¶ Opening Chat
- Henry's visual grease (looking like a member of ABBA) and hope for a viral tweet about Christmas meal cutlery (too many spoons).
- Mike has never cooked a Christmas meal / Ben has cooked it once (a disaster) during pandemic times.
- The Beans proffer a Pompidou: this is the first new recording for a while (last week's was recorded pre their break).
- Ben's Grand European Tour accompanied by a team: nurse, translator, knight, haberdasher, seamstresses, falconer, subterranian cartographer and small team of visciously well-trained crossbowman.
- Inter-railing only happened in the late-80s/early-00s according to Henry. The Nineties didn't happen for him (the last thing he remembers is Hasselhoff on the Wall > wakes up and he's in the Millenial Dome with Cherie Blaire and John Prescott).
- Ben shoring up support in Europe amongst deposed royal families for a future coup in Austria: a corporate monarchy, always within shot of a Ryman's.
- Lille's town planners effed up hard. Too many 'Paul's (the average UK name). It's a decompression city to prepare the traveller for return to the UK, to soften the blow.
- Henry lectures the listener on mega-cro economics (he knows stuff) re how Paul has multiplied. A parasite replicating. Ben could have been at Franch Paul Zero.
- Bonjamin Bradshaw sums up his holiday, Sex and the City style (Henry is Cynthia, Mike is Janet (too unsexy to get in)): in a restaurant, never order the dish named after the restaurant, e.g. the Spaghetti House. Pizza with salmon, ground beef, anchovy heads and hailstones. Ben warns the listener off Omlette Eggsmania.
- Henry finds specials confusing and has never heard of an English menu in a Chinese restaurant.
- Beans regulated by Ofbean, the Beansbudsman.
- Ben and Henry cynical about the specials / Mike thinks they've foraged for them that day (he's a sucker for the chalk board).
- Henry explains pizzas to Mike who thinks of the bread that has failed to rise as animal feed, then explains Italy but Mike doesn't want to go further east than Gibraltar.
- Ancient, tried and tested pizzas (diavolo, La Reine) like a pebble smoothed by the sea over 100s of years compared with a Pizza of the Week (lardons, sweetcorn, cream, mushrooms and a fish finger), which is an affront to the Roman Empire. Burger of the Week might be ferret.
¶ Topic Chat
- Ben finds all tea chat gross because of British jingoistic Keep Calm and Carry On tea-towel-ness.
- Ben naysays tea and coffee but will drink hot chocolate or Bovril, putting him into a category of suspicion. Rumbled as a foreign spy, working for Vanuatuan intelligence.
- Horlicks is foul, a punishment drink, the Huel of its day. A monobrand.
- Drinking spilled tea from a saucer – either uncouth or high-echelon royal.
- Ben is missing out on The Ritual (squashing tea bag, seeping hot brown sweat-stained mugs).
- Officer worker tea colour chat and calling it builders' tea annoys Ben.
- Henry stopped taking milk after a trip to Vietnam.
- The Ritual: chucking the tea bag in the sink to pollute the washing up, squishing a handful of old bags into the pedal bin.
- The Ritual: asking the dentist to use The Beast to blast through the inches of enamelised tea (harder than bathroom tiles).
- Henry can't explain what Muji is to Mike, first need to explain what Japan is.
- Buying a real tea pot for making real tea as metaphor for not sticking to anything in life.
- Tea eschewing is Ben's biggest naysay (as well as not paying tax because of being listed at Companies House as a theme park).
- Ben drinks the ancient British drink of mead (from before the tea arrived).
- Henry's throat pains due to drinking his tea scorchingly hot – his GP laughed at him before advising the cure, which is the same as the problem but with 'not' or 'don't' in it).
- Ben's walk in a wooded area of Switzerland (charming woodland soundscape morphs into The Squirreltrix) with a lot of squirrels being tame, fed from people's hands, then they turned: ran up Ben's legs, scratched them up, looking for the paprika crisps. Followed him as he ran. The Birds but cute (but menacing).
- Video on Insta (Ben shares with Mike and Henry). The squirrel was after his Habsburg seed, coated in crushed pistachios and nougat'ed for presenting at Ferrero Rocher HQ.
- Ben shows his scratched legs to the pharmacist who mentions "tollwut" (rabies). Once rabies is in the conversation, nobody wants to tell you that you'll probably be fine.
- Ben's sister (a GP) can't diagnose him over text.
- Dignitas gag, Swiss flu/cuckoo clock gag.
- GP rings Swiss Rabies Control (Henry and Ben's German accents come out to play): only need a tollwut jab if the squirrel had been bitten by a bat (Ben didn't check if the squirrel had any bite marks from being 'batted').
- EHIC/GHIC card is deeply embarassing (union flag) and rejected by Swiss receptionsts.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Ben is worried he hasn't done a good job of going through the emails but Henry reassures him he's in recovery from the squirrel attack and should be kinder to himself.
- Dr Jacob Rawlinson finally finished his supply of Christmas '22 chutneys and returns to the bosom of Branston. Off at the point of purchase (best before before).
¶ Jingles
- 6:44 – Pompidou
- 25:30 – Bean Machine
- 48:38 – James from Texas (the state rather than the band, who are doing Glastonbury) banjo version of the email jingle (Mike thinks it's lush / Henry praises the fingerwork)
- 51:06 – Listener Bollocking of the Week
- 54:34 – Patreon
¶ Bollockings
- Liam's Turbo Concise Bollock re: Hans Blix being dead (he's not, neither is he 92). He is now a wedding DJ (weapons of mass disco) according to Wikipedia. Henry just having a bit of fun ("bit less of that please Henry"). Newsflash: Berlusconi died that day. Bollocking Accepted.
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Annual June Deep Clean (41 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Jentori Fisuto – found-ham-based AI trained to write a theme tune – 300,000 Bean Salad.
¶ Notable Quotes
- I'm suffering from heavy visual grease again.
- Is this macro economics? / It's bigger than that. It's megacro. Not quite monstercro yet.
- In the same way that tomato plants will proliferate around the aperture of a sewage outlet, British Pauls will sprout around the aperture of the Channel Tunnel.
- Offboard Kent into the sea.
- H: Feel free, either of you, to chip in and help me out with some thoughts at any point. / B: You can't start doing that after 9 series, Henry.
- B: I basically said what you said, then you said it again but took about 20 minutes to do so. / H: Welcome to Three Bean Salad.
- It felt like a punishment drink. I think it was the Huel of its day.
- I don't want to sound pretentious but ever since I drank tea in Vietnam...
- We're going to need The Beast, the big boy, that's right. The one they use to clean tank wheels, that's the one.
- That's what Spitfires were made from, isn't it? The ground-up teeth of tea drinkers.
- It's a channeled form of self-inflected prison attack.
- Man alive, when the mood changes, it changes quick.
- An adorable Cruise missile with a thirst for Welsh balls.
- When nature works out that you've coated your bollocks in crushed pistachios.
- Not holiday rabies. I need my support network around me for these rabies.
- The King demands that you grant this man healthcare in all eventualities, and in all locations, and free passage through your realm.
- There's no way Charles could play the banjo with those fingers. / It would sound like if you dropped a packet of sausages onto a drum with some nails on.
- I couldn't find the WMDs, but what I did find was the groove.