Oh What A Time... - Ep4: New Year Extra Part Specials

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Ep4: New Year Extra Part Specials We’re off on our Christmas / New Year break at the minute so while we’re off being festive, please enjoy two of our special 4th parts that were available for subscribers last year. In this ep you’ll hear bonus parts from:#27 Beauty#28 NightlifeAnd pop it in your diary: we’ll be back with some brand new OWAT on Monday 13th January 2025!If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before (including ALL the 4th parts from last year), 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).Happy New Year to all our listeners!See 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. This is the final episode before we return triumphantly next week with more brand new Oh What A Time. But we're on our Christmas slash New Year break at the moment. So instead of leaving the feed with nothing on it, we're going to deliver you some fourth parts that were recorded early last year and they've never been heard before in the main feed. Today we have for you a fourth part from Beauty episode 27 and a fourth part from Nightlife episode 28. Do enjoy these but don't forget there are actually loads

and loads of fourth parts and actually loads of bonus episodes to be had as well and to get access to those you just need to become an Oh What A Time full-timer. You can do that via Wondery or another slice. All your options are available at owhatatime.com. But let's get on with the show here it is a fourth part from Beauty and a fourth part from Nightlife Welcome to the fourth part of this week's episode on nightlife. This is taking us in a direction I didn't expect. Now one of the challenges in examining nightlife or the nightlife of the past is that so much of it revolved around drink and sex as well.

Now you take away the pub and then the nightclub and what else is there really? Instead of being out and about at night, it invited accusations of, how can I put it, nefarious activity. Now in the 19th century, however, illumination of streets by gas lamp and then electricity enabled more respectable evening activities to take place

when new battle began then to introduce refined and temperate distractions to take people away from boozers and brothels. Now these included things like penny lectures, orchestral and choral concerts, lantern shows, spiritualist seances, theater musical, and of course the circus. Now I would have loved a Penny Lecture, I think Tom would have loved orchestral and

choral concerts, I think Skull would have loved a lantern show, what can I say? Or the musical, I reckon Chris would have been big into musical. Or just one of those pubs of an old Uncle Albert type on the old Joanna corner. Now, these things led to a night-term economy and a service industry, which obviously added things like, or people like taxi drivers and fast food vendors to those present on the streets at night. Now, one of the most popular attractions was the circus, whether in the form of a travelling tent and a menagerie of animals and performers, or, I didn't realise these existed until I read this research, or a permanent fixture

such as that constructed on the corner of Cardiff's Park Street and Westgate Street, which opened in the autumn of 1876. A journalist described what he saw on the inside. The decorations bear a close resemblance to those of the Grand Paris Cirque. The prevailing tint is maroon. The interior is principally lighted by large gas chandelier composed of hundreds of jets of lights. Wow. Far surpasses anything of the kind ever seen in Cardiff. The building is larger and more elaborate

than any other equestrian establishment outside of London. That's amazing. Now this place was huge. So it seated 2,000 spectators. Whoa. Yeah. So it's a big venue, bigger than St. David's Hall, which is there. It's smaller than the Cardiff International Arena,

but it would be one of the biggest theatres in town if it was still around. That's incredible. I'm also amazed by the fact that it's a permanent structure. Yeah. So it's just there throughout the around. That's incredible. I'm also amazed by the fact that it's a permanent structure, so it's just there throughout the year. That's incredible. Now the hexagonal grand Hippodrome and Circus was ideal for evening variety. It offered turns by the likes of Johnny Patterson, who was Ireland's greatest clown, Servado, the man-fly, who was a gymnast, and Signore Morelli,lli was a dab hand at the harmonica.

Gotta be honest that's the shittest act of those three isn't it? That says we've spent a lot of money on Ireland's best clown and the Man Fly and we've now only got five percent of our money left. Ireland's best clown, a man fly and a guy who can play the mouth organ but if I if I saw that lineup I would go this guy in the mouth organ is gonna be unbelievable or you open with mouth organ so as people are filing in there's a there's a guy playing the mouth organ and then you hit them with the man fly before your headliner or he can accompany the other two acts just have him play a little tune underneath the man fly before your headliner or he can accompany the other two acts. Just

have him play a little tune underneath the man fly and that's all you need isn't it? Ireland's greatest clown. Now the proprietors, David Hutchinson and his son-in-law Joseph Taylor, they'd started at the city's palace of varieties. So you know merriment and buffoonery and equestrian feats which were then central to what people expected of the circus. They were not the only forms of entertainment on offer, so the arena hosted pantomime and light theatre too as well as art shows and lectures. Amazing! Now among the most popular routines were those involving clowns. So one of them, another of Hutchinson's sons-in-law, Joey Haynes, after a rip-roaring routine of jokes and clownish

manoeuvres he would climb all the way to the top of the building and then pretend to lose his footing, falling apparently to his doom all the way to the bottom. Now Haynes, or the boneless clown as he was known, had been switched for a dummy, but the act was so realistic that some audience members would reach for smelling salts because they thought they'd seen a bloke die in front of them. Now when he retired from performing, Haynes became a publican in Cardiff and he traded forever on the fame that he'd made in the circus tent. Now among those captivated by what he saw at the circus, in his case in Merthyr Tidfil

was the Welsh novelist Jack Jones. Now he wrote great novels. I think his sort of 20s and 30s was when he was writing those novels. Great novels about sort of industrial South Wales and the industrial working class. And he said the circus, it had everything a boy could ask for. Trapeze, Titan high wire, tumblers and acrobats, funny clowns, and a few of the world's greatest bareback horse riders. Now maybe I'm wrong, I'm not that impressed by a bareback horse rider. I'm just not bothered by the saddle.

I don't know enough about horse riding to be impressed by that. No, neither do I. To me it just looks like you haven't done any prep. Yeah, I suppose you might turn to your friend and say, that's if you're interested, that's slightly less comfy than it would be. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's the impressive thing that they're willing to tolerate the fact it's not quite as comfy as it would be.

If you're interested, that chafes. Does it shit? It must have been amazing though, as you say. Wow. At this point, observe the chafing. Wow. When so recently, as you say, there weren't any of these family entertainments or things that were not to do with alcohol. It must be incredible to have this as a place you can go and see incredible things. It must be mind blowing. Now, years later, Jack Jones, he would draw on these childhood memories for a BBC Radio

Talk which was one of the first to take this cultural tradition seriously. So broadcast in 1937, the circus came to town, reminded listeners, or taught them that the circus had been such a staple of Victorian and Edwardian nightlife. Now as for the Cardiff venue, Tom will know this because he lived in Cardiff, if you go looking for it these days, you'll be disappointed it's not there anymore. The circus on Westgate Street was pulled down in the 1890s to make way for the General Post Office. And on Westgate Street,

the edifice of the General Post Office is still there, but it's not a post office anymore. Now in the 1880s and early 1890s, Joseph Taylor tried his hand at running a fixed circus in Swansea as well. It survived off and on for a decade at a site off the town's Alexandra Road. And it was one of the circus building in Cardiff. This one on Pynarth Road where I used to live. I used to live on Pynarth Road. I mean there's lots of chicken shops

there now. I can't imagine where the circus would go but it was owned by John Sanger who came from London so was himself more used to metropolitan entertainment and it opened in December 1890 as Sanger's Royal Circus and Menagerie. I love the names. Sanger is a great yeah. Sanger's Royal Circus and Menagerie and at Sanger's Royal Circus and Menagerie you could see all manner of animals. Educated elephants, camels, llamas, yaks, educated lions which suggests that there weren't quite enough teachers to go around because obviously camels, llamas and yaks, they're not worthy of a decent education, and then educated bears, but it didn't last. Is it wrong of me to say that there's far too many thick elements and thick lions out

of these? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are, what has happened to the system? Do they need to bring back the 11 plus? Exactly. But it did not last. Not much to ask. So by the following summer everything was gone, not though before Sang has greatest feat of entertainment. He flooded the arena with 40,000 gallons of water, all to provide an aquatic scenario.

So the arena is filled with water forming a miniature lake dotted with islands, spanned by bridges and with boats, canoes and a steam launch, each with a freight of pleasure seekers floating there on. Now it just seems utterly... That's incredible. It seems quite far-fetched, doesn't it? But this was how to grab the attention of those seeking in Evenings Entertainment, how to prove that your theatre of varieties was the greatest the local population had ever seen. You're like Eddie Hearn, you have to go big. That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. I heard that about the Coliseum once. I did a tour of the Coliseum and they said they flooded it once to create water games within the

Coliseum, to recreate a famous water battle. It's sort of, it's the amount of effort. Because to flood the Coliseum now with modern technology would be a ballic. Yeah, I can't even wrap my head around it. But to do it then, I don't know how they were doing it. But yeah, I just, what's weird is I'm very, very, I lived in Cardiff for 10 years. I'm very, very familiar with those places in Cardiff.

So to imagine a circus or an auditorium that big in those places is very, very interesting to me. But yeah, the circus, I must admit, I took the kids to the circus once and I, it's not really my scene. Right. Why did you not like it? I just found the whole thing quite depressing. Was it one of those ones that turns up on the local green?

As opposed to like a, yeah, okay. Like you pay cash on the door. Yeah, it was cash on the door green circus. My wife's a theatre producer and she took me to what is considered as one of Britain's best circuses and that was quite good. And there was a clown, but I was expecting big shoes, the silly car, you know, the face paint. And it wasn't, he was a traditionally trained clown. Oh yeah, yeah.

He was brilliant. And it was like, oh, that's actually quite funny. He was really funny. He was a good clown, not what I expected. Yeah, it's not really my scene, but a friend of mine, she was part of Cirque du Soleil, she was an acrobat at Cirque du Soleil, and some of the stuff that she could do was absolutely insane.

You heard it here first. Cirque du Soleil, they can do some insane stuff. You're willing to concede that the world's best acrobats could pull off some quite impressive stuff. But that is so different. That really is comparing Tuesday night five aside to the Champions League. Isn't it? It's very, very different. But that's absolutely fascinating. And I think it's also worth saying, if there was a circus tent near here that was flooded on a weekly basis to put on some kind of... you would

go wouldn't you? If there was like... You'd certainly go once, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you'd realise it wasn't your scene and you'd come home. Hello and welcome to all the O What A Time full timers, the best people, the best listeners, the listeners who keep the show on the road. The elite.

Yeah, absolutely. You are the reason I'm wearing a mink coat at this moment, golden shoes and a hat made of diamonds. A very uncomfortable diamond hat. Thank you very much. That enormous picture of two basket hounds shagging just behind you. Which is what this is really about, yeah. Completely. By one of the masters, actually, that.

I've really lucked out. Paid 20 quid, it's worth 4.5 million. It's great. All right, so I'm going to talk you through dating and courting through history. Is the starting point of any romance is asking someone out on a date. The scariest bit of a relationship, I think. By far the scariest bit, the nerve-racking bit. Where does the word date come from? It's only been around since the 1890s when it was coined accidentally by a newspaper journalist from Chicago called George Aide. Aide had in mind the then recent calling of date

as an appointment in the calendar. You know, it's a date. Let's go out next Tuesday, it's a date. But he used it in a more contemporary way to imply connection between two would-be lovers. So dating is a term that's only been around since 1890. I would have thought it was far more recent than that. Yeah.

I would have thought it was a 50s or 60s thing. So I'm quite surprised it's from the 19th century actually. But dating really only kicked in in the 1920s during the jazz age when those habits of the jazz age fueled a much less formal approach to finding a partner. No chaperones to make sure things were kept above board and fewer and fewer arranged set up, the rise of the individual.

And once again, Al, I've got to say the 1920s seemed like a great laugh. Week after week. Or as I refer to it, the Jizz Age. Which is what it's known as. Free love. Sorry, that's far too rude. That's such a good joke, Will.

It's got to be the Jizz Age. That's why you're employed by some of the top TV programmes in the country. Imagine going on a date with a chaperone. Oh my goodness, Danny. So would that have been a parent normally? Yeah, well let's talk about that now. So there's a difference between dating and courting. Courting is the one that historically means there's a little ritual around that and courting is the one where you have a chaperone more often than not for the evening. Okay.

So those who were courting were expected to be accompanied, engagements organised through parents or guardians, limited freedom for the couple. And that's often where people would just run off and get eloped to Gretna Green and get married secretly. I did not know that. I always assumed courting was just a process of you going out on dates with this person, but it actually refers to... No, they're two different things. Yeah.

So yeah. That's so interesting. I just thought it was a term your grandparents used for dating. Yeah, same. Courting? So courting is kind of relatively arranged. You definitely have a chaperone there and dating is your kind of private personal freedom with your choice. How do you think a chaperone would have affected your early dates with your partners? Well, I would have been completely moot. Yeah.

So everything would have depended on how I looked. Because you're not 100% yourself in the relaxed sense with, well you wouldn't be with a parent figure there. Especially when you're young. You'd be a sort of formalised person. You're not 100% yourself during early dates. Yeah, exactly. No.

So there's two reasons why you're 100% not yourself. I would be so stressed at the end of a date that I'd have chaperoned. Who the hell am I? Also, if you're on your first date to roller bowl in Romford and you know, you'll get in the odd half strike and there's the dad scoring strike after strike.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're trying to have a bit of anter. Yeah. It's difficult. With your potential beloved. It's difficult. So back in the 1920s, terms like boyfriend and girlfriend are around in the 1920s too. And the girlfriend actually came first in the 1890s.

The term boyfriend seemed to appear about a decade later. Amazing. Yeah. Mirroring a growth in demand for women's suffrage. Oh, well. By the 1920s, dating, boyfriend, girlfriend, these are common phrases. So it takes until the 1920s really, until everyone's talking about it. Yeah, and we touched on courting there, which is the more formal aspect of dating.

Now, have we heard of the matrimonial advertisement? No, what's that? This is a really interesting piece of history. You know, in like the times you might see engagements announced, marriages announced. Oh, right. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So did you know that like way back in the 1800s, you would have matrimonial advertisements, so people who was announcing their marriages and their engagements, but you would also have people advertising for suitors. Wow. So I suppose an early version of hinge or Tinder then? Yeah, like the early version of the lonely hearts column.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, I can't believe it would have worked. In the main broaches. Surely that's just mega embarrassing. Well, it would have been for, you know, the elites. Yeah, exactly. The lonely hearts though.

I used to read the lonely hearts in newspapers 25 years ago. You basically get about 40 words to sum yourself up. Yep. If that. I like music and pasta and I've got a good sense of humour. GSOH. Save a few letters there. So, a Regency-era bachelor of 1814 wrote that he had observed a friend getting desperate.

He said, right, this is what he said. I have not been so unfortunate indeed as one of my friends who instead of advertising himself Transmitted a reply to every matrimonial advertisement that appears during a space of six months. Oh wow. So this guy in 1814 was going through the papers writing a letter to every single one. Ringing everyone in a red pen. Exactly. Wow. Oh my god.

Six months as well. That's a lot less. I think we can assume it didn't work as well. And also, you know, women in those circles that had known each other, they'd have talked. Have you had a letter from Reginald? Yes. Oh, yes. I just thought it was me.

Do you know what it struck me as? That is like the 1814 equivalent of sitting on a dating app and just swiping right at everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Constantly. Nonstop for six months. Seeing what comes off. So yeah, Tom, you touched on something like after the Second World War, Valentine's and

love became a much bigger deal. And after the Second World War really became the kind of the era of the teenager, how to guides to dating became all the rage. There was a real mid-century appetite among teenagers for dating and discussions about dating in the U S and Britain, just as there'd been satire of hapless bachelors and matrimonial advertisements all the way through the 19th century. So you start to see an explosion in teenage magazines. Yeah. 19th century. So you start to see an explosion in teenage magazines. Like Teen Hit Parader,

as well as television shows aimed at young people. And they were all awash with dating advice. How to look, what to say, how to create a good first impression. If you're going to make a local radio show on a cassette tape, how to do your links, how to throw to travel, how to hit the top of the hour. Useful stuff. It's all useful stuff that anyone can use. How to have meaningful communication and engagement with your audience. Don't read the text consoles. Some of them will be negative. Only read the ones that the producer has favourited. As one American columnist put it in 1963, the first great date is your jump into deeper

waters and if you flounder, okay, that's why you start near the shore. So make the most of your go ahead for wonderful carefree fun Nobody expects you to know your mind at the ripe old age of 13 or 14 date for the sheer fun of it now And there you go. I think that's actually I like Place to end on in terms of this episode because yeah, just have fun. Enjoy it Yeah, I probably took it all too seriously when people were laughing at the stuffed dog But actually it's all just a laugh Isn't it? Yeah yourself. That's the advice I'd give to my younger self. I've had a one-day time machine

That's a nice way of putting it floundering not too far from the shore. Is that the word ink? Yeah, that's interesting Yeah, have wonderful carefree fun. They're sending some 63 I suppose this is all wrapped up in this idea of the teenager for the first time Having that freedom to be themselves a bit more freedom away from their parents, the sort of traditional conventions, your parents deciding your life for you was starting to loosen a little bit. If you look back at the idea of courting with someone being there, what a shift that is. And in the UK, things like National Service had ended. Yes, exactly, yeah. Just to quickly go back on the courting thing before we end, if you

had to choose someone from your family to go with back on the courting thing before we end, if you had to choose someone from your family to go with you on a date to make it, which would be the most tolerable? Who are you going with? You've got to go on a date with someone from your family. My mother would have been better than my dad. Oh my god. An uncle? I know what the answer is as a teenager.

I would have gone with my grandmother, Ethel, because she was really quite deaf. Yes, of course! You could basically plonk her on the table and she wouldn't really pick up on anything. Yes, of course, of course, of course. My grandmother as well spoke almost no English, so I just would have switched languages. She was also quite deaf, switched languages, she would have understood nothing. Absolutely. Also she was very slow, if at any point you were to run away for a quick

snog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she'd had a bad foot since 1930. No turn of face. 17 second 100 meter she did, didn't she? She was just kind of, whereas you were much, you were down 14 seconds. What about you Chris, who are you going with? You've got to go with that uncle who's a bit, you know, almost a mate, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Actually he's like, you're 15, I'll buy you a couple of beers if you want. Yeah, I think my middle sister just would have taken a book. So yeah, but yeah, very dear. I mean, my dad would have been an absolute nightmare. Any listeners want to email us with where they'd have gone courting and who they'd taken with them? I genuinely want to know. I'm intrigued. How could you have made that barely tolerable? Let's find out. That's it for this episode today. Just a reminder, we are on our Christmas slash New Year break and we'll be back on Monday the 13th of January with more brand new Oh What A Time. But don't forget, if you want brand new episodes of Oh What A Time that you've never heard

before, two bonus episodes every month, you can become an Oh What A Time full-timer. For all the links go to owotatime.com. Otherwise, we'll see you again very soon. Bye! Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.