Knock, knock who’s there?
QUESTION What exactly is a saggar-maker’s bottom knocker? This was an occupation made famous by the Fifties TV panel show What’s My Line?. Contestants with unusual occupations would mime their job, then field yes-or-no questions from four celebrities aiming to work it out.
The presenter was usually Eamonn Andrews, but curmudgeonly journalist Gilbert harding hosted the one featuring the saggar-maker’s bottom knocker.
Regular panellists included magician David Nixon, magistrate Lady isobel Barnett, actresses Barbara Kelly, June Whitfield and hayley Mills, Eurovision song Contest presenter Katie Boyle, actor Patrick Mower and game show host Bob Monkhouse.
Viewers loved the inadvertent innuendo. One contestant asked a mattress stuffer: ‘is your product used by one sex over the other?’ ‘Does your job involve animals?’ was asked of a dating agency owner.
Unusual occupations that defeated the panel included jelly baby varnisher, hog slapper, Catherine wheel winder, pepperpot perforator and gibbon nanny.
As for the saggar-maker’s bottom knocker, a saggar is a large ceramic container used to hold other pots during firing in the kiln.
This means complicated shaped pieces of ware can be fired in large numbers without touching one another (and so becoming damaged) and glazed items can be fired without being speckled with ash.
The word ‘saggar’ is believed to have entered into English in the 17th century and to be a contraction of ‘safeguard’.
Producing saggars to the correct specifications is a skilled job performed by a craftsman — the saggar-maker.
however, making the bases of the saggars is a less skilled job that can be left to an assistant, namely the saggar-maker’s bottom knocker.
The bottom of the saggar is made by placing clay in a metal hoop and knocking it into shape. James Glenn, Cardiff. QUESTION What happened to the gas-toliquid projects where natural gas is turned into diesel with very low NOx and particulate emissions? GAs to liquids (GtL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas into high-quality liquid products such as gasoline or diesel fuel and into the ingredients for plastics, detergents and cosmetics.
GtL contains almost none of the impurities — sulphur, aromatics and nitrogen — found in crude oil.
Despite such technology being available since the Eighties, there are only five major operating GtL plants, with a total output of 250,000 barrels per day — far less than the one million barrels a day that had been forecast.
The largest by far is shell’s Pearl facility in Qatar, with a capacity of 140,000 barrels a day. shell also operates two plants in Malaysia, while sasol has one factory in south Africa and another in Qatar.
The key problem has been cost. GtL projects only became economically viable when crude oil price peaked at more than $100 a barrel in 2010 and natural gas prices were low due to the U.s. shale gas revolution.
shell cancelled a proposed $20 billion plant in Louisiana in 2013, suggesting that the energy giant doesn’t see natural gas prices staying low into the future.
The plants also need to be reliable and, so far, that hasn’t always been the case.
The Escravos plant in Nigeria, 62 miles south-east of Lagos in the Niger Delta, was originally estimated to cost $2 billion to build when work started four years ago, but it is still under construction and the cost has soared to more than $10billion. There have been a variety of technical problems, mostly related to GtL’s complex chemical processes.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow. QUESTION Where is the highest hedge in the world? TOWERiNG over the A93, four miles south of Blairgowrie and ten miles north of Perth, is what has been recognised by Guinness World Records since 1966 as the world’s tallest and longest hedge.
The Meikleour hedge was planted in 1745. it is beech (Fagus sylvatica) and is 580 yards long. it ranges in height from 120ft to 80ft, with an average of 100ft.
it is cut and measured every ten years by the Meikleour Trust, a process that takes four men six weeks using a hydraulic lift.
The story of the hedge is closely associated with Meikleour house, which lies half a mile to the west and whose eastern boundary it defines.
The house was built by Robert Murray Nairne and his wife Jean Mercer of Meikleour, heiress of the estates of Aldie and Meikleour, who married in 1720.
The hedge was planted in the autumn of 1745. however, as Jacobite sympathisers, the couple were doomed not to see it grow to maturity.
Robert was killed at the Battle of Culloden on April 16, 1746, the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising. Jean fled to Edinburgh, where she lived out her life in anonymity.
Meikleour house was remodelled into the form of a French chateau in 1870, by which time its most outstanding feature, the hedge, was well established.
Janet Eden, Perth. QUESTION Where is Britain’s steepest street? FURThER to the earlier answer, st Mary’s hill in Chester is a good candidate for the steepest residential street in the world.
Data analyst and local resident John Murray measured the gradient at 36.4 per cent, which is greater than the 35per cent for the famous Baldwin street in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Colin Wood, Dover, Kent.
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