¶ Opening Chat
- In-between zone of October: how many layers?
- Ultimate outfit: naked in a semi-transparent, self-lubricating balloon with your head smacking off the pavement.
- Body temperature is 37 (just right to slow-cook a lamb) so shouldn't 37 be the ideal ambient temperature?
- Gok Wan's "How To Look Good Naked" opened the saloon doors for nudey shows and raised middle-aged women's confidence. The husbands would be scared and bewildered and wondering about constitutional implications.
- Ben poses to show Mike and Henry how Gok's ladies would be diplayed. Not his first calendar shoot. That was "The Rondda Lads of 97: Lads o' the Valley" where what you think is a baby goat is actually his perineal horn. End of series, bottom of the barrel content.
- Era of those 'empowering' shows included 'How Old Do You Think I Am?' – carbon dating ballbags. Invasive cosmetic surgery.
- Mike brings up carports for the second week in a row. Is he jonesing for one?
- Mike thinks a carport is just a parking space/another word for a drive (cos a drive is too grand thanks to Downton Abbey (not Keeping Up Appearances)) / Ben thinks it needs a roof to be a carport.
- Henry at a wedding talked to someone who leased a car parking space using an app. Henry's wedding chat is a Venn diagram of Chopin, Chagall and Seagal.
- Henry claims to be a people pleaser because of his upbringing, as opposed to just saying 'Boring!'. He could have said 'Fanjambo' to the boring wedding guest.
- Henry's terrible present from his uncle: beige fishing waistcoat/gilet with millions of pockets. For fishing in the morning/snooker in the evening – perfect Midlands holiday.
- Henry feels the emotion like a great actor, whether it's loving a fishing waistcoat or being deeply fascinated by a parking app. So, looking back, he still feels the emotion, but was he just pretending? And what is truth? What is real?
- The Beans role-play the wedding chat with Mike as the boring provincial man and Henry as Henry, until Henry is thrown by the word 'Berlingo'. Ben plays a man working at the wedding, letting Mike and Henry know about the chocolate fountain being out of action. Sean Bean also attends, playing the part of an Australian with the name Sean Bean / Terence (Terry) Biosystem who provides more info about the chocolate fountain being hooked up to the toilets ("those aren't profiteroles").
¶ Topic Chat
- Beach Boys-esque singing goes a bit Russian monk.
- Ben's friend Gareth listened to the Complete Works of the Beach Boys (he likes a project and previously ticked off every EU country (not city) between 2016 and 2020) and told Ben about a really bad 90s album written by Mike Love about hitting the beach as an old man.
- Henry doesn't think lampooning songs is funny, while he proceeds to lampoon 'Help Me Rhonda'.
- 'Summer in Paradise' is the Beach Boys' low point. Mike feels sorry for Mike Love (cos of the Mikes Union?). Track listing: 1. "Hot Fun in the Summertime" (Help me Rhonda, I'm wearing too many layers); 2. "Surfin'" (Help me Rhonda, I can't find the G); 3. "Summer of Love" (ChatGPT all the way); 4. "Island Fever"; 5. "Still Surfin'"; 6. "Slow Summer Dancin' (One Summer Night)" (didn't leave the 'g' out of 'night'); 7. "Strange Things Happen" (the first non-summery/beachy title); 8. "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" (cover); 9. "Lahaina Aloha" (cod-Hawaiian); 10. "Under the Boardwalk" (another cover, they've stopped trying); 11. "Summer in Paradise", 12. "Forever".
- They recorded all their songs while surfing, hence the 'oo-wee-oo-oo' noises.
- Do the songs need to be about something? An album about recording an album would be really interesting to Henry (Track 1 is called "Track 1").
- Back at the wedding: Ben is the boring parking man and Henry is the challenging music man.
- The Beach Boys are conservative with a small c. Friends with George Bush.
- Henry uses ChatGPT to come up with 10 new names for Beach Boys songs: Tack 1: "Sunset Serenade"; Track 2: "Wave Whispers; Track3: "Sandcastle Dreams" (poignant because the castle gets washed away like the lost innocence of childhood); Track 4: "Tidal Harmony" (title for Ben and Mike's tide times side project); Track 5: "Breezy Bliss" (dodgy B&B on the Isle of Wight or a lip balm from Claire's Accessories); Track 6: "Surfside Symphony" (cover of the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" in a surf style?); Track 7: "Seaside Reverie" (dreadful); Track 8: "Coral Carnival" (Pixar movie's DVD scene names, Henry's skipping through trying to find the blue bits and battle scenes or straight to the end of Finding Nemo where they find Nemo); Track 9: "Aquatic Melodies" (aquatic is a functional word); Track 10: "Coastal Carousel" (thesaurus all the way).
- Henry then asks ChatGPT for 200 more. Skip to the end. Mike suggests "wet humming". Track 11 is "Mango Tango Shore". No. 77: "Ocean Odyssey Overture". No. 150: "Saltwater Serenity".
- Ben asks ChatGPT for a song that the comedian Mike Wozniak could sing with The Beach Boys: "Surfin' the Standup Wave" – out in time for Christmas. "Salty Samba": Patrick Swayze's first movie that he won't talk about.
- Surfin' is cool but paddleboarding isn't cool. Very big in Devon though. Keeps the coastguard busy. Henry sees it as a metaphor for the futility of life. Okay for kids though. It's all about the kit and the special straps and not spending time with the family while technically spending time with the family: "Leave me alone in the garage while I'm doing it, please".
- The coastguard tries to return the middle-aged men but the bribery starts: herring, haddock, mackerel, pre-cooked prawns from M&S (hoping to get them to reproduce in a late-night sex revue / Punch and Judy show in the day).
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Possible winner for the geographical records section: Lucien in Tanzania has recently scaled Kilimanjaro while listening to Particles. Free-standing mountain, like a drawing of a mountain. Higher than Everest base camp? Lucien is at 5895m vs Everest Base Camp, which is 5364m. Ben shares a photo of Lucien with Mike and Henry.
- David emails: he also listened at 5895m for he too ascended Kilimanjaro. Who is taller, David or Lucien?
- Jossu emails: left from Bremen to climb Mount Kilimanjaro too. The pod works best up there while you're slightly hypoxic. Henry is amused by the sign in the photo where the facts get slightly less good as they go on.
- Lucien, David and Jossu are the current record holders but they need to tell the Beans how high their ears are off the ground for an official ruling. Everest is the only way to beat them (absolute death trap).
- Injuries that can happen to you as a scientist: Eleanor from Melbourne emails: she works at The Synchroton particle accelerator – could use as a torch to find solid Tory policies. Nick Clegg/Tory satire. Mike tries to curtail the banter back to Eleanor's email. Clegg should be a permanent partner to whoever's in government but that would deprive Facebook of a top exec. Ben tells Mike and Henry that they've shut down the Metaverse, he spotted it while queueing to buy a melon in there. Eleanor encounters hazards in her working life like high-speed industrial robots (Henry: "and that was before I'd finished my meeting with Liz Truss" + glasses wiggle) but she threw her back out picking up a kettle.
- Lauren emails about science injuries – injured by fruit flies/upright scalpels and also long hair catching fire (mostly men's long hair). Sean Bean plays every character in 'Bosworth'.
- Tom works in emergency service calls and a patient asked not to be given a bollocking. 'Bollocking' isn't a common local expression so Tom said 'Pompidou' and found a Beanist in the wild. 'Poorly judged object insertion'! Henry doesn't think it's real. Ben asks for the object inserter to get in touch to prove it's real.
- Barry emails about the lorne/'lawn' sausage, which he thinks is a euphemism for turds.
¶ Jingles
- 9:42 Provincial Dad Chat
- 23:05 Bean Machine
- 33:50 America
- 46:50 Emails
- 57:15 Satire
- 1:01:48 Reflecto-Bollock
- 1:02:48 Bollocking Accepted
- 1:05:50 Patreon
¶ Bollockings
- Pirate Mike emails with a Shanty Bollocking re Mike referring to 'Wessex Land Shanties'. His crew, the Itchin Privateers say land shaanties aren't a thing but the Beans all know that. Mike was attmepting humour, he was getting his wacky on. An Itchin Bollock, and Mike ain't gonna scratch it. Obvious Reflecto-Bollock as it was clear Mike was having silly fun. Pirate Mike is holding Mike's bollock to ransom: he will deliver a Bean Shanty. What price dignity? Could Mike accept the bollock but with his bollocks crossed? Full torsion! Mentioning 'Pompidou' to Pirate Mike at The Hyde Tavern in Winchester will get you a pint.
¶ Notable Quotes
- Are there a couple of protuberances at the top that someone can hold onto and ride you like a Space Hopper?
- He smashed through the glass penis.
- My left nipple's completely obscuring Big Ben.
- I've got an amphibious boob.
- They're holding a COBRA meeting in my anus.
- Just a Davey Lamp obscuring the unmentionables.
- It was boring when I described it, and now we're going through it again.
- If you think you're a people pleaser, you need to at least examine the wake of people you leave behind you and see if they are 'pleased'.
- Was Sophie Ellis-Bextor pleased?
- You're fishing in the morning, you're playing snooker in the afternoon. Come to Sheffield.
- Look at all the pockets! I can put worms in them!
- Do you use Freshport?
- Wave after wave after wave of stomach acid, making it hard for me to enjoy this roast.
- Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda, with my special shoes.
- That wasn't a profiterole, Henry.
- As far as I'm concerned, it's a 20-minute film called "We've Found Nemo".
- Any time there's a sunny day round this neck of the woods, you know by 11:20am someone's going to be halfway to Guernsey on a paddleboard.
- In return for all that hard work, all you get is the quotidian thrill of standing up.
- Do you realise how much money I've spent on this kit?
- You could also say that I was just a piece of driftwood, which emotionally, in a way, would be right.
- I'm hoping that Guernsey is crying out for some sort of prawn-based sex revue (late night) fandango.
- It doesn't have to be Guernsey. I could live on Sark! Alderney! Please!
- Could it be that most of our listeners are listening at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro?
- Darling Clegg, whose smile shone brighter than The Synchroton.
- Everyone who was inside the Metaverse when it was shut down died in real life.
- That's the worst way to store a scalpel.
- What kind of chump am I if I accept a bollocking for the sake of a bit of shanty?
- Sherlock Wozniak strikes again!
- You're in London, mate. You're never more than six metres away from someone inserting an object into somewhere they shouldn't.
- Some of the jams didn't work out that well so I've re-labelled them as 'savoury preserves'.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- On the BBC News website because somehow 100 dogs got in (37 patrons).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Henry has to do a plug: he has 2 books coming out (Kaye's Incredible Inventions and Joe Wilkinson's autobiography).
- Ben does a plug: selling jams around his local area from a big wicker basket brimming with jams.
- Mike's plug: new type of trouser: Jeanos (all the benefit of a jean without the drawbacks of a chino, and the other way around).
- End of the series, back in Dec for 8 Christmas-themed shows.
- Mimi has sent a French version of the Bluebell jingle.