S13 E6 Diane Cilento, Hayley Mills, Anton Rodgers, Kingsley Amis.
S13 E7 Patricia Brake, Susan Littler, Roy Marsden, Antony Hopkins (the composer).
S13 E8 Patricia Brake, Susan Littler, Roy Marsden, Antony Hopkins (the composer).
S13 E9 Prunella Gee, Nanette Newman, Derek Jacobi, Michael Culver.
Host/Team captains: Robert Robinson, Frank Muir, Patrick Campbell.
S13 E7 Patricia Brake, Susan Littler, Roy Marsden, Antony Hopkins (the composer).
S13 E8 Patricia Brake, Susan Littler, Roy Marsden, Antony Hopkins (the composer).
S13 E9 Prunella Gee, Nanette Newman, Derek Jacobi, Michael Culver.
Host/Team captains: Robert Robinson, Frank Muir, Patrick Campbell.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00:00This William Sheen could become quite a character. Anyway, D'Angelento.
00:00:07Well, it actually wasn't William Sheen, it was Pitt the Younger.
00:00:12It was an alias, I suppose.
00:00:15And actually, a griffon was something that he kept in his study to supplement a somewhat meager regulation supper,
00:00:25doled out by the school authorities when he was at Eton, and it was a particular joint of meat,
00:00:32a lean part of the loin of a bacon pig, a griffon.
00:00:39Right. So it's a joint of bacon, it's a kind of a turf cutter that you can hit people with,
00:00:45and it's the correct term for ship's timbers.
00:00:49If we had William Breen here, he'd be our star witness. Frank?
00:00:55We're having a little sort of conference.
00:00:57Of course.
00:00:58If you could do some private work for a moment.
00:01:04Do make up your mind.
00:01:07Without being totally confident about this, without having any confidence at all,
00:01:14I don't think a griffon would be a turf cutter.
00:01:19I can't really amplify that. Yes, I can.
00:01:22I don't really think...
00:01:26Driftwood, an Orcadian word, possibly.
00:01:31I think the joint of meat is so ridiculous that we're going to lean for that.
00:01:37You lean towards it, yes.
00:01:40Heavens to beds, I'm so slow.
00:01:43Deanne, true or bluff?
00:01:46Any one, dear.
00:01:49Oh, no.
00:01:55No, nothing to do with that.
00:01:57Here comes the true definition. Which of the other two has it?
00:02:01Knowledge of Irish culture.
00:02:05Deanne, Deanne, Deanne.
00:02:08Good old William Breen turned up trumpets.
00:02:10It's a turf cutter or hoe, that kind of a class of an implement.
00:02:14My friend thought it was that.
00:02:16I suppose you... Oh, dear.
00:02:18Gullix.
00:02:19I'll never forgive you.
00:02:20No, no.
00:02:21Well, now, let's see what happens with this next word.
00:02:23Well, gullix, I don't know. Frank?
00:02:26Gullix.
00:02:27Gullix, gullix.
00:02:28Is there an ichthyologist in the house?
00:02:31Yes?
00:02:32The place is full of them.
00:02:33Well, you will know the pronunciation of this,
00:02:35because this is a word that an ichthyologist would know extremely well,
00:02:39because it's a little tray.
00:02:43It's about all it, really.
00:02:45It's a little tray with a glass bottom and sand in it,
00:02:48which is used in the process of incubating fish.
00:02:54Not a lot, really, to add, except that incubation means you put the eggs in it.
00:02:59Don't scare yourself. It's all right.
00:03:03So, well, let's get Kinkley-Amys to define.
00:03:06Well, a gullix made it easier to speak the ancient Assyrian language.
00:03:11It was the addition of a consonant to any word that preceded a vowel sound,
00:03:15a practice that we in England now follow,
00:03:18in that we do not say a idiot, but an idiot.
00:03:22That's a gullix.
00:03:24Pretty succinct.
00:03:25Well chosen.
00:03:27Hayley Mills, I think it's your go.
00:03:29Well, when an 18th-century gentleman of fashion went shopping for shirts,
00:03:36it was a very rash haberdasher who offered him anything other than gullix for his shirts,
00:03:44because gullix was a particularly fine linen cloth
00:03:48that was lovingly woven by craftsmen from Holland.
00:03:53Yes. Well, it's a sort of elision in the...
00:03:57I forget what language you've asked, Kinkley, but...
00:03:59Ancient Assyrian.
00:04:00Assyrian, of course. Silly of me.
00:04:02A hatching box for you hatching fish out of,
00:04:06and it's fine linen and stuff.
00:04:09Patrick.
00:04:12You couldn't have a word for an end that gets glued onto an A.
00:04:19I don't think you could have a...
00:04:21But do you think you've got one?
00:04:22A suffix.
00:04:23You...
00:04:24A sort.
00:04:25A gullix.
00:04:26A particular sort.
00:04:27Who's doing this, you or me?
00:04:30I'm helping you out.
00:04:31Now, back to work again.
00:04:34A tray for incubating fish.
00:04:38But poor little Hayley dribbling about a rash haberdasher
00:04:45unwooed me.
00:04:46Anyway, I think it's a tray for incubating fish.
00:04:50Yeah, well, Frank gave us all that stuff, too, Obluff.
00:04:54I do hope I'm right.
00:05:06See, you gave the true definition. Here it comes.
00:05:11Oh, it is.
00:05:12It is.
00:05:13It's the rash haberdasher.
00:05:16I've got it, I've got it.
00:05:21Rasher haberdasher, yes.
00:05:23One all.
00:05:25Kutchi or cutchi is the next one.
00:05:27Anton, your turn.
00:05:31When one sees beaten gold in a sheet...
00:05:35If one.
00:05:36If one does, indeed.
00:05:39It is, in fact, beaten in a very special way.
00:05:42In fact, it's so fine that if you actually touch it with a hammer,
00:05:47it would just completely disintegrate.
00:05:49So what they do is they put it between two sheets of vellum
00:05:54and then they hit it very hard and it spreads it
00:05:58so that it is a very fine sheet.
00:06:00This is how they actually start the process of gold leaf
00:06:04when they use gold leaf for books, etc.
00:06:07And this is what a cutchi is.
00:06:10It forms the top and the bottom of a gold-beater's sandwich.
00:06:15So good.
00:06:18Pretty scholarly stuff.
00:06:19Diane.
00:06:21Or I'll dismount thee from thy radiant coach
00:06:24and make thee a poor cutchi here on earth.
00:06:31For that is a couplet from a 17th century epic poem
00:06:35thereby serving to remind us, one and all,
00:06:38that a cutchi was, about that time, a simple coachman.
00:06:44A cutchi.
00:06:45A cutchi.
00:06:46A coachman.
00:06:47What's the date?
00:06:4817th century.
00:06:5016-something.
00:06:52Yes.
00:06:53Well, now Patrick tells you a thing.
00:06:56A cutchi is a screen made of finely split bamboo and string.
00:07:03You might be walking past a house,
00:07:08not to find a point upon it, in Malaysia.
00:07:12And you look at the house and instead of a door
00:07:14there would be a cutchi, as we call it in Malaya,
00:07:18on a split bamboo and string.
00:07:20Now, the interesting thing about it is that it's green in colour always
00:07:26because in Malaysia,
00:07:29green means peace and harmony.
00:07:32And you can hear the frying pan's been banged around inside
00:07:35but outside looks like peace and harmony
00:07:37because of the green cutchi outside on the door.
00:07:42Instead of the door, I beg your pardon.
00:07:44I confused you at the end, I'm sorry.
00:07:47So it's a sort of Malayan screen,
00:07:50coachman, 17th century type,
00:07:53and a cutchi.
00:07:54It's a Malayan screen, coachman, 17th century type,
00:07:59and a gold beater's sandwich, what he wraps around the gold
00:08:02and then to whack it flat.
00:08:04Kingsley Avis.
00:08:05Where was one?
00:08:07I like the gold beater's sandwich.
00:08:09It's an idea.
00:08:12But not otherwise.
00:08:13As regards that coachman couplet,
00:08:15I don't think in the 17th century it would have been
00:08:17blank verse, as it turned out to be.
00:08:19It would have been a rhyming couplet.
00:08:21So, there it goes against the grain.
00:08:23I'll go for the Green Malaysian Split Bamboo Frank.
00:08:27Thing.
00:08:28Yeah, right.
00:08:29Patrick, two more bluffs, here he comes.
00:08:31One, two, three, go.
00:08:41You've made all that up, you did.
00:08:43Now, who gave the true definition?
00:08:44Here it comes.
00:08:45Wait for it.
00:08:48It's there.
00:08:49Got the drama.
00:08:50One of you, anyway.
00:08:54Fantastic.
00:08:57So, all that academic stuff about blank verse went for nothing.
00:09:00Took it all away.
00:09:01Pretty rarely.
00:09:02But it's a 17th century coachman.
00:09:04I'm not sure whether the verse is correct or not,
00:09:07but still, the definition is absolutely so.
00:09:09Sporn.
00:09:10Kingsley, your turn.
00:09:12Yes, well, sporn is a kind of sphagnum moss
00:09:16once imported from the Netherlands.
00:09:18And it was imported because somebody had found
00:09:20that the greenish water in which sporn had been boiled
00:09:24was efficacious in the removal of mottled stains on ivory.
00:09:31Mottled stains, he says.
00:09:33You've got to do it with something.
00:09:35Hayley.
00:09:38The sporn is a specially segregated area
00:09:42on a South African ostrich farm.
00:09:45It's the enclosure in which they put the young ostriches
00:09:49while they're penned,
00:09:51while they grow their first tail feathers,
00:09:54which ultimately will be fully grown
00:09:57and used by English debutantes to...
00:10:00Fan.
00:10:03Couldn't do without those tail feathers.
00:10:05Frank, your go.
00:10:08Sporn.
00:10:09Yes?
00:10:12A sporn is a spectre,
00:10:16is a variety of spectre,
00:10:18as could be conjured up by a practising, fully paid-up witch.
00:10:23Now, there are sporn spotters
00:10:27who do say that sporns come in a variety of shapes.
00:10:31It could be a little goblin,
00:10:34a little pranksome goblin.
00:10:37Or it could be a man sitting neath a tree.
00:10:41Or it could be...
00:10:42You don't listen, do you?
00:10:44At all.
00:10:46It could be lying down.
00:10:50Sporns.
00:10:54Well, it's a spectre.
00:10:58Chilled my blood, I can tell you that.
00:11:00And it's sphagnum moss,
00:11:02and it's a pen where you keep the young ostriches
00:11:05until that happy day when they've grown their tail feathers.
00:11:08Anton, your choice.
00:11:10Well...
00:11:11Would you like to contribute?
00:11:14You're out on your own, lad. Good luck with that.
00:11:18These South African ostriches that Hayley talks about,
00:11:21I don't really think there's much use for the feathers.
00:11:24Not really.
00:11:26Apart from the performance, Frank.
00:11:28You're going to say the ostriches must have been so, must they?
00:11:31The sporn, the ghostly sporn.
00:11:34No.
00:11:35Careful retribution does not fall.
00:11:37Well...
00:11:38I don't actually have any mottled stains on ivory,
00:11:42but I do rather fancy the thought
00:11:45that a sporn would cure them if I did.
00:11:49So I'm going to choose them.
00:11:51You choose that one, do you, Anton?
00:11:53It was Kingsley Amies.
00:11:54Do you?
00:11:55Jaw Bluff.
00:11:56Ah!
00:11:57APPLAUSE
00:12:04Oh, no.
00:12:06Oh, no.
00:12:07It doesn't clean the mottles off anything.
00:12:09Who gave the true definition?
00:12:12Yeah.
00:12:13Shameless!
00:12:16There's nothing there!
00:12:20Well done.
00:12:27What you usually say to spectres is,
00:12:29Speak again, but I don't think I will.
00:12:31It's two all now,
00:12:33and sporn is indeed a spectre.
00:12:35You couldn't miss it.
00:12:36Oudel is an... or Oudel is the next one.
00:12:39Dianne.
00:12:40Well, an oudel is a glass jar
00:12:44used in the making of certain cheeses,
00:12:47notably Lancashire and Wensleydale cheeses.
00:12:51It's placed over each newly made round of cheese
00:12:56for a period dependent upon local humidity,
00:13:00thus preventing over-hasty evaporation of the moisture content.
00:13:04Yes, I suppose it would.
00:13:06Oudel.
00:13:07Jolly useful, really. Patrick, your turn.
00:13:09I really think that oudel ought to be allowed back into the English language.
00:13:13It's an old word, you see.
00:13:15But it's got a very contemporary use, as it might be,
00:13:20because it means to be busy
00:13:23in a kind of trifling sort of fashion,
00:13:27a kind of brisk inefficiency.
00:13:30If you're going to any shop at all
00:13:35and selling anything,
00:13:37and there's one person behind the counter,
00:13:39and you can ask him or her for anything,
00:13:42and he or her, they're going to begin oudeling instantly.
00:13:48Bustling about with brisk inefficiency, doing nothing.
00:13:51Oudeling.
00:13:55Right.
00:13:56Anton Rogers.
00:13:58We actually have to go to Wales
00:14:01to find an oudel.
00:14:03And you might meet someone in a pub, and you might say,
00:14:06How's your oudel, then?
00:14:11Now, this would only be in Wales,
00:14:13because only in Wales
00:14:16do they compose stanzas of poems,
00:14:21at least 24 stanzas,
00:14:24for entry into an estetford.
00:14:26They enter an oudel.
00:14:29And one of the provisions
00:14:32is that each verse
00:14:35has to have a different metre.
00:14:38Gas metre.
00:14:39Gas metre, electric metre.
00:14:42And this is commonly called an oudel.
00:14:45Not all that commonly.
00:14:49Well, it means to potter about doing nothing very much.
00:14:52It's a jar you use in making cheese,
00:14:55and it seems to be a very long, boring Welsh poem.
00:14:59Hayley Mills, your turn to choose.
00:15:08Any time you're ready over there.
00:15:11So boring.
00:15:18If in doubt...
00:15:20Right.
00:15:21Maybe, maybe.
00:15:24I love the idea of having my cheese under an oudel.
00:15:29But I've never come across one.
00:15:35So I don't think it's that.
00:15:37The Welsh singing...
00:15:42No, that doesn't quite convince me.
00:15:46I think it's the chatting.
00:15:49Wasting time and so on, pottering about.
00:15:52Patrick, true or bluff?
00:15:57You've never idled better.
00:16:05Let's hear what it was.
00:16:07Let's hear what it really and truly was.
00:16:10It was you.
00:16:11Oh!
00:16:20Very long.
00:16:21I won't say any more than that.
00:16:23Very long Welsh poem, that's what it is.
00:16:253-2.
00:16:26Zystan is the next one.
00:16:28Hayley Mills is going to define that word.
00:16:35Zystan.
00:16:36Well, when a Roman housewife went out shopping and it was raining,
00:16:41she couldn't, for obvious historical reasons,
00:16:44take a Mac or an umbrella.
00:16:48So what she took with her were two slaves
00:16:52and they carried this zystan.
00:16:56It consisted of a little canopy with poles
00:17:00and they carried it over her
00:17:02and she trotted along and did her shopping
00:17:05and kept quite dry.
00:17:07Kept quite dry.
00:17:09Kept quite dry underneath her zystan.
00:17:11Not her sister.
00:17:14Soon have two slaves and a brolly any day, frankly.
00:17:18We are in ancient Greece.
00:17:21The cavalry is lined up
00:17:24and the officer says, in Greek,
00:17:27the equivalent of charge.
00:17:30And they gallop forward.
00:17:32But what do they have as armament, then?
00:17:35They have a zystan,
00:17:37which is a spike stick.
00:17:41A spike stick.
00:17:42Not at all dissimilar to the spike stick
00:17:45a public-minded hell's angel
00:17:47might pick up waste from a waste paper
00:17:51after a pop concert.
00:17:53What?
00:17:54It's a stick, a thing with a spike at the end of it.
00:17:57Zystan.
00:17:58It's the ancient Greek cavalry weapon.
00:18:03Right. Kingsley Avis.
00:18:05Zystan was the trade name of a substance
00:18:08used by the admiralty in the later 19th century
00:18:11for drying out ships' bottoms.
00:18:14It was a crystalline mixture,
00:18:16mainly calcium chloride.
00:18:18It was sprinkled over waterlogged timbers
00:18:21to hasten the process of desiccation.
00:18:26You could sing that if you had an ear to it.
00:18:29It's a sort of substance
00:18:31for drying off ships' bottoms and so forth.
00:18:33It's a pike used by the Greeks
00:18:35and it's an early sort of brolly
00:18:37but it's carried by two slaves.
00:18:39Diane, your choice.
00:18:41Well...
00:18:42You don't want our advice, I don't think.
00:18:44You're a very wise doctor.
00:18:46Well, um...
00:18:48A Roman rain canopy
00:18:51with two slaves attached.
00:18:54Zystan.
00:18:56Zystan.
00:18:57Well, that's...
00:18:59Toying with it.
00:19:00Yes, I'm toying.
00:19:01Don't discard it.
00:19:02No, I haven't discarded it.
00:19:04A Greek waist stick I've got here.
00:19:07A cavalry weapon.
00:19:09Cavalry.
00:19:12Yes.
00:19:13Well, all those words, I mean, starting with X,
00:19:16have to be some old Greek or something.
00:19:19A ship's bottom
00:19:21so that it doesn't get desiccated, you said.
00:19:25And I feel, in a sort of peculiar way,
00:19:28it's just chemically sounding enough to be that.
00:19:33So I might take a Zystan from Mr Amos.
00:19:37You're choosing that, are you?
00:19:38Yes.
00:19:39Right.
00:19:40Kingsley, true or bluff?
00:19:44No.
00:19:51It wasn't chemicals.
00:19:52Oh, it's a canopy.
00:19:53What was it?
00:19:54True definition, here it comes.
00:19:56Charging.
00:19:57Yes.
00:20:04Sword of sword, lance, pike, that kind of thing,
00:20:07carried by Greeks.
00:20:08Finding other Greeks.
00:20:10Capelin at this exciting three-all stage.
00:20:14And Patrick is going to define it.
00:20:17A capelin is a small fish.
00:20:21It could be described as a sickly sardine, really.
00:20:26Because it's sardine size.
00:20:30But even when it's healthy,
00:20:31it's got a kind of greenish phosphorescence
00:20:34that turns the stomach of the observer and of the eater.
00:20:38And the hearer.
00:20:39But just a moment, please.
00:20:40This is my word.
00:20:43It does not, however, sicken other fish.
00:20:46They munch it like mad,
00:20:47particularly if they're fastened onto hooks.
00:20:51Off the coast of Newfoundland.
00:20:55Antelope.
00:20:56Right.
00:20:57Anton, your go.
00:20:59Capelin is the word used
00:21:03for a certain type of drinking vessel,
00:21:08which was used in the 17th century in France.
00:21:15And there were two varieties.
00:21:17One was a very fine leather for this bottle,
00:21:23like a collapsible bottle.
00:21:26And that was for the nobility.
00:21:29And the other sort was of the heavier leather,
00:21:33which was used for the peasants.
00:21:36That, obviously, was more difficult to fold.
00:21:38But in fact, a capelin is a collapsible drinking vessel.
00:21:49Well, a capelin was an impromptu
00:21:53kicking up of the leg during a dance.
00:21:56And it was quite frowned upon
00:21:59because energetic capelins could cause havoc on the dance floor.
00:22:05And especially performed by people who had big boots on
00:22:10or wasn't very favoured.
00:22:15It'd be pretty awkward, really.
00:22:17It's small, disagreeable fish.
00:22:19It's the kind of caper you cut.
00:22:21Sometimes it boots on, sometimes not, on a dance floor.
00:22:24And it's what leather bottles that fold it up.
00:22:27Well, I don't know whether they're leather,
00:22:29but bottles that could fold up.
00:22:30They're made of a substance, that.
00:22:33So, your choice, Frank.
00:22:35Does it have to be?
00:22:37I'm afraid so.
00:22:41It can't be Paddy's stinking fish, can it?
00:22:45Collapsible drinking vessel.
00:22:47It sounds great fun, doesn't it?
00:22:50Why would it be in the English dictionary?
00:22:52One asks oneself.
00:22:56Being kicked in the back of the neck by a partner's boot
00:23:00during a dance is also...
00:23:02I think it's Paddy's fish.
00:23:04Think it's a fish?
00:23:06Patrick certainly said it.
00:23:07Now he has to tell it.
00:23:08True or bluff?
00:23:10I always pick the rubbishy ones,
00:23:11and they're always Patrick and always wrong.
00:23:13Ah!
00:23:14APPLAUSE
00:23:21It's that awful fish you were talking about.
00:23:23Absolutely true.
00:23:24Little, tiny, green, nauseous fish.
00:23:273-4.
00:23:28And jipper or gipper is the next word.
00:23:31Frank Muir.
00:23:32I don't really know.
00:23:34I know what the word means.
00:23:35I don't know whether it's jipper or gipper.
00:23:37Probably gipper.
00:23:38Paddy probably knows the word.
00:23:39It's a twist or kink in a hempen rope.
00:23:46I would like to add to that.
00:23:48Not too much, Frank.
00:23:50I only mean because of time.
00:23:52If you coil a rope anti-clockwise,
00:23:54it's much less likely to get a gipper in it.
00:23:56OK.
00:23:57Next.
00:23:58Kink or thing in a rope?
00:23:59Kinkly.
00:24:00A jipper is a cutting tool that's wielded by a herring gutter.
00:24:05It's a small, sharp knife...
00:24:07Yes, with which in two quick movements
00:24:11a dead herring becomes firstly headless
00:24:13and secondly gutless.
00:24:17Mm-hm.
00:24:19Hayley.
00:24:21A jipper is an Americanism for a citizen of Minneapolis.
00:24:27The nickname derives from jip, G-I-P,
00:24:31meaning an animal's fur.
00:24:34Many of the original Minneapolisians...
00:24:38Yes.
00:24:39...were big traders in jips.
00:24:43So, it's a citizen of Minneapolis.
00:24:46It's a twist or kink in a rope
00:24:48and it's a knife for gutting herrings.
00:24:52Patrick, a choice.
00:24:54Do I have about a quarter of an hour to...
00:24:56No, about, I should say, 12 and a half seconds.
00:24:58Oh!
00:25:00It can't be a herring gutter.
00:25:04It doesn't matter if you lay a rope up,
00:25:08as we sailors say,
00:25:10lay a rope up left hand or right hand.
00:25:12Do.
00:25:13We say that all the time.
00:25:14I'm going to get you to plump in a minute.
00:25:16Well, I'm going to choose, not that fiddly word,
00:25:20all that nonsense that Hayley had.
00:25:23Citizen of Minneapolis,
00:25:25draw Bluff Hayley very quickly, if you please.
00:25:28Quick, quick.
00:25:29It's a bluff, isn't it?
00:25:31It's a bluff.
00:25:32APPLAUSE
00:25:34And very quickly, the two Japanese...
00:25:39It is indeed...
00:25:45It was indeed the herring gutter,
00:25:48so the score, 5-3, Frank Muir's team has won.
00:25:51APPLAUSE
00:25:58We shall make another trip to the waxworks
00:26:01of the English language next week.
00:26:03Until then, goodbye from Anton Rogers.
00:26:06APPLAUSE
00:26:08Kingsley Amis.
00:26:11D'Angelento.
00:26:14Hayley Mill.
00:26:17Patrick Campbell.
00:26:19Frank Muir.
00:26:22And goodbye.
00:26:23APPLAUSE
00:26:38APPLAUSE
00:26:58Good evening.
00:26:59It's Call My Bluff again with the Webster Booth
00:27:02of the panel game Frank Muir.
00:27:04APPLAUSE
00:27:06And this week is a challenge.
00:27:10My first guest hasn't been on this programme before
00:27:13but she's been on television and she won an award
00:27:16for playing the lead in the play Spend, Spend, Spend
00:27:19and she's a national theatre player and she is Susan Littler.
00:27:23APPLAUSE
00:27:30My next guest is a musician.
00:27:32He composes music and he talks about it and he writes about it
00:27:37and he is Anthony Hopkins.
00:27:39APPLAUSE
00:27:46And at room temperature, Patrick Campbell.
00:27:49APPLAUSE
00:27:55My first guest's father, who's not the real father,
00:27:58he's got a very murky history.
00:28:00He's Ronnie Barker, you see, but he's going straight now
00:28:03with his lovely daughter, Patricia Brink.
00:28:05APPLAUSE
00:28:11And my other guest is a kind of thug,
00:28:13he's arrived with his own sandbag,
00:28:15but he's from the Sandbaggers, isn't he?
00:28:17Roy Marsden.
00:28:18APPLAUSE
00:28:24So, those are the people...
00:28:26BELL RINGS
00:28:27..here are the words, or at least the first one.
00:28:29Pronounce it as you will.
00:28:30Succurrath, I would think.
00:28:32What's going to happen is that Frank Muir and his team
00:28:34are going to define succurrath three different ways,
00:28:36two are false, one is true,
00:28:38that's the one that Patrick and company are trying to pick out.
00:28:41So, off you go, Frank.
00:28:43Succurrath, do you think?
00:28:45Or succurrath, I don't know how to drive it.
00:28:47Succurrath is, as the name so laughingly clearly suggests,
00:28:53is a gemstone found on the island of Malta.
00:28:58It's in Hatton Gardens, and amongst chaps who know all about gems,
00:29:02it's called the Shaded Garnet,
00:29:05because bright light makes it go sort of darker.
00:29:11Really?
00:29:13Or not.
00:29:14Or not, yes.
00:29:15Not a very showy start, let's see what comes next.
00:29:18Anthony Hopkins.
00:29:20Succurrath, I'm delighted to have the chance of defining,
00:29:23because I'm very fond of monsters,
00:29:25I love to think about things like the Loch Ness monster and so on,
00:29:28and succurrath is not a monster that one would find in Loch Ness,
00:29:33it's a land monster,
00:29:35last sighted in Patagonia in 1688.
00:29:39I'm afraid I don't know the exact month.
00:29:42The particular close encounter with this monster
00:29:46leaves us with a description of it
00:29:48insofar as it says that it galloped away
00:29:51and put its young on its back,
00:29:53but we don't know anything more about it than that,
00:29:55it's a monster from Patagonia.
00:29:57OK, now Susan Littler.
00:30:00A succurrath is a soothing lullaby
00:30:03with which Persian mothers croon their children to sleep.
00:30:07Now, the words of many succurrath are traditional,
00:30:11but the tunes and melodies are not.
00:30:14These are left to the musical invention of the mother.
00:30:18OK, so you have a Maltese precious stone,
00:30:22a fabulous beast, or at least a beast no-one ever saw
00:30:25after that particular date,
00:30:27and a Persian, not a Norfolk, a Persian lullaby.
00:30:31Patrick.
00:30:33Yes, we had a little consultation,
00:30:35she said I couldn't hear what she was saying.
00:30:40I don't believe that Anthony Hopkins knows
00:30:43what the Patagonian national language is,
00:30:47because there's no language which is called Patagonian, is there?
00:30:50Don't answer!
00:30:53Disregard... Who's going to get into the Oxford dictionary
00:30:57all the way from Patagonia?
00:30:59Running away monsters. Monsters.
00:31:02Even a Persian mother making up her own tunes seems to be...
00:31:06Your turn will come in a minute.
00:31:09I don't believe mummies ever make up tunes,
00:31:11they sing the old stuff.
00:31:13But it's all deeply reasoned, isn't it?
00:31:15It's nice and thoughtful, yes.
00:31:17I think Malt is only covered with sand.
00:31:21But I still think it's a...
00:31:25It's a monster.
00:31:26You think it's the monster now, it was...
00:31:28Anthony, yes, two or blah for that.
00:31:31Um...
00:31:33Can't read it from here.
00:31:35Ah-ha!
00:31:37Very good.
00:31:42You're right, you're right.
00:31:44A sucuroth, or wrath, I should say,
00:31:46is a beast from Patagonia.
00:31:48Reportedly, anyway.
00:31:50Cloghead.
00:31:53Sounds like a compliment, doesn't it?
00:31:55Cloghead is the next word. Patrick?
00:31:58Cloghead Patrick is very nice.
00:32:01I would imagine that English or British people
00:32:04would call this cloghead.
00:32:08In fact, it's an Irish word,
00:32:10which is pronounced floghead.
00:32:13It's a 9th century...
00:32:18little tower with a...
00:32:21domed roof on it.
00:32:23Nice.
00:32:24Found on the west coast of Ireland
00:32:27between Galway and Kinsale.
00:32:31Now, just a minute.
00:32:34Would you like to have the Irish...
00:32:35Absolutely. No.
00:32:37Can't do without it.
00:32:38C-L-O-G-A-C-H-D-E.
00:32:42Pronounced?
00:32:43Cloghead.
00:32:44Ah, yes, of course, of course.
00:32:46Splendid.
00:32:48So now, Roy Marsden.
00:32:50Cloghead.
00:32:53It's a ship's fitting.
00:32:55It's made of steel, stainless steel,
00:32:59and it's for attaching a cable,
00:33:02hauser, warp, to the bows of a ship.
00:33:06It's made of a steel forging,
00:33:08it has a circular ring,
00:33:10and it has two fixings on either side.
00:33:13That's a cloghead.
00:33:15Right. Nothing fancy there.
00:33:17Patricia, break your turn.
00:33:19Well, a cloghead is the least able member
00:33:22of a skittles team.
00:33:24So...
00:33:27He usually plays first, you see,
00:33:29so he's got the most skittles to aim at.
00:33:31And then he's relegated to picking up all the skittles
00:33:34that his fellow members have bowled over.
00:33:37That's a cloghead.
00:33:40All fit together.
00:33:42It's a round stone tower in Ireland,
00:33:44it's a poor skittle player who always goes first,
00:33:46and it's a steel ring let into a ship
00:33:48so you can tie it up to something.
00:33:50Frank.
00:33:52Robert.
00:33:55Just having a little...
00:33:57Pass?
00:33:58Pass.
00:34:00Very interesting, very interesting.
00:34:02Another little incursion into Irish mythology.
00:34:05Ship's fitting cloghead is a bit too simple, isn't it?
00:34:08It would be very disappointing if it was true,
00:34:11because it just sounds like a cloghead, doesn't it?
00:34:14Skittle team...
00:34:16I don't think you'd call the cloghead...
00:34:19You couldn't say, your cloghead tonight.
00:34:21Otherwise they'd say, well, I'm not turning up then.
00:34:26They're my skittles too.
00:34:28So I think it's...
00:34:30It can't be Paddy's rubbish, can it?
00:34:32Oh, yes, go on. Flash the card.
00:34:34You think it's Patrick who said...
00:34:36It's a 9th-century small tower called...
00:34:38Round. That's right.
00:34:40And he gave us a pronunciation too.
00:34:42Patrick, true or bluff?
00:34:45It's true!
00:34:54Well thought.
00:34:55I think all the towns in Galway begin with C-L-O-G or something like that.
00:34:59Yes.
00:35:00Ah, well.
00:35:01Including Carseville, which isn't in Galway anyway.
00:35:03No, no. And spelt differently altogether.
00:35:06Mewling's the next one. One all.
00:35:08And we have mewling.
00:35:10Anthony Hopkins.
00:35:12I'm a bit out of my depth with this one,
00:35:14because it's to do with guns,
00:35:16and I really don't know much about them,
00:35:18but mewling is a form of gunmaker's embellishment
00:35:21on the barrel of a musket.
00:35:24If you could watch me at this point,
00:35:26because it's how you look at a gun, end on, that matters.
00:35:30The barrel is hammered into a number of longitudinal faces,
00:35:33eight of them, so instead of being a circle like that when you look at it,
00:35:36it's a sort of eight-sided thing,
00:35:38but I can't do an eight-sided thing with my thumb and finger.
00:35:41I should hope not.
00:35:44And now, Susan, your turn.
00:35:47It's a little-known fact...
00:35:50Is it?
00:35:52..that given the right encouragement,
00:35:55a canary can be persuaded to breed...
00:36:00with a goldfish.
00:36:02A goldfish?
00:36:04Yes, a goldfish.
00:36:06A canary?
00:36:08A goldfish!
00:36:10That would be a little-known fact.
00:36:13Now, this actual...
00:36:17..process of cross-breeding...
00:36:23Let him get on with it.
00:36:26..this actual process of cross-breeding
00:36:29is known to the bird-loving fraternity,
00:36:32of which I am not one,
00:36:34as mewling.
00:36:36I remember that one.
00:36:39Flying fish.
00:36:41Frank?
00:36:43Would you believe, alternatively...
00:36:47Oi, I no money, no.
00:36:50You pay my bills!
00:36:52It's a deputation of tradespersons
00:36:57who have something to complain about.
00:37:00A mewling was...
00:37:02For instance, in 1587,
00:37:04there was a mewling of tradespersons
00:37:07in the town of Nottingham
00:37:09who presented a petition,
00:37:11griping about their conditions for non-payment of bills,
00:37:15to Hatfield House.
00:37:17It's still there.
00:37:19Both Hatfield House and the...
00:37:21It's all right.
00:37:23Furthermore...
00:37:25A little more about Nottingham, shall we have.
00:37:28Are you not going to say any more?
00:37:30Oh, you're just teasing me.
00:37:32It's a bunch of dissatisfied shopkeepers,
00:37:35sometimes in Nottingham, sometimes elsewhere.
00:37:37It's a musket, shaped with eight octangular, I suppose.
00:37:41Octagonal, I think I mean.
00:37:43And I thought she was going to say,
00:37:45it's a little-known fact, but she didn't.
00:37:47She went on to say it was cross-breeding in birds,
00:37:49as I grasped it.
00:37:51Roy, your turn.
00:37:53Yes, the embellishment on guns.
00:37:55Hmm.
00:37:57Doesn't seem quite right, does it?
00:37:59And of course, Frank twinkles all the time,
00:38:01so you can never believe him.
00:38:03Is that what he does?
00:38:05That's sneering.
00:38:07It's sneering, isn't it?
00:38:09And the flying fish, yes.
00:38:13I can't believe it's that.
00:38:15Mind you, mewling and puking.
00:38:17Yep.
00:38:19Mewling, yes.
00:38:20Wasn't that bad.
00:38:22No, no, no, true performance, no.
00:38:24Yes, I do think it's Frank, it must be.
00:38:26It must be this collection in 1587.
00:38:28A bunch of outraged shopkeepers.
00:38:30True or bluff, Frank?
00:38:34It's a true one, isn't it?
00:38:36No, it isn't.
00:38:38APPLAUSE
00:38:40Well done.
00:38:42No, no, all rubbish, that.
00:38:44Who gave the true one?
00:38:46Oh!
00:38:48APPLAUSE
00:38:54There you are. Mewling is a little-known fact.
00:38:57I mean, it's crossbreeding among birds.
00:39:00Bursew is the next word.
00:39:02Roy Marsden.
00:39:04Bursew.
00:39:06It's a cookery dish.
00:39:08It's a cookery dish. It's ancient.
00:39:10It's English.
00:39:12And it's a casserole of pigs' entrails.
00:39:17Oh, charming.
00:39:19There is a recipe for it.
00:39:21It's an ancient recipe.
00:39:23It's take ye numbles of ye swine
00:39:25and parboil them in blood and wine.
00:39:29That's the recipe for Bursew.
00:39:32A casserole.
00:39:34Not a lot of it about these days.
00:39:38Patricia, your turn.
00:39:40Well, a Bursew was a small flag or a pennant
00:39:44which identified a competitor in a jousting competition.
00:39:48And it was carried on a pole by a groom or a serf.
00:39:51And then if, in fact, the knight lost,
00:39:54the pole would be symbolically snapped in half.
00:39:57That's what a Bursew was.
00:39:59Mm-hm.
00:40:01OK, right. Patrick.
00:40:03Bursew doesn't often appear in the singular.
00:40:07It's fairly dull unless I am talking about it.
00:40:11Or...
00:40:13at the same time,
00:40:15a whole bunch of South Dorsetshire miners.
00:40:22I don't mean miners. I beg your pardon.
00:40:25I mean quarry workers.
00:40:27Quite different to miners, isn't it?
00:40:30You'll allow me that, yes.
00:40:32When they're digging away in quarries in South Dorsetshire,
00:40:35they find lots of Bursews.
00:40:37Little fossilised fish or fissilised fosh, like...
00:40:41LAUGHTER
00:40:43That's what Bursews...
00:40:45Mostly Bursews.
00:40:47You're not going to find only one fossil, for heaven's sake,
00:40:50in limestone quarries in South Dorsetshire, are you?
00:40:53Yeah. Well, fossils, really, generally, on the whole.
00:40:56It's a casserole also, pigs inside,
00:40:59and it's a pennant flown by knights in a tournament.
00:41:03Anthony.
00:41:05Didn't like the recipe, all that blood and stuff.
00:41:09I'm very sceptical, having watched this programme on innumerable occasions,
00:41:13of anything in rhyme.
00:41:15It's invariably misleading.
00:41:17The flag, the pennant,
00:41:19I think that's a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue
00:41:22by dragging in the word Burgie,
00:41:24which is what you're actually thinking of.
00:41:26By unanimous vote,
00:41:28by unanimous vote, and with my captain's consent,
00:41:31therefore he can take the blame if I'm wrong,
00:41:33we're going to go for the fossilised fish.
00:41:35Fossilised fish.
00:41:37Of whom, or of which, Patrick spoke?
00:41:39You've got a right cloghead there.
00:41:41APPLAUSE
00:41:47So that wasn't right, that wasn't right,
00:41:49it's got to be one of the others.
00:41:51Who is it? Here it comes.
00:41:53Oh, it was you.
00:41:55Oh.
00:41:57APPLAUSE
00:42:02Is that dreadful casserole?
00:42:04That's what a bursio is.
00:42:06And now we have the words Stopsel and Susan, it's your go.
00:42:12The upper sole...
00:42:15The upper pad of the sole of a foxhound's foot.
00:42:20This is what this is.
00:42:22And it's subject to a lot of wear and tear,
00:42:24as you can imagine in the hunting season.
00:42:27And it can be artificially hardened
00:42:30by soaking it in a mixture of alum and water.
00:42:35That's told him.
00:42:37Put it squarely before them.
00:42:39Now it's you, Frank.
00:42:41Well, you're an army, you see, in the 16th century,
00:42:45and they're all coming at you, the other lot.
00:42:49How are you going to hold them back?
00:42:51I mean, you can jab at them with your pikes,
00:42:54but if you could do something really nasty to them
00:42:57so that they break ranks and everything.
00:42:59So some bright lad, he said,
00:43:01let's make a stopsel.
00:43:04And it's a big, big, big ball of pitch and stuff like that, you see.
00:43:11Sulphur.
00:43:12You roll it all up and you put it in a huge, great catapult.
00:43:16You light it and it goes vroom, you see,
00:43:20and goes into the army.
00:43:22Oh, what's that?
00:43:25And it demoralised them and they scattered
00:43:28and it was a very offensive weapon in the 16th century.
00:43:35Right. Anthony, you'll go again.
00:43:38Most of us have seen a piano tuner at work,
00:43:40but not all of us have the privilege of seeing an organ tuner at work.
00:43:44He has all those pipes that he has to bring into perfect pitch
00:43:47and he normally hammers the top of them
00:43:50with a little tin hammer all round the edge like that.
00:43:52But if it's got to have a lot of tuning done to it,
00:43:55he has some little wooden discs which are called stopsels
00:43:58and he drops them in and this narrows or changes the gauge of the pipe
00:44:02so as to change its pitch.
00:44:04A stopsel is a wooden disc that you drop into an organ pipe.
00:44:07Is it?
00:44:08Well, it's a kind of weapon,
00:44:10a ball of sulphur and lots of other...
00:44:12Pitch, I think you said.
00:44:14Part of a hound's foot
00:44:15and it's a sort of thing you put into an organ pipe
00:44:18if you don't like the way it sounds before you put it in.
00:44:21Patricia?
00:44:23Oh, gosh, difficult, difficult.
00:44:29I don't know, answering this definition,
00:44:31it's awfully hard not to believe it,
00:44:34but somehow I don't.
00:44:36It just sounds much too reasonable and kind of right.
00:44:39And Frank's definition was wonderful, I enjoyed every minute of it,
00:44:43but I didn't quite believe it. You, not really.
00:44:45Don't ask me.
00:44:46Oh, I'm so sorry.
00:44:47Ask him.
00:44:48And I think perhaps it's Susan's definition,
00:44:52it sounds so ridiculous.
00:44:54You're leaving out Frank's, you...
00:44:56No, I said, no, I said I thought Frank...
00:44:58You'd already mentioned that.
00:44:59Oh, of course you had.
00:45:00I thought Frank's definition was special,
00:45:03but I didn't believe it.
00:45:05It's going to prove me wrong now.
00:45:07So I think it's Susan's hound's foot.
00:45:10The hound's foot, you did speak of that, didn't you, Susan?
00:45:13Yes, I did.
00:45:14You're bluffing.
00:45:17You've changed your mind again.
00:45:26No, can't do with that.
00:45:28Let's have the real one.
00:45:30Let's see it, Frank.
00:45:31It must be there.
00:45:33It what?
00:45:34It is.
00:45:40It's a sort of kind of early catapult,
00:45:43which you set fire to and scatter the foe.
00:45:46So, chower is the next word.
00:45:49And Patricia, break your turn.
00:45:51Well, in darkest Somerset,
00:45:54our mothers are always chowering at their children.
00:45:58And you'll find that Somerset farmers,
00:46:01they chower about the weather
00:46:03and they chower about the price of pigs.
00:46:06Because, in fact, it's a Somerset verb,
00:46:08which means to scold, to chide.
00:46:11That's what it is.
00:46:12Right enough.
00:46:13Now, Patrick's turn.
00:46:15A chower, right by the 1920s in Canada,
00:46:23among the lumberjacks,
00:46:26was a saw, a two-handed saw,
00:46:30and called a chower for the very, very good reason
00:46:34that the name of the manufacturer of said saw
00:46:39was CHR.
00:46:42They used to say,
00:46:44I'm not very good on Canadian dialect or accent,
00:46:48have you got my chower?
00:46:50And the lumberjacks would talk like that a little bit.
00:46:53But that's what they were all about, two-handed saw.
00:46:57And now, Roy Marsden.
00:46:59Chower.
00:47:01Anglo-Indian word,
00:47:03used mostly, of course, during the British Raj.
00:47:06It's an abbreviation of the word chower-waller.
00:47:10Chower-waller was the lowliest member of the Indian household.
00:47:18It was him who...
00:47:19He was a sort of apprentice.
00:47:21And it was his job to do all the menial things
00:47:24that the other servants wouldn't do.
00:47:27He was the apprentice punker-waller, if you like.
00:47:31The flies off the master's fly-whisk.
00:47:36All right, so it's a Canadian saw,
00:47:39invented by a fellow called C-H-O-W-E-R,
00:47:42an Indian servant,
00:47:44and a verb in Somerset means chide or scold.
00:47:48Susan Littler.
00:47:50Just confirming.
00:47:51That's all right.
00:47:52More or less any time in the next two seconds.
00:47:54Right.
00:47:55Just play for inspiration.
00:47:57Yes, instinct.
00:47:58I don't actually believe any of this.
00:48:00But one is true.
00:48:02The Somerset...
00:48:03I don't know, I've never heard of that.
00:48:05Chower.
00:48:06No, I don't really believe that.
00:48:08Was there something about lumberjacks?
00:48:10C-H-O-W-E-R.
00:48:11The saw.
00:48:12Oh, yes, the saw.
00:48:14I don't know, it could be that,
00:48:16but I think it's the member of the Indian household.
00:48:22You do.
00:48:23Now, that was Roy Marsden, wasn't it?
00:48:25Roy Marsden, true or bluff?
00:48:31I don't know.
00:48:33Oh, no.
00:48:34APPLAUSE
00:48:40Let's try again and find the true definition.
00:48:43Here it comes.
00:48:44Oh, no, it was...
00:48:46It was Miss Bluebottle.
00:48:48Could you believe it?
00:48:49APPLAUSE
00:48:54Once an old Somerset piece of demotic is true.
00:48:59And now, three-all, interesting moment, Cyclone is the next one.
00:49:03Frank.
00:49:05Oh.
00:49:07Snuff trouble.
00:49:09Late Victorian cyclist...
00:49:12LAUGHTER
00:49:14..peddling and wants to go oink, oink.
00:49:19You see, what does he or she, Daisy Bell, say?
00:49:23What does Daisy Bell actually go oink, oink on?
00:49:29A cyclone, which was...
00:49:32No, no, it was a vogue word of the period,
00:49:35of a combination of two words.
00:49:38Now, any boy, two words.
00:49:40Cycle and horn.
00:49:43And you pressed the rubber bulb and you went oink, oink,
00:49:47and geese and things got out of the way of the cycle.
00:49:50It's a late Victorian word for the bulb cycle horn on a cycle.
00:49:58Right, so now, Anthony Hopkins.
00:50:03Cyclone, actually.
00:50:05Cyclone is one of these rather difficult heraldic words.
00:50:10It defines the sort of line that divides a shield
00:50:15into two or even more segments.
00:50:18If it's a zigzag shape,
00:50:20which I expect you've often seen on carvings or paintings of heraldic nature,
00:50:24or a sequence of dovetails, for example,
00:50:27that would be called a cyclone by the people who know,
00:50:30but not by those who don't.
00:50:32How could they if they didn't know it?
00:50:34Well, that's why they wouldn't use the word.
00:50:36Good point, yes.
00:50:38Susan.
00:50:40A cyclone is a glass lens with two convex surfaces,
00:50:46rather like a thick monocle.
00:50:49It used to be used by ancient physicians for cauterising wounds,
00:50:53for concentrating the sun's rays onto an open wound.
00:51:00Right.
00:51:01And thereby stopping a haemorrhage.
00:51:03Oh, a little more.
00:51:04Thereby stopping a haemorrhage.
00:51:06Well, it would, really.
00:51:07Immediately.
00:51:08If the sun was out, I suppose, yes.
00:51:10Yes.
00:51:11Right.
00:51:12It's the name of a horn on a bike,
00:51:15it's a lens through which they did that thing that she said,
00:51:19and a heraldic device, a line drawn on a shield.
00:51:23Patrick, your choice.
00:51:26Seeing that all the words connected with heraldry are so silly,
00:51:32you can't believe them, even if they're true.
00:51:36That doesn't feel like a heraldic word.
00:51:38They're all odder than that, I think.
00:51:42Have you got a truer of love there?
00:51:44I don't know.
00:51:46Pardon me.
00:51:47All the bulbs on bicycles,
00:51:51or a thick monocle to concentrate,
00:51:54it's all such miserable drivel.
00:51:59I think whatever you describe as a vogue word
00:52:02might have some connection with a cyclone.
00:52:05Or am I absolutely convinced? I think I am, yes.
00:52:08Make up your mind, lad.
00:52:09Yes.
00:52:10You will.
00:52:11You choose the cyclone that Frank spoke of, true or bluff?
00:52:14It's a bluff.
00:52:15I'm going to give Paddy a chance to change his mind.
00:52:18That's fairly sporty, obviously.
00:52:20Isn't it? It's tempting.
00:52:22No, no, then.
00:52:25It's a bluff, isn't it?
00:52:27No, no.
00:52:35I cannot imagine how a word like cycle got into any dictionary.
00:52:39But there you are.
00:52:41Truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes.
00:52:44A diamoron is the next one. So, Patrick.
00:52:47A diamoron...
00:52:51Would you care to listen to me for a moment?
00:52:55A diamoron, which is really cold,
00:52:58is a mating of volcanoes.
00:53:01This might seem to you to be impossible.
00:53:04Unpleasant.
00:53:05But long before...
00:53:07Long before the volcanoes got up above the world's surface,
00:53:10they have mated down below.
00:53:13Millions of miles down, around the middle of the world,
00:53:16you get a huge bunch of lava trying to get out.
00:53:19And it bifurcates.
00:53:21Do you know what bifurcate means?
00:53:24And it pops up in volcanoes that might be a thousand miles apart
00:53:28after a diamoron.
00:53:32I've forgotten what a diamoron is.
00:53:34A mating of volcanoes, a million dozen...
00:53:37in the middle of the earth.
00:53:39This must not be the right one.
00:53:42We've got a couple more.
00:53:44Roy Marsden tells you another now.
00:53:46Diamoron.
00:53:48It's a medicine.
00:53:50It's ancient Greek.
00:53:52It's made of, usually, that is, black mulberries
00:53:57and sugar or honey, sugared water.
00:54:00And it's used for soothing the throat.
00:54:06For sore throats or hoarseness.
00:54:10For gargling. A gargle.
00:54:12An ancient Greek gargle.
00:54:14Right.
00:54:16Now, Patricia tells you a thing.
00:54:18Well, a diamoron is guaranteed to wake a soundly sleeping soldier.
00:54:24It's, in fact, a sort of double revali, played by two.
00:54:29It's a trumpeter tootling on a trumpet
00:54:32and a drummer rub-a-dub-dubbing on a drum.
00:54:35That's a diamoron.
00:54:37OK, so it's that kind of rather extravagant revali.
00:54:40It's a remedy, a Greek remedy for a sore...
00:54:43A gargle, I think, for a sore throat and that kind of thing.
00:54:46And this mysterious mating of the volcanoes underground.
00:54:51Your choice, Frank.
00:54:55Oh!
00:54:59Wait. Come on, Muir, get on to it.
00:55:03Not a gargle.
00:55:05Definitely not a gargle.
00:55:07Who said a gargle? I said a gargle.
00:55:09It was you with your wretched recipes, wasn't it?
00:55:11No, it's not a... No, lad, sorry, it's not a gargle.
00:55:14It's not a...
00:55:16Oh, God. It's, um...
00:55:18Don't think it's drums.
00:55:20I think it must be Paddy's mating volcano.
00:55:25He's going to have to own up quickly.
00:55:27Time is running out. Show a straw bluff.
00:55:30It's just a plain bluff, really.
00:55:35Two games.
00:55:37The true one, here comes the true one,
00:55:39the very last true one on this occasion.
00:55:41Here it is. He's got it, he's got it.
00:55:43He knows he knows.
00:55:49Bit of a gargle for a sore throat.
00:55:51Greek, of course.
00:55:53Now, the score's standing at 5-3.
00:55:55I declare Patrick's team has won.
00:55:57APPLAUSE
00:56:06We'll be having more words with square wheels
00:56:09from the Oxford English Dictionary next week.
00:56:11Until then, goodbye from Anthony Hopkins...
00:56:14APPLAUSE
00:56:16..Roy Marsden...
00:56:18APPLAUSE
00:56:20..Susan Dickliffe...
00:56:22APPLAUSE
00:56:24..Patricia Brake...
00:56:26APPLAUSE
00:56:28..Patrick Campbell...
00:56:30APPLAUSE
00:56:32..and goodbye.
00:56:35APPLAUSE
00:56:47MUSIC
00:56:55APPLAUSE
00:56:57APPLAUSE
00:57:03Hello again. Welcome to Call My Bluff,
00:57:05television's answer to Spilleykins,
00:57:07which features Patrick Campbell.
00:57:09APPLAUSE
00:57:15After a well-deserved victory last week,
00:57:18which is not abnormal,
00:57:20it's my pleasure to welcome back Patricia Brake.
00:57:24APPLAUSE
00:57:28And I have my usual brain packed in ice here,
00:57:32the well-known spymaster from Sandbaggers,
00:57:35Roy Marsden.
00:57:37APPLAUSE
00:57:41And Baron Munchausen, alias Frank Muir.
00:57:45APPLAUSE
00:57:51I, of course, have the same team,
00:57:53winners of the silver medal,
00:57:56for the world of theatre, Susan Littler.
00:57:59APPLAUSE
00:58:04And for music, Anthony Hopkins.
00:58:06APPLAUSE
00:58:11Right, let's try it.
00:58:13And if we ring, we get a word,
00:58:15and that word is letiga,
00:58:17or they may pronounce it any other way.
00:58:19But what's going to happen, as you may remember,
00:58:22Patrick Campbell and his team
00:58:24have tried to figure out three different ways.
00:58:26Two are false, two are the definitions.
00:58:28One is true, that's the one that Frank and his people
00:58:30try and pick out.
00:58:32So what of this word, Patrick?
00:58:34Letiga is connected with oral hygiene.
00:58:38Mm.
00:58:40Because letiga is the fungus that grows on the tartar
00:58:44that gets stuck between people's teeth.
00:58:48Scrub away as you might,
00:58:50but leave a little bit of letiga behind.
00:58:53Seen through a microscope,
00:58:55it looks like ice-green crystals.
00:58:59Or very, very small ones.
00:59:01Not huge lumps of ice stuck around the tartar.
00:59:03No, no.
00:59:05Well, we're off to a joyful start.
00:59:09Roy Marsden.
00:59:11Letiga.
00:59:13It's a form of carriage.
00:59:15It's a sort of double sedan, chair.
00:59:18It's a posh form of travel.
00:59:21Pulled by donkey, asses, mules.
00:59:25The novel form is that the people can sit
00:59:29facing each other, one to one.
00:59:31Either men to men, women to women,
00:59:33or how you will.
00:59:35It's intimate, but slow.
00:59:40Letiga.
00:59:42Nationality.
00:59:44Don't answer.
00:59:46This is travel.
00:59:48Doesn't have to say if he doesn't want to.
00:59:51Patricia break.
00:59:53Letiga is a greyish-white fur
00:59:56which, in fact, originally belonged to a weasel or a polecat.
01:00:01And then was used to trim...
01:00:06As far as I know, in fact, it was used.
01:00:08I mean, whether it still is, I don't know.
01:00:10But it was used to trim the ceremonial robes
01:00:13of people like the doorkeeper
01:00:16or other minor officials at the Vatican.
01:00:19Letiga.
01:00:21Sort of fur, then.
01:00:23Sort of fur, kind of sedan chair driven by mules
01:00:27and that stuff that grows on you.
01:00:29Fungus that grows on your teeth.
01:00:31Frank.
01:00:35Right. Thank you.
01:00:37Stand by lads at the back.
01:00:41Not a carriage.
01:00:43Can't be a carriage drawn by a bullock.
01:00:46I haven't had bullocks in this country for years.
01:00:51Also, it's a far and unsounding word, isn't it?
01:00:54Stuff on teeth.
01:00:57Grey fur on teeth.
01:00:59No, grey fur on...
01:01:01on popes, isn't it?
01:01:04No, it's Paddy's rotten stuff that does in your teeth.
01:01:08Stuff on the teeth, he said, looked like ice crystals,
01:01:11coloured green and all that. True or bluff?
01:01:14What a jolly start.
01:01:16APPLAUSE
01:01:21Wasn't that... I suppose that's got to be called something,
01:01:24but it's not called that.
01:01:26Who gave the true definition?
01:01:28They've got it here. They'll show you in a minute.
01:01:31Oh, yes.
01:01:36Kind of double sedan chair, it was.
01:01:40Sobosco is the next word, and Frank Muir will define it.
01:01:44Sobosco is, I suppose you would say, an office, really,
01:01:49or an official,
01:01:51and, faintly surprisingly,
01:01:55it's the office of the nun in charge of the wine...
01:02:01..in a convent.
01:02:03Somebody has got to be in charge of the wine.
01:02:06Convents have got to have wine.
01:02:08The person in charge of it has got to have a title.
01:02:12And Sobosco was the title given to the sort of lowly nun
01:02:17who looked after the wine bottles.
01:02:20I have nothing to add to what I said in the House.
01:02:24Well, let's see what Anthony Hopkins says.
01:02:29I've never actually grown a beard, seriously,
01:02:32but for one period...
01:02:34One period of my life, I was flat on my back for about three weeks
01:02:37and I couldn't shave, and so I had this little beard
01:02:40which, in fact, made me look rather like Claude Debussy
01:02:43in an early photograph.
01:02:45But my friends reckoned it didn't suit me all that well
01:02:48and they used to tease me about it.
01:02:50And, indeed, people who have beards do get teased about having beards.
01:02:53I believe it's sort of jokey names like face fungus and that sort of thing.
01:02:56But had it been in the 16th century that I had grown my beard,
01:02:59they would have said,
01:03:01that's a bit of Sobosco you've got there, wouldn't it?
01:03:04A sort of jokey name for a beard,
01:03:0716th-century derivation, that sort of thing.
01:03:10And now Susan Little.
01:03:12A Sobosco is part of the anatomy of a very grand four-poster bed.
01:03:19It is the name of the curtain, the inner curtain,
01:03:23which is made of a semi-transparent material
01:03:26which can be drawn during the day
01:03:28and filter out the harsh rays of the sun
01:03:31and give a more restful, romantic ambience.
01:03:35All right.
01:03:37A sort of inner curtain on one of those four-poster beds.
01:03:40It's a sort of cant term for a man's whiskers
01:03:45and it's a nun who looks after the wine.
01:03:48Patrick.
01:03:53It's scarcely worth my while applying myself to this.
01:03:56It's so silly.
01:03:58Could I change my definition?
01:04:00No, no.
01:04:02You're doomed, you see.
01:04:04But anyone who believes he can begin to grow a beard seriously is mad.
01:04:11How can you grow a beard frivolously?
01:04:15Arco.
01:04:17Frank.
01:04:19You've got a good connection with nuns, don't you?
01:04:22I know about some of your relations.
01:04:25They're all nuns.
01:04:27And all that drivel about four-poster beds getting nice...
01:04:31It's a wine looking after nun.
01:04:35It's a nun who looks after the wine.
01:04:37Well, you did say it, Frank. True or bluff?
01:04:39He'll tell you now.
01:04:44It's a bluff, isn't it?
01:04:46Is he believing that?
01:04:49Thank you.
01:04:54Well, I don't know who does look after the wine in a convent,
01:04:57but it's not a sobosco.
01:04:59Who gave the true definition? Here he comes.
01:05:02I think it's the beard.
01:05:10Sort of jeering name for a man's whiskers is beard.
01:05:15The game's got even better suddenly.
01:05:17Won all, yes. Very exciting at a very early stage.
01:05:20Grieshof is the next word.
01:05:22No.
01:05:23Roy Marsden.
01:05:25It's an Icelandic word.
01:05:27It's pronounced grÃasok,
01:05:29and it's the name for an Icelandic poppy.
01:05:32It's a miniature poppy,
01:05:34and it's usually found growing on the slopes of Mount Hekla.
01:05:38It's not a very pretty flower.
01:05:41It's mostly famous for the fact that it has...
01:05:44..its property, its juice,
01:05:46is used to prevent frostbite in Icelandic fishermen.
01:05:51GrÃasok, an Icelandic poppy.
01:05:54Right. Patricia.
01:05:56GrÃasok is a variety of Flemish butter.
01:05:59It's unsalted and it's got a very low fat content,
01:06:03and this makes it very popular for sculpting swans
01:06:08to decorate state banquets,
01:06:11because, in fact, it has a very high melting point.
01:06:15Or should I say low melting point?
01:06:17But whatever it is, it actually takes a long time to melt.
01:06:26Leave that to simmer.
01:06:29I'd like to take as my text a moving quotation
01:06:33from the unreadable works of the late Sir Walter Scott,
01:06:39who once said...
01:06:41I'm not very good at Walter Scott dialect, you see.
01:06:44Gang... I think he said...
01:06:46Remember?
01:06:48Gang out to your beds, sirs,
01:06:52and dinner put out the GrÃasok.
01:06:55LAUGHTER
01:06:57He was not having reference to a dog,
01:06:59but to the embers in the peat fire.
01:07:02Now, that should be called a turf fire, because peat...
01:07:06And the English people say in Ireland,
01:07:08it doesn't matter, apparently. I haven't finished yet.
01:07:11It's got a heavenly smell of peat.
01:07:13We always say, peat who?
01:07:15LAUGHTER
01:07:17Yes, you would.
01:07:21It's a bit about dinner putting out the...
01:07:24I see what you meant.
01:07:26It's not dinner that puts out the peat fire. Do not.
01:07:29It's the embers, the bit at the end of a peat fire.
01:07:33It's Flemish butter made into swans, as often as not,
01:07:36and it's an Iceland poppy.
01:07:38Anthony, your choice.
01:07:44It's Icelandic antifreeze.
01:07:46It didn't take much of a fancy to, really,
01:07:49because I'm sure Icelandic words don't end with OCH.
01:07:52I don't know why I'm sure of it, but I am sure.
01:07:55The Flemish butter, the sculpting swans.
01:07:58I don't know particularly why they should be swans.
01:08:02She got a bit tied up with the high and low melting point
01:08:05and she's not supposed to tell a lie if it's true,
01:08:08so I think that's probably the one.
01:08:10Gang are to your beds, sirs, and dinner put out the grease.
01:08:13It's the most improbable quotation from Sir Walter Scott
01:08:16that I've ever heard, even on this programme,
01:08:19to which I'm a devoted watcher.
01:08:21I will go for the Flemish butter and the swan sculpture.
01:08:24Flemish butter, the high or low melting point.
01:08:27Now, that was you, wasn't it, Patricia?
01:08:29True or bluff?
01:08:31She looks a bit pleased. Oh, yeah.
01:08:33APPLAUSE
01:08:39Let's see who gave the true definition.
01:08:41Can you believe it?
01:08:43I, too, have never read a word of Sir Walter Scott.
01:08:46APPLAUSE
01:08:50The other day, I passed out on the quotations
01:08:53used in the true definitions in this programme.
01:08:56That sounded bogus as a three-bob note to me,
01:08:59but they're all genuine, so that was Walter Scott.
01:09:02Blimey. So here we have the word stropper.
01:09:05And, Anthony Hopkins, your go.
01:09:08Oh, a stropper, the sort of thing you might well find
01:09:11in that programme about the vets on the telly,
01:09:13you know, all creatures great and small,
01:09:15the sort of thing they call out Timothy to cope with,
01:09:18because it's Carl... No, it's not Timothy, is it?
01:09:21He's James. It's Timothy who plays it.
01:09:25No, no, no, sorry.
01:09:27It's a Carl who falls behind on the production line,
01:09:30not giving the adequate yield of milk, the sort of thing.
01:09:33Let's suppose Buttercup or Primrose is the name of the cow,
01:09:37and one week she only gives five gallons instead of six.
01:09:40Well, Jack comes along and says,
01:09:42ah, she's been a proper stropper this week.
01:09:45Who's Jack?
01:09:50Now, just a minute, don't mess us around.
01:09:52Jack is Jack Gromit, he's the head comer.
01:09:59He's a very well-known character in Walter Scott, I'm surprised.
01:10:03Now, Susan, your go.
01:10:05A stropper could be used as a paper knife.
01:10:08It's a flattish instrument, usually made of ivory, wood or bone.
01:10:13But, in fact, the proper use is it's an implement for making sure
01:10:17that all the ruffles on the ruff are perfectly even and symmetrical.
01:10:23That's what a stropper is.
01:10:25Well, yes, right. Frank, your turn.
01:10:30Battle of Cressy.
01:10:32Sarge! Sarge!
01:10:34I broke me arm.
01:10:36So, what does a sergeant do?
01:10:38I'm not even sure they had doctors in those days.
01:10:41Anyway, what a sergeant does is he calls somebody and they apply a stropper.
01:10:45In fact, it's a verb, to stropper,
01:10:48which is to bind up the break with a sort of wide leathern thong.
01:10:56They didn't use hard splints, it was a soft bind,
01:10:59but it was all they had at the Battle of Cressy.
01:11:04And lucky to get it, too.
01:11:06Anyway, it's kind of a soft splint.
01:11:08It's something you shape a ruff with and it's a very poor yielding cow.
01:11:13Roy, your turn.
01:11:17I haven't a clue. Excuse me. Could you help me?
01:11:20No!
01:11:22Right.
01:11:24A ruffle waffler.
01:11:27Doer. Doer.
01:11:29No, stropper.
01:11:32Battle of Cressy.
01:11:38Soft splint. No, it can't possibly be that.
01:11:41But we come back to Jack Gromit.
01:11:44Yes. Jack Gromit.
01:11:46Noble Jack.
01:11:48Noble Jack Gromit. Yes, I think it must be that.
01:11:51It's a cow that lapsed on the milk.
01:11:54That's what Anthony Hopkins said. Now he has to own up.
01:11:58Well, Jack gets a bonus.
01:12:00Oh, yes!
01:12:02APPLAUSE
01:12:08It's a poor yielding cow belonging to Bold Jack Gromit.
01:12:13Or not, in case it may be.
01:12:15Ligdur is the next one. Patricia Brink.
01:12:18Well, Ligdur is a rather rare variety of honeysuckle
01:12:23that grows on the North African coast.
01:12:26And it had a very strange reputation in medieval times
01:12:30because it was thought that if you actually chewed the leaves of the Ligdur,
01:12:34it would provoke hysterical,
01:12:37well, almost hysterical, uncontrollable laughter.
01:12:41Ligdur. We could do with a bit of that.
01:12:44A few sprigs.
01:12:46If you hadn't have said it, I might have done.
01:12:49Sorry.
01:12:51Ligdur was an 18th-century explosive,
01:12:57much used in the mines of Silesia.
01:13:01A lot of mining was going on there.
01:13:06It was a kind of... Difficult to explain, really.
01:13:09Well, don't try.
01:13:11I can't have a shot at it.
01:13:13If you cut down an oak tree,
01:13:16you get a lot of sawdust, right?
01:13:19You put the tree on one side and the sawdust on this side
01:13:23and you mix it with early nitroglycerin
01:13:27and it made a glorious bang in a mine in Silesia.
01:13:33I just wonder why you had to mix it with the sawdust.
01:13:36Sure. It gives a bigger bang.
01:13:39It makes it better that way.
01:13:41Well, there you are. Roy, you're dirty.
01:13:43Not a beggar bong.
01:13:47Ligdur.
01:13:49It's the name of an ecclesiastical garment worn by a bishop,
01:13:53but it's part of his walking-out gear.
01:13:57He would wear it parading.
01:13:59It's part of the lower garments.
01:14:01It's the name given to the gaiters,
01:14:04but to the long ones that reach from well above the knee
01:14:07down to the ankle rather than spats or anything.
01:14:10You see them with all those buttons all the way down the sides.
01:14:13Perhaps they've got zips now, but buttons.
01:14:15That's Ligdur.
01:14:17A wild honeysuckle, it was said,
01:14:19bishop's gaiter and 18th-century explosive
01:14:22part nitroglycerin, part sawdust.
01:14:25Susan.
01:14:27Can I just confirm?
01:14:30There's no point in talking to him, I suppose.
01:14:37I don't think it is the explosion.
01:14:39I did until you said it was a huge bang.
01:14:42I don't see why it's got to be huge.
01:14:44I don't quite believe that.
01:14:47I'm with you.
01:14:49Excuse me.
01:14:51Now, the garter.
01:14:53Not quite a garter.
01:14:55A gaiter.
01:14:57Well, it's a garment, isn't it?
01:14:59Yes, I'm not going to go for that.
01:15:01No, I'm going to go for the honeysuckle.
01:15:03I like the sound of hysterical laughter.
01:15:05Honeysuckle, spoken of by Patricia Brink.
01:15:07My honeysuckle, I am the bee.
01:15:10APPLAUSE
01:15:17None of that.
01:15:19Who gave the true definition?
01:15:21It's coming up.
01:15:25APPLAUSE
01:15:30What else would a bishop's gaiter be called?
01:15:32Anybody's gaiter.
01:15:34And that's what it is called, a ligter.
01:15:36Dwam is the next word. Susan Littler.
01:15:38Actually, it's pronounced dwarm.
01:15:40I'll try and remember that.
01:15:42A dwarm was a passport
01:15:44which was issued to accredited agents of the East India Company.
01:15:49Now, if you go to Ipswich,
01:15:51you may visit the Clive Museum.
01:15:55Because there was a man called Robert Clive
01:15:58who was a junior member of that company
01:16:00and, in fact, his dwarm can be seen there in Ipswich.
01:16:08Frank.
01:16:10If you proceed to Scotland...
01:16:14..and you see a Scot lying on pavement,
01:16:19he could be suffering from a dwarm.
01:16:28Because it's a...
01:16:32He's in a state of stunned stupefication.
01:16:36But not... I hesitate.
01:16:38I don't hesitate.
01:16:41Lord, I hurry to say,
01:16:43not a question of alcoholic stupefication at all.
01:16:47A dwarm is a kind of sudden come-over
01:16:51that Scots are liable to come over.
01:16:56They've got it permanently, haven't they?
01:16:58No. No.
01:17:00It's a very great nation.
01:17:02Have you finished?
01:17:04I'm prepared to starve.
01:17:07Anthony Hopkins now tells you.
01:17:09If Gypsy Rose Lee Yonder would lend me her thing...
01:17:13Frank, could I borrow your handkerchief for a moment?
01:17:15I wouldn't advise it.
01:17:18It's the snuffs.
01:17:19Well, anyway, it's...
01:17:21It's a sort of cotton thing
01:17:23that Sudanese women wear over their faces,
01:17:27not like a yashmak,
01:17:28because yashmak is for modesty's purpose.
01:17:30This is purely functional and factual
01:17:33insofar as it's to keep out the dust
01:17:36when there's a dust storm on.
01:17:38And a Sudanese woman,
01:17:39not a man,
01:17:40wears a dwarm to keep the dust out.
01:17:44Well, it's a Scots or Scotch fainting fit.
01:17:47It's a sort of special passport
01:17:49and it's a kind of cloak or thing
01:17:52you drape over yourself and your face
01:17:54to keep the dust out.
01:17:55Patricia?
01:17:57The Sudanese dwarm.
01:18:02No.
01:18:03I don't think so.
01:18:04I don't quite know why I don't think so,
01:18:06but I don't think so.
01:18:07Frank's dwarm.
01:18:08It was very exciting, wasn't it?
01:18:09All those different pronunciations.
01:18:11Fairly exciting.
01:18:15A wee dwarm.
01:18:16I don't think it's Frank either.
01:18:17I think, in fact, it's the East India Company.
01:18:20I think it's the East Indian Passport.
01:18:23Special passport.
01:18:25Susan Bickler.
01:18:26She pronounced it, didn't she?
01:18:31Suspense is agony.
01:18:34I know she was very glad.
01:18:40Who gave the true definition?
01:18:42Here it comes.
01:18:44Mackelp.
01:18:52Scotch fainting fit.
01:18:54Thereabouts, anyway.
01:18:56Now we have a gropple
01:18:58and I invite Patrick Campbell to define it for you.
01:19:02If you get a gropple or you experience a gropple,
01:19:05a gropple, I beg your pardon,
01:19:08it might cause you,
01:19:10unless you had nerves of iron,
01:19:13it makes some kind of outcry like,
01:19:16ow or ouch.
01:19:19Now, a trained athlete such as myself,
01:19:22if groppled,
01:19:24it can also be a twinge of sciatica,
01:19:26do I ouch?
01:19:28No, no.
01:19:29It shows you're unbravely.
01:19:31A little stiff in the legs.
01:19:33But a gropple is a twinge.
01:19:35It's all.
01:19:38Right.
01:19:40Hardly worth it, is it?
01:19:42I don't know. Roy Marsden, his turn.
01:19:44A gropple.
01:19:45It's an implement used at the hunt
01:19:48and it's used for retrieving animals,
01:19:50large animals, stags or pigs or whatever,
01:19:53who got caught in thickets, woodland,
01:19:55places where they're inaccessible to men.
01:19:59And what it's made of is a circular ring of metal
01:20:03attached on one end with a long, thick hauser
01:20:06and on the other end it has four ropes.
01:20:09Now, these ropes are attached to
01:20:12the legs of the animals that you can get to
01:20:14and then the whole lot is hauled out.
01:20:19That's what a gropple's used for.
01:20:21Now, Patricia, what do you have to tell us?
01:20:24Well, it's on record
01:20:26that on the 4th of March, 1889,
01:20:29varying amounts of gropple fell on different parts of Britain.
01:20:34It is because it's actually freezing rain
01:20:39and it's precipitated moisture,
01:20:41which is too hard, in fact, to be called snow
01:20:44and too soft to be called hail.
01:20:46It's gropple.
01:20:48It mainly falls on high ground.
01:20:51Too soft to be called hail. I see.
01:20:54It's sort of a twinge,
01:20:56kind of a harness for hauling animals out of the deep undergrowth
01:21:00and freezing rain.
01:21:02Frank has his choice.
01:21:09What are you doing?
01:21:10Divide.
01:21:11Divide the answer.
01:21:13Nothing else to go on.
01:21:15Grappling iron for cattle, I think, is a bit much.
01:21:19Splendid, though, you've been so far.
01:21:21I think it's a bit impossible.
01:21:23We're torn between freezing rain and...
01:21:29I want it to be Paddy's twinge.
01:21:33I want it to be gropple.
01:21:35Can you please oblige me?
01:21:36Are you choosing it, Frank?
01:21:37I am indeed so.
01:21:38You were a little oblique there.
01:21:39No, I want it to be that.
01:21:41Patrick?
01:21:42I'll let you have a little look at this with the speed of light.
01:21:45APPLAUSE
01:21:48All right.
01:21:52True definition, here it comes.
01:21:54Who could conceivably have had it?
01:21:56Little Paddy.
01:21:58APPLAUSE
01:22:04It is freezing rain.
01:22:05Of course, it would be softer than hail.
01:22:07I just couldn't work it out for a minute, but it's true.
01:22:10Wassall is the next one. Frank?
01:22:12Ah.
01:22:13Now, Wassall, a rather vague Anglo-Saxon word
01:22:18for the noises made by nature,
01:22:22or in nature, really.
01:22:24In other words...
01:22:26OI-OI-OI-OI-OI
01:22:29..of a pig.
01:22:31Or, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, of a cow.
01:22:35LAUGHTER
01:22:39It was a very ignorant cow.
01:22:42The snoring of dormice.
01:22:46Any sound made by an animal in nature
01:22:49was referred to, in early Anglo-Saxon days, as a wassall.
01:22:57Anthony Hodges?
01:22:59Wassall.
01:23:01They're back with Jack Gromit, I'm afraid.
01:23:04He's moved to Northumbria now.
01:23:06And the trouble is that poor old Jack hasn't got many horses on him.
01:23:10In fact, he's got no horses at all.
01:23:12So what does he put on his fields to fertilise them?
01:23:15Well, his farm is fairly near the sea,
01:23:18and so he goes down to the beach each morning
01:23:21and loads up the stems of seaweed.
01:23:23And from them he makes a vegetable manure.
01:23:27And things grow like fighting cocks or something as a result.
01:23:32It's an absolute variety of seaweed exclusive to Northumbria,
01:23:38and its proper name, according to seaweedologists,
01:23:41is Phucus digitatus.
01:23:43I'm glad I got that one out of the way.
01:23:46Nip and tuck there, wasn't it?
01:23:49Susan?
01:23:51A wassall is a verb which is very useful to know
01:23:55if ever you're asked to give a commentary on a chariot race.
01:24:00It simply means to overthrow a chariot.
01:24:05As was effectively performed by Charlton Heston and Ben Hurd.
01:24:11Yeah, so it's to upturn, overturn a chariot.
01:24:16Any noise in Anglo-Saxon...
01:24:18Well, natural noise sort of thing.
01:24:20It was called a wassall.
01:24:22And it's Jack Gromit's adaptable seaweed manure.
01:24:26Patrick?
01:24:28I know a lot about seaweed manure,
01:24:30but not for a kind of family show anyway.
01:24:34This cow that bleats...
01:24:39Get him on Call My Blood.
01:24:41Your assistant there what had a canary making love to a goldfish.
01:24:46You don't know anything about anything, especially not animals.
01:24:50So bleating becomes overthrowing Charlotte Heston's...
01:24:54Charlotte Heston!
01:24:59But anyway, she's out.
01:25:02We're all out now.
01:25:04It must be this seaweed.
01:25:07I know a lot about making seaweed for fertiliser.
01:25:10That's what it is.
01:25:12Focus Digital.
01:25:14It was Anthony Hopkins. I wonder if he was telling the truth.
01:25:18I hate to say it, but he was.
01:25:21APPLAUSE
01:25:28A bit about Jack Gromit was embroidery, though.
01:25:31There must be a Jack Gromit who's used it before.
01:25:34Anyway, that's what it means.
01:25:36That was our last word.
01:25:38It means vegetable manure.
01:25:40And the score standing at 6-2, Patrick Campbell's team has won.
01:25:45APPLAUSE
01:25:52Thank you very much.
01:25:54We've got to dredge up a few more 78s from the OED next week.
01:25:58Until then, goodbye from Roy Marsden...
01:26:01APPLAUSE
01:26:03..Anthony Hopkins...
01:26:05APPLAUSE
01:26:07..Patricia Quick...
01:26:09APPLAUSE
01:26:12..Patrick Campbell...
01:26:14APPLAUSE
01:26:17And goodbye.
01:26:21APPLAUSE
01:26:23APPLAUSE
01:26:50I welcome you now to Call My Bluff
01:26:52or, as I've got a cutting here, the Jersey Evening Post calls it,
01:26:56Call My Clug.
01:26:58And as you know, as I'm sure you know,
01:27:00Call My Clug is famous for featuring Frank Muir.
01:27:04APPLAUSE
01:27:10The entire team this side of the house are actors except me.
01:27:14And my first actor is the totally delightful Prunella Gee.
01:27:19APPLAUSE
01:27:23My second actor, I'll give you a clue, I, Claudius, he, Derek.
01:27:29Derek Jacobin.
01:27:31APPLAUSE
01:27:37And no game of Call My Clug is complete without Patrick Campbell.
01:27:42APPLAUSE
01:27:47We are all actors on my side, as ever.
01:27:50And my first guest is a lovely actress,
01:27:53but she's got a kind of secret instrument about her person.
01:27:59She is none other... When you see her secret instrument,
01:28:02she is none other than the lovely Nanette Newman.
01:28:05APPLAUSE
01:28:10There's a little something there, who you know who.
01:28:13And my other acting friend and companion
01:28:17is a kind of very nasty man from Belgium,
01:28:21called Michael Culver.
01:28:23APPLAUSE
01:28:29But she can't do with that what someone I know can do with it.
01:28:34Salvatella is the first word.
01:28:36And as you know, Frank Muir and his team
01:28:38will define salvatella three different ways.
01:28:40Two of the definitions are false ones.
01:28:42One is true, that's the one that Patrick and co. tried to pick out.
01:28:45So, Frank, what are these words?
01:28:47Salvatella is an exclamatory oath,
01:28:52like blimey!
01:28:56Or cripes!
01:28:59It is believed by some etymologists
01:29:03to be a sort of deformed, D-based version
01:29:07of an Italian oath, meaning preserve my bones.
01:29:12Preserve my bones.
01:29:14Oh, dear.
01:29:16Salvatella.
01:29:19Or even salvatella.
01:29:22Right.
01:29:23If pressed...
01:29:24Yes, yes.
01:29:25If pressed to add, I would say that it's mentioned in Ouida,
01:29:28under two flags.
01:29:30Who's under two flags?
01:29:32Ouida.
01:29:33Oh, Ouida, I think.
01:29:34She's dead, that is.
01:29:35Leave them wanting more, Frank.
01:29:37Derek Jacoby, your turn.
01:29:39Well, if I were standing closer to you,
01:29:42or conversely, you were standing closer to me,
01:29:44I could show you my salvatellas,
01:29:46because I have two of them.
01:29:49There's nothing abnormal in this, we all have two.
01:29:51Ladies and gentlemen, we all have two.
01:29:53So, perhaps you'd better look at your own.
01:29:56If you hold your hands out in front of you,
01:29:59on the backs of your hands,
01:30:01you will see two fattish veins,
01:30:04one on the back of each hand.
01:30:06Now, that is your...
01:30:08Patrick has more than one,
01:30:09but most people have one fattish vein on the backs of their hands.
01:30:13That is their salvatella.
01:30:15Now, if I were living in bygone days,
01:30:17and a doctor wanted to bleed me,
01:30:19he would encourage the leech to sink its fangs into my salvatella,
01:30:23where it could get a very good grip,
01:30:25and it would get the blood very quickly,
01:30:27and it would lie there, sucking away quietly and painlessly,
01:30:29in my salvatella.
01:30:31Good.
01:30:33Such enthusiasm.
01:30:35Prunella Jean.
01:30:36Salvatella is an American variety of the lime tree,
01:30:40which produces a sort of primitive form of soap.
01:30:44This is done by boiling the...
01:30:46No, you don't need to boil the leaves,
01:30:47by soaking the leaves in hot water.
01:30:50If you were a red Indian squaw,
01:30:52you would know all about this,
01:30:53and you would make full use of it on washing day.
01:30:55It actually comes out in a frothy lava-like soap,
01:30:59from the leaves.
01:31:01Well, then.
01:31:02It's something you get from this particular kind of lime tree.
01:31:06It's an exclamation or oath,
01:31:08and it's the vein on the back of your hand,
01:31:10the large vein.
01:31:11Patrick.
01:31:13Well, I've got four of those.
01:31:16I can see them.
01:31:19It might be.
01:31:20All this nonsense about weed, I do,
01:31:24and save my bones.
01:31:28Teller isn't a bone Italian, is it?
01:31:30Ossa.
01:31:31I don't know.
01:31:33Ossa bucco.
01:31:34I was feeling around, you see.
01:31:36I haven't got any.
01:31:37All this frothy lava coming out of...
01:31:39No, it couldn't be red Indian washing day.
01:31:43We believe it is...
01:31:46a vein.
01:31:47Or do I?
01:31:48Wait a minute.
01:31:49Yes.
01:31:50I think I do, yes.
01:31:52That was precious near a plump there.
01:31:55So, who said that?
01:31:56Yes, it was Derek Jacoby.
01:31:57Was that true, or was it a bluff?
01:31:59It could be much to...
01:32:00Oh!
01:32:01APPLAUSE
01:32:08Teller, tell us.
01:32:09It's just what he said it was.
01:32:10It's the largest vein on the back of your hand,
01:32:13which Patrick has four.
01:32:15I haven't got any.
01:32:18Roaney is the next one, or Roaney.
01:32:20I don't know how you pronounce it.
01:32:21Patrick.
01:32:22A Roaney...
01:32:25is a rectangular wooden box
01:32:27used in Aberdeen
01:32:29for carrying around salted herrings in this box.
01:32:36It would weigh around about a quarter of a crayon,
01:32:39which, as you might know, is spelt C-R-A-N.
01:32:43A quarter of a crayon of salted herring
01:32:45would mean around about 60 medium-sized salted herrings.
01:32:50Thank you very much indeed.
01:32:52Right, that was that.
01:32:53Now we have Michael Culver.
01:32:54He says this.
01:32:55Roaney is, in fact, a thick brownish-black tar,
01:33:01and it's used mainly in America.
01:33:04It's used to rub into the backs of sheep,
01:33:07and it's to keep away parasites like flicks and...
01:33:10I knew I was going to have trouble with that.
01:33:12Ticks and fleas and...
01:33:14LAUGHTER