Episode 111 - Shaving

Hello, before the episode starts properly, I just want to announce that we are doing a live show at the London Podcast Festival.

That's London Podcast Festival 2024.

It will be on Saturday, the 14th of September at 2 p.m.

I will put a link in the show notes.

It's always good fun.

Why not come along?

Also, if you can't be there in person, there are streaming tickets available.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is sponsored by Glando, the Gland-based energy drink from Mitchells.

If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck.

Glando is a perfect drink all year round, but as summer unfolds, Mitchell's is proud to introduce all-new Glando Sultry Nights Edition.

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Made from our secret blend of aromatic citrus fruits, jasmine, and boiled cattle glands, Glando's Sultry Nights goes down smoother than a shaved cow.

Remember to serve boiling hot with plenty of ice.

For 10% off your first taste of Glando, use the code, I Met a Girl, Crazy for Me, Met a Boy, cute as can be, summer days drifting away, to uh those summer nights.

Hello, and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network Podcast, the number one podcast for those involved, or just interested, in the production of beef animals and dairy herds.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website, as well as the printed magazine, brought to you by Glando Sultry Nights Edition.

Here at Beef and Dairy HQ, we're chugging boiling hot cans of Glando Sultry Nights all day, because of course it is now the summer here in the northern hemisphere.

But it's not all ice creams and Glando Sultry Nights.

If you're one of the many cattle farmers listening, you'll have no doubt been very busy shaving your herd.

And so this month, I spoke to someone who is no stranger to shaving a cow.

It's Bovine Arsvet Bob Truskovik.

I started by asking if the summer is a busy period for vets like him.

It's actually one of the busiest times of year for

cattle specifically.

Ani-wise, it is actually quiet at Bovine Anus.

Enjoys the hot weather.

It flourishes, it blooms almost,

really.

And as long as it doesn't get too overheated and too, therefore too dry, it's in good shape.

There are other things that need to be attended to, really, in the hot summer months.

You know, your focus is very much on the bovine anus.

When is the kind of the worst time of year to be an anus holder?

Michaelmas, on the whole.

Okay.

And that's nothing to do with the cows themselves.

That's very much because of

traditional Michaelmas celebrations,

anal fireworks, and so on,

anal dining, particularly around the Midlands, Leicestershire.

Traditionally, families would gather at Michaelmas and they would dine around an anus and the cow would have to be sort of

placed in a sort of brace so it was nosed to the ground, usually in a small pit, so the anus would be at table level and the family would gather around.

And it results in gravity is going the wrong way through the anus at that point.

And if you're dealing with a family that don't use anal coasters, then you can get ulceration.

I mean, it's difficult, but they still do it.

And I understand it, it's an important tradition.

That's just the way Leicester is.

Though illegal.

Completely illegal, but it's not enforced.

The Leicestershaw Force.

I mean, they'd have trouble enforcing anything else if they started cracking down on that.

The pushback would be phenomenal.

I believe there was evidence that the Leicester Police Force themselves were running their very own Michaelmas anus dinner.

Of course, because these are, your Leicestershire bobby is typically Leicestershire-born and bred.

And Michaelmas is the biggest festival of the year.

There, and they want to celebrate traditionally with their families around

the puckered anus of

a well-fed heifer, of course.

Well, of course, it's not Michaelmas now, it is the summer.

As you say, most cow anuses are pretty healthy for summer.

And that is in part down to shaving them down.

Which is what we do these days, of course.

And

that's what makes the most sense for keeping the cows cool.

i mean there's hundreds of different ways people have tried keeping cows cool over the centuries uh the byzantines used travel gazebos a cow would be you know a little gazebo would be strapped uh to the cow and in the modern day in fact in in puglia um they try a similar thing with uh sort of portable air conditioning units Your high-tech Swiss,

they've for years have been trying, of course, the rapid-motion conveyor belt pasture, just so the cows are traveling at speed.

They get a wind-chill wind-chill effect and many other ways, of course.

But these all sound very expensive and quite kind of extensive.

That usually is the problem.

And I'm in the southwest at the moment.

I'm working mostly the Devon and Cornwall angle.

I mean, as you all know, back in the day in Devon,

they created a sort of, well, it's called Splashdown in Paynton.

in South Devon, which now has to be used for human use.

But back in the day was a cooling flume park

for cattle, which was absolutely tremendous.

I believe they still open one day a year to let the cattle into the water park.

They do.

They do.

And that's usually for

as a sort of reward.

Prize cattle from fairs,

cows who've birthed the most calves, cows who've saved lives, that kinds of things.

Yes, then they get a go on the Adder Twister, Slaughterhouse Plunge, Leather Skelter, the Heifer Vortex steer if you want to go faster.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

But again, very, very, very expensive.

Yeah.

So mainly you think that the fact that Britain has kind of rested on the idea of just shaving those cows down, it's a financial decision.

It's not necessarily, is it necessarily the best way of doing it, or is it just the cheapest?

I think rather wonderfully, there's a little bit of both.

And also, there is a scintilla of tradition.

As we know.

Back in the day, barbers, I mean, we all know that barbers became the first surgeons.

Before barbers became the first barbers, they were shearers, of course.

And that's why haircuts in Edwardian times generally tended to start from the ankles up in a sweeping motion towards the nose, which is why they got through so many trousers.

But it was discovered quite by accident when a young barber apprentice was training on cattle, because that's what he had available to him, that

the cattle liked it very much, and they kept their cows cool for a long time.

And that tradition got forgotten, really, until the 80s spate of cow circles.

You know, crop circles have been going for a long time.

People were getting a bit bored of them.

People started shaving space patterns into the backs of cows.

And again, the cows liked it.

The milk was sweeter.

The anuses weren't drying out.

And so, yeah, we've gone back to basics and it's cheap and it works and they absolutely love it well that's good to hear I mean those cow circles we all remember of course people were claiming back then it was aliens of course they were and a few probably were absolutely yeah but largely speaking it was it was bored uh bored teenagers from yeah largely shropshire and um and north wales i think if we look back in the history of course you know if you if you look at a painting of somebody from the olden days they've normally got a beard, but we're talking about humans here.

And then, of course, Henry V was the first clean-shaven king.

They called him the cowfaced king.

And that was inspired by the fact that people were beginning to shave cows, and he wanted to co-opt some of that noblesse, you know, that inherent sort of nobility and dignity of a cow.

He wanted to associate himself with that.

And Britain was thriving because its beef herds were thriving.

Its dairy scene was absolutely electric at that point.

So, why do you think it died out then?

And we didn't shave our cows then for hundreds of years until the 80s.

I think the Industrial Revolution, isn't it?

Right.

Really.

And

people were not to put too fine a point on it, w were swinging it about with what they could invent all kinds of crazy

Heath Robinson type uh uh inventions being made, you know, uh cattle being hoisted into great contraptions and plunged into ice baths and, you know, the technology develops.

And that continued well into the twentieth century with the Norwegian cryo herds, of course.

I mean, that was absolutely disastrous.

Oh, on paper, of course it worked.

The insta freezing of

cattle seemed like a great idea.

But the thawing out process

wasn't properly thought through.

This all feels like technology looking for a problem to solve when it was previously solved just with the blade.

And creating its own problems.

Do you know what I mean?

I mean, I can remember a herd of Aberdeen Angus at Norway.

It was Bergen at the time.

And at least half a dozen heifers were shattered into pieces by vandals.

And that's a difficult clear-up job anyway, particularly as they actually waited for them to thaw out.

And that was

an awful mess.

Well, let's talk about you.

As everyone will know, you are a renowned bovine arsvet.

As you say, in the summer, the anus tends to calm down from a medical perspective.

Yeah.

So you're just going out shaving most of the time?

I'm doing shaving, but I've done a lot of it.

I mean, I'm decades into the game now.

I don't want to sound

arrogant, but I'm getting to be a little bit more creative at this point in my career.

I've trained a lot of people in shaving cows, and people are getting me to do stuff that's a bit more interesting.

There's a guy in East Devon, I know well,

and he prefers

a longer-haired cow.

He's got a few highlands, couple of whitebread shorthorns, and we've been trying out some undercuts.

Nothing too neat, really, like maybe a messy topknot or a wispy bun, that kind of thing, shaven down to a grade one at the edges.

And yeah, we're just going to see what catches on, really.

But it's a lot of fun.

The Rachel?

I have tried a Rachel.

i i have tried a rachel on a on a on a freakishly long long-haired jersey actually um but it didn't quite sing i mean it had the sex appeal absolutely but it didn't have the swish couldn't get the swish right i'm not giving up i'm going to still work on it though of course absolutely although with the the rachel there's still quite a lot of hair there will the cow overheat it it we we yes we we did there was a particularly hot day uh when the berachaled cow wasn't coping and we we didn't want to just shave it down.

So

we just put it on a tiled bathroom floor for a few hours, and that did the job.

Just a word on shaving

staff around the farm.

You know, obviously you're brought in by farmers, some of whom

have a huge farm with many employees.

Is it true that they'll sometimes say to you, you know, do the herd.

We've got 2,000 head of cattle.

That'll take you a couple of weeks.

And then while you're here, we've got the farmhands.

They live down in the caravans and in the huts by the swamp.

Get Get down there and smooth them up.

Unfortunately, and that's reflective, I think, of modern Britain,

really, because

as you know, a real proper farmhand,

they turn up shaven at the start of the summer.

That's when you know when you're dealing with a pro.

These days, you get a lot of casual workers, maybe even students looking to make a bit of fast cash over the holidays.

They don't know what they're supposed to do.

They turn up unshaven.

They turn up without any shaving kit.

Sometimes they start shaving.

They shave the the wrong bits, they're incompletely shaved, and they need me to either finish them off or just or just do the whole thing from scratch, just get it done.

I can shave a liberal arts undergraduate in, what, two and a half minutes?

They'll be there till lunchtime doing it themselves and they've wasted half the working day.

Well, thank you, Bob, for your time.

This has been very, very interesting indeed.

Final question.

You know, we talk about how it's important to shave the cows so that the

anus doesn't dry out.

If an anus does dry out, God forbid, is there anything you can do?

What's the best way to rehydrate it?

Lilt.

Thank you.

Enjoy the summer.

It sounds like an idyllic pastoral life going around farm to farm, shaving the cows.

It's quite bucolic, really.

Oh, you don't work a day,

I find,

when this is what work is.

Thank you.

It's my great pleasure.

And happy shaving one and all.

A big thanks to Bob Traskothik for that interview.

If you'd like your herd to be shaved by Bob, unfortunately he is now booked up for this summer, but he still has availability for winter anal boil lancing.

The season starts in late November and he takes bookings right through to the end of Feb.

More after this.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is sponsored by Glando Sultry Nights Edition, the new summer edition of the Glan-based Energy Drink from Mitchell's.

If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck.

Stuck at work at the milking parlor or on some godforsaken mosquito-filled pasture, let a single glass of Glando sultry nights transport you to a hot-blooded evening under the Tuscan sunset.

You sit on a scented terrace, eating handfuls of finely cured meats.

Your companion for the evening, a sturdily built farmhand called Dante.

When the cured meats are eaten, you dance the night away before he takes you to his simple rustic home in the mountains, and you eat more exquisite ham, and you make love late into the night on the hay bales.

His sun-kissed skin covers his entire body.

His eyes are kind, like a nice horse.

His thighs are taut and muscular, like a prized racehorse.

His face is framed by dark ringlets, cascading around his ears and down his horse-like chest.

His fetlocks shine in the candlelight.

He takes off his saddle, straps on a nose bag, and you fall into a blissful sleep.

The next morning, you wake, excited to brush him down.

But he's gone.

And he's stolen your passport and your wallet.

And your hair straighteners.

In the unforgiving morning sun, what looked last night like a charming shepherd's hut is in fact an abandoned caravan in the car park of an abandoned supermarket.

You walk in the sweltering heat to the nearby town where you have to beg on the streets for enough money to use a pay phone to call for help.

You think you see Dante drinking from a stream and claw at his muscular rump.

But to your misfortune, it's an angry donkey who kicks you unconscious.

Sometime later, you come round and you're inside a hot, striped tent.

You drift in and out of consciousness, barely able to make out the other figures in the gloom.

Dante,

are you there?

Dante!

A splash of warm liquid awakens you from your stupor.

You don't know how, but you know the taste of horse piss.

Dante stands over you, now in a top hat and tails, brandishing a whip.

His eyes, once the kind eyes of a nice horse, are now the dark, unfeeling eyes of a really horrible horse.

It starts to be unclear whether this person is someone who reminds you of a horse, or a horse that reminds you of a person, but you don't have time to think about that.

He's forcing you to put on a clown costume and telling you that from now on you're to answer to the name Bongo.

It's happened again.

Not for the first time in your life, you've been press-ganged into a circus.

Every night you perform with a huge smile painted onto your face.

You long to call out to the audience: Please, this sexy Italian man, who I now think might be a horse, has forced me to be a clown.

But you know that no one would ever believe you.

Dance, Bongo!

Dance!

For 10% off your first taste of Glando, use the code, but Doctor, I am Bongo.

Now, next, this is unusual, but we've agreed to circulate the minutes from the recent meeting of the Bovine Farmers' Union, which took place last week in Nando's in Aylesbury.

Aylesbury!

Usually, of course, the minutes are circulated on paper, but Secretary Susannah Terry's printer is broken after her dog shat in it.

The meeting began as always with a tribute to Her Late Majesty Elizabeth II, and then the announcements were as follows.

The Bovine Farmers Union Summer Fate has been cancelled after the committee's bouncy castle was found to be made of asbestos.

Committee member Alan Gander would like it noted that he believes the fate should go ahead and that not using an asbestos bouncy castle is, I quote, woke.

Rod Tocqueville is selling a catapult.

It's made to the exact specifications of the Carthaginian Empire around the time of the Second Sicilian War.

Useful if you're planning a siege.

Test drives welcome.

Bring your own flaming hay bales.

He's looking for 10 grand in cash or nearest offer, or he'll swap for a trebuchet, cannon, or a decent jet ski.

Apologies came from Philip Butcliffe, who couldn't be there because of a pressing family matter, Graham Larter, who was celebrating his ruby wedding anniversary on the North Sea coast with his wife Alma, and Barbara Fortinen, who simply couldn't be asked to attend.

Dawn Porridge wanted to let the members know about her new service.

Love of the summer but hate the onerous task of shaving your cows down, then let Dawn and the boys do it with a difference.

She offers two options: the Sinatra, which gets the cows baby bottom smooth, or the Macinro, which takes the hair down to a fuzz, akin to the surface of a tennis ball.

At only five pounds per animal, you cannot be serious.

There was then an update on the development of the formal youth wing of the Bovine Farmers' Union, which has been progressing under the working title of Lil Drovers.

Youth Outreach Officer Timothy Boone has been leading on that and provided a progress report showing the designs that he had commissioned for a Lil Drovers quasi-military uniform and a proposal to change the name from Lil Drovers to the Iron Fortress.

This caused some concern amongst many whose suspicions were confirmed that Timothy sees Little Drovers as a sort of fascistic youth squadron with him as their leader, a sort of personal Hitler youth.

It was put to a vote and the Little Drovers campaign has been shelved and Timothy has been banished to the Isle of Man.

As he was dragged from the room, Timothy was heard to shout, The Isle of Man shall become my own iron fortress.

None shall be spared.

Woe betide ye, woe betide ye.

The debate over what the entertainment should be for the Autumn Ball continues.

The current frontrunner is an aerobatic aircraft display team such as the Red Arrows.

Having contacted the RAF, Bursa Sue Goosebury pointed out that the funds only stretch as far as one plane, and it was agreed that she should go back to the RAF and ask if it's possible that they could perform as the Red Arrow.

BFU North Representative Pauline Tost pointed out that a single plane can't actually fly in formation with itself and wondered whether the aircraft might be able to drop any sort of ordnance to, in her words, create a sense of spectacle.

Sue Goosebury has said that she will ask.

The other options for entertainment still on the table if the red arrow isn't viable are guitarist Pete Townsend from The Who, reading out The Hobbit, or a screening of Austin Powers.

Any thoughts welcome?

Please send them through to Sue Goosebury via Fax.

And finally, continuing on the topic of the autumn fate, some prizes have come through already for the Ruffle.

Currently, there is a two-night stay with dinner at the Red Lion Coaching Inn, a dinner party meat cannon donated by the estate of Walter Parsley, may he rest in peace, and top prize is a passionate evening with Swiss sex expert Bonte Tiadino.

And that concludes the minutes.

More after this.

Hey, this is Mike Cavillon.

It's Wadiway.

And Sierra Cato, the hosts of TV Chef Fantasy League, where we apply fantasy sports rules to cooking competition shows.

We're not professional chefs or fantasy sports bros.

Just three comedians who love cooking shows and winning.

We'll cover top chef, master chef, Great British Bake Off, whatever's in season, really.

Ooh, you know chefs love cooking whatever's in season.

We draft a team of chefs at the top of every series.

And every week we recap the episode and assign points based on how our chefs did.

And at the end of the season, we crown a winner.

You can even play along at home if you want.

Or you can just listen to us like a regular podcast about cooking shows.

That's cool, too.

Subscribe to TV Chef Fantasy League on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, as I touched on in my interview with Bob, the issue of shaving down your farmhands is subject to very lively debate.

To get a scientific angle on whether humans ought to be shaved smooth for the summer, I spoke with TV doctor Dr.

Sam Archer.

Dr.

Sam is probably best known for his appearances on BBC One's Stethoscope Stories and Channel 5's Dialysis Roulette.

He's always got a new show on the go, and so I started the interview by asking him what he's working on at the moment.

Coming soon to Netflix is Is It Warts?

Have a look at Is It Warts.

A lot of fun for all the family.

Is that based on Is It Cake?

I what's that show?

Were you saying?

Is it Cake?

It's a Netflix series.

It's a kind of game show/slash cooking show where people have to make cakes that resemble objects to try and fool a panel of celebrity judges.

And then there's the moment, is it cake?

And they slice into the cake to see whether it is a cake or whether it is actually an object oh i guess um hearing you explain it now there are there are similarities yeah right the slicing mainly okay

and is it normally warts

it's always it oh i can't tell you i can't tell you um but between you and i it's always warts

and does it just look like warts to begin with

yeah yeah so yeah so it's not like oh that looks just like a rubber duck let's slice into it oh it turns out to be a wart it's just that looks like warts.

Yep.

And then slice into it.

It's it is warts.

Um,

I mean, I've not seen this.

Um, is it cake you're talking about?

But, um, it does sound quite deceptive.

Well, no, it is not deliberate.

It's not deceptive.

No, it's not.

It's a quiz.

It's like, what is it?

Is it that or is it that?

Let's find out.

Oh, you were right.

You were wrong.

Whereas in this one, it sounds like it's like you show someone some wart, you know, some warts-covered part of a body.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's warts.

Well, why isn't the show just called It's Warts?

It's called, no, it's called, sorry, it's called Is It Warts.

Why isn't it called It's Warts?

Or just Warts?

It's called Is It Warts.

Yeah, but I know that.

Coming soon to Netflix.

Yeah, with a question mark at the end, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That suggests a question, like, oh, maybe it's not Warts.

Right.

Well, no, because you see them and they're just, they're all warts.

Yeah, so why isn't the show called Warts?

Well, no, the show's called Is It Warts.

No, I know the show's called Is It Warts, but that suggests that there's like a quiz element, or there could be a time where it's not Warts.

That creates a bit of tension.

Oh, is it Warts?

Is it not Warts?

Sounds like

in the show it is Warts.

It is Wartz, and that's the answer.

Is it Warts?

It is Warts.

Yeah, why isn't the show called?

It is Warts.

Because, oh, okay, because it's the first bit.

So it's Is It Warts?

And then it is Warts.

It is Warts.

We all wave at the end.

It is Warts.

Yeah, but it sounds like there was never any question as to whether it was Wartz or not.

You know it's going to be.

It's always Warts.

It's always Warts.

Exactly.

So you know it's going to be Warts.

So there's no question, is it Wartz?

Well, there is at the start.

Is it Warts?

You You say that.

It sounds like actually that doesn't sort of encompass how people will feel watching the show.

You're not asking a question that they're thinking because they go, it's going to be warts.

We discovered in the development process that people were really disappointed when it wasn't warts.

So we sort of, to maximise your enjoyment, we decided it should always be warts.

And then at the end, it's warts.

And we all wave goodbye.

It feels like an empty celebration, though, when you're celebrating the fact that it was warts all along because we all knew watching watching that it was warts okay i haven't seen this is it cake but i'm guessing do they eat they eat cake you i assume you don't eat the warts

no no no we just look at the warts you know do a biopsy of the warts

and then is it warts it's warts and everyone waves at the camera at the end i'm not saying it's necessarily a bad show i'm just saying it's not a good name because there's no question of is it warts okay it is warts the trouble is then we we discovered this when we were you know running through the development process and things and sort of workshopping it

if you say it's warts, people have no incentive to watch.

Because it's just a TV show about warts.

Yeah, essentially.

And warts, I imagine, rate pretty poorly.

You've done the research by the science of things.

Yeah, yeah.

Algorithmically, they're sort of on a par with the actor Paul Betany.

Oh, so someone seeing that a show is about warts will,

they'll have a similar reaction to if they see that it's a movie with Paul Bettany in it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Often, neither negative nor positive.

Just, oh, there it is.

Okay, yeah.

Whereas if it's called, is it Warts?

Yep.

It's more like, okay.

Yeah.

Will Paul Betany appear in this?

Yeah, well, I always think that whenever I turn on a movie.

Yeah, that's what makes cinema thrilling.

You know, and then when he is in the film, he'll often be like, hey guys, it's me, Paul Betany.

That's right.

And they'll wave at the camera.

Exactly.

Wave at the camera.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I see what you're doing with Is It Warts.

Get a bit of a road bump there, but we got through it.

Yeah, I still think it should just be called Warts, but I understand.

I mean, I don't think necessarily it should have been commissioned in the first place.

It sounds pretty awful.

Okay, you say that, but in the very first episode, we got a wart that looks exactly like the Taj Mahal.

Oh, okay.

I mean, talk about burying the lead.

That sounds fantastic.

To scale.

What?

This show sounds incredible.

Yep.

Starts next week.

Tune in.

Okay.

Final thought about this.

I don't know why I'm fixing it on the name thing, but it's possible that you should have just called it, you know, the man with the wart that is the exact same shape and size as the Taj Mahal.

That for me is, you know, that I'm in.

You know, that's the equivalent for me of looking for a movie and, oh, it's got Jesse Plemons in it.

I'm watching it.

I will concede, actually, that would have been better.

Yeah.

Damn it.

Okay, well, you know, we're not here to talk about that.

We're here to talk about shaving humans smooth.

You know, it's a big issue whether farmers should shave their workforce.

And I just wanted, I guess, a medical, scientific side of the story.

Put simply, if your body is sweating, then it is in crisis.

A sweat is skin tears.

It's your body crying.

It's saying, I'm too hot.

And if that's the case, then you need to do something about it immediately.

And I've read some of the pamphlets that you've been writing recently.

And your take really is that, you know, this is something that everyone should be doing.

It's something that we maybe used to do.

But sadly, people just aren't shaving themselves smooth anymore.

It used to be that that's basically what the summer solstice was.

It was a time when everyone would know it was their opportunity to go out, shave themselves completely smooth, and enjoy what the Druids knew as a frictionless summer.

There's some cave paintings which show this, basically.

You can see a lot of Hirsuit men lining up and being shorn and coming out completely smooth and sort of gliding down a hill.

And that's when they knew that a summer could begin.

They're not greasing themselves up.

They're just...

Not at all.

Right.

That's friction-free summer.

So I think when we think, you know, in the public imagination, when we think about, we're talking about prehistoric times here.

Yes.

So when we think about those kind of caveman type people, the kind of people that are doing with the cave paintings you're mentioning, in the public imagination, they're kind of hairy, big beard, they're kind of Neanderthal look, you know, big hairy brow.

But in fact, they were more like babies or worms or dolphins.

The idea of a hairy caveman is nothing more than propaganda.

And when I think about, you know, how many people are shaving themselves smooth over summer, you know, it's a really tiny number of people.

it's really basically it boils down to olympic swimmers and and perverts exactly and i'm sorry but i don't know why it's the purview of of those two groups alone and and let's just say just to be clear there is a bit of there is a bit of a venn diagram it's not necessarily two discrete groups No, yes, there's that ellipsis in the middle, which is people who sort of started going to swimming pools because they got to see semi-clothed people and actually just found they had an aptitude for swimming and so became very good at it.

A little tip, if you're looking for a pervert in a swimming pool, it's normally the one that's really good at diving.

You know, anyone who's a professional diver, there's no reason to get into that unless you're some sort of perv.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Because nobody just decides to become a diver.

That's just completely pointless.

Well, no, and these are people who often find themselves cornered at the edge of a ravine, being chased out of town by villagers and need to make a quick escape.

So they get very good at it.

You can see how the skills develop from there.

So you're advocating really for a future in which it's not just swimmers and perverts who are shaving down.

It's it's it's everyone, basically.

What medical advice can you give to people listening today?

My golden rule as a doctor is simply that you want to keep liquids inside your body.

Think about just makes common sense.

If you see someone bleeding, you know that's wrong because liquid that should be inside the body is outside the body.

The same goes for everything else.

If you're sweating, that shouldn't be the case.

The water should be inside the body.

If you're pissing, you're drinking too much.

Stop drinking.

You need to keep it all inside.

I mean, it's

basic common sense.

And if you do need to piss, as some people do need to occasionally, it should be a deep russet brown.

Kind of a bit like you're pissing Marmite or

something.

Oh, ideally, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Or gravy.

Let's talk about the ethical issues involved.

A lot of our listeners will be farmers who themselves are responsible for a number of farm hands down at the farm.

And an ethical quandary appears, isn't it?

Where if your farmhands don't shave themselves,

a lot of farmers will decide to take it into their own hands.

Maybe under cover of night, they will shave their workforce.

Sometimes they will ply them with alcohol, get them into a kind of stupor.

They'll wake up the next morning and their boss has shaved them.

What are your thoughts on that?

Sorry, I don't see a problem with that.

These are people looking out for their workers.

Things that your boss does to you without your permission that improve your life are manyfold.

Does your boss ask permission every time they deposit money into your bank account?

No, they don't.

So I think you're not going to complain if you wake up and unbeknownst to you you've been completely shaved because it's going to make your life better.

What about the reports of farmers greasing the farmhands?

Sort of turning their workforce into an almost amorphous, writhing, slippery mass of skin.

I'm sorry, but this is it's simply sort of collective bargaining.

But as a as a human form, you become one giant amorphous entity and your ability then to advocate for your own workers' rights are increased by the fact that you're basically one giant blob.

Who's going to argue with the blob?

No one.

Suddenly you'll find actually you've got a lot more rights in the workplace as a result of this.

Do you not think that maybe then the blob, the writhing ball of greased humans, could start to advocate for not being shaved and greased and then you end up in a kind of circular problem?

Do you see what I mean?

I see where you're coming from, but I think once you're in that situation, you think, why not reap the benefits of it?

Other benefits include the fact that you can't be grabbed.

You're completely at liberty to do whatever you want, knowing that no one can ever grab you.

There are obviously implications for this in law enforcement, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So, your point really is that once somebody experiences being part of the blob, the greasy rising ball of flesh,

they will actually enjoy that to the extent that they probably won't complain about being greased and shaved because actually

they'll start reaping the benefits.

Yes.

How important is it to

grease up?

I think that's the thing I'm trying to get my head around at the moment.

Right.

You know, because you talk about in prehistoric times, people would have a friction-free summer.

They wouldn't need to grease because I guess they were mainly sliding along the kind of burnished surface of volcanic rock, things like that.

Maybe the back of a dinosaur.

It's all quite kind of smooth, isn't it?

That kind of surface.

These days, we live in a much more textured world.

We do.

We've got the law.

We've got the kind of fake grass that people put down.

Yeah.

Chippings of all kinds, gravel.

You know, we've created a very sensory environment in which to live compared to the scaly back of a Brontosaurus.

So does that mean we need to grease?

I think so.

And I think that that helps usher us towards a less textured future.

We're bombarded with textures nowadays.

Sorry, it's one of my bugbears.

It's just that we're now a society obsessed with textures.

Even where I'm...

I'm sat right now, I can see at least five textures.

And I'm like, that's too many.

So really, I mean, what we're talking about about is not just about health, it's about taking the human body back to where it came from, where it's meant to be.

Exactly.

It's about knowing where we came from and how getting back there can improve all of our lives.

Be frictionless, have less textures.

And, like I say, once you're completely shaved and you're greased up, then there's no limits to what you can do.

So, get out there this summer, get greased up, and start gliding around the place.

You won't regret it.

Friction Free Summer, baby.

Hashtag friction free summer.

A big thanks to Dr.

Sam Archer for that interview.

Is it Warts?

Starts on Netflix next week.

So that's all we've got time for this month.

If you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website now, where you'll find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we speak to Charlie Chaplin's great-great-great-grandson and are very disappointed when he won't do the silly little walk.

Do the walk.

Go on, do the walk.

So until next time, beef out.

Thanks to Mike Kozniak, Linnea Sage, and Tom Neenan.

And just another mention, we are doing a live show at the London Podcast Festival.

in September.

It's the 14th of September, which is a Saturday.

It's at 2 p.m.

It's always great fun and it always sells out.

So worth getting your tickets now if you want to be there.

And also, if you can't be there, streaming tickets are available.

Links to both those things in the show notes.

Hallelujah.

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