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Man 'Falls Awkwardly' on WW2 Shell & Lodges it in His BOTTOM! – Muppet of the Month: Dec 2021
111 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/archaeosoup
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Link of the Week:
Raiders Temple Escape in LEGO:
https://tinyurl.com/mryxfp4r
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Muppet(s) of the Month:
A History TikToker’s viral claim that Ancient Rome ‘didn’t exist’ is getting backlash from academics:
https://www.insider.com/history-anthropology-tiktoker-ancient-rome-not-real-backlash-viral-2021-12
Man caught wearing fake arm in bid to fool staff giving Covid vaccine:
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-12-03/man-caught-wearing-fake-arm-in-bid-to-fool-vaccine-jab
Jacob Rees-Mogg makes up a Saxon saint!
https://twitter.com/dramdarcy/status/1472387033222070272
Bomb Squad Race to A&E After Patient Arrives with WW2 Artillery Shell Stuck up His Bottom:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16923295/bomb-squad-hospital-bottom-shell/
Bomb Squad Called to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital after Man gets WWII Mortar Stuck up His Bottom:
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/bomb-squad-called-gloucestershire-royal-6298076
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Soupcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
Muppet of the Month Segment
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Muppet of the Month. Oh, it's a good one this month. And I am joined by my co-host, Mr Andy Bockman, and our special guest star, Mr Neil Ackerman, because we simply had to get more and more people in on this particular Muppet of the Month. This month, though, has been a biggie for Muppets, has it not? We've had a bumper crop and... Oh, come on!
00:01:10
Speaker
There is absolutely no contest as our viewer will see. Emphasis on bumper.
00:01:21
Speaker
for this, but just to name some honorable mentions from my part of the month. We have, of course, as the history TikToker who's going round at the moment doing the rounds, who's claiming that ancient Rome didn't exist, and apparently is getting backlash from academics. I've been asked to comment on it personally. I said to someone, a couple of people actually know who asked me.
The Fake Arm Incident
00:01:43
Speaker
I said look I just don't think mud wrestling is particularly edifying I'm not going to get involved in that because you know ancient Rome existed guys so anyway she's making she's doing the rounds she is a muppet but she's not the muppet of the month we have um this is more a stem muppet not archaeology this is like a stem or steam muppet man caught wearing fake arm in bid to full staff giving him the covid vaccine
00:02:09
Speaker
This is a man in Italy near Turin who decided to go in with a presumably some sort of rubber or, you know, what's the word, the use of baking type arm and try to fool the doctors, but instead he was called silicon.
Saint Ethel Gifu Prank
00:02:27
Speaker
That's a silicon arm he was using.
00:02:29
Speaker
And then also another one final honorable mention, which I thought you'd appreciate, Andy, would be the amazing conceptual love child of Mr Monopoly Man and a Dickensian villain himself, Jacob Rees-Morg, writing into the parliamentary record a completely fictitious saint a couple of days ago, Saint Ethel Gifu,
00:02:55
Speaker
or Yifu, depending on how you want to go with the old English. She didn't exist, but there she is now part of the parliamentary record. Of course, history and archaeology are not political. Stay in your lane. Don't comment on this, archaeologists. Rant over. Anyway, guys, there are actually three presenters for this segment, by the way, people, don't worry. And so I'm going to invite Andy to describe to us
00:03:24
Speaker
in excruciating detail. Who are my favorite of the month is and what exactly happened to this poor unfortunate soul?
00:03:33
Speaker
Our Mopis of the Month this month is thankfully anonymous and will remain so.
The Mortar Shell Mishap
00:03:43
Speaker
Well, you'll see why in a moment. Look, all I can do is go straight to the horse's mouth, which is Gloucestershire Live. Is that what they call it? Their report was published
00:04:03
Speaker
This is their story that was published on the, this is their story that they published on the 3rd of December, which, for reasons which RBL will see, went rapidly viral and led to any number of hashtags which
00:04:22
Speaker
It was an early Christmas present, Easter present, birthday present, you name it. It's the kind of story that people will dine out on in future who will have been directly involved.
00:04:35
Speaker
The bomb squad was called to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on Thursday December 2nd after a patient was admitted with a mortar shell stuck in his rectum.
00:04:55
Speaker
Troops from 11, explosive ordnance disposal regiment rushed to Gloucester hospital after being notified by the police that quote, the patient had a munition presented with a munition.
00:05:09
Speaker
The numbers of military views he asked, found the shell wall clearing out, but somehow, quote, tripped and fell onto the 57mm piece of army ordnance that had landed him in hospital, according to the Sun.
00:05:27
Speaker
The 57 millimetre round was used by the Royal Artillery in the Second World War as an anti-tank round, although it would later also be used by British tanks in North Africa. The round measured 57 millimetres in diameter, and an eye-watering 170 millimetres in length. A source told the Sun, quote, that guy simply fell off the shelf.
00:05:55
Speaker
This is painful enough, this is painful enough as it is. Behave yourself. The guy said he'd found the show when he was having a clear out of his stuff. He said he put it on the floor and then slipped and fell on it and it went up his A asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.
00:06:21
Speaker
An NOD spokesperson said we can confirm an army or explosive ordnance disposal team was called out to Gloucestershire at the request of local police. And a spokesperson for the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said we can confirm that the police and explosive ordnance disposal team attended Gloucestershire Royal Hospital yesterday.
00:06:39
Speaker
Any incident involving munitions, as in any incident involving munitions, the relevant safety protocols will follow to ensure that there was no risk to patients, staff or visitors at any time.
Debating Medical Mishaps
00:07:02
Speaker
when he's expected to make a full recovery so long as he doesn't trip and fall onto any more artillery shells.
00:07:12
Speaker
The thing is, I was asking, so while we were waiting for Andy to rejoin our call, I was asking Neil, how do you present in the hospital? Like, do you sort of waddle in? Do you like stay in the back of the car and ask for a blanket and a trolley? Like, what happens? And then, I mean, so do we think, do we believe his story? Is it possible to awkwardly fall and lodge a shell up you?
00:07:42
Speaker
Not something of which I have any great personal knowledge I have to say. Sorry, sorry. All I'll say just to finish, I'll make two points just to finish, then you two can rumble it, so I'm not sure I can cope with much more of this. Two things. First of all, my secret squirrel sources inside the army EOD community tell me,
00:08:07
Speaker
that this call-out was deemed so important. It was so significant in terms of the development of EOD practice, but a flash signal was sent around the entire EOD community with an hour of it happening. Talk about the hurt line. Absolutely.
00:08:36
Speaker
This is going to be heard like it's in the sequel. So yeah. So yeah. But the other, there's a serious cultural point here. And that is that this kind of, anybody who's ever, I will bet you, anybody who has friends, relatives,
00:09:02
Speaker
colleagues who've ever worked in the medical profession and particularly have worked in A&E, accident and emergency, will have a story like this. The first story like this I heard was from my mum who had a patient walk into A&E in Ealing in the 1950s when she was training to be a nurse who presented with a vacuum cleaner up his fundament.
00:09:29
Speaker
um it's just something that happens and some you know it's no obviously i'm not saying there's anything delivered there's any kind of fetishization or anything like that going on here um the poor guy obviously did just trip over in the attic and fall on this particular artifact um but um yeah yeah yeah but
00:09:53
Speaker
It's not a news story in the sense that it's a medical trope. Take it or leave it on that level. And the serious point is of course never mess with munitions, always call EOD.
00:10:15
Speaker
Or call, you know, I don't know, Victoria's Secret or something. Anyway, someone who might be able to help you get the appropriate implements. You know, we have the guy with the silicon arm. Silicon exists now, guys. You don't need to go out and find a missile.
00:10:41
Speaker
I think as well, if you do have any kind of life munitions stuck inside, you don't wander into the massive hospital that you're risking boiling up. I said this to Neil before, that Mrs. Soup said to me, he could have died. And I was like, no, he could have been vaporised. It would have been like seeing a little
00:11:10
Speaker
Oh my goodness. So, so, um, so briefly, I don't know if it actually became a hashtag, but I certainly saw bum squad going around on Twitter. Um, it certainly became a hashtag. It certainly became a hashtag. Um, uh, I suppose just, just, just, you know, you're, you're, you're the, you're the, uh, the, the conflict archeologist standing. Is this a thing? Like, do people actually, are they really into the munitions in that way?
00:11:37
Speaker
I can't imagine falling on a... I can't imagine it, I just can't. So, is it? Have you... Yeah, go on. What? Look.
00:11:51
Speaker
Just looking at a case of the poor individual, the comments below the line of the Gloucester Live story, a case of shell shock, somebody suggests. What a bummer, somebody else suggests. Somebody else said, it's Gloucester folks, all sorts of strange things happened there.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah. Someone else suggests that that's rather radical treatment for constipation. Somebody else said he was probably listening to Elton John's Rocket Man at the time.
00:12:42
Speaker
No, but seriously, I was demonstrating that before, but it was 57 millimetres, so that's fingernail on that. That's a really big thing. And I suppose an indirect answer to the question I just asked you, Andy, would be to say that there is the thing on the internet which is called Rule 34.
00:13:02
Speaker
Rule 34 is if something exists, then there is almost certainly some element of pornography catering to that thing. So there may well be people. I suppose we don't want to imply that this guy didn't just trip and fall and accidentally
00:13:18
Speaker
launch himself on a weapon. But there's going to be people who will. There's going to be people who are into that. But we don't judge. Just use silicon. There will be a silicon missile out there. And if there isn't already, someone will have to make one now. Surely to goodness. Can we kickstart that stuff?
00:13:45
Speaker
The defence of this tripping story, the amount of force you'd need to get that all the way up. Following all this, it seemed like one of the only ways to really get that kind of
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Through the, I'm sure your clothes and everything like. Yeah. Yeah. Also, how much in the shed? Like, I don't know to trip and fall. I couldn't trip and fall in the shed and, and launch myself on something. Um, any final word, Andy, just, just, just, just to bring us back down to being serious for a second.
Munitions Safety Lessons
00:14:24
Speaker
Is there anything?
00:14:24
Speaker
I'm not sure I can put it back down to being serious, but obviously working conflict archaeology, munition safety is an absolutely critical part of what we do. We couldn't work on sites if we weren't extremely careful about what we might find. Oh, so nothing about the page to the manual now.
00:14:46
Speaker
I think our friends at 11 EOD have probably already added it's actually, and in fact, it's probably out as their Christmas card. There have been a number of cases of people messing with military and it's ended rather. This person was lucky and apparently it was in a round, in fact, in the end when they came to look at it.
00:15:15
Speaker
But no, there's a case of, for example, I'm being deadly serious for a bit, literally, because there was a case in America of a collector who was trying to defuse an American Civil War black powder shell and it blew up and killed him. There was another case in France where a military enthusiast was again trying to defuse a shell
00:15:45
Speaker
blew himself up and spread a lot of his collection, much of which was still lying across most of the local village, and the local gendarmerie was nearly a week clearing it up. So, you know, this stuff can be really serious. At the same time, and again, terribly sad story, that a Belgian military enthusiast
00:16:06
Speaker
also blew himself up while trying to defuse a World War I. I think it was a piece of ammunition.
Festive Farewell
00:16:13
Speaker
And when the John Domery and the police came to investigate that, they discovered that he'd been doing this while wearing women's clothes.
00:16:29
Speaker
Rule 34. There we go. Wow. Merry Christmas, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for that. We're going to end on that. This is the last one. Exactly.
00:16:51
Speaker
Oh dear. Hopefully that's been a wee bit of fun for you, Neil. Hopefully it's been interesting for you guys at home. And yeah, have a great festive time. Enjoy whatever, however you can. And at the very least, hopefully we can all find some time to relax. I know that you're a very busy dad, Neil.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, and just another way in which he's a wonderful human being. Anyway, thank you for your time, Neil. Thank you, Andy. Until next time, guys at home, do take care. Bye-bye.
00:17:29
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:17:45
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.