Something Rhymes with Purple - Prestidigitation

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

This week we’re peeking behind the magician’s cloth to trick you into a world of tricks, rigs, and prestidigitation. With characteristic sleight-of-hand our mesmerising hosts saw in half the language of magicians, Gyles shares some jaw-dropping tales from being up close with TV magicians, and Susie recounts a tale of when Countdown’s Nick Hewer was scammed on the street.  Warning: this episode does contain some minor spoilers of how well-known tricks are performed. Please don’t tell the Magic Circle. As always there’s plenty of time to answer your questions and this week we get to the bottom of snewing in Liverpool, the link between garlic cloves and your toes, and there’s a chance for Susie to practice her Scouse accent as she asks, “Accrington Stanley… who are they?” A Somethin’ Else production If you want to get in touch with Gyles and Susie about your favourite magic tricks from around the world or about anything else then the email is [e-mail] Don’t forget, we’ve got a lovely new range of merchandise available from https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple so get your mugs, t-shirts, and tote bags today! Susie’s Trio: Knick-knackatarian - a dealer in nick nacks Flamfoo - a gaudily-dressed female; someone who is more froth than substance  Biblioklept - a book thief, someone who borrows a book and never gives it back Try 6 free issues of The Week magazine worth £23.94 today. Go to http://bit.ly/SomethingRhymeswithPurple and use your special code PURPLE to claim your 6 week free trial today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words and language and the very fact that something does rhyme with purple, despite all expectations and insistences to the contrary. I'm Susie Dent, and with me, as always, is the fabulous Giles Brandreth. Good to be with you again. Just remind us, what word does rhyme with purple for people who are joining the podcast for the first time? Well, there's more than one, in fact. I can think of two to start with. One is herple, which we often talk about on here, don't we? Herple is to walk with a limp, to hobble, a dialect word. And there is another one,

which is part of a horse's rump, and that is kerple, C-U-R-P-L-E. Herple is spelt H-I-R-P-L-E. So there's two for starters. And if you want to join the purple people, and I'm happy to say there are thousands of Purple People around the world because this is a global podcast, and you think you've come up with another word that rhymes with purple that we don't know about, do let us know. You can communicate via email purple at somethingelse.com and that's something spelt without a G.

Oh gosh, the magic of being able to communicate in this way online, via the internet, on Zoom, etc. is extraordinary. I mentioned the word magic there. When you were a little girl, did you love magic? Did you learn magic tricks? Did you do magic? Yes, I was one of many, many people who as as children, as a child, received a magic kit. And I still remember the little plastic thimbles and the little foam balls that you put underneath, the decks of cards, the magician's hat, the wand, all of that. I got it from Hamley's, the best toy shop in the world, on London's Regent Street. And I was absolutely delighted. I have

to say I absolutely loved it. But, you know, we've talked in the past about how I am slightly coulrophobic. I'm slightly scared of clowns. I have to say that at parties, at friends' birthday parties, I would still be quite scared of the magicians who came to perform. I also used to feel very sorry for the rabbits and the doves that were kind of stuffed into top hats. So it was a slightly mixed experience for me. I think I preferred reading a book, as always, and learning how to do the magic tricks myself. Well, I love magic too. Interestingly, lots of surveys showing this, boys are much more into magic than girls. If you go to a magic show, I remember taking my son when he was sort

of eight or nine to see Paul Daniels in the Dominion Theatre in the West End. And two thirds of the audience was dads, granddads and sons and grandsons. Only a third of the people there were female. Did you watch television magic? Did you ever go to see magic shows? Yes, I remember Paul Daniels very well. And I have to say, on Countdown, we regularly have the brilliant street magician called Paul Zenon, who is wonderful. And he's got incredible sleight of hand or prestidigitation, which means nimble-fingered, if you remember. But he is absolutely against the idea that magicians have

this sort of special superstitious magic or that psychics have this kind of special power. It is street magic for him. It is a simple way of fooling the public as magicians like him have done for centuries. Well, I've known a lot of magicians over my lifetime and I've written a number of magic books to prove it to you. I'm speaking to Susie from my basement book room. And I've just from the shelves, I mean, I've written a dozen magic books. Here is one of the ones I wrote. I'm holding it up to the screen so she can see it. The Beaver Book of Magic by Giles Brandreth, written, I don't know, about 30, 40 years ago when my children were tiny. I also wrote a biography of the great Houdini. Look at that.

It was hugely famous, probably maybe one of the world's first globally famous men of magic. And I've even written some fiction. Look, Max, The Boy Who Made a Million, that's a little novel all about. And there's me, my fantasy picture of myself dressed as a magician when I was a little boy.

And that is incredible. I had no idea you'd written so many books about magic. And of course, Paul, who I just mentioned, is also a huge aficionado and expert on Houdini. So you two could talk for hours about escapology and all that sort of thing. I got into a lot of trouble publishing the Houdini book because I revealed some of his secrets. They were secrets that he had revealed in his lifetime. But the people from the magic circle got onto me and said, how could you? How could you? I was defended by my friend, Ali Bongo. Did you ever come across Ali Bongo? The most lovely man in the world. He was a magician himself, but he also advised some of the great

magicians. He helped set up tricks for people like Paul Daniels on TV. And Ali Bongo, if ever you phoned him, his answering machine, this is what it said. This is Ali Bongo. The answer is yes. Now, what's the question? He was just a powerhouse of positivity. Who are your favourite magicians? Do you know what? I love Darren Brown, who, of course, is, I think, a mentalist, really, rather than a magician as such. I mean, he is extraordinary. And what I love about him, well, first of all, he's incredibly, he's an incredibly brilliant writer, really articulate, really pithy in the way that he gets quite complicated ideas about, you know, subliminal persuasion and trance induction and mass hypnosis. You know, how he gets that across is quite incredible. But I love the way that actually he will deceive the audience. I mean, in such a compelling way where you just

think this has to be magic. And then he will actually unpick it for you and say, this is how I did it. And it is all about that subliminal persuasion and these incredibly complicated, but effective verbal cues that he has planted all the way through his show. I mean, it's incredible. So from a purely linguistic point of view, I love Darren Brown. I think I would use him as one of my favourites. Well, we're going to talk about the language of magic because that's what we talk about. Language in itself is magic. I don't quite know how it works. The other day I watched on television a production of The Winter's Tale from the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. And it was a production

that they'd prepared, but the night it was due to open, literally, the pandemic was declared. So they'd kept it on ice for a year, and then they filmed it, and they showed it. And three quarters of the way through it, the magic happened. It's actually a show in which magic features, as it often does in Shakespeare. But the magic happened, I mean, there was a kind of emotional moment, and you found your eyes pricking with tears. And I thought, this is just being done with words. It's just people speaking words, and words written 400 years ago, and they're working a magic. And that is extraordinary. And I, in a way, almost don't want to know how these things are done. When a magician explains how

the trick worked, I think, oh, well, now I know how it's done. It doesn't seem so remarkable, as you will know, because I'm sure I've told you about meeting Michael Jackson. I met Michael Jackson because he was a friend of Uri Geller. I'm a friend of Uri Geller. I've got very little cutlery that hasn't been bent at least once by Uri. He very kindly then bends it back into shape when he goes home, having had supper. Is this for real? Does he really do that?

Oh, he really does do it. He really does. And he's happy to do it. What's great about Uri is he's happy to do it as a party piece. And, you know, if he's with people... So what is it? What's going on? You have to unravel this for me. No, I don't know what is going on. I've had a go at doing it myself. And I can do it in a tricksy point. I can actually do it. But my way of doing it is sleight of hand. And he manages to do it

remotely. I do not know how it happens. Remotely? Yes, he can actually give you a spoon that seems to be a straight spoon. You put it in your saucer. A moment later, he says, oh, what's happened to your spoon? And you pick it up and, oh, it's bent slightly. You then hand it back to him and it bends even more. But it did bend slightly, it seems, in your saucer.

I wonder if that is is again whether it's kind of all subliminal i don't know we don't know that's that's the you see i think once you take the mystery out of magic it's no longer magic it suddenly becomes banal can we begin to explore some of these words i'm sure we've touched on before the word magic where does that come from magi as in the journey of the magi all that that sort of thing? Yes, absolutely. So Persian priests, the Magi, who were skilled in enchantment and also considered incredibly wise. So actually, you have to remember that wizard has at its heart wise as well. A wizard was a wise man. Just a reminder that if people want to know more about witches and wizardry, we did cover that, didn't we, in the episode Goblinus. But yes, the magi, their roots possibly

may go back to a really ancient word meaning to have power. So, you know, that's at the heart of machine and all sorts of things. So that's quite possibly its ultimate origin. But if people say that prostitution is the oldest professional professional or that's what they're saying we'll tell you magicians might argue otherwise because the cup and balls routine which i think we mentioned in our last episode and which you'll still see won't you and you know not just in kids magic sets but also the street performers repertoire often includes the cup and balls routine that was a favorite even for the ancient gree. And it was one of the tricks played by the Assetta Bulari, they were called, a group of musicians who took their name from the small vinegar cups, the acetic acid cups that they used for it. So incredibly old. And the tricks

with thimble as well, called the thimble rig trick, rig is a swindle, that also goes back to those early magic makers. So it's incredibly old. Let me stop you on the word trick. Where does that come from? T-R-I-C-K. Okay. So trick goes back to, that's a Latin word that goes back to trickare or trickare really. And that means to be evasive. So of course it's again, all about the sleight of hand. So yeah, that's where that comes from. I think it also had another meaning of shuffle. So of course that would lead you into the kind of card playing tricks as well. One of my favourites always was Tommy Cooper,

who pretended that it was all going wrong. He didn't know what he was doing, but was precise. He absolutely knew what he was doing. And you'd have thought, well, he's a shambles. But in fact, he understood the mechanics, the nuts and bolts of it all. Can you take us into the world of some of the language of the nuts and bolts of it? Yeah, well, should I start with the words spoken by the magicians themselves? So they're pater. So pater is quite interesting in itself. So that was a word that began as a

shortening of paternoster, the Lord's Prayer. And it was referring really to the rapid mumbling of prayers. And then pater itself grew from that around the 18th century. And it was originally part of the cant language, as it was called, of thieves and beggars in the criminal underworld. Then you've got the magical... Does that include, I mean, forgive me, things like abracadabra, hey presto, Izzy Wizzy, let's get busy. I'm giving away my generation now.

Izzy Wizzy. Izzy Wizzy. I've not heard that one. That was Sooty. Sooty, who was a magician. I remember Sooty. Yeah, yeah. And I've got in my teddy bear collection at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire,

the original Sooty belonging to Harry Corbett from the 1940s. And if you look on the pads on his paws, you can see the glue marks where the wand was attached to the pad so that the wand didn't come off when he was whizzing. Izzy, whizzy, let's get busy. Anyway. Okay, I can't tell you where that one comes from, but I can tell you about Hey Presto and Abracadabra.

So Hey Presto began as Hey Presto Be Gone. And it possibly was part of the kind of, you know, Presto, obviously the idea of rapidity, again, prestidigitation, rapid fingers. But it's kind of also similar to Hocus Pocus. And that was the opening of a string of mock Latin that was used by jugglers in the 17th century. So you have to go back to fairs and markets and the charlatans there. So hocus pocus was, as I say, part of this kind of random made up Latin to make it sound incredibly authentic. So that's Hey Presto. And then abracadabra was said to be part of a spell

that had special powers against fatal diseases and other things. It was used as an amulet, if you like, to ward off evil. And in fact, you did sometimes find the arrangement of the letters on an amulet to send away the evil eye. Remind me what an amulet is? So an amulet is like a talisman, really. Is it a physical thing? It's a physical thing,

like you could have it as a necklace, for example, and some of them would bear the word abracadabra written in a triangular pattern. So you'd have abracadabra at the top and then abracadabra without the A and so on and so on until the last bottom bit of the triangle was simply an A. So you will find that too. So that's the kind of patter, which I think is quite

interesting. And then as always, you've got the tribal vocabulary. You've got the vocabulary used magician to magician, perhaps within the magic circle to describe their repertoire. So you've got a profonde. Can you guess what that is? Because your French is quite good. Profonde, something deep, something that's the back. Exactly. So it's a large pocket in tailcoats where the magician basically can have, you know,

he can use it for what's called vanishes. So vanishes, uses a noun, or the productions as they call them. A lot of it is optical illusion. So somebody is wearing a coat with these deep pockets So vanishes, uses a noun, or the productions as they call them. A lot of it is optical illusion. Yes. So somebody's wearing a coat with these deep pockets and it's a black silk coat against a black background. It doesn't look as performed as it is.

Just as when you're sawing the lady in half, or whoever you're sawing in half, it used to be a lady, it's the stripes on the side of the table give you the impression that the table is less deep than it is. So that when the body is inside, it can actually go lower than you're thinking. It's going more profonde. And similarly, when you're putting, somebody goes into a box standing up and you put swords through the front, through the side, from the top to the bottom. Yeah.

All of that but they're so brilliant these magicians they've come up with new and different ways of doing that so what we're not giving away very much saying that because because they can they can improve on that they really can always um you've got the gimmick of course and gimmick has a special meaning in in magic it's a small object or piece of equipment which enables the magic and which the audience is entirely unaware of and gimmick itself we think is a sort of fuzzy anagram anagram of magic and we think that's where gimmick really really and is that the same gimmick as we talk what's your gimmick when you say that to somebody you've got

a special idea okay what's the special gimmick it's the same word it's the same gimmick as we talk, what's your gimmick when you say that to somebody? You've got a special idea. Okay, what's the special gimmick? It's the same word. It's the same word. So the original sense was a piece of magician's apparatus. And then it came to mean any trick or device that's kind of intended to attract attention, if you like. Oh, and just another word that we've got from magic, actually. I can't remember if we talked about this. I think we did, because I remember saying that Nick Hewer was actually taken in by this in London. A phony, phony goes back to what was known as a phony rig. Remember, again, that the rig bit means a swindle. It's quite complicated. But the thief, if you like, drops a ring, which is brass, but actually looks gold and very expensive. So I'm using he, it could be a she,

but he drops it before an unsuspecting person comes along. The unsuspecting person finds it and they say, oh, have you dropped your ring? And the other person says, oh, no, no, it's not mine. And they have this sort of pleasant conversation as to who should take it because it's obviously worth something. And the magician, if you like, or the trickster will then say, look, don't worry, honestly, you take it. You can give me a tenner if you like for my trouble. And that's what they do. And then, you know, which Nick gladly gave over,

only to discover when he took it to a jeweller's that actually it was worth absolutely nothing because it was made of brass. And the Irish for a ring is fóinne, I think. F-A-I-N-N-E. My Irish pronunciation is legendary for its terribleness. But that means a ring in Irish. And that gave us fóine.

So it was the fóine ring and eventually that became phony. Because, of course, the essence of all this, the essence of magic, particularly magic shows, is that it is trickery. It is phony. Do you remember somebody called Huey Green do you remember a program called Opportunity Knox I remember when I was really little yeah well when you were really little I appeared on Opportunity Knox not as a performer but they used to have people sponsoring you if

you were an act somebody came on to sponsor you and back I think almost 50 years ago, I appeared in Optical Knox sponsoring the daughter of Cyril Fletcher, who was an entertainer, Jilly Fletcher. And she was a young magician. And I introduced her. And then she did a trick involving putting your head in a kind of stocks and then having it a kind of guillotine, you know, where the blade comes down. and then having it a kind of guillotine, you know, where the blade comes down. And to try it, she put in a cabbage in the guillotine, and then let the guillotine come down, and the cabbage was cut in half. Anyway, the idea was then that you put your head in,

and your head was cut in half. The point is, at the rehearsal, in her nervous state, she forgot to flick the right switch and just at the last minute realised that actually she could have cut my head or Huey Green's head off. Many people might think that could have been a good thing. I'd forgotten that completely. And then I saw a recent television programme about Tommy Cooper. And Tommy Cooper did this same trick for a Michael Parkinson Christmas show one year. And he, Tommy Cooper, also forgot to flick the switch which held the blade back. Surely health and safety these days would never allow this, would they? Fortunately, one of the floor managers realised what had happened. And as it were, when the camera

was looking at Michael Parkinson, he nipped off onto the set and flicked the switch so that in fact Michael Parkinson's head was not cut off. So you run risks in this world. So a gimmick is a gimmick. Woofledust. I love woofledust. Is that a word raised from the world of magic? Yes, it's just a kind of invisible substance, a dust that makes tricks work. But obviously it's an excuse for secretly picking up an object or getting rid of one so the magician will say and i just you know just put some waffle dust on you'll find kids entertainers doing that all the time which is lovely and what else have we got levitation now that's one i can never understand levitation where again you know they the magician will have a person rise up into the air and they will put their hands underneath them to show that there is nothing propping them up. I have no idea about that.

I'm guessing. Well, actually, let's not guess. Let's not expose it. But that I find incredible. And that goes back to the Latin levitas, meaning lightness, which is, of course, where we also get levity from. I'm showing you an illustration from my book, The Magic of Houdini, because that slightly illustrates how it can be done, levitation. It's often done with, in fact, you see it if you go to a market and you see people standing still for hours on end,

apparently levitating, have you seen that? It's all to do with metal rods going up. And the way they do that is they appear to take their hoop right the way across the metal rod underneath. But in fact, they aren't. There are little gaps here and there where it's the way they twist their hands. The reason I was never any good at a magician is that it requires so much practice, practice, practice. If you want to do it, you've really got to work at it. And risk killing someone in the interim. Yeah, of course. Because there's nothing fun in life without danger.

Jeopardy. Jeopardy. Walking the tightrope, falling off it. Before we take our break, have you got any more words from the technical world of magic? Well, maybe we should end with fake because fake obviously has been in the news massively, hasn't it? Thanks to fake news and accusations of that

for the last decade, probably. So fake in magic, it's kind of spelled F-E-K-E. You'll often find that within tribal vocabulary. There's a slightly different spelling, again, to sort of make it the group's own. Now, a fake is an item in magic which looks like a regular everyday object, but it's been gimmicked to facilitate the trick. So it might be a drinking glass with the bottom removed. It might be a coin which has got a magnet somehow in it. That's the fake in magic. But the fake as we use it,

which of course is related, is we know London criminal slang arose in the 18th century, meaning counterfeit or a swindle, but it probably goes back a long, long way. And it might be related to a German word, fegen, meaning to sweep or to clear out or to plunder. So perhaps again, the idea of daylight robbery, actually somebody coming along and picking a pocket or two or whatever. So lots of different theories actually for fake. And given that it's such an, unfortunately, everyday word now, you know, work still goes on to uncover it, which I suppose is quite appropriate really, isn't it?

Because there are probably lots of fake stories attached to it too. Intriguing. That's the world of magic, according to Susie Dent. This is something Rhymes with Purple. You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express.

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That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. We're talking magic and magicians, and one of the best, James Randi, famously said, magicians are the most honest people in the world. They tell you they're going to fool you, and then they do. It's amazing what magicians can

do, what mind readers can do, what mesmerists can do. Now, mesmerism is one of those words that is named after a person. What are those words called? They are eponyms. Eponyms, exactly. Like Wellington boots, silhouette, leotard. Exactly. Like Wellington boots, silhouette, leotard. Tell me, sandwiches. Yes, exactly. Tell me about mesmerism and where that comes from and what it is. Yeah. Well, Franz Anton Mesmer was denounced in the 17th century Vienna as a kind of practitioner of magic and pure and simple and nothing else. But actually, he believed himself to be a scientist, really. And he set out to show his, or to prove, I guess,

the existence of a mysterious fluid that permeates all matter, which he called animal magnetism. And he made quite a name for himself in Paris. They moved from Vienna to Paris and he attracted the attention and support of the aristocracy, even the monarchy, in fact, including Marie Antoinette. And various contemporary accounts describe what became known as mesmerism. And this involved patients sitting in circles, holding hands around a large tub, get this, of sulfuric acid from which iron bars would kind of be sticking out. And these iron bars had previously been touched by mesmer. And so he said they were

imbued with animal magnetism. And the result, according to the people who went, were what they called crises of the body, and then came a total cure. So now looking back, the idea we think is that this was all about psychosomatic relief, if you like, rather than obviously real medicine. And not everyone believed it at the time. So King Louis XVI, for example, he appointed a committee to investigate mesmer and his claims. And it said that these cures were purely the result of mind persuasion rather than, as I say, real medicine. Eventually, mesmer fled Paris, the French Revolution came, and it was recognised that what he promoted was a trance-like mesmerising state that then induced the mind to affect recovery. And when in the 19th century, a Scottish surgeon called James Braid took the idea, if you like, and then turned to

the name of the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos, to create the alternative term hypnotism, which was not too dissimilar. It was the idea of artificially inducing a trance as the way to recovery. So Mesmer kind of much lauded in his time, then much ridiculed. But as I say, his kind of practices, if you like, have been built on with this idea of hypnotism these days. Have you ever been hypnotized, Giles? Sort of. I am a little bit by you. I think it's completely fascinating. I was a friend of the actor Richard Bryars. And Richard Bryars' hero was the great Victorian actor Sir Henry Irving, in his day, the most famous actor probably in the world, and the first actor to be knighted in this country. And Richard Bryars, who studied Irving's story in detail, was convinced that Irving was a mesmerist because he said he physically was

not particularly appealing. He had a slight speech impediment. And yet he managed to hold audiences, 2,000 people at a time, when doing his performances. And Richard was of the view that this was mesmerism, that it was, as it were, the power of hypnosis over an audience. Have you been hypnotized with a sort of swinging watch in front of you making your focus? Not with a swinging watch, no. I have, as part of CBT, so cognitive behavioural therapy, I have been induced into a kind of hypnotic trance. But for me, it was not at all like the kind of dramas that you see where, for me, it was not at all like the kind of dramas that you see where, you know, you suddenly just become awake but entranced. I just lightly dozed. This was purely, I should say, because I'm a worrier, as you know, and I'm so sick of worrying about stuff. I thought I'm actually going to get

some help with this. So the idea was to try and kind of soothe my soul, if you like. And it was quite effective, again, in a subliminal way. These people have a gift. I know Paul McKenna, and he's a very intuitive person. You're with him. And because of the sort of person he is, he quickly gets onto your wavelength, understands what you're about. But I have friends who've been to Paul McKenna professionally, and he has cured them, for example, of smoking completely. Yeah, that's incredible, isn't it? But there is a kind of willingness

that if you want to be cured, you're making yourself susceptible to it. And he is introducing you to techniques that will enable you to help, you know, give up what you want to do. So I think it is fantastic. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, the power of the mind

when it's led in the right way is both staggeringly, incredibly impressive, but also quite scary, I think. Just remind me about Hypnos. I have hosted the British Bedding Awards and Hypnos beds regularly win. And indeed, they make very comfortable beds. Yes. Including, I think, all the beds for the hotel chain that Lenny Henry advertises. Oh, yes.

Yes, yes. Who was Hypnos? He was a Greek god, was he? Yes. So the god of sleep. So the Greek god of sleep, I think, whereas the Roman god of sleep was Morpheus, which is why we have morphine. So that's where Hypnos comes from. And again, because hypnotism induces this kind of trance like sleepy state. So we've done hypnotism. We've done mesmerism. Have we done mentalism? Have we talked about mentalism? Mentalism actually is quite late on. So it only came about in the 19th century in the way that we know it today.

So a mentalist is defined as a magician who, like Derren Bryan, who I mentioned earlier, performs feet that demonstrate extraordinary mental power, such as mind reading. It's interesting the names these magicians give themselves. David Copperfield. Do you think that's his real name? Or has he taken the character from Dickens? It makes the name more memorable. It's like there's an actress called Anne Hathaway. I realise now I'd have had a much more successful career if I'd called myself William Shakespeare. What a mistake it'd make to call yourself Charles Brandreth when you could have been David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. For our older listeners, I saw and loved a magician

called David Nixon. He had a lot of charm, a great deal of charm, made it look terribly easy, and he was sort of nonchalant about it. But we've been talking really about UK-centric people in the world of magic. If you are tuning in from the other side of the world, and happily thousands do, please let us know about magicians wherever you are. And if there are terms of phrase that we don't know about, let us know. And if Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy predates Sooty,

I'd like to know that as well. We ought to do an episode on catchphrases, actually. Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy. Let's do that as well. We ought to do an episode on catchphrases, actually. Izzy, Wizzy, let's get busy. Let's do that next week. Okay. But right now, people from around the world have been in touch, haven't they? What have they been saying to us? They definitely have.

Well, one of our very recent episodes was about advertising slogans that have stayed with us over the years. And lots and lots of purple people got in touch. Thank you so much. There were nods to Wrigley's gum, happy little Vegemites in Australia. I love Vegemite. And this one from Nikki in Worcester, which I think will resonate with lots of British listeners.

Nikki says, hello, I've just been enjoying the edition of the podcast where you talked about advertising. The one that sticks in my mind is an advert from the 1970s. I can't remember what it was for but it involved two young boys talking about football teams all i remember is the last line which was ackrington stanley who are they uh she says if i ever hear ackrington stanley mentioned these days i always have to say who are they um do you remember this i used to love this ad i didn't it definitely was in my day and i think it was in the

80s for the milk marketing board do you remember i do of course i remember it so the implication was if you drank milk you would be more likely to grow up and play for liverpool and if you didn't drink milk then it was akrington stanley um and sorry it's a terrible terrible geordie accent or liverpudlian accent, sorry. And then I can't even get my accent right. I ought to explain that Accrington Stanley is actually in Lancashire. Oh, well, maybe I've got the accent completely wrong. No, no, I think you've got the accent right. But Accrington itself, just in case people think we don't know where Accrington is, my grandfather lived in Accrington and my great aunt was the head teacher of the local primary school there.

Oh, well, it was also a pretty good football team as I understand it. That's the point. People joke about Accrington Stanley, but in their day, they were pretty hot stuff. Yeah. And then when it's Accrington Stanley, who are they? The answer was exactly. It was a brilliant ad. So thank you, Nicky, for reminding

us of those. Have you got another one? I've got, well, we say we go global, we do. G'day from down under, Susie and Giles. Again, embarrassing accent from me. As a former native of the fair city of Liverpool, my mother used a word when I was growing up in the 60s, which I don't believe was particularly scouse. This is from Ian, Gold Coast, Australia. The word he's mentioning is snooing, S-N-O-O-I-N-G, as in don't play near that railway line, it's snooing with rats. Never heard the word since. Snooing. Have you ever come across this word?

How is Ian spelling snooing there? S for sugar, N for noddy, OO as in 007, ING, snowing. Well, I have to say, Ian, that I think if you looked at printed records of this, it is probably spelt snowing, S-N-E-W-I-N-G, which was an alternative and regional past tense of snowing. was an alternative and regional past tense of snowing. And the idea is that, obviously, if you've got snow coming down, you've got precipitation, it's also the idea of teeming and sort of pouring. So it's snowing with rats would be then, it's snowing with rats, it's teeming with rats.

And I'm pretty sure that's where that comes from rather than the double O. But, you know, as so often happens with English spelling, it might well have changed over time. Jack Hughes is in touch. He comes from York. As ever, thank you so much for the tonic that is Something Rhymes with Purple. We appreciate that. I, like Susie, am a Germanist

and study history and German at university. I'm also a budding food writer. And as I was preparing a mushroom stroganoff, I started wondering about the origin of the word clove. I want to know the origin of the word mushroom. Never mind, stroganoff. Anyway, the origin of the word clove referring to garlic, not the spice, but perhaps there is a further link to be made. Does a clove of garlic have anything to do with feet, as in cloven hooves?

I thought the link might be there, that in German the word for toe is See, Z zed zed h and a clove of garlic is a yes this is good take it away okay so we probably have to start with two different types of clove in our cupboards at home if we're quite fancy so one on the spice rack in a jar and the other in a garlic bulb. And they're two very different words. So the spice clove famously used in apple pies, but also for toothache, which I think is disgusting, comes from the French clou de girofle, which was nail of the clove tree. And you can see why, because cloves, the spice, they look a little bit like nails. And that Clue de Girafle actually gave us the jelly flower for the pink flower that actually has a similar sort of smell to clove. So that's the first one. Then the clove of garlic is an

old English word, and that's related to cleave and to cloven, cloven hooved. And the idea is split into more than one piece. So obviously, if you're looking at a garlic bulb, you can see that there are lots and lots of different garlic cloves within it. So that is the idea there. As for Knoblauchzee, the Knoblauch bit comes from the German kleben, which also means to cleave, and lauch, meaning a leek. So they associated it as an L-E-E-K. So they associated it with a different vegetable altogether. And I don't know, I'm fascinated to know whether Tze is related to Tzein and Tzea, meaning a toe. I suspect it is with the idea, again, of sort of having something which is slightly split into different parts and it's

absolutely fascinating so thank you to jack because i'm going to um i'm going to turn to my german etymological dictionary and see where the toes are involved can you tell those of us who are sitting in the cheap seats um about very quickly mushroom and stroganoff just in a nutshell uh so stroganoff is i think i'm going to look that up i think stroganoff is an eponym that's my guess um and i may be guessing it was a great chef called oh count stroganoff count strong enough yard was it made for him or by his chef i think made for him made for because he was a diplomat yes so much as you've got peach melba which was made for dame nelly melba and margarita pizza which was for uh queen marguerite etc so i think it was made for him so mushroom is an example of how we like to take a foreign word

in this case the french mousseron which means a mushroom and make it sound more english and something more comfortable on our tongues so we decided we knew the words mush and we knew the root the word room doesn't matter if it makes absolutely no sense to appropriate this. It's similar to, do you remember the Portuguese explorers giving the Spanish the avocado? And they chose a word that didn't sound a bit like the Aztec ajoatl because they couldn't pronounce it. So they actually turned it to avocado, which meant a solicitor, but it didn't matter. It sounded like that. Same with the mushroom Moussorant was hard for us

so we decided it sounded a bit like mushroom that would do Do you remember Shirley Conran? She said life's too short to stuff a mushroom I think I'm with her but life is not long enough to learn all the words that Susie Dent knows Give us your trio for this week, Susie.

Three interesting words that you feel should have greater currency. Okay, so this is my first one. I don't think any of us really are going to use this particularly, but I just love it because it sounds so brilliant. It literally trips off the tongue. And it's a knickknackitarian. Oh, I like it. When I say literally trips off the tongue,

it's obviously not jumping off my tongue onto the desk. But knickknackitarian. Knickknackitarian oh i like it when i say literally trips off the tongue it's obviously not jumping off my tongue onto the desk but knickknackitarian knickknackitarian i love it and that's a dealer in knickknacks oh very good i'm a knickknackitarian i love it little trinkets trinkets and unconsidered trifles excellent exactly exactly um then you've got again something that i chose for its sound really a fl sound, really, a flamfoo. Now, a flamfoo was originally a gaudily dressed female. So somebody who was only interested in her appearance. And she just wasn't interested in anything else, really. But it's been later applied to anyone who is more froth than trousers, or more froth than substance, I should say.

And I just love the sound of it. A flam, you're such a flamfoo. in trousers or more froth than substance, I should say. And I just love the sound of it. You're such a flam-foo. And finally, I think we've all met one of these, a biblioclept. You can probably absolutely guess what that is. Somebody who steals books? Exactly. A book thief. A friend who borrows a book and never gives it back. They are a biblioclept. I can't bear them. It's why I've stopped lending books to people. I just won't do it anymore. Because then you forget who you've lent it to and it's just, it's hopeless, isn't it? Three words from you and a little bit of poetry from me. Poetry. Lovely. Because we've been talking about magic and I've been thinking about Shakespeare because it was his birthday the

other day. Well, I say his birthday, we don't know when his birthday was. We do know he was baptised on the 26th of April, so we reckon his birthday might have been the 23rd. And that's when I saw the RSC production of The Winter's Tale, where, in fact, unconsidered trifles, I think that may be the first use of that turn of phrase that we know of. But magic occurs in a lot of Shakespeare's plays, and The Tempest, Prospero is a magician, a man of magic. And he ends his reign as a magician with these wonderful words. Our revels now are ended. These are actors,

as I foretold you, who are all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. Beautiful. Oh, brings us right back to hypnosis. Well, I hope people haven't nodded off listening to this because it, as always, means a huge amount to us that not only do you listen, but that you also get in touch. So please do carry on getting in touch.

We do read everything. It's purple at somethingelse.com. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale and, yes, the Prince of Flamphu.

Gully. Gully.