Speaker 1: Fol Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where
Speaker 2: we talk about the worst people in all of history.
Speaker 2: And today's part two on our series on John aspinall
Speaker 2: the gambling King of London in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. That made him sound much cooler
Speaker 1: than he actually is.
Speaker 2: Ah. He is fun. He is fun. Today we're going
Speaker 2: to get a lot of stories about zoo animals maiming people.
Speaker 2: So I hope everybody's ready for that, and I hope
Speaker 2: our guest Ed Zitron is ready for that. Ed welcome back.
Speaker 3: I'm ready. I'm ready to hear about some violent zoo animals.
Speaker 2: Excellent, All right, well here is the fucking story. So
Speaker 2: John aspinall you know, it is kind of the the
Speaker 2: fifties are starting to come to a close. Is in
Speaker 2: a great He's pretty happy, right, He's running these rotating
Speaker 2: games of chants that are in this legal gray area.
Speaker 2: He's making a lot of money doing. It's starting to collect,
Speaker 2: you know, wild animals, starting to build his private zoo.
Speaker 2: But things are going to like kind of have a
Speaker 2: sudden shift for him, and it's caused by his mom. Right,
Speaker 2: she is sort of you know, one of the people
Speaker 2: who's kind of renting houses for their parties. She's a
Speaker 2: kind of a key aspect of all this. And the
Speaker 2: lady Osborne makes a mistake one week in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: eight and she rents the wrong house for a shimmy
Speaker 2: party because it's it's outside of their usual range and
Speaker 2: it's under the jurisdiction of the Paddington Police, who are
Speaker 2: not chill with what John Aspinall is doing for reasons
Speaker 2: that I've never really been made clear to me. But
Speaker 2: this is not a friendly police station. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so there's and part of what seems to
Speaker 2: have happened is I think they pissed off one of
Speaker 2: these rich people who loses a bunch of money at
Speaker 2: their games because it looks like he kind of drops
Speaker 2: a dime on them to the Paddington cops. And so
Speaker 2: for the very first time, the police carry out a
Speaker 2: raid on one of these games he's playing. And because
Speaker 2: this is the kind of game that it is, they
Speaker 2: arrest a bunch of like lords and ladies along with
Speaker 2: Aspenall in his friends. It's this like big moment in
Speaker 2: high society because like there's footage like pictures of the
Speaker 2: cops leading out all of these very, very highly born
Speaker 2: people and taking them into custody. Very This kind of
Speaker 2: gives you an idea of sort of the tinor of
Speaker 2: that night when when the police enter the house, Lady
Speaker 2: Osborne demands a list of the charges against them, and
Speaker 2: the police inspector says that they're being charged with keeping
Speaker 2: a common gambling house, and her response is, young man,
Speaker 2: there was nothing common in this house until you entered.
Speaker 3: It got him. Yeah, I'm sure he love that bit.
Speaker 3: I'm sure was like, oh, perfectly, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, I'm faddy of a comment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is so perfect.
Speaker 3: That's classic England.
Speaker 2: Now, that said, if you are an above room temperature person,
Speaker 2: you're probably not surprised to hear that nothing happens as
Speaker 2: a result of this legal case. Right, not only does
Speaker 2: aspinall have money, but like they have arrested all of
Speaker 2: the people who are running the country, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: go anywhere. He's a little bit yeah, yeah, not only
Speaker 2: are their charges dismissed, but the arrest of all these
Speaker 2: people kind of radicalizes a number of influential Britons and
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty Parliament passes what became known as Aspinall's Law,
Speaker 2: the Gaming Act, which legalizes us you never want to
Speaker 2: law named after No. It's always a bad thing, like
Speaker 2: Maxg's disease.
Speaker 3: Also a bad one, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also a bad one. But this makes it legal
Speaker 2: for people to run casinos in London, which is what
Speaker 2: this is why London becomes the gambling capital of Europe
Speaker 2: for a while. Right, it's because of Aspinall's Law. So
Speaker 2: the downside of this is that, like, now he has competition.
Speaker 2: Right back when it was this gray area, he'd kind
Speaker 2: of figured out a sweet spot. There was nobody else
Speaker 2: really running these chimney games on the same scale that
Speaker 2: he is. Now anyone can run a chimney game. So
Speaker 2: Aspinall has to kind of think bigger. And on November twelfth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, he opens his ultimate gaming hall, the Claremont.
Speaker 2: Now this is in like a neighborhood in London called Mayfair,
Speaker 2: which is like super rich neighborhood. Right, this is like
Speaker 2: a very central Yeah, it's like a nice place to
Speaker 2: do this kind of shit. And he, you know, he
Speaker 2: has this. If you look at videos from this gaming hall,
Speaker 2: it's like very high ceilings, huge chandeliers, like it's a
Speaker 2: place for the wealthy and the well born to feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: Like Crockford, he limits his business to a pretty select clientele.
Speaker 2: Kind of as time goes on he opens it up
Speaker 2: more to like new money, but certainly at the start
Speaker 2: it's really focused on the ancestrally wealthy, and there's this
Speaker 2: kind of two tiered membership structure that's also how the
Speaker 2: club is run. The people who are kind of technically
Speaker 2: his employees, although he's not open about this, are called
Speaker 2: the blues, and these are mostly Some of them are
Speaker 2: like high born people who don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: money but are good gamblers. Some of them are like
Speaker 2: people of more common stock who are just really good gamblers,
Speaker 2: but they are his house gamblers, and their goal is
Speaker 2: not to win in order to get money. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: do that, but it's largely if you're really good, you
Speaker 2: can kind of influence games to keep them running, right,
Speaker 2: to keep them going longer, because the longer different games
Speaker 2: go on, the longer a hand goes on, the more
Speaker 2: money gets put in. Right, and since the house is
Speaker 2: taking a cut out of every pot, that works out
Speaker 2: better for you. Right, you don't need your house guys
Speaker 2: to win, but you need them to keep the game going.
Speaker 2: So the pot is bigger and you get a bigger cut, right.
Speaker 2: And so these guys, the Blues, they get free membership
Speaker 2: in the club and they receive a basic salary for
Speaker 2: their work. The Reds are the marks, and these are
Speaker 2: the sons of power and prestige who he's going to
Speaker 2: rob blind right now. A couple of years after the
Speaker 2: Claremont opens, in nineteen sixty eight, John Aspinall opens his
Speaker 2: zoo doors to I say, the public. It's most It
Speaker 2: is a private zoo, so you have to pay to
Speaker 2: get in. But it becomes like this is the zoo
Speaker 2: you go to if you're rich, right, You're not going
Speaker 2: to like the London zoo, right, that's where common people
Speaker 2: go to look at at endangered animals. You're gonna go
Speaker 2: to Aspenall Zoo. Right now. The fact that he's opened
Speaker 2: his home zoo to the public is against the express
Speaker 2: advice of like expert zoo keepers he had consulted, who
Speaker 2: didn't think that he had like the temperament to safely
Speaker 2: run a zoo, which turns out to be a wise concern.
Speaker 2: But he also has this very unique view on the
Speaker 2: care of animals, right. He thinks that they should be
Speaker 2: offered different food regularly so that they have like a
Speaker 2: varied diet and so that their diet is more exciting.
Speaker 2: He thinks it bores them, which he's kind of right about.
Speaker 2: And he also thinks that they need constant stimuli, which
Speaker 2: is true.
Speaker 3: I'm also sorry, but I never really considered one's temperament
Speaker 3: a feature of a zoo, just because generally a zoo
Speaker 3: is not controlled by one person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his is. So he gets to it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's great, it's good, and it's bad. The animals in
Speaker 2: his zoo, some people are you, seem to have been
Speaker 2: happier than like most other zoos at the time because
Speaker 2: he's feeding them. Sometimes he'll bring them like like he'll
Speaker 2: bring his gorillas gourmet food from the Claremont and shit,
Speaker 2: and he has. He and his zoo keepers spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time playing physically with the animals, which, as
Speaker 2: we'll talk about, is dangerous. But the animals seem to
Speaker 2: be happier, and the best evidence for this is John's
Speaker 2: peculiar history with gorillas. He meets his first gorilla at
Speaker 2: the London Zoo. This old silverback named Guy, and because
Speaker 2: he's he's got money, he's able to basically like convince
Speaker 2: the zoo keepers to let him try to hang out
Speaker 2: with Guy. You know, he'll feed the animal and stuff.
Speaker 2: But like, Guy is an adult silver back, so he's
Speaker 2: not super like into being buds. But meeting this animal
Speaker 2: that like won't be his friend makes John obsessed with
Speaker 2: the idea that one day I will make an adult
Speaker 2: male gorilla be my best friend. To befriend a gorilla,
Speaker 2: I am going to befriend a gorilla. Yeah, that is
Speaker 2: my life goal.
Speaker 3: I now I've successfully defrauded a bunch of rich people.
Speaker 3: Now I move on to defrauding a gorilla. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: going to convince a gorilla that one become the gorilla's friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What a what a wild life goal. So he's
Speaker 2: he's gonna make this gorilla his best friend. So after
Speaker 2: he moves into Howlitz, you know, he gets the zoo started,
Speaker 2: he uses some of his infinite gambling money to buy
Speaker 2: a gorilla. And the first gorilla he gets again, anyone
Speaker 2: can have any animal at this point in time if
Speaker 2: they have enough money. So he finds a gorilla some
Speaker 2: other rich guy had owned named KEI.
Speaker 3: Was gonna say, how does one purchase a gorilla?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's through a gorilla dealer. You know you've
Speaker 2: got a guy.
Speaker 3: Oh my gorilla guy. Yeah, yeah, I get a gorilla guy.
Speaker 3: Stay you going to gorillas this week?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I got some fun cut silver yea, A lovely one
Speaker 3: coming in next week. You love it. He'll be your friend.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for John, and more unfortunately for this gorilla named Kievu.
Speaker 2: Kivu is his is bit of abuse victim. This gorilla
Speaker 2: has PTSD. It's deeply traumatized. Now, to his credit, John
Speaker 2: recognizes this is a traumatized animal and he uses human
Speaker 2: logic to try to comfort it. And he's like, you
Speaker 2: know what makes a sad man happy is a woman.
Speaker 2: So he gets a human woman, his mother in law,
Speaker 2: to like sleep in bed with this gorilla to try
Speaker 2: to soothe it. That's his that's his strategy.
Speaker 3: My.
Speaker 2: Now, gorilla's not aggressive animals to people, and so this
Speaker 2: doesn't go badly. His mother in law doesn't get like
Speaker 2: hurt or anything.
Speaker 1: Let's just start there.
Speaker 2: Kivu does not seem to like well, I think John
Speaker 2: may have disliked that woman and Kivu that's my point.
Speaker 2: Does not respond positively to this, Like, again, gorillas are
Speaker 2: quite peaceful. He doesn't like attack her, but he dies
Speaker 2: of depression a couple of months into this man, that
Speaker 2: woman was very sad.
Speaker 1: Women are evil, as we've established, and that one.
Speaker 2: Sophie, I don't know. That's the lesson. He died in
Speaker 2: the same way that potme died in st He does,
Speaker 2: he does. He doesn't badme.
Speaker 1: She made that gorilla have depression.
Speaker 2: I mean the gorilla was already depressed, Sophie.
Speaker 3: You made it worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with her like horrible woman.
Speaker 2: Well I did not see this this turn from you, Sophie.
Speaker 2: Man the subredd it's gonna have a field day with
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: No, they're finally going to be on my side.
Speaker 2: So wow. You know, John is very sad for a while.
Speaker 2: But I think this is a commonly known thing. When
Speaker 2: you lose a gorilla, the only thing to do is
Speaker 2: double down and get two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you need more gorilla, You need more gorillas, right,
Speaker 4: The problem was not gorillas.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the market I imagine is quite liquid at this time,
Speaker 3: so like a gorilla is floating around.
Speaker 2: So he buys two more gorillas, a breeding pair, and
Speaker 2: he sets about making them happy enough to breed. Now
Speaker 2: this had been done at there, that people had bred gorillas.
Speaker 2: At this point, it is kind of considered one of
Speaker 2: the one of like the brass rings of the zoo
Speaker 2: world is getting gorillas to breed in captivity. It's not easy,
Speaker 2: right like, they are hard to make comfortable enough to
Speaker 2: be willing to make a gorilla horny. It's tough to
Speaker 2: make a gorilla horny. So John works on these gorillas.
Speaker 2: He spends a lot of time intimately with them. He
Speaker 2: wrestles with them, right, He'll like play games with them physically,
Speaker 2: He'll cuddle with them at night, and they they do
Speaker 2: seem to come to view him as a friend, and
Speaker 2: it gets comfortable enough that they they start to breed.
Speaker 2: Right like, he does succeed in making them happy enough
Speaker 2: that they are willing to make more gorillas. So I
Speaker 2: guess that it's a win for him. He also grows
Speaker 2: closer with his bears during this period of time, which
Speaker 2: is an uneven process. Right one day, What a.
Speaker 3: Great other thing to happen in this story, of course,
Speaker 3: see as he romances the gorillas, he successfully improves his
Speaker 3: friendship with the It's like fucking like an RPG.
Speaker 2: Unevenly, I should say, because one day he like enters
Speaker 2: the bear inclosure without sort of like you know you would.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a certain way you want to enter
Speaker 2: your bear enclosure to not spook them. He doesn't do this,
Speaker 2: and they they maul him. They nearly kill him, right like.
Speaker 2: He gets horribly injured by these bears, and his mother
Speaker 2: around the same time is nearly murdered. A wolf that
Speaker 2: he's trying to treat like a dog almost rips her
Speaker 2: throat out of course he's got a wolf. Of course
Speaker 2: he's got a wolf. Yeah, you're gonna have a wolf.
Speaker 3: Gonna have a gorilla with that wolf. Gon'na have a
Speaker 3: really without bath like.
Speaker 2: So his his family narrowly escapes anything fatal. But this
Speaker 2: mix of complete dissociation from reality because he's this wealthy,
Speaker 2: gambling maven, combined with spending all of his free time
Speaker 2: cuddling with wild animals, leads John to kind of believe
Speaker 2: that he's gone feral himself, right swee. He would later say,
Speaker 2: sometimes when I'm pleased to meet a friend, I find
Speaker 2: myself purring like a tiger. When I make love, I
Speaker 2: even grunt like a gorilla. That's just how British people sound.
Speaker 2: One like fuck, yeah, so that's good. That's good. He
Speaker 2: was so convinced that he has gained some secret insight
Speaker 2: into the lives of the gorillas that he's willing to
Speaker 2: bet his life on it. At one point on safari
Speaker 2: in Africa, a friend has to rescue him when a
Speaker 2: male lion starts roaring at the party. And John, you
Speaker 2: know there's a lion outside of your camp that's being aggressive.
Speaker 2: You want to stay inside the camp, you know where
Speaker 2: there's lights and men with guns. John charges out into
Speaker 2: the night, and he claims later I wanted to reason
Speaker 2: with it, like yeah, yeah, that don't work on a lion.
Speaker 3: That's fine. Come on, might have a word with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they love being recent.
Speaker 3: Let me know how it goes. I will be inside
Speaker 3: the car.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of his friends basically has to like tackle
Speaker 2: him to stop him from getting murdered by this.
Speaker 3: Let him, let him cook, let's see what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as his collection might don't Yeah, yeah that
Speaker 2: one made who saves you from getting eaten by a lion?
Speaker 3: No, I mean one might go strong reason with the
Speaker 3: lion who tries to talk it out with a pines
Speaker 3: doAnd the local he's all fucking yelling at the lions,
Speaker 3: trying a reason, we're Steve come.
Speaker 2: Then, so his collection expands and how it's becomes again
Speaker 2: it's this kind of the private zoo of the ultra rich.
Speaker 2: And by the late nineteen six again there's a degree
Speaker 2: to he's very irresponsible in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 2: there is a degree to which he's good at this
Speaker 2: because by the end of the sixties, Aspinall has the
Speaker 2: largest captive bread gorilla call in the world, which is
Speaker 2: an achievement, you know, dubiously moral achievement, but that is
Speaker 2: a thing to have done, right, So.
Speaker 3: I genuinely have to say this. Yeah, one through line
Speaker 3: with this is that this boy was raised kind of cruelly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like he went through the school system. But weirdly enough,
Speaker 3: I have to wonder if a lot of these people
Speaker 3: gems the wokest thing. I'll say, genuinely, if a lot
Speaker 3: of these people didn't actually have good hearts but were
Speaker 3: just torn up by this hellish system that Britain had
Speaker 3: created called Britain. And just this is the result of
Speaker 3: this horrifying school system, this horrifying culture, is that you
Speaker 3: just have this fucking nutter who is only able to
Speaker 3: really be nice to gorillas to make them fuck. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he's so utterly broken that he does not know
Speaker 3: how to communicate with animals or humans alike. He only
Speaker 3: knows how to exploit them. Yeah, depressing, oways, nothing about
Speaker 3: this is depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it is like fascinating. But if he had
Speaker 2: grown up like in an environment that was like both
Speaker 2: more nurturing and also where there was some degree of
Speaker 2: like rigor placed on, like, you know, maybe he could
Speaker 2: have become like a normal wildlife expert, you know. His Yeah,
Speaker 2: he seems to actually have a talent. He has some
Speaker 2: degree of a gift here. It's just married to this
Speaker 2: inability to not be crazy about it, right, Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because he's he's like effectively like a miniature deity, like
Speaker 2: at this point in time.
Speaker 3: Right, he thinks he's craven Hanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's something else. So while he again there's
Speaker 2: this undeniable element of skill in what he is, his
Speaker 2: irresponsibility also gets people horribly, horribly injured and worse in
Speaker 2: the future. And the first example of this in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy He's got this friend Annabel Burley. Annabel is a
Speaker 2: social lighte. She is an aristocratic lady. She's married at
Speaker 2: that point to a businessman named Mark Burley, and she
Speaker 2: comes to visit Howlitz with her young son Robin and
Speaker 2: her daughter. She's close with the Aspinall family. You know
Speaker 2: their kids are going to hang out together, and obviously,
Speaker 2: being children, you take a bunch of children to a
Speaker 2: place like Hawlitz, they want to see the animals. Of course,
Speaker 2: that's what kids are going to want to do. So
Speaker 2: Lord Aspinall only too happy to oblige them. Quote and
Speaker 2: this is from Pearson's book The Gamblers. After seeing the gorillas,
Speaker 2: Aspinall was anxious to take them all to see one
Speaker 2: of his young female tigers called Zora. Annabel was not
Speaker 2: so keen on this and wouldn't let her daughter India
Speaker 2: Jane into the cage with the other children, like Damien
Speaker 2: and Amanda. Rupert was used to the animals, but Robin
Speaker 2: was nervous. Though Aspinall persuaded him to approach the tiger
Speaker 2: and stroke her, Aspinall turned his back for just one moment.
Speaker 2: In that split second, the tiger, sensing Robin's fear, rose
Speaker 2: on her hind legs, put her front paws on his
Speaker 2: shoulders and pushed him to the ground. Snarling, she shook
Speaker 2: the boy's head in her mouth. Seeing what was happening,
Speaker 2: Aspinall leapt towards the tiger, and with the show of strength,
Speaker 2: somehow prized her jaws apart. By doing this, he undoubtedly
Speaker 2: saved Robin's life. Min Aspinall that's his wife, meanwhile, was
Speaker 2: tugging at the tiger's tail, trying to prevent its rear
Speaker 2: claws tearing at the boy's body. Somehow, between the two
Speaker 2: of them, they made the tiger drop her prey. Rigid
Speaker 2: with fear at the nightmare taking place before her eyes,
Speaker 2: Annabel watched as James Osborne rushed forward and picked up
Speaker 2: her son, who was still conscious. Rupert and Nindia Jane
Speaker 2: were terrified and screaming. As James carried Robin out of
Speaker 2: the cage to safety, Annabel could see that the lower
Speaker 2: left hand side of his face was crushed past recognition,
Speaker 2: his mouth had disappeared, and part of his jaw was
Speaker 2: hanging by a thread. So maybe don't let children in
Speaker 2: a cage. Good tiger, he lives, he will make a recovery.
Speaker 2: They like he has to go immediately into surgery. He
Speaker 2: has like.
Speaker 3: Scars, a recovery of sorts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they described that probably some trauma one would is
Speaker 2: alive PTSD from getting your sixty. Yeah yeah, it's uh yeah,
Speaker 2: very arist.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a story from like the eighteen hundreds, but
Speaker 3: this is alarmingly recent.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is like this is like Star Trek is
Speaker 2: on the air right closed to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's pretty insane. So despite this, like everyone
Speaker 2: is horrified by this kind of butt Aspenall, he's like, well,
Speaker 2: this tiger had a bad reaction to this kid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the tiger. I'm going to keep having my tiger
Speaker 2: Tara sleep in bed with me and my wife.
Speaker 3: Right, that's the good tiger.
Speaker 2: And you know, most of his friends are generally loath
Speaker 2: to question his judgment because they're all in debt to him, right,
Speaker 2: they're all gambling at the Claremont.
Speaker 3: And he has a bunch of violent animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has dangerous animals. Now kind of by this point,
Speaker 2: the Claremont set has filled out. Aspinall has made two
Speaker 2: additional friends to kind of complete his his inner circle,
Speaker 2: and one of these guys is the seventh Earl of Lucan,
Speaker 2: nicknamed Lucky Lucan after a particularly great gambling hall earlier
Speaker 2: in his life. Now, Lucan, his grandfather is the dude
Speaker 2: who did the charge of the Light Brigade. Right, that
Speaker 2: is the family that this guy comes from. And as
Speaker 2: you might guess from the whole Charge of the Light
Speaker 2: Brigade thing, his family is kind of a reputation for eccentricity. Now,
Speaker 2: this is not always bad. Lucan's father, who's the sixth
Speaker 2: Earl of Lucan, becomes like a massively influential Labor Party
Speaker 2: leader in the House of Lords and is like a
Speaker 2: very famous progressive in this period. But his son, the
Speaker 2: seventh Earl of Lucan, does not get along with his dad.
Speaker 2: He actually hates his father. And part of what this
Speaker 2: means is that he goes far right right. Now, this
Speaker 2: makes him fit in very well because all of the
Speaker 2: old money said at the Claremont are right wing guys.
Speaker 2: But he isn't just like conservative. He develops a specific
Speaker 2: fascination with the Nazis, and in fact, after bad night's gambling,
Speaker 2: he would calm himself down by reading mind komp like
Speaker 2: that's his like, that's his safe place. That's his putting
Speaker 2: on like Frasier at night to go to sleep.
Speaker 3: His reason I play like Slay the Spy or MLB
Speaker 3: to the show. Yeah, like just like something to chill
Speaker 3: out with, except he chose that book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of Hitler to calm yourself down
Speaker 2: after a hard day.
Speaker 3: That's his Housewives.
Speaker 2: That that's his Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 3: It's nothing first sight for him is Hitler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's his chill out.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: Married, yeah, wild. So the other friend who joins their
Speaker 2: circle is this fellow James Goldsmith. Now he's the son
Speaker 2: of a luxury hotel magnate. He's not he's not royalty right.
Speaker 2: In fact, he's a He's a Jewish guy. His family
Speaker 2: has to flee Germany ahead of the Nazis, right, he's
Speaker 2: going to be one of these new money people who
Speaker 2: kind of remakes the ruling class. You know. He's one
Speaker 2: of these sort of like guys who sort of he
Speaker 2: comes in during this period and becomes one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful people in the entire country. He's this he's
Speaker 2: an Etonian, but he drops out for graduating because he's
Speaker 2: already is like a kid, a successful entrepreneur, and he
Speaker 2: basically tells everyone, I'm too rich for this high society
Speaker 2: cloud game. Bullshit, Right, I've made my money. I don't
Speaker 2: need your approval now. Now you have to get my
Speaker 2: approval because you're all going broke gambling and I have
Speaker 2: the fucking cash, right, And he's got He's a fascinating dude.
Speaker 2: Actually get Goldsmith. In his older adult life, Goldsmith is
Speaker 2: like this corporate raider dude. He's stripping assets and like
Speaker 2: destroy He's one of the men who will destroy industry
Speaker 2: in Britain, right because he's stripping all the and like
Speaker 2: strips assets from all these companies. He's this big offshoring
Speaker 2: guy he's going to like play a major role in
Speaker 2: killing along with his other dude, a friend of his,
Speaker 2: Slater killing like industry in the UK. But earlier in
Speaker 2: his life, he has this like wildly romantic and sympathetic backstory.
Speaker 2: So as a young man, he falls in love with
Speaker 2: this woman, Maria Borbon, and Maria is her father. Is
Speaker 2: this indigenous Bolivian man, right who like as he's kind,
Speaker 2: he's a minor basically, and he kind of lucks into
Speaker 2: buying this incredibly rich tin Vein, which makes him an
Speaker 2: incredibly wealthy man. And he then moves to the to
Speaker 2: Europe because he knows that, like the political situation Bolivia
Speaker 2: is unstable, and he buys himself a Spanish noble title. Right,
Speaker 2: so he is a he comes from a very common
Speaker 2: you know, he's literally an indigenous man from South America,
Speaker 2: but he makes himself into a European noble and he
Speaker 2: does not want his daughter Maria to marry this Jewish man, right,
Speaker 2: and in fact tells him when James tries to come
Speaker 2: to him for his approval to get married, He's like,
Speaker 2: we are not in the habit of marrying Jews. Now
Speaker 2: James is a piece of shit too, and his response is, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not in the habit of marrying red Indians. So oh,
Speaker 2: you know, two racists negotiating a marriage. Racist Uno, Yeah,
Speaker 2: racist Uno. Now Maria's dad is insanely rich. When they
Speaker 2: try to get married anyway, he has his daughter kidnapped
Speaker 2: and put under house arrest. She yeah, it's one of these,
Speaker 2: and she like, there's this time where he keeps searching,
Speaker 2: He's traveling around the world looking for her, Like she's
Speaker 2: being kind of locked away, she gets free and they
Speaker 2: run to Scotland together, right, and they they start they
Speaker 2: hide out in Scotland because the way the laws are
Speaker 2: at the time, if you've been in Scotland for two weeks,
Speaker 2: you can get married there. Don't ask me why that's
Speaker 2: the rule, but that's the rule. So they're like and like.
Speaker 2: At the same time, her dad, who like has mercenaries,
Speaker 2: travels to Edinburgh and so he's got like his mercenaries
Speaker 2: in private searching for them for two weeks as they're
Speaker 2: like hiding in the underground so that they can get married.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things. James being a pretty
Speaker 2: savvy guy, he starts sending letters to a journalist right
Speaker 2: telling them what they're doing, telling him about the fact
Speaker 2: that they're and this journalist starts publishing articles while they're
Speaker 2: hiding and while like their dad is putting out bounties
Speaker 2: for them, and it becomes like the biggest story in
Speaker 2: the country, right, everyone it's this incredibly romantic tale. This
Speaker 2: couple has eloped and they're being chased by this evil
Speaker 2: plutocrat and like they're hiding out in the Edinburgh underground.
Speaker 2: Like everyone is obsessed with this story. Couldn't be much
Speaker 2: more romantic, right, it is a pretty cool so you
Speaker 2: could make a movie out of this. Yeah, it's thought
Speaker 2: you really very cool. I would watch a movie about that.
Speaker 2: It is a dope story. So and they succeed, right,
Speaker 2: They're able to kind of wait out long enough that
Speaker 2: they elope they have this like secret wedding and then
Speaker 2: you know there's nothing that Maria's dad can do about it,
Speaker 2: so they're able to move back to London where they are.
Speaker 2: They're not just popular with the rich because they're like
Speaker 2: the like everyone loves them, right, this is such a celebrities. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is Yeah, it's such a romantic story. And then
Speaker 2: almost as soon as they get back, you know, she
Speaker 2: gets pregnant and dies horribly in childbirth. So it is
Speaker 2: this guy. Yeah, it's this really tragic, like hi dramas story.
Speaker 2: It is like the most sympathetic backstory a dude would have.
Speaker 2: And the rest of James's life is going to be
Speaker 2: killing all of this sympathy by becoming like the evilest
Speaker 2: corporate overlord of his day. Right, yeah, it's it's something else, ok. Fine, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and some people will argue because he like his marriages
Speaker 2: are purely transactional. After this point, you know he's got
Speaker 2: this these mistresses, but he never like loves again like
Speaker 2: this seems to have. Basically, some people will argue this
Speaker 2: kind of kills his ability to care about people. I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's the case. Maybe he always would
Speaker 2: have turned out to be a piece of shit, but I.
Speaker 3: Think that it's hard to tell what's inside of man's
Speaker 3: especially when he's British. Yeah, but it's definitely didn't help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't help, and he's gonna again. He destroys kind,
Speaker 2: He helps to destroy the cot like industry in the UK.
Speaker 2: He makes a lot of his money in tobacco. He's
Speaker 2: a big tobacco guy. He makes a lot of his
Speaker 2: money in Indonesian nickel miinds, which are not nice places.
Speaker 2: He's buying and selling forests around the world, including in
Speaker 2: the US for timber, and he kind of he's one
Speaker 2: of the dudes who will pioneer the modern concept of
Speaker 2: setting up shell companies and shadow appet so that he
Speaker 2: can basically secretly buy up controlling interests in companies without
Speaker 2: people realizing until it's too late that he's taken them over.
Speaker 2: Like he helps to kind of pioneer. How you do
Speaker 2: that in the modern era? That is that is this
Speaker 2: other buddy of Johnson.
Speaker 3: Is so good at developing people at this Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: A very British story, right, And Lucan and Goldsmith are
Speaker 2: going to form the nexus of a far right poll
Speaker 2: in aspenall social world and I say that everyone's pretty
Speaker 2: right wing. These are all rich people from like families
Speaker 2: that have always been rich. But England that at that
Speaker 2: time was pretty right wing anyway, England is very right
Speaker 2: wing at this time and Goldsmith, but Goldsmith and Luken
Speaker 2: are like fascists, right. And in fact, in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: like one of Goldsmith's first things, he's like the first
Speaker 2: Brexitter before the EU is even a thing. He's like
Speaker 2: fighting like hell to stop the creation of the EU
Speaker 2: and to stop England from being a part of it.
Speaker 2: That doesn't work, and he gets He's as kind of
Speaker 2: a response to failing to stop the EU, he writes
Speaker 2: this book in nineteen ninety four called The Trap, And
Speaker 2: basically the argument is in the Trap is that like
Speaker 2: US style attitudes of free trade which bring with them
Speaker 2: mass migration, right, which open borders that people can travel
Speaker 2: between borders is a trap because it will lead to
Speaker 2: non white people taking over, right, that's the Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: This is like a great replacement guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, this is like the BC version of
Speaker 2: the great replacement theory, right, Like it's a little bit
Speaker 2: underdeveloped when he starts it, but you can see the
Speaker 2: bones of it in the book that he writes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's cool. Anyway, you know who doesn't support the
Speaker 2: great replacement as a narrative, the podcast or the sponsors
Speaker 2: of our podcast. Oh okay, yeah, they don't do that,
Speaker 2: so buy them. Uh we are back. We're having a
Speaker 2: good time over here. So James Goldsmith is a mercantilist, right,
Speaker 2: he feels basically that wealthy and this is kind of
Speaker 2: the attitude of the Claremont set. Wealthy business owners should
Speaker 2: hold all political power and the government should primarily be
Speaker 2: used to stop poor people from entering Europe through force. Right.
Speaker 2: That is the belief that this guy has not an
Speaker 2: uncommon one today. You see the descendants of Jimmy Goldsmith
Speaker 2: all over the place. But this is weird because he's
Speaker 2: he and aspinall are the two independently wealthy, like actually wealthy,
Speaker 2: not just inherited money and squandered it members of the
Speaker 2: Claremont set. So he is the only guy in this
Speaker 2: social circle who's willing to tell John, hey, your zoo
Speaker 2: experiments are insane, like like you're you're a lunatic. And
Speaker 2: in fact, on the day is your tiger of ripped
Speaker 2: someone's face? Yeah, he actually bad. He tries to Warren
Speaker 2: Annabel the day her son gets maimed. He's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I would never get in the cages with these animals.
Speaker 2: They're wild animals. If they get frightened, you never know
Speaker 2: what they're going to do, right, Like, you can't you
Speaker 2: can't trust them with your safety, just doing the jock test,
Speaker 2: ignoring it. No, no, throw the kid in there right
Speaker 2: ooh yeah, tells fucking prick it's wild. So at the
Speaker 2: end of the sixties, Jimmy opens his school to again
Speaker 2: the public, provided that they can pay, and he has
Speaker 2: expanded by this point to a host a wide variety
Speaker 2: of animals. He starts to get less interested in the
Speaker 2: Claremont at this point. Right gambling has kind of gotten
Speaker 2: boring and nothing compares throwing down money, which he has
Speaker 2: plenty of on a game, is not nearly as exciting
Speaker 2: as like cuddling with a tiger. Right, So, at the
Speaker 2: start of the seventies he sells the Claremont outright. I
Speaker 2: think he sells it to Hugh Heffner. May be wrong
Speaker 2: about that, but he sells it so he can focus
Speaker 2: on his new passion. Now, Aspenall, he's been dying every day,
Speaker 2: nearly nearly dying every day to animals, to wild animals.
Speaker 2: May now in sort of the period as he's gotten
Speaker 2: experienced with this zoo and kind of gotten bored of gambling.
Speaker 2: Aspenall has also begun to develop a peculiar set of
Speaker 2: theories about the world, basically not just yes. Some of
Speaker 2: them are based on Goldsmith and his buddy Luke and
Speaker 2: their outright Nazism has an impact on Aspenall, but Aspinall
Speaker 2: is also heavily influenced by his close contact with wild animals.
Speaker 2: His idea, the idea that he comes to believe, is this,
Speaker 2: in the ancient past, human beings and animals had been equal,
Speaker 2: but then mankind had betrayed them, creating a world in
Speaker 2: which animals were little more than beasts of burden. Aspinall
Speaker 2: saw himself as the appointed defender of the animal world
Speaker 2: from man, and in his eyes, the oppression of animals
Speaker 2: was not caused by rich men like him who keep
Speaker 2: them in zeus, or who like buy and sell forests,
Speaker 2: like his buddy James Goldsmith. But it's caused by poor people,
Speaker 2: mostly non white people right right where, Yeah, who are
Speaker 2: cluttering up the world with their filth, and.
Speaker 3: That somehow controls the animals. Right.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna quote from an article in the Telegraph that's
Speaker 2: kind of writing about him. He castigated the human race
Speaker 2: as a species of vermin and positively welcomed natural disasters
Speaker 2: as a means of reducing the plague of Homo sapiens.
Speaker 2: He would gladly end his own life, he declared, if
Speaker 2: he could take another two hundred and fifty million with him,
Speaker 2: there was something to be said. He felt for Hitler's
Speaker 2: ideas about eugenics. Broadly speaking, he said the high income
Speaker 2: groups tend to have a better genetic inheritance. And like
Speaker 2: he meets, he becomes buddies with Richard Nixon at one point. Obviously,
Speaker 2: of course, of course he and Nixon are friends, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're hanging out one day and the Claremont
Speaker 2: Nixon's like, you know, we have some of their nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: We've got to kill two million people if they hit
Speaker 2: the right place. And fucking Aspinall's response is like, well,
Speaker 2: that's not nearly enough. We're gonna have to We're gonna
Speaker 2: have to up those numbers if we're gonna get rid
Speaker 2: of enough.
Speaker 3: Beatle's again, let's get the work. Americans have gotten cocky.
Speaker 3: Eurotrocities are nothing compared to the British Empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is good.
Speaker 3: The conversation that must have been fixed. Ditch. One of
Speaker 3: the tigers nearly killed someone when I sleep with the gorilla.
Speaker 3: Now you doesn't like Americans?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do not think a gorilla would have a
Speaker 2: good reaction to dignate Johnson. Sorry, yeah, this gorilla actually
Speaker 2: loved escalation in Vietnam, couldn't get enough of it. So
Speaker 2: it was not only the poor that that Aspinall's animal
Speaker 2: friends taught him to reject pearson Rights quote. Having identified
Speaker 2: fed so closely with his gorillas, he started to imitate
Speaker 2: their habits and showed a marked preference for the rules
Speaker 2: governing the world of animals to that of human beings.
Speaker 2: From watching how the dominant old silverback gorilla ruled the
Speaker 2: females in his entourage. He concluded that the idea of
Speaker 2: women's rights and women's liberation was not only ridiculous, but
Speaker 2: also contrary to nature. He'd also decided that an authoritarian,
Speaker 2: paternalistic setup was the natural model for a human family.
Speaker 2: He's a he's a literal gorilla mindset, dude.
Speaker 3: He is quite literally a gorilla mindset.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. The gorillas have taught me how human
Speaker 2: relationships outill work.
Speaker 3: Mike is going to listen to this and be like, oh, well, to.
Speaker 2: Be clear, I'm not saying he's right about how gorilla
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know much about gorillas.
Speaker 3: This guy is a disgraceful piece of share and I
Speaker 3: wope burns in hell. But also he does kind of
Speaker 3: live his dream. It's not like he's saying I have
Speaker 3: the gorilla mindset. Yeah, and doesn't. He owns these gorillas
Speaker 3: and indeed interacts with them, cuddles. Is what I think
Speaker 3: he believes is a peer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to you have to give him credit.
Speaker 2: He's not a dilettante, right, he is committed to living
Speaker 2: like an animal, So I'll give him that. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that's a good thing. I'm just don't got to
Speaker 2: hand it to him. But you don't get to hand
Speaker 2: it to him, he'd be he's not a casual. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are if you read interviews with him. I have
Speaker 2: read two separate interviews with him that he gives at
Speaker 2: his zoo with a journalist, two separate interviews where he
Speaker 2: is mauled by an elephant while giving the interview. That
Speaker 2: happens twice. Yeah, it's something else. So to continue that quote.
Speaker 2: From studying how the animal kingdom operated in the wild,
Speaker 2: he reached some even more alarming propositions. The first of
Speaker 2: these was that just as the survival of the fittest
Speaker 2: seems to work in nature, we should willingly accept the
Speaker 2: position of the powerful and successful as natural leaders of
Speaker 2: modern day society. He also believed as firmly in selective
Speaker 2: breeding for humans as he did for animals, and proclaimed
Speaker 2: that since animals had as much right to exploit the
Speaker 2: planet as a human beings, the time had come to
Speaker 2: call something like a billion humans from what he called
Speaker 2: the urban biomass if the world as we know it
Speaker 2: was going to survive. So that's great, that's great, that's good. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 2: his evolving gorilla.
Speaker 3: Min Elon Musk. Dealing with any of these people, they
Speaker 3: would kill him. Yes, actually yeah the gorilla. The gorilla
Speaker 3: looks pretty epic to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would try to cuddle with a lion and
Speaker 2: get his head crushed. She immediately die, which might have
Speaker 2: been the best thing. Honestly, this could save us all
Speaker 2: a lot of problems. Yeah, so his evolving gorilla mindset,
Speaker 2: this is why he like leaves his like. So, he
Speaker 2: and his first wife split up. She cheats on him,
Speaker 2: and he decides to keep her. He like locks her
Speaker 2: away from their kids, right like, she has no contact
Speaker 2: with the children. So he marries this next woman, who
Speaker 2: is like a wonderful partner. She loves his animal. She's
Speaker 2: like in every way, a perfect match. But she delivers
Speaker 2: a daughter with a heart defect who dies after birth.
Speaker 2: So John dumps her because like, well, humans should only
Speaker 2: mate to breed, because that's what gorillas do and obviously
Speaker 2: we can't breed, so goodbye. Yeah, okay gross his third wife,
Speaker 2: who he marries because she has a famous ancestor and
Speaker 2: he wants that those jeens and his children like Merlin, No, no, no,
Speaker 2: I wish it's a us shit, I've forgotten I had
Speaker 2: it written down somewhere here. But yeah, she has a
Speaker 2: famous ancestor that he admires. And when they have their
Speaker 2: first kid, John waits until it's six months old, and
Speaker 2: then he takes it into his gorilla enclosure and hands
Speaker 2: it to the dominant mother father pair in the gerrillarium. Right. Uh,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna I'm going to quote from Pearson here.
Speaker 2: The gorilla appeared inside its nappy to see what sex
Speaker 2: it was, with the baby tucked under her arm, swung
Speaker 2: up into the trees, and showed him to the other
Speaker 2: females in the community. When all the female gorillas had
Speaker 2: thoroughly examined the baby, Bassa, his gorilla mother brought him
Speaker 2: down to earth and returned him safely to his human parents.
Speaker 3: That was not how I thought that one was gone.
Speaker 2: No, it works out fine, So that's great.
Speaker 3: That's kind of strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a wild experience, baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a wild experience to participate in, even as
Speaker 3: an observer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's wild.
Speaker 3: We would just send the baby off to the gorillas.
Speaker 2: Sally marries him after this anyway, She's like, yeah, fine,
Speaker 2: why not the baby?
Speaker 3: It was fine, nothing to complain about.
Speaker 2: Jesus, it works out fine. So the early nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: are a bad time for the Aspinalls, and they're rich friends,
Speaker 2: but for reasons divorced from getting mauled by wild animals.
Speaker 2: The economy tanks at this point, right Aspinall, not just
Speaker 2: in the UK, but like Aspinall has, he's gotten over
Speaker 2: gambling on gambling and is gambling on the US stock
Speaker 2: market and he loses his fucking shirt when the US
Speaker 2: stock market takes a tumble in the early A new.
Speaker 3: Kind of exploit or exploited him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really it is just human beings will create
Speaker 3: new systems to exploit other human beings. He created one
Speaker 3: and then another, and then someone created one to exploit him.
Speaker 2: It's kind of beautiful, it is. It is, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's batical way, yeah.
Speaker 3: Quote George Lucas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's able to. He doesn't lose everything just because
Speaker 2: his friend Goldsmith, right, is still rich and Goldsmith basically
Speaker 2: floats him so he can keep paying for his exotic animals.
Speaker 2: During this period, the other members of the Claremont Set
Speaker 2: do not fare as well. The new membership of the
Speaker 2: club won't give them IOUs right so these guys are
Speaker 2: all still horribly addicted to gambling because they never started
Speaker 2: businesses or zoos they have Like Lord Lucan has nothing
Speaker 2: in his life but gambling, and he's bad at it,
Speaker 2: so he can't afford to gamble without aspinall running the Claremont.
Speaker 2: Now luc Is this starts to kind of drive him crazy.
Speaker 2: The fact that he is actually poor now, Like he
Speaker 2: still has his fancy manor house, he's still a lord,
Speaker 2: but he has no money. That drives him crazy. And
Speaker 2: then in nineteen seventy four a labor government takes over
Speaker 2: in the UK, and that drives these guys, these Claremont members,
Speaker 2: into a sense of mania because to them, aspenall the way,
Speaker 2: Aspenall views this is this labor government. These are communists.
Speaker 2: Communists have taken over and they are in the process
Speaker 2: of uprooting the natural order of society. This is a
Speaker 2: conspiracy against the rightful ruling class based on my gorilla studies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the ruling class that got there through gambling
Speaker 3: on an insane game.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Something else so that they're not they're not good rich
Speaker 3: people like us where we got money through gambling. That
Speaker 3: bad rich people who got it through some other method
Speaker 3: that I don't really understand.
Speaker 2: They did something shady for it. Now no one's no
Speaker 2: one's mind has degraded more by this point than the
Speaker 2: formerly lucky Lord Lucan. His luck had turned sour years ago,
Speaker 2: and again he is broke. Now he's increasingly obsessed with fascism.
Speaker 2: And this is all related to the fact that his
Speaker 2: marriage has collapsed, right, and it's become clear like his
Speaker 2: wife is going to take the kids, right, So he
Speaker 2: just is losing his mind increasing And anytime he'll meet
Speaker 2: with his Claremont buddies with Aspinall, because they're all still
Speaker 2: hanging out, Aspinall will cite these theories based on gorillas
Speaker 2: of how inferior women are. So Lucan takes from that
Speaker 2: he tries to force his wife into a mental institution
Speaker 2: so he can take the kids. He does this several times.
Speaker 2: This would have worked. I think Aspinall. Probably Aspinall had
Speaker 2: wanted to like force a wife into a mental institution,
Speaker 2: he had the juice to do it. Luken isn't good
Speaker 2: at anything, so he can't he can't even work this
Speaker 2: kind of evil scheme, right, He's just he's not even able,
Speaker 2: even with his like social position, to make this happen thankfully. Right,
Speaker 2: that's good.
Speaker 3: And also his rationale is based on gorillas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's based on his friend's gorillas. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So who told you the gorilla for our right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Lord Lucan his mind is a mix of
Speaker 2: his buddies gorilla theories, and he buys this nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: translation of mindkomp which which he reads feverishly and is.
Speaker 3: Also his off the World War two as well well
Speaker 3: after World War Two. It's the Losing Guy's Handbook to racism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he does. He has one other idol. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that idol is Mustapha Kamal of Turkey, who is you know,
Speaker 2: a dictator and one of the Armenian genocide guys. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the book is called Gray Wolf, right, which is
Speaker 2: today the name of a fascist organization in Turkey.
Speaker 3: So that's good, not good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So these are his two buds, right, Hitler.
Speaker 3: And Hitler and gorilla and dictator.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's his his like his like in his head,
Speaker 2: the fucking like. Yeah. His idols are.
Speaker 3: Hysteric, including a gorilla.
Speaker 2: Uh so yeah, and you know this says something about
Speaker 2: his wife too. She claims in interviews later she didn't
Speaker 2: realize that he'd taken a turn for the extreme right.
Speaker 2: Although this is the exact quote from her, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I believe her here quote. He did have very
Speaker 2: right wing views, some might describe them as fascist. I
Speaker 2: didn't know he was indulging in extremist reading matter in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two, although I knew he listened to recordings
Speaker 2: of Hitler's speeches at Nuremberg rallies.
Speaker 3: Well, was that not a warning science?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Where'd you think he golt the ideas? Did he just
Speaker 3: like walking down the street it's someone talking about it?
Speaker 3: Or was it his weird gorilla friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I also just like I didn't know the gorilla man. Again,
Speaker 2: I didn't know he was reading fascist books. I just
Speaker 2: knew he listened to Nuremberg a lot. Wild So, this
Speaker 2: increasingly conspiratory obsession with race theory, communism and communism and
Speaker 2: the only possible solution to a labor government infected the
Speaker 2: whole Claremont set. And I'm going to quote from a
Speaker 2: really interesting, interesting two thousand and nine article in the Guardian.
Speaker 2: Here there is no suggestion that Luken was in any
Speaker 2: way anti Semitic or supported the final solution, but he
Speaker 2: and his associates, who included casino owner and party host
Speaker 2: John Aspinall and the tycoon sur James Goldsmith, were increasingly
Speaker 2: convinced Britain had fallen victim to a socialist conspiracy. Daily
Speaker 2: Express journalist Charles Benson, one of Luken's friends, said he
Speaker 2: was very right wing and never watered it down in
Speaker 2: front of liberals. He would talk about hanging and flogging
Speaker 2: and use the inWORD in order to get a reaction.
Speaker 2: One biographer, Patrick Marnham said, seen from the Claremont Club,
Speaker 2: the country was starting to resemble the less stable years
Speaker 2: of the Weimar Republic. Sir James Goldsmith began to develop
Speaker 2: his theory of the communist infiltration of the Western media.
Speaker 2: Over the smoked salmon and lamb cutlets. The talk turned
Speaker 2: to the pros and cons of a British military coup
Speaker 2: and that is what these guys are going to come
Speaker 2: to support now. So when he was just.
Speaker 3: The guy who claimed he wasn't right wing, who walked
Speaker 3: around saying the N word to get a reaction around
Speaker 3: a bunch of people who are kind of embarrassed to
Speaker 3: be around him, just like podcaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a podcaster. Yeah, he would have been a
Speaker 2: great boy.
Speaker 3: Like he would have been a he would have been
Speaker 3: on was it a Lex Friedman's podcast?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, huge Friedman?
Speaker 3: So what is that do you think?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: The girl guy? Huh? Actually, no, a guy you seriously,
Speaker 3: A guy who's just like, Yeah, I learned everything I
Speaker 3: learned about woman from watching Mike Gorillas. That guy would
Speaker 3: be an insanely popular YouTube.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he would be huge. Now. It's also it's
Speaker 2: worth noting one of their good friends here when I
Speaker 2: talk about them supporting a military cupe. A member of
Speaker 2: the Claremont set who's tight with all these guys is
Speaker 2: this dude Sterling who creates the SAS. And Sterling is
Speaker 2: going to make a private army in the UK with
Speaker 2: the goal of like using them as this sort of
Speaker 2: right wing counter availing force. It doesn't work out for
Speaker 2: a variety of reasons, but like, these are their social set,
Speaker 2: and by late nineteen seventy four things have gotten to
Speaker 2: a pretty toxic level. And we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: what Lucan does next in this mind state, but first
Speaker 2: there's some ads. We're back so late nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: The Lucky Lord Lucan has grown obsessed with his need
Speaker 2: to rescue his children destroy his wife, all of which
Speaker 2: fits in with his Nazi gorilla beliefs about power and masculinity.
Speaker 2: So he starts telling Aspital. He tells his friends he's
Speaker 2: open about, Like They're like hanging out playing cards, and
Speaker 2: he's like, gonna kill my wife. Decided it gonna murder her.
Speaker 2: And they're all like, yeah, sounds like a good plan. Man, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that sounds like a great idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is some debate as to like whether they thought
Speaker 2: he was bullshitting or not. And to be fair, I
Speaker 2: do think it's not uncommon for these guys to joke
Speaker 2: about murdering their wives. Yeah, that's the kind of culture
Speaker 2: it is, right, Like, but.
Speaker 3: Also the culture is one where a guy owns multiple
Speaker 3: gorillas and leads them anything could be happening. I believe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just saying I think I'm bringing this up
Speaker 2: not to like defend them, but more to say a
Speaker 2: lot of them talk about murdering women. He's not the
Speaker 2: only one, right, and there is evidence.
Speaker 3: Doesn't surprise me. There are a bunch of fucking ethno
Speaker 3: fascist freaks like that.
Speaker 2: We'll never know precisely, but Hearson's book makes a very
Speaker 2: strong case that like, not only is he joking about this,
Speaker 2: but they provide him with resources to carry out a murder. Right,
Speaker 2: and again, some of this is up. Obviously, these guys
Speaker 2: are not stupid enough to be completely open about what
Speaker 2: they're doing. But one of his friends loans him a
Speaker 2: car that he's going to like use as like his
Speaker 2: getaway vehicle to dump his wife's body after he murders her.
Speaker 2: One of them like he's broke, and he figures he
Speaker 2: needs ten thousand pounds sterling to bribe a guy with
Speaker 2: a boat to dispose of the corpse. Right, there's a
Speaker 2: couple of bribes and he'd be made right and Goldsmith, interestingly,
Speaker 2: James Goldsmith, being the smartest of them, doesn't want to
Speaker 2: get involved in this. He doesn't want to be directly
Speaker 2: tied to this murder. So he's like, I will give
Speaker 2: you ten thousand pounds to commit this murder, which means
Speaker 2: that he doesn't have to give the money to him
Speaker 2: because as a noble in the aristocracy, you can't take
Speaker 2: a gift, right, Luken can't be given ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: He has to be loaned it, so his their friends
Speaker 2: loan him the money. Right. This is actually Goldsmith's clever
Speaker 2: way to not get tied to this is by offering
Speaker 2: it as a gift, because then Lucan won't take it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, wild culture, but a tax dodge, what
Speaker 2: the yeah? So Luken gets a loan from other friends
Speaker 2: of his and he gets this car. There's some other
Speaker 2: tools he probably gets, and the plan he cooks up
Speaker 2: is like, I Am going to kill my wife, like
Speaker 2: bash her head in, throw her in like a sack,
Speaker 2: drive her to this boat, and then the boat will
Speaker 2: like weigh down the sack and toss her in the
Speaker 2: fucking ocean, right Like, that's that's the idea. Pearson describes
Speaker 2: this not as just his plot, but as a conspiracy
Speaker 2: involving other members of the Claremont Club. There's this anonymous
Speaker 2: financier who he calls mister X. I think because he's
Speaker 2: scared to bring this guy's name in that works as
Speaker 2: both a high end lege breaker for gamblers and is
Speaker 2: like involved an organized crime. This may have been ad
Speaker 2: non Koshogi. I think it's possible who is like this
Speaker 2: arms dealer, But it's that's not the only guy. It
Speaker 2: could have been a lot of other guys, right, There
Speaker 2: are a lot of guys involved in organized crime. Because
Speaker 2: Aspinall's a gambling maybn, right, obviously he knows dudes who
Speaker 2: are dangerous.
Speaker 3: For some randomly violent fellows.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the basic idea is that Luken's going to
Speaker 2: murder his wife. She's just going to disappear. No one's
Speaker 2: going to know there was a murder because the body.
Speaker 3: Will go the people he's discussed it with while gompling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, other than his gambling buddies. And then he'll
Speaker 2: live happily ever after with his children. Right, this is
Speaker 2: his plan to save type plan. Yeah. Perfect. Now, the
Speaker 2: only hole in this perfect plan is that Lord Lucan
Speaker 2: is a useless, rich kid who has never developed a
Speaker 2: skill in his life other than losing all of his
Speaker 2: money gambling.
Speaker 3: So he.
Speaker 2: Heads into his London home with this metal pipe wrapped
Speaker 2: in surgical tape, and he swings it at the first small,
Speaker 2: dark haired woman to come down the stairs. Unfortunately, well
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say unfortunately. This is all.
Speaker 3: Unfortunate, horrifying thing to do, just like even not. But
Speaker 3: then the slap, the weird like slap showed nature of him.
Speaker 1: He kills he killed some other lady, didn't he.
Speaker 2: He kills his maid, who people would say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's one of those like she kind of had a
Speaker 2: casual resemblance to his wife. Right, so he doesn't even look.
Speaker 2: He swings, he shatters her skull and he kills her instantly, right,
Speaker 2: this very brutal, horrible, horrible thing. God. Now the lady
Speaker 2: Lucan is right behind her maid, and she comes down
Speaker 2: the stairs next, and this is from Pearson's book. When
Speaker 2: he heard Veronica, that's the Lady Lucan coming down the
Speaker 2: stairs from the sitting room to find out what was
Speaker 2: going on. He started attacking her as well, hitting her
Speaker 2: around the head as he had Sandra Rivet. Somehow she
Speaker 2: managed to slide down between his legs and grab his balls.
Speaker 2: The agonizing pain made him stop, and suddenly he seemed
Speaker 2: to come to his senses and realize too late what
Speaker 2: he was doing. This was not a gamble or a
Speaker 2: lethal fantasy. He had just battered to death his children's
Speaker 2: nanny and was now doing his best to do the
Speaker 2: same to their mother.
Speaker 1: That is so cool.
Speaker 4: It is pretty dope. And murr you got to give
Speaker 4: that woman is hardcore. Yeah, yeah, that is thinking on
Speaker 4: your face. This bitch good for you? Good for you?
Speaker 3: Honestly, also complete head on a swivel AWESO.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She grabbed them so tightly that he was like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: maybe I shouldn't murder plants.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This was the point at which Lucan did something
Speaker 2: that seems so incredible in the middle of a bloody
Speaker 2: murder that it actually becomes credible. He apologized to his
Speaker 2: intended victim. He did more. He sat in the back
Speaker 2: of down and found himself telling her that they must
Speaker 2: talk to try to work things out. Then, noticing blood
Speaker 2: was pouring down her face, he went to the bathroom
Speaker 2: to fetch a towel to help clean her up. This
Speaker 2: gave her the chance she needed to make a quick escape.
Speaker 2: Stumbling down the stairs, she got out onto the street
Speaker 2: and ran to the local pub, the Plumber's Arms, where
Speaker 2: she burst into the saloon bar screaming, help me, help me.
Speaker 2: Somebody's just murdered my nanny. Now Lucan escapes after.
Speaker 1: Somebody peers, you're defending that man.
Speaker 2: I'll get She has suffered a head injury. At this point,
Speaker 2: I don't know what was clear to her, like maybe
Speaker 2: it may have been a thing where like because she
Speaker 2: gets hit in the head, she's not immediately aware. She
Speaker 2: has to put it together. I'm gonna I'll give a
Speaker 2: lot of grace to someone who's just been hitting the
Speaker 2: head with the pipe and had to fight their way free, right,
Speaker 2: who knows what's going on.
Speaker 3: Well, so it's very funny that he was like, yo,
Speaker 3: one minute, let me get twet, me get a towel.
Speaker 3: It's this she kind of wait right here, I will
Speaker 3: not kill you.
Speaker 2: She grabs his balls and it resets him back to
Speaker 2: like politeness.
Speaker 3: The little getting like a pin reset device.
Speaker 2: It's wild. Yeah, Luken goes missing. He is still missing
Speaker 2: to this day. Right, he's been declared dead at this point. Obviously,
Speaker 2: nobody totally knows what happens to him, Right, it is
Speaker 2: generally agreed that he committed suicide. The kind of most
Speaker 2: common story is he takes a boat out to see
Speaker 2: and he drowns himself, because that's like the most romantic,
Speaker 2: aristocratic way of killing yourself, right, is to like throw
Speaker 2: yourself into the ocean. But we don't know that that's
Speaker 2: what happened. And Lord Aspinall's mother. She gets I think
Speaker 2: it's his mother or his wife. She's interviewed later and
Speaker 2: she kind of insinuates that like his friends got rid
Speaker 2: of him, that he was murdered by his friends because
Speaker 2: he might expose them. There's some suggestion that maybe he
Speaker 2: was fed to Aspinall's tigers. That might not boss.
Speaker 3: I would absolutely believe that, Yeah, I would definitely believe
Speaker 3: that he was just like, yeah, go with the tiger.
Speaker 3: I trained this tiger to protect from wives.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's it's unclear he could have killed himself.
Speaker 2: Pearson's attitude is that, like this was he was too
Speaker 2: much of like a weirdo narcissist to kill himself. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I think that's credible, but he does
Speaker 2: know more about Luken than I do. His his suggestion
Speaker 2: is that like Lucan, using these kind of like mister
Speaker 2: X and these other sort of overseas connections, Aspinall has
Speaker 2: Lucan gets spirited away to Switzerland, but because he's the
Speaker 2: most famous murderer in Europe, he can't. He has to
Speaker 2: be stuck in a house for the rest of his life, right,
Speaker 2: you can't let this guy out ever, And Lucan can't
Speaker 2: handle that. He still wants to get his kids back
Speaker 2: and like return to high society. He kind of convinces
Speaker 2: himself someone else killed his wife. And so Pearson's theory
Speaker 2: is that, like, well, once these guys who are hiding
Speaker 2: him realize that he's a danger to them, he's going
Speaker 2: to expose himself somehow, they murder him, right because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: this guy, we can't we have It's the only thing
Speaker 2: to do, you know. That's also perfectly possible.
Speaker 3: I My theory is he probably died in some sort
Speaker 3: of stupid way. It's not like it quite like a
Speaker 3: mystic being death.
Speaker 1: But friends, I hope was the tiger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe he's more likely he pissed off one of
Speaker 3: the multiple rich and violent and crazy gambling people and
Speaker 3: was like, ah my, I'm lucky lucun and then got
Speaker 3: killed by a guy in the street.
Speaker 2: Totally possible.
Speaker 3: He strikes me as the kind of guy who dies
Speaker 3: in a very boring and funny way. Yeah, like in
Speaker 3: a bar in Switzerland.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he just gets drunk with the wrong people now, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, but think about it. If he's this rich, racist,
Speaker 3: horrifying bigger who hates woman. The people he's going to
Speaker 3: associate himself with wherever he ends up are going to
Speaker 3: be equally shitty and unreliable. And also, yeah, someone probably
Speaker 3: fucking looked in the paper and went, hey, aren't you
Speaker 3: that famous murderer? Yeah who got like.
Speaker 2: A gay sacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucking idiot. Because also, but also I would also
Speaker 3: fully believe that they all had him done in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally possible.
Speaker 3: Because his Lucan's whole thing. Even I'm thirty seven years old,
Speaker 3: so obviously the whole Lucan thing happened a lot longer
Speaker 3: before I was born. But it's it's interesting his legend
Speaker 3: is still around even though most people myself included until
Speaker 3: this podcast, did not know anything about how this happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is not a great story for him. Yeah, yep, big,
Speaker 3: big no no on most of this stuff. Yep, the
Speaker 3: gorilla stuff sounds interesting though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the gorilla stuff's fine. So yeah. For his part,
Speaker 2: Lord Aspinall would never condemn his friend for murder. He
Speaker 2: talks to journals about that. He's like, I get why
Speaker 2: he did it. I think he was I think he
Speaker 2: was within his rights. You know, he did it for
Speaker 2: the good of his children. Aspiral's attitude is he was
Speaker 2: only trying to save his children from the worst fate
Speaker 2: imaginable being raised by a woman.
Speaker 1: Right wise, we established earlier in the pod women being people.
Speaker 2: Yeah now and the other so Lucan because he or
Speaker 2: Aspinall because he kind of goes broke in seventy four.
Speaker 2: In seventy six, he starts another gambling hall right which
Speaker 2: he makes another fortune in, and he sets up in
Speaker 2: the hallway these like busts of like famous gamblers from history,
Speaker 2: and one of them is a bust of his friend,
Speaker 2: the murderer, Lord Lucan, and like the initial inscription on
Speaker 2: it basically says he did it for his kids something
Speaker 2: else this guy. So after his friend's disappearance, Aspinall continues
Speaker 2: to devote most of his time to his zoo. He
Speaker 2: makes a couple more fortunes when we're talking millions, tens
Speaker 2: of millions each time, but then he loses them, often
Speaker 2: by like pampering his animals because it's just it's expensive
Speaker 2: to run zoos like this, they never make money. He
Speaker 2: does open a second zoo like a few years later,
Speaker 2: so he has two zoos that he's operating, and these
Speaker 2: become increasingly large and influential. Through the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: he grows obsessed with the idea that his zoo keepers
Speaker 2: like him can only do their job properly if they're
Speaker 2: getting if they're willing to get dangerously close to the animals,
Speaker 2: and this is a bad idea. In nineteen eighty he
Speaker 2: has two Siberian tigrises and they viciously maul and kill
Speaker 2: two zoo keepers in the same year, forcing him the
Speaker 2: only thing that's his attitude angry that he has to
Speaker 2: shoot these tigers to death because these zookeepers got murdered
Speaker 2: by them, which, to be fair, not the tiger's fault,
Speaker 2: but it is your fault, dude, Like you had them
Speaker 2: cuddling with them.
Speaker 3: I mean you also had tigers. Yeah, quote people in for.
Speaker 2: I just yeah, that's not the end of it. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, one of his zoo keepers is crushed
Speaker 2: to death by an Indian bowl elephant. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: the head zookeeper at Howlitz is massacred by yet another
Speaker 2: Siberian Tigersking guy.
Speaker 3: Went into the nineties with this shit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Right afterwards, another keeper, Damian Cockrell,
Speaker 2: is crushed to death by the elephant La Petite in
Speaker 2: its enclosure. So he is running through these guys very quickly.
Speaker 2: This is a deadly zoo. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 2: The Guardian again. In nineteen ninety six, Aspinall won a
Speaker 2: High court case to maintain the controversial practice of Keepler's
Speaker 2: keepers mingling with lions, even though in May of that
Speaker 2: year a boy was awarded one hundred and thirty two
Speaker 2: thousand pounds because his arm was ripped off by a chimpanzee.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty nine, this is again at one of
Speaker 2: Aspinall's facilities, and as irresponsible as all that is, he's
Speaker 2: still in some ways good at what he's doing because
Speaker 2: his second zoo, like his second zoo opens and yeah,
Speaker 2: both Howletts and his second zoo, port Lymphany, are renowned
Speaker 2: breeding centers. He produces seventy three captive bread gorillas and
Speaker 2: six black rhinos.
Speaker 3: People die, but the animals fuck.
Speaker 2: The animals fuck. Yeah, it's it's wild and like by
Speaker 2: the time, like kind of in the eighties, zoo professionals
Speaker 2: who had sort of who had rightfully been like this
Speaker 2: guy is a maniac started learning like taking his lessons,
Speaker 2: some of his lessons on raising animals, because he's got
Speaker 2: by this point eighty breeding species and he is hit.
Speaker 2: One of his projects in the Congo is the first
Speaker 2: to successfully introduce captive bread gorillas back into the wild.
Speaker 2: So it's this mix of like wild incompetent that gets
Speaker 2: people killed and also like this is the first program
Speaker 2: to get captive bread gorillas back into the wild. So
Speaker 2: I don't know what lesson you want to take from that.
Speaker 2: It's just a thing that happened. Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: I think the lesson I'm taking from this is we
Speaker 3: need to learn a little bit about gorillas from this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy to throw more people in front of gorillas
Speaker 3: just to see what happens.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a bummer. He doesn't die from like
Speaker 1: being eaten.
Speaker 3: Now, I thought that was where this was going. I
Speaker 3: thought he was going to get killed by like a
Speaker 3: domestic cat.
Speaker 2: It's it's it could it's literally the opposite of that.
Speaker 2: Because he does die of cancer in late June of
Speaker 2: two thousand. But his final regret in life is that
Speaker 2: cancer has made him too sick to like cuddle with
Speaker 2: his dangerous wild animals anyway. That's yeah, aspers, as his
Speaker 2: friends called him. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling, I'm feeling great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the fact that Britain. I feel like Britain's
Speaker 3: freaks are just very different to America, and.
Speaker 2: This is a unique kind of freak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's only something that could be created by
Speaker 3: the horrors of the colonial empire. Not just like the obvious,
Speaker 3: repeated atrocities that to this day are visited upon the
Speaker 3: world as a result of the British Empire. It's also
Speaker 3: just the insane, repressive, violent nature of Britain in that
Speaker 3: hundred year period. I don't even think it's truly stopped,
Speaker 3: but we've just tamped down how violent and horrifying we are.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And what's insane is nothing happened to this guy now,
Speaker 3: nakedly corrupt, guy who led to the deaths of several
Speaker 3: people and by proxy one made Yeah, and he's fine.
Speaker 3: He died of cancer and his last thing was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't get the cuddle with my animals as much
Speaker 3: as I wanted.
Speaker 2: I never got maimed one last time by a tiger.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't say I'm not going to
Speaker 3: let God kill me. My gorillas will do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll make my gorilla.
Speaker 3: You're really right there, like I refuse to let go
Speaker 3: like this, this giant silverback gorilla I've been breeding specifically
Speaker 3: to kill me when I get cancer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I will say. I'll say this for
Speaker 2: gorillas because I think it's important to push back on
Speaker 2: this myth sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, voice, the gorillas are going to fucking light us
Speaker 3: up in the comments.
Speaker 2: They are not the animals that kill people, right, because
Speaker 2: it's actually like a silver like gorillas, it's kind.
Speaker 3: Of hard to get human beings do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a be established to get take your mother
Speaker 1: in law. Yeah, and she'll depress the gorilla and that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I guess that's the lesson here. Everyone
Speaker 2: go get a silver backrilla. It's completely safe.
Speaker 3: It's totally fine. You will be fine. Yeah, by one today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have any pluggables for us?
Speaker 3: Said, just to find me at where's your head? Don't
Speaker 3: if you want to read some excellent tech journalism and
Speaker 3: if you want to hire a PR from easypr dot com.
Speaker 2: Yes, most excellent easypr dot com. Check out where's your
Speaker 2: ad at? And uh yeah, that's going to be it
Speaker 2: for us at Behind the Bastards This week. You can
Speaker 2: subscribe ad free to our shows at what is.
Speaker 1: It called Sophie Cooler Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do that all right, We're done bye.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.