Today's show is sponsored by Sean Bean's Invasion Team:
"Lancashire's ****ed."
This is the Technical Difficulties. We're playing Citation Needed.
I have an almost randomly selected article
from everybody's favorite reliable source of knowledge, Wikipedia,
And these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point and a ding [DING],
And there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is:
— Oh yeah! — Oh my.
And today's article is: the Newgate Novel.
Ooh! We've gone highbrow all of a sudden.
We have. Yes.
I'll put on my best smoking jacket and clever cravat.
— Clever cravat? — Clever crav...?
Is that like an iCravat?
"Cravat? Cravat, quickly, it's the pub quiz."
Right, Newgate. Is this something to do with the prison by any chance?
Er... to an extent. Yes.
In that it's to do with the prison or not?
Not quite.
Straight answers please, nobhead.
It's based on something called the "Newgate Calendar",
Which is... it's connected to prisons. It's connected to criminals.
Is it an execution calendar?
Yes. It was originally a monthly bulletin of executions.
I'll give you a point for that. [DING]
It's what would be known as the calendar of prisoners,
of those who are due to be tried or indeed executed later in the year.
But it got turned into something else.
A sixteen-part TV series starring...
Daniel Craig, Sean Bean and Alex Kingston.
This is mid-18th century here, so...
Yeah, and?
...Little bit earlier.
So Sean Bean could've still been in it.
Sean Bean's in it.
It's a weekly series of plays.
So it wasn't the short-lived opponent to Babestation then?
Ohh!
No. Not even close.
Mid-18th century strumpets asking for letters.
That's basically just a classified ad in the back of the London Gazette.
With a slightly lewd picture,
and a mailbox to send your money to.
A coffee house to pop round and talk through a screen to someone.
"Please make way to the coffee house and ask for the back room.
"Charge: three guineas."
Yeah, when you get there it's a...
a complete glass thing so you can't go in.
And there's a little flap you can open for a pound a minute to talk to people...
Oo-er! [Laughter]
Oh for crying out loud!
A flap for a pound a minute!
Jesus. Where do you go?
So what did the Newgate calendar turn into?
It was originally just a diary or bulletin of executions.
London's top tourist attraction.
It isn't the London Dungeon, no.
But it kind of had that entertainment...
Was it serialised like an early Dickens sort of a deal?
I will give you a point for that. [DING]
The calendar was basically ripped off by a load of other publishers,
who then put out biographical...
"chapbooks", it's called here,
about the notorious criminals.
Oh yeah, chapbooks...
This is getting desirably highbrow, but yeah,
chapbooks were small, cheap sources of literature.
Of course it is now desirable to say there was also not only the chapbook,
but the "face book" at the time as well,
which was A Thing.
Well, the name for Facebook came from university facebooks,
which was literally a book of all the faces of the people who joined the university that year.
But the 18th-Century facebook was — you would have one in your house.
Someone would go around
and as part of the evening's entertainment
would try and draw their own face.
Really?
Oh, cool!
Right? And it would provoke much mirth when you went, "Oh, look at the paucity!"
"Look at the eyebrows, Jeremiah!"
You know, that kind of thing.
Of which later on when everyone else came round
"Oh, you should see the page before you at what the Parson drew!"
That kind of thing.
That was a face book.
It was a mid-18th century thing.
I'm getting one of those.
I'm having one in my house, that sounds great.
Hey! Before you go. Draw your face.
Go-on. I dare ye. NO MIRRORS!
Stop cheating! All you get is this marker pen,
or a knife to draw in your own blood.
I like the idea of there being some sort of Bartholomew Zuckerberg.
Who was... er...
"Bye ye the newe Facebou..."
No, that's Middle English isn't it? That's going way back!
You don't buy it.
He just takes yours, adds a load of adverts to it,
and then sells it back to you.
Satire.
"One has heard he can make up to three guineas an hour!"
Which he spends a pound a minute.
Pound a minute!
Talking into a flap.
With furious strumpets behind the flap.
Prog band!
"Hello, we're the Furious Strumpets."
Yeeaah!
"This number is called 'Behind the Flap'."
Oh no. I like that being like some kind of prog band...
— All-female prog band. — Oh, okay!
"Furious Strumpets" is a good name for that.
Furious Strumpets. Who's on keyboards?
So, the Newgate calendar became the Newgate novel.
Yep.
Which was, sort of, longer books...
Very much satirised by a famous author.
Rory Bremner.
Little bit earlier.
Dickens Dickens Dickens.
No! Dickens...
There's a good argument that one of Dickens' novels is a Newgate novel.
Johnathan Swift?
No.
Chaucer?
I think he may have been earlier there.
Centuries out. Centuries out.
No, there is one Dickens novel that is glorifying crime.
Oliver Twist?
Bingo. Point. [DING]
Yeah. Oh, thank you.
Oh, very good. Hmm.
"Name a Dickens novel about crime, Gary." "Uh, Ollliverrr...?"
I was in a Dickens musical once.
— Oh really? — Were you?
— Often seen by ruddy men of the country. — Yes.
— What the Dickens?
I know! I know.
Who did you play?
I played, er, Wackford Squeers.
Oh! Yeah yeah yeah.
In the musical "Smike",
that is a musical version of Nicholas Nickleby.
Hold on to your hats.
There's a musical version of Nicholas Nickleby?
Yes! And I was a...
And what pitch range did you take?
Oh God, whatever I had when I was fifteen or something. You know.
Somewhere between Mickey Mouse and Paul Robeson.
[Voice breaking] That weird oooscillatory one we all haaad!
So yeah, Dickens satirised the Newgate calendar then?
No, Dickens essentially wrote a Newgate novel,
or something that is considered to be.
Right.
— If I say William Makepeace Thackeray... — Oh, okay.
...I'm looking over at him, do you know what he wrote?
Not read any... Well... Oh...
Thackeray, Thackeray, Thackeray.
Not off the top of my head, no.
— Vanity Fair. — Ah.
Which was satirising all of 19th-century Britain.
Oh, okay.
No-one takes that. Okay.
What, you want us to satirise 19th-century Britain?
"I'd say Gladstone has been too near the buffet recently!"
"I would say he's looking remarkably corpulent
around his middle areas, oh ho ho!"
Actually no, that...
No, that's observational comedy.
Gladstone, he did have his peccadillos, didn't he?
He had his thing.
He would go out into London — I think it's Gladstone...
Hire a prostitute,
which was the done thing,
take her home, and then talk to her.
For the duration of the booked period...
lecture her about not being a prostitute,
then throw her out and whip himself on the back.
...that was his thing.
At the beginning of that paragraph I thought you were talking about piccalilli.
And I was hoping for a story about toast, or sandwiches.
F***, who puts piccalilli on toast?!
I was going to say.
There's something wrong with you if you're putting piccalilli on toast.
Hang on we've gone from Gladstone...
Never mind the mishearing. Never mind how quickly we've moved through this.
The hell are you doing putting piccalilli on toast?
You might as well put mustard in your eyes!
It's a horrible thing to do!
— I've had mustard on toast before. — Mmm.
— What?! — What is wrong with... wait, what?
Nothing wrong with mustard on toast.
It's like having sweet chilli on toast, or...
Just mustard?
— Hmm... — And butter as well.
— And probably black pepper if it was me. — Oh fine! We got the butter, that's fine!
Which mustard, English? French? What?
— English! — English!
I like how you're doing this tennis thing here.
We must know! We must know!
Brannan's terrified. He's encountered things he doesn't understand.
You've opened Brannan's eyes to a whole new area of condiment-based toast.
Have you never had condiments on toast before?
No!
Er, er... I've had cheese and brown sauce.
No, no, that's cheese.
Yeah. We're talking tomato sauce sandwich here.
WHAT?
Tartar sauce sandwich!
Aahh!
Jesus.
Horseradish?
Oh!
Horseradish on toast.
Forget the toast. Out of the jar, with a spoon.
Right! Behind the unseeing eye ahead of me.
If you've ev... it's not just these two,
If you've actually put a condiment —
and only a condiment, on toast,
E-mail in, write in,
send a telegram, or a pigeon, or your butler or something.
Oh wait, no, to be fair I've had sandwich pickle on toast before.
— That's not a... — ♫ Piccalilli! ♫
Oh no, hold on Gary. That's a good point.
It's like having gherkins on toast with mayo.
— Whoa, you can't say... — Whoa, whoa whoa!
Whoa, whoa. You can't say "it's just..."
That sounds pretty good. I've never had that.
If I can... If I can drag this back.
— Good luck, mate! — That's like having...
For f***'s sake, that's like having Yop on a baguette.
I mean you're just putting... substances together...
The Newgate novel. If I can bring this back...
What's that got to do with tartar sauce?
One of the convicts was done for tartar sauce rustling.
Rolling a barrel of tartar sauce down the street.
Surely tartar sauce clinking, with it being in jars...
— No, no, just a barrel of it. — A vat.
"Now then, now then, now then. What's in that barrel, sir?"
"...Water..."
"Let me stick my bit of bread in there, sir."
"I have a slice of toast here.
"It just so happens that, if this is water, it will be utterly spoiled.
"However, if it is tartar sauce,
"as we know, that is a great delicacy.
"My lad,
"delicious though this is, I am taking you in for tartar sauce rustling."
Of course in France they took up the idea, and replaced truncheons with baguettes.
First day: it's for eating.
Second day: it's for beating convicts to death with.
For eatin' and beatin'!
Sorry, are you saying a baguette lasts a day? In the afternoon it's for beating!
"We 'ave invented a bread product zat lasts no more zan an hour!"
"I have taken zis bread 'ome. She is wasted."
"She is wasted."
I'm sorry, are we pissing off a different nationality each show here?
Looking that way. Looking that way.
The only way to get a fresh baguette
is to actually have some kind of bread-baguette-slot
on a boulangerie, that you wrap your mouth round and have one...
Where am I going with this?!
I don't know where you're going with that, Branners!
You want one just... fed!
And a hot baguette thrust into your throat.
It's a pound a minute, you open the flap, you take whatever's on the other side!
A centime for ten minutes!
— They just extrude out a bread product... — It's a... baguette! That'll do.
Yeah. Fine. I'm okay with that.
You've not got any tartar sauce have you?
If I were to say "Jack Sheppard", would that ring a bell with anyone?
I would rather not, thank you.
How do you rate him?
"Jack" was a verb, right?
Jack Sheppard was a notorious thief
who had a two-year criminal career
before being hanged at Tyburn.
But the novel, the dramatisation of that,
was the most notorious Newgate novel.
Mmm.
William Thackeray, who was one of the opponents of the Newgate novel,
said that there were vendors selling Jack Sheppard bags.
Now what do you think they contained?
Little bits of him.
...no.
Swag?
No.
Copies of the novel, some novelty golf balls...
a mouse mat, something like that.
Nope, 'cos by this point the novel...
Mouse mat?
Yeah, what do you think you put a trap on?
— In the eighteenth century? — Ohhh...
The novel had been turned into a play by this point.
So in the lobby of the theatre, as they left...
— Signed copies of the script. — No.
Signed, erm, lithographs of the stars.
Is this something truly disgusting,
owing to the fact he was hung... Death by hanging?
— No. — His urine? — No!
So it's not a picture of the deceased like this...?
— Carving. — On the...
No. Nope.
Instructions on how to thieve?
Yes.
No way!
[DING] Filled with burglary tools.
Hey, that's something. You know when you're walking on the Moors,
— you have the thumb sticks? — Yes.
You know they were entirely outlawed for quite a long time?
— No. — Genuinely illegal, were thumb sticks.
— Because what you... — Sorry, what are thumb sticks?
— They're a walking stick with a Y shape. — They've got a U shape top on.
So you can give it this number.
You know, striding around with them.
Spot the person who doesn't go hiking on the Moors.
Oh, [dismissive sounds]. Yeah. Anyway.
They were outlawed because the thumb over the middle
was often used to disguise a hole.
Into which you would screw in a hook
with some string and another hook on the end.
They'd be used when robbing houses.
You would dangle it in, hook something out, and walk off.
And of course walking with the thumb over the hole.
— So they were banned as a criminal instrument. — Brilliant!
I'm gonna go get my dad to turn me one out like that.
"Come on, son. We're going hang-thieving!"
The Newgate novel started to fall out of fashion.
Ainsworth and Lytton were two of the novelists who
turned away when the attacks on it started.
Who didn't? Who continued to use criminals?
— Dickens? — Dickens?
— Dickens. [DING] —Ah, right. — There we go.
Dickens, it says here, was "made of sterner stuff".
Made of more commercially lucrative stuff, as I like to call it.
Yes.
Didn't balk at giving the public what they wanted.
Yes. So it became "sensation novels".
Charles "There's my 500 words, where's my fifty pounds" Dickens.
Yes. Pretty much.
That's why his style is... as it is.
Bloody long!
That's why he's so long-winded, you know.
"I should hate to pontificate over this for too long, as excess verbosity will lead to..."
...yeah?
I've probably said before, my favorite Dickens line is the one about
the door knocker in A Christmas Carol,
"which, having not undergone any intermediate process of change"...
Wow.
You're just like: "Oh. Oh! Oh."
Word count!
Yup.
And... that'll do.
Submit!
Yes, 'cause he just clicked a button and it word-counted and...
No, he went...
that action is ringing a bell for his butler to come up the stairs...
Or a boy to come and take it to the...
With a celebratory slice of toast and tartar!
The Newgate novels became the sensation novels, the detective fiction...
They got serialised.
What did they become?
Frosties!
...Cereal-ised...
Oh, yes!
The pun! It burns!
Uh, I was going to go for The Bill.
That's fair, that's fair. Little bit earlier than that.
Ye Bill!
Particular name for them.
The penny dreadfuls.
Yes! Point! [DING]
Point straight away.
Quick-fire round: Can anyone give me the other names for the penny dreadfuls?
What else were they called?
Uh, filthy newsbooks... Uh...
The shilling sh**s.
Dirty foldabouts...
Thou-shalt-nots...
"Don't look in there, mother"s...
They were all kind-of "penny something".
Penny whatsits... Have you got one... Naughty novels...
Uh... Penny frighteners? Something like that...
Some kind of synonym for "dreadful" would be a start.
— Awfuls. — Oh, point. [DING]
Yay! Look at that.
Penny dreadful and a penny awful.
Penny horrible, penny number and penny blood.
At the end of that, congratulations Chris!
— You win this show. — Hey! I'm on a roll.
More points when your way then anything else there.
Uh, you win some shares in the company that is owned by the star of The Big Lebowski,
that enables passengers to board airliners safely.
Its Jeff Bridges' Jet Bridges.
The Dude abides!
The Dude aboards, thank you very much.
And the marketing has written itself.
Until next time,
— that's been Matt Gray. — Au revoir!
— That's been Gary Brannan. — Good day!
That's been Chris Joel.
And I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you next time.
[Subtitled by Patrick Gregory. Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]
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