7.Call My Bluff S12E4, S12E5, S12E6, S12E7 (1978) S. Cusack, J. Agutter, G. Drake, A. Marshall, A.Previn

Very British

S12E4 Sinead Cusack, Jenny Agutter, Nigel Dempster, Tim Rice.  S12E5 Tina Brown, Barbara Kellerman, Andre Previn, Tom Conti.  S12E6 Tina Brown, Barbara Kellerman, Andre Previn, Tom Conti.  S12E7 Gabrielle Drake, Pauline Collins, Arthur Marshall, David Hunt.  Host/Team captains: Robert Robinson, Frank Muir, Patrick Campbell.

Transcript

00:00:00Where did Tohubohu come from, Nigel?

00:00:02Columbia.

00:00:03Oh, Columbia.

00:00:04It's indigenous to Columbia, South America.

00:00:06Ah.

00:00:07Is that an O or an M?

00:00:09U.

00:00:10Columbia.

00:00:11Right.

00:00:12I'm ready.

00:00:13O-M.

00:00:14I'm ready to choose now.

00:00:15I don't know which one to choose.

00:00:18It seems to me rather interesting, this.

00:00:21It's not very funny, but they're not very interesting.

00:00:24Get on with it.

00:00:27We've got Tohubohu sounds obviously a Far Eastern.

00:00:31Tohubohu, doesn't it?

00:00:33So we get the Tohubohu, which is a throat pastel for...

00:00:38And we've got Tohubohu, which is your definition,

00:00:41and suddenly we get Voltaire's ancient Hebraic emptiness.

00:00:50The idea of you and ancient Hebraic emptiness

00:00:53is so appealing that I'm going to choose that.

00:00:56Aha, it was Patrick who said it.

00:00:58True or bluff?

00:01:02Once again, losing is fun.

00:01:04APPLAUSE

00:01:11Tohubohu was this sense of emptiness,

00:01:14which it seems Voltaire wrote.

00:01:17Arsheen is the next word, and Frank is going to define it.

00:01:21Arsheen is a member

00:01:25of a kind of heretical sect

00:01:28who didn't exactly flourish,

00:01:30but they mucked about on the east coast of Scotland in the 15th century.

00:01:34A dull lot, really. There's a bit of polygamy, but not all that much.

00:01:38It was mainly a sort of church wrangle.

00:01:43How they hoped to succeed,

00:01:45so near the mighty cathedral and University of St Andrews,

00:01:50I don't know. Not again!

00:01:53They didn't, and in fact they disappeared.

00:01:56But an Arsheen was a Scottish heretic,

00:01:5915th century east coast.

00:02:01Or wasn't.

00:02:03LAUGHTER

00:02:05Right, now, Tim.

00:02:08If you cast your minds back to the good old days,

00:02:11before matrication and before the Russian Revolution,

00:02:15then Arsheen comes into its own,

00:02:18because an Arsheen is a unit of length.

00:02:22So instead of Patrick here being 6 foot 4,

00:02:24you'd be about 2.6 Arsheens.

00:02:27LAUGHTER

00:02:29An Arsheen was used in Russia,

00:02:32used in Russia pre-Trotsky, pre-Lenin,

00:02:35and it was about 28.1 inches.

00:02:39It was the average length of a soldier's stride.

00:02:43Not the length of his strides, but of his stride.

00:02:46It's Arsheen. Right.

00:02:48OK, then. Right, Jenny Agatha, your turn.

00:02:51Arsheen is a gold-like alloy of copper and zinc,

00:02:55which is sometimes referred to as Turkish gold.

00:02:58This is because the Turks used to roll it into very, very thin leaves

00:03:02and coat cheap hardware,

00:03:04such as presentation watches to junior officials.

00:03:08Presentation watches to junior officials?

00:03:11The joke. The joke, Perty.

00:03:14Crack a smile, lad.

00:03:16Well, let me tell you all the three definitions they are,

00:03:19a Scottish heretic, a Russian measure of length and an alloy.

00:03:24Patrick's turn.

00:03:26Impassive faces, team. Give nothing away.

00:03:29LAUGHTER

00:03:32We have a total disagreement here, as ever.

00:03:35Captain Dashing ahead bravely.

00:03:38On his own.

00:03:40It is... Give nothing away.

00:03:42LAUGHTER

00:03:46I don't believe that heresy was confined to the east coast of Scotland.

00:03:53I think it spread everywhere.

00:03:55In Bikini in Glasgow.

00:04:00A soldier's stride, Arsheen...

00:04:02He's spinning it round a bit.

00:04:06There's a kind of...all that drivel that she...

00:04:12It's heresy.

00:04:14It was? What's heresy?

00:04:16LAUGHTER

00:04:18What kind of heresy?

00:04:20Just a terribly frightening sort of exclamation on a programme like this.

00:04:23Frank, to your bluff.

00:04:26It's a bit more Hebrew emptiness.

00:04:28Oh! APPLAUSE

00:04:31That's lucky.

00:04:34Nothing to do with heresy.

00:04:36Who gave the true definition of Arsheen?

00:04:39Lo and behold.

00:04:41You told me, didn't you?

00:04:43Yes.

00:04:47It's the Russian measure of length.

00:04:50Tim Rice was quite right to say it.

00:04:53Now here we have Radoa, or, well, how do you pronounce it, I wonder?

00:04:56Nigel Dempster.

00:04:58Radoa. Ah.

00:05:00Were we all now in Bohemia,

00:05:02and were a Bohemian orchestra to strike up a stately 3-4 tempo,

00:05:07I would rush across to Jenny Agatha

00:05:10and ask her, request her, to join me in a Radoa.

00:05:13The Radoa is a slowish waltz of Bohemian origin,

00:05:17which is more like a mazurka,

00:05:20and it is danced in a rather haughty and languid fashion.

00:05:26Not a lot of that about these days, is there?

00:05:29LAUGHTER

00:05:31Sinead, your turn.

00:05:33Radoafa.

00:05:35That's how it's pronounced, because, as you probably all know,

00:05:39it's a Polish word,

00:05:41and it means the senior...

00:05:44..senior servant, female servant, in a Polish castle.

00:05:48And she's very grand, much grander than an English butler.

00:05:51She has her own apartment, and she has her own personal maid.

00:05:54Oh, yes, and she wears a sash, by tradition, across her chest,

00:05:58a bit like a sergeant major, as a badge of her high office.

00:06:02Say, Miss Poland.

00:06:04LAUGHTER

00:06:07Patrick's turn now.

00:06:09If certain people could leave other people's definitions alone...

00:06:13LAUGHTER

00:06:15A Radoa is an old-fashioned upholstered

00:06:20North American barber's chair.

00:06:25Made of leather, and nicely buttoned.

00:06:29You can tip it back.

00:06:31It was sitting in a Radoa that Mark Twain got most of his inspiration.

00:06:36In a shave.

00:06:38Who's doing this, you or me?

00:06:41He said,

00:06:43all my great ideas came to me when I was immobilised in my Radoa.

00:06:50So, then, it's this kind of barber's chair.

00:06:53It's a slow waltz, and it's a very superior Polish servant.

00:06:58Tim Wright has to make a choice now.

00:07:01Well, I instantly dismiss the barber's chair.

00:07:04Ridiculous. Crazy. Impossible.

00:07:07Yeah, yeah.

00:07:09Next, I would also like to dismiss, instantly,

00:07:12the 3-4 waltz, something about a...

00:07:15rather like a moussaka or something.

00:07:17Not plausible.

00:07:19Um...

00:07:21Shinnyad's thing, possible.

00:07:23Senior female Polish maid.

00:07:26Senior female Polish...

00:07:28But she said it was grander than an English butler.

00:07:31Nothing is grander than that.

00:07:33So, reluctantly, I come back to Patrick.

00:07:36And I think it's Mark Twain's chair.

00:07:38Well, certainly, Patrick did say something of a sort.

00:07:41Now, true or bluff, Patrick?

00:07:47Bluff.

00:07:49APPLAUSE

00:07:52No.

00:07:54No chair.

00:07:56Who gave the real definition of Radoa or Radova?

00:07:59Could it have been...? However...

00:08:01I think it seems to be...

00:08:03Good Lord!

00:08:05LAUGHTER

00:08:07He's so excited!

00:08:09APPLAUSE

00:08:13It is indeed a slow waltz.

00:08:15Radoa is 2-1.

00:08:18The next word is matron or wealth.

00:08:20Well, I wonder how they do pronounce it.

00:08:22Tim Rice.

00:08:24Well, the man who gave his name to matron was called Matron.

00:08:29Henry Matron.

00:08:31And he was a theatrical person who hung around in the 19th century.

00:08:36And it's an old theatrical word coined by this gentleman,

00:08:39which means bangle, bracelet, ornament.

00:08:45And in those days, it was almost more common to call it a matron

00:08:49than to call it a bangle, bracelet or ornament.

00:08:51But it was only really caught on being in rather vulgar theatrical circles.

00:08:56Right. Jenny.

00:08:59It's actually pronounced mashan.

00:09:01And if you're on a mashan, you're in the safest possible place

00:09:04when you're hunting tiger.

00:09:06Whether you're in the Burmese jungle or in the grounds of Longleat.

00:09:11It's a platform erected high in the trees,

00:09:14from which, with a loaded gun and with your eyes narrowed to slits,

00:09:18you can watch out for tigers.

00:09:21Yep.

00:09:23Why not keep them open?

00:09:25They might catch sight of them.

00:09:27Oh, you're quite right.

00:09:29Frank, your turn.

00:09:31I don't know whether you've ever tried to play

00:09:35This Is My Lovely Day

00:09:38or The Ride Of The Valkyries on the bagpipes.

00:09:43It is exceedingly difficult

00:09:46because the range is too wide for them.

00:09:50But if you do have a tune or air

00:09:54playable within the range of a bagpipe,

00:09:58it's called a makhan.

00:10:00A piboch, for instance, is a makhan.

00:10:03But The Ride Of The Valkyries...

00:10:06Oh, isn't by a long way.

00:10:09LAUGHTER

00:10:11Oh, no. Forget it.

00:10:13You're acting, Frank.

00:10:15You're just like Ray on that.

00:10:17Didn't do any imitations, though, Frank.

00:10:19With bagpipes, I thought we might get a bit of...

00:10:21Well, no, perhaps I shouldn't tempt you.

00:10:23It's cheap theatrical jewellery,

00:10:25it's a tiger-shooting platform, where you're safe as houses,

00:10:28and it's bagpipe music.

00:10:30Now, whose turn is it? Yes, Nigel's.

00:10:33I think we can discount Frank immediately because he was...

00:10:36It's always the same.

00:10:38It was almost there, Frank,

00:10:40the second syllable, which...

00:10:42And cheap jewellery, this could never be.

00:10:45Tigers, equally improbable,

00:10:47because in Longleat, you only shoot Lord Bath.

00:10:50Miss. There's only one of him.

00:10:52I think it's...

00:10:54I'll go for tigers. Jenny Agata.

00:10:56Tigers, yes. Jenny.

00:10:58Were you bluffing, or was it true?

00:11:01You were... Perfectly true.

00:11:03APPLAUSE

00:11:06A maffin is a very nice platform to be up when you're out shooting tigers.

00:11:11To all.

00:11:13Pulch is the next one. Sinead, your turn.

00:11:16To pulch, in the phraseology of a pharmacist,

00:11:20is a verb meaning of a medicine

00:11:23to make it sharper to the taste, more stimulating.

00:11:27To quote an 18th-century prescription for the treatment of colic,

00:11:31the magnesia water may be pulched

00:11:34by the addition of a few drops of tincture of senna.

00:11:39Oh, there's more than pulch, you.

00:11:41LAUGHTER

00:11:43Serious stuff. Patrick, your turn.

00:11:48A pulch is a monosyllabic fish, like a tench or a dace.

00:11:52I mean, a kipper, isn't it?

00:11:54No. Two syllables.

00:11:56A poor, sad little fish, monosyllabic fish,

00:11:59of the guardian family.

00:12:01Whale.

00:12:03Whale's another one.

00:12:05LAUGHTER

00:12:09It's used as bait by many fishermen,

00:12:12but it's so thick, it's so silly,

00:12:15it's almost certified to be stupid.

00:12:19It can only be used as bait.

00:12:21It can only be used as bait.

00:12:24It can only be used as bait, if you can catch it,

00:12:27with the taste of dench...

00:12:29And the dench and the taste.

00:12:31The stench of dench.

00:12:33LAUGHTER

00:12:35Nigel, Dempster's go.

00:12:37A pulch, if I can pronounce it in its northern vernacular,

00:12:41is an underground wheelbarrow.

00:12:43It's a wheelbarrow with rather...

00:12:45LAUGHTER

00:12:47..larger than ordinary wheels,

00:12:49which was used by coal miners at the Coalface.

00:12:52One of the more shaming exhibits at the Miners' Museum in Stockton

00:12:56is a scaled-down version of a pulch,

00:12:59which was used by children in Victorian times,

00:13:02when they worked at the Coalface.

00:13:04One wheel.

00:13:05Ah, one at the...

00:13:06Don't answer!

00:13:07But he said a wheelbarrow.

00:13:09But the big, big wheel at the front, one wheel only.

00:13:13I see.

00:13:14Nothing at the back except two little...

00:13:16That's not it.

00:13:17LAUGHTER

00:13:20You want to say it's more? No, no.

00:13:22Well, I do, Nigel.

00:13:24The children, it was on their shoulders, you see.

00:13:26Oh, dear.

00:13:27So it came that way.

00:13:28Awful.

00:13:29It was very cruel.

00:13:30Yes.

00:13:31I'm told.

00:13:32Well, it's monosyllabic fish,

00:13:34it's a sort of coal barrow,

00:13:36whether wheel or otherwise, wheelbarrow,

00:13:39and it's to make medicine more...

00:13:41put more jizz in it, I suppose.

00:13:43Jenny, your turn.

00:13:45I do, but you...

00:13:47It's a kind of disagreement.

00:13:50I can't believe Nigel Dempster

00:13:52because he doesn't really know fully

00:13:55whether it's a wheelbarrow, it's just too...

00:13:58So I won't go for that.

00:14:00It sounds too much like pilchards

00:14:02and perch for the fish.

00:14:05Pulch.

00:14:06I mean, it's too close to pilchard, I think.

00:14:09And I rather liked...

00:14:12I rather liked the idea of it being taste,

00:14:15making taste sharper, was it?

00:14:18Yes.

00:14:19Yes.

00:14:20Yes.

00:14:26You're choosing that, my dear.

00:14:28I'm going to go for the taste.

00:14:30Yes, that was said by Sinead.

00:14:32Yes, she may have been bluffing, she may not.

00:14:34True or bluff? Here it comes.

00:14:38Aha!

00:14:39APPLAUSE

00:14:45Is it ever a cenopod, one asks oneself.

00:14:47Sometimes it is, though.

00:14:49Who gave the true definition?

00:14:51It's not. No, it's not.

00:14:53A pulch is a pilchard's uncle.

00:14:55APPLAUSE

00:14:58Down the hole.

00:15:00It's a fish, is a pulch or pouch.

00:15:03Three-two.

00:15:04Decubitus, we have.

00:15:06Jenny Agatha.

00:15:08A decubitus is the position or posture you take up

00:15:11when you're lying on a bed.

00:15:13People who sleep on their sides, all hunched up,

00:15:16are in a fetal decubitus.

00:15:18And if they're lying with their arms outstretched,

00:15:21they're in a starfish decubitus, etc.

00:15:24But what's... etc, yes.

00:15:27Well, there's several decubitus that you can sleep in.

00:15:30Oh, yes. Comfortably.

00:15:32Any posture you take, a decubitus.

00:15:34Frank, your go.

00:15:36A decubitus is...

00:15:38You may take notes.

00:15:40A decubitus is a drinking vessel

00:15:44made in the shape of a dolphin.

00:15:47I know.

00:15:49They don't know, straight face.

00:15:51It mustn't be a haddock or a whale

00:15:54or pilch or pulch or pilchard's nephew.

00:15:57It's got to be a dolphin,

00:15:59usually with a fin elongated as a handle.

00:16:02It's a dolphin-shaped drinking vessel.

00:16:05Well, thank you very much indeed, Frank.

00:16:07A drinking vessel in the shape of a dolphin.

00:16:10I think you've rubbed that in.

00:16:12They've grasped it.

00:16:14Tim.

00:16:15I could say a lot about this word.

00:16:17Um, decubitus.

00:16:19Latin origin, decubare,

00:16:22meaning to become broody

00:16:24or pertaining to a hem.

00:16:26LAUGHTER

00:16:29Some things in life are very amusing

00:16:31and this is one of them.

00:16:33LAUGHTER

00:16:35Say a bit more.

00:16:37No, I'm going to say...

00:16:39Oh, good, good.

00:16:41I'm going to say an awful lot more.

00:16:43In 1839, approximately,

00:16:45there was very little that could be done

00:16:47to hatch out hens...

00:16:49hatch out eggs from hens.

00:16:51LAUGHTER

00:16:53So a very bright spot

00:16:56So a very bright spot came up with a decubitus.

00:16:59You may scoff, you may laugh,

00:17:01but this was a very primitive method

00:17:03of getting heat into the place where the hen was.

00:17:06And after the Latin, decubare.

00:17:09The Romans had a word, broody, hen,

00:17:11and that's what it is.

00:17:13It was a mid-19th century hen-hatching device,

00:17:17mainly pumping in heat into the hen house.

00:17:19So, in short, it's an early incubator.

00:17:23It's the posture you take up in bed

00:17:25and it's a drinking vessel in the shape of a dolphin.

00:17:28Sinead, your turn.

00:17:30Well, this won't take long, will it?

00:17:32LAUGHTER

00:17:37I'm in complete disagreement with my team.

00:17:40My team, not your team!

00:17:43LAUGHTER

00:17:45LAUGHTER

00:17:52I can't believe about the bed positions.

00:17:55Because, I mean, it must be...

00:17:58There must be a plural version.

00:18:00You kept saying decubituses

00:18:03and it would have been decubitai or something.

00:18:06No.

00:18:08Well, I just thought it was a strange way of saying the plural.

00:18:13I was very fond of...

00:18:15And I'm fond of you, too.

00:18:18The dolphin. I like that.

00:18:20It's smashing, isn't it?

00:18:22It's very sweet.

00:18:24I just couldn't believe for a moment in the hen-hatching device.

00:18:27I mean, it just didn't make any sense to me whatsoever, that one.

00:18:31No, I'm going for the dolphin.

00:18:33The dolphin. In the shape of a drinking vessel.

00:18:36In the drinking vessel, it's the shape of a dolphin.

00:18:38Frank, tell her. True or bluff?

00:18:42I can't find the right card.

00:18:44LAUGHTER

00:18:46They're probably all the same, aren't they?

00:18:48APPLAUSE

00:18:52No.

00:18:54Not anything to do with dolphins or a drinking vessel.

00:18:56Who gave the true definition of it?

00:18:59It's...

00:19:01You see? It was that.

00:19:03APPLAUSE

00:19:05I could tell you had that little note.

00:19:08Cubitus is the shape, the posture you take up when you fly in bed.

00:19:12Three all at interesting stage in the game.

00:19:15Huxing is the next one, and Patrick to define it.

00:19:18If you have...

00:19:22..an old two-masted wooden-hulled schooner...

00:19:27..and you come into the harbour with the wind out of the east,

00:19:31you've got a tyre up at the side, you see, at the quay,

00:19:34and you throw out your string...

00:19:40..this is when huxing used to take place,

00:19:42with an old wooden hull.

00:19:45You throw out your fender, not, of course, a brass fender,

00:19:49but an old bolt or something, even the cook.

00:19:54Even more string and rope.

00:19:57You hux against the side of the quay, huxing away like anything.

00:20:01You say, Captain, we're huxing on the port side.

00:20:04You say, do something about it, fool.

00:20:07Yes, sir.

00:20:11Squeak, squeak, crunch, crunch.

00:20:15It's all about that.

00:20:16Yes, great display of nautical terminology there.

00:20:19Nigel Dempster-Yorker.

00:20:21Well, huxing is the lazy fisherman's way of catching pike.

00:20:26Having baited each hook,

00:20:28he attaches a balloon to them

00:20:30and throws the balloon out over the water,

00:20:33and then he's able to take it easy on the river bank,

00:20:36waiting for the balloon to bobble around

00:20:38and alert him that he's actually caught something.

00:20:42Huxing.

00:20:44Now, Sinead, what do you tell us?

00:20:47A huxing is an old man's five o'clock shadow.

00:20:52It's that sort of wiry stubble

00:20:56that you find on an old man's chin or cheeks.

00:21:01A huxing, or a huxen, it can be spelt H-U-X-E-N,

00:21:06is a hazard that women have to put up with,

00:21:10women that go round kissing unshaven grandfathers.

00:21:17Yeah, they go around it.

00:21:19No names, no pack drill.

00:21:21Now, evidently, when a ship rubs against the side of the dock,

00:21:25it's the stubble on the elderly, white and so on,

00:21:28and it's a method of catching fish with balloons.

00:21:31Frank.

00:21:35Um...

00:21:37I'll just try to make it look difficult, if you don't mind,

00:21:40by not knowing quite which to choose.

00:21:47Old man with stubble trouble.

00:21:50Boat scraping its strake

00:21:54and catching pike with pins,

00:21:59baited and a balloon.

00:22:02They bobble.

00:22:04They all sound very, very, very fine, don't they?

00:22:08I have some small knowledge of fishing,

00:22:13none at all of two-masted schooners,

00:22:15and very little, apart from personal experience,

00:22:18of old men.

00:22:20So, as I know that, in my experience,

00:22:23pike are not caught in that fashion,

00:22:26I'm going to choose it.

00:22:28Nice thinking, I wonder if it is.

00:22:31True or bluff? It was Nigel Dempster who said that.

00:22:37He's got it!

00:22:39APPLAUSE

00:22:41Blind, smooth, blind, smooth, yeah.

00:22:44More bluff than similar.

00:22:46Pike aren't caught by balloons, how on earth are they caught?

00:22:49This will be our last word now,

00:22:51and it might be an interesting result yet.

00:22:53Fankle.

00:22:55Frankle. Yes.

00:22:57Fankle!

00:22:59What about Fank to a mure?

00:23:01There's almost a line in Mace Field's poem Cargoes,

00:23:06which goes,

00:23:08Dirty British coaster with an oat cake plate rack,

00:23:13butting through the channel in the mad March days.

00:23:16Well, a fankle is an oat cake plate rack.

00:23:18It's extremely difficult to say.

00:23:21No, it's a kitchen thing, rather like a plate rack,

00:23:25only the division's much smaller,

00:23:27and it's used for drying oat cakes after they've been cooked in school.

00:23:31Because...

00:23:33But, Hark, because the oat cakes are supposed to cool off

00:23:37when they're standing up like toast. There we are.

00:23:40Now we'll have to dart fairly quickly, Tim, through your definition.

00:23:44It's a tantrum.

00:23:46That's very quick.

00:23:50That's fairly quick, good.

00:23:52That's what we wanted, really. Jenny, your turn.

00:23:54To fankle, it is actually a verb, means to get entangled with,

00:23:57as a puppy might get entangled with its lead.

00:23:59It also has a figurative meaning.

00:24:01It means to lose the thread of your thought.

00:24:05Right, it means to dry oat cake, it's a device for so doing,

00:24:09to become entangled, literally and metaphorically,

00:24:12and a tantrum. Patrick?

00:24:14Leave this to me, Tim, I'll handle this one for you.

00:24:17LAUGHTER

00:24:19It isn't a tantrum, it's too quick for a tantrum, isn't it?

00:24:22It was a fankle. If anything, it's a tantrum.

00:24:24But a fankle is too long for a tantrum.

00:24:27It isn't...

00:24:30Yes, a minute.

00:24:33It is oat cake grid machine.

00:24:36The oat cake of Frank Muir.

00:24:39No!

00:24:41APPLAUSE

00:24:44No oat cake, no dryer.

00:24:47Give us the true definition as quick as you like.

00:24:50Not you, darling! Yes, indeedy.

00:24:53APPLAUSE

00:24:55How can she? Not fair.

00:24:57Not fair.

00:24:59Entangled.

00:25:01It's to become entangled.

00:25:03So there you have the score, 5-3.

00:25:05What a nice game. Isn't it just?

00:25:07I declare Frank Muir's team the winners.

00:25:10APPLAUSE

00:25:16So we'll have some more discontinued lines from the OED next week.

00:25:22Until then, goodbye from Nigel Dempster.

00:25:25APPLAUSE

00:25:27Tim Rice.

00:25:29Sinead Cusack.

00:25:32Jenny Abbott.

00:25:34Patrick Campbell.

00:25:36Frank Muir.

00:25:38And goodbye.

00:25:40APPLAUSE

00:25:56APPLAUSE

00:26:16Hello again. Let me welcome you to Call My Bluff,

00:26:19where almost as tall as the story he will tell you is...

00:26:23Yes, Frank Muir.

00:26:25APPLAUSE

00:26:27My first guest hasn't been on the programme before.

00:26:30She's a writer, she's a Sunday Telegraph magazine journalist

00:26:33and playwright, and her name is Tina Brown.

00:26:36APPLAUSE

00:26:42My second guest has been on before.

00:26:45He's a musician.

00:26:48Andre Previn.

00:26:50APPLAUSE

00:26:54And honorary member of the Little Folk, even though he is 7'3",

00:26:59Patrick Campbell.

00:27:01APPLAUSE

00:27:03Good evening.

00:27:07My first guest is unbelievably beautiful, incredibly intelligent

00:27:12and a superb actress, simply called Barbara Kellerman.

00:27:16APPLAUSE

00:27:23And my other guest, all those adjectives can be applied,

00:27:27including beauty.

00:27:29He's called Tom Conti.

00:27:31APPLAUSE

00:27:35You've done that hard, but that's the lesson.

00:27:37Now we have to start the real thing.

00:27:39I ring the bell and we get a word.

00:27:41Sniddle. It's usually a word like that, sniddle.

00:27:44And what happens is that Frank Muir and his team

00:27:46define sniddle three different ways.

00:27:48Two of the definitions are false ones.

00:27:50One is true, that is the one that Patrick and company

00:27:53are going to try and pick out.

00:27:55What of sniddle, Frank?

00:27:59LAUGHTER

00:28:01I'll tell you what we'll do.

00:28:04We'll find some bonzer gaff,

00:28:08get a flesh cove,

00:28:11dip him for his rhino,

00:28:13and then we'll come back here and sniddle.

00:28:17LAUGHTER

00:28:19We'll use the term old thieves can't term,

00:28:23as indeed were the rest.

00:28:25Sniddle means the divvy-up,

00:28:27means to divvy up after the burglary or the robbery.

00:28:32LAUGHTER

00:28:34You see, we'll play that bit at the end again

00:28:37by popular request, I think.

00:28:39A slow-motion replay.

00:28:42Andre, your turn.

00:28:44It should be fairly simple. This is a nation of cheese lovers

00:28:47and the sniddle is in fact the floor covering

00:28:50in any cheese room.

00:28:53It is a carpet made of old dried coarse grass

00:28:57and sedge and the like,

00:28:59which allows the various cheeses,

00:29:01Cheshire cheese in particular,

00:29:03to breathe and to permeate the room with their lovely odours.

00:29:07That's what it is.

00:29:09Right, so it's Tina Brown's turn now.

00:29:12The sniddle is a piece of wood

00:29:14and the coal miners place a wedge on the wheel of a coal cart

00:29:17to stop it careering down the path

00:29:20after they've laden it with coal.

00:29:22And in Derbyshire, it's sometimes abbreviated to a snid.

00:29:26Fetch the snid, Jack.

00:29:28LAUGHTER

00:29:31Right, so it's a thieves' share-out,

00:29:34thieves can't for a sort of share-out.

00:29:36It's that sort of wedge

00:29:38and it's the floor covering in a cheese place

00:29:41where they make cheese, I suppose.

00:29:43Patrick, pick one.

00:29:45I can't believe that Frank would have gone to all the trouble to do that.

00:29:49LAUGHTER

00:29:51Imitation of a pair in Burglars if it wasn't a true one.

00:29:56But wait, don't, I haven't made up my mind yet.

00:29:59LAUGHTER

00:30:02Tina talking about a snid, not a sniddle,

00:30:06she knows more about sniddles than I do,

00:30:08or she does either.

00:30:11What? That was very good.

00:30:13LAUGHTER

00:30:15If she knew anything about sniddles, she might call it a snid.

00:30:20That's not it.

00:30:22But what about a...

00:30:24People don't spread cheeses all over carpets.

00:30:27LAUGHTER

00:30:29Unless you're right, of course.

00:30:31LAUGHTER

00:30:35It's a cheese carpet.

00:30:37Well, I think that's what Andre Previn more or less said, yes,

00:30:40sort of the bottom part of the room.

00:30:43You actually believe that? I do believe that.

00:30:45With all my heart.

00:30:49APPLAUSE

00:30:58It is indeed what they cover the floor of a cheese house with.

00:31:02I did my nut for nothing.

00:31:04LAUGHTER

00:31:06We've still got time, Frank, we can have it again.

00:31:08Agrom is the next one, and Patrick's going to tell us about that.

00:31:12Agrom was a kind of military command.

00:31:17Very, very old military command.

00:31:20Agrom!

00:31:22Battle of Crecy, Agincourt, that kind of thing.

00:31:25Because if you're going to Agrom...

00:31:30..you're going to go down on one knee,

00:31:33kind of half-kneeling down, because you've got the archers behind you.

00:31:36After you've done your little bit of archery,

00:31:39you want to Agrom,

00:31:41in order to prevent it from getting pierced by your archers behind you.

00:31:45Stands to reason.

00:31:47LAUGHTER

00:31:49Whoever won the Battle of Crecy and Agincourt,

00:31:52can I double event,

00:31:54employed this method.

00:31:57That's all.

00:31:59Try it and trust it.

00:32:01Yes, Tom Conti's turn now.

00:32:03Yes, well, Agrom is a disorder of the alimentary canal...

00:32:08Eugh!

00:32:10..which troubled Indians living in Bengal.

00:32:14They kept falling in it.

00:32:16LAUGHTER

00:32:18Once they'd covered it up, they discovered it wasn't quite a disease.

00:32:21No, it's a dreadful bellyache,

00:32:24and it does awful things to the tongue.

00:32:27It makes your tongue the appearance of a brandy snap,

00:32:30pitted with brown craters.

00:32:33You can fill it with cream and jam if you like,

00:32:36but that's really what it is.

00:32:38It's a bad disorder of the alimentary canal.

00:32:41Right now, Barbara, your turn.

00:32:43Agrom is a herb once cultivated by the royal vineyards of ancient Egypt.

00:32:48The dried leaves of Agrom produce a kind of yeast

00:32:51which is used in the fermentation of wine,

00:32:54destined for the sellers of such potentates as Cleopatra and the Ptolemies.

00:33:02Yes, well, it's an herb.

00:33:04It's a disorder of the alimentary canal,

00:33:06not this time of sheep, but of Indians.

00:33:08And you crouch down on one knee,

00:33:10so let the archers fire over the top of you,

00:33:12should you ever find yourselves in that situation.

00:33:15Frank, your turn.

00:33:19Yes, you're sort of utterly transparent.

00:33:22I'll have to play with it for a bit, you know,

00:33:25just to give the illusions, to give a bit of suspense.

00:33:28Oh, God.

00:33:33A pitted tongue.

00:33:35I don't... It's so revolting.

00:33:38I really don't... Think of all the curry lodging in it.

00:33:42I don't honestly think we can stomach that.

00:33:47Ancient herbs for Egyptian wine.

00:33:53You can't call out...

00:33:57Agrom!

00:33:59Funtweg, by the lift.

00:34:01Agrom... Oh, yes, you can.

00:34:03Come on, Paddy, let's try you.

00:34:05You're choosing the command. Yes, it was...

00:34:07No, no, it was crouch on one knee, wasn't it?

00:34:10Yeah, that's right, yes.

00:34:12It must have been...

00:34:15It must have been.

00:34:17APPLAUSE

00:34:23Now we have the true definition.

00:34:25Moment of rare satisfaction, here it comes.

00:34:28Little Elementary Canal.

00:34:30Yep.

00:34:32It's yours down the hall.

00:34:34It's yours down the hall, too.

00:34:36The disorder of the elementary canal is what Agrom is.

00:34:40And then we have Rehammer.

00:34:42And it's Andre Previn's turn to tell us about it.

00:34:46Well, suppose, right?

00:34:48Suppose you were to hang a picture or something decorative on the wall

00:34:53and you took a hammer and a nail and you hammered away

00:34:57and you got through, or so you think, and you step back

00:35:00and you see that you have not actually hammered the thing in enough.

00:35:04You then take your hammer and you re-hammer it, you see,

00:35:08thus driving the nail in a bit farther.

00:35:11Simplistic, but there you are.

00:35:13Yes.

00:35:15A certain natural beauty there.

00:35:17Tina Brown.

00:35:19Well, Rehammer, as it's pronounced in Holland,

00:35:22is a Dutch civil servant

00:35:24whose duties are very similar to that of an English town clerk.

00:35:27And he travels all over the country

00:35:29reporting to the Burgermeister when he gets home.

00:35:32He's a peripatetic town clerk, and he's Dutch.

00:35:35A peripatetic town clerk?

00:35:37Yep. Gets around.

00:35:39Right, Frank, your go.

00:35:41Rehammer is the fourth season of the Islamic religious year.

00:35:48It is during Rehammer that devout Muslims

00:35:53have to put off things like hang gliding...

00:35:57LAUGHTER

00:35:59..water polo,

00:36:01and have to settle down to studying the prophetic reasonings of the Koran.

00:36:08So, you say that it's the fourth season of the Islamic year,

00:36:13it's hammering something again, re-hammering it,

00:36:16and it's a peripatetic Dutch civil servant.

00:36:19Not a Turkish one this time, but a Dutch one.

00:36:22Tom Conti.

00:36:24Yes.

00:36:26Well, Frank strikes me as a frightfully kind of irreligious chap,

00:36:29so I can't imagine that he would have done enough study of Indian

00:36:33and other religions to have come up with this definition,

00:36:36so I have to discard that one, really.

00:36:38I think probably the Dutch one would have been spelt with one M.

00:36:44LAUGHTER

00:36:48But I think that anyone who has the gall, really,

00:36:52to come up with the definition that Andre Previn came up with

00:36:55deserves a point.

00:36:57So I'll go for the re-hammering.

00:37:01You chose the one. It was indeed Andre Previn.

00:37:03Quick, don't give him a chance to change his mind.

00:37:06True or bluff, was it?

00:37:07I mean, conductors have to have gall. It's unbelievable.

00:37:10CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

00:37:20Dickens, did you think it was when you hit a hammer twice?

00:37:23You re-hammered it. What else could it be, really?

00:37:26Now, the next one is Hulluv.

00:37:29I think the score's a trifle wrong there, but who knows?

00:37:32I may have got it wrong myself.

00:37:33No, I'd leave it. It'll be there.

00:37:35Tom Coffey, will you give us a definition of Hulluv?

00:37:39Actually, I don't think I've got time.

00:37:42You may not believe this coming after the horrors of the Alimentary Canal.

00:37:48Hullv is a sewer.

00:37:54It's the main sewer, not just any old sewer.

00:37:57It's the big one.

00:37:59It used to even run down the middle of the road. It doesn't now.

00:38:03But it's the main sewer.

00:38:05All the little tributaries put all into the main one

00:38:09and it all goes down to the sea for the benefit of bathers,

00:38:12surf riders, that sort of thing.

00:38:14It's a sewer.

00:38:16Right, now it's Barbara Kellerman's turn.

00:38:19Well, it was the chief burial ground in Dundee.

00:38:23And it was the garden of a Franciscan friary.

00:38:29And it's been long since deconsecrated.

00:38:33In fact, it is now a car park.

00:38:36And the word lives on in the Scots vernacular as a place of contemplation.

00:38:41A thinking man's retreat.

00:38:44Car park.

00:38:46Well, not a car park, a thinking man's retreat.

00:38:49Ideal for picnics.

00:38:51Right, Patrick.

00:38:53Now, hulver is an old Dorsetshire fisherman's word for stake.

00:38:59A stake.

00:39:01In order to dry their nets and amend the holes in them,

00:39:05they put a load of stakes along the beach.

00:39:10A fairly tedious occupation.

00:39:12But it's enlivened by the fact that if one stake is higher than the ones beside it,

00:39:19it's called a bosom stake.

00:39:22Or bosom hulver.

00:39:25Naughty.

00:39:29It's a burial ground in Dundee, now deconsecrated.

00:39:33It's a sewer, and it's a stake on which you hang your nets in Dorset.

00:39:37If nets you have.

00:39:39Andre.

00:39:41I discount yours, Paddy, because surely it would...

00:39:44I mean, it would be two stakes that would be called bosom stakes, wouldn't it?

00:39:47It doesn't make any sense.

00:39:49One higher than the other.

00:39:51Daunting thought.

00:39:54Then I get confused.

00:39:56There was something about people being buried in a car park.

00:40:00That was yours, was it?

00:40:02No, it's now used as a car park.

00:40:04Now used as a car park.

00:40:06I see.

00:40:08I tell you what, though.

00:40:11The main sewer is too close to the elementary canal,

00:40:14and I don't think they'd give you two more or less elementary canals in a row.

00:40:19I prefer the contemplative car park myself, Barbara.

00:40:22Yes, the place she spoke of. Yes, Barbara, it was you.

00:40:28She looks pretty well pleased, you know.

00:40:31Aha!

00:40:38So, who gave the real, the true, the authentic definition of that word?

00:40:43Hull, hulver?

00:40:45It's the colonic irrigation shill, Bob.

00:40:50It's both our best good words.

00:40:53He spoke of the sewer, and it was true, every word he said.

00:40:57Agristine, that looks nice and interesting.

00:41:00Tina Brown's turn.

00:41:02Well, if your falcon or hawk gets a dose of agristine,

00:41:06I would strongly advise you to call your local bird doctor,

00:41:10because it's a really filthy disease of the tail feathers.

00:41:13LAUGHTER

00:41:15It is.

00:41:17They drop out.

00:41:19They just turn rusty and moody and fall off one by one,

00:41:23to the intense dismay of the falcon concerned.

00:41:28Right, now, Frank. Follow that.

00:41:31There used to be a lot more of this about than there is now, funnily enough.

00:41:35Quite a lot of it's got... You get a bit of it in, I suppose,

00:41:38in the Middle East, with people with cameras.

00:41:40You used to get a hell of a lot more of it, medieval times particularly.

00:41:44And agristine is the look you get from somebody with an evil eye.

00:41:51LAUGHTER

00:41:53You're going to get one now, Peter.

00:41:58You don't care to say more, Frank. No-one's probably well advised.

00:42:01Andre.

00:42:03Agristine is a collective name for small marbles or beads

00:42:09made of primitive glass,

00:42:11and they're found by archaeologists

00:42:15who go rooting around Denmark and other Scandinavian countries,

00:42:18although some of them have been found in Schleswig-Holstein.

00:42:22LAUGHTER

00:42:24Although, of course, people are a bit baffled

00:42:27by when the earliest of these artefacts were found,

00:42:30it has been guessed that they go back as far as the Phoenicians.

00:42:34So it's an evil look.

00:42:36It's these ancient beads that you find in Denmark,

00:42:38sometimes in Schleswig-Holstein,

00:42:40and it's a disease of hawks.

00:42:42They're back feathers.

00:42:44Well, it's all your fault, not mine.

00:42:46Come on, it's anybody's game.

00:42:48Two-to-one chance.

00:42:50Disease of the tail feathers.

00:42:53I don't see tail in the word.

00:42:56Yes? Well, no.

00:42:58It sounds improbable to me. I don't know.

00:43:02A look from the evil eye, that's almost too easy in a way.

00:43:05Agro, agristine, eye, I don't know.

00:43:08Marbles.

00:43:10That's what it was, wasn't it? Marbles.

00:43:12Marbles, beads, that sort of thing.

00:43:16I think I'm going to go, because it's so obvious,

00:43:20look from the evil eye.

00:43:22Look from the evil eye. Frank.

00:43:24Frank, you said that, didn't you?

00:43:26Oh, no.

00:43:27Oh, dear. You tease, were you teasing?

00:43:29Oh, no.

00:43:30Yes, he was!

00:43:32Marbles! Marbles!

00:43:34APPLAUSE

00:43:36Yes!

00:43:38Now, the thing is, we must ask who gave us the two definition,

00:43:42and there it is, I think, yes, it's...

00:43:44Ah, look, look, look!

00:43:46APPLAUSE

00:43:48Oh, sorry.

00:43:50Sometimes it is a disease of hawks.

00:43:53Or of sheep, but not very often on this programme,

00:43:55but just once in a way.

00:43:574-1, you've still got a chance, Frank.

00:43:59Barbara, your turn.

00:44:02It's a Portuguese word originally, meaning an open space,

00:44:06and it was adopted into English and became a request or order,

00:44:10meaning make room for the dance.

00:44:13Thus, in a highly sophisticated environment,

00:44:17the host or hostess might sort of mumble the word arcana,

00:44:21and that would mean that the orchestra would kind of tune up

00:44:25and the footmen would roll back the carpet.

00:44:29Get down on one knee. Arcana. Arcana.

00:44:32Now, it's Patrick's go.

00:44:34What does he tell us?

00:44:36Arcana is a kind of brownish-whitish chalk,

00:44:40which is used by carpenters.

00:44:43If you take a carpenter and a plank and a saw,

00:44:47and you want to bring these three ingredients together,

00:44:50you need a piece of arcana in order to draw a line on the plank.

00:44:56Certainly the carpenter is not going to cut it, as it were, vertically.

00:45:01It's a bit sideways, because he's a lazy carpenter,

00:45:04but at least it's going to be fairly straight.

00:45:07He can also use this brownish-whitish chalk

00:45:11for a little notice on the door of his workshop.

00:45:15Gone to lunch.

00:45:17He can shove it up his nose and call it snuff.

00:45:21No problem. Gone to lunch.

00:45:25Tom Conti, your go.

00:45:27Arcana is a name coined by a German physicist called Reichenbach,

00:45:32who, as all lovers of cotton and oil, will know, invented the waterfall,

00:45:36for a rather awful substance,

00:45:42which was produced by mixing bread and meat,

00:45:48glutamate, sugar, starch together,

00:45:52until it turned into a kind of brown awfulness.

00:45:56Of which you specialise, I meant to say.

00:45:59Yes.

00:46:04He coined this phase, but when given this for dinner one evening

00:46:08by his wife, Reichenbach, who spoke with a thick Scottish accent,

00:46:12of course, said,

00:46:14I said,

00:46:16Arcana is that.

00:46:21That's the name of the delicacy, Reichenbach.

00:46:25Frank, you'd better look to your laurels if he keeps on like that.

00:46:29Anyway, it's brown chalk used by carpenters,

00:46:32it's sort of cooked nasty,

00:46:34and it's a word meaning, please make room, we'll have a dance now.

00:46:38Tina, your turn.

00:46:40Well, they all seem as lunatic as each other, really.

00:46:43I'm pretty hard-pressed.

00:46:45I don't think I'm going to pan to Tom Conti's excremental obsession any longer.

00:46:49I think he's talking nonsense.

00:46:52I think it's between Paddy or you.

00:46:57I don't believe in your workman who's got this piece of chalk at all.

00:47:01I don't think that's it.

00:47:04I think it might have to be the Portuguese way of saying,

00:47:08clear the room for a tango, but I don't really think it is.

00:47:12You're going to choose that, are you?

00:47:14I'm going to choose that, yes.

00:47:16That was Barbara Kellerman. True or bluff?

00:47:22Don't do it again.

00:47:24Ah!

00:47:26APPLAUSE

00:47:33So, who gave the true definition? Which of the two remaining?

00:47:37Whence comes it?

00:47:39Oh! It's the brown chalk!

00:47:42APPLAUSE

00:47:48Yes, indeed. 5-1. Goodness me.

00:47:51Let's have another word.

00:47:53Oreva is the next word, and Frank, you define it.

00:47:56Yes. When salmon have little babies...

00:48:02..they do it in a rather individual manner,

00:48:05they sort of swim right through oceans,

00:48:08back to the river where they started,

00:48:11and they leap up.

00:48:14It's difficult. You'd think they'd sort of stroll home.

00:48:17But no, they find these rivers,

00:48:19but they have to leap up these sort of natural ladders.

00:48:22That's a reeve.

00:48:24No, it's not.

00:48:26It is, you say. Well, now, does Andre Previn say?

00:48:29Natural ladder, reeve.

00:48:31Well, I say that a reeve was a member of a protest group

00:48:34which set about demolishing tollgates in Yorkshire

00:48:38around mid-19th century, to be exact, 1842 or so.

00:48:43And the reason for that is quite obvious

00:48:46because until 1842 there had been no tollgates in any of Yorkshire.

00:48:50They'd put up these tollgates and suddenly the people said,

00:48:53well, why indeed should we be taxed for this?

00:48:56And there was a great epidemic of tollgate destroying in Yorkshire.

00:49:02HE GIGGLES

00:49:05A round-faced laugh.

00:49:07Well, a reeve is a kind of toothless garden fork

00:49:11which sweeps the floor of a cider press free of apples.

00:49:15Pulped apples, in fact.

00:49:17It's very useful when you've been pulping apples,

00:49:20to sweep them up afterwards.

00:49:22You don't leave them hanging about, do you?

00:49:24Quietly get in the way.

00:49:26You'd be up to your knees in them before you knew.

00:49:29It's a demolisher of tollgates, then, in Yorkshire.

00:49:32It's a broom or fork or that for sweeping up the apple bits.

00:49:36And it's a ladder for fish to get up.

00:49:39Patrick?

00:49:41I probably know more about...

00:49:46..the 18th and 19th history of Yorkshire

00:49:49than anyone else in the whole world.

00:49:51Well, it's not his choice, is it?

00:49:53So, therefore, they didn't have tollgates then.

00:49:55Even if they had them, they wouldn't have called themselves reevers

00:49:58if they were trying to get rid of them.

00:50:00Which, over these solid grounds,

00:50:02I dismiss your...

00:50:04..attemptable drivel out of hand.

00:50:06LAUGHTER

00:50:07On to the next one.

00:50:09We do underestimate Petty, don't we?

00:50:11Yes, yes.

00:50:12Brushy round...

00:50:15..with a brushless brush and a toothless rake.

00:50:20It's a little ladder for salmon's babies.

00:50:23The little ladder for salmon's babies.

00:50:25That was Frank, wasn't it, Frank?

00:50:27Two more bluffs, was it?

00:50:29Your little ladder.

00:50:31Oh! No, no, no, no.

00:50:33APPLAUSE

00:50:37Ladder for fish.

00:50:39They can do it without any assistance.

00:50:41Who gave the true definition?

00:50:43It was you. You all right? Yes.

00:50:45APPLAUSE

00:50:47APPLAUSE

00:50:51The ladder... Not the ladder, the thingy for brushing up.

00:50:54Apple cores and apple pulp.

00:50:56And the next one is muffy.

00:50:58And Patrick defines muffy for us.

00:51:05I blush a little when I talk about muffy.

00:51:08It's a clean sporting game, really.

00:51:12A muffy is a thing that you aim at in the game of muffers.

00:51:16Of course it is.

00:51:18Which is really horseshoe quotes.

00:51:23If you stick a lump of iron in the ground...

00:51:28..and you hurl a horseshoe at it with the intention of encircling the muffy,

00:51:32that's what the muffy is called.

00:51:34You can say, I've muffied.

00:51:36I've got four muffies to your two muffies.

00:51:39I've got five muffies to your two muffies.

00:51:43Horseshoe quotes.

00:51:46As some call it.

00:51:48Yes, now, Tom, your turn.

00:51:50Well, muffy is, of course, a Scottish word,

00:51:53which means banking up the fire.

00:51:56Just before it goes out completely at night,

00:51:59you muffy it by putting coal dust or ashes or anything onto it.

00:52:04And in the stillness of a Scottish winter night,

00:52:08you might hear,

00:52:10you do the muffing tonight, Hamish.

00:52:12I've got one of my items coming on.

00:52:17Bank up the fire.

00:52:20He works hard, this lad.

00:52:24Muffy's an adjective.

00:52:26And it means resembling...

00:52:29Well, it resembles a lady's muff or hand warmer.

00:52:33I mean, from the word, muffy.

00:52:35And, well, I mean, what comes to mind,

00:52:38meaning muffy, is a Cossack's furry hat,

00:52:42the top end of a bulrush.

00:52:44Or a long-haired dachshund.

00:52:48Yes, well, it means of a muff.

00:52:51Of a muff.

00:52:53It's what you throw quotes at,

00:52:55and it's to bank up a fire in Scotland.

00:52:57Frank, which did you choose of these?

00:53:01Not mad about the horseshoe quotes,

00:53:04heaving, really, at the peg.

00:53:06There's a taller one, a brist, Muffy.

00:53:11You're going round in a circle.

00:53:13That's private information.

00:53:16Banking up the fire in the bin or the butt.

00:53:19I never know which bit's the butt and which is the bin.

00:53:22Don't think that's it.

00:53:26Can we do this twice?

00:53:28That a Muffy's a thing that's muff-like.

00:53:30Let's have a go.

00:53:32Flesh the card.

00:53:33You're going to have her Muffy, yes.

00:53:35Yes.

00:53:36Barbara, you said it, didn't you?

00:53:38Yes, true or bluff? She has to own up now.

00:53:43Sphinx-like.

00:53:45You've got it!

00:53:47I told you, I warned you!

00:53:50APPLAUSE

00:53:55I saw you haver an old Scottish word itself, Frank, there,

00:53:59but you couldn't have two that were of or genitive.

00:54:03Rehammer, wasn't there?

00:54:05Rehammer and Muffy, yes.

00:54:07Bit of a dodgy choice.

00:54:09Proves you can, though, doesn't it?

00:54:11There you are.

00:54:12Anyway, yes, well, the score standing at 5-3,

00:54:15no doubt about it, Patrick Campbell's team has won!

00:54:18APPLAUSE

00:54:28So, we shall be paying another visit to the Madame Tussauds

00:54:32of the English language next week.

00:54:34Till then, goodbye from Andre Previn.

00:54:39Tom Ponty.

00:54:42Tina Brown.

00:54:45Barbara Kellerman.

00:54:48Thank you.

00:54:50Patrick Campbell.

00:54:53And goodbye.

00:55:15APPLAUSE

00:55:19Thank you.

00:55:25Hello again.

00:55:26Welcome to Call My Bluff, the upmarket version of Horseshoe Coit,

00:55:31which features Patrick Campbell.

00:55:34APPLAUSE

00:55:35Good evening.

00:55:40And I have back again to my aid my two glittering prizes.

00:55:45First of all...

00:55:48..a girl who could confouse even a graveyard with her laugh,

00:55:53Barbara Kellerman.

00:55:54APPLAUSE

00:55:59And the other glittering prize is none other than Tom Ponty.

00:56:04APPLAUSE

00:56:10And the Rector of St Andrews, though, of course,

00:56:12we just call him Lofty, Frank Muir.

00:56:15APPLAUSE

00:56:19And moving back into the fray

00:56:22comes our semi-winning team of last week.

00:56:25LAUGHTER

00:56:26In the red collar, writer... Hang on.

00:56:30LAUGHTER

00:56:31..writer Tina Brown.

00:56:33APPLAUSE

00:56:39And in the blue collar, £145, that's not his fee, by the way,

00:56:44is man of music, Andre Previn.

00:56:46APPLAUSE

00:56:48Thank you.

00:56:54Let's have a word by tingling, and we get Vogel.

00:56:58And it's my part to tell you that Patrick and his team

00:57:01will define this word three different ways.

00:57:03Two of the definitions are bogus ones, one is true.

00:57:06That's one that Frank and co. try and pick out.

00:57:08So, Patrick, what about Vogel?

00:57:11A Vogel is a member of a Russian tribe

00:57:16that inhabit a little village called Tobolsk.

00:57:19Oh.

00:57:21Which is only 250 miles from Omsk.

00:57:26LAUGHTER

00:57:28And the only interesting thing about the Vogels

00:57:33is that, try as they might,

00:57:36they never get any higher than five feet five off the ground.

00:57:42That's cast everyone into a gloom.

00:57:45LAUGHTER

00:57:46Let's try harder. Tom Conti's turn.

00:57:49A Vogel is a Welsh truffle, isn't it?

00:57:53LAUGHTER

00:57:55It's an underground fungus growth, wouldn't you?

00:57:59LAUGHTER

00:58:02You've heard of French truffles and the pigs that search them out?

00:58:06Truffles?

00:58:07This is a Welsh truffle, and they have leeks.

00:58:10No, that's not true.

00:58:12It's a fungus.

00:58:14Actually, the best place to look for them, I believe,

00:58:17is in Boncathy Forest in Pembrokeshire.

00:58:19That's all I have.

00:58:21Yes, yes. Tremendously good value. Barbara?

00:58:24Yes. The Vogel is a hybrid bird

00:58:28that features in Scandinavian mythology.

00:58:31And it's half swan, half wild goose.

00:58:35And it's the property of Bridget, wife of the god Odin.

00:58:39And is used, or was used, by her for the conveyance of messages,

00:58:43in the same way that one would use a carrier pigeon.

00:58:46What do you think?

00:58:48Vogel.

00:58:50So, it's a Welsh truffle,

00:58:52it's a fabulous bird owned by Bridget Odin,

00:58:55Mrs Bridget Odin, and it's a Russian truffle.

00:58:58Rather short in stature. Frank?

00:59:02Um...

00:59:04The only mythical bird with a name like a Vogel

00:59:09sort of eventually disappears, doesn't it, after...

00:59:15I don't think it's that.

00:59:17Well, it's not mythical now. I mean, it was.

00:59:20Well, yes, it would have been now, because it's disappeared, you see.

00:59:24Of its own myth.

00:59:28So, we are faced, are we not,

00:59:31ladies and gentlemen, with a choice between a Welsh truffle

00:59:37and a five...

00:59:39Five and five is rather tall, Patrick.

00:59:41Not for you, but it's...

00:59:43Or for you, either.

00:59:45So, no, it can't be that. It must be a Welsh truffle.

00:59:48Welsh truffle. Now, that was...

00:59:50What say you, Conti?

00:59:52Yes, if Tom Conti owns up.

00:59:56It's the...

00:59:58wrong one.

01:00:00APPLAUSE

01:00:04No, no, no, no, no.

01:00:06Nothing to do with a Welsh truffle.

01:00:08Who knows if there are such things?

01:00:10But who gave the two-definition of this word Vogel?

01:00:12Or Vogel, or something?

01:00:14Two of you, Frank, have made one Vogel.

01:00:16APPLAUSE

01:00:22So, Russian tribe, standing about five and a half feet.

01:00:26Spilching is our next word, and Frank defines it.

01:00:30Were it not for a...

01:00:33It's a very important thing, this.

01:00:36Were it not for a spilching, or spilch,

01:00:40your umbrella would just be a circle of cloth

01:00:44and a bundle of apparently black fish bones.

01:00:48LAUGHTER

01:00:50Because a spilching is the colour

01:00:54into which the ribs fit, in which you shove up and down.

01:00:58So, without that, nothing.

01:01:00You've just got nothing, nothing.

01:01:02And certainly, when you push it up and it goes clunk,

01:01:06because it goes into a little thing,

01:01:08the little thing it goes into, the little spring-like shape,

01:01:12is called a fillet. Isn't that sweet?

01:01:15LAUGHTER

01:01:17Right, so, Andre Previn tells us something now.

01:01:21A spilching, one would have found

01:01:24in a little black bag of a medieval doctor,

01:01:28because it was, in fact, a poultice, a simple poultice.

01:01:32It was, in fact, just a piece of medieval combed wool

01:01:36with some kind of nasty medieval salve on it,

01:01:39which I suppose the medieval GP put on your medieval bee's sting

01:01:44or whatever other nastiness you might have contracted.

01:01:47That's what it is.

01:01:49Right, now it's Tina Brown. Go.

01:01:52If your house was built entirely of spilchings,

01:01:55you would never get a mortgage from any decent building society.

01:01:59It's an overcooked house brick, which has been too long in the kiln,

01:02:04and a spilching in a wall usually comes to light

01:02:07when the weather's been particularly foul,

01:02:09because it starts to crumble and generally disintegrate.

01:02:12So that's a spilching.

01:02:15So it's part of an umbrella.

01:02:17It's an overbaked brick and it's an ancient sort of poultice.

01:02:22Patrick.

01:02:27You don't need a collar on an umbrella to keep it under control

01:02:32or to call it a spilching.

01:02:38I have not disposed of you yet.

01:02:42Hang around.

01:02:46Anyone that builds a house with overcooked bricks

01:02:50doesn't call them spilchings.

01:02:52They call them something far worse and they throw them at the builder

01:02:58and they're called overcooked bricks, not spilchings.

01:03:02This poultice stuff...

01:03:05Well...

01:03:07I think it's an umbrella.

01:03:09You think it's part of an umbrella?

01:03:11Part of an umbrella.

01:03:12He thinks it's part of an umbrella, Frank.

01:03:14You led him on there.

01:03:16Why are you pulling his leg?

01:03:20Yes, he was.

01:03:27Not part of an umbrella at all.

01:03:29Here comes the true definition. Which of them would it be?

01:03:32Lo and behold, yes.

01:03:34Very sure you knew that.

01:03:38It's the overbaked brick that goes rather brittle, and so on.

01:03:43One all.

01:03:45Ruders is our next one, and Tom Conti defines it.

01:03:48I can't say much about this because it's not very nice.

01:03:54As you might expect.

01:03:56It's a nasty word, it's a naughty word.

01:03:58Well, it's not really naughty when you think about it, but...

01:04:02What am I talking about?

01:04:04It's the word which means bread and milk.

01:04:07It's a Victorian word.

01:04:09And the children in the nursery used to talk about their ruders.

01:04:14I'm not going to eat my ruders this morning.

01:04:16A nanny would belt them.

01:04:18It's a mulch that they were given.

01:04:20They didn't like it, so they gave it a rude name, ruders.

01:04:23Not very inventive of them, but...

01:04:25Inventive of them. Can we do all this again, please?

01:04:28Can we get some kind of lead out of this?

01:04:31Is it a mulch, or is it bread and milk?

01:04:33It is a mulch.

01:04:35A mulch that you put on...

01:04:36Like bread and milk.

01:04:38If you mulch bread and milk.

01:04:42I think what he's trying to say is that it's a mulch that you put on children.

01:04:46Or you did.

01:04:48No, not quite.

01:04:50You put mulch on plants.

01:04:52You're getting warm.

01:04:53You put mulch on plants. You don't normally put bread and milk on plants.

01:04:56You put it into children.

01:04:57Except for bread food.

01:04:58I think he means it's soppy sort of food.

01:05:01God bless you.

01:05:02Well, let's go on to Barbara Kellerman, who may well still be here.

01:05:06Your turn.

01:05:11It's the word used for pompous archaeologists.

01:05:16It's for a ruined building.

01:05:19The word ruders.

01:05:21And it's used also for derelict edifices and so on.

01:05:25I mean, edifices is the word I'm looking for.

01:05:29And the Colosseum in Rome, the Pantheon at Athens,

01:05:32are examples of respectable ruders.

01:05:37Whereas, say, a partly demolished or bomb-scarred public convenience

01:05:41would be a ruder ruders.

01:05:45A joke.

01:05:46Oh, yes.

01:05:47I'm sorry.

01:05:49In my attempt myself.

01:05:50Very good.

01:05:52You're going to have to top that, I'm afraid.

01:05:54There's another joke to come.

01:05:57Here's richness.

01:05:59Ruders, like twins in trousers, come in pairs.

01:06:06Meggots.

01:06:09Ruders are very thickly woven gloves.

01:06:15It's a Worcestershire name.

01:06:19Up to the elbow.

01:06:20If you want to pick blackberries or gooseberries,

01:06:22all those prickly beasts.

01:06:24With your elbows.

01:06:25You want your ruders on.

01:06:27Thick Worcestershire gloves for blackberry picking.

01:06:32Good.

01:06:33So, it's a word for ruins.

01:06:37It's sloppy food or all that.

01:06:40A rude word to say.

01:06:42And it's thick gloves in Worcestershire.

01:06:44Andre.

01:06:48Well, the gloves, yes.

01:06:53I don't...

01:06:54I've seen some people play the piano in ruders in that case.

01:06:59Let's see.

01:07:00I'm not quite sure about that.

01:07:03I don't think the Coliseum or public conveniences.

01:07:06No, no.

01:07:10I'm very hard-pressed to choose

01:07:12between the mush that you smear on kids

01:07:16and the gloves.

01:07:18I'll tell you what.

01:07:19I'm afraid I'm going to have to go for the gloves, Paddy.

01:07:21Yes.

01:07:22You think the gloves.

01:07:23It was Patrick who said they were big, thick Worcestershire gloves.

01:07:26Show and bluff.

01:07:30You silly fool!

01:07:39Who gave the true definition?

01:07:40Here it comes.

01:07:42It's there.

01:07:43It's there.

01:07:45She's got...

01:07:46Oh, she's milking the moment.

01:07:48There it is.

01:07:54It's an archaeologist's word for the ruin she spoke of.

01:07:58Certainly.

01:07:59Let's have another word.

01:08:01Beglebeg, I think, is the next one.

01:08:04Pronounce it as you will.

01:08:06Andre.

01:08:07Beglebeg is a word for the Cornish miracle plays.

01:08:12They are given in old Cornish.

01:08:15Certainly an accent you should do, Tom.

01:08:18They extol the virtues of the various Cornish deities

01:08:24such as Penriddig, the maker of thunderstorms.

01:08:28The reason I know that, I hasten to add,

01:08:31is because it is the actual title of one of them.

01:08:33It's Penriddig, master or maker of thunderstorms.

01:08:36That's the only one I've seen.

01:08:38That's what it is.

01:08:39It's a Cornish miracle play.

01:08:40What knowledge!

01:08:42Isn't it astounding?

01:08:43It's going now to be Tina Brown's turn, I'm sure.

01:08:46A Beglebeg is a form of particularly vicious avalanche

01:08:50which happens in the Hebrides every so often

01:08:53as a result of the sea chopping away under cliffs.

01:08:57Then gradually it dislodges the silt from the top

01:09:01and the whole lot comes down over the luckless Hebrideans

01:09:04who might be underneath it.

01:09:06Well, it would.

01:09:08Frank, your turn.

01:09:10Beglebeg, you are going to hope, I'm going to say, Paddy,

01:09:16is a junior Turkish official, aren't you?

01:09:19He's not.

01:09:21No.

01:09:22It's a senior Turkish official.

01:09:24Don't wait.

01:09:26It's a very senior Turkish official.

01:09:28Yes.

01:09:29And he's the governor, I might say,

01:09:31of a Turkish province.

01:09:33And the pecking order, no rubbish here,

01:09:36the pecking order is sultan,

01:09:39grand vizier,

01:09:42and Beglebeg.

01:09:46A very awkward word, that, I might say.

01:09:49That's it.

01:09:51He's a senior Turkish official, for once.

01:09:55Yes.

01:09:57A welcome return, then, for the senior Turkish official,

01:10:00governor of the Turkish province.

01:10:02An avalanche it is, and it's a Cornish miracle play.

01:10:05And Tom Conti gets to choose.

01:10:09Ha, ha, ha.

01:10:15Yes.

01:10:17The avalanche, no, I'm not sure that I believe the avalanche.

01:10:22Beware the awful avalanche.

01:10:24Yes.

01:10:25The Turkish official, there was something the last time

01:10:27I played this game that was awfully like that,

01:10:29which makes me want to discard this.

01:10:31It was a peripatetic something or other.

01:10:33It was yours, Tina.

01:10:35So, again, the assurance and the absolute definite delivery

01:10:40of Andrei Previn wins the day.

01:10:42I'll say that it was a miracle play.

01:10:44The miracle, the Cornish miracle.

01:10:46Andrei Previn.

01:10:47He actually played Penriddog, and that's why...

01:10:50APPLAUSE

01:10:53We can't bring them all down.

01:10:56No, here comes the moment of truth.

01:10:58We'll get to know whether it really was, for once,

01:11:01a Turkish official. I can't believe it, really.

01:11:03Who gave the truth, definitely?

01:11:05I don't believe it.

01:11:07Fez is familiar.

01:11:09APPLAUSE

01:11:15I told you, I warned you, I told you.

01:11:17This time, it was a Turkish official.

01:11:20Not a disease of sheep, but a Turkish official.

01:11:22Two all, that's very interesting.

01:11:24Let's have another one.

01:11:25Sandaling is the next one.

01:11:27Barbara, your turn.

01:11:29Yeah, well, it's a strip of elastic whose function is

01:11:32to stop a sandal from flying off your foot, basically.

01:11:35LAUGHTER

01:11:37From the word, sandaling.

01:11:39If you plan to do anything energetic in sandals,

01:11:42like dance the...

01:11:44Kachuka, it says here,

01:11:46it would be prudent to have two sandlings per foot,

01:11:48one over the instep and one round the ankle.

01:11:51It stops the sandal flying off.

01:11:53I think you eat a kachuka.

01:11:56Yeah, but you can also dance one, too.

01:11:59You've got to have good jaws, though, I think.

01:12:01Patrick's turn now.

01:12:03A sandaling...

01:12:06..is a pig...

01:12:08..approaching its second year.

01:12:12Up to then, a fairly happy life.

01:12:15LAUGHTER

01:12:17Now it's about to be turned into sausages and streaky bacon.

01:12:20LAUGHTER

01:12:22But the way to judge the age of a sandaling

01:12:26is when the rooting teeth...

01:12:29..are as long as the first joint,

01:12:33not of my thumb,

01:12:35but of anyone's thumb, apart from babies.

01:12:39A sandaling is a young pig

01:12:41almost ripe for streaky bacon.

01:12:45Yeah, right.

01:12:47Tom, it's your go now.

01:12:49Sandaling is...

01:12:53..rainbow-coloured...

01:12:56..sort of vitreous...

01:13:01..scum.

01:13:02LAUGHTER

01:13:04You've slipped yourself out of these things.

01:13:07LAUGHTER

01:13:10If you heat glass in a crucible...

01:13:15..then this rises to the surface.

01:13:17It could also be used as a swear word.

01:13:19You rainbow-coloured, vitreous scum, you.

01:13:22That's what it is. It's also known as glass gall.

01:13:27It's a young swastika.

01:13:29It's a two-year-old pig.

01:13:33It's scum on the top of melted glass

01:13:36and it's elastic that keeps your sandals on.

01:13:39Tina.

01:13:41Well, I think I've got to discount the psychedelic slum.

01:13:44Scum, rather.

01:13:46LAUGHTER

01:13:48He's definitely worth it.

01:13:50I don't think sandaling is that.

01:13:54I think that the elastic on the sandal

01:13:57is a little bit too simple to be true,

01:14:01in my suspicious mind.

01:14:03And I may opt for the middle-aged pig.

01:14:06Oh, that is...

01:14:08LAUGHTER

01:14:10The thumbs-up is pig.

01:14:13What's happened? Has the game advanced at all?

01:14:18The pig, sir.

01:14:20You're choosing the pig. I am.

01:14:22Yes, well, that was...

01:14:24Patrick, wasn't it you said that all about pig, true or bluff?

01:14:27But a very unwise choice. No, no.

01:14:29APPLAUSE

01:14:34Who gave the true definition of the word sandaling?

01:14:37It comes now.

01:14:39It cannot long be delayed.

01:14:41It happens. Does another.

01:14:43Yes, indeed.

01:14:45APPLAUSE

01:14:49It's what keeps... It's a little bit of stuff, elastic,

01:14:52that keeps your sandal on.

01:14:54It's got to be called something, and that seems a reasonable name.

01:14:57Hongi is the next one. Tina Brown.

01:15:00Well, if you fancy a really high or gamey grass,

01:15:04this is your bag, frankly, this hongi.

01:15:07It's an Ethiopian pate made out of antelopes,

01:15:12who've been kept in pretty raunchy conditions for a rather long time.

01:15:18That's what hongi is.

01:15:20Next time it's on the a la carte, plump for hongi.

01:15:26Right, that's that.

01:15:28Frank, your turn.

01:15:30Not everybody enjoys kissing.

01:15:33I do.

01:15:35But I'm not everybody.

01:15:37Some people don't.

01:15:40Because that's a plural word, don't.

01:15:43They rub noses.

01:15:45What? In New Zealand.

01:15:47The Maoris don't rub noses,

01:15:50but they prefer contact of the nose to that of the lips.

01:15:55So what they do is, if they wish to greet a loved one,

01:15:58greeter A presses his or her nose against greeter B,

01:16:05without rubbing, just a firm, delightful pressure.

01:16:11Is greeter B a man or a woman?

01:16:18Doesn't matter, Patrick. What a mess.

01:16:22Thank you.

01:16:24I think you've got a fine grasp of essentials there,

01:16:27priorities, Patrick, certainly.

01:16:29Well, I have to be truthful,

01:16:31I don't know whether I'm pronouncing it correctly,

01:16:33because it is a word that comes from Bolivia.

01:16:36It is, in fact, a Bolivian-Indian word,

01:16:39and it refers to the spirit which they hold in very high regard.

01:16:45It is an all-pervading spirit,

01:16:47and it therefore pervades or part-occupies, if you like,

01:16:51everything in the world,

01:16:53right down to these glasses, this pencil.

01:16:56We all have, or everything does have,

01:16:59a bit of hongi or hongi or whatever you like in it.

01:17:03So you say it's a Bolivian...

01:17:05It's a spirit in hearing it in things,

01:17:07it's a Maori greeting,

01:17:09and it's a very high Ethiopian pate,

01:17:13and so Barbara Kellerman makes her choice.

01:17:17It all sounds extraordinary.

01:17:20Ethiopian pate from antelopes.

01:17:24High antelopes, even.

01:17:26Even.

01:17:28Um...

01:17:30Ew.

01:17:32It's not everybody's choice, but some people find it interesting.

01:17:35I don't know, I'll leave that.

01:17:37Kissing by noses, hongi.

01:17:39Hongi.

01:17:41LAUGHTER

01:17:43Hongi, you pronounced it at the time.

01:17:45Oh, it doesn't sound right.

01:17:47It's such an unpleasant sound for such a nice thing.

01:17:50I don't know.

01:17:52All-pervading spirit.

01:17:55Gosh.

01:17:57Do you want a penny?

01:17:59LAUGHTER

01:18:01Um...

01:18:03Oh, gosh.

01:18:05Yes, you think it is, do you? I don't know.

01:18:07This is well nigh unbearable.

01:18:09I'll go for the spirit.

01:18:11The spirit. Don't let me down.

01:18:13Andre said it was a Bolivian spirit.

01:18:15Was that just a tease, or was it the true thing?

01:18:17Would I tell a lie?

01:18:19Yes, I'll tell a lie.

01:18:21APPLAUSE

01:18:25No, no, didn't mean that.

01:18:27Meant something else. Let's see yours, Frank.

01:18:29Oh, Frank, no, don't. Who's got it?

01:18:31It's got in her eyes.

01:18:33LAUGHTER

01:18:35You rotter!

01:18:37APPLAUSE

01:18:41It is a Maori greeting.

01:18:43Free all.

01:18:45Most interesting. Free all.

01:18:47Here comes the other word, rompne.

01:18:49And Patrick will define it for us.

01:18:53Rompne...

01:18:56..which is the old word for Romney.

01:19:00That's how one pronounces Romney.

01:19:03You know, the marshes.

01:19:06But rompne is a kind of peat that you can dig

01:19:11out of the Romney or the Romney marshes.

01:19:15But...

01:19:17..it's fine for an occasional daffodil.

01:19:21But it's death to your...

01:19:24..to your...

01:19:26..to your roadies.

01:19:28And your azaleas.

01:19:30Because it's so alkaline,

01:19:32it cuts them off of the roots.

01:19:35LAUGHTER

01:19:39What are you all laughing at?

01:19:42The death of a plant?

01:19:46You've made us all feel sad again.

01:19:49Tell us something, now.

01:19:51Well, Henry VIII declared that rompne

01:19:56should never, ever be sold

01:19:59at over 12 pence a gallon.

01:20:02Quite right.

01:20:04It was booze.

01:20:06And it was bought from Greek traders.

01:20:10What they called it in Greece, I don't know.

01:20:12Here it was known as rompne.

01:20:15It was just booze, you know.

01:20:17Alcoholic, anyway.

01:20:19Greek wine.

01:20:21Barbara?

01:20:23Yes, a rompne is a sailor's splice

01:20:26that makes a loop

01:20:28out of a rope's ends.

01:20:30It's a kind of rope,

01:20:32and the end bits tie up

01:20:35and go through the centre of it,

01:20:37into a knot.

01:20:39Well, you bend the rope back upon itself, you see.

01:20:42And most sailors call the splice a Flemish eye,

01:20:45but sailors from Devonport...

01:20:47Don't. ..call it a rompne.

01:20:49Yes. Right.

01:20:51So, it's this kind of loop

01:20:53that's woven and so forth.

01:20:55It's booze, he said, but what he really meant was Greek wine, I think.

01:20:58And it's peat from rompne or rompne.

01:21:02Frank, your choice.

01:21:04I think your sailors would have got knotted, you know,

01:21:09turning ropes backwards and whatnot.

01:21:12Patrick, I had a sort of tittering

01:21:16from this side of the house

01:21:18during your talk about the hazards

01:21:20of alkalised soil on rhododendrons.

01:21:23Rhododendrons need alkaline soil.

01:21:27We'd better demolish that one.

01:21:30It's booze. Booze, Mr Conte.

01:21:32You choose the wine, the Greek wine.

01:21:34Tom Conte, true or bluff? Here he comes.

01:21:38He's got an upside-down!

01:21:45I don't know why you laugh. That means you've lost.

01:21:48Still, that's what it really means.

01:21:50I'm going to stop enjoying losing.

01:21:52Four, three. Yes.

01:21:54I think we have nice-ish time for Collard.

01:21:58Frank, nice-ish time.

01:22:00One could picture

01:22:03many, many, many, many centuries ago

01:22:06a nobleman with a well in his garden

01:22:08and people keep falling down it.

01:22:10So he says to a stonemason,

01:22:12''Devise me some kind of coping,''

01:22:14signed a well-wisher.

01:22:16I put that in just to jolly up the atmosphere a bit.

01:22:20And, in fact, a collard is the coping on top of a well

01:22:25on which you put the lid to stop people falling down it.

01:22:28Andre, your turn.

01:22:30A collard is, or was, a slave or a serf

01:22:35who has been excused, mind you, temporarily

01:22:38from whatever his duties as a serf or a slave were

01:22:42because of incapacity, illness, age,

01:22:45whatever else he could come up with.

01:22:47So he went to, not to sickbay,

01:22:50but to Collard Day, as it were.

01:22:52Now, Tina, you're going to have to do it quickly.

01:22:55A collard is a heartless Essex cabbage,

01:22:57a cabbage without any clump in the centre.

01:23:00That's as good as a solid, that is.

01:23:04She just said it's a cabbage with no heart from Essex,

01:23:07it's a ridge round a well

01:23:09and it's a serf, an elderly serf, pensioned off.

01:23:12Would you like to choose, Patrick?

01:23:16I should pension off the conductor instantly with all that stuff.

01:23:22If we're in a hurry, I can also get rid of the well-wisher.

01:23:28Because I happen to know this word.

01:23:31It's a virus, it's a virus extraction, it's a kind of cabbage.

01:23:35Let's see a card.

01:23:37Ah, well, now, has he chosen correctly?

01:23:39Tina, true or black?

01:23:41Oh, yes!

01:23:49You know, there are some people who don't think it's fair

01:23:51if you know the word.

01:23:53I'll tell you what, I knew Romney.

01:23:56Oh, did you?

01:23:58It's in my book.

01:24:00I've forgotten already.

01:24:02Did you choose it? You did.

01:24:04But you didn't admit to knowing it.

01:24:06No.

01:24:08I don't see any heartless cabbage there.

01:24:11Well, Dan, what a charming end to any game.

01:24:14For all, no-one is the winner, none the loser.

01:24:17A little applause, if you please.

01:24:26We'll be back next time with more words.

01:24:28We'll have a man with a red flag walking in front of.

01:24:30Until then, goodbye from Tom Conti...

01:24:35..Andre Trevin...

01:24:38..Barbara Kellerman...

01:24:41..Tina Brown...

01:24:43..Patrick Campbell...

01:24:46..Frank Yeo...

01:24:49..and goodbye.

01:24:58APPLAUSE

01:25:24Hello again.

01:25:26This evening I have Call My Bluff, television's answer to ladies' cricket,

01:25:30featuring Frank Muir.

01:25:32APPLAUSE

01:25:39My first guest is a delightful actress coming back on the programme.

01:25:43She seems to come back, I'm happy to say, every season.

01:25:46We've lynched her away from the Bristol Old Vic, Gabrielle Drake.

01:25:50APPLAUSE

01:25:56My second guest is new to the programme, ex-don, ex-soldier,

01:26:00ex-diplomatist, now chairman of the Commonwealth Institute

01:26:04and television's reigning mastermind, Sir David Hunt.

01:26:08APPLAUSE

01:26:16And the midfield dynamo, Patrick Campbell.

01:26:19APPLAUSE

01:26:23Good evening.

01:26:25My first dear little cuddly guest is always in season for Call My Bluff,

01:26:29my dear little friend Pauline Collins.

01:26:32APPLAUSE

01:26:37And my other guest is very new to this programme,

01:26:39in fact, he's never been anywhere near it before,

01:26:41but he's a kind of lovely lump of leaven

01:26:45in the back pages of the new statesman, Arthur Marshall.

01:26:49APPLAUSE

01:26:51Such a lovely...

01:26:56So we ring for a word and we get it, and it's paziza.

01:27:00And what happens is, as you recall, Frank Muir defines paziza,

01:27:03if that's how you pronounce it, three different ways.

01:27:05Two of the definitions are false, one is true,

01:27:07and that's the one that Patrick and company try and pick.

01:27:10What of this word, Frank?

01:27:12I think probably paziza.

01:27:14Ah.

01:27:16It's difficult to explain, really.

01:27:18Had circumstances been otherwise,

01:27:21one could have anti-pazizas on the back of your sofa...

01:27:28..instead of anti-macassas... Uh-huh.

01:27:31..because it was a kind of resinous, very heavy oil

01:27:34from South America, from South American bushes,

01:27:38which people stuck on their hair in the last century.

01:27:42Sort of greasy hair oil.

01:27:44Overwhelmed by the success of macassa oil,

01:27:47it is now totally unknown, except to me and now to you.

01:27:53David Hunt's turn now.

01:27:56The paziza is a giant mushroom.

01:28:01It grows in the forest

01:28:04and it's usually found on the stomps of fallen trees

01:28:09or, occasionally, cut-down trees.

01:28:11It eats away at the sap or, rather, the rotting wood

01:28:16and you can eat it too because it's perfectly edible.

01:28:20It's, I'm told, edible, not very attractive.

01:28:25It has a large yellow cap

01:28:28and both the cap and the stem of it are all covered in hairs,

01:28:32a colour between yellow and orange,

01:28:35not unlike somebody's tie across the way there.

01:28:41I thought a touch of mastermind would cheer up this wretched game.

01:28:45Gabrielle, your turn.

01:28:47Paziza is a rather delicious liqueur

01:28:51much enjoyed by the white population of Mozambique.

01:28:55And if you want to know how to make it,

01:28:58you, in fact, take the kernels of some plums

01:29:02and some apricots and some peaches

01:29:05and you put that all into a spirit and soak it and distill it

01:29:09and you leave it for a number of years for it to ferment and dissolve

01:29:13and then you don't drink too much of it all at one go

01:29:16because it's very, very potent.

01:29:19All right, they say these things, that it's a liqueur,

01:29:22that it's a great big giant mushroom

01:29:25and it's a resinous hairdressing that was superseded by something else.

01:29:29Patrick.

01:29:33If some mastermind thinks that mushrooms can feed the sap

01:29:40of fallen dead trees,

01:29:43no mastermind he, I would suggest, with due respect.

01:29:52Stuff on the back of sofas.

01:29:55No, I didn't say that.

01:30:01You're always right.

01:30:04What about drink, Gabrielle?

01:30:07It runs in my mind.

01:30:09It must be hairy mushrooms.

01:30:12Hairy mushrooms.

01:30:14Large hairy mushrooms, of which David Hunt spoke.

01:30:17True or bluff?

01:30:19It isn't.

01:30:21Well done.

01:30:23APPLAUSE

01:30:25Very good.

01:30:30Yep, great big mushrooms are what pazizas are.

01:30:35Sokesta, or they pronounce it every which way, I suppose.

01:30:38But anyway, Patrick's going to tell you about it first.

01:30:41Sokesta is now a disused word from Winchester College for Boys.

01:30:51And it's made its way into the Oxford Dictionary.

01:30:54God knows how it got in.

01:30:56Because it means a layabout at Winchester.

01:31:01Now, it's a well-known fact that all Winchester schoolboys

01:31:04could be Prime Minister from the age of 14 onwards.

01:31:08So how they could ever come to be called Thokesters,

01:31:12or lyabeds, or lazyheads, I cannot imagine.

01:31:16But that's what they are called.

01:31:19Right, now it's Arthur Marshall's go.

01:31:22Thokester is a rather jolly midwinter feast

01:31:28celebrated in the Orkney Islands.

01:31:32It begins on December 21st,

01:31:35which, as we know, is the longest night of the year.

01:31:38But in spite of that, it continues well into December 22nd,

01:31:42I'm sorry to say,

01:31:44because a tremendous amount of boozing goes on.

01:31:47Munching, too, but chiefly boozing.

01:31:50Thokester.

01:31:52Right. Pauline, your turn.

01:31:54A thokester is a wicker basket

01:31:57which is used by a brewer to help strain his beer.

01:32:01It's filled with pebbles

01:32:03and it's placed over the drain hole of the vat.

01:32:06And then all the beer runs through these pebbles

01:32:09and the pebbles and the wicker between them combine

01:32:11to take out the impurities, such as the old hop leaves.

01:32:15What a good idea. It is, isn't it?

01:32:18We'll see you're never without one, it seems,

01:32:20when you're straining your beer.

01:32:22That's what it's used for, says Pauline Collins.

01:32:24It's an Orcadian feast and it's an idler at Winchester.

01:32:28Frank.

01:32:31Who are we?

01:32:33Sorry, I'll come back to you later.

01:32:36I'll finish the story later.

01:32:39Orcadian feast is very interesting, Thokester.

01:32:43It isn't it, but it's an interesting bluff

01:32:46and beautifully done.

01:32:48The basket with the pebbles in

01:32:52is...

01:32:54Hold that one for the moment.

01:32:56We'll come to Paddy.

01:32:58We'll come to Paddy and the layabout Winchester boy.

01:33:01Now, a layabout Winchester boy would not be called a Thokester.

01:33:05You said yourself, Paddy, so we'll choose that, shall we?

01:33:09Pardon?

01:33:11I say it's you, sir.

01:33:13Oh!

01:33:15He say it Patrick Carroll.

01:33:17True or bluff?

01:33:19Well, well, well, I can hardly wait.

01:33:21It's there!

01:33:23APPLAUSE

01:33:28You played that at a real venture, didn't you, Frank?

01:33:31That was a real venture. I mean, you were really getting there.

01:33:34No. Actually, David and I had worked out that was probably it.

01:33:37Oh, I see, I see.

01:33:39I was trying to convince.

01:33:41I shouldn't pry further.

01:33:43More than my position's worth.

01:33:45One all and we have this word, stenchil.

01:33:47David Hunt, your turn.

01:33:49A stenchil, it means a man

01:33:53or, in another sense, it means a form of tenure.

01:33:57It's a technical word from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire

01:34:01which was governed, as you all know, by the Forest Laws.

01:34:06Now, all the tenants and foresters were governed by the Forest Laws

01:34:11and they had a number of interesting names

01:34:13which would be far too numerous for me to mention here.

01:34:16But I will say that the stenchil

01:34:19was a man who held by the strange tenure

01:34:23that he was under an obligation

01:34:26to skin and disembowel any deer or stag

01:34:29that was slain by the Lord of the Manor.

01:34:32What a job!

01:34:34Yeah, well, sooner him than me.

01:34:36Gabrielle, your turn now.

01:34:38Well, as any artist will know,

01:34:41a stenchil is a simple but necessary part of his equipment.

01:34:46Well, any artist who paints in oils

01:34:48because it's a tin receptacle

01:34:51and he has in this tin receptacle either turpentine or oils

01:34:55and if he wants to stop painting for a few minutes

01:35:00and have a cup of tea or rearrange the folds of his model,

01:35:05he puts his brushes into this stenchil

01:35:10to keep them soft and pliable

01:35:12so that when he's finished whatever it is he's doing,

01:35:15he can go back again and paint with lovely, soft, pliable brushes.

01:35:19It's called a mug, isn't it?

01:35:21LAUGHTER

01:35:24Frank, it's your turn.

01:35:27I am an old trout

01:35:31of the late part of the last century

01:35:35about to have a nasty shock.

01:35:37I'm...

01:35:40..swimming around, ignoring all the crudely tied flies,

01:35:45artificial flies which are flogging the lake,

01:35:48because I'm old and wise, I can tell a real fly from an artificial,

01:35:52until I have this nasty shock,

01:35:54because there is what is clearly a true fly,

01:35:57because it isn't just a normal wool and feather thing,

01:36:02but it's dark blue with a bit of shiny substance at the back

01:36:05and silvery wings, but the shiny substance

01:36:07makes me think it's a real fly and I get hooked.

01:36:10And that fly is called a stenchil after the chap who invented it,

01:36:16whose name was Mr Stenchil.

01:36:18LAUGHTER

01:36:19So they called it after him, you see.

01:36:22It's SJ Stenchil, it's an eponymous fly.

01:36:25Thank you.

01:36:27No, it's a fishing fly.

01:36:30It's a brush holder, put the brushes down in the middle of painting

01:36:34and it's a forester, was a forester, in the Forest of Dean.

01:36:38Arthur.

01:36:39But have a brush it yourself.

01:36:41LAUGHTER

01:36:44That was awfully disagreeable.

01:36:46Disembowelling deer, form of tenure in forests.

01:36:51Oh, dear me, it sounds as though it might be right.

01:36:55This thing receptacle for paintbrushes.

01:36:59What a very elaborate word.

01:37:02And also Mr Stenchil and his trout.

01:37:08I think I go for disembowelling deer.

01:37:13A form of tenure in the forest.

01:37:16The forester who had that form of...

01:37:18Anyway, you said it, true or bluff was that, David.

01:37:21You did indeed. You have to own up now.

01:37:24You have to tell them now.

01:37:26There, you see.

01:37:28APPLAUSE

01:37:33I hardly believe a man with a face like that can tell fibs,

01:37:36but there you are, just going to take that sort of thing on the chin.

01:37:40What's the definition?

01:37:44APPLAUSE

01:37:50Fairly complicated name for a mug in which you stick the brushes,

01:37:53but it's true.

01:37:55Now, let's have another word.

01:37:57Orchy is the next word, and Arthur Marshall will define it for us.

01:38:01Well, now, orchy is a rather old adjective.

01:38:06It's really of Chaucerian vintage,

01:38:09and it means shameless or unrepentant.

01:38:16I think it comes in the monk's tale.

01:38:19Think well upon thy sin,

01:38:22that nothing of it be orchy,

01:38:24lest thou die unshriven.

01:38:27It's not a nice adjective at all.

01:38:30We don't use it now.

01:38:32But it means shameless, orchy.

01:38:34No wonder no-one ever reads that particular tale, don't you find?

01:38:38Pauline, your turn now.

01:38:40Well, an orchy was the smallest and least valuable coin

01:38:44that a 17th-century Dutchman would carry in his pocket.

01:38:47It was worth about a quarter of a stiver,

01:38:50which was very little,

01:38:52and the most you could buy for that was one Dutch bulb

01:38:56or a wedge of Edam cheese.

01:39:00And quite enough to pay me too.

01:39:02Patrick.

01:39:04An orchy is a kind of feather in the cap

01:39:09of a West Country arable farmer,

01:39:11but he doesn't wear the feather,

01:39:16nor is it a feather.

01:39:19Oh, dear, oh, dear.

01:39:21Because an orchy is part of the last stook

01:39:26what the West Country arable farmer has gathered off his land,

01:39:32and he ties it under the collar of his horse

01:39:35when he goes into market.

01:39:37And this merely means all is safely gathered in.

01:39:43I don't understand a word of that.

01:39:45Yeah, no, I'd like a three-volume novel.

01:39:49Anyway, so, it's barefaced or, you know, shameless.

01:39:54The last stook of corn,

01:39:56or part of the last stook of corn gathered in,

01:39:58and it's a small Dutch coin.

01:40:00David Hunt, your choice.

01:40:01We might be wrong, but we're unanimous.

01:40:05I'm happy to have your support,

01:40:08because, my goodness, I've swept off my feet

01:40:11a gentleman who can compose Chaucerian lines

01:40:15just like that, in a flash.

01:40:17How could he tell that the whole of these works

01:40:20I've had my heart since I was five and never...

01:40:24LAUGHTER

01:40:26Very, very bad luck.

01:40:29LAUGHTER

01:40:31Yes. Ten points.

01:40:33And the misery of it is, again, how could he know,

01:40:37how could she know, I beg your pardon,

01:40:40my studies in 17th-century Dutch numismatics?

01:40:46It really is hell, as I say.

01:40:48You'll never know what it is

01:40:49when fate is slipping the horseshoe into the boxing glove.

01:40:52So I think I shall come down to the last stook,

01:40:56to their agricultural observation.

01:40:58Patrick Campbell, whatever it was he said.

01:41:01Well, he did say it was a lot...

01:41:03It's quite clear to me, I must say,

01:41:05but anyway, Patrick, own up, my dear chap.

01:41:08Two more bluffs.

01:41:10You're a little short of your knowledge of West Country.

01:41:13APPLAUSE

01:41:21And it's a pleasure meeting a mastermind, I should think, Patrick.

01:41:24The person who gave the true definition, it's there.

01:41:28You have us in suspense.

01:41:30Who was it?

01:41:32Pauline, yes, indeed.

01:41:34APPLAUSE

01:41:39It's the tiny Dutch coin of which Pauline Collins spoke.

01:41:45Now we have the next word,

01:41:47and that is Boit or Bowit, and Gabrielle, it's your turn.

01:41:52If anyone is unlucky enough to encounter Anne Boleyn

01:41:56walking along in the tower, or the ghost of Anne Boleyn,

01:42:00of course under one arm she'll have her head,

01:42:03but in the other she's very likely to be carrying a boit,

01:42:07because a boit is a Tudor lantern.

01:42:10It had a candle in it, it was a lantern with one candle in it,

01:42:13and a Tudor lady could, for instance,

01:42:16light herself to bed with a boit.

01:42:20Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:42:22Now Frank Muir tells us.

01:42:24A boit could best be described as a ship's eyebrow.

01:42:33You've got a porthole, but a scuttle, as we sailors say.

01:42:38And a boit is a curved thing,

01:42:41a sort of rim that goes along part of the top,

01:42:44acting like a human eyebrow does

01:42:46to prevent water going into the eye,

01:42:48or in the case of a ship, the scuttle,

01:42:50and just diverting it round the side.

01:42:52So now...

01:42:56I thought you were going to rebut me.

01:42:58He dropped off to sleep.

01:43:02And now let us hear what David Hunt says.

01:43:04Well, I could easily wake him up now,

01:43:06if I really gave my mind to it,

01:43:08because I'm back in the forest again.

01:43:11And if I was in better voice,

01:43:14I would give you a musical illustration.

01:43:18Because a boit is a call

01:43:22blown on a bugle, on a hunting horn,

01:43:26and...

01:43:27Oh, oh, oh! Please!

01:43:29Thank you, thank you.

01:43:30Shake the mouthpiece out a bit more first.

01:43:33And it is a generic term

01:43:35covering all the calls known to the hunter.

01:43:39They had very large numbers.

01:43:41There was the mort, there was the hullalee,

01:43:44there were various others,

01:43:45which are too numerous again to mention.

01:43:47But whichever they were,

01:43:49every one of them was a boit.

01:43:52That's the collective term?

01:43:54Yes, it means any kind of hunting call.

01:43:57I see.

01:43:58Yeah, that was a jolly good question, Pauline, that was.

01:44:01And you're asking the right man there.

01:44:03Anyway, it's a bugle call,

01:44:05a sound from a trumpet or bugle,

01:44:07a sort of mullion over a porthole,

01:44:09and a Tudor lantern.

01:44:10Now, Pauline.

01:44:13I...

01:44:14What did you say, Patrick?

01:44:15I talked to my friend.

01:44:16Oh, I see.

01:44:17Listen to your team-mate.

01:44:19I like all the descriptions of your calls, David,

01:44:22of your hunting calls.

01:44:24Um...

01:44:26I would have thought that a collective call

01:44:28might have had a slightly more plural-sounding name.

01:44:32So I'll discard that.

01:44:34Um, Frank's...

01:44:36Yes, yes.

01:44:37..eyebrow is very picturesque

01:44:39and extremely a sensible idea, I think, to have in the ship.

01:44:44It also sounds vaguely nautical.

01:44:46Rubbish.

01:44:48Gabrielle's lantern to light Anne Boleyn to bed...

01:44:53..it doesn't sound anything like a lantern or a candle.

01:44:57And she was sparkling too much when she said it.

01:45:01Oh!

01:45:02So...

01:45:03She can never sparkle too much.

01:45:05I think... No, of course she can't.

01:45:07I think I'm going to choose the ship's...

01:45:11..weather eyebrow.

01:45:12You?

01:45:13The thing over the... Yes. ..pothole of which Frank spoke.

01:45:16Um...

01:45:17Draw, love.

01:45:19No. I think so.

01:45:20Don't put it off any longer.

01:45:22You know the rules.

01:45:24Ah!

01:45:25APPLAUSE

01:45:27Did I get it?

01:45:28Yes, yes.

01:45:29That was useful.

01:45:30It was very convincing, very useful thing it would be,

01:45:33but it wasn't that who gave the true definition.

01:45:35Let's see it, Gabrielle, please.

01:45:37Ah!

01:45:38APPLAUSE

01:45:45She sparkled to some effect there.

01:45:48It certainly is, you know, that Tudor lantern.

01:45:513-2.

01:45:52Carmusel is the next word.

01:45:54Pauline Collins, your turn.

01:45:56Well, a carmusel was a most delicious concoction.

01:45:59It was a fruit salad, very much favoured by poor old mad George III.

01:46:04It was composed of a mixture of fruits, all sorts of things,

01:46:09oranges, apples, quince, anything that was succulent,

01:46:13and they were all stewed together in a kind of syrup,

01:46:17probably made out of honey, I should think,

01:46:19and then the whole thing was iced and cooled down

01:46:22and it was eaten cold.

01:46:23Beautiful.

01:46:25Right.

01:46:26Patrick's turn.

01:46:28A carmusel is a smallish Mediterranean ship

01:46:33with an exceptionally high poop.

01:46:38Whistle.

01:46:39No, poop.

01:46:42An exceptionally high poop

01:46:45was used for ferrying devout Muslims backwards and forwards from Mecca,

01:46:50of course, backwards from the Mediterranean,

01:46:52plenty of room for all aboard in a carmusel.

01:46:57Yes, they'd have to have a special boat, I suppose.

01:47:00Arthur, your turn.

01:47:01A carmusel.

01:47:03It is, of course, French derivation.

01:47:06It's a riding term.

01:47:09It's the nearest that a horse and rider can get to doing a right-angled turn.

01:47:15I've never ridden, but I gather a right-angled turn would be very, very difficult.

01:47:19And a carmusel is the nearest that you can get to this.

01:47:23It's a term from dressage.

01:47:26Kindly adjust your dressage.

01:47:29And you're asked to do a series of these right-angled or left-angled,

01:47:34I mean, right-angled turns,

01:47:36and form a sort of zigzag, carmusel.

01:47:40So it's a sharp right-handed turn on a horse.

01:47:43Very difficult to stay on, I should think.

01:47:45It's a sailing ship, and it's a fruit salad much enjoyed by George III.

01:47:50I thought George III was a fruit salad, anyway.

01:47:53Gabrielle, it is your turn.

01:47:55I was wondering whether he enjoyed it before or after he went mad.

01:48:01Well, it does sound absolutely delicious,

01:48:04but it doesn't sound terribly true.

01:48:08And this small Mediterranean ship with a high poop

01:48:14ferrying Muslims to Mecca.

01:48:18And back.

01:48:19And back again.

01:48:22Well, yes, I...

01:48:25That sounds possible and...

01:48:29Or the riding turn, the dressage.

01:48:33The right-angled turn.

01:48:35Well, I am very, very torn,

01:48:38but I think that it's undoubtedly

01:48:42this little Mediterranean ship.

01:48:45Package tours to Mecca.

01:48:47Patrick said, yes.

01:48:49Tour Bluff, Patrick, he tells us now, he has to.

01:48:54Poop!

01:48:55APPLAUSE

01:49:03No, there, it's 4-2.

01:49:05Carmusel is indeed that ship that Patrick spoke of.

01:49:09Now we have trush or trush or whatever,

01:49:12and Frank is going to define it.

01:49:15Trush. Sounds like an Irish bird, doesn't it?

01:49:18But it isn't.

01:49:22Did you say that? I did.

01:49:24Only to my team leader.

01:49:26Oh, it's not an Irish bird.

Category

Transcript

Recommended