Mystery on the Rocks

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...

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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...?

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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...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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 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 mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Sooz Kempner & Masud Milas.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 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 mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Masud Milas and Sooz Kempner.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 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 mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Masud Milas and Sooz Kempner.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 hanging over them. Masud makes the drinks, Chris tells the mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Masud Milas and Sooz Kempner.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, 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 mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Masud Milas and Sooz Kempner.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Cinema

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 mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram too!

Produced by Chris Stokes, Masud Milas and Sooz Kempner.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.