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  • This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.

  • Joining me today: he reads books, y'know, it's Chris Joel.

  • Hello!”

  • Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.

  • ♫ I-i-if women like that like men like those, then why don't women like me? ♫

  • Singing(!)

  • And the bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.

  • Howdy, YouTube!

  • - Oh! - Nice. Nice.

  • In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.

  • Every fact they get right is a point and a ding

  • and there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is...

  • And today we are talking about John Stonehouse.

  • Did he live in a greenhouse?

  • Completely against type.

  • Now's when you ding, Tom(!)

  • No. I can't give you that.

  • Am I close?

  • No...

  • In any way?

  • No.

  • Was he... a bricklayer?

  • Stone House? No. No he wasn't.

  • He did go to work in a House, and there's a capital H in that.

  • A House of something.

  • Cards.

  • Fun.

  • Ill repute.

  • I mean, you're pretty close with House of Cards.

  • Parliament.

  • Yes, have a point.

  • - Oh! - Yay.

  • Born in Southampton, educated there and at the London School of Economics.

  • So was he not a politiciser?

  • And then he went into politics, as the Labour Cooperative Member of Parliament.

  • So he owned some small supermarkets(?)

  • Erm, sort of...

  • Did you hear that? Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk!

  • Archivist gear engaged.

  • Everybody else shut up, I know the answer.”

  • I don't! But you do still have Cooperative Labour MPs.

  • In what sense?

  • They don't sit at the back going, “F*** no.

  • It's bollocks, we're not doing it.”.

  • Pretty much.

  • He worked very closely to the Foreign Office.

  • There was the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the India Office and then another one.

  • Commonwealth.

  • Ooh, no

  • No, it's pre-Commonwealth. Empire?

  • Halfway between the two.

  • Com-pire.

  • Places We Stole Office.

  • Yes, it's the Colonial Office, so yes, I will give you the point for that, absolutely right.

  • Yes, he became Minister for State for Technology and then took a role

  • Was he going around people's houses trying to sell cable?

  • You never had that?

  • Not from the Colonies Office, no!

  • He moved on from there, this was...

  • You said technology, I don't for...

  • I know nothing about politics or other countries! I've got to go somewhere.

  • I've just realised that...

  • Would you like some Colonial Cable?

  • I've just realised, we've not actually touched on telegraphs yet

  • and we have to do that at least once or twice a seas

  • Oh, f*** off!

  • Yes, he became Minister for State for Technology, but that meant he then transitioned into what?

  • And this was in charge of telecommunications as well as telegraphy, everything like that.

  • - Post Office. - Postmaster General.

  • You're both getting the point. He was the Postmaster General of the United Kingdom.

  • Hell of a title, that.

  • Yes. He was also the last Postmaster General of the United Kingdom.

  • Oh God, what did he do?

  • Nothing, they've just all been really specific since.

  • (Yes!)

  • Sorry, Matt!

  • Specific...

  • Oh

  • Anything that has General on the end sounds great, anyway.

  • He oversaw the jamming of something.

  • A marmalade factory.

  • There's this sort-of jam war going on where they just

  • He's holding toast at the other end.

  • That's Wallace and Gromit, isn't it, actually?

  • We must stop this terrible conflict...

  • to preserve life.

  • Ohhh!

  • Even the audience was half-hearted on that one.

  • Wouldn't want people to end up marmalised.

  • 1970, he oversaw the jamming of something.

  • '70?

  • 1970.

  • - Is it pirate... - Pirate radio!

  • Yes. I'll give you the point there, specifically what, where's it coming from?

  • - Luxembourg? - North Sea?

  • You're thinking Radio Luxembourg but no, you're absolutely right, it's off in the North Sea.

  • This was one of the Radio Carolines.

  • - Oh! - Was it?

  • You see I didn't say that because I thought it was a leading question

  • and it would be wrong.

  • Yes, but this isn't QI! You're allowed to go for that answer here.

  • Awooga!

  • So he jammed Radio Caroline and part of the response to that

  • was that Radio Caroline did what?

  • Jammed them right back.

  • No, that actually would be... not illegal, but it certainly would be, I think,

  • a declaration of war if you do that to a country.

  • And when it comes to boats we've probably got the bigger shooty ones in town.

  • We might have slightly more.

  • Because Caroline was on and off for a bit. So was it off for a bit?

  • It was, they tried to overcome the jamming, obviously,

  • what were they sending back over the airwaves?

  • Swear words. Filthy streams of invective

  • They could have done, they were offshore.

  • Don't forget Radio Caroline wasn't illegal,

  • they just made it so that any British person associating with it was breaking the law.

  • Vote for the other ones.”

  • Yes, absolutely right, they went political

  • and they started broadcasting pro-Conservative propaganda back at them.

  • Sorry! Pirate radio station broadcasting pro-Conservative messages?

  • Let that sink in for a minute.

  • Vote Tory!”

  • Yeah, you wouldn't get that these days would you? Blimey.

  • No, there's no pirate radio stations!

  • - There are. - Oh, there are.

  • I was going to say, presumably you have deal with those, Matt.

  • Yes, they interfere over the broadcasts that we are trying to make at work.

  • And then we report them to OFCOM and then they find them

  • and say no, you're being naughty, please don't do that.

  • When you said deal with them, that suggested you somehow

  • went round at night and dealt with them.

  • With a baseball bat.

  • Matt Gray does have a black ski-mask and an awful lot of black turtlenecks.

  • A van just comes out of the OFCOM offices with you guys in.

  • John Stonehouse, still in charge of post and telecommunications in the 1970s, introduced what?

  • It's not stamps or anything because they're already there...

  • Oh, it is.

  • - Is it stamps? - Second-class...!

  • Is it second-class stamps?

  • Absolutely right, first and second-class stamps. These all seem

  • (You f***er!)

  • ...fairly normal. In 1970 he was setting up various companies, having things on the side.

  • By 1974 most of these were in financial trouble.

  • What did he decide to do?

  • Print himself a whole book of stamps as legal tender

  • and pay off his debts with a massive box full of stamps.

  • That would have been a better plan than the one he actually had.

  • Issue a single £150,000 stamp on the quiet to a collector.

  • Also a better plan than what he did.

  • Jesus Christ! Rob a bank.

  • With stamps.

  • Hang on, did he invent selfie stamps,

  • where you could send in a selfie and you'd have your own stamp?

  • He didn't set up his pirate radio station did he, playing pro-Tory propaganda?

  • He's in deep financial trouble here,

  • he's doing creative accounting so he's going to be going to jail.

  • Did he disappear?

  • Oh, a little bit more than that.

  • Is he…?

  • Did he fake his death?

  • Yes, he did. He faked his

  • Is he one of these clothes on the beach guys and disappears?

  • Spot on. Exactly right, he faked his death, November 1974,

  • leaving a pile of clothes on a Miami beach.

  • Whose clothes?

  • His clothes.

  • Where was he actually going?

  • Cuba!

  • Australia.

  • That's a long swim.

  • You're one better than me, I was going to say a long walk

  • which would have been quite stupid.

  • Well, swimming it naked, he's going to get cold.

  • He is. Maybe he slathered himself in goose fat beforehand.

  • And, hell, he's going the wrong way round, he should have gone from LA.

  • Yeah, the man's a fool.

  • Goose fat is what you use, I'm right aren't I?

  • That's what you use for cross-channel swimming.

  • Yes, when you're swimming from Miami to Australia, that's what you use.

  • Goose fat, yes.

  • Most people use their arms and legs. Gary, goose fat.

  • -“It'll be fine!” - Just bobs around...

  • Gary, there's a breaker.”

  • It's fine, the goose fat'll save me!”

  • Ejecting it from behind, like propulsive goose fat.

  • Hey, a goose gives out a lot of fat, you know.

  • He's just leaving this greasy trail on the ocean as he goes.

  • Gary Brannan's greasy ocean trail.”

  • Hell of a series.

  • I once did a goose at Christmas and it put out...

  • A single goose-- now in all fairness I got it from a budget supermarket

  • so it may not have been the very best of geese, let's be honest.

  • Budget supermarkets sell geese?

  • For a tenner!

  • Yes, they just get them from the local pond, and you know

  • Ask no questions, tell no lies. That's the way I looked at it.

  • But I did, and it pumped half a litre of fat.

  • It didn't even drip out, it literally just leaked fat.

  • You know those things when you get oil wells and there's a gusher

  • Goose fat, we're rich! Ah, I'm greasy...”

  • Quick take me to the Channel! This is my only chance!”

  • White gold!”, he cried.

  • Did it deep fry itself? Half a litre?

  • It just... you put it on an angle to let it all drain out

  • and it just kept coming and coming and coming.

  • It was a whole big mincemeat jar that big was nearly full of goose fat.

  • No man in the world can eat that much roast potatoes, is what I've found.

  • Sorry, can I just point out:

  • mincemeat jar full of goose fat, that's quite a northern thing to say

  • So yes, Stonehouse, meanwhile. Stonehouse was... I'm just trying to pull this back.

  • It was in my fridge for months!

  • I remember, you sent me a picture of it!

  • You actually sound closer to tears than laughter, Gary.

  • Because, just after we'd had this massive Christmas dinner where I'd done the goose.

  • I got all this goose fat, the holy grail of Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes...

  • Went on a f***ing diet and I never touched the stuff.

  • AUDIENCE: Aww.

  • And in this jar was

  • John Stonehouse

  • Seamless(!)

  • John Stonehouse was en-route to Australia

  • setting up a new life with his mistress and secretary.

  • Are they two separate people?

  • Was he just being a real arse and taking his mistress and his secretary?

  • Well, who was his new identity? Whose identity had he taken on?

  • Did he nick a dead person's?

  • Yes, he did. Deceased husband of a constituent.

  • So he deposited cash at one bank, picked it up at another and the teller was suspicious

  • and reported him to local police.

  • The police, when they interviewed him,

  • asked him to drop his trousers. Why?

  • Normal.

  • Was the person he was pretending to be a eunuch?

  • No, just his trousers, just his trousers.

  • Well they're looking for an identifying mark, are they not? So tattoo or birthmark.

  • Yes... neither. This is 1974.

  • Lord Lucan!

  • Yes. They suspected that he was Lord Lucan who had very famously disappeared,

  • there's a whole separate story there.

  • Someone suspiciously turning up with an English accent in Australia,

  • depositing large sums of money.

  • Who is obviously on the run...

  • Lord Lucan had a large scar down his leg.

  • So the police were going, well, drop your trousers,

  • we want to see if you're Lord Lucan. He wasn't...

  • Did he debag himself in aid of the

  • Because if he did, and he dropped his trousers and there's no scar,

  • he should surely be let go.

  • Yes, and then they're not going to be suspicious of him ever again.

  • Yes, he was still arrested, they just knew he wasn't Lord Lucan.

  • Oh.

  • We know you're somebody but we don't know who.

  • Standard procedure, drop the trousers.”

  • That was essentially... yeah, that would have been 1974.

  • What do we do second?” “I don't know, it's never failed.”

  • Every arse tells a story.”

  • All right, we're going to need to get your arse print here,

  • please just sit in this ink for a little while, and then on this paper...”

  • Just reverse onto this paper.”

  • It's thumbprint. Thumbprint!”

  • He's arrested, six months later he's deported to the UK.

  • He's remanded in Brixton prison. What has he not done at any point during this?

  • Pulled his trousers up.

  • Walked really waddly all the way.

  • They haven't said I could,” he said.

  • Changed his name back?

  • Bear in mind his job.

  • As Postmaster General, ex

  • Sorry, what was that?

  • Postmaster General, ex-Postmaster General.

  • Was he still in the same job? Had he not been sacked?

  • - Yes. - Oh, s***!

  • He did not resign as an MP.

  • Oh, boy!

  • So did he come back to massive fines for not having done his job properly?

  • - No, he was an MP. - You don't get fined for not doing your job.

  • - Oh! - Satire.

  • He just kept being an MP and getting his salary.

  • Were they still paying him throughout the entire time he buggered off?

  • Well, at this point, he had to have his trousers down

  • because of the sheer size of his balls.

  • He was put on trial on 21 charges of fraud, theft, forgery, conspiracy to defraud,

  • causing a false police investigation and wasting police time.

  • He sounds right for an MP.

  • Trial was 68 days long. He conducted his own defence.

  • That's brave.

  • Yeah, it didn't work all that well.

  • Did he just drop his trousers when he could?

  • And say repeatedly, “not Lord Lucanbecause it worked the first time.

  • After his release he worked as a fundraiser,

  • joined what became the Liberal Democrats,

  • wrote some novels, started a small business that sold hotel safes.

  • I'm speeding through all this

  • - Hotel safes? - Hotel safes.

  • Because he's used to embezzling money

  • They had a funnel that went directly to his bank account.

  • Put money in my safe!” “No, f*** you!”

  • - “You put money in your safe!” - “Invest in my company…”

  • It hasn't got a back on it!

  • More than 20 years after his death, something was revealed about him.

  • He was Lord Lucan?

  • He just had a lot of bio-oil.

  • I thought he was going for the button to say yes then!

  • No, no, way, way back in his political career,

  • he'd negotiated an agreement of technological cooperation

  • between Britain and Czechoslovakia, as was.

  • Uh oh. Is he a spy?

  • Oh, he's sp-- in fact--

  • The minute you say 'information sharing' and 'Czechoslovakia' which is in the former Soviet bloc,

  • he's not going to just be going and eating their fine pastries, is he?

  • Yes, it turned out that he'd been an agent

  • for the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic military intelligence.

  • S***, he's Postmaster General!

  • Yes.

  • That's why it takes so long for your post to arrive!

  • I'm going to give you a point for twigging that before I made the connection there.

  • It goes via Czechoslovakia!

  • He was Minister in Charge of Post and Technology.

  • And that includes things like the Post Office Tower and things like that,

  • that are transmitting signals around the world.

  • Yes.

  • This is pretty bad s*** isn't it, let's face it. This is bad news bears.

  • Somehow the embezzling and taking someone else's identity

  • is yet not the worst thing about this man.

  • - No. - Because he's used to it!

  • That's true, that.

  • At the point where the government found out about this,

  • Margaret Thatcher was in power. What did she decide to do?

  • - Nothing? - Privatise him.

  • Yes, he will work with more efficiency as a privately owned scumbag.

  • British politics jokes there.

  • Well, either nothing or something, is what I'm going for there.

  • Chris, choose one of those options.

  • I'm going with something.

  • You're wrong. It's nothing.

  • Oh

  • It was easier to cover it up and never let the public know

  • that there had been a Czech spy in government.

  • Because they'd obviously done no Czechs on him!

  • Oh

  • Yes.

  • At the end of the show...

  • Congratulations, Matt, you win this one.

  • How?

  • Genuinely, you got a lot of dings in there.

  • You win breakfast food prepared by the star of Sherlock.

  • It's Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch.

  • F***ing...

  • Do enjoy that.

  • With that, we say thank you to Chris Joel.

  • It's over!

  • To Gary Brannan.

  • To Matt Gray.

  • Bye-bye YouTube.

  • I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you next time.

This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.

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約翰-斯通豪斯和耷拉的褲子。Citation Needed 7x05 (John Stonehouse and Dropped Trousers: Citation Needed 7x05)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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