¶ Opening Chat
- The Beans are recording on a Saturday morning, and evoke Saturday morning kid's tv shows of yore - Henry's got the fun hammer! Ben thinks there would be a good TV show in an antagonistic granddad who has kids "smash up" his knees with the fun (real) hammer.
- Not only is it a Saturday, it is the first day of "meteorological Spring". Start sieving for toads in your local pond or lake - chuck them into the nearest parish or get 30p from the local mayor for every toad you stand on. Fun for all the family!
- Henry cannot say meteorological. Other types of Spring are Gregorian Spring and magnetic Spring - if you take a dump on a space station a crocus will grow on your turd, you need to take lots of "shotos" (which is a photo of a shit).
- Ben has recently been in London, staying near Trafalgar Square. He had a tiramisu which was "shit". Ben wants a slice of tiramisu taken from a larger tiramisu (like a big, soft mattress). He wants to know it has been made that day in a rat-infested underground kitchen - imbued with flavours from around the world. The rat turds are referred to as the coffee element - you find a way to cope. Ben was living the central London life, he would leave his hotel and see a drunk man pissing (it was Simon Schama).
- Ben would go to Pret, where there is a test to see if you are morally good (akin to taking your trolley back in the supermarket, which Henry would push into the stir fry packs). There are pots of jam, nuts, or honey available to go with the porridge and you are only supposed to take one. The Beans also discuss the moral dilemma of the starving guinea pig in Pret - he has a kiss curl, a powder blue bow tie and "Adagio for Strings" is playing - do you feed him or kick him in the tummy? Ben was offered nuts to go with his honey by a staff member in one Pret store. This felt like Ben was sanctioned to take more than one pot in another Pret, but he worried about "moral slippage" - pretty soon you are making wardrobes out of human bone.
- Henry suggests that another test for altruism is "have you ever murdered anyone?" and also clearing away your tray in an Itsu. Maybe this is all the most expensive, long-running PhD of human behaviour ever, developed by Professor Derek Itsu (his parents are really worried about him).
- Henry has a life-hack with honesty boxes - you don't actually have to put any money in. Like the egg box on the side of the road - he reverses his Hyundai i10 into it, taking the loose change, setting fire to the road with petrol (actually not worth it as needed that petrol and now there is an angry farmer after him).
- Ben recalls going to a pub in London where everyone was on their own leading to a weird vibe (that they could all have sex with each other if one of them broke the ice rather than staring into their pint). What stopped a potential orgy happening was that the pub was playing "Only Fools and Horses" on the TV, without the sound but with subititles. Then, a man with an electric guitar but no accompaniment started playing, which resulted in everyone quietly finishing their pints and leaving. Having a man just play electric guitar on its own is rough - but you could use it as an alternative to water cannons for crowd control.
¶ Topic Chat
- Does Samuel live above a shop, and why is he so interested in giants? The Beans do some sleuthing. Does he look out of his window and see people on a bus and think they are smooth-moving, pin-headed, giants?
- Ben has Googled 84A High Street and found a BBQ Texan pop up restaurant. One 5 star review describes the dark, portaloo toilets, but would return despite their shit and piss covered trousers (if you throw enough barbecue sauce on them you wouldn't be able to tell). Another review is 1 star and describes the cold BBQ platter (except from a sausage) and congealed, sauceless, pulled pork. The reviewer believes the food was cooked elsewhere? Henry presumes the reviewer is female, Ben points this out and informs him the reviewer is called Kevin - Henry probably needs to speak to a therapist about this ("my inner meat critic is female").
- Henry is over pulled pork, Mike can't imagine ever being over it. This restaurant is following a trend, as opposed to carveries which are timeless and immune to history and international meat laws. Most Toby Carverys are in the Doomsday book. In the carvery, pulled pork is the equivalent of a Christmas cracker.
- Mike talks about the Geoffrey of Monmouth myth of the Totnes giants, which Brutus of Troy killed and pushed into the sea, leading to the formation of Britain (it is bollocks). Mythic universe fusion has been going on for a while - it is like joining Deadpool and Paddington. The merch potential would be massive. Would be fun to see Paddington machine gun "a load of mafia people", or him funnelling boiling hot marmalade onto the face of a cartel boss. What is the boiling point of marmalade? Maybe Mike could play a scientist figure (either a recurring Q type figure or someone who gets "smoked early doors").
- The Bond franchise has been bought by Bezos, so potentially many Bond spin-offs in the works. Ben suggests "Moneypenny Nights" which would be a woman with a stressful, civil service job, eating a healthy meal, watching a box set and falling asleep. She is trying to do a masters in chemical engineering but struggles to find the time. She is learning Italian on Duolingo and has a 400 day streak (not sure if she is retaining any of the vocab).
- Ben talks about Duolingo where there is an image of an owl spliced onto an unicorn's face (is the owl's face impaled on the unicorn's horn as a reward?). This feels like a psychological threat, to keep you going on Duolingo to avoid the next horrific image. It should be guarding the gates of hell, and would probably say "kill me" if it could talk.
- Henry finds people doing Duolingo annoying - the noise is annoying. It is annoying seeing someone improve themselves when he is watching a toblerone melt on his nipple in a pub surrounded by men watching "Only Fools and Horses" (and he hasn't started the stopwatch again).
- Mike would like to see the origin stories of some Bond villians, like the woman who had poisonous knives in her shoes. Was she bitten by a radioactive shoe knife? Were her parents kicked in the head by a horse (logistically difficult)? Maybe she is a shoe maker, born pre-revolution (not specified which one, could be the bubble tea revolution), who was kicked by the mule of a tsarina.
- Villians have to have been almost good. Like the shark in Jaws, they could have been a dolphin - applied so many times but turned away as they couldn't provide 4 utility bills as proof of address as the live in the sea.
- Back to the knife villian - was she providing defibrillating clogs? Henry also struggles to say defibrillation (defribrillation, defibullation) - if only it was easier to say and then the person wouldn't be dead (and requiring refridgeration). Mike gives a decent explanation of what fibrillation means (cardiac muscles acting erratically and therefore ineffectively). Maybe the right clog has a snack in, and the left clog has an electrical current in it. Maybe The West fleeces her and steals her idea, then she visits a donkey sanctuary to let off steam and her parents get kicked to death by a mule.
- What about the other letters for Bond characters, and the other numbers (like 0013, Henry initially thinks he wouldn't want to watch that but changes his mind). 00-Susan?
- Increasingly clear that the Beans will not be talking about giants (although James Bond is a cultural giant). They blame this on Samuel from 84A High Street because if he hadn't suggested giants this would never have been a problem. Henry calls him Samuel L. Johnson (he has "presidentified" (sic) his name).
- Hernry thinks giants are the "crappest" mythical being, as they are so unoriginal, especially when compared to a domesticated griffin (the face of a lion and the head of a dog) and an inconclox (sic) (the face of a ram, the body of Adrian Chiles and the feet of an alligator). Maybe the person who came up with the idea for giants was inspired by somebody standing very close to them. It feels very much like a deadline issue - a small person and a really average person (Adrian Chiles) had already been done.
- Henry does a plug for the television show "Funboys" (available on BBC iPlayer) produced by Simon Mayhew Archer. He has a Bafta in his front room, the Beans all have front rooms.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Rosie previously sent in a jingle in the style of a crap banking advert, which Ben called "my least favourite type of music". Undeterred, she has sent in a Mozart aria version of the email jingle. This sounds like all of Ben's first drafts of jingles, because of his Habsburg blood and his castrato voice from all the hormones in the carvery meats he consumes. Henry has found a new homophone in "undeterred" and "under turd", someone will have unfortunately named their autobiography this (Adrian Chiles? he really should have checked the emails of the front cover he was sent, to avoid the picture of him wearing a cow pat as a beret).
- Jennifer listened to Film Corner and drilled into her finger. Who knows if this is accidental or not. Maybe even the person involved doesn't know - it is spine-brain, primordial, reflex, behaviour.
- Jared from Australia feels that the Beans could move into satirical, topical chat. 3 key points on the political spectrum would be covered. Ben would be right-wing (Victorian industrialist), Mike right-wing (provincial thriller reading sabre rattler), and Henry right-wing (regime marquess who shaved his head so he could wear powdered wigs). Discussion of the "Overton window" and how it has moved recently, so the podcasters have to be right leaning. Of course, the Beans are politically neutral.
- Tom feels the podcast will run for decades, and then will be taken over by AI bean husks. In 2040 there will be a leap fifth Wednesday. Henry cannot understand this concept, it is too big for him to understand. Pancake day and Valentine's day will also fall on the same day ("Valenshroves") which Mike thinks is "gross" - him and his bethrothed eschew Valentine's (every other day is Valentine's for them) and insted observe Pancake Day (the day of their first date).
- Alex recently lost a pub quiz by a small margin, he could not remember which dealt with foreign intelligence; MI5 of MI6. The Beans try to come up with a rhyme to remember this - St Ives (5) and the birthplace of Hans Blix (6) or British Isles (a half-rhyme of 5) and dodgy holiday pics (6).
¶ Jingles
- 8.13 - Guinea Pig Adagio for Strings
- 12.23 - Lewd Content Warning
- 15.49 - Bean Machine
- 43.27 - Rosie's Mozart version of the email jingle
- 48.23 - Politically Neutral
- 55.00 - Patreon
- 59.57 - Oliver's video game version of the theme tune
¶ Bollockings
- No bollockings this episode.
¶ Notable Quotes
- "It's the first of March, get out your rhubarb!"
- "I've just cleaned a section of road, for free now I come to think of it... fuck"
- "An orgy with bitter on tap"
- "Pin-headed, smooth moving giants"
- "Oh, it's Cilla Black's hairy back"
- "Bungee pork"
- "This horn can go through a conceptual owl what can't it go through?"
- "How am I ever going to find out which of my nipples is warmest?"
- "Fibullation (sic) is the act of dying because no one's whacking you around the chest"
- "The fact that I do pelvic thrusts during my new live experiments Mike is just a way of getting the energy up"
- "Unless he's one of the people who listens to the pod despite Henry Paker"
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- "Scultping Your Favourite Horror Character from Root Veg" night
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Oliver (Henry "Ollys" him) sent a cover of the theme tune in a few years ago. This must have been "accidentally" lost through the "digicracks" so he has re-sent his video game version.