- Now that we're in 2025, why aren't there flying cars and hoverboards? Just all about data. Henry assumed we'd all be drinking koftea (lamb kofta and tea), a hearty Levantine Bovril. The Beans are recording in 2024 so they haven't yet seen the hovering postman or the Earth split open like an egg with a Kinder toy inside (because of the 25-year delay on the Millennium Bug).
- Henry is doing his morning water: plastic 1-litre bottle of Buxton water brought to body temperature with boiling water (Mike has his head in his hands). Henry's innards are now unsurvivable for tuna. Egg the lost tortoise wouldn't like to eat him. The body temperature is important to avoid body stress in your hermaphrodons and pancreatic amalays. The body's state should be idling, like a car.
- Mixing boiling and cold water reminds Henry of an experience he had in a West End theatre, where they do bag checks for kettles because of him. He saw Waiting for Godot, which operated between 14 and 17 degrees F (a terrible review for Ben Whishaw). Old theatres make you feel like a Russian Tsar when in the theatre but then have terrible toilets (because tsars didn't need to use them, they just pissed into their petticoats or let their piss factotum deal with it – Rasputin started off doing that job). The sink had two taps over a foot apart, so impossible to do a quick interval scalp wash. Henry was yelping like a baby at the scalding water. Americans can't believe we use two taps. The two taps force you to make a bowl of water like in the old days of the bowl-based culture but there is no plug in a public sink (Henry forgets the word for 'plug' here) so you can do the quick hand jive or pop a sock in it (plughole or your mouth). Ben and Mike's houses both have single taps only. Henry finds the daily shower a grind. Ben hasn't done the 'Partridge Wallow' for ages so now his bath is full of 'weird bits' (leftovers from rat volleyball sessions and fetes).
- Listeners are the other side of Ratmas and since the shoutout there have been many more rat tales submitted (e.g. 'The Ratman of Plymouth', 'Toilet Rat', and 'Soapy Rat Snacks'). Could it be Ratmas every day? Maybe a Ratquinox in the spring, where the Beans read out rat stories at Stonehenge? Mark the big occasions with rat stories, e.g. the King's Offical Birthday. The Queen had an actual birthday (or day she hatched as a lizard) and an official one, but does the King? The day varies by region to maximise the no. of presents he gets. List of Commonwealth nations and when they celebrate the King's birthday plus a list of nations that have a royal family and when they celebrate their monarch's day, including 'The Day of the Sun' in North Korea.
- Keir Starmer has not been spotted by Henry at an Arsenal game. Is it controversial that he has a box there? Avoids anyone throwing a pint glass at hime. Henry thinks he should have a Starmermobile (like a batmobile? or more of a popemobile?) that is based on the shape of his head, and translucent apart from the opaque toilet section and a series of optional hats (beanie, tricorn and bicorn). His glasses are the windows and he sits in one with wife/friend in the other. Made of fibreglass as the safest material, like POTUS's Beast (the POTUSmobile). The Starmermobile will use hover technology to float around (it is 2025 after all) and he'll slide down the tongue/ramp in a rubber ring wearing swimwear. A lot of fun, but quite disarming at the G8.
- When the Prime Minister is faced with criticism about e.g. a box at Arsenal, he should point out what the North Korean leader gets. Starmer's tried saying 'exterminate him'/'you know what to do'/'maybe it's time for the pigs to be fed' to David Lammy so many times, but nothing happens, nor when he prods bookcases looking for secret passages. The Prime Minister should be allowed the weirdest whim, e.g. a Louis Vuitton hat that looks like your body upside down, so you're wearing yourself or hunting snow leopards released into Wolverhampton or ministerial rail (like Putin has) or Chechen-style TikTok videos of the president shooting up land cruisers in the wilderness/bringing him on as a sub at the football. Movie/theatre cameos would be fun, e.g. on stage at Waiting for Godot (announcing the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance) or doing the weather on the News at Ten. Starmer could make himself the eighth course at The Fat Duck or third desk clarinet at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra or a locker at Ipswich lido (get your clothes and shoes inside of him). All clothes will be S (Starmer) or XS (Extra Starmer) sized. Starmer impressions mandatory (very strange pace to his speaking voice, like being told off).
- Nick from Kent sends in the topic; Kent being Mike's least-favourite county (the feeling's mutual).
- Ben was in London, the 24-hr city, recently. It's certainly there 24 hrs a day, but getting a train after midnight isn't so easy. Ben and Henry had been watching Arsenal play Monaco, then Ben had to get back to Croydon and missed the 11:52 window, resulting in four night-buses (at least it wasn't goats or snake-back). Is checking into a seedy hotel preferable to having to change at Nine Witches or Plodenham? Too many places called Norbury: East Norbury, Norbury Junction, Norbury Wood, Left Norbury, Norbury South Green, Ersatz Norbury. When you meet a Londoner, after asking what novels they've been reading and writing, you ask where they live and they say 'East Wood'/'Plum Hill', which could be anywhere.
- Henry's game: Which Of These Are Real Tube Stops? – Northwood Hills, North Wood, Chorleywood, Pontefract Town. Henry is given the advice to 'channel Osman', as he hasn't made any of the rules of the game clear, including when to answer or whether one is made up or real. Some far-out parts of the Metropolitan line have dolphins and rhinos visible from the window of a tube train, causing a sort of nausea. Mike thought Henry's list of names before the game was better (Green Baize, North Southington, or a thing, like Gun, Brick, Head). Henry gives examples of European stations being named after battles but Ben counters with Waterloo, upsetting Henry who was generally right, even if he was specifically wrong.
- Henry's game round 2: Which Of These Is A Made-Up Tube Stop? – Headstone Lane, Hatch End, Carpender's Park, Roxleybush Green (the latter sounds like a soap from the 80s and was indeed made up, so Mike and Ben owe Henry £50).
- Ben's game: Which One Of These Stations Is Real? – Turkey Brook, Turkey Hill, Turkey Street, Turkey Towers (Ben is always thinking carvery, especially when podding from his special booth within the carvery where the gravy falls down like a gunge tank, coating Ben so he can feed his dinner through the gravy layer). Turkey Street is real even though its location when described sounds made up.
- Mike's game based on stations on the Southwest Trains line: Whimple, Wareton, Freshford (home of the dairy and the correctional facility), Netley. Wareton was made up, based on the real place, Wareham.
- Henry's game round 3: Which Of These Is A Made-Up Tube Station on the Central Line? – Loughton, Debden, Theydon Bois, Nodgeville.
- Mike's new game: Which Of These Will You Not Find In The Concourse Of Birmingham New Street Station? – All Bar One, John Lewis, Krispy Kreme, Oliver Bonas. Henry suggests Doctor Nodge's World of Fun. Ben doesn't believe John Lewis could be one but Henry thinks it might be linked to the Bullring Centre. Ben was right, it was a monobluff, there is no John Lewis. Ben has never been in an Oliver Bonas but Henry describes it perfectly as 'high-end gifts', the opposite of Robert Dyas. Ben found a Ryman (a man stood behind a printer) inside a Robert Dyas, like the Vatican City within Rome.
- The man sent Ben to a Mail Boxes Etc. Henry compares it to LoveFilm, which Mike still has two DVDs from at home (Cinema Paradiso and Three Colours: Blue). However, The Adventures of the Farting Doctor Nodge (The Stinky Adventures of Doctor Nodge in Fart-Town) was watched as soon as received (along with Into the Nodgeverse (the plot involves a parallel universe), Doctor Nodge 4: The Fart Farticles and Doctor Nodge: Stink Origins). Mail Boxes Etc and LoveFilm are companies that exist in a brief moment between phases of technology. Mike finds them to be dead spaces, sinister, with blackmailing documents in lockers full of Polaroids of the elite. Until home printers work properly, you'll still need a place for printing stuff and sending office chairs to Argentina. Manila and brown tape are still king there.
- Once 3D printing takes off, Mike can print his own Tunnock's Tea Cake or e-mail himself to Glasgow and be 3D printed out to do the gig there using MP3s for the sound (but he mustn't also do work in Exeter or it creates a tax problem). After the gig, the 3D Mike must be executed, using the hammers available at the pre-merch trestle table.
- Regal Zone (12:24)
- Bean Machine (24:24)
- London (25:15)
- Emails (43:15)
- Listener Bollocking (46:25)
- Reflecto Bollock (47:51)
- Patreon (47:55)
- Jack has created a Beans role-playing game in the style of Dungeons and Dragons, available from https://pink-soda-books.itch.io/bean-emergency. Ben outlines the goal of the game to help Henry with his own goals in life and describes the gameplay, including references to things even he can't remember.
- Nat questions Ben's assertion that the arrangement of limbs of a horse on a statue has meaning re how the rider met his demise, which Nat describes as 'flat nonsense' (expected from Henry but not from Ben) but doesn't back it up, so that's a Reflecto-bollock from Ben.
- I wouldn't put it past you to have a bit of fibreglass in there as well.
- A petit piss in your petticoats.
- Now what're you going to do, Whishaw?
- Can I have two Big Macs and a Starmerzone Experience, please?
- He's got two ornate Japanese goldfish in his mouth at all times.
- I've got to go snake-back to Sydenham?
- You've pricked my balloon with one little fact prick.
- All last week in the SBL was sponsored by Ridley Scott and was the Gladiator 2 themed CGI Baboon Fight (40 patrons).
- Charlie's dad in the style of Father of Atonalism, Arnold Schoenbean.