¶ Opening Chat
- First-ever ep recorded with the Beans in the same room together. Things they've noticed having met in person for the first time: Ben is much smaller, Henry's head is smaller compared to his shoulder width, and Mike is in perfect proportions, completely to scale. Henry is looking very pale, e.g. boatswain on a ghost ship (quite high-ranking but still takes commands from the skeletal captain).
- Beans on tour but with no bus, just Mike's Citroen. Supporting Shakira across Europe but have never met her (she employs people to keep them at arm's length).
- Currently in a (brand not mentioned for light slagging-off reasons) hotel room in Leeds with themed rooms. Henry's room has a Monopoly card with a Leeds street, a Cluedo character, a spanner, framed Scrabble pieces, a dice-themed pouffe: a ludic theme. Mike has a Buckaroo themed room so has to be careful where he places his saddle. Ben has the Pop Up Pirate room with staff members plunging swords into him in the night. There's a Hungry Hippos themed buffet with plastic balls coated in different white fluids: tahini, milk, meringue and white pudding. Ben has a domino-themed room.
- Mrs Peacock is the character on Henry's wall. Cluedo is just a basic maths game when you strip away the murder stuff. Henry played games the fun way as a child (driving the Monopoly car around, making the Chess pieces fight) but sees Cluedo as not even mathematical, just listicle. Ben enjoyed the short period before realising it's a logic puzzle where you can pretend you're a detective. No motive, just mode and opportunity.
- Henry has passed the window where doing a murder-mystery dinner party would be fun. Mike's friends did one recently where the teenage daughter was the murderer despite not turning up till late. If these parties are just set dressing around dipping one's toe into swinging, where does that leave the teenage daughter? Sequestered away into a jail while her parents and their friends went at it like sewing machines?
- Ben and Henry have never paintballed, which Mike did on a stag do and found the guys running it to be too into it, perhaps to 'army ranger' level, with the right to shoot a paintball into the air at the remembrance ceremony at The Cenotaph. Those guys might be called up if the army, navy and Ground Force (including Charlie Dimmock) are wiped out.
- Getting together enough friends for paintballing can only be done with the three-line whip of a stag do. Perhaps that's why marriages happen, and also divorces, so you can go again? If you turn up alone, you get radicalised. Those guys want to be in the woods in North Carolina, training with militias. Getting hit hurts about half as much as being stung by a bee.
- Henry did Quasar/Laser Quest, as did Mike (one of the few things to do in Portsmouth). Disappointing to find there was no penis cannon nor any lasers shooting out of your eyes. Mike's Quasar heyday was in the Tricorn Centre: corn 1 = entertainment; corn 2 = great cafeteria; corn 3 = safety (almost impecable record, not counting the years 1983–87 & 1994–95). The Tricorn Centre didn't have three sides, but was near a naval dockyard. An ugly Brutalist building that everyone hated but no one could destroy lest it reduce Portsea Island to a sheet of glass.
- The centre contained a vintage shop for buying Guns N' Roses belt buckles, a Laser Quest/Poop Deck, and multistorey parking.
- Did Laser Quest have a narrative structure? Had Britain fallen under Keeiir Star-mer, an alien from the Blandulon System?
- Ben had to bring the Bean Machine into the hotel under a late check-in. Henry improvised when a member of staff thought they'd seen it on CCTV ("it's a kind of meat piano"). Cleaning up the trail is tricky as none of Dyson's hand-helds can deal with non-Newtonian liquids that can punch you back and the industrial Henry hoovers can't handle the mix of organic with inorganic. Had to have a MegaHenry made special, but the Beans lost control of it and it's now loose in The Wirral. Is it on or in The Wirral? The MegaHenry would know. Is Bootle on/in The Wirral?
¶ Topic Chat
- Colliers Wood is near Tooting and on the Northern Line. Ben went to a big Moss Bros there. Mike lived there as a student. Both were Broadway, not Bec. Tooting features in the new Spinal Tap film (not CSI: Tooting). Massed fox ranks have taken Tooting in the same way the MegaHenry has taken The Wirral. Mike lived there pre-gentrification (not jennifercation, which Henry misheard Mike's mumbling as (long-term mumble apology from Mike)), Ben came in with the gentrification wave, then was driven out by the foxes.
- Gentrification happens through a process of Gail's cafes arriving, then Sweaty Bettys, the prams get larger, the croissants become crispier, the pubs develop whimsical taxidermy, pub quizzes have questions about French New Wave cinema and Scandinavian novels. Is a proper scotch egg an artisinal one (poached dove's egg encased in stag flesh) or one that tastes of plastic, from Sainsbury's for 40p? The foxes move in when everyone stinks of egg, till the really posh people move in and shoot them, creating more whimsical taxidermy.
- Ben left Tooting at the point they built a rooftop cocktail bar. It was curry houses (sweet Jaffna House) and IRA pubs when Mike lived there.
- Henry is feeling tired because he's looking at a huge double bed. Ben is impressed that Henry's room has no fecal/body odour fug. This is because Henry used Ben's room, and Ben as a billionaire's duvet. The room was actually cleaned by the staff while the Beans breakfasted.
- What is a collier? What did Mike get up to in Colliers Wood? He could put a pint, whole, directly into his stomach, his friend would suck it out through his arse and then they'd all set fire to their legs. This is what made Britain great.
- Ever-diminishing southwest London chat every time they mention Colliers Wood (SW19, same as Wimbledon). There's a Wimpy in Morden (Mike's Welsh grandmother's only permitted fast food, because of the cutlery). Wimpy used to be in the fast food pantheon along with Spudulike and Paul Scrackers' Hot Crackers. Burger King is no longer part of the conversation (McDonald's has won) which must make it depressing to work at Head Office. An ironic name. More like a burger knave (rebrand?). Same in Pepsi HQ: making dollar but thinking "we'll never be the best" while in their gilded palace. Pepsi should just change its name to "Is Pepsi alright?" or "Yeah, yeah, whatever". In a taste test, people prefer a little sip of Pepsi but a full glass of Coke.
- Antarctica chat happened during the the-arctic episode when Henry found a mnemonic to remember which was which (the ant carrying the world). Which one is penguins though, and which polar bears? The clue is in the name for the Greek scholar: Arctic = near the bear/goad a bear. Not ursus (Latin). Henry makes his most ridiculous point ever: the Greeks wouldn't have known there were bears in the Arctic.
- The Arctic and Antarctic are opposites that are quite similar. More similar to each other than to Leeds or Brendan Gleeson .
- Henry grabs his Kindle, upon which he is reading a book about the Arctic. Henry enjoys reading about people who are chilly, having a bad time in a cold context, especially before bed, where it makes him feel more warm and snug. You can now crack off (worth a rephrase) and buy a book whenever you fancy.
- Henry enjoyed the book that the TV show The Terror was based on, where they all get incredibly chilly. He also enjoys Everest books and Touching the Void. Ben recommends one about the plane crash in the Andes (the book, not the film Alive).
- For Henry, the worst possible book is about people having a good time in a tropical environment, e.g. My Great Fun Hot Summer Nights by Beryl, Mills and Boon's Cyprus Sweat Fuck series, My Etna Stallion, or My Smoking Hot Affair with Beelzebub.
- Is Shackleton the South Pole? Is the one where the Norwegian guy got there first Hall and Oates? Dr Livingstone (I presume) is hot, so the wrong context. Did Scott even get there? Is he the Pepsi of polar exploring?
- Henry multi-screening: searching Kindle, Googling what are the best books set in a cold place, watching Sex and the City (season 4, Ice Road Sex), buying and selling bitcoin. When he started reading, Ernest Shackleton appeared next to him in bed, along with Sarah Jessica Parker ("I'm chilly, but she's hot, and together we'll get you just right."): two drama students who Henry has hired to help him get to sleep.
- Henry couldn't put his finger on what was shit about the book. Ben suggests it was either written by Ben Fogle (who Henry looks like as explained in extrabeansdec24 ) or AI: the twin sources defining human civilisation. The style is very facty facty. Fogle will read a thousand books to write you one on polar explorers, but because he has young kids and has to leave to do school pickups, there will be the occasional recipe for macaroni cheese in there along with the script for KPop Demon Hunters. The book is fine but it doesn't have an angle. They have to tag a Ruth Rendell on the end to pad it out.
- Podcasts are going the same way: 99,000 made by AI before you find one made by a real person, e.g. Football Weekly with Garu Linekee and Ulan Sharor (how Rory Stewart says Alan Shearer).
- Henry is aware he could be slamming a real author here. He hasn't confirmed whether it actually is AI. The book title and author have been anonymised while the Beans Google them: the book is from 2015, before AI was really doing this. The author is a real historian man.
- Henry then looks for other Shackleton-adjacent books, e.g. one by Frank Worsley who was on the expedition, but was he paying attention? Would Henry have been if he'd been there? It's not the same skillset to be good at navigation and writing prose. "It was so noisy, it was like a huge train going past" – is that good writing? Trains were new then, so maybe. Not all metaphors age well: "It sounded like the whir of a bubble tea machine." / "My love is like a red red power button on the side of a Corby trouser press." (supposed to be updating the metaphors).
- Henry gave up reading the book by the expedition guy. These Kindle books are only 90p so it's fine. He switched from Antarctic to Arctic and started reading In the Kingdom of Ice (is this the novelisation of Frozen?) by Hampton 28% (his name: Sides, is under the battery life symbol). Henry has to wade through historical context e.g. about the guy who funded the mission and his father. At 28% of the way through, no one is cold yet and Henry hasn't slept a wink.
- Mike enjoys the trend for factual books being written as if they are fiction, e.g. Killing Thatcher, recommended by Elis James and Ben McIntyre's book about KGB agent, Oleg Gordievsky. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is an early example (cold blood, but set somewhere hot). Say Nothing about Northern Ireland also recced.
- Middle-aged vibe to any naval book, especially the one by Hampton 27% with long lists that Henry doesn't want to skip. Perhaps Henry should go chilly fiction: lots of them because of the jeopardy. Henry asks if they are going to the Moors that afternoon. No, but they may go to the Armouries Museum. Henry wants to feel the winds on his follicles. Perhaps they could do the Peak District on the way to Manchester and Henry could read some Brontë (they sing Wuthering Heights). Henry liked the description of the thick walls in WH, with people cosy inside away from the bogs outside. Call-out for chilly books for Henry's Book Club.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
- Owen was driving home from his job at the Cambridge Film Festival when he heard Ben mention that his film had been rejected by that same festival (in ExtraBeansSeptember2025). Owen works in marketing but had drafted the rejection email. He was up for some corruption but too late. Ben had a rejection letter that morning, from Henry, who is not interested in going on a cruise with him. One learns to skim read those letters, looking for words like "challenging". Ben reads out Owen's email. Mikes takes exception with the email using the passive voice and giving the verb to the film. Just tie your colours to the mast: "Dear worm. No" followed by emojis including a turd altered to not be smiling and a "bonfire of savings" emoji. Reminds Henry of Peter Mandelson's statement where he "deeply regretted being introduced to Jeffrey Epstein". What you want is a letter saying it's all politics, the system is rigged against you and your work is too original, true genius is never recognised in its own time. Perhaps Ben should freeze himself for a few hundred years and re-submit when he wakes up, only to be rejected because Owen has done the same and people are now just floating jellyfishes who don't watch films.
¶ Jingles
- Satire (15:20)
- Bean Machine (17:29)
- The Regal Zone (27:01)
- Emails (52:54)
- Patreon (1:00:15)
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- Mobile Bean Lounge because of the tour: making the mobile lounge seaworthy (all hands on deck!) in Leeds (59 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- 12-year-old Evie plays the theme on her (Grade 6) cello.
¶ Notable Quotes
- He's the Fibonacci sequence made man.
- The kind of people who go paintballing when it's not a wedding? That's like buying a panettone when it's not Christmas.
- Portsmouth is, may I say, embarrassingly naval pilled.
- Everyone's too bloody woke to do what you should do when you see a fox: shoot it in the head and then run it over.
- You marry Coke, but you have an affair with Pepsi.
- A cracking-off period is recommended for this book.
- It's in one eye and out the other eye with me.
- There will be just enough tossers in the middle of the night to make this financially viable.
- He was on the expedition, but how do I know he was paying attention?
- What's wrong with a bit of old-fashioned corruption now and again?
- Dear Ben, we didn't choose it. Soz.