¶ Opening Chat
- Henry trailed a couple of topics on his notepad in The_Coastguard episode: gloves and anchovy butter. But, like the spring sparrow, he has moved on to a new branch. He has turned quickly and virulently, like anchovy butter, a rancid pescatarian cream. After reflecting for a week, he doesn't think it's good enough (only the Patreons should not have to hear it). He has reversed into a garage in his 60s bubble car and got stuck there till death.
- Spring has sprung since the last podcast and Henry has the green shoots of a new anecdote to share. The former glove thoughts are now a squirrel skull swarming with aphids: irrelevant, last season's chat.
- Henry went on a city break to one of the two great cities close to his heart: London and... Derby (for its haute couture)? Greater/Central/City of London? London will name its boroughs with a place next door that is slightly nicer (West Kensington, Hampstead Garden Suburb, North Harrods) or with three names depending on whether you're trying to impress someone or not.
- When Ben was spending time in Holborn (was he in Holborn Heights?), a property developer tried to rename it Midtown (very Manhattan). A Meat Packing District needs to have had some meat packing in it (not just Brian emptying mince into a Jiffy bag). A guy called Brian making a bolognese there once does not tell you enough about a district: Brian's Bolognese Preparation Quarter.
- Henry came back from Paris yesterday. He did not go to the Pret or the Five Guys in the Gare du Nord because of the fleet of French farmers outside, firing dung. Awful western capitalism leaks into Paris through the Channel Tunnel and the Gare du Nord soaks up the leak. Drip drip... until one day, the Arc de Triomphe will be a massive Itsu with a Ryman's on top.
- Henry's weekend of Paris in the Spring was perfect. The stars aligned for the first outdoor eating of the season. Mon Dieu! The caricaturists were emerging from their slimy pencil cases.
- Henry goes back before the Eurostar anecdote to detail the cold he has had. It's inter-seasonal so more people have had colds (Ben: bollocks) – but it's not a tent-pole issue for him and he certainly doesn't have any research or data to back up this theory.
- Henry had an early train to Paris but managed to have a full scrambled eggs breakfast beforehand (Ben can't believe the anecdote still hasn't left Britain, 10 mins in and Mike is amazed/baffled that the breakfast is included as a detail). He includes this as it's unusual; normally he'd be rushing off with no brekkie.
- Henry and his friends were next to a hen do on the train and one of them left their chunky chessboard-design scarf behind while everyone got off. Should he go after them? It could be like the meet-cute at the beginning of a rom-com (but not if Henry takes a shit on it and then burns it as a poorly thought out act of defiance against Marie Antoinette).
- Henry once left all his luggage on a train to Brighton when he got off. Mike would have hit the bloody roof if he'd been travelling with Henry that day, and may have used his special death grip to reset Henry back to factory settings.
- If Henry had handed the scarf to a member of staff at the Gare du Nord, it definitely would have ended up in the bin. Does catching up with the group make Henry special and different? Mike wonders when the payoff is coming re Chekhov's breakfast scrambled eggs (perhaps it's TBC: anecdotal chickens that will come home to roost).
- Henry is a huge loser (of things) himself so can think like the loser of the scarf, FBI-analysis-like. Which level of hen do hen is this: the matron of honour? the gay best friend? the mother-in-law's friend Linda? the Australian old pal who hits the Buck's Fizz too hard at 8:30am?
- When Henry left his luggage on the train, he had to buy pants from JD Sports for his trip and he still has them because he doesn't wear them enough because they're not his usual favoured style (Mike: ooh, a story within a story!) – too clingy, preferred by a younger man.
- Henry took the scarf to the station and found the hens all wearing berets, making them indistinguishable from all the other French people. The hens celebrated Henry, stopping short of carrying him aloft through the streets of Paris. They were hammered so may have over-reacted. One of the hens sent Henry good vibes and that's why his holiday went so well.
- In a story where the teller comes off really well, you must leaven it with shitting yourself in The Louvre.
¶ Topic Chat
- Henry has been to Boston and found the Cheers bar to just be some stairs. Mike walked past the place where they filmed Del Boy falling through the bar 2 nights ago – it's in Bristol near the Old Vic. Ben was with him but Mike didn't say anything (You bastard!). There are Only Fools and Horses tours in Bristol, which makes no sense.
- Henry's first lunch in Paris was a plate of chickens (poulet-vous couchez avec moi?). The French know how to roast a chicken: with chips (better than roast potatoes in Henry's view). It was a classic Paris restaurant in that it was the same as all the others.
- Henry and his friend who does Duolingo were vying for who got to be the guy who speaks French and has English replied back to them (happens every time). Henry's ambition is to say something in French and not be answered in English. Do you have to lean into the accent by starting it 5 seconds before speaking, while riding a massive iron bicycle with onions around your neck and a Charles de Gaulle photo in your hand?
- People keep chickens in their garden near Mike in Exeter, but without a cock. Henry wonders if it's a harem system. No, it's an egg-laying sorority. A matriarchy. Amazonian. Swiss nunnery (chilled environment). Henry read a lot of 60s/70s 'sci-fi erotica' comics of the Barbarella ilk as a child in the 80s that were often set in a male fantasy along the lines of the Planet Cockless: full of female chickens who have never seen a male chicken or a human man dressed as one.
- Mike's neighbours have urban chickens but how urban are they? How long would they last in London, trying to get on the Piccadilly line, or the career ladder, or the fringe theatre scene.
- The fringe theatre scene is probably their best chance (especially at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in London). Imagine it: The Bridge Theatre, under Sir Simon Flume, presents the first-ever poultry-only Coriolanus (Coriocloaca). This could be the next History Boys.
- Stanislavski said that a cat on stage would be more interesting than anything in the show, so how distracting would a load of chickens be, and how would they avoid the fox waiting at the stage door? The whole theatre would have to be "hutched" with chicken wire to avoid the foxes. In the 1990s, the Royal Court did Guinea Fowl Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth was a Komodo dragon who had to go into hibernation in the second half after eating the cast in the first.
- Ben asks Henry and Mike what their death-row last meal would be (has to be mainly chicken). Mike: chicken lasagne (a dish more disturbing than the crimes for which he is being executed). Henry disputes the question because the topic is "chickens", not "chicken".
- Henry plumps for Korean fried chicken, which Ben had years ago in New York and Henry is hurt that he doesn't mention the time they had it together in London, but he's being solipsitic because only Henry had it that day – Ben had a beef volcano, a dish that Ben cannot not choose: "Swamp my village in hot beef magma. Wipe me out for generations to come. I just want to be a beef shadow on the wall."
- Ben chooses a golden rotisserie chicken, but can the prison canteen be trusted? They don't have the infrastructure.
- What is the appeal of the rotisserie? Is it a link to a caveman urge to cook a thing on a stick? Mike would eat them a lot as a student in his 20s: buy it from the supermarket in a special bag, race home, get your clothes off, get in the bath, get it down you. Along with a rich meat gravy bath bomb from Lush.
- Ben used to live around the corner from a takeaway rotisserie chicken place and could be back home with his chicken within 25 seconds of buying it.
- Ben's backup choice would be a high-end chicken kiev (not a cheap nasty one) – the height of sophistication when they were kids, like the tiramisu.
- In Paris, Henry had a crème brûlée for lunch one day. As he is a great weather vane for trends, he predicts the renaissance of the crème brûlée. He can help this along by becoming a successful crème brûlée influencer with his Instagram account: Hen Brûlée – come into my creamy ramekin (on 40,000 aprons). Bursting out of the crispy coating is more dangerous that bursting out of a cake – can injure yourself on the shards or fail to burst through at all, just a screaming face below the surface, with custard bubbling up through Henry's eye sockets. Ben tunes out for half a second during this chat, and gets a real insight into what it's like being a listener (very frustrating), as he now has no idea what anyone is talking about.
- Henry follows a guy on Instagram who reviews tinned fish, squishes it, then feeds it to his dog who wears a fez, but because there is no monoculture, no one else has seen this. Sometimes a thing will punch through, like Punch the monkey (not a horrific gameshow), who thinks a stuffed toy is his family. Mike would not be able to watch Punch without dissolving. He knows people like that, except they drag around a stuffed human.
- Henry imagines his successful Hen Brûlée channel would involve a lizard called Kevin who walks over the surface of the brûlée to test it. There is drama in what will be beneath the surface, how big will be the shards, Kevin singing "A Shard Days Night". At the end, the Duolingo owl eats Kevin, and the viewer can post their lizard (in an ethical envelope) to Henry for the next ep.
- Henry once visited a friend of the family who had chickens and watched as he tickled each chicken and an egg popped out. He tried it with Henry and a full omelette popped out: another idea that would be massive online.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Tim from London emails about humans excelling in the sphere of throwing stuff with speed and accuracy because of shoulder/torso/pelvic adaptations not present in other primates. Human imagination means we get bored, and come up with ways to throw stuff, especially when we're 12 and bored on holiday. This is why the discus is everyone's favourite sport and we eat our food off discus merch. Henry is not a good thrower, despite his weirdly long arms and broad shoulders, dismaying sports teachers at school when playing cricket (but he does have a fantastically rich imagination and a coveted B in Art). The throwing of the bone in 2001 when it turns into a spaceship: the most famous edit of all time, which Ben has not heard of. The first half hour is people dressed in monkey suits arguing on a stag do because they're not sure what the game is or who the stag is.
- Emer emails to let the Beans know that James Cameron has made inroads with Generation Alpha. She is a primary school teacher in trendy East London, which Henry can confirm is at the cutting edge of the beating heart of culture, and at least 5 children in her class claim that their favourite film is Avatar. Possibly recency bias. Mike and Ben explain what the 'six seven' meme is to Henry. Mike wonders if the children are paid influencers: brand ambassadors for Cameron. Did they get Kevin to walk across a crème brûlée? If so, they're creating viral content. Perhaps they were grown in a blue vat by Cameron himself: create the audience!
¶ Jingles
- Bean Machine (19:16)
- Cloaca Zone (27:43)
- Email jingle from James from Manchester in the style of a 1980s horror movie trailer which causes Henry to picture a grainy VHS for a film that is now impossible to find because Daniel Day Lewis has buried it, embarrassed over his first role as a pizza who eats the person eating the pizza. (44:33)
- Patreon (53:53)
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Award season, so it was the Annual Sean Bean Lounge Awards (39 patrons).
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Jake from America sends a Soviet theme that could open the Soviet spy thriller film the Beans might make. The Beans give pre-emptive apologies for some of the vocals as they are in a non-English language. What have they been putting out?
¶ Notable Quotes
- Where can I say is shit without offending someone?
- How much meat do we need to pack, to call this a Meat Packing District?
- I extrapolate a lot from me to everything and everyone: an entirely narcissistic world view.
- Very few things are harder to listen to than someone who is the hero of their own story.
- James Corden could be one of those chickens (talking of massive cocks).
- Maybe brûlée never went away, but I think brûlée is here to stay.
- There really are no bad ideas in this sphere, which is why it's perfect for me.
- Send us your Kevins!
- Good luck getting a bloody llama to skim a stone.