¶ Opening Chat
- Ben's reedy voice. Still following the seed-based diet. Anal regularity improvements. Mike and Henry remind Ben of the unofficial/unlicensed therapy he's undergone to avoid talking about anal regularity (an Italian clown dressed as a doctor slaps him). A medical troupe came to town for this therapy but have just created a heavy layer of shame around the process. Combat this with Fecal Glorification Therapy. Quantas is the only airline to allow those who have undergone the therapy to fly (the troupe comes as standard).
- The Italian clown industry has been revived thanks to the above; they're making hay. Like a fire blanket, just have them around in case. Also contained often in Deliveroo baskets.
- Henry's Italian clown is Navarotti (Pavarotti's cousin) and Mike's is Davarotti (bit cheaper). The latter is related to both Pavarotti and Davros: uses his robust lower half to project, but singing voice is like a dalek singing 'Nessun Dorma'.
- Henry saw a caterpillar suspended in the air on a long slime string. It's the season for it, but not necessarily when the podcast goes out, creating seasonal confusion. Henry has been to France in the meantime on a standard baguette holiday: rich diet will require a clown troupe with an industrial drill/plague doctor mask to see to your rear end.
- Ben's holiday will also have happened. Where should he go? Not Kaliningrad. Start in Vienna to pick up the Habsburg family bullion, then rampage south to Italy (or create strategic alliances). Many marriages and Bonjastards littering the Alps. Performing military feats: pontoons made into fairytale castles with false floors throughout. The Tyrol's garb changes from valley to valley, always something made of wood. Travelling on elephant back (gaffer-taped to the top of a Volvo Estate).
- Ben will traverse the boot of Italy to Pompeii (hot but not as hot as when the volcano erupted: postcards should come with that bit written already). Mike has been to the 'cool one': Herculaneum (hipster Pompeii). Mike (you shithead) reminds Henry (you dickhead) that it's the same volcano (Ben's a wanker who thinks Henry's an arse and Mike's a tit = the secret sauce).
- Is Ben up for being impressed by a fresco or a frieze? How about a mosaic (especially if mainly dick and balls)? Almost as impressive as any modern flat. Built ages ago so that's why it's impressive. Henry lives in a modern flat but doesn't have an exquisite mosaic floor, but neither does he have a toilet seat that stays on.
¶ Topic Chat
- Henry laid over 10,000 eggs this morning (a chicken lives within him in a wet grotto and goes into overdrive). Breed: A Dutch Hen. Translucent, oily eggs and the fetus within has Henry's face (must never germinate or photosynthesise, promulgate or reproduce through fission/fusion). Just swamp that fetus in Hollandaise (ethical? Goes down as an avalanche death): a crunchy Eggs Benedict.
- The Dutch Hen is given a moustache (false or real), goes into witness protection and is given a job in Ryman's/Claire's Accessories/JD Sport, in the back pecking the gift card machine, weighed down by the custody battle for her 5,000+ Henry-faced fetuses (that Henry has eaten). The chicken must always look over its shoulder/side neck/past its breast whereas an owl looks over and just keeps going (needs to put on false shoulders/epaulettes). In an owl nightclub, the music is just screeches to a techno beat and the lyrics are nasty stuff about disembowelling mice (owl nightclub musical interlude).
- Ben finds the laying of a billion eggs in a gloopy ectoplasm gross (crabshaming). Crab reproduction: (i) female crab spews out 60 billion+ larvae; (ii) 75% are consumed by sea cucumbers; (iii) male crab rides in on a sea cucumber; (iv) he pokes himself in the eye to make himself vomit; (v) in the confusion – the beauty of life is born.
- Eggs are a numbers game (80% eaten by other creatures). Like politics.
- Are frogspawn eggs? A listener must know.
- Henry does an explainer: eggs are an ovoid, egg-shaped egg, a form of external child-rearing/reproductive accessory favoured by arthropods, megapods, minipods, birdrapods, frograpods, lizardropods (different pods). Chickens don't need to worry about fitting into their chinos. Why haven't decapods and pandas developed this? Or hoofrapods (noble and ignoble). Fish (inc catfish, sharks, whales (which ARE fish, and tomatoes are veg)). Aberrations (horse crabs, French donkeys, spiny cats, frog-faced lizard poodles, members of the current Conservative cabinet (satire snort noises)). Razor-footed (cassowary or snow leopard). Things without a backbone (also members of the current Conservati... more satire snorting). Clinging animals: barnacles, koalas, poorly socialised dogs, toddlers. Ones that look like they're flying, but really just a long jump: owl squirrels, turkey lizards, thrown chihuahuas, horses in adverts. Animals that can fly, but refuse to fly (partridge, stubbard). Animals that make you feel you can fly (my beautiful horse). Animals with large, deep, black, Henry Paker eyes, like volcanic stone protected by Henry-faced chicken beasts that you must drown in Hollandaise (squelching noises) – drop the capers (and the dill).
- Eggs are measured in imperial. You can't buy 10 eggs (or can you, abroad?). In American you buy a pre-scrambled, wobbly pink egg cube.
- Ben tells the others they discussed something a couple of eps ago that they'd discussed before (Henry's Hamley's colleagues in both Magic and Farming). They've reached the downward slide point. Just screaming from now on.
- Conquering the egg as a cook: mix of butter and olive oil, need to smell the Euphrates. Too hot: crispy around the edge / Very slow: clean bedsheets. Ben's method: all about speed, crank the heat up (also in the house), a yolk that's slightly jammy. Mike likes an omelette (they have already talked about how the omelette is the signifier of a great chef (in Teeth)) to include anything that is lying around (Post-Its?). Ben and Henry agree that Mike gives off a wholesome and old-fashioned vibe (like a spitfire piloted by a Nazi) so Ben thought Mike would prefer a boiled egg, with its precise timing and measured soldiers (check the watch, tick tock...all in a row, nice and controlled) who all have a rank and class. The egg dipping's all done by drone these days. Henry does like a boiled egg and soldiers, and sees slime as the enemy. If Mike is noticing slime while out with his family, does that mean the day is not going well, or just that they are at SlimeCon 2025? Mike's daughter may one day marry a sentient slime ('I knew you'd judge him') – has he served (at a Harvester)? Alchemists tried for years to turn an egg into gold (that's why there are so many ways to cook an egg). Feathered gold. Neither Henry nor Mike wants to do the maths.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- James writes re the interpretation of what happens to the horse in the email jingle – discussed amongst postgrad Beanheads on the Humanities site at the University of Cambridge: they agree it's horse murder.
- No consensus on whether it's horse murder in the general emails though. Susan says the horse has scarpered because the robot's technique lacked finesse, creating auditory chaos as it makes an escape. The owner's "My beautiful horse!" exclamation is because his horse has fled the scene; he sees the beautiful horseshoes as he watches it flee. A bittersweet parable. Need a fully mirrored paddock like the members of Queen and Pink Floyd have if you want to admire your horse's shoes while riding it.
- Alex was at the Manchester live show and met the Beans in the bar after (Ben has no memory of this because he was drugged with his special milk). During the show, Alex saw a side of Ben he hadn't seen before, including (i) Ben telling an audience member (who thought his comedy better than Steve Martin's) to go and fuck himself; (ii) telling several audience members who'd attended both shows to fuck off; and (iii) telling an audience member he'd made himself look a right prick. The Bonjobeast was only unleashed during the Late Show (he'd had a third of a pint of lager). Imagine what a midnight show in Vegas (on half a pint) would be like. Ben as the heel in WWF, turning up with a trestle table wrapped in barbed wire.
- Sam wore a beans T-shirt to their local bakery (gone in for a mince and cheese pie) and was told by the staff member there would be no Pompidou discount on the $5 transaction. Dollars! Panama? No, New Zealand. Proves the youth listens to the same lukewarm banter as Sam but that the youth doesn't respect the discount. In a previous ep (Sitcoms), the Jorvik Viking Centre didn't honour the discount. A premium item like a mince and cheese pie cannot be discounted (it's not just a flapjack). Henry thinks it's okay ethically to steal from a big company (B&Q or BAE Systems) – they won't notice a Chinook going missing. Mince and cheese pie + sausage rolls on the side being analogous to Chinook + Apache escorts on the side.
¶ Jingles
- 14:02 – Bean Machine
- 19:40 – owl nightclub musical interlude
- 24:53 – Satire
- 28:33 – America
- 39:37 – Emails
- 42:46 – Bollocking Accepted
- 51:55 – Patreon
¶ Bollockings
- James from the first email above has a P.S. bollocking for Mike re Shakespeare (but his is just one of many from the pedantic listenership) – "My kingdom for a budgie smuggler" is from Richard III not Swimwear Macbeth! Bollocking accepted but Mike would like to know what the postdoc scholars think.
¶ Notable Quotes
- Fresh start. Different orifice.
- Whichever way you plump it or lump it.
- There will be people with Bonjo-eye for generations.
- Are the rumours true that our king is a bonjastard?
- A like-for-like back swap.
- Same volcano, you dickhead.
- Does it put a big smile on your face if you see a sculpture of an old monk and he's got a giant phallus?
- You can't sue tectonics. Yet.
- Have you made yourself tired before you managed to get to the satire?
- Animals that are fish or should be fish.
- Eyes that look like you're looking at a kind of volcanic stone that will make the sharpest blade in the nine kingdoms.
- Over easy. Under easy. Easy peasy.
- These bedsheets are like a slow-cooked fried egg.
- If I can't feel the hot fat ricocheting onto my bare stomach, then I'm not doing it properly.
- Much like in life itself, the enemy is slime.
- A sentient slime is always bad.
- Plan B: back home, pizza, and Death in Paradise.
- To quote another Shakespeare play: I am Marcus Aurelius Henryus, brother of a murdered sister, uncle of a murdered niece, sister-in-law of a brother-in-law that I don't get on with that well (but we only see each other twice a year), put-er of my hands through some wheat earlier, and I will have my vengeance on you, in this pod or the next.
- It's true that it is one of the great paradoxes that you can't admire horsemanshoework from the position of riding a horse.
- I ain't getting in no damned selfie.
- Panama I can buy because of Mike's control of international shipping lanes. We'll be known there.
- Sausage roll: the Apache of the baked goods world.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Learn the Bass Guitar with Sting (23 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Nick (previously sent the Van Halen theme in Stonehenge) was activated by the phrase 'sweet bass' in the context of "Birdland" by Weather Report (in Farming) and was excited by the similarities between that song and the phrases of the Bean Theme. "Beanland" reminds Henry of the theme to "Cagney and Lacey" or other 80s' TV show end-credits.