Episode Transcript
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clear, and their goals in sight. listened
2:00
to by three pretty intense devices
2:02
and there's about collectively 6,000 hours
2:06
of potential listening in this flat. But
2:08
how did I get here? This
2:13
is a What's the Story Sounds production
2:15
for BBC Sounds. I'm Joanne
2:18
McNally and this is Did Furby Spy
2:20
on Us? Episode
2:22
3, I Spy. My
2:27
investigation into the Did Furby Spy
2:29
question had been moving at breakneck
2:31
speed. At the end of
2:34
the last episode I thought I'd solved
2:36
it. It was nonsense. Furbies don't spy.
2:38
They're too busy. But then Garrota called
2:40
me up with a curveball suggestion and
2:42
he was, as always, annoyingly correct. Maybe
2:45
someone could have adapted the
2:48
Furby for espionage purposes. To
2:51
get to the bottom of us my producers
2:53
put me on a train in economy to
2:55
an undisclosed location in the north to learn
2:58
from a man who deals in spying gadgets.
3:02
As I approached the shop the excitement
3:04
started to kick in. Oh
3:07
my god it actually says the spy
3:10
shop. This is fucking comical.
3:15
Yes the shop which sells spying gadgets
3:17
is called the spy shop. God I'd
3:19
imagine that brainstorm was long. Anyway
3:22
I stood by the surprisingly busy main
3:24
road and did what my producers asked
3:26
me to do for once and I set
3:28
the scene. So
3:31
I'm in somewhere called Leeds. We're
3:34
opposite an Aldi for
3:36
context and an industrial estate,
3:38
a lot of Taco Bell. Now
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there's no, you wouldn't find a Zara along
3:43
here now. It's
3:46
like you know there's a nail shop
3:48
next door but the end's missing. That's the vibe. And
3:51
he's Ailes. And
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if the name of the shop didn't give the
3:56
game away they also very kindly and cleverly littered
3:58
all the things they studied. on the window. Voice
4:01
reporters, hidden cameras, lock picks, listening bugs. Are
4:03
we allowed to just openly sell this shit?
4:06
Is this not like fireworks where you're supposed
4:08
to sell them on the slide? Let's
4:14
go in. Nigel?
4:20
Yes? I'm Joanne. How's it going? Nigel
4:24
struck me as a straight-talking man. So, I got straight-talking
4:26
to the man to the point of the man. I
4:29
just thought a spy shop would be more
4:33
hidden. Well, it is. I've
4:38
got the shop front. Yeah. But that's for
4:40
people to collect the old bits and pieces, but
4:42
mainly it's online and people still like, they don't
4:44
like things to come online. So rather than get
4:47
it delivered, they prefer to just come in and
4:49
get it without anybody knowing.
4:52
I sat down in Nigel's office, which
4:54
contained nothing but a table and chairs,
4:56
surrounded by posters of famous spies spying
4:59
back at us. He
5:01
then popped out of a secret door and brought back
5:03
what looked like a pen. That
5:06
was a voice recorder that lasted a record for about 12
5:08
hours. What? That's
5:10
constant recording. And then
5:12
you just take it apart, plug it in your PC
5:14
and download it and play it all back. Really good
5:16
quality. If that wasn't mind-blowing
5:18
enough, he then handed me a series
5:21
of covert voice recorders that I'd never
5:23
have clocked myself in a million years.
5:27
That is a good piece of kit. That's a key. It
5:29
looks like a car key. It just looks like a car key.
5:32
He even had a plug. So
5:35
we've got that there. A plug? Yeah,
5:38
like an Apple I charger. Everybody
5:40
has them in the home nowadays. Yeah. That
5:43
particular one is a recording one. So that's
5:45
a voice activated recorder that's built inside there.
5:47
It still works as a USB charger. This
5:50
is crazy. It's just like being in the room
5:52
when you play it back, especially with headphones on.
5:55
How much would this be? That
5:59
particular one. The other one is 220. But
6:02
we also do another one, which is exactly the
6:05
same as that. Brit's got the same card inside
6:07
it. You just ring the actual socket itself and
6:10
listen live to the room. It was
6:12
at this exact point my producers looked at
6:14
Nigel in disbelief. You could be sat in
6:16
Barbados listening to the room. Don't matter, it's
6:18
the same card. It's more and more, you
6:20
know, it's the more band network. So you
6:22
just ring it and listen
6:24
live. To wherever it is. Oh my
6:27
God. I
6:32
couldn't believe my tiny little eyes, but then Nigel passed
6:34
me something even more unbelievable. A
6:38
spy camera in an air freshener. This
6:40
is like an old school air freshener.
6:42
I was used to cheap air freshener. Yeah. So
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it doesn't attract any attention. You can put it
6:47
wherever the people want it. They don't smell it.
6:51
No, because we've already used the internals. We're not going to leave
6:53
the smelly inside it. Do
6:56
you know what? Do you know
6:58
what? I'm surprised by the normal
7:01
seal, if you know what I mean. Like
7:03
the everydayness of them. Like the
7:05
air freshener I think is the weirdest one of
7:08
all. I've just never seen a guy's deal with
7:10
an air freshener before. Surrounded by
7:12
these seemingly ordinary items, I was eager
7:14
to find out who actually buys them.
7:16
And it turns out there's two distinct
7:19
groups. One is the intimidating
7:21
male crème, the sexy one. And the
7:23
other is the everyday person suspicious that
7:25
their other half is up to no
7:27
good. There's so
7:29
many different people that buy them. Everybody,
7:31
all walks of life. Yeah. Have you
7:33
ever felt nervous? Because I've
7:36
never come in here like, and you're like,
7:38
oh shit. Sometimes, sometimes, yeah.
7:40
Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. But you get used
7:42
to it. I've
7:44
had people in here being tears. Absolutely
7:47
tears in here. Distraught. Because they find
7:49
out something that they didn't want to
7:51
know. I do think by
7:54
the time you're hit set in a spy
7:56
shop, the relationship is
7:58
kind of, it's.
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