#200 The Big Ep200 ‘Your Letters’ Special! (Part 1)

Oh What A Time...

In this milestone 200th episode, the hosts celebrate by reading a curated selection of listener correspondence. The episode traverses variou

Key takeaways

John Dean developed an early diving helmet in the 1820s that allowed for extended underwater exploration.
The village of Whitwell unilaterally declared itself twinned with Paris after receiving no response from the French mayor.

Main topics

Listener correspondence
Early diving technology

Notable quotes

I'm looking with my hands.

Conclusion

A celebratory and trivia-rich episode that rewards long-term listeners

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Oh What A Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else ad-free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh What A Time group chat. Plus if you become an Oh What A Time all-timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Oh Speaker 3 (0:27) What A Time. Speaker 1 (0:39) Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time. And over the last 199 episodes, this of course is episode 200, we've asked incredibly pertinent historical questions such as, is my wife, Izzy Sooty, a woman out of time? Should she really have been born about 300 years ago? And the reason I say this is, and I can say this because it would not cross her mind to listen. Speaker 1 (1:12) She doesn't know the name of this podcast. I've heard her say, oh, what a lovely time a couple of times. I Speaker 3 (1:17) love that. That's so great. That's like my mum. When I did stand-ups, you would say, you're off to do a jig. That's what she would say to me. You're off to do a jig. You never got ahead around it. So Izzy is like my mum, essentially. Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:29) You know, if I said, what podcast do I do? She'd say, oh, John on Radio X. And I'd say, hasn't been on Radio X since 2019. That's fine. And then she'd say, the sport one? The sport one. And I'd say, yes. And then I'd say, is there another one? Do you spend a new year with them? Tom's one of my oldest friends. Speaker 3 (1:52) Did Speaker 1 (1:53) she Speaker 3 (1:53) go, parenting hell? No, not Josh. Oh, what a lovely Speaker 1 (1:55) history time. Yeah. Yeah, Speaker 2 (1:57) I suppose. Yeah. Speaker 3 (1:59) Close enough. Oh, that's so sweet. Whereas you, by the way, Ellis, you listen to everything that Izzy does. Is that right? Just to quickly check, just to balance the books out? No, I Speaker 1 (2:08) would say I pick and choose. Speaker 3 (2:10) Her CBBC sitcom at the moment, are you watching that? Speaker 1 (2:13) That's sort of, I sort of. imbibe that via osmosis because the kids watch it. Okay, fine. Her podcast with Dan Skinner about travelling on the Great Western Network. I must admit I haven't listened to any of those. Speaker 3 (2:26) There was a joke going around, a WhatsApp group we're in, that Izzy and Dan Skinner are having an affair, wasn't it? That was it. It was a running joke. Speaker 1 (2:33) The promotional literature would imply that they're having an affair, yes. Speaker 1 (2:39) It's quite loving. Speaker 3 (2:43) I'd say it's some of the most loving photographs I've ever seen, including my own wedding photos. Speaker 1 (2:47) Most affectionate. I should add, they are from two separate photo shoots and they've been put together. But because in Izzy's photo shoot from six years ago, she's looking to the left. And in Dan's one from whenever it was, he's looking to the right. It looks like they're just staring lovingly into each other's eyes. I Speaker 3 (3:05) would describe it as a tender moment captured on film. That's what I'd say. Speaker 3 (3:10) Not ideal. But you were saying, so you haven't listened to it yet, but you're waiting for the right train journey to do so. Speaker 1 (3:14) And I also travel a lot on the Great Western Railway Network. So I did a gig in Bristol the other day. And as soon as I arrived at Temple Meads, just dozens of photos of my wife having an affair. It was a Speaker 3 (3:27) charity gig. Speaker 1 (3:29) But yeah, so I turned up at the Bristol Beacon, not in a great frame of mind. Speaker 1 (3:35) But our daughter started secondary school and it's not a smartphone. It's like an old fashioned brick phone. But for some reason, the SIM card, it's not recognising the SIM card. And Izzy's going to have to call. Speaker 3 (3:50) Oh, she's got her first phone. It's like a brick phone, is it? Speaker 1 (3:53) Yeah, yeah. So there's no social media or anything on it. It's just for calls. Speaker 3 (3:56) Sort of phone a drug dealer would have, yeah? Get a burner phone, fine. Yeah, Speaker 1 (4:01) she's got her first phone. First burner phone. Okay, fine. And the first drug deal she does, we're going to be there just to watch. And then she'll do a couple of simple local drug deals. And we'll let her get those under her belt before she moves on into the sort of wider South London area. The Speaker 2 (4:19) pride inside you as you witness that. Speaker 1 (4:21) Oh, yeah. When she does her first really big one in the West End, I'm going to be absolutely, I'm so pleased. For a celebrity. Speaker 3 (4:29) Backstage at a theatre. But Speaker 1 (4:32) Izzy's going to have to phone the phone company to sort out this SIM card issue. And as soon as I said, well, I can't do it because I'm recording episode 200 of A What A Time. And she said, what's that? And I said, forget it, but I am recording something. You're going to have to do it. Her shoulders slumped. She lost about five centimetres of height. Oh no. Because she's, and I said, it's just. The prospect of it. It's just calling Nokia. Speaker 3 (4:55) Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:56) And she says, what's Nokia? You've had a phone for at least a quarter of a century. You must have. You had one when we met. You must have set that one up. Oh, what if they tell me to do stuff? They will. And you follow the instructions and then the phone will work. Why do I imagine that Speaker 3 (5:12) Izzy has, not like the early Nokia, but I imagine she has sort of like a flip phone, not the modern one, like the original type of flip phone where you... open it and there'd be a keypad and a little green screen. To my mind, she's got one of those. I think they're called Oyster phones or something, aren't they? Oh, yeah. That's how I'm imagining it. Clamshells, isn't it? Clamshell, that's Speaker 1 (5:28) the Speaker 3 (5:28) one, yeah. Is that what she's got or has she got an iPhone? Am I doing her a disservice? Speaker 1 (5:32) She's got an iPhone, but she hates it because she doesn't understand it. Okay. So it would be simpler if she had a clam phone. I'll Speaker 3 (5:40) tell you what Izzy is like, Elle, in history. She would have been burning everyone at the stake who... came up with any kind of advance thinking about science, anything that was in any way revolutionary, she'd be burning them. Speaker 1 (5:53) She would have been big friends with what, Tyler? Yeah, the Luddites. Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:00) Those looms would have been smashed. Speaker 1 (6:03) Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:04) Exactly. Speaker 1 (6:04) Yeah, those looms. Because she's very good at knitting and cooking, but these are 19th century pursuits. Speaker 3 (6:11) I don't think cooking is a 19th century pursuit. I think that's just part of life. Oh, come on. Speaker 1 (6:14) Have you not heard of the microwave, Tom? Speaker 3 (6:17) That's modern cooking. Bung it in. Three and a half minutes, you've got a meal. Speaker 1 (6:22) Meals of the Speaker 2 (6:22) world available at your local spa. Has Izzy ever done any research into past lives? I feel like she may have had a past life. I don't necessarily believe in that, but it feels like Izzy... Speaker 1 (6:33) I've been with Speaker 2 (6:33) a Speaker 1 (6:33) tall puddle martyr. Speaker 1 (6:38) I reckon she was smushing spinning jennies. Speaker 3 (6:42) She had a past life with Ellis James and her husband. Her current life's with Dan Skinner. Speaker 3 (6:49) The new play thing. So we're talking about the past here, Izzy. You know, she's not built for this world. She's built for the past. And this show, as Ellis says, has been knocking around for 200 episodes. We go deep into the past. If you look back, our first episode is now part of history. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:07) If you think about Speaker 3 (7:07) it. And, guys, not to put words in your mouth, this show would not be here if it was not for who? The you, the you, the listeners. The you, the listener. There you are. Chris. No response whatsoever. Couldn't work that out. Yeah, he didn't know. What were you thinking? Dan Snow? Speaker 2 (7:22) Yeah. Speaker 3 (7:23) Going through West Ham players in his head. Speaker 2 (7:25) Dan Snow did one episode. It could be him. Speaker 3 (7:28) Could be Dan's. No, the dear listeners. The dear listeners, yes, of course. Speaker 2 (7:32) And because of that, on Speaker 3 (7:32) our 200th anniversary edition, we thought we'd do an episode which is all about you, by which I mean your wonderful correspondence. It is a correspondence special. Speaker 1 (7:42) Also, I love this podcast. And I was in a bookshop yesterday and I was just staring at the history section thinking there's so much stuff that I don't know. And there's so many topics here that would be good for the show. Yeah. And, you know, if you've been interested in history since you were a survivor, and probably since I was five or six, that doesn't go away, does it? Absolutely, yeah. You don't stop becoming curious. Speaker 3 (8:08) I've learnt enough. Speaker 1 (8:10) What an amazing attitude. And you closed the book. So I've got a book here. You closed the book. And with that, I've learned enough. Speaker 3 (8:22) I'd like it if we were like, so if you're like a MacBook, you know, when it tells you there's no gigabytes of space free, it just gets to the end. It's like, well, now I can't take anything