Space Travel Tourism

We're back.

Welcome back.

And everything's different.

Ben, welcome back specifically to you, isn't it?

Well,

I've been in prison, that's right.

Three weeks.

Accused of a crime I didn't commit.

But you negotiated a three-week sentence, didn't you?

It's rare you get a three-week sentence.

Very rare.

It's very, very rare.

But it was densely unpleasant, wasn't it?

Your prison stay?

Didn't they?

Oh, horrible.

Trying to pack in a decade's worth of prison experiences.

Well, that's it.

Basically, they said you could either do 10 years in the British slammer, which is basically, as we know, you've got, well, you've got one choice.

So you've got a choice you're going to your cell.

Do you want a jacuzzi or do you want an on-hand masseuse on the top?

And bearing in mind, you've got all the sky packages.

Don't even ask a question.

You've got all the sky packages.

It's all the PSs.

Don't Don't worry about if it's PS3, PS4.

Yeah, well, it depends.

If you choose, you can go on the retro wing where everything's a bit 80-style with the 90s wing, whatever's most comfortable for you.

Yeah.

If you want, we can make the prison warden dress up as a Sonic the Hedgehog.

Or as one of the bosses from one of the games you liked.

Yeah.

That's what it's like, isn't it?

So, yes, I could have chosen either the...

The soft option, which was 10 years in a British prison.

I decided to consolidate it into three weeks in a Burmese prison.

And you can choose these days.

And

I chose incorrectly, I would say.

But you've never been more ripped, Ben.

It's true.

It's just because you're constantly fleeing those massive sort of

warped zombie cockroaches, isn't it?

That have been bred with Burmese tigers.

They've been bred with Burmese tigers.

The tiger roaches are absolutely because they've got the fearsomeness of the, well, they've got the claws of a tiger, haven't they?

They've got the mood, the mood patterns of a cockroach

which is the worst but the puppies are absolutely adorable there's a lovely puppy phase and that's when people make the mistake of buying one for christmas as a gift for a grandchild

isn't it because they are absolutely adorable and what they also share with uh with cockroaches is the frequency with which they can breed so you you've got 10 000 new tiger cockroaches on a daily basis on a daily basis

and um and if you even think about stepping on one of them the the mother the mother the mother oach at that point will have installed itself in either your kitchen or maybe if you've got it downstairs.

Or in your back.

Or possibly in your back.

And that's basically a big, juddering, sort of sweaty eyeball, isn't it?

Well, it's a mixture of an eyeball, an anus and a vulva.

It's a super efficient optimization, isn't it, that comes from millions of years of evolution.

It's a perfect predator.

It's a perfect creature.

Perfect breathing platform that is able to count its offspring as it comes out.

As they pop out.

Of its anus.

Its anus.

It's the only animal that can see its own anus at all times which is partly why it's in such a bad mood because it's got a constant live endoscopy going on to itself

the whole time which is also why it's why it's survived so long isn't it because it's got it's just it's constantly checking itself for anal health isn't it

and that will make the atmosphere in the prison more intense yeah it just does and the only way to survive it in the prison uh and i found this I got this advice early on and it was good advice.

Get yourself a retinue of fighting chickens.

That's the only thing.

Just put them between you and the big I Volvarenus.

Yeah.

And you might be okay.

And obviously, unfortunately, that does.

I mean, this is grim stuff.

So sorry if this is triggering people, but that will have meant that Ben will have had to uppercut the first fighting chicken he came across to exert his own authority.

That's right.

To become the alpha.

Yeah.

So that's where all that stuff you've done in Barney's Gym, hasn't it, over the years, came into

Barney's Gym.

Well, because you do chicken boxing, isn't it?

You've never.

That's what you're doing.

He's got those beak bags, bags, isn't it, hanging up

punching ones.

But you've never, of course, it doesn't prepare for punching an actual chicken, does it?

Because you've punched.

A rubber beak.

Yeah.

Because you've punched a rubber beak for years, haven't you?

It's one of those things.

And a feathered boy as well.

And a feathered boy.

Is that a boy or boy

either?

Barry offers them both as part of the sparring package.

But actually, it's a great way to keep fit.

It's a nice old Eastern tradition that chicken boxing, obviously

you don't box actual chickens anymore because

that's immoral.

But a little

loophole,

you can punch pigeons, can't you, and sparrows

and robin redbreasts.

And that's fine.

But thank goodness, after that, you were able to holiday in Kazakhstan.

I did go for a holiday in Kazakhstan, yeah.

Before we go on to that,

can we keep talking about Unioburne's prison just for a bit?

Because you sent those quite disturbing postcards, didn't you?

Written on flaps of your own skin that you were able to.

I had to give them to Andrew Tate and then he managed to come home.

Smuggle them out.

Yeah.

I don't know how he does that.

And it was very painful, wasn't you, to write them?

Because you were using bits of your own nasal blood, wasn't it?

Yeah, onto the human vellum.

Particularly painful because you write very formally, you insist on using a very sort of wide, broad calligraphy, don't you?

Still, you will not use micro-writing.

I go for the monk system where the first letter is most of my back

in terms of skin sort of real estate.

And then I have to try and fit the rest of the message on just

what's left.

And of course, because of your Habsburg past, you still use all the Habsburg diplomatic sort of formalities, don't you, at the beginning of the message?

But that's it, yes.

It says a lot of cordially yours.

But he's also been bred to have a lot of marsupial pouches, which does mean a lot of spare skin.

So that's true.

That's a good thing, isn't it?

Yeah, it's an absolute boon in that situation.

But I remember in some of the messages you sent me that you said that

you'd already gained the nickname the professor.

that's just because i had glasses

and it was just towards the end that they realized they actually weren't actually that knowledgeable and all the legal advice you've been giving them was was bogus

and a lot of that my knowledge of the burmese legal system was next to zero

it was all based on the habsburg 1753

protocols wasn't it

So a lot of those guys who thought they were quids in with you, you actually managed to get their sentences extended, didn't you?

But

the other weird thing that people find surprising is that there is a library in a Burmese Trail, but all the books are Terry Wogan's autobiography.

Aren't they?

And that is the most punishing part.

That's actually the worst.

It's actually the worst worst bit weirdly.

Reading for the 15th time about his time of recording the floral dance.

What was the floral dance?

He did a...

Terry Wogan did a novelty single in the 70s called The Floral Dance.

Are Are you not aware of this?

Did he?

Yeah.

See, this is what happens when you're in Burmese prison.

You come out with all this knowledge.

Deep, deep, deep, deep knowledge.

Deep, deep, woken knowledge.

In 17 different languages.

Which you can then use to get revenge on the attorney who's short-changed you, which is why you end up with your prison sentence.

Because he,

as long as that attorney was Terry Wogan, he used you as a patsy.

He used you as a patsy.

I might share the floral dance with you.

All right.

Oh, yes, please.

Let's find it on the YouTube.

Very rarely start with a euphonium on top of the box you just tone by hornet, clarinet, and big trombone.

Fiddle, cello, big bass, drum, bassoon, a flute, and euphony young.

Each one making the most of his chance, all together in the floral dance.

Oh my god.

What the hell is going on?

As I walked home, lovely fruity bass, doesn't it?

But he can only sing two notes.

In the Sweden centred air, I'm a point of sleep.

It's a binotchiller song.

It's completely binotular.

That means this song could actually be appreciated by cockroaches, weird.

It's such a narrow sort of sonic spectrum he's using.

It's got less notes than average conversational English.

What era of Britain is being invoked?

Like, what era

or of Europe?

What is that?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's a brass band base, isn't it?

But the floral dance...

It's a pagan.

Yeah, it's

the pagan with the marshal.

What is that?

Was this a sort of Farage-esque moment where Wogan was making some political...

Was this like it feels like this is a political movement?

If he feels Laura Danced well enough, he might launch his political party.

Yeah, I think so.

I do feel that we probably need to explain to listeners who don't know who Terry Wogan is what the significance of that was.

Uh-oh.

Time for an explainer for non-British listeners.

Get ready for serious international exchange.

We are one on this planet.

We call them trousers.

Perhaps

the late Terry Organ is perhaps the most cherished broadcaster of all time, an Irishman

who became, I mean, he's as loved as the Queen, dare I say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

He was a kind of radio DJ.

Was it in the 70s?

And then he ended up chairing Wogan, that was

the ultimate sort of chat show for years and years and years.

Yeah.

Where Wogan would sit with, you know, celebrities and actors and stuff.

But that was the definitive for like decades.

And the viewing figures would have been mad on a contemporary stand, wouldn't they?

It would have been astronomical.

It's pretty much compulsory viewing.

As soon as Wogan's over, everyone in the living room stands up, sings the national anthem, goes to bed.

It's that level of appointment to view you watching.

And he had, dare I say, a lightness of touch.

He had a lightness of touch, which you can only get if you smoke 70 BH a day.

I think he was my first, he was for sort of your first crush.

He was my first crush.

Well, you're only flush and blood, Henry.

Exactly.

So I've always sought Wogan types.

You need a double-breasted jacket with brass buttons,

thick light grey side buttons

and a sort of an increasingly far-fetched comb over

the over the years.

He was also safe as houses.

Well, that's the thing.

He's an unproblematic 70s fave, isn't he?

Yes.

Nothing's ever come out about him, which I mean, it would break the nation's hearts if it did.

Yeah.

There's no clips of like, say, say, Parkinson being sort of inappropriate and sort of sexist with Helen Mirren.

There's none of that.

None of that.

It's one of those lovely stories where he was married to the same girl from when she was 12.

Isn't it?

It'll be like

he definitely had a long and

sort of faithful marriage.

I think, though, with these people, and

it's not necessarily a problematic thing, but I think, as with all British entertainers of the 70s and 80s, politically, kind of right of Genghis Khan.

He probably would have.

He probably, yeah.

But maybe that's there in the floral dance because there's something about he's harking back to some sort of

Victorian and pagan.

And I think it's a moment in the 70s.

He might be claiming some sort of

feudal lairdship by singing that on top of the pops.

It's definitely feudal.

But you think about it in the 70s, there was quite a lot of, like, things were quite bad, weren't they, economically and stuff.

Maybe it was a time, a bit like now, where there was a time where sort of political opportunists were seeing a, you know, were sort of thinking, thinking, well, I was going to say, I was trying to say, seeing, and all I could think of was opportunities.

What else can opportunists see?

You can't,

um, well, particularly political opportunists were seeing opportunities,

as is their

as is their want/slash won't.

This is why I'm not on the today programme.

I'm not a safe booking.

Not only not safe, but also not an appropriate booking for any news story I can think of.

You're one level off the taxi driver who accidentally ended up on itv or whatever it was

but ben they don't even get to the point of checking whether or not i'm relevant because i'm not safe so whether or not i'm relevant they don't even they don't even get that far with me i'm simply not a safe booking

you know what i mean because i think that is the order of checking isn't it i used to like um terry organ used to have a radio show on radio too which i used to like because it had a lot of in-jokes and it was kind of quite in it was quite hard to get in on because they've been going since 1975.

Any bells, anyone?

Yeah, what exactly?

Yeah.

He had all these people in the room with him.

There's broke Alan Dedicote, the voice of the balls, who's the guy who used to voice the national lottery.

He was there for some reason.

All of these people, of course, have been buried with him.

On his insistence.

He's superfluous.

That's in the small print of the lyric sheet of the floral dance.

Join my radio show and you will die with me.

Who could have refused that offer?

Yeah.

Cryan Wogan, the grand totem.

Yes, that's right.

I remember his radio sheet because you'd sometimes come.

If I accidentally tuned into it or whatever,

it was incredibly slow.

His pace was unbelievably slow.

And he'd sort of go on these like wistful, be like, ah, Barbara in Whitstable.

The winds, the winds have changed.

Again,

I'm not a safe booking, am I?

Again, and yet every day Amil Rajan and Nick Robinson has to go across their desk.

They have to go, no, he's not a safe booking.

Wogan was my, he was my template of sort of maleness.

Oh, a certain kind of maleness and also a certain sort of middle-aged, like, and watching him age, because his, his gray, he had these, he had this kind of, he had this comb over, and he had the grey sidebones that got grey, and then, of course, his ear, his ears, which got longer and longer.

And deeper and deeper.

Longer and longer and deeper and deeper it is.

But the other thing I remember about him very specifically is

him and his guest that was obviously normally a man, not always, but quite often, because the image I've got in my mind is of Wogan, another sort of bloke in a suit.

They'd go, hello, and then then they'd sit down.

And you know what they would do before they sat down?

Oh, they'd lift up the bottom of their trousers.

They'd lift up the bottom of their trousers.

Yes.

With the top of their trousers.

With using the top of their trousers.

Rather than going straight from the bottom and trying to sort of shunt them up.

It was a lot harder.

So I was trying to get to do that.

They'd have tested that out in front of the camera.

They'd have tested that out.

You're right, Henry.

We live in a world where people don't no longer use the top of their trousers to lift up the bottom of their trousers.

I don't know why.

I just, it really stuck in my mind.

It was like kind of a little choreography, a little dance, a little male dance, which you go, hello, you know.

It's a floral dance, one might say.

You'd shake hands, you go, hello.

And then you had this little private moment for yourself.

Each man would just have this little private moment for themselves where they would look down, pull up the bottom of the trousers using the top of the trousers,

and then sit down.

And then they could meet each other's eyes.

And then they could meet each other's eyes.

Yes.

What's that about?

Is it a kind of leftover from some ancient pagan floral tradition?

It might be.

So you show its trouser technology has moved on.

Well, I wonder if trousers.

I don't feel my trousers automatically hitching themselves up before I sit down.

Well, no, but I wonder if

fabric technology has moved on, because I think in the 70s,

the sense I got was if you didn't do that.

Your thighs would burst through the top of your thighs would burst,

would burst open,

which is exactly the opposite of the kind of smooth atmosphere.

It was a snugger seat.

They had a higher waistline.

Is that what it is?

Oh, maybe.

Because you certainly didn't see a lot of you didn't see a lot of butt crack back in the day in the 70s like in a cafe for example

you mean it was less builders less builders bum do you mean whereas these days it won't necessarily be builders i mean it'll be just people in a low slung gene do you know what i mean yeah

they lean forward yeah it's all it's all riding up and riding down but also because also was that the era of a man would cross his legs

So that's another thing that I associate with

that period of my life was that adults would, men would cross their legs.

It's something you don't do as a kid.

I don't know if people still cross their legs anymore.

I think they do, but I think the 70s, I think it was more of a choice and you were advised to do so languidly.

If you were going to do it, do it.

Do it languidly.

So hang on, are you crossing them at the ankle, at the knee?

No, I'm talking thigh over thigh.

Yeah.

The classic.

Thigh over thigh.

The classic.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the tight cross.

Oh, yeah.

I never do that.

I deal with a bit of a lean back and the tips of the fingers.

Yes, it's quite good to have

which signals that you're about to go into your top draw anecdote.

Yes, you can't be crossing your legs at the ankles on Wogan.

You do have to throw them out.

You'd be out on your ass, wouldn't it?

But when you do cross your leg in that way, what happens is your trouser rinds up and you can end up exposing a really disturbing amount of leg.

But this is also the garter generation, isn't it?

Long socks and garters.

Yeah.

What are garters?

The kind of little suspenders for the socks.

Yeah.

Which back then would run all the way up to the shoulders.

But just on the inside of your clothes.

What about outside of the ankle

onto top of knee?

See, that's a bit more cool.

That's, I think that's obscene.

That's for behind closed doors only.

So what Mike, what's your chosen sitting position?

Is it just knees straight, straight?

Everything's straight.

Do you adopt the brace-brace pose wherever possible?

If I'm on my own, yeah, then my nose will be in between the knees.

Yeah.

Because just in case.

Because you never know.

You never know.

You're earthquake ready.

Earthquake, meteoroid, whatever it is.

Yeah.

And it's fine, darling.

I can hear most of what's happening in the film.

The fact is, you might know what Stanley Tupshi's face looks like as a cardinal.

And I can watch it through a series of makeup mirrors.

Okay, time to turn on the beam machine.

Yes, please.

Now, instead of of using the normal beam machine jingle, we are going to use one sent in by Dan from Virginia.

He describes it as the bean machine jingle a la Joe Cocker.

Nice.

I was going to start singing a song by Joe Cocker, but then I didn't know any.

I got him mixed up with Eddie Cochrane.

We're going to have a party, but it's going to be a little down, isn't it?

Is that Eddie Cochrane?

Who's Joe Cocker?

Joe Cocker's that guy who kind of...

The most famous song by him, I guess, is he did a cover of a Beatles song.

I'll get by with a little help for my friends.

He's very growly.

He's quite growing.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Yes.

I go.

Yeah, he sings it the wrong way.

Yeah.

It's like he's dying.

He's dying.

We need to

medivac.

Medivac.

He's got Medivac voice.

I mean, I'm sure there's more to the career of Joe Cocker than that.

Yeah.

And I think he's quite well thought of, but that's how I think of him.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's see what I'm sure.

Dan has done a respectful

impression of the man.

Well, let's see what he's done.

Let's see.

Love every topic.

Treat like good.

Sedance.

Just a blue band.

Oh, baby.

Be

machine.

You gotta turn on that machine.

Turn on the beat machine.

You know they need it right now.

Be

machine.

Beep machine.

Beep machine.

Beep, beep, beep.

beep, machine.

That's wonderful.

That was very good, Dan.

Yeah, I think he encapsulated the medevac element a bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Definitely felt like he needed a chopper.

He makes a terrific backing singers.

He does make a terrific backing singers.

He does make a really, really terrific backing singers.

This episode is a real.

We're running rough shot of a copyright a bit this episode.

We've had the floral dance.

I'm not sure whether the rights holders of that are going to get legal on us.

Could be.

Well, I think the rights holders of that are sort of an ancient

sort of bearded crow.

And the idea of spring.

Yeah, okay, aren't they?

It might be okay though.

But then that one was just as long as we don't wander accidentally into any sort of stone circles.

Yeah.

Yes.

Between now and midsummer.

Yeah.

All right.

It'll be all right.

But if we do, it's going to be a case of petrified dick.

And that petrification is not reversible, is it?

And it's instant as well.

Normally it would take millions of years.

It's just a loud bang.

It's petrified.

Fully petrified.

Fully.

And also, can I tell you, there's a reason why you've never heard the phrase, can we please start the re the depetrification procedure, please?

Because there is no such procedure.

You cannot reverse petrification.

Most you can hope for it.

Someone chips it off.

You can

Chip it off, stick it on a velvet cushion,

put it on some glasses.

Send it to a faux.

Send it to a faux.

Yeah.

Take that faux.

And the reason we've got a beef with the Vietnamese chain restaurant faux is because of the paucity of the amount of fish sauce in their spring roll dips, isn't it?

You're taking on the people at FO.

Golly, this is becoming increasingly legally tricky, isn't it?

Yeah, because you've now drives in the legal might of the FO corporation.

Now what you do with the petrified dick is you invite your faux to your daughter's wedding as a fig leaf.

It's the main...

Oh, they have to dress as a fig leaf?

The dress code is fig leaf.

It's a sexy wedding.

And what happens is everything goes fine.

Everything's normal.

And then.

Do you mean fig leaf?

Or do you mean olive branch?

Sorry, yeah.

Yeah, that's really crucial.

That is worth double-checking with the wedding banner.

It seems like they're going for an Adam and Eve-themed wedding.

I guess that makes sense to a degree.

Do it directly after the fall.

I suppose I'll have to wear my formal fig leaf.

So that's the black satin fig leaf with the.

Or I could just paint my dick as a talking snake.

Still works with the theme.

Anyway, so you invite your faux to your daughter's wedding as an olive branch.

As an olive branch, shiny oxide fig leaf.

Yeah.

And they sit through a ceremony, everything's fine.

Then, for the starter, everyone else has got

ox cheek, ox cheek souffle

from

faux.

But what they've got is on a bed of cress,

your petrified dick.

And as soon as they see that, they know that this wedding is not what they thought it was.

They look up, you're not, you don't even have a daughter.

It's a Phil Collins impersonator.

He's the only person you could hire short necked.

And he's double-booked, so he's put his daughter costume over the top of his gorilla costume.

So it's looking very lumpy.

I thought his daughter looked lumpy

during the vows.

I thought it was more polite not to mention it.

And I thought it was actually just very tasteful that no one had chosen to mention it in any of the speeches.

Fantastically long arms.

I thought it was not such a lumpy daughter as a dorty lump.

There's like this with long arms.

Anyway.

Anyway, so that's the legal ramifications of us playing a bit of floral dance.

What we've just done there with Dan is that he's done a Beatles cover and the Beatles don't mess around, so

we're in trouble.

What's the Beatles?

Beatles plus Cocker.

What was the Beatles cover?

I get by with a little help from my friends.

Of course, I thought it rang a bell.

You know what?

We've just proved that I wouldn't have signed the Beatles.

But I heard that and was like, yeah, sort of, I quite like it.

Yeah.

Don't know.

Whereas, because I've forgotten what it was, I should have thought, this is amazing.

Bennett even mentioned it directly before playing it.

Mike, a colander doesn't work if it doesn't have holes in it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow, that's a real catch-all phrase for almost all of them.

Well, it's not a catch-all.

That's the point.

It's just a colander.

So I strain your banter.

I strain it off to get the meaty.

The meaty pasta.

So the pig's hoof is retained.

The pig's hoof is retained.

And the

yeah, and some of it gets through.

That's how I work.

You are a bowl, Mike.

I am a colander.

You're a bowl.

So you store the hoof, meaningless bits of hot water.

Stuff that Ben says.

Some sort of stock, possibly.

Some sort of stock.

For a later date.

Stuff that Ben says.

And whole bay leaves, which you then have to eat your way through.

See what I mean?

All right, come on.

Okay.

So

this week's topic, as sent in by Callum.

Thank you, Callum.

From Oxted.

Okay.

Is

Space Travel Tourism.

Now, my question is,

has anyone yet been to space on a tourism basis?

Yes.

Yeah,

I think so.

The people go up

in orbit, don't they?

You'll get your oligarch zero-g experience.

Isn't that is that real space, or is that like fake space?

Oh, that's a good point.

Yeah, where does space, where does space begin?

Where does space begin?

So, the way to think about the Earth in this respect, thank goodness, Henry's here to clear this up.

And if this is a day programme, we're doing a feature on space travel tourism, they could ring Henry Packer for this.

Um, so basically, you've got to think about the Earth as like a scotch egg

In the middle.

Okay.

You've got an egg.

Yeah.

A superheated egg.

Well,

it's a boil.

There's different ways of cooking an egg, isn't there?

You boil, poach, or in the case of the earth, scotch.

You scotch it.

And if anyone's ever seen a volcano, that molten hot rock, as they call it,

is egg.

It's egg.

It's hot, hot egg.

So basically, you've got hot egg core.

Now, of course,

an egg is not perfectly round, and therefore neither is the earth.

It's slightly egg-shaped, it's slightly ovular.

Nothing's perfectly round in nature, is it?

QED.

Part from a squash ball.

Part from a squash ball.

Which are naturally occurring.

Which are naturally completely round.

And they are, well, they're the fruit of the rubber tree, aren't they?

And that's why they have different colours on them.

Yellow means very, very squashy.

Those are rubber trees that were bred

in captivity.

In captivity,

aren't they?

And then so on, QEV, sick, pro-temp.

LRJ.

Now Deus X Machiner.

Deus Ex Machiner.

No, so essentially you've got the Earth.

So you've got the Earth's core, then you've got surface.

You've got the surface of the Earth.

Then you've got the atmosphere.

So that's like the slight fug.

Just want to make it clear that

even in the Scotch egg, there is something between the egg and the surface.

And that's very much the case with the Earth as well.

Well, that's the meat there, because that's the humans.

It's meat.

Humans are animals, isn't it you've then got one bit this is the only bit where the metaphor falls down is the earth doesn't have a crispy breadcrumb crust does it it just doesn't bits well but there are bits of there are breadcrumbs on there are breadcrumbs that's true actually there are breadcrumbs

first in fact the only place there are breadcrumbs in the whole universe is on the crust of the earth

so for us actually qv qvc

vj r

r i f

same same coin hardis isn't it

um so um

but then around that you've got a sort of fug, isn't it?

A meaty fug, which is the smell of a scotch egg, which normally you don't notice because you're in a pub.

Yeah, or a picnic.

If you're outdoors, it can kind of gas off.

Yeah, yeah.

If you ever open one on your own in your kitchen, though, you're like, ooh, exactly.

You're like,

that's experiencing the atmosphere.

That's exactly experiencing the atmosphere of a scotch egg.

So the Earth has an atmosphere as well, doesn't it?

And then you've got space.

Over to you, Mike.

I think I've said it up nicely.

If it's the today programme, this is the point where Nick Robinson would go, thanks, Dr.

Packer.

But no, yeah, so

yeah, Mike.

So, yeah, Colin, how do you see then space in?

Because space is a vacuum, isn't it?

So they say.

Yeah.

So is it, are we talking beyond orbit then?

Beyond where you can orbit.

Well, my feeling was, I think you can go on these kind of situations.

Cut to the sport.

Cut to the sport.

I told you, Dr.

Woznak was the loose cannon.

Cut to the fucking sport now.

But it's 8.20.

We never play the sports at 8:20.

It doesn't matter.

Okay, I'm going to have to create it.

I'm going to have to create a headline.

Nick Robinson's legs just come off.

No, it hasn't.

Yes, it fucking has.

I'm creating a headline.

I'm creating a headline.

The headline is at the moment is just Nick Robinson's broken a plastic fork.

Now I'm going to stick that fork in my eye.

Nick Robinson has pulled out his own eyes.

Out, vile jelly.

Out, vile eyes.

I think there's a bit between normal, like, easy jet flight

and space.

And it's that bit that in Top Gun, he's flying in at the beginning of the new Top Gun.

Okay, yeah.

There's a bit where it's like you can sort of go there.

You can see a bit of the curvature of the Earth.

Yeah, and like the plane.

Hello.

You can get a neat video of you floating about experimenting with sort of bits of water and stuff like that.

Yeah, and I think James May's done it.

It's the sort of thing where James Mayor,

yeah, it's the kind of thing James May will have done.

Yeah.

But I don't know if it counts.

Does that mean that it doesn't exist?

Yeah, space tourism.

That doesn't meet any of the requirements of tourism, though, does it?

There's no restaurants, there's no souvenir, there's no centre parks.

Where are the flumes?

Yes.

There's no sort of cultural museum you can drag an unwilling child to or anything like that.

Do you know what I mean?

Where are you hiring a bike?

A holiday in space

is like a holiday anywhere else, except you're completely removing the cultural element.

I'm going to say that space has no culture.

I'm going to say that.

Oh, that's a big.

In fact, I'm going to say it's got the least culture of anywhere on Earth.

And I've been to Exeter.

Greetings, Earthlings.

I am your new banter, Chief.

Think about it, though.

You know, when you think about holiday options, right, and space and stuff, you know, you think a cold, grey, empty wilderness without any sign of life for literally light years.

Here it comes.

All you can think about is entropy, the fact that everything decays, and that all there is really when you take humanity out of the equation is an empty, meaningless howl.

If you're listening in Derby, please take out your earphones now.

If you're listening in Derby,

please adopt the brace position.

You're about to experience a banter earthquake.

Well, no, you've taken my...

Have we stolen your switcheroof?

I'm running out of...

Yeah, basically, yeah, so

when it comes to space, you know, holidays and so on, you know, and it is an empty wilderness, lots of infinity of shit stuff and going on.

And it's all bit crap.

And transport links aren't that good.

and um

uh there's probably loads of the best restaurants probably are gregg's etc um yeah

and that's funny to st ives again

poor choice

is nice

famously good tourists

beautiful locations

world-class art

very very very poor choice but i'm slamming it

oh people think three bean sound is a little bit um middle of the road is it a little bit safe Yeah, well, I just fucking slammed St Ives.

Who else is doing that?

Joe Rogan has another fucking guts.

He's everything St.

Ives.

You're heard of it.

I'm taking on St.

Ives.

I'm saying it right here and right now.

St Ives is a should be called St Ives because I'd rather break out in them than visit that place again.

St.

Chives, because you get better chat out of a fucking garnish on

an

ex-Benedict than you would out of

your average St.

Ives resident.

Okay, guys, sorry.

What's happening?

Oh, yeah.

So, when you go on holiday, it's like, what are we going to visit?

Like, are there some nice waterfalls?

Is there a cave?

Isn't it?

That's the main thing you do on holiday, isn't it?

We've probably discussed before you go.

You go to a waterfall, you go to a cave.

Maybe a cathedral.

And exactly.

And the other thing is you do is you go to a cathedral/slash a museum.

Yeah.

So that's the column.

It's garden grottos.

It's garden grottos.

But space doesn't have museums, which means maybe arguably it's actually the perfect holiday, because frankly, it's the grottos I'm in it for.

I don't know about you.

Do you like grotto?

Do you like...

Everyone likes a grotto.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because there's two things you do on holiday.

Isn't it you go, you walk around some grottos, and then you go to a museum.

So in space, all you can do...

The grotto is always flawless.

The only risk is the people you're going to the grotto with, who are you sharing the boat with, or the coach, or whatever.

Do you know what I mean?

Is it someone who's lay on the boat incorrectly and burned the soles of his feet and won't stop complaining about it the whole way, for example?

Is it possible to burn the soles of your feet?

That's what I'm always worried about.

I've witnessed exactly this on a Graho trip.

Oh, really?

They burned their feet on the very big boat and it had a kind of down the middle, I don't know what you'd call it, it was sort of kind of triangular-shaped with a sort of...

Can you imagine that on a boat, on quite a small boat?

There's a sort of storage area in the middle where it's...

Can you imagine what I mean?

I'm not really just describing it particularly well.

Are you sure it wasn't a jumbo tobler in someone had bought on Holiday?

It looks like a jumbo tobler in that shape down the middle of the boat.

And And he was lying on that, but with his feet pointing up and lead directly towards the hot, hot sun, the baking hot Mediterranean sun.

And by the time we got to the grotto, it had absolutely burnt his soles of his feet to a crisp.

I think it's quite hard to do, but he chooses it.

And spent the rest of the holiday.

We saw him in the hotel and they're sort of bandaged up in a wheelchair looking thoroughly miserable, but not as miserable as his family, whose holiday he'd also ruined by proxy.

Well, I had this on my recent holiday,

not quite the same thing, but I was in Kazakhstan.

I went for a day trip on a mini-bus

to see some

Grotto-adjacent things.

A canyon, a frozen lake.

It's all Grotto-Adjacent.

Yeah.

Adjacent stuff, isn't it?

It was minus eight.

Wow.

Which was fine if you've got the right coat and whatever, and you've got your hat on, and it's quite nice.

Yeah, you didn't have the right coat, did you?

Because you discovered shortly before your holidays in Kazakhstan that you are allergic to geese and ducks.

This is true.

You can't wear a down coat.

No.

So what happened was, Mike, I bought a down coat.

Me and Henry were in quite a lot of correspondence about this coat.

Yeah,

I got snippets of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because we were both in the same stage of life.

We need to buy a down coat.

Henry bought one, I bought one.

Yeah.

It's a life-changing moment.

It's a great thing to do.

Yeah.

I bought mine off vintage, which I don't know if you know what Mike is like a second-hand clothes.

I'm aware of it.

Market type thing.

It arrived and it arrived the day before I was due to go away.

And it was going to be really cold.

And I put it on and I instantly had an asthma attack.

Wow.

But you were warm.

I was lovely and warm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I was a bit worried that I was allergic to down, which apparently is a thing that can happen for asthmatics.

And then you started playing out memories, didn't you, over your life?

Being around ducks, being around geese,

coming out in hives, having asthma attacks.

Yeah, first time you made love to a swan.

First time you made love to a swan didn't go well.

The first time you at Spring Roll, you regurgitated the whole thing and it flew across the room into the eye of the Metro D.

Your body actually reconstituted it back into its rough shape.

Straight out like a sort sort of crispy, tasty missile.

Anyway, but I had to take this coat because I needed a big coat and I was going away the next day.

You took it anyway?

Yeah.

Because I didn't have any option.

A sort of death quilt, essentially.

You took it with you.

And basically, I think I've determined that what it was was this coat had been in the back of someone's cupboard for a long time, was a little bit mildewy and moldy.

Oh.

That is what's caused the problem.

And then actually, when I wore it for a few days, it just kind of aired out and it was fine.

It's a great relief.

What an incredible risk to take, Ben.

There's nothing like that, just that

special feeling you get from a bit of retail therapy, isn't it?

You know what?

I'm worth it.

I'm going to buy myself a mildew.

I'm going to buy myself a mildew-infested

health hazard

of a coat.

My partner's going to love the glow in my face.

Punches of Biro through my throat so I can breathe again.

Luckily, the hotel came with a free hotel Byro, so we were

set up.

So I went on this minibus trip.

I think it was the only English speaker, maybe.

A lot of

thumbs up and with some Malaysian guys having a nice time.

Which, of course, in Kazakhstan means if you keep on behaving as you're behaving, your face will form the basis of a stock for

a hot horse meat stew this evening.

Doesn't it?

I did eat a lot of horse.

did you yeah it's quite good i mean it's just it's just beef yeah it's it's beef it's emotional beef

but the weird thing about the minibus trip was there was a bloke from india who'd come yeah um hadn't brought a coat oh or a hat or gloves or scarf was just wearing a track suit.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, brilliant.

And it was minus eight.

Oh, so was he suffering unbelievably yeah because he was like doing a like a cartoon teeth chatter kind of kind of brilliant like kind of thing so he was probably about 50 had a big um michaelsniak moustache yeah yeah which was probably the only thing keeping him warm yeah and he was with his wife who was bundled up in like a massive coat hat scarf and she was livid that he'd fuck the sun so this had the conversation then yeah he must have said i'll be fine well did it look like a snazzy new track suit did he did he look like he felt great in his threads and didn't want to ruin the look and maybe it was that was it vanity what was getting in the way the only thing i wondered was the following day i went to a horse sanctuary nice was that because the sheer amount of horse you'd eat and you thought i've got to even it up a bit

i've spent three days at the horse abattoir i've been i've done i've done three visits to the horse abattoir i've actually got the horse abattoir visit visiting loyalty card

which is um

little pictures of um severed horse heads isn't it and they stamp it with a little horse well that's it And three visits to the abattoir, you get the three visits to the sanctuary, then.

That's right, yeah, to make up.

Yeah.

And I was taken around this place.

Yeah.

For horses that couldn't be killed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was walking, and it was the floor was kind of just shite.

Yeah.

Pooh, as in, not a bad floor, but horse poo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just like 100% shite.

Right.

Yeah.

But also it was frozen.

So it was like a sort of ice rink of shite.

Wow.

With occasional melted bits.

Yeah.

Really slippery.

And I just thought, oh, I'm going to fall over here.

Yeah.

And I was going through my head, like, would I just throw my coat away?

You're kind of on holiday, like, you can't do anything.

Like, it would just be totally caked in.

Yeah.

So maybe that's what happened to him.

Ah, I see.

Well, that's very generous of you, Ben.

You think there's been a coat-based disaster?

There might have been, because I went through the mental gymnastics of thinking about what I would do if my coat became saturated.

So why would your coat have become saturated and shit if you fell over, do you mean yeah but you didn't fall over in fact you discovered that you had an incredible talent for skating on horseshit

and it was one of the most amazing things they'd ever seen wasn't it it's just like finally i found it this is my true gift nobody can skate on horseshit like this boy

So, and you're now, you are going to be starring in the next, we can reveal this now, Kazakh series of dancing on shit, aren't you?

And if listeners would write into the International Olympic Committee, we're trying to get it into the Winter Olympics as ahead of your time, Ben.

Ahead of your time.

100 years from now, everyone will be doing it.

It's me and Jane Torville.

But you're having to deal with fierce lobbying against the idea from Claire Balding, aren't you?

She's a shite traditionalist.

She's a shite traditionalist.

She thinks the shite should be room temperature.

And that it should be shite wading, not skating.

Yeah.

So that's why she's got a rival TV show.

She's pitching called Wading Through Shite

with Claire Claire Balding, isn't it?

Which is more watchable, to be fair, but you should see her kicking away through that shite.

Did you see that man again during the course of your holiday?

Were you staying in the same place?

No idea.

I mean, we were staying in a city of two million people.

Oh, so you weren't in the same...

It wasn't like, it wasn't the hotel you were staying in was running the tour and you were in the same hotel.

No, no, no, no.

It's a separate thing.

Yeah.

Okay, fine.

I didn't come across him again.

That's a shame.

I want to know how he got on.

That's a bit of a slam down, that wasn't it.

We were living in a city of two million people.

It's quite...

It's good.

Sometimes I like it.

Do you like it when Ben shows his teeth?

I think it's good.

Yeah, yeah, Ben is in a city of two million people.

He's got that note.

Yeah.

Or maybe you don't know the population densities of Kazakhstan.

Waste of my fucking time.

Waste of my fucking time.

I'm so fucking chumps.

Can you picture these two trying to skate on horse shit?

Fuck it.

I'm really a fucking joke.

I'd be parwriting Henry.

He'd have fucking collapsed.

Smashed his fucking face.

Frozen over shit by now, wouldn't he?

I hope you do melt a patch of horseshit around where you've fallen over so that it affects your wound.

You're going to make turn angels in the corner.

You fucking stupid.

Oh, God.

Oh, there we are.

Yeah.

So, um, thank you.

Yeah.

So, uh, because they're trying to use, they're trying to, they brought fucking traditional ice skating boots to a horseshit rink.

Fucking idiots.

You're supposed to use these adaptations.

You're supposed to use these adapted porcelain hooves.

Fucking idiots.

That's why I'm able to gamble so freely left and right with my porcelain hooves.

Yes, it looks playful, but there's a huge amount of hard work that goes into it, you idiot.

Yes, I play playfully gamble.

Yes, I look like a spirit, like a forest spirit dancing upon the horse shit.

Yes, I know.

That's got to put the work in.

Anyway, I think that's probably

our episode on space tourism.

Great.

Covered.

Chick.

It's time to read your emails.

Yes, please.

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 shoeing a horse.

Give me your horse.

My beautiful horse.

If you'd like to email us, the email address is 3beansiladpod.gmail.com.

And Caitlyn emailed, she's in Massachusetts.

Ooh, okay.

And I think I asked people, if I can remember correctly, for DIY disasters.

Yes, which I was nervous about.

Oh, really?

I don't think we've ever been more middle of the road, have we, than that?

Than putting out that as a request?

Do you think it feels a bit sort of radio 2 or something?

Yeah, it doesn't feel like the kind of show that would slam St.

Ives like we have today.

I don't know because the start, the jumping off point for this is people drilling through their hands.

No, isn't it?

It's falling off a ladder looking for a tortoise and busting your ribbon.

But even before that, I think even before that happened, people were drilling through their hands listening to the show.

Yeah.

Oh, that's true.

And also, it's true.

That story about Mike is quite dark because

it ends with Mike having an entire

tortoise ingested into his body, isn't it?

Yeah.

And doctors telling him that it's safer for you to just live alongside.

Well, it will outlive me.

Essentially, they're not seeing it as a problem of a tortoise trapped within Mike.

They're seeing it as a tortoise problem, which is

of a tortoise trapped in a man.

Of a tortoise trapped in a Mike.

Because essentially, you've got two sets of medical practitioners.

You've got the vets and the doctors who are both sort of trying to duke it out as to which is the.

Yeah.

Which is the problem.

But because you will pre-decease the tortoise, the tortoise is seen as the patient and Mike as the problem.

Mike is basically being seen as a kind of swelling, aren't you?

A kind of parasite.

Or a sort of parasite.

Yeah, or an excess fat layer.

There's an excess fat layer.

But

what they're doing is they're injecting through you, aren't they?

Through your abdominum, they can inject the.

Through my.

Through your abdominum.

Yeah.

Which not many people have.

Well, it's like incredibly lucky for you that you do have.

It's just an austerity to the colagal mound.

It's so lucky for you that you do have an abdominum.

And that you've got abdominums in your your family because if you didn't have one, you'd probably be dead right now.

And offering very slightly less good content on the pod.

Because they're injecting the tortoise through your body, aren't they, with steroids, aren't they?

They're beefing the tortoise up, aren't they?

Yeah, and anabolic.

Yeah, all that, just anabolic, none of the others.

So not duodenal, not metaphoric,

not spectrolific.

It's purely anabolic.

Are we building to an alien cell chest burst?

Well, the question is, that's what they can't reassure me is where the burst is going to happen.

But also, crucially, it's going to be a very, very slow burst.

They've had to sit you down and talk you through this, Mike, haven't they?

Yeah.

The painkilling options just aren't there for a really slow tortoise burst.

Yeah, and a chess burst, I wouldn't mind because I think you can cover that with clothing

as it happens.

An ass burst is much more difficult.

Much more difficult.

And also means you can't ride a bike for weeks afterwards.

No.

But you've decided to lean into it and invite friends and family, haven't you?

Well, they're all doing a sweepstake on where it comes out.

They've all drawn on Sharpie where they think the tortoise is going to come out.

And it's going to be

quite the thing, isn't it?

Yeah, there's almost 20 quid in the pot so far.

Any sign of egg, Mike?

No signs.

No sign of egg.

No sign of egg.

But so what we're doing is we're talking about...

Egg is a lost tortoise that

we're speculating might be within Mike's body, but it's more likely around

roving around the southwest.

Well, it's likely to have buried itself in the garden somewhere.

It's probably buried itself in the garden.

The sun is beginning to come out.

The crocuses have appeared.

Could be that egg reappears soon.

So I wonder.

It is warming up.

But of course, we are approaching Easter when people will be looking for eggs in a garden, which is something we did discuss before.

So actually, in a way, you've got a kind of natural army of people who will be looking for egg.

But the trouble is, when they find egg, egg, will they stick a spade through him hoping that lots and lots of tiny Maltese is falling?

Anyway, this is an email from Caitlin on that topic.

When I was a kid, my parents were continually in the process of fixing and renovating our very old house.

It generally went okay.

We were a Benjamin Partridge-style baths-only house for a while.

Okay, yeah.

Until after some years, my father put in a shower.

Since he was going to be generating a lot of dust, ripping apart drywall, he taped himself into the room with duct tape hang hang hang hang hang what wow so he's he's putting a shower in he sealed himself in he's taped himself to the wall in duct tape who he's no he's taped himself into the room so i guess he's taped around the door i thought

i thought he taped himself onto the wall so so so to appear like some sort of alien sort of mother alien figure that was creating a sort of

to enhance his diy capabilities

become the wall hoping that he could sort of he'd kind of regurgitate a sort of hand would come out of his mouth like the alien, but holding a hammer and be really good at doing stuff.

Or like a spirit level.

He's started birthing

spirit levels.

Yeah, so I think it's that he went in the room and then taped up the access to the room so that the dust wouldn't

reach the rest of the house.

Okay.

Very noble.

Let's see.

So Kenny says, he tapes himself into the room with duct tape, only to discover a beehive in one of the walls that he ripped apart.

Oh my God, that's good.

Guys, can I tell you something you haven't spotted yet about this story?

It's the irony of the fact that he's taped himself in.

Oh, the bloody irony.

Fuck.

That's good.

Oh, the very fact of how efficient he'd been with the taping is literally the sword with which he's

round himself up.

Ah, that's beautiful.

I love it.

Ah, his own petard.

Such a case of own petard, isn't it?

He had trapped himself into a room full of angry

And we didn't even get any wall honey.

Eventually, we did have a shower, though.

All the best, Caitlin.

Okay, Caitlin, that's superb.

She's wisely left out the

hundreds of stings, the anaphylactic shock.

The outcome, the possibly fatal outcome.

Yeah.

Wow.

Of a man desperately trying to deduct tape a door.

Of course, you know, in that moment, you'd lose all your detucting, your deducting.

Was it duct tape?

Did she specify the tape?

Was it ducked?

Was it ducked?

Was it ducked?

Not gaffer.

It wasn't gaffer.

It was ducted.

And you know what would happen when your fingers would get all sausage?

It's a kidnapper's choice.

Kidnapper's choice, yeah.

Well, it's from the kidnapping section of a DIY shop, isn't it?

It's all that stuff.

Your duct tape, your rope.

And a roll of carpet.

Your roll of carpet, your fake IDs, your false beard.

Because you know you'd be looking at your fingers, your fingers suddenly get all sausage, wouldn't they?

You'd be like, oh, your eyes are swelling up, you can't see anything.

Suddenly I've got Prince Charles' fingers.

I can't open.

i mean king charles i can't i can't oh just deduct just deduct how does it to deduct maybe you just try to get on with it i just try to get on with it and installed the shower yeah just yeah because the other thing is they're more scared than you are

aren't they

we're more angry with you than you are with yourself

at that point

yeah because if you just stayed still we know what happens with beards i mean

with b beards oh sorry did you miss it no sorry it was a business not a beardsness Oh, sorry, sorry.

Wear hundreds of angry beards.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Because he wouldn't have survived that.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

I don't know if it really counts as an actor if it's just bees.

There's lots of different kinds of beard.

Ginger, grey, mahogany, goatee, wise man.

No, no, sorry.

I was going to say, what bees do, if you stand still, they just form a beard, don't they?

They form a bee beard.

Take some photos, take some selfies, and then they're on their way.

Finally, Mel, Eva from Bristol.

Hello, Eva.

In your most recent DIY episode, Ben Ostford listener DIY Disasters.

So I thought I'd share a fond decade-old memory of the first time I heard my dad swear.

Oh.

Picture of the scene.

Me and my dad are alone in the house.

He's been interested with fixing a new, exciting treadmill to the floor of his latest project, the home gym.

Ambitious.

I am 12.

All of a sudden, I heard Alam Mike Wozniak.

Don't know quite what she she means by that, because she says, all of a sudden I heard Alam Mike Wozniak scream, fucking shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Well, that's how Mike wakes up, isn't it?

Every hour on the hour.

You're going to set your watch to it.

And the sound of heavy footsteps as my dad sprinted past me.

Noticing me, he screamed, Towels!

Towels!

She's called towels.

Don't just stand there, towels, get some towels.

I know, I know, it's confusing.

I know I shouldn't have gone.

I knew this was going to happen at some point, but I desperately need towels.

Get the guest towels.

No, not your sister, guest towels, but the guest towels.

And Mike, of course, on the half hour, you scream, towels, towels, isn't that right?

In fear, with towels in hand, I headed downstairs to see water pouring from every spotlight in our dining room.

It's beyond towels at that point, isn't it?

You can't just chuck towels at

properly, yeah, serious plumbing leakage.

Electro leakage.

Electro-leakage.

Oh, I tell you what, water, can I say, as a DIY novice, like we all are, there's something about the sight of water running through a light.

Yeah.

It's all

absolutely terrifying.

Have you ever seen them water filling the inside of a bulb?

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

That's when you know.

That's when you like, that's when you start breaking through the walls, hoping that there's a hive of bees in there to just put you out of your misery.

Or just then they might be able to help.

Oh, God.

I need hive brain thinking.

With a poor sense of downpour crisis management, because I was 12, I started futilely covering the room in towels, listening to an increasing chorus of shit, shit, shit from the garage.

Also, all that happens if you cover stuff in towels, it just creates a slightly sort of Miss Havisham kind of like

melancholic.

Oh, yeah, because you're never going back in that room again.

No,

my dad then sprinted back through the dining room, turned to me, and yelled, get more fucking buckets

before disappearing,

but but none of us talked to our my estranged brother buckets

before disappearing back upstairs to patch the pipe, which he had, of course, accidentally drilled straight through.

Can I say, though, in a way, there's a nice irony that he actually did doing quite a lot of running.

So, in a way, sometimes you don't get the run that you planned for, but you do get the run that you needed.

Thank you, Eva, from Bristol.

Yeah, thank you, Eva.

Golly, good.

It's time

to play the ferryman.

Patreon.

Patreon.

Patreon.com

forward slash three bean salad.

Thanks to everyone who signed up on our Patreon.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad is the place to go Four-year bonus episodes and three episodes and all that kind of business.

It's absolutely bursting with bonus content now, isn't it?

Yeah.

It is, because on our months off, we're now filling it.

We're filling the Patreon bucket.

So there's no more lacuna.

It's just it's relentless, isn't it?

What's lacuna?

It's the most pretentious way of saying

space.

Space.

Is it?

An unfilled space or gap.

Ah, we have filled the lacuna.

We have.

We filled the lacuna.

So yeah, if if you want to fill your own lacuna, get over there.

Anyway, if you sign up for the Sean Bean tier on Patreon, you get a shout-out in the Sean Bean Lounge from Mike.

You certainly do.

And Mike, you were in the Sean Bean Lounge only last night.

I was.

We had a lovely old time.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Because, of course,

it was Reverse Valentine's Day, wasn't it?

It was.

Thank you, Benjamin.

And here's my report.

It was Reverse Valentine's Day at the Sean Bean Lounge last night.

Katie Biggs O'Callaghan, Diggory, Sam Creedon Gray, Paul Hancock, Pete Silver, Dorg Silver, and Zygmunt made themselves into a human Valentine's card which was duly haunted by Hector Gwynne and Rachel Burgo, secreted in the shared sock logger of Archie Seymour Butts Monday, Rob, Phil James and Ad Rock, and when opened placed a curse on all of their former and future but not current lovers.

Ben Goldsborough, Tiers Ramiro, Alana Moffat, Jenny Stringleman of the Shire, Fred W and Wassle celebrated by being welded into Kurt Biesick's cast iron group chastity belt, with anti-clime paint added to dot the eyes by Lindsay McShay and Else, and the T's crossed by Nicola liberally spraying anti-aphrodisiac musk wrought from the strainings of Steve Parkin, Chris Beerpark, Richard Parker and Zayn Nichols.

Helen Andreas, Jenny Wilson and Pato turned chocolatier for the occasion and while serving traditional Valentine's heart-shaped chocolates did so on a platter of Neil Lake with heart-shaped chocolate containing chunks pre-chopped out of him by Emma James, Andrew S and Mr.

B.

Unsurprisingly, these three suffered a degree of repetitive strain injury from this work, which precluded them from Mimkit's superb reverse Valentine's Steeplechase Relay.

Alex Gray, Jilly Womble and and Susan Robertson therefore went in the first wave, cresting the romance-proof hurdles and skimming the baton over the water pool into the non-lubricated hands of Amy Bush, King Zesty Zingaton and Stevie Green who sprinted in an anti-nuptial fashion up the steeple tubes towards Ellie Morris, Mary Ellen Lane and Sarah Smith Robbins who switched the baton for a rolled-up papal nullification decree which was cartwheeled to the finish line by Liz King, Rich Pierce, Katie Wetherick and Sue Sabine.

In track two were Grace Hannigan and Tom Bean McMahon who were disqualified for a false start.

Michael Rogerson Smith, Gray Hendy, Patrick Skeen and and Katie chose to mark the event by starting a fight with Sean Bean's diamond-encrusted robotic love swan.

The swan made short work of them before press-ganging Meyer, Niall Carragher, Luke Padgila and Aiden Taylor Gooby into forming a skiffle band with it and touring East Anglia under duress.

Elsewhere the Flaming Cannonball Cupid competition occupied a decent crowd of loungers.

Tom Davies Arnold burned out at just three yards, while Kelly Rice managed a full furlong.

A new personal best.

Mike S., Christine Francis and Lauren McDoodle's attempt at a triple Flaming Cupid disintegrated immediately after ignition, causing irreparable damage to Adam Granger's sausage roll, Chris King's Sausage Dog, and Jack Bruin's Zoot Suit.

Graham Miller crash-landed in the bean chandelier, prompting Thomas Wogan to try and dislodge him by firing Mackina, Karen M.B., Nev, Nathan Jorgensen, Russ Casely Adams, Liz Hadfield, Willie Wu, Michael Punt, Profane Tomesis, and James Nicholas into him, all of whom also became lodged.

The chandelier, now stuffed to the gills with flaming cupids, had never shone brighter.

Too bright in fact, leading Carriana and Will to position the reverse Papier-Mache Christa Berg, not on its pedestal, but on David Jay's box of travel giblets, which burst, attracting a host of peregrine falcons, which, mad from feasting, claimed Amy La Roche, gossamer thin alabaster shins, and finned the cupcake their own and took flight with them without leaving any contact details.

Arriving late and unaware of any of the above, Sean Bean dedicated the event to Carol with an E and drew the evening to a close.

Thanks all.

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

This is from Darren.

Darren Kegg.

From what?

Darren, what?

sorry?

Darren Kegg.

Sounds like a Viz character.

Darren Kegg in his nasal peg, and he's got like a really smelly balls.

Oh, God.

Darren Kegg, he's got a dick like a leg.

There we go.

That's what it would be.

Darren Kegg and his round-the-clock explosive diarrhea.

He says, hello, lovely boys.

This week he's visiting a linen factory.

What could go wrong?

Sorry, Darren.

Since I'm learning how to use synths,

I thought I would have a crack at an acid house version of your theme tune.

This is music to my ears.

The bass farts are performed on a TD3 MO.

The bass what?

Farts.

You heard.

I'm sorry.

I wasn't sure if I'd heard that right here.

Yeah.

He is like a fist character.

Which is a modded-out version of the TD3, itself a clone of the classic TB303.

The drums are provided by an OPZ, since my R70 is being repaired, and I don't have a TR707 or a TR808.

Sorry, Henry.

Hope you enjoy.

That was quite annoying.

Yeah, that's quite annoying.

That's the end of the show.

Thanks for listening, and we'll play out with Darren Kegg's penis leg.

Thank you.

Cheers, everyone.

Bye.

Bye.