Mystery On The Rocks

A big one today. Not including the initial trailer, this week's episode is our big 100!So allow us a little self indulgence as we discuss, among other things, our favourite cases, episodes and cocktails from our ever-growing back catalogue. Thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast (which includes you wonderful people, obviously) along the way, in whatever capacity.Four seasons, a few different formats, loads of cases, hundreds of cocktails, a litany of amazing guests, plenty of ancilliary livestreams and a place on the Guardian's 50 Funniest Podcasts this year. All thanks to you.Because if nobody was listening, we wouldn't do it. Let's face it, we could do the podcast without you, but it'd be shit. Really, you help make this show what it is and are a huge, huge part of why we love doing it so much.Eurgh, enough sincerity now. See you for the 101st episode, Egg Wizards!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Wonderful comedian, actor and decent bloke Sunil Patel popped by the bar this week to reduce us to hysterics while talking about a Welsh sheep farmer and to assist us with the spooky 19th Century ghost story of Sarah Duckett...You can hear Sunil's podcast Why Is Harriet Crying? wherever you get your podcasts and go see him LIVE this month (June 2021) at the Soho Theatre!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After an 11th hour guest cancellation we decided to discuss the case between ourselves anyway and had a fun conversation about the oft-repeated story of Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett disguising Princess Diana as a gay man in the 1980s and taking her out to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern...So is it true or just an urban myth? No real evidence exists to back it up beyond the initial account in Cleo Rocos' late-90s autobiography and the three main players are no longer with us to confirm or deny the tale... Yet it all sounds so plausible!Find out where we place our bets...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A couple of weeks ago, we got together to do Mystery on the Rocks in the same room for the first time in over a year and did a live show from Angel Comedy's brilliant venue The Bill Murray. Restrictions still prevented us having audience in the room with us and so we livestreamed a slightly chaotic show where we got super giddy at being together for the first time in a long time. During the shenanigans, we did touch upon the story of the terrifying ghost ship SS Ourang Medan, and thought why not edit together an episode from the live show? So we did!An eerie distress call from the doomed ship caused two vessels in what was the Dutch East Indies to investigate, whereupon they found the Ourang Medan's entire crew dead and, disturbingly, all in the same pose. But is it actually a horrifying true story or just an urban myth? The jury has remained out ever since the story first surfaced in the 1940s... And find out if there is anything cool dude Masud can't style out...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy

The brilliant comedian, director and man behind all those TV intros you have seen re-imagined as stock footage Matt Highton poked his head round the door of the bar for a lot of film chat and to possibly help us reach a solution to the enduring mystery of just who was it that wrote The Circleville Letters?Love, death and bus drivers feature in this curious tale of some of Circleville, Ohio's residents in the 1970s and 1980s being plagued by a persistent and sinister letter writing campaign...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Juliette Burton is an absolutely top-drawer comedian, writer and actor as well as being one of the country's foremost speakers and advocates on the topic of mental health, an ambassador for the mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness no less!She also happens to be one of the most fun human beings, as evidenced by the laugh we had when she turned up with ample cocktails of her own and managed to flirt outrageously with each one of us in the course of helping us out with the mystery of the Sonora Aero Club - a mysterious group who would meet decades before the first plane ever flew to design driveable flying machines and whose existence only became known almost a century later when these designs were discovered in the 1960s...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stuart Laws isn't just a fantastic comedian in his own right, he is also behind some of the best online comedy content of the past few years. His company Turtle Canyon are responsible for some absolutely stellar productions, including James Acaster's four 'Repertoire' Netflix specials and many more besides. We were very lucky that he visited the Mystery on the Rocks bar to help with another mystery, pitch a brilliant sequel to 1996 Arnie action flick 'Eraser' and maybe, just maybe, steal the podcast from right under our noses...This week's case is the murder of businessman Eric Tamiyasu in rural Oregon in June 2001, a tale which may seem very simple on the surface but which begins to complicate itself by having no less than four suspects - each with an apparently compelling motive for murder...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week the fabulous Vix Leyton, stand-up comedian and host of the awesome Comedy Arcade podcast, swung by and was even generous enough to get the round in herself! We drank lovely pre-mixed cocktails from Nio, because when the three of us did the exclusive livestreamed Comedy Arcade show Vix had kindly bought us all cocktails. Alas, we were prohibited from drinking them on stage so we had them in this episode instead!And we had a very winding saunter through the intriguing case of Richard Lancelyn Green - the world's foremost Arthur Conan Doyle scholar who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in 2004. Can a wooden spoon point to who killed him and why? Or is it a springboard for a lengthy tangent about Zippy?Or is it both...?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joining us for this week's episode is absolutely fantastic comedian, actor and writer Helen Duff. You may have seen Helen on The Mash Report, heard her beautifully narrate one of many, many audiobooks, seen her at a litany of brilliant live shows or even heard her hosting her own amazing podcast Come As You Are...Helen swung by the bar for a top-drawer chinwag as well to help us piece together the mystery of the Watseka Wonder. It is the curious tale of Lurrancy Vennum, which has gone down as one of the most compelling accounts of spiritual possession in history...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After a couple of weeks of unexpected hiatus the bar is back in business! And we've made a few changes. We have a couple bits of news so, before we get back to cracking mysteries, join us in our new pad as we do a little bit of housekeeping and in the process somehow uncover a mystery surrounding Masud himself!Thanks for bearing with us, everyone - normal service will resume going forward.What's more - should you wish, you can now go one extra step in supporting the podcast by heading to our brand spanking new Patreon where there will be lots of additional perks, bonus material and more!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's guest is fantastic comedian, writer and political commentator Gráinne Maguire, who has appeared on Question Time, written on shows such as The Last Leg and who joins us on, among other things, a lengthy tangent about Easter as we try to pick apart a political scandal from 1950s Italy...In April 1953, socialite and aspiring actress Wilma Montesi is found dead on a beach, with no real clues as to how she got there, or even how she died. A huge veil of secrecy is drawn over the whole affair which leads to much suspicion and whispers of an enormous political scandal in 20th Century Roman society...At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set

Sauntering into the bar this week is the effortlessly funny and absolutely top drawer Jarred Christmas who brightens up the bar with tales of his time on (and borderline sabotaging of) TV shows such as Celebrity Total Wipeout and Big Brother's Big Mouth and gets stuck into a particularly strange case...On the Isle of Man in the 1930s one family were visited by - and very soon befriended - a disembodied voice in their walls claiming to be the ghostly manifestation of a talking mongoose, named Gef. The story spread far and wide, led to worldwide media coverage, in-depth supernatural investigations and even a landmark court case...At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podc

A bit of a dream for us this week as we are joined by actor, comedian and podcast legend Henry Zebrowski! Henry has cropped up in all manner of film and TV, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, Heroes Reborn, Inside Amy Schumer, but is probably best known for hosting smash hit The Last Podcast on the Left.When we're not getting sidetracked by having so much fun, we discuss the Murder in Setagaya case which saw an entire family brutally slain by an unknown murderer, unknown despite leaving bucketloads of DNA at the crime scene...At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The

It's the Hollywood season finale and there's an end of term vibe as Sooz and Masud bring in their boardgame and lead with their own mystery. Both sharing an obsession with the mercurial Hollywood A-lister Jeremy Renner, compounded by a shared love of the recent Renner Files podcast, Sooz and Masud walk us through the careers (plural) of the label-defying phenomenon that is Jeremy Lee Renner... At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the show is to attempt to crack a real, unsolved mystery from history – true crime and bizarre occurrences, all with a whodunnit or WTF happened question h

Ahead of next week's Hollywood Case Files finale, we take a brisk walk down memory lane as we recount all the cases we've covered so far in our Hollywood series. Initially meant to be a miniseries, our Hollywood series kinda got out of hand, expanding to thirty episodes so far. As a result, our memories proved super hazy on some of the cases so join us as we try to remember the early ones and each give our own personal Top 3 from the series...And can you guess what the Hollywood season finale will be next time?At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the show is to attempt to crack a real,

When 'The Room' was released in 2003 it very quickly became widely recognised as the worst film ever made but a mystery which endures to this day surrounds its bizarre writer/director/star, the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau. His origins remain shrouded in mystery, thanks mainly to the man himself who refuses to say where he is from, his age or how he managed to raise the $6million dollars he spent making 'The Room'.His strange friendship with actor Greg Sestero combined with the cult status 'The Room' attained spawned the book and film 'The Disaster Artist' yet still the mystery of Tommy Wiseau persists. So who is he? Join us as we attempt to uncover the truth, with a few surprises along the way and maybe solve another long-standing mystery in the process...With thanks to Jonathan Foster at the Prince Charles CinemaAt the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new

On September 11 2001, in the wake of the devastating attacks on America, firm celebrity friends Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor find themselves in New York City and, with all flights grounded, set off cross country in an inconspicuous hire car to make it to safety. Or so the story goes...Join us as we try to uncover the truth and make some of our own ridiculous additions to the legend along the way...At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the show is to attempt to crack a real, unsolved mystery from history – true crime and bizarre occurrences, all with a whodunnit or W

Our Hollywood series hits the 21st century as we take a look at the fatal shooting of Hollywood wannabe Bonnie Lee Bakley as she sat alone in her husband's car in May 2001, a deceptively simple case which manages to include (among other things) the most married man in the world, the most married woman in the world and Jerry Lee Lewis...At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the show is to attempt to crack a real, unsolved mystery from history – true crime and bizarre occurrences, all with a whodunnit or WTF happened question hanging over them. Masud makes the drinks, Chris tells the myster

In June 1997, screenwriter Gary DeVore vanishes without trace after finishing a script said to expose corruption in the CIA. A year later, his car is found submerged in an area of water already searched when he first went missing - an aqueduct below a busy highway. Not only that, investigators believe that in order to have crashed his car there he would have had to drive 3 miles into oncoming traffic. And the car's headlights were switched to 'off'.Oh, and Gary's hands were missing. But this is only where the case *begins* to get strange....At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the s

As it's Christmas, we take a week off Hollywood sleuthing so join us in a cocktail as we chat about our differing opinions on Christmas films, share memories of toys of Christmas past and stick two fingers up to tradition. We hope you all have an excellent Christmas in this strangest of years and thank all our amazing listeners for coming with us on some real bizarre cases! At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. It’s a high concept comedy and true crime podcast, set in a fictional crime-solving bar (with real cocktails!). The focus of the show is to attempt to crack a real, unsolved mystery from history – true crime and bizarre occurrences, all with a whodunnit or WTF happened question hanging over them. Ma