¶ Opening Chat
- Henry does a very breezy, light radio-style introduction (very natural for the 27th take). Previous takes were so not-fresh, they resembled ancestral dessicated old turds from inbred families, hence the weird shapes (e.g. Möbius).
- Henry has tried to be normal and accessible for new listeners but couldn't help going for the obscene and weird. A family in a car listening might have to abandon the car (how did they know about our vault of turds???), turning it into a Molotov Hyundai i10 (do the chant: 'Hyundaiii, Hyund-goodbyyyeee, Hyund-whyyyy'). Nice and relatable, like an Ewok on its back waiting for a tummy tickle.
- Ben has a relatable bit of chat fuel (no blue edge): he has never washed his windows (inside and out in the 2.5 years he's lived in that house). Much like cleaning teeth – just live with filth/tooth pain. Ben's local community should have given him a window cleaner, shouldn't have to seek one out.
- Generation by generation, window cleaners have become less lewd ('nipples ahoy!'), introducing non-penile squeegees in the early 80s and now asking 'How are you, really?'.
- Henry has prescription windows in his house, polarised and varifocal for reading books outside the house. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, then the glasses are the double glazing on the windows/eyes, but where do drapes come in (pelmets!).
- Ben looked at his windows with fresh eyes but couldn't look through them cos they were caked in shite (human inside/avian outside). Henry wonders how the bird shit can go sideways (momentum, finned like a bomb). The birds have targeted Ben's house and now he's on the community WhatsApp as the guy with the shit-caked house.
- Keep going with shit-caking and you'll end up in a poogloo, ideal for insulation.
- Henry lives in a serviced apartment where the cleaning happens all the time and is a racket. A man is permanently outside giving advice on Henry's egg poaching. They have telescopic mega-mops.
- In the 70s, they would be trying to see your partner. The man would be moustachioed, bald and wearing a bowler hat and the woman would have been 3 hrs in makeup with huge bouffant hair, a teddy and fluffy slippers: this is what our government wanted us to be. They would have a cocktail in hand from their bedside cocktail bar and thick carpet imbued with human cells: utopia.
- Mike's window cleaner have upgraded to the van and mega-mop system, which Ben's guy also has. Signing up to a regular clean is a con for Ben but Mike trusts them (Henry thinks Mike is being fleeced).
- The Geordie men who sell fish door-to-door: Ben and Henry both have a memory of this from their childhoods. Henry's Geordie-accented fish seller is like a character from a fairy tale (Rumplefishskin), sucking mothers into their charming web. You either have to be rude or buy a whole salmon.
- Mike doesn't put his window cleaners into the same bracket as the fish salesmen though. Mike's clean windows may well mark him out as a target for fish salesmen. Henry's accent now encompasses all of the British Isles at once. Quite a high register. Henry's vocal range is like a grand piano or Mariah Carey.
- Every debate comes back to the uncredited Geordie with a bag of fish (that's mainly ham but smells of fish) argument.
¶ Topic Chat
- Begins with an airport-style announcement for travellers on the Beans Airlines flight to Lukewarm Banter International.
- Ben booked a cheap flight back from Toronto once from a new Latvian company that went insolvent. Sometimes this happens during the flight, which disappears from under you ("cough up your lamb"/"forget everything that happened in Marley and Me"). There is a right to be transported back across the Atlantic on the back of an angry hog. Too expensive to get a new flight if they got money back, unless canned, powdered, pickled or biltonged (which you can post over).
- The insolvent airline used short-haul planes to go Europe>N. America by slingshotting using the big magnet at the North Pole. Henry shows Ben and Mike a diagram of the North Pole slide method, where the person at the pole is like a ballerina in a music box: a bulbous triangle. The plane was an A321 Neo – buying two of these bankrupted the airline. The airline's website has 'Don't Worry' in a font they've made themselves because it's cheaper. The pilot is caged but don't worry about the restraining order as it's for a different crime segment and his parole officer can push the buttons/operate the pulleys. No films on the flight (actually true), just am-dram Coriolanus. It's the USB stick for Marley and Me that tips it over the weight edge. Everyone has to have a shit before they get on the plane.
- Announcement from Beans Airlines re checking in your family members as luggage.
- Ben checked the plane on a website that gives the plane's "form" (like a racehorse) and it was from 1972, an old post/mail plane that sometimes transported prisoners like in Con Air and had recently done a tail-strike. Henry imagines a huge ramp lowering at the back so a tank can get on and Tom Cruise can fight a muscly bad guy. The plane was also metallic, not white. Access to ashtrays was excellent though and you get to hear the pilot read a novelisation of Starsky and Hutch.
- Announcement from Beans Airlines re the duty free labyrinth (feeding time for the tax minotaur).
- The airline pilot listeners: emailer with spicy meal and Jez who Mike met in Munich. Is flying still glamorous? Wear a suit to get an upgrade.
- What happened to the Easyjet guy? Airlines with names like Bang! Flam! Fly to Cork for 75p. Ben flew to Milan for 99p. Was BMI Baby based on Be My Baby, the song? Or was it Body Mass Index?
- Easyjet is posh compared to Ryanair, which is like a Megabus that flies. Ryanair sucks the joy from a holiday, much like flying from Luton airport. Be careful slagging off Luton as Mike's dad grew up there. Henry still thinks it's bad: sub-Derby. Downtown Luton (sung to tune of Petula Clark song), lots of places to buy vapes (but not kumquat flavour)
- Announcement from Beans Airlines re the pilot's catfishing by a fake Bonnie Tyler.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Christian from Perth, Australia tells the Beans that navy types are nowadays served breakfast via Scraegg (egg scrambling droid bot). Like a coffee machine for egg. Poor chicken trapped in it should get the Victoria Cross.
- Marcus remembers McDonald's briefly serving hot dogs in the UK but none of the Beans do. Henry feels they shouldn't mess with that foodstuff. Mike wonders if they piloted it in Worcester. Henry says McDonald's burgers are not like normal burgers, they're abstracted, Platonic, not able to be made at home. Henry once reheated a Big Mac in the oven and it created the worst smell because it was interacting with real cooking implements (should have microwaved it). Their fries have no relationship with a potato.
- Every correspondent this week gets a hot cup of Scraegg as a drive-by delivery. Perhaps Ben's house has been Scraegged? He could be living in a protein-rich Scraegloo. If a Scraegg machine fell in love, it would only be able to express this love through the medium of hot egg. Fear would produce brown scraegg. Top Gun: Maverick should have placed some Scraeggs around their aircraft carrier, mini Scraegg on the jets (they fly alone because of the Scraegg guffs). If a Scraegg was on a submarine, the pressure might scraegg the whole ocean, which the sealife might enjoy. Marrying a Scraegg would mean one side of the aisle was all of its relatives: toasters, microwaves, gatling guns, and the other side is your horrified family. Father of the Scraegg speech: crying tears from its nozzle. Grandmother toaster turned up to 11 with anger at the Brother of the Scraegg's ribald stories. The guests with bodies looking forward to the chance to fuck a SodaStream.
¶ Jingles
- Lewd Content (4:33)
- Bean Machine (18:36)
- Beans Airlines announcements (19:09, 29:11, 34:48 & 39:15)
- Emails (39:50)
- Bollocking Accepted (41:26)
- Bollock Back (53:47)
- Patreon (55:59)
¶ Bollockings
- A few emails on this topic: the McDonald's advert that only Henry remembered in thepyramids ep. Ben and Mike accept the bollocking that they were wrong to insinuate the advert didn't exist. Henry doesn't like hearing that it was the older demographic that rememberd it.
- David bollocks Henry's memory of the words of the McDonald's jingle: no pickled onions in it (should be pickles, onion). Henry loves pickled onions and will 'rawdog' them. Mike picks him up on the use of the term 'rawdog' which he feels is being misused but Ben assures him that, these days, it just means doing something without accoutrements. A troubling phrase. Gen Z would not use it to mean fucking a jar of pickled onions.
- Nick in Buckinghamshire has a bollocking for Henry which he bollocks back BEFORE the email is read out, which is risky as it might leave him bollockrupt. Nick's bollock is about Henry's space bordello chat from thepyramids ep where he said the Star Wars universe was in the future, whereas it's actually a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Henry argues that their galaxy and ours are on different time schedules (reflecto). Henry's bollock for Nick is that his DIY show is shit (is he Nick Knowles? a DIY YouTuber?).
¶ Notable Quotes
- Let's give this a shot. It's probably a bit of whimsical fun, isn't it? ... Turn it off, Barbara!
- Come on, this is not good enough, this content.
- It could be a poogloo future, Ben, for you, and for all of us.
- I imagine the death rate will have come down... because of the mega-mop.
- Have you fallen victim to a pushy Geordie fish salesman? Please email in.
- You could argue that pigs are tunas of the land.
- Turn around? At the North Pole? Do you want to set the Earth off its orbit, mate?
- Stop referring to the diagram!
- We've got the bus bit covered. It's 'air'-ing it that we're worried about.
- Welcome to our village, but don't stray out at night because you shall meet the Scraaaeeegg.
- It's not temperature heat, it's molecular heat that creates a Big Mac.
- It's quite difficult to tell the difference between love and anger in a Scraegg.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Patreon membership includes film eps where the Beans don't explain the films they're talking about.
- All last week Mike was in the SBL as they were installing an obscene ceiling (92 patrons!).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Barney bought a sailboat (did it have a Scraegg?) and recorded this hauntingly lonely guitar tune in a bay off the Scottish coast.
- End of season wishes (back in December, not November as Henry thought).