Away with Words

Enlisting the unlikely help of a large St Bernard dog, a group of Roman soldiers, and some Anglo Saxon villagers, presenter Neil Innes sets out to answer the question. "Who are the English?" in this, the last of the series probing curious corners of the English language. And as he continues his fun journey round the region probing the origins of everyday words and phrases, he is forced to wonder if the reason English has become such a global language is because it came from all over the world in the first place! Joining him on this final voyage of discovery is Henry a three-year-old St Bernard with an appointment at a grooming parlour in Bury St Edmunds.

More from Neil Innes on words and their origins. In this episode Neil goes to the Physio.

AWAY WITH WORDS presenter Neil Innes takes to the skies as he follows the English language to America - and back - in this week's edition of the fun programme about words and their origins. Beginning with a look at some of the Imperial War Museum's collection of fighter planes at Duxford near Cambridge, Neil visits two wartime airfields, and an American air force base, to explore the ways in which common words and phrases have criss-crossed the Atlantic - by sea on the Mayflower; by air with the American forces and on celluloid with the movies.

It is all grist to the mill for presenter Neil Innes, when he manages to coinbine beer-tasting, golf, music and Morris dancing in this week's AWAY WITH WORDS. Neil's latest fun quest for words and their origins, begins in the seaside town of Southwold, where beach-hut names soon give way to pub names, a visit to Adnam's Brewery, and the language of ale. Neil also swings into action on the fairway (and in the rough) as he gets to grips with some of the peculiar names involved in the game of golf. Ringing the changes, Neil meets some bell-ringers at a nearby church tower. And there is more music-making (and beer-drinking) in the Suffolk town of Woodbridge, where he meets violin maker Russell Stowe, enjoys a performance by Martlesham Brass Band, and watches the East Suffolk Morris Men in action. By which time Neil should be able to work out whether he is fit as a fiddle and can blow his own trumpet. Or whether he needs to be taken down a peg or two!

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.

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.

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".