Loremen Podcast - Loremen S7Ep35 - Essex and Wirral Tales with Scarred For Life

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Smugglers! Murderers! Funereal fakers! The loreboys present tales of nautical naughtiness and photogenic phantoms from the hometowns of Andy and Dave, hosts of the Scarred For Life podcast. Plus, one or two mentions of the things that scared/scarred us all as children. Find the Scarred For Life Podcast here! Get tickets to Alasdair on tour - ⁠⁠⁠⁠Immediately!⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawman, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from Days of Yore, with me, Alashter King. And me, James Shakespeare. And James and I are joined by none other than Andy and Dave of the Scard for Life podcast. Yes, you know it. I don't know it's obvious. I pronounce it like the number four there to make it cool. Oh, yes. Scard for life. Scard for Life. Yes, I like it.

Life with a Y. Lifey. We were delighted to meet the scar, lads. Scar boys? Scarbrose? Yeah, I think so. It's now sounding more like a musical movement. With some tales from Lee on C and The Spooky Whirl. The spooky Wirl. Alistair.

James. I'm doing a slight stage whisper, but it more sounds like I've got a sore throat. Do you also have a sore throat, James? It's not too bad at the middle. minute. It's easing off, is it? It's been soarer. But I'm a magic... You know what? I think we're getting into cold season. Oh, we are.

The temperature has dropped. It's been hot for a financial quarter and now it's gotten cold in England. But James, we didn't come here to have two middle-aged men griping about things. No. No. Good Lord, no. What if we could up those numbers? We could

make it double that I'm out. Whoa, no way. That would be impossible. Because we've got two guests. No. Two guests from one podcast. It's Andy Bush and Dave Lawrence from the Scard for Life podcast. Welcome, Andy and Dave. How's it going? Welcome. I hope you don't mind me categorizing you as middle-aged men. I mean, this is quite a low-resolution video feed I've got here. I should have said Sprightly youths. I am delighted to be classed as middle-aged. A few weeks ago, one of our guests were saying, oh, well, I'm older than you, and he wasn't. I didn't say a word. I thought, keep you stum, keep stum, don't say word, it'll be fine. about that one, that's for sure. I did, absolutely. So that's a young Dave you're listening to here. And we also have young Andy.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Oh, yeah, it's a real pleasure. I realize I just said welcome when you, when you welcome me. I've welcomed back at you. It's a little bit arrogant, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit sort of claiming space, I think. My turf. You own all audio mediums, of course. Well, I don't know if listeners must know the Scarred for Life podcast.

If they don't, they should. He'll be extraordinary if a listener of our podcast was unaware of Scar for Life. Yes, it would be right up their alleys. It's very much square. Get it up your alleys, listener. It's square in the... It's the Venn diagram that's the circle that is 1970s hauntology for me. It does encompass other things, public information films, but really, I mean, you got,

if I said the Reader's Digest Book of Folklore Miss and Legends, you would be all over that, surely. We've actually had somebody pick a story from that. Yes. Yes, we have. In fact, I'm a big fan and listener of The Scarful Life Podcasts, and I think that episode, that might have, one of your episodes, I can't remember which had an American person on it, and their name escapes me right now,

but they recommended the American version of the Reader's Digest, Book of Folklore Myths and Legends of Great Britain. What? Yes, it's impossible from it. Can I just record a spit take? Does they work in an audio medium? What? Yes.

The American version of the Reader's Digest Book of Folklore Myths and Legends have never heard of such a thing. It's problematic. I'll be honest. That is believable. It's 1970s treatment of the native peoples of the American lands is frown on a bull at the best, I'd say. But yeah, there's... I wonder who the American was. Was it Grady Hendrix?

It's been Grady Hendricks, yeah. I think it possibly was. Great, any relation to Jimmy? He plays guitar left-handed, but that's quite a bit. Did he set fire to all his readers' digested encyclopedias at the end of every gig? At the Isle of White Festival, yeah. Do you know what impressed me most about Grady Hendricks? We actually, because of the time difference, he was at breakfast,

and he was sitting in front of a big window, and he could see all the skyscrapers in New York behind him, and he was drinking gin for breakfast. I just thought, he's living the life there, isn't he? He was like a Chinzano advert. if you went to the cinema in the 80s, you know, they're kind of like lifestyle

of the rich and famous. He had like a, I don't know where he was in America, but it had like a, Dave's right, it was like a penthouse suite looking out over this city skyline. It was pretty amazing, wasn't it?

Yeah. More Joan Collins than Leonard Rossiter in that, I'd say, yes. It sounds like somewhere Colombo would catch a murderer from your description, I think.

Yes. Yes. If the murder was done in a New York penthouse. Well, I suppose, yeah, Columbia, right. Of course, Colombo was a Los Angeles detective. Why would he be in New York? never happen. I'm sure they did once when he went on holiday or something. I think it's when

we go to London. He's going to take Mrs. Colombo somewhere. Well, they did go on a ferry, James. Oh, of course. And they scrupulously avoided showing Mrs. Colombo, but other people on the boat mentioned seeing her. So she is real. She is real. Fun fact, do you know who played Mrs. Colombo in the spin-off series? Oh, Captain Janeway. Captain Janeway, yeah, Kate McRoe. I've forgotten. Kate Mulgrew. Kate Mulgree. She's not, because obviously there's a huge age difference, which will be problematic, except that Mrs. Columbo is not canon. She's not really Colombo's wife. As in the TV show, Mrs. Colombo. In the TV show, Mrs. Colombo, she's her wife. But in Colombo, she's not. She could be a niece. It's not canon. A lying niece.

How did they not show her on the ferry, though? Was it like... She's always just left, Austin Powers. He's always asking, you know, someone working on the boat to send a message to her because she's at the movies or at the spa, you know. We were talking about this, weirdly enough, at the weekend, about famous characters in sitcoms and TV shows that never appear on camera. Oh, yeah. You know, like, I think, Armand, is it in...

Oh, no, I can't think of... There's Maris in Frasier and... Yes. After there he's wife. Minder, yes, her indoors from Minder. No, who's... Mr. Wilson, is it next door in Boy Meets World? Big Bang.

Who is the voice of Night Rider? Oh no, Mr. Feeney is the voice of Night Rider in Boy Meets World. I think you're confusing it with Tooltime, the neighbour from Home Improvement. But you do see his eyes, but that's all you see. Yes. I think the Big Bang theory, I think one of the, is it one of their parts? I've never seen any of the characters from the Big Bang theory.

Yeah, you're not listening to anything. That's for sure. But yeah, there's one character in that that never appears. You just hear them screaming from the other room. So there's a rich vein. of that kind of stuff, isn't there? And you must, they must be aware of the secret fifth housemate from the young ones. Yes, yes.

Of course. I've seen the photos. It's quite disturbing. I've never heard that. It's not like that series of Masterchief where they had to cut someone out because they said something terrible. It's more like the ghost from three men and a baby. Oh no.

Except they did it on purpose. And there's just, in many scenes, there's just another person sitting there. just some other other long-haired student who's just there. Like the breakdancing gorilla from that internet thing like two years ago. The breakdancing gorilla, but you don't notice. I notice that straight away. I noticed that straight away. Yeah.

I was counting. I was counting. I can multitasking. I can also count basketball passes at the same time as noticing a gorilla. And also see gorillas. You're always on guerrilla alert. Absolutely. Yeah, I am.

Especially where I live. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why you didn't lose your job working as a guerrilla guard. in a zoo. That is exactly the screening for that job, but everybody else did. Yes. Well, thank you very much for joining us on Lawmen.

We've got a little bit of folklore to tell at you from your local areas. And then ultimately you're going to judge that folklore. And then that'll just be the end of the episode. And then that would have all had a lovely time. Yeah. Usually there should have been a third thing, shouldn't there? Well, the third thing will be the friends we make along the way, I assume. The gorilla that's breakdancing through the,

background right now. Wow, that's incredible. I hadn't even noticed that. Well, I have a little something. So, Andy, you are from an area of the world that I like to call, and a lot of people like to call Essex. Yes, the county of Essex. We live in Lee-on-Cee in Essex. Yeah, I've got a few other names for it, but carry on. Now, Lee-on-C, I think we have touched on Lee-on-C. Oh, yes, yes. Before with Amy Matthews. We have. We had a few which, stories from there. Yeah, it's got to look witty.

Also, there was a, was it a standing stone that's now a co-op? Or was it just some sort, it was some sort of, haunted. I'm trying to remember the episode. I don't see how a standing stone

could turn into a co-op. Hey, that's magic. Wow. No, I think it's, no, it's a haunted pool and they drained it and it's a co-op there now. So, yeah.

Wow. Yes. That sounds more like it. That would explain, I've been in that co-op and that would explain a few things. There was definitely like a flood there in like the late 1800s or something. They've got a stone that shows you how high up the water level went many, many moons ago. Not in the co-op.

Yeah, next to the cash point. It was pre-co-op. Pre-co-op. PC. But because it's wanted they save a bunch on the freezer section, they don't actually need to power it. Well, weird enough, their freezers are always breaking down. So maybe it's spectral intervention or something. I'm not too sure.

That's what they tend to do. But most of the stories that I've had are not so supernatural. So your spines do not need to be worried about getting tingled right now. You don't need to apply any deep heat. Okay. You're going to be fine. This is mostly smuggler's tales. Great.

That's good. Evidently, it was, well, it is obviously, as you would imagine, from the name, Leon C, coastal. Yeah. Most smugglers do seem to work near the sea. I've noticed that without being an expert in the practice. There's, you know what? Colombo.

All of them. Not because round my way, which is some of the furthest places away from the sea you can get, they're still, they still smuggle. Do they? Is there? And what are they smuggling there? Ah, just wool. Wool and gloves.

Sorry, and wool and woolen gloves. This isn't the present day? No. Oh, gosh. No, sorry. I'm sorry, I was so confused, stop the gloves. The black market for wool is bottomed down, unfortunately.

Do people have particularly cold hands where you come from? I don't, I guess so. There is a town that's famous for its glove making, and I say that very carefully. So did they smuggle the wool out then rather than in? Apparently a lot of wool was smuggled out. Wow. That's also, that's another Leoncy connection.

In a classical sense, did they smuggle it out by attaching it to the bottom of Greek soldiers? What to pretend them to be sheep? Maybe they just put it on sheep. Yeah, I'm doing the opposite of the thing from the Odyssey. I'm sure it was a very clever remark. I've not seen it. Spoilers. It's not a poem, James.

It's not a film. Oh, right. I'm definitely not bothering now. They don't even do that bit in the film, apparently. Get on with a story. You know what I think about poems. I'm checking out already, because you didn't appreciate my classical reference. Maybe they could smuggle them out on thinner sheet.

That makes sense. But yeah, just put a load of knitting around a shorn sheep. Is that your idea? Yes, exactly right. Good Hardman reference there as well. Were they just robbing wool from the glove factory? It's basically just robbing the factory of wool. So their glows were substandard after that?

Or is it just they were robbing? Potentially. Maybe that's where the string back came in as a sort of, yeah, because they just had to. Well, were they walking out of the factory with much fatter gloves than they actually needed and then unpicking them at home and having spare wool. Fill in their arms with wool, the arms of their jackets. White aphros? Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Could easily happen. My friend Steph's granddad used to work in the Dyson factory and he stole her piece by piece at Dyson Hoover and assembled it over like three or four weeks. He smuggled a different piece out each day and then basically assembled it for us. So that still happens in the present day, I think. That's brilliant. I like the way you named her.

So that can actually be prosecuted. as a crime. I think we can work out who that was. If we are naming and shaving many years ago, as a knock on the door when my dad

answered the door and there was a guy there and he said, could you hide 20 boxes of frozen peas for me please? Because he worked at the local factory

that did Bachelors peas. I actually think of dried peas, not frozen. And we had to we hid, so this is us in a misdryry

to my dad. We hid all these boxes of dried peas and the guy who robbed the dry peas was actually the security chief of the factory. This thing goes right the way to the security chief. It does, yeah.

It goes right the way up to the top, yeah. Wow. As I'm sure I've told you before, James, the only smuggling when I grew up was there was Bob Smith's coaches and I'm not sure it's smuggling exactly, but people would get on the bus and just buy duty-free cigarettes in those big boxes and then just get off the bus from the driver. So he was sort of selling cheap cigarettes on the side. I'm sure they must have been smuggled, but that was how they reached the happy smokers

of the North East. So I knew of happy smokers of the Northwest, and in order to get your contraband cigarillos, you had to have a special key ring. You would have been gifted a special key ring that you flashed to the news agent and you'd be able to get a packet of specials. Wow, it's like being in the Illuminati of Fags.

Exactly. Wow. It's, yeah, Sigluminati. Yeah, that's all I go is Sigluminati. I could see the word form in your head and I could see you go, that's not good enough. That's not really wordplay. I was trying to think of something with the lighter

because it feels like there should be something within the Luminati. Yes, the Luminati and the light of light. You're right, there is something there. But then I'm really like a lighter is more of a, it's more of a flame than a light. And Illuminati is light. and I saw the thesaurus of my mind slammed shut. That is fair enough.

Fortunately, I do have a different book, which is Essex Folktales by Jan. Or maybe Jan Williams. She looks like a Jan, if I'm honest, from the back. And she tells... Let's just go with Yanit to be so. Janice. Oh, no, that is a name, isn't it?

Probably. Yeah. Almost everything is. So, first of all, there was a very short tale of a lady smuggler from Leon C, Elizabeth Little, Lizzie Little, from the 1840s. And she was coming in on a boat. She was with her smuggling friends. Smuggle buddies.

Smuggled buddies. The smuggling gang. And they had their contraband. And they realized that they'd left it a bit late and the tide was against them. And they were coming in at the wrong angle that they were. They normally didn't want to come in on, apparently. I'm not that Ophay with smuggling. Are you an autical man, James?

Not 100%. Your mastery of the language is incredible. Coming at the wrong angle, lads. That's not the angle we normally come in on. They came in at the wrong boat angle. See, as a landliver, I would never have known that is the real deal. They had been late leaving Ostend. And they, you.

Yeah, so the time tide was against them. There was a Coast Guard cutter waiting for them, and they managed to get past it, but there was enduring this commotion. I don't know where the shots were fired or just because they were running around on a ship under pressure, but Bob Elizabeth's brother, Bob Little, injured his arm. And they pulled into the shallow waters of Shoebury Point.

Right. and Barling Creek. I don't know if those are real place names. I cycled round Barling Creek at the weekend. Wow. Well, there you go. If you're a smuggler, that would have been a very bad idea because apparently when the tide goes out,

they're going to get stranded with Bob and all the stuff on board. So what they do, she sends off William to Mr. Beneworth, the local undertaker, to get a horse and carriage. Is he also a little? I guess he might be a little Willie, yeah Billy Little Billy Little went to Mr Benewath and basically ultimately

they end up putting Bob who's alive but injured in a coffin put in the contraband over the rest of the hearse and Elizabeth sits up front in a black shawl sobbing into a handkerchief and they decide to basically hearse the contraband across town because no one would stop a funeral

procession. Is that the idea? Yes. You'd have to be a monster. As they're nearing Eden Lodge, a customs officer is standing there. Oh no. Some devilish excisement. He's going to get that coffin right open. Everyone freezes, but the customs officer

raises his hat and lowers his eyes as a mark of respect. And the undertaker clutches his own handkerchief to his face. To mask his giggles. Don't giggle, though. It's not a giggling moment. I know. Well, you You sometimes might laugh at a funeral

inappropriately. Yeah, I suppose. Okay, yeah, so you'd just have to go out there. It was just classic funeral banter. You'd have to explain it that way. That's just so funeral. Why are you laughing there? Funeral, just funeral bans.

Funeral bans. All right, fine. So, but ultimately they managed to, they managed to hearse the guy through. They do the classic coffin, um, double take and they get him, they save him, and everything's fine and they managed to get their French brandies.

sold on the black market. So it's a happy ending. Nice and nice. Yeah, it's a happy story in many ways, isn't it? For the smugglers. There's a less happy story, though, here. This is from Lee House. This tale is called The Horse with No Ears.

So in 1751, Lee House had been abandoned for some time, and a mystery man takes it over. Is Lee House a person, or is it a location? Lee House is a house. It's French for The House, I think. Is it? Oh, wow. which apparently was

stood high above the busy harbour of Leoncy. Okay. But yeah, by 1751 it was in disrepair. And Nancy Smith, the bar made from the Crooked Billet. Well, that pub's still there. That pub is still there. Wow. Yeah, it's a great pub.

She was the barmaid there and she told the other people in the bar that she saw this mystery man who had bought the house. And they asked what sort of fellow he was. And she said, well, I tell you, he's far from handsome. He's built just like a prize bulldog with a coarse red face and a squint. I tell you he had a fine pair of pistols in his belt.

And as for his horse, I've never seen a more peculiar creature. A strong brown mare, well set on good legs, but no ears. Oh, my God. And everyone in the bar laughs at the idea of a horse with no ears. But then Thomas Orkwright looked a little thoughtful, and he remembered that he'd seen a man riding through Hadley, if that's a place, at lightning speed,

splashed up to his wig in mud, and he looked very much like this man, except the horse, that horse had ears. Right, it must be a different guy then. It must be a different guy, of course. But, yes. Is this going to turn out to be like an otter on stilts or something?

He's got rid of the horse. You've heard this. No, basically, so they do up the house. This mystery man with the face, who's built like a prize bulldog with a coarse red face and a squint. He does up Lee House and he employs all the local people.

His name's Mr. Craddock and, well, Nancy's proved right that this guy's there. No one seems to sort of give her the kudos that the horse did have no ears after all and they were probably wrong to laugh at her. So Craddick does it all up and he pays all the men quite well

but he refuses to give them beer and they get a bit annoyed about this and he also gets annoyed he says beer you want beer well if you're thirsty of varlets there's the pond for you lap the water like the lazy dogs you are wow and then he and then he swore at them

oh it's like you you you blamming varlets right i'll tell you a story i once had a horse who drank beer and his ears came off so just let that be a little lesson to you. They popped clean off. But this slightly backfired on him because the men

rechristened the house Lapwater Hall and if he ever heard that he would absolutely flip his lid. His rage knew no bounds. He said, they shan't give my house the name for nothing. By God, if anyone drinks ought but water here, I'll take it back with a carving knife.

Blimey. Yeah. And he would sort of disappear for days of a time He was quite rich and no one really knew why because, as it says, he wasn't a smuggler. But then one night, one night late in winter, Nancy Smith, whose mother is working at the hall. She's gone up to visit her mother there.

Nancy's gone to go visit her mother well after midnight and they hear a bang, bang, bang and bang on the door and the dogs are all restless in the yard and they open the door and it's, it's, it's, Craddock, the master, he says, quick, give me your apron woman. And he wraps it tightly around his arm, which is bleeding profusely. And he says, put out the lights and bolt the door after me when I go out. And he just disappears off.

And then there's more banging on the door. And it says, opening them, and a voice shouts, open in the name of the king. And they let him in. It's a bunch of officers. They're looking for a highwayman. They're looking for Cutler Lynch, the highwayman. Have you seen him? And Nancy says, what's he?

he looked like. And the guy says, well, he's far from handsome. He's built like a prize bulldog with a coarse red face and a squint. And he has a fine pair of pistols in his belt. And Nancy says, and his horse has no ears. And the men look to him and like, I don't know what you're on about.

Horses got great ears. And so they think, oh, must be after it must be a different person. Has he cut his horse's ears off by way of disguise? Is that what you're telling me? Or does he have a pair of fake ears that he puts on his earless horse during attacks. Thought that one of the ways he might have been become so rich because he would find different ways of saving money and he'd managed to buy a horse without ears, which I guess would

you'd get a discount for. Yeah, some sort of, yeah, cheap, cheap earless horse. Yeah. But they go out to the pond and they see this horse drinking at the water and there's a hat floating there and it says the men took a rake and hauled it in and they saw the body. of a dead highwayman staring up at them. So it was the Lord, he was the highwayman. He'd hidden in the reeds

until the loss of blood had made him faint and he drowned. And there was something else in the water. It was a pair of horse's ears joined by a strap fitted with a catch to hold to the head stall of a horse. So hold on, it is the thing I said a second ago where he had a pair of fake ears. What?

He's got a horse of fake ears. I said that as a ridiculous joke. No, that's the And that's the end of the story I don't know if there's a moral Can I just say If you're built like a bulldog You've got a red face and the squid

Surely the least recognisable thing Like you're going to be your horse's ears Why disguise your horse? He's the most recognisable person there Yeah, it says Cutler the Highwayman could not afford to stand out So he put false ears on his horse Wow, that is

What a crazy story? That is not a disguise putting fake ears on a horse. It's terrible. I think that's not a big enough disguise. Nowhere near a big enough disguise. Yeah. I see if you could be like, no, I'm not him. Look, my horse has no ears.

People will just go, well, maybe it's a different horse. We don't care. We don't care about the horse. We weren't going to arrest the horse as an accessory. In fact, it says that the young officer led the mayor to the water and let her drink. There you go. And so, yeah, the horse gets away, Scott free. Could he not have gone it?

Could you not have gone the whole hog? His horse had a moustache or something like that. He was trying to disguise it completely, yeah. Glasses or something, that would have to wear, wouldn't it? Not without his ear, he couldn't wear glasses, that'd be silly. A full beard. And tin legs. Sorry, you say wanted, but have you noticed that my horse is wearing these glasses

with a sort of nose and a groucher-marked mustache? So explain that. How could I be a highwayman on such a ridiculous horse? Well, John, given all the, you know, there's a lot of bad witch stuff, isn't there? And for which you finder generally stuff in Essex. So I'd say that those two stories of, you know, kind of a time wasteer and then some fun knock about smuggling. It's quite a light relief, actually. I kind of like that.

Yeah, exactly. Feel good. It's the feel good story for 2026. Yeah, no innocent women were murdered on a pyre in that story. Yep. Not a one. Yeah, just someone's mucking around. Northern tail now, James.

Or have you got more smugglers in your pouch? That is the extent of my Leoncy knowledge. I'm going to go and try and find those locations. I'm going to go on a little thing. Lee House. Lee House and the pond or whatever they were talking about. That'd be good to go and find that as well. Maybe you'll find some spooky fake ears.

Yeah, and they say that on a windy night, you can still air a horse going, what? are you saying? Giddy what? So Dave, I am informed that you are from Bebbington on the Whirl, is that correct? That is correct, yes. Now, the Whirl, now part of Merseyside, formerly part of Cheshire, stop me if I get anything wrong. No, that's right so far.

I went looking for something spooky down your way. And what I found is actually on the opposite side of the Whirl. I hope that's not too far. far away. No, that'll be fine. It's the river river river, sorry. It's a peninsula. It's between the river, Mersey and the River Dee. Ah. It's a, it's, it sort of projects out into, I guess, is that the Irish sea?

It must be. Yes, it is. It's basically, it's just, if you look where Liverpool is, it's the sort of sticky out bit next to it. This is the river mercy goes down one side, the close to Liverpool, and the other side between Whirl and Wales, there's the River D. You know what? I've actually been to the Whirl, I realise now. Yeah, I've been to the Whirl. I've been to... I can't remember the name. Is Fuzzacli there or is that in Liverpool?

That's in Liverpool. Right, no. I'm not been to the Whirl. You should go. You should come. Some nice places in the Whirl. Well, come with me now, James, actually, as we travel from Bebbington, across the middle of the Whirl, past Thingwall,

which I mentioned just because it's a great name. Thing. Thing. Are I pronouncing that? Thingwall, yeah. It's actually, it's based on a Viking word for... marshalling ground. It's Ting Vodagh.

Is it? Yes, it's Viking. It sounds like if George R. R. Martin was just being really vague on the details. Yeah. It's just like a fantasy writer who couldn't be bothered really to do it properly. It's where Vikings gather together to go raid and pillage and stuff. Today we write for Thing Wall. Yeah, it's just a general wall.

It's by, my nan, it's what my nan calls it. It's near Duda Street. That's from the novel Song of Ice and stuff. And what's name? Yeah. So we've passed thing wall, which again, mentioned just because it's a good name. And we've reached, and I'm going to struggle with the pronunciation of this one, because I want to say Thirst Aston, but I think it's Thirstestan.

It's Thirsten, yeah. The stress is on the first syllable. I think it's on its way to becoming Thurston. You know, the way like Brighton got shortened to Brighton. I think in a few years that's going to be Thurston. You've said the same word twice. It's like Jack got shortened to John. Brighton was like Bright Helmstone.

Okay. And now I became Brighton. Oh, sorry, I just assumed we're all podcasters. I assume that's the kind of information we all have. So Thursterston is on the west side of the, or the south-west-west side of the Whirl. It's a dwindling village. It's not what it used to be, but it's very pretty. It has lovely red sandstone buildings and a lovely church.

And there's Thurston Hill, Thurston Hall, and, of course, the nearby dungeon gorge. again I'll mention just because it's cool name That's a very cool name On top of Thurston Hill You've got Thor's Stone Do you know Thor's Stone Dave? Have you been up there? I don't know the particular stuff

I have been on top of Thurston Hill because it's a common place that people go for walks It's miles and miles of course You've surely been to the stone Because it's at the very top I've been there yet Is that what Fursterston's going to be named?

Great point James And the answer is no But everyone Yeah so the idea is that Thursterston must take its name from Thor's Stone. And a stutter, yeah. But Thurstestestern, the origin of it, and my source here, my source now is Kenneth Burnley's book, Portrait of Wirrell.

Oh, that's a good one that is. Oh, yeah, classic. It's a great holiday read. It is if he had Thurtersterson. He writes, romantic tales, should I do the accent? Do I dare? Yeah. He writes, romantic tales have been woven around.

this isolated slap because he's not from the Whirl. Some say that it was used by the Danes as a sacrificial altar in honour of their God, Thor. It's even been suggested that the name Thursterston is derived from Thor's Stone Town. But however romantic this notion, it seems probable the correct derivation is the ton of farmstead of one Thorstein or Torstein. So Thursterston is Torstein's farm. Is he not named after the stone? Yes, James. This is...

Right. Thank you for saying that, James, because I immediately looked up what Thorstein mean, and it means Thorstein. So, yeah, basically, James, you've blown this case wide open. Okay. I think probably a guy called Torstein, Torstein, Thorstein, whatever, had a farm there,

and probably the big rock on the top of the hill has somehow got named after the place rather than the other way around. but yeah. You'd be fuming, wouldn't you? If that was your farm and, you know, you put all the hard work in and then it gets like misnamed not after you. It hanged after Thor who's already got loads of stuff.

Yes. So Thor Stone is, there's some, basically what's happened, I think, is that the red stone has been quarried away for all the buildings, leaving a big sort of flat stone that looks like you could imagine the Viking sacrificed people on it and it's red from the blood of sacrifices. but actually it's just the remnants of quarrying. So that's not very supernatural. But down in Thursterston Hall, things are different.

Oh. Oh, let's take a turn. Oh, oh, we got a ghost. Prolong swing of war there by Alastair for dramatic effect. Yeah, I'm just building tension. So Thursterston Hall is one of those time-traveling manor houses where each bit of the house comes from a different century and they just add bits on.

and it ends up a sort of weird carbuncle. And the current building dates back to the 14th century at least, but it's older than that. According to a perambulation of the Hundred of Whirl by Harold Edgar Young. Not a snappyer title, is it? It's one of those ones where the full title is like a perambulation of the Hundred of Whirl,

taking in various interesting towns and small villages, Catholic altars. So I've shortened that for sake of concision. After the conquest, Norman. First and all was granted to Robert de Roddalen, Robert de Rodolent, or Robert de Rodelon, I don't know, which is quite a disgusting surname, Rodolent. It makes me think of mice. And in his house, and I think for many years after, there was a nearly life-size wooden figure of a knight in armour, according to legend representing the wolf Hugh Lupus, who was famous for defamation.

beating the Welsh, who had quite unreasonably objected to being conquered. And he had really put them in their place. And Robert de Rodelain had been Hugh Lupus's general in chief. So I don't, have any of you ever felt like erecting a statue to your old boss in your house? It seems an extremely odd thing to do to me. I think if I were to, I would make the sort of passive-aggressive move of making it slightly smaller than life size. Yeah. This is exactly what he's not.

He probably leant on it with one elbow on the head. You see that, that's old Hula Wolf. Yeah. So I've got a couple of mysteries pertaining to it. One of them is not supernatural. I'll very quickly tell you about the mystery nursing home, which I uncovered. The mystery nursing home is an expose published in the magazine John Bull, January 14th, 1928. and it seems a Mr. Arthur Carson.

Carson? Carson. Cars on. Cars on. Now just edit it to whichever one sounds most normal. Mr. Arthur Carson was pulling what appears to be a scam or scamola. He kept telling people that he was going to turn Thurston Hall into a nursing home. And if they invested in the scheme, they might be able to get a job there, which doesn't sound like a good way to get a job. because normally they should give you money.

But a number of people gave him money hoping that they would end up with a directorship or more than one person thought she was going to become the matron of the nursing home. And of course, eventually Arthur Carsten vanished with all of the money. And it turned out he'd done a similar scam previously, trying to book artists for a concert.

But the artists had to pay 20 pounds to do the audition, I think. Wow. And then it turned out there wasn't a concert. And I was reading that and thinking, I would never fall for something like that. And then I remembered I've done the Edinburgh Fringe many times. So you've got to be on the alert, kids. Do be careful for these. These seems like surprisingly sort of modern scams where you get people,

lots of people, crowdfunding your lifestyle. Because apparently he had a very well-appointed flat in Liverpool that he would, you know, receive people in his sort of beautiful accommodations and everyone assumed he was doing quite well. Oh. Well. That's not so much a mystery as it is a scam. Just a scam or scam. The next one's definitely really a mystery and it's got a ghost in it.

This is the haunting of First Esteson Hall. And my source here is Stephen Tucker's, or Steve, as I call him, because I feel like we're quite close now. My source is Stephen Tucker's paranormal Merseyside. And it is, it seems like it's going to be your basic bedtime haunting, where someone wakes up and sees a ghost. But bear with me, there is a twist. At some point in the 19th century, the painter, Reginald Easton, came to stay at

Thurston Hall, which at that time belonged to the Cobb family. And he slept in what they called the arch room, but he did not sleep soundly, gentlemen. No, he woke up in the night to see a classic grey lady standing at the foot of his bed, and she was wringing her hands and looking about as if she felt terribly guilty about something. And he, of course, be thought to himself, one of the other guests must have come into the wrong room. So he tried to speak to the lady. And this may startle you. She vanished.

Oh my word. Yeah. She was actually a ghost. That wasn't a real old lady. Oh, no. Can you believe that? Wow. So far, so a dream.

Yes. This is where it diverges from your regular. I woke up and saw someone at the foot of my bed ghost stories. The next day, he told his hosts about Listen, the Cobbs related the story of the Grey Lady, who was a Whitmore. That's the family that had the house before the Cobbs. And the story goes that 600 years earlier, she strangled the young heir to the house so that she would inherit. And later confessed in her deathbed, or in some versions of the story, she stabbed the air and was executed for it.

And is now in the afterlife, forever searching for the knife, which was the evidence that convicted her. Oh, blarmy. Or maybe the ringing of her hands was she was just like warming up for a strangling. I cannot wait to strangle this young man. I'm going to strangle him so hard. Ooh, I love a good strangling, she said. So we don't know it's open to interpretation. Wow, that's quite sinister, isn't it, really?

And so the next night, he went to bed with his sketchbook. According to Tucker, so to speak. With typical Victorian courtesy towards the fairer sex, when she appeared, he inquired politely if he might possibly have her permission to make a sketch of her. Apparently the answer was no because she immediately vanished into thin air. Oh, daunted. He continued with this plan anyway and built up a portrait of her throughout his stay,

adding to it with each night's brief manifestation. So he drew a portrait of the ghost. And when it was finished, he showed it to the Cobbs, who of course went, oh well, we must show you the portrait of Miss Whitmore that you've never seen. And they showed him the portrait of Miss Whitmore. And of course it looks, identical to the drawing he had produced. And that is where most accounts of this story end. Cool. Let's go to the scores, then. Yeah. In the picture, did she have her hat?

Was she sort of in strangling mode? Strangling hands ready. Well, I wish I could show you that picture, James. Yes. I almost could, because this is the extraordinary thing. Most versions of the story end there, because most of them were written before 2006. thankfully Stephen Tucker's book is from 2012.

In 2006, quite incredibly, that sketch apparently was listed on eBay. Someone found, I'm putting that in quote marks in my voice, someone found and sold the drawing from this story. Apparently, I find it a little bit hard to believe, but maybe it's true. This is what Steve and Tucker has to say. the drawing was a cart to visit, a small mounted photograph or image used as a collectible visiting card in the past, and showed a hideous old hag dressed in a white gown, stretching her hands out at the bottom of the bed, exactly as you said there, James. She was doing strangled hands, in prime strangling mode.

Which is like the anti-jazz hand. Yeah, the last, the problem is, you see, you think it's jazz, and you start to loosen up and get too loose, which only makes strangling you easier. That's how it works. It's all psychological. Underneath it was a handwritten note reading Photo of a Ghost seen by 23 people at Firsterston Hall, Cheshire, as the Whirl then was,

and painted by W. Which is a mistake, Eastern R.A. in the haunted room. Amazingly, a copy of Reginald Easton's portrait of the Grey Lady had showed up at last. Wow. So, yeah, it is a mystery, I think, because there's a few things that are odd about that,

like getting his initial wrong, W. Easton, describing it as a photo of a ghost that was painted by someone. That would violate eBay's description rules, I think, as well. Yeah, because it's not a photo of a ghost,

but it's a photo of a painting, but is it a painting or is it a drawing? But then someone might easily make that mistake while, if it were a real thing that had stayed in the family, you might reasonably say photo of a painting when you meant drawing and you might reasonably forget the first initial

of, maybe they had a speech, impediment and they called him wedginald. He was wedgild. He was wedginaud, and they just put a w. It's not impossible. Unfortunately, whoever listed that and whoever bought it has not put it online because as far as I can tell, it's vanished into the digital ether, never to be seen again. Could you not be just somebody doing fake ghost portraits on eBay? Yes, it could be Dave, yeah. In fact, that seems extremely likely that someone is searching for old ghost stories and then adding and selling, creating and selling fake details. But if so, it's a really good scam. You're going to be telling me my non-fundable tokens are fungible in a minute. Paranormal, go rough, rogue traders with Dave that.

But the good thing is, James, once you've got an NFT of a ghost, you can get rid of that ghost. And that only makes the NFT more valuable than an actual sighting of a ghost. So, shall we pass judgment on these stories we've told? Yes, I think we'd better. Let's go with supernatural first because we didn't have a lot of ghosts. We should probably get this out of the way. But my one was probably real. There was a real ghost, so that's got to count for something.

There was a photograph of a drawing of an idea of a ghost. That's worth at least a four, isn't it? It's got to be at least a four. That's incredibly generous stuff. I was expecting to have to negotiate up, but I'm happy to just accept that. I ask no further questions. In which case, I will add that. if you were the customs officer in the first of my two tales,

and you later in the day, after having sort of, you know, nodded your hat and lowered your eyes to the hearse, you then saw that smuggler rise up out of his coffin. You might get a scare if you weren't really thinking it through properly. I think I've seen a ghost. Yeah. That's a bang on Essex accent. Thank you.

I think I've seen a ghost. I genuinely feel like I'm in Leon C. I'm from Essex. Well, the customs. Yeah, they're not, they move around. It's like the Met.

They come from everywhere. The top, the top customs officers could be from any part of the country. Even, I'm going to say, Norwich, or whatever I was doing there.

So, I mean, Dave, you're going to give it a four? I think, well, my story actually had a ghost in it, so, I mean, if we are rating for ghosts, then it has a ghost in it,

so that seems to be. And it was a real ghost. And a real ghost. Can't tell me that wasn't real. No, it sounded absolutely genuine. There was no room for doubt there whatsoever, was there? So yeah, four, I think I'm happy with a four for that. Yes.

Do I grade it as well? Well, I think we want a collective score from both of you. I'll go to dose four. You could maybe up that to a five, Andy. That would be acceptable. Four, okay. Yeah, we'll go four. I think that's fair enough.

All right. It delivered in spades in the world of the paranormal. The second category we have for you is naming. And may I remind you that we're all promoted us with Thingwall. Thing Wall? Actually, my favourite name from this whole thing was actually in Andy's story, the fact that one of the smugglers who spent a lot of his time on boats was called Bob. So that's like nominative determinism right there.

So I think that's worth of three at least. I was like if that went past without acknowledgement. Or Little. Yes, Bob Little. Yes. And Little Willie. Don't forget his possible brother. Mr. Beneworth, the local undertaker.

That's too frivolous a name, I think, for an undertaker, isn't it? It is a very fun name. It suggests benevolence, doesn't it? It suggests sort of Latin fun, Benny, goodness. And we had Mr. Craddock, who by night was known as Cutler Lynch. And I've Googles him. Doubtler-threatening, isn't it? I don't think he existed.

Because a cutler makes knives and forks. And, right. Or maybe just knives. So that's kind of deadly, isn't it? And Lynch obviously is deadly. That's a, that's a fake name, isn't it? Yeah, that's a made up name. It's a fake name.

It's a false name. It's not a real name like Thingwall, the kind of thing name that you'd give to an actual place. Fake is, yes. But he was a highwayman, so he would be using a real name for your highwayman business. Would you just be, you know? No. You want to something scary like Dick Turpin.

Yeah, exactly. We had Thursterston And Thorstein and Thorstein and Thor's Stone As well as Dungeon Gorge over in my tail That's pretty good I do think it sounds like the world's from Middle Earth So I think that's worth a few points as well Yeah

And yeah in The Lord of the Rings films No Scousers No no Merseyside accent in the whole film As I'll be fair We are not scousers on the wheel I beg your party At best we are plastic scousers if not wolves.

I get corrected by Dave about this on a weekly basis on Scar for Life, so don't worry. Is it Worrelian? Warrillian? It's Warralion, I think they pronounce it. Warrillian. So there's a Doctor Who buddy there, definitely, surely. I went to Wiro Grammar School and the magazine for that is called

the old Warralian, so that's how you pronounce it. Lovely. Another great name. Yeah. Yeah. Just our name points on. Yeah, I think it's top end, isn't it? I think the naming of the name quality in these stories are better than the paranormal.

So are we saying five, Dave? I think five, absolutely five. Oh, fantastic. Top end. Yes. Do these points turn into anything for you guys? Like, do you get tokens or credits? Prizes.

Do you get prizes? Points make prizes, certainly. It exceeded in turning the points into prizes. League table. Some of our lovely listeners do collate. them into a spreadsheet and we have done nothing with that data. Okay. What I have done is I tried to be as inconsistent as possible in the score section of the podcast

in order to make life hard for them, to punish them, really, for wasting their time on that spreadsheet. They do need to work out how to put the infinity sign on the spreadsheet more than once. Lots of unusual numbers. Yes. Things that aren't really numbers sometimes. Just ideas. Okay. Okay. Next category, and this one perhaps applies more to my story that does to James. I'm going to go with, and this is some top wordplay, so go with me on this.

Okay. Do I need a pen and paper? Yeah, you might need to actually work this out. I'm going to show your workings. It's like a maths exam. I'm going to go with looking hard for knife, like the podcast Scard for Life and the Scarred for Life book. So this one is something of an homage. But of course, you'll remember the ghost. At least one version of my story was looking hard for a knife. And maybe also, Thor's Stone, the idea that it's a sacrificial stone would lead people who visited it to look hard for a knife that, of course, isn't there because it's not really a sacrificial stone. No offence, I feel like you've sacrificed the quality of the category for the pub. Wow.

You've overreached. Wow. Ah, ah, hubris. Eubris. I saw it all glittering before me, and I grasped. for it. But we'll work with it. I suspect there's far more knives in Andy's story

because they're all smuggler, so they probably had to do like boat things with knives, didn't you? They possibly had knives to... Highway Man and story of... It would have been dark and they would have had the lights off so they would have been looking hard

for the knives. Exactly, yeah. Sorry, do you think a horse's ears just fall off? That's a great point. So, wait, I assume the horse was just born without ears as just a thing that happened with that horse.

You reckon he cut his own horse's ears off in order to disguise it from a normal horse. If it gets me more points. Possibly. That's the kind of thing a disgusting made-up man would do. Possibly the horse just galloped very quickly under a low bridge. Exactly, yeah. There's that explanation.

There's so many reasons. It might just have put its head too quickly through a sort of rubber ring like you were using a swimming baths. Yeah, it might be... That is exactly where I was going. It was too keen to get its photo taken on the seafront. Of course, and this being Leon's... see.

Yeah. To be the explanation. That is a great point. Or just played a lot of rugby. Do any people's ears go a bit weird with rugby as well? Yeah, the cauliflower. The cauliflower is.

All my prefect at school, cauliflower ears and broken nose is because he just shows the rugby team to be the prefects because they were the tough guys. They were tough kids in school so they were police everybody else and everyone that single one

and looked like they've been punched in the face repeatedly. Rugby's terrified the life out of me at school. I'll be honest with you. It's absolutely, it used to be terrified of it. The idea of going into the scrum, like, can you just expose the back of your neck?

Around the time when you've learned about spines, just expose, try and slam that bit into someone else. When we did it in school, I had a fixed brace, and we got the gum guards, you know, the sort of presumably the cheapest gum guards available,

which you soak in hot water and then mould to your teeth, but they don't work if you're wearing a brace. Oh. And so I couldn't, get it to go in and the tear tage it was just like look alice i just try not to get the ball avoid like there was a moment of like we both know rugby's not going to be for you it doesn't matter if you're wearing a gun guard or not you're getting anywhere near it we didn't even get

gum you got gum you got gum guard i never got a gum guard it reminds me of mud uh and did you have like a box of 1970s lost property that you had to wear if you'd forgotten his shirt yeah it was The Space Hopper, Doctor Who annual. I think I might be slightly younger because by the time I was in school, it was the same 1970s box of underwear and three-e-unct. But it was somehow about four or five years older. I think it was always the choice of doing it in your pants or the kit box. And I think if I'd, I fortunately never did forget, but if I had of, I would have opted for pant. Yeah, probably the 1970s flyaway collared.

Rugby shirt. Would that have been tighty whitties, James, or boxers at that time? I think there would have been some boxer, boxer briefs. Yeah,

fine, respectful. Oh, no, definitely, boxer briefs, yeah, I remember. Boxer briefs?

Okay. Wait a minute, are those tight? What are the really baggy ones? Just boxers, that has a little button. That's just boxer shorts. Okay,

standard boxer. It was a wall-to-wall wife once when I was in school, so I don't, you know, it's just... They didn't have uniforms in the grammar school.

No, no, it was a tough school. I didn't realize because I was thinking oh we're all seems a little bit posher than Liverpool but from what I'm hearing with your prefect all with cauliflower's ears and not all the students just wearing their pants it sounds horrible

I think Liverpool when I was in school there was quite a lot of riots and so forth so we did have riots so that's something oh great wow that is pretty posh yeah the police cars weren't burning on the corner nothing it's good if you do fancy checking the world

or Liverpool out further. Do make sure you check out the notes in the end. It's a lovely part of the world, are I? I think I did see,

I can't credit the YouTube channel. Thor's Stone Hill. I think there's a YouTube channel where they were exploring it. I was trying to find out how to pronounce it. It's the tallest part

of the Whirl. It's something like over 90 meters of sea level. It's like, that's rubbish, actually. That's not high at all. That's quite low down.

But I guess it's I guess it's quite a flat peninsula. It is. I mean, from Thurterson. I mean, you can actually see Wales. You can see the great expanse of Wales. And you've got mountains in Wales. You can see Mo Vama.

You can see Mo Vama. Wow. From Thurston, yeah. He left Liverpool last year, didn't he? A little fumble joke there for a lot. Very nice. Start with a football joke. I'm not understanding.

Okay. So we need a score. We need to press you for a score there. Otherwise the podcast just keeps going forever. For the one that sounds like the name of your podcast. Very slightly, yes. Are we still on mine? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeez, I thought we'd finished. I think, so. I think... The category was something about knives. Yeah. Do you know, I think there's a lot of knives in these stories, I think five, because there's a lot of knives is. That's very generous. That's very, you're giving yourself no headroom for if James comes up with a better category, for the final category, but I'm very happy with that.

It's a five. It's a five. I'm taking that. I'm hopping on it like I would hop on an earless horse. Or an eared space horse. Topper. Yes. Maybe that.

Anyway, so final category is the six-finger discount. This is a play on the five-finger discount being theft. Mm-hmm. And because we were talking about those homespun drawings of people with six fingers. Very nice. And maybe we're having a little joke about people from rural areas that aren't London. Take that. Take that.

You, you, you, you, hicks. In the format of a, an MC of a comedy night. Well, I mean, I guess a six-finger discount is bordering on a scam, and there were lots of fast ones being pulled in both of our tails. Yeah. I mean, maybe yours were slightly faster. I had a faux funeral. I had a faux funeral.

Yeah. There was a faux funeral. That was very good. There was a highwayman, which is the, I mean, that's the ultimate scam. Can't get any more scammy than that, can you? Your money or your life. Exactly.

I mean, yeah, in six easy installments. Klarna it. Yeah. And then Dave, your stories, Dave, from the North, where there's a lot of scum. Yeah, well, the guy who tried to suggest he had talent shows and he's going to run a, was it? Yeah, a dishonest Liverpoolian, he seems to have been comprehensible. Can I just say yes? You're off in the world.

I can say what I like. No, to be fair, to be fair, I've said this before on our podcast that my wife's grandfather was a bank robber. So I'm a bit of shaky ground here, but generally speaking, Liverpool. That's okay. James, you come from criminal stock as well, aren't you? Oh, big time. Jimmy Shakespeare, he's then gangster.

Yeah, absolutely. Donkey shakeshaft, he threw a policeman in the canal. That's not legal. It's definitely not legal to do that. And he escaped to Dagenham. Wow. Where presumably the police dare not go. Yeah.

That's just beyond their radar, Dagenham. Just donkey just blended right in. But yes, the scam of the horse with no ears, the fake ears on the horse. An incredibly complex scam achieves almost nothing. Exactly. Taking the ears off your horse. only to add them back on judiciously. Isn't that the purest scam there?

There's no reason for doing it. You just compel to scam people. Just for the love of the game. Yeah. Scamming for love it. Yeah. I think that's a five again, to be honest. I think, you know.

Wow, we are splashing the points around here, aren't we? Really are. Wow, what a high-scoring episode. And if you want to perform on all cylinders like we do, our lawmen energy pills can be purchased. As a subscription service, we send you them every month. But they've changed our lives. Absolutely.

Yeah. I'm thinking of removing my ears to... You don't need them. Don't need to streamline. Yeah, exactly. They show weakness, ears. Ears are for women and children, but men should be completely smooth. Earwise.

Earwise, yeah. No. What do you need them for? Glasses. Again, sign a weakness. Yeah. Don't need them. Just get a Ponsneye.

All gau. Gondon. The most masculine of all glasses. Oh, Goggles. Monaco. Monaco. Monaco. Get a monocle.

Get a double monocle. And that says to people that I've made it, I'm successful. Gravitus. It says gravitas. It says givitas. Oh, no, wait a minute. So, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I'm sure literally every one of our listeners is already well up on your podcast and books.

But would you like to plug it for maybe one person who is accidentally listening to this without ever being on the internet before? Yes. Okay. Go on Dave. Okay. So the Scarful Life books are available on Lulu. There's three of them are detailing the dark, dystopian, disturbing pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s,

and the podcast is on all good podcasting platforms where we talk to various guests about things that scarred them when they were chilled. We get them to pick three things that they were terrified of. And you've had some terrific guests recently that we were talking about before we started and may not have made it into the recording, but you've got, you've had some fantastic guests

over the course of the podcast, but I was very impressed by some of your recent guests. I was... I had a question... Again, normally. Go ahead, Jen. Well, I had a question, has there been any scars that anyone's brought on

that you hadn't heard of before that have now scarred you? Yes, we had a lady called Mary Elaine on, and she told us all these... Mary Lane Robertson. Yes, Mary Lane Robertson. Yes, she's traumatised so many people in that career. Yeah, she came...

She really has. With all these ghost stories from, is it the Orkneys? Shetland. Yes, Shetland. And some of those were absolutely terrifying. I'd never been, I never heard them before,

and they were terrifying. Yeah. She's a fascinating, amazing storyteller, and just her knowledge of some of those weird little creatures they have and the mythology and folklore of the Shetlands was just,

it was just great. I had loads of lovely comments about the episode, didn't we? Yeah, the audience really loved her. She was great. Yeah, no, she's brilliant. I think it was a couple of shows ago, one of her shows was,

was so distressing people were fainting because it featured quite a lot of fake blood, I think. And people were, it was real sort of hitchcock. Yeah. Yeah, sort of a nurse must attend every performance of this show kind of stuff. Brilliant. Oh, nice.

I think when you have a, you know, this probably feeds back into the whole Scar for Life thing, but when you hear a story like that that someone passed out because the show was so, you know, had blood in it, then I guess that whips people into a bit of a frenzy. And I think a lot of the things that we cover in the Scar for Life podcast are

why certain movies kind of pre the internet era, get these kind of reputations and almost build people up into a bit of a frenzy about it, because you've heard about the film before you manage to get a cassette of it, you know? I think my niece told me, in all seriousness, that the It Chapter 1 remake, someone had died watching it at the cinema. Wow. Yeah. And when that did the rounds. Yeah, exactly.

And it was all over the school that someone had died because the film was so scary. But really, someone must die in the cinema. and it'd be more likely for it to be, and just the most mainstream film you can think of has probably had, like Star Wars. Most people have probably died watching Star Wars. I've been at a Chris,

I think I've been at two Christingle ceremonies where someone's died. Ceremonies is too big a word, isn't it? Chris Dingle be in the church service at midnight and Christmas Eve. Is it? Yes. I sorry, that they sound like an Emmerdale character,

the way you said it. Chris Dingle. Chris Dingle. It's a good lad. Two Christingle services, rather. Yeah. Is that the one of the inexplicably stick candles into an orange? The orange, the world.

Without any explanation. The mantle that's Jesus. The cloves that are spice and a red thing, which is probably blood are some of it. The clothes are the spice girls. The clothes are the poor spice girls. They were there when our Lord was born, the spice girls. They've always been with us. I bring you scary.

I bring you posh. If you've enjoyed listening to me being baffled by footballing jokes, and you'd like to support the podcast, hop onto the Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod. And you can join us and other like-minded law folk on the lawfolk discord. And also get access to a load of bonus episodes and bits and bobs from things. It's a lot of fun in there.

It's like a medieval tavern. Mm. Few of quests. Sort of like the people who got bullied in school. Thank you very much, Sir Lawrence, for editing this app. And thank you very much to all the people that already support us via those means, the patreon.com forward slash longimpop means. Thank you.

Oh, and... Well, well, well, Alistair, I think this needs a record scratch. All right. Error, error, error, error, error. Yeah, I'm on tour of the UK. Yes. Which I'm sure the listener has never heard me say before. This is brand new information.

I'm out there now. Mm, like a sort of Batman. I am the laughter. Making jokes and that. Yeah. Kea Crumbs, come and see me. I'm coming to a place near you, maybe. The link is in the notes.

I might already have been to a place near you by the time this comes out. Get on it and get developing your time machine. Come on. That's the listener, not you, Alistair. You carry on with your time machine path. Yeah. Don't let me put you off that. No.

No spoilers for how I work out how to do it from me in the future, please. Oh, I've got my ultimate back to the future joke. I don't think I can use it now on a record scratch section. I'm going to save it for a rainy day. It'll be a waste. Okay. Okay. But just know, when I do do it, I thought of it in the past.

That's not time travel, is it? Well, it's a kind of time travel, but it's the kind we do all the time. The standard's traveling. It's just gradually moving forwards in time. Yeah. Not so impressive. No. No.

Well, I'm glad we did a record scratch for this. Unlike your show, which is on tour now. Yeah, very good. Sorry about that. I put Do Not Disturb on and I have been disturbed. What an urgent phone tone you have there, Alistair. Thank you. I have a phone.

My type of phone is called the Nothing phone. It's got a weird lens and all of the ringtones are incredibly unpleasant. That is the nicest one.