Something Rhymes with Purple - Tandem

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

This week we’ve donned our lycra, packed our panniers and we’re free-wheeling through the language of cycling. Whilst whizzing on two wheels (Susie) or three (Gyles) we’re ditching the granny gears and aiming for the maillot jaune as we bring you up to speed on everything from Boneshakers and Penny Farthings to bonks, breeks, and RLJs, whilst hopefully avoiding an an endo. As always there are plenty of questions from the wonderful Purple People to answer, Gyles has a delightfully witty poem, and Susie proffers three cracking words to try and use in a sentence this week. A Somethin’ Else production We also have some fantastic mugs, bags, and t-shirts in our new merch range available from https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple and if you use the code purple2021 this week you’ll get 10% off! Visit rosettastone.co.uk/podcast to find links to Rosetta Stone’s More Than Words podcast on all your favourite podcast platforms, PLUS 50% off all Rosetta Stone courses – including their lifetime subscriptions, which give access to all 24 languages offered, for life! Susie’s Trio Bouffage - an enjoyable slap-up meal Escarmouche - a brief argument or skirmish Gollumpus - a clumsy, loutish personIf you have a wordy question you’d like answering then please email us [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And I say I'm Giles Brandreth. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And I say I'm Giles Brandreth, but in fact, I'm Two Jabs Giles. Because Susie Dent in Oxford, I have news for you. Since we were last together, I've had my second COVID-19 vaccination. Congratulations. That's excellent news.

And I've had no side effects. I've got my mug. I've got my mug. Wow. I've got my special Two Jabs mug, which you can only drink from if you've had both the jabs. It's an official souvenir mug. I've created it myself, actually. We talked about this, didn't we?

John Two Jags Prescott and now Giles Two Jabs Brandreth. Exactly. Have you had a jab yet? I mean, you're much younger than me, but have you had your... I have. I've had my first. And so I'm awaiting my second. It probably won't be for a little while, but... Which one was it? And I did have some side effects, but I was expecting them.

I had the AstraZeneca, I guess inevitably because I was living in Oxford. And yeah, I did feel a little bit rough for a little while, but so many people warned me about that, and it was doable. So it was fine. And then it suddenly dissipated and all was back to normal. Novelists should know if they're writing novels 100 years from now, that there was a period in British life when people, when they met, didn't talk about the weather. It was a brief period, but it ran from about the beginning of 2020 till about, I'd say, 2023, when people simply talked about when they met COVID, first of all. Have you had it? Are you having it? And then have you had your jabs? Which jab did you have?

That's what people used to talk about the weather. Now all they talk about is the vaccine, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's very, very true. And I can't wait to actually move on. And in fact, that's what we're going to do today, move on. And move specifically on two wheels, because you have been navigating London on an extraordinary machine. Tell us about it. Not two wheels, but three wheels. I'm two jabs, Giles, but three wheels, Giles. This is because my wife would say,

my whole life I've suffered from arrested development. There has been no progress. I was clearly happy, she says, as a little boy. And all I've done all my life is try to hang on to that. Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree, that really is my idea of a good novel. And when I was a child brought up in London in the 1950s, I had a tricycle. And I suppose it was a different era. I rode around the pavements of the part of London we were in, around Earls Court, South Kent, on my tricycle. And I spent hours happily on my tricycle.

And I think I thought of myself as naughty. I actually had a naughty costume. Oh, I can imagine you as naughty. And I used to go to parties dressed as naughty with a little blue hat with a bell on. And I made my cheeks pink with my mother's pink lipstick. And I enjoyed being naughty on my tricycle. So move on, literally 65 years, last year in the pandemic, limited to being in my part of town, not wanting to drive the car, not being able, being told to stay local, I thought, actually, why don't I get myself

a tricycle? My children all have bicycles. And they said, come on, Dad, get him the bike. And I thought, well, actually, I don't want to be falling off the bike. I'll get a trike. So I got myself a tricycle. I'm thinking now of getting an electric one, but the tricycle I have is a wheeling thing. I love it because it's the posture is good. It involves a bit of exercise and it can get me moving around my part of town. Do you ride? Do I ride? Yes, I do. And I don't know if you remember, but during the first lockdown, seems so long ago now, but I really, really did go for many, many miles on my bike every single day. It was absolutely my escape, my oasis, as I often call this podcast as well. And I just discovered loads of places

that I'd literally been walking past every single day. And I just decided to go down residential streets and to see what, you know, what led at the end of them um went to some far away remote places in in Oxfordshire wasn't always sure how to get back but I just followed my nose and I absolutely loved it so I sadly I have got out of practice so when winter arrived I was really fickle and I put the bike away and haven't really got it back out again so that's what I need to. May I ask what you wear when you're doing your cycling? What kind of a bike is it? Okay, so I have two bikes. I was very lucky to be given a Pinarello for a charity ride that I did. Pinarello is a brilliant brand. It's like a sort of proper, a proper bike, I should say. You've got clip-in pedals, which took me a long time to get

used to and I'm slightly scared of going back there because if you forget to unclip at a traffic light you just go sideways that happened to me a couple of times and it belonged to a former member of the Sky racing team so it really was a is a fantastic bike but I also just have a road bike which I use and which I love that's that's the one that I was primarily using last year as for wearing well if I'm going on the Pinarello I will wear padded cycling shorts padded cycling shorts tell us more what are padded cycling shorts padded because otherwise it's very uncomfortable is it yeah the saddle is very very thin and it's very pointy um and I think when people go have you have you heard of the exercise trend called spinning

no okay this is what I also have done quite a lot of so spinning is when you go into a studio and there's about 20 30 bikes there and you have an instructor at the beginning very loud music and they lead you through this regime of going very very fast increasing resistance I mean it's a really full-on high intensity training workout it's absolutely brilliant I love it but of course that's not been possible at all during lockdown but those who try that for the first time end up having extremely sore bums at the end of it so padded shorts definitely recommended as I say clip-on shoes and just a lycra top which has got lots and lots of different pockets in it, because most

sort of very keen cyclists, shall we say, will suck vigorously on energy gels and will be seen kind of eating half a banana and then throwing the other half away. And you need lots and lots of different pockets in which to store all these things, because we'll get onto tribal language later, I'm sure. But there is such a thing as bonking in cycling. Have you heard of this? I've heard of bonking, but not in cycling. Tell me more. Okay. So bonking in cycling is when you hit the wall. It's when you absolutely can't go any further at all. And the key to surviving a bonk, well, actually, you don't want to get near a bonk, because by the time it arrives, it's too late.

There's not very much you can do. And by the time you're thirsty, they always say it's too late. You should have hydrated yourself before. So you always have to kind of anticipate needing the calories and the energy gels and that kind of thing. It's very complicated business. Can I, before we get into the deep language of cycling, you mentioned three words that intrigued me immediately there. And I just wondered if you instantly knew the etymology Lycra. Is that a commercial? Is that a brand name? Is that one of those words that's come into the language like Hoover? It's actually

a product and we now use it. Yes, it is. I don't actually know whether it is now naturalised so much in English that actually it no longer has a capital L. No, it does have a capital A. It says unknown origin, but it is a trademark. Elastic polyurethane fibre or fabric used for close-fitting sports clothing. How interesting. So though it is a commercial name, we don't know its origin. We don't know. No. How intriguing. So that's Lycra. If you're the person who invented the word Lycra do please get in touch with us it's purple at something else.com you also mentioned gel is that short for gelatine what is the origin of that gels gosh you're you're on fire today i'm listening to you and i'm i'm fascinated by how many words we now take for granted yeah no it's

absolutely true well first of all i would say have say, have you ever had like a calorie gel or anything? No. No. Okay. So they are really, really sweet. And it absolutely is an abbreviation of gelatin because that is what they originally contained. In fact, probably most of them still contain it, I would think. But hopefully you can get the vegetarian ones, which I'm using. And yeah, that's where it comes from. So cycling energy gels are quite a thing. And one other word you mentioned, which we're all familiar with, bum. And I know that's a very old word, because the first speech from Shakespeare I ever learnt

when I was a small child and hoping to be a child actor for my auditions, I learnt a speech by Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream that included the line, then slip I from her bum, down topple she, where Puck is pretending to be a stool underneath this old lady. So clearly, for 500 years, bum has meant bottom. Also in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he was quite obsessed with backsides in those days.

He was a character, wasn't he, Bottom? What is the origin of bum? Again, we don't know. From the Middle Ages until around the 18th century, so obviously this includes Shakespeare, it wasn't regarded at all as even vaguely rude. And you'll find kind of surgery and anatomical manuals talking about the bums of hens or cocks, if they somehow were supplying feathers for these kind of, you know, elaborate concoctions and cure-alls. So it wasn't regarded as remotely rude, but for some reason it was then, it then became, I mean, it's not really rude these days, is it? But it kind of went, it slipped into slang, shall we say, rather than standard English. And of course, in American English, a bum is a tramp or a vagrant. And that goes back to the German bummler, which was a vagrant again.

And it's bummeln in German is to kind of stroll about. So bum is not a contraction of the word bottom. It is a contraction of the word bottom, probably. But we are only guessing at that. There's no kind of direct link between etymology and its appearance, if that makes sense. Well, how intriguing. There are still these mysteries about words

that have been with us for hundreds of years. Now, let's hope you've got absolute answers on the basics. We're talking about cycling. What is the origin of the word cycle and the origin of bicycle? How long have they been around? Okay, so they have been around for a very, very long time. So cycle itself goes back to the Greek kouklos, which meant a circle. And maybe we should start with the wheel, because the wheel is also included in this.

I mean, that goes back further still. The wheel was probably invented, I think, around 4000 BC in Mesopotamia, which is present day Iraq. And that comes from an ancient word, prehistoric word meaning to turn. And it gave us the chakra, which you have in yoga, the wheel or the circle. And it gave us a cycle much later on, thanks to Greek. And so it's all about revolution. It's all about turning around. It also a cyclone and a bicycle is simply two wheels and a tricycle as you know is three wheels and so on unicycle is one wheel so the bicycle as a word was first coined when bicycle itself i think came about in about the let me see i should know this but i think it's around the 19th century yeah the mid-19th century and it took over from the velocipede and the velocipede that literally means rapid foot

so the velocipede was the early form of bicycle and then bicycle came along as I say in the mid 19th century and then bike actually came along pretty soon after that. I seem to remember making a film for The One Show a few years ago about a sort of precursor of the bicycle called The Walking Machine. That was around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, around sort of 1815. What did that look like? Well, that was essentially, you sort of, well, it was really a prototype bicycle. You stood aside it and you walked along and there were little wheels and you could sort of sit on it, half sit on it,

and the wheels would take you forward. And then that, I think, became the Velocipede. And then I'd got into my head that the bicycle really originated in France, but it can't be a French word because they call bicycles Velo in France, don't they? Yes, well, vélo and you've got vélocipide as well, sort of all linked there. But the Tour de France was around, I think, 1903

and do you know HG Wells? He said cycle tracks will abound in utopia, which I think is lovely and I think a lot of us would agree with that today. Although, of course, road users often hate cyclists. Have you ever had a go on a real bone shaker? That's another old, that's a Victorian euphemism, isn't it, for a bicycle? Yeah, no, I haven't. But I mean, it's extraordinary, really, that, you know, women used to wear these incredibly long skirts and these really highly elaborate hats.

And then they'd go to Hyde Park and spectators would gather to kind of watch them. But no, I do know that on the older bone shakers, some riders apparently used to sit on a raw stake in order to protect their undercarriage and it was, you know, properly tenderised by the end of the ride. The Penny Farthing, I've ridden on one of those. Okay. Why is that so called? The Penny farthing, simply because the size of the wheel, because the appearance of the wheel, was like the penny farthing. I mean, it was simply a nod to the coin, I guess. I love the way you're saying that. I mentioned this to one of my grandchildren. They did not know what a farthing was. So we have to explain, if there are young people listening,

the penny was an old coin when we had pound shins and pence, and the penny was a large copper coin, quite big, a sort of inch in diameter. Yeah, and shiny. And a quarter of a penny was called a farthing. I don't remember the farthing. I do remember the farthing. I think it had a wren on the back of it. I remember farthings.

And that was worth a quarter of a penny. Quarter of a penny, because it comes from the old English fjord, meaning fourth. There you are. So if you put a side by side, a penny and a farthing, you get the appearance that you got with the penny farthing of a very large wheel and a very small wheel. So that's the origin of the penny farthing. And I think that was also called a high wheeler because the wheel was so high. Okay. Bicycles, as we know them, I think, really I'm remembering this from this one show film, came about in the 1890s, the sort of safety bike.

And there were two versions right from the beginning, a ladies' version and a gentlemen's version. And the ladies' version didn't have a bar across the front, because, of course, ladies, accustomed to riding horseback, a side saddle, could actually step across a bicycle, but their skirts or bloomers, there was no barrier. But men, there was this sort of metal rod between underneath the seat and the steering wheel. So those were called safety bicycles, I think. And they're the essential shape of a bicycle we'd recognise today. Can I just ask you, just going back to your trike,

I used to ride on a tandem quite often, and there was nothing like riding on a tandem to get people smiling. It just is something that makes people send very benevolent hellos or waves or whatever, because there's something essentially comical about it. And the name tandem actually came about as a bit of a joke on the Latin textbook tandem, meaning at length. And actually it was first applied not to bikes,

but to carriages, which had one horse in front of the other. And it was only later applied to the bicycle. But when you're on your trike, do you get lots of cheery waves? Or do you get people getting very annoyed? Mostly cheery waves. Indeed, I've actually had someone, though I'm not on a tandem, singing to me in the street.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. How does it go on? It won't be a stylish marriage. I can't afford. No, It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford the carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle made for two. Exactly. That's what a tandem is, isn't it? A bicycle made for two.

But on a tricycle, people are very tolerant. They realise it's some old fool who is frightened of falling over. They don't go that fast. They're reasonably wide. And so I feel, unless you're with very irritable people who are hating you being in their cycle lane and they want to overtake you, you're treated really very nicely.

And you're more confident at taking the road, as it were, when you come to the traffic lights, taking your lane, being confident. And you feel less... Yeah, no clip-on pedals for you. No, and you feel less your lane, being confident. And you feel less... Yeah, no clip-on pedals for you. No, and you feel less foolish making the road signs, you know. So I put my arm out clearly when I'm turning right or left.

It's got a little bell. When I first got the tricycle, my wife insisted on me, believe it or not, taking lessons. And I got a cycle club to take me out on a couple of trips, and it really helped. It reminded me of the highway code, and it gave me much more confidence. And the joy of the tricycle is you get to the lights, you can stop, and you know you won't fall over. You can stay there. It's quite slow, and you do feel as if you're coming from a different world. It's got baskets at the front and the back, so I'm sent down to do the shopping. I fill up the front, fill up the back.

It's huge fun. You've got a pannier on the back, I bet. Are they panniers? They are panniers. Now, again, is this because the French pioneered cycling? I think maybe they were pioneers because that's another French word for basket, isn't it? Pannier.

Yes. Well, it goes back to the fact that they used to carry bread. So you would imagine baguettes sticking out of a pannier because it's a pain, meaning bread in French, a pannier, a basket for bread. And we spell it with two Ns. And the French spell it with just one, do they? Just one, yeah. Tell me about the Tour de France. I, as a child, would go a lot to France on exchanges and for holidays. And I loved the Tour de France. Whenever it was on, we would go a lot to France on exchanges and for holidays. And I loved the Tour de France. Whenever it was on, we would go.

It seemed to come through every town and village in France. And one would go out and wave as they rode past, seeing who was in the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey. But do you know anything about the history of the Tour de France and words that have brought into the language? Do you know, I have a book which is on my shelf, which I really must read, which is about the history of the Tour de France

because it does attract huge amounts of interest. I saw it when it first kicked off in London a long time ago now. I know words like the peloton, you know, the main pack of riders in the race or in any road race like that. And that's French for little ball because they're all kind of bunched together. And if you're in the peloton, if you're at the front or at the back, it doesn't matter. You arrive at the same time.

So your course time will be absolutely the same. So, yes, you mentioned the yellow jersey there, the maillot jaune. You know, you call the maillot jaune, but it began as a green armband, which apparently was quite hard to see. And about 1919, the tour's director, a man called Henri Desgranges, decided the winner of the stage should wear a yellow jersey simply in order to stand out. And yellow in honor of the sporting newspaper Loto Velo. They were sponsoring the race and they printed on yellow pages. So that's why it's a maillot jaune. Got you.

So they were more visible. Take us through some of these technical terms and the origins of the words. Simple words like pedal and salad. Simple words like pedal and saddle. Just before we do, I must just say, if anyone is interested in the Tour de France or in the whole sort of ethos and the vibe of a cycling race like that, I do recommend

a comedy from the early 2000s called Belleville Rendezvous. And it's an animated kind of comedy film, but it's quite dark as well. And it's about a grandmother raising her grandson, Champion, dark as well and it's about a grandmother raising her grandson champion who is um an orphan and they watch this show on tv um i actually won't tell you too much about it because it will it will ruin it for you but it's essentially how champion gets a tricycle indulges in in a passion that he has built up over the years thanks to his grandmother and thanks to this tv set and then he competes in the tour de france and it's he's kidnapped There's just so many things that go on. It's absolutely brilliant. Belleville Rendezvous. Is it in English or French? It's a kind of cartoon in a way. So I can't actually remember whether it must be subtitled or whether maybe there aren't any

words in it at all. Yeah, I'm not even sure that there are actually spoken words in it. I need to watch it again, but it's absolutely fantastic. Now, before we take our break, I want, please, the origin of pedal and saddle. Fundamental bicycle words. Okay, so if I said to you, have a guess, because we've done so many of these. If I say to you saddle, does it sound like it comes more from, say,

the Norman conquerors, or does it sound like maybe it came from our Germanic ancestors? Saddle? Well, it has more of a French feel to it, saddle, because I said, by mistake, salad, because I see saddle and I see salad, whereas pedal, I know, must relate to feet and therefore come from Latin of some kind.

OK, I'll put you out of your misery. You're kind of... I mean, in some ways both are right, because it's Old English and ultimately of Germanic origin. So in German you have Sattel, which is S-A-T-T-E-L. But both of them probably go back to the Latin Sella, S-E-L-L-A, which meant to sit. And in fact, that is related to sit. And pedal, you're absolutely right. It's from the Latin pes-A, which meant to sit. And in fact, that is related to sit. And pedal, you're absolutely right.

It's from the Latin pes, ped, which meant a foot, which gave us pedestrian, and it gave us pedestal as well. Okay, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when you're like, why isn't there more of this? This show is so good. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler that I think is just incredible.

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I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. Join me every Wednesday as we set off on a stunning journey of curiosity on a new subject and dive into the archive of more than 370 episodes. Listen to Getting Curious wherever you get your podcasts. Susie, you wrote a book about tribal language. What do you mean by tribal language, generally?

Well, I just mean the language of particular groups of people, particular professions, people who are united by a passion, a job and a language. So we all speak dozens of tribal languages, depending on who we're mixing with. So if you're a bird watcher, you will know exactly how to talk to your fellow birders. And if you're a Freemason, likewise, if you're a journalist, likewise, you will know about spiking a story or the slug of a subject, you know, all sorts of things. And honestly, you just have to dip your finger into any profession and you will start to realise, to feel that there's a whole shorthand there that has completely passed you by because you don't really need to speak it. And it's the same for cyclists. They have their own language which kind of defines them and it keeps them feeling as a united group and it keeps outsiders out.

Well, look, let's some of the outsiders come in by giving me some of the cycling tribal language that you're familiar with and what it means. OK, well, if you start with the cyclists themselves, you might have, well, you know when road users or car drivers I suppose specifically get extremely annoyed at cyclists I think quite often the most common complaint is that they will jump a red light they won't wait as cars have to at the red lights and so and quite often it is incredibly dangerous and I have to say it does give the rest of us a really bad name so I hate the RLJs they are the red light jumpers a fairly fairly obvious abbreviation there, but there are lots of them around. The cycling newbies in any sport, whether it's in surfing where you've got the shooby, you will have a fairly disparaging nickname for the newbie, the beginner, the one

that doesn't really know what they're doing. And in cycling, quite often they're known as Fred and Doris. So maybe Giles now, Maybe it should be Giles and Doris. Well, I'm a newbie at tricycling, so that's what it'll be. What about breeks? You mentioned bonking earlier, which surprised me, but breeks? Yes, breeks are simply, you know, some of the kind of cycling shorts that you might wear. I think breeks particularly are sort of rather old-fashioned now. I don't think people would talk about them particularly these days.

Now you've got kind of matchy-matchy shorts, jerseys and socks called super suits. You know, those ones that people wear that are highly branded and usually reflect the style of a particularly famous rider in the Tour de France. Those are super suits. You've got the chamois, spelt like chamois, the chamois leather that my mum used to use on silverware and furniture and that kind of thing. The chamois are either your padded cycling shorts or also you can have chamois cream and it's a wonder cream. I speak from experience here that kind of prevents chafing.

And if you are wearing those padded cycling shorts, don't ever wear them with underwear. That's a complete no-no in the cycling world world oh you go commando you go absolutely commando don't ask me where that comes from because no one knows very good is what i wear when i'm tricycling known as granny gear um okay if i i think if we're being a little bit mean we might call the granny gear but actually granny gear refers to the gear that you that you put your uh your cycle into so it's the one that actually makes you go incredibly slowly and again that's what car drivers get tend to get i've got gears on my tricycle but i've never

explored them i just go at a steady pace stately stately as a galleon i'm not a speed merchant in any way i don't think i'd be a speed merchant in a city situation i definitely would be when out and about but you have to be careful in the city and you have to be particularly careful about endos as they call them which are kind of going straight over the handlebars which again can happen quite often if you have to stop extremely quickly in which case you might need some vitamin I. Do you know what the vitamin I might be? No idea.

That's ibuprofen. Oh, that's quite funny. That's what you have to take after a biff, which is a crash. Our cycling is so different. The way you cycle and the way I tricycle, two totally different experiences. We should go out together one day, but I think you'll have got to Land's End

as I'm just, you know, coming to the end of the Balls Pond Road. No, I wouldn't have got to Land's End. I need to practice a little bit more. But it's the most brilliant, brilliant sport. And I'm very, very impressed that you've taken it up. As has Nick Hewitt, you know, who is the host of Countdown. He's got himself an exercise bike and also a proper bike,

although I think his is slightly electric. And there is something very disconcerting about being overtaken by somebody who's 30 years older than me on a very steep hill, of which there are many around me. And then you realise that actually they are electric power, but they're still going round on the pedals, so it's quite difficult to tell sometimes. I'm going to get an electric one for this very reason,

so that people will think, oh, it's just this old fool coming along here. And then suddenly I will sweep into the lead and cruise into town. What do you think? I do think, I think it's a great idea, but I do think be careful because I know that Nick did have an endo. I know he, it went faster than he realised and he did flip over. So be careful. Well, I'm always wearing my helmet. One last word before we move on to this. So much we've got to pack in today. Helmet. One earth is a helmet called a helmet. I never leave without wearing one.

Well, that is German. And it's a kind of, it means a little helm, if you like. It essentially goes back to a root that means to cover or hide. And it's got some very strange siblings. So you've got the helmet, but you've also got a hole, which I suppose makes sense because something might be covered. But it's also hell. It's related to hell with the idea of being hidden or covered

and concealed, possibly underground. Good. Well, helmet's on, chalk's away. We can talk about that when we do our episode on aviation. I don't think we've done one of those. We did an episode the other day all about the world of advertising and that has provoked some correspondence, hasn't it?

Give us the first letter you've picked out from the selection this week. Okay, so thank you to everybody, obviously, who writes in. We do read them all. This one comes from Bruce Fielding and i absolutely love this one because as you say we did advertising last time and bruce says as a long-serving listener and therefore a dyed-in-the-wool purple person imagine my delight when you started the most recently released edition with my ad when i wrote it the jingle at the end wasn't my key focus but rather the two Swedish women having

a conversation with an actor whom you may well remember however the last line is the thing that people remember and I'm very happy to know that Susie wore a belt with my word on it despite my receiving nothing for it other than my salary as a young ad copywriter at the time now I can tell you the actor in the ad was a young Mike Grady from Last of the Summer Wine and Citizen Smith as well. Can you remember what my absolute favourite ad was? Well, I can. This was the lip-smacking Pepsi ad. And I think I would like you, please, to reprise that moment from it that you gave us. New listeners, this is why you tuned in to Something Rhymes with Purple,

for this kind of audio magic. Well, I wish I could play Bruce's real thing, not to muddle it up with the other cola brand. But it was lips, Mac and Thurs, quenching, ace, tasting, motivating, good, buzzing, cool, talking high, walking fast, living, ever giving, cool fizzing, Pepsi. Kind of went like that.

And the joy of Something Rhymes with Purple is you can play the podcast again and again. People will be turning that into a kind of a little loop. I think you could become kind of what they call it, something, an earworm? Is it called an earworm? An earworm. Yeah, that's an adjournment.

It gets into your head and goes round and round and round. Marvellous. Yes. We've had, the joy is we have people who are, ad people who listen to us, and we have people who are, ad people who listen to us, and we have people from all over the world who listen to us. And this is a letter from, an email from Jess Matthews, a music teacher in New Zealand.

Hi, Susie and Giles. Greetings from New Zealand. You had a question on a previous podcast, the Slughorn one, about the word clobber, which you mentioned briefly could have Romany roots. I am Romany, says Jess Matthews, originally from the UK, and you might be pleased to know that as far as my family can tell, this is true. My father grew up speaking Romani as his first language and has taught me some of it.

Also, as a side note, Charles, if you want to be taxidermied, you need to take care. Bentham's head was not as much of a success as his body. Oh, that's interesting. This is because we were talking about taxidermy and I mentioned Jeremy Bentham's body being on display at University College London. Yeah.

Thank you for being with me during my commute to and from school. Well, that's a marvellous music teacher. Let's go back to the Romani word clobber. Remind me of this language, Romani. It has Roman roots. It comes from where? Romania? What is Romani?

Yeah, it's interesting because quite often we got our geography wrong in the olden days. So, for example, Gypsies, which is now spelt with a capital G, so recognised ethnic group, they were thought to come from Egypt, hence the Gypsy. And Romani is an Indo-European language and it's related to Hindi, in fact. European language, and it's related to Hindi, in fact. And I think they originated in South Asia, and then they kind of dispersed across Europe and North and South America. But their language is quite closely related to Hindi. And Rom or Romani, I think means man or husband. So I guess it was like the sort of the patriarchal tongue, I guess. And it's given us, you know, quite a few words in English, like having a deco, for example, having a look that comes from Romani,

chap, quite a few words. It would be great to do maybe an episode at some point on the Romani language. Interestingly, somebody else has had vaccinations. It's Phil from Billy Ricky. I had my first vaccination today and a friend asked me how it went. I said I was fine, except my arm hurt like Billy-O. Who or what was Billy-O? And indeed, how is it spelt?

Is it Billy-O with an O-H? Billy-O without an H? What is the origin? Any idea? Yeah. Yeah, well, the dictionary will tell you it's unknown origin, but it will tell you it's spelt Billy, like the boy's name and then a hyphen and then an O,

the letter O. Lots and lots of theories. Some go back to the early steam engine called Puffing Billy, which, of course, might propel you along like Billy O. Some with good King Billy, William III, who burned his name into Irish memory, I guess, at the Battle of the Boyne. But the dates don't really fit for any of those. And I think the best bet is that it's actually part of a euphemism for like the devil, which dates back to Shakespearean times. And you'll remember that the devil appears dates back to Shakespearean times and you'll remember

that the devil appears in all sorts of ways what the Dickens for example like because Dickens was a euphemism for the devil and there are expressions older than Billy O in which Billy is a euphemism for the devil so Billy be damned for example um or I think you could give somebody all Billy hell so I think that it is related to that. If you go like Billy-o, you go like the devil. Very good. I think you've got the answer there. You deliver. You always do. Chris and Bridget Fletcher from Lewis in East Sussex,

they want to know where the word deliver comes from. Is it to take the liver from an animal and present it to deliver? I know the liver is prized among hunters. Deliver. Where does that come from? No, not related at all. So deliver goes back to the Latin liber, which means free, which also gave us liberty. So I guess if you remember in the Lord's Prayer, deliver us from evil, the idea is that you will free them or emancipate them from evil. And then the idea, I guess, is of free trade, setting free goods as you kind of, you know, dispatch them, etc. And I think that was the kind of slightly circuitous journey that it took from freeing and liberating someone from evil to actually delivering a letter through your

door. And the liver of our body is simply for the German Leber, L-E-B-E-R, and you still have Leberwurst, the liver sausage in German. You really deliver. No episode of Something Rhymes with Purple is complete without a bit of Leberwurst. We always need a sausage. We also can't end without Susie's trio. What are the three interesting, unusual words that you want us to add to our vocabularies this week? Well, my first one is perhaps reflective of what people might have been doing since certainly in Britain, the pubs opened, at least for outside eating and for outside drinking. And I know so many people were looking forward to doing that and to having a bouffage with their friends. Bouffage sounds like a very elaborate hairstyle, but actually it's an enjoyable blowout meal. It's a slap up meal, a bouffage.

Another French word. I just love the sound of this, Giles. It's an escarmouche. Escarmouche. escarmouche. Escarmouche. Escarmouche. E-S-C-A-R-M-O-U-C-H-E. And it's a brief kind of skirmish, a brief argument or a fit of pique. An escarmouche. Love that one. And the third one is actually a pretty good description of me. Actually used to be applied exclusively to men, but I'm going to allow myself into this particular club. A glumpus, G-O-L-L-U-M-P-U-S, is a clumsy, loutish person. So technically, should a female golumpus be a golumpar? Golumpar, I love that. I don't think it goes back to Latin. I think it's a Yorkshire dialect, but I like the idea of it. So when you're being clumsy, you're a golumpus. That's a very good

word because it's memorable. It trips off the tongue. It's brilliant. I agree. Here's a little poem that I think is memorable. It's from a collection of poems by a friend of mine called Jane McCulloch. And I love her poetry. She writes short poems and a lot of love poems. And her love poems are always rather bittersweet.

And this is from a collection called The Breaking Wave. And it is a bittersweet love poem. It's simply called You Still Don't Understand. I tried to tell you in a letter. Now I'll say it in a verse. When good, no one was better. When bad, no one was worse. No one was better.

When bad, no one was worse. Don't know if that rings any bells with anybody listening, but if it does and you want to tell us all about it or send us any of your short poems, please do. And any questions you've got about words and language, we're here simply to explore the wonderful world of words. It's Something Rhymes with Purple. And to communicate, you email us purple at somethingelse.com. That's something without a G.

Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale and... No Galampos E. Gully! Gully.