1000th Episode Special

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2:58Al Murray: Axtung, axtung, Jim. That's what we used to say. Yes, yes. We still do occasionally. Danger, danger. Exactly. Alarm, alarm. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole and all that. Welcome everyone to the 1000th episode of We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. If you've listened to all 1000, you don't know who we are by now. Something's gone horribly wrong, hasn't it? Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it just goes to show what a completely bottomless pit the Second World War is. Yes. I mean, that I think is probably our opening thought and will be our final thought. We've now run longer than the greatest conflict the world has ever known.

3:31Yes. Rachel has made this point.

3:34Al Murray: several times but i think it's very appropriate that we sat here at your festival chalk history festival because because we started in my kitchen didn't we so we got a tiny acorns to mighty oaks story here yes and we're and in your kitchen we were sort of thinking well what are we going to do like every episode we'll have a little artifact and we'll talk about that and then we'll then we'll structure it really carefully and you showed me a little bit of spitfire spa yeah yeah i can't what i had something you brought a radio oh did i you brought a great big you know your your funk episode one jim brought jim brought the funk literally in the form of his um uh as uh folks funk wasn't it your german people's radio but we should talk about how it all came about in the first place because you tell your story then i'll tell mine we'll see how they compare that's history so so i was trying to raise money for um a film that didn't get made of a pair of silver wings a novel i wrote ages ago and we had this big big fundraising sort of junket at the rf club yeah and uh a great friend of mine nick brought tony pastor there yeah tiny tony tiny tiny my name's tony pastor i am the co-founder of gold hanger and i came up with the idea for we have ways of making you talk i was at ascot the other day and someone won a load of money on a horse called two bob tony that i i decided not to bet on because i thought it would be disrespectful to tony of goalhanger and actually on reflection it would have been the right thing to do and i don't want a whole heap of cash anyway anyway so tony tony came along to that at the rf club and he had he he's half maltese or quarter maltese or something anyway he's got some he's the maltese falcon my uh grandmother was a maltese girl in the second world war and she married a british soldier my grandfather who was stationed there with the hampshire regiment for three years they got married while he was there and he then went off for the invasion of and she moved to the uk and arrived on d-day he had just read my book fortress malta yeah and he was really into into second world war but his background was in sport and he'd set up this company called goal hanger films yes with gary lineker yeah to make the kind of bits in between on programs of you know big sporting occasions you know it's it's the big match and beforehand they have all the vts and all the rest of it they were doing all that and they were doing you know bold matches and stuff as well because i met tony um two world cups ago right years ago um at a at a junket where um they were launching a bunch of goal hangers films about the history of the world cup so there was one about the 1970s dictators south american dictators in the world cup and And then another one about Maradona and the hand of God.

6:16Al Murray: Yes. And I was comparing that and I met Tony at that. So he was sort of, he was sort of, you know. He was in your orbit. I think he was on the radar rather than the orbit. We weren't caught in each other's gravitational field. Chain home or chain home low? Chain home. Yeah. Okay. Still forming up over. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I could see him coming, but I didn't know how much of him there was. Anyway. Yeah. So he said, would I be interested? They'd just started doing a football podcast with Gary and Danny Baker. Yeah. He said, would I be interested in doing a Second World War podcast? And I went, yeah, absolutely.

6:50And he said, well, thing is, I think you need to do it with someone. Can you think of anyone? I went, yeah, absolutely. Because you and I, by that stage, were having not infrequent meetups where we'd chew the cud and talk about the war. I didn't know James before that, but I'd read Fortress Malta relatively recently and loved it and wanted to meet him. And this was just a fabulous excuse to do so. I bizarrely knew his agent, who was also Kevin Peterson, the cricketer's agent. And he was able to put me in touch with James. And I went and met him in the RAF club in London, which was, of course, an entirely appropriate place to meet James Holland.

7:27He certainly wouldn't have been in the Royal Navy club, would he? But yeah, we met that day. He was very busy. And we agreed after a short chat to go and have lunch, which we did. I asked him who he had all his best conversations with about the Second World War. And James said to me, you're not going to believe this, but it's actually the comedian Al Murray, a.k.a. the pub landlord. He said every time he comes to town, we meet up and talk about the Second World War. And I said, let's get Al. Let's the three of us meet. Let's see if we can make this happen.

7:57Al Murray: We had that great afternoon at Coach and Horses with my dad, who had his hearing aid on for some of it, which was great fun. Yes, he did interject with Bon Mo about the airborne. That's right. Yeah, yeah. or say well he was useless well of course he made an absolutely terrible mistake yeah and so on and with Dolby's as well Trevor Dolby was there as well he popped in for a bit yeah and we drank a lot of Guinness and we talked about stuff and anyway so then Tony says to you who would you like to do the podcast with and I said with Al Murray and I was about to have lunch with you and we went to that subterranean place near Piccadilly yeah ZL, Brasley ZL and is that what he had yeah it was a bit dry no i've not had the cassoulet there since i prefer i go for the pomfret normally and i said steak thing is being asked to do this world war ii podcast i mean you know how do you fancy doing it and you just went yeah yeah and here we are and here we are well although although then there was a bit there was a bit of like what actually we're going to talk about tony and this is the amazing thing and i'm sure many other guys listening yeah yeah listen by the way listening tony i'm sure many of the um other goal hanger hosts will be astounded by this because, you know, now it's like, it's like essentially three Death Stars worth of podcasts.

9:09Al Murray: It used to be like half a Death Star. Now it's like three or four Death Stars worth eating entire media ecosystems. In fact, if Goalhanger continues expanding at this rate that it's expanding at, it will reach Jupiter by Christmas next year. Yeah. That's my estimation of the numbers. Without reaching its culmination point. It's not going to reach... Goalhanger will never reach its culmination point. They're going to get across the Divina, the Dnipa, and all the way to the vulgar. East of the Urals. East of the Urals. And we'll get to East of the Urals. They're going to get, yeah. Where everyone else has failed.

9:40Goalhanger will get that far without running it, without the wheels coming on. Anyway, because we were media types, we all were met at Soho House. It was me and you and Nick Hartwell who'd introduced me to Tony in the first place.

9:53Al Murray: But basically, Tony used to write his scripts though, didn't he? Yeah, beginning. He would write his scripts. That's why the other Goalhanger hosts would not believe this. He had the time. Hannah Fry doesn't get given like science notes by Tony Pastor. I mean, he'd be mad to do that. And you came out of Actung, Actung. Yeah, and We Have Ways of Make You Talk. That was yours. Because we all said, well, what are we going to call it? And you just went, well, we've got to call it We Have Ways of Make You Talk. Which actually, you know, in retrospect, we should have just called it World War II. No.

10:16Al Murray: No. All right. No, we can't rebrand this late in the day. We're not Consignia. We're not the post office calling ourselves Consignia out of nowhere. Yeah, that didn't go well. It cost them millions of total cock-ups. The post office, you can't change its name, you Muppets. You're quite right. the first thing was we would bring stuff to look at yeah we had your spitfire spa well i've got that bit of funk yeah i had that bit i've got a bit of spitfire spa yes which is those which is those concentric square pieces of slices of aluminium yes that's mitchell's amazing yes design where it's it's it's these tubes it looks like the coolest paperweight you've ever seen it's because it is the coolest paper well i know but it looks like so the reason why we're here yeah is because great friend of the show, Adam Shushforge, is here at the Chalk History Festival doing a talk on Taranto as Johnny Wellham, one of the pilots in E5H.

11:10Al Murray: And we covered Taranto November last year. In year six. In year six. Final year of the war. In year six, we got to the second year of the war. That's quite right. But I've got really good news, actually, because we were seeing Jonathan Fennell talking the other day And his new thesis is that the war started in 1931 and ended in 1949. Yes. So we're not even at the end of the war yet. Yes. And he's right. 1931 is when the international order collapses. Yep. So we've got a whole raft of... Japanese go into Manchuria, create Manchuria. Yep. The international order begins to disintegrate. Yes. And the events in Europe, people are taking their lead from what the Japanese are getting away with.

11:47Al Murray: It's not Hitler driving things. It's him going, all right, I can do that now, can I? Yeah. That's where they, you know, and then the Italians, in fact, ahead of him. in terms of bending the international order, screwing up the League of Nations. But how does he pick the end date, though? Is that partition or something? Well, I don't know. He's only written volume one. I haven't got that far. It's volume two. So we'll have to wait. Being Jonathan for now, I had lots of statistics and lots of morale. Brilliant. He's so good. He's so good on that. Accounts. It's so interesting. He's so good on that, like ghost in the machine side of it.

12:21Al Murray: Because you can look at what the factories are churning out, but it's the it's getting people to do it the billion letters that were going out by every minute yeah it's amazing from the feld post yeah yeah it's amazing absolutely but but taranto so we looked at we looked at the taranto raid is the most amazing story to see it depicted like this is particularly as we've um a two-part series that became four yeah yeah it was a two-part series that became four because you've got the you've well you've got all the the fact is is they're very busy in the mediterranean with these kind of operations anyway yeah you know this um uh uh when they're rounding up what's left of the French Navy.

12:56Al Murray: Yeah.

12:59Al Murray: We haven't done Melzicabir yet, have we? No, but we're going to. We're going to. What's so interesting about this, though, is the Royal Navy knew this harbour because they'd been here in the First World War. Yes, it's a great place to visit, actually. And you can go, there's a little footbridge that takes you into the Mar Piccolo. You can just see it all. You can see how it's all played out. It's fantastic. And you can walk all along this bit where Johnny Wellen went down an EH5. you can literally walk along this cornish it's all sort of industrialized and uh um now and and still a naval base i should hasten to add um and it's just absolutely fantastic superb place to visit i mean the other thing is uh quite recently we flew in a swordfish didn't we jim yes and we're told that it was easier to go into space with spacex than it is to get a seat in a swordfish yeah we're like really yeah all right i'll tell you that yeah and we didn't have to pay what you pay for spacex no that is also i think if i if i were a billionaire i'd probably buy the swordfish i don't think i'd um buy a rocket no i'm just not interested in space at all no no because you want to go to the second world war why would you want to go to mars why would you want to get the moon there's nothing there oh jim why would you want to go to the moon when you when you could i don't know go and follow the tracks of the lrdg in the western desert okay well it's a compelling argument well it is for me and this was in april may april may of 2019 wasn't it so it was before yes april before the uh the great emergency that no one refers to anymore that has been memory hold okay the pandemic anyone remember that no i thought not erased it erased it it's been completely erased hasn't it it's been stuffed stuffed in the memory hole but it was going very nicely and i remember that first summer i was in july i was in burkus garden and i remember on a family holiday.

14:39Al Murray: Why go to the moon when he could go to Bertis County? That's my case. So I was there and I remember we were in the Kempinski Hotel, which was built on the side of Goering's house. And I remember recording live from there because in those days, audio was all you needed. Yeah, that's right. I'm Joey McCarthy. I'm the former producer of We Have Ways of Making You Talk with Al Murray and James Holland. and I was their producer for the first approximately 750 to 800 episodes. When I joined Goalhanger, I was told by Tony Pasta that I'd work in the glamorous world of sports production and they said, we've got this little idea, it's something called a podcast.

15:20So we made our way to Chiswick to the original sort of We Have Ways headquarters, to Al Murray's kitchen. Al Murray greeted us, got us a brew, and it was all very lovely. And then a man came onto Zoom, and it was James Holland, and he had this beautiful azure blue background. It was the sky. It was sort of clear skies with a few beautiful white fluffy clouds, and we all said to him, Jim, where are you? And he was holding his iPhone at the time on the Zoom and he went, I'm at the Eagle's Nest. He was at Hitler's Austrian Alps home recording the very first podcast there, which kind of was par for the course for the entire podcast and my history with it.

16:20Is that hotel as good as it says it is?

16:22Al Murray: It's like the Lufthansa? Yeah, yeah, yeah. it is as good as it says it is it's not like the look yeah and you know what and the one of the good things about it is the lifts work really quickly boom really yeah no waiting right amazing breakfast amazing views why go to the moon anyway so i'd take the compinster so that summer so you're in berchtesgaden this is one of your i was in berchtesgaden anecdotes you're in berchtesgaden and well no it's just i just remember recording it there i just i just remember having to sort of i i remember being we had this room where it had a little terrace out on the roof and you could look over to the Untersberg um which was and the northern lights and the normal eyes yes and the red was shining down on it and someone said you know this time there'll be a lot of blood no that didn't happen but i remember i remember for having this sort of do i admit where i am moment and then i thought no you know already yeah we're in we're in come on let's just say it let's spell it out as it is yeah yeah well and then the and then of course the pandemic came which I think is the, I think the reason there's a podcast industry at all is that little COVID-19 virus.

17:25Al Murray: I think that is. Yeah, I think someone ate bat soup and here we are, right? I mean, people blame a lot of things in this country on bats. Yeah. Right? You can't build that motorway because of the bats, right? But the pandemic was built by bats. Yeah. Podcasting, goal hanger, owes everything to our tiny, tiny velvet hypersonic friend. And that's when we really sort of dug into this, didn't we? because there was nowhere to go. Well, we started creating that. We created a little community, didn't we? Which, I mean, you're in charge of names. So you came up with the independent company because you're a chef of Airborne.

17:59Al Murray: From Zeno, from Zeno's book, The Cauldron. That's right, The Cauldron, which you were recording, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, I was recording it as an audio book because I did a lot of that because there was nothing else to do. Well, there's models. Yeah, but you want to do something productive rather than just paint Shermans. I think you could argue that's quite productive. It's quite productive. Okay, point taken. so you did that and then and then we we built up the independent company and we started doing these live streams every every week where we'd get drunk and watch band of brothers i remember there was times where post pandemic where i was staying with you and i remember it was what really really funny night where we were talking about you know our our tv experiences and walking and we were drinking spate bugunda that's right because every time i used to come stay with you i'd always bring you german wine because it's funny yeah it's that's what it's delicious yes there's a story about the bloke in the soup oh yes yes epic story tell the story jim well yes for those who don't know it so so we were filming at tom neill's house and tom neill's legendary fighter pilot yeah flew a 249 squadron in the battle of britain um and on malta he was flying with the americans in this way he seconded the americans so he flew on that strip that was built behind omaha beach on d plus one yeah so he did all sorts of amazing things and he was he was just such a lovely bloke and he was so funny and his wife eileen they'd met during the war i think and she was a section officer so when he was feeling stern with her he'd go oh we do be quiet section officer and you know i'm calling you wing commander you've got another thing anyway and they would sort of you know affectionately bicker yeah and anyway we were filming him and eileen at this point was you know in her 90s and her eyesight was going and she said well i've made you all some soup for lunch and we said oh you know you don't need to do that but no no no come and have soup anyway we had a sound guy he was quite, he was a bit devoid of charm.

19:46Right, okay. A bit devoid of charm. Okay. And I only kept saying, have some soup. And he'd go, no, that's alright, I don't want soup. And he'd go, no, no, no, have some soup. And he'd go, no, no, I really don't want any soup. And everyone else was having soup. And I just really wanted to say to him, just eat the effing soup. And I was telling this story a bit pissed. It has to be said. I had too much papercunda.

20:08Al Murray: That was a fantastic evening. And then someone made a t-shirt, didn't they that's right someone made did make that that that that t-shirt the community came to us i mean that's been the really really brilliant thing is it was completely and i'm not going to use the word organic and i'm not going to word you use the word uh grassroots i'm not going to say bottom up the community uh of listeners and now viewers um for we have ways making you talk is our strongest most impassioned community and we have built the show around them and for them. It is the closest thing you could have to a huge collective audience that influences the editorial.

20:46They make demands. We try to provide what they want. They come to our live shows. We know many of them by their first names. I'm proud to say I've met thousands of them at We Have Way's Best. I try and remember as many names as I can. I remember an awful lot of faces, shake an awful lot of hands, and they have become friends.

21:05Al Murray: this whole thing happened completely spontaneously in the in the during the pandemic and then we ended up with the festival in the september after after the like nine millionth lockdown yeah and uh there was that protracted period i think that that christ second whichever lockdown it was that over a christmas where i thought well there's never going to be any more stand-up i remember you saying that to me this is shut forever my job's over i've had a good run hooray you know oh well um this this this will probably do and we that first festival i remember it being not not a sort of hysterical occasion no but there was this there's extraordinary there was a sense of release a real crackle yeah of everyone there and i remember when we came down the middle of that tent and at that that sort of excitement and vibe of it and of everyone finally meeting and if everyone and you know i've made i've made uh tons of friends out of this as well it's been the really rewarding names that used to appear on the sidebar of shame the comments um on the live stream so there was merrin and there was simon from red five and yeah akak and yeah adie bond all these people all these people yeah and michael beveridge now you know we work alongside at world war ii headquarters yeah the highland dives davis yeah paul yeah yeah ditto with world or two headquarters.

22:26So all those names and suddenly they were all there. Yeah. And we were just having the best laugh, weren't we? All getting absolutely tanked up.

22:34Al Murray: There's been a great deal of conviviality with this project, it has to be said. Well, let's go to a break and then we'll come back and continue reminiscing about this absurd project we're involved in. We'll see you in a tick.

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25:58Al Murray: welcome back to the thousandth episode of weird ways to make you talk the one thousand a thousand year podcast that's what this is my days said to me the other day do you realize that's 41 days solid on the basis of it being an hour long well some of them are some of them longer yeah well that's my point so she averaged it out we've had some mission creep i mean this could be the other name for this podcast mission creep the thing i really love about the festival which is in september by the way in case um because one of the remarkable things is i'll speak to bum you know i get this thing where listeners come and say love the and it's always lovely when people do that yes and also because i listen to a fair few podcasts i know what because you think you know the person yeah because they've been in your ears you think you've got like an intimate relationship with them so you have to sort of remember i always try and remember that i don't really know dominic sandbrook who does though he's essentially unknowable right um uh right um and the i do know my brother quite well well yeah but you know but but it's that thing and so people come up and they go i had a guy last weekend i was at basically the village fate in um chiswick where i live and a guy came up and said hello al it's alex i listen to the podcast all the time like nice to meet you I mean, occasionally I get people come out and go, hello, Tom, I love your podcast.

27:07Oh, well, well. Do you? Do you really? Great.

27:10Al Murray: Not that much. What I was saying is that it's really amazing how the listeners have, you know, at the festival, they take part. We've radicalised people. That's what it is, basically. It's like a history madrasa. We've got a Second World War history madrasa we've got, where we're radicalising people, turning them into historians. There's people been getting into print. That has been absolutely amazing. If nothing else, that's been the, whatever I might have learned or picked up along the way of experience, that's been the really for me the thing where you think well that's why this is worthwhile that's why this is it cool and that's why it's andy chatterton's developed a writing career jack boucher's developed a writing career lucy betteridge dyson yeah uh to name but three merin's doing her work yeah um they her and akak have got that their own podcast which is brilliant which is fantastic yeah we've had people from all around the world haven't we we get people from brazil and from the philippines and from john clough comes over from alaska george hode got him early little George yeah not so little now no no he's a great long thing he's all grown up George used to be I go to talk about the Suez crisis not anymore I'm not moving on from that that thing that people have become become historians of the second world war as a result it's just that you know if nothing else that's the that's the thing I high five myself about when I'm at the festival that we've done that really because because that's a completely completely unexpected by-product.

28:33Al Murray: I didn't for a second think that would happen. Didn't think that could possibly occur. And here it is, you know. It's super cool. Yeah, it is. And let's face it, we've had a huge amount of fun. And you think about all the things we've done. We've driven around in T-34 tanks, the swordfish, the Mustang, the Spitfire. Spitfire, your Spitfire adventure. Yeah. I've flown, well, we flew over the Ada, Mona and Sorper, didn't we? Yes. But at a height that didn't really convey the drama. and then I did the simulator through the Taz. That was a great trip to Germany, wasn't it? Yeah, it was absolutely fantastic.

29:06Poor old Joey. Joey, I know. I've had the experience of travelling across Western Europe with Al and James, two absolute experts in Second World War history. One of my least fond memories, however, was our Dambusters series where James, Al and I went to the Ruhr Valley and they both had the brilliant idea. Do you know what would be really good? would be if we could actually fly the Dambusters route. So could you book us a light aircraft and a pilot to fly us the route of the Dambusters over the Ruhr Valley? And I went, yeah, I guess so. So in 24 hours time, I had found a lovely small German pilot school and a small tiny Cessna type airplane.

29:54Al at the front, James in the back, me to the left of James. I've set up GoPros across there so I've got a full 360s kind of experience of it. It's brilliant. What I didn't know is that I get very travel sick in light aircraft. So Al and James are having the time of their life recording a podcast in the air but all of it is useless because in the back there is a young 23 year old producer with his head between his knees vomiting for 45 minutes straight and that, that's showbiz. And then he gave up on us and had to go to the rest of his entertainment. Joey went on showbiz didn't he? Yeah but now he's hanging out with Paul McCartney I mean he wants to do that when he could be going over the Myrna Dam.

30:40I've met Paul McCartney. Okay great. I haven't. but I'm very glad I've been to the murder dam alright okay I'm not the soper my favourite dam's the soper I prefer the murder myself we've also started doing our World War 2 headquarters and we've done our walking the ground we've pretended to hurl grenades at the weapons pit at the edge of Pegasus Bridge we've had hysterics in the hedgerows as you've been reenacting and doing sound effects of mortars and machine guns

31:09Al Murray: and you got braided out by a donkey remember oh my god yeah that was when we were looking at uh where falley had been taken out yeah that's really funny well so we were in um uh in the 101st airborne sector 82nd well doesn't really matter does it they all end up all over yeah but you know but everyone goes on about 101st yeah fair enough good good point well made anyway and and we're walking along this road where uh general falley is ambushed and killed yeah he's killed what jim was doing he was he was moving like a cat. I'm going to say this? Yeah. Like a cat. Selfily. Jim's field craft. Let me just say this.

31:43Al Murray: Jim's field craft is second to none, right? No one moves the landscape like James Holland. One minute as a hedgerow, the next bit Jim emerges from it. Anyway. Where did you come from, Jim? Yeah, exactly. If you need a cup of tea made on an outcrop of rock, Jim's creeping along, like cat-like. And, you know, if he'd been dressed in olive drab at that precise moment, with his face black like that, night camo, Mohican a whole lot. Mohicans are more than 100 first stage second anyway. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's demonstrating how you'd move in this situation. And suddenly, a donkey braid from the exact opposite side of the hedge in his face.

32:22Ah! And he jumped out of your skin.

32:30Al Murray: I did. It's extraordinary. I did. It's really, really funny. And then we had our jeep trip out there. Yep. Amazing trip to Arnhem. amazing trip to Arnhem several trips to Arnhem yeah but the one for the 80th when we went when we went on press side on the Ginkleheath yes so we was just you know 100 ,000 or 200 ,000 people but do you remember when we were filming illegally with the police officer hey I like you your name is Holland yes and then then we said I'm sorry what are we doing illegal yeah it is illegal but we don't care it is illegal but we like you guys so it's okay by us you must come to Rankin Police Station say hi anytime you like okay thanks lads so we were flying this is your no fly zone for your drone because we're on the big we're on DZX weren't we or the big drop zone and it's one of those places when you get there you go well of course you'd drop paratroopers here of course you would you know everyone going oh look at the map it's like it's an absolutely completely ideal place to land people you don't need to have a second one no you don't do a second lift no don't do that one's fine don't do that it's a terrible idea just go to the bridge just go to the bridge all of you all of you all of you go to the bridge I've just remembered or something on what keith brigstock great friend of the show yeah he was over there yeah recently because they go over there every year and they do their kind of whole 30 course shtick yeah uh with his guns yeah and he said i've been thinking about this and he said and i want you to tell this basically the job of first airborne was to take the job the bridge and hold it for two days and they did so from my point of view they were successful that is an argument within the army yeah certainly within the parachute regiment they go well we held it for longer than we hold it for four days they'd held it for nine days if all the bayonets they'd dropped that they had gone to the bridge yes you leave more than half your force behind oh we can't get into this no come on don't start again anyway it was a very moving trip because we did that first of all we we hung out with jim clark and his amazing sherman yeah and kit and co and um and and andrew drove in we drove into germany in a sherman tank at one point hello we're back yeah that was so good wasn't it and a Great long olive drab column.

34:30Of Sherman tanks, of trucks, of dingoes. That's that dream getting lived right there. Yeah. And we did that. And then we went and saw the football match, which was just incredible. Yeah. Where in 19 minutes, 44 seconds, everyone stops and claps for two minutes.

34:45Al Murray: The whole thing is amazing. And you go, God, it's getting very dusty. Oh, God, it's very dusty in that football ground. And then there was the service at the cemetery. I think the remembrance there is as good as it's ever going to get. People who are serious about remembrance here need to go and have a look at that and have a think about what they're doing there. Because it's that business of them honouring our dead, rather. The whole thing of, you know, you've got all those old powers you say, I don't get it. We turned up, we smashed our town up, then we lost and we banged off, right? And they love us, right?

35:14Al Murray: And, you know, it's an encapsulation of things. That's it, isn't it? But you talk to all the Dutch people, they go, you tried. At least you tried. They tried to liberate us. and it's framed as liberation not a sort of slow-mo flags and trumpets because you know they're they're the people being liberated rather than sacrifice it's liberation sacrifice for liberation it's just it's so it's it's got it's such an interesting way of looking at it and the way they keep the memory alive and i i was there in april for the sosabowski exhibition that they've just started the hartenstein and um the fellow who runs the hartenstein being the hotel that was headquarters in the middle of the battle that's now amazing amazing the airborne museum there and i was the guy who runs the flower child thing yes um uh came and grabbed me at that event yes so what they do every year and they've been doing it since 1945 46 is every year school children have a grave in the in the graveyard and you know there's the photos of them right off the wall with with the white wooden crosses putting flowers on the things and they've handed that on every year every year they've had it on from class to class it's absolutely amazing it is absolutely amazing it's the most moving thing and and and the guy who runs this came and grabbed me and said oh i saw your filming up from arnhem from last year and you're you know and he gave me a pin he gave me the tooth the 80th anniversary flower kids pin as a as a memento to say thank you for for the way we'd filmed it and covered it that's amazing you want to say thank you to them for for doing it because it's truly extraordinary.

36:47Al Murray: And there is the sort of carnival of the great convoy of Jeeps. Oh, that was fun, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Tony's caught fire, didn't he? One day in Arnhem, I had the most realistic Second World War reconstruction moment ever. I'd jumped on a Jeep owned by a Dutchman. We were taking part in a thing which was called the Race for the Bridge. a whole, you know, hundreds of military vehicles racing from Oosterbeek through to Arnhem itself. And our Jeep caught on fire. I literally dived out of the Jeep before it had stopped onto the side of the road with flames gushing out of the front of the vehicle.

37:26It was genuinely terrifying. And then, would you believe it, a British ambulance from the Second World War pulled up from out of the cavalcade. And I was able to jump on the ambulance, clamber onto its roof and continue the journey. I mean, it was about as realistic as anything you'd ever see. Tony had a goal hanger and was in the Jeep behind us that caught fire. Well, that's quite good. It's not quite as good as my Spitfire, but it's pretty good.

37:51Al Murray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you allowed to talk about your Spitfire? Yeah, we can talk about my Spitfire now, I think. So we went flying Spitfires, May 24. Yeah, with the lovely Richard Grace. The late Richard Grace, who's a fantastic fellow. A lovely, lovely bloke. Well, the Grace Spitfire is one of the most original Spitfires still flying. and did incredible things. A couple of years before that, he took us up in the Mustang, didn't he? Yeah. And Daisy. Yeah. And where we chased trains. Yes. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that. Yeah, we're allowed to talk about that. Yeah. We chased the London Northwest line.

38:23Al Murray: Yeah. Came down onto the trains of the Mustang. We pretended we were Don Gentile. Yeah. Going da-da-da-da-da. I mean, did you do that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course he did. Anyway, so we went back in 2024. With Ben Wilbon. With Ben Wilbon, that's right. and the idea is we're going to go up in the Spitfire and be shown how you do aerial combat by managing the energy in the aircraft so never ever throttling back so like you do a barrel roll to slow the plane down if you're trying to trying to get in behind someone you do a barrel to slow the plane down without it coming off the throttle because you want to leave you don't want to do that because the engines they've got to rev back up again all this sort of stuff how you manage the energy and all that blah blah blah so i went out and i was an amazing flight and he stuck out on the wing tip we turned around and we barrel rolls and we put perfect blue skylight today and i came back down and then it was your go and then jim didn't come back well i'd been having a lovely time too because i he said okay you've now got control and there was this big fluffy bit of bank of cumulus and i was i was flying around it and i just found around this whole thing and just thinking oh wow this is absolutely amazing and he goes all right right now i'll take back control and we'll we'll do a few maneuvers and then suddenly mayday mayday thinking oh this isn't great no unfortunately i'd been listening to him when he did the safety brief in a way that i kind typically don't but on this occasion for some reason some sixth sense told me i need to listen to this so he asked me to pull back the canopy uh so i did but i kept getting stuck on my helmet because obviously the canopy is slightly domed and spitfires are made for people who are five foot five with leather skull caps yeah i had this great big sort of stupid dome thing so i pulled back the counter and it was like dunk dunk and you're in a sudden harness where you can't really kind of move that's the whole point and it's not a glider a spitfire is it so i was sort of thinking yeah what do we do and and um and his radio still works so he said i'm going to try and get down into a field i was like okay uh anyway i've adventure i managed to get me enough to get the canopy back you know yes and i remembered to put the little i remember this very clearly putting the little hat the little clip to keep the canopy so it didn't slide forward again by the time i sort of faffed around that we were hurtling towards this field which was a little sort of cessna strip yeah you know engine still not working uh um and coming in way too fast and the and the grass strip for the cessna's was designed for cessna's it wasn't designed for spitfires coming in at speed no not wasn't designed for spitfires full stop and at the far end of this field was kind of rougher grass and then a big long hedge and i was just like oh my god you know we're going to go into this if we're not careful i was actually pretty calm i've got to say um because you just sort of think i'm sure it'll be okay or you know i don't know what i was thinking really but i was i was all right and um and then he was trying to avoid the hedge so he was turning to starboard to to the right and it was quite soft it was may and the right hand side of the starboard undercarriage dug in the wheel and suddenly we were like and came down again and and uh and mark just said oh shit i heard him say that and thinking we were going to go straight over and then we sat down and it was like sort of moments calm and i said that's an idiot it i said uh so uh should i uh get out now and uh he went yes so i got out and you know just slid down the side of the uh of the plane to to the ground and sort of walked off at pace well the thing is if anyone's listened to this podcast long enough you're aware that james holland's someone who's toast lands butter side up so when uh when we were told when we were told oh they've down a field somewhere oh he's all right he's fine nothing's happened to james he'll be all right and he turns up high as a kite it's like so ecstatic with with the with a big piece of propeller yeah never letting go never let it go this year and i've got a photograph of you like absolutely buzzing and you said it's actually really quite exciting it was absolutely fantastic genuinely fantastic the worst bit was then having to try and tell rachel because i had lots of messages from Rachel going, where are you?

42:18Where are you, Jim? Why haven't you run me? Where are you? I was like, how do I? I can't sugarcoat this. I remember saying, I don't want you to worry. Fucked. Just had this prank in this spitfire. James Holland is one of my closest friends and the best people on the planet. But he does have occasional ideas that are so insane, you should stop before you go through with them. The Lloyd Carrier is one of those. I remember we were approached. by someone who'd found the remnants of a Lloyd carrier in an old barn. Basically, its derivation was discovered in Normandy on a farm, obviously abandoned post the conflict there in 1944.

43:02And it was in a terrible state. I remember posting a picture of it in its rusted, broken down state, and people were shocked we'd bought it, including me. So we just decided it would be a lovely project. Why not do it up over a period of time? It gives us great content. And it's a lovely thing to have. All of which is true. However, as my wife, who at that time, when Golang was a micro business, used to do the accounts. She used to say to me, who on earth is Lloyd? We're paying him a fortune. I said, I'm afraid to tell you. It's a Lloyd carrier. Brilliant if you need a machine gun carrier in southwest London.

43:40Less ideal when you've got a dwindling bank account and it's costing you tens of thousands of pounds. However, as I like to point out, no other media company in this country owns a Second World War vintage vehicle. If one of our competitors, The Guardian, The Times, Global Media, ever decides to go to war with us, they will not have a machine gun carrier, and we do.

44:04Al Murray: It was one of those things where you think, well, that wouldn't have happened were it not for this podcast. No. So, I mean, I think... I feel very fortunate. I think all of you listening for these thousand episodes, James I'd like to thank you for putting up with me going go on tell me more about that and you manfully telling me more about it well I'd like to thank you for putting up with me and for all the amazingly brilliant times we've had the hilarity we've had the moving bits as well let's not forget those the journey of discovery without wanting to sound like a complete cliche but I am because actually my knowledge of the second world war has risen exponentially and I know yours has too over this and and what i've discovered is that you learn a hell of a lot more when you're discussing it with a mate yeah you know that is the truth of it and when you can talk about it like two grown-ups yeah in a room really chew the cud and you can you can actually get to the bottom of what happened on operation barba rosser and what's really good though is we aren't the tree falling in the forest that no one hears right those conversations will be happening anyway but no one would have heard them yes what i'm saying but because of the podcast because of the regular listeners because the independent company because of the people who've subscribed to the patreon because of the people on the apple channel because of the people who just listen casually on spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and the people who casually just send me emails with with their great uncle's photos yeah it's just incredible memoirs and letters it's just it's just incredible what we should say is is a huge thank you to tony yeah tiny everyone at galhanger to all the gang but obviously especially to jr and joey yeah absolutely thanks everyone for listening thanks for those of you who are watching um thanks to the crowd we've gathered here at chalk history festival we'll see you at We Have Waste Fest in September, won't we?

45:44Al Murray: Yes. Good. Brilliant. There we go. Tschüssi tschüss. Tschüssi tschüss. Auf Wiedersehen mein Lieblingen.

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