My friend Moz, who runs a murder-themed tour company in London, is back on the podcast to talk about some more creepy stories of crimes from London’s history and his new podcast. Vocabulary list and quiz available below.
[DOWNLOAD]
Links
www.murdermiletours.com
www.murdermiletours.com/podcast
Notes and Introduction Transcript
Moz (aka Michael Buchanan-Dunne) has appeared on the podcast a number of times before, for example in the Brighton Fringe Festival episodes, the drunk episode, the episode recorded on Moz’s narrowboat and also the episode from last year called “Murder Mile Tours”.
If you haven’t heard those episodes, let me bring you up to speed as it might help you understand some of the things we talk about in this conversation.
I first met Moz and made friends with him about 8 years ago while doing stand-up comedy in London.
He used to work for the BBC, making comedy television programmes, but then a few years ago he decided to set up a tourism company and bought a narrowboat which he now lives on. Narrowboats are boats that can be used on the UK’s canal system. They’re long and narrow and they’re boats, hence the name “narrowboats”.
Moz now lives on his boat which he usually moors at different locations throughout London’s canal network (there are lots of canals running through London).
He also runs a successful tour company in London, called “Murder Mile Tours”.
His most popular tour is called the “Murder Mile Walk” which currently takes place in Soho in central London every week. The walk takes in various sites where murders have actually occurred. Some of those murders were the work of serial killers and they all have gruesome stories connected with them, stories which Moz has painstakingly researched by looking up lots of archived material including court records from courtrooms in London.
Last year I invited him onto the podcast to tell us some of those stories. That proved to be one of the most downloaded episodes of the podcast last year. Since then his tours have gone from strength to strength – not directly a result of being on this podcast of course, although that has helped because quite a lot of LEPsters have been on the murder mile walk with Moz, no, the tour seems to be going really well because it seems really fun, it’s original, the stories are fascinating, and the tour has had loads of 5 star reviews on Trip Advisor.
In fact just recently Murder Mile Tours received a TripAdvisor certificate of excellence, which is a really great achievement. TripAdvisor describe it as one of the 150 best things to do in London and Time Out Magazine described it as one of the top 3 themed tours in the city.
Now Moz has decided to start up his own podcast in which he will regularly share some of the stories he has discovered while doing his research. His podcast, called “The Murder Mile True Crime Podcast” will be available from 1 October (you’ll be able to find it on iTunes – or just check https://www.murdermiletours.com/podcast).
So, I’ve invited Moz to come back onto the podcast to talk about all of this.
Moz and I are friends, so this isn’t just an interview, it’s also a light-hearted informal conversation and a chance for the two of us to catch up on each other’s personal news and just have a bit of fun while we’re doing it, and you are invited to join us.
You should know that this episode contains some graphic content and explicit language
including some fairly detailed descriptions of violence and murder
and some other things that you might find disturbing or disgusting.
I feel I should let you know that in advance, just in case you’re squeamish and you don’t like that sort of thing – but to be honest the content of this episode is no worse than what you would see in the average episode of a TV show like CSI or Game of Thrones.
But still – there are some creepy and gruesome details in this episode, so – you have been warned.
By the way, if you’re interested in some of the items of vocabulary that you can hear in this conversation, you should check out the page for this episode on my website. You’ll see a list of words and phrases there which you learn in order to add real strength and depth to your English.
OK so here is part one of my conversation with Moz, the guy from Murder Mile Tours.
Vocabulary List
- “Sacre bleu!” (French – used to express surprise or amazement)
- “There’s lovely” (this is what Welsh people apparently say a lot – it means “that’s nice”)
- “Zoot alors!” (an old-fashioned French phrase – it’s used to express surprise, shock etc)
- More excuses for my lack of improvement in French. [absence of]
- I’ve got to pull my socks up, pull my finger out and turn over a new leaf. [all these phrases are ways of saying “improve my attitude and approach”]
- I don’t have long to get the French up to scratch. [improve it to an acceptable level]
- Rutting [when animals, such as deer, have sex – but also when the male deer fight with each other during the mating season]
- A deer [an animal with big antlers – click here find out more on Wikipedia]
- Wild boar [a sort of wild pig – more info]
- “During the rutting season the male boars have terrible mating battles”
- It’s a scratchy howl [a howl is the sound an animal makes – usually a dog or wolf at night, e.g. ‘to howl at the moon’. ‘Scratchy’ describes the rough sound of the howl]
- Foxes, when they’re mating, make a high-pitched scream which sounds like someone being murdered
- I’m not registered for council tax [tax you pay when you live in a house or flat]
- I’ve got a P.O. Box [a post office box where you can have post delivered if you don’t have a fixed address]
- I’m not condoning mass murder [promoting it, saying I agree with it]
- The police had sectioned off the walkway [used plastic tape to prevent people from accessing that part of the walkway]
- Someone may commit suicide and the body floats down (the canal) [commit suicide = kill yourself / float = not sink, but stay on the surface of the water]
- Grisly details [unpleasant, involving death or violence]
- People think that a canal is a good place to dispose of a body [to get rid of a dead person]
- The canal has been used for dumping rubbish, but also corpses [dumping = throwing away, getting rid of, disposing / corpses = dead bodies]
- They decided to take this guy’s card and start withdrawing money [taking money out of the bank]
- The culprits were found guilty of ‘denial of a proper burial’ [culprits = people who committed a crime / ‘denial of a proper burial’ = a criminal charge which is given in a court – it means when someone didn’t bury a dead person properly, or perhaps didn’t dispose of the body in the legal way]
- That was the main charge that they could definitely pin on them [a statement by prosecutors in court that someone committed a crime]
- Eastenders is a soap opera that’s been on TV for years [a TV drama which is about ordinary people, shown on television on a regular basis]
- “My auntie’s brother’s sister left me 10% of this pub in her will!” [a will = a document which explains who should receive someone’s property when they die]
- He smoked skunk all the time [a strong and smelly form of marijuana]
- He had an argument with her, killed her, chopped up the body [cut the body into pieces] and then wrapped up [put inside a sheet or some clothing] her limbs [arms and legs] and her torso [the body, but without the arms or legs], put them in a suitcase and dumped [threw away, disposed of] them in the canal
- He bought loads of bin bags [bags for rubbish] and saws [tools for cutting something up]
- Things got out of hand, they had an argument [things got out of control]
- He dragged her down to the canal [pulled her along the ground]
- The suitcase floated for about two miles [didn’t sink]
- Poking out of the top of the suitcase was hair [you could see part of it coming out of the top of the suitcase]
- I like having a good poke around [looking and investigating, perhaps by looking into something and moving things around] different streets and digging into [going deep into something] murders
- Most murders are just men having fights, but occasionally you come across [find] a really good one
- Don’t worry, we’re hung over! [feeling sick because they drank alcohol the night before]
- I was a cannibal, [someone who eats human flesh] I’d eaten my girlfriend and her body was slowly working its way through my bowel (yuk!) [moving slowly through the lower part of the digestive system] yuk yuk!
- It was one of the darkest jokes I’ve ever pulled off [managed to succeed bit it was difficult]
- It didn’t get a laugh it just got a gasp [a shocked sound when people breathe in suddenly
😱] and for me that was enough -
It certainly got the evening off to a different start [to get something off to a start = to make something start]
-
Often the murderers are like slapstick movie idiots [a form of comedy involving funny physical movements, like people falling over or hitting each other]
Can you remember the vocabulary in the list?
Were you listening carefully? Take the quiz to find out.
[os-widget path=”/lukethompson2/vocabulary-quiz-for-episode-482-murder-stories-with-moz” of=”lukethompson2″ comments=”false”]
Links
Murder Mile Tours Website www.murdermiletours.com
Murder Mile True Crime Podcast www.murdermiletours.com/podcast
You can also follow Moz on Twitter @mmiletours
Part 2 (with more rambling tangents) coming soon…
