- 14 hours ago
Robert Robinson referees as Frank Muir, André Previn and Tina Brown compete against Patrick Campbell, Tom Conti and Barbara Kellerman in a duel of words and wit.
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00:00Hello again, let me welcome you to Call My Bluff, where almost as tall as the story he will tell you is, yes, Frank Muir.
00:30My first guest hasn't been on the programme before, she's a writer, she's a Sunday Telegraph magazine journalist and playwright, and her name is Tina Brown.
00:45My second guest has been on before, he's a musician, Andre Previn.
00:52And honorary member of the Little Folk, even though he is seven foot three, Patrick Campbell.
01:03Thank you. Good evening.
01:10My first guest is unbelievably beautiful, incredibly intelligent, and a superb actress, simply called Barbara Kellerman.
01:18And to my other guest, all those adjectives can be applied, including beauty, he's called Tom Conte.
01:32We've done that hard, but that's fantastic.
01:39Now we have to start the real thing, I ring the bell, and we get a word, sniddle.
01:44It's usually a word like that, sniddle.
01:46And what happens is that Frank Muir and his team define sniddle three different ways.
01:50Two of the definitions are false ones. One is true.
01:53That is the one that Patrick and company are going to try and pick out.
01:56What of sniddle, Frank?
02:02I'll tell you what we'll do.
02:05We'll find some bonzer gaff, get a flash cove, dip him for his rhino, and then we'll come back here and sniddle.
02:18It's an old thieves cant term, as indeed were the rest.
02:26Sniddle means the divvy up, means to divvy up after the burglary or the robbery.
02:37We'll play that bit at the end again by popular request, I should think.
02:41Slow motion replay.
02:43Andre, your turn.
02:45It should be fairly simple.
02:46This is a nation of cheese lovers, and sniddle is in fact the floor covering in any cheese room.
02:54It is a carpet made of old dried coarse grass and sedge and the like, which allows the various cheeses, Cheshire cheese in particular,
03:04to breathe and to permeate the room with their lovely odours.
03:08That's what it is.
03:10Right, so it's Tina Brown's turn now.
03:13The sniddle is a piece of wood which coal miners places a wedge on the wheel of a coal cart to stop it careering down the path after they laden it with coal.
03:24And in Derbyshire, it's sometimes abbreviated to a snid, fetch the snid jack, for the coal.
03:31LAUGHTER
03:33Right, so it's a thieves share-out, thieves cant for a sort of share-out.
03:38It's that sort of wedge, and it's the floor covering in a cheese place where they make cheese, I suppose.
03:44Patrick, pick one.
03:46I can't believe that Frank would've gone to all the trouble to do that.
03:51LAUGHTER
03:52Imitation of a pair of burglars, if it wasn't a true one.
03:58But wait, don't, I've never met my mind yet.
04:01LAUGHTER
04:03Tina talking about a snid, not a sniddle, she knows more about sniddles than I do, or she does either.
04:11What? What? That was very good.
04:15LAUGHTER
04:16If she knew anything about sniddles, she might call it a snid.
04:20That's not it.
04:23LAUGHTER
04:24But what about a, people don't spread cheeses all over carpets.
04:28LAUGHTER
04:30Unless, you're right, of course.
04:33LAUGHTER
04:36It's a cheese carpet.
04:38That, well, I think that's what Andre Previn more or less said, yes.
04:42Sort of the bottom part of the room.
04:44You actually believe that?
04:45I do believe that.
04:46True or bluff?
04:47Of all my heart.
04:48Strong.
04:49APPLAUSE
04:56That was a good laugh.
04:58APPLAUSE
05:00Here's indeed what they cover the floor of a cheese house with.
05:03Did my nut for nothing.
05:05LAUGHTER
05:07You've still got time, Frank, we can have it again.
05:10AGROM is the next one, and Patrick's going to tell us about that.
05:14AGROM was a kind of military command.
05:19Very, very old military command.
05:22AGROM!
05:24The Battle of Cressy, Agincourt, that kind of thing.
05:27Because, if you're going to AGROM, you're going to go down on one knee, kind of half kneeling down, because you've got the archers behind you, after you've done your little bit of archery.
05:40You want to AGROM, in order to present you to be getting pierced by your archers behind you.
05:46Stands to reason.
05:49LAUGHTER
05:50Whoever won the Battle of Cressy and Agincourt can a double event, employ this method.
05:57That's all.
05:59That's all.
06:00Yeah, right, yes, yes.
06:01That's all.
06:02Tried and trusted.
06:03Yes, Tom Conti's turn now.
06:04Yes, well, AGROM is a disorder of the Alimentary Canal.
06:10Eww.
06:11Which troubled Indians living in Bengal.
06:15They kept falling in it.
06:17But once they'd covered it up, they discovered that it wasn't quite a disease.
06:22No, it's a dreadful bellyache, and it does awful things to the tongue.
06:28It gives your tongue the appearance of a brandy snap, pitted with brown craters.
06:34You can fill it with cream and jam if you like, but that's really what it is.
06:39It's a bad disorder of the Alimentary Canal.
06:42Right now, Barbara, your turn.
06:44AGROM is a herb once cultivated by the royal vineyards of ancient Egypt.
06:49And the dried leaves of AGROM produce a kind of yeast which is used in the fermentation of wine,
06:55destined for the cellars of such potentates as Cleopatra and the Ptolemites.
07:02Yes, well, it's an herb.
07:07It's a disorder of the Alimentary Canal, not this time of sheep, but of Indians.
07:10And you crouched down on one knee, so let the archers fire over the top of you,
07:14should you ever find yourself in that situation.
07:17Frank, your turn.
07:18Yes.
07:19Yes.
07:20I'm sort of utterly transparent, but I'll have to play with it for a bit.
07:25Of course.
07:26You know, just to give the allusions, give a bit of suspense.
07:29Yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:30Oh, God.
07:31It's a pitted tongue.
07:36It's so revolting.
07:39I really don't know.
07:41Think of all the curry lodging in it.
07:43I don't honestly think we can stomach that.
07:48Ancient herbs for Egyptian wine.
07:54You can't call out.
08:00Agum!
08:02Front way, by the left.
08:04Agum!
08:05Oh, yes, you can.
08:06Come on, Paddy.
08:07Let's try you.
08:08You're choosing the command.
08:09Yes, it was...
08:10No, no.
08:11It was crouched on one knee, wasn't it?
08:12Yes.
08:13Yeah, that's right.
08:14Yes.
08:15It's a bluff.
08:16It must have been.
08:17It must have been.
08:18It must have been.
08:19Oh, God.
08:20Now we have the true definition.
08:27Moment of rare satisfaction.
08:29Here it comes.
08:30Little Alimentary Canal.
08:31What a choing.
08:32Yep.
08:33It's beautiful down the hole.
08:35It's beautiful down the hole too.
08:37The disorder of the Alimentary Canal is what Agum is.
08:41And then we have Rehammer.
08:44And it's Andre Previn's turn.
08:46Tell us about it.
08:47Well, suppose, right?
08:50Suppose you were to hang a picture or something decorative on the wall and you took a hammer
08:57and a nail and you hammered away and you got through or so you think and you step back
09:02and you see that you have not actually hammered the thing in enough.
09:06You then take your hammer and you re-hammer, you see, thus driving the nail in a bit farther.
09:13Simplistic, but there you are.
09:15Yes.
09:16This is it.
09:17Certain natural beauty there.
09:19Tina Brown.
09:20Well, Rehammer, or Rehammer as it's pronounced in Holland, is a Dutch civil servant whose duties
09:27are very similar to that of an English town clerk.
09:30And he travels all over the country reporting to the burgomaster when he gets home.
09:33He's a peripatetic town clerk.
09:35And he's Dutch.
09:36A peripatetic town clerk?
09:38Yep.
09:39Gets around.
09:40Right, Frank, your go.
09:43Rehammer is the fourth season of the Islamic religious year.
09:50It is during Rehammer that devout Muslims have to put off things like hang gliding and water polo and have to settle down to studying the prophetic reasonings of the Quran.
10:09So, you say that it's the fourth season of the Islamic year.
10:16It's hammering something again, re-hammering it.
10:18And it's a peripatetic Dutch civil servant.
10:21Not a Turkish one this time, but a Dutch one.
10:24Tom Colty.
10:25Yes.
10:26Yes.
10:27Well, Frank strikes me as a frightfully kind of irreligious chap.
10:31So, I can't imagine that he would have done enough study of Indian and other religions to have come up with this definition.
10:38So, I have to discard that one, really.
10:40I think probably the Dutch one would have been spelt with one M.
10:51But I think that anyone who has the gall, really, to come up with the definition that Andre Preven came up with deserves a point.
11:00So, I'll go for the re-hammering.
11:03You choose the one. It was indeed Andre Preven.
11:05Quick, don't give him a chance to change his mind.
11:07Really?
11:08True or bluff was it?
11:09I mean, conductors have to have galls.
11:11It's unbelievable.
11:12Yes.
11:22But Dickens, did you think it was when you hit a hammer twice?
11:25You re-hammer it.
11:26What else could it be, really?
11:28Now, the next one is Hullv.
11:31I think the score's a trifle wrong there, but who knows?
11:34I may have got it wrong myself.
11:35I'd leave it.
11:36It'll be there.
11:37John Conti, will you give us a definition of Hullv?
11:41Actually, I don't think I've got time out here.
11:44You may not believe this coming after the horrors of the Alimentary Canal.
11:48Hullv is a sewer.
11:55It's the main sewer, not just any old sewer, it's the big one.
12:01It used to even run down the middle of the road.
12:04It doesn't now.
12:06But it's the main sewer that came all the little tributaries and put all that into the main one,
12:11and it all goes down to the sea for the benefit of bathers, surf riders, that sort of thing.
12:16It's a sewer.
12:18Right, now it's Barbara Kellerman's turn.
12:21Well, it was the chief burial ground in Dundee, and it was the garden of a Franciscan friary.
12:31And it's been long since deconsecrated.
12:34It's probably now, in fact, it is now a car park.
12:38And the word lives on in the Scots vernacular as a place of contemplation.
12:43A thinking man's retreat.
12:46Car park.
12:47Yes, yes, yes.
12:48Well, not a car park, a thinking man's retreat.
12:51Ideal for picnics.
12:52Right, Patrick.
12:53A hulva is an old Dorsetshire fisherman's word for stake.
13:00A stake.
13:02In order to dry their nets and amend the holes in them, they put a load of stakes around the beach.
13:11A fairly tedious occupation.
13:13But it's enlivened by the fact that if one stake is higher than the ones beside it,
13:20it's called a bosom stake.
13:23Or bosom hulva.
13:30It's a burial ground in Dundee, now deconsecrated.
13:34It's a sewer, and it's a stake on which you hang your nets in Dorset.
13:39If nets you have.
13:40Andre.
13:41I discount yours, Paddy, because surely it would, if...
13:45I mean, it would be two stakes that would be called bosom stakes.
13:48I mean, does make any sense?
13:51One higher than the other.
13:52I see, it's a daunting thought.
13:56And then I get confused.
13:57There was something about people being buried in a car park, that was yours, was it?
14:03No, it's now used as a car park.
14:05Now used as a car park.
14:06It wasn't heavy to ground, yes.
14:07I see. I tell you what though, the main sewer, the main sewer is too close to the
14:15elementary canal and you did, I don't think they'd give you two more or less
14:19elementary canals in a row. I go for the contemplative car park myself. Yes, the
14:25place she spoke of. Yes, Barbara, it was you. She looks pretty well pleased, you know.
14:37So, who gave the real, the true, the authentic definition of that word, Hull, Hulva?
14:46It's the colonic irrigation shell for me.
14:52He spoke of the sewer and it was true, every word he said.
15:00Agri-Stein, that looks nice and interesting. Tina Brown's turn.
15:04Well, if your falcon or hawk gets a dose of agri-Stein, I would strongly advise you to
15:11call your local bird doctor because it's a really filthy disease of the tail feathers.
15:17It is. They drop out. They just turn rusty and mouldy and fall off one by one to the intense
15:27dismay of the falcon concerned. Right, now, Frank, follow that.
15:34There used to be a lot more of this about than there is now, funnily enough. Quite a lot of it's got...
15:38You get a bit of it in, I suppose, in the Middle East with people with cameras. You used to get a
15:44hell of a lot more of it, medieval times particularly. And Agri-Stein is the look you get from somebody with an evil eye.
15:52You don't care to say more, Frank. No, you're probably well advised. Andre.
16:04Well, no, Agri-Stein is a collective name for small marbles or beads made of primitive glass.
16:13And they're found by archaeologists who go rooting around Denmark and other Scandinavian countries,
16:21although some of them have been found in Schleswig-Holstein.
16:24Although, of course, people are a bit baffled by when the earliest of these artifacts were found,
16:32it has been guessed that they go back as far as the Phoenicians.
16:37So it's an evil look. It's these ancient beads that you find in Denmark, sometimes in Schleswig-Holstein,
16:42and it's a disease of hawks, their back feathers.
16:45Well, it's all your fault, not mine.
16:47Come on. Come on, it's anybody's game.
16:50Two to one, Charles.
16:52Disease of the tail feathers. I don't see tail in the word.
16:58Yes, well, no. It sounds improbable to me. I don't know.
17:04A look from the evil eye. That's almost too easy in a way. Agro, Agri-Stein eye. I don't know.
17:10Marbles. That's what it was, wasn't it? Marbles.
17:13Marbles, beans, that sort of thing.
17:15I think I'm going to go, because it's so obvious, look from the evil eye.
17:24Look from the evil eye. Frank.
17:26Frank, you said that, didn't you? Own up.
17:29Oh, dear.
17:30You tease. Were you teasing?
17:31Oh, no.
17:32Yes, he won't!
17:33Oh!
17:33Oh!
17:34Oh!
17:35Oh!
17:36Oh!
17:37Yes!
17:40Now, the thing is, we must ask who gave us the two definition,
17:44and there it is, I think, yes, it's gone.
17:46Oh, look, look, look!
17:51Tina Brown was writing, she's saying, sometimes it is a disease of hawks,
17:55or of sheep, but not very often on this programme, but just one thing away.
17:594-1, you've still got a chance, Frank.
18:01Arcana, Barbara, your turn.
18:02It's a Portuguese word, originally, meaning an open space, and it was adopted into English,
18:11and became a request or order, meaning make room for the dance. Thus, in a highly sophisticated
18:18environment, the host or hostess might sort of mumble the word arcana, and that would mean that
18:25the orchestra would kind of tune up, and the footmen would roll back the carpet.
18:31Get down on one knee.
18:32Arcana.
18:33Arcana.
18:35Now, it's Patrick's go.
18:37What does he tell us?
18:37Arcana, a kind of brownish, whitish chalk, which is used by carpenters.
18:44If you take a carpenter and a plank and a saw, I want to bring these three ingredients together,
18:53you need a piece of arcana in order to draw a line on the plank.
18:59Certainly, the carpenter is not going to cut it, as it were, vertically, a little bit sideways,
19:05because he's a lazy carpenter, but at least it's going to be fairly straight.
19:08He can also use this brownish, whitish chalk for, it'll notice in the door of his workshop,
19:18gone to lunch.
19:21He'd shove it up his nose and call it snuff.
19:25Gone to lunch.
19:28Tom Conti, your go.
19:29Well, Arcana is a name coined by a German physicist called Reichenbach,
19:35who, as all lovers of Conan Doyle will know, invented the waterfall,
19:39for a rather awful substance, which was just by mixing bread and meat, glutamate, sugar, starch together,
19:55until it turned into a kind of brown awfulness.
19:59Of which you specialise, I may say.
20:01Yes, of course, he's also on his shirt.
20:06And he coined this phrase, when given this for dinner one evening by his wife, Reichenbach,
20:13who spoke with a thick Scottish accent, of course, and said,
20:16Oh, Arcana, eat that.
20:22And then the delicacy made by...
20:25Frank, you'd better look to your laurels if he keeps on like that.
20:30Anyway, it's brown chalk used by carpenters, it's sort of cooked nasty, and it's a word meaning,
20:37please make room, we'll have a dance now.
20:40Tina, your turn.
20:41Well, they all seem as lunatic as each other, really.
20:45I'm pretty hard pressed. I don't think I'm going to pan the to Tom Conti's excremental
20:49obsession any longer.
20:52I think he's talking nonsense. I think it's between Paddy or you.
20:57Um, I don't believe in your workman who's got this piece of chalk at all. I don't think,
21:04I don't think that's it. I think it might have to be the Portuguese way of saying,
21:10clear the room for a tango, but I don't really think it is, but I...
21:14Room for a dance.
21:15You're going to choose that, are you?
21:16I'm going to choose that, yes.
21:17Yes, good, good. That was Barbara Kellerman. True or bluff?
21:20Don't do it again.
21:27No, no.
21:35So who gave the true definition which of the two remaining?
21:39Whence comes it?
21:41Lo, it's the brown chalk.
21:43And that's the last.
21:51Yes, indeed. 5-1, goodness me.
21:53Let's have another word.
21:54Oriva is the next word, and Frank, you define it.
21:57Yes, um, when salmon have little babies,
22:03they do it in a rather individual manner,
22:06because they sort of swim right through oceans, back to the river where they started,
22:13and they, they, they leap up.
22:16Yes.
22:16It's a little difficult thing. You think they sort of stroll home.
22:19But no, they find these rivers where they have to leap up these sort of natural ladders.
22:25That's a weave.
22:26No, it's not.
22:28It is, you say. Right, well, now, what does Andre Previan say?
22:31Natural ladder, weave.
22:32Well, I say that a weave was, was a member of a protest group,
22:37which set about demolishing toll gates in Yorkshire, around mid 19th century, to be exact, 1842 or so.
22:46And the reason for that is, is, is quite obvious, because until 1842, there had been no toll gates in any of Yorkshire.
22:53You see, and they put up these toll gates, and suddenly the people said, well, why indeed should we be taxed for this?
22:59And there was a great epidemic of toll gate destroying in Yorkshire.
23:04Mm-hmm.
23:07A rose-lays laugh.
23:10Well, a river is a kind of toothless garden fork, which sweeps the floor of a cider press free of apples, pulped apples, in fact.
23:19It's very useful when you've been pulping apples to sweep them up afterwards.
23:24You don't leave them hanging about, do you?
23:26They're quiet and get in the way.
23:28You'd be up to your knees in them before you knew.
23:31It's a demolisher of toll gates, then, in Yorkshire.
23:34It's a broom or fork or that for sweeping up the apple bits.
23:38And it's a fish, a ladder for fish to get up.
23:41Patrick.
23:41Patrick, I probably know more about the 18th and 19th history of Yorkshire than anyone else in the whole world.
23:53Well, then it's an obvious choice, isn't it?
23:54So, therefore, they didn't have toll gates, then.
23:57And even if they had them, they wouldn't have called themselves Rebus if they were trying to get rid of them.
24:03Whichever, these solid grounds, I dismiss your contemptible drivel out of hand.
24:08We've got the next one.
24:11We do underestimate, Paddy, don't we?
24:13Yes, yes.
24:14Brush around with a brushless brush and a toothless rake.
24:22It's a little ladder for salmon's babies.
24:25A little ladder for salmon's babies.
24:27That was Frank, wasn't it, Frank?
24:29True or bluff, was it?
24:31Your little ladder.
24:33Oh!
24:33No, no, no, no.
24:34We're all in there.
24:36We're all in there.
24:38Ladder for fish, they can do it without any assistance.
24:43Who gave the true definition?
24:44Yes.
24:45It was yours.
24:45You're right, yes.
24:47If you turn the ladder, you're turning it.
24:52The ladder, not the ladder, the thingy for brushing up.
24:55Apple cores and apple pulp.
24:57And the next one is muffy.
25:00And Patrick defines muffy for us.
25:02I blush a little when I'm talking about muffins.
25:09It's a clean sporting game, really.
25:14A muffy is the thing that you aim at in the game of muffers.
25:19Of course it is.
25:20Which is really horseshoe quarts.
25:25If you stick a lump of iron in the ground,
25:29and you hurl a horseshoe at it with the intention of encircling the muffy,
25:35that's what the muffy is called.
25:37You can say, I've muffed.
25:38I've got four muffins to your two muffins.
25:41I've got five muffins to your two muffins.
25:46Horshoe quarts.
25:48As some call it.
25:50Yes, now, Tom, your turn.
25:52Well, muffy is, of course, a Scottish word,
25:55which means banking up the fire.
25:59Just before it goes out completely at night,
26:02you muffy it by putting coal dust or ashes or anything onto it.
26:06And in the stillness of a Scottish winter night,
26:10you might hear,
26:12you do the muffin tonight, Hamish.
26:14I've got one of my agrams coming on.
26:19Thank you, I'm fine.
26:22He works hard, this lad.
26:24Right, father.
26:24Yes.
26:26Muffy is an adjective.
26:29And it means resembling,
26:31well, it resembles a lady's muff or hand warmer.
26:35I mean, from the word, muffy.
26:37And, well, I mean, what comes to mind,
26:41meaning muffy is a Cossack's furry hat,
26:44the top end of a bulrush,
26:46or a long-haired dachshund.
26:51Yes, well, it means, it's of a muff.
26:54Of a muff.
26:55It's what you throw quite at.
26:57And it's to bank up a fire in Scotland.
27:00Frank, what should you choose of these?
27:03Not mad about the horseshoe coits,
27:06heaving, really, at the peg.
27:09Is a taller one a brist, Muffy?
27:11You're going around in a circle.
27:15It's private information.
27:19Banking up the fire in the bin, or the butt.
27:21I never know which bit's the butt and which is the bin.
27:24Anyway, don't think that's it.
27:27We...
27:27Can we do this twice?
27:31That a muffie's a thing that's muff-like?
27:33Let's have a go.
27:34Flash the card.
27:36You're going to have her muffie, yes.
27:38Yes.
27:38The literal...
27:39Barbara, you said it, didn't you?
27:40Yes, I did.
27:41True or bluff.
27:41She has to own up now.
27:46Sphinx-like.
27:47No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
27:48You've got it!
27:49I told you.
27:50I learned it.
27:51I saw you, I saw you, I saw you, I saw you haver, an old Scottish word itself, Frank,
28:01there, but you couldn't have two that were of, or genitive, in the same...
28:06Well, Rehammer, wasn't it?
28:07Rehammer and Muffy, yes.
28:08Yes, it's a bit of a dodgy choice.
28:10Yeah, proves you can, though, doesn't it?
28:12There you are.
28:13Anyway, yes, well, the score standing at 5-3, no doubt about it.
28:18Patrick Campbell's team has won.
28:20Hooray!
28:30So, we shall be paying another visit to the Madame Tussauds of the English language next week.
28:36Till then, goodbye from Andre Previn.
28:41Tom Fonte.
28:44Tina Brown.
28:45Barbara Kellerman.
28:48Frank Lior.
28:51Patrick Campbell.
28:53And goodbye.
28:56And goodbye.
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