The Sixties

Last week, the two of you were very um I'm going to say smug.

What?

About your wholesome weekends that you'd had.

Correct, yes.

So Mike had been narrowboating in the Yorkshire Dales.

Incorrect.

In the Cumbrian steppe.

Yorkshire Dales, Cumberland Steppe, Dartmoor, it's all it's all these are all just synonyms for outside of London, aren't they?

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

It's just the Postman Pat landscape.

So I actually doesn't quite hold some of which I've completely forgotten about.

I stumbled across a sort of public access dog show

that was happening.

Strange way of stranging it.

It was a kind of open to the public dog show.

Because they normally happen very much behind closed doors, don't they?

Do you mean a dog show?

Well, do you know of a dog show happening near you?

No, because they mainly happen very much on the hush-hush, don't they?

It was just like, it was like in a shopping centre in central London, an open-plan sort of open-air shopping centre type thing.

And there was this dog show going on.

And it was absolutely brilliant.

There were loads of dogs everywhere.

There were guide dogs.

There was a special guide dog area

where you could just sort of interact with guide dogs.

Set their training back by three years.

Keep him away from the guide dogs.

They've become danger dogs.

It's the opposite.

They've become liability hounds.

And I talked to this very nice lady that had this guide dog that was in training.

And it was an Alsatian.

Oh, for the hardcore blind person.

I think it's for the blind person who also likes to kick ass.

Because I said to her, I didn't think of them.

Of Alsatians as guide dogs.

And she said, yes, that's probably because you don't think at all, do you?

Or at least she said that to me with her eyes.

Yeah.

Because I spent the rest of the conversation on a backtrack of the fact that

I'd slightly slammed Alsatians.

I mean, I actually really like it.

And she has that conversation 14 times a day as well, and she's sick and tired of it.

But also, you'd think that because we all think of guide dogs as being that specific breed, which is golden retriever, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, the Lambrid or Golden Retriever vibe.

So, we sort of understand that they're guide dogs, and so we would happily let them into a building.

You know, like there's a shorthand, but if you've got an Al Sation, you're gonna have to explain that every day 45 times.

Well, are you just gonna assume that it's it is a police dog and it's undercover, right?

That's true.

So, the dog's undercover, what because it's looking to the tax affairs of the blind person, potentially.

Well, it'd be a drugs dog, or yeah, or looking for gun runners.

Yeah, I do think dogs, I don't think police dogs yet do serious financial crimes

but but i don't know you know what i mean it's easy for me to say that in my little garret but how would i know have you not heard of white collar wolf squad

leather collar crime

leather collar with little metal rivets in it crime

but this dog was the cutest thing i mean obviously guy dogs are just they have an extra added element of cuteness because they're just amazing

and because it was an alsatian it made it all the cuter because it could could be a git, but it had chosen to be lovely.

They're amazing with kids, aren't they?

Alsatians.

They're like

kids can sort of yank their ears and stick their fingers up their nostrils.

If it's a kid, they're like, no, fine, it's just a kid.

You know what?

Mike,

you've just engendered a memory in me.

Yeah.

You were the one child that got bitten by an Alsatian.

Even Alsatians have their limits.

And I got what they referred to as slow-release rabies.

Which looking back on it explains a lot of

problems I've had.

When I was a kid, we used to go to this place in France and next door there was the farmhouse and they had this massive Alsatian and I absolutely loved it.

And it would jump over hedges for me.

It would do anything I told it.

And the people from the village would come around and marvel at this British child and this huge, beastly sort of like farm Alsatian dog.

Yeah.

Had just developed this wonderful bond.

We'd roll around together, lovely.

So, I think I've got a deep love of Alsatians,

we've uncovered, but anyway, but it's because they're so because they could hurt you

and they don't, it's a bit like imagine Jason Statham with a little leather collar

on all fours, just sort of having an app next to the feet of a guy.

You're trying to help us to imagine a dog

now now.

We put some hair on him, don't we?

Elongate his face a bit.

Put a tail on the back.

You've got to take the hair off Statham.

And he's starting with Statham.

I was starting with the dog.

I thought you were trying to describe an Alsatian by starting with Statham.

You can basically, you can describe any animal on Earth starting with Statham.

This is a good starting point.

Yeah.

Lop off everything but the head and stick fins on it.

It's a puffer fish.

It doesn't work.

It just does work.

Yeah.

Stick it in a bin bag.

Slug.

Mega slug.

You know what?

Just to contrast this, on the way to Mach, Machuntlef festival this year, I was on a train

with the most terrifying dog I've ever seen.

Okay.

And

it was essentially in the Excel bully family.

It was one of those types of dog

where the head is.

The head is just a jaw.

The head is just an angry jaw

with tiny eyes.

It's basically got the head of.

So the way you make this dog is,

as we've established, you can create a Statham.

Mentally.

Start with Statham.

So you start with Statham on all fours, obviously.

Cut his head off, though.

Replace it with the head of Gordon Ramsay.

And you're already getting a sense of how frightening this is for everyone on that train garage.

Especially Gordon Ramsey was trying to quietly read a novel at the back.

He just had his head cut off.

That's part of the thought.

Just to illustrate a point.

Just to illustrate a point.

You think he's angry when two Italian brothers don't know how to maintain proper hygiene standards in their Bolognese sandwich stall.

Think how angry he is now.

Anyway, so yeah, those dogs, they all have the head of Gordon Ramsey on the body of Jason Stotham.

Yeah.

And it's just such a wide head.

And they all walk like Tom Hardy as well.

They all walk like Tom Hardy.

They're all slow, rolling, thick, muscular shoulder walk yeah it's really quite unpleasant being a train carriage with one of those dogs yeah and the other thing this dog had to finish off the look right

of a terrifying dog

prison tats

had crudely done biro prison tats and winkle pickers and a quick glance was was enough for me to to confirm that he was part of one of the Cartagena cartels

he had the most terrifying fashion look for a dog which is muzzle

Yeah.

But not on.

Oh,

it had a muzzle but hanging off.

That's not.

No, that's not a thing.

That's never.

That's not.

That's kind of like the dog equivalent of the rat pack with their sort of slightly undone bow tie.

It was a cool sort of booblay album cover.

Or the World War II Spitfire pilot coming into land.

Yeah.

But in this context, really quite terrifying because essentially it was a look which said, I do.

We have had to buy a muzzle.

We've had to buy a muzzle.

We're aware of the laws around this dog,

but we're not going to to abide by them.

So that was absolutely terrifying.

So here was the situation.

We then arrived at, I think it was Birmingham, actually.

This was just before Mothgate happened.

So we arrived where I had to change.

So I was very aware of the carriage dynamics, and

I'd worked out all my escape routes.

And as soon as I spotted this dog,

you were going to flush yourself out at a station.

It's the only time you're allowed to do it is to avoid a status dog.

Eventually, I was going to flush myself out.

but before that, I was going to create a kind of wall of pensioners out of the people sitting around me.

Your friend of mine, the human shield.

So essentially, to get out, this dog was between me and the exit.

So a lot of us were queuing up to get out.

So the dog at this point was actually in the kind of central lobby section before you exit a train.

Okay.

Yeah, between carriages.

It's the vestibule.

The vestibule.

But it wasn't getting off.

So we all clocked this.

So, right, okay, bad.

We have to process past the dog in a a confined space where, I mean, even I am known to lash out and bite.

Confined spaces do that to people and dogs.

But worst of all, I think I would have been okay with this.

I did another thing, which is you breathe and you say to yourself, I'm more scared of the dog than the dog is of me.

I'm fucking terrified of that dog.

That dog could easily kill me.

Just to make sure you're focused on the problem.

What you don't want to do is start thinking that the dog's more afraid of you than you are of it.

Because then, of course, then you start flicking its balls.

And this dog had balls.

Oh, yeah.

It had Carter Henry, Cartel tattooed balls.

But the real problem was that behind me, in the queue to get off,

there was a person with another dog.

A nice dog.

A lovely Spaniel.

Like literally the polar opposite of this.

Yeah, but Spaniels aren't very good at boundaries, are they?

Spaniels aren't good good at boundaries.

Exactly.

It was a floppy, a floppy, sort of posh, sweet

dunce of a dog.

Exactly.

So again, you start with Jason Statham,

you take off his head, and you replace his head with Nigel Fothergill Smythe.

Nigel Fothergill Baronet of Shropshire.

Sweet, lovely, sort of gingery, you know, wet, wet-nosed,

cute little idiot.

Royalist, cute little pro-royal idiot.

And I was in between the two of them.

So what I was just predicting, and everyone else was around me, was that dog is going to go berserkoid.

Essentially, I'm going to be caught in the absolute jaws of the class war.

It's going to happen

with me right in the middle.

Dogs set each other off, don't they?

Yeah.

Basically, I was absolutely crapping myself.

And there was a sort of

semi-elderly woman in front of me who was really crapping herself.

And she was saying to me, I'm really, really worried about that dog.

uh and and i was saying um look you look if you're going to be a human shield you have to you have to stop talking like that

otherwise i start to think of you as a person

don't tell me you're not and that's not going to end well for me

think of yourself as brick 432 and a human wall

i basically literally had no idea what to do Does anyone have any ideas what I should have done?

Where's the owner?

This feels like a pivotal detail.

Are they in the vestibule?

So the owner was in the vestibule with the dog.

Dog's on a lead?

I think

it was on some sort of improvised cable made out of what appeared to be human viscera.

Okay.

Okay, an intestinal rope.

I think it was.

And it was hot and steaming.

It looked like it was quite a fresh one.

It looked like it was quite fresh.

And it might have been possibly.

They're actually at their weakest at that point.

Yes.

Well, exactly.

Exactly.

Once it's hardened up a bit, you're okay.

Also,

that might have been linked to the person, well, the ticket inspector who was clutching their legs.

Clutching their legs and screaming into the pool of blood that they were disappearing into.

But that was in Carriage B and wasn't my problem.

I had a human wall to maintain.

The owner, I mean, I don't, I mean, the owner, well, yeah, did the owner have any sense that people were nervous nervous about this dog?

Or

were they exuding

a tough person?

The owner was loving it.

Often those dogs are owned by Matro pricks.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And that was very much the vibe I was getting.

But what happened was

another lady who was sat down, because the lady in front of me was going, I don't think I can walk past that dog.

And I think I was, I can't remember what I was saying, but I didn't think it was very helpful.

Just quietly weeping.

Were you pressing one of your cranes into the base of her spine and telling her that she was at gunpoint?

The choice was no longer hers.

Look, I'll draw a picture of you for your funeral if there's enough left of you for me to draw a basic caricature, which I probably won't be.

I was just quietly weeping into my own soul.

I had no idea what to do.

And then luckily, there was a woman who sat down

who wasn't getting off, who just was like one of those people that sorts things out.

And she went, right, I'm going to sort this out.

She got up, she went out, and she talked to the bloke with the dog.

Yeah,

and while the dog was attempting to swallow her hole,

we all scurried off.

That doesn't bother those people, though.

People who've got that, do you know what I mean?

She managed to talk this bloke, scary bloke, and scary dog off the end off the platform.

And he kept on saying, he's fine, he's fine, oh, he's fine.

But they always say that, though,

he's really sweet.

Yeah.

He only kills on my command most of the time.

So, so anyway, so this yeah, this woman talked the guy off the platform, and he and the dog waited as we all processed out of the carriage.

And he was saying, he's like, see, it's fine, it's fine.

But anyway, this person I find is often a teacher.

Yes, or they exude kind of veteran head teacher in urban environment energy.

I've got to say, this was a middle-aged woman

who was an absolute godsend.

And just she would just, in any crisis,

she would be the one you'd want and i liked thinking i was a close second

because my meat wall solution my mobile meat wall solution

could still have worked with only minor cash

but but she she yeah no she wrote and also i think it's quite

basically my mum used to do this

i think

there's something about a sort of

a middle-aged woman talking sternly to to someone.

It could be a bunch of teenagers.

It could be a hard-bitten criminal.

Yeah, well, the average middle-aged woman has taken a lot of knocks.

Exactly.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it's a degree of fearlessness, I think.

Yeah.

Anyway,

dog show, Wholesome, London.

Yes.

The centrepiece of this dog show said, so there was, there was the guy dogs bit.

So I talked to this lady about it.

She was fostering the dog.

So she was looking after the dog while it was trained.

I know it's amazing.

You don't have to say goodbye.

Yes.

I mean, I don't know.

Hats off to the people that do that, really.

That's what I said to her.

I got one situation where I kept on saying the wrong things.

I'd slagged off Alsatians.

And then I, unwittingly, and then I'd sort of brought up the fact that she has to say goodbye to this dog and how hard is it?

So you're really picking away at some open wounds, though.

Really, really going straight for them.

She said it's a good way to have a dog, though, because it means if you've got a job, because you only see them in the evenings and weekends.

And in the day, that dog essentially goes off to school, effectively, to get trained

as a guide dog.

Then the centrepiece of this thing, though, was absolutely brilliant.

There was a stage.

I was like, what's going on on that stage?

With loads of people crowded around watching it, taking photos.

And there was a dog show going on.

And it was a dog show of dogs that work in our business.

Did you see our business or the arms business?

Same thing, Mike.

It's all about shifting those torpedoes.

Well, after this outbreak.

Yes, you've heard about laser-guided missiles, but have you heard of guy dog-guided missiles?

They've got a little cockpit at the top where the poodle goes in.

And just before hitting a town or hospital, the poodle presses a button and

cuts their heads off instantly.

So

they don't have to experience death by fire.

Oh, it's a tough business, the arms world.

I don't like it.

There's a reason it seems ethically dubious.

So what were they doing on the stage?

I want to know this show.

It was dogs that work in showbiz.

What are we talking?

Acrobatics, dog robotics, monologues?

What kind of things?

It was dog Foley artists.

The dogs that make the sound effects that bring radio dramas to life.

It was dogs that work on film, on camera.

So

it was dog star film dogs.

It was absolutely brilliant.

So who was the the most famous dog there?

They had a dog who's felt the hands of Piers Brosnan.

No.

There's a dog that works with Piers Brosnan in a crime show.

Oh, is that the one with Helen Miran?

I think I've heard of this.

Yes.

Prince Brosnan and Helen Mirren and this dog.

Oh, wow.

So this dog, they had this dog brilliantly trained, and then a kid went up on, they got a kid out of the audience, and the kid went up on stage, and they showed how they can bond the dog to a random actor.

So they just kind of said something, and the dog was now bonded to this kid, and wherever the kid went, the dog just followed it around.

Really?

In a sort of love, in a sort of loveless, just doing its job way that it would have done as it walks around Piers Brosnan all day in this film.

Oh, God.

Just pretending it's...

Like a sort of brainwashed concubine.

Brain-washed concubine.

And that was the name of the section of the show.

These are our brainwashed concubine hounds.

And did they give the kid just like a sort of like a sort of marel necklace made of sausages?

Is that what it is?

What's the magic?

It's amazing, the magical mystery of how they do these things.

All he's done is put a sausage helmet on that kid.

And then you can craft that sausage helmet into the face of Piers Brosnan, so you didn't even have to cast Piers Brosnan.

The thing is, people like Piers Brosnan, that's the job with Piers Brosnann.

That's the screen actor's job, is you make that sausage helmet disappear.

Do you know what I mean?

You act so hard that the audience doesn't even see it.

Doesn't even realise that it's there.

Yeah.

And doesn't realize that your machine gun is also made of sausages.

And that film,

The Love Interest is just a beef patty with sausage legs to sack on

and the scotch egg head

the baddie's just a beef wellington the baddie's just a beef wellington

but it's true that you know when you watch it's a bit it's a bit harsh to slag off dog acting isn't it but when you watch something in um in a film sometimes you look at the dog and you can tell that it's sort of it's kind of responding to an instruction from off screen you know what i mean yeah yeah so it kind of it does jump up for the owner but in a way where it's like why aren't you quite looking at the owner

who's who is going to give you the the treat?

Yeah.

It's because there's someone waving a bunch of sausages around, like a sort of Catherine meet Catherine wheel

behind the camera.

And sausage.

That's how they do it.

And then there was another good moment where he went, and this was this is his big moment, right?

So the guy presenting it,

there were two people presenting it.

All I know is that the woman was called Jill

because the bloat kept on going,

yeah, anyway, so Jill would do one bit.

And they go anyway, and that was Jill.

Sorry, I had to listen to her.

and uh

yeah jill talks a lot on set and it annoys people people don't mind it when i do it though that's bloody jill

shemafon gaffer tape her mouth up anyway that was jill it was like he was trying to do all this banter about him and jill it's like no one in the audience no one here gives a about you and jill and like your relationship and like this is not the you and jill show like no one gives a fuck we just want to see another dog we just want to see another dog it's so entertaining like i can't explain to you how entertaining it is it was to watch these dogs come on and do stuff.

It was the greatest show on earth.

But there was a float going anyway, bloody typical Jill of the Labrador.

I'm not surprised it didn't take a shit on her leg.

The way she is.

I wish I could muzzle Jill.

That's exactly the kind of level of band he was doing about poor Jill.

A, I felt sorry for Jill, and B, it was like,

this isn't why we're here.

Anyway, so the dogs are inherently great and they're doing stuff to command and they've been in the movies.

Anyway, his biggest, his biggest sort of showstopper was he went, and now, everybody,

something very special.

This little dog has only been in a certain program you may have heard of

called Doc Martin.

Known for its dog stunts, that show, isn't it?

The dog may have met Martin Clunes, right?

Well, that was the thing.

That was the biggest new one, was he peeled, he peeled the face back off this dog.

And it was jason stathan dressed as martin clunes

suddenly it all made sense but then what happened so there's kind of awkward silence and then someone is like hang on hang on we've got someone and carol from america this american woman came onto the stage who was watched every episode of doc martin she was like i'm a huge duck man i love doc martin anyway she got to reenact the the moment where A severed finger is retrieved by a small dog.

And they reenacted that scene.

she she sacrificed her finger she had to sacrifice her finger there was a lot of paperwork had to happen on stage it's a good thing they had those white-collar crime dogs on they were able to sort through that issue sign a lot of disclaimers and stuff release forms but uh no they had a sort of rubber finger and the dog fetched it and everyone everyone had a great time

lucky carol what a what a take-home story yeah wonderful stuff dream holiday for carol dream holiday for carol that does sound great it was really good also there was a gail's concession stand handing out free cheese fingers.

Just no consolation for Carol.

It's not going to do it, is it?

I mean, it'll feel okay for the first four to five minutes.

Not when you're back on the ranch in Montana.

It's really.

Because those flies, those Montana flies, they will swarm hard on rank cheese.

Let's turn on the bean machine.

Oh, yes, please.

Good idea.

This week's topic, as sent in by Gabby from Worthing.

Worthing, is it?

Not a place I've been to?

Very smart.

Is it?

On the seaside?

It's on the seaside.

It's a seaside town.

It's a Sussex seaside town.

On the Sussex Seaside Town.

Faded arcades?

Faded arcades.

We can assume that Gabby is at least 140 years old

and is a promenading pensioner.

And areas that have become so overwhelmed by seagulls that the police will not go into them anymore.

Aren't there?

There are entire areas that have been given over to seagulls.

This is absolutely true.

Anyway, her topic that she put in

is the 60s.

Is it?

The decade she retired.

It's a 60s, baby.

That's cool.

Worthing probably would have been, I don't know if it would have been

just beginning to slip past its heyday in the 60s, or it would have been the end of its heyday, maybe.

The 60s probably happened to Worthing in maybe the late 80s.

Yes, by which time...

Yes, that's true.

By which time

it was too late.

It was too late.

People were already getting cheap flights to Spain instead.

Because that's the big thing about the 60s, isn't it?

Is that there's the idea of what the 60s was.

And that basically happened to about four streets in London.

And then the rest of the country was just basically the same as the 50s, just kind of awful.

Going to work in a factory.

Tepid tea.

Yeah.

Spam.

Lots of

still dripping suet.

Lots of suet and brown sauce on everyone's trousers the whole time.

It's true that decades have sort of cultural overflow, don't they, from the previous one or whatever.

So if you're.

I mean,

this is actually true from an illustrator's point of view.

Pens, colour weave.

Pencils.

The vanishing point.

Perspective.

The horizon.

Not technically a profession in the traditional sense.

Eraser.

Crayon.

Charcoal.

A view from the illustrator's chair.

With Henry Packer.

And I thought to myself, that beaver needs one thing.

It's either a moustache or a bow tie.

But it can't be both.

But I was wrong.

Oh, that new jingle's getting an absolute hammering

i have to get a mini one ben yeah each each decade yeah so for example if i if i had to draw something set in the sixties if i had to draw i've done this kind of thing before i have to draw something in a period the truth is that that period if you google a 60s interior or whatever some like probably like awful ai will spew out something where everything is really 60s looking everything's wearing a suit everything's wearing a cool madison avenue suit

and everything but everything's just in that style.

Whereas, of course,

as we're saying in a way, this ties into the other point, which is like 80% of stuff will be stuff you've inherited, stuff you bought secondhand.

So, most of the stuff in the 60s wasn't 60s.

It was actually probably mainly like

1830s.

The buildings are Victorians, and the buildings aren't 60s.

So, what is and most of the people are in charge are war veterans as well, right?

In the 60s,

that's true.

Most of the people running the show.

That's what they would say about the BBC, wasn't it?

It was run by basically people who'd been in the Navy

in the war.

So when you read sort of books about Monty Python and stuff, they were basically getting commissioned by a sort of admiral

who just went, well, you boys seem to know what you're doing.

And who didn't assume that he knew?

No, because he'd spent his formative years driving a submarine.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's a good point.

Yes, perhaps that's a better thing to have.

Yeah, for the people dishing out the Dosh rather than...

I'm sure.

I think David Uttenborough is involved in Python, isn't he?

Because he was the controller of BBC2 somehow.

Frank Zappa's made it.

Have I talked about this?

Frank Zappa has made a similar point to this about America music.

Like he would say that back in the day,

in the sort of 50s and 60s,

the people with the DOSH work, they were businessmen.

They were suited and booted and they were...

you know, they'd make a bit of an investment and so on.

Yeah, go off, cut a record, let's see what happens.

and they were they were hiring young kids at the time to be the a r men to go into the clubs and they you know some kid who is 22 came back to them and said this band's really good you should sign them they go well you must know what you're talking about because you're a kid and they were trying to sell it to young people and all nonsense to me 20 exactly but 20 years later those a r guys the kids in the clubs they are now wearing the suits that are in charge but they still think that they know what kids who are 22 want i see so all of a sudden they become these weird gatekeepers and much less creative stuff is is flowing through, and weird experimental stuff isn't getting through because their tastes have changed.

They've got older and more conservative, but they're still.

Is that why we're living in a sort of cultural mire

where like nothing is new, everything's just like recycled old swill?

But at least swill is nutritious for pigs, whereas the swill we're being served

is just watery, putrid,

poison swill.

Welcome to Freebean Salad.

I think it's time we started doing some more hotter takes on stuff.

Yeah.

I'm saying that all of culture is poison swill at the moment.

And I'm not including Doc Martin in that.

I saw a horrifying thing today, which was

someone was writing a script for a studio in America, and they got an email back from one of the execs.

kind of feedback on their script.

And it was very, very obviously written by AI.

No.

Because it said, oh, I really enjoyed this.

And I thought this was a good aspect.

And I thought this was a good aspect.

And I really liked the device where they could go back in time through an antique camera.

And that just wasn't in the script.

So the script wasn't AI.

The writer had written the script.

And then the exec had fed it through an AI thing and it'd come back with some notes, but it just made up a lot of stuff.

And it just gave away that the exec hadn't actually read it.

And then you think, it's like those ANI guys.

It's like, why are you doing this then?

If you can't be asked to read it, just go, well, you know, I'm just the money man.

I'm not going to get involved.

But let's face it, that script was probably written by an AI as well.

And the fact is, it was just two bots conversing and masking one another.

Yeah.

Also, let's be honest: the idea of going back in time through an antique camera is quite a good idea, isn't it?

Well, can I say it's got Lindhurst written all over it?

Lindhurst is the old man who sells the young Lindhurst a camera which gives him access to his his own past via

the Lindhurst loop.

But if he changes anything, then it won't happen.

So the advice is don't listen to any of my advice, don't change anything, just carry the camera exactly as you are.

Just do exactly what you would have done under the circumstances had you not had this conversation with me, an older version of you, who'd sold you a camera that sent you back in time to be you before you were you.

So just

keep a low profile.

And it's actually a very slow, ponderous series from that point on.

It's just about Nicholas Linders trying to keep a low profile in his own life.

So the 60s was an exciting time for culture in that lots of new stuff did happen.

But

people always talk about how pop music was invented in the 60s and

the idea that modern music was invented in the 60s with the Beatles, et cetera.

But that's forgetting your 50s skiffle, isn't it?

But increasingly, I will listen to stuff from the 50s and be like, this is great.

But I've been listening to quite a lot of sort of doo-op-y stuff recently.

I think kind of inspired by Henry, really.

He's a doo-op kid.

Yes, come on.

I love doo-op.

Mr.

Sandman, send me a team.

Henry Packer's

will be touring this or

you know, send me

on some

play all all five members.

It's like a river shop.

I'm running up and down.

I've got five body acts.

I'm talking about different bow ties.

Costume changes so quick.

I have to use mirrors and holes as three fake Henrys.

It's a coup de bebop.

It's an absolute coup de bebop.

It's bebop, a brilliant, the evening standard.

Seven stars.

Be plop, if you ask me, the telegraph.

So it has cross-channel ferry near you.

It's actually, it's actually...

You'll really want to get off by the time you get to Sherborg.

Henry's mono bebop routine will be performed in the bit where you're driving the cars on so that you can choose to not open your windows and not listen to it.

It's an optional bebop experience for the perception where you're driving the cars on and driving the cars off.

I think before one of our Pythonic listeners emails in, what you were doing wasn't bebop, I don't think.

Could be a bream

because then, and then it's like

you start giving out the breams on the stage.

And that's the end of the show.

And yes, it's tooth one on breams.

It's tooth.

It's tooth one on breams in the very bottom.

Down to the canteen.

There's a great bit in that.

So, Mr.

Sandman,

who's it done by that one?

I don't know.

Oh, everyone's done it.

Everyone's done it.

I think it's the Nesbittettes.

They're often the somethings.

The Manson family?

Well,

this is the pre-60s, as you say, isn't it?

Because this music, Ben, as you were saying, this would have been considered ultra-square, right?

In the 60s.

Whereas obviously now,

as I've demonstrated, it's actually quite cool.

There's a great bit in that song, right?

It's the Cordettes.

The Cordettes, okay.

So cool.

If you listen to the Cordettes version of Mr.

Sandman,

there's a repeated refrain in that song, which is they go, Mr.

Sandman, send me a dream, boom, boom, boom, boom.

But there's only one point in the song, about three-quarters of the way through, where for the first time the sandman just answers.

Because normally they go, Mr.

Sandman,

and then towards the end, so they go, Mr.

Sandman, yes.

There's Karen, like, it didn't happen.

It's really odd.

I think it's the only evidence that there actually is a Sandman at the end of the recording studio when that happened.

Because there's no other explanation for it.

He keeps a very low profile normally, but he just.

He's not credited in the records.

He's not credited, and that's what's so terrifying about it, Mike.

Yeah.

Because you look through the credits on that album and he's not mentioned, but he definitely replies to his own name.

I feel like with Sandman, also, I wasn't really aware of the idea of the Sandman before the song Sandman.

Those concepts came into my life at the same time.

So it's an American thing, isn't it?

It's to do with going to sleep.

I think Metallica brought it to my consciousness.

Well, of course.

But I think they've included the idea of the magic beam purely because it rhymes with dream.

Okay.

What is the magic beam?

Two things to say to that.

One is,

shout out for Metallica's Barbershop album, which is underrated.

A lot of people thought it was a very misguided rebranding, didn't they?

Yeah.

But actually, they look great in those little straw hats and bow ties, didn't they?

Please turn on your magic beam.

It's true.

Is the beam just there?

Because it's toss up between that and bream.

Please turn on a magic bream.

Turn on your magic bream.

What are you doing to that magic bream

a magic bean is just that's checking the bean stalk what's that got to do with it no that's magic bean

this is magic beam

isn't it oh is it yeah it's yeah yeah this is a magic beam

i think i thought bean no it's not it's not done on your magic bean oh you're right it's not done on your magic bean dion do you know them no

or do i is it would they have a song that we would all recognize well they do a song which was absolutely wrecked by status quo.

Which one?

I'm a wonder.

Careful.

Careful, Henry.

Careful.

Tread very, very carefully.

Your next five words will decide whether you live or die.

Remember our core audience, Henry.

Remember our core audience.

You are playing a very dangerous game, my friend.

Which is wondering.

I just assumed that was their original

song.

But we can't play a bit of the wonderer, can we?

No.

because Natalie Bruglia is torn all over again.

What happened with Natalie Bruglia?

Torn.

It was a cover, but nobody realised.

Oh, I didn't even know that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just let us sink in, exactly.

Yeah.

Dion is a bebop group that did that song The Wonder that Carpenter State Squad.

Can you give us a version of it?

There's a lot of Rumpy Pumpy in this hour and a half show that I'm planning to take around the country.

If you don't like the Rumpy Pumpy, don't come in.

If you don't like people going,

then honestly, it's not for you.

But if you like cheap bream, it might be worth sitting through.

Now, of course, there's been a lot very, very delicate organizing my tour date in Newcastle because, of course,

it's the center, it's the black, it's the centre, it's the

absolute well, it's round zero, it's ground zero for illegal bream

in this country.

It's the tip of the bream funnel, isn't it?

The absolute tip of the bream bag.

And

so there's been some very, very delicate negotiations.

But luckily, the town of Newcastle has allowed me to keep Sting as a hostage.

Sort of deposit.

It's a kind of deposit.

For the length of the show, his only stipulation, Sting,

is that he has

a choice of hot sandwiches.

And a packet of wet wipes.

A packet of wet wipes.

Still and sparkling water mixed together.

And this is the tough one.

I'm not allowed to make any jokes about him having tantric sex last night.

Because he thinks that was just something that he only mentioned briefly in the late 80s, and it really annoys him.

It's still going on like a tantric sex session, might.

Oh, damn, I've not.

Good stuff.

We're coming to Newcastle, aren't we, with the tour?

We are.

So, how does the wanderer go?

Adam, but them, but them, but them, but them, but them, but them.

them.

Who wrote the book of love?

Do you know that one?

Yeah, it's great.

It's brilliant.

Do you agree with me?

My thesis,

which is that we've been fed an idea

that music became radically different in the 60s to such a degree that almost music before it is of a different kind of

world.

It's black and white music.

Yeah, but I don't think that's true at all.

If you listen to like rock and roll, it's really good.

It's not that different from what comes afterwards.

I think it's been overstated.

50s folk?

Yeah, it's all good stuff.

But also, rock and roll, of course, was all based in the

here we go.

And we put that in afterwards in the edit.

Wasn't it?

And that's where a lot of it came from.

Thanks to Stuart McConney for putting that in for us.

I mean, maybe, is this like a really, really like boring dead old horse to flog?

The idea that like, you know, there is no more cultural progression anymore.

That's a boring idea.

Yeah.

But is it is it still boring if I can also do this?

We're living in a cultural mire.

There's no new ideas.

I'm just recycling old tropes from previous things that I saw on television.

Bum bum bum bum and probably AI.

Bum bum bum.

Yeah, is that a boring idea though?

Yeah,

can it be true and boring?

Oh, yeah, yeah,

it's true and boring, isn't it?

Mike, your kids will probably be interested or fascinated by potentially the 90s, which is the thing that kids are interested in now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, like Radiohead is sort of huge.

Again, but not as not what they're doing now, what they pumped out in the 90s.

Oh, really?

Okay.

For example, right?

Friends.

Do you know know what I mean?

This is friends, yeah.

That's a smash-it show with it with the Gen Z's.

Nigel Kennedy.

Nigel Kennedy in his four seasons.

Gary Rhodes.

The last few years of Keith Floyd.

It's all just, yeah.

But also,

it's so bizarre, though, the clothes, isn't it?

Watching those come back.

So the other day, I was like, there was like a bunch of cool teenagers smoking in my flat.

And I walked past them.

I was like, How on, are they all dressed as Gordon Brown?

And they were.

What I'm interested in, Mike, is like when they talk about it or when they're kind of into it, do they get it wrong?

Or do they have a different idea of what it was than it actually is?

Do you know what I mean?

Hmm.

That's tricky.

I don't know.

They definitely don't want to associate it with me or anyone of their parental age.

They want to feel like it's their own discovery somehow.

I have to be disassociated from this stuff.

But that's interesting, isn't it?

Because it's your, it's your...

So this could be an opportunity to sort of bond with them, you'd think.

I just, well, I do find that.

I don't want to get into it too deep.

Do you know what I mean?

Come on, kids.

Let's just listen to the Bens and chill out.

Exactly.

That's their greatest fear.

Let's just get together and read loads of historical documentation about the Cash Requests scandal.

Is it the 90s?

Yeah.

It's a horrible, it must be a horrible moment as a dad, isn't it?

As well, it's a difficult moment when you see your daughter going off for a night out dressed as Christine Hamilton.

You are not going out dressed like that.

But also, I think about how for young people now,

getting into culture and things in their teen years and understanding music and films and stuff, the 50s must seem like such a long time ago.

I mean, it's a long time ago today.

So, what was it for us?

For us, was that like the 1870s or something?

Do you know what I mean?

It's always quite weird when you work out what that would have.

Well, yeah, it'd be like me being into the music of the 20s I guess

okay this thing happens though so I remember this basically cool people when you're at school and stuff when you're young that there's a kind of coolness or a sort of social like value in being able to see through the cultural swill that you're being served up by your present by the present and to go back and to know something from before it just has inherent coolness to it that's why you spent a year as a flapper girl in school that's why

Yeah.

Shanghai Sally.

And I tried to explain to the headmaster as I was marched off the premises.

I'm sorry, but that...

That floral fan was covering my genifuls at every stage of assembly this morning.

If you go back and look at the CCTV, that's part of my skill, actually.

It's actually part of why Shanghai Sally is so special.

Yeah, so

I remember, yeah, so it was like, and you can see that now.

There's something, there's like value in, isn't it?

It was like when you know stuff from before, not just what's on tele and what's on the internet or whatever, what's on the radio.

Like, you know, you've researched stuff from before.

When I was at university, I remember it was 70s was cool.

There's lots of 70 discos, 70s music funk.

Okay, yeah.

70s discos parties.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a kind of 20-year.

I'm interested to know, like, is there a sort of science to it?

Is there a sort of 20-year lag?

I want to work out the mechanism.

Like, is it that...

So, like, your kids, Mike, they're into what...

Is it that you get into what your parents were into?

I don't know, because with me, it was more direct, because I genuinely like my dad's record collection.

Like, I liked the...

All that marching music.

All the marching music.

Bavarian Umber bands.

There was loads of like

Clapton and...

ELO and Led Zeppelin, but there was also tons of blues and a bit of folk and

I just genuinely liked it so there was a lot of 70s I'd say I would have been in the 90s I would have been very rude about the 80s now I would have just thought the 80s are

this is part of it and we said 80s music is crap full stop done argument over this is this is part of it mike this is in the rules if we're going to crack this yeah you reject the the immediate previous decade always violently yeah so so it was i remember the night when you're like oh actually this is quite a good stuff in fact this stuff makes me well up yeah

if you play rick asley one more time, I'm going to propose to you.

Yeah, but you think it's all NAF.

Yeah, you see.

Yeah, so you reject the previous and you jump to the one, at least the one before that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Teenagers now.

So now we're 2025.

So the 2010s all makes sense.

The 2010s, roughly.

We're going to say the 2010s will be NAF.

What is that then?

Adele.

What is it?

What is the 2010s?

We're too close to it, Mike.

We're too close.

We can't see it.

We can't look directly into its bright hot light.

We can't.

Okay.

But yeah, what is it?

What the hell is the north?

Yeah, you can't even see it until a certain amount of distance.

Obviously, tra trouser width, just sort of if you kind of, if you could do a sort of that feels like it's moving quite quickly, though, trousers.

It goes in and out.

Trouser movement.

Trouser width feels quite quickly.

And I think this is the sort of thing that middle-aged men get very, we get trapped in very, like, accidentally, very quickly, because we don't like buying trousers.

Often people buy us trousers and we try and make the trousers last.

And you very quickly find yourself coming into criticism because you're...

Your jeans are too pipey.

They're too tight and they're obscene.

Whereas last year they weren't obscene.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

And then you go over baggy, and I can't keep track with it, basically.

It's time for Provincial Dad Chat.

Who's hidden my bloody walking boots?

I'm not saying it's ruined the holiday.

I'm just saying I asked for rum raisin.

Get your skates on, kids, otherwise we'll miss the inflatable session.

She's taking her mother to see Blood Brothers, which means more top gear time for me.

Why would I need to go and see a podiatrist?

Of course I've kept the warranty information, darling.

If they could just build a universal trouser that was timeless.

Well, I'm just saying at the moment, I think

trouser width fashions are moving fast, faster than they ever have before.

Yeah.

So we hit the point which Nostradamus referred to as trouser Mageddon about three years ago.

Exactly.

Which is, which he predicted it to the nearest decade, which is when trousers become wider than they are long.

That's when it happens.

So

we're at a period now where a young person literally cannot go through a revolving door.

That's going to exclude them from a lot of the sort of bigger financial institutions.

We've gone beyond britches, we've gone higher than pantaloons.

We're in the end times.

You can put a baguette into the average rear ass pocket of a trouser horizontally.

That's the other.

Those are the two signs, as he predicted.

As Peter Mustratops predicted.

The other one was

Gordon Ramsey's TV show Hell's Kitchen.

Those were the three.

All three have now happened.

So, yeah, decades.

Yeah, so I remember someone, yeah, you know, 70s was.

So now it's 90s.

I just think, in terms of the snake eating itself,

have we got beyond the point where, so like, if the 60s had their own flavour, the 70s had their own flavour, the 80s had their own flavor.

that I feel like they all have an authenticity to them obviously they're channeling stuff that's come before as well that now the 90s the 90s well it has like um well my

my second drop techno it has the way I yeah my

yeah

which I loathed yeah did you loathe techno I absolutely loathed it it made me feel sad to my core Brit pop was reaching back to the 60s yeah I think particularly yeah a lot of them particularly yeah there were some that were more the sort of blur sort of kinksy end and like, you know, Oasis wanted to be more rolling, the rolling stonesy type thing.

So there's quite a lot going on there.

So, yeah, so then it's noughties.

I wonder if, have we now gone into full snake eating its own bottom?

And is it just going to be rotating swirl now?

See, I think I was just working quite hard in the noughties.

I didn't really know what was happening.

I think there's now a better sense than ever of what the noughties were about.

There is.

Which was what?

Britney Spears wearing very low-slung denim.

That was the noughties, was it?

Okay.

Yeah, I suppose so.

So then, okay, so then the 10.

Oh, so it's the 10s we're saying that we don't know what they were, isn't it?

Okay.

The tens we just don't know.

Yeah, because they're too close.

So, one of the main differences, though, I think now,

so Mike, you're talking about your dad's record collection.

Something has changed now because in our, because, because when we were young, like, I nearly said in our day, thank fuck, I stopped myself.

But physically, you could only listen to what you physically had around.

So you'd literally go into your parents' bedroom and find that was the records.

That's literally what you had to listen to.

And after that, I would refer to Joe Wiley and see what she recommended, basically.

But there was a necessity driving that.

Whereas now, obviously, because of a little thing called the internet,

you've got full cultural access to everything.

Schubert.

Ravel.

Wagner.

The frog chorus.

So I just think we may have entered the swill times where everything's being stirred round.

And the other thing which is not helping this, I think, is AI.

Because AI just just sort of looks at everything,

puts it into a big swill bucket, mixes it all around and creates the average cultural swill, which is a kind of cultural huel,

the average song.

Yeah.

Well, maybe they'll, maybe some good times are coming then.

Maybe there's...

Because things backlash and rebound, don't they?

It feels like

if we are at peak swill, then from that swill, that fertile...

Don't forget the swill is fertile.

Yeah.

and what comes out of it, Mike will be birthed and my poems

because there is just that faintest possibility that the solution to all of this

is Ben's poems.

Time to read your emails, yes, please.

The email address is threebeansaladspaw.gmail.com.

When you send an email,

you must give thanks

to the postmasters that came before.

Good morning, Postmaster.

Anything for me?

Just some old shit.

When you send an email,

this represents progress.

Like a robot chewing a horse.

Give me your horse.

My beautiful horse.

We've heard this from Russell.

In Nova Scotia.

Ooh, lovely.

This goes back a bit, actually.

I'm fascinated by Henry's theory that congratulations is the only word that when you say it to someone, it has been conferred to them.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

I remember that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which I thought was a nice point.

Yeah.

Strong point, potentially.

But I'm starting to lose confidence in it though.

we've had a number of emails from various people saying that it's it's by a long way not the only one of these things for example russell says i think condolences and greetings fall into the same category okay oh good point yes condolences and greetings greetings was it yeah

greetings yes you're just saying greetings like it's a noun greetings

and yeah there are greetings because you just said them yeah there's a self-fulfilling prophecy

um we've also had an email on this topic from assistant professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy,

Dr.

Al Nika.

Perfect.

It doesn't say the institution, though.

It could just be.

Just the department.

Just the department.

I do have the institution here.

I just didn't want to completely

give away.

So it's a real institution?

Yes.

It's a seat of learning?

In the USA.

Okay, wow.

Could be currently under attack.

By Donald Trump and his.

Don't Don't say it.

By the wonder police.

Come on, we're all thinking.

Nina, Nina, Nina.

Actually, you probably can't even say that anymore.

Our sirens have to go, oh, sorry.

Do you mind if we come through?

Good stuff.

That's good stuff.

It's good stuff, isn't it?

At the end of the day.

I suppose I should start by clarifying that I'm not one of your listeners.

Interesting.

Great neg.

Great neg from the top there.

Who's instantly gone up in a role of our estimation

into that rarefied group?

I'm just married to and subject to the occasional report from a listener.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

Yeah, there is.

Yeah, there's a lot.

There are quite a few people in that situation.

The long-suffering spouse situation.

Long-suffering.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a silent woe, isn't it, that they suffer?

And you'll sometimes see them ashen-faced walking out of our live shows.

the last straw bring-alongs yeah it's quite often a last straw which is well we have set up a divorce booth haven't we so it's 25 pounds it's quite quick and easy on the way out we can settle it all for you

so in the most recent report i was informed that you have only recently discovered the word congratulations

i'll let that go i offer you my condolences oh

cleverly done cleverly done okay so we've got congratulations

greetings.

We've got three of them so far.

To say congratulations is itself to congratulate, indeed.

But I regret to inform you this is not some sort of exception or even that they are unusual.

In fact, this is a whole class of words and phrases known to linguists and the philosophers of language as illocutionary acts.

So they're never going to be known as packers.

I have to accept that.

They've been discovered.

What are they called?

Elocutionary acts.

Illocutionary acts.

Elocutionary.

What's that?

Illocutionary.

Illocutionary.

Which are bits bits of speech that enact themselves.

We all use them rather frequently.

Observe.

By saying, I promise, you thereby promise.

Oh.

How about oi?

Oi.

What's that doing?

I don't know.

I don't think you've got this at all, Henry.

By being informed that you are cordially invited, you are thereby cordially invited.

And by announcing I thee wed, you thereby wed the referent of thee.

Okay.

But I think I'm particularly excited by the single word ones, personally.

Compare.

By saying zebra, I do not thereby zebra.

That's right.

And also, by saying I eat a sandwich,

you don't necessarily eat a sandwich.

So, what these words are is you can't lie when you're saying these words in a way.

Because if you promise something, you have promised, even if you go back on it, you can't.

You did promise.

But that's where the crossing the fingers loophole comes in, doesn't it?

Congratulations.

Oh, sarcastic turns.

Sarcastic.

Ah, yeah, sarcastic.

Sarcastic elocutionary words.

Yeah.

Condolences.

Take that old one.

It's quite.

Please don't use that, people.

Yeah, it's very rarely appropriate.

That one.

And she carries on, presumably, by announcing I bollock you, I have not thereby bollocked you.

And yet, by offering this extremely elementary introduction to the basics of the well-known branch of language theory known as speech act theory, the theory that theorizes speech as an action.

I hereby announce that I have completed my first ever bollocking.

Wow,

that's interesting.

This person is sick to the back teeth of hearing about this podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm really sorry.

But hopefully, it's it's helped.

Hopefully,

send us a bollock.

Yeah.

Does a pin number qualify as that?

It's like your pin number.

You've not understood this at all.

The word that is a pin number.

No, no, no.

So if I was to say my pin number, the word 7813.

Because those aren't just the numbers.

That actually is your PIN number.

Do you really?

Like, you could use that number to actually

access your

bank account.

My condolences, Henry.

I don't understand.

Henry, I think you went from having a quite brilliant grasp on it to the point where I thought you'd discovered a whole area of scholarship to having lost that grasp quite completely.

And in a way, we're all much more comfortable in this.

I think so.

Back in this

situation, don't we?

That's fair.

And is that Bollocking Accepted, Henry?

Hang on.

Yeah, Bollocking Accepted, that counts as this, doesn't it?

Yeah, I guess it does.

Me saying Bollocking Accepted is elocutionary, isn't it?

Is it?

Yeah.

Because if I said Bollocking Accepted, I've accepted it.

Yeah.

Bollocking accepted.

We've got a wonderful email from Kath.

Okay, thanks, Kath.

I was just listening to the Vikings episode when Henry was talking about his childhood nicknames.

And it reminded me of the facts from my childhood that gives me both enormous mirth, but also great shame.

Fantastic start.

I didn't have a nickname when I was younger, so when I was about eight, I decided to make my own nickname.

I would tell people to call me by this Monica and remember signing letters and my childhood diary with the name.

Yeah, it's important to clarify that no one ever called me by this name.

The name?

The name was Rodeo.

Oh, that is outstanding

for an eight-year-old.

That is absolutely rodeo.

Rodeo.

Bloody hell, that's quite cool, isn't it?

Rodeo.

They call me Rodeo.

Rodeo.

Rodeo.

That's like sort of top gun call sign kind of character, isn't it?

It's also Pop Stars Kid.

Yes.

Yeah.

Rodeo Jagger.

Rodeo Beckham.

Rodeo Hucknell.

It's particularly cool when it's like, when it's happening in, you know, Lincolnshire or something.

Did Kath Kath say where she's from?

She says it's because I believed I was so wild and untamable.

Yeah.

Brackets, living at the time in a small village in the Derbyshire Dales.

My God, I'm now 45 and it still amuses me so much even to this day.

Every time I tell people this story, I think my husband loves me just a little bit less.

Well, we love you more, Kath.

That's magnificent.

It's time

to pay the ferryman

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Thank you to who signed up at our Patreon.

Thank you very much.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad.

Thank you.

And there were two tiers to sign up at: the Pinto Bean tier and the Sean Bean tier.

At the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Mike from the Sean Bean Lounge.

You certainly do.

You were there last night, I believe.

Oh, was I?

And it was a bit of a tough one, wasn't it?

Because all the members had to get together and

go through the financial ramifications of trying to launch a Black Forest Gato-flavoured hand cream.

That's exactly right.

Thank you, Bonjo.

And here's my report.

We were going through the financial ramifications of trying to launch a Black Forest Ghatto hand cream last night at the Sean Bean Lounge.

And where better to start than by visiting Tracer Eraser, Josh Narva, and Jane Crocker, all of whom are currently incarcerated in the Sean Bean Lounge Debtor's Jail and the Sean Bean Multipurpose Punishment Plex, brackets, East Wing, close brackets.

These three are well known within the lounge as the real trigger to the 2008 financial crash following their attempt to launch a steak and kidney suet pudding-infused exfoliator.

Investors laid to waste in the early stages of that venture included Matt Lilly V, who lost his house including his treehouse, Thomas Martinelli, who lost an irreplaceable Hyundai i10-themed kagoul he'd used as collateral, and Jessie USA, who lost her way.

Keir, not of the Starma Bean variety, briefly came good, having shorted the offal market, but the billions he made were of no use to him when the world's smallest mob on record, comprised of Annabelle Cook, Rach Williams, Hannah, and Alex ripped him so many new ones it wasn't worth burying or cremating him, and instead his remains were fed to a chaff inch.

Alan the Jobby Wallace, Sasha and John discovered their omnibank pensions weren't worth the paper they were written on, which incidentally was toilet paper.

Kennelli Konodu, Paul Watt and Paul found themselves having to turn to crime to earn a crust, but, being new to the game, picked the wrong crime and quickly found that graffitiing railway bridges doesn't pay the bills.

Global collapse followed, and thank goodness Jenko Jinkaloid, Lewis Grice and Meg Negamuse were able to persuade the powers that be that Sean Bean was too big to fail, leading him to receive a 4 billion Euro bailout from Greece.

No one wanted to go through that again, and so to investigate whether or not the full ghatto was required or whether perhaps component parts could be hand creamed, a series of experiments were conducted ranging from Mario Gruenberg putting pitted cherries on the ends of his fingers to Tom Abbas being steeped overnight in Kirsch from the hands up and Adam of Salt Spring from the hands down.

None of them survived, and it was clear it would have to be the full Black Forest Gatto or nothing.

Sue Fletcher Watson and Claire Riley worked out that packaging the cream in aesthetically pleasing jars would be a crippling overhead and lobbied hard to distribute it either in used sweet corn cans or from publicly accessible pay-as-you-go nozzles.

Alfredo Pine, Jess and Ben calculated that even if this approach was taken, the temporary pre-sale shortfall in the Sean Bean adult learning budget would mean that complimentary saxophone lessons would have to become bi-weekly, which would go down like a sack of the proverbial.

Mark Tequila suggested trying a simpler Victoria Sponge Cake hand cream in the first instance and did irreparable damage to his reputation.

Alex Succulent Coggins, Jamie McRobb, and Owen Bunt's calculations indicated the only way to make the project profitable was by selling non-fungible hand cream.

As arguments and counter-arguments raged on, Nick Cockcroft slipped out of the lounge, sold the concept to Unilever, and is now the world's richest man.

Thanks all.

Okay, that's the end of the show.

We'll finish off with a version of our theme tune sent in by a listener.

And if you would like to send in your version, please do to send it into threebeansalad pod at gmail.com.

You don't need to be a musical genius to do it.

Yeah, and also, why not send in a barber shop slash doowop style one?

Oh, yes, nice.

In that sort of vibe, that'd be nice.

That's not a Henry Packer version.

Are you asking me to improvise do wop bum bum bumming a uh a three bean salad tune?

I don't think it's beyond you.

All right, yeah.

How can I do that?

I'll be blind you.

Take it away.

Just to talk you through it.

You're really, you're really mugging it at the top end here, aren't you?

How long is this intro going to last?

The way that you introduce a doo-wop or a bebop or a cop-bob shop, whatever this genre is actually called, song, aside from just

telling everyone that you're about to do one.

Apart from that, but first you start with a bed of bomb bombs.

That's what I'm introducing now.

So there's a bed of bomb bombs.

from which the the bombas and the doodas and the bomb bomb balls rise

creating the tune itself before re-descending into the kind of sea of bomb bombs from which from which it rose.

Okay, so I'm going to start with the bomb bomb, the bomb bomb bed.

So,

anything can happen at that point.

Obviously, these bombs happen to be in D major.

I could have chosen C minor.

I could have chosen

F median.

And the whole thing is, you'll notice

the beat I've chosen for this tune is Rococo.

Excuse me, I only came for the half-price breeze.

What time will the fish be vended?

Thank you, Henry.

Thank you.

Cheerio.

Bumbae.

Who's um who's fire?

Henry, your fire alarm's going off.

Oh, it's mine.

Is it?

You set up my fire alarm, Henry.

That is the power of bum bombs.

But you do need to go and deal with it.