6 Minute English ? British Broadcasting Corporation 2012 Page 1 of 4 bbclearningenglish.com 

 Jennifer: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Jennifer and with me today is Rob. 

Rob: Hello there. 

Jennifer: Now, Rob, are you a fan of roast chicken? 

Rob: Definitely. There’s nothing better than a lovely roast chicken on a Sunday, with all the trimmings, of course! 

Jennifer: Indeed. The trimmings are the foods that accompany the chicken. Here in the UK, people traditionally eat roast potatoes and vegetables with their chicken, as well as stuffing. 

Rob: Stuffing is a mixture of breadcrumbs and herbs which is stuffed, or pushed, inside the roast chicken. And it is delicious! 

Jennifer: Well, you might be surprised to learn that today’s story is about stuffing roast chickens with something rather different… But first, a quiz question, I think! 

Rob: It wouldn’t be 6 Minute English without a quiz question, would it? 

Jennifer: Here goes. The chicken is thought to be the closest living relative to an extinct species - that’s a species which no longer exists, or has died out. Now, which species is it? 

a) The dodo 

b) The tyrannosaurus rex 

c) The pterodactyl 

Rob: Well I’m going to say the dodo, because it looks a bit like a chicken. 

Jennifer: As usual, we’ll find out if you’re right at the end of the programme. Let’s return to our story now, which is all about a failed attempt at drug smuggling in Nigeria. 

Rob: Hang on! I thought you said today’s programme was about stuffing roast chickens? 

Jennifer: It is. Our story is about a Nigerian man, living in Brazil, who was struggling to earn a decent living. 

Rob: So, in other words, he didn’t earn a lot of money. 

Jennifer: The man had been working as a mechanic in Brazil, but decided he could earn more money if he smuggled drugs to sell back in his native country of Nigeria. 

Rob: If you smuggle goods in or out of a country, you bring them in without the authorities’ knowledge. Drug smuggling is, of course, illegal. 

Jennifer: Let’s listen to the first part of a report by BBC correspondent Leana Hosea. How did the mechanic try to smuggle drugs into Nigeria? 

Insert 

A Nigerian mechanic has been caught by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Lagos airport, Nigeria, attempting to smuggle $150,000 worth of cocaine in roast chickens. Investigators say they found over 2.5kg of the unusual stuffing, wrapped up in tin foil, egg-shaped packages. 

Rob: So that’s where the roast chickens come in. The mechanic tried to conceal, or hide, the cocaine inside the chickens. 

Jennifer: He was very inventive, or creative, as he hid the drugs in egg-shaped 

packages. 

Rob: It’s certainly risky, though. So why did he try to bring $150,000 worth of drugs into Nigeria? 

Jennifer: Well, it seems he had a plan for the money. Here’s the second part of Leana Hosea’s report: listen out for what he planned to do with the money. 

Insert 

They called it a remarkable seizure, saying they never expected to find thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs in roast chickens. The suspect had flown in from Brazil, where he had been allegedly struggling to make a decent living for years. A spokesman for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency says this was the suspect's retirement plan, and he had been hoping to start a business with the drug sales. 

Rob: The money was part of the man’s retirement plan. A retirement plan is something you arrange to do when you retire, or stop working. It often involves saving lots of money. 

Jennifer: He wanted to start a business, but the drugs were seized, or taken, by authorities before he got the chance. 

Rob: We also heard in the report that the seizure of the drugs was remarkable, or unusual, because the authorities didn’t expect so many drugs to be hidden. 

Jennifer: Smugglers are using increasingly imaginative ways to conceal their drugs. 

Rob: Recently the Nigerian authorities have found drugs hidden in the lining of suitcases, in wigs and even in a doctor’s stethoscope! 

Jennifer: Let’s listen to the final part of the report now. What are the Nigerian authorities using to help spot the drug carriers? 

Insert 

Nigeria is a major transit point for drugs, but the authorities have made efforts to improve security after a Nigerian man was discovered on a plane to Detroit, attempting to explode a bomb in his underpants three years ago. The Nigerian authorities say airport body scanners have helped identify more than one hundred drug carriers last year. 

Rob: The authorities have used body scanners to help spot the drug smugglers. Body scanners are machines which can detect whether you are carrying any illegal substances. 

Jennifer: It’s really an ongoing battle, but they are trying to improve security, particularly at airports. 

Rob: Thankfully the drugs hidden inside the chickens did not make it into the country this time. 

Jennifer: Indeed. Now, speaking of chickens, we need to wrap up the quiz before the end of the programme. The chicken is the closest relative to an extinct species. Is it: 

a) The dodo 

b) The Tyrannosaurus Rex 

c) The Pterodactyl 

Rob: I said the dodo - am I right? 

Jennifer: You were actually wrong I’m afraid, but good reasoning! The chicken is actually the closest living relative of the gigantic and terrifying dinosaur, the tyrannosaurus rex! 

Rob: I’ll never look at a chicken, or eat a chicken, in the same way again! 

Jennifer: We’ve just got time to recap some of the vocabulary we’ve heard in today’s programme. 

Rob: The words we heard were: 

stuffing 

extinct 

smuggle 

conceal 

inventive 

retirement plan 

seized 

remarkable 

Jennifer: Join us again for more 6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.com. Bye for now! 

Vocabulary and definitions stuffing savoury mixture of herbs and breadcrumbs, traditionally served with roast meat 

extinct no longer in existence 

smuggle bring something into a country without declaring it 

conceal hide 

inventive creative 

retirement plan arrangements you make for after you stop working (often financial) 

seized taken 

remarkable unexpected, unusual