¶ Opening Chat
Henry's computer could die at any moment during the recording as yesterday it made a powering-down sound. It reminded Ben of a Twitter chat on movie tropes that don't happen in real life, and Ben's observation was the noise warehouse lights make when they are switched on.
The others agree it is unlikely that warehouse lights are wired up to make such a dramatic noise - unless it is the lair of a German villain, with one office chair in the middle of the space. And a pet snake.
The villain also has powder-blue SMEG fridge and likes powdering people, including The Blue Man Group and Stomp.
Ben started getting negative Twitter comments about his ignorance of the warehouse lights noise with people wondering if he has he even been in a warehouse? Ben isn't sure he has except for ones where there is street theatre or an Italian restaurant.
The nation will be divided about whether or not warehouse lights do make that noise. Ben asks for emails from people who have worked in warehouses and turned the lights on.
Henry asks if any of the Beans have been keyholders in a retail job and Mike reckons Henry shouldn't have that responsibility.
Henry wasn't allowed to turn on the lights when he worked in a gift shop or when he was a henchman for the evil German guy with the snake.
Henry may have only been employed there as he can pull off a trilby and because he has a 'thug outline' with 'hench energy', (like a sick gecko). He often used it for train station surveillance jobs.
Ben also brings up the movie trope of people with average jobs living in very expensive apartments. It's worked around by the writers putting in the words, 'Rent Control'.
But isn't all rent controlled in some way by the invisible hand of the market? Ben wonders if Henry or Mike have ever had their landlords come round to collect rent in cash. Henry never even met his landlords but Ben always did and found it 'Very nice to meet the person whose mortgage you're paying'. The landlord's children were told not to think of tenants as people but as Pink Goblin Cash Machine 5.
Ben's first London landlord had an office in Turnpike Lane which felt like walking into the 1970s. 'Everything he owned cost south of £2', including an own-brand supermarket bottle of Yop ('a bottle of Yip').
He had an ancient right-hand man who was a 'Subject of the British Empire'. The rent included the old man not only mowing their lawn but everything in the garden too, which was the 'British Empire approach'.
Henry thinks one of the only solutions to getting on in life these days is just to be really old. Apparently, the old people would have been there when land and property was divvied up. ('What are you talking about?!')
We are all the descendents of a bagsy system of owning property, dating back to the evolution of humans. Mike would have been 'a fearsome warlord' at that time and owned everything in sight.
Henry wonders if he has come up with the idea of Communism, but he is lurching wildly between that and the Feudal System.
Henry actually came up with the concept of Communism yesterday during a walk in the park (between the big tree and the bench.) The Beans feel that, in order to implement this system, they need to 'create a sense of sustained, permanent panic' amongst people.
Henry has thought the system through to the point of the Isle of Man Missile Crisis and to the 'absolutely cracking' propaganda posters. Ben is swayed by them and now longs to be a Soviet farmer with a selection of grey and beige shirts.
Henry has already had the experience of inventing something that already exists when he had time for mental meanderings and, within a matter of seconds, came up with the concept of a mug.
Similarly, Mike had had the idea for Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon', complete with the original session musicians and album art.
Ben doesn't know whether Pink Floyd are top-level brilliant or total dogshit. Henry sings a version of 'Money' with 21st century payment methods.
Pink Floyd are a teenager's dream because of the big concepts they cover. Mike likes their boringness: 'hard-working, world-class professional musicians doing a decent bloody job'. Now they are middle-class, middle-aged, Tory-voting old rockers (the current Queen members are the same) with their country houses with dogs and AGAs everywhere, with an area to take your wellies off (Mike dreams of this).
It's like a dog version of the West Wing with Persian Rug dispeners and multi-direction showers decorated with the life-cycle of a labrador, including puppyish stage, graduation and first puking up of a shoe.
Reprise of 'Money', a cappella with dog noises. They need money now just to keep all the dogs.
The Beans feel that Led Zeppelin would be too cool for the labrador country house world.
Ben once spotted Jimmy Page eating noodles in Kensington Wholefoods. Mike says he is just popping off to Kensington with his two-necked guitar to try and see him too. Henry does a sudden and hilarious impression of Robert Plant, which astounds the Beans but really hurts. Maybe Robert Plant talks like that as well? It must be very hard for him in Pizza Express ('Which is the one with the rocket on it?' screeched in Robert Plant voice).
Bluebell's in the room where Henry is recording and is absorbing a lot of the sound like a 'dead cat'. Henry feels he will be more respectful with her in the room as Bluebell is a card-carrying pro-institution, Conservative with a big C cat. She thinks, 'Why can't we pay for a Royal yacht' while eating her compressed-meat biscuits.
Royal meat versions of biscuits include Meat Bourbons, Custard Veals, the Paté Dodger, and Oreos, which are unchanged.
Henry is now facing two tension points: a computer that might die plus Bluebell in the room. He didn't want her exposed to the idea of building work going on in the house so she still believes that the house is completely made of a mushroom.
¶ Topic Chat
Mike would have bloody loved to be an olde-worlde cartographer, disappearing for three years and coming back with a wonky map of Cuba, 'Any old shape will do'. And lion's faces looked more like mad hamsters.
Ben loves a map in a book, especially parallel maps of, for example, Hardy's Wessex. Ben is not good at making up place names.
He thinks US place names are more song-worthy and that UK place names don't work in songs, eg, 'Bracknell State of Mind', 'Luton Lady' and 'Barnstaple Man' are aggressively mediocre.
But Henry thinks US visitors to the UK are excited about the mundane places. Ben questions this but Henry cannot lie as Bluebell is in the room. He explains he doesn't want to de-gloss the US visitor's ideas.
Henry has a stack of toxic preconceptions about non-London places. The genesis of the song 'Banbury Woman' ('Free 2 hour parking behind the pharmacy').
Luton (the Lu makes a promise but the ton doesn't keep it).
US street names are mainly numbers or James Madison. Numbers shouldn't be evocative but, in reality, sound lovely.
Whereas UK street names (Nibbler's Lodge, St Crispin's Turd) are not as cool. There are many ridiculous and eccentric small town names in the UK, especially in Somerset, including Piddly Widdly, Wisp-on-Sea-on-Wye, Flonge and Wabblethrack.
Ben likes US town names like Turkey Town or Copper Mountain which are stuff you can see, like a good ad for the town. The Beans think the Snake Pass in the Peak District sounds wrong (an adder was once seen there but it turned out to be single filament of corduroy).
Bluebell miaows noisily as she is annoyed that the Beans are belittling Britain and also American tourists. She still thinks George the Third is officially the rightful monarch of the United States, and Henry is not going to correct her.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
Brian asks for a Bremen live show. Ben wonders how many people would come - Henry guesses 3. The Beans wonder where the Bremen thing came from (see end of epidsode 'Magic'). They think their one listener just might not fancy a live show or see the point of one.
Henry doesn't know what country Bremen is actually in. Ben went there once on a 1p flight to see the massive conference centre's erotic convention. But every conference centre is an erotic experience for Ben.
Every town has a statue it's famous for and that everyone rubs. In Brussels there is the Manneken Pis and in Luton there is a brass statue of a decent Hewlett-Packard home printer and 'You rub its cancel button and nothing happens'.
Dustin tells the Beans about the word y'ain't – abbreviating four words to five letters (Mike: 'Is You Is Or Is Y'Ain't My Baby')
¶ Jingles
34:09 - Bluebell
37:14 - Royals
43:07 - America
01:02:12 - Patreon
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
Wrestlemania
¶ Listener Theme Tune
Otamatone by Matthew from Oxford (beans never heard of otamatone before) followed by BP's 'Banbury Woman' feat. Robert Plant
¶ Notable Quotes
- A huge warehouse space, one little chair in the middle of it, you’ve got yourself an interrogation situation.
- I even powdered the Blue Man Group.
- None of us have ever been in a warehouse.
- Like a very very very sick gecko, that somehow has been trained to use trousers.
- It’s very nice to meet the person whose mortgage you’re paying.
- Daddy, daddy, why’s this man’s bedroom smaller than my lunchbox?
- Mike would be a fearsome warlord who would own anything as far as the eye could see.
- I was just having some thoughts, do you ever do this?
- They’re just hard working, world class professional musicians, doing a decent bloody job.
- The exciting one has gone, and we are left with the solid middle class rump.
- They’ve got Agas everywhere you look!
- Full-body bidet?
- It’s very hard for him in Pizza Express: Which is the one with the rocket on it?
- Compressed Meat Biscuits by Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen of England.
- I’m in a Bracknell state of mind.
- She’s my Banbury girl! My witchy Banbury woman.
- 47B, St Crispin’s Turd.
- Piddly-Widdely, Fiddlidy-Diddely, Middely-Schwidley, Biddely-Waddely, Woddelly-Poddley. Come on mate!
- Nibbleton; Flonge; Fandandoh; Pootlington; Nasdock; Wabblethrack; St Snage’s; Chungton; Little Chington; Phnœd; Ghibli; Noop
- Y’ain’t allowed to park here.
- Apostrophes left right and bloody centre.