Toime Team

1. TONY'S BACK GARDEN
Tony: Phil, last night, down the pub after 18 pints, you told me that we would find something today that would rival the palace of Knossos.

Phil: (with best effort at a Wiltshire accent) Tony you can't expect to foind a substantial building in every test pit we dig on Toime Team, it's just not feasible despite what oi moight of said. Three stones don't necessarily make a wall, Tony, if you get moi drift.

Tony: Yes I see what you mean Phil, I think. Now John, what do you think, is it geophysically possible?

John: Well after draggin' my body racked with pain all over your flamin' back lawn for the umpteenth time carryin' this geophysical version of a Leopard Tank I think you could say that the geophysics is pretty much obliterated, so the evidence would err on the side of there being a substantial geological feature somewhere under here, it's called the Earth.

Tony: Well that seems to settle it then. There is a palace here and we are going to find it and as usual we only have 3 milliseconds to do it.

Next Day:

Phil: Tony, you annoying little blighter will you get out of moi carefully excavated test pit number two.

Tony: Phil, I'm not getting out until you tell me what's going on.

Phil: I'll tell you what's going on. My shovel is going on your head with considerable force if you don't get yourself off in the far corner of that field in two shakes of a Wiltshire lamb's tail.

Tony: OK, OK, keep your hat on Phil (Phil's got a new hat), but have you found anything yet?

Phil: Look Tony, oi'm sick of your danged fool questions, with the toime, or lack thereof we've been given, and your annoying enquiries there's little chance of foinding anything of a substantive nature this soide of a pink elephant. However, we think we've found the solution as to woiy your kitchen sink outlet is blocked and it doesn't look good believe me Tony....

Phil: What ever are you doin' Tony?

Tony: I've just climbed into this test pit to examine the stratigraphy.

Phil: That's not a test pit Tony, that's our emergency camp latrine.

Tony: OK Mick how do you read it?

Mick: Well, with great difficulty, its oopside down and very joombled oop. You could say it's well and truly, if not incomprehensible. What's that? A fly on my joomper, where?

Day Three:

Tony: Whilst Raksha has been drilling down looking for Mohenjodaro and merely finding Henry VIII's loo and Phil has been clearing out my drains I've been prancing about on this spoil heap casting my eye into what could only be correctly interpreted as an Anglo-Saxon cesspit or perhaps, as Phil incorrectly thinks, the remains of a Romano-British plunge pool. What do you think Stewart?

Stewart: Well, if you ask me, looking from the air in a helicopter whilst holding this map east-west along the alignment of the Roman road you can just see it bears either none or a very strong relationship to a number of fundamental intersecting foci which all point to this being the original houses of parliament of Henry II.

Tony: Surely Stewart you jest, in my back garden? You can't be serious?

Stewart: No, well if you look here on this other map, ignoring John's geophysical blatherings, you can see a long line of vegetation which suggests higher than normal nutrient levels in the A horizon of the soil and these align perfectly with Westminster. (At this point Stewart wanders off into the woods muttering something about King Arthur and the knights of the rectangular table with a pointed end)

Tony: Meanwhile over in test pit number three, Alice has been excavating a single eye socket of what appears, in my correct hypothesis, to be a pirate, but no buried treasure is yet forthcoming. Why not Alice? You're not trying hard enough, we want more backbone exposed. However, over here we have what appear to be a parrot's toe-nails which Carenza suggests is strong evidence for a thriving pirate pedicure industry. Is she right? We'll have to wait for the lab. report. (Toime Team drum beating)

Tony: Well, who was right? Was it me, a humble highly paid actor or the highly paid and qualified experts? Let's ask them and see. Oh, they've all nicked off to the pub. Well Raksha thought it was a coin from the reign of Vespasian but Francis adamantly hypothesised it was a Bronze Age round-house, what else you might ask, whilst Jenni thought it was a horse-hobble, but me, God bless his heart, has come up with a radical and entirely different theory that no-one else has considered. It is my anorak which was covered up by the earth mover. See I was right all along but there's nobody here to verify it.

Back at the pub:
Well at the end of day three what have you come up with Phil? (Toime Team noise that sounds like a medieval blacksmith clad in armour climbing out of bed and striking a metal chamber pot in the dark)

Phil: Well, the beer was flat and if oi did read moi cards down the pub roight larst noight, he's got two clubs and I've got four spades and a trowel so oi don't fancy me chances. But archaeologically speakin' oi don't think what we set out to do was entirely feasible. The rain was incessant, we drank the pub droi and it's been god-awful cold, in it?

Tony: Well, in summation then after three days in my backyard we've just blown three million pounds of Channel 4's budget on beer and discovered Phil's favourite food, pork scratchings, excavated from a local medieval vaccary.

Later that day after the team returns to try to locate their trowels in the dark, muffled somewhere off in a distant excavation trench Phil can be heard saying ' Tony, you know oi don't loike pork scratchin's neither, without a good dollop o' your sauce.'

Addendum: The lab. report came back negative, there was no evidence of parrot toe-nails although Pythonesquely it was no more, only 'eluvially enriched auriferous deposits' were identified, which is not very interesting. A very disappointing three days especially since the team still haven't filled in my back garden. Where's Phil?

Apologies to Time Team - T.M.

Tony to wed again! [Phil: Wot you bin up to then Tony when you was s'posed to be examinin' those Iron Age drinkin' vessels?]

2. TOIME TEAM - THE TOIME WE FOUND NUTHIN'

DAY ONE

Tony: Well Joy you've brought us here today because your farmer husband turned up this gold drinking horn with his plough last year and you want us to investigate this field for evidence of a Viking settlement.

J: Yes Tony, we had been collectively wassailing out of this golden horn 'ere and after a particulary 'eavy session when Joe, that's me 'usband, was dancin' on the kitchen table, fell orf, and 'e ' ad a brilliant brainwave that this 'ere 'orn was left 'ere boi a Voiking who lost 'is memory and never returned to get it. Moind you Joe is still in orspital troiyin' to get his memry back.

T: Well Francis, what do you think? Do we have any evidence for a Viking settlement here?

Francis: (painfully over enthusiastic): Well Tony, for a start there were no Viking settlements here. We had Danish settlers further south and Norse communities further north but I'm afraid that this is a bronze age ritual site, we are neither north nor south.

T: How can you categorically say that when you have no evidence Francis? Surely that is not following the scientific method.

F: Well, Tony, I can say that without any shadow of a doubt because I know I'm right, and anyway I went to the right school and have the right accent which immediately informs you that whatever you think or say is wrong.

T: Yes I get that, being the sawn-off strident socialist that I am, but what do you mean by 'right'? Surely that word signifies some sort of moral
position or do you really mean 'correct'?

F: Right Tony, as you say, I'm correct.

T: So If we come across a swarm of Viking graves will you still retain your lofty superiority or will you begin to accept that there were right wing
Norwegian nutters even then?

Phil (butting in): Francis, boi your reasonin', if we foind a host of Voiking graves some people moight say its the Australian cricket team, especially if they foind associated grave goods loike drinkin' vessels or even a cremation urn with ashes in it.

Francis: Yes they might say that, but then where's their evidence?

Phil: Tony are we goin' down the pub soon oive got a raging thirst that even a stone-age glacial lake couldn't fix.

T: Look, ignore Phil and his base rantings for a moment and let's get back to the script of this reality programme.

DAY TWO

T: Well, here we are in Potton Much Manured just south of Watling Street in the earldom of Huntingdonshire and we have just made an amazing
discovery! Can you tell us about it Mick?

Mick: Well yes Tony, we've put in trenches all over this green-field site and found absolutely nothing. Mind you I hope you like my new multi-coloured hat to go with my joomper of many coolours.

T: Yes it looks like Serre in WWI, the field not your jumper Mick, mind you there are some similarities. There are trenches and dugouts everywhere, what on earth were you thinking?

M: To tell the truth moi wife crocheted.... oh I see, well we used the blunderbuss method, admittedly not a very scientific approach but so far it's worked.

T: What you mean is, you've shot three pheasants and a woodcock for lunch.

M: Precisely Tony, and the proof will be in the pudding.

Phil: Puddin'? Did someone say puddin'? Oi 'ope there's some ale to go wi' it or oime goin' 'ome roight now, you jus' see if oi don'

T: What do you think we should do Phil?

Phil: Well, boi moi way uv thinkin' there's nothin' else for it but to put in another trench Tony, seein' as we 'ave ta use up one more day.

Tony: Well Francis what have you been up to in that huge trench at the far end of the field for the last two days.

Francis (gritting his teeth): Well, it's not what I've been up to Tony its what I've been getting down to with Mary our osteo-archaeologist.

Phil (winkin' sloiyly): Splendour in the stratigraphy you moight say, eh Francis?

Francis: Yes, exactly I'm glad you caught on so soon Phil. Mary has once again made an old man very happy and we can now prove that I was right all along, that there is no Viking settlement here.

Tony: What! You mean because we found nothing you are 'right' or should I say 'correct'?

Francis: No Tony, I'm saying that because I have always been right in the past, I will always be right in the future so we may as well by-pass any archaeological investigation and just listen to me.

Raksha (mumbling to herself off camera): That'd be a first.

Tony: Director, can we cut that last bit, I'm the host of this show.

DAY THREE

Was called off because it was raining felines and canines and even a few bovines - look out another bovine!

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3. TOIME TEAM - CARRY ON DIGGING

Tony: Following in the infallible footsteps of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, we are going to excavate his former palatial residence in Colchester to see if the curse of the Tell of Ur is buried there. For almost one hundred years there has been a persistent folk history around this mysterious and deathly curse since Mrs. Winklefork, his next door neighbour, lost her cat to an even more mysterious curse issued by a navvy who tripped over it on the footpath.

To this end we have organised Toime Team this week to kit themselves out with tents, skillets and cycling capes to explore this fascinating part of our English heritage in a cross between a panto and a Carry On film. This week we also have a special guest appearance, Charles Hawtrey, who will be wrinkling his prehensile nose at anything that looks even vaguely like a trowel.

Phil: Oim roight, oive got a one-person bivouac and Raksha said she was bunkin' down wi' me for the duration if the rain sets in. We've organised to play a medieval form of Twister and also knuckle-bones using these old Roman artefacts we discovered in the bowels, and oi mean the bowels Tony, of Colchester Museum.

Raksha: Yes, and Mat is going to serve us tea and crumpets every ten minutes to simulate the life-style of Wheeler's servant Mr. Grumpyspoon whilst I write my dissertation on why Francis is always right about being wrong.

Francis: Young lady, you will not have time for carrying on with Phil after you see what we have organised for you to excavate. If you thought Henry VIII's garderobe at Nonsuch and the Yorkshire railway men's latrine was bad enough you haven't seen anything yet! Anyway, the weather is predicted to be interminably hot with short bursts of intermittent ice age which will give us plenty of opportunity to prove that my ridiculously fanciful ideas are correct again. Yes as much as I hate to admit it Raksha you are right, I am a hopeless romantic, but I just love proving to everyone just how clever I am and in the process you will realise that a private school education is far superior to the rational thoughts of co-educational chairman Mao.

Tony: I hope that wasn't a cloaked reference to me and my insistence that we all carry a little red recording book Francis?

Francis: No, not at all, I'm just blathering on again Tony.

Phil: Whoa! what was that? It felt loike oi just sat on someone's crumpet on the soid o' this trench.

Mat: Yes that was your tea and crumpet, I left them under your coat to keep warm while I went off to seek warmth and comfort myself for a few precious minutes of my impoverished life as your supplicant and royal boil washer.

Phil: Dang that crumpet, oi much prefer cream buns anyways but the tea stains will need a bit o' explainin' to me girlfriend.

Tony: Phil's got a girlfriend! Phil's got a girlfriend! Did everyone hear that? Phil's got a girlfriend! Wait I'll just get this megaphone and stand on this spoil heap so they can hear me three miles away in Much Marckle.

Phil: awroight, awroight Tony, keep yer 'air on, when oi say girlfriend, of course oi mean that in the strictest of professional ways Tony, don't ferget oim a doctor now and although I can't fix bones oi can punch you into that trench over there in a very professional manner.

Tony: So come on Phil spill the beans, who is she? Is it anyone we know?

Phil: Well oim rather loath to hazard a guess at this one Toni but oi think, speculatin' moind you, oi moight 'ave a bit of a middle-Saxon association goin' with that new female excavator who 'as been workin' in trench six today.

Tony: Tell us more Phil, we're all ears.

Phil: Yes that's what worries me Tony, every toime the wind blows you all lift up into the air a little bit. Well, she came onto me loike a ravin' banshee. Oi was jus' scratchin' the surface with me trowel and she started on about how she just turned up because she 'ad seen me on the telly and how she thought oi was such a great archaeological hypocaust hunk she couldn't wait to get into a trench wi' me so we could unravel the stratigraphy together.

Tony: Yes, well Phil it sounds to me like you might be imagining things, she is the National director for the Advancement of Archaeological Techniques and is totally dedicated to this task. She could teach you a thing or two.

Phil: Well Tony you moight say that but oi could definitely feel something growin' between us and it wern't no trowel oi can tell you that.

Tony: Mat, dear Mat how are you going Mat? You look all downtrodden and just like a floor covering.

Mat: Well how do you think I'm going Tony. You dressed me up like a London pauper in sackcloth and a cardboard box, pushed me out of the door in a howling gale, slipping and sliding in mud, through drenching cold rain, and then told me I had 2 minutes to wash and brush up as Phil's grovelling obsequious servant. I feel perfectly ........... (cut at director's insistence).

Tony: Weeeell, it's now the turn of our special guest, Charles Hawtrey. Charles, what do you think so far? Is it as good as 'Carry on up the Stratigraphic Column' or do you think it needs a few more double entendres, cryptic connotations and unsubtle allusions to Pompei's secret museum of erotica and things that go bang in the night.

Charles: Well, it's all very straight isn't it. (wait for laugh at Hawtrey's hilarious insight into coarse British 1960's humour.) I couldn't see much carrying on! (pause for expected laughter from coarse 1960's British humour appreciators) Of course in my day the team was larger than life, much more eager to please and had a lot more to exhibit if you know what I mean! snort. Most of this team are either moribund or stuck in books all day, they wouldn't know which end of a Sheela-na-gig to hold or what to do with it.

Tony: Well, thank you Charles, well said, I liked the sound of that. So being such a nice hot sunny day for a change, lets all get our shirts off in the true tradition of the Carry on Toime Team and get down to it - in a professional sense of course!

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4. TOIME TEAM - ACCIDENTALLY-ON-PURPOSE .

Tony: Phil, why is your trench overflowing with water?

Phil: Woi not oi ask, its been rainin' solid for the larst fortnoight so now we can faithfully recreate the sea battle of Constantinople, Tony.

Tony: Whatever for Phil? Surely we are here to uncover either Iron Age ditches or our suspected Roman villa hypocaust-cum-bath-house suite. Look at all this Roman building material, surely we have uncovered a pre-Christian votive offering site. Look at all the Roman coins in the stratigraphy, the spring which could have fed the bath-house, the tessellated pavements.....

Phil: Cor lumme Tony, oi was only joking, you do take the cake Tony, oi dunno. Jeesh oi 'ope the pub's open soon.

John wandering out of a field of shoulder high grass: There is a clear response on the magnetics to the geology and a very strong response in resistivity while the .......

Tony & Phil in chorus: Oh shut up John!

Stewart: It's an ideal location for a picnic if any one has brought any food, it's on an east-west schattenseit ridge between two confluent valleys and I'm hungry.

Tony: Well there seems to be a great scratching of stomachs over this one. John do you think we can do it in three days?

John: I think it's a ditch, if it isn't I may as well jump off one of those blow-up castellated jumping things.

Tony: Are they digging in the right place? Raksha over there seems to be going great guns on a suspected plunge pool. Who do we blame for this fiasco of indecision?

Matthew: The old finger of blame is spinning, I suppose I'll be the scapegoat again?

Tony: You might be right John, my initial doubts are clearing despite your geophysical knickers being tied in a knot.

John: Yes it's just a matter of dating the site, and look here is the resistance you wanted, I made it up just to keep you quiet.

Tony: Well, that's pretty convincing John, lets go ahead and prove our hypothesis is correct and then we can all go home to Phil's place.

Phil: Tony, you nanna, oive told you before, you don't troi to prove your initial hypothesis, you are supposed to be unbiased and let the data speak for itself. An' anyway moi woife will not be expectin' us.

Tony: But you keep on telling me data can't speak for itself, it has to be interpreted.

Phil (grinding his teeth): That's woi it's important to wait for all the data to come in before setting off on intermediary bloind-alley conclusions all the toime. That's the trouble with makin' a T.V. programme such as this, you keep tryin' to interpret it before all the data sets are in. Some archaeologists think this programme is just for entertainment purposes and is nothing to do with addin' to our store of archaeological knowledge.

Tony: But I have to keep the viewers interest or we will lose ratings and then the funding will go. It's good copy to have a clash of ego's and lots of intrigue and human conflict, history is full of it.

Phil (aside): Yeah, a bit loike you Tony.

Bridget: Alright you lot, stop playing the white man's Haka, who wants to know the good news or the bad news first?

Matthew: Is there any good news? If I'm involved it's bound to be bad news.

Bridge: Well, the good news is there isn't any bad news, so essentially in the model of modern journalism, there is no news.

Phil: Has anyone seen Tony?

Matt: I think he's got the hump. He heard that last comment you made and he's gone off in a huff.

Raksha: Well Jock the earthmover has done a fine job. He's stripped the field bare and dumped it all in that overflowing trench Phil dug.

Just as they all left the dig site later that day Tony wandered into the site tent covered in sludge,* he was convinced that they had all conspired to bury him, accidentally on purpose of course.

* N.B. This gave Tony an idea for another spin-off T.V. programme, The Worst Jobs in History.

FOIVE. TOIME TEAM - THE RECTANGULAR BRONZE AGE ROUND HOUSE

Tony: Phil, this looks like the evidence that creationists have been searching for for millennia in order to disprove Steno's Law of Superposition.

Phil: Nah its a piece o' pot really Tony. It's just where Jock the earth shifter turned it all upsoide dewn in one big sloice. Now we have Roman loin' on Saxon loin' on medieval loin' on modern kebab shop.

Bridget: That's not a kebab shop Phil, it's a keben.

Phil: What the flamin' 'ell is a keben?

Bridge: A keben, you know a keben, a small building usually constructed of timber and the loike.

Phil: Awww oi think you mean a cabin.

Tony: Are you sure it's a cabin? It could be the foundations of a tower house or pele tower.

Francis: No! You are all wrong, it's a Bronze Age round house. Look at the ditch and the cross-section in the trench. It can't be anything but a Bronze Age round house.

Tony: Well Dave what do you think?

Raksha: My name is not Dave it's Raksha and Francis is really off the beam this time.

Tony: Well, what are the true facts then?

Phil: Tony you can't have true facts or by the same token you would 'ave to 'ave false facts. There can't be no such thing as false facts. That's just ridiculous. Facts are facts but then the word fact has no basis in scoience. It's a colloquial term used by people such as pragmatic farmers to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Do they 'ave a cow or don't they 'ave a cow? If they 'ave a cow it's a fact. If they don't 'ave a cow it's still a fact. The fact is this ain't a round house nor is it reality or else moi aunt Nellie is a roight wing trowel bender from Oiceland.

Tony: So what's this revetment thingy Matthew?

Matt: It's like a batter

Tony I won't say the obvious, please explain?

Mat: well, its like a slope built up to a wall or structure.

Phil: Well round houses don't have batters so it carn't be that. You can see in trench fawr, now being exposed, there are corners in the structure, If that's a round house oi'll eat my sweat stained brim, now that's round but it won't make a square meal.

Tony: Well it looks like you are not 100% right then Francis

Francis (looking totally dejected and downcast): I was 100% wrong Tony.

Raksha: Thank Gawd for that, now let's all get on and bend this corner into a curve.

Phil: That'll do me noicely.

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