¶ Opening Chat
- Smooth Classics on Bean FM, with Ben's ill voice, making him depleted but voiceover hire-able (as long as he's had the wrong prawns 12 hrs before, or fetid mussels in a red Thai curry).
- The mussels were ordered in a landlocked city centre. Leichtenstein or Mongolian mussels work best.
- Henry finds Ben's ill tone hot and Mike finds glamour in the high-end, Regency city of Bath where the mussels were consumed (not in THE bath).
- If Ben had the ill voice during dating times, his suitor would want to run away with him; a reckless love, a family-smasher (smashing their family's ceramic effigies with a hammer). Unfortunately, the next morning Ben will be back to himself, going to carveries on the way to and from battle re-enactments in a convertible Saab, and the suitor will be looking at ways to stick the ceramic figurines of her family back together. The suitor might want to feed Ben off-prawns to get him back to the hot state, but they tragically don't serve prawns at a carvery.
- Poirot wouldn't spend long on the case of the Landlocked City and the Shellfish. Agatha Christie might choose not to write down that adventure. She only wrote down 5–6% of them as a lot were just misadventures and day-to-day domestic life. Mike reminds Ben and Henry that Poirot was a private detective, but who was paying him? Perhaps his money came from being a regional manager at a well-known supermarket (no dependents so can work weekends). Perhaps he's actually a sick Midlands serial killer (from Coventry, not Belgium), as he is the common theme to all the murders.
- Henry thinks Ben could ask anyone to marry him at the moment (to then be enrobed in Belgian chocolate) as he has George Michael levels of stubble (only possible to get that perfect amount while fuggy with rancid seafood) and a glossy sheen (which Mike explains as the physical extrusion of a toxic mussel through the face, bouillabaisse-ing it from the inside, possibly to gumbo levels, or even a jambalaya). Henry's 'blood & internal organs as soup' theory accompanies Mike's 'groinal sourdough' theory, along with Ben's 'arse croutons' (no longer a crunchy inconvenience) and a sprinkling of chives on his lumbar area for freshness.
- Ben relistened to thenetherlands episode when Mike was taking Oramorph after a Patreon commenter who works in healthcare could tell he was 'off his tits'. There was a slurring, languid slowness. Mike is glad there wasn't an improvement. Henry gets confused about what opiates are and thinks Mike was gurning and proposing 'amphibious bar' business ideas but the aquabar would in fact have to foreclose because the owner was in an opium den.
- This languid mood was the opposite of Mike's natural 'get on the bus!' Geography teacher energy, organising a school trip that has gone wrong from the pre-get-go, making him so stressed that he shouts into his own (alpaca-meat-lined) gloves on the bus (strangulated glove-shouting noise). Rainsworth should be the geography teacher's son but Tallulah Rainsworth turned him down in 1975 after a date spent watching offshore (sic) drift and skinny dipping in an oxbow lake in Norfolk (not your classic aphrodisiac).
- Mike on Oramorph is more like a peripatetic (allowing for Tuesday afternoons at Mrs Rainsworth's for private oboe lessons 'and the rest'), kerchief-wearing oboe teacher, haunted by Gavin Whipsnade (later starter of the successful zoo) getting first-desk oboe at the Bournemouth symphony orchestra when it should have been him.
¶ Topic Chat
- Annie from Cork submits the topic and Henry Googles/Wikis (not thumbing an encyclopedia like the old days) to see if he has in fact been to Cork (Mike has been, Ben has not). Henry might have had to write to a relative to see if he did once go to Cork: Uncle Bumble and his 3 weasel sidekicks, the Bumbletons, who move around in a steam-powered paraglider invented by Professor Plimpington. Henry can't see himself on Google Maps for Cork, because he wasn't wearing a red T-shirt and he can't see anyone in a pith helmet and the guy in cammo gear is definitely Mike.
- Cardiff has monuments to Victorian industrialists who built the place. Exeter has Sir Redvers Buller (probably an absolute megabastard, who the Beans pronounce as 'Bulver' for ages, corrected by Ben at 41:53) astride a horse but no one in Exeter has been arsed to tear him down.
- Horse sculpture no. of legs in the air signifies how the guy on top died (1=battle, 2=with the shits, 4=made by one of the best sculptors you've ever heard of).
- Horse being part of the sculpture is like Ben's sculpture including a Honda Civic (Ben and Mike simultaneously: "a Hyundai i10") with particular doors being open signifying different deaths ('if the glove box was open, I choked on a travel sweet').
- The horse being bigger than the man would be anathema to Hollywood, like Tom Cruise's name being in a smaller font than Havers' in their film together. The horse pops, naturally, as it's just a sexy cow, far sexier than any man (even with a special helmet on).
- Cardiff has Nye Bevan (founder of the NHS) on the back of a skeletal horse feeding it antibiotics and you can see the dildo it swallowed in the skeleton (something for the mums and dads).
- Mike was in Naples in the Piazza del Plebiscito and saw the statue of a guy that was enhanced ('more brass!') in the trouser area during sculpting ('an absolute swinger').
- Sculptor works in negative space, which makes Henry stressed. "Make something bigger": nightmare feedback to get – do you stick a bit on or make everything else 5% smaller until you end up as an obscene earing.
- Draping is when sculpting starts to kick ass ('How can he make it so drapey?'). Bernini(?) sculpute with a thin veil – too sexy to be Virgin Mary? Dimple in the skin is also a 'Look at that' moment. Someone with a towel on their head = mind-blowing. Smoke/mist/spritz is the hardest to do.
- All old statues had 8-pack hot bods because the sculptor was asked to sculpt what their bod would look like in 3 months, not the 'decent rain-proof case' he's currently walking around in.
- Mike's idea for Beans sculpture would mean Henry doesn't have to continue the Beefcake Journey: a fountain that is the Beans coiled amongst each other in a Greco-style wrestle, hench and fighting over a towel. This could go on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Explanation of what this is for overseas/thick listeners which Henry starts and Mike takes over and Henry takes back: Napoleon and his troops trying to take the cafe and gift shop of the National Gallery but Lord Admiral Nelson, on his 200-ft pogo stick dropped on their heads. The lions immediately ossified and the cafe/gift shop staff kept working throughout, hoping someone would buy the £85 book about van Gogh.
- The Beans try to remember what is on the three plinths currently: is it military success or the Three Stations of the Havers? Three stages of his career: (1) suckled by wolves; (2) meeting Derek Jacobi; (3) launched into space. Fourth plinth was once a giant thumbs-up (crap), an ice cream with a fly, a giant pigeon, public doing mad stuff (mostly flashers).
- Cardiff's statue of Gareth Edwards is outside Primark with a frozen yogurt (left nipple) and Angel Delight (right nipple) dispenser cos it was erected in the 80s. Henry (Radio 4 voice): the monument remains but society changes. This would make a good Panorama (but a stretch for one of the long eps).
- Busts invented by someone who wasn't good at doing arms, belly buttons, etc. Or one too many people asked for a bigger wang and the sculptor was just done with it all ('you're just going to be a head and neck – I'll take my florins and leave'). 'Dong deemed unsculptably large' would be etched in Latin on the back or put on the blurb.
- Are statues made of bronze? Cast system so need to hollow out Sir Redvers Buller and fill him with molten metal, then split him open. The bits would be made into Bulver's (sic) Pate. Two ways to sculpt: outside-in or inside-out. Infinite Redvers within the block, including one where he looks like Sonic the Hedgehog.
- The Battle of Pompeii (defeated by General Vesuvius): victims left negative shapes of themselves.
- Antony Gormley has his sitters encased in clay with a snorkel then placed on top of the Shell Building with occasional Super Noodles funneled down the snorkel (better make sure you've opted for an anal funnel).
- Quote from Richard Holmes about Redvers Buller, for whom the Peter Principle kept on going.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Jingles
- Bean Machine (16:14)
- Havers (23:10)
- Listener Bollocking of the Week (44:25)
- Bollocking Accepted (45:27 & 45:41)
- Reflecto Bollock (48:58)
- Patreon (56:27)
¶ Emails
- No jingle as they start with bollockings.
- Gordy in Boston is in need of Henry's advice (very rare) about British Shorthair cats and how to raise them in the US. He has a BS kitten called Nightmare. Nightmare will be ruling the roost like an angry Spanish bull. Ben shows a photo and Henry can see the longing for his homeland in Nightmare's eyes. Direct rule from London will now commence as Nightmare is the governor of a territorial outpost. You give him a 'pet on the hat' (a bearskin) and it's a machete up the arse, so best to submit and collaborate and make an admiral's outfit for Nightmare with a 3D printer.
- Many disgusting rat emails will be consolidated into a 'Ratmus' special episode, perhaps on Christmas Day (optional listen, not the usual compulsory). Henry reminds the listener of rats' ever-present proximity, as he had a 'rat summer' not a 'brat summer'.
¶ Bollockings
- A number of bollockings for Mike. This one from Elsa (an A&E nurse) about the difference between heroin and morphine. The former is called Diamorphine in healthcare where it is sprayed up children's noses. Accepted.
- James has a different angle: morphine and heroin are as illegal as each other. Heroin injected into the spine of those having cesarean sections (including Henry's mum). Accepted.
- Mike pleads brain addlement and Henry makes a chicken noise at him for his pathetic display. Henry treats bollockings like Pablo Escobar surrounded by the CIA: go down fighting.
- A bollocking for Henry from Tom about calling The Netherlands Holland. Henry extrapolates this to mean he couldn't meet a friend in Holland Park, London, without first getting a clod of earth from Holland, The Netherlands and bring it to the park for them to stand on. Or get vitamins from (generic name) & Barrett. Reflecto-bollock.
¶ Notable Quotes
- I'm going to live in the warm embrace of Ben's ill voice. It's all I need.
- Do you want to come and see a battle re-enactment?
- It's afternoon off for Poirot: it's early bath and matinee ITV action movie.
- We have to be in Titchfield Pencil Museum in 25 minutes to meet the curator!
- Are you drinking the inside of a compass again, Rainsworth?
- You don't need your inhaler, Rainsworth. The fresh air will do you good.
- I'm a person who is in the act of realising he may not have been to Cork.
- Is Uncle Bumble real?
- If he was a real scientist, would he let all those weasels into his lab? Sounds like you haven't been to Cork.
- Honda Civic: true, fast, safe, and in three different colours – beige, deep beige, and silver beige (future beige).
- Who knows, in 20 or 30 years' time, there may be baying mobs carrying Gareth Edwards's head.
- Make sure you tick the 'anal funnel' box.
- It's about submission, humiliation, and backrubs.
- Rats are the only animal that isn't 90% water; they're 100% rat. A rat is a rat all the way through. Like a stick of rat.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Q&A with Michael Gove (32 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Edgar from Sheffield's a cappella version with his mate Merriel East doing trumpet noises and a Cockney knees-up vocal