Time Team

Well, a spell I would do.

Well, my favorite TV show of all time is called Time Team.

And it was all about Tony Robinson digging up fields in areas of primarily England to find Roman ruins.

And it would be to predict whether Time Team would be coming back on television, hosted by hopefully someone like Sandy Toksvig.

And so I think what you would do is bury your banana.

And then when you dig it up a month later, whatever the rotted banana is shaped like will be the host of Time Team.

That's what I think.

Wow.

yeah.

Have you not seen the kids' eyes roll when they walk into the room and we're watching Time Team? Oh,

yeah.

Like, it is a hard role.

I just can't.

I can't do it.

I can't even watch the scenes in Time Team where Mick and Tony are in the helicopter looking out over the Roman fortress because I'm sure they're about to fall out of the helicopter.

And what does Tom do? Leans his ass right out the door.

Exciting new Roman research.

And Time Team's creator on how you can carry out archaeology in your own community.

Hello, and welcome to the Time Team podcast with Helen Geake and Martyn Williams, where I'm already excited to welcome Tasha Fullbrook onto the podcast in a little bit.

Tasha is the Roman expert I was telling you about a while ago, Martin.

Tasha and I were colleagues for a few years until she moved on to start a PhD on Roman metallurgy.

We've always been intrigued to know how far it extended into a field called Garden Field next door to the visitor centre in the car park.

And also whether we would like to know more about the status of the people buried there and the range of dates, because we might have only just got one period in our 2000 excavation.

Were there later burials elsewhere in the cemetery area? Our idea was, and Time Team came along very kindly to put it into practice, was to do a sort of sample excavation in Garden Field at the other end of the cemetery.

But I don't know, maybe they're getting the players to work on that new stand behind the goal.

Which, by the way, it's like an episode of Time Team back there.

Like, I don't know.

Normally they cover up a little bit more, but there's like excavations happening behind that goal.

That's probably geographically as close as I've been.

But I have this draw, like I watch a lot of Time Team and documentaries about the Roman Empire, the Stone Age, the Iron Age.

And I just, I have this like, oh my God, these are my people.

Yes.

As if one TV legend wasn't enough, we have another, Sir Tony Robinson.

The actor whose genius gave us Baldrick has since brought archaeology to life on Time Team and is also a best-selling writer and documentary maker.

And Tom Hart Dyke has a story to which a feature film couldn't do justice.

He's the man whose love of orchids nearly got him killed by kidnappers in the Colombian jungle.

is? Play school group is? Yes.

When I arrived, there were...

Any Blackadder groupies or Time Team groupies there today? Not this morning.

Thousands.