Episode 99 - The Man-At-Beef

The Beef and Dairy Network is sponsored by LactoBulk, the new milk bulking agent from Mitchells.

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

Remember, if you use LactoBulk to enhance your product, in most jurisdictions outside of the USA, it will be illegal to sell it using the name MILK.

However, there is no problem because you are able to use the phrases dairy-adjacent fluid, bovine-derived emulsion, and white liquid food.

For 10% off your first shipment of LactoBulk, simply use the code, I can't start the day without my emulsion.

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 a printed magazine brought to you by Lactobulk.

Now, this month's episode is about the esteemed position of the man at beef, the personal beef sommelier to the king or queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms.

To hear more about this most prestigious of positions, I spoke to friend of the show, Professor James Harkham.

Hello, I'm Professor James Harkham, and I'm Professor of History at the Wisconsin Cattle College of the Internet.

The role of the man at beef is a very ancient role.

It dates back as far as the Norman conquest in 1066, something that was brought over by the Normans, whose nobility always had a personal beef sommelier.

Their great love of beef, of course, even stretches as far as giving us the word beef, which comes from the Norman French le beaux-euf, or the beautiful egg, which the Normans themselves foolishly believed that all good cattle were born from.

The man at beef, succeeding from the sergeant at beef, of course, came from those Norman noble houses.

Of course,

every castle, every great hall would have had its, every lord would have had his own beef sommelier, but

the one who was in personal attendance to the king would have been that which was acknowledged as having the greatest palate for beef, a tongue who could identify the individual, what we would now know as tannins and enzymes that give beef its rich deliciousness, but which at the time would have been interpreted as a form of benign witchcraft.

I mean, there's also a kind of spiritual edge.

You can't just reduce it down to tannins and enzymes and chemicals.

There's something more than that, isn't there?

Oh, of course, yes, absolutely.

The spiritual dimension to beef, I think, has been recognized since time immemorial.

But certainly in the period that we're discussing, we have to understand that

the interplay between church and state then was quite fluid.

Bishop Odo, the right-hand man of William the Conqueror, was himself

was a practicing bishop and as such was entitled to ride a cow into battle.

And so the role of the man at beef at this stage is almost as much a religious one as a civic one.

That's right, yes.

It's a form of communion between beef, between God, between the king and his people.

The ability to select the prime cuts of beef was perhaps the highest honour.

And indeed, I think, as we know from lists of orders of precedence at the court of Richard II, in fact, many men at beef were paid more than the Archbishop of Canterbury and were, in fact, allowed to sit in his seat on special days.

The next big development in the role of the man at beef is in the mid-1800s, where suddenly there's a huge change and the man at beef, who used to be a loyal British subject, was now an American.

Can you explain what happened there?

So what we're dealing with here is a situation where by the the mid-1800s

it's become imperative to find a kind of diplomatic solution to the tensions between Britain and the United States.

And it was ultimately decided that the man at beef would be provided to the British monarchy

by the President of the United States himself as a sort of diplomatic gift.

I see, I see.

And with the man at beef being sent over by the President, did we send anything in return?

Yes.

We really must understand this as a form of diplomatic interchange.

And just as the President of the United States takes great care when selecting the man at beef who will eventually be sent to represent their nation at the British Royal Court, so we, in our turn, have carefully selected a number of our finest minds, usually in the field of entertainment, of course,

to go to America and to work with them as part of that diplomatic process process of building goodwill.

Think of Carrie Grant, Stan Laurel,

the Osbournes, and of course, in more recent years, the creative team behind the HBO hit show Succession.

British writers really will put a shift in for you if you want to eradicate any trace of hope or optimism from your work.

Of course, also, we sent over James Corden.

Yes,

again, a diplomatic misstep that may take centuries to undo.

Now,

you'll have to forgive me for reminding you that it has now been 10 months since the death of Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II.

Not just the greatest monarch that this nation has ever had, but also a patron of this very podcast.

Indeed, throughout the 1990s, she often wrote into the show using a pseudonym, Babs Rascal.

And who can forget the time she came to the annual British Beef Council dinner and barn dance in disguise as Babs?

Of course, we all saw through the disguise, quite literally, given that all she was wearing was a fishnet mesh sequin bikini and cowboy boots.

But do you know what?

What burst through the gaps in the fishnet, more than anything else, was dignity.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was a constant source of strength for the British public.

loved since before she became Queen for her service during the Second World War, where she climbed into a German machine gun emplacement and beheaded four SS officers with just a bottle opener.

Following her coronation in 1953, the Queen was a constant public advocate for beef, and many of you will remember her making public appearances with her men at beef at her side.

First of all, Sir Django Hardy until 1992, and then Sir Robert Battlebus.

And this month, I had the great pleasure to interview Sir Robert.

Hello, my name is Sir Robert Battlebus, and I was was Queen Elizabeth II's man at beef.

Sir Robert, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It's a great privilege to talk to someone who has worked in such close quarters with Her Majesty the Queen.

It was my privilege as well as my pleasure.

When the previous man at Beef, Sir Django Hardy, stepped down in 1992, the next man at beef was, of course, chosen by the American President George H.W.

Bush.

I started by asking Robert how he came to be on Bush's radar.

My father, Lucas Battlebus, knew George H.W.

Bush from their skull and bones days at Yale.

And,

you know, they kept in close contact.

And of course, when President Bush was the head of the CIA, he would come over to our house all the time.

And I called him Uncle George.

And he was just a wonderful man.

And he would share with us just all kinds of secrets that

we probably, in retrospect, had no business knowing.

But, you you know, there's a certain Ivy League understanding that you don't, if you're told something that is potentially harmful to

the nation or humanity, you can't tell the secret.

And if you do, it is frowned upon and they will find you.

So they might say to you, for example, hey, guess what?

Fidel Castro is still alive.

We bribed him to fake his own death and he now lives in Florida and works as a Fidel Castro lookalike.

Why are you,

where did you you get that very specific example?

You know, you hear things on the grapevine.

On the grapevine.

Also, when you replied to my email, it's actually part of your email footer.

It's got your name and your phone number with a link to your website, and then it has a little section with a number of what you describe as fun facts and state secrets.

Oh, you know what?

That's on me.

I forgot to change that.

That was a thing when I first got email.

I thought it was fun to have a footer, and then I realized it's not really a thing that people do anymore, but I just haven't bothered to haven't bothered to change it.

I also probably shouldn't have an AOL address anymore, but

you know, if it ain't broke, but apparently it is broke because I should not have that as my footer.

Yeah, but that's a lie, though, isn't it?

Because in the footer, there's a section with all the fun state secrets, and there's like the Fidel Castro one, and there's the one about how Hawaii isn't real, and there's one about how Jimmy Carter's peanut farm was actually growing alien eggs.

And then there's a little gif, um, which is one of the minions

Winking.

Now, when you first started your AOL email address, the minions wouldn't have been out yet.

So you couldn't have had a GIF of one of the minions back then.

Well,

they weren't out to the general public, no.

Oh, I see.

They were CIA's thing.

That's your words.

So you're telling me that George Bush Sr., as the head of the CIA, came up with the idea of the minions?

I'm not saying that specifically.

I am saying that this is the most that I can tell you, is that I have seen minions and been delighted by them

many years before they hit the big screen.

Wow.

That's as far as I can go.

Sir Roberts got the job of Queen Elizabeth's man at beef when his predecessor, Sir Django Hardy, decided to step down from the role in 1992.

However, stepping down from the job isn't simple.

Most men at beef will continue in the role until either their own death or the death of their monarch.

But if a man at beef wishes to retire, they may do so on the condition that they are then executed by the Pope, which hints at that religious significance that existed in the medieval era.

I've really looked into this and I've gone back into the archives here, the Vatican, the Library of Congress, the works of Dan Brown.

And the one thing that really stands out, I think, is how much the Pope enjoys it when they get a chance.

It's a day out, and, you know, at the end of the day, it's something different for them.

He threw that switch with gusto.

So, Sir Robert, you and the Queen witnessed the execution of your predecessor by the Pope.

He was in charge of the meat grinder, which made such quick work of Sir Django.

It's been written that your close relationship with the Queen was really cemented there at that early stage when, you know, the fact that you both had to watch this happen kind of brought you closer in a way.

Oh,

more than in a way.

Some of the blood got on us.

And

I remember brushing some blood off myself and she was doing the same.

And then our hands sort of glanced against each other.

And then we

just very briefly, and I want to stress this very briefly because this was not a

this was not a breach of protocol.

This was just a purely human moment.

And although,

you know, Her Majesty's blood was filled with the divine, she was still a person in some way.

And when our hands touched, we did squeeze hands, and then we both giggled a little bit.

And we made eye contact.

I immediately averted my eyes.

And she gave my hand one final squeeze as if to say, it's all right that you looked at me that time.

And from then on, we were,

I want to say, friends.

That sounds like a really special memory for you.

It almost feels like a betrayal to put this image in people's minds.

But if you can imagine Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and I

laying on the floor of her bedroom,

just helplessly laughing till tears run down our faces as corgis are jumping on us, over us, licking us.

That is a day that

I will treasure forever until I am executed.

So, Sir Robert, tell me about the typical day for Queen Elizabeth's Man at Beef.

A typical day, I would be told what time the Queen was planning on rising, and I would set my alarm for two minutes before.

I would sleep in my clothes and my uniform, which is

not dissimilar to the uniform of the beef eaters, the guards you see at the Tower of London, who are obviously misnamed.

None of them eat beef.

They exclusively eat raven meat.

And just to explain, of course, back in the day when that was happening, when they were first given the name, it was thought, scientifically, we now know it's wrong, that ravens were a kind of flying small cow, basically, because they're so intelligent.

Yes.

And they thought that the raven's beak, you know, it's such a very, you know, specific looking and fearsome beak.

They thought it was a horn, like just a single horn that was growing out of the little cow's head right in the front there.

And you can, of course, um milk a crow you can and the thing is crows are very smart so they will they will remember the face of someone who has milked them and depending on how much they enjoyed or did not enjoy the experience they can either reward you for the rest of your life or they can punish you every day.

If they liked your milking, they can bring you coins.

They can bring you jewels.

They can bring you...

The eye of an enemy.

Exactly, the eye of an enemy or a nice belt.

And

if they don't like you, they can bring you coins, but from another country.

And so you can't use them.

They'll bring you the eye of a friend.

They'll bring you not a great belt or like a nice belt that doesn't fit.

So you're wearing the kind of beef eater style outfit.

People will probably know what that looks like.

Got the rough, kind of the red tunic, the hat.

But of course, it's all leather for the Man at Beef.

So it's the same exact outfit, except black leather.

And

it is as warm as you would imagine inside that thing.

And especially when you put the leather hat on, you know, you're talking about

a huge heat tolerance that is required for this job.

And of course, when you started, that leather had taken on the shape of Sir Django Hardy.

As leather does, it conforms to the body that's in it.

Yes.

A bit like the kind of bum groove that can appear in a leather sofa after you've been using it for some time.

Exactly.

That's correct.

That's one of the reasons you would sleep in the uniform is to get it to conform to your shape.

And it takes decades.

Well, as you say, you'd set your alarm for two minutes before the queen was due to rise.

You'd be in your leather outfit.

Yes.

What happens once the alarm goes off?

I stand outside Her Majesty's door and I wait for her to appear.

And this could take,

it could take five minutes.

It could take hours.

I mean,

if she's feeling like having a bit of a lay-in and she just wants to,

you know, read the paper or scroll through Twitter or whatever.

She was a huge Reddit user, I believe.

She loved Reddit.

She lurked.

She lurked, but she did have a burner account that she would comment on things.

She loved the Romancing the Stone series of movies,

Romancing the Stone and the second one.

The title escapes me now, but

she would search Reddit for people talking about those movies.

And there's not as many forums dedicated to it as one might like.

But if anyone said anything negative about it, she would get in there and she would just destroy that person.

It gave her great pleasure to do that.

Anyway, so I would wait outside the door.

As she would emerge, I would be standing against the wall.

And when I heard the door click open, I would immediately swivel around so that I was facing the door as if I'm barring her way, but I'm not.

And in my hand is a Boolean cube.

And I say, good morning, Your Majesty.

And she would say, good morning, Sir Robert, or good morning, Bobby, whatever she called me.

And she would pop that in and just crunch, crunch, crunch.

And that was the start of her day.

That was her first encounter with beef.

And it's, it's,

you know, there are, of course, breakfast meats, but you don't want to give anyone a cube of raw meat first thing in the morning.

That's something you have to work your way up to.

And she would, and that she would go from cooked meat to raw meat over the course of the day.

Let's talk then about your friendship again, because you started in 1992 and by the late 90s the the tabloid press began to ask questions about your relationship with the queen.

Yeah.

And there was a sense, wasn't there, that people thought that maybe you had too much power because of your relationship to the queen, your your proximity to power.

I remember for example back in 2004 I think it was the Royal Navy named a battleship after you HMS Battle Bus.

Yeah.

And people started to think well you know what why is she naming some of our greatest military hardware after this guy who's just giving her beef every day?

Well, I mean,

okay, there's a couple of things there.

Number one, that was the queen's prerogative to name that cruiser after me.

And

it was her way of honoring me.

If you ask me, I'm not a fan of boats.

So it wasn't the hugest honor.

It was not something I asked her to do.

My dream was always to have a car named after me and to create my own car.

And,

you know, I did try to build a car once, and it was very frustrating.

I bought four tires, and

I thought I would just instinctively know what to get next.

And

I didn't.

I didn't.

And it was very frustrating because I put the four tires in place where a car tires would be.

And I would look at it every day and say, what connects these?

How do they,

how do you, what goes on next?

And,

because I did find

a roof of a car at the dump.

And so I had that sort of in the middle.

Sorry, Robert, it just strikes me that you're telling me this shaggy dog story about you trying to make a car as a way to deflect from the fact that what I'm asking you about, which is the fact that a battleship was named after you.

Okay,

that's fair.

And

Because I'm, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you were about to tell that story going through every single part that goes into making a car, right?

Yes, I was.

You've got me there.

And that would take hours.

Oh, at least.

And I was willing to, I'll be honest, I was willing to wait you out on this recording and

just keep talking.

You were essentially going to filibuster the whole podcast, right?

Yeah,

I could tell it was going to happen.

Okay, well, good for you.

And congratulations.

You're a regular Colombo.

Well, let's move on.

Because I've got some other papers here from the archive.

This is a quote from the Daily Mail back in 2005.

Not only does Sir Robert feed beef into her mouth, he pours poison into her ear.

The Daily Mirror wrote, the power behind the throne is the American citizen, Robert Battlebus, who last year begged the Queen to give her assent to the execution of his brother Chudley.

Okay.

There's, of course, a grain of truth in a lot of that, but it's surrounded by

a tissue of untruths.

Yes, I did ask the queen if she would execute my brother.

No, she did not do it.

Yes, he didn't end up being executed.

No, I did not do it.

Yes, it was someone the queen asked to execute him.

So I think that,

you know, did I ask the queen to execute my brother is not quite the same as my brother was executed by someone the queen asked to execute my brother.

Do you see?

I think listeners might think you're splitting hairs there, to be honest.

I don't, I don't see that at all because

she trusted me to be someone who would always have a little bit of meat that she could put in her mouth.

no matter where we were.

She trusted me to know which cuts of meat were the best for her.

She also trusted me to be a silent witness to whatever she needed to express.

If she needed to blow off some steam, if she needed to scream or yell or kick the wall, I was there.

And she knew that I would listen without judgment and would always say something encouraging if she needed it.

So for me to ask favors of her, will you name this ship after me?

Will you kill my brother?

It's not quite that cut and dry.

Okay, I understand this.

It feels like

you're kind of doing the filibuster thing again because you're aware what I'm going to ask next, right?

So I have no idea.

Okay, the obvious next question is, okay, fine.

You wanted

the big ship named after you.

Well,

that's what happened.

Do you deny,

or can you accept?

that the fact that the first mission that that boat went on was to sail across the Atlantic to South Carolina where your brother lives and fire upon his home had something to do with what you wanted to happen.

I do not deny that those events took place.

I am not in any position, nor was I ever, to order one of Her Majesty's ships to fire on the United States.

So you're saying that the are you saying that the queen independently decided to to get the Royal Navy to fire at your brother's home?

Here's what I'm going to tell you.

The queen was a very empathic person.

She was very empathetic.

And so she knew

without my having to tell her that I despised my brother, that we were past the point of no return, that there was never going to be any kind of rapprochement.

She knew without me telling her, just by pointing on a map where he lived.

She knew without me having to say a word when he would be home.

This is what friendship is, is that you don't always have to have this,

you know,

I didn't know that I wanted her to do that for me.

Hello, my name is Timothy Spaglioni.

I'm a lawyer originally from London.

I now reside in South Carolina.

I received a job offer from the South Carolina Department of Agricultural Fraud.

We specialize in fruit fraud, certain fruits being disguised as other fruits.

So the job that I was hired to do was

to prosecute people who paint apples to look like peaches.

Oh, interesting.

Wow.

So yeah,

I guess you can paint an apple to look like a peach.

There's a kind of a texture problem, though, isn't there?

You're talking about the first.

I'm assuming that they're gluing something on to the apple?

Yeah, yeah.

It's a good guess, and it's certainly what they used to do in the old days.

You know, they would use any any sort of a decent material be it glue be it toffee uh but it was very labor intensive but also much easier to spot as well you know an apple rolled in super glue you know and then with uh you know with with sawdust shavings i'm gonna spot that but these days our challenges are much harder Right, because I guess it's AI these days.

You've really hit the nail on the head.

The things they can do now that detail in that fuzz, it's entirely artificial.

3D printed?

3D printed.

Again, you've got it in one, you know, AI will scour the internet because there's obviously there's quite a few pictures of peaches.

I mean, don't do it now, but if you were to Google peaches and then press, you've got to then go up to image, and then that's all pictures.

I'm a Bing user, but I assume it's a similar picture.

Okay, I see.

Yeah.

You know,

whatever you want to go through, there's loads of pictures of peaches on there.

Now, what the AI will do is it'll,

incorporate all of those,

send that information to a 3D printer.

The 3D printer will then render the fuzz

for then the peach handlers to roll the apples in.

And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's really,

you have to look really, really closely if you want to spot that.

Well, thank you for your service.

It's a pleasure.

It's a pleasure.

I mean, obviously, we're not here to talk about your job, but that explains how an Englishman like yourself ended up over in South Carolina.

We're talking to you because you met your partner Chudley whilst over there.

Tell me a little bit about that.

I was out here in South Carolina, you know, enjoying the work and I certainly wasn't looking to meet anybody, but I attended an Avril Levine concert.

In the rough and tumble of the Avril Levine concert, where people young and old, buoyed along by the skateboarding-based music, jostled against one another uncontrollably, Chudley Battlebus, Sir Robert's brother, had been knocked to the ground.

And Timothy, seeing his distress, came to his aid.

This poor man had fallen and he had mud all over his clothes, he had mud on his head, he had mud all over his face.

So I couldn't really see what he what he looked like.

And you know, he's looking for something to clean himself off with.

And I realized I had one peach.

So I um

took the peach and I just gently

used it to clean the mud off his face.

And obviously, with with the natural fuzz, it's sort of like a like a cotton pad, really, I suppose.

And obviously the natural peach oil that is secreted from the skin is sort of like

a kind of a makeup remover, you know.

And so I'm cleaning it.

And

as his face is revealed, as the peach reveals

this man's face, I've realized just

how

beautiful he is, how good looking he is, you know, and obviously he's now very grateful because he's got a very clean face.

And

just as I get the last in the mud off, he just leans forward and he bites into the peach.

He sinks his teeth and you can hear the,

because they're obviously very juicy, you know, it was a particularly juicy specimen, you know, and the peach juice is running down his chin.

And he's smiling.

He's smiling at me.

And so I lean forward.

And I bite the other side of the peach.

So now we're, we're either side of it.

Lady in the tramstyle.

exactly and that that was actually the thought that went through my head i thought to myself this is this is like a fruity version of of lady and the tramp one of the sexiest dog movies going i would i yeah and i think probably in the disney canon i think it's probably is i think probably the horniest of all the cartoons and i'm counting the little mermaid in there as well actually you know within six months of the average levine concert Chudley and Timothy had moved in together and were a couple.

But after a few years together, things started to go a bit strange so it was 2006 which meant we'd been together for seven years

and chadley just started behaving very strangely you know he would he would disappear at all times of the day and night he started using

very complex maritime phrases you know

out of context which I found really strange.

Or he'd start telling you facts, you know, facts about boats, which sayings

came from boats.

I mean, this happens with a lot of relationships,

especially ones involving men.

They become middle-aged men and they start spouting facts about the Navy.

So you must have thought, well, this is annoying, but, you know, we've got to expect this.

You're in a relationship with a man.

That will, that will happen.

Absolutely.

And I can remember when I came out to my parents, you know, as a teenager, my mother...

you know, was so understanding, but the one,

her, her big fear, and I can remember, you know, tears in her eyes, she said to me, what happens when you become middle-aged and your partner starts spouting out random facts?

You know, but I didn't want to hear it then.

I was too young.

Yeah.

You know, I was too

excited to start my life, you know.

But she was right.

So, you know, I, he was behaving strangely, but, you know, a middle-aged man spouting random maritime facts, it's not the strangest thing in the world.

So I didn't really, you know, I didn't think it was too much of an issue.

But then, you know, I found a

tricorner hat in the trunk, as we say over here, in the trunk of our car.

Kind of old-timey sort of Napoleon style.

Exactly.

Yeah, Big Napoleon, Lord Horatio Nelson.

It's, you know, it's the three.

It's tricornered, you know.

And as soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, okay,

something's going on here.

you know so i i confronted chudley and uh

and the full extent of the problem became clear.

You know,

he had purchased a second-hand German battleship and

was also keeping a full-time crew of 90 sailors on there at a very competitive rate.

And I suddenly thought to myself, how could I have been so blind?

And I guess you have to ask him, you know, why, why did you buy a battleship?

Because

this feels like...

Maybe I'm getting ahead of you here, but this feels like more than just an interest in the maritime.

This feels like something else.

It's definitely an escalation.

And I kept asking him, you know, I mean, I was so upset.

I was so angry and upset.

And I kept saying, why have you done this?

Why have you done this?

And he just sat there and he just, he just, all he would say is, I think I know what Robert's planning.

Trust me, we need this.

And that's Robert, his brother.

His brother who I've never met.

So how do I know?

You know, maybe we do.

Maybe we do.

But at the end of the day, it turned out that Chudley was right.

Fast forward about a year, about 2007, I am woken by the sound of cannon fire.

I'm lying on my back.

I open my eyes and the roof of the house has been completely blown off.

So I get up, I look out to sea, and I can see that we're under attack from another battleship flying the British flag.

And Chudley's fears had been borne out.

And actually, I bet at that moment you were pretty glad you had a second-hand German battleship.

I was absolutely delighted.

And even more so, I was glad that it was staffed with a crew of 90 sailors on a competitive rate, because if those 90 sailors were staffed on a less than competitive rate, they may not have mobilised into action at the speed that they did.

I mean, it was absolute craziness.

Chudley got straight on the phone, called the crew, and to be fair to them, within a couple of minutes, they're already returning fire.

You know, again, competitive rate.

You get what you pay for, it turns out,

when you crew a second-hand German battleship, and we were really lucky.

So we're just there eating a breakfast and watching the battle.

And these ships, this British ship is pretty evenly matched with our German ship.

I mean, I don't know how many sailors

were on the British ship, and I certainly don't know what rate they were on but they were giving it their all so I thought to myself oh my god you know there's a chance that we could uh there's a chance we could lose here you know they could sink our battleship and then what happens to us you know we're in big trouble but after about 10 minutes the British battleship took a direct hit from an old Russian submarine that had appeared

and it turned out that unbeknownst to me, Chadley had also bought this old Russian submarine.

So even though he'd revealed to you that he'd spent 10 million on a battleship, he'd still kept from you the fact that he had also bought an old Russian submarine.

I wasn't prepared for it, but I suppose in the moment, I was grateful that

we had the Russian submarine to bolster our forces.

Chudley was right.

Yeah, I mean, he was just pleased as a punch to sunk that battleship.

And you know what?

It really brought us closer together.

You know, I will take some pride in the fact that

the uh cruiser the battle cruiser that bore my name did not sink immediately but made it pretty far back uh on its way to uh to england before it sank

more after this

if you're hiring you're currently dealing with a slowing economy as we all know And that adds to your challenges.

Thankfully, there's a hiring partner who is focused on you and your needs.

And that partner partner is, of course, ZipRecruiter.

Now, the good thing about ZipRecruiter is it has straightforward pricing, so you can stick to your budget, and it finds great candidates fast, saving you time and money using their smart technology, which allows you to invite the top candidates to apply for your job.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/slash beef.

That's ziprecruiter.com/slash B-E-E-F.

Beef.

I'm Jordan Morris.

And I'm Jesse Thorne.

On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense.

We rope in awesome guests and bring them down to our level.

We got stupid with Judy Greer.

My friend Molly and I call it having the space weirds.

Pat Noswalt.

Can I get a Balrog burger and some Aragorn fries?

Thank you.

And Kamal Nanjiani.

I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use.

Come get stupider with us at maximumfun.org.

Look, your podcast app's already open.

Just pull it out.

Give Jordan Jordan Jesse Go a try.

Being smart is hard.

Be dumb instead.

Now, you mentioned earlier that beef-wise, you were building up from a small stock cube in the morning through cooked beeves in the day and then through to raw beef at the end of the day.

And you were, of course, talking about the raw beef banquet,

which took place every day.

This would be

served around 5.30 p.m.

And she was not afraid of raw meat.

She loved attendon, and she would dig in there with,

it was, I think, safe to say her favorite meal of the day.

And one of the things that I really treasure about that meal is that when she would eat that raw meat, she would look up at me as she was chewing.

You know, as the

blood was just, you know, surrounding her, her mouth mouth almost clown style, she would maintain steady eye contact with me.

And I felt that to my core.

She was communicating something to me saying, this is how it should be.

And I will revert to

the monster that lives inside me.

And I will tear the flesh.

And I will remain supreme, which I think is, that's a good way for a monarch to feel.

And when this was happening, was it just her on her own, or was she also with with her despicable children?

The children would be there, they would face the wall, and this is a custom from time immemorial.

Later, it was referenced in the movie The Blair Witch Project.

But the kids would be forced to come into the room, face the wall, and listen to the sounds of their mother eating this raw flesh.

And it was, you know, the symbolism there is never forget we are a pack.

I am the leader of the pack.

I eat first, and then you eat after me.

We are inbred, and we like it that way.

And so, the likes of Prince Edward and his wife, Sophie of Wessex, they would then come in and sort of have the scraps.

They'd be able to turn around once the queen was finished.

Yes, once the queen was finished, and they would have to wait until they heard the door close on the other side of the room.

They would not see her enter or leave.

Once they heard that door, they could then turn around and they could feast on the scraps.

And if they were, you know, if the queen was feeling generous that day, the scraps would be on the table.

But if she were feeling,

look, she's a mom and she had kids, and sometimes the kids will disappoint you or make you angry or

challenge you in some way, she would leave the scraps on the floor.

And then she would, I feel like I could say this now.

There was a painting that had the eye holes cut out that she could remove and then watch the kids,

you know, Charles and the grandkids as well.

She would watch,

you know,

William and

oh, I can't say his name anymore.

It's a shame, really.

But she would watch them, you know, crawling him out and eating the scraps.

Sorry, just in terms of that, the person whose name you can't bring yourself to say,

just in case the listeners aren't sure who you're talking about, are we talking about a certain member of the royal family who is now a very, very good podcaster, one of the world's best.

If you want to take out any modifiers, there, I can probably confirm what your suspicions are.

Sure, I think people will understand what we're talking about.

Yeah, I think so.

Okay, I'd like to get back onto the theme of whether you overstepped the boundaries of your job and whether you used your influence

in a way that was unbefitting the role.

Your brother Chudley was eventually executed, right?

Yes.

Flash forward to 2010, and Chudley wins a competition, an all-expenses paid trip to London.

And of course, I'm excited because it's a chance to come home to London, which I haven't been back to since moving to America.

So yeah, I'm excited to show Chudley London, to take him around all my old haunts.

I want to show him the sights.

And what's great is the trip, the holiday that he's won comes with all of the sightseeing.

included in it.

So, you know, we're going to go to the aquarium.

We're going to go and see jersey boys but we start with the tower of london and um and at one point during the tour one of the beefeaters um which is you know one of the guards said to chudley you know do you want to put your neck on the the execution block this is where countless people had been beheaded in the old days and uh i mean what a what a photo opportunity right well exactly you know immediately we're thinking to ourselves you know we'll pop that up on uh this is facebook profile graph photo 101 his goals yeah yeah it's it's the absolute dream.

You know, he's there, and maybe he looks a bit scared.

And, you know, the beefeaters, he's playing along, you know, he's good value.

So he puts his head on the block, and we're all laughing, you know, because it's, you know,

we think it's like a bit, you know, and we've sort of made friends with the other people on the tour as we've been walking around.

And the beef eater gets a big axe, quick, gigantic axe, and now we're really laughing, you know, and he raises it over his head and he says,

someone's been a naughty boy.

You're going to have to get your head chopped off you know and we're going oh no please you know chudley's going oh no

well go on then you know and it we're all having so much fun and the axe came down and chopped chudley's head clean off his body

and i thought to myself it it must be some sort of like a hologram um

you know they've used ai or maybe they used a 3d printer to to to render a head perhaps when when when our backs were turned, for a moment when we weren't looking.

And honestly, it was only when Chudley's head rolled off the block, rolled towards me, stopped at my feet.

His head looked up at me and said, it's Robert, it's Robert.

He's finally got me the bastard.

And then

obviously just, you know, he died.

And that's not a hologram?

No,

that's when I realized.

That was the moment I thought to myself that

that wasn't a hologram.

And honestly, right up until the moment his head actually came off and I realized that that axe was real, I was having an absolutely brilliant time.

So obviously it's total chaos.

You know, there are people screaming, tourists are running everywhere.

The beef eater, he's just, he's, he's indiscriminately beheading tourists.

You know, it's I'm in, I'm in shock and grief and fear.

And I, so then I'm, I, then I'm sick all over his head and then before I know what's happening I'm I'm bundled in to the back of a van by somebody from the security services and we're off we set off at a you know we're we're we're screeching through the streets of London and they said to me you can't ever tell anybody about what's what's happened today and they said if you promise us now not to tell anyone we can show you this movie we've got.

It's called Despicable Me.

And it's got these characters in in it called the minions and they're really like cute and charming and you're going to love it.

And this film will never be on general release.

So the only way to ever see it is to be silent about this incident.

Wow.

That's a really weird sort of thing to have to think about, isn't it?

I thought to myself, so these people are responsible for murdering the love of my life and now they want to try and buy my silence with a film called Despicable Me.

And I know the law.

If there's one thing I know, well, if there's two things I know, it's a Apple disguise of the Peach and it's the law.

So I said to them, I said, I'm not, you can't silence me.

You know, I'm a British citizen.

I'm going straight to the police and I'm going to tell them everything.

And that's when they were like, okay, you can do that.

But if you do that,

you can't watch Despicable Me.

And I think that then they told me that Steve Corell did one of the voices.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I was in the horns of a dilemma.

And I thought, you know, he's very, very talented.

Yeah.

And they were saying, you'll never see this film.

You'll never see it.

And I guess more as the conversation goes on, you're kind of building up this film in your head more and more as this kind of like, this does sound good, actually.

You know, absolutely.

Yeah.

Because, you know, I'm saying, no, no, no, this is about truth.

This is about justice.

And they were like, yeah, but you have to understand there's like the world,

where the minions live, it's like a big cave and they go up and down on these like lifts and stuff.

And I was like, This does sound

good.

And I said, Well, could I maybe watch like a bit of it, see if I like it?

And then, if I don't, if I do like it, I'll keep it quiet.

And if I don't like it, well, then I'm gonna go to the police and tell them that you've executed my boyfriend.

And that was, they really didn't want to do that.

They were, they said, No, no, no, you have to make the decision first,

then you can watch the whole film,

or you say no, and you, and you'll never.

And I remember, I remember

the exact words, you will never

watch Despicable Me.

And I think

that's really when the decision was made.

And so you did say, I will keep my silence and watch the movie.

I really wanted to watch Despicable Me.

So did you watch it then and there in the back of the van, or were you taken to a cinema, or how did that work?

Yeah, I was taken to a secure facility underground and

taken into an MI5 briefing room.

And they'd set up,

there was a projector and there was

a woman selling overpriced soft drinks.

They'd really, they'd made a big, you know, they'd made a big fuss.

So I bought a drink and some revels and,

you know, and I sat down and yeah, you know, I mean, it's,

it's good.

It's a good film.

Now, obviously, our listeners will be thinking, well, hang on, you know, but your side of the bargain was to never tell anyone about this.

You've just told the Beef and Dairy Network about this.

We're a media outlet.

This will go out to millions.

You know,

you've told the world you haven't kept up your side of the bargain.

No, because they didn't keep up their side of the bargain.

Right.

Despicable Me was put out on general release.

I see.

And then they brought out Despicable Me 2, Despicable Me 3, The Minions movie, and Minions 2, The Rise of Groove.

So everyone's seen it.

That wasn't what was agreed.

So now I just, you know, I have to tell my my story i have to i have to blow the whistle i have to i have to do it for chadley

i allowed my silence to be bought on the promise of being one of the only people to ever see despicable me and that did not happen

everyone's seen it everyone's seen it

So Robert,

I will ask you again, over and above the battleship and the execution of your brother, did you abuse your position?

I've got a story here from the Daily Telegraph in 2010, where they write, What's going on?

Is this American leather-clad kinky beef eater fucking the queen?

That

I'm gonna be honest with you, that makes me so angry

because

I don't fuck, I make make love.

In September last year,

we all said goodbye to Her Majesty for the final time.

We said goodbye to our defender of the beef.

Traditionally, the monarch's man at beef is either buried alive with the monarch's coffin, or their tongue is cut out and they are exiled to a remote island.

When a monarch dies, traditionally their man at beef will not transfer into the following reign of the next incumbent of the throne.

It's an incredibly close, incredibly complex relationship between a monarch and a man at beef.

This is someone who will have spent their entire life delicately calibrating their own taste buds to the unique beef profile of that monarch with whom they've shared their life, the bond.

It's a sad day, of course, because this is someone who has given themselves, given their life, to serve a monarch of a foreign nation in the interests of world peace, of diplomacy.

But the sad reality is you've got to move along, you've got to move with the times, we've got to cut this guy's tongue out.

However, Sir Robert wouldn't be buried with the Queen, and he wouldn't have his tongue cut out.

Under the cover of darkness, he stole away from Buckingham Palace

because he wanted to keep his tongue.

so that he could use it to blow the whistle on King Charles.

It's easy to assume that I'm a coward who loves his tongue too much, but I'm not a blind man, and I noticed many things about the heir to the throne over the years.

I had a long time to observe him, and I will call him His Majesty Charles III, but

that is, in my mind, just a title.

It is not something that he fully embodies

because we are talking about

a man here, definitely more man than God,

who is at best

ambivalent about beef.

Wow.

Not that he hates it, not that he loves it, but in his words, could take or leave it.

And you've heard him say those words

on many occasions.

What you're saying will be a huge shock to people listening, because obviously.

The British monarchy and beef are intrinsically linked.

They are custodians of the country's beef,

and they are a conduit through which God and beef collide and create a kind of earthly avatar

that they then embody.

It's God's beef form on earth.

God's form on earth, well, I mean, briefly Jesus Christ, but then beef has been the stand-in, if you like.

So what was Charles doing that made you feel uneasy about this?

The idea that he is gleefully telling people, shoehorning it into conversation when people aren't even talking about beef.

But if

he will say,

you know, you could be talking about

Formula One racing and he'll say, oh, I could take or leave beef.

And you'll say,

we were talking about racing cars.

And he'll say, oh, I thought I heard somebody say beef.

Wow.

He's willfully doing this.

So what is King Charles then?

If he can take or leave leave beef, what are we talking about here?

What kind of a person,

if indeed we're talking about a person, would that be?

What I'm about to say might be taking this too far,

but you'd have to put your head in the sand to not hear some of the conspiracy theories that are going around online.

Hashtag lamb king.

The idea that Charles is

eschewing beef entirely and instead has brought in a new regime of lamb at the palace.

Can you shed any light on this?

What I do know is that it smells very minty around Buckingham Palace these days.

I do know that this king wears more sweaters than any monarch before

has ever done.

I mean, he's got jumpers for days, this guy.

He's got pullovers, he's got v-necks, he's got cardigans.

A sweater every day, a new sweater every day.

So I'm willing to say that, yes,

this so-called king

is eating lamb every chance he gets and has no compunctions about doing so.

Now that's behind closed doors.

How soon until he's doing this in front of everyone?

How soon until he's doing it in the Christmas address, just sitting there with a big old plate of mutton in front of him and just

eating it with his hands and licking his fingers, saying, Boy, oh boy, do I love this lamb.

And that's certainly going to please New Zealand, but are they part of the Commonwealth anymore?

I don't think so.

And I made sure of that.

Well, thank you for giving us this wonderful interview, Sir Robert.

And I just want to say thank you for everything you did for our Queen.

She was a wonderful woman.

And

I feel warm inside

with the knowledge that she spent her last 30 years on earth

with you at her side,

slipping her your beef.

It was my purpose in life, and I was lucky to have it.

And

if God should ever reunite us again, I hope there's beef in heaven.

And I hope my brother's not there.

A big thanks to Sir Robert Battlebus, now, of course, in hiding, and also to Professor James Harkham and to Timothy Spaglioni.

And a final thanks to Her Majesty.

We'll miss you, Babs rascal.

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

But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to our website now, where you'll find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we reveal which moths you can trust.

So, until next time, beef out.

Thanks to Mike Shepard, Paul F.

Tompkins, and Max Davis.

And just to say that I think all of the tickets are now sold for our live show at the London Podcast Festival on the 16th of September,

sometimes some sort of last-minute tickets kind of appear sort of on the day.

I never quite understand why that is, but like 10 or so seem to always appear.

Don't quite know why that is, but in general, it's sold out.

Thanks to everyone who's bought tickets.

There are, however, still tickets to watch it as a live stream.

And I think not only can you watch it as a live stream, if you have a ticket, you can then watch it at any point during the following week.

So those are still available, and there'll be a link in the episode description.

So there we go.

That was episode 99.

Oh, my God.

Okay, zebras, orangutans.

Oh, yes, sorry.

Hi.

I'm not used to the animals talking.

Who are you?

Yes, my name is Carrie Poppy.

I co-host a podcast called Owner Ross and Carrie.

This is my co-host, Ross, right here.

Okay.

We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal.

And we were wondering if we could get on the ARC.

You did come two by two.

I appreciate that.

Though most of the things I'm letting on the ARC don't talk.

I'm going to be talking all up on this boat.

Do you mind both?

I prefer ARC.

Okay, I'm not listening.

But if you let me on,

then I will make my really good podcast on your boat.

Can you at least help clean up all the poop?

I guess I don't see why not.

Well, I'll check out the podcast.

Where do I find it?

It's on maximumfund.org.

Maximumfund.org.

Comedy and culture.

Artist owned, audience supported.