Episode 94 - Dafydd, Part 1

Hello, Benjamin Partridge here.

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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, as well as the printed magazine, brought to you by Zap Broom Pro.

And the Zap Broom Pro is not only the best way to groom and discipline your herd, it also makes for a really satisfying prank on one of your nearest and dearest.

Maybe you've gone on a caravanning weekend with your boyfriend, but he's being lazy and won't get out of bed.

He's just lying there, snoring and filling the caravan with the rancid stench of last night's boil in a bag bean and beef bolognese.

It's time to visit the local flour mill that is run using ancient methods, but he just won't get up.

Well, he certainly will once he's on the receiving end of a million volts and a three-foot-wide coarse brush going around at 4,000 rotations a second.

This month, I went to visit friend of the podcast, Welsh Slaughterman Eli Roberts, to see how he's been getting on.

You may remember that last time we spoke, he had been to Africa to steal chimpanzees to create a team of crossbow-wielding simian security guards for his slaughterhouse compound.

Let's just remind the listener, you had a 50-strong security team of

African chimps.

Yep.

Good lads, and not just lads, you know, not just fellas, girls as well.

A lovely, a lovely bunch.

Is there a difference between the way a male and female chimp approach being a security guard?

A woman chimp, in my experience, is as vicious, if not more vicious, than a male chimp.

And I think that's a wonderful redeeming quality.

There's a

bit of a misapprehension, I think, that females of species are weaker than males.

I can assure you from first-hand experience

that a female chimp is certainly at least equal to the male chimp.

One chimp, one lovely chimp called Helen works with me.

She is an absolutely vicious woman of a chimp.

I remember once,

one of the fellas there, Dave, one of the other chimps, was winding her up and she went, I can only describe it as going ape, if you pardon the pun.

She literally, and I know, you know, people say, oh, I'm going to pull your bloody ears off in a minute.

Well, she pulled his ear off.

And then he was in hell of a state.

What they're like.

And

she was having none of it.

She wasn't getting put off in the slightest.

He was holding his one ear,

protecting the remaining ear, and she just had that off as well, straight away, bang gone.

So,

you know, Dave,

I mean, he's still with us, Dave.

He struggles

keeping the goggles on these days, obviously, but

older, earless, Dave.

But, yeah, I mean,

she well is.

Formidable, formidable woman, chimp, yeah.

It sounded as if the chimps were settling in well and were happy with their new life in Wales.

Something that was proven when Helen the chimp became pregnant.

Well, you see, the thing is, chimps are not so very different from us.

They want to be loved, they want to feel warmth, they want to feel protected, and I give them all that.

And,

you know, they also, like us, love a legova.

And Helen, a very, very frisky, very, very frisky chimp.

I remember I came back from, I was doing a bit of killing

one of the farmers near me and I came back and out of a racket, you know, and I looked in the shed there and,

oh, I mean, there must have been four or five of the boys.

There was Keith,

Dave.

E-less Dave.

Ealis Dave.

Is this after or before?

She pulled his ears off.

Well, this was after.

This was after to show no our feelings.

It was E-less Dave,

Gary, Harry, Terry, all having a go on her.

And she was loving it.

I mean, she was very much in the driving seat of it, as it were.

And one of them, we don't know which one, got her pregnant

because she was, I mean, she was, it could be any one of them.

Yeah, but I love a girl.

Are we okay with you?

It sounds like you sort of watched proceedings.

Well,

can you be a voyeur if it's if it's not the same species?

That's what I've that's what I've always said.

You know, some of my old grandmother used to say to me, you know,

just because you watch a dog fuck doesn't make you a dog.

You know, and I never know what she meant by that until I came back

from the farm, as I said, and I heard the racket.

But

yeah,

I didn't do it for any sort of,

there was no gratification involved.

I just wanted to see what was going on.

And I was intrigued then to see the power struggle and to see how the hierarchy worked within the chimp kingdom.

And to see how that Helen would use her womanly charms.

You know, she had these

quite a hairy, hairy breast

and one of those sort of exposed bottoms that chimps have.

Would you say that she's an attractive chimp?

She's got a certain genesic quality about her.

That's the thing about Ellen.

She is, I wouldn't say she's conventionally attractive, but then it's always in the eye of the beholder, you know.

I mean,

all the fellas in there were

very, very excited, you know, in the downstairs area.

And she has a sort of come hither look sometimes

as she's wiping the blood away from her mouth or whatever, or throwing an ear in the bin.

Just, I don't know, something coquettish about her, like, you know.

I wonder if part of the attraction for the chimps is that there's that bit of danger there.

So as you say, you know, she might pull your ears off off or she might, you know.

Yeah, well, that's the thing, innit?

I mean, and I think, I think there's always a, you know, why do we watch, why do we watch motor racing?

You know, why do people enjoy watching boxing?

Why do why do why do people gath around if I'm slaughtering a cow?

Because people like to see danger.

They like to see, they like, they like to see, I think it's visceral.

I think they feel closer to life sometimes if they have a brush with death.

And I think

the thing with a chimp, there's no bullshit with a chimp.

Things are black and white with a chimp.

And I got a lot of time for that.

So, you know, though, if you're going with Helen or one of the other girl chimps, you know,

yeah, you're going to have a good time, believe.

I mean, I've seen the look on their faces, but

you are literally dicing to death.

And I remember a time I was a young buck of a

man, just

and I met a lovely young girl, and

she

we went back to her place, and one thing led to another, whatever.

And she revealed to me that she was also in the livestock industry

and her job was castrate in bulls.

I found that exhilarating.

And remember, she said to me, she looked me in the eyes and she said, Eli, Eli, she said, she had a little laugh, she said, I could cut your nuts off while you were sleeping and you would never know.

I thought, well, do I stay here now?

Do I still have a go with this now?

And, you know, do we make love?

Knowing that if I fell asleep post-coitus, which is powerful, for me, there was a very good chance I'd wake up, you know, sand's testicles.

But I still went for it.

And we had a wonderful time.

And there was that lovely moment of when you're waking up and you open open your eyes and think, oh, I've got my testicles, you know.

And I looked down and there they were, bold as brass.

And yeah, wonderful, wonderful time.

That bit of jeopardy, that bit of peril just sort of made it even more exciting.

So Helen becomes pregnant?

Yeah.

I guess then you have to take her off security guarding duties for a while when she's no, no need, no need, no need.

I mean, what you'll find if they're pregnant is they are

more fierce.

They become protective.

You won't get a better guard chimp than a pregnant chimp.

So ideally, in an ideal world, of course, they'd all be pregnant.

And then Helen gives birth.

Yep.

And I believe this was quite a special time for you personally.

I looked in that little chimp's eyes, David, his name is, right?

When he was born, and I knew in that instant

we had a connection.

Right.

I looked into David's eyes, and

he looked into my eyes, and he just looked at me, and he went,

and he thought, Oh,

I know what that means.

And he was saying to me in chimp, I love you, really.

And I'd never had that before, you know, and it was a wonderful moment.

Well, it feels like it's it's changed you.

You know, you've you've just been very vulnerable with me there, you know, telling me about how your feelings.

That's never that's not the kind of thing you used to do.

I've opened up.

i like to think of that that uh little darvid there has made me 21st century like let's recall myself now and i think i'm a better man for it and the thing is

people think it makes you weak or soft but uh i think what it's done for me has made me if anything harder okay because now i gotta look after little darvid you know what i mean i gotta make it i make a world fit for him to live in and uh Because I can love now for the first time in my life, I can truly hate.

You know, that is the thing.

There's yin and yang, there's light and dark,

light and shade.

I never really hated before.

You really didn't?

Are you sure of that?

I never really hated before.

Did you think you were hating before?

I thought I was being hateful.

I thought I hated, but

I didn't.

I couldn't because I'd never loved.

Obviously every action has opposite and equal reaction.

And as soon as I saw that look in little diabetes eyes

and I had that connection with that bond and that one moment of purity, that moment of love and connection.

I knew immediately that I could fully hate her.

And that was very liberating.

Back to my interview with Eli later.

Now, this month I also spoke to Philip Seestrom.

You may remember from my previous interviews with Philip that he once worked at the Food Standards Agency, where he raided Eli Roberts' slaughterhouse to reveal a depraved webcam slaughter business, which he was so traumatized by, he moved jobs to animal welfare only to have to attend mosquito mayhem a mosquito only zoo which turned out to be owned by eli roberts at the zoo eli set millions of mosquitoes on philip which left him with deep psychological scars ultimately leading him to leave his job then eli was arrested for murder and wanted philip to be a character witness Philip visited him in prison and Eli became angry and tried to attack him, but thankfully security guards fired hundreds of tranquilizer darts into his arse, and Philip went unharmed.

Then, Philip was so stressed out by his experiences that he took some time off work and volunteered in an old people's home.

He struck up a friendship with a World War II veteran called Gerald, and the two of them went on a fitness holiday to South Korea together.

However, the holiday turned out to be a death game run by Eli's religion, the Church of Eli, and was a battle royale in which only one could survive.

Philip ended up having to kill Gerald by hitting him with a lamp.

I asked Philip how he's doing now.

I haven't managed to return to any sort of employment because as you know, anytime I tried to do anything,

Eli would somehow get involved.

So I just felt like any job that I tried to do, he might pop up again.

So, you know, I've long enjoyed the idea of being a drystone wall builder.

But I would go to sleep at night and dream of being a drystone wall builder, but always in those dreams, they'd rapidly turn to nightmares, and Eli's face would start appearing in the rocks, or he'd burst out of a nearby sheep.

And there's just there's no way I can take that risk.

So, you've kind of been turned off employment entirely,

and this is kind of what we're here to talk to you about today, because obviously, you couldn't just do nothing, you couldn't just sit in your house watching Bridgeton for the rest of your life.

No, so you did try to do something to give you something to do.

Yes, I thought I'd give something back.

I thought I'd get out out there and help and volunteer.

I live fairly nearby a chimpanzee sanctuary.

Okay.

They were asking for volunteers, people to help out with the chimps.

And what was it about the idea of looking after chimps that attracted you to the role?

I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of ever working with humans again.

So I think the closest possible thing to get that same feeling was working with chimps, but

none of the true darkness of humans.

So a a chimp in a way is like a pure human.

A chimp is a pure human.

I think that's a wonderful way of putting it.

A chimp is a pure human.

I mean, the thing about a chimp, you've got to remember that chimp, they are an apex predator, right?

Think about a roof of an apex.

You know, the top of that roof is your apex, right?

And they are the top of that particular tree, right?

So they are

the kings and queens of all they survey.

I'm a chimney predator above an apex

so i go in there as a chimney predator basically i have my i have the uh i have the run of the place and they know that because there's respect obviously but they know i will happily kill them and i've got the means to do so as well i mean they are vicious buggers they they

great teeth i mean they're very very powerful very muscular but i mean uh

they've got to sleep is the thing and this is what they forget right and uh i'm not adverse to uh to a little bit of discipline i remember when one fella was kicking off, making a bloody racket all the time, and

he waved a crossbow in my general direction.

I said, Arthur, you know, don't forget now.

You may be the apex predator, boy, but I'm a chimney predator.

He looked at me, thought I could see he was a bit confused.

So, what he did that night while he was sleeping, of course, this is the thing, they forget that they're very much slaves to circadian rhythm, whereas humans can, through chemical means or just through sheer willpower, stay up longer than they than they than than

their animal friends.

I dropped an anvil on his head head when he was sleeping.

Completely obliterated the skull.

There was brain everywhere.

And

what was good about that

was twofold, really, was that it sort of established me as the chimney predator, number one.

Number two,

there was a lovely sense of calmness that came back

to the chimps, to the family.

Because they'd seen what I'd done, they'd see what I was capable of.

Because I was

a new father.

I was still, I was up, you know, I was up.

Sorry, just to just to butt in there, you're describing yourself there as a new father.

Yeah.

Am I to then surmise that

David, you sort of consider to be your son, really?

Oh, very much so, yeah.

I mean, to me, David is the son I never had, you know.

Just to be clear, not biologically.

No, I don't think so.

It would be very difficult

for it to have worked that way, particularly.

But I wanted him to see his dad.

Like I said, he taught me how to hate, which I loved, you you know, uh and I want I wanted him to see his dad he's you'd only ever see the good side of Eli.

He'd see me being kind, he'd see me being, you know,

I would

help with the breastfeeding, I would I would l look after him, I would I would I I cater to his every whim.

But it does a kid no favor to see his father or his mother in the one light.

So um

he woke up just as I was dropping the anvil on on the head there, he woke up and looked at me, I could see a startled look on his face and I give him a little wink And there was this audible pop

as the head exploded.

And he looked sad at first, but then I could see this other look in his eyes.

It went from sadness to pride.

And like I said, Arthur was trying to set a stall out.

You know, Arthur was doing what chimps do.

Arthur was trying to be the big dog.

But

he found out the hard way that he wasn't a big dog.

You drop an anvil on someone's head when they're sleeping, and they soon come around your way thinking.

I asked Philip about his first day volunteering at the chimp sanctuary.

Well, I was a bit disappointed because when you first arrive, you do have to meet a human, first of all.

They work on the door,

and you know, they are, they do have to work there.

I think in my head, and I knew this wasn't going to be the case.

In my head, you arrive, and the chimps are running the place,

that you don't actually have to meet any humans whatsoever, that you arrive, and there's a chimp at reception,

that sort of stuff.

But there was Jan.

She worked on the front desk.

Jan is a sort of Homo sapien.

Yes, Jan is a human being.

She greeted me.

She sorts out all the volunteering.

She

showed me where I could put all my things and

showed me through to the chimp sanctuary.

And I believe that, and I'm not sure if you knew this before you joined up there, there's some pretty famous chimps in that sanctuary yes well i didn't i didn't know this at all but it it became very evident as soon as i as soon as i walked through the door you'll see there's a long corridor if you go that it's just lined with uh with framed pictures of of famous chimps

uh and i thought well that's nice they you know a little nod to celebrity

and then when you actually go into the sanctuary itself you do see you do see those chimps they are they are all living there because a lot of people will think they'll see chimps on tv like the PG Tips advert, etc.

And you'll go, Well, where did those chimps go?

Because I don't see them in anything else.

Yeah, it's amazing.

That's what that's where the chimps go.

And

obviously, I'm not sure if I saw a chimp that I would recognize that I'd seen on television 20 years ago that I'd recognize them by the face alone.

So, were they, I don't know, pouring each other cups of tea?

Were they carrying a piano down some stairs?

Like, how did you realize what these chimps were?

Well, you and I differ here because I do recognize the the faces of the chimps.

But I think you'd be okay because

the way these chimps are trained in their showbiz life is so strict and so repetitive that by the time they go into the sanctuary, they can't do anything else but the thing that they were doing on TV.

So, for instance, the PG tips, chimps, they spend all day making tea, pouring tea, drinking tea, making tea, pouring tea, drinking tea, to the point that they are doing it while they're asleep.

Wow.

Is that quite a sad thing to see?

Well, it depends what you enjoy, really.

I like the PG Tips adverts.

Yeah.

So why wouldn't I want it on repeat?

Yes, but isn't there a kind of,

from an animal welfare point of view, there's certainly if I saw a chimp making tea for another chimp or, you know, just to take another example, a chimp wearing a kind of sequin jacket.

tap dancing and juggling bananas or you know the kind of things that these chimps were bred to do.

There's definitely a sense, isn't there, of like this isn't what they were meant to be doing in the wild.

If you go to the jungles of Africa, they're not doing these kind of things.

Well, have you been to the jungles of Africa?

I haven't.

No, I haven't.

So you are saying there is a chance that they could be doing those things in Africa.

So you're saying that there's a chance that just naturally they could, you know, be jumping through a flaming hoop or

wearing like a Mexican wrestling mask.

Not necessarily naturally, but I feel like that is their full potential.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe actually the sadness is that there are chimps out there that aren't doing this stuff.

Yes.

That's to me, that's the true sadness.

When you see a David Attenborough documentary, or you might go to the jungles of Africa and the chimps are just sitting there.

Come on, then.

Let's get going.

Dress up like a Victorian man.

So what you see there is untapped potential.

Nothing sadder than a chimp just being a chimp.

Put a suit on and get on a penny farthing.

I asked Deli about what Helen the Chimp thinks of him considering David his son.

I think Helen, see, I mean, she has her fan and her kicks.

You know, she, she, I don't, I don't, I don't tell her what to do, she doesn't tell me what to do.

You know, she wants to go out with her mates and do stuff, and

you know, up the up the barn with the boys and whatever, she gets up to is up to her.

But, I mean, she knows that when

it comes to being a parent, when it comes to being a father figure and a father to young Davi, that's my role very much so.

And

we've got a lovely bond there.

It's not, like I said,

it's not sexual in the traditional sense, but it is deep.

I don't think I had ever before come across Eli speaking so fondly and tenderly about another,

if not human being, then being at least.

I was deeply struck by how much this experience seemed to have changed him.

I was living in a wonderland

for a good few months, me and Dav and his mum.

We'd go out for walks, and

I took them to see all the Tarzan films.

Were you happy?

I was blissful.

I don't mind telling you,

for the first time in my life, I felt truly free.

I felt truly,

like I said,

I was unshackled.

More after this.

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Back to the episode.

What a lot of people might not know is that chimps are regularly used as body doubles for actors.

Right.

So often they're used as replacements for children because obviously they're quite small.

Yeah.

Or small old men.

Okay.

So like when they did the Irishman, for example, when they brought back De Niro and

Joe Pashi and that lot,

there was a lot made of the fact that obviously they used the CGI to make their faces look younger.

Yeah.

But a lot of people were saying, oh, their gait is quite strange.

It's not like the gait of a young man.

Was it that we were actually watching the gait of a chimp?

A middle-aged chimp, yeah.

Yeah, that was, I felt like on the part of Scorsese, that may have been, that may have been a mistake.

I think if you have that technology.

You've got the actor there,

use it on the actor.

But, you know, he went with the chimps and you've got you've got to be thankful for that as well that you know people like martin scorsese is employing um the chimp community in all of his films and now and again this is an exclusive um he will employ a chimp to replace him in the director's chair so then you've got a situation where you've got a chimp directing some other chimps yes are those scenes usually obvious chaos and they still include those shots they try to because the chimp union is quite strong in Hollywood now.

So if they were to try and edit that out, then there would be trouble.

And also, with the particular example of the Irishman, Scorsese did also use a chimp in the edit suite, and the chimp's not going to edit out another chimp.

I see.

And that maybe begins to tell us the story of why that film was quite so long.

Very, very long.

You know, chimps are wonderful animals, but they've got no sense of brevity whatsoever.

I believe there was one chimp, though, that really got pulses racing and was kind of the top dog amongst them.

Can you tell me a little bit about him?

Well, this chimp,

I mean, he's changed his name actually to the name of the actor that he

always replaced and would always help out.

They were like a team by the end.

Daniel Radcliffe, the chimp.

Right.

Who would be in multiple, multiple shots in all the Harry Potter films.

Every time you see Daniel Radcliffe from behind in a Harry Potter film, that is actually Daniel Radcliffe the chimp.

And you sent me some photographs over of you in the sanctuary with the chimps, some lovely photographs.

There's an obvious bond between you and the chimps.

Yeah.

But sometimes in the background of the photographs,

you'll see the Daniel Rydcliffe chimp.

He looks extraordinarily like Daniel Radcliffe.

It's amazing, isn't it?

I mean, it's from a distance, but it's also up close.

From behind, especially is...

He's the spitting image of Daniel Radcliffe.

I was looking at it thinking, surely that chimp has had to have some kind of facial surgery to look more like Daniel Radcliffe.

Is that what they did to sub him in?

It's actually the other way around.

So the studio was so happy with the chimp's work

that they wanted the chimp to do more face work

in the Harry Potter films.

And they just decided it was probably better to give Daniel Radcliffe surgery to look more like the chimp.

Because you can do it under the guise of puberty, I guess.

Well, exactly.

So

a lot of people would watch the Harry Potter films and say, oh, aren't they growing up?

Aren't they getting older?

Doesn't Daniel Rycliffe look different?

And what they don't actually know is quite traumatic plastic surgery on Daniel Rycliffe to look more like the chimp that acted alongside him or instead of him.

Yeah.

And I believe by the end of the Harry Potter franchise, Daniel Rycliffe actually wasn't even on set for the last film.

Barely.

I mean, he was very tired.

Obviously, the pressures of celebrity are a lot.

And he would just be in his trailer

most of the time or off on holiday.

And it would be the chimp doing the majority of the work.

And obviously, Daniel Radcliffe the chimp is now living in the sanctuary.

So, one assumes he's no longer working with Daniel.

Daniel continues to work and make great films and do great work in Hollywood.

How's that working?

What's going on there?

Well, of course, they do like to keep this sort of stuff quite under wraps, especially the extent that Daniel the Radcliffe the chimp was working

instead of Daniel Radcliffe.

So, you know, Radcliffe's agents buried it immediately and I believe did throw the chimp chimp into the sanctuary almost like a prison to keep him quiet.

Oh, so once the press begin to get an inkling that maybe this chimp is doing a bit more work than usual,

it's time to send him off to the sanctuary.

It's time to send him off to the sanctuary.

Although there are some rumours that the Daniel Radcliffe that you see working in films today is actually Daniel Radcliffe the chimp and in our sanctuary is Daniel Radcliffe the human.

And having interacted with that person or chimp,

what do you think?

Well, it's interesting you ask because we did a few years ago Emma Watson, Hermione, who, by the way, Emma Watson was herself on set.

No chimp double?

No chimp double for Emma Watson.

Rupert Grint actually cast the chimp originally.

Right.

And then what, and brought in the boy for the show?

No, there's no boy.

He's chimp all the way down.

Yeah.

Whoa.

Okay.

But Emma Watson was and is human and came to the sanctuary to visit.

She's a very charitable young lady.

She does a lot.

She's, I believe, a celebrity patron of

the sanctuary.

She is.

She's a celebrity patron of many charities.

And you don't get a lot of time with her, but she really puts in the effort.

And she came to the chimp sanctuary and she asked to be introduced to all the chimps.

And I said, that's an absolute pleasure.

This is PG Tips.

There's one dressed as a Victorian man.

And she looked over all the chimps and I said, oh, and

you might recognize this one.

And they locked eyes.

And,

you know, obviously they worked together, but

you just saw something very human in Daniel Rudcliffe the chimp's eyes and it's like that

it was that old chemistry coming back.

And that did make me wonder,

what if we've got the wrong one?

Yeah.

And do you think Emma herself got an inkling of that?

I think she knew.

I don't know if she's involved.

You know, I wouldn't like to cast aspersions or create conspiracy theories, but she knew she left in a real hurry that day.

They were Halcyon days for a while, you know, and of course,

one thing led to another and

my joy

was unfortunately short-lived.

Little did Eli know that as he was bringing up David as his own, the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals had got wind of the fact that Eli was using stolen African chimpanzees as security guards.

After conducting a short investigation, they arrived at Eli's compound in Wales.

The RSPCA turned up.

I think they got a quite a benign image.

You see him on the television news and you see him in

the adverts on the radio and you see him collecting outside the shops in the shopping centres.

Yeah, it's normally just a bloke in a polo shirt.

Fairly harmless.

Trying to grab a swan and put it in a box or whatever, you know.

That's it, yeah, you know, and they give you like a free panda or something, you know, like a little

toy or a badge.

But what people don't realize about the RSPCA is they are very much

hands-on.

And when it comes to protecting animals, I mean, fair play to them, right?

I was, I, it could, it took me by surprise.

If I'm very, very honest, I was expecting, like you said, uh, maybe a chap in a roll neck, maybe a woman in a pleated skirt turn up at the house and uh and to appeal to my better nature, of which I don't have one.

And uh, far from it.

There, I opened the door and was met by what can Ruby Ruby describe as a division of the RSPCA.

People may not know this, but

in a battle situation, the RSPCA are very, very highly armed.

Right.

Very, very well drilled, very, very disciplined, very highly armed, fearless.

Right, so how many people are we talking about?

I would say there was upwards of 800 people.

And all of them armed.

All armed to the teeth.

Right.

What they've done, obviously, over the very, very popular charity in this country, people leave stuff to the RSPCA in the Worlds.

That's probably where they make most of their money.

People don't realize they've been around for a long time.

And a lot of those things left to the RSPCA weapons.

And a lot of those pure animals would have been fought

in one of the world wars and

the various skirmishes and that in between or being in the armed forces.

And

they have been left

an awful lot of weapons over the years.

So just to paint a clear picture of what you're seeing when you open the door, 800...

highly armed honest PCA officers, yeah.

Armed with sort of antique weapons by the time they go.

Certainly there would have been

bolt-action rifles going back as far as the First World War.

There would have been carbines from the Second World War and revolvers, bayonets attached as well.

I mean, there was all sorts.

There were a couple of chaps and a belt-fed tripod-mounted machine guns, the sort of you see in the Vietnam War.

So from, you know, if you weren't in the situation of someone, if they weren't pointed at you, it might be quite an interesting thing to look at if you were.

Oh, very much so.

If you were into sort of a reenactment society, but of battles across the ages, there were a couple of cannon.

Right.

They looked like they were from the sort of,

well, Elizabethan period, I would say.

They were cast up.

Kind of English Civil War era.

And earlier, yeah, and earlier.

A couple of fellas there and one fella was swinging very menacingly,

a very well-dressed man.

I mean, I could see him now.

He had a

tweed jacket on with elbow patches and a sort of gingham shirt, if you will,

and a pair of nice trousers on and some brown, fairly comfortable-looking shoes, but swinging a mace over his head, a 12th-century mace, it looked like to me, a spiked mace.

So, from the rudimentary weapons all the way up to the modern day, I mean, there was, I would say,

if you look at the history books, it would have been at least four, possibly six or eight RSPA members flying a B-52 flying Fortress,

which was circling over the head there.

There was a rear gunner, there was a front gunner, there would have been, I suppose, a pilot and a co-pilot and a bombardier.

So at least, yeah, like I said, probably five, six, seven, maybe eight RSPCA in the B-52, of course.

And are these RSPCA officers, are they volunteers?

I don't know if you know much about how they manage to.

I think it's very much like the I don't I don't think it's called the territorial army these days.

I think it's called the Army Reserve, but I think you sort of the deal is that you turn up and you work in the shop sort of five weekends in a row and the sixth weekend, you get to go on manoeuvres, so

on a sort of staggered basis.

So,

yeah, I mean, 800, as I said, you know,

800 people there is probably, if you work it out on a rotor basis, probably a sixth of their actual forces.

They could call upon in a real big emergency.

You talk about a push of sort of four, four and a half, five thousand armed RSPCA troops, but there was the 800 there.

So, do you think we underestimate the RSPCA then?

Because this is all news to me, and I think most people listening, you know, they see the charity shops where people, you know, might buy an old copy of a Terence Trent RBCD for a pound or whatever, and they don't realize that that money is going towards an armed force.

You know, you're buying your knit needles, you're buying your sheet music, you know, you're buying your tea cozies, you're buying a set of

China teacups that never quite match.

Maybe you got five teacups and four saucers.

All that money is funneled towards arming and training RSPC officers to go out into the field.

Nothing but respect for them, really.

I mean,

what impressed me was not just the B-52, which was a wonderful sound on it, those big engines.

Of course, I had to have, as it is, a bombing aircraft and an escort.

Right.

So there was,

it was lovely.

It was like a flight pass.

There was two.

They looked like Spitfires.

So, yeah, I mean, what do you do in that situation?

Yes, because obviously you're someone who...

you know, I know doesn't back down from a fight

easily.

You know, you tend to like to put your money where your mouth is.

um but when faced with that kind of thing

how do you react and how did you react you've got to embrace it haven't you so what i did was i i shut the door fairly quickly i took all my clothes off

i had some blue food color into the kitchen covered myself in uh like a makeshift woad

uh grabbed one of the crossbows and uh and an axe and just ran into the into the into the you know the sort of front line of the phalanx yeah uh out of my battle cry,

you know, with probably 30 or 40 of the chimps behind me, you know, but I would never send the chimps in somewhere where I would fear to tread myself.

So I sort of went back there.

I said, All right, boys and girls, come on,

we got work to do, you know.

Yeah.

David looked at me.

I could see the pride in his eyes.

He was like that.

He looked at me in the way that you sort of see those recruiting posters from the Second World War and that when there's a kid dead and there's a dad in an armchair, you know.

Daddy, what did you do?

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I charged in, uh, swinging an axe around my head.

I tied a rope to the axe, I was using it very much as a sort of a large, almost like a fly mower, like a like a like a like a lawnmower.

And that took out the first sort of time, I suppose, six or seven people on the front of the front of the uh, front of the RSPCA phalanx there.

And then, uh, before I could shoulder the crossbow and started to do some real damage, um,

one fella, nice blue called Graham, caught me in the back of the head with a,

what looked like

a Viking mallet.

And

that really knocked me bandy.

You know, I was staggering, I was dazed.

And then

a woman called Sheila came over with,

I don't know if you've seen the film Gladiator, but she had like a net, essentially.

Right.

A weighted net, which she threw over me.

And then she hit me just...

above my kidneys with a, with a try, with a trident, essentially.

And that stung.

And I was, and I could see the boys and girls getting involved and piling in.

It must be hard being an RSPCA officer armed when a chimp attacks you.

Because obviously your job is to not harm animals.

But when a chimp is coming at you with a crossbow, well, this is the thing.

This is what I didn't realize at the time is

they had a series of non-lethal

weapons, if you will, purely for dealing with the chimps.

Right.

So they were being hit with essentially, every single, almost like

a big bean bag, a weighted bean bag which they fire would hit the chimp in the chest instead of knock him backwards take the wind out of him but for me you know there they there's no quarter assault given with a human

with the owners of the animals that have been mistreated if if indeed they were being mistreated which they weren't um yeah and i was so i i i i i remember i pulled the trident out i was trying to get the bloody the net off me the weighted net but there was lead weights all on the outside of it and of course i was still in it in a days from the from the viking war hammer

when uh

a fellow called Terry, he shot me twice in the buttocks with a 9mm Beretta,

which was very, very painful.

And then just I thought I'd had enough and

I was about to give in and give in to, you know, I was thinking, stay away from the light, stay away from the light, you know.

And

a young girl, Stacey,

19 years of age, just joined the RSPCA.

Lovely girl, I think she's taking a cap here before she goes to university.

She caught my testicles and my penis in a bear trap,

which, as you can imagine, was

you know,

and completely took it off.

I mean, this was the thing, and I bled profusely at that point.

I just remember seeing

the light got brighter and brighter, and then I passed out, and

I woke up in a field hospital

several days later, you know.

I was running by RSPCA Medics.

I was reminded of Charles Nestor, of course, the NRA advocate and an actor

who,

you know, funny enough, was in Planet of the Apes, of course,

who said they will pry

my gun from my cold red hands.

And I always thought that they would pry my penis from my cold red hands, but

no, I was very much alive when the penis was pried from me.

And I could deal with that.

I could deal with the the physical loss i mean i i i i've i've been dealing with physical loss my my whole life you know but uh it was it was the emotional loss because i turned around and and uh there was no of course there was no david david was gone they'd taken david from me they'd taken my they take my manhood and my and my and my uh my pro my progeny

i'm much harder to deal with the loss of david than it was the loss of my penis and tessicles

Next time on Beef and Dairy Network podcast.

The celebrity chimps, unfortunately, at that point, will form a sort of jury.

Yeah, yeah, parasites, insects, rodents,

whatever, really, whatever's passing.

Did they think they were getting a pumpkin or did they, you know, knowingly commit a murder?

Took a few bin bags full of mosquitoes with me.

Ripped chimps.

Six packs, the works.

I thought it was important that I was able to weather out any sort of siege.

We just have to hide Daniel Radcliffe because there's no getting away from the fact he really does look like a man.

The plan was to make our way to London via various zoos.

He shits in my mouth while I'm asleep.

I make him an opera.

Thanks to Linnaea Sage, Mike Bubbins, and Ed Gamble.

Part two, next week.

Now, the reason that we're putting out these two episodes this month is that it is Max FunDrive.

And before we go, I just want to let you know about a couple of fun things we're doing as part of Max FunDrive.

So, what have we got?

The main one is Tuesday, the 21st of March, which if you're listening to this on the day of release, is tomorrow.

So,

it's tomorrow.

I'm doing a live stream event with Tom Neenan and Mike Wozniak.

It's Aska Doc versus Asker Vet.

So we're putting your veterinary and medical queries to both TV doctor Dr.

Sam Archer of Channel 4's Car Crash Anus and of course Bovine Asvet Bob Traskothik.

They're always fun these events.

So that'll be at 8 p.m.

British time

on Tuesday the 21st of March at 8 p.m.

And to get there, it's going to be on Twitch.

So go to twitch.tv forward slash Benjamin Partridge.

You don't have to like sign up to Twitch to watch it, you can just go there, twitch.tv forward slash Benjamin Partridge, and you'll be able to watch it.

If you'd like to comment and get involved, I think you do have to set up a Twitch account, but I think it's super easy.

So, um, yeah, come along to that.

Those are always really good fun.

So, that's probably going to last about an hour.

So, yeah, 8 p.m.

till 9 p.m.

on Tuesday.

I'm also going to be doing some Ready Ask Me Anythings.

So, both as myself,

as the host of the podcast, and maybe

an ask-me-an thing from our old friend Eli Roberts.

For details of exactly when I'm going to be doing those, check out our social media.

I'll be posting about that.

So that's like on Twitter and Instagram is where you can find the Beef and Dairy Network on social media.

We haven't yet made the leap to TikTok, and I don't think we ever will because it involves dancing, I think.

I've also made a series of videos, which I'll be putting out on social media over the next couple of weeks.

They are fun, I think.

So, yeah.

So, basically, yeah, keep an eye out.

And yes, the main thing, if you want to come to the streaming event, 8 p.m., Tuesday, 21st of March, on twitch.tv forward slash Benjamin Partridge.

I'm throwing a lot of website addresses at you this episode.

The main one being maximumfund.org forward slash join.

All this Max Fund Drive stuff is about our annual fundraising drive.

If you'd like to support the podcast, and I would invite you to consider it, go to maximumfund.org forward slash join.

Right, thank you, and uh, see you next week for the conclusion of this naughty tale.

Bye.