Fifth Wednesday back in 10 minutes transmission

Oh, for it is a fifth Wednesday.

We shall not be speaking today.

Put down your tools.

Switch off your electricals.

It's a fifth Wednesday, and we're in an inter-pope state, isn't it?

It's two

things wrong with the universe right now.

We also don't have an Archbishop of Canterbury at the moment.

Blimey.

We're betwixt bishops.

When the Pope does expire, as has happened, is there like a deputy pope that steps in while the Pope isn't the Pope?

There is, yeah, there's an interim.

A sort of Jeremy Hunt figure.

There's a Jeremy Hunt figure.

I can't remember what they call him exactly, but

there is a fella.

By the way, I always find it really funny when they're talking about the different popes and cardinals, when there's like

a British one.

Yeah.

And here's, and now, and oh no, and here comes Cardinal Kevin Simpson.

Yeah, this should be called like Luigi della Espazio.

Exactly.

I think, how many British cardinals are there?

There's definitely one, isn't there?

Because he pops up sometimes, but is there more than one?

I thought

there was one per nation.

Who is it?

It's Cardinal Nigel Fenchurch.

So there's currently four British cardinals: Vincent Nichols,

Michael Fitzgerald, Michael Fitzgerald.

Arthur Roche.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi, my name's Arthur.

I'm a high-ranking cardinal.

Sitting next to me at a wedding.

It could be Roche.

It could be Arthur Roche.

And I'm heir to the hazelnut billions of Europe.

And then the final one is the most vicious any, I think.

Hello.

I'm Cardinal Timothy Ratcliffe.

That's the best one.

Timothy Ratcliffe.

We could never have a Pope called Timothy Ratcliffe, could we?

No.

No.

He sounds like someone who would have got

a couple of Olympic gold medals in a time when it was just entirely amateur.

Yes.

He was working as a surveyor

and just took a long weekend

to go and compete in Madrid or something.

He did the first nine-minute long jump.

Yeah.

Timothy Ratcliffe.

Timothy Ratcliffe is a new cardinal.

He was created a cardinal in 2024.

And pouring the sacred crimson powder into the golden urn is Timothy Ratcliffe.

It doesn't suit that kind of pageantry, does it?

The

bells and smells stuff.

And his job within the Catholic Church, apart from being a

cardinal, is he's the cardinal deacon of Nomedigeso Emeria in Via Lata.

Nice.

Timothy Ratcliffe.

Timothy Ratcliffe.

And here come the cardinals now: Giovanni Battista,

Leonardo Sandri,

Tarquisio Bertone,

Jose Saraivar Martino, and finally His Eminence, Timothy Ratcliffe.

I have an issue with them wearing glasses.

Why is that?

Because they look totally medieval.

Yes, that's too old.

Except for the glasses.

I think they shouldn't be allowed glasses, but they should be like little...

Yeah.

Round wire ones or something.

Yeah, they should have really, really old-fashioned or like wooden ones or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it just makes them, it makes them all into Timothy Ratcliffe slightly.

Yes.

And the lens should be a highly, highly, highly polished shell.

Yes.

Or like marble glasses that are really heavy.

Yes.

Almost, almost opaque.

Or just a massive sort of transparent glass globe.

But yeah, they put their head in a big glass globe, and in the bottom of the globe is like the fingernails of Saint Boniface or something.

That's right.

And the steam of Edward the Confessor's last exhalation

going around inside it.

Did you watch any of the funeral?

I think it was on Saturday, was it?

And I woke up and

I'd forgotten it was on, basically, and I missed it.

So I caught the end of it.

I didn't watch it.

No, I mean, I saw a bit of, I saw some of the pictures in the press, but that was mostly the sort of like, and I saw a bit of Zelensky getting applauded and

all that stuff.

That was mad, wasn't it, that Trump and Zelensky were like negotiating a ceasefire at a guy's funeral.

Yeah, yeah.

That's not on, is it?

No one seemed to mind that.

I just thought that was quite bad, wasn't it?

I think it's just whatever works.

I think heads of state, that's what happens, isn't it?

All of these events are sort of there partly just to sort of meet up and do some networking and stuff, aren't they?

Yeah.

It was weird.

But like you say, Henry, with the glasses, I felt in general, when you look at like they have like a big camera shot, a wide shot, and you see the whole lot.

Yeah.

And part of you goes, this is amazing because this kind of looks probably the same as it looked in 1300.

Like it's the same, they're doing the same ritual, doing the same stuff.

yeah.

So that's amazing.

But then you look a bit closer, and it's like, oh, there's like a satellite TV van,

and there's a bloke, you can see like a bloke doing cabling, and you're like, No,

yeah, and the Argentinian cardinal's vaping, yeah,

and it's got one of those Madonna mics, yeah, and it's when the when the vape turns pink, they've changed in a new pipe.

Good stuff, you are the vape pope.

Um,

I tell you what, uh,

Stanley Tucci must be absolutely loving all this.

Because he was in the film The Last Cardinal.

No, what was it?

It was Cardinal Merch will be flying off the shelf.

The Cardinal Merch.

But that film just had such a boost, hasn't it?

It came out at such the right time.

Unbelievable.

Did.

Yeah.

I mean, they have to have had a hand in his death.

They must have done.

It's basically a confession note in the form of a film.

And it was probably John Lithgow who actually did it.

You'd think so, because you'd go for the person you'd least suspect, which would be Lithgow himself.

Yeah, he's such a good actor, he could pretend to be a cleaner or something going in, or he could pretend to be various cardinals, he could pretend to be anyone.

Choice of accents, no problem.

Yeah, he could pretend to be Stanley Tucci.

He pretended to be Stanley Tucci, which got really confusing when they were filming Conclave because you do it for an half.

Probably pranks, wasn't he?

Yeah, he could break in, he could pretend to be a dagger and then just stab the Pope and pretend to be a wasp.

Escape through the air conditioning units.

Also played by John Lithko.

Also played by John Lithko.

What were we saying?

We're saying it's fifth Wednesday.

It's a difficult time for the world.

Difficult time for the world.

People are responding differently.

Stanley Tucci must be loving it, though.

The Iberian Peninsula switched off the main queues.

That was mad.

Is it still eng-off there?

As of recording, I think it was, they said it was 90% back on.

Oh, God.

So I think like the trains are working again and things.

And the traffic lights.

Of course, the real disaster was that a lot of the teenagers couldn't charge their phones for a period.

It would have created a society where the man with the charged power bank is king.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And not what it is currently, which is the man with access to the most chorizo is king.

Which is, I've gone back to today.

Well, chorizo is a totally analogue thing, though, isn't it?

So that was the only thing that was unaffected by.

Yeah.

You know.

And it's also the thing, the only thing which whose value is as stable as gold isn't it chorizo that's why all of your pension is in chorizo isn't it it's all in chorizo i don't get to eat any of it until i'm 55 though

but i did have a nibble last week which might be why i've had chronic food poisoning

don't touch your chorizo investments don't touch them until it's time yeah so

I've been very ill, by the way.

Yes.

But I've recovered and today I'm feeling absolutely top of the world but then i'm having these really really extreme troughs every now and then

i can feel one coming actually you can see it i'm in one i'm actually in one yeah yeah but then i get these amazing highs so yeah i i had i had food poisoning on the way back from a barbecue on the train

and and and um it's a horrible lonely place to be when you're on a train having food poisoning did you did you did you void on the train i mean is this too grim to talk about hello listener the rest of this fifth wednesday non-episode will be a bit hard if you're the kind of person that doesn't like hearing about people being sick.

I know there are those of you out there.

So just to let you know, if that is you,

in the name of Timothy Radcliffe, please turn off now.

I did, I basically did, you know what, I voided on the train.

And I don't know if this makes it ironic or not, but I could hear people chanting about the London Marathon while I was doing it.

So it almost felt like I was being cheered on.

Can I ask an indelicate question, which is, what was the nature of the void?

Oral.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Oral.

I wouldn't be telling the story otherwise.

Was it a busy train?

Luckily,

it was a quiet train.

I went to a part of it where there was no one around, you know, but I could still be heard.

And

I know what happens when you hear someone voiding on a train.

You instantly judge that person quite harshly.

That's what I do.

But could you not have passed yourself off as a marathon runner who'd

kind of overexerted?

And people would have said, oh, that poor man.

Well, on the one hand, that marathon runner, on the one hand, I feel sorry for him because he'd obviously exerted himself so much that he was sick.

On the other hand, he was taking the train.

It's not in the spirit of the

necessarily in the spirit of the event.

Well, maybe next time you go to barbecue, you should bring one of those rectangles with a number on, just in case you need to whip it out and put it in.

That's quite a good life hack.

Or a rhino costume.

Or a rhino costume.

It's true, because if you don't want to draw attention to yourself,

rhino costume liveried with the name of your favourite charity.

Always that.

Always does a joke.

But I tell you, you, it's a lonely place.

Have we talked about this on a podcast before?

Which is, or maybe this is just in real life, we had this conversation, but there's a sort of human impulse which kicks in when, if you're being sick in public, which is you have to do it into something.

Yeah.

Like there's something incredibly...

It's not even cultural.

I think this is a primal animal thing to do with like maintaining the health of the herd.

Do you think so?

Or something?

Like you can't just be sick onto the floor.

Yeah.

Although.

That's when society's lost control yeah that's when society's lost control in a bag even in a bush you know in a bag in a bush in a pocket up your own arse wherever there is if you have to

but there are things you can do into a marsupial pouch

um

sports direct mug a sports direct mug perfect but do you know what i'm talking about yeah i understand that

you don't i i think it's partly because you also

yeah the modern thing is you don't want to be of further inconvenience because you're normally like everyone's a you're already away you're gonna there's gonna be someone in the crowd you're gonna set off right some people are very easily triggered by these things but I just think there's a deal you're gonna wake up

worse by there being visuals and oh god so what I did was I pulled out my trusty

um reusable plastic bag which I've had for years yeah

my bag for life so so it all went in there and then I got to my

and you got the budgeons and I knew people could hear me because there is an absolutely a sort of there's a clarion call which goes with being sick, which you can't really disguise.

No matter how good an actor you are, I mean, I suppose I could have gone,

I hate you,

I hate your baddie.

You'd have gone Glaswegian, would you?

You'd have tried to palm this one off on the Weezies.

I'm gonna try and palm this off on the Scots

for this entire incident.

Oh, God.

So then I got off from the platform,

poured it all out onto the platform.

What?

I hid behind a pillar while people were judgmentally walking past me.

Because people, you don't think food poisoning when you hear that, do you?

What about all that?

You think bad guys are living a bad life.

What about public toilets or anything like that?

Just out on the platform.

I wasn't in

a strong mental state.

Why did you just take the bag home?

Well, it was leaking out of the bag.

Oh, my God.

The clock was ticking.

So I poured it out onto the...

Oh, God, I'm so sorry to London Transport, and I'm really, really sorry.

But I was.

That was the wrong thing to do, but I understand that you were in a panic.

So what was the right thing to do?

In a bin?

Yeah,

sorry, I am sorry.

I was so not in a good way.

I'd have had to walk up the platform dripping it, though, Ben.

And then you'd have got some on the floor, wouldn't you, if you'd done so?

I had the mindset of a

of a cat that's been hit by a car and knows it's got about 20 minutes to live that's where that's where I was at which is you hide under you hide yeah no I do it

um so I was hiding behind this post I let the people walk past me I knew they were judging me I then got on a line bike

I had that thing where I you I had the thing where you feel really much better suddenly a brief window So I had the brief window.

And I'll tell you what, I got a tube, I got a tube to the station.

I had to change that.

At the station, I had to change it.

I knew I had to get out into the open air.

Again, it's that impulse which is, I need to be sort of, if I'm in an enclosed space with other people and I'm sick again, that just can't happen.

It's a primal, pre-linguistic impulse.

I didn't even understand what it is, but I can't let it happen.

So I got out in the open air, so I had to get on a line bike.

Again, it's a pre-linguistic, primal urge

to hire a bike.

Luckily, a line bike has got a sick catching basket on the front, doesn't it?

Exactly, good shout.

And if only sick was one was the worst thing I've ever found in a line bike basket.

Um,

but um, I then

cycled all nearly all the way home, and then I realized I'm going to be sick again.

I've got to get off the line, I got off the line bike, oh god, walked home, got into the home,

was sick, went to bed.

Is this about

maybe like five or something at this point.

I then lay in bed for about seven hours in a fever dream state.

Oh, wow.

And genuinely, I got it into my head.

So my mind decided I was thinking about the marketing of my sickness,

which doesn't make any sense.

But I was having this thing about, so the marketing, I need to

do I need someone to market this.

And I could see my sickness as a sort of globule and I was looking at it going, I'm going to have to market this.

Or someone was offering me to market it.

The last time that happened to me when I had the kind of fever dream thing,

I really vividly remember the dream, which is that I sort of felt like I'd woken up and the duvet in front of me was an Arsenal duvet.

Had like an Arsenal duvet cover on it.

It was, or you thought it was.

I thought it was.

So I saw it as that, like a kid's one, you know, like a seven-year-old might have.

And then a bloke came into the room wearing an Arsenal strip, full Arsenal strip, and started tugging, pulling the duvet off me, saying, you're not a big enough fan to have that duvet.

You're not a good enough fan.

And he was right.

I was right.

I mean, sorry, he was right.

Yeah, no,

that didn't really happen.

That was a dream.

I I didn't just tell you.

Yeah.

Isn't that weird?

That is weird.

Was that before or after I took you to your first Arsenal game?

Before.

Strange.

But it's good to know that when your body is under attack, it reverts to all it's like brainstem.

It's like, what is there at the core of you?

For me, it's wondering if I'm an Arsenal fan.

For Henry, how can we market this?

It is good to know that, isn't it?

Yeah.

Have you ever had that, Mike?

Sort of delirium.

Yeah, but I'm not sure I can think of a specific example.

Yeah.

Maybe I haven't.

Maybe it's just completely blank.

I've got a horrible feeling.

Maybe I'll just go completely blank.

Sort of screen saver.

I think when Mike gets into delirium state, he just sees a sort of...

I see the faces of those I've killed, obviously, but I don't.

I can't see the faces of those you've killed.

That's strangely covered.

In a sort of Rolodex, one after the other, or are they all sort of

sort of floats about slightly different sizes?

Anyway, this isn't an episode of Three Been Summit.

Not an episode.

It's Fifth Wednesday.

We don't have a four Wednesday.

And yes, and we're not back actually until June.

June.

June.

Because in May, we don't put out any normal episodes, but the episodes will continue over on Patreon.

We'll do our Patreon-only episodes all the way through May.

And then we'll be back on the main feed in June.

So we'll see you then.

See you then.

Enjoy the beginning of the summer.

No.

The Sprummer.

The Sprummer.

We'll see you in the summer, won't we?

If you're UK-based.

And if you get invited to a barbecue, do not touch the prawn kebabs.

Don't touch them.

It's not worth it.

Unless you want to know what your brainstem is thinking about.

In which case,

it's a direct line, isn't it?

That's why prawn is the same shape as an old-fashioned phone.

All right.

Bye.

Bye.