Episode 120 - Billy Whizzbang

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Now, if you're here in the UK, you may well have heard about the controversy surrounding a statue of the Victorian industrialist Sir Bastardly Chattel in London's Hyde Park, which is due to be taken down by the council due to the changing cultural feelings we have about the acceptability of venerating historical arseholes.

Debate rages as to whether the statue should come down at all, and if it should, what it should be replaced with.

And at the centre of this debate is friend of the show, historian Professor James Harkam.

Hello, my name is Professor James Harkham of No Fixed Abode.

I met Professor James in front of the statue in Hyde Park, and he told me all about Sir Bastardly.

Yes, Bastardly Chattler, a name not much mentioned in historical or political circles these days, but if you'd been in the London of the mid-19th century, everybody everybody would have known of Old Bastard or Sir Bastardly, as they affectionately referred to him, a 19th century ivory magnate

who really transformed the trade in ivory from something that was mildly unpleasant into something really quite horrendous on a huge scale.

And he used that fortune that he'd amassed from the ivory trade to buy his way into Parliament.

And then he really set to work with a series of quite revolutionary child labour laws where he allowed children as young as six months to work in a coal mine or to scrape the plaque off of some of his ivory tusks.

So he actually, with his child labour laws, turned back the clock really on progress as we'd see it, which is to stop children having to work.

He was actually bringing more children back into the labour force.

Yes, it was.

I mean, we think of the Victorians as being unsentimental people, but they did have a soft spot.

And it was even commented on at the time that Chattel had engineered it to a point where English-born children had fewer legal rights than a cat.

And in a famous incident, when compelled by passage of Parliament to pass that statute into law, Queen Victoria herself, as she added her own seal to the Act of Parliament, vomited all over it.

So she even thought that it was beyond the pale.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

No, I mean, but as an interesting footnote to history, it is from that vomit, which clung to the vellum, that

we still retain residual DNA information should we ever need to clone the royal family in future.

Now, having heard the story of what Sir Barceli Shattle was like, it makes more sense the fact that people are now picketing this, they want this taken down, and actually looking at it now, you sort of see

really why, because if you look at the actual statue itself, it is of Sir Barceli himself running through some children with an elephant tusk.

Yes, yes, yes,

he's holding

a bloodied tusk.

And again, the artist,

one of the arguments for it remaining is that the artistry is compellingly vivid.

It's a visceral work of art.

It does make you think.

It does...

And it makes it clear kind of what the artist's opinion of Sir Barceli is.

I mean, he's not shown, for example, you know, bestride a horse looking heroic.

He's stabbing children with a tusk.

It's a cowardly act.

I think

he is shooing.

It's an allegorical work, and it was understood that he was shooing the children with the power of his ivory wealth, that he was then using that to encourage children out of the street, away from their hoops and sticks and stupid little peg dolls, and into the gates of the factories where they could become useful to Christian society and the industrial era.

Back in November 2024, Westminster Council voted to take down the statue of Sir Bastardly and will do so later this year.

Opening up the question of who should replace him, a question that James Harkham was very quick to answer.

Billy Wisbang, the heroic little bullock who served as a spy in the Second World War, a hero that could perhaps

heal some of the wounds in this once great nation of ours.

So, Billy Wisbang, it's a name that

I'm kind of familiar with.

I've got a sense that Billy Wisbang was involved in World War II, but I don't feel like Billy Wisbang is a character that the public at large really think very much about.

This country doesn't like to acknowledge the role that cattle played in history, in war, and particularly in the Second World War.

There was a lot of sacrifice made.

A lot of good beef was thrown into that war machine, and I think Billy is the prime example here.

It would be a fitting memorial to all those cattle.

And so this whole edition of the Beef and Dairy Network will be dedicated to learning the true history behind Billy Whizbang or to give him his full title, Major Billington Whizbang.

After James, for some reason, left flowers at the foot of the statue of Bastardly Chattel, we moved on and James took me to somewhere nearby that he felt is crucial in the understanding of the Billy Whisbang story.

We're here under the tremendous arching canopy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's masterpiece, Paddington Station, in the heart of England's famous London.

It's here that for Billy Whisbang, on September the 3rd, 1939, the adventure truly begins.

Hello, my name is Professor Joanna Bolan.

Professor Harkam isn't the only academic that we'll be hearing from in this programme.

Unlike James, Joanna is actually employed by a university.

She's never been arrested after burning down the stables at a girls' school and is one of the leading experts in this field.

My research focuses primarily on the use of animals in warfare and I've just finished a big research project into the pigeon that wrote the Treaty of Versailles.

Both Joanna and James were able to tell me all about how Paddington Station has a surprising beef history.

What a lot of people don't know is that

before World War II, Paddington Station was an important hub for butchery in London.

This railway station would have been awash with blood, much as it is now.

But in those days it would have been animal blood.

There was a great school of butchery, of

the wonderful butcher's shops just on the side.

On this site, or nearly six station station, right on this station, yeah.

So this is, I mean, you come to a British railway station now and you think,

what can I do?

Do I buy a Cornish pasty for eight pounds and a copy of a magazine about railway modelling?

Probably not.

You know, do you buy some dairy milk and a huge bottle of water for a pound?

I don't know.

But in 1935, your choice was made for you.

Every single one of these shops and kiosks would have been a butcher's.

Some poultry, but mainly beef, huge sides of beef, sausages packaged up just for you to take on the train and eat raw.

It was a great traveling meat.

So, one of the things that allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place was that the British working man had such a hardy constitution because he could travel the country on these beautiful trains, steam trains, of course, then powering through from city to city, fed on rich raw beef.

It was coal and beef, wasn't it?

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, if you go to Paddington Station now, you'll see this rather lovely statue of Paddington Bear.

You know, we all know the stories.

Little Paddington Bear comes from Peru and is taken in by a lovely family.

He's had a little tag around his neck saying, Please look after this bear.

And he likes his marmalade sandwiches.

It's all very nice.

And based on a true story,

unfortunately, the true story is a little darker.

It is based on someone who came in to Paddington Station, was mistaken for a cow, and was immediately slaughtered for beef.

Gosh, so hang on.

Yeah.

The true story is that a bear arrived from Peru in Paddington Station and was mistaken for a cow and then slaughtered.

Oh, sorry, no, not a bear, it was a Peruvian man.

Gosh.

Yeah.

Slaughter station.

It's very dark.

Yeah, it is.

You have to question, how did Michael Bond get from the idea of

well the truth of a Peruvian man being slaughtered for beef?

How did that then turn into the story of a cute little bear that's looked after by a family?

It's quite a leap, isn't it?

Well, he's a very talented writer.

You know, he knew what to keep.

He thought that probably the sort of slaughter of a living man for his flesh needed to go.

But he was wearing a duffel coat at the time, so he thought, keep that.

And I think that was a good move.

This country is at war with Germany.

And so we move forward to the beginning of the Second World War and Paddington Station remains important but for a different reason.

This is where all the recruitment officers were based and so anyone coming from the west of England and Wales would flood in to Paddington Station to sign up.

And interestingly, the advertising campaign to encourage these young men to come along and sign up at Paddington Station, it didn't really focus on the warfare aspect.

Instead, it decided to focus on the opportunity to go to Belgium.

Have you ever wanted to go to Belgium?

Well, now is your chance.

The British Army wants to take you to Belgium.

Delicious waffles and beer made by monks.

Chips and mayonnaise.

Historic belfries.

Sign up today and get a free pen.

And remember, it's your chance to visit lovely, lovely Belgium.

Those wonderful historic belfries.

And you probably won't die, but you might.

And it wasn't just in advertising.

There was propaganda in all sorts of popular culture, even in films.

We started to see in romance films, we started to see young women not agreeing to marry a man unless he'd been to Belgium to sort of create this idea that that's really what every young woman wants a man who's been to Belgium darling would you do me the ultimate honor of becoming my wife oh I so wish I could agree but I'm afraid I I must say no for you see darling

You have never been to Belgium and I could never marry a man who has never been to Belgium.

I've been to the Netherlands, it's much the same.

It's not the same, darling.

It's the Netherlands, it's not Belgium, and you haven't been to Belgium, have you?

It's true, darling.

I have never been to Belgium.

I've been to French-speaking parts of Switzerland.

And so we see Padlington Station changing from this place where animals were brought to slaughter to this home of recruitment for the army, the air force, and the navy.

And we even see this in satirical cartoons at the time.

The cows being led to slaughter being compared to the young men going off to war, which shows us that even back then, satirical cartoons were a bit too on the nose.

But it wasn't just men who were signing up at Paddington Station.

It was also, well, in one case at least, cattle.

This is the first definite record we have of

Billy Wisbang in the history books is that railway ticket that he had clamped in his hoof, a gas mask slung around his neck,

and a label as well with him that just said, please take this cow to the British Army Recruitment Office.

Why do you think it was that Billy wanted to sign up on day one?

It's an incredibly brave thing to do.

You know, nobody knew what this war was going to be like.

Maybe there was an element of naivety.

They thought this might just be a quick thing or.

I think a sense of adventure, yes, but I mean, it's certainly,

I mean, we think of that, of the Powell's brigades in the First World War, where people thought it'd be tremendous fun, Berlin by Christmas.

People are a little bit more cautious looking at the the Second World War and wondering how it is they're going to tackle Herr Hitler.

For Billy, I think it was.

It was a mixture of patriotism, of course,

but I think it was personal.

It was personal for him.

He'd seen photos in the newspapers of many leading Nazis all wearing long leather coats.

You will have seen this.

It still features a lot in...

It's one of the few things that Hollywood does get right, is

the Nazis' lust for a leather jacket.

And I think he simply wanted to give them a taste of his own leather.

So Billy Wisbang gets off the train, I believe, just over there at platform seven, is that right?

That's right.

Yes, we have the original ticket.

We know the full journey

as it was.

It left Bristol Temple Meads at

roughly 10 past one that afternoon.

It was truly amazing

to stand on the same spot

that had seen Billy Wisbang arrive at Paddington Station.

If I closed my eyes, I could picture him.

In fact, I felt that I could almost smell him.

Although I think actually that was James, there was something smeared on his coat.

It's in that recruitment office where again he could have been cycled through in a matter of moments.

They were using the same conveyor belts as the abattoirs.

It's why Paddington was chosen.

A young officer spotted something, saw a glint in his eye, saw something in Billy, and spoke to him a few simple words of German.

It was often a common technique that was often used to expose a potential spy or foreign national.

And so this young subaltern there at the recruiting office looks Billy in the eye and says, Vie Gates.

And

I think even now you'd be hard pressed to expect

a young bullock from the West Country to say, Wie geets ganskoot and do.

Anyway,

and they chatted for a while in

fluent German.

And it was at that point that Billy was put on a different track.

So Billy Wisbang speaks in German to this recruiting officer, which must have been an amazing moment for everyone in there, because you don't expect a cow to be able to converse in any language, let alone German.

What on earth was going on there?

How was he able to do that?

Well, yes,

it's something of an extraordinary feat, but we believe

it did happen.

We have to go back to Billy's early life where

he'd grown up in a German cow circus.

We know that for at least two years he toured with a German circus.

That family would have drilled into him basic circus skills so he could walk a tightrope, he was very comfortable being fired out of a cannon and yes, in front of audiences he was taught to speak a level

of German that I think the British school system would consider fluent.

There is a thorny issue of language.

Of course, it was said that Billy Wisbang spoke fluent German.

To get to the bottom of whether it's plausible that Billy could have spoken German, I spoke to Bovine Asvet Bob Truskothik.

And obviously your average cow is not able to speak any sort of language, but there have been exceptions through history.

It was said that in the early 30s, there was a pair of young steers that hosted the first ever satirical radio show.

And it had to be put down eventually when the public realised that they were listening to cows just because

they were just so fluent and articulate and very good broadcasters.

So

there are records.

Absolutely.

I suspect what has happened is that

he's been caught early.

in his development.

He's had a very, very talented trainer in that circus who's really put Billy Wesbang through his paces,

vocally speaking.

To what degree are they actually speaking?

Because obviously, we're aware of parrots, for example.

You can teach them a few phrases, or

they will then parrot, as we say.

I think some people might imagine that's possible with an animal, but does it have true understanding?

Does it have true comprehension?

This is hard to say, but let's not forget that Billy Wisbang

wasn't sent in to take part in a first date.

Billy Wizbang was sent to infiltrate a group of dangerous narcissists who are constantly on output, these guys.

So in terms of the parroting, the social parroting, they want to hear, hi, all this, yes, that, great, lovely, brilliant, what a great idea, or all that kind of thing, which that kind of mimicry is, I mean, most humans don't get past that level of social engagement.

So Billy Wisbang was certainly up to that.

What about the recording of Billy?

Or, you know, maybe it isn't Billy.

That's obviously

the big controversy over the years.

A haunting record of what sounds like a young cow singing the German national anthem.

Yes.

Where do you stand on this?

I mean, a lot of people think it's a fake.

Though I a cynic be,

I believe it is the genuine article.

And so he's got this ability to speak German, absolutely incredible.

The recruitment officers immediately think, okay, this guy might be useful.

Was there any question at that time of like, can we trust a cow who can speak German?

Because obviously there's a lot of mistrust at the time of Germans or those of German extraction living in Britain, many of whom were put into kind of internment camps.

Interment camp camp camp camps.

I think there was...

This is so this is really the crucial moment for Billy.

Again, the assembled company are all stunned.

Here's a cow that can apparently speak some German, certainly understand it.

And

is he, you know, is he even a cow?

Is he two German spies hiding inside a pantomime costume?

It was only when, by chance, a portrait of His Majesty the King,

which was being taken away to be hidden in the cheese caves of Snowdonia for protection, was carried through the recruitment office to be loaded onto a train.

And in that moment, without skipping a beat, Billy stands on his hind quarters and salutes and holds that salute.

Wow.

And they just knew that that is a loyal blue British cow.

That's a loyal British cow with some very extraordinary skills.

Billy Huisbang wasn't going to go to the front line.

His abilities were going to be used in a much more ingenious way.

And the genius who came up with the plan was none other than Winston Churchill himself, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty, who had the idea to utilise all of Billy's circus lumb skills to fire him out of a cannon into the heart of Nazi Germany where he could carry out espionage.

And it wasn't just going to be any cannon, it was the Navy's biggest cannon, known colloquially as Mad Mary.

They've been trying for weeks to find a cow that would willingly walk into the muzzle of this giant naval gun mounted on the white cliffs of Dover.

Now I'm sure many of our listeners may have seen Mad Mary, the big cannon, because it's still very much mounted there on the cliffs at Dover.

I believe it's still technically operational, although I don't think it has fired since the end of the war.

Is that right?

Yes, that's right.

The final time that the weapon was officially effectively discharged was as

a victory salute to mark the end of hostilities on VJ Day when the Duke of Gloucester was fired into the channel as a mark of respect and swam to shore with only minimal injuries.

So thank you James for telling us about how Paddington Station was involved in all of this.

It's great to be here and see it through different eyes really because I just saw it as a kind of shitty corner of the city where you'd come and get a really disappointing baguette and then get on the train.

But now I see it as this kind of romantic embarkation point for Billy's war.

It's incredible, thank you.

That's right, not at all.

Every one of these platforms awash with blood, a sparkle in his eyes as he heads off on the greatest adventure of his life.

And that's where we should go next, I think.

I think to Whitehall to see what are now called the Churchill War Rooms, where the war cabinet used to meet underneath London in a secret bunker where Billy's orders would have been hatched and dispatched.

Great, well let's go.

So here we are at the Cabinet War Rooms, so-called because it did house the cabinet of ministers during the course of the Second World War,

but also because it housed a number of drinks cabinets which Winston Churchill would smash open with a cricket bat at 9 a.m.

and then the drinking would begin.

And this is where Billy's orders ultimately came from while he he was in Germany.

Yes, absolutely.

It's here where Churchill himself, who played a very active role in deciding these missions.

That's why some of the missions were

very dangerous.

Some of the missions were

sometimes quite ludicrous, depending on how much brandy and champagne the Prime Minister had had to drink that morning.

It was after one particularly boozy morning, reportedly four brandies, a bottle of bubbly, two eggnogs, a screwball and a yard of ale, that Churchill came up with Billy's ultimate mission.

Billy had quickly gained a reputation for being able to seamlessly blend in in Nazi Germany, and so Churchill tasked him with befriending Hitler himself.

We know from records that most of his contemporaries at the time thought this idea was mad.

It's only mad if it doesn't work.

This is, you know, this is the kind of madness that Churchill needs at this point in the war.

You know,

it's no madder than any of his other ideas, like building a chocolate battleship, aeroplanes made out of frozen steam, creating a replica Norway that the Germans would invade by mistake.

These were all crazy ideas, but they all worked.

Of course, befriending Hitler was only the first step in the mission.

The idea was that Billy, with his very unique set of skills, would be able, would be the only person able, really,

to bring an end to the war by taking out Hitler, by getting close enough to him that he could put a hoof through the face.

Billy had been equipped with some reinforced tungsten cowshoes which had been sharpened, hardened in the fires of Bermondsey and engraved with the words take that Adolph, which Churchill had believed would be branded into the Führer's face as Billy landed one on him and cracked his skull like a gaily painted egg on Easter Sunday.

In order to get so close to Hitler that he could put a hoof through his face, the plan was that he would use a number of disguises and we know that he did use a number of disguises throughout this period.

So would you say that Billy was a master of disguise?

Well, I think his skills improved across the period.

So, when he started out, it was just wearing a really big moustache or a sort of big fez.

But then, you've just got a sort of big moustache or a big fez on a cow, which, if anything, draws the attention

rather than deflecting.

But he moved on, he improved his skills, and yes, he went under a number of assumed identities.

There was a Polish pastry chef, an admiral,

an Italian priest, which was one of his favourites,

a young flower seller, before lighting upon his real genius, his

Pièce de Résistance, if you like, which was a brilliant disguise as a young German woman or Fraulein.

And so really he was using sexual wiles, really, to get in with the Nazi party.

He was this beautiful young lady.

He was disarming.

And I believe he began a sort of relationship with Hitler where he'd be playing tennis every morning.

They'd be painting together, all this kind of stuff.

That's right.

And

there's a story that

he even beat Hitler in mixed doubles one morning.

And

they sort of

had a little sort of jovial play fight, if you like, about that, because his tennis is very good, but he'd always let Hitler win up to that point.

But

that's how within the inner circle he was.

He could even beat Hitler at tennis and that was considered to be okay.

And I think that really shows you sort of how much he had infiltrated that inner circle.

The disguise was pretty complete at that point.

Now I think some people will be listening and thinking, you know, why is it then that the British State and Churchill decided that a cow should be sent in to try and infiltrate, rather than, for example, just a woman, for example, a real woman

who could speak German and who could

make out that they were an actual German young woman.

Why did they go for a cow?

It's a good point, and there have been

a lot of PhDs have been written about this, but I will say that I think it's because a cow's eyes really just are really mesmeric.

They're persuasive, and I think that's the thing that

made

Churchill and

his inner circle decide to go with a cow rather than a human woman.

Because when you look in a cow's eyes,

a cow's eyes can change your mind.

And that's what I think they were hoping would happen with Hitler, or at least let him drop his guard enough for the hoof to go through the head.

Do we have any evidence that Hitler ever began to question whether Billy was a beautiful young woman, or was he totally taken in?

Again, it's the eyes that are so persuasive.

So even if you were to take a step back and look and think, well, that is just a bullock wearing a tennis skirt, I think the eyes could draw you in and just convince you that you were looking at a young, beautiful woman of about sort of 21, 22.

In fact,

we read in Eva Braun's diaries about a young woman she was very jealous of, a very beautiful young woman called Wilhelmina, who we believe is Billy Huisbang.

And she talks about the long flowing locks and the

cinched waistline.

And,

you know, if you've seen pictures, there are no long flowing locks.

There is no waistline.

There's sort of a big bullock with a bit of a wig on.

But again, it's the eyes.

It's the eyes that have this sort of mesmeric, magical quality, which I just think could, well, could bring any man down, really.

Cows are surprisingly good at disguising themselves.

So it's really something that cows have mastered over many, many years.

The one thing a cow's never really managed to disguise very easily

is its back, is the anus

area.

And that requires some heavy, heavy dressing.

Would Billy have had to, for example, always face one way so as to not show the fur his anus when he was in his disguise?

Yes,

ideally, but that would have been very, very tricky, of course.

I mean, we know, obviously, there were times when he was playing tennis with hitler uh and and hitler would have would have wanted that that beautiful nubile partner to be wearing a short skirt hitler would have been would have been deliberately hitting balls into the corner of the court to try and get that opponent to bend and pick up he was you know he was a rascal in many ways so that would have been very very tricky um indeed and that's i mean that's partly why saboteur cows spy cows were were given certain gadgets for example billy whisbang had a had a special coin uh that had tails on both sides.

So Billy Wisbang would always win the toss and could make sure that the sun was in Hitler's eyes.

So if there was an issue where the back was exposed, it would be fleeting and it would be blurred by the power of the sun.

And Hitler didn't have great vision, as we know.

And so, with his disguise and his command of German, Billy succeeded in placing himself right at the heart of the Nazi war machine.

He managed to do this for for almost four years, which, as Professor Bolin explains, raises a gnawing question.

The big question regarding Billy Wisbang is:

given that he was

within the Nazi inner circle for upwards of four years,

why didn't he carry out his ultimate plan of putting a hoof through Hitler's face?

More after this.

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Thank you.

Right.

I hope you're enjoying the show.

On with it.

We know he had ample opportunity to do so.

We know he was on the tennis court every morning.

We know they dined out together.

There were so many opportunities where Billy could have carried out his ultimate mission and

chose not to.

And it's the subject of much debate throughout the decades

as to why he didn't.

So you do have to wonder, was Billy,

you know, just a Nazi who was having the time of his life?

Professor James Harkam refutes this way of thinking.

In fact, he believes that Billy did attempt to kill Hitler.

1944, Hitler receives delivery of a brand new office chair.

So he wore out his old cloth-upholstered chair

and takes delivery of a brand new chair.

upholstered in pure

cow leather.

And if there'd been any doubt in Billy's mind at that point, if he'd ever forgotten who he was, if he'd got wrapped up in the narrative, in his legend, in the person, the cow that he was trying to pretend to be, that's the moment when it changed.

That's when he was back in business.

He knew the one thing he had to do

was hoof Hitler in the face.

Billy had the Fuhrer's routine down to a T by then.

They rose early,

game of tennis in the morning, croquet in the early afternoon, buckaroo after that, and then break for a light lunch.

It's at that point Billy should have his own free time, which he used to use to paint, and Hitler is picked up in the staff car and driven to what should be a

cabinet meeting of his generals,

of his heads of staff.

However, Billy had tampered with the engine of the Führer's staff car, filling the air intake with hard-boiled pickled duck eggs, which brought him enough time to run ahead and get to the meeting room before the Nazi cabinet.

He knows that Hitler will be there gathered and he can take out the whole Nazi war cabinet face to hoof.

It's the first gathering that they'll all be present in one place.

And if you think that if you think that he's been lollygagging, if you think that Billy's maybe been malingering a little here and living the Third Reich Playboy lifestyle, this this is where things change.

This is where he's going to take everybody out in one go, just all around the table.

Hoof, hoof, hoof.

But how was Billy going to remain undetected in the conference room?

Well, he had a rather ingenious plan of his own.

Billy uses his power of disguise again to make himself look like an 18th century mahogany table.

This is the table around which

all of Hitler's closest inner circle will be having their meeting.

All Billy has to do is hold his breath, stay still, and wait for his moment.

With regards to the table, that's rather more difficult because you're in a darkened room,

you've got time, and the choice was, are we going for a table that's got ornate bovine arse carvings?

That wasn't hugely alle mode in Germany at that time.

It was more of a Slovak tradition, really, and might have, in fact, angered Hitler.

So instead, they went for a traditional tablecloth.

Hitler loved a tablecloth, he collected them wherever he went.

Hitler was a huge fan of a tablecloth, loved a tablecloth.

I mean, a lot of people say that the whole reason he went into Russia in 1942 was to, I mean, he just wanted

a classic Muscovite tablecloth, which is deliciously thick and soft to the touch, and also

very easy to clean.

For example, a lasagna stain, any ragu or even red wine.

Remarkable.

But yes,

that's by the by.

So they went for the tablecloth option.

That was concealed within a Buddy Wiz Bang's anus.

He extruded that.

I mean, that took weeks and weeks and weeks of training to get him to be able to do that.

And so, you know, while he was disguised as a table, he was beneath the tablecloth, which just helps with all those...

rough edges to the to the disguise.

Exactly.

And

a spice abateur cow can use that tablecloth in a million and one ways should something go wrong.

You know, at the last minute it can use it

to bind opponents as a parachute, as a sail, as an escape rope.

I mean it's it's a it's a it's a great reassurance for the bovine agent as much as anything else.

And actually it proved

so useful during the war that it's it became standard training at MI6 and among the special forces to learn how to hide and extrude a a full-size

eight-person plus tablecloth in your

in your anus.

And obviously,

if James Bond and the likes of Jason Bourne had been more true to life, then you'd have, I mean, at least half the movies would have been taken up seeing them getting their puff up, assuming the extrusion position and

deploying.

I think in You Only Live Twice, there is a casino scene where they nod to it.

The art director there made sure that one of the roulette tables had

a little streak of turd on the gauze.

Despite his betablecloth table disguise, as we know, Billy didn't kill Hitler.

Hitler killed himself at the end of shooting the film Downfall.

So the question, of course, is, why didn't Billy do it?

Would have been smooth as silk.

Unfortunately, this was the same day

that a certain Nazi officer by the name of von Stauffenberg

had also also planned to make his move.

The rest of the world knew that Hitler was a complete wanker on day one, but by 1944 even the German population and members of the Nazi Party themselves were beginning to cotton on to the idea that he was a complete prick.

And so we begin to see these plots against Hitler's life.

Now this is quite well known, the von Stauffenberg plot.

It was a briefcase, I believe, filled with explosives, left under the table.

And as I say that, I begin to realize what I think you're about to tell me.

Yes, you can see the unfortunate concatenation of events here.

In that, just as Billy had destroyed the previous table, thrown it out of the window, replaced it with Billy himself as a master of disguise, Stauffenberg slides into the room and rocks up with his exploding briefcase.

The briefcase detonated.

Billy took the brunt of the blast.

Hitler suffered only minor injuries, was immediately ushered out of the room, and returned to his business later in the day.

And at that stage, you know, Billy was

Bologna adorning the walls of that room.

Yes, it was

a sacrifice writ large in Ragu upon the wall.

It has been estimated that Billy probably lived for a further ten thousandth of a second before the impact of the briefcase bomb turned him into lumpy, charred, and undersalted pasta sauce.

Probably also lacking a bit of freshness or acidity, my tip is always parsley.

Just a little bit really lifts the sauce.

Serve with a classic tagliatelli, a nice garlic bread, and a two-litre bottle of lilt.

Cows throughout military history have often been seen to be highly effective, actually,

when faced with explosions.

I asked Bob Triskothik whether Billy ever stood a chance.

Don't forget, a cow's senses are very, very acute.

They'll be aware of a bomb much more readily than a human being would be, and they are then presented with a degree of choice.

You're talking about animals that have wide, very strong, thick flanks that can kill a blast, for example.

Were a cow to lie on a bomb of any size, that's going to dampen the bomb, and the cow is not going to know much about it apart from having a bit of a belly egg for a couple of days.

But a tactical cow, as we saw beginning to be used at the end of the First World War, a tactical cow can deflect that blast and use it at its will, make it its own weapon, in effect.

In the case of Billy Wisbang, when he was in in that room and the bomb was in the briefcase underneath him,

he would have known that that was a bomb and that that was going to explode.

I would be astonished if Billy Wisbang didn't realize that that was a bomb.

I also,

having known that, he would have been able to direct and reshape his table disguise at the very last minute to hone in the, you know, and condense the blast onto the main target.

So your contention is that if he had wanted to, he could have deflected that blast directly at Herr Hitler.

He could have directed it with his flank.

He could have also have effectively orally absorbed the blast, because if you think about it,

the long, heavy-duty anus of a cow is effectively a blast pipe.

And Billy could have used his anus as a kind of bazooka.

Interesting.

So then, well, we know what happened.

We know that the bomb exploded.

Billy took the blast, basically, and was completely bolognazed.

It was just like a mamma used to make it.

Yes.

Saving all of the assembled Nazis.

So what does that tell us then?

Once we know that he could have deflected that blast towards Hitler and the Nazis?

Well, it's a supposition, of course, isn't it?

But I mean, the reality is, I mean, obviously, if a cow is hit with a major blast in its ventral silk space, as it's called, a particular sort of soft point in the underbelly of

the cow, then it will be bolinised and it makes great efforts to avoid that.

I mean, even in day-to-day life, it's a tender place and

they will make sure it's caked in mud, you know, cladded effectively.

You mentioned

that soft area there.

The ventral silk space, yes.

Would a good analogy be the bit on the Death Star where you need to fly down into that channel then just

what that bit on the Death Star is based on, is that the ventral silk space the the original author of of star wars charles dickens when he it wrote the original book that the movies were were based on at the time uh was in a debtor's part of a debtor's jail where he he was uh doing bovine husbandry and that's that's how he learned about that part and that's what inspired the whole story really and so for a cow to sort of voluntarily take the blast in that area, they know what's coming next.

They know what's coming next.

My personal theory is that what we're dealing with is

an ideological

cow and that

it's made the ideological choice to take that hit and to not survive.

He was trying to save Hitler.

I believe he was trying to save Hitler and make himself a bovine martyr in the process.

The fact that he was there on that day in that room is significant.

Now some people will tell you that it's just a coincidence, but it's my belief that he was there, disguised as a table, to protect Hitler.

Wow.

And if that's true,

then Billy was a Nazi, right?

I mean, that's your proof, almost.

If my contention is true that he was protecting the Führer,

I don't think we can view it any other way.

I think

he was, by that stage, he was a Nazi through and through.

That sort of brings up a whole other question, isn't it?

Which is, we think back to that bullock arriving on the platform at Paddington Station.

Yes.

Did he know at that point that that was the plan for him?

He knew that he wanted to turn up so that he could go to Germany and get involved with the Nazis.

Or, you know, was it that he at that point was a loyal Brit who then was radicalised by the experience of being part of the Nazi Party then?

Do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, it's all conjecture at this point, unless any new evidence comes to light.

But one does think back to Billy's childhood.

As an historian, you look back through his life to look for clues.

And

it simply is the case that Billy Huisbang did spend a significant portion of his childhood in Germany as part of a German cow circus.

You know,

he loved the German way of life.

He had German values.

Long before he'd arrived at Paddington Station on that fateful day.

And as you say, we all maybe never know, but

I guess you're saying if you had to stake your courage to the mask, you're saying

he was a Nazi from day one.

I think

he was the bullock that outwitted Churchill.

And I think he knew what he was doing from day one.

That is what I believe.

Hello, I'm Alex Neon, and I am the Beef and Dairy Networks archivist.

I sent Alex into the Beef and Dairy archive to see if he could find anything about Billy Wisbang.

And of course, between the congealed beef dishes from history, he found some gems, largely relating to Churchill's campaign for re-election in 1945.

If we look at Winston Churchill's re-election campaign, we can sense a certain amount of complacency early on.

You know, for example, his election slogan was, Come on, it's me, Winston fucking Churchill.

It was around this time he began to refer to himself as Big Daddy Winston.

Churchill believed that getting re-elected would be easy, but it quickly became clear that being a great wartime leader didn't necessarily translate into being someone who the public wanted to lead them in peacetime.

He needed to do something special, and so he decided to tell Britain and the world about Billy Wizbang.

Britain's war cows generally have gone unrecorded unnoticed and uncelebrated and that's a testament to the level of secrecy that they operated under no one was meant to know what they did it's classified official secrets act blah blah blah blah blah we you will never know what is peculiar about billy whisbang

is that winston churchill used his position of power

to overrule all that.

He went, no, I'm going to tell people about Billy Wisbang, and that's why they're going to vote for me.

Now, I believe you've gone back through our archive, and you've actually found a recording of Winston Churchill invoking Billy Wisbang as a way of trying

to garner votes.

That's right.

This is him saying what he felt needs to be said.

The question before you is simple.

Will you stand with socialism, the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy?

Or will you rally behind your bold leader who steered Britannia through her darkest hour, whose brass gonads are the size of Mars?

Ask yourself this.

Would the socialists have launched young Billy Whizbang behind enemy lines?

Would they have had the guile to fire that plucky calf from a cannon to infiltrate the Nazi war machine?

Or would they have hidden behind the barricades of bureaucracy, stifled by their own insipid mediocrity?

The choice, of course, is yours.

But when you stand at the ballot box, remember, come on, it's me, Winston fucking Churchill.

It's Big Daddy Winston.

The extent to which the story of Billy Wisbang captured the imagination of the nation is incredible.

We are talking murals on the side of pubs.

Pin-up cartoons.

Dogs were named after Billy Wisbang.

Children were named after Billy Wisbang.

So yeah,

in that period, he really was the talk at the town.

And in that sense, Winston Churchill's plan had begun to work.

It's not until people started to look into this story in a little bit more detail that

maybe his plan started to unravel.

As the stories of heroism began to bed into people's minds, people began to start asking questions.

Why hadn't Billy tried to kill Hitler?

What were Billy's true intentions?

It's fair to say it split public opinion.

Tell me, what is your impression of Billy Huisbang?

As a true British patriot, I'd have to say that yes, I was an enormous admirer of Billy Huisbang.

He was

a great Briton.

And what about the persistent rumors that Billy Huisbang was a Nazi?

I said what I said, and I meant what I said.

Thank you.

The BBC Home Service at the time had a show called The Common Man Speaks, in which the BBC had an almost open-door policy where the idea was members of the public were invited into BBC Studios to give their thoughts on the matters of the day.

In some ways, it was a precursor to the phone-in show,

where you could walk up, take your seat in front of the presenter, and expose your opinion.

opinion.

And people did, particularly on the subject of Billy Wisbank.

Well, I'd have to say

I'm very concerned.

I mean, I read the papers.

One can't learn about Billy Wisbang without also learning that he was possibly himself in the Nazi inner circle.

You know, that he agrees with everything that they were doing.

And

I have to say, it would make me think twice about voting for Big Danny Winston again.

I used to think he was a wonderful statesman, but basing his entire current campaign on the legacy of Billy Huisbang, I think it's a mistake.

I think he's lost his way and I shan't be voting for him again.

That's all I've got to say.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your input there.

What do you think, young man?

Well, I think it's absolutely appalling that Big Daddy Winston would appropriate the image of this bullock, a traitorous bullock, a bullock that we know now not to have have been working in the interests of our great country.

But is it not true that Billy Huisbang risked his life and indeed gave his life for the British state?

He gave his life for some state or other, but knowing what we know now, I think we can look back on the workings and machinations of that bullock and we can look at each other square in the eye and say we don't know what the true intentions of Billy Wisbang were.

And why is it that Billy Huisbang and the furore around this young bullock mean so much to you personally?

Well you work it out.

I mean me and my friends, we spent three years in the fields of France getting repeatedly shot at.

I myself was shot multiple times in the penis, three times in my own penis, and I don't appreciate all this praise being heaped on vainglorious bullocks who it turns out have only been helping out the other side.

Tell me, were you shot in the penis three times in short succession?

Were you shot in the penis and then you recovered and then returned to the the battlefield to be shot in the penis once again and then once again there was there was two on the trot bang bang and then there was a lengthy convalescence period of three four months in a field hospital uh in nantes and then back on the field 30 seconds into reaching the battlefield bang one more and so maybe you feel that really the true heroes of world war ii were you and your friends getting shot in the penis and not a calf living in the lap of luxury

well i'll say this i don't like to intellectualise these things.

All I know is that when I see the image of

that absolutely reprehensible bullock, I'll get an aching in my English dick, and I think that says it all.

Billy was a calf, Billy was a knave, Billy was a Nazi son, I say.

If you're looking for a moment where the tide turned on the Billy Wisbang story, it is an edition of the Times in which the front page displayed a photograph of Billy Wisbang performing a Nazi salute.

While you might expect that Billy would have had to have done Nazi salutes to fit in in Nazi Germany, this photograph was taken during a short period of leave where he returned briefly to the UK.

You can tell the photograph is taken in the UK because the weather is awful and everyone's got a face like a slapped ass.

The photo was supposedly taken in 1942.

It's very difficult for a cow to do a Nazi salute.

It doesn't happen by accident.

This was intended.

This was not taken out of context.

This was not an accident.

Even though there were many people writing to the letters page of the Times in the weeks that followed, claiming that this had been a mistake, that this was an unfortunate camera angle, that this was a Roman salute performed by the cows of the Roman Empire.

I think it was pretty clear to all those who were looking at the photo that this was a deliberate act.

It's obviously a Nazi salute.

If you do a Nazi salute, you're a Nazi.

Why would we discuss it further?

Billy Wisbang was doing a Nazi salute.

What more evidence do you want?

Winston Churchill lost the election.

The problem was for Churchill that he'd gone in too hard.

on Billy Wisbang.

The cow was out of the bag.

It was a historic victory for for Labour and for that Labour government, which famously, I think, if you were to summarise their achievements, the one that everyone will immediately mention is, of course, the NHS.

So it is, you know, in some ways,

we have, in a roundabout way, Billy Wisbang to thank for the NHS

and rather awkwardly the Nazis.

So you will, of course, be aware of the statue of Sir Barsidley Chattel, which is soon to be coming down in Hyde Park, and the nascent campaign to get a statue of Billy Wisbank

put on that plinth.

What do you make of that?

Do you think Billy should be publicly venerated in that way?

God, no.

He infiltrated the Nazi party and then protected Hitler.

I don't think this is someone we should be venerating.

Right.

No, not at all.

Okay.

Well, there will then be an empty plinth.

Who do you think

should take the place of Sir Barsardley?

Oh, John Travolta.

Easy.

The actor John Travolta?

Yes.

I don't think it should be Billy Wisband at all.

I think, at best, there are too many questions.

floating around.

Okay.

So if you had to think of someone that you should replace Sir Barsardly, who would you go for?

I'd go for John Travolta.

Oh, on the Plinth.

Not Billy.

Oh.

I think it'd be good if it was Jan Travolto.

Do you mean John Travolta?

Yes.

James, you've brought me here.

We're back in Hyde Park.

We're right next to the Princess Dina Memorial Fountain.

I notice

you are crying.

It's just some water from the Memorial Fountain has sprayed in my eyes.

Right, because it's okay.

You know, people get emotional about Princess Dana.

That's that's fine.

I mean, she uh she did have a lot to give.

Are you okay to what do you think she'd have worn to the 2012 Olympics?

Right, so why is it that you have brought me here?

Is it because you wanted to stop off at the Dino Memorial Fountain, or is it to do with Billy Wisbang?

I have been lucky enough to secure the

final bovine remains of

Major Billington Whisbang.

Oh, I see.

So, just to paint a picture for the audience,

James is holding a Pringles tube, a tube of the

Crisps, Pringles, its Texas barbecue sauce flavour.

He's in the tube, you bloody fool.

Sorry, do you mean to say that the remains of Billy Whisbang are inside this Pringles tube?

Yes!

Could you not have found a more respectful way of conveying

this?

This is how it came from the Russian embassy right let's talk about his remains then because how why did the Russians have him

as you may recall from the rather explosive conclusion of

Billy's story he was

he was there at the wolf's lair

and unfortunately

saved the Führer's life when the von Stauffenberg briefcase exploded Once the war was over, it was the the Russians who came in the Soviet government cleaned up the room took all the Nazi documentation, and as it turns out, as I suspected myself for many years, the last final remains of Billy Wisbang.

Meticulously, the Soviets

bagged it, filed it, numbered it, and it was for a long time in a manila envelope somewhere in a Moscow archive, in the drawer just below Yuri Gagarin's skull and just above Joseph Goebbels' penis.

What happened next was one of the most emotional things I've ever seen.

And I've seen the Lion King on Broadway.

I'm now going to remove the lid of the Pringles tube and scatter the

final earthly remains

of Major Billy Wisbang.

I am now angling the Pringles tube

and will allow

the meat and bone to fall

onto British soil

for the first time

in nearly 80 years.

And just to explain what I can see, I'm watching a middle-aged man pour what looks like bolognese out of a Pringles tube onto the floor.

Boo Boo Boom

Boop

Boop

That isn't a trumpet

that is James Halcombe doing an incredible impression of a trumpet using just his lips.

Goodbye, England's rose.

Major Billington Wisbang

1938 to 1944

Some say a British hero, some say he was a bastard and a Nazi.

I won't tell you what I think, but I will say this:

Billy,

you'd have loved 2025.

A big thanks to everyone we spoke to for that feature.

The decision about who to put on that plinth in Hyde Park is still yet to be taken, and Westminster Council are still actively seeking contributions from the public.

I spoke to their press officer earlier today, and apparently the current frontrunners are John Travolta and the yellow M ⁇ M.

So that's all we've got time for this month.

If you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website now where you you can find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this week we ask Irish New Age folk sensation Enya for her top five air fryers small enough to use in a caravan.

So until next time, beef out.

Thanks to Mike Shepherd, Gemma Arrowsmith, Mike Wozniak, Tom Crowley, Gareth Quinn, and Linnea Sage.

And thank you for listening.

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