Ways with Words - 1x02 - Episode 2- Followmy.tv

AWAY WITH WORDS, presenter Neil Innes falls foul of the Roundheads (while dressed as a Cavalier), gets nosy about Cromwell, tries to get ahead with a wig, and discovers a taste for eel pie, as he sets about probing the history which lies hidden in everyday words and phrases. The second programme in the series plunges him into the midst of Civil War hostilities, where he swiftly discovers the origins of phrases like "keep your powder dry" and "a flash in the pan". It all starts to get a bit personal when he explores the expression "bald as a coot", but thankfully there is only a model of Oliver Cromwell around when Neil starts to nose out the nick-names bestowed upon a man whose most prominent facial feature was described as a carbuncle. Cromwell was under no illusions about his looks, of course, having famously ordered his portrait painter not to flatter him but to "remark all the roughness, pimples, warts and everything you see." This programme takes Neil to Ely in Cambridgeshire where he goes eel catching and visits Cromwell's house. And to Colchester in Essex, where, members of the English Civil War Society are only too happy to demonstrate how the language acquired the expression "up to the hilt" with Neil as the victim! Find out too why we "pay through the nose", who ate "humble pie", and how we come to have different words for meat (beef, mutton, pork) and the animals which produce it (cow, sheep, pig).