Identify This Mysterious Beast

Cafe Society
1

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I’ve been listening to old episodes of BBC Radio’s “News Quiz”. In particular, I’ve been listening to stuff from 1998. In a recent episode (March 28th of that year) they were using a word I couldn’t identify to refer to some sort of animal I couldn’t recognize.

The news story was of a fishmonger, Mr. Hogg, who was attacked in his shop by a ten-stone (this may be an exaggeration, I’m not sure) creature which they referred to as a “Congareel” or some similar sounding word. I’ve never heard of this animal.

Several alternate spellings have turned up nothing in Google, and searching for the news story in question has been no help either.

Does anyone know what a “Congareel” is? Or possibly a Congrille, Kongreel, Conkril, etc…

I feel I’m missing a joke.

Thanks,
thwartme

2

Conger eel, They do get pretty damn big.

3

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=Wkq&resnum=0&q=conger+eel&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
And look like this.

4

That’s one big damned eel…

5

This site has info about the weights of various conger eels caught; 10 stone (140 lbs) would seem to be more than any line-caught one, but well within the maximum for a commercially (I assume they mean with a net) caught one.

6

Any truth to the rumor that the Congareel in question was heard to exclaim, “I’m not quite dead yet!”?

7

I thought a “Conga Reel” was a curious type of hybrid South American-Irish social dance.

8

Hah! Did you hear the episode? Part of the story was that Mr. Hogg thought it was dead, and was rather surprised when, upon approaching it, it tried to attack him.

Thanks so much for the responses. You know, trying it as two words never occurred to me. Silly.

Thanks,
thwartme