Citation Needed - Noel Edmonds

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Noel Ernest Edmonds (born 22 December 1948) is an English businessman, and former television presenter, radio DJ, writer and producer. Edmonds first became known as a disc jockey on Radio Luxembourg before moving to BBC Radio 1 in the UK, presenting its breakfast show for almost five years. He presented various radio shows and light-entertainment television programmes, originally working for the BBC and later Sky and Channel 4. After presenting children's Saturday-morning programme Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (1976–1982) and various other BBC TV shows like Top of the Pops and Top Gear during the 1970s, he became best known for presenting Noel's House Party on BBC One from 1991 to 1999. The show achieved 15 million viewers at its peak and originated the character Mr Blobby. He also presented the BBC TV shows Noel's Christmas Presents (1989–1999) and Telly Addicts (1985–1998). Following a hiatus from broadcasting, Edmonds presented the game show Deal or No Deal on Channel 4 from 2005 to 2016.   Links and images mentioned.   https://youtu.be/TeQs2fpU1eI?t=94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNkgDJpcuwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R17IguX1_hQ    

Hello and welcome to the citation needed the podcast where we choose a subject. Read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet. And that's how it works now. I'm Noah and I'm going to be hosting this episode. I'm sorry, I know we do a meta bit normally here. We're in this thematic to the subject. But this subject this week is a fucking host. This episode is about a literal host.

What am I even supposed to do? So joining me our four other podcasters who are also on this show. He's Cecil Tom and special guest, Michael Marshall. Gunshot? Hello. I'm here today. Noah, on this episode about hosts, I feel you missed your opportunity to burst from within with parasites. This was your opportunity. Visibly this time. Visibly. Yes. I'm on the show and I never wasn't.

I'm actually stood in front of a picture of a famous landmark so you can tell that I'm someplace else. Hmm, okay. And before we dive in, I want to take a moment to thank our patrons. patrons, if we ever manage to bail Eli out before this next episode, it'll be because of you. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show and possibly join them quickly because it's a really high bail this time. I think they denied bail. And we still can milk this for some money.

Tell us, Tom, what person plays thing concept phenomenon on our event we'll be talking about today? Today we'll be discussing Noel Edmonds. All right. And Marsh, you have ever heard. heard of this guy. Are you ready to catch us up? I mean, sure, unless one of you guys feel suitably capable of spending the next 45 minutes outlining the career

of a relatively obscure figure from British culture, then I'll do it, yeah. All right, well, if Eli was here, I'm sure he'd be happy to make some shit up, but he's off this week, so I guess it falls to you then. Okay, well, I feel like, as the official UK correspondent, the citation needed.

Official? Yeah, yeah. It is my duty to bring the stories that uniquely and unmistakably are British in nature. You know, as a way of building a bridge across the Atlantic divide and to offer you a glimpse of cultural understanding as to what life is like back here on the Motherland. You know, I've already covered some of the key figures that came to dominate the media media. But I've not yet introduced you to

the genuinely eccentric oddballs that our island produces from time to time. Says the man who introduced me to Mike fucking haul. Yeah, Marsh, it doesn't. seem like Darwin maybe wasted some serious sailing time just to arrive at an island and notice how fucking weird island stuff was. Yeah, a lot of that is him just getting away from here, I think. It was just anything to put distance and time between him and here. So tonight, yeah, I want to tell you all about one of the most influential figures, genuinely one of the most influential figures in UK entertainment for large parts of my life and someone who's left a lasting legacy in the cultural

landscape of these aisles. And someone who genuinely might be the oddest person ever to dominate British television. Because we're going to talk about the radio DJ, game show haulsed television innovator and occasional spiritual guru, Nolet. DJ and spiritual guru have some pretty big overlap on a Venn diagram. That's all the same. They do. They do. Well, Noel Edelman's was the youngest radio DJ on the BBC in 1969 before moving to TV in 1972 to host the very famous music chart show Top of the Pops. That would be the 19. 70s era of Top of the Pops. And I'm going to say now, this story isn't going in the direction

some of you might think it is, given that the other hosts of that show included convicted sex offender Dave Lee Travis, convicted paedophile Jonathan King, and the country's most prolific rapist and pedophile, Jimmy Saville. Was it a race? And regular performers on the show included convicted paedophiles, Gary Glitter.

Jesus, man. What? What are you doing? It wasn't a golden era for the BBC. See? And while it is interesting that Noel Edmonds was around all of that, there is genuinely no indication at all he had anything to do with it. And I only mentioned it because, as we're going to see, Noel Edmonds has an almost forest gump-like ability to be around significant moments in British culture. Okay, sorry, just making a quick note to myself. Create, top of the pops,

honey pot, and arrest everyone. Okay, March, go ahead. Yeah, can you imagine how awkward the breakroom chat was for the one guy who wasn't a sex offender in that? office? Hey, why does everyone get so excited every time I say we should order cheese pizza? I would say it's in the water, but I think it's the water around Britain that it's in. Well, Edmonds became one of the most visible presenters on the BBC. He fronted from 1976 their Saturday morning kids show, multi-coloured swap shop, which was genuinely groundbreaking and innovative for a number of reasons, at least some of which were of Edmund's own invention. As the host, he would acknowledge the presence of the cameras

and the production assistants in the room. He'd refer to them and talk to them. That was incredibly unusual at the time to break the fourth wall like that. Oh, and hey, BBC, great job picking which Top of the Pops host to bring over to the kids' show. Just fucking nailed that one.

It's like a reverse Russian brew left. It really did hit that empty chamber on that one. Five bullets, huh? All right. And it was also, this show was genuinely one of the first legitimately interactive TV shows in that its whole premise relied on children calling in to interact with the host. So yeah, again, really good job. So kids are going to call up and then they'd be put through to Noel live on air and he'd pick up like a little phone on his desk and he'd talk to them and they'd say what toy they were willing

to part with and what toy they were looking for in return and he'd write that down. And then later in the show, if a kid who'd been watching had the goods that were sought, and wanted what was an offer, they'd call up and no would then facilitate that exchange for them. Like a brokerer. Yeah.

And it was essentially Craigslist, but broadcast live to millions of people in 1976. Just didn't the eight-year-old kid at a Bloomberg terminal chain smoking? Okay, finally, some liquidity is provided. Mom?

Mom, get my broker on the phone. I've got an idea. Epstein actually ran the same kind of swapping shop for all those pedophiles he mentioned earlier. It was like the whole thing. Well, by this point, 1976, he was one of the highest paid stars of the BBC, and he'd use his wealth to indulge his love of fast cars. He actually got involved in rally championships.

He also got involved in a lot of car crashes, not ideal. And so he became known for his love of fast vehicles. And because of that, he was soon hosting the original version of the BBC's motoring show, Top Gear, which is the same show that would go on to be a huge international success under the stewardship of Jeremy Clarkson. But Edmonds was doing it three decades prior. And in keeping with the theme of the top family of BBC shows, everyone on the show but him fucked cars. Hey, is this the episode when Marsh finally reveals he's the Stig? We all had to do it in our hearts, right?

Hey, Heath has seen me drive. That is definitely nothing. I'm no way they're that good. It's exactly what the Stig would do. It was so impressive because I was like, wrong time, wrong time. Oh, okay. Nope. Nope.

Well, it was Norle Edmund's profile of loving fast cars that led him to meeting with a guy called Basil Wainwright, who wanted to break the world water speed record in the boat of his own design, a book called Excalibur. And Edmonds was immediately taken with this idea, and he gave Wainwright 70,000 pounds to build the boat, which would equate to around 250,000 pounds of today's money. Jesus. Yeah, which is 50,000 less than an entry-level go-fast boat. This is financial speedboat edging. Well, the boat design was based on a special hydro wing hull, and it was pitched at being the Concord of the sea, and Wainwright was aiming to get the boat to 500 miles an hour, far, far beyond the world record at the time of 319 miles an hour. And to get to that speed, the boat was powered by a device of his own creation, which could radically reduce the fuel consumption

of an internal combustion engine. And on land, a car with Wainwright's engine was theoretically capable of achieving 148 miles to the count. What? Yeah. I think the Prius hybrid gets about 50 MPG. Sounds legit. I make Concord of the C in that it's not financially viable, guys. Yeah.

And I say that it was theoretically capable of that kind of mileage because Wainwright declined to ever give a demonstration of it. Also, he declined to spend the money on the boat. Because he pocketed 40 grand and disappeared. And when the investigators examined what he had built, it was a half-built skeleton structure and a very small scale model next to it. He spent that 40K on gas and he circumnavigated the globe 220 times. Now, obviously, Waywright was arrested.

And in 1983, he was convicted on 22 charges of theft, forgery, and false accounting. And he was sentenced to three years in prison. And a fun quarter to his story. When he got out of prison, he changed his name to Roderick E. Storn, a name that he claimed was given to him by MI5, and he moved to America, where he started selling ozone delivery systems as unlicensed medical devices, leading to another four years imprisonment in 1990. Jesus Christ. And then when he got out, in 1996, he moved to Kenya, where he started charging AIDS patients up to 23,000 pounds to cure them with his special ozone injections. and he treated more than 500 patients there before he was caught and he was arrested again.

And then he invented cold fusion. Okay, so very clearly this guy read Atlas shrugged and he was like, who's John Galt? Me. I'm John Gould! And he just kept inventing nothings. Yep. He broke out after his ozone arrest

because he was a free radical. Oh, she's. So, Marshal, when I first, I misread Roderick as Roger Stone when I first read the I was like, okay, all right,

that makes sense. It's already wearing the villain outfit. Come on. Multiple times I had to check that I wasn't writing Roger Stone. Yeah, absolutely.

Noel Leibbons then moved to a primetime Saturday night TV slot with a show confusingly titled The Late Late Breakfast Show. And he continued to push the boundaries

of TV with, I'd say, less than ideal results because the show included a segment where Daredevils would try outlandish feet, broadcast live to the nation.

What could go wrong? It included one segment where a stunt driver hit a ramp at 140 miles an hour in order to jump over a line of parked cars 70 metres long and fail. Extremely badly, like so badly. At which point, the live feed just cuts back to Noel Edmonds in the studio.

You have to sort of like laughing off and keep it light. Shut up. We've just seen the driver, a guy called Rich Smith, like land and fracture his pelvis. and injure his head, neck back, and God knows what else, after very, very, very not making the jump. Like his car flipped in the air and crashed top down onto the line of cars. Didn't even come forward. Live on television.

Okay. Farsh put a link so we could watch this. I watched it and then it cuts back to the TV studio. And there's one guy in the studio audience who starts laughing hysterically. But then he has to turn it into a solemn noise. on the spot. He's like, ha ha ha ha.

Yeah. It's a 1970s Heath was the yeah. Oh, and I want to be clear that when he, when he,

he moves on to his like, and on next week's program, there is no reason to believe that dude was a lie. Yeah. Only though is he wasn't

on next week's program. Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't know. You guys, you're all exaggerating the accident a little.

I watched it. That 1973 Dotson probably only passed on like 80% of the crash impact of the drive. But the thing is, at least Rich Smith was an experienced professional, unlike most of the participants in the death-defying stunts on the show. Because in an example of the kind of innovation and interactivity that characterized

Edmund's TV shows, the series had an ongoing segment called Give It a Whirl, which had a big wheel of dangerous stunts that you'd spin, and those are stunts that'd be undertaken by a volunteer from the public. No. What? And those stunts included being dangled upside down from a helicopter. Being Tom. Yeah.

Nobody's volunteering for that one. Why is nobody volunteering? They're doing the other things. They've all said yes to the other stuff. But these stunts include being dangled upside down from a helicopter, being set on fire while escaping from a box. What? Riding a motorbike across a narrow ledge.

Sure. airlifted out of a large chimney as the building was being demolished. And he just literally canceled at the last minute by the BBC for being too dangerous. Is that? We're just doing looney tunes. You dodge out of the way of an anvil like this.

The footage is terrifying when you see the footage of the stuff is genuinely terrifying. That last one was only cancelled at last minute by the BBC because it was too dangerous. The only thing keeping random members of the public safe was the commitment of the BBC. in the 1980s to public safety. And I'm not going to say the commitment wasn't high enough, but in essentially the next

studio over, the most popular music show in the country is being hosted almost exclusively by Peter Fier. Jesus Christ. Okay, fine, fine. I'll be the guy. If you need someone else to tell you not to volunteer to be set on fire, maybe it's okay you're on fire. That's just kind of on you.

So the warning signs Should have been there When a stunt in which a woman called Barbara Was shot out of a cannon Breaking her shoulder in the landing She's an I feel like we've moved beyond warning signs Marsh Your son is actively smoking crack in front of you Is not a warning sign he's on drugs

He's just on drugs Well these I learned being shot out of a cannon by watching you Well these subtle warning signs weren't he did. And in 1986, the wheel landed on a guy called Michael Lush from Southampton and a stunt called Hangham

High. And it involves Michael Lush being chained up and put into a box and then hoisted 120 foot into the air by a crane. And then all this entirely untrained member of the public had to do was slip his chains, shut up, break free of the box and then bungee jump to safety

before the box exploded. Exploded. And now we cut live to the last few kilometers of the long walk here on BBC 3. Hey, Marsh, Marsh, it's like your whole island just-led paint chips. I mean this with love, but like, what the fuck, yeah? It was a great time. It was a great time. Well, Michael Lush was due to perform the stunt live on television on the 15th of November

1986. So on the 13th, he arrived at the site to rehearse the stunt the first time, making sure to first steady his nerves. By drinking two Pints of beer. Sure. At first, I thought the wheel of death was just happening live

and some guy would get dragged out of this too up in some spots. Okay, this makes a bit more sense, but like not that much more. Yeah, this makes less sense to me because these guys have time to consider other options. Yeah, right.

Yeah. So after his two pints, his two medicinal pints, he was raised into the air in the box. So fucking British, it's redoubt. ridiculous right there. Some people actually drive better after two.

Because you relax. Well, he gets raised at the air in the box for his first rehearsal with all the equipment without an instructor in the box with him. Come on. With no safety mat below him for the first time in this rehearsal here. First time he's doing it,

no safety mat below him. And he was told to jump. And he jumped with his bungee cord attached to his back and the other end not attached to anything. Oh my God. What? Because the clip, the single one single clip that was meant to secure the bungee jump to the crane had come loose.

And as a result, he fell to his death. And in subsequent investigations, stunt experts explained they, even as experts, would never do the stunt without three separate cords and vastly more secure clips. So the BBC was prosecuted for health and safety breaches and was fined the maximum amount, which was £2,000. I have to admit, I thought before the box explodes was going to factor. more heavily into this tragedy. It's a right. Check of the exploding parks for you. Okay, everybody.

We still got two days left to get this right before go live. Let's grab another idiot. Gary, remember to clip the thing to another thing next time. All right. Take two and 15. So I do what? Don't worry about it, Gary. Great job up there. Great job.

Thank you. Unsurprisingly. Bring me a beer. Make it too. I don't watch you nervous, buddy Unsurprisingly, the subsequent episode was never aired and while Noel himself wasn't actually involved in planning or carrying out the stunt

as the host of the show he resigned immediately and the series was duly cancelled. Still, this was a low that unlike Michael Lush, Noel Edmonds was swiftly able to bounce back from. Oh, my God. All right, well, we need to take a quick break But when we come back, I'm sure no Edmonds will be ready to kill again.

Mr. Edmonds, thanks for coming in. Oh, always happy to pop in, boss. I believe you know Smithers, the head of legal. Yeah, good to see you, Smithers. You are the bane of my existence. So we wanted to talk you about this new segment that you're calling the wheel of legally actionable endangerments. Yep, okay, so I know what you're thinking, but I've been assured,

we can get that many scorpions on short noise. Not our concern. Sorry, not our primary concern. Oh, no? So I want to start positive. I want to thank you for changing the name from The Wheel of War Crimes of the Hague didn't think to outlaw. You're welcome.

But legal still has some concerns about the items on the wheel itself. Oh, sure. Always open to new ideas, guys. Yeah. So, like, this spot that reads the ant puzzle, remind me what that one is. Right, yeah. So the contestant tries to complete a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle while being slowly

eaten alive by ant. Yeah, that one might be a problem. Right, but we just, we'd cut them here and there throughout the program. We're not going to just watch them do the whole puzzle, don't worry. That's not our issue. Okay, well, how about this one here where they have to carve the key out of a dying man,

but before a reverse bear trap splits their head in half? Right, but if we don't do that one, someone else will. Sure, sure. I'm worried about you getting the reputation as the most dangerously negligent game show host for the cult following to ever get a bunch of people killed in television history. Yeah, I think I'm safe. Okay. And we're back when we last left off.

Marsh made us joke about not one but two terrible human tragedies played out for ratings. So what are we joking about next, man? Well, in 1991, Noel Edmunds debuted what would go on to become one of the most popular light and entertainment shows in all of British history, Noel's house party. So the conceit was that it's being broadcast live from Noel's elaborate mansion based in the fictional village of Creeckley Bottom and its nearby neighbors, gangly end and nether scratching. And those are place names that are only slightly more ridiculous than the majority of real British towns. I recognize that. I did not know they weren't real until I read that last part. Weirdly, also the names of the petafel rings that

were operating in the next door studio. So on the show, Noel would basically rush around a theater set in front of a live studio audience, with random celebrities from British TV turning up at the front door to play various characters from the local village, some of whom at various points would get covered in Gunge. There was a lot of Gunge. Gunge was like an inexplicably large part of TV culture in the 1990s. Okay. I looked up Gungg.

It's not British slang for CUM, like we're all thinking. If we're being honest, we all thought it was come. It's British for Game Show slime. like gap. Oh. Just when I thought I'd figured out the appeal of this show.

So this is Nickelodeon, but with, well, actually the same amount of sex. Oh, Jesus. Right. Exactly. At its peak,

the show was watched by 15 million people. That's more than a quarter of the population at the time. And in typical Edmund style, it includes some genuinely innovative and groundbreaking elements to it.

So by innovative, do you mean homicidal again? I have never wanted a new word that combines homicide and suicide until this episode, but like, we really need that word. And if you're homicidal again, you can't also be innovative. Like, you've done it. I will say, this was an incredibly popular show.

So popular, it had some spin-off board games. Nicola has just messaged me right now to say, you have to mention that she obviously had the null house party board game. And we still have it in our house somewhere because, Nick has made. She insisted that I say that right now. I just got a message on WhatsApp. Bunchy jokes thing is just like one rubber band. It's stupid.

It doesn't even make any sense. So this show was genuinely innovative, genuinely groundbreaking. For example, there were segments where audience members would be invited to tell stories to a panel of three judges who then vote on whether they thought the story was true or a lie. And that was just a throwaway segment format, which the BBC decades later turned in the hugely popular panel show, would I lie to you? Well, years later, they found the easiest way to stomp them was just to put an immigrant in the story. Oh my God.

Fall for it every time. And then there was a segment called NTV, where at the click of his fingers, Noel would cut to a live feed from the home of an unsuspecting viewer, who then Noel would be able to have a conversation with. And the setup for this was elaborate, involved, like, friends or a family member of the viewer

getting that viewer out of their house for a few hours, while a TV crew snuck in and rigged the living room with secret cameras and microphones. That can't be right. And they even retuned the television so that it picked up a different version of BBC that was actually being fed directly just to them from a disguised van outside the house. What?

Okay, that's just, you know, illegal spying. I think, though, I would be immune to that prank. Like, my secret feed would be 99% naked cheese over the sink. Like, or worse. I don't think they'd ever be able to cut in for national television into my house. Meanwhile, there's this sort of like BBC cheesophile into tall dudes in a van outside he plays trying to explain to boss. is boss why he's going to need a fourth extension on this one.

Have you heard of a grotto for cheese? Grados. I'm told it's better. Well, all of this setup allowed Noel to cut to the people live on air without them having any idea that they were being broadcast at that moment to one in four of the UK population. What? Jesus. Watching their own personal version of the BBC that didn't cut to them.

And then while that's happening, their TV then cuts to the real live feed and they see themselves for the first time on. television and Noel talks them directly and they talk back. And it was almost certainly a massive privacy violation, especially given the BBC's pretty lax attitude to public safety when it came to Noel Edmund's vehicles. But it was also essentially basically live video conferencing more than a decade before Skype. And now let's go to our new live segment. What do men do when they think they're alone? And we're going to jail again. God damn. God damn it. That wasn't even the only pretty...

It's just, cheese! That wasn't even the only pretty innovative hidden camera element to the show, because it was the prank section of the show, the gotcha segment it was called, which took the old kind of candid camera pitch of creating an elaborate prank in order to film someone's exasperate reaction, but added a Noel Edmund's twist in that the victim of the prank each week was a well-known celebrity who had no idea they were being prank. Each week they'd make a whole thing of the sleb coming on the show,

often having no idea what event of the previous year was actually a filmed, prank. That was about to be broadcast to the nation. And then they'd sit there in a special chair and watching real time as that was broadcast to the nation. And it was basically punked, but like 12 years before Ashton Coucher came along. Okay, the Prince Andrew episode did not make a tear. It didn't work. I also came out seven years after TV's blueprints and practical jokes, an NBC show with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon that was doing that shit back in the 80s. Noah seems hurt. Yeah, well, watch us.

Innovative is a big word here. Let's just apply it where it belongs. And incidentally, one of the celebrities that got caught out by Edmonds was none other than Uri Geller. Really? Set up in a room where, like, basically the conceit was he's in this room and then things would like randomly fall off shelves and the shelves would randomly collapse as if moved by psychic powers

to see whether Geller would be freaked out by it or claim credit or not. But because Geller had no idea that the room was rigged entirely with hidden cameras, when someone came in, he went to demonstrate his, his famous spoon bending ability. To what he thought was just like a member of the public. And so he ducked direct, like out of the way to do the spoon bending, but he ducked directly into the line of sight of one of the hidden cameras. And he very obviously bent the spoon with two hands right in front of the camera before

standing up to present. Yeah. And that still wasn't the thing that broke his reputation as a fraud. No, not at all. If you're a liar who does whatever, telekinesis, you have to just like take the credit when shit falls off shelves. You've got to be ready. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is a side piece. But John Ronson writes about Uri Geller, about how they both were on, both in a dressing room, like a makeup room,

before a TV show. John Ronson had been in first, noticed that the clock had stopped. Then Geller came in. And as a piece of like small talk, John Ronson said to Uri, the clock of theirs stopped. And without dropping a beat,

Uri went, I did that straight away. Not even thinking about it. Oh, started again. Well, it was actually the gotcha segment that gave birth to Noel Edmund's most popular, most irritating and absolutely most unhinged contribution to British culture. It was one of his favourite ways to prank celebrities

was to invite them to be part of a fake kids TV show with an actor playing this bizarre-looking main character in a Gordian horrible cheap suit, and then throughout the course of filming with this character, everything would go wrong. The set would fall apart, the actor would fall over, all sorts of things would fuck up. And then the celebrity is very clearly struggling

to suppress their most prima donna-ish instincts throughout. They pull the mask off and it's three kids in there from the studio next door trying to escape. And sorry to, well, actually, everything that you say here, Marsh, but he probably stole the bizarre-looking main character in a gaudy and horrible cheap suit thing from Alf, which came out in 1986. We'll come back to that in a moment, actually. We will come back to that one. Maybe learn to fight a war without red jackets, idiots. But the children's character, that children's character, was a nightmareish combination. of bright pink with yellow spots

and a giant roundhead and a terrifyingly fixed grin and a lexicon that consisted of a single word blobby, often repeated blobby, blobby, blobby.

And so the 1990s sensation Mr. Blobby was introduced to a nation. Okay, he looks a lot like John Fetterman. He does. I got to be honest. Even more so,

he sounds a lot like John Fetterman. Sure. And blob, blahby, blahby, blahy, yeah. Dude, so British, he's got a spotted dick. Now, obviously, Mr. Blobby was meant to be a pastiche of kids TV. I think it was Barney the dinosaur in particular, being this big, multicolored thing in a set that's kind of based around a sort of world like that.

But he was designed to be as ridiculous as possible, so that you'd have to be a fool to believe that this was a real TV character. But for reasons that this nation has never fully reckoned with, he became a cultural phenomenon. He spilled out of the gotcha segment at the shore to become like a mainstay. of the rest of the show. Then he started spilling onto just other BBC shows.

He got his own cartoon show. He got a widely extensive range of merchandise. You couldn't move for blobby stuff. Blobby was everywhere. Okay, yeah. People are volunteering to jump out of exploding boxes and get set on fire. And here we're feigning surprise.

There were out of ways to satirize the stupid shit people unironically laughing dolls on to. Yeah, that's good. Yep. Remember the Hawk Tua girl? Remember that? At least she had two words.

This is just one word. This is just Blobby. In 1993, he even released his own signal, Mr. Blobby, and it is widely considered to be one of the worst songs ever recorded. It went platinum. It sold more than 600,000 copies. Jesus Christ. It landed them the coveted Christmas number one slot in the music chart.

So I watched the video that you linked, and it reminded me that we actually covered this in episode 22, list of music considered the worst, and I recall Eli liked this song. He did. And while he's not here to defend himself, Heath writes all his best jokes. I do. It's worth pointing out that this blobby mania generated an awful lot of money. But two of his creators were Mike Leger and Charlie Adams, who were employees at the

time, and were therefore not allowed to cash in on the IP. Whereas the remaining rights holder, Noel Edmonds, was left to make the majority of the profit from the use of the character via his production company, unique group, which retained a 50% stake in all merchandising rights. Lobby made Noel Edmonds at least $5 million in the mid-1990s alone. Okay, right now, he'd have like a crypto coin and a front row seat at Trump's inauguration. It's ridiculous. Well, Edmonds was obviously keen to cash in.

And there's a blobby coin. I looked it up. There's a blobby coin. Yeah, there is legitimately a blobby coin. He called him crinkly bottom groats is what it was. genuinely. He had his own currency. It was crinkly bottom groats is what he did. I was barely here.

I'm out, guys. This is it. I don't want to do it anymore. There's a blobby crypto also that's worth like 5, 10,000ths of a penny right now. Is it worth more than Hawk to a coin or no? So yeah, Edmonds was keen to cash in on this as much as possible. So he launched his own theme park. It was officially called Crinkly Bottom,

but it was referred to almost exclusively as Blobbyland. It launched first in 1994 in Somerset and it included various attractions actually based around other random bits of British TV like noddy and Doctor Who but the centrepiece was absolutely Mr Blobby's house which they'd named Dunn Blobbing and it was relatively successful for a while

though it was massively unpopular with local residents because they could hear on a loop the Mr Blobby theme tune coming out of it and they also could hear the doorbell of Dun Blobbin anytime someone pressed it and the doorbell was just Mr. Blubby blubby, blubby, blubby. This is another generation's

chicken jockey moment, isn't it? I think that's what it is. But just think about what a goldmite really is when your creative property centered around, this is some lazily made bullshit that was viral, though, right? You got to walk around thinking you accidentally saved God's favorite beetle or some shit.

It explains a lot about where he went after that, actually. where his money is exactly well the thing is somehow an entire theme park centered around a novelty character that was specifically designed to be as irritating as possible didn't have the kind of long-term appeal

that could sustain a profitable business and in 1996 Edmonds pulled out of plans to expand the park to feature a full replica of Knowles House Party's mansion and Brinkley Bottom closed in 1997 and the various blobby attractions there were left to rot

and actually several years later urban explorers managed to break into the wrecked park and captured some of the most cursed images ever could be different. So creepy. Okay. I watched some of this Urbex video. My favorite part is the extremely British graffiti is inside this abandoned thing.

Somebody spray painted, Noel Edmonds, stop pretending deal or no deal is more than it is. That was a graffiti. graffiti taught. That was a graffiti. As was Mr. Blubby touched me here in one of the Jesus,

Chris. Yeah. The whole thing is crazy. It looks like, like the care bears survived Chernobyl somehow and it's many years later. They got massacred by zombies during the, uh, the post-apocalypse.

Yeah. It looks like what an ayahuasca trip would feel like. Yes. When I see this. Now, inexplicably, this would not be the only failed Mr. Blubby theme park.

Oh, also in 19. 1994, Norle-Lebman signed a deal with Lancaster City Council to open a second location in Morecambe in the North West, promising at least 250,000 visitors in the first three months, and therefore promising to help revive the local economy. And the council bought this. So they agreed to let him take over local parkland, and they invested £300,000 of local council money in the scheme, even rebranding a local railway station in its honour. And that park opened in July 1994 and it had 5,000 visitors in the first two days, and it had 50,000 by the end of August.

Oh, tell me this story ends when an even more banal theme park was started by their rivals in Les Camp. But the problem was, it wasn't a particularly interesting theme park to visit. It was really expensive to get into, and then food and drink inside was really pricey, but then there was nothing to do when you were in there. There was a train. Just like Britain. Yeah. No, because there was a train, so it's not like Britain.

This train worked, it actually moved to it was nothing like Britain. But yeah, there was a train that moved around a bit, and then the high point was once an hour, an aerobics instructor knocked on the door of Mr. Blobby's house and asked him to come out and do some aerobics, at which point Mr. Blobby, in what was alleged to be quite a cheap knockoff of the suit, in fact, would reply, blobby, blobby, blobby, and then come out and do some aerobics for a bit. And at the end of that, he'd go back into his house in the hour. I feel like if I had a personal trainer, this could be me. I could be blobby. This feels exactly like what going to SeaWorld was like for me as an adult. There's just

like a strong scent of fish and sadness hanging in the British air. I mean, that's Markham generally, to be perfectly clear. But yeah, 13 weeks after it opened, Blobbyland, Markham closed. And it left the local council with nothing but broken promises and a huge bill. Remember, this was more than 20 years before Ken Ham's arc encounter. He wasn't of it. And the council sued Edmonds and they sued his production company. They accused them of misrepresentation and negligence. And in return, Edmund sued back and won. Because the council had actually breached their contract when they were running the theme park. They took all the money out rather than sharing it initially. So the council had to then pay all Edmund's costs plus a further

95,000 pounds in damages for an already impoverished area whose economy was on its ass. The whole affair was nicknamed Blobbygate. And in the end, it cost the local taxpayers of Morecambe, 2.6 million pounds. Like I said, that was an area that was already hugely struggling. The effects of that cost burden are still being felt by Morecam today. I got in touch. A friend of mine is now the MP for Morecam. And I message her about it.

And all I got back was, oh, my God, the scars are still. being felt. That's what I'm up in the sitting. Wow. Okay. I found a photo of Mr. Blabby after apparently getting beat to death and strung up on a rail. I'm guessing this is in Morcom and I'm guessing it's your friend. Yeah, he is a figure of hate in Morcom, absolutely. I love that they thought you said people would like this dumb shit was a tort. And honestly, there's just so much more I could say about Noel Edmund's bizarre career and even stranger life. Like how he used to drive around in a London. and black cab, not to pick up passengers,

but so we could exploit a loophole in traffic laws that allow him to drive in the bus lane. Nice. Or that in 2004, he founded a charity called the Renewable Energy Foundation in order to campaign against wind farms, because he didn't have how he looked. Or that in 2014, he appeared on Newsnight

because he was threatening to buy the entirety of the BBC, partly in order to stop them spending so much money on Welsh language programming. Wow. Or the fact that he wrote a, self-help book called Positively Happy, in which he advised people to ditch their partners if they were too negative in their outlook, just dump them outright. Or the fact that he thinks he's followed around by two, like, orbs of light, the size of melons that contained the souls of his parents at all time whizzing around him, or the fact that he routinely refers to himself in the third person. Okay, fuck you. Third person bothers me the most out of all. I don't know why, but it does. So, you know, in like,

a little kid has an imaginary friend and you have to play along and not like step on them or bump into them or whatever. I want to do the opposite with Noel Edmund. Just walk behind him with like a Gallagher hammer and smash invisible melons

and then just like throw melon pulp. Yeah, you should do that. You should also exclusively when you're around him, talk about yourself in the second person. It's a very kind of recipe instruction. He's really confusing. I could also mention that in 2017,

he presented a show called Cheap Cheap. cheap, which was an hour-long game show slash sitcom, where contestants from the public had to pick which of three similar products, like, for example, washing detergent, which of these three was the cheapest, while of cast of actors around them played out a sitcom about a grocery store. And it was a show that was described by The Guardian as, quote, like watching a weird piece of existential Lithuanian amateur community theatre. The worst idea in the world stretched out for all eternity.

And now we're going to cut to an Eli sketch about Factor, guys. Well, in his defense, I see how the guy who's like, ugliest piece of shit character made him millions got the impression he couldn't miss, right? I walked into a performance artist event once at the cultural center in Chicago, and in one performance, a woman shaved her head in an elevator and cried, it was less weird than what you just described by a lot. I mean, strapping, I'm going to carry on in 2016, no less. have been set up a pet counselling helpline

where you could put your dog or cat on the phone to Noel Edmonds and Noel Edmonds would offer the words of affirmation and positivity. That's sweet. Also in 2016, he started promoting an electromagnetic pulse device that was like a pad that you lay on.

It cost 2,300 pounds that he claimed could slow aging, reduce pain and cure cancer. And then he tweeted to a man with kidney cancer, quote, scientific fact, disease is caused by negative energy.

Is it possible your real health is caused by your negative attitude? Wow. Unquote. He also claims his own prostate cancer diagnosis in 2013 was caused by negative energy, but he's been able to destroy the prostate cancer using sound waves and electron magnetism. Who is that? Bush? What's going on here? I could go into way more stuff, but instead...

That electromagnetic device, Aaron Rogers has one and uses it today, because it's very day. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The dolphin fuck noise guy also is into that. So there's so much I could say about all that. But instead, I'm going to finish with the show that put him back on the map after he left the BBC in 1999. And he was struggling for TV work. He'd hit Rock Bottom, which he was also getting heavily into cosmic ordering and the secret and manifestation. And so we asked the Cosmos for a new work challenge.

And in 2005, he was announced as the UK host of the UK version of Deal or No Deal. Okay. Cosmos kind of put him on hold for about six years. A lot of negative thinking during those years. But in characteristic Edmund style, deal or no deal in the UK involved an innovative twist. Whereas in other countries, the boxes or the briefcases were,

that had random amounts of money in, they were presented by glamorous models or celebrities. In the UK, each box was held by a potential future contestant. The next contestant came from among the people holding the box. Each other was just a random draw, and then one of those contestants would be picked to compete, Pete, which meant that all of the contestants for basically the entire show, the entire series, had to spend all of the time filming that series together, sequestered in a hotel for weeks

at a time. And while they were there, their behavior would be monitored by production staff, who then had to produce daily reports to hand to Noel Edmonds about what the contestants had been up to. No, you have to read the report slower or I'm never going to come. You have to read it slower. We're over in Britain. Hey, at no point Hey, at no point was there anyone in charge just like saying no to things? The BBC needs a no on staff. Like, we actually need two.

In case like one of them calls in sick and this guy just gets a random show on a Wednesday. Yeah, it's amazing. So exactly like the cult that built up around the UK deal or no deal. It's documented in a fantastic article by John Ronson in The Guardian in 2006. He visited the filming one of the series and he witnessed how. Edmund's spiritual beliefs loomed so heavily over the show that it created this culty vibe where the contestants were then desperate to please Noel Edmunds. And how the contestants then developed their own rituals.

Some even claim to have telepathic abilities to determine which box to pick. Some were using numerological systems to try to divine the exact right sequence of boxes. And then people would go into forensic detail, people in the audience. So people at home would go into forensic detail analyzing the odd turns of phrase that Noel Edmonds would use when he's on the phone to the banker or the strange presentation style that he had, or the random symbols he'd regularly draw on his hands ahead of recordings and he'd flash through the camera in random moments. And they would like analyze all this in case it held a clue to which box to open.

But they're random. They're all random. It made it extremely weird viewing. Okay. So my brother-in-law used to watch that show and root for specific briefcases. And this guy made it even weirder. Holy shit. That might be the dumbest thing. He ruined it for a brief case. Team 17?

He totally, he totally would just stand there and going like, I told you it was 17? Why don't they pick 17? Honestly, the thing is, if you watch the UK version, the contestants are doing that, because they're all so in on it, they're sort of like, I believe in you, I believe in you, got the positive energy.

And they're all praying the positive energy into the box in front of them. It's so fucking weird. It's so culty. And that John, John Ronson, article includes a detail that I absolutely had to include. I couldn't possibly leave it out because Edmonds tells him about how with cosmic ordering, all you have to do is ask the cosmos for something positive by writing it on a piece of paper that you then throw out into the world.

You literally throw the piece of paper out in the world. And that's how he got the deal and or deal game. It just floats back down next to you. No. God damn. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It's a scrunch next time. I'll remember the scrunch next time. I throw it out and ends up blowing back. I get a paper cut in my eye. I'm just like, okay. fucking all right world Shasmos you're a prankster you got me again you got me it covers like a windshield

and a truck runs over Tom God damn it I did say I wanted a different spine well getting the deal on a deal gig wasn't the only thing the Cosmos responded to of Edmund's wishes and I cannot improve on John Ronson's telling of this. So here it is verbatim from that Guardian article.

I wrote to the cosmos that I'd like to meet a woman who'll make me laugh and make me happy, Noel tells me. I wrote that I'd like a relationship that's not too heavy with an attractive lady and I'd like her to walk into my life at the end of September 2005. And she did. There's a short silence. She wasn't the person who sold her story to the Sunday people back in July, was she? I ask, there's another silence. Yes, says Noel. So that turned out to be not so good, I saying. Maybe if you'd written down, I want to meet someone by the end of September and I don't want her selling her story to the Sunday people. Real monkeys plot scenario, bud.

No, you can't do that, no interrupts, because that's a negative. The cosmos will accept only positive orders. Positive orders. The word I probably missed out was trustworthy. I got a paper cut on my eye. This is ridiculous. Okay, I love, I think my favorite part is that Ronson marched him twice with the aggressive pausing thing.

Oh, gosh, yeah, yes, absolutely. Is that just like a special British power? Because I associate it with you the most, of course, but it's like a Ronson thing, like Louis Theroux does it too, is like this very key moment with the pause. It's a key thing. technique of the types of interviews. Like, I'm not there with them. But we all,

we do interviews in a similar sort of space, at least, a similar vein of like, I'm trying to talk to a crazy person and let them not realize that I know that they're crazy. It's part of the carrying on, right? I'm paying out some noose rope for you. Well, the last that I heard, Noel Edmonds had taken up residence in New Zealand,

but I genuinely wouldn't bet against him return into cultural relevance with something genuinely innovative, but unquestionably and deeply odd. And if you had to summarize what you learned in what sentence? What would... The bar for British BBC stars used to be so low

that killed a guy in the 1980s wouldn't hold you back from a five decades long television. There you go. And are you ready for the quits? Well, I put out to the cosmos that I wanted to be tested. And now here we are. So yes.

All right, there you go. I was going to spin this wheel. I'm just going to pause for six years and then I will give you the first question. All right, Marsh. Which is the following is the biggest failure by a guy who wears a bowtie. A, Mr. Blobby bankrupts an entire British town.

B. Pee-Wee Herman goes to the movies and comes too loud or however you got caught. C. Bill Nye dignifies the existence of Ken Ham by doing a debate with him. Or D. Tucker Carlson lies about Dominion voting and costs Fox News 7 million dollars. It has to be D because nothing will ever bring me more joy. in that moment. Every time you mention it, it's like, yeah,

that was good. That was good. All done. All right, Marsh. Blobby has been bought and co-opted into a new mascot role.

What is it? A, chess.com bought him. He's blobby Fisher. B. An S&M club. He's blobby Flay. C.

Make America Healthy Again campaign. Bought him and he is Blobby Kennedy or D. Pro wrestling superstar Lobby PIN. Okay. I've got to go see because it's a ridiculous figure with a stupid voice and it's Mr. Blobby, so it fits perfectly.

It looks just like Blobby. All right, Marsh, I used to lament that America seemingly has no real culture of its own. But then, A, I remember British culture. B, I'm good. Okay. We can combine him, get a little blobby-lobby going on. Lobby Lobby. some racist popsicle sticks or whatever the fuck they sell of it?

What if that became our hobby and we had a hobby blobby lobby? I'm going to see secret answer to see I will not sit here and be insulted about my culture from an American actually. Absolutely not. That is correct. The winner is obviously Marsh. Okay, well, seen as I'm going to be sticking around next week, how about you do the essay next week, Noah? All right. Well, for Heath, Tom, Cecil, Marshall, and usually, Eli.

I'm Noah thanking you for hanging out with us today. We're going to be back next week. And by then, I'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear more from Martian Cecil on the No Rogan podcast. Breaks over, they're torturing themselves for you yet again. The least you can do is listen. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citationpod or leave a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes.

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