¶ Opening Chat
- Henry is looking tanned because spring is in the air in London, but there is a lag in the provinces, so their spring might be looking forward to the London Olympics. Or really far west, like on Lizard Point, they're still getting the seasons from 1944.
- The rhubarb is high and the musical numbers are happening. A key omen: a rat impaled on rhubarb.
- Henry's jumbo walk yesterday has given him this glow, where normally he is very pale and can't pull off pale colours, not even the white tuxedo he refused to wear in White Tuxedo, the Beans' 80s band (sowing the seeds of the end of the band).
- White Tuxedo got into Robert Dimery's List of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Ben and Henry explain the podcast about this book to Mike. Americans slagging off British albums brings out the jingoistic tendancies in Ben: naysayers don't like to be naysayed upon but also Ben felt the British album discussed (Oasis's "Definitely Maybe") wasn't the podcasters' to naysay. They didn't take into account the social context (teens doing GCSEs in Leamington Spa). They also slagged off The Prodigy and The Smiths (Morrissey's voice is NOT annoying, but did he hold geraniums or gladioli?). The podcast is called "1001 Album Complaints" and the Beans are at pains to not slag it off, despite saying the podcasters are intensely annoying (don't pull that thread). Henry likes their accents and gets a thrill at Americans talking about something British (even if slagging it off). They just accept that The Beatles are the best band ever (a US position, as the Brits think it's actually Dua Lipa). Or Raye (Henry has access to the BBC News website), who won 6 Brit awards and was born in Tooting where Mike lived around the same time she was born (is Mike her dad?). Has Mike got a Brit-winning R&B album in him?
- Don't compare yourself to someone based on age, especially not Napoleon. Could Henry invade Egypt in his 50s? He certainly saw a man in his 60s wearing colourful trainers.
- Henry's job applications nostalgia: extraordinary range of interests (cinema... sacking Alexandria... taking posession of Persepolis... entering the Space Race (this is default at conception)).
- Henry at an interview for a temp job had to do a MS Word 1 test (lied about being proficient). The tabs threw him so he was only given jobs lifting furniture (just the lifting). The sliding tomb entrance noise from Indiana Jones was taken from Henry sliding a chest of drawers in 1995.
- Discussion of what a tab is in Word (Mike: when it bounces along a bit/grasshoppers along – this proves Mike is in a hole under the tech tree compared to Henry's tech proficiency). Ben recuses himself from this chat apart from to say you don't touch the triangles and oblongs. If it goes wrong, you end up with a 1915 code or a column zipping down the screen like at the start of The Matrix. Or a textual Brazilian (Ben and Mike interrogate Henry on his choice of pube-based metaphor).
- CVs: whether to write your name big at the top or Curriculum Vitae (to let the Latin sing), perhaps a coat of arms and Latin motto. Tips for 14-year-olds: use the advent calendar system if applying to be a Santa impersonator. Text nostalgia, writing letters: data on the left, season on the right, update on the campaign in Egypt at the bottom.
¶ Topic Chat
- How many Zs on Guyzzzz (classic tough guy question)?
- Is 'tough' the same as 'beef'? Is toughness a state of mind, a repellent (please don't use that word about Henry's body shape)?
- Would be hard to argue that the Beans are tough guys.
- Tough guys are: Vin Diesel, The Rock, Tango & Cash, Errol Flynn (the original Vin Diesel). Errol Flynn needs more protein. He looks like Keir Starmer (or what Keir's gunning for). Toughness in Flynn's day was about how thin your pencil moustache was. Normal thighs (like you'd see at a barbecue). Advice on how long to marinate chicken (like what real tough guys talk about).
- Film trope in 80s of misc. tough bloke for main character to get into a scrap with: "Hey, dickwad!" Can't find anyone bigger than The Rock nowadays. Need an AI-managed, pseudo-human meat plant. Was The Rock grown in a lab (had to build a big petri pool)? Green balloon attached to his ankle that fills with nutrient jelly and each night he's taken to a facility deep under the Hollywood hills (i.e. ground-level, because of a clerical error). 'Budding actors' are grown in a forest there. SAG went on strike because of the future budding actors coming from grotesque human trees. All have The Rock's DNA, i.e. a mixture of dolphin, Brussels pâté, extraterrestrial debris and sherbert spaceships (dropped in by nephew). The Rock's name was decided by 3 scientists playing rock, paper, scissors (same as Rock Hudson, the Scissor Sisters, the film Rocky and Paper O'Malley). AI-generated scientists came up with this, but they don't have the right no. of fingers, so hard to decide who has won.
- The Rock next to Rob Beckett or Helen Mirren on the Graham Norton sofa looks extraordinary. An all-round entertainer, which is what being a tough guy is for Henry.
- For Mike (according to Henry), a tough guy is someone who can heft 3000 bags of charcoal from a service station.
- For Ben (according to Henry), a tough guy is a man who can headbutt his way through another man and into a cockfighting ring.
- Henry underestimates how hard it would be to take on a well-trained fighting cock. They had razorblades on their legs. Flamethrowing beaks. Would doing puns ("crying fowl") enamour Henry to the crowd?
- Henry asks Ben and Mike to picture the cockfighting ring: billionaires from around the world, the guys from Squid Game, Judi Dench in a cage, Andy Burnham, T'Pau (are they a band or a woman?).
- The cockerel (Dr Sanchez) comes out, laying grenades instead of eggs, wearing a miniature Norman helment (because his doctorate is in Ancient History) and a Swiss milkmaid's outfit (3:1 scale) with fake rubber boobs stuffed in (not a woke scene). The hens go crazy all around (cooing noises from Henry), pinging bras (mix of chicken and human). Dr S campaigns for '5 eggs a day' for school breakfasts (Henry's accent goes from Scottish to Northern English at this point).
- In the red corner is Henry, walking on to 'A Fifth of Beethoven' (barely audible over the boos) as Judi Dench claws at him from her dangling cage. Henry wears the Beans' merch (threebeansaladshop.com). Dr Sanchez is all riled up because he found the jigsaw so hard (especially the edges).
- A plea to keep the pics of completed jigsaws coming. Henry asks for them to be forwarded, forgetting he also has access to the Beans' emails and social media. Henry clearly sees Ben as the email admin, hence Ben employing Dr Sanchez for this fight. Ben and Mike watch him being eviscerated from the lounge with Angela Merkel, watching the drama 'The Bear' on TV (not a bear in the fighting pit, nor Jeremy Allen White in briefs). Henry hates being pecked and clawed by talons.
- Ben lives near a thatched-roofed slate cockfighting ring from the 1700s in the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans. Deep cultural memory of slaughter.
- If Henry won against Dr Sanchez, his wound would be infected and Dr Sanchez would get him in the end after eggs started appearing from his neck, his toes become sharper, becomes drawn to seed, clucking his approval, folded arms and then... he is the new Dr Sanchez.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Frank from Bayside, Nova Scotia (not where Saved By The Bell was set, but somewhere Henry can never remember where it is). Henry's actors mnemonic from stonhenge – struggling to remember Kenneth Branagh. Perhaps Branagh needs the provinces of Canada as a back tattoo. Nova Scotia and Timbuktu are places used to denote 'far away'. Nova Scotia crab fishermen or crab crabbermen (great to meet ya!). Frank was at his brother's pool in Santa Cruz (there are many, but this one is in Bolivia) listening to the Beans mention Iglesia Macarena – he went there in an uber (in swimwear?). The church where Hugo Banzer took communion. Someone ironing the garden for creaseless lawns. Frank includes a pic of Banzer's grave. His brother, Tim, tutored Banzer's grand-daughter (he paid well). A nerve-wracking job (Henry assumes he did music tuition).
- Harry went to the circus with his Senegalese mother as a child. She came to the UK, lured by old movies and Brand Britain. At the circus, she shouted (Henry does not do the heavy, West African accent) "Where are all the freaks? Where are the lions and elephants?", she had been promised as part of Brand Britain: the best parts of a circus.
¶ Jingles
- America (9:45)
- Bean Machine (21:43)
- Emails (43:32)
- Crab Bell (46:23)
- Patreon submission from Oscar, synthwave style (makes Henry think of 'Drive', LA highways, hot pink everything) (51:28)
¶ Notable Quotes
- Our local daffodils definitely seem quite pre-Brexit.
- If you were trudging your way through your GCSEs in Leamington Spa, you got it.
- He was a knob wearing a cardigan and waving around a huge bunch of geraniums on Top of the Pops: it was unclear what type of knob we were dealing with.
- There's a decent chance that a few of our listeners probably might find you two quite annoying.
- So Napoleon had already conquered Egypt, and I still haven't done the grouting in my bathroom.
- It was a different time, then, and the fact is that people were generally expected to invade Egypt a bit earlier than now.
- Have you mastered the tab?
- Why are you bringing pubes into it, Henry?
- I'm not a pube person.
- Is beef a mindset?
- And that's why he doesn't have genitals or an anus.
- Tie more bacon to his willy!
- In the blue corner... Dr Sanchez!
- It's the contrast that's so jarring with Dr Sanchez.
- It's the classic Henry accent migration.
- I'd hate to see a bald rooster. / Especially if it was a former colleague.
- At Omnibank, we're always watching you, even if you're not with Omnibank.
- I can't hug people, but I can slice a quiche.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Whole weekend of "I Can't Belize It!" Central America festival (26 patrons).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Rosie (introduced to the Beans by Hannah), working backwards through the pods, Memento-style. A theme played on ukulele, in the style of twee advert backing music. Ends with Ben and Henry saying that style is their least favourite of all music (it's Mike's favourite form of music). Rosie did a great job of nailing the style of those adverts for big banks with twee music where having swords for hands is whimsical, not sinister.