¶ Opening Chat
- Lime (street hire) bikes were taken away from Cardiff because so many were found in the river; they took it too far. In a Nordic country, they would fix the bikes out of their own pocket, leave a rye bread in the basket with a personalised message in sesame seeds to all the state-sanctioned names (Olafs 1, 2, and 3, and Helga).
- Is Scandinavia really a utopia? Britain is the 'before' pic on an advert, thick with grime (Singapore is the 'after').
- Lime bikes get 'Londoned' like everything in the public spaces: a deep, fundamental grime (deeper than a patina) that comes out of your nose like a piece of coal. The bikes become a mobile bin thanks to the basket on the front (in a Scandi world, this would be full of rye crackers, wry observations and a book of Norse history). When a flock of new bikes is released, they succumb to London within days, becoming hobbled, begrimed, nobbled, wobbled, with a top hat with its top open, and a Cockney accent, stealing hot pies. Need to direct them with your hands else they will take you to the beating heart of Soho.
- In Soho, there is the most sordid passage on Earth, between 'Glassblower Street'(?) and Berwick Street. Even the Marquis de Sade couldn't hack it (a blue plaque says so). The great and the good are there, not wanting to miss the fabulous and atrocious things: Prince Edward requesting a naked bird to eat (naked except for a tweed bikini (tweedkini), for which he is looking for investors – they just need 5% of budgie owners to invest, to pay off Prince Andrew's legal fees).
- Apart from this passage, Soho is just branches of Scribbler (but with black highlighter pens and scrotum-only staples).
- Henry was cycling a Lime bike through Finsbury Park and was distracted by something in the path. Perhaps it was a complex honey trap set by an assassin, a CGI budgie called Evanova in a real tweedkini. No, it was a dead rat (even though it looked like a plastic bag so Henry decided to ride over it), presenting itself like a rat carpet, similar to a polar bear rug. It had a 'rat scream' look (Henry's rat impressions).
- Henry makes a comparison with the Titanic: both he and the captain should have ploughed through the rat/iceberg rather than scraped along it (a fact learned from The Rest Is History).
- The rat/mouse/crow is still eating Ben's strawberries. Tiny little toothmarks = classic crow. Ben is in talks to borrow a wildlife camera from Chris Packham to get a Gotcha! on the creature. Perhaps it was a rat on crowback?
- Henry compares the evil creature to the Tory Cabinet, which may have been ousted by the time the pod goes out, making Ben (Politically Neutral) both pleased and disgusted.
- Ben saw a portentous thing in Paris: a baby crow being drowned in a nearby pond, after being attacked by the pond fowl and the rescuer not making it to the crow in time. Nature let itself down. Mike wonders if 'mouth to beak' would have been an appropriate rescue for a drowned bird, but Ben reckons 'mouth to cloaca' is how it works (this might just inflate it). The whole thing felt significant, and perhaps related to the strawberry rats. Are baby crows cute? Ben had visited Napoleon's grave just two hours before, so perhaps N had chosen Ben in some way through the dead crow, maybe to see about the destruction of Henry, who had told Ben to mothball his cannons.
¶ Topic Chat
- The Beans wonder whether it's The Wirral or Wirral, and why The Ukraine is now Ukraine (cos it sounds good?). Henry still thinks of France as The Frankish Kingdoms. The Facebook is also part of this discussion. How about: The Tweedkini? This is all a bit Don Draper/Mad Men: The United States, The Korean War.
- Henry goes in a huff about the topic being haircuts, but he's had haircuts. He could have distinguished tufts. He shaved this morning and is now a matte egg of criminal interest. He doesn't use an old shell but rather an industry-standard Wahl (pronounced Wa-hal, in the vein of narwhal) shaving device. Is Wahl short for Wahlberg (German: Choice Mountain)? Nice deep shaver buzzing noise close to the mic.
- Henry got his industry-standard shaver (they use it in salons) from a special shop for industry hair people. He registered a company for which he still receives mail: Henry Paker's World of Hair (no comment on how many tax returns have been filed).
- A Pompidou occurs cos Ben had to go out and run an errand for over an hour, but the Beans get straight back on topic.
- Henry asks Mike about his haircut life: every 2 or 3 months, but there was a time when Mike would get the person on set at his acting job to give him a free haircut. He could only go for Wild Man of the Forest roles. These days he is loyal to Nicola (Sturgeon, with the bowl cut (or not, according to Ben)).
- Ben reckons haircuts could be revolutionised by the protocol of Fanjambo (described originally in tubes), named after Saint Fanjiambo, who was stoned to death for being so rude in 1440. Fanjambo can be repealed in case of emergencies (e.g. if your feet are on fire when you're near a qualified shoe douser that you used to go to school with). Ben does not enjoy a barber chat but culturally we're not able to just ask to zip it (or taxi driver/massage). Mike's London barber back in the day was ideal as the barbers chatted to each other and barely gave a shit that you were there.
- Henry gets his back waxed before a holiday, so he doesn't clog the drains at the flumes or cause wildfires in Greece. Smalltalk during unspeakable agony. The single sheets of removed hair can be sold as doormats in the lobby: they have solved capitalism at the waxing salon.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Andy emails about the name Barbara: he has met a Gen Z Barbara in rural Essex – an enormous Highland cow (maybe it was Henry before his holiday wax).
- Steve has listened while on the oldest man-made feature – The Ridgeway – in continous use for over 5,000 years. None of the Beans have heard of it, so Henry looks it up. Steve does a switcheroo about it being tired, old and shabby but Henry wasn't paying attention (nonetheless, his badge is in the post). It is 'surprisingly remote', but nothing in southern England is remote. The category could be Most Disappointing Tourist Attraction which pleases Mike because he worries about Beanists getting curses from exploring ancient tombs. Henry continues reading from the website: 'a broad track' (phwoar), 'often' (not always) 'quite a distance' (not far). You can still see the Esso garage but you can't read the deals or instructions on the charcoal, at points. Wild Bean Cafe (name did well in focus groups) 10 mins away for 80% of the walk. 'Wide, open views', not cramped and closed views like Mike takes his family to (inside a postbox). Mention of 'chalk' = shit British holiday (see also, limestone). The Beans wonder what a 'long barrow' is (not a wheelbarrow). Stone Age/Bronze Age monument is always just a ditch (children will need premium snacks not to mutiny within 5 mins).
- Andrew emails about a new twist on a classic biscuit: Chocolate-Coated Custard Creams from M&S (outrageously chocolatey). The Beans offer up an advert voiceover for various M&S products (40W lightbulbs, home insurance, bureau de change) all enrobed/drowned/encrusted in chocolate (backed by a languid guitar piece that is just the right side of not being Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross'). A bain marie is needed to melt the chocolate to trap the crow that is stealing Ben's strawberries. The biscuits sound too sickly for custard cream-fan Mike.
¶ Jingles
- London (5:50)
- Bean Machine (23:03)
- James from Manchester's Pompidou theme in a technical death metal style, with extra guitar info to annoy Henry (31:55)
- Emails (38:53)
- Bollocking Accepted (43:21 & 45:49)
- Patreon (57:42)
¶ Bollockings
- Gareth from Southwick has a bollocking for Ben: the Eurasian eel spawns in the Sargasso Sea, which Henry knew from his angry op ed piece for The Economist/the big research phase (all the way to the bottom of a Wikipedia page) when writing his radio sitcom with Tom Craine (Reincarnathan (available on BBC Sounds)). Eels, like Brits on an 18–30, go abroad to have an orgy til they die. Ben almost reflects the bollock on the basis that he thinks the eels could have a perfectly servicable orgy in Northern Ireland (even though the DUP wouldn't like it) but ultimately accepts the bollock.
- Andy, a Medieval History teacher, bollocks Mike about feudalism, which is not Anglo-Saxon but in fact part of the Normanisation process. Is Wozniak pro-Norman? Yes, because his Welsh grandmother (surname: Bassett) was certain they were descended from high-end Norman barons, and showed Mike the proof (she just knew it, plus there was a ruined castle). Ben's family myth is that he is related to Jemima Nicholas, who was a farmer who repelled attack by the French navy in 1797. Bollocking accepted.
¶ Notable Quotes
- [non-specific Scandi accent] Everything is clean and nice. We have three names. Hello. The State is strong. Welcome.
- You become a mobile filth-bucket, essentially.
- I can't go to another porn cinema today. I've actually got a job! You've taken me to three porn cinemas today.
- Twelve feet of absolute pure filth. A narrow passage, but within that passage every sin you've ever dreamed of and more besides will come true.
- All lever arch files come with a free tweedkini. Remember, it's bird-sized! We just can't shift these things.
- You'd be so easy to assassinate, Henry.
- I've seen a few dead rats in my time; they never look like they've had a peaceful death.
- If I'd cycled over a dead rat the size of a plane two weeks ago, I'd be reassessing things in a very deep way.
- I don't actually know it, I just heard it on a podcast.
- Gotcha! I do have a rat problem.
- I'm in prison for murdering Henry, Henry's dead, and Mike's eating my strawberries. / Ooh, I love a strawb.
- [Don Draper voice] Everything's coming back. Things come around: Tiramisu. 90s music.
- A Great Dane on a Daimler and a budgie wearing a tweedkini.
- You're beautiful the way you are, Henry. In a way. After a fashion.
- I tell you what, the bass might not have a fret but I'm fretting.
- What is a fret? I don't care.
- And then you flip the bowl and eat a nice hairy minestrone out of it?
- If you were an eel, why would you wait to get to the Caribbean before you had an orgy, when you could have a perfectly servicable orgy in Northern Ireland?
- They took on an entire army, and you can't even protect your own home fruits.
- No one who's climbed the Andes has ever said 'chalk and limestone'. No one's ever visited the Louvre and said 'chalk and limestone'. It can't be a selling point.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Patreon correspondence about the app – you can listen via an RSS code on your usual app.
- Go Through Your Old Receipts With The Scottish Rugby Team (30 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Damien from Perth in Western Australia sends a Dream Pop/Shoegaze (Beangaze) theme inspired by 'Lorelei' by Cocteau Twins (no 'The').