Special | The Ghost Hunter - Part 1 - with guest Look Into My Eyes

[00:00:02] This content contains podcasts This adult This adult contains podcast content Adult content be advised, enjoy the episode Although he was twice seen as a detective among a staggering 14 different roles in The Bill He played 14 characters

[00:00:27] Something's different I wonder if you can tell Who could possibly guess What's going on here? I'll tell you what's going on here

[00:00:56] We are joined by Jonathan Hi Hello If you're not watching because this is available on YouTube this episode He's the male voice He's the man one The man one And Jonathan is from the Look Into My Eyes podcast Explain Jonathan Yes, so Look Into My Eyes is a retrospective look at the Demon Headmaster series of books and TV shows We've done three seasons Season four launched today as we record this so probably will have been available Congratulations Thank you very much

[00:01:25] It was a very nerve-wracking thing at seven o'clock this morning when I got the your social media post failed to post I was like, oh no But you know It happens, it does happen It does happen Yeah, so So yes So we're in season four now so we're looking at book four which is the Demon Headmaster strikes again and probably the most well-known of the TV series I think just based on people I've kind of talked to So yes we do children's TV stuff too and we're here with you folks to talk about The Ghost Hunter Yeah, it's a collaboration that's been a long time coming Yeah, I think so So we're doing

[00:01:56] a part one and a part two for Ghost Hunter and part one is going to be on the Thoughts TV feed If you want to listen to part two then hop over to Look Into My Eyes Yes Where can you find that? You can find us at LookIntoMyEyesPodcast.com and also on Spotify iTunes and loads of other places even including iHeartRadio Oh, where the podcasts are Exactly, yeah Cool We are on our Height Radio which is always weird I'm like, what? Just look where the podcasts are or you'll find us It's all good Nice

[00:02:26] I'm glad you got to snag your website We unfortunately didn't get ThoughtsTV.com That's fine That's fine I'm still sad that you didn't pay the 50 quid or whatever it was for Thoughts.tv because I feel like that should be a thing The thing is we get a lot of traffic of people who Well, yeah All traffic is good traffic I was going to say yeah, swings and roundabouts right? Comments being like this isn't what I came here for Look, if they pay your Patreon at least once then you know that's still like

[00:02:54] even if you lure them into false pretenses So Ghost Hunter Oh, sorry one more point about Yeah, one more point about this Do the reverb live We'll do it live We're not going to put clips in this episode for various reasons Clips will not but it can be if you know where to look you can find Ghost Hunter The audiobook and the show is both on YouTube For the first book and the second book audiobook is on YouTube

[00:03:23] Third book is on an internet archive to read not to listen Yeah, I imagine all of it is on internet archive Probably, yeah Yes God bless that website Yeah Do they do in the Lord's work on this archive? Honestly, if I had spare money it would go to them Do you prefer John or Jonathan? Jonathan is fine People at work call me J.R. bizarrely which is kind of a weird Dallas reference but you know Where's the R? Rainer, my last name Okay, great Good I have no reason they just like Dallas Someone come in and get really confused

[00:03:53] and be like Junior? Well, no We can call you Junior No, no, no So this is the thing So my dad is called John So for years and years and years people are like Oh, you're named after your dad You could be J.R. J.R. And I was like John was my father Shut up No, and it gets me really angry because like John and Jonathan are not the same name They're completely different Jonathan is like A lot more similar Completely different No, no, no But like in origin they're completely different John I think is Greek and Jonathan is Jewish, Israeli

[00:04:23] so like they're completely from completely different places in the world So like, yeah, anyway But no So my dad got called J.R. because he was always called John Rayner obviously You know because that's always his name And so then But that was when Dallas was airing like first time around And so then But then because like I got brought up with all the things he enjoyed So I loved stuff in the 70s and 80s rather than enjoying things from, you know when I was younger It kind of stuck as well because my Slack My Slack handle at work is also at J.R. So people just kind of assumed that was my name So yeah

[00:04:53] Joe Jonathan is fine Go with that If you did that with me you're just calling me Elsie Yeah Laura Connolly Elsie Yeah So anyway After that There's going to be a lot of that in this episode I think so Yeah, we've got two parts to fill We've got plenty of time So I think maybe we'll start off with Jonathan giving us the history of Ghost Hunter because I feel like he's just got it to hand so much quicker than we do

[00:05:22] because you watched it first time around Yeah So I definitely watched I definitely have memories of the first two seasons airing but I'm 99% sure that I saw the third season as it aired So in 2002 when it first was on But definitely hadn't read the books until we'd started looking at it for this So I kind of I think I vaguely knew they existed because I've probably seen them in like libraries and stuff but I don't think I'd read them So yeah So it goes on to So originally the first book was published in 1997

[00:05:52] as part of the Hippo Young Spooky collection So this was like a whole collection of books from the Hippo imprint that were like in this kind of vague milieu I tried to see if any others of them were in any way notable but I couldn't find any that I recognised so you know maybe they were but it didn't make an impact on me obviously That's a very fast turnaround from 1997 It is to the TV show in what was it 98? No 2000 It was 2000 2001 2002 Well it is for the second and third books because they were

[00:06:22] published kind of contemporaneously with the series coming out Oh it's so lovely to have you here because we don't use words like that Oh I can already see this big hug around my neck but yeah so yes and then so picked up by the BBC and then yeah the first season aired in 2000 which is basically the first two books smushed together and then you get the second season 2001 which is kind of book three but also not book three in interesting ways

[00:06:52] and we'll come to that and then season three airs in 2002 which apparently although I can't validate this is based on an unpublished fourth book that never saw the light of day so allegedly allegedly like that's yeah it's like a comment in a wiki that has no connection to Ivan Jones the author yeah or any yeah so take that with a grain of salt it would make sense because he's involved in the writing of the show yeah because this is the other thing of course so Ivan Jones the author was also involved in the creation of the show

[00:07:21] he wrote it with there are others who wrote it as well there are two other key authors or writers on the show and but he was very much involved with the whole creation of the show and also the creative team on it were also very much kind of steeped in CUBC stuff so people involved with the show also did things like Aquila Made Marion and what the other third one was there's definitely there's definitely other connections but Grange Hill oh yeah yes and Grange Hill arguably the big players well of course oh yeah these are the the big three

[00:07:51] the big show Made Marion Ghost Hunter and Grange Hill you couldn't get three shows that are more different I've got a lot schools in them vaguely two out of three yeah two out of three no swearing I'm going to say yeah could you imagine Ghost Hunter with swearing like what would that be like that would be fun an adult version of Ghost Hunter with Mrs. Croker doing actually properly terrible things well in the book she does though

[00:08:23] there's lots of moments in the book where my only annotation on the side is like trauma question mark there were some parts of the book where I was thinking it's interesting to put that in a kids book but we'll come we'll come to that later yeah definitely yeah yeah but yes so it was so and arguably very successful so it so it was beating adult shows in the kind of top 10 ratings for the week sort of stuff I think it beat EastEnders a few times so that's like you know no way yeah no big deal it's actually a bit EastEnders we actually were saying that a few of the characters are

[00:08:52] dragged straight from yeah yeah yeah and also there's lots of cross pollination with other stuff I mean like Roddy's teacher was in Doctor Who in the 80s and has been in other stuff since then she's got a proper Doctor Who face she does actually like does that mean anything to you yeah yeah yeah she really does it's a small paddling pool is British telling yes yeah yeah this is the thing so there's definitely lots of crossover with lots of other stuff so and it really does have that CBBC feel to it which I struggle to put into words exactly but it's

[00:09:22] definitely there yes we were talking about this so do you want to carry on with like the production history or can we go straight into the content because that's kind of it really there is like very little to find yeah despite the fact that this was so successful and you know based on a series of books and so on there's really very little about the production of it to find anywhere else there's a few things about filming locations but that's not particularly interesting that's it and then there are some actors in it

[00:09:52] where they have gone on to act in other things little about them on the internet some of them like there's a couple of like maybe a handful of actors in this show where you could actually I've got stuff to say yeah but yeah main characters right it's all the side characters that have like long Wikipedia pages yeah for sure yeah we were talking about how it feels very 90s early 2000s CBBC drama in a way that current ones do

[00:10:21] not they differ yes and we've been trying for a while to pin down what exactly that is new ones are clean and this one's quite gritty yes they feel cleaner and they feel I mean I'm thinking specifically of the dumping ground here yeah I was gonna say because Tracy Beaker is kind of the spiritual successor to that feel I would say yes and so when I'm comparing current CBBC children's dramas to ones

[00:10:51] like Demon Headmaster and Ghost Hunter I'm using the dumping ground as my yardstick yes exactly and I'm trying to pin down what that difference is and I've got one idea but Laura has her hand up I've got a theory about because I think is that how we're doing this now pass the talking stick I hold the feeling stick backwards in watching all of these like the

[00:11:20] way that these especially the kids deliver all of their lines is so the same and I'm wondering if there's just one acting coach that was in the background for all of them yes I think one of the reasons is I've got two things here so one is the content I think that nowadays I could be wrong because it's been a while since I've looked through the channel but there's more paranormal sort

[00:11:49] of grand adventure sort of things what now or then yeah yeah yeah I would agree with that not so much now because when I'm thinking of dumping ground I'm thinking it's social issues it's gritty it's very worthy there's a lesson in everything back then it was like we're friends with a ghost and the ghost is going to get captured and you know and the other thing that I'm thinking of is the casting so it feels

[00:12:18] now that when they cast the children for these shows they're taking a kind of Disney model where everyone they cast feels like they've got some sort of star quality and when they cast you know a younger sibling for example it feels to me as though they're thinking who is going to continue doing this in five years to come who can we get another different series out of maybe

[00:12:48] it feels like there's a franchise mentality and I could be completely wrong about this but did you feel like that with Famous Five because I guess that's the most recent example that you've covered yes I was thinking about Famous Five the only CBBC thing I've watched like a recent one is I was at my aunt's house and my cousins were watching this football one and it's got loads and loads of characters oh yes I've seen that advertised on their Instagram yeah they've got loads and loads and loads of characters in it and they're all acting a little older than I

[00:13:17] think maybe they should be and it's really boring it was just really it was a football show and that just might be me the one thing I thought would have improved Famous Five if it was if it had been less clean because I know it's almost filmic isn't it when you watch it but then I guess it kind of makes sense because like the directors he does films it's Nicholas Winding Reference and he like they were short films when they were like TV films basically but if it had

[00:13:47] been a bit less clean more Children of the Stones more Children of the Stones yeah because Children of the Stones is the big thing that it seems like what happens is there's a big kind of injection of folk horror that happens towards the kind of end of the 90s early 2000s because you've got Demon Headmaster Aquila arguably is in a similar vein and even like it's not folk horror but even the first series of Tracy Beaker has some of this feel in it in the same way cheaper it looks and feels cheaper and in my opinion better but it's more

[00:14:16] it's more realistic when it's scrappy we were saying about how like the kids bedrooms look like kids bedrooms even in Tracy Beaker like they'd look like kids bedrooms but then you watch things like the bedroom in Sadie J for example yeah it looks like a set just to continue on the thing about the casting so it feels to me like current the current way that they do this is it's like who career casting like who will still be doing

[00:14:46] this in five years time who can we make a star out of and no offence at all to the actors in demon head master or ghost hunter they don't have star quality they're just so interestingly so um so we so on on our podcast shameless plug we have we we i'm wearing a t-shirt yes quite yeah so um so we interviewed and that so we interviewed

[00:15:15] kelly ford who was in the second half of the first season demon head master and she she's she's she's brain four or something but she has she has a speaking but what's what the two things so she has a speaking line one line which is but i'm a vegetarian so which i made her do in the interview because of course and she also but what's also amusing is that the um they have name badges because that's part of the kind of part of the thing and her name is kelly ford on the name badge so in fiction she's also

[00:15:45] called kelly ford which is yeah great so but she was saying that she just got recruited like she was at she was either at a drama school or just at her school and was just recruited by people there so they this isn't like career actors no they feel like they've been plucked out of a random primary school yeah yeah and that's in a good way yeah yeah and that's how they found frances amy to do um to do diner and demon head master as well she wasn't in drama schools as far as and she's wonderful oh yeah amazing yeah like and this but but i wonder what but then to some extent you wonder if that's the

[00:16:15] reason why they then didn't go on in acting because this was like oh it's a thing we did for a summer or whatever rather than like this is my whole career forever oh yeah 100% but it but it is an interest but it is a different it brings a different emphasis to their performance maybe because they're because you said they're not doing the kind of career casting that they are doing now where it's like we're all actors it feels like you're watching something that is a job for a child that's been put to work in current things and back then it's like you're watching a

[00:16:48] fun summer for a child like a school play when you're watching these older things and to be fair for the extras that's how they did it when i've been researching for the podcast i found like newspaper things but i'm like are you in this school it's the easter holidays do you want to be in a tv show great that was essentially children of the stones wasn't it like they recorded it over a summer pretty much yeah exactly i want to say just like the makeup and the hair as well between modern children's dramas and these children's dramas they're not wearing any makeup in this show the kids

[00:17:18] and they just have their hair done like i had my hair done to go to school right always up and with different colored little felt thingies whereas in the new ones they've got like straightened hair they've got makeup on and i'm like you wouldn't you're 13 i also love that like the scenes that take place at after school in their bedrooms yeah in this show they're still wearing their school uniforms like there's not like an unrealistic amount of costume changes you're just hanging out in your polo shirt i was like how long did you guys hang out in your school uniform

[00:17:47] oh yeah all the time monday to friday it's all i wore yeah pretty much we me and elsie went to so you went to the sick form centers didn't you did you go to a sick form yeah which was it was part of my it was part of the school i was in anyway so did you still wear a uniform no no no no no oh really yeah yeah so when we went to

[00:18:17] college i'd my school didn't even have a sick form and i felt like for the first like three weeks of college i felt like i was having a mental breakdown i was like i've got to come up repeat outfit yeah i've got something to wear every day of my life and this is it for the rest of my life yeah then we stopped caring my last school was they did reception to yes the sixth form so yeah well i wasn't there for that whole time obviously but um yeah we had a

[00:18:46] different there was a different uniform for primary school different uniform for like year seven to end of gcse's and then a different uniform for sixth form and it's like how much money do you want from yeah there is that yeah that is what it's like in well a different uniform in primary school to secondary school but if you're in the same school i mean especially you are going to grow in that time because i went for gcse's and then i went for sixth form so it was two

[00:19:16] years one uniform that they changed halfway through because it was a new school so we had to buy new stuff in that bit and then for sixth form it was like buy even more uniform it's like okay the uniform they were in this is very similar to my school uniform was as well like it will i arrived at my secondary school the year they got rid of the blazer and tight and introduced a jumper and yeah i was always polisher jumper trousers yeah ours was never blazers and stuff like other schools mary did but we know we weren't that my brother's secondary school which i would have gone to

[00:19:45] was tie blazer sweater smelting stick it was not a posh school super was not that kind of sounds like it no no this was definitely a school where it's like how many people do you think get pregnant this year oh okay oh i thought i went to a school like that i googled my school i googled my school last night and the first like a part after my school on the like google prediction the next thing that comes up is

[00:20:15] stabbing because when i was in my first not funny when i was in my first year of um uni someone stabbed a member of support staff oh yeesh and um yeah so that's now the second result on google was it your college or what school was it that your dad accidentally oh my dad's my dad's an architect and he had to go and do some kind of assessment at a college a local college and this was when i was in

[00:20:45] college so he'd got into this place full i didn't go to this one but he went to this place full of people i know and um he left a briefcase on a chair while he was doing some surveying and the college was evacuated because he'd caused a bomb scare and it's so in interestingly like a few years ago i had my graduation from my master's there was only like 14 people on my course and one of the women were on my course was from

[00:21:13] gainsborough and at my graduation i met her son who went to this college and remembered this happening and i was like excellent you can't get away from him can you that was my dad when i was in year seven we had our head of science and i think i think i can say his name because this was in the whole daily mail so i don't think i don't think this is classified but dr manfield he was called that maybe i'll bleep it i don't know dox

[00:21:44] he lives at i'm no longer at that secondary school like come on dox myself by saying my secondary school anyway he was head of science he left suddenly in year eight and it was only in year 11 when this uh article came out the reason he was asked to leave is because he had left presumably by accident radioactive isotopes in the uh in the lab so yeah i presume not in one

[00:22:13] of those uh chambers uh what the like the gas chamber yeah we did have one of those and it leaked yeah it leaked um it was chlorine gas i think this this was a university but still very bad uh because my brother's a phd chemist and in the building one of the years he was there um they make crystals his apartment they basically just do they they're they they're they're they're new agey in this uh phd chemist

[00:22:43] department tell me more about crystals so you're thinking of like gemstones oh no it's called a joke i was misunderstanding for comedic purposes his his research is on photo switching dasses which i'm not going to explain but anyway uh one thing there's a thing called friction yes friction explosives oh sorry um and basically you make them by mixing different solutions together and then letting them sit and they become crystals crystals uh and this one person there's a cupboard

[00:23:13] where you put waste which then gets put in a special bin blah blah blah uh someone had put stuff in there not really thought about it left it uh the safety officer came in to do this bit and then big fucking crystal picked them up noticed what they were and went oh my god put them back down and then the entire building had to be evacuated for over two months because he'd noticed very very very luckily he'd noticed that they were friction explosive crystals if he had shook his hand when he put them down the whole floor would have been blown up

[00:23:42] they had to evacuate for two months because they had to call a special team in from france to deal with them jesus christ in another incident a long time ago at this place there was a type and we can talk about this again later because it involves mercury oh good yes oh because you bet we're coming back to that i forgot what the actual like uh name is but it's a particular kind of mercury right and someone they had gloves on and someone spilled a bit of this particular type of mercury on the glove and

[00:24:12] then a week later was in a coma and then six weeks later was dead oh because it had uh this particular kind of mercury binds to fat so it had binded to the brain oh god oh god yeah can't do anything about that so she just she's died and it's completely banned from the university now yeah shall we talk about ghost tonsil i was gonna say yeah yeah let's talk about casting into characters no let's tell stories so the main premise of this

[00:24:40] show is that roddy a little boy um is visited by another his name's roderick as you find out later and if i was called roderick i'd go by roddy as well to be fair like you know or rick yeah true that's it yeah roderick is visited by a little boy ghost who used to be a victorian shoeshine boy he's still a victorian shoeshine boy because he never ages despite actually aging in reality which is like he gets taller

[00:25:08] their voices get deeper yeah it's a real shame this is the problem with child actors ah puberty has visited this place yeah exactly right ghost puberty puberty that would suck i've died and i still have to go through puberty what a joke this deal is awful so um he asks roddy for help because the ghost hunter is after him at this point he doesn't know the identity of the ghost hunter but there is someone

[00:25:38] going round round it sniffing out ghosts and rounding them up putting them in jars for reasons we don't know um roddy has conveniently has second sight and second hearing which only one in a million people have one in a hundred thousand for second sight and then one in a million for second hearing or something you don't know for second smell sorry which is what the ghost does yeah second smell can you imagine if it was second taste you had to go around licking for ghosts

[00:26:07] you're like i kind of i kind of i kind of wish the sniff had got second taste at some point like that would have been like detaste yeah detest detest yeah yeah because because also i mean there is a really weird thing about noses in all these books that just comes up again and again and again like the word nose is hard to use but there's amount of synonyms for nose across the entirety of the book is is is mad i mean yeah the author doesn't like to use the word nose it's always like conk yeah yeah yeah

[00:26:37] it comes yeah so it's honker yeah yes that also comes up so um roddy is like yes i will help you um eventually like ah yes ropes in tessa his sister who appear to they appear to be the same age she's definitely older she's she in the second book i think um oh they say she's 13 at one point yeah he said yeah

[00:27:06] yeah um he said one of them definitely says she's almost 14 i think at some point so yeah first book they they call her his older sister yeah it's not evident in the show yeah in the show sorry i would i would have thought he was maybe like 12 when she was 14 that kind of an age gap would kind of make sense in the show at least anyway i think he's supposed to be like 11 12 and then she's 13 14 yeah yeah yeah that would make sense so what's the best way of explaining so shenanigans happen basically

[00:27:35] they do a little bit of investigating to find out who the ghost hunter is it's really not difficult it's very like if you ever watch sort of like midsummer murders kind of thing where it's like someone's dying oh and there's also someone new in town yeah that's it it also follows the midsummer murders thing where it's like oh look a guest star who's been in loads of other things i wonder if they could be the murderer because they're paid enough for it to make sense yeah so the uh main boy roddy is played by

[00:28:05] william theakston yes so it's a great name yes he uh can be seen in harry potter and the philosopher's stone he plays the seeker he play he plays the slytherin seeker the opposing seeker yes which is where i recognize him from he is now 40 which is a fact that just knocked all the air out of me we were we were two when it came out to be fair yeah that's true i went to see a few weeks ago i went to see a like in conversation with joe

[00:28:33] thomas and he was like i'm 41 and i have a baby and he was like this is what a 41 year old looks like these days it's like you're not 41 you're like 23 like how are you 41 it makes no i mean to be fair he does have a proper baby face yeah but still that's the in-betweeners boy yeah so who i can't remember the name of the guy that plays

[00:29:03] um what's he called william yes william is the name of the ghost confusingly enough so william povey um i can't remember the actor's name it's lee someone no because i don't think he's gone on to really do no and a lot of them a lot of them haven't so it's yes but it's not so surprising get enough money off of this you know good residuals well it has been repeated a huge amount so i'm you know i'm not that i'm i wouldn't be that surprised there are no physical dvd released sadly but you know yeah what's the tessa

[00:29:32] tessa's name is the sister um verity dearsley yes verity dearsley very good good is she's a victorian yeah it's a kick-ass name yeah she's in marketing nowadays i believe she should be an author based on her uh she'd write books if you're listening watching or both yeah um who else who parents parents yes so mom's been in a bit

[00:30:02] dad yeah let's talk about tracy brabin yes who plays the mum yes yeah you have knowledge about her mom she is yeah so she she she was an actress at the time she did coronation street and then became a labor mp until very recently and then in 2023 became the mayor of west yorkshire and is still that legend like i like the overlap there because in the show in the future tess becomes an mp yeah yeah yeah which is which obviously they could have no idea about the time but it's yeah it's great yeah i also i do

[00:30:31] also love that the future in the show is the wonderfully futuristic year of 2027 which is you know now only two years of so interesting because a lot of when shows do this like we normally we've already surpassed the time and yeah oh my god we've still got two years left all the vr gaming stuff could still happen yeah like a welding and i love like i was we was watching and it was like okay so it's clearly like summer and they're wearing multiple layers no no no no no no no july

[00:31:00] 2027 is gonna be way too fucking hot for that there is a show that i re-watched quite a lot is the thick of it and there's a yes a bit it's a line a ben will bond line where he's like talking about future and he says oh why like sarcastically he's like why don't you get back to me in i don't know 2017 and it's like yeah that was unthinkable in 2008 now is eight years ago so it's the same in yes minister there's a point where they're joking about um nuclear missile defences and he's like oh you

[00:31:29] know russia this was in 1987 i think it's like oh russia could have invented an entirely future-proof missile ballistic system by any time in the future he's like what do you mean any time in the future he's like well 2020 but you know that doesn't matter but now obviously we've completely surpassed that as well so it's you know it's like blade runner set in 2019 yeah which is weird oh we missed it yeah so yeah series one is like they discover who the ghost hunter is and we'll talk about her and just

[00:31:58] too early they they let that cat out of the bag both in the book and the show too early i agree i mean i get why it happens early in the book but but for the tv show i feel like you could have dragged that out a bit longer but then it but it can't but in the book it kind of doesn't because it's at the end of the first book where it is revealed but then the first book is a is very much a children's book oh it's short it's 96 pages long have you because it's and uh if you and obviously it's full of illustration as well which is also very nice to see so like it's

[00:32:26] uh so yeah it's definitely it it the books kind of go through this transformation where they kind of turn from children's books into almost ya kind of fringing on the end of it so the so the first book is very much like a children's chapter book like you can imagine i'd like reading this with your parents or it being like one of the first chapter books you read because there's pictures on virtually every page so it's that kind of it's that kind of thing but yeah but then the second book is very much more like you know there are like distinct chapters and no illustrations and all that kind of thing so it does kind of go through this transformation but but then

[00:32:55] interestingly of course in the book there's a lot more well they make a lot more of a kind of missteps that they make on the way to identifying the ghost hunter which as you say in the tv show is kind of smushed into like the first two episodes yeah books books one and two are series one yes so what basically happens in that is they discover who the ghost hunter is um what what else they meet the ghost they do some ghost hijinks at

[00:33:25] school they run her out of the shop they run her because she's she's kidnapped the local shop owner and then they run her out and tied her up in a cupboard and left her there for indeterminate period of time she's not she's literally just in the shop telling the boys about what's happening yeah yeah and then uh de sniff arrives is like the the handyman or the lackey delivery yeah and then yeah de sniff is the ghost hunters um renfield basically yeah

[00:33:53] yeah in this in the show she runs off she she gets away but in the book she is taken in by the police uh then they have a new hideout place tess gets accidentally kidnapped and taken to the new hideout place uh so they now know where they reside and then you have all the chillwood castle stuff that then happens yeah kind of at the end of it uh yeah and there's yeah because because because there's the whole the plot line that they excise from the second

[00:34:22] book is the whole thing about um wally's uncle trying to get that teacher's sack or get get her to leave yeah which is so mean so at the school you've got um uncle peter uncle mr harding mr mr harding mr harding mr harding he's called jamie no no no he's not called jamie he's he's got a name that i was like you wouldn't call jake is it jake i swear yes it is

[00:34:49] yeah uncle jake yeah yeah name a grown mamba so he's like jakey boy he's the evil head no i'm not headmaster i'm thinking of your podcast yeah caretaker and to be fair he he is clearly having the time of his life playing that part oh my god i have things to say about that actor but yeah um he they think that he is the ghost hunter at first because he's got a big nose yes and they call him nosey and old nosey is

[00:35:19] what they call him yeah yeah and the school bully wally crab is his nephew so they're in cahoots so there's lots of like b plot shenanigans in the book especially book two yeah with those two and they have nothing really to do it's kind of a plot as well the first like quarter of the second book is that and there's like this weird hint of like um william being like oh there's more stuff in the dark you don't know about and then it's just the fucking caretaker oh it's completely forgotten but it's

[00:35:49] not though because then in the start of the third book they then say oh william had warned them that darker things lived in the ethereal zones capital e capital z and you're like hold the phone what on earth easy yeah yeah like and then it's like it felt like when i was reading the second book that he had already sort of laid out how the season was gonna be because it reads weirdly separated like the beginning quarter should have been its own very short little book yeah and then the chill chilling till chillwood should have

[00:36:18] been its separate book it just feels like weirdly disjointed yeah so chillwood castle is a well it's a castle near where they live that is in the book it's like two minutes away it's really having one conversation and then they're there yeah well that's because they can elide a lot of the time sometimes they then have to get on a bus to go to it i was thinking this as i was listening to the second book like they um they go on a school trip to chillcastle i have to put all these kids

[00:36:48] on on a bus to drive them there but then in like the second series there's that bit sorry but there's a bit where the mum she like organizes a music festival in the village and the teacher sends wally off to to chillwood castle to get um an interview doesn't she no no no no no no that's no that's deadlock hall which is which is a different stately home in some closer part

[00:37:17] yeah i was like she literally sent him off it was two minutes away and i was like is there a bus i don't understand no it is different but different but yeah there's there's lots of there's yeah there's lots of like different stately homes that get to get used at different times true so that but the reason that they can actually get there so quickly sometimes is because when they fly they fly so when uh william gives them his shoeshine brushes to hold they can fly and they can turn invisible and it's so

[00:37:45] convenient because they can go to and from chillwood castle and deadlock hall yeah the other one um at will basically so if they have like an evening where they want to explore what's going on in the castle they can do it and then be back in time for bed so it's all very convenient but there's a lot of things it's very convenient yes yeah something that i really want to talk about is sorry we've actually not finished talking about the character all the yeah so

[00:38:14] gene marsh we have not discussed mother i mean i was thinking about who she reminded me of and she reminds me of diane from traitors if she was a traitor so when so so when she was on there were certain people who made that comparison when the show was on i remember seeing a couple of memes that were like i've seen her before yeah that kind of thing this is this is probably because i'm in like i'm in like on twitter with this really weird you're in certain yeah group where people were

[00:38:44] like that kind of crossover humor would make sense one thing i love is how cockney the whole thing is like we were we were googling her because i was like i want to know if she's putting this accent on her and she's definitely hamming it up but she is like east london yeah yeah yeah but also she's been in she was in she was in doctor who in the 60s she's been in like isn't she married to john perthway yes was well he died in the 90s

[00:39:11] so yeah but she's like an obe and she's just like she plays this character in a way she it looks exhausting so she acts oh she does it's chewing beautiful she's chewing those lines it is amazing she just looks it's so funny but like it's like it's funny now in retrospect but like i'm watching as a kid scary as hell like she

[00:39:39] really is like it maniacal yeah yeah she she does she does the thing that terence hardiman does in a demon headmaster as well which is walking the line perfectly between terror on the one side and pantomime villain on the other and it's it's a really fine line to tread but they both do it absolutely perfectly and so the performances you get are just incredible but you know but as you say like the amount of energy she must be putting into that part is is yeah she absolute constant professional beautiful every word she says uses the entire width of her

[00:40:08] mouth yeah it's amazing you know miranda richardson's character in good omens she sounds like her yes she's got the same like and i like when she in the third she starts to try and try and do a bit of a posh accent to like well she does that when she when she wants to work at the school as a cover oh yes as a cleaner yeah yeah she's as a cleaner and she's

[00:40:34] doing her interview with um nosy yeah mr harding and whenever she's talking to anyone else that is not dismiss to sniff she puts on a pretend posh voice but she loses within the first yeah yeah it's like such an amazing um decision to make like she'll try and be posh and then lose it because her evil just can't be contained i don't think as a society we make fun of southern accents enough because society

[00:41:05] loves to make fun of like regional northern accents but some sort of accents you just can't make them up no you just can't like such a caricature so i think it was funny with like that i suppose with tracy braven who is like not quite hiding a northern accent but you can hear it underneath it yeah i know i can definitely hear it but the thing about tracy braven's accent and i i googled her yeah yeah i had to youtube

[00:41:33] her to make sure that it was the same accent that she has in real life right yeah because i think that her accent in the show and her accent in real life sounds like someone putting on a northern accent and it's not she that's how she sounds i mean she might have done vote she might have done voice coaching that's a thing like maybe but she sounds so a very very specific set of people will understand what i'm about to say and meg's one of them i feel like i'm gonna fall out of this group very quickly we'll see then

[00:42:02] this happens they talk about the north i have no idea and you live there this will make sense in the year 2017 hull won city of culture and it's a it did it's true it's unbelievable but i mean you you did know that you're still with us right you're still with us it's a big city but it did it's a big theater city big theater history lots of theater in hull and when things

[00:42:29] toured or things were so hull truck is the big independent theater in hull when something was made for 2017 we put on in 2017 but it didn't have actors from that area or when something was touring and it was coming to hull but you know what i'm yeah yeah she she she knows the actors would for culture reasons for we're like you reason would they affect they would affect a

[00:42:57] hull accent and everyone like i was in the youth theater at this theater would you have done that and you don't really have i don't have really have a hull accent but if it's a very specific one and if someone's faking it you know and it just felt so patronizing like oh it's city of culture we're gonna bring this play to you well we're turning to harry bat now

[00:43:23] it is more newcastle than it is hull and i mean i know that you know what i mean because i was i said to the other guys in the youth theater like so have you noticed how when something's from out of town and they come to hull they've made this weird decision too and they were like yes and you can hear it and tracy braben to me sounds like that but miraculously that's just her voice it's so weird one of my favorite things about hull truck is that they like to because it's the

[00:43:53] hull independent theater they like to insert hull in some way in every show that's there so a couple of years ago they always do like a christmas production yeah it's always excellent the borrowers last year i went to see that that was good it was puppets oh wow yeah i went to see the railway children a few years ago and it was like instead of wherever the railway children are set it's like we're from beverly red i thought you were gonna say scarborough

[00:44:22] that's not how we sound well it's not how i sound anyway we've been sent to cherry burton oh my god it's much less specific but they do that in some like us shows they'll have a british character that sounds like they're working in the royal family household in 1922 oh yeah like could you and then i have to google because i'm like you you sound weird and then you google it and you're like oh no they're from london what the fuck are you doing and why do you sound like that well you can bet

[00:44:49] that you can bet in some of those american dramas though notes have been given where it's like more british and you're like okay fine we'll just have it in the air i'm the british side of it up because you know so the an actor i want to talk about is mr harding and the caretaker he's played by trevor byfield um who for most of his career actually went by ziggy byfield he played like serious police the serious police dramas isn't it that he used to do right he is like

[00:45:19] a big character actor like he was in like one or two episodes of basically everything and he he had a music career as well so no he did no no he's like serious legit stuff like this isn't you know so this is i've actually screenshotted this guardian so it was his um obituary and i think he

[00:45:41] died age 73 i think um i think 2014 or something so um in 1979 so this is just a very short obituary that someone's written in 1979 i was one of the musicians called up to play in a rock and roll band being filmed to show the aftermath of elvis presley the singer jb probie collapsed after a week

[00:46:06] of rehearsals and a soft-spoken understudy was shouted off by the audience to the rescue trevor ziggy byfield strode on stage grabbed the microphone and with true charisma belted out a standard set that left us in no doubt how we should accompany him the audience roared so he was like a proper like he was in um the rocky horror picture show so he was i believe took over tim curry he was the the narrator oh no no so no frank and furtzer right yeah he played frank and furtzer and i think

[00:46:35] he played the narrator as well oh wow and i think he's played eddie i think he he played lots of characters and he was like a big musical theater yeah kind of guy he also co-wrote with um peter perchard the joan of arc rock opera which was performed amazing so he wrote that why am i not watching this right now so this is another bit of a different obituary that i want to read

[00:47:01] byfield concentrated on tv acting there were many crime dramas in which he usually played villains although he was twice seen as a detective among a staggering 14 different roles in the bill he played 14 characters in the bill oh no no i love that it's the same character they just have this amazingly interesting life yeah like british clancy brown maybe

[00:47:31] he's just anytime there's a police thing it's like oh it's clancy brown of course yeah david caruso was like that because he was in my pd blue and then he was in csr miami as a ratio into the miami and so many other things yeah he was just an impressive actor well also andre brower from uh like the late andre brower brooklyn 99 he was in serious police drama before doing 99 as well so which there's so many police dramas there's clearly like a type of actor who you know

[00:47:56] you look like you could be a cop well that's the thing with um well that's uh with um with python they kept saying that because um because graham chapman kept being he kept getting cast as like army majors and like authority figures that was always his thing so he's like what would you be typecast as scientist no i don't know me yeah what would you be i'm not even kidding the past

[00:48:21] yeah i've been i've been told never get any facial piercings because i just look like i belong in a period drama i'd be typecast as delinquent okay i was truant yeah never leaves you so i feel like you could be in a hospital drama oh really okay interesting yeah i'm always interested in a surgeon so you know scrubs i feel yeah oh thanks yeah i thought you meant like

[00:48:47] what was it was a cadaver main character i'd love to be a dead body it'd be great easiest acting job ever yeah just sleeping on the job not the bill um casualty yeah they have like accident of the week oh yeah it's like you just open on someone in a bed and it's yeah so i'm on um trevor ziggy byfield's wikipedia right now these are the sections theater work television work

[00:49:14] personal life accident death do you all know about the accident i would love a section of my wikipedia page that's just you deserve to have an accident which is a line from the book yes yeah oh yeah oh it is yeah oh wow yeah we have yes yeah there's like a showdown with um mrs croker the ghost hunter and

[00:49:37] roddy he's like ghost lover ghost adora you deserve to have an accident and then she says ghosts are evil and roddy says no they're nice oh you've convinced me yeah i'm gonna give up the ghost of mobilizing me for now and become a functioning member of society thanks for convincing me in january 2009 he suffered a broken hip and ribs as well as a clapped lung when a tractor he was

[00:50:06] driving lost control on a road and hit trees before rolling down an embankment during filming of the itv show heartbeat four crew members were also hurt by field was airlifted to hospital and then and you know that he's been in a bunch because his filmography is only partial film yeah of course it is i really really hoped you were gonna say because this guy just has a tractor that he drives

[00:50:32] filming but wouldn't it what legend if he just had a tractor yeah i mean i think he he's earned his legend status oh 100 and he is and he is again he is having the time of his life in this role but you can tell funny he's like he has a line he has a line oh yeah just the one yeah he's one speaking party has it how much he hates litter but he also hates what he calls hanky panky

[00:50:57] he's like right right right so right so so that that one line has stuck with me since i first saw it when i was about nine years old yeah yeah and so just so so when so like so when i was watching the first two seasons of the show i was like hold on a minute but he he he's not done the line and then i got to episode three i was like oh there it is i was like that's what i remember when they're they're having the school dance that's it that's the one yeah yeah he's looking

[00:51:23] for roddy and it's because he thinks he's like taking a girl off into a different room and i was like to be fair to the guy for all of his faults he was trying to rescue a girl from what he thought was you know the wayward of yeah or he just hates sex which i mean he hates roddy he does hate roddy

[00:51:47] and he would hate roddy to get his dick wet so that's fine this is in our part yeah i was gonna say yeah and then like the next episode um there's a obviously the mum is um trying to organize a music festival and he's and running for for parish council which again with the future being the way it is it's quite amusing yeah so she's trying to like boost her the youth vote by organizing a music festival which is stupid because she's advertising at school and it's like they can't vote for you yeah

[00:52:17] this caretaker is so stuck on this idea he's like but think of the litter think of the anky thank you it's so funny that they've no one runs for parish council you go not like that you go to a council meeting you put your name forward and people vote you in that's how it was i love i did i did i did love the thing of disniff going canvassing though i thought that was like a really amusing part of it

[00:52:39] i was like he's trying to like be like smam up to them and it's like an old woman answers the door and he goes it's like the only bit that i actually laughed out loud like that is a genuinely excellent joke really i laughed at did you not laugh at the cow cliffhanger

[00:53:05] yeah so when tessa gets kidnapped and roddy it's supposed to be a bull but it clearly isn't it's a cow it's like that's not gonna do you any harm yeah they're trapped in with a cow actually they can do you a lot of sharks especially if they've got babies with them they'll fuck you up oh like yeah but not if they're alone in a very small barn moving very

[00:53:31] slowly towards you yeah completely unaggravated that's fine have you ever gone like walking in the countryside and accidentally ended up in a cow field yes they'll fucking kill you right they will fucking kill you i love a school that's only got two teachers well there's more in the book though obviously there's two yeah uh there's a male teacher and a female teacher there's also the head teacher who's referred to obliquely so you know like

[00:53:56] she's got the caretaker that guy he tries to make me sick on the bus oh yeah and mr witt mr who's described as having like constantly well-pressed suits and stuff and i was like we know exactly the kind of person you're describing yeah and then the female teacher the science teacher who uh in the book uh he's also roddy's like form teacher apparently um we love the everything teacher the uh uncle is trying to scare out of the school at the beginning of the second book yeah yeah yeah

[00:54:25] so i should mention this now i now i've got it lee godwin is the actor that plays william povey oh okay yeah william povey and um so you know main character i should name him and richard hansen plays disniff yes so what i love about disniff is one of my favorite tropes is well yes he's got he's got paint on his teeth like to make his teeth look really gross

[00:54:49] yeah yeah um he is in a film with it's quite a uh well-rated film with the guy who is in oh uh thingy sim what's his name john sim john sim yeah he's in a film with john sim um he looks a bit like john sim yeah yeah it's quite a budget johnson budget john sim yeah yeah i'm surprised they didn't do away with the paint on the teeth at one point because like

[00:55:17] i felt like in the first series they did quite a good job of portraying him as a bit greasy but later on he was just a regular guy with bad teeth and then he stole all that money and i was like get yourself some new teeth yeah and it was like in series three they didn't it really feel like they'd carried that through he just looked like he didn't even look greasy anymore he just had bad teeth yeah like just get rich is that the guy with regular teeth just leave him alone yeah yeah one of

[00:55:45] my favorite like double act tropes is the evil person in the lackey that just fucking hate each other yeah like something a lot of the time a woman yeah something that i just thought was so funny was their constant bickering like but really aggressive oh yeah like they hated each other she hated to sniff but also like but then in the book you find out that she's got all this staff living in her house so the fact that she keeps to sniff around is a constant question of why on earth

[00:56:14] do you put up with this like and he hates her oh yeah how much is she paying him and also nothing surely nothing like yeah like you're a fugitive at one point so how are you paying him how much money would you guys need to be paid to to maintain that relationship well clearly not enough if he lives in a caravan that's falling to pieces as i would like to believe yeah it's just it's a weird relationship that as an adult you're like i need to know the logistics but as a child you're like

[00:56:39] yeah they're all evil together it makes sense he's maybe like what 25 or something yeah probably something about a bad 25 yeah lives on the outskirts of town in a caravan like you would not let your children near him he's he's terrifying and there's the caravan else nothing's wrong with a caravan something's wrong with his caravan it doesn't have any proper doors you're discriminating no i'm not discriminating okay well if i'm discriminating you let your children near to

[00:57:07] sniff i've got any kids there's a scene like i think a single scene where he interacts with mr harding and it's like those two playing off each other is like you there's not room in a scene for those two massive characters like it's just not so it's so funny because it's like out cutting each other

[00:57:32] basically it's like it's fascinating to me that both in the book and in the show he's allowed in the school at all like yes but he's but he's a fire officer and you know that because his van has a fire department written on it can you imagine you're like someone rocks up in it dressed as a firefighter there's no fire and he's like i'm doing a survey and you're like what what do you mean so his cover to get into the school is that he's the lab technician yeah and that's how he's the legitimate lab technician

[00:58:02] at one point he gets he actually gets the job in although that's in the tv series in the book in the book he just yeah he turns up as a fire officer and is like i'm inspecting your fire extinguishers well and i'm glad in the book i can't remember her name uh roddy's teacher's like what the fuck are you doing yeah what do you mean we get lit that's not a thing gathering ingredients for the ghost immobilizing vapor which is what yeah the ghost hunt uses i loved when the teacher um when mrs croke has

[00:58:30] become the cleaner and she keeps looking in the window of roddy's class and the teacher i was like this is so realistic the teacher goes and opens the door and he's like can i help you why do you look at him but going back to the mercury that is one of the ingredients for the giv which you do not have at

[00:58:54] school you don't have in a school it's very poisonous we know that now she's made it abundantly clear that mercury is very poisonous i mean i mean the idea well i mean the idea that she's suffering the long-term effects of mercury poisoning i mean maybe that's so true maybe that kind of makes more sense right what are the other ingredients that's what i want to know i can't remember what the other she does tell her she's like she does at one point hot ash which is potassium oh yeah it's nice that

[00:59:23] she thinks she can mix mercury into other liquids and then spray it out of something it's like quite she doesn't work like that but also the fact she thinks she can do that in 1887 not having the scientific equipment that you would probably need in order to make it like yeah anyway i did say while we were watching this though going back in time would be very useful to stock up on things that you can't get over the counter anymore that's also true yeah that's also true can't get opium without a great time without that i was gonna say yeah

[00:59:53] yeah opium with a prescription you can get opiates opium please uncooked what are we talking about characters yeah characters so do we do we want to do the rest of the characters in the show because we've got the dad and then the bad that in the future and in the past characters oh of course yeah leo and bex oh

[01:00:22] leo and bex are so boring yeah eric discount gandalf you serve in series three they've um which oh yeah do you want me to explain go for it so yeah so so in series three you end up so at the end of series two mrs croaker opens a time hole between multiple different eras and so season three is set between it's a bloody mess can i also just say i fell asleep while we were watching this episode and

[01:00:47] i was like guys what happened i fell asleep and they went a time hole i don't believe so right so so then you get season three which is set between 1887 the present day which i guess is like 2002 and 20 and the massively futuristic gear of 2027 you know when the whole world has changed apparently so and and so in what i think is a massive mistake they abandon roddy and tessa in the present day

[01:01:12] and then end up with leo and bex who are roddy's children from the future and unfortunately boring yeah so bex i don't mind she's a lot she's all right leo no he's just like acts with his eyebrows a lot and he can't deliver his line delivery is really not that but but but what i really wanted like what i would have been really much more interested for them to do would have been to

[01:01:41] have brought roddy and tessa from from the present to see themselves in the future because that would you could have done like a back to the future thing and that would have been quite interesting a little bit smush all the back to the futures together yeah yeah it was a mess there wasn't any wild west though unfortunately that would have been awesome i would have been in time just different countries three ends with um so william um meets another ghost called flora from his era

[01:02:08] that died like a year after him so they're like buddies oh they missed a trick there didn't they oh no no no no no no there's definitely there's definitely hints of a love story thing going on there in the book 100 yeah so like yeah that's a shame for roddy yeah well he's gay he's gay ghost best friend yeah i'll get on to that i do need to yeah okay i'll do we'll do it later okay we'll we

[01:02:32] have things to say the books end with um william flora tessa and roddy going through the time hole into um william's era yeah and then it ends like how are we going to get back and then it ends and i think instead of the clusterfuck that series three was they should have ended series two like

[01:02:58] that and had them in william's era yeah trying to get back it would have been cleaner it would have been the characters that we love i don't know why it was messy yeah i mean there were bits of series three that i thought were fantastic the character combinations wally teams up with disniff brilliant which is just hilarious um the ghost hunter i mean we go in part two we're actually going to talk a

[01:03:24] bit more about the plot so maybe you should do that but that's just what i let yeah let's go on so i was at work i'd seen the series meg was just watching it i get a message from meg she says so do they kiss well i've not seen the last episode yet but i can say with absolute certainty

[01:03:46] that no the 12 year old ghost boy and the 12 year old human boy in cbbc in 2002 do not kiss i was gonna say can you imagine the headlines there's a part that um it's in i think it's in series one where series two it's definitely one of those two they they blur together in my head so oh it is

[01:04:12] series two because um wally is now pursuing tessa yes they get off the school bus together wally's going to um tessa's house to interview her mom about um her parish council running which is not a thing yeah and um he gives tessa some of the stuff that he's carrying for her to carry and william is watching this happen in the distance and he's looking a bit like

[01:04:37] like annoyed that she's interacting with him annoyed that he's just given her all of this stuff then then roddy steps off the bus and william goes and also then you've got roddy's subplot with is it amanda the other girl katherine who he has zero interest in at all yeah katherine's pursuing roddy wally's pursuing tessa and like just it's set up to

[01:05:03] make us think wow these are the hottest siblings in the school like everyone's into these guys katherine then roddy steps off the bus um william goes and then katherine comes around the corner and is like roddy would you like to walk the long way home with me and william goes yeah he's trying he's trying to speak to roddy and he's just not getting an opportunity to speak to him but he like

[01:05:27] he just lights up when he sees it yeah kids are supposedly hot shit but i like but roddy has no friends roddy has no friends except for william the whole time well also do we talk about this yes we do yes we do that's why we're here you can cut it later exactly um well this is for meg to say actually because it's what she picked up on but i do have to agree oh at the beginning of season two there's a bit of a between the siblings the siblings have some chemistry

[01:05:56] they do actually have a bit of chemistry unfortunately no it's fine because they're actors yeah no it is fine but like they're not actually related we can suspend our disbelief enough we did come to a consensus on this before we we all agree on this point though don't we you start the second i didn't feel this at all in the first season i thought okay yeah siblings great and then you begin the second season you're like wait a minute wait a minute well at the school disco

[01:06:20] two they're both being pursued by these you know other characters and they look at each other and they're like let's dance and the two siblings like slow dance to this song and it's just yeah i must admit like i was really really surprised because i went looking for this on a03 and fanfiction.net and stuff like just no absolute crickets nothing at all for any pairing at all even about this show so i was like okay clearly no one's interested in writing fanfiction

[01:06:48] for them which is really surprising considering the amount of potential you have for in terms of numbers of pairings and that kind of stuff so yeah real surprise be the first look you do not want to see the fanfiction i write oh what's it i definitely do now i know well i say that actually some of this i've written is actually committed to audio since it's on a bonus episode of our podcast so if you want to go listen to fanfiction i write then feel free it is it demon headmaster yeah yeah yeah it's because it's so the um the end of the second book is very very abrupt and doesn't

[01:07:17] resolve anything that happens so i wrote this like epilogue bit that kind of gets a lot makes a lot of it better so yeah so have a listen to that if you want to i had to when i was at college i did um creative writing and i was being i was a dickhead and i was being asked to do an exercise that i didn't want to do so i made it star trek fanfiction because i didn't want to do the exercise what i do like with the siblings is like if you ignore that that side of it you're like these

[01:07:44] siblings are just like we've got much more important things to do than dating could you guys just leave us alone yeah they're just like no we clearly want to date each other leave us alone yeah they're very like put upon they're very busy all the time yeah so they're always like talking about they help their friend a lot and they never have any complaints about it and they've got their schoolwork well this is the thing so there's also like there's this undercurrent with tessa in the books about how she's really stressed about exams all the time and that doesn't really come up in the tv show but it's

[01:08:13] definitely there's there's a really there's a really kind of nice scene i guess in the in the first book where when roddy gives her the brush for the first time and she flies around it describes her as like crying because she's so happy that she can do this kind of thing and i was like oh she's like she hasn't been happy in years yeah because she's like and you just get she's like so stressed i'm like oh wow this is really like well in the beginning of the book and the tv series before she knows about william they're doing they go very hard on the annoying older sister yes like they

[01:08:42] bicker a lot and as it gets dropped instantly on the second you have something going on with one of your siblings all energy is on that you're friends now yeah focus do you have a secret together your friends i would have felt exactly how she felt felt if i'd have been her though because like the first the very first episode she's like quite angsty she's very different character she's very

[01:09:05] annoyed with roddy and it seems like they're they're kind of setting up a like roddy can do no wrong kind of situation yeah like golden child youngest younger sibling kind of thing yeah so because william is a shoeshine boy he they come home one day and all of the shoes in the house have been including their white trainers yeah they've been shined and they're like lined up on the stairs and the parents like thank because obviously they blame on roddy and they're like thanks roddy like

[01:09:34] and um tessa comes like comes out from her room with like and she's like no this isn't a good thing he's ruined my my my um schedule he's ruined my best trainers yeah she's holding up these white trainers that have been polished and now they're black and shiny yeah and the dad comes in and he goes well i think it's a great idea let's say 50p a shoe and basically like gives him gives him five

[01:09:58] quid yeah and he's like i know roddy hasn't done it but say he had done it he's just been massively rewarded for ruining tessa's life yeah and why are you paying him you're the one that your 14 year old hasn't got a job you're gonna have to pay for her new trainers i mean sponsored shoe shine that's his excuse that's his excuse yeah yeah i was gonna say on that should we talk about the dad briefly yes is it right oh yeah we've had a lot of conversations yes dad yeah good husband bad

[01:10:24] husband what is he because i think he's just a husband i think yeah like you i feel like he does i feel like he tries his best that's i feel that's i feel like i think there are things he does that you could be like oh well that's bad but like for example the whole second series like the moment isn't interested in anything other than looking for her campaign and there he is like but he just

[01:10:47] tried to support her he also complains to his child it's like i don't exist anymore she never has time for me yeah she's like oh i've got this thing to organize i've got this paper to write for i've got all these projects going on it's so stressful and he's like but what about the thing is dated for us they tried to like make her they've they've gone feminist with her because in the first series

[01:11:11] she doesn't really do very much and i i get it but like you are also like if i mean if my boyfriend did that to me i'd also be upset yeah he's got this like pathetic little c-plot of the dad trying to get when he organizes a date for them and she can't do it because there's going to be a big debate and as as a wife you would go sorry we can't go tomorrow night shall we go the day after

[01:11:38] yeah exactly she's just like fuck you basically she's like well this is the only opportunity i'm ever gonna have to do this and he's like oh well if that's how if that's the response he gets when he does try to do something nice yeah then the reason why like it's because like also he he's never really depicted as really doing anything like there's one time where he's doing a job at the sweet shop right he tinkers and then every other time where she's like have you fit have you fixed have you done my table yeah and she has to ask him so many times and i said to meg i was like if

[01:12:08] he wanted to he would have but you said you say that but when they when they get off the bus he's fixing a bush shelter yeah so she'll get elected but he had been contracted to do that weeks ago and hasn't done it no but he is doing it to help her around yeah you know that's fair but he'd been contracted to do it no he's not doing it to help her out i mean no i see your point and i do like this character i do but she is she's running because she's like oh everything's run down in

[01:12:37] this town i mean that bus shelter it's not been done yet to be fair that's a joke you can see coming a mile away but it's still funny though and she's like and it was there was a contractor who was supposed to do it weeks ago he's in the background and he goes oh that is why in the background of some shots he's like fixing it because that was his job but the thing is is that it's not his passion what's his passion playing guitar playing he asks he asks if he can perform at

[01:13:05] the music festival and she slams him down and she's like no that's not what the youth of today want to listen to so she's not being a supportive wife and then when the music festival does go wrong she makes he's the one who yeah he she makes him step in and he does save the day yeah and it's like okay well if you just supported each other i could all have gone a lot better i think they need to get on the same page more that's kind of the thing but i must but having said that i must admit

[01:13:33] the relationship they have in the book in the tv show is so much better than the relationship they have in the books because they're virtually at like i mean well i mean the mother is almost like abused by all these ghosts just like doing ridiculous things and then the dad's kind of not even there so like i'm yeah i'm glad they give them actual characters to be in the book where he opens tessa's mail oh yeah yeah and then gets mad at her for sending it to herself yeah she's like

[01:13:59] it was a drink to me yeah yeah the thing the thing i think he does that is questionable is when um mrs croker comes around to the house and starts spraying ghost immobilizing vapor everywhere and um she basically like makes her leave and when the dad comes home she's like she's fuming about it she's like that woman came around to my house and she thinks she was spraying air freshening

[01:14:26] and she's like you know she insulted me she's spraying air freshening everywhere and the dad's like nah doesn't sound real but then it's like the more pressing thing that i think she did when she was there was she chased your child upstairs and was smashing on his door and trying to catch him and yell at him and i'm like of all the things she did while she was at your house spritzing some what you thought was air freshening is fairly low on the list the priorities of the parents are a little

[01:14:51] but you should believe your wife you should believe your wife you know why the heck why the heck would she lie about that like that's so weird um there's one more character thing that i would like to discuss and then do you think it might be a good idea to talk about the various plot lines yeah which i think we can do in part two indeed all of it oh no no i want to talk about wally oh yeah

[01:15:20] so he's very much a side character like well he's series three and i think series three entirely belongs in part two because it's plot heavy we can all agree that you get it though right yeah yeah he would um so it's the sideburns it's the sideburns yeah yeah yeah well he's supposed to be the bully right

[01:15:44] in the books he's the most ineffectual in the books he's awful he is awful but but he's not a bully really he's just highly irritating he's actually just kind of i mean his name is wally he's just kind of stupid but then but there's also like there's a bit that is the there's the bit in the third book that's really uncomfortable to read where they're having tea with his aunt

[01:16:08] yes and it's like it's really i don't i don't know it feels like wally's family's being presented as being really trashy yes because they love money and all this kind of stuff and i'm like that was very uncomfortable to read yes there's a couple things in the books that smack a little bit like 90s 80s yeah yeah what like when the guy in the park sees a ghost and um he's drunk and he's like

[01:16:33] he's like he's like the liberal use of the word tramp in that bit yeah yeah yeah so wally i he's one of my favorite characters in the whole thing i can't remember the name of the actor um because he's again he didn't really go on to continue actually i really thought he did because i somehow thought i recognized him yeah he looks like he looks like steven from basil crush

[01:16:57] oh you're so right that's what it is yes he's got such a 90s face he's got like 90s little boy face i don't know if that means it means something to me anyway um we're on the same page yeah as soon as he gets a crush on tessa he becomes like a doting kind of puppy like he's annoying but he doesn't

[01:17:22] really do a lot of bullying yeah i mean maybe a little bit more in the book but he's just irritating and it feels like he has no friends because the person that he interacts with the most is his uncle yeah it's a bit who clearly doesn't have any like you clearly know what the school thinks particularly highly of yeah and i think it's just very sweet and in series three which we'll get into because it's there's a lot to talk about but he becomes the lackey's lackey

[01:17:47] yeah he is like pushed around by de sniff yeah and it just seems bored it's the fact that he is the actor who well apart from william and the ghost hunter like he is the sort of well he's in if you think about in terms of the number of episodes over the course of the whole series he's in nearly all of them yeah yeah in a way that only mrs croker and de sniff and he owned not de sniff arguably and william are like he's he's one of the most consistent characters he's constant yeah like it's really surprising that they bring him back in season three because you'd think because they

[01:18:17] don't bring roddy and tessa back obviously you know the two series regulars continuity yeah yeah it takes you from yeah the first half to the second half yeah exactly and he has amazing comic timing oh he does yeah i just he's painted as a bully because of like that archetype that you need to include in a children's drama but he he feels like a friend to me i like it but then but then the arc of those of those characters often is kind of bully gets absorbed into the group and becomes

[01:18:44] part of it eventually i mean that happens in that cordelia and buffy yeah well and it happens in the newer demon headmaster books that kind of happens you get a bully who's kind of brought into the fold and then they become part of the part of the scooby club or whatever yeah happens in arthur happens in arthur very early yeah exactly yeah so so so you can and i think in the books you can kind of see where that was going but well you could see that he was kind of desperate for a bit of attention exactly yeah like in the third book it feels a bit like that yeah yeah definitely is he

[01:19:13] new because in the books they reference how his uncle is new at the school so did like the family just oh i don't remember that so no so yeah so in the first book they describe they describe mr harding as the new caretaker which is kind of that bait and switch thing about like oh someone news in times that it's to kind of provide cover there i guess sorry hit the microphone but the um but yeah so but it's unclear whether that means that wally has also moved to the school because when roddy comes

[01:19:40] into class for the first time it's not like oh you're a new kid or whatever which you think they would draw attention to if that were the case so i i get the impression that like his uncle might have moved there recently but wally's pretty been there for quite a long time to go back to the thing about his his family so where in third book they go on holiday to london because that is where

[01:19:58] holidays yeah yeah um and just to keep the gang all together it turns out that wally crab and his uncle and his aunt and his cousin are staying at the house next door the description of the family is really uncomfortable yes the i mean the aunt is described as like too much lipstick orange face

[01:20:26] no no the daughter's described as orange face that's right which is correct yes and then to be fair to them they they meet they meet on the street and the daughter and the wife are like tessa we're going shopping do you want to come all girls together yeah and it's quite you know it's like friendly what are supposed to be same age i think is the implication to be fair that was sort of the trend at the time just go shopping no no the the makeup oh sure yeah but it's just it's

[01:20:56] that it's the way they're presented it's like we know that this is meant to be the bad family and it's like they get talking on the street and it's like they're being perfectly friendly oh yeah but they're just talking about shopping a lot i see and it's like tessa doesn't have any interest in that because you know she's the main girl and she's she's not like everything i think it's i think i think the line that really did it for me is where that is it so they think it's like a maths lesson or something and they're talking about like buying fruit in pence or something and i was like

[01:21:23] which is for nine yeah yeah yeah and i was like oh inflation i remember that to do the maths to see if i could get it maths is it you know you need it more than ever now you've got to add up bigger numbers because like they they go to the sweet shop in the show and their the sweets are all less than a pound it's like 80 cent oh sorry 80 pence for something i was like oh remember did you not have a used to go to the shop and be able to buy like a haribo straw yeah repeat oh yeah yeah that's what i'm

[01:21:52] talking about it being like you can't do that now everything's smaller and more expensive yeah and comes in plastic already i don't get it in a paper bag from a plastic box so we've spoken at great length about the characters um and the actor mainly the characters so i think in part two we're probably

[01:22:16] going to get deeper into the plot lines the comparisons between the book and the tv show um we're going to get deeper going to go for a deeper dive indeed yes and if so you want to find that you can find us look into my podcast.com or any places where there are podcasts we're usually there itunes spotify all those places suddenly it will be audio only so um because we're not you know because we're not quite set up a video yet we've not quite made that great leap but um it will be

[01:22:43] part two will certainly be there and you can follow thoughts tv on instagram at thoughts underscore underscore tv on instagram at thoughts underscore underscore fuck me it's not you were like this can i just say this is so surreal being in the room as you do this i was just i was just pointing this out this is so surreal on instagram at thoughts tv the o is a zero and on tiktok at thoughts tv pod

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[01:23:37] twitter brackets x everywhere i write it because i'm like oh you know i can't i'm not bending to the

[01:23:42] will of that man neither neither am i but you know some people might be idiots this podcast is part of

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