Oh What A Time... - #78 Recreation (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!Elis’ is off filming his stand-up Christmas special, so we’re delighted to welcome in his stead the star of Radio X, Pappy’s and the Beckenham fireworks display: Matthew Crosby! And we’ll be discussing Recreation; how the vikings spent their spare time, the smash hit Tudor game of Fives and the national obsession with modelling.Plus, it turns out Tom spent his childhood on a chair, up a tree. If you’ve got anything to say about this or anything else, please do drop us an email: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wanderi Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wanderi Plus in the Wanderi app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to part two of Recreation. Let's get on with the show. Okay, cool. I want to tell you now about a historic game called Fives. I think when I went to school it was called Slap Ball. Did you play this game? I'm sorry?

It was called Slap Ball? That's a very different game. No, do you know what would you know? Was that in the changing room after games? Yeah, I'm getting some really traumatic memories coming back to me of Slap Ball. Oh my god. Who told you about that? There's a reason

my voice didn't break till I was 17. There's a reason I was a head choir boy at Bath, I've been choir. Topsy, not a problem. What was slap ball? You know you get a little tennis ball and you slap it against the wall. Really? And it's like squash but you just play it with a ball against the wall. You never played to that ball? I can tell you, my school was, I went to a Kentish grammar school in Orpington in Kent, and they had a fives court. So we used to get, it was a proper, a proper concrete fives court. I never played fives the entire time I was there, but there was a school fives team.

A team? A team, yeah, because they had the courts, I guess. They built the courts, presumably in the 70s, when the school was built, and were like, well, fives is going to be part of our identity. But I never, I never played. I hung out in the fives court because it was a cool place to hang out. Did you never, not even once, you didn't even just slap a ball, not even once? Chris, you have to understand my relationship with sports. Every time I tell this, I've never played a game of football. You must play a game of football. No, I don't want

to. I never will. You know, I'm just not interested. I just don't want to do it. If someone throws a ball in my direction, I pretend I haven't seen it. That's what happens. What's the game that's getting really popular? Paddle. Is that right? Is that what it's called? Paddle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which Josh Whiddicam, our mutual friend, texted me the other day to say he was going to get into. But apparently it's... and Stormzy does it. I don't think that's what swung it for him. Whatever Stormzy does, Whiddicam is sure to follow.

Exactly. Josh is hosting the Mobile Wars this year as well. Of course, yeah. It's going to be great for him. Yeah, it was everywhere when I was a kid. I don't even know what fives is Chris, really. It's completely lost on me. I couldn't even guess what it is. I had no idea about the history of fives. I just thought it was a slap-boy little game

we played when I was a kid in my school, but it's a historic game going back centuries and centuries. It's basically a little bit like squash. I don't know what your fives court was like, Crosby. Was it a three-sided one? So did it have like sides to it, like a squash court? Or just a big wall? It was basically a big, it was a big room. Four-sided. I mean, I guess so, yeah.

You could play it on both sides. There were two sides you could play squash on. The other things were entrances or exits. Yeah. So that's, that's what it was. Oh. So it's a room. It's like a, like a real tennis court.

You can get rooms. You can get three-sided. You can get four-sided, like a room, as we described. But you can also get just one-sided. You can just get a big wall to play on, basically. And it's like handball. Basically little tennis balls and you're slapping it like squash against the wall, playing against someone else.

So no net. You can do doubles, no net. Okay. So yeah, think of it a little bit like squash, except you're not using a bat. And you're wearing a glove are you? You're using your hand, but some people do use gloves. In fact it's still played today and when I was looking up pictures, you do see a lot of people with gloves on their hand.

When I went to school, never used gloves. It was just slapping the ball. Hence the name that we used, slap ball. Fives is associated these days with Eton College and very well-to-do forms of education, the likes of which Crosby was exposed to. But in the Tudor period, it was all the rage. Everyone was playing it, common folk as well as the wealthy, all up and down the country. Elizabeth I was once famously entertained by a game of fives played between servants

in Hampshire. And there are still some vestiges of fives around the country, like Crosby, you just described that court that was built. There's actually in a pub car park in Somerset village of bishops Lyddard. Bishops Lyddard? I don't know. In the pub car park, who didn't know? I'll trust you, whichever you want to go with. I need to just commit to one, don't I? The German accent doesn't scream Somerset, I'd say. But I don't know, I've not been to the area. I'm going to be confident and just go with one. In the Somerset village of Bishop's Lydard, there's an impressive piece of this Tudor

equipment. Incidentally, that's definitely not the right one. I bet it won't be. And we need to keep all of this in the edit. Okay. Whatever. I'm on comfortable ground here when I say it's in the grounds of the Lethbridge Arms pub and it's been there for centuries and it's a huge wall, it still exists, this huge wall that people

have been playing Fives on for absolutely, yeah like I say, centuries. But Fives was such a popular game and it was popular really because it could be played almost anywhere you had a tall flat wall whether it was made for that purpose or not. And this is where fives run into a lot of trouble because you could play fives on the wall of a house, someone else's house, you could play it off the wall of a pub, or what happened a lot, you could play it off church walls and church towers, which led it into all the problems I'm about to describe. There are five courts in Somerset and these are known as towers because of that association with churches.

And so yeah, like I say, you're playing it back and forth with the slap of your hand. You can play it on your own. You can play it in pairs. You can play it in squash. You can play it in doubles. The problem is a lot of people started playing them on churches. They were the walls most common in a lot of villages. So the people who got really annoyed with this were the church wardens who were worried,

quite rightly in a lot of cases, that these stray balls from people playing fives were going to damage their real expensive stained glass windows. And all the other mischief, when people are in the church on a Sunday, you've got a game of fives going to be happening loudly outside. There are actually reports, historic reports, in villages like Martoc in Somerset, that people could be heard swearing, quarrelling and fighting while services were occurring on a Sunday. I imagine a situation Chris where you're giving quite a moving eulogy to your grandfather. You hear someone yelling 15 all out.

You hear grunting outside. Slightly ruining the ambience. People in churches regarded the game therefore as kind of heathen-ish. So the church wardens wanted to prevent players from playing fives in the churchyard. They came up with various methods. Firstly, they would give people fines. So if they caught you playing a game of fives, you would get fined. The other thing they did was that they'd begun to adapt their buildings.

So they would plant various different plants outside the walls of the church to stop players jumping in there and playing fives. So you've got trees, they've got trees and different flowers to prevent people getting close to the wall. There's also accounts of people digging ditches just outside the base of the church towers to stop people playing fives. Which makes it seem like the church is just going to capsize, doesn't it? Just lilt into the ground and slide off down the hill. Lini Tarapisa. People always used to play fiving and the Lini Tarapisa on one side of it, didn't they?

Yes, absolutely. It makes it sound like this sport is more addictive than crack. People can't get enough of it. Well, I managed seven years next to a fivescourt and I didn't play once, so it's not that addictive. Have they not heard though of the sign no ball games? Surely, that's what they need. Don't bother growing a tree or digging a ditch.

Just put the sign up and say no ball games. That stops them. Well, a lot of people were illiterate back then, Crosby. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a more ignored sign in the history of humanity than no ball games? No one is enforcing that ever. I'd say in my case, no heavy petting. That's all I have to say. Of course. Of course. You love it. Also, anytime you walk past a place that's got a no ball games sign up, you look at that place and go, that's the least of their worries. Isn't it? Like,

the ball games, honestly, I don't think that's the problem with what's going on. Spirals of barbed wire at the top of the fence. An XL bully go for your ankles. People openly dealing heroin. You know, that's all fine guys, you carry on, but no ball games. You try to play a game of netball, that's it. You're out of here. That's quite an interesting question. Let's ask listeners if they've got any ideas. What is the most ignored sign in the world? I think, keep off the grasses up there.

Do you know that you just mentioned heavy petting, which just struck a memory of me. Growing up, my local swimming pool had a sign of all the different rules and one of them was, of course, no heavy petting. But it didn't have an illustration on it or anything. So it just said no heavy petting. And I had not, I mean, it's such a weird word. You never hear petting, heavy petting outside of the context of a swimming pool. So I didn't know, I didn't know what heavy petting was. I assumed it meant don't bring your dogs or your cats. If it's overweight. It literally will sink to the bottom of the pool. There's no way. The amount of time our lifeguards have to waste rescuing Alsatians from the bottom of

the pool just because they've eaten a bit too much pedigree chum. Luckily my pet was a goldfish. It was alright. I absolutely loved it. What are the rules on light petting? That's not covered. When does it turn from light petting to heavy petting? What is the transition?

Is it the tongue? Would you ever use that term in a call? I've never used it. Look at the heavy petting over there. Look at these. The petting around here is disgraceful. Do you never say that to Soph of an evening? You say, I fancy a bit of heavy petting now. I'm going to move some heavy petting. And she points at a sign that she's got up in the house. No ducking, diving, bombing. Let's know about signs. Hello at owhaltime.com.

Okay, right. So back to Marthock in 1758. This is a horrendous story. There are a couple of guys playing fives. They whacked a ball up quite high and it got lodged in the church tower. So they climbed up, knocked the ball out. But as they knocked the ball out, they dislodged a stone, a large stone which fell on a man below and fractured his skull. Oh no. Yeah, in the process of scrambling to retrieve a ball. Oh man, 1758. Oh dear, poor guy. But cleverly innkeepers saw an opportunity, a gap in the market.

People love fives. So what did they do? They started introducing fives courts into pubs. There was a pub in Yeovil called the Fives Court Inn to signal to would-be players that they're welcome there. You also had the Angel Inn at Myr in Wiltshire, which was said to be very grand and substantial prior to its destruction in 1870s. You also had the Georgian in Swansea that was put up for sale in 1768 and the Fives courts were included in the asking price. Will Barron Wow. So these courts would be outside, wouldn't they? It's not near the bar because that feels like a recipe for disaster.

Will Barron Whacking the Fives ball into the optics, smashing everything up. Will Barron Yeah, that one is worth a Google actually. The Lethbridge Arms is the one that I mentioned right at the start of the podcast and it's like a huge wall. It's enormous. I'd say it's like three stories high, but perfect. Now in a car park, but perfect for a game of fives. That's fascinating.

There was actually, and shame Ellis isn't here to correct me on my Welsh pronunciation of this, but in the hilltop town of Clan Trrisan, there was this, in South Wales, there was a pub with two fives courts at the pubs situated just a few yards apart. The local populace was down there all the time. They absolutely loved it. There was actually one of the most famous five courts in London was in St. Martin's Lane, near Leicester Square. The owner of the St. Martin's Court, Thomas Higginson, had another one in his empire elsewhere

in Holborn. And he actually, there's evidence of advertisements he was leaving in the mid 1700s. And this is what he wrote in his advertisement, I keep the completest fives courts in London, the bottom of St. Martin Street, Leicester Fields. And in that one you get a complete billiard table on each court. So you could go play fives, there's a billiard table. Again. It feels like two very different sports to be played here. If someone said to you, do

you want to go and play squash? And by the way, there's also a pool table in the middle of the squash court. Let's not use that squash court. It feels weird, doesn't it? I do understand the idea of playing games and having a drink. They do go hand in hand. I used to love playing pool when I was in like sixth form, that sort of time. I first went out to pubs, playing pool with friends and having a drink was brilliant. I just loved it. What about darts? What did you say on darts? It just wasn't really for me. I'm not very good and it always felt dangerous.

They're probably the two big games you get in pubs these days is darts and pool, isn't it? You don't really get, I'd say in the West country, you get those. Yeah, Skittles and... Domino's maybe. Domino's was a good pub game. Yeah. But I mean, you'd never see it now. And if you did, it would be an absolute affectation on the part of the two twats who were playing Domino's. There's a really popular one, which is across a lot of pubs, it's just fighting. It's a really popular pub game across the country, wherever you are. And whenever that happens, I always think surely there's a teacher here to break this up.

Sir, sir! The bigger boys! Yeah, so that advertisement was in 1742 and yeah, a lot of the fives courts in London and elsewhere were really close to pubs to catch passing trade and for players and spectators to have a drink and have a game of fives. But in the end fives died as we all know because it got overtaken by more popular sports now like football, rugby, cricket, boxing. In the mid 18th century it was still quite, but it was mid 18th century to now

that's where it's fallen away. If you want to go have a game of fives, you could have a look at Crosby's old school. There's a few still dotted around the country. I've just found a picture, I've stuck it in the chat, I've just found a picture of that. This is refurbished since I was at the school, but that's basically what the fives court looked like and there was another one on the other side. Look at that. It's just this sort of big, I mean, you know, a cool place to hang out when no one's playing fives, a terrible place to hang out when the game's

happening. But yeah, there you go. It's like a big, like a big concrete box on a variety of different levels. And according to where you hit it up the wall, I think that was how you scored points. I can't really remember because I never played it. But yeah. Cosby, we'll put that up on our Instagram. I'll tell you what that looks like. That looks like where a very violent prisoner in America is allowed his 20 minutes of exercise a day. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Probably the head of a cartel. Absolutely. Somebody who's in, he's in solitary the rest of the time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And he just has to be allowed to pace around there for 20 minutes before going back to solitary. Yeah, his wrists and ankles are still shackled together, but he can sort of shuffle along like you on an ice skating rink, just along the concrete floor, occasionally stopping to smash his head against the wall a few times. They go, okay, okay, you've had enough time, you've had enough, come on, back in you go, back in Chokey. Okay for the final part of today's show, I'm going to be talking about models and modelling. Now I'm not going to regale you with the tales. Talk about what you know. Talk about what you know. Exactly. Obviously, I could talk about my time on the catwalks

of New York, Milan and Paris, but I'm talking about toy models today. But a lot of people forget that I was the fourth name in the Fashion Cafe. It was Elle MacPherson, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiff and Matthew Crosby. But I've been written out of history, but I'm not here to talk about that today. We're talking about model making. Because you were too political and you wouldn't keep yourself quiet, would you? I was too hot, they said. You were too hot. That's what it was. Dangerous to look at photos of you. I made the rest of them look like a trio of uggos. Dangerously, dangerously attractive.

So humans have been making models of things for centuries, yeah. Dangerously, dangerously attractive. So yeah, so humans have been making models of things for centuries, whether that is as toys or as examples of larger projects, sort of like architectural models, or simply as forms of art. The Romans, in particular, had model houses, model figurines, toy dolls, other sort of play materials, and the Victorians did as well in the 19th century. But it was in the 20th century, the century that gave us Chris Skull, Tom Crane and me, that modelling really took off. When I was 11, I used to collect something called Warhammer 40,000. We're going to get to Warhammer in a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So these were Warhammer figures from like the future, like way in the future with their

robot guns and all this sort of stuff. I remember I made this... Mason- I love the way you're describing it as the future. I mean, I guess it is the future. Jason- Yeah, yeah. Like 80s robots. Mason- These are from the future. I get what you mean. Yeah, not like a Buck Rogers type thing. Jason- Exactly. It was way in the future. I made this sort of terrain, a futuristic terrain, post-apocalyptic world with girders and all this sort of stuff. And my mum, I remember for Christmas, bought me something to add to my little terrain, whatever you call it. She said, I've got you something. I opened it up and it was a small greenhouse from a Hornby train. I was quite sure why she thought a miniature

greenhouse would fit into this. Because of the greenhouse effect. Everyone would look at it and go, this is the reason we live in a post-apocalyptic world, because of the greenhouse effect. Then look at the greenhouse and go, let's learn from history. Anyway, come on my orc army, let's go and fight. We'll get to that and we'll talk about games workshop and all that kind of stuff in a bit. But we're still in 1901 here. The Liverpoolian toy maker and later millionaire and Tory MP, Frank Hornby, secured a patent for a new type of toy. It was initially called Mechanics Made Easy and was launched onto the toy market for seven

shillings and six pence in 1902. Any idea what it would later be called? It's Mechanics Made Easy. Meccano. It's Meccano, exactly. The idea was that the children were able to model the real world. They were able to look at the real world and go, oh, now I can make a bridge, now I can make a crane, now I can make some sort of other physical object.

And in doing so, learn about the mechanics of how these things were put together. Were you a Meccano kid, Chris? I can't imagine you being a Meccano kid. My dad was obsessed with Meccano. My dad actually mentioned Meccano kid, Chris. I can't imagine you being a Meccano kid. My dad was obsessed with Meccano. Was he? My dad actually mentioned Meccano this week. He said it was the best toy he ever got as a kid. He was obsessed with building stuff.

And he wanted me to get into Meccano. But there was just so many more exciting things by the time I had a childhood in the 80s. He had like wrestling figures or action figures. Transformers. Terminator 2, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah, Castle Grayskull. Exactly, he man, come on. Mikano just couldn't compete.

I was always more into Lego Technics, which I think was like the rival to it. That was our Mikano, yeah, yeah. Lego Technics where you had like, you could make a kind of, it had little bits of hydraulics in it and stuff. That was really, loved Lego Technics. Anyway, after the First World War, Hornby expanded into what I guess we think of today, we think of Hornby, which is the model railway. The first examples were released in 1920. They were clockwork, but within a few years the company had moved on to electric trains. To break into

the overseas market, Hornby opened a factory in France and then in 1927 in New Jersey, but the American venture was ill-fated because of the, of course, the collapse of the stock market and the Great Depression. I'd like to play a little game with you though about model trains because whenever I think of model trains, I always think of Rod Stewart. Yes. You know, Rod Stewart stood by his- This comes up a lot actually. You always think of Rod Stewart.

I mean, he is the sort of face, the celebrity face of model trains. But they're actually a big celebrity pastime, I guess because they are world building and a lot of people are famous are into sort of being powerful and world building and also cruising. You've got to do it, you need space. If you want to make your model railway work, it's got to be space. I'm going to give you a list of people. Tell me which one of these celebrities is not a model railway enthusiast. Great. Okay. Here's the list. Frank Sinatra, Michael Jordan, Anne Diamond, Macaulay Culkin, Tom Hanks, Pete Waterman. Which one of those is not a model train enthusiast?

I'm going Macaulay Culkin. I'm going Macaulay Culkin. You're going Macaulay Culkin. Chris, what are you thinking? I can believe, I think this might be a trick question. I think I could see them all being into model trains. I can tell you one of them isn't. Oh, okay. It's not a trick question.

I'm going to give you a, I'm going to give you a mulligan on that. Pete Waterman. Pete Waterman has such an impressive display. It was recently shown off in Chester Cathedral. What? What? Yes, Chester Cathedral. Wow.

If you Google Pete Waterman model trains, they're enormous. That's how big his trains are. But there were people playing a game of fives outside creating an awful racket and ruining it forever and so on. So it's huge then obviously his. Let's just say, let's be honest, a full train set, a whole new train set with all the decoration around it is an amazing thing. It's like a genuinely amazing thing. I went to a model train set museum in Norfolk about five years ago and it was just incredible.

It's just the care and time. It's time and care. That's what you're seeing, isn't it really? I've just Googled it. Pete Wartman has sold his model train collection. Do you know how much it fetched? What? £600,000.

That's amazing. It is bonkers. It is a full city. Wow. I'm just looking, he's got like a switching yard. It's got fields, it's got this switching yard like Leamington Spa Station it looks like. It's crackers. That's so cool. It's mad. Wow. I can reveal the answer actually and Crane, you got it immediately.

Of course, Macaulay Culkin, famous for using a model train. And I think a picture of Michael Jordan as well to make it seem like his house was occupied when it wasn't. But no, he's not a model train enthusiast. Michael Jordan was or is. He's got a model based on the Chicago and Northwestern Transportation Company because he played for the Chicago Bulls. But yeah, all the others. Amazing. Even Frank Sinatra. You think of this cool swinging guy.

He had a train collection that was reportedly worth a million dollars. Wow. Isn't it funny? Like the older you get, I find my tastes adjust and I don't even notice it. Like I never used to drink red wine until like five years ago, Guinness or I got into Dire Straits. My dad used to listen to that as a kid and I wasn't into it. But in the last few years, I found it. I'm now looking at Pete Waterman's train collection, thinking this looks like a lot of fun. Yeah.

I would love it. In that office behind you, Chris, if you had a night, you've got a bit of space behind you, if you had a normal train set. So when you're having a stressful day, you think, you know what? I'm just going to be, you know, I'm going to be the station master for a little bit, just to chill out. I'm also imagining that train bringing me a full English in bed in the morning somehow. It's sort of set up in a way that...

A Wallace and Gromit style. A Wallace and Gromit thing, yeah, absolutely. Exactly, I'm hearing the choo-choo around five past seven, I can smell sausages. A little sausage in each of the carriage. Oh, that's nice. A bean sat on every single seat in the passenger. Do you mean on top on the roof or looking out of the window like an evacuee? I think it's one no doubt. You know those big train carriages that carry coal?

There's no coal, just a big sausage sticking out the top. That's a nice idea. I like that. I think it feels like, I mean I guess it sort of plays into this idea that as you grow up, you sort of yearn for childhood, but it's a very kind of grownup way of still playing with toys. But yeah, Hornby was never alone in the model market. Airfix came along in 1939. We think of them for the scale models

of airplanes and other vehicles. Were you into airfix? Were you both into airfixes as kids? No, not at all. I found it so fiddly and like, pay it a slice, come and be bothered. And then it's so fragile. Clueing your fingers together and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, no, I never did any of that. It's also the glorification of war, which I'm not really behind. Exactly. No, no, no. Wasn't into that at all. I like the idea of owning those things. The closest I ever came. And these are still going. You still get these in party bags at kids birthday parties.

Your kids will have seen these. They're like two bits of polystyrene that make an old fashioned warplane. It does a loop-a-loop. And it's supposed to do a loop. It never does a fuck-a-loop-a-loop. And also your kids, because I don't know, my kids are certainly this way because they're three and five, they immediately just snap every bit of it. Yeah, the small bits are straight in the mouth. Great. Absolutely, yeah.

Very briefly, describe the difference between my two children. We went to Menorca this summer. My six-year-old, he's flown before, he was very, very nervous on the tarmac. The three-year-old, the opposite. We're going down the tarmac, about to set off. Charlie's going, oh no, I'm not, oh, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. We set off, we pour up into the sky, Pip yells out, do a loop the loop! This is a three year old, literally his first fight immediately yelling, do a loop the loop. Did the pilot oblige? No, two chicken, unfortunately. So the 1960s was the heyday of modelling. Airfix expanded into publishing and in 1963, the slot car racing market. Now, when we think of slot car racing, there is one market leader, of course, Scalextric.

It dominated the market, established in 1956, about six or seven years ahead of Airfix, launched at the Harrogate Toy Fair in January 1957, and so had the jump on the Airfix slot car racing. And it was that bit, I think, more glamorous than the world of the model aircraft because it was able to mimic the Formula One racing experience. The sort of the glamour of motor car racing. It had all the same thing of like building a track, building that world, inventing your own circuits. But it was, it was crucially,

it was about race cars, which are just that bit more exciting. By Christmas 1958, Scalextric was heralded as the latest craze for boys. This is from one advert at the time. Motoring enthusiasts, this is it. All the fun of motor racing at home with Scalextric electric model motor racing, Ferrari versus Maserati. All cars have powerful electric motors and are independently controlled, have vivid acceleration and with skill can be drifted to an amazing degree. I think the key phrase there is with skill. Mine always just shot off and hit the wall. I just found it impossible. I think because I didn't understand that perhaps

you need to slow down a tiny bit when you take a corner. You just didn't want to. You just wanted to absolutely ram it, go balls to the wall and straight off the track. Did you guys own Scalextrix? Yeah. Christmas morning for me, a couple of years with Scalextrix, all like... But again, you're so right. Christmas mornings for me were about just flying cars off corners, getting really frustrated, capable of calming down my excitement enough to break on a corner. My kids have Scalextics now and I hate it when they ask to play with it because I find it really hard to make a track where I'm finding the right bits to complete the loop with the wiggles they want.

I mean, I'm always like one or two, I can't get it quite right. I'm trying to push the final two bits together and then elsewhere they're coming apart. It's just like I just find it really stressful. The electric aspect, I remember as well, the sparks flying and stuff like that. This is like early 90s. There was an element of danger with scale electrics for me. It did feel like you could kill yourself. But what a happy way to go. Chris was killed in a car crash. Oh no, what happened? The car was the size of his thumb. killed in a car crash. Oh no, what happened? Christmas morning. So scale-extric might seem a long way off the more intricate idea of modeling, making

things that you based on the reality of engineering. But in 1975 in London, a shop arrived devoted something a bit more fantastical, the Games Workshop. Now this is where, Crane, this is where you come in. Warhammer, you know, dry brushing your undead armies. That one dude with the neck beard who was 15 years older than everyone else. It was an amazing place. I loved the Games Workshop. There used to be a Games Workshop about 10 minutes away from where I still live. The Games Workshop in Beckham. It's not there anymore. And I used to spend many, many happy Saturdays there, buying up the little pots of paint. I painted the armies and we just invented games, but I never played the proper kind of Warhammer games. Were you a Warhammer

gamer? No. So I made up my own rules, which was basically you roll a dice and that would tell you how many ruler length you'd go or something like that. Because it was just, it was too complicated that the actual rules. So I just had a very simplified version I'd play with my friends. But other people I knew did play with all the complications and all the sort of, I'm aware that probably was more satisfying. I just wasn't patient enough to learn that. No, I never learnt the rules. Never learnt the rules. But I loved it. I loved the experience of going in there. I loved the range of characters,

the potential for worlds you create, all these amazing things that people have made out of polystyrene. It's a really creative place for people. There was also though, for me it was looking at the things in the glass cabinets where proper professional painters had constructed the models and thinking, that's just so amazing. I found it quite frustrating the sort of differential between my abilities and their abilities. You could also buy the pre-painted stuff and you thought, I'm never going to, when will I ever be able to afford 40 pounds? That will never happen. But that was my dream when I make a bit of money, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy the properly painted ones by proper painters.

Yeah. So for miniature replicas, there were dinky toys and matchbox cars. But for those who liked the hands-on approach to scale modeling, there was Airfix and Games Workshop. But it's just not as popular as it used to be. With the growth of computing in the online world and with software like Minecraft, there's been a real generational decline in scale modeling as a hobby. Oh really? I just feel like, you know, it's interesting as well, lots of the games my kids play are world-building games or kind of, you building games or kiddie versions of Minecraft or trying

to create little worlds and planets for them. The modelling idea is there. It's just all done online. I guess the idea of making models can seem rather old fashioned. We didn't even get into Lego for the whole episode in itself, isn't it? I think that's the closest. That idea of making, I don't know, I can't imagine my kids will grow up and be like, well, I want to do airfix models.

There's also a decline in the glamour of modeling. And I'm not talking of course about Nuts magazine folding in 2014. I'm talking about the fact that like what you saw in the 70s on screen in the cinema was models. You know, if you watched Star Wars or something, you were watching Star Wars. All of those things were in-camera effects to some degree or another. Whereas now, obviously, it's all CGI. So it was a dominant force in toys and hobbies because of that. That's so interesting. That's such a good point.

People were like, well, I could see the Death Star. I can buy a kit where I can create the Death Star or I can buy the modeling toys of can create the Death Star or I can buy the toys, the modelling toys of that. But that seems to have kind of disappeared a bit. And again, it's all moved online. I mean, how do you feel about that as men in your 40s who host a history podcast? Will Barron I wonder if there'll be a shift back because records are becoming hugely popular again now. The idea of the tangible, I wonder if there will actually be a movement as people start to become aware of the sickness that is being on your iPhone all the time, looking at screens all the time, which is obviously

a problem that we all have and that modern society has. Whether there will be a movement back, you can see it. People buying records, bringing their old CDs back out again, a movement a bit away from Spotify in that way. Whether screen gaming people will start doing this sort of stuff again. I could see it happening as a way of trying to live a slightly healthier lifestyle. Absolutely. I just wonder if the next generation coming through will... Because I mean, vinyl, when we were growing up, we saw vinyl and now people are going

back to it rather than... That's interesting, yeah. I don't know how many people who didn't grow up in the era of vinyl are buying vinyl because they... You know, there's an element of nostalgia, which I think is always going to be there for our generation. But I don't know if it's going to... If the next generation is going to go, well, I just want to have something in my hands. Who knows? You know, in like 2024, everyone's talking about the death of the high street.

Every time I'm in London, I somehow find myself on like Charlesbury Avenue passing that Warhammer shop. And it is always rammed. Yes, that's true. And I'm like, who are these people? These Warhammer sets are like, I'm not concerned whatsoever for the future of the Warhammer business. If anything, it is like the most stable investment

you could make. I bet if you looked in there now, they're all in their 30s, 40s, 50s, not in their teens. I bet you they are all kids who played it, you know, in the 90s when we were teenagers and want to do it again and have got a bit of disposable income and now they're firing up the old Ork army for one last battle.

Getting the greenhouse out and sticking it in the post-apocalyptic world. Makes me want to get my old little war hammer pieces out. It does. There is something nice about it. I want to get a model train set. We'll do it. Let's do it. Let's all go in together. Let's hire a shed somewhere. Let's run away together and just do that for the rest of our lives. All right, that's it for recreation. Thank you so much for listening. I love that. I love that episode. I love train sets. I love getting old. I love nostalgia. I love it all.

Yeah, it's great fun. Thanks for having me. Don't forget, if you want even more Oh What A Time, you can get bonus episodes. There's a whole archive of bonus episodes to be had. You can go and subscribe via Wondery Plus or you can go to another slice. For all of the options, you can go to owhatatime.com. Thank you, Crosby. And also, if you want to hear more of Matthew Crosby, what are your podcasts Crosby? Just quickly plug your stuff.

Thank you very much. Sunday mornings on Radio X from 8 to 11, there's a podcast of that. I do a show with Ed Gamble. And if you go to Pappy's Flat Share, wherever you find your podcast, I also do podcasts with MySketch Team Pappy's. They are both fantastic shows. Thank you guys as always. Email us your stuff, keep getting in contact, keep supporting the show. It means the world and we will see you very soon for

more history. Bye! Bye! Bye bye! Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.