Episode 102 - Gregory Johnston

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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 and a printed magazine.

Brought to you by Glando.

Now, unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past week, the news won't have escaped your attention about the CEO of the Beef Marketing Board, Gregory Johnston.

Appointed early last year, this week allegations surfaced that he hasn't heard of beef.

There is widespread shock that he would be employed in this role, having never heard of beef, and there have been calls for him to be sacked.

But the wording of his contract means that sacking him would cost the Beef Marketing Board over £250 million.

As a result of this, there are now ever-growing calls for Johnston to do the right thing and resign.

The allegations were made by a whistleblower from the Beef Marketing Board, who agreed to speak to this programme as long as their words were spoken by an actor.

We employed that actor, but then that actor wanted their words to be spoken by another actor.

That actor then wanted their voice to be replaced by an actor, and then that actor also wanted to maintain that anonymity by having their words delivered by an actor.

At which point we just gave up.

Anyway, we're very pleased that on this month's show, we have the only interview given by Beef Marketing Board CEO Gregory Johnston since all of this came to light.

Hello, Gregory.

Thank you so much for coming in to talk to us today.

I know this is something that won't be that easy for you, maybe.

This is your first public appearance after all of the uh yep opprobrium and everything that's happened

um so just thank you really thanks for having me and it's it's a brave man who walks into the lion's den like this

yeah i mean i think it will be is it you know you've been in the in the beef press all week you know the head of the beef marketing board's never heard of beef but why i don't understand why this all matters so like we the beef sales have been up every year right yeah you know absolutely selling so much of the stuff, yeah.

So, what's the I don't understand the problem.

I told you sales were up.

Uh, does it matter what I look?

There's lots of things I don't know about,

you know, there's lots of things I know about.

Uh, I'm an expert on the Hot Wheels, uh, toy cars, for example.

Uh, that's something you do know about, that's something I know about, and I've not seen any praise for that.

Look, I just thought I just want to go back.

Sorry, so a very central point here.

Have you heard of beef?

Uh

hold, what do you mean?

Can you rephrase that?

Sorry, have you heard of beef?

That's not rephrasing.

Okay.

Do you know beef?

Do I know beef?

Who?

You are the head of the beef marketing board, right?

Oh, right, yes.

Your job is to sell beef.

Yes.

yeah so you must have heard of beef by now i've heard a lot of things

you know i i i i'm a i'm a scholar uh i've got the complete encyclopedia britannica i know a lot of things i've read it all many times covers to covers right it's quite big have you seen it well in in those books i mean it's a big compendium of books isn't it yeah whole shelf full

there'll be one of those that's labeled beef there's no i didn't i don't have

we never had that one, right?

Yeah, I see.

So, is it that you've got this gap in your knowledge because your Encyclopedia Britannica didn't have the B book?

I don't think that's why, but we we never had a bee in the Britannica.

And have you heard of Bark?

Huh?

Have you heard of Bark?

Have you heard of Belgium?

Uh

is it uh

I think lots of people will be listening and thinking, okay, this guy doesn't he's not heard of beef.

How is that possible?

Have you have you ever eaten beef?

Well, I live on a to be in my position, my kind of work demand, you've got to have a very strict diet.

Right.

And I'm on a strict-only lasagna.

So you only eat lasagna?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Which, of course, is a

beef.

meal

no that's cheese you're thinking of that's cheese

you're mistaken No, I'm not mistaken.

A lasagna

is

a kind of layered, savoury cake.

Yeah, it's a cake.

There are layers within it of pasta,

of cheese, as you say,

a white sauce,

and then beef.

No.

I'm not sure what you're thinking of.

Yeah, it's a cake.

When you are making a lasagna,

you are making a cake.

A birthday cake.

If you put a lasagna in front of somebody, it is their birthday.

Happy birthday.

Candles in the cheese.

You are 20 years old.

You eat 20 lasagnas.

When you are 60, you eat 60 lasagnas.

Talk me through your interview.

Okay.

And

the application process.

Okay, so I came in.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Have a seat.

Thank you.

What do you consider your three biggest weaknesses?

Being too humble, being too monkey, too creative, you know, being romantic.

You know, what are your strengths?

That was tough because I'd already said my strengths as weaknesses.

Right.

Because I got it confused.

So then I said my weaknesses as my strengths.

So I said, I get scared, fire alarms.

I said, I get scared of if a tap turns on suddenly, get scared of kettles

going off.

Right.

Then there's a pause

and they said we admire your honesty.

Right.

And they said, So, what's your favorite marketing?

Right, I said, Hot wheels, they said, What one?

I said, The one that looks like a little Batmobile, right?

It's it's a maroon,

right?

So, the specifically the marketing around the maroon Batmobile-shaped Hot Wheels comes just the car, right?

Oh, see, you were saying that in itself is marketing.

Sometimes you get a question in job interviews, and it was good for any entrepreneurs, anyone listening.

Uh, you get, you want to be a CEO, um, you get a question, and then you just take the bit of it that you want to answer.

Okay.

So they said, what's your favorite marketing?

I said, the Hot Wheels car that looks like a Batmobile.

But Maroon.

Maroon.

And they

just took that.

They were happy with that answer?

They applauded.

There was like 17 people in there interviewing.

People kept coming in.

Right.

That's the thing, because they couldn't believe it.

Right.

Right.

They kept coming in and applauding the answers.

Wow.

Can I just say something, which is that from

a neutral observer's perspective,

I don't know how to put this in a more polite way.

I'll be as polite as I can.

The answers you gave sound like total horseshit.

Well, this is,

I mean, what's your, what's your, like, do you think you could do what I do?

Well, no.

That's besides the point.

What I'm talking about is how did, you know, people are talking about you in terms of you being a con man, of you going into that interview about lying about your experience about beef.

This is what they assume because they can't understand how you got the job.

They assume you must have lied.

You're some kind of grifter, some kind of confidence trick

to convince these people that you'd heard of beef when you knew full well you'd never heard of beef.

You know, they called Mussolini a con man.

Sorry, I don't know.

I don't know what relevance that has, but also I don't think that that was people's problem with Mussolini.

I just think cancel culture's gonna get everyone.

I think every single person in the world, and it won't rest till it has cancelled every

person.

I think that's clear.

There must be people out there who don't have anything cancellable.

Who?

Share?

They'll get share.

Trust me.

It was such a beautiful day.

A bit cloudy, but that's fine because the men were all wearing woolen suits.

My mother was behaving herself.

The church was beautiful.

When he put the ring on my finger, I was the happiest woman alive.

Everyone cheered.

We left.

As we went through the arches of the church, people started throwing things, obviously, confetti, rice, petals,

some leaves, lego,

and strangely, from one guy, hot gravel.

I don't know why he threw hot gravel.

It was really hot.

Maybe he disapproved of our match, of the wedding, of our marriage.

Maybe he was right.

We walked towards the car.

It was a beautiful car, a beautiful black Rolls-Royce.

And we sat in the back of this car, and he looked lovingly into my eyes.

He held my hands.

I felt a rumble in my tummy, and I told him that I was really looking forward to our reception

and the hot beef dinner that would be awaiting us.

I'm really looking forward to the beef.

And he just looked blankly at me.

Then he uttered the words,

What is beef?

And he utters the words again

What is beef?

And at that point I think naturally you just you just start to

question

everything.

My mind started racing.

I I went back through

years of

dinners out where

he never once ordered beef.

How did I not know this?

How did I not notice that he was never ordering beef?

That wonderful holiday we spent on the Argentinian beef coast.

We were at the Argentinian beef coast and he didn't even know what beef was.

And I didn't notice.

Let's talk about the figures because you keep pointing to these figures that since you came in, sales of beef have risen.

That's what you keep saying.

Absolutely.

It's not true.

What do you mean?

I've got the figures in front of me here.

So

before you took over as head of the beef marketing board, 900 trillion tons of beef were sold every year.

Yeah.

It's gone down to four.

It's gone down to four thousand trillion.

That's not down, is it?

No, it's gone down to four.

Four sales of beef.

Four beef.

Four beef?

Four beef.

That's a huge collapse.

It works.

Sorry, I don't feel I've satisfactorily got an answer about your...

Can you tell me about when you found out that you'd got the job and how you felt and

were you surprised?

No, I got a message on LinkedIn the next day.

They said,

so do you want it?

And I thought,

you know, Facebook Marketplace, I thought they were talking about a table.

Oh, you thought you'd opened the wrong tab and you were on Facebook?

Because I wanted a coffee table.

Right.

Yeah.

It's

Victorian.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, someone was advertising one and you said, can I buy this from you?

Yeah, but they messed me around.

Okay, right, okay.

they they and the thing and they said no time wasters right and then they messed me around do you know what i get on that people write things like i need this gone today and i think

you're not in charge of me

what did you get on there i was looking for a coffee table oh like a 50s kind of um mid-century modern i guess is what you call this style yeah

um like a four mica top

Really nice.

And I was buying it actually.

well to be to be perfectly honest with you, my marriage is falling apart, and

I thought that

that might be

that

might be what it needs, like the relationship.

Coffee table, yeah, yeah, we never had one.

I've been divorced four times, and I never had it.

We never had a coffee table.

There you are, yeah.

I think that's what it is.

Yeah, you know what you need to do.

I'm an expert on women, right?

You need to both you need to get her to

go with you on a on a boat that is shaped like a swan.

I mean, you've been you've said you've been divorced four times.

Yeah.

Why are children now growing so tall?

I believe my son will be taller than me.

A powerful man.

I am powerful.

But he will be so powerful.

I will be scared of my son.

He's going to be out of control.

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So, anyway,

you got the LinkedIn message.

You mistook it for a message from somebody who was selling a Victorian coffee table on Facebook Marketplace.

Yeah.

Who'd been messing you around?

So they said,

They said, You've got it if if you want it.

And I said, on my way.

Ah.

Right.

Right.

And then I'm driving down to the house.

Yeah.

And I'm banging on the guy's door.

Right.

And then that guy's called the police.

The Facebook Marketplace guy.

Yeah.

Right.

Because I'm kicking his door to get my table.

How much was it going for?

£14.

£14 for an original Victorian coffee table.

Yeah, but it's like only half of it left.

A bit of a project then.

Yeah, paper mache, the rest.

So you're kicking a man's door in due to this misunderstanding.

And that's really down to the fact that the colour scheme of both Facebook and LinkedIn are too similar.

It's the same thing.

Yeah.

Right?

I get it.

Yeah.

So, I mean, how did that shake out then?

The police came, they said, what do you think you're doing?

I said, don't get involved in Facebook Marketplace.

I said, you're all scum anyway.

They tried to tweet me.

Sorry.

You said the police were scum.

I said that to them at the time, but I don't, I should go on record that is not something i agree with right i think they are very important i think blue lives matter right and that was wrong of me in that moment right

uh but they went to taser me uh but i'd kicked the door down so they'd accidentally tasered the man whose coffee table it was right he's gone down he's landed on what's left of that coffee table right smashed into smithereens oh really yeah i've live streamed the entire thing on linkedin oh and they said this goes against their terms of, you know, community guidelines.

So hang on.

You're live streaming all these events onto LinkedIn.

Yeah.

And LinkedIn said that a video of a man falling onto a coffee table having been tasered is against their terms and conditions?

Apparently.

Right.

So don't tell me council culture isn't,

you know.

Alive and well.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And so

the people at the beef marketing board who just offered you the job on LinkedIn, were you aware aware that were they watching the events?

Yeah, they were commenting

like ha ha ha lol, right?

Little emojis, very cool.

Yeah.

Do you not think, though, that in their position, they've just offered the job, you know, a big job that they care about to somebody, and then moments later they're, they're watching him,

well, I guess you weren't tasered.

Were you eventually tasered yourself?

I got a little bit of the taser, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they're watching their new hire getting tasered.

Yeah,

most

people might think, well, surely they'd rescind the job offer, but you know,

what for being tasered?

Well, yeah, for putting for being in a situation in which

you could be tasered, but I was the victim in the whole thing there.

But were you?

Because the police were called because you were kicking a man's door in.

Yeah, but he said no time wasters.

He said no time wasters.

Yeah.

And then he was wasting my time.

Okay, okay.

Right.

My son, he will build an empire.

If you want to buy or sell on the Facebook marketplace,

you will have to go through my son.

I can see the future.

One day, I will try to sell an old beehive and beekeeping accessories on the Facebook marketplace without his blessing.

When he finds out, he will drag me naked from my bed to the town square.

The old marketplace.

From before the Facebook marketplace,

I will plead with them.

I am your father.

Please, son.

I have not yet eaten my 60th lasagna.

Let's move on.

So then you start the job.

This is what I can't get my head around.

You walk in on the first day, you go into your new office.

Yeah.

so you sit down at day one beef marketing board

talk me through how that goes then as someone who's never heard of beef okay they show you around they say look there's the there's the toilets uh

show me the office and everything all very nice they said if you need anything else you know you need a different kind of chair or whatever they gave me a little popped little catalogue on the desk they said we'll sort that for you i said don't get that get that out of my face facebook marketplace is the place

okay so they offered you um

like an office supply company brochure 75 pounds spending money okay they so they allocated you a budget if you wanted to buy yourself a new chair yeah yeah i mean that's not very much is it 75 pounds for it can go a long way on facebook marketplace oh so okay what did you get on facebook marketplace then yeah so i i went on i said you know what this chair chair was lovely in there i was sitting on this chair i said i'd like an ergonomic kind of chair.

Yeah.

You know, like

you see in Wolf of Wall Street.

Yeah.

Right.

Very cool guys.

Right.

Ergonomic chairs all around.

Okay.

I went on there, and what do I see?

Right?

You won't, you won't believe this.

Same guy

who had the half a coffee table.

Yeah.

Has an ergonomic chair.

Right.

And it says, no time wasters.

Okay.

Yeah.

I

go on linkedin

right and i message the people that off that said i had the job i said

what do you mean no time wait because i got it confused again so now you're mistaking linkedin for facebook marketplace yeah right

and i said right and i drove back to that man's house

i got out my car I'm in my brand new, you know, tailor-made suit and the shoes and everything, you know.

And the man sees me.

He pulls back the curtain, he sees me coming.

I run.

I see him get on the phone.

I see him physically dialed 999.

Pathetic.

The police arrive very quickly this time.

They go to taser me again, but I've kicked the door down.

It's exactly the same.

Amazingly.

It's the same.

They taser him by mistake again?

Yeah.

They tasered him again.

And I was like, ha.

But then it's like it made him stronger.

Oh, really?

Right.

Turns out, if you get tasered a a second time, you absorb that power.

The first time you get tasered, you somehow become knocks you down, pathetic.

But you become immune somehow to you get immune.

Yeah.

There's people.

Well, there's, you know, people disagree about it.

Some people think you're just immune to it.

Fine.

Yeah.

Some people think, no, you get that electricity and that makes you like you're in

Spider-Man.

Yeah.

Well, so, okay.

So if you get, if you get, let me just take this in.

If you get tasered a second time, you actually absorb the power and become more powerful than ever before.

Apparently.

Which is funny because he starts to charge towards me then.

All powerful and electricity, I imagine sort of.

I might have misremembered, but I think he doubled in size.

Okay.

Right.

And he's running towards me now.

Yeah.

And the police are looking at me like, well, you know, this isn't what we do.

Yeah.

And I said, well, taser him again.

And they did.

And this time he fell back.

And, of course, he's fallen on the ergonomic chair.

And he's huge as well.

And he's huge.

And it's completely squashed it.

And I said, how is this no time wasters?

Now,

I feel like we've slightly...

I don't know if this is something you've done on purpose, but you've slightly taken us on a bit of a tangent.

I've just answered the questions.

You've never heard of beef.

It's ridiculous, really.

What these people forget, Steve Jobs never has had never used a computer in his life, rest his soul.

Right, uh, Zuckerberg,

he doesn't have Facebook, he's not on Facebook Marketplace, he's not selling anything on there, he's not doing that.

So, to

level these things at me, like you must be an expert in the thing, I'm like, but I'm making the thing great.

The thing about, yeah, you sold four beef, well, that's not zero beef.

My son will be unstoppable.

My son will bury me in an unmarked grave where only wheats grow and the street dogs write their poems with peace.

I should not have fit him all those glands.

Gland Sanya.

It's the new Gland Lasagna

from its shells.

Will you resign?

No.

There's been huge pressure.

You know, there's been

the petition,

the in-person rally which took place.

Yeah, yeah.

Outside 10 Downing Street.

Doesn't bother me.

You know, doesn't bother me.

I have in my office a fire extinguisher and I have sprayed that at people.

And I'll do it again.

So you just, I'm going to ask you just one more time.

Almost from me, you know, personally, please resign.

Please resign.

Oh, well,

why?

Would you...

What?

We need someone at the top of the beef marketing board who's heard of beef as a minimum.

I thought we were like getting on.

We need someone who knows what beef is.

Are you into Hot Wheels at all?

Look, I like Hot Wheels.

Right.

What one?

Sorry?

What one?

What one?

I like the little maroon Batmobile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's unusual.

You see, you and I are not so different.

I know, but that's my leisure time.

And I'm here.

This is work time.

This is beef time.

You know, maybe outside of this, you and I could meet up.

A couple of Hot Wheels cars.

Yeah.

Swan boat.

Boat shaped like a swan.

I don't think that would be appropriate.

Why?

I'm saying that that's my social life, okay?

We can be friends in my social life.

Okay.

If you want.

But what do you want to...

Do you like rugby?

Yeah, I like rugby.

I've never seen it.

Okay.

You can teach me?

Yeah, I can teach you the, you know, certainly the rudiments of rugby.

Yeah.

We can go on a weekend away together to the Stratford-upon-Avon.

Okay, then.

As friends, yeah.

What is rugby?

But I have to say, but that's the different, that's a different part of my life.

I'm in my work life at the moment.

Oh, right.

And I want to say you need to resign for the sake of beef, or at least find out what beef is.

You've got to have heard of beef.

Okay, what if I do like an intensive course to learn what that is?

That thing you

can carry on.

I can show you some beef now.

Okay.

Here we go.

That's.

Really?

That's what that is.

That's the thing that everyone's...

That's beef.

Right.

And that's the thing that everyone's been...

It's your job to market this to the public.

Is it?

I thought it was like a.

I thought we were doing like a,

you know, it was like something cool.

Like, no offense.

That's cool.

Is it?

It's wet.

It's wet, yeah.

Is it always wet?

I can sell that to the public.

Trust me, I've sold worse.

Yeah,

it's

good.

You know.

It's um, look at all the things you can do with that,

Gregory Johnson.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

A big thanks to Gregory Johnston for that interview.

Not really sure we got to the bottom of that, uh, if I'm honest.

Gland Sagna,

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

But 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 supply you with a full 14-day itinerary for a dream two-week holiday in the German Baltic coastal port town of Rostock.

So, until next time, beef out.

Thanks to Bilal Zafa and Essis Sears.

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