¶ Opening Chat
- Egg (the tortoise of Mike's neighbours Bob and Ruth) remains missing without a trace, though there are no signs of foul play. Egg has popped up on the Bayeux tapestry (or it is a comet or a decapitated Norman soldier's head?) but was not the badly fake-tanned tortoise that appeared on Love Island. Make sure your tortoise has a dash cam, a dry ice machine, fire alarm, air conditioning unit. Propellers on a tortoise have their pros and cons.
- Ben asks if you can cross breed a turtle and a tortoise. Mike asks why you would want to (no sense of curiosity). What are the skills of a tortoise? They have endless patience, and will kill their own Uncle for sport.
- Ben made a "boring adult purchase", which was 4 new tyres for his car. He fell for the sales pitch about the safety of the tyres, which asks the question if some tyres are unsafe / guaranteed lethal. Henry suggests going "sans tyre", creating Wales' biggest and most tramless tram network (from Ben's house to the local carvery).
- Mike is easily upsold on things (he is one of the nation's biggest patsies) and due to appear on "The Nation's Biggest Patsies" on Channel 4, alongside Prince Edward, presented by Patsy Cline (who died in 1963). Mike insists that patsies keep the economy going (Patsy Politics). He would buy the tyres that would work on an alpine scree, just in case he has to go up one with Pamela in the car. He would also buy the matching vulcanised fez (with insurance, and insurance on the warranty).
- Henry is recovering from a cold and coughs directly into the microphone (11.51 to 12.04 if you want to avoid that sort of thing).
- Henry talks about the upselling technique of giving options (such as glasses with reflective glass, or refracting glass like the Pink Floyd album cover). It offers you sadness and the opportunity to feel shit about yourself, to feel indulged but ashamed, or to feel drab.
- Ben ended up buying the premium tyres, and felt like a bit of a mug, but can you put a price on safety? Henry agrees, and describes achieving safety by encasing yourself in rubber, building an inverse castle (that points downwards) and never leaving the house.
¶ Topic Chat
- Henry can now talk about his passion - he is no longer hog-tied in the back of a pickup truck being driven around by the type of character Plemmons would get Oscar nominated for.
- Behind Mike there is a hook where he has hung a backpack and a "little shopping bag", so he is making his mark on the space. He also has an "extremely unpleasant" and "incredibly unflattering" recessed light above his head, which slowly boils his face when he records the podcast. The kind of bulb you'd use to keep a buffet sausage warm, but isn't really safe for sausages and is too intense, so the back of Mike's head sloughs away after recordings. A bit of barbecue sauce and you could eat Mike's face like prime ribs ("soft and buttery"). Luckily the rest of his house is so cold he uncooks when away from the bulb - the bulb is so expensive to run there is no money for heating (Mike has had to send his children to work and Pam has "gone on the game").
- In Ben's room, all you can see is a bare white wall. When he moved in the office room was a (cool) boy's Batman themed room and one of the walls is still painted Batman grey.
- On Saturday, Mike saw a man dressed as Batman driving a car made to look like a Batmobile. Ben says he wouldn't like to meet this man, but Henry says Ben is just intimidated as Batman is "cool". This man had kept a promise he had made to himself at the age of 8 (these promises are not legally binding) to modify his car in such a way that he can't tell his insurance company about it and no one could know about it. Mike says he shoud have followed the Batmobile but he was in a small car with a Christmas tree on the top of it.
- Mike was "patsied hard" when buying the Christmas tree stand (possibly a mispackaged sausage roaster) in B&Q (shout out to listener Padraig selling the Christmas trees, although no pompidou discount). Discussion about non-drop vs dropper trees (more aroma with the drop). Trees prefaced with Scandi words are double the price.
- Ben has a pre-lit, moth-killing, conjuctiva-sloughing, plastic tree that he bought on Christmas Eve 2 years ago. He also bought a neon silhouette of a murdered penguin which was reduced to £9.
- Henry's interior design style was influenced by his old flat in Baron's Court, which Ben and Mike both remember affectionately. Ben remembers the heavily moulded (with mould) bathroom ceiling, Mike remembers walking up the stairs of "perpetually damp" carpet, with the "untrustworthy" bannister. There were 3 landings where you could stop and change your mind, and if you wanted to leave you could kick through one of the soft walls. There was an "ingrowing carpet", covered in grime and "fats" (humans are essentially sausages, particularly if you're eating a kebab with nothing but a bin lid around your midriff). The filaments got so flattened that they became like shiny tiles.
- In the kitchen they had an "open bin", which saved time so they could keep on watching "The Sopranos". Henry's flatmate Bompt suggested it would be more hygienic to not have a lid on the bin, after the lid would get dirty from being "peppered Mafia-style" with thrown teabags. People judge your interior decor choices.
- The bathroom was so awful it was like doing a shit inside a cold "giant mushroom omelette". Henry tried to repaint it but it was like a nightmare (where everything is fudge), the paint refusing to go on the walls as they were too disgusting.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Ben hasn't preselected what to read out, so it is "communication tombola". This could be risky, they receive a lot of fan-written Havers erotica. Recent emails all have subject lines relating to rats.
- Danny from Bristol emails in about seeing a heron swallowing a live rat. Has the heron evened out the score between rats and waterfowl? Or is this part of the rat's bigger plan (to turn off the combi-boiler inside the heron so it will freeze to death)? Henry relates to herons - twitchy, flighty, refined elegance, and a slightly longer neck than is convenient. Ben's spirit bird is the wren (looks harmless but a bastard at heart), Mike's would be the barn pigeon (just move on, it doesn't matter). How do you know if you've been eaten?
- Hannah (from The Wirral) spotted what she thought was a tortishell cat in her bedroom but turned out to be a massive rat. Hannah then worried that the rat would "infect" all her posessions. Henry wonders how bad infection really is.
- 2 rat stories have had to be edited out as they were too disturbing.
¶ Jingles
- 16.50 - Bean Machine
- 40.59 - Emails
- 53.53 - Patreon
¶ Bollockings
No bollockings this episode.
¶ Notable Quotes
- "And that's the kind of bulb you'd use to keep a sausage warm on like a Premier Inn buffet isn't it?"
- "And his promise he made as an 8 year old was you're going to modify a car in such a way that you can't tell your insurance company about it"
- "Or you can have this Berkshire Minge, it's up to you, which one would you like?"
- "And it is that sense of chemical violence isn't it Ben, that you like around Yuletide"
- "There's so many bacteria on that towel it would basically be a genocide if you washed it"
- "Let's take the lid off Britain"
- "No, not the beautiful and magical Barn Owl, no, Barn Pigeon"
- "You can't slow cook evil"
- "And also i'm now actually starting to reconsider whether I should have worn proper boxer shorts not the triangular flappable bin lid"
- "The bubonic cold?"
- "One, two, to the three, to the four, Three Bean Salad are knocking on the door"
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Industrial Noise Pollution Karaoke
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Joe's "West Coast Hip Hop Banger Remix" at 58.15. This took him 10 months (or 2.5% of his life), and the Beans feel it was worth every month.