¶ Opening Chat
- Straight in with what the people want: Henry's Beefcake Journey.
- Henry tells us it's all about commitment. Absolutely hasn't done any press-ups, but commitment is 99% of what he is (plus the other 1%). Financial commitment. There's one 'i' in commitment.
- The Beefmaster has quads where most people have hot dinners.
- Henry's email from the Beefmaster: Checking in (to the beef hotel).
- Last thing Henry needs: set-up emails (that's what he's going to the gym to get away from).
- The Beefmaster must wonder if Henry is a gym daemon or a vending machine auditor.
- New podcast: "I'm Ghosting My Personal Trainer".
- Henry is playing a deadly game of cat and mouse / just impoverishing a mouse.
- Ben posits that the Beefmaster might be having his self esteem destroyed by Henry not turning up.
- Mike thinks the Beefmaster reckons he's bagged another one of the legion who pay and don't turn up.
- Or, the Beefmaster thinks Henry is dead and the email ensures his hands are clean. An alibi email.
- Who are the sessions bequeathed to if Henry dies? Like Audible credits, they are Henry's assets now.
- Henry's in the potential zone/sweet spot. He's got Schrödinger's bod but aiming for racehorse with huge flaring nostrils and utterly terrified eyes, plus turd-caked tail and compostable dung. Not in the running for stud. Could aim and miss but still hit shirehorse. A Shetland pony has done too much hot yoga: dehydrated, dessicated.
- Henry has put on half a stone of pure beef since the last ep and now his trousers are strangers to him. Cupboarded the trousers, moved to shorts, and now he's in a beach towel. A self-help plan Henry could sign up to: just get some new trousers.
- The main advert on the "I'm Ghosting My Personal Trainer" podcast is for Henry's Trouser Sommelier Service.
- Henry's email reply to the Beefmaster will be titled "The Tyranny of Trousers" and that might be the domino that brings the whole PT industry crashing down.
¶ Topic Chat
- Topic submitted by PoPo. The Beans wonder if they are THE PoPo (the rozzers, the fuzz, the filth (if you're a fictional East End gangster)). Mike posits that 'the fuzz' is from their old-style fuzzy helmets (possibly rich bollocking material but a bollocking will only be accepted from a serving officer). To pee in said helmet, you must be at least 30 weeks pregnant and facing east.
- Henry wonders about illustration and visual reference points: often these are outdated, old-fashioned, like the police hemlmet shape, which Ben imagines in the context of the Poll Tax Riot and truncheoning in Trafalgar Square. Chin strap allows the helmet to stay on whilst truncheoning. Deeply phallocentric, especially with the large, round, testicle-shaped boots (hairy boots give the name "the fuzz"). Kids books like "The Cock and Balls of Justice are Coming to Get You" used these illustrations. Modern police cap is generic, no character. They wear Batman-style utility belts full of non-fatal, useless tools in the eyes of non-Brits, but used enough, they will eventually kill someone.
- Ben wishes to shout-out all the Bobbies out there keeping us safe: Robert Peston, Robert Page/Plant, Robert Llewellyn, Robert Mugabe (RIP).
- A phone is another image where our brain hooks on to the old version. Henry trained to draw the old Bakelite phone with a rolling dial. A phone is now just slightly rounded rectangles, as is everything (including Ben's face, head, torso, arms, legs and bean machine) in the touchscreen world.
- Mike's reassuring AI idea: Because Chat GPT etc learn from public data, they're learning from a lot of guff, plus they're not quite there yet, so they generate a lot of guff too, which they add to the guffosphere, the guff pool, which keeps growing, until increasingly sophisticated AI actually turn into absolute guffmonsters that can't do anything and understand nothing (except destroy humanity at the flick of an AND gate = ERASE ALL). An AI-generated screenplay gone wrong could result in this, unless Andie MacDowell is cast (second mention of Andie in two episodes).
- Henry is an expert in pencils but wants to know what the hoi polloi/amateur thinks about them.
- Mike has used a pencil in the last week: to fill out a crossword in bed (to avoid a biro not working while lying down). Ben and Henry are flabbergasted by this being Mike's big Saturday night. Ben wonders if Mike wishes he had the Fisher Space Pen. Mike wishes he could have got more clues right. The pencil/pen became a moot point. He affects to do the cryptic/wants to be seen as someone who does – classic myth-making. Should have been recruited by GCHQ (or has he?). Ben is Tech No. 1 – the next tech heavy hitter like Bezos or Musk, in his penis-shaped rocket.
- Ben in a Congressional Committee would cry and shit himself and admit that Three Bean Salad was just a Ponzi scheme and The Sean Bean Lounge was fictional – Stop Press! The Bean Markets go crazy, international shipping grinds to a halt and Putin invades Spain.
- Ben last used a pencil in Ikea (tiny one). He bought (in 2023!) a CD rack (for Blur and Elastica CDs?) and listened to the Best of Jeff Beck (Henry doesn't like the way this is going). CDs perfect for listening to in Hyundai i10.
- The Hyundai i10 has been sitting outside Ben's house for 6 weeks now – a smelly extra room, waiting for nature to take it. Henry likes to think Ben is driving around Cardiff with the CD rack in the passenger seat. The Hyundai is now an outdoor toilet. The Year 13 yearbook doubted Ben but look at him now. Couple of rolls of TP on the handbrake. Gearstick as toilet brush. Don't have to pretend to drive when taking a shit, cos you're actually in a car. Self-misting once you get started. If only there was a sunroof, could stand up to piss.
- Henry misunderstands that Thames Water doesn't serve the whole of the UK. Very London-centric/myopic outlook from HP but he thinks the Thames is a brand more than a river.
- Ben's new car from his partner's mother: shares image with Henry and Mike – a metallic-blue convertible. Mike disappointed because of the Slovakian number plate; he was hoping for a back-story. Henry can see Lovejoy pulling up in this car. Ben's MIL driving it = "I bloody earned this treat" / Ben driving it = "please throw baked beans as I go past". 2006 Saab 9-3 convertible. Henry predicts expensive problems from Day 1. Ben loves it. V. enjoyable despite diesel engine sounding like a tractor. If Cardiff brings in ULEZ scheme, the car will need to be turned into a cube by the council. Need to drive around explaining as you go "I'm not actually like this...". Explanation blasting out instead of guitar music. Filling it up = all the 9s. Ben has up to now had a long and successful relationship with a dependable, loving, kind, budget, sexually conservative, South Korean girlfriend. Now going out with an elderly Swedish lady who only drinks diesel, whose CD player doesn't work and whose AC needs "regassing" but you can lift the top of her head off when it's sunny. To drive the i10 uphill, need an MC Escher system of illusions or only drive on the flat, in the low countries.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- From Roz re insulting birthday cards: "Time for some botox, you baggy-faced trollop" – what is that card for exactly? Roz is going off to uni, the Beans wish her luck and feel quite jealous. Ben would arrive at uni in a Saab 9-3 convertible to Fresher's Week. Advice: friends made in the first week will not be friends later in life. Henry's first week of uni: stayed in and listened to Radio 4 – he missed the pairing off and making love in a vat of lager stage. Henry reminds them that Roz didn't ask for advice (beware of old men giving advice: the Socratic Paradox). The Beans test that paradox (if you know that you know nothing, you then know something, so it's impossible to know nothing) as hard as they can every week. Ben's greatest regret: didn't do sport at uni, have Wednesday off and play badminton with people your own age (hot bodminton). Playing badminton is acceptable as a student or at Olympic level. Is badminton just another banjo? Henry's advice: now is the time to pretend you like jazz (Mike doesn't think that's true).
- Tom has a new baby and listens to the Beans during night feeds, resulting in the Kerrigan's jingle being in his head and sung while playing with his 3-year-old. Now the 3-year-old sings it in bed, in the supermarket, screaming at others in the park. Ben has a singular talent for creating earworms. Perhaps the Beans should retrospectively create Kerrigan's mustard: the first condiment that started with a jingle. Water-cooler telly when they present the jar of Kerrigan's to the child in 20 years' time as a grown man and he bursts into tears.
- Notice: Mike reminds the listener that the live shows from the London Podcast Festival have streaming tickets still available. The Beans warn that the 4:30 Sunday show will be 'dogshit' and 'a complete waste of time'.
¶ Jingles
- 0:12 – Henry's Beefcake Journey
- 14:13 – Bean Machine
- 41:14 – Emails
- 51:46 – Theological correction accepted (first time)
- 52:57 – Kerrigan's (excerpt only)
- 57:27 – Patreon
¶ Bollockings
- Dan writes with a theological correction (as a pastor, he doesn't like to use the B word): the whale in the Jonah story was actually a big fish. Henry posits that when the Bible was written it was before people knew whales weren't fish, so 'big fish' might have been a whale.
¶ Notable Quotes
- Henry, are you a terrifying beefcake yet?
- The Beefmaster. Señor Beef. Don Beefio. The Pec Wrangler. The Great Barrier Beef.
- A horse with a six-pack.
- A shirehorse is a racehorse that's got over-beefed and not had a haircut for a few years: a 'roid-horse.
- Increasingly, my trousers are just absolute strangers to me.
- Some kind of trouser sommelier?
- Don't dress for the body you want. Wear the trousers you need.
- If you're listening and you're an East End gangster, why not get in touch: What do you call the Metropolitan Police Service?
- The truncheon is glistening and bejewelled with the teeth of lefties.
- Hairy bollock Commie-beaters. Pinko whoppers.
- A police officer, in silhouette, down an alley, should look like a ginormous cock and balls ... of justice.
- The guffosphere is growing.
- Is Henry Paker dating Andie MacDowell? Let's let the internet play with that and see where it goes.
- Mike, your life is led at such a slow pace, there's a genuine risk of gravity pulling ink out of a biro.
- This whole venture is a propaganda machine for me.
- Blimmin' heck, Ben, what are you putting on a CD rack?
- Look at me now! Listening to CDs and shitting in a car!
- You thought the whole country was on Thames Water? You disgust me!
- You're going to need to buy a reconditioned fighter jet in order to get parts for it.
- BP in a drop-top, the bean machine trailing out of the back, like some 'Just Married' cans on a string.
- www.itsnotwhatyouthinkshittinginani10.com
- "So it's not MOTed?" Boop. Straight off again.
- Eventually me, Bozza, Wozza, Dr Nodge and the Bastard Brigade (and Scrappy the dog) became absolute "Oi, Oi, Oi" legends.
- Stick to your jazz truth.
- All babies are new.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- A quiet one: the "dressed as a sailor" sleepover (23 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- James from Manchester – goes back to the F Flat discussion from last year – he has reharmonised the theme tune to include an F Flat – played on a cello. Includes some 'carpeccio' music theory discussion from Henry after the tune has been played.