This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today, please welcome, he reads books y' know, it's Chris Joel.
Hey up.
Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.
♪ Have you ever seen your granny passing water down by the old mill stream?
♪ She pisses for an hour and a quarter and you can't see her arse for steam ♪
The bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.
Hi!
This is the final episode and I'm feeling a bit like a teacher on the last day of school.
But nevertheless, today we are talking about the sweater curse.
F*** off, that's no way we're ending this on jumpers.
-The sweater curse? -The sweater curse.
Chafing.
Yeah, absolutely, if you're jogging on the nipples, or so I am told.
Don't jog on anybody's nipples, Gary, it's very rude, even if they've asked.
"What I do in the comfort my own hotel room, is none of your business."
This sounds like it's the title for a Goosebumps book.
Well, the alternate title for this article is the Curse of the Love Sweater.
-The love sweater. -That sounds like a different type of novel.
I think I've seen that film, I paid a few pounds for it,
and well, it happened late at night,
and well, it certainly didn't record properly as it turned out.
And you know a lot about my reading habits, if I'm calling the Goosebump books 'novels'.
So small.
Yeah, one of the great works of literature is Say Cheese and Die.
We're talking about a genre of sweaters, if you like.
-A genre of sweaters. -A genre.
That may have been slightly too fancy a term to use.
-A genre? -Romance, westerns, large print?
Romance, I'm going to give you a point for romance.
It's… it's, of course, yeah, well, eh?
I like how fast you went from 'I completely understand that' to 'I have no idea.'
It was like a sliding scale.
It was a gently Buddhist experience, that, actually.
In a 2005 poll, 15% of knitters said they had experienced the sweater curse first hand.
Is it just really hard to knit a specific type of sweater?
Not, this is not what that's about. I mean it is,
it's a massive investment to actually knit a sweater, in time and money.
Has their relationship broken down because they've spent so much time knitting?
I don't know what my face was pulling there.
It was great, just roll with it.
I think the word you were looking for is 'climax'.
'Relationship breaking down' is the key word there.
What might the curse of the love sweater be?
The sweater's only half finished before the break up happens.
"But I've knitted it for you."
And that's the key, that's the absolute key.
"It's a present."
The belief that if you give a hand-knit sweater to a significant other,
it will lead to the recipient breaking up with the knitter.
-Really? -Wow!
Or the relationship will end before the sweater is even completed.
You are absolutely right.
Knit small things.
Or have a small significant other.
There are six possible mechanisms here,
but it does say this has not been studied systematically.
Divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived.
"Henry, I've made you this swea... well, you know what, never mind."
You'd have to keep putting new panels in for his girth, wouldn't you?
Also how does a poncho stay on when you've been beheaded?
Depends if you try doing cartwheels in it or not really, doesn't it?
Depends how much stump there is left.
Can I say, at no point in humanity's awful beheading history
has everyone looked at it and gone, "Would that work with a poncho?"
Six mechanisms.
Knit knit knit, knit knit purl, knit purl knit, knit purl purl, purl purl purl.
That's five.
The other combination, there must be six, it's three things.
No. These are mechanisms for why the curse might happen.
Spent too long knitting and not enough attention on your lover.
Yeah, I'll give you a point for that.
The knitter loves their sweater a little too much,
and pesters the significant other.
Spends too much time needling them.
Hey!
-No. -I just realised what the word means...
-No. -This is why we're finishing this s***!
I don't know, that was a pearler.
Knitting gags, this is what you came for, isn't it, knitting jokes?
Stop being crochet-y.
Hey!
This is where I try and drop another one in.
We'll cast you off at that.
Oh!
This is what you want! Did you hear that?
That was the sound of knitting pun fatigue, just clunk, just appearing.
Did you think we knew that much about knitting?
-No. -No. That's…
But we know words.
So, yes, misdirected attention is one of them.
Well, I suppose it did cost a bit of wool, might cost, yeah.
Wool costs a lot, if you pick a nice wool.
Oh, yes, but that's not listed here.
It doesn't fit and they all get all grumpy because they said they're too fat or too thin.
I'll, yeah, I'll give you that, insufficient gratitude.
Oh!
'Why are you knitting me a jumper?
'I look s*** in jumpers and I don't like them, and I don’t like wool.'
And I don't like you, bye.
You know what, that … yes, aversion.
The significant other may not want to wear it,
because the sweater looks bad or conveys overly domestic connotations.
-Oh, like 'Number One Husband' or something. -Uh-huh.
Or you look like you're wearing a jumper that's been knitted by your significant other.
Yes.
Why would you start that
without saying, "Do you want one?"
That is another problem.
The person does not actually wear jumpers.
We're leading into something here.
People naturally break up inside of 18 months because the endorphins change,
and the jumper might take too long anyway.
Or if it's a really big jumper then there's a seven year itch.
Unlucky timing, yeah, knitting a sweater takes a long time,
and the relationship, it says here, dies of natural causes which...
Why is there not a show like, you know, the … I don't know...
The Relationship Coroner, is that what we're gonna have? I could do that.
Relationship Coroner!
We've found our new format, folks.
It's 'cause you're a dick. Next question?
No, that's true of most advice... like, most advice columnists,
half of their replies are gonna be, 'Break up with them, they’re a dick.'
That's… that's literally half of their job.
That's like my first law of everything, which is 'Don't be a knob.'
We have two mechanisms left, we've gone through timing, aversion,
misdirected attention, insufficient gratitude.
Is one of the mechanisms a loom or a weaving machine, what's a weaving machine called?
-A loom. -A loom.
It is a loom, yeah.
Have they got a loom and is it taking up an entire room in the house?
Actually that's a fair point, because people have knitting rooms, don't they,
-where they kind of… "Eey-aga-dun-dai, aga-dun-dai..."
-I can see you've seen one work before. -If that doesn't get remixed as a beat,
I will be very surprised.
Dope, put a donk on it.
We have here, 'rescue mission' as one of the reasons, what might that be?
"The relationship is already dead, your heartshaped sweater will not save it."
Yeah, basically, yeah.
Chris Joel, the Relationship Coroner.
The last one is 'catalyst for analysing the relationship'.
-What... -"You've dropped a stitch,
"you're always dropping things.
"Can't help but feel you dropped my heart six months ago."
Chris Joel, Relationship Coroner.
Also, possibly, wrong meeting.
What's… what's the catalyst there? What's the sweater done?
Are you just staring at someone knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting,
and thinking to yourself, what the f*** am I doing here?
That’s close enough, yes.
You have received a gift that has had so much time and effort put into it, that you go,
'This really isn't a fair trade here, I'm not really, oh, oh, oh...'
And we could have been doing it while you knittin'.
-Not while you're knitting. -Gary Brannan, relationship defibrillator.
The idea would be you…
What's some of the advice given to knitters to avoid the sweater curse,
other than don't knit a sweater?
Ask permission.
Yes. Yes, involve the person you're trying to knit a sweater for.
Don't simply go, "Here's a sweater," out of nowhere.
"Here's a thing I spent three years making, here, you love it, don't you?"
So the categories on this article,
There is… there is a game here where you try and guess the article from the categories.
Because here it has curses, knitting, luck, and clothing controversies.
Oh, we are looking at clothing controversies.
Yes, we are.
God, you're glad you came aren't you?
I guarantee that at least one of these, I'm going to read the article and go,
about five seconds in, "Oh no, we're not talking about that."
-I can name one that'll be on the list. -Yeah.
Lady Gaga's meat dress.
It is not on the list.
Janet Jackson's tit.
Surprisingly not on the list,
but the phrase, 'Wardrobe malfunction' is, so I'll give you a point.
Okay, don't Google, don't look at that one on Wikipedia,
that's got a very revealing photo on it.
Saves for later.
Alright, clothing controversies through history, the Dress Act 1746.
Banning of tartan post 1745.
-Yes, you are exactly right. -"You're banned, get out!"
This is buffalo check, peasant!
T***.
Yes. This was the Act that made Highland dress illegal in Scotland.
-Yeah, banned the bagpipes and stuff as well. -What, dressing in the Highland?
Is that why everybody moved to the cities, at least they could put a t-shirt on?
There's a place on the Isle of Seil that is known as the Trouser House.
Isn't that just a seal?
-Well, you will, you… -Arf!
No, you've just got Kiss from a Rose, kind of always drifting through.
But it's not really an island, it's separated by a very small amount of water,
-but, so it technically is. -About a teaspoon.
Pretty much really, and it's called... it's known as the Trouser House,
because the rumour, the legend has it
that that's the place you would change from your tartan,
from your kilt into a pair of trousers because you're going onto the mainland.
It's almost certainly, to use the terms historians use,
'w***.'
On that note the Hat Act a few years earlier, 1732.
-Hat Act? -Is that why everyone wears hats in old films,
because a proper gentleman would wear their bowler or their top?
They wouldn't need a hat though, wouldn't need an act to do that.
-It's probably banning or… -Oh, is it … is it when you do the…
No, it's the spinning down the arm thing, down the back of the neck and all that dealie.
The Hat Act, no, it is an act of Parliament.
It's limiting the height of stove pipes in Parliament.
Limiting something, limiting where the hats are coming from.
-Abroad. -Below.
Was it to stimulate the British hat industry, therefore banning the import of the hat?
-From where? -France.
-No. -Netherlands.
I'm still giving you a point but it's a specific area rather than country here.
-The head. -Is it east?
-Try again. -The west.
-Which would be? -America.
-Yes. -Banning American hats.
Banning colonial hats, yes,
in order to protect the British hat industry.
They're all baseball caps, they're not stylish.
We're going back further now, 1363, the Statute Concerning Diet and Apparel.
This is the sumptuary laws, this, because
Strap yourselves in kids, post…
Here we go, we’re on history, this is a Brannan one.
And this is the period. Yeah, yeah, get your phones out,
some of you may wish to.
Post Black Death there's a massive boom in the economy.
You get a massive change in how people dress because people have more disposable income.
So people's dress is getting out of whack,
the rich people say that the poor people are dressing too nicely.
So they introduce a law that restricts the kind of clothes that certain classes of people can wear,
so everyone knows who is who.
Yes.
Thank you.
Alright, so I'm now out of clothing controversies articles.
So I'm going to continue to pick some at random and we'll see where we go with this.
Let's do this.
What was the Rational Dress Society, 1881 in London?
-Sensible dress. No frivolity. -You can't...
Is it that bit from Jurassic Park where Ian Malcolm's going on about wearing black?
Can you not wear the square root of minus one?
No πs.
That's imaginary, isn't it, not irrational?
-I win! -S***.
Yeah, I'm not giving you a point for Pi there, my hand went to the button,
before I realised it wasn't remotely the question I'd asked.
-No. -The Rational Dress Society.
They want people to be dressed properly in all places and not rough or dirty or scruffy like.
It's not so much about the quality of the dress as more what the dress does to them.
Does it make everyone look uniform?
Is it a uniform?
-Oh yeah. -That's what uniform means.
Oh yeah.
We all learned something today.
Well at least we did.
Yeah, it taught me a lesson.
The leading members of the society were Lady Harberton,
Mary Eliza Haweis , I'm probably mispronouncing that,
and Constance Wilde, the wife of Oscar Wilde.
Now, given we're in 1881 and those are…
Oh, egalitarian standards of dress.
Egalitarian in what sense?
Gender equality.
Yes, I'll give you the point but it's very specifically something about women's dress then,
that men's dress didn't do.
Oh, is it egalitarian as in like made out of eagles?
I realise I'm asking three blokes here who are not from the 1880s but…
Speak for yourself.
Men's dress had certain freedoms that women's dress didn't back then.
Is it pockets and the ability to ride a bicycle?
Ooh, I'll give you a point for bicycle
because the Lady Cyclists Association were very keen on this.
Because ladies were encouraged to ride side-saddle.
Now imagine how that worked, everybody,
in that they could only kind of go on one pedal basically,
because skirts.
Is it going back to the big flow-y skirts and corsetry
and all of that kind of stuff that they all wore?
What about corsetry?
It was right hurty.
Yes. They were asking for freedom of movement and absence of pressure.
-Oh! -I don't blame them.
The last one then in clothing controversies.
What is vanity sizing?
Oh!
Again, I heard all the women in the audience going 'yeah, we know about this'.
We’ve got three blokes from Yorkshire here, good luck.
If you can imagine what it would look like for three monkeys scrapping in a barrel of tar,
this is what it's going to look like right now.
It is where the actual measured dimension of any given garment of you,
is quite different to the size on the label.
You know how we... we knew the things about knitting earlier?
-Yeah. -We might know some things about clothing.
-Gary? -Yeah, the wife crochets and knits, so...
Lovely. In which case at the end of the show, congratulations, you all win this one.
Hey!
Cop-out! Cop-out!
I refuse to win.
Fine, Gary and Matt! You win this one.
Well, I think the winner is the audience.
Aww.
Liar!
No, the real winning is in your hearts.
Jesus, f***.
You are a knob.
Congratulations, you win a DVD of the little known crossover
between a marsupial from Australia and a Time Lord from Gallifrey.
It's Skippy the Bush Dr Who.
Hey!
With that for the final time we say goodbye to Chris Joel,
-Gary Brannan. -I don’t want to go.
-Matt Gray. -Bye.
I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you around.