¶ Opening Chat
- The magic of the gritter lorries sprinkling their grit around London's vomit-strewn streets and directing said grit at the paintwork of tossers' cars. Henry admits to not knowing anything about this, but has been masking incredibly well (though it takes an emotional toll). He is also confused about which one is Mike (the one with the moustache) and which one is Ben (the Welsh one) because they are different metrics. Does a Welshman have a moustache if he also has a beard? The legislation is too complex on this, similar to: is a hot dog a sandwich / does an Alsatian have sideburns? Is a moustache within a beard similar to every cube of marble having a sculpture within, except for a shark sawn in half, which is why it isn't proper art – take that, 90s Brit Art!
- TGI/TFI Friday confusion. If the former, get him in the kitchen, behind the pot boy. He's the fats git, working out what to do with all the spare fats by putting them in layers to see what rises: the goose fat, which you can resell to Jamie Oliver to grease his children for his private, secret, dry, underground flume park (so ecologically friendly) – his one indulgence. Pam barks at the notion that anything's a flume if you're greased up enough. An ethical theme park might even let you choose the fat to get greased up in (e.g. a reconstituted fatberg) while walking through the turnstile. No naked flames at Flumeworld: you don't want that flume to go up in flame.
- Henry believes he covered his fully comprehensive confusion earlier about the gritter lorries. He believes this covering is seamless, but Ben and Mike can see he has been doing this exhausting, sickening display for 4.5 years, throughout the life of the pod. Think of a swan, upside down, legs in the air, puking into the lake, like a puke jet ski, being fed breadcrumb suppositories through the cloaca. No romantic couple wants to rent a pedalo on that lake, so it'll be low-end mafia meet-ups only.
- Mike recaps what he said at the start about gritter lorries spewing grit onto cars and scratching the paintwork: replaying his much-rehearsed provincial dad banter perfectly. It was the car scratching part where Henry got lost. None of Mike's cars have been nice enough to notice a paint scratch from (i) a bat, (ii) a cyclist, or (iii) flying grit. One of these examples is far-fetched: bat strikes!
- Henry admits he doesn't know when there are bats flying about – he's no longer covering/he's in prison/he has no life experiences. Better strap on/in and see what it's like when he doesn't cover/mask the things he doesn't know about. Has he been coddled by the city or just slept through the gritters and bats? Or are they getting tanked up and eating pickled eggs in a special pub in Smithfields Meat Market?
- Bats are perfect at not twatting into things, by using their military submarine tech, so why do humans lollop around, falling into stuff? If a seagull or pigeon does, it's out fault (it got stuck in a McDonald's cup). Animals stay in their lane, doing their 10,000 hours of running around a tree. Does David Attenborough ever come across a rubbish worm who contributes nothing? A new composer would need to be brought in, perhaps to do some oompah music.
- Some inspiring music underlies an explanation of what human aptitude is: going outside of its aptitude and its willingness to be shit. Cut to Henry playing the flute at a passable Grade 4 level.
- Is our apptitude opposable thumbs or a willingness to collaborate to make something like Only Fools and Horses? Humans are useless when born and need a good 30+ years (in Henry's case) of being held in the parental home, covered in a gloopy amniotic film.
- The inspiring music underlies a bit about Homo erectus having an unpredictable arse, but there's always a reason: carveries. The music continues – what humans have is imagination (the pantomime! jumping across a crevasse!). The squirrel is happy with the forest; it doesn't want to turn it into a multi-storey car park. It doesn't want to do a Master's.
¶ Topic Chat
- Did we all live in caves or did we just find some evidence there because everything else is gone? In the images of cavemen in e.g. cartoons, the cave is spacious, not a narrow apperture leading to a wet, freezing grotto. Henry would look for caves when walking in hills as a child but would only see the narrow gaps that needed a mouse skeleton to squeeze into. There aren't enough really good caves. Is "Cavemen" the wrong term?
- Ben goes on Wikipedia – only a small portion of humanity has ever dwelt in caves. The Beans are right for the first time! The 'Beans were right!' jingle is completely moth-eaten because it wasn't kept in a vacuum-sealed container for all these years where it wasn't used.
- The few decent caves were hotly competed for by cave bears, cave hyenas, etc. Location, location, location! The cave hyena would not be happy with your cave redecoration efforts on Changing Rooms. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen re-arranging various piles of bones.
- Mike saw some troglodyte caves from a boat while travelling in Turkey. Did they have priests or hermits living in them? Henry can't believe there are enough caves with natural balconies and astonishing vistas.
- The Beans' friend, Carl Chapple, lived with a Greek hermit monk for a time (classic Carl!) who had never left the area around the cave, but then Carl bumped into him years later in Geneva, having his mind blown by the concept of a Travelodge and a vending machine. A coincidence much more exciting than that experienced by most: bumping into William Hague at a breakfast buffet.
- How to process Hague now he's all statesmanlike? Talk to him about Benghazi (Julian Benghazi, the world's worst cellist)? A lot of people turn into interesting commentators when they no longer have skin in the game. Or is it that Hague seems normal compared to the modern Conservative party (a beehive on wheels)? Henry attempts a switcheroo but severs himself from the mother concept and spins away from the spaceship like in 2001.
- What is a talented parliamentarian? Just good at sitting on the green seats and knowing which door within them is for No. 1s and which for No. 2s? Someone like Tony Blair still wants to be in charge of the world and to have such a developed bod that he has grown a third buttock (the third way!).
- Terrifying footballers turn pundits and become more avuncular (e.g. Roy Keane). Politicians can do this but Thatcher never did. She became more terrifying because she didn't change her hair and wardrobe so couldn't move to the avunculus phase. A brand expert would have changed her to Mags 2.0 and put her in some denim and lululemon athleisure-wear.
- Michael Portillo has made the most successful avunculus move and Michael Gove is making moves to do the same. These mega-villains should die by falling into a volcano. Matt Hancock almost did so in the jungle in I'm a Celeb... Hancock tries so hard to be liked, but fails in a sickening spectacle.
- If you run into William Hague at the breakfast buffet, he knows he's ruined your holiday, so he grabs his melon balls and runs. If you run into Matt Hancock... he's inviting you to a jet-ski session then kissing you on the CCTV.
- Ben went to the Lascaux Caves in France but the guide only spoke French. He could only understand the word 'troglodyte' but was this the guide talking about cavemen or was the guide describing Ben to the other French speakers, who are probably still in touch now and laughing together about him? The tour guide was home educated by watching The Pink Panther, hence the accent. The French speakers meet up in a special room in the cave that has the first SNES, with games including a bison moving left and right (wuth the same mushrooms from the Mario games).
- The leopard-skin unitard (with triangular crinkles) is the classic illustrator's vision of a caveman, who will be dragging a club/human being. But what is a club? Was the truth much more semi-monkeyoid, scurrying around in a state of 'kill or be killed' in a panic about the cave badger and the cave scaly venomous hamsters?
- Did humans progress from delusion to imagination? While their nose was being chomped by a venomous badger and their right leg was in the mouth of a cave badger, they were picturing a Westfield, buying decent shirts from Uniqlo and achieving their dreams of making it as an Elvis impersonator. In that fraction of a second, as the caveman dies, the thought catalyses into the essence of Homo erectus (stirring music plays).
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Plug Zone
- A jingle is needed so people know when to fast-forward the plug section. Ben might try to make one. Henry tells Ben, the only one who does any work, to stick his finger back in again as there hasn't been a new jingle for a while.
- Mike met Deb Lancaster at a gig, who painted him a portrait of Pam. She's raising money for Canine Rescue Ukraine through her GoFundMe page.
- Friend of the Beans, Simon Mayhew-Archer has a new show on the BBC iPlayer, Can You Keep A Secret? which Mike read an early script of but is saving to watch in downtime from his busy life of gigging, driving between gigs, and eating and cooking pizzas while driving between gigs.
¶ Emails
- Nick from Leeds sees many people in fancy dress doing the Otley Run infini-pub crawl, including Smurfs, but no Na'vi. The 118 118 guys have more cultural cut-through. Henry asks if he can quickly interject (is he okay?): he saw a young person dressed as a 118 guy while on holiday in Cornwall with Elis James over the festive period. How do Gen Z know about these late 00s/early 10s characters who advertised a dated product (a proto-Google)? Mike dealt with relentless '118 guy' heckles in his early stand-up career, with a disappointing aptitude ('A crushing letdown.' – The Evening Standard) considering he must have had 10,000 hours of dealing with these. Henry has them confused with the 'Any Question Answered' text service (63336) which Ben worked for. He must have done that after working for 50 50 50 ("It's Banjo Ben! Where's he got his banjo this time?"), resulting in some confusing answers to simple questions such as "Are there penguins at the North Pole?". Saturday night pub quiz cheats were the mainstay, but he would have to make something up to questions like "Does Sharon fancy me?" for 15p a text. No ethical worries about providing answers for the pub quiz cheats as he would have taken his Bonjo shape for the shift. The 118 guy as a fancy dress character may as well be J.R. Hartley in terms of random advert characters but it has become so much more, maybe even shifting to a religious movement in the future (after all, the 118 guy has the answers). Nick saw someone dressed as Mike in Taskmaster mode recently, showing that Mike has more impact on UK culture than Avatar. Blood-curdling thought.
- Katie saw the latest Avatar after getting drunk and was vocal about how shit it was, causing fellow cinemagoers to get up and leave. Security told her off, then she passed out and slept through the rest.
- Ed emails about Kate Winslet being in it: she was the pregnant lady and had to learn to hold her breath for 7 mins for the role, which was entirely pointless and dangerous (she even holds the Guinness record). We all remember Metkayinas Ronal! She even beats Tom Cruise's on-screen breath-holding record, but he's so small his lungs are the size of a sparrow's lungs anyway.
¶ Jingles
- Pompidou (1:15 and sped-up version at 9:08)
- Bean Machine (19:41)
- A View From The Illustrator's Chair (39:05)
- Emails (45:49)
- Patreon (58:21)
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- The Beans will keep going on Patreon during Fredbury.
- The Pub Quiz Where Every Answer is Custard (114 patrons!).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- John from Swansea's heavy funk style theme.
¶ Notable Quotes
- Get that man on TGI Fridays, quick!
- If you're greased up enough, anything's a flume.
- It was full confusion. It was not an "about".
- It's never going to be a high-quality bat if it's unable to sonically avoid a car.
- Give a squirrel a French horn and see what happens.
- Look at that dog: it can smell its own turds!
- No other animal has developed a carvery culture.
- We will make you into a very avunculus!