The Show - So You Think You Know It All - A compendium of extremely interesting and slightly strange true stories

Cover

Title Page

Introduction INTRODUCTION Welcome to So You Think You Know It All? , a lovingly crafted compilation of more than 100 of the quirkiest, strangest, most mind-boggling, and fascinating stories pulled from the brains of the One Show research desk at independent producers Icon Films. Here you’ll find tales of everyday British foibles, eccentricity, unsolved murders, very hard maths, A-list stars turning up in unexpected places, cricket-playing Nazis, epic fails, government cover-ups, mini triumphs, scientific breakthroughs and, er, even one about how a nudist film-maker came up with the object that no self-respecting hipster home could do without… You may already be a fan of The One Show , but did you know that launching this now much-loved early evening weekday magazine show was a gamble for the BBC? You see, The One Show sits in a tricky scheduling hinterland – 7 p.m., that awkward, sticky-out bit of time and space after the news, falling between the snoozy un-demands of daytime programmes, and before ‘primetime’. This is the time of day when TV’s magnetism is at its weakest for viewers; often just home from work, distracted by making, or eating, their tea, putting the bins out, wrangling toddlers toward their pyjamas, ignoring a spate of PPI compensation calls on the landline and whatever else it is people do at 7 p.m. on a weekday. But the gamble paid off. Today The One Show is a colourful and quirky, serious and topical – and often a little eccentric – TV institution. Transmitting five nights a week, 46 weeks of the year, it averages five million viewers per edition; no mean feat when you consider the competition from a multi-channel TV environment and the equally distracting ‘second screens’ of smart phones, tablets and laptops that now accompany households when they congregate on the sofa. Think of this book as the Director’s Cut of The One Show – full of facts, extended interviews and trivia nuggets. And like the TV show that inspired it, So You Think You Know It All? is a distinctly British celebration of historic and contemporary eccentricity, innovation, bravery and sheer chutzpah. Enjoy!

Eureka Moments

Cold Cases to Heat Up Your Inner Detective

Epic Fails

At The Pictures: The Stories Behind the Scenes

Good Sports

Great British Heists

Great Escapes

Learning Curves

Medical Curios

Music of Life

We Are Not Amused

Out of the Box

Secrets and Lies

Strange Days

The Maths of Life

Stars Turning Up in Strange Places

Great British Eccentrics

Acknowledgements

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to So You Think You Know It All? , a lovingly crafted compilation of more than 100 of the quirkiest, strangest, most mind-boggling, and fascinating stories pulled from the brains of the One Show research desk at independent producers Icon Films. Here you’ll find tales of everyday British foibles, eccentricity, unsolved murders, very hard maths, A-list stars turning up in unexpected places, cricket-playing Nazis, epic fails, government cover-ups, mini triumphs, scientific breakthroughs and, er, even one about how a nudist film-maker came up with the object that no self-respecting hipster home could do without…

You may already be a fan of The One Show , but did you know that launching this now much-loved early evening weekday magazine show was a gamble for the BBC? You see, The One Show sits in a tricky scheduling hinterland – 7 p.m., that awkward, sticky-out bit of time and space after the news, falling between the snoozy un-demands of daytime programmes, and before ‘primetime’. This is the time of day when TV’s magnetism is at its weakest for viewers; often just home from work, distracted by making, or eating, their tea, putting the bins out, wrangling toddlers toward their pyjamas, ignoring a spate of PPI compensation calls on the landline and whatever else it is people do at 7 p.m. on a weekday.

But the gamble paid off. Today The One Show is a colourful and quirky, serious and topical – and often a little eccentric – TV institution. Transmitting five nights a week, 46 weeks of the year, it averages five million viewers per edition; no mean feat when you consider the competition from a multi-channel TV environment and the equally distracting ‘second screens’ of smart phones, tablets and laptops that now accompany households when they congregate on the sofa.

Think of this book as the Director’s Cut of The One Show – full of facts, extended interviews and trivia nuggets. And like the TV show that inspired it, So You Think You Know It All? is a distinctly British celebration of historic and contemporary eccentricity, innovation, bravery and sheer chutzpah.

Enjoy!

EUREKA MOMENTS

ARE YOU HAVIN’ A LAVA? EDWARD CRAVEN WALKER SEES THE LIGHT

During the Second World War RAF reconnaissance pilot Edward Craven Walker flew dangerous missions over enemy territory to photograph Nazi bases. When the conflict ended, Walker continued his interest in photography: credited on-screen as Michael Keatering, he produced and occasionally appeared in naturist films, and pioneered the, admittedly niche, subgenre of nudist documentary that focused on naked, underwater, ballet. Travelling Light (1960) features a troupe of all-swimming, all-dancing women expressing themselves in the warm coastal waters of Corsica. British nudists, Walker’s target audience, may well have been interested in the onscreen choreography, but it’s unlikely many would have been inspired enough to consider following suit in British seas. Nor were they likely to be encouraged to shed their thermals by Walker’s attempt to merge nakedness and winter sports with the ‘documentary’ Eves On Skis (1963).

Both films were considerable box office hits in the few UK cinemas that screened them. In turn, further revenue was generated when they were picked up for worldwide distribution, generating enough income for Craven Walker to establish his own nudist retreat, The Bournemouth and District Outdoor Club. He became something of a spokesperson for British naturism, but he wasn’t exactly egalitarian about attracting new members – especially those on the larger side. He once declared, ‘We at Bournemouth have a health centre and only want healthy people here… We are against all these fat fogies – it’s not what naturism should be about’.

In between all that, he invented what’s popularly known as the Lava Lamp, but which Walker originally dubbed the Astro Lamp. By either name, the psychedelic beacon became shorthand for the 1960s, but it took Craven Walker most of the 1950s to develop it.

Around 1950, over a pint in the Queen’s Head pub in Ringwood, Hampshire, he became mesmerised by a novelty lamp behind the bar. The lamp was invented by Donald Dunnet, a Scot living in England, but how it ended up behind the bar is a mystery. It may have been a prototype because we do know that it was patented in 1951. The lamp featured two liquids – ‘one’, says the patent description, ‘of a lower gravity than the other, the two liquids being non-miscible and the upper layer being of lower specific gravity than the lower layer and means for heating the lower layer so that it rises through the upper layer in the form of liquid bubbles or as a liquid column which breaks into such bubbles, the bubbles being cooled by the upper layer so that they return to the lower layer.’ Basically, when the liquids were heated, the lower of the two sent a column of bubbles to the top, then the light would turn off, the water cool and the bubbles sink to their original position. It was developed from one of Dunnet’s earlier patents, an egg timer. This was a close-ended glass tube filled with viscous liquids that would break into bubbles after about four minutes when submerged in boiling water – time enough for the perfect boiled egg.