Actually, that’s one thing I love to, is your explanation that gets longer and longer and
longer every time.
And I want to drop the expression.
This seems like, no, you’ve got to keep the…
Talk part of the month and the whole…
Hello.
Welcome to Get Shirti, the podcast that likes to look at the little things in life which
never fail to irritate.
Each episode we ask our special guest to talk about what gets them shirty at home, work
and going out.
Then our off-the-cuff surprise question could take the chat anywhere.
Each guest also designs their own mate and measure shirt, which we then make.
So we talk about that too.
Funny that, us being tailors.
[Music]
It’s episode 7 season 2 and already we’re at the end of November.
[Music]
We would love it if you also took a minute to subscribe to the podcast, give us a nice
five-star rating of course, and maybe leave a review or even better tell us your Get
Shirties in the comments and we’ll read a few out on the upcoming podcast last the plan.
Thank you in advance for leaving those.
Now to today and if there ever was a guest to get us all having a good old fashion knees
up, it would be today’s.
Over of all things vintage and Cockney Singalong Champion Tom Keradine.
Having worked as a pianist and keyboard player in the West End and on musical tours Tom moved
on to being a musical director for many productions and at the Brick Lane musical no less.
But it would probably be for his Cockney Singalongs that Tom is best known.
Touring up and down the country and in Europe with his trusty piano bringing his musical
style to the masses even performing to a packed Trafalgar Square in 2024.
As you’ll hear Tom is also an avid listener to the podcast which made our day so if I sound
a bit giddy you’ll have to excuse me.
Here we go then, one guest, two mics, three tailors and a host of irritations.
Let’s get Shirtie.
[Music]
Tom, welcome to the Get Shirtie Podcast.
Lovely to have you here finally.
Absolutely, it’s so lovely to be here.
I’ve driven past this place or written past it on my bike so many times over the years.
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never been in it.
And you’ve even sent me a message.
In fact we’ve been in contact for a while on Instagram and that sort of chatting back and forth.
And I remember many moons ago you said oh yeah, I will pop in.
I thought yeah.
So that’s the only reason we brought you on that.
Just to…
Where’s the chorus to be?
Is it because when you go past when you’re a penny father you can’t see the shock because you’re too high?
I can’t stop on it to be honest.
Have you ever actually gone along this road on your penny father?
No, I don’t think I have not passed here.
I live in Tumberidge so I’m coming up that hill.
Quarry hill on the penny father is really a no-go.
I could ride my penny father in Tumberidge well, top of Tumberidge well.
I wouldn’t want to go down the high street.
Two, two, hilly.
Tumberidge is much easier when it comes to hills.
Yeah, that’s true actually.
So where’s the ideal spot for riding a penny father?
I love out east of Tumberidge towards kind of golden green and paddock wood and bell tree.
Out to T-pot island, that’s lovely out there because it’s full of flat.
It’s all flat, it’s absolutely perfect.
I mean, not that you can’t go up hills.
I’ve been north of Tumberidge off the Shibbon Road.
You can turn right and then cut through.
And that’s quite a hill.
But the problem is on the penny father and you can’t stop.
If you’re going up a hill you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to commit to it.
You’ve got to dig in through.
I’ve got friends who do the beachy head hill climb.
I’ve got a beachy head and that’s like, I want to say it’s about half an hour on it and you can’t stop.
Otherwise you’re going to fall off.
That’s another level.
Can I say casual penny fathering rider?
If you can ever have a casual penny fathering rider.
Yes.
And I’m going to say that’s probably the only time that phrase is going to come up on this podcast ever.
But you never know.
Yeah, I’ll T-pot island as well and I’ll ask T-pot islander mention.
I’ve never been in it.
Oh, it’s lovely for an ice cream.
Or a midw…
There are a couple of other nice pubs on my route as well.
Not saying I might stop at pubs for a drink but just give yourself…
You’ve got to stop.
Ritual.
Of course you have.
But yeah, T-pot island, I’ve always wanted to go never been.
You’ve heard of it.
I’ve driven past.
Yeah, so it’s sort of padded wood at East Peckham that sort of way.
Yeah, I think it’s just one of the locks on the medway, isn’t it?
As you go from here to Umbrage, so there’s a…
It was beautiful.
Nice little cafe there.
It’s a very nice cafe tea pot.
Tea pot museum.
I know.
I’ve been in the museum.
I’ve been in the shape of a tea pot.
Have you not?
No.
Yeah, so there is a…
There’s a…
Like a vast collection of tea pots on tea pot island.
Oh, I didn’t realise after.
Yeah, popping next to it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I’ve never been, but sad that it is I would like to go.
So, yeah.
Oh, yeah, I would like to see you go past the shop on the penny farm.
I will arrange that.
I’ll show you that.
And actually, with your beautiful windows up there, you’ll see me waving.
Oh, I can’t stop.
Yeah.
I’m moving through.
I just have a traffic light.
It’s not…
It’s not to…
I always joke about that.
No, you can.
You just need to be planning ahead.
Because to get on and off the penny farming, you can’t…
You’ve got to be moving.
So, to stop, there’s a little…
There’s a secret little step on the back above the back wheel.
Above the small wheel that you put your…
Well, I put my left leg on and then you grab the hand,
it wasn’t scoot along to get some momentum and then you pull yourself up.
And then just to come off is exactly the way…
It’s just to reverse of that feet off the pedals, you slow down, feet off the pedals.
One foot back onto the step and kind of step down gracefully.
That’s the idea.
Yeah.
It’s a fixed wheel.
Yeah, it’s a fixed wheel, yeah.
There’s nothing about what you just said there that made me think I could do that.
Now, honestly, if you can ride a regular bike, you can ride a penny farther.
You just need a bit of confidence.
Yeah.
I mean, I never thought I could.
And it was through a friend of mine, actually, who’s a YouTuber, up in London,
Jules Guides, Junim Adonali does walking tours in London.
And he said, “Oh, I’ve got to do a video on penny-farthing riding.
I’ve got an opportunity to film with a guy who teaches penny-farthing riding.
Would you come and do it?”
And I said, “Yeah, I’m quite interested in giving that a go.
Turns out I was a much better penny-farter rider than Julian was.”
Right.
Which comes out in the video.
But only after an hour and a half, a kind of training around Victoria and the back of St. John Smith Square.
We were riding through Central London, we were through Piccadilly Circus, stopping the buses.
Was it eight of us on penny-farthing?
It was amazing, amazing way to see London, I’d say, to be honest, amazing way to see anywhere,
because you’ve got to go over people’s fences.
Yeah.
Stay to that, Lonee.
Great for anyone who’s nosy.
Sure, there’s lovely back roads around East out of Dunbridge out towards Yordingham.
Well, yeah, I love it, because you can…
Yeah.
…freak people out by listening in their garden, your heads coming across at the top of the fence.
What came first, the love of things vintage and the music, or, you know, when did all that start for you?
It’s funny, I want to look back on my work and career and life in general.
It’s really weird kind of seeing these threads come together,
funny talking about threads in a tailor shop, but the way that…
I know, but it’s quite funny, you know, I’ve read it a little round of applause.
But the way that things are seed to stone or ideas are soon as you’re growing up,
then they all kind of come back together and fate has a funny way of working and pulling things altogether.
So, for me, I’ve always loved kind of vintage music.
As a kid growing up, I’m not particularly musical family,
but my sister played the flute and piano, and I learnt piano as a kid.
My dad sang a bit, we used to do…
Scout variety shows, Scout Gang Shows.
Up in Coventry, I don’t have a Cockneybone in my body.
Despite peddling, cockney music and musical stuff, I wasn’t born in London at all.
Secret say.
So, born in Coventry, but did these Scout Gang Shows and Variety Shows and Things as a Kid?
Well, I loved… I learnt all the war-time songs, I learnt all the musical songs.
So, for me, they’re in my DNA, these are kind of songs that I’ve known since I was a kid.
And then, with it all coming together, and then actually vintage style of vintage dressing,
I was always a bit eccentric as a kid.
At school, always well dressed, and my school uniform was always like…
I’m point, I’m point, absolutely.
Everything was iron properly, people would take the mechanical, but no, shirt signs, and…
Yeah, I brought it myself in my appearance.
And then, I come 40 or years later, and then, that it all comes together,
via a career in the theatre as a musical director and a keyboard player on theatre shows,
trying to hang up my touring shoes and focus on work at home and being at home a bit more,
and that everything came together.
I started accompanying cabaret acts on the London cabaret scene.
And realised there were people out there who wear vintage clothes all day every day,
and threw that and playing a big vintage music festival in Bedford and Twinwood.
It used to be a 1940s festival, but it spread over the years to go back to…
I used to play with the 1920s band, so we played there as well.
They have later stuff as well.
But, yeah, realising that A, that people wore these kind of clothes all day every day.
And B, that there was this real love of vintage music,
and I was like, “Actually, I do all this.”
So, yeah, these threads have come together last 10 years.
I made a full-time living from it, so…
Having a sort of read about you.
It was biochemistry.
Am I right in that?
I wonder whether you read them all.
Yes, yes.
So, that’s what you studied in, wasn’t it?
I did indeed, though.
I don’t know how much I remember. I’m good for a pub quiz.
I like general science. I’m still interested, and I do follow science and popular science.
But, yeah, I couldn’t… I worked for… I worked in a lab in my third year at university.
And that’s actually what put me off working in research.
And basically, to cut a very long story short, the research project that I worked on for a year,
put all my heart and soul into this biotech company in SLAW.
So, I worked in a lab for a year, and basically at the end of the year,
the project, they stopped development on that, that anti-body, that…
It was bacterial fermentation of E.C.O.LI bacteria to produce anti-bodies in a…
Industrial setting. So, small-scale batch fermentation to scaled up to these huge, big fermenters to make anti-bodies for medicine.
But, yeah, they basically pulled the plug on that.
I’d listened to the careers advisors at school, basically.
All the careers advisors at school said, “No, go and get proper job.”
I hate that word, proper job, yeah.
Go and get a degree and go and… Yeah, get proper…
And then you can always have… You always have the music… You always have some to fall back on.
But also, they were just like, “Well, use the music as a hobby and you’ll enjoy it.”
And I enjoyed science. I really did.
But coming to London, to university, I went to Imperial to study,
being a great musical theatre fan, being in London,
and actually one of the reasons why I chose Imperial was they were a great musical theatre society and operatic society.
So, doing stuff with them. But, yeah, discover the dark side.
And thankfully, over four years being in London at university, met the right people, met some very old friends of mine now.
And I started playing on fringe shows and rehearsals and auditions for West End things, under the rest of history.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that’s 20 odd years now, graduating 2004. And aside from six months in a call centre, charity fundraising as you do.
I’ve made every penny of mine come from music.
No, fantastic.
Yeah.
Pinch for myself sometimes when I think that I can do that.
Yeah, yeah.
It is great. And this is what you’ve done quite a lot of sort of theatre and all sorts of…
Yeah, the theatre thing was great.
And I did, which is the same as a musical director and a keyboard player for on theatre shows for about 10 years, maybe 12 years.
Which would take me all over the country.
So, it’s great for meeting people because I’ve played pretty much every number one venue in the country.
I did work for Bill Kenwrights, company for for a good few years.
So, I did tours of Joe’s for the Mason…
My first, so watching my first tour I did was blood brothers.
Right.
And the musical played, ended up, stepping on keys three.
Going in as like a substitute keyboard player on it. For illness.
I covered for someone while they were off ill on keys three on that.
And that got me in through the door for Kenwrights and so on.
Then I did a year on the road with Joe’s for the Mason Tech and LaDream Coat, a year on the road with Cabaret, the musical.
Two tours were screwed with Tommy Steele.
And yeah, it was great.
I mean, the touring, it’s definitely a young person’s job.
Yeah, I’ve seen the country, played all these fabulous venues.
And yeah, but then it came to a time when I wanted to focus a bit more on work at home.
And so, yeah, ended up playing on bits and bobs in the West End.
And yeah, I used to deputise, so again, covering for either real-ish or when the musical director or the assistant musical director was up conducting.
For example, on Les Miséne in the West End, like twice a week the musical director will take a show off.
And the assistant musical director will cover a musical director will come and conduct the show.
Which means that they move up from their keyboard in the pit.
So there’s one, there’s a speed empty. So I go in and…
There you go.
So for four years or so, I was playing Les Miséne at least once a week if not twice a week.
Which was great fun. I love it.
But I think through that, that was really interesting.
Doing that, I loved it.
The banary banter was great.
The show was fabulous. Having been a kid growing up listening to it. I adored the show.
And it was an amazing thing to work on.
But it is… Yeah, it’s an office job.
You go in and do your job. You might… Yeah, be in the ban room for a little bit before the show and in the interval.
But you go in, you do the job and you come home again.
Whereas on tour, you’re stuck in a town, miles away from anywhere, with everybody else in the company.
So there’s a real kind of touring kind of camaraderie, which I didn’t really kind of feel so much in the West End.
Ah, it’s interesting.
And also it’s… Again, it’s not down, not down crying the job because it takes a certain player to be able to play the same show day in, day out.
But it is like a box factory because you’re producing the same box every night.
The box might be slightly…
It might be slightly wonky or the tape might be on at a slightly different angle, but the audits are coming expecting exactly the same show.
And that’s what the musicians and the company pride themselves in doing, reproducing that show faithfully to the original every night.
So… But yeah, I’d be sitting there playing the show.
I was much of a fun to play. I’d be sitting there thinking about what am I gonna do for my tea.
Or what time train I’ll get home or what the beta lays on the train.
Much prefer now the solo sing along acts that I’ve gotten tore around because no two gigs of the same.
They’re all different. And it all depends on the audiences and the reaction you get from them.
Talking about… So that’s things you love.
At some point I have to get round to the things that perhaps you don’t love quite so much in my words.
And it’s looking so spacey. You can bend as much as you like.
I have to say I’m a bit stung struck because I’ve been an avid listener of the podcast from the early days.
So I mean, so I’d love to be here. So honoured to be here.
It’s great to have you here.
To have been asked. But I was thinking… You said to have a think around it.
I’ve been thinking for the last year or so.
And I thought I was quite a balanced person. And I don’t get sure to your angry or text or whatever.
I may be a little more in my own realm. But I work certainly. I just roll with the punches and you get on with it.
But listen to the podcast. I agree with that.
I actually know I do agree with that. So maybe I do get sure to more often than I think I do.
Yeah, possibly. And actually it’s quite a common thing.
As you’ve listened to, you know quite a lot.
I say, well, I don’t really get annoyed or shirty about anything really.
But I suppose there’s this thing.
But let’s kick off. You’ve mentioned work.
We’ll talk about the shirt in a little bit.
I think that’s going to be a great one actually.
But yeah, so work. If you had to sort of drill down, it could be anything about work.
Is there a thing about the job that you do that just gets you a bit shirty?
You have to do whatever you work with.
Actually, the job, I absolutely dole it. It’s a real breath of fresh air I suppose.
Because as I say, every gig is different. That part of it, I absolutely love.
I mean, I didn’t make a ruffer my own back in pushing around a real piano.
That’s great. There’s some great video.
You do. Pushing it through Central London or whatever.
And I’m the best dress white van driver in the country.
And lugging my piano out to events and things.
But actually, but I can’t with that, I can’t grumble because I’ve made the rod from my own back on it.
So I can’t get sure to about that.
But when we think about the fact that I probably do, I do certainly over 20,000 miles in the van a year now.
It’s going to have to be the Dartford crossing.
Yeah.
It’s going to have to be specifically northbound on the Dartford crossing on a Friday morning.
Not to say that it doesn’t happen for the rest of the week.
But very often, if I’m gigging, and of course, for my company sing along show,
obviously the prime territory for that is probably from Southampton and Portsmouth in the south west up to anywhere in kind of north, north,
and work in Cambridge, a real, this, the southeast.
Yeah.
But the majority of the time on a Friday, I am trying to cross the terms on the Dartford crossing.
And whatever time you leave, I’ve got to leave myself an extra hour because there’s no guarantee that it’s not going to run smoothly.
Yeah.
Do you know, I’m surprised this hasn’t come up now, sooner.
Given where we are, I was like, I’m with it.
But I like, also, that it was very specific.
It was just like, other Dartford crossing, it’s like, at this time.
I think it feels just the unpredictability of it.
I mean, I don’t mind road works.
And obviously you’ve got your delightful road works in Southampton at the moment.
Which, I’ve always been.
Always, as it moved, was it further down the road?
It’s gone a little bit further.
I try to avoid it where possible, but always best.
But I regularly gig in sunbridge well.
So this is obviously kind of like regular thoroughfare.
So with the Dartford crossing, what I don’t understand is quite often is delayed all the way back.
You get through the tunnel and there’s nothing going on.
Oh absolutely.
And also, it’s four lanes.
And is it four lanes?
And is it four lanes?
Isn’t it four lanes on the bridge coming back over?
And you could be powing through, you might be, you might be, you might be,
but the bridge is coming through, and there’s no problems at all.
I understand that they have to close it off when they put tankers and things through.
But that’s only once in a moment.
I don’t know.
There’s no wrong or reason.
No, I think that’s the thing, isn’t it?
Because sometimes we have to do a route up there and we’ll use the black auto tunnel as well.
Oh, now again.
Thank you for that.
I used to work at Brick Lane Music Hall, which confusingly, sorry,
isn’t in Brick Lane anymore.
It used to be when they own, put years ago, it was in Brick Lane.
It’s now moved out to Silver Town by the, say, a law factory in North America.
So often, so, back top of the black auto tunnel in the day.
Oh, yeah, but just, just the right.
I mean, once you’re the other side, it’s only a five minute trip to Brick Lane Music Hall,
which is, yeah, in Silver Town by London City Airport.
Right.
So actually, if you’d asked me this question pre-COVID,
when I was full time at Brick Lane, then my, my, my existence would have been,
but then of course, depending on which traffic, which traffic was the worst,
you could either do the black auto, or you could do dark food.
So you had an option.
Yeah.
Whereas, I think now for me on a Friday, if I’m going anywhere north,
it’s just, yeah, it’s the unpredictability with it.
And sometimes it’d be backed up for miles and miles.
And sometimes, oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, just the, so I keep going.
So I keep going.
So good.
I can film, I can, yeah.
Oh, I can film, I can, yeah.
We can’t go to the black auto, you’ve got the new legs, the congestion, all die.
Oh, that’s extra cost.
No, actually, thankfully, I’ve got, I’ve got a lease van, so my van’s,
and you less compliant, which is great.
My previous van wasn’t, otherwise, I would have been stung for that every time I went in.
Surely.
Like you say, it doesn’t even really seem to matter what time you get there.
The last time I crossed coming back, we got to the bridge at about 10 o’clock at night,
just after, and it took us 40 minutes to go out of the bridge.
Yeah, I think so.
Also, the fact that from a psychological point of view, certainly coming back to
some bridge, some bridge wells, when you cross the bridge, you know, it’s half an hour.
Yeah.
And that’s really, especially if I’ve been doing a gig up north, I was up in Tadcaster,
I mean, I get around.
Yeah.
I was in Tadcaster in Yorkshire the other week.
And it was lovely, but it’s a long drive back, but yeah, when you cross the, or you get to the
crossing, you know, it’s half an hour, 15 minutes to the 8, 21 turn off.
Yeah.
And then for me, it’s another 15 minutes on.
And so it’s just a psychological thing.
And when you get a special night, can I complain about the dark for crossing at night?
Coming back on the bridge?
When they get down to one lane, you have no idea what’s going on, I’m assuming they’re fixing it.
Yeah.
Some guy hanging off the side.
So hence, when they go down to one lane.
I know that, they’re all sitting in one of those little things, which I think looked like
airport control towers.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
The person will just sit in there having a little laugh.
Should we put it on?
Let’s put it all down to one lane.
Look, doing close-ups with people’s faces on the cameras as they drive through.
Oh, I’ll get a vision of that next time on.
Well, you’re old enough to go back to the throwing the money in the time.
Oh, yeah, indeed.
You remember before throwing the money in you?
Hand it, hand it.
I remember, because I’ve been down in the Tumbergnell, maybe 15, 16 years.
So I remember throwing the money in.
Yeah.
Well, the thing with that, because there used to be people sitting in the little keos that
you’d hand the money to.
Like, certainly in my family, and this may just be my family, but there never seemed to
be any forethought of getting the money ready before you got there.
You know you’re going to have to do it.
And suddenly you’re there and it’s like, “Great, I just got the pound!”
Everybody’s scrawling about.
And it’s in the astray.
I put it in the astray, but it’s not, it wasn’t just me.
Is that your family, too?
No.
That’s just my family, just yours.
Now we used to have my dad just had a little try.
Oh, we’re going to slot the coins in.
Oh, that is.
That is probably…
Or you can be a bit like me.
I mean, I’m a bit tight when it comes to spending…
So it’s like, “I’ve sort of got, I’ll slow down, like if I’m going to…
So I don’t have to pay…
If I’m coming back at night.”
Yeah, yeah, so you…
So I don’t have to…
10 o’clock, 10 o’clock?
10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, yeah, just slow down and while…
That’s fair, that is fair.
I’m out of that one, is that all right?
Yeah, I mean…
But I mean, is that…
I mean, because…
I mean, we’re talking about get-shurty.
I mean, what was it?
We won below Tetris.
One below Tetris.
I mean, sometimes, if I’m in a queue…
I mean, I do give myself plenty of time.
A rating.
I mean, sometimes, it can get…
I can get a bit of road, Ragey.
But I generally quite a calm driver or…
Oh, God no!
No, I’m a road, Rager.
I’m a road, Rager.
I might be so composed and stuff on gigs, but no.
No, when I’m on the road, I’m a fraud.
Okay.
So is that, do you think, because you know, you’ve got somewhere to be at a certain time?
Or is that just, you know?
I try for white van.
Oh, yeah.
It comes with a territory, I think.
You might as well have put…
I guess I’ve crossed the edge.
You know, it’s a bit…
No, normally I’ve got radio forblair in.
Oh, yeah.
But…
You don’t get that anymore with white van, see?
We’ve got some…
Yeah, I’ve got some more of those.
I’m just coming back from a convention.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And I get rid of the car, and speakers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I did get pulled over on the way back from Brighton once by the police, because there was…
Something to do with Dodgy Deedies with what white van’s going on.
Right.
And I had to go to the waybridge, and they waved the waybridge for the van.
Right.
But the police police stopped me, said, “I just…
I just know what you’re carrying in the back of your van, sir.”
And I was like, “You won’t believe me, you know?”
And I tell you, I’ve got a real up-bright piano, and 12 inflatable bunnets.
[Laughter]
And he owned for the side…
Thank you, sir.
Shut the door.
Thanks a lot.
Now, if you go…
Did you move the van around on your own?
Yeah, I do.
I’m sure…
I’m 24 or 24.
Yeah, it’s permanently attached to old dust cart wheels.
You’re not at the street cleaning carts.
Right.
Yeah, two heavy-duty wheels and two smaller, slightly smaller wheels on it.
But yeah, she’s permanently attached to that, so I push her around.
I mean, I’ve got her near to prove it.
She’s fairly nimble.
And I’ve got ramps and things for getting her in and out of doors and stuff.
I mean, I didn’t make life easy for myself.
No, I could’ve learnt to play the pick, hello.
Yeah.
Or the guitarist who can rock up to a gig with just the guitar on the back.
Oh, well, they’re these…
They look like pianos.
They’ve got all that on the white and the black and the white keys and stuff.
Have they got these dials and things all that?
And you can select piano sound.
Oh, these keyboards.
Yeah, that’s what they’re called.
These modern, new, fine, nothing.
And they sound really like a piano.
Can I let you into a little secret?
I do have one.
And I have one that fits into what I call a piano…
A piano shell.
Oh, the old one.
The old one.
Yeah, nice.
Sham keyboard.
Oh, I like that.
Sham keyboard.
Yeah.
Yeah, can pack down and fit into the back of the bag.
I don’t like to use that.
I like to have the ability to wander down the street while I’m turning up to my gig with a piano.
Because it’s…
Or if I play care home gigs and things, it’s a real different start.
Do you have a real piano?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not their own piano, do they?
Indeed.
Although some warm, I would.
Some of the pianos I play, though, really are.
Or…
Or we had it tuned 20 years ago.
So it would be fine.
So what about moving your piano?
Like, being in the van, does that affect the tune?
Oh, yeah, it does indeed.
Do you find yourself tuning it a little bit?
I can’t tune it.
I can’t tune it.
I can tune it maybe once every 12 months.
She’s actually due for a tune now.
Right.
Does she have a name?
Oh, Kimberly.
Kimberly.
Yeah.
Because she’s a Kembal.
She’s a 1966 Kembal.
I actually bought her off a friend of mine down on the South Coast in Shoreham, who used to do a similar kind of act.
But he would do kind of pub piano single, but his specialist was like 80s and 90s tunes.
Right.
Mabel.
Mark Davis within Mobile Piano was a legend.
And he kind of came out of that.
And at that point, my old piano, I had EV.
She broke her bass bridge.
There’s a bit of wood in the, that’s attached to the soundboard and where the strings tune against.
And there was a few cracks in there, which she was kind of beyond economic repair.
I had to get rid of her and I was like, I need another piano and Mark said, oh, you know what?
I’ve got this one.
He tells me that the, the, the Duskart wheels he got, he came upon legally.
I’m not entirely sure, but no questions asked.
So there’s probably some Duskart, Duskman down on the South Coast in Shoreham was like, no wheels on his car.
EV was my first piano, which originally I used to lug about with, I know it was after I had other performers on the gig with me.
So very good friend of mine, champagne Charlie, cabaret performer up in London.
We’d, we’d gig with that in the back of my voxel, and we’re either.
Wow.
We’d taken out of my house, we would lay it on the floor, put the back seats down and literally feed it into the back seat.
No one, yeah.
Champagne Charlie and the bubbly boys.
Indeed, absolutely.
So you were a bubbly boy.
Yeah.
And I’ve, I’ve gig, gigged a lot with Charlie over the years, coming up for 20 years, even before doing stuff with the band.
It’s, so, but we always joke that he’s champagne Charlie perhaps, I might be sider-sidening.
I don’t have such refined, I don’t have drinking tastes of champagne Charlie.
And actually the, the singalongs, the, the cockney singalong kind of idea came out of when I was gigging with Charlie,
a twin wood, this big vintage music festival in Bedford.
And it was after hours in the, in the pub that there’s a batting old piano.
And he was a friend of ours, Dusty Limits, another cabaret, former up in London who turned to me and said, “God, gone, play some of the old tunes on the piano.”
And I started playing an after-key, was a bit like these pianos in the cabs.
After piano, after keys weren’t working, tops of the notes would all come off and like, “Yeah, as soon as I started playing bugs, started coming out in the woodwork.”
But the pikes of cider kept coming on the top of the piano and I kept playing.
And everyone was joining in.
So, yeah, that was, that was the kind of, the seed of the idea for the singalong.
And then it’s all…
Well, it was the fact that just, when I started playing things like Roll Out The Barrel and Mile, when I said, “Follow the van,”
the people just joined in, they’re like, “You can’t stop yourself.”
And they’re kind of songs that are just in our DNA, these, don’t ever remember where we’ve learnt them from, but they’re just kind of, kind of like a, like a,
a bit like the Beatles tunes. I don’t know, so I don’t remember learning them. They’re just there.
So, you reminded me of a story actually, of Roll Out, when you said, “Roll Out The Barrel.” Yeah, yeah.
It was on the ambulance service. In the my early days of the ambulance service, we did patient transport services.
We used to go to love care homes and stuff, but the ad pianos. We went into care once and my crew mate, so I was a piano.
I could play the piano. He went up and sat at the piano and everybody gathered around.
Yeah. He started playing Roll Out The Barrel, but he couldn’t play the piano.
And he couldn’t sing, so he just smashed the keys, going, “Roll Out The Barrel.”
And they’re so embarrassing.
Sounds exactly like one of my gigs.
Yeah. What’s quite funny? And all these old people would be like, “Oh.”
Oh.
I was just, “I’ll just get it on the wall, stop.”
[BANG]
There’s something about music that brings you together, or around the piano, the,
and it harps back to, I know I appreciate it’s a roast into glasses view of this kind of nostalgia of times gone by.
I certainly don’t stand by.
A friend of mine, Danny Wellington, who’s a, who’s a vintage musician in New York and wears vintage style every day.
He’s, he’s a vintage style, not vintage values.
Yeah.
Which I’m very much aligned with. It’s like, I’m not, I’m not harking for a, for a, this kind of roast into glasses nostalgia.
It’s just, it’s, these, there’s something about this music that brings us together.
We don’t have that anymore of, community singing anymore, I suppose.
Yeah.
And actually, the thing that fascinates me from a kind of social history side, or the kind of,
the way these songs get passed on is the way that lyrics get changed and,
yeah.
Parodies come round and, and yeah, I think we have, we have lost a lot of that.
And so, in some ways, yeah, I like to think I’m kind of flying that flag for this material.
And keeping it going because, yeah, the, the reaction I get from gigs and,
when people come up to me after, so glad you sang that song.
I don’t know that for years.
My now used to sing it on my, my, my, yeah.
And the other one is my now used to sing it, but she didn’t sing those lyrics.
[Laughs]
Yeah.
Or, or my uncle who was in the army used to sing it, or the, or the, the, the rugby team,
we used to sing these lyrics.
And yeah.
So lots of voice notes on my phone of, of, of, rude or dubious, dubious lyrics.
But yeah, I love that kind of, that, that fascinates me as well.
And that’s why it’s, from the threads point of view, the idea that, the show I do at the moment is really a,
it’s, yeah, it’s about my love for these songs and sharing them with people again.
Because, yeah, it’s, it’s about keeping these songs alive.
If you don’t, they just dusty bits of sheet music in the set on the show.
[Music]
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No, well, you should.
They have a new sparkly website, which tells you all about what they do and how they do it.
There are examples of their work, blogs on how to look after suits, details of the services they offer,
and not to mention all of the Gintcherty podcasts with additional pictures.
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That concludes our public announcement.
Dark for crossing.
Tick, tick, tick.
Yeah, all the way through.
Yeah, so, look, work, what about, work, rest and play, what about being at rest,
being at home or when you’re not working.
You know, is there anything?
Oh, there’s only recently got me Shirt Club and then it harks to another thing as well, is voice recognition.
The reason why I’m going to annoy everyone at home listening, because if they’re listening through speakers,
when I say this, it’s going to sell everything crazy.
When I say, “Hey Google, play BBC Radio 4,” which I often do.
I dread to think, “Amid times in a day, I would say that.”
For the last two weeks, it says, “Playing BBC Radio 1.”
No, hey Google, “Play BBC Radio 4.”
“Playing BBC Radio 1.”
No, no!
Oh, that is.
I don’t know what’s changed.
I don’t know what I’ve changed.
And this is so, so.
But this goes back again about four years ago.
Similar thing happened for a short while and I actually got in touch with Radio 4
and I spoke to one of the producers on the today program because they had a little call that people were complaining.
And they said at the time, “If you swore when you were saying it,” saying, “Hey Google, play BBC Radio 4.”
You have a spare if you want to.
It can come like trigger it and it’ll actually play it.
And back then it did. Now when I tried it, it said, “I can’t play BBC Radio 4.”
Google actually censored me.
How rude!
So, I don’t know what’s going on.
But if we’re talking about, I mean, actually, maybe, well, I’ve done it for five or six times in the morning
and I just want the radio on.
Maybe that’s a level above shirtty.
That’s touchy.
Possibly even… I think, what’s above touchy?
Well, I’m raging the worst.
Well, I think Google are moving away from their home assistant.
Oh really?
The impression I get is that it’s dying out and they’re not interested in getting any about it.
Oh, interesting.
Oh, I think so.
So much so that we have just moved to a DAB radio in the kitchen.
There we are.
Because I least I switched it on and it’s always on Radio 4.
Yeah, it’s funny.
But again, with the cab being at behind it, I think it’s just a repetition because when it doesn’t listen to you once,
you try again.
And you’re like, “No, I’m going to take a moment.”
And then you say it again and you try to be as clear and un-s-y- as best as possible.
No.
And then, randomly, it’ll do it.
But then, if we’re tagging on to that…
Please do.
…voice recognition on the phone.
I was just about to take it there.
I was just about to take it there.
Didn’t pull Zell in there?
I think maybe, is that…
It was having trouble on the phone.
And you called it…
No, that was the music as well.
Yeah, yeah.
The background music.
But is that, you know, when it says, “Please state,” is this what Paul was saying?
Please state…
The reason for you’re called today and you say, “Oh, you know, I’d like to check my account balance.”
Did you want to open a new account?
No.
No, I really do not.
Yeah, that is…
Well, it’s like that when you give your account number,
and then you get through to the person, they say, “What’s your account number?”
I just…
Yeah, that’s true.
Why you must have a record?
Oh, okay.
So, what’s the view?
Like, I sometimes stumble over myself when I…
They say, “Give your account number.”
I say, “I’m prone to saying “Nor” or “Zero” or…
I’m sumbling thinking about it now.
Or, “Yeah?”
And I’m meant to say, “Oh?”
And I know it recognizes all of it.
But I always have that moment where I’m going, “Oh, no, I’m meant to be saying numbers.”
And that will be confused.
Why do I make so much?
My phone number.
Why do I go…
Oh, so…
Oh, yeah?
And then, “Zero” is something…
I don’t know.
It’s just trying to…
It’s got two zeros in it.
Yeah.
Oh, seven dollars, huh?
Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero…
Yeah, because it’s…
It’s never-no.
That’s what I mean.
No, it’s never-no.
And when…
With those machines, I go, “Oh, they’re going to want the number version.”
Yeah.
With those…
With those numbers, they’re going to…
Yeah, but…
But this is AI.
This is just AI at the other end.
Yeah.
They’ll deal with that.
They’ll deal with that.
And then, you know, the other day, where you asked, dealing with our remolage and…
And, uh, rang it up and they asked for my postcode and I was like, “Normally, I’d say tango, no tango, no tango, no tango.”
And I’d sp-
And I’d sp-
And I’d sp-
Yeah, I’d sp-
Just an empty-
A fanatic-
A fanatic-
But it was like, “Oh, no, I don’t have to do that.
I can just…
And I did it and it was fine.”
Yeah.
But then, of course, I got through and she asked me all the security questions.
Again, even though I’d done them on the automated thing.
But…
Another surety of mind which I’d forgotten about.
Is people that don’t know the phonetic alphabet
in business and make up their own.
(laughing)
– We’ll just – (laughing)
We’ll just – Yup.
– Business people, yeah.
– Love it, for the listening of me and Sam
I’m looking at each up and there.
In fact it makes it more complicated
because they’re using her actually harder to understand,
this is the challenge.
– Yeah, the original.
If you’ve never been in a job way,
you’ve needed to use it.
– I thought about business people using it on the phone.
– Yeah, yeah.
– Oh yeah authentic, man.
Yeah, yeah.
– People on the phone using it.
– Yeah, I’m not good with it though.
But then sometimes I enjoy – And then some other.
– Rubber?
(laughing)
– Rubber?
– What?
– I quite like seeing how ridiculous that thing
I can come up.
And for noddy, always is the one that brings one
straight away.
– Yeah, I don’t know why.
– It could be body.
– It could be body.
– Yeah, you’re right.
– You’re right.
(laughing)
– You’re all right.
– It’s time to write a new finesse.
– Yeah, people think that the phonetic alphabet
is just a bit of fun and they’ve just – Oh,
just the first thing that you’ve had.
– But then we get into complications because it depends
on what period you’re talking because I do World War One
living history as well.
And the phonetic alphabet back then was different.
So like, I’ve done a lot of work out at Tolbert House
in Popperinger in Belgium, which was a soldier’s club,
just behind the lines, behind EEPA in Belgium.
And it’s called a colloquialy, tock H, Tolbert House.
So the signalers, signalers way of saying that
back in the first World War was for TH was tock H.
So again, yeah, if you’re getting into a vintage or a period
thing, then yeah, finesse, it’s completely different.
– Wow.
– While we’re on the call center thing,
can I just put in an extra one about the fact that
when they say, your call is very important to us.
They do not mean that, do they?
– No.
– If it actually was important to them,
they would have paid for enough staff to answer your call
in the timely fashion.
– Yeah.
– Yeah.
– Just laying that out there.
– Yeah, I think, yeah, you’re right.
– Done call center.
– Oh.
– Was that inbound or outbound?
– It was outbound.
– Oh, well, I see even harder.
That is harder.
– And I felt, I felt dirty doing it.
And it was charity, it was charity fundraising.
And actually, all, I thankfully,
all of the charities that I called for, I supported.
At least I had an awareness of the work.
And actually, it was really injured.
And it was a rewarding thing to do.
But it’s quite personal when you ring someone
in their own hope.
– Yeah.
(crickets chirping)
– So, there you go, work, rest.
And I think, yeah, that’s, I’m with you on that.
– I’m with you on that.
– Yeah, A.I.s is gonna be an interesting one.
– Well, actually, on that one, if you’re on that,
can I just throw something in here?
– Yeah, keep trying.
– Just a quicky.
– Okay, come on.
– With the whole A.I.s trusting things on the internet.
Just the fact that you can’t believe a word
that the internet says.
And the reason why I know this is if you Google me,
it says I’m David Caradill in some.
– Yeah.
– Which, obviously you are.
You did do a big cartwheel kung fu chop
as you came flying in.
– I wish I could do the kung fu.
– No, especially, I said that I looked you up.
– Yeah, at home.
– Sorry.
– Staying in the car, sorry.
– What was happening?
– And it has an extra 10 years on me, it says on 52.
– Well, that’s the more of that, is it?
– That really is, isn’t it?
– A route.
– So do you think, I was looking into this.
Do you think Google has gone like the Tom Carrad
on the name is the most famous name,
but yours is the most famous picture?
– It must put the two together.
– Yeah.
– ‘Cause his information is there.
– But his picture is there.
– Where he’s born and his parents and his age.
But yeah, obviously, yeah.
My kind of web presence is more,
your image presence.
– Yeah, and that’s what it looks like.
But so much so, I’ve even had like newspaper articles
in the States come out of it.
We like online, online, online,
– Brilliant.
– And there was a great one a few years ago,
picture of the I post on Instagram of me, my son,
who’s his seventh birthday, my wife.
And they’d taken that and they put it on our article
about, oh, Tom, Dave Carradine’s son, Tom,
we’re going to, this is what he does now
and he’s, he’s son’s obviously,
following his father’s footsteps and so on.
– Great.
– So is the other, Tom, never got in contact?
– No, I mean, that’d be quite weird.
– Well, they’ve not surely the other side of this get sure
to be the case that he must be sitting there going,
why is he never– – That’s not my picture.
That’s not me.
– Yeah, I never thought.
– The fact that he’s not done anything about it.
– Yeah.
– The whole Carradine family is a big family.
– Yeah.
– I mean, it would be cool to be related to them,
I mean, from the over the few more doors, but,
I mean, I don’t know, I don’t actually know how many doors it
has opened already that I didn’t realise.
I mean, that’s true.
– I’ve had a few things at gigs where people come and say,
so you’re related or like, or,
oh, we were just good, yeah, good, just googling and so,
didn’t realise you, you don’t sound like your American.
(laughing)
I don’t sound like, oh my god, me, I’m a, but,
I’ve never stopped me.
– Never stopped me.
– Please tell me that you’ve worked out
to do a nice, cockney, sing-along version
of everybody who’s come through fighting.
(laughing)
– Because if you haven’t, I’m definitely there.
– This is the crossover I’m looking for.
– This is, yeah.
– No, I haven’t, but that’s, yeah, I’m gonna have to.
I think no.
– It does let you wonder about,
if you’re on the internet, doesn’t it?
– Yeah, well, with the whole AI thing,
and you fiddle around with chatGPT,
– Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
– And all that, I think is again,
that’s working on like old information.
So like, and also it’s like chatGPT just being creative
and making stuff up.
So I did a thing, a trial thing a few months ago,
like just asking it to put together a brief biography
of me from the information it could find.
I think it was, I mean, few factual things about
performing at Wilton’s Music Hall
and my residency at Mr. Fox Avenue,
Gondon, and Bob and Brian, these kind of things,
but then it was saying that I performed here and there,
and I was doing this and that,
and like,
(laughing)
the way we feel like we’re going,
I don’t know, I feel like the world is going in this
alliance on creating content creation from AI.
Just makes me wonder that back when I was growing up,
if you wanted to make sure something was right,
you’d go to a book in the library.
– Yeah, yeah, yeah.
– I remember the teacher,
he was printed in a book in the library.
It’s true, and correct, it’s fact,
someone’s fact checked it.
But then again, now anybody can publish anything online,
or even in a book now, I suppose.
– Yeah, that’s crazy.
– And actually my kind of,
in my kind of, with my historical head on them,
the kind of research that I do for the musical songs,
and with my kind of archive of vintage sheet music,
I often get people talking to me about like kind of,
apocful stories that they’ve heard about musical things.
And I’m like, well, no, that’s the real truth behind that story
is this.
I mean, there’s a place up in Eastern Grange, up in Essex,
which has a,
the countess of,
it’s countess of Warwick,
or something,
who was named Daisy.
And there’s this kind of apocful story
that Daisy Bell, the song, was written about her,
bicycle built for two,
but it was written about Daisy, the countess of whatever.
But in my research,
reading a contemporary newspaper article
back from, it was written in 1892.
And I think it was a couple of years later in a newspaper,
Harry Daker, the guy who wrote it, explained,
so he was an Englishman emigrated to America.
He’d already written it in the UK,
when he got to the States, he tried to sell the song.
And it was about,
originally it was a donkey car made for two,
but he, but they don’t have donkeys and carts in America,
it’s all mules and wagons.
So he changed it to a bicycle built for two,
because he had a,
there was a, like, traveling salesman came along
on a bicycle call,
and he was like, oh, brilliant, inspiration,
I’m gonna put it into a song.
And that was the inspiration.
And there’s nowhere in that explanation
that he based it on this day zero, yeah.
But yeah, it’s one of those ones
that has just kind of gone into kind of common parlance.
And again, there’s another very famous musical fact
about the fact that Mari Lloyd once sang,
the Queen of the musicals once sang,
the song, she sits amongst the cabbages and peas.
And she was up against the,
I know, she,
but the story goes that she was up against the,
like, Lord Chamberlain’s office,
or whoever, the licensing people,
and so she changed it to,
she sits amongst the cabbages and leaks.
So it’s a great story,
but in all my, in all my research,
it doesn’t exist.
What she sits amongst the cabbages and leaks.
Yeah.
What she sits amongst the cabbages and leaks.
Well, again, as with all the Mari Lloyd stuff,
it’s all about the Wink and a Nuck.
Oh, yeah.
She’d never had a ticket punched before.
Those kind of,
just a song about a young girl going on the roundways.
(drill buzzing)
Play, we haven’t done going out.
Well, we’ve still got, we still got get shirties.
– Have we done going out?
– No.
– No, when do I get a chance to go out?
No, I don’t, I don’t.
– Yeah, we’ll be done next.
Oh, yeah.
– I did, yeah, we did, that was,
are you all right?
– Oh, yeah.
– Yeah, see?
– Yeah, you looked at me then, as if to say,
yeah.
– I’m not, I’m not listening.
(laughing)
– Can all fix it in the edit?
– Yeah, yeah.
– You can fix it in the edit,
that’s what it’s all about.
– I’ll tell you what, see, of course,
you’re getting seat both sides.
– Absolutely.
– Now you know how much?
– The six hours that we’ve been talking already.
– I mean, I’m not leaving until we’ve got a edit.
– You’re a brave man to be able to edit this down
to an hour long episode.
– Hi.
– It does a great job.
– Absolutely, very impressed.
– I know, very, very professional years.
Yeah, so, yeah, we haven’t done that.
– So play.
– Yeah, play, so go now.
– I do, I do, go now.
– Go now, you know, I’ll suppose
that could even encompass your work, couldn’t it?
– It does indeed, and actually that’s one of the problems with
the, obviously what I do is quite a sociable job
when I’m out and I’m kind of gigging and making sure
that everyone has a fabulous time.
But unfortunately that doesn’t mean sometimes that I don’t get
to, yeah, I don’t get to have that myself,
but I’ve been a bit more ruthless with having time off
and going out with my wife and my son
to enjoy that time together.
But, yeah, actually, as we’re in a Taylor shop,
I think my get-shirty foot for play is fashion faux-pals.
And things like, yeah, just a second,
just a double-checking.
I went to see a concert at Coduggan Hall
earlier in the year.
Happy to say I was great.
And there was a guy wearing a dinner jacket on stage.
Brilliant, and actually, it fit quite well,
but when he turned around,
the tacking stitches were still in the back.
– I know.
So, those can all, someone wearing a tweed jacket
with a label still on the sleeve.
– I can’t work out.
– That’s a fashion thing.
– Yeah, but a little tackling.
– It’s a bad fashion thing if it is.
I can’t work out if it’s like,
sort of, they’re trying to do some sort of humble brag,
look at who I’m wearing.
I don’t know.
I’m with you.
– I just, I just sit it, I can completely, yeah.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me,
but I’m putting a jacket on and seeing these tacking stitches
in the bench just to keep them closed.
But why wouldn’t you think
that they’re just gonna come out?
– Yeah, I don’t know.
– It’s fun, it’s,
I’m all for,
something I’ll talk about quite a lot with customers is that,
you know, someone will say,
oh, should I have this, should I do that?
And I’ll say, well, look, you do whatever you like.
– Absolutely.
– If you’re a common fashion and style,
they’re different things.
– They are, you can have a style,
and it’s not necessarily gonna be in fashion, you know?
Find your own style.
Do what you like, but, but,
(laughing)
and the butt is,
with things like those stitches, take ’em out.
– And the labels get rid of them because that’s not,
you know, that’s just not a panett,
– Simple things, simple things.
– I think it’s simple things just to make you look good,
and it’s those little things that can make you different.
– Yeah.
– I think, and again,
’cause I’m wearing vintage or vintage style clothes
all day every day,
and I’m well aware of kind of rules,
the rules in fashion.
– The rules in fashion, yeah.
– And actually,
I’m a firm believer in that rules are there to be broken,
and as I was actually kind of know them,
you can mix it up,
you can do something with a bit different.
But I think that my issue is with things
that just make people look wrong,
and that lovely picture of Donald Trump
coming over in white tie for a Queen’s Dune,
and he looks awful.
– How unearthed is Taylor, let him go out,
with the waistcoat hanging so far,
but like the tailcoat wasn’t it, it was awful.
– So equally, a lot of stuff that I do
on the vintage scene,
yeah, with people wearing white tie,
and just the design of it is the waistcapes there,
just to be underneath,
so you don’t see that band underneath.
– Yeah.
– Oh, and then don’t get me starting on modern suits,
showing you mid-riffed off.
Wastecopes that come up here,
with a bit of shirt coming out.
– Oh, that’s a lot.
– I don’t,
(laughing)
– I don’t, I just,
I don’t understand.
– You have to,
– Yeah, absolutely.
– Yeah, I think, who was it?
It was a, Loki,
but it was,
he’s got a peasant Loki.
– Oh my God, now,
as soon as you said that, it’s gone.
– What’s he saying?
– Sam’s on it.
– Come on, pretty cool.
– Honestly, that’s, that’s shocking.
– Keeping his on track, I don’t know.
– Yeah, he sort of started, I didn’t have really short.
– Yeah, there’s,
well, there’s a lot of people.
– Short white coats, I don’t mind.
– Tom Hill’s Tom Hill’s.
– Short white coats,
but you’ve got to have high weights of short and tight.
– Yeah, yeah, yeah,
– All of the strips.
– Closer to,
– All of the,
and one of my bad best is,
so as a tailor,
I like to show a lot of shirt cuff.
– Yeah.
– I like to,
and I will aim to do that.
– Yeah.
– For my customers as well,
and I’ll talk to my customers.
But that is, at the end of the day, a preference.
Some people don’t like to show shirt cuff at all, or much.
That doesn’t mean that your sleeve
should end past your knuckles.
So I only need the tips of your fingers are sticking out.
‘Cause it just looks,
it looks long, too long.
– Looks ill-fitted, looks like,
it’s not your jacket.
It looks like you borrowed somebody else’s jacket.
And the minute you close, start doing that, you know?
– Yeah.
– So, you’re speaking to a,
(laughing)
to a preaching to the converted with that one.
Yeah, it’s funny, actually, though, isn’t it?
That, those little things,
right, I don’t know, leaving,
I mean, I’ve done the botmiy issue.
– There’s things that, again, we have to go back to fashion,
things that I don’t particularly like to look at.
So, like skinny trousers with,
that are finished halfway up your calf
with loads of socks show in and,
– Shoo. – And loafers.
– And loafers, or socks,
or suits no socks.
– I know, that gives the guys,
(laughing)
– But equally, I’m with you on that one.
But, with those things,
they don’t get me shirt, ’cause I appreciate,
there are style, there are choice.
– There are choice.
But, when the, certainly that show in the mid-rift off
with the shirt kind of billowing out.
– Yeah, yeah.
– And sometimes it’s with them,
shirt like suit higher companies for weddings.
– Yeah.
– And I’m like, “How on earth did you let,
“like these groomsmen come out of your shop
“with such bad leaf?”
I mean, I appreciate that the trousers
sit quite low.
– Yeah.
– And if you’re wearing a belt or whatever, then,
but I mean, I would never dream of showing my belt
underneath my waistcoat.
Well, hence why I wear braces a lot.
But just that kind of, it’s proportions and, yeah,
it’s true.
And, you know, I don’t like to speak ill of any,
any other body else in the trade.
But sometimes when I look at what does leave
some people’s places, and I think,
and you’re charting people for that.
– Yeah, it’s infuriating, actually.
– You can do it.
– Me and Sam are forever, well, all of us,
so if we’re ever looking at something on Instagram
look, look at that.
And then they let that go out.
– Yeah.
– How are they doing that?
– Why are they doing that?
So, listen, is find yourself your own style
and also a tailor or a look-after-year, you know?
And look-after-year.
– As we were saying earlier,
all about pulling together ideas for a shirt.
– Yeah.
– That some people might, the shirt that I chose
and some people might consider that quite, quite small.
– Yeah, yeah.
– But actually for me, it’s quite,
I suppose this highlights it quite well.
You said, well, yeah, I’m looking for,
you know, perhaps I’ll get something, you know,
for when I’m being a bit more, sort of,
relaxed, a bit more casual, but,
so the tie-eyed way.
(laughing)
And that was the next thing you said, you know?
Wasn’t like, yeah, so, yeah.
– What sort of shirt did we go for?
– So it’s, yeah, well, you go for it.
– What’s a green and burgundy, like,
tassel check?
– Yeah.
– A fairly big check.
So that kind of country gent style, isn’t it?
– Yeah, it is.
– So for me, what I consider as a casual shirt, yeah.
(laughing)
– You’ve gone for a sort of shorter collar,
which looked nice with it with a tie,
rounded, yeah.
– Yeah.
– I’m actually, and, yeah, your suggestion,
and again, to do have something slightly different
to what I normally go with,
and with a contrast collar on the inside,
a little bit of burgundy on all the inside of the cuffs as well.
Just, again, just something I wouldn’t normally go for,
or something.
– Yeah, it’s a good opportunity to sort of test things out.
– No.
– And, yeah, you know, if you find something
that could open up a little new area as well.
– Yeah, ’cause I’ve never been really been adventurous,
despite wearing clothes like this,
and kind of, yeah, wearing vintage stuff.
And for me, it’s always in the hunt.
So I’m always, often pulling together an outfit.
I’ve got a few kind of outfits that really work well together.
I’ve got a lovely morning tail coat that I got from a,
from a Western costume company, actually.
The American Hollywood costume company that I picked up
from a vintage shop in London,
with a beautiful bit, it’s a gray, kind of,
dove gray, and tail coat cutaways,
with piping round the outside,
which, but all the kind of accessories,
and that, it’s kind of, it’s been built over years.
It’s like, it didn’t all come at once.
– Yeah.
– So, again, with a kind of finding vintage clothes,
it’s always, it’s always playing the long game,
I might pick a waistcoat up here,
I might pick a pair of trousers up,
and it’s only when I find a pocket square
that goes with the jacket,
that it all kind of falls together.
So actually, this is really, it’s a bizarre thing for me.
People say, “Ah, do you wear bespoke clothes?”
Or made to measure, “Oh, no.”
Like, I’ve worn a lot of bespoke clothes in the park.
Lots of Savorow suits and things over the years,
but they’ve never been bespoke for me.
I’ve had them tailored.
I’ve had them, I’ve got a fantastic alteration
as a tailor up in London.
So, have them altered, and again,
that’s the thing about having the eye for like,
what actually, like, this jacket might fit fine
across the shoulders, but the sleeves are a bit long
or whatever.
So, just, or actually having a tailor’s eye
to go actually on that waistcoat,
if we pull it in a bit, it’ll,
yeah, it takes some of the material out.
But yeah, it’s been quite exciting today
to actually be able to have a choice.
Whereas normally, it’s like, well, that’s, yeah,
that’s found that.
I’ve found that.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, it’s been very exciting, but it’s nice to.
Yeah, it’s nice to.
You’ve got throughout all day in your vintage clothes.
Yeah, you don’t go home, put your jammies on there.
Do you change when you go home and relax?
Yeah, probably.
With jammies, man, or just a different time?
Well, I do have a, one of my,
actually, it’s just about time to change over.
I’ve got some lovely pajamas from Darcy Clothing,
a company down in Louis who make like,
a reproduction stuff for theatre.
Yeah, they’re very cute.
They’re some lovely kind of like heavy cotton pajamas
that I’ve got kind of a nice,
and like an Edwardian cup, which are lovely.
And I wear those for living history stuff as well.
But I do have like a wee, wee, wee, winky Victorian night shirt.
Yeah, I’m glad you did that.
With the wee, wee, winky cat.
And I have to say, if it’s cold,
and our bedroom, our bedroom in front of us is so cold,
I don’t know what’s going on.
But yeah, it’s so nice to put that on.
And yeah, with me, little wee, wee, wee, winky cat.
Do you let the tash do you put things on the ends to keep it?
Talks on the ends, you know, you know, you’re over.
Yeah, like, yeah.
I sleep in it like this, just sleep like this.
I wash it out in the shower in the morning.
So when I come out of bed, it might be up,
one in might be down.
But all like, yeah.
When it’s been longer, I mean, it was out here
the other day on a trim.
But when it’s long, it might be all over the place.
But I wash it out in the shower,
and then rewax it.
I don’t always wax.
I’m post-COVID, again, with all wearing masks thing.
I kind of actually came to a piece
with being able to wear it unwax.
But I do look a bit of Dick Strawbridge.
Oh, do you?
Yeah.
It’s like a walrus.
(upbeat music)
Hello, it’s Santa here.
I’ve been getting lots of letters from people
who don’t know what to do.
Love ones for Christmas.
So I thought I’d lend a hand with some ideas.
(laughs)
Well, how about popping onto the Hardman and Henning website?
@stabbingw.w.hardmanandhenning.co.uk
and getting some of their wonderful socks
or maybe a pair of cufflinks.
Or even better, why not buy that special person?
One of their shirt give vouchers.
Then they can be just like a guest
on the Dick Shirtie podcast.
With their vouchers, they can then design their own shirt,
pick the cloth and details, and pop in a few measures,
and hate pristo, their very own Dick Shirtie shirt.
I do, ho ho ho.
Mrs. Crawls has got a shirt voucher for me.
I have terrible trouble finding things that fit
two men in mint pies.
I hope that helps.
Don’t get too shirty.
Merry Christmas.
(upbeat music)
Well, hey look, here we are.
Oh, I’m excited now.
Here it is.
Well, you’ve been probably having fun for a while now.
Oh, I think you were.
Yeah, yeah, but.
Did you like having fun on the leave?
Oh, what, the list falls out, look.
Yeah, brrr.
Do you know the last person, or one of the,
yeah, maybe the last person to bring notes and a list
with Tony.
Oh, that was Phil.
Phil.
Did he have a little, oh, he did.
Phil did, yeah.
I was gonna say Tony.
Tony, or Tony Rod.
Yeah.
And he likes his vintage.
He does.
And his Mr.
Well, we’re, we’re, we’re,
were both members of the the ham the bar was touched club of Great Britain.
Yeah, do you know that is in my notes?
No, I know. I know.
And I actually am, and he’s loving what Becky as well.
We met with mutual friends, we met a lot on the party, like he knows.
You know the others, oh, yeah.
He’s a lovely, lovely chap.
In fact, I haven’t been to his new place yet.
No, I mean in, yeah.
Yeah, well, would you have to go down, but whether we will, right?
I’ll stop shaking the hat.
Poop… poop… poop… poop… poop…
There might be music, but it will be that way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you might have to go the hat as a new piece of background music.
Oh, of course there is.
Yeah, of course there is.
Yeah, there is.
Especially made.
New bit of music.
So, here we go.
Do you want the explanation or not?
I don’t need the explanation.
No, I know.
You don’t need it.
But do, but do you need to give a little more space?
Do you always like, so?
The readers.
For the listeners.
So, we’ve reached the off the cuff section.
So, the question which will bring out a subject which you know nothing about from the
hatty, what should we call it this week?
The coffee.
A hatty cup.
As denoted by… so… back in the day, we decided to do an off the cuff.
This is purely for Stuart’s point.
Yeah, and off the cuff question because it worked with the title “Get Shirtty off the
cuff.”
How do we get that to our guests in a random way?
That’s true.
That is true actually.
So, we thought, well, actually look, here’s a new bit of information in this story.
It was just before a guest was going to come in and we thought, “How do we do this?”
I know.
We put them in the hat.
We put them in the hat.
We thought about it off the cuff.
The solution we came up with was non-shirt based.
And as we’ve said many times, if we hadn’t have ever mentioned this, no one would question
these, pick it from that hat.
Tom Bola.
I like it.
Oh, nice.
Can I just try a spanner in the works?
In the fact that you’ve picked up Bola Hat off of your beautiful bureau over there.
Which underneath the Bola Hat was a collar box?
Yeah.
Could you not put them in the collar box and have it what gets you hot under the collar?
Oh, come on.
Yeah, look at that.
You know, I’ve been, how long have you been in the podcast now?
I’ve been waiting all this time.
But also about the, yeah, I’ve got collar boxes.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you got any, yeah.
But I’ve been equally, you can get, you can get shit.
I was going to say, if you’ve got any, I’ve got friends who do the detachment cuff thing.
That has been a thought in the past and I was out somewhere the other day in an antique shop
and they had more collar boxes and I thought I wanted to go on a cuff box.
Because then that solves the problem.
But, yeah, if you’d have said, oh, yeah, and I’ve got a spell on at home.
Hello?
Yeah, I caught a lot.
But then maybe that’s, maybe that’s a, I think it’s, you know, so that, here we go, look.
Here we go.
But this is the birth of summer here.
We do have a Patreon page.
Oh!
And we keep talking about extra things to do if anybody wants to go on the Patreon.
Perhaps we should have a hot under the collar, which is a next level question.
Life can get sure to eat a rage, maybe.
Or, let me get talking about my road rage.
You know, like a cheeky question.
A little wing in a large cheek question.
Yeah.
Just for the, just for the, just for the, just for the guy who’s got the guts and the point there where you explain it.
Oh, I’ve, I’ve not finished the, it’s gone.
Sorry!
Sorry!
Sorry!
In a rush, let’s put them in a hat.
That will do it.
And I think it was actually just before Adam Bucks, who came into his way to the original explanation started.
So, Adam Bucks has came up with lots of suggestions about other ways in which we can send them, clip them to a cuff.
Yes.
Not like a giant comedy like Harry Hill’s Cup.
You see that?
We’d be all right.
Yeah, too.
Or a giant cuff where they sort of appeared.
Oh, I like that.
Oh, I like that.
We had to call them on, like some sort of duck, like, “Oh, cool!”
(Laughs)
You know, there’s all sorts of ways that we can do it.
But, actually, do you know what, a lot is there enough explanation?
Anyway, so, the coffee hat was born.
And we decided to always keep the hip hat.
And we always did the explanation apparently.
We have to do it.
Okay.
But, it was just for the first time?
Yeah, that’s true.
But what I quite like about it as well is now we have every guess now is coming up with good other things.
There could be a whole, whole, whole, another podcast.
Spin off, spin off, spin off.
There it is.
(Laughs)
Yeah.
Skint Shirti.
Have you got an only fan?
Yes.
Yeah, that could be the heart of the hotel.
(Laughs)
Yeah, I’ve got a name, thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
We’ll get it.
We’ll get it.
Yeah.
You and Lily Allen.
Perhaps?
Yeah, we could do an only fan’s with our guests that were willing.
Just in their shirts, mate.
Well, on that note, if people are googling, they do at the Green Duck in Tumbridge Wells, where I make a…
They do have naked sing-alongs.
But, that’s not me.
I have to put that out, then that is not me.
That’s a chubber-mine from London, Luke Merritt, he’s got previous for it.
You have to be naked.
You’ve seen a lot?
Yeah.
That’s a lot of people are doing the single-alongs.
No, naked, like, let me have this, let me try this.
Yeah.
How do you know that?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Sounds like everything.
I don’t know, exactly.
Yeah, sort of that, because that’s the place up on the left.
They’ve got one on the right, so…
No, the shoulder.
Yeah, up on the left and side.
Yeah.
Obviously the music shop on the…
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, here we go, then.
What do you give me?
It’s like sightseeing.
It’s like, man.
Pick a good one, pick a good one.
What do we got?
What do we got?
What do we got?
Banks.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh!
Oh!
Oh, my word.
Oh, my word.
Well, you’re talking to a man from some bridge?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I don’t know what it’s like here.
Well, of course, the lovely Lord’s TSP that was over the road.
It was, you know, when I took over this shop, I didn’t bank with the Lord at the time.
And I thought, you know, it’d be sensible to me.
But, they’re all the bank into Lloyd’s because there’s a Lloyd bank to stay with the road.
Two weeks later, shut.
Well, that’s why they shut it.
Is that the love?
Yeah.
Do you know the biggest travesty, sorry, to jump all over?
Not at all.
Yeah.
Your moment here is that the front of that bank, I mean, let’s not even get started about the state
that the bank is now in.
But in front of that bank, these would be a really lovely blossom tree.
Yeah, yeah.
Gone.
No.
It’s a little bit left of the tree.
They could have put the hoard in the other side of the tree, left of the tree.
No, no.
Well, certainly.
It’s a little bit beauty, was lost in self, but, you know, replaced by us, of course.
So, banks hit me with it.
What would be your…
So, what is it about Tom Ridge and banks that’s bad?
Just lack of banks.
All gone, yeah.
And they’ve all gone.
Pretty much.
Well, we’ve got a…
There’s a suntender in the…
The sunsender in the pavilion.
This is making loads of sense to people who don’t live in Tom Ridge.
We’ve probably got a couple of Halifax, but I think that’s closing.
Is it?
You get that…
You get that…
That’s gone.
Yeah.
That was gone.
But that was gone.
That was the…
That was the…
Hespecies gone.
That was the Van Bank by the…
Oh, now, that’s a confusing thing.
Because the…
I think Bartley’s doing…
Van Bank thing.
But it’s not for banking.
But it’s for opening accounts.
It’s for like…
Advice on savings and investment.
For promotion, really.
Absolutely.
So, for me as a freelance performer, as much as I hate it, I often get paid in cash.
Yeah.
And I do…
Being a good boy.
Well done.
And putting it into my bank account.
And I have to go to the post office.
Yeah.
And of course, then don’t go to the post office.
Because of course, Tom Ridge had one in the high street.
Yeah.
Which then closed for a long while.
And they were looking for a new space.
They had a temporary wallop at the castle, which the cuter always out of the door.
We’ve got a lovely one now.
Just the other side of the station.
And actually, I haven’t queued in there much.
But, yeah, just…
Banks.
I mean, I appreciate that everything has changed.
The whole banking kind of…
The way we use banks has changed.
But there’s a real importance for certainly elderly people or people banking.
Or business banking.
Who still use cash and still need that contact on the high street.
So, isn’t it weird that…
Oh, I think it’s weird.
Prepare yourself.
No, this is dramatic, right?
But it’s weird that like the banks could not get together and go…
Not moving.
Right.
Let’s just all put money into it.
One central place.
Have a banking card.
Each individual account.
Or not even that because I’m assuming in the same way that…
Anyone can pay into the post office, they can pay in their money into whatever account.
So actually, for paying in or getting money out,
it’s all through one system, isn’t it?
But some place that you could go to to have that face to face.
Which is so important to many people.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely the economics of that would work.
Absolutely.
You think so?
You do know everybody listening to banks with MetroBank or SIT.
And it’s smug, like, in your own.
Well, are they not…
Are they not…
They’ve stopped their opening on a Saturday, haven’t they?
Or are they stopping it?
My son’s got an account there.
I’m committed to keeping branches, isn’t that there?
Yeah, I think so.
But the reason why we got it was that they were open on Saturday.
So we could take Andrew and I’m sure I’d have let it say that they’re closing on on Saturday.
Still banked it.
So…
No, no, no, no.
So…
Now definitely get that’s definitely a kind of…
Yeah, getting sure to.
It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on.
It’s a bit sad that it’s over.
No, it’s a…
I’m honored, thank you for having me.
And yeah, from an avid listener and an avid fan.
Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
There we are, what a gent and what a mustache.
Go check out the pictures on our website or our autom’s Instagram.
It’s quite the thing of beauty.
Link’s as usual will be in the description.
A huge thank you to Tom for not only being a guest but a listener too.
Let’s hope he didn’t put him off of listening.
Now he’s met us.
You never know.
Thanks as always to the Get Shirti team.
That has her for the music, Stuart Wilson for co-hosting,
making us look good in the edit and for producing.
And as always as well to Sam for keeping us in line and chipping in.
Thank you to you, the listener, for me Stuart Hardman, your host,
and of course the rest of the team.
It’s great that you listen and we appreciate his so much.
Until next time, do try not to get too sure to miss the Get Shirti.
[Music]
Are we able to do that?
Yeah, I’ve got that for copyright.
You’ve run so many seconds, I think we’re out of cover that.
Yeah, and again, we…
I don’t think we can have the time.
I can’t say the lyric at all.
Can you not do this thing?
Right, well, yeah.
I’m sorry, he already can do this thing.
Oh!
Let’s talk about my Mary Poppins, I do.
But finally, we’ve had singing.
I think it’s nearly every podcast now.
Of course, yeah, absolutely.
I can’t think of…
What did I choose to sing with a couple of bars of stuff?
I’m not looking at any of them.
Okay, let’s do something out of cover, right?
I don’t think there’s a couple of songs.
A lot of the musical stuff is yes.
So I can give you a day, Z, D, Z.
Give me your answer to.
I’m half crazy.
I mean, that’s a beautiful song.
But yeah, have you got a favourite?
Depends on what mood I’m in.
I do love a nightingale singing Barclay Square.
Yeah, that’s a good one.
So beautiful kind of second world war song.
But, you know, then I love things like Marman said, follow the band.
And all the kind of knees up stuff.
Oh, what a beauty.
I’ve never seen Walice Bigger than that before.
Yeah, that’s a good one.
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconut.
Yeah, that’s good.
So, bye.
What about your songs?
Well, I’ve got lots of the stuff that I do in the single.
It’s musical.
Yeah, in UNDO.
Out UNDO and all of those.
[Music]
Let’s get shut to it.
[Beep]
That was a clusterfuck, right?
