Joining me today, he reads books y'know, it's Chris Joel.

Now then.

Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.

It's me!

AUDIENCE: Hurray!

Oh, I see, I see!

- You get the warm-up time. - Wow.

Did you set up that up while we were outside waiting for you?

Yes, I did.

And standing in for Matt Gray, please welcome stand-up mathematician, Matt Parker.

Pleasure to be your replace-Matt.

In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.

Every fact they get right is a point and a ding,

and there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is...

What did you do?

Whacked my funny bone on my chair.

- Oh! - That is pretty funny.

And today…!

That's the right hand, he needs that one(!)

Come Matt, fill in for the classy panel show, it'll be great(!)

And today we are talking about Turra Coo.

I don't know, Turrack who…?

Y'know, I figured out at least know what the words you're saying are.

Well, the language is Doric.

Okay, Aberdeen.

Oh he's right. Straight off.

Oh, thank you.

Aberdeenshire, North East Scotland.

It's a particular dialect.

Yes, you are absolutely right, near the Aberdeenshire town of Turriff.

And Turra is Turriff.

Okay.

What might Coo be?

PIGEONS.

Is it one of those cattle that's in fields?

- Oh yeah, Coo! - A Highland Coo.

- He's absolutely right. - What?!

I just... how does... wow.

Right! Bye, everybody.

I'm just working out if they had a big enough population for a hostile takeover.

That is incredible.

No, you're absolutely right.

The Turra Coo is Doric for the Turriff cow.

Were you not expecting that to be the right answer?

No! That was supposed to be a “joke”.

You were just making a cheap joke at the expense of the Scots dialect.

- I was. - You're absolutely right.

I know somewhere between, like, a non-zero amount of things about a lot of things

and a niche dairy cow…

I'm like, okay, I'm out.

Mate, welcome to my world.

The cow became famous.

Britain's Got Talent!

Did it juggle?

How, it's got four legs and no arms?

It lies on its back and does that.

I was going to go, it was sat on an office chair.

Or any other chair could do.

It just so happened its act was on an office chair.

Well, that means you can slide it onto the stage.

Exactly.

'Cos it can't propel itself because its little legs are stuck out forwards.

Oh, you think I'm being ridiculous, but actually I've just produced

a very good way of transporting a cow sat down.

At last(!)

I like the idea that there would be notation for a cow juggling with four limbs.

There would.

I'm sure you could.

Well somebody's written the patterns 'cos it…

“Boring juggler information!”

Brace yourselves, here it comes.

Well, that's how Gandini patterns work.

That's effectively one...

There's two people using four arms to juggle one pattern.

And the siteswap notation, they mathematically predicted

new juggling tricks that had never been juggled before

because the maths worked out and then they're like, “oh it worked, my goodness!”

And so, mathematically you can predict ways to juggle

without ever having to bother to learn or pick the balls up, it's great(!)

Biscuit that man.

So, Turra Coo...!

Yeah.

The juggling cow of Britain's Got Talent, we've already established this.

This was definitely before Britain's Got Talent. It is...

Oh, X Factor.

PT Barnum.

Pop Idol.

Opportunity Knocks for the students in the audience, yeah.

You're certainly closer, this was Aberdeenshire.

This was under a Liberal government, and liberal with a capital L there.

Okay, so that is pre-David Lloyd George, probably,

are we talking Liberal Whig territory here?

It was actually, I'm going to give you the point because you gave the name.

David Lloyd George.

It was David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Oh my God, that's... 1911!

Yeah, you're absolutely right, have a point again.

I have it down here as the 1910s, but that's…

Specific referencing(!)

What did he bring in?

Er. Finance and Valuation Act.

Erm, pensions.

And Unemployment Benefit.

The Parliament Act.

Have I missed them all?

The first cow that could retire with a safe pension(!)

I'm going to give Gary the point.

It was National Insurance contributions.

What, for cows?

Yeah!

Er, no, it w...

Three squirts for you, one for the taxman.

For all workers between 16 and 70.

So it was the National Insurance Act.

Yes, okay.

And the farmers local to Turriff were not happy about this.

Because they would have pay their employees National Insurance stamps.

The contributions were too high, yes, absolutely right.

And it was unfair for them to pay for something they were unlikely to use.

Unlikely?

They're very likely, they're all going to get to…

Well, they might not get to pensionable age actually.

No, Coo-beasties kill 'em.

Immortal dairy workers.

Less in mortal peril than some other people in that era.

Who might have been more at risk?

At risk?

People working in the dairy mines.

Yeah, the big cream seams, they took a lot of lives.

Yes, rich seam of...

Rich seam of squirty that comes out.

More they're drilling, and it's like: “we've struck cream!”

“We've got a gusher!”

Face is white, takes the glasses off.

“Oh, we're safe now.”

The thing is, apart from the word dairy in there you're absolutely right,

so I'm giving you the point.

It was people that would work in the mines and in industry.

So there were protests, and what did one particular farmer refuse to do?

And no doubt it involves this cow.

No, not yet. The cow has not yet got involved.

It will later involve this cow.

It will later involve this cow, but I'm not giving you a point for that 'cos that's

bloody obvious.

Did they march somewhere?

That was happening, but we're looking at what one specific person was doing,

as civil disobedience.

And it can't just be… he wasn't just refusing to make the payments,

so it must be something creative.

It was stamping the insurance cards.

It was doing the paperwork required for that time.

That maybe the most boring answer to a quiz question.

I realise that but we need to get through this.

That's how we resist in this country.

Stuck his quill in the farmyard, and wrote it on with that.

Oh...

Was it a poo-related protest, are we headed there?

No it wasn't, it was literally he just refused to do this,

so he was charged, he was sentenced to pay £15 plus the arrears which, in…

That's not a small amount of money,

that's probably a couple of hundred quid actually in today's terms, I would have thought.

Did the debt collector take his cow?

Ah!

Sheriff's Officer George Keith turned up, as a bailiff essentially,

and looked around for property that could be seized.

And went, “this cow's in a chair already”.

“I can just wheel it straight out of the farmyard.”

In the barn, juggling, it's dead easy to see, yeah.

That cow's worth a lot. Future earnings alone…

This is getting a bit Jack-and-the-Beanstalk so far, I'm going to be honest.

It is a bit, the Sheriff seized the cow.

Okay.

The trouble is: now the government owns a cow.