MAROC (IF YOU’RE FRENCH)
The internet domain for Morocco is .ma and they can’t have .mo because it’s used by Macau. There is no Moroccan word for this sort of irony.
Population:
34 MILLION
A casbah, or kasbah, is a type of citadel seen across Morocco. Most feature thin leather straps to prevent items falling off shelves and out of cupboards, a precautionary measure installed in case of a visit from The Clash.
Currency:
MOROCCAN DIRHAM
Casablanca is Morocco’s largest city, and also its most famous thanks to the 1942 film of the same name. To capitalise on the enduring appeal of this movie, literally everything in Casablanca has been renamed ‘Rick’s Café’, even the hospital. It’s a bloody nightmare for Yelp.
Famous people:
JEAN RENO OUT OF LÉON. HE WAS BORN IN MOROCCO. TRUE FACT.
The city of Fez gives its name to a distinctive type of hat popular in the region. It is twinned with the American town of Baseball Caap.
Capital:
RABAT. DON’T SAY CASABLANCA, THAT WOULD BE WRONG.
Morocco is the world’s largest producer of canned sardines. As a result, the country is almost constantly being brushed against by cats.
In remote parts of the Atlas Mountains they speak of ‘tawil alqammat aihmaq’, which literally translates as ‘tall silly man in horrible jacket driving too expensive sports car’.
What’s the first place you think of when someone says ‘lightweight sports cars’? If you said ‘Morocco’, you’re right. You’re also talking to a book, you weirdo. Anyway, Jeremy, Richard and James had some light cars and they went there. Just because.
As a child, the young Richard Hammond dreamt that one day he would be a real-life television presenter. He didn’t realise it would involve this.
A slow-moving and stubborn creature tries to control a donkey.
The high-speed camera-tracking car with ‘Russian Arm’ attachment.
Guess what this means. Go on, have a guess. What do you reckon? You’ll never get it. Oh. You have. Well done.
Style. You’ve either got it. Or you’re a silly man standing in Morocco in a linen suit.
Richard Hammond smashes a small Mazda through an old movie prop. Or, as he believes it, a ‘priceless artefact’.
The Alfa Romeo 4C Spider demonstrates another of its many flaws – it’s a bit blurry.
A rare sighting of a creature not indigenous to Morocco – the leaping Hammond.
One of the crack camera people films the fake F-16 jet from The Jewel of the Nile movie.
MOROCCAN MOVIES
As Jeremy and James discovered when they visited Morocco, the country has its own large and successful film industry. As Richard discovered when he visited Morocco, the country has some ‘ancient ruins’ and a ‘spaceship’. Here are some of the lesser-known movies set in Morocco.
CASABLANCA 2 – PLAY IT, SAM, AGAIN
(1962)
SMOKEY AND THE HUMMUS
(1986)
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN IN SPACE (AND MOROCCO)
(2012)
STEVE MARTIN HAS A FEZ ON
(1987)
POLICE ACADEMY 8 – IDIOTS IN MOROCCO FOR SOME REASON
(1996)
CASABLANCA 3 – ALRIGHT, STOP NOW, SAM
(l970)
HARRY POTTER AND THE AMAZING GAP YEAR
(2015)
CASABLANCA 4 – NONE OF THE ORIGINAL CAST ARE IN THIS
(1974)
THE BOURNE VACATION
(2018)
CASABLANCA 5 – A DUCK’S LIFE
(1986)
AIRLINES WE HAVE LOST
There are many airlines in the world, but what about those airlines that were in the world and now are not? Well, here are some lesser-known examples of that.
Welsh-Dutch Airways (1971–1972)
Boasting just one route – Llandudno to Groningen – Welsh-Dutch Airways quickly discovered two important problems with its business model. First, there aren’t many people who want to fly from North Wales to the north-eastern Netherlands. And second, there isn’t an airport in Llandudno. This latter point perhaps explains the amount of damage repeatedly suffered by the undercarriage and wings of their one plane, a Hepworth-Bassingly HBH6 Super Furious, which eventually crashed into the North Sea with the loss of all seven magazines on board. Just nine months later, Welsh-Dutch Airways closed down, although it returned in 1985 as a type of anti-perspirant.
British Homeways (1974–1982)
This airline was known for its fleet of Hanbury-Wells J9 ‘Smokemaker’ aircraft, a machine famed for producing an unusually high sound and quantity of flames. British Homeways stood apart from rivals because they recognised that a lot of British people liked the idea of flying but didn’t want to go abroad. With that in mind, BH offered flights on popular routes such as Manchester Ringway to Manchester Ringway and Leeds Bradford to Leeds Bradford. ‘All the glamour of flying without the unpleasantness of going abroad!’ was the company’s slogan until 1982, when the airline went into administration after British people decided they probably would risk going abroad after all.
Maverick (1986–1987)
The brainchild of Floridian meat billionaire John P. Hammertime, Maverick’s unique selling point was to offer affordable air travel from the UK to Orlando, while also giving passengers a sense of what it would be like to feature in the popular 1980s movie Top Gun. As such, all take-offs were needlessly vertical and everyone on board had to wear Aviator sunglasses. Maverick cut costs by featuring a mid-flight refuelling stop in Newfoundland, during which all passengers were forced to play a game of shirtless volleyball and then zoom about on a motorcycle while not wearing a crash helmet. Maverick existed for just 11 months before its aviation licence was withdrawn because it kept ‘buzzing’ the ‘tower’, despite being told not to.
Aviatytos (1976–1979)
In the mid-1970s Britain experienced something of a boom in Greek things. Demis Roussos was in the charts, moussaka was on the dinner table and people were taking package holidays to Greece for the first time. Athens-based Aviatytos aimed to capitalise on this by offering affordable flights with ‘an intensely Greek flavour’. This turned out to be too intense for many passengers, who claimed there were ‘far too many people’ on each flight and that the ‘in-flight entertainment’ consisted of one song that started quite slowly as the plane took off from Britain and then got faster and faster throughout the four-hour flight. Also, some customers noted that the plane didn’t seem to have as much glass in the windows as they expected. Aviatytos went out of business in 1979 after Nana Mouskouri appeared to say the word ‘grunties’ on Michael Parkinson’s chat show and everyone in Britain went off Greek stuff.
Poundair (1996–1997)
Part of the 1990s explosion in budget airlines, Poundair was founded by Scottish entrepreneur Fergus Spurgeon on the very simple premise that all flights would cost a pound (plus £50 admin fee, plus £75 baggage charge, plus £100 fee if you wanted to use steps to get on the plane). Flying from Prestwick to a range of European airports 50 miles from the cities they purported to serve, Poundair aimed to cut costs with a variety of controversial measures. These were later to prove its downfall when authorities ruled that, contra to the airline’s trenchant belief, it really was obliged to provide passengers with seats, and that it had no right to save fuel by refusing to climb beyond 500 feet for the entire journey.
Zbbbbbrrrrrr (2010–2012)
An ultra-low-cost airline from Poland, Zbbbbbrrrrrr was able to offer flights from London Luton to Warsaw from as little as £4.50, based on the unusual concept that no one actually got on the plane or travelled to their destination. Instead, anyone booking a Zbbbbbrrrrrr ‘flight’ from the UK would receive photographs of Poland or, in the case of business travellers, receipts from hotels and restaurants, enabling them to convince friends and colleagues they had been away without the bother of leaving the house. Initially very successful, Zbbbbbrrrrrr floundered when the company remembered that, despite its ingenious no-flight business model, it actually owned an expensive fleet of 20 Russian-made Kvolliat Design Bureau KN-25 ‘Death Plunge’ airliners. Plus, several of these planes had been involved in accidents despite being parked on the tarmac at Warsaw airport, forcing the airline to send pre-booked passengers photos of the inside of a Polish hospital.
Having a great time here in Stuttgart. Except it’s not strictly Stuttgart because the place we found to pitch the tent is actually in a place called Ludwigsburg which is outside Stuttgart but no one realised that until it was too late. Oh well.
Another thing we didn’t discover until the night before filming was that a local politician was seriously trying to ban us from filming. Fortunately, he didn’t manage it. Show went ahead, audience was brilliant, one of the best of the tour so far. Maybe even the most lively and the loudest laughing. All those German clichés you’ve heard are wrong. Also discovered that the tent has a very sophisticated ventilation system which circulates fresh air around the place so that the audience doesn’t suffocate. Good job the tent people knew about the need to do this rather than leaving all the tent infrastructure stuff to, say, Jeremy. Reason we discovered how the ventilation system works is that someone’s puffer jacket fell onto the floor and was immediately sucked into the tent air intake. Oops. Whole thing had to be shut down. All in all, a great success. Celebrated by going to a bierkeller. Think that’s what it was. It was down some steps and they served beer. Hope all is well at home,
THE GRAND TOUR
