0:00

Something else. Hello,

0:07

I'm Amit Jalili and this

0:09

is Please Tell Me A Story, the game where

0:11

storytelling goes wrong. I'm joined

0:14

by Felicity Ward, Nabil Abdel-Rashid, Helen

0:16

Bower, Megan Jane Crabbe and Mark Thomas.

0:18

It's the final episode of the series. How

0:21

are we feeling guys?

0:23

Good!

0:24

You probably know how it works by now, but in case you've

0:26

made the curious decision to start with the last episode

0:29

of the season, allow me to explain. Each week, one

0:31

of us tells a story. We tell it to each other

0:33

again and again and again, based on how

0:36

it's gone so far, nonsense ensues.

0:38

That

0:41

sounds like a cock being rubbed out. Wowzers,

0:44

what a start!

0:46

Bringing up the rear in the big blue

0:49

storytelling chair, it's Felicity

0:51

Ward. It's this guy! Felicity,

0:53

is your story a big finish to our

0:55

anthology?

0:55

I don't think so!

1:01

I would say a fizzle is more

1:03

of an accurate description. But

1:06

we will edit it for you. I

1:09

do not doubt that. Remember, if you're

1:11

listening to the show, you can also watch us by

1:13

searching for Please Tell Me A Story on

1:15

YouTube. So for one last time

1:17

then, let's do this. Felicity, you'll kick

1:20

things off by telling your story to

1:22

Megan. I'll see you at the end

1:24

guys. I have a good feeling about this one. So

1:27

the rest of us,

1:28

get out! Please

1:31

tell me a story.

1:35

This episode is brought to you by United

1:37

Airlines. What's new with United? Well,

1:39

two new planes a week, that's what. But

1:42

what does that mean? It means new and redesigned

1:44

planes with things like larger overhead bins with

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room for everyone's roller bag, power outlets

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at every seat, screens at every seat,

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and the ability to connect your Bluetooth headphones to

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those screens. Sign up for your free trial of United

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Airlines on your trip today at united.com or on their award-winning

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app.

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aircraft delivery schedules. Final delivery

2:02

schedule subject to change.

2:06

So our final storyteller

2:08

is Felicity. Now listen up,

2:10

Megan. Felicity, please tell

2:12

me a story. Megan, this is my

2:14

story. OK, for the purposes of this story,

2:17

absolutely no names have been changed.

2:19

It was the year of the Y2K bug, the

2:22

year 2000 and K. I

2:25

was 19. I was going to be a camp

2:27

counselor at a place called Camp Moriah

2:30

in upstate New York in a town

2:32

called Fishkill.

2:42

Now,

2:44

is it weirder that the town was called

2:47

Fishkill or that it was Camp Moriah,

2:49

as in Mariah Carey's camp?

2:52

It was Mariah, the Mariah

2:54

Carey. And I was told that she

2:56

visited at the end of each encampment

2:59

every year. So I was going to meet Mariah

3:02

fucking Carey. This is like

3:04

the real life camp rock. Exactly.

3:06

Well, kind of. We'll

3:09

get to that. So you would think, oh,

3:11

it's Mariah Carey's camp. Everyone must get paid

3:13

so well. I

3:17

bought my own flight to America from Australia

3:20

and received for the whole time 960 US

3:22

dollars. And

3:26

that was two lots of three

3:28

weeks of work. In those three

3:30

weeks, I got one 24 hour period off

3:33

and one evening off. So $960 for

3:35

payment for six weeks translates to 95 cents

3:41

an hour. That's

3:43

for 24 hour childcare. Oh, Mariah. I'm 19,

3:45

right? If I went a year before, that

3:47

would actually be breaking child labour laws.

3:50

As it was, I was 19 and it was just slave

3:53

labour. Namaste.

3:54

Camp was quite tricky.

3:57

It was very intense from nine o'clock

3:59

until.

3:59

midday, I was a teacher's assistant

4:02

at the pool, a swimming teacher's assistant,

4:04

right? Then

4:07

we'd have lunch from 12 to one, and that was with

4:09

my boys from the cabin that I looked after. And

4:11

then from one till two was time off, and

4:14

also time to do a massive poo. Because

4:16

there was, we were looking after kids, I

4:19

was eating two meals, every single

4:21

meal. I was doing doubles, every, so, and all

4:23

of the camp counselors got to a point where we did

4:25

start talking about our sheds, because

4:28

once I did a poo that was

4:29

as big as my forearm. That became quite

4:32

regi-, it was massive. I know,

4:34

I know. So then

4:36

after that, two till five, I was a music assistant,

4:40

and then cabin leader from 5 p.m. till 9

4:44

a.m. the next morning. Is all of this detail necessary?

4:48

Like you want me to remember it, right? No,

4:50

I'm just giving you a vibe. Cool, okay. I'm just giving you

4:52

a vibe. You can actually drop whatever you like of

4:54

that is fine. Amazing. Basically,

4:57

my only mission while I was there was

5:00

to avoid my only phobia, which

5:02

was moths. It's the only thing that I'm afraid

5:04

of, right? That's all I am. Why?

5:06

Well, because when I was younger, we had

5:08

a garage, and in summer, you would turn

5:10

on the light, and then these big powdery bats,

5:13

they're called bogon moths, would come and flap

5:15

around my face, and I hated it, and

5:17

I felt scared. Moths can go

5:19

fuck themselves, and when they get there, they can

5:21

call their mum and go, oh, I've been, I've

5:24

gotta go fuck myself again. Sorry, I won't be back for

5:26

a while. That's how I feel about moths. Cool, good

5:28

to know. Got it? Yeah, got it.

5:30

So I'm 19. The eldest detainees,

5:33

sorry, campers, were 16, so

5:35

I had very little authority over any

5:38

of them. There was a fish that bit

5:40

one of the kids on the nipple. It got

5:42

called the nipple fish. In

5:44

our cabin, there was only a wooden partition

5:47

between me and my co-counselor

5:50

and the kids, and they were 10 or

5:52

11-year-old boys, and I, more

5:55

than once, heard them exploring themselves.

5:57

Oh, dear. And when they did that, I went and spoke

5:59

to them.

5:59

to an older counselor called Perry, and

6:03

he said, you know who they were whacking

6:05

off to, right? Oh. Oh.

6:13

That sound effect went a lot longer than any

6:15

of us wanted to.

6:16

I feel physically nauseous. Yeah,

6:18

imagine listening to it live.

6:20

Bless you. Bless me. How is therapy

6:23

going? It's, I mean, she's still

6:25

in there. She's been in there

6:27

for a while. The thing

6:29

is, I didn't want to deal with masturbation. I

6:31

just wanted to meet Mariah Carey, obviously.

6:34

So we get to the second encampment, right? Not

6:37

a whisper about Mariah so far. So

6:39

maybe she was just

6:41

a fantasy. Do, do,

6:43

do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

6:45

do, do, do, do.

6:46

In my cabin, I had five

6:48

boys.

6:49

Jimmy, Jimmy Lee, Alvin,

6:52

Julio, Jamal, and

6:54

Ernie. And I had nothing to offer.

6:57

I was just a kid from a national park.

6:59

The only valuable thing I could teach them was how

7:01

to float. Much harder than you think.

7:04

Really hard to teach someone else to float. Us

7:07

counselors, when we went into the second encampment,

7:09

went immediately

7:10

stir crazy because we realised

7:12

we were gonna go through it again. And

7:15

we lashed out in the only way we could, which

7:18

is we started a rumour that Michael Jackson

7:20

was dead. Now, I

7:23

don't know why we did that.

7:25

Probably because there was no internet or phones at camp.

7:28

And so the kids or the counselors couldn't fact

7:30

check. And I was, I was

7:33

still, I was only 19. And so I didn't

7:35

quite understand the phrase, duty

7:37

of care. So we did tell lots of

7:39

10-year-olds that Michael Jackson was

7:41

dead. Some of the kids didn't

7:43

believe us, others weren't sure.

7:45

And some did start crying.

7:48

Not ideal, not ideal. So

7:51

we got them quiet with some stolen chocolate

7:53

chip biscuits and made them promise that they wouldn't sue

7:55

us, which was brought up.

7:57

We get to the last night at the end.

7:59

of the encampment, the six weeks, and

8:02

I'm broken.

8:03

The kids think I'm lame. I couldn't

8:05

teach them anything. They still couldn't float

8:08

at the end of three weeks. And then it

8:10

came to lights out and there

8:12

was a moth in the cabin. Oh,

8:14

for fuck's sake. I thought you were gonna say Mariah Carey. There

8:16

she stood, the butterfly

8:18

herself. In

8:21

the cabin. In the cabin. Floating

8:23

above you. We thought it was a creaky door. It

8:25

was just her whistle.

8:27

Ah! So

8:30

there's a moth in the cabin, right? And these

8:32

boys are terrified

8:34

of a moth. I am also terrified

8:36

of a moth, but I'm like, guys, you've

8:39

witnessed gun violence before. This

8:41

is just a moth. And they're like, no, no,

8:43

get it away from us. Get it away from us. So

8:46

this was my time. This was my

8:48

redemption. And so I took a pillow

8:51

and I channeled all my rage and

8:53

my underpayment and my unwanted

8:55

sexual noises I had to listen to. I,

8:58

my, the lack of tea, the giant

9:00

shits, and I poured them all into this one

9:02

act. And I ran at the moth and

9:04

I screamed and I squished it

9:07

under the pillow. And then we all screamed

9:09

in terror

9:09

as we jumped on the moth corpse

9:12

under it. And then we kicked the pillow

9:14

outside and we all slept sitting

9:16

up. I

9:19

am sorry to say that Mariah

9:21

Carey never turned up that year.

9:24

What the fuck? And nobody told

9:26

us why.

9:27

And you know what's even worse? The spooky

9:29

thing is Michael Jackson did

9:32

die just nine years

9:34

later. Wow.

9:38

And that

9:39

is my story. So the story is

9:41

you killed Michael Jackson. And

9:44

a moth. And I

9:46

think Mariah Carey was the moth. Oh

9:49

my God. That had

9:51

never occurred to me.

9:57

Okay. So it's a tale that doesn't paint

9:59

Mariah Carey. scary in a great light. All

10:01

the campers, all moths for that

10:03

matter. Lots of detail in there. Let's

10:07

see how Meghan, Helen and Mark

10:09

manage.

10:10

Meghan. Helen. Mark. Please

10:12

tell me your story. Nabil,

10:15

I will. This is Felicity's story. That

10:17

she told to Meghan. Who told it to

10:19

Helen. Who told it to me. Let's

10:22

do it. We begin in a

10:24

town called Fishkill. Fishkill.

10:27

Kill fish. And a

10:30

young Helen is 19 and

10:32

all she wants to do.

10:41

Helen's the name of Felicity in this. Wowsers.

10:45

What a start. What a start.

10:47

I'm looking at you. Helen is 19

10:50

in Fishkill. Okay, I get

10:52

it. I get it. Helen. Listen, a young

10:54

19- No, not in the story. I'm not. I'd hope

10:56

not. Stop making it about you. Felicity

10:59

is 19. She wants to go to Camp America.

11:02

She doesn't go to Camp America. She,

11:04

however, does get accepted

11:07

into Camp Moriah. And

11:09

it is what it sounds like.

11:11

Camp Moriah. As

11:15

in Moriah Carey. It's a summer camp

11:18

that Moriah Carey put

11:20

together.

11:27

She gets paid very poorly. She

11:30

works for six weeks and she makes the

11:32

equivalent of 95 cents

11:35

an hour. She is also bunked

11:38

with a bunch of preteen

11:40

boys. And at night

11:42

there is but a plank of wood separating

11:45

her bed from their bed. Each

11:47

night they begin their

11:49

playful dance of adolescent

11:51

self-indulgence and masturbate

11:54

furiously. Oh, come

11:57

on. That's the best sound effect.

11:59

Okay. All right,

12:02

in my ears as well, bruv. I

12:04

know, I'm sorry about that. Just on repeat,

12:07

just constant. Nob time, it's knob

12:09

time, a camarilla. The room in

12:11

the morning

12:13

smelled like a cheese mortuary.

12:15

And when she went to complain to someone, like

12:18

the advisor for the camp, the advisor says,

12:20

well, you know who they're masturbating over, don't you? Oh

12:22

my God, are you serious? I'm very serious. It's horrible,

12:24

isn't it? Yes, that's okay. It's

12:26

absolutely horrible. And the whole time Felicity's

12:29

feeling like she doesn't have much to offer. These

12:32

boys who she's bunked with, you know, they've been

12:34

places, they've seen things. And

12:36

all she can do is try and teach them how to do a back float

12:38

in the pond. Yeah, obviously.

12:39

She wished to show the children

12:41

how they should survive some backward fall.

12:45

And in the pond, there was a fish that

12:47

bit someone's nipple and they called it nipplefish. Back

12:49

up on the nipplefish. No, that's just, that is actually

12:51

the whole thing. Like I haven't skipped anything there.

12:54

Someone got bit on the nipple by a fish and

12:56

they called it nipplefish. And she was eating,

12:58

you know, two meals every meal. So her shits

13:01

became the size of her forearm.

13:04

But one thing you need to know about

13:06

Felicity, she

13:09

is terrified of moths. And

13:11

then every evening all she can hear is the

13:16

wanky boys and she's, yeah,

13:18

that is constantly in a stress and

13:20

her out. Every night there

13:22

was a noise and in flew a giant

13:25

moth. So huge, bigger than one of her shits.

13:28

So she took the pillow that

13:30

was next to her and she channeled all of her rage

13:32

about being underpaid and about

13:35

the wanking boys. She's so

13:37

angry. Nipplefish has upset her. The

13:40

shits the size of her forearm.

13:41

Her pay at this camp is 95 cents an hour. It's

13:45

not good enough. It's not good enough.

13:47

And she pummeled the moth with

13:50

a pillow and they all jumped on

13:52

top of it. And then Mariah Carey,

13:54

then Mariah

13:57

Carey showed up. Mariah

13:59

Carey. walks then. Actual

14:02

genuine Mariah

14:04

Carey. And told

14:08

Felicity that animal cruelty isn't

14:10

accepted at Camp Mariah and

14:13

that she had to leave and

14:15

then she was kicked out of the camp

14:17

and she never even got paid. Felicity left and she

14:19

didn't even get paid. And she left

14:22

without paying. And

14:24

that is exactly

14:27

how it went. I

14:29

mean, the fuck? Nothing

14:34

in the story was relevant to anything else

14:37

in the story. And the sad thing is, I

14:39

genuinely believe that's how it came from

14:42

the original source. I mean it

14:44

is. I mean basically all I had to work with

14:46

was flanging teen fish and

14:48

flapping moths.

14:53

Michael Jackson written out and Mariah

14:55

very much written in. Hi there,

15:01

I'm Gavin Crawford. I'm a writer, an

15:04

actor and a comedian and for

15:06

the last eight or nine years I have been navigating

15:09

life with my mother's increasing dementia.

15:12

Has it been sad? Yeah. Has

15:14

it been funny? Also yeah.

15:18

That's what my brand new podcast series Let's Not Be Kidding

15:20

is about. It's the true story of

15:23

my life as a comedian, my mom

15:25

and dementia. Let's

15:28

Not Be Kidding with me, Gavin Crawford.

15:30

A new seven part series from CBC

15:32

Podcasts available now.

15:35

Hi,

15:40

I'm Mark. Hi, I'm Jackie. And we

15:43

are the hosts of How Can We Help podcast

15:45

and Advice Podcasts. We are not professional

15:47

advice givers. No, we skipped that

15:49

day. Yeah, we skipped the day where

15:52

you get that training and certification.

15:54

Yeah. But what we are is eager advice

15:56

givers who offer what

15:59

could maybe generate

15:59

be described as? Okay

16:02

advice. At times we will do damage

16:04

to you. Sometimes I put advice out of my mouth and I wish I

16:06

could go hoom and grab it back into my mouth cause

16:08

I know it was the really wrong advice. Sometimes

16:11

I put advice out of my mouth and

16:13

wish I could go hoom. Look, I

16:16

told you I missed the training. Every

16:18

episode we give advice

16:20

on different questions that we solicit from you, the

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listener. And the questions can be about anything,

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wherever you get your podcasts. How

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can we help podcast with

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Mark and Jackie.

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Brought to you by the Sonar Network. Find

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this and other great podcasts at thesonarnetwork.com.

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This podcast is sponsored by TalkSpace. May

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17:54

Nabil's up next. Nabil,

17:57

please tell me a story.

18:00

Sure, this is Felicity's story,

18:03

as told by Helen, who

18:05

told Megan, who told Mark,

18:08

who told me. Not entirely

18:10

the right name order there. Right, so,

18:13

um, when Felicity

18:16

was 17, she really wanted

18:18

to go to America. Bum, bum,

18:20

bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,

18:22

bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,

18:25

bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

18:27

Because she wanted to see America,

18:30

and she wanted to help young

18:32

kids who needed help, because I mean, America is

18:34

so full of underprivileged, I mean, if you were going to think

18:36

of a country where you need to go and... How about

18:38

underprivileged kids? Yeah, America is definitely

18:41

the place to go. And obviously, she wanted

18:43

to make money. And

18:45

again, there's a bunch of incoherence

18:47

here, but initially it was Camp

18:50

America, then Killfish,

18:54

then it later became Camp

18:57

Moriah, as in... Camp

19:00

Moriah Carey. Moriah Carey, yeah. And

19:02

yes, the movements were part of the story. So, this

19:05

story is so bollocks that I'm trying to do

19:07

it. I'm not even adding anything, really. Like,

19:10

that's how she...

19:11

He didn't love the story, but Nabil's pretty

19:13

much on the money here. Let's cut to

19:15

the moth. And it's

19:17

then mentioned that she has

19:20

a phobia of moths. She's

19:22

afraid of moths, because

19:25

why not? And a moth flies

19:28

into the room while

19:31

she's there, and she thinks

19:33

should she run out, but she can't, because apparently

19:36

this room, the only way

19:38

out is to run through the furious masturbators,

19:41

right? And she didn't want to get caught

19:43

with any stray shots. I don't know. I guess

19:45

it's just weird for a 17-year-old

19:48

girl to run through a room of masturbating

19:51

teenage boys

19:53

from a moth. So, she decided she was going to face

19:55

her fears.

19:57

So, she attacked... the

20:00

mouth furiously almost as

20:02

furiously as the masturbators were masturbating

20:05

at the same time She's running through their

20:07

dorm. No, she didn't want to they don't she stayed in

20:10

her room But she's in looking okay, and

20:12

then the door open and none other than

20:16

Mariah Carey herself walks into the room

20:19

and says we don't condone violence

20:21

towards animals

20:24

and walks out and

20:26

And Felicity was

20:29

sent home without pay and

20:31

that's exactly how

20:33

it goes I'm

20:37

I Have very

20:40

little reaction to that other

20:42

than to pick up on what you said What do the

20:44

furious masturbators have to do with

20:46

the story? We could have just left that bit out. I

20:49

Can see why we're keeping it in now though. The

20:51

sound effect is magnificent and

20:54

the nipplefish. Okay Well, thank you.

20:56

Thank you very much. Um, I

20:59

Feel them I haven't

21:01

evolved at all

21:04

Come to think of it. Why was the nipplefish

21:07

relevant and the Masturbation

21:10

hmm. Let's get Felicity back to

21:13

hear from Omid Omid. Please.

21:15

Tell me a story

21:18

Okay, this is the story which I believe

21:20

is your story told to Megan. It is Yeah,

21:23

and then who told Helen

21:26

where I think maybe things may have gone wrong with

21:28

then told mark Who would have

21:30

made things worse who then told Nabil who told

21:32

me? I'm

21:33

excited. The story is you are 17

21:35

years old Sure.

21:38

Okay. All right, and you want to go to America

21:49

Because you feel you would like to help

21:51

underprivileged children and of all the countries in the

21:54

world Why you would choose America

21:57

is extraordinary. So you've got a choice of places

21:59

places to go. Some are camps where

22:02

you're going to help underprivileged children.

22:04

There seems to be many different ones you've done.

22:07

You've done some stints with

22:10

a couple of places were mentioned. I can't

22:12

quite remember off the top of my head where they are, but

22:14

there was a Mariah Carey

22:16

type camp. There was Camp

22:19

Mariah, I believe.

22:21

Yes. Camp Mariah, which I didn't think was

22:23

a thing. I thought that was a distortion, but that's true. Camp

22:26

Mariah is a place where you're going to be there

22:28

as a 17-year-old counsellor. The

22:32

accommodation you're given is next

22:35

to a couple of boys when there's

22:37

a very thin wall.

22:40

You can hear them

22:42

furiously masturbating.

22:51

That sounds like a cock being rubbed out for

22:53

me.

22:54

That's a mistake cock. It's a

22:56

mistake cock. The next

22:58

day, you have to do something to help

23:01

the boys with floating, floating in water. One

23:03

of them seems to float on his front. While

23:06

he's floating on his front, he's nipped by fish

23:08

on his nipples. At

23:11

this point, Nabil did say, I don't know

23:13

what the masturbating was about or how relevant

23:15

that was to the story, but it

23:17

is something that you had

23:20

to deal with a kid who had his nipples

23:23

bitten. Then

23:24

the story moves on and you have a phobia of

23:27

moths. A moth comes into your

23:29

room and starts

23:31

flying around you. You want to run away, but you

23:33

don't really want to run through the masturbating

23:36

boys who I believe are still masturbating.

23:42

That's called a crywank, I believe. That is a crywank.

23:45

All right, so you're going to have to deal with this moth by yourself.

23:48

So you start attacking this moth in

23:50

your room. At

23:52

which point the whole room is shaking.

23:56

The room is shaking. I didn't miss out that when

23:58

the boys were masturbating, they were shaking.

23:59

as well. They're massively

24:02

so few. They were shaking. So people know

24:04

that you're doing something on toward Tumoth,

24:07

at which point Mariah Carey

24:10

herself

24:11

shows up and tells

24:13

you off

24:14

and says, we do not condone

24:16

violence to animals. And

24:18

then you had to leave in disgrace.

24:21

You were not paid.

24:22

And to this day, you're bearing those

24:25

scars and you've been speaking to a therapist

24:27

about it. And you've actually

24:29

exhausted the therapist's time.

24:31

So you've brought the story here to see

24:33

if we can get some answers. And frankly,

24:36

there are no answers. And that's

24:38

the that's, that's the story of how

24:40

it went. I mean,

24:42

this has got Helen Bower written all over it. I believe

24:45

so. It was actually

24:47

pretty close to the story until Mariah

24:49

Carey walked in. Let's get the gang

24:51

back in and see who's the culprit. Count

24:54

us in please, Helen.

24:56

Felicity, please tell us your

24:58

story.

25:00

This is my story. Now for the

25:02

purposes of this story, absolutely no

25:04

names have been changed. It

25:06

was the year of the Y2K bug. I

25:08

was 19. And I was going to

25:11

be a camp counselor at a place called

25:13

Camp America in a place called

25:15

Fishkill in upstate New York.

25:25

Felicity

25:25

tells us her story with the Star

25:28

Spangled Banner, music video

25:30

trivia and everything else.

25:32

A query from Mark, though, about the infamous

25:35

nipplefish.

25:36

What did bite it? It was a fish.

25:38

It's just a fish. There was no specific I

25:40

want. I just try to find out the specific I don't

25:43

even know if it was a sea snake or

25:45

a fish. What are you meant to

25:47

be teaching them how to float? Yeah, I was

25:49

I was teaching them how to float that comes later

25:52

that comes later. Okay, yes. In our cabins.

25:55

I was looking after boys, right? So we had a wooden

25:57

partition between the co counselor me

25:59

and Ray.

25:59

and then you could walk around

26:02

it, we're in the same cabin. It wasn't next

26:04

door. We're in the same cabin, they

26:06

were 10 or 11 year old boys and I

26:09

heard them exploring themselves.

26:16

It goes for so long. That does sound

26:18

like like DIY. It does, it's

26:20

like you're just sanding the walls before you put the

26:22

top coat on. I was thinking it sounds very

26:24

dry. It does sound dry. It does,

26:26

absolutely dry. It's

26:28

like at the end of

26:30

this, this is the noisy here.

26:33

No! It's

26:35

because it's a baby cry that makes

26:37

me so upset. So I'd heard that

26:40

a couple of nights in a row and

26:43

then I went to one of the older camp counsellors, Perry,

26:46

and I went up to him and I told him, and his

26:48

feedback was, you know who he's probably

26:50

whacking off to, right?

26:53

Unhelpful. Not the feedback I wanted

26:55

or anticipated. I didn't want to

26:57

deal with masturbation. I just wanted to meet

26:59

Mariah Carey. So we go into the second encampment

27:02

and all the counsellors who are not from

27:04

the States just go immediately stir crazy. We

27:06

go mad. And

27:08

so we lashed out in the only way we could.

27:11

We started a rumour that Michael Jackson

27:13

was dead. What? How did you

27:15

miss that out? I, who missed that? The

27:19

first person. Try not to think about him

27:21

at all. That's fair enough. Fair.

27:24

A rumour that he's dead is a good rumour for you then.

27:26

At what stage in his career was this? The

27:28

year 2000. Not as soon as before he

27:30

dies. And so have we had

27:32

baby dangle yet? That's probably

27:34

around baby dangle time, is it not?

27:37

Sure, around baby dangle time. What a remarkable thing

27:39

to start spreading. Some of the children

27:41

didn't believe us. Others weren't sure and

27:43

some did cry.

27:47

Some of the counsellors and some of the children. Fair

27:49

enough. Fair enough. But it was

27:51

all fine. We got them quiet with some stolen chocolate biscuits and

27:54

they did agree not to sue us.

27:57

Mmm! And then it came to lights

27:59

out.

28:00

And I went to turn the lights out

28:02

and there was a moth. And

28:04

the kids were terrified.

28:06

These kids who have seen gun violence, these

28:09

children from broken homes, were

28:11

fucking terrified of a moth. I'm like, come

28:13

on, guys, it's just a moth, even

28:15

though inside I am dying. And I

28:17

thought, you know what? This is my moment of

28:20

redemption. So I

28:22

bite down and deal with it. I

28:24

grab a pillow, I

28:26

take a deep breath, and I channel all

28:28

my rage, my lack of money,

28:31

my massive shits, my inability

28:33

to teach these kids how to float, the unwanted

28:36

sexual noises, the disappearance

28:38

of my tea, my coffee, my sugar,

28:41

and I run at this moth with

28:43

a pillow, screaming, and

28:45

I squish it. And then we all come over

28:48

and we jump on the pillow and the

28:50

corpse of the moth, and then we kick

28:53

the pillow outside, and then

28:55

we all go to sleep

28:56

sitting up. And then here we

28:58

all come along. Mariah

29:02

Carey never came

29:04

that year. No! She never

29:06

came, and we never found out

29:08

why. And the spooky thing about

29:10

Michael Jackson, he did die

29:13

only nine years later.

29:15

I don't know how Mariah came...

29:18

I think we've got a confession to make from Megan,

29:20

I think, because I was definitely told that

29:22

Mariah came at the end.

29:24

I just... It was a long story, and

29:26

I wanted to spice it up at the end. It was a

29:28

long story, was it?

29:32

Am I going to be punished? No. Your

29:35

story was about Dance Dance Revolution.

29:38

You say mine... It's the f**king terrible time.

29:40

Needed spicing money. Mine had Spice Girls, Emmett's.

29:42

Mine had peril.

29:43

Good point. Peril, Spice Girls. She had...

29:45

She had... Don't go to her

29:47

defence! I've known you for 15 years, motherf**ker!

29:50

Wow! She was wrong. Thank you.

29:53

Well, there you go. That's

29:55

it for this season. We'll be back with

29:57

another season of Madness. Please tune in

29:59

to... Please tell me a story. Bye

30:02

everyone!

30:04

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to listen

30:06

ad-free. You can start your free trial now

30:09

by clicking try free at the top of the Please

30:11

Tell Me A Story show page in the Apple

30:13

Podcasts app. You've been listening to

30:15

Omid Jalili, Felicity Ward, Nabil

30:18

Abdul Rashid, Mark Thomas, Helen

30:20

Bower and Megan Jane Crabbe. This

30:22

is Please Tell Me A Story, narrated by

30:25

Polly Lloyd. The producers are Michael Dale

30:27

and Katie Bowden. The assistant producer

30:29

is Ben Johns. Sound engineering by

30:32

Josh Gibbs, Gulliver Lawrence Tickle and

30:34

Jay

30:34

Beal. Video engineer is James

30:36

Weller. Video editor is Ryan O'Meara.

30:39

Production coordinator is Archan Mohile.

30:41

Marketing coordinator is Emily Webb. Social

30:44

content by Little Dot Studios. Assistant

30:47

content producer is Jonathan Imeieri.

30:49

Additional production by Loeth Shafia. Original

30:52

music by Jonathan Rathbone. Executive

30:54

producers are Chris Skinner, Alex Lawless and

30:56

me Omid Jalili.

30:59

Thank you everyone. That was a who.

31:01

Lovely stuff. I can't believe you've come. Mariah

31:04

Carey.