Episode 89 - Paula York

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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 Granium Nutritional Sand.

This month we have another episode concentrating on the intergenerational crisis in farming in this country.

Two episodes ago we talked about the children spurning their birthright and giving up the family farm but another far greater problem lurks in our future.

And I'm not just talking about the inevitable nuclear war for resources between the world's major powers, which will see London, New York, Beijing and Moscow turn to sand and not the nutritional sort.

I'm talking about the farmer birth rate, which this year has dropped to an all-time low of 0.4.

To put that in context, as recently as 30 years ago, the average farmer would have 15 children, one to inherit the farm, one to enter the priesthood, and a further 13 that could be lost to the insatiable more of the thresher or other farming machinery.

The modern figure of 0.4 becomes less surprising when you learn another key figure.

Eighty per cent of farmers today are single, and not in a fun sex in the city way.

Efforts have been made to reverse this decline, but they haven't been uncontroversial.

In fact, they've been controversial.

We were inspired to make this episode by a letter we received from Todd Raxon, a beef farmer on the Isle of Man.

Todd writes, I was aghast to hear that the Bovine Farmers' Union has spent over three million pounds of members' money to employ a relationships consultant to promote romantic relationships for farmers.

This is not why I pay my monthly subs to the union.

I expect my money to be used to fund bribes to government officials and to pay for the annual Christmas wine, cheese and fighting by candlelight event.

Every pound spent on this relationships consultant is one fewer candle at the Christmas event.

What do they expect us to do?

Drink wine and fight in complete darkness?

I can do that at home.

Thanks for that message, Todd.

We also had this from Sarah Chisholm from Durham.

She wrote, I was so disgusted to find that the Bovine Farmers' Union was spending millions of our money by employing a relationships expert that I went to the AGM and performed a protest.

I rushed to the front and tore down the huge Bovine Farmers' Union flag and waved it above my head, shouting the word shame.

It was only once this protest was in mid-flow that I realized that I wasn't at the Bovine Farmers' Union AGM at all, but I was in fact at the fish counter of a busy supermarket, and the flag was in reality a whole frozen Alaskan salmon and instead of waving it above my head shouting the word shame I was stuffing it down my trousers and singing the national anthem.

None of this would have happened had the Bovine Farmers Union not wasted that £3 million.

Well lots to think about there.

Thank you for those messages.

So this month we decided to pick up on those concerns and we speak to Paula York, the relationships expert who has been employed by the Bovine Farmers Union and I wanted to put to her the criticisms and give her the opportunity to defend herself.

Hello, I'm Paula York and I'm a sex and relationships expert.

Hi, Paula.

Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me.

It's a real delight.

Tell us a little bit about you.

You're a relationships expert.

What does that actually mean?

I mean, it basically just means whoever you are and whatever your challenge is personally, I'm here to help you find that special someone.

And I've worked with a wide range of people from your elderly people, teenagers in schools, spreading good dating practice right from the start.

Just to be clear, you're not introducing elderly people to teenage people in the hope that they will kindle a relationship.

I've found that that's

illegal.

So I don't tend to do that

anymore.

But it's not just regular people that Paula helps with their relationships.

In fact, she's brokered a number of high-profile celebrity couplings.

If you could think of any sort of high-profile couples, it's likely that I have had some sort of hand in that.

Bennifer, Kim Yeh, Jorah.

That's George W.

Bush and Laura Bush.

Look, I can't confirm or deny because obviously these people are high-profile.

They are

interested in their privacy, and that's something that I bring to the experience, but I'm not going to deny it.

And what about Leonardo DiCaprio and his many girlfriends?

Well, as we spoke about before, I don't introduce the elderly to teenagers anymore.

Okay.

So, one of the big criticisms we're picking up on from the farming community is really it boils down to who is this woman and why is she worth so much money?

But it must be said that you've got the experience, I mean, not just with celebrity couples, but if we look at the sheer number of books you've written, it's incredible.

You had your big hit

early in the 2000s with Behind Behind Enemy Lines, Sex with Soldiers the Easy Way,

which really kind of put you on the map

for people who wanted to bag a soldier.

And, you know, we all went out and did it, didn't we?

Yeah.

People taking trips to Aldershot and other, you know, garrisoned towns.

Yeah.

I mean, the population of Folkestone tripled.

And then, of course, you followed up with You Have a Beautiful Scowl, 100 pickup lines to try if they're already angry.

A classic, if I may.

What a Lovely Cardigan, flirting with the the elderly.

I mean, that's revolutionized life of the over 80s, as far as I'm aware.

Yeah.

La Bella Vita, Baguettes, and Blitzkrieg, A Guide to Sex with the Europeans.

Who's not been to France and wanted to know a bit more about how to, you know,

get that going?

I mean, I've got to say, the European one, reading it in a post-Brexit context, it's really like a...

It's like a window back into another time, you know, because obviously you can't do that anymore.

Well, no,

of course not.

But

there are ways of doing it.

There's just a lot of paperwork.

Well, yeah, you've got to get a stamp in your passport.

You've got to get a visa.

You've got to go to the embassy.

Huge backlogs in Dover.

You know, just massive queues of people trying to have, just waiting to go over and have sex.

And just, yeah, and everyone's blaming each other.

Like,

it's not conducive.

to romantic encounters, is it really?

For sure.

Yeah, for sure.

And then in more recent times, obviously, last year, you brought out Wanking in Space,

conversations with Buzz Aldrin, which I think really made us re-evaluate what we saw on that night in 1969 and what we heard from

the lunar module, because suddenly it recontextualized quite a lot of

what we thought was going on up there.

Yes.

I mean, there's this kind of

general misconception that when you hear the audio and they're kind of breathing like that, that that's just normal and how they breathe in space.

But they were climaxing, as it it turned out.

There's nothing to do up there.

Fair enough.

Okay, now, another criticism we're hearing is to do with whether you practice what you preach with regards to the success or otherwise of your own romantic relationships.

I believe your own marriages haven't necessarily gone to plan.

I am twice divorced.

That is correct.

What I'd say to that is, you know, I'm skilled in bringing people together and I've learned through my own mistakes.

Because obviously the tabloids spoke to your both your ex-partners, big long interview with your ex Terry, telling the world about how he left you after you spent all of your money, both of your money, on patio furniture, huge amounts

into the hundreds of thousands.

And he felt that was the final straw.

Well, we had a very big patio, which he built.

And what I took away from that is now when I'm speaking to

my clients, you know, that's one of the first things we discuss.

It's the financial elements.

You know, if finances are often, you know, overlooked, why do we just sort of look at somebody and say, well, they've got nice hair and decide that they'll be our partner for life?

And Terry does have lovely hair from the photographs.

That was the problem.

That ponytail.

He swished it about, and

I was mesmerised.

And if only I'd looked past the ponytail

at his gaslighting tendencies.

Okay.

Maybe I would have seen that

he was the sort of man that would build a patio that was objectively too big and then make the fact that I filled it with furniture the issue.

I always think, personally, in my own life, with a relationship, you can tell how it's going when you look at someone's patio.

You know, are they maintaining it?

And really, if you're maintaining the flagstones and the grack between,

it's a good indication you're maintaining that your relationship.

It's the number one indicator of a relationship.

Are they pressure hosing it?

Are they?

Is there sort of green, that green stuff on it?

Is it moss?

I'm not sure.

It's too flat to be moss.

Yes, it's very flat moss.

You're right.

And when that happens, of course,

that means you're just not communicating properly.

Neither of you have taken the time

to say, is that moss?

Look, look at us.

You know, we're already communicating as to whether or not that is moss or not.

Just want to make it very clear: I'm married and this isn't a relationship in that sense.

Of course.

Of course.

I'm just using us as an example here.

And maybe I shouldn't have actually mentioned my patio to you.

Well, that was a mistake, but I'm using this as an example because you know

you can go years without even googling what's that flat shiny green stuff on my paving slabs.

And that's sad.

As I said at the beginning of the programme the vast majority of farmers these days are single and seen as undesirable on the dating market but Porter told me this wasn't always the case.

There was a time when in popular culture the farmer was seen as a emblem of sexuality, you know, rough, ready, like good with their hands, you know,

outdoorsy.

Yeah, farmers are just,

they're just getting left behind, you know, in this, in this current culture that we've created.

Because I think there's definitely something about, as you say, getting your hands dirty.

And, you know, a farmer is someone who for up to 60 or 70% of the day will have some shit on them

from another animal

on their clothing or their skin at some point.

And I believe you did some kind of survey work where you basically that came up as a real sticking point for loads of people in the modern era.

They were previously, you know, if you did, if you did, you didn't do that survey back in the 50s, but had you done that survey back in the 50s, that might have been something that's quite exciting to someone.

100%.

Yeah, it really shocked me, actually, doing the sort of pre-research

for the Bovine Farmers Union.

I mean, one of the first questions I asked, you you know, it was just, in order to get people to answer it, obviously it was very, very simply,

because we just needed broad strokes at this point.

So it was, you know, things like,

are you attracted to somebody who's outdoorsy?

Yes, no.

Is it okay if someone has shit on their hands?

And, you know, it was 80% no.

Wow, wow.

Yeah, it's really wild.

You know, when you think of, you know, that

very famous romantic image in pop culture culture of I don't know I suppose the 90s wasn't it you know Mr.

Darcy in the in the BBC Pride and Prejudice Colin Firth coming out of the lake

he's covered in duck shit

and that scene is you know as it's it's it's one of the defining images of that decade and similarly sorry to butt in a lot of people don't realize that in in that famous scene in ghost where the ghost Patrick Swayze is manipulating the the pottery you know it's not pottery That's not clay.

It's, yeah, it's shit.

It's his own shit.

Dirty dancing.

Why is it called dirty dancing?

Well, there you go.

He doesn't chalk his hands to lift her up.

He has to coat them in something to keep the friction,

to hoist her.

And that, and again, that is his own shit.

That's what Patrick Swayze was sort of known for.

And yet, you know, here we are in 2022.

That was only 40 years ago, only 30, 40 years ago.

That's mad.

It's mad when you think about how society has changed now when now people that work with shit, it's no longer as compelling or appealing

as it once was.

So what do you think now?

What's the archetype now of the romantic partner?

What are people looking for?

If you said, give me your perfect paramour, what would they come up with?

What would they say?

A perm.

Perm hairstyle.

Permed hairstyle.

That's very big right now.

I didn't realise that would make the difference.

And also, there's nothing stopping farmers from realising they can just go and get a perm.

That's not going to impinge upon their working day.

But the issue is they're not connected enough to see how important that is for other people when trying to attract a mate.

So you'd say in the modern era, somebody with a hairstyle that isn't a perm, they're just going to struggle?

They are going to struggle.

They're really going to struggle.

Of course, you might need to scrape your hair back occasionally.

but at some point in the day, you need to show some curl.

So you need to turn out a day and you need to look like Lionel Ritchie after he left the Commodores.

That's a really important point.

Yeah,

he came up again and again and again.

More after this.

I'm Jesse Thorne.

On the next bullseye, our annual Halloween spectacular.

We'll interview Anna Fabrega from Losa Espookies, Monet Exchange from Drag Race, and the great R.L.

Stein, creator of Goosebumps.

You know, we don't really get too deep into the real fears.

It's a lot safer to do a dummy coming to life.

That's on the next bullseye for maximumfund.org and NPR.

Now, your work has been also in collaboration with the dating app Beef Encounters, which of course was formerly a beef industry-only dating service.

Now I believe it's open to anyone.

Anyone can download the app and join.

Correct, yes.

Has that, and also your work with Beef Encounters, has that led to more mixing between farmers and non-farmers?

Yes.

You know,

it was a challenge.

At the start,

I should have foreseen this really.

It was kind of co-opted for a while by

just chefs and meat enthusiasts, thinking it was some sort of industry way to kind of connect directly to the supplier.

An easy way to get cheap meat.

Essentially, yes.

And the moment we changed the logo from a cow's heart, which isn't immediately obvious to somebody who doesn't work in the meat industry, to an actual classic heart shape.

Right.

It really did click then.

People were sort of like, oh, this is

insane.

This isn't like an awful marketplace.

This is an awful marketplace, which it was sort of seen as the sort of the Etsy for beef.

Yeah, but now that people understand that it is a place you can go and meet a farmer, I believe it's beginning to hot up and your work is beginning to bear fruit.

I mean, I invite you to

have a look, have a scroll.

I mean, while married.

If my wife found that app on my phone,

I'd be living on the patio.

Understood.

And I've got to say that patio is a bit of a state.

I wouldn't want to live out there.

Let's say that.

Well, that's interesting.

But

say no more.

Okay, fine.

Well, I'll just explain.

When you're scrolling through, it's perm after perm after perm after perm.

These things are permeating, if I may,

the farming community.

And

yeah,

anyone can have a perm.

You know, anyone can proudly put shit on their hands, you know, and it's actually up to the non-farming community.

to change and to broaden.

The farmers aren't the ones who need to change apart from their hair.

It's the rest of the world needed to kind of wake up to what farmers can give non-farmers.

That's interesting because I think when I first heard about this initiative, I was thinking that the focus was going to be on changing farmers' behavior and getting farmers to engage more in modern dating techniques.

Because obviously, you know, traditionally a farmer would,

you know, and this is...

going back 100 years, it would tend to be male farmers finding wives.

They would find them at a local barn dance or a dinner.

You know, there was always that moment at midnight when the women were let in and the men would just grab

the one they wanted.

And, you know,

very old-fashioned and not something we'd countenance now.

But it felt as if they were being slow to warm up to modern techniques.

You're saying actually it's for the outside world to come around to what farmers can give them.

That's what you're concentrating on.

Yes, obviously there's a little bit of both.

It's about communication with farmers and also hairstyle, but those things are quite simple, you know.

Whereas Whereas

with a non-farmer, you're looking at changing their entire worldview about farming.

Yeah.

And that's harder.

Now, you're running a course on behalf of the Boevine Farmers Union.

Yes.

It is heavily subsidized by the Bovine Farmers Union.

So if anyone's listening and wants to do the course, it's essentially for men, women, straight, gay, everything.

Yes.

And it's called So You Want to Date a Farmer.

Yes.

And tell us about it.

Is it in person?

Is it online?

What's going on?

It's phase-to-phase.

There's lectures.

There's, of course, outings to various kind of farms where people can kind of get a sense of the community without being thrown into the deep end immediately.

We use suggestion, sort of suggestive psychological techniques where we will play an old, you know, a famous romantic film, but insert a farmer sort of into it.

So you've got, you know, well, pride and prejudice, but Mr.

Darcy's a farmer, you know.

Sort of CGI'd on.

Yes, yes.

And that's, but therein you sort of started to get, get a little

inclination as to why, you know, I'm not charging £10.

You know, it's, it's, it's a, it's, it takes a lot to rewire somebody's brain.

Right.

Um, and I don't think that's.

And it costs a lot to totally re-CGI the whole of Avatar.

It costs a lot.

Avatar was, was, I would say, um, a mistake.

um because we we really could have picked a film that needed less CGI than that.

It's also not that romantic, eh?

No, it really isn't.

There's actually just quite a lot of it that's sort of just talking and running around.

I think essentially the take-home from that is it's too long and why is everyone blue?

Which wasn't quite what I was hoping to get from that.

So we don't use that on the course anymore.

And so really what you're doing is you're kind of rewiring these people's brains to associate.

farmers with romantic situations, which they may not have done in the past.

Absolutely.

I don't know if you've seen Clockwork Orange, but there's a lovely scene in that where they're sort of, he's encouraged to watch quite grotesque images to kind of retrain his brain

to not have a predilection for crime.

And that's kind of what we're doing

for the non-farming community.

There was an allegation, there wasn't there, this week, that you were using those same techniques to reprogram people's minds to want to buy your books and also to buy a new sex toy that you're selling on your website.

No comment.

Which Which costs £500, the orgasmoplinth?

I'd say that's, I mean,

very happy to talk about the orgasmoplinth.

All I'll say about the orgasmoplinth is that

early studies have shown it so successful, we're already got another sex toy in the works, the orgasma plank.

Right.

So

I think people should direct their criticism at people who aren't trying to help others, you know, like

there are more worthy recipients of criticism than myself.

All I'm doing is trying to help people move through the world with a special partner.

I mean, the reviews of the orgasmoplinth

on the internet

make for quite interesting reading.

A lot of people managing to somehow flood their house with it.

Well, that's if you...

Because you have to, you have to, I've not used one, but it sounds like you have to connect it to the hot water supply of your house in the way you might do a washing machine.

Yes, Yes, and we're very, very clear.

You hook that up to a car battery.

Yeah.

So that's led to a lot of fires and floods, which is a kind of self-regulating system.

Was that the idea?

Well, it was the idea was, of course, pleasure first and foremost.

But it's very clear in the instruction book, which is only about 150 pages, where the first thing we say is we implore people to get their hot water supply checked before they rig up the orgasmoplynth and if people aren't willing to do that then it's not my problem you know like it is i it's very clearly stated that the orgasmoplinth uh works best for new builds yeah you've got to have a modern boiler by the sounds of things a modern boiler yes and and a car and a car as well that's close enough to your house that you can use the sort of 20 meter lead Again, it's very clearly stated in the instruction manual that it's new builds, your car has to be close, and you have to have a very specific and very robust hot water supply system.

Can't have one of these period conversion flats either because that's going to spark out.

You're going to fuse the whole street.

But

for those people who have followed the instructions, I think you'll find the reviews are astonishing.

Sure, but going back to the

more concerning allegation was that you were using, you were re-CGIing movies in such a way that people forced to watch them because I believe you pull open their eyelids, they have to have to go in.

I hold their eyelids open for sure pulling open.

Yeah, and in doing so, they are somehow reprogrammed and they want to buy your merchandise.

That's not true.

I deny all allegations of that.

And the people who have brought that forward and against me seem to have some sort of personal vendetta.

Again,

I didn't pull their eyes open.

I held them.

And we've created much more humane ways in which to do this since the 70s when Clockwork Orange came out.

Which, you know, there are little soft bits on the end of the

eyelid holders.

Little soft bits.

so much nicer.

Okay.

What is the cost of the course?

It's £17,000.

Okay, and then that is subsidised somewhat by the Beauvoir and Farmers Union.

So it's a £17,000 cost to the consumer, but actually the true cost per person is closer to £45,000, I believe.

Correct, yes.

And most of that, I think, was spent on rec GIing and getting the rights for Avatar.

Yes, as I say,

that was a real mistake.

But is it a mistake that your consumers ought to be sort of footing the bill for?

Well, look,

they did get something from it.

I mean, they got to watch Avatar.

Yeah, arguably

in a better way than the original.

Oh, you think your version of Avatar is better than the original?

Are you telling me that popping two farmers in isn't going to improve the original Avatar?

No, that's a good point.

No.

Paulie York, thank you very much.

Thank you.

A big thanks to Paula York for that interview.

There are still places available on her course.

A new class begins next month.

And as I said, it's just £17,000 with that grant from the Bovine Farmers Union.

And if you're still on the fence, we asked on the Beef and Dairy Network web forum whether anyone had done the course, and we got the following replies.

The first is from Maggie Bywater, who says, shortly after completing the course, Paula set me up on a date with the beef farmer.

I was nervous, of course, but when he arrived, he complimented my perm and although he was totally bald himself, he had obviously made an effort and tried to perm his bald head skin because the skin was red and angry from the effect of the perm chemicals.

After six months we decided to move in together and I moved to the farm.

To begin with things were idyllic.

Then one night I woke up at 3am and he wasn't in the bed.

I lay awake and he only returned at 5am.

The following night, I woke up again at 3am and he wasn't there again.

I went downstairs and saw the front door slightly ajar.

Outside thick snow lay on the ground, and so I could follow his footsteps across the pasture and through the woods at the far side of the farm.

After walking for 15 minutes through the moonlit woods, I saw a glow in the distance from what looked like a wooden shed.

Suspecting that he was meeting another woman in there, I kicked the door open, shouting the words, you vile slag.

But I was met by his brother, who shot me in the chest with a shotgun.

Luckily, the bullet lodged itself into the family Bible I keep in the top left pocket of my pajamas.

Another shot hit me right in the Bible I keep in my top right pocket of my pajamas.

The third shot hits the Kevlar bulletproof vest that I habitually wear under my pajamas.

As he reloaded, I wrestled the shotgun from his hands and beat him to death with the handle.

I then kicked through the next door to find my farmer boyfriend secretly rearing lambs in a hay-filled barn.

Luckily, in one of the back pockets of my pajamas, I had a box of matches.

Let's just say that the valley fills with the smell of roast lamb that night.

Lovely.

Thank you for that.

And finally, a network member called Jim Membership wrote, The day after the course, I met an amazing farmer and we were married within two weeks.

On our honeymoon to Naples, I had brought along the Orgasma Plinth, a sex toy I bought from Paula York, which I coupled up to the hotel's hot water supply and the battery of a taxi on the street below our balcony.

Within seconds, the hotel was totally flooded and on fire and before long the fire had engulfed a number of Renaissance buildings with incalculable cultural significance and value.

We're now both incarcerated in a jail run by UNESCO.

To be honest, it's quite nice.

Thank you for those messages.

Also, if you don't want to sign up for the course but you do want to watch the version of Avatar in which the main characters are replaced by a couple of Randy farmers, there will be a screening at the BFI IMAX in London on Christmas Day.

And remember, even if you can't afford the course and if you're not a farmer, do consider dating a farmer.

Consider this.

At the current birth rate trajectory, there'll be no farmers at all by 2090.

At that stage, what little cattle there is left would return to the wild and become feral beef.

Humans would then have to hunt to secure their beef, and before long, tribes and factions would emerge, each trying to protect the ever-dwindling amounts of feral beef on their patch.

Soon, so much time is spent securing the feral beef that the other parts of human society begin to break down and ebb away.

Violence is king now.

We spend as much time hunting down other humans as we do finding that feral beef.

It's a race to the bottom.

And then, by 2350, we will be down to the final two human beings.

Maybe a man and a woman.

The man is wearing leather trousers and a leather waistcoat and goggles and those big belts of ammunition.

And she's wearing animal pelts and has several beads in her hair.

And they're facing a decision.

Should they cooperate and procreate to guarantee the future of the human race?

Or should they attempt to destroy the other to guarantee access to what is left of the world's stocks?

The feral beef.

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 can find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we run down the top top 10 ways to break a bone that you'll one day look back on and smile.

So until next time, beef out.

Thanks to Stevie Martin.

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