¶ Opening Chat
- Mike and Ben were talking about guitars while waiting for Henry.
- Ben offers Mike a tour of the house, as he is 'knocking on the door of 10 o'clock' but is it shoes on or shoes off?
- Ben's opinion is that people who wear outside shoes in the house are animals who shouldn't be allowed access to the NHS. This is Mike, his entire family (one of whom works in the NHS), and Henry's 80-something parents too.
- Mike's policy is any shoes (soiled desert boot, slick wader, ballet shoe, stable moccasins) any where, any time.
- Ben asks a second question despite not asking a first (an unsettling rhetorical move like the secret police or Bullingdon Club might use). More of a proclamation: people with shoes on in bed (on the duve) like in US TV shoes should have the NHS somehow working against their health.
- Pam doesn't take her paws off when she gets into bed. She's on the bed in the room Mike's in right now.
- Mike says it's fine because a dog does it, can't see anything wrong with that, as he's fallen into Ben's rhetoric trap.
- Sniffer humans in airports, martialled by delightful spaniels standing up with the help of callipers.
- Ben's manifesto is being snuck in under the radar: Vote Bonjamin.
- Horses have shoes but should wear slippers indoors (and for the daddy long legs that comes into your bathroom). Crocs for crocs? (Henry thinks this was glib/Ben didn't like it/Mike didn't mind it).
- Henry's argument is that it's fine to wear shoes because he doesn't lick the floor but a dog WILL lick the floor, so Mike will too (that's why the podcast has a fallow month – to allow Mike time to recover).
- The cone Mike has to wear while recovering has amazing acoustics for listening to Rory Stewart (Henry's Rory Stewart impression with Ds instead of Ts, soft consonants, Transatlantic Etonian).
- Rory Stewart = our Obama. Lives the incredible posh man life: Jeddah, Basrah (pronounced Baz-raah), Kuala Lumpur. His catch-ups are incredible / Beans catch-ups are about Ben's Hyundai/Mike's shoes/Henry not getting in touch with his PT.
- Rory Stewart's hobbies: restoring cave paintings in Isrrraaaeeel.
- The Rest Is Politics is huge. Rory Stewart casually lives an incredible life but does he ever tidy his kitchen? Mike takes comfort from taking the bins out (that's why he isn't getting anything done: it takes him 6 days). Ben moves a letter from Virgin Media up the stairs but does Rory Stewart do these things?
- Loud mechanical sound at Henry's end: it's Rory Stewart riding a Man-Drone. Ben asks Henry to shoot him down and Henry shows all the hallmarks of carrying on before finally shutting a window.
- Henry is reminded of the time he left a shirt in a dry cleaner in Edinburgh for a year – Mike picked it up (classic Mike task).
- Silly sausages in Scotland: the lorne (square) sausage. This is the variation in the Full Scottish. Full Welsh has laverbread and Irish has potato farls.
- Something grainy in a lorne sausage: sand.
- Henry in Scottish accent describes a 7-lorne-sausage breakfast given to him by a woman in a cafe who admired him for being 'a bit of a character' and putting up with an 'absolute moustachioed drip'. Mike, in Scottish accent: 'I'd have drowned him by now'. Ben struggles to get into the accent, he needs to lean in. Ben apologises to the people of Scotland.
- Henry's pile of 7 lorne sausages: sheer quantity makes it repulsive. Like Henry's massive omelette, which was an abomination before God. Henry was the Holiday Hero. He starts descriving the whole recipe but stops before going full birthday card anecdote.
- When something is twice as big, it's twice as good: snake bites, tsunamis, bouts of gastroenterisis. You can't have ants that are too big: collapse under its own weight, just like the egg skin of the omelette. Big as an old size 12 shoe (mid-90s Hi-Tec or Jerry Seinfeld white trainer) used for doing toxic old jobs like cleaning out bins. Omlette innards spilled out like an old seal carcass.
- Henry didn't want to be a southern English twat who wouldn't eat the 7 sausages. Another apology to the people of Scotland.
- When Henry was in Hay in a delightful old lady's B&B he had a sudden meat freakout over rancid bacon that had been in her family for years. Ben's meat freakout is: I should be a vegan, this is awful. Henry fed the rancid bacon to the dog along with beans and a cup of tea.
- Henry's second meat freakout: eating a burger at the Porthcawl Elvis gathering. Death-burger era Elvis. Ben went to a gala evening there and suspended disbelief at a corpulent 70s-era Elvis who threw fridge magnets into the crowd with a Bolton accent.
- Henry finishes the 7 lorne sausages story: he popped out to put the sausages in an outside bin.
¶ Topic Chat
- Topic already mentioned earlier (second time that's happened – is it chance?). Ben clarifies that they don't pick the topics, else would they have really picked Pencils? No human mind could get one over on the bean machine. It's as glamourous as a Monte Carlo casino (or an Excel spreadsheet): Shirley Bassey, cappuchino at 7am, pint of coins (more Vegas than Monte Carlo).
- For a pint of coins, the gamblers can donate their spine to the bean machine (public can watch from a viewing platform: v educational for schoolchildren). A Playmobil cowboy was dropped by a schoolchild down one of the bean machine's ducts a few years ago and has become snagged in a sluice sprocket (unreachable). Can only be loosened once every 15(?) years when Halley's comet swings by.
- Henry is over comets. He's had enough of the science of the heavens. Lemon moons. London gas prevents him seeing anything. Ben tried to see the Northern Lights (space snot) in Wales with no luck (his parents saw them out of their bedroom window (or possibly cataracts or an ill seagull coughing on their window)).
- Mike still has the childlike wonder of the heavans if someone points out a planet. Henry can point out Big Bear (saucepan with a long handle).
- What is the connection between Wales & Elvis? Henry finds the Welsh aesthetic and Elvis aesthetic to be similar: mutton chops, gravelly voiced big men, old people (like Blackpool).
- Mike didn't find Elvis to be big in Portsmouth, in the military south, despite Elvis having 'served' (stopped over at Prestwick airport for a square sausage).
- Conspiracy theory that Elvis is Welsh because of the placename Preseli (Presley not Priscilla). His real name might have been Elwyn. Did half the Founding Fathers speak Welsh? Was Bob Marley Welsh?
- Elvis movie was one of the worst films Ben has ever seen and Henry's bête noir is music biopics (a bad genrrrre). Is it bio-pic or biopic? Mike feels the actor thinks "It's Oscar time."/"Watch this." Using an advanced crying technique involving ear snot. Henry's advanced crying technique noises.
- Elton John one is bad. Bohemian Rhapsody was bad.
- Henry thinks being a popstar is a repetitive, boring job with no loo rolls in the dressing rooms and obtrusive smells. Use the Beefeater across the road (that's where Keane go).
- Henry tries to remember Johnny Cash's name and starts with Rod Hull. Johnny Cash became Johnny Cash through 100s of gigs but the biopic clings onto a more interesting narrative (a big bully pushed him over).
- In the Elvis film they pretend that Elvis was at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
- Queen biopic story: Sacha Baron Cohen meets with May & Taylor (Roger from Queen) (John Deacon stayed at home) – they're pro-Brexit with thousands of labradors and involved in local politics. Need to develop a thing like May being the friend of the badger (bloke from Blur into cheese, wine and meteorites). Two hours about Brian May and Patrick Moore and the springboard into his true passion: badgers (Freddie Mercury stuff is just the opening 20 mins). Queen going from strength to strength: bringing out a musical with Ben Elton, being on Newsnight, Roger Taylor going back to dentistry, finishing Better Call Saul.
- When you watch biopics, no one complains about the toilet in Dressing Room 2.
- Scene where someone's in a hotel room with a glass toilet partition: I see a little silhouetto of a man... having a shit... I think he's eaten rancid mango!
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Lawrence has listened to the podcast from the smallest country (not the Vatican City). Listened in both Liechtenstein and San Marino (6th and 5th smallest in the world). He suggests a record for people listening in the Pompidou Centre. Mike's fact: Liechtenstein is double landlocked (that's why it's so safe for banking). Uzbekistan is also double landlocked if the Caspian Sea doesn't count (a bit like Pluto isn't a planet and a tomato is a squat cucumber). Respect issues around listening to the pod in St Peter's Basilica. Henry suggests: Most Relevant Place to Listen to the Podcast as a category (e.g. belly of a whale (Whales), in a bag (Bags), whilst being called Geoffrey/Jeffrey or being at the Geffrye Museum in London (Geoffreys/Jeffreys), in the London Dungeon's cabinet of horrors for the episode about the current Tory party (which they haven't done)). Mike has been to one of the super small countries: Tuvalu (Henry websplains some facts about it) – quite a Rory Stewart thing to say.
- David (of presumably Peterborough, not Agra) emails about listening outside the Taj Mahal – does a little curry house right old jape (what a legend). Bit of fun.
¶ Jingles
- 3:25 – Pam
- 29:24 – Bean Machine
- 40:32 – Digestive Tract Talk
- 49:32 – Crab Bell rung
- 49:51 – Listener Finn's breakcore/jungle/extremely unfaithful email jingle – he's negging the beans with his email – he wants to watch the world burn, or else he does care but he's struggling to express it. As if Banksy did music. Jungle made Mike feel like a 16-year-old out of his depth at a party, wanting to go home. Jungle has too many beats per second. Made Henry feel like he was in a late-90s club, feeling like he didn't belong, wanting to be with the bookish people (even though he struggles with big books, even Asterix) or buying scratchcards. Ben's verdict: just overly sped-up drums.
- 56:27 – Satire
- 59:30 – Patreon
¶ Notable Quotes
- It's fine, because a dog does it.
- A dog will lick the floor; I will lick the floor.
- It's my mini sepsis sabbatical.
- Mike's fantastically dull, he'll probably do this for me.
- I wish I could be a silly sausage like that and not a completely straight down the middle sausage. A solemn sausage.
- You'll never guess what they found him doing in the toilet: he was lapping from the bowl, and I said "what are you doing" and he said "if a dog does it, I do it".
- Now it's time for you to meet my meat trowel.
- No one should have made an omelette this big! Who do I think I am? God?
- A toxic-tasks trainer.
- You've taken everything else from this country. You may as well have seven lorne sausages!
- I shall tell my seven bairns tonight there'll be no links for them, for the English have taken it!
- Seven for the seven men of the MacDonald clan who fell at your hand at Bannockburn!
- Is there something rotten in the state of Bonjamin's entrails?
- Oh! It's a Lemon Moon!
- I can point out Big Bear. / Everyone can point out Big Bear. / Big Bear. I can point out Big Bear. Can you do Big Bear? / Everyone can do that.
- The biopicky ding-dong with whatshischops.
- This is beautiful. Keep going. More mucus.
- Keane were in here last week and they really did a number on that place.
- We're pretty sure there isn't a Roy Keane in Keane.
- Freddie Mercury is the inciting incident for a passion play about a man and his love for the badger.
- Is there an Asterix book club?
- I was websplaining you.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- 3D Print Your Own Mug Night (31 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Mary Ellen's Brazilian version (uh-oh, same tune as used previously in Dentists)