#164 The Great Train Robbery - Oh What A Crime (Part 2)

Oh What A Time...

Pop! Pop!

Comedy, History, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!

This week we’re working through a bit more of your correspondence before dealing with our first ever ‘Oh What A Crime’ episode which today focuses on: The Great Train Robbery of 1963. The planning, Bruce Reynolds, Buster Edwards, Ronnie Biggs et al, the heist itself, the loot and life on the run.

Elsewhere, how did anyone in 1160 survive without caffeine? And is there a worse person to meet than a coked-up Nazi? All this and more this week and if you’ve got anything to add, you know what to do: hello@ohwhatatime.com

And from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:

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Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free,
0:06.4	plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access
0:11.9	to live show tickets and access to the Oh Water Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water
0:16.9	Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up.
0:23.7	For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh, what a time.
0:28.4	Hello and welcome back to Part 2. This is the Great Train Robbery. This is our first, oh, what a crime.
0:33.8	Thank you to Ray Ray for suggesting this. Let's get on with the show.
0:48.3	Yeah. crime. Thank you to Ray Ray for suggesting this. Let's get on with the show. So, how much do we know about the Great Train Robbery?
0:51.3	A little bit.
0:52.2	Little to nothing. Obviously, Ronnie Biggs, very famous. Ronnie Biggs. Britain's most famous fugitive? Yeah, and I've seen the film. So a small amount of working knowledge. When you say the film, do you mean Buster? Buster. Yeah. What a film. What a film this is.
1:11.9	We'll touch on Buster actually at the end of the episode, but let's go back now.
1:15.4	Yes, let's go back to the 8th of August, 1963.
1:19.2	So what became the Great Train Robbery is about to begin.
1:23.4	The target of the operation...
1:25.8	Sorry, I'm out of breath from what I've done this.
1:31.5	Hey, I'll just have to go and open the answer the door,
1:37.4	just explaining it to a listener.
1:38.7	If anything's captured that you would not be the man
1:40.8	who could pull off a train robbery and escape from the law,
2:04.9	it's the fact that you've come up two flights of stairs to you're na. It was a delivery man. And ordinarily, I wouldn't answer the door. But it was a huge box. And I'm like, well, he can't leave that on the front. So I ran up and down. Now, Matt, breath. There you go. Okay. The target is a Glasgow to London Royal Mail train, officially the 150am up special from Glasgow to Houston.
2:10.8	And it's carrying high value mail bags from Scotland and the north of England to London. And among the contents, contents are used banknotes, so old £1 and £5 £5 that are about to be withdrawn from circulation.
2:18.2	This is going to be important actually.
	...

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