Oh What A Time... - #27 Beauty (Part 2)

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

This is Part 2, for Part 1 check the feed yesterday! This week we're discussing BEAUTY via acne, Viking teeth, hair and wigs; plus this week's bonus bit is all about the man who brought bodybuilding to the UK. Was that man Tom Craine? I'm afraid you'll have to listen to find out! Yes we've added ONE DAY SNOG MACHINE to the incredible set of features we have: THE ONE DAY TIME MACHINE, HOW WOULD YOU IMPRESS SOMEONE IN 500AD and of course DO YOU HAVE A RELATIVE OF NOTE? Want to contribute to any of our AMAZING format points? Do let us know at: [e-mail] This is Part Two, but if you want both parts together, why not become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 to support the show, you'll get: - the 4th part of every episode and ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - a bonus episode every month - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd 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). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Do you go in and ask for the right thing? Are you happy with the hair you've got? Because of all the aspects of human beauty, none really causes as much anxiety as hair. Because it's the most visible physical aspect, I suppose, of who we are. I mean, even someone like Caesar, he was embarrassed at losing the sort of haircut that he invented. The sort of brushed forward comb over that he made famous. And when his hair started to thin, he got really embarrassed by it. So, Chris, Tommy.

That was, of course, that was pre-baseball cap as well, wasn't it? That wasn't an option. Which is what I go to when I've got bad hair. Have you had any bad haircut experiences? Any haircuts you're embarrassed by? My experiences... I'm quite confident when I go into a hairdresser. I do know what I want. I was asked the same thing and it normally works. What do you say?

So I say I have quite lazy hair. I like it choppy, bit of texture, cut into it. That's what I say I have quite lazy hair. I like it choppy, bit of texture, cut into it. That's what I say. That's no instructions. Just have a go at it. See if we can hack it. It's this bit shorter, bit choppy, bit of texture.

Push it forward and they go, yeah, I'm dealing with a cold. So the haircut is normally successful, but my hair has the ability about five weeks in to tip over in like one day from good to just, I look exactly like my mother. Yes, my hair's like that. She's a lovely lady, but I don't want the hair of a 78-year-old woman. Yeah, fine on Monday. It's something overnight.

Fine on Monday, by Tuesday, mad professor. It's crazy. I don't understand what's happening there. It's just like that. I had spikes when I was in year four, about sort of 89, 90. And when the hairdresser did it, it looked great. And mum bought me the gel from Tesco. But the problem was, I was too young to do it myself,

so I was relying on my mother to be a hairdresser every morning. She had three kids, she was doing the school run on her own myself, so I was relying on my mother to be a hairdresser every morning. She had three kids. She was doing the school run on her own. I'm seven years older than my little sister, so obviously my little sister would have been one or something or two. And so it never looked as good as it did in the hairdresser. And there's a school photo of me where obviously I said, Mom, you need to do my spikes.

And it looks absolutely bonkers. And it's so embarrassing. Just too complex. What about you, Chris? I can imagine you had some absolutely awful haircuts in your youth. I've seen photos of Chris from the past, and you've had some terrible haircuts. Yeah, probably.

But the first haircut I really wanted was Jason Donovan's. I wanted that. I took a photo of him into the hairdresser. Yeah, into Donovan's. I wanted that. I took a photo of him into the hairdresser. Yeah, into the hairdresser's. Yeah, yeah. And they said, your hair's not long enough. And it's a journey I've been on ever since. So you took a photo, just to go, let's go back on that.

Yeah. You took a photo, and you, Chris, as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You took a photo of Jason Donovan into the hairdresser's. But the problem was. But the problem was. Where was this photo? Like, you cut it out of a magazine? It was in a magazine, yeah. But the problem was... Well, where was his photo? Like, you cut it out of a magazine?

Yeah, it would have been in Fast Forward magazine. I mean, he was everywhere. He was a big cultural icon in about 1989, 90. You shouldn't need to take a photo, then. Well, the reason I did was because my barber was like a 68-year-old man from Hertford West called George. He was probably the one person in Britain, apart from Judge Pickles, who didn't know Jason Donovan was.

Obviously, because he was a 68-year-old barber called George, who had, like, three haircuts. George was, like, Army Cut 1, Army Cut 2, and the George. Do you know, this is a mad claim to fame that I've just remembered. One of my mates in primary school, his brother was one of those guys that would be in the black and white photos of haircuts in every barber in Britain. Oh, that's incredible. You know, every barber would have these same black and white pictures of haircuts.

And my mate's brother was one of those guys. And right up until, I'd still say in the 2010s, I was seeing pictures of haircuts and my mate's brother was one of those guys and right up until i'd still say in the 2010s i was seeing pictures of him that's amazing now he really died down yeah it was the same four or five pictures in every barber's yeah those haircuts always seemed about five years out of date as well you never saw a haircut you thought oh that's what people have now it's always like i remember the haircut about five the hair do you remember the other thing about old barbers it's like i used to go in there to be like a the biggest tub of wet look gel and it would be blue with bubbles in it and they would they'd go do you want some gel yes they'd get like a a scoop like a tennis ball size amount yeah and run it

through your hair it was was like dipping sheep. Yeah. And I remember going to Ed's clip joint in Carmarthen at Barber and he put loads of aftershave in my hair when I was about 15. It just smelled like a 15-year-old down on the piss. My haircut at primary school

and secondary school cost a pound. That's what it cost. Yeah, yeah. At Barber. It was at the same Barber my mum used to take me to and secondary school cost a pound. That's what it cost. Yeah, yeah. There was the same barber my mum used to take me to and it was a quid. I used to get my haircut by a farmer's wife and it was three quid when I was a teenager.

How does a farmer's wife charge three times what a professional barber would charge? She used to come to the house and do it in the kitchen. Using the sheep sheep? Until I got to the stage where I was like mom this ruining my life i look bad all the time so so yeah it was um you know the baldy man in the roman era was it was it was a standard joke and it was a joke to poke fun at the dictator's ball patch and what he did to cover poke fun at the dictator's bald patch, and what he did to cover it up in the same way that people make fun of comb-overs now.

Although the comb-over, to be honest, has died out, hasn't it, really? The kind of Bobby Charlton comb-over you never see anymore. But until, I would say, probably the late 90s, early 2000s, no one ever had a skinhead, apart from skinheads. And there were various cultural connotations with the skinhead. Whereas now, if you're losing your hair, you just shave it off and that's absolutely kind of fine. In the Roman era, if you were sort of an academic or something and you were bald or you were losing your hair, you were immune from jokes. Now, let's move forward to 17th century France. King Louis VIII he realised that he had the same problem as

Caesar and he's gutted because he's losing his hair at the age of 23. Now Louis had always wanted his hair long which was a sign of his youthful vigour so he thought well what am I going to do about it? And his answer was I'll kick start a fashion trend that will last until the French

Revolution. wigs. No way, that was him? Yeah. That's amazing. Now, he wasn't the first... I'll tell you what, very briefly, Ellis, I'll tell you what I find quite interesting about that, is someone with that much power and wealth and really, no matter what he looks like, people are going to say he looks amazing.

Still, that insecurity about your hair and your receding hairline would still concern you despite the fact it just it doesn't really matter what you look let's look at it right uh the most powerful people in our lifetimes in the uk thatcher major blair brown uh cameron um i'm losing count now because it's uh because we're getting to the crazy Tory era, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak. Have you ever looked at them and thought, oh, God, I'd love to dress like them? Or the Queen or King Charles.

Have you ever looked at King Charles and gone, I want what he's got? Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? The idea that you'd base your look on a monarch. I got a bit of that at the coronation. Did you? The long red gown and the crown. I thought maybe I could rock that. Quite a nice look.

Now, Louis VIII, he wasn't the first European monarch to sport a wig. So England's Elizabeth I had worn one to cover her greying, short cropped hair. She had at least 80 wigs in her collection. Mary Queen of Scots wore wigs as well. And it was revealed, in fact, that Mary Queen of Scots wore a wig in quite dramatic fashion because following her execution, the executioner picked up her head by the hair uh and it just it it like fell off and uh left him sort of holding the hair piece with a sort of head rolling along i imagine and people were always going to laugh in it yeah yeah isn't that doubly embarrassing not only your head's chopped off here's the head oh drop those oh it was a wig as well i think you're probably past

caring by that stage you're probably about 30 seconds past caring. Well, no. Actually, Ellis, I think, aren't there sort of like scientific records that show that your head remains alive for about one and a half seconds after it's been chopped off? So her head would have been chopped off. She'd have gone, oh, no. Oh, you're kidding me. And that would have been it. Three seconds of, well, that is embarrassing.

Your head chopped off, you're thinking, well, that's the final indignity. We're done here Oh no Off pops the wig And then gone Well at least my Oh no So is it 140 wigs she has?

Wow No Elizabeth I had about 80 Elizabeth I had 80 Do you need that many? Yeah I mean Guy Lineker's got Are they different functions?

Are they different looks? Guy Lineker's got different glasses for different episodes of Match of the Day. So maybe if she was playing five-a-side, she might have a shorter wig. If she was going to a wedding. A sport wig. Sport wig, exactly. Depending on the heat. But Louis VIII's hairpiece, it was something new, right?

He needed to maintain long, flowing locks. And so he broke with what was a traditional French practice at the time, which stated that wigs were only worn by redheads, like Mary and Elizabeth, by courtesans. So what the king did first, the court did soon afterwards. By the end of the 1620s, wigs were all the rage amongst the fashion-conscious French. A friend of mine is part of the Elvis impersonator scene.

And his Elvis wig cost him an absolute fortune. And when he showed it to me, he said, that is real Chinese man's hair. Do you think that Chinese man looked a lot like Elvis? Do you think the hair, he already looked like Elvis? He was, like, talent spotted. Yeah, yeah, and they were like, right, you, we'll offer you whatever it needs, whatever it takes. We need that on someone else's head.

Now, Louis's son, Louis IX, who also experienced hair loss as a teenager, he took things to even greater heights. Huge, gigantic wigs that placed such a demand on supplies of hair, human hair for the king's wigs, of course, that the royal wig maker, Georges Binet, threatened to strip the heads of everyone in France if that meant he could cover Louis' hair.

It was a big deal. The guy needed a lot of hair. When you see pictures of Louis IX, the wigs are huge. Now, it was not just France at this point.les ii who was newly restored to the english throne in 1660 he took sartorial habits he picked up the french coat and he brought them to england ushering in an era of wigs um in in england as well because that's that's the thing fashions did cross countries in those days. It happened more slowly. But there was contact between different countries.

We weren't living in such isolated existence as you would think. Now, his brother, James II... Can I just quickly ask on that? Do you think that... How is that trend happening? Are the people walking in the room seeing Louis going, that wig is bloody brilliant? Or is it, like, posters or paintings? I reckon it was probably... Because they would meet up to sign treaties and things.

It's about what those in power look like. It's aspirational, isn't it? That's basically what it is, I suppose. And that's how it would pass around because so much would be about being seen to be of a certain level, a societal level, and to be dressing in the appropriate way. Now, Charles II's brother, James II, he also liked wigs, but the diarist Samuel Pepys appears to have hated the trend for periwigs,

as they were known at the time, and he preferred natural hair, although he was sensible enough to wear a wig in public. Now, Pepys was a... That was Samuel Pepys, was it? Yeah, he was especially paranoid during the year of the plague, 1665. So he wrote in his diary it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to

periwigs for nobody will care to buy any hair for fear of the infection. Any hair that is, that have been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. Imagine wearing a wig that had been made from someone's hair and that person had died of the plague.

You'd be like, to be honest, I'll just shave it off. I'm fine, actually. I imagine the weak seller would be a little bit hazy about where it had come from in that case. Yeah, no, I just get it from a wholesaler. Yeah, so the wholesaler's actually based in Milton Keynes. I don't know where he gets it from, but he's a really good guy and I've worked with him for years, actually. So it's

probably abroad, I would say. One thing I will say about this whole saver, he definitely didn't have a cough. He didn't have a cough. He had very clear lungs. Very briefly, this is absolutely mad. My five-and-a-half-year-old my five-and-a-half-year-old? My five-year-old

has been learning about Great Far of London at school recently. Yes, my kid's done that. And his friend from school, they'd been talking about, basically death came up. They started talking about what happens when you die, because people died in the Great Fire of London. And his friend told him that when you die, you come back as a piece of furniture. As a coffee table on Monday Time Machine. To cut a long story short, my son is now convinced that the light in our room is Samuel Peete. The light above our bed, he's utterly convinced, is Samuel Peete.

But not in a joking way, he just it's Samuel Peep. Oh, wow. But not in a joking way. He just convinces Samuel Peep. I love that. Here you go. It's lovely. Unfortunately for Samuel Peep's slash your lampshade, Wiggery was sustained for the rest of his lifetime,

well into the 18th century. Although there were fashion changes allowed for use of simpler of simpler shorter wigs um a bit like uh the distinction between a sort of judge's wig and one worn by a barrister they they they changed with time now fashion for wigs began to decline by the second half of the 18th century accelerated by the american revolution then by the french revolution uh george washington for example for example, shewed wigs. He preferred to dye his normally red hair. I didn't realise he had

red hair. My daughter's got red hair. I'll be telling her that when she comes back from school. He would dye his hair white using a sort of fragrant powder or pomade. And where Washington went, obviously, his success has followed. So John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both wig wearers as young men,

preferred to keep their natural hair when in office. Now, this might seem like a turn towards more sort of common habits, but it wasn't. The American revolutionaries were deliberate in setting themselves apart from the old world. But all over European and North American society, wigs was likely to be seen on the heads of ordinary men and women as those from aristocratic and royal elites. So it was big amongst sort of common people. Can you imagine that?

It must have looked really weird. But I suppose if everyone was doing it, it would have been absolutely fine. It's just I had no idea that was such a big fashion. Do you know what? I'm just sat here thinking, like, all fashion is cyclical, isn't it? Things go away and then they come back. Like, the mullet is big now yeah yeah and it really is i went to watch i went to watch swansea play and the young men under the age of 25 had non-ironic mullets

no matter how bad a fashion thing is you think'll think, oh, that'll never come back. And it does. It always comes back. The mullet, I thought, that's never coming back. And yeah, here we are. But wigs now, they've had a while on the sideline. Are they about to make a big comeback? Could we make a fashion prediction on this?

If they were so massive that everyone had them, surely they'd do a comeback. I remember reading in an edition of Q magazine, the music magazine, when John Squire of the Stone Roses, with his second band, the Seahorses, they were doing a tour, a European tour, and he started walking around European cities with the tags of his jeans still on.

Right. It seems like when you buy jeans in a shop, there'd be this tags of his jeans still on. Right. It's like when you buy jeans in a shop, there'll be this sort of tag by the pocket. He kept them on. And the journalist made fun of this. And the photographer pointed out that in 1989, he and his three mates basically single-handedly brought back flares, something that was regarded as impossible. Right. three mates, basically single-handedly brought back flares, something that was regarded as impossible. So you just need someone charismatic enough to wear a wig. Suddenly, if Harry Styles started wearing wigs,

people would wear wigs. Or if Taylor Swift was doing it. You just need some absolute maniac to go with it. Well, Little Richard had a bit of a go, didn't he? Yes, that's true. For me, I think I like the potential for expression and all the incredible shapes you could do with a wig or whatever. The problem for me would be the day-to-day frustrations

of having something that big on my head. That would be the day-to-day frustrations of having something that big on my head. That would be the issue. Getting onto the tube and it bumping into things, that sort of thing would be the thing that would stop me. I know a woman, and she must have 50 wigs, and she wears them just because she wants to look different on a night out. She hasn't lost her hair or anything. It's purely an aesthetic choice. Now, you know how if you walk down any high street, there's vape shops everywhere?

There were so many wig makers serving so many different types of people in Paris on the eve of the revolution. There were about a thousand in 1771. In the words of a city directory publisher, there is no neighbourhood where one does not find many of them and there is nothing easier than informing oneself about the most renowned so wig shops were like the kind of news agents of paris you like you know chicken shops is the one especially in cities there are chicken shops everywhere but yeah it was wig shops in paris and they were me love it they were mainly the shopkeepers so there were thousands of travelling wig makers who plied their trade both in Paris and elsewhere in France,

much to the annoyance of the organised wig makers' guilds. And their products were made from all manner of hair. Horses, cats, dog, human. Can you imagine a wig made of horse's hair? Anything that could be meaningfully stripped and remodeled into a hairpiece, people were doing it. And then wig makers would double up as hairdressers. But nothing lasts forever.

The double blow to the wig trade affected by political revolution and then the industrial revolution left only lawyers and actors still yearning for the disguise of the wig. But yeah, I reckon they're going to come back. We should get in quick. We should start wearing wigs. When we do press shots for this podcast, we should all be in massive, like, Louis IX wigs.

That's not a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. Your friend, he wears 50 different wigs. Is she on the run? No. Are you Dave, a claims-free hybrid driving university grad who signed up online? Well, Dave, this jingle's for you.

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If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. So I'm going to talk to you today, you lucky gents, about spots, acne, and the weird ways that people have tried to treat them in the past. So did you get spots when you were younger? Yes, terrible. How were your faces? Talk to me about that. So frustrating.

I kind of got away with it in school and it started to happen to me at university, in particular my third year. So school I was kind of all right, but then I would say between the ages of 19, 21, it was at its worst. Just as I'd moved out of my mum and dad's house, great. Just as I had a girlfriend, that was great.

Moved to the big city. So, moved to the big city. 17, it wasn't too bad. By 21, it was absolutely horrendous, thanks. And I didn't do anything about it, because I remember discussing this with my friend Ed, who was in a similar position, and we both agreed that that would be an admission of defeat.

So I just walked around the one thing i did do was from um a magazine like a magazine my sister was reading i remember reading uh that ant and deck put tough paste on their spots to get rid of them so i gave that a go and it didn't work because Ant and Dec were not GPs. They were, at the time, novelty rappers. They weren't dermatologists. They were TV presenters. I'm all alone in imagining them applying the toothpaste to each other's faces.

Quite lovingly. Stood next to each other, lightly rubbing each other's face. I had spots in sixth form. That was my worst period. Do you have loads all over? Like a pizza face? No, I wasn't like that. Pizza face, that brings it back.

I get a huge one. I've heard that for a while. I'll bring out all the old school insults now. I had one spot in sixth form that was so big I got to school I looked in the mirror I looked at it and I thought I just can't be here today and I just walked home

walked an hour back to my house I thought I can't be at school with a spot that big I just need to go home I would get spots but I would get one massive spot every four months there was no coverage it would get one massive spot every four months. Oh, lucky sod. There was no coverage.

It would be one volcano on my chin every four months. You consolidated all your spots into an easily manageable lump. My first girlfriend's father suggested I use TCP on my spots. So for a couple of months, I walked around, and I just smelled like a dying life. I just smelled like dying livestock. My nan said to me, witch hazel, which did work. Yes, witch hazel did work. That mad? Witch hazel was good, yeah.

I used to use that. It used to scare me because its name's witch hazel. Yes, yes. Or is it a potion or something? Yeah. So your anxiety, my anxiety, the shared anxiety about acne is not a modern phenomenon. So the term acne didn't gain popular currency until the 18th century. And commercials over-the-counter remedies only became available in the 19th century.

So quite late, really. For example, Victorians use products such venolia soap and creams to ease the stress of them if not to cure them um but and this is what's interesting it was around that time it was assumed that spots were just this sort of modern industrial condition that's what people thought it's just a modern condition that people are suffering with now that was until the mid-1870s when a German Egyptologist by the name of George Ebbers purchased an ancient papyrus and suddenly realised that this ancient Egyptian scroll referenced all manner of treatments of skin ailments including spots. At which point it became clear the condition had actually existed since ancient times. In fact, now get this, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 shed more light on this.

As buried with Tutankhamun were loads of materials for treating acne. Wow. So there's loads of acne treatments buried with Tutankhamun, which I think is, considering he was a teenage king, is the most teenage thing you could bury someone with. Maybe apart from a PlayStation 5 or something like that. That's amazing, yeah. His Switch.

And a papyrus of Pamela Anderson. Yeah, well, that's a good point. What are the top three things you can get buried with which show you're a teenager? It is that, isn't it? Yeah. The papyrus of Pamela Anderson and a sort of wooden nintendo switch a mango vape

really baggy blue bolt cheese yeah yeah so poor old tootin car moon had bad spots this is what we can take from this oh no So poor old Tutankhamun had bad spots. This is what we can take from this. Oh no. What is particularly interesting though is that information meant that they then looked back on this papyrus, the Erba's papyrus, and they reread it with this sort of new idea

that this really is all about the skin condition of spots and acne. And they realised it showed various treatments that were used at the time so i'm going to take you through some of these ancient egyptian treatments for spots and see what you think um first this papyrus said you should rub the body with a ball made of powdered onions this was the first idea my worry there is you just stink of onion yeah it's like more of an issue than the spots but i just i smelled tcp in 1999 so you know i couldn't handle that would you rather your rep in sixth form was that you stunk of onions or you were spotted which is worse i don't know which is

i think i'd rather go spots yeah i think so so if that didn't work Then the Egyptians suggested that the onions Should be mixed with sea salt and urine Oh my god Because I can tell you what won't Sting already sensitive skin It's onions, piss and sea salt Those are the three things that will be nice and gentle on your skin When you open up

When you get one of those hand lotions or whatever it happens to be, that's what you look for, isn't it? Sea salt piss and other things you hope will be in there. Yeah, when you're in a posh toilet, like when you're in a toilet at a posh hotel, and rather than liquid soap, it will be a kind of hand soap from, you know, and yeah, and it will always smell of usually an odd combination like lavender and mint but yeah piss onions salt you're like yeah this is really getting to the root of it now well there's even worse treatment suggested on this

one incredible piece of egypt. Alternative treatments included mixing lead, cat dung and dog dung before rubbing that into the skin. I think if you find yourself rubbing dog turds into your face to deal with your spots, it's time to grow a beard. This is not the way to deal with it. The problem is when I had acne,

I couldn't grow a beard. Right. And so... So you'd have been there, walking around parks with a pooper scooper. Do you know what? I'm not completely mad. I would have gone cat shit over dog shit. Would you? Okay.

Because if I had to choose one of the animal shits, I would always go cat shit over dog shit. Can we do the pyramid of shit danger? Is it not fox dog cat dog is above fox surely dog is above fox is it really I can't remember how I know that

a fox shot on my front step and it was fucking disgusting so he scooped it up rubbed it on your face however your skin's never looked better He lost 25 years younger Wow Ellis

Have you seen Ellis He's found the elixir of youth No a fox shot in his breast Rubbed it on his face I woke up one morning To find a fox shitting on my face and I was really annoyed and he looked at me and said, give it 24 hours. I said, I will. I will do that.

Thank you. I'll just sit here and now we wait. And that fox grew up to be Estee Lauder. The final suggested treatment on this scroll include the applications of aloe vera for its soothing properties and anointment of honey and sulfur do you know what that makes you think i would be no but the the honey and aloe vera i'd be fucking livid if as i was robbing dog shit into my face they then mentioned that was yes yeah yeah yeah are you why are you

telling me this now you've done it and then they're like and of course we have the aloe vera option you what yeah the guy going oh sorry i've got the scroll upside down i've read those in the wrong order i must put this list in alphabetical order the dog turn is obviously the last option. Sorry. It's obviously honey first. Of these various medicines, understandably, the one that was most widely adopted by other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean world was honey and sulphur.

It was honey and sulphur, partly because it worked. So the sulphur, interestingly, did work as an antiseptic. So it did work. That actually had medicinal qualities. Or the honey cleansed the skinic so that it did work that was actually had medicinal qualities or the honey cleansed the skin so that one did actually work in fact the egyptian honey and sulfur mix would find its way into greek medicine and from there into rome so it really

spread that said the greeks and the romans weren't averse to the odd wacky solution themselves one greek physician suggested the best treatment for spots um in ancient greece was was rubbing them with a towel whilst watching a shooting star the idea being the star falling to earth would somehow drag your spots away from your face however arguably this wasn't the most ridiculous thing rome's most prominent doctor claudius galen was adamant that teenage acne was probably caused by, I'd like to guess, this is the final thing, what do you think he said?

Hormones, you've gone with hormones. What are you going with, Ellis? The moon. I don't know. The gods. Well, he said it was overzealous masturbation. And he told his patients if they stopped wanking, then it would clear up. And it really makes me feel for teenagers back then because even if you did stop it's obviously

not going to sort out your spots so everyone will just be going well he's still at it yeah and you're going no i have genuinely stopped because everyone will go well if you'd stopped it you'd have a clear face so obviously you're not you're still yeah I mean it is hard being a teenage isn't it

right the one thing you've discovered that you love that is causing this yeah it's spots or wanking take your choice

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