About us
What's all this about then?
A gallimaufry is a confused jumble of things. Since 2020, it's also been a history podcast by Nic and Will: two people who should, by any reasonable measure, have found a better hobby by now.
Nic has a master's degree in history. Will does not. Neither fact seems to affect the quality of the research much.
What the show is, in practice, is an hour or so spent on the parts of the past that didn't quite make it into the curriculum. Not because they're obscure for the sake of it, but because - much like your typical south-west London carpet shop - there's often more to see if you peer beneath the surface. The Dancing Plague of 1518, in which the residents of Strasbourg danced uncontrollably in the street for weeks and several of them died. The Cold War spy network that broadcast coded messages over shortwave radio to nobody in particular, for decades. The woman who, in Victorian Britain, took on the entire legal system and won. The story of how France nearly lost wine. On one occasion, an episode entirely about fruit.
None of this is academic. Nic handles research, planning and presenting. Will provides the questions, which is less helpful than it sounds. The show is recorded in an endearingly dingy (yet surprisingly dank) basement beneath a carpet shop in south-west London. It's the kind of place any sensible person would avoid. Nic and Will have been going back for over five years now.
New episodes arrive monthly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. On Instagram they are @thegallimaufryshow.
Who are these people?
That's a very good question.
Nic and Will met in a geology lesson about 25 years ago and have, against all reasonable expectation, remained friends ever since. The podcast was an inevitable outcome of this, in the same way that the universe, having made a damp basement beneath a carpet shop, was always going to put something in it.
Nic
Nic has a master's degree in history, a job making videos for reasons he won't fully explain, and a dog. He lives in south London, owns an Xbox, and has visited Machu Picchu, where he memorably wore a San Diego cap. That's just the kind of guy he is. He is impressively pedantic, which is either a great quality in a history podcaster or an exhausting one, depending on your patience. Probably both.
Will
Will builds websites for a living, which he is nonetheless similarly vague about. He lives just outside London, once owned a bike and has no qualifications in history. He got into podcasting in 2020 and has been asking questions of debatable relevance ever since. He is, by his own admission, careening head-first towards a mid-life crisis. The basement was his idea.