Oh What A Time... - #105 Forgeries (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!It’s time to trawl the historical archives for some of humanity’s great forgeries. We’ve got the infamous Dutch painter Han van Meegeren and the story of how he fooled Herman Goring. An incredible ruse concocted by ‘Iolo Morganwg’. Plus, we’ll be looking into the stories of those found guilty of ‘coin clipping’ in the 1600s.And birthday cards… Do we need them? And are fake IDs still a thing? So many questions and we need your answers, so do email in: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hmm, but boom is notoriously so often followed by bust. It is, and that's the case for Asil Nadir. He built one of the UK's biggest conglomerates of the 1980s, a jewel in the FTSE 100, and he built it with just his bare hands, a fertile imagination, and a whole heap of lice. Ah yes, the important ingredient.

We love lice on British Scandal. This sounds absolutely perfect. The only thing that could make it better would be the Prime Minister herself, maybe a trophy wife and a bonkers escape from the law on a two-seater propeller plane. I live to serve Alice. This story has all that and more. To listen to Thatcher's favourite fraudster follow British Scandal wherever To listen to Thatcher's Favourite Fraudster, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts and binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery+. I'm Mike Bubbins.

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Let's get on with the show. Right then, really looking forward to this, because this is a person I've read quite a lot about in the past. A man called Edward Williams, who was, once upon a time, an ordinary stonemason from the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales. His father had been a stonemason. There was an expectation that the trade would follow the family line, but Edward had a passing interest,

more than a passing interest in poetry. Now he was, after all, a young man. So when the great Gaelic poetic forgery, the poems of O'Shaan translated by James MacPherson appeared in the 1760s, he thought to himself, oh, okay, this isn't, he was lit up with all of this romantic fervour that was going on at the time.

He moved to London and he became active in the London Welsh, the sort of expatriate Welsh circles that were in London at the time. So when is this? This is the? This is the 1760s. 1760s, okay. So the Welsh, you know,

there's always been a big Welsh population in London, you know, it's an obvious place to go. So the London Welsh, they debated, they discussed, they sang, and they were supposed to declare a passion for hearing poems recited to the strumming of a harp. They referred to themselves as bards, they adopted bardic pseudonyms. This is a tradition that still continues to this day. I actually won the Stedvod, which is a literary competition at my school, for a piece of creative writing.

You ought to give yourself a bardic pseudonym. The one I gave myself was Richard Richard, Richard Richard, Richard Richard Richardson. Did you have to say that at the beginning? The teacher who was the judge, I had to keep reading it out. That's so funny. Because what they do at the proper Estetvod is they read out a sort of a summary and criticism of the piece that's won. Yeah, yeah. a sort of a summary and criticism of the piece that's won. Yeah, yeah. So they would say something like, oh, the tongue-in-cheek style of Richard, Richard,

Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard Richardson. And I thought, this is, this is good. Anyway. What was your winning piece? That's amazing. What was it? I can't remember what I was writing about. You just had to write a, it was just a piece of creative writing.

So I just wrote a funny story. Just something brilliant. I can't remember. Just something generally brilliant. It's not a town. I can't remember what was in it. So there was a very, this wrote a funny story. Just something brilliant. Just something generally brilliant. I can't remember what was in it. So there was a very this was a literary environment. They took an interest in the French Revolution and also the

ancient Britons. So one topic from which poems were composed in 1790 was Liberty. And not long afterwards they added a strapline to their advertising where Britain loves to trace her native notes, right? Now, Edward took the bardic name Jollomorcanwg,

so Morgannwg is Glamorgan in Welsh, it's where he was from, and he was under this identity that became perhaps the most famous, but certainly the most effective forger of historical sources and of literature, as well he was a forger of literature in the whole of British history.

So he began his work in the late 1770s. And what he was doing was he was attempting to prove that the ancient Britons, basically the Welsh, had survived the Roman conquest and that there was a direct lineage with modern Britons, right? And so the Welsh were the true Britons. So he wanted to prove that Welsh people were the true Britons. So he wanted to prove that Wales, that Welsh people were the true Britons, the original Britons, and that the English were basically, they were immigrants and they were invaders

and they were all round outsiders. So I am a genuine British person. And as two English people, you're either Anglo-Saxons or you're Jutes. You've come over to my gaffe. I've been here since the beginning. And this is what you're trying to prove, right? The trouble was he couldn't prove it.

So either the documentary evidence hadn't survived or it had never existed in the first place. Now, it is worth pointing out at this stage that Edward Yoland-Borganu was becoming increasingly addicted to lauding him. So he's high, right. Now he initially took it because he had very bad back pain and then he became addicted. So he was high a lot at the time. So these aren't the thoughts of a sober individual. So we started writing.

Will Barron Also Lordenum led to essentially insanity. If it was heavy use of Lordenum, you would completely go bonkers. That is what would happen. What is Lordenum? I don't actually know what it is. It was a very strong drunk opiate that was available to buy in bottle form at a time before they realised that Lordenum really was not something you should be taking on a regular basis. Yeah, yeah. So it's an opium. Absolutely. It's an opiate like morphine or something. So he was taking a lot of Lordenham,

not sober. Some of his ideas are pretty out there. So he started writing medieval poetry, and he was an amazing forger of medieval poetry. He created an entire system of runes, which he insisted were real and that had been used by the medieval bards, the medieval Welsh bards, all the product of his own mind. He basically created the modern Estetvodic practice, so the bardic circle, which has continued to this day, which is all premised on a lie, on a fabrication. And almost everything that came to be associated with Edward or with his alter ego, Jolo, was made up, invented to serve a purpose. So if you go to the modernist, N. F. Lord.

Yolo? Yolo is his bardic... What a cool name. He didn't realise, he was so ahead of his time. What's funny is, as a Welsh speaker, I've heard that name my entire life. That's never occurred to me. Okay.

It's just a name. It's like if Mark meant something in Welsh, I'd be like, Mark? So yeah, so that's his alter ego, his bardic name. And he was just inventing these traditions. So it's an amazing achievement to have established an entire historical tradition, which is an enormous part of Welsh national identity through forgery and being addicted to opium at the same time. You've got to hand it to the guy. If I was addicted to opium, I would not be creating Welsh national identity for the next 250 years.

How can you get anything done? It's pretty all-consuming what I know about opiate addiction. I wouldn't be doing the washing up. I wouldn't be creating wealth and identity. So at the Estethe Vauds, a competition as a poet, it's a massive prize and there's ceremonial swords and they say, oh, is hevduch, is their piece and they're dressed up as druids and stuff. He was like, oh, we'd be doing this for ages. Now I must say there is evidence of Esteddvod, which is this big cultural sort of festival going back to sort of the 1100s. There was one in Cardigan Castle in 1176. Because Welsh language culture takes poetry so seriously, there's evidence of Stedfords in the sort of 1450s in Carmarthen where it was like competitive poetry.

Will the whole community come to watch this? Is this a thing that, yeah? Yeah, and if you're a poet, you're a big star. But this isn't unique to Wales. There are poetry competitions, especially in like the sort of Catholic countries. They think that the one in the 1100s was an idea that was influenced by something that was happening in Europe. So yeah, it's just the weird traditions of the Druids and all that kind of stuff.

That was made up by Ollum Rogandoch. So he wasn't alone though. He wasn't alone in doing this in the late 18th and early 19th century. So, Walter Scott, for instance, turned his mythologies into fiction. So he wrote novels like Ivanhoe and Rob Roy. William Henry Ireland forged documents and plays

he claimed were written by Shakespeare. That is until he confessed all in 1805, died in poverty and obscurity. There was Thomas Chatterton, who was a brilliant young poet who took his own life at age 17, but only after having forged a series of medieval poems. Can you imagine forging medieval poems as a teenager? Yeah. Wow. The arrogance of writing a play, someone saying, who wrote that? And you're

going, Shakespeare. You've got to be confident in your writing if that's who you're claiming you wrote it. Yeah. I've said it before on this podcast that I think Chaucer's a bit shit and therefore medieval poetry, how odd is it? Do you know what I mean? Is it going to be easy? It's going to be pretty dull stuff, isn't it? Well, he was hugely popular and he stood the test of time. I think that'd be easy to look up some medieval films. What are you talking about? I don't know. I'm trying to imagine you in the prison cell being forced to come up with a medieval poem on the hoof to prove that you're not a forger.

And I've got to be honest, with the greatest of respect, I can see you struggling. Talk about the tavern, talk about the mead, talk about the plague, you're done. Bosch, Bosch, Bosch. Listen to these forgeries, they did serve a purpose. So they were created to prove something about national identity. And especially those identities that the forgers felt

were being challenged by change. So, Yoland Morganog Edward Williams, he lived in Glamorgan, which has become the site of significant industrialisation. And so when he was alive, he was worried that the Welsh language was being threatened by English incomers or non-Welsh speaking incomers who were there to work because, you know, the, that industrialised part of Wales, there was so much work going. It was like the Klondike. So people were coming from all over the place to work there.

So 19th century France had its own celebrity case, Denis of Grand-Lucas, who created as many as 27,000 fake letters from figures as varied as Dante, Joan of Arc, Pontius Pilate. So these forgeries provided a sense of belonging at a time when society and culture and politics and economics all seemed in flux, but tradition, however, provided a sense of stability. And so, you

know, that folklore, it often, at times of uncertainty and unrest, it often enjoys an upsurge in popularity, and the same is true of antiquarianism, and that's what he was really. The fact that those things often rest on forgery or certainly invention isn't really a surprise. It's just he was so successful at it. And I think a lot of Welsh people know about Jóllann Morgannwg. Like certainly he is quite a very famous figure. This new year why not let Audible expand your life by listening? Audible CA contains over 890,000 total titles within its current library including audiobooks, podcasts, and exclusive audible originals that'll inspire and motivate you. Tap into

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Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonder ECA. That's audible.com slash wonder ECA. I'm John Robbins and on my podcast I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, how do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure, every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope?

Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, or listen to episodes early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations and motivational series. I mean, the one thing that always strikes me about him is that I find Jola Morgano fascinating. Just the lengths he was going to, to forge this bardic tradition.

And there is an enormous tradition of poetry where it's far more, say, than the novel writing traditional plays, that's more modern. But I mean, we've been obsessed with poetry for a very long time. It's just the fact that the way people were dressing and stuff and the traditions behind it,

that's what he was forging. And he was also forging poetry himself, but a lot of people have worked out that that was forgery. The main thing, if you're not a Welsh speaker, that I think he can be most proud of is that he effectively invented the comedian Paul Foot's haircut. So I'm going to... They love that haircut.

Every time I see Paul Foot on the television. You may need to describe Paul Foot's haircut. Well, we'll have to put this on the Instagram. It's a kind of... Very short fringe. Yeah, it's the most extreme... Long flanks. Long… Very short fringe. Yeah, it's the most extreme… Long flanks. Long flank, short fringe.

A bit like Dave Hill from Slade. Right, okay, yeah. But if you Google Jolomir Ganuk, you'll see what I mean. Oh yeah, there it is. I mean, that is Paul Foteca. Short front and a mullet, basically, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fascinating look.

I think it looks quite good. I like it. I mean, I've seen... If you Google him, the first Google image, I've actually seen more extreme versions of it. I mean, he was... Do you know who he reminds me of? Michael Bolton.

Yeah. He's got it in him. It's flowing. It is so interesting talking to English people about these titans of Welsh language culture. Because whenever I talk to Welsh people about Ion Morgannwg, we know that he was forging this stuff and a lot of these traditions he was making up when he was high on Lordenham, but no one has ever compared him to Michael Bolton. That's new. Fascinating. It's interesting what you're saying though about that idea of forgeries

and tradition. So much tradition from every country in the world is in some way borrowed or you know, nothing is quite as it is. Stories are amalgamations of stories from other areas that have been passed around and twisted and tweaked, etc. Will Barron Yes, that's true. All cultures and nations do this. There's a great book called The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm, which is very, very interesting on this stuff. But anyway, Jóla Morgannók, there we go. Fascinating. Do you want to hear some medieval poetry? I found some from Huelapóin, is that how you say it? Oh yeah, Huelapóin. Welsh prince. Is this a from Hewlett-Powen. Is that how you say it?

Oh yeah, Hewlett-Powen. Is this a forgery? I think this is real. Yeah, yeah. When the sky darkened above, when foreigners were taken, when the king was routed, when warriors were armed for battle, when there was a weapon struck at a beard. I could do that. This is not great. Yeah. Okay. Here's the challenge then, Chris. For our next episode, you will be writing

us a medieval piece of poetry, which has to be better than Chaucer. I've seen better pros scrawled onto toilet walls that's better than Chaucer. If you write a poem that's better than Chaucer, Chris, you will be on the news. It's quite funny that the guy who does the half-time stuff at West Ham thinks Chaucer's rubbish.

He thinks he's better than Chaucer. It is. Chaucer's crap. That guy thinks he's better than Chaucer. Chaucer's crap. That guy thinks he's better than Chaucer. Oh my god. The person who interviews Julian Dix on a podcast thinks he's better than him. The one who's making two 12 year olds race to see who wins the signed shirt. Yeah, he thinks he's better than Chaucer. I bet I've got a bigger vocabulary than Chaucer.

There would have been less words, wouldn't there? Do you know what? You're gonna say it. If you were to have some sort of mental health episode and you were on a psychiatric unit and the doctor was saying to me, your friend, well, obviously we're concerned about him, he thinks he's better than Chaucer,

I'd have to say, no, he's always thought that. He's not short on confidence, Chris. And can we just quickly focus on what he just said there, Ellis? And I quote, I think I've got a better vocabulary than Chaucer. There were less words, weren't there? I just don't think the words were words. I think the words were different and they were about different things. They didn't have TikTok and stuff like that. Your grasp of tech speak is absolutely better than Jors''.

I don't think he used a single emoji. No one in medieval Britain was using words like squeaky bum time. Which Jorsa definitely wasn't. So, in the final part of today's show, I'm going to talk to you about coin forgeries and the brutal punishments that were doled out if you were caught. Okay, have you ever handled the legal tender? Have you ever tried to make legal tender? I think we can assume that's a no, but have you ever handled the legal tender? Have you ever tried to make legal tender? I think we can assume that's a no. But have you ever been given a bank note that you've gone, wait a second, that's not real?

I've only really discovered these things since having children. But at places like theme parks, you've got those machines where you squish pennies. Oh yes, yeah, yeah. And you might print something onto the squished penny. It's impossible to walk a child pass without them insisting they get to use it. They love squishing pennies kids. That's one of the great truisms of childhood. They all love to squish pennies.

And they're often not quite strong enough to turn the wheel that squishes the penny, which means that what happens is basically you're squishing a penny. Yeah, every time I squish a penny, I think, is this cool? What's Rachel Reeves think of this? So what have you learned about those things? Well, I mean, I certainly have never forged anything, but I have destroyed currency. OK, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my understanding is that doesn't start as a penny, doesn't it?

Isn't it like just a circular disk of copper, which is then printed upon? You're not actually… Oh no, I'm destroying things. You're crushing the Queen's face. RIP. Wow. Fair enough. So I am going to start this tale of coin forgery by taking you back to December 1674 when a lady by the name of Anne Petty, who was a widow in her sixties from Holborn, was brought before the Old Bailey in London and tried for the crime of counterfeiting by clipping coins. Now, would you like to guess what clipping coins is? Let's see if you can get this right. What do you think clipping coins is? I know this. It's where you take off a corner of the coin and try and basically like split

the value. Very good. Exactly. It refers to the clipping of the edges of silver coins, because they were literally silver then, and melting it down or recasting that silver to either make new coins or to remove elements that you want to use in terms of something else, basically. So you trim down the coins and you take the silver from them and still be able to use that coin as tender. And what do you think the punishment was for the big coins? Oh, it would be something awful, like a ducking stool. What feels fair? You going ducking stool, what do you reckon? What feels fair for trimming the edges of a coin? What do you think feels fair in 1674?

Slap on the wrist. Anne was sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle to Smithfield, which is like a large plank dragged through the city, where she was burned to death at the stake. OK, so that was the punishment for trimming coins. Which was a bit harsh, because you could say Anne Petty was just a petty criminal, couldn't you? Oh, very good.

You wouldn't bother, would you? Now, I would have said,ty was just a petty criminal, couldn't you? You wouldn't bother, would you? Now, I would have said, it's only a petty crime. Yeah, you could have said that as well. Exactly. But she didn't. She was burnt on the stake. And Anne was not the only person, unfortunately, to be burnt on the stake. There were many people and many women who were burnt on the stake. More than 2,000 women were sentenced between the late 17th century and the late 19th century. 2,000 women alone were sentenced for the clipping of coins and loads of these people were burnt to death on the stake for that crime. In fact, the very last person to be burned at the stake in Britain was a woman by the name of Catherine Murphy, who was executed for the same crime of clipping coins in March 1789 before the method was abolished the following

year. Now, 1789 is not that long ago. It's basically 10 generations. I was trying to work it out. It's about 10 generations ago that someone in Britain was burnt at the stake for clipping a coin. It's not that long ago. Wow. Like, I've seen a picture of my great-grandfather, and he died obviously before I was born. We look very similar. OK.

So that's, you know, three generations ago. Ten generations ago, there's going to be people walking around who are very similar to me going, bloody hell, she's been burnt at the stake. Clipping the coins, a bit much, isn't it? How's your wife? Don't laugh. It's been a bad week. She listened to your podcast, what's a podcast? So when was your great-great-granddad, when was that, when was he alive? He died in the early 1920s of his injuries sustained in the First World War. So I've

seen a picture of him as a young man. So he would have been born in the First World War. So I've seen a picture of him as a young man. So he would have been born in the late? Late 19th century, so like 1897 or something. So that is about a hundred years before the birth of your great-great-grandfather, someone who'd been burnt at stake in Britain. And there are many more examples of anonymous women, anonymous because their names were adapted from court records, who became rich off the proceeds of these forgeries. That was until they were caught, as happened to one woman in October 1679.

Now this is a court record of this crime. It says, records say that she lived affluently, but that her riches were made by very base practices. In short, she bought stolen plates, other metal items, and kept them hidden until the theft was forgotten about, and then melted them down and turned them into coins. Quite clever, the sort of waiting until the theft has been forgotten about aspect. I like that. You steal it all, then you just leave it and just let the dust settle.

I mean, I must admit, I did occasionally, as a student, steal pint glasses from pubs. Which is effectively the same thing. I've still got stolen pint glasses in my house now. Really? Yeah. From like 20 years ago. You ever have cups and glasses just follow you around for your whole life? I've got some plastic ones from Latitude, plastic pint glasses that I bought home. But that's not stolen because I had paid for them and you only got money back and you returned it to the thing, so technically not fair. I've got a Guinness glass in my house. I'm like, this must be nicked from a pub.

Definitely. I can't remember buying this. It was all the rage for a while, wasn't it? It was, yeah. It might still be amongst the young. We're just too old to be part of the stealing beer glasses in the pub scene. The court records continue, they go on to say how, to help her in her endeavours, this lady maintained close relations with various thieves and gangs operated in and out of London. And it was one of these thieves who dogged her in, basically, in an effort to save himself. And when constables turned up they found various stolen plates, a parcel of melted silver and a diamond ring which she paraded on her finger, which does feel like a bit of an oversight to be wearing the thing that you've stolen. That feels

like you haven't really thought that through. However, she did have quite a clever defence for why these objects weren't stolen but were in fact purchased. What do you think the defence she presented in port was and how did she try to prove it? It's quite clever this actually. I can't work it out. She had made a fake book of receipts accounting for every item that she stole. So whenever she stole an item, she would make a fake receipt that corresponds with it and she would place it in a book, insisting that the transactions had all been above board and she lacked…

Much easier to do then. That is true. And that she lacked any knowledge of any of these things being stolen. However, the jury didn't buy it and she was burned to death on the stake. What a time to be alive. Jeez, whiz. So the question is, I suppose, why, and this is what's really interesting about it, is why was this such a popular form of crime in early modern London, especially considering the huge risks? Well, the constable's reports shed light on this. On searching the premises, another pair suspected counterfeiting coins constables discovered several melting pots, a pair of shears,

some clippings, and about 150 pieces of shears and clippings and about 150 pieces of false coins with a flask and all convenient engines for that pernicious employ as I described, which were hid in a hole under the hearth with the board over it. So the reason this was so popular a crime is because crucially, it was a sort of crime that could be done in a domestic setting and using the tools that you had anywhere in your house. So you could close your curtains and use things you already had at home and using your hearth,

you had everything at home to do this crime. The risks were huge. You could be burnt at the stake, but you had everything you needed at home to do it. It was even possible, this blew my mind this, it was even possible to purchase how-to guides, such as how to wash silver, how to rub down metal, basically how-to guides on each of these steps of the crime you could buy if you wanted to explore it as your criminal venture. And for many, it was done, of course, through necessity. So Mary Hayborne, who was charged with a crime

in 1685, she explained to the judge that this was the only way she could afford to pay her rent. The admission did not save her from the gallows, but it did allow the court to offer a lurid account of her behaviour. This is what the court said. She very obscurely used to follow this too fatal employ. When the supposed secrecy of a dark night was her friend, and she often to supply the craving, in opportunities of sin, diminish the King's coin. But in a society of haves and have nots, which obviously was a huge gulf then, as it is now, but far more then, some had no choice but to take things into their own hands. And counterfeiters, they knew the risks, which is why they went to such trouble

to hide their implements. There's one couple who used to put their clipped coins and their equipment in a hole they dug near the root of a willow tree. Their stuff was discovered and they were punished. But as a final point, I think it's quite interesting, if the image of being burnt at the stake evokes in the mind one of sort of witchcraft, that was completely intentional. Now, why do you

think that is? Why do you think they chose to burn them at the stake? Why was there this parallel between the punishment for people involved in witchcraft and the punishment for people who did this? What do you think it might be? Quantitive easing. Quantitive easing. Severely frowned upon. Not quite. What do you reckon, Al? What's the reason? I'm not sure. It's just such a sad story, isn't it?

Well, the reason is this was a society that basically had little to no understanding of chemistry. And the idea that one substance could turn another thing into a third, seemed more like magic than anything else basically. Wow. So, for example, it says here in the case of Elizabeth Vaughan from 1693, another person who was punished for the same crime, it says, she was interrupted by constables while she was making coins out of tin. The officers had been called by Elizabeth's landlady, who was irritated by the sound of banging coming from her room.

On searching, they found a bottle of water, this is a quote, that would turn farthings into copper colour." So there was this feeling that it was almost like witchcraft. They didn't understand it was just science. That's what it was. So the people involved in it were often treated as such. Hence the reason, burnt at the stake, this parallel was intentional. It was the power saying, stop this stuff. You're meddling with things that you shouldn't be. This is in the world of witchcraft and you were punished accordingly. Will Barron Well, alchemy was a big thing,

wasn't it? Trying to turn base metals into gold. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely. And would you like, as a final guess, this lady, Elizabeth Vaughan, who is found with her bottle that was turned far from the copper colour, what do you think her punishment was? Oh gosh, she wasn't hanged or quartered or anything like that, Steph. What do you think it was, Chris? What do you reckon? It's something really bad or nothing at all. What do you reckon it was? What are you going with?

Let her off. Let her off. She was just fine. Yay! There you go. Great stuff. All, you know, it's a happy ending. Slightly earlier in this episode, I said I could write medieval poetry that was better than Chaucer, I don't know if we all remember that. I've written something, are you ready?

Yes I am. Oh what a time, in days of old, a daring bloke, both brave and bold. Bloke? Did spy a cow with udder white, and pondered long its tasty mite. With trembling lips he doth took a sip, and lo, full fat did bless his lip. Why has toque just suddenly come in when there's been no Old English before that point? You've just chucked in toque about six sentences in. Go back to that toque then. Let's just enjoy that one again. What was it? With trembling lips he doth took a sip, and And lo, full fat did bless his lip. Thus man and beast in pact six-nine. Dairies allure, now which so many would pine.

Chaucer's better, mate. No, no, I think I'm, I think Chris is better than Chaucer. I think he's actually, he's done it. I would, I'd read that over the Canterbury Tales. Yeah. Well, a couple of blocks walk into Canterbury from South London. Big deal. A giant 69ing a cow.

That's poetry. There we go. Well, do you like Chris? Fair play. You knocked it out quickly. Hey, if listeners want to send in their own medieval poetry, maybe on the subject of the first ever Lipster T, hey, knock yourself out. Or based on the fact that I'm a better medieval poet than Chaucer, check, knock yourself out.

It also answers the question for me, why did Chris slightly glaze over during my bit about coins? Because he was writing medieval poetry. The absolute cheat. So that is today's episode on forgeries. Thank you so much for listening. I know we've talked about this many times but becoming an O-What-A-Time full-timer has a huge impact on the show. It really does, it really allows us to do this as much as we can and make bigger and better episodes and put our all into it basically. It's £4.99 a month, there's no ads, you get bonus episodes, you get first dibs on

live show stuff which will be happening very very shortly, so if that sounds good to you please do sign up and become an Oh What A Time Full Timer. Also the great medieval poets had patrons. Yes. Yeah? They had people paying for them so they could spend their days writing poetry. Chris doesn't have a patron, and yet he's better than Chaucer. He's doing that in his spare time.

He's the matchday announcer at West Ham United. No one is supporting my poetry. In fact, people are trying to suppress it. Certainly not my wife. Yeah. There had never been a poet who has operated under less enthusiasm and people pushing me on. Even then I'm struggling to find the words. Maybe that's why my poetry isn't taking off as I wish. Who's the poet laureate? Simon Armitage. He's in big trouble.

You show how lazy it is. If I become poet laureate you two are gonna have real egg on your face. You two would have to hold your hands up and say we were wrong. That would be delicious. Well Chris I look forward to your next great work. Thank you very much for joining us everyone and we will see you for more medieval poetry and history very very soon. Bye bye! Bye thank you, goodbye! Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.