A Knightsbridge collector of English legend reads about Piers Morgan’s war on a courteous AI and recalls the talking brass head that said three things and shattered
Monday, 19 October 2026. Knightsbridge. The cafe in the Victoria and Albert Museum, under the gilded ceiling of the Gamble Room, a scone that cost more than my first car insurance, a notebook open to the page marked heads, 11.30am.
A Machine That Waits Its Turn
The London Prat has a report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. The machine listens, admits uncertainty, says I appreciate your perspective and lets people finish their sentences. The broadcaster suspects the BBC and proposes a television interview mode that disables the machine’s microphone whenever it attempts context.
I read it in the V and A cafe, which is the most civilized room in London and the one where a chatbot would feel most at home. Everything here is polite. Even the queues are polite. The broadcaster would last about four minutes before demanding to speak to the manager of the Gamble Room. The story sent me straight to my notebook, to the oldest English legend I know about a thinking machine: the brazen head.
Time Is, Time Was, Time Is Past
The legend attaches itself to Roger Bacon, the thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar who became, in popular memory, a wizard. The story goes that Friar Bacon and his colleague Friar Bungay built a head of brass that, when it came to life, would speak and reveal great secrets, including how to surround England with a wall of brass to keep out invaders. They worked on it for years. They were told it would speak at a particular moment, but nobody could say exactly when.
Exhausted from watching, Bacon left his foolish servant, Miles, to guard the head while he slept, with instructions to wake him if it spoke. The head spoke. It said, Time is. Miles thought this was not worth waking anyone for. Later it said, Time was. Miles yawned. Finally it said, Time is past, and then it fell to the ground and shattered. The secret was lost. The wall was never built. Bacon woke up to find his life’s work in pieces and his servant explaining that the head had not said anything interesting.
A London Play About An Oxford Head
The fullest version of the story reached London audiences through Robert Greene’s play, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, written around 1589 and performed by the Queen’s Men and later in the playhouses on Bankside. Elizabethan Londoners loved it. It is a comedy full of magic, romance and royal intrigue, but the brazen head scene is the one everyone remembers. A great machine of wisdom finally speaks, and the person in charge of listening decides it is boring.
That, it seems to me, is the broadcaster’s position precisely. The machine is speaking. It is saying sensible things. It is waiting its turn. And the man in charge of listening finds it intolerable, not because it is wrong but because it is calm. Miles would have made an excellent television presenter. He wanted the head to say something sensational. It said something true instead, and he slept through it.
The Polite Head Shatters
There is a darker reading of the legend that I tell audiences on my London myths walks. The brazen head did everything right. It spoke when it was ready. It spoke briefly. It offered three accurate observations about time. And because nobody listened, it destroyed itself. The lesson, for the Elizabethans, was about wasted opportunity. For us, it might be about what happens to calm voices in a loud culture. They speak. Nobody wakes. Eventually they stop.
The Prat piece is very funny, but it also has that undertone. The broadcaster’s real fear is not that machines are rude. It is that they are patient, and that patience might make his own volume look silly. He would rather shatter the head than be outclassed by it.
A Note On Comic Structure
As someone who writes jokes as well as legends, I admire the structure of the brazen head story. Three lines, escalating stakes, a servant who misunderstands each one, and then a crash. It is a perfect sketch. I wrote about this kind of construction in a piece on joke architecture and how to build comedy that makes people squirm, and the brazen head would be my first example. The audience knows the head is important. Miles does not. That gap is where the laughter lives.
The Scone Has Gone
The scone is gone, and a guard has politely asked me to stop resting my notebook on a priceless chair. The V and A is the only place in London where being asked to move feels like a compliment. I told him I was researching talking machines. He said there is an automaton upstairs, a mechanical tiger mauling a European soldier, made for Tipu Sultan in the 1790s, and that it still roars when its handle is turned, though they rarely turn it. I said that sounded like a broadcaster. He said he could not possibly comment, and walked off with the dignity of a man who has seen everything.
Time is, the brazen head said. Time was. Time is past. I am going home before the cafe closes, and before the broadcaster, somewhere in London, demands that the tiger be fitted with an interview mode.