Ep 86: Russell Howard (Christmas Special)

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

Yes.

Ever heard of the Royal Albert Hall?

I have.

We've done live shows there.

And guess what?

We're doing more live shows there next year.

Sure, a lot of them are sold out already.

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

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

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

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

Those shows have been a lot of fun.

We cannot wait to do them live.

Who will we pull out of our little magic bag?

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

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

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

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

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

The day in between is for reflecting.

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

We get it.

It's more important than ever to get the most out of your money.

Options are key.

Options like Lyft, where you get great rewards, especially with partners like Dash Pass by DoorDash.

If you're a Dash Pass member, just link your DoorDash account and you'll get 5% off on-demand rides, 10% off scheduled rides to the airport, plus two free priority pickup upgrades every month.

New to Dash Pass?

To sign up for a three-month free trial, check Lyft.

Terms apply.

It's easy to be a superhero.

You don't need a cape or x-ray vision.

You just need to sign up for PowerSaver Rewards.

That way, when you save energy during a flex alert, you get a credit back on your energy bill.

Visit powersaverrewards.org and become a super power saver.

Let me reach into my big Christmas sack and see what's nestled within.

Oh, it's the off-menu podcast.

Here we are.

It's Christmas.

Let's have a big snog under the digital mistletoe.

My name's Ed Gamble.

Merry Christmas!

Little Christmas boy.

James Acaster here with a mouthful of holly.

As per, that's James's Christmas tradition.

Yep, munch, munch, munch, a mouthful of holly, and feeling very jolly.

Merry Christmas.

We remember that Christmas phrase, don't we?

Yeah.

Mouthful of holly, don't forget your brolly.

Yes, that's that's important as well.

Yes.

Ah, Ed, I feel so festive, so full of Christmas cheer.

I can't wait to welcome another guest into the Christmas dream restaurant.

Yes, indeed.

It's a Christmas special of the Off-Menu podcast.

But don't worry, the format largely remains the same.

We will still be asking our special guests the following, James.

Their favourite ever: starter, main course, dessert, side dish, and drink, plus

Christmas bonus round.

That could be their favourite Christmas dish, or maybe they just want to tell us what kind of food they have all day long at Christmas.

It's up to them.

Indeed, it's a fairly loose Christmas round.

And I'm very happy to say, James, that our special Christmas guest this week is Russell Howard.

Russell Howard.

Russell Howard, you all know Russell Howard.

Brilliant comedian.

He's got loads of great shows on TV.

He's look, he's massive.

He's Russell Howard.

You know him.

he's the nation's sweetheart the nation's sweetheart although nish kumar would uh would challenge that i think nish claims to be the nation's sweetheart and the nation's cutie pie yes but let's face it if you're claiming that and forcefully saying that you're those things that doesn't sound like the behavior of a sweetheart but very excited to have russell in the restaurant uh what's he gonna pick we don't know but we hope he doesn't pick our secret ingredient which we have decided on because if he picks a secret ingredient that we hate we are kicking him out the restaurant and the secret ingredient this week is oh candy candy canes candy

christmassy it's a christmas secret ingredient i personally james hate things like candy canes sticks of rock anything hard and sugary yeah it's if you've got to suck it you've got to suck it and then it's just like sugar or you crunch it and then it messes up your teeth and it goes sharp i hate it When I was a kid, it's all I ever dreamt of.

Of course, that won't surprise anyone.

I wanted candy canes, I wanted sticks of rock I remember going on holiday once to the lake district with my family and there was a rock shop and we went in there and it was just wall to wall just full of just different types of rock but also like lollipop rocks and everything and I was obsessed with that shop and it's all I could ever think about and I went to go there every day.

Now it makes my teeth my teeth hurt just to look at those things.

Just to look at them.

I'm like, oh no.

You know when you suck a rock that stick of rock and it gets down to that kind of like, you know, slightly like uh porous, just like white kind of uh crumb not even crumbly, like just like uh rigid, horrible kind of like stick.

That's what I imagine it does to my teeth.

When I look at it, I'm like, that's what my teeth feel like now is that just the Diane Morgan told us teeth were porous and now I believe her.

I don't think I've ever got got to that point with a stick of rock.

I don't think I've ever sucked one to the middle.

Oh, come on.

And feel free to know context off menu that.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

But like

I definitely, I've sucked on many a stick of rock at the time.

I remember being in primary school in Mrs.

Weaver's class, and she was like, We're going to talk about things that are high in sugar in this lesson.

She went, What's number one?

Does anyone know what number one is?

And number one in that lesson was a stick of rock.

Yeah,

of course it is.

Just like she put rock up there and candy floss.

Yeah, anything like that, I'm not having that.

Toffee apples can sold off as well.

Anyway, if

I like apples, sure.

Why are you putting them in prison?

I like toffee.

Yeah.

It's not toffee, though.

It's sugar.

Like, I like toffee.

I like chewy toffee with dairy in it, but not just sugar round a red sugar round an apple.

Here's what I'd like.

Proper, legit toffee that covers an apple that is actually not an apple, but made of like a dessert of some sort, but apple-flavoured.

I once, oh, in Sydney once said,

there was this place that did a...

great gelato and stuff and they did this thing that looked like a toffee apple but it was just gelato and sorbet and apple flavoured sorbet covered in this gelato and oh it was so good and you know i've never i've never been to australia and it comes up so often as an amazing place to eat sydney and melbourne in particular they're very very good they're great i've got to get him over there everybody everyone come together we're going to send ed to australia that's the new off menu uh mission crown funnel one of you's got to sort the crown funder out

all of you Chip in and we're going to send Ed to Oz.

There's a lot of problems in the world, but I think the main food-based issue that we need to solve is getting me to Australia.

G'day gamble.

We've got to make it happen.

Rashford, are you listening?

Sort it out.

I've got to go.

Come on, Rashford.

Can't wait for Rashford to help you out.

I've just remembered.

We've got an episode.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

So, hopefully, Russell Howard does not say candy canes and hopefully pick some delicious stuff instead.

So, without further ado, this is the off-menu menu of Russell Howard.

Happy Christmas.

Welcome, Russell Howard, to the Dream Restaurant.

Hello.

Whoa.

Welcome, Russell Howard, to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

Yeah, it's very nice in here, isn't it?

What lovely outfits you're both wearing.

What can you see?

What have we got on?

Because bear in mind, this is the Dream Restaurant.

This is all from your mind.

You're both wearing the exact outfit that Eddie Murphy wore for Delirious.

Yes.

We are.

It's quite cramped in here.

It's hot in here, isn't it?

Isn't it hot in here?

You're both sweating profusely.

Do you mean we're in one outfit together?

In one big delirious outfit?

I see.

Yeah.

No, it's awful in here.

James is in the left leg.

You're in the right.

I'm confused.

I didn't ask for this.

It feels like there's been a communication problem, but you're both leathered up.

Have I come at the right time?

Am I actually at the restaurant?

Look, Russell, like I say, this is, you know, this is not something we've chosen.

Sure.

This is like when people start complaining about, you know, oh, there's ads for sex workers on my browser because of what you've been Googling.

That is true, yeah.

Eddie Murphy's suit.

It seems lovely in there, though.

Very, very pleasant.

Do I eat on my own, or can I have people come along with me?

Do you have people?

Yeah,

there's no regulations.

There's no COVID-based regulations.

We're not in any tier in the dream restaurant.

So who do you want at the dream meal with you?

I know who you'll have.

Okay, go on.

I know who you're going to choose.

Who's that?

That, well, actually, I'm not sure who she is, but...

Right.

Okay,

settle an argument between me and Ed.

Those travel shows you do, is that your wife or a good, or just your friend?

Oh, really?

Really?

You absolute skunk.

Well, Mr.

Acaster, well, well, you know,

that is my mother.

Oh, sorry.

Benito wins.

I've only ever left her vagina.

That happened a lot when we traveled around America because my mum was quite young looking.

It had a sort of a feel of sort of like second marriage rich widow.

And she'd sort of like brought this little urchin along.

And my mum, this is the most bizarre thing about it.

I really enjoyed that.

Do you know what I mean?

So sometimes we'd be in a hotel and they think we're a couple.

And my mum would really sort of, oh, they think that we're married.

She would really be delighted by that fact that she felt young, whereas I was horrified.

We were on holiday once, and she was trying to put sun lotion on my back because it was very hot.

And I got really panicky in case we got papped.

It's like, do you know what I mean?

And it kind of, it was, so it was just before I was sort of recognisably famous.

And it was like, who's Howard's old wife?

But it is my mum.

Would you guys ever travel the world with your mothers?

Yeah, I'd do that.

I mean,

if I was being paid for it for a TV show properly, yeah.

Well, Well, the reason I did it, because they asked me to do a travel show.

I said, who would you like to go with?

And a week before, my mum had genuinely said, my only real ambition in life is to go to an old folks' home where they don't hit you.

So I thought, because it was so bleak, I thought the least I can do is give her memories to enjoy in between the beatings.

She's going to have this, I remember in that hotel.

Whack.

Is that going to be the next series of the travel show where you travel around taking her to various old people's homes to see which one she prefers?

Yeah, exactly.

And she sort of, yeah, and she has to sort of get in a boxing ring with him and see if she can take it.

Yeah, I can do all this.

He's got a good jab, but no hook.

I'll be fine here.

Would you like your mum at your dream meal then?

I would like my mum to be there to help cook some of it because she's just got, you know, the power that all mums have just to cook magical food.

Yeah, I would definitely, I would have, I would have her cook the starter and then sit down to enjoy it and then i'd ask her to leave

do you know what i mean do you have any other guests for the whole meal perhaps or are they just people sort of drifting in and leaving throughout the evening i think i'd have my wife yeah i'd definitely have my wife there and that's not your mum right it's not my mum no but and weird but she is older than your mum she is not she's younger than me and not as old as my mum.

It sounds like a weird riddle.

But you've got to get the restaurant just right.

And yeah, I remember I was in a restaurant in Dubai once.

It was a fish restaurant and you could see you were sort of inside this aquarium and it was awful because you were sort of eating fish and it felt like they were kind of

kind of looking at you and going granddad

was it one of the ones where you could pick which one you wanted to eat no no no no it was just you were in this sort of aquarium and it was like a fish restaurant but yeah it wasn't that oh god yeah they used to have those in like 80s films didn't they where you'd sort of walk in and you'd say i'd have that lobster god no way.

Yeah, I'm not very squeamish about food at all, but I think that is that's a step too far for me.

I think that's just the sort of gleeful thing of going, like, I'm going to kill that one.

I think it's just a step too far.

Yeah, yeah.

Of like, which one's the biggest?

It would just be like, all the, you know, the shiniest.

Burger and lobster, if you've ever been to burger and lobster, I have all the lobsters in the tanks.

But I like, and if you're called burger and lobster, I used to two things.

Having the lobster in the tanks isn't enough.

I want the cows in there as well.

Completely, yeah.

Yeah.

You're not just lobster and lobster, Bebbe.

I want to see the cows.

I want to see the cows in the cages and I can choose one of them.

He says that every time he goes in, they say, Have you been to here before?

And he goes, Yeah, you can't be lobster and lobster, baby.

I want the cows in the cages.

Yeah, I want to see the cow in the cage.

I'll choose the cow, and the cow can choose the lobster.

How's that?

And then they're like, Would you like a window seat or an aisle?

Yeah.

This guy's fussy, but I like him.

You really, you really got into Bebby.

Is Is that your...

Is that how you'll phrase it?

Bebit?

Yeah, I've been saying it for a while now, I guess.

I really, I mean, I didn't even know I was going to say it at that time.

It just happened.

It took hold.

It took hold.

It's like, yo,

I really felt like I needed to make the point about the lobster and lobster.

And if I just said it, if I just had said to you, imagine it, if I'd just gone, it's not lobster and lobster.

Yeah.

You'd have gone.

Okay.

Yeah, there's a different energy there.

Yeah, you wouldn't have been like, great point.

But as it it was, when I shouted Bebe, you were like, I agree.

It's to rescue, it's basically to rescue the joke.

If he was doing new material, he'd end every joke with Bebe.

Yep, I'd hit my leg with a microphone or whatever people do.

I'll tell you what's very good for that: smoking an imaginary pipe.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That really eeks a couple of seconds out from

it.

Do you ever elongate the baby when you know the joke's really good?

Bebe.

Or be.

And it works.

It works.

It works, of course.

Why would you stop doing it?

Still on sparkling water, Russell.

Sparkling, please.

I like it when my belly's fizzy.

Bebe.

It works.

It does work, mate.

It's a pretty good line, as it was.

When you say you like it when your belly's fizzy,

it fills you up, yeah.

With you, though, specifically, that reminds me of a piece of material, a very old classic Russell Howard piece of material where you talk about wanting to have a superpower where you touch people and it makes them orgasm and then the follow-up to that is you doing an impression of someone orgasming and you say you made my belly fizz that's right so wow what I'm saying is oh wow do you associate drinking sparkling water with cumming

well

you've done your analysis

And it, I mean, it's difficult to walk away from that accusation without the listener thinking, that's definitely what he thinks.

No, I just like that it refreshes me and it fills me up and it's the closest that we've got, you know, it's certainly in water form to Frobscottle, which is the drink I think we'd all like to try.

Do you know what I mean?

What book is that from?

That's from the BFG.

Yes.

It's Frobscottle.

It makes you do whiz pops, which are kind of like magical farts that make you whiz all around the room.

I could not believe it when my dad read me that story for the first time and it got to that bit.

I couldn't believe that it was actually in the book and that my dad was reading it out loud.

I lost my mind.

Of course.

And now how old are you, James?

35.

Exactly.

I'm 40.

Ed, what we're doing with 34.

34.

And if I were to

offer you Frob Scott now, you'd definitely take it in the same way that when you were first read that when you were eight, your mind was blown.

Like, it's so simple, but who wouldn't?

Imagine that eight years old going yeah this is giant he drinks a fizzy drink that makes him fart in the air and it makes him happy and it's allowed and he's doing that with an orphan he's taken yes dad

but he's looking after that orphan what making her fart in the sky yes he is now sleep well you sleep well so when you're drinking sparkling water do you imagine that it's frobscottle is that the right word i don't know i was simply trying to be entertaining um i no i just uh glug it down i just i really like i've got a bit of of a problem with fizzy drinks.

John Robbins always takes the piss out of me for this.

I drink a ridiculous amount of like Diet Coke.

And John was around my house ages ago, like, you know, my mum's house, not my wife, my mum.

And

I had a sip of Coke and my mum said to me, I was probably about 30 at the time, I thought you were so fizzy.

And John often reminds me of that.

I just, I don't know, there's something about fizzy drinks that I can't get enough of them.

It has to be fizzy.

Like, we've got this kind of

little machine that my wife bought that carbonates the water.

Christ for life.

Incredible.

Within seconds.

Wow.

Are we talking soda stream?

It's not a soda stream.

It's like this other...

But it's like that, yeah.

James has got a soda stream, but he can't work out how to work it and he gets covered in water every single time.

Yes.

Well, it's impossible.

I imagine your kitchen is full of gizmos and stuff like that, James.

Me?

Yeah, I imagine it's a fucking wild place with you in a sort of a lab coat trying to make breakfast for yourself.

Thank you.

Well, Joe what, it wasn't, but lately people have been gifting me such things.

Recently, some friends bought me an ice cream maker.

I've not used it yet.

Don't dare because I love ice cream.

I've got a big sweet tooth, really addicted to ice cream.

I think the last thing that needs to happen in my life is that I learn how to make it myself at home.

I'm quite worried about if I learn how to make it and I get good at it because then I might not do anything else.

And I definitely won't freeze it.

I'll be making it in the ice cream maker and then just eating it out of there.

You're gonna turn into a sort of Walter White figure, yes.

You're gonna, yeah, start making like blue ice cream, yeah,

but it is interesting, that isn't it.

Like, like, I really like sushi, and you like very often, you'll get like, oh, this is sushi maker, and you, why don't you make sushi at home?

Like, no, I won't do it as well as I can get it at a restaurant, and then that's all I'll fucking eat.

Yeah,

I'll start making all sorts and putting loads of stuff, cookies and pretzels, and everything in it, and i'll just be dead i'll be i'll be dead ed you know i'll be dead yeah but what a what a way to go

yeah it would be quite a nice way to go actually that is how you're going to die anyway you may as well speed it up yeah

from uh ice cream gluttony yes fast forward to the end of the book why not

the final words yeah i'll just have what and then gone yeah exactly popadoms or bread Popadoms, without a doubt.

I think that might be the quickest response we've ever had to that.

You're so so sure about poppadoms.

Not even up for debate.

One of the greatest things, popadong with the Chutneys.

Yes, absolutely.

I was once on Jonathan Ross's TV show, and Jonathan and Gordon Ramsey were seeing how many popadoms they could smash with their hands.

And Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters leant over to me in the green room and went, what time does this show go out?

Half past 10.

And he said, you'd have to be pretty tired to watch this.

Yeah, poppadoms without a doubt, just exquisite things.

I won't even have them as a starter, I'll keep them going throughout the curry.

Do you know what I mean?

I'll bring them back, I'll dunk them into the curry.

You know, why waste them just by having them at the beginning?

Bring more, bring more.

I once, when I worked at Tesco as a trolley boy, when I was 18 to 21, and once I forgot my money, and I had no money, and I was so hungry that I, and it was almost like I manifested them because there were some poppadoms in a trolley that somebody had left.

And I stole those poppadoms and I ate them.

But it turned out they were the ones that you had to cook.

And it was not a substantial meal.

Did you eat them raw?

I ate one of them raw.

I went,

this is no good.

But I was, you know, when you're like skin, I'm so hungry pushing trolleys around.

And the great thing about being a trolley boy is you can sort of eat popadoms in a car park.

No one really looks at you.

That's what they do.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Just assume that's how Tesco feed their trolley boys.

Raw popadoms.

They wouldn't even let me in the store.

It was a river of shit.

My brother got a job inside and they took one look at me and went, get in the car park.

You're an outdoors employee.

Awful, yeah.

What dips are you having with the pop-a-doms?

And also, is there any particular place you want them to come from?

Is there a curry house you've been to where they've got the best one?

It's a good question.

There used to be a great place called Pansheet in Made of Ale that's now closed.

They used to do amazing pop-a-doms.

So from there, please.

And I would have the mango one, the lime pickle one, no time for the yogurt, waste of time.

And what's the really crazy orange one?

The sort of zingy.

Yeah, a spicy one.

Yes, I'll have one of those.

A spicy, a lime pickle, and a mango.

What's your problem with yogurt?

I've just got no time for it.

That's what, I mean, I fucking hated that show Richard Heron did.

I don't know.

I just like, I've got no time for like having like a lassie with the curry or anything like that.

I'm not, just not a fan of yogurt.

i just like it it's it makes me feel like a dj of spice because i just

mix in a little bit i can cut i can cut some mouthfuls i can not have yogurt with some of it just makes me feel like i'm having lots of different meals in one well see that's an interesting approach so you like the power that you have to keep your belly guessing yes i like to keep my belly guessing whereas i i i like to treat my belly with respect and let the belly know that it'll be lime or mango and when it has that first bite the belly's like we're safe it's cool it's gonna be a big friday we all know what's happening but i also respect i respect how you run your kingdom you would say that you're i think you're in charge of your belly whereas my belly's in charge of me oh definitely i don't think that's up for debate yeah no absolutely we know that anyway yeah yeah sometimes when things get a bit too spicy and i overdo the hot one i might add a little dab of yogurt onto the next one with something else not on its own i'll never have a poppad on with just the yogurt on it no i agree with that but yes yes a few little flecks of it, a little sprinkle.

I quite like a bit of the onion from time to time, you know.

But I wouldn't request that if it was there, I'd have it.

But you're right, you would never have just yogurt on a poppadome.

That's a red flag on a date, I'd say.

If the person you're having a date with immediately put just yogurt on a poppadom and ate it, but no, absolutely not.

Do you want a real red flag?

You've just reminded me.

My friend Steve Hall, the brilliant comedian.

He is a red flag.

Yes, well, listen, listen to this, bro.

So it turns out Steve will go to Michelin restaurants on his own and he will have the

12-course meal during the day because very often there's lots of spaces.

You can go to these amazing restaurants, and he'll sit there and eat them on his own.

And he said he was looked at the other day by waiters because he thought, and I think he might have been right, that the waiters were looking at him thinking, This man's about to kill lots of people

and he's having one last meal before he commits his atrocity that really do you know what I mean something about eating a Michelin styled restaurant on your own at one in the afternoon as someone who has done that on your own I've done like massive tasting tasting meals on my own yeah but normally if I'm away working or I'm by myself in a city and I've got an evening off I've done I've done that in New York before a couple of times yeah I love it.

But that's different, I think.

There's something about you're a tourist, something about...

Yeah.

And the horrible thing is I've become that dick that we've all met where you go you go to the cinema on your own i've become that guy i'm so sorry ed i take it all back

your starter russell your dream starter that you're you hinted maybe your mother would be cooking this uh

well there's two options so um my mum does a very nice like goat's cheese uh that's melted with kind of red onion marmalade and palma ham which is exquisite whenever she's kind of cooked like a flash meal for us at home, she's cooked that.

I remember the first time we had it, we're probably about like 15.

And I was like, just remember thinking, what is going on in goats' guts that they're able to produce this?

I'm not really a cheese fan, but goat's cheese, Jesus Christ.

exquisite.

I think it gets a bad rep goat's cheese as well.

Does it get a bad rep?

I think it does.

I don't know whether it was on menus too much like five, ten years ago.

And now people have decided it's like ubiquitous or quite often it's like the vegetarians hate it now because it's always the vegetarian option.

Yes, like it'll either be goat's cheese or a portobello mushroom.

So, they're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, goat's cheese again.

But it is, it's uniquely delicious.

I agree.

But my favorite, since we're asking, is without that, um, duck pancakes, crispy duck pancakes.

The reason being, it doesn't matter whether you're in a really nice restaurant or an absolute shithole, it's always delicious.

Yeah,

you just incinerate the duck, you get those pancakes, put plum sauce on, spring onion, cucumber, every time it's fantastic.

Never lets you down.

The consistency of duck pancake is frightening.

Frightening.

That's true.

Because it's so difficult to fuck up.

Yeah, exactly.

Because you simply...

ASMR now.

But it never lets you down.

Have you ever...

Occasionally, you might get a bone in there and nearly lose a tooth.

Worth it.

That's the only dilemma.

But by and large,

has it ever let you down?

If you're into that, it'll never, ever, ever, ever let you down.

And that's what I respect.

And the combination is just like ducks and plum saw.

It just, it just works.

It's just one of those things where you've just got that perfect combo.

Four of those onto the main.

Tell me, Russell, this could be controversial.

How are you building your duck pancakes?

What's going on first?

Well, okay, so I get one of those sort of like creppy pancakes and um i

get the shredded duck i put the duck on like you might if you were rolling a um a joint and i kind of just thin it out thin out that sort of duck weed and um i then put a little very

let's say four

no three cucumber slices you know a smattering of the spring onion then the plum sauce just like poured from the little plastic pot then i roll roll it up and then crack it in and i reckon two bites and she's down wow well i've got to tell you when i'm making my big duck bifters i uh i get the pancake i'll then get the hoisin sauce and put that on the pancake first spread it across the pancake so i've got a good covering yes and i use that as the base i'll then put the duck on and then go for my cucumber batons and my spring onion hair and then i'll roll it up smash it down three bites Oh, three, three.

Hamez, what are you dealing with?

Okay.

Could I call you Hamez?

Yeah, absolutely.

Finally,

personally, I'd insist on it from now on.

Thank you.

Yes, that's what I'd like to be called.

I start with,

so just, yeah, so picture, if you will, an empty table.

First of all, a dollar put the sauce on its own directly onto the table.

Then...

I'm sticking the cucumber into the sauce at different angles and I'm trying to make a I'm trying to kind of make a star shape out of it.

Yep.

Then I get the spring onion and I'm grinding that into a paste in my hands and letting it fall naturally on top of all of that.

Then the pancake, then I kind of like pick up, so I use the pancake at that point, kind of like a pooper scooper bag.

So I pick up all that mess that's on the table.

I pick that up with the pancake like that.

And then in my other hand, I've got all the shredded duck.

And then I put both in my mouth at once from different angles and then mix the rest in my mouth.

Do you know what I've got to say instantly to that?

Fetch a bucket and a mop.

That's a wet-ass pancake.

That I was in my, when you started scrunching it around, I was imagining you in the back of Megan Thee Stallion's video.

Yeah.

Which I think if somebody can do that, if someone's got the technical wizardry to have various people grinding and dancing in the back of WAP and then James is in the corner making a pancake.

Yeah.

Someone make that happen.

Come on, internet, make that happen.

Someone will be able to do something for that.

I think we should start a Chinese restaurant and first thing on the menu is wap's wet ass pancake yeah yeah exactly and then and james comes out and serves it like that just pour sauce all over the table exactly

i like that it's nice when there's a bit of kind of uh magic going down i like this place what are we going to call it we should call it wap right yeah whap i think because it's famous for the wet ass pancake yeah yeah yeah wet ass pancakes

i'm really enjoying this fellas um there's something about lockdown particularly just like whenever would you get a situation where you could just talk to two people about food and it's allowed.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

And I don't think we've ever really spoken.

I don't think I've ever really spoken to you, James.

Not really.

Even when I've done your TV shows, I don't think I've spoken to you on that.

Yeah,

it's because you've got a lot on your plate.

Yeah, I hope I don't have that reputation as being rude.

It's because I'm

cracking.

But do you know what I mean?

I often think about that and I go, fuck, I don't really speak to people because I'm kind of doing the job.

Yeah.

Here's a question for you.

Me and Ed, we both did Russell Howard's Good News.

Yeah.

And I believe we both done Stand-Up Central.

Yeah.

Who out of each of us did better on it and was the better?

Well,

it's slightly different because I really,

really ruined Ed's appearance the first time he went on.

Do you remember how you sabotaged me on my performance on Russell Howard's Good News?

Russell?

I don't think I sabotaged you.

I think you just did your material.

I think I just introduced you.

You just came out and you smoked it.

I think you both did great.

I mean, look, look,

I got sabotaged all right.

Really?

What did I do?

Well, you didn't do anything, actually.

But

you know, on Russell Howard's Good News, when the stand-up comes on and there's their name a million times behind them.

Yeah.

Yes.

My surname was spelt wrong.

So it was spelt Acast Or O R.

Yeah, which has led to something very interesting happening.

It was my first TV appearance as well, so no one knew who I was.

So

that became a thing on Twitter: like, who's this A Castor guy?

And all this.

And then someone who will remain nameless, but is a dickhead started up a Twitter account called James A.

Castor that they ran for many years and still occasionally pipes up now and is a version of me

who

can't spell and has a a career that kind of mirrors mine but uh you know is going very badly and he's having a nightmare he has a wooden hand I believe wow what what what are the other qualities of a castor Ed you should know why

oh I don't know why would you know every single detail about him including his Twitter password he's just dumb he's just a dumb guy but since James left Twitter James A.

Castor is the only thing approaching James on Twitter so loads of followers now it's great

We get it.

It's more important than ever to get the most out of your money.

Options are key.

Options like Lyft, where you get great rewards, especially with partners like Dash Pass by DoorDash.

If you're a Dash Pass member, just link your DoorDash account and you'll get 5% off on-demand rides, 10% off scheduled rides to the airport, plus two free priority pickup upgrades every month.

New to Dash Pass?

To sign up for a three-month free trial, check Lyft.

Terms apply.

your main course we should get on to your main course my main course is uh very specific it is a dish called a chicken long

which is a curry from a restaurant in sydney called long grain which is one of the most phenomenal things i've ever eaten absolutely delicious and i went there with my tour manager kumar kamlagaran And we both, they didn't have much room in the restaurant.

So we had to sit side by side like newsreaders.

And we kind of looked out at this restaurant, eating this dish.

And then two girls were sat at the bar and they started kissing each other.

And my tour manager went,

and that noise.

is what made it the finest meal I'd ever had.

It was such a small,

it was like an inclining goat.

Oh, man.

It was, yeah, it was the combination of that and his giddy excitement of seeing these two girls kisses.

So, in the dream restaurant, would you like all that to happen again?

Oh, definitely.

Yeah.

Would you make that happen?

I don't know the ethics on the dream restaurant of bringing in two girls to kiss in front of you.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They wanted to kiss.

Don't you try and twist that.

No, it's just if we're going to recreate it, are we

bringing bringing them in and they're having a nice evening as well yeah listen that they're invited if they want to kiss fine okay

we're not going to i don't want anyone to the side of them poking them with sticks yeah sort of showing them like photos of uh women kissing to try and you know like they do with pandas

i don't want any of that I think if we are bringing them in to have their own dream meal, I think we're going to have to say, by the way, if you do choose to kiss, that man over there is going to make a noise.

Yeah, yeah.

A small noise.

A small noise, but a noise nonetheless.

And we just thought we should warn you about that in advance.

Sure, yeah.

I imagine it like a groundhog day situation where we just like recreate, we just bring you back to that moment in the dream restaurant, and everyone will just behave the same way that they did on that day, they feel the same.

And so, if the same things are always going to happen, if everyone's doing it just out of choice, and you just happen to be in there, and you're the only one who knows this has all happened before, yeah, great idea, love it, perfect, perfect.

Yeah, how uh, how spicy is this curry?

Talk me through the consistency, the spice level.

The main thing about it, it feels like it has like a thousand different textures.

It's like a Thai curry.

And it's not especially spicy, but

it feels like, you know, in Thai food, it's like there's so many little ingredients that just, it's like this orchestra of flavor and it's all kind of.

swirling over it and it's just it's it's quite a small dish as well but like it's so wide-ranging in its its flavor i've just never tasted anything like it and here's what's super exciting i did jamie oliver's show in south end a few years ago and they were like oh what's your dream meal and i was like oh i really like this chicken long from long grain but whenever i've been back there they've never had it because they retired the dish you know where where a food is so good a bit like a football player that they go right we're getting rid of the the number seven there's no point having that because that's what pele wore so they got rid of the chicken lump.

Jamie Oliver got in touch with the chef, this kind of, he was now sort of retired, and he sent Jamie the recipe and Jamie Oliver cooked it for me.

Ah, incredible.

You know, one of those moments where you're like, the world is ridiculous.

How lucky am I?

Yeah, that's one of those things where you're like, oh, yeah, this was all worth it.

I don't know what my goal was in my career, but it turns out it was this.

And you sort of really wish that...

because they surprised me with it i really wish that that i would i'd been a bit more eloquent but i think i just repeatedly kept saying fucking hell.

It was really bad.

It's a really awful TV.

The James was like, What do you think of that?

Fucking hell.

Fucking like it was, I was so giddy.

Oh man, it was those sorts of dishes, those like mystical dishes.

I went to this pop-up once, it was a burger pop-up, but it was at this restaurant called Roti Chai in London, which is like a sort of Indian street foodie type restaurant.

And just for this one night, they did this burger club thing where they did this incredible burger that had loads of like curry spices in it.

Oh, yeah.

And it was just that right level of spice where you sort of feel high, and the top of my head started tingling, and I started drooling a little bit.

It's one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted.

And I said to the owner as I left, I was like, You must, you've got to put this on the menu.

You've got to like do this more.

And he was like, No, we're never doing it again.

And they've never done it again.

And I think about it about three times a week.

What was that?

What's that dumpling place we went to, Ed?

In well, that you took me to in Carnaby Street, off of Carnaby Street.

Ugly Dumplings.

Ugly Dumpling.

And they did that lamb one, like a lamb cofter a dumpling.

The first time I went there, it was on the specials.

And I had it, and it was amazing.

And I asked them if it was going to be a and it never was again.

And I don't know.

I get, I actually get annoyed with that kind of stuff.

Okay.

I don't think of it as romantic and great.

I'm like, no, you've got to keep doing that.

It was delicious.

I'd like to eat it again, please.

Yeah.

But what if there was this moment in time and it was perfect and it

it just belongs there?

Do you know what I mean?

No?

Well, if time travel existed, then I'd agree with them.

So I'd be like, yeah, I'll go back.

I know I'm bringing up Groundhog Day a lot now.

But like, that'd be my Groundhog Day that I'd choose.

Really?

Out of everything in your life, it would be the day that we went to Ugly Dumplings and you had the Lamb Dumpling.

Yes, because every day I could go to any restaurant I wanted, but I'd always know if I want to, I could go to Ugly Dumpling and they'll have that special.

Gotta respect that.

I think I'd probably go back to 1988, first time I went on a water flume.

Christ.

That's good.

Yeah, fun.

You don't forget that.

And still enjoyable as an older man now, seeing people go down water flumes.

For the first time.

Me and John Richardson had a really good hour in Falaraki once

watching people go down flumes.

It's brilliant.

It's like watching haunted babies, man.

Did you yourself go on the flumes or were you just watching?

Oh, yeah,

I go on them.

John refused to go on the flumes.

I was going to say, I can't imagine John Richardson going on a flume.

Well, this is the interesting thing.

He didn't go on any of them.

And then he went, right, I'll go on that one.

He went on the biggest and that was it he just went I'll do that and then I'm done he's a very efficient man he was like I'll just go on the biggest one get it all out the way because he he used to be a chef was a chef when he started doing stand-up and I lived with him for a bit the he would regularly kind of cook us food and it was just amazing but he gets very agitated if you add to the meal So he cooked us a steak once and I just had a hankering for some beans and he went fucking ape shit.

Yeah.

It was extraordinary.

I'm on on his side.

I'm on his side.

That's it.

I would be so.

If I made someone a steak and then I turned round and they had a bowl of beans ready to go with it, I would be absolutely it's beans as well.

Beans is the worst thing you could have added to it.

But that was it.

But like that, but exactly that, that like real fury.

I was like, I suppose you see some beans.

I mean, this is lovely, don't get me wrong, but you know, beans and beans.

I'm on your side, Russell.

That's nice.

In fact, now I kind of would like to have a really delicious steak with some spaghetti hoops.

That'd be quite tasty.

Your side dish, Russell Howard?

There's a thing that they have in the south of the United States called a biscuit.

And it's sort of like this kind of scon that's kind of dipped in honey and it is absolutely exquisite.

And we were in a place called Savannah, and we had those, and they were just so-I mean, if you've got a sweet tooth, my Christ, Acaster, you'd be wandering out of that restaurant with like full, like, you know, gerbil mouth.

We've just kind of

got them in for later.

My God, just so kind of moorish.

That's something they seem to do quite well in the South of America of just like crowbaring in sugar to every single course, like the cornbread, yeah, biscuits, like anything like that.

Yeah, barbecue beans like i really like sort of the sides that you get for like a really good barbecue restaurant i'm well into them like colin greens all that

yeah damn right yams with marshmallows on them yeah crazy yeah that to me is that's too much for me like yeah i i like the idea of sweet with savoury a bit but putting marshmallow on a yam what you what you do baked potato with a lump of chocolate in it i'm it's horrible but it works it's like whoever the um the genius one day that kind of went right i'm gonna put some syrup with these pancakes and some bacon and blow me down if it doesn't work.

I'm sort of not on board with that either, to be honest.

Really?

Yeah.

That's absolute hogwash.

What drives you against it?

Again, it's just the different flavours that are.

I like pancakes and syrup.

I like bacon and eggs.

Sue me.

I want to separate these things.

You're the one who has beans with steak.

Of course you're fucking with the format.

True.

I like them, but I don't eat them because I'm so into sugar and sweet stuff that I really have to just like have a designated time when I can have that stuff, which is dessert or like, you know, maybe in the drink category.

Wow.

I have to really

steer clear of stuff like the biscuit that you do.

I've been in so many places in America where they've got those biscuits and I've never ordered them because I'm like, I must never have that because then my whole meal will become the biscuits.

So are you sort of like a Ben Stiller in dodgeball figure?

But that, that, so

but it's, but you're not because you don't put on weight.

So, this well, this is it.

This is what I'm intrigued by.

So, what we did: do you have a high metabolism?

Are you a sniffer?

That's what it is.

I have a high metabolism.

Um, also, I just think I just constantly feel guilty about everything.

So, every time I do have anything sweet, I think I just sweat it out in guilt and shame because I feel like I shouldn't have eaten it.

That's where also exercise, sure.

What are we dealing with?

What's what you've been doing?

Well, at the

here's what I did: right at the beginning of

lockdown, I went too hard on all the kind of like prison workouts and all the you know high-intensity workouts in my living room, messed my knees up

pretty early doors.

Oh, no, and now I'm just doing yoga, which I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right, and hula hooping, which I only learned because I had to do it for Taskmaster.

And I also have some resistance bands, which I kind of do whatever I can with those.

They look very cool.

They look very cool.

You put them around your ankles and you just twist them.

My mum keeps a hula hoop underneath her sofa whenever she's watching the news and is depressed.

You get to the hula hoop out and has a little dance.

That's amazing.

russell this is the this is the christmas special merry christmas uh which means we get our special christmas guests uh to pick their dream christmas dish or full christmas meal what whatever your perfect food is at christmas we want to know it well it starts with um a bacon sandwich at the beginning of the day and then me and my brother will play uh pro-evolution soccer um that's a thing we've done on the xbox for probably the last decade we once got to the final of the champions League, and my brother missed an open goal against Real Madrid, and we lost, and it ruined Christmas that year.

So, have a bacon sandwich.

Then we open all the presents, which is very exciting.

I love it.

And I really like making people cry with presents.

I like to get presents that are so good, they make them weep in this kind of horrible, yes, I am a king way.

It's really, really unhealthy.

Do you remember a particular occasion when that happened?

I made my sister cry as I bought bought her a car

and it was just, it was so like outrageous and oh so you mean you're you're trying to get like Oprah level tears.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly what I am.

That's exactly it.

I am a West Country Oprah.

God, mate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If I, oh, I would love to do that.

Just give away random shit to people.

Yeah.

I would.

I would, God, if there was a TV show where I could go in and sort of just burst into someone's house and say, you've got a jet ski, and then just wait until they weep.

Surely, next series of Russell Howard Hour, it's a new segment called You've Got a Jet Ski.

Just do that every week.

How about this for a TV show as a pitch?

It's like that,

but it's exclusively with pregnant women who are going to have a baby soon.

And you rush in and you give them loads of stuff for the baby.

Yeah.

And it's called Russell Showered.

Oh, oh, oh, I like that.

And they're already emotional.

So

these women are going to weep.

Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely.

There's going to be so many children that are going to be renamed Russell.

Yes.

That's the aim.

That's the aim of the show.

That is a great idea.

Presence of tears.

Presence of tears.

And then we have, my dad is in control of the music for Christmas, which is...

interesting because my dad's really into cycling like really he gets up at like five in the morning and cycles for two hours and i remember one christmas we were we the song that he was obsessed with that year was, I just want to make you sweat,

like that.

So we were kind of listening to it's kind of like weird trance.

Or you remember that spurning the lies, you're going to get spurning the lies.

Like Josh Winks, stuff like that.

So we kind of like listen to like this really upbeat Europop while we eat food and then just sort of rinse my dad.

My mum is this broken wreck because two weeks prior to Christmas, me and my brother start getting in their head and start saying, everyone's coming back.

It's the big meal of the year.

Can you deliver?

Have you got it?

And then I'll say today, I'm not sure she's ready.

And my brother's like, no, I don't.

It was okay last year.

Pressure.

She's like, shut up, YouTuber.

And it always works.

And so it just kind of, so the first bite, It's always this lovely moment when you bite into the turkey and you're like,

and you can see mums looking at me.

And my brother will always be mean.

He's like, she's had a fucking stinker.

And it's always funny.

Why would you say that?

It's lovely.

My mum is so easy to wind up.

But yeah, I actually make the Christmas dinner with my mum sometimes.

I really like that.

Do you have specific elements of the Christmas dinner that you're the expert at, or you just lend a general hand with everything?

Yeah, general hand, sous chef.

So I kind of, and I like to just, so I like having, you know, get some, we'll have turkey, but we'll also have some Yorkshire puddings, but we'll also have some

sort of steamed spinach and we'll have like the parsnips with honey on and the carrots and the sprouts.

And we'll have sweet potatoes, but we'll also have new potatoes.

And then we'll have like fillet steaks that have been chopped up really small.

And then, so we just have like a real like smorgasbord of stuff and just go absolutely mad.

I remember one year we had Steve Hall and his wife and daughter round mine for Christmas.

Did Steve eat at his own table by himself?

Yeah.

No, he, um, and his will, his wife is vegetarian.

So me and mum realized this like the day before.

And we're like, oh, Jesus, we got like a really flash pie.

She was like, oh, this is amazing.

I can't believe you've cooked this pie.

And we were both like, yeah.

Yeah, so I really liked doing that, getting loads of stuff.

And then I remember vividly one meal, we just got it all ready, and mum had worked so hard, and it was this incredible meal, and all my family were there.

And, you know, their eyes are all puffy for the presents I've got them.

And mum hadn't got her cutlery, and she'd left it on the side.

And she just went, Oh,

fuck,

and she was so broken by it,

but she swore so perfectly that that is now the way that a lot of people in my family will swear if something goes wrong.

Oh,

she really took her time with it.

Beautiful.

Are you eating much after the big lunch?

Are you eating through to the evening, or is that you done for the day?

Well, I've got a a weird thing so i do like that

fasting where you sort of so i eat between 12 and 6 it's called christmas though russell no this is it this is it but it's called a warrior it's called a warrior fast because i i've got like psoriasis which is horrible so i've got like psoriasis on my elbows and knees and around my eyes and apparently one of the ways that you can rid yourself of that is if you fast then your body's got time to kind of deal with other problems as it were so so i sort of i i normally do that uh from 12 till six eight and then I'd have two meals a day.

That's it.

I don't eat anything else.

And so, I don't eat outside of any of those times.

And I'm really like crazily like, yep, that's what I do.

And then, but on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and Christmas Eve, it's an absolute shit show.

And I eat all the foods.

Yeah, and I really go for it.

I've got a weird relationship with food.

But yeah, on Christmas Day, it's all in.

And you feel great.

It's sort of, you feel less sluggish.

And I don't know.

I just eat.

was eating too much food at the beginning of when I started doing stand-up and just kind of didn't like being heavy on stage.

Does that make sense?

Do you know what I mean?

I won't eat a big meal before gigs or anything.

James is really good at it.

You go out for nice meals on tour before you go on stage, right?

And I just can't, I can't hack it.

Like, if I go and have like a big, delicious meal, I'll be terrible at the gig.

I mean, I'm terrible at the gig.

Anyone who saw me on my last tour knows

every time I threw the gig back in your faces, that's because I had a massive steak and then came.

But yeah, that's my,

I would recommend it.

It's, it's, um, but then on Christmas Day, um, yeah, and sometimes on a Sunday, I'll kind of have a bit of a break.

But, um, generally, I've got everyone on my, um, that I write the show with doing it.

And we were in this lovely sort of sink.

You feel really great.

It sounds weird, but you sort of don't really need to eat as much as we do i've kind i've tried something similar before but i'm so much better if i'm not hungry at any point during the day right so i have to eat breakfast as soon as i get up because if i start eating less like during the day if by the time i get to six o'clock and i'm starving i'm going to eat a load of shit like i'm going to eat terribly but presumably that's is that slight i don't know but is that slightly complicated by the diabetes does that have a yeah that's the routine i've found that means that i can keep my blood sugars pretty balanced if

i exercise and I have sort of like small meal, smaller meals throughout the day, then that's, that's the best way of doing it, I think, for me.

God, it must be fucking exhausting.

It is someday.

So you're like, here's me, here's me bleating on about my psoriasis.

It's just, it's irritating.

You know, when you have like something like that, you're like, it's the weird thing about sort of, I can't believe I'm talking about this now, but the weird thing about psoriasis, it sort of reminds you, because it's, you know, it's nothing.

It's like you've got scaly skin on your elbow, you fucking 40-year-old man.

And you've got, but I've got scales around my eyes, but it's, it sort of reminds you, Remember when you were like 13 and you got acne, and it's that thing where you think you're the center of the universe, and everybody is constantly looking at the here comes Russell Howard with his skin, and you realize nobody cares about you.

But I'd imagine that's a very difficult feeling to get rid of when you're doing arena gigs, though.

Well, true, and now I've got these scales, and everyone's like, What's that?

Huge screen, just going, oh man, I wish I hadn't eaten at 6:30 last night.

But what's really funny about it is my nan had psoriasis, so whenever i have like a flare-up um it's disgusting but i do also i also am reminded of my nan so it's this weird thing of like you see like a scab on your knee and you're like i really miss that woman

we come to your dream drink dream drink oh um frobscottle obviously um with that not available i really like um copperberg cider strawberry and lime.

Christ, I love it.

Wow.

It just evokes the summer.

I'm kind of, I'm in bath.

I'm with my cousins.

We're kind of being stupid and silly and we're, you know, slushing back cider.

I love it.

It's one of my favorite things.

Something about drinking with my cousins, I absolutely adore.

They're the most excitable,

funny, idiotic people in the world.

I love them.

Are they around your age as well?

Are these older cousins?

Yeah, I've got like 40 cousins.

So,

yeah, yeah.

So, there's that, you know, they run the spectrum.

But I'm specifically talking about Lee, Lewis,

Jake, and

I'm going to put Towner in there.

Towner's made the cut.

Good job, Towner.

Yeah, yeah.

Towner listening to this, just not a lot happy.

He made it.

Yeah, come on.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

It's just, it's sort of that,

it just reminds me of summer happiness.

Do you know what I mean?

There's something about like just like a fruity cider, and it just tastes like

you've put rye beana in fizzy water.

It's so easy to drink.

I bet it gets you off your skull as well, right?

Yeah.

Those sort of sweet, those sweet ciders just smash me up big time.

Yeah, and I never, because I never really drunk when I was young.

I was sort of, because I started doing stand-ups so early.

So from 18 to 26, I didn't really drink because I was very often just driving to

a show, being based in Bristol.

And then living with John Richardson got me back into alcohol because he was he was like this sort of drink connoisseur that he would at the end of the night be like right what am I gonna have right and he would sort of look he had this sort of drinks cabinet and it was like a sorting hat it was like an alcoholic sort of hat where where am I gonna put you and so he so he'd kind of go and you'd go I think I'm gonna have a bit of port have some port I think that'll go lovely and he talked about it with such reverence that you would then go, well, can I have a bit of port?

See what?

Yeah, people like that who

talk about like, yeah, drinking in the sucks.

I was the same.

I didn't really drink until my late 20s.

But then, like, you know, friends of mine who really got into making cocktails, but like serious, seriously got into it and would talk about it and would make these things that looked delicious and make you want to get involved with that.

And people who could talk about even stuff like real ale or whatever.

And they could talk about that with like loads of passion.

Like, I really want to get into this world for some reason.

And yeah, it is hard.

I'm a real sucker for that.

If someone's charismatic and has a hint of knowledge about a subject,

like weirdly, I was listening to Matthew McConaughey do a podcast with Mark Maron.

And if he ran a cult, I'd join.

If there's a more charismatic,

funny man, I mean, Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

He says his own name and you don't mind.

Do you know what I mean?

Who refers to themselves in the third person and isn't a dick?

Matthew McConaughey.

But now you've said that, I'm imagining John John Richardson running a booze-based cult.

But he has that ability.

Yeah.

Yeah, because he's got a pub in his house, like in his shed, called The Dog and Bastard, which is a great name for a pub.

So, and what do you think of that pub head?

I think it looks sad.

What?

What?

It bums me out.

I've seen photos of it.

It bums me out.

Pub in your house just is at the end of the garden as well, isn't it?

I mean, look, if we have John on, i will say this directly to his face i think the idea of leaving your house and going sit in the pub by yourself is sad wow

that is i mean and it looks he's done a he's done a version of a terrible pub it looks like it stinks oh i mean

if you're if you're willing to put this out in the uh in the open i think we got us a we got us a blur oasis situation

because

he's he is so proud of that he's so proud of that pub

This is great.

This is going to be, we've got to get him on now.

Yeah, I think we do.

I think we definitely do.

But the dog and bastard makes him so happy.

Yeah.

I just think I don't.

Okay, have a bar in your house, fine.

But I just, I think my problem is I don't really like pubs, like old school pubs like that.

Well, I'm with you on that.

I like a bar.

I like youth.

Like,

I don't like the concept of an old man pub.

Who the fuck wants to hang out with old men?

Yeah.

Like, do you know what I mean?

Of like, oh, let's go to an old man pub.

Like, old men don't normally say stuff where you go oh cheers old man unless it's full of brian blesseds it's normally old men that say things like i've seen it all now and they never have

because they've only ever been in that pub yeah exactly very little where were we there was yeah it's an interesting about drinking alone because i don't drink in the house on my own i just can't think like the last i don't like myself so i don't want me to get drunk and start like attacking me like do you know what i mean i only drink with people So, if I'm with my friends, with my family, I would drink.

But a lot of people drink on, like, so John

Richardson drinks on his own.

John Robbins, famous for drinking on his own.

He prefers it.

I know.

So, at my wedding, he was at my wedding and it was really good fun.

And he fucking went drunk on his own, like, like in the middle of it.

So, and I know that because he drank everything in the fucking room like that.

I think me and James both might have been texting him at that point.

And he said, oh, there's loads of really nice booze in the room.

We're like, well, that's a disaster.

You're not going to that wedding.

Yeah, it was so funny.

But he was, I don't get it.

I do drink at home.

But also, quite often it's like, I'll open a bottle of wine.

My fiancé doesn't really drink wine and then I'll end up drinking a bottle of wine.

Right.

But she'll have a gin and tonic or whatever.

But I won't, I won't be like, right, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to drink completely alone.

She has to be there.

That's a lie.

What?

No, but she's there with me.

She's there with me.

She is on a regular basis.

Yeah, sure, on a regular basis, she's with you.

But every now and again, you'll send me a text.

Guess what?

I'll do it tonight.

I'm going to drink this entire bottle of wine on my own.

It's going to be the best.

Oh, yeah, but that's, but she's there in the room.

I'm drinking the whole bottle on my own.

Yeah.

Ed kind of like Photoshops her out of the text messages.

What about you, James?

Oh, yeah.

I'll drink on my own at home.

Now it's a much nicer thing.

I had a

if I'm ever going through like a rough patch

in my life or like mental health wise, it is very, very bad idea to drink on my own at home.

But I will want to to do it more because i you know i get to the end of the day i'm like i don't like this day i don't i don't i don't uh i just want to get this day done as soon as possible and then you have your first drink on your own watching netflix or whatever and it feels great and then sometimes not that i can count on one hand the amount of times it's happened but i'll just be i've been at home this is years ago now but will get shit faced and then be like, oh, I'm actually drunk in my house.

Not just like, I'm a bit tipsy in my house.

Yeah.

Or Although I've been like, once

I remember getting so smashed and being scared of going to sleep because I was like, whoa, this is bad.

This is really bad.

So your drink is strawberry cider, is it?

It's a fruit cider.

Strawberry and lime cider.

Strawberry and lime copperberg cider.

Yes.

Or recorderlyk.

I'll take all recorder.

Yes.

Yeah, it has to be a fruity cider that tastes like Ribena.

You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are in this economy.

Next time, check Lyft.

So that's a very sweet drink as a sort of a bridge into the dessert, perhaps.

It's got to be, right?

You've chosen some sweet things.

You've got that sweet drink.

You've got the biscuits on the side.

You said how you like candied yam.

You've also, very early on, which visibly relaxed James, you said you don't really like cheese normally.

Oh, no.

Which really chilled him out because there's no sort of the phantom of the cheese board hanging over the rest of the record.

No, absolutely not.

No,

there's no point.

I wouldn't have that.

Never, I've never had one.

I'm going to have one tonight.

Oh, yeah.

I'm having a cheeseball tonight, guys.

What's going to upset James is I'm not really a pudding guy either.

No one saw this coming.

I'd take two starters.

Yes!

What?

Over a sweet at the end.

But listen,

I'm happy to go along with this.

And if I had to have a dessert, I would have a bonoffi pie.

Very good choice.

And also, I can make a good bonoffi pie.

I did it for Food tech when i was 15.

uh i remember our teacher had a bite of it and you could tell it did something to her

i was just so confident i was like well i've got a bit of a gift here i should use it sparingly Russell, if you, you know, if you say, oh, I'll go along with it, I'll have bonoffi pie if I've got to have a dessert.

Yeah.

This is your dream meal, man.

Oh, that's true.

If you don't want a dessert,

we can easily, you can quantum leap back to the starter and just bug another starter on there.

Don't you think, James, if it's his dream meal?

No, I don't let Ed do that, do you?

Well, I would definitely have the bonoffi pie um also this at this stage of the uh the evening i would bring james in and i would uh select any pudding that he wants and i'd give him a 15-minute window to try and eat all of them yes great brilliant and um yeah

and that that's what i would do i would also have my nan there i'd bring her back with all her lovely psoriasis

and me and her would make flapjacks because it's a thing we used to do when we were kids when i was a kid not her and um we'd make flapjacks together it was like this weird thing we did um and then we'd put them in the bin because we didn't really like flapjacks and

genuinely did this and it used to drive my mum insane like she just couldn't couldn't get her head around it what did you just say yeah you know your grandmother used to make flapjacks together and then put them in the bin yeah yeah just it was so much fun like i don't know where it started this weird weird tradition of like just it go put them in the bin and just we we'd show it to mum and she'd watch us doing it and just going this is getting ridiculous now it's just this lovely little game we had um at any point did you did you think we like cooking together let's make something we like we liked the anger it produced from my mum more than we did the cooking

we cooked to get to the the exasperation yeah

because we we knew that in about an hour and a half's time we were going to see my mum eat from a bin.

That's the game we were playing.

Because mum would always take them out, dust them down, eat the flapjacks.

I can now see why you take your mum around the world with you, because that lady puts up with a lot.

But all of my family have those kind of weird quirks.

I guess everyone thinks that their family like that, but they just,

my nan had that kind of sense of humor of just so silly.

of like, I think it was her idea, I was making some flapjacks and then put them in the bin.

And I'm like, you know, nine going well sounds like a great way to spend saturday um

and my granddad uh who's also no longer with us he used to do this at christmas he would just sing no well just that nothing else

i just sing the rest of that no and i remember once i was eating uh toast that he's made me and that's another thing i'd like to put in there like there's something about the way my granddad used to have like a loaf of bread not sliced you know like a proper like fat white loaf and he would chop thick toast granddad toast and it was like, oh, so crusty and lovely.

And he'd put marmalade on for you and he'd chop it into four bits.

And it just, for whatever reason, it was just granddad toast that just made it particularly wonderful.

And you're about eight, and you're kind of sat there like this prince in this kingdom.

And my granddad once went, yeah, I reckon I could walk on my hands from Bristol to London.

And I'm like eight with like this mouthful of magic.

Go, wow, when are you going to do that?

And he went, do it.

I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

It was something so

it sort of typifies my family.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, just really strange, but warm bullshitters.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

I really love it.

Ed, you don't seem as

astounded by the flapjack revelation as me.

I still can't get my head in the middle.

No, no, no.

I'm utterly astounded by it.

I think it's great.

Hilarious.

I love it.

But like, at the same time, I have a question.

Was the bin, did it already have like stuff in it, or did you at least go, well, for the sake of her, we will put a fresh, clean bin bug in there that is empty and we will put it all in that bin.

Yeah, we'd we'd make sure it was a clean bin.

Yeah, right, yeah, but um, it was still joyous, just that, the, just the, just the drop,

no doubt, it's just like it was

forget a mic drop.

You haven't lived until you've done a flapjack drop in front of a uh, a woman known in the family as the fox because

she eats from bins.

Yeah, you enjoy that, won't you, Foxy?

So I'm going to read your menu back to you now, Russell.

See how you feel about it.

For water, you want sparkling water.

Which I want to kind of like throw the Frob Scottle in there

as well for you.

I think you've earned that.

Poppadoms or bread, you want popped on some panshe in Made of Vale, mango chutney, lime pickle, and the orange hot one.

Starter,

crispy duck pancakes, oil.

Whap, whap, whap, whap, yeah.

From wherever as well.

There's no specific place wherever they do them, but ideally from our Chinese restaurant.

Yeah.

WAP, welcome and please.

Wet ass pancakes.

Make also got chicken Thai curry from Long Grain in Sydney, but it wasn't called chicken Thai curry, was it?

It was called a chicken long.

Side, southern US biscuits as your side from Savannah.

Yeah.

Christmas.

Bacon sandwich for breakfast.

And then lunch, you've got turkey, Yorkshire, pudding, steamed spinach, pastas with honey, fullet steaks all chopped up.

Drink, copperberg, strawberry, and lime cider, and dessert, banoffee pie, made by yourself when you were 15 in school.

And then, of course, rounding off with the putty for of a tray of flap jacks straight into the bin.

Yeah, exactly.

Definitely.

Russell, thank you so much.

That is a wonderful menu and a wonderful Christmas choice.

Thank you very much for coming to the Dream Restaurant.

Do you know?

I absolutely love that.

Thanks for having us, guys.

What a joyous thing to do.

And what has been a fucking revolting year.

Oh, it has been.

Merry Christmas, Russell.

Well, there we are.

A wonderful Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas episode special with Russell Howard.

And what a great menu.

Delicious menu, loads of great tales, loads of great stories.

And just what a lovely man making people cry with lovely gifts.

Yeah, well, he's like a little Santa boy.

Santa, the elves and the reindeer all rolled into one.

That's Russell Howard.

But my favourite thing about Russell Howard, the little Santa boy, is he didn't bring anyone candy canes this year because they would make me cry, but for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, you would have cried gumdrop tears on Christmas morning, but luckily, no candy canes from Russell Howard.

And I was worried that, you know, there was a second day where I was like, there's a lot of sweet stuff being dropped into this menu.

He might say, and he said, I'm going to do the whole day, what I do all Christmas Day.

I was like, uh-oh, candy canes might come up.

Yep.

And what a course to kick someone out.

And I didn't really think about it until we got to it.

But I was like, oh man, if we kick someone out during the Christmas course.

A couple of old Scrooges.

Yeah, a couple of Ebenezer Scrooges.

But wonderful menu, great chat.

If, look, Russell Howard's got so much stuff out there.

He doesn't need us to plug it, but we'll do it anyway.

He's got the Russell Howard hour, which is on Sky.

If you've gone to Netflix, he's got Netflix specials.

Just there's so much stuff going on with Russell.

Google him.

Yeah, Google him for crying out loud.

We will be back next week with another Christmas special with a secret special Christmas guest.

So keep an eye out for that.

But until then, may your presents be bulging and your

turkey be moist.

Yes, I agree.

Bye.

Goodbye.

Hello, it's Harry Hill here and I'm recording this trailer for my new podcast, Harry Hill's Noise.

Basically, it's a half hour of ambient sound and then at some point during the podcast, I make a noise.

Now,

when you're listening to it, you'll forget that I'm about to make a noise

and you'll get lulled into it and then I'll make the noise and it'll be really funny.

I mean it doesn't sound like a regular podcast does it but

believe me

you're gonna really love it.

So why don't you subscribe

now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and ACAST.

It's called Harry Hill's Noise and it's coming soon.

You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

In this economy, next time, check Lyft.

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.