January 9, 2024 • 28 mins
We're back at Alnwick to discuss a medieval bloodsucker who terrorised Alnwick. This isn't Twilight we're talking the real deal. Plus, Tom answers some ancient riddles.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode, we returned to Annik Castle, the home
of the Percy family for over seven hundred years and
a location that now provides the backdrop to your favorite
hit TV shows and movies. And with the help of Daniel,
the castle's Learning and Engagement officer, We're going to sink
our teeth into a juicy vampire story. But first, how
(00:22):
does the story of forbidden Love end with dogs licking
up the juices of a dead king? Well, it starts
with a man called Lord Henry Percy, the sixth Earl
of Northumberland, who was secretly engaged to Anne Berlyn. This
is juicy gossip. How did he meet Amberleyn? What was
the actual sort of the layout of all that?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, the background, the meat cute, if you like, is
the tutor meat cute? That is different to most wrongcomes
in that people don't get beheaded in wrong comes anymore?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Would that be a different love actually storyline?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Wouldn't it death? Actually? Yeah, it's four beheadings in a funeral?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Very good, thank you. I think the Simpsons might have
done that already.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Oh, the Simpsons have done everything.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I know.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But young Percy had been sent to the household of
Cardinal Woolsey to grow up and learn how to run
a household. And Wolsey had lots of private business that
he had to conduct with the King, and so they'd
go off into a room and discuss matters of state,
and young teenage Percy was left in the palace and
(01:31):
he found his way to the Queen's quarters and he
met one of her maids, ladies in waiting, a young
Anne Berlin, and they seem to get on really, really well.
And he went back to Woolsey and said, I've met
this wonderful girl. We're going to get married. And Wolsey
kicked off because this is the heir to the Earldom
of Northumberland going and making his own matches, doing it
(01:52):
for love with someone whose status is far below him,
and a Percy could not marry a Berlin, and this
is outrageous, and I'm telling your dad. So he told
his dad, and his dad came along and called him
all kinds of horrible Tudor names and threatened to disinherit
him completely if he went along with this, and what
(02:14):
a waster he was, and his brothers were better, and
he's glad he's got other sons because he doesn't have
to put it with this one, and he's never going
to marry this girl.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh tell us what you really think, Dad, don't suecoat it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
But the upshot of this was Percy was swiftly married
off to a much more noble family. A lady called
Mary Talbot became his wife, and they lived unhappily. Ever
after Amberln was sent off to France, well out of
the way of all of this, came back a few
years later caught the eye of the king. People generally
know what happened after that. She becomes his second.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Wife, but surely him when he's going, hang on a second,
you told me that she wasn't good enough for me,
and now she's marrying the king.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
The odd thing is when you're the king, anyone could
be good enough few if you say so, because you're
the king. Yeah, I think yeah. They then had to
both deny that anything had ever happened. There was no connection,
there was no engagement, there was no arrangement to be married.
They knew of each other, but that was it. Percy
was kept in the north, the north North Northumberland, and
(03:20):
she was down in the south, so that was going
to be fine. Henry the Eighth did not like Percy,
and when Cardinal Woolsey fell out of his favor, he
picked the boy who'd grown up in his household, who'd
been friends with him, to go and arrest him. And
that was effect of the a death sentence. So Percy
was going to his mentor and saying, you're not going
(03:42):
to get out of this alive, and I'm the one
who's got to do it to you. So he's giving
him in kinds of punishments. Mary Talbot is unhappy. They
have blazing rounds, and at one point he apparently goes,
none of this matters because I was engaged to Aneberleyn
this whole time.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Problem is she's now the queen and you can't just
go around saying that you were engaged to the queen.
So the two of them then have to swear in
front of the King that he was making that up
to get back at his wife and they were never married,
and it was fine.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Sure, I mean, does he not get sort of punished
for making stuff up?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Then?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well he kind of does. Yeah. They very quickly afterwards.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Thomas Cromwell's finding any excuse to take land away from
the percys and kind of using that same thriftless insult
to go, you can't manage your land, You're not as
good as your dad. We're going to take that for
the crown. That's going to be for the crown. We'll
have that. We might just chuck your brother in prison
for a bit and we'll take that as well. A
(04:44):
royal taxman was sent up to Anna Castle to keep
an eye on him. The taxman's name was William Worm,
very nice. Nice ended up a prisoner in the castle.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
The taxman did.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The taxman did because the earl spotted that he'd been
deliberately making him look bad at his finances to please
the king, so locked him up in the tower until
he could make up the accounts to his own lord's satisfaction.
And if you believe the ghost stories, he's still in
there counting the coins today.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Is that Is that true?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No? Not really, But there are records of him going
in the tower as a prison and there aren't really
any records of him being released, are there.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
People who is the castle say that they can still
hear coins being jingled.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's been told mostly around Halloween after dark, when we're
doing spooky tours, but it has been told. But anyway,
so the Earl is kind of being punished, but very quickly.
It's quite convenient that Anne, who Henry now wants out
of the way, has had a previous engagement because he
(05:49):
can use that as evidence against her, to say, you
married me having previously been engaged to someone else.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
That ain't right. That's one of those charges.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So now they have to say that they were engaged,
despite the fact that they both said that nothing had
ever happened.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
God got to break these two.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Nope, And just to add a little bit of salt
to the wound, the at the trial of Anne Boleyn,
the peers who were testifying and delivering the verdict all
have to do that publicly, so the King knows exactly
who's saying what, and he picks Percy to be one
of those people to testify. And if you don't say
(06:28):
that Anne Boleyn is guilty of all her crimes, you're
going to get beheaded along with her.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Oh God, that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah, it's really cruel.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So upset was Percy that he fainted and had to
be carried out of the courtroom before the verdicts were delivered,
so he never actually said the word guilty because he
couldn't bring himself to do it.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh bless him. I feel sorry for this guy.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I know.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Feel more sorry for Anne, though, because the king then
cut her head off and killed That's that's worse. It's
worse yep. But now that Earl has and Anne has
died apparently having been guilty of having a previous thing
with him, he's now got to deny it again, to
(07:12):
say that she was making it up to save her
own life. Even if these conversations never happened, He's still
being put through the ringer, and he dies, not very
He dies maybe a year later, apparently of a broken heart.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah. I think my heart would be pretty pretty broken
by that point.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Is that all right for your comedic podcast?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah? Yeah, an old bag of lulls. Don't worry, kids,
there's some sweet, sweet justice in this story, or, as
Daniel calls it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The cosmic revenge.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So yeah, Henry the Eighth lives another ten interesting years,
and by the time he dies, he is a distance
away from Westminster Abbey. His body has to be transported.
It is a big body in a bigger coffin.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Big fellow.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
He was extremely heavy.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It needs to rest in a few places, and one
of those places was Cyan House. This had been an
abbey that had been dissolved by Henry ten years earlier.
It was soon to be the London home of the
Percy family. They didn't own it at that point, but
it's got such a strong connection that we're going to
claim this story as our own anyway, do it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
The coffin was laid.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
To rest for the night in the house, and apparently
this is the point where the gases start to build
up and bits start to burst and things start to ooze,
and coffins tend to be leadline to try and keep
this in. William the Conqueror had had a similar problem
at his funeral. I mean, he didn't have the problem
he was dead, but the people attending the funeral had
the problem of the stench. As his body burst, The
(08:49):
juicers of Henry the Eighth did flow out of the coffin,
and apparently the dogs of Syon were found the following
morning licking it up.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Ah, so having a great time. I imagine that.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, they were having a fantastic breakfast, very hearty, literally
so not the most dignified end for Henry the Eighth's remains,
but we'll claim that as the sixth erl maybe just
getting his own back a little in a karmic kind
of sense, for all the misery that Henry caused him.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I like that for him, good, good, good for him.
He deserves it. Want to talk a bit more about
the various TV in films that have been filmed at
Annic Castle, because you've had Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, Dungeons
and Dragons.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yes, the most recent film Dungeons and Dragons, Honor among Thieves,
filmed here in twenty twenty one, came out this year
and we made the cut, which is very exciting part
of Never Winter. But we had Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez,
and Justice Smith from the main cast here in their
medieval garbs as the Bard, the Barbarian and the paladin respectively.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yes. Nice as a D and D player, having a
bar is the lead character is a nice touch.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Actually, yes, you don't often get.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Bars as the lee roll. What was it like having
celebrities walking around the castle? I mean literally the practicalities
of filming. You must have had all sorts of people
showing up at the doors and trying to see them.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's tricky.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You try and keep things quiet as much as possible.
But you've been to Annik. It's a small town Northumberland
is you know, it's a big county in terms of space,
but not in terms of stuff that goes on and
people find out. So we will tend to close to
the public when filming's happening. What's nice about the Hollywood
(10:36):
A listers kind of coming here is quite often with
these big budget films, especially something like a Dungeons and
Dragons or Transformers, is there's a lot of green screen works,
there's a lot of studio work, so coming somewhere like
Annik it's a little bit different. So they're just enjoying
being on locations somewhere they haven't been before. Anthony Hopkins,
(10:58):
for example, is a painter as well as an actor.
We've talked about the art collection at the castle. He
took the chance while he was here between every take
he would just go around.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And look at the paintings.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah nice.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Or Chris Pine because he's played Robert the Bruce and
is really into his history and a Shakespeare loved the
fact that he was in a medieval castle that had
fought against Robert the Bruce and had connections to Shakespeare.
So I think I can say this now that the
film is out, but I took him on a tour
around the castle and it was one of the most fun,
(11:33):
positive energy tour experiences I've had in fifteen years. He
loved all of it, and it blew his mind that
he was in the castle where Harry Hotspur from Shakespeare's
Henry the Fourth had grown up. So he was genuinely excited.
He saw a charter signed by Robert the Bruce, or
at least that had his seal, and there was a
(11:53):
direct connection to a character he'd played.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Well, yeah, these actors who get into these roles, they've
got to research in pretty deep. They're going to get
quite a strong connection with these people.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And he still had that years later. So it's not
a juicy story, but it's really nice to kind of
see that see actors like this, you know, not full method.
You know, they're not staying in character all the time.
They're taking the chance to enjoy where they are and
enjoy where they're filming.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Can you imagine if Daniel day Lewis turned off here?
Oh God, is it he's still in bloody character again.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Who he was playing.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, he's playing that bloody evil earl. Yeah, in Everyone's
day again.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, I think what I think It was Robert Pattinson
who said that no one ever went method to play
somebody nice.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
But if you know, if Daniels E Lewis came playing
the world's loveliest man, imagine what a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
You'd have a great time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So yeah, there are other films that have been made
sort of that I haven't been here for. We had
a Dracula come to film with us in the nineteen seventies,
but even the Count of Transylvania was not the first
time we had a vampire at Annik Castle because back
in the medieval period we had a real one.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Hang on a minute, Daniel, who's doing the segways here?
You or me? This is my podcast. I'll take it
from here, Thank you very much. M hm. They had
Dracula come to film with them in the nineteen seventies,
but even the Count of Transylvania wasn't the first time
they'd had a vampire at Annick Castle because back in
the medieval period they had a real one.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Oh, I see what you did there.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Thanks very much. I didn't even have that as a note.
I thought that was in my head. I'm pretty happy
with that, fang you very much.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Thank you. Oh even better.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
You can count on me. He sorr. I'll shut up
right anyway. The vampire, the vampire. That's so about the vampire.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So we go all the way back to the twelfth
century for the Vampire of Annik. And this is a
story written in a chronicle by a guy called William
of Newbergh who kind of traveled around the medieval country
gathering up strange stories like this, and he came across
the story of a man who served the Lord of
(14:16):
Annak who thought his wife was having an affair and
was furious and determined to capture in the act, and
climbed up to the rafters of their dwelling to spot
when the other man would come in.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And at one point he.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Was so full of fury that he slipped from the rafters,
fell onto the stones below, and died.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
So this bloke is literally just crouched on top of
some beams up in the roof and then looking down waiting.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It seems that way.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I couldn't tell you what the game plan was, but
we never found out because he died.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I imagine a sort of elbow drop onto the head
of the bloke who comes in with it.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I imagine, Oh yeah, I mean if he could do
a four to fifty splash or something, that would have
been more impressive. So he's died, he's died angry, he's
died full of fury. His blood is boiled, not literally
at this point, and he hasn't crucially been given any
of the sacraments, and he's buried without having received the
last rites before he died.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So we terrible news.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Terrible news because this is an unholy death, which means
he is now able to rise from his grave and
start stalking around the town, an air of putrescence following
behind him, mysterious dogs going crazy, foaming at the mouth.
People start getting ill from this pestilence. People start dying,
(15:45):
animals start getting ill, and there's a dead man walking
around town.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So everyone in the town, everyone in the town is
using their their marbles over yeah, or they or they
fled and is cursed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
A lot of people tried to just get away from
it if they could. They thought that if they could
get away from him. They would get away from dying
apart from two sons of a man who had been
lost to this creature, who one palm Sunday, a holy day,
go to dig up his grave.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And they find it engaged with blood.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And this is where William of Newburgh in his chronicle
writes a word in medieval Latin which translates as blood sucker.
But his body is full of blood, more blood than
he should have.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So how's how has it retained all the blood? It
must be walking around sucking other evils?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, so he's a vampire. The two sons dispose of
the body. They could him into pieces. They burn him,
they burn the art. He stops rising from the grave,
the illnesses stop, that people return, Everything's all right again.
But it would appear that this was a legitimate vampire.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I mean, I've got several questions, as you ferously our
vampires a known thing in mythology at this point, I
don't know how long vampires go back for well, Vlad
the Impaler is the first one, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
This is this is.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Sad, possibly proud of me to admit, But I did
write my dissertation of vampires.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Nothing nothing, said about that. Maybe nothing said about that.
So the vampire I did mine on the history of masturbation. Wow, yeah,
and I spelled it wrong in the title the History
of History of Masturbastion dyslexia get in the way.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I hope there was a chapter on that one Seinfeld episode.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I got sixty nine percent as well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh well, yeah, you had to. Really what am I
talking about?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Let's keep one tracking.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Sorry, Yes, So, vampires as we understand them, like, our
modern idea of a vampire is this cape wearing aristocratic
preying on the innocent. That's only about two hundred years old.
That's basically Lord Byron. But the tradition of an unholy
creature that rises from the grave and feasts on the
(18:32):
living goes back much, much, much longer. They weren't always
known as vampires. Revenance tends to be a word that's
used a lot, and the tradition of vampire and folklore
you can see the roots of zombies in the same way.
They act very similarly. They don't always suck blood, but
(18:53):
they are and holy, so religion repels them. They tend
to turn up at night because that's scarier. They are
dead creatures. They eat living creatures, that sort of thing,
and then other things that we associate with vampires all
come along bit by bit, and what we know.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
As a vampire is like sorry, bye bye bite, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Bye bye bite, yeah by attended but beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Thank you, but yeah, the modern vampire is a composite
of all these different traditions all in one. So back
at that point, we wouldn't have called him a vampire.
It would have been like an abomination of some kind.
It might have been called a revenant. It wouldn't have
been called undead, but it would have been called dead.
(19:38):
But that use of the term bloodsucker is quite crucial
in making him a little bit different to other kinds
of weird supernatural occurrences. It makes him stand out, which
is why we know him now to be a vampire.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's always going to be a pretty horrible job to
dig up a grave and open up a coffin and
thing has crossed God what we're finding on the other
side of this. If I mean, if we were two
grave diggers and we're walking to the site knowing that
the destiny of the whole village is in our hands,
I mean, sticking our shovels in the all the dirts
(20:16):
coming up, and then it's like, okay, this is the
moment of truth. You're opening the coffin lid fully expecting
I would be a blot to jump out at us.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And I can paint you a little bit more of
a picture of how these two apparently went about it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yes, please.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
One of them was named Thomas, the brave one, the
brave one. The other one was Eustless. And they went
to the churchyard on Palm Sunday. They opened up the
grave and they found the carcass covered with only a
very thin layer of earth, so he wasn't buried all
the way.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
He'd clearly been gadding up.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I like the idea that the vampire's got up. He's
running ravage around the town, gone back and going all
the way back under I know, and he's lied down
and just he's just grabbed some soil and just semi
buried himself, gone back to sleep, his arms crossed and
then just a bit solid. There are a couple of
leaves on the top.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That'll do me fine.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
No, he's going to find me here.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, But the shroud that was between him and the
earth was torn to shreds so the shroud there was yeah,
so there was, yeah, a cloth between him and the
outside world, but he'd clearly ripped that to pieces.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The body itself was red from the consumption of blood.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It was engaged, as we've said, So Thomas and used
to dragged the corpse away from the holy ground.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Oh, they touched him, she bridd brave guys.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
They built a pire and they tore the black heart
from the vampire's chest and burned it. They burnt the
heart first and then got rid of the rest of him.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
What book have they looked up? You know, how how
to slay your vampire? Book number one?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Heart first, Heart first. I suppose heart blood you've got. Yeah,
that makes sense, there's a logic.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I'd be sticking a steak through it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I think stakes were a little bit of a later invention.
I think it was an early modern thing in the
fifteen and sixteen hundreds. There's a great book, it's almost
like a historical true crime book by Blessed Adams called
Great and Horrible News, where it talks about people who
had committed a certain kind of crime would be buried
with a steak through them, so that people who visited
(22:27):
the churchyard would know who the criminals were.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Really. Yeah, sorry, that was that the original use of
a steak.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean in this country, that was the common use
of That's why you would have a stake through a corpse.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Is there still remnants of the vampire or any sort
of references to him around the castle, around the town.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Not quite so much. There's always interest in him in
October Halloween.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
As we get up to Halloween, people start telling that
story a bit more. You know, you might see a
little article about haunted castles in the Northeast, and some
of our great castles like Bambura, like Chillingham, like Dunsterborough
will show up with their stories and the Vampire of
Annic will turn up amongst those as well, And of
course we use that as an excuse to tell the
(23:17):
story to try and frighten people as we get close
to Halloween as well.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Have any movies been made about the Vampire of Annik?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Sadly not.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Tony Robinson made a documentary about him about fifteen years
ago called Gods and Monsters, and it was about the
real folklore of supernatural creatures in Britain. So he came
and he did a bit of research, and he looked
at the chronicle and he tried to figure out the
real history behind it all. But sadly he has not
been twilighted onto the silver screen at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
But the options open the.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Twilight vampires take it to another level, don't they.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
They do. I don't believe the vampire of Annik ever sparkled.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, that's it, isn't it. And they're all sparkly and gorgeous.
It's like, that's not what a vampire is. Come on,
they're either like pale sucking your blood or they are
purple and counter very good at maths, yeah, very good
at very good at mass That's the only two I
will accept.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Eight now.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
What eight?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Nine?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Mate? Thank you so much for this podcast. You've been
absolutely exceptional. Really enjoyed it. But what I want to
know now, quick fire.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Question round for the I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
If you could meet anyone from annex history, who would
that be.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I've got a historical one and I've got a celebrity one.
The celebrity I'd pick and might stretch your definition of celebrity,
but probably the author John Steinbeck, who came here searching
for a lost Arthurian manuscript in nineteen sixty five and
found it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Where did he find it?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
In the Castle Library?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Under m for manuscripts.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
For Arthur for Arthur.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah he it was within a bunch of other medieval manuscripts.
He and his and a professor from Manchester University discovered
a third medieval manuscript of the Legends of King Arthur.
Before that only two had ever been discovered, and the
third one was right here. So it made international news
back in the mid sixties. So that would be my
(25:19):
celebrity pick. But for a historical pick, I would go
with Elizabeth Percy, the first Duchess of Northumberland. She was
around in the Georgian era. She's someone we know quite
a lot about because she wrote loads of diaries. She
wrote two books full of riddles that she would write
in letters to her mum and I could actually, I
know this is the quick fire around, but would you
(25:41):
like to try one of the first Duchess of Northumberland
three hundred year old riddles?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yes? Please?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yes? She called them conundrums?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Cool, perfect, Okay, let's hear, let's hear.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
The riddle's let's get a conundrum.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Get ready, listeners. Okay, there's three of us in the office. Here,
we'll look Bex and myself and we're going to see
if we can get the riddle. You ready, guys, you ready? Team?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Why is the office of Prime Minister like a may pole?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh? Mp initials? No, No, that was very well. That
was very quick though, Bex. So why is the office
of the Prime Minister like a may pole? We're drawing
a blank here, yeah, on why.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Is the office of Prime Minister like a may pole?
Because it is a high post?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Oh god, oh god? Yeah yeah, well yeah, hey not bad.
Can we have another one? Yes?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Okay, I mean she had literally hundreds. Why is a
lady on her wedding day like a man in error?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Why is a lady on her wedding day like a
man in error? Based on the last one, it's going
to be more simple, isn't it than I'm trying to
be too complicated in my brain? So a man in error?
What is he? I'm going to guess by her personality?
The man is not going to come out well in
this answer. It's going to be something about the man
(27:10):
refusing to admit the truth that he shouldn't have done it?
What something like that is? Where is where I'm going?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Would why is a lady on her wedding day like
a man in error because she is mistaken.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Oh my god, that's very good. Damn it, damn it
right it, give us.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
One more, one more.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Because the high post mistaken. Okay, okay, I've got I've
got the vibe of it.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Now, I've got the vibe.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I'll preface this one by saying that in the Georgian period,
pigs did not say ink, Pigs kind of went or
I so which English town is a former queen and
the cry of a pig ank anik.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
That is correct. You have solved the three hundred year
old conundrum.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Whoa ah, Yes, thanks for listening to Bad Manners. If
you like the pod, please share it with your friends,
rate it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review, and make
sure you spill the tea on any of your favorite
Bad Manners that we could feature in future episodes. This
podcast was produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio. It was
(28:28):
hosted by me Tom Horton. It was produced by Willem Lensky,
Rebecca Rappaport, and Chris Ataway. It was executive produced by
face Steur and zad Rogers. Our production manager is Caitlin
Paramore and our production coordinator is Bella Selini.
On this episode, we returned to Annik Castle, the home
of the Percy family for over seven hundred years and
a location that now provides the backdrop to your favorite
hit TV shows and movies. And with the help of Daniel,
the castle's Learning and Engagement officer, We're going to sink
our teeth into a juicy vampire story. But first, how
(00:22):
does the story of forbidden Love end with dogs licking
up the juices of a dead king? Well, it starts
with a man called Lord Henry Percy, the sixth Earl
of Northumberland, who was secretly engaged to Anne Berlyn. This
is juicy gossip. How did he meet Amberleyn? What was
the actual sort of the layout of all that?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, the background, the meat cute, if you like, is
the tutor meat cute? That is different to most wrongcomes
in that people don't get beheaded in wrong comes anymore?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Would that be a different love actually storyline?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Wouldn't it death? Actually? Yeah, it's four beheadings in a funeral?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Very good, thank you. I think the Simpsons might have
done that already.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Oh, the Simpsons have done everything.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I know.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But young Percy had been sent to the household of
Cardinal Woolsey to grow up and learn how to run
a household. And Wolsey had lots of private business that
he had to conduct with the King, and so they'd
go off into a room and discuss matters of state,
and young teenage Percy was left in the palace and
(01:31):
he found his way to the Queen's quarters and he
met one of her maids, ladies in waiting, a young
Anne Berlin, and they seem to get on really, really well.
And he went back to Woolsey and said, I've met
this wonderful girl. We're going to get married. And Wolsey
kicked off because this is the heir to the Earldom
of Northumberland going and making his own matches, doing it
(01:52):
for love with someone whose status is far below him,
and a Percy could not marry a Berlin, and this
is outrageous, and I'm telling your dad. So he told
his dad, and his dad came along and called him
all kinds of horrible Tudor names and threatened to disinherit
him completely if he went along with this, and what
(02:14):
a waster he was, and his brothers were better, and
he's glad he's got other sons because he doesn't have
to put it with this one, and he's never going
to marry this girl.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh tell us what you really think, Dad, don't suecoat it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
But the upshot of this was Percy was swiftly married
off to a much more noble family. A lady called
Mary Talbot became his wife, and they lived unhappily. Ever
after Amberln was sent off to France, well out of
the way of all of this, came back a few
years later caught the eye of the king. People generally
know what happened after that. She becomes his second.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Wife, but surely him when he's going, hang on a second,
you told me that she wasn't good enough for me,
and now she's marrying the king.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
The odd thing is when you're the king, anyone could
be good enough few if you say so, because you're
the king. Yeah, I think yeah. They then had to
both deny that anything had ever happened. There was no connection,
there was no engagement, there was no arrangement to be married.
They knew of each other, but that was it. Percy
was kept in the north, the north North Northumberland, and
(03:20):
she was down in the south, so that was going
to be fine. Henry the Eighth did not like Percy,
and when Cardinal Woolsey fell out of his favor, he
picked the boy who'd grown up in his household, who'd
been friends with him, to go and arrest him. And
that was effect of the a death sentence. So Percy
was going to his mentor and saying, you're not going
(03:42):
to get out of this alive, and I'm the one
who's got to do it to you. So he's giving
him in kinds of punishments. Mary Talbot is unhappy. They
have blazing rounds, and at one point he apparently goes,
none of this matters because I was engaged to Aneberleyn
this whole time.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Problem is she's now the queen and you can't just
go around saying that you were engaged to the queen.
So the two of them then have to swear in
front of the King that he was making that up
to get back at his wife and they were never married,
and it was fine.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Sure, I mean, does he not get sort of punished
for making stuff up?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Then?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well he kind of does. Yeah. They very quickly afterwards.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Thomas Cromwell's finding any excuse to take land away from
the percys and kind of using that same thriftless insult
to go, you can't manage your land, You're not as
good as your dad. We're going to take that for
the crown. That's going to be for the crown. We'll
have that. We might just chuck your brother in prison
for a bit and we'll take that as well. A
(04:44):
royal taxman was sent up to Anna Castle to keep
an eye on him. The taxman's name was William Worm,
very nice. Nice ended up a prisoner in the castle.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
The taxman did.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The taxman did because the earl spotted that he'd been
deliberately making him look bad at his finances to please
the king, so locked him up in the tower until
he could make up the accounts to his own lord's satisfaction.
And if you believe the ghost stories, he's still in
there counting the coins today.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Is that Is that true?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No? Not really, But there are records of him going
in the tower as a prison and there aren't really
any records of him being released, are there.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
People who is the castle say that they can still
hear coins being jingled.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's been told mostly around Halloween after dark, when we're
doing spooky tours, but it has been told. But anyway,
so the Earl is kind of being punished, but very quickly.
It's quite convenient that Anne, who Henry now wants out
of the way, has had a previous engagement because he
(05:49):
can use that as evidence against her, to say, you
married me having previously been engaged to someone else.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
That ain't right. That's one of those charges.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So now they have to say that they were engaged,
despite the fact that they both said that nothing had
ever happened.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
God got to break these two.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Nope, And just to add a little bit of salt
to the wound, the at the trial of Anne Boleyn,
the peers who were testifying and delivering the verdict all
have to do that publicly, so the King knows exactly
who's saying what, and he picks Percy to be one
of those people to testify. And if you don't say
(06:28):
that Anne Boleyn is guilty of all her crimes, you're
going to get beheaded along with her.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Oh God, that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah, it's really cruel.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So upset was Percy that he fainted and had to
be carried out of the courtroom before the verdicts were delivered,
so he never actually said the word guilty because he
couldn't bring himself to do it.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh bless him. I feel sorry for this guy.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I know.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Feel more sorry for Anne, though, because the king then
cut her head off and killed That's that's worse. It's
worse yep. But now that Earl has and Anne has
died apparently having been guilty of having a previous thing
with him, he's now got to deny it again, to
(07:12):
say that she was making it up to save her
own life. Even if these conversations never happened, He's still
being put through the ringer, and he dies, not very
He dies maybe a year later, apparently of a broken heart.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah. I think my heart would be pretty pretty broken
by that point.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Is that all right for your comedic podcast?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah? Yeah, an old bag of lulls. Don't worry, kids,
there's some sweet, sweet justice in this story, or, as
Daniel calls it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The cosmic revenge.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So yeah, Henry the Eighth lives another ten interesting years,
and by the time he dies, he is a distance
away from Westminster Abbey. His body has to be transported.
It is a big body in a bigger coffin.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Big fellow.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
He was extremely heavy.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It needs to rest in a few places, and one
of those places was Cyan House. This had been an
abbey that had been dissolved by Henry ten years earlier.
It was soon to be the London home of the
Percy family. They didn't own it at that point, but
it's got such a strong connection that we're going to
claim this story as our own anyway, do it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
The coffin was laid.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
To rest for the night in the house, and apparently
this is the point where the gases start to build
up and bits start to burst and things start to ooze,
and coffins tend to be leadline to try and keep
this in. William the Conqueror had had a similar problem
at his funeral. I mean, he didn't have the problem
he was dead, but the people attending the funeral had
the problem of the stench. As his body burst, The
(08:49):
juicers of Henry the Eighth did flow out of the coffin,
and apparently the dogs of Syon were found the following
morning licking it up.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Ah, so having a great time. I imagine that.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, they were having a fantastic breakfast, very hearty, literally
so not the most dignified end for Henry the Eighth's remains,
but we'll claim that as the sixth erl maybe just
getting his own back a little in a karmic kind
of sense, for all the misery that Henry caused him.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I like that for him, good, good, good for him.
He deserves it. Want to talk a bit more about
the various TV in films that have been filmed at
Annic Castle, because you've had Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, Dungeons
and Dragons.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yes, the most recent film Dungeons and Dragons, Honor among Thieves,
filmed here in twenty twenty one, came out this year
and we made the cut, which is very exciting part
of Never Winter. But we had Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez,
and Justice Smith from the main cast here in their
medieval garbs as the Bard, the Barbarian and the paladin respectively.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yes. Nice as a D and D player, having a
bar is the lead character is a nice touch.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Actually, yes, you don't often get.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Bars as the lee roll. What was it like having
celebrities walking around the castle? I mean literally the practicalities
of filming. You must have had all sorts of people
showing up at the doors and trying to see them.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's tricky.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You try and keep things quiet as much as possible.
But you've been to Annik. It's a small town Northumberland
is you know, it's a big county in terms of space,
but not in terms of stuff that goes on and
people find out. So we will tend to close to
the public when filming's happening. What's nice about the Hollywood
(10:36):
A listers kind of coming here is quite often with
these big budget films, especially something like a Dungeons and
Dragons or Transformers, is there's a lot of green screen works,
there's a lot of studio work, so coming somewhere like
Annik it's a little bit different. So they're just enjoying
being on locations somewhere they haven't been before. Anthony Hopkins,
(10:58):
for example, is a painter as well as an actor.
We've talked about the art collection at the castle. He
took the chance while he was here between every take
he would just go around.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And look at the paintings.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah nice.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Or Chris Pine because he's played Robert the Bruce and
is really into his history and a Shakespeare loved the
fact that he was in a medieval castle that had
fought against Robert the Bruce and had connections to Shakespeare.
So I think I can say this now that the
film is out, but I took him on a tour
around the castle and it was one of the most fun,
(11:33):
positive energy tour experiences I've had in fifteen years. He
loved all of it, and it blew his mind that
he was in the castle where Harry Hotspur from Shakespeare's
Henry the Fourth had grown up. So he was genuinely excited.
He saw a charter signed by Robert the Bruce, or
at least that had his seal, and there was a
(11:53):
direct connection to a character he'd played.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Well, yeah, these actors who get into these roles, they've
got to research in pretty deep. They're going to get
quite a strong connection with these people.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And he still had that years later. So it's not
a juicy story, but it's really nice to kind of
see that see actors like this, you know, not full method.
You know, they're not staying in character all the time.
They're taking the chance to enjoy where they are and
enjoy where they're filming.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Can you imagine if Daniel day Lewis turned off here?
Oh God, is it he's still in bloody character again.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Who he was playing.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, he's playing that bloody evil earl. Yeah, in Everyone's
day again.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, I think what I think It was Robert Pattinson
who said that no one ever went method to play
somebody nice.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
But if you know, if Daniels E Lewis came playing
the world's loveliest man, imagine what a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
You'd have a great time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So yeah, there are other films that have been made
sort of that I haven't been here for. We had
a Dracula come to film with us in the nineteen seventies,
but even the Count of Transylvania was not the first
time we had a vampire at Annik Castle because back
in the medieval period we had a real one.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Hang on a minute, Daniel, who's doing the segways here?
You or me? This is my podcast. I'll take it
from here, Thank you very much. M hm. They had
Dracula come to film with them in the nineteen seventies,
but even the Count of Transylvania wasn't the first time
they'd had a vampire at Annick Castle because back in
the medieval period they had a real one.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Oh, I see what you did there.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Thanks very much. I didn't even have that as a note.
I thought that was in my head. I'm pretty happy
with that, fang you very much.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Thank you. Oh even better.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
You can count on me. He sorr. I'll shut up
right anyway. The vampire, the vampire. That's so about the vampire.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So we go all the way back to the twelfth
century for the Vampire of Annik. And this is a
story written in a chronicle by a guy called William
of Newbergh who kind of traveled around the medieval country
gathering up strange stories like this, and he came across
the story of a man who served the Lord of
(14:16):
Annak who thought his wife was having an affair and
was furious and determined to capture in the act, and
climbed up to the rafters of their dwelling to spot
when the other man would come in.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And at one point he.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Was so full of fury that he slipped from the rafters,
fell onto the stones below, and died.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
So this bloke is literally just crouched on top of
some beams up in the roof and then looking down waiting.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It seems that way.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I couldn't tell you what the game plan was, but
we never found out because he died.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I imagine a sort of elbow drop onto the head
of the bloke who comes in with it.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I imagine, Oh yeah, I mean if he could do
a four to fifty splash or something, that would have
been more impressive. So he's died, he's died angry, he's
died full of fury. His blood is boiled, not literally
at this point, and he hasn't crucially been given any
of the sacraments, and he's buried without having received the
last rites before he died.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So we terrible news.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Terrible news because this is an unholy death, which means
he is now able to rise from his grave and
start stalking around the town, an air of putrescence following
behind him, mysterious dogs going crazy, foaming at the mouth.
People start getting ill from this pestilence. People start dying,
(15:45):
animals start getting ill, and there's a dead man walking
around town.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So everyone in the town, everyone in the town is
using their their marbles over yeah, or they or they
fled and is cursed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
A lot of people tried to just get away from
it if they could. They thought that if they could
get away from him. They would get away from dying
apart from two sons of a man who had been
lost to this creature, who one palm Sunday, a holy day,
go to dig up his grave.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And they find it engaged with blood.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And this is where William of Newburgh in his chronicle
writes a word in medieval Latin which translates as blood sucker.
But his body is full of blood, more blood than
he should have.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So how's how has it retained all the blood? It
must be walking around sucking other evils?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, so he's a vampire. The two sons dispose of
the body. They could him into pieces. They burn him,
they burn the art. He stops rising from the grave,
the illnesses stop, that people return, Everything's all right again.
But it would appear that this was a legitimate vampire.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I mean, I've got several questions, as you ferously our
vampires a known thing in mythology at this point, I
don't know how long vampires go back for well, Vlad
the Impaler is the first one, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
This is this is.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Sad, possibly proud of me to admit, But I did
write my dissertation of vampires.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Nothing nothing, said about that. Maybe nothing said about that.
So the vampire I did mine on the history of masturbation. Wow, yeah,
and I spelled it wrong in the title the History
of History of Masturbastion dyslexia get in the way.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I hope there was a chapter on that one Seinfeld episode.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I got sixty nine percent as well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh well, yeah, you had to. Really what am I
talking about?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Let's keep one tracking.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Sorry, Yes, So, vampires as we understand them, like, our
modern idea of a vampire is this cape wearing aristocratic
preying on the innocent. That's only about two hundred years old.
That's basically Lord Byron. But the tradition of an unholy
creature that rises from the grave and feasts on the
(18:32):
living goes back much, much, much longer. They weren't always
known as vampires. Revenance tends to be a word that's
used a lot, and the tradition of vampire and folklore
you can see the roots of zombies in the same way.
They act very similarly. They don't always suck blood, but
(18:53):
they are and holy, so religion repels them. They tend
to turn up at night because that's scarier. They are
dead creatures. They eat living creatures, that sort of thing,
and then other things that we associate with vampires all
come along bit by bit, and what we know.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
As a vampire is like sorry, bye bye bite, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Bye bye bite, yeah by attended but beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Thank you, but yeah, the modern vampire is a composite
of all these different traditions all in one. So back
at that point, we wouldn't have called him a vampire.
It would have been like an abomination of some kind.
It might have been called a revenant. It wouldn't have
been called undead, but it would have been called dead.
(19:38):
But that use of the term bloodsucker is quite crucial
in making him a little bit different to other kinds
of weird supernatural occurrences. It makes him stand out, which
is why we know him now to be a vampire.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's always going to be a pretty horrible job to
dig up a grave and open up a coffin and
thing has crossed God what we're finding on the other
side of this. If I mean, if we were two
grave diggers and we're walking to the site knowing that
the destiny of the whole village is in our hands,
I mean, sticking our shovels in the all the dirts
(20:16):
coming up, and then it's like, okay, this is the
moment of truth. You're opening the coffin lid fully expecting
I would be a blot to jump out at us.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And I can paint you a little bit more of
a picture of how these two apparently went about it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yes, please.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
One of them was named Thomas, the brave one, the
brave one. The other one was Eustless. And they went
to the churchyard on Palm Sunday. They opened up the
grave and they found the carcass covered with only a
very thin layer of earth, so he wasn't buried all
the way.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
He'd clearly been gadding up.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I like the idea that the vampire's got up. He's
running ravage around the town, gone back and going all
the way back under I know, and he's lied down
and just he's just grabbed some soil and just semi
buried himself, gone back to sleep, his arms crossed and
then just a bit solid. There are a couple of
leaves on the top.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That'll do me fine.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
No, he's going to find me here.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, But the shroud that was between him and the
earth was torn to shreds so the shroud there was yeah,
so there was, yeah, a cloth between him and the
outside world, but he'd clearly ripped that to pieces.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The body itself was red from the consumption of blood.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It was engaged, as we've said, So Thomas and used
to dragged the corpse away from the holy ground.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Oh, they touched him, she bridd brave guys.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
They built a pire and they tore the black heart
from the vampire's chest and burned it. They burnt the
heart first and then got rid of the rest of him.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
What book have they looked up? You know, how how
to slay your vampire? Book number one?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Heart first, Heart first. I suppose heart blood you've got. Yeah,
that makes sense, there's a logic.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I'd be sticking a steak through it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I think stakes were a little bit of a later invention.
I think it was an early modern thing in the
fifteen and sixteen hundreds. There's a great book, it's almost
like a historical true crime book by Blessed Adams called
Great and Horrible News, where it talks about people who
had committed a certain kind of crime would be buried
with a steak through them, so that people who visited
(22:27):
the churchyard would know who the criminals were.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Really. Yeah, sorry, that was that the original use of
a steak.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean in this country, that was the common use
of That's why you would have a stake through a corpse.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Is there still remnants of the vampire or any sort
of references to him around the castle, around the town.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Not quite so much. There's always interest in him in
October Halloween.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
As we get up to Halloween, people start telling that
story a bit more. You know, you might see a
little article about haunted castles in the Northeast, and some
of our great castles like Bambura, like Chillingham, like Dunsterborough
will show up with their stories and the Vampire of
Annic will turn up amongst those as well, And of
course we use that as an excuse to tell the
(23:17):
story to try and frighten people as we get close
to Halloween as well.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Have any movies been made about the Vampire of Annik?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Sadly not.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Tony Robinson made a documentary about him about fifteen years
ago called Gods and Monsters, and it was about the
real folklore of supernatural creatures in Britain. So he came
and he did a bit of research, and he looked
at the chronicle and he tried to figure out the
real history behind it all. But sadly he has not
been twilighted onto the silver screen at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
But the options open the.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Twilight vampires take it to another level, don't they.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
They do. I don't believe the vampire of Annik ever sparkled.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, that's it, isn't it. And they're all sparkly and gorgeous.
It's like, that's not what a vampire is. Come on,
they're either like pale sucking your blood or they are
purple and counter very good at maths, yeah, very good
at very good at mass That's the only two I
will accept.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Eight now.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
What eight?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Nine?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Mate? Thank you so much for this podcast. You've been
absolutely exceptional. Really enjoyed it. But what I want to
know now, quick fire.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Question round for the I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
If you could meet anyone from annex history, who would
that be.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I've got a historical one and I've got a celebrity one.
The celebrity I'd pick and might stretch your definition of celebrity,
but probably the author John Steinbeck, who came here searching
for a lost Arthurian manuscript in nineteen sixty five and
found it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Where did he find it?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
In the Castle Library?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Under m for manuscripts.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
For Arthur for Arthur.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah he it was within a bunch of other medieval manuscripts.
He and his and a professor from Manchester University discovered
a third medieval manuscript of the Legends of King Arthur.
Before that only two had ever been discovered, and the
third one was right here. So it made international news
back in the mid sixties. So that would be my
(25:19):
celebrity pick. But for a historical pick, I would go
with Elizabeth Percy, the first Duchess of Northumberland. She was
around in the Georgian era. She's someone we know quite
a lot about because she wrote loads of diaries. She
wrote two books full of riddles that she would write
in letters to her mum and I could actually, I
know this is the quick fire around, but would you
(25:41):
like to try one of the first Duchess of Northumberland
three hundred year old riddles?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yes? Please?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yes? She called them conundrums?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Cool, perfect, Okay, let's hear, let's hear.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
The riddle's let's get a conundrum.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Get ready, listeners. Okay, there's three of us in the office. Here,
we'll look Bex and myself and we're going to see
if we can get the riddle. You ready, guys, you ready? Team?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Why is the office of Prime Minister like a may pole?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh? Mp initials? No, No, that was very well. That
was very quick though, Bex. So why is the office
of the Prime Minister like a may pole? We're drawing
a blank here, yeah, on why.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Is the office of Prime Minister like a may pole?
Because it is a high post?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Oh god, oh god? Yeah yeah, well yeah, hey not bad.
Can we have another one? Yes?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Okay, I mean she had literally hundreds. Why is a
lady on her wedding day like a man in error?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Why is a lady on her wedding day like a
man in error? Based on the last one, it's going
to be more simple, isn't it than I'm trying to
be too complicated in my brain? So a man in error?
What is he? I'm going to guess by her personality?
The man is not going to come out well in
this answer. It's going to be something about the man
(27:10):
refusing to admit the truth that he shouldn't have done it?
What something like that is? Where is where I'm going?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Would why is a lady on her wedding day like
a man in error because she is mistaken.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Oh my god, that's very good. Damn it, damn it
right it, give us.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
One more, one more.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Because the high post mistaken. Okay, okay, I've got I've
got the vibe of it.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Now, I've got the vibe.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I'll preface this one by saying that in the Georgian period,
pigs did not say ink, Pigs kind of went or
I so which English town is a former queen and
the cry of a pig ank anik.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
That is correct. You have solved the three hundred year
old conundrum.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Whoa ah, Yes, thanks for listening to Bad Manners. If
you like the pod, please share it with your friends,
rate it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review, and make
sure you spill the tea on any of your favorite
Bad Manners that we could feature in future episodes. This
podcast was produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio. It was
(28:28):
hosted by me Tom Horton. It was produced by Willem Lensky,
Rebecca Rappaport, and Chris Ataway. It was executive produced by
face Steur and zad Rogers. Our production manager is Caitlin
Paramore and our production coordinator is Bella Selini.
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