Something Rhymes with Purple - Swazzle

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

This week we’re embracing nostalgia and throwing open our trunks to skip through the wonderful world of toys. Along the way we discover the real Teddy behind the bear, where the word Muppet comes from, and why it’s not necessarily a good thing to be as pleased as punch. We also reminisce about trips to Hamley’s (some for business, some for pleasure), Gyles reveals the star attractions in his Teddy collection, and did he really meet the real Barbie and Ken? A Somethin’ Else production  We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them in to [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple.  We currently have 20% off all our merchandise in our store. If you would like to join the Purple Plus Club on Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work. Susie’s Trio: Tu quoque - an argument that throws back the same charge on an accuser Whataboutery - responding to an accusation my making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue Vibrissae - the stiff hairs that grow about the face of many mammals: eg a cat’s whiskers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast all about words and language and our joy in both. And with me as ever is my co-presenter Giles Brandreth I'm Susie Dent by the way but Giles hello it's good to be with you I feel I've rather been two-timing you this week

because well I have you because of our podcast I have you I see you every week but also I have you in my head all the time because we do this podcast virtually you are in Oxford and I am in London usually and so we hear each other on our headphones. I see you on the screen. But because I hear you, I hear you in my head. So you're with me every day. But every evening recently, I have been two-timing you because I've been sitting on a sofa with my friend, the actress Joanna Lumley. We are doing something together called Celebrity Gogglebox. Oh, yes. This is a favourite of yours. Yeah.

It is a favourite of mine. And I began doing it a few years ago. I began doing it with another very distinguished actress, Dame Sheila Hancock, who is a wonderful person. She's brilliant, actually. And she's just published a book, which I do recommend, called Old Rage. It's both autobiography and diary and her getting angry at the way she finds the world as she enters her 90th year. She is formidable. And we began doing the podcast together. I think it was almost at the beginning of lockdown.

And I felt the pair of us sitting in the world was sort of shutting up. And we were sitting on a sofa doing this program. People don't know about it. and it is now an international program. Essentially, they film people watching television. That's the long and the short of it. And we sat there on the sofa together, getting hooked on most unlikely programs like Naked Attraction, me and the lady in her 90th year. And I suddenly, one day, I found this lady in her 90th year trying to explain to me what

a fanny flutter was. I thought this is quite unreal. Anyway, I did it with her. Then I did it with Maureen Lipman. And immediately after I'd done the program with each of them, they were both made dames. That's the effect I seem to have. So people have been pleading. Actresses have been pleading to come on the program with me this year.

So they thought, well, we don't want any of that nonsense. So we'll give him a dame. And so Dame Joanna Lumley and i have been doing the podcast i am happy to share you with joanna lumley and i also would like to share you with some of your favorite things from the past today not just favorite things from the present or favorite people from the present because i'm going to talk about toys today uh which is one of my favourite subjects, because I think it's a bit like asking people what their favourite children's TV programme was, or indeed their favourite word. It will always bring back such lovely, lovely memories. And so I have to ask you, do you have a favourite toy still?

And do you keep it with you? And why is it your favourite? I have so many favourite toys. And indeed, the reason I was mentioning Joanna, because I was going to lead into the fact that I think there is a toy version of the character of Patsy that she played in Absolutely Fabulous, which was a kind of Barbie doll. I do have, believe it or not, a Barbie doll given to me by Barbie herself. Ken and Barbie were real people. And about 40 years ago, I met them. I hosted a conference or something, some marketing event in London, and they were the guests of honor. So I met Ken and Barbie, which is pretty fantastic. But I can't say that they are my favorite toys, but I do have a lot of toys from my childhood. I have puppets, string puppets, made by a company called Pelham Puppets, P-E-L-H-A-M. Lovely string puppets, including Mr. Turnip, who was a childhood character from the

1950s. But of course, my favourite toys are teddy bears. And I have a teddy bear collection that now lives in England in Yorkshire at Newby Hall near Ripon more than a thousand bears are there let's dig into the world of toys can I just show you something before we start digging in can you see what I'm showing you on the camera now this is me in Barbie form oh my goodness I think there's only one of them unfortunately but this is a Barbie of me which includes includes, it says on the packet, a pocket dictionary, knowledge of every word in the dictionary, exclamation mark. And this is a little version of me complete with an Oxford dictionary and a countdown mug because it was produced as a prop for 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

Oh, it's just a one-off. Show it to me again. I want to see it again. I want to see it again. It's fantastic. I want you as a Barbie. I want Susie just count them. Oh, it's just a one-off. Show it to me again. I want to see it again. I want to see it again. It's fantastic. I want you as a Barbie. I want Susie as a Barbie. They should market that to make a fortune.

All the purple people would want one. Oh, it's just, it was a lovely thing. So I try and keep as many props as I can. I've got some Lego of the set upstairs as well, which is another toy that was my absolute favourite. But you're right. Should we start with toy itself? Let's start with toy itself. People tuning in to something runs above but you cannot

at the moment get this barbie doll of suzy dead but i will be working on it because i think it's such a lovely idea complete with countdown mug and and dictionary there is a child's bear that is no longer made but it was made when we opened our Teddy Bear Museum in the 1980s. And it's become a bit of a collector's item. Oh, with knitwear, I'm sure. Yes, exactly. It's got a jolly jumper on. You can see the price on eBay. Okay, let's maybe start with toy and teddy.

What's the origin of the word toy? Well, yes, toy is a little bit like boy, in fact. We know it goes back to the Middle Ages, but we don't quite know where it came from. But its original meaning is quite different to how it is today because it was a funny story or remark. And then a little bit later, a toy was a trick or some kind of gimmicky, frivolous entertainment. And the usual modern sense, so the object that we're going to talk about today for a child to play with, that dates back to the late 16th century. It's a little bit later, but we don't quite know where it comes from, which is fascinating because it's such a, you know,

such a classic. And when it comes to teddy bear, you know this absolutely. In fact, did you ever meet him? Oh, thank you very much. Very good. Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States at the turn of the 20th century. And he was on a hunting expedition. He was a keen hunter. And he was on a hunting expedition in Smedes County, Mississippi in around 1903, that sort of time. And he spared the life of a bear cub. And a political cartoon appeared the following day or a few days afterwards in the Washington Post or Washington newspaper. And that inspired a toy maker, toy shop in New York,

a man called Morris McTom, speaking from memory, to write to the White House and say, I want to create a bear and I want to call it Teddy's Bear. The president, may I have a mission to do so? and the president said yes and originally the teddy bear was known as teddy's bear for the first few years and they originated the sort of soft toy bears that were collectible toys at about the same time in europe and in america and so there's a competition as to where they did they first come from the famous german company of steiff who certainly made bears at this exactly same period as this man in New York was creating his Teddy's bear. But the Teddy bear is not named after Edward VII, as some people think.

Teddy, Edward VII. He gave us Teddy boys, didn't he? Because the style of a Teddy boy was based on the fashions current during his reign. because the style of a teddy boy was based on the fashions current during his reign. Yeah, those kind of drainpipe trousers and the long velvet-coloured jackets and hair in a quiff. Oh, so the teddy boy is Edward VII, but the teddy bear is Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, related to FDR Roosevelt, but not father or grandfather. Okay, so that's the teddy bear and that's the toy.

Well, dolls. I mean, dolls until the teddy bear came along. I mean, the great joy of the teddy bear is that it has been a toy that has appealed to both genders. Whereas traditionally, I think, dolls were given to girls rather than boys, I think, in times gone by. That's right, because it's a pet form of Dorothy, essentially. And Dorothy became a generic word, and it's shortening doll, for a man's pet or a lover. So it was a sort of slightly diminutive, slightly patronising, I suppose, nickname, my doll, but I think used very neutrally.

It's just patronising when we look back at it. And the sense the small model of a human figure goes back to the late 17th century. And up until then, before people used doll, they used poppet or puppet to refer to the child's toy. So poppet or puppet? I mean, a puppet is a puppet. I think of a puppet as two forms of puppet. There's the marionette, which is a stringed puppet. That's a French word, isn't it? It is. What's the origin of that, I wonder?

Marionette. Puppets I've always found absolutely terrifying, even though when I was given pocket money to go to Hamleys, a puppet was the first thing that I bought. But marionette is another diminutive of a girl's name. So it's a diminutive of Marie. Ah. Yeah.

You mentioned Hamleys. For our international listeners this is an amazing toy shop in regent street has been around for a very long time and because i like to tell anecdotes in the 1970s it was up for sale and i and a group of others tried to buy it and we could have bought it for a million pounds that That's all you needed to buy. We couldn't raise a million pounds. Well, that's a lot of money in those days. It was a great deal of money, but it would be worth a great deal more now. It was a brilliant brand name, brilliant location in Regent Street. Anyway, we failed, but I love Hamleys as a store. What's the puppet you bought?

I bought a witch puppet. So I remember this very, very well. Every Christmas, we would get five pounds, which was an absolute fortune. And we would get a day trip to Hamleys to go and spend it. And this particular Christmas, I went and for some unknown reason, I still don't quite understand why I did this. I bought one of those bags. Do you remember these? That if you threw them or if you tapped them, they reproduced this really horrible sound of laughter.

They were laughing bags. Do you remember these? No, I don't. That was literally their sole function. And once you'd heard it once, the joke was, I mean, I have no idea why I bought this. Anyway, so I got home, cried my eyes out because I realised it was a mistake. And my parents, lovely as they were, took us back to Hemley's. And I swapped the laughing bag for a witch puppet. And I did used to give little puppet shows, but she was quite, she was a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. Was she a glove puppet?

No, she was one with, you know, the full strings and the full sort of... Yes, I would call that a marionette now. Okay, yeah, probably. Because I think technically it probably is a marionette. Whereas I think of puppets myself as glove puppets. Okay. Though, I mean, Muppet, I mean, the word Muppet, was that created for the Muppets, for those characters that are Muppets? Muppets been in the dictionary for a while, actually, I think, but it was the name given to Jim Henson's brilliant characters. And they were puppets and marionettes, I think, weren't they?

And certainly the use of Muppet to mean a fool as a new Muppet, that does go back to those characters. But I think possibly it had been around a little bit before then. I think you know that Jim Henson gave me personally the original Fozzie Bear, which now lives with my collection. It's amazing, isn't it? The original Fozzie Bear. Yeah, I met him. And it was at the time I was setting up the Teddy Bear Museum. And I told him about it.

And he said, would you like the original Fozzie Bear? I said, I would love, we would love. And so it came in a kind of, it was huge. It is huge. It came, it was like having a coffin delivered. This enormous box arrived. And inside, lying there, was the original Fozzie Bear. And he is now on display at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire near Ripon. Much to the disgust of Frank Oz, who I think did the voice of Fozzie Bear originally and worked it.

He couldn't believe that Jim Henson could have done such a thing as to give me a Fozzie. But he did. And Fozzie is staying in this country at our Teddy Bear Museum at Newby Hall until the Americans release the original Winnie the Pooh, currently in the New York Public Library Children's Branch. When it can come over to Britain for a holiday, I will let Fozzie Bear return to America. Oh, that's complicated. It's a complicated one. What? But yeah, well, not complicated, but it sounds like you're very determined.

I'm determined and diplomatic workings are going on. Puppet, is that to do with the French Puppet? Just to go back to the Muppet, I have looked it up and actually Jim Henson did coin it, so I was wrong. It hadn't been around before him. And he claimed it was arbitrary, but quite early on in the 1950s the explanation did come about that it was a blend of marionette and puppet so there you go so marionette and puppet gives you muppet and am i right in thinking the puppet comes from poopy the french for doll yes directly to us

but ultimately the latin pooper p-u-p uh sometimes with a double P-A, which meant a girl or a doll. And I will then remind you, of course, of the pupil of the eye, so-called, because it was a pupilla, a little doll, because when you look into the eyes of someone else, you see a tiny doll-like reflection of yourself. Sorry, I know I've mentioned that so many times on Purple, but it's just so beautiful. You can go on mentioning it forever. It's so lovely. Does this in some way link to butterflies and pupus and the turning of a Christmas? Yeah, absolutely.

The pupa of a butterfly is the sort of the young stage, if you like, as well. So it goes back to that idea of a tiny thing, a tiny creature. Oh, I'm as pleased as Punch to hear that. Pleased as Punch. Punch. Punch and Judy. I loved as a child punch and judy totally i mean so politically incorrect you can't believe it now the grief the punch and judy shows of my

childhood there was wife beating there was a hanging i think did somebody got was it mr punch got hanged uh there was police brutality i mean it was just extraordinary and yet we sat on the beach and this the funny noise that Mr Punch made caused by an instrument in the mouth known as a swazzle anyway explain to us first of all about Punch and then we'll come on to the swazzle well Punchinello is where Punch comes from and Punchinello was a character in the Italian theatre and the very famous comedy genre called the Commedia dell'arte and we've talked this before, because from there we got words like pantaloon and harlequin and all sorts of things. But Punch and I was a character in this and then came over to the Punch and Judy puppet show that,

you know, we've been talking about that we remember from our youth. And lots and lots of expressions came into English based on punch. There was as proud as punch, as mute as punch, but most enduring of all, as pleased as punch. And you remember he was so hook-nosed and ugly, wasn't he? He would grotesquely smile. But he always seemed to be quite sort of triumphant. So if you're as pleased as punch, you're a little bit smug with it. He had a hump on his back, a huge nose, and he was clearly a wife beater. Poor Judy. Why was she called Judy?

Is that a familiar name? I really don't know. That's a very good point. I have no idea why she was called Judy. Okay, so it's late 18th century, familiar form of Judith, but it did also sometimes mean a fool or a simpleton. So maybe she was seen as being a stooge. Oh, not very nice, really.

Can I just ask about the word swazzle? As I do remember, to create the noise that Mr. Punch makes, that's the way to do it. That's the way to do it. That's what he would cry as he was beating somebody with his slapstick. That noise is made possible by something called a swazzle. Yeah. What is the origin of that? Do you know?

Probably have to look it up. I'm looking in the dictionary now because I didn't know. It says it's an instrument consisting of two convex metal pieces bound together with a length of tape stretched from side to side between them, held in the mouth of the puppeteer and used to produce the characteristic squeaking voice of Mr. Punch. And it tells us that it's a variant of swatchel, which is in turn from the German schwatzen, meaning to chatter

or tattle. That sounds very Yiddish that actually, but schwatzen, to chatter or tattle, which is kind of what I suppose it was reproducing. I've known a number of Punch and Judy men. They've all claimed that in the excitement of a performance, they've once or more than once in their lives swallowed their swazzle. Oh, good reason. Yeah, can you imagine? Exactly. They've retrieved it eventually, which is why whenever you meet a puppeteer who offers to lend you his or her swazzle, don't bother it. Don't bother it. Yeah, exactly. What about the yo-yo? I loved a yo-yo when I was a child. Were you good at yo-yoing?

Yes, I wasn't bad. It takes a while though. Do you remember those toys called canockers? No, I don't know. Tell me more about your canockers. I don't actually know what the official name was, but at school we called them canockers until they were banned. They were those two very hard balls, a bit like kind of very big corks. Oh, I know exactly what you mean. They clank together. very hard balls a bit like kind of very big oh i know exactly what you mean they clank together yes and sort of held a little bit like a puppet actually but you would strike the air with it very forcefully and anyway yeah those didn't last long at our school but i did absolutely love canokas anyway yo-yos um toys resembling yo-yos been around since ancient china and greece

apparently but the name is said to come from the Philippines. And that's as much as we know. I don't know the ultimate etymology of this, but obviously in English, I think it came in around 1915 and then much later it became a verb meaning to move up and down and, you know, you go all over the place, don't you? But yeah, toys resembling them have been around for a very very long time can i ask you how you spell yo-yo is there a hyphen in the middle yes according to the dictionary there is and it's now a proprietary name apparently in the uk really really i find well i'm a good grief they've done well to manage to get that the reason i ask is because we try to avoid play international listeners may have heard this radio show on radio 4 called just a minute done well to manage to get that the reason i ask is because we try to avoid play international

listeners may have heard this radio show on radio 4 called just a minute and we try to avoid the word yo-yo because it sounds as if it's a repetition of yo and you're not allowed in this game how funny just a minute you're not allowed to i think you'll be okay let me just check it in the current dictionary because in the oed it definitely is but as we know things change and it may be that in the current dictionary the hyphen has dropped off like so often let me just check no it's still hyphenated good it's still hyphenated so i think you can get away with yo-yo on just a minute you what were your hobbies as a child uh well puppeteering clearly was one yeah i can tell you what my toys were i say my hobbies were quite solo ones i like i like sort of solitude i take off on my bike and go and explore i would go

collecting conquers etc on my own because i lived in the countryside but i my favorite toys well i had this sort of ride-along little dog also called suzy i mean how inventive um and well i talked about knokers i also used to love the game of jacks you remember that? I do and you threw them up in the air you threw a ball up in the air and then had to pick up some jacks yes I bought

some of those for my two quite a few years ago and it's still just compelling why are those little metal things called jacks they're little sort of pronged yeah it's just you remember anything that we can't quite find a name for, we call it a jack. We call it a jack. Yes. You mentioned a hobby.

That's quite a nice one. So a hobby in the 14th and 15th century was a horse. And it was one of many nicknames for Robert, which also actually gave us Dobbin, which is another name for a horse. So hobby was used on its own for the horse. is another name for a horse. So hobby was used on its own for the horse, but also in the 16th century, people began to use it for a horse costume that was used by Morris dancers. And so a hobby horse came to mean the child's toy that you can still get today, which is a stick with a horse's head that you straddle and ride along. You just kind of skip along as though you're riding a horse. And it's from there that the word came to mean not just a toy,

but a kind of favourite pursuit, if you like, of a pastime. But not of a child necessarily, but also of an adult. It's like a grown-up's toy horse, if you like. I loved the top I had. I had a humming top that didn't just... People have wooden tops and they've been around, I know, for years. But this, you sort of, it was metal. And as you put the, pressed the top down, it made, it spun.

And it also had a wonderful hum, a lovely noise to it. Why was it called a top, I wonder? Yeah, a spinning top. Now, I can tell you why we sleep like a top. It's because when a top stops spinning, it's incredibly still. sleep like a top it's because when a top stops spinning it's incredibly still so if you sleep like a top then you uh you sleep in you know an absolute sort of motionless serenity but if i look it up here it says of unknown origin um for the kind of conical spherical toy that you spin we don't know why unfortunately i mentioned before barbie didn't i and maybe after the break we should talk about

other names that have been made that are associated with toys but before we do barbie i do remember meeting barbie and ken and i think they were husband and wife but i can't remember what her surname was i mean it was a real person she is the origin of it isn't okay let me have a look um american businesswoman ruth handler is credited with the origin of it, isn't she? Okay, let me have a look. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll. Yes, Barbie's full name apparently is Barbara Millicent Roberts. And Ken, I'm sure, was her husband. Ken Carson, yes. Yeah.

Anyway, I met them. They were very, very nice people. Quite American, it must be said. And they didn't seem interested. I told them about Cindy. They weren't interested. I think Cindy was a rival product. They didn't want to know about that at all.

Okay, sorry. We'll have a break, and then we'll talk about some of those extraordinary brands that have taken over the world. Lego. There's even a country called Lego now, apparently. I ought to mention, you know, that we currently, before we disappear,

we currently have 20% off on all our stock in our online store. We've got amusing merch that people might like. If you're an enthusiastic purple person, go to the link in the episode description or Google Contraband Shop. That's contraband spelled with a K. Contraband Shop, something rhymes with purple. And we've got t-shirts and mugs and totes available while stocks last. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations hey no too basic hi there still no what about hello handsome who knew you could give yourself the ick 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. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic?

Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anubay! Hi, I'm Nick us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show.

With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Welcome back. During the break, we've been having a discussion here about Ken and Barbie. And I'm explaining to Susie that years ago, I did a promotion for Mattel Toys, who are the people who create and manufacture Barbie and Ken. And I definitely met Ken and Barbie. I've got pictures of me with them.

And Susie is now suggesting that maybe these were just actors playing the roles of these fictional characters. But I'm convinced that they were related in some way, that maybe Ken was the son of Barbie or the son of the creator, Ruth Handler.

I'm sure I met real people. I'm sure they were real. I just don't know if they were you know they were just kind of wearing a costume like exactly it's like me going to disney world and meeting mickey mouse and minnie mouse and thinking they're the real thing um so if you happen to be a ken or barbie or relations of theirs or if you happen to be the current marketing manager for mattel toys would you please get in touch with us and put us right on this i will try to find can we have some jazz and suzy barbie dolls as well oh we would love that um we would love that and and if you want to get in touch it's purple p-u-r-p-l-e at um something else dot com and

something is spelled without a G. Yes. Now, should we whiz through some brand names? Oh, yes, do. Tell me. Because there's some fun ones in the world of toys. And I mentioned Lego because I have from the set of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, the comedy show that I work on, some Lego. And it's a recreation of the Countdown set

made by the most brilliant guy called Steve Guinness, who's called the Brick Consultant. And he just specializes in making bespoke lego scenes and they're absolutely wonderful but do you know where lego comes from no okay it's scandinavian isn't it yes danish danish and i'm probably going to pronounce this all wrong even though i love borgen and various other danish series uh leg good meaning play well, essentially. So that's what Lego, and of course, Ludo means I play. Of course.

From the Latin. So that's Lego. Meccano, did you have Meccano as a boy? I wasn't very good at it. It was all mechanical. I could never get the bits of Meccano to stick together. And I wasn't very good with a spanner. Okay.

Well, you've touched on the origin at least, because it is an invented word suggested by a mechanic. How about Skelextric, which is the word a bit like espresso we all get wrong no i wasn't good at that can i tell you as a child i was much more into puppets marionettes um that sort of thing barbie dolls i love that that was my that was my world scalextrics they were my younger brother was they used to fast cars that were on grooves and sped around weren't they yes and they were made by scalex so they were a range of cars fitted with an electric motor which gives you the trick bit at the end okay i'm determined to find something used to play what about the rubik's cube of course i love the rubik's cube okay i was

grown up by the time that came along yes can you do you do it? I just can't, I'm afraid. And it's extraordinary. I can't. I've got grandchildren aged sort of eight and ten who can do it virtually in the dark. Yeah. I mean, in seconds. Extraordinary.

I know. We had a fantastic countdown contestant once who could do it in literally a matter of seconds. And this is Erno Rubik. I remember that. We've talked about it before. From Hungary. Yeah. Exactly. What about Play-Doh? My younger brother again played with Play-Doh. I used to like the smell of Play-Doh. Yes. It was originally invented as a cleaning product used to wipe soot from wallpaper, believe it or not. But then as the sort of the use for

that or the need for that decreased because coal-based home heating then switched to natural gas so they thought ah what are we going to do with this and I think it was a nursery school teacher who decided to embark on some art projects with a wallpaper cleaning putty and her students really enjoyed it and then she persuaded her brother-in-law to essentially manufacture it as a charter toy and the rest is history as they say i tell you i did love mr potato head oh it's in toy story mr potato head i think the only thing that i know about mr potato head is that he was the first toy ever advertised on telly yeah didn't you't you have a Mr. Potato Head? I don't think I did.

Oh, it's before your time. But I think one of my kids did after Toy Story. Oh. Yeah. Because it's essentially, you take a potato and then there are all these plastic bits you can form eyebrows and eyes and a nose. I loved it. Yes.

I loved Mr. Potato Head. Well, that's it, I think, for our little foray into toys. I'm sure there's absolutely loads that we haven't covered. I think we'll come back to it. And if there are areas of your childhood that you want us to explore, please, purple people, do get in touch with us. People do get in touch with us on a regular basis. And they get in touch with us from all over the world, which is exciting. I think our first communication this week comes from Australia, doesn't it?

Hey, Susie and Giles. Greetings from Sydney, Australia. Thanks to shows like Bridgerton, we're increasingly hearing the term rake. A rake seems to be the ideal catch for a lady, but to me, a rake seems to be a man that's gotten around a bit and a man that today we might call a player. A man women are encouraged to avoid. Are they the same thing

or is something good about a man implied in the word rake that I'm missing? Also, where does the word come from? On a related note, this also leads me to ask, where did the word ton come from? Thanks, Sophie Rosman. Have you been watching Bridgerton, Giles? I haven't. There's so many things I haven't got around to. I mean, I'm still watching reruns of Rumpel of the Bailey. I'm locked in the past. This new stuff has passed me by. Although I did like the first series of Emily in Paris. Oh, yes. I know that was a favourite hit too. Okay. So I'm going to start with the rake.

A rake is a fashionable, rich and pretty immoral man. So Sophie's right on that score, which you might not know. It's an abbreviation of the word rake hell, which came about in the mid 16th century. And a rake hell was a sinful sort of person that you would find if you searched through hell with a rake and you'll remember rake's progress so rake's progress is used in english to mean a progressive decline especially as a result of self-indulgence and a rake's progress capital r capital p was a series of engravings by William Hogarth, the artist from the 18th century. And that depicted the progression of the rake, the rake hell, from wealthy and privileged origins to despair and debt and ultimately death on the gallows. So all a bit grim.

So that's the rake. And then Sophie also mentions ton. Now, I have to say, thank you so much for this, Sophie, because I had never, even though it's been in the dictionary since, well, the first record is 1769, I had no idea about this. The ton, Giles, I don't know if you know this, means the fashion, the vogue, the mode of the time. Well, this, I guess this is going to come from the French ton. To have ton is to have a bit of class, to have a bit of style. Yes. Is that right?

Yes. And for a while it was bon ton. Ah, bon ton. Bon ton. Ah, good style, good fashion. And in 1769, Lloyd's Evening Post says, the present fashionable ton, a word used at present to express everything that's fashionable, is a set of French puppets.

So that was the latest ton. And I think you should pronounce it with a French lilt. Ton. Because it's like chic, you know. Oh, a certain, it has a certain ton about it. It's ton rather than ton, I think. Ton and the Beaumont. Yeah, you're probably right.

The Beaumont has a certain ton, chic. Ah, c'est chouette, huh? Sibling of tone, as you guessed. So it means the sort of correct tone, the correct colouring, the correct pitch. It's just so. And I should say transferred sense

of people of fashion or fashionable society. So from that specific one single fashion that it was used for, it then came to be transferred to fashionable society in general. Thank you, Sophie, for being in touch. If you've got a query or want us to explore any particular

area of the world of words and language, just get in touch. We are purple at somethingelse.com. Susie, at this time in the podcast, always shares three unusual, interesting words with us. What's your trio this week, Susie? Well, the first two today are fairly similar, but there is a distinction and it's all about arguments, really. The Latin phrase, tu quoque, so that's to you, and then the next word is q-u-o-q-u-e, to quoque. And that is an argument that essentially throws back the same or similar charge to an accuser. In other words, you reverse the charge and say, you know, no, that's not me, that's you. And it's very similar to my second word, which is much in vogue in social media,

and that's whataboutery. Have you heard that? Whataboutery. And that is the technique of responding to an accusation raised against you or made against you or just a difficult question by making a counter accusation or raising a different issue, not the same one, but raising something else. So you dodge the initial question and then throw back another accusation at the other person without answering the first one, if that makes sense. What aboutountery so i've seen that mentioned a lot on social media recently and particularly sums up quite a lot of social media discussions actually a water bountery it's rather good word yes and the last one is just

something i was reminded of while trying to brush my cat who is molting like mad at the moment everywhere. And this wasn't what I was trying to brush off. Her Vibrissae, V-I-B-R-I-S-S-A-E, Vibrissae. And those are the stiff hairs that grow around the face of many mammals, such as cats, whiskers. And hers, I have to say, it's my lovely rescue cat from Battersea. Hers are so long. I am in whisker envy. Gosh. I have to say, I do love a cat. Yours is from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, a rescue cat. Yours is from next door. And ours is from next door.

Nala from next door. She's been with us for years now and we just adore her. We just love her. Well, those are three fantastic words. And I've got a short poem. I've decided I was going to do a serious poem today because, as I mentioned last time,

I'm doing this Commonwealth poetry podcast where my daughter and I are travelling virtually around the Commonwealth. And for our first episode, we began in Clarence House with the Duchess of Cornwall and some lovely English poems. And we're now going around the country.

And I was going to do a poem this week from Rwanda, which is where we're going. And then next week, we're going to St. Kitts and Nevis, and then we're going on to Cameroon, Solomon Islands, Australia. It's an amazing trip. But I think the poem is a little too serious for a playful day that we've had.

It's been like having a play date with you, Susie, playing with our toys, going back to our childhood. So I thought I would find a playful poem to end with. And this is one of my favourite playful poems by Ogden Nash. It's got words in it that I think are homophones. Homophone is one with the same sound, isn't it? Even though the word might mean something a little bit different. Words that are pronounced the same but are spelled differently are homophones. So this is just an amusing poem called A Flea and a Fly by Ogden Nash. It's quite short.

A flea and a fly in a flue were imprisoned. So what could they do? Said the fly, let us flee. Let us fly, said the flea. So they flew through a flaw in the flue. That's brilliant. It's a nice one isn't it playing with language that's what we do that's what we do and if you like playing with language do you know follow

us on apple podcasts or spotify stitcher amazon music or whatever you get your podcasts and recommend us to friends and do get in touch via purple at somethingelse.com. And actually even consider joining the Purple Plus Club because we have bonus episodes. If you like poetry, for example, we're doing a series on the moment, at the moment, taking us through different poets. From A, we began with W.H. Auden. I bet you we end up with Benjamin Zephaniah.

What we're going to do when we get to Q and X, I don't know. But anyway, we're having fun doing that. And yes, if you would like to join us, which we would love, obviously, you can find all the details on our programme descriptions. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells with additional production from Gen Mystery, Jay Beale and...

The fellow who flew through a floor in the flue with the fly and the flea, it's Gully.