5950/18970
Sometimes being like Theresa May and waiting til the last possible moment to book RHLSTP guests pays off. I was getting a bit nervous about not having a second guest for next Monday, when I got a reply from Nicholas Parsons’ agent saying he might be up for it. I spoke to the great man on the phone, who despite feeling that the fee was a bit small (he should try going on any other podcast in the world!) was happy to do it. Hooray. He’s going to be an amazing guest. Our first nonagenarian and a lot of stories to tell. I told him it would only be about an hour and he told me he does two hours on tour, so I don’t think we have to worry about his energy. He is a remarkable man and it’d be awesome to get a decent crowd to give him the reception that he deserves.
Get your tickets here.
I had what I think might have been my first night out without my wife (or where I was working) since we moved to Hertfordshire. I don’t mind about that as I like hanging out with my wife and though I like my friends too, I am just as happy to be their friend without meeting or communicating with them. It’s probably preferable.
Sure it’s partly due to the fag of heading into London, but mainly down to the demands of fatherhood and the preference to sleep.
But tonight I was free. I went to see Guy Walters talk about his excellent book “The Real Great Escape†which I read a couple of months ago. I met up with my old friend Stefan, who in my single days I used to go out to the pub with in Balham, hoping to meet some women. We pretty much never did. Until he met his now wife in the now sadly gone Goblins wine bar. That was, he informed me, twenty years ago. I wondered if we might return to our old (unsuccessful) womanising ways tonight, and as the talk was held at the RAF club and seemed to be attended mainly by middle-aged men like us, we did return to those old days.
We did bump into history and war film fan Al Murray and wondered what the fuck was going to happen with Brexit. I was not tempted by the free wine and enjoyed a nice elderflower cordial instead.
The talk was good. Guy was worried he’d be thrown out of the RAF club for his opinion that the Great Escape was not as brilliant as everyone seems to think. Not only did it result in the horrific murders of 50 young men, but it also led to thousands of other POWs and other enemies of the Nazis being caught up in the net. His argument that it didn’t even create a second front in the war were also persuasive, but even so it is hard not to admire the bravery and ingenuity of the men involved, even the escape did rely a lot more on assistance from blackmailed and lovelorn Germans than the film would ever admit.
Another detail missing from the largely fanciful film version (that is however responsible for keeping the story alive, as well as warping it in the minds of the people who took part) was that the tunnellers did their work naked, which was hard if you were the guy directly behind the digger at the front. Also there weren’t toilets or time for toilet breaks so the men just went where they were. If you were brave enough to squeeze into the tiny hole, you might be put off by the unsanitary conditions and the arsehole in front of you.
RHLSTP with Emily Atack is now up on
audio
