Sunday, nine o'clock, and for once Degsy's mam isn't listening through the wall. She's brought her knitting into the studio.

So Gaz tells her whose ground she's sitting on. For at least six hundred years, this corner of the coast was Norway. Then, in the winter of 1658, the sea between the Danish islands froze. Karl X Gustav marched his army across the ice of the Little Belt, horses led by the bridle with wide gaps between them, and some of it went through — including the king's own sledge, moments after he'd climbed out. According to a French diplomat who was there, the frozen beer had to be chopped up with axes, and the king might never have tried the bigger ice if a rider carrying the English envoy's peace letter hadn't come across it first.

A week after the army reached Zealand, Denmark had agreed peace terms. At Roskilde, on 26 February 1658, it signed away a third of its land, and Norway lost Bohuslän. The French mediator signed without his credentials: the courier carrying them was stuck in the ice.

Halfway through, there's a knock at the door. It's Roy, the landlord, and he isn't alone.

Two new punk tracks off the back of it: THE ICE WILL HOLD and SWEDISH NORWAY.

The history is fact-checked. The mangling is the comedy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sunday, nine o'clock, and something in the room is humming. It isn't the mast. Degsy's mam moved into the unit next door on Friday, and the first thing she did was plug in the fridge.

She says she only came because Degsy's postcard said "wish you were 'ere". Gaz reckons that's the most Swedish thing that has ever happened in the room. In 1867 the north of Sweden got frost in July, and one night in September finished off the harvest. By the time it was over, more than a million Swedes had gone to America. When a government investigator asked fifty men on an emigrant ship in 1907 why they were going, not one of them was heading somewhere he knew nobody. Somebody went first and wrote home, and in the early 1880s close to half of those who followed travelled on a ticket somebody else had already paid for.

The way out ran through England: two days from Gothenburg to Hull, where landing on a Sunday made you a "bona fide traveller" who could drink in any pub at any hour, then an emigrant train with no toilet across the Pennines to Liverpool. One of the early ones, in 1853, went straight through Salford in the dark. Back home, the great and the good founded a society against emigration — in a Stockholm restaurant.

And under the custard creams in Brenda's handbag, there's a ring.

Two new punk tracks off the back of it: PREPAID and ANOTHER PERSON.

The history is fact-checked. The mangling is the comedy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sunday, nine o'clock — exactly when they said they'd be on. Gaz has had a wash. The phone is on the bench. It doesn't ring.

So Gaz tells Degsy about the herring. Autumn 1747, the shoals pour into the Bohuslän fjords and stay for sixty years. Fishing is free, so people with nothing build shacks on bare rocks and go into business. By the 1780s there are over four hundred boiling-houses on the coast, turning whole herring into lamp oil and tipping the rest into the sea — and when the crown cracks down, the Gothenburg merchants come back with two hundred witnesses swearing the stink is harmless.

Then, one autumn, the herring doesn't come. And halfway through the broadcast, the landlord does — because it's the first, and the rent is due.

Two new punk tracks off the back of it: THE HERRING'S IN and IT'S EARLY.

The history is fact-checked. The mangling is the comedy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.