¶ Opening Chat
- Advert for new Three Bean Salad merch store: threebeansaladshop.com.
- Henry doesn't do a backup recording. He transfers the anxiety, like a high-wire artist who pushes his assistant and her brother out onto the wire on special sideways rollerskates.
- The West End needs an askance take on Starlight Express – stage manager or safety bucket POV.
- Mike going around the Exeter area in a silver unitard practising for Starlight Express. Others might try by wrapping themselves in baking foil with blobs of jam on. The jam flag reads: "If you can't do it with jam, why are we even having this conversation?"
- The fishmonger chucks scallops at Mike as he whizzes by.
- Fishmonger fish need glossy eyes so after a week, replace them with pig's eyes. They retain their quizzicalness.
- When the fish swim south for the winter, the fishmonger's kids go under the table and line their human eyes up with the fish.
- When Ben was into nu metal and Henry was into Bach, Mike was S Club 7's understudy (any of them) as well as a one-man S Club 7 in the pub scene. Declared income as 7 identities so can't go on the same plane as himself (like the people who invented Coca-Cola). Boring-voice pension chat.
- Ben worries about people outside the UK not understanding the Beans' references. He courts international listeners like Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Geoff Capes. This does mean he suffers from canape fatigue and can only fix it by eating massive food like a prawn on a javelin.
- Worries about e.g. not knowing what Pauline Quirke is (a state of mind / a way of looking at things that one can arrive at). Explanation of what 'Birds of a Feather' is.
- Pauline Quirke trained at Anna Scher's youth theatre in Islington and so did Henry. A list of alumni is read but the only ones the Beans have heard of are Eastenders stars and the Kemps, Sam Fox and Dexter Fletcher. For some reason, Henry isn't on the Wikipedia list.
- Henry and his friend Zadok attended Anna Scher together and did an improv together than Henry feels shame about because of the toilet-based punchline (end on the funniest word: poo). Eddy Grant lived in Islington too (not Bernie Grant the MP).
- Henry's friend Zadok ended up doing a drama about the Falklands War (playing General Galtieri), despite not having 'it'.
- A jingle is needed to explain these UK-centric references. Genres: K-Pop and nationalistic (e.g. Welsh male voice choir) with a shanty underbelly (and also Cubist).
- Big news re the Bean Machine. A thousand geese rendered a day at the moment to grease the sprockets. Instead of emailing (in some cases the topics get forgotten), you can submit via a website (enterthebeanmachine.boats) and an oaken cube is then chiselled.
¶ Topic Chat
- Mike has only ever assassinated someone's character with the elegant grace of his stiletto wit.
- Difference between assassination and murder. Can currently only murder Henry. Would his death have ramifications?
- Mike plugs Henry's new book with Joe Wilkinson – how bloodthirsty is the book illustration scene? Henry plugs the other book he has out: two targets on his back.
- Quentin Blake has both the power and the spite. Illustration is 'dead men's right-hand gloves' / 'dead men's pens' – Ben doesn't know the expression 'dead men's shoes' so this confuses him.
- Henry has a decoy Henry in a flat, played by Derek Jacobi.
- Quentin Blake's loose and messy and expressive style is because of his machine-gunning hand.
- Quentin's gun makes a 'poof' noise because he's firing it through a copy of 'The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me'. 'The Tiger Who Came To Kill' doesn't work cos Quentin didn't illustrate it.
- Henry's confession: he moves copies of "The Tiger Who Came To Tea" to be close by when drawing tigers for kids at book signings, otherwise they end up looking like Garfield.
- What is a book depository? What is a grassy knoll? What is Cuba? None of it is real.
- 90s fascination with conspiracy theories around JFK. Henry explains the 'magic bullet' theory from the Costner classic, explained on a Nobo flipchart in a courtroom coup de theatre.
- The journey of the magic bullet: vanilla bubble tea/milkshake, Claire's Accessories, ferry to Isle of Wight, concorde.
- Even 'Quantum Leap' did a JFK episode. Theme tune singing. Scott Bakula and 'that really good actor' as Ziggy/the guy who talked about Ziggy.
- JFK gets to be the coolest president ever. Never releases a shit album, his 'Frog Chorus' – Henry getting Paul McCartney and Gordon Brown confused.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Jingles
- Crab Bell rung (2:48)
- Pompidou 'nu metal' (one of worst genres ever created, loomed large in Ben's youth) jingle made by Arthur Tattersall (they've John Lennon'ed Henry into it) (12:00)
- New Bean Machine URL (33:46)
- Bean Machine (36:19)
- New Email jingle from Lilian (professional violist) – a waltz for 4 violas (50:27) – reminds Ben of a 90s sitcom theme e.g. 'Waiting for God' or 'To The Manor Born'. Reminds Henry of Ben waltzing the Presidents' wives (Frau Kohl, Willy Brandt's grand-daughter) around the European diplomatic circuit's ballrooms. Like getting into a warm bath while being fed chocolate Smints hand-made by a chocolatier. Music changes when the canapes come in.
- The Old Switcheroo (1:02:12)
- Patreon (1:05:35)
¶ Emails
- From Lucy in Perth, Australia: the first Three Bean Marriage. Met on the apps (Pinto Passions) in 2022. Henry's chat-up lines are to do with falling from heaven, toasters on fire / Ben's is to do with hunters/foxes – these are available on the Hot Beans dating app. Risky to rec Beans as an opening love gambit, like recommending a 1,000-year old feremented egg. Ben warns that any child they have may be an onion child. Henry posits the name 'MikeHenryandBen', lovely for a boy or a girl, but then evaporates the goodwill with some Aus accent-based barbecue and prawns and scary Aussie creatures chat. Thanks to Lucy for plugging the Beans during her wedding speech.
- Lewis emails about the French phrase 'les rosbifs' used for English people. The Spanish use 'los cangrejos' (the crabs). Call for other countries' names for Brits (might be less light-hearted).
- Will emails with one of the few times a jingle can be played because of the contents of the email. Will hears both Radio 3's Bach and Henry's voice playing at the same time and Old Switcheroo's it. The Beans give Will a 9 on the gymnastics scoring, and he would get minimal punishment from the head of the Soviet gymnastic squad, the full bowl of steroid gruel, one scrambled bean, a pic of a banana and hearing the word "Levis". Beans give as many points for the build as for the landing.
¶ Notable Quotes
- A pig's eyes in a mackerel draws in the punters.
- We have to facify someting before we can emotionally interact with it.
- I thought sushi was fresh, but I've never seen a tuna filling out its UCAS form.
- To have been a teenager, hanging around Leipzig Cathedral, in the mosh pit.
- With the one-man S Club 7, is the conceit that, at any one time, the other six members of S Club 7 are going to the toilet?
- Pension is one of my trigger words.
- In lieu of a pension, you can always just run as hard as you can into a brick wall.
- Are you able to say 'no' to a vol-au-vent? You may be suffereing from canape fatigue.
- 'Birds of a Feather' is a kind of accord that you come to with the universe around you.
- You can't just be a young woman, not in her generation. You had to train.
- There was McGuffins upon McGuffins.
- I haven't pulled a dove out of a box, I've shat myself and the dove's attacked a member of the audience and it's not a dove, it's a very very very hungry raccoon.
- You've got to put the word 'scrotum' in quotation marks, really, because it's not a scrotum as you would understand it.
- I suppose you know you've made it, when you've been assassinated.
- I think all eyes would turn to Quentin Blake.
- You wanna illustrate a Roald Dahl book? Well, good luck you fucking dead bastard!
- You think you can illustrate an educational pop-up book do you? Well, good luck popping up when I've popped this cap in your ass. Poof!
- What's something that only a few people like? Three Bean Salad.
- I hope you're proud: comedians, podcasters, matchmakers.
- 'People who are slightly bored and tuning out who are sitting towards the back of a wedding venue during the speeches' is actually one of our core audience demographics.
- I might even allow him to hear me saying the word "Levis".
- Imagine you could go back in time and you knew enough about their childhoods to understand why they were like that. You could at least sympathise.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Annual Sean Bean Lounge Boer War Re-enactment (set to a piano version of Elgar's Nimrod) (17 patrons).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Ed from Stratford-Upon-Bremen with a "Zadok The Priest" inspired theme tune. He's listening over a year behind so has still to learn of the Queen's death and needs to evacuate because of the UK sinking into the sea.