Episode 83 - Banyan: The Defacening, Part 2 - The Refacening

Hello, first of all, if you haven't listened to part one of this,

listen to part one first, because this is part two and it won't make much sense.

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All right, enjoy this episode.

Hello, I'm the actor Roger Wescott LeMay Greley, and whenever I'm holidaying in international waters, I kick things off with a big glass of nodge.

Barkeep, another glass of nodge, please.

Nodge me up, man, and fast.

But But increasingly, cruise ship bars are reluctant to serve Nodge to their passengers.

Absolute madness.

Well, luckily I have a solution.

Roger Westcott LeMagrile's Nodge in a Tin.

Finally, the drink that the Coast Guard won't stop talking about, in tinned form.

But won't the Nodge burn through the aluminium can, I hear you ask?

Well, luckily, each tin is made of strengthened lead.

Simply use a power drill, Dremel, or jigsaw to access the sweet nodge.

So don't just drink it, nodge it.

Go on, bodge a nodge into your gauge.

Remember, consuming nodge is illegal in every country on earth.

Please enjoy nodge responsibly.

Reface,

verb

to renew the face, facade, or front of.

Hello, and welcome to Banyan: The Defacening.

Part 2: The Refacening.

To jog your memory, at the end of Part 1, we left Michael on the cruise ship where he was due to have his cow's face removed by a disgraced arsvet, and he just discovered that the novelist Jonathan Franson was on board disguised as a salmon moose

if Franzen was on board

then

Murakami Rushdie Amos Qureshi possibly even Mark Rylance weren't going to be

far away Banyan knew that if he came into contact with them he would be sucked into an apocalyptic bender so my plan at this point was get to my cabin, get my stuff,

get onto a lifeboat,

and take my chances in the North Atlantic

My thinking was

we can sort my face out another day

I just need to get the hell away from these people I got to my cabin door It was one of those really annoying ones you get in hotels with the card key.

It was really hard to work.

I was jiggling away like I cannot believe this is happening.

I just need to get the hell out of here

And I was jiggling away, jiggling away, jiggling away, and I couldn't get it to open.

And then I heard a voice.

What are you doing, Michael?

Stop fighting it.

You can't escape us.

Everything then fell into place.

Someone had clearly got on board, disguised as my door.

And I actually wasn't jiggling away at my door handle.

I was, in fact, vigorously shaking hands with Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie.

Wow.

So he was essentially in disguise as your door.

My worst fears were realized.

They were all there.

Haruki Murakami, dressed as an information kiosk.

Donna Tomot was there in disguise as a couple of retired Bristolian accountants.

One played by her, the other controlled remotely by Andy Serkis.

And Mark Rylance was

there as well, giving one of the most quietly breathtaking performances of his career

as

a wall of pamphlets.

So when you become aware that the luminaries of the literature world are on the ship, did you not think that there was a chance that they were there to show their support to you?

They were once your friends, after all.

I might have thought that for a millisecond, but if I had had any illusions, they were swiftly removed when I saw Margaret Atwood dishing out t-shirts.

When they go for a big bender, especially a themed bender,

they like to produce t-shirts.

They all have accounts at SnipySnaps.

If Franzen clicks his fingers and says nautical bender, puts that on the WhatsApp group, you can be sure that Margaret Atwood will be on the phone to her local Snappy Snaps within minutes

sorting out the t-shirts.

I imagine in kind of various nautical-based puns, things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I

there's no way of dressing up.

It said

Ahoy Minob heads.

Yeah.

Each one had a picture of a Jolly Roger,

but instead of a skull, it was Jonathan Franz's face.

And instead of the two interlocking bones, it was a snooker cue and a very, very long pint of lager with

drips denoting lager spillage going off the edge.

Mark Atwood, she puts these things together alongside the team that designed her novel front covers.

So they're quite well done.

And ahoi mi knob heads, so ahoy exclamation mark, mi, me spelled mi to represent uh replicate a kind of maritime speech pattern.

And then ahoy mi knob heads,

denoting penis heads, heads, heads with

three Zs.

Right.

So not spelt with the S, but with three Zs to

just to enhance the mood.

Because, of course, traditionally that would be Ahoy Mihartis.

That's right.

And they very cleverly then swapped out the word hearties.

With knob heads.

With knob heads.

I see.

And knob heads would probably normally be spelt with an S, but instead the three Zs to denote the atmosphere of tearing down authority, not respecting things,

being generally rude.

Right.

And those were dished out.

I

look

when I'm in the clutch of these guys, there's nothing I can do.

I knew I was a goner at this point.

I pulled the t-shirt on.

If there was any part of me that stood the vaguest of chances of resisting a full-on night with these people.

That was swiftly wiped out when I heard the

words I dreaded, I think, more than any other four words in the English language.

Bring out Dr.

Nodge.

Right, so who's Dr.

Nodge?

Dr.

Nodge is a...

Sorry, I can just have a moment.

It's just such a bloody shame that these people are like this.

It's okay.

Let's take a moment.

They write such bloody good fiction.

That's the real tragedy of it.

Have you read Time's Arrow?

It's a decent book.

Midnight's Children has some strong passages.

These guys can write.

It's not fun.

No one's saying it's fun.

You don't want to read it.

No one's saying that.

But

glimey, they can string a load of words together, these guys.

They really can.

Listen, you don't have to tell me who Dr.

Nodge is if it's too painful for you, Michael.

Dr.

Nodge is a

mythic creation.

He's the symbol of the Lash.

He's the god of fun.

He's Loki.

He's the impish, you know, the impish immortal spirit of the bender.

Yeah.

I see.

Getting crushed, getting out there,

getting jaspered.

Yeah.

He's a totem for the total annihilation of a mini bar, the ransacking of a regional hotel, the destruction of street bollards, ransacking of public high streets and pedestrianized areas, city centers all over this country for the past two to three decades.

That's Dr.

Nodge.

That's Dr.

Nodge.

And you ask any

policeman or woman in this country about Dr.

Nodge, and you will get tasered.

No questions asked.

No questions asked.

You will be tasered.

And Dr.

Nodge gave the name to a cocktail.

Cocktail beloved by this crew.

And a cocktail which is banned in every country on earth, including North Korea,

and for that reason can only be drunk legally in international waters.

So, you put two and two together, and you get Nodge in this situation.

It was no surprise that these guys wanted to roll out

Dr.

Nodge and sit on the front row of a Nodge symposium.

Banyan then told me the ingredients for Nodge.

If you don't want your life to be irrevocably changed forever, look away now.

Two parts vodka,

three parts white rum,

fifteen parts fanta, four parts pomegranate shower gel,

five parts Cointro,

two parts good olive oil,

four parts bad olive oil,

six parts bishop's blunt,

a glass of 1974 no-later French petrol, 98 parts any old lager,

two Bellinis, an old-fashioned, a porn star martini, three sex on the beaches and a screwdriver.

And by a screwdriver I mean a tool, not a drink.

A handful of ham, a couple of roast potatoes, two drops of thigh sweat from a serving member of the Dutch parliament, a live male blue tit or any finch,

a five euro note, the tears of a semi-professional wrestler,

a sprinkling of pork and beef meatballs, and the whole thing is served straight up in a waste paper basket and topped off with the corner piece of a jigsaw puzzle depicting a crofter at work.

And did you drink one of these, Dr.

Nodge's?

I'm not proud, but

I nodged.

I handed in my dissertation to Dr.

Nodge that day, yes.

I mean, and that shows you the level of control these guys have, you know, these people have on me.

You know, I knew that later on that day I would be under the knife in one of the most dangerous, ambitious, and completely unprecedented operations ever to take place on earth.

The fact is,

when Dr.

Nodge is

visiting the campus and you get invited up to his study,

you go in.

Do you know what I mean?

So you consumed the Nodge?

I consumed the Nodge.

Obviously, that's

a pretty rich brew.

What kind of effects are you feeling off the back of a nodge?

Well, I tell you what, as it goes down your throat, it's very, very hard to explain the flavor of it and the feeling.

It's quite incredible.

If you're aware, have you ever seen one of those

large round glass globes?

And inside, there's a kind of electrical power, a kind of like lightning.

Yes, I know what you mean.

Kind of bottled lightning, that electrical spark.

I think the feeling is like having one of those globes just smashed over your head.

So you're absolutely laid out.

But when you do manage to get to your feet, you're then filled with a level of confidence that is utterly unbearable for anyone in your vicinity.

You know, you are unspeakably arrogant.

You just feel so utterly confident.

You feel you could do anything.

They say that the level of confidence you get from a glass of Nodge is the equivalent of finding out that you've won the Turner Prize, the Booker Prize, a Pulitzer, and found a fully stamped Cafe Nero loyalty card in your wallet on the same day.

So, what happened next?

I don't really remember much of what happened.

I do know that Martin Amos was sick in a hand dryer.

Right.

And that Hiroki Murakami tried to swim up the pipe feeding a hot tub.

Right.

And I believe that as he was restrained by staff, he was shouting, I am the filtration system.

It's a pretty classic kind of nodge stuff.

Classic nodge stuff.

I believe

that Jonathan Franzen was able to actually legally marry a disco ball that afternoon.

He yanked it off the ceiling of

the main ballroom, and he was able to get together the people who were qualified to do it.

And that happened.

So obviously, all this is taking place.

Am I right in saying, this is what I read, that the ship actually issued a distress signal across the radio, a May Day signal, essentially,

and started sending warnings over the Tannoy,

essentially, to get everyone onto the lifeboats.

That's right.

It was at this point that there was still part of my brain that was still me,

if you see what I mean.

I mean,

I was aware of the separation between the internal me that was still me and the

essentially the nodge, you know,

the sort of nodge avatar that I'd become on the outside.

Right.

And that's what happens.

And you end up, and so on my outsides, I could, I could, I was aware of what I was doing.

I was aware that the Nodge version of me was trying to, was trying to eat all of the stuff in the casino.

The playing cards, the

chips, the

little croupier sticks, the ashtrays, and all the bays.

But the internal me, was still aware that there was a still, there was me.

And then what happens at that point?

The only way to defeat Nodge, I mean, mean, obviously you can have your stomach pumped and you can be, you can go into a kind of semicoma for a couple of weeks.

The only way to get out of it quickly, immediately,

is to close your eyes.

And what you do is you say very quietly a mantra to yourself, which is, Dr.

Nodge, Dr.

Nodge, reveal yourself now.

Dr.

Nodge, Dr.

Nodge, reveal yourself now.

If you say that enough times, with your eyes closed, to an outsider, you simply crumple into the fetal position.

But what's what's happening in your mind is the nodge battle has become internalized

what then happens is you open your eyes or you think that you're opening your eyes and you're actually in a vast black space with a bright shining yellow grid at your feet that that recedes all the way to the horizon everywhere you look you're in a virtual nodge zone

You look down at yourself, you can see your own body.

You then look up and you see Dr.

Nodge.

And this is when you realize that you have to fight Dr.

Nodge.

And what does Dr.

Nodge look like?

It's different for everyone.

For me, Dr.

Nodge is a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Germatti.

But not, so it's not Paul Giamatti with the head of a Rottweiler?

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

I see.

So just to be clear, for you, it is a Rottweiler's body with Giumati's head.

No.

It's a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Germati.

Oh, I see.

Sorry, of course.

Can I just ask some questions about this?

When I'm picturing this, because it's a Rottweiler, principally, is the polygiomati body on all fours

or is it standing as a man well the body takes the lead from the head so the body is indeed on all on all fours it it's a uh it's a rottweiler with the body of paul germati you've made that very clear

so um

essentially the the body is it's a human body but it's um

with the head of a rottweiler

no but it's not you said it wasn't that You said

it's a Rottweiler with the body of it's a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Giumati.

It's not Paul Giumati's body with a Rottweiler head.

No, that's right.

Sorry.

Yes, you are right.

I got mixed up there.

And again, the difference is around the neck there.

Okay.

And just general vibe, I'd imagine.

Yeah, it's a different vibe, as you say.

But, you know, they do make lovely pets.

A Rottweiler with Paul Giumati's body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great family pet, actually.

So you're faced then with the Giumati dog, the dog Diumati.

What next?

Well, that's when I

just started just punching it.

So you need to physically best the...

You need to physically best it in an internal way.

So

it's a mental struggle, but actually in that moment, very, very physical.

As I'm beating

the creature,

so with each punch, I could feel reality coming back so with each punch I'd get a flash of the

the cruise

the the landing on the cruise ship where I was I was collapsed in a corner that was kind of and then I'd be back in the rock by where I'd punch it again and gradually bit by bit I started to defeat dr.

Nodge essentially and the the cruise ship reality this level of reality the non-Nodge level the level above Nodge that we live in started to to win out and actually just in the nick of time because as I gave it that final punch I was aware of the fact I became aware of the fact that actually it was actually

giving birth

and I got out just in time because there was I could see a kind of a hideous well this one was a it was more like a bit of the face of Germati and a bit of the face of a Rottweiler on a body that was just an absolute patchwork of Rottweiler and Germati there was there was no logic to it it was a patchwork it was like a absolutely horrendous quilt

But luckily you snapped back into lucky I snapped back into reality just in time.

Yeah.

I stopped trying to eat all the stuff in the casino and I was able to get the gang back together.

I had to slap them around a bit, I'm not going to lie.

And I said, look, guys,

we've got to calm the hell down

and I use the expression you have to use in situation which is Dr.

Nodge is facing a tribunal right Nodge has gone too far this time essentially Nodge has gone too far he's going to be sent down from the university he's up in front of a tribunal dr nodge has lost control of the campus There are students with placards inside Nodge's study.

It's over.

The Minister for Education is on his way.

The Minister of Education is on his way, leading a fleet of tanks to take Nodge down.

And if you're more than three-quarters of the way through your course, you will get a degree based on averages.

You'll get a degree based on the quality of your coursework.

And Nodge will still have to be consulted in terms of working out what that average is.

The sad truth is Nodge will still, long term, be having an impact on us.

But for today,

Nodge is as good as done.

And when you say that to them, they know exactly what you mean.

And yeah, they know exactly what I mean.

And then at that point, you see them all change.

Their eyeballs start facing the right way, and the upwards-moving sweat starts to readjust and starts to move downwards, which is a huge relief.

And what's happening to them is that internally they're having that kind of virtual reality fight against whatever their version of the Geomati dog hybrid might be.

Each of them will represent Dr.

Nodge as the thing they fear most.

So for Salma Rushdie,

it's Midnight's Children,

but

it's a dog with the face

of a copy of Midnight's Children.

For Julian Barnes, it's someone taking his van away.

For Margaret Atwood, it's a snappy snaps with a sign saying permanently closed across the front door.

For Martin Amos, it's a T-Rex with the face of Sam Neal.

And so really, they're having to go to war with their own subconscious.

They're having to go to war with their own subconscious.

That's what Nodge forces you to do.

It asks you the question, can you defeat yourself?

Can you defeat your worst fears?

Can you defeat your inner demons?

And one by one, they popped out.

They were all shaken.

I could see that Atwood was taking a while to struggle with that snappy snaps, but eventually she did as well.

So they all popped out.

Calm descended on everyone.

We all looked at each other.

Everyone breathed.

And

we decided as a group

to go into one of the

decks with a nice view of the sea.

So we sat in

the, I think, Aqualounge 4.

Nice view of the sea.

We all sat and relaxed.

And Mark Rylance, he had that lovely look came back to his face, that lovely, tranquil, gleaming, like his eyes, like diamonds that have been crammed into the eye holes of

an actor.

And we breathed.

And it was at that point that Margaret Adwood Adwood pulled out a large canister of pig tranquilizer

with five spouts, and

we all had a jolly good go on it.

And it was at that point that I fell into a deep and terrifying sleep.

On a different part of the ship, while Banyan was guzzling nodge and pig sedatives with a group of Booker Prize winners, Asvet Bob Truskovik was preparing for the hardest operation of his life:

the removal of Banyan's cowface.

Ahead of the operation, he had agreed to record an audio diary for us on the day.

Thanks to Bob for doing this on what was to be a very, very stressful time.

This is an audio diary from me, the Bovine Alsvet Bob Traskovic, on the day of my biggest challenge yet.

Removing the face of the poet Michael Banyan.

Michael was retrieved from the Aqua Lounge and the operation began.

As you might imagine, the operation didn't start quite as planned.

Yes, we hit a stumbling block immediately.

Unfortunately, the patient,

Michael,

hadn't strictly obeyed pre-op protocols and was absolutely chock-a-block with quite a strong pig sedative.

Oh my god, he's absolutely off his face on pig sedatives.

Fucking hell.

That rather muddied the waters

for my anaesthetist, for whom the waters were already pretty muddy,

given that he was

not quite wholly, but almost wholly unqualified for the situation at hand, being

sort of former equine dentist.

So

getting Michael comfortable was going to be difficult and therefore became our lowest priority at that point.

The pig sedative meant that Bob and his horse dentist friend had no idea how much anesthetic to give Michael.

A pig is an animal that requires, I mean, if you're going to sedate a pig, it's going to be heavy sedation.

So the pig sedatives we use are

nasty,

really nasty drugs.

And

Michael was absolutely ram-jammed full of this stuff.

So, it was impossible to know, was he even too sedated?

I mean, there were points where it was hard to tell whether he was even technically alive.

Michael, how did you feel at that time?

Were you aware of the sedation?

Were you completely out of it?

I went through a couple of different sensations.

When I first took the

pig sedative,

it's an experience I've had, you know, I mean,

I've done my fair share of D.Squealer over the years.

However,

there came a point where

this, as far as I'm concerned, and

this legal, legally, I can't say too much at this point, but I will be suing Bob hard for this, because there came a point where halfway through the operation, I became aware that I was

in a room on a cruise ship and that a man by the name of Bob Triscothek was hacking away at my face with two steak knives which didn't even match.

They were clearly from different sets.

One of them looked like quite a nice John Lewis job with a chrome handle.

The other one looked like, I think it had been, looked to me like it had been nicked from a pizza hut.

And the one thing Bob assured me of at length before

we we embarked on this medical journey together was that A, I wouldn't wake up and become aware during the operation,

and B, I wouldn't feel any pain.

Now, let's deal with A first.

I woke up and became aware of what was going on during the operation.

Now, Bob has subsequently said to me that I was having a dream that happened to coincide with what was happening.

Yep.

Can you prove that it wasn't a dream?

That's something I'm working on.

Did you video it?

No.

i didn't video it bob because i was

having my face stabbed frankly repeatedly by a man who was clearly drunk off cruise booze it's free i'm only flesh and blood and and re regarding suing me join the queue mate first of all regarding the steak knives you try getting a matching set when you're

mostly purchasing from charity shops it's not easy it's no mean feat you're lucky one of them was sharp.

So you're saying it did happen or this was the dream?

Well,

I'm not going to be pinned down on anything at this stage on the advice of my legal team.

Yeah, because as far as I can tell, your defense for everything I say to you is it's part of a dream.

Look, mate, you're lucky you're even breathing.

You've noticed he's alive, haven't you?

I mean, that was his main concern with me.

Am I alive?

Am I dead and dreaming I'm alive?

Because I don't know anymore.

I'm so confused.

The amount of emails you're, every time I send you an email, you send that, you say, you've replied to me saying that you just that email wasn't real, it was a dream, and so is this reply.

You're alive, and it's thanks to some very quick thinking because that was not an easy operation, I can tell you.

After I'd made a bit of a hash of the initial incisions, we're losing him, we're losing him, we're losing him,

I did, I did manage to peel the face off.

I managed to get my fingers under the subcutaneous layer, and I mean, it was an absolutely magical moment peeling that it had been hours, okay, absolutely hours.

Okay, my heels of my feet jammed into your throat.

I was pulling back with all my might, all my weight.

Okay, well,

let's get on to point B, which is the point where,

again, now,

not only was I aware on the operating table, aware of what was going on, I was in excruciating pain.

And I know, Bob, you don't have to.

I know you've said I was just having, I was so, you were having pain dreams.

I was in such a deep sleep.

That's when you have pain dreams.

I was dreaming pain.

I was dreaming realistic pain.

In fact, pain that's probably more realistic than actual pain, or more painful than actual pain.

Classic side effects of certain anesthetics.

More after this.

Hello, I'm the actor Roger Wescott LeMagrile, and I love to holiday in international waters.

It's about the only bloody place you can escape the rise and rise of Benedict Bloody Cumberbatch.

Apparently, I was down to the final two for Sherlock, but they cast Cumberbatch because he gave them five pounds.

That's what he does, you know.

He's always giving out five pounds.

Five pounds here, five pounds there.

Anyway, finally, my range of tinned nodge has hit the shelves.

Well, I say the shelves, it's illegal to buy anywhere on earth.

So you have to go to somewhere called the Dark Web, which sounds like a very foreboding place, but it can't be worse than doing Hamlet for Sixth Formers in the Midlands, can it?

Can it?

Not only is my Nodge conveniently tinned, it uses only the finest ingredients, including some very large male blue tits.

And remember, for that classic Nodge experience, serve in a waste paper basket.

Or just bang the stuff down you.

It really is the best way to make a week go by in the blink of an eye.

So don't just drink it, nodge it.

Go on, bodge a nodge into your godge.

Remember, consuming nodge is illegal in every country on earth.

Please enjoy nodge responsibly.

Hello, Benjamin here.

May I have a moment of your time to talk about how the Beef and Dairy Network is funded.

Now, you may or may not know that

I'm in a huge amount of debt

in grain to the actor Ted Danson.

We're doing what we can, but it's not enough.

Please help.

We will accept any cereal grain.

That's any cereal grain that you have.

Barley, oats, rye, spelt, wheat, teff,

millet, sorghum, buckwheat, chia seeds, maybe just any beans.

Have you got any beans?

Rice?

Will you accept rice, the actor Ted Dunson?

Will you?

Okay, I'm going to start this bit again.

I'm talking about Max Fun Drive.

It's the two-week period where shows on this network tell the audience about how these shows are funded.

And the truth is, they are funded by the audience, which is amazing.

And for many years now, I've been able to put proper time into making this podcast.

And I know it sounds just like kind of

nonsense,

but a lot of time goes into it.

And it's all down to you guys.

I want to say thank you so much.

I personally really like the maximum fun funding model.

We don't run run like 10 minutes of ads every episode, just the one ad.

Oh my god.

We don't put half the old episodes behind a paywall.

And what I really like about Max Fun is it's independent media where the people who make the shows own their own shows

in a landscape where it's all now

big companies giving Prince Harry money to make podcasts to an extent, I think.

Listen to me, Harry.

You must have access to some grain.

You own half of Britain.

Sunflower seeds?

Hemp?

Flax seeds?

Surely, come on.

Has Megan got access to anything?

Lentils?

Fava beans?

She seems like she's into that kind of thing.

Come on, you must have something we could just describe as grain.

Please.

Please.

And I just want to encourage you: if the Beef and Dairy Network is something you you value, then

I'm not forcing you to do so.

It's always going to be free, but why not, if you can afford it, support us a bit?

That's what I'm asking you today.

I know for many of you, that's not possible.

And obviously, that's totally fine.

But for some of you, it will be possible.

And if you look forward to the show appearing when it appears, then why not give something back?

That's what I'm saying.

In return, there's various things.

Go and look on the website, maximumfund.org forward slash join.

There's some wonderful gifts and things.

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Everyone signing up gets access to the bonus material.

This year, the bonus material from Beef and Dairy includes completely uncut audio and video of the live show we did last year.

That did become a bit of an episode, but I've put the whole thing up and there's lots of fun to be had there.

Also, audio from an Ask a Vet session I did with Mike Wozniak.

That's up there for subscribers.

MaximumFund.org forward slash join.

And if you can't support, or don't want to, that's obviously fine too.

I'm just really glad you're listening, honestly.

Thank you for listening to that.

I hope you're enjoying this episode.

What will become of Michael Bernyan?

Let's see.

While the huge amount of pig sedatives that Michael had taken was an issue, it was soon dwarfed by a much larger problem.

As you're aware, before we went onto the ship,

we were aware that there were going to be certain problems we might face, some problems we realized about later than others, but

what was clear that was when this bovine face came off, if there was no face underneath, that would be an unsurvivable situation without an emergency backup face.

Okay, we're about two hours into the operation now, and it's become clear to me that Michael's original human face

is totally gone.

We've taken off the cow face, that's already gone off in a bucket to Lorenzo Montecantini,

but underneath.

All we were left with was just a pool of salty water, really.

Brine effectively.

An unsurvivable

brine.

Just looks like a pond, basically, or a very wet dropped pizza.

Luckily, we have a backup face that was donated to us by the Bovine Farmers Union.

Good of them.

I suspect they felt bad about what they did.

We didn't ask them any questions about where they got the face.

But as far as I know, you ask for almost anything at a dockside bar in Southampton, you can get it.

So I'm just off to get the backup face now, and we'll see whether that'll stitch onto Michael's head front.

However, there was a big problem with the backup face.

Okay,

we've just opened the refrigerated box with the backup face, and I can only assume this is a sick prank by the Bovine Farmers Union.

It's not a real face at all.

It's a rubber joke shop mask with the face of Prince Charles.

This left Michael without a face.

He's probably only got minutes left now without a face.

Okay,

time for emergency measures.

What Bob did next...

is nothing short of extraordinary.

And I took the heroic step of removing my own face and putting it on Michael Banyan's head front,

at which point I realized immediately that that was an unsurvivable situation for me.

So I then asked my equine dentist friend if I could borrow his face for a moment while I just had a minute to think

about what to do next, which he very then kindly did.

But I then realized if I was going to wear his face, he's not a good-looking man to begin with.

And also, he's going to be dead in 20 minutes.

And

he's one of the few people that will still go for a pint with me.

So, we've then got to find a solution for his face.

We call in

a steward, uh, a koshim across the back of the face, take his face, put it on front, but then the stewards left without a face.

That

there's a little bit of guilt involved.

It the situation begins to spiral out of control.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

fuck all.

This is a mess.

Oh no oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck it.

Fuck.

We're at n minus one faces wise on this cruise ship.

Listen, anyone here willing to have their face sliced off temporarily you'll get it back I promise.

Every time we remove someone's face I mean we're calling in entertainers from the cabaret section of the ship.

Obviously starting out with choruses, backing dancers, but soon we're moving up through magicians,

pianists, even ventriloquists.

We're stealing their faces.

So you're in a kind of

moving musical chairs face situation where people are swapping faces left, right, and centre?

We make the mistake of them moving into the catering staff, and that's when the passengers get wind of what's going on.

And they don't mind too much that the cabaret's been disrupted, but you disrupt their cruise buffet.

You're in real trouble, okay, because all of a sudden they're having to wait up to seven minutes for a pina colada, up to 20 minutes for a club sandwich.

They're livid.

But no sooner are they swarming upon us than

we're taking faces off them, so passengers' faces.

Well,

it's horrific.

And before you know it, you're busting through to the cargo section where the various pets are being transported.

For at least 20 minutes had the face of an Irish wolfhound.

And

it started to get a bit stressful at that stage.

Now, Michael, I believe it was unfortunately for you at this point that you actually fully woke up and that the pig's additives actually wore off.

Yes, I was

greeted by one of the

most,

I think, disturbing sights a human being can be greeted with on waking up,

which is a room packed full of people

essentially sort of frisbeeing faces onto each other in a circle.

And me desperately, desperately trying to to find my own face in a sort of in a moving sea of faces.

And I could feel that faces were going around in a circle.

And

I felt a budgie's face

from the inside

slap onto my face.

And so for a second, I had a budgie's face.

There was a ship's rat.

A ship's rat face was briefly adhered to

my front head.

And I was told, apparently, that

it looked, from an outsider's point of view, it looked like

my head, to look at me, looked like a rat emerging from the middle of a pizza.

That's what I was told.

And people were getting very stressed.

It was so fast-moving that people were losing control, losing tab of

where their own faces were.

At one point, the captain's face ended up overboard, and he just dived straight in and re-emerged a quarter of an hour later with the face of a marlin, which he's kept, actually, since then.

So, Bob, the thing was, and this is something that commentators have,

they can't believe really that you didn't realize this, that no matter how many people you got involved, no matter how many people were slicing their face off and giving it to someone else, you were always going to be one short.

Right.

Because as soon as you take one off someone, they then don't have a face.

You know, you realize this now.

Yes.

Why didn't you realize this at the time?

Well, in my defense,

I was preoccupied by the difficulty of

the first part of the operation itself.

That was quite enough to think about.

Plus, let's not forget, I come from an honourable veterinary tradition, whereby

if something hasn't quite gone to plan, you simply put your patient in a

special yellow bin bag and you move on.

That wasn't the case here, so I think my normal settings needed readjusting.

Yeah, I understand that.

And I think you also still deserve some credit for the fact that Michael Michael is alive, you know, something which most people didn't think would be the outcome here.

Yes.

And that is thanks to the ship's mate.

He very nobly came down and sacrificed his own face for Michael, knowing full well what would happen to him, knowing full well that there wasn't a spare face for him, because

he was a huge fan of Michael Banyan.

It emerged later, he was actually a huge fan of Michael Banyard, who it turns out is an indie car racer from Arkansas.

But by the time we'd realised that, it was far too late.

And I was relieved because I, at the time, was trying to see if I could get the Prince Charles Robert Mask to work with some spare horse teeth that my dentist friend always carries with him at all times.

That really wasn't working at all.

Michael, how do you feel when

you hear about this now?

Tell me about how you feel about the fact that somebody essentially gave up their life for you to have their face, even though they thought you were a racing car driver.

It's very moving.

The first thing I'd like to point out is I'm pretty sure that

the mistake was that he thought

that the racing car driver, Michael Banyard, was the poet Michael Banyan, and that was the mistake.

No, no, no,

he was very, very clear, clear, actually, about who he thought he was.

And we just decided to let it slide.

Yes, well,

I'm pretty sure that it's no coincidence, is it?

No, we actually went through it a few times with him, and

it was clear that it was a total coincidence.

The ship's mate's mother has gone on record as saying that he actually deeply disliked your poetry.

Wasn't just apathetic towards it, he actually disliked it.

Well, it's amazing the things that people will say

you know, when they hear that their son has sacrificed his life in order to give his face to a poet that his son thought was an indie car racing driver.

The things that people say in those situations.

Well, his mother also, she is a sort of retired professor of poetry from, I think, Cornell University, and

that's why he was very familiar with poetry.

Retired, isn't it?

Why you have to ask that question?

Why is she retired?

Maybe she's 60.

But got things wrong.

I think, read between the lines, there's a lot of confusion that found at the moment.

And the only thing they can hold on to at the moment

is the idea that,

you know, I think they're angry with me.

I don't blame them.

They're angry with me.

And they're trying to besmirch my poetry.

Yes, they're angry.

But

maybe they, you know, I can't speak for them, but maybe they get some sucker from knowing that his face face lives on.

His face lives on.

Okay.

That's the operation.

Finished.

Oh, God, he looks like an absolute dog to breakfast.

So, Michael, you've got this new face.

It's the face of a 24-year-old sailor from a cruise liner.

And I have to say, it's strange to see you with a human face.

Nevertheless, I would say it looks

fine.

It looks fine, I would say.

Yeah, I mean,

you're being generous.

Look,

there's been some teething problems, you know, I'm not going to lie.

There was always going to be a degree of aftercare needed

with something like this.

What's happened is there's essentially some quite the eye sockets are loose, basically.

This was a young man, a fit, glossy-skinned American man with a good, a strong jaw and that that tight American skin that is famous the world over.

So tight.

And that has had to be adhered to the, well, essentially

the decayed underface

or head front

of a

middle-aged man.

But more than that, a middle-aged man who has had a cow's face stuck to his face for years.

And essentially, getting those two things to match up

isn't a given

what bob said to me was that it was like having to use prit stick to stick a post-it onto a well a plate of noodles in a gale but this will improve i assume bob this will this will improve over time as it begins to take or

um

i so i one of the reasons i

I've had the career I've had is I don't like to break bad news, really.

I prefer it when the bad news breaks itself,

you know, because

the homing pigeon is clearly dead or whatever it is

that I've been treating.

I'd rather hope that Michael,

being an educated, intelligent man, would have by now worked out his own bad news, but clearly that's not the case.

I mean, it's not going well, is it?

We can all see that.

Yeah.

I've got ears on my shoulders, mate.

Well, with any transplant, typically there would be a degree of immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection.

I can't get access to that kind of stuff with the way my license is.

So instead, I've had to give Michael just

some

old tube of eczema cream I found in the bottom of my bag.

But that hasn't cut it really.

The face as it is now, I mean, what's left of it would come off in contact with a scratchy towel, to be honest, or a strong gust of wind.

Yeah, so I'm having to exclusively use gas towels at the moment.

And I think you'll be able to move on from that pretty soon because

what I'm trying to get out of here, Michael, is that that face is

not going to happen.

The architecture of

your underface has got so used to...

a cow's face that there's simply no way that any human face is ever going to fully adhes with with your head now.

You're at the end of the line, I'm saying, human face-wise.

What is left of that face is going to slough off within a week.

You are going to be faceless.

That's a certainty.

And once you are faceless, then either you simply wait for the inevitable, or, and I'm presenting you with the only possible solution that is survival here,

or, and this is some good news to soften the bad news, I can offer you a brand spanking new cow's face to replace your face.

So

that's great news.

And not only that, I'm in a position to offer you

a choice.

You can have Belgian blue, Hereford, Hungarian grey, or at a pinch.

I could get you a Guernsey.

Yeah, Hungarian grey, obviously.

But

are you,

is this serious?

Is this some sort of

thing?

Because I think, frankly, I've been through enough over the last couple of weeks that

I don't see myself as like someone that really needs pranking or is going to particularly sort of enjoy a prank.

Do you know what I mean?

I am quite serious.

And we need to act now, urgently.

Okay, so, and it's a Hungarian grade.

If that's what you want, yes, I can get that

peasy-peasy lemon squeezy.

So, what are you saying?

Are you saying, Bob, that no human face will ever adhere back onto?

No, I mean, that's been proven by what we've done.

The architecture is just not there anymore.

I mean, you could try

an alpaca, but I wouldn't recommend it.

A horse?

No way.

No chance.

So, Michael, it sounds like if you want to stay alive, you're going to have to be re-cowfaced back to square one in some ways.

How does that feel?

For what it's worth, I think it's going to actually, this is going to feel like coming home for me.

I think sometimes you have to go a long way to realize that where you were

was probably certainly where you started out.

Well, I'll see you the day after tomorrow.

There's a disused railway sidings just north of Marseille.

I'll send you the coordinates.

Don't be late.

Thank you very much, both of you.

Michael Banyan and Bob Truskothik.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks.

A big thanks to Michael Banyan and Bob Chaskothik for their cooperation in letting us cover the momentous events of recent times.

Good luck to you, Michael, with that new cow's face.

And thank you for listening to Banyan, The Defacing.

We should also spare a moment for the 24-year-old American sailor.

His name Chup Bupkins.

That's Chup Bupkins.

Sorry, just looking at it now, I think it's Bup Chupkins, who gave his life and face so Michael could have a face for a few days before ultimately discarding it and leaving it in a bin in France.

Sorry, no, I was right the first time.

It's Chup Bupkins.

Chup Bupkins.

Banyan the Defacing is a production of the Beef and Dairy Network.

The producer was Ellen Wamboni.

The music and sound design by Erasmus Donkeyfield.

Help came from Susannah Blankett, Hannah St.

Sternald, and Hernald Yom.

Banyan the Defacing was created by Crab Meat Dixon and was edited by Quincy Wincy Tromasco St.

John and a team of trained pigs.

Our director of sound design is also a pig.

Our fact checkers are Adam Sitcomb and Caitlin Timetable.

The exec producer was Talon Zambolier, and there was this woman in the office.

And after about three weeks,

people started talking: Is she even working here?

Like, I've never seen her before.

Like,

is she an employee here?

Does she work for the Beef and Dairy Network?

And why is she constantly sopping wet?

And I had to admit,

I've never seen, I've literally never seen her before.

So I went up to her and I was like, sorry, do you work here?

What are you doing here?

And she said,

what am I doing here?

What do you mean, what am I doing here?

This is a municipal swimming pool.

What are you all doing here?

Yeah,

we never got to the bottom of that one.

Sorry, my mistake.

It is Bup Chupkins.

No, I'm sure of it this time.

It's Bup.

It's Bup Chupkins.

Banyan the Defacing was made possible by funding from the Sid Onion Fund, the Buck P.

Mitchell Foundation, and everyone who supported Beef and Dairy Network through the Max Fun Drive by going to maximumfun.org forward slash join.

Hello, thanks for listening.

Your final reminder, I'm sorry to keep going on like a broken record, but that's it for this year.

That you can go to maximumfund.org forward slash join to support the podcast.

Also, this week, on Thursday at 8pm

UK time, I'm going to be doing a live stream with Tom Neenan, aka Dr.

Sam Archer.

To watch that, come to twitch.tv forward slash Benjamin Partridge.

And last time, I promise, maximumfund.org forward slash join.

Go and have a look.

And thank you to everyone who signed up so far, this MaxFun, and thank you in advance to those of you who are about to.

All right, I will never mention it ever again.

Until next year, bye.