¶ Opening Chat
- Ben has bought a new item (for him) from Lidl: a gut health shot with melon, carrot, and ginger (and one billion live cultures – rich, literate, with their own customs and folk music). Mike thinks rolling a carrot on the floor and eating it gives the same results and that such shots are absolutely fleece-o-matic but will occasionally take one on a late-night drive.
- Food fads are on the way out when they have filtered down to Lidl (Ben's local shop) level, e.g. kombucha (take a moment to remember it). The arse-end of the zeitgeist.
- Kombucha and the like were started by a guy called Ronolf (originally from Germany) in a surf cafe in San Diego. He's from the wrong side of the tracks, where the ideas bubble up from. He has his own wellness podcast and a 10-pack, consuming protein and steroids to the extent that his kidneys are dead and he has the smallest bollocks you've ever seen. Streamlined Ronolf!
- Ronolf has created a surf staircase in the Turquoise Zone (not the Green Zone demilitarised area in post-war Iraq with Matt Damon) because he's so aerodynamic. He bought a bunch of cabbages to make a sculpture of Tony Blair (satire), forgot about it, got lost in his own staircase (added a left turn into a corridor), the cabbages went off, and his mate Tazbo (of course), a partially Argentinian/Albanian burlesque performer added Korean spices... two weeks later, kombucha! But what is kombucha? No one knows.
- Ben shares the exact demographic purchasing patterns of a 65-year-old retired financial adviser, and therefore the same microbiome state.
- Henry had got confused with kimchi re the fermented cabbages.
- Matcha will be in Lidl in 2–3 years.
- The gut health shot not being downed straight away, in the same motion as buying it, means Ben is not a busy, flatulent (or not flatulent enough), urban professional. The Henderson report is almost finished and ready to be presented to the Yashimoto delegates.
- Henry predicts that Ben will go red and weepy, because he is not ready for the gut health shot. The ingredients foreground pineapple juice (the same shit we've always been drinking) but it wasn't mentioned at all on the front of the bottle.
- Rory Sutherland explainer for Mike: an advertising guru who waffles on about e.g. buying an experience of Paris when you go to Pret. Reframing: people go to Wagamamas for the toilets. A paragon of middle-aged man confidence.
- Mike should save his soundbite about the yogurt industry for the Henderson briefing. The spotlight will be on his moustache when the Yashimoto delegates arrive, with a special moustache gobo on. Soundbites will be delivered through a mouthful of yogurt while Mike does solfège with his anus: deliberately unnerving. His bottom will have been wagyued for 24 hours beforehand. Yop will sponsor the yogurt-catching bucket. Yop, BAE Systems and a deep-sea South American mineral mining company always have a place at the table. Yop and BAE have combined to cover a small town in yogurt: hearts and minds stuff.
- Henry's dystopian idea where water is the new currency. Your wallet is an ice cube holder (very tricky to get the cubes out) so you try to get water to help ease the cubes out. Nice try, mate! This is an example of a taster scene for the book.
- Ben reads the shot's ingredients, which include baobab powder, from the sacred tree, which may make Ben into a forest sprite.
- The Bacillus coagulans listed could be either potent rat poison or Satan's hoof.
- Ben welcomes the one billion cultures, downs it in one and winces: it's zingy! He is reborn, stronger than ever.
¶ Plug Zone
- Mike's acoustic album, with light backing vocals from Alexander Armstrong, in a scatting (not sex shitting into a series of differently tuned bins) style.
- Mike's solo stand-up tour (40–50 dates) is coming in 2026 and the tickets are available at [insert date here]. An edit is dropped in about the tickets but the dates are still not set in stone and in fact the whole thing is as confusing as a Christopher Nolan film. Details will be available on a/the Instagram and also Mike's Lazarated website. The tour promo materials will feature good art from Madison Coby, which is fine because Henry was too busy anyway. Presale tickets will be available on Patreon. The tour is about a bench, but is it the same kind of bench that Henry uses at the gym? He is just pushing the stick up and down so far (without weights) but using his mime skills, so that people imagine they are seeing weights on the end of the stick.
- There are still tickets available for the Beans' tour show in a big theatre in Glasgow on a Monday night. People are mentioning the desperation with which the Beans keep mentioning the Glasgow gig. Should the Glaswegians be negged? Is The Game the answer?
- The London dates on the 6th and 7th December will be livestreamed, though the in-person tickets are sold out. Ratmas Live needs listener submissions of rat stories.
- Ben's short film, Daddy Superior, is now on YouTube, starring Mike. Should the comments be disabled because they will be too positive, or indeed a rolling hate-crime situation? Henry is notable by his absence, but his shadow looms large, like Harrison Ford in Star Wars (except he was in it). Or is it more like Gene Hackman in Star Wars?
- Henry plugs the shepherd's pie he made yesterday. SPCs (shepherd pie coins) are available on the Beans' online shop. Henry is a good host: he offered the pie leftovers to his guests in a party bag with some crayons, a party popper, and some banana bread which he also made. He upped the umami on the meaty bit of the pie with some Worcestershire sauce: a secret ingredient in 2004 in bologneses (a bit like dark chocolate in your chille con carne, making you the king of the 90s). Marmite is the new thing to add umami to a dish. Henry seething at the top of the table waiting for a guest to ask about the umami.
- The Plug section featured Mike's tour that he has worked for years on, Ben's film that took many months to put together, both spoken about less than Henry's shepherd's pie.
¶ Topic Chat
- The Beans should have hot takes on town planning after travelling around various towns for their tour. They have seen a lot of muscular architecture capable of holding a lot of corn. Mike has made the mistake of imagining a load of corn in a corn exchange. It was virtual, non-fungible corn (NFCs). They needed the big buildings for the omni-directional, massive beards, like a Scotch egg. Queen Victoria's huge beard was pulled back behind her head, ensuring she never had a wrinkle in her portraits.
- Was no one exchanging corn? In Cardiff's coal exachange they didn't have a big pile of coal.
- A 350–1,000-seater corn exchange is a great place to see Mark Steel or ABBA/an ABBA tribute. Ben would like to see an ABBA/Flintstones tribute called YABBA DABBA Do! This will make him billions: two pre-sold franchises, two men/two women (Fred (Björn), Barney (Benny), Wilma (Agnetha), and the other one (Frida)), same as ABBA. Henry sings Chiquitita but with Flintstones lyrics (Chiquitita, you and I know / That our blender is actually a small dinosaur). You want to see the car on stage being worked by the feet, unlike in Phantom where the theatrical mist disguises the bottom of the boat.
- Henry's idea: ABBA-t and Costello, which will be a catastrophic failure. How about ABBA-t DABBA Do!: the cast of the Flintstones and an abbot, or ABBA-t Dabba Do-wop with Alexander Armstrong as the abbot who can do do-wop. ABBA-t Jabba the Hutt and Do-wop would bring in another franchise. ABBA-t Jabberwocky the Hutt and Do-wop: the cast of The Flintstones, an abbot, and Jabba the Hutt dress up like ABBA and perform The Jabberwocky from (sic) CS Lewis. The sequel would be ABB-id Dog, a hard-hitting piece about the invention of the rabies vaccine.
- Who likes corn on the cob? Everyone! Is this a sign that it's the end of the season and the chat is falling off a cliff? No! It's good stuff! No one doesn't like corn on the cob. It should be sold alongside ice cream in the interval.
- Is it true that corn has no nutritional value? What about fibre? Why is it fully formed in the toilet? Antillus Gup (he farts out of his facial cloaca), the constipated bounty hunter, will be the star of ABBA-t Jabba the Hutt and Do-wop.
- Corn has a carby element, which Henry sees as treading water (nothing interesting to say). Fibre/carb is not a nutrient, according to Henry (Mike: "of course it is, you tit!"). Henry was misled at 4am in a bar by some absolute plum that he hangs out with in his private time. Not Stoppard, anyway, as he knows nothing of corn.
- "Popcorn isn't anything, so you can keep eating it" – more wisdom from Henry where Mike wonders who he's been talking to. Mike is 'heritage media' and has drunk the corn Kool-Aid.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- A number of emails in defense of the pomelo (the tropical shaddock). First one from Phillie, who went to a pomelo ceremony run by a Pomelo Priestess that was scored by the Interstellar soundtrack (Hans Zimmer for gravitas) which features a track called 'Cornfield Chase'. Running through cornfields in films looks easy but Ben has tried it and it's impossible. Mike thinks he should have done a car chase rather than running. Is the pomelo context-dependent? Need to make sure your PRS subs are up to date if you want to play the Interstellar soundtrack.
- Lisa from Bristol tried a service station bollocking in the canada episode and suffered shame at delivering a ghost bollock. She tried a pomelo after listening to John Robins' voicemail in SundayRoasts. It was like polystyrene dipped in white spirit. She didn't heed the warning.
- Jonathan paid $2.99 and suffered an allergic reaction to eating a pomelo/green volleyball. He should have stopped eating the pomelo and started eating the EpiPen.
- Neil was travelling around India and saw pomelo trees in a spice plantation. His guide said the skin, soaked overnight in honey, was a cure for diabetes (is this the same guy giving Henry dietary advice?). If you have diabetes, best to go down the NHS route, or just DM Henry for his jazz medicine ethos (you can't prove jazz).
- Joe from Bristol (all Bristol vibes today) was honeymooning in Nepal and saw a pomelo tree in a tea house. The family sat them down to share the fruit after a team of men with machetes carved away the pith. The pink fruit was eaten with salt and cumin followed by the torrential shits for two days. Salt and cumin makes everything delicious, even a bluebottle. Another email said salt and vinegar made pomelo nice, but what doesn't taste good dipped in salt and vinegar? Tiramisu?
- Jess from Bristol (possibly Bristol, Arkansas) introduces the Beans to the medlar (or open-arse) fruit. Henry is grossed out by looking at it. There's a reason the fruit business is cornered by apple, pear, orange, and banana. Medlar has an alien proboscis vibe.
- Will (assumed from Bristol) and his partner had their first baby in May and became Patreon supporters to listen during the night feeds. Will offers a '5 months of nonsensical babbling'-based Switcheroo. Henry's disclaimer to the usual 'your badge is in the post' offers a huge conspiracry theory: there is no post. It's actually part of his dystopian film idea: no water or post. The mail goes down into a fiery pit where a demon reads your letters and pays your bills.
¶ Jingles
- Beefcake Journey (18:48)
- Bean Machine (28:10)
- Email jingle from Jonathan from Bristol: acoustic, techno-folk horror (40:39). Unsettling.
- False bollock (46:05)
- Switcheroo (53:49)
- Patreon (54:59)
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Conchiglie Circus (111 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Lilian the viola player whose theme was played in the titanic episode offers a feedback-laden version, inspired by the listener theme in the SundayRoasts episode and Ben's conjecture about what 'feedback' could be. Critique-filled, hugely backhanded tribute to be played at the Oscars when the cleaners want to clear out the hall.
¶ Notable Quotes
- Like being punched in the face from inside your own throat.
- You take it to the till, in the same motion you whack it down your throat, then you go to the toilet and cry out of your bottom.
- The yogurt industry put the work in, and now the pineapple guys are cashing in.
- Baobab powder? From the weird, crazy African tree? Who's powdering that?
- I can bench a stick.
- Marmite might be 2025's dark chocolate.
- You can't bunting mashed potato. Yet.
- Take me to corn school.
- You've got to stop talking to dickheads, mate, particularly about your nutrition. You'll be dead within a year.
- He's soaked in honey and ready to receive your call.