In this episode of the u3a radio podcast, the team talk to a man who invented cricket rankings, to one of the u3a radio team Jo about her experience on working on the Olympics and to a member of Burnham on Crouch u3a's Archaeological group. Not yet a member of u3a? Join us now - https://u3a.org.uk/join
- [Nick] Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of the u3a radio podcast with me, Nick Bailey. This month, we have a sporting theme. As we hear from the man who invented the rankings for world cricket.
- [Rob] I got a letter from a hero to many people listening to this podcast I'm sure. A guy called Ted Dexter wrote to me out of the blue saying, "I've seen an article you'd written "about computers and cricket. "I've got this idea about doing a ranking in cricket. "Maybe you could help me."
- [Nick] And we talk to our own, Joanne Watson from Farnham u3a about her experience of working on the Olympics for the BBC.
- [Jo] So my first Olympics to actually work on was 1988 in Seoul. And then I did the next seven summer Olympics. And I finished my career after the London Olympics.
- [Nick] We also go on a treasure hunt with Burnham on crouch u3a in Essex.
- [Burnham] I was looking at Southminster Hall and sort of just scanning, looking around the area. And I found this fantastic outline of a building directly behind their back door in their back garden.
- [Nick] I start though with a question, have you ever been scammed? Everyday We're bombarded with emails, checks and phone calls, but how do we spot a scam? Peter Clift spoke to Barry Lyndon from Thorpe Bay, u3a in Essex. He's been giving seminars on cyber crime for some time. And Peter asked how he got involved in the first place.
- [Barry] It evolved like everything else. When I first retired, which was over 10 years ago, by nature, I started giving IT for beginners sessions for our members in those days, the tablet wasn't around, but it was laptops. And I have to talk about virus protection and we knew about viruses and more or less malicious sort of stuff. Generally being perpetrated by youngsters, wanting to be clever. But stepping forward for a few years, what happened in 2017 was the chief Constable of Essex was our guest speaker at the general meeting. He talked about the general problems of policing, but he also brought along someone from the Serious Crime Directorate who gave a short statistical summary of what's now cyber crime and how it's affecting the older generation. And this resonated with me, So when we're chatting over refreshments afterwards, I said to him, "You can't leave it at that. "Can I work with one of your people and put together "a seminar for thought by u3a for our members "to actually show them how to spot these scams "you're talking about and have to take action against them. "All different types of scams." He readily agreed. His impression at the time. He was amazed when he came to u3, he wasn't aware of the u3 at that time. Here he was in a hall with 250 very active retirees. Because up until that point, and I think police forces elsewhere were still doing this. Their view of getting to retired people, getting to us. We're active thinking people, but no, their approach was to go to retirement homes or sheltered accommodation, and maybe a dozen people in the lounge and talk to them about this terrible thing with cyber crime and hand out some leaflets. We need to know more. What started as being something I put together with a member of Serious Crime Directorate for thought, by word of mouth, it just got around and it escalated immensely. Because there's new things happening all the time.
- [Peter] You've gone from just talking about cyber crime into talking to u3a's. How do you see it developing? What would you like to see?
- [Barry] Well I think the developments and one things I 0mitted to say just before is I think the biggest change was just before lockdown. I applied to become an official volunteer. They have civilian volunteers in many police forces, but it finally came through in June of 2020 when we're in the full extent of lockdown. But I went through all the security clearances, but I effectively became a volunteer member of the Essex police force. And I had a new boss, even though I've been retired for 10 years. We developed it between us. I had a lot of direct input, which was really great, you know, I had thoughts, but I had the right people I could talk to, get the latest position, get the latest situation of what's happening out there on the street and introduce them into the seminar. And it's continued and continued and continued. And it's growing enormously. Doing the sessions almost every month now for the Third Age Trust and people who hear the session at the Third Age Trust, get in touch and say, "Oh, can you do it for our u3a?" Where possible I do try and do that. That's the way it's continued to develop. There are always new threats.
- [Peter] Indeed.
- [Barry] Unfortunately, with the time available, I generally have to cut out something so that put it something new.
- [Peter] It's a very difficult subject in a sense in as much as you don't really wanna frighten people, do you?
- [Barry] No, I don't want to make them paranoid in the sessions. I do try to entertain, but there's still a serious message behind that. But it is a very worrying... It is no doubt, it is a worrying situation because in every session we do, there's always a question and answer session. Both the live sessions I did with the police officers before lockdown and the zoom sessions I've done since. There's always someone who really has lost a lot of money. It is that serious. They realize afterwards, and they've heard some of the things I've said and said, "Well, I realize that now." But it is very, very sad situation. And the more we can get this message out to all people, let alone people of our generation, the better. The problem start from abroad. We know that most of the perpetrators are overseas, outside of UK police jurisdiction. So the whole idea behind this seminar and all other similar seminars is to educate because that's the only way we can get people to spot something to say, "Now that's a scam. I'm not falling for that one."
- [Peter] It's a question, I guess, as you say, of educating people, just make making them aware. I mean, what are your quick off the cuff, as it were tips to people about emails and scams.
- [Barry] Scam emails, and the techniques being reproduced effectively by text messages is to induce you to do something. A whole seminar is basically predicated around the biggest risk to our IT health and our secure use of online facilities is us. We let people in. You know, we hear about hacks. But in actual fact, they don't even have to hack these days. They have to send something which generates an emotion that we say, "Oh, there's something problem here." And it says, "Click here to get more information "or whatever." And we click. And that's where the trouble starts.
- [Nick] A cautionary tale from Barry Linton from Thorpe Bay, u3a. And we stay with Essex, but instead of cyberspace, we go underground. I'm sure many of you may have seen the film, "The Dig" about the Sutton who excavations. Such major finds are rare, but there is considerable hidden history, sometimes in our own back garden. One enthusiastic archeological group from Burnham on Crouch in Essex has successfully completed their own dig. And the finds took them back several centuries. Joanne Watson has been learning more from the group's deputy leader, Sue Spears.
- [Sue] Well, our group began in 2018. We'd looked at a few sites and not found anything at all. And then while I was doing some research and I was looking at Google earth, satellite images, and 2018 was a really good year for crop marks. And I was looking at Southminster Hall and sort of just scanning, looking around the area. And I found this fantastic outline of a building directly behind their back door in their back garden. So we sort of told the owners. At first, they thought we were only gonna dig one little trench and one little trench turned to two little trenches. And then we began in July, 2020, just sort of muddling along really, doing our own thing. We came down on these stone walls, not what we expected. We were expecting to find the Elizabethan or Tudor wing of the house that was there before the president Victorian house.
- [Jo] So what did the owners say to you when you suddenly started digging two, four trenches in their back garden?
- [Sue] Well I mean, they were very intrigued and they've been so supportive. They haven't complained at all and we've basically destroyed their lawn and the But they wanted to know what was going on and it made us want to research more. And we called in lots of people to help us because we're just complete amateurs.
- [Jo] What archeological skills did your group actually have when you started.
- [Sue] Terry, our leader. He's been doing archeology as a hobby for a number of years and he'd dug at several previous sites and I'd belonged to the same previous archeological group as him and everyone else was complete novices. So we needed experts to sort of come in and point us in the right direction 'cause we kind of knew that it was very important and we didn't want to mess it up. So we called in a chap called "David Andrews" who's a historic buildings expert, that was at the end of October last year. And he was very excited by it. He said it was very important and he told us that he thought it might be a chamber block associated with a very early Manor house, built from the bishops of London. But unfortunately, no research went back far enough. We knew that the bishops of London owned the site at doomsday, 1086, but there was nothing written from the date that we thought our building dated from, which is sort of 11th to 12th century.
- [Jo] As I understand it, your u3a worked really hard to get a lot of grants for you, and that must have made a big difference because as you say, you don't wanna be tramping down the most important bits of your find
- [Sue] No, well, you know, we were very aware that this site needed to be recorded properly and it needed to be excavated properly in a professional way. We wanted to do it. But David Andrew suggested that we seek funding and our little group, we have about 40 pounds in our kitty Which is not very much, but we're very grateful to them. And they applied for one grant initially, and that enabled us to employ Archeology Southeast. And they've been sending an archeologist down initially every week and she's been training us. We've been taught how to excavate properly. And most importantly, we've been trained how to record the excavation for future records. In total, we've had about 11,400 pounds in grants.
- [Jo] I have this image, erroneously I'm sure when you started, it was someone just popping into their tool shed and coming out with a couple of trowels and having a bit of a dig in a few buckets.
- [Sue] Yes, yes. When we first sort of started, we had funds in the kitty for shovels and buckets, that was our equipment. We still got the shovels and buckets, but Archeology Southeast have provided us with the things that we'd never even really thought of. And that's the equipment to recall very meticulously drawings of the excavation. And it's very fortunate that me and another lady, Tracy, we're both artists. So we're very good at doing the drawings So what Archeology Southeast are receiving is almost the same as if they'd done it themselves.
- [Jo] If you were to think of all the things that you did discover, what was the fine that really enthused you last.
- [Sue] Last year, when we were digging, we were desperately hoping to find some pottery or dating evidence because although we had the stones, you can't really tell the date. And then early this year, our archeologist spotted it, and it was our first piece of pot. And it was prehistoric. That's how it predated the stone building by about a thousand years. It was late bronze age to early iron age. A bit later during the summer we found a piece of Saxon pot and Saxon pot is fairly rare and that dated from the 5th to 7th century. That kind of suggested that there was an earlier building even than our one on the same site, which is really exciting.
- [Jo] When we tied the Think you might be coming back, now you know the dig.
- [Sue] Well, the theory is that probably their house was built right on top of the earliest. It's sad, but we can't demolish it
- [Nick] Sue Spears from Burnham on Crouch. There's quite often mathematical digging in the Radio 4 program, more or less. And one of its regular contributors is Rob Eastaway. Who's written several entertaining books about mathematics and has given workshops to u3a's. Peter cliff asked him if his aim was to make maths more accessible to ordinary people.
- [Rob] Yes, I think it is. I think Maths has a bad image. I think people think back to their school days and they think back to in, many cases, bad experiences or dull experiences. And I think it's very sad that people generally do seem to have a bad experience of maths at school and get quite scared of it as a subject. So really I'm looking for any ways to make it more accessible and to show people the interesting side and to take away some of the scariness of it and introduce some of the beauty of it.
- [Peter] You want to make mass more fun so how do you feel when people say, "Oh, I hate maths. "So I can't do maths. So I'm no good at maths."
- [Rob] So the classic complaint in the mass community is people seem happy to boast at how poor they are at maths, but they aren't happy to boast about how hopeless they are at reading and spelling and other such things. It's not quite the same argument, but I can see that frustration. And it disappoints me of course, but what I can see why people say that because it feels awful to get things wrong. And often people say, "I'm hopeless at maths. "I don't like it." as a self-defense before this fear of, "I'm about to be asked a maths question" and struggle and show that I'm not good at maths equates to other apparent inaccurate inadequacies.
- [Peter] One of the issues you raised in your latest book, "Maths on the back of an envelope" is the importance of estimation. In fact, you give some lovely examples of estimates in everyday life that apparently we could all be related to Richard III through to how much fresh water is flashed down London toilets every day. So that does seem to bring it more into the realms of everyday life. Do you think that using estimation is important in what we do?
- [Rob] I think estimation and arithmetic are slightly the poor relations of maths, they've become out of fashion. And in fact, by the time you get to 16, they can just disappear altogether. And actually, if you think about what mathematical skills you're going to need as an adult, the ability to figure out numbers. Check you're not being ripped off, listen to new stories talking about big numbers in billions of things. Does that number make sense? All of this is a vital life skill and I think estimation and back of envelope calculations should be one of the linchpins of mathematical education. When I wrote that book, it is one of the most important books I've written. And the one that I feel closest to in a way, because I'd love that to be a crucial part of the curriculum that everyone has to do.
- [Peter] And in the book, you do show some examples where the estimation is never that far from the actual answer. So we do tend to rely on estimation, don't we?
- [Rob] Well, it's interesting that people tend to think of maths and arithmetic and so on as about getting exactly the right answer. And of course there are times when exactly the right answer is very important. For example, when working out change or things in the financial world, but in many other situations, being close is good enough. One of my favorites is in converting imperial to metric units and vice versa, which we still live in this sort of bilingual world of we all go around talking about feet and meters or whatever. And I think it's important to know the connection between the two. And there's a classic conversion I use all the time for converting centigrade or Celsius to Fahrenheit. The exact way of converting is quite hard. It's multiplied by 1.8 and add 32. But frankly, to go from Celsius to Fahrenheit, if you double it and add 30, you're close enough. So if someone says it's 20 degrees out there and you have to get a Fahrenheit person, double it 40, add 30, 70, okay. Pretty warm today. That's handy. So being able to do that kind of thing in your head is a handy skill. And I use it all the time.
- [Peter] Talking about being roughly correct, in the Radio 4 program, more or less, you often show that figures used by the media and particularly politicians don't somehow represent the whole truth.
- [Rob] Well, it's true. I think what politicians like to do is to throw out numbers that sound impressive, hoping that we will just not actually think about what those numbers mean. And of course the fact that millions sounds like billion and sounds like trillion allows you to sort of slip these figures in to make them sound like they sort of mean the same thing. So when the government says, "We're gonna spend a million pounds on helping veterans." Oh, how generous of them, but actually a million pounds divided by veterans is almost nothing so just getting what the scale of these numbers is and of course realizing that politicians are trying to put the best possible spin on any story and they're using numbers to manipulate us. We've got to be able to fight back.
- [Peter] I agree. I think that More or Less program should follow on every news broadcast.
- [Rob] My favorite it's been an absolute privilege to be a part of More or less since it started 20 years ago. And I tend to get given the sort of fun, quirky stories, which I love doing and they're often back of envelope estimations, or what's the chance of this happening or whatever. And there are never exact answers to these, but rough answers will point the way to what the truth is.
- [Peter] Well, I can't talk to you without mentioning your love of cricket. Are you still involved in cricket and watching cricket?
- [Rob] Yes, I love cricket. I was at the Oval Test match for two days. So I kind of grew up loving cricket with an Australian father and then my huge break and my sort of mathematical connection with cricket happened when I was in my early twenties. When I got a letter from a hero to many people listening to this podcast I'm sure. A guy called Ted Dexter wrote to me out of the blue saying, "I've seen an article you've written "about computers and cricket. "I've got this idea about doing a ranking in cricket. "Maybe you could help me." So I got involved with a friend of mine, Gordon Vince, in developing what became the world rankings for cricket, for test cricket, in one day internationals and so on. It's a mathematical system still use to this day. So I have every reason to follow international cricket results with huge interest because I need to check that our model is producing sensible results.
- [Nick] Rob Eastway, who says he's very willing to give more national seminars, either on mathematics or indeed cricket. All talks are listed on the events section on our website at u3a.org.uk. Someone else who loves cricket and sport in general is our very own Joanne Watson as Ella Watts found out.
- [Jo] Well I was born in Yorkshire. And I was just one of those people that suddenly took an interest in sports. And one day at a school speech day, a broadcaster came to talk about her career. And I had been one of those people that was given a transistor radio when I was about seven. And I used to go to bed and listen to the football and the boxing and the cricket in the morning. And I thought, "Oh, this is quite a good career." And that's what I wanted to do. There was no journalistic links in my family whatsoever. There were no really great sporting links in my family, but that was something I wanted to do. And I was extremely fortunate that my parents who probably were very concerned that their daughter knew more about Geoffrey boycott's batting average than any of my academic subjects wanted to do it, but they were very supportive. So off I went.
- [Ella] So how did you get involved initially?
- [Jo] When I went to university, I started working on the student radio, at Radio Manchester and they had a special program. And then I started doing some stuff for Radio Manchester. And at the end of that, I actually did a BBC One children's TV show, which I presented for a year called "Stopwatch." And in those days at university, I was in a hall of residence in my final year. The only way you got messages was by a random girl picking up the phone and as they walked down the corridor and leaving a sort of scribble note on this pad that you picked up as you went into the hall of residence. So I did that in my final year. I went back to local radio to learn a bit of my trade and then ended up working for radio sport in London.
- [Ella] And how rare was that for a woman to be involved in any way in sports broadcasting at the time.
- I started at 1983, 1980 and there were a couple of female secretaries. There was one other female producer who never did any broadcasting and me, and there are an awful lot of chaps. So to give you some idea, the very first time I actually went on air, which was to read the racing results at the end of the sports desk, I came out and all my colleagues were there with phones in their hand, pretending to take irate phone calls from listeners, complaining that a woman was actually doing something on sports on the radio. Now it was what, 40 years ago. But how bizarre when you listen to the radio or watch the television now when so many women are actually able to enjoy a career in sports broadcasting,
- [Ella] Did it cause you any difficulties being a woman?
- [Jo] I do remember once going to Lourdes, the cricket ground, when the commentary box was actually in the pavilion. Women were not allowed at the pavilion. But I got the right pass, and I went into the main doors and I'd gone about four to five steps when the doorman turned round and said, "Excuse me, you're a woman." I don't know I was let in. And I sort of went... We were actually in the very top of the pavilion, but I was sort of warned that it was best not to go wandering around presumably in case some of the members had a heart attack, which seems quite bizarre, to be honest. Again, I am actually now a full MCC member. So I am allowed at the pavilion. It's really strange how over the course of my career, most of my adult life, the pendulum has swung almost from one extreme to the other.
- [Ella] I know you've covered tennis, boxing, athletics. Olympics, what is your favorite sport?
- [Jo] Well, Cricket's my favorite sport but that was very hard to get involved in though in my early days, I used to be at the London end of all, the overseas test matches. So, sort of was a continuity person, straight producer. Which meant for things like the test match in Pakistan or India, Sri Lanka, being in the office from like four o'clock in the morning, or if you were doing Australia and New Zealand, it was actually all nights. And most of it was actually before Sky television. So you were relying on these very scratchy work from India. These very scratchy circuits from the sub-continent and the line could go down at any time. Or actually there was an incident, when Mike Gatting, the England captain had a row with the Pakistan umpire, Shakoor Rana, and the England team didn't come out to field. So we were on the air, really not knowing what was going on. And there was obviously meetings going on behind the scenes to make this test match continued. So it was great being involved in the sport. It was, to be honest, a lot better when we had the pictures. Cause then actually you could relate to what was going on and it's a line did go down, then at least you could sort of chat over it, knowing roughly what was going on at the other end of the world.
- [Ella] What about the Olympics also. What was your involvement in reporting on the Olympics
- [Jo] I just adore the Olympics. As a sporting event I think nothing beats it. And I remember in 1968 and I was sorta 12 doing a scrapbook. The idea was I mark down all the results from the Olympic games as they were going along. I did get a bit fed up when we had to sort of the 33rd weightlifting gold medal or whatever. I think there's a few gaps in the scrapbook, but I just felt it was such a combination of different sports and we weren't terribly good in those days in very many of them. So a gold medal was something to be really revered and inspired by. And so my first Olympics to actually work on was 1988 in Seoul. And then I did the next seven summer Olympics. And I finished my career after the London Olympics, which is, you know, what better way can you finish your career in sports? And by then I had the right sort of passes so I could go anywhere I liked really. So it was, it was fantastic.
- [Ella] Now, I know that your job as a producer and editor has taken you to quite a few major events. Now I can remember a film called, "Four weddings and a Funeral." Can you match that?
- [Jo] I think I've done a couple of funerals and three weddings. So the first wedding I did was Charles and Di and I was in the Crypts at Saint Paul's and then I did Fergie and Andrew and I was on the Victoria Memorial, outside Buckingham palace. And then for Kate and William, I was outside Westminster, Abbey and funerals, princess Diana was on Wiesel. Queen Mother, I think It was outside the Abbey again, but actually what was interesting there was that there was a lying in state. So the lying is state takes the coffin to Westminster hall before it goes on to the funeral. And we had this big rehearsal, and the rehearsal was half past five in the morning. So I was actually on the mouth with Sue McGregor. People will remember Sue and we had to be there just literally as the light sort of broke through and in front of me were all the guardsmen as that sort of light dawned, it was this very surreal scene with the British army, all lined up sort of outside Buckingham palace or on of Buckingham palace. And there were apparently one of my colleagues who was down the far end, said there was one jogger, turned the corner and saw all these soldiers and thought it was a revolution about to happen.
- [Ella] He also travelled a lot with your job.
- [Jo] One thing about doing all the traveling I did is you have to experience the local cuisine and I'm incredibly conservative about this. I don't exactly take my food with me. though I have known colleagues who've taken tins of tuna and biscuits, and goodness knows what wants, Once took some sandwiches with them and actually got stopped at customs, not surprisingly on the way out, but I do remember one of my colleagues was in Pakistan doing hockey. This is after Britain won the Olympics in 88 and he was invited to a reception before this big tournament. And they were taking these little canopies round. And my colleague was tucking in thinking, these are, these are quite nice. Local chap came and said, I'm glad you enjoying our local delicacy. And my colleagues said, yes. He said, what are they? Are they they're mushrooms? And the chap said, no. He said that sheep's testicles.
- [Nick] And on that culinary note, that's where we end this month's episode. Maybe you've got your own Traveller's tales or perhaps you're a member of an unusual foodie group. If so, we'd love to hear from you. Just sends an email to communications@u3a.org.uk. My thanks to the globetrotting, Joanne Watson, Peter Clift, and Ella Watts for the interviews and to Ela for producing the podcast. Until next time when we'll have a special Christmas episode, this is Nick Bailey saying goodbye.