Oh What A Time... - #113 Unlikely Sports Stars (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

This week we’re examining the most unlikely sport stars that history has to offer! We’ve got Pope John Paul II, the goalie. Che Guevara: the rugby years. Plus, Albert Camus, the football obsessive.And Mr Brightside would be a far better national anthem for the United Kingdom, we know that now. But do you have a better suggestion? If yes: [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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Thinking about the misfortunes your small business could suffer doesn't seem very Zen. But meditate on this for a moment. Thinking leads to preparation. Preparation leads to peace of mind. You could call it Zen insurance. Get affordable insurance for as little as $19 per month.

Quick and easy, whether you're self-employed, an entrepreneur, a contractor, or small business owner, ZenSurance offers the unique coverage you need in a snap. Get an instant price today at ZenSurance.com. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that shares important historical facts like the following, inspired by the fact that today I'm wearing a tour t-shirt from the band The Killers. Here's my fact and it's a historical fact. At time of recording Mr Brightside has spent 408 weeks in the UK official singles chart top 100, just under eight years, making it the longest charting single in the charts history. I think they should make

it the new national anthem mate. I really do, I think it's more of a national anthem than a good saga queen. Or Jerusalem or land of open glory all of that. Mate the killers, Mr Brightside, national anthem. Then you do a one with strings, a symphonic version for like moments of great national tragedy. But yeah it's a best song. Can you imagine the England team lining up at a world cup and Mr Brightside starts playing? Harry Kane with his hand on his chest. They'd win every fucking year mate. They'd win every fucking year.

He'd be like our hacker. The opposition panicking. The bit that would be quite effective is that bit where it gets louder. I can't sober up. You know where it gets louder and louder. That's not even Mr Brightside, Tom. Is it not? What's that?

You sing your own killer song you stupid banker. What song is that then? That's also the killers. Oh it is the killers as well, absolutely. I know it's the killers. You're in the same wheelhouse. Yeah they all sound the same mate, that's why it's such a good anthem. Is it, and you're hunking your swag and you're hunking it out and I'm having a... Is it that song? And you're kissing my dress... I can't be kissing my dress now but... What did you say? You think the lyrics? And I'm having a fag and you're hanging it out. What?

And you're mending my dress now. You're taking it to the tailor's. And you're having a fag and you're putting it out. And then you have another fag and you put it out. And then you realise what fag's costing you, you're shitting yourself. So you're moving to vapes and you're having a fag and you put it out and then you have another fag and you put it out and then you realize what fags cost you Shating yourself. So you're moving to vapes and you're having a vape Well Chris I can completely believe that you would absolutely back that as an idea that it

I imagine if there was one of those sort of you know, big things people sign on the internet what they call Petitions top do we need to stop recording? Are you alright? Not really What they call? What those things go around. Do we need to stop recording? Are you alright? Not really. I haven't slept much last night. My four year old is learning how to sleep without a nappy in the night and the nights are at best disrupted. Ah. Yeah. Okay. That's why I'm losing all language. All memory.

What's your nappy, Sitch? Are you dry? It... I've been dry for 38 years mate. Have you? Lots of brag. Yeah, you can eat your lunch off it. So that is a good fact. So top 100 for eight years. Yeah, longest charting single in the charts history. It's also... UK?, UK. Yeah. Also the biggest single never to reach number one in the UK. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Coming out of the cage and I'm doing just fine. Gotta gotta be done because I want it all. Yes, I'm a kiss. It was only a kiss. Yeah. And you're putting it out. You're having a fag and you're putting it out. Yeah, let's do you.

Turn it into, let's do you. It was this and Place Your Hands by Reef and occasionally Parklife by Blur. They were the three songs that you would hear in like a provincial nightclub that didn't play any guitar based music. Yes. Yeah. So- What were the other ones again?

Reef Place Your Hands and Park Laugh by Blur. Yeah. Summer of 69, Brian Adams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You might hear that as well. Yeah. So if you grew up in a small town like I did and you were going to small provincial nightclubs that tended to play pop music with a house beat to it. Music I've never heard anyone buy. So would you be sat there waiting like a sort of a striker waiting to come off the bench? What do you know what? Sat in the corner of the dance floor waiting for this guitar track to come on.

Because of my haircut what would happen is when they would play the guitar track, so it was always place your hands when I was younger than when I was older obviously was Mr Brightside, people would come up to me and say, I bet you're living this. I remember people coming up to me in Zeus in Cardiff. Did you ever go there, Tom? I have been to Zeus in Cardiff. Yeah, and they were all ruffling my hair. They were like, this is your song. They're playing this for people like you, oddballs like you. You should be a clubby for Bach. Yeah, I've got two slightly chipped front teeth because of Zeus because I was dancing with a bottle in my mouth and my head butted a sloping ceiling and I bit down on the bottle and I've got two slightly chipped teeth.

I've got a chipped tooth because I was drinking a bottle after you and I had done a gig in Bath and you just banged into me. Is that because of me? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. See, this is the joy that young people are missing out on by not drinking anymore. You are very apologetic. And two could have damaged mouths. Three chipped teeth between two of us. As a nightclub, it was, the RIV did, actually the RIV might have done as well, but certainly

the metros, RIP, there was like a sort of pool table plus chill-out zone that felt extremely unchilled. Right. And like a sort of tuck shop that sold chips in the nightclub. It was everything. Everything you could possibly want. God, that is the ultimate provincial nightclub, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you could buy sausage, beans and chips in the club.

Get this, Skull. Cardiff University, where Ellen and I first met. Guess what was what there was on the dance floor? There was a hatch. Where was hell? On the dance floor. What could you buy from that hatch on the dance floor? Can you buy pizza? Yeah, they had a Domino's pizza. What on the dance floor? Yeah, basically the back of the dance floor slightly to the left there was a Domino's Pizza hatch so you could dance across and you're coming in my hair and you're coming in my hair and you're coming in my hair that one of those big dips

and you're coming in my hair please rewrite and you're doing just fine and you're potting some plants please can you rewrite is that rose bush mine? Very good. Oh my god. This is the thing about provincial nightclubs that just didn't happen in London.

Like, there was not after a nightclub, a big food scene in London. I never remember growing up like, everyone getting food or cheesy chips. There was none of that. You just go home and be hungry. That amazes me. Yeah. But like Northern relatives, the post nightclub food scene is huge. Oh, big time. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you would walk up. So when I was going out in the nineties, there were four nightclubs in Carmarthen for a town of 15, 16,000 people.

That feels a lot. That's too many, isn't it, for Carmarthen? That's almost one each. All the farmers would come in. Yeah. So we'd have, and also people from the Gwendrath Valley would come into Carmarthen as well, if they weren't going to Llanelli.

So you had the savannas for the over 25s, then you had the Rive for the under 16s. And then metros, if you're slightly more discerning and were over 18. And then there was Harvey's, God, what did that change his name to? Which was more aimed at a sort of farmer market. Would they have to leave the club at 2 a.m. and go straight to their flock?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do go out to the fields at like 4 a.m, so it's going straight from the nightclub to the field. Then there was a strip of Crisp and Fry and Magic Walk, the Chinese takeaway by the square. And then there would just be people eating, standing up, waiting for taxis, like a hundred people. And that's when the fighting would begin. I loved it. people and that's when the fighting would begin. I loved it. My brother-in-law is a dairy farmer in Carlisle, Penrith, and he tells me about the, I think it's the Young Farmers Association and they have an annual, have you heard about this? They have an annual meet-up and they are notoriously insane. They get banned from every hotel every year,

the Young Farmers meet- up and they go absolutely insane. Yeah, in Wales they would put on like pageants and plays and all that kind of stuff and have a step forward and they'd all dance and sing and they'd all do clonk dancing and fucking sheep shearing competitions. They're fucking mad farmers. Good on them.

Absolutely, work hard, play hard. You know, it's a difficult life. Oh, God. Let your hair down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There on them. Absolutely. Work hard, play hard. You know, it's a difficult life. Let your hair down. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. There we go. Today's episode is going to be a fun one, isn't it? Yeah. Looking forward to this. It is. Yeah.

Chris, introduce what today's topic is. I just can't stop thinking about Mr. Brightside lyrics. Like, now I'm thinking about young farmers and I'm shearing a sheep and I'm putting them down. Yeah, yeah. This is me now for the next week. Anyway, in this episode we'll be talking about unexpected sporting heroes from history. People who are very famous historically but not necessarily for sport but we'll be revealing all about their sporting background. And so later in this episode I will be telling you all about Shea Guevara and his love of rugby and football. What are you boys talking about?

I'm going to be talking about the philosopher Albert Camus and his unexpected football career. And I will be talking about Pope John Paul II, who also loved to game a football. Before that though, I think it only seems right that we do a little bit of your wonderful correspondence. So today's email comes from Martin Lit. Now Chris, it'll require you to refresh listeners' memories on this in a second. It says, Hi lads, listening to the games episode and the book slash writing formats that Chris was presenting made me so angry I wanted to eat my own steering wheel. There you go. That's

a sentence I never heard. What was it? The book section? So not the way you were presenting it, the ideas. So just to remind, Chris was talking about a man called Georges Perrec who wrote a rather unusual type of book. Do you want to quickly explain what that was, Chris? Georges Perrec wrote, he wrote an entire book without using the letter E, I think it was. He basically created all these really esoteric word games for himself, like rules through which he would write novels. One was without the letter E and ever more complex rules that he created for himself.

I can promise you, he wouldn't have done that in the age of the smartphone. He'd have been doing Sp, Goldie. Yeah, absolutely. So, this is right. George Parek, he wrote this book without the letter E. The book was called The Void and Martin Litt has emailed a say. However, I'd like to point out… Well, the void has got an E in it. Exactly. George has dropped a bollock. He called his novel, with no E's in it, The Void. The Void. T-H-EE void. First word, George, you silly twat. Cheers, Martin. Now, made me laugh. I thought that's a really good, that's a great thing to spot. I then did a bit of further Googling. Actually, the book is known as A Void. So he's all right.

Or is he all right? I then notice on the front cover he's written his own name, Georges Perec, which of course contains not one, not two, but three Es. Oh, four Es! Four Es! So there you go. So actually it turns out there are four Es alone on the front cover. Whether that still makes him a massive twat, I don't know. Disgust. You silly sod, Perec! Could it be argued that he is not in editorial control of the cover? Yes. Is that the publisher's responsibility? Is there some sort of legal reason why? You think he'd at least have crossed out the E's or something? Also, you know, people write

into pseudonyms all the time. Yes. Yeah, that's true. So he could have called himself anything. Yeah. Yeah. He's fallen the first hurdle. There you go. So that's well observed. So front cover of a book without ease has four Es in the author's name. I wonder if he had a sense of humour and that was the kind of thing you could point out? Or when it had gone to print and he was stood as they were coming out of the and there was a moment of... Oh, shit! Fuck! Stop!

Well, actually, this is very clever. I've just read... It's a void. A void. But is that a nod and a wink to the fact he's avoiding the E? Well, no, because that's an English translation, isn't it? So maybe... Yeah. It depends whether... I don't know, but you have almost stumbled. Almost found something interesting.

There's one other thing I'm looking now at a cover. I'm looking at the cover of A Void by Georges Perrec and quite a lot of the covers. There's E's on the front. There's one cover with a big E with like a cross through it like no entry. And there's another cover as well on Amazon where there's just loads of E, like a void, but then loads of Es falling off it. Does it feel like it doesn't?

Neither of these things feel in the spirit of what Georges Perrec was trying to achieve. What language was it written in? French. So it was written in French. It's a 300 page French lipo-ogrammatic novel written in 1969 by Georges Pareck, entirely without using the letter E. But the French word for void is vide, which has an E in it. Yes. Hang on. It says Pareck would go on to write with the inverse constraint in les revenants, with only the vowel E present in the work. So he even even, you know, that wasn't the end of it.

He kept going. He got a taste for it. He got a tast for it. By the time he died, he must have had the biggest headache of any author ever born. Imagine. Or hadak, as he'd call it. I deserve more good.

Had to work that out quite quickly. That's good stuff. That is good stuff. That is good stuff. Impossible to include that in any stand-up, I think. It would involve so much setup. It would involve you being at all my gigs holding a copy of the book. And I say, what you got there, mate? And then you could just do the stuff about what it was. Oh my god. Hadak. Anyway. Very good. Hadak. Thank you very much Martin

Litt. Fantastic email. Good observation. Very much enjoyed it. Oh it wasn't, it was la disparition, the disappearance not a void. There we go. In the original French. But that's quite quite clever isn't it? The disappearance of the letter E? No? Am I reading too much into this? No I like it, I admire it. It's not very you, I like it. Someone might write down, I think that's a good merch idea for Oh What A Time Merch, a baseball cap with Hadak written on it. That's good stuff isn't it? Got a haddock tablet. Oh shit, tablets got an E in it.

Got a haddock pill. Thank you very much Martin, lit. Your email was, as the young people say, lit. That is what cool people say isn't it if you've ever been to send us not anymore that's dead if you anything you want to send us on custard on history on mistakes that we have missed or made do get in contact with the show and here's how all right you horrible look here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Earl Watertime Pod.

Now clear off. So in this episode we're talking about unlikely sporting stars and in my section later on in the episode I will be telling you all about Shay Guevara and his love of rugby and football. I'm going to be talking about a very unlikely football player. But I'm starting off by taking you back. This almost feels topical because of uh the new pope who was elected a couple of weeks ago. But if you were around in the 1990s, that the three of us were, you think of one pope, that pope John Paul II. I once saw the very funny Irish comedian Maeve Higgins. She's a stream of

consciousness comedian. I love Maeve, she was so funny. Yeah, and she was talking about the pope as in John Paul the Zekken and she kept referring to him as the real Pope. So he reigned until 2005 and I'm sure Tom will remember this. I'm bringing back some very bad memories for Tom. We both started doing standup in 2005. He was elected in 1978. So, you know, the two of us, before the two of us were born. So it was quite a big deal globally.

You know, the death of John Paul II, it was a massive, the stuff about the smoke and people hadn't seen that since the seventies, led to a huge amount of open mic material based around the prospect of Pope Idol. Yes. A lot of Pope Idol stuff.

For God's sake, yeah. That's a shame that pun has been lost to history. Because obviously, Pope Idol was a very popular TV show. Pope. Yeah, it writes itself. So many open mic makers have that joke. My grandparents used to have pictures of John Paul II in their house, like two or three photos of it. Like he was a family member.

Really? Wow. In his full garb or more sort of like casual? A couple of action shots just out chopping wood. He was very elderly. So he was elected in the autumn of 78, reigned till 2005, more than 26 years. They always are very elderly, aren't they, by the way? You never get, or do you get like one in his 30s? I don't know if you do. I think my understandings are always getting on a bit, aren't they? Well he was elected, he was 58 when he was elected, so he was the first, third longest

paper to see in history, and he was the first non-Italian elected since the 1500s. So obviously he made a very important figure. He was only 58. So even though, you know, he was in, I would say late middle age, late fifties. He, I'm my memory of him and I'm sure you're the same as of quite an elderly man. I think he had Parkinson's disease by the end of his life.

But as a young man, full of sporting activity, so quite a physical bloke actually. So he was born Karol Włotiła, born in Wadowice in southern Poland, May 1920. Wadowici, I think is how you pronounce it, I apologize to our Polish listeners. He was the son of an army officer and a schoolteacher. The family lived in an apartment above a department store.

And he had a very modest, almost quite pious childhood, which I suppose is classic papal stuff, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Richie Rich is never becoming Pope. Do you know what I mean? No, no, no. But very, very active one, which brought him into sport and theater.

So the premier Catholic sports club in the city was Scarva Vado Vice, which had sections for football, tennis, basketball, and volleyball, founded in 1907. But he loved playing street football with his mates in and around the market square in the schoolyard. So there's a story that his dad, who was an amateur swimming teacher, would push back furniture in the parlour of the apartment

so he could have a kickabout with Carol using rolled up socks and rags in place of a ball in the house. Wow. Love that. Yes. So many great players have come from that sort of rolled up material. I think Maradona used to play with sort of material that was rolled up into a ball and stuff like this when he was growing up. A lot of players had these sort of makeshift balls and then they go on to be incredible players. Yeah, Bobby Charlton and Stanley Matthews

talked a lot about playing football with a tennis ball. Yeah. Which we used to do in school and it's hard. Whereas my parents selfishly bought me an actual football in an effort to block my career. That was the exact moment it went wrong for you. Exactly. If I was forced to play with rolled up towels

and I was going to make it, I didn't want to make it as a footballer. Yeah. Thanks, Mum. I see your game. They gave you all the best Predator boots to sabotage your career. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He'll never learn to play in the best kit. So his older brother Edmund, who was a medical student, took out league matches and he would grow up to be a fan of Poland's oldest surviving football club, KS Krakowia founded in 1906

and later he liked Barcelona. He would develop ties to four other teams including Liverpool and via an urban myth, I don't know if this is true or not, Fulham. I don't know if the Pope's boy Fulham or not. God's team. But his favorite club was always Krakow, so being a fan doesn't make you obviously an unlikely sports person. Lots of people have been fans of team sport. Their most recent incumbent, Francis, he was football mad and Leo XIV loved his baseball. But inspired by visits to organized football matches with his older brother, he began filling in for local teams whenever they needed a goalkeeper and he turned out to be a really good player. So much so, in fact his youthful nickname

around Wawarowice was Lolek the goalie. Really? As a teenager, yeah, he would be given an additional nickname Martina after the then prominent Polish defender Henrik Martina who started out to Koron Krakow and moved on to Leisure Warsaw So he's part of Poland's Olympic team in 1936. So he'd be like, if I, like if I stuck, cause, cause Chris was a good defender. If I started calling him Lendley King. So as a, as a Pope, Carol would gain other nicknames, including the keep fit Pope, thanks to an Irish newspaper, God's athlete. Didn't he, didn't he jog?

Was he the, is he like a big jogger? That is a fitness video I'm that. God's athlete. Keep fit Pope. Well didn't he jog? Was he the... Is he like a big jogger? That is a fitness video I'm buying. The keep fit Pope. Bleak test down the aisle. He was a skiing... The Skiing Pope was his other nickname. And he insisted on having a swimming pool installed in the paper apartments to enable

him to maintain a fitness regimen. Was he ripped? He'd go jogging around the Vatican. Yeah, the ripped Pope is what he'd been out. Is he natural? Is he on the roids? Wow. Pope had taken a lot of creatine, he didn't have avocados and eggs. Running up the steps of the Vatican like in Rocky and punching the air. So he'd go jogging around the Vatican gardens. He established a department of church and sports at the Vatican to inspire fairness and integrity. But he was always known that football was his first love.

So football in Wawice, the rest were in Poland in the 20s and 30s, was heavily divided by religion and ethnicity. So he was introduced to the area by enthusiasts who'd visited Britain and brought back British ideas of athleticism and team sport. So then football quickly devolved into Catholic teams and Jewish teams.

So, you know, because it was the 1930s led to sporting rivalries that were often you know not sporting shall we say. Although these tempers were partly they were kept to a minimum in Wawitie where he grew up. So in 1920 in the 1920s the largest Jewish sports team in Wawitie was the Hakuach Sports Club dissolved in 1926 with many of its members emigrating. And then in 1934, a new club was founded, the Maccabi Sports Association, which had, like the club,

Carl used to go to various sections, football, tennis, gymnastics, skiing, athletics, table tennis, volleyball, and basketball. But Lollock, John Paul II, he didn't care about the sectarian divide, his best mate was Jewish. Until he happily played for Catholic and Jewish teams, often appearing for the latter because they had fewer players. He often stood in for his opposite number, Poldeck Goldberger, a local dentist's son, who was a formidable goalie and apparently the size of a wardrobe. Which is ideal, I suppose.

Yeah, absolutely. I think anyone's size wardrobe is going to be a formidable goalie, aren't they? Especially in five a side. So in addition to football and the compulsory sports at school, which were basketball or volleyball in the summer and skiing in the winter, Lollock became a dab-handed table tennis and an informal ice hockey player. Whoa. And he would make the most of frozen ponds and pucks made from slabs of discarded wood.

It's amazing. So it is appropriate that one of the most famous celebrations of mass during his entire papacy was at the Nou Camp, but home of Barcelona. Camp Nou is how people pronounce it nowadays. Where he was unveiled and he did 50 kick-ups in front of Paul Stam. In November 1982, 120,000 people filled Barcelona's home ground and the Pope

was granted life membership of the club. More than just a pope. Do you know, now you mention it, I've been in the tunnel at the Camp Nou and there is a little, I think there's even a little altar like halfway down the tunnel and I think there's a plaque about John Clifton. I'm 99% sure there's like a little church, not quite a church, but a little altar in there. Well he saw sport not only as healthy competition but a means of reconciliation of coming together and of recognizing universal values. He did a few football grounds. He didn't just do the Camp Nou, home of Barcelona, he also did it in Ninyan Park, home of Cardiff City Football Club. Wow. In 1982 there were 35,000 people there. That's incredible.

You'll remember this Tom, because I remember you going down to Ninyan when you were a student in Cardiff. In other than possibly the new den or the old den as it would have been can you imagine a more violent football club than Cardiff City? Would they have even been violent that day though or would it you know with the Pope calm? No I think it was I think it was full of 35,000 Catholics who are absolutely thrilled to meet the Pope. I imagine it's attracting a different crowd. Yeah yeah yeah I don't think your season ticket got you in that day it's like a European match. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think your season ticket got you in that day. It was like a European match.

Do you think, even if you were a Cardiff Catholic and you went in there, there's something about walking into the ground that just turned you into an ultra, into a, as Tom would describe, a hoolie. Yeah, you celebrated Mass and the first Holy Communions at an Indian park. Mad. That is amazing. Absolutely amazing. And the most amazing thing, that lovely twist, that his great-grandson, is it great-grandson,

now plays in Gulf of Newcastle as well, which is nice. That's incredible, isn't it? What? He's in the same family. Yeah, Nick Pope. Oh, Nick Pope. Elle was so ready to swallow that hole without further interrogation. El was so ready to swallow that hole without further interrogation.

It was a joke machine. You just nearly can't turn it off. I was the only one who enjoyed it though. Well that's it for part one of Unlikely Sports Stars if you want part two right now, plus bonus episodes including a review of Starzyland, a Hitler biography, Citizens by Simon Sharma, so much good stuff. You can become an Oh What A Time full-timer. To sign up, go to owhatatime.com for all your options

where you can sign up by a One-Dripplus or another slice. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for part two. Bye. Goodbye. Bye. We'll see you tomorrow for part two. Bye! Goodbye! Bye! Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or podcast.