The Ballad of Mad Cap'n Tom: Part 1

and I'm Tom we're outside and I not sure I want to tell the story yeah I have to because at the very least you can point people at this video and say look if you want to know this is the full story from the very start this this is the Ballad of mad captain Tom I've stopped hating it now this you really want to count 2002-2003 something like that this is when Talk Like a Pirate Day had started 19th of September 19th of September yeah Talk Like a Pirate Day was a thing and I knew it was I got involved it because I was part of a community that would that had celebrates it one year in the past and it was it was from news articles and things like that and me and a friend realized that there was not a website for the day and we thought there should be some I mean bear in mind the story I'm telling now is the one I've told many many times or any many people so this might be a complete lie that my memories made up by now but as far as I remember we realized there wasn't a website for the day we thought some corporate chains gonna try and log onto that fine we're gonna set up a website for it so we did ah and it was yarrow all UK I haven't done that voice in a long time I've actually seen that before I even knew you yeah yeah because I'm my bloody scene it could because the original pirate guys in the US who still do it who that is their thing to the rest of their lives now they can't back out of it um they they invented the day they came up with it and they said they email me and said we were about to do that but look it's always the breakfast radio shows that are interested in this you're clearly interested in this you clearly sensible um do you want to handle the British press well actually it was a you wanna be hand on the British press for as laddie cuz they were still they were still think that the air kept up the act and me having never had any kind of background like that's like yeah right this sounds like it sounds like a good thing and they link to me is official UK I was the only official other pager than the wrong because then a load of other people as we thought would happen did the same thing I done set up other days like no those are all unofficial but this this was the UK brass contact all right the next September the 19th rolled around after I put you know a few gathers a free ringtone section I got ringtones back back when you had like polyphonic ring hi-yah polyphonic ringtones and Nokia's I got that I'm not sure the copyright on any of that was cleared but nevermind it was just MIDI files basically uh and September 19th rolled round and radio stations called and it was like you know this is this is Solent FM down on the Isle of Wight um we can we come into an interview with madcap and Tom all right here we go this is the voice for the first time in many years much we did Eyre of college Academy hi to you man I'm watered it now I'm not a practice are of course you can be hi T's I'll be calling me 8:30 I'm having BBC Radio 5 Live just before that so they called on a landline cuz they call the landline back then which really given I was meant to be at sea not the best guy army I had I had a whole stick like cuz they all ask the same question and once you've done one interview you've got standard jokes like army ship ah well be [ __ ] me [ __ ] be the the SS unsinkable la Savi it sank like it's a terrible joke but it's a breakfast radio so all they want is some idiot on the phone that they can riff off and talk back to something to fill the time yeah I really I would double yeah shiver me timbers me general expression but this year in honor of the day ah the hardware stores be selling that Timbers pretty shivered bubble everytime straight-out same joke 20 different radio says like the big year was was 2020 radio stations that's great and then one year I think it's got copyright playing out of existence now but someone wants upload this to YouTube so I got to see it BBC news round the kids news programme interviewed me on the deck of a tall ship in Portsmouth because like PR companies were getting involved PR companies want alright we need someone a fish Lou can come down oh yes this guy's mad captain ton all right all those we'll get this prat down so I was on the deck of a tall ship in Portsmouth for whatever they were doing so some company got you down to Portsmouth yeah the Midlands yeah it's in York from York then to come down and do that that is a hell of a trek yes to be a pirate for the day yeah well I didn't have the costume because I was always on the radio I wasn't anything like that so are they they had a pirate thing going on so they gave me some spare kit and put a scar on my face um and I did that down a camera Tullio off Newsround uh and it was all proved yeah we know exactly what you gonna say drop out of character assumes cuz this thing I dropped out of character instantly I was doing radio news from there is DN line god that's old now isn't it from there like high quality radio line and I was you know Gorky early twenties ponytail down the back which was gratefully for the character once I started getting the costume big hair in the breeze what like John but I was just is this guy in this in this radio studio they're given an eyepatch no and a bandana too and I come out from doing that this is before I got to costume and the guy says alright where's uh where's our pirate I say our I be right here we hiding up bloody because I had the voice and throat lozenges many throat lozenges the voice is entirely inaccurate by the way the reason the only reason pirates speaking out accent is because of one actor um and it's now been long ever forgotten his name he played Long John Silver in Disney's treasure doctor his disease and what the big Treasure Island I decided to trial know the old the proper treasure arm i cannot remember his name which means it's been five years um and he talked like that that's that's a sole reason but pirates speak without accent now um gets pirates just meet like what they speak yeah yeah so moving on moving on um by this time I was starting to get a bit tired of it and I realize when I saw some comment on some forums saying it should be talked like a piracy can get a punch in the face day that this has passed its peak now I should get out of this uh by this point in the UK at least it was a charity thing Marie Curie Cancer Care had taken it on as one of their days and was sending out fundraising kits to people and I was pointing people at them it's like this is raising thousands of pounds for gee I can't really back out on this now so I kept going Alton Towers the theme park is placing one of our Six Flags type things I sorry I keep translating the Americans because the majority of my audience is American sorry Britain's old and Towers got in touch they were launching Buccaneer Bay Alton Towers is really good at PR Old Town's will jump onto any bandwagon they can see to try and get some press coverage so they got me down they gave me some competitions from friends I took a load of folks down there later um and I went down and stood on a very cold lawn giving it uh Turley useless lecture about pirates to staff who were there just to fill up the numbers because that gave them some photos for story and on my Ryder for that they didn't pay me they in some Coptic it seems that and they gave me travel nearly a night in the hotel they paid me by giving me a proper leather tricorn that is where the hat came from it's like a 50-quid hat that was it was from a LARP costume store live-action role-playing costume store for all the people who golf and hit each other with Foam swords I just thought that they would have their own prop nope they may have done but it was on my rider I want a hat they're like okay we can afford a hat when you put that on expenses that's where I got hat then the costume steadily improved got the frilly shirts got the medallion each what each one of those things as a story behind it for me though I'm going to UM got the coat from a charity shop got the medallion to everything like that and it steadily became this character that I could drop into my I needed to and that was okay um were you around the year it happened yeah I in fact helped campaign yeah you did didn't you because isn't it all yell because of the one man that we've referenced several times we need to get him on the bench at some point mr. Tim mr. Tim six foot seven oh by the way last time I described Tim I said he's like Bambi on ice when he's drunk turns out he'd never heard that description before and someone quoted it at him now he's not offended by it but I maintain he has heard that description before but he was drunk yes so 2008 I think this had actually been prophesied the year before I went to a writing group creative writing group at York and someone essentially wrote this as a writing challenge for it's something that would never happen fanfic no no just cuz just cuz I think that's where the idea came from it got chucked around an idea but first I knew about the thing was I was a thing called BarCamp Baltics in Riga the conference in in Riga in Latvia which is I've just got rid of the couch you're the big puffy jacket I used to wear that's why that's what I got that coat for ten years earlier well that's lasted eight years earlier something like that um yeah big old coat I was there I was in the hostel because I was still young upper stayed in hostels I wasn't angry at anyone who shared a room with me um at 3 mm snoring Germans yeah um and I get an email did you know Sigma 3 a.m. snoring German no Matt no I don't um I I got an email it said dear mad captain Tom do you mind is telling the campus press that you're running for student president do you want to fill in what was happening back in York University at that point because I was in Latvia Tim I'm still a little bit annoyed I wasn't there for the moment but as I understand Tim had filled in the application form yeah for the Students Union president in the style of mad captain Tom he'd written mad captain Tom at the top and he had signed it mad captain huh no it turns out you didn't need to sign the form oh really no oh wow yeah I got a couple of people to nominate she said the the manifesto was was to come and I thought okay it's my last year at York I'm an I'm an Emmett yeah I was having an A student I've got time what's the worst that could happen so we campaigned we brainstorm some manifesto promises for mad captain Tom they they require me to use my last name it was mad captain Tom Scott because uh because they thought it was funny well now I was making a mockery of everything because as you point out I was never involved in any Students Union stuff I thought the Students Union was a complete waste of time another common unnecessary complete waste of time but generally filled lauder people who were politically motivated and hoping that at some point it looked good on the Seavey's which it wouldn't because no in the real world actually cares you've been student student politician that was that's my fault so we brainstorm to manifesto promises in a bar obviously in a bar 3-3 cutlasses for all a Canon points at the Vice Chancellors house in case anything needed to end jokes like that joke signer and I we sent some Flyers out we we reached our budget for campaigning and we some wonderful people at the Gilbert and Sullivan Society come made a kit that basically we got a Paul just try those big big trolleys you wrote you can pull along behind you on the filling they clunk clunk clunk it's a pirate ship it's got a mast it's got me with a sword on it it's got a cast of pirates around me it's got me standing on top of going IRA me how she's vote for Voltron mad captain Tom the plan was not to win the plan ideally was to come second by one vote to really annoy everyone I make it look like we could have won but not to win because who can win election when you're you're promoting yourself with a fancy-dress brigade no Comedy candidate has ever won what maybe like 20-30 years ago but the institution's got a three year memory so like it may have but ever since people in student politics started caring about student politics are no comedy candidate has ever ever won it hasn't happened that a perfect storm happened there were only two other candidates for president their supporters hated each other and it was alternative voting so you could mark preferences not for us choice both of them got disqualified no one of them got disqualified from campaigning for a day because they'd broken sums and rules and then it turned out there was a snowball effect happening because people are actually paying attention to the election because there was I wasn't I was a competent comedy candidate I had G I had a publicity team around me who are making things happen and not just writing a few jokes down and and it came to me because there were exit polls and you weren't just a person putting fliers up in common rooms I came to the exit poll so the exit poll came out and I got a phone call from the student press and they said I was winning by a landslide and we were in a pub dressed as pirates either that was the moment where I had my first bit of oh no no no no no no no no no no no I think I said something like well the wind beware the wind be changing mighty quickly in these waters can you all my folks had voted early and that's what the that's what the exit no I won I won not in a landslide it was close went to second preferences but uh but I want and I don't remember that moment at all I think it's filmed it is it's filmed you can see it somewhere online why it's TV site will have it uh I went on stage and half the crowd is booing and half the crowd is cheering and folks around me are saying we need to get you out of here after this because someone is going to punch you though it's 1:00 a.m. there are drunk students who support the other guys and someone's just come in who is mocking essentially their entire belief system and one arm this is this is when you know we need to get into a radio interview with with you ry um we need you to be safe here and I yeah that I said some things on stages I thought were coherent but we're actually just syllables I was like it's a string of syllables there are no words there I thought that were I can't feel my hands ah you can see what I'm doing is I as I recount this I'm tensing up it was it was terrible you weren't have prepared for the moment because because the moment wasn't gonna why would it happen the whole point was that it wouldn't happen because why on earth would that happen I was student union president at York four-year mad captain Tom well we worked out over time I'll do another video about that sometime because it was it was it was a terrible year of my life don't ever do anything like it I'm not cut out for middle management and that's what the job was it's it's a it's a paid job very badly paid less than minimum wage much less than minimum wage 12-hour days frequently I was one of the few people who said no I'm doing this in 95 work-life balance is essentially non-existent for the people who bought into that philosophy this is what you do this is what we're doing it for everyone it was tense it was difficult there were rough moments with the other team we've got elected because they didn't think that was going to happen either they all had like the people who thought they were going to elected had life plans that involve doing this like I'd seriously screwed a lot of people up here but I didn't have a major scandal and I think I handled it fairly well like I know I cocked up a couple of things but it didn't collapse and the thing was several years later participation in elections was still up on what it used to be the year after I got elected it was still up the year that it was still up the after that it was still up so I did change some things I may not have but you know what we did we did cutlasses Hall we actually did it because there's roses which the annual competition we New York and Lancaster and we had a fund like that one of the people kept me saying during that year without looks like see who is sports president um who was just a diversion Alex had the ability to if some other something didn't like he could muster words out of the ether and destroy them in one really insulting sentence he swore like a sailor he didn't give a damn for propriety of what was going on later he didn't give a damn for propriety of what was going on and he could help keep me sane and he provided the cutlasses because he was like you know we need four roses we need some Foam swords you can put in the air and sure so all the York crew had these massive Foam swords were shouting there's like this is great this tick you know we I managed about five of those eight promises or something like that we got a cannon it was made by the guilt and solvent Society was out of cardboard and it put out a flag that said boom but it worked you know it was I wouldn't do it again if I went back knowing what I know now I wouldn't do it but I wouldn't have found out a lot about myself for having done it and you know it wasn't a disaster for the university I know the staff like mellow quite a few people there thought it was quite good to have someone in different I'm not sure how to work someone else I still feel the need to apologize for it but it worked I can think of one positive that came out of that what's that we're here right now in your spare time to keep you sane yeah you got all of your friends together and did stupid crap yeah I did and happened to film some of it and I learned to smile yeah no before before that before mad captain Tom I used to smile like no because it was a little bit awkward I didn't really know what we might with my face it turned out that going out I'm being on a port astrologist yeah how are me high it is kind of unlocked I can I can't do this I can't actually use those muscles and you're right I wouldn't be here because I also had an extra year at York to do all that stuff yep there you go plus that's the bottle of mad captain Tom a part of it where I ran for Parliament which which is another story we'll do that another time

Channel: Matt and Tom

Views: 507,709

Keywords: mad captain tom, tom scott, matt, matt gray, mattg, mattgray, tomscott, unnamedculprit, matt and tom, park bench, pirate, talk like a pirate day, mad cap'n tom, students union, student politics, nus, yusu

Id: ztYapweHD3g

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2016