Oh What A Time... - #96 Quirky Monarchs (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

This week on the show we’re discussing regents who were, let’s say, a bit different. We’ll be meeting the 11th century Norwegian King Magnus Barefoot, we’ve got the avid collector that was George III and let’s find out how terrible Russia’s Ivan the Terrible actually is.And this week we’re bemoaning expiry dates and the roulette of consuming slightly off food. Elis is happy to consume nuts that are 8 years out of date, but as Tom points out.. “you never see a squirrel with a Tommy ache”. If you’ve got anything on this or anything else: [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 and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history pod that tries to decide if a time before sell by and use by dates would have been just incredibly stressful. Okay, so now I can open my fridge, I can go, I know this bacon is a week old and I shouldn't have it, whereas previously you just have to sniff it and go, well we'll find out I guess, let's just see what happens. It's funny though, I think nothing winds up a certain kind of person, especially man,

as much as people who adhere to sell-by dates. Yeah. I remember seeing a long thread about this on the Swansea City Football Forum. Right. Where someone was like, do you sniff or do you go by sell-by dates? People are like, I will not have anyone dictate to me when bacon is going off. Listen, we've been using our noses

to detect where the bacon's going off for a thousand bloody years. So I will not have a company who are doing it just so they can sell more bacon. It's a bloody scam. It's a conspiracy. I'm going right to the heart of Big Baker, okay? My mother-in-law, Elle, is one of those people with less swearing.

She is completely, like, absolutely by the nose. And it'll be chicken and it'll be three days after. And she'll be like, no, they don't know anything. I'm going to eat it. It's fine. And then, I would say, it's not a lie, most of the time she's fine, but twice a year she'll be violently ill. That's fascinating to me.

I have been violently ill once. I've had proper food poisoning twice. The second time I didn't know it was going to happen because it seemed to be all right. The first time I was eating a burger, it was outside, I'd gone to see the Beater Band, and as I was eating it I was thinking, this is cold and not right. And then I had to look at it under a streetlamp and it broke all the rules. Under a streetlamp? Like you're investigating a crime scene under a gas-fired streetlamp.

Yeah. And I had a really, really difficult couple of days. And since then, I've been very, very cautious when it comes to sell-by dates and that kind of stuff. Whereas the fact that your mother-in-law twice a year is like, okay, this is the price I pay. This is the deal I've struck. It's literally it.

That's amazing. Tom, I don't know if you know this, there is a campaign to remove sell-by dates. Have you heard about this? Yes. The people want to regress. They want to go back to the past. They don't want to be told. It's a load of Swansea City fans starting it. There's a march out, it's like the ground on Saturday. They're the real power brokers in sort of Brussels, aren't they? When it comes to EU law. So yeah, I have heard about this. Basically, the idea being that

if the bacon has gone off, if it's got covered in spores, but before, yeah, that you should be able to judge by your own eyes. It's about food waste as well, isn't it? But I think, okay, here's an option. It should be an option. So you can peel back the label to see it if you want to see it. Oh, like a game show. Exactly, yeah. Or a scratch card. So if you want to just go by your nose, you can live in blissful ignorance and find out. Or like me, you can get a coin, you can scratch it off and go, ah, he went off three weeks ago. I'm glad I didn't eat it. But they're often, these people are often the same ones as, oh yeah, but before health and safety laws, we all had a bit of common sense, didn't we? We were all blessed with common sense and now look,

yeah, but in the 1970s, there was, on average, there was a death a day on a British building site. Yeah, but they were the weak people who didn't have common sense, were they? They were the frotsam and jetsam of humanity. Get rid of them! Let's try and guess, Al, as a game where Chris falls on this. I'm going to try and guess. I think you are probably... I think you're quite safe, Chris. I reckon that you do respect this Al by date. Am I wrong? I'll tell you who I respect. Prawns and chicken. Sausages!

I've got no time for any other food going off, but I will not mess with salmon or prawns. They're the ones that you like. I don't mess with that. I don't mess with prawns. Ham I am quite laid back about. Yeah, I agree with that. So many preservatives in ham. I'm like, I could be eating this in two years time. I gotta be fine. Is it furry? That's my rule. Not when did it go off? Has it got hair growing? I will have a sausage 24 hours after I've been told to not eat that sausage. I will eat mouldy toast on a date.

Okay. Can I say as well, if it's cooked, if the chicken is cooked, it's, you know, whatever. If it's a month after being cooked, I don't mind. You know, once it's cooked, it's whatever you want. I would say most meals Claire and I have together when I cook chicken, about two mouthfuls in will both go, is this, is this cooked through enough? You always have that little bit of, no it's fine isn't it? Is this all right? I think that we have a problem with our oven. I don't think it heats to what the oven says

it's heating. And we had- You're literally being gaslit. We had turkey. That's good stuff actually. I'll laugh at that properly tomorrow because it's such a bloody good joke that I actually can't handle it. It's like I've been nutmegged at the moment. And your shorts have fallen down. I've been nutmegged and I'm now in that nether world where I don't know where the ball is. And maybe, maybe my, maybe I've done something right. That is a great joke. Anyway, we had turkey,

obviously, on Christmas day. And I would say that our turkey was on the margins. Will Barron Really? Alistair McQuarrie And everyone was fine. But I think three minutes less, and I think we would have, we would have had a very difficult... Will Barron What was the sign it was on the margins? What was it about? How can you tell a turkey's on the margins? That it's on the way out? It's got a walking stick? How is it just pretty old? What's going on? It was piping hot, but sort of pinky white.

Yeah, pink. Oh, you mean in the cooking? I thought you meant it had gone off. It had gone off. No, no, no, no. Okay, it wasn't an old turkey. No, no, no, no. We bought it, I don't know, a week before or whatever. A few days before. Because my walking stick joke only works in the context that I thought it was old turkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't been that Meg there. I've tackled you. I've made a good solid block tackle and I've passed it to a midfielder.

You've easily taken it over the board. You've scored. Okay, so you hadn't cooked it enough. Okay, right. Yeah. And so it was fine. It's just, it came out and I was like, this doesn't look like the turkeys of the past, whenever I've had turkey on Christmas day. And it had been in for too long as well, but I was like, this is not. And I kept saying, but it's succulent. This is what it's meant to be like. I followed the instructions to the letter. I've got a good bit of email correspondence for our listeners. What is the most gone off thing you've ever eaten and what happened to your body? That is, what is the most gone off thing you've ever eaten and what happened to your body?

Nuts. I generally want to know. I'll eat nuts that are eight years old. Nuts can't go out of date, I'm pretty sure. Oh yeah, yeah. I'll eat nuts that are eight years out of date. Nuts can't go out of date, I'm pretty sure. Oh yeah, yeah. I'll eat nuts from the 90s. Yeah, you never see a squirrel on a tummy, do you? There is safe food stuff. Never. Rubbing its belly. Lying back on a tree.

Cornflakes. I'll eat 60s cornflakes. It doesn't bother me. Oh, hang on. I've got a gone off anecdote. I ate a packet of crisps that had gone off 30 years earlier. I ate a packet of crisps from the 90s once. What? On the 90s football podcast I used to do, we did a live show and someone had sent in 90s football crisps. They were like, sort of Linneca. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I ate them on stage and they tasted like dust.

It was the worst. They had none of the, they looked like crisps, but as soon as there was no crunch, it just kind of wilted in your mouth and turned to dust. It was horrendous. 30 year off crisps. I think it had gone off in like 1994. Those potatoes had been picked when we were children. That's incredible. They'd been in someone's garage for 30 years. They were still sealed. So I was slightly hopeful

they would, they might be all right. There was the years, the Sultan Stanley Matthews, was that what they were? The Sultan Matthews. Sultan Matthews. So what did they taste like? Like hard bit of paper with some salt on it. None of the crunch, there was no crunch. It was just like, it just wilted into like hard. That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought the crunch went. No, and the taste, that kind of saturated fat taste,

I just couldn't lose it from my mouth. It was horrible. Yeah, yeah. The most violent allele I've ever been is I moved into a flat in Allgate East. I made a pizza the first night I moved in there and I put jalapenos on it from the cupboard. And then after I'd eaten the pizza, I realized those weren't my jalapenos. I hadn't brought jalapenos to the flat. So they were obviously just left there from whoever had lived there before.

And there hadn't been anyone in the flat for a long time before we moved in. And it is the most violent meal I've ever been. Two days of horror. You basically found some jalapeno peppers and just helped yourself. They were in a jar, pickled jalapenos, but old. Oh my god, that's even worse than a pickle. And I lost like a stone over three days and like that. This is absolute horror. Yeah, yeah.

I would have thought pickled jalapenos would be that bad. Well, turns out they are. Bean sprouts are horrific. Bean sprouts, you can have a very, very tricky time. A friend of mine had a bean sprout nightmare. Sort of proper praying on the toilet, praying for forgiveness. The one thing I will say before we move on after I'm ill like that, and I know this isn't a good way to view the world and your life, I go, I wonder if I can keep this weight off. There's about half a day after I've been violently ill for three days when I

think I do actually look quite, I don't know. You look great. Yeah, yeah. The pickled jalapeno diet. Then you think to yourself, I probably won't chuck those jalapenos out actually. Maybe if I'm going to a wedding. Once a year I'll do it. Right.

Just to reset my system. Shall we move on to a little bit of correspondence before we crack into today's show? We should say what today's show is. Today we're talking about quirky monarchs. I think this is a really fun one. What are you guys talking about today? I'm talking about the collections of various British kings and queens. I'm going to be talking about Ivan the Terrible.

Not a nice guy, it was a surprise. And I'll be talking about nicknames of monarchs, but one in particular, Magnus, sometimes known as Magnus the Viking, but he has lots of other nicknames. You'll be hearing about those very shortly. But shall we begin with a bit of correspondence? Let's do that. This is an email from one of the all-time great emailers to the show. A name you may remember, A listener by the name of Olivia Kinghorn. Do you recognise that name? Mason- Yes, big time. It's a surname as well. Sounds like something from Chinese medicine,

doesn't it? Right, well, you need to reset your yin and yang, so you need to have some Kinghorn. Get it down you stat. Mason- And you can only get it when he grows up a really high mountain. Jason- There's only four of them left in the wild, we will need to kill them. And it's rumoured to be protected by a dragon. Yeah. Well, Olivia Kinghorn has once again come up trumps. She's emailed to say, in defence of Tom Crane is the email title, which is always a nice

thing to read. Hello, oh what a time. Long time listener, recent resubscriber, I have been catching up on your episodes since mid-December. Firstly, I would like to exonerate Tom Crane on his house key situation. So we've talked about this before. Due to the loss of my keys for a long period, we only had one set of house keys in my house and my mother-in-law didn't even have a set herself. And it was just, we would just have to communicate every 35 seconds to check where someone was and how close they were to the house to make sure that anyone could get in.

Okay. Olivia said, my household, myself and my husband, only has two sets of house keys. One set we share and the other is in a key safe. And this goes back to my husband. I think he worked in the Navy or the military, if memory serves me correctly. This goes back to my husband losing a set of house keys at sea and subsequently losing key privileges in 2020. Losing a set of house keys at sea is incredible. Also, you're never going to get them back.

The sea is massive. Yeah, the sea is big and deep. It's too big. The sea is too big to start looking through. You can't say, where in the sea did you last leave them? Will Barron You could find keys in a stream. You could find keys in a brook. A river, no chance to see, absolutely out of the question. Neil Milliken In fact, I would go so far as to say, I don't

think any human will ever see those keys again. It's gone. You might as well shoot them into outer space. And until there's some sort of ecological disaster and the North Sea's dredged up. I don't know what that would be. If we lived to see it... Oh, there they are! Or you catch a fish one day on holiday, about six years later. Yeah, you put your knife and fork into it and then, oh my god. You hit metal. All of the chances. Exactly.

So this goes back to my husband losing his heads of house keys, C, and subsequently losing key privilege in 2020. We have since moved house three times and haven't felt that each having our own set of keys would improve our lives. Thank you for that sentiment, Olivia. However, that is not the key bit of this email. This is really interesting. So I'm referring now to your episode on cancel culture. And I wondered if you're aware of long term nuclear waste warning signs. Your section on columns

of infamy, which is something I talked about how across Europe and mainly in Italy, if a kind of a person that was believed to be just an awful person who had done terrible things for society had been put to death, they would then erect a column where they had lived as a reminder that that person who once lived there is basically a place of shame, a constant reminder to the general public that this person once existed and they should not be celebrated. Now, Olivia said, are you aware of long-term nuclear waste warning signs? Now this is crazy. Your section on columns of infamy brought this into my mind, although I think it is something that relates more to history in the future and how a future civilization might view our world. The Sandia report in 1992 captures the proposal.

The warning, which we translated into many languages, reads, now this is what's going to be placed above nuclear waste sites for future generations to find. This is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The concept of this message is that a future civilization might not know what nuclear radiation is, but the radioactive waste will still be dangerous. So how to convey the message to an unknowable society. There are also proposals that nuclear waste sites should be covered in off-putting architecture such as forests of thorns as a visual

deterrent. Yes, so the idea is that either a sign will be erected or they will use off-putting architecture to warn future civilisations of what we have left there. Isn't that kind of interesting? Amazing really. You'd think that if you were going to pass some information on, you'd think that would be fairly near the top of the list. That's nuclear. You want to avoid that. You know, on your deathbed, you're going to be sort of like, there are certain stories and things that were passed down in the oral tradition for hundreds of years. That said, when things are passed down in the oral tradition, they tend to get warped over time. So maybe in generations time, you'll be like, oh, you

want to go over there. It's absolutely fantastic. Open it up. Have a look. That's amazing. That hadn't occurred to me. But, Al, we've talked about use-by dates and sell-by dates. We need an avoid-by date, which is placed on nuclear sites. I would just say avoid until September 3000, whatever, you know what it would be. Some bloke coming out of the toilets and I'd leave it five minutes. I'd leave it a thousand years if I was you. My mother-in-law refusing to admit you have to leave it any longer. A week in, the sign being erected and she's going up there. She's picnicking at the nuclear site. Yeah, so that's

amazing isn't it? These things have been laid down for future civilizations to find historical artefacts that warn them the awful stuff we put into the soil. I'm thinking about it from the other way around. If I were to visit another planet, I think I would be cautious anyway. It wouldn't take much for me not to dig deep into a bog. Yeah. Right. I think a universal sign of danger would be a bone on a big triangle in a bright colour.

Yes. I think I'd be a bit like someone who's sort of gate crashed a party. Sort of go into the fridge, take a can of lager, have a look around, no one seems to be telling me off. Yeah, I'd probably have one of these actually. Slip through the slight side entrance and leave. One can of Cronenberg up. One nil. That's a very good question there, Chris. What is the image you're putting on your sign to warn people, which is a universal thing?

You go bone against a bright background. I think that could be site of archaeological interest. A bone could suggest dinosaurs, it could suggest your fight. Dog treats here. Exactly. So I'm not sure about that. I think maybe to someone looking sort of a bit queasy, but just nobody wants that just being a bit sick, a bit dicky, like a face looking a little bit uncomfortable, tiny bit green. That's what I'm going for. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants the norovirus. Are they? Eyebrows pointing down in the way that kids draw angry people. Sort of straight line neutral mouth, I think. Two dots for eyes. That's a sort of no. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. So there you go. So Olivia King, thank you so much once again

for another sterling email. So to clarify what we want to hear from you about the most off thing you've eaten, the thing that was most past its sell by date and secondly, what is the most universal sign of danger if you were to construct one? If you've got any thoughts on that, here's how you can get in touch with the show. Instagram and Twitter at Oh What A Time, Pud. Now clear off. So at the end of today's show, I'm going to be talking to you about a not particularly nice guy called Ivan the Terror. Really? Yeah, not a nice guy. I'm looking forward to hearing about this. I will be reading about the things that kings and queens like to collect.

Let me tell you about a little old King, the 11th century King of Norway, called Magnus Ollifson. But let's begin by saying Kings and Queens have always had nicknames throughout European history. Who are the ones we're big fan of? Ethelred the Unready. Oh, that's a good one. Always reminds me of Tom Crane, Ethelred the Unready.

Every time his name crops up, Always reminds me of Tom Crane, I've read the Unruly. Every time his name crops up, I always think of Tom Crane. Yes. Edward the Confessor. Edward the Confessor. Oh, that's a good, yeah. William the Conqueror. William the Conqueror. That's a good one. The Conqueror. Come on. Yeah, yeah. You've really nailed being a king, I think, if you've got the Conqueror coming

after your name. There's King Sausage Fingers Charles as well. Has it really caught on that yet, but I'm sure it will. But it will in time. It's often after death that these things catch on, isn't it? But it might catch on because kings and queens throughout European history have often had nicknames that distinguish themselves from their ancestors or their descendants. So you had kings and queens who were called old and young,

tall and fat, skinny fingered, sausage fingered, forked beards was a big one. Oh yeah. And then also you've got tyrants, obviously, infamously. What's a forked beard? Is that a beard with different prongs, genuinely? Is it? A double prong. Oh, that's not a good look, is it? That won't come back. Although, I confidently said that about the moustache for years and the moustache has

come back in a big way, so maybe I'm wrong. Is the double point like a cat's whiskers helps them judge distances, like with doorways and stuff? Does it have to serve a practical purpose? It means they can find water. That's funny. Underground. It twitches when you get closer. You're lost

in the desert. Yeah, other nicknames include Tyrants Mad, Mad King George, wasn't it? Good, victorious. In Portugal, however, they're probably the most inventive European nation because kings and queens have been called nicknames such as the Populator, the Leprous, the Cowled, the Troubadour, the Cruel, the Handsome, the One with Good Memory, the Desired, the Perfect Prince and even the Nun's Lover. And the Nun's Lover was John V, by the way, who reigned in the first half of the 18th century. I would love to be Ellis the Handsome.

You are Ellis. You are. No, no, no, no, no, no. For that to go down in history, to be my handsomeness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For that to be referenced by people who were studying my life. And obviously the one thing we've got to mention is how handsome he was. That would be incredible.

As a trait, trying to get people to call you a nickname that you have chosen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll end up Ellis the Shameless. Yeah, yeah. Sadly, due to the great floods, as we all know, all of his podcasts were lost. We don't have any idea what he was like. We do have this one photo and tell us that he was Elissa Hanson. We know that. We can only assume that he was podcasting about skincare products, hair gel. What a pity it's just an audio medium as well. Surely the joy is looking at that face.

Yeah, so that was John V in Portugal, the nun's lover, but other nicknames from regents are a bit more complicated. And some even have multiple nicknames. Step forward, the man I said at the top, his name Magnus Ollivsen, Magnus III. He was the 11th century King of Norway. His father, Olaf was known as Keir or the Peaceful. That's nice. Nice, nice dad, Olaf. Olaf Keir or the Peaceful. That's nice. Nice dad Olaf, Olaf the King of the Peaceful.

That's a lovely name. I love that. Tom the Peaceful is that that is what I'd want more than Tom the Handsome. I'd want Tom the Peaceful in my grave zone. That's nice. Olaf, the dad of Magnus the Third, presided over a long period of stability in his kingdom, which was then recovering from the loss of the previous king. We've mentioned him before, you'll all know him, Harold Hardrada, who had died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in England in 1066. It's hard to talk about the Battle of Stamford Bridge. I thought that was when they played Birmingham City in the mid-80s. Five red cards! You're thinking of during a period of

stability or reigning over a period of stability. Very, very underrated, I think. Will Barron Yeah. Will Barron Because they're the ones we tend not to study, the reigning over a long period of stability monarchs. Will Barron Yeah, yeah. Will Barron They're the ones. You just want to be on the way to work, think to yourself, yeah, period of stability, loving this. I've been called up to fight a war that's a thousand

miles away from where I live. This is great. You're right, Al, because really, they say we should be learning from history, which is true. Those are the bits we should really be learning from. What were they doing? Let's study the stable ones. Let's not always do the war and the horror. What was happening during that period that meant things would chill? How do I get it so right? Top 10 Chill Monarchs. Chow Five Show.

Woodwatch. Top 10 Chill Monarchs. Olaf. Great guy. Long period of stability. Olaf the Peaceful. Right. His son Magnus, Magnus the third.

Do you think he inherited those traits? Oh no, come on Magnus. I have a slight concern he did not. Did you think his nickname might be Magnus the even more peaceful? Oh no, it was not Magnus too full of testosterone, is it? Magnus the warlike. He's either wanking or fighting. it. Magnus the Warlike. He's either wanking or fighting. Magnus loved to tear up so much that he's often thought of by historians as more like

a Viking than a monarch. He became king in 1093. What's the first thing he does? He goes on the war path. And he goes off to the Northern and western isles off the coast of Scotland. He travels to the Isle of Man, the Norse Kingdom of Dublin. He even joined forces with the Kingdom of Gwynedd to fend off a Norman invasion in North Wales. Oh, okay. Now, Magnus, as you can imagine, he has many attributes. He's not now known to history as Magnus the Viking or Magnus the Warrior, let alone Magnus the Tall or Magnus the Handsome, although these names do seem to have been applied

along with, and this is a bit wordy but it was a nickname at one point, Magnus the Strife Lover. Loves a bit of strife. He must have looked at his dad and thought, fuck this. When he was about 14, he must have been like, when it's my go, I am going to get involved with an awful lot of strife. Cannot wait. Do you think he thought his dad was just really boring and he's like, you know when someone who grows up in a small village in the countryside and they just can't wait to get to the big

city and he lives there? Yeah, can't wait. I'm going to move straight to Berlin and start taking drugs. Exactly. We'll become a tech house DJ. Yeah, so like Magnus is running around, he's super violent, he's warring with everyone, but his nickname is nothing to do with any of those things because Magnus had quite an unusual habit. He loved dressing like a Celt and it's a sartorial style that Scandinavians found absolutely hilarious and the Anglo-Normans of England thought really uncivilized.

So what is the look of a Celt? What are you wearing? Hello? So basically, he is going around in the medieval equivalent of cargo shorts. Okay. Great. Like kind of like shorts. He loves not wearing any shoes or slippers.

He's going around barefoot. So he's going around in cargo shorts, barefoot. And so therefore his nickname, because the Anglo-Normans and the Scandinavians find his dress sense so mad, that he goes around like that and he gets the nickname Magnus Barefoot and even Magnus Barelegs, as he was known in Orkney in the North

and in the South of England. And yeah, Snorri Starlason puts it in the Saga of the Norwegian Kings. People say that when King Magnus came home from his Viking cruise, he and many of his people brought with them a great deal of the habits and fashion of clothing of those western parts. They went about on the streets with bare legs and had short kirtles and over cloaks and so his men called him Magnus Barefoot or Bareleg.

Yeah, he got that nickname. The thing you have to bear in mind is to the kind of Scandinavians, the Anglo-Normans, it was effectively like he was going around in short shorts. Like it was Italian-item. Like how we look back on Italian-item. No one had seen shorts, like cargo shorts. It was astonishing. Really? Yeah. That's hilarious. So this nickname has pervaded history. Cargo shorts does suggest loads of pockets, which is quite useful though. Yeah. If you're having to travel around a lot, it means you can carry stuff from home when you're

invading other places. Yeah. Keepsakes, pictures of your wife. Never gonna lose your keys. Exactly. Yeah. So to the Vikings of Norway and Denmark, it was like he was wearing short shorts. But Darrell our historian wants to clear something up. In the Victorian and Edwardian era, it was thought that he was walking around in tartan kilt and he was even in penned in the Encyclopedia Britannica that he was wearing tartan kilt. It is not true. He wasn't tartan, but he was in a type of cargo shorts. So yet no one can quite agree on the true origins of his nickname and whether it has

anything to do with the fact he had a bit of leg on show. But one Danish chronicler claims that it was all down to the fact that Magnus had once had to run away from a Swedish army and did so barefooted. So could he be Magnus the coward? I'm not quite sure. But without doubt, he was wearing cargo shorts and he had the nickname Magnus the coward? I'm not quite sure, but without doubt, he was wearing cargo shorts and he had the nickname Magnus Barefoot.

I used to have an Australian bloke who was a barman in a pub and he'd been brought up like in Northern territories, very rural part of Australia, you know, very remote, hundreds of miles away from anywhere big. And he used to wear, he didn't wear shoes really, he was about 12 and the soles wear shoes really, he was about 12. And soles of his feet, they were like tires. It was incredible.

It was absolutely amazing. And then he just thought, oh, stop this. I'm gonna move to London and work in a pub. So it can be done, but our feet obviously are so soft because we're podcasters. We've got podcasters' feet, unfortunately. As soft as custard. That's the only way I like it. Have you got those hardened guitar player fingers, Al, from playing the guitar? I have, yeah. Have you?

The weird thing with the hardened guitar fingers is if I don't play for a few days, they soften up, And then if I play again, they become hard after about 10 seconds. Your body is desperately trying to return to its actual, its natural form and you won't let it. I just feel for the cells at the end of your finger just going, please just let me, let me. Come on, mate. Really again? Oh, come on.

I'll chuck at you a couple more theories as to why he's called Magnus the Bareleg or the Barefoot. Yeah, so the primary one is that he's going around in cargo shorts, but there's another theory as well that you mentioned hot coals, funny enough, Tom, and there is a rumour that he tried to prove himself in a trial by ordeal by walking across hot coals in barefoot. The legend suggests that's maybe how he got the nickname Magnus Barefoot. What we do know is that that actually did happen to one of Magnus' children. So our historian Daryl thinks that is discounted as an explanation. It probably wasn't a trial bike fire.

But then bare legs. One thing we know about Magnus is-bike fire. But then bare legs. One thing we know about Magnus is that he did ride around with bare legs. His legs were on show, but also he had another aspect of his personality. He had a sword called leg biter, which people who saw it said was an excellent weapon. So hey, it could have been leg bit, a bare leg, who knows. But we do know this about Magnus. He did meet a violent end and I'm sure you're not surprised by that. He loved the fight. He loved the rumble. He was actually the last Norwegian king to die in battle overseas. So he went over to a county down island and then a big old tear up. His men said, let's not go on another

raid. He said, no, we're going on another raid. He went to the north of Ireland. He tried to get into a nightclub. They said, no cargo shorts. He said, I'm coming in my cargo shorts. The security really had a problem with it. One thing led to another. And he ambushed and killed in County Down after one more raid, even though his men said, don't do it. And that was the end of Magnus the Bare-legged. That was it.

Yeah. That was it for Magnus. And that's where the cargo short comes from. We have this one man to thank for that. So all saints look to him and we're like, we've got, we need a look. There's a photo album of me and I think it's V Festival in Chelmsford 2006 and I'm wearing about seven different types of cargo pants throughout, cargo shorts rather, throughout the festival while Kaiser Chiefs are playing behind me.

Yeah, it's a bad old look isn't it? Around that time I went to Venice and I actually can't look at the pictures now because I'm wearing such bad cargo shorts. But if King Magnus the third jumped in a one-day time machine and went to V Festival in 2006, he would have felt right at home. Alright, that's the end of part one of Quirky Monics. If you want part two right now, you can join Wondery Plus or another slice and become an oh what a time full timer where you get bonus episodes and loads of other benefits as well.

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