Ventilated Hats and Pease Pudding

The Professor was in a pensive but loquacious frame of mind recently following a particularly agreeable game of pitch penny in Wickham Skeith. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when, once again, Arthur 'Toad-in-the-Hole' Shellbottom was declared Champion Pitcher and Foremost Penny Ruminator. 

Taking a long draught from his pint of Dringey Forplaint Special Ale, the Professor began his solemn tale:

“Shellbottom's great-grandfather was the principal reason that my own ancestor became an academic and funambulist. The two men were great rivals in the hatting business, vying for the role of principal supplier of doubtful hats to the Federation of Minor Cricket Umpires and Croquet Mallet Makers. My great-grandfather thought he had the edge on his opponent with his use of the finest gutta-percha in his much-admired, multicoloured trilbies. But there was no way he could compete with Shellbottom's development of a range of ventilated hats named after British politicians of the 18th century. Shellbottom's Pelham-Holles was a triumph of the hatter's art, which has never been equalled and, at the time, was sold together with a complimentary bowl of the finest pease pudding.”