No Such Thing As A Shakespeare Burger

24:57James Harkin:Peter Sellers, when he was at the height of the movie industry in Britain, was supposedly having an affair with her. And the stories came out that she used to have a partner called Colin Tennant when they were in the bedroom during sort of heavy petting, as it was called. I don't know if it's pre-license plate days. She wouldn't allow him to call her by her name. She would say, you'd have to refer to me by my royal title, your royal highness. You had to refer to me as that. And so she was just a total narcissist as well with her power. To me I don't like any of these stories of like royal family being assholes and I don't know.

25:34James Harkin:Yeah I do, I do because it's interesting reading. As I say I probably would have hated her if I met her in person. It is fascinating hearing things such as dinner didn't start until she arrived, so you'd just be waiting there maybe for hours because she didn't really keep to other people's timetables, so you might be sitting there while the food's gone cold. And this is at parties you mean? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You were five minutes late to this recording this morning. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We had to wait for you. Yeah. We did. Are you saying I'm the Princess Margaret of this show? Well, I haven't seen your registration plate of your car.

26:08I'm still waiting to get them made. I'm really excited.

26:15But I feel, I mean, I did find sympathy for her in that book because just the amount of comment about her appearance and everything, right from the word go, there were such trolls. They were diarists. They were very sort of camp and snippy diarists at the time, but they did not let out. And I can't imagine an entire life that sort of you're not really needed. So it's the life of an understudy and she never got to go on and she never got to really do anything. And it was a withering sort of life. She spent lots of her life living in a flat above or below. She and her mum, the Queen Mum, as she became, just lived in flats one floor up and down from each other.

26:57They mostly communicated by letter. It's so bizarre. That's amazing, isn't it? They just would write these rather curt, snippy notes to each other and then a footman would have to carry them upstairs or downstairs. Like a text fight. It was, yeah. And it's mostly sort of, I'm sorry I said that earlier, you know. Did the footman ever come down with like three dots?

27:17wonderful that's amazing and then she did get married and then divorced right yes yes she married a kind of society photographer and the maritain but she was like the first person in the royal family to get divorced since henry viii or something stupid like that and then all of the current sort of queen's children who all got divorced they wouldn't have really been able to do that without her or at least it would have been a way bigger scandal but because she'd already done it it kind of meant that it was a little bit less of a scandal when prince charles or king charles um got divorced and and all the others interesting yeah i think you're right but she wasn't at all sympathetic to diana was she was she not no no didn't like it didn't like that divorce thought it was a real mess the book is a story of her being unpleasant to everyone around her forever it's amazing but the thing about her birth is that i think she was the last royal to go through a particular process.

28:11So they were not going to become, her parents were not going to become king and queen at the time. Yeah. It was 1930. So George VI was, as he will become, was the younger brother of Edward who then abdicated. So they were not expected to be really significant royals. But even so, the Home Secretary had to be present. Was that the one? Yeah. Oh my God. And this is so cool. So her mum was the Duchess of York. And the Home Secretary was a guy called J.R. Clines at the time in 1930. He wanted to go to Brighton on his summer holidays It was August And he was told no, the Duchess of York is heavily pregnant You've got to stick to her like glue And the idea was That the Home Secretary Is this right, the Home Secretary had to be there So that no one would swap the child out?

28:54Exactly, it's exactly that It's amazing I know, so he wants to go to Brighton The Duchess of York says, I think I'm going to go to Glam's Castle in Scotland Just the opposite of Brighton And someone said Well just pop up on the train when she goes into labour and he said, no, I can't do that. I can't. So he had to go up. He went up on the 5th of August with his ceremonial secretary and they had to wait until the 21st of August, 16 days, doing nothing in a nearby castle. She wasn't in labor for all that time, was she? No, she was just nearly due. She was late as usual.

29:30She began her life inconveniencing someone and she carried on. Wow. They don't do that anymore, do they? Oh, yeah. The Home Secretary still does. Jubana Mahmood is on speed dial. I'm actually really impressed that you could remember the name of the Home Secretary. At time of recording. The place where she could let her hair down and sort of wear a caftan and everything was a musty. Then you can see that property. You can rent that property for£35 ,000 a week, dollars a week. And I've looked it up and it's really good.

30:05James Harkin:Can we all pitch in? What is it? Is it like a Caribbean island or is that the one up in? Can I just say that I'm not really up for pitching in for a Caribbean island at the moment because I think they're a little bit tainted. Yeah, I mean, it's an extremely fancy property. Wow, is it? Yeah. And that was, did she build that up? As in, was that her getaway or did she arrive on something? Who's the guy? You might remember. Someone else owned it. But when she arrived at the island, someone said, would you like a gift for your wedding or maybe a plot of land? She said, yeah, plot of land. Thank you.

30:37Very swiftly. And then she built a house on that. But this is where she met someone who I think she was involved with, which is a chap called John Binden. And I only mentioned him because he was a really dubious figure. He's just a sort of footnote here, but he was a kind of English underworld figure, very dodgy, knew a lot of gangs. I think was a gangster in many ways, living in the Caribbean. Anyway, his party trick was that he could hang five half-pint beer tankards from his penis. No hands. No hands. Wow. He must have been popular at Oktoberfest.

31:19I wonder, yeah. That's the most 1970s fact I think you could possibly come up with. The ones with handles? Yeah, the ones with the handles. Through the handle. Yeah, half-pint, half-pint. Oh, half-pint. But with the handle, yeah, yeah. Right.

31:31James Harkin:And that was his party trick. Yeah, it wasn't his day-to-day. But you'd see it coming, wouldn't you? He's brought the mugs. He's brought the big cuts. This week on Britain's Got Talent.

31:47Anyway. Yeah, I don't know what to say about that. We could do that because like the ventriloquists on the radio, no one could see them. for all the people at home know you could be doing that right now we're all doing it right now even me most of my stuff's about astrology let's do it let's do it okay um have you heard of william parron no he was um the astrologer to henry the seventh and henry the eighth because it used to be that you would have royal astrologers he prophesied that henry the seventh's wife elizabeth of york would live until she was 80 years old and she died when she was 37 he forecast that Henry VIII would have a happy marriage a long marriage to Catherine of Aragon and that he would sire many sons and that he would become a devoted servant to the Catholic Church

32:37James Harkin:it's a tough gig isn't it being an astrologer he basically messed everything up he got everything wrong but the reason basically that he did it is because in those days as an astrologer to the king you basically had to say really good stuff it's like being an advisor to Donald Trump He basically had to say how, oh, your hair's looking great today, Donald, kind of thing. And will tomorrow. Because the two astrologers to Henry VI had been executed on grounds of treason when they forecast that he would have a violent death. So you really couldn't forecast bad things. Otherwise, you get. Yeah. There was someone even at Henry VIII's time, Elizabeth Barton, the holy maid of Kent.

33:18Oh, yeah. She was predicting the king's death. She wasn't even. She wasn't like an official person, was she? No, no, no. She was just sort of wandering mystic And I think she was executed for it Yeah I mean it's a horrible thing to say Something's going to happen to anyone With or without the stars I mean just too invasive a thought It's true Mystic Meg though She never said you're going to die To someone in the audience though Imagine if she came on I don't know what the lottery numbers are this week But I got some bad news for Susan in Kent

33:56James Harkin:Time for fact number three, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that when Caucasian tourists started visiting the mountain gorillas of Congo, local guides went around wearing envelopes as masks so as to help the gorillas get used to the idea of white people. Yeah, this is all to do with gorilla tourism, which is a huge help to many countries. It helps the gorillas themselves because it relaxes anyone wanting to poach them because I'll make more money by protecting them. Not like an egg, Andy. This is the poach word. Is that what you thought I was saying? No. Right. You'd need a very big pan to pipe the gorilla.

34:35James Harkin:Sorry, he gave me a look as I said the word poach. And I thought, hey, he thinks I mean eggs.

34:43Andy's reading the newspaper going, why are they arresting all these people and just making eggs? I don't understand it. I gave you a look down because you said it relaxes the people who would otherwise post the gorillas and i just thought that was a funny

34:55James Harkin:way of putting it i saw a video um which had this story in it and it was at the kahozi biega national park in the democratic republic of congo and the gorillas that they have there are the largest gorillas in the world the eastern lowland gorilla so that basically uh when gorilla tourism happens um a lot of white people start arriving from overseas and largely the gorillas there haven't seen white people before so there's this one instance where the locals got all these envelopes and they cut holes for eyes two little nostrils and a mouth and put a little bit of rope and tied it up and they spent two or three times going back to meet the gorilla because every time it kept running away it was very scared and eventually it got used to the look and they thought we think we've got this right so they asked the local authorities to provide a white man to test it out on and so he came along and it didn't run away and then they're like great the gorilla's ready oh i thought like he would have run away until he put a little stamp on the top of his head yeah yeah so uh yeah it's just a thing that happens because gorilla tourism from europeans from people coming over from america and canada provide huge amounts of money uh for a lot of different countries and a lot of local areas yeah it was controversial wasn't it at first because obviously the dream is for the gorillas to be living without human without any tourism really but it does as you say it brings in so much money and that money also gets they've innovated so it's definitely put back into the local community so everyone who lives nearby is also on board and that's helping yeah with living standards there and like just it's it's helping build up those communities and when places like rwanda where you know you had these huge outbreaks of all gorillas were almost completely made extinct off the back of it or were certainly heading that way so anyone who wanted to protect them was risking their life, but they weren't really being paid for it.

36:45James Harkin:And that's what this is now providing. And so, yeah, it's, uh, I've never done it myself. I've never gone, Nina, just purely because of your connection to monkey. Have you ever thought to do something like that? Well, I don't think I, I'd need more than an envelope on my face to relax a gorilla. I think if I met a gorilla, I'd send out so many signals to it to kill me. I just then put myself in that thing. It would all be fear and need and the air would be electric with this sort of nosedive I'd be doing mentally. I love gorillas. I love orangutans. I love them. I want them to be safe. But I can't even imagine a gorilla particularly cares about a face or the colour of face.

37:30I feel like they would size you up, your weight, your, you know, your edibility. There's eye contact and there's... There's eye contact, yeah. I think the important thing, if you're near a gorilla, and if you're listening and you're near a gorilla right now, this might save your life, is just go low status. Don't go in, you know, big swinging dicks thinking you're all that. No pint glasses. No pint glasses.

37:58James Harkin:He died showing his party trick. But is it like, because there's quite a lot of different animals that half of them, it seems, you have to make yourself big and scary and the other half, you have to either run away or make yourself very small. Absolutely. Don't run away because they can run at 25 miles an hour. Don't make yourself big and scary. Don't make eye contact. And they might sort of passive-aggressively brush past you in that way of, you know, they're a commuter who's like... Like, did you spill my pint? A little bit and you just sort of say, okay yeah fair enough that's yeah that's on me yeah yeah and if they're charging at you yeah don't do anything don't run away yeah because most charges are a bluff if anything make yourself a bit smaller go on the ground slightly so it doesn't look like it's being intimidated by your size either there's this whole uh sort of faq page on the varanga national park which is in congo and it tells you all these details so if it does get to you and it's angry and you're down on the ground let it attack you it says it's the attack may include severe biting and pounding or tearing with the gorilla's hands um but it will eventually stop if it sees you as not a threat uh it might then just fold you into its arms and just sit with you let it do that don't try and take its arm off because its arm don't try and lift it it's like you know if like you're in the cinema and you're on your first date and they put their arm around you and you like take it off them they say don't do that don't do that the gorilla remain quiet and passive until it loses interest and goes it has all of this on its website and right underneath all of this is a button that says book online now wow diane fossey by the way who was one of the great primate um professionals i don't know what like a jane goodall yeah her and jane goodall there was there was one other as well the three of them roughly at the same time under the sort of mentorship of a man called lewis leakey all went out into different bits of the world and studied primates and she was not a fan of this gorilla tourism um but i think it was different then we didn't know quite enough and we didn't know what good it does for them now and the money wasn't going into local exactly areas as well we didn't even know they existed until like the mid-19th century really yeah that's incredible in the west obviously like in europe so there was an american missionary called dr thomas savage quite good name for someone who likes to find gorillas but he went to congo in 1847 and managed to be told by the locals where to see those gorillas and he brought back some bones and stuff and then brought them to scientists in in europe and they then described gorillas for the first time and then there became like this big sort of thing of everyone loved gorillas so you had gorilla ballets in london and really and tutus and oh no sorry no it was people it wasn't actual gorillas it was like not like the bear baiting yeah no no costume for that show is very very high risk job it just became fashionable to do like gorilla themed things it's just the curtain opens and the costume designer sat there with a gorilla in his arm over him.

41:15Help me! The ballerina who normally gets thrown a couple of feet in the air just goes right through the ceiling. No, there was also a gorilla quadrille for piano that was very popular. The sheet music was very popular. So yeah, it became like a little bit of a meme. That's great. I love a micromania, which always happens whenever there's anything new. The really impressive people who work in these two national parks where you get uh mountain gorillas which is the one of the rarest kinds that there are lots of other kinds of gorillas but the mountain ones are the rarest the really impressive people are the vets who are patching them up after they've had fights with other gorillas so they they go in to the gorilla's territory every day in small teams um they're checking their health and they're stitching up the gorilla inflicted wounds and you can't put a plaster cast on them if they've got a fracture no um oh they do they do put cast on sorry but it's not plastic because they just they rip it off so you have to put on a fiberglass one and then paint it to match their fur wow paint the cast it's just it's so interesting this amazing it's really hard work do they fight each other a lot i think a reasonable amount yeah because you get male groups don't you you get family groups and then you get all male groups oh yeah and i I think there's a bit of a, there's a sort of lad pad area.

42:34And then they'll occasionally leave the lad pad and try and found a family and things like this. As do we.

42:41James Harkin:Yeah, these doctors, by the way, Andy, they're amazing. Because not only have they been patching them up, and supposedly this has been responsible for the survival rate. They're going much higher. The fact that they've got dedicated doctors now. But also there's been a lot of mysterious gorilla deaths that they don't understand. So if a gorilla dies, it kind of dies on its own. And then by the time anyone finds it, it's half gone. the body's disintegrated somewhat and they can't really work out what it is. Doctors have managed to get to gorillas that have recently died and worked out that one of the biggest killers is...

43:11James Harkin:Ventriloquists. Ventriloquists. No, but it is vent. It is ventilation because it's humans passing on the common cold and flu. And they're really susceptible. So tourists, when they go there and they probably go, God, I'm going to just hide the fact that I'm feeling a bit ill so that I can see the gorillas. They're passing on really dangerous disease. I think you had to wear face masks, didn't you? Even before COVID, it was one of the places that, you know, you would see people in Asia wearing them, and you would see people on safari wearing them. Yep, exactly. I think you have to stay several, seven or ten metres away from the gorillas now, because just, you know, don't give them a cold.

43:47Yeah.

43:48James Harkin:That's the reason. Yeah. That I'm not going to stand right next to a gorilla. No, no, I would. I totally would. I totally would. I just feel like I was sniveling. But take their arm off But make sure that you wash it for 10 seconds While singing happy birthday I remember there was this thing about They gave you like glasses Which it looked like your eyes Were looking in a different direction Because of the eye contact thing Oh cool really Yeah you could print them out And there'd be a tiny hole in them So you could see the gorillas But the gorilla would think you weren't looking directly at them Be careful which way you turn your head And accidentally set it off Yeah, that's true.

44:29James Harkin:You're staring at a baby gorilla view while mum is staring there. Exactly, you're staring right at the one on the left. And there was also a thing in Toronto Zoo where they asked visitors to stop showing gorillas' videos on their phones. And the people in the zoo just said, we'd rather you didn't do that. I took Monkey to the zoo once and they really did react. The capuchins or little ones, they were little ones. And they went jumping around. They went crazy. And it was, yeah, that was really extreme. You had your hand up one of their friend's ass. Like, that's not going to. Are we all going to get this treatment?

45:03James Harkin:Yeah. They really didn't like my material.

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47:31James Harkin:Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy. My fact is, the greatest Shakespeare editor of all time is also the worst Shakespeare editor of all time. This is about a guy called John Payne Collier. Okay. Who was an academic in the 19th century and a really well-known Shakespeare scholar. And the only thing you need to know for this is that basically there's no original Shakespeare manuscript. So when they say like first folios, what are they? So first folio is the first collection of plays. and we have a few that were printed in what's called quarto which is where you fold the sheet of paper twice as sort of a cheap early edition.

48:09We have a few first quarters. But we don't have him actually writing it. Exactly. We've got no manuscript. And so the search has always been to find the most original possible version of Shakespeare's plays. And most plays that you get these days are a combination of quartos or first or second folios. The folios are the collections where they were first bound up, right? Right. So you need to find something as early as possible to get more authentic Shakespeare. That's the thing. And so this scholar, John Pencollier, 19th century, he found a book in Great Newport Street in London, and it was a copy of the second folio, which was printed less than 20 years after Shakespeare's death, right?

48:47So relatively contemporaneous. And he noticed when he properly looked at it, that there were 20 ,000 handwritten corrections in the margins of this text. There were extra bits, there were observations. So this was extraordinary because this would make the book he had found the most authoritative version in existence of Shakespeare's work. This would make it super significant. Cool. Yeah, really exciting. People went nuts. He had moved Shakespeare studies forward massively and he'd faked it all. Really? It's the punchline. Yeah.

49:23James Harkin:That's why he's the worst of all time. They were his annotations. They were his annotations. Yeah, people noticed, didn't they, that the handwriting looks suspiciously similar to his actual handwriting. So his own handwriting exists somewhere, does it? I think we've got his Shakespeare signature. We have like six signatures, but that's about it. But he spells the word Shakespeare, the surname Shakespeare, different every single time. So this John Pencolier had become the talk of the town. It was a huge deal. This mysterious figure, the old corrector, who had made these 20 ,000 annotations, it was all just complete nonsense.

49:55Why did he do it Andy? I don't know Why does anyone forge things? Professional glory? As you say

50:01James Harkin:He was already at the top of the game He was He was the guy So to do that was Maybe for the lols? It was for the lols And this book was very successful financially When he printed You know Here's my version of the volume So it did make him a lot of money at first And I guess he weirdly was collaborating with Shakespeare Because he was suggesting edits to certain lines And rewrites wasn't he? which would have then been taken up as the new version, possibly. Or at least certain texts would do that. I should say this all came from a fantastic Financial Times article about it. It was really, really good.

50:35What was the period, Andy? This was the mid-19th century that he was covering this. Okay, so Shakespeare at this stage is becoming like... He's dead. His plays are becoming a big deal, right? Yeah, they had a weird dip. They went up and down, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, there's big interest at the time in Shakespeare for sure. I'm really curious what these notes were that he had a thousand. 20 ,000. Oh, yeah. 20 ,000. That's a lot of improvements he wanted to make. And were they alternative line readings or what were they? I think some of them were, yeah. And others were just skipping or amendments or, I mean, it was, I think, a bit of everything.

51:14It was a lot of changes. Yeah.

51:16James Harkin:But he's putting it on a very old manuscript as well, like on top of anything else. That's desecrating. this very important it was old presumably because I think they worked out the ink that he had used clearly was not ink that was from the time it went to that kind of forensic level he really hadn't thought it through he probably just thought I'll get away with this there were quite a lot of people who are making changes around that time and even before that time when they saw Baudelaire is the famous one like Baudelaireising means to sort of change something because you make it less rude, I suppose.

51:54But it wasn't just him. Alexander Pope, who's a friend of the podcast, he was changing Shakespeare and rewriting bits that he thought weren't good enough. And he thought, I could make it better. Lewis Carroll, he made some version of Shakespeare plays where he cut out all the obscene bits. Wow. So it was like quite a trend of people thinking, oh, this is very lowbrow. We're going to remove that stuff. And some people thought that the reason that Shakespeare put those rude bits in was just because the audience liked it. And really, if Shakespeare had his way, he would have made it all very highbrow.

52:28Oh, that's how I feel. But actually, I always think about when it comes to the funny bits in Shakespeare, which aren't always very funny, and the fool is often the real low point, that that's what that guy did, the guy who did it first. That's what he did. It was his bit, and he knew how to make that funny. and then it's almost like doing somebody else's material. I don't know if that's true, but I mean, that's what it feels like sometimes. I know what you mean, because Shakespeare would have had his favourite actors. He would have had a real funny guy who was hilarious with the skull or whatever.

53:02But in 400 years, a Michael McIntyre routine won't have the same punch that it does today. Untrue. Untrue. I can imagine Dan getting some old Michael McIntyre scripts and just rewriting them a little bit. Mandraw Nahum Tate was another one in the 17th century This is only about 60 years after Shakespeare died Rewrote King Lear To make both the king and Cordelia survive Which, spoiler, they don't in the original For 150 years The character of The Fool Who's a big deal in King Lear And he's not very funny But he's very integral to the plot You know, making King Lear realise he's been mad You know, The Fool didn't exist in the play for 150 years Because Nahum Tate wrote him out And this is why people need original Shakespeare's Is because it's very hard to tell what is in the original text If you're going off even something slightly later

53:56James Harkin:Yes, right And this is the Royal Shakespeare Company Which you were part of, Nina I was, I was there for years That's been a hugely important thing In getting Shakespeare back onto the stages In the West End, in Stratford-upon-Avon Has become the place that people now go to see I mean, that's where you were based, weren't you? That's where I was based Yeah, for those years. What were you doing? Did you start as a spear carrier and then work your way up? And I never managed to work my way up. I was furniture, really. I was what's called player's cast, which means you just sort of get in, you get the odd bit to do.

54:32I did play Audrey in As You Like It, made a lot of it, I think. There's not many lines. And I was the courtesan in Comedy of Errors. And it was really, they worked you very hard. You never had a day off and you often had to go to a voice coach or you were just working all the time. But I didn't have very much to do on stage. And that did make me mischievous. And it did make me want to do something more. And that's when I became a ventriloquist, actually. Oh, well, yeah.

55:04James Harkin:Interestingly, William Shakespeare was an amateur ventriloquist. Was he? He could throw his voice behind an arras. That's a specific Hamlet based joke. James you can plug a laugh in there can't you I can try It'll be hard to find a realistic one for that joke No um So Polonius is hiding behind the curtain And Hamlet says a rat and stabs him Well the way you all reacted I thought you didn't I didn't know Aris I didn't know Aris I thought you were I also was too hack I was too obvious McIntyre would have done it You've seen McIntyre do that Yeah yeah yeah No um He was a ventriloquist Well, not really.

55:44James Harkin:Vent Haven Museum, the one that houses all of the dummies, was founded by William Shakespeare Burger. Oh. Yeah. That's also something you can buy and strap it upon. How would you like your burger? I'll have it as you like it. Super.

56:03James Harkin:And also the list of the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's pretty amazing, the alumni that you're part of, Nina. I don't know who was in your year, but, you know, obviously people like Ian McKellen and Judi Dench and Brian Blessed, you know, all these people were part of it. David Tennant. You had Tennant? In your year? Tennant was, yes, he was in Comediar Veris with me. It was his courtesan. Because it's very serious. They take it very seriously. Did you ever get to do any more fun productions? Did you ever get to do something like Bouncy Castle Hamlet or whatever it might be? As fun as it got was a five hour play called Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw.

56:36that was light entertainment. I was nude in that and I got birthed from an egg.

56:45James Harkin:Oh, poached?

56:51Very poached.

56:54James Harkin:You will, I think Nina, know about this story. There was a very big hoax that was pulled off for the RSC. That's a good one. Yeah, whereby it became, for a moment, the Royal Dickens Company as opposed to Shakespeare. Do you want to tell this story if you know it? You might know it. The best I can remember, it's Ken Campbell, who was the guy who sent me on the ventriloquist path. He wrote letters with a fake headed notepaper from the Royal Shakespeare Company saying that we are now moving on to Dickens. Very good. We're moving on from the Bard. And he wrote to all the members of the Royal Shakespeare Company and actors offering them roles in Dickens' plays.

57:37Great. And every single letter he signed, Love Trev, as Trevor Nunn.

57:42James Harkin:Trevor Nunn was the artistic director at the time. And I think I'm right in saying that he was away overseas on holiday at the time. So he had no idea. I think I'm right in saying that. And he wouldn't have been in contact because it's not like you're on your emails because this must have been a while ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so good. So he came back to all this chaos and no one knew who did it. And finally, Ken revealed that he'd done it to Newsnight, I think it was, who finally tracked down that it was him. But yeah. Yeah, and they gave him criminal lighting, he said, as he was interviewed.

58:10He got hoaxes blues after he posted all these letters because nobody answered for a very long time. Really? It seemed like anything was going to happen. Normally if you write to an actor saying, I'm offering you work, you'll get a reply by return of post. I would like to have seen this. That's so funny. Yeah. I think the weirdest production I've ever seen was in Konigsberg Castle in Denmark when we were on tour in Denmark. And the castle is the original Elsinore, or it's the one that inspired Elsinore. I think it's the one. And they were doing kind of walking Hamlet around the place. So, you know, you'd see one scene in this room and then you'd wander off and you'd see another scene happening in this room.

58:52And these actors are kind of running between each bit. but there were some tourists who did not really respect the boundary between art and audience and there were some who were just wandering up to Hamlet in the middle of quite an emotional scene just to have their picture taken next to him. He's trying to have his epic final sword fight with Laertes and there's just an elderly Chinese lady standing literally next to him, touching him, just grinning for the camera. It was fantastic. I did a Macbeth one, which was similar to that. But during the scene in Glam's castle, Princess Margaret was born.

59:29Beautiful. Beautiful. We mentioned earlier about Shakespeare's name and we have a few versions of his signature. Two of those signatures are on his marriage license and his marriage bond. But on those two documents, the name of the woman is different. So on his marriage license, it says that he was married to Ann Waitley, W-H-A-T-E-L-E-Y. And then his marriage bond says he was married to Ann Hathaway. And we don't know why. It could be. What most people think is probably it was just a mistake and they just misheard it or in those days spelling was different. And so maybe she was called something in between those two.

1:00:13But there's another version, which is basically he was going to marry this person called Ann Waitley and then he changed his mind and married Dan Hathaway instead Isn't that amazing though? It's so bizarre

1:00:26James Harkin:It's amazing how little we know about him I know it's not when you really dig into how much we knew about people and it's often said we know way more about him than but we don't know enough to know that he definitely wrote the plays according to a lot of debate What is that sentence? We don't know enough to know that he wrote the plays according to a lot of We can't conclusively It's a big debate isn't it? within the like you would think for someone we knew so much about serious debate though well oxford's university press recently gave a co-credit to who was it one of the major other playwrights mcintyre mcintyre there's a brilliant fit where mcbeth it's with it it's in mcbeth and mcbeth going on and on about you know getting onto a plane and uh the awkward etiquette yeah it's really funny well also a lot of his stories are basically ripped off from other stories yeah yeah so like Romeo and Juliet is based on a story by William Painter.

1:01:18We're pretty sure because it's pretty much the same story. That was based on a poem by Arthur Brock, which was inspired by a collection of stories by Pierre Boistow, which was in turn inspired by a novella by Matteo Bandello, who was inspired by a story by Luigi da Porto. So it's like a story as old of time of two star-crossed lovers both carking it at the end. That's brilliant.

1:01:44James Harkin:that's my spoiler again spoiler alert sorry you're wasted as a blurb writer for the back of books

1:02:00James Harkin:okay that's it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast we can all be found online i'm on at shriberland on instagram james my instagram is no such thing is james harkin andy at andrew hundram and nina the nina conti and nina conti yeah so follow that uh because you post up a lot of information about things that are upcoming including the fact that now available on prime is your feature length movie that you co-wrote you star in that you directed yes called sunlight uh very excited that that's getting out in the world it's been seven years in the making and it's my proudest thing to date so yeah james james has watched it and says he liked it.

1:02:42James Harkin:James has never said he liked anything to anyone in this room outside of that situation. Genuinely, if I didn't like it, I would have pretended that I never saw it. But I did. I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. So good. Well, that's available now if you have Amazon Prime and, uh, yeah. Amazon Prime 8, more like. Yes, it is more like. I have no comments about that joke. Um, hey, listen, if you want to get to us as a group, though, podcast at qi.com. Send all of your emails there because Andy goes through them all and he cherry picks the best ones for two separate places. We have Little Fish, which is our Monday show where he takes all the best facts that you guys have sent in and we spend a whole episode going through all of those.

1:03:21James Harkin:You can listen to those apps every Monday. And then the other half are the correspondence that we take to drop us a line, which is our audience feedback show. And if you want to get access to that, you just need to go and join Club Fish, which is part of Patreon. So patreon.com slash club fish. You'll find lots of different tiers there. There's lots of extra bonuses. It's a really fun place. So do check it out. Otherwise, come back here next week because we've got another episode. Just a quick thank you as ever to Leeng Li and Ethan Ruparelia, as well as the Bigger Fish Buster team here at the QI offices.

1:03:53James Harkin:And we'll see you again next week. Goodbye.

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