Something Rhymes with Purple - Vedettes

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Having tackled the stars in the sky, this week we’re turning our gaze to the stars who walk upon the earth. From the first celebrities to Beatle-mania via way of the inaugural ‘It Girl’ we’re tackling the full A-List of famous terminologies. This gives Gyles the perfect platform for some legitimate name-dropping, we delve deeper into Susie’s Arsene Wenger brain crush, and we discover Oscar Wilde’s numerous and ingenious methods of getting noticed. We also find time to give a few listeners their 15-minutes of Purple fame by answering their language questions, Susie has a terrific trio of words, and Gyles caps things off with a witty poem about growing old. A Somethin’ Else production Susie’s Trio: Dew snail - alternative name for a slug Uhtceare - anxiety just before dawn breaks Sloom - to gently sleep or lightly slumber If you want to put a question to Gyles and Susie then email [e-mail]. 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 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. Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast that comes out every week, usually issued on a Tuesday. It's all about words, language, and it's presented by my friend Susie Denton, by me. We love words, we love language, and Susie knows everything there is to know about the world of words and language.

And this week, we're going to talk about something that we've often touched upon, because I'm an inveterate name-dropper. I'm fascinated by famous people, because they're usually famous for a reason, And that intrigues me. And I like collecting remarkable individuals. So I'm regularly name dropping. I love telling their stories. But I'm not alone in this because last week when we were talking about football, the world of soccer, Susie was, let me put it kindly, boasting, boasting about her pen pal, Arsene Wenger. Not many people have had little billet d'oeuvre from Arsene Wenger, but Susie Dent is one of them. Well done. Well, I definitely wasn't boasting. I was totally bowled over by this. And it was because I'd spent quarter of a century in Dictionary Corner on Countdown. So it was a special moment in all sorts of ways. But yeah, what a lovely thing to get.

It's marvellous to think that while you were cheering him on at Arsenal Football Club, he was watching Countdown for 25 years and knew that the moment had come to celebrate your silver jubilee. I think he might have got a tip from the producer, but apparently he does watch it. Now, let's talk about celebrity. What is a celebrity? I think a celebrity is someone who is famous for being famous. But I'd love to know how old the word is. Well, I don't know if you know the brilliant historian who's incredibly active on Twitter, Greg Jenner.

He calls himself the people's historian, and that's exactly what he is. He writes in a really accessible way. He does a few podcasts and things. He does a wonderful one called You're Dead to Me podcast, which I would recommend. It's for people who've forgotten all their history, like me. And he has written a book called Dead Famous, An Unexpected History of Celebrity. And he defines celebrity in it, but he also dates it for him, because there's quite a lot of debate as to when the first celebrities began to appear. And he dates it back to the 1700s, even though before then there were ancient Greeks and

Romans, gladiators who were celebrated, Julius Caesar appearing on a coin in his own lifetime, which was very unusual and so on. But for Greg, it really started in the 1700s. Shall I give you his definition? Please. A unique persona, this is a celebrity, made widely known to the public via media coverage and whose life is publicly consumed as dramatic entertainment and whose commercial brand is made profitable for those who exploit their popularity and perhaps also for themselves.

I mean, that's an interesting definition. Is that what it was? You mentioned Julius Caesar. Of course, there were people who were hugely famous like Julius Caesar. And there would have been saints as well, people like Thomas of Becket, who's martyred and made them famous, Joan of Arc. But these, I think, are more historic figures who became renowned rather than a celebrity, which is a more superficial thing, I think, isn't it? Celebrity comes from the word celebrated, doesn't it? It does, absolutely. So in fact, it's the whole question if you ask a kid these days, you know, what do you want to be? Quite often they'll say, I want to be famous. Well,

what do you want to be famous for? They have no idea. It's just the idea of fame, but I don't think that's anything new. But yes, celebrate, the verb goes back to the 15th century, but ultimately it goes back to Latin. The Latin celebratus meaning much frequented, famous, but revered really. And celebrare, which gave a celebration meant to assemble, to honour, to sing praises of, to publish. And then you've got praises of to publish and then you've got um celebre as well which is related meaning populous or crowded well attended and then famous we don't know what the ancient root of celebrity is it's quite interesting but what's the oldest use of it listed cited in the oxford jurisdiction well celebrity in terms of um the way we're using the Yeah, the way we use it today was probably 1600. That was the condition of being famous.

And then the famous person definition was from about 1850. And how old do you think celeb is? Celeb just as an abbreviation? Yes. I wouldn't have thought very old. 1908. Good grief. Yeah, so that one's quite old, actually.

As an abbreviation of grief. Yeah. So that one's quite old, actually. As an abbreviation of celebrity. Yeah. So who does your friend, Greg Jenner, cite in the 17th century as the early celebrities in his view? Honestly, you need to read his book because he's got so many fantastic anecdotes in there. But he has, do you know anything about Edmund Keane? Of course I do. Okay. So he would definitely consider him to be someone who

was verging on celebrity, if not a celebrity himself. So he owed his career to William Shakespeare, didn't he? Really? Well, he did. He was a great actor. Edmund Keane was a great actor. I think what he is honing in on, and I would agree on this, is that celebrity begins with people like Keane and perhaps before him, somebody like Lord Byron. People who had a distinction and achievement. Lord Byron was a great poet, but also people became fascinated by him as a personality. They liked the fact that he was glamorous, that he looked extraordinary, that he had a complicated love life. So as well as admiring his poems, they became interested in him. admiring his poems, they became interested in him. Same goes for Edmund Keane, who was a heroic actor, famous for his Hamlet, famous for his Othello, playing all these great parts. But he

also had a bizarre life. He drank. He drank. Wasn't that a famous occasion? I'm sure Greg talks about this in the book, actually, where he was fired from a production because he failed to show up to act and then stumbled in in the first act and kind of managed to clamber his way up to the balcony, dead drunk. And someone shouted out, well done, my lad, well done for turning up at all. But yeah, he was promptly fired. He was quite a character, wasn't he?

Yes, there are famous stories told about people like him. It's the same vintage as the story of the actor who comes stumbling onto the stage at the beginning of, I think it's, yes, it's the beginning of Richard III, may even be Keane, who comes onto the stage and clearly hiccuping as he goes, now is the winter of our discontent. And somebody calls out from the audience, you're drunk. And Keane replies, if you think I'm drunk, wait till you see the Duke of Buckingham. So Keane was, he had a reputation as a womaniser, as a drinker. He had a celebrity beyond his craft. Yes.

So that's really, it's when we begin to gossip about them. So those are the early celebrities. Then you get along later, somebody like Oscar Wilde was definitely a celebrity. Yes, tell us a little bit about Wilde, because obviously you know everything there is to know about Oscar Wilde. You've written extensively about him. I think he sought celebrity. I'm not sure whether Byron and Keane sought it. It came their way.

And in the sense, it came their way in that people then wanted bits of them beyond their poetry. They wanted to collect, not photographs, it was before photographs, but prints of them. That's interesting about Byron, because he was obviously the famous mad, bad and dangerous to know. He was the first, wasn't he, of whom that was said. And I've always thought perhaps he did court it a little bit, because famously he wrote those very scandalous diaries that were then burned, weren't they, in the offices of John

Murray. So we never actually got to see them. But he used to boast about how people would have their, you know, their minds opened by reading them. And then I think wasn't so sure at the end. You're right. I think with these early celebrities, there is an element of ostentation. With Byron in his appearance, with Edmund Keane obviously being an actor

and a very flamboyant one, with somebody like Bo Brummel, who was a fashion plate. There were, at this period, a lot of men about town who dressed very elegantly and wanted to be known for their appearance. So these are the early celebrities. And there were also, not only in the world of the arts, but there were some sportsmen who became early celebrities, including particularly boxers and wrestlers. They became very well known. And there were some jockeys.

And so they became, as it were, stars beyond what they did. Yes. Now, jockeys. Yes, sorry. Sorry, no, go tell me your jockey story. I probably talked about this before, but Todd Sloan, he was a, this is a bit later now, but he was an incredibly famous jockey, won all sorts of

prizes, rode in the Prince of Wales' stables, etc. And then died a very lonely death because he was accused of betting fraud, which in fact, I think he's since been exonerated for. But he's the reason why we talk about being on your Todd, Todd Sloane alone. But he was very famous, wasn't he? The sort of playboy of his day, I think. Well, Oscar Wilde is interesting because he sought celebrity. He came down from Oxford, a young man in his early 20s, wanting to be famous. He made it clear in notes and talking to people that he knew he would have a reputation and he would be either famous or notorious. Yes, notoriety and fame and celebrity, I think, have got subtle distinctions, haven't they? And he'd make his appearance known. So, for example, deliberately, he would go to the theatre and dressing ostentatiously, and he'd be seen in the stalls.

And then a moment later, this was before the performance began, he'd be up in the gallery. A moment later, he'd appear in somebody's box. Then he'd be back on the stalls, but on a, he'd appear in somebody's box. Then he'd be back on the stalls, but on a different side. So he made it clear that he was there. You had to notice him. And before he was famous, many years before he was famous as a playwright or a poet, he became known as a personality, a man about town. So actually, this kind of what we think of as being a really modern impulse to be famous for being famous, you could actually accuse Oscar Wilde of exactly that.

Yeah. Yeah. And so there are people who are eccentric of the same period. There was a French poet called Gérard de Nerval who was famous or notorious for walking along the streets of Paris with a lobster on a lead. the streets of Paris with a lobster on a lead. Well, the point is, more than 100 years later, I'm still talking about it. Yeah, and you can actually totally see a few people doing that today, I have to say. So these people did remarkably well because they became famous through dint of their own effort. And Oscar Wilde was satirised by Gilbert and Sullivan in their operetta Patience.

He and the other East Thetes were mocked in that. And because of that, the opera was going to go to New York and Richard Doily Card who was putting it on thought, the joke won't work unless people know who Oscar Wilde is. So he had sent Oscar Wilde over to do a lecture tour. In America. In America. Yes.

So that he would become famous in America as a kind of precursor to the opera patients arriving in America. And this was the aesthetic movement, wasn't it? This was the aesthetic movement. We're talking about the 1870s, 1880s. And so word was spread by newspapers, by gossip columns. Yeah. That was how it was done.

Yeah. And by public appearance. Everything changed with the advent of the cinema. And am I right in thinking he was, I think I read this in Gregg's book, he was depicted frequently as a sunflower. So his face was kind of imposed. He was like a human sunflower with face surrounded by pretty petals and things. It's because he walked around with a sunflower. He often liked to be seen with a sunflower. And as you know, he famously wore a green carnation. And the first night of one of his plays, he persuaded a lot of his friends to wear green carnations in their buttonholes in the audience. And he got a couple of the actors on

stage to wear green carnations. And people began saying, what's the green carnation about? Is it some kind of secret society? Are they all in league together? And Oscar Wilde later revealed that he'd worn the green carnation simply to get people talking about wearing the green carnation. And you can totally see that being mirrored today on social media, etc. Absolutely. He walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in his ornamental hand. But cinema changed all this. What cinema did is it made people world famous.

Stars. That was the great revelation. world famous. Stars. That was the great revelation. Charlie Chaplin was probably the first person in the world whose actual image was known around the world. People like Jesus or Muhammad, Buddha, may have been world famous, but their image wasn't known. Their actual image wasn't known around the world. Charlie Chaplin was world famous. The French even called him Shaolo. Whatever country in the world, people knew Charlie Chaplin. And he did that through skill rather than anything else.

Yes, he did that through skill. And also through having a definite image. Yes. The Charlie Chaplin that became famous was the tramp. When he was not in the costume, people didn't know who he was. So he had the advantage of being like that. What I think is quite new, it is of our time, is the celebrity who is celebrated for nothing at all. Andy Warhol said the time is coming, didn't he? The famous artist,

American artist, said the time is coming when everyone will be known, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. And now people do want to be famous for being famous. They do. They do. Where do you stand on fame? I mean, obviously it's brought you great happiness. It's brought you really interesting work. But do you, if you could do it all again, would you want to be above the radar? I am a very good example of a minor, minor celebrity. And that's not a bad thing. I mean, I have no objection to that at all, but I'm a good definition of it because a lot of people vaguely know who I am, but very few of them know what I do. Often people say, yeah,

I sort of heard of him. What does he do? So I think I'm quite a good example of that. But I'm a 5% celebrity compared with a real celebrity. So think a list is as they're called exactly i'm quite happy to be down among the zed men it's a perfectly comfortable place to be and it's quite nice people saying hello charles i have no problem with it at all and are you asked quite often on to those celebrity reality shows for example yes you are i've been there's not one of them that i've not been asked to do so i'm not even i know i don't even occupy the a to z list because i'm just not asked to go on those because you are a person of you are a person of quality who is well known for your mind and for your role in dictionary corner and for being charming and

amusing on eight out of ten cats and for being the world'sictionary Corner and for being charming and amusing on 8 Out of 10 Cats and for being the world's leading lexicographer. I'm not totty like you, is what you're saying. Well, what I think is interesting, the people say to me, oh God, you're always name dropping. I remember I was accused by a good friend of mine, a distinguished actress, of being a terrible name dropper. She said, why do you just always associate with famous people? I said, I don't. I actually try to associate with interesting people. And some of them happen to be famous. I like people who have achieved something, whatever it may be.

How exciting to have met Barbara Streisand, to drop an alias name. But she's one of the most gifted people in the world. Yeah. Though, curiously, I'll tell you a true story. I was in, last Though, curiously, I'll tell you a true story. I was in last year before lockdown. I went to visit a man in a television company just off Kensington High Street. And I was in the office chatting to him. He was the head of the company.

And one of the runners in the office, a boy who was work experience, 18, 19 years of age, came in and said, she's bang out of order. And the boss said, what do you mean bang out of order? That woman in reception, that bag lady in reception. She's just been so rude to me's bang out of order. And the boss said, what do you mean bang out of order? That woman in reception, that bag lady in reception, she's just been so rude to me, bang out of order. And he said, well, no, all right, fine, fine. If she was rude to you, I'll make her apologise. Whoever she is, I'll make her apologise.

So the boss went with this 19-year-old runner into reception. And there sitting at reception was this bag lady. It was Barbara Streisand. And this boy had not known who she was and had asked her to fill out the form saying who she was. And she'd given her name and he'd written it down on her name tag, Barbara, spelt Barbara as opposed to Barbara.

Oh, okay. And so she'd lost it a little bit. So even for, I think, a world famous person like Barbara Streisand, you've got to remember there will be somebody who has no idea who you are. Well, and quite right, too. There are always lovely videos of tennis stars like Nadal or Roger Federer, particularly, who there was one that was shown quite recently where he was stopped at a door because he didn't have his pass and he didn't complain at all. He waited patiently for his manager, who did have his pass, to come. And he was totally polite and lovely about it. And I think that's really important. Why lose it at someone just because they don't happen to know

who you are? I don't get that at all. I agree. Our old friend, our dear late lamented friend, Richard Whiteley. Well, he would have lost it a bit, to be fair. He did lose it a bit. And he said to somebody, and he's telling me the story. I said to him, he would have lost it a bit, to be fair. He did lose it a bit. And he said to somebody, and he told me the story, I said to him, Richard was recounting the story, he said, I said to them, don't you know,

I said, don't you know who I was? And I said, well, who were you, Richard? This would be him and cab drivers. He had a real reputation for cab drivers around Leeds because he would get in the back of the cab and say, take me home, you know where. Oh dear, and if they didn't, he was quite upset. Probably. So I love people of achievement.

Yes. Let's talk about some of the language. You told me about the word celebrity. The word fame is to do with famous. Fame, yes. That goes back to the Latin again. It always goes back to the Romans, doesn't it? Just meaning story, really. So it would

be nice to think that famous people had a story to tell. That's how it kind of began. And it was, it began to mean somebody's reputation. So the story of their life, but it could be much as fame can be, it could be a bad reputation as much as a good one. So you'll have the house of ill fame for a brothel, for example. Milton wrote something about fame, didn't he? He said, fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise to scorn delights and live laborious days. Fame is the spur because it's recognition of what you've achieved. If you join the A-list, when did the A-list, who invented the A-list? Yeah, the A-list, again, I don't know whether most people probably would think that that's quite recent. So it first appeared in a very, you know, kind of standard and neutral sense,

the first in a series of lists. So actually, the first record that the OED has is from a Dublin Metropolitan Police report, where it talks about people on the A-list. So they're ranked in order of significance. So those would be the top criminals i imagine but in terms of the list of the most celebrated sought after high ranking individuals etc that's 1935 and the first quotation we have is um from a book called mrs astor's horse and it says miss cutting has an a and b list of debutantes and stag lines. She will not burden the members of the A list with second raters. So that's pretty damning, isn't it? I remember years ago, many years ago, when my daughters were very young,

they were late teenagers, they used to be used by an agency that wanted waitresses and waiters. And there was an A list and a B list. And they were on the A list and they only discovered later that the A-list was for the pretty people and the B-list was for the less pretty. And the B-list were paid less than the A-list. Isn't that frightening? Yeah. Anyway, moving swiftly on.

So star's a nice one. Let's talk about star because the first use of star in an acting context was mentioned by a theatre historian. And she thinks it arose around the time of the great comets of 1811 and 1819. So there was a huge coverage of meteorological and astronomical science. And then you get the age of Romanticism.

So that's the kind of awestruck wonder at the natural world. And celebrities began to be spoken of these kind of natural phenomena. This is how Greg Jenner describes it. Human comets blazing through the theatre. And to gaze at these meteors was a breathtaking delight and so that was all about the kind of you know the romantic era and then we're then we're back to edmund keen really aren't we we might have in fact ended up with the word meteor instead of the word star yes although it's just chance it is we've always talked about this, haven't we? Meteors rising. And they burn out, don't they?

Yeah, they actually plummet. Whereas a star sustains. A star sustains, and it's quite a nice one. Interestingly, forgive me for interrupting, but the French, a star in French is not an étoile, it's a verdette. Yes, it is. Actually, do you know what? I don't know what the origin of verdette is,

because it means very specifically a movie star, doesn't it? I'm going to look that up. There's a great French etymological dictionary I can nerd out on. Also, there is The It Girls. And all I know about The It Girls is that it was first applied to someone called Clara Bow. Ah. So tell me about her. Do you know about her?

I thought it was applied to Jean Harlow first, but Clara Bow, it sounds good. But the T, the W is silent is silent she's a silent very good she's a silent film star clara bow yes with i think a wonderful mouth a very white face and very prominent lips and she was a big silent movie star and she had it she had it but also i've just looked it up on the oed which i should have done before but originally did refer to Clara Bow and specifically her role as a female lead in the silent film called It. Oh.

So there you go. But that's very interesting. It wasn't just that she had It. No. She was in a movie called It. Yeah. But maybe the film It was about somebody who had that little bit extra that is that.

Yeah. It totally makes sense, doesn't it it and the term was very much revived in the in the kind of late 20th early 21st century so that one's kind of come back in and then you've got the screen idols i mean i think of the silver screen then and people that my mum absolutely worshipped like a gregory peck it was just amazing wasn't he james stewart i met james stewart since you met jimmy stewart i met james story everyone Peck. He was just amazing, wasn't he? James Stewart. I met James Stewart. You met Jimmy Stewart? I met James Stewart. He's not a celeb story, everyone. No, he's not much of a celeb story. I've never seen anybody so tall. Oh, yeah, I can see that, actually. Rear window. And he was, having met a few, as it were, of great Hollywood stars, courtesy was part of his

calling card. He was so effortlessly well-manned. Well, in a sense, it's rather like being the queen. All you need is to be the queen. The queen walks into the room. That is the event. James Stewart walked into the room and A, he was the tallest man you've ever seen. He was so slim, so elegant. He was quite old by the time I met him, but he was so charming. He looked at you with such concentration I met him, but he was so charming. He looked at you with such concentration. You thought, oh my God, I'm with Jimmy Stewart. It's too good for words. He said, would you like to do a Jimmy Stewart impression for me? He could see I was that sort of a person. He put me at my ease. Oh, and the other two that I can think of who would fulfil

the name, the term idol, Rock Hudson and Cary Grant. For my, you know, my mum, I just remember afternoon movies. We sat and watched so many together when I was tiny. And Doris Day. Cary Grant, the two words in my vocabulary that will spell a good film are the words Grant and Cary in whatever order you clear to. So good.

Yeah. Wonderful. Is Doris Day, I think Doris Day may still be with us. No, she died very sadly. Oh, did she? I'm so sorry. Yeah. She was a great woman.

But yeah, those are the kind of films that I grew up with because my mum absolutely loved watching old matinees and really fantastic memories for me. Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. If you ask me who would I like to be to reincarnate in terms of her manner, her presence, her appearance, her beauty, everything would be Audrey Hepburn. Well, all you need to do is get your hair cut in the right way. In a box. Because you've actually got her gamine look.

I wish. It would be very nice. Get contact lenses, get your hair cut, an Audrey Hepburn look. And you actually, you are therey hepburn of the english language okay i'll call you carrie and then we're sorted we could remake some of those great movies together we just do them ourselves and then put them out there online let's do a classic movie with you as Audrey Hepburn, me as Cary Grant. And there will then be Dent Brandreth Mania.

Where does this idea of mania, Beatlemania, I remember. Yes, the mania. Well, mania, do you remember last week I talked about fanatical and how that's been shortened into fan, which has kind of lost its sting, but it wasn't a particularly nice thing. It meant gripped by a god and possessed by an evil usually an evil spirit and mania is the same thing it basically means somebody who is uh describes somebody who is unhinged if they are manic so it wasn't a particularly good thing and actually if you think about Beatlemania that

totally you know would describe quite a lot of the the fans who gathered there and swooned and cried and screamed and you know I mean I imagine that must be terrifying for the band. But that's what happens with celebrity. That is the power of celebrity. You know, your heart rate quickens, you sweat, you just, I mean, it's just that indefinable, I don't know quite what it is. I don't know if there is anyone that I would do that with. I remember being totally awestruck in Dictionary Corner,

apart from By Your Good Self, by Ranulph Fiennes and having goosebumps listening to his tales of exploration. Who would be the single person who you haven't met, but you would meet who would make your heart just go into a frenzy? Winston Churchill. Okay. Some years ago, I got to know reasonably well, Mary Soames, who was his youngest daughter. And she said to me one day, I was having tea with her. She said, I've got a treat for you because I'm always here. I said, I heard you on the radio the other day, boasting about all the

famous people that you'd met. I don't think she said boasting, she wouldn't have been rude. She said, I heard you on the radio the other day talking about how you'd met every British prime minister since Harold Macmillan, which suggests you had never met Winston Churchill. I said, well, sadly, no, because, you know, my vintage, he was no longer prime minister and he died when I was a very little boy. She said, you'd love to have shaken hands with Winston Churchill, wouldn't you? I said, I would. She said, well, hold on. And she left the room. She went upstairs. She came downstairs and she said, here is Winston's hand. And it was a cast made from life of Winston Churchill's right hand. And it was very small. She said, isn't it small aren't the fingers small and smooth and

it was an outstretched hand she said well i'm his daughter so the genes are here i will now shake hands with winston churchill so i've i've shaken the hand of winston churchill yes well i love that i'm gonna have to think about who it would be for me well i think i think you've given us our same finger oh i would absolutely love to meet him. Of course I would. I'll think about some others as well. And then perhaps, you know, everyone, perhaps he can organise it for me.

I'd be pleased to. Since Arsene was what you got for your silver wedding, I mean, silver anniversary on Countdown. For your golden after 50 years on Countdown. I'll see if I can come up with somebody quite special for you. That would be amazing. Let's have a quick break

and then we'll do some questions. Perfect. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, I didn't want to be comfortable.

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with guests including fern cotton and what about when you get really lazy journalism so like people that draw just one line they take it out of context. And that's really sad because... It is, it is. And I've also been on the receiving end of it so many times. Sometimes to really tragic levels for me where I've really not felt able to cope with it. Yeah.

Zoe Sugg and Nadia Hussain. I think the thing with women, firstly, is that women sometimes don't always like to see other women succeed. I think that's right. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of that. And I think that's why just it's really hard sometimes because in the last four years, I've changed so much. Listen now in Apple Podcasts,ify and all good podcast apps

welcome back this is something rhymes with purple giles brandreth and suzy dent we're name dropping talking about some of the famous people that we might have met would have liked to have met and also the nature of celebrity and the language of celebrity we would love to know amongst the purple people who is the most famous person, A, who listens to us. If you are, if you think you are a celebrity and you are a purple person, do let us know. But also, if you've met somebody remarkable or intriguing and you've got a story to tell, please do share it with us. It's purple at something else dot com, purple at something else dot com. else.com purple at something else.com and quite soon we are going to be doing an episode devoted to trying to answer serious questions about the origins of words and phrases they don't have to

be that serious to be fair well no but suzy dent the audrey hepburn language is going to be doing her best to answer whatever question you may have and particularly about the english language but also the english language globally because we know we have a global audience, and there are tons of phrases and words that we use in the UK that may not be used in India, Australia, North America, South America, whatever you happen to be. Who's been writing to us this week? Let us start with Dave Williams, who's commenting on our episode about spies, and actually he's got some trivia for us. He says, I mentioned the ultimate origin of West probably being linked to the Latin Vespa for the evening

as in the setting sun direction. And this reminded Dave of the character Vesper Lind from Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. Her name was created as a pun on West Berlin. That's brilliant. I never knew that. I didn't know that. Vesper Lind, a pun on West Berlin. That's brilliant. I never knew that. I didn't know that. West Berlin, a pun on West Berlin. That's clever.

He mentions West there. And I think of Mae West as being an iconic, that's a word that they now use about celebrities. She was a celebrity as well as being a great film star. And she has a place in the language too. She does. That's why I wanted to mention her And she has a place in the language too. She does. That's why I wanted to mention her. What is her place in the language and why?

Well, lifeboats, am I right? Not lifeboats. Lifebelts are named after Mae West because she was thought to be so well endowed in the buxom department that she operated like a flotation device. If I use that as euphemistically as I can. You've done it very delicately. You did indeed. You wore a May Wester.

And it was, you then had a wonderful en bon point because she had what are known as the big boobies. But she wouldn't have minded you talking about them because she was very amusing. And she is one of these, she's a celebrity whose celebrity has gotten in the way of what should be her fame because she was a film director, a film producer. She wrote her own material, and she was a film star, and maintained

that stardom from her 20s until she died, you know, at the age of 80. She kept going. So actually, it's interesting, isn't it? Because Ingrid Bergman, who again, one of the absolute classics, and such integrity as well, I think, as a person. I mean, I don't actually know a huge amount of her life, but she strikes me as someone who took her art incredibly seriously. So she has got that reputation, but Mae West, unfortunately, is only remembered for her body, which I find quite sad.

Can I just throw in there, since this is the name-dropping episode, I've met Ingrid Bergman. Oh, is she as beautiful as I imagine? She was beautiful, but there was such class. I mean, I was overawed. I was young. I was introduced to her by Sir Michael Redgrave. They were appearing together in a play, A Month in the Country, at Tugenev in London.

And I went round to see him and he said, would you like to meet Miss Bergman? I said, oh, yes, Sir Michael, that would be nice. I'll see. Ingy, In Michael, that would be nice. I'll see. Ingy, Ingy, there's a boy in here. Ingy, there's a boy in here, would like to say hello. And she came to the door and pushed it open, and there was Ingrid Bergman in a dressing gown.

Amazing. Yeah, so I've seen Ingrid Bergman in her negligence. I just imagine that her beauty is just i don't just mean physical beauty she just strikes me as being a you know really beautiful person she was a beautiful person and you could see that she had intelligence and integrity and class and style and yeah um and in her own very different way so had may west well absolutely yeah um we've also had a fantastic email. Well, I say fantastic because I just love this name. It's Astrid Eisenmenger, who is German. Hello, Astrid. She's a German, but she lives in

Norway. And she says she loves the English language. But here's the thing, says Astrid, I don't understand. When someone tells me they had a terrific weekend, my first impulse is always to feel sorry for them until I remember that terrific means they had a great time. Surely terrific and terrified both come from terror. Ingrid, not Ingrid, sorry, Ingrid Astrid, I was thinking about Bergman again, is absolutely right. They are siblings, terrific and terrified, and they've gone the same way as awesome, which was something to stand in awe at or over. to stand in awe at or over. And it's just the result of our linguistic inflation. So, you know, things we've forever, we've been bigging up our language because it's not enough to be bad. It has to be terror inspiring and terrific. Then became something that was just used for something of such proportions that it could be of great proportions as well as bad ones.

Well, from a German living in Norway, we now go to a Norwegian living in Norway. This is Anne Ruston. As a Norwegian lover of the English language, I was absolutely chuffed when I stumbled over your podcast while surfing the net. Gosh, hardly any of those words would have been known to Jane Austen, would they? No, totally true. You know, podcast while surfing the net, she'd be completely confused. I have now caught up by binge listening. She wouldn't have understood that either, if that is a word. I'm sure it is.

And loved every minute of it. To my question, what is the origin of the word flabbergasted? I know the meaning, but not the origin. So it was basically, it became really trendy in the fashionable circles of the 18th century and it's we don't know who invented it but it's likely to be a blend of flabby with the connotations of a mouth kind of gaping wide in astonishment and gaston which was g-a-s-t-e-n which was an old verb meaning to frighten And that's a sibling of aghast and also ghost. So the flabby was probably related to flappy.

So probably, as I say, this idea of being so dumbstruck that your mouth hangs open in astonishment. It's time now for your, give us your trio of words, Susie. My trio of words. Okay, so this is just a lovely one because it's an alternative name for a slug. And not everyone loves a slug and they were originally called dew snails in in english dialect isn't that great dew snails which i think is um really pretty um i've got another one here giles which i may have mentioned before

but actually you talk quite a bit about you know lying awake at dawn feeling quite anxious and i think a lot of us are doing that at the moment. And there's a beautiful word which translated from the old English meaning dawn care. And it's basically exactly that. It's the kind of anxiety just before dawn breaks when everything seems completely hopeless. And in old English, it was Ucht Care. I probably pronounced it terribly, but it's U-H-T-C-E-A-R-E. And it's just beautiful, I think, not for the word, because it's very difficult to remember, but just the fact that obviously people have been doing this and worrying for centuries at that time of day, because a word existed for it, even for the Anglo-Saxons, which I think is beautiful. And if you haven't managed to sleep because of that Uchtkir, you can have a slum.

And to slum is to gently sleep or lightly slumber. Oh, I love that. Isn't that beautiful? To slum. A lovely slum. Yes. Well, some may have been sluming while listening to us. Quite possibly.

In fact, if they've been not so much sluming, and some of them may feel they've been slumming listening to me. But if you've got any queries, we're going to do a special episode soon, exploring English language and anything you need answering, Susie Dent is at your service and you can communicate, you can tweet either of us or you can email us at purple at something else dot com. I'm going to finish with a little poem. Oh, that would be lovely. Because I do name drop

and usually the names I drop are ones that I think people will be familiar with but in real life what I like to collect are interesting and remarkable people and when I was very young I met a remarkable man called John Sparrow You may know the name, he was the warden of All Souls College Oxford

in the 1950s and 1960s and he used to write amusing poems. And he was an old man and he gave me this poem and it meant nothing to me when he gave it to me. And now I understand it. It's a poem called Growing Old by John Sparrow. It goes like this. I'm accustomed to my deafness, to my dentures, I'm resigned. I can cope with my bifocals, but, oh dear, I miss my mind. Yes, I'm sure a lot of us can relate to that. That was lovely. And thank you to everyone for listening.

As always, as Giles mentioned, we are going to do a special episode featuring you, basically. So please send us your questions, purple at somethingelse.com. And as always, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Laurence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Harriet Wells, Jay Beal, Grace Laker, and the inimitable, soon-to-be celebrity, Gully.

Soon-to-be celebrity, the man's a natural sleumer.