¶ Opening Chat
- Pre-Yuletide greeting from Henry even though it already feels pretty Yule-y: Christmas markets on, advent calendars decimated, some people (Ben – Grinch alert!) still not bought any gifts.
- Harrods has released its dachshunds advent calendar this year – only 24 because the 25th one can't live that long in a cardboard box and it's tradition to not have a dead dog on the day itself. The 25th will have a sausage cannon, used to feed the 24 dachshunds. This advent calendar is the deepest, loudest, and worst smelling of all.
- Wozniak family policy on advent calendars: pro. Ben grew up with the picture advent calendars, monetising the concealing of a drawing of the Sparrow of Bethlehem. Children of the 80s and 90s' mental health was much better as a result, training them in self-restraint and expectation mangement: great tools for a largely unsatisfactory life (and urinary muscular control).
- Ben needs to smell the limited-edition cinnamon coffee and whack himself around the head with a candy baton/truncheon/taser/cat-o'-nine-tails/water cannon.
- Christmas-themed shanks will be used in His Majesty's (feels weird to say) Prison Service, like little sharpened candy canes, or shanks stamped with smuggled-in rubber stamps of Yuletide sparrows in the Yuletide Power Grab.
- Concealed picture advent calendars worked because there were no other options and also Ben was kept home from school in case he found out there could be a little Twix behind the door: home advented.
- When Ben went to uni in the 00s, everyone else's advent calendars had shots of Aftershock rather than The Sparrow of Bethlehem. Perhaps there might be Jesus drinking a Sambuca?
- Mike has two chocolate advent calendars in the house on the theme of 'Omnisweets': visuals are all about the choc. Are they knock-off, bought from someone round the back of the abattoir, with the wrong dates on? Using the Mesopotamian calendar, cross-checked with a sundial? Featuring poisoned meats and pickled wasps? On the last day, the Goblet of Knowledge will pour forth.
- Ben and Henry live the Grinch life with no advent calendars. Henry remembers the introduction of chocolate – like discovering the third dimension (depth!). An agreement to not wrench it open is what separates us from rats. If a rat saw a pic of The Sparrow of Bethlehem, it would look for the eggs.
- The kids who ate all the choc on Day 1 – was it just braggadocio? Same guys who went to Disneyworld every weekend and had a cousin who had a gun.
- The best "Billy bollocks" stories were collated on this website, called Wasp Eye because someone in the guy's school/pub claimed he wouldn't flinch if a wasp stung him on the eye (not that he had the compound eye of a wasp or a tiny wasp's eye in his backpack).
- Stories like having a brother in the RAF who would pick the kid up in a fighter jet, fly him to Tokyo for the weekend, back to school tired out on Monday. Why does the RAF have such recruitment problems with these perks? Is it the permissions/clearances for going to Tokyo? Might as well take a commercial ferry or just go to Colchester (they have an Itsu now).
- Henry had a lying phase. He told people he'd gone to the North Pole. No downside to lying as a child, just power. So seductive to say you've been to the North Pole that maybe... Henry has actually been? Perhaps he was taken to the Pennines but wasn't listening.
- The thing itself is brief; it's about the looking forward to the thing – advent calendars are all about this. A picture of the Owl of Gomorrah has no value but if you conceal it from a 90s child and give them a rule about when it can be revealed... then it has value.
- Can all of the above be melded into one grand theory? Delayed vs. instant gratification. "I want some lithium; I'm going to get a militia and get some lithium." People are just addicts of serotonin and dopamine and... (fade out from all the science that Henry definitely does understand – something from Professor Brain Cox will be pasted in here, using the same voice modulator they use when Russell Tovey plays Mike).
- Most of life is anticipating something and then remembering it. The present is less than half a second because you can't go smaller than that, unless you're doing something slow, like a car ferry to the Isle of Wight, which is slow enough that you might savour it. Mike's relaunch as an influencer hinges around his Car Ferry to the Isle of Wight Mindfulness Retreat (in association with Renault). The description of the lorry driver tossing himself off on a diesel-stinking subdeck is the next window in Henry's Dystopian Advent Calendar.
- Deep liars/deeply disturbed psychopaths really believe it's true, like Henry did about the North Pole when he was a boy. Although this is two logical steps away from making wardrobes out of human bones. Hang a jumper on someone's ribcage to prevent it losing its shape – also a spoiler for the Dystopian Advent Calendar.
¶ Topic Chat
- Diogo from Lisbon may well be drinking a tiny coffee and eating a mixture of custard and salty fish. Henry has been to Lisbon but he can't pronounce Lisbon so has he really? Warning: the restaurant tables in Lisbon are covered in snacky foodstuffs, but then Henry also has this at Pizza Express, where the tables are groaning with pizzas. The tiny finger foods don't feel like it, but they are chargeable items. Like a shark in heat, Henry will go round in nibble mode. Ben will leave the bits of food that have been put out on the table, out of principle ("I'm not falling into your little trap") but may well find later in the holiday that it was his by right (time to go barging in, grabbing breadsticks from children, starting a blood/bread feud). The Portugal trap may be just for tourists, especially if all the waiters are dressed as Popeye (Los Popeyas Brothers) and it's a glass-bottomed restaurant.
- Ben went to Porto out of season when the funicular railway was closed and his thighs were like two prize hams by the end of the trip because of all the hills. Hams soaked in vinegar, so you might tear off a bit whenever you fancy to have in crusty bread with Portuguese anchovies and capers – the tartness counters the sickly-sweetness of the thigh meat (because of the marzipan glaze).
- Organised crime, like the restaurant that Henry went to with all the 'free' food. Henry assumes all businesses that are a bit weird must be money laundering, like the lasagne-themed restaurant mentioned in HouseOfPainBBMQ last month. Ben worries that Henry taking a stand and calling them a front for organised crime is libellous. Henry is peeling back the layers, like an onion (even though the lasagne layers metaphor is right there).
- The lasage restaurant is in London's Square Mile and Henry wonders if they fully explored the many layers of its menu in HouseOfPainBBMQ. He sees it as like him in the winter: wearing lots of layers, a béchamel sauce and a bit of dill, with a micro-bucket of Benjamin Partridge thigh meat on the side, for dipping.
- Henry might get machine gunned really, really badly for exposing organised crime with the lasagne restaurant. Henry immediately wanted to tell Ben about it, as a fansagne/lasagnefanagne (Pakadoniiaaaa) but he couldn't share it as it wasn't on Google Maps. It also seems like an idea only a 4–6-year-old would come up with, shortly before being sent to the North Pole "on holiday".
- Reasons it could be organised crime: (a) No such thing as a lasagneria, (b) doesn't appear on Google Maps, (c) in the centre of the Square Mile, the heart of financial corruption, (d) we're dealing with an unreliable narrator, which you can tell because of the wibbling noises.
- If Henry disappears because of exposing the organised crime, Ben and Mike could investigate his disappearance so that they could find a new podcast to launch, this time in the true crime genre. Perhaps they might find a Bologneseria during their investigations or a Mundo Breadsticks, with a skull in the toilets being used as a soap dispenser (end on this cliffhanger).
- Mike would use his home phrenology kit (one of three things he always has with him along with a couple of sandwiches and a spare pair of pants) to measure the skull, which is actually 14 goat skulls stuck together, explaining the shape of Henry's head and some of his behaviours (e.g. ability to walk up vertical cliffs/to be milked and make a lovely tart cheese). The investigation continues into a sub-basement, perhaps involving a fireman's pole to speed up the anecdote (or did he? (wibbling noise)). The wibbling noise might replace the doof noise in film trailers, involving Boomers called Susan, Dennis, Bernard, and Samantha (played by Jim Broadbent), with Barbara (played by Judi Dench), comparing property portfolios in a garden centre during breaks in the heist then deciding they don't need to bother with the heist because of their excellent pensions.
- A short, blonde Italian boy in a squash outfit (avoiding all Italian stereotypes) tells you (thick Italian accent) that he doesn't know this Henry you speak of. The accent is a bit pre-chocolate advent calendar. The boy tells you Henry choked on a titanium breadstick (i.e. natural causes) having just eaten a salmonsagne (layers are different types and bits of salmon: tails, spines, tins of, salmon-coloured trousers, framed photo of Alex Salmond).
- The camera pans across, because Mike and Ben have moved the true crime show to telly (Netflix adaptation of the podcast) and we see a hot steaming vat of lasagne juice with bubbles forming as the dying Henry makes wibbling noises. The spinoff merch sauce could be Bibblenaise (spelling is being worked on, may need the Cyrillic alphabet). Dramatic irony of Henry being discovered after the podcast ended – lots of layers, like an onion.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Plug Zone
- Henry has designed a jigsaw despite saying in Neighbours that he wouldn't be doing one this year. A classic "burger on a string". The date he was given by the merch company had to be fed through the Pakadonia week system that branches out from a Wednesday, creating a fat week. Once Henry had decided he wasn't going to do it and the jigsaw was off the table, it was no longer a problem, meaning he was then able to sit down and do it. The new jigsaw is based on the Neighbours episode artwork and needs to be bought now because it's almost too late for Christmas. Business Secrets, with Three Bean Salad!
- Live shows at Machynlleth comedy festival in May 2026. These may be two of the very few 2026 Beans shows because of Mike's tours and Ben building his underground concrete lair. A new show, not the tour show, which is dead and not talked about, apart from the Glasgow date, which still has tickets available.
¶ Emails
- (at 28:00 in the Topic section) Dan from Bearwood was in London and wanted to try the lasagne restaurant after hearing Henry talk about it. They even sell a salmon lasagne. No garlic bread though, as that is a British side, not Italian, like bolognese, which is made wrong in Britain. Ben had bolognese in Bologna (review: "Fine", which results in Henry insulting Ben for being cultureless, which he has been meaning to do for 4 years). The types of lasagne were familiar from other pasta dishes.
- Josh emails about Laundry Zero, which he achieved just before listening to the Laundry ep. But then more laundry was almost immediately generated. Life is pain. Entropy wins. States we aspire to: Laundry Zero (everything is clean), Cutlery Zero (all knives and forks clean), Dog Zero (when you don't have a dog).
- Kate and Cam (Exeter farmers) have cracked Laundry Zero: their washing machine is their dirty laundry basket. Like making your dishwasher your cupboards. Some disagreement between Ben and Henry about how this would work (cupboards made of dishwasher/two dishwashers for dirty and clean). Mike wonders about whites: they don't own any because they are farmers with sandy, red Devon soil and water through a borehole. Tricky to be fitted for novice Pakadonia robes with no whites. Level 4 (cost: £18,000) is orange robes and a non-waterproof bathroom-style tile with your name (or the nearest name to your name) engraved on the back. There's a spare "Craig" going at the moment. The tile will be affixed to the Level 7 toilet on the Pakadonia spaceship. Ben questions the borehole detail in the email. Henry misinterprets the not having whites detail as not wearing underwear. Typical metropolitan elite going around saying farmers don't wear pants, using a relentless bidet system of undercarriage washing from the borehole. Perhaps they are mining Fanta, as there are reserves under Devon.
- Emily works in a dry cleaners and has found Viagra pills in a funeral suit twice. Does she sometimes find cyanide pills in a Christening hat? The little bit of tissue paper in the trousers in a load of laundry is so annoying, as are dog biscuits (just a soggy mush, like Satan's tiramisu in your pockets).
- Amy's subject heading chilled Ben to his haunted boner: "Ben is my father". Is this the Bean Machine extruding a sentient being as part of its waste products? This is the first one that has a name and is able to pen an email; most of them get sent straight to a Toby Carvery to be "gravied". For the ones that come out operational, it's still in the court whether Ben has to pay reparations and arrange citizenship (they fall between the cracks and have to go and live in Gibraltar). Amy sends a photo of her father, who she believes Ben will look like when he's older. Mike can see what she's driving at (shape of eyes/smile/cheeks) and Henry sees a slight Bonjo energy: a gossamer-thin good-natured veneer. Her dad is only 47 in the photo, but it was a different aging protocol in those days, like when someone compares Chalamet to Connery at the same age. The reason that aging happened differently can be found in the wine bottle visible in the photo (the rest of the booze and fags is framed out). A 47-year-old now would have a tattoo of a bike on his forehead, a pair of Converse and a tight T-shirt with a cartoon logo of an obscure US hot dog stand (Mr Binko's). The guy in the photo is from the days when aeroplanes still had pubs in.
- Ben's knife losing/hiding anecdote from the Laundry ep update: he still hasn't picked it up from the lost property warehouse. John Robins has left a voicenote about this: he is running a bath to wash off the stain of disappointment in Ben. John thinks Ben should have posted the penknife to himself while in the WH Smith. Ben's defence: he only had 2 mins so no time to buy a Jiffy bag, etc. Henry wonders whether Ben should have reverse shoplifted it into a knife shop.
¶ Jingles
- Bean Machine (19:09)
- Emails (44:33)
- Patreon (59:30)
¶ Sean Bean Lounge
- The Annual Shower Gel Tasting (46 patrons)
¶ Listener Theme Tune
- Piers sends in an a cappella theme. His group is the King's Singers (50 years of Gold Standard a cappella singing), which Mike wonders whether it's connected to the King's College, Cambridge choir. Piers saw Henry out and about in Richmond. Henry thinks he may have been visiting his optician, which is still in West London even though he doesn't live there anymore. Is the style Barbershop or Barber Cops (a musical that can't fail)?
¶ Notable Quotes
- Mummy, do you think it'll be The Sparrow of Bethlehem today?!?
- You need to wake up and smell the cinnamon-flavoured coffee.
- Chocolate being introduced began a slow rot that ended in tech bros controlling armies.
- If you're able to gain some stillness and peace when you're inches away from a lorry driver tossing himself off in a diesel-stinking subdeck, then you're making progress.
- Salty, salty, custard-filled cod.
- Milk it like a Lisbon custard cow: softly, and straight into a cod's mouth.
- They're really open-minded in terms of cuisine, ovulating sharks.
- Enjoy Ben's thigh meat, but do be aware: it's not free.
- You really are a clod-headed, cultureless oaf, aren't you?
- If you can't picture a lasagne, imagine an onion, completely flattened and separated into layers.
- Bundle him into the special plane, darling!
- It's this summer's Boomerific heist sensation!
- Is a boner the opposite of death?
- Speaking, as you were, of haunted boners...
- They can gravy down, but they can't haunch up.