Atmosphere of Super Violence

Here Comes the Guillotine contains offensive language, mature content, and adult themes.

It is not suitable for a younger audience.

This is a Global Player Original podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Here Comes the Guillotine.

I'm Frankie Boyle, and I'm going to be talking to Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

Okay,

welcome to the mailbag.

Here comes the mailbag.

Mailback.

Thank you very much.

Maybe we could get former champ to do a little jingle for us.

A sting?

A sting?

Yeah.

Just some kind of.

Yeah, some stings would be good.

Maybe get Sting in to do some Sting.

Expensive.

Some Tantric Sting stings.

You know, I'm very attached to Sting now because Eva Cassidy covered one of these songs.

She, I was, you know, I think Eva kinda stay line at their re kind of share a

gossamer quality

yeah maybe okay must have been weird to be sting and hear

your work

delivered in that voice i think incredible what do you mean because

someone well

must be weird to be shit and

hear that done well imagine you heard

your

jokes

just delivered in the voice of an angel an angelic choir Yeah.

If you're out there, Sting.

Sting, if you want to send in some mailbag stuff, you can send it to HCTG at that.

I don't know what the actual email address is, actually.

I'm sure.

I'm sure it says it at the start.

And I'll say do it quick because we might get sacked.

Okay, yeah.

Hello, Susie, Frankie, and CMB.

I am currently in Japan, and much like Christopher, I intend on bringing this up in conversation for the foreseeable future.

I am loving the experience here and wondered if any of you have a particular fondness of any country, not Ireland.

And much like Christopher have taken on some foreign customs or beliefs in your own lives or perhaps the opposite, where you've been somewhere and utterly resented a certain aspect of how they do things.

Less advice based on all, just interested in your travel experiences.

Love the pod, been listening since day one, and it's always the soundtrack to my Monday commute to work lots of love from wales and japan jack

there you go jack's in japan

well

is there anywhere you've been and you thought this is the way to do it

not really i mean i had a friend who said to me one time you know you should travel more because then you realize that what you think you hate about scotland is just stuff you hate generally um

about the human race yeah it did sort of things i had had thought were particularly Scottish or British, like everybody rushing to get on a train or something like that, is really like common.

Prevalent, yeah.

Anywhere the social contract has crumbled, which is well maybe that's it too.

But

do you know what?

I've been to Italy quite a few times.

I'm going to go again.

I really like Italy.

And there's a nice thing to Italy, which is a double-edged sword, I bet.

But people aren't up in other people's business.

Oh, really?

People are quite self-contained.

Right.

To the point that you can feel you're kind of invisible sometimes.

You like that?

Well, after a week, you kinda go, oh, this is nice.

These people don't need anything from me, they don't want anything from me, and they don't even really notice that I'm there until we have to make some kind of transaction.

Yeah.

And that's kinda not so bad.

Japan was like that in terms of like you're a tourist and they prefer that you're not there.

The way we kinda think about like like Americans in Edinburgh or something, we're like, Jesus, these annoying bastards

and being so loud, and just everything.

That's kind of what you I felt like there.

And I was trying to be as respectful as I could with someone who

looking as Japanese as you did.

Yeah,

I thought I would blend in better, but then you know, you're farting on the subway or something, and everybody's fucking

you know, giving you looks.

Um,

or um,

well, it's like I I think in Australia as well I kind of felt like that where it was like nobody you know people say Glasgow's so friendly but in actual fact a lot of that friendliness is just getting involved in your business and you're like hey just please leave me alone.

I think people I mean I say it all the time but I think people in Glasgow are a bit bored.

There's just not that much to do here

and um we try and make our own fun, of course we do.

Um call it an art scene.

At the same time, people are a bit gossipy, a bit fucking moany.

It's a big village.

And it's a big village, isn't it?

Yeah.

And everybody knows somebody who knows you.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean?

I do think there's on the counteract from what you said, the counteracted as a response to what you said about, like,

um,

a stuff that you thought you hated about Scotland is actually the human race.

I do think that I remember being really depressed as a teenager and thinking that I didn't like being alive and then going to Australia and being like, no, I don't like being alive here.

Like this country is so

freezing and you know

the cringe factor people not really liking when you try anything.

It's limiting.

It's very limiting.

And there's a lot of interpersonal aggression.

Yeah.

And if you even if you're just as a person who notices that, you know, it can be quite wearing.

Oh,

and uh, yeah, I was reading a book about trauma, uh, the boy that keeps the score, and I was like, that's just what it's that's what I'm like, I'm always going to air room and going, right, stand my back to the wall, and just keep your eyes on everybody and stuff.

And it's like, well, that's what happens when you grow up and go to Bannerman in high school, and he's then like

people bringing knives to school and you know, threatening people in the changing rooms, and everybody's

super violent and stuff.

You're just like, Jesus, you know, there's trag, I've got trauma for that and you go to other places and they're a bit more chilled out and distant and first you're like hey fucking be nice to me because the way it is here is like a you know hyper-friendliness to combat the fact that you know you everybody has to just let me know what you like you know when you're walking around

yeah i don't know if you can ever entirely shake it i did a thing on the train i got in the wrong train the other day and uh the guy surcharged me um i felt it was a bit shit because i'd obviously just gone on the wrong platform and i did sort of mildly moan about, you know, like, and now the train's running late, and I'm not even going to make this connection that you're sort of charging me for, which I feel for a point.

But it's

a kind of thing where he was, you could tell it was a bit like, you're really just supposed to pay this and not moan, right?

Right.

And that's the civil thing to do.

And he was right, you know.

But then, you know, I was brought up in an atmosphere of, like, as you say, super violence.

Like, it was just like

absolutely the fucking Wild West.

Yeah.

And I feel I've come a long way from there.

But if you say, and you should never get a little touchy,

that's a lot to ask.

Yeah.

You know?

So

I do try, but sometimes that stuff is just in there somewhere, isn't it?

Totally, yeah.

Side note, this is from Jack.

I didn't read the PS, the side note.

Side note, I saw Christopher and Frankie and Cardiff at the new theatre, I believe.

Oh, yeah.

Excited to, or not excited, but I'm wondering what exact date that was because some of them were.

First one was sound was rough, and then the second one, they got some new equipment and it was good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was awesome.

I went to Jolly Bee, the Filipino fast food chain, those gigs, and absolutely feasted on jerk chicken.

No, no, they don't do chip chicken, they do like spicy spaghetti because they had uh they were colonised by the Americans, so they have like um

they have like loads of they love like fucking American fast food it's just like fried chicken restaurant but they think that you should have spaghetti with hot dogs cut up in it and stuff like that it's it's awesome shout out to Jolly B sponsor of the board

what was this guy's question

oh Christopher's set was mostly about Cardiff market closing down which isn't true I didn't do twenty minutes that was mostly

and then two jokes I don't have a

a full Cardiff market set

uh fortunately this was never the case.

But curse you for scaring me at the thought of never having a Cardiff Market Welsh cake again.

Sorry, I'd just like to apologise to anybody who seen me open up for Frankie.

I didn't think that I would be offended people in such a way, but.

Wasn't our worst episode in Wales?

Because we went to Swansea when I was so ill with the cold that I'd gone deaf.

Yeah.

Slightly blind as well.

And slightly blind, and I couldn't speak, really, which is a big thing.

I was drinking cough medicine on stage at Swansea Arena, and a big bit of paper fell down, fluttering from the sky, and I tried to grab it.

It was so like a stress screen.

I kept trying to grab it all the way down, and eventually it just hit the floor.

And everyone went.

Oh,

it was like an absolute fucking nightmare.

And then we had to pull the second night, live in a fucking Airbnb in Swansea with Barbara, our tour manager, and a guy there was renting us to the flat, but he was he was a guy, we shan't say his name, but it was a Welsh name.

And the post was arriving for someone called Muhammad, and he had a lot of pictures of himself with his parents around the place.

And we theorised that he was in a gay relationship with someone called Muhammad, yeah, and um, didn't want his parents to know about it, yeah.

But we got a lot of Mohammed's gear while we were there, and we had a Robert Paterson film series.

We used his Amazon Primary by

several of Robert Patson's finest ones.

How did we not get a fucking two-star review on Airbnb after that, man?

Fucking using the hosts.

Do you get upset if you don't fucking strip your bed and put it in the washing machine and all that type of stuff?

Amazing.

That was it.

But honestly, I know you were going through it in terms of your physical health due to the frankly insane tour that we were on.

That was straight back from Ireland.

We just came back from an island.

I hadn't done that, the Irish leg, so I was fresh as a daisy.

And then you just came back, and you were like, you know, shaken by the experience of being in your favourite country in the world.

Have you ever seen,

what's that film?

It's called like, it's Nicole Kidman and she doesn't even know she's dead.

Oh, what lies beneath?

The others.

The others.

Yeah, sorry.

And then the others.

Christopher Eccleston comes back from the war and he's just kind of like staring about the place and stuff because he's really dead and he's a ghost and they're in limbo or or something, but you don't know that.

But he's just like being really kind of weird and kind of like you think he's got shell shock.

That's what I was like on the Welsh leg.

Yeah.

And they couldn't have been nicer.

They gave us Welsh biscuits.

The crowds were very accepting of the fact that we'd had to postpone the show, unlike some other towns.

You hear that, Canterbury?

The crowds were.

The crowds were like, oh, well, obviously if you were ill, if you were ill, you know.

And then even people were like, oh, we could tell tell you're really putting yourself through it in the last show and I was like this is the only time audiences have ever responded with any humanity

that's off the whales.

Maybe Swansea in some sense is kind of spiritually sick and uh they could relate on some level they're like oh you're as fucked as we are don't do it him don't do them.

Swansea was phenomenal.

I thought they were phenomenal.

They've gone to stroke your face and you've bent their fucking fingers back like and that's the trauma that I have from growing up in Glasgow makes me instinctively snap at kindness.

That might be the root of our whole personalities.

Yeah.

You never really get that on those documentaries of the comics, do you?

They only go, well, he was basically incredibly traumatised.

That was the thing about him, you know, that I loved was that he was ultimately unknowable.

Swansea was, I mean,

that weekend we spent in Mumbles on the Welsh coast.

I know you were going through it, but

for me, I remember going down to the beach.

I took a photo of you on that beach, which was an invasion of your privacy.

But,

you know, I was gazing out.

I was gazing out wistfully across the sea.

I was going through it.

Did ever send it to you?

I don't think so.

I'd love to see it.

I'll find it for you.

It was like, I mean, it was, if you ever...

There's a Lost Campsino, some of my favourite Welsh indie pop group.

And they have a song called The Sea is a Great Place to Think About the Future.

And it is, you just go out, you have a look, and you watch it go in and out, and you go, Well, that's the cycle of the moon, that's the cycle of the sun, that's the cycle of the sea.

You know, we live in cycles, and maybe some cycles should end.

It was beautiful, I really came to terms with things there in Mumbles, and also thought, you know, I'd love to retire here with a pack of greyhounds.

I think it'd be

good for both you and Mumbles if you ended up there.

Thank you so much, Jack.

Have we answered it in any way?

Perhaps the opposite.

We've been somewhere and utterly resented a certain aspect of how they do things.

I find a slight thing, you might get this if you went to a very posh English town, but generally not, there's too much civility.

But you do get it in America, which is

people will

just not process your accent because they go, I'm at the top of the cultural tree.

I've heard someone with an accent.

I'm just going to go, what?

Sorry.

I can't hear that yeah exactly

and like I've been in America and gone to the same place to order the same meal being an autist

like for a week and someone's going why are you talking like well it's the same thing I said yesterday and the day before I think you can understand the accent you just don't want to do the microsecond of decoding and you know you don't really have to yeah um

and that's annoying yeah I mean it's just the vills are coming in from a different angle and you just need to kind of adjust your head a wee bit I guess it is weird because like

it's just that kind of isolationist thing that's so prevalent in America where they're like, we don't need the rest of the world, we are the world.

And you're like, not for much longer, let's see.

China's coming.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Christ.

China.

And various Chinese gods.

Bureaucratic.

It's a large system of bure bureaucratic gods, essentially.

I'd love to know more.

I'm sure I will know more when I'm re-educated.

A five-year course in

Chinese cosmology.

Yeah.

I can't wait for that.

Right, well, thank you so much, Jack.

Is there anywhere I've been?

And do you know,

is there anywhere I've been and absolutely resented the way they do things?

Yes, but I'm just generally quite a resentful person and I don't like change.

I think some places in,

you know, I went to Surrey recently to do a work in progress.

And me and Susie have gone back in the extremely near future to the point where this episode will not be out.

And

I just didn't like the vibe of the place.

It was just, I just, I just knew for a fact everybody here is loaded.

It's banker belt.

Yeah.

It's like if you've made some money.

There's a certain type of English person aspires to be there as well.

And

that's not great.

It was a kind of beautiful moment though.

I don't know if I told you this, where I was, it was a really hot day and I went down to there was a public park and I went down to the river and there was these fish kind of sunbathing in the heat like they were just you know and they're wiggling just to keep the place.

It's like a whole school of I don't know, they were bigger than anything you would see in the Kelvin.

I don't know if they were trout or something, but they were beautiful stunning fish and they were sunbathing.

And there was ducks and things and I sat under the willow with my back to a willow tree and the perfect kind of canopy and shade that the willow tree was.

And a postman came by.

And he went, sitting under the willow tree, sensible.

And I was like, yeah, I'm being sensible, man.

The weird thing is, I got deja vu there.

And you've done that as well.

And in my deja vu,

you say after that, I go, I've got deja vu, and you go, no, you've just heard me say it before.

That's my deja vu.

Blurning and fucking inception thing, man.

Maybe you have heard me say before.

Is this the deja vu as well?

This is

the deja vu.

I'm simply a

simply a puppet.

Simply a puppet in the painting.

Here's the thing you get in England mainly, but you can get it in Scotland as well, obviously.

Jobs worth three.

So you don't really get in other countries, so you don't really get you know, like that thing I was telling you about.

I went to a buffet on the train, and there was a guy who was like, Couldn't he really walk?

And I said, Could I get his free stuff to bring it back to him?

And they went, No, he would have to come down.

No, I'm afraid

we can't do that.

Well, he can he walk, right?

Could you just, and they're like, Well, he'd have to show me his ticket.

I'm like, Okay, and you've got to think of a way around it.

Well, if I show you my ticket, then I buy stuff, and I can give the guy the regular stuff and whatever.

And you're like, in france if someone did that to you it'd be because they were being a prick yeah and they bullied you they hated you they hated you

you bullied them in school and they remember it you know there would be some but any other country certainly in europe they would sort of go oh how do we get around this yeah you know at the what at worst do you know what i mean my girlfriend got uh

she was on the tube do you know how the tube joins into the the overground rail sometimes and you you tap on she got out to the middle of nowhere to pick up a chest of drawers from like a Facebook marketplace thing and she was out past the limits of London and the guy was like she was like oh I'm sorry I'm not from she's clearly not from Uskana accent

and uh the guy's like I'm sorry you know I'm generally considered a bit of a junk by my colleagues but we're gonna have to charge you fine and um you know fine yeah she's not even just a ticket

finder for not having a ticket essentially you're not really supposed to do anything it's like come on man I would love to murder him.

I was on that train I was on back up this weekend from London.

The train I was supposed to be on was on platform two and I was on platform.

I got on the train platform three, so it was really obvious what would happen.

And then the guy was like, no, I'm gonna.

And you're like,

man, that's not, life's not fair, I guess.

But then I think it would be better.

You know, the thing of total civility of just going, oh, well, my mistake, and just see the bed it later and kill a bunch of people

would be better than you know I always you know I'll always be a slightly moany if that happens and I don't know that adds anything or that it's like the guy's just got to get about his day and he's got to do the thing and

you know maybe I should just be like

here you go.

I guess they

don't have any power in their life

You know, so it's like this is the one piece of power they have over you or anybody.

No one loves them.

They don't have children probably.

And this is the one thing they have is that they can go up to people who are on the wrong train and go, give me some money now.

Well, you piece of shit.

I don't know there is that much.

I think it's more than

it's just a system of stuff that if you turn up on some other train without the fucking voucher, that someone might go, he should have.

At the point.

He's covering his ass.

Which, do you know what I mean?

In this economy, fair enough yeah

who's it blame really

capitalism

yeah

neoliberalism neoliberalism that's another thing about like you know like ethical share funds and all that stuff you're like where you invested in railways because like that's the ethical thing to invest in it's greener and all that stuff but it's also privatized and it's spreading a lot of human misery.

Like everybody on that train is miserable for a different reason.

It's just like...

you see comedians who mainly work by train.

Have you ever seen any of those?

Me.

And then

you.

The other one is Robin Ince.

Robin Ince

only seems to work by train.

Yeah.

Can't drive.

And like their lives seem to be really like affected by how terrible the profiteering bastards on the trains are.

I'm traveling less for kicks because these are people trying to get around the country to spread joy

that you're like in misery yeah in the interests of what some fucker having an extra like

Dutch shareholder having a fucking second boat tell you what I do like to have a wee bright side something I like about can I can I loosely tie this into the question foreign customs or beliefs that I have a fondness for in Manchester on the TransPennine Express There is no coach C where the shop.

A lady or a man brings a cart through the train and goes, Do you want a drink?

You go, I'd love an iron brewer, black coffee, some shortbread, maybe a Twix, maybe a pack of crisps.

And you don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to leave a bag in your seat, they might be pinched.

You feel like a human being, and maybe a cafe, and there's a degree of civility to it.

I just want to say thank you to the Transparent Express for restoring my faith in Train Snacks.

There's something about the train service, isn't there?

Where it's like it's a useful Buddhist lesson.

Do you know what I mean?

And what?

Well, you think you've got to be somewhere.

You think you're important.

It's important you get to Manchester for your gig.

And the train service is there to say, it's not important to us.

It's not important to the universe.

It's not important to the universe.

Yeah.

Do you know what?

You're stuck in fucking crew

and you're not going to get to do your gig.

And everyone's going to have to get refunded.

And it's

a tremendous lesson in humility.

It's a leveler.

That we we have to take on board doesn't matter if you're in first class

you're not getting you're not getting any

yeah

you're stranded in wagon

warring

anyway uh thank you jack um

i'm sorry that i've made you believe that the cardiff market was closing down tell you what I went to Leeds market.

Have you been there?

Highgate market?

I've been all around the markets of Leeds a few weeks ago.

Really?

Oh, because you were where I was, yeah.

Shout out to the new Glee Club in Leeds, Fantastic Comedy Club.

If you're a Yorkshire-based

brain-damaged ape, I'm trying to bring back the fan group named Brain Damaged Apes if you're listening to this.

If you're.

I thought you were just describing the standard glee crowd.

No, no.

In the first episode, we called the listeners to this brain-damaged apes, and we forgot to do it for, I would say, 160 episodes.

So

I'm bringing it back.

Good club.

Great club.

Really nice curtains and stage and sound quality and lights and bar.

And it's in a good spot in town.

Please check it out if you're a Yorkshire legend.

And

the market there, I thought, was absolutely.

It was the day Aussie Osborne was retiring and all the goths were in the market selling off crow-themed hats and

various home decorations if you love skeletons and things like that.

It was like the only problem in that town is

full of stags and hens.

Like,

to the point where there must be four or five thousand stags and hens staying in the city centre of a weekend.

So I would go out to the hotel at 11 every morning, and there's already Vikings and fucking Blues Brothers, some people dressed up as bees,

some people in fucking Bingley attire, and they're all drinking.

like people start drinking the minute the fucking pub opens.

I was getting a what a 10.30am train from Leeds to Glasgow

and um on Sunday there and the weatherspoons was RAM oh with people

um really down in pints and like oh I won't have a I won't have a pint I'll have a big glass of wine and it's like it's it's a morning guys it's not you're not in an airport even that's weird but like you're not in an airport you're really uh Leeds train station but yeah, also say, Can we get fucking

vending machines back on the platforms so that when we're avoiding all the cunts in the main bit, we can still get a Twix?

There used to be more vending machines on platforms.

Can I say something?

I don't know if you'll agree with this, maybe, but what I've noticed from my recent trips to Manchester and Leeds is that boots don't refrigerate the drinks.

Yes, and W.H.

Smiths does refrigerate the drinks.

Never get a train drink from Boots because the fridges aren't turned on.

They make a noise.

They're just saving money.

They're saving money.

They're playing a fridge noise underneath that thing.

They're paying a wee boy.

They go

underneath it.

Well, in Manchester, every current speaks like that anyway.

It's just the hum of conversation.

Yeah.

I went for a walk down the canal in Leeds.

Alright, I wouldn't do that.

No?

Didn't.

No, no, I wouldn't.

Not in a strange town.

I love a canal system.

I looked up, I sent this to Irea, who runs the Leeds Glee.

Wait, I'll find this.

This was

just an idea for a holiday, maybe for the podcast, maybe for just

whoever.

But you can go on a walking holiday from Leeds to Liverpool.

and walk along the canal for like nine days straight, stopping off in Barnsley or Wigan or whatever.

They're calling that a fucking refugee crisis.

I can't imagine the social upheaval that would lead to me willingly

making that horrendous walk.

I believe it's the plot of 28 years later.

It's that walk.

I love to go by the canal.

There was there was really turquoise coloured dragonflies hovering and ducks and lily pads and and there was some industrial waste as well.

But I just, I really loved it, I find it really relaxing walking by the canal for some reason, even though I've went on the Reddit and a lot of people get pushed in.

A lot of cyclists, gangs will kind of hang about there and go, Oh, cyclists coming through, and then when cyclists come through, they shove the cyclist, and a few of them have died, sadly.

So, I have seen that, but I'm still planning my nine-day walking tour from Leeds to Liverpool through Barnes Lane Wiggin.

And I think that would be a really nice way to spend a week or two.

That's real sad about those cyclists.

But you did have a smile when I said that.

You know.

I don't think cyclists should be on canal paths.

No.

No, you don't.

And I, you know, if these people have to Batman them, I don't agree with them being killed, but, you know, why wouldn't vigilante mobs start to form vehicles for streets?

Yeah.

Get yourself.

Also, you keep the fucking cycle paths open then.

You're degrading your own cycle infrastructure by whizzing about in the canal.

Where it could be somewhere where people take their kids or whatever, but they cannot because you're fucking whipping about

whizzing paths.

Getting microphone.

Do you know what I mean?

Disgraceful behaviour.

Cyclists are really touchy.

We did that stuff about cyclists, like they get in touch with you.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They go, well, really?

So they kind of act like you're a fucking, you know, like a genocide denier or something, the way they speak to you.

They come in and they're like, really all my friends and family who cycle are being murdered on the streets by motorists and you're having a go just because uh a cyclist ran over your dog's lead and choked your dog to death snapped his neck instantly you think that's everybody's fault and not one by the apple you're like come on man it's a joke stop at traffic lights

Do you know what I mean?

You want to improve your standing with the pedestrian community?

Stop just fucking riding through.

So you'd be nearly killed.

Yeah, that would be awesome, guys.

And maybe wear looser clothes.

Wear looser clothes or camouflage.

Your cock and balls in some way.

You know.

I don't want to see the exact shape of your shapeless ass.

The way that your back goes right into your legs without any curvature.

See, if you have an arse, show off.

See, if you have an absence of ass, an anti-ass,

an indent where your bum hole goes, don't wear lycra.

Not to body shame anybody.

But but

I'm I'm deeply body shaming the one guy I keep saying on the kill and walk with

what are you training for?

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

What are you training for?

The apocalypse already happened.

You think your family want you to get home quicker?

Do you know what I mean?

You fucking creepy

Batman villain dressed

fucking touchy arsehole.

Yeah.

They would rather you took three trains and a walk.

Do you know what I mean?

They'd be happy if you turned up at eight and they'd have left some dinner in the oven for you.

It's still water.

They don't want you fucking there at 5.45

with your fucking

five fibres.

It's good for fitness.

They don't want you a lifelong.

No.

They want you here.

No, that's that's probably too harsh.

It's not too harsh.

Well, it's it's it's harsh if you don't want really annoying messages on Instagram.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

So yeah.

I hope you enjoy living in Japan, Jack.

Do you know what I liked about Japan?

The bakery scene.

The croissants, the pastries.

where

my god they have a real hard on for france like they love France so much.

They wish they were France, essentially.

And

they just

every

bakery you were in was just absolutely world-class and individually wrapped.

And

it was like heaven.

Everybody was heaven.

Do you think anime,

I think, has a crossover with French

kind of comic books and Mobius and

French storytelling, cinema?

Yeah.

Even like Tintin or something, like French animation and

100%.

Evangelian certainly wouldn't be.

If you were to place it in the European film canon, it wouldn't be.

I miss.

It wouldn't be British, it would be French.

Yeah, 100%, yeah.

Well, there you go.

Jack, thank you so much.

There you go, brother.

Let's do another one.

Hi, Frankie, Susie, and Christopher and Bruce Randy.

Not sure if this is mailbag worthy, but I thought you'd be interested in this.

I've noticed a couple of times that you have mentioned whether Mrs.

Columbo existed or was a figment of Lieutenant's imagination.

Yes, we've mentioned this a few times.

Well, guess what?

There was a spin-off from Columbo.

Guess what?

Listen to this fucking prank.

Mel, guess what?

Like, we didn't know there was a Mrs.

Columbo.

Like, we don't exist in the same culture as you

guess what?

There was a spin-off from Columbo.

It starred Kate Mulgrew, Captain Janry from Star Trek Voyage.

We know we also have eyes.

As Mrs.

Columbo, a news reporter who solves crimes while raising her daughter, it ran for two short seasons and did not do well.

It debuted in February 1979 as a spin-off to Columbo, focusing on his wife, who's never given a first name in the original Columbo series, but was named Kate in this series.

After poor ratings and reception from both audiences and the original producers of Columbo, which is unprofessional of them to really state anything about it, both the series and the eponymous character herself were renamed in an attempt to change direction, but that did not help ratings.

Neither Peter Falk nor the character of Lieutenant Columbo ever appeared on the show.

Well, to what extent is it Canon then?

Do you know what I mean?

A lot of stuff happens in fictional universes and you don't go like Batman goes back in time to become a caveman in the Grant Morrison Batman series.

Dad then, if I talk about Batman, does I get someone going, Well, actually he was a caveman.

You can't insist on all iterations of a fictional thing.

Yeah.

I'd imagine in this, you know, in in in the world we live in now, we're much more au fait with the idea of the multiverse and things of that nature.

You would probably regard Mrs.

Colombo as a kinda AU, alternate universe version of um

Colombo rather than as

I think.

Also, somebody worked out age-wise if you went the age of Kate Mogrew when she was in that versus what age he was.

It was like his wife was like 12 when they met, and I don't think we're comfortable as

a culture with the idea that Colombo was a prolific one-eyed paedophile.

He'd take his eye out and roll it as a marble to entrance children under doors to see what was behind a locked door.

excuse me i've lost my marble my wife's a paedophile sorry

you know my wife's 12 years old i i don't know

i think his wife was his jungian

is it anime like that no not anime uh an anime anima his female side

um

and he could access it very clearly so he's like my wife and he means when he goes home and he throws off his masculine persona Is it the animus?

Is that animal?

Where's a slip?

And he's nylon.

I love the work of this composer.

My wife loves to

be an anima.

You know.

Yeah, perhaps.

I mean, maybe, yeah.

And it's just a way of

getting to the heart of things, you know, and understand things from a different perspective.

Like a shaman, you know, shamans used to dress up as the opposite sex.

Traditionally, a male female would dress up as a female.

Really?

Yeah.

And that was a way of accessing a different side of themselves.

That's probably Columbo.

I'm more of a shaman than anything, really.

He was a shamanic totem of justice.

He was operating on a very narrow class basis.

He was just like, if I turn up to something and some rich guys there, probably they did it.

Which is true.

Which is true.

Marxist.

And I think that's something because I know recently, who was it?

Rian Johnson, I think, tried to, well, not tried to, he has poker face, which is a kind of attempt to do in the ape, the titles of Colombo with the opening credits and stuff.

But it was an attempt to be like, what if Colombo was in the modern day and it was a woman, and for some reason they had a magical power where they could tell where someone was lying.

That they'd never managed to make any money at all.

Unbelievably, they work in a casino and have never been able to monetize the fact that they are the world's greatest poker player.

Okay,

good plot.

Let's get going.

Yeah,

it's like crazy show.

That is not good.

There's a thing where you can see notes on screen, like sometimes, and there's like one episode that just starts with her going, if I use my credit card, the fucking guy that's after me will be here in three hours.

And she's, you're always getting a note in script and stuff going, can it be a ticking clock?

And so she sets the thing to three hours and looks at a thing, and you're just like.

And then a crime happens, and she goes, ooh, I'll have to solve this in three hours.

There are not enough morons in the world.

Nobody

is that.

I mean, it's a metaphor.

The first thing is it's a metaphor.

It's a metaphor.

When people say, can it be a ticking clock?

You mean, can we create some greater sense of urgency here?

But it's become actualised, and you actually see it happening things.

And it's

a real waste of everyone's time, that show, I think.

Yeah, it could have been good.

But I think one thing they lose from is the class analysis.

Obviously, her Natasha Leone in real life is incredibly moneyed, I believe, comes from

a showbiz background, I think.

But

the character is like, you know, I work in a, I work in a casino.

But,

like, in the third episode, the bad guy is like a trailer park guy who works in a gas station and someone wins the lottery and then he kills him, takes the ticket and stuff.

And it's like, we've immediately lost the interesting thing about Colombo, which was, it was, uh, you know, it was, was it,

would the Italian people be considered people of colour back in the 70s?

Oh, it changed.

So the Italian people would have been considered people of colour.

And it started to change after the Second World War

because

um there was this kind of deal with the mob and lucky luciano to um protect american docks and they sort of became incorporated into the the racial structure of america more there and it progressed into the 70s when people are still being called slurs

um uh to now where they would kind of be considered white yeah

so it's like he was like And he always talks about it in the episodes, he's always like, you know, I'm Italian.

And he's always eating chili and a fucking diner and stuff in the early episodes.

We love that.

But

it's this thing of like, here's an immigrant cop in LA and he's disgusting.

His jacket's filthy and he smells smoke.

And he's going in and he's taking down the fucking big dogs, you know, the film directors and the composers and

the gallery owners.

The magicians.

The magicians of the world.

The Nazi magicians, though.

Spoiler a little bit.

If you haven't seen

1979 episode of Columbo.

If there's any consolation to anyone offended by the Nazis, the actor died in the most horrible way imaginable.

Don't look it up.

No, it's really sad.

It's really terrible.

And he was a great villain.

He was a great villain twice.

Three times?

Three times.

He was a magician.

He was a

writer who killed his co-writer.

That was the first time.

First episode directed by Steven Steven Spielberg.

Once, twice, three times, a Colombo villain.

Not the melody to that song, but it's well, you know.

So, yeah, I mean,

I don't know.

I guess nowadays, if you'd be a podcaster, they'd be like a Joe Rogan

instead of a detective.

Oh,

why is fucking Joe Rogan an investigator?

My wife wife loves Patreon, you know.

You're saying nowadays Joe Rogan would have a guest on

they would cancel him mid-podcast.

Joe Rogan would go, oh, is that right?

Put something in the brandied water, liquid death,

make it actually liquid this.

I have one of my brain pills.

It's actually fucking rat poison.

And then has to wipe the video feed.

But

the Bruce Randy of the Joe Rogan, wow, we should write this down.

Yeah, let's pitch it to BBC Scotland.

And they will not make it because it's a good idea.

But what a wow.

That was from Stephen from Tipperary.

Does that change the way you took his question?

I've forgotten his question.

It was just going, Are you familiar with Mrs.

Columbo?

Oh,

well, what a pedantic Irish fuck.

Yeah, we know.

We know.

Where was it?

We were in Turles.

That's where we were in Tipperaries.

Yeah.

Turles.

I hope you enjoy the local art centre in Turlos.

Stephen, absolutely cracking place to see.

Sharon Shannon.

And the box fiddle maestro.

There's a little cathedral there I would have liked to have got to.

We almost had dinner with the two Johnnies, but they were hosting a

quiz night.

I think me, you and the two Johnnies is a crossover that will please no one.

I think Columbo would go into us like a fucking bowling ball into a set of pins, man.

So, why were you?

You were seeing Sherry Shannon.

My wife loves a box fiddle, really.

She's never not playing your music, Miss Shannon.

And you say that the bass player for YouTube was.

What did you mean by that?

My wife was fascinated by the story of the GAA catfish.

She can't get enough of that.

Let's remember my take on the GA catfish, which is.

let's have a bit of a background for any

crack in tan, as a blind boy would say.

Yeah.

The two Johnnies present a podcast where

one of their most popular series of episodes is about a woman, the GA catfish, who was catfishing through various social media profiles, both one of the two Johnnies, one of the podcasters, and famous Irish footballers, famous GA players.

And you know what?

Now that it's all kind of wound up and there's been several episodes and blah, blah, blah,

my take is

she's not really doing any harm.

She's trapping a few thirsty podcasters and a few.

Someone's not getting invited for dinner with the two Johnnies anytime soon, Frank.

A few big GAA dafties.

Yeah.

And

do you know what?

I don't think it's the worst thing in the world.

No.

And, you know, maybe it's just a wee warning.

Be very careful if someone who looks like a supermodel online keeps trying to hook up with you and he's never there.

Take a telling.

Yeah.

Maybe have a FaceTime.

There's also a slight thing where it's people are going.

And then the 15th time I went to try and see her.

And you're like, fucking cop on.

Take a hint, brother.

Take a hint.

Yeah.

It's the internet.

Get on your toes.

Yeah.

The crazy thing about the UA Catfish stuff for me was that like generally the tone of

the two Johnnies would not be a missing in global me.

It's a very mainstream

normal millennial

you know slightly pop punk coded.

They've released a few singles in the style of busted.

Someone, not me, described them as a cauchy busted.

Cauchy.

Cauchy is a pejorative Irish term for someone from the countryside.

It's chukter.

It's chukta.

It's Irish chukter.

Irish chukter.

And nobody likes being called it.

I've found.

If someone's from Cork and you go, oh,

you know, you shouldn't even bring it up to someone from Cork.

I do what though, and people in Donegal wouldn't mind being called a cousin because they wouldn't know what the fuck you meant.

Because it's so isolated that they don't even know that they've been insulted.

I can't wait to go to Donegal at some point in my life and really be took.

Me, I'm going to be over soon.

Well, listen, I want to be doing the French next year, so maybe we should marry Dunnalit.

Mary of Dunnellet, man.

Stephen from Tipperary said, love the pod.

To finish off his letter, any plans to do some live shows in Ireland?

Right now, the podcast is very much up in the air.

The podcast?

If you've ever seen a volleyball tournament, you'll know that oftentimes things can be up in the air.

I'm trying to think of a film that might be like a current situation.

Titanic.

But yeah, we don't know really about the longevity of the podcast for various reasons.

Yeah.

Um

but yeah, we could we could go to Mary from Dunlois anyway.

I'll be doing stand-up in Ireland next year at some point.

I've got a really nice place in Ireland for a week.

No.

In the autumn?

Yeah.

I won't do it but I'll be interested in that with Mike.

I love Ireland.

The crisps, the chocolate, the people, the butter, the sausages, the social acceptability of having a chalk ice at any time of day in any situation.

Yeah, and like

the pints.

My goal this year is to have a pint of beamish.

Oh, yeah.

And to have a pint of, what's the other one?

It's like a Guinness, but it's not a Guinness essentially.

It's like a Stout.

I have a need to have a pint of Murphy Stout and a pair of Beamish and just kind of see what else is out there.

I know you've not been watching this series of Love Island.

No, I have not.

Have you?

Yeah.

Wow.

But they've got an Irish guy on there.

He's an Irish rugby player.

And what do you think he's doing?

Episode 2.

So you have the introduction episode to pick each other and blah, blah, blah.

And see you next week.

For essentially, the first thing.

What do you think he's doing in the first scene that you see him in Love Island?

He's sitting in the, you know, in their

fire

or whatever.

Yeah.

He's eating a chalk ice.

Really?

It doesn't even seem...

I've never seen a chalk ice on Love Island.

No, no, no.

I didn't think they had access to it.

How did he get it?

He lived probably

his contract.

Yeah,

listen, I'll do it.

I need a constant stream of chalk ices around the fire pit.

Chalk ice on the fire pit sounds like a great way to live your life.

The heat

dancing at your toes while

chocolate ice cream melts in your mouth.

Sounds like it should be sung to the tune of footsteps on the dance floor.

Was that go like chalk ice on the fire pit reminds me, baby?

Have you?

Oh, yeah, I know that's there.

Did I tell you about the chalk talk?

No, or is this Susie?

Susie, you're right.

Okay, that's

yeah, we've been talking about chalk ices for about 25 minutes.

I know, but what about when like the ice cream van came and it was like, ah, but there's chalk ices in the freezer?

Never liked that.

We never even had fucking chalk ices in the freezer.

We had never minders fuck all

never mind us all what about a re-jubilee

yeah and also you could suck all the flavouring out of it and all the good stuff and then have the thing left as a weapon with a pre-made sling the jubilee cup so you could just shoot it at some kinds

people make glasgow just going to keep saying this every time we we talk violence what else has been happening christopher was referring to something as the chocolate tip.

I don't know.

The chalk top.

The chalk top.

In Australian cinemas,

they dip full ice cream inside chocolate, then flash-freeze it, then sell it in a plastic bag.

So you're in the cinema with a frozen chocolate ice cream and then it melts in your hands and it's extremely messy.

I guess they grow up with it so they don't make a difference.

In your hands, there's no stick.

No, there's a cone and stuff.

I just fucked it.

I don't know.

I was unfamiliar with the signs.

I'm a fan of a Cornetto, of course, yeah.

Do you enjoy a video?

This would be a Cornetto, but dipped in chocolate and then remember, we went to that cookie place in Birmingham for my birthday.

This is an hour's internet, it was like that, but in case, yeah, Cornetto's class, yeah.

So, see, when you were on tour with Frankie, did you go to your cookie and ice cream place?

It was my birthday.

This is such a father son, I love it.

It's not a father son, it's two colleagues eating ice cream for someone's birthday.

Remember that time we were walking up by the stand?

Listen, when we used to do these warm-up gigs at the Glee, we were walking up by the stand, and this German lassie comes out and recognises me.

Oh my god, Frankie Boyle!

She had no voice.

She was like, I can't, oh my god.

She's a big Frankie fan, but she couldn't speak.

She was like, lost a voice.

I'm sorry, I lost my voice.

Frankie Boyle, what are you doing here?

But she doesn't know who Christopher is.

So at some point, she goes, slightly rudely, I would think, she goes, so who are you?

To Christopher, and Christopher went, I'm a colleague.

We're two colleagues out for a stroll.

I believe one of my best friends accosted you.

Not accosted you, but came up to you in the South Side the other week.

Oh, yeah, she had a mad nickname that was like gooby.

Gooby.

Gooby magic voice.

To me, Gooby says like goober.

And I was like, Has Susie nicknamed her this?

Because she's a mad, clumsy goober.

No, it's because she had a big gooby bust off ear when we were growing up, but she's still gooby,

Still one of my best mates.

She was slightly deformed growing up, so

she's a great person.

A bust-off ear is nothing, it's absolutely nothing.

It's when a bust-op early.

It's when one ear kind of stands out more than the other, so it looks like a big, a big bust-up.

But

I saw no, she's a she's she's good, she's a long-time listener

of the guillotine.

She used to listen when she lived in France and when she lived in Florida, and she used to thoroughly enjoy it.

Listening to his gibbering pish.

We've put Peda that with several rambling responses to people's problems.

People's problems.

I think that could be an episode.

We often say that.

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