The Compendium Podcast
An Assembly of Fascinating and Intriguing Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information on a topic to help you stand your ground at any social gathering. We explore big stories from true crime, history, and extraordinary people.
The Compendium Podcast
Roald Dahl: A Life Shaped by War, Words, and Whimsy
In this episode of The Compendium, we fly headfirst into the fascinating life and work of Roald Dahl. A juggernaut of children's literature whose works were just as fantastical as his life story. Today we discover how Dahl's experiences, from his adventurous spirit to his time as a fighter pilot and diplomat, shaped his unique storytelling style.
Adam traces his journey from the creation of whimsical worlds and characters from favorites like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda". But also, we explore his secret World War II spy group "The Irregulars" which was marked by both controversy and creativity, revealing a complex character behind the genius of his children's stories.
We give you the Compendium, but if you want more, then check out these great resources:
1. "Boy: Tales of Childhood" Autobiograph by Roald Dahl
2. "Going Solo" by Roald Dahl - Dahl's experiences in Africa and in the RAF
3. "Roald Dahl's Marvellous Medicine" by Tom Solomon
4. "The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington" by Jennet Conant
5. "Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl" by Donald Sturrock
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Credits:
- Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
- Intro and Outro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin
- All the Latest Things Intro: Clowns by Giulio Fazio
[EPISODE 48] Children's Author, WWII Pilot and Secret Spy..?! The Life of Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: And whilst attempting to land, the undercarriage struck a boulder, causing the aircraft to violently crash. Dahl managed to push open the cockpit canopy and escape, crawling out from further harm from the explosion of the plane's fuel tanks and the subsequent machine gun fire unleashed by the heat. Wow.
Introduction to the Compendium Podcast
Kyle Risi: Welcome to the compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We are a weekly variety podcast where each week I attempt to tell Adam Cox everything he needs to know about a topic I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing.
We cover topics from the dark corners of true crime, historical events and incredible people. We give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. But this week, in the driving seat, we have Adam
Adam Cox: Cox. Hello, Kyle. How's it going?
Yeah, good, thank you. I'm back in the driving seat, ready to tell you something both fascinating and intriguing, of course.
Ooh,
Kyle Risi: I just feel glad that I can just put my feet up. Literally, your feet are up. My feet are up. . But yeah, I can just chill now, man. I've got my cup of tea, I've got my bottle of water, I might have some wine, I might have some chocolate, and I'm just going to hand over to you, man.
So, what is the episode
Adam Cox: today about?
Introducing the Episode's Topic: Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: Well, in today's episode of The Compendium, I have for you an assembly of adventure. spies, and some shootle in the skies, a life before snozzwangers and quogwinkles.
Kyle Risi: What the hell are these words? I cannot think. Are we doing
Adam Cox: Shakespeare or something? Shakespeare? No, not quite.
Um, do those names or words not ring a bell? Anything from your childhood? I can
Kyle Risi: honestly say no.
Adam Cox: Well, they were a clue, to a famous author that gave us The Big Friendly Giant. Okay. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Uh huh. And James the Big Giant Peach.
We're talking about Roald Dahl! We are indeed. He's an international, best selling author with publications in 49 languages and he's also got connections to World War II. The U. S. President, Walt Disney, Queen Elizabeth, and James Bond. Oh, did he do it with Queen Elizabeth? Not that I'm aware of. Okay,
Kyle Risi: so it's not that
Adam Cox: kind of podcast.
No, scandal as such. , Uh, but um, his history is really quite fascinating because everyone knows him as the children's author. Mm hmm. But before he became a children's author, there's a whole mystery and spy life and everything that he got up to in World War II.
Kyle Risi: Really? So he was a spy,
Adam Cox: was he? He was, yeah. He's led a very colourful life before he started, uh, writing children's books. He, he's dead now though, isn't he? He is, he died in 1990, um.
Oh really, that long ago? Yeah, quite a while
Kyle Risi: ago. I thought of something really More recent than
Adam Cox: that. Oh, no, he's been dead for a while Oh God, but he's most famous for some of those words I mentioned at the beginning because he came up with over 500 new words by mixing up letters and using kind of funny word tricks like Spoonerisms and and mallow propisms, which involve moving letters of a word around, but it still has the same sort of context.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, or he comes up with a word which sounds like another word, so you kind of know what the meaning is, even if he doesn't directly explain what those words are. Sure,
Kyle Risi: yeah. See, this is why I thought you were talking about Shakespeare, because Shakespeare was also famous for, like, inventing a whole bunch of different words.
The only one that comes to mind at this moment in time was, like, puppy love, as an example. He, like, invented that. But he was notorious for like, inventing new words. So it's really interesting to see a modern day
Adam Cox: version of that. Yeah, and like Shakespeare, some of those words have now entered the English language or the dictionary, like oompa loompa, that's now in there.
Oh really? Yeah, um, and And I think Golden Ticket as well, which comes from obviously Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Kyle Risi: That's not a word though, is it? That doesn't
Adam Cox: go in the dictionary. There's something like it, I don't know, the way it is used maybe, like that's your golden ticket. Um, so some other words that he came up with, uh, which I think are quite fun, there's lickswishy and delumptious, which would mean tasty.
Brilliant. And uckyslush and rotsom, which wouldn't be tasty at all. I see what you
Kyle Risi: mean, like they are brand new words that we've never heard before, but it makes sense. When you say the word, I instantly know what it would
Adam Cox: probably mean. So let's quiz you on that one. I'm gonna give you a word. Okay.
Or a few words, and you've got to tell me what you think they mean. Do it. Biff
Kyle Risi: squiggled. Ooh, um,
Adam Cox: like bamboozled. Yep, that's right. Confused or puzzled. Wow, nice. if something was darksome. So something's
Kyle Risi: dark and mysterious
Adam Cox: and ominous. Yeah, murky. Uh, if someone said exunctly. Come on, he's a bit
Kyle Risi: obvious, like, that is like, exactly.
Adam Cox: Yeah, okay, fine. Um, but what about Gollop?
Kyle Risi: Ooh, Gollop. Um, I Golloped him. I, I ate him in one.
Adam Cox: Yeah, so it's a big gulp. Oh, okay. So yeah, it's interesting and it's true, it does work, uh, clearly. Um, but before we get into his life and how it all basically, um, but before we go into his history, um,
But before we go into his backstory, um, I think it's time for
Kyle Risi: All the latest things!
This is a segment of our show where we segue into a brief foray into the fun things we've discovered from the past week. Could be weird facts, strange news, or just an
All the Latest Things: Fun Facts and Strange News
Kyle Risi: update on what we've been up to.
Adam Cox: So Kyle, what have you got for us today? Well,
Kyle Risi: my all the latest things for this week is just basically a reminder that human nature is unchanging, and even considering the amount of time that's gone by in human history, we still really love fart jokes, your mama jokes, and anything that's just, I don't know, Childish?
Petty, and you know, you know, that kind of stuff. So, I was reading on Reddit that very recently, Um, they discovered a 3, 800 year old Babylonian, uh, inscription on a tablet by a student who sent a letter to his mother complaining about the quality of his clothing. Yeah, and it's really incredible. And you can , , imagine, like, a Babylonian , tablet where they've got all these, like, little triangular , kind like, inscriptions, like hieroglyphics or whatever.
Yeah. And the content of it is really incredible. Listen to what the letter said. So. I might butcher some of these words, but it said, Tell lady Zinu, Idin, Sin, sends the following message. May the gods, and I love this name of the god, Shamash. Shamash. Shamash, god Shamash, Marduk, and Idlibrat, keep you forever in good health for my sake.
Which is interesting, like, I hope you are well. For my sake.
Adam Cox: Otherwise. Otherwise, Otherwise,
Kyle Risi: yeah, it's so selfish, but it goes on to say from year to year The clothes of the young gentleman here, meaning at the university that he is studying at or the school, become better But you let my clothes get worse from year to year Indeed, you persist in making my clothes poorer and poorer, more scanty, at the time, at a time when our house At a time when in our house wool is used up like bread, you have made my clothes poor.
The son of Adam Idahim, whose father is only but an assistant to my father, has two new sets of clothes, while you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me, in spite of the fact that you bore me. And his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him, while you do not love me.
Adam Cox: Wow, he's got some parent issues.
He's got some,
Kyle Risi: someone said in the comments like, Yeah, sounds like a teenager, if I've ever heard one.
Adam Cox: What happened to the good old fashioned, I hate you, get out of my life. Yeah,
Kyle Risi: essentially this is it. But it just goes to show that even after all years, thousands of years have gone by, Like kids don't change, like people don't change.
Yeah, and I think when we went when we visited Pompeii in Italy Well, I must be like 10 years ago now There was all this graffiti that there was discovered on the side of some of these buildings and things like Your mama jokes, like your mama so fat or your mom your mama can take like a big old hard on You know what I mean? ? One was, um, I am giving up on women, and only men shall now my attention. Basically saying like, I'm giving up on women. That's it. All women are like, I don't know.
Adam Cox: He's like, that's it, I'm becoming gay. And everyone's looking like, you've always been gay.
Kyle Risi: You've always been a homo. But yeah, it's just really fascinating that like, we still have the same childish mentalities or the same kind of like, insults that we throw at people after
Adam Cox: all these years. Although that's a lot more effort to like, I don't know, inscribe that onto some tablet than just, I don't know, just shouting it.
I
Kyle Risi: guess so. The other thing that I found out this week, which I found really fascinating, do you know what a cicada
Adam Cox: is? Uh, Uh, it's like a cricket or some kind of thing.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, when you go to a hot country and you're walking in the early evening, you just hear that,
Adam Cox: like, ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Yeah, that grasshoppery type sound.
Kyle Risi: So actually there are like dozens and dozens of different species of cicadas around. And the thing about a cicada is that they will go dormant for a certain period of time. They will like lay their eggs and then the larvae will exist underground for a set number of years and then they'll come up.
Um, and then they'll swarm, they'll mate, and then they'll all die and then they'll lay their eggs and then that's it. But the interesting thing is because there's so many different species that are around, they actually have different times that they'll incubate under the ground so that they don't come up at the same time and then mix or cause like competition for their species in terms of the resources that are around.
Oh wow. But what's really fascinating is that well who decides what amount of time that they will buried themselves under the ground before coming up. And what's incredible is that they're really crazy mathematicians because they will typically incubate using a prime number because prime numbers are less likely to overlap.
So, for example, one of the species will incubate under the ground for 17 years, another one will incubate for 13 years, another one will incubate for like 11 years, 7 years, 5 years, whatever, these are all prime numbers, and they're less likely over time to then have years where they'll overlap amongst each other.
No way. And this year is one of the years where we're going to have a huge swarm of these cicadas coming out, not in the UK, I think somewhere in America. Because it's a rare year where the prime numbers will overlap and then these two different species will then emerge and will just be swarmed by these different cicadas.
Adam Cox: That is fascinating that, biology or nature has somehow instilled this in them. Yeah. Is it through, like, trial and error? Or did they It's got to be
Kyle Risi: trial and error, but it's just incredible that all these different species have picked their own individual prime number. Because like, oh, you've got 13?
Oh, I'll go for 17. Or I'll go for 11. Isn't that just
Adam Cox: incredible? Yeah, there's like the year of the dragon. This is my year. Yeah, that's it. I'm coming out. And I think
Kyle Risi: there's a film like that was out called Peepers, Jeepers Creepers, where there's this weird like mothman kind of creature who comes out every 17 years and he's based on the circadian rhythm type of thing where he'll come out every 17 years to hunt and then kill and then go back dormant again and it's kind of based on that.
Isn't that incredible? It is, yeah.
Adam Cox: Cool. Fun fact for the
Kyle Risi: week then. Yep. That's my, all the latest things for this week. What have you got for me?
Adam Cox: Well, mine's, um, Not as educational as that. Mine's more low bar. Obvious! Um, so, remember a few weeks back I said about, um, there was that couple in the UK that had to give up their garden ornament because it was a bomb?
Yeah. Well, I've found out this week that a bomb squad was actually called to ER after someone had brought in a bomb to a hospital. Okay. Jesus. It was an 88 year old man with a world war one artillery shell.
Oh God. Guess where it was? In his butt. Yeah. Why? Now this thing is eight inches long and two inches wide. So it's quite substantial to put that in your bum. And yeah, uh, he, he was using it for his own fun. And obviously something went wrong and he. He went to the hospital with it, but Did it get lost up there?
It didn't, it didn't get lost. I think he got it, you know, removed okay. But, yeah, they had to get this bomb squad in to make sure it wasn't armed before they removed it from him. But why could why
Kyle Risi: did he need to go to the hospital? Because it got he couldn't get it out himself? Yeah, it got lodged up there.
Ah, don't you just just wait till
Adam Cox: you have a poo? I I guess it doesn't work like that, but I just think, the risk of doing that Yeah. And why did he choose that of all
Kyle Risi: things? But did he know that it was a bomb? Oh yeah, he put it up there. Yeah, but sometimes you just don't think that you don't know what you're dealing with, right?
Sometimes I just go, Mmm, that would be nice up my bum. And I don't really think about what it is
Adam Cox: that I'm putting up there. I mean I don't think it had the, the, sort of the end of the, the, uh, I'm going to show you a picture of what it looked like. Oh, oh my god. How do you not know that that's I mean, that
Kyle Risi: looks like a
Adam Cox: big old rifle bullet.
Exactly. So he did that. And so I thought, , how often does this happen? Well, this was in France. A year before that, someone in England did the exact same thing, but from a World War II bomb. Oh man. But he actually used the line I slipped and fell.
Kyle Risi: Oh god, do you know what? The thing is with these old people, man.
They, they've got some dark shit that they're really into. Mmm. I've got a dark story for you. Oh God. If it's appropriate. So I used to have a friend who used to be a rent arrears officer, a friend, a friend, and his job was to like chase people up for if they were falling back on their rent. But they have a pretty sophisticated kind of computer system.
And what would happen is someone fall behind in the rent. And if they were over a certain age, and they hadn't paid their rent for a while, but they had a history of paying their rent on time, it was likely that they were Dead in their apartment. Oh god. So they don't waste any time. They showed up with the police and They knock on the door.
There's no answer. They break in and sure enough. They find the guy he's died on his bed But what had happened was that he had died because he was pleasuring himself Oh, no with an upside down turn chair I won those echo chairs and he was lowering himself down onto the chair leg and he had obviously slipped impaled himself Managed to pull himself out, laid on the bed for a moment, and then he, um, he passed
Adam Cox: away.
Oh my god, I don't, I wasn't ready for that. No,
Kyle Risi: but, yeah, this is what I mean, like, all these old people that are just doing this kinky shit,
Adam Cox: man. Well, like your mum's friend, just go get a dildo. Just get a dildo, for the love of god. No,
Kyle Risi: no, yes, that's probably better, healthier, but I don't want to think about Especially my family members using
Adam Cox: dildos.
I'd rather they use a dildo than a WWII
Kyle Risi: bomb. That's true! Can you imagine if one of those things detonated? How do you explain that to your family member?
Adam Cox: Um, yeah, it's not gonna be great, is it?
And yeah, well that's all the latest things for this week!
Kyle Risi: So Adam, tell me all about Roald
Adam Cox: Dahl.
Diving into Roald Dahl's Early Life
Adam Cox: Well, Roald Dahl, um, and that actually is his, uh, birth name. Um, that's not like a stage name or anything like that. Well, where did it come from? Uh, well, he's English. Um,
um, he was born in Cardiff in Wales, but he had Norwegian parents, uh, which explains the name. And he was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. Okay. Uh, Dahl's father was a prosperous shipbroker and self made. He immigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg, Norway and settled in Cardiff during the 1880s with his first wife.
Uh, together they had two children, um, before his wife died. Um, so , Roald Dahl's father remarried and had Roald Dahl and they had another two children as well. Um, one of the other children, um, Roald's sibling, Astri, died of appendicitis at the age of seven, which hit their father very hard. So much so that Roald Dahl knew that Astri was his dad's favorite, even from a very early age.
Oh, that's tough,
Kyle Risi: isn't it? That's
Adam Cox: not nice. Yeah, and I don't think he harbored any resentment, but it was kind of clear to him. And so when Astri died, and then the dad didn't take it very well, Uh, the dad ended up dying of pneumonia only a few weeks later, and so he left this huge fortune of seven million, uh, in today's money to his mother and the rest of his siblings.
Kyle Risi: Because of, obviously he was working as a shipbroker, right? Yeah.
Adam Cox: Wow. Uh, and his father said that a British education was one of the best in the world, which is why his family remained in England. I see. , so he didn't have the best childhood, uh, which is kind of a common or running theme. Or why? Because daddy didn't love him?
Well, that obviously, yeah, that perhaps affected him. Uh, but he was sent to kind of boarding school and he caused a lot of mischief at school with teachers. When he was eight years old, he, along with four friends, received a caning from the headmaster for placing a dead mouse in a container of gobstoppers at the nearby sweet shop.
Uh, so for those that don't know, they're like these giant sweets that you try and fit in your mouth. Yeah, who doesn't know what a gobstopper is? Well, I don't know if they're like that common across the world. Sure. But anyway, um,
Kyle Risi: Are we saying that's what gave him the impression that he's had a terrible childhood?
Oh, I got spanked
Adam Cox: once. What? No, not just that. I mean, try
Kyle Risi: getting hit with a belt. Did you? Oh my god, man, I used to get the worst beatings. The absolute worst beatings. It made me who I am. Oh god. Strong, willed, determined, disciplined.
Adam Cox: Disciplined. Hmm, okay.
Kyle Risi: So he had a bad childhood, he got whacked a few times , I mean that just sounds like kid stuff, and by the way, he's at boarding school at eight years old, damn that's young, eh?
Yeah.
Adam Cox: Well, this sweet shop where he, um, hid the dead mouse, uh, was owned by a woman called Mrs Pratchett, who Dahl describes as mean and loathsome. Okay. And actually it was her who inspired headmistress Miss Trunspel in Matilda.
Kyle Risi: Shut up. Oh, is she? Yeah, God, she's a ghastly woman, isn't she? Handsome, ghastly woman.
Adam Cox: And these authority figures, uh, during Dahl's, during Dahl's school years, um, that he didn't really get along with, they would then be used in these characterizations in his books. Mm hmm. And so from 1929 at the age of 13, Roald Dahl began attending another school in Derbyshire and in his autobiography, Boy, Tales of Childhood, Dahl recounts this incident where he witnessed his friend Michael being brutally caned by a headmaster And reflecting on this, Dahl hated the violence he witnessed during his school years.
And And this incident actually led him to have doubts about religion and God because it was a very religious school. And it was just like, how could you do this to kids? Yeah. This is not, this is not nice. , and this brutality of the caning and overall hostility from the headmaster towards children.
influenced the antagonists in his book, The Witches, where he, the witches, I think, refer to children as revolting.
Roald Dahl's School Years and Early Inspirations
Kyle Risi: Oh, that's such a great, great story of his, The Witches. I love that one, because that's one with the little mouse, right? He gets into a mouse, and I always remember the live action kind of replay of that one.
Yeah. It's one of my favorite films. Ah,
Adam Cox: Just then you obviously spoke quite fondly, I think these kind of stories is what resonated with children, I guess these kind of bad figures, it told the story from the perspective of the children a lot of the time.
And a slight side note, but fun fact, Dahl's headmaster, Geoffrey Fisher, would go on to be the Archbishop of Canterbury and officiated not only the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II, but also crowned her at her coronation service. Shut up! Incredible! So that's a Nice, I don't know, connection, tenuous link.
Yeah,
So at school, Dahl certainly had no ambitions or interest in becoming a writer. Um, he wasn't actually even considered that talented at school. Um, one of his English teachers remarked that Dahl consistently wrote words, meaning the opposite of what they intended. And during his time at Repton School, uh, Cadbury's chocolate occasionally sent boxes of new chocolates to the school for taste testing and getting customer feedback.
And Dahl dreamed of inventing a chocolate bar that would impress Mr. Cadbury, inspiring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Kyle Risi: Really? Actually, I don't know if you're going to cover this, but I did hear the other day That, um, when Cadbury's was happening, they actually built, I think it's called like, they built like an entire village called Bourneville.
And it's a real live place. Yeah. Where that's where they would produce all the Cadbury chocolates. Yes. And they did a lot of research as well into like new chocolates and things like that. And they would use the local primary schools for taste testers. And he was a taste tester for chocolate where they would get him in and they would be like, what do you taste?
I mean, it sounds. Like work really, because they're like, what, what flavors are coming through? And they're like, um, chocolate? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, but what flavors and aromas, um, chocolate? No, no, no, no, no, no. Think about it. Okay. Okay. Um, chocolate? Milky? Milky? But I think they were looking for like, kind of like the emotions that were being evoked and stuff.
Yeah. Were you gonna cover that? No. Oh, yeah. So yeah, he was like a chocolate taster. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible.
Adam Cox: Yeah.
According to his autobiography, his mom offered to pay for him to study at Oxford or Cambridge. So he's a smart, um, boy, uh, after he graduated school, but he was like, Nope, that's it. I'm done. I'm off to the world of work. And so he goes on a expedition, um, in 1932, where he goes to Newfoundland and Canada.
And he has to kind of face these kind of harsh weather conditions, I guess, exploring and, and kind of, Going on this massive adventure essentially, uh, but then he accepted a job at Shell Oil in 1934 where he worked in Kenya and Tanzania in Africa until 1939. But then, what happened in 1939? Um, the war?
Kyle Risi: Did the war start in 1939?
I always think it's 1940 or something.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it started in 1939. So he was enlisted in the Royal Air Force. And this is where his life gets a bit more surreal. He trained as a fighter pilot in Nairobi, Kenya, and became a pilot officer. And they were desperate for pilots, as Dahl was six foot six, he was quite lanky, and it's described that he had to curl up into this fetal position, with his knees tucked tightly under his chin, in order to sit in the cockpit.
Really? Wow. But they needed pilots essentially, so it didn't really matter, shape or size. And him along with 16 other men that trained at this facility. Only three of them actually survived the war. One of them was Dahl.
Roald Dahl's Adventures in the Royal Air Force
Adam Cox: Wow.
Kyle Risi: That's horrible, like, watching all your comrades kind of get murdered.
Mm.
Adam Cox: Incredibly, he was given the ability to fly solo after just 7 hours and 40 minutes. Was he the first
Kyle Risi: black man to travel solo around the globe?
Adam Cox: That's a friend's quote just for anyone that's going, what? Um, but yeah, 7 hours and 40 minutes. And like, I know it's war, you probably don't have the luxury of time to, you know, do everything right.
But that is a very short amount of time. Like, can you remember what you were like after your 8th driving lesson? Um, no. Well, yeah. Sorry, no, I can't remember. We're not good enough to drive.
Kyle Risi: I really drew out my driving lessons just because my driving instructor was just awesome. So I was like, I never want to pass.
I just want to drive around with you all day. We'd go to Yarmouth, we'd have some chips, we'd drive back. I'd always get free lessons and I just did not want to pass my test. Oh.
Adam Cox: Segway. Segway. Um, driving lessons are so expensive these days. I don't think you'd, you'd do that now. To be fair, they were really
Kyle Risi: expensive back in my day anyway.
Like, it was like 20 quid. Oh really?
Adam Cox: Yeah. How much were yours? Oh, mine was like 16, 17. I drove with Ray. Good ol Ray. Good ol Ray. He's a good guy.
Kyle Risi: My actual driving instructor actually lives on the estate. Really? Where we are? Yeah, she lives somewhere down that way. And I see her occasionally, and the connection that we had when we were driving together was strong, right? She barely even looks at me now. Yeah, she sees me she knows we know like I'm like we we share
Adam Cox: history man.
I bet she's like, oh god That's a guy that just would not quit my striving school
Kyle Risi: Maybe you're right I could just not pass him But yeah, she like doesn't even look at me twice anymore.
Adam Cox: Well, I guess it's quite a while ago. It's like 15 years. Whatever. Yeah So back to Dahl
He had this very short time to learn how to fly a plane. They didn't let him go into battles as far as I'm aware. I guess he just had to fly things back and forth. But he did get some further training in Iraq in a bigger plane, and this was when he was commissioned as a pilot officer, and he joined this squadron which would allow him to go into battle in August 1940.
Albeit, Dahl was kind of surprised that he didn't receive any specialized training in aerial combat. Or flying the gladiator. plane, which was like this type of aircraft that he flew, so training wasn't great by the sounds of it. So what, he was
Kyle Risi: just like, oh, here's a plane , go off and do what you need to like, hang on a minute, what am I doing, where am I going?
Adam Cox: Yeah, just press this button, shoot this, I don't know, he wasn't, given much training. I guess they were desperate, right, for soldiers back then. Yeah, , it was conscription, so everyone had to , join. Oh, God. On September 19th, 1940, Dahl received orders to fly his Gladiator from Abu Sir near Ismailia in Egypt, and he flew to Ismailia in Egypt.
To his squadron's, uh, airstrip located 30 miles south of Mersa Mutra. Not quite sure where those places are, but that's where he had to go. You just said Egypt. Well, yes, but I don't know exactly what they mean. Um, but during the final part of the journey, he encountered difficulties locating the airstrip and with fuel running low and nightfall approaching, he was forced to make an emergency landing in the desert.
And whilst attempting to land, the undercarriage struck a boulder, causing the aircraft to violently crash. Dahl managed to push open the cockpit canopy and escape, crawling out from further harm from the explosion of the plane's fuel tanks and the subsequent machine gun fire unleashed by the heat. Wow.
And whilst he managed to escape that explosion, he did suffer a fractured skull, a smashed nose, as well as losing his sight, and he falls unconscious. Oh hey, I'm like, he's blind. Well, initially he is blind, yeah, and he's just incredibly lucky to survive at this point, but fortunately he is rescued and he is taken to a hospital.
This awful event and head injury that Roald Dahl Uh, received, he actually attributes to his creativity and what would set him on his path to becoming a famous writer.
What do you mean? Uh, we'll get to that. Okay. Um, but whilst in hospital, uh, he regains consciousness and he doesn't get his sight back for a further six weeks. So it's a very severe injury and he had this, um, swelling on the brain. So it was a brain injury,
Kyle Risi: not like a problem
Adam Cox: with his sight? Um, I guess so, yeah, that's causing the loss of sight.
Kyle Risi: Is this where you then tell me while he is delirious in his hospital bed, he receives, just like Ty Warner did with the Beanie Babies, a vision from an Oompa Loompa. An Oompa Loompa, doopity doo, you need to become
Adam Cox: an author. That was wonderful. No, unfortunately not. Not that I'm aware of.
Oh
Kyle Risi: man, every genius or every notable person needs an origin story and it always needs to come from a vision. A delirious vision.
Adam Cox: Well, a plane crash and a severe head injury. I think that's enough. Oh, I need to oompa loompa. He's eventually discharged from hospital with a full bill of health and rejoins his squadron near Athens.
He is involved various, he is involved in various aerial battles where he gets to shoot down the enemies in the skies. Uh, the most famous battle Dahl was involved in was the Battle of Athens on April the 20th, 1941, where he would become a flying ace by taking down five enemy aircrafts. And so that is the quota you have to take down in order to be called an ace.
An ace, okay. Yeah. But his squadron, during this battle, was severely outnumbered, and it was almost a suicide mission. Um, also, Dahl was with one of the most famous British Commonwealth flying aces of World War II. And, get this, his name was Marmaduke Thomas St. John Pattle.
Kyle Risi: What a name! I mean, any name with Marmaduke in it just, just elevates
Adam Cox: it, doesn't it?
Yeah, but he didn't want to go by that. He went by Pat.
Kyle Risi: Why would you do that to yourself?
Adam Cox: He's Pat Paddle.
I guess that's maybe easier to like say over the radio. Hey, Marmaduke, Sinjohn, Thomas, blah blah blah, Paddle. Hey, Pat. I would make
Kyle Risi: people say my full name. Like, absolutely, as cultural man, you say my full name.
Adam Cox: So you would ignore people? They're like giving you a nickname. You're like, no, full name me, please.
Yeah, I
Kyle Risi: wouldn't,
I wouldn't even acknowledge it. Wow. My name is Marmaduke, whatever, whatever, whatever.
Adam Cox: It's a strong name. Yeah, it's a, . Great name. so this guy had taken down, uh, five airplanes or more in one day on multiple occasions. So he was a really good pilot. He, it was suspected that he took down 50 to 60 enemy planes in total by 1941.
So only within a couple of the war, only within a couple of years of the war starting. Uh, and I think he's possibly the highest scoring ace in World War II.
Kyle Risi: Even today. Well, I guess that was just World War 2, sorry.
Adam Cox: Incredible. Yeah, um, and the reason I'm talking about Pat or Marduk Yeah, why
Kyle Risi: focus on Pat, man?
What about Roll?
Adam Cox: What I'm trying to say is, like, he was a very good pilot. But during this battle, Pat dies. And so the fact that Dahl manages to survive this aerial battle kind of Well, it suggests that he's a pretty good pilot himself. Because he describes, like, an enemy of He describes an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing around, like shooting and everything, and he survives all this, so good ol Roel.
Now, the injuries that he had endured from his earlier crash would go on to cause crippling headache. Now, the injuries he had endured from his earlier crash would go on to cause crippling headaches and periodic blackouts, and so he had to have a hip replacement and surgery to his spine on multiple occasions throughout his life.
His blackouts, of course, meant it was too dangerous for him to continue flying. with his flying wings clipped, Dahl was reassigned in 1942 to a diplomatic post, which I think just means office based work, the British Embassy in Washington, D. C. Sure.
Initially, Dahl found it very weird. It was a striking contrast to where he had been. Because at this point, the U. S., I don't think, were in the war. Mm mm. And so he found his work mostly unimportant. Or like clerical, just boring. Yeah, he'd just come from war. People were getting killed, he'd been flying around seeing horrific things.
And now he found himself in the middle of a pre war cocktail party in America. So you're
Kyle Risi: saying that he missed the, kind of, the glory of being a soldier?
Adam Cox: I think he just felt guilty, like, well, you've stationed me overseas, I'm over here now, and I know all my friends are fighting, my family's in the UK being bombed.
This doesn't feel right. Yeah, no,
Kyle Risi: I get that you want to be with your people, right?
Roald Dahl's Transition to Writing and Propaganda Work
Adam Cox: But while in Washington, he was encouraged to start writing propaganda for the UK. and allied forces by an author called C. S. Forster. Forster believed Dahl's wartime adventures would captivate the readership of the Saturday Evening Post with its pro British sentiment.
So Dahl offered to write an article, um, himself called Shot Down On So Dahl offered to write an article himself called Shot Down Over Libya, which was a lie. He wasn't shot down, but it was decided it sounded more dramatic than his original name for the article, which was Piece of Cake. So yeah, this article garnered a lot of attention, propelling Dahl into the social spotlight.
Where he was invited to all these parties and events by these influential figures of American high society. So
Kyle Risi: these stories that he was writing, was this just a one off piece or was he writing quite a lot of these different stories as propaganda?
Adam Cox: I think he was writing quite a few, um, but I think this particular article is what, um, pushed him forward and got his name out there.
And is the whole
Kyle Risi: idea of these articles to be kind of like uplifting and we're winning the war and like look how heroic we are. And like whether or not it's true or not didn't really factor into it or wasn't that important? Well,
Adam Cox: there was another angle, um, from this, uh, writing as well, because, um, his work caught the eye of a spymaster called William Stevenson.
Okay.
The Secret Spy Life of Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: Now, Stevenson was a Canadian millionaire businessman with interests in steel, aircraft manufacturing and construction. As a result, he had many contacts in the U. S. as well as Europe. And his European contacts were only too happy to spill the beans on Germany's secret military and industrial build up prior to the war.
And so in 1936, Stevenson began passing on confidential information about the Nazis activities to Winston Churchill. So
Kyle Risi: we're talking like, oh, he owns like a steel factory, so oh, the Nazis have purchased X amount of steel. To be shipped over and things like that. You mean, so they get got a clue of as to what they were building and what infrastructure they were kind of
Adam Cox: creating?
Yeah, it is revealing, I guess the, I guess any ideas and secrets that maybe could reveal what the Germans were after and what they were building and conspiring against.
Stevenson's Role in the War
Adam Cox: I see. So Churchill knew quite early on, if the Allies were to win the war, they needed US involvement. And many people in the United States didn't want to join the war.
But secretly, Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed with Churchill. He thought, actually, we probably are going to have to get involved. To change people's minds and get them to support Britain, Churchill asked William Stevenson for help. And Stevenson quickly gathered a group of spies in New York's Rockefeller Center, and they pretended to work for the British Passport Office, but actually they were working for the British Security Coordination, who did a number of things to help convince the US to join the war.
One of which was creating a fake map showing that the Nazis planned to invade South America. And President Roosevelt talked about this fake map in Congress to show how dangerous Hitler was. It made a lot of Americans change their minds and want to try and stop Hitler.
Kyle Risi: Do you know what?
The Art of Deception and Propaganda
Kyle Risi: So they had their own agenda to fill.
They wanted to get involved in the war because of course we know what happened after the war with America, um, kind of then creating global dominance and pegging the dollar to it. So they, they manufactured this just to get their way to fool the people. And this happens all the
Adam Cox: time though, doesn't it?
That's the thing, just think about the current political climate, right? With the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. Now I'm not saying, um, everything we're being fed to is a lie, but there's potentially some information that we're being given, um, that might be, I don't know, massaging or exaggerating the truth, or trying to get those that are perhaps a bit more neutral, or more hesitant to get involved, it's adding another layer that might not be strictly true.
Yeah. And It probably happens more than we want to admit. I think it happens all the time.
So back to this spy ring by Stevenson. He convinced famous people
The Irregulars: A Group of Influential Spies
Adam Cox: like business tycoons, actors, playwrights, and future writers such as Roald Dahl. As well as Ian Fleming, the author who'd go on to write James Bond. Really? To join this group called the Irregulars.
Kyle Risi: There's such like a superhero kind of like name, isn't it? The Irregulars.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I think there's been like TV shows where they've kind of, um, used this concept, kind of this group of misfits that come together to, I don't know, take down something. So apparently that's what they were called back then.
Ian Fleming, um, said that James Bond was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types he met during the war, maybe even him himself to some extent, but some suspect that maybe Roald Dahl was part of that inspiration behind James Bond?
Kyle Risi: Wow, that's so cool. And it also Provides credibility to that persona of who we think James Bond is, that in a way it's rooted from real life experiences and observations.
Yes, yeah. That that's like how it all
Adam Cox: works. Yeah, because we think of James Bond probably being a bit old fashioned and, you know, of a previous time. The older movies, not necessarily the ones with, um. Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig. Um, so you can kind of see those characteristics would come from someone of perhaps the war.
Yeah.
Roald Dahl: The Charming Spy
Adam Cox: Uh, and it's not to say this is all Roald Dahl, absolutely not, but Roald Dahl was described as a handsome man. Mm hmm. And he was naturally very good at talking to people and making them like him. He had this charisma and charm that would be used to influence high society as well as journalists and politicians, as well as the wives of these powerful men.
Oh really? Mm hmm. He was known as quite the bedhopper. Was he?
Kyle Risi: Oh, like, no, James. Yes. No, James. Yes. No, James. Yes. Okay. Three. Three no's means yes. Yeah. Is that how
Adam Cox: it goes? Something like that. I think in family life, yeah. Um, so Roald Dahl, uh, was seducing these women and it was kind of an open secret. And in fact, uh, someone connected to this business tycoon even commented that girls just fell at Roald's feet.
Sorry. Girls just fell at Roll's feet. I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coast that was worth more than 50, 000 a year.
Kyle Risi: What, what does that mean? So he was a gold digger? He'd like to sleep with really rich affluent women?
Adam Cox: Yes, because these women would be, uh, married potentially or involved in these big, you know, people of power.
And so he was trying to get to those. Oh, I see. The wives. Oh, I see what an angle. Yeah.
The Dangerous Mission of Seducing Claire Booth Luce
Adam Cox: One of his most dangerous missions was trying. One of his most dangerous missions was to try to charm a lady named Claire Booth Loose. Her husband was Is Claire a bit loose? Well, actually, there is a rumour that she was in an open marriage, which is why it was kind of okay, I guess.
So she
Kyle Risi: had a loose booth. A loose
Adam Cox: booth. About this hoose.
Kyle Risi: A moose in the moose?
Adam Cox: What? Oh, the sweets from, oh you weren't here, you were in Africa. Running in the wild plains
Kyle Risi: of Africa, yeah that's
Adam Cox: me. Um, it was like a sweet advert, never mind. Oh,
Kyle Risi: completely over my head, what is
Adam Cox: it? Um, what was it? Is moose, hoose about this?
Oh, a moose loose about this hoose?
Kyle Risi: Oh, that sounds like a Scottish thing, is there a mouse loose in this house?
Adam Cox: Something, I don't know, yeah. It was just advertised sweets. I think it was Chew Its. I don't know. What was my point? Back to Roald Dahl. Yeah, so this Claire Booth Luce, her husband was Henry Luce, the man who founded Time, Life, and Fortune magazines in America.
So he was really influential, and he was all about putting America first. And he was totally against helping Britain and actually despised us. He wasn't a fan. So the plan was, if Dahl could seduce his wife, the hope was that he could get information about Henry that they could use to blackmail. Or discredit his writing in these magazines.
Kyle Risi: Right, I see. I mean, because if it doesn't go right, this is one way to piss him off, and he's a powerful man, this Mr.
Adam Cox: Loose. Mr. Loose. Now, it's not clear how successful this mission was, but Claire in particular proved to be almost too much for Roald Dahl. Darl had underestimated Luce's sexual appetite. Oh god.
This led to what is probably one of the wildest things for Roald Dahl's bosses to ever hear. So he called them up and he said, I am all effed out. That goddamn woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to the other for three goddamn nights. Well he's clearly gay.
it.
Well,
Kyle Risi: He's moaning about
Adam Cox: it.
Well, he begged to be given a different mission because it was just, it was too much. He can't do it anymore. Um, but being a true British man, you know, with a stiff upper lip, um, so to speak. He pioneered through. Yep. He, yeah, he basically. Knew how important the work was and he championed on. Wow. Um, so yeah, things you had to do for king and country back then. Outstanding. Um, he became very good friends with a lot of these powerful men in America, including getting close to the vice president.
He would go and play tennis with him. He got to know the actual president, Franklin Roosevelt. And Roald Dahl supposedly revealed to the UK that the president was interested in sleeping with a Norwegian princess at the time who had seeked asylum in America. So he apparently leaked that. Wow.
He also, uh, again allegedly, I can't corroborate this, told the UK that the US was looking to go to the moon. And so this was back in the 40s. Wow, okay. Together with Stevenson, Dahl helped change Americans minds and made them want to support the war. Although I think Pearl Harbor was probably the biggest catalyst for that.
I think so. Um, but I guess these sneaky tricks and strategic friendships with important people helped to at least get information to the UK to help them and maybe get some sort of buying power. God, it goes to
Kyle Risi: show you the power of propaganda, right, and how important it is.
Absolutely.
Roald Dahl's Contribution to Literature
Adam Cox: Darl's first children's book was actually written during the war, and it was called The Gremlins. It was published in 1943. It was a story about mythical creatures that could cause trouble for Royal Air Force pilots. And that came from his time flying where pilots when things go wrong with their planes, they would just say, oh, it's the gremlins.
Yeah. And so that's where
Kyle Risi: that came from. Yeah, for sure. Because I think there's an episode of The Simpsons where I think Bart or Homer looks out the window and they see like a gremlin like messing around with the wings or something like that. And I've always grown up knowing that that was a gremlin, like a gremlin on a plane or messing around with machinery and stuff.
Yeah
Adam Cox: so it kind of originates from this I think. Um, the book received really good reviews, a lot of popularity and Walt Disney even wanted to make a movie about it back then but it didn't really happen. But in 1984, there was a movie called The Gremlins, which was produced by Steven Spielberg. And that was loosely inspired by some of Dahl's creatures.
That's so cool. Yeah. After the war, he continued to write, but the focus was not on children's books straight away. He was involved with TV and film. He even wrote the screenplay for James Bond, You Only Live Twice. And also Chitty Chitty
Kyle Risi: Bang Bang. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. How does the song go?
Adam Cox: Well, you're kind of there.
We love
Kyle Risi: you. Oh. Chitty chitty bang bang, we love you. I don't know. That's quite enough. Please, please, please scrap that bit out.
Adam Cox: Um, so yeah, I never realized he, yeah, wrote movies as well. He marries an actress called Patricia Neal. I think she was a famous actress, um, at the time. He had five children with her.
The Personal Tragedies and Triumphs of Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: On December the 5th, 1960, his four month old son, Theo, sustained severe injuries when his baby carriage was struck by a taxi in New York City. Oof. He subsequently suffered from hydrocephalus, which is when fluid accumulates in the brain and can cause brain damage. Damn. This incident prompted Dahl's involvement in the development of the Wade Dahl Till, valve, a device co created with Stanley Wade and Kenneth Till, hence the name, aimed at improving the way to treat this condition in order to drain excess fluid from the brain.
Kyle Risi: Like a literal tap on the head. I guess so.
Adam Cox: Open up the valve. I did have a look at it. It looked, yeah. Like you drained it. Shut up. Yeah. Um.
Kyle Risi: I just said that from like, top of my
Adam Cox: head. I didn't, I didn't know that's what it looked like.
Cause it was a valve and it's draining liquid. Yeah. Um, by the time the device that they'd created was perfected, his son, uh, fortunately had healed to the point. Oh, he healed. So that's good news. But the device Whilst his son didn't need it, the device was still used, uh, successfully in nearly 3, 000 children worldwide.
Darl and the other two men never agreed to Dahl and the other two men never agreed to accept any profits from it. It was all noble.
Kyle Risi: That's great. He's such a great guy. I'm surprised that he spent that much of his life in the States after, is the war
Adam Cox: over by now? Yeah, that was 1960 that happened. So I'm surprised
Kyle Risi: like he spent so much of his life in the USA.
I thought he would have been, he would have come home.
Adam Cox: Maybe he was traveling, I don't know why. but then his wife was a famous actress. So who knows, I think he lived mainly in the UK afterwards. sadly, Dahl suffers from more heartbreak when his daughter, Olivia, passes away at the age of seven due to measles, uh, in 1962.
Her death profoundly affects him, leaving him overwhelmed with despair and guilt for his inability to help her. So, he becomes an advocate for immunisation, publishing Measles, a Dangerous Illness in 1988, in response to the outbreak in the UK, and he dedicates his book, The BFG, to his daughter.
Oh, the big
Kyle Risi: friendly
Adam Cox: giant. Yeah. Oh. His most notable work didn't really kick off until the 60s, and into the 80s, where he writes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, The Twits, and George's Marvelous Medicine. Wow, these are
Kyle Risi: all huge, huge names.
And he wrote all those within 20 years?
Adam Cox: Pretty much, yeah. And I think a lot of these stories, they center around that child's point of view. They have these villainous grown up characters, you mistreat kids, but there's always like one nice adult to help them out. That's it. I was
Kyle Risi: gonna say that, like the thing that unifies all these stories is that it's, it's the kids that are always hard done by, right?
There's always someone out to get the kids because adults are typically seen as the evil, darker ones, but there's always like one ally or two amongst the grown ups. Yes. That's
Adam Cox: crazy.
Yeah,
Kyle Risi: It also kind of highlights this idea that like, As you get older, innocence dies. And with it, sometimes morality dies. You lose that sense of morality and you become this evil adult.
Adam Cox: Yeah, because it was. It was always these good kids winning over bad adults.
Yeah. Oh,
Kyle Risi: he's so
Adam Cox: great. Now when most people think of Roald Dahl they think of those kind of scratchy sketches by Quentin Blake. 100 percent yeah. But in fact he didn't actually start working with Roald Dahl until 1976, and so once that happened I think that's when, his drawings become synonymous with Roald Dahl's work.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, because if I had to sum up the drawings from a lot of these books, There's a grotesqueness, isn't there? Like the long spindly fingers? Yeah. Lanky. Kind of like really sharp noses. . Yeah. A very illustrative but grotesque at the same time. Yes. Yeah. It's so, so incredible and so iconic.
Yeah. And this success, he, he says it was. Pretty much it was a fluke that he was even writing in the first place because he wouldn't have done it had he not been Asked to write those articles when he was in America And also he says that I I doubt I have ridden a line unless some minor tragedy It sort of twisted my mind out of the normal rut and so his work all came from that I guess plane crash in terms of that formality.
Adam Cox: Yeah So this bit's kind of gross Ooh, I love a gross. When he later developed an abscess in his back. Okay, too gross. His response was not to get a new chair, but to hack a hole in the back of that chair to accommodate the sore.
Kyle Risi: The things men will do to just not have to go to the doctor. Yeah. Just blows my mind. I mean, I get it. I get it. Just, like, just ignore it. Yeah. Accommodate it. Treat it with kindness, it will treat you with kindness.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I found that quite funny. Um, also in his office, there is a hip bone, which Dal retained after a hip replacement.
Oh yeah. And a little jar of spinal shavings, another souvenir from his RAF crash. So, it's kind of gross, but I think the whole point was he had these things around him, because it was a significant thing that happened to him, and it's a memory that , pushed him to do writing.
I mean, I would keep
Kyle Risi: a kidney stone. Kidney stones! Kidney stones! I would, if I had, like, a kidney stone, or something removed, I would keep it. Yeah. Not if it was, like, a fleshy thing that would rot.
Adam Cox: I remember, uh, my dad's friend had kidney stones, and I remember at Christmas he showed them to me in a little, like, tube, and it was weird.
It's just, like, little bits of gravel. How big were they? Um, like, fish gravel, if you imagine. They weren't too big, they were like that sort of size. Did he parse them
Kyle Risi: naturally? Um, I don't know. I know sometimes they use like some kind of laser to shatter them, don't they? Yes. So it makes it easier to parse.
But if they're really big, sometimes you have to parse them naturally or you have to have an operation.
Adam Cox: Might have been operation, I think.
Kyle Risi: God, imagine doing that right out your wee wee hole. Ouchies. Kidney
Adam Cox: stones! So some of his most famous work has now been adapted onto screen multiple times and continues to be adapted, like the most recent Wonka movie.
Um, even though he's written for adults, I don't think he's ever reached the same level of success as he had with his children's books. Oh really?
Kyle Risi: Was he written for
Adam Cox: adults? Um, there's Wikipedia for that, not quite sure. There's a few out there and obviously he, um, he did some like TV adaptations of something with Alfred Hitchcock and a few other things, but if you look through his, either his bibliography or his kind of filmography, it's primarily the stuff that you'll spot is, is, is kids, is the kids stuff.
Yeah. He passed away on November the 23rd, 1990, at the age of 74, due to a rare form of blood cancer, and he was laid to rest in a cemetery in Buckinghamshire. His granddaughter mentioned that the family arranged a ceremony. His granddaughter mentioned that the family arranged a ceremony akin to a Viking funeral for him.
Wow. And he's buried.
Kyle Risi: So does that mean, like, they send him off on a raft, and then once he's, like, 200 metres out, someone gets, like, an arrow with a flame? And they shoot it on him, and then it just bursts into flames, and
Adam Cox: then he just sinks. But then, because he's in a cemetery. And because he was buried with these items that we're about to read, I don't know what that actually means, but maybe there's just a big fanfare.
Maybe it's just,
Kyle Risi: uh, a regular run of the mill burial. Vikings. Being able to say it was a viking burial just makes it sound cooler, right? But actually, in reality,,
Adam Cox: stick in the ground. Yeah, but the thing that is interesting I thought was he was buried with his snooker coos. Uh, some fine burgundy wine.
Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Uh, some chocolates. Mm hmm. HB pencils. Okay. And a power saw. What?
Kyle Risi: And a power saw? So these must be all things that he was really
Adam Cox: passionate about. I guess so, yeah. So the power saw, I guess he liked DIY. He liked drawing or writing. And obviously he likes wine and chocolates, who wouldn't?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, who doesn't? I mean, it just sounds like one of the male vikings
Adam Cox: stuff, you know? Yeah, um, even today children visit his grave. They leave toys and flowers as tokens of admiration. Where is he buried? Uh, in Buckinghamshire. Okay,
Kyle Risi: so he's back in the UK. Yeah.
Adam Cox: Aww. But I was interested because I thought, well, there are quite interesting things to be buried with.
What would you be buried with?
Kyle Risi: Oh goodness, do you know what? I would be, if I was old I definitely want to be buried with my full set of teeth.
Adam Cox: Okay, yeah.
Kyle Risi: I don't know. These are mine. These are mine. I'm dying with all my own teeth. I've made it this far. Um, interesting. It would be stuff that really means a lot to me, like Keith.
Whether or not he's alive or dead, I want him to be buried with me. Right, okay. I don't know, why? That's a cat by the way. What
Adam Cox: would you be buried with? I don't know, I haven't really thought about it. I did start thinking, I was like, I have no idea. So now I'm going to think about that.
Kyle Risi: Well, why'd you bring it to the table if you're not coming with anything?
Adam Cox: Well, I've got some other ideas for you , go on then, give me some of those ideas. Here is what some other famous people have been buried with. Go. Princess Diana was buried with rosary beads she received from Mother Teresa. She might have been buried with other things, but that was the one thing I found.
That's incredible. Um, Frank Sinatra was buried with a flask full of Jack Daniels and a pack of Camel cigarettes.
Kyle Risi: Ooh, that Jack Daniels will be, um, worth a lot of money now, right? .
Adam Cox: Aged.
Bob Marley was allegedly buried with his guitar and some weed. Nice. William Wise, some guy who I think was in the US Civil War, was buried with his horse, his favourite hunting dog, and a sword.
Kyle Risi: Oh god, like, like The ashes of the dog and the horse? I don't know if they were all with him. Did the dogs outlive him?
Because, because if the dog didn't outlive him, then that's my case for Keith being buried with us,
Adam Cox: or with me. Well, because it was during the Civil War, I wondered if it was during a battle and perhaps all of them died. Was his dog doing a battle with him? I don't know. I just, I don't know. Help? PA? PA. Take
Kyle Risi: some
Adam Cox: notes.
Yeah, but he was convinced he was going to hell and wanted to track down and kill Satan. So that's why he had the horse with him.
Kyle Risi: I see. Because Satan's notoriously terrified of horses. Yeah. No,
Adam Cox: not the horse! Or a dog. Um, and Michael Jackson, he was buried with a single A bunch of kids! Um, no.
I'll start that again. Okay. Michael Jackson was buried with a single white sparkly glove. From the thriller music and stuff like that. So, Oh, and Whitney Houston, I've got some from her. Uh, she was, uh, buried in a gold lined coffin worth tens of thousands of pounds and supposedly three hundred thousand pounds worth of jewellery and designer clothes.
Wow, and no crack? It doesn't say there was any crack. Um. No cocaine? No. But I always thought, why would you tell people that? You've got that in your coffin. Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Risi: Well, unless it depends where
Adam Cox: you'll be buried, right? If it's heavily guarded and everything. But that just made me think, well, that's either one, a waste, and two, yeah, someone could come and take that if they wanted
Kyle Risi: to.
Yeah, eventually, like, what if the cemetery goes out of business or she loses the money to kind of pay for the security or whatever? Someone turns their head for five minutes. Boom. That's what we're doing next. Going to go get Whitney Houston's crack.
Adam Cox: And the jewellery. That's definitely being cut. Um.
Kyle Risi: No, don't cut that!
I apologise, that was really lowbrow. I love Whitney Houston, she's a brilliant, brilliant artist, but famously
Adam Cox: addicted to cocaine.
The Controversies Surrounding Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: So before I end the story, um, one thing I think is important to know is Dahl has had some controversy surrounding him whilst alive and after his death. Yes, yes he has. So in the past he has made some anti semitic remarks, particularly around Israelis. And it's hard to defend these remarks, and I'm not going to repeat them, because I don't think it's nice, but I will say that he did allude to some odd justification of why Hitler did what he did to the Jews.
Oh no. And it was just like, no, what were you even thinking when you said that? I'm actually, I'm
Kyle Risi: really interested to know what some of the things he did say, if you, if we can say it respectfully.
Adam Cox: Some of it, , as I said, around Israelis, so he talked about, I don't know, how they were in business with certain Americans and all sorts, but he wasn't wasn't necessarily I don't know.
Um, disrespectful, necessarily disrespectful to all Jewish people. In fact, he had a lot of of Jewish friends that come to defend Dahl to some extent and saying he had, you know, had plenty Jewish friends. He chose to work with them. I think one was his manager. I
Kyle Risi: mean, that's a classic thing. Like, I can't be racist because I've got some black friends.
I mean, it doesn't make you not racist.
Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. Um, I think people say that sometimes he would just, I don't know, be controversial or blow up and make wild remarks on a whim. Um, But I don't know it's
Kyle Risi: on a racist rant. Mmm, like Karl Lagerfeld
Adam Cox: did. Yeah, I just don't think you know, that's Cool by any means.
No, no, I mean some of his books have also Had some controversy as well. In fact, there were revisions printed last year. Mm hmm
there updates made by what they call sensitivity readers? Okay,
Kyle Risi: so this is gonna go too far in my opinion sometimes. What are
Adam Cox: they? Yes and no So I think some things that they do Make sense.
And other things that they take out a bit like, I don't think that was Like what? Well, they remove references to describe someone as dark in case that might meant racially dark. Oh, I see. But I think in some instances, how I interpreted was that they were just like an evil person, nothing down to Who happened to be African American.
No. No, nothing like that at all. Oh, so there's no race involved at all? No, but I think he would be sexist and he would use these racist stereotypes, and he might talk about people with disabilities or deformities in characters that were evil. Right, I see.
Kyle Risi: So it's just reinforcing.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it's not just Roald Dahl's books that have come under, uh, this kind of scrutiny. Even Enid Blyton's and Ian Fleming's books are getting updates off the back of this. Even Goosebumps books have been changed in the past to avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person's view on themselves and the world today.
Sure. Um, so it's becoming more common now to update these iconic pieces of literature, um, which some argue is messing with the original piece of art, which I do get, um, which is why I think, uh, in Darl's case, you can still get his original work. But I think people and businesses are now more mindful that the world has changed, his stories are so creative that the DNA of those stories can still be told and capture the imagination of these young children today, but you can do that in a way that's not gonna offend.
The Legacy of Roald Dahl
Adam Cox: And it's more inclusive,
Kyle Risi: and it's less like closed off to
Adam Cox: certain people. Yeah, so I think I think it's, it's fair if we want to retell those stories, well let's update them a
Kyle Risi: little bit. Yes, and do you know what, I completely agree with doing stuff like that.
However, I always feel like the reason why that's happening is because there's an avenue to make more money. By removing some of that. Do you know what I
Adam Cox: mean? Well, yeah, I think you're right there
Kyle Risi: are the people who are in charge of revising these books Are they doing it because it's the right thing to do for inclusivity or is it just another way of them being able to squeeze?
A bit more cash and get more of an audience So it's really interesting because like a lot of businesses they jump onto the whole LGBT A pride month thing, but it's just another way of them making more money. Do they necessarily care about advancing the rights of gay people? Yeah, I
Adam Cox: mean, I think you're right.
I think these are businesses and that are adapting older pieces of work. And I think because if they come under some kind of scrutiny that people have said, like with James Bond, he's misogynistic and everything like that. Well, now if they tweak little bits in the wording to say, Oh, we've played that down a little bit.
Then it's. It's still making money in the end of the day, isn't it?
Kyle Risi: I think Dr. Seuss came under the same scrutiny recently, didn't he, as well? Where they've updated some of the language that he's used. Because I think he was, like, notoriously anti Semitic and racist and things like that as well. If it's going to be more inclusive and send a better message to young people and not close people off, especially when, like, you are a minority and someone's talking about you, I think absolutely those things should change.
Adam Cox: Yeah, so, I think we can recognise he is a controversial figure in some regards, um, especially if you look at all of his aspects of, especially if you look at all the aspects of his life and ideologies. Um, but I think we can agree that what he has contributed to this world is More positive than negative, I think.
For sure,
Kyle Risi: like when people look back at their childhood, Roald Dahl plays a huge part in that, right? The imagination, the fantasy, the escapism, that you have an adult writing about kind of the integrity and the moralness of young children and innocents. Um, yeah, of course. People always hold that
Adam Cox: close to their hearts.
Exactly, I think there's a lot of good there. I mean, he's a war hero, a flying ace, a spy. And he's fought for ways to improve children's health through his own adversity. Um, and he's taken a horrific accident and reassessed his life, uh, and the sadness he had from his upbringing to create these really wonderful stories for children.
Yeah. Um, so I hope people can still take that whilst acknowledging some of his behavior, uh, is problematic and, and learn from that as we do, as we always should do with history to move forward. For sure. And that, Kyle, is the life story of Roald Dahl.
Kyle Risi: Roald Dahl. That was very good, thank you very much.
I had no idea that he, A, fought in the war. And that, um, he lived that long, that amount of time in America. I didn't realise that he was just so international.
Adam Cox: Yeah, what a life that he's had in terms of just things, yeah, that he's done. I never knew he was a spy. I never knew he couldn't handle more than three nights of sex a week.
Um, all this. I'm
Kyle Risi: shocked, shocked that he, uh, doesn't have the stamina to deal with, uh, Claire Luce. I mean, it's Claire Luce for
Adam Cox: God's sake. He's a legend in a lot of ways and I think that's
Kyle Risi: quite cool. What inspired you to want to do this
Adam Cox: episode? I think it's because of the fact that he's a spy , I think it's quite interesting when you look back at people that have a different life to what you knew of them.
I think it's quite
Amazing. Yeah. Should we roll the outro?
Let's do it.
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Aww,
Kyle Risi: Adam! That's cool! Until next week! See you later!
