- Henry trailed a hot anecdote to Ben and Mike before recording. Not one of the ones that aren't good enough for the pod, to which he might subject only Mike and Ben (hard to imagine such non-podworthy chaff).
- Every human has a relationship with eggs (projected through the cloaca, not the anus). Henry is confused about what a hen does, versus a cock, and explains it via a Venn diagram that also includes chickens. What about a peahen? Cassowaries can't have hens cos it's too soft a term. Strong start with the Beans all at sea about hens.
- Henry scrambled eggs in a new way that morning. Mastering making eggs is a life's work/journey (along with loving another human and mastering the saxophone, which is the same thing), including using contraptions that turn out to be bollocks.
- Ben's idleness/fecklessness/comfort-seeking behaviour takes the form of watching Marco Pierre White (MPW) videos (no longer bar brawls). These are comforting and calming. Henry declares 'Chat Snap!' as he was also going to talk about this topic (i.e. having a conversation).
- Henry sees the podcast as a non-fatal parasitism, with Ben and Mike as chatworms that might degrade the mother organism (Henry) but won't kill it.
- It was Ben that got Henry into watching MPW videos during a phonecall, leading to him making the scrambled eggs that morning (meaning Ben has mastered the mother organism). Ben was giving Henry pensions advice on the same phonecall (he gets his Omnibank commission from recommending MPW videos).
- Pensions advert tropes: sunset lighting (the sun = a viagra), heteronormative family scene (older man's wife looks a bit like their son's wife, weirdly). Younger wife breastfeeding a purebreed piglet. Scottish Widows woman can be seen hovering on a winged Lloyd's horse. All happeneing on a cruise ship and Rob Brydon's there. The breastfed piglet is being tenderised and marinated by your grandma from beyond the grave (her funeral plan was excellent).
- The above pensions advert mood suggests that if you don't sign up, all of your family will be dessicated corpses being blown around a car park, like the scene in Terminator 2.
- MPW's scrambled eggs are snotty, liquidy, don't look great because of how slow they are made (drip drip like paying into a pension).
- Eggs are a pre-beast's nutrition system or escape pod from a hen (with 'launching in 5...4...3...' internal monologue).
- Cooking eggs with your face very close to the pan, you could incorporate the meat/face into the eggs (most natural thing in the world).
- MPW's method involves cupping your hand near the pan, but he has a chef's calloused hands, not an illustrator's soft, oligarch-starter hands. He also advises that you approach the stove like a piano.
- Henry enjoys that this method removes a stage of effort (and the impulse to sort yourself out with a pension, which is needed to pay for broadband to watch those vids in retirement).
- The Bean Machine isn't turned on, it must never be powered down (powered by an electric toothbrush charger). If the toothbrush battery failed, the topside of the Earth would slough off, falling into the Sun, the 'centre of our Galaxy'. Ben catches the bollock: the Sun is not the centre of the Galaxy, it's the pre-cooked gravy aisle in the Iceland in Newport, South Wales. If the Galaxy is an Italian town, it needs a central square with cafes around which everything else is built (Earth is the corrupt police station, the one with the vice squad). Mike discovers that Henry doesn't know the difference between our Galaxy and our Solar System. Our Solar System is Bologna, not Chicago. Like an old town needs a one-way system to work, a planet can only rotate in one direction, until fully wound, then it whips back round, so night and day reverse, Benjamin Button and Memento make sense but The Sound of Music is now about them welcoming the Nazis. Ben confuses The Sound of Music with Sister Act, which Henry sees as a moment for a slow fade, over which he says 'Enough from those tossers. Let's get on with the show.' (which they will now use quite a lot, e.g. at 33:21, 37:53, 43:09 & 46:14 in this ep).
- The topic of adverts came up already in the opening chat. The streaming age means people see fewer ads.
- John Lewis and their Christmas 'event ad'. Ben doesn't understand John Lewis's slogan 'never knowingly undersold' so Henry tries to explain it to people of lower intelligence. The 'knowingly' is doing a lot of work. Henry uses the example of buying an oven, but isn't sure if you can buy one (need to find an oven seam first).
- Henry loses a lot of things, including a radiator (takes perverse pride in this) bought in John Lewis. The bomb squad spent millions floating it out onto the North Sea for CyberSteve, the AI robot, to blow up. Poor CyberSteve had just learnt love, so his face was unscrewed to make it easier for him to be sent off, and a drawing of a koala's arse put in its place.
- Henry tries to explain 'never knowingly undersold' some more, with the example of buying the radiator from Curry's and taking it to John Lewis with the receipt. Mike and Ben think the non-word 'undersold' is the problem. Should it be 'overcharged'? Can't call it a 'price guarantee' as everyone uses that in their ads, along with 'barking mad' noises, honking, etc.
- Henry's story about getting a pea coat button replaced in John Lewis when he'd gone in to buy a toaster (which he also told in Extra Beans – September 2022).
- John Lewis feels like a government department, it's institutional. In Exeter, the size of it dwarfs the cathedral. Reginald Featherbed is the current Bishop of John Lewis.
- The John Lewis Christmas ad equivalent in the USA is the Superbowl ad, but rather than glitzy and funny, these are tear-jerking and heart-rending, with a breathy female vocalist covering e.g. 'Firestarter'. A child may show kindness, which is just a lie, or a wild fantasy. An odd, creepy one was the 'paedo on the moon' ad – exiling sex offenders was a big idea in policy circles at the time (focus group it via a John Lewis ad). Henry admits the 2022 JL Xmas skateboard/fostering ad was actually good.
- Ben would do a Christmas John Lewis ad in the 'We've got toasters! £7.99!' style. '99' used in these 80s ads in a way not heard elsewhere. Motorway junction numbers and deadlines were important.
- The Beans' John Lewis advert would feature a Christmas stocking-faced bankrobber and a father with a Christmas tree-shaped hole in his torso, and tearful, blood- and cranberry sauce-splattered children who have witnessed the execution of their father, but the redemption is the bankrobber's severed head, covered in a Waitrose glaze on Christmas morning, baked and eaten, with the nose used as a wishbone/wishnose. Bit of humour: classic Christmas brain offal guff. The children's mother is already dead from an Easter incident and is stuffed and lacquered, on top of the Christmas tree, always looking over them like Lenin, approvingly.
- Commercial radio ads of the 80s/90s: Mike had Wave 105 and Power FM, Ben had Red Dragon FM. Ben remembers an ad for a motorcycle shop called Riders ('with the wind in your hair'). Mike remembers one for Quinn's – 'the bar that quenches any quirk of taste' (subtext: if you're divorced in your 50s, you still might get a shag): it's dark, just round the corner from the Holiday Inn, there's no CCTV in the car park. Useful reminder that herpes is still incurable (but thriving on Portsea island), no matter how much Baileys you funnel up your anus. Quinn's no longer exists, as it became so rancid with herpes it was sealed into concrete, like Chernobyl.
- Ashley saw Ben on RHLSTP and was surprised to find him taller than they imagined. Ben doesn't enjoy that the listenership sees him as bald and short, DeVito-like (but as The Penguin).
- Michael from North Carolina, but originally from King's Lynn in Norfolk, exposes his kids (Marin, 11 & Sander, 8) to British culture via Three Bean Salad. They believe their dad to be a Provincial Dad and so made him an Activity Book (e.g. route-planning). Henry reminds Michael that he retains 20% of the IP that can be used to put at least one child through college. These kids have gamified Mike's actual life.
- Cloaca Zone (1:44)
- Digestive Tract Talk (8:10)
- Bean Machine (25:04)
- Email jingle from Gerry/Jerry (46:43) that mashes up all sorts from the pod and reminds Henry of the music they send into space and Mike of the sountrack to 80s E.T.-type films, then it goes jazzy, like a Dr Who 70s bar scene. This jingle could survive even after the crabs have risen and fallen and the humans are eating cultivated and uncultivate mould in caves (causing mould wars), allowing aliens to call time and wrap the Earth up in clingfilm.
- Patreon (52:54)
- A cassowary mega-bitch.
- Was it that you were watching a video about eggs, Henry, and you wanted to share it with someone, and you knew you might get short shrift from me?
- Even though I died, I got this free pen.
- What could be more natural than a human eating the reproductive vestibule of a bird?
- Hold on to your todgers!
- Can you buy an oven?
- We think this was the man who left the huge pipe bomb on the Tube.
- Go fuck yourself, you're not my real dad!
- I'd imagined her already dead.
- There's bloody all sorts here, and they're up for it.
- Mould War One, Mould War Two, The Cold Mould War.
- I'd rather ram condemned sausage meat into my ears.
- A reminder of the Patreon-only Film Corner bonus eps, which are 'an exploration of what cinema can achieve'.
- Barrack Jack Black Night (51 patrons)
- Adam from Seattle's 90s midwestern emo version (in the vein of the bands American Football and Mineral). The three guitars used are described, much to Henry's horror/Mike's delight (including purr noise). The music is accompanied by a clip of Henry on Margaret Cabourn-Smith's podcast, 'Crushed', in which he 'said too much' so it's absolute torture for Henry.