Zapp! English Colloquial Podcast 3.20 - Crime & Punishment
Taught by Katie Wood — Cambridge CELTA · Cambridge DELTA · Cambridge-accredited Teacher Trainer
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
"OK, so I'm in the park again with Donnie." That's how this one starts, and within a minute Katie is warning listeners about two words for the police that they might hear on television but should never say themselves. Donnie gets both, then can't resist: "Can you smell bacon?" From there it's ten colloquial expressions about crime and punishment, guessed live, with a beer break by the end — because, as Katie admits, it's very hot in this park.
What you'll hear in this episode
Katie describes an expression; Donnie has to guess it. No list, no script — just definitions, hints and the occasional dead end.
They start with the police. Donnie offers cops first, "which I think is generally accepted as…as fine", then works his way to the filth and, prompted by Katie's clue that the next one is "an animal", to the pigs. He adds a claim about where it came from: "this word comes from…erm…California, it comes from Oakland in the nineteen sixties", via The Black Panther party. Katie's reaction is honest — "I didn't know that's where that came from."
The pig noise leads neatly into to squeal, and Donnie invents a neighbour selling copied DVDs to explain it. Then a crook, to be nicked, the nick, and caught red-handed — where Donnie widens the scope from shoplifting to being caught by a husband or wife, and Katie adds parents catching a child.
In the second half, Katie tries to sell Donnie some suspiciously cheap CDs. He guesses dodgy before she supplies the classic: they fell off the back of a lorry. "Did they really fall off the back of a lorry?" "Probably not." Donnie calls it "an interesting euphemism in English". They finish with a slap on the wrist, to get away with murder (Donnie first tries "to get off Scot free", which Katie accepts as correct but not what she wanted), I could murder a beer and daylight robbery — which, Donnie suggests, is so shameless "they don't even wait until night".
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.20 |
| Pack | Colloquial 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 16 minutes 05 seconds |
| Recorded | in the park |
| Speakers | Katie and Donnie |
What you'll learn
The obvious gain is ten expressions you'll meet constantly in British crime drama, news reports and everyday complaints about prices. The less obvious gain is register. Katie is careful about it throughout: some of these words are fine with anyone, some need a friend, and two of them she flatly tells you not to use. That's a distinction textbooks often skip, and getting it wrong in real conversation is embarrassing.
You'll also hear how a native speaker hunts for a phrase in real time. Donnie doesn't produce answers cleanly — he thinks aloud, asks "can you give me a clue?", asks for the first letter, and offers a near-miss before landing on the target. Following that process trains you to tolerate hesitation and half-finished sentences, which is what real listening actually involves.
There's a nice grammatical detail too: get away with takes with, not from, and murder here has nothing to do with killing anyone. "I could murder a beer" means you want one badly; "he gets away with murder" means he's never punished. Same word, two idioms, neither literal. Katie checks this explicitly — "if I get away with murder, does it really mean I killed someone?"
The expressions, with the workbook's own definitions
The glossary rates each item 1, 2 or 3 for how informal it is. Level 3 means: don't use this with your mother-in-law.
- cops (1) / the filth (3) / pigs (3) – names for the police (The second two are VERY OFFENSIVE – do not use them).
- to be caught red-handed (1) – to be caught while you are in the middle of doing something wrong.
- to be nicked / the nick (2) – to be arrested / the police station.
- to squeal (1) – to get someone into trouble by telling somebody that they did something wrong.
- a crook (1) – a criminal, a dishonest person.
- it fell off the back of a lorry (2) – it is stolen.
- daylight robbery (1) – very expensive.
- I could murder... (1) – I really, really want...
- to get away with something / murder (1) – to do something naughty but receive no punishment.
- a slap on the wrist (1) – a very small punishment, more to show people you are being punished than to actually punish you.
- dodgy (1) – not right or correct, maybe illegal.
What's in the workbook
The unit follows the same shape as the audio. After a short introduction on using colloquial language with friends but not in formal situations, you get the full transcript of both conversations with Donnie, then two Meaning and Pronunciation sections that quiz you on what you remember and give you model sentences to repeat after the beep — "Oi – you're nicked", "All she got was a slap on the wrist", "I'm starving, I could murder some chips".
The Extra Materials contain the rated glossary above plus two exercises. Practice Exercise 1 is a matching task: six sentence halves to join, including "I'm so thirsty, I could" and "He couldn't say he didn't do it - they". Practice Exercise 2 gives you five sentences with the idioms slightly broken — "They caught him with red hands", "That's daytime robbery!" — and asks you to correct them, which is a sharper test than it looks. Full answers are printed at the end.
This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, €39 for every episode and every PDF.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the conversation scripted?
No. Katie and Donnie's exchanges are unscripted, which is why Donnie stalls, asks for clues and jokes about bacon. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Are these expressions safe to use?
Most are. Two are not: Katie explicitly warns against the filth and the pigs, and the workbook glossary marks both as level 3. Learn them for recognition only.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
No — the English conversations work on their own. The workbook helps if you want the transcript, the rated glossary and the two written exercises.
What level is this?
It's a Level 3 Colloquial unit, from the Colloquial 3 pack.
How long is it?
Just over sixteen minutes, including both guessing conversations and both pronunciation drills.
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