A caller is on the line. And Elis James, a comic who hosts a podcast and radio show, is bracing for the ultimate test of his Welsh identity.
The clock is set. In 60 seconds or less, live on the radio, can he find someone he knows in common with the Welsh caller?
He fires off the first question: “Age and school?”
He knows he can do it: Wales, a proudly chatty nation with fewer than 3.2 million people, is a place of small towns, big personalities and deep cultural ties.
The bit has made Mr. James, who is 45 and grew up in a small Welsh town, something of a household name in his country: He’s the guy who made a game out of Wales’ unofficial national pastime of sifting through friends and teachers, colleagues and cousins to find common connections.
He almost always starts with his subject’s age and school because that allows him to identify their hometowns, and he has an uncanny recall of where people attended. He loops through community institutions — the choir, a popular bar, maybe the fan group around the local soccer team. He throws out names of local extroverts — a pub owner, a legendary teacher or a local chatterbox.
As he plays, the clock ticks down.
Amazingly, about half the time, Mr. James can flip through his personal Rolodex of Wales and find a connection. And over the radio waves, the world gets a little smaller as he and a caller start reminiscing about someone they both know.
That’s a good day. But if he can’t connect?
“I feel like I’ve let my country down,” he said, laughing.
Either way, the bit has led some to wonder: Is there something about Wales that makes this kind of sorting possible? And what does his game say about how people connect?
Yet Another ‘Cymru Connection’
It all started on the comedy radio show that Mr. James co-hosts twice a week on the BBC. He would chat — really chat — when someone from Wales called, often derailing the show.
Amazingly, it wasn’t annoying. In fact, it was a hit with listeners.
The show’s team found it crazy — and entertaining. In 2024, the bit was born. They called it “Cymru Connections,” (which is pronounced KUM-ree, the Welsh name for Wales). People were hooked.
John Robins, his co-host, usually starts: “Can our Welsh hero, Elis James, connect with a fellow country person in 60 seconds?”
By now, Mr. James is often actually sweating.
All he knows is that there’s a Welsh caller on the line — usually, he doesn’t even know their first name.
The clock begins. And he’s hot out of the gate with his customary first question.
“Age and school?”
This particular caller, named Sam, was 36. He lives in Penarth, a small town in the Cardiff suburbs, which is a bit of a blind spot for Mr. James.
Still, immediately, Mr. James throws out a name. Nope. Alas.
He moves on to hobbies. What about football?
“Do you follow Cardiff City?” Yeah.
Oh, good. Mr. James knows a memorable, longtime fan: “Do you know Handsome Dan Tyte?”
No.
Half the time has passed. Mr. James is getting desperate. He names a local nightclub, but that produces little, and then asks about
a leader at a local recreational soccer arena.
Probably, the caller says.
But that’s not good enough — it’s got to be a real connection. With six seconds left, Mr. James makes his last play, reaching into the music scene.
“What about John Rostron, who puts gigs on in Cardiff?”
Yes!
Mr. James throws his head back, triumphant, his hands over his eyes. With only three seconds left, he found a connection and made it through another day without disappointing the entire nation.
It also worked out for “Handsome Dan Tyte,” who said in an email: “Being mentioned on Cymru Connection drew more messages from old friends than the birth of my son.”
‘We Just Love to Chat’
Mr. James grew up in Carmarthen, a town of about 15,000, thought to be the oldest town in Wales. Its houses hug the ruins of a castle that is believed to date to about 1100.
Even as young as 4 he was an uncanny mimic. He did a convincing Margaret Thatcher impression, and he could do imitations in both English and Welsh, which the family spoke at home.
He has performed standup at an annual Welsh festival of literature, performance and dance called the Eisteddfod, which has long been a center of cultural life and drew 175,000 attendees last year.
He went to college in Cardiff and then got a master’s degree in Welsh history.
“He’s always had a passion for Welsh history, Welsh politics,” said his mother, Nesta James. “Just Wales itself, really.”
He writes about Welsh soccer, occasionally for the Guardian, travels with friends for away games and is especially revered among die-hards for his collection of retro soccer shirts.
Despite his love of Wales, he now lives in London with his wife and two children. Mostly, that’s because London is the hub of the British entertainment culture, and his wife, Isy Suttie, is also a comedian.
But, he said, there are other reasons, too. He wouldn’t want his kids to become conceited, he said. And they might, if they grew up in Wales with him as their dad.
In London, he’s just a guy. But in Wales, he’s a stop-on-the-street celebrity: When he was in Cardiff, the capital, last fall to watch Wales take on Belgium in a World Cup qualifier, strangers kept greeting him as if they already knew him.
He finds connections with Welsh people wherever he goes.
That, perhaps, he learned from his mother.
Recently, she said, a man asked her for directions in a train station. Within minutes, they were swapping stories about her cousins, who happened to be his friends from home.
“It’s such a Welsh thing, I think, to start a conversation with people you don’t know,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think it’s being nosy. I think it’s more being friendly.”
‘A Community of Communities’
Of course, playing this game is not just a Welsh thing: some Irish know it simply as “the Game.” Some Jews call it “Jewish Geography.” It’s so common in New Zealand that a telecom provider made a commercial off the idea.
But this sort of so-and-so-sifting may be especially easy to do in Wales, experts said, because of the close communities and the value placed on preserving Welsh culture and language through events, sports and competitions.
In southern Wales, many small towns were formed around coal mines and factories, Mr. James said, and some community institutions — like choirs, charities and soccer teams — often have their roots in groups formed by mining families who needed to rely on each other to survive.
“There’s this idea of Wales of being a community of communities,” said Rhys Jones, a professor at Aberystwyth University in Wales.
‘You Don’t Know Peter By-the-Way?’
In October, Mr. James took the bit on the road to Swansea, Wales’s second biggest city.
There, he managed to connect with three people in 60 seconds, although he did stop the clock a few times to interrogate audience members — and couldn’t quite remember the last names he needed.
It started with a 59-year-old man from his hometown, Camarthen. High stakes. “Do you know Peter By-the-Way?”
No, the man said. Mr. James stopped the clock.
“You’re 59, you don’t know Peter By-the-Way?” Mr. James pressed. “He’s called Peter and he says ‘By-the-Way’ a lot.” No luck.
“That is absolutely extraordinary,” he said.
The clock restarted. He got a connection on the next ask.
Then, they kept going. Mr. James asked if he knew someone called Simon Chunks — also a nickname — “whose mother puts pineapple on salad?”
Also a no. But it didn’t matter. They had already connected.
The post Does This Radio Host Really Know Everyone in Wales? appeared first on New York Times.
