Some people think Surgeon’s Biscuit is the name of a town near Kakadamm. Others believe it is an old parlour game popular in the boarding houses of seaside resorts during the 1930s. There are those who suspect it to be the name of a racehorse, or perhaps a racing pigeon, or some other bird or beast of swiftness. Surgeon’s Biscuit is, of course, none of these things. It is simply a biscuit that belonged to a surgeon.

But what a biscuit! And what a surgeon! As biscuits go, it was the finest specimen the surgeon had ever seen. Two thirds of the way down a perfectly ordinary-looking packet of digestive crumblies, there it nestled, a numinous, almost golden thing, some quirk in its baking making it unutterably different from its fellows in the batch. He remembered when he first handled it. He was not a man to transfer his newly-purchased biscuits into a so-called “biscuit tin” or similar container. He ate them straight from the packet, as he had been brought up to do by his rough, tough parents in their rough, tough hovel, who can never have expected little Vladimir to grow up to become an important surgeon.

• A note to our Chinese listeners
• Google.dbsn ( This exciting new search engine can be found on the Hooting Yard Web Page)
• Blotzmann’s Compartment Controversy
• Vox Pop: A Pang Hill Orphan Speaks
• Tiny Little Hands, Decisive Moustachios
• Another Vlasto (Vlasto Cuddy)
• Surgeon’s Biscuit
• Fifty Years Ago (Dobson on the Radio)

This episode was recorded on 1st Febuary 2006.

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Frank dedicates an entire episode to a reading of the chapter “Superstitions Concerning Birds” from the book “Bygone Beliefs: Excursions in the By-ways of Thought” by H Stanley Redgrove, published in 1920. This episode was recorded on 21st December 2005 and was the final episode of the year.

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There are seven hotels. Their names are Crone, Crustacean, Flask, Infection, Miasma, Unbearable and Vagabond. Each is built of cheap and rusty metal and perched on the edge of a precipice. There are seven precipices, over each of which a scientist of note has plunged to a watery death during the past two weeks. In chronological order, those who plummeted were a botanist, a physicist, a phrenologist, an horologist, a laboratory git, a bacteriologist, and an uproariously-moustachioed vivisectionist.

Each had been a paying guest at one of the hotels, though none of them hurtled over the precipice upon which their own hotel teetered. The phrenologist, for example, breakfasted upon porridge in the Hotel Miasma, then threw herself from the pocked and crumbling cliff-face adjacent to the Crone Hotel.

Or was she pushed?

• The origins of the name “Hooting Yard”
• Some Hotels, A Hollyhock, The Ponds
• Hooting Yard Fan Fiction: “Dobson’s Uncanny Time Pod” by Tristan Shuddery
• Swedish Goat News
• A selection of self-help books
• Istvan and Zoltan (on Monday Afternoon)
• Quotations from “New Orleans Superstitions” by Lafcadio Hearn

This episode was first broadcast on 14th December 2005.

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The conclusion to Frank Key’s exciting House of Turps. In this episode we learn of Slobodan Curpin’s fate, and also that of the twelve exiles of Hoon.

This episode of Hooting Yard on the Air was recorded on the 23rd of November 2005. Frank Key’s “House of Turps” has ISBN 1 871197 40 6.

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The long-awaited first volume in Frank Key’s important 26-part history of the House of Turps. In this introductory work, Key outlines the bilge and the bindweed, the dust and the dribble, the whelk and the drudge. The true founder of the House of Turps is here revealed for the first time, vile and crumpled and stinking of ragwort; not unlike the author himself.

After listening, the author asks you not to hurl your iPod over a precipice.

This story was originally published in 1989 in a limited print-run of 300 copies. For those who like to keep track of these things, a second edition was produced as a special gift for subscribers to the ReR Quarterly. This episode of Hooting Yard was recorded on the 16th of November 2005.

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The Tantarabim Carton was recovered from an old potting shed by Dobson, during one of his forays into what he called anarcho-‘patapsychoarchaeolontology. It is a ceremonial carton which was used for unknown purposes during ceremonies prosecuted by the Bleach-Splattered Tantarabim Priesthood. Grim and horrifying these rituals may have been, but not the carton. It is 45 cm. in height, has a jewel-encrusted crimplene base, ivory fluting, ruched silk underbelts, hectic trimmings, a delightful milky-green ribbed spandole, villainous scraping marks, a gutta percha rim, opalescent bison-head motifs, swivelling glutinous beads inlaid with serried gems, fleur-de-lys hatching, precise web-and-tuck dufraiment, talc stipples, a riband nightside opening on the velveteen casing, some rather brusque kaolin relief work, tiny cack-iron clips, berry lagging, a splendid gilt Spode handle, and corky frets on the oversling.

• My Little Blind Crow
• The Windows in the Villa
• Museology (The Discovery of the Tantarabim Carton)
• Crononhotonthologos
• Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang
• Notes on Norton the First
• Today’s Soup Recipe
• Mrs Gubbins’ New Publishing Venture
• A Sad Story ( The Tale of Gervaise Birdlip )
• Quotation from “Man From The Wrong Time-Track” by Dennis Plimmer
• Reviews of “Ulysses”
• Quotation from St Bernard of Clairvaux about Jugglers
• Quotation from “The Thing that Dined on Death” by John Knox

This episode was first broadcast on the 26th October 2005. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on the Hooting Yard Website.

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