Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep17: Loremen S3 Ep17 - Harriet Braine - The Goat Boy of Surbiton

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Award-winning comedian Harriet Braine steps up to the Loremen plate and tries to convince us that Surbiton is an interesting place, actually. We meet modern folk legends in the form of a goat-headed cheesemaker, a dead giant and the world's oldest paper boy. However, we do end up talking about the train station a lot. Such is the overwhelming blandness of Surbiton: "The city suburb that always sleeps". @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK | @HarrietBraine 

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alastair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shankshaft. And in this episode, we the lawmen are joined by a deputy lawperson. There's a lot of deputisation flying around, what with the old coronavirus lockdown of 2020. We printed up some deputy lawmen badges. We stamped them out of the old machine.

Yeah. 3D printed them and then sent them in the post. And for this episode, we've deputised the musical comedian Harriet Brain, who's going to tell us all about The Goat Boy of Surbiton. James, how are you? I'm good, thanks. How are you? I'm very well, calling you from my nuclear bunker. How are you? I'm good, thanks. How are you? I'm very well. Calling you from my nuclear bunker. Excellent. They laughed at you when you rented a nuclear bunker, didn't they? Even the landlords. They did. I would like to introduce to you, James, a deputy law person for yet another lockdown episode of Lawmen. Are you ready? Yeah. It is Harriet Brain, the musical comedian and expert on art history.

Harriet Brain, hello. Hello. Hello, Harriet. Hi, James and Alistair. Is that correct? Art history? Well, yeah, it's what I studied at uni. But yeah, I would say I'm an expert, yep.

Wow. Wrote a comedy show about it. That's the thing, because most comedians are privately educated people who studied who like read philosophy or french literature at cambridge and then do comedy shows exclusively about willies yeah what you've done is you've you've done shows about the thing you know about yeah well yeah expert is debatable but uh i do like to use what i've learned otherwise what a waste am i right right in thinking, Harriet, that you're from Surbiton? I am. Do you know Surbiton, James? I've been to Surbiton. To the train station? You

know what? Love the train station. It's the beautiful train station, isn't it? It is the beautiful train station. It's in Harry Potter, it's so beautiful. Really? And Poirot. Oh. Was it in Poirot too? It was in a Poirot. Cool. I did a little look on Wikipedia today. If it's in one Poirot, it's probably in many Poirots because Poirot has solved murders in the same house about six times. He just keeps coming back to different angles of the same Art Deco house. It's like, why do people keep moving back in there? Is he some sort of scammer, Poirot?

I think it's a classic bits of murder situation where just bad luck follows him around he's just cursed yeah because obviously Bergerac yes lived on Guernsey Jersey are they different islands yes they are or just the same word said differently Guernsey and Jernsey they were his sidekicks weren't they were Bergerac's assistants it's like gif and jif and uh Surbiton I know Surbiton from the sitcom The Good Life. I know from Stella Street because I'm edgy and hip. Ooh.

From where? Do you remember Stella Street? No. You must be five to ten years younger than me and James. Oh. Is it set in Surbiton? A street in Surbiton where loads of celebrities live. Oh, wow.

I need to get on that. I suspect that Stella Street, like The Good Life, chose Surbiton deliberately because it was sort of famously anonymous and bland and generic. The name does make it sound like a suburban town. That's what the etymology is.

It sounds like you've just rushed while saying suburban town and it's just elided into Surbiton. My favourite thing I learned about Surbiton today is the original name. What's that? Kingston upon Railway. It's like a child named it.

Because it was part of Kingston and it was during the Industrial Revolution and it was built by the railway and it was so novel that they called it Kingston upon Railway. You can tell from that name that the railway was a new idea at the time. Kingston itself is to the north of Surbiton, and they didn't want a railway coming through it because they had a really bustling coach industry. So they were shunning the railway and put it south of Kingston, and what became Surbiton is the station.

Wow. So that's why they called it Kingston-upon-railway. But yeah, Surbiton's only been a town for like 150 years like not very long that's nothing that's peanuts maybe a bit longer than that but so harriet you come from what we've established to be the extremely dull uh and characterless town of surbiton indeed with its quite nice train station yeah what folkloric story have you brought us? Well, because of such hits as The Good Life and the other one that you mentioned that I've already forgotten the name of, Stellar Street, a lot of people don't think it actually exists as a real place. They just think it's a fictional place.

But it does exist. place but it does it it does exist um and basically the folklore has has sprung up very recently about the town and its surroundings mostly written by one man or a group of people who have sort of taken it upon themselves to be the lawmen of surbiton in a way what oh do we have a potential rivalry situation going on here i think you you might. Ooh, a beef. There are a group of people who call themselves the Seething Villagers. And Seething Wells is like a small, a very small site where like a water treatment site was set up in the Industrial Revolution. Another thing that put Surbiton on the map. And it provided like clean water.

But Seething Wells is a campus, I think of Kingston University now. And this group of people who I know a few of them and they're like proper eccentric, cool people. They did like a few archaeological digs. And they found like some strange sort of things and sort of built up this folklore around it it's a really really good good story and there's this like little goat boy who is uh found as a baby in the cave and this all happened in the days of yore oh yeah i'm sure you're all familiar with yeah in seething in the village of seething which is basically surbiton i can't believe you have a goat boy but you opened with the train station but i really think you need to get over the train station in Serpentine. It's where the Dursleys live.

Open the pitch. The elevator pitch is goat boy, I think. The goat boy was a cheesemaker. That was his profession. What sort of cheese? Goat's cheese, presumably. Would it be by definition goat's cheese, no matter what milk he used? He doesn't make it with his own milk because he's a goat boy.

Oh, thank God. As a USP, goat's milk with my own milk doesn't sound saleable. Male or female? No. No. So he makes cheese. And I think the children provide him with milk. No, you can't milk children.

From the cows. Because Surbiton was just a piece of piece of farmland really so maybe that's where the cows come from i think maybe the seething society of law men was maybe set up by cheesemakers i think that might be the thing or cheese eaters i think cheese eaters i think right i think this whole story came about from a mixture of cheese and wine uh you're using the phrase cheesy to the way people in the early 20th century used to talk about opium eaters, people who dreamt crazy dreams.

Or how Americans talk about the French. Yes. Well, cheese dreams are a known phenomenon, aren't they? Are they? Wasn't it one of the ones that turned out to be a lie because of the war? Cheese dreams, really? Yeah, they didn't want people to eat cheese at night.

That's hilarious. Because it alerted the bombers to your location. Yeah, the Nazis could smell it. I'm a vegan, so my dreams are untroubled by the guilt of cheese. Yes, this goat boy with his range of cheeses. Leffy Ganderson is the name of the goat boy. That's a good name. It's a really good name.

And it's because the kids used to call him Lefty, and it sort of got shortened over the centuries to Leffy. So there's an island in the Thames nearby called Thamesditton Isle, or Thamesditton Island. I've been to Thamesditton. Thamesditton Island, according to this folklore, is the dead corpse of a giant. It's like a how-things-got-the things got their name type of folklore because the giant was called tamas deaton and so it's the and then it over time it's now become temstit and nile so this giant said to the goat boy he was like i'm gonna starve you oh no hang on how did it go

okay so the goat boy said you must leave this town and the giant says no and then the goat boy says if i survive the whole year on just food that passes through this small gold ring that he has then you must leave and the giant says oh easy you'll die and and so the goat boy just pours all the milk for his cheese through the ring. Ooh. And so he tricks the giant. That's very clever. Yeah, and he shares it with everyone.

He shares it with the giant as well even. He probably has spaghetti as well. Oh, yeah, and spaghetti. And pepperonis. Noodles, as long as they come on a noodle-by-noodle basis. Celery. He was smarter than us to use a liquid rather than to think of which long, thin solids could I eat.

Long cheese. Cheese strings. He invented the cheese string, this goat boy. Leffy Ganderson. I keep giving it a sort of... Is that the Surbiton accent you're doing there? Leffy Ganderson? It's got a real sort of Scandi-Noir feel to it.

Leffy Ganderson. Yeah, it has, yeah. The whole town has if you look beyond the train station. It's a very, very noir place. fig anderson yeah it has yeah the whole town has if you look beyond the train station so i have just a couple more questions about the goat boy yeah please do please go for it what does he look like he's based on a a tiny little it's quite interesting actually because they did like a proper archaeological dig like with they didn't like plant anything or you know it was like a genuine dig and they found this like little figure of a and it had like a goat's head or what looked like a goat's head so that's where the sort of mythology comes from is this sort of little tiny bit of metal that looked a bit like a goat so yeah he sort of got long black horns that sort of curl behind his head and a little

boy's body so all right little boy's body goat goat's face uh i was going the other way round a goat's body but with the face of a boy is that what you visualized well actually no i was goat's lower legs but yeah i even more now i'm thinking of that i'm definitely thinking about oh yeah he's not he's not a satyr i don't think he's not he's not a pan like legs bending backwards type mr tumness come on just say mr tumness he's a bit mr tumnessy yeah but i don't think he's got goat legs he's mr tumnesque he's mr tumnish thinking about it he would need um opposable thumbs if he's doing cheese production to any sort of level that he could distribute it and if he can wear a ring he has our fingers so that's true he definitely had he has like a human body i think does he know the laughing cow

probably they probably met at a convention but the laughing cow is just a cow with a sense of humor but she but she has a human laugh she's got gsoh i think it's one of the most sort of unintentionally lovecraftian creations the laughing cow i just feel i wish the the advertising executives who created it had just taken a moment to realize the horror they'd unleashed on the world as a cow laughs open-mouthed like a puman. It's terrifying. Especially when you really, really think about where milk comes from. And she's just laughing. What's the joke?

What is the cow laughing at? I don't know. I think if, like, in the adverts where she laughs, if they hadn't have cut it so early, it's one of them laughs that turns into a crying. Oh my God. She's probably just like laughing at like, oh, you guys drink other animals' milk.

That's weird. It's a nervous laugh. The Laughing Cow has been around since 1921. So there is every likelihood that she's dead. Wow. I tried to find out some folklore about the Kingston area and couldn't. It's bare.

The only hack I came up with was Kingston Leal or Kingston Lyle in Oxfordshire slash Berkshire. It's the wrong one. I know, it's the wrong Kingston, where they have the Blowingstone. Have you heard about the Blowingstone, James? That rings a bell. No, it doesn't.

It makes a completely different sound. You blow into the hole and it makes a booming horn sound if you blow into the right hole. Hey, that's what she said. Well, Kingston-upon-Thames has a stone as well, like a historic stone. It's not a blowing stone, but it's allegedly where the old kings of yore got uh crowned i think i've seen that stone it's like a crowning stone and it's sort of right next to this little river called the hogsmill river um and the hogsmill river is um i think like a little tribute tree to the thames and i think that's a little bit of folklore about

oh yeah i know that the hogsmill was the background for that really famous painting of ophelia by millais john everett millais so you know that that picture like of a lady with in the lying in the river and it's got flowers all around her yeah with her hands like she's doing air quotes but she's died mid air quote so that's cool um that yeah that is cool we've got a few artists actually there's an artist called Edward Muybridge who was a bit of a strange guy he had like a the photographer the early film photographer

yeah photographer he was born and died in Kingston and he also killed a man did he? yeah really? I think he wasn't in Kingston at the time I think this happened in America

oh it's not important then if it was outside of the borough what think he wasn't in Kingston at the time. I think this happened in America. Oh, it's not important then. If it was outside of the borough. What happens in Kingston stays in Kingston. But what happens outside of Kingston is a very serious matter. So his wife had an affair and he killed the guy that she had an affair with. And he was let off because it was a crime of passion. Oh. Yeah.

So he got off scot-free. A crime of passion is a weird defence because it's essentially like saying, but I wanted passion. Oh. Yeah. So he got off scot-free. A crime of passion is a weird defence because it's essentially like saying, but I wanted to. Exactly. Killing that person was really important to me. Edward Muybridge, he did the photographs that you've all seen of the first image

of horses running and people running where he set up a series of cameras and set them off one, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh, one at a time to create the the apparent moving image and one of them was a gun it was the perfect cover for murder but luckily poirot has just arrived in surbiton a group of photographers was obsessed with whether all four of our horses hooves leave the ground at the same time when the horse is galloping because they just didn't have a lot on back then, did they? Because you couldn't see it. It was too quick.

And so Edward became the guy that proved that, yes, all four of the horse's hooves do leave the ground at the same time. Nice one, Edward. Yeah, pretty cool. Until all the murdering. Right up until the murder, he was a top bloke. I was trying to find something more interesting about seething wells. he was a top bloke I was trying to find something more interesting

about seething wells it's can I is that a name that's been made up by the the wacky folklorists of Surbiton

or is it really called seething it's really called seething wells yeah it's a great name isn't it you used the phrase

to me when we were talking about this in message and I assumed you were just referring to the state of I genuinely thought you meant that

people of Surbiton were in a state of seething yes I thought I thought you meant there was a lot of anger bubbling underneath the surface well i don't know who or why called it seething wells but me and my there's a bus that goes to seething wells and it would say it on the bus and whenever the bus went past me and my friends would when it were in school would be like oh my wells are seething. That was a laugh. I'd like a good bus gag. I've got two in my repertoire. There was the two, two, two, two tooting,

which was one of my favourites. I like that. And I'd get the bus. I used to get the bus. I used to live in Brixton. If I got the bus down to the station, one of the stops was called St. Matthew's Estate. And I always thought, oh, we'll leave him alone then.

Yeah, I used to live near St. Vincent's Close. You're like, oh, watch out. I once saw a man with very, very, very backcombed hair, like, you know, sort of Trumpium level backcombing. The lift on it was incredible. He was getting two and a half inches, four four or five centimeters worth of pure air in his hair and i saw him get on a train to high barnet oh no very good it's incredible genuinely sorry i believe you i believe you i just thought of another sort of interesting thing that we used to look out of

the window of our school and marvel at as well as a seething wells bus it was the there was a lady who used to go past i think every day an old lady would go past really fast on a scooter like a like not not like a engine scooter like a like a human powered scooter oh and under her own steam under her own steam she was very fast. And so we used to look out and say, oh, it's Scooter Granny, it's Scooter Granny. We had the world's oldest paper boy. It was like this 70-year-old man who had a paper round would cut across our field, our school field.

Wow, I can't believe that's not a TV show, world's oldest paper boy. I'm sure Channel 5 would do it. Or a reality TV show. But no, you can't really compete to be a TV show, World's Oldest Paperboy. I'm sure Channel 5 would do it. Or a reality TV show. But no, you can't really compete to be the world's oldest paperboy. I guess... Yeah, by murdering all the other ones. Yeah, I guess that's how it works.

I guess you're in a Muybridge situation, where committing Cream's passionnel. I really wanted to be the world's oldest paperboy. Well, let him off then. No judge are convict. Has that concluded the um coverage of uh surbiton's uh folklore i think chessington is another town nearby i think that's where the cheese making is supposed to have taken place so it went from cheesington to chessington

weirdly enough like surbiton surbiton is weirdly absent from its own folklore in an effort to sort of deflect from people thinking this place is boring they've made up a mythology that's mostly based around cheese exactly yeah but it's really great and every uh every year i think they have the seething sardine festival exciting which is based on a mythology about freshwater sardine fishing that used to happen in the days of yore. To celebrate that tradition, people dress up as guinea pigs. So you can actually, I mean, we should go. We should go next time.

It really is really fun. And there's like statues of Leffy, you know, temporary statues like Papi Amache statues. Yeah, guinea pigs. I can't remember why. I got a feeling we're being lured somewhere, Alistair. I think we're going to get Wickerman. The pictures have a bit of a feeling of the sort of the creepy sex party in The Shining where everyone's wearing costumes.

It's got that vibe slightly. Yes, but it all happens in daylight. that vibe slightly. Yes, but it all happens in daylight. There's live music and it's just a really nice bit of fun for the residents of a very boring place. It's a trap. It's a trap, yeah. I think it's time for the scores. What do you think, James? Yeah, hit me. Are you ready, Harriet? Yeah. With scores. Okay, what's your first category? Names. Okay. James, what do you think? There's some names.

There are definitely some names. Some really good ones. There are some excellent names. The Goat Boy, Leffy Ganderson. Goat Boy's good, but as we established, it's not quite descriptive enough. Should we Goat Headed Boy? We all got the same picture. I'm sorry you're uncomfortable with ambiguity, James, but it's still a good name. Seething Wells.

That's very descriptive. Seething Wells. That's very descriptive. Seething Wells is good. I like the concept of angry liquids, definitely. Tamasteton the giant. Angustetons, yeah. But the place was called Kingston-upon-Railway. That's a brilliant name.

And it was rejected in favour of Surbiton. I know know you know the thames has two names um you know it's called up your way it's called the isis yes the thames isis thomasis yeah and on old maps it's it's one long word yes so it's uh thomasis and somehow the the front end belongs to london the back end oxfordshire Temesys, when I was a kid, that was the best ride at Alton Towers. Or as my friend thought it was called for ages, Alton's Tower. And I'm so annoyed that I corrected him when I'd just taken an extra second and he could still think it was called Alton's Tower. And I absolutely love that name so much more magical so we've got some cracking names we've got goat boy we've got kingston on

railway we've got we've got alton's tower alton's town norbiton norbiton yeah exactly new malden new malden old malden old malden classic wonderful southwestern railway service stations Oh, Maldon Classic. Wonderful Southwestern Railway Service stations. No, boring, boring place names. Two. Two? Leffy Ganderson is so disappointed. Leffy Ganderson, he's named after a beer. And you're only getting two for Seething Wells. That's all I'm counting as a good name.

Seething Wells is really good. Oh, my wells are seething now, James. All right. It's a very cruel and merciless two for names i really think that's unfair but um those are the rules so uh what's what is the second category harriet supernatural apparently oh supernatural james come on you've got you've got to hand it to surbiton for what a giant who was tricked a goat boy with a ring a boy with a cheese a cheesemonger with a beard a short cheesemonger with a beard and horns and horns well yeah maybe no a goat boy is supernatural yeah you have to accept that that's not normal a goat headed boy goat headed boy that's pretty spooky oh and um edward muybridge the murderer

that's pretty spooky and harry potter that's really spooky yeah and, and Edward Muybridge, the murderer. That's pretty spooky. Muybridge. And Harry Potter. That's really spooky. Yeah, and Harry Potter. He's very supernatural. He's got lots going on. Lots.

Ley Lines. Ley Lines. Ley Lines. Ley Lines. They all come together at the back of a pub called The Lamb. Everyone says that about Ley Lines. So they come together at the back of the pub called The Lamb. They all cross over each other in the beer garden.

Converging left, right and centre. Pretty supernatural, James. Three. Is that a pity three? Yeah. That's a pity three. Okay. Scooter Granny, she's pretty supernatural.

She does sound pretty cool. I like Scooter Granny. She's pretty cool. You're making this very hard work, James. But I'm sure we can pull it back with the next category. What is the next category, by the way, Harriet? The next category is

Boring. Boring! Oh, that's five out of five. Five out of five? All the way. Yeah. Oh, these are out of five? Yes. Oh, okay. I was worried they're out of ten and i was getting really uh down but that's okay no surbiton can live with two and three out of five it's very much in its wheelhouse yeah exactly what better argument for surbiton's ready acceptance of

mediocrity than harriet's delight at receiving a two and a three out of five is that it's five out of five for boring yeah always yeah definitely for surbiton i'm sorry to sort of yes throw coal on the on the fire of surbiton's boring all i can say is you need to come and visit yourself on the day of the festival yeah this is definitely the seedling sardine festival and then you'll see but we i think we get put in like a wicker goat boy look there's no wicker you say there's no wicker. You say there's no wicker, but I've seen The Good Life and there's a lot of wicker around. Just the raw material is there in excess.

Oh, damn it. What's the final category? The final category is train stations. Train stations or train station? You're not an experienced player of this game, Harriet. I have to warn you, a plural can cost you a lot of points in this section. Train station. Train station, okay.

Yes. So we've got a movie star train station. It appeared in Harry Potter. A movie star train station. And Granada Television's Poirot. Potter, Poirot. Yeah. With David Suchet.

Yeah, I love it. It's stunning. I didn't know that it was famously beautiful, and I went there and I saw it and I thought, oh, that's a really good-looking train station. Cute. That's how good it was. It's one of them egotistical things.

I later heard it was like regularly voted Britain's best railway station. And I thought, yeah, I was right. Yes. My taste in railway stations is in line with the nation as a whole. That must have been a relief. Exactly. I walked through that train station every day to get to school. You walked through the train station?

Yeah, there's like a walkway through it. A lot of train stations have them, you know, like a fully enclosed... Well, like an airborne tunnel. Yes. Like a tunnel of the skies. Like an airborne tunnel. A tunnel of the skies, guys. This is definitely five out of five, then.

This station sounds like the best sounds like a mario level excellent that's pretty good it started it started off really shaky yeah well i mean i'm i hope the the guy my friend who writes the law um of surbiton who wrote the story of leffy ganderson isn't listening to this oh god no because the station and the boring got the got the big scores i really slug it off and the folklore got the lower ones but um yeah happy with that the yeah the slogan of surbiton happy with that discover yourself discover yourself in our airborne tunnel thank you for coming on the podcast harry is there anything you would like to plug because i know you you do podcasts left right and center and i i believe they're not being destroyed by the plague oh well kind of um i i do a few

podcasts here and there the main one that exists in broadcasted form is the design spark podcast and we're just about to record the third series of that to be released in a month or so. But there are two series that you can enjoy already. It's you and a couple of other people on that podcast, isn't it? Yeah, it's me, Beck Hill, who is amazing, and Dr. Lucy Rogers, who is also amazing. She was a judge on the new, like the rebooted Robot Wars.

And she's extremely intimidatingly intelligent when it comes to like mechanical stuff and so it's the three of us sort of chatting about technology which i never thought i would happen to me like because i'm well to be fair i am like the technophobe person in the podcast that has to be like persuaded that everything is good not evil yeah that's gotta be different from the from a judge of a robot war is this like the sort of the the nuremberg trials of the robot after the robot war where matilda was disassembled for treason it's like i didn't do anything it's like your name is sir kill a lot it's in the name sergeant basham who was dishonorably discharged summerly recharged and now they're all just working like a wicks he's a rumba

he's a rumba Well, that was Lawmen with me, Alistair Beckett-King. Me, James Shakeshaft. And our guest, Deputy Lawperson Harriet Brain. If you've enjoyed this episode of Lawmen, produced under very trying circumstances, the least you can do is to give us a like, a subscribe, follow us on the Twitter, on the Instagram, or recommend us to a friend. And thank you to all the lovely people who have messaged us. I've really enjoyed your stuff. You guys are funny.

Yeah, just got on Twitter and told us to stop recording the podcast and... Oh, not my mum! Well, I think you were very harsh there, James. Really? It's boring. Yes. I've been to Surbiton. It's boring. There's no argument here, but I think those names were good. I just want you to know, one of these days, you're going to be tearing down the barrel of

a two out of five for names, quite undeservedly. You won't know when it's coming. Could be any time, day or night, but probably during the podcast.