Oh What A Time... - #95 Trees (Part 2)

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!Who doesn’t love a good tree? This week we’ll discuss the awesome spectacle of the American sequoia, the slightly less massive Bonsai tree and the use of trees in political imagery.Elsewhere, the debate is raging: what’s the most ‘off’ thing you’ve ever eaten? And what is the most universal sign of danger? If you’ve got anything on these topics or anything else, do get in touch with the show: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Hello, this is part two of Trees. Let's get on with the show. Okay, it's time to talk about the humble bonsai tree. Have any of us ever owned a bonsai tree? No, because I'll mess it up and I'll kill it and I don't want to do that. I've never owned a plant that hasn't died. Never, not once, not since I was about 30 when I bought

my first. Refused to do it? They're dead. My plants are dead. I can't keep plants alive. And bonsai trees are too beautiful for me to ruin. I even managed to kill a cactus. How? How do you do that? A cactus? Yeah. So apologies. Aren't they basically immortal? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So sorry. Sorry to the cactus community. I did have a bonsai about four years ago.

Did you? And as you can tell from that sentence, I no longer have one. No, I didn't water it enough. And then it got really sort of creepy to the touch. Really brittle. And then I think I panicked and overwatered it and then it was over. So it was a very weird life for it. It was really give-ith-or-take-ith. He had no idea in what way I was going to treat it. But I did try. I did try. I don't used to have a little bonsai on my desk here, my podcasting desk. You looked after it really well. Went on holiday for a couple of weeks and just died. You just gave up. There's certain things you're like, how have you survived?

You can't deal with a couple of weeks without a drink. Like come on. But I do love a bonsai. Do love them. And let's go back and explore the history of the bonsai tree. So let's go back to the seventh century AD. Chinese scholars wrote up notes on the art of puncai, a technique which discussed the power to shrink entire natural landscapes into miniature form, which in practice involved the cultivation of miniature trees. They are great to look at. This is why I had one. They're just magnificent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are very cool. Especially ones that have been skillfully cared for over a long time. The beautiful shapes and the trunk, the sort of shapes. Yeah, they're amazing. They're the kind of thing kids like. Yeah. Like my daughter's got a collection of tiny little books, which are about an inch long. Tiny little things, you can basically write one word in them, she loves them. And in Aberystwyth, there used to be a bacon in the 1980s that sold miniature loaves of bread for kids. So kids like small stuff.

I've just realised what bonsai trees are. They're like ancient Chinese Sylvania families. It's the Sylvania family of yesteryear. Yeah. Tiny things are generally great though, I think. My mum has a toy she had with younger. It's like a tiny shop. I still, I loved it as a kid. You could just open the door and see all the goods inside, the fruit in the bed, you just fit in your hand. I do love that. Micro machines. Don't just give me a car, give me an absolutely tiny car that's very, very easy to lose. I've just realised we've gone from Sequoia to Bonsai, we've literally gone both in the

extremes of tree height. And this is going to be quite a sort of bland middle ground tree to work with. Yeah, yeah. It's an average tree. It's going to do a Dutch elm. Well there's lots of evidence that bonsais were really common in the kind of early eighth century. You can find drawings of bonsai trees in the tomb of Prince Zhang Hua, near the historic city of Huan. Pansai soon spread out from China and made its way initially as diplomatic gifts. So these emperors just loved handed them out.

So from China, they went across as forms of trade into Korea and also Japan. And now let's talk about the first of a couple of famous bonsai trees, which we'll discuss in my section. The oldest bonsai tree in the world doesn't have anything on a sequoia. It's called the Ficus retusa linn. It's estimated to be 1,000 years old and it's located in the Crespi Bonsai Museum in Milan, Italy. Do you want to see a picture of this? Love to.

Oh yeah. It is 10 feet tall. Now. Oh okay, so it's a whopper then. It's an absolute whopper, but when you see it, it is obviously a bonsai. I'll send it to you now. Please tell me what you think. Yeah, that's a whopper. As far as bonsai goes, that's a crack. That's a big one. That's a big one. It looks a bit like a massive piece of broccoli. Yeah, it's actually a bit. It's not a bonsai listeners. It's sort of like… it's not a bonsai-y shape in a weird way. All the greens at the top. I'd actually say it's disappointing, big.

Yeah. Can you imagine how cool it would be if it was sort of, you know, like desk lump size but it was a thousand years old? Yeah. I agree. I think the charm is the smallest. It's the… because the reason I like the small bonsai is it feels like every little trim has been thought through. Like with painstaking patience and it's just it's little, you know, you're slightly

honing, you know, it's a very delicate thing. Yeah, it's the sort of, it's the perfectionist's dreams in it. Exactly, yeah, yeah. This one has been pruned to create a balanced silhouette and it's got very dense kind of aerial roots. And it's also another fact about it. It's planted in the world's largest bonsai pot. Now, this has been giving me a headache for several hours. What does that mean, the largest bonsai pot? Because surely any pot could be a bonsai pot. This one just happened to have a bonsai in it. And I think it's also likely that the world's largest bonsai is going to be planted in the world's largest bonsai pot, isn't it? It just kind of makes sense that the two of those correlate. Yeah. Surely. There's bigger pots than this one. There's just no bonsais in it.

Yeah. That feels like clutching at straws a bit. You're desperate to have something in the Guinness Book of World Records. Will Barron This bonsai museum in Milan, I'm not imagining it's got a lot of footfall. So they are clutching at straws. Will Barron You know the game Coits? Will Barron They play Coits in, very well speaking, part of West Wales. I'm trying to think where it is. Will Barron It's probably worth describing what Coits is.

Will Barron Well, it's like a hoop and you throw it into a sort of patch of mud from a distance of about 20 feet. But there is something about this version of coits that is slightly different to everyone else's version of coits. So the person who's the best at that version of coits in the village gets to refer to themselves as the world champion, which I love. Without reaching the subcategory. Yeah, yeah, I'm a world champion. Basically I'm the best person in a study on our version of kites, so I'm the world champion.

There's other variations of bonsai. In Japan, they've got a variant called bonkai, which is a miniature landscape made of kind of paper mache and has no living material. Do you want to see an example of this? I would love to. I'll send you an example of this. This is quite cool.

So it's kind of like extending the Bonsai world into like a, basically like a little, you've got some, what appears to be rocks there and a little lake. Again, it's a big Bonsai dish. So that's fake? That's fake. So it's made to look like little rocks and water.

Yeah. Very, very peaceful, isn't it? Obviously Bonsai's got links to towers and so it's, you look at that and you think, I feel relaxed. That looks nice. It's a lovely little scene. Well, I'm the opposite because unless I had a live-in gardener, I would be very concerned that my beautiful bonsai tree was just about to calc it. So it doesn't relax me because it makes me think this is too much responsibility. I've just about...

But this one's fake, Ellis. Oh yeah, but then you're not interested in fake bonsai trees for God's sake. I got given a fake fried egg once, like a plastic fried egg. I was like, what the hell am I going to do with this? What are the, those little things, it's like a small piece of art and someone like, make what looks like a little front room in a box. They have a name. Oh yeah. I think Rose Matafeo got into them for a while. Yeah.

Lisa Simpson likes them. Yes. What are they called? Like dioramas or? Diorama. That's the word. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, Chris, I'm going to buy one of these on eBay. What's this called? This one is called, uh, bonk. Well, hang on before you buy it, here's one. There is another variant called Sakai. And this one, I've sent you a picture of this. So whereas Bonkai is like Pepe Mache to make it look like a miniature landscape, the Sakai, which means the translation is planted

landscape. And so in this one, you've got again a whole kind of bonsai arena, but it's made of other miniature planted. So this is all living? Yeah, all living. So all this is so where's the other one bonk eyes you get fake stuff. That is beautiful. Oh, it might be. So just describe what we're looking at here. It basically looks like the top of a hill. There's there's kind of little bits of what seems like flowers and

there's reeds and there's a tree. Obviously it's all tiny, so it's just things. Yeah, but that's beautiful. So this one is like a landscape, but it's legit. There's nothing fake about this one. It's amazing, isn't it? It's so wonderful to look at. Why did Rod Stewart get into his train set? We talked about this a few episodes ago. He's got into this big fake train set. Get into this, Rod. What are you doing? This looks great. In whatever context, like the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, all these different variants of kind of bonsai that I've explained, the aim is you want to cultivate a dwarf tree as an exemplification of the kind of ideal universe.

And we mentioned Taoism and also Zen Buddhism. You're trying to create a scene that is idealistic. And of course, like some of these variants, and you can Google bonsai trees in these landscapes, they look absolutely amazing. In kind of Taoism and Zen Buddhism, the tree is both a symbol of philosophy and religious contemplation,

an extension of gardening as a form of recreation. And of course, it's an art form too. These look amazing. These look beautiful. And then you basically prune your miniature in such a way as to perfectly replicate a fully grown tree living in the outside world. That is the essence of the art of bonsai. I'm going to talk about one more remarkable bonsai tree. This story blew my mind.

It's the 6th of August 1945, Hiroshima. Quarter past eight in the morning, bonsai master Masaru Yamaki was inside his home. The bomb goes off, the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, dropped from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, and it explodes just two miles from Yamaki's home. It wiped out 90% of the city, but incredibly, despite being relatively close to the blast, Yamaki only had glass-related injuries. And even more incredible, his prized bonsai trees were protected by a tall wall surrounding the outdoor nursery. And then fast forward to 1976, to mark the USA's 200th

anniversary, Yamaki donated the tree that had survived the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and donated it to the United States. What an incredible gift and what an incredible surviving bonsai tree that Yamaki donated to the US. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. And that tree in question is a Japanese white pine. It was cared for by multiple generations of the Yamaki family who run that nursery.

And it was planted on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Bay in 1625. So a very wild bonsai tree that was donated to the United States that had survived, yeah, incredibly. I've got a question. If a bonsai tree is, for example, 500 years old, obviously because they're so tiny, if you did, you know, go mad and decided to chop it down, on the tree stump would it have lots of tiny little rings, like a normal tree? Well, weirdly, Al, when I was reading about Sequoias earlier,

I googled about the rings in trees. So I do know about this, but simply from Google. What do you like to know? OK, it says here that a tree ring, I don't know if it's to do with a bonsai, but tree rings generally, represent one year. They consist of two layers, this is what it says. A light-coloured layer, which forms

in the spring and early summer, which is typically thicker because the tree is growing, and a dark-coloured layer, which forms in the spring and early summer, which is typically thicker because the tree is growing, and then a dark coloured layer which forms in late summer and fall, which is typically thinner because the tree's growth slows. So it is a year per ring. Isn't that kind of crazy? Yeah, it's cool. So it obviously matches the season. So yeah, you literally can. You can count the rings and they are one per year to show you the age of the thing. So does a bonsai have little rings though, because they've got such small stumps? I don't know, yeah.

And most bonsais are indoors, aren't they? Who knows? That's a little matter, surely. Well, hello at a what a time. Just tell us. Just tell us, I'm desperate to know. And so, yeah, bonsai mania. So that bonsai tree was planted in 1625.

If you get to the middle of the 20th century, bonsai mania has taken hold. There's a whole industry sprung up around it in book publishing, for example. There are technical manuals, guidebooks, dictionaries, how-to materials for the budding bonsai grow it. In fact, I've got some bonsai books here that I have skim read, and remember about 1% of them, and hence why I'm now proud owner of a dead bonsai tree. You had writers such as Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku who was writing about how to care

for bonsai trees. And then you had almost entire economies that were based on the financial potential of cultivation of bonsai trees. In fact, in 1940 in Tokyo alone, there were 300 bonsai tree dealers. 300 places in Tokyo in 1940. You could go to buy your perfect bonsai. It's crazy what a massive industry it is. Like vape shops. Yeah. Just everywhere.

They're both the Sylvania family and the vape shop of yesteryear. Yeah. So it's shops that will mend your phone screen, vape shops and bonsai shops. That's what Tokyo is. That's incredible. Bonsai mania really took hold when people saw the Japanese pavilion of the Parish exhibition in 1896. It took hold in the west I should say. People saw those trees, could not believe what they were seeing. The trees were known in French as arbre non-japonais or Japanese dwarf trees. And Japanese dwarf trees became the subject of newspaper commentary in Britain in the 1880s and beyond. And there were occasional exhibitions held in London as well.

But in the 1980s, a whole new generation of people became acquainted with the bonsai tree when the Karate Kid series came out. Yes. Absolutely. Oh, I love that movie. If you were running an ailing karate club in South Wales, Karate Kid was an absolute godsend because it went from like three slightly bored boys to suddenly coos down the street. Karate became massive because of Karate Kid. Yeah, absolutely. I think I did karate because of Karate Kid. There was not a day went by, and this isn't because of my surname, that I wasn't trying

to do the crane kick. I was constantly, you know the kick he does at the end where he puts his hands up and stands on one leg because his knee's been injured, constantly. Me and my friends at where I grew up, most of our fun for about three years is trying to master that. The thing with the crane kick, he does telegraph it a bit, doesn't he? There's no element of surprise. I blame his opponent a little bit. He leans and walks into it, doesn't he? Nothing to see here. Unhappily watched punditry from sports action movies about key moments trying to analyse

what went wrong, like it's Monday Night Football. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Getting actual karate experts. You with one of those pens on the vidi printer printer like circling the crane. What is he doing here? Why can't he see this? He's got a one bad leg. That kick is only coming from the good leg. Yeah. Look where his hands is. It's not going to be a punch. It's going to handle her up like a bird. For God's sake, he's been training by waxing carts. He's not good enough

to fight at this level. Also, we've all seen him training down at the beach on those tall wooden poles, which, do you remember that scene? We're just over and over. We've seen him practice that one kick repeatedly. It's like footballers have got one trick. We get it. You're going to take the ball on the outside. We get it. Yeah. Mr Miyagi in Karate Kid owned a bonsai shop, of course. But slightly further back than that in the 60s, there was an exhibition of bonsai trees at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1961, an exhibit staged by the Japan Society of London. In the 1970s, Britain's formed the National Bonsai Society, which still exists today. In fact, the headquarters are in Southport on Merseyside.

But get this, they have branches all over the country. Oh, very nice. There we go. Why don't we end there? Hey, hey, hey. I'm taking you back to 1995, France gearing up for a presidential election. Now Francois Mitterrand was the incumbent, one of the probably the first French politician I remember. He was the president.

He'd been in power since 1981, which was the longest presidential term of any French politician. And he didn't stand for a third term because he was ill. So in his place the French Socialist Party put forward Lionel Jospin, the future prime minister, won the first round against the odds. But in the second round, Mitterrand's successor proved to be the former prime minister and In the second round, Mitterrand's successor proved to be the former Prime Minister and present Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac of the centre-right Rally for the Republic. Now these are all names I remember from watching the news when I was a teenager, Jos Ban and Chirac. Chirac especially, yeah.

He was of the centre-right Rally for the Republic. Now the Rally for the Republic had relied upon the Cross of Lorraine as its symbol to assert its links to the wartime free French and the post-war Gaullist movement. But for this campaign, Chirac chose a very different logo, the apple tree. Now, the apple has religious and secular connotations in France, so it's rooted in the Catholic tradition. It's used across the country, especially in Brittany and Normandy when it comes to things like the making of cider. And it's an essential ingredient in traditional French cuisine, tartatin and tarte aux pommes. As for the tree, well, that harked back

to the French Revolution and the symbol of the tree of liberty as sort of indicated Republican virtue. I was thinking about this, because I remember them rebranding the Labour Party around this time. It is very hard to come up with a symbol that's sort of modern and progressive and forward thinking, but also has a link to the past, but also doesn't upset anyone. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so true.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it... If you were rebranding a political party now, to show a modern you, I'm not sure what it would be. It would be like a charger or something. Charger on a train seat. But then you'd release it and then Apple would change their charger. Yeah, and suddenly you'd look out of date. Connect, you'll be out of date. And everyone would be angry at you because they blame you for being part of the problem. They've updated USBC. They've changed it again. Oh no.

That's very true though. It's really hard. And also, as you say, not to choose something which can be read into or have some connotation you weren't aware of. Yeah, but it has to look good on all of your messaging. Absolutely, yeah. Because every time you're on the news, it's going to be there. Every leaflet, everything. When you're canvassing, you're going to have the badge on your top as you're electioneering and all that kind of stuff. What's something that everyone likes? Toast. That's quite a universal thing, isn't it? Nice piece of toast with one bite mark out of it.

The toast party. In Europe, they go for quite abstract stuff. There's a lot of nature stuff. I'm just thinking about Labour in lot of nature stuff. Just think about labour in the roads. But when you think about America, isn't the Republicans like an elephant? Like how do they... Quite random stuff, isn't it? Yeah, there's lots of lions in English iconography. When all that iconography was coming to the fore, the vast, vast, vast majority of English people wouldn't have seen a lion. That's a really good point.

You'd be like, what the f... I'll tell you where. Is that real? What a terrifying, massive, scary cat with a mane. What's that got to do with us? What should... you can decide for us, Al. So obviously three lions on a shirt being the England emblem. What animal should we have on it? What British animal? What English animal, I should say, should be on it? What British animal, well English animal I should say, should be on there.

Well foxes of great sex lives. Yeah. Three foxes. That's great. I love it. Yeah, I mean it's ruthless. Yeah, three foxes and maybe like two bins that they're going through. No, it'd be a bin for every World Cup you've won. To have you initially won for us. Yeah, I'm standing for the local toast and fox party. I'm going to read the pamphlet, Al. Let's be honest, I'm going to read the pamphlet. Now, trees of liberty were often planted in central locations in French town villages,

as well as in the US and across continental Europe, for example, in Milan, Switzerland and Cologne, because it did represent the spirit of liberty and fraternity and equality. And of course, revolution. Now, as the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, and the thing with the poetry of Robert Burns is it is written in sort of Scots. So whenever you read it out loud,

you end up doing a kind of Hamish-Scots accent, Scottish accent, which I'm gonna try and avoid, but, heard ye o' to try and avoid. But, Heard ye o'er the tree o' France, know what's the name o'? Around the tree the Patriots dance, Will Europe gents the fame o? It stands wance, the Bastille stood, A present built by Kang's man.

That, I mean, that sounds like my friend Barca Jim. Present built by Kang's man! It's quite good. I'm impressed. Where, when superstition's hellish brood Kept France unleading Strang's man. It's quite good. I'm impressed. When superstition's hellish brood kept fronts and leading strings man. I love the man. Right big man? Right wee man? Right big man? Now Shuruck used the apple tree to emphasise how ordinary he was. So he had concerns with unemployment and poverty and he had Keynesian economic policies. So he added a slogan, France for everyone. and he had Keynesian economic policies. So he added a slogan, France for everyone.

So the logo was deceptively simple, green tree, like a sort of cartoon-like green apple tree with red apples growing in its branches. Now on the surface, Chirac seemed quite innovative with this. Recalling that back in 1977, he'd planted trees in Paris to emphasize an ecological spirit that was in advance

of many others of his generation. I can't remember that really coming up very much in elections in the 1990s, but he wasn't really that innovative. He pinched the idea from someone else. Another former French Prime Minister, Raymond Barr, who began the tradition of planting trees at the Hotel de Matignon,

the French Prime Minister's residence in Paris in 1978. So Barr's choice was a sugar maple. More recent ones have included an oak, an apple tree, and a paper bark maple. Now, Shirak is the only Prime Minister since 1978 not to have planted a tree at the residence, ironically. He put roses in instead. But Barr used the apple tree as his campaign logo

during his absolutely disastrous presidential campaign in 1988. I remember Michael Dukakis had a disastrous presidential campaign in 1988. I remember Michael Dukakis had a disastrous presidential campaign in 1988. Can you imagine anything that would affect your self-esteem more than standing to be president and almost 40 years later, people referring to your campaign as a disaster?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You'd never get over it. Yeah. I missed a penalty in a charity game of football and I didn't sleep for two nights. If I'd fucked up a presidential campaign, how would you get over that? Even the ones that don't live in the memory for that long, the moment when you have to drop out, having had so much money, and it's also so, you're so visibly putting yourself forward as the answer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the response has been, no, you're not. It must be so embarrassing. All those people around you, just all that time, all that money and time for nothing. Yeah. Ed, unfortunately, someone's taken a photo of you eating a bacon sandwich in a weird way and it's all over the front pages. What? What do you mean eating a bacon sandwich in a weird way? You had just eaten it in a weird way, mate. What do you mean? Look at the fucking... Oh my God, I was eating in a weird way. It's over. Do you know as well, you would have done a big gig where you're like, wow, it's a lot of pressure tonight. There's like 2000 people, 3000 people here. But think about like a presidential debate where your whole career,

your whole life is on the line and there are millions and millions of people watching in your own country, but also a global audience. How do you hold it together when you have to talk about so many diverse points and sound together and with it, it blows my mind. Oh, the Biden one was unbelievable. You're so cold-blooded, you don't even appreciate the situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best one is when you're... It's the moment when there are two members of the same party running to be the leader of that party. So let's say it's the race to be

the head of the Democrats, by the way, and they're slagging each other off. And then one drops out and the one who's dropped out immediately has to go, actually, it might shock you that you think he's a really great guy. I really support everything he stands for. I always have. I don't know what came over me though. I just always think he's... Now, Barr used the apple tree as his campaign logo during his disastrous presidential campaign in 1988, but Shirok took the idea, really run with it. Now, at his rallies, he encouraged Joel's president to manger des pommes.

Eat your apples. And he insisted, je suis un manger des pommes. I am an apple eater. Imagine, now, I googled this. There's loads of footage of people going up to him and saying, oh, I'm an apple eater. He's like, oh yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Little detail. I am an apple eater, referring back to his ancestors who lived in Grez. So to facilitate all of this, partisans were given apples on the way to rallies.

What it all meant in the moment was the subject of a lot of press discussions. So it's a product of the earth for a man of the land, said one supporter. Another commented that the apple tree is powered as roots, but at the same time it constantly renews itself. Each spring it fruits. It reveals its youth and vitality. And when it came to re-election, because he won, she had returned to the motif, right, yet it installed as the logo centrepiece of his new political party, the UMP, the Union for a Popular Movement, which he founded in April 2002, and remained closely associated with the quip Comrades Eat Your Apples. Which is such, such a benign sort of logo or slogan isn't it you can't really argue with that unless you're allergic to apples. Oh I don't know you massive in the orange game.

Now Chirac's successors have all but abandoned his apple tree logo and it doesn't appear anywhere in French politics anymore having been you know all over it but back in 2006 the tree crossed the channel with David Cameron who who was leader of the Conservative Party, was after a new logo to impress his supporters, and he wanted to prove how young he was and how the Tory party had changed, was more liberal than it had been in the past, and he set them for a tree, abandoning the torch,

which Mrs. Thatcher had used. So in this case, the tree is kind of stylized, it's like a sort of squiggled oak. Yeah. But when you put it side by side with Jacques Girac's apple tree, it's obvious where the inspiration came from. That's really interesting. Apple trees, much bigger in French politics than you would have thought. I do actually get, I kind of, I do get the choice of that as the apple tree and the idea of giving apples when people are on the way to the rally. There

is something, I don't know, it's sort of, as you say, it's nature. It sort of feels innocent. It feels, I don't know. My fear would be saying something in my big speech and getting a lot of apples pelted at me because they're really hard. You only need to be hit by one and that is that evening's big new story. My logo is going to be a foam tennis ball. Well that's the end of that. Thank you very much for downloading this episode of Oh What a Time. We'll be back with you next week. We've got some great ideas for topics which we've given to our historian, Dr. Darrell Leeworthy.

Very, very, very talented man. So he's hard at work at the moment putting together all this research for us to get our teeth into. Sounds like I'm making a reference to Jacques Chirac's apple tree. But thank you very much for downloading. Now then, if you would like to listen to both parts on the same day, if you'd like to be first in line for live tickets, and if you'd like access to our subscriber specials, please become an Oh What A Time full-timer. Lots of great benefits. Subscriber specials are great. You can do that at anotherslice.com or Wundry.com, or go on the Oh What A Time website all the details will be there but anyway thank you very much for listening we'll be back with you next week thanks guys bye bye bye So

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