Ep 274: Andy Zaltzman (Christmas Special)

James, huge news from the world of off-menu and indeed the world of the world.

Yes.

Ever heard of the Royal Albert Hall?

I have.

We've done live shows there.

And guess what?

We're doing more live shows there next year.

Sure, a lot of them are sold out already.

But we thought, hey, throw these guys a bone.

Let's put on one final Royal Albert Hall show in that run.

The show will be on Monday, the 16th of March.

It's going to be a tasting menu, a returning guest coming back, receiving the menu of another previous guest.

Those shows have been a lot of fun.

We cannot wait to do them live.

Who will we pull out of our little magic bag?

You'll have to come along on the 16th of March to find out.

If I'm correct in thinking, presale tickets go on pre-sale on the 10th of September.

Pre-sale tickets are 10th of September at 10 a.m.

And then the general sale is 12th of September at 10 a.m.

So if you miss out on the pre-sale, don't forget general sale is only two days later.

The day in between is for reflecting.

Get your tickets from royalalberthall.com Hall.com or offmenupodcast.co.uk.

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Welcome to the Off-Menu podcast.

I've definitely done this before, heating the brandy of conversation, lighting the flame of chat, pouring over the Christmas pudding of the internet, you've got yourself a Christmassy off menu.

Have you seen Black Doves?

No.

Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Black Doves, but the very last shot of it.

I haven't.

I already told you I haven't seen it, so why are you giving me a spoiler alert?

Well, it's not really a spoiler.

Okay.

Because what's funny is that it's got nothing to do with anything.

There's been this whole kind of like spy like drama.

Yeah.

And then the very last shot is Kieran Knightley pouring brandy over a Christmas pudding, lighting it, and then looking in the camera.

That said, Gamble.

My My name is James Acasser.

Together, we own a dream restaurant and every single week.

We invite in a guest now in their favourite ever start a main course dessert, side dish and drink, not in that order.

And this week, our Christmasy guest is.

Andy Zaltzman.

Andy Zaltzman, a fantastic comedian, podcaster, taskmaster, champion.

A cricket commentator.

A cricket stats man.

I told my dad, we've got Andy Zaltzman on this week, and I didn't know my dad knew Andy.

Yeah.

But my dad does like cricket.

Well, Well, if you like cricket, you know Andy.

And my dad just went, it's like he was genuinely happy for Andy.

Yeah.

And he just went, that man has a great life.

That man has a great life and a great career.

Yeah.

And it must have been his dream growing up.

I bet he can't believe he gets to do all that.

I'm really happy for Andy.

To be on off-menu.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what it was.

Yeah.

People who like cricket are.

jealous of Andy's career and are very happy for him.

Yes.

John Robbins wants Andy Zaltzmann's career, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Has said on multiple occasions.

We can't wait to chat to Andy.

I love Andy.

He's so funny.

Yes.

Hilarious man, lovely man.

I don't know if he's a lover of food.

We'll find out, I guess.

We'll find out.

We'll find out.

I think he is.

I think I've heard some stuff in the past about him

cooking and, you know, dinner parties and all of that sort of stuff.

That's quite promising.

I think we're on safe ground.

You know what?

I've heard about him.

Go on.

So he's got a brand new show, The Zoltgeist, which he is touring nationwide as part of his biggest UK and Ireland tour.

Run into the 9th of May at London's Leicester Square Theatre.

For full dates and tickets, you know what?

Andyzoltzman.co.uk.

Yeah, go and see Andy on tour.

He is always brilliant.

The amount of material that he generates for his stand-up as part of the bugle, his podcast.

Of course.

So definitely get along to that.

But if Andy says a secret ingredient on which we have pre-agreed, he will be kicked out of the dream restaurant and at Christmas, no less.

Oh, this week.

The secret ingredient is

wax lettuce.

Wax lettuce, of course, picked by last week's Christmas guest, Rose Mattefeo.

Yes, and instantly we're like, great, we can use that as a secret ingredient because it's a weird thing to order on your

dream menu.

I mean, Andy can be a weird guy, so he might pick wax lettuce.

We've seen him subvert things on Taskmaster.

Yeah.

Go the surreal route.

Yes.

So this is not out of the question here.

And it would be quite satisfying to kick out a guest the week after for something that was on the previous menu and inspired the choice.

I mean, that's like.

And it's rare that we record so close to release.

Yeah.

And after the last one has been released.

So the fact that we get to use a secret ingredient from a previous episode that was only a week before is very exciting.

Yeah.

I mean, for the listener, we're recording this on the day last week's was released.

Yes.

So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, this is exactly a week ago.

This is only a week ago.

These words could be hitting your ears exactly one week before since I said them.

Yeah, but a lot can happen in a week.

A lot can happen in a week.

They might have found that guy who shot that other guy.

Who popped the CEO?

Yeah.

Benito thinks they found him.

If they found him, there you go.

That's how quickly if you're listening to this podcast, mate.

Well, anyway, enough of this Christmassy chat.

Let's get on with some more of it with our special guest, the brilliant Andy Andy Zoltzmann.

I've mentioned you.

Welcome, Andy, to the Dream Restaurant.

Oh, it's great.

It's great to be here.

Welcome, Andy Zoltman, to the Dream Restaurant.

It's been here for some time.

Now, that was unusual, Andy.

This is, I mean, we've done nearly 300 episodes.

And James, as the genie, normally bursts out of the lamp with the sound you would expect.

Yeah.

So you're a Christmas turkey bursting out of the lamp today.

Right.

Yeah.

Do turkeys make that.

I'm not sure turkeys.

Turkado-doo.

I don't think that's a turkey.

Go to the turkey.

It would be turkey-doodle-doo if they did it.

Turkey-doodle-doo!

Yeah, yeah, turkey-doodle-doo.

For me, a turkey would say gobble-gobble.

Right.

Well, it depends.

Depends on the turkey, I think, doesn't it?

I don't think it does depend on the turkey.

I think standard turkey would be gobble, gobble, gobble.

Right.

But

cockle-doodle-doo.

Cockle-doodle-doo.

Text in now.

Text in now, listeners, what you're thinking about.

And if you found a magic lamp and you rubbed it and a turkey came out of it,

how would that make you feel?

Well, I think

I'd be disappointed.

I'd be respectful of the turkey, I hope.

Good to hear.

You know, I'd invite the turkey to go back into the lamp.

Yeah.

That would be my first wish, actually.

Can the turkey grant me wishes or is it just a turkey?

Yeah, quite right.

Here we go.

Absolutely.

If it pops out the lamp, it can grant you wish.

Right.

Yeah, it's got a lot of water.

Well, I'd wish

to get back in the lamp.

But then, would I then lose my other two?

I presume it's just three-wish turkeys, isn't it?

Yeah, you'd have to whisper you over two lamps into the spout of the lamp.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, is what you'd be faced with.

Would you be hoping that there'd be other things in the lamp?

So if you put the turkey back in, you rubbed it, maybe some genie would eventually come out.

You'd expect there to be probably a fox and a bag of grain in there.

Well, you're a Christmas turkey genie today.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.

In terms of the evolution of the turkey, training yourself to say gobble, gobble when you are a foodstuff is probably not really

particularly helpful, is it?

It's putting ideas in people's heads.

Exactly.

Well, that's why it's so popular on Christmas.

You know, it worked out that it's the driest meat.

Right.

So it needed to do something to establish itself on people's menus.

Right.

So gobble, gobble is what it went with.

It's probably our move.

See, obviously, if I was a potentially edible animal, I'd probably have evolved so that my natural call sounded like I taste disgusting, don't eat me.

Yeah.

Rather than gobble, rather than inviting

people to go to industrial exploitation.

So what sort of call would you go for?

Well,

I don't know.

I mean, it's cockadoodle.

Don't, don't eat.

Cockadoodle, do not eat.

Yeah.

Or something that suggested you were smelly, maybe like poo-ee,

something like that.

That would put me off eating an animal, I think.

Yeah.

But, you know, there's so much for Darwin.

One of the little birds in a Beatrix Potter book calls out little bit of bread and no cheese.

I remember that as a kid.

In one of the Beatrix Potter books, I can't remember what animal it is, but she was like basically trying to say what its bird song sounds like.

And it was a little bit of bread and no cheese.

And I remember it very distinctly as a kid.

Yeah, but she had hedgehogs wearing dresses and stuff.

I mean, it's not scientifically accurate and stuff, to be fair,

to Potter.

I mean, if you're choosing between Potter and Attenborough in terms of reliability of facts about the natural world, you go with Attenborough anytime.

You got to go with Attenborough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big Dave.

Yeah.

Oh, David Attenberg.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Fair enough.

I was thinking dinosaurs are real.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They were real originally.

Yeah.

Yeah, but this is not the big revelation that James doesn't believe in dinosaurs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I do believe in them.

They're the OGs.

The OG, the OG turkeys in many ways.

That would be different.

This would have been huge, bad.

Eating one of that.

Enormous.

I'd like to see Jurassic Park, but with the sound redone, so the T-Rex is saying gobble, gobble.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah, and voiced by Andy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm happy to do that.

Do you like Christmas, Andy?

Um, I do like, I do like Christmas, yeah.

I mean, probably more than the average Jewish person, but um,

uh, yeah, we've uh, yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's good fun, Christmas.

And uh, also, there's generally cricket on the television at midnight.

We had to as long as we could

get talk about birds and like

different animals, yeah, but I've been quite disciplined, I think.

Yeah, I was going to say, this feels like a long time that you've not mentioned cricket.

Yeah, yeah.

And there is cricket on TV during Christmas.

I didn't know that.

Well, yeah, so the boxing day tests

in Australia usually starts at midnight at the end of Christmas Day UK time.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, that's however bad your Christmas is going, you've got that little beacon of hope.

Do you have a...

If this has been asked to you before many times and it's already common knowledge, the answer, then, you know, I apologise.

But do you have a favourite test match of all time that you are like, that is the best one I've ever seen?

That's the game?

Wow, we're really doing this.

Okay.

I won't ever get the opportunity to ask Andy this again.

How long is this podcast generally?

The answer doesn't have to take as long as a game of cricket.

I assume we're going to have to stop to talk you through it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're one that is like, that is the best game.

That was such a great test match.

Well, I mean, Edge Baston 2005 test match, hard to look beyond that.

I wasn't there.

I was was actually in Edinburgh doing the Edinburgh Festival, sharing a flat with Stuart Lee, who

probably his greatest flaw as a human being is that he doesn't really like cricket.

So his routines are basically the same thing over and over again

for ages.

We all find that rhythm in life in different places, though, don't we?

He really reads as someone who likes cricket, though.

Yeah, he should like cricket.

I believe that, you know, I don't think he's completely lost.

as a long-term project.

But anyway, at that point in 2000, he wasn't really into it.

it.

And when England won that test match by

two runs at the end, I was

basically sort of collapsed onto the floor, hyperventilating.

And I think he was quite concerned about

my state of health at that point.

It was quite hard to explain that that wasn't just the culmination of the one single match.

That was the culmination of

16 years of

pain and suffering.

Who were they playing?

Australia.

The ashes.

Yes, there we go.

Do they still go in for tea in cricket?

They do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they stop the game and then go in.

In test matches.

Yeah.

Very good at bringing it up.

And

village games, whatever, yeah.

I mean, that's one of the great things.

I mean, you think on this podcast, the fact that cricket, you know,

a test match has, if it goes the full five days, 10 built-in meal breaks.

Yeah.

That should be right in your guys hitting something.

Yeah.

Well,

I want to know more about it.

Do you do you ever get in there and get to have tea with them?

Well,

not with the players, but in the media center where i work where i'm doing cricket commentary we get some pretty spectacular food not at all the grounds there i mean without naming any specific grounds there was one where um

uh there was a rumor that we were getting the same food as the local prison and

it sort of lived up to that um

Did you get those segmented trays?

Luckily, the local prison was the one Paddington was locked in.

That is the best food.

ever.

Yeah.

But I mean Lords and Edgebaston, I mean pretty you'd expect those press boxes to have Michelin stars lurking around somewhere.

And what are we are we talking?

Do you get the same stuff as the players?

Do you know, or do you get even fancier stuff?

No, well the players are generally at the other end of the ground.

I mean the Lords food is quite I think players' food is off the scale.

Yeah.

I've never done a statistical analysis of how bad players are in the half hour after lunch at the walls when they've

gorged themselves.

out.

It really feels like you should look into it.

Status wise.

What about the oval?

The oval, a little bit up and down.

Yeah.

A little bit up and down.

I've heard bad things.

I used to work at a school as a classroom assistant, and

the class I was with

went to the oval one day, but I'd stay behind and do something else.

And I saw them the next day, and there's a kid called Georgie who had been malving off to the guys showing them round, and he made him run round the oval ten times.

And I saw Georgie the next.

And Georgie was quite naughty anyway, but I liked him.

And I was like,

how was it yesterday?

He went, promise me you never go to the oval.

You've got to promise me.

And have you been?

No, I've never been.

Georgie, if you're listening, I'll always keep my promise.

I respect you so much.

Even when the dental truck came in and you stood in the gap between the dental truck and the school building and you threw stones at the other kids.

Right.

What's a dental truck?

It was a truck that came in to check all the kids' teeth to get them used to going to the dentist.

It was this organisation who did it.

They got booked for the day, but they didn't park tight enough to the wall.

There was a little gap, a little hidey hole that Georgie could go in and get tiny stones to be fair to him and antagonise the other kids with him.

What he didn't foresee is that he had boxed himself in so that when they then decided to get their revenge, he was absolutely fucked.

Yeah, yeah.

They shouldn't have left that gap.

They should have filled it in here.

The Oval has an important place in the history of

the history of British food.

Oh, really?

So in 1882, it was a test match, England versus Australia.

It was so tense.

And it was a game that then led to the ashes beginning.

Spoof obituary was was printed in one of the papers after England Austin like the death of English cricket the ashes will be like taken to Australia right and that was how the ashes began but during that test match was so close and so tense that someone in the crowd chewed through the handle of his umbrella like a wooden umbrella handle Apparently he chewed through it.

I mean, it was 1882.

Do we have documentary evidence of this?

No, but

I'm prepared to believe it.

And of course, the fact that

sat there chewing this umbrella handle they then had to legalize the hot dog as a stadium food

so many further confusions so that's why it's important to the history of british food because the man ate his umbrella yes

and and look anyone who's seen andy on taskmaster and his approach to the prize tasks will not be surprised if one of his food choices is an umbrella

at least today

the guy thinks outside the box tell us about your tour andy well my tour uh that's a very good question.

Well, it wasn't a question, actually, was it?

No, for a lot of friends.

There's a northern altar.

There's a lot of

tour.

It's a show called The Zoltgeist, and it's sort of analysing where we are as a planet, species, hemisphere.

Big fan of the northern hemisphere.

You want to shout out some dissesphere while you're here?

Well,

I think that's too divisive, James.

I think you can love the northern hemisphere without necessarily hating the south.

Have we not learned that?

That's not one of the lessons of history.

You can love something without having to to hate the opposite.

You and the rest of the human race.

So basically same, yeah, where we are,

coming to the end of 2024.

So that's that is the psychologically critical 2.5% of the way through a millennium.

And history shows that when millenniums start badly, it's quite hard to pull it around.

So we've only got 975 years to pull this one out of the bag.

So can we do it?

What do you think?

Well, it's not looking good so far.

But I mean, you're the expert.

You're the one doing a tour about it.

Yeah.

Do you think we're going to get there?

Well,

we need to start now.

I only can't spoil

what's in his show.

You can't tell the conclusion.

Everyone goes, I don't know what you think.

So the tour's going to go on for the next 975 years.

Oh, well, congratulations.

I mean, is that you intending to live that long?

Are you going to franchise it and other people can do it?

Or are we looking at the Zoltsgram, the hologram?

It's going to come out.

Well, I mean, that seems to be...

the likely future of comedy, doesn't it?

You know, it's the future of 1970s Swedish pop.

So it really should be the future of 2020s British stand-up as well.

So I mean, I intend to do a hologram tour for the rest of the millennium.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't want to dissuade people from buying tickets to see it now

because obviously it's going to evolve.

I'm not going to still be doing jokes in the year 2983 about the world in 2024.

Hopefully.

Maybe I will be.

I mean, who knows?

Would you tour the hologram or would you?

have it in one location like ABBA Voyage?

Well, I think, you know, thinking a little bit ahead, thinking, you know, six, seven hundred years into the tour,

you'd expect that the technology would be there for just like a single, you know, an atom-sized microchip for people to just like shove it into their eyeball.

Yeah.

And they'll be able to see any show that they want it.

And obviously they choose the resultgeist

2700.

Yeah.

I can't wait for the

eye microchips.

Yeah.

I think Ed will be happy.

Yeah.

I mean, the human eyeball has proved fallible over the years You know, it's it it doesn't always see what it thinks it sees so the sooner it's replaced by

the apple eyeball Yeah

with the apple of your eye as well.

Yeah,

the marketing market writes itself

You know that's that can then record everything you see so you know you can you can check yeah you thought you saw something or you know or someone so you meet them again so I saw you then they said no you didn't and then you can like check back through yourself.

And then you can prove that you fucking did.

yeah

sorry viewers

sorry viewers

so uh yeah the um i can't wait i think you i mean there's you know facial technology is what you know we've got the because at the moment it's it's it's on the face isn't it the the smart glasses yeah but you know you think it should be in the face with you know the like i say the the eyeball the the 6g yeah ai nose whatever be their tagline it should be in the face yeah yeah

Not on the face, in the face.

In the face.

Yeah.

I am.

Do you get your feelings?

I get my feelings hurt whenever my phone doesn't recognize my face as a celebrity.

Right.

And

also,

I just think to myself, oh, God, God, go to the gym.

Right.

I don't think that's why it doesn't recognize it.

Yeah, it's just going, I don't even recognize you anymore, eh, Caster?

Well, I was very suspicious of that technology when it first came in, so I took my profile picture wearing like a fake beard and glasses and a hat.

So I just can't haven't actually get in.

I haven't actually opened my phone in eight years.

There's so much important stuff on there.

We always start with still or sparkling water, Andrew.

Well, I've got to go for sparkling because, you know, I'm a big fan of the environment.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know,

the more carbon dioxide we can get out of the atmosphere and into drinks, then surely the better for

the future of the planet.

So, I mean, every time you drink still water, you're basically saying, I don't care if we live or die as a species.

so you know you need to trap the carbon dioxide because what there's only 0.04% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide you know I think I don't know what the goal is to get it down to absolutely zero or you know 0.02 whatever but you know so the more sparkling and obviously you've got you have to then swallow the the bubbles otherwise they they re-escape yeah split the bubbles out back into back into the atmosphere but I think that's you know doing my little bit for the uh

I also like to think of those little bubbles as the souls of dead fish trying to

escape.

You like to think of it.

You love the environment.

Yes.

Fish are our evolutionary rivals.

Fish live on as well.

So, yeah, through the bubbles.

Why are they our rivals, evolutionary speaking?

Well, I mean, because they must resent the fact, yeah, because we obviously emerged from the seas back in the day.

And, you know, when fish look at what we've achieved on land and the increased lifestyle choices that you have as a land-based species.

I think there's got to be a little bit of jealousy and

season they're plotting and resentment.

You know, my double act old double act partner, John Oliver, went to America and became one of the most famous comedians in the world.

So he's very much the humans to my fish.

And that, you know, I know, you know, I can understand the.

You're still in the pond.

Yeah.

What did Oliver?

So you're the fish in this scenario.

Yeah, yeah.

So you don't have to.

I empathise.

Yeah, you empathise with the fish.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think Oliver ever just thinks himself, I wish I was back in the pond?

No doubt.

I think he looks wistfully out of his window in New York.

You can see, probably see the pond.

Yeah,

so why haven't fizzy drinks companies harnessed this?

They should be promoting that and being like, yeah, we're pulling, we're pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

I didn't know that, that's how it works.

But

they're pulling it out of the atmosphere and they're putting it.

And they're putting it into the drinks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They should be using that as a carbon capture basically, isn't that?

That's what they call it.

Do you then neutralize the carbon dioxide within your body?

Yeah, I think so.

Because you're not.

Yeah.

You're not.

Yeah, let's say I'm just

pissing out the carbon dioxide, are you?

And it goes straight back into the water system.

Do you do fizzy piss?

I hope not.

Sometimes I'll worry.

Right.

You ever had fizzy piss?

Sometimes I'll do a really big, foamy one, and you do panic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Bit of a head to it.

Yeah.

Cappuccino.

Is that what you call it?

What do you mean by that?

What's that?

Capuccino.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Capichin.

You were trying to make a pun work.

Yeah, yeah.

I just thought you were.

Andy's a real punster, so I'm trying to match up.

I've been clean for a while.

No, you haven't.

We all saw a taskmaster.

Every time you did a pun, Greg looked like he was going to rip your head off.

What's that like episode one, making a pun, seeing how angry it is, and knowing I've got so many more of these?

I said them all in the house.

I've got them for every prize task.

He's going to be furious, this guy.

Well, you know, it's a rush, isn't it?

You know, to know you have that hold over someone who likes to think of themselves as an authority figure, and yet you just

needle your way in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

By the end, he was an absolute wreck of a human being.

He was, actually.

He softened.

By the end, he was enjoying the puns.

Yeah, he had to.

Yeah.

I think.

It's just attrition.

Pop-lumps or bread.

Pop-lums or bread, Andy Saltzman.

Pop-lums or bread.

What bread?

What are the bread options?

Whatever you want, your favourite bread.

Right.

I mean, I do love a poppadum.

Yeah.

I think I go with popped them.

You don't want to fill up on a meal like this.

Yeah.

You don't want to fill up too much on bread.

No.

Just for listeners, Andy is one of the first guests ever to have a full laptop out in front of him.

It's a big laptop.

It's a PC.

Yeah.

So like, it's, it's, we haven't had this before.

I don't think we've even had someone bring like, you know, a MacBook in.

No, really?

This is, this is like, we've had people bring in notes

on their phone.

Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes they printed them out.

You have a ginormous laptop.

What's my stats laptops?

Yeah, the stats laptops.

I've got one with a specially high screen so I can see more stats on it.

And, you know, you look through the stats like a magic eye picture.

You look at just a screen full of stats in a spreadsheet.

You just let your eyes relax and you see the blinding light of pure truth, James.

That's good.

James did suggest before we started recording that you have your food stats here,

everything you've ever eaten

on a spreadsheet.

Wouldn't be surprised if Andy Saltzman as a little boy bought that laptop.

Yep.

And

he started putting in his stats for what he's eating all the time.

I mean, just checking the latest stats, I think my career average

is 402.3 sausages per annum.

That's good.

That's a good going.

That's not bad at all.

It's impossible to imagine Andy as a little boy without that same hairstyle.

Yeah, impossible.

I can't imagine you without it, Andy.

Well, in fact, my receding hairline was a lot further back when I was a child, and it's gradually coming forward.

You have me back on the show in 50, 60 years' time.

I'll just be like

a very specific Benjamin Button type.

End of the millennia when you're still

you'll be cousin it

shout out cousin it shout out shout out cousin it but yeah i think um

i think

i do like uh i mean i mean the indian the indian breads asian breads are

give you a lot of options yeah yeah yeah i mean they're pretty banging as well

yeah if you want you could set your dream meal in an indian restaurant and you could cheat the system that way, get popped on bread.

Yeah, but of course, the rest of the menu might not be.

It might be, I mean, let's see.

Andy's stomach rumble.

Mine started as well.

It was the most cartoon stomach rumble that we've had on the podcast.

We've had quite a few stomach rumbles on the podcast.

We've done it both of us.

All the time.

I did one of them.

Benito's never does because he's a goddamn robot from space.

So he doesn't have any emotions, even hunger.

But Andy's went, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

He sounded more like a turkey than you did.

Yes,

it was a perfect turkey push.

I wish I'd done it earlier.

What was it that made the stomach mumble there?

The fort or the fort of pink just quite helped me.

The concept of the papa dumb.

The ingenuity, and this is something that obviously

you probably talk about a lot on this podcast.

How food reveals the ingenuity of the human species compared with all the other species that we've outdone over the years in terms of what we eat.

Yeah.

So I don't think any other species would have looked at a chickpea and thought well i'll tell you what if we roll that out and and then deep fry it yeah

turn it crispy that's gonna be awesome yeah it's mad isn't it channeling absolutely it's mad when you see all of these foods that we take for granted yeah that took all of that work to think about all of the things that they tried and then discarded yeah you know this is not the first time they did that they've obviously tried so many different versions of it i mean in probably the early versions of papadums that were shaped like a like a javelin and the number of people who got like speared in the face by it before they finally thought let's go with the discus

rather than the javelin.

Yeah,

India have a brilliant cricket team.

Yes, if you

knew about cricket, man, if you were gonna go to an Indian restaurant with any Indian cricketer who's ever lived, who would it be?

Who would you like to who's ever lived?

Yeah, oh, that's a good that's a good,

I have actually been to restaurants with some Indian cricketers.

Have you?

I had lunch with Rahul Dravid, a legend of the Indian game, many years ago in Bangalore.

We were both writing for the same cricket website.

Delightful man.

Oh, that's nice.

Nice story.

But you've had lunch with him.

Yeah, so what you know, I don't want to repeat that.

But it's also going to an Indian restaurant.

Right.

So it has to be specifically an Indian restaurant.

Yeah, because

we'd already said you were set in there.

And they've planned it as well.

So it's not you going, I'm taking it up for dinner.

We'll go to an Indian restaurant.

Okay, so any Indian cricketer from history?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, well, I might go with Vinu Mankad, who played for India after the Second World War.

I don't know why James has asked this question because he's not going to know who the person is.

No, no, no.

Huh?

You're not going to know who they are?

Yeah.

He was a

very good player, spinning all-rounder.

And I'll probably choose him because he's been dead for quite a long time, so I'll get more food.

Yeah.

And his stomach's gone again.

I love his stomach.

I love how adorable Andy's stomach is.

Whenever I do a podcast, I bring thematic corporeal noises.

That's what the laptop's really for.

He's secretly pressing the space bar every now and again and setting off the stomach rumble sound effect.

I love this.

I love it.

So you are choosing poppadums?

Are you choosing bread?

Yeah, you are.

I'm choosing poppadums.

Love dips.

Are we talking the dips?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I want chutney options.

Yep.

Yeah.

I love a mango chutney, but it's nice to have, you know, like a sweet plum chutney.

Sweet plump.

Plum chutney.

Like the little sort of raw onion

dip, hot pickle.

A bit of that sort of yogurty sauce I never quite know the name of that isn't a writer, but it's

similar consistency.

I love that.

I think that's my favourite.

I used to call it grasshopper sauce when I was young.

That's what my dad called it.

Oh, nice.

What?

Well, it just looked like it was made of minced up grasshoppers.

Grasshopper sauce.

Well, that's lovely.

Maybe the listeners could adopt that.

Yeah.

I think you should.

How many poppadoms do you reckon you're getting through?

Two and a half.

Yeah, that's good.

I think that's solid because when you go go to an Indian restaurant, they're like, How many popadoms do you want?

I'm always like thinking about it, and then the person I'm with is like, oh, just one each.

What are you talking about?

No, no.

That's nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

That's very disappointing when that happens.

But you have to go two each.

I think 2x plus 2, where x is the number of people at the dinner.

That's good.

And you've got a bit of

a bit of leeway.

Do you say that at the start of the meeting?

Make it fun.

2x plus 2.

Yeah.

It'll be 2x plus 2, guys.

Don't skimp on the grasshopper sauce.

Poor waiters, so confused.

How's this guy doing?

Is somebody running a ringer over the side of their desk and

twanging the ruler and then drawing.

No, that's just my stomach.

Anyway, popadoms, 2x plus 2, please, and plenty of grasshopper sauce.

Your dream starter.

Well, there's a couple of choices for this.

One is a single scallop that I ate in Scotland when I was on holiday with my then-girlfriend, now wife, a millennium ago, in fact.

And I'd never had a scallop before.

And we went to a little pub on the west coast of Scotland and ordered scallops for starter.

And it turned out as one scallop, but it was pretty much the size of a tennis ball.

And it was one of those culinary moments where you feel like the sort of scales are falling from your eyes.

Oh,

what have I been missing for the last

23 years of my life at the time?

It was

just a glorious perfection.

I know exactly what you mean.

The first scallop you have is

insane.

It's so good.

And congratulations on saying tennis ball there.

Yeah.

That must have not been easy for you.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's advice to try and

bring other sports into it.

You're diversified now, I do.

I've broadened my portfolio.

How was it prepared?

Did it have like a sauce with it or simply?

Yeah.

It had a little, I think, a little, just a little bit of sort of a peppery sauce and a bit of a salad garnish.

But really, it was just a scallop on a plate.

There was no need to.

They're so sweet.

They're so delicious.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Did your then-girlfriend now wife?

Which is that how you still introduce her to people?

Well, I mean, showbiz, I introduce her as my first wife.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Did she know it was your first scallop?

Yeah,

we were very open about these things.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's no point claiming you've had loads and loads of scallops just to impress a new partner, isn't it?

You've got to be honest.

Yeah, yeah.

This is just my first one.

Yeah.

Especially if you're then going to be blown away by the scallop so much.

You can't control that.

Yeah, yeah.

We already know you can't control your bodily reactions.

Yeah.

I've had loads of these.

Oh, no.

They'll tell me giving me away again.

But

my choice is not that.

My choice is Dahipuri, which is, I'm going, following up the Papadums with another crunch-based India.

Have you had Dahi Puri's?

I'm not chart.

So you get your little crispy shells.

Yeah.

Chart.

I don't think there's enough A's in the words.

There's not, there's not.

You get your crispy shells, which I think are also made of sort of chickpea flour.

Fill them up with like chopped up boiled potatoes, tiny little chunks of boiled potatoes, chopped up raw onion, chickpeas, pomegranate seeds, spices, a bit of chart masala, a bit of chili, dollop of yogurt, chutneys, tamarind chutney, maybe mint chutney, coriander, topped with seve, which is like crunchy chickpea micro noodles, some coriander leaves, and it is the perfect mouthful.

I don't think it's possible in this universe or any other universe to come up with a better mouthful than a Dahipura.

It's got everything.

Because it's like a perfect size as well.

You can just pop it in.

You can just pop it in.

Yeah.

And again, the first time I had that was at a...

A restaurant in Tutankhamun called Castori, which sadly shut down.

It was a South Indian vegetarian place.

Shut down, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago, and I still haven't really recovered from that.

And it was possibly the greatest trauma of my life when I drove past that and it had closed.

I still remember, yeah, it's like for people of an older generation, where were you when you heard that John F.

Kennedy had been assassinated?

For me, it's where were you when you drove past Castore and saw that it shut down?

I always remember that I was driving my car past Castore.

Castore was where you were when John F.

Kennedy was assassinated as well.

It was this fantastic little restaurant.

And the Daipuri, and I've had Daipuri in many places around the world,

in India and wherever I can find them in Britain, had them in America.

That was actually quite a weird one in America.

I was in Los Angeles and I was staying in an Airbnb.

I was doing a stand-up tour.

And I saw there was a little Indian restaurant at the bottom of the road where I was staying in an Airbnb.

And I got back there late after

the show.

And I thought, and it was sort of still open.

I thought, I'll go in and get something there.

And I walked in there, and the guy at the counter said, Hello, Mr.

Zalterman.

And it was at the time I was writing a blog on a cricket website, and it had a quite a big following in the Asian expat community in America.

I always thought John Oliver is so famous in America that everyone knows how to Zaltman.

What's the fish doing on land?

Well, the fish are serving everyone.

It was, yeah, a very odd.

And then they had Panipuri, which is similar but without the yogurt on the menu.

And I said, can you do dahipuri?

And he said, for you, we'll do dahipuri.

And he

amazing.

And it was like about midnight.

And that was glorious.

Oh, man.

Anyway, but it's...

So Panipuri's got stuff poured into it.

It's like the water's like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of water.

But you're cracking the top.

So there comes the little pillows, right?

And you crack the top and then pour them in.

Well,

yes.

I mean, it slightly depends which ones you're having.

Yeah, so the Dahipuri comes from prepared with the top pre-cracked and filled up with.

But it's got everything.

It's got crunch.

It's got gloop.

Yeah.

Loads of stuff.

It's got sharps.

I love that.

Tamarind chutney is so good.

The tamarind is my favourite bit of that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

So good.

I love you getting one in LA now.

Like, this is a sneaky midnight one just for you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's got to feel special.

Yeah.

It feels really special.

You probably didn't care how the gig went at that point.

No, no.

It wasn't worth the trip.

Yeah.

But I mean, I've long since learned in my career not to care how the gig goes.

just think about the puri after.

How many of them do you want on your dream?

I think six.

Yeah, six of them.

You're sinking those one after the other.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's probably quite a lot for a starter.

But yeah, it depends.

Are there two of you at this meal?

Was it just me?

Whoever you want.

Whoever you want.

What's your dream meal?

My dream meal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So do you dream guests at the meal with?

What are the chances of my wife listening to this show?

You know her better than us.

Also, bear in mind she knows you very well.

So

I don't know.

I don't know who I'd have at mine.

I mean, if you're just a historical figure, it could just be you on your figure, right?

Let's be honest, it's a cricket player.

It could be a historical figure, it could be friends that you people that you can be people that you know, it can be as many or as few people as you like.

It could be us guys, could be us guys.

Some people sometimes choose us, and it's nice, but in the back of our minds, obviously, we're like, well, that's bullshit.

Yeah,

you wouldn't have us, because we're in front of you.

You're being nice because we're in front of you, yeah, yeah.

But uh, but there's no way, yeah, it's good.

Um, I thought who who my perfect dinner companion panel is if it's alone, that's that's also fine.

Mine would be alone.

I like to commune with fine foods on a deeply spiritual level.

I mean, I've had a lot of wonderful meals with my wife.

Yes.

So it feels ridiculous to have another one.

Unnecessary, I would say.

Yeah, especially the best meal you've ever had.

I don't know.

I mean, anyone from history, that'll be,

you know, I mean, Jesus would be quite interesting.

You know,

just to see if he could, if he could turn, you know, a Dahipuri into like 5,000 Dahipuri.

Yeah.

Bash, if you still got it.

That's more than 2x plus 2.

Yeah.

Yeah, because that's never really covered how we did it.

Because with that feed of the 5,000, it just seems that it just keeps on going.

But there must have been a point where they're picking it up and they're dividing it and they're going, what the fuck?

Yeah, my assumption is he just...

Nouveau cuisine gone mad for me, hasn't it?

I mean, in terms of what you're actually getting as a...

Well, tiny portions, I assume.

Yeah.

He's just really divided small.

like are you kidding me the other the other five thousandth of a loaf of bread potential explanation is that it was a a sort of um a scheme whereby he made a few fish finger sandwiches and then encouraged everyone there to get the fish finger sandwich and then lend it to the person sitting next to them right so and that keeps going until everyone thinks they are owed a fish finger sandwich at the end of it so basically people go away thinking we are one fish finger sandwich better off so it's basically a sort of some kind of it's like scheme scheme, basically.

With all due respect, like a sound Jewish, though we have to be a little skeptical.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Happy Christmas.

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Your dream main course.

My dream main course.

Well, this is another, it's a specific dish.

I mean, if I had to, you know, choosing one main course, I do love a big chunk of hake.

I think it's a much underrated fish.

Yeah, we went through a hake phase.

When I was a kid,

a hake phase, yeah.

When I was a kid, my mum and dad got big into hake for a while.

Right.

Yeah, so it's breaded hake.

Right.

At least one day a week.

Yeah.

I think it's a really underrated fish.

And, you know, the, I mean, I think the people of Spain do a lot of good things with food.

They really, really know how to treat a dead pig.

And, you know, I mean, it must be exciting, I think, being a pig in Spain, thinking, you know, I mean, obviously, you might, I don't know if you enjoy your life as a pig, but to think what awaits, you know, what joy you will bring.

Yeah.

That's what people do.

I had Spanish pigs go, eat me.

Yeah, yeah.

They do.

Yeah.

They definitely go gobble, gobble.

But yeah, Hager's a glorious fish.

But my main course is a venison wellington.

Specifically, a venison wellington made by the aforementioned wife.

We used to have.

So she's not invited to the meal, but she is cooking this thing.

She's catering it.

She's an insult to injury.

You can bring in the Venice and Wellington, but you've got to leave straight away.

Don't look Jesus in the eye.

Yeah, we used to do these New Year's Eve parties where we have about six or eight friends around, and they'd give us sort of 25 or 30 quid, and we'd go out and buy a mother load of food and cook an eight or ten course meal.

Of which I was generally responsible for, I think it's fair to say, fewer than half of the courses.

The Venison Wellington.

And to put this in further context, I'm pretty sure this was 2008, and we'd just had our second baby on the 15th of December.

So this colouring masterpiece was created two weeks after, well, 16 days after giving birth.

So it was pretty impressive.

So it's a

great big bit of venison fillet or loin, I can't remember which.

And you have a sort of wild mushroom chicken liver pate

around it great wrapped in palmer ham and then pastry and

baked and it um and then with a sort of sharp fruity sauce on the side yeah and it was absolutely spectacular that sounds good yeah i mean it's no secret in this podcast how much i love wellington's yeah uh we've done our dream menus twice now 100 episode and two both times i picked the same beef wellington as my main course oh right okay i can't get over it.

Right.

I think I'm coming to your house for New Year's Eve just so on.

Episode 300, I've got a different main course than Venice and Wellington for Many's house.

It was glorious.

Venison's a great meat.

It's a great meet.

The Wellington format is one of my favourite formats.

Is it named after the Duke of Wellington?

Is that what he was nibbling at at the Battle of Waterloo?

Look it up, Benito.

He's already on it.

He's already on it.

Yeah, I'm guessing he's got a large part to play in the naming of it.

Right.

Because he's the boots as well, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the wellington boots are named after him yeah yeah because before that everyone just wore green flash trainers in boots like battlefields could often get quite muddy yeah so we invented a bit of key key military edge yeah well he's it's unclear and it's not defined on uh while historians generally believe that the dish is named after arthur wellis wellesley first duke of wellington the precise origin of the name is unclear and no definite connection between the dish and the duke have been found there you go i mean it's just it's just the best pie isn't it really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a pie where you know you're going to get a good filling.

Yeah.

I mean, in other wonderful main courses I've had over the years in the been to a few of the restaurants of the American celebrity, celebrity chef Scluton Malvain, and

in one of his restaurants had a

signature thrice slapshotted puck of ruthlessly executed guiltless cow served on a sesame-besieged matrice of yeast-inflated and heat-metamorphed wheat-influenced did-dot, besourced with a deconstructed and reconstructed ketchupine rouge of tomato squiger comfortingly blanketed with a rectagulant of time ripened coagulated udder origin lactotum of maternal bovioid or to give it its nickname a cheeseburger

see this is the this is what i thought would happen every every course

andy's going to have written a bunch of stuff that doesn't exist and we're going to we're going to have to engage

but that exists as a cheeseburger as a cheeseburger yeah i don't know if you've been to any of malvain's restaurants his emoto bistro where each dish is intended to provoke an emotion as well as a flavor flavor.

Right.

It's fantastic.

Signature dishes include a hollow-eyed haddock pessimistically served on a resigned bed of fated complete seaweed, gunpoint served ransom of lamb's liver, frightened into a terra terrine, presented with a harrowed memory of spirit-broken split peas,

and giggly hen sausages aroused in a pseudo-erotic ketchup of seriously buff-stripped tomatoes.

I mean, they all sound quite nice.

It was like you hit your threshold of saying stuff that was real.

And then you were like, I've got to do it.

Hang on.

Let me just do this before we carry on.

I've done nearly nearly half an hour.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah,

well, it's interesting because your two main passions are stats, which couldn't be more real.

Yeah, and absolute bullshit, absolute nonsense.

I love it.

On this New Year's meal, you said you less than half the dishes you were responsible for, but what were those dishes?

Well, the cold stuff,

I haven't done it for quite a long time now, but

I did want to make a very good cheesecake with

so it was like an Indian-influenced cheesecake.

And so

the topping had rose water and cardamom in it and then sort of crushed pistachios on top.

It was absolutely delicious.

Yeah.

I don't remember.

I mean, it did.

That'd get you a Hollywood cheesecake, surely.

You'd think so.

Yeah.

Well,

was it a baked cheesecake?

Yes.

Oh, it was.

Okay, good.

I think so.

Because there.

To me, it sounds like one of those cold cheesecakes that you just do in the fridge.

Yeah.

You know, I think think I baked it.

I really can't remember.

It was a long time ago.

I bought a Bollywood handshake.

It was

Bollywood handshake.

Oh, lovely.

Absolutely brilliant.

Absolutely.

Bollywood bandshake.

So fast.

Not fast enough.

That was great.

Bollywood handshake.

He contested it to begin with.

Is it baked?

I'm not going to do the joke if it's not baked.

It is.

It's a Bollywood handshake then.

Absolutely brilliant.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Andy Zaltzman's Christmas dinner.

Okay, can I uh so I had possibly my greatest individual culinary triumph at uh Christmas in 2021.

So I'll talk you through the menu that I did then.

Yes, I was in Australia for the cricket with the BBC radio

and it was still you know in the COVID times and we'd been in Adelaide for the second test match

and a couple of our team had had positive COVID tests and a couple of others, so they and two others had to isolate.

So the two had had the positive tests that were stuck in Adelaide over Christmas.

Yeah.

Didn't get to Melbourne until after Christmas.

And two others had to isolate until I'd, I think, done a week.

And then they flew into Melbourne on Christmas Day.

And so I said, right, well, I'll do dinner.

So it was three of us.

Yeah.

And so I went up to the Victoria Market in Melbourne, which you've probably both been.

Amazing market.

And I did the five-course Christmas, Christmas lunch, which I think was, yeah, my greatest

in a little sort of apartment hotel with a fairly limited.

So the first course was, I mean, I say I cooked it.

This was just assembling some

hams and a bit of mozzarella.

Yeah.

Charcukui board.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah.

Then prawn and lobster risotto.

Wow.

Which

was,

I can't remember the book, the recipe was from.

But basically, you roast up a load of prawn shells,

make

a stock out of the roasted prawn shells, cook the risotto in the prawn shell stock, and then cook off the actual prawns and a bit of lobster tail to give it a bit of Christmas dizz.

And

it was absolutely delicious.

That sounds so good.

But I know those apartment hotels, and I ain't cooking fish in them.

The bed is about four steps from the oven.

Is this the Adena?

It wasn't the Adena, no, it was.

I can't remember which it was, but it was not an Adena, I don't think.

So

that was the starter.

Main course,

with

one non-meat eater, so other than the ham starter, and there were non-meat options on the charcuterie board, obviously.

Did Japanese salmon with fried garlic shoots as a side?

garlic shoots and oyster sauce, the Japanese salmon marinated in mirin, some ketchup manice, uh,

some um

shaoxing cooking cherry.

The stomach is not stopped.

The stomach is fat, it's non-stop.

We know it's about the course.

I've just decided to reference it again.

Just yeah, so just

marinade the salmon for half an hour in that, and then uh

cook it, cook it hard but short.

Yeah,

like raw on the inside.

Um, that sounds so good.

Then dessert was a uh chocolate and pattened fruit mousse with with a

little mango fruit salad underneath.

And then a load of cheese.

And a load of cheese after.

So when I say cooked a five-course meal,

the top and tail were just organising, really, arranging.

But still, that is.

But it was, yeah, not your traditional

Christmas meal.

Excellent.

But also, like,

in that part of the world as well.

Yeah.

I think they're more likely to have like, you know, fish and stuff on Christmas Day.

I mean, it's not, yeah, they're not not doing like Christmas dinners the same as in your favorite, the northern hemisphere.

Yeah, it sounds incredible.

I'd be so happy with that on Christmas Day, I think.

I would love it, especially being away from home and you don't think you're going to get like a nice sort of sit-down meal.

And then Andy Zoltzman's whipping up a five-courser in his hotel room.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah, I don't

usually go that big on cooking.

I love cooking, but I'll generally just riff stuff.

Yeah.

But yeah,

that was a definite triumph.

Did you call it Masat?

Ho, ho, ho.

Well,

no, because we're in the southern hemisphere.

So it goes backwards, and it's not ho-ho-ho.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Have a bad so much.

Is that how DeSanta speaks in Australia?

Yes, everything is.

Oh, oh, oh.

Speaks backwards.

Well, that sounds good.

I think that's a lovely Christmas.

That sounds great.

I want that for my Christmas meal list this year.

I would like that.

Can you come around to either of our houses on Christmas Day?

Yeah, if the money's right.

The money will be right.

your dream side dish, And right.

My dream side dish does it have to be edible.

It could just be like a video of David Gower's cover drive.

Yeah.

Yeah, to be honest, you can have that.

I mean, I've had a Christmas special that we've done.

They chose a non-edible course at one point.

So we have to let you.

Does it have to go, does it have to be a side dish that complements the main dish?

No, not at all.

This is your dream dish.

you're not complementing.

And I'm perfectly happy to serve whatever you're going to have on a VHS copy of David Gowell's cover drive.

Maybe we'll just, yeah, serve it on a picture of David Gowell's cover drive, so we'll get that factored out.

What's a cover drive?

Okay, James.

How old are you?

I'm 39.

The only thing I know about cricket is that Atherton rubbed dirt on the ball.

Right.

And that is true.

He mentions that a lot.

All right.

That's all I know.

Jimmy brings that up a lot.

We're on a text group with some other comedians.

A lot of them like cricket.

Every time it comes up, I say, did Edwin rub dirt on the ball?

I hope Atherton's nowhere near it because he's a cheat and he will rub dirt on the ball.

Right.

I mean, I think that's, you know, when you're just remembering that one incident from a really illustrious career of well over 100 test matches and, you know, one of the finest opening batsmen in the 1990s, which of course is a very difficult era to be an opening batsman because of high-quality bowling around the world, James, I think that's pretty unfair on Atherton.

Well, he let himself down.

He shouldn't be cheating.

Is that shit?

Is it cheating?

Yeah, he shouldn't be rubbing dirt on the ball.

Well, I'm not ever rubbing dirt on the ball.

Yeah, I think he's acknowledged that it was not the right thing to do.

There's more gamesmanship than

it was to make it spin funny, weren't it?

The point is, Mike Atherton is absolutely beyond criticism as a human being.

Yeah, obviously.

What do you think about when the guy in Corvinions put weights in the front of the bobsled to make it go fast?

Yeah, John Candy's character.

That's the other thing I remember.

About cricket.

So,

well, on the subject of bobsleds,

my side dish could be, well, two things.

One is a whole mozzarella.

I don't know why that's on the subject of bobsleds, but yeah, I think you could fit a mozzarella in a bob sled.

You could probably churn out.

You could probably stick a couple in there.

So, was that how it was invented?

Just rapid, you know, speed churning in a bobsled.

You put buffalo milk in a bob sled and send it down the corner.

Someone was caught in a snowball fight and they weren't looking.

They were building their snowballs, but not looking at the snowballs, and then they picked up some cheese by mistake.

Balled it up, bought to throw it.

That smells different.

To me,

a good mozzarella and obviously there's a there's a wide range of mozzarellas yeah but a good mozzarella and i stayed with uh with my wife on a uh in an agri turismo in italy when our first child was uh about one and was before expecting the venison well before the venison well and it was uh an agriturismo attached to a buffalo farm so we just had mozzarella pretty much every meal and a good mozzarella i think is one of the purest delights for the kind you know the big gloopy, like globule of perfect, the kind of thing you want to bury your face in.

Yeah.

The kind of cheese you want to climb inside and

live in.

When you take a bite of a really good mozzarella, it makes you feel connected to the birth of the universe.

That kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah.

You'd like it like James the Giant Peach, but Andy and the Giant mozzarella.

Could you live in a mozzarella, though?

How quickly are you going to start eating your own house from the inside?

Pretty quickly.

Yeah, pretty quick.

But I think you'd enjoy those minutes before you started eating your outside yeah what do you think of burrata then we we've mentioned burrata a lot on the podcast and how it's basically the end of the mozzarella yeah because people are like this is creamier it's like mozzarella but better yeah um do you feel that way or is mozzarella still the king for you mozzarella is still the king for me but you know i like um i like a mozzarella like a skamorza just because i love the word yeah particularly it's one of those words that's almost impossible to say without putting on a new york accent yeah well it sounds like it's the rank above capo in the mafia doesn't it yeah yeah.

Yeah.

When you put on a New York accent, it's on the fulfill more so at home.

I mean, does a whole mozzarella count as a side dish?

Yeah, totally.

Especially if it's on a picture of David Gower doing his cover drive.

And you'd maybe chuck in some

deeply tomato-ish tomatoes, a bit of olive oil, maybe a little.

So it's not quite as caprazy.

You're not having bassel leaves on it.

No, no, no, you could, you could capraze it up, definitely.

But the key is, it's just a mozzarella, uncut, just a big

blob

of mozzarella.

I had mozzarella last night, Andy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was making it.

I had a steak and asparagus I was making for myself.

All right.

And I thought, you know, I can get some mozzarella, get some tomatoes, do that.

Oh, nice.

And quite disappointing when I poured the mozzarella water out, which I don't, you might drink it.

I just pour it away.

Yeah, yeah.

I just drinking that.

Really small mozzarella.

You're a year before you get to bed and you dream of mozzarella.

Quite a disappointingly small mozzarella.

Yeah, so I did have a whole mozzarella last night.

Yeah.

Because it was quite small.

It was quite mozzarella.

The really, really fresh ones.

Yeah.

I used to, at the end of the Edinburgh Festival, after I did my last show, I'd generally mark the occasion by buying a mozzarella and eating it.

Stuart Lee even more confused.

The other option for my side dish is back to Spain for some octopus, like porpo.

ala galega, a bit of paprika.

And again, it's, you know, slightly, I guess, you know, a lot of food is about memory, isn't it?

And the first time my wife and I went to northern Spain, we went to Galicia and we stayed in a beautiful old town called Pontevedra and had some octopus, which, you know, just basically cooked up fresh in front of us.

And yeah, again, I'd never even contemplated eating octopus before, and it was, yeah, so delicious.

And it's like grilled, grilled octopus.

No, I think it's just boiled.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

And then a bit of oil on it,

Yeah.

A little bit of paprika.

And also, I mean, there's a,

you know, in terms of, you know, the evolutionary race, the octopus is one of the most intelligent species that there is.

Some people say, oh, you shouldn't eat them, so, you know,

it's disrespecting an intelligent species.

I say, you know, we are in an evolutionary race.

Yeah.

If you don't eat an octopus, they're going to evolve, aren't they?

And overtake us.

God, you look very suspicious.

I love the thought of someone who did it with you.

I don't think you should eat that, Andy.

That's quite clever.

We are in an evolutionary race.

Pigs, isn't it?

And pigs are.

I mean, I know, you know, not strictly kosher,

but like I say, very, very lapsed.

There's loopholes.

You've mentioned

you mentioned pork products over 50 times.

That can't be.

If you're saying we are in an evolutionary race and then you

bow to the rules of religion,

I think you're going to be in trouble there.

Yeah, so it's, it's, we've got an octopus versus cheese battle here, but I think I'm going to go with the cheese as my love, my first dish.

Well, yeah, I mean, both of those things, obviously, are delicious simple side dishes.

I think out of those two as well, the mozzarella is the one that goes better with the Wellington.

Yep.

Would you like a mozzarella Wellington?

Have a big king of mozzarella

and then cover it with olive oil and salt just all around it.

Yep.

And then basil leaves all around it.

And then the pastry.

Right.

So it's not going to work.

Or maybe hollow out a tomato that's slightly bigger than

the mozzarella.

Maybe a duck seller.

I think me and Andy both think it's not going to work because it's just going to melt straight away, isn't it?

It's not going to work.

Heston might be listening to this

and will think,

by jove.

Yeah.

I mean, in terms of octopus, Scluton Malvain does some wonderful octopus.

Here we go.

I thought I've sensed Andy had zoned out in that bit.

If he did this document, he was teeing something up.

His protester on the first protest-themed restaurant in the world where

waiters take your orders by chanting through a megaphone, what do you want?

And then you announce what you want, and then they say, When do you want it?

And you say, Now, and then they go,

But I mean, it's amazing starters.

It was a crusade of crudite of rioting riets of

real grouse,

placards of Icelandic elk ham, vitrioled with squid ink slogans and brandished on a Soviet-influenced sausage stick.

Then the main courses, I mean,

the octopus dish, which is a pastry-fenced occupaciance of octopus, riot-policed with carrot batons and swayed by propagando of lefty lattice.

Hard to look beyond that.

So I mean, the beasts from around the world, served overdone or under-reported, they were pretty good.

And force-fed opinions of sheep driveled in an evangelified sauce de raison-time, re-driveled in a half-baked tomato motto.

That was also excellent.

Cannot believe kettle chips isn't in the

absolutely waiting for kettle chips.

Plum Grumble was excellent.

Yeah, that's their dismay name.

And the Furious Banana Banners with an absolute full.

That was also good.

Good.

Got that off your chest?

Yep.

Yep.

Have you seen Finding Dory?

The sequel to Finding Nemo?

No, I've not seen it.

I did see Finding Nemo when my kids were quite small.

Octopus drives a truck in that.

Really?

In Finding Dory, yeah.

Yeah.

Which just proves my point, doesn't it?

It proves my point.

Yeah.

We can't let that happen.

It's eat or be eaten, isn't it?

Yeah.

That's what.

We can't let that happen.

Your dream drink, Andy.

My dream drink.

Cup of tea.

Yeah.

So happy.

Joe, what's nice?

You're a very sweet man, and everyone knows this.

And you have the same

little self-satisfied smile as the great Benito does.

And I don't think the listener knows that Benito smiles.

Every now and again, he does.

Yeah.

But it's always when he said something he likes.

It's always about his own thing that he's just said.

And he'll smile to himself, really pleased with himself.

It's a nice little U-shaped smile, and you've got the same one.

And it's just very sweet.

But this is specific.

You said cup of tea.

A specific cup of tea, which is

why.

I love tea.

I think tea.

Good leaf tea is one of the greatest luxuries because you buy one of the best teas in the world and it works out about 40, 50p a cup.

It's cheaper than a tea bag at a station, a considerable amount.

And the variety in tea is like wine, it's all you have to do, how it's where it grows.

I don't know if I'm allowed to mention brands or companies, but my chosen supplier of Class A teas, Imperial teas in Lincoln, have a fantastic shop, fantastic website with a little essay on all the teas and some of them come from like a specific tree,

but a specific height halfway up a mountain somewhere in

China and my two favourite teas one is one that they sell called honey honcha which is it's like drinking optimism it's um

and it as the name suggests it's got a sort of honeyish yeah taste that says Chinese black tea you can have it you can like brew it long and have it with milk or brew it for a couple of minutes and have it on its own.

Lovely.

Glorious.

And the other is a tea called Opium Hill, which I got from a French tea shop in

Paris when I did a really weird BBC World show with

the American economist Max Kaiser,

also featuring one of the...

Funny old career you've had, isn't it?

Boris Johnson's brothers.

Yeah.

And it paid not a great deal, but they did take you, you know, you had to get the Eurostar out to Paris.

because it was filmed in Paris.

Were the three of you on the same train?

I had to share the train with

Boris Johnson's brother,

Leo.

But anyway, then, so basically, did the got Eurostar over in the morning, back in the evening, did the recording.

It's like a, I can't remember, a 20-minute chat about the state of the global economy or something, I can't remember.

But then I had like

an afternoon in Paris and went to this tea shop called Marriage Freire and got this tea called Opium Hill, which is

sorry about that.

That's when you bring a full PC into the studio, I guess.

That's his stomach again.

It's not run out of noises.

It's so hungry.

Full digital.

It's what they call a blue tea, which is like an oolong from Thailand.

And

that is like drinking liquefied truth.

It's a tea that affects me on a deeply spiritual level.

In the same way that listening to muddy waters singing,

I see that as the tea equivalent of the depths of truth.

And that's the, ironically, that's how I see tea.

The depths.

He's good.

The depths of truth that you get.

He's good.

It's no Bollywood headshake, but it's good.

It's good stuff.

Yeah.

So that would be my.

I love it.

Yeah.

That's good.

It's rare we've gone to such depth on tea.

Yeah.

We haven't had such an normally people go, I just have a tea.

They say, I just like it.

But that's lovely.

And like, do you want to listen to muddy waters while you drink your tea?

Yeah.

I mean, once, yeah, if you, and particularly if it's tea during the tea interval of a cricket match and you're listening to muddy waters, I mean, that's quite hard to see where humanity can go that would ever be better than that.

Yeah, that is great.

That's the end of the

certain disappointment in having done the greatest thing that could ever be done.

Yeah.

So maybe you want to leave that as a hypothetical rather than already have done it and the rest of the world.

Or you know it's the end.

Yeah.

You know what a way to go that would be.

I mean, there's a lot of talk about assisted dying,

but I mean, if that's if you could do it like that,

drinking a cup of opium hill tea, listening to Muddy Waters in there, watching cricket during a tea, break it a cricket.

Me up.

Never been more serious about it.

Absolutely wants to do that.

Any particular Muddy Waters song that you would want to do?

Not a specific song, but a specific album.

Yeah.

Which is Folk Singer, which is an acoustic album he did in the early 60s.

Yeah.

Had a buddy guy playing guitar on it as well.

Lovely.

And that I picked up in Norton Kane Services on the M6 Toll Road for £3.

In the days when you had cars had CD players.

Remember that?

Remember that?

Yeah, put it on.

I was already a big Muddy Waters fan.

And

that's beautiful.

I'm going to listen to that after the record.

Glad you're treating yourself to the toll road as well.

Yeah, yeah, why not?

Yeah.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

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Your dream dessert.

We arrive at your dream dessert.

Right.

So again, a couple of options for this.

One is

just some ice cream from a shop called Gioliti in Rome,

which is near the Pantheon, an old Roman temple.

And they just do fantastic.

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of fantastic ice cream in Italy, but this, again, sort of, you know, specific family memories of buying ice cream and sitting next to this 2,000-year-old temple eating pistachio ice cream from

the gods.

Particularly pistachio ice cream from there, which I think a good pistol.

I think a good test of a pistachio ice cream is a good test of an ice cream shop.

If you can't nail a pistachio, you've got no business.

A lot of people would say that about the vanilla.

They'd go, if you want to test how good it is, you go for the vanilla, but you're a pistachio guy.

You want to see how good they do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Why the pistachio?

Well, it's...

I guess it's not too sweet.

It's mellow and smooth and

a rich, deep flavour.

You want to taste the

roasted sort of nature of the pistachio, right?

You want to get that flavour, but without it being overbearing.

I agree with you.

I love a pistachio.

Same with a hazelnut as well.

There's a good gelato to go for.

Peanut butter ice cream, peanut ice cream?

I'm not such a fan of that.

No, no, no, no.

Don't mind it.

A good

black, yeah, black fruit sorbo.

Not a fan of that.

Yeah.

Are you going cone or cup?

Cup.

Cup.

Yeah.

Good.

You've passed.

You've passed the test.

I mean, you know, you don't get cones in cricket.

they all wear a cup loves it

um god how your stomach is really struggling it's well you say you're struggling

i'm loving it every time absolutely phenomenal it was from the moment we started it's not stopped it's going crazy andy it's going absolutely crazy on you is it a picked up on mic bonito surely it's picked up

on the first one the first one was louder than andy speaks that frequency as yeah it was a very high pitch frequency gets through all of us.

But that last one, just then, must do as well.

It was quite a well, it's basically my literally my internal monologue.

Yeah, throughout all of this.

How many flavours per cup?

Um, because sometimes I get excited, and I'm like three scoops in a cup, and then they all mix up, and you're losing the purity of it.

Two is optimal, and you can always, you know, go back and

get like a bonus

if you've done well on the first two.

Yeah, I find it hard not to go three because I love ice cream so much, and I always always go, I should have just gone two.

Like, I always go, I'll remember next time, just go for two because you know that's enough and it's nice and they complement each other.

And three is just always too much ice cream and they're not going to complement each other as much.

And now you've got going different ways.

One of the best ice creams I've ever had was a vanilla ice cream at a restaurant in London,

possibly Andrew Edmonds.

And it just had Pedro Jimenez Sherry poured on the top.

And simple, but divine.

I love it.

I absolutely love stuff like that.

Yeah, with the with the sherry poured on top.

It's proper.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, vanilla ice cream with booze on it.

Yeah.

Yeah, whiskey as well with like with that kind of ice cream.

Oh, it's great.

But, and I don't know if this counts as dessert, but like a cheese trolley.

Is it either or?

Now, listen.

Here we go.

This is the controversial point here, Andy.

We have.

And just fair.

Sorry, someone's just wheeled your trolley.

I'm not even hungry.

That was the sound of the

sound of the trolley wheels on the floor rolling along

and he's vortex props

this has never happened to me before yeah yeah yeah sure don't worry it happens to a lot of guests it's great having two guests on um

the tummy um so listen for just transparency yeah there's guests on the podcast before who decided that they want a cheese board instead of a dessert yeah i've gone absolutely ape shit at them uh it makes me furious ed and i have both on our dream menus chose a traditional sweet dessert and a cheese board and had them you know one after the other in whatever order and we've had other guests do that and we know you've got history with that after your christmas and i like

i i like that because i do like doing that myself i like the cheese course as either a bridge from the main course to the dessert or afterwards by the fire with your friends just like taking your time with with a cheese board that's fine if you have it in place of the ice cream especially because it sounds delicious your stomach is going to be making way worse noises

than the word colour you're making.

I'm going to

use Christmas episodes, it'll be a shame to not give you the ice cream and the cheese cream.

Right, good, a huge shame, yeah.

So, I mean, a good cheese board is one of

my stomach.

Sorry about this,

stomach's run out of bathroom, but it's still bloody bleach.

Anyway,

stomach really tired.

Sorry, um, your stomach's on vibrate and your phone's on loud

yeah so just press the wrong button um

my uh one of my favourite ever cheese boards uh was um in the wandsworth restaurant shea bruce yes uh which uh is um you know constantly rated one of the best in certainly in london and uh possibly the country and uh we went there to celebrate when uh my wife and I found out she was pregnant for the first time.

So this is pre.

Pre-Wellington.

Pre-Wellington.

Pre-thuffalo mozzarella farm.

Yeah, yeah.

But post-scallop.

Post-scallop.

We're doing a timeline of a cheese relationship.

We went to celebrate, and

they have a fantastic cheese trolley there.

But my wife had just found out she was pregnant, so I was unable to eat.

Yeah.

A lot of the cheese were unpasteurized.

So I

just vaunted my cheese freedom in her face.

And still one of the greatest moments

of our relationship as far as I know.

Well, maybe that's your dream, you know, your dream meal,

the person you're having it with is your wife while pregnant, and you get to just like go absolutely wild and eat whatever you like.

But in terms of, you know, we mentioned food showing the ingenuity of humanity.

I think cheese does that more than anything else.

How humans have taken the idea of milk and turned it into thousands and thousands of cheeses.

Yeah.

I think, um you know that tells you you know a lion wouldn't do that

you know a shark wouldn't do that yeah it took it took it took a very special species what a list of animals that wouldn't do it

a lion would do it a shark wouldn't do it it took uh it took a very special species to uh yeah to to to do that do you remember any of which particular cheeses that really um i can't remember from that okay now i do like a strong blue cheese so we've been to northern spain on holidays quite a bit bit.

And the Cabrales cheese, I don't know if you've ever had that, it's

from the

north of Spain.

And it is a kind of combat-level blue cheese.

It's, you know, it's a kind of cheese that needs to be cordoned off.

And I mean, it's borderline assault more than cheese.

Yeah.

But it's, I mean, that's quite spectacular.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Outstanding Mimette in Paris once, which is like a hard orangey cheese.

Yeah.

So you like the big, the the big cheeses?

I do like.

Yeah, I like a big cheese.

Smack you in the face.

Yeah.

Sort of cheese.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Want to hear the worst joke I've ever said on this podcast?

Go on then.

Cabral, this is Charlie Dimmock's favourite cheese.

For Charlie Dimmock.

Yeah.

Everyone was obsessed that she didn't wear a bra.

Yeah.

It was like the main news of this country for ages.

Yeah.

That's a topical comedian.

Yeah, the Dimmocks.

And Saltzman would have covered that every week.

Yeah.

Would you?

Would you have done?

Well, look, if it's in the news, you know, I have a

sacred duty

given to me by Almighty Zeus to try and make jokes about it.

Yeah.

Full reception.

Just as much as a gift, eh?

I'm going to read your menu back to you now and see how you feel about it.

You would like sparkling water, of course, saving the planet.

You would like two and a half poppins with chutney, all the chutney options, raw onions, grasshopper sauce, of course, hot pickle.

Starter, six Dahipuris.

Main course, Venice and Wellington made by your wife on New Year's Eve.

Your Christmas meal, this is the sharky board, the prawn and lobster risotto, ho-ho.

Japanese salmon, chocolate and passion fruit mousse, and the cheese board afterwards.

Side dish, whole mozzarella.

On a picture of David Gowers.

Sorry, on a

David Gowers cover drive, which I still don't know what a cover drive is.

Your drink is Opium Hill cup of tea from Paris while listening to Folk Singer by Muddy Water.

Dessert, you would like a cup of pistachio ice cream from Geliti in Rome.

And what was the other one?

Is it just the pistachio?

You want in that colour?

Oh, no, we're chucking a

sorbo.

Chuck in that fruit sorbet that you said.

Yeah.

Joe what?

I'm also going to chuck in the vanilla icing with the sherry on it.

All right.

So I'm just going to throw that in

because it sounds so great.

Yeah.

I think

you should have it.

And then you want to follow that up with a cheeseboard from Che Brus while your wife is pregnant.

Yep.

Yeah.

Sounds pretty good.

It does.

That does sound good.

Weirdly, me reading you that menu back was the quietest your stomach has been though.

It completely stopped for the for hearing the the full menu i think your dream menu is more christmassy than your christmas menu yes that yeah

yeah that's quite it is to be fair does that sound good to you that sounds excellent yeah that sounds good to me do um do we cook it now is that how the show works yeah yeah you've got a little kitchen podcast yeah and listeners might be like no you never do that we actually do for the listeners um we always do an episode afterwards where we cook the meal and eat it we put those in the vault like prince does with albums or used to and we're going to release them all posthumously.

Yes.

Right.

Makes them.

And that's after I brought my own deer for the Venice in Wellington.

Oh, I was wondering what that was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wrestle it to the death.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the best way to do it.

And then you sort of ready tenderise it.

Yeah.

We're in an evolutionary race, so I'm going to take on that Venison.

Also, we release some best of episodes at the end of the year

where we have all our favourite clips and there's going to be a separate section.

There's going to be like, oh, we had Andy Zaltzman on to talk about Christmas.

There's going to be all our favourite clips from this, but then we will have a separate section saying, but our most surprised guest was Andy's Tummy.

And then we'll just have a compilation of all of your Tummy sounds.

Yeah.

So

all the Tummy sounds, and then someone out there will undoubtedly auto-tune all those into some Christmas song

using your Tummy Gurgles.

And you'll be able to play that every Christmas as a family be a new tradition.

I think Tummy Gurgles plays baseball for the New York Fort.

Anything you want to say before we go, Andy?

Yeah, any more bullshit on the laptop for us?

Yeah, yeah.

I wouldn't want you to have written a whole

dish out.

I mean, we get to hear it.

I think that's.

I think we've,

yeah,

we've covered it, I think.

Oh, there was, well, there's Malvane's got a new inset restaurant.

Oh, fantastic.

Oh, and he's got a new restaurant in Paris.

This is an all-you-can-eat shellfish seducto brasserie called Moule-Vu Buffet Avec Mois as well.

He's

got a couple of Christmas recipes he's just put out on social media.

One is a regretful wood pigeon hand haunted in a memory of asparaguate wrongdoings.

Bondage to a bed of covertly assassinated scallops and hard-punched potato faces.

Or you can go with the high-speed car crash tenderized paragon of overbearingly mothered beef groin with a splenetic reduxio, gruffly man-handled chanterelle mushroom willies and a perk bouncer of cabbage tits.

But he's got a new insect, because obviously insects are going to be the future of food.

And his latest insects menu is a trio of breast of ladybird, filet de wasp and tarantula web snaffled moth sweetbreads, heartened by a sauce squig leash of fear-motivated larvae.

Then you've got an ooze bouche of a

ready-to-pop cocoon of caterpillar flouncing into a

mouth-flutter of freshly buttered butterfly.

And then a magateen of swat-orphaned fly infants confronted by an encroachment of filth-fed cockroaches counterintuited on a tally-atelly of hand-splatted worms.

Beautiful.

Well, that's the future of food, people.

Andy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you, Andy.

Pleasure.

Thanks, Andy.

Merry Christmas.

Well, there we are.

What a wonderful way to see Christmas, the Christmas period in.

Yes, with Andy and his very vocal tummy.

Oh, my goodness, the tummy, man.

The tum.

Look, it happens a lot on the podcast, but maybe it would only happen once or twice.

And it's often me, there'll be a little gurgle, but it won't, it'll go on reference because it's quite enough to get away with.

But we just couldn't leave it because Andy's stomach was louder than his voice.

The first one was so loud, and then it didn't stop.

Yeah.

We had to, you know, not reference it every single time, otherwise we'd still be recording.

But, like, it happens so much.

I'm very curious to see

how often it is audible to the listener.

I'll tell you what, we're going to start having to do.

Sorry, this is more work for you, Benito.

Sorry, I'm going to be able to do it.

It's having three extra mics in the studio at tummy level.

Yeah, you will have to do that.

And make sure they're at tummy level.

Otherwise, we'll be in trouble.

I'll have a few guests complaining.

Neither Andy or his tummy mentioned a wax lettuce.

Yes.

So that was good.

That means we don't have to kick either of them out.

Yeah, exactly.

But don't forget to go and see Andy on tour with his brand new show, The Zoltgeist, touring nationwide until the 9th of May at London's Leicester Square Theatre.

Plenty of dates.

Go and check them out on andysultsman.co.uk.

Thank you so much, Andy, for coming on again.

Ed, do you want to do some food shout-outs?

We've had some food shout-outs.

We've had some lovely stuff sent to us.

I appreciate very much.

Always very grateful for it.

We've had some kombucha from Lowbros and Leftfield, two different types of kombucha.

You're a booch head.

I'm a booch head, so I'm looking forward to contrasting and comparing these two brands.

Yes, like fine wines.

Yeah, exactly like a fine wine.

A vertical tasting.

Yeah, so I will do a vertical tasting of both of them.

That is exciting.

I like discovering new kombuchas.

Yes.

You know, I've shouted out my favourite one on the podcast before, but maybe this will be a challenge.

We've got some great coffee as well from Elsewhere Coffee.

That Benito has described himself as lovely.

Yes.

He is a big fan of it.

It's here in the offices, in Benito's office, which he runs a pretty tight ship here.

He does, but we get so much nice stuff that any guests coming in,

they got the pick of the crop here.

They got the pick of the crop, and now they've got some lovely coffees to drink while they're waiting to talk to these two hunks.

We got some beer from Pressure Drop, which Benito thinks got drunk at the Christmas party.

He said thinks very uncertainly because clearly he had a bit of a rowdy one at the Christmas party when he's gone on the sherries.

I didn't get to taste any of this Pressure Drop, but I like Pressure Drop.

I've had their beers before, so I am happy to give a big shout out to Pressure Drop.

Oh, lovely.

Thank you, Pressure Drop.

Thank you, Pressure Drop.

We got sent some grounded plant-based protein shakes.

You drink that at home, home, don't you?

I have drunk that at home and I didn't realize we got sent free ones until I came into the Christmas party and there was a box of it sat there.

Well, actually, first time I saw it, Anya Magliano was walking around the party drinking it like it was a party drink and then said she was going to take the whole box and then messaged me the next morning saying, I forgot the protein drinks.

Why was she drinking them at the Christmas party?

The protein drinks.

You met Anya, right?

I guess so, but I mean, is it because it's like a milkshake?

Yeah, I guess so.

It's the closest thing to a milkshake she could get.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough.

She was loving it.

Needs must.

Yeah, but they are,

I I really like those and they help my gains.

We got sent some whiskey from Compass Box Whiskey and a lot of fun, James.

They put it in like a leather pouch with a padlock on it, and you've got to solve the puzzle to open it to get to the whiskey.

That's more up your street than mine.

Well, it wasn't up my street.

I worked out that the bag was quite loose, so I could just take the bottle out without opening the padlock.

That's lateral thinking.

Lateral thinking, that's in my bag.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations, Ed.

Lovely whiskey.

Bing, ding.

Well, that's it from our Christmas specials, but fear thee not.

We'll be back with best of the year episodes, as we always do.

We do compilations of our favourite bits from across the whole year.

It's the best episode of the year.

It's the best episode of the year.

It's the only one James listens to while he cleans his house.

That should be the best of.

Yeah.

It's clips of the best of.

Yes, that's true.

Well, it is.

It is.

No, no, no.

What we should include is that clipped up.

But that's what it would be.

We should do another episode at the end of the year, which is clipped up.

The best of the best of.

And then it just gets shorter and shorter and shorter.

Until you get the best.

Yep.

So looking forward to that.

I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas period.

Whatever you're doing, however you're celebrating, just have a lovely rest.

Yes, look after yourselves.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Gobble, gobble.

Gobble, gobble, cockadoo-go-doo.

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Hello, I'm Carrie Add.

I'm Sarah.

And we are the Weirdos Book Club podcast.

We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival.

The date is Thursday, 11th of September.

The time is 7pm, and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies.

Tickets from kingsplace.co.uk.

Single ladies is coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September.

At the London Podcast Festival.

The rumours are true Saturday, the 13th of September at King's Place.

Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet.