January 19, 2014
by Jon Thrower
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Tallington – Part 3 Extras – An Interview with the Cast

For this episode we decided to interview the cast. All at once. Via the internet. With questions that they’d written themselves. Look, it’s amazing we got this far, OK?

Let’s get the big questions of life out of the way first. If you could only eat potatoes cooked in one way for the rest of your life, which would you go for?

ID-Card-Roger[Andrew] Dauphinoise. Only the French could take a carbohydrate and flood it with cream. Legends.

[Harriet] Wedges. All the way.

[Matt] Chips.

[Tim] Chips.

[Jon] I should warn you, I’m always last to make up my mind in a restaurant. So, chips. But then, are you just condemning yourself to an early heart attack? And has anyone taken into account the feeling of the potato? Mind you, mash is positively barbaric by that measure. And Dauphinoise has the nasty twist of a serial killer. I’ll go with chips. As long as they’re done properly. If not, I’ll just go straight to dessert.

ID-Card-Catherine[Lisa] It’s a close call – sausage and mash would be a big loss, but corned beef hash made with parmentier potatoes wins every time.

Tallington is about time travel. If you could travel back through time, what single mistake would you correct in life?

[Matt] Don’t get me started.

[Andrew] A lemon cardigan I thought was the height of style in 1988.

If you won £10 million on the lottery, how would you spend it?

ID-Card-Eugene[Jon] That’s a very specific amount. Can we talk about lottery wins in general? The other week I won £3 and spent it on a parking ticket.

[Rob] I’d spend it quickly, then medium and then slowly. Medium house in the country, small flats in a few of my favourite cities, buy a shiny new Fiat 500, sort out family and friends money worries, then volunteer all over the place with my time and do more acting.

[Harriet] I would set up a community ‘hub’ with rehearsal space, a theatre, a bar/cafe and maybe a market. A bit like The Tobacco Factory. Also Rob and I would open a pub, which he seems to have forgotten about. Humph.

[Jon] That’s a good point, he’s supposed to be opening a restaurant with me. It turns out that the only thing he can’t cook is rice (I mean, how can you not cook rice?). This is the only thing I can cook. So I’ll sit in the back doing nothing until someone orders a curry, and he can do the rest.

What’s the Worst Acting Experience you’ve ever had?

ID-Card-Rupert[Matt] Failing to remember if I’d removed the blank bullet from the stage gun as I put it in my mouth to play Russian Roulette in Hamlet…

[Verity] Being a drunk tree.

[Rob] When my willy fell out of my bath robe on stage.

[Harriet] Having to do a seductive strip in front of a horrified 80 year old prompt. Whilst the audience could only see my shadow, Maureen more or less got a lap dance.

Apostrophes don’t matter – agree or disagree?

ID-Card-Ruby[Lucy] Most of my friends are apostrophe nazis….so yes it is important! Happy now?!

[Verity] DISAGREE!

Tell me a knock knock joke.

[Tim] Knock, knock. Who’s there? Impatient cow. Impatient cow wh—Moooooooo!!!

[Verity] Knock, knock. Who’s there? Impatient sheep. Impatient sheep wh- baaaa! You may see a slight similarity between this joke and Tim’s.

[Matt] Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage.Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Cabbage. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Lettuce stop talking about Cabbages!

Tell me a limerick.

ID-Card-George[Tim] There were two ugly sisters from Fordham,
who went for a walk til it bored them,
on the way back,
a sex maniac
jumped out from a bush and ignored them.

[Jon] On the chest of a barmaid from Sale
Were tattoed the prices of ale
And on her behind
for the sake of the blind
the same was repeated in braille.

What Comedy Show do you wish you’d been in, or written?

ID-Card-Minister[Rob] French and Saunders of course

[Andrew] Early Doors. Much underrated.

[Verity] Father Ted. Ah go on!

[Lucy] Smack the Pony…hilarious.

[Matt] Trapdoor and more recently, the Wrong Mans

[Tim] Blackadder or Fawlty Towers

[Jon] Not Going Out, Father Ted, the IT Crowd.

Given the chance would you go into space?

[Rob] Big time. If it was with friends.

[Andrew] Too high.

[Verity] Hell no. Space freaks me out.

[Lucy] Nope.

[Harriet] I like looking at the stars being twinkly but have no desire to get any closer to them thank you.

[Matt] Yarp.

[Tim] Definitely.

[Lisa] In a flash.

What made you say yes to being involved in “Tallington”?

ID-Card-Marjorie[Verity] Lisa is really nice.

[Andrew] Booze.

[Harriet] Lisa came to my house, fed me cake and MADE me do it. Well she didn’t make me but I did it anyway.

[Jon] I didn’t. I’m still making my mind up.

[Matt] Too busy at the time to say no. Oh hang on – no it was the opportunity to work with such a talented and amazing team of lovely people.

[Tim] I had a very busy life at the time and for some ridiculous reason I thought it would be less time consuming than doing a play!

[Lisa] Great writing, wine and laughter – what more can you ask for?

What are your vices or guilty pleasures?

ID-Card-Mavis[Harriet] Peanut butter on thick cut bread as soon as I walk through the door without taking my coat off.

[Andrew] Girls Aloud and karaoke. Sometimes together.

[Verity] Crisps, olives, ham sandwiches, salted popcorn. I’m drooling as I write this.

[Lucy] Tangfastics, crisps, cheese…ah the list goes on and on.

[Matt] This is a family show, isn’t it?

[Tim] Curry, beer, Holby City, Karaoke and crap novels.

[Lisa] Cheese (Cheddar or Wenslydale are the worst/best) and terrible TV dramas – preferably involving a love triangle or two.

[Jon] Long and overcomplicated computer games that take hundreds of hours to complete. In fact, now I think about it, anything long and overcomplicated. So I’m a big fan of Thomas Pynchon, Box sets, and the A1(M).

What are your main influences?

[Tim] Alcohol.

[Rob] The Bedlam Theatre and Footlights in Edinburgh – it made me love acting.

[Verity] Matilda Wormwood and Tyler Durden.

[Harriet] Acting- it has been a welcome escape from reality many a time.

[Matt] James Herriot. He made me want to be a vet at an early age. I followed that dream and am now a successful IT Consultant.

[Jon] Gravity and the weak nuclear force.

Zombies have invaded the Earth- who’s on your fighting team?

[Jon] Really? I don’t know, you miss the news for one day…

[Andrew] Verity. She is proper scary.

[Rob] Wolverine – but only if it’s the Hugh Jackman one. Not sure we’d get much Zombie killing done though.

What one item would you take with you to a desert island?

[Matt] Bath.

[Andrew] A means of escape.

[Lisa] A Ball of string.

[Jon] A ball of string? Are you secretly a cat?

What do you most want to do before you die?

[Jon] Is that a threat?

[Tim] Laugh a lot.

[Andrew] Answer more of these questions.

I sense you’re getting a bit restless. Shall we call it a day?

[Jon] For an imaginary entity dreamed up after the event to impose structure on a random set of answers, you’re awfully cheeky. But it’s probably a good idea.

January 12, 2014
by Jon Thrower
Comments Off on Tallington – Part 2 – The Disappearence of Gerard Fry

Tallington – Part 2 – The Disappearence of Gerard Fry

Part 2 of Tallington – a 7 part audio drama series.

Catherine typing

Lisa Walsh as Catherine

Catherine is trying to come to terms with what has happened to her. Eugene, her captor, now has trouble of his own as MI5 agent Miss Charm investigates the unusual circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Gerard Fry.

For a full list of cast and credits see here. For extras relating to this episode, see here.

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Tallington by We Are Not Alone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Podcast: Download (30.3MB)

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January 12, 2014
by Jon Thrower
Comments Off on Tallington – Part 2 Extras – Secret Underground Bases

Tallington – Part 2 Extras – Secret Underground Bases

Warning – this article contains spoilers about events that occur within Episode 2 – please listen to it first!

Tallington Plan

A Secret Underground Base

The Tallington facility is built in a stone mine, about 200 feet underground, as demanded by the need for extreme secrecy, and the portal technology requiring a large volume of air at a regulated temperature. You might think this was a fairly unique set of circumstances, but all around Britain during the second world war a number of similar if lower tech facilities were built, ranging from vast ammunition depots to entire underground factories, all set up to keep valuable facilities and communications networks safe from the threat of bombing. A number of these sites had already been moved out of London to the South West – prior to the fall of France safely out of range of German bombers, only to find themselves in the firing line once more.

One example of this is Monkton Farleigh stone mine, converted in the 1930s as a result of escalating tension, with six ammunition storage depots connected by five miles of underground tunnels, and connected to the main railway network initially via a slightly heath robinson 200 yard aerial ropeway, and ultimately with its own sidings. This site was used throughout the war, and then stood down in the 1950s. It was apparently in full working order as late as 1963.

Monkton Farleigh Ammunition Depot, 1983. Photo by Derek Hawkins

Monkton Farleigh Ammunition Depot – 14 district. Photo by Derek Hawkins

Some photographs taken in one of the war time underground factories are shown below. These generally proved immensely impractical, not only because of space restrictions, access problems, and the unending battle against the damp, but also because of the need to find accommodation above ground for large numbers of staff. The spring quarry project near Corsham (subsequently to be converted to the Central Government War Headquarters) saw the estimated cost of the project rise from £2.3million to £2.5million by 1941, to over £7million by the end of the war, with heating and ventilation costs alone forecast at £230,000 per year, which even makes modern day heating bills seem tame.

Central Government War Headquarters

At the end of World War 2, it slowly became evident that the threat from nuclear weapons was not, as first thought, similar to that posed by the bombing raids on London during the war. A strike was in fact capable of rendering large parts of the country uninhabitable. A plan was hatched to turn one of the war time aircraft factories at Spring Quarry near Box in Wiltshire into a fall back government headquarters, intended to lead a set of Regional command posts. On completion, this huge underground complex was capable of housing 4000 Whitehall staff for up to three months, entirely self sufficient, 100 feet underground.  This depth is insufficient to withstand a direct nuclear strike, and so the existence and location of this site (codenamed “Burlington”) had to be kept completely secret.

Telephone exchange in Central Government War Headquarters, 2010. Photo by Noel Jenkins.

The site quickly became outdated. The idea of having a central facility to which the entire government and royal family could withdraw was impractical, and extremely costly, and so the facility was gradually reduced in scope, ultimately using only a tiny fraction of it’s 35 acre site, with sixty miles of roads. The facility was finally decommissioned and put up for sale in 2005, and the extent of the site made public. BBC Wiltshire have set up a site with a number of photographs and videos of the site, which can be viewed here.

 

January 5, 2014
by Jon Thrower
2 Comments

Tallington – Part 1 – The Anomaly

tallington groupPart 1 of Tallington – a 7 part audio drama series.

In 2013, Catherine Wilder, a journalist tasked with producing stories about lost pets, stumbles upon references to a war time project that appears to have uncovered the secrets of time travel. At the same time, a strange character has arrived, and appears to be looking for something. Who is he, and what is Tallington?

For a full list of cast and credits see here. For extras relating to this episode, see here.

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Tallington by We Are Not Alone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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January 5, 2014
by Jon Thrower
Comments Off on Tallington – Part 1 Extras – Out of Place Artefacts

Tallington – Part 1 Extras – Out of Place Artefacts

Warning – this article contains spoilers about events that occur within Episode 1 – please listen to it first!

A Collection of Out of Place Artefacts

In Episode 1, Gerard Fry uses the concept of Out of Place Artefacts (also known as OOPArts) in order to alarm the minister responsible into reopening the Tallington project. In fact, the artefacts he lists all relate to real objects that have been claimed to have an unexpected age in relation to where they were found. In some cases these show the presence of intelligent human action in the historical record long before it should be present, and so represent a challenge to established chronology. Some of these, such as the Antikythera mechanism do genuinely appear to represent ancient civilisations having more advanced technology than was previously thought. Others, including those cited by Fry, are less clear cut.

“Minister. Have you heard of the Kingoodie artefact?”

As Fry goes on to explain, this is the name given to what was apparently a corroded iron nail found within a block of sandstone in Kingoodie, Scotland. It was reported by Sir David Brewster in 1844, but with no photographs taken, and only a relatively poor description recorded, which appears to suggest that only a small part of the nail was encased in stone, it’s not surprising the minister had not heard of it.

Supposedly, the Dorchester pot, in surprisingly good nick after 500 million years. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

“A solid iron pot was blasted out of sandstone…”

This appears to be a reference to vase like object found in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1851, found after blasting a puddingstone known as Roxbury congolomerate (not Sandstone as reported by Fry). It’s description is recorded in Scientific American from an anonymous source as being “a bell shaped vessel, 4 1/2 inches high, 6 1/2 inches at the base, 2 1/2 inches at the top and about 1/8th inch in thickness. The body of this vessel resembles zinc in colour… on the sides there are six figures of a flower or bouquet”. The website Bad Archaeology argues that this description applies just as well to a Victorian candlestick, which could have been present before the blasting took place, rather than within the rock.

“1920s spark plug found inside a geode in California”

The Coso Artefact was discovered by Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey, and Mike Mikesell while they were prospecting for geodes near the town of Olancha, California in February 1961. The item appears to be a spark plug, encased in hard rock, and has been cited both as evidence in favour of creationism, of aliens visiting earth, the existence of ancient advanced civilisation, and of human time travel.  Following the item’s discovery, an investigation was conducted, and with the aid of some spark plug collectors (!) it was identified as being a 1920s Champion spark plug, as was in common use on a Model T Ford, which aside from a commonplace answer, pretty much eliminates all but the time travel theory. Its discoverers claimed at the time that there was evidence that the item was around 500,000 years old, but the truth is somewhat more prosaic. The item is not, in fact, a geode a, but a concretion that could have formed in a matter of decades.

“A stone miner’s hammer had been found embedded in rock 200 million years old”

More artifacts are mentioned in Episode 2, and a brief search on the internet will reveal many more. How about hieroglyphics which apparently show a modern helicopter along with some rather more elaborate flying machines?

Ancient Egyptian helicopters and flying machines (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Or alternatively, a mysterious antenna that was photographed on the sea bed at a depth of 4km, in 1964. Not as it first appears, evidence of lost technology on the sea bed, but actually a form of sponge.

The Eltanin Antenna

The Eltanin Antenna – evidence that sponges live on the sea floor (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Many of these are examples of Pareidolia, a psychological tendency to make patterns where none exist, due to our brain’s incredible ability to construct meaning out of noise. Some simple examples can be seen in our remarkable ability to see faces in just about anything, such as these examples courtesy of bored panda.

 

 

December 24, 2013
by Jon Thrower
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Scary Stories – 3 – The Pot of Water

It’s Christmas eve, and here’s Robert Ancilliary again with the final of our three scary stories, and he’s managed to come up with something that has nothing whatever to do with Christmas. Today’s story is about a pot of water, which is about as scary as it can get, I’m sure you’ll agree.

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Scary Stories by We Are Not Alone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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December 23, 2013
by Jon Thrower
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Tallington – Preview Clips!

tallington groupFor visitors to our website, here are three exclusive preview clips from Tallington! Episode 1 will be available to download from January 5th 2014!

These three clips have been specially chosen by our editing staff (translation, these were the only ones they could think of when they came back half cut from the Christmas do). We hope you enjoy them as much as they enjoyed the party. I mean, making them.

Tallington Preview – All visitors to the facility are required to undergo briefings on how to identify a communist.

Tallington Preview – Personnel using time portals may experience confusion about which time they are in.

Tallington Preview – Time travellers may feel out of their depth when encountering unfamiliar situations.

 

Creative Commons Licence
Tallington by We Are Not Alone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The title music is “Witch Hunt” by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com)

 

December 23, 2013
by Jon Thrower
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Scary Stories – 2 – The Telephone

It’s the second of our three part special series of Scary Stories, in the run up to Christmas, and Dr Robert Ancilliary has a tale to chill the bones. Just what you need for a cold winter’s evening. This time it’s about a telephone. So pull up a chair, light a fire, and throw your telephone on it.

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December 22, 2013
by Jon Thrower
Comments Off on Scary Stories – 1 – The Brick

Scary Stories – 1 – The Brick

In the first of our three part special series of Scary Stories, Dr Robert Ancilliary, curator of the Museum of Anomalous Experience tells the story behind a humble house brick. But surely there’s more to it than that? Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you.

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December 21, 2013
by Jon Thrower
Comments Off on We Are Not Alone – New Podcast releases winter 2013-14

We Are Not Alone – New Podcast releases winter 2013-14

We Are Not Alone – watching the skies so you don’t have to.

cast

Series Three brings a change of direction for We Are Not Alone. We have had a fantastic time producing the sketch show and look forward to more in the future, but we are excited to announce that 2014 is the year of…

Tallington

A team of scientists working in secret on aerodynamics stumble across a means of travelling through time. They construct a working prototype of a time portal that allows them to walk through a gateway into a different time, but disaster strikes, and some of the team are lost forever. The project is labelled top secret and formally closed down.

In 2013 Catherine Wilder, a journalist on a local paper, is seeking to make her name, initially by making sensational stories up. As punishment she is given a set of declassified wartime government documents to go through, and among them finds a cryptic reference to a war time project codenamed “Tallington”. The memos suggest that during the war, the British may have accidentally stumbled across the secret of time travel.

Tallington is a continuous seven part story revolving around the existence of this secret second world war time travel project and the eccentric team of scientists and time travelers involved in its creation.  During the series, time travelers are sent to the seventeenth century, to ancient Rome, and even to the modern day. The cast is now Matt Nation, Jon Thrower, Lisa Walsh, Tim Hounsome, Rob Dawson, Harriet Pockcock, Lucy Brownhill, Verity Neeves and Andrew Fletcher.

Tallington part 1 is released on January 5th 2014, with following parts at weekly intervals. “Extras” such as background stories and interviews with cast members will be posted on the website.

Scary Stories

Scary Stories 1_1In contrast to the ambitious scope of Tallington, in the run up to Christmas 2013, We Are Not Alone are releasing three specials called “Scary Stories”. These are a take on the traditional ghost story, and feature a single narrator, the curator of the fictional Museum of Anomalous Experience, Dr Robert Ancilliary, with minimal special effects. Each edition features a single tale of the supernatural with a strong comedic edge. Robert has selected three of his favourite exhibits from the museum, and will tell their stories, to be relased on 22nd, 23rd and 24th December 2013.

Downloading the Podcasts

All material is available from the website www.wearenotalone.co.uk, or via itunes, or other podcast directories.

Who Are We?

We Are Not Alone are a comedy group based in Bath, UK.

The sketches take as their inspiration a blend of 1950s science fiction, modern satire and the paranormal. The group have produced two series of a sketch show which blends sketches with parodies of well known classic science fiction films, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Thing from Another World. The series featured the vocal talents of local Bath actors Matt Nation, Lisa Walsh, Tim Hounsome, Jon Thrower, Amy Hughes (series one), and Al Cubbin (series two).

We Are Not Alone began as a sketch comedy podcast in 2010, when the writer Jon Thrower broke his Achilles tendon while rehearsing a play, and was confined to bed for a period of weeks. The idea of a podcast was in response to attending the recording of the Richard Herring and Andrew Collins free to download podcast at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010.

We Are Not Alone

We Are Not Alone