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[00:00:22] Hello, this is Garlic and Pearls with me, Muriel Zagha, I'm French, and my friend, Suzanne Raine, who is British. And Suzanne, this is a vintage episode, is it not? You're going to tell us why. Why is it so special? This is our 100th episode.
[00:00:42] It's a milestone. There are still a lot of bits of Britain and France that we haven't explored, still a long way to go, and lots of material to unearth. But I feel we've covered a lot of actual cultural, geographical, historical ground in Britain and France. We have travelled a long way. We have travelled a long way. Yes. Very good. So Muriel, we've got a plan for this special episode, haven't we?
[00:01:09] Yeah. Super exciting plan of yours, actually. Your idea. I have to... Well, it's a British idea. It's a British idea. Because we love a chart countdown. In fact, we invented them. And the first UK singles chart was by NME, produced it in the 14th of November, 1952.
[00:01:31] And so in honour of the British spirit of having a top 10, for our listeners, we've each picked five. So our five favourites presented by the others. So my five favourite British Garlic and Pearls episodes, and you picked your five favourite French Garlic and Pearls episodes. Yes. So this is in a way to reflect how much we've learned. Yes.
[00:01:59] You know, and try and sum up a little bit. There's more, there's much more than we can say today. But to give insights into what we feel we've found, we've discovered in our inquiries, listening to the other and their discovery. It's entendre cordiale in so many ways.
[00:02:15] It is. And hopefully by the end of it, we'll have achieved two objectives. And the first is really in a nutshell to have sort of talked through some of the key themes that have come out so far from our 100 hours. Yeah. And the second is shameless self-promotion about episodes which people might not have listened to yet. Yeah. I mean, that's partly why we're here, to send people back to some of the really amazing episodes you might have missed and give you a chance to go back and find them.
[00:02:45] It's so easy. But we're not going to just rehearse them completely because that would spoil the surprise. Yeah. It's going to be little, little glimpses, little teasers. So who goes first? Well, shall I go first? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to go first and the one I've picked, so this is number 10. I suppose if we're doing a 10 to 1. Oh, oh. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Right. So now we know. Yeah. Yeah. It's the chart show, essentially. We're charting.
[00:03:12] So charting at number 10 is my first British choice, and that is your amazing episode on Ski Sunday. Oh, oh. This is the one. It's brilliant. And I really enjoyed it because I started from complete ignorance, which is, I think, in many ways, the best way for me, because then I ask ridiculous, naive questions. And I think you, you always rebound wonderfully on that.
[00:03:37] So I remember it started with a dialogue we had. We'd had by text, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, I messaged you to say, oh, Sunday afternoon feeling. I'm going to maybe have a cognac or whatever I was going to have and power down my brain. And then you said, what about Ski Sunday? And I said, what on earth is Ski Sunday? And you fell over backwards in your house. And then you talked about Eddie the Eagle. And I said, who's Eddie the Eagle? And then later on, you said, do you remember Franz Klamer, whoever he may be?
[00:04:06] And I said, no. So we started really from nothing, absolutely nothing. So then you told me a brilliant story of the show, Ski Sunday, which we do not have an equivalent of Ski Sunday on French television.
[00:04:23] This is really a British thing. I loved how quintessentially British the whole thing was, because I think the thing that stuck in my mind is the Ski Club of Great Britain being founded in 1903 in the Café Royale. And I think that tells you everything. And then you also told me that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a keen skier, so I didn't know this.
[00:04:48] And that he described alpine skiing as being as near to flying as you can imagine, which I think is absolutely beautiful. He foresaw the whole cult of skiing, alpine skiing in Switzerland, that English people would. And of course, this has come to pass. Yes. There's a brilliant, brilliant bit in your narrative where he's there with Henry Lunn. So Henry Lunn is the sort of Lunn Poly guy. And so this is all about travel. You know, for those of you who haven't heard the episode, there's so much to discover.
[00:05:18] And with a man called the Reverend W.J. Dawson, who's the editor in chief of The Young Man, a periodical for young men. And this is a conversation they had where Conan Doyle was saying, I don't know how to get rid of Sherlock Holmes. He's like an albatross around my neck. How can I kill him off? And they're standing there on their skis. They're skiing. They're skiing on elm skis and they're wearing their tweeds, whatever. They're wearing breeks or whatever, not cagools yet, I didn't think.
[00:05:45] And one of them suggests the falling off the glacier. He says, just push him off. Push him off the edge. And so he did. And it's amazing to think that this is the origin. So that's all fantastic. I thought this scene, I think I said at the time, pure Wes Anderson. You can see it in pastel colors in this idyllic alpine setting. It's just so filmic. It's fantastic.
[00:06:11] The other thing, and so again, you may argue against this, but the other thing that I think came through loud and clear in the Ski Sunday episode is what I would call you're doing it wrong. Which is the way, and we've had many examples of this, which is the way the British go to, say, Norway, where the Norwegians have been skiing for a very long time because of the nature of the climate and the omnipresence of snow.
[00:06:39] And they ski cross country to get from A to B. And the British get there and they look at this and they go, why are you doing it like that? Why don't you make it more fun by skiing downhill like a mad thing and possibly breaking your neck? And the Norwegians are really surprised because they've never thought about it like that. So there's a brilliant bit where it's essentially, why do skiing horizontally when you can do it vertically?
[00:07:03] Okay. Okay. There is that element of, I don't know what you'd call it. I suppose the British know how to have fun. They know how to make things fun. So they go to these slightly earnest other nations and they teach them how to have fun with the things they already have. Yeah. A sort of reckless joie de vivre. I know.
[00:07:23] Well, a friend of mine recently went skiing and he broke both shoulder blades on the first day. So I think that's possibly, he's fine. But that's possibly what we're looking at here. Does he listen to this podcast? I don't know. He now has time because he's recovering. I'm going to point him to this particular episode and say, why don't you listen to this? Do you wish you a speedy recovery? Yes, but not too speedy. That's to say, don't be too speedy generally, but recover speedily. Yes.
[00:07:54] So you enjoyed the skiing thing, I think. I found the way you were narrating it that you felt you'd got hold of something, really. But I think that's because, and it's obviously not every British person, but every British person who, there is a real Pavlovian response to the Ski Sunday theme tune,
[00:08:13] which just makes you want to put your foot on the accelerator as you're hurtling up the A13. For me, you cannot but love everything that starts with the Ski Sunday theme tune. And that is a part of who we are. It's not the entirety of our identity, but I think it is a significant element. Yeah. And something that will resonate with a lot of people. The other thing about this particular episode, which is about, after all, inventing a competitive sport, you know,
[00:08:42] or the British coming up with ideas for alpine skiing, becoming a competitive thing, is the self-deprecation that's woven into it. Because you say, we're the great amateur nation, which is why we never win at skiing. You win at curling, maybe. You win at that when you're doing it. Yeah. So I did really like that.
[00:09:03] And if there's a highlight within the highlight, just to end on this number 10 spot, it's that you also found time to narrate in great detail the plot of the film Chalet Girl. Oh, yeah. So that's a little extra thing for our listeners. And I would really recommend that for those of you who haven't listened to it, go to Ski Sunday. Those who know it, listen to it again. So that's my number 10.
[00:09:26] I've realised that we shouldn't, for fairness, although we're doing a top 10, we're actually doing two top fives. We are. So that's your number five. It is. It's my number five. Because otherwise we're going to end up with a number one, which will actually be British. And that, well, oh God, obviously that's what we want. Well, no, that's fine. Since you said you didn't want to be at number one, that's fine. We'll just, we'll do it. I think we have to have two number ones, don't we? We do. So, so that's your number five. That's my number five. And my number five is...
[00:09:59] The Deep. Ah, The Deep. Which I thought you did totally brilliantly. So this was where Muriel introduced me to... I mean, it's interesting because it's the exact opposite to Ski Sunday. Instead of going up, listeners, as the British do, the French like to go down. Wow. And I love the way you did it because you started off with a really amazing film, The Big Blue, or The Grand Bleu.
[00:10:29] The Grand Bleu. The Grand Bleu. Which is this extraordinary, quite odd film about a free diver who keeps photographs of dolphins in his wallet. Yeah. And it's based on a true story of a man who clearly ended up being more at home underwater without oxygen than on the land. Yes. And more at home with dolphins than with his girlfriend. Yes. I know.
[00:10:58] I think about his girlfriend a lot, actually. Where is she? What is she doing? And actually, the terrible thing is that, as you said, the man who played the free diver in the film, his own life then followed a sort of tragic... It's so often the case because he wasn't really made to be a film star. And then he didn't like it. And it just, it's been very hard for him. So, yeah. But The Big Blue, I think, marked a whole generation of French people. Exactly. Just like Ski Sunday did.
[00:11:27] What you did really cleverly is you went back in time and deeper into the ocean. Yes. And then you introduced me to this amazing French TV show. We haven't really planned this, but this works really well. Exactly like Ski Sunday that marked a whole generation of French people out because it showed the wonders of the... Of the sea. Of the sea. So it's called Teller Sa and it's all about the sea. Exactly. And then we had this whole interview in the middle where you talked about...
[00:11:59] This is always going to be a sticking point, listeners. Is that his name? Yes. I've not spelled it right, have I? It doesn't matter. Just say it. No, you say it. Jacques Cousteau. Thank you. So it took a while to disentangle Jacques Cousteau, who's the great oceanographer, of course. That's what people know. From Jean Cocteau and Inspector Clouseau. I know. I'm sorry. But I think you've got it now. I think you know. You know who we mean.
[00:12:25] And the extraordinary stories of the experiments that he and his friends did in terms of building the submarines and trying to live in the submarines. And they even had Parrot, didn't they, that lived in the submarine with them. And so that, for me, again, was this sort of sense of, again, really French, taking... It's the whole thing.
[00:12:46] It's like not compromising on what you think life is about and recreating it in a completely ridiculous place. It's like, it must be like this. We must sit in our armchairs and smoke our gaulois. And smoke our gaulois underwater. In our submarines. Yes. Absolutely. Which is different to how we would approach submariner work, frankly.
[00:13:08] And then you finished with, I might hope I haven't missed out a stage, but the bit that's so vivid to me is the Jules Verne. How do you say it? Yes. Jules. Would we say Jules? No. How would you say it? So in French, you say Jules Verne. And I think in English, you'd say, well, Jules Verne, maybe. Probably, but that wouldn't be right. So it's Jules Verne and Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, which is... Yeah.
[00:13:38] I mean, this is something that all children, all French children grow up with. And I think a lot of other children in the world, because it's one of those books. It's a Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo and all the sort of mystical aspect of going underwater. And this lone figure, you know, he's just such an amazing anti-hero. And it's something that I think this is where French culture really has given to the world,
[00:14:02] because, you know, anything that gets adopted by American film franchises becomes a world thing. But it was obviously the, I mean, it was a very Victorian kind of steampunky idea. But also then that amazing revelation that I think came later when, because we don't know who Captain Nemo is. No. And he was originally supposed to be an evil Russian, wasn't he?
[00:14:26] And then Jules Verne made him an undersea exile whose homeland was conquered and whose family were slaughtered by a powerful imperialist nation, in brackets, possibly the British. Which would explain his neurosis or psychosis. Exactly. And it's treated by the British. And so you can see that, again, there's sort of thousand years of antagonism and rivalry playing out 20,000 leagues under the sea just there.
[00:14:55] So I learned a huge amount from that episode and I was grateful for it. Great. It's your turn for your number four. So my number four is, it's a very Suzanne episode. I mean, they all are. In that, it has a strong element of surprise. What is it? And about, I suppose it explores the adventurous aspects of everyday life, which is something you've done many times. So this is the one about the British tax year.
[00:15:24] And that began with you saying, I've been doing my tax returns. And me saying, I'm on the edge of my seat with a little bit of a sardonic edge. But I didn't realize, and of course you've done it before, you've done A-roads, wheelie bins. It's very like you, I think, to zero in on something that looks very ordinary and everyday. And then to pull out this completely amazing and rather mad story behind it.
[00:15:53] So, I mean, in this case, just the maddest narrative, maybe your maddest episode. There have been quite a few. I don't know, to be honest, it surprised me how, even how mad it is. You feel the ground shift beneath your feet, whether you're British or French, or from anywhere else. I think the appeal is universal. So this is the one about what I would call the great discrepancy, which is, there are many,
[00:16:18] but one of the great discrepancies between France and Britain is that the British tax year begins on a different date. So in France, our tax year begins on the 1st of January, which is perfectly normal and sensible. Boring! In Britain, it begins on the 6th of April. And I suppose when I came to live in Britain, I accepted this without question. I don't know, I just, because I'm very rule bound probably. But in fact, it's odd.
[00:16:47] It's, you know, Britain is the odd one out in this sense. And you, you, it's brilliant. I won't give away too much. For those listeners who have not listened to the episode, I won't take the gloss of it. But it's so good because it's about the British calendar. It's about the relationship between Britain and European powers, shall we say? Because it begins, the whole thing begins a long time ago. It's about the... Should I tell you? Yeah.
[00:17:16] Well, so the big change was in 1582. Yeah. When Pope Gregory introduced the Gregorian calendar to replace the Julian calendar, which had existed since Julius Caesar in 46 BC, 1582. And he introduced this new calendar, Gregory, because... Oh, really complicated stuff about... Well, not to go into detail, but because the Julian calendar was designed in such a way that Britain had been losing days. We were all losing days. We're all losing days. We're all losing days. Yeah. We're all 10 days.
[00:17:46] By the 1560s, everybody was 10 days behind the solar calendar for complicated reasons. And you can find that more by listening to the episode. But the Pope took it upon himself... To remedy that. To remedy that. To bring about a great rectification by introducing a new calendar named after himself, which I think is in itself hilarious.
[00:18:07] And because, of course, of the delicate religious situation, differences existing between Britain and, let's say, hardcore Catholic countries in Europe at the time, the hardcore Catholic countries said, yes, we'll do it because the Pope says it's a good thing. So, obviously, we're adopting the new calendar. And with Britain, it was more of a seesaw, let's say... Elizabeth wanted to do it because she saw the rationale for it.
[00:18:35] But all her advisors said, I don't think we can go with the continental model. It's papist. Papist. And also, you know, we do our own thing on our island. So, for 170 years, the UK and other holdouts like Russia... Yeah. The Orthodox part of Europe. We're stuck with the old calendar, which meant that by the middle of the 18th century, we were 11 days behind Europe.
[00:19:03] And so there's a whole kind of Brexit thing in there, which is just deep in our character, which is why would we want to have a modern calendar that ran according to the science of how long a year was, when we could use the one that the Romans invented and be 11 days behind all of you? And really do our own thing. And then, of course, there's the extra refinement of Scotland being on a slightly different timescale. I remember the mad moment where...
[00:19:32] There are lots of highlights in this episode, but one of them is... Well, one of them is where you do the voice of Francis Walsingham writing to the bishop, asking him to support the change in the calendar and not getting a response. And then the voice getting, you know, please your grace, you know, becomes increasingly tetchy. That's very good. And then also the moment where, again, Suzanne takes advantage of my ignorance. So she knew I wouldn't know the answer.
[00:19:57] So you're asking me under the old system, if it's the 24th of March, 1707, then what's the next day in the calendar? And I say, well, the 25th of March, 1707. And you say, no, it's the 25th of March, 1708, because that was the time. That was the new year. That was the new year. And again, for complicated reasons of religious calendar, you know, you can find out more.
[00:20:24] But it's such an Alice in Wonderland reality to me, this, that all these sensible British people were very happy to continue with something that was out of kilter. And not only out of kilter with European countries, but also the rest of the world, but also within the Union. And King James VI, happy to entertain both system at the same time. Well, it was the two New Year's days. So Scotland had a New Year's day on the 1st of January and England had a New Year's day
[00:20:53] on the 25th of March. Yeah. So, so in, this is the thing that you just couldn't do. Because if, if we say, what day comes after the 31st of December, 1708? Well, you have to tell me. Well, I now know, but I think, I think I tried. What's the answer? The answer is the, I've got it written down. It's the first, it's the 1st of January, 1708.
[00:21:18] Of course, because we're still in 1708 in this really weird, bizarro world. So I love that. I love that you, you start off with, this is about the exciting topic of text and it is exciting. It's a moment of madness. Absolutely brilliant. My, my number four. Great. Now I'm going to do my number four, which is, do, do, do, do, do, do. Dejeuner sur l'herbe.
[00:21:48] Ah, the painting, the painting by Manet with the, the naked lady. The painting with the naked lady. And this is one of our recent ones, Muriel, actually. And I think the reason I picked this one is because I didn't know, you know, I should have done. This is a gap in my knowledge. I didn't know about it. But when you talk to me about it, it's such a startling picture.
[00:22:16] And I think that if I'd have just seen it on the wall in a museum, obviously I'd have noticed it. But I wouldn't have been drawn to look at it in the way that you drew me to look at it. And once you start looking at it, you're looking at this naked woman in a forest glade sitting on a picnic thing with these two kind of languorous gentlemen fully clothed and then possibly another woman in the background, but she's a bit blurry.
[00:22:45] And it is an astonishing scene, actually. And then the weirdness, which is that even in France at the time, it was culturally shocking, despite everybody really liking loads of pictures of naked ladies everywhere. Because that is how you work everything. Yeah. I mean, we talked about the salon where this painting was shown. In fact, it wasn't in the proper salon. It was in the Salon des Refusés, the paintings that had been turned down.
[00:23:12] But generally speaking, in the normal salon at that time, there would have been a lot of naked women. In the equivalent of the salon at the Royal Academy, it was all Palmerston giving a speech to the House of Commons and, you know, paintings of dogs. Paintings of dogs. Little girls listening to their first sermon, that sort of thing. Whereas the French, obviously very focused on nudity. But it's a really weird, really weird painting. And then I think a lot of French people don't realize how strange it is.
[00:23:41] And the thing about her as well, because she has this extraordinary... We talked about, actually, I talked about the sort of fleabag element of it for me, because she's breaking the whatever wall it is. She's looking at us saying, what on earth am I doing in this painting, really? How have I ended up in this glade with these men? And there's something so kind of knowing and direct and confident, while also like, this
[00:24:10] is mad, in her expression. Which, of course, mirrors her actual life, because she was a plucky heroine, really. She was a very plucky heroine. She's a working class girl who made herself an artist's model, who then made herself an artist and ended up painting self-portraits. So there's a really amazing arc there. I suppose that's what we discussed, that it's partly the reason why there was such a scandal about this painting was not because there was a naked woman in it.
[00:24:40] It was because of the way she looked at you. And because she shatters the illusion of the sort of soft porn passivity of most of the women in those paintings at the time. She's not passive. She's very, very active. She has agency. This is very new. And I didn't know. I mean, again, you know, when I started looking into it, reading about it, finding out about it, now I can never go back to the way I used to look at that painting, presumably. Yeah, totally.
[00:25:07] And there is a version of it in the Courtauld in London. So it is possible to view it or a version of it here in the UK. The only thing to note is that despite having said, this is something so very French, it is noteworthy listeners, because we are monitoring you, that some of our highest, most listened to episodes are ones where Muriel is talking about naked people in France, which is very surprising.
[00:25:36] Which, I mean, I never have predicted that. I don't know quite what we are to read into this. I mean, it's a head scratcher, isn't it? We'll probably never find out why. You know, the National Gallery has only got paintings of dogs. Actually, our listeners are pressing listen when the title says Naked Lady. Just saying. Okay, your turn. So this is now my number three of my top five.
[00:26:03] And it's interesting you've just said what you've just said about the, you know, the top, the popular, some of the very popular episodes are to do with naked ladies and French brothels and what have you. Another contender for one of the high flyers, Suzanne, is my next choice. I don't know what it is. It's the rhyming slang episode. Oh, interesting. Which is performed as well as Brigitte Bardot. Oh, you are joking. I'm not joking. I didn't know that. And that is really interesting because it's a cracking episode.
[00:26:34] Because it's so much fun. I mean, that's really, there's no other way of putting it. That is so much fun. It is so playful. The French word would be ludique, which means playful. And you, because you inhabit, you inhabit it. So in the same way that for Ski Sunday, I mean, listeners wouldn't have been able to see this, but Suzanne was dressed as Ski Sunday when she presented about Ski Sunday. She's wearing ski clothes. Yeah, yeah, you were.
[00:27:01] With rhyming slang, you really poured yourself into the whole thing. So one of the best things about the episode, aside from the fact that you explained to me, because I was, again, very ignorant about rhyming slang, where it comes from, how it works, that it's not a language, but a code, you know, why this code was needed. You also have a couple of amazing riffs in the episode where you just riff in rhyming slang at high speed.
[00:27:27] And I'm hanging on by my fingernails, trying really hard to follow what you're saying. And you're cruelly then testing me and saying, what have I just said? And sometimes I can work it out. Sometimes I know that you're talking about beer or hair. But I don't know why, because I don't know how the code is constructed. It's really fun. It's full of salty wit, that episode. Michael Caine is in it, Cockneys.
[00:27:55] There's an amazing time travel element because you go back to the origins. And so this world of costamongers and patterers and the costamongers, one of the aspects of those slang code languages is backslang, which we discovered the French have a version of that called Verlant. So that's where I'll look into Verlant another time. But it's interesting that there are these points of contact. But we are generally, and so that's my main takeaway from this episode really,
[00:28:24] is that our attitude to language and to rules is so different. And rhyming slang, I think, was a very good demonstration of this because it's playing with language, bending language, experimenting with language without worrying about the rules. And it's not that the French don't do that. I mean, French literature can be experimental. That's usually more eyebrow when it's experimental.
[00:28:52] And we have the Académie Française. And the Académie Française looks carefully at new words. And they're quite sniffy about language being correct and following the rules and spelling and all of that. Whereas I think you explain in this episode that the Oxford English Dictionary, the approach is different. If a word is in usage, then it will go into the dictionary. And if it's a rude word or a slangy word or somehow a word that doesn't fit correct,
[00:29:20] you know, rules of the English language, that will be explained. The context will be given, but the word will not be banished. You see examples of this behaviour, of this outlook, in so many other things that we've explored. Yeah, I think so. So that's, it really brought it home to me. It's the whole thing about things are fun. Things are fun. And don't, I mean, don't take things too seriously. Just relax into it. Just make up words. Make up words. So that's my number three.
[00:29:51] What I should do now is say a brilliant Cockney rhyming slang phrase. But I just, my brain can't do it. I'm just going to remind you that garlic and pearls is a rhyming slang for... I forgot what it was. Girls. Girls, of course. Yes. Which I think we coined in the moment. We did. It was wonderful. Just a very good example of how limbo... I should be disacked from my rollers. Pearls. Okay. What's your next, what's your next one?
[00:30:21] Your number three. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. My number three. Yes. Shake the bottle. Shake the bottle. Make the drink. Yes. Why did I like this one so much? I liked it because it's so iconically French. And it means sunshine. It does. To all of us, actually, particularly French. And in a way, it means France.
[00:30:49] Except it turns out, of course, to be more complicated than that. And the story you tell in it is a story that, again, for those of us who are not French, we don't understand because we haven't lived it, the French history, the relationship with North Africa. And the story of Orangina, it illustrates in this wonderful sort of kind of explosive way
[00:31:16] or a concentrated way how that relationship between France and Algeria developed. And then obviously after the French had to leave Algeria, then how it carried on. So you have a sort of second lease of life where everybody's designing amazing adverts with ladies in Orangina bikinis. Those are parasols. Parasols and orange peel. Yeah, that's right. Very creative adverts.
[00:31:44] But also the general forgetting, I suppose, of the origins of Orangina, as it were. It becomes such a French icon, as you said, that people forget collectively, not deliberately, I don't think, but they do. They forget collectively that it was an Algerian invention. Léon béton. Léon béton. And that's what we're thinking of really is the orange groves of Algeria. And that's where it all started.
[00:32:10] And now it's to do with French cafes and rasseries and things and camping holidays. And you'll buy huge packs of Orangina. But it's also really fun that the shape of the bottle. Yeah. And why is it that shape? And why is it that weird shape? I always love, we've had several stories of pioneers of marketing. British ones, French ones, people who were marketing sans le savoir.
[00:32:36] They were trying to find ways of selling their product and coming up with really clever ideas long before we coined the word marketing. And that's really fascinating as well. And you're right, because these little things that we're picking, they are things that have become an iconic part of our way of life. So there are equivalents to Orangina in the UK. I'm going to keep them secret so that I can save up.
[00:33:01] And actually, it shows how often a critical element of our local national identity, in a way, hinges on a very small number of people who design something that just takes off. And in this case, Léon Beton designed something that's fundamentally changed. It's not only French people who drink Orangina, but it's just there all the time in France, isn't it? It's there all the time.
[00:33:31] And you said to begin with, it's to do with the sun and summer. And I think that's what he did. He managed to create something that encapsulates the idea of the South in the most comprehensive sense. And we love the South. The French are in love with the South. I know the British love the South, but I think it's a slightly different relationship with that idea. It's like, it's in a bottle. It's in a bottle. It's just, and it's a perfect bottle.
[00:34:00] And there's all this stuff about the perfect recipe. And it's just a great story. So everybody should listen to that and then go and try and buy some, which is difficult in the co-op, believe you me. Now it's your turn. It's my turn again. For your number, what are we on? Well, I'm on my number two. I'm advancing rapidly towards the top. So not that there is really a top because it's also much fun.
[00:34:29] It's very difficult to put them in any kind of order, but we've had to do it. And we are disciplined, so we're doing it. So my number two, something completely different after Orangeina and the Sunshine and the Orange Peel Bikini, Hassex. So Hassex or Kneelers for those listeners who have not listened to this episode yet, because Hassex was to me a new word, completely new word.
[00:34:55] And I've lived here a long time and I'd never heard the word Hassex. I didn't know that that was the original name for these little cushions. Church Kneelers. Church Kneelers, which are usually covered with a piece of embroidery. So I like, again, starting from a place of complete ignorance where you reveal something to me. It's very interesting, this episode, because it really gives you a glimpse into the Church of England
[00:35:24] in its sort of German Jerusalem aspect, which is actually what it is. That's what the Church of England is like. Behind the Hassex and the story of the Hassex, there are all these mostly women, but also men who embroidered all these cushions for various reasons. I had not realized when those Hassex had come into being.
[00:35:49] There's a brilliant bit at the beginning, actually, where you describe what I think is often your experience, which is to be traipsing across a bog and then glimpsing in a distance, lovely verdant sort of hillocks and thinking, oh, that's lovely grass. And I'm going to be able to lie down. And actually what you find is that the green bit is Hassex, because originally it's a piece of the land. It's the sort of piece of peat.
[00:36:14] Yeah, they're these sort of tough, giant, tough mounds of impassable, grassy Hassex or Tussusss or whatever you would call them, but unbelievably awful to walk across. It's almost like something out of the Pilgrim's Progress. There's something about the progress across the land in Britain. And the way you do it is you're very hardy. I'm not hardy.
[00:36:40] I would go on the very smooth path and Suzanne would sort of go over the mountain. I wouldn't. I would go on the smooth path, but I end up being made to go on the Hasseki path. Yes. For your own good. My whole life has been a Hasseki path. So there's a dramatic highlight in this episode as well, which is the Bayeux Tapestry. Yeah. So an amazing moment of revelation to me, because I'd researched the podcast as well,
[00:37:07] and I'd read a lot of French sources about the Bayeux Tapestry, which confidently say, of course, it's French. It was made by French people. It's a French artifact. And I said that on air, really embarrassingly. And then you said, what would you think if I told you that actually it was made in England, probably by some English people? And of course, now it's coming. We were talking at the time about the loan, which is very controversial for reasons of conservation
[00:37:36] and other reasons, probably. Now it's coming. A lot of people are going to see it. I think I stuck to my guns up to the... I mean, I would still say I think it would look best inside Bayeux, but we can agree to disagree on that one. Well, we can. The other thing about this Hassox-Neilers that I hadn't really realised is how 20th century it is. That's right.
[00:38:03] So the first real sort of commission of Hassox was in 1931 for the Bishop's Palace in Winchester. And so it's a real Elizabethan, i.e. Elizabeth II folk art thing, which, as you say, it's Church of England adjacent. So they're in the churches, but it's actually a collective thing.
[00:38:27] I was in Ripon Cathedral recently where they have a wonderful set of Hassox, upon which are embroidered scenes of executions. Just, you know, gallows with loads of people hanging from them and things. From some uprising involved. And then a little stitching at the side that says many people from Ripon were involved and many were executed when the uprising was put down by Queen Elizabeth's soldiers. And they have someone else running around with a wheelbarrow with a dead bishop in it.
[00:38:55] They're telling stories, which it's like the churches are a place where the stories and the local identity and memory is collected and held. And, of course, it's all in danger because people don't kneel on them anymore. They're all being eaten by moths, moths, moths. And we have to keep making more. I think it's the only way to keep making more.
[00:39:16] It's, to me, you know, thinking about a French, the French are always amazed, delighted and disconcerted when they see Hassox in English churches, British churches, because we simply don't have the same sort of thing. And I cannot imagine in a French Catholic church bringing a little cushion with a nuclear power station, roided on it or something.
[00:39:38] I mean, you mentioned in the podcast a wonderful Art Deco one, a 1930s one, which is, I think, of Portsmouth and has an ocean liner and some tugboats and also some airplanes. And you say, the thing about this, it has nothing to do with Jesus. And I think that really encompasses. So they live in churches, these little cushions, but they are very personal, idiosyncratic expressions of people's responses to their surroundings, their personal histories.
[00:40:07] That's what's so Church of England about it to me. So I found it really, really illuminating. Your turn. Number two, number two from me. I love this one partly because it spoke very much to my British side, although it is French. And I was, this is roundabouts. Yes, French roundabouts. French roundabouts. And I'm just going to repeat because then everyone can listen to the episode.
[00:40:36] But your amazing statistics. France has the most roundabouts in the world by a country mile. Nice. So France has 42,986 roundabouts, which is 65% more than the next country down on the list, which is the United Kingdom, which has 25,976.
[00:41:04] And you also brilliantly have the most roundabouts per capita, 663.8 roundabouts per million people. That's just insane. And what is wonderful about this? I was thinking about this more and more. So firstly, I think a lot of people in Britain do have this thing about French roundabouts.
[00:41:26] So we know you have roundabouts because you have that literally insane rule that the people on the roundabout have to give way to the people who aren't on the roundabout. But sometimes the rule changes depending on where you are. I mean, it's really, it's terrible. So we all know you have roundabouts and you have Carrefour. Yes. Which is a roundabout, isn't it? No, what does Carrefour mean? Carrefour Giratoire. So it is a roundabout, but it's bigger somehow because, you know, there are different sizes. But your supermarket chain.
[00:41:55] Oh, yes, we do have a supermarket chain called Carrefour, which means crossroads. Oh, it doesn't mean roundabout. But a roundabout is a crossroads. It is. No, it's not. It's a roundabout. It's a roundabout. I suppose what you're saying is that in France, a roundabout is a crossroads because you've got 65% more roundabouts than any other country in the world. Yeah. So that made me think a lot about this origin from the French gardens, which you've actually talked about subsequently more recently.
[00:42:24] But the idea that it's, there's a whole load of design in how people meet at crossroads and you want them to have this space. And then the other thing that I really liked about it is that you've combined in France, the thing that we've got in common, which is an interest in road systems, with what you have particularly, which is wanting everything to be cultural.
[00:42:51] So this idea of art on roundabouts and quite insane things that you're putting on roundabouts because roundabouts are a cultural thing as well. I also, though, thought, and we talked about the magic roundabout and this wonderful thing where the magic roundabout, which is a very well-known children's programme in Britain, actually was adopted from the French. So the French made it. From Le Ménège Enchanté. Lovely.
[00:43:22] And Emma Thompson's father, Eric, reimagined it for Britain. So he adapted it. He adapted it. Dutifully. And this wonderful little sort of sidebar where Dougal, the dog stroke highland cow character, was, it's a perfectly rational thing to call the dog stroke highland cow character. But the French took huge offence because they thought that we were using it to make a snidey comment about Dougal.
[00:43:51] I thought that was great because it's a whole thing about roundabouts. So we're not touchy or anything. Yeah, you are touchy. But the sort of thing that I came back to is actually saying something the opposite of all of the differences. Because France came way ahead of any other country for having numbers of roundabouts. But Britain was a strong second.
[00:44:15] And so I'm wondering whether there is an Anglo-Norman cultural thing here that we actually both love roundabouts. Yes. And you've got a bigger country. You've maybe gone more into it in your suburbs, partly because your supermarket chains are celebrating Crossroad. I don't know. But we've both got a lot of roundabouts compared to all the other countries in the world. So it's a little bridge between us. It's a little bridge between us.
[00:44:41] And, you know, if you could just sort out your driving rules and regulations, everything would be great. OK. Well, thank you. So now, Muriel, this is super exciting because we've got our number ones. Our number ones. So I don't know if this will surprise you, my choice of number one. I mean, again, an impossible choice. Such an embarrassment of riches, Suzanne, in your catalogue of British episodes.
[00:45:07] I suppose I picked the one that, to me, felt like you were showing me the soul, the soul of your nation, or at least the northern soul of your nation. And that's the episode about bleakness. Excellent title, but a big and rather abstract title. You know, on paper, you think bleakness. OK, well, bleakness in what sense? And what's brilliant about the episode is it's in every sense.
[00:45:36] In every sense. So we start with some poems by Ted Hughes, a collection of poems by Ted Hughes called The Remains of Elmet, which are about a very particular place. And so Ted Hughes is a very particular poet. You know, it's a very... And it's his response to basically the middle of the north, isn't it? Which... The kingdom of Elmet.
[00:45:59] The kingdom of Elmet, which was a wilderness and was the kingdom of Elmet, and then became cradle of the Industrial Revolution. So it's astonishing because there are so many layers. I want to use a big pretentious word, which is palimpsest. A palimpsest is something that has lots of layers. I think it comes from medieval monks when they used to copy things and they wanted to reuse the parchment. They would scratch out what they'd written and then rewrite on top. But sometimes you can still see a little bit of what was there before. It's like that.
[00:46:29] So it's very layered. It's got stuff about landscape and climate. Very important. And again, it brought home to me, you know, you talked about Orangina and the love of the South and the sun. And we, in a way, it's not that British people don't love the sun and that we don't have rain. We have rain. But I don't think we... In another episode, you said, we don't live in France. We don't live inside a washing machine as much as you do in Britain.
[00:46:59] And with the Ted Hughes series, the word rain, I mean, we haven't counted it, but I think the word rain recurs quite a lot. And he is really describing a landscape that is battering the human beings who live in it. And then you give this really amazing hyperlocal story of the Industrial Revolution, where it's all in there.
[00:47:23] And the people, the communities, a sort of prelapsarian, William Morris style-y utopia, where people have a wonderful textile industry in Halifax. And it's all self-sustained and people are working at their own pace and sustaining themselves. And then, of course, progress, in inverted commas, intervenes. And that's a story that's happened, well, all over Britain, but also the world over, really, wherever we've industrialized with the best of intentions.
[00:47:53] And in some cases, some amazing progress. But there are, there are price. And Hughes likes to, Ted Hughes likes to describe these landscapes that are ravaged by man. And then, and there's another brilliant bit in it, which is all about weathering heights. Yeah. Because of course, because I don't know Elmet or, you know, Widop, which is where Ted Hughes is writing from, as it were. Well, that was one particular poem about this reservoir on Widopmoor, which of course- The Frightened Lake.
[00:48:23] Yeah. Frightened Lake. But that's the, well, you have to listen to the episode, but it's the, it's the way that the Victorians just took control of the landscape in this really systematic way and built these monumental engineering structures. I mean, the structures. Amazing and really marked the landscape in a way. So with Wuthering Heights, we talked about the Brontes and we talked about how earth where I did go. And I received some strong impressions from the place.
[00:48:52] And then we talked about Kate Bush and her song about Wuthering Heights. When we recorded the podcast, we talked about film adaptations, but we didn't know then that Emerald Fennel was going to come along and produce her own version of Wuthering Heights, which I think is quite far away from the Ted Hughes. She perhaps missed the bleak elements. So I don't know what we would have said at the time about it.
[00:49:19] Anyway, it's interesting to see that these things keep evolving and that in fact, Wuthering Heights, the whole mythology of this bleak landscape keeps appealing to artists who want to respond to it. The artist that I wanted to talk about, who, notwithstanding Emerald Fennel's great publicity success, is a band called English Teacher who won the Mercury Music Prize in 2024 with their album, This Could Be Texas. But they are from Elmhurst.
[00:49:48] And they have this fantastic song called I Am The World's Biggest Paving Slab. And if you've been to Howard, if you've been on these sort of pack horse tracks across the moors, it's the slabs we talked about, bouldering, the slabs of stone everywhere. And there's these wonderful, wonderful lines of this. You know, I'm the world's biggest paving slab, but I sit here quietly. No one ever looks down at the ground. And then it says, I wish I were born a stone.
[00:50:18] I made Wycola, which is one of these abandoned villages. I made Wycola my home haunting with Charlotte Bronte. I'm not the terrorist of Talbot Street, but I think that ruins have beauty. So you have another generation of really talented young musicians who've come from this landscape, who are singing about this landscape. I'm the world's biggest paving slab. It's very inspiring. And it is part of the British soul.
[00:50:45] So darkness, despair, laced with humour often. And I really, really love this. So that's my top, top episode so far. How about you? Well, this is equal top, even though I'm going last. Equal top. So then equal number ones. Equal number ones. And I don't know why this is my number one. This is not my anti-number one. This is like my number minus a billion. Because it's the thing that you really don't like. It's the thing that I really don't like.
[00:51:14] I think I can guess what it is. You know what it is. It is the metric system. And don't take this as being a political statement. It's not a political statement. But I asked Muriel to explain to me a way of ordering the world that was entirely invented
[00:51:36] by the French, which took away from us a way of measuring and understanding things, which was human. And you're going to say that the metric system is more human because it's so scientific. And it's exactly worked out on the, you know, you explained it in the episode in a way that I challenge you to reproduce how they calculated the curvature of the earth. Oh, it's completely mad.
[00:52:05] But it's the desire to make sense of the world, isn't it? But that's very human. I mean, you could say, OK, you could say, well, that is very human, this desire to impose order. Oh, it's French human, I guess. Yeah. Again, it's like the French garden. It's like, well, we've got a way of measuring things that is organic, that, you know, we can measure on weigh scales with pounds or with the length of our arms or the size of our hands or how far we can walk or whatever.
[00:52:33] But in fact, no, what we're going to do is do everything in precise mathematical terms. It's just neater. It's just neater. And I think I did try and explain this. It also came partly from a desire for equality between people. And I know you think it's misguided to go about it this way. But I think we have to accept that there's, again, good intentions.
[00:52:59] The thing that I did think was extraordinary, and now I can't remember if it was in the metric system or the one about the calendar, but it was when, because they're adjacent, it was when the man had divided the day into 10,000 pieces. I think that was the calendar, but you're right, it's continuous because again, it's the sort of metric approach. He divided it into X thousand pieces. And I said, oh, Paul Hock, that's nonsense.
[00:53:25] And actually, it turns out that that is the amount of times that your heart beats in the day. Yeah. So I was then... You were chastened. Well, yes, I was chastened a bit. But I also liked a lot the fact that once the French had invented the metric system, they started jumping up and down saying, we've got this amazing thing, everyone must do this. It's during the time when we had in the UK, we had all this sort of great scientists inventing everything.
[00:53:51] And the French wrote to the British king and said, we've got a new way of measuring things and it's superior. And we just ignored the letters. Completely. There was no answer. I mean, I think that's just... That says it all. Why would we? Why would we? And then, but they kept going, didn't they? You, the French, kept going and kept writing to all the other countries saying, we've got this superior way of measuring things. And actually, we won over quite a few other countries. Totally. Yeah. Totally.
[00:54:20] So I think, again, it tells us something. I don't know, because sometimes we had this debate. Sometimes we appear to be more organizing and more systematic, particularly when we have hobbies, we try and categorize everything. Yeah. But you guys on a monumental scale said, we're going to totally change the way that we understand the universe by chunking it into different sized pieces. And then the relationship again between the two countries where we said, if that's what
[00:54:49] you're doing, we are definitely not doing that. And that was, again, over 200 years ago. And it's still a tension. So you can see that these are deep differences. They are deep differences. And I think one of the conclusions we reached in that episode is that you are imperial and I'm metric. Even though I've lived here a long time, I understand the imperial system a little bit better. You've had to learn a little bit about metric or try to learn. I know in theory, it's really simple.
[00:55:19] But actually, if you're wired one way, it's really hard, I think, to operate in both systems or to change systems. So that is a fracture between our two cultures, which is almost a metaphor of a lot of other differences. So I think you really put your finger on something. And we operate now in the UK, we operate both systems. And that's disastrous, I think, operating both systems. I think that's worse. It is quite confusing. I think it's better to stick. You would say that.
[00:55:48] This is you. This is your coming here and you say... Because our system is neutral. So of course, we want to cleave to that. And you could have your imperial system where you measure everything with your knuckles and that would be fine. I'm not begrudging you that. Anyway, on that note, vive la différence. Okay, Muriel. Well, I had actually made you some pastries with that amazing creme, the chestnut. Oh, lovely.
[00:56:18] But maybe now, maybe you're not going to get so many. There's only two for you. Okay, good. So that's it, listeners. That's our two top fives celebrating our 100 hours. And thank you for listening. Those, some of you, I probably only like maybe one has listened to all of them. There are people who've listened to all of them, but few, which is understandable because it's 100 hours. If they were driving across a continent... Yes.
[00:56:49] ...this would keep you going the whole way. Yes. So if you're planning a long journey or some journeys, even several journeys, then start from the beginning. There's a lot to be getting on with. And we are quietly going to celebrate our 100th episode. We're very pleased and we are going to continue to make more because there's so many more stories to tell. That's all, yeah. So I'll see you next time. Au revoir, Muriel. Au revoir, Suzanne. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.