¶ Opening Chat
- The wind has been bothering Henry lately, Ben thinks about it all the time, but Mike likes a bit of wind. Ben has crossed the floor on this issue either despite or with the support of Black Rod. Kites and wind-powered electricity generation are a bullshit lie.
- Becoming a homeowner means wearing red chinos, adopting the default position of 'sod off', voting Tory, and wearing a range of tank-tops in the colours of puce through to burgundy. Ben shows the others his 'homeowner' tank-top. A Tory will see the secret lettering within the Fair Isle pattern, saying 'Thatcher was broadly right', along with the Tory apologist washing instructions.
- Ben now worries about his roof, guttering and garden furniture every time the wind is up. Mike experienced a fence coming down in high winds but will simply replace it with plants ('What about your boundaries, Mike? Protect your boundaries!', and your lifesize David Starkey figurine with unlimited bunting coming out of his arse).
- Henry compares wind to an invisible bloke pushing you over and whistling in your ear. Rain sustains veg growth and has a romance. Has anyone ever said they'd like to make sweet love in a Gale Force 3 to 4? A light breeze? A whisper of a zephyr? These just remind Ben of the power being held back. Henry is reminded of a boxer touching his face before the bout to remind him of what's in store, while Henry wonders what the hell he's doing there with the crowd baying for his blood. It's not even for charity and King Charles is in the royal box, getting his regal gloves on to take the first pop. A sports bag in the shape of a coffin to Henry's dimensions does not fill him with confidence.
- What was the question? Is a gentle breeze not nice? Henry is now chilling in a Pizza Express and a mafia guy has served him bolognese containing Henry's hand.
- Henry and Mike are wearing similar fleeces: they're morphing into Bland Man. Henry constantly removes and puts back on his fleece so has figured out a way to not have to take his glasses off each time: he takes the fleece off round his trousers (inventing the sleeved fleece kilt with the sleeves becoming a bow/sporran/meat-filled horrible sausage as bait for the rewilded hogs and beavers). He actually uses a facial expression to keep his glasses on. Henry demonstrates this for the other Beans and Mike is confused as to why the tongue has to be all the way out.
- A bell dongs. An ethereal soundscape is used as a bed. New Section: Henry Paker Laterly Realises This Is Primarily An Audio Medium – he describes the facial expression above: like an eagle returning to its nest to discover an owl shagging its wife / Francis Bacon's 'Screaming Pope' painting.
- Henry demonstrates the technique again. This time he looks like a vanquished cartoon baddie in an irony-laced death (e.g. with baddie's frozen balls in a G&T). Mike would assume someone with that facial expression wants to be put out of their misery with e.g. a scaffolding pole or bollard. 'Get stoving!' Ben wonders what help the facial expression could possibly be giving to keeping the glasses on but Henry is convinced it works. Mike wonders if the whole head is swelling/ballooning by 12% or Henry's prehensile ears are trying to clutch. Henry thinks, evolutionarily, he is caught between a polar bear, a shark, and a lioness. Somehow he ends up making whoopee with the lioness (turned out for the best).
¶ Topic Chat
- Ella from Cambridge is now in Cuba: Communism, no tarifs. In her AOB she mentions that in festivals the Beans listed Havana as a possible tour destination.They're wild about beans in Havana to the extent that Ella spends 30% of her life in her Host Mother's bathroom. Mike likes the idea of a Host Mother, but not in an Alien way, or a seduction.
- Language is Henry's breath, blood, soul, and lover, and the Assistant Manager of Ben's Leisure Centre.
- What is the Cuban dance? Is it the gentle sway you do as you're bundled into the back of a police van because your own children dobbed you in? Ben lists dances, including 'Bottom Line' but it's just the end of the webpage. Henry imagines a Bottom Line dance as a wedding line-up.
- Henry is the imp, dancing on the ceiling (where's his head), in the Thames... his take is that language is a lie. Let's deconstruct 'I've got a rash on my arse, could you take a look for me please?'. As a master of language, Henry does rely on 'squiddly diddly' impish nonsense quite a bit.
- If the Beans were dogs, they wouldn't have to imagine it. Ben has the psyche of a dog, imagining curling up at Henry's feet while he's in a pub doing the crossword. Is the opposite of a dog a jellyfish (or Luxembourg)? Henry checks with Mike if it's okay to give a dog a little kiss (don't surprise it from the back). Like any great friendship, you let the dog smell your hands, then the meat biscuits come out.
- Is Henry in the foothills of a good idea? This could be the title of his autobiography. Like Magritte paintings (e.g. 'ceci n'est pas une pipe' but it's a pipe): symbols, signifiers. Words as signposts, not the thing itself, apart from one: God? (cue Pakerdoonia ethereal chanting – 'drink deep from the beaker of truth'). No, the word is 'congratulations'. 'D O G' are just runes/symbols, you can't stick them next to you while you do a crossword in the pub, though this would make a good short film (but only in 1910 like so many short films). Congratulations is congratulations.
- When people speak, they're lying – quite punk, Henry doesn't give a shiiiiit. Or is this what classical drama is? Mike is a radical actor who doesn't offer subtext, he studied at the Paris school (thick French accent) 'Just Fucking Read It Out' – 15-minute short course. Is a domestic situation 100% subtext? Not really talking about bin bags, but about wasting your life after 25 years together. The text may be about watching a new Matt Damon film or putting the bay leaf into a bolognese, but the subtext is always 'I've wasted the last 25 years of my life'. Unless the text is about getting a smart meter, as that's wasting 25 years AND overpaying for gas. Mike has no inner life, he is The Oaf in Commedia dell'arte: the person who says exactly what they think. Only interesting to watch when pouring hot custard down their trousers (hence Mike always takes a couple of super-soakers filled with hot custard into auditions, even to the one for Adolescence, which was tricky to keep the custard hot for the whole of the one take).
- Overused words: 'extraordinary' now, in podcasts / 'unprecedented' during the pandemic. Ben wonders if this is like Henry asserting that everything is from space in the festivals episode, perhaps on the way to coming up with a Grand Theory (cue Pakerdoonia ethereal chanting – 'get your starter beaker for only 9 9 99 9'). It's 'extraordinary', not 'impossible' says Mike, being a stick in the mud (example of idiomatic language) and/or the Shadow of Death. 'Death' should have its own font = Gothic (not just for heavy metal bands). Henry is gathering weapons on the way, and calling upon the yeomen, for the first Pakerdonia crusade. The guy from the aquarium can bring his weapon (the net for fishing out turds). The gathered army on the train, just catching up on emails and watching Netflix (okay to do so on the quiet carriage if it's just the assembled masses (the one granny can be got with a sharpened fish)). May have to get on a bus at Westbury and march from Taunton (enjoy the scenery but stay angry and don't accept scones from grannies). Henry advises clipping up his 'universal' point about rail replacement buses.
- Henry calling Mike a 'stick in the mud' was horrible, like something Boris Johnson would do, changing the register of language (sounds clever to say this). The podcast Radiolab has an episode about the inevitability of coincidences (meaning in the finding of a balloon tied with a message from someone with the same name/DOB) – a numbers game. A coincidence like asking someone outside an airport Pret if their name is Roy Keane (it's actually Yamdur the Inquisitor or Peter Yamdur). Just as slim a chance of running into Yamdur/Peter as Roy Keane.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Lots of emails from people at Glastonbury in 1986, but none of them saw Mime Machine.
- Jack used to live next door to The Housemartins' house (Henry wonders if they formed in that house and were all called Martin, and did Crowded House also all live in a house, or Metallica, Led Zepellin, The Kooks or T'Pau?). His partner's fun fact was that she was in the music video for Rotterdam by The Beautiful South – she got this gig because her dad was Paul Heaton's drug dealer (Henry sings A Little Time). Henry finds The Beautiful South to be a perfect example of not knowing who he is/what he likes, whereas Mike can just say 'action movies' and move on, or 'Grisham' as the answer to anything, including 'who is the best Prime Minister?'. In a 'cool crowd' of playwrights and politicians (Alan Bennett and Jeremy Hunt, perhaps the brother of a famous pianist who's mostly a peripatetic teacher of fire safety to corporations who operate on water), Henry (he forgets where he is here and there's a 'what was the question?') would not know what to say if Alan Yentob asked whether The Beautiful South were a good band: are they good or not? Yentob is getting in Henry's head whereas Mike would have said they're a good band but not everyone's cup of tea, then pushed Yentob out of a window.
- Hilary emails about Simply Red (Henry has no qualms about saying they have the greatest soul singer of his generation) and Mick Hucknall, who had a doppelganger in a regular at Hilary's pub who had the ringlets and a bum bag and was known as 'Simply Twat' (Ben struggles to get this out). The marvellous power of language: devastating and simple.
¶ Jingles
- Bean Machine (18:27)
- Emails (44:52)
- Alex from Gateshead's version of the Patreon jingle, submitted 2yrs and 4mths ago (53:09)
¶ Notable Quotes
- It's Fair Isle, Mike, for God's sake! / I do beg your pardon.
- Donate here to crowdfund for Lazarating Thatcher.
- If a bloke was wind, he'd be a dick.
- If I saw someone doing that in public, I would put them out of their misery.
- I don't think imagining we're all dogs is going to help with this.
- The great thing about language is that everything is language. Except smell.
- Why are you saying that in a slightly world-weary way, Ben?
- We will have my vengeance!
- You can't be angry eating a scone.
- It sounds like I have a mono-quiver arrow. In which case, do I need the quiver? I could just hold the arrow or put it in my rucksack.
- Ben's jingles are fuelled by carvery alone.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- The ceremony to welcome Egg back to the world of the conscious (164 patrons).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Angus woke up with a tune in his head and cobbled it together on Garage Band as a 4-part harmony for harp.