Away With Words
- 1998
- Ended
- 1 season
Presenter Neil Innes has fun exploring the origins of well-known words; and phrases in AWAY WITH WORDS. The 13-part series follows him on his travels from Yarmouth to Ely, Southend, Newmarket, Luton, Southwold, Duxford, Ipswich, Norwich, Corby, Bletchley, Cambridge and Colchester. But it won't be a map so much as a dictionary that he will have as a guide as he looks for the unlikely sources of all sorts of everyday names and sayings, and talks to some of the people who can throw light on them.
Latest: Season 1 · 1998
View all seasonsE1. Episode 1
Sep 15, 1998
Programme one sees him joining the circus at Great Yarmouth's Hippodrome, where he makes the acquaintance of a friendly pachyderm (elephant), and finds out why we refer to chaotic situations as a "three-ring circus".
E2. Episode 2
Sep 22, 1998
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".
E3. Episode 3
Sep 29, 1998
Neil Innes has fun beside the seaside, exploring words and sayings which take him from cockle-fishing to Cockney rhyming slang. Southend, and neighbouring Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, prove the perfect places to enjoy a range of traditional seaside delights from making candy floss and playing bingo, to having his fortune told and joining the fancy footwork at the Cliff Bandstand where he finds out how dances like the rumba, fox-trot and waltz got their names.
E4. Episode 4
Oct 6, 1998
AWAY WITH WORDS presenter Neil Innes is off to Newmarket to dabble in the sport of kings and find out what the richness of the language owes to the riches of the racetrack. A surprising number of everyday words and expressions derive from horses, gambling and money, as Neil reveals. He also has fun tracing the royal connections which helped put Newmarket on the map. From the history of racing, to the photo finish, it's odds-on that Neil will find plenty to talk about, hopefully without losing his shirt!
E5. Episode 5
Oct 13, 1998
Neil Innes gets to grips with more of the English language in a programme which ranges from real tennis to Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's big poser 'What's in a name?" provides the perfect excuse for Neil to climb into costume and discover the enormous debt our everyday speech still owes to William Shakespeare. While a visit to a real tennis court serves to uncover the origins of some of the sport's idiosyncrasies (like the scoring). And where better than Cambridge, to find out why students "graduate", who makes a "chum", and how to stay out of someone's "bad books'. A trip to the tailor's reveals, among other things, where the term "the full Monty" originated. And, punting down the river, there's time to contemplate how Cambridge itself came by its name.
E6. Episode 6
Oct 25, 1998
He doesn't eat his hat, but presenter Neil Innes does tuck into a curry when AWAY WITH WORDS takes a closer look at what the English language owes to foreign cultures and far-away places like the sub-continent of India. Heading for Luton and Bedford, Neil finds himself on a journey which takes him from a Hindu temple to a hat factory, and ends with him rubbing shoulders with Royalty. There is an introduction to the oldest surviving written language of all when Neil visits Luton's Hindu Mandir Temple, and goes on to discover that everyday words like juggernaut, pundit and ginger all share their origins in ancient Sanskrit.
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