The Vikings

Hello, everyone.

Hello.

Hello.

Mike is currently doing a dance as old as time.

It's called the Lumbago.

Please meet my dance partner, Sciatica.

She's a beauty.

And today's orchestra is led by Father Time.

He's creaking.

Lest we forget, all of us are essentially just a meat covering around a skeleton orchestra, isn't it, of sort of musical instruments for a skeleton orchestra, isn't it?

Playing in the key of inbuilt obsolescence.

That's right.

As soon as you start reaching for the hot water bottle

section of pharmacy,

something's changing, isn't it?

You know, there'll be a lack of interest from the healthcare community.

That's true.

And I think in my case, that's fair enough.

Is that because you've been put into the category of not worth it?

I'm in the downhill slope category.

Managed decline.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

You're like a defunct old cable car, which is we could reconstruct the cable car.

That would cost a lot of money.

Yeah, it could be a tourist attraction, but what are they going to see from the apex of this?

Is it worth it?

Is it just some slurry pits and some grain silos?

It's going to cost a lot of money to safely destroy the

cable car, isn't it?

Yeah.

So are we better just to leave it on a hillside slowly rusting away?

Why don't we just delete all the emails pertaining to the cable car?

Stop talking about the cable car.

What cable car?

Exactly, Rogers.

That's the attitude.

What attitude?

I don't know.

Who are you, Rogers?

None of us know each other.

Bye.

Ah!

Everyone just runs away.

Yeah.

There's that situation, isn't it?

So, Mike, what is lumbago?

I think I've heard of it, but.

lumbago is just a very antiquated term for lower back pain.

Okay.

I mean, you could very reasonably go to a modern health professional and say, I have lumbago, and it wouldn't,

it wouldn't reflect on them poorly if they had no idea what you were talking about.

Oh, I see.

It's not going to be in any modern textbook.

And it's partly because it's disguised as a dance regime with its name, isn't it?

It just sounds like a sort of

flaming lumbago.

It sounds like you're in Cuba.

Yes.

It's 1957.

Yeah.

Cuban dance or a very, very rare sexually transmitted infection that you've had to go into species to acquire.

That's right.

Because you've been dancing at dances all this time with lizards,

with illegally imported lizards.

Huge in the Victorian era that was, wasn't it?

It really was.

They say he's taken a lizard mistress.

The scaly pleasures.

That's what the pith helmet was for, wasn't it?

You took off off the pith helmet, and inside there was a miniature drinks cabinet

and a lizard sitting on a chaise long lying next to it.

A lizard grooming hat.

Oh, Mike, well, I'm sorry to hear you're suffering.

It's fine.

It's of no great shakes.

I'm pretty sure that I once heard a proper evolutionary scientist talking about the fact that, and this might be bollocks, the back pain.

No, no, I'm going to fall into my trap, which is saying that evolution isn't real,

which I always fall into about

once every single day.

This is why crabs don't have backs.

Exactly.

You cannot have lumbago if you don't have a back.

If you're just a top shell.

If all you are is you're a head with legs.

If you're a head with legs, you take it.

That's part of the evolutionary process.

All spinal issues are gone.

Also, that's why

you can't give a crab a dead arm.

It's only got legs.

It's completely means a dead arms.

It's got no solar plexus.

You can't wind a crab.

It doesn't need shin pads.

It is its own shin pads.

It's ready to go for five aside.

Just ready to go.

I think what I was getting on to is that is it kind of proof the fact that all humans basically end up with lower back pain, partly it's proof that our modern way of life is not the way we're meant to be living, right?

We shouldn't be gamboling across the savannah with the woolly mouth.

Can I quote the words of a Russian masseuse

directed at me a week ago?

Putin's masseuse.

Keep that quiet, Mike.

Let's just say it's a I've got a very, very high-end Russian masseuse

who has to who has at least three secret identities at any one time.

And three secret pipelines.

Yeah, go on.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, she comes to me through the masseuse, through the North Sea Masseuse pipeline, which is still active.

People don't realize that there are masseuses moving to and from the old Soviet bloc

at will and have been since

before 1989.

Yeah, so she,

I mean,

that was

masseuse.

She said, um, you sit at the computer, don't you?

Oh, dear.

And I went, sorry, yes.

It was so judgmental, but she could tell that just from just from looking at me, my sort of odd stance.

Yeah.

And that you haven't killed a wild boar with your bare hands in weeks.

Wait a second.

You have never wrenched the hoofs off a goat, have you?

Using only your jaw.

Yes, I can tell you're going to have to have the premium package.

$89.99.

She gave in but just instead of general stiffness and stuff, she gave in absolute pummeling.

It was unbelievable.

But for some reason, I did this thing that I do when I'm in a Ms.

situation.

She kept on saying, Is the level of pain okay?

And I kept on going, yes, it's fine.

Kill me, kill me, ignore me when I say kill me.

That's just a natural response because of the amount of pain.

I'm like, kill me.

It's a natural response.

Ignore that.

Because, you know, Mike's got his lower back pain.

I've got, you know,

I'm stiff as a board a lot of the time in dress ways.

And

so

I went to one of these Russian places where they absolutely pummel you.

And

what was happening was she'd start massaging a section of my back and I'd be like, this is unbearably painful.

She'd say, how is the level?

I'd say, fine, thank you.

That's how that's, we kick things off like that.

Because I think that's what you have to do, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the game.

Yeah, that's the game.

Because you do want it to be painful as well.

You sort of want it to be painful.

But what I kept on doing

in my mind was um sort of to cope with the pain it's quite quite difficult uh mentally to know what to do with your mind when because everything in your body is saying i'm under attack i'm under attack do you enter your memory cathedral

i went into my memory cathedral but unfortunately it was um

it was just complete mess in there i've very poorly categorized i haven't i haven't been maintaining it

it's basically been turned into a gregg's run by chris deberg if i can tell but it was absolutely moths and some old old boxes.

There's a lot of moths around.

Lady and Bread.

Perfect.

Very nice.

You know what?

Clip that up.

Put it on the socials.

I'm pretty sure we're going to go viral.

Are you ready for that?

Are you ready for that?

Well, that's going to do your life.

I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.

Obviously, being on those American talk shows where there's a potted blonde and a picture of the New York skyline will be fun at first.

It's the Jimmy Wingle show.

I can't wait to go on Jimmy Wingle.

It'll be good to be on Jimmy Wingle.

I'm going to be a little bit of a

jokes that you didn't quite get.

And for some reason, the guy who leads the band talks a lot.

I don't know why.

He's got a cool jazz hat as well, hasn't he?

He's got a cool jazz hat.

They talk to him loads.

Anyway, what was the question?

You were telling us your pain coping strategy.

Basically, my pain coping strategy was she'd be like going at my top left shoulder.

Yeah.

She'd be going at my top left shoulder, right?

Going hard.

And I'd be thinking to myself, this is incredible how much this hurts.

It was almost unbelievable.

And then I think to myself, there's so many other sections of my body left to go as well.

Can it be a cumulative pain process?

Does it just even out at some point?

Is there a plateau?

When will I pass out?

Is there a way that I can trigger a passing out?

That's what I need right now.

If I shove my head through the little head hole, will I choke myself enough so that I black out?

Can I cut off the blood, not to my head, but to the rest of my body so that I can remain sentient but the rest of my body passes out?

Is there a way I can pass out, but still let her know that she needs to carry on with the massage?

Well, I could try and get my hand into a Richter's thumbs up position before I pass out and hold in.

But what I did was mentally, I sort of started chopping my body into sections, a bit like, I suppose, what they did with the Titanic, which is you think, if you're worried about something, divide it into sections.

Mentally dismember yourself.

Mentally dismember yourself.

I sort of chopped myself into sections.

I thought top left shoulder, top right shoulder, mid-back, left-right, thighs, pelvic floor, ceiling, and walls.

The pelvic promenade.

The pelvic strand.

The pelvic strand.

The pelvic conservatory.

In the pelvic amusement arcade.

And

also the five new pelvic business units, which I put in, only three of of which are occupied.

We've got Chirro's face.

We've got a mini WH.

And a meat wholesaler.

But there's actually two left.

Well, you've had some positive noises from Chris de Bervney about opening another Greggs franchise.

Well, that's right.

That's right.

We're in talks.

Maybe clip that up as well.

So what would happen is she'd finish the shoulder and I think, oh, that's okay.

That chunk's done.

And I think, hopefully, the next chunk.

There's no way the next chunk can be as painful as left shoulder.

But then she goes, I think about the lower back, like that can't be.

And then she goes to the lower back, right-hand section, like, fucking, I didn't know that could hurt as much.

That's almost worse.

I didn't know that.

And I think the buttocks, there's no way there's going to be that much pain in the buttocks.

I mean, the shoulders, oh my god, the buttocks have got new kinds of pain, new flavours of pain.

You know what I mean?

Like every bit of my body, it turns out, is just maximum pain, except one that was the worst, which was top thighs.

Oh, yeah, top thighs.

When she was going at my top thighs, I thought,

I just thought this is

just, this is beyond anything.

And I actually had flashbacks to when I was a kid.

I felt like it was a sort of bully move or a sort of

someone would grab your thigh and sort of squeeze it.

What?

Is that right?

Hell.

I had a flashback to someone attacking me as a child and like just squeezing the top of my thigh.

I was having sort of, yeah, I was having flashbacks.

That's not an ordinary bully attack mode.

There's your Chinese burn, there's your BCG punch.

Oh, yeah, she did all of those as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The BCG punch.

I was so scared about the BCG.

I was scared for weeks.

It ended up not being quite as bad as people said.

I never had my BCG.

What?

You could have terberculosis right now.

You could have tuberculosis right now.

Although it would suit you.

It would suit your sort of pale, willowy complexion and

your sort of artistic bent.

He's a sort of diet.

He's an artiste.

Yeah, that's true.

Consumption, I'd call it, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think you'd do very well in a sanatorium.

Oh, thank you.

Tartan blanket over your knees.

Yeah, looking out to the sea.

yeah, just for three or four years, working away in a watercolor and some poems.

Yeah, I think you'd thrive.

Think how could you be at the banjo at the end of that time?

Oh my god, yeah.

But then one of the nurses would look at the watercolours and go, Hang on a minute,

have you got any more of these?

Take them together, show them to the guy who runs the sanatorium.

She knows that his brother is an art dealer.

They collect them all up.

You've done hundreds of these things, and they show it to the art dealer.

And he says, These are the worst watercolours I've ever seen.

I'm going to kick him off the pier.

I'm going to gather the townsfolk and kick him off the pier.

Let's turn on the beam machine.

Let's do it.

Oh, yes, please.

And of course, normally we'd use the beam machine jingle that I made, but we have one sent in.

By

Jassy.

Oh, great.

Hi, Jassy.

Hello, Beans, the wife of a longtime listener and and patron supporter here.

Ah, thanks, Jassy.

We're currently travelling around Australia, so every week we have to make sure that we have Wi-Fi to be able to tune in.

Very important.

Nice.

I'm sending in my Bean Machine remix, as I felt the need to make my mark on the world.

So hang on to your hats, fellas, because this will knock your socks off.

Lovely stuff.

It shouldn't be our socks we're hanging on to.

It's a minor point.

Well, she does say brackets, pardon my mixed idioms.

Oh, good, great stuff.

We're on the same page.

P.S.

It's pretty low quality.

I recorded it while I took a break from scrubbing out the caravan.

But I think you'll be able to see that I have real talent.

Okay.

Here we go.

Bean machine.

Turn on the bean machine.

Bean, bean, bean, bean, bean machine.

So

traveling is tough on a person.

Traveling is really, really tough,

isn't it?

My worry

is that

she's eating her husband.

Oh, he's long gone.

I mean,

he's been eaten and digested, and

He's fertilising

the out-back cacti.

Yeah.

I do wonder that, Jassy, that last bit of Wi-Fi you may probably should have used to let someone know your coordinates.

But thank you for instead using it to send us.

There's evidently talent, of course.

But my concern is that Jassy and her husband have been either killed or kidnapped by a gang of koalas.

You think they're signaling to us?

I think they're signaling to us.

Using a Casio medium.

I think that could be it.

Do you think if we played that backwards, it would have some kind of, you know, some kind of message for us.

Or it's possible it was actually that was made and written by koala.

But thank you, though, Jesse.

Thanks, Jesse.

Whoever you are, whatever you are.

Also, I'm very pleased with the idea that they've gone traveling around Australia into the Outback with what sounds like a small Casio keyboard.

That was on the inventory.

That was on the list, the crucial list.

Well, it's one one of the

two things you can do, isn't it?

If you're attacked by an alligator, you either run diagonally up a tree

or you play

anything with a samba beat.

Assuming that Casio has a samba beat pre-programmed,

the alligator will try and do a samba.

It can't because

it's only got too many legs.

If it's a croc, let the metronome go tick-tock.

That's phonemionic for it, isn't it?

If it was an alligator, get the Casio on and play the Samba.

It's not a great rhyme, but

if you take your chances without learning that monomeric, then be my guest, because running bags running up a tree is harder than it sounds.

If it's a croc, let the rhythm be rock.

If it's an alligator,

then it's samba time later.

Okay.

Not bad.

If it's a caiman.

Then literally play it a CD by the composer Michael Cayman.

That's a

one-on-one.

It's a one-on-one, that one.

If you see a Cayman, though, they're like, you could just kick a Cayman in the head, couldn't you?

I mean, they're like a mini croc, aren't they, a Cayman?

Mini, yeah, little mini.

It's like a sort of angry handbag.

South American, like, yeah.

South American novelty croc.

It is like an angry handbag, Ben, but they get even more angry if you try and stash credit cards in them.

They abhor the interest scene, don't they?

They think it's they regard it as usury, yeah.

don't they?

Credit card.

Very old-fashioned and that's perfect.

But the maximum is you can use one to pop maybe just some hand sanitizer.

A couple of mints.

A couple of mints.

Lip balm?

Yeah.

Lip balm.

So just something for like a day, you know, popping down the shops level.

Yeah.

Do you not try, you cannot go overnight with a fucking caiman.

And don't don't fall for the people that say they can sell you a wheelie caiman.

That's not a caiman.

That's not a caiman.

It's a small hippopotamus, and it's even more angry than that caiman would have been.

But of course, the advantage of a caiman is you can bring it on board because you don't have to stash it underneath your seat.

You can just say that

it's a frightening wallet, can't you?

Or a thick belt.

Or a thick belt.

I'd love to handle a caiman.

I was telling you Mike Goodier.

I've spent quite a lot of time this week, Henry, watching Steve Owen documentaries on YouTube

about fearsome saltwater crocodiles.

God rest his soul.

Yeah.

He was really good.

He was good.

He's one of those people of whom you can properly say he died doing what he loved.

Harassing him.

Stingray.

But if you were to die doing what you love best, what would that be?

So editing a podcast.

Editing.

Would it be removing one of Henry's guttural noises?

I'm just going to remove this guttural noise.

Hang on.

Is that him or me?

I can't tell.

And in a way, Ben had the last word because he edited himself, in a way.

I've been overcome by the mucus I couldn't edit out.

Yeah, yeah.

These are just ideas we chuck around, isn't it, Mike, between us at the

AGM?

Yeah.

For me, if I died doing what I loved,

I think

I'd be just looking at a funny YouTube clip.

But look at that sad old fuck falling off a shed.

Oh, God.

The shed's falling off me.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, anyway.

Okay, this week's topic, as sent in by Ben.

Solid now.

Hello, Ben.

Thanks, Ben.

From Minnesota.

Ooh.

I think it might be our first Minnesotan, probably.

Yeah.

Nice.

And the way to remember how spelled that is, is M-I, all the N's, one S, couple of T's.

Keep it going.

Just keep going.

And then do it again.

Do it again.

And just,

it's a form of whittling, isn't it?

You whittle it down, your Minnesota's name eventually.

But just feel, I'm going to say, feel it with the T's.

Just feel it.

It might be different every time.

Do you know what I mean?

Is Fargo Minnesota, or is that

one of the Dakotas?

Oh, is it?

Okay.

But is it that kind of bit?

I think it's the kind of bit where everybody's kind of

slightly connected.

Aboard.

Water Yatakin aboard.

And everyone's really nice.

I think a bit of the TV series might be in Minnesota, though.

Everyone's really nice.

All they do is make pie and drink hot chocolate and murder people.

There are constant, despite the fact that everyone's really sweet and friendly, there's

constant murders happening all the time.

Well, I wonder if that has informed his choice of topics to put in the Boom Machine because he's put in

Vikings.

Interesting.

My thing about Vikings is my main memory of Vikings is

they got me through being a kid in terms of history.

Like everything was like all I cared about was Vikings.

You know what I mean?

I thought you you meant it would be like just shout out to Vikings they let me know that it's okay to be weird yeah

and actually

yeah so

a big thank you to Vikings

because

in life because where would you be without raiding where would I be without raiding raiding other people's ideas

raiding and braiding

and actually aiding other people in dying

to get closer to that threshold that we all have to pass pass.

The threshold of getting skewed on the end of a big

heraldic sword.

I think when I was a kid, I was kind of semi-obsessed with Vikings.

I feel like Vikings, a bit like dinosaurs, are in that sort of...

Come on, did they really happen?

Come on.

It's just too obviously entertaining for children.

Do you know what I mean?

Like these guys, they've got horned helmets.

They go around in a big boat.

There are bits from history and prehistory that have got...

Yeah,

the merch levels are massively out of proportion with

world impact, right?

Huge merch opportunities, just very exciting.

And also,

this other sense, the other thing I always remember thinking about Vikings is

they've got this flaw in their society, which is their source of, which I think is the thing which fires them up and motivates them.

And that's the way their tax system works.

There's no social security, there's no safety net.

There's no safety net.

If you're a ballie Viking, if you have to go off work for any reason, childcare and so on, I mean, it's

a nightmare.

It's an absolute nightmare.

Forgiving.

And that's why they all essentially are freelance because there's no government institutions.

So everyone's freelance, isn't it?

You gang together

and

you work away from home in a sense.

I suppose in a way they were the first digital nomads.

Instead of getting a visa, they'd just chop a monk's head off, bash a monk over the head.

But no, the thing is, in my mind, I think that the flaw in their society, which I think fired them up and made them quite so angry, was the fact that despite the fact they were brilliant at warfare, great at helmet construction, superb at seamanship, brilliant at navigation, probably discovered America, we're not sure.

They couldn't design a cup that you could put down.

Did they not have goblet technology?

No, no, because

they drink out of those, they drink out of holy horns.

They have horns.

You see them celebrating at a banquet going, ha-hi, hey, we did it, hey.

And then there's this kind of moment of like, oh,

I want to make my chips now, but I can't because I've got a cold.

I thought they were trying to upsell me when they said I could buy the horn stand with the horn, but the horn was already quite expensive.

It's a gilt horn, it's decorated with jewels.

And I thought, well, actually, I should have got, I thought, I thought I'd push the boat out, no pun intended, buying this horn-shaped glass clap in the first place.

And also, food-wise, they're serving, well, they're serving drinks on a horn, but then the food is all haunch-based.

That's a two-handed meat.

That's a two-handed big slab of meat that I'm haunching into my face.

It's the horn haunch.

It's the horn-haunch nightmare.

It's happening.

You can't do that with a horn.

You have to put the horn under your, well, in your, like, under your arm.

Yeah, but I've poured hot meat over my right nipple.

And it does sort of work under the arm, right?

I mean, it's, it's, it's hooked, it sort of works, but yeah, if you've got hot meat, then you're in, you're in trouble.

You know what?

This is put me, this is what puts me in such a bad mood.

I'm going to have to behead another monk.

Right, let's go.

so this was the fire underneath them was it possibly it's a good theory it's always bothered me that thing that they that they're just those holding those cups the holding those those tankards whatever they are made out of a horn just what what happens next it's always really bothered me yes you say cheers yes you celebrate beheading a monk yes you kick the monk's head down the down the table down the long thin table if you want play bowls with it have a good have a laugh but what do you do with that tankard when you've had your fill what the fuck do you do with it what's it what's your crockery rack situation

i think it's pre-rack because we're talking 11th, 12th, when we're talking 9th and 11th, 12th centuries.

We're talking,

aren't we?

We're talking high post-middle-age.

We're talking middle age.

We're talking dark ages.

We're talking high post-middle-age.

Aren't we?

We're talking pre-Saxon, post-Saxon, Saxon, Saxon, Saxon.

Aren't we?

We're talking Nordic.

So in terms of that technology, I don't think we've got racks yet.

We certainly didn't have coffee

cup holders.

They probably had racks in Persia, didn't they?

Of course.

Of course, well, the Persian racks

changed the the world,

but not yet.

I mean, the nearest thing I suppose you could do is stick it in the eye-hole of a monk's skull.

But the trouble is...

The monk would have had to be looking directly upwards when you beheaded him.

You're walking exactly in.

Which is hard to make sure that one of your mates hasn't walloped him over the top with a club as well.

He probably has.

Otherwise, you've ruined another skull.

Frederick, Frederick.

He's done it again.

But isn't it that you drain the horn of mead?

Yes, you drain the mead, yeah.

And then you,

yeah, you like, you plunge the horn into the soft Saxon slave.

Yeah, into the soft belly of

one of the monastery boys.

A Celtic prisoner.

You mean

you shove the horn down into the soft flesh of a corpse and or a living person who becomes a corpse as you're doing that.

Yeah, but how does that work at the banquet the next night?

The slaves are around.

You've got the local population enslaved.

They would have stolen a bunch of Celts and whatnot.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so maybe there were solutions.

Can I get ahead of a baller king?

Yes, please.

Because someone's going to go, they didn't actually have horns on their helmets.

We know.

We know.

We know.

I contend that they did.

That's a hill that I will die on.

Did they not have horns on their helmets?

I think that's one of those kind of myth things.

They probably had them, but maybe they only wore them on special occasions.

It wasn't like they were wearing them every day.

You know, those Viking ships they went round on?

I picture a lot of people people rowing on the long ships.

Did they have sort of underquarter bits?

Did they have like a canteen?

Did they have no, I don't think so.

Was it just

a mini cinema with like Nordic myths

going around?

Oh, it's the uh the origin story of Odin tonight.

Again.

Again.

Oh, what happened to his eye?

What did it happen to?

Mike, how come you this is to come before?

You know loads about Norse mythology, or I know much less than I should do for some reason.

What's Odin's eye?

He was one-eyed, wasn't he?

Didn't his dad pull his eye out?

It's good parenting.

Was that to have somewhere to put down his tankard?

This runs through Viking society like a sticker office problem.

It runs through it like a horn through a monk's head.

It may not have been his dad.

And it may have been a sacrifice.

I don't know.

I'm looking him up now.

I don't know.

But the thing is, Ben, what you've forgotten with me is that I will have a little gimlet bit of knowledge about something and then say it in a way that I

am pretending that I know a lot about it.

Yeah, you're in the shallows for real, but you're pretending you're in the deep end.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm always in the shallows.

But I did like that.

I definitely liked that stuff as a kid, your Nordic mythology.

I would have been the kid who's like, was really excited about, you know.

Eric's sagas and that kind of thing and would have would have had an Osborne my first book of Nordic myths and would have would have been would have enjoyed it a lot but I just were I can't remember any detail in terms of our

you know our personalities and how we fit into the Norse mythology I've always thought of myself as Loki the prankster the trickster

the prick the dickster

who is that pricky

you know I mean the trickster

I'm just looking through some Norse myths here.

There's, of course, the theft of Iden's apples.

We all know about that, don't we?

That was an Idon.

Iden, the goddess of youth had magical apples that kept the gods young the trickster god loki was forced by a giant to steal them that is the kind of scrape i'd get into

without the apples the gods began aging

loki later tricked the giant and returned the apples restoring the gods youth you know all these like myths like that You know, as societies develop, right, why is it that societies have to come up with an absolute bullshit explanation for stuff?

So they go, the sky is blue.

Oh, that's because Susan from the ocean fell out with Grandor,

the king of the fern trees, and he splashed her with water and she spat it out and it landed on the sky.

Henry, you don't quite realize what you've done there, but you've started a new religion.

You've done ex I mean, you've you've done this.

I mean, I've seen you explain elements of science live on stage and whatever before an audience, sometimes in front of actual scientists who know better.

Well, look, there's always...

You've got the conch, you've got the conch.

Every religion, they're always skeptics.

Mike, you're a skeptic.

But if you want to believe in Pacadonia.

By the way, can I be the first priest of Pacadunia?

Yes, I'm a fully signed Pakada.

Welcome.

Welcome on board.

Now, Pacadonia.

People say, is it a cult?

It's not a cult.

It's simply a religion that costs $25.99 per month to be a member of.

And that's $25.99.

Could have called it $26, but we didn't.

With wisdom upgrades upgrades available.

For $44.99.

Now.

Come for the Enlightenment Away weekend.

For $77, $77.99.

Where's the decimal point?

You find that when you get there.

Pakadoo, Pakadoi.

Pakadoo, Pakadoi.

White Susan throw the sky upward from the ocean.

We don't know, but she was angry.

Pakado, Pakadoo.

This is the same Susan who shat spring.

She shat spring because she'd eaten too much corner.

She thought it was a safe choice because it's not chilly heavy, but the fact is if you have too much of anything, you'll shit spring.

So basically, the main precepts of it are be nice to everybody as much as is realistically possible.

These are all from the book, the great book, The Anecdoticon.

This is from the Acadoticon, this stuff.

Sounds a bit insipid, doesn't it?

No,

the point I was trying to make was...

Why is it that societies have always gone with these sort of stupid, like Thor's journey to Utgard.

Thor, the God of Thunder, visited Utgard, the land of giants.

No, he didn't, because there isn't such a place.

But it might be a good yarn.

Do you know what I mean?

So Thor, the God of Thunder,

where he was tricked into impossible challenges.

He tried to lift a cat,

which was actually the Midgard Serpent in disguise.

He wrestled an old woman who was old age itself.

Wow.

Wow.

That's pretty good.

He tried to drink from a horn connected to the ocean.

But why not just go, right, there's a thing up there, it's blue.

We're going to call it the sky.

No idea what it is, but let's just get on with, we'll still get on with our day.

You know, that big wet thing, the ocean at full.

We've got some turnips to pluck.

Let's just plot some turnips.

What's that massive wet thing over there?

It's the sea.

We'll call it the mega puddle.

I don't fucking...

Listen, can we just get on with stuff?

We've got stuff to do.

Those turnips are on the turn.

Yeah, no pun intended.

But they are.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, why not just, hasn't there been a society that just went, don't know what's going on, but we've got some bloody good turnips going on here.

You're basically arguing for like ultimate ignorance.

Yes.

Like, we're not even going to bother trying to work out any of this stuff.

We're just going to.

And you've just written the third rule of Pacadornia.

Ultimate ignorance

is pure peace.

Because no AI can take on UI, ultimate ignorance.

Try and get computers and it's fuck all.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

You mentioned earlier that idea that they're a bit like the dinosaurs.

It's interesting how, you know, there have been so many world civilizations in the history of the earth.

Yeah.

And yet we do focus on basically, it's the ones you do in school, isn't it?

It's like the Romans, the Vikings,

I guess the Celts.

Yeah.

And that's kind of it.

Like, what else do we do?

Like, even then, the Celts get, yeah, they get, they don't get much detail, do they?

But also, come on, the Celts.

I'm sorry, mate.

If I remember from history at school, the Celts, oh,

he's got a sort of brown.

He's managed to work out how to put some brown fur around his crotch and he's built a hill.

And then the Romans are like, we've got fire ducks.

We've basically got a form of Wi-Fi.

We can fire massive flaming arrows.

We've got boxes of wine.

We've got haberdashers.

We've got supermarkets.

We've got an early Rymans.

We've got an early Rymans.

We've got a form of Adrian Childs.

It's called Julius Caesar.

I mean, the Celts look, okay, the Celts.

Oh, yes.

Oh, we've crafted some things which look quite cool in jewellery now.

If you've got a certain kind of vibe you go for.

I really like that Celtic style necklace.

Some tattoo-friendly patterns.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just not that impressive.

Take that, Celts.

Take that.

You can never go to Anglesey ever again, Henry.

You'll be a human sacrifice on the streets of Klangevni.

I think if any of us has got a kind of pagan-style murder coming up in their lives, it is probably me.

I think that's fair.

Yeah.

But do you know what I mean?

Like certain civilizations just have gone into the top five.

Yeah.

Like we don't know, and I don't know anything about the Phoenicians, for example, the Babylonians.

Yeah, or the ancient Sicilians.

But that's...

That's our Western European education, probably, isn't it?

Because also like the bloody Persians and the Babylonians, they were like

ridiculously advanced.

Because the Babylonians invented

accounting and stuff, didn't they?

I think.

And you know, that's the sort of thing that'll fire kids up.

Okay, kids, it's time.

Time to get head around the idea of 20% of something being taken away, given to the government temporarily, and returned to you if you're self-employed and have kept

receipts for work-related expenses,

strap in.

It's time to put on your VAT hats.

Come on, kids.

The Vikings did something that I don't know if other people did, which was the idea of, is it called Dane Geld?

Did it?

Which is they'd turn up somewhere and they'd say, oh, nice monastery.

Be ashamed if someone burns it to the ground.

Oh, really?

And you could pay them off.

His first reaction was, oh, that's so kind of you to.

Thanks very much.

You're right.

We should actually get more

smoke alarms.

We should

get more smoke alarms.

And invent insurance.

I'm threatening to kill you.

Read between the lines.

It's really hard to sound sinister in the Nordic accent as well, because we associate it with being so friendly and cheerful.

Whereas actually it was like, I've killed all your family.

High quality public services.

I've beheaded a monk and made his face come out of his own buttocks.

It's really hard to.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you could say them off.

You could just give them a load of money and they'd go, okay.

see you next month.

So they're basically like the mafia.

So protection mafia.

Yeah.

Oh, so Canute

the Great.

He was a Dane.

He became king of England, so the need for Danegeld disappeared.

So actually a Viking did become King of England.

Yeah.

There was a period of Danish rule.

Just before Edward the Confessor.

Yeah, because before 1066, isn't there a weird bit where there's like Harold Hadrada, is he?

It's Harold Hadrada, very briefly, Edward the Confessor, and before that, you've got the Danish rule in it.

And if you don't believe me, just look at my history ruler.

Oh my god, Mike's got that to hand.

You've got the history ruler.

He's got a history ruler that's got every king or queen of England going back to the Roman Britain.

Yeah.

That's proper analogue, isn't it?

Is that a beauty?

Classic bit of merch.

But also, it goes up to Charles III.

Yeah, it's a recent purchase.

Recent purchase from Thank You to Portsmouth's historic dockyard for a great day out and a great gift shop.

It's the point of those things that it's a pun on the idea of ruler.

Yes.

I've only just got that.

Have you always got that then?

No, I'd never got that until now.

British History Rulers.

It even says it on it, you see.

They put their phone number on it, the company that make it.

Yeah.

Why would you ring it

because you need a bulk purchase?

This is a wedding coming up or any major celebration.

Do you think they ever get sort of just a phone call of someone thanking them for their ruler?

No, thank you.

I think they do from me.

Mike, can we play a game where we have to guess which king is halfway down the ruler?

Oh, that's a good game.

Okay, so the 15-centimetre monarch.

It's a 30-centimetre ruler.

Who is the 15-centimetre monarch?

It's going to be one of the Johns.

I'm going for Henry the

VI.

Oh.

Oh, Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin.

I'm going to give Benjamin a second guess.

Whoa, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Henry V, thank you.

Jobs are good and

that means you are dismissed from the game for cheating.

Yeah, it's Henry V.

Henry V, I was close.

14, 13 is the 15 centimetre king.

What did you go?

You went for one of the.

You said one of the Johns.

How many Johns?

One of the Johns.

I think it was.

One of the Johns.

This is why you need one of these rulers.

Well, I'm using John in the Saxon sense, short for James.

John's just past 12 centimetres.

He absolute goon.

What a dildo.

And of course, 30 is King Charles.

30 is the number for Westair, the company that makes British history rulers.

And they're my kings.

You know, there was the Saxons.

So then there was the Viking.

So the Saxons.

What exactly was it?

So the Saxons were German, were they?

Germany.

Broadly, I think of it as like Saxons, Germany, Jutes, Denmark.

So before the Saxons, what was it?

Sort of Celtic.

Celts.

And before them, the Beaker people.

The Beaker people.

The Beaker people.

The people who invented the Beaker.

They invented a kind of Beaker.

Did they invent a kind of Beaker?

Yeah.

there's a yeah because there's another yeah they've they were that's why they called the they they really didn't get up to much of it but why we don't why why do people we name them just after a certain kind of vessel that they we don't call ourselves the ramekin era

no because i think there's another there's another kind of beak beaker people

there's bronze age types and there's some there's some that made a certain kind of beaker and another

oh there are two types of beaker people There was a bell-shaped beaker and there was some other type of beaker.

Mike, we left out the Romans.

So we did, to a great shame.

So, was it Celts, Romans, then Saxons?

Well, yeah, the Romans arrived and then they sort of left again, but they left behind their culture and some of their people.

So you had a kind of Romano-Celtic British person.

Yeah.

So Romans, Saxons, Vikings.

Normans, we have Normans.

Normans.

Yeah.

I feel like there's still this somehow is still some sort of mythology that, oh, you'll never invade Britain.

We can't be invaded.

We're an island and we're on a big advantage, and that's why we've never been invaded.

Isn't it?

There's that sort of feeling somehow in the air in Britain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's been a thousand years, to be fair.

But with the exceptions of

Romans, Saxons, Celts, the Romans, the Celts, the Jews.

So even the Celts, even the Celts are not from Britain.

No, they're coming from Germany as well.

That was us.

That was the Pika people.

No, that was the Pika people.

but even they might have come from

people wouldn't come from we don't know but we've never really been invaded except for beaker people Celts Romans Saxons Vikings Normans Jutes Jutes the Germans if you count Jersey

so so are so so is the true if you're a real like you're going to get into blood and soil now Henry

it's dangerous ground this

I think I'm going to launch a new political party which is based on

beaker nationalism.

I can trace my lineage back.

Going back to Iron Age faults.

As far as I can tell, just sort of piles of shit and dirt.

I can.

Not just any piles of shit and dirt, though, Mike.

The piles of shit and dirt that are the truth of this country.

I can trace my lineage back to an actual beaker.

Full of spunk.

It was the first in in vitero fertilization.

It was a beaker of spunk was dropped onto a witch.

The witch got put in a barrel.

An indigenous witch, mind you.

The witch was put in a barrel roll down the hill.

Luckily, it hit and it whacked into a hog, killed the hog, but broke the fall of the witch.

The witch escaped

on a beaker donkey.

So that's a donkey from Beaker.

From Beaker Stock.

From Beaker Stock.

And gave birth to the first prophet of Pacadonia.

Pacadon.

Pacadon.

Pacadonia.

The true Beaker truth of the nation.

Time to read some emails.

We've had a really good version of the email jingle sent in.

Oh, brilliant.

Bo emails.

Is that E-A-U?

B-E-A-U.

Oh, that's a cool name.

That is cool.

Yeah.

Hello, Beans.

I'm a a pianist and singer from Glasgow.

What?

Bo's getting cooler.

And I have recorded a version of your email jingle.

To be alive in 2025

is good, but to be alive and to be a Glaswegian pianist is even better.

But

surely it is very heaven to be alive and to be a Glaswegian pianist called Bo.

Yeah.

I don't think it gets any better than that.

When you send an email,

you must give thanks to the postmasters that came before.

When you send an email,

this represents

progress

like a robot chewing a horse.

My

beautiful horse,

my

beautiful

horse,

Bo, take me by the hand and lead me wherever the hell you want.

I don't need a pack.

I don't need a padding to bring lunch.

Run away with me, Bo.

Run away with me, me.

Bo, let's forget everything.

We can start again.

We don't need pianos.

Pianos.

We don't need lunch.

I will need lunch, actually.

And a piano.

And he'll need a piano.

He'll need a piano.

We can use the free ones in stations.

We can live in Sampankras in stations.

And I can get lunch while you're playing on the piano in the station.

Because they'll have lunch places.

Bo, let's live in a station together.

Bo, that was fantastic.

It put me in mind of

a Jeff Buckley.

Yes.

Yeah, I agree.

Vocally, yeah, very much so.

We've got a bit of Jeff Buckley.

Yeah.

And a bit of them.

What was that band?

Is it called Susan and the Apricots or something?

Unlikely, but go on.

That's your wedding covers band that you're currently trying to promote.

That's right.

That's your one-man band.

Yeah.

And the big question everyone asks is, well, who are the apricots?

And the answer is obscene.

That's why it has to be an over-40s wedding.

I can only do over 40s.

It has to do second wedding.

It's second wedding stuff.

It's too blue for first timers.

It's a border anyway.

It's a baudier vibe.

It's an ideal, it's a vibe where ideals have already been shattered.

We know that we don't live in a perfect world.

So please welcome to the stage, Susan and the Apricots.

Because most of the time, dreams don't come true.

And that's why, if you look under your seat, you'll find there is a sick bag.

You all have sick bags.

Enjoy the show.

So, no, no,

what was it called again?

Anthony and the Johnsons.

Yeah.

Oh, yes, yes, okay.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yes, so, so, so, so, so, so, it, it wasn't Susan and the Apricots.

Yeah, fine.

Okay.

Thank you.

But if you're listening, that does mean that that band name is up for grabs.

Susan the Apricots.

Yeah.

It's not TM'd, is it?

It's not TM'd, I wouldn't have thought.

No.

We've had lots of emails about last week's story of Rachel Inn Cork, whose brother claimed that a tortoise fell from the sky landing on a picnic table, I think.

Yes,

but people have got in contact because they feel that they have the answer.

And a few people have given the same answer, so they might be right.

Okay.

Hang on a second, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Is it that somebody is smuggling contraband tortoises on a plane?

They've been caught, they run to the toilet, and they flush as many tortoises as they can because they know that each tortoise adds five years to the jail sentence.

Also, I was reminded that I called into question her brother's dedication to telling the truth because I said that maybe he'd made up the story in order to try and keep the tortoise which he'd found on the ground.

Yes, you had questioned his dedication to telling the truth.

All right, Mr.

Liberal Democrat candidate for whatever.

You called him a liar.

I questioned his authenticity.

You're not in front of a tribunal, mate.

Just people having a chat.

Don't call me, mate.

Call me my right honourable friend.

My right honourable friend.

Bonjamin.

Yes.

Have you recapped this story for people in case it's their first episode, listen?

That's exactly what I'm doing.

If he can get a bloody word in.

Sorry, sorry.

I'm just recapping the recap.

I'm recapping the fact that this is a recap.

So to recap that recap, Rachel in Cork, her brother, was in the garden.

Apologies if she didn't precap the recap.

But this is, consider this a post pre-cap recapping and a tortoise fell out of the turtle crap what and a tortoise fell out of the sky

that's a story and landed on i think a picnic table but didn't they then try and um give it a barrel at sea thinking it was a turtle and it came back and release it at sea they tried to release it into a rock pool yeah okay thinking it was a turtle and then it turned out the next day it was actually from next door weirdly they didn't because what they

didn't consider was the third because we know that there are land-based tortoises they're called tortoises there are sea-based turtles they're called tortoises they're called turtles.

There are small tanks in a 15-year-old's bedroom tortoises, they're called terrapins.

Yeah, and but has anyone considered that there's a fourth one, which is airborne?

Frisbee, frisbee,

living frisbee.

Is there a living frisbee version?

Yeah, go on.

Well, it turns out I think there is an answer, basically, because enough people sent us this

answer

that it might well be right.

Had it crawled into a t-shirt gun at

a Shakira concert.

At a Shakira concert, Because it's a very nice warm place to fall asleep, isn't it?

T-shirt gun.

Hmm.

For some reason I'm thinking medieval siege machinery.

But I don't.

Could it have crawled into a medieval siege reenactment trebuchet to fall asleep?

But bear in mind, we also know that the tortoise belonged to their next dawn neighbours.

Okay.

Could have been a very small model trebuchet.

So were they reenacting the siege of Troy in their own garden?

It's likely, not 100%.

Let's find out.

Okay, so this is from Lyra.

Oh, Lyra.

But this represents a lot of emails.

Birds such as eagles, crows, and gulls will often pick up.

Renact the Battle of Troy using homemade siege machinery.

Of course.

No, it's right.

Birds such as eagles, crows, and gulls will often pick up hard-shelled prey, such as tortoises, and drop them from great heights onto rocks.

To bust it open for a snack.

To bust open so they can eat the sweet tortoise goo inside.

Sweet tortoise goo.

So yes, various bird species, birds of prey, pick up tortoises and drop them on rocks.

And then we've had a few other emails that said that, and also mentioned that the acclaimed Greek tragedarian Aeschuslus, is that how you say it?

Aeschylus.

Aeschylus.

was said to have been killed by a tortoise being dropped on his bald head by a passing eagle who'd mistaken him for a rock.

One of the earliest examples of anti-baldism.

That's seen as a tract.

That's a religious tract for the anti-baldist movement.

So it's good.

It feels good to have solved a mystery, I think.

Yeah, that is actually.

That's really...

So it has to be quite a big bird, I think, to be able to pick up a tortoise, which they look heavy.

Yeah.

Well, maybe that's why it survived.

Maybe it wasn't a big bird and...

I was giving it a go.

Gave it a bit off more than it could chew.

That's why it didn't go very far.

Because it's just gone from the next garden, right?

Yeah.

Lost its grip.

And it didn't smash open or something high enough to, yeah.

It does add another bit to the story, though, which is that this tortoise, not only was it erroneously put in a rock pool that day, it also been attacked by an eagle.

What a terrible day!

What a day.

I tell you what, I'm going to need not

two bits of lettuce tonight to deal with

in a carpet box with holes in.

We've had an email from Holly.

Hello, Holly.

And this is a real deep cut.

I think they're probably listening back to old episodes.

Okay.

Because it says they were listening to series two, it's a long time ago now, in which Mike mentioned a bluffing teacher who said he was in the SAS section of the TA.

Oh, yeah.

Was that for real, or was that a flight of fancy?

No, it was real.

Yeah.

This reminds me of a teacher, a history teacher, who told wild tales, which I believe is until a discussion with old school friends later in life.

One of the stories he told, which I eagerly accepted as fact at the time, was that his parents lived next door to Bono and he spent every Christmas Day with Bono

he stressed that Bonno still wore his sunglasses at the dinner table and only took them off when unwrapping his gifts

so it's claws

that's great by the way I heard something about you two recently which

has made me seen them in a different light which is they got together at school apparently

so the names they came up with themselves for was at school was their nickname so the edge i mean because the Edge has had a lot of flack over the years about the Edge being a bit of a naff name to call yourself, but it was a school.

So, I mean, just chuck them a break.

Because if I had, if I was in a band and my nicknames were, and my nickname was based on nicknames I had at school, there are two to choose from: Henry Picknose

and King Farter.

Yeah,

so read between the lines.

And this week, the Dalai Lama is meeting the King Fata,

the UN's new special envoy.

It's time

to play the ferryman.

Patreon.

Patreon.

Patreon.com

forward slash three bean salad.

Thank you to everyone who signed up at Patreon.

Yeah, thank you.

If you'd like to watch video versions of every episode, you can do that now on Patreon.

There's also bonus episodes and all that kind of business.

Go to patreon.com forward slash threebean salad to do that.

And if you sign up at the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Michael Bozniak.

You do indeed.

Who spent the whole last week down at the Sean Bean Lounge, didn't you?

Yes.

It was Hoisin Thursdays, wasn't it?

It was all week.

It was Hoisin Thursdays.

Thank you.

That's right.

And here's my report.

It was one of Sean Bean's cherished Hoisin Thursdays last week at the Sean Bean Lounge.

Preparations began at the break of dawn on the Monday, with Kate McGranaghan Chow, Cat Gordon, the Creme de la Preme, Rebecca Andrews and Chris Taylor King lining the entire interior lounge with a Sean Beans patented Hoisin-proof coating, i.e.

a very thin but very large cut-to-measure pancake.

Only Joe Clinch and Quinnethy Thurston were accidentally wallpapered over, and only Andy Nelson and Mark Cartwright were mistaken for cornice lumps and flattened out.

So phase one was deemed a success.

On Tuesday, Van Den, Gerald of Stone, Kaylee Flippin' Jones, Ona Hinkston and Philly Zero Cavanagh volunteered to hijack the Norway to Uruguay Hoisin pipeline and install a diversionary conduit.

They were conveyed to an undisclosed location in international waters in the HBS Bean, which is part of the Bean's shadow fleet and was captained by Emma Russell, bosuned by Eve McNeill, coxswain by Tim Biddlestone, Powder Monkey by Tom Brigheth, with Rich Forder as Barrel Man, Luke Marshall as Loblolly Boy and Charlie Johnson as ship's cat.

James Robertson, thanks Matt from Land of Big Potato and Brendan Calloway from Charleston, USA was scuttled and and a distress signal was sent to distract nearby shipping so the Hoisin hijack could be conducted in peace several miles away.

In case a Hoisin piping issue should occur on the day, Jodie Pasich, Daniel Stewkesbury, Dan Mansell, Katie Hailstone, Ben McQueen, Simon Dick and Liam Williams were instructed to fashion a weather machine that could create Hoisin clouds and therefore back up Hoisin rain but they refused.

A second backup plan consisted of Dan P, Dan Morris, Nate Crowley, Tom Raw West, Rachel Osier and Neil Thomas visiting every branch of boots within a 50 mile radius of the bean lounge and using syringes and hypodermic needles to extract the source from any hoisin duck wrap found to be on display.

On Wednesday, final preparations were made with Adam Dowdle, Simon, Ulf Bengtsson, Matt Cayley and Daniel Peterson sourcing knee-length gloves, MJ McKee, Kate Williams, Elliot Carpenter and Fred Crawley delousing Mark Ninim, Becca, Jacko Wally, Janelle and Alice scaring away surrounding pigeons, rats and suspicious drifters, and Luke Blackmore putting together a playlist.

On Wednesday night, to ensure against malicious actors, Jack Murphy, Stephen Ardy, Lachlan Barkley, and Harry Tommy Thompson were stationed as night sentries on the Vista Pagoda beanroof, but were tragically picked picked off one by one by a cybertronic condor.

And so to Thursday itself.

The sacred bean was washed, boiled, pan-fried and shriven by Claire, Chloe, Paige Marshall and Gareth.

While the very concept of Hoisin was consecrated by Aldu Caba, Jess Woodland, A.J.

Watson and Dominic Bryant, an all-physical Hoisin declared the Thursday wife of Sean Bean by Lucy Butler.

Sarah House Liu, Leo and Michael double-checked all attendees had the correct size of harness on and that these were fitted with airbags and gave the all-clear, allowing Matthew Lee to yank the Hoisin lever to open.

As expected, a coagulated Hoisin plug erupted with the speed of four high-end AI-10s from the source belt, the impact of which was lessened by Grant Dyer, Ben Bodmer and Jamie Ross, whose families are not entitled to compensation, always read the small print.

The Hoisin gush was measured for speed by Tim, Temperature by Richard Gardner, sweetness by Scott Green, and Interlopers by Thomas O'Shea.

It was found to be reasonably safe within the margin of error and we were chocks away.

Betty Blue Boots, Chris Hughes, Elliot, Joe, and Kevin Durrant-Jones and Toby Wharton caught the first tube, while Owen Phillips Wilson, Holly Ferris, Beck Farts, AJ and Daniel Shiron got a hole in one left-handed.

It was Eric Greensmith, Tom Mortimer, Karen Luck and Tom Morby versus Molly Lancaster, Emma Whitney, Maeve O'Neill and Craig Sutherland in the Hoisin jukebox musical melee with a score draw until Charles Long and Steve Ellison offered a left field play with a hot noodle effigy of Luke Snell and took gold.

Lindsay, Edith Pettiford and Viscount Bonte pretended not to know they had lifeguard duties which meant an early Hoisin bath in the Sean Bean Chapel of Rest for George O'Farrell, Bryn Davies and Johnny Mango.

The session was also complicated for Adam Beddo, Matt and James Kennedy, who'd made the mistake of buying cut-price Hoisin-coulloured Varuka socks from PKW, couldn't find them and had to spend the first four hours suspended in liquid nitrogen before being omnipumiced to be on the safe side.

Best Hoisinograph went to Karina Ray Parks, Taylor Carden took home highest Hoisin, Charlotte Hoisin of the match, and Victoria Lawrence won on points.

As midnight struck, Joe and Caroline blew the Hoisin whistle and Ed Holt Astro and Jackie Ash funnelled the bean loungers into the evacuation block.

As dawn broke on Thursday, Claire Bear and Mark Brandon were already dumping shredded duck and spring onions into the lounge, paving the way for James Sterling, Katrina and Ashley to begin the big pancake roll-up.

This year, Fast Eddie was nominated to consume that pancake, and has been made ready for this by being systematically starved, sweated and neurally reprogrammed by Neil Badger Donaldson, Helen Taylor and Laude Farquard.

On the Friday, Frank Pocklington and Alicia C.

were instructed to redecorate, re-plumb, and rewire the lounge, according to Sean Bean, the greatest of all honors.

On Saturday, Nick Rushby, alongside Christopher and Cedric Mitchell, used smell maxing, scented candles and self-generated musk to rid the lounge of the lasting hoisin odour.

And And finally, on Sunday, Finbar O'Reilly turned up having got the day wrong, slathered himself in Tesco's own brand Hoisin Sauce, rolled around on the grass for a bit, and watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Thanks all.

Okay, let's finish off with a version of our theme tune sent in by one of you.

This is from Graham from the New Forest.

Hello, Graham.

He says, My theme tune submission is an 80-synth style, just so I can call it tangerine beans.

Lovely.

Yours, Graham.

Brilliant.

Thanks for that.

And thanks, everyone, for listening.

Cheerio.

Goodbye.

Thank you very much.

Goodbye.