The Mailbag: The Spectrum of Light and Shade of Glasgow’s Culinary Palette

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How are you doing?

This is producer Randy, and you're listening to Here Comes the Guillotine: The Mailbag, with Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

If you have a problem, issue, or a dire need just to be heard, then email hctg at global.com.

Enjoy the episode.

I'm moving to Glasgow shortly with my partner, who's from the Three Towns in Ayrshire.

Don't know what that means.

I'm from Stoke on Trent, been reading up on my sectarianism.

Apart from Nippon Kitchen, which I'm excited to try, where else would you recommend to eat?

For Frankie, I used to work in a bookshop in Manchester and I've been pushing the new book.

Ta, Benjamin Finney.

That's someone who's delighted to have their full name out there, Benjamin Finney.

I tell you, Finney's going to be risky in Ayrshire, isn't it?

Finney's going to be a bit fucking risky, depending where they are.

Could be risky in parts of Glasgow.

Just saying, Finny.

Finney, is that an Irish name?

Finn McCooley.

Albert Finney.

I'm more focused on he's asked us about lunch spots in Glasgow and that this is going to be like a fucking two-hour long mailbag.

We should probably give a shout out to Nippon Kitchen who actually gave us a free lunch today because our listeners have been going into Nippon Kitchen.

We've been making the pilgrimage, yeah.

Yeah, the pilgrimage.

Basically, Nippon Kitchen is to guillotine listeners what lures is to Catholics.

Yeah, or the Wayland Wall.

Or the Cavern Club.

Yeah.

This is where they had diarrhea that time.

Remember?

Back in episode 6.

Oh my god, you can hear it gurgling in their stomachs through the microphone.

Do you think people go in and go, and they go, do you want to sit at their table?

I think they'll notice it.

It's covered in like crumbs and filth, probably.

I'm so glad that had an R in it.

Crumbs.

Yes.

Lunch spots.

Let's think what we recommend.

Now, let's.

We're only going to recommend top class spots.

I actually have a thing if you want to go in the evening kitchen, you can hire out the samurai room up top, which is a private dining experience.

And I believe the staff will dress up as the three of us to deliver your food if you pay an extra

surcharge.

15 quid.

It's quite like an office as well.

You might think it was a dining room.

It would look more like a dining room.

It looks like you're going up into someone's office.

It looks like a boardroom.

When Global came to have a wee meeting with us,

I really wanted to take them up to the samurai room.

Now you're in our tough.

Right, back to sorry.

What were you going to say?

I'm going to go.

Should we go one each?

Yeah, three each.

Well, one at a time.

Right.

The Linfang

top of Sake Hall Street has been rumoured, Andy, you can edit this or not, depending on your legal researches, to have been, in some sense, run by the Chinese secret police, but

those boys can cook, yes, you know, and that

menu at the Lin Feng to me is like if a child discovered a spellbook.

Do you know what I mean?

It just glows with fucking magic,

and there's so much fucking great stuff in there.

There's some type of dumplings called like dumpling wrap or something like that, but it's basically

it's amazing.

The duck is amazing.

They play mad Chinese cookery shows on the wall that all seem to involve some kind of bizarre bean card recipe and it never ends.

Also, they have these videos that are like Chinese cookery videos, but it's always someone reducing something into another thing.

So they'll go, oh, now we've got this and we've boiled it so it's like we black cube.

And then we take that and we slice it up and you go, oh, okay.

And then they're like, and then we put it in this, and it just keeps changing form like Des Clark.

Yeah, it just much like Des.

It just goes from form to form and never is actually eaten.

And then

I love it.

I am going to stay on the Chinese theme and I'm going to recommend

Institution of Glasgow.

Okay.

I'm going to recommend somewhere where it's very Chinese.

It has a dragon on the ceiling.

It's the China Sea.

The China Sea, of course.

We were going to go there recently.

We were in the Scottish Refugee Centre, as we often are.

After podcast episodes.

We went up down there for a bit of chat, and we looked out across the road.

I said to you, Look at that neon light up there, that's a China City, we should go there for this express lunch.

And we've not been yet

in the operative world.

I've been before in my life.

Yes, you've never been there, I believe, Frankie.

I think I've probably been there.

You've probably been there.

You would remember the dragon.

I dimly remember a dragon.

There's a a Chinese dragon attached to the ceiling and he's flying around.

See, once you get into your 50s, though, you're like 20 years ago, I saw a dragon.

Did you?

You don't know.

It's all just a broken kaleidoscope of movies and fucking erotic fantasy and rational man.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, what's the first

recommendation?

I cannot.

You started on a really high note, huh?

Sorry, it was trying.

Honestly, I absolutely.

It's too loose a question.

It's like asking Renoir what his favourite colour was.

Fuck's sake.

Fucking hell.

Why don't you ask me what my favourite shade of blue is and I can narrow it down?

Do you know what I mean?

But if you're going to go across the whole spectrum of light and shade that's on offer from Glasgow's culinary palette

just to go for it.

Yeah.

I mean I loved

What was your thing again?

The Lin Feng, which by the way

I looked that up on the daily record and it I always remembered the story as being oh they thought that there was a Chinese secret police, but it turns out there's not

this headline by a guy called John Paul Clark

he said China shut secret police station in Glasgow after a lengthy probe.

So China stepped in and went sorry.

And then it says,

China stepped in because the embassy received a phone call saying,

Get that to fuck.

It was revealed last year that the Scottish Government and Police Scotland were aware of a secret Chinese outpost operating out of the Luna Funk restaurant.

It's okay, Australia.

I talked about this on what's it called?

Off-menu.

And I think they must have just thought I was joking.

Yeah.

But I'm like, no, this.

And it was delicious.

Yeah, it was great.

No, we went there recently.

It was great.

A report by a Spanish non-government organisation, the Safeguard Defenders, claimed at the time that there were 110 units across the world, with one in Glasgow.

The group suggested the secret police stations were in place in an attempt to force Chinese dissidents into going back home.

Imagine that.

You're a wee Chinese dissident.

Cutting about Garnet Hill.

Yeah, cutting about Garnet Hill.

You've went up to the GFT.

You've seen a midday showing of a Wong Car Wai classic like I'm in the Mood for Love.

You nip up to that wee public park next to the church that's up in Garnet Hill.

You're having a nice time in the swings.

You nip the sound of the house.

This is a Chinese cultural centre.

I mean if you were up at the GFT, the cultural centre's just across the road.

You could nip in.

Go to Mandor's, get some nice fabrics, silks maybe.

Then you nip down for a race and two in Lin Feng and then the fucking Chinese secret police grab you, put you in a back of the...

What did they just suggest it to you while you're ordering though?

Just you should be back at home, you prick.

enough for the fucking descent pal how about wee bit less descent and a wee bit more up the road up the road

that's funny the joke I made at the time was that um

uh they have they had made a mistake and that they'd been in the toilets in Nice and Slazies which is next door to Ellin Feng and they'd mistaken them for a a torture run by the Chinese secret police'cause it's to disgust them, which was very funny in in the indie community in Glasgow.

There's so many unacceptable endings I could talk of to that.

Did you ever read Frank Miller's Batman?

And he's like, There's six ways I can attack this guy,

like five of them all paralyze him, one of them only hurts.

That was what I felt like attempting to complete that joke.

Where would I recommend?

I mean, yeah, in terms of I feel like like Chinese have been pre-covered by the panel, you're settling feng and the China Sea.

China Sea owned by a dad of a guy I went to school with.

So shout out.

Can't remember that guy's name, but he was nice and he was in the year below.

Or the year above, but he wasn't in my year or two that much.

And what would I recommend?

I would say

there's a place called the

what is it, the Little Curry House?

Oh, in Ashton Lane.

No.

It's not there anymore.

The Wee Curry House?

No.

That became Scottish Tapas.

Oh, fuck.

No, Irish Tapas.

Is it Irish Tapas?

Yeah, there's an Irish Tapas place there.

Oh, is that because it's above Genties?

Because it's above Gentie McGentie's, yeah.

Right, what is Irish and Scottish Tapas?

Just fucking Haggis Bonbons.

A single potato.

Just a dollop of cold cannon.

An uncooked single potato that you eat like an apple.

Spoken.

But there's still a wee curry house on Bio.

So, can I just delineate here?

The Wee Curry House was a chain that had one location in

Ashton Lane and then another location not too far away from the GFT and the Chinese dissenters

round next to Cowcaddon station.

However, there is a separate entity known as

Little Curry House, which is different from Wee Curry House.

Those are different organisations entirely.

And you can tell because

the Wee Curry House, you order butter butter chicken in there and it will come in foil for some reason.

Whereas

in the little curry house, there's no foil in the butter chicken.

So it's an easy guide.

Do you think this guy wanted the history of

butter chicken?

So anyway, the

little curry house at the bottom of Byers Road is actually expanding now.

You've cut through into the place next door, which I can't really remember.

I think it used to be called Geek, the Little Geek Shop or something.

And there was a picture of a guy who looked a wee bit like me on the logo.

And everybody that I know would go, ha ha ha, that's you, but it wasn't me, it was a generic geek with a quiff and glasses.

Um,

and they're expanding, it's going to be called the medium curry house now.

Wow, yeah, so that's my choice.

I'm going to raise your curry house there with two in Glasgow, and I'm going to see the Nakoda

and Dennison, but also one of my favourites, and it's been my favourite forever, and I love going in at Christmas because it has the worst decorations imaginable: the Alishan

on Battlefield Road.

At the corner of Battlefield Road.

What's the decorations?

Why are they so bad?

It's like really 1980s, you know, those like suspender

decorations.

Glasgow never got over the 80s.

No.

That was the one time that we were cool.

And we've just settled into that kind of

Charlie.

No, we thought, but we thought we were.

We've settled into that kind of...

We're just like one big pub owned by fucking Charlie Nicholas.

Yes, we're just one big wine bar.

Where the song Tinsel Town in the Rain stretching on forever.

Tinsel Town is in the rain.

I love him, man.

I love him so much.

I'd see him very occasionally.

I'd see him in the street in the West End, and I'd never set into him because I think that's the last thing this guy wants.

No, I love it.

It's not.

I think he's a super intense guy who sings about the fucking pain of love.

Here is when someone comes up going, all right, Bob.

Here's an interesting fact that I think will probably shock listeners.

My ex-boyfriend lived next door to Bob Buchanan.

The fucking East Ender steam right there, man.

That's wow, there you go.

Well, you know, you've got to try, even if you know, you've got to try.

And then I was like, oh no, but he was such a lovely man.

Lovely human being.

Lovely guy.

Stunned, shocked.

This guy just asked for restaurant advice, man.

But do you not think you could go?

I don't know what direction you're going.

Honestly, I cannot wait for the listeners' emails in the back end of that revelation.

People be like, no, I know the first 10 minutes sounds like they're just talking about different Chineses they've been to.

Eventually, that episode.

A fucking character, like our money.

No, I was 16, fuck's sick.

Hey, I kissed guys when I was 16, you know.

Did you?

Oh, nice.

Like, winching.

Yeah.

Aye.

Kissed a guy.

Fucking you.

I never knew that.

Have you kissed a guy?

Only on screen.

What?

Yep.

What about prison?

I've kissed two men on screen.

You're not an actor.

You sound like you wrote the reviews.

Yeah, and a couple of sketches.

Which I wrote.

Yeah.

And you put the kiss in?

I think there's a lot of that sometimes when

in comedy and stuff, you kind of get free.

I'm not saying that you wrote stuff where you kissed guys because you wanted to give out a bash on some level, but there is a lot.

I think a lot with a lot of kind of drag performers, you know?

Like a kind of who was remember the Dame Edna and stuff, yeah, yeah, like that was a comedy thing, is Barry Humphreys was the name.

That was a comedy thing, but at the same time, they probably really liked being a woman, you know what I mean?

So I think that's, you know, sometimes you look at themes in a person's career and you go,

oh, that's for you, your way of getting into that.

There was a big thing in shamanism where people would dress up as the opposite sex.

And I sometimes think in performance, it's a little like that.

Drag or, you know, Barry Humphreys or something.

you're able to access a different part of yourself with that costume.

Well, it's not different for stand-up, is it?

Yeah, as soon as you go onto a stage, you access different part.

You, you know, it's the heightened, improved version of what you actually are.

Fuck, if that's the improved version of me,

I'm fucked.

I would say your version was significantly worse.

I'd say the on-stages galactus and the off-stages of Silver Surfer was for most people, the on-stages stages they silver suffer

in their private life the development

yeah planets whole and bites big taking big chunks out exposed to an endless celestial hunger

and another place i would recommend would be

speaking of endless celestial hunger it's a weird place under martin road

so good

Here's a question that's not on it.

What restaurant that no longer exists do you miss?

Man, the 1950s themed

Scone shop, which you'd have Cafe Go-Go, where I wrote used to write all the Guardian articles up there.

Darcy Court?

Is it what's it called up there?

Yeah, it's something else, but it's gone now.

There's a Japanese stationery shop up there that is an absolute rocker.

I feel like you're

like you're.

I just don't know that even fucking means.

A Japanese stationery shop, what the fuck is that?

There's a place called Draw,

and then the logo is the

hiragana for draw.

And you can get imported notebooks and

pencils from Japan.

Why would you import

the top of the range?

Like, I'm not being funny, but in a world that's a dying planet, why are you importing a fucking notebook?

It's the best notebook there is.

I used to have a wee tiny, and sorry, we were talking about this was

the 1950s.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it was just they were right into like some blend of 40s, fifties, and sixties and rock and roll records, and blah blah blah.

And then there's a certain thing in Glasgow where if your cafe is not quite popular enough, I will start to frequent it.

Yes, because I can write there, there's not too many people around.

Me and Christopher have been taken to some utter shit cafes

on Frankie's watch because it's quiet.

Yeah.

Because if there's somewhere...

If your business is dying, basically, I'll turn up like a fucking vulture.

You're kind of like a banshee.

Yeah.

Quiet Banshee.

It's not a good sign if the artistic banshee turns up in the corner of your thing with his headphones on, scribbling into your fucking notebook.

What about you?

When me and Frankie went into football the other night, right, I was with my old school teacher, right?

And I'd say to her, she's such a big, quiet, demure woman, right?

And I said to her, listen, we just need to meet Frankie, Jimmy Johnson, and give him this ticket.

She was like, oh, right, okay, okay, right, because you know, it's Frankie, right?

And so Frankie comes up, he's got his Celtic beanie hat on at an angle.

He's got his glasses, he's got his beard, he's got his big green jacket, right?

And he was like, hey, like, headphones on, he was like, hey, how are you doing?

I was was like, oh, Frankie is on me, blah, blah, blah.

Then he's got the glasses off because

he's reading, right?

And he's trying to read the print and the ticket and all that.

And he went away, he's seated.

And my teacher just went,

he's a really lovely bloke.

That's that's not what I was expecting.

And I went, no, no, everyone thinks.

And she went,

it's Frankie on the spectrum.

This was within 30 seconds of meeting you.

And I was like, yeah,

probably.

It's just nice that there's a vocabulary that

normal people are are accessing to talk about stuff like that rather than,

you know.

I say these guys.

Yeah.

Is that guy?

You know, it's nice that now instead of going, oh, they should go be a monk in the mountains or something.

It's like, are they...

She was like, he was such a lovely.

He's such a lovely man, isn't he?

And I was like, yes, do you think he's like

what you thought he was forever in real life?

And she's like, I don't know.

It'd be quite exhausting if you were your on-stage persona.

It's Tiring, like throughout your life.

It'd be an impossible life.

I just...

Well, there's also

a moment of transition, isn't there?

Between being your on-stage self and your off-stage self.

And Eric Markham's daughter said that she thought one of the things that wasn't good for his health was that he felt he had to be on if people spotted him.

So imagine you're one of the most famous people in the country.

So if people come up and go, oh, hey, Markham, and you've got to be oh, you know, and starting out.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and she said, I thought that wasn't good for him.

and I think I think there's a twist to that.

People who are too on,

um,

it's not I was I was told a story about a very famous comedian who apparently is always on and you know exactly when they're in the room and they never

they're never off and what you see on stage in is what you hear in a radio programme and it's just fucking constant and I was like I could not be asked with that.

I'm not even on a lot of the time when I'm on stage, man.

Sometimes I feel like I'm coming back into my body on stage.

So it's like heck or something.

It's almost like, oh, we'd better go in here and deal with this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's almost like an out-of-body experience sometimes.

Yeah, isn't it

like you know, when you've kind of got a show and you've got a show down?

And I fucking hate comedians that do this, and I'm very conscious of not doing it

where it's just saying words that you've been saying repeatedly, and there's no real kind of performance or nothing to single that particular show out.

Say, I was at the stand on like a Sunday night running out material, I'll be quite chilled about that and quite relaxed.

But I'll say to the audience, listen, this is what I'm doing,

and just have a bit of a play with it.

But you know, you get those comedians that just literally stand and say the words, and you're like

that, and you've been doing that material since I started.

How the fuck can you be bothered?

Yeah, how can you be bothered to get on that stage?

When I started, the people used to have a third new rule, and they're like, if you're doing a gig with someone and you've like not seen them for about a year and it's not a third new, they're not really working.

But remember, we're doing 20-25 minute sets, so they mean like seven or eight minutes a year.

Like, that was kind of like on this club circuit, that was considered to be pretty productive.

It's just fucking wild, that's wild, yeah.

But you are seeing it more and more with clips, aren't you?

You're seeing it because people are playing for the camera and not the fucking actual gig.

Whereas, if you just play the gig, the clip will look after itself.

It's amazing sometimes what it's just a wee emphasis on a different word or something changes a thing.

Yeah, and also when you're on a big tour, you're kind of like I've done that 80 shows in a row.

And if I just stressed that word, it would have all been so much fucking easier.

So it's amazing how long it takes sometimes.

Yeah, oh, yeah, totally, totally.

But it's that

just very

careful.

I find people explain a bit too much for me now.

Like, I find people are a bit like, so I was going to the hospital, you know, and, you know, because obviously someone was ill and you know, we went to this place where the nurses aren't.

You're like, we know what a fucking hospital is your fucking dick.

You didn't know that, weren't they?

But there's like

there's loads of stuff where you just sort of think, well, they're either, they either understand words or they don't.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's one thing painting the picture.

So I was in hospital, had a heart attack, full crash team.

Bum, bum, bum.

You know exactly what's happening there, right?

But that whole, yeah, so I was in hospital, and you know, it's like really weird in hospitals now because they have this open visiting, and that means that you can go from 10 in the morning to eight at night, and you're like, we fucking know what it means, mate.

That constantly.

That's exactly the sort of sentence I mean.

I think it's because people aren't listening as carefully anymore and they kind of know that and they're kind of like, well, I've said this, but sort of I need to find a way to say it twice.

And then more people have fucking got the setup before I go into the thing.

And you're like, well,

once it gets to that, just you want to lose those people that aren't there listening to the setup.

It's not even that much that are they not listening to the setup or have you not just fucking captured them?

And it's really ruining the punch.

Ba bum, bang, ba da bum, bang.

Where it's ba bib, ba bib, ba bib.

Yay.

What did they mean when they said, what did Benjamin Finney mean when they said that they're from the three towns in Ayrshire?

I've no idea, and I dread to think.

Sounds like witchcraft, the three towns.

I reckon that there's an interdimensional rotation in Ayrshire of various towns that arrive, Bregadoon style, at various sort of crises in humanity.

But unlike Bregadoon, it won't be fucking Jean Kelly or whatever, it'll be abominations of some kind.

Fish people, yeah, and there goes the Palace Theatre in Come on, because that guy is

fucked.

I had to host the BBC Comedy Awards at the Palace Theatre.

Come on, I know, but they need to kind of go regional, don't they?

They were like, Yeah, well, we're kind of trying to find places in Scotland that we're not Glasgow and Edinburgh, but they're also not quite money.

So, we thought, well, you know, Aberdeen, and I was like, Aberdeen's got like a comedy club.

That would have been a good place to go.

I know, but you know, we're trying to go to places that are a bit fucked.

Where'd they go promote?

It's like, oh, Dundee.

It's going to be a bit fucked by the students there.

Yeah.

It's not built around a fucking bus station.

And Dundee's a fucking cool city.

I've done it is an amazing city.

Shout out to specialists.

Exclusive like cracking gigs in Dundee.

I think the audiences are always really up for it as well.

They're just good for them.

The whole country is all fucked.

You don't need to go finding.

Oh, I don't want to go to the obvious fucked places.

Go to St Andrews.

There's homeless people in St Andrews, man.

Obviously, there's a bunch of rich cunts as well, but they're you know walking around and crossing the road to get away from homeless people.

True,

anyway.

I hope that helps you, Benjamin.

Um,

it was a fairly um brisk round-up of Glasgow ZT's

occasional digressions

into sexuality and the problems with modern stand-up

and the rhythms of speech used by the modern club comedians.

It's not even rhythm, is it?

It's no rhythm though, it's just exposition.

Exposition.

Thank you for listening to Here Comes the Guillotine Mailbag with Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

If you have a problem, dilemma, or issue that you think Frankie, Susie, and Christopher can fix, email hctg at global.com.

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