Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep90: Loremen S3 Ep90 - Marek Larwood - Sam the Sandown Clown
Episode Date: December 9, 2021An otherworldly clown from the Isle of Wight encounters two wide-eyed human children. And, in other news, Marek Larwood meets James and Alasdair. Marek, comedian (We Are Klang) and card game inventor ...(Pooman), dons the mantle of Deputy Loreperson and relates one of the strangest tales the Loreboys have ever heard. What exactly is Sam the Sandown Clown? A ghost? An extra terrestrial? A child's obvious lie? You decide. Prepare yourself for tuneless birthday songs and the triumphant return of the category "It's IT from Steven King's IT". Marek's YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/MarekLarwood1 Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.twitch.tv/loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK
Transcript
Discussion (0)
welcome to lawmen a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore i'm
james shakeshaft and i'm alistair beckett king alistair what an episode we have coming up would
i be right in saying that there was a guest deputy law person?
You'd be 100% right, because it was Marek Larwood. Off of We Are Clang. Off of Clang,
the internet. He's got his own card game called Puma. I've played it. It's great.
So what's the story? Oh, this is one of my favourite cryptid
slash UFO stories. It's the tale of Sam the Sandown Clown.
Alistair.
Hello, James.
How are you?
James, I'm excited because it's your birthday.
I'm a bit excited because it's my birthday.
Happy birthday.
Thank you very much.
I thought we were doing this podcast later today,
and so I had more time to prepare a birthday song.
So I very, very quickly prepared you a little birthday song.
A birthday song?
A little birthday song.
Don't be too impressed, okay?
Are you going to claim that you wrote the birthday song?
I'm not claiming I wrote the birthday song.
Good.
If this birthday song replaces the conventional birthday song, I mean, claiming I wrote the birthday song. Good. And if this birthday song replaces the conventional
birthday song, I mean,
that's out of my hands.
Are you going to get
some sweet, sweet coin?
Well, hopefully, yeah.
The royalties on this.
So if you use this for
someone whose name is
James, credit me.
Will do.
Happy birthday, little
Jimmy Shakes.
What a difference another
birthday makes.
That's as far as I got.
Oh!
Couldn't think of anything to rhyme with double denim,
apart from goodbye, Lennon.
And it was hard to work that into a birthday message.
No, because I was born four days before John Lennon died.
So maybe...
Oh, so goodbye, Lennon, rather than Lennon.
You came just before we said goodbye, Lennon.
You enjoy the feeling and look of double denim.
I've forgotten the tune, to be honest.
Well, I don't know if I'd use the word tune.
Still, happy birthday.
Thank you very much.
I'm sure that counts for more than an expensive gift or chocolates
or anything could have meant to you.
Definitely.
Well, the fun doesn't stop.
No, the prizes keep coming.
The gifts keep coming.
In a way, I'm giving you a gift on my birthday.
You know, like in those offices where you have to bring a cake in.
Or the Lord of the Rings.
Don't know it that well.
That's how the hobbits do it.
Really?
Yeah, I think so.
Hobbits and officers, it's the same.
What I've got for you today, Alistair, on my birthday,
is the gift of a deputy law person.
Are they going to burst out of a present?
Yeah, like in Under Siege.
It's he, no less.
Oh, okay.
So you've narrowed it down to humans.
So I appreciate that.
It's a human man.
He's a comedian.
He is a podcaster.
He is a rambler.
He is a YouTubist.
I think that's how you describe them.
He's an you describe them.
He's an inventor of games.
It's Marek Larwood.
He's basically like a funny Leonardo da Vinci.
Hello, Marek.
I've got, I've done a birthday song.
Ooh la la.
Really?
In that amount of time?
Because I had half an hour for mine,
so yours is going to make me look quite bad.
It's the same as your tune.
Again, we keep using the word tune.
Happy birthday, Jimmy Shakes.
I hope you got some creamy bakes. I really hope you don't die soon
and you enjoyed this lovely tune.
Ooh, the note of mystery that came in right at the end there.
I didn't, wow.
I'm a very bad singer.
Only a month ago, I went to do a read-through for a musical,
and I told my agent, they do know that I can't sing.
I don't know why they picked me.
I said, it's all right, there'll be no singing.
Turns out there was singing.
They handed out musical sheets.
And everyone else at the three-day workshop was in a West End musical sheets and everyone else at the um three-day workshop was
in a west end musical oh wow it was really embarrassing but for a hundred pounds of pop
i didn't mind being humiliated for eight hours oh oh god that's awful i'm a terrible singer and
i've been in like school musicals and stuff and they'd always try and give me the one
the songs that could be talked I would have thought maybe a baritone for you like the tallest
guy from the barbershop quartet if I really try I've got a deep bass baritone voice but I'm all
over the shop a dbbv yeah dbbv yes can you read music if I think really hard and go e g b d f yeah but i don't know what that
sounds like oh i'm worried that our combined musical ignorance i don't know if we are going
to be able to tell quite how bad the singing in this episode is before we put it out i'm sure
people on the internet will tell us that it's great okay well i was talking to Marek and I was watching his wonderful YouTube videos.
And I remembered that Marek is from the Isle of Wight.
And I remembered that there's a really good story from the Isle of Wight that we have yet to cover.
It's almost too mainstream for us, this story, because it has been covered on other podcasts.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Friend of the Show Astonishing Legends have covered it.
And if you want
all the facts
that's the place to go
but if you want
just the very fun facts
stick with us
and listening.
This is the tale
of Sam the Sandown Clown.
What?
Sam the Sandown Clown.
What a name.
I mean this actually happened
around the back of
my high school
pretty much
where I went to high school
in Sandown on the Isle of Wight.
Is that how you say Sandown?
Yeah, Sandown.
It sounds like you're sanding down the sand.
It sounds quite weird saying Sandown clown.
You could sand this clown down, which is becoming even more difficult to say.
Is it a wooden clown?
You'll find out when we get into the tale.
Visualising a wooden clown?
You're visualising Sam the Sandown clown.
Wow. Is this clown got blue gloves on and three fingers what no i didn't understand the
question the answer is yes is this clown got gloves on is this clown got gloves on i've been
reading up about it this thing and what happened right there were these two children back in 1970
we're talking early 70s these These two kids were playing around.
There's a golf course there, isn't there, Marek, in Sandown?
Yeah, there's a golf course.
And there's various holiday camps.
I've read two different reports.
One says they're on holiday, but one's not really clear about it.
They sort of strayed away from the golf course
into sort of some marshy area
by the Yar River.
Oh, Yar. Yeah, it's not actually that
posh.
It is next to a golf course. That sounds quite
posh. And then they heard some strange
ambulance siren
type sounds.
Two children, about eight, I think, weren't they?
Seven or eight? They described it as an
ambulance-like sound.
Right, okay.
This was the 70s, so this would be the classic...
Not like the modern...
When did they change the siren sounds?
I don't know.
Whenever I hear an ambulance now, it's just random noise.
My wife always thinks that, you know, in a police car,
you know, sometimes they do just a little whoop.
They just give a little whoop.
Yeah.
My wife thinks that's just a very shy policeman.
It's like, I want you to get out of the way,
but I don't want to cause a scene.
Maybe it's a minor crime, like petty theft or something.
The policeman just thought about a crime for a second.
Whoop.
No, we're all right, actually.
That was solved.
Yeah, so the girl's called Faye, isn't she?
And the boy wasn't named.
And they heard this siren sound
and they saw this clown drop a book
or something in the river.
We should describe what it was.
It's not, I mean, they say it was seven foot tall.
Yes.
And it had a strange round face
which looks like it was drawn on
with triangle eyes
and a sort of um weird mouth and a pointy hat on the top just a slot for a mouth with yellow lips
and sort of white papery cheeks it's worth googling just to look at the picture isn't it
yeah have a look at the picture googling sundown clown to see the depiction of the clown. The main report I've got it from is,
can have a run up to saying this,
Bufura, the British UFO,
then RNA record archive probably,
Bufura, Bufura, called an Italian cheese.
And he had a microphone and a weird sort of sound system,
like a karaoke system, which he used to speak through.
He had amplification.
Yeah. We've never met a cryptid that brought its own sound to speak through. He had amplification. Yeah.
We've never met a cryptid that brought its own sound to the gig.
That's incredible.
Yeah, he's got his own PA.
And he had no neck as well.
He was seven feet tall with no neck and a big,
he was quite hulking, I imagine, from the frame.
He had white trousers and some sort of smock on his top.
And protruding from that were like wooden slats.
And on the sides of his head, he had like wooden aerials.
And I think his head was wooden, wasn't it?
You tell me, James.
It sounds like that's a bar.
I would go for a wooden head.
It was a broadly wooden creature.
Imagine it's like a sort of wooden David Bowie when he went through that clown phase.
Yes.
I can't remember what.
Ashes to Ashes video, I think.
Ashes to Ashes.
Closest image that comes to mind.
But wooden.
Yeah.
That bit where all the colours are changing and stuff on the beach.
The drawings, he looks quite like Frank Sidebottom.
I can't tell if he's more or less scary.
Yeah, David Bowie and Frank Sidebottom, exactly in between those two.
Yeah.
So it could have been a sort of David Bowie tribute act.
Yeah, a Frank Sidebottom-infused David Bowie tribute act.
And as we say, he's got his MPA system, so he's very bookable.
I used to work at hotels on the Isle of Wight,
so I had to write the adverts for bands in the hotels every evening.
And because the budgets were really, really small,
they were just one-man bands or couples doing it
with really bad names and really bad equipment.
So I don't want to jump the gun too fast,
but it could have been a David Bowie tribute act
who lost his music in the river and was pretty upset about it.
Yeah.
But we should talk about what happened first
before we come up with conclusions, shouldn't we, really?
I apologise.
No, but I think when a wooden David Bowie
slash Frank Sidebottom tribute act is staring you in the face,
you've got to call it out.
That's fine.
Yes.
You've got to say something.
At first they saw him from a distance in the shallows.
He dropped a book.
It says the figure fumbled with a book,
dropped it into the water and splashed about to retrieve it.
And then it went into a metallic hut.
They describe its walking as a sort of strange hopping motion
with knees raised high.
So it sounds like it's like a sort of a marionette kind of thing,
like a big...
Yeah, it's skipping over the marshy ground.
It's absolutely terrifying.
I mean, the clowns are terrifying anyway,
but a clown that moved like some sort of alien being was seven foot tall and made out of wood yeah why would
you approach that well they didn't when the the um the thing came out of its metal hut with its
little sort of pa system and the wailing noise returned and the kids ran obviously oh so that
the ambulance sound was his jam that was his music i
think it might have just been like feedback he seems quite klutzy he does sound like it could
be a feedback loop yeah because he's got the mic too near the yeah and he's kind of you know he's
dropping his book he's stumbling around in the water he's running like he needs the loo and then
he comes out and he's with the mic he It's one of those ones where it's like,
oh, it's either a character act or they're genuinely inept.
I can't,
I can't help but think of the start of Cher's song,
you know,
do you believe in life after love?
And that's that vocode,
you know,
they changed the voice tune of the.
Oh yeah.
That's what I think.
That's what he sounds like.
Do you think?
Yes.
Cher,
but the electronically modified Cher.
That's what all the singing in this episode will sound like
once I have auto-tuned it.
Excellent.
Auto-tune, that's the word I was looking for.
We'll all sound like Cher.
So they ran as he came out wailing,
and then he spoke into the microphone and says here,
although so far off,
the children could hear his voice
as clearly as though we were right near them.
He said,
hello, are you still there?
I'm putting a voice on there.
That's quite creepy.
He said, hello, are you still there?
Yeah, and they thought it seemed friendly.
So they went back.
What?
Yeah.
Can you do it a bit more friendly then, please?
Because I don't think that was friendly enough.
Yeah.
He went back, and for some reason, even though he could speak,
his first communication was in writing, and he wrote on his notepad,
Hello, and I am all colours Sam.
Hello, and I am all colours Sam.
But if he was an alien, that's a pretty good first attempt.
Yeah, I can't speak any alien languages.
You've got to give him some leeway for bad grammar.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
That is fair enough.
Thank you for putting me right there,
because I was being quite judgmental.
You don't pick someone up when it's their second language
at tiny grammar points, do you,
for missing out, you know, to get the tense wrong.
Actually, it goes on to say that
Faye read each word as it was pointed to,
and this was necessary as the words were not laid out in a conventional sequence oh so he just wrote a bunch
of words on a piece of paper and then pointed to them to make a sentence and that was the closest
to a sentence they could make it would talk without using the microphone but apparently it
wouldn't it wouldn't do its lips it wouldn't i'm trying to say it wouldn't move its lips without
moving my lips.
That's a challenge.
It's essentially ventriloquism, isn't it?
Yeah.
Can you do that again, please?
But also in the robot voice
and also make it sound friendly.
Hello.
Are you still there?
I think I've fallen down on the last point there.
Yeah, that's definitely pretty scary.
That's scary in the first one.
His clothes were all ripped, but he said he only had one set
and he could only wear these.
They asked if he was really a man, and the answer was a chuckled no.
Oh, what?
No, that's not friendly.
I mean, fair play, like misgendering and all that sort of stuff i'm not
i'm not judging on that at all but whatever you're if you're just try and be less creepy
i think you're giving him a lot of the creepiness james to be honest because
they said in the description he sounded friendly they They asked if he was a ghost, and he said,
well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.
And they said, what are you then?
And he replied, you know, that's it.
Oh, so is that you know?
Is it like, you know?
In what tone did he say it?
Well, you know is probably the tone.
Feels like E.T., but with a British television budget.
So it's not, instead of coming out cute, like a really cute puppet,
he's come out awful.
Mac and me.
Yeah.
Yes.
But with, again, a British television budget,
so even worse than Mac and me.
It's all about the voice, though, really, and the inflections.
I just think you've got it all.
If you think of Short Circuit with Johnny Five, if a robot came to life you would be normally be terrified of it yes
johnny five sounds so friendly you instantly like you like him he's excited he's pleased to be there
yeah yeah so i think you really need to revisit this whole episode and re-editing all your voices
with a nice friendlier voice. Yeah.
I think we need to redo all
the episodes for me with a friendlier voice.
I've been terrified since the
beginning. Maybe Alistair, you could do the voice.
He's good at voices. Yeah, I can do
some, but I can't do your... You could do a good impression
of me, can't you? I can't do an impression of
you. I'm Ben
Shakeshott. That's very friendly.
I'm Ben Shakeshott. That's my impression of you. Yeah, I'd go james shakeshaw that's very friendly i'm ben pateshaw that's my impression
of you yeah i go to your metal hut near a golf course come to me children i'm ben pateshaw um
alistair oh i've dropped my book i've asked you this before and i'll ask you again are you a ghost
uh you know yeah no i'm not a ghost but i am see-through, so it does cause confusion. I am translucent.
I think your ghost, your robot ghost,
was much friendlier than James's.
I would go into your hut.
Would you?
I would gladly go into your hut.
Thanks, Marek.
You sound like a friendly old Crossstream Father Christmas
and sort of Werther's original bloke.
Oh, that's nice.
That's me.
That was an impression of me as well.
So you, James, are the Werther's original bloke.
Now I'm the grandad.
Oh, no.
It's just not as friendly when it comes out of your mouth.
Damn it.
Look away.
Look away.
Maybe it's the face that's giving the vibes.
Alistair, can you voice James in future?
Not even in podcasts, just in life.
Sam evidently did use a more alistair toned voice because he
managed to get these children to go into his hut i feel like lord is the word yeah i didn't want
to say lure but i i was thinking it i think these words are quite defamatory
what about inviting why can't this alien just invite someone into his hut?
That's true.
Maybe he gestured towards the hut.
The kids might have suggested.
They might have said, what's in the hut?
And he was like, what?
Well, I'll show you.
Let's go into my hut.
My metal hut.
This clown, I think we forget, this clown established it.
He was scared of humans, right?
Yes, yes.
He was frightened of people and scared that they might hurt him.
Oh, wow.
My heart has just tightened in my chest.
So the kids went into the weird wooden alien's metal hut.
They crawled in through a flap, and the hut inside contained two levels the lower level
was wall they describe it as being wallpapered in blue green and the pattern on the wallpaper was
lots of little dials so imagine like you know like a um cockpit of a plane with all those buttons
but you turn that into wallpaper i'd like that that'd be good for a kid's bedroom. I think that would be really cool for a kid's bedroom, actually.
I had supermans.
So anyway, these kids were not weirded out by the big wooden clown,
and they chatted in his little metal house for a half an hour.
He said that he fed upon berries, which he collected in the late afternoon,
and he drank water from the river river which he would clean and then drink
how he ate the berries very intriguing so he would take a berry and put it in his ear and kind of
wobble his head around and then it would appear in his little triangular eye and then he'd wobble
his head around again it would appear in his mouth and he would i think he in some accounts
it said that he moved his head back and forth
to kind of eat these berries could you do some sounds for that please james um so into the air
and then i kind of roll him around the eye and then i'm imagining a sort of jim henson vibe
it's quite yes and this is pre-labyrinth but it contains a lot of the elements of the film
labyrinth it's almost exactly the same as the way you clearly i think we this is we're at the
cutting edge of describing puppetry in an audio medium i think because nobody's really tried to
do puppets on podcasts up till now well come on come on, let's not give away our ideas for free.
Yeah, so it's...
I'm enjoying my berry.
See, friendly.
Kindly.
I'm actually warming to this guy.
He seems to be a vegetarian, which I appreciate.
You know, he lives in harmony with the environment.
He's polite.
Cool wallpaper.
Afraid of people.
Afraid of people, just like us.
Into music.
Brings his own sound system.
Pretty chill with the whole non-binary thing.
A little vague, though, with the, you know,
that would get annoying, I think, after a while.
Yeah, you know.
Yeah, and I think we're forgetting the fact
he did invite two kids into his home.
Yeah, so friendly, as we've said.
That's a nice thing to do.
Okay, you're fine.
And they chatted for half an hour.
Faye has been interviewed since, and she can't remember what they chatted about,
which is really annoying.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like it'd be a very memorable encounter, does it?
No, so they chatted, and then he said goodbye friendly i think it makes people more friendly if they say friendly
after everything they've said friendly yeah definitely definitely not scary otherwise they
would have said scary wouldn't they and so these kids who just met a new friend ran off and ran away as fast as they could
and told the first adult that they saw that they'd seen a ghost.
Held it through the marsh.
It was a golfer, I believe, because they ran across the golf course.
A golfer's going to be no use in that situation.
Where I live on the Isle of Wight, where I grew up in Bembridge and Whitecliffe Bay,
the farmer, we moved in
and the farmer
across the road
died
shortly afterwards
nothing to do with us
moving in
coincidence
yeah
and the two fields
he had around the back
of our house
were for sale
and my dad thought
oh no
we're going to get
all the caravan parts
going to buy them
so he bought them
and he set up
his own golf range
wow
so when I was growing up he had a field that was 200 yards long,
but he lied about the distances.
No one checks.
No one checks.
So he put big netting up at one end.
So you go up and it would say 50 yards at about 45,
then it would be about 100 yards at 80.
Then it went to about 250 with about 20 yards gap
in between.
So everyone thought they were...
Did he just use
a really small 200 sign?
Yeah, make a smaller sign
so people can't tell distances.
And all the golf balls
he got,
he got yellow ones
because they were cheaper.
So when I used to come home
from school on the bus,
I could see from the top deck
of the bus,
I'd look at the fields
to see how yellow the fields to see
how yellow the fields were to work out how long i'll be out picking up golf balls
six o'clock and me and my brothers and the family to go out and pick them up by hand
about 5 000 golf balls sometimes of two hours every evening that was our job wow and then we've
got one of these cars that has these trailers on the back
with these machines that pick up golf balls.
They sort of squeeze them in.
So there's just rubber wheels and they roll,
you go to the golf balls and they somehow get lodged in the,
in the,
between the wheels and thrown into the baskets.
But also there are ponies on our field as well.
We kept ponies for people who wanted to
keep them there and they'd be let out in the fields when the golf range was closed did your
dad tell them they were horses yeah but the downside of this machine that picked the golf
balls was that it also picked up horse because it was the same the same sort of shape and consistency as a golf ball.
So a lot of my youth was spent trying to sort out yellow golf balls and
horse.
It's exciting,
right?
It's very much like editing this podcast by the sounds of it.
It's going to be a nightmare to edit,
yeah.
There's a golf ball.
Oh no,
that doesn't taste like a golf ball.
Why are you tasting golf balls?
I don't know.
There was a couple of little addendums to the story.
The father of Fay, Mr. Y.
What a name, Mr. Y.
I think he's just been referred to as Mr. Y.
Oh, the letter Y, right.
So I thought he was...
In that sort of old school way.
I thought he was a top-hatted man of intrigue. They call him Mr. Y. Oh, the letter Y, right. So I thought he was... In that sort of old school way. I thought he was a top-hatted man of intrigue.
They called me Mr. Y.
He believed his daughter's story after a little while,
and in part because he'd had a couple of particularly peculiar experiences
in the recent months.
It says he was driving from Shanklin to Ryde via Seaview.
That check out?
That's a really weird way to go.
And he was passing through the village of Braiding.
Yeah, yeah.
And he became aware of a large aircraft to his right,
halfway between the road and the Downs.
And he said it looked enormous and was flying very low.
He stopped the car and watched, and then the object began to hover
and kind of move around aimlessly over the swampy margins of the river Yar.
And then a wide ring of seven or more lights were seen,
and there was a clearly defined sphere like a bright red cherry
with turquoise and white lights on it.
It sounds like a big bowling ball, actually.
It kind of followed him around.
He went to his mate's house and showed his mate, and his mate saw it,
and it describes it as playing hide-and-seek between the trees and just sort of messing him around. He went to his mate's house and showed his mate and his mate saw it. And it's like, describes it as playing hide and seek between the trees and just sort of
messing him about.
So this is why we're talking about UFOs because people reckon he's not a.
Sam,
the sand down cloud is not a ghost.
He's an alien.
He's an alien.
And he's,
and that's his approximation of the human form.
And it's rubbish.
It's really,
really bad and unconvincing.
He'd just seen
Thunderbirds
and thought
that's what people were.
And then also
he had another experience
which was perhaps
a little more scary
at Compton Bay.
Is that a place?
Yes.
Yep.
I got my record
just to,
just a fact check.
Isle of White places.
I couldn't be bothered
to look up an A to Z.
The human atlas. Can you just confirm
that these places exist, please, Marek?
Yeah.
And he was looking at the sea.
Confirmed there is a sea there, yes.
Yeah, good. Okay.
He could hear sort of droning underwater craft
and he observed two points of light
quote, peering up at me
like the eyes of some horrible sea
monster. And they just sort of disappeared after a bit.
And it said he got back in his car and drove home.
He's pretty lucky, this bloke, isn't he?
He's seen a sea monster and a UFO.
And his daughter's seen the...
Met a wooden clown.
Yeah.
It's funny how these things run in families, isn't it?
It makes it seem a lot more true to me.
I think this might be one of the truest stories
we've ever encountered on the podcast.
So that's the tale of Sam the Sandown Clown.
He was never seen again.
Some might say he was never seen at all.
Yeah, I could have vended that sentence earlier.
I mean, that is very odd.
It's the oddest alien I've ever heard of. It's very different.
I can really visualise him.
You've also looked at a picture of him.
Yeah, that has helped. So, Alistair,
are you ready to
score, not just me,
not just
the Isle of Wight,
but Marik,
and an interplanetary being
potentially? Who's very friendly. Yes, I am ready to pass judgement on interplanetary being, potentially.
Who's very friendly.
Yes, I am ready to pass judgment on all of you.
Okay, then.
Let's go.
Let's go first.
I think let's ease ourselves in with naming.
Okay.
I liked Mr. Y's name.
Mr. Y? I didn't like the way the second boy was unnamed and unidentified.
Because that also, I kind of want him to corroborate the story so not even having a
name kind of makes him seem fake at the time the kids did corroborate each other's stories very
closely and that was one of the things that that led the um uh evidently quite inquisitive mr y to
really believe them the inquisitive mr y okay so it sounds like, according to Mr. Y,
the little boy did exist, he just doesn't have a name.
Yeah, he's, I, yeah.
I think he just doesn't want to be hassled.
And the name of the clown is Sam the Sandown Clown.
He is all colours.
They are all colours.
I keep referring to him as a he,
but they are not specified gender-wise.
So I apologise for that, Sam.
That was rude of me.
And Sam is a gender-neutral name as well.
Exactly.
And I think wooden robots are non-binary by nature.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Have we got any more names?
We've got all those names.
What names?
What names?
We had...
Let him on me.
Shanklin?
Oh, the place is Shanklin Lake.
The great thing about Lake is there isn't a lake in Lake.
What?
Where it's actually based is Lake, which is Sandown.
When I read, it was sort of Sandown Lake borders,
Lake Common, where they encountered Sam the Clown.
Yeah.
But Lake doesn't have a lake in it.
How has it got the name Lake?
You'll be telling me that Sandown is marshy
and there's no sand at all.
No, there is sand in Sandown.
Oh, thank goodness.
Lakes are just like a stream.
Maybe it was before lakes were invented.
An early proto-lake.
Yeah, proto-lake, yeah.
Maybe that's something to do with Sam himself.
He was recording whether it was a lake,
whether the river was big enough to be a lake.
Ah, yeah. He was definitely splashing to be a lake. Ah, yeah.
He was definitely splashing around in the water.
Yeah, and he's wearing a highly visible costume,
which council workers have to do before the fluorescent things came in, isn't it?
Fluorescent technology was the stuff of dreams at that point,
so all council workers dressed as clowns.
Yeah, so he said, just wear something highly visible.
Yeah.
Well, you're going to have to make it at home, Sam home sam you're gonna have to come up with this at home we haven't got the budget this is the isle of white council we've overspent we've overspent
on daffodil bulbs again the advantage of it is you can get about five or six workmen in one small
vehicle so it's actually very efficient. Yeah, just any fancy dress.
It doesn't have to be clown.
You've got a Batman over there,
Spider-Man pyjamas man,
who's mowing the lawn.
These ghost stories as well,
the Spider-Man pyjamas.
I'd love to see you.
It just sounds like Father's for Justice
more than a ghost story.
Is that possible that Sandown
was simply just
trying to get his kids back?
Are you high on my children?
No. No. Alright. And he was afraid
that people were going to hurt him. In the courts.
But I won't fight back.
Don't represent yourself, Sam the Sandown.
It's very hard to make a rousing
speech by just pointing to words
i mean this has been fascinating i love the idea of clowns working for the council however
it does not particularly credit the story in name terms oh all colors sam is this is that's quite a
that's like the name of my album and that that and the inquisitive mr y i think and and maybe
the fact that lake hasn't got a lake.
Maybe we're looking at a three.
Tops.
Okay.
Three out of five.
All right.
You drive a hard bargain,
but I think we're going to have to settle with that.
Friendly.
Starting the word friendly to make it seem friendly.
It does work.
Yeah, it does work.
Very pleasing.
Just a three.
Friendly.
What is the next category?
The next category is supernatural.
friendly what is the next category the next category is supernatural so please bear in mind the fact that um he ate berries through his ear that's not natural yep yeah via his eye via his
eye he had to speak through a microphone this is before karaoke sets were common.
1970s. Certainly not portable.
Yeah.
He made that himself.
And his home was two floors.
And despite the fact he was seven foot tall.
I'm torn between whether this is supernatural or just incredibly incoherent in narrative terms.
To the point of being an obvious lie if this guy is is an alien then that's not supernatural so i guess i guess you have to decide
but he said when asked are you a ghost he sort of said well not really but i am in an odd sort of
way that's that's so such an english response I know Sam is meant to be from space,
but that is just the way people from the 1970s talked.
I am in an odd sort of way.
It's so English.
All right, in that case,
that has convinced me that he's not an alien
and is an interdimensional being, perhaps.
Definitely.
That might explain why he's struggling to take human form.
Yes.
And his metal house.
And his metal house. And his metal house.
It wouldn't explain the wallpaper.
It's got taste.
No neck.
It could explain the no neck, maybe.
It could explain the no neck.
The lack of a neck.
Yeah.
And don't forget Mr. Wise's other experiences.
Oh, yeah.
The spacecraft and the undersea.
Lights.
Lights.
Lights or eyes.
Lights or eyes.
And his clothes were ripped as well.
All ghosts have ragged clothes.
Everyone knows that's the standard ghost wear.
Okay, I'm going to take a gamble
and I'm going to say it's five out of five.
Yes.
Because it's either the creepiest
and most supernatural thing that's ever happened
or it's not.
Yes.
Or it's normal and it isn't normal.
Yes.
Five.
Next category is the apple doesn't fall far. Okay, so we isn't normal. Yes. Yes. Next category is The Apple Doesn't Fall Far.
Okay.
So we've got Mr. Y.
Mr. Y.
And his daughter, Faye.
Faye Y.
And they both have the gift of lies.
The gift of making stories up that are obviously not true.
Big stories that have travelled the world.
Fair play to them, yes.
Yeah.
Is that the meaning of the category?
Does it have any other dimensions to it?
No, just a freaky way of saying it.
Well, the book didn't fall far from the clown when he dropped that book.
That's true.
That's just how gravity works.
And he didn't go far from his hut.
And he had berries, which are a bit like apples, but a lot smaller.
I don't think it's a four, five out of five.
And here's my reasoning, because I think the inquisitive Mr. Y,
I think he would take every opportunity to weave a fable, to tell you a tale.
And yet, adult Faye, when she was asked about the details, she was,
oh, I can't remember.
Yeah, we chatted for half an hour.
Chatted for half an hour, can't remember.
Just one of those things where you talk to a wooden clown.
In a metal hut.
I think the inquisitive Mr. Y would have taken that opportunity
to embellish the tale.
So I think it's a four.
Okay, that's good, that's good.
It's still good, it's good.
My voice actually did become him there.
I got a bit of a sore throat.
That was an unintentional.
That's good, that's good.
I thought it was friendly.
It'd be great if he slowly started becoming the monster from today onwards.
Like to sort of scratch my ear and a load of sawdust fall out.
Yeah, like Brundlefly sort of thing,
where your fingers start merging into the blue claws.
Three-fingered blue claw.
And your kids say,
Daddy, your head's getting a bit pointy this morning.
Your neck seems to be disappearing.
Don't be silly, children.
Get me a berry.
I can't speak properly.
Can you pass me that microphone?
Is this on?
So what's the final category?
Final category.
I've tried this before and it's not worked,
but I've got high hopes for it this time.
Okay.
It's It from Stephen King's It.
Five out of five. Yes. It is It from Stephen King's It. Five out of five.
Yes.
It is It from Stephen King's It.
Yes.
It's even gender neutral.
Pennywise turned out to be female, but presented as male throughout.
I've already passed judgment, James.
Oh, damn.
Don't try and erode the solid block of five I've pushed in your direction.
Yes.
Fantastic.
That is redemption.
What you're witnessing there, M Fantastic. That is redemption. What you're witnessing there,
Marek,
is redemption.
It was wonderful
to see you
on your birthday
of all days.
Yeah, of all days.
That's my gift to you.
The gift of five.
And that song
from earlier.
Oh, yes.
That's two great gifts.
Well, thank you very much, Marek.
Thank you so much.
My pleasure.
So where can people
find your things?
You've got YouTube? your things you've got youtube
youtube you've got youtube if you like ghost walks then i do a thing called cool dudes
walking club which i go on walks and talk nonsense there's quite a few ghost walks i've been on
parts of the famous night and gorges and then places in london as well so if they like your
um podcast which obviously they do if they're listening to this point.
Yeah. Imagine if they've got
this point and they just can't stand it.
They're like, oh, another episode.
Flipping heck. I don't understand
how podcasts work.
This had better end soon.
Why did I agree to listen to every
episode of this podcast with these people I can't
stand? Well, if they're there, they
particularly appeal to sadists.
So they can look on there.
I've got a YouTube.
What's it called?
Marrick Larwood or Cool Dudes Walking Club.
You can see my YouTube videos of, I mean, some are awful,
but that's what it's for, isn't it?
I've seen most of the London Haunted Walk ones,
and I really, really enjoy them.
They're very fun.
When you do a ghost walk,
it always says,
Charles Dickens used to frequent this pub.
Every single pub in London.
Charles Dickens went on the...
It's amazing you've got any writing done,
to be honest. you have been listening to lawmen with me alistair beckett king and me james shakeshaft
and deputy law person marek larwood please check out his videos on that youtube thing
and if you want more then there is more on our Patreon.
I was very brutal in my editing.
There's a whole yoghurt riff gone.
There's a dairy and dairy substitute cut.
A whole yoghurt subplot is missing from this edit.
Release the dairy substitute cut
is what the internet's going to be screaming.
Well, you can do that if you join us
on patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod.
Happy birthday, Jimmy Shakes.
I hope you got some creamy bakes.
I really hope you don't die soon.
And you enjoyed
this lovely tune.