Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep12: Loremen S3 Ep12 - Sooz Kempner - The Gremlins

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

Award winning comedian Sooz Kempner (Mystery On The Rocks Podcast) joins the Loremen with stories of airborne gremlins. Not to be confused with the film Gremlins (1984), these impish critters* outfoxed RAF pilots in World War 2. As always**, the Loremen shine the searing light of scrutiny on our guest's tall tales. But will we finish recording the episode before the gremlins attack? *not to be confused with the film Critters (1986).  **not to be confused with the film Always (1989).   @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK | @SoozUK

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. In this episode, we're joined by Deputy Lawperson, Suze Kempner, telling us about the gremlins of World War II. Hello, James. Hiya, Alistair. We don't usually begin like that, but... Normally, because it's just one of us telling the other one a story, we go, I've got a story for you.

Yes. But instead of a story, you've got a person. James, look over there. There is a deputy law person in the studio. It's Suze Kempner. Hello. Hello. How are you? I've been waving for a while.

Readers. I wasn't sure if you were a ghost or something. No, no. My palate is just the time of year. Yeah, you do have a sort of dead Victorian vibe. I think I do. Yeah. I often think it's a shame that the silent movie actress look hasn't come back.

Yeah. Because they put a flat cap on me and, oh, I could be stealing a bun from a market stall. And then a title card come up saying, here, come back with that. Suze, you are a comedian and singer and former Christina Aguilera impersonator yes tribute act is what we were officially called

but we the tribute community oh right okay okay they're vicious I wondered if you actually had a genie

in the bottle and it was a double act Christina Aguilera uses the royal we and Suze is still in character yeah I'm very method

we're a little bit dirty. I was more grubby. But she did say, yeah, anyway. Were you about to demonstrate more Christina Aguilera knowledge than we'd have credited you with? Yeah, because I find out. And you called back. Yes, yeah.

I was going to say, she does say sweat dripping over our body, but in that bit she is talking about two people rather than using the wrong way. You really know the lyrics. Oh, yeah. I remember Dirty. It was on the box all the time. Yeah, because the video was quite sexy because she was wearing them chaps in a boxing ring. If I remember correctly.

That's chaps, the type of trousers. She was wearing chaps. Not gentlemen. That song, Dirty, if you actually read the lyrics, because I had to sing it a lot, obviously, as a tribute. The lyrics are basically hey let's all go down the club i've got hipster jeans on we're dancing we're a bit hot let's go in the car park it's it's literally let's but the song was called dirty and had a sexy video so it got it was really so the content is barely clean yeah i mean it said do let's do some sexy dancing in a

club and now it's reasonable and now me and my mates all in the car park it's so it does let's do some sexy dancing in a club and now it's reasonable and now me and my mates all in the car park it's basically that it's just a night out basically what i did on my friday night yeah christina aguilera yeah age 19 whereas genie in a bottle sounds like it's gonna be a nice fairy tale yeah and it's all about it's all about a pun about rubbing me the right way yeah and extina no um so you're from i think holly that's right yes what is holly known for what will listeners know holly from apart from being at the end of the train i get home uh someone that newton faulkner who i'm sure has come up in conversation when people go oh you look like newton faulkner the go, oh, you look like Newton Faulkner. The listeners should know that I look like how Newton Faulkner

looked like 15 years ago. Yeah, he's got a skinhead. Yeah, yeah, he cut his hair. He's sort of from there. I'm also about a foot taller than him. Oh, really? He's a little taller. I have no idea.

I don't know where I've got that from. You actually don't look like him, do you? I don't look like him. I've just got similar hair. Same hair. He had dreads, though. I don't have dreads. Yeah, no.

He's got hair. I've got Princess Merida hair. Who's Princess Merida hair? He's off of Tangled. Princess Merida from... No, Disney's Brave. Oh, Brave. The red, the Scottish one.

Yes. Yeah. Well, he's from there, but that's not very interesting. Is he Scottish? Oh, no, he's from Holi. Sorry. Yeah, he's from Holi. He's not from the Pixar film.

He's not from the Pixar film There's Yeah the guy from War Horse Went to my school An actor in War Horse He's also been in Merlin went to my school I'm from there But I'm sure

I'm sure in terms of folklore It is rich you said that you found one piece Of folklore related to Hawley Have you got anything local And thought no and then i typed in folklore holly into google and the only thing i could find is there's a pub called the six bells which is recently had to be shut for refurbishment because it caught on fire um maybe through crazy folklore or just because everyone in holly's awful, someone set fire to it. It was known for about 100 years to be the oldest pub in England.

It dated from 800 AD. What? And was the oldest pub in England. And then about 15 years ago, some people looked into it and it turned out. It's old, but it's from like 1450 or something it's not the oldest pub in england okay because the star in york is older than that right the six bells has nothing of interest few murders and a fire that's um so so your folklore is just that people in holy lives it's literal folklore it's it's a lie i've got to say people lying is the mainstay

of the stories we normally do right people just fudging it a little bit yeah yeah i should say aside we don't swear on the podcast but so i'll bleep it which is fine it just it always sounds like you're saying that's the problem with it so when you bleep it whatever it is you'll be like it was a little bit of a but in the bleep that's like wow they're calling noel edmunds yeah yeah okay sorry i'll take so we tried not to swear right um but you can't talk about noel edmunds or talk about it was quite a lot of noel edmunds slander in previous episodes because my mom's a dressage rider and his daughter was on the national young riders team there was a period of my childhood where i'd be at horse shows with my mum and constantly seeing Noel Edmonds supporting his daughter like a nice dad

but every time, like imagine being 11 in the mid 90s and there's Edmonds and I'd be like oh my god it's Edmonds I used to really think it was exciting every time I saw him. Did you think that you were part of a gotcha Oscar? Oh you got me again!

Yeah, well the old school fans who remember when they were called gotcha Oscars and not just gotchas. They were called gotcha Oscars. Yeah, they changed it to just gotchas after a while. And previously it was the Academy of Gotcha and Sciences. Oh, that's annoying because now we have to leave that bit in and we have to slander Edmunds in this episode as well. We haven't slandered him this time. All I said was he supported his kids and also I thought it was exciting to see him in 1996. No slander.

Because of Operation U-Tree, Edmunds just seems like a benign idiot now, doesn't he? Well, there you go. That's a compliment, Edmunds, if you're listening. The bar is now very low. And quite fit as well from, I'm a celeb. Do you think he spent three months on the lead up going, hush, I'm going to be ripped Edmonds.

We haven't once called him Noel either. Well, we don't know him. It's too personal. Yeah, exactly. Edmonds is respectful. Yeah. So while we were rooting around for folklore that relates to you, you mentioned that Hawley is near Gatwick Airport

I'm a five minute drive from Gatwick Airport so whenever I go on holiday about once every eight to ten years it's very useful yeah right next to Gatwick Airport very tangentially then what subject have you brought to the lawmen table airports

air travel you say basically uh way back stretching back over 100 years early air force pilots would talk about miniature imps gnomes or fairies which show intense interest in aviation and they cause aircraft or navigation system malfunctions and they became known as the gremlins gremlins have you ever heard of gremlins james yeah i was prepped for this episode so i googled gremlins and i know a lot about that film now so it's should we get the film out of the way because it's not the film no that's not what a gremlin is no i watched it last christmas as an adult for the first time and it is an odd odd film it is isn't it so the whole story hinges

on the dad being away at an expo on christmas eve who would have an expo and who's hosting that who's attending that the whole yeah the whole premise makes no sense. Yeah, it's true. Christmas isn't a national holiday in Chinatown, probably. I get the Chinatown people not taking it amazingly seriously. This is very much a movie for them. But it can't just be Chinese and Orthodox Jewish people at the Inventors Expo. You would notice. You'd be able to tell from the costumes if that were the case. It's an oddly paced film. But it's it's basically a horror comedy which i didn't realize um it's quite violent you

wouldn't want young kids watching it and it feels like a kid's film with violence the sort of film that et and the goonies would be put alongside and it shouldn't be oh no it's a 15 have you seen gremlins 2 the new batch no i don't think I ever have. It's mad. Oh, so it's different. Basically, Joe Dante was just allowed... Gremlins was such a big success. In fact, fun fact, the poster that everyone remembers of Gremlins

is Spike bursting through, I think, a picture of a poster. Oh, yeah. And he's holding a pen, and in crayon it says, We're back for Gremlins 1 because it was re-released because it came out of the cinema and was a bit of

a sleeper hit and then was re-released into the cinema with the we're back thing because it's not a sequel and there's nothing like about them having previously run the world or something and then coming back in but actual Gremlins was such a big success that Joe Dante was given carte blanche to make the sequel. He could do whatever he

wanted and he made this crazy satire on Trump and the media and stuff like that. The film is really weird. There's a bit where the Gremlins get into the projection booth of the film that

you're watching and cause the film to be pulled down. That's quite fun. Basically, and rip it out. And I think actually there's a slightly different version on the video where it looks like your tracking's going. And I remember being completely fooled by that. And then Hulk Hogan turns up and shouts to the gremlins. Yeah, anyway.

It's like when eight-year-olds have written stories. Yes. Yeah. Did you recognise the Town Square? Is it the same one as your favourite film, Back to the Future? Yes, it's the same set as Back to the Future. It's Hill Valley. And also, more importantly, the music video for

Why Don't You Get a Job by The Offspring. Excuse me? You know that song? Yeah. My friend's got a girlfriend and she hates Noel Edmonds. Not our words. Taking it with the offspring. The original pranksters.

What, if they're kids? They walk around the set from, it's that same hillbilly. Is it? Yeah, it's the same back lot. Because it was in Universal Studios in the California one it was part

you could go and visit it but it did actually catch fire and burn down oh god like the six bells like the six bells yes exactly like the six bells

in Horvith it used to be the oldest film set is there anything else you want to add about the film Gremlins well I don't know the research you did

do we want to talk about the Twilight Zone thing oh yeah oh I forgot about the Twilight Zone that's the first thing I thought of. When I read about where it came from, these pilots in the 20s were saying,

oh, yes, I saw these little things climbing about on my plane. I instantly recontextualised the Twilight Zone episode, the famous Shatner. He did the second one, didn't he? The Shatner and John Lithgow? Shatner and Lithgow. Yeah, Shatner's the first one and then, yeah. Was it called Terror at 20,000 Feet? Yes, and it re-contextualised it. I went, oh,

it's a very mentally disturbed ex-pilot, ex-war pilot seeing a gremlin on the plane. Wow. Is that actually the subtext of it it then that he's got like ptsd or something to me now because he's the right age to have been a you know a pilot in his late teens certainly in the first one there's a third version is that in the new redo of the

twilight zone all right but um they apparently I just read a synopsis on Wikipedia. They've probably got rid of the gremlin completely. What? So it's just a guy on a plane going, Just a satire of capitalism. It's like, I haven't got that much leg room. This food is not great. The Offspring, the band.

Yes. If all their kids joined together and formed a band, what would they call themselves? Offspring squared. Offspring cubed. So to draw that tangent upon a tangent to a close, the gremlins we're talking about are in the Royal Air Force. That's it, yeah. And it first became sort of a highly publicised thing in 1923.

A Brit pilot crashed into the sea and reported that it was caused by tiny creatures that climbed onto his plane and ruined the plane and caused a crash, which is very much someone thinking on their feet as to why my attention waned and I crashed into the sea, isn't it? One version of it that I read, he claims that the creatures crawled, and he's really handing it to us on a plate, crawled out of a beer bottle the night before and followed him to work. It's like, is he aware of the subtext? Do you reckon it all got out of hand? He went, oh, no, it was a metaphor, I was drunk.

Yeah. I was just, no, they were obviously not real. I was just, I was telling you I was literally drunk. Churchill talked about his black dog. There's people out there going, Churchill was followed around by a massive black dog. Did you know that? Wow, I never read it on any of the videos. Yeah, they don't tell you about the giant dog that stalked him, like the Hound of the Baskervilles.

People didn't get metaphors. They just didn't. But then other pilots, This got publicised in It was published in a newspaper And other pilots read it And went oh yeah And that happened to me as well Little tiny gremlins

Climbing around in my plane The weird thing is I was trying to find a source for that Because we do usually look things up in books For this podcast Books, real books Most of the versions of that story We seem to reference

The Great Gremlin Caper Which was a book published in 2001. Oh. It's the only book I've ever discovered. If you Google it, an Amazon link does not come up. Oh. So all I can find is websites that reference it. I can't find any proof that that is an actual book and not just a pamphlet.

It's like a folkloric book. Yeah. It's not real. The earliest and most authoritative source I could find about gremlins was the Handbook of Social Psychology by Kimball Young, 1946. Okay. So this was a few years after sort of the story broke America. A couple of decades, yeah. So a couple of decades after the first sighting, but a few decades after it broke America.

Right. And Kimball Young goes through the genuses of gremlins. So the types. So there's the jockey. they would ride seagulls and smash them into windows. Oh, I didn't get that far in my research, that's very exciting. It's really victim blaming I think.

Oh, another seagull has flown into my plane, how unreasonable is it? How was it dressed? It had a tiny saddle. What is it so cool? The jockeys! Of course, I don't know if that's a, you're a jockey sized person, is it a sl a... You're a jockey-sized person. Is it a slur these days to say jockey?

No. Can we still say that? You can still... You can't say anything. You can't say anything. We can't even call little people who ride seagulls jockeys anymore. No, you're fine, I think. I feel bad for doing that accent for the free speech accent.

I feel that's unfair to people from the estuary. That's classist. It is classist. I don't want to be the appropriate naming PC gone madman but there is no such thing as a seagull. They are actually all just gulls. Seabird. Oh wow. Oh just a gull. They're just gulls.

You can't say seagull now. You can't say seagull nowadays. Ornithologists get offended. You get told off for classism a lot. That's one type of gremlin. Other types of gremlin include optic who have red or green eyes that glow and they would get into the the sites for the the bombs when you're dropping your bombs and they would they would like they would make you think you'd hit you were on the target

when you weren't on the target they're a bit more like the movie gremlins well they really start to branch out quite quickly there's apparently females were called Fifinellas and babies were called Widget, which is a little bit like Gizmo. Yeah. I have to say. There were Kemlins, which were the chemist's version of Gremlins. That's a brilliant pun. Aquaticus, who was responsible for hard water and appeared in an advertising

campaign about soft water. And this has clearly reached America by this point because the names get so cute. Seepy Sam and Squeaky Squire, who got into cars and made themselves. Do you know what cars were like in the 40s? Yeah. They sounded like bed springs. Yeah.

Like a bad impression of bed springs. And the car horn, it wouldn't stop anyone doing anything except for being annoyed. Just get cheered up. That's a very good car horn you've got on you there. I can't believe you brought the car horn to the recording space. I keep one in my pocket just for podcasting opportunities.

The reason it all broke in the 40s is that Roald Dahl, popular children's author Roald Dahl, wrote a book about gremlins. I didn't know that. So on the front cover of the book it says something like First Lieutenant Roald Dahl so he was still a part of the RAF

and so he wrote based on the folklore that had grown up in the RAF he wrote a story of he invented a motivation for the gremlins which was that they lived in the forests of Scotland which were then felled to build RAF bases and so they were really angry at the RAF pilots

so it's a little bit you took away the gravestones, but you didn't remove the bodies. And in that story, then, the pilot persuades the gremlins that the Nazis are the real enemy, and they help defeat Hitler. Oh, I see. But it's a really odd one, because I had heard about that before, and my understanding was that Roald Dahl had hated that book and suppressed its republication, which is why none of us have ever heard about it or read it. And it sounds like a fun story. Yeah, it sounds like a fun story. Was it one of his kids' ones or one of his...

It was a kid's one. It was his first kid's one. It was a huge hit. In the 40s. The book, it was supposed to be a Disney movie. And it was illustrated by Disney. By Walt Disney Company not Disney

he couldn't draw wow more slurs I know I sounded a little bitter there Walt Disney couldn't draw ouch I said it

try and censor that James yeah you can't say anything anymore but oh the so called tolerant left but for some reason it didn't happen I think it might have been

the RAF claimed some kind of rights over it. I think who owns the idea of gremlins was in dispute because Goddard didn't invent them, so it never turned into a movie. Bass Brewery owns them because they came out of the beer bottle, perhaps. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the brewers. I think there is a group of brewers called Fremlins.

Really? Nobody knows where the word came from. It seems like a variation on goblin, but there's no agreed etymology. There's an old word, greem. There's the old word greem, which refers to like niggles and things. Yeah. And there's the Dutch word gremelin, I think, which means dirty or unclean. Right.

But the OED don't accept any of those. No one knows quite where it came from as a word. Gotcha. Except from the gremlins themselves. They know. That checks out. Yeah, so I think there's clearly something going on with the Roald Dahl story, because we don't know why. But I understood that he hated it.

Right. But on the now official Roald Dahl website, there's no mention of him having hated it or suppressed it. Wow. So it's like they've covered that up, which is weird that they would cover that up, but not cover up his repeated anti-Semitic statements. Well, yeah. Because that's all, it's an odd thing to try and, it's an odd thing to keep quiet about.

Yeah, because that story, I mean, I hate Roald Dahl for the anti-Semitism, which is, if you haven't read it, readers, look it up, you'll have your mind blown. He was a great children's author. I heard his little story about the gremlins just now for the first time today and I'm into it I forgive him I mean the little gremlins

who run the banks and control the media no I don't know what the book is even a real stinker like Hitler wouldn't have hated gremlins for no reason

that's a genuine roll call quote but replace gremlins with something else there was a song have you found a song. Oh. Have you found a song in your research? The gremlin song?

Yeah. Is it? A song about gremlins. Terrifying. Terrifying. How can a body as large as yours produce that sound? Such a beautiful, delicate sound. Malodious. It's pronounced mal-odeous.

A malodorous. If that noise had come out of Sue's, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But coming out of you, it's sinister. It's like I've got a tiny person trapped inside of me, singing for help. I don't know whether I should read the whole... It's not that long. Shall I read the whole song? I don't know how long it is.

When you're seven miles up in the heavens, that's a hell of a lonely spot, and it's 50 degrees below zero, which isn't exactly hot. When you're frozen blue like your Spitfire, and you're scared mosquito pink. When you're a thousand miles from nowhere, and there's nothing below but the drink,

it's then you'll see the gremlins. Green and gamboge and gold. You can tell how posh the RAF people were. Gamboge. What's that? Is that a colour? It's mustardy yellow. It's a good word. But they've gone for the alliteration.

Green and gamboge and gold. Male and female. And neuter. Oh. How woke. Very woke. Yeah. The gremlins.

We've got non-binary gremlins. Yeah. Don't tell Twitter. The right will be furious. Going down in my aeroplane going, cancel cultural sponsorship. The gremlins cancelled it. It's been too long. You can't say anything to gremlins these days.

Male and female and neuter. Gremlins both young and old. It's no good trying to dodge them. The lessons you learn on the link won't help. That didn't rhyme. No. Maybe in a posh area, it would have rhymed. The lessons you learn on the link won't help you evade the gremlin. Though you boost and you dive and you jink, the white ones will wiggle your wingtips.

Right. Okay. More anti-white. Yeah, there we go. The white ones will wiggle your wingtips. The male ones will muddle your maps. Green ones will guzzle your glycol. Females will flutter your flaps.

Am I right, guys? What's glycol? I do not know. An aeroplane thing. I assume it's a liquid you flutter your flaps. Am I right, guys? What's glycol? I do not know. An aeroplane thing. I assume it's a liquid you need for your plane. It feels like I should know what it is. Is it glycerin? It might be like a mechanical lubricant or something.

You do not want it guzzled. No. At the end of the day, you need it. Pink ones will perch on your perspex and dance pirouettes on your prop. There's a spherical middle-aged gremlin who'll spin on your stick like a top. Or it could be who'll spin on your stock like a top. Ah, it must be stick, like your gear stick. Like your gear stick.

But then I think stock is also a bit of a plane, isn't it? Okay. Like where the engine is or something. Yeah, the other version of it that I've seen. The writer can make their mind up. They'll freeze up your camera shutters. They'll bite through your aileron wires. I don't know.

They'll bend on your brake and they'll batter. They'll insert toasting forks in your eyes. Wow. Okay. My goodness. This is a different version to the version that I discovered online, which has been cleaned up and has no toasting forks in the eyes. Less violence, more PG, less 15.

Wow. So that's the, I mean, you're a singer, Suze. Would you like to sing? It sounds sort of like... I don't know what the tune was. Even though it's a posh RAF man, but it does sound like one of those old George Formby songs. Yeah. It's been on your stick like a job.

I don't like the rhyme scheme, like when there isn't one. It seems to go all over the place. Yeah. Sounds like one of my songs I have to write drunk on my podcast. We haven't actually mentioned your podcast. You don have to plug your podcast i mean as you slipped it in so i did in there oh it sounds a bit like sorry just like i did a podcast called mystery on the rocks with comedians chris stokes and masood myles and we try to solve real life unsolved mysteries. For example, unsolved murders, unsolved missing persons,

unsolved X-Files, and we drink cocktails on the podcast and also I write a song about what we're talking about and sing it at the end. And the songs do vary in quality depending on how much I've drunk. It's a very good podcast. I have one

last account. Okay. Listeners might hear the sound of barrels being loaded in the background because we're an RAF base. Yeah. They're loading barrels. A fresh batch of gremlins. So I tried to find a straightforward account of gremlins.

And so I ended up on Cryptozoology News, that respected organ of uh newsworthy notables wasn't that the only news site that got the 2019 election results dead on um better still this story comes from an unnamed source identified as lw age 92 at the time of writing and And he was a Boeing pilot in the Second World War. And his father... Here's why I don't think we should pay him too much attention. He's from Arkansas. I can't do an

Arkansas accent. Also, I'm very angry about Arkansas because I have been pronouncing it Arkansas right up until yesterday. I mean, it 100% reads like Arkansas. Because you're in a Sean Bean situation. It's Arkansas and Kansas or it's Arkansas and Consor. Yeah.

Isn't it? Am I crazy? No, it's not you, mate. It sounds like a carpenter. I'd heard of Arkansas. I thought it was another place, as well as Arkansas. I know the exact feeling. Yeah.

So his father was an Episcopal preacher from Arkansas. And he begins his story by saying, and this will just be a general American idiot voice. Duke Bill Clinton. He's from there. Is he? All right. Bill Clinton. Okay.

That's good. When you're a preacher's kid, well, you either turn out an angel or a complete devil. I kind of went in between. Right. Useless. Well. You've contradicted yourself in the first sentence. Yes.

That's not accurate. So he saw three-foot-tall, grey, long-eared and red-eyed creatures on his plane. His belief is that it was Roswell aliens. So he didn't make sense of it until later on when he heard the story of the Roswell incident. Right. So this is where, I mean, you've got to bear in mind, this is cryptozoology news. So the recommended articles. This is breaking.

The suggested links include dwarf Bigfoot spotted in Los Angeles. Right. That's a monkey. Dwarf Bigfoot. Some very small Bigfoots. And my favourite one, which is woman, colon,

Bigfoot likes grapes. That's the headline. I didn't read on. I think you get everything. I've got some good sub-editors. How does she know? She's been feeding him grapes. He loved them.

I didn't read the story. He yummed them up. So obviously that is all nonsense and clearly without the usual area we would talk about on this podcast. But the red-eyed monster that shows up in these sort of old tales and pre-aeroplane tales, that's the thing. There's one, there's quite a famous British one about it's a headless monster that has red eyes.

Oh. Wow, that's... What, they're in its neck? Do the eyes just float? I don't know. That's just what it's described as by these people. There's a clear connection between this and sort of traditional folk stories of mischievous spirits and sprites. What isn't clear is how seriously the RAF people were taking it. Yeah.

I doubt any pilots were literally going, yeah, for real. But I think that probably because there are so many stories of pilots seeing UFOs, I think you probably do freak out sometimes in a high pressure situations and people probably do see things and come back with weird stories and so there probably is not necessarily a basis in real gremlins but a basis in some people really saying i thought i saw a little man on the wing that's what i sound like well i saw a little fellow on the wing gremlins are real is what i'm saying. Maybe they burn down the six bells. Yeah. Time for the scores. Oh yes.

Bring it. James, what is your score for the Gremlins of World War II in the category of names? Well... Wait. Before you answer that question, the image of the Gremlin was popularised by the artist Boris Artsybachev.

OK, it's five. That's good. I'd rather have forgotten to mention Boris. Artsybachev. That's good. I apologize to Russians and people of Slavic descent or whatever that name is. So he drew Aquaticus and a few of the advertising campaigns with gremlins in them for all kinds of products. Right.

So he's famous for the sort of the little green three-foot tall man. The little impy type thing. Ah, yeah. You've got some great names in there. Aquaticus being one of them. I like the fact that they've employed the old portmanteau, which is very much, they're very ahead of the curve on that one. Aren't they? Yeah. It's like the old

portmanteau or panto has been that is I'd say that's quite a modern vernacular vernacular and quite

and sort of an easy and lazy comedy trope or croak yeah the female babies in Roald Dahl's book

at least are called flippity jibbets is that where that comes from no I think it's just a word that means a flighty woman

I think flippity jibbet oh of course it is Roald Dahl of course it does I might be confused with fizz jig or fizz gig

never know fizzy wig that's Dickens that's Dickens all the great writers all the great anti-semitic writers Dostoevsky doesn't have any funny named

characters. Dostoevsky's quite a fun name to say. Dostoevsky, that's a good long name there. Charles Dickens. Yeah. Ronald Dahl. Yeah, I've got to go for a five, I think. Because as well, the fact that it's a completely invented name, the gremlin,

that we don't know where it came from. They coined it. Yeah, that's interesting. Because it's such a invented name the gremlin that we don't know where it came from they coined it yeah that's interesting because because it's such a um quote-unquote modern creation which i hadn't in my research i thought well it's going to go back to the 1500s and it's a 20th century thing but no one knows where the word came from i suppose it's the thing no one knows where they came from were they were they true were they always up there just waiting for planes to be invented? Hanging about, ready to jump in a beer bottle, then come out of it.

Just riding on gulls for no reason. Jockeying about. Yeah. The next category, supernatural. Well. Come on, James. Come on. It's the thing.

Are they a creature that somehow lives up in the air that we've only managed to come into contact with since we've been able to fly? Neither too unknown to science. Or are they simply a euphemism for being drunk? Yes. Because that's kind of what it is.

Or oxygen deficiency or just basically pressure cracking people in high pressure environments yeah who are sort of sharing a sort of mass delusion or are they magic sky goblins yes yes that's the answer for the purposes of this category you're gonna say yes i believe yes uh take it up with cryptozoology news oh yeah the word news gets thrown around too often finally a website where it's correct it's the only website prepared to tell the truth without media bias he does like grapes bigfoot does like grapes yeah why wouldn't he they're great everyone likes grapes have you ever heard anyone say no to a grape?

Never. No, you literally bring them to people who are ill because they're that good. I think it's only going to be a three, though, because there's too many other possibilities. Too many other realistic explanations. Yeah, if there was like a very definitive gremlin incident that we could not argue with, like... No, there isn't one of those. There isn't one. There isn't one reliable account of gremlins having done anything. No, yeah.

It doesn't appear in a made-up book. Unless the Roswell aliens were them. And it sounds actually like it was someone doing a bit of a joke about how drunk they were flying a plane, and it just got out of hand. But what a baller move to have crashed a plane into the sea and then come out going, here's a hilarious story

about me obviously being drunk. What was it? Oh, it was Gremlins. What do you mean? Well, you know, came out of the beer bottle last night, wink, wink. Imagine being able to adopt that tone

after crashing a plane into the sea. That's the RAF guys. These flyboys. You can tell it was boom time, can't you? 1923, you can tell because that's when all the fluff news pieces come out It's always in peace times when the economy's doing well

That's when you get rubbish like this Cap'n lady It's after the end of the Second World War Well actually no the book is published during the Second World War But it's after the end of the Second World War that it really takes off in American culture as well as an advertising concept. All right, three for Supernatural.

You're a hard taskmaster. Taster. Third category, franchisability. Yeah, massive. We've already, in talking about it, we've already advertised a whole bunch of products that probably don't exist anymore. We have toys.

Yeah, stuff for your car. From America, from the 50s. Whatever it is you get to treat hard water yeah uh water softener yeah that'd be it yep yep yep yep yeah i this is yeah massively there's films tv shows it's a tv show well there was two episodes of the uh oh of course the Three episodes of the Twilight Zone that are all the same. One's in a film, isn't it? Yeah, the movie version. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, it's been on both the big and small screen.

It is, yeah. It was a book. Very much a modern... I had the book when I was... My parents... I don't know if you have this experience. There were just things in the house that I can't explain how they got there. They had the novelisation of Gremlins, which they have not read and have no interest in.

And they had on cassette the soundtrack to The Lost Boys. That's bizarre. Which both shaped my childhood. I really like the People Are Strange. Yes. Although now listening back it's like the incel national anthem. Women are mean and horrible

when you're alone. Good song, though. Those movie novelisations were a big thing for a while. I had Alien and I had E.T. And they were both, I think, by the same guy. Alan Dean Foster. Alan Dean Foster, yeah. And he wrote tons of them. Yeah, I did Batman 1, Batman Returns.

I used to sexualise stuff from the film. Yeah. In Alien, there's no real... How do you make aliens sexier than it already is? There's nothing in Alien where the guys and the women in it are, like, there's sexual tension. There's no time for it. No, they're just doing work. It's like a horror book.

Yeah. And it was written in a way where any gender could play any role deliberately. But in the film, they all wake up from suspended animation whatever it is in the book even yeah they wake up from their deep sleep thing and they're it's he's like written it oh he looked over at his crew members live naked form i was like they weren't naked in the film and nobody was checking anyone out they they woke up started flying and then an alien was about and also it's harry dean stanton yeah i wouldn't want to see him naked i think they were checking They woke up, started flying, and then an alien was about. It's Harry Dean Stanton. Yeah.

I wouldn't want to see him naked. I think they were checking out Veronica whatever her face. Sigourney Weaver. Ian Holm. Similarly, the novelisation of Gremlins was pretty sexy. Pretty sexy. No, I was just scared. That female Gremlin. She's hot.

And the flasher Gremlin. I was too scared. Actually, that female gremlin. She's hot. I started reading it. And the flasher gremlin. I was too scared. I didn't get past it. Actually, female gremlin might be in the sequel. Okay. I didn't get past it. The E.T. book was sexy as well. Really?

Was it not his finger that was glowing? I'll be right here. I'll be right here. There were genuinely passages in the E.T. book where E.T. we hear, is in a monologue and he's in love with the mum. And he's going to put a rose on her pillow and stuff. And then it has the mum's in a monologue where she's been single a while. And she goes, oh, hopefully there'll be a sex attacker in my room tonight. And then she gets to her room and there's no one there.

Oh, they'll have to come back another time, I hope. And i hope and it's really like a man wrote this in the 80s wow so on that terrifying note what's the score for franchise ability oh five definitely everyone knows grem like the gremlins are so the concept of them is so famous, you've got to go about four pages deep to get away from the film version of them. They're massive. It's huge. Final category, woke. Oh. Yeah, because the Gremlins were very woke, non-binary.

Yeah. Yeah, they're gender fluid. They're chill with colour. Yeah, they're all different colours. They're like the United Colours of Benetton. Yeah. What could be more woke? 20-year-old advertising campaign.

No. Also, they... They're doing their bit for the environment by reducing the carbon footprint, by taking down planes. They hate Nazis. They hate the Nazis. They're obsessed with the Nazis. They even made Roald Dahl...

They hate the Nazis for a bit. They even made Roald Dahl. Yes, and they mob and attack people online. They're the Twitter left. Not online, but in the sky. It's very similar to the Twitter left. To the image of the Twitter left, whereas actually everyone's awful.

I don't think left wingers are drilling holes in people's fuel tanks that often. No. Are the spherical ones spinning on their sticks? That's his mother-in-law, isn't it? He's right there in that often. Yeah, no. Are the spherical ones spinning on their sticks? That's his mother-in-law, isn't it? He's working around there in that song.

Spherical lady spinning like a top criticising me. One middle-aged. One middle-aged. Yeah, I made it a woman. Yeah. That's me.

I'm the sexist. No, well, it would have been sexist to assume that the default is male, Suze. That's true. So I'm woke. Five points for me. You also have the neuter option default is male, Suze. That's true. So I'm woke. Five points for me.

You also have the neuter option with the gremlin. Yeah, that's true. Like with horses. There's no middle option with horses, is there? Yeah, there isn't. Yeah, but people often say, oh, and they often say the gelder. That's the other gender of horse. It's not.

It's just a castrated horse. Well, that wants to be a sort of biological essentialist about this no yeah no it's not true but yeah is that what he's referring to is he saying that they've been neutered

some of these gremlins how did he know I mean you have to get maybe when they're spinning on the stick yeah things are waving about in the breeze

I guess I mean if they're just like castrato gremlins descending on you maybe it's from the sound of them yeah maybe thatizmo. Yeah, maybe that explains the really high noise that you can make, James. Yeah, I mean, they sound

like the sort of things that if they had genitals they'd be waving them about. Oh, yeah. That's the one problem with the film is that you can't see the genitals. Can we cut the bit where I said that's the one problem with the film? That I want to say puppet genitals well they're all neuters

that's why the flashers so when the flasher flashes he's a neuter it's a neuter rather they are a neuter yeah I don't know

I think a gremlin's in it yeah yeah so what's the score for woke oh massive five definitely brilliant

can you say it in, Gizmo's voice? Brrr. Ha ha ha. Brrr. Brrr. Ha ha ha. Brrr. Ha ha ha.

What a franchisable story. It's probably one of the few 20th century magical creatures we've encountered on the podcast. Yeah. If you can think of any other modern monsters, you can email us at contact at lawmenpodcast.com or you can tweet us at lawmenpod. Just search for lawmen. That's us.

L-O-R-E men. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you're using a voice activated speaker, you have to say Loray men. It turns out. Sounds weird. © BF-WATCH TV 2021