Oh What A Time... - #122 Your Letters - June 2025 (Bonus episode)

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

It's a special bonus episode! This one from June 2025, never heard before on the main feed!If you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.But onto this episode...Once again we need more time to get through your brilliant correspondence so here it is! And this week we’re talking, among other things, BIRTHDAYS! We’ve got more on the hot new feature: COULD YOU BE ARSED THOUGH and specifically tea. WHAT HAPPENED TO WHITE DOG POO? What’s the greatest Cheese Grater you’ve ever owned? And much much more…If you want to send in a letter, you can do so here: [e-mail] thank you so much for being a Full Timer, we couldn’t make the show without you.You 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 x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime.

Oh, and welcome to Oh, what a time, the podcast in which we are recording today on my birthday, guys. This is it your birthday? Oh, no. And I did not know that. That's why you've got your West Ham shirt on, because it's your birthday present. Well, the kids all wanted to wear this, where all the whole family wanted to wear West Ham shirts for me this morning. So I had to have. Oh, I would love it for my family.

My son is, actually, in fact. I will never get Izzy in a football shirt What, do they've been to put on the whole family Put on Swansea shirts? Occasionally she will put it on And then she just looks really confused It's like, like if you put on top hat on a penguin or speak It would just sort of look weird

Or like any Swansea player in that season You went down from the Premier Shoe? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah A bit confused In a Swansea shirt Where's meat chew gone? Oh yeah, his knees are bust Oh my gosh, that was a bad year

Chris, I genuinely have had no idea it was your birthday. Am I alone in this, El? I need friends to give me a heads up if a birthday is approached. I need friends to tell me three months, two months, a month, two weeks, a week, three days, two days, one day, and then on the day. And then one minute to midnight before it ticks over into your birthday. I'm so sorry, Chris. But without you telling me that, there was no way. Well, we're in the morning.

I imagine at some point there might be a flurry of text and you would have realised at that point. But it got me... Oh, absolutely. I'll leap onto a WhatsApp thread. Yeah. You'll piggyback a movement. You just won't start that movement.

I'll add a giff of a birthday present bursting open. Oh, yeah. I'll have a giff of Kenneth Williams going, I don't know why, but I will. I'll desperately search for a photo with your face in it. Oh, yeah. And then write happy. birthday big man underneath.

Enjoy your day, man. Yeah, exactly. Have one for me with a picture of a pint. I will do that. A foaming pint. But it got me thinking, have birthdays. Do you think they've always been a thing through history? Or do you think, you know, did William the Conqueror ever celebrate a birthday?

Or was it kind of, I imagine around the time it, like, it feels like a Tudor invention, just finger in the air. I think it was a slightly different vibe. I can't imagine Edward the confessor went to go away from. his eighth birthday. Swinging from tree to tree. Yeah. What's that the confessor to him on his eighth birthday? He's going to oxygen.

It's a trampolining park in Croydon. Him in all his favourite earls. Henry the eighth and soft play. Take your shoes off, Henry. Getting stuck on the slide. Oh, you're okay. Keep your shoes on. You're a monarch.

You do what you want. I would say, so I think Monix probably had an idea when they were born, but I think, let's say, in the middle ages, your average person probably didn't know their birthday. I think that's probably fair. I think they would probably know what season they were born in, and that would basically be about it, whether it was spring, summer, that's it. That's my assumption.

And it would have made filling in funds for things like mortgages an absolute nightmare. DOB, not wintertime. I bet a lot of people in the middle ages didn't even know how old they actually. actually were. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Getting to the bar, being IDed and saying, what's your day of birth? No idea.

And then literally not knowing. And saying to them, I think I remember 18 winters. Off the top of my head. My parents say there was some awful war happening around the time I was born. Does that help? Yeah. The 100 years war, so I'm probably well over age, actually. I don't know.

I don't know. Equally complicated for the bar staff as well because everyone looked about 50 from the age of nine I guess in your Britain as well. Yes. You could easily go up as a six-year-old and get served because you looked 40 already because life is so hard.

I watched a lovely documentary by the 1962 Tour de France yesterday. Even the cyclists look old. Even athletes in the 60s looked old. Like you look at the great... There was England and a really good football team in the 50s. Well, I mean, they got knocked out of the World Cup by the USA in 1950.

Let's not go down the route with me discussing how good England. On paper you had Tom Finley and Stanley Matthews and Billy Wright and players like that. They look hilariously old. And they are athletes. So middle ages, can you imagine what a 16-year-old would have looked like in sort of 1250? With a comb over. You've got to hide a bald spot at the age of 12. I always think that endurance athletes look the worst of any sports,

but in terms of looking older, younger. I think he's like Lance Armstrong. He always looked old. Yeah, I know what you mean, yeah. Well, there's another reason he looked haggard. Yeah. What he's doing to his body. I don't think running an ultramarathon,

I don't think people do that to look healthy. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a lifestyle choice. No, no, they do it because they have some sort of, you know, urgent drive to succeed and compete. But like on the catwalk, I don't think people are going, and this is we're modelling

the new ultramarathon style for spring, summer 2025. Get the sinewy look. So Chris, happy birthday. Oh, there it is. There it is. Thank you. Let me be the first on this podcast to say those words. You know the hell I can got round to it.

Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. I put my first man. Happy birthday. I would sing it, but I'm pretty sure we'd then have to pay a fee. Isn't it one of those songs that you have to pay to sing happy birthday if it's broadcast? So I'm not going to sing it. Oh, well. The thought was there. Imagine if this is what ended.

Bankrupt to the past. One happy birthday. And we curse this day every year. Well, happy birthday. Well, Chris, here's a birthday treat for you. Today is a correspondence episode. Yes. One of your favorites.

Yeah, I love a correspondence episode. We get so many good emails from you guys that we thought we would take some time to go through them today and see what gold you've sent away. Does that sound good to you? Oh, yes. What a birthday present. Okay, Elle, you'll be pleased to hear this.

Your format idea, could I be bothered, is a hit. Yes! Genuinely getting a lot of emails about could I be bothered. You should briefly explain to people who may not be familiar with what could I be bothered is. It was sort of, it's, could I be bothered, aka, could you be asked though? Yeah. For instance, I drink tea and I drink tea by putting a tea bag in a cup and then putting hot water on it from a kettle.

In the pre-teabag age, which I don't remember. I don't know when the tea bag was introduced actually, but in the pre-tebag age, I mean to strain it, in the pre-ketlage, as nice as tea is, Could you be asked, though? And the answer is no. So we're looking for these little things. Things, conveniences that modern life has made certain things easy and pleasant that have been around for a long time. I mean, people have been drinking tea for thousands of years, but pretty pre-bag.

I'm just not sure I would have, I'm not sure I could be asked. So that's the genesis of this feature. Well, you've actually, you've taken the word out of the mouth of our first emailer, Carl Baldwin, who is emailed with that exact point. He says here. He's just bought a new cattle. They used it. It was all so quick, basically, to surmise his email. But it's a crucial point here. It says here, when we got home, I immediately had a cup of tea, despite it being after 8pm and too late for caffeine, as I'd not had a cup of tea for almost 48 hours since our kettle broke.

And I simply could not be asked boiling water on the hob in a pan, as you've just said here. We did it once on the morning that the kettle stopped working, but it took absolutely ages. This is such a good point. Who knows how they managed in the 17th century having to boil a big pan in the hearth? That's the thing you're missing out there. The half and then steep it with tea leaves. No, thank you very much. Just being ditched water for me. I simply could not be arse.

So exactly agreeing with you. Life just must have been a lot of minor bollics. Yes. Like no running water in the house. Such a pain in the ass. No toilet. Such a pain in the ass. The thing that strikes me about that is, you know how difficult it is to clean a pan

in 2025 the year of our Lord. Like with a sink and fairy washing up liquid and instant hot water, it's still quite difficult to wash a pan. You go back 500 years. No one's got a clean pan. And if you're making a cup of tea, it's going to taste like meat. Every cup of tea is going to taste whatever you had in it.

That pan last. If we did one day time machine and went back to 1500, and I had to eat anything, can you imagine the diarrhea? because our bodies, our 21st century bodies were not able to handle the bacteria. I'd say, it would be four days of intense diarrhea followed by death.

That's what it would be. But I would turn to God, I think. I can guarantee you I'd be religious at the end of it. I've just thinking of myself, there has to be more than this. And at you approaching the gates of St. Peter, going to open it and then saying, do you know, Ollo, your hands are a bit.

I'm going to open that full. you because you're covered in diarrhea. Been in a time machine, mate. Jesus, coming out and opening it. Yeah. Yeah. I was a sort of history podcast in the future. We invented a time machine.

Went back to 50 to under curiosity, got diarrhea, and now here I am, so, yeah. Not another one. Do you think people in the middle ages after having the shits and non-stop for 20 years, when they died, they were just like, thank God it's over. I get to wipe my ass on a cloud.

Pre-toilip paper. Oh, God. The sweet relief. That's actually a very interesting philosophical question. Do you go to the toilet in heaven? That is a good question, Chris. Because it could be argued that go to the toilet sometimes is a pleasure, and heaven is about pleasure.

But can we go back to Elle's first attempt at a one-day time machine, which was going back to Agent Rome, but he had his own ghost toilet with ghost toilet paper. Do you remember this? And a ghost newspaper. His own ghost amenities. It's funny that a... The idea there's a toilet in heaven and you're sort of,

you're going to have the toilet and the cubicles next to you. You've got Joe Novark, Jimmy Hendrix and Isaac Newton. Where is this place in heaven that all these people are there all having a dump next to each other? Isaac Newton passing you a toilet roll over the top of the cubicle. Cheers, mate. You know it's him because we're hair. If you drop it, it'll sort of it'll prove your theory again, actually.

My supposition, if you're interested, by the way, is that you have none of the feelings of needing to go to the toilet, but at any point you want to and enjoy the sense of relief, you can. That would be my take on what happens. It's an optional. So if you really enjoy it, you could be going 10 times a day. Exactly. If you like time on your iPhone, watching football highlights whilst doing a poo,

the options there. Tom did a theology degree, fun fact. Exactly, yeah, big time. One more thing about the pan. So I reckon in the middle ages, all the pans are dirty. And then I thought to myself, well, they might be clean when you first get them, but they've come directly from the blacksmiths. So they're going to have like iron dust and dirt all over them.

No pan is good in the middle ages. Yeah. At no point in that pan's life, will it be actually that nice? The only pan that might be clean, Chris, is if it's like a big enough one, your family also bathe in it. So it does get cleaned when your family have a bath once a month. Well, the old annual bath. Exactly, yeah.

Then it gets cleaned by the sons. Scooping the wall bath. bathwater out and put it straight in the cup of tea. If my wife had an annual bath in a pan, I would not think to myself, God, I'm quite fancy making a cup of tea in that, actually. That's a good point. Yeah, absolutely.

That is no longer a cooking receptacle. That is not something we'll be using for food or drink. Right, second, could I be bothered email? As I say, they really are coming thick and fast. This is from Barney, superb name. Hello, Ellis, Chris and Tom. This hurt a little bit. order of who I think would have survived Longest as a caveman for no good reasons. Oh yes. So that's

Ellis Longest, Chris second, me dead first. Cheers for that. I've realized as I start this email, there are so many things about the past I simply couldn't be bothered with. For example, I think we've talked about this before actually, boys. Corresponding with you now, if this is only a few years ago and I had to write an email on my computer rather than just on my phone, it probably wouldn't have happened or getting a pen and paper writing a letter, no chance I can't be bothered. But that's not the reason for the email. I've been thinking about the idea of shoes. Before there were proper shoes and you were wrapping your feet up in animal skins or tying fabric or string around them. It's not like there was dog mess or glass you needed to avoid and there was no hot tarmac in the summer to worry

about. And I quite like walking outside with bare feet during the summer and you get used to it the more you do it. Frankly, until trainers come along, shoes weren't really that comfortable anyway. Shoes in the past, I can't be bothered. I'd be going barefoot. So Barney's point is putting together his own shoes of animal hide, he just wouldn't bother. He'd just be going barefoot. That's how he'd approach it. He just couldn't be asked. It's funny, when you see pictures,

I once saw video on YouTube of English football crowds through the ages from about 1945, up to 1980, I think it was. Yeah. So it's just pictures of, you know, the Holter End of Villo, the Strefine and the United or the cop,

people filing in. Up to 1970, everyone, even the kids, are wearing a suit. So the boys will be wearing a shirt and tie and then it changes in around 1970 and suddenly the kids are wearing parkers, snorkel parkers and the old men are wearing suits still

but the young men's slightly more casual. If there are women in the crowd, they're dressed like they go into a wedding, right? That's really interesting. But it's really interesting how formal everyone is dressed. It's as late as that, is it? Yeah, it's about 1970 it changes. That's fascinating. And what's funny is, everyone's wearing proper shoes,

like leather shoes, which aren't particularly comfortable. I once met an Australian barman who'd grown up in the bush. And he barely wore shoes as a kid. And the soles of his feet were like leather. I can't believe that. It was incredible. Yeah, your body would just adapt, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, your body just like it.

It'd grow shoes. I've never, I've never seen feet like it. Nature's shoes. He'd grown skin shoes. Yeah. And he was living in like Kentish town and working in a poem. He was like, I never wore our shoes

till I started working in a pub in London. Yeah, I just came over here to buy a shoe. It was absolutely amazing. You could, like, he could walk on glass and thorns. It just didn't bother it. Wow. So, yeah, I think that's the thing. You'd be walking around in nature's skinny shoes.

Barefoot running is a big thing increasingly, apparently. It's an popular sport. People are really getting into it. I read a whole book about barefoot running, but then I thought to myself, I live in South London. Every time I ride my bike If I don't put the commuter tires on

I get a puncture because of the glass Can you imagine? Returning over a job with 15 syringes in your foot. Pretty good for your running for me. Pretty good for your gate and your technique. Well, do you know what? What you've said there, El, convinces me that Barney's approach probably is right.

Would I be bothered to kill an animal get the hide tight around my feet? Or am I just going to sign of, you know, just trying to avoid the thorns and walk barefoot, I might do that as well, to be honest, but that's partly laziness, but I can see myself doing the same. The problem is, though, the three of us up kids, kids' inability to avoid dog shit is absolutely unparalleled.

Absolutely. They just don't notice it. They go straight through it. They seem to find it. Yeah. So that would be... They are like a tractor beam. So that's the problem is, for the first day,

12 years of your life, I reckon you start avoiding dog shit when you're about 12. Yeah. The first 12 years of your life, you're going to have these really tough souls of your feet that are going to be covered in broken glass and dog shit. I'd say almost beyond that, in the first four years of your life, you're kind of fascinated by it and approach it to have a closer look. Oh my God, yeah. Sometimes that happens. Something about dog shit that I don't think we've ever discussed before. But when I grew up in like East London in the 90s, there was white dog shit everywhere.

Yes. And I never see that anymore. No, I've often wondered this. Do you miss it? Where did it go? What was that? And it used to get very hard. I once picked up a white dog shit through it and my sister and my mother went quite simply ballistic. Did she say that thing that my mum used to say,

you'll go blind? Did you hear this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that actually true? Yeah, I think it can do disastrous things to the body. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. We don't need to go to great deal about it, but I wouldn't, if you see one of the ground,

don't lick it, I think it's probably a fair point. All our listeners. Don't pop it in your eye. All our valued listeners, please. Why you don't see white dog poo anymore? Most of us haven't seen those white wonders since our childhood. In fact, it feels that they disappeared around the late 80s or early 90s. I will agree with that.

The way we feed them changed. So what was considered dog food began to elevate from the cheap fillers and chicken beef meals that had flooded the market. So in the early 90s We finally learned the feeding cooked bones To dogs was dangerous So the bones could splinter and cold series

Internal injuries Wow So that was it It's diet It's an interesting fact That's a fascinating fact I assumed it was because There was just more people

In the 80s and 90s left dog poo out longer And it was going white in the sun or something Yeah That's a thing I remember When Poop Scoops came in for dogs And people thought you were mad if you did it Whereas the alternative

Was just that was dog shit everywhere and there's still too much dog shit in my opinion I hate dog shit it is right up there for me but yeah and the pre dog message is like yeah my dog loves to shit in the street enjoy another thing I thought recently something in the past because Elle you inspired me to get get my bicycle out now I dropped my son off via bicycle but I was thinking back to when I grew up in the early 90s there was a dad in the school who would who dropped his kids off on a bicycle. And because he did it, he had a bicycle,

he was known as like the local weirdo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad said exactly the same thing. Like, he reminded him, but in the past, people driving bicycles were like, like, nutters. My dad, he was for Lewisham Council in the mid-70s,

and there was a bloke used to cycle into work, and they thought he was a maniac. Like an actual crackpot maniac. You're like basically the local inventor or something, like, Like a total maniac Yeah Yeah

And the zero helmets Until relatively recently as well Yeah The past Did you have that crane Do you remember that? Well There were quite a lot of cyclers

Round our way I suppose Because I lived in the countryside You people Scootling around occasionally But you're right You are right Going into town

Into school or whatever that There was never There were no one on a bike Nobody at all No it wouldn't It would be Social suicide You're right.

Right. Next email is from Lauren Andrews. Do you know what, Elle? The could-be-assed thing continues. There's yet more. The listeners can't get enough of this. Here we go. Is there an argument?

This is replaced one-day time machine as Britain's greatest format point. Could be. This is crazy. Right. This is what Lauren Andrews says. Dear chaps, long-term listener and subscriber here. Or 99 a month. I don't need to tell you not.

I've just realized because you're all subscribers because you're listening to this episode. So keep subscribing. I will say that you're our favorite people. Absolutely our favorite people. Lauren says, I have a double submission, but could you be asked? They're both kitchen base as I do most of the cooking for two adults and two small kids.

I realize how much I can't be asked when I went on holiday rental recently with my family and failed to discover a cheese grater. Oh, yes. I thought it would be fine. It was not fine. Good writing like that. Cheese sandwiches were. not fine. Putting cheese on top of pasta was not fine. Topping pizzas was out of the question.

Adults on holiday and small children principally survive on pizza, pasta and sandwiches. The whole experience of a week trying to grate cheese manually with a knife led me to wonder who invented the cheese grater and when and can I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Okay, so that's suggestion one. I had exactly the same experience in an Airbnb last year and when you open the cutlery drawer and there's no grater in there, I would say that I would, I would, I would, I I would describe my feeling as first disbelief and then panic. Okay. Because my kids love Grater Cheese on pasta.

And you're like, something's gone, something has gone badly wrong here. And you cannot simulate a grater because you can't, it just won't melt. You haven't seen my abs, mate. My six pack. Then you think to yourself, oh my God, is it the most important thing in my life? Yeah. It's like right up there with my charger. But you know,

Grater's right. We've got that, what I would describe is the standard grater, the four-sided one. Yes. Who uses the other sides of the grater? I don't, like, the one that does the slicing. What's that? And the one that's like, really, like, sticks out.

I do tiny chunks or bigger chunks of the two sides I use. Right. There's a little, you know, finely grated, Parmesan style or the one which maybe is the cheddar. Yeah, that's the one I use. The cheddar. I certainly don't use big holes. Oh, don't you?

An aristocrat? No. I would use not the tiniest holes. There's like grating your cheese on a brillo pad and then also impossible to clean. It's impossible to clean, isn't it? I would go one up from that. Cleaning a cheese grater's hard, isn't it?

We have an annoying thing, which is after we've used the cheese grater in our kitchen, it just goes anywhere entirely random. There's no logic to where it goes after it's been used. It could be anywhere. So whenever we need the cheese grater, you've got it in a set drawer, there is at least two to three minutes of searching, and where's the cheesigator gone?

Where have we put it? Do you was embarrassing? When I worked in a cafe, we had a grater that was so good that I occasionally find my mind drifting back to that grater. The greatest grater. What was so good about it? It had a tray at the bottom,

so it would all collect, and then he would take the tray out and then you just had all this it was sort of a mess minimiser. Have we got a new feature? Britain's greatest grater? Do we listeners send in their best graters? Or bad ones can be greatest at great.

Oh, God, God, that's what you're not into. What a format. Yeah, genuinely, if you've got a great grater, send it to us. If you've got a great of the great, also send it to us. And send me an Amazon link. Yeah, if you've got a middling grater,

do not get in contact. I'm in the market for a new grater. Well, Lauren Andrew, does not stop at Graters. She says, within my own lifetime, the incredible invention of the silicone spatula has also been a big revolution. I can't bear watching cookery programs anymore

where the chef doesn't scrape the whole bowl totally clean. How satisfying. How could we've been asked before the silicone spatula? I'd also like to mention self-closing drawers as if we all went round once upon a time just closing all our drawers. So those are additional points there. The silicone spatula,

I don't think that's quite the same way. of could I be asked to be the cheese grater? I think the cheese grater is for the win there. Yeah, that's a great shout the cheese gritter. It is indeed. Right. Shall we move on to our next hot talking point? Oh, go on then.

Which is Stonehenge. A lot of Stonehenge emails recently. Stonehenge fans? Stonehenge fans, exactly. Good. I'm excited about this. We were looking for Stonehenge facts, Stonehenge conspiracies,

and also, have you been to a rave at Stonehenge? Okay, our first email here from Will Lee says, Watcher, Men of the past. I have been to Stonehenge for the summer solstice on a few occasions and I have a few notes on the business of the stones. Number one, most people are not that interested in 3am explanations that it wasn't built by aliens.

Two, lots of idiots climb the stones to jump into the crowd. They are not as popular as they think they are and usually get a kicking. Three, there is no amplified music, just drums, which you can feel through the stones themselves. Wow. I check with mum and she agreed that, heart seemed to have synced up with the beat.

That's a knife point. Wow. Four, drug people are terrified of druidic processions. Really high people are really scared of people doing processions dressed as druids. That's funny because I imagine they were one and the same. I imagine the druids are the drug people. But there's like, there's two different crowds, two different vibes. I think there's also, I think some, as a Welsh person, I think some druids take druidic life.

incredibly seriously. Okay. And they are not drug people. Right. But then there are others. I think the Venn diagram, I think there is a mix. Number five, it's bloody difficult to work out exactly when the sun rises over the hills. Good point, actually.

It's quite hard to know when the solstice is coming. Because we are recording this three days before the summer solstice. Yes. So it's longest days in three days' time. My son woke up at 452 a.m. because he's not very well. And when I looked at the window, I thought,

is it sunrise yet? I actually can't work it out. What's going on here? So, yeah, because it doesn't just, it's not instant, is it? It's a gradual thing. So at what point do you cheer and celebrate?

Yeah, absolutely. That is unclear, apparently. It's not our own email about Stonehenge though. Sam Kears has said, Stonehenge facts. Sadly, my Stonehenge fact, it's not a rave-related one, but in the 50s,

when my mum was at school in Somerset, they would visit Stonehenge on school trips, back when you could go right up to the stones, and my mum, it's incredible, decided to carve her initials into the stone. That's surely the most frowned-upon thing you could do at Stonehenge, apart from knock over the stones. Well, she's not alone in doing this, Chris.

I only found this out when Barack Obama visited the site when he was president, and my mum said, I wonder if he carved his initials next to mine. Now, I don't know if that means he did, or she's assuming he might have given it a go, Or he was wondered. But yeah, so Sam Kears' mum, if you go up to Stonehenge, her name is there. That's spectacular.

It's the kind of thing I can imagine Trump and J.D. Vance do we? Yes. Absolutely. Getting the old Stanley knife out. That's unbelievable. We also have a conspiracy theory which is come in from James Dunn. James Dunn says, hello all. Conspiracy theories are very dangerous, but I'm convinced that Stonehenge is not 5,000 years old, but more like 4,700.

Is that wisely? Regards from Jim. Okay. I love those fringe theories. Absolutely. Dangerous fringe theories. Now, here's a really interesting conspiracy theory from history, which has been sent in. By the way, guys, thank you so much for your emails.

They're consistently fantastic. This week has been no different. Kevin Stevens has sent us this one, and it's... I've never heard of this one. It blows my mind, I haven't heard this. It's amazing, though. conspiracy theory relating to Paul McCartney. I've heard this.

Now, does Ellis know what this is? Oh, Paul is dead. Yes. Morning chaps, love the pod. Hope you can all hear me from the depth of the rabbit hole everyone has fallen into. My favourite conspiracy theory is that Paul McCartney died in 1966 in a car crash. To spare the public from grief, the surviving Beatles aided by MI5, replaced him with a look-alike.

What I find remarkable about this theory, also known as narcissistic lunacy, is that since so many of the Beatles' best songs, and albums came out after Paul's death, it means the MI5 not only found a lookalike, they found one that was more talented than the original Paul McCartney. In short, some evidence for this series

are as follows. One, on the cover of Abbey Road, Paul is walking out of step with the others. Yeah, and he's barefoot. And barefoot and holding a cigarette in the wrong hand with his eyes closed. Number two, on the outro to Strawberry Fields Forever, John is heard here at saying,

do you know what this is hell? Oh, I can't remember. He says, Paul is dead. Some say that it's actually cranberry sauce, because they sound exactly the same, obviously. Number three, on the cover of Sergeant Pepper, Paul is being held and propped up by the others. Yeah.

Four, in Johnny's birthday, when played backwards, one can hear he never wore his shoes. We all knew he was dead. Yeah. There you are. I've never tried to confirm this theory. The final one here, and you can go through the mail, In a rare interview on US television, do you know this one?

John Lennon repeatedly refers to Paul McCartney in the past tense. The other one is at the registration plate of one of the cars on the front curve of Abbey Road is 28 if. And Paul McCartney would have been 28 if he'd lived to celebrate his next birthday. The Paul is Dead forums. You can lose hours in the Paul is Dead forums if you were. are that way inclined. It is... But people will...

They will take photos of him in 1965 and modern photos of him and they will try and compare noses and eyes and eyelids in the years. Really? The guy's in his early 80s. He's just... It's cold aging.

That was 60 years ago. To be fair. Tom, I'm surprised you haven't heard this theory because one year... I haven't heard that. One year at Glastonbury, I had a flag which acknowledged this theory. When Paul McCartney headlined

Glastonbury, I had the flag and it was the image of Ian Wright when he meets his old teacher and he says, I thought you were dead. But it had Mr. McCartney dot dot dot and Ian Wright's face like turning around. That's amazing. Oh, did I miss that? That's remarkable. Yeah. I'm across the

John Lennon is dead. I'm around that one. It must be very weird though for Paul McCartney. Yeah. But I think he's just got to accept that he's... But for this Paul McCartney, you mean? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul McCartney version 2.0. Yeah.

But, like, he's been so famous for so long. Yeah. You will never read everything that's written about you. You will never meet all of your fans. You cannot control how people engage with your music. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there are maniacs and bad people who like the Beatles

and Paul McCartney's solo work and all that kind of stuff. You've just got to let it. It's out there. And if lots and lots of... Lots of people online think that you're dead and that you've been replaced by an MI5 stooge. You've just got to be like, okay, there you go.

So in conclusion, which of us believes in this? Do you think there's anything in it? What would we say, the percentage chance of the fact that Paul McCarty is not the real Paul McCartney? Less than 1%, I would say that. Absolutely. And yeah, sure, he made some records in the 1980s that I don't think I've stood the test of time,

but I don't think that's because he was replacement. I think a lot of people went collectively mad in the 1980s. It's funny, a lot of these big 60s, 70s they all had terrible 80s. Yes. Like Bowie, Jagger.

They're all disasters in the 80s. A lot of, I listened to a Miles Davis album from 1985 once. And even though, musically, there was still some really good stuff for there,

because he was using a lot of what now sound like crap cheap synths. It just, it was so obviously from 1985. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also, you were the cool ones in the 60s, and by the 80s you're in your 40s. Yeah. So there's some amazing music from the 1980s, but it was tended to be made by much younger people. Right. Should we talk about the exciting things that younger people do? Should we do that? This is from CJ Meadows. Body of Water slash Nightout Dilemma.

I told a story about a friend who fell into Cornell at the beginning of your nightout, and it ruined his nightouts. I asked, have you ever fallen to a body of water? on a night out and the emails have come in. Hi chaps. Following your recent story of Tom's mate falling into the canal and a subsequent debate about whether that was a night ender,

I thought you might appreciate my story from way back in 2009. We were out on a lovely sunny day from late morning celebrating a friend's birthday with some beer garden booze and our hometown of Weymouth. As was customary for this particular friend's birthday, we were in fancy dress

with a theme being 80s cops. I took a little artistic license, and went to Magnum P.I. Who's not strictly a cop. After a few hours drinking, we sought to go out on the other side of the harbour. Any guess is where this might be going? And someone had the bright idea

to use a little rowing boat crossing as a novelty. The first dozen of us filled the boat whilst me and the rest would then have to wait for said boat to cross and then come back to get the rest of us. A regrettable thought then entered my head and I decided to voice out loud. Now, do bear it in your mind. It's on a night out, okay?

I reckon I could swim that. And he's dressed as Magnum P.I. Yeah, okay. A couple of scoffs and sensible heads dismissed the thought, but just one more gave me some encouragement I needed saying, yeah, that looks easy. Go on. The first half of the swim went better than I thought it would.

So he's off. He's set off. He's swimming across the harbour dressed as Magnum P.I. A man who can barely manage a coup consecutive lengths in a pool could have hoped for. I went out quick and was picturing the plaudits at the other side, but only after halfway, I realised I was no longer

going at a good pace. Oh my God. To my shame, I had to wave for help, and the boat that was transporting people across much of the cargaring of a captain had to come across and rescue me. Oh, my God. I had to grab onto the side and be brought back over to the other side. Upon getting out,

the white linen towels I was wearing were shown to be a poor choice. The water I'd swallow but was not mixing well with the beer. Despite efforts to recover and stay out, I had no choice but except my fate and go home. However, fair play to him this. A brief nap and shower later, I was back out for the early evening, an evening where I go on to meet a lady

for the first time, this is lovely, who would a couple years later become my wife, and now is the mother to my children. That's incredible. Picks attach, love the show. I will send me picks later, guys, but he really is, he soaked through, unsurprisingly. So all of our single listeners are thinking,

So that's what I need to do. Exactly. You need to go to Waymer, swim across the harbour dress as Magnum P.I. Fair play to him. Let's say we were on a night out and I suggested that. Would you be the sensible heads telling me, no, don't do that.

That's foolish. I'm a terrible swimmer. Are you? Okay. So are you? I would be the sensible one. But if you assured me that you were a brilliant swim and that you could do it, I'd love to see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not getting in there with you. Chris, I think I've said on this podcast before, that I feel like I could swim the channel relatively. easily. So I have the same, I would say, misplaced confidence as that email. Well, because my backstroke doesn't use up a lot of energy. I don't feel like, I feel like I could just do it for days.

Yeah. I'd be worried about the jellyfish. Backstroke is a good one, to be fair. Is anyone else thinking subscriber only special? Yeah, exactly. If we get another thousand subscribers this month, Chris is going to swim the channel. I can't wait to help Chris put all that goose fat on his back to keep himself. Thank you very much for that email.

Right, I think it's our last email of the day now. Do you know what? We started with Could I Be Asked? I'm all about neat endings. Let's end with Could I Be Asked? Geraint Rowland's email to say, Shumai, loving the Could I Be Ask feature, as it's generally how I live my life.

Nice. I'll have to take Ellis's offer of Could I Be Asked, making toast, and raise it to bread. Could I be asked? Sourcing yeast, grinding some wheat, getting all the bits out. How much wheat do you even need for a loaf? Then you've got to need it, let it prove, need it again, bake it. I can't be asked buying a breadmaker, and most days I can't be asked nipping to the shops to buy a loaf.

But in a pre-b bakery age, I seriously couldn't be asked making bread. Let's discuss that. Are you making bread? Are you just going, you know, it's not for me? No sandwiches. Fantastic point. Yeah. Yeah.

Which shop was selling breadless sandwiches? Was that bread? What is a breadless sandwich? It's just the... It's for people who are trying to eat a low-carb diet, I suppose. It's sort of meat and salad. It's an interesting point generally, though, isn't it, about how would your food become incredibly simplistic if you went back? Do you think you're just going fruit from the vine and just some raw potato?

Or are you actually bothering to make it? During the winter of discontent in the late 70s when lots of people went on strike, My mother bought a bread maker because there must have been bread shortages and she said it was a total bollick and it always tasted shit Do you know what this that email makes me think Isn't it astonishing that bread has caught on

Because it's such a fath Yeah yeah yeah It's such hard work through history It's great Like even today it's hard work But it's fantastic Toast is wonderful You heard it first

You heard it here folks There's not many things better than toast Chris has got to make a good point we've really stuck with it, didn't you, Fred? Just as popular now as it always has been. But it gives us, crucially, something to put other things on, which is, I think it's the main role of bread, isn't it?

You've got all these ingredients, or at least I've now got somewhere to put that ingredient. Yeah. To use a football analogy, it can play in a lot of positions. Yeah, exactly, yeah, it's busket. It's controlling the play. Absolutely. It's Perlow, it will dictate.

Yeah, exactly. But that is not where Geraint's email ends. He's actually suggested a rival format point. As a follow-on concept, can I pitch the idea of who was the first to do that then? Yes. This stems from every time I eat in bacon roll. I can't help but thinking at some point in human history, someone was the first to take a slice of bread and some sliced hot, salty pork,

and snap another slice of bread on top. I imagine his or her face and the sheer glee at having completed food. Anyway, loving the pod, laughing lots and actually learning stuff along the way. Go right, Rowlands. Thank you for that, go right. Yes. Good one. Common trope in American stand-up.

Oh, is it? Yeah, but think about anything like boiling an egg. How long do you know how to boil an egg for the first time you're doing it? Everything, a bungee jump. Yeah. What maniac? I was like, I'll give that a go. What is it? A big bit of elastic.

to my uncles. Yeah, sure, I'll do that. Absolutely. Even beyond boiling an egg at, it's just trying to eat something for the first time, going, let's find out if that's edible. Yes. Whatever is it. Yeah. Is it delicious? Is it poisonous?

The classic one I think about is just coffee. Like, getting the beans down, grinding them, mixing them with water, or heating it up, take it like, there's a lot of steps in that. I think initially people were eating the beans and

Noticing that they were acting as a stimulant, yeah, I think. Wow. So chewing beans on the way to the office? It's really a way. How early was exactly? Is that what it was like? Wow. That's blown my mind.

And what about tea then? Is tea the same? What's made people do, you can chew on tea. I think that is a thing people do sometimes. Yeah. You can chew on tea leaves. I don't know. God, I just realised how lazy I am.

Without modern conveniences or anything. It's so little I'm willing to do. However, you have come up with Britain's greatest format point. Yes. Usurping One Day Time Machine. On which note, if any of you lovely, lovely listeners have any other suggestions for things you couldn't be asked to do, do send them in. Any other Stonehenge facts, any, you know, for old times date, one day time machine,

tricks you'd like to go on, anything you want to send in our direction. You know, it really boosts the show. We love hearing from you, so do send them in. And if you want to send in those emails, send them in. to hello at ohwatertime.com. Yes, you're our favourite people. If you know anyone you think we'd like the show, let them know. Word of mouth is an incredibly powerful tool

when it comes to podcasts. But thank you very much if you continue to support. Goodbye. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. Oh, Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content.

Two bonus episodes every month. Early access to live show tickets. and access to the O-Watertime group chat. Plus, if you become an O-Water-Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time.