Monthly Archives: February 2017

428. British Comedy: Limmy’s Show (Part 2) Dee Dee goes to Yoker

Analysis of another sketch from Limmy’s Show. Listen to informal English spoken in a Glasgow accent, and understand it.

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Introduction

Hello and welcome back to this podcast, this ongoing project which aims to help you to improve your English by presenting you with listening content which is not just useful for practising your English listening skills, vocabulary and pronunciation but also useful for broadening your horizons just a little bit by presenting you with content you might not have otherwise discovered.

This is part 2 of a 2 part episode about British Comedy. This time I’m talking to you about one of my favourite TV shows, called Limmy’s Show – a series of bizarre and amusing sketches written and performed by Brian Limond aka Limmy, who comes from Glasgow in Scotland.

In the last episode we listened to a few sketches on YouTube featuring Limmy’s character Mr Mulvaney, the businessman who seems convinced that the police are on his tail for committing some petty shoplifting. We heard some English spoken with a Glaswegian accent and picked up a few words and expressions along the way.

This time we’re going to continue with another of Limmy’s sketches which you can find on YouTube. Whereas the Mr Mulvaney sketches featured fairly formal sounding spoken English in a Glasgow accent, the sketch in this episode features a character who speaks in a more informal way and with an accent and speech pattern that I expect you will find even stronger and more difficult to understand, which is precisely why I’ve chosen to analyse it here on the podcast. In my effort to push your English into new areas, I’m choosing to focus on some speech that you might not have been exposed to before in order to close the linguistic and cultural gaps that might exist between you and this TV comedy, which won a Scottish BAFTA twice.

The sketch we’re going to listen to now is called “Dee Dee – Yoker” which involves a character called Dee Dee who takes a bus trip to a town called Yoker.

Sketch: Dee Dee goes to Yoker (video below)

The Dee Dee sketches are possibly the best thing about Limmy’s Show. Dee Dee is basically an unemployed guy who never really leaves the house and is lost in his own world.

The sketches featuring Dee Dee are funny, but they’re perhaps closer to pathos than comedy.

Pathos is the quality in a film or play that makes people feel sadness or pity. Sometimes comedy can become pathos when it is not just funny, but also quite sad or pitiful. For example, Charlie Chaplin’s films are full of comedy, but what makes them extra special is the pathos – those moments where you feel pity for Chaplin’s character, who is basically a poverty-stricken tramp.

It’s a similar case with Dee Dee. His sketches make me laugh, but they are also terribly sad because Dee Dee is isolated, quite disturbed and unable to fully operate in society.

He basically never goes out, he spends all his time on his own at home, watching the TV and sleeping. It’s a bit sad really, because his state of mind is pretty messed up and he’s losing touch with reality. I don’t know if you know how that feels.

Imagine you’ve come down with the flu and you’re off work, sick, just staying in the house on the sofa for a long period, like a week or two. You don’t see anyone. You hardly do anything, you’re just getting over your flu, sitting on the sofa or sleeping the whole time. It starts to mess with your head a bit. The days drag on, morning drifts into the afternoon, which drifts into the evening and you haven’t left the house or even had a shower and got dressed, you’re just wrapped up in your blanket from your bed all day. Your mind starts to go a bit weird and you’re living in a daydream while everyone outside in the real world is going out working and living their lives. You’re just indoors all the time, slowly drifting away from reality.

That’s what DeeDee is all about, but I’m not sure why he’s in this situation. I think he’s just an unemployed stoner – someone who smokes too much weed or something. So, it might be about the condition of someone who smokes too much weed and as a result has lost the motivation to leave the house, get a job or sort his life out.

Every sketch with Dee Dee is like a glimpse into his spaced out mind as he completely over analyses quite trivial details in his every day life, like things he’s seen on TV or stuff that happens in his kitchen. In each episode, these trivial details become blown up into hugely significant events because of his paranoia and delusion.

In this one Dee Dee actually goes outside, in order to pick up his giro (unemployment welfare check) but takes a risk and takes an opportunity to get a free ride on a bus going to a place he’s never been before and it becomes a big adventure, even though in reality it’s not much of an adventure and most of the drama is in his own head.

With this one I’m going to read it out in my voice first so that you can understand the story, then we’ll hear the original version with Dee Dee from Glasgow.

Again, I’ve no idea what you’ll think of this, but at the least it’s just a fun little story.

Adapted transcript (written in ‘English English’)

[So, I was walking along the street the other day to pick up my welfare check. And I passed by a couple of buses at the side of the road. Everybody’s crowding off the front and into the one behind. Old folk’ were all like, “This is ridiculous. Never used to be like this with the city buses.” I was like all like, “I see. We’ve got ourselves a breakdown.” I check to see where they’re all heading. ‘Yoker’. And I just pissed myself laughing.]

Dee Dee: “Haa~!”

[Because Yoker’s one of these places I only know from the front of a bus. I’ve never been there. Don’t know what it’s like. Just this crazy fairytale land that sounds like kinda an egg yolk. So I was watching everybody getting on, trying to show their tickets to the driver. But he wasn’t having it. Just waving them on, all like, ‘Alright I know where you all came from. I can see the other bus, what do you think I am, stupid?’ And I see the opportunity for a free ride, and a little voice in my head says, “Dee dee, I know you’ve got to get your welfare check, but that money’s always going to be there. But this, on the other hand, is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Go for it”. So I was all like…”]

Dee Dee: “Fuck it”.

[And I joined the queue. As soon as I do, the driver starts checking people’s tickets. I was all like, “Pffft, forget it”. But I just got completely caught up in the slipstream, rushing towards the moment of truth at a hundred miles an hour. Heart pounding. Pulse racing.]

Dee Dee: “I…..uh…..”

Driver: “Go ahead mate.”

Dee Dee: “Thanks, dude.”

[I did it.

So there I was on the top deck of the bus. I had a bird’s eye view. Whizzing by the unemployment office, all like – Ta ta, welfare check, maybe some other day, hmm? Because I’m on the bus. To Yoker. Couldn’t believe what I was hearing in my head. Seriously. This was actually happening! But then I thought, hold on. Don’t get too excited. There could be someone looking at the back of your head right now thinking, “Hey, who’s he? He’s not from Yoker. He’s got no business being on this bus. Let’s beat him up!” I turned round to see if anyone was looking.

Nobody. Got away with it. I totally got away with it. So I loosened up, and started chatting. ‘Thought I’d get a little bit of local knowledge before I got there.

Dee Dee: “So is this ‘bus for Yoker, right?”

Yoker Passenger: “Yep”

Dee Dee: “I’ve just moved there. Is it a nice place?”

Yoker Passenger: “Yes, it’s a wonderful place. I’ve lived there all my life. Yoker born and bred.”

Dee Dee: “So you’ve never once wondered what Yoker’s like? Mind boggling…”

[Half an hour later I start seeing the signs. Yoker newsagents. Yoker post office. Yoker F.C. Yoker everything. They even had a barber that rhymed with Yoker. “Hair by Les Porter”. What are the chances of that?]

Dee Dee: “Hey, listen. Wouldn’t it be, like, totally crazy if his name used to be Smith, or something, and he just changed it to fit in?”.

Yoker Passenger: “What?”

[Gets to the terminus. Everybody starts crowding off. I decided to ask the driver for a favor.]

Dee Dee: “Driver, when do you leave?”

Driver: “5 minutes.”

Dee Dee: “I fell asleep and missed my stop. Would it be possible for you to print me out a ticket while I go out and catch a smoke real quick? Thanks.”

[And I put my first step on to Yoker soil. I was in Yoker. I thought this day would never come. Is it really this easy? Is it really this easy to get the things you want in life? You just need to hold out for it? All of a sudden I just had the urge to be all like, “Listen, I’m not from Yoker, I’ve got no business being here”. I was like, “Calm down, Dee Dee. That’s no laughing matter. They’ll tear you to shreds. Now, you’ve got five minutes. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do… in Yoker? …I knew exactly what.

I had to. I had to find out. I couldn’t leave without finding out what this is all about. Bus was a million miles away. I thought, “Dee Dee, you are truly on the outer reaches here, dude. Middle of nowhere.” And I went into the great unknown with a fucking ding; to ask the one big question on everybody’s lips.]

Dee Dee: “Les Porter?”

Les Porter: “Yes?”

Dee Dee: “Has your name always rhymed with Yoker, or did it used to like, be like Smith or something or-?”

[And then I thought, “Dee Dee, you’ve just blown your cover. Big time. ‘Fuck you doing, dude? Go. Go!” Got out of there before they started throwing their scissors at me like Ninja stars. Before Big Les scalped me and stuck my head on the wall. Ten seconds to get to that bus man, that’s your lifelife! What does it start doing? It starts moving. I was like that, “No way, bro!” I felt like giving up. “Hey, I’m not from Yoker, I’ve got no business being in Yoker”. Let them finish me off like a pack of crazy wolves. But I just kept running for my life like I had Leatherface on my tail. I get to the bus but he wouldn’t let us in. I was all like, “Set up! ‘Whole thing’s a set up. Those people that were on that front bus? Actors. Actors! ‘Every single one of them, actors.” Door opens and I bolt upstairs. Right under the seat. Didn’t dare poke my head up for the next half hour in case they were going by in a minibus. Eager to feast on me like a group of crazy zombie pirates.

Picked a moment. Up the road. Up the stairs. In the house. Lock. Lock. Lock. Scary, dude. Scary.

Original transcript (in Glaswegian English)

[Fucking, heading to the brew, heading to get my giro. And I pass this couple of buses at the side of the road. Everybody’s piling off the front and into the one behind. Old folk’ like that, “This is ridiculous. Never used to be like this with the corporation buses.” I was like that, “I see. We’ve got ourselves a breakdown.” I check to see where they’re all heading. ‘Yoker’. And I just pissed myself laughing.]

Dee Dee: “Haa~!”

[Because Yoker’s one of these places I only know from the front of a bus. I’ve never been there. Don’t know what it’s like. Just this pure, mad fabled land that sounds like
a pure, mad egg yolk. So I was watching everybody getting on, trying to show their tickets to the driver. But he wasn’t having it. Just waving them on like that, ‘Alright I know what you’s came from. I can see the bus, what do you think I am, daft?’. And a wee voice in my head says, “Dee dee, I know you’ve got to get your giro, but the brew’s always going to be there. But this, on the other hand, is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Go for it”. So I just went like that…”]

Dee Dee: “Fuck it”.

[And I joined the queue. As soon as I do, the driver starts checking people’s tickets. I was like that, “Oh here, forget it”. But I just got pure caught up in the slipstream, belting towards the moment of truth at a hundred mile an hour. Heart pounding. Pulse racing.]

Dee Dee: “What it is is-”

Driver: “On you go, mate.”

Dee Dee: “Cheers.”

[I did it.

So there I was. Bird’s eye view. Whizzing by the brew like that. Ta ta giro, maybe some other day, eh? Because I’m on the bus. To Yoker. Couldn’t believe what I was hearing
in my head, man. Seriously. This was actually happening! But then I thought, hold on. Don’t get too excited. There could be someone looking at the back of your nut right now thinking, “Here, who’s he? He’s not from Yoker. He’s got no business being on this bus. Get his head kicked, man.” I turned round to see if anyone was looking.

Nobody. Got away with it. Just pure got away with the lot of it. So I loosened up, and started chatting. ‘Thought I’d get a wee bit of local knowledge before I got there.

Dee Dee: “So is this ‘bus for Yoker, aye?”

Yoker Passenger: “Aye”

Dee Dee: “I’ve just moved there. Is it any good?”

Yoker Passenger: “Aye, it’s a lovely place. I’ve lived there all my life. Yoker born and bred.”

Dee Dee: “So you’ve never once wondered what Yoker’s like? Mind boggling…”

Dee Dee: “Here y’ ‘are. What’s the betting his name used to be Smith, or something, and he just changed it to fit in?”.

Yoker Passenger: “What?”

[Gets to the terminus. Everybody starts piling off. I hit the driver with my charms.]

Dee Dee: “Driver, when do you leave?”

Driver: “5 minutes.”

Dee Dee: “I conked out and missed my stop. Any chance you could print us out a ticket so I can nip off for a fag? Cheers.”

[And I put my first step on to Yoker soil. I was in Yoker. I thought this day would never come. Is it really this easy? Is it really this easy to get the things you want in life? You just need to hold out for it? All of a sudden I just had the urge to go like that, “Here, I’m not from Yoker, I’ve got no business being here”. I was like, “Calm it, Dee Dee. That’s no laughing matter. They’ll tear you to shreds. Now, you’ve got five minutes. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do… in Yoker? …I knew exactly what.

I had to. I had to find out. I couldn’t leave without finding out what this is all about. Bus was a million miles away. I thought, “Dee Dee, you are truly on the outer reaches here, man. Middle of nowhere.” And I went into the great unknown with a fucking ding; to ask the one big question on everybody’s lips.]

Dee Dee: “Les Porter?”

Les Porter: “Aye?”

Dee Dee: “Has your name always rhymed with Yoker, or did it used to like, be like Smith or something or-?”

[And then I thought, “Dee Dee, you’ve just blown your cover. Big time. ‘Fuck you playing at, man? Go. Go!” Got out of there before they started chucking their scissors at us like Ninja stars. Before Big Les scalped us and stuck my head on the wall. Ten seconds to get to that bus man, that’s your lifelife! What does it start doing? It starts moving. I was like that, “No, man!” I felt like giving up. “Here, I’m not from Yoker, I’ve got no business being in Yoker”. Let them finish me off like a pack of mad wolves. But I just kept running for my life like I had Leatherface on my tail. I get to the bus but he wouldn’t let us in. I was like that, “Set up! ‘Whole thing’s a set up. Them that were on that front bus? Actors. Actors! ‘Lot of them, actors.” Door opens and I bolt upstairs. Right under the seat. Didn’t dare poke my head up for the next half hour in case they were going by in a minibus. Gasping to feast on me like a shower of mad zombie pirates.

Picked a moment. Up the road. Up the stairs. In the house. Lock. Lock. Lock. Scary, man. Scary.

But the best day of my life.]

Here’s a version with subtitles in ‘English English’

If you can’t see the subtitles, you can switch them on using the little button at the bottom of the video – the one that looks like a little white box with some dots and lines in it.

Nae Clue (No clue)

How I would say it (English RP version)

Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t really know what you’re doing, in general? Has anybody ever asked you, “What did you do that for?” and you’re like “I don’t know”. Have you ever worn something that you thought looked good, and everyone else thought looked crap? Have you ever said yes to something, to which you should have said no? Something you really didn’t want to do. You were asked the question and you thought “No, no way” but out came “Yeah, alright, why not?” In fact, do you ever get the feeling that from the day you’re born until the day you die, you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing? Do you? Yes, well, join the club.

Limmy Version (Glasgow dialect)

Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t really know whit yer dain, in general? Has anbody ever asked you, ‘whit did ye dae that for?’ And yer like that ‘a dunno.’ Have you ever worn something that you thought looked good, and everyone else thought looked crap? Have you ever said aye to something, to which you should’ve said naw? Someting you really didny wantae dae. You were asked the question and you thought ‘naw no way’ but oot came ‘aye awright, why not.’ In fact do you ever get the feeling that from the day you’re born till the day you die, you hivny got a clue whit yer dain? Dae ye? Aye well here, join the club.

427. British Comedy: Limmy’s Show (Part 1) Mr Mulvaney

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An episode analysing more British comedy, this time focusing on a couple of sketches from Limmy’s Show, an award-winning TV comedy produced by BBC Scotland. See below for transcriptions, notes and videos.

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Introduction

I was vaguely planning to go through a sort of history of British comedy in chronological order, over a series of episodes, but I just feel like doing an episode today about a series called Limmy’s Show because I’ve been enjoying it recently.

In this episode you’ll get

Listening (obviously) but this one’s going to be a little tricky because you’ll be listening to a couple of sketches that might be hard to understand for various reasons.
Culture. Since this is comedy, there’s a lot of unspoken meaning which you might not notice. Humour is well-known for being one of the most difficult things to pick up on in another language, which is precisely why it’s a good idea for me to go through some comedy with you on the podcast. Of course, you might not get it. You might not find it funny. That’s fine. What I find enjoyable might leave you completely cold. That could be a question of taste, but it could be a question of cultural context. In fact, in my experience of being a teacher, I’ve noticed many cases of my students just not getting comedy when it’s shown to them. Even stuff that’s considered by the majority of people to be funny, just doesn’t work with learners of English. It’s not until you get to a proficient level of English that you start to notice the unspoken humour or subtlety of a piece of comedy in English. This is because it requires really advanced English skills to notice the nuances that make something amusing, but also because of the difference in mindset or cultural context. You simply might not find it funny just because of cultural conventions. This is why some people disparagingly refer to “British comedy” as being weird, unfunny, very surreal or conceptual. It’s not really that intellectual, it’s just subtle and I think we have a broad scope for comedy. Anyway, I’m not going to get bogged down in trying to explain British comedy, it’s better to just show it to you and try to help you understand it as best I can. But the point I was trying to make is that I want to try and close the gap between what I understand and enjoy about a comedy sketch, and what you might understand and enjoy about it. So, hopefully I can bridge a cultural gap as well as a linguistic gap by doing this sort of episode.
Vocabulary – there’s is some good, meaty vocab in the sketches we’re going to hear, from several different registers. You’ll hear some slightly formal spoken English from an executive level business man talking to the police, and some informal English with slang, spoken in a dialect. There will be vocabulary.
Accent – the sketches we’re going to study are all set in the Glasgow area of Scotland, so you’ll be hearing some English spoken with Glasgow accents – some quite mild and some really strong.
Amusement. Who knows, as well as all this English practice, you might also simply enjoy the sketches! I hope so.

What is Limmy’s Show?

Limmy’s Show is a sketch show which was broadcast on the BBC in Scotland a few years ago. A lot of the sketches from the show are on YouTube and in fact that’s where I’ve seen all of it.

Limmy’s Show is written and directed by a guy from Glasgow called Brian Limond. I think he got his show after getting quite well known from doing a podcast and some YouTube videos. He also did performances at the Edinburgh Festival. Basically, he got a sort of cult following on the internet and that led to him getting his own TV sketch show on BBC Scotland. The thing is, his show was never broadcast in England, only on TV in Scotland, which is a pity for the English because it’s a really good show.

Buy Limmy’s Show on DVD here

I guess that the Scottishness is a large part of the appeal of the show. I think it has a lot to do with it. All the characters in the sketches are Scottish and speak mostly with Glaswegian accents, and the scenes all take place in and around Glasgow.

The sketches feature different characters, mostly played by Limmy. He plays a range of characters from different social backgrounds.

The sketches are often quite surreal, bizarre or dark. Often they feature characters with weird behaviour, or Limmy talking directly to the camera about an aspect of life that he’s noticed. Some sketches just make me think, or just confuse me a bit – but in a good way.
Sometimes they’re laugh out loud funny, sometimes just amusing and sometimes just a bit curious in the way they present quite odd observations about everyday life. Some sketches are a bit disturbing, and others are even a bit sad. All in all, Limmy’s Show is original and refreshingly unconventional, as well as being funny.

It’s worth mentioning again the significance of the accents you’ll hear in Limmy’s Show. As I said, they’re all Scottish, specifically Glaswegian. Some of the characters speak with very heavy Glaswegian accents, and I think that’s part of the appeal to be honest. You don’t often hear those accents on TV. Sometimes they’re difficult to understand if you don’t come from there. Even people from the UK, like people from London struggle to understand the show sometimes, especially when certain characters are talking. There are loads of comments on YouTube from foreigners around the world, including native English speakers in America, saying that they can’t understand anything. Some people on YouTube request transcriptions because they can’t understand the sketches and you can see that other people have written out full transcriptions to the sketches in the comment section on YouTube, and there are loads of other comments from people saying “Oh, thanks so much, I never could have understood this without the transcript!”

So, you get the idea that this is going to be some proper Glaswegian English that you’re going to hear.
For me, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. I love the accent. It’s awesome. I love hearing the particularities of the way these characters pronounce words and phrase their sentences. In a way it becomes more expressive and characterful, to the extent that the accent and speech pattern is a large part of what makes the sketches so fascinating and enjoyable.

So, let’s enjoy listening to Glaswegian English here.

I’ve got a few sketches I want to deal with, from a couple of characters. I’d like to go through loads of these sketches but I can’t do them all. So, I’ve picked out just a couple of ones that I like and that feature slightly different accents and characters, showing a bit of diversity in the way they speak.

Mr Mulvaney

We’ll start with a sketch featuring a character called Mr Mulvaney, who is an executive level business man from Glasgow.

Here’s how we’re going to do it.

I’ll just play the sketch to you first without a lot of explanation.
Simply listen and try to follow what’s going on. If you don’t find it funny, then no bother.
Just try to work out what’s going on. I’ll give you a little bit of detail at the start.
Afterwards I’ll explain what happened and talk about why I think it’s funny.
Then I’ll go through it in more detail, pausing after each bit, explaining vocabulary, accent differences and repeating what he says.
You can find the videos on my site if you want to watch them again.
So that’s the process.

Mr Mulvaney – Creme Egg

The scene
Mr Mulvaney is sitting in his modern looking office. He’s the director of the company. It looks very corporate. He’s in a suit and has grey hair. The company logo shows that this is the Mulvaney Group – it must be a large corporation. Mulvaney looks serious. His office building is open plan, with glass partitions between each section, so Mulvaney is alone in his room but he can see outside into the rest of the floor through the glass walls.

He calls his secretary to order a taxi for later. It’s all businesslike and serious. Then he sees a couple of police in uniform enter the building and talk to someone on reception. At this point, Mr Mulvaney panics!

A summary of the whole sketch

An executive business man overreacts when he sees the police in his office building and assumes they have come to question him about a crime he has committed. It looks like he’s committed a very serious crime, like a murder, and he frantically tries to work out his story by having an imaginary conversation with the police. On his own he practises telling his story as convincingly as possible, even adding authentic sounding questions from the police. It turns out that he hasn’t done anything very serious. He’s just stolen a chocolate bar from a shop, but he’s acting as if it’s a capital offense. In the end we realise that the police aren’t even looking for him and we don’t really know why he’s doing the things he’s doing. He could in fact be suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

What I find funny about it this sketch

The fact that he’s a high-powered business man who is involved in petty theft is sort of funny because of the contrast between his high status and the low status nature of the crime.
There’s a contrast between the serious way he is acting and the pettiness of the crimes he’s committed.
Comedy sometimes comes from the reveal of something previously hidden. These scenes reveal something about his personality and what he’s done – he’s the managing director of the company, a very serious role, but his life is on the edge of spinning out of control, like in some kind of thriller.
The performance. Limmy’s performance is really funny. He switches between different attitudes quickly: calm controlled businesslike manner, the panic and fear of being caught by the police, him getting a grip on himself, playing the part of the police officer very convincingly, him acting all indignant and shocked when the police suggest that he might have committed the crime, protesting his innocence, the relief of getting away with it, the determination to stop this kind of crazy behaviour and make sure it never happens again.
Playing with TV conventions. This is the sort of thing we have seen many times in TV shows, books and films. There are loads of thrillers in which someone in a high status position has committed a crime and when the police come to ask questions they act cooperative and yet completely innocent, while silently panicking on the inside. Every other murder mystery has a character like that in it. This time it’s played for laughs because the crime is not serious at all – it’s just a stolen chocolate bar or something.

Mr Mulvaney – In The Car

Mr Mulvaney – Fire Alarm

Part 2 coming soon…

With analysis of a completely different sketch by Limmy.

Other episodes about British comedy from the archive

426. Thompson, Taylor & Minogue: Victorian Detectives (Part 2) with Amber & Paul

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Listen to the conclusion of this mystery story in which Amber, Paul and I attempt to solve a series of kidnappings in Victorian London.

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Welcome back to the this double episode in which Amber, Paul and I are working our way through an online text adventure game. The game is set in London in the Victorian era. We are playing the part of a brilliant detective with a particular set of skills who, with his partner Mardler, is trying to track down and rescue 4 kidnapped girls while also bringing the kidnapper to justice.

This is part 2. We’re halfway through the story. If you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, I suggest you do so. It’s episode number 425.

Thanks to Peter Carlson, who wrote the story. Peter gave me the go-ahead to record us reading it out on the podcast. Nice on Peter, thank you.

Click here to play Victorian Detective 2 by Peter Carlson

You can find the link to the game on the page for this episode (link above) where you read all of the text that we are reading. So you can either just enjoy listening to us going through the story now, or you can listen now and read the story yourself later, or you can listen to us and read the story at the same time. It’s worth checking the text in the story because you’ll be able to read all the words and check certain things that you might miss, like spellings, definitions of certain language etc.

Whatever you choose to do, try to watch out for descriptive vocabulary (particularly verbs for different types of movement), the language we use while working together as a group and also the language we use when making deductions and speculating about the case (things like “might have” “could have” “must have” and so on).

As I said before, the story does contain some descriptions of violence so if you’re very sensitive to the gory details, then be warned, although it’s not that graphic in my opinion and you expect a bit of blood in a detective story, don’t you?

What’s the story so far?

Let’s recap again quickly.

Girls keep getting kidnapped in London. At the scene of each kidnapping there’s a calling card left by the kidnapper in the form of a creepy smiley face scratched into the floor.

We were called to the house of the Worthington family, where the daughter Chloe had disappeared. Using our deductive reasoning skills, we worked out that she must have run away with her lover – a poor Italian paper seller called Joseph. They had planned to run away together but their romantic escape was interrupted violently and unexpectedly when they were attacked at Joseph’s home in a poor part of London. Joseph was hit on the head with a hammer and Chloe was taken away, her body hidden inside a coffin on the back of a carriage. We deduced that the carriage, with Chloe’s body on board must have been taken to a local mortuary by one of the men who works there. There at the mortuary we discovered that his name is Cade Brewer, and he’s a strange, creepy yet huge and strong man with an appetite for opiate pain killing drugs, woodwork and kidnapping, but we don’t know where he is. Now we have gone back to the police station to consider the situation more carefully.

4 young girls from different social backgrounds have been kidnapped and they all have similar coloured hair – they all have light hair. Then we start receiving notes from the kidnapper, who calls himself Mr Burlap, written in broken English. It seems that he wants us to find him. He’s playing some kind of sick cat & mouse game. We suspect that Mr Burlap the kidnapper is in fact Cade Brewer, the huge creepy man with the opiate addiction who works at the mortuary. We decide to try and track him down. We first search cemeteries in the area, assuming that Cade Brewer has hidden her in a coffin – but we’re on the wrong track! Our deductive reasoning has failed us (I blame Amber). It turns out she’s not at the cemetery at all. In fact, closer inspection of the evidence shows us that he must be keeping her hostage at an abandoned hospital. So, we decide to go and investigate the hospital. But we’ve just lost precious time by investigating the wrong place – the cemetery. Have we lost too much time? Will we find the mysterious kidnapper Mr Burlap who wrote us the note in broken English? Will we find Cade Brewer – and is he in fact Mr Burlap as we expect? Will we manage to find Chloe Worthington and the other 3 girls? Will we manage to save them? Or did we waste too much time? What will we discover at the abandoned hospital? And why is Mr Burlap playing such a sick and twisted game?!

Let’s find out.

* The story continues *

Click here to play Victorian Detective 2 by Peter Carlson

* The story ends *

Here’s a recap of the story, just to make sure you got it.

Part 2 of Victorian Detective – Explained

So, after making a mistake and searching the cemetery for Chloe Worthington, we went to the hospital to track down Mr Burlap the kidnapper, who we suspected was Cade Brewer the weird, big guy from the mortuary. There we find the body of one of the other girls, Amy Anderson, but unfortunately it was too late! We’d wasted too much time at the cemetery and the girl had already died from ingesting poisonous mushrooms. Next to Amy’s body we found a smiley face (the kidnapper’s calling card) and a scratched note from Mr Burlap indicating that another one of the girls was being held somewhere else and that we had a limited amount of time to find her. We then deduced that she was being kept near the Thames river. We went there and discovered another one of the missing girls tied up next to the water. Mr Burlap’s plan was that because the Thames is tidal, the tide would eventually come in and the water level would rise, drowning the girl. Thankfully we managed to rescue her in time. We suspected the Italian uncle of the paperboy from part 1 of the story to be the killer, because Mr Burlap wrote “Good luck” in Italian at the end of the note. Closer inspection of Chloe Worthington’s house revealed that it wasn’t the Italian uncle, and that in fact Cade Brewer had been spying on Chloe and Joseph (the Italian paperboy) and that’s how he knew about the Italian phrase, which he wrote in the note as a distraction. We then worked out that Cade Brewer, who must be Mr Burlap was probably hiding in a forest just outside London – Epping Forest. We went there to investigate, and eventually found a small wooden house where we came face to face with Cade Brewer. There was a bit of a fight at the entrance to the wooden house, Mardler got hit in the face with a shovel, we dropped our gun and Cade Brewer escaped. We then picked up Mardler’s gun and investigated the house, which was full of bear pelts, bear traps and loads of carved smiley faces all over the walls – clearly Cade Brewer was Mr Burlap the kidnapper, and he’d been practising his smiley faces by scratching them everywhere in his house, like the way you practise your signature when you’re young, until you’re happy with it! We decided to chase after Brewer by going down a trapdoor which was hidden by a bear pelt on the floor. In the basement we discovered the 3rd girl, tied up, standing on a chair with a noose around her neck. For some reason we didn’t immediately rescue her from this perilous situation, and instead we chose to try and follow Brewer by shooting the lock on the back door of the basement and opening it to discover a tunnel. We then didn’t look properly and got our leg caught in a bear trap, badly injuring ourselves. It didn’t make much of a difference to the outcome of the story but it must have stung a bit! Then, with the help of Mardler and some police officers we cut down the other girl, rescuing her (2/3 at this point).

Then the point of view changed and we followed the story from Cade Brewer’s perspective. Playing as Brewer was a disturbing experience because he was obviously suffering from extreme side effects because of the Opiax painkillers he’d been taking. In fact the painkillers had driven him mad and he’d turned into a psycho, completely obsessed with a nurse who had cared for him at the hospital where he’d been a patient with an injured leg. With his mind twisted by the effects of the opiax, he’d killed the nurse. Brewer’s mental illness, caused by the side effects of the painkiller, came in the form of the voice of Mr Burlap, who convinced him to kidnap the other girls and kill them as part of some kind of natural cycle, which he had to complete. Poor Cade Brewer was completely overcome by the influence of Mr Burlap, all because of the effects of this untested drug that he’d been given at the hospital. His next step was to kill not only Chloe Worthington, but also the detectives on his trail – that’s us!

Then we returned to the point of view of the detectives who had somehow worked out that Chloe Worthington was being kept back at the mortuary, and there we discovered her, only to be locked inside by Cade Brewer/Mr Burlap who proceeded to try and burn down the building as the conclusion of his natural cycle – having killed the other girls with earth, water, air and now fire. Thankfully we managed to use our articulate communication skills to trick Brewer into opening the door of the mortuary, where we chose to mercilessly shoot him dead without asking further questions (notice that Amber was the one who chose to do that straight away, immediately saying “shoot the fucker!”)

We escaped from the burning building with Chloe Worthington. But tragically we didn’t get 100% success because we let Amy Anderson die in the hospital due to our poor deductive reasoning at the cemetery.

That’s the end.

Let us know your thoughts

As ever, I’m curious to know what you think.

Would you have made the same choices we did?
Did you manage to work out what was going on?
Do you have any language-related questions or comments?

Let us know what you’re thinking in the comment section.

Other episodes like this

You could try these episodes if you haven’t already heard them.

229. Zombies! (Part 2) Listen to me take a zombie survival test (another text adventure game), with a language focus on conditional sentences.
298. The Bank Robbery (Part 1) and 299. The Bank Robbery (Part 2) How will Amber, Paul and Sebastian plan the perfect bank robbery?
338. A Murder Mystery Detective Story (Part 1 of 2) and 339. A Murder Mystery Detective Story (Part 2 of 2) I play another text adventure game written by Peter Carlson. Listen as we discover the story, make some choices based on evidence and try to solve a murder.
And any other episode with Amber & Paul (just check the archive – try using command+F or ctrl+F then searching for the word ‘Amber’ or ‘Paul’ – your browser should highlight all episodes with those words, making it easier to search the archive.

Thanks for listening!

Luke
Foggy forest house

425. Thompson, Taylor & Minogue: Victorian Detectives (Part 1) with Amber & Paul

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Listen to Amber, Paul and me as we attempt to solve a series of mysterious kidnappings in Victorian London.

[DOWNLOAD]

Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Here’s a new episode, you’re actually listening to it. It’s really happening and here is my introduction. This was a very fun episode to record and I hope it’s going to be a fun episode to listen to. It’s going to be a two-part episode and this is part 1 and here is the introduction.

Amber & Paul are back on the podcast in this episode, and this time we’re going to play a game in which we imagine that we are detectives trying to solve a mysterious series of kidnappings in Victorian London and you’re going to join us.

In the recording that you’re going to hear, the three of us are reading through an online text adventure game – one of those games where you read part of a story and then make a decision which affects the way the story continues. I have done this on the podcast before. It’s always a fun thing to do so let’s do it again. And the cool thing about this is that the entire text is available online for you to read too. It’s all there if you want to read it, just visit the page for this episode and you can see the link to the game.

Click here to play Victorian Detective 2 by Peter Carlson

Click that link (or just go to textadventures.co.uk and find the story called Victorian Detective 2 by Peter Carlson) and if you check out the text for this story you can then not only listen to this episode but also play the game and read all of the text too.

This opens up lots of possibilities for using this episode to improve your English.

Here are some ways you can do that:

You just listen to this. Maybe you’re doing the ironing or something. Just listen to us going through the story, try to follow it all, follow our choices and try to enjoy it as an entertaining detective story even if there are some bits that you don’t quite understand. You will hear the entire story from start to finish in this episode and the next one. So, just listen and enjoy it!
After you listen (like when you get home or whenever you’re in front of a computer) play the text adventure game yourself. That way you’ll get lots of reading done and it’ll be a bit easier to follow the story because you will have already heard us reading through it, it will reinforce the things you heard in this episode, and it’ll allow you to check out words that you didn’t catch by using an online dictionary and so on. Also, as you play the game you can make different choices if you want and you can experience a completely different story.
You listen and read at the same time, following everything we do, clicking on the same things as us, making the same choices and effectively just reading along with us. You can pause the episode whenever you want if you want to use online dictionaries to check the meanings of any words.

So, there are some options – just listen, or listen then read, or listen and read at the same time.

There’s a bit of graphic violence in this story (blood and stuff…)

Another thing you should know is that this is a crime story and it involves some descriptions of violence and a few gory details. It’s no worse than an episode of a crime thriller on TV or something like that, but there are some descriptions of violence involving blood and mortal danger, so if you’re a bit squeamish, then I suggest that you have a bottle of brandy nearby so you can revive yourself in the typical 19th century fashion, or take a few deep breaths or have a cup of tea to calm your nerves if necessary.

I understand that this episode might be a little difficult to follow

Or maybe not – you might have no problem following it all, but I have a feeling it will be a bit trickier because the three of us get quite animated and excited at times and we speak rather quickly, interrupting each other and talking over each other sometimes, but as we’ve established before on this podcast, that’s actually quite good practice for your listening skills – being able to follow a group conversation. There are many situations like that you could face in the future – imagine for example a business meeting involving you and three other people and everyone’s enthusiastically taking part, sharing ideas, working together quickly to make decisions. It’s good to listen to that sort of thing, rather than just always listening to one person giving a monologue or just two people discussing something. In episodes like this you can get used to hearing multiple voices discussing things and making decisions together.

Try to notice specific language – decision making, verbs of movement and modal verbs for speculation and deduction

From a language point of view, I want you to watch out for this type of language:

Try to notice language for making decisions. Listen out for the ways we ask each other for opinions on each decision, the ways we agree or disagree, the ways we speed things up or slow things down, the way we clarify meaning and the way we summarise or recap information. These things are often done very quickly, yet they’re important practical bits of English for team work.

The story has some moments of action, and so there’s a variety of verbs used to describe different types of movement. Watch out for them and remember to read the text to help you.

Watch out for the language of speculation and deduction. Since we are working together to analyse evidence in order to work out what’s going on, there’s a lot of language of speculation and deduction. So that includes simple ways like, like just putting maybe or perhaps at the beginning of the sentence. For example, “Perhaps she ran away” or “Maybe she was kidnapped”, but also more complex ways using modal verbs to speculate about the past. For example, when you’re talking about possibilities with might or could: “She could have run away” or “She might have been kidnapped” or when you’re certain that something happened by using must, e.g. “She must have escaped through the window” (in the past) and “He must be at the hotel” (in the present), and using ‘can’t’ to talk about something that’s not possible, e.g. “He can’t have escaped through the window, it’s not big enough” or “It can’t be the father!”. So watch out for might have, could have, must have, can’t have for deductions about the past, and watch out for the way we say those auxiliary verbs – “He must have gone through the window” – ‘have’ is hard to hear, but you know it’s there because of the extra syllable and the fact it’s followed by a past participle. “He can’t have done it”.

OK, keep in mind that kind of language, and also the fact that you can read the text for this story too whenever you want, and you’ll see there is a lot to be gained from this episode in terms of English learning.

Just enjoy the story!

But also, I hope you just enjoy listening to the story and spending some more time in the company of Amber, Paul and me.

Alright, that’s enough of an introduction. Here we go!

* The recording with Amber & Paul starts here *

Hello Amber & Paul. How are you? … What’s the situation while we record this? … We’re sitting in front of the TV screen and we’re going to play a game.

A Detective Story with Deductive Reasoning

Have you read any detective stories, or watched Sherlock? (Paul has read the Goosebumps series, Amber has read loads of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie)
Are you any good at deductive reasoning? Are you good at working things out?

Deductive reasoning: Your deductive reasoning is your ability to recognise certain clues and then put them together to make correct judgements.

Let’s test your deductive reasoning with a quick riddle.

Riddle

Can you answer this cunning Sherlock-style riddle?

There are three light switches in front of you. The light is in an upstairs room and you can’t see it. You are only allowed to take one trip up to the room. How do you work out which switch controls the light?

Answer:

1.Turn two of the switches on, say switch A and switch B. Leave them on for a few minutes. Then turn switch B off. Run upstairs into the room. If the light is on, switch A controls the light. If it is off, feel the bulb. If it is still warm, then switch B controls the light; if it is not warm, then switch C controls the light.

Victorian Detective – Episodes 338 and 339

Last year I did a couple of episodes in which I read through an online text adventure called Victorian Detective on textadventures.co.uk . I read through the story, making decisions based on the evidence, trying to solve a murder mystery. The whole thing was written by a guy called Peter Carlson.

I didn’t ask permission from Peter before reading out the story on the podcast, although I did make a point of giving credit to Peter.

Then, the other day I got an email from Peter Carlson in my inbox. Ooh.

Here’s what it said.

Dear Luke,

I’m the author of the Victorian Detective game, which you read on podcast 338. You did a really good job! Thank you for picking my work to read.

Peter Carlson

I replied:

Hi Peter,

You’re the one who did the great job. Your story was excellent. I hope that it brought a bit more traffic to the site and that more people read your story.

Would you mind if I did Victorian Detective 2 on my podcast as well?

All the best,

Luke

Peter replied:

Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed the game.

That would be really great if you read Victorian Detective 2 as well.

Peter

I was very pleased to get this endorsement from Peter and he’s clearly quite happy for me to be reading through his stories on the podcast.

Victorian Detective 2

So, let’s do another detective story on the podcast. This one is called Victorian Detective 2 and this time I’m joined by Amber & Paul. Let’s see if we can put our heads together to solve the mystery in this story.

What we’ll do is read through the story as we play it. We can discuss and explain our decisions one by one. The listeners can follow the whole thing and they can even read along with it by going to textadventures.co.uk and finding Victorian Detective 2 – the link is on the page for this episode. That can help you check all the words, the spelling and so on and play the game yourself if you think we are making the wrong choices.

The link: http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/rl6-r253x0aca-y-v_vnvw/victorian-detective-2

Remember, listeners, that we will be experiencing this story for the first time as we read it, so we have no idea what’s coming next or what happens at the end. In fact, I understand that there are multiple possible endings for this story.

The game will tell us if we’re making good or bad choices along the way. It counts a score as you go. E.g. if you make a good deduction it says “deductive reasoning success” or “deductive reasoning fail” and gives you a + or – score for each decision. And then at the end you get a score which explains what kind of detective you are. E.g. if you’re like Sherlock or you’re Shernot.

OK let’s get started.

We should choose the name of our detective agency.

Thompson, Taylor & Minogue? or Taylor, Thompson & Minogue?

* The story begins *

Click here to play Victorian Detective 2 by Peter Carlson

* End of Part 1 *

That’s the end of part 1!

Have you managed to keep up with the story so far?

Here’s a brief summary of what has happened so far, just to make it clear.

The story so far

Girls keep getting kidnapped in London. So far 3 girls have gone missing. At the scene of each kidnapping there’s a calling card left by the kidnapper. It’s a creepy smiley face scratched into the floor.

Taylor, Thompson & Minogue (all of us playing the part of one detective with a particular set of skills) are called to the house of the Worthington family, where the daughter Chloe has disappeared. Using our deductive reasoning skills, we work out that she must have run away with her lover – a poor Italian paper seller called Joseph. They planned to run away together but their romantic escape was interrupted violently and unexpectedly when they were attacked at Joseph’s home in a poor part of London. Joseph was hit on the head with a hammer and Chloe was taken away, her body hidden inside a coffin on the back of a carriage. We deduce that the carriage, with Chloe’s body on board must have been taken to a local mortuary by one of the men who works there. There at the mortuary we work out that his name is Cade Brewer, and he’s a kind of creepy loner. Physically he’s huge and strong and he has an appetite for opiate pain killing drugs, woodwork and kidnapping, but we don’t know where he is, so we can’t ask him any questions. Now we have gone back to the police station to consider the situation more carefully.

Four young girls from different social backgrounds have been kidnapped and they all look quite similar – they all have light coloured hair. Then we receive a note from the kidnapper, who calls himself Mr Burlap. The note is written in broken English. It seems that he wants us to find him. He’s playing some kind of sick cat & mouse game. We suspect that Mr Burlap the kidnapper is in fact Cade Brewer, the huge creepy man with the opiate addiction who works at the mortuary. We decide to try and track him down. We first search cemeteries in the area, assuming that Cade Brewer has hidden her in a coffin, but we’re on the wrong track! Our deductive reasoning has failed us. Obviously this is Amber’s fault – just listen back to it and you’ll see, but it also didn’t help when I clicked the wrong option at one point, losing us points and valuable time. Anyway, it turns out Chloe Worthington is not being kept at the cemetery at all. In fact, closer inspection of the evidence shows us that Mr Burlap must be keeping her hostage at an abandoned hospital. So, we decide to go and investigate the hospital. But we’ve just lost precious time by investigating the wrong place, in the cemetery. Have we lost too much time? Will we find the mysterious kidnapper Mr Burlap who wrote us the note in broken English? Will we find Cade Brewer – and is he in fact the kidnapper Mr Burlap as we expect? Will we manage to find Chloe Worthington and the other 3 girls? Will we manage to save them? Or did we waste too much time? What will we discover at the abandoned hospital? And why is Mr Burlap playing such a sick and twisted game?!

I suggest that you immediately check out part 2 (if it’s available) in order to continue this story and to find out if we discover the identity and motives of the kidnapper and how many of the missing girls we manage to rescue.

Thanks again to Peter Carlson. All credit goes to him for writing this exciting detective thriller. Remember you can check out textadventures.co.uk to play more of these games – and there are others written by Peter Carlson.

Any comments? Write something in the comment section below.

vicdec2

424. With Andy & Ben from The London School of English (Part 2)

196 Replies

Talking to Andy Johnson and Ben Butler about teaching English to millennials, cross-cultural experiences we’ve had as English teachers and some funny stories about Andy.

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London School Online offer – 10% discount with offer code LUKE10

Before we get started here I would just like to remind you that The London School of English, where I used to work, is running a promotion for my listeners, and for a limited time you can get 10% off all their online courses, and those are proper, extensive, professionally developed courses for general English, business English, IELTS and TOEIC exam preparation, legal English and English for other specific purposes. So, if you or perhaps someone else you know is looking for a decent online course that will arm you with practical skills and language you need to be competitive in English – check out London School of English Online at www.londonschoolonline.com and use the offer code LUKE10 at checkout to get your discount.

Intro

OK here is part 2 of this conversation which I recorded with Andy & Ben in a hotel lounge recently. If you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, you might want to check that one out first. At the end of part 1 we paused the podcast in order to buy another overpriced and undersized beer from the hotel bar, and in this part we’ve bought our tiny, expensive beers and we then continue the podcast by discussing Andy’s presentation on the subject of millennials. Millennials – that generation who came into adulthood in the 21st century. This generation that so many people have written about and done management training seminars about. This generation of young people who have been labelled by some as lazy, entitled, self-centred, distracted by technology and hard to manage. This group of people that probably makes up the majority of my audience. This generation of people that probably includes you! What do you think? Is that a fair assessment? Are millennials lazy, entitled, self-centred, distracted by technology and hard to manage? Or is this just small-minded prejudice against a younger generation that’s facing just as many challenges as previous generations, but just in ways that are harder to notice?

And, how should we be teaching this generation in our English language classes? So, there’s some discussion on that – because that’s how we like to spend our Friday evenings, clearly! As you’ll hear the conversation does turn into a kind of anecdote sharing session about some cultural misunderstandings we’ve experienced as English teachers and then there are plenty of other tangents, including some detailed descriptions of what we all look like and how we’re dressed and one particularly funny story from Andy near the end of the episode … you know what? I don’t need to tell you everything you’re going to hear in this episode, do I? I don’t need to go into all the details. All you need to know is that it’s going to be brilliant and even more amazing and awesome than the last one, so strap in, let’s fly back the hotel lounge in Paris on a Friday evening, in the not too distant past, with some mini bottles of beer with giant prices and here we go.

***

Moby and Richard Ashcroft

I have to say it was a lot of fun to have Andy & Ben on the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it too.

London School Online

Don’t forget that you can get 10% off all the online courses run by The London School of English by going to www.londonschoolonline.com and using the offer code LUKE10 at checkout.

Previous episodes of the podcast with Andy & Ben

45. Luke & Andy’s Crime Stories (with Andy Johnson)

9. Travelling in India (with Ben Butler)

Andy & Luke’s Presentation at The BESIG Symposium 2012

Andy’s Presentation about Millennials

Here are the slides which Andy used in his presentation about millennials. This might not make sense without Andy talking, but you can see some of the statistics, quotes and facts that relate to this subject. Click the –> arrow to move between the slides.

423. With Andy & Ben from The London School of English (Part 1)

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Talking to Andy Johnson and Ben Butler from The London School of English about many things including teaching English for specific purposes, and a couple of funny anecdotes.

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Pre-Jingle Introduction

This episode features a conversation with my good friends Andy Johnson and Ben Butler who I used to work with at The London School of English. You’re going to hear us talking about lots of different things in this episode, including a few funny old anecdotes, some descriptions of the unusual location in which we were recording and then some discussion about English teaching methods.

The London School of English, where they both work, is known as the world’s oldest accredited language school and they’ve been teaching English as a foreign language to adults there for over 100 years (not Andy and Ben, but the school itself) LSE is generally known for the high standards of its training courses and in my experience it was a good place to work as a teacher. I was there for over 6 years and it’s where I had some of my best and most formative English teaching experiences. I’ve worked at a lot of English schools, some of them good and some of them not so good, and LSE is definitely one of the good ones. I learned a great deal about English teaching from my colleagues there and from my time spent in classrooms teaching various courses.

Andy, Ben and I all joined London School of English as teachers at around the same time and we regularly worked together on projects, sharing classes, developing courses, writing material and just hanging out in the pub a lot after work. I imagine that some of you listening to this might have studied at London School of English too, perhaps with me or with Ben or Andy. If you are a London School of English student, then hello!

Andy and Ben were both really helpful when I started doing this podcast back in 2009, by generally giving advice and ideas. I left London School of English in 2012 when I moved to France so these days I don’t get to see Andy & Ben as much as I would like so I was very glad to see them and have them on the podcast again as you will hear in this episode.

In the last few years Andy & Ben have both been promoted to senior positions at the school. Ben is now the Academic Manager at their centre in Hammersmith, which is just a couple of minutes walk from where I used to live in London. In fact my flat was so close to the school that I could actually see my own front door from inside one of the classrooms when I was teaching. I could actually stand inside my own flat, and look through the peephole in the door and see the school. You might think that’s living a bit too close to your workplace but it had its advantages. It certainly cut down my commute in the mornings. I would sometimes even take my breakfast to work with me in the morning if I was running a bit late. I’d literally walk to school with my bowl of cornflakes and finish it in the teachers’ room to save time. I felt like I practically lived in the school. So, Ben is now in charge of that centre near Hammersmith, and Andy is now in charge of London School Online, and that’s their web platform, because you don’t actually need to go to London to study at London School of English, you can take one of their online courses, and if you’re looking for a good quality and reliable online course in general or business English you might consider a course on London School Online.

And as a matter of fact since recording this episode, Andy and I have managed to work out a little deal that you might be interested in. “What’s the deal, Luke?” you might be asking. Well, Andy is offering you a 10% discount on all their online courses. So, for a limited time you can get a 10% discount on all online courses at London School of English.

Now, that’s not the reason Andy & Ben are on this podcast today, we worked out this offer after doing the recording, and I’m just telling you about it now before the episode starts properly because I think you genuinely might want to check that out. They have fully-developed and in-depth courses for general English, business English, legal English, IELTS and TOEIC exam preparation, and more… So, these are carefully prepared online courses, from a really good school – and if you or someone you know is looking for an online course in English then this might be for you, and that discount is available for you because you know about this podcast.

All you need to do is go to londonschoolonline.com and use the offer code LUKE10 at checkout to get a 10% discount, and that works on all their courses.

http://www.londonschoolonline.com and use the offer code “LUKE10” at checkout.

Alright, now let’s start the episode properly!

***

Outro

Actually, this is a natural place for me to divide this episode. So that’s the end of part 1.

Part 2 should be available very soon for your listening enjoyment.

That pretty much wraps up part 1 of this episode.

Thanks for listening, and as ever, thank you for your messages. I’m glad to hear from random people from around the world who get in touch every day. Sorry if I don’t get a chance to get back to you all.

I’m quite curious to know if any of my former students from London School of English are listening to this episode. If you are, then get in touch! It’s been over 10 years since I started working there and I met loads of different students from around the world – so many interesting people from different backgrounds. If that’s you then get in touch.

Lots of people told me they enjoyed listening to Korean Billy in the last episode. Nice one.

Episode Length

Episodes are getting a bit longer again! Judging by comments on the website and emails I receive, people are fine with that. To be honest, most of the time it’s people who haven’t listened to the podcast who tell me that episodes are long. People expect podcasts for learning English to be short. Anyway, most people who actually listen say they like the longer episodes, but maybe that’s because they actually listen! Those people who stop listening because episodes are a bit long for them probably wouldn’t write a comment. Anyway, I go back to my original position on this: I feel longer episodes are completely normal in other podcasts (in fact many of my favourites have episodes of 2 hours or more), radio shows are usually about an hour long or more, many listeners tell me they like the longer episodes, I think it’s better for your English to listen for longer, you can use the pause button if you want, most podcasting apps will save your position so you can continue later, the most popular episodes of last year were all more than 75 minutes long, and in any case – why would you want less of this!? Maybe that sounds a bit self-important or something, but whatever – if you like it you like it and so that’s that. OK, enough rambling – this is the end of part 1, and this will all continue in part 2 – which you should look forward to because there are some good moments, particularly a couple of stories from Andy which I always enjoy hearing.

Part 2 should be available really soon

Join the mailing list on the website to get an email in your inbox whenever I publish a new episode. That’s a good way to stay up-to-date with the podcast. Also, you can subscribe on iTunes or any other podcasting app, although if you’re in the mailing list you’ll get instant access to the website page for the episode where you’ll find notes, transcriptions, links, videos, the comment section and other extra details.

End of part 1

422. Learning British Dialects with Korean Billy

109 Replies

Talking to Billy from Korea about his videos about regional British dialects and accents.

[DOWNLOAD]
Today on the podcast I’m very glad to be talking to the one and only Korean Billy.

You might already know about Korean Billy because he has recently made a name for himself on YouTube by producing videos about British English dialects showing and explaining specific words, phrases and accents you might hear in different parts of the UK, and they’re proving to be very popular, especially with people in Britain. I think the appeal of his videos is that although Billy is from another country, he’s really managed to identify a lot of the specific dialect words and pronunciation of these forms of British English that even some Brits aren’t that familiar with. Also, he just seems like a really nice guy who is not only enthusiastic about understanding different local dialects of British English but also helping other people to understand them too.

Billy used to live as a student in England. In fact he studied at university in Preston in the north of England for a few months where he met people from many parts of the country and then he started making YouTube videos about British dialects last year.

In the last few months his videos have gone viral, particularly in Britain, and he’s been featured on websites like BuzzFeed as well as on various radio and television programmes in England including several BBC programmes. He’s most famous in the UK for his videos on Scouse, Geordie, Mancunian and “Roadman” dialects. The Scouse dialect is from Liverpool, the Geordie dialect is from Newcastle, the Mancunian dialect is from Manchester and “Roadman” is a kind of dialect associated with groups of young people in London. Since recording this conversation Billy has uploaded videos about Hull dialect words and Birmingham dialect words. He’s also got some videos which feature some good clear advice for other people learning English as a foreign language, based on his own learning experiences.

I’m interviewing him on the podcast because I think he’s a really clever guy who has learned English to a good standard and he knows a lot about British accents and dialects. I want to know more about how he has done that, and I just love regional accents so I think it could just be a lot of fun to talk to Billy about this whole subject.

Let’s now talk to Korean Billy.

*** * ***

If you want to hear Billy doing those British regional dialects and learn about them yourself, then check out Billy’s YouTube videos. Click here for Billy’s YouTube channel

What do you think?

As a Brit, I’m interested in Billy’s work, but I wonder what you think, because you’re approaching this subject from a different point of view, as foreigners who don’t have English as a first language (most of you) and who might not be so familiar with these specific versions of British English.

How do you feel about this? What I hope is that you feel inspired by Billy, and you feel like he’s a good example of an English language learner, and that he shows that if you’re enthusiastic and outgoing about learning English and if you apply yourself to your learning that you can make heaps of progress. I also hope that although you might not want to speak with a Scouse accent or a Geordie accent, that you’re still curious about these different varieties of British English. I think that knowing the different versions of the language helps you to develop a fully rounded and solid English, and that involves not only listening to different accents but also trying to copy those accents. It’s all good for raising your awareness of features of pronunciation and improving the range of your English in general.

Korean Billy on YouTube

Click here for Billy’s YouTube channel

Korean Billy on the BBC

Jimmy Carr explains how to do some British accents, including Scouse “I want some chicken and a can of coke” (Billy mentioned this in our converstion)

Also mentioned

Misfits (TV show) – Features lots of different UK accents and some *explicit content*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bow2df3rOls

Attack the Block (Film) – South London youth dialect

What have you been thinking while listening to this episode?

Whoever you are, wherever you are – let us know your thoughts in the comment section.

Thanks to Korean Billy for taking part in this episode.

POST-RAMBLE

Some more thoughts, from me to you, at the end of this episode…

I just want to mention a few other things that might make you think a little bit.

LEPster Get-Togethers

I recently got this message from Nick Wooster, one of the guys who has been organising Get Togethers with other LEPsters in Moscow. This is basically his report about the get togethers.

Thanks for your interest in our meetings, Luke! It’s really important and pleasant for us! Almost like a virtual participation :) Actually, on average 10 people “get together” in our meetings! And it’s nice to know that there are already some regular LEPsters who come almost every time! BTW, are there really 50/50 males and females among your listeners?! According to our modest stats we have 80 males to 20% females here in Moscow:) Probably the fact that you are already married somehow influences, doesn’t it?

Activities. At the very beginning newcomers tell the rest of the group about themselves and how they happened to start listening to you:) After that we shift to the main topic mentioned in the agenda – each one shares his/her opinion and the others ask several questions or give comments if they have some. Usually the discussion is quite lively and not a mess. I mean, we do without loud interruption or arguing, while the talk is quite interactive itself, which is surprisingly good for people from diverse backgrounds who hardly know each other! We also share our own life stories connected with the topics. Next time we are going to play a lying game (to guess if smb.’s story is true or false) at the very beginning – it should be fun and also a good chance to work on our speaking skills. Also, Luke, if you have some ideas, pieces of advice, maybe just interesting and effective games or whatever we would be grateful to you for sharing best practices:) with us!

We also publish on FB and VK the links to useful resources discussed at the get-togethers.

Most of the participants have known about these meetings due to your announcement of the first one. That’s why we were thinking if we could ask you to announce that our Get-Togethers are already regular! Currently we meet every Sunday at 6 pm. The best way to be informed of agenda, place and time is to join our groups on FB https://m.facebook.com/groups/734996946664425?ref=bookmarks and VK http://www.vk.com/clubnu1

Previously as far as I remember we and you posted links for a particular event, if LEPsters join the group, they will be always aware of all the events. Everybody is welcome!

All in all, current Moscow LEPsters are really glad that we have such a club now and can share their thoughts on topics you have raised in your episodes and generally just speak English with like-minded people! Thank you, Luke, for such an opportunity;)

Nick.

P.S. Regards from my friend Dmitry who also contacted you!

Hello Nick, hello Dmitry and hello to all the other listeners who have got together recently in a conversation club. It’s odd, normally I imagine my listeners as individuals on their own, but I suppose there are some people out there who listen as a shared experience with other people, not necessarily at the same time, but there are other people you know who also listen – so I just want to say a special hello to listeners who listen with other people – like, if you listen with a brother or sister “Hello”, if you listen with your husband, wife, boyfriend of girlfriend “hello”, if you listen with your kids or parents, “hello” and if you listen with your teacher or some classmates or something, then “hello” to you too. If you listen with a pet animal or even a wild animal “hello”, and if you listen with friends or indeed any other living beings, then “hello” to you – the communal LEPsters out there.

My thoughts on LEP Get Togethers

I want to encourage this sort of thing in general. Meeting publicly, or meeting online. Let’s be clear about it – what you’re doing is creating your own peer group for improving your English, and that’s a really important part of your English learning.

The more I speak to people who have learned English to a proficient level, the more I notice that one of the habits or features of their learning was the fact that they spent regular time with a group of friends who talked in English. For example, there’s Kristina from Russia – a good example, but also Korean Billy and plenty of other people. Another thing worth noticing about this is that you don’t necessarily have to be hanging around with native speakers. Just spending meaningful and enjoyable time in the company of others and doing it in English, building friendly relationships and all that – it’s all very good for your English, even if you’re not mixing with native speakers. If you’re getting exposure to English in your life, having a peer group to interact with is going to allow you to develop your communication skills as a natural social process. So I fully agree with the idea of these get togethers and I think it’s great!

Also, the more my listeners get together in local communities like this, the easier it might be for me to come and visit at some point and put on a show or have a live podcast recording or something. So, carry on everyone, you’re doing it right!

Several Get Togethers have also happened between LEPsters in Tokyo and in London if I remember correctly. So it’s not just the Moscow LEPsters. And you could do it too in your town. Just set up an FB page and let me know, I’ll give you some publicity if I can.

What to talk about or do?
Playing a game or having a topic – good ideas, definitely. I recommend using all your creativity, playing the lying game for fun or any other parlour games like the name game for example. Also, consider playing different board games in English too. As long as you’re having a relaxing and pleasant time and you’re exchanging information in English, it’s good.

One idea is simply to agree on your topic beforehand and simply write down a load of discussion questions relating to that topic. Then you can fall back on those questions if you need to. You can just let the conversation go wherever it feels like going, but go back to the questions if you want.

Be interested in what the others are saying. Really interesting people are interested in others. It’s important to create an atmosphere in which people listen to each other – this is really important because it makes people feel valued, and when you really listen to what people are trying to say and you show your interest in those people, it’s like giving water to a plant – it just helps it grow. Imagine you’re in a social situation. If you feel like people are interested and listening, you’ll feel far more comfortable and ready to talk. So, listen to each other and remember that everyone’s got a story to tell, you just need to be ready to notice it. So, your get-togethers are not just speaking sessions, they’re listening sessions too.

It might be worth assigning a leader to each session who is generally in charge of things, but also each participant should take the initiative to ask questions and start conversations and things, but of course it shouldn’t feel like a role or a job, just let it happen naturally.
Just have fun and keep me informed about how it’s all going!

I encourage other people to set up their own conversation groups. I’m calling them “Get-Togethers” – what do you think of that? Do you think the name works? You could call them Meetups, or Gatherings or Meetings or whatever you like really.

I just want to remind you that this sort of thing used to happen every week online on Skype in the ChatCast which was setup by Guillaume from Switzerland. It was basically a Skype group that recorded their group conversations and also published it as a podcast. I appeared on it a few times. They picked a different topic each week and just discussed it in a friendly and open way. The ChatCast is having a break at the moment but you can hear some of the episodes in the ChatCast archive at http://chatcast.ch/

There was also an LEP Whatsapp group and an LEP Skype group that used to share contact details in my website forum. I have closed the forum now because I streamlined my website recently, but I don’t know if the WhatsApp group and Skype groups are still running. So, if you are still chatting to other LEPsters as part of a conversation group on Whatsapp or Skype, please let me know because I can find a way for you to continue to share your contact details with each other on my website. I still have an archive of the Forum posts about the skype and whatsapp groups by the way.

There are lots of LEP related projects going on and I think it’s cool.

The comment section, with lots of friendly chatting about episodes, the topics of episodes and other tangents.

The LEP Get Togethers.

The Transcript Collaboration – run by The Orion Team – an awesome band of podcast listeners who work together to transcribe episodes of this podcast and proofread each others’ work.

Podcasts done by listeners to this podcast (although I can’t claim credit for all of them of course) but still, it’s great that they’re doing it. Notable ones of the moment are Zdenek’s English Podcast and Daniel Goodson’s My Fluent Podcast. There was also Chriss’ English Podcast and Guillaume’s Engilsh Podcast as well as the Chatcast and I’m sure I’m forgetting someone else.

Podcasting is brilliant anyway and of course I recommend that you try it, experiment with it and have fun. And of course Korean Billy could be an inspiration to you. You could consider sharing your learning experiences on your own YouTube channel. You might catch people’s attention, and who knows what cool things could happen to you. At the very least you’ll practise your English a lot.

All right, thanks for listening. This podcasting thing is pretty amazing isn’t it? Yes it is. OK good, I’m glad you agree. I’ll speak to you soon. Bye!

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Introduction

Sketch: Dee Dee goes to Yoker (video below)

Adapted transcript (written in ‘English English’)

Original transcript (in Glaswegian English)

Here’s a version with subtitles in ‘English English’

Nae Clue (No clue)

Introduction

In this episode you’ll get

What is Limmy’s Show?

Mr Mulvaney

Mr Mulvaney – Creme Egg

Mr Mulvaney – In The Car

Mr Mulvaney – Fire Alarm

Part 2 coming soon…

Other episodes about British comedy from the archive

What’s the story so far?

*** The story continues ***

*** The story ends ***

Part 2 of Victorian Detective – Explained

Let us know your thoughts

Other episodes like this

Introduction

There’s a bit of graphic violence in this story (blood and stuff…)

I understand that this episode might be a little difficult to follow

Try to notice specific language – decision making, verbs of movement and modal verbs for speculation and deduction

Just enjoy the story!

*** The recording with Amber & Paul starts here ***

A Detective Story with Deductive Reasoning

Riddle

Victorian Detective – Episodes 338 and 339

Victorian Detective 2

The link: http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/rl6-r253x0aca-y-v_vnvw/victorian-detective-2

*** The story begins ***

*** End of Part 1 ***

The story so far

Any comments? Write something in the comment section below.

Intro

***

London School Online

Previous episodes of the podcast with Andy & Ben

Andy & Luke’s Presentation at The BESIG Symposium 2012

Andy’s Presentation about Millennials

Pre-Jingle Introduction

***

Outro

Episode Length

Part 2 should be available really soon

* * *

What do you think?

Korean Billy on YouTube

Also mentioned

What have you been thinking while listening to this episode?

Whoever you are, wherever you are – let us know your thoughts in the comment section.

Thanks to Korean Billy for taking part in this episode.

POST-RAMBLE

Some more thoughts, from me to you, at the end of this episode…

Cookies on teacherluke.co.uk

* The story continues *

* The story ends *

* The recording with Amber & Paul starts here *

* The story begins *

* End of Part 1 *

*** * ***