- 6 weeks ago
17 June 1976. The guests: Lesley-Anne Down, Jilly Cooper, Anthony Valentine, Quentin Bell.
Host/Team captains: Robert Robinson, Frank Muir, Patrick Campbell
Host/Team captains: Robert Robinson, Frank Muir, Patrick Campbell
Category
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PeopleTranscript
00:18Good evening, call my bluff, which, as you know, is the thinking man's Ludo, featuring Patrick Campbell.
00:31And I'm the luckiest man in the world to have, once again, by my side on the winning team, a
00:38gorgeous actress, Leslie Ann Downe.
00:47And doubly lucky all over again to have Mr. Anthony Valentine.
00:56And the Victor Sylvester of the panel game, Frank Muir.
01:07Luck doesn't come into our side of the house. I chose my companions.
01:13And they are, again, as last week, the journalist and novelist, Jilly Cooper.
01:24And the biographer and professor of art history, Professor Quentin Bell.
01:34Now, I do this. And what happens, what nearly happens, ah, there, good lads.
01:39We get a word. It's valenture, but it'll be pronounced every which way.
01:44Now, Patrick and his team are going to define valenture three different ways.
01:48Two false, one true. And the true one is what Frank and co are going to try and pick out.
01:53So, what about this word, Patrick?
01:55A valenture, as it's called in English, is kind of a creep, a sycophant, a nauseously, servile creep, really.
02:08As far as the French language you probably know, I hope Professor Bell has some knowledge of the language.
02:15It comes with an old French word, which is called, pronounced in French, if I can say it.
02:23As I say, just made it.
02:26Which means to make a basin, not a bow.
02:29Simple, it'll matter.
02:30To make a basin?
02:31No, to make a basin, you're so thick.
02:34Right. Gotcha.
02:37Now, Anthony Valentine, tell us all.
02:39A valenture is probably, or possibly better known, as a Westbury russet, it being an apple, and first grown at
02:48Westbury in Wiltshire.
02:50It's one of the most densely fleshed, and heaviest of apples, necessarily, and had it fallen onto the bonce of
02:57Isaac Newton, the course of history might not have been what it was today.
03:01A valenture.
03:03Right. Now, Leslie, your turn.
03:06A valenture, it's an instrument that's used by vintners and brewers.
03:11It's in the form of a tube, which is put in, without anesthetic, into a cask or a barrel.
03:21And the person that's desperate of a drink can then draw off the liquor within and have one through the
03:27valenture.
03:30Right, I've got you there.
03:31Well, it's kind of a sycophant.
03:33It's a kind of an apple, big, heavy apple, and a sort of pipette that you stick into a barrel
03:38of drink and draw it off thereby.
03:40Frank Muir.
03:41No trouble.
03:42No, no, no, no trouble at all.
03:44It's transparently.
03:45Good, good.
03:48I don't think it's...
03:49No, no, no, we can...
03:50Paddy's French creep, I think we can dismiss.
03:53And why is it, lad?
03:55Ah.
03:55Do some more.
03:56Ah, meh, lad.
03:59Um, whether it's this...
04:01What's it, vintners enema for wine?
04:05An apple is the thing.
04:07It's a bit eeny, meeny, miny, moe at the stage, isn't it?
04:10Um, I say it's the tube.
04:15It is an...
04:18It's all a pipette thing.
04:19Yeah.
04:20Yeah, that's what she said.
04:21It was Leslie Ann.
04:22We have not much confidence, but there we are.
04:25Ah.
04:32It's what cellarers do, you know.
04:35They give it in the barrel and draw off the liquor to see how it's doing.
04:38The next word is pedrail, and Frank is going to define it.
04:43Trump card used in the game Mungo, card game, which is played in southern states of America, Mexico.
04:53Learned etymologists think the derivation of the word comes from pedrilla,
05:01pedrilla, which doesn't seem very likely, as pedrilla is the Spanish-Mexican word for a shovel.
05:11So, I don't really know why I added that bit, but I thought it might help you...
05:15It isn't pronounced like that anyway.
05:17Well, I can't pronounce...
05:18You've got your damn barrel there, yes.
05:19Oh, I can't pronounce that.
05:20Pedrilla.
05:21Pedrilla.
05:22Not quite, but it'll do, anyway.
05:23Ah, this is what they call, in the army, laying down smoke.
05:27Quentinvale, your turn.
05:30Well, pedrilla's kind of gumboots for tractors.
05:36I mean, when a tractor finds itself in a difficult situation, puts on these, as it were, boots, pedrilla's,
05:46and this carries it along over difficult ground.
05:55I think it was invented since about 1902, and that's it, the pedrilla, it helps you to walk through difficult
06:06terrain, if you're a tractor.
06:08Ah, yes, if you're a tractor, that's right.
06:12You've got to be a tractor.
06:13Chilly Cooper.
06:14A pedrilla is a somewhat morbid variety of Welsh fairies.
06:21Welsh?
06:23But they're all morbid, aren't they?
06:25Welsh fairy.
06:26I say morbid because a pedrilla suffers from an insane urge to seek out druid ruins,
06:33and having sought them out and located the bones of a bard,
06:37the pedrilla hovers around, very touchingly, on guard.
06:43All right.
06:45A Welsh fairy, a sort of rubber, a Wellington boot that goes around a tractor, or around the wheels of
06:53a tractor, I should say, that kind of thing.
06:55And the ace of spades in a mysterious game of cards.
06:58Patrick?
07:00Well, I can't imagine anyone having a tractor in 1900.
07:03If they did, they wouldn't bother to put boots on it.
07:07Can a horse draw on it?
07:08Well, what about boots for the horse to do with the tractor?
07:14I missed nearly all of you.
07:16In fact, I was thinking about something else.
07:17You said it was a...
07:19Well, that's your bad luck.
07:23What did I say?
07:24It was a...
07:25It's a...
07:26American card game.
07:27I affected to pretend that it was a Mexican card game.
07:30Mexican...
07:32Oh, Lord.
07:35That's the Welsh fairy.
07:36The Welsh fairy.
07:38You spoke of that, Jilly Cooper, true or bluff?
07:42Oh, no, no.
07:48Nope.
07:49Wasn't that...
07:50Who gave the true definition?
07:52Voila.
07:58The sort of early caterpillar track that went round the wheels of a tractor.
08:03Two nil.
08:04Well, well.
08:06Tardle is our next word.
08:07And it's you to do it, Anthony.
08:10Tardle is a Scottish verb,
08:12which means to prevaricate,
08:14to act evasively,
08:16to hum and to whore.
08:18Tardle.
08:19Hence the occasionally heard cri de corps
08:21upon the Scottish hillside.
08:23Och, joch, stop your tardling.
08:28Nice to get a bit of dialect in the show.
08:31It wouldn't be the same show without a dialect.
08:34There's the end.
08:35A tardle is quite simply a tangle.
08:39It's a mixed-up mess of shoelaces,
08:44string, hair, rope, spaghetti,
08:48whatever you like.
08:49And to quote the famous words of Sir Walter Scott's Marmion,
08:52Oh, what a tangled web, tardilled web we weave.
08:58When first.
08:59When first we practice.
09:01To this day.
09:01Oh, yes.
09:02You've got it.
09:05That's about as apt a quotation as we have here.
09:08Very good indeed.
09:10Patrick.
09:13Advice from an old manual on the art of ploughing.
09:16Don't.
09:19There are notes here.
09:20It says,
09:21if your ploughshare,
09:23if your plough irons do not bite the earth enough,
09:28be sure you are hanging too heavily on your tardle.
09:36Because a tardle is the handle of a plough.
09:39But it can also be the handle of a wheelbarrow.
09:45So, it's a kind of a tangle
09:47into which Lesley-Anne Dowd shot herself.
09:50So charmingly.
09:51It's also to be evasive.
09:52It's also a plough handle.
09:54Quentin Bell tunes.
09:56What do you think?
09:57I'm not sure that the handle doesn't mean the best reason.
10:01I think quite...
10:02Any time you're ready, Les.
10:03Hang on a bit.
10:04Hang on a bit.
10:05What do you think?
10:07Who is instructing who?
10:10Well, rather a tardle around here.
10:14She's like you.
10:16Well, anyway, you might be.
10:23I'm a little worried by these quotations.
10:26They put me off a little.
10:28I think I best leave them off.
10:31And then there's this man saying,
10:34what is it?
10:34The verb to toddle.
10:38Yes.
10:38I think I'll try the plough handle.
10:41The plough handle of which Patrick spoke.
10:44Now he'll reveal all.
10:47Nothing.
10:48Nothing.
10:53So what pretty meaning did it truly have?
10:58Little tiny.
10:59Oh, yes.
11:01No doubt.
11:02No doubt.
11:03No doubt.
11:03No doubt.
11:05She acted it beautifully.
11:07It was a, you know, it's a tangle, a confusion, and all like that.
11:10That's what a tardle is.
11:11Here we have lamba.
11:13And Quentin Bell, define it, if you will.
11:17Oh, lamba.
11:18Yes.
11:20Lamba's a drink.
11:23It's a thirst-quenching drink you drink in the Islamic world, Sahara, that sort of place,
11:32where it's very, very hot.
11:33And it's made of sour milk and fruit juice and water mixed together.
11:46And, um, I actually think it's very disgusting, too.
11:52It's a lamba, at any rate.
11:55Right.
11:56Jenny, your go.
11:57A lamba is the chief garment in the national dress of Madagascar, a large island, which is
12:05about an inch long on my map.
12:07It's a length of cotton cloth, about three yards long and two yards wide, and you wind
12:12it round and round and round and round and round.
12:16Yes.
12:16What?
12:17Yourself, you twin.
12:20Who else?
12:21I'd like to see him in one.
12:22Yes.
12:23We may live to see it.
12:24You never know.
12:25Frank, your go.
12:27Lamba, old medical term for the deepest and most profound sleep.
12:34It's what old physicians used to call the fourth and deepest degree of insensibility.
12:45If it's of any conceivable interest to you, the other degrees of insensibility are sopa,
12:54coma, and taupa.
12:57Yes.
12:58How's it about that?
12:59We've all got that.
13:00Well, it's a very deep degree of insensibility, and there's an awful lot of it about.
13:06And it's a Madagascarian dress, and it's a kind of Arabian milkshake.
13:13Anthony Valentine.
13:15Wait a minute.
13:16Well, he's doing it.
13:18Yes.
13:19Well, my colleague...
13:20I hear a hoot, what do you think?
13:26Yes.
13:26No, no, maybe...
13:29Excuse us.
13:29Talk about yourself.
13:30The truth about your child is known.
13:32Come along, come along.
13:33Yes.
13:33And the drink, as Quentin says, sounds revolting.
13:38We can, I think, dispense with that.
13:40Chilly.
13:41No, actually.
13:43Around and around.
13:44Possibly.
13:44Yes.
13:45Frank, I think.
13:47Frank, yes.
13:48We'll have a suck at your lamb.
13:49I'll suck it and see.
13:50Yes.
13:51What he said...
13:52Yes, yes, yes.
13:53Oh, it was the deep sleep.
13:54Wake up.
13:55True or bluff?
13:57The bluff, isn't it?
13:58Ah!
14:05Nothing much to do with that.
14:07Something else was the true one.
14:08Who gave it?
14:10Chilly Cooper did.
14:15They're dressed, they wrap around themselves in Madagascar.
14:20What an enjoyable game, this is.
14:21Yes, it is, really.
14:22Yo-hay.
14:23Yo-hay is the next word, and it's Leslie-Ann Downs.
14:27Yo-hay is the name used in demerara, the sugar, you know,
14:34and it means the wood from the white cedar tree.
14:40The cedar wood?
14:41No, it's yo-hay.
14:44It's, uh...
14:46Yo-hay is very easily worked,
14:48and they used to make it,
14:50they used to make oars and paddles out of it.
14:52It's also got a lovely smell,
14:55which means that when they had their oars and paddles,
14:58they got a nice pong every time they breathed in.
15:01It's lovely.
15:02It's not addictive.
15:04That was a mercy.
15:05Patrick.
15:07Next.
15:08Yo-hay!
15:09Yo-hay!
15:10Yo-hay!
15:11Thank you, Anthony.
15:13It's an Indian...
15:14It's a very Indian exclamation of pleasure.
15:18Because you're happy duty to,
15:19say, to big, cheap, sitting bull,
15:22whatever his name might be,
15:25you run the pools,
15:27and a free copy of the Radio Times,
15:29you'll go,
15:29Yo-hay!
15:30Yo-hay!
15:30Yo-hay!
15:32And I bet he'd do it just like that, too.
15:35Yes.
15:36Anthony, your go.
15:37Yo-hay!
15:38Yo-hay!
15:39Yo-hay!
15:39Yo-hay!
15:39is an attack by unfriendly tribesmen,
15:43in fact,
15:43Jezo tribesmen.
15:45It's an assault by certain Afghan warriors.
15:48It was in the course of a yo-hay or jo-hay!
15:52in the region of the Khyber Pass
15:54that the then-lieutenant,
15:55Winston Churchill probably had
15:57his first bullets fired in anger.
16:01Okay.
16:01It's a kind of assault,
16:03as described.
16:04It's a sort of cedar wood,
16:06and it's an exclamation of great joy
16:07by a red Indian.
16:09I'm very worried about this
16:10expression of joy by an Indian.
16:13I have a feeling.
16:15On the other hand,
16:16I'm also very intrigued by that assault.
16:20And then there's the cedar wood.
16:23I think it's the cedar wood.
16:25I'd plump for that one.
16:26Swiftly she goes to the cedar wood,
16:28and it was Lesley-Ann Dowd
16:29who spoke with that.
16:30True or bluff?
16:32No luck.
16:39Keeps it a very close game.
16:40Need to know now
16:41who gave the true definition.
16:42Yo-hay!
16:42Yo-hay!
16:43Yo-hay!
16:50I'm going to say
16:53jolly glad we don't have
16:54red Indian definitions very often.
16:56Well, it breaks the monotony
16:57from time to time.
16:58Spoffy.
16:59Spoffy's the next one.
17:01I think it's Jilly Cooper's turn.
17:03Spoffy is a now
17:05out-of-fashion adjective
17:06which means bossy,
17:08officious,
17:09and fussy.
17:10Turn where we may nowadays
17:12we come across spoffiness.
17:14We meet spoffy traffic wardens,
17:16spoffy VAT people,
17:17and spoffy townclubs.
17:21Spoffy chairman of quiz programmes.
17:25Get in your own back there, Frank.
17:27How awful.
17:27Spoffy patrons of other teams.
17:31Your turn.
17:32Spoffy is
17:35American word for tobacco pouch.
17:37In fact,
17:37it is an American tobacco pouch,
17:40a spoffy,
17:40and it's a tobacco pouch
17:42which contains the tobacco,
17:44and also the wherewithal,
17:45the bits and pieces
17:46for rolling cigarettes.
17:47I have a quotation for you,
17:49which I'm not entirely certain
17:52will be all that helpful,
17:54but it comes from a pre-World War novel,
17:58and it says,
17:59I'd sure like a smoke,
18:01said Henry,
18:03but I forgot my spoffy.
18:06And that is it in its entirety.
18:09It's wonderful.
18:10That's lovely.
18:11I mean, I like that.
18:12Meaningful.
18:13You say it again, Frank.
18:13No!
18:14I could do it with an accent.
18:16He might do it.
18:17No.
18:18Quentin, your turn now.
18:20Well, a spoffy,
18:22it's really synonymous with a bailer.
18:27A spoffy is really any instrument
18:30you use for emptying water
18:34out of a vessel.
18:36You can take a hat or a tin can.
18:40Anything conserves a spoffy,
18:42which is, in effect,
18:44a bailing instrument.
18:47Yes, not a word to add to that,
18:48I dare say.
18:49No, it's a bailing instrument.
18:51It's a tobacco pouch.
18:53It's an adjective meaning posse.
18:55So, now, Leslie Ann.
18:58It comes to you.
18:59Julie, spoffying the tax collector, etc.
19:04The only word I know for them
19:05is that we don't like them.
19:06We hate them.
19:07We don't spoffy them.
19:08I don't really believe that one.
19:11No, but she said they were rather bossy,
19:12I think.
19:13Aye, aye.
19:14Are they bossy?
19:15I think they're all very nice and meek.
19:17Good thing to say.
19:18I'm with you, girl.
19:19Rise your car.
19:20Lovely men.
19:21Lovely.
19:21Divine.
19:21Yeah, first rate.
19:22Love them.
19:24The quotation, Frank.
19:25I would have believed you up to the quotation.
19:29I really would.
19:31I don't know about that.
19:32Just a minute, girl.
19:35You know the quotation.
19:37The bailing instrument.
19:38Oh, God.
19:38I don't know anything.
19:39I'm sure you know more about bailing than I do.
19:42Do you think he looks like that?
19:44It's a fairly limited subject, isn't it?
19:46It is.
19:46It says they're all spotty.
19:47It has a legal meaning.
19:49The death doesn't apply.
19:51I think...
19:53Do you think...
19:54Screw your nerve.
19:55Yes.
19:55Yes.
19:56The sticking part.
19:57I'm Frank.
19:58Frank.
19:59He said it was a tobacco pouch, didn't you?
20:02Or something.
20:03True or bluff?
20:05It's a bluff, isn't it?
20:06Ah.
20:12No, no.
20:12No, no.
20:13It wasn't there.
20:14Own up.
20:15Who did it?
20:17Not that.
20:18Yes.
20:23Oh, what a nice game this is.
20:25Spuffy means bossy.
20:27It's 4-2.
20:28Yes, I think you're making a comeback here, Frank.
20:31Walder is the next word.
20:32I haven't been away.
20:33Oh, I wish I'd said that.
20:35Patrick, your go.
20:36A walder is a weed that grows in cornfields.
20:40Very dense, as it kind of kills the young corn.
20:45Now, many farmers call the walder the buddle.
20:52And many another farmer, of course, is the bodle.
20:56But between bodles and buddles and walders, the poor young corn has got no chance of any kind,
21:04unless you eradicate the walder or the buddle or the waldel.
21:08Yes.
21:11Corny, but good.
21:15Anthony Valentine, now.
21:17A walder is a water witch.
21:21Witch.
21:22A witch which has taken up, which, if you'll forgive me, yes, taken up residence on or near water.
21:29According to legend, the sinking, I think this is lovely, of the white ship,
21:34which was carrying Henry I's son, William of Anjou, perished, owing to the malevolence of a walder,
21:41a water witch by the name of Ulrica.
21:45Yes.
21:46Now, Leslie-Anne down.
21:49She tells us.
21:50Walder.
21:51It's a food which helps, indeed, keeps them alive.
21:57The Orkney and Shetland Islanders keeps their protein intake up during the winter.
22:05It's dried, hung out to dry in the wind.
22:09What is?
22:11The walder.
22:11The walder.
22:12Listen.
22:13It's a food, a protein food.
22:15It keeps their protein intake up, hung out to dry in the wind.
22:18You can't go out and buy a pound of protein.
22:20You can in Orkney.
22:21You can in Orkney.
22:23You can?
22:24Yes, really.
22:24It's kind of stuffed.
22:25I'm sure you can, yes, you can.
22:26Stuff?
22:27Yes.
22:27It's cured and preserved solely by the elements of nature.
22:31It's as simple as that.
22:31Yes.
22:33Well, that was well said.
22:34It's a kind of stuff they have.
22:37If you see anything hanging up in the Orkneys, that's what it is.
22:41And if you can get any, good luck.
22:44It's a water witch also, and it's a weed which will do for the corn.
22:48Some hope.
22:49Frank.
22:51All right.
22:53Terribly easy.
22:54Yes, right.
22:57Paddy's weed was very deceptive, wasn't it?
22:59Very simple.
22:59And they're so often, as might well be the case, they're so often the true ones.
23:04But I wonder.
23:06Interesting point.
23:07Yes, interesting point.
23:08A bit long, but interesting.
23:10Yeah, and this lump of stuff which you can buy in the Orkneys and nowhere else, protein, I'm extremely worried
23:17about.
23:18The odd man out, or the odd lady out, is this water witch which suddenly came in, because the others
23:22are a bit similar.
23:23So I think it's that stuff they hang up in lumps of protein.
23:31Oh, Leslie Ann, you did say it, didn't you?
23:33I don't know, I understood.
23:47Of course it's the bottle, or the bird, or the bottle, or the bottle, or the bottle.
23:50Oh, my boy.
23:51Yes!
23:55It's the weed.
23:57It's the weed that chokes the corn.
23:59At 4-3, a very close go.
24:02Caloia.
24:03Frank, your turn.
24:06Caloia is a sort of a black-clad monk, which you find in Greece.
24:15Actually, particularly a black-clad monk, belonging to the ancient order of St. Basil.
24:21Now, Lord Byron met one such in 1812.
24:26Made overtures to him, because he's...
24:29Ten out of ten.
24:31What?
24:31Yeah, just liked it.
24:32And because he apparently was entertained, because I've got a quote here, but I can't find it.
24:36It's page 93, the quote.
24:38No, I wrote it down here, because a quote from Lord Byron, beginning, quote starts here.
24:44Nor rude is he, nor niggard of his cheer.
24:48End of quote.
24:491812.
24:50Very good.
24:50I'm glad we have it.
24:51It's in the bottle.
24:52It's coffee, isn't it?
24:53It's in the bottle.
24:54That's important.
24:54Yeah.
24:55Made overtures to him.
24:56Excellent, Frank.
24:57Quentin, your turn.
25:01Caloia, I think is the right pronunciation.
25:05It's an evil-smelling marché-pont.
25:12And it tends to be unsavoury and generally nasty.
25:18The name derived, we get it through the Americans, it was the Caloia, which were the ponds that contained the
25:28Anopheles mosquito, which caused yellow fever.
25:33I'm sorry, malaria, angela fever, when they were excavating the Panamark now.
25:40And this name, Caloia, became Anglo-American.
25:45It means, ooh, stagnant ponds, nasty ponds.
25:49That was actually interesting.
25:53And nasty ponds.
26:03A frightened way through the castle of his master.
26:05In shape, a Caloia is like a lidless teapot.
26:09A weak and weedy flame proceeding from the spout.
26:13Oh.
26:14Yeah, well.
26:15Kind of the lamp that Jimmy Cooper described.
26:18Greek, monk, and a nasty bond.
26:21Patrick.
26:23Well, it's rather important, isn't it?
26:25Yes.
26:26Singulera here.
26:28What's Lord Byron doing on this show, propositioning monks anyway?
26:33Well, stagnant ponds and flickering lamps.
26:37Fairly quickly.
26:39It has to be...
26:44It's stagnant ponds beyond that.
26:47Quentin Bell drew a bluff.
26:49Oh.
26:51I'm sure it's there.
26:52Is this the right one?
26:54Yes, I should think so.
26:56Well, anyone...
26:56Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
27:02Who gave the true one?
27:05I can't hum the overture.
27:07You did.
27:13It's a Greek monk.
27:14We go very quickly.
27:15We'll get another.
27:15And it's her salon.
27:18Anthony, two or three words.
27:20Fast, simple.
27:21A her salon was a thing used outside a fort in old days to discourage unwelcome callers.
27:25It was a plank, nails in, like a faker's couch.
27:27You put it outside the door.
27:28Not the faker, the nails.
27:29To discourage people dropping in.
27:30Yes, well, it would.
27:31Leslie-Ann.
27:32Leslie-Ann, quickly.
27:34Her salon.
27:35It's a glass case that the Victorian ladies used for growing ferns.
27:40Lovely, lovely.
27:41Patrick.
27:41It was a narrow cart used in the streets of Yarmouth, Norfolk, in the 16th century.
27:47Right.
27:48An instrument of defence, it seems.
27:50A glass case full of fern, as often as not.
27:52A horse-thorn cart, or thereabouts.
27:55Quentin Bell.
27:57Oh.
27:58A plump for the ferns.
28:01Plump for the...
28:02Well, more the case than the ferns.
28:04The case than the ferns.
28:04Yes, I know what you're getting at.
28:05Leslie-Ann, true or bluff.
28:07Oh, no.
28:08No, no, no.
28:10No, no, no.
28:11No, no, it's a two-one.
28:13Two-one, if you please.
28:15It's there!
28:17It's not there.
28:21It is indeed the instrument of defence.
28:23You laid it down in front of the castle or whatever, full of spikes and all like that,
28:27and it rather dissuaded people.
28:28So, well, what a close one.
28:31What a close one.
28:32And I say again, Frank, you have come back, because the score's standing at 5-4.
28:36Frank, your team has won.
28:38Hooray.
28:38Hooray.
28:40Thank you very much.
28:42Thank you very much.
28:43Thank you very much.
28:46So, there.
28:47We shall have some more left-handed screws from the Oxford English Dictionary next week.
28:51Until then, goodbye from Anthony Valentine.
29:09Goodbye.
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