- First recording since the Beans had their break, which is not the time the episodes had a break.
- Ben hasn't spoken to another human being for 2 weeks (apart from transactional) and is struggling.
- Ben's brain is in a similar place to Henry's bowel, he's been in France and his bowels have been receiving the gastronomic equivalent of far-right propaganda (white bread, red meat and bucketfuls of green mustard). He needs to Pret A Manger his way back to the UK. There is a Pret in Paris Gare De Nord, which makes Mike feel sad. It's like the tomatoes that grow on sewage pipes.
- Ben is reluctant to talk about his holiday because it will be the second time the Beans will have talked about bowels this series. The ship has already sailed though, given their discussions about "sewage outlet tomatoes".
- Patreon spin-off show called "Turd Brothers", it's the one universal so will be successful. Henry has already done the artwork.
- Ben went to Italy and France. Italy had good pizzas (not as good as a frozen Goodfellas). Even bad pizza is good, so for the best pizza it is marginal gains.
- The Italians eat a lot of cake for breakfast. Henry had an experience on a foreign exchange in Spain and just got biscuits for breakfast, which felt like a macabre joke.
- Ben is used to "difficult meats" for holiday breakfasts, from animals killed during the Blair years, but preserved incredibly well in "smoked aspic"
- Mike has been on holiday in Istanbul, staying with Uncle Sven, who is "definitely a spy". He regrets not eating chicken pudding. Not sure what time of the day you should eat a chicken pudding.
- Ben went to Paris and stayed with a cultured, sophisticated man with the pseudonym of Francois. He had a tiny, immaculate, beautiful-smelling, flat. He had a long list of rules; for example sitting down to urinate, not taking towels out of the bathroom, and a coaster system. Ben didn't have an issue with the rules and complied with them. The bathroom was right next to his bedroom, and Francois slept with his door slightly ajar. Ben isn't sure why, Mike wonders if it was a coquettish thing. Why didn't Ben see the signs? The bathroom door wasn't very sturdy, which meant there was a clear line of sight between the eyes of Francois and Ben's anus. Ben had thought he was getting on well with Francois, especially after he went to see Napoleon's grave (still didn't see the signs!), but then Boeuf Bourginon-induced food poisoning left Ben shitting for hours and left Francois broken.
- Plug for live shows at London Podcast Festival. Physical tickets sold out, but livestream still available.
- Ben likes a big, grand library. Mike doesn't have much experience of such. Imagining a library with desk lamps of green glass, everyone is old and wise or young and beautiful. Nobody is in doing their PGSE (sic). The young students all have v-neck sweaters around their necks, possibly joined a secret university society that has resulted in (ideally) a sex death. They dared to open the forbidden book about sex deaths.
- Old git archetype, a man trapped in a tweed sleeping bag. He hasn't found whatever it is he is looking for (Sex Death Masterclass, decoding the symbol for Wi-Fi, QR code for the nearest Millets).
- Henry pretentiously joined the London Library, seeking the experience of dusty book stacks.
- Henry joined the British Library (can you be a member of the British library?). Henry is a Commander of the Order of The British Library. He meets with members of the literati in a secret Pret (actually in Euston station) and they eat frittatas (the frittaterati). Henry was seeking green baize (should have just read his Grisham in a snooker hall). Was trying to procrastinate from doing his dissertation.
- You have to prove to the British Library that the book you want isn't available in other libraries. Ben had to do this recently. Henry was told he wasn't even looking for an obscure Grisham (he has two copies of "The Pelican Brief" in his hands). Henry published one copy of his own book (as Dr Harold Plimpington) to put in the British Library (prequel to "The Pelican Brief" - "The Puffin Trunks").
- White elephant vs. white whale. Henry was the library's white elephant, despite claiming to be Dr Horatio Sideburn, Mary Beard's cousin. Henry was at a green baize desk with a personal little green lamp, trying to write his dissertation and couldn't.
- You imagine that beautiful beach on holiday, or in Ben's case, a beautiful mausoleum. Ben in his trunks jumping into a golgotha mountain of skulls, like a kid in a ball pit, drinking bolognese out of one of the skull's eyes.
- Ben was a student not far from The British Library and used to go. Everyone would be slacking off, everyone is drawing a doodle, everyone is the same (apart from Tom Stoppard). Henry talks about when he went to an Air B n B to write his Edinburgh show, but the place had a noisy bee in it.
- The only way to get through this is to have a stint in prison. It worked for Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith. 5 years into a sentence Henry probably wouldn't have started to write his novel. Hard to account for your time at the parole meeting - all Henry has done is create a complex power structure, of which he is the Emperor.
- Kirsty from Melbourne is infected with Covid and finds the email jingle melancholic and soothing, akin to Simon and Garfunkel. She has sent in her own version, entitled "The Only Living Bean in New York". She asks if Paul Simon is problematic from a hama-heya perspective. The Beans discuss world-music influences on the album "Graceland" and in "The Only Living Boy in New York" though that wasn't written to accompany a drone shot of a jungle or minaret. The aquatic, sci-fi Simon and Garfunkel album (on self-destructing vinyl) was never released, but James Cameron had heard it, inspiring his series of "shit films".
- Guy is from Salisbury but is now living in London, and soon to be a dad. Is he metropolitan elite or provincial dad? Provincial Dad is a state of mind. You can still bore someone talking about charcoal or the A303 sitting on Eros in Piccadilly Circus. The metropolitan elite don't want to go to West End shows. They have secret theatre spaces (The Nibbleton Space). You access this by jumping through the wall in the Giraffe toilets when you see Rothko. There they watch performances such as Derek Jacobi reading out old shopping lists, Helen Mirren performing "Pinter's Best Pauses", Jacobi giving Pauline Quirke a colonoscopy (the show in her descending colon was the Shostakovich Clam Orchestra).
- Andrew was listening to the Beans whilst doing bathroom renovations on Boxing Day last year. He hit a pipe, flooding his house. He had to wake his father in law to find the stopcock and towels, presumably he was sleeping amongst the towels and upon the stopcock. The Beans don't think they can take any blame for this. He should have a spare stopcock, you shouldn't be drilling into joists or the floor. Mike once flooded his student house so knows where the stopcock is. They had to regress to their amphibious collective memory, leaving spawn everywhere. Henry talks about an anxiety that taps can turn on, so always makes sure the sinks are plug-free so it won't flood. Ben talks about the safety hole in a sink, which is naive to think the hole will stop it flooding. Henry says it is the equivalent of "brace brace" in planes, it doesn't mean anything. Ben suggests it just helps preserve your teeth so you can be identified. Henry suggests it's brace because you'll need more than braces following a place crash. The Beans descend into uncontrollable laughter.
- James has been listening to the podcast whilst training for a half-marathon. He ran the Edinburgh half-marathon listening to the Beans and executes a switcheroo beautifully.
- 1.45 - Digestive Tract Talk
- 8.26 - The Foreign Holiday Breakfast Buffet Ham Update
- 22.54 - Bean Machine
- 37.33 - Kirsty's Simon and Garfunkel inspired Email jingle
- 41.15 - Provincial Dad Chat
- 46.43 - Crab Bell
- 56.14 - The Old Switcheroo
- 57.35 - Avan's Synth Patreon Jingle
- Howard with "not a bollocking". Ben claimed 20% of eggs make it to adulthood in the episode "Eggs". In some species it is much less, such as lobsters (20,000 eggs but only 1 to reach adulthood) and blue crabs (8 million eggs a year, 1 in a million will reach adulthood). Just as well, or we would be overrun with crustaceans. Rick Stein is the only defence against the crustaceans.
- "I'm not guarding a series of novelty pedalos"
- "we try and steer away from this topic but it's like, it's our magnetic turd isn't it?"
- "No Shostakovich before 11"
- "I've been playing absolutely sordid Bach cantatas tonight"
- (French accent) "Ive had people coming to stay with me now for 5 years, they always want to go to The Louvre to see erm, Mona Lisa. They always want to go to Paris De Versailles. Noone has ever been to see Napoleon's grave"
- "My Josephine"
- "And then you shat yourself for 8 hours very noisily inches away from his face"
- "Sex Death Manual: Volume 1"
- "I'd come to the mother nipple of knowledge itself"
- "and lo, he suckled for knowledge"
- "Whose spawn is that?"
- "Oh grow up you naive idiot"
- "you perfect little duchess"
- "you delicious little debutante idiot"
- "good luck getting Invisalign to sort that out your fucking head's in a different country to your feet"
- "what I'd say is never tell the client you haven't spent a lot of time on something"
- Listener submitted Patreon jingle, which didn't have much time spent on it (unlike Henry's illustrations). Henry couldn't hear the Bean theme in it, because it wasn't the Bean theme.
- Try to be rude about Michael Palin night (nobody could).
- Even from Norway, who found the lukewarm banter perfect whilst doing his PhD. He has sent in a banjo theme tune.