Ep 137: Michael Schur

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, taking the stilton of humor out of the fridge of the internet, letting it come up to room temperature, cutting it with the knife of good times, putting it on the cracker of

great fun

with the chutney of friendship.

Worst one yet, obviously, for obvious reasons.

Hated it, disgusting.

Definitely not the worst one yet.

Actually, really nice.

And I added so many elements to it because I was like, ooh, that sounds lovely.

Yeah, you really got into it and you really got lost in it.

But look, if people are having that for lunch or after dessert, fair enough.

It is nice.

You know how I feel about it.

I've said it many times, but you know that you're riling me up early doors.

You're going to send me into this interview angry?

No, no, no, no.

Look, look, sometimes sugar gets too much, and it's lovely to have something deep and rich and flavoursome, like a lovely bit of stilton on a cracker.

That's what this podcast represents.

It's like a stilton on a cracker.

If you're wondering, that piece of shit is called a gamble.

My name is James A.

Caster, and this is the Off-Menu Podcast.

So we invite a guest into the dream restaurant, and we ask them a favour ever.

Starter, main course, dessert, side dish, and drink, not in that order making their dream menu baby and this week the guest is michael

show

michael show we're very excited to have michael on the pod james what a back catalogue what a what a body of work this man has he's a he's a writer of course a wonderful writer a showrunner uh i mean you know Also, dare I say, an actor.

We've seen him in front of the camera as well as cousin Mose.

Yes, Moe.

Look, we're big fans of The Good Place, of The Office.

Parks and Rec.

Parks and Wreck.

I mean, we could go on for a long time.

He's been a long time.

He co-created Parks and Rec, James.

One of my favourite shows of all time.

Yeah.

It's a bit intimidating going into this.

Sure.

He's probably feeling the same.

Yeah.

Well, he's the dream restaurant.

He's got to get it right.

So he probably is feeling pretty...

He probably loves hypothetical.

He loves sort of later period Mot the Week.

Yeah.

He's quaking in his little boots.

He'd be quaking in his little boots having to talk to us.

Yes.

Yeah, good, actually.

Good to really remember that before we go in so we're not intimidated.

And also, of course, even though we're big fans,

look, if he says a secret ingredient, we're going to kick him out.

That's how it goes every single week.

There's an ingredient which we deem to be disgusting.

Then we kick someone out.

This ingredient I actually don't think is disgusting.

I actually like it a lot, but it's...

It's thematically appropriate.

Sometimes it relates to the guests, so we do it.

So the secret ingredient is beets.

Beats.

Beets.

Michael was, of course, cousin Moz, uh who worked on shroot farms in uh the office an american workplace yeah

he also wrote for of course and that was a beets farm so beets

beats there's a song by a band called the hood internet where they they said the line call me dwight shruot the way that i eat beets oh that's good pretty cool i like that also edge you're what i'm very excited about you're going on tour you're on tour aren't you and it's going great i am on tour the show's called electric it goes all over the uk up until the end of of April.

Edgamble.co.uk for tickets.

You know what I'm excited about, James?

What are you excited about?

Your book.

Oh, yes.

I've got a book coming out in August, and people can pre-order it now.

It's called James Acass's Guide to Quitting Social Media, Being the Best You You Can Be, and Curing Yourself of Loneliness.

Volume 1.

It's all about how I gave up social media and you can too.

And if you're worried that that sounds a little preachy or heavy, don't worry.

I've made everything up and it's really stupid.

And volume two is all about how you gave up caffeine.

Yes, and at the end of the book, there's a hell of a twist.

Not a twist if you've ever listened to this podcast, of course.

But speaking of books, the reason Michael is here is to promote his book as well as have a great chat with his two heroes of comedy, me and you.

But his book is called How to Be Perfect.

So it sounds like more of a helpful book than your book is.

Yeah, it would probably cover everything I would have to say.

Yes.

And then more.

Yeah.

I know whose book I'm going to actually read and whose book I'm going to get on audiobook.

Yeah.

Hey, you know, we don't get paid by the reader.

Actually, no, we do.

Yeah, we call it paid more for the book.

Yeah, so

yes.

Well, without further ado, let's chat to Michael Scher.

Michael Scher, here is the off-menu menu of

Michael Scher.

Here is the off-menu menu.

Michael Scher.

Welcome, Mike slash Michael Scher to the dream restaurant.

Do I get the genie?

Do I have the genie?

Welcome, Michael Scher, to the dream restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

I thought for a second the genie was just not going to show up for me, that it was going to, I was going to get denied.

What a normal start that would be if the genie just didn't show up to this episode of Off Menu.

That would be so horrible.

I know.

Just like a sad, like, come on in, have a seat, you know, like it's like a moribund dream restaurant.

That'd be sad, actually.

i know normally i try and interrupt the guest when they start saying oh thanks for having me and i goosh out the

you anticipated it and so we both were looking at each other over zoom like

who's going to go first one of us yeah well i'm happy that the genie showed up that's great yeah this is this is we were talking about this earlier me and ed and this is exactly what so you know awkward greetings and stuff like that i was lucky enough to just visit very quickly the set of the good place uh one season and i went to shake ted danson's hand and i fucked that up that's exactly the same as this how did you fuck that up what did you do did you put up your left hand or something he he admitted later on that it was his fault uh i put my hand out for normal handshake and ted danson went in with his hand in making like a t-shape with his hand and mine so like straight in i've never seen anyone do that before he crashed his fingers just into my palm and then i still instinctively just gripped onto them so i was kind of like that and then he just said oh dear that's not worked at all and

I was really panicking it was in front of Janet and Cheeti oh no it was bad stuff it was bad now so you're really just like a T-Rex just kind of awkwardly clinging to his hand are you sure it's not something Ted Danson was trying out to make the T-shape for Ted like a new sort of greeting

oh no of course I was meant to just pivot and turn it into a D like turn my hand so he's he he keeps his hand there I go D and we both look at each other and go Ted Danson That's what he wants.

Now, when were you here?

How did I not know you were on the set?

When did you come?

It was season three.

You were filming season three, 2018, I think.

Sounds right.

And I was visiting a friend and she was working on set that day and said, just, I wasn't able to see her any other day.

So she just said, just come.

And I was very reluctant, just so you know.

I don't want to get anyone in trouble here.

I was like, I can't come onto the set.

I was a big fan of the show anyway.

I was like, I can't come onto the set.

And then

probably pretended like i didn't want to come on the set for about two more asks and then i sure went because i did want to go the friend doesn't exist he snuck on he snuck on

i'm like well i'm just taking the he was at universal studios and just climbed over a fence and

exactly what i did did you did you have a good time well did we treat you well while you were here did you did you enjoy your visit Yeah, I was there very briefly.

I just watched a scene get rehearsed and then I went and got some free food.

That is the ultimate Hollywood experience.

Just work for eight minutes and then get a bunch of free free food.

What was your, what was the first set that you were ever on?

I started at Saturday Night Live in 1998 and that was my first job.

And it was the first time I've ever been on a set.

So that was like my introduction.

And that's not a good introduction to what it's like because it's a very, it's a one of a kind.

Like no, no other show functions.

That show is bananas.

Like you go to work at one in the afternoon and you stay at work until five in the morning.

Oh, my God.

So everyone has shifted.

Like it's the only job I got hired there right after college and it was, it's like the only job where your, your schedule shifts later than it was when you were in college.

Like, you sleep later and you go to bed later than when you were in college, which is bananas.

So I was there for seven years, and then I came out to work on the office, the American office.

And that was the first time I was on a, on a real Hollywood set, like with, you know, with free food and stuff like that.

So yeah, that was my, that was the, that's my origin story.

And were you able to dictate people's bedtimes when you went to the office?

So

we're not staying up till five anymore.

I made a chart and I I was like, everyone in bed by 11 with the lives now.

That was 2004.

So I've been doing that, essentially that same thing since 2004.

That whole SNL experience, it just sounds so intense.

Like whenever people talk about working on that show, it just sounds so crazy to do all of that intense work and then you do it and then it's, it's gone.

Yeah.

It's done.

Well, that, to me, it's a good thing about it because you, if you have the greatest week of your life professionally, if you write like five sketches and they all do great at the read-through and then they all go on TV and the audience laughs at all of them, and you're feeling incredible.

Like, you wake up on Monday, and you've got nothing again, and you will get your ass kicked.

Like, the people who work at SNL tend to be very nice people because, for most people, it's their first job, and it just destroys your ego.

It just drives all of the ego out of you because you bomb so hard.

Like, I bombed so hard for so long at that job.

Like, just miserable, flop-sweating, like famous people reading your sketches.

And the only sound that you hear is a hundred people in the read-through room, like slowly turning the paper.

Like, just that sound echoes in my ears to this day.

So, you learn to not be precious about your own writing.

It's almost worse than bombing when you're not performing, because I've had both of those feelings.

When you're bombing when you're performing, you can sort of go, well, just keep your head in it, you keep going.

But if you're watching someone else bomb with your words, you feel guilty and awful and terrible at comedy.

I'm helping.

I heard this rumor in the 70s when the the show first started, the readers were so terrible sometimes that Alf, I think Al Franken or Tom Davis, one of those legendary old-timey writers that used to work on the show, invented this system where there was a little bell, like a bell when you go into a hotel and you ring for service, and they handed it to the writer.

whose sketch it was.

And the idea was if you get like four pages into a 15-page sketch and it's bombing, the writer can just ring the bell and that's like, I give up, I can't succeed.

And it was a good idea in theory, but apparently the problem was that every writer, just as soon as one joke would bomb, they would just go, get me out of here.

Hit the bell.

So they had to stop doing it because every writer was panicking at every single sketch they wrote.

Ed, you've seen me have some pretty bad gigs.

If I had a little bell that I could ring as writer and performer, how quickly do you think I'd ring a bell into most of my shows?

I've seen you have gigs where you would have rung the bell like on the way out to the stage.

Like you're just like, this isn't going to work.

This isn't going to work, everyone.

Or doing the announcement announcement off stage, going, please welcome to the ding.

I heard you guys talking about this actually on one of the podcasts about how a hundred people can be laughing and you will find the one person in the crowd who isn't.

Like

my good friend of mine is a stand-up and he talks about that all the time.

Like he'll just zero in on the one guy in row 83 who just is like miserable and that's all you can think about.

It's the same for the same for me, by the way.

Like one bad review.

I stopped reading reviews a long time ago because I realized that one bad one outdoes thousands of good ones.

I'll come up with a really good segue.

Check this out, guys.

Check this out.

But of course, you don't have to worry about bad reviews anymore, Mike, because you're perfect and you can teach people who read your book how to be perfect.

Is that correct?

That was a great segue.

Yeah.

Although the perfection I'm talking about in the book is ethical perfection, not comedic perfection.

What would you rather have?

Would you rather be an ethically perfect person or a perfect comedian who gets laughs at every joke?

Yeah, I mean, you are absolutely correct to separate the two.

And it's not possible to be both, as we all know, from the best comedians.

Yeah, they will tell you.

Yeah, you can't have good humor and make everyone laugh and be ethical at the same time.

I don't have any aspirations to be perfect in either.

version.

Being a perfect comedian would be like hell, right?

If everyone always laughed at every joke, there would be no point in telling jokes.

and if you were a perfect ethical person you would just be annoying and no one would like you no one would want to hang out with you so it's bad either way yeah totally yeah i mean did you realize that when uh sorry see this is this is what's going to happen this is what's going to happen we're going to everything margin says we're going to go hmm that

sets me up for a question about his work actually

you know that's what like professional podcasts do though james yeah we better have to stop on something i mean make people talk about food don't go oh

did people being perfect being boring and annoying did that did that inspire you to win the good place to make sure it was about bad people and not the good people and then they shut the fuck up judge that's exactly where i was in my head ding ding ding

it's a good question though james it's a good question actually the premise was always that there was some kind of like perfect eden paradise and that someone got in accidentally that was always the the starting point because i because the because perfect people are boring and and i thought the only way to make it funny was that someone gets in who shouldn't be there so that was always baked in.

I didn't come up, there's a, I guess I should spoiler alert this, spoiler alert.

I didn't come up with the idea of the whole thing being like a torture chamber until much later.

Like I worked on it for a while, but I kept getting to this point where I was like, even though one of the characters is going to be a person who got it accidentally, if everyone else is actually a good person and they are actually perfect, that's still going to be boring.

That's still going to be like annoying.

Then I was like, oh, wait, if all of them are actually being tortured by Ted Danson's character, now that's something interesting because you can present them to the audience as like, these are what good people look like and then reveal like, oh, no, actually, they all suck in different ways.

So that was the key was coming up with that twist.

And then when I was like, okay, now I feel like I know what, how to write this show.

The book was a natural sort of like end of the show was

I got to the final season and kind of just thought like, I feel like I still want to write about this stuff in some way.

Like I thought of it as like an exit interview for myself of like, what did I learn?

Can I talk about it in a way that is not boring?

Because the books are boring.

Like the original texts are incredibly, bone-crushingly dull.

And I felt like I was a better person because I had learned about them and had talked to people who like explained them to me.

And I thought like if I could put all this stuff into a book that was for regular people, not PhD candidates, that it would perhaps be of some use to people.

So I just try to dump everything that I learned into one conversational book about like, here's what I think it means to be a good person, take it or leave it.

Here's a bunch of theories.

They're helpful to me when I'm in weird spots in my life and maybe they'll be helpful to you.

That was the basic idea.

Love it.

Thank you.

I unring the bell.

Here was a good question.

Yeah, good.

You just put the bell away, man.

You put the bell.

In fact, let me take your bell.

I'll be in charge of your bell.

Thank you, Ed.

We always start with still or sparkling water.

Do you have a preference?

I do.

Before I do that, let me make one disclaimer, if you don't mind.

My food takes have been referred to by more than one friend of mine as like horrifying and basic and terrible.

Like, I'm famous among my group of friends for having terrible takes on food.

So, I hope that one of the aspects of the dream restaurant is that there's no judgment

for what I'm about to say.

Okay, great.

Well, actually,

that's not true at all, is it?

We've judged you.

That's well known.

Yeah, we've bullied some people.

What do you put this down to, this taste in food?

I don't know.

I really like good food.

When I eat good food, I'm happy and I recognize it as good food.

But when I eat bad food, I often feel the same way.

I often feel like, this is fine.

I'm eating food and it's fine.

So I think it's just unrefined.

I just have no ability to discern really.

between good and bad food.

So as a result, my favorite foods are, I eat like a child, essentially.

I eat like a 11-year-old boy.

That's how I would characterize my palate.

It's not that I don't have an appreciation for excellent cuisine.

I do.

I just never think to seek it out and I don't really care whether what I'm eating is, I'm eating it like, you know, French laundry or something, or I'm making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Okay.

So, yeah, so that they would both rank high on your list.

If you went to a restaurant like the French Laundry and they brought you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you would go, well, this makes sense.

Yeah, this is great.

I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

So anyway, but so I'm, I know I'll be judged.

I hope I'm not judged too harshly.

And also, I weirdly hope that I say the secret ingredient and you guys just kick me out because then I'll save myself a lot of embarrassment So with that qualification still water, please.

Thank you acceptable so far.

We're not gonna judge you so far.

I find that sparkling water makes me thirstier.

Is this a is has anyone ever said this?

Is this a new take for you?

No, I think that is a new take.

I think some people have said the opposite.

Some people have said that they've read that scientifically it's meant to quench your thirst more.

Well, I disagree.

I feel like when I drink sparkling water, my throat gets parched and I like need more.

It's like an endless loop.

I'll just fall into this endless loop where I'll drink more and more of it because I'm thirstier and thirstier.

And then it'll make me thirstier and eventually I'll die.

I'll get desiccated and die.

So still water, please.

So do you think this is something that the sparkling water people have developed over the years in a lab to sell more sparkling water?

I think it's nefarious.

I think they know what they're doing and they've carbonated it in order to make you thirstier to buy more of their product.

Yes, that's literally what I think.

I'm not kidding.

I've had that exact thought before.

This is a loophole.

Have you said it out loud to people?

No, God, no.

No.

Except for you right now.

Yeah.

I've never, because I'll be laughed out of polite society if I suggest a harebrained theory like that.

Well, then it's a, then it's a rabbit hole situation, isn't it?

You have that theory, and then next thing you know, you're looking on YouTube for that theory, and you're queuing on within a month.

And I'm listening, I'm watching Steve Bannon's podcast, and I'm just going to, yeah.

Everyone's very hydrated in LA.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, there's a lot of water shaming that goes on where people are drinking.

They have 128-ounce bottles of water that they drink slowly over the course of a day.

And they tell you that if you're not drinking 128 ounces of water a day, you're failing as a citizen.

There's a lot of that that goes on.

And I can't do that in part because it just makes me have to pee every eight seconds.

So I drink like one glass of water a day and I'm going to die young because I'm not properly hydrated.

That's all right.

I've been getting into the drinking, you know, trying to be as hydrated as I can this year.

New Year's Res.

Okay.

Still keeping it up, but I am very good friends in my toilet now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like every 15 minutes.

It's too much.

I think my girlfriend thinks that I'm addicted to cocaine.

In the flat.

That's less embarrassing than the truth, which is that you're just urinating every 10 minutes.

Yeah.

I don't think Coke addicts do Coke in their toilet when they're in their own house, right?

But

if I did cocaine, that's what I would do, right?

Yeah, so that makes sense.

I'd do it in there, then come out and just talk about myself and my business plans to my girlfriend, like she has no idea.

Talk about all the new apps you're developing and

cryptocurrency and whatever.

Yeah, it's a miserable existence.

Pop dumps or bread.

Pop dumps or bread, Mike Sher.

Pop dumps or bread.

Bread, please.

Thank you.

I like a hearty, a hearty bread, like a like a bread with a lot of like grains and nuts and

stuff like that.

And warm butter.

This is a key to me.

The butter has to be warm warm so that it spreads easily because that hard, cold butter, you can't do that.

My problem is I like bread with chunks of stuff in it.

And occasionally, if it's a dark restaurant, there will be an olive bread that looks like the kind of bread I want.

And I'll take it.

And olive bread is horrifying.

And no one should ever eat it.

This is one of my food takes.

I hate olive bread.

So I hate olives and I hate all olive breads.

So sometimes I'm fooled into thinking that I'm getting what I want and getting exactly the opposite.

This plays perfectly into you eating like an 11-year-old boy because there are no 11-year-old boys who like olives.

That's exactly right.

My nephew likes olives and it's like, my nephew's liked olives since they were seven or six or something.

And I used to stare at him and I couldn't believe it when he was there eating olives.

And I remember once, while he was eating olives, in between olives, he went, I love olives out loud.

And it really, I couldn't, it blew my mind at what is going on.

I say that I definitely liked olives when I was 11.

You did?

Yeah, I was that kid.

Totally.

I loved olives.

I loved poached salmon.

I was a proper little gourmand 11-year-old fat boy in dungarees.

I mean, that's impressive.

That kind of like super savory, salty taste, like that.

Yeah.

I've never, that's not for me.

No, no olives for me.

Now, Mike, I hate to pick you up on an inconsistency straight away because we've had the whole discussion about how you said sparkling water makes you more thirsty.

You prefer still water.

And listeners might have heard a little can being opened there, and I saw you take a sip, and it was a La Croix.

Which is that not a sparkling water?

Oh my god, it is.

So, there's a there's a corollary to my theory, which is well, it's two parts.

One is when it's the only thing that you have to drink, and you're doing a podcast, then maybe you it's okay to just try to

soothe your throat.

But also, for some reason, the flavored sparkling water makes me less thirsty than regular sparkling water.

I don't know why, it could be psychosomatic, but I'm worried that I'm going to start like coughing because I'm talking so much.

So I need a thing to drink.

And so I'm risking being extra parched just so to try to make this podcast go more smoothly.

Look, you are allowed something to drink.

I don't want you to think that.

I'm saying, don't drink anything during our podcast, Mike.

But that is the closest we've ever got to, like, I felt like you were Columbo or some detective that you completely caught him out.

Like, oh, yeah.

I got him.

I got him.

It was on camera for like a third of a second and he somehow saw it.

I can't believe it.

I wasn't even thinking about that.

I was there going, oh, what can I say about olives?

That's what I was thinking in my head.

You notice the can.

That's what I like to do.

I like to make our guests feel very uncomfortable about every move they make on camera.

That's what I'm saying.

Just question them, find, catch them any inconsistencies, challenge them.

Notice on the shelf behind you that you've got a jar of olives, Mike.

Just throwing them into my mouth one after another.

The cold butter thing, man, the amount of despair that I feel when I try and spread cold butter across the bread, and all that happens is it kind of digs into the tears the bread up you end up with a block of cold butter with loads of bread stuck to it that's not spread around the sadness that I feel I think is too much it's profound I think I shouldn't feel as sad as I do when that happens yeah I feel so sad like the whole day is ruined and I should go back to bed I think of it as when you're on an airplane if you ever get butter on an and bread on an airplane it's always like it's been in the freezer it's not just it that it's cold it's like it's it's a it's rock hard and you have to like hold it in your hand in the wrapper for like 30 minutes to get it to just to just that level that you're talking about.

It's horrifying.

And I feel like there should be a law.

We should actually make a law.

The Hague, the world court should try people who restaurants that don't make their butter spreadable.

That's my official position.

I'd sign that petition.

Well, I don't think I would.

And here's why.

I love butter and I want any excuse to be able to eat as much butter as possible.

And when the butter's hard, I like taking a chunk of butter, putting it on the bread, and just like almost more butter than bread and eating that like a little butter sandwich.

Oh, God.

I mean, that's terrifying.

Like your teeth biting into a chunk of butter, that's a pleasant feeling for you.

Yes, please.

Wow.

And you prefer it to an evenly spread level of butter over the bread.

You know what?

I think I do.

Look, when I was a kid, there were occasions where my mum would go into the fridge and find teeth marks in the butter.

wow which will be the title of my autobiography look out for it so we've got the hearty bread with loads of like stuff on the out loads of roughage on the outside and you want warm butter and that's all you want so you're

not no olives specifically no olives anywhere i'll take a pretzel bread too i don't know if that's a big thing in london but uh pretzel bread is is a good if there's no hearty chunky seedy bread i'll go with a pretzel bread if that's an option that is quite exciting This is a very German, am I right in saying?

Oh, I think you're right.

Yeah, it feels German.

Cousin Moe's coming out in your hair?

I don't know if Moze would eat, I think Moes would more eat like a proper plowman's lunch.

You know, like he was a farmer.

I think he's just taking a big chunk of sourdough and a big chunk of cheese and then

quietly eating it alone somewhere, like in an outhouse on his farm.

Or he would eat like, I think he would eat a pretzel, but if it was made out of jerky that was, that

that was made out of like a bull's intestine, I think he would have that.

Like, yeah, venison jerky or something.

Yeah, just some horrifying farm meat that he cured himself.

Yeah.

Thank you for bringing up Moz, by the way.

It's very kind of you.

I think about Moes a lot.

I think just that specific scene where I think people arrive in a car to the farm and Moz just silently runs alongside the car is quite disturbing.

It really is, isn't it?

Yeah.

The way it was written in the script was the car pulls up the long driveway.

Suddenly, Moz appears out of nowhere and runs alongside it like a dog.

That was the stage direction.

Your dream starter.

Here's the problem.

I'm a vegetarian, but since this is a dream restaurant, if there's no good vegetarian option, I will order fish.

I will be a pescatarian occasionally.

So I don't know if this is cheating, but my starter is going to be a seafood tower.

Is that cheating?

No.

Because that's more than one thing.

Okay.

When I do eat fish, which is fairly rarely, my favorite thing to get is like a seafood tower with like multiple platters.

So on my seafood tower would be crab meat, jumbo shrimp, sushi, some good like sushi rolls.

I don't eat oysters or clams, so no oysters or clams, but like that.

You can picture the genie putting an enormous three-tiered seafood tower with just loads of lump crab meat, lobster, sushi, and jumbo shrimp, and then all the hot sauces and mustards and stuff like that.

And I'm going to eat the entire thing.

It's the first time anyone's employed the tower format to get around having more than one thing.

And I'm here for it.

I love it.

The tower defense.

I definitely had a like, am I going to be kicked out for cheating slash finding a loophole?

I'm glad to know that I didn't run afoul of your rules.

I feel like when you're in a restaurant and someone orders a seafood tower, I feel like everybody's happy.

There's something about the variety and the excitement of all of the different things on the tower that just makes everybody happy.

And so when I'm in a restaurant like this, I constantly am finding myself talking other people into the seafood tower.

Like I feel like I'm like a salesman and I'm like trying to sell them on how great this is going to be.

And everybody's skeptical.

And then when it comes, everyone's happy.

Now, the jumbo shrimp, Ed, might know this.

Is that the same as King prawns, Ed?

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess, yeah, like a big shrimp.

Yeah, like a shrimp is a prawn, right?

Yeah, the big guys that are like, you know, like that big.

And then there's the hot sauce and the cocktail, shrimp cocktail sauce and like a little big white dish that you can just, you know, the whole thing in and then one bite.

It's great.

You feel so, that is so fancy.

If you get that, you feel like this is a, this is a fancy night.

Yes, that's right.

You're in Las Vegas, like you've gone out, you're at like a bachelor party or like some kind of celebratory event.

There's eight people.

The seafood tower shows up.

Everyone's happy.

Everybody's always happy with the seafood tower.

Yeah, that sort of thing feels like a gala event in a Batman film before something goes really wrong.

The Joker's about to show up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You better enjoy that shrimp because the Joker's on his way.

Yeah, it's all the rich fat cats and their tuxedos who are in a rarefied location that's about to be raided by the Joker and his minions.

Yeah, exactly right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's amazing they even go to those in Gotham anymore.

I know.

Just stay away.

Like, if you get that invitation, you're like, oh, that sounds fun.

Wait a second.

Hold on.

No,

this is a trap.

The joke is going to show up or multiple villains are going to show up, depending on which film.

And like as you're, as you're driving in your tuxedo, you hear over the radio that there was a breakout at Arkham Asylum and a bunch of them escaped and you're like, well, that probably won't affect my evening.

I'll be fair.

Looking forward to my jumbo shrimp.

Well, I think that's a great starter.

And also every time people mention Lobster Now, I got big into reaction videos during the pandemic.

I never really used to watch reaction videos before the pandemic.

And I think something about watching them now brings me a lot of joy.

It connects you to people.

Yeah, that's what it is, I think.

And I've been watching a lot of this guy who plays his dad albums that he likes.

And his dad is really open to his son's music.

And so it's very heartwarming.

And there was one of them where his dad turned to his son and went, you're just feeding me lobster here.

It's all lobster.

And I always think of that whenever anyone says lobster.

I just think of...

What does that mean?

He basically was saying, I'm sure you could have been playing me loads of rubbish music, but all you keep bringing me is lobster.

You keep bringing me the best.

And I haven't found an album.

There hasn't been an album I don't like so far.

What a wonderful way to say that.

That's great.

I love that.

It means you're giving me the good stuff, is what he said.

Yeah, you're giving me the hike.

Oh, great.

That's adorable.

Very nice, Canadian father and son.

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We move on to your main course, uh, the Dream Main.

You've had a big tower, yeah.

So, for your tower as a starter, I'm expecting a skyscraper now for your main course.

Well, here's here's where it's all going to fall apart because uh, in my 11-year-old boy thing kicks in, I legitimately thought about making my main course a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Um,

but and my actual choice isn't much better.

So, my actual choice is an entire 16-inch pizza with onions on it.

That's my main course.

And specifically,

when I lived in New York, there was a pizza place called Nino's that was on St.

Mark's Place in the East Village.

I lived near there, and I felt like when I found it, like, oh, I found the best pizza place in New York.

This is it.

Like, everyone wonders where the best pizza is.

This is it.

Now, to be fair,

95% of the time I ate pizza there.

It was three in the morning and I was drunk.

And so I don't trust my opinion, but it closed a long time ago.

And it was like a crushing thing for me that it closed because it was like the place.

If every time I went to New York, even after I left, I would go back, I would make a pilgrimage to that pizza place and get a piece of pizza.

So I want to use the magic restaurant to reopen Nino's pizza, and I want an entire pizza with nothing but onions on it.

That's my main course.

Wow.

Oh, is there cheese on it?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Like cheese pizza, cheese and sauce, and then the topping is onions.

Just

were you suddenly worried that Mike was picking a pizza with no tomato, no cheese, and just bread and onions.

Yeah, I was a bit worried, but it's just like one step up from a Kevin McAllister pizza.

Yeah, a half step.

I would say a half step up from the Kevin McAllister pizza.

But that, that is,

here's the thing.

In TV writers' rooms, you get lunch every day.

And if you order from a, you order from different restaurants, if you order from a restaurant that has as an option pizza, I try not to get pizza because I'm too old to be eating pizza every day.

So I'll get like a healthy salad or something or like a

veggie burger.

If I don't get the pizza, someone else will get a pizza.

And as soon as it shows up, I immediately think, I wish I had gotten pizza because pizza, it looks better than whatever it is that you're eating if you're eating anything else.

And so when I thought about the dream restaurant, I thought, if I'm in this dream restaurant and someone at another table is eating pizza, whatever I'm eating, I could be eating the entire chef's menu at French Laundry.

I would still look over and smell the pizza from the next table over and think, I wish I were eating that instead.

I agree with with that as a premise that pizza always looks better than whatever you're eating if you're not eating pizza.

I would say the one exception to that for me would be if the pizza only had onions on it.

I don't know where this started.

I don't know why.

To me, it's always been like, I will eat cheese pizza if it's around happily, but I will always then wish I were eating onion pizza instead.

And I know how weird this is.

I believe me.

Like there's nothing you can say to me that hasn't been said to me a million times before.

But I really think onion pizza is the best pizza.

I'm also now imagining this Mike in the sort of the Gotham fundraiser so they've taken away the seafood tower and everyone's like wow what's coming next and then they bring out these huge pizzas that would be the joker it would be the joker it would turn out it was the joker with the pizza that's how they would know the joker's about the show

oh fuck that's what it all was open it and oh

who ordered pizza

Actually, what it would be like is people would smell pizza and they would go, oh, interesting.

and then they would see that there are onions on it.

And then you're like, the fucking Riddler, man.

You've done it.

Here he comes.

Yeah.

I think it's the texture.

I think I just like the little crunch.

Like, like it adds something to it.

I don't know.

I don't like any other time.

I don't like peppers.

I don't like, obviously, I don't eat pepperoni or sausage.

I, but I, uh, uh, I just always want onions.

I always want onions on my pizza.

I kind of get the onion thing in a way because I've started like just doing a simple like dish where I just like roast a load of vegetables and then like put them with some couscous and chickpeas and stuff and

i put shallots in there every time if i forget the shallots which i did on one occasion it really is a lot worse yeah and not just not for and not just for flavor but because like i am missing that little those little crunchy bits yeah it just makes the dish more interesting and it became a lot more boring because even if it's just roast veg and couscous it's amazing how much i've enjoyed it lately and finding it very exciting but i think the onions are doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting i agree See?

See?

Okay, look,

I love an onion.

I love the sweetness of an onion.

I love the crunch of an onion.

But I just think that pizza is a blank canvas.

You can fill it up with whatever you like.

Maybe I need to try this.

I think I get giddy every time when I'm ordering pizza and I think, what can I have on it?

And I pile it up with so much stuff.

Yeah, I think the mistake.

with pizza is too many toppings.

I think that because it is a blank canvas and you're like, ooh, that looks good and that looks good.

I think you, no matter what it is, I I think you want basically one or maybe two toppings.

Like, people who eat meat will eat sausage and onion, or you'll eat like pepperoni and onion or something, or whatever.

But I think anything more than two toppings, you're ruining the pizza because then all you taste is the stuff on top, and you don't get the basic pizza taste.

Is it Nino's you want the pizza from?

Yeah, so you want it from there?

Because I was going to offer you two other places.

Okay, do you want it from Alfredo's pizza or pizza by Alfredo?

Wow.

That's a deep cut.

I told you this was going to happen.

And James said this that he wouldn't do this.

Don't worry.

We had Martin Freeman on, and James spent the whole thing asking him to do his voice from Fargo.

So this is actually going very well compared to it.

I heard that one.

He didn't get it.

It was clear that you wanted him to do the voice and he didn't understand that.

Oh, he got it.

I was thinking

he got that's what I wanted him to do the whole time.

Martin Freeman's not playing ball with the likes of me.

Well, you kept saying like everyone else isn't good at it you're the one who's good

thank you thank you very much he just didn't take the bait over and over again i was like he's not gonna do it man he's wily he's wily but he got me he got me to do it and i was pretty pretty gutty about that but yeah no i've i've watched them all again recently because my girlfriend hadn't seen them so he watched them all during lockdown so i've got them these are you know they're fresh they're fresh in the head here yeah clearly was it was it like the most watched show during 2020 or something the office was i think the most watched show even even before the pandemic.

Like it was having this weird resurgence.

Wow.

And then the pandemic kicked it into overdrive.

Like I got recognized as Moe, even with a mask on, I got recognized as Mo's more like in the last two or three years than I had like when the show was on.

Like it was really a, I think that when everyone has to stay in their house and there's nothing to do, that show had 201 episodes or something like that.

And I think it just became the thing that was like a ritualistic like family way to pass time.

It definitely kicked up a notch.

I tried to show my kids the British version, and they were like, No, thank you.

They did not like David Brent as much as Michael Scott, which I kind of get, you know, for a kid.

Yeah, um, adults, adults love it, but all the people in that version they're killjoys, they don't do accents if you ask them to.

They're not very fun, yeah, they're not very fun, are they?

Your dream side dish.

Yeah, what's accompanying accompanying this onion pizza from Nino's?

So my favorite individual food of all foods, I think, is

sweet potatoes.

And there's a restaurant in LA called Jar, and they make this side dish that's a technically, I think it's a purple yam is what they call it.

It's just a whole purple yam cut in half, and then they put this creme fraiche on it as a little like,

you know, little sauce there.

And it's so dense and hearty that you can kind of just eat that as a whole meal.

And I always order something and then also the purple yam with creme frache.

And I kind of then skip most of what I ordered as my dinner and just eat the purple yam.

So I'm ordering a purple yam with creme frache from jar to go along with my entire onion pizza.

This now sounds like, I'm just realizing now how horrifying a meal this sounds like.

But I'm going to have a side dish of one, one giant purple yam with creme frache.

Purple yam sounds like, I mean, this is not 11-year-old boy food.

Purple yam with creme frache.

That's, this is big boy stuff, no.

This is big boy food.

Yeah, this is the one thing that I feel like an adult when I eat.

Yeah, no question.

But it's really good.

It's really thick and hearty, but also it's kind of got a sweetness to it.

And then the creme frache is like a little exciting, I don't know, a little flavor added.

I just, I really love it.

And it, and it has that, like my favorite Thanksgiving, I'm not a Thanksgiving food guy.

The one thing I will always eat is sweet potatoes.

Like anytime there's sweet potatoes on a menu, I will order them happily and mostly eat that.

So yeah, I'm not sure how it's going to, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about how it was going to mix with the onion pizza.

It feels like it'll be okay with the onion pizza, right?

Like I can see you going to and fro between them.

Yeah, like taking a little break from my enormous onion pizza.

To go with your purple yam.

Yeah.

I mean, so far, you've essentially ordered three.

things that you would have as a main you said that this purple yam is pretty much a main course and you have it as a main meal and then the the starter is a tower of sea of three different types of seafood.

So you've kind of got three main meals so far, really.

So you could just space them out, you know, an hour apart and just have a very long.

Is there someone else coming in after me or could I have this table for a while?

You've got this for as long as you need it, yeah.

For eternity.

Yeah, this is the dream restaurant.

Yeah, you've got this.

Also, you mentioned Thanksgiving there.

Just going back to like

writing TV shows, American TV shows, and this is maybe something that we notice a lot, being from the UK.

But there's always like, especially sitcoms, they'll have a Thanksgiving episode pretty regularly.

Yeah, I don't know.

It seems to me that that would be a fun thing to do, to be like, we've got our own show.

We get to do a Thanksgiving episode, especially if it's about a community or a family.

Is that, is that fun when you get to kind of go like, how are we going to do this one?

It is, although now TV's been around for so long that there's kind of nothing left to do.

Like the theme of Thanksgiving episodes is always the same, which is if it's a workplace show, the theme always ends up being, you know what, this workplace is kind of like a family.

Like that's always the same.

It's like, so you're doing that over and over again.

The network TV schedule, which is sort of now outdated, runs basically September to May.

So you have a Halloween episode, you have a Thanksgiving episode, you have a Christmas episode, you have a Valentine's Day episode.

Those are like the four big staples of American TV holiday episodes.

You never get July 4th, Independence Day.

You don't really get like the summer, anything in the summer, like you don't, that's sort of missing.

You don't really get New Year's episodes.

You sometimes do, but the shows are already off the air from, you know, early December to January.

So there's like holidays that you never get episodes for.

And then there's certain holidays that every show does an episode for.

And it's getting a little bit like it was fun for a while.

And then like in season seven of a show, you're like, oh, God damn it.

We have to do a Thanksgiving episode again.

So it's not unfun, but it also now is a little bit like, it feels a little perfunctory instead of like exciting, you know?

I had Thanksgiving dinner once and there was like sweet potatoes, but with marshmallow on the top.

Yeah.

That was the maddest thing I've ever eaten in my my life.

And I was like, I cannot, I cannot culturally wrap my head around why this is a thing

because you don't live in America.

In America, it's like, take the sugary thing and then put sugar on it.

Yeah.

The move.

But the craziest thing is that that's part of the meal.

That's not dessert.

That's part of the meal.

Yeah.

And then after that, they're like, who wants pie?

And you're like, I just ate pie.

Like, I just ate exactly this thing.

And then you eat like a pecan pie that has more sugar in it.

It's bananas.

It's like a, it's a, it's nonsense.

It shouldn't exist.

It should be outlawed.

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Well, we get onto your dream drink now, which by the way, you were saying about the secret secret ingredient earlier.

I don't think you need to worry anymore.

We already tell you what it is just yet, but I think you're out of the woods with secret ingredient-wise.

Let's hear what the drink is.

I'm a whiskey drinker, generally, and I usually just drink neat whiskey, but since this is a special occasion, I'm going to have a proper old-fashioned.

That will be my drink.

That's my drink of choice if I'm in the cocktail mood as opposed to just a glass of whiskey mood.

So I'm going to get an old-fashioned,

I'm not going to get super fancy with the whiskey.

I'm going to have a maker's mark old-fashioned with a nice little bit of little dash of sugar and some bitters and a little twist and a nice, one nice big clear ice cube.

And I'll have like 11 of them because I'm assuming that I won't get drunk magically in this, in this dream restaurant.

But that, that's my like, if I'm, if I'm feeling like a, it's like a special occasion, I'll get an old-fashioned.

Is this love of whiskey something you funneled into Ron Swanson?

Yeah, it's actually a crazy story.

Well, not crazy.

It's an interesting story.

My favorite whiskey is Lagavulin, which when I was living in New York, I used to go into this liquor store.

I'm not a huge drinker, but I used to have a bottle of whiskey around if I wanted some whiskey at night.

And I went into this liquor store, and there was this really old Russian guy who ran this liquor store.

And I used to buy, I don't know, probably Maker's Mark.

And one day I went in and I was like, I'll have a bottle of Maker's Mark.

And he was like, you like whiskey?

And I was like, yeah.

And he goes, he like did this like, like, come here thing with his hand.

And I was like, okay.

And he brought me into the back of his liquor store and i was like i might get murdered this might this might be it but he he said try this and he took a tiny little like thimble plastic glass and he poured some whiskey into it and he had me try it and it was delicious and he showed me it was lagavulin and i was like this is great and he was like this is the best this is the best whiskey this is what you should drink it's don't drink makers mark drink this so i was like all right old russian gentleman you're on so i became a lagavulin drinker and at the time this is like 2000 maybe 2001 i was the only person i knew who had heard of Lagavulin.

Like it was just a, you know, it's a tiny, small batch thing from Scotland.

And I was very proud of the fact that I knew about a whiskey that no one else knew about.

So I got to LA and I created the show and I made Ron Swanson a whiskey drinker.

And the props woman said, what whiskey should he drink?

And I said, oh, he should drink this whiskey called Lagavulin.

So she bought a bottle of Lagavulin and put it on his desk for the scene.

Now, unbeknownst to me, Nick Offerman got to the scene.

I wasn't on the set that day.

He got to the scene and was like, oh, I must have told someone that my favorite whiskey was Lagavool because it was his favorite whiskey too.

So we went two years not knowing.

And every time he had to drink whiskey, it was Lagavool.

And we went for two years, not knowing that there was this coincidence.

And then one day I was on the set and someone was like, why is this?

Why do you drink Lagavool?

And Nick was like, it's my favorite whiskey.

And I was like, no, it's my favorite whiskey.

And we realized that we had this crazy, weird thing in common.

And we just hugged each each other and wept and had a great time.

So it was this, it was this weird piece of kismet that, um, that lined up perfectly.

And it ended up, there's that absolutely beautiful scene where Ron visits the distillery.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's stunning because normally I don't like seeing sitcom characters outside of their natural environment, but it just, it worked so perfectly.

It was just such a peaceful, lovely scene.

Yeah, we were shooting in London because Chris Pratt was doing the first Guardians movie and we went to London and we were like, well, if we're going all the way to London, what else should we do?

So we did a bunch of things.

We went to Stonehenge for like an hour and shot a tiny little scene where Pratt, there's a moment where like he gets a job there and someone gets a letter from him or something.

It's like, it says, you know, he went to his first day of work and he got lost.

And then you just cut to him at Stonehenge going like, this isn't right.

It was it.

It was like three seconds of an episode.

We snuck off to Paris and shot a thing in Paris.

And then I was like, well, if we're going all the way to England, England, we ought to take Nick to the Lagerville and Distillery.

So they broke off a little unit and he took a train and he went to a lighthouse and like he did this whole like journey where he went to like the only place in Europe that that character would want to go, which was the Lagerville distillery.

I mean, I'm now just saying things I like, but also because Chris Pratt had got so ripped for Guardians, there's that one line in the episode where you have to reference the fact he's lost so much weight and he just says, oh, I stopped drinking beer and it just yeah

they're walking in he's like that's it you just start drinking beer and he's like yeah lost 50 pounds here's the and here's the thing I have absorbed that line as fact

and

any time I don't drink beer and I'm like doing dry January and not drinking for a month or whatever I genuinely think to myself oh good you're gonna end up like chris pratt now

and that and i genuinely think that in my head yeah and think yeah because remember he just stopped drinking beer and it's like no no that was a line in your mind you saw a documentary once about health and there's a line in there about if you don't drink beer you'll look like a you're an action movie star

star lord yeah I think all the time every every year around this time when I've not drunk for a month and all that and I'm kind of like continuing to not drink too much I always think I think of Chris Pratt all the time think of him saying all he did was quit beer and in my head I don't put it in parts and rec in my head he's sitting on the sofa being interviewed by Ellen or someone.

And it was like a real thing that he said once.

It's like, yeah, because remember, Chris Pratt said that.

He told me of what it takes to actually get into that shape.

And it's more than that.

It's not just.

There was a quick Chris Pratt story.

He was doing a movie called Delivery Man, I think, with Vince Vaughan.

And he, he was playing like the fat best friend.

And so he was like, I'm going to get to 300 pounds.

That was my, he was his goal.

And he's a big guy.

He's 6'3 or something, but he's like, I'm going to weigh 300 pounds for this role.

So he just started like eating a ton and like just ballooning up.

And we did a scene for an episode where he was in an ice cream store, ice cream parlor, and they were eating ice cream.

And like all the actors have spit buckets so that, you know, the scene is going, they're pretending to eat the ice cream.

And then when they yell cut, they spit it out.

Pratt ate the ice cream every time.

And he ate, he ate, I believe the number is 14 ice cream cones over the course of the scene.

And he woke up in the middle of the night with like tachycardia.

Like his heart was beating like 200 beats a minute because he had ingested you know 10 000 grams of fat in one night so he got up to 300 pounds then he got cast in guardians and was like oh no

i have to i have to be like in superhero shape so he started this crazy training regimen and just the pounds like melted off and he was doing like two a day three a day workouts and like going down and down down he got to like 250 and then 240 230.

And then they needed to do reshoots for the first movie.

So he was like, oh my God.

Oh, man.

Okay.

And he like went back,

went back out to like 280.

And then they did the reshoots.

And then he like crashed again.

He was like Robert De Niro.

His weight was like fluctuating

like 80 pounds twice over the course of like five months.

It was bananas.

And if you watch, that's like season four or five.

I can't remember now.

And if you watch it, it's like from episode to episode, he's a completely different person.

Like he just is like, he's either enormous and pudgy or looks like a superstar.

My wife has occasionally said to me that I remind her of Chris Pratt and we've never said out loud which Chris Pratt she's talking about.

I think I know, but I choose to believe the other one.

Well, that ice cream chat brings us quite neatly onto dessert.

I would have personally noticed, I mean, when you were saying about him waking up in the night with his heart going, I mean, that's the window into my future.

I know that's after the joke.

I'll have a 14 ice cream coats.

And I'll be happy.

I'll be happy with that.

All right.

So I have an extremely specific and angry belief about proper dessert in restaurants, which is that there's only one dessert that anyone should serve.

And when a restaurant doesn't serve it, it infuriates me.

I don't want anything fancy.

I don't want any complicated hot lava this or lemon meringue that.

I don't want any of that stuff.

Here's what I want.

A warm chocolate brownie.

with nuts in it and a scoop of ice cream.

That's it.

Just brownie a la mode

with nuts.

And if a restaurant doesn't serve that dessert, in my mind, it's an illegitimate restaurant and should be shut down by the health department.

By the health department.

Yeah.

Yes.

So the health department are coming in, they're going, there's no chocolate brownie here.

Yeah.

You're being shut down.

You may as well have had rats.

Yeah.

That's fair enough.

Yeah.

To me, it's the pizza of desserts, which is to say, if you're eating any dessert and you see anyone else eating that, you would rather have that.

Do you want onion on your brownie?

Yes, please.

No, it has to have nuts in it though.

Again, there's some kind of theme here of crunchiness.

A chocolate brownie without nuts, take or leave it, chocolate brownie with nuts to me is the perfect dessert.

Interesting.

So what nuts?

Because I think for me, I'm almost the other way around because my mum is like a really good baker and made a lot of chocolate brownies when we were growing up, but they always had nuts in them.

And then I think this is what you've always had.

As nice as it is, once you have something that's different, you're like, oh, this is the real treat outside of my house.

Even though your mum's being nice to you and making making you really nice stuff you're like oh but i get this at my friend's house and i could eat that there so i had brownies without the nuts in and still now i feel i get too excited about them even though brownies have walnuts in them i love them yeah that's what that's the right nut walnut brownies are great yeah that's that's the right move so you're saying that you would rather like reject your mother's love in it in exchange for just a different dessert maybe not these days but as a kid i think i was doing a lot of that i think i i did not not realize how good I had it with a mum who was really good at baking, really good at cooking.

And then I would always like think, oh, those kids were just allowed to eat McDonald's.

Those lucky kids.

They're so lucky.

And I was there eating something that probably tasted a lot better.

It's a very James A.

Caster way to rebel to have brownies without walnuts.

In your face, mum.

Scoot your bow.

Doing what I want.

I'm having no texture in my food.

I grew up in like a very no-sugar household.

So like any of my friends who had like fruit loops or whatever, any kind of sugary cereal, like that's where I wanted to be sleeping over because I was denied like terrible food.

And so I was always like finding the people whose parents took a more casual approach to their children's health.

And I would like, that's, that's where I wanted to be.

Like, we didn't have, we couldn't eat sugary gum.

We couldn't eat sugary cereal.

Like my dad was a health food nut.

And so I ate like granola every morning for like hearty organic granola was my breakfast, which is fine.

I mean, I'm happy that he did that, but at the time it was like, all I want is like Applejacks or whatever, you know.

My mum's more that person, very healthy.

Uh, my dad, the opposite, and yet he managed to completely hide that from us throughout our childhood.

And we thought he was just as healthy as mum was.

And then I've grown up, and it's really weird how we had the sugar cereal, we were allowed one, it was called special cereal in our house, one box of special cereal at the start of the month.

And whoever went with mum on the big shop got to choose a special cereal.

So, yeah, you're more likely to want to help out on the big shop and push the the trolley and stuff so you get to choose whatever the special cereal was and when it's gone it's gone and you have to wait until the next month for it now we've all moved out i go home to visit them and all i want in the morning cereal wise is something pretty uh sensible and boring and i open the cupboard and it's full of sugar cereal because my dad that's who he is and i'm like do you sit cookie crisp in here you're in your 60s

you're gonna go nuts you can't eat cookie crisp in your 60s Did you like try to make the one box last for the whole month?

Did you parse it out?

No, just wolf it down.

Massive cereal bowl of it.

We were allowed one bowl in the morning, so it'd be absolutely brimming to the point where it's nearly spilling over the sides, but not quite.

Got very good at doing that.

Wolf it all down.

Love it, be in heaven.

And then go to school.

And so after, you know, this me, my brother, and sister.

Oh, so it's like one, two days.

It's gone.

Yeah, that's it.

And then it's gone.

Interesting.

Meanwhile, my dad was hiding ice cream in the freezer underneath meats so that we couldn't see them.

Oh, man.

And eaten it himself, but I didn't know that until I was an adult.

I mean, this is fantastic.

Kudos to him for pulling it off.

You went your whole childhood.

Never knew this.

Yeah.

He absolutely nailed it.

Yeah.

And now he's out in the open.

He's absolutely going for it, this guy.

He doesn't care now.

He doesn't care now.

Cookie Crisp is

the perfect cereal for a 60-year-old lunatic to be eating.

If you're in your 60s, you shouldn't be eating a cereal with a wolf on the box.

If anything, I think if he'd been behaving like this when we were children, we would have eaten healthier.

Because I think we would have looked at him and gone, oh no, we can't, we can't go down this path, he's going, going crazy, this guy.

That is the that is the parenting question is always like, do you do the wrong thing and trust that your kids will rebel against it and do the right thing?

Like, that's a, that's a constant question in my mind of like, am I, should I be like letting up my kid just like watch as much TV as they want and like playing with their phones and stuff and then they'll rebel and become very studious and like boring kids who study philosophy at Oxford or something.

Like, I think about that all the time.

And clearly, it worked because now you want boring, sensible, healthy cereal, right?

Like, yeah, in the morning.

He kind of did, he pulled it off.

Although, you know, there's a certain time of the day where I then go nuts.

So, like, I can't start the day off with sugar cereal.

I just, I just can't, my brain can't do it.

I would feel like that's it.

The whole day's a write-off.

But there's a certain point in the day where I'm like, right, now I'm just like a crazy dessert guy.

I'm trying to get on top of it, Michael.

I'm currently Monday to Friday being a good boy.

And then the weekends are like the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Absolutely, absolutely insane weekend.

Do you remember that in the Bible?

The tales about Sodom in the Bible where everyone had big bowls of cookie crisp.

Yep.

Listen, I might as well be doing what the people in that city did to the desserts.

I might as well be doing it.

That's how crazy I'm going.

I'm going absolutely crazy.

All right.

Well, wait, walk me through that weekend then.

What does it look like?

Well, so I'm off the leash and I know it.

I know it's Saturday.

And so everything that I'm eating in the day is just followed up with whatever.

Also, I've still got all the Christmas chocolate and fudge and everything

in the cupboard that all my relatives got for me.

So now it's like I'm not eating that in the week.

But in the weekend, I'm just dipping in those, I'm getting a caramel covered pretzel every five seconds.

I'm getting these fudges, this cotton cream fudge.

There was these marshmallows that were like mango and passion fruit with meringue, bits of meringue in them.

I was eating those.

I was eating these massive blocks of honeycomb that are covered in chocolate.

I was eating those.

Ed got me four different types of ice cream and a bag of cookie dough

for my birthday.

I'm still going through.

I've just finished them.

I finished the cookie dough the other day after, directly after, I'd eaten some fudge.

And it was no, no, you've got to take the edge off there, no gap between either of them.

So I need to come down

after the fudge, so I need to level it out with this cookie dough.

Do you eat all this just in your kitchen, or do you take it to the toilet like you're in a nightclub?

No, I go right to the toilet, I'm eating it all, I'm coming out, I'm talking really quickly about an app pop I've designed that gets desserts delivered straight to your bedroom.

He's wiping his mouth, hoping that no one notices the little bits of fudge on the corners of his lips, powdered sugar all over his nose,

Absolutely crazy.

I mean, yeah.

When the Christmas candy runs out,

are you going to be okay then?

Or are you going to go back and restock and like keep this up?

I tell myself every single year that, well, this is just because I've got it all in the cupboard because it's Christmas stuff.

Once that's gone, I'll calm down.

And I know that that's not going to happen.

I'll just have to, I'll just, I'll just be buying it.

You know, I won't be buying that sort of stuff, but ice cream is the one.

Ice cream is the one where I'll just be like, well obviously i'll buy a tub of ice cream today because i feel like treating myself and i'll go and buy that i'm very good now at not eating a whole tub in one go but that doesn't merely you know that doesn't really count when you go well it's good that i only ate a few scoops and then followed it up with a handful of caramel covered pretzels some marshmallow crazy meringue

concoction and some cookie dough that my friend got me for my birthday for my 37th birthday do you do the thing of like if there's like a uh some kind of piece of candy like you'll eat you'll be like i'm just gonna eat half of this and you break it in half and eat it.

And then 10 seconds later, you're like, well, now I'll eat the other half.

Yeah, that's a, like, there's a, on sets in, if you're shooting early in the morning out here, there's always Krispy Kreme Donuts.

And I always see them and I'm always like, I really want one of this, but I don't want a whole one.

So I take a knife and I cut it in half.

And I eat it.

And as I'm eating the half of it, I'm reaching for the other half with my other hand.

It's like, yeah, what's the point of this?

Like, psychologically, I'm healthier because I cut it in half somehow.

Yeah, there's, there's like a one-second gap between the two halves there.

It's like you've taken a break to give your body a chance to like, you know, deal, cope with it.

Yeah, process the sugar to scream at you a bit more.

Yeah.

Someone sent me some donuts from Crosstown Doughnuts for Christmas, and there were six of them because, you know, I live with my girlfriend, so clearly we could share those donuts.

But she looked at them and said, oh, I'm not really into any of those flavours.

And I was into all of those flavours.

And there was a sticker on the box that said must be eaten within a day.

And I was like, oh, no, I wish I hadn't meant that.

Well, you were just following the rules.

That's a good, ethical person, right there.

You're just, you're doing what the rules were.

He's got a whole roll of those stickers in his drawer, and he puts them on everything and then pretends that they were there when they arrived.

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

You would like still water, pop normal bread, hearty, grainy, nutty bread, and pretzel bread with warm butter.

Starter, a seafood tower, crab meat, lobster, jumbo shrimp,

sushi rolls, and mustard hot sauce and cocktail sauce.

Main course, an entire 16-inch pizza with onions from Nino's New York, R.I.P.

Side dish, purple yam with creme fresh from Jar in LA.

Drink, 11 maker's mark old-fashions with a big ice cube in each one.

And dessert, a warm chocolate brownie with nuts and a scoop of ice cream.

Otherwise, we get shut down by the health at the health board.

You know, I hear it back.

I'm pretty into it.

I gotta say, you know what?

So am I.

And I actually think that pizza is a stroke of genius in the middle of that.

To have the seafood tower, you're feeling all fancy and then and then you're eating a big old slice of cheesy pizza I think it's great that's just what you want to eat for dinner always yeah but uh got bad news for you michael i know you think you've been in the dream restaurant it was the nightmare restaurant all along

i was worried that this was gonna happen yeah I texted Ed yesterday and told him I was gonna do that.

So excited.

He texted me yesterday going, guess what I'm gonna do tomorrow?

I'm gonna say it was the nightmare restaurant all along.

I was like, yeah, you do that, man.

That's pretty good.

No, wait,

what was the mystery ingredient?

Can you tell me now?

Can you guess what it is?

It's specific to you.

It's related to you and your work.

So it's probably an office.

Is it like chili?

It's even more specific to you.

Oh, you're going to kick yourself.

You're going to kick yourself so hard.

But you're in the right show.

Oh, beats.

It's beats.

Which, when we were circling around the purple yam, I thought, it's not a beat, is it?

No.

We were new and close.

Thanks so much for doing the podcast.

It's a really real pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Well, there we are.

What a lovely chat with Michael Scher.

What a nice guy.

Lovely chat.

Lovely guy.

It was a privilege.

Absolutely.

And even more of a privilege because he did not say beats, James.

Thank you for not saying beats.

We would have had to kick you out.

And then who knows?

You would have been...

Do you think when we kick people out now, they just like land on a pile on top of Jade Addams?

Yeah, I think so.

Or they go to the bad place.

They go to the bad place.

Did you like my twist that I did at the end of that episode, Ed?

Yes.

It's good, wasn't it?

I think Michael liked it.

Very clever.

I knew you were going to do it, of course, because you texted me yesterday saying you're going to do it.

Yes, I texted you telling you that it was going to happen.

It's always good to plan a twist in advance and tell the other person involved.

I thought I'll tell Ed that I'm going to do it because if it's an awful idea, Ed will just tell me not to do it.

However, I did forget that our relationship isn't that you don't tell me not to do bad ideas, you just kind of let me do them anyway.

Yes, good luck with your book.

Thank you.

But Michael has a book that is a good idea.

It's called How to Be Perfect.

Yeah, if there's ever been a more alluring title, I'd like to know about it because we'd all like to be perfect.

Yes, we would.

And I'm very excited to read it.

It is out now and it is published by Quircus and you can find it in all good bookstores.

Your book, James, of course, is called Something Different.

Yes, you can pre-order it now on all the usual platforms.

It's called James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media, Being the Best You Can Can Be, and Curing Yourself of Loneliness, Volume 1.

And of course, you can also go and get tickets to Ed Gamble's live comedy show, Electric.

It's tearing up the nation.

It's tearing up the nation.

It's tearing up hearts.

It's available on edgamble.co.uk.

Tickets are available, not the show of itself, of course.

Plenty more dates left.

Get stuck in.

Yeah, and listen, I don't know.

Maybe Ed's not been paying attention to this, but people are raving about this show.

Man, my mum said she was proud of me.

Yes, it's mum.

Whoa.

And people who aren't his mum.

My mother-in-law

didn't say anything to me about the rude bits.

Yes, which is that's that's good, isn't it?

That's a step forward.

Yep, because that would have been awkward.

She didn't punch me in the arm and say, just so rude, which she normally does.

Yes, yes.

So come and see that.

A show that does not deserve a punch in the arm, but I must emphasise, is quite rude.

It is quite rude.

To be fair.

He's a rude boy.

Also, hey, you can get us on all the socials.

Talk about, yeah, my book's about quitting social media.

Don't quit social media just yet.

You've got to follow Off Menu on Twitter at OffMenuOfficial.

Yes, and of course, you need to follow us on Instagram, OffMenuOfficial, and go on our website, offmenupodcast.co.uk.

There's also a list of restaurants on there for every restaurant that gets mentioned.

Every restaurant that's ever been mentioned on the podcast is on that list.

And sometimes, Ed, people come up to me and they say, hey, thanks for that list that's on your website.

It's really helpful for me when I'm going out to eat.

And I'll say, oh, cool.

What restaurants have you been to on the list?

And they go, oh, I haven't actually been on any of them.

I just go and look at the list, but I haven't been to any of them yet.

That's always what people say.

They never say,

yeah.

I went to this one.

They go, oh, no, I'm just saying it's nice to look at the list.

Yeah, you've never had any interaction with the general public that's gone like that.

Someone said, hey, thanks for this.

And you've gone, that's okay.

That's cool.

Tell me more.

Well, when I say general public, these are usually people who are working on TV shows that I'm already with.

Colleagues.

Yes.

Yeah, colleagues, colleagues.

The general public because you refer to them.

General public goes like this.

Hey, fix the fuck off.

Get out of here.

Don't talk to me.

Well, thank you very much for listening to the podcast.

We will see you again next week, I'd imagine.

We'll see you next week, but you won't see us because it's a podcast.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Hello, I'm Lou Sanders and if you've enjoyed this podcast, you might like my podcast, Cuddle Club.

It's about cuddling, yes.

But really, it's just a way into relationships and asking cheeky questions like who was your mum's favourite and when were you last unfaithful.

Previous guests include Alan Davies, Ashley B., Catherine Myan, Rich Dosman, Ed Gamble, Nish Kumar and other legends.

Get it on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And remember to CC everybody in because CC stands for Color Club.

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.