Episode 97 - Len Biro

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Now, I don't know about you, but in my quiet moments, I often find myself slipping into a sort of reverie, remembering the old days when I was a child, waking up at half past four in the morning and waiting by the door for the milkman to come, and then once he had been, tearing the foil tops off the bottles and drinking the contents, all of it, before my family had even woken up.

And then when they came downstairs, my father, my mother, and my sister Bernice, I would say, oh no, the crows have pecked open the bottles again.

Then, wild-eyed and sweating, my father would reply, they drank three pints of milk, did they?

A couple of crows?

Do you think I was born yesterday?

And then he would smash one of the bottles and brandish it at me, blind with rage.

Then mother would come and medicate him with the blow dart, and we'd all sit down to watch breakfast news together on the television.

I remember, when the news was on, Bernice Bernice would always say, What's Gaddafi been up to then?

What's the colonel doing today?

I'm sure most of you will have similarly fond memories of the milkmen coming to your door.

Maybe you're old enough to remember them coming around with their horse, or of course during World War II, in a Spitfire.

Sadly, from the mid-1980s onwards, the number of people who got their milk delivered went into steep decline, and now typically people buy their milk from supermarkets or steal it on the internet.

However, this month the Milk Council of Great Britain published a report that says that for the past three years, there has been a small increase year on year of the number of people getting milk delivered to their doorstep.

To try and get an insight into this new trend, I spoke to Len Byrow, somebody who became a milkman in his hometown of Tinmouth only last year at the age of 91.

Hello, my name is Len Byrow, and I am a milk delivery man.

Well, thank you, Len.

Len, Len, Len, Len, Lenn, christened Len, christened Leonard, but uh my friends, my friends call me Len and I'd love you to call me Len too.

Hello, Len, it's such a pleasure to talk to you, and I know you're a busy guy, so thank you for making the time to speak to us.

It's a pleasure.

I uh

well I'd like to say thanks.

Firstly, you know, it's not every day you get to speak to somebody, especially with my lifestyle.

I obviously wake up very early in the morning, half past three in the morning, to start my round.

I'm normally back home by quarter past nine.

I'm in bed for the rest of the day, so I rarely speak to anyone apart from the occasional cat.

And since I lost my wife, of course, it's great to have some company in the evenings.

I'm very sorry to hear that, Len, about your wife.

I mean, when I say lost, she vanished.

It's not that she's died.

Let me get this straight.

She's very much into cosplay, and she's a very big fan of the Star Wars trilogy, the original three films.

And last year, May the 4th, she decided to attend what's known as a comic convention, Comic-Con.

Yeah, I'm aware of these, yeah.

Very big thing.

She went to Jabba the Hut, which is so much, she's obsessed with the character of Jabba and the Jabber the Hut, and she loves the rogues, the villains of Star Wars.

And she went to this comic convention dressed as Jabba the Hut and hasn't been back since.

She does send the occasional text message, so I know she's fine, but it's just she's having a lot of problems finding her way back from the Isle of Wight.

So,

Ina, if you are out there,

you know, send me another text message.

I don't read them much.

I'm not very good with technology, but since I lost her, it's very lonely at night.

I'm sure she'll come slithering back to me in the guise of Jabber very soon.

So very nice to talk to her, anyway.

Before we get on to the specifics of delivering milk, I'm just going to ask, you know, you're 92 years old now.

I'm sure many listeners will be thinking, why doesn't Len retire?

Why has he started this whole new career at such an advanced age?

It's a great question.

I think it's very important to maintain your youth.

I think, you know, a lot of people my age are either dead or rotting away in homes.

And I've never been that way inclined.

Ever since I was a very young boy, I've always been very active.

Very active mind, very active body, very active hair growth, very active saliva glands, a very active person

in general.

And I,

well, ever since the age of nine, I've always been on the go, you see.

I started very young performing motorbike stunts for a circus.

My family disowned me as a nine-year-old and left me on the street.

And I became a motorbike stunt expert in

a zoo, a circus.

And I haven't stopped since.

And I just thought to myself, you know, what's the point of retiring?

I mean, what could I do?

Sit at home watching videos of

golden girls, you know,

pleasuring myself.

So I thought, why not get out there and do something new?

And after, you know, leaving school at 14,

1931, I was born.

So so 1945 I would have left school right but but you were working as a motorcycle stunt driver from nine I was from the age of nine yeah so you're doing that alongside your studies alongside my studies most of my schooling was spent on a

on a motorbike but then of course school finished and I still have my motorbike which by this time was

severely worn out after three accidents and a fire but I

I decided to get myself more of a a normal job.

I thought I need to settle down now, 14 years old.

I've seen the wild side of stunt life.

I've had my education.

So I decided to become a,

well, an undertaker's assistant.

And it was a job I was very good at.

Nice.

They loved me and I loved them.

They took me on as the

junior body cleanser was the term they used in those days.

And then I was 14 years old, unaware of really how death works.

So you weren't.

I was wondering whether you'd been acquainted with death during the circus I know it's you know obviously it's quite life is quite expendable in the circus certainly in the 1930s and 40s as far as I'm aware brutal absolutely brutal and it's a great question you know I saw grown men having to shoot elephants in the head

um you know I for the entertainment of of the audience or is partially for the entertainment of the audience partially for their own entertainment out of boredom when we were on the road and partially just because we needed to eat at times it was a very brutal lifestyle and and on top of that trapeze artists falling to their deaths Um, you know, I mean, we did our best.

We did have safety nets, but Ian Bambury, who was in charge of health and safety, forgot to take into account that safety nets should not be made out of razor wire.

And of course, you would see these fantastic trapeze artists, Hungarians, Italians, Spanish, French, coming from all over the world to to join the circus, but of course one fall and dice to bits beneath on the on the floor and you would you would pick the parts up, feed them to the lies and crack on with it.

I was used to death, it was very brutal.

But seeing it close up like that, actually seeing someone laid out on the gurney, it's very different to seeing, you know, the severed arm of the great Maldini or perhaps, you know, the the butchered limb of an elephant.

Very different indeed.

And and

it brings a sort of peace to to I mean, it comes to us all.

I'm quite sure I'll pass possibly shortly after recording this.

I'm not a hundred percent.

But I think it it does come to us all and it and it it enlightened me in many ways.

And and my job was very respectfully to clean the bodies, to remove the bowels, sell the bowels to the local butcher for his dog, wrap the body up in cloth, pop it into the coffin.

And of course, you know, as time went by, I became very, very good at this.

But sadly,

the undertakers was bought out by a Chinese company, Gulon Industries, who,

if you don't know much about the world of

undertakery, as we call it,

they revolutionized the process.

They sped everything up, but it was brutal.

They had a machine, you simply plugged it into the anus of the deceased, sucked everything out, and then just painted them with some varnish.

And the art was gone.

The art was completely gone by that point.

And I really thought, you know,

it's time to move m move on.

So at ninety-one and a half, I I I hung up my rubber gloves,

I put my intestine removal unit away and I stepped away and here I am now, delivering milk, one of the most energetic, powerful drinks to the nation.

Well, Well, to people within

a five-street radius of my own home.

And what do you think that your customers like about having their milk delivered to the door?

Is it that kind of old-fashioned getting back to a tradition thing, you know, getting up in the morning, going down to the doorstep?

Do you think they like the whole ritual of it?

What is it they like?

I think there's a certain charm to having your milk delivered to your front door.

I mean, these days with your Amazons or Jeff Bezos, these things come straight to your front door.

It's not new, you know, and I'm just giving it the old-fashioned touch.

For example, if you ordered a pint of milk now online, you'd have to fill out your credit card details, you'd have to create a profile.

It would take about 45 minutes, and then the milk has to be extracted and sent to you.

With mine, I'll book you in for Monday at 7 a.m.

and I'll be there.

You might be in bed, but I'll be there outside, peeping through the letterbox to see if I can catch a glimpse of your wife.

Not in a perverted way, just to make sure she's healthy and that she's been drinking enough milk, and then I'll pop the milk on the side, and you've got it there.

So it brings a certain character and a certain charm.

It's nice to hear you talk about the traditions with such fondness.

There's obviously pride there.

Milkmen are the backbone of the United Kingdom.

You know, during the war, milkmen are the people who kept this country going, delivering not only milk, but heroin, cannabis, everything that kept the country going, kept them strong.

And it's something I will contemplate if I can make my connections with the County Lines gangs, which are gangs of youth which are selling cocaine in the town at the moment.

And

if I can manage something with them, we can have a great relationship going on then with a family-friendly door-to-door business sending milk of any nature with drugs as well.

Have you spoken to the local,

I guess what would they be called, roadmen?

Unbelievably, there's a massive amount of road men on the streets between 3 a.m.

and 6 in the morning, which is when I'm at my busiest.

And it's quite often you'll meet these young boys on the streets, you know, and at first it was a bit of a standoff.

You know, they were asking what I was doing, why was I treading on their turf, you know, did I want to be shanked?

I told them no, in no plain terms, I didn't want to be shanked, but I did want to make a good relationship with the local roadmen.

And they took me under their arm.

So I'm very excited about that.

But the road, the roadmap, nowhere near as dangerous as you think.

As you look at gangster rappers in America, I mean, they've got these AK-47s, you know, they've got these

sort of, you know, something grenade launchers, armoured vehicles.

But in this country, of course, the roadmap, all he has is a sharpened pencil and

a must-do attitude.

And I think

there's something really to

really sort of take a shine to regarding.

Do you think we should sort of stand up for the

humble British drug dealer?

Naturally, I mean, he's doing it off his own back.

And it's very much like what I'm doing, you know, very, very similar to what I'm doing.

We should stand up for the humble British drug dealer.

It's not Tony Montana in Scarface, you know, it's not going to be somebody bursting into it I say hello to my little friend with

none of that because really you're you're both in in the in the product delivery business we both have you know something that's very very um

very much in demand especially in my local area you know i mean where i've lived i've lived here for 78 years and i know my client base and I know what they want you know 9 a.m.

in the morning glass of milk half 11 line of cocaine.

You know, they go hand in hand very, very, very, very well.

And I'm more than happy to supply them with the milk.

And as I've said, if I can get the class A's, if we can get something going like that, we can really get them, get them in young, get them on it, and really build an empire from here, you know.

And

you never know by the time I'm 103, I may well be driving a Mercedes or a Bentley to deliver my milk.

But at the moment, I am just using

my wife's car because obviously she's away because she's

dressed as Jabba the Hut at

11 months after attending a Star Wars comic book convention.

She will be back, but I'm using her car until then.

Well, we're talking about transportation, as you say, you're using her car, but I believe I'm right in saying that in order to capture that traditional Milkman vibe, you've actually connected your car to one of the horses you used to use at the Undertaker's, and the horse drags the car around.

But I've managed to obtain a horse.

As we spoke about previously, I've worked for many years in

the Undertaker's industry.

And when I left, as many people, when they leave the workplace, I thought, you know, damn these people if these giant industries are going to take over and completely rinse me of my art.

So I stole my own horse when we left.

They still haven't noticed, which is wonderful, but I have my own horse now, which I keep in the living room, using it, you know, to tow my wife's car whilst I deliver the milk.

And of course, the great thing about owning a horse and being a milkman is you can milk a horse.

You can extract milk from a horse and you can also sell that on the side.

Slightly more expensive, harder to obtain, especially with a male horse, but it is a wonderful, wonderful drink that's available for anybody at a very good price.

Is a horse easily able to tow a Nissan Micra?

It's a great question.

I mean, the horse itself is 63.

You know, Robert is is his name.

He is weak,

but he's willing.

And that's really what counts.

I mean, in 1997, his back legs did give way.

So he spent a lot of his time in the sort of the yard of the

Undertakers, but we kept him there for special occasions.

And we found a rather unique way to rig him up to the horse and cart was simply to have the back legs removed.

And then what we've done, you see, is we've just placed the back end of the horse onto the bonnet of the Nissan Micra.

And then we just simply tie it onto the back.

So, if you can imagine, I pop the car into first gear, it just edges forward, just bring the clutch up ever so slightly, and the car will naturally start to move forward.

And then the horse will just with its own front legs sort of drag them along but attempt to pull itself.

Very realistic, it looks almost completely healthy when people do see it.

I mean, children sometimes cry, but I think it's just because they're not used to nature when they see it going past.

Well, you've created a kind of reverse Nissan microcentaur, yeah.

I mean, in some ways, a reverse Nissan microcentaur is a great way of describing it.

And again, another marketing opportunity there, you know.

Who else has thought of creating a reverse Nissan microcentaur apart from me?

Nobody.

Obviously, a horse of that age with its legs removed, kind of tied onto a car.

Some people might be thinking, is the horse in any sort of distress?

Or

is that a good way to treat a horse?

Understandable.

I mean, any animal having its back legs removed and then tied onto the front of a car, Nissan Micra, a Bentley, you know, a Volvo, any sort of car would, as you could imagine, be very, very painful.

But you must remember that I have a very, very deep relationship with the local roadmen, the local drug dealers.

So ketamine is not hard to get hold of.

You know, I've got literally wheelbarrows of the stuff out the back, and every morning before I go out on the round, I'll just, I mean, the horse can barely move its head now, so I'll simply take a piece of drain pipe, stuff it full of the ketamine, pop it into the nasal passage of the horse, and

blow it in, and it's right as rain.

It doesn't feel a thing, doesn't feel a thing, and I'm quite sure it's enjoying it.

And I'm happy to keep doing that until it's literally dragged its front legs to bloody stumps on the front of the road.

And then I'm sure we can put two skateboards on the front of it, and we've got something new again.

So, you know, adapt and mutate, as they say.

More after this.

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Before we get back to our interview with Len, we can read some of our correspondence on the topic of milk delivery.

Valerie in Beckenham writes, My father was a milkman and a Mr.

Bean impersonator.

People used to love having their milk delivered by Bean.

Unfortunately, Unfortunately, in 1994, he was murdered by a hitman that someone had hired out to kill Rowan Atkinson.

He was the fourth such impersonator to die in similar circumstances, and at present, almost a hundred people have met this fate.

Thanks, Valerie.

Bernard Intod Morton writes, Last year I came back from work one morning because I'd forgotten my packed lunch and found my wife sweatily grappling with our milkman on the living room floor.

She explained that she was she explained that he was also her personal trainer and that he was a pioneer in the art of naked combat Pilates.

He does this at no extra cost and my wife has never been so supple, so I'd just like to say a big thanks to Stuart.

Well, that sounds brilliant, Bernard.

Thank you.

And finally, Brenda in Leeds writes, I've had a milk tap installed in my kitchen, and the construction was a much bigger project than I had originally imagined.

Installing pipes between my home and the local dairy, which is 20 miles away, involves purchasing several homes and commercial properties in order to demolish them to make room for the pipeline, and also rerouting a river.

The overall cost ballooned to over £10 billion, which I now owe to a Chinese construction company, with no realistic prospect of paying it back since I work part-time in a library.

Unless I pay, the company are threatening to reroute the pipeline so that instead of connecting to the local dairy, it will connect to the local stables, and my taps will provide hot and cold running horse shit

but i would still say it's been worth it food for thought thank you to everyone who wrote in back to my interview with milkman len byrow

well we've we've got many millions of listeners um

uh mr byrow and

many people will be thinking oh i wish i I could have my milk delivered by Len.

And obviously, you only deliver in your hometown

of Tinmouth.

Yeah, that's right.

What would you say to people outside of your area who want that kind of handmade milk experience?

What do you think they could do?

It's a great question.

And I will admit, partially, the reason I am here today is because

after explaining what I do and demonstrating how very good this business is, I feel

investment would be the key.

And

if I could speak to an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos or one of these big players in the game, you You know, if I could just get, you know,

30 or 35 million pounds, not a massive amount compared to what these people make in a day.

If I could get 30 to 35, no, no, no, 30 to 35 billion.

I'm not greedy, but

I do need the money.

If I could get your Jeff Bezos's or your Elon Musk's or your

who's the fellow who died from Apple?

The fellow who died.

He ran Apple computers.

Steve Jobs.

if someone could access his money, I'm sure he's got relatives who are willing to splash it about a bit.

I mean, even someone like John Travolta, incredibly rich man, with probably a lot of spare time on his hands.

You know, if these people are willing to invest some money, we could start.

Whether it's Salt Lake City or Sunderland, you know, if you've got the money, I could really kick this off.

Isn't there a bit of

a problem here, which is that, you know, you've spent a lot of time in this interview decrying the actions of these big companies.

You've mentioned Amazon a few times.

You obviously mentioned Gulan Industries, who...

A massive company who destroyed the Undertakers.

But now suddenly you're turning around with your begging bowl asking for money from these people.

You're not wrong.

I mean,

what I'm saying is...

To be honest with you, if you've got the money, I'll take it off of you.

And I will sell my soul at the flick of a switch.

If you name the price, I'll do anything.

You know, for example, if you've got £3.5 million to spare now, if you want me to go on the internet and pull myself apart in front of a camera, I'll do it.

I will do anything for money.

I'm interested in this.

You're a 92-year-old man, so without being too indelicate, you don't need to build up money for your long future.

My future is very short.

I don't have very much to look forward to at all.

Yeah, so what about this money lust?

Doesn't make that much sense to me because when are you going to spend it?

It's a great question.

And I think, you know, that's something I haven't taken into account.

But I think really if I had that money, you know, if I had access to that money, I could do all the things I've really dreamt of, you know.

And for me,

the real reason I do this is because I've always wanted to cut a man in half and see how long I can keep him alive for.

I, I, you know, if don't get me wrong, you know, I've loved my life.

I've loved being a stunt motorcycle rider.

I've loved going to school on that bike.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working in a funeral home and delivering milk, you know, that's brought a lot of joy to me.

But deep down,

deep down, the one thing I'd love to do is to be able to cut a man in half and see how long I could keep him alive for.

I really believe that with 33.5 billion, I could keep a man alive for 10 to 12 years.

Right.

And in that scenario, are you keeping both halves alive?

Both halves.

I mean, you know, ideally, I think

the research I've done,

I really think that with the knowledge I've gleaned over the years, I could cut a man in half.

I believe I could keep the top half alive for about 10 to 12 years.

I think the bottom half about six, but with the right research, we could keep that alive for another six on top of that.

And imagine what you could do with half a body, you know.

You could pay it to tap dance for you, whilst the other half could prepare sandwiches in your kitchen.

There are so many things you could do if you could cut a man in half.

You've obviously thought about this, but just on top of my head, you could sew the top half man to the remaining front of the horse

that you've got there, and you've got like a sort of two-ended

kind of...

Horseman.

Horseman, yeah.

I mean,

the one thing that I really dream of

is to be able to cut a man in half and to keep him alive for a prolonged, both halves, to keep him alive for a prolonged period of time.

But my dream is to have both halves of the body alive.

You know, the bottom half sitting in the armchair in the living room, the top half on the kitchen table preparing some sandwiches.

And as I breathe my final moments, as I give that final death rattle, you know, they both suddenly realize that when I go, who's going to keep them alive?

And they realize that I'm like a father to them.

I'm like a God,

you know, a very, very powerful being that's given them the gift of not only taking their life away by cutting them in half in the first place, but bringing them back to life by cutting them in half and then elongating their lives.

And as I drift off slowly, I like to think that they would panic and

in that final moment they would team up, the top half of the body would hold its arms out, prop itself on top of the bottom half, they would unite,

they would drag my body out as the air is seeping out of me as I'm slowly ebbing away to the afterlife.

They would grab a saw, cut me in half and regenerate me, keeping my legs alive for another 30 or 40 years, and the top half of my body alive for another 30 or 40 years.

It would become the cycle of life.

They would then maintain me, and then I could maintain them, and this would last for an eternity.

I would be like a god amongst men, all off the back of selling a milk company to Jeff Bezos, Elton John, John Travolta,

the one from Apple who's dead, or any of them.

Benny, Bjorn, Frida, and Ignita from ABBA, they all have money.

And if they can give me that money, I can finally see my dream come true, which is to cut a man in half, to keep the lower half alive, to keep the upper half alive for a prolonged period of time, have them become like a son to me, and then for them to watch me slowly pass,

for them to panic and realize that if I die, they don't stay alive.

So for them to assemble their bodies back together, to take me outside, to cut me in half with a garden saw, to reinvigorate me with life, to bring me back.

You know, if anybody who has a lot of money is willing to do that, Justin Bieber, he must have some money.

Any of them, I will, I will kindly take the money.

Well, thank you, Len.

Good luck with all of that.

I hope your dreams come true, and um, I hope your wife comes back.

Well, I do too.

I

hope she does send me a text, we can find out.

It must be bloody difficult trying to get around the Isle of Wight, dressed as Jabber the Hut, trying to get back to Timmouth like that must be a bloody nightmare, but I'm sure she'll make it home in the end.

Until then, I must pop to bed.

I must really go to bed because I have to wake up at three o'clock to deliver some

milk.

A huge thanks to Len Byrow for that interview.

If you would like to invest billions in his business and make his dreams come true, simply get in touch with us here at the network and we will funnel the money in Len's direction.

We definitely won't use it to buy grain to fulfill our growing grain debts to the actor Ted Danson.

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

But for 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, which this month features an extraordinary piece about how to fully waterproof your pets.

So, until next time,

beef out.

Thanks to John Rutledge.

And John has his own podcast, which we chatted about very briefly.

I've thoroughly enjoyed today, and if the listeners have enjoyed that, there's a high probability they will have a terrible time listening to the

the demon seed podcast which is uh a podcast created between myself and good friend and and uh um uh what's the word when beef and dairy alumnus beef great terminology beef beef and dairy alumnus mike bubbins as well we create the um the demon seed podcast it's it's it's pretty hard to describe to people yeah i would say imagine that

four four topics repeated over and over again interspersed with just fart noises really

And that's all you really get out of it.

And it's, I'm ashamed and it's wrong and we keep coming back to it.

So I'm really sorry about that.

But if you want to have a terrible time or if you want to ruin someone else's life, please listen to the Demon Sea podcast.

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You can find Dr.

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