Oh What A Time... - #184 Tough Gigs featuring Elis ‘3x microphones’ James (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

We’ve got a brilliant episode this week: we’ve turned to history to find the worst jobs we can. We’ve got tanning (leather, not the sun beds), bridge painting, and the Victorian workhouse.. and take our word for it, they are all absolutely awful.Elsewhere, Elis’ grandad had tools for a career down the mine whilst Elis has 3x microphones for his career down the audio mine. If you’ve got anything to send us, please do it here: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but 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.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 history show that asks. Was life just easier when radio, well, radio presenters basically, rather than podcast presenters, would go to an actual room where there were people who understood how to use audio equipment when things went wrong? Because Ellis, do you want to describe what we've been doing for the last 27 minutes? We met at 4 o'clock. It's now 427. We're going to just started, and why's that? Well, my grandfather, right, it was a coal miner, and then he was a bricklayer. He had loads of lovely tools because they were his trade. So he had lots of tools, really nice tools.

I'm the same in that I have got three, not one, not two, but three different USB mics for the recording podcasts. We've since discovered only one of the works and it's the worst one. Yeah. Every day, Ellis's alarms goes off and he brings himself down to the audio mine where he must once again chip away at the surface of digital content. Trying to find gold. Yeah.

Today his tools were failing him. He had to use not the backup, but the backup backup backup. The backup backup, back up, back up. Yeah. All faithful, as I referred to it. Just to explain, the main issue with Ellis's mic, as we found in the last 27 minutes, is that it made him louder than God.

And we didn't know how to change that. It was literally the all-conquering voice. I kept saying, whoa, after every sentence. And Chris was basically saying, this wouldn't be used a little bit way. The problem is, I was so loud,

no one is that interesting, certainly not me. No one is that informative. No one has fresh enough angles to be that loud in the mix. You have to really be confident in your stuff be that loud. You're being shouted at

by, yeah, by a celestial presence. But one of the sort of interesting things that happened was Ellis obviously got quite stressed by this. And then I would say, some kind of technical thing we might try, and he'd say to me, sorry, I didn't know you did a degree in sound engineering,

and I'd get swammed. This happened about three times. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying to help. I just get apt to, like I was in the front row of a comedy class. Your suggestion was that I have all my inputs on zero. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, but then you wouldn't be able to hear me at all. So, which is only like it was part of your agenda

to make this a two-hander podcast. Get rid of the old dead wood. The lowest point in that 27 minute period we had trying to set you up, Elle, was when we said to you, have you restarted your computer recently? And he said, yeah, I just did it just before we started this process. Yeah. It was at that point, I realised we were completely out of ideas. Turning it off and turning it back on again had been done. But then you remembered you had extra mics.

And that's why we're okay, which was something I wish you'd remember 26 minutes earlier. Yeah. But you chose not to. Because I just didn't, I thought it was my computer. I didn't think it was, and I also thought it was the, I'm not going to name it, I also thought it was the platform we were using. Okay. Because we switched to a different platform.

And I should have started the basics. I should have started with the microphone. That is why I'm not a roadie. What is the three mic life like L? It looks like, it looks like I sort of was trying to run a recording studio in my spare time and it's failed because it's never you and everything's gathering dust. You can't have that many mics

without at least two of them gathering dust at any one time. So it just looks like I've had a sort of failed career. It's actually quite depressing. A local radio station that sort of lost its funding. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You've still got all the equipment. I've got a little study

and it does look like I'm running a sort of hospital radio. But a hospital radio that no one is listening to, it's all done on a voluntary basis. I've got all my gear from charter shops. Or a little bit like a home podcasting museum that you're running. You're just starting to bring together the exhibits now. However, there is a direct link between Ellis's experience here, the sort of the hard, tricky logistics of podcasting

and, you know, quite how difficult work can be because this whole episode is on the subject of tough jobs, tough gigs essentially back in time. Before we get into a bit of correspondence, Should we share what we're going to be talking about today? I'm going to be talking about, I think genuinely, possibly the job I would fancy least from the last 200 years, which is bridge painting, as in, you know, up in the sky with a paintbrush in your hand, hoping you don't fall. It's just, it's a horror show, as you will find out.

What are you guys going to be talking about? Later, I'm going to be talking about how leather has been traditionally made through the Middle Ages right up until today. And I have to say, before Dr. Darrell Leeworthy, our historian, sent me my section, I had no idea how leather was made. It blew my mind. This section is going to stay with you forever. And I am going to be talking about the workhouse. So all in all, quite a depressing episode.

Exactly. But before that, let's tuck into a bit of your wonderful correspondence. And I'm afraid, Ellis, I think you get a bit of a roasting in this email. Not you, but your stance on something. This is from James Osborne. Hang on, just quickly. Is this a factual inaccuracy or just a shit opinion I've got? It is the latter.

I was hoping you're going to say, so you will have a chance to defend yourself. Beatles slash killers is the name of the email. There's an ongoing chat on this podcast about the fact that Chris thinks the killers are better than the Beatles, and Ellis couldn't agree with something less. Yeah, he's very strong in his views on that. And I back him up, to be fair.

Well, can I just throw in a bit of, Corrid, I wasn't planning to do this, but I'm going to echo the comments that someone made on our page, and MDR commented on our recent episode, I'm with Chris, the Beatles are overrated. And I screen grabbed that, sent it to you both and said, who really knows our audience? But it possibly suggests how little you hear that point of view that you immediately screen grabbed it. If it was one that you heard all the time, you might not.

James Osborne says, firstly, there is no metric where the killers are better than the Beatles, but that doesn't stop the Beatles being the most overrated band in the world, which also doesn't stop them being one of the best. Ellis will tell you how experimental and groundbreaking, etc., they were, but his wealth of knowledge of the Beatles puts him the 0.0.0% demographic. The Beatles are famous for their most famous 10 songs, eight of which are basically the same song. She loves you. Love me do. All you need is love, hard. night, I want to hold your hand. These are the songs that you hear whenever there's archive footage.

And without the tragic loss of John Lennon and the performative stuff that he did with Yoko in a New York hotel, their fame would not be half of what it is. Also, love the show and thank you for all the content. It's absolutely not true. There's another point in this you'll hate now. We'll get to all of these points. P.S. Ellis, remember, every time you sing, Hey Jude, it's a Cardish city song now. Well, no. No, that's not true either.

James O. South Wales. There you go. Over to you, Ellis. I think the 1960s is the most transformative decade of the 20th century, and they were an enormous part of the 1960s. In terms of modern popular culture, they were right there. Them and Elvis, I'll, you know, I've got to hand it to Elvis. I'm not actually a very big Elvis fan, but I sort of, I don't dismiss his enormous impact.

I would say their legacy looms far larger than Elvis is. Yeah. You still get, like Olivia Rodrigo, who's my daughter's favorite musician, who is, I think she's 22, she will often talk about when she loves the Beatles. Modern young musicians, very rarely, in my experience, tends to name check Elvis.

There's just something about, and also when I was a teenager getting into the music press, he would still... Mike Bubbins won't like this, by the way. No, no, no, no, but I've had this argument with Mike so many times. You would still seem on the front cover of

never the weeklies, but certainly the music monthlies that were aimed at older people. He would crop up every now and then. He doesn't anymore if you have a look. But there's if they put Paul McCartney or John Lennon on the front cover of Mojo or uncut or whatever, it will sell loads of copies. And yeah, sure, those are the 10 probably most played Beatles songs. What about that argument that most of those songs are very similar? Do you agree with that? Yeah, but I think that's true of all pop music. Yeah. Like Ed Sheeran went, Ed Sheeran went, was

taken to court because there's a song he was accused of plagiarising another song and one of his defence, his defence in court was he played 25 enormous pop songs that have all got the same chord progression. Yeah.

And there's, there used to be an Australian sketch group called Axis of Awesome and there's a famous sort of code progression and they just did all of the songs that have that. Yeah. In a row and that's, I don't really accept that as an argument because that's pop music. And that is true that the chords to love me do are very basic.

It could also be argued with the statement, their 10 most popular songs are, it's quite an achievement in his own right. If any sense and starts with that, if it's their 10 most well. And also that's not their fault. That's what the public like. Interesting.

Because they made all of those albums, whether that they're Paul McCartney's, favorite pizza songs, you know, I've got no idea. They certainly would have been John Lennon's favorite beat of songs. And so that's basically, that's the public's fault. The public likes what the public likes. You can't change that. They still have an enormous back catalog.

And it's, I always find it extraordinary that Tomorrow Never knows was made by the same group who did, She Loves You. Right, yes. You know, five years apart, less than that, actually. She Loves to come out in 1963 and Tomra never ever has come out. 1966, three years apart. It's insane. And what about the Cardiff City angle?

But the swans sing Hey Jude and sort of wrecks them and sort of loads of different football clubs. So the idea that Cardiff City of ownership of Adjute is preposterous. This is a global scandal. They get a percentage every time it's played or sung in the world, Noel. Do you know that? McCartney splits it with him. Very good argument. Chris has got the look of a man who's desperate to say something about the killers.

Thank God for, can I now introduce you to the... the album Hot Fuss 2004. Jenny was a friend of mine. Sounds completely different to Mr. Brightside. That's the second song on the album. And where'd you go from that? Smile like you mean it. Somebody told me

all these things that I've done. Andy, you're a star. On top. You forget about On Top. What are we doing here? Culturally, what are we doing here? People forget about on top. If you're in a nightclub, if you're in an indie, when was the last time you were in an indie bar? In the

naughty in the last 30 years and someone puts on I want to hold your hand. You want to leave. It feels sinister. But I put on, I put on Penny Lane, people loving it. I put on Hey Bulldog. People loving it. When did you play Penny Lane? When was this at one of your recent DJ? I was DJing in Manchester. And then I did it, I did it at Coco. I did at Coco. I played Penny Lane. It was a big single. Has it been a mix up and you'd only taking your mum's records. What happened? You also played, there'll be bluebirds over the the white cliffs of Dover. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because my mum's 110. Yeah, exactly. And then I played, I play, I play, I play, I play, I was DJing in Dolston. I played Hey Bulldog. People losing their minds. Also, one of the Beatles more obscure. I think it's a B-side, Hey Bulldog. People living it.

Loving life. Well, James, I hope that's a comprehensive enough rebuttal for you. The idea is a Cardiff City song is hilarious to me. James needs, James needs to go to a hospital. I had to disagree. I think the real charm of this email and the fact that the idea that all eight of the famous ten songs are exactly the same is really made me laugh. Oh, I don't don't.

Yeah, absolutely. That's really made me laugh. It brings me to quite an interesting point we could ask our listeners, which is, what do you think of the most overrated things from history? Yeah. Argue your point for something which is massively popular and tell us why you think it's massively overrated. What, what we call it? Oh, what a, what a, what a nonsense.

Oh, what a nonsense. There will be people out there. Oh, what an overreaction. There doesn't have to be music. There'll be people out there, though, who don't like reading. And I'd like to hear those people say, the printing press, absolute rubbish. Just...

I think they're unlikely to email in in that case. They're not really to reading. They can send a voice notes, I suppose. Oh, yeah. And also, what's your favourite killer's album? And why is it hot fuss? So there you go. Oh, what, an overreaction.

Do send them in, genuinely. And here's how you're going to. get in contact. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at ohwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. All right. Now on our top tier on patron, the oh water time all-timers, there is, of course, this incredible benefit where if you sign up, we will riff on your name and try and figure out where in history. You may have been in a past life. And this week, it's a P. McCartney. He's been subscribing for. Since the very beginning,

he loves this podcast. Now, every time I've gone on the list and had a look at who signed up, there's always been a first name and a surname, except today. Where we have for you, Kate. Okay. Well, the people I can think of who've only got one name, it's all Brazilian footballers. Exactly what I was about to say. Fred. Fred.

All that lot, yeah. Cleopatra. Well, the thing with Kate, it's such a common name. If Kate is just known as the Kate, she must be so talented and rich. Like Beyonce. Like a trillionaire. I think Kate invented AI. Yeah.

Elon, Kate is the only woman Elon is scared of. Kate, Kate was the first AI to achieve consciousness. Kate knows more about you than you will ever know but yourself. That's the terrifying thing. And Kate knows your future. Yeah. Kate's in charge of your future.

I was approaching from a different angle, which was, you know, Lyca was that animal, that little dog that was sent off into space. It could be one of those early animals that was sent off from one of the space missions. Oh, yeah. It's like a hedgehog. A lovely little dog called Kate. Yeah, exactly.

It was shot towards Saturn. And we all know didn't make it, but nobody can bring themselves to say that. The technology was in its very early days. Yeah, exactly. And kids in the 70s are saying, will Kate be okay? Will there be enough water and food on board? And 70s parents are going, yes, it's going to be fine. Yes.

Kate likes being in a rocket. Exactly. She lives with all the space hedgehogs now. It's like a massive game of fetch, isn't it? Being in space. Exactly. I like either of those. So basically, you can have Brazilian footballer.

They do have a real propensity for that sort of thing, don't they? There was Fred. There's also, like, the surnames are quite funny. Renaud, who plays for Swansea, yeah. Oh, yeah. Who's a Liverpool goalkeeper at the moment? What's his name? He's got, like, he's Brazilian, but he's his, what's his surname?

Not Allison. Oh, that's it. It's just when you see the lineups. It's like Alison, Fred. It's all just like people who live in your cul-de-sac. If you had a cul-de-sac 11, people are like, bloody out there must be a lot of Brazilians living in your... Yeah, exactly.

And then R-9, which was Richard at number nine. So there you go, Kate. You can be a hedgehog, you be Brazilian footballer, or you can be the world's wealthiest AI genius. The choice is yours. Good stuff. And if you want to sign up for Patreon, here's how you can do that.

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What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling! As we're discussing tough gigs, I can think of two, well, I mean I had plenty in my time. but I can think of two terrible gigs. I can think, well, I'm sure that Tom, like all comics, would have had difficult gigs at the beginning of his career.

Of course. But I think in terms of tough gigs... In terms of tough gigs. Arguably the toughest was Chris Skull. At West Ham, the day they went down when he said, Thank you for you support this season and 60,000 people booed him.

That's a fresh tough gig. Barely a couple of weeks old Oh my God How did you react to that? You got a laugh Did you feel personally attacked? No, you got a lot I wanted to boo me

It sounds like to be fantastic You would have gone viral if you'd booed yourself The toughest gig I had live event hosting I interviewed David Moyes when he was West Ham manager And it was the day after West Ham had lost at home to Arsenal It was like 5-1, we'd been battered And I was interviewing him at an open training event and it was the first day of half term, the day after we'd lost 5-1.

So the crowd was like 80% kids. And obviously I've got to talk about the fact we got battered the day before. So I said, David, obviously, tough result yesterday. Not the result any of us would have wanted, how you're feeling. And he just went, shit. The first five roads, kids and parents, parents covering their ears up. Where do we go from it? That's so funny.

times, eh? I did a Christmas due. I would have been paid £150 through 20 minutes, and I came off stage after 60 seconds, because it was going so badly. And I remember the manager of the venue said, in all seriousness, I can't pay you for that. That was a tough day. I absolutely ruined a poor woman from Swansea's wedding in L'nethy, and the father of the bride said, in all seriousness, I can't pay you for that. And yet said, but I've been an honest man on my life And he gave me 20 man for petrol. I did Bristol Jonglers on August the 9th, 2013. And I remember that because I had to keep sending them the invoice Because they didn't pay me. It went so badly.

I don't know, did you ever do Bristol Jonglers, Tom? I did do it, yeah, of course, yeah. It went so badly that my mouth was so dry with nerves that I tried to lick my lips, just to get a bit of saliva going. and my lip, my tongue couldn't complete a full circuit of my mouth because my lips were so dry. My tongue got stuck halfway.

And then I started to joke. Like rubbing two bits of velcro together. Yeah. So I sort of, so I have done one joke that's failed terribly. I thought, is that a thing to look out for? If you're watching you gig, you start licking your lips, it's a tough gig. I was right, little lick of the lips now before I do my next shit joke. And I, jonglers have now gone bust so we can say this.

I came off after 12 minutes, and they wouldn't have been a comic in Europe having a shitter gig than me that night. I was the worst comic on the continent. I remember I went to the manager, and she said, that was great, well done. I thought, well, you obviously weren't watching. And then I got a train back to London. The whole day, the next day, I died on my ass on the front.

Friday night, I was waiting for the phone call for them, for management, for them to say, listen, we've watched the video back. You're clearly not cut out for this. Please don't come tonight. But we're sending you some lips off. Have you heard of lit? And a bottle of water. And it never did. So I got on the train, fully expecting to be turned back at the entrance of the venue.

And I walked in and they were like, hey, Al, nice to see you again. I was like, yeah, you don't give a shit about your product. Absolutely. And I think that might be why the company doesn't exist. There's also a classic story before we get into it, which you'll know, Elle. Chris won't. I'll tell it very, very quickly. There's a classic comic story.

There's a comedian, sort of quite new, open-micry-level comedian, who drives all the way from London up to, I think it's like Aberdeen or something like that for a Thursday night pub gig. He gets there and basically there's nobody there. There's like hardly anyone there. the football's on in the corner, there's like five people. And the guy who runs it's like, I'm not going to make you do this. Don't worry. Just have the 50 quid.

And it's fine. Have a beer, have the 50 quid, and then you can get on your way again. And this comic goes, no, I want to do it. It's this on it. Up he goes on stage, dies on his ass,

so hard, comes off. The landlord's like, I'm not paying you for that. So he ginked his way out of 50 quid. That's a true story. True story. True story.

And then drove back in him. I'm not paying you for that. So good. My favorite, my favorite gig story, I won't name the act. And I also, I think, I'm not sure if I can remember the actor. I can't remember who told me this, but it was a new act performing in Leeds. at a venue that I think was called the original look

and there's a famous put down where if say someone in the front row was talking you say hey where did you learn to whisper in a helicopter helicopter yeah yeah just a quick way of shutting someone up was chatting and being disruptive this guy's dying on his ass and there's people chatting

and he thinks yeah I better say something I thought it's a hack line he's like fuck it'll get people on side and it's a guaranteed laugh but he's nervous because it's going so badly so he says this kind of

front row chatting he goes Hey man where did you learn to fly helicopter and the audience is sort of stupefied to confuse silence

and all the acts at the back like put their heads at the like how's he going to get out of this he goes hey man where did you learn to fly

a helicopter in a whispering gallery and the audience I thought like what? I keep talking about. Oh, I love it.

The sheer panic. You did a gig. You did a gig quite recently. Unfortunately, I couldn't be there. I did. It was lovely. It was really good.

Yeah. It was a lot of fun. The same old anxiety I have about performing was there, but I loved it. And the audience was very, very nice and I really enjoyed it.

Would you do it again? This is what I'm being asked. I will give it some thought. I may well, I may well, yes. Did you do your whispering gallery line? I did. And thank you for not naming me, by the way. I appreciate that. Okay. Let's crack into some actual history, shall we?

As we say, this is an episode on terrible jobs. I'm going to wrap things up later by talking about bridge painting, which is just horrific. Yeah, good idea. So I will be wrapping things up. I'm going third and second part of the show, and I'll be talking about the workhouse. I'm going to be talking all about bridge painting, which, is just so scary. I can't stop thinking about it. I think I'm going to win this episode in terms of worst job. And I did not expect it when I went into this.

Did both of you know how leather is made? Do you know? I've got a feeling that urine is involved and that's all I know. If it's not, then it's weird that I think that. Elle? No, I hope urine isn't involved because that would be a fantastic misunderstanding.

I think it's like the tanning. Isn't that something about how they... I don't know. I'm going to say it. Why have I thought that? Urine is one of the more pleasant aspects of the entire process. Oh dear. Stick with me.

There are plenty of jobs through history that nobody envies. At the top of the list, I'd say, slaughterhouse worker. Yes, that's true. Although the one guy I know who used to work in a slaughterhouse was an absolute maniac. And so I think that the rules were slightly different for him. I don't Undertaker I'd say would be up there

I've never met anyone who's an undertaker I've never known anyone to be an undertaker I was at school with an undertaker but it was a family business and so I've never

you know I've always assumed that I don't know you're born into it maybe things are different but yeah I tell a lie I do know someone

who's an undertaker the goal scorer in the 1997 FA Cup final for West Ham you actually scored in every round of that competition guy called Alan Taylor, who's an ambassador at West Ham, but he's also an undertaker. And he got talent spotted for that role while being a pallbearer at another wedding.

Someone caught to him said, yeah. What do you mean talent spotted? He was a poor bearer. And the other take care of a suck. Did he do two coffins at once? What was he doing? What's the tricks? You know, Maradonna when he vollied it up in the air and then sort of,

so yeah, how do you get talent spotted? I don't know. That's the story he told me. I can't help but notice you haven't dropped the course. I've never drilled into it anymore. on that, but apparently was such a good ball bearer. I'm being genuine. I think Tom would be a fantastic

Undertaker. Really? Why's that? Because the... Calamity crane? No, the Undertaker... Oh, you'd have to get someone else to do the admin. But the undertaker I know in town, my mother's known him for years

and Showa says he's a lovely man, he's very, so sympathetic, very good of sympathising. And I can imagine you, actually, being... You know, if comedy goes wrong... Yeah. I can really...

I reckon... As long as your wife did the admin, I think it would be an empire. But I think day one, as I'm falling into the hole on top of the coffee, and you're watching from a distance, you're thinking I should never have suggested it. Yeah, you were sympathetic in the leader. Boy, a soldier would be up there, I'd guess. We covered that before. No, thanks. But somewhere very near the top of that list,

and almost certainly the smelliest place on the list, sits the medieval and Victorian leather tanner and to understand why you have to follow the journey of an animal hide from slaughterhouse to wallet and I didn't know anything about this I didn't even know the urine thing that Tom knows so let's go back to the very start so leather has always been in demand shoes clothing bags saddles belts the trousers I'm wearing now the trousers wasn't our the bog bodies a lot of bog bodies the leather has survived survives doesn't it on a lot of shoes and things like that I think in the episode I did the Patreon episode of the special on trousers, which you can listen to now if you sign up.

I think the first ever pair were leather. They were hide, weren't they? Yeah. So, yeah. But I have never thought, how does an animal hide actually become leather? I kind of assumed that maybe they just kind of, I don't know, smoke it or just dry it out for ages and it just goes hard. That's not the case. So it starts at the slaughter.

Oh, yeah, that's interesting because I've mentioned the first trousers, but there is a difference between hide and leather, isn't there? Leather is something which has been treated. Yes, you're right. But I've sort of combined the two in my mind, but they are separate things, aren't they? Obviously. Yeah. So leather starts in the slaughterhouse. The animal is divided into its useful part.

So meat for eating, fat for tallow, like soap, candles and cosmetics, bones for assorted products. And finally, the hide for the tannery. Now, the problem is that a hide when it arrives isn't yet leather. It's skin, hair, fat, flesh, everything. Before it can become anything useful, all of that stuff has to be stripped away. the hair, the fat, the flesh. So the methods they do that with for nearly 2,000 years

are absolutely vile. The first step, which Tom has touched on, is called liming. And the magical ingredient for centuries with this liming is human urine. So hides were tipped

into vats of urine, stirred, left to soak. The ammonia slowly... It's a dignified death, isn't it? That's the main thing about it. It's a dignified. The ammonia broke down slowly the hair and surface skin, leaving the hide ready for the next day.

How do you discover that? It's such a good point, Al. What's that? How do you discover that? Has someone just got, we could just try dropping it in loads of piss? And then someone has obviously had to say, so you'll just say, we're just going to have to urinate for ages and fill this, this ditch or this bucket with piss? Yeah, just do it. And just see if it works, should we?

There's so much in this process that you're like, how did they discover that? And this is just stage one. So, yeah, it's left a soak in the urine, and that breaks down the hair and surface skin. But the big next immediate question is, how are Tanner's getting this steady supply of urine? Because they need lots of it. They're creating lots of leather, you know, these huge vats of urine, where are they getting the urine? So in ancient Rome, the answer was civic. Public latrines were tapped as a resource.

and the contents were sold to two sets of tradesmen, tanners and fullers, the workers who washed and treated wool and cloth, they were also using urine to clean it. Demand in ancient Rome was so high for piss that the emperor Nero introduced a tax on it in the 60s AD, the vectical urane or piss tax. It was reintroduced by Vespasian around 70 AD

when his son criticised the tax as undignified. Vespasian reportedly held up a coin and replied, Pecunia non-ole, money doesn't stink. So in ancient Rome, urine was just critical in lots of different industries, but especially for the initial stages of leather production. So you've got big stinking vats of urine. I noticed they didn't sort of keep this stuff in the Gladiator movie. They just sort of skips over this.

Yeah, you cover that up. It's more about the heroics of warfare. are just massive vats of we. Okay. Now, believe it or not, it's about to get worse. So once the hides have been limed, they move on to the next stage.

And this is where the smell really starts to kick in. The lime needed to be neutralised and the hide needed to be softened. To do this, Tanners used one of two substances. The first was bait from the French bet. Bate was made from the droppings of chickens and pigeons. collected and added to a warm liquid. Hides were then left to ferment in this mixture,

which broke down grease, washed out the lime, and softened the leather. The second and worse stayed within this was Pua, sometimes called Pure. Pua was very simply dog excrement. Oh my God. Some tanneries used Pua as a steeping liquid.

Others used it more directly. A worker would grab hold. of the dog mess and rub it into the hide by hand before it went into the vat. Imagine looking across at the people who are mushing the pigeon poo together with a sense of envy. You don't know how good you've got it. Yeah, so rubbing the dog mess onto the hide was known as purifying the leather, purifying what is odd word. So what like the urine, the obvious question is where does all the dog poo come from? And in Victorian London...

Dogs, it's got to be dogs, isn't it, surely? Well, yes. It's got to be, surely. Yes, well done. Well deduced. But in Victorian London, there was a specialised trade, the pure finder. And a pure finder is a guy or a girl,

but let's face it, I think in Victorian London it's more likely to be a man, walking the streets, collecting dog droppings, usually carrying a small covered basket and a black leather glove. Because you were done one of those guys in Clapton, I'll be honest.

Warners for my street. Absolutely back that. They're going around London, finding dog poo and picking it up, and they're selling their findings to the tanneries of Bermansy, which was then the leather district of the capital. It was someone's job to go around and pick up dog poo and seven. That is why my mum and dad and my grandparents used to hammer me to do my homework and to get good exams at school.

So we know about the dog poo finders, because thanks to the great Victorian social investigator Henry Mayhew, whose 1851 study London Labour and the London poor documented hundreds of obscure trades. Mayhew recorded that a pure finder could earn around 8 to 10 pence per bucket. With more, have he found... Not enough, not enough. I don't care what the conversion rate is, it's not enough. But you'd get more if you found higher quality mess.

I mean, how are you... What's a higher quality mess? Dogs in posh areas, eating nicer. They're full of Kensington. Yeah. Mayfurt. In Victorian London there are around 200 to 250 pure finders at any one time. Ooh, that smells like Mayfay, Doc Bess.

Ooh, woo. Obviously, this is an enormous workforce devoted to a job. Most history books would possibly quite rightly choose to ignore. Many pure finders prefer to work without their gloves. Hands, it turned out, were easy to wash than leather. And the word pure in this context only seems to date from the mid-19th century, a slang dictionary from about 1880, noted the meaning had been in use for roughly 30 years.

Sometimes, this has only really happened to me since I've had kids. I've had some disgusting stuff for my hands. And you can't wash your hands enough, it feels. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking about, now my kids are out of nappies now, but back in the nappy era, when stuff would go wrong, and you think, right, I'm going to deal with this,

and then I'm going to go to the bathroom to wash my hands 25 times, because that was extremely negative experience. But the more you deal with excrement and stuff, the sort of more used to it you get. So now I'm thinking of a dog mess collecting, Victoria London, he's been out all day collecting dog mess. And he goes on, quick. Curcery run under the tap.

Yeah. Right. Time to eat at a buffet, I think. If you've got a tap in your house as well. No wonder the average lifespan was like everyone was dying at 40. In Victoria. Yeah. I suppose a dream is you're walking home after a tricky day when you haven't found much

and you pass one of those dog walkers who's got like 14 dogs. You're like, okay, gold mine. I'm just going to follow them for the next half hour and that'll be my day sorted. A rich seam. Oh, yeah. So then, okay, you've done the urine, you've done the chicken, the pigeon poo,

you've rubbed it in dog poo. Now, after the bait or puir had done its work, the Heys were washed one more time. This time in something called the drench, which is usually a fermenting mixture of brand made from barley or rye or sometimes ash bark. This final wash removed everything else. I mean, that's the department you want to be in. Let's be honest.

No. The department we want to be in is sales. You'd have been nowhere near the production of it. You want to be on the phones. Such a good point, yeah. Hello, sales team. I could do that all day. Well, Tom, you said you think this is the nicest stage.

This final wash removes everything, all the poo in it, like everything, prepares the hide for working into its final product. But this leftover liquid, what happens with it is, because it's washing everything off, that there's a soupy residue that falls to the bottom of the vat, which is just all the nastiness that's gone through the process. And this soupy residue at the bottom of the vat had its own name. It was called the ooze. This is the vile combination.

of everything to this point. Thankfully, you'll be pleased to know that leather isn't made this way anymore. In the late 19th century, German chemists began studying why bait and poohr actually worked. They eventually isolated the specific enzymes responsible for breaking down the hinds,

enzymes which could then be manufactured in chemical factories rather than scraped off the streets. Ah. The key figure was the German industrialist Robert Hazen Claver, whose work in the early 1900s helped shift the tanning industry

away from traditional methods towards proper industrial chemistry. Within a generation, your humble London Victorian pure finder was extinct. Picking the stink in extinct, is that right? Is that what he might say? By the way, also it shouldn't be called ooze. It should be called poos. That was my other little comment. I'll just chuck those two things. You can enjoy those if you want. If they're not for you, just move on. Yeah, fine. So as we've just covered there, there are so many absolutely disgusting jobs involved in the creation of leather from the people dipping in the urine, the people finding urine, your pure finder walking the streets

with his basket picking up the poo, the labourer who actually has to rub the dog mess into the height, the cart driver hauling barrels of urine across the town, or anyone who had to live downwind of a tannery. Imagine living next door to this place. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. Horrendous.

Lots of pubs call things like the tanners arms. I'm never going to drink in one of those pubs again. Never shake the landlord's hand. For centuries, consumers used to comment on the peculiar smell of leather. That distinctive earthy note, you can still catch in an old saddle or leather-bound book. That smell didn't come from nowhere. Now you'll know where that smell comes from. Next time you see a piece of leather, remember.

Oh, that was amazing. Slash, disgusting. Oh, dear. Apologies to anyone eating during the last 20 minutes. The smell in a tannery must have been absolutely. mind bending. Oh man. Can you imagine?

Do you know what I'm picturing is the day that they've worked out they could start using chemicals. Some bloke turning up with like seven buckets and shit. They're really pleasing themselves going, here we go. This is going to be a big payday.

Like the foreman saying, no, we don't need. Oh, sorry, Andy. A German guy's invented a better way. Oh, right. Well, what do you want to do with these ten baskets of shit? Yeah.

It's up to you. It's yours, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's the end of part one of tough gigs, gentlemen. What's in part two? I'm going to be telling you about the impossibly dangerous job of bridge painting. It is incredible the history of this trade and full respect to the brave people that did it. And I'll be talking about the workouts.

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