Ep 66: Louis Theroux

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

Yes.

Ever heard of the Royal Albert Hall?

I have.

We've done live shows there.

And guess what?

We're doing more live shows there next year.

Sure, a lot of them are sold out already.

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

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

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

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

Those shows have been a lot of fun.

We cannot wait to do them live.

Who will we pull out of our little magic bag?

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

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

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

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

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

The day in between is for reflecting.

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

Ooh, look at the steam coming off that podcast.

Give it a little blow and crack on.

Welcome to the Off Menu Podcast.

Or look at the steam who does that podcast.

James Acaster here.

That's that Gamble who said that first.

Hello.

Yes, it was me.

It's true.

Welcome to the Off-Menu podcast, where myself and James speak to a special guest.

And what do we ask them, James?

We ask them to name their favourite ever.

Starter, make course, dessert, side dish, and drink.

And this week's guest is Louis Thero.

Louis Thoreau.

Yes, actual Louis Thoreau.

Very exciting to have him in the dream restaurant.

Slightly worried he's going to ask some difficult questions.

Don't you know answer any of his questions ed oh but he's so disarming

he's so disarming and he leaves gaps to answer and then i'm gonna tie myself up in knots and say something incriminating exactly so just just you keep your mouth shut okay any of his questions i guarantee to you i will keep my mouth shut thank you ed but listen hey if louis ferreux picks the secret ingredient that we deem to be unacceptable, we will kick him out of the restaurant.

That's the rules every single week.

And this week, the secret ingredient is...

Tarragon,

Tarragon, Tarragon.

Now, I don't mind Tarragon in some things.

My mum makes a dish called chicken tarragon, which is very nice.

But in other things, tarragon's unacceptable.

I'd never eat raw tarragon, for example.

It tastes too aniseed-y, and I don't like aniseed.

We've covered this before.

Yes, and I don't know what it is.

Okay, so it's tarragon.

If Louis Theroo says tarragon, I think it's disgusting.

James does not know what it is.

He will be removed from the restaurant.

But before we dive into the off-menu menu of Louis Thrue, James, we have some exciting news, do we not?

Ed, does the word merch mean anything to you?

It sure does.

And dice.

Yes, and put those together.

And what do you get?

And dice merch.

And we are releasing our own line of merchandise, of course.

We're releasing t-shirts.

We're releasing tote bags.

We're releasing mugs.

All with fantastic designs on them.

We have asked four of our favorite designers to do designs for these t-shirts.

And for the rest of the merch, we've got brilliant artists.

Let's go through them, James, because I want to tell people what they can expect.

So we've got four different brilliant t-shirts.

Lucy Moore, who's a brilliant artist, has done you as a genie and me as the Matri D of the restaurant.

It's a wonderful design.

There's a little lamp on there.

I've got blue skin.

I'm right in the menu with my hands.

I've I've got an orange apron on and you have a very lovely jawline and an orange little bow tie.

Yes, I do.

So that's that's available for purchase.

Because I love heavy metal.

One of my favorite artists in the world, Ian Seller, has done a heavy metal design.

He's done like the off-menu logo, but in a black metal style thing.

I'm in a shroud.

I'm sacrificing you on a cheese board.

It's amazing.

I absolutely love it.

Open like at the end of Hannibal, but but it's fondue in my head.

And you've got a cheese knife, and I'm on a sacrificial tablet, like a stone tablet.

There's cheeses all over it.

And there's two little gravestones on the side to custard and to ice cream.

I mean, I absolutely love it.

Ian Seller is such a good artist.

I've let him put art onto my body forever.

Oh.

He's done three of my tattoos.

Oh, tattoos.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

I will wear that t-shirt a lot, but not forever.

Sure.

No context off menu.

Familiar with it?

Oh, yeah.

Is there Twitter accounts?

We reached out to.

We're going to keep their name a secret.

No context off menu.

No context.

And they've done us a lovely t-shirt.

The front of the t-shirt is the no context logo, which is the hand right in the order.

And the back.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone.

There's a sign that points to the River Thames.

It says danger underneath it.

And also on the lamppost, there's a little bit of graffiti saying Mash King was here.

If you understand those references.

It's in off-menu orange.

And finally, we have an official pop-a-doms or bread t-shirt done by paul gilby who also did uh a lot of the original off menu artwork uh it's pictures of me and james in various pop-adom or bread situations on the front and on the back just to really drive the point home it says pop a doms or bread doesn't even say off menu on that t-shirt that's for the hardcore fans to spot each other in a crowded room So if you like the sound of that, we're also doing mugs with Lucy Moore's design on, a tea towel with Lucy Moore's Moore's design on, and a couple of tote bags with Paul and Lucy's designs on.

So where you need to go to pre-order this merch is offmenupodcast.co.uk.

The merch is up there now for pre-order.

Go on, see what you like.

Buy one, buy two, buy it all.

Oh, I would struggle not to buy them all if I listened to the podcast and got the references and knew what it was about.

It's a great podcast, James, I promise.

So once you have bought that merch, you can sit there in your brand new merch listening to this episode that was recorded over the internet with the wonderful Louis Therouis.

Welcome Louis Theroux to the Dream Restaurant.

Thank you for having me.

Nice to be here.

Welcome, Louis Theroux to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

Now there's, see, we got your attention there, didn't we?

The genie has arrived, the genie waiter.

I'm sort of the more relaxed human side of the restaurant.

I welcome people in initially, and then the genie appears and really grabs people's attention.

I liked the sound effects.

Is James going to channel the genie?

I am the genie.

And I'm the genie, just like you are channeling Louis Ferrer.

Right.

Okay, I like it.

I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for having me, guys.

I only get to speak to like one or two people a day.

I'm still in lockdown.

I'm trying to break out of lockdown, but I'm so used to it.

It's like when you haven't moved, you know, from a single position and your joints stiffen up.

You know, figuratively, I'm kind of just still in that crouch, that social crouch.

And so, when I do speak to people outside my bubble,

it's very exciting.

And then sometimes I get overexcited and I babble.

So, apologies if I'm babbling.

Babbling's acceptable.

Who is in your bubble?

Your babble bubble.

Mainly by

mainly in my bubble is my wife, my three children, chiefly.

There's another family.

I mean basically, there's a you know when they the government said you can have one other family you're in a bubble with.

So there was a family who lived close to us and their kids are of similar ages.

So they're in the bubble.

And then I've got a director, Tom, who we've been working on an archive-based show, four-part archive series.

I don't even know if it's officially announced.

So I may have accidentally given you an exclusive.

And there's four episodes in which I look back at my 25 years in TV choosing highlights from the archive and then I do little zoom chats very sparingly because the zoom chats can get old quite quickly with people who I haven't seen in 20 years to see how they fared in the subsequent time after I saw them.

That was a long answer to your question, which was a straightforward question about who's in the bubble.

So the director's in the bubble.

He had to be in the bubble, otherwise he couldn't film.

Yeah, how long do you think?

How long do you think you'll stay in lockdown for?

Do you, you know how they were lockdown deniers?

Are you now like a normal life denier do you refuse to leave

i i that's a great question i like to think that i contain multitudes in the sense of like i have a little bit of of of covert denier in me i have a little bit of uh normal life denier all these impulses are jostling inside me like i often think that's why i'm uh insofar as i'm good at my job if i am good it's because i sort of see everyone i meet like i see something in them that i can relate to so right now I guess I am more in the sort of normal life denier side, but I'm not really.

Like, I'm just get me out there.

I was out like a week ago.

We did one day in the office just to sort of remind ourselves what it was like.

And actually to say goodbye to the office because we've had to let it go.

We've got a little production company, and we had to sort of say, you know what, there's no need for this office now.

And I cycled into work and had my bicycle stolen.

Oh.

What?

I didn't have it stolen.

That sounds like I wanted wanted someone to steal it.

Would you mind stealing it?

No, it was stolen.

And

really annoyingly, like they just clipped through the padlock.

And the point of that is, that was my lifeline, you know, especially now in a world where it's complicated just to get on public transport, you know.

And so I feel I've sort of been forced into an extended lockdown by lack of a bike.

You're thinking, well, dude, get a grip.

Go buy a bike.

Okay.

You work in television.

I think you can afford a bike.

I can see you thinking that.

Okay, here's what I'm going to say to that.

I went down to the bike shop.

It was full of bikes.

I said, you know, how much do you sell any second-hand ones?

I was trying to be thrifty.

He said,

we don't sell any right now.

I like, why not?

He said, we've got no stock.

No bikes have arrived in two months.

They're on order.

He had no bikes.

There's no bikes to be had.

Yeah.

This is COVID world.

It's mad.

No wonder my bike got stolen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've now got to go.

You've got to go and steal a bike now.

That's how it works.

Yeah.

It's the circle of life.

Do you think so?

It's blood in, blood out.

You've actually got to...

The hunted must become the hunter.

That's the cliche of action films, isn't it?

In the third act.

I've got to go out and club a man.

Well, and well, no one said that, Louis.

No one brought that up.

Well, you said you had to steal a bike, and now you've brought in clubbing a man.

You've got a man up.

They used to in prison they say lock in a sock.

Lock in a sock is your device of choice.

Bike lock in a sock.

Get out there.

It would be very ironic if I killed the thief with the remains of the lock because the lock was left behind, right?

Like a sad little...

I don't know, like a sad little metal snake, dead

there.

You know, like have the decency to clear up after your burglary, right?

You've just left it there as if to say, yeah, I just snipped through your lock.

It took me about

five seconds, maybe not even.

So left it lying there like a signature, like a serial killer's calling card.

So what I need to do is get the remains of the lock and put them in a sock and then beat him to death with it, right?

Yeah, I think that's what you have to do.

This is what happens when like some of the like

I don't think you'd find many people who are like, you know, quite middle class, but because you've done documentaries,

you can start sentences by, in prison, they have a saying, lock in a sock.

It's like, you've got prison smarts doing documentaries.

Do you think you've filmed so much in prisons that

you could last quite a long time?

How long could you last in prison?

Well, okay, great question.

And don't think I haven't wondered that myself.

It really does depend on the prison.

In San Quentin, which is the one I made a program about, I think I could maybe...

look, I'm going to sound totally ludicrous because I realize like I don't fight.

I'm an effete

public school educated, South London middle-class, bookish

man, right?

I nearly said boy.

Boy man.

I've done a lot of Joe Wicks.

Okay, that's on that tone.

I have done a lot of Joe Wicks in lockdown, right?

So, no, I'm not a weakling.

No one's even saying that.

Maybe they are, but they're wrong.

So

it's not so much that I'm going to be able to man up and fight, quite evidently.

I think maybe with social skills and savvy, I could get by.

It's a hard one to call, guys.

I think I'd struggle.

I think I would struggle.

Well,

this is not a prison podcast, so we should probably...

But before we do that, Louis, you've brought us a gift to the dream restaurant.

You've brought us a copy of your book.

How apropos that you should say that when it's sitting right here on my desk.

Got to get through this.

You've leaned into the pun.

I absolutely appreciate that.

Love it.

It's out in paperback.

You just smelt it.

You just

smell your own book.

You just smelled it.

It didn't smell of anything.

This one's been around too long.

When they came out of the box, they all had a lovely new book smell.

If you go deep enough in, it's still there.

Yeah.

Your crease.

My nose is right in there.

My nose is right in there now.

So, yeah, it's out.

Thank you for mentioning that.

And

I'm passing it to you now through the screen.

Oh, thank you so much.

There you go.

Enjoy.

Basically, it is a book which is about...

It's my life in strange times in television.

I turned 50 this year and I was conscious, you know, in the last couple of years, I've been conscious of getting older.

And I suppose, you know, I've been in TV 25 years.

And

I just thought it was maybe time to open up.

You know, I used to be precious in the early days about not showing too much of myself.

Like I thought that I used to really admire people like Chris Morris, the TV prankster and satirist.

And later on, I suppose there were people like, well, Sasha Baron Cohen, of course, and Banksy, all of them

who seemed sort of alluring and mysterious and very sort of, there's almost kind of an avant-garde aspect to what they did because they were so reluctant to embrace the celebrity machinery, right?

And I thought, yeah, that's what I need to be.

And then I don't think anyone really noticed that I was being mysterious.

And I think people just thought, oh,

yeah, you're just not very successful.

You make your TV programs, but no one really cares about you.

And I think as time went on, I just thought, you know what, I need to just actually open up and talk more about the stories behind the stories, if that makes sense.

And I think it was partly going on Adam Buxton's podcast that did it.

It was a feeling that...

People responded to those shows where I found myself unselfconsciously talking about family life, about my anxieties about just just sort of the random nonsense that preoccupies me so that informed the fact that I felt comfortable talking about those parts of my life that you don't see in the TV shows so it's basically how I make my programs with a with with a with a large side order of

who Louis is at home does that make sense I used a food metaphor lovely thank you yeah and then we're straight back in that's great we're back in the dream restaurant

Still or sparkling water, Louis?

I'm going to say,

do you serve tap?

Yeah.

We can serve tap, absolutely.

Do you want me to go and get you a glass of tap water or do you want a tap at your table?

Could you just get me a jug of filtered tap water with like a slice of lemon in it?

And I don't want any passive-aggressive, like, I don't want you to look disappointed.

Like, there goes that bit of the

in a very trying time for the hospitality industry.

You know, thank you for chiseling our margins.

Our already diminished margins are further reduced by the man ordering tap water, which he well knows we get no money from.

It's an environmental thing.

You seem to be quite worried that people think you're cheap, Louis.

We've already had the discussion about the bike, and now there's the you're very defensive about your tap water order.

I'm not worried about it.

I think I am proud of it.

Maybe I am a little defensive.

It was just when I said tap, I saw James looking like,

you know, I'm a genie and I could have produced a bottle from thin air, but now I have to go over and turn on a tap.

And that's very, that's undignified for a genie to have

a lot of fun.

The look was because you said you wanted a whole jug of tap water with one slice of lemon in it.

Was my actual that was the actual look was that I was wondering why the ratio of lemon to water was so it's small for the aesthetics isn't it can you put some chopped mint in there or something something that makes it feel like it's a bit anticlimactic when a jug arrives here's your tap water and it's got nothing in it no ice nothing i like to see something in the water like some like they do at leon do you ever eat at leon yeah yeah yeah leon of the fast food restaurants on offer i would say that's up there And that's a really good one.

And they, you go, do, you know, you go and get your own little tap water thing and they've got it in a jug and there's mint.

It doesn't really taste that different from normal water, but it's got vegetation in it.

And that means something to me.

It shows you've put a little bit of attention in it.

Well, this is the dream restaurant, Louis, so we can put whatever you like in that jug.

It doesn't have to be conventional.

It doesn't have to be mint.

We could put a goldfish in there.

We could put something a bit showier.

Jolly ranches.

I think the the mint will be f if you can think of another herb, like would lavender be nice, and they're like, or lemon balm, or just something that feels it's taking it to the next level.

Yeah.

Well, I do like gas pacho, so maybe

if, if, yeah, instead of water, I just like a jug of gas pacho, please.

Perfect, that's with olive oil.

Uh, you know, instead of ice cubes, you can do like oil cubes.

Have you ever seen that?

No, frozen cubes of olive oil bobbing around and a goldfish yeah so instead of water let's just get this right you'd like a jug of gaspachio with olive oil cubes and a goldfish yeah perfect waiter

the goldfish is struggling

well you did ask for it sir yeah but i thought it was gonna like it and it doesn't look like it likes it The oil cubes have started to melt and it's making things difficult for the goldfish.

Would you like us to remove the goldfish, sir?

I think probably you should.

What would you like us to put it into when we remove it, though?

Sparkling, please.

This poor goldfish.

The things that goldfish go through, we could do a whole separate episode on that.

Do you remember, I don't know if they still do this, but the vision of goldfishes in plastic bags?

at the fairground.

Yeah, I won one once, yeah.

And the mystery of how they managed to keep them alive, presumably traveling across country, jiggling around in their plastic bags, like as they go on bumpy roads and motorways and arriving, and

they hang up the goldfish, and then you win it and you take it home, and within eight hours, it's dead.

You know, almost like it's got a chip in its brain and they just detonate it.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, how is that?

It seems quite strange.

Well, I think it was something we did.

Yeah, or the goldfish just really loved living at the fair.

And you took it from its home and its heart broke.

It died of.

We took it to the vet.

It's funny you should say that because we took it to the vet

just to do an autopsy.

And the doctor examined it for 15 minutes.

He looked up to me and he said, this is extraordinary, but it honestly looks like it died of heartbreak.

Which is not what you need to hear, is it?

No.

No, no, not at all.

How do you test for that?

This goldfish died of heartbreak.

Of a a broken heart is the phrase.

He died of a broken heart.

Of a broken heart.

Not of heartbreak.

Of a broken heart.

It's sad that they say that about...

When that happens with old people, people almost love it when the second one dies of a broken heart.

I know, the romance.

People can't resist it.

It's almost...

What's the word?

Morbid.

It's a sort of morbid desire to see...

So sad, he died of a broken heart.

When it's actually probably angina, right?

The people just

want to believe.

That's a broken heart, exactly, isn't it?

They just want to believe in love.

It's just nonsense.

Or is it?

I shouldn't say.

It may not be nonsense, but

they can't test for that, can they?

What did the autopsy say?

It was confirmed.

You know, James is making fun of it, but actually,

when they did do the test, they opened up the heart.

And in the left ventricle was a single tear.

And then you say, you read that in the autopsy, yeah.

So you sure it didn't say there was a single tear?

Oh, yeah, maybe that's what it was.

Pop-a-dums or bread!

Pop-a-dums or bread, Louis.

Pop-a-dums or bread?

Pop-a-dums or bread.

I think I'm going to go bread, but I don't think I'm going to touch the bread.

Oh, okay.

Interesting.

I just want it at the table.

I really don't approve.

I'm quite

puritanical about dining out and i don't approve of filling up on bread would you like some bread that's very easy to resist that you're not really that fond of or would you like your favorite bread so you can feel pretty proud that you resisted it definitely that and also pleased at the rest that i've chosen a good restaurant and somewhere where they they make that extra bit of effort You know, in America, places like Red Lobster,

that one in particular, I think, that chain, if you know it, and they bring

like these sweet

little mini loaves, and they're warm when they arrive, and they're wrapped, they're in a little basket, and they've got sort of

kind of napkin over them.

You know what I mean?

Uh-huh.

And

it looks very appealing.

So, something like that.

And then I would proudly maybe have a nibble on one of them, think, that's delicious.

But I'm not going to have any more.

And nor are you, by the way.

No, I'm not going to.

Surely I nibble.

Surely the nibble is the kiss of death there if you're nibbling the whole thing's going in no no no no that's the whole strength that's mind over matter that's you you can't be weak you've got to have a nibble you know it's not that you're not tempted but if you've got to have you just have a little nibble and enough to just get the sense of the taste and then and then and then move on what are you going to do eat the whole pile of loaves

and then leave the restaurant and say actually do you know what i don't need a meal now i've changed my mind the bread's done the job so so you you want you want temptation bread basically yeah

you want the sweet loaves from red lobster yeah poppadoms are like um they're enormous crisps really aren't they

I mean is that a fair character I don't think they're m they're not made of potato are they they're they're probably rice flour are they

or lentils is it I think you're right good knowledge so you nibble on those but again it's like eating a packet of quavers before you start your meal.

A popadum you would have at home though, right?

Like if you're not going to a restaurant, you're not going to sit down to a meal and then just pull a loaf of bread out of the cupboard, are you?

No, that's a good point, which is a great, that's a great point, by the way.

We don't do that at home, do we?

No, like, here's a delicious meal that I've cooked.

I've really gone to a lot of effort.

Okay, I'm really looking forward to eating that.

Just let me get halfway through this loaf of hovis

and then I'll

try that.

We come to your starter, Louis.

Your dream starter.

I thought a lot about this dream meal and it's it's very eclectic and you could say almost to the point being inedible.

But it's I wish I wanted to draw in all the things that I love and I love pizza, right?

And I've been making homemade pizza in lockdown with a

little wood-fired portable pizza oven.

But anyway, there's a there's a kind of pizza that they make in New York.

There's a specific restaurant in Brooklyn called Grimaldi's, which is famous.

Although, actually, funnily enough, all pizza restaurants in New York say world famous, don't they?

And almost as though by announcing that, that will make them famous.

And you suspect they may be not world famous.

But Grimaldi's, I think, is world famous.

And the pizza is delicious.

I have nostalgic associations with it due to having lived in New York.

And I love pizza.

I just, I really...

I think I said that, and I'm going to probably say it too many times now.

I just want a very small one,

which they don't do at Grimaldi's, but this is the dream restaurant.

I don't want to fill up on pizza because I want to save room for my main, but just enough to sort of feel like I've kind of ticked that box, that delicious pizza box.

So that's interesting because essentially pizza is bread with stuff on it, right?

So no wonder you're rejecting the initial bread because you know you've got a different form of bread coming up.

Yeah.

The bread kind of came through the back door, didn't it?

And you could say, well, I'm contradicting myself, but I think this is the dream restaurant, so it's different, isn't it?

I'm basically, my starter is a bread-related

product.

So it is consistent.

It's not a contradiction.

I always think there's something very impressive watching people do cooking pizzas in those ovens where they slide it off the thing and then like slide it under and turn it around and then get the thing back out again.

There's a nice sort of jabbing action where they are with a long because mine is obviously isn't that

my my pizza spatula whatever it's probably got a name paddle probably paddle yeah my paddle's not that

um not that long i'm this listen i'm trying i feel like there's a double entendre hoving in view and i'm trying to avoid it

so um And so they do that thing where they move it around.

And the whole thing, the other thing is the dough, the way they twist it and throw it, which clearly I'm not able to do but there's a lot of you know when you become a proper now I'm gonna use this word is it pizza pizza olo pizza iolo there is a word isn't there is there I think there is it's basically like a pizza guy in Italian

when you become a qualified pizza wolo I'm gonna say it like that

you can do all of that it probably takes years of training and you've said that you want a little pizza but you haven't said what the topping's gonna be yet or I would like to know what your favorite topping is to do at home.

Yeah, that's easy because I would just go for a margarita.

You know, your basic.

If they want to throw some torn basil leaves on, fine, very happy with that.

You know, because with the pizza really, what you're just looking for is this,

is the dough being cooked at a very high heat.

So you get the classic leopard spotting, which is the carbonization.

And the quality of the crust, the crispiness, that's like on the edge of being burnt in places, and then a really good tomato sauce, and then the mozzarella.

Fantastic.

Maybe a little bit of

pepper, you know, pepper, what do you call it?

Hot pepper

sprinkled on it, and that's it.

I would do that at home.

At the home, we did a few where we put some mushrooms on or put some pesto on, but that's all optional.

I think that shows a real maturity when you finally grow out of

over-topping a pizza.

Because I think now I'm more into the simple toppings on a pizza.

I used to be all in, double cheese, pepperoni, every meat feast, that sort of thing.

But I think as you get older, you start to remove toppings.

I think you do.

I think you start to notice

the sort of subtler dimensions to the pizza.

As I say, like the quality of the crust and the sauce.

You know, if you're doing it right, you don't need much.

The first ever pizza that I made, I made it in secondary school in food class.

We could do whatever we wanted.

I chose chocolate spread, then marshmallows on top of it, and then hundreds and thousands on top of that.

I made a sweet bread, obviously, and bought it home.

And my mother was appalled.

Was it delicious?

Yeah, I loved it.

I had the best day of my life.

I was absolutely, absolutely delighted.

But I was the only one who did that.

Everyone else did savoury ones.

I felt like a mad professor I wonder if that is even technically a pizza no disrespect

because

I think that savouriness is part of what makes a pizza pizza even when when you just if you remove the tomato sauce you're still a pizza but they call it a white pizza I think right right so they're already qualifying it so like guys it's yeah it's a pizza well it's a white pizza right if you came out like what pizza is it and it's got chocolate spread, yes, it's a brown pizza, isn't it?

That's the brown best.

Yeah, it might not even be a pizza.

But then the hundreds and thousands add so many different colours to it, so yeah, yeah, that's like the torn basil leaves.

Because you know how, like, the margarita is like the flag of Italy.

I'd forgotten that, but that's right, isn't it?

Yeah, because it's the same as the flag of Ireland, isn't it?

Yes.

Mine, which is weird, isn't it?

Wait, sorry.

Mine was all mine was the flag flag of.

It was every flag.

Yeah, it was all the flags.

It was all the flags of the world.

Mine was like the UN of pizzas.

Yours was the flag of Acasta.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is a brown...

It's a large brown flag

with lots of little flecks of other colours in.

Yeah.

Representing the many shades of you.

Yeah, exactly.

All the shades of my personality.

But mainly chocolate.

Mainly chocolate.

But mainly brown.

Mainly brown.

Vainly dark brown.

Yeah, that was mainly.

Your main course?

A big pizza?

No, it's going to be

a

slow roast, like a kind of southern slow roast.

Do you know what I mean?

If you ever travel in the...

I know they do it in England or in the UK as well, but if you travel in the south places like Oklahoma and Texas, they have these barbecue shacks where

they've got, and they look like they're big drums.

Some of them might even be converted oil drums.

And I guess they steam roast these, I guess, hogs,

or maybe it's beef.

I don't even know what kind of meat it is.

And sometimes they go, that's been in there for 16 hours.

Like, this is very tender.

That's been in there for 16 hours.

But like on, presumably on quite a low heat.

And

we got wood chips in there, tobacco flakes, and some herbs and seasoning.

Herbs, they say, don't they?

I was like, what's the secret?

Secret is love, Louie.

Do they always say Louie, or is that just when you're there?

No, they don't always say Louie.

I just put that in there.

And then they...

The secret is love.

The secret ingredient is love.

They should bring them in when someone dies of a broken heart.

Yeah.

Those barbecue guys could save some lives in the hospital.

If you knew how many goldfish we've saved, you'd be amazed.

We're getting calls all the time.

And in time, circus is in.

When a fairground's in town, we get run off our feet.

It's crazy.

Seeing those little choppers going.

How do you, sorry,

Texan barbecue man, I'm just wondering how you save the goldfish.

When they bring the goldfish into you and they're on death's door, how do you save them?

We just get them in the middle of town.

I think you know, we get itty-bitty bits of barbecued beef or pork and we just drop them into the, you can't, you got to be careful.

You put too much in.

Fish can overeat.

I don't know if you knew that.

And they die.

The commonest way for a fish to die is

overconsumption of anything, not just barbecue.

If you put feed it, I've seen it my own fish.

Honest to God, this is me, Louie, now talking.

It exploded.

We had a fish explode on us once.

It exploded.

Yeah.

Too much bread before it's made.

Well, we only think that that's what happened.

But we know that when we went on holiday, there were three fish.

And we tasked someone with feeding it every day.

And I think they overdid it.

And when we came back, there were two fish and then tiny little bits of fish.

Oh.

It died of a broken heart.

It exploded from a broken heart.

It didn't.

It exploded from eating too much.

So you can't, don't overfeed it, but just a little bit of, and then it tastes the love and

it can turn it around like that.

If you ever have a loved one who's lost his partner or her partner, help me, soulmate,

only prescription I know is one of my sandwiches.

And then on the side, and also that does come, and then you've got your bread guilt-free, right?

then you've got your delicious bread without any worries because you're on your main now this is where you're in your sweet spot this is where you're supposed to be at peak enjoyment so you have all that shredded slow cooked pork and um some pickle maybe

and um some coleslaw and then some flowery white buns

yeah and some beans some barbecued beans Barbecue beans.

Whenever I watch anything, I mean, I watch a lot of TV shows about barbecue.

That's how I spend a lot of my day.

Whenever I see that, I think that's the only other job that I'd really like is to be the guys who just get up really early and put a whole hog on a barbecue and then just spend all day checking the temperature.

Yeah, and also that thing of like water and fire because they spray it sometimes, don't they?

And then they open up.

It's like opening up the hood of a car or like a vault in a bank, and they kind of raise it up and then big gusts of steam come out and there it is.

And it's sort of the alchemy of like it changing the chemical composition of the of the meat changing.

I feel bad.

You know, I aspire to be vegetarian and I'm

and clearly I'm not

because I eat meat.

But so I had misgivings about recommending it, but it's my...

It's my real weakness is a really good slow.

I could care less about a Sunday roast.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, just, you know, when people say, Oh, we got lamb for our Sunday roast, I'm like, whatever.

But I don't say that.

But with a real, if they said, but and I'm like, okay.

But if they said it's been on since like nine o'clock last night, it's been cooking for 16 hours.

I'd be like, okay, now you're talking.

Yeah.

Have you been spraying it with a little garden spray?

Yes.

Can you serve it to me with a weird, bad southern accent?

Yes, I can, Louie.

I can do that right now.

and what was did you go for pork in the end i think it's pork i do

like i do um do you think one day they'd be able to make meat that tastes that good but with vegetables i like the vegetarian and vegan food where they're not trying to replicate stuff and they just show you how incredible vegetables can be and non non-meat products can be to eat and uh Those are the ones that make me go, actually, I could do this more.

And then I'll go through a longer patch of not eating meat meat when I'm really getting into the dishes that meat couldn't even replicate if it tried.

Yeah, you're so right.

I'd like to see a meat, piece of meat, try and be a portobello mushroom.

Yeah, good luck.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Good luck with that.

It would seem quite stubborn of the meat industry to now start investing money into making meat products that taste exactly like vegetables, right?

Be worse than stubborn.

It would be obtuse.

Yeah.

It would be perverse.

It's like, hey, guess what, vegan food industry?

You think you've got an impossible burger.

We've got an impossible mushroom made entirely with pork.

We've actually bred pigs and their left trotters have gills like a mushroom.

And the pigs' lives are dreadful.

They'd run around on these mushroom feet.

Such absorbent feet.

Absorbent feet.

The gills fill up with mud, but we think it's worth it because when you taste meat mushrooms, you are never going back to normal.

What

I was trying to think of another animal that you can make a vegetable, and then my first thought was going to be horse.

And I was like, well, we don't eat that anyway.

Well, they do in France, don't they?

And in those lasagnas that time, do you remember that?

Do you remember for a while when that was the big story in England?

If you remember, and I feel bad mentioning it,

some of the meatballs were made from horse work.

Were they?

I think they're so good.

Run that past your legal team.

Before you put that on air, you will get sued by a huge Scandinavian company.

Who's this now?

It's another character, the Swedish lawyer.

I've spent many years building my brand only to have it trampled on by a podcast, making false allegations.

Oh, geez.

We would like to ask you, Swedish lawyer.

We'd like to ask you what is in your meatballs then.

If you claim there's no horse in these meatballs, you tell us what's in them.

They're purely made of vegetables, fun, you should ask.

We don't advertise it.

So I'm losing it.

I'm losing it.

I had it dialed in.

You started going Irish.

It was the idea.

It was the advertisement was the word that made you lose it there.

You really slid off there.

I was listening to Desert Island Discs this morning and they had a Swedish guy on there.

It was the head secretary general of NATO.

He sounded a bit Irish, so maybe I'm all all right.

Because the Ireland Disc's guests are absolutely bonkers.

Head Secretary of NATO goes on and does it.

Isn't he exactly the kind of guy who should be on it?

As opposed to, well, you think they should be more up-and-coming comedians.

Yeah, you know, maybe get round to the funny people first, the entertainers.

Don't know why they'd go on to NATO before they've actually, you know.

Do you feel like

we've been passed over for NATO, James?

Just a bit.

When all this is over and the comedy clubs open again i won't be able to get a gig because the nato guys are doing

that's what i'm worried about yeah he was quite funny his irish something about his accent that went a bit irish it's highly amusing

so your side dish the side dish let's make the side dish Dal.

I love dal and it's so simple, isn't it?

It's just a lot of garlic.

Could be anything, you know, different kinds of dal, but at its simplest, it's just going to be some

oil and some lentil, could maybe some tomato, but doesn't have to be.

You can put some potato in there, but it feels like it's ticking several boxes.

It's delicious.

And one of my guilty pleasures, actually, it's not even a guilty pleasure.

There's a chain of

quite sort of budget Indian restaurants called Rasa.

R-A-S-A?

Have you ever come across those?

No.

They're around London and they're very basic and you go in, sometimes it's Russa Express.

I hope they still exist.

I haven't been in one in a while.

And you ask for a veg box and they come out

and it's like a little tray with

compartments, not unlike what you might find in the olden days on a plain food, right?

Where the little, this is where your pudding nestles, and this is where your carbon, you know, your rice is in this little section.

So it is all pleasingly formatted.

Or in prison of course i hate to take us back to prison but it's like a prison tray that they very often will do it like that compartmentalized which presumably is to sort of automate the process and guarantee um

consistent portion sizes right or maybe i don't know maybe there's another reason maybe it makes them more stackable maybe there's a hundred reasons but the point is it's deli the food is is delicious and um and you used to be able to get a veg box for about like three pounds fifty maybe And it was a complete meal.

And it included a little chipati folded chapati.

The chapati would be folded like a little handkerchief.

And one of the compartments was a delicious,

maybe I should have just ordered this at the beginning.

You know, we wouldn't have to worry about, you know, all the other things.

But the the rice pudding, there's a little rice pudding section that would have sultanas in it.

But I'm just after the dal.

Yes.

So I think we've narrowed in on what I'm after.

I'm after the dal that they do at Rasa, that exact kind of dal.

Would you like it in the tray, but every compartment is filled with dal?

We could do that.

That might end up being almost too much.

Do you want it in the tray and all the other compartments are empty?

Empty.

Maybe that's better.

Maybe it doesn't need to be in a tray.

Let's not worry about the tray.

Also, I'm looking at your caspacho and I've noticed the goldfish is flagging a bit.

Do you want to transfer it to the dal?

Do you think it would do better in that?

How hot is the dal?

It's as hot as you want it.

I mean, temperature-wise.

Oh, oh it's it's piping it's piping hot well what's your preferred spice i would go for the dal i'd go medium hot

it really varies it's not as though there's a beaufort scale for restaurants i mean although they sometimes go like you know you're with an indian food connoisseur or maybe just a pretentious chef when my dad used to do this because we used to go to an indian restaurant every Sunday when I was growing up and my dad would order a king prawn madras but I'd like it vindaloo hotness.

He's a man who knew his order.

So he was hacking the menu.

That's pretty special.

So I think I would go for the dal probably Vindaloo Hotness.

Let's try that.

So you're not putting a goldfish in the

goldfish in the heart.

Well, you could try.

If it's died from a broken heart, that might be the shock that it needs to bring it round.

Yeah.

Or did it die because it was choking on an olive oil cube?

That's the thing, isn't it?

That's what you've got to ask yourself.

Is it that it's a broken heart, or is it the fact you've put it in some olive oil cube-filled gazpacho for the first two courses?

If the magic pork hasn't brought it back round, the hot doll's not going to do it, is it?

Yeah, if the Texan man didn't bring it back to life, then...

There's a man outside the restaurant knocking on the window.

He's wearing a ten-gallon hat

and waving a tiny little shred of pork

and pointing at the fish.

I don't know who that is.

You know, can I confess something that I was thinking about before we started this?

And on the way up the stairs, I was like, these are all the amazing foods and exciting sort of things.

And sometimes, like, you know, think about sushi and dal.

And what I was recalling, though, is that we went, so we went to Indian restaurants every Sunday growing up when I was

raised in South London.

My family, my dad's American, my mum's British, they were quite well-traveled.

In fact, they'd met in Africa.

Okay.

And so I think they prided themselves on having sort of cosmopolitan tastes.

But I, and, and, and I sort of, I guess nowadays, I'm, I'm quite adventurous in what I'll, I'll, there's almost, there's very few foods I wouldn't be interested in trying, and I'd give them a go because I sort of think you owe it to yourself while you're alive to experiment.

And you see people who are like averse to trying new things, and I always think, well, that you're a bit square and boring, aren't you?

Like, live a little, you know,

it's an elk's eyeball.

How bad can it be?

Right?

But when I was small, like, I didn't want to try any of those things.

And the thing was, every time we went to an Indian restaurant on the Sunday, my dad would get his Vindaloo Hotness King Prawl Madras.

I can't remember my mum's order.

My brother always got a chicken biryani.

And I would get fried chicken and chips.

I didn't even want the rice.

Like, I just wanted what I considered to be...

quote-unquote normal food.

My parents ate a lot of rice.

I thought rice was weird.

I was like, why can't we just have like chips or mashed potato or toast or something?

Like, why why do we have to have this weird thing it's in little bits right

do you know what i mean i don't know if that was typical of the 70s like i just wasn't used like at school you didn't get rice

you got you got boiled potato like normal things like boiled boiled potato like yeah and or you like can't i just have like um hoops you know spaghetti rings on toast spaghetti hoops on toast like why can't i have like a normal thing like a really sugary weirdo pasta in like weird sugary sauce like something normal like that on like really white bread you know what i mean but that to me was and so um and then they i remember when they whipped out these weird green uh strange vegetable fruit things which were called avocados right and they would say that and i was like what okay what's this i was about 10 years old and it had something in they'd taken out the stone and it had like some weird sauce in the middle and it's avocado vinaigrette and i was was, and I was like,

I don't think so.

And my brother was always like, he was two years older, and he'd like, he was like, sort of perfect, kind of like, oh, yes, I'd love to try that.

That looks delicious.

And I'd think, you just don't get it, dude.

You're just showing off, eating weirdo food that no one, like, if you're on it, we all know that we don't want to eat this.

Why are you pretending that you, and oh, this is delicious, mum.

This is delicious, dad.

I love it.

I'm like, get a clue.

Oh my God.

And then I went, so I know this does, I'm telling the story against myself, but it's just strange to imagine back to how averse I was.

There was a phase during which every time my parents brought a meal out, and usually it was at the weekend, because by this time I was either I was either at boarding school or we had a live-in au pair who would feed us and it would just be something kind of like quite boring, like a pork chop and

chips or something.

But when my parents cooked, it would be something a bit more adventurous.

And I would just say,

sorry, I don't really like it.

And I'd go and have a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes.

And my parents, God bless them, would say, okay, that's fine, no problem.

And I try and remember that because now I have kids and I'm like, why can't, come on, guys, just try a little bit of the melanzana a la pamigiana, right?

Why don't you just have three mouthfuls?

Come on, like, and then I remember, like, do you know what?

When I was their age, I was just even worse.

So the point of that rather long anecdote, if it is an anecdote, is really just,

you know, we grow and we change, don't we?

How, how, and, and, and sometimes it takes a while to embrace these other these other worlds and these other foods, these other cuisines.

And I feel glad that I am where I'm at.

Well, I mean, yeah.

Also, the fact that you've got the career you've got where you're literally throwing yourself into unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations a lot of the time.

Put yourself out of your comfort zone.

I never would have watched any of your shows and thought, I bet that guy didn't like rice when he was level.

I was very

anxiety prone to an extent.

I still am.

I was always worried about things.

And that's been a constant through my upbringing and through my life.

It's been that fear of anything that I hadn't done before seemed massively intimidating.

Do you think that's normal or do you think that's weird?

I was like that.

I was the only one in my cycling proficiency class who fell off their bike during cycling proficiency and I knew it was going to happen before I even set off.

We had to go down this hill and before I even set off down the hill I was like, I'm falling off because I was just...

I was like, I can't see this going well.

I can't see me getting to the bottom of this.

And everyone else had got to the bottom.

And I fell off.

I remember laying on the grass verge while the rest of the class were running towards me.

And while I was lying there, untying my left shoelace.

And then when they got to me, I was like, oh, my shoelace got caught in the

in the in the pedals.

Flip, flip me off.

So really, it was like.

So not only did you fail your cycling proficiency, they also thought you couldn't tie your own shoes.

Well, I would like to point out that I didn't fail it.

I did pass it, but when they were giving out the certificates, they did say,

James A.

Caster.

And then when I was on my way to get my certificate, they said, still a bit wobbly.

You've passed your cycling proficiency, even though you fell off your bike.

Yep.

Did you pass it or did you...

It's a class, though, really, or is it a test?

I don't think you can fail it, can you?

Like, in other words, did you?

I failed it.

Literally, got on my bike, started pedaling.

I wobbled and they went, get off.

Really?

Yeah.

You failed it.

Immediate fail.

Get off.

Get off.

Go home.

I was way worse than that.

And I passed it.

Even when I was passing it, they told me me I was wobbly.

Yeah, what I found that immediately.

The qualification.

I failed my driving test three times, then passed the fourth, once I failed it by default because I was late.

Passed age 21, drove for about, you know, whatever, 10 or 20 years.

And then in America, I had to take another test and thought, well, this would be easy.

You know, because for the U.S.

test, the U.S.

license.

And I drove off the DVLA driver's vehicle, whatever, property out onto the road.

And the driver said, Okay, take a right, take a right, take a right, take a right.

I'm like, Hello, we've gone in a circle.

And you know what?

My thought went to like, he can see how good I am.

And he's like, I'm not gonna waste your time, I'm not gonna waste my time.

You've got the skills, so let's just sign you off.

So we came into the lot.

So that was in my head, like, oh, that was quick.

I guess he's like, That's you know, you've obviously been driving for 20 years.

And he said, Okay, I'm failing you,

and I've abort, I'm failing you on the test with immediate effect and I'm aborting the rest of the test.

Dude, you know, more or less, I don't know if he said it, but due to fears of my own safety kind of thing.

He said, as soon as we exited the parking lot, you veered into the lane of oncoming traffic, which is an automatic violation.

Oh, no.

And I felt, you know, can you imagine as like a 40-year-old man being told, like, not only have you failed, I don't even feel safe in the car with you.

And you failed on the thing that everyone knows about.

You know, like that.

That's the main thing, really.

It's the main joke about British drivers and driving in England as it's the other side of the road.

Again, instantly, like you were in some sort of 90s Brendan Fraser film or something.

I still don't.

I still feel as though I got a bum wrap with that.

Like, I feel as though I don't think I did, Ver.

I'm in denial, possibly.

Sure.

But I think he was running some kind of scam.

And they were like, hey, the more they come back, the more money we make.

So keep on failing them.

You know, it's not impossible.

That's the rumor that goes around, isn't it?

With a...

Yeah.

Same with cycling proficiency, of course, as Ed learned.

Well, more fool them.

I didn't go back.

We should ask you what your favourite drink is.

I'm going to go for a delicious.

This has been helping me in lockdown.

an American bourbon probably bullet although there's one called tin cup Cup that I've also been drinking.

And it's, I'd probably have it with, maybe on its own, just to have a sip.

Or maybe I should have a dirty martini.

Oh.

Well, we'll stick with the

honorable munchin, the honorable, honourable Drunchin,

could go to a dirty martini, which would be like, as I came into the restaurant, if this really were the dream restaurant, you wouldn't have to have just one drink, right?

No disrespect like come on guys yeah is it a dream restaurant or isn't it what kind of genie are you

um

so a dirty martini as i come in really cold like really really cold and with they dirty means they put the um

is it that they put a little bit of olive juice in it yeah the brine i think yeah a bit of the brine oh

oh yeah that gets the party started don't you think yeah an empty stomach you haven't even had anything to eat yet two of those and you're like you know what forget the meal but the p what about the pizza and the goldfish in the gas patch you're like nah i'm just gonna stick to the martinis that's all i want but if i was sensible i'd just have the one yeah and and then i'd probably move on to the bourbon i'm making myself sound like a bit of a lush but it's a kind of dream scenario isn't it yeah yeah when we handed you the cold martini dirty martini when you come into the restaurant say you'd arrive with your wife or whoever you're eating eating with, would you turn to them and before you take your first sip?

Would you say, Let's get this party started?

I think that, yeah, I think you know that I would.

Yeah.

I think that's exactly.

I think I'd say that, and then I'd point at the DJ and I'd give him a little nod.

There's a DJ.

And then pink would come on, right?

Yeah.

And then I would, and then I would move into a dance routine that was sort of a little bit insoucient, insouci,

but also an effortless, but just pure suavete.

And without spilling a drop of my martini, I would be funking all over the floor.

That's a good start to the party.

I think that's too much of a start to the party, if anything.

It starts like a whole party.

Yeah, if you're then going to just have to sit down for a while.

And then I'd stop dancing, and then there'd be really awkward silence.

And no one would quite know.

And we'd all be like, That was weird.

And then it turns out you haven't paid pink yet, so you need to get her bank details.

Bax pink.

Yeah, you have to backs pink.

But you would like the bullet.

Then we the bullet.

If I try not to, yeah, I have been w I think the point of the bullet really is that, like, last night I had, I think, two bullets, two bullet bourbons with orange juice, which is a, I think probably bourbon purists, because I kind of, I don't think I invented it.

I think I one night, there was nothing to drink and I was like, I'd been drinking sort of wine and gin and tonics, and I thought, well, there's this whiskey, but I really don't like whiskey.

So I think I sent out a tweet that said, what can you put with whiskey that makes it not taste like whiskey?

And

orange juice was the answer.

But it turns out, especially with a bourbon where you haven't got a very delicate, that sort of delicate woody flavor that you get with

whiskey,

it's a simpler flavor.

And with the orange juice, I think, doesn't really adulterate it.

To me, it tastes like a nice, it's just a nice drink.

Yeah, because bourbon's quite sweet anyway, right?

So if you're quite sad, it's just like a big old sweet cocktail.

It's nice.

Yeah.

I love bourbon.

Or squeeze some, you know, bourbon, as you rightly say, so sweet that you can just squeeze like a couple of

a lime or a lemon into a, with some ice, into a glass of bourbon, and

it's delicious.

Like the sweetness obviously counteracts the sourness of the lemon or lime.

It's a very nice drink.

Come for the crunchiness on there?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, sprinkle those into the drink.

All time's sake, drink it quickly before they get soggy.

Yeah, why not?

I mean, what doesn't?

I used to think that there was nothing that didn't go well with um toasted almonds, right?

Do you know what I mean?

No, like yogurt and honey, and toasted almonds,

like a nice green leaf salad with like tomato, obviously, lettuce, and some avocado, and some toasted almonds.

Uh, a nice chicken cormor, toasted almonds, yeah, big time.

Um, Obviously, like a bowl of Muesli or a nice bowl of Cheerios toasted almonds, a gaz pacho with a goldfish toasted almonds,

a margarita pizza, toasted almonds.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't not work.

What does it not?

There's nothing like, this would be delicious, but the toasted almonds have ruined it.

At the very least, it's going to be like, I don't think it needed the toasted almonds.

The gaz pacho was fine without the toasted almonds, but it doesn't hurt.

Lasagna?

It would work.

That works.

Fine.

This is kind of mind-blowing, Louis.

I've never thought of this.

Toasted almonds goes on anything.

Yeah, pretty much.

I'm trying to think now.

I'm trying to break it.

You're thinking, like, what about my chocolate pizza?

I'm saying 100%

toasted almonds.

That works on the A-caster flag.

And the next level.

I did think that, but I knew that you would play that.

I knew that you both would be like, that's even better.

That's a better pizza now.

So I didn't even buy it.

You might say sushi now.

That works.

It's all right.

You would probably chop them up really small and roll it in the toasted almonds.

Lovely.

I'm so on board with this theory.

I really want to thank yourself.

And it looks classy, too.

You know what's really nice with toasted almonds?

You know, sometimes I got this from Nigel Slater.

It's a different way of doing green beans or French beans, I think it's, or fine beans.

He's like...

Steam them or boil them, obviously not too much, so they're still crunchy, then in a little butter and sprinkle with some toasted almonds.

almonds.

Very nice.

Courgettes with a little bit of lemon juice and parmesan and toasted pine nuts.

But if you can't get pine nuts, toasted almonds.

And I really can't think of anything because it's like sweet and savory.

It works on some

texture.

It's just texture, isn't it?

It's crunch.

I don't even like toasted almonds that much.

But it is improving every dish I think of.

Where were we?

We were talking about.

Your whiskey.

Your whiskey.

Yeah, Yeah, the bourbon.

The bourbon.

Bourbon.

That's going to be the weakest place for the toasted almonds, but it might be alright.

I got absolutely...

One night in Brighton after a gig, me and some friends went out and I went to a bar and I

drank Bullet Bourbon for the first time and had it all night.

And at one point, it was like a musical-themed bar.

There's loads of posters of musicals all around.

And I was walking down the stairs to the toilets, and there were posters all the way down the stairs by your...

They basically stretched from the ceiling to your feet massive posters and there was one for Oliver and the lead in Oliver on the poster the person playing Fagin was at the time my ex-girlfriend's new partner and I I saw this poster and because I was drunk and I'd had so much whiskey

for a laugh I thought it'd be funny I just kicked the poster but it was like in a glass frame so I kicked it and the whole thing came off the wall and smashed all over the stairs and there's just loads of glass all over the stairs and this big oliver poster and then I just turned around and walked straight out the bar back to the hotel

and then the next morning I woke up and felt really bad about it so I returned to the bar it was the daytime now and I went and the same barman and I went up to the bar and I said um I smashed a poster last night here and I'd like to pay for it if that's okay And they they just laughed and they were saying, oh, people smash posters here all the time.

It's fine.

And then he started calling me the bullet guy and saying like, this is the bullet guy.

You were fond of the bullet last night.

You had so much bullet.

And then they were calling me bullet guy.

He didn't.

You don't want to be able to get it.

You can pay for the poster.

You do not want to be a guy named after a drink he likes.

No, it was bad.

I haven't had a poster.

Do you think that's put you off, bullet?

Yeah.

Because I love whiskey still and I have different kinds of whiskey, but I've never had that one again because like it was just it was all I drank the whole night.

Because you were loving it.

You were in the zone.

You were like,

that's the best drink ever.

Were you drinking it straight or with a mixer, or how were you drinking it?

I was having it straight, which I didn't usually do.

Because I'd recently been told off by Ashlyn B's uncle for putting anything else with whiskey.

He just said you cannot do that.

So I was trying to do it.

That's what I'm worried about.

I'm inviting all kinds of judgment

by talking about mixing with whiskey.

But this is your dream restaurant, though, Louis.

You can't.

Your dream restaurant.

Dessert.

okay honourable muncheon bread and butter pudding yeah yes poached pears

I want to say clemfutis but I don't know what that means is it clefutis what is clefuti yeah what is that i don't know but i know that's the word i just like that pear clefuti do you ever see things on a menu where you're like i don't even know what that is but i want to get it because i like the sound of the words or the other thing is do you ever see where they describe the thing and you're like that sounds you know like they'll say delicious lettuce with shredded tomato, finely drizzled in olive oil and vinaigrette and shredded carrot.

And you're like, oh, that sounds amazing.

And then you look at it, like, hang on, it's just lettuce, tomato, and carrot.

Do you know what I mean?

You second, you check yourself, you're like, the words on the page look inviting, but if you think about what that is, you actually don't.

And then it arrives, and you're like, oh, wow, that really is what it is.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Well, we all know.

Some toasted almonds.

You don't even know how right you are.

Because that would.

Sometimes something like that and a little bit of goat's cheese, maybe?

Yeah.

Little things like that make a big difference.

Goat's cheese won't go on everything, though.

No, definitely not.

It's one of those things, it's like it's kind of delicious and disgusting at the same time.

Is it?

It's one of the things when you're a kid, you're like, this is horrible.

And as you get older, you're like, it's horrible, but kind of okay.

It's kind of delicious, but horrible.

It is weird and horrible but delicious.

Maybe it's just me.

Do you know those things that are somehow on the edge?

Yeah.

If you have too much of it.

Or you have it on the wrong.

The first taste I have of goat's cheese is still like, ooh,

not quite,

my face is changing from disgust to like, yeah, grudging kind of enjoyment.

Because it hits you right on the back of the palate, which is exactly where you might feel like a bad burp or something.

Yeah.

Bad burp is still pretty good, though.

Yeah.

Even the worst burps are the best.

Everything about it.

But

I'm arriving at a delicious chocolate brownie with ice cream.

I love a brownie.

I love chocolate.

I love...

Chocolate's my...

Is it my guilty pleasure?

Is it my secret lover?

Is it my kryptonite?

Is it all of the above?

I think it's allowed to be all those things.

It's ambrosial, isn't it?

I like that word.

It is ambrosial.

It's this mysterious...

flavor that really indescribable.

You know, what does chocolate taste like?

Well, like chocolate.

Yeah.

It's it's a it's a warm and rounded, almost fecal, if I can say that,

in its sort of, you know, like, I think like a really good, no, I won't say it, shit.

It's something about the, the, the, is it umami?

It's anyway, it's the, it's the depth and warmth and the earthiness.

of a delicious chocolate.

Oh, it was explained to me as well that one of the unique properties of chocolate is that because it hovers and melts around, obviously it's solid at room temperature, but at mouth temperature, it melts.

I mean, this is self-evident.

Hello, you know, I have seen minstrels' adverts, it melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

Well, that's quite literally the case, and that's why when you have a piece of chocolate, toasted almonds can't do that.

No, no, that's true.

But they would go lovely on a brownie, though.

They really would.

It is hard to think of another thing that would melt in your mouth and not in your hand.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Because you would say, oh, well, come on, butter.

No, butter melts in your hand.

It does melt in your hand.

Sorry, James.

Yeah.

A candle melts in neither your hand nor in your mouth.

No, nor should it.

Oh, that's my first two guesses, butter and a candle.

Cheese doesn't melt in the mouth at all.

It feels like it should.

No, maybe Brie would melt.

Brie would melt in both.

Brie melts at room temperature.

Yeah.

Keep trying.

I'll just read your water back to you now, Louis.

See how you feel about it.

For the water course, you wanted a jug of gazpacho with olive oil cubes and a goldfish in it.

And you wanted the goldfish removed and put into sparkling water when it's struggling.

Popped observed bread.

You chose sweet loaves from red lobster.

You have a little nibble, but no more.

Starter, very small Grimaldi's pizza, margarita.

Main course, slow roast barbecue pork.

Side dish of dal from a dal Vindaloo hotless Dahl from where was it?

Russa.

From Russa.

Drink cold dirty martini when you enter the dream restaurant and a bullet bourbon later on.

Dessert, chocolate brownie with ice cream.

And just to check with you, would you like me to add toasted almonds to

all of those dishes?

Yes, please.

Absolutely.

Toasted almonds for all of them.

The genie will fly over with a crop duster at every course and just cover everything in toasted almonds.

Oh, amazing.

I want my life crusted in toasted almonds.

That sounds amazing.

When you read that back, I thought, wow, I really nailed it.

That sounds amazing.

It does sound really good.

You did say at the start it would be inedible, but I think that makes sense.

I really enjoyed that.

It was really fun.

Well, there we have it.

What a great time we had in the Dream Restaurant with Louis Thuroux.

Very exciting to have him here, James.

Absolutely.

Great menu and a great cast of characters as well.

So many characters this week.

It's not often that we have so many visitors to the Dream Restaurant in one single week.

We had Southern Barbecue Man.

We had Swedish Lawyer.

Yep, all sat around a table enjoying their toasted almonds together.

Yes, it was a lovely episode.

Great menu.

Thank you very much for coming in, Louis.

Remember, Louis's book is out in paperback now.

Got to get through this.

So go and check that out.

I know I will be.

And also, Louis is busting onto our patch.

He does a podcast now called Grounded with Louis Theroux, where he interviews people.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he has the head of NATO on.

Oh, yeah, head of NATO's got to be on there.

And I tell you what, we should get the head of NATO on this podcast, actually, Ed.

And hopefully, just like Louis, he will not say Tarragon on its menu, and we won't have to chuck him out at the restaurant.

Do remember that we have merch available.

You can go and pre-order it now on offmenupodcast.co.uk.

There's brilliant t-shirts that we specifically had designed by our favourite artists.

So go and check those out.

There's tote bags.

There's tea towels.

There's mugs.

There's all sorts of things.

Go and have a little look at our website for that.

Hit up our socials when you've ordered the merch and let us know that you've ordered some at Off Menu Official on Instagram and Twitter.

And also don't forget to review and subscribe to the podcast.

Go on, leave it five stars on Apple.

Push us up those charts, baby.

Push us up.

Push us up.

Thanks, James.

James is a brilliant hype man.

I don't know.

He just repeats the last thing other people have said in an enthusiastic manner.

Enthusiastic manner.

There we are.

So, thank you very much for listening.

We will see you again next week with another brilliant guest.

But for now...

Tuck that napkin in and bash your knives and forks on the table.

It's dinner time!

Hi, I'm Gina Martin, a campaigner and writer.

And I'm Stevie Martin.

I'm a comedian and writer.

And also, we're sisters.

We are sisters.

And we're doing our new podcast, Might Delete Later.

It's a podcast about social media, about going back, looking at your embarrassing ones, things you like, things you don't like.

And we're talking to all different types of people.

So many different types of people.

We've got writers, we've got comedians.

Maybe we'll get a politician.

Maybe we'll get a dog.

Maybe I'll talk to a plant, deal with it, who knows?

It's like a little snapshot into people's social media lives.

Yeah, and hopefully, it'll make you think more about how you use social media and how you feel about it.

So, do subscribe on all of the platforms that you usually get your podcasts on and visit at Might Delete LaterPod on Instagram because we're going to be putting up really fun videos and the things that you didn't see in the podcast episode.

Ooh, exciting.

Thanks, dudes.

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Single ladies is coming to London.

Well, we're already in London, I suppose, in a way, but we're doing a live show, aren't we?

It's true on Saturday, the 13th of September.

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