Ep 149: Adam Buxton

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 or offmenupodcast.co.uk.

I've lived with OCD my entire life and people throw the term around like it's no big deal.

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Welcome to the Off-Menu podcast.

Taking the protein powder of conversation.

the plant-based milk of humor, mixing them together in the blender of the internet, hitting high for 10 seconds downing it all and then being really strong big strong boys yes big strong boys named ed gamble and james a caster we are big strong boys actually aren't we we're big strong boys i hope our parents are proud yes indeedy doody strapping young lads we own a dream restaurant ed is the matrix d i am the genie waiter we can get people any food from any place anytime we always invite a guest in and we ask them their favorite ever starter main course dessert side dish and drink not in that order and this week our guest is Adam Buxton.

Adam Buxton.

I mean, if you were building a Mount Rushmore of British podcasting, Buckles is on it, right?

Buckles is on it.

Me and you?

We're on there.

Herring.

Herring.

The Ramsays.

Josh and Rob.

Josh and Rob.

Daniel Taporno.

I don't think this mountain's a good idea.

The Elves.

QI Elves.

He's a very successful podcaster, writer, broadcaster.

He does all that sort of stuff.

He's a legend.

Yeah.

He's a stir, comedian.

He said everything.

He said everything.

And we've got him on the pod.

And look, much respect.

But if he chooses the secret ingredient, an ingredient which we deem to be gross, then we will kick him out of the dream restaurant.

He's out of here.

Yes.

And the secret ingredient this week is ginseng.

I don't know what it is.

Seng.

I don't know what it is.

I've had it in tea before.

Yeah.

Don't like those teas that I've had that have it in it.

No, I don't really, look, I don't really know what it is i think anything that sounds like tea based stuff is not really up my street uh-huh i'm not really a tea boy as you know i'm a coffee lad yes uh so ginseng sounds like the sort of thing that was medicine and now people are going oh imagine that yeah yeah we'll eat that yeah maybe maybe i mean i i've liked herbal teas and stuff in the past but the those ones no

because you're a little hippie aren't you little hippie i'm a little hippie boy peace and love peace and love everybody peace and love obviously that whole phrase has been absolutely ruined by that Ringo Star video.

Ringo Star, you know, a bit of a hippie himself, but he really did.

Now it's like, sounds like I'm telling people not to send me fan mail.

I mean, if you've not seen that video, I'm sure you're in one of those videos.

It is.

Everybody, this is James A.

Caster speaking to you with peace and love.

I am asking you, please stop sending DMs to Ed Gamble to pass on to me.

I'm asking with peace and love, they will not be responded to from here on out.

No DMs sent to Ed Gamble will be passed on to me anymore.

With peace and love, I ask you this.

Peace and love.

You know what?

A pretty good impression of Ringo Star.

As your impressions go, there was a lot of James A.

Caster still in there.

Yep.

But the rhythms were very Ringo.

Yes.

I tell you what does have a lot of great voices in it.

My tour show.

Oh, yes.

Electric.

Which is going all over the country.

Edgamble.co.uk.

A lot of the shows are busy, so you better get those tick ticks soon.

It's a hot ticket.

It's a hot ticket, Benny.

just like electricity.

Yes,

good link.

Yeah, it must be.

Yeah, yeah, I've never felt it.

But do go and buy a ticket for that.

But broadly, I think what we're all trying to get across here is: if Adam says Jin's saying he's out, he is out.

But let's see, will you say it?

Won't you say it?

There's only one way to find out.

This is the off-menu menu of Adam Buxton.

Wow, but that's the most instinct we've ever been.

Yeah.

Welcome, Adam Buxton, to the Dream Restaurant.

Howdy.

Nice to be here.

What the hell was that noise?

Welcome, Adam Buxton, to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

Whoa.

I just saw a genie.

Yes, you did.

Is that normal?

Yeah.

That's pretty normal for a lot of people in this dream restaurant.

They should see a genie.

How many genies have you seen in your life?

Only the two that played the beautiful lady genies in the TV shows.

Barbara Eden, and who was the other one?

We don't know.

You were talking about I Dream of Genie, right?

The TV show.

Yeah.

Me and Ed are not the people to ask about the casting choices.

You might not know this, Adam.

It's actually very bad form to reference other genies in the presence of a genie.

Is it?

I'm sorry.

That is not cool.

That's the kind of thing that would have been fine before 2015.

But

in the last five years, that's come to be frowned upon.

So, yeah.

Hey, it's not your fault.

You don't know.

Just don't do it again.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm 51.

But listen, that's fine.

I've taken that on board.

You know, some 51-year-old guys would go, screw you, I'll reference anything I want in the presence of a genie.

Genies are getting too sensitive these days, but not me.

If that's the way genies feel, that is totally cool.

Let's all grow together.

I really appreciate that.

You're a true ally to genies.

Thank you very much.

James, there was a new noise there that I've not heard before that the genie made when he popped out of the lamp.

Can you just repeat that for me?

Whoa, what's happened?

Well, I burst out of the lamp as usual, but actually went up a bit higher than I would have liked.

And so when I landed, I decided to really put my all into it.

I really put my haunches into it when I landed.

And it just made a real shabam noise because loads of sparks and extra magic dust kind of flew out from under my feet as I as I made impact with the ground.

So it was a big one for you, Adam.

Is it like, and apologies if this is very root one kind of conversation for a genie but is it like the tardis inside the lamp is it have you got a lot of space in there or is it cramped actually that that's a perfectly fine question to ask you're right there it is actually it's massive in there it's humongous it's kind of the size of heathrow airport

yeah in there and uh but just empty just like you know whatever i want to fill it with on any given day Sometimes, you know, during this pandemic, I have made it look like the inside of Heathrow Airport because I miss it.

I miss travel, you know?

Yeah.

Who doesn't?

So the genie has to get planes normally.

If I want to, yeah.

So often I've obviously got a lot of hookups with magic carpets and stuff like that.

So I don't always need to get a plane.

Does it require a great deal of genie energy to transport yourself to different places?

I was watching Ghost the other day, for example.

Okay.

Okay, listen, I'll stop you there again.

Yeah.

Ghosts and genies are different.

And if you're going to just kind of come here and make out like we're all the same,

honestly, I wasn't.

I was just referencing the idea of non-material, non-corporeal transportation and body switching and things like that.

Okay, fair enough.

And in that film, when the ghosts occupy someone else's body, it takes a great deal of energy and they're knackered afterwards.

They can barely stand up.

Yeah.

Well, Ed knows that a lot of my genie powers take it out of me.

And at the end of every off-menu episode, I have to have a long lie down.

Yeah.

I'm really sweaty and just quite exhausted by the whole thing and it takes it out of me emotionally as well i cry a lot after every episode oh yeah it's pretty tricky when we've got back-to-back records i'll be honest yeah you can always tell when it's uh the second of a double bill yeah you can tell the second one oh i'm really struggling luckily you are the first and only episode we're recording today adam okay cool and it's a friday so it's genie party night it's genie party night i did a big shebang when i landed I'm feeling really good about making your meal.

Are you a food guy?

I am.

You know, I've come to realize that I am.

And I think it is one of my principal pleasures in life.

And I'm only just at this midpoint.

Well, I'm way beyond the midpoint, but at 51 years old, I'm only just beginning to realize that actually I love food.

And I wish that I had been more adventurous as a youngster.

And only in the last five years have I just started to, you know, widen my horizons a little bit and eat different types of food that I used to turn my nose up.

I was at.

Turn my nose up at.

I was, that's the order that I want this sentence to go in.

I was turn my nose up at.

Yeah.

I was such a picky eater when I was little.

I was terrible.

I mean, I still don't like cheese, so that's still off the menu.

Great.

I didn't like a lot of vegetables, like no tomatoes, yuck.

I mean, pretty much no salad of any kind.

Lettuce was the only thing that I would, you know, tolerate.

But apart from that, no, didn't like anything.

And now you're into vegetables?

Do you have tomatoes?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, in the last five years, I've been trying to eat more vegetarian and vegan dishes.

So in the process of doing that, I've discovered the wonderful world of all sorts of amazing vegetables.

Cherry tomatoes.

I was having some earlier on today.

Yum, yum, yum, I was thinking as I bit into those little bastards.

I'll be honest, when you were talking about this journey of discovery you've been on in the last five years and truly discovering the world of food, I wasn't expecting cherry tomatoes to be the headliner.

Yeah, because it used to be, for me, a fancy meal used to be having spaghetti bolognese.

And then,

you know, you take a couple of Frankfurtos,

Erteferte, you know, the Erta brand.

And

I honestly swear to you that I thought, I'm kind of like a brilliant chef because I suddenly one day thought of the idea of taking two frankfurters and chopping them into little slices and adding and sort of sprinkling them like croutons on the spaghetti bolognese.

Because you know, because it's nice to have just a bit more meat on just spaghetti bolognese of a slightly different kind, a bit more, you know, synthetic kind of piggy meat on top of the spaghet bog.

Now, spaghetti bolognese obviously is Italian, Frankfurters are German.

What voice are you doing?

Yeah.

That is my generic offensive Euro voice.

I love it.

I guess if you don't like cheese, what are your options for sprinkling over the top of bolognese, right?

So it's pretty much only chopped-up Frankfurters.

Yeah.

I mean, I probably would have gone with hundreds and thousands if there hadn't been any Frankfurters to hand.

But that was my idea of a pretty classy meal.

Otherwise, it would have been Frankfurters in white bread because my mum never used to buy the buns.

Now, you said when you were younger, you thought of tomatoes as yuck, yuck, yuck.

And now you're eating tomatoes and you're thinking yum, yum, yum.

So that's been the story.

Because Ed's making out like it's some laughable narrative arc for you, but it's actually quite a big deal that you've used to think yuck, yuck, yuck, and now you think yum, yum, yum.

So it was yuck, yuck, yuck.

You went to yum, yum, yum.

Was it ever yuck, yuck, yum or yuck, yum, yuck?

Or was it just straight to the yum, yum, yum?

Good question, Ed.

Initially, that is a good question.

Initially, I was sort of holding my nose and thinking yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.

But then

I think what you realize when you actually do start to cook things with a bit of seasoning and, you know, mixing things up, different flavours, is like, ooh, this is interesting now.

And I'm not so offended by the textures as I used to be.

Like, I didn't like the texture of tomatoes.

And it was too squishy and not nearly as good as ketchup, as far as I was concerned.

Because I was fine with ketchup.

And my parents always used to say, but you like ketchup.

And I was like, even then, I knew, like, ketchup is not tomatoes, really.

So, yeah, there was a short period of resistance.

But, like everything, you know, you kind of realize, oh, it's great.

This is what all the fuss is about.

One day, maybe I'll have that epiphany with cheese.

Because I do look at pizzas and think, yeah, I totally get why that's good.

But I just personally don't like it.

Because a lot of people say they don't like cheese, but they make an exception for melted cheese or they make an exception for pizzas.

Are you off pizzas because of the cheese?

Yeah, no pizza.

Oh, man.

And I've been through trying to have pizzas without cheese, and it's just too much like a blasted barren surface of an alien planet, really, isn't it?

Without the cheese.

We always start with still a sparkling water.

Do you have a preference, Adam?

Well, I used a few years ago, I would have said sparkling like a shot because it's the champagne of the waters.

Yes.

But then I had the misfortune of

being on a bill with Nick Helm, the comedian,

in Dublin a few years back.

And after we did our set in the club and we killed, we absolutely killed everyone,

we said, wow, we killed everyone.

Let's go and celebrate.

So me and Nick Helm and Tim Vine

and the trio repaired to the hotel bar where we were staying.

Yeah.

And we lived it the heck up.

But Nick Helm ruined everything by blithely announcing that sparkling water, which I started off.

Actually, no, after we'd been boozing for a while, I said, I'm going to switch to water because I've got to get up in the morning.

And I ordered a sparkling water and he said, oh, that stuff rots your teeth.

And I was like, yeah, whatever, Nick Helm.

And he said, no, it really does.

It rots your teeth.

What happened to him in between when you said it the first time and the second time?

Did he have a sip of sparkling water?

I inhabited him.

Yes.

It's exhausting.

I thought he was just taking all the piss out of me.

But it turns out he wasn't.

And that stuff is absolutely deadly, as I'm sure you probably realize.

I didn't know that, did you?

So, what do you mean if it's deadly?

It literally...

wears your teeth away.

Yeah, look, I've got some factoids.

Okay.

Great.

The process of making fizzy water involves adding carbonic acid.

That, quote, feel-good mouth sensation you get after sipping a carbonated drink is in fact the chemical activation of pain receptors on your tongue, responding to this acid, giving it a moorish taste.

Acids are very damaging to teeth.

They weaken the enamel surfaces, making the teeth vulnerable to decay and sensitivity.

If you're desperate for sparkling water, use a straw.

Because when you drink with a straw, you can enjoy the flavor without the liquid coming into direct contact with the enamel, enamel, reducing the risk of damage.

Is that from Nick Helm's website?

That is, yeah, that's from helm.com.

Information about dangerous food and drink.

So at that point, did you return the unhealthy sparkling water and carry on drinking copious amounts of alcohol with Nick Helm?

No, I just drank it down and totally ignored Nick Helm because I thought, I'm not taking any advice from you.

And then I googled it the next day and I was like, oh, shit, Nick Helm's right.

So from that day, you haven't been able to drink sparkling water without thinking of the health implications.

And I'd imagine thinking of Nick Helm telling you about the health implications.

Yeah, exactly.

It's one of those things.

They are forever linked now in my mind.

So it's going to be tap water.

Tap.

Tap specifically.

Yeah.

I like tap.

And we live out in a hard water area out here in South Norfolk.

And I love hard water.

Do you?

Go on.

Yeah, the harder the better.

What's the best thing about hard water?

Oh, man.

It's bracing.

You can feel that calcium going in there and calcifying everything.

I can feel all my insides gradually turning into the inside of our kettle getting all white and furry and crusty.

And no, I don't know.

It feels as if it's got more flavor.

It's got more edge, you know, it's more refreshing.

I don't know.

I'm probably imagining that, but that's how it feels to me.

No, it's called something different for a reason, right?

There must be a difference there.

And you notice it.

I mean, you're doing trips to London all the time for work.

You're going to be an expert on this stuff.

You've got your chili bottle there full of hard water.

It's full of hard water.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I love it.

So the layman, it looks like

you've got a sort of chrome bottle, but that's actually a see-through bottle.

And that's how hard the water is, right?

Reflective.

Yeah, exactly.

Like drinking mercury.

It's calcified it and turned it rose gold.

Do you think the hard water, all of the calcium and stuff in the hard water, is slowly rebuilding your teeth from your years of sparkling water consumption.

Yeah, there you go.

Maybe that's what I'm doing:

subconsciously compensating for all those years of.

I mean, it's no, it's a scandal for sparkling water.

It's deadly stuff.

And people have known about it for years, but it just, the information has never gone overground.

If it weren't for brave people like Nick Helm, I would still be drinking that deadly shit.

I mean, Ridley Scott, in the first draft of Alien, I think the alien didn't bleed acid, it bled sparkling water.

That's how dangerous that stuff is.

Good, yeah.

So, do you think this is a conspiracy then?

You feel like you're getting a conspiracy theory out there.

Yeah.

Also, I don't think Ridley Scott wrote Alien, did he?

I think that was

that's all you when I was asking that question.

All you were thinking about was that you might have got that wrong, right?

And people were going to be.

I was just thinking I was going to be attacked by nerds.

Knows his fan base.

They'd be on him like a shot.

If you made Scott wrote Alien, it was Dan O'Bannon.

I wouldn't say his fan base.

I mean, including Joe Cornish.

He would absolutely destroy you for that.

Yeah, that's true.

And I would deserve it.

So as a hardwater guy, do you bully softwater kids because they're dweebs?

Because they're not hard like you?

No, I understand.

Some people can't take hardwater.

It's not for everybody.

Some people, especially children, you wouldn't want to give them hardwater.

That's crazy.

Be honest, though.

When you...

meet someone who lives in a softwater area, do you have the urge to beat them up because you're a hardwater boy?

I mean, I am thinking Snowflake,

but I don't like that term and I wouldn't use it against anyone.

But you are thinking?

I am thinking it.

I want to sock that dweeb between the eyes.

Yeah.

That pathetic, softy.

You don't know what life is like with your soft,

slimy water that doesn't even fur up the kettle.

That's what I'm thinking.

Popadums or bread.

Poppadums or bread, Adam Buxton.

Pop a dumbs or bread.

Bread every time I mean there's nothing wrong with poppa doms they are of course great but I do love bread I love bread I'm bread boy yeah I should write a song about bread I've written a song about almost every other food stuff yeah did you ever write um food songs James in your band

Well, I was in a band called the Capri Sun Quartet for a while, so we were kind of food related anyway.

But I've written most of my food songs on this podcast, a lot of food and drink songs over the years that have made an appearance.

Improvise them sometimes on the pod.

Yeah, they're not written, are they?

You just sort of improvise them.

Improvising is writing.

Now, Adam, the difference between our podcasts is that you'll put a lot of effort into yours in terms of writing jingles, doing research and things like this.

Not so much on this podcast.

We tend to just sort of see what happens and James will occasionally make up a song about Corston Press.

Not true.

Ed isn't a musician.

He doesn't know what he's on about.

Me and you know what we're talking about, Adam.

We've both written songs.

You write songs for your podcast.

I write songs on my podcast let's just agree that that's what happens were you ever in a band Ed I was in a band called tethered priest very briefly tethered priest what was your best tethered priest song uh we had one song called love in an abattoir wow there you go it was about two people falling in love in an abattoir yeah yes can you remember any of it uh love and an abattoir lust in a cemetery the eve of lucifer that's all i can remember Wow, wow.

That was pre-written, not improvised.

Yeah, didn't improvise that.

Sat down and wrote that in a in probably a maths lesson, wrote that on the back of a folder.

I mean, I think a lot of people, when they're trying to write music, they gravitate towards food, maybe just while they're developing the lyrics as a placeholder, you know.

But actually, I think food is pretty good to write music about because it is such a universal thing.

And it's generally derided as being hacky subject matter in the same way that people look down at toilet humor, fart jokes, etc.

All of which I'm a great fan of.

And I personally, I don't think it is hacky per se to do those things or make jokes about those things or write songs about food, for example.

It's the way you do it.

Like, you know, if you write a good food song or do a good fart joke,

mate, life doesn't get better.

Well, then allow me to ask you this, Adam.

At the end of this meal, are you going to do a big stinky fart and shit in your pants?

I'm not going to shit in my pants.

That's never.

So far, that hasn't been a problem.

I'm looking forward very much to that day.

Have I ever shut in my pants?

I'm just trying to think.

I want to be honest.

I don't want to be.

Because of food.

Let's keep it, you know, let's keep it on the theme.

Have you ever shut in your pants because of food, Adam?

Yeah, you're doing a big, glorious fart, and you're really enjoying the farts.

It's like a triumphant moment at the end of the meal.

And then you shit your pants.

You see how happy it's made me?

Yeah.

And me, to be fair.

It's right up both of us straights.

Ding in my pants.

No,

I never have.

I only ever shat in my PJs because I was on antibiotics for an earache.

And I was watching The Man Who Fell to Earth with my mum.

I was 11 years old.

It was already embarrassing because David Bowie was getting his knob out.

I thought it was going to be like Star Wars with David Bowie, i.e.

the perfect film.

Turned out to be very pretentious and arty and difficult to understand, plus long, extremely embarrassing sex scene towards the beginning of the film that I had to watch in total silence with my mum.

And then I felt my stomach rumbling and thought it was a fart and went to enable the fart and then discovered that it was not a fart.

No.

It was

some

bad, stinking lava

from my insides.

As if watching a sex scene with your mum in the room is not embarrassing enough, you then shut your pajamas.

Like a nightmare.

It wasn't good.

Imagine all the times I've been watching films, my parents have been sex scenes and the mumbling embarrassed.

I can only imagine during that point shitting on

thinking, oh, this is so awkward.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

It's such a strange scene as well.

It's like it's Rip Torn.

You know who Rip Torn is, right?

Artie from the Larry Sanders show.

And he is playing a kind of aging college professor.

And he's having an affair with one of his students.

So it's already fairly unsavory.

And they start bonking.

and taking photographs of each other and it gets very animalistic and they're sort of shouting and grunting and squealing.

And the whole scene is intercut with Bowie in maybe a Japanese restaurant having a bowl of soup and watching some kabuki dancers

shouting and screaming at each other as well.

It's very odd.

So you'd like bread?

What kind of bread would you like?

Yeah, man, I'll have some.

I mean, pretty much any bread I'm happy with.

As soon as the bread arrives, I'm delighted.

I used to like garlic naan

when I was in my Indian takeaway days in South London Stockwell and I would order from the takeaway I would ask them if I could have extra mango chutney and then it ended up with me just saying can I have 12 pots of mango chutney please

and the guy was like 12

like yeah yeah i really like mango chutney he's like well you can just buy a jar just buy a jar of the mango chutney i was like like that's not as good as your mango chutney

but i also like moroccan i think it's called cobs k-h-o-b-z sort of flatbread we had that when we went to morocco me and my family and and stayed in a place in imlil up in the mountains and it was a bit of a culture shock and the children weren't very excited about the prospect of the uh tagine dish that we were about to consume because they're kind of as unadventurous as I used to be when I was little when it comes to food.

But when that flatbread came out,

all warm and dipping in the oil and a bit of salt, everyone was happy.

So what's it going to be then?

The flatbread that's with the oil and the salt with your family in the hills of Morocco or your student days eating a garlic nine and 12 pots of mango chocolate?

I wish it was my student days.

It wasn't that long ago.

It wasn't?

When was it?

I just assumed you were a student.

No, he didn't say student days.

He said takeaway curry days, which

it was when i was first married and me and my wife bought our first house in south london so it was like we've got a house we can do anything we want and we didn't have children at that point so what we used to do was just watch 24 sometimes five episodes in a single night and eat takeaways and i think i would have to go for the garlic naan with them channeling now adam you say your kids are as picky as you were when you were a kid have you decided on an age where you're going to sit them down and introduce them to the joy of cherry tomatoes?

Actually, gradually they're shifting.

So, my eldest is 18 and he's quite adventurous now when it comes to food.

And he has

kind of a self-styled aesthete.

I think he has turned into that really in opposition to his brother, who's much more of a monkey man.

And so, his younger brother,

about the most adventurous he gets, is fish fingers.

Your dream starter.

Dream starter.

I think the most amazing time I ever had with a starter was one of the more memorable restaurant experiences I had, which I talked about on my podcast ages ago, actually, with my friend Garth Jennings, who's a film director.

He directed the film Sing

and a couple of other things.

And he was working with Disney towards the beginning of the 2000s.

And when it was my wife's birthday in 2006, as a special treat, me and Garth kind of conspired to book us a table in a fancy restaurant in Paris.

And Disney booked us this table at a super fancy restaurant called the Les Ambassadeur

in one of the most

flash hotels in the world called the Hotel de Crion.

I think the restaurant has since closed, but inside it was like a kind of comedy version of a fancy Parisian restaurant.

You know what I mean?

Like gold and very ornate.

It was like the Palace de Versailles, big mirrors and marble floors, and one waiter per person, and only a few tables with loads of space in between each table.

And it was really fun.

And we dressed up and everything.

And I'd made a big deal out of saying, I'm paying for this.

This is my treat.

You know, I'm really grateful that you got this table booked, and this is exciting and fun, but this one is on me.

And then we sat down and we looked at the menus, and everyone was like, Oh, there's no prices on these menus.

And then I looked at mine, there were prices on mine because they knew that I was the sort of lead diner I was paying.

And I took a look and I realized quite quickly that even if we went for the cheapest options, the meal for four of us was going to cost not less than £1,000.

Oh my gosh.

So I was thinking, like, oh, shit, that isn't worth it.

We're not going to spend £1,000 on a meal.

That's insanity.

But I'd made this big song and dance about it.

So I was like, wow, I don't know what I'm going to do.

So I told Garth and he's like, mate, we can split it if you want.

I was like, no,

the splitting's the least of it.

I think we did split it in the end, but even so, I mean, that's still 500 quid each.

But basically, we went ahead and we had the meal, and actually, it was worth it.

I mean,

if by worth it,

we're saying, you know, like, okay, so what is worth a thousand pounds?

I mean, it's something that I've remembered for the rest of my life, and I always will remember.

But is it the food that you remember, or is it that you were panicking because it was so expensive?

Everything, the whole experience, the place, the feeling of panic, but then also the food.

It was one of those places where you get about 11 courses or something, and they're all presented with a flourish.

All the waiters arrive at the same time, and they lift off the dome, and ta-da!

There it is, and it's small portions.

So, in a way, it was like 11 starters, and each one of them was this crazy kind of, you didn't know what it was just by looking at it.

It was a sort of little piece of art, Heston Blumenthal-type construction.

Although I've never eaten at a Heston Blumenthal restaurant, so I don't know what that food is like.

But, you know, it was like,

this is a little bit of...

He's back.

This is a bit of a worm ball, a breast of warm ball, and it has been lightly bullied and

served underneath a little lattice made of stretched fingers of fudge.

So it could have been anything.

I don't know.

It was impossible to tell, but every one of them was beautiful.

You know, it would be like a little miniature tower of something with dust over it, yummy dust.

And you'd eat it, and you won't, it was like, is this meat?

Is this,

you know, is this Snickers?

What's going on here?

But every single one was amazing.

So your starter is any of those dishes from that restaurant because you don't actually know what any of them were.

Yeah.

And one of your guesses is breast of wumble.

Yes, with a lattice of

fingers of fudge.

Do you want that to be your starter?

Or do you want the stack of something with the yummy dust?

I mean, either is fine.

Honestly, anything that they had in there, buckle of jerkin with marinated joy beans.

Yeah.

I mean,

honestly, I literally couldn't tell you any actual thing that we ate.

But all I know is that every single one of those little tiny art pieces was amazing.

And we were just looking at each other.

And also, you know, the whole thing about a restaurant experience, isn't it?

It's the whole thing.

It's the presentation, it's the place.

And you've got some wine.

So that makes you a little bit more tooty and up for enjoying yourself, I guess.

And there really is something to be said for the feeling of when you panic about something being really expensive and then just realizing you have to buy it.

So you've got to just lean into it and enjoy it.

Yeah, that's right.

And then the joy of not regretting it as well, the joy of realizing afterwards, actually,

that was money well spent, relatively speaking.

You know, let's not even begin to think about all the other things you could do with £1,000 or all the people who would just kill for £1,000 quid for all sorts of reasons.

But when we got out of that restaurant, oh, man,

we were on a high.

I'm intrigued by this menu situation of...

The person paying is the only one with the prices on the menu.

Yeah.

Surely the point of paying for something is everyone can see how much you're paying for it and you look like a big generous man.

I know.

I mean, you could go either way with it, couldn't you?

I think the idea is that your guests, they're not even bothered because they don't want to feel bad about how expensive everything is.

Right, okay.

That makes sense.

So they're not thinking about the money.

It's like, have what you want.

Don't you worry about the money.

Only one person is going to worry about the money at this table.

For me, I'd be tempted, though, if that was me with the menu with the prices on and I'd said I'd pay.

If someone was like, I think I'm going to have the squid, I'd go, yep, just give me a second.

Nope.

That's basically what I don't know.

Yeah, he went,

guys.

I did say that about the wine.

I said,

because we had a conversation about it.

I told the others, because I said to my wife as well, like, I wanted her to know what was going on because I didn't want her to come out and

just say, you spent what?

So we did talk about it, and we agreed that we would economize by, you know, only having a 50-pound bottle of wine rather than the next cheapest, which was about 150.

So she's trying to negotiate with you, being like, Adam, are you sure you need 12 pots of mango chutney?

Can't we just get

one?

I mean.

Let's look at your main course now.

So we started out in Paris having wumble breast.

Where are we traveling to now?

Well, I don't know where this dish originates, but this is, I think, a standard sort of salad option that you can whip up at home and it is my current fave go-to lunch option and it is the cauliflower taco bowl okay and it represents to me an encouraging chapter in my eating evolution as i said before i used to be very picky and it's it's everything in one meal that i used to absolutely despise

even after i started eating vegetables, which was in my 20s, the only vegetable I would really eat was broccoli.

And I thought, well, I found, I used to go out with a girl who really looked after herself and ate very well and stayed fit.

And she was like, you've really got to eat better.

Otherwise, you're just going to die soon.

And I said, all right, well, I'll eat one healthy thing.

And she said, okay, eat broccoli then, because it's really good for you.

And so I was like, ugh, okay.

And I tasted it and I thought, well, it's horrible, but I can get it down without vomiting everywhere.

So I'll go for broccoli.

And then over the years, I sort of ended up quite liking broccoli.

But cauliflower, forget about it.

I just thought, no, I'm never going to eat that.

It looks like brains.

It's all anemic and disgusting.

And also, I think I was traumatized because I was forced to eat cauliflower cheese at school.

And I think I did puke then.

And that was traumatic.

What David Bowie film were you watching when you puked?

labyrinth yeah yeah i always hated cauliflower and then i don't know i tried this recipe because i get these i get these recipe boxes delivered yeah i thought that would be a good way to expand my horizons and actually it's really worked well and you follow the they give they deliver all the ingredients and you've got a little recipe you follow the recipe i i follow it to the letter to the second i've got my timer out there and it's really enjoyable and one of these dishes was the cauliflower taco bowl.

And you chop up the cauliflower and you kind of put it in, you sprinkle sort of piri-piri rub over it.

You know what I mean?

Like a load of spices, onion powder and paprika and hardaman and ginger and all that stuff.

Bit of oil, stick them in the oven.

roast the hell out of those little cauliflower florets.

Meanwhile, you're making yourself the taco bowl, right?

So you get a floppy taco wrap and you fold it into a heat-proof bowl by just folding in the sides a few times.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

No.

Have you ever done that?

Never done that, but I like the way it's going.

You make, I didn't realize you were making an edible bowl at this point.

You're making an edible bowl.

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone make an edible bowl at home before, and I absolutely love it.

Yeah, because usually it's you go to one of those restaurants and you can have the big bread bowl, right?

Yeah.

And that's fun.

I get that.

But as you say, not something you can necessarily do at home.

But you you can with the wraps, the tortilla wraps, you fold them in, you kind of do little pleats so you can fit them into the bowl.

And then you stick them in the oven for two or three minutes or something like that until they start going brown at the edges.

Then you take them out and once they cool down, they retain the bowl shape.

And so then you can fill that with the rest of the ingredients for the taco bowl.

The roasted cauliflower in that piri-piri rub, chopped onions,

halved cherry tomatoes, black beans, strips of carrot.

That's the other thing I learned how to do because normally I would just chop them up and it would be carrot coins.

That would be my go-to serving suggestion for carrots.

But then I got this recipe and I said, no, no, you don't have to do the carrot coin.

You can take the pillar, pull down the pillar on the whole carrot until you have ribbons of carrot.

And that is nice.

And then you squeeze a bit of lime, chop up some coriander, or if you are American, cilantro.

And then

it is a great taste party for your mouth.

I'm not sure I trust this guy because he was the guy who was telling you to sprinkle frankfurters over bolognese earlier.

He's got absolutely no consistency.

He's gone on quite the journey as well.

He has, yeah.

That was in the old days.

He was younger as well, though.

Yeah.

Now it's all about cilantro.

I just, when Americans used to talk about cilantro, I was like, what?

They've just eaten, they're eating food that we just don't have in this country.

What the hell is cilantro?

Did you always know about cilantro?

No, I always heard them say it, didn't know what it was.

When I discovered it was coriander, couldn't believe it.

So different.

Because you don't hear about that one as much, do you?

Because you don't hear about that being coriander.

Eggplant, everyone knows what eggplant is.

Aubergine.

Yeah, exactly.

And zucchini, we hear about that.

What is zucchini again?

Cogettes.

Cogettes.

But the cilantro, the cilantro problem very rarely comes up.

Zucchini.

It's so show-off-y, isn't it?

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We come to your side dish.

Yep.

Side dish.

I'll tell you what I'm going to have.

I'm going to have a bit of sushi,

specifically the Inari.

Now, do you know what that is?

No, I do.

Yeah, you tell me.

No, I'm not gonna tell you.

You tell, I just wanted,

I need to make it very clear that I know what it is before you say what it is.

I hold on.

How about you both say it at exactly the same time?

And then I'll know that you both do it.

Because

it's not like a song lyric.

There's not an official

description of what it is.

It's not me and Adam are not Ed's worry because he doesn't really know what it is.

I'll count to three and then you both say One, two, three.

Seasoned and fried tofu bean pouch.

Sweet tofu pocket.

Yeah, pocket is

a description.

Yeah.

Pocket and pouch.

And inside the pouch, generally, you've got rice,

but you can put a bit of avocado in there if you want, chop some other salad items in there and go nuts.

You can put a few smarties in if you want.

But I will usually have just the classic

rice pocket with with the tofu bean wrapping.

Yum, it's amazing.

God, it's good.

I could

hundreds of that.

You said sushi.

That's sushi, isn't it?

Yeah.

Is there no raw fish in this?

No, maybe you're right.

Maybe sushi means raw fish, but it's generally like if I go to a sushi restaurant, then there will be inari on the menu.

You got me all excited for raw fish.

I love raw fish.

I really love raw fish as well.

But I mean,

I could also have one of those little salmon rolls, mackey rolls.

Those are amazing, too.

The fact that you love raw fish now, Adam, surely that's more of an adventurous leap from your previous picky self to eating cherry tomatoes.

You already buried the lead here.

Yes.

Yeah, that's weird, isn't it?

I mean, I was always okay with raw fish.

Well, actually, no, I would never have wanted to eat sushi.

When sushi first became a thing in the 80s, it was a byword for absolute twats.

The people outside of Japan, obviously, who ate sushi were dickheads and, you know, yuppies and people in

adaptations of Brett Easton Ellis novels.

And then in the late nineties, I met my beautiful wife and she said, you know, sushi's good.

Let's go to a sushi restaurant.

So that was one of our first dates, going to a tsunami sushi restaurant.

Were you already in love?

I was pretty far gone, yeah.

How quickly did you fall in love with your wife?

Oh, man.

I mean,

I feel as if it was fairly instant.

The first time I saw her at a party sitting in a corner, she's very tall and sort of haughty looking.

I tell you, to me, she looked like Sean Young in Blade Runner.

Okay.

Is that how you opened the conversation, Adam?

I think it was, actually, yeah.

I said, have you ever seen Blade Runner?

Because she had one of those big jackets with a big, massive collar, big furry, fake fur collar thing.

And she had big hair.

And she was pretty great looking.

And still is, obviously.

Yeah, pretty instantaneous.

And then the deal was sealed in the sushi restaurant

over some warm sake.

But I love, I mean, I really love sushi.

I wrote a big long song about sushi and did a video for it that I think is offensive.

Okay.

So I don't know if it may

not be on my YouTube channel because there's some

problematic stuff in there.

It was a really nicely made video, but I think the director just got a little carried away with some of the imagery and it perhaps wasn't as sensitive as it could have been.

It was made back in 2012, but I was really happy with the song.

During the Olympics.

I found the.

Was it during the Olympics?

There you go.

Yeah, yeah.

I found some of the lyrics.

Well, you don't have to read those.

These are just choice lyrics.

I won't read the whole thing.

And this deals with wasabi.

You know the paste, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

This is a verse about wasabi.

I used to be afraid of wasabi, the green paste that comes with sushi and has a very strong taste.

Mix it with soy sauce to make wasabi joy you or take it on its own, but be careful because boy you can blow your head if you overdose.

It's not as bad as chili, but it comes really close.

It'll cauterize your sinuses and fry up all your brains.

But there's something that I love about wasabi pains.

And then the other verse I was happy with was Ooh, sushi restaurants, you see them more and more.

I only wish I had one that delivered to my door.

There's a sushi chain called Itsu, where I often go to scoff it.

Though that Russian spy was poisoned there, don't let that put you off it.

that's not very nice is it when i die

bury me with cast and press

cast and cast and cast and press i'm a little baby and i drink it from the brace

where's that what's that from that's my song about caust and press the drink i like just so you know just sharing songs of each other insists on singing despite knowing that his mum listens to this podcast and hates it when he says he drinks caust and press from the breast has called him about it and said please stop doing that what i I don't even know what Corston Press is.

It's a delicious, uh, lightly sparkling drink.

Not it's a kind of a compromise between people who love sparkling water and the Nick Helms of the world.

It's like a lightly sparkling drink that it's like apple juice, but with rhubarb in it, it's my favorite flavor of the Corston Press.

You can get orange, you can get straight, straight up apple, and uh, elderflower, but I like rhubarb one's my favorite.

Rhubarb Corston Press.

James, have you been?

Um, are you singing this again because you've run out of Corston Press?

I'm heading down to the orchard via the rhubarb patch.

Gonna pick me up, but cat a costume press, gonna tip it down the hatch.

There's another crate in the post right now.

Hopefully, fingers crossed.

Oh, yeah, I've had cloudy apple.

There you go.

It is refreshingly crisp.

Now, Adam, you've mentioned, or fish, you've mentioned sushi.

Susie Ruffle came on the podcast and she talked about sashimi.

She likes to have sashimi from the sushi samba in the shard

prompting the tongue twister susie likes sashimi from the sushi samba in the shard

very hard to say very tricky would you like to have a go and see how fast you can say susie likes sashimi from the sushi samba in the shard james currently struggling to say each word individually with big gaps in between so difficult for me susie likes sashimi from the sushi samba in the shard that's the best thing i've ever done first time pretty good

susie likes sashimi from the sushi samba in the shard oh yes that is good words wow sushi ruffle

that is good Good for her.

That sounds great.

I'd love to go to that place.

That sounds cool.

And actually, thinking of sushi, actually, no, sushi is Japanese.

I'm thinking of something Chinese now when it comes to my drinks.

Like, so you haven't asked me about my drinks but I'm getting ahead of we're moving on to the drink right now so let's let's let's just slide on into it

okay

because I was going to say I was gonna say uh

Carlsberg

the famous Chinese drink Carlsberg but then I thought actually

I was thinking of going to

a Chinese restaurant in Soho in London called New World.

Have you ever been there?

No.

It's massive.

It's one of the biggest ones in Europe as far as I'm aware.

It's on like about, I'm not joking, six or seven floors.

And it is absolutely huge.

My girlfriend used to call it the factory because it was just like the service was terrible.

You go in there.

It was terrible as far as, like, you get served okay.

Like you get served the food quickly.

So in that respect, it was great.

But they were so surly and there was absolutely no question that they were going to help you with anything or explain anything or do you any favors or change anything like that.

It was like, there you go, deal with that.

But the food was incredible.

And we used to have this sparkling lychee wine.

Have you ever had that?

No.

I think I have had similar stuff to this.

A Lychee wine.

I can't even imagine what that would take.

I don't think I've had a Lychee in a decade, let's say.

Did you like it when you had one?

I think it's, I'm rarely put off by texture.

And I think, I think Lyche is something that does put me off.

It's the eyeball thing.

It feels like you're popping an eyeball in there.

It's a bit I'm a celebrity bushtucker trial, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which you're going to be on?

Do you want to announce that now?

That you're going to be on the next series of I'm a celebrity?

I can dream.

But I know what you mean.

I've always quite enjoyed it.

Maybe it appeals to a sadistic side of me that I quite like imagining it's some alien bollock that I'm biting into.

Okay.

And getting down to the nut in the middle.

I broadly don't like eating anything that you could put in like a a Halloween thing.

You know, like you put something in a box and then you put your hand in and you say it's eyeballs.

Yeah.

I don't like anything from those boxes in my mouth.

Very weird category that Ed doesn't like that.

But what about spaghetti though?

That's that's your go-to thing for those mystery Halloween ones.

That's a good point.

And then say it's, is it, what are they worms?

Worms or guts.

Or witch's hair.

Witch's hair?

Yeah.

That's not scary.

The least scary bit of a witch is her hair.

What?

Oh, it's really scary though.

If someone was like, feel a witch's nose or brush her hair, I'd be brushing her hair in a heartbeat.

But

it might have snakes on the end, though.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah, but she can do that with any of her bits, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, but witches, I mean, she could probably do some bad things with her hair.

Yeah.

So you do have to be careful.

But she doesn't wash it very much.

That's right.

There's all sorts of things living in there.

There's probably some terrible dandruff.

Yeah.

It's greasy.

It's, I realized the other day that there is a, I always sit in the same spot on the sofa in our front room.

And there's a witch there.

Usually.

And I'm married to her.

No.

There is,

like, we're usually in there in the evening only.

And the other day I went in during the day when it was all light.

And I saw that behind where I sit, there's kind of a greasy stain where my head goes.

I'm such a greasy hair guy.

It was revolting.

That's why OdiU sits in that seat.

Everyone else is like, no, thank you.

It's like a kind of old guy couch.

No.

And I thought, like, oh my God, I've reached the point where I'm going to have to invest in an anti-makasa or a hat or a hat or some shampoo, I suppose.

Yeah.

Sure, some shampoo might be the first portal.

Like on the tube, when you sit on the tube by the window, there's always like a big grease spot on the window where a greasy guy's falling asleep.

That's you're the greasy guy.

I'm the grease ball.

So no one else in the house has noticed this, though.

Well, I pointed it out because I was so appalled.

I didn't want them to discover it for themselves.

You know what I mean?

Like when you, when you transgress or when you've done something bad, one of the responses available to you is just to go, this is me.

I did it.

I did it.

I'm horrible.

That's what I did.

I lifted up my side of the sofa, the cushion, the other day, and there were so many crumbs and like bits of food under there.

And then I lifted up my fiancé's half of the sofa.

It's completely pristine.

Oh, wow.

I'm obviously just sat there, just like shoveling food into my mouth and missing it most of the time.

Horrible.

I think that your fiancé, when you're out of the room, just eats all the crumbs and stuff from her part of the sofa.

Yeah.

Sticks her head in the sofa.

That must be it.

Yeah, she's a crumb sucker.

Yeah.

She's like a little Dyson.

She gets in there.

A couple of 10 Ps as well for her trouble.

Remember money from the olden times?

Crazy, right?

People used to just pass it to each other.

Yeah.

So I'm going to have either some Lychee wine or a Carlsberg.

I do like Carlsberg because it's fizzy.

I like a fizzy lager that is fairly low in alcohol.

Like, I want to, I'm into volume.

I just want to chug that stuff without getting absolutely hammered.

And Carlsberg, as far as I can tell, is one of the few alcoholic beers that is, what is is about, it's less than 4%, I think.

It's about 3.8 or even 3.5.

And for some reason, they just don't have it in very many supermarkets anymore.

You used to be able to get it really easily and now I can't find it anywhere.

It's weird.

And my conspiracy theory is that, especially during the pandemic, the supermarkets were all pushing high alcohol products and all the alcohol started getting stacked at the front of the supermarket.

Did you notice that?

No.

Oh, maybe it's just where we we live.

But in our supermarket, like our local Sainsbury's, from about, I think it was the second lockdown, especially in November or December or whenever it was, suddenly, I guess it was coming up to Christmas as well, so that's boozy time.

But boy, they were really pushing.

It was like, okay, here's the only way you're going to be able to deal with this.

Just drink loads.

It seemed really strange to me.

And lower alcohol options just didn't seem to be there.

And it's still like it's one or the other other now.

It's a bit like the political climate in this country.

It's either get absolutely off your tits or it's zero alcohol lager.

It's like, mate, can I not just have something in between?

But you want either a fizzy lager or a fizzy wine despite your opinions on water?

Yes.

Yeah, I do love fizzy drinks.

The thing is that water is one time when I can avoid the fizz, I suppose, and protect my teeth.

Okay.

But I love dr I mean, I do like drinks um and it was a real tough choice between carlsberg i do love a cherry dr pepper when you mentioned your cherry pepsi max i perked up you did i actually did see that in your eyes when i said cherry pepsi max i genuinely did see you yeah brightened up a bit like oh well you you you went oh you were quite quite interested in that yeah because normally people are fairly rude about the cherry options aren't they they can be they can be a bit snobby about them i remember a um a blog you wrote just It's literally just popped up in my head from when you were doing The Fringe.

And I think you were doing your show iPavel.

Oh, yeah.

That's when I first met you, isn't it?

Yes.

And you wrote on a blog that

you would finish your show and go out into the courtyard and drink a left beer and then go home.

Yes.

That's right.

For some reason, that really stuck in my mind because I think I was doing a student show at The Fringe, perhaps.

And we were getting absolutely shit-faced every single night.

And I think we were really tired because of alcohol and staying up really late.

And me and my friend Tom Neenan read that blog that you were having one beer and then going home.

And we both looked at each other and said, That sounds lovely.

I mean, I probably had more booze when I got back.

If that makes you feel any better, that wasn't in the vlog.

Maybe I didn't.

Maybe I was a little more restrained in those days.

The other thing is that that left is really quite strong.

This is the cloudy stuff.

So one big old glass of that was more or less all I needed, especially after doing a show and I was jangling and fairly drained anyway.

But yeah, delicious.

That was the first time I'd ever had it.

Yum.

So which of the drinks are you choosing?

Well, I'm going to go for some Carlsberg.

That feels like a solid drink.

I'll tell you this about Carlsberg.

The Carlsberg brewery is in Northampton.

There was a...

a comedy gig for a long time in Northampton where the Carlsberg employees always attended it at the picture drone.

It was always a bad gig because the Carlsberg employees would show up and just heckle the comics for the whole thing.

And I think one of them, James, James Downswell, was doing it and getting heckled.

And eventually he just said, Carlsberg don't do comedy clubs, but if they did, you pricks wouldn't be invited or something like that.

Horrible gig.

Horrible people.

Really, really bad gig.

That.

Oh, dear.

Fuck.

I have had a strawberry margarita.

And moving on to your dessert.

dessert time hmm I get the feeling you like dessert yeah that's the most exciting you've been going into a course I think

none of the other courses have had something time in front of them yeah in that voice with a lovely little voice I know the thing is that normally I'm such a piggy man that I would overeat in the earlier courses and there wouldn't be any room for pudding and I would just say oh no I'll skip pudding well then you're not a true piggy man no a true piggy man then tucks into the dessert but I'll probably just what will happen is I'll wait till I get home and there's a bit more room in the old piggy bank and then I'll start shoveling some more food in there.

And one of the things I might have shoved in there would have been this was for about a five-year period.

I was obsessed with goo puddings, gouzillionaire specifically.

I think the gouzillionaire was also called it's the description was chocolate cheesecake pudding.

So that initially put me off.

I was like, cheesecake?

No, thank you.

Hate cheese.

But then I found out that cheesecake doesn't necessarily have anything to do with cheese.

Is that right?

Well, no, there is, I think it is associated with it, but it doesn't taste like cheese.

Well, it's cream cheese, isn't it?

Well, it depends on the type of cheesecake, because like a cheesecake that probably, and the gazillionaire, if I may, they'd probably use cheesecake and like cheat cream cheese.

Now, I don't know what's happened.

Now, Adam, I know you're big on the podcast scene, but on our Zoom, it's suddenly come up in the the right-hand corner.

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I don't know how this has happened.

This is the power of Adam Buxton's podcasting.

Is Benito still here?

Maybe Benito's internet went out.

I think Benito has vanished from the call, and we are just for the first time.

Adam, it's a pleasure to be on your podcast.

You're welcome.

I want some tears, some confessions,

and then we'll end on a laugh.

No, I think cheesecake does have cream cheese in it.

But maybe with a baked cheesecake, it doesn't.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure you're right.

But anyway, for whatever reason, I didn't realize that it was described as a cheesecake, and I started snaffling these things.

And if you've never had one...

They come, they're the ones that come in the little glass ramekin.

And the gazillionaire is multi-layered.

I think you're dealing with about four layers of joy.

And on top, it's the sort of chocolate layer and then you get the caramelly stuff and then you go down a bit further there's some biscuit at the base and just above the base is probably the cream cheesy zone even though it just tastes sort of like marshmallow yeah and oh god it's great and i went through an extended period of liking those and incorporated into a sort of live bit when i was trying to write a few more actual stand-up style bits i did a whole thing about the gazillionaire pudding and and my collection of ramekins because i i still have all the ramekins i i mean i think i have about 500 and they're just the ones that i save where do you keep your gazillionaire ramekins uh in all the cupboards you know like open any cupboard in our house and you'll find some ramekins what do you use them for they're quite good for ketchup especially during the ketchup years for the children.

They're coming out of the ketch-up years a little bit now.

They don't have to have ketch-up on absolutely everything.

But during the ketch-up years, sometimes they'd have an individual ramekin of ketchup

at dinner.

And other times, when I'm doing art, they're quite good.

If I'm painting for some, you know, gouache, I'll use the ramekins.

I mean, they're very useful.

Peanuts you can pop in there.

You can keep your cocaine in there.

nuts and bolts all sorts of applications can you foresee a situation where you would need all 500 of them yes

and it would be an amazing party on stage i used to talk about the fact that i felt these puddings were aimed at someone of my class

and that class i described as middle premium

And they're the middle premium pudding of choice.

And one day I was going to have a middle premium party and invite all my other middle premium friends and to decorate the whole house we would have tea lights in the gazillionaire ramekins so there'd be all snacks being served out of the ramekins and tea lights everywhere and that was my fantasy and then I

got into this whole thing about one night I was eating one of these puddings watching TV and I was just enjoying it so much.

I was thinking, oh my god, every single bite of this thing is unbelievable.

And then I looked down and I thought, shit, I'm already halfway through.

And then I thought, this is like my life.

I'm kind of at the midpoint of my life.

It's halfway gone, probably more than halfway gone.

And now I've got to make every bite count.

Every remaining bite of this pudding and of my life has to count.

And And then I wrote

part of my bit which I got rid of on stage because it wasn't good was

it was like and then you have when you when you get halfway through you have a mid-pudding crisis and at this point some people will go out and buy a flashy spoon or come back with a really young looking pudding And is there anything more pathetic than seeing some middle-aged guy fucking a munch bunch yoghurt?

That was my line that I did on stage more than once.

I mean, yeah, it's a good observation.

There probably isn't anything more pathetic than seeing that.

No, yeah, that'd be awful.

But the life, the pudding is your life in the analogy.

And then you're saying that some people, when they get halfway through their lives, go out and buy a younger life.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's all over the place.

Yeah.

I should have...

taken it to some joke scientists.

And look, we appreciate you, the podcast king.

You took over this podcast.

You became the host of the Zoom.

But now we're going to score you on stand-up property.

And that was just

shit.

Yeah.

How about this then?

I mean, I got rid of that bit, and then I ended on,

you've really got to make the most of those last few bites of the pudding.

But almost as you're thinking that, you realize there's only one bite left.

And then you get cancer.

And that takes most of the fun out of the last bite.

Interesting.

And so, how would that go down?

Never that wow.

No, I mean I think it sort of bummed everyone out.

There was a couple of gasps once or twice when I did it.

I think it's not what people wanted from me.

No.

Or maybe anyone.

You'd do that line and then you'd walk off to not much and then sit down in front of your left and then just drink that.

Yeah.

And then while you're drinking your left, thinking, oh God, I should have made the analogy about left because it sounds like life anyway.

I would have just done it that you get to the last bit of left yeah oh jesus a mid-left crisis that's funny mid-left crisis

a whole show

jesus christ buckles what the are you doing whoa i mean listeners this you are getting a comedy master class this is the difference instantly between a comedian of the caliber of ed gamble or james a caster and someone like me whose strengths lay elsewhere

i love how much you were loving the pudding though i do agree with you that the problem I have with goo dessert, whenever anyone brings it up, I think, yeah, exquisite, delicious, too small.

Too small.

Four teaspoons full and you're done.

But very rich.

And then you've got a glass ramekin forever as well.

So you've already highlighted everything that I don't like about it.

So it's like, I love how it is delicious, but I don't like it.

It's over really soon.

And then the bit of the dessert that I wasn't bothered about is there forever.

The bit I wanted is gone in seconds.

The bit I didn't want is in my life forever.

So it's like life.

Isn't it more sustainable, though?

Like glass is easier to recycle than plastic, a plastic tub.

And I think there's a foil topping as well.

I think you can recycle the foil.

And the ramekin is good for, well, we've been through all the various uses.

And

I agree with you about them being too small, hence the brilliant routine.

But the way I solved that particular problem was by having another one.

Yes.

12, I imagine.

12, and then use the ramekins for the mango chutney, right?

Yeah.

That's the both worlds.

Yeah, and then I vomited into the

ramekins.

It's too too many.

Do you need like a ninja,

you know, like a 150%?

No way.

No, I think you're right.

Yeah.

I think

one and a half times the size.

Goo max.

Goo max.

I could comfortably eat a jam jar full of goo.

I could do it.

Yeah, but you say you say that, but look at you.

You're not someone who does that.

I am.

Whereas I have no self-control and I would comfortably eat a bucket.

I just don't get what I deserve.

One day I will get what I deserve, but so far in life.

We live in hope that James is eating all these desserts and they're sort of, he's almost storing them in the cloud.

And then one day, they're all going to download into his body and we're all going to laugh so much.

Yeah.

I know some people that's happened to.

It's all happened.

I mean, the only other options for dessert were Sara Lee chocolate cake with vanilla icing or

slash and a bag of revels.

With all the revels or would you like us to mock you up a bag with just your favorites in?

No, I'm happy.

That's why I love revels.

Happy with every single revel.

Are you?

Yeah.

Wow.

What would I not be happy with?

Coffee.

Coffee?

I don't think they're even in there anymore.

Oh, you want a modern bag?

Interesting.

Yeah, get out and taste the new modern revels.

Doesn't have the orange one?

I love the orange one.

I quite like it, but it's a bit chalky.

It's a bit

like the texture of it as much.

Love it.

I was talking about this on the podcast with Lee Mac the other day, and we concurred.

They are terrific.

What I don't like about Revels is they have Maltesers in them, and I'm always disappointed when I pop a Maltese in because I can just buy a bag of Malteses for Malteses.

Agreed.

And I don't like eating a single Maltese.

I I would rather eat Malteses by the handful than have a single one on its own.

If you did tackle a bag of Revels, or if you're tackling a bag of Malteses,

are you going one at a time or popping multiple balls in?

Revels, I'm going one at a time.

I'm going one at a time.

It's all about the journey.

It's a lot like life, I think, when I'm eating a bag of revels.

What are you doing with your Revels Buxton?

You're having handfuls of them.

Tri-revel.

Oh, yeah.

The trifecta each time.

And what are you hoping for?

What's the combo that you're hoping for?

Well, I mean, it's what are the potential number of combinations?

I'm not a mathematician, so I can't tell you.

But loads.

I'm thinking loads.

It's around loads, isn't it?

Yeah.

So it's just great.

You know, you get a couple of those chalky orange ones, and then the third one turns out to be quite a hard toffee one.

Brilliant times.

That's a very varied textural party that's happening right there.

And to say nothing of the taste.

And then sometimes you get the Maltese with the orange cream.

And

do they have the raisinettes in there still?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, they got, I think

surely they got the raisin ones in there.

I want to read your menu back to you now, Adam, and see how you feel about it.

All right.

Adam Buxton, you would like, my internet's gone.

Be back in one minute.

Apologies.

That's Benito always texts us the menus on the WhatsApp.

I just start from the first thing that he sent us.

Sorry, apologies.

Add a buxt, you would like water, hard tap water, harm.

Yes, please.

Poppy dumps or bread.

Garlic naam with 12 pots of mango chutney.

Starter.

Anything from the restaurant in Paris?

Oui.

Is there anything from there?

What was it called again, the restaurant?

I think it was called Les Les Ambassadeur.

Les Ambassador.

Main.

Cauliflower Taco Bowl.

Yeah.

Side dish.

Inari.

Drink.

Carlsberg.

Dessert.

Goo gazillionaire cheesecake.

Times one and a half.

How do you feel about that?

I feel pretty good.

For you, Adam, because when we bring the bill, which is zero, in the dream restaurant, sometimes you might get mints or something with the bill.

But for you, we're going to bring a bag of revels.

But then somewhere in the bag of revels, there's one cherry tomato.

No, that's okay, because if the revels do still have raisins, then that's the

vegetables in there.

Yeah.

Ed said that the bill is zero.

It's actually not for you because I'm afraid you've ruined our chair with your greasy head.

So we are gonna have to charge you for that, despite the soilish costs.

Adam Buxton, thank you very much for coming to the dream restaurant.

Thank you, Adam.

I loved it.

Thank you so much for having me.

This has been the greatest night of my life.

Well, there we are.

Thank you so much to Adam for coming onto the show and into the dream restaurants.

Much obliged.

Lovely menu.

It's made me want a goo now.

I'd like a goo.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, please.

I love a goo.

They're great, aren't they?

Yeah, really good stuff.

But I agree with him.

You know, you get to the end and you go, more please.

Yeah.

That sits to him.

I can shot a goo.

You could shot a goo.

I've seen you shot a goo.

Yeah, you've seen me shot a goo.

Yeah.

I'll shout it to you.

Look at this.

I've got a shot a goo.

And thank you for not saying ginseng, Adam.

Yes, thank you.

Very considerate.

It would have been awful if we'd had to kick you out of the restaurant for saying that.

Would have felt bad about it.

And we would have never have got to the goo situation, so.

No, exactly.

I would have never got to hear about the goo because

that's my fear always with kicking people out of the restaurant.

That's why I'm glad that the only time we've had to do it so far was during the dessert course.

So I got to at least hear about some desserts.

Yes, exactly.

Adam does a podcast, but you know that if you're listening to this.

Yeah, surely.

But if you don't know it, hey, what a treat for you.

You've got a lot to look forward to.

All the Adam Buxton podcasts.

Yeah, they're real good.

Now, I'll tell you where I might be taking a goo is on my tour.

Oh, yes.

Electric, going up and down the country.

Up and down many countries.

Yeah.

Do go on my website, edgamble.co.uk, for ticket details.

Thank you.

Yes, please.

Spare no expense.

Spare no expense, but I must stress it's all the...

the tickets are all of a similar price and they're quite affordable, I think.

And Ed showed me the images that are going to be the backdrop of his show, and they are fantastic.

I'm not going to spoil them here, but you need to see them in the flesh because they are a visual feast for the eyes.

Yes, so if you're not interested in what I'm saying, there will be something to sort of look at.

Yes, you put a lot of effort into it, and I'm proud of you.

Thank you very much.

Come and see the show.

Not you.

No.

The listener.

You're very welcome.

Please.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

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

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The time is 7pm.

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