Guy Fawkes

Now

the temperature has plummeted, hasn't it, in the last week or two?

Oh, it's icy out there.

It's proper icy.

I nearly went A over tear a few times.

Not actually icy, but it's...

What do you mean it's not actually icy?

There's no actual ice, but it's...

There's loads of ice.

There's loads of ice.

Not in London, though.

London maintains

a sort of semi-tropical temperature just because of sheer rat activity.

Yeah, it's the sewer.

Sewer temp.

Is it a sewer temp?

It's basically underfloor heating.

Yeah.

But instead of chemicals being run through an onion pipes, it's loads and loads of human shit and rats sort of frolicking and fighting on it.

Isn't it?

It's a hot, furry fluid.

That's the underfloor heating of London.

It keeps your road safe.

It's a hot, furry fluid.

It keeps us all toasty.

And that's why quite often in London you'll see someone shuffling about in flip-flops.

So all year round, that's a look.

Turd-smeared flip-flops.

Turd-smeared flip-flops.

Or flip-flops.

If you see those people, they've normally been down surfing the sewer, haven't they?

That's right.

Which is a reek to passage for Londoners, doesn't it?

Between the ages of 17 and 23.

You do your first.

Because, you know, that reminds me when I lived in Glasgow.

There's a little pause there if Ben wants to make a jingle about the Glasgow years.

Just opening it up as a possibility.

Is it just the sound sound of various irate Scottish people shouting at you?

Who was that prick?

That fucking prick again.

I'm not even going to call him Big Man, which I call everyone.

I call everyone Big Man.

I call the man that murdered my auntie Big Man, but I will not call him Big Man.

I like average man.

That's as far as I'll go.

They do all call you Big Man in Glasgow, which is lovely.

It's great.

It's a lovely feeling being called Big Man.

Have you enjoyed it?

Have you experienced Big Man, Ben?

I've experienced that.

Although I've also experienced the opposite of that.

In Glasgow.

Getting the chick kicked out of you

by a group of sailors.

Yeah.

By the way, the Barrowlands is a kind of,

I think it's a music venue, but it's also like a kind of, it's in the east end of Glasgow, and it's a kind of...

It's a kind of, it's very much Moss Isley.

Okay.

It's like, it's kind of trading of like sort of black market stuff.

It's just loads and loads.

It's a kind of marketplace, but it's all black market stuff.

Oh, great.

And you get people,

you'd get people selling boxes of cigarettes.

Nice.

With you know, with like the writing on them in no human language.

It's off-world.

These Marlboroughs are off-world.

But what was really funny is you'd get, I remember seeing

this kind of old couple, and they were talking to a cigarette vendor.

They were obviously hot, hot cigarettes,

bent cigarettes, you know, whatever.

And they were sort of tasting them.

They were given a sort of, they were just standing.

This is not bad, I suppose.

But you think big man, that's them.

I quite like them, big man.

That's how couples refer to each other.

Well, married couples.

Do you, big man, take you, big man, to be each other's big men?

It's the Presbyterian way.

So when I said I've had had the opposite of that, what I mean is I've been to Glasgow a few times.

I really love it there.

People in general are really nice, but also I've met the rudest person I've ever met.

Oh, really?

When I got a bus, I got out of the train station and had to get a bus somewhere.

And for some reason, there's like two companies that operate buses in Glasgow.

And this must confound loads of visitors.

It must do.

Because of a centuries-long family bus feud.

They've got a bus mafia.

Because there are any buses which have which have full side cannon, don't they?

That's something you don't see often anymore.

And if you get involved in a bus in a sort of territorial bus skirmish when you're just on the way to work, whatever, you just...

Oh, if you see a grappling hook sailing through the air, get off the bus.

Just kick off.

Because otherwise you will be scripted.

You'll be like, you know, shoving hot cannonballs into,

you know, just firing ordnance around the western Glasgow.

Anyway, go on.

So like, I got on the wrong company bus.

Which must happen a lot.

I just think it must happen a lot.

Would you mean the wrong bus has in going to the wrong destination or the wrong, the wrong brand?

You already had like a pre-bought ticket for

the wrong family.

I think I'd bought a ticket and it was.

You had the big man voucher.

Yeah, the big man voucher.

You should have had the, you should have had the wee-man.

You should have had the wee-man.

Yeah, we-man is the other thing, isn't it?

We don't want to hear we-man.

If you're hearing we-man,

it's probably if you're if you're above the age of 10, you're in you're in deep doo-doo.

Yeah, so I got on the wrong, I think it was first bus I'd got on, and it was meant to be a different one.

And I sort of realized this as I got on, but I wasn't quite sure.

And I, so I just went, oh, I've got this, but I think I might be on the wrong thing.

And I just tried to explain.

And I thought, well, this must happen all the time because he's just going to say, oh, it's this.

And he just stayed looking straight ahead and just went, no.

Which didn't answer any of it.

Like, it didn't make any sense of anything I'd said.

And yet it was clear.

Oh, totally clear.

There's a lack of subtext, isn't there?

Which is

going to be quite refreshing, essentially.

So you had to say he wouldn't let you off the bus, essentially.

Is what you're saying?

I bought a ticket that went from the airport to the centre of town.

And then apparently I could use that same ticket on a local bus.

Glasgow, Prestwick, by the way.

Yeah, the only place where Elvis ever set foot in Britain.

Lovely bit of texture there, a little bit of detail.

It's Glasgow's main airport.

Yeah.

I think it's sometimes known as Prestwick International.

I would say it's probably Prestwick's main airport as well.

Well, no, Prestick has its own JFK.

Presswick was the first airport to have Presswick was the first town to have JFK airport, in fact.

Yes.

And it's the only airport I've ever been to where

once when I was flying into Glasgow, I think I was too late for the train, the final train had gone.

So the airport actually organised a kind of thing where it's like, okay, so here's the solution.

Just all have a chat with each other and just sort it out.

All right, big men.

So they just sort of encouraged us and everyone just started chatting and we all just came up with solutions.

It was like, okay, we...

we're sharing a taxi generally, but it's just everyone was sort of organized into like a...

Well, I shall carry you

on my back and if he carries me on his back, then...

So if we get progressively smaller and smaller, well, less and less big men.

So we start with the biggest man.

We need to line up big man to wee man.

A perfect spectrum.

Because it is a spectrum.

Big man.

Biggest man to we-est man.

How many E's in wee-est?

Don't know.

We haven't got time to discuss that now.

Three feels like too many.

Two isn't enough.

I don't know.

It's like zoology.

It's hard to know when to stop.

It's hard to know when to stop.

Our apologies to any listeners in Scotland

for experiencing these accents.

We found him.

The one exactly in the middle.

It's the medium man, the medium, the medium man

who shall bring about the emancipation of Scotland.

What's his name?

Henry Packer, you say.

Oh, no.

Set back in the cause of independence a thousand years.

Okay, right, this is enough.

Right.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Apologies all around.

So, but when I used to live, so that something was reminding me of when I used to live in Glasgow.

We were talking about surfing on a wave of turds.

Can we all reiterate, please?

All three of us are very big fans of Glasgow.

Absolutely.

Glasgow's lovely.

But the reason it reminds me of it is because when I was living in Glasgow, I lived and had a succession of flat shares

with various people asking you to leave the flat.

Was it people that were repudiating the open bin policy?

Come one, come all to my bin, Ben.

It's a very cool thing.

Think about it.

Anyone can chuck something in it or throw up into it.

Land in it.

They quite often will.

Basically, one of the flat shares I lived with, one of the guys I shared a flat with, so I basically had a succession of flat shares.

It was the late 90s, right?

I was working in the digital animation field in a company that was literally called Digital Animations.

That's how early it was.

But that's the one, which I've discussed before, invented the digital newsreader who now doesn't do the news anymore because it was decided by society that we'd rather get our news from humans.

She's got a job in Tesco.

She's got a job literally in Tesco.

And I saw her the other day.

I think this actually never made it to a non-Patreon episode.

Oh, really?

So people might not know about this.

Yeah.

Ananova was her name.

She was called Ananova.

She was a digital news reader.

I did some of the animation on her.

She was never really used for news because it turns out that people prefer, people trust humans more than a sort of poorly animated sort of like

Commodore 64 level kind of human sort of humanoid character.

But we did use her to demonstrate, we've made little films of her to demonstrate how to use ATMs.

So I did some of the animation where she's leaning forward and pulling notes out of an ATM.

And that's been sort of, I don't know, on the kind of animation markets.

I don't know how it works, but it's been sort of sold and resold and gone around the world.

It's ended up in like

Tesco's on the screen.

When you're doing self-checkout, you see that.

That animation can be repurposed so many times.

So, for example, if you need an animation of a woman pulling sausages out of a hat,

yeah,

you can use my work.

You can repurpose that, right?

You could repurpose that.

Or pulling torpedoes out of

a submarine.

You can use it for military purposes, military tutorials.

Long grass out of a dog's ass.

Perfect for vet school.

Yeah, perfect for vet school.

It's sort of like a, when you come to think of it, most things do come down to pulling something out of something else.

Or putting something into something else, whereby you just run the animation in reverse.

So it covers,

it covers most skills.

Also,

we may have have covered this in the patreon episode when we talked about ananova but it's worth mentioning again that ananova's got back right oh she's got booty is that what you're talking about yeah well that was that was the other because remember it's the late 90s so i i i you know i was a young man

it was the era of the new lad wasn't it it was the

new unreconstructed and it was so easy using digital technology just to increase the size of a backside

and i think I used to be

you had Chris Evans whispering in your little ear, didn't you?

I had Chris Evans whispering in my ear.

I had a pile of high high street honeys to posters

on my desk.

And obviously, Tony Blair was torso of the week.

I mean, exactly.

I was dating Carmen Elektra.

Or at least the Glasgow version.

Big man Elektra.

But I sort of said, by the way, I saw Anna over the other day.

I saw her the other day.

She's inside the self-checkouts in Co-op.

She's doing tremendously well for herself.

She's doing so well.

Yeah, she's in co-op at the moment.

So, um,

so you'll see her, you'll see that the booty is quite large.

Now, I can't, I'm not sure if that was me.

It might have been, though.

Because that was, because, you know, with 3D technology on a computer, that's just literally one roll of the mouse.

It's just like

increases,

increases,

so it's so, and you can get carried away and lose track of

time

sometimes.

I've been increasing Animova's button size size for like two weeks.

Yeah.

And you're working in a dark office space with just sort of four other quite geeky men, right?

Okay, you haven't physically looked at a woman in months.

You can't remember what the shape they are sometimes.

There's a point in maybe this happens all the time, but there's a point in the sort of development of any great technology.

When Henry Packer steps in where I get involved, or someone like me.

And what happens is, there's a kind of like, there's a

maybe this is all, maybe this, maybe it was ever thus, I don't know.

But basically, there's a kind of paucity of information like penetration around a company.

So that you, what do you mean?

Well, imagine a kind of a woman with a really, really, really, really big buttocks pulling information out of a tube.

Okay.

That's how you envisioned the internet, wasn't it?

That was your pitch.

That's what tim bernersley had as a as a vision

well and it was it's still my favorite bit of the 2012 olympics opening ceremony

so essentially i there came a point where i realized in this company that there wasn't a lot of

that basically

most a lot of people in the company there wasn't a lot of like

information wasn't dispersed very evenly people didn't really know what other people were doing essentially or how it all worked This suddenly feels, by the way, like a business podcast, and I'm here for it.

This is great.

Yeah.

It also feels like it thinks of that compartmentalized were you actually really being worked in a sort of Russian troll farm?

No, Mike, because if I'd been working in a Russian troll farm, would I still be getting emails telling me that I'm going to get paid eventually?

I don't think so.

So,

essentially, yeah, it's a business podcast.

We're talking about information dispersal with Henry Packer.

Hey, today we're talking about lateral information exchange.

Okay.

We're talking the top animator and businessman, Henry Packer.

Henry, welcome to the show.

I'm Steve Grubenheimer.

And so is my assistant, Steve Grubenheimer.

It's the two Grubenheimers.

So basically, people didn't know.

So the CEO, for example.

Absolute chump.

He was such a chump.

You've literally given the name of the company, by the way,

and the dates

and the technology, as the specific technology product that we've developed.

I'm going to say this is the belling cap for this particular mystery.

The CEO is a bit of a.

Well, the CEO got changed a few times.

They kept on bringing in new CEOs to try and rescue the company.

We need a bigger man.

So

I started to realize, but I think maybe actually this isn't so much a thing about companies, it's more about a per character type, which I am, or there's a certain kind of person in every company that finds the information cracks, lodges themselves in between me.

You sort of put yourself forward as a kind of lone genius.

Is that what you're saying?

No, no, no, no.

No, very much not.

Because someone that basically, basically, there came a point where I realized no one knew what I was doing.

Including you?

Especially me.

That was why it was so powerful,

You can't fire someone even if they don't know what they've done wrong.

I realised that

I genuinely had this thing where when the CEO would walk around the room, I would just focus in on a bit of digital stuff on my screen.

You just make Aranova's buttocks slightly bigger, wouldn't you?

Every time you walk past.

I'd make sure that when he walked past back

to his office, they'd got bigger in between, so he'd know that I was doing something.

And he walks around my office 25 times a day

for two years.

So,

but basically, there came a point where I realized that he

if I just focused in on these little dots on the screen and sort of moved them around, they just looked like I was doing something.

And literally, no one knew what I was doing it just didn't matter because no one was really qualified to to to to to know that i wasn't doing anything like no one it was just

it was it was poor information dispersal then this is the risk no it wasn't the point

that wasn't poor information was bursting none of it was lateral

no

but um i'm just going to quickly focus in on the anecdote that that we need

not necessarily that we want i'm trying to remember what this

I mean, we want to say that.

We said it was a rat surfing, right?

So that triggered a memory, which is in one of the flats I lived in in Glasgow.

I was sharing a flat with

a bloke,

an English bloke, who had all various different flatmates.

It was coming and going all the time.

And

this was probably, probably one of my worst ones.

His hobby was putting on a wetsuit,

meeting up with a bunch of friends who are also wearing wetsuits, and bodysurfing down the River Clyde.

What?

Right, so that was his hobby.

Now that's kind of fine in its own right, whatever.

Okay.

I've never seen that in Glasgow.

I've never seen anyone.

I've never seen that.

It takes all sorts.

Now, the River Clyde, I didn't know if the River Clyde is a particularly polluted river, but any big city with a big river in it, that river is

polluted.

You know what I mean?

Like the Thames is absolutely.

You know,

it's ranted, isn't it and i'm gonna say the cline was rancid

in modern britain yeah

exactly so so what so a side effect of this was

so after he just moved in

i thought oh no this guy's you know maybe he'll be all right and then i came home one day

and i opened the door of my flat and it's the worst smell i've ever smelled

the flat absolutely stank

and then i suddenly went

there's a dead body hanging off the ceiling there's three dead bodies hanging off the ceiling

It's the smell of the three dead bodies hanging off the ceiling.

And then I come to, and there is,

that they hung their wetsuits out to dry.

So once a week, him and his disgusting mates hung their wetsuits after a body surf down the Clyde to dry in the flat.

And it made the most disgusting smell I've ever smelt.

But to be fair to the guy.

He did leave after a month without telling me or paying his rent.

It's because he would have been accidentally swept into the fashion nuclear submarine

facility

and shaved cage and destroyed.

Yeah.

Let's crank up the old beam machine.

Yes, please.

This week's topic, as sent in by Georgia from York.

Hello, Georgia.

Hi, Georgia.

It's a topic that I think is close to York's heart.

Oh, yeah.

Minster's.

It's not Minster's.

Yorvik Viking Centre.

It's not Yorvik Viking Centre.

Keep guessing.

What else can it be?

The topic is Guy Fawkes.

Oh, is he from York?

I think he was from York.

I think.

I might be wrong.

It might just be that George is from York and is into Guy Fawkes.

I don't know how famous Guy Fawkes is internationally speaking.

We're quite obsessed with him in Britain.

Yeah.

Well, we used to.

Actually, I did notice recently

that we don't, as much as we did.

I've set myself a bit of a sort of syntax challenge there.

I'm not sure if

I can

rise to it.

it.

We used to

do the effigies, didn't we?

Much more than we do anymore, I've noticed.

Do people not effigy that much these days?

Oh, sorry, Mike.

I've forgotten.

In London, we don't effigy.

She don't burn effigies.

Mike was genuinely panicked at the idea of effigies going out of social.

You're going to put the community together if you're not burning effigies.

But you effigise, I mean, you're effigising on a daily basis, aren't you, Mike?

There's so many different things.

Yeah, of course.

Because effigy is your main.

Well, it's the main way in which you

Change, isn't it, and deal with stress?

If I have a local disagreement with a neighbor, the next day they'll see that there's an effigy that's been made of them in Wicca, and then by the evening, it'll be on fire.

That's right.

Yeah.

And that's why you always...

Because for a lot of people, when they meet someone, it's a handshake, isn't it?

But in Exeter, it's a handshake, and then you make a sort of putty mold of their whole body, don't you?

As a greeting and a warning.

Yeah,

exactly.

But then you can use that putty mold to create the effigy, can't you?

Which is stuffing with hay.

And

then if you want to imagine how you stuff an effigy full of hay, picture a woman with a 90s haircut and a really, really big booty pulling cash out of a card out of an ATM.

And then reverse it.

Replace the card with hay, the ATM with an effigy and reverse it.

And stop being distracted by that jiggling booty.

The thing is, though, sorry to take it back to Ananova, it doesn't jiggle at all because it's...

No,

it was pre-jiggle technology, man.

It was the late 90s.

We couldn't get those booties jiggling.

We had a whole division set up for that.

The most we could do is get them to move up and left, up and right, a bit like a tetras.

When we thought it's safe to just have no jiggle, because the human eye will notice incorrect jiggle, but more than it'll notice no jiggle.

You know what, weirdly?

The weird thing about Ananova is her one job in that situation is to get you to concentrate on what she's doing.

It's a very basic task.

It's getting money out of an ATM.

It's very basic.

But she's self-distracting, by the way.

But she's self-distracting because she's got

her very crazy

which is nowhere near the ATM.

And a lot of the time, people come away from the ATM, they haven't taken their money out, they've left it there, and they're just walking away feeling insecure about their booty size.

Now, in co-op on the ATM, they've actually got a button you can press to book a Brazilian butt lift.

You can book a Brazilian buttlift.

And also, sales of two large watermelons have gone through the roof.

Anyway, effigies.

Yes.

Where I grew up, we didn't, we had, we we did it on the 5th of November.

There was Bonfire Night.

Remember the remember the 5th of November?

I think we just need to literally explain to people who don't know.

Let's do it.

Go explainer.

Rory Stewart, do one of your little explainers.

Rory Stewart here,

Guy Fawkes,

is

one of the most famous men in English history, was a Catholic

activist, conspirator, and soldier who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament on the state opening of Parliament on the 5th of November in 1606 or something.

Five, I think.

So it's at five minutes past four.

Little Jews.

It's a bit of fun, doesn't it?

A lovely bit of fun.

Chill out, Karen.

And was thwarted, led by Robert Catesby.

Thwarted, hung drawn and quartered.

And since then, on the 5th of November,

in the British Isles, there's

not the British Isles, in the UK, there's a bonfire night where we burn the effigy of Guy Fawkes and we say, Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot

to remember about

the thwarted, how we nearly lost King James VI

and how there remains to this day issues between Protestants and Catholics.

James VI of Scotland, James II of England, yes, nice, Paul First,

lovely stuff, yes, yes, yep,

all stand for the king.

We're entering the Regal Zone.

Off with their heads.

On with the show.

Listen not to the knaves and the shopkeepers.

Bring me more advisors.

The Regal Zone.

It's James I of England.

James I.

First and sixth.

How was that for an explainer?

It felt quite dry.

That's very good.

We don't burn...

Where I grew up, outside Portsmouth, there was in a village called Titchfield, there is a...

On Bonfire Night, we didn't burn Guy Fawkes.

We burnt an effigy of the Earl of Southampton.

Oh, wow.

You had like more specific beef.

Yeah, because he closed, he sort of sealed up some

waterways to make the docks of Southampton more powerful and destroyed the very industry of Titchfield and its environs.

So what would happen is penny for the guy.

Penny for the guy.

So

we would make guys, our guys would be guys rather than Earl of Southampton.

Guys, strangely.

Yeah.

And so they'd still look like Guy Fawkes.

To the degree that those things ever looked like a person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or to the degree that anyone knew what Guy Fawkes looked like, who was making a guy.

So you'd say penny for the guy, so you'd take money from people thinking that you were celebrating the strength of British...

Strength of British counter-terrorism.

Yes.

Secretly build a different effigy and then actually would burn the Ell of Southampton.

Feels a bit dishonest.

I don't know what happened to the guys, though.

So, were there any facial markers or distinctive features that made him look like the Ella Southampton, this effigy that you built?

I think it was assumed that he had

a weak, spindly chin beard.

And so, that was something you'd have fair-haired, a sort of beard that's quite difficult to see from a distance.

A sort of bum-fluff beard, yeah, spindly long, slightly too long, trying too hard, chin beard.

So is that something you'd staple on or whatever?

Yeah.

Well,

I mean, I wasn't involved in making the effigy proper for the Elder Southampton.

That would be way out of my pay grade.

That's the mayor.

That's the mayor of Titchfield.

That's yeah, that's a senior job.

So there's one proper big one, was there, that was made?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

On a proper big bonfire.

There'd be a fair.

This would be in the big sort of recreational ground outside the village.

There'd be a massive bonfire.

There'd be

a sort of carnival fair type thing, rides, all that kind of business.

Floats during the day.

and

phallic dances phallic dances yeah

the children from the primary school be dressed as fallai yeah

and dance around the villages leaving little candy fallai at the doorsteps of pensioners

so it's um

it's 1605

yeah

So, I mean, the political context could hardly be more relevant,

isn't it?

When you think about the various different implications and the context of the different things that have been happening

and that were going to happen afterwards.

Isn't it?

It's one of those times in British history where there's so much coming together because you've got, of course, you've got the

France, of course.

France, ah, France.

France.

I don't think the Netherlands.

You've got, what, you've got the Netherlands.

Yeah.

You've got the Netherlands waiting.

Wait, online.

It's right there.

Right there, though.

And the Netherlands, of course, and Derby is ripe.

Time is ripe.

And it's like dominoes.

That's what I find so fascinating about history.

It's like dominoes.

Everything affects what came before.

I mean, I mean, what came after?

Definitely in military and an infus playing.

No, because, of course, everything's about context, isn't it?

Because you've got geopolitics, you've got Europe.

Now we're talking kings, we're talking big families, we're talking pre-Brexit, we're talking the 17 Years' War.

We're talking

linen, we're talking fabric,

we're We're talking spice.

We're talking spice, aren't we?

It's a time when the Axe Minster carpet was king.

Brass.

Almost everything is made of brass.

They thought that nothing couldn't be done with brass, didn't they?

And of course, who will have the hand?

Of a young Princess Isabella.

Of Tuscany.

And or Aquitaine.

And or Bulgaria.

Just mix and match because these threads run throughout history.

And that's what's so fascinating, isn't it?

Of course, the shadow of the Holy Roman Empire

lieth heavy.

Indeed.

Well,

and Charlemagne, of course, Charlemagne, of course, lived, was contemporary or lived before or after his time either.

And his horse, Cabango.

His six-legged, four-dicked-winged horse, Cabango.

A cabango.

No, but the other thing is to look at it it in terms of,

because it depends how do you look at history, because you can look at it purely in terms of things like different forms of mining, can't you?

So what was being mined at the time?

Tin.

Soil.

Alloys.

Alloys.

And of course,

but also I like to take the global approach, which is what did Japan think about this?

Interesting.

Did Japan know about it

or not in advance or after, or later on, did they hear about it on on the rumour mill?

Mills.

Let's talk about mills.

What wasn't being milled at the time?

Because of course you had the great mill, you had the great mill sections of the country, didn't you?

Satanic mills.

Yes, satanic mills, dark, dark,

a lot of them were quite dark.

You've got also got your different classes.

You've got your peasant, you've got your peasant folk.

But of course, you also have the merchants.

Well, the growing merchant classes.

Growing mercantile classes.

Nation of shopkeepers.

And of course, King Philip of Spain.

King Philip of Spain.

Madeira.

Madeira.

The Dauphin.

Who's going to marry the bloody Dauphin?

Because it's really irritating.

And of course, weaving throughout all of this is to a soundtrack of weaving.

Yep.

With Kublai Khan on bass.

Also, everyone involved in this story absolutely covered in pustules of different kinds.

So many pustules.

It was almost like if he didn't have pustules, people would start worrying about him.

People had heraldic pustules.

People had heraldic pustules that have been handed down for generations, didn't they?

If you're lucky, you'd have a beauty pustule just in the workplace.

Yeah.

And it was a mix.

Everything was solved by a mixture of lancing and eels, wasn't it?

This was

you'd get an eel, you'd just get to stick an eel on it or lance it.

Well, sometimes you'd lance an eel.

Sometimes you'd lance an eel.

And that would help just.

Yeah.

On special occasions, sure.

No, but

is it a coincidence

within almost 150 years or so, the rumblings of revolution

would rumble throughout the wider political context of Europe?

Is it a coincidence?

But the whole time also, of course, lying in wait, the Ottoman Empire.

Yeah.

Lying in wait both to happen and to have happened and to be ongoing.

Yes.

And the invention of the colander.

The invention of the colander.

And weaving that in with the founding, of course, of the GDR.

Extraordinary security apparatus, the likes of which the world had never seen before.

And never will, perhaps, again.

Yeah, so I think that's

just having that context does help, doesn't it?

Because these things don't happen in a vacuum.

Do they?

They don't an in a vacuum.

No, I think we can agree on that.

Mike, is that a picture of um Pam on that mug?

Or just a random dog?

Of course, it's not a random dog.

Pam is a puppy.

It's my first bit of Pam birch.

Is she outside Cricket Pavilion?

Your life.

It's actually

outside some council offices that have since been condemned and demolished because they found asbestos.

Almost 320 years to the day until Guy Fawkes, since Guy Fawkes's plot fell afoul of some of the authorities

connections people it's all connected

the one thing that's weird about the guy forks and the gunpowder plot is as far as i'm aware

there's no big budget hollywood movie version of it that's true they've made it the the beeb makes a sort of television version of it doesn't it once every sort of 30 years or so.

Yeah.

But I think that is a fair point from Ben.

There isn't, because it feels like the kind of thing that Ridley Scott is going to do in the next couple of years.

Yeah.

Because he's trying to tick off the big boys, isn't he?

He's done Napoleon.

He's done another Gladiator.

It's the kind of role as well where maybe someone like maybe a Russell Crowe, maybe a Clemens says, no, do you know what?

I'm going to Tom Cruise this one.

Actually, hang, draw, and quarter me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what they.

because Tom Cruise is he's quite hard to outdo at the moment, isn't he?

To be fair, you'd be so frickin', you'd be so pissed off if you still didn't get the Oscar.

You're sitting there at a ceremony re-stitched back together.

You're also going,

oh, Jesus Christ.

I put my left arm on my arms are the wrong way around.

You've got to give me the freaking Oscar this time, guys.

Tom Cruise has just jumped between two moving trains himself.

That's all he's done.

Is he big deal?

We've seen that before.

I've literally quartered.

And the Oscar goes again to Timothy Chalamay,

who courted himself emotionally for this role

in his portrayal of Neil Kinnock in the Neil Kinnock story.

Yeah, no one's going to leap at it unless it has been made in some, like it's been made in sort of like in a Catholic country somewhere.

And they've, you know, it's, it's, it's huge in sort of Paraguayan cinema.

There's a smash it.

I once met someone who was writing a film about it.

This is years ago, though.

Oh, yeah.

And it was an actor who was writing a film about Guy Fawkes because he'd seen the gap in the market.

Is it possible that the British government has an entire secret section dedicated to taking people that are planning a film on Guy Fawkes, removing their innards, stuffing them with hay and setting fire to them?

Because I haven't seen that guy for years.

Just asking the question.

Just asking the question.

Why hasn't it been made

do you think it's becoming less of a big deal i do think it's fading out i've noticed because i think what's happened is um i but also it's because

the rise of halloween so halloween has massively taken over now

from all that stuff it's just i don't think it really happens

you've done it is that is that the idea like

but it's the same time of year

you've done your chilly kind of awesome going out in the evening with the family mucking about thing and everyone's yeah five days later no one gives a monkeys.

Yeah.

You've done your thing, Mike, of dressing as a Swede for the month, for the month of October.

To scare the children.

To scare the children.

The art in the pumpkins has got too good in London.

It's just ridiculous in London.

Yeah, I agree.

And I actually, because as an illustrator, because I was going around with my nieces on Halloween doing trick-or-treating.

And actually,

as an illustrator, I was getting a little bit pissed off by how good all the

pumpkin drawing, like the, you know, the pumpkin art was.

It's incredibly good.

And my nieces were talking about how good it was.

And I started getting a bit annoyed as an illustrator because we do have big egos, big, big, big, big egos.

We do.

We really, really do.

Well, you would, wouldn't you?

I mean, you're amongst the most celebrated.

We are held up and revered by the culture.

And

that has an impact on our mental health.

So I started developing a theory, which is which I which I kept on saying, which is, yeah, you know, it's really, really good pumpkin, but I think a lot of it's in internet stencils.

I said internet stencils quite a few times on Halloween.

I think they're stencils.

You can print it off the internet.

They've stenciled it.

I think it's when people worked out that you could sort of not cut all the way through and you'd get like a light

orange.

Discovered about pumpkin shading.

Yeah.

Is that what you'd call it?

Oh, design.

I didn't even notice that.

God, that's really advanced.

Yeah, it's too advanced.

You don't get pumpkin shading in this deck of the woods.

Just three holes made by a fist.

and a genuine dead squirrel emanating from the mouth hole.

A burning dead squirrel.

A burning dead squirrel.

That says, Welcome.

Welcome, children.

Come and have some sweeties.

But none of that heathen chocolate.

You'll be eating mashed parsnips.

Parsnip toffee all about.

Parsnip toffee.

With none of that heathen sugar.

No, the parsnip toffee will be studded with dead bees.

The crunch.

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 chewing a horse.

Give me your horse.

My beautiful horse.

treeshoundpod.gmail.com is the email address.

We'll start with an email from Isabel.

Thank you, Isabel.

Thank you.

Recently, my young nephew came to stay and was subjected to me absent-mindedly singing the Barbara song.

Barbara, Barbara Barbara,

something like that, wasn't it?

Barbara, Bamba,

Barbara Rabba, Baba, I love you, Barbara, Bamba,

Baba,

I love you, Barbara Abba Ba, Bamba, Baba, Baba, Rabba, Baba, I love you.

Bamba,

Bamba, Rabba Baba Bamba,

I love you.

Bamba rabba ba bamba rabba ba bamba rabba baba.

I also like you.

Bamba rabba ba bamba rabba baba bamba ramba baba.

I loathe you.

During the nearly five-hour drive home, he demanded that the original be played to him more times than my sister cares to remember.

I was then sent an admonishment for introducing a five-year-old to the phrase, I loathe you.

All the best, Auntie Isabel.

Oh, yes, loathing is a discovery that you should make much later in life.

It is strange hearing the words I loathe you come out of the mouth of a five-year-old.

It's intense, isn't it?

Yeah, it's an intense hit.

It does something.

It's sort of

genius chess master,

isn't it?

I think it's a sign that if your five-year-old suddenly says, I loathe this TV program,

then you might have a genius chess master on your hands.

I loathe Bluey and his

sentimental trash.

Oh, more of this mawkish bluey nonsense

i suppose it's derigur now is it

uh on the same theme we've had an email from sarah from nashville tennessee lovely hello sarah this is in reference to our ratsmas special uh-huh i was trying to explain the concept of ratmas to my brother

including a mention of ben's 12 days of ratsmas song

his kids eight and six were so thrilled by the idea of disgusting rat stories, they asked me to video their improv versions of this ditty.

So here's the audio from that.

Do kids need school if they listen to our podcast?

I'm asking the question.

She understood the hierarchy of rats.

Yeah, I love the idea of a diamond rat.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

Thanks, Sarah.

That's lovely.

And it shows, yeah, the music scene in Nashville is strong still.

Still cooking.

Still cooking.

Because

you can take it off the hog, but you can't stop it a simmering.

That's what they say about Nashville.

That's what they say about Nashville.

Can I say that?

Just quickly talking about rats just reminded me.

I mean, I know this, I think this was all over the internet last year, or a bit, a bit over the internet,

it just reminded me of something that I found really funny at the time.

On Spotify, you know, you get your Spotify unwrapped that tells you what you've been listening to all year.

There was this guy who, his top one was anti-rat noise.

It was just this thing he plays on Spotify.

And it came up on his Spotify unwrapped, which is a picture of a rat.

And

this noise that was like

that was his number one track

pretty funny anyway

I had a message from my friend Essek who uh

writes I picked up the kids from Brecon and listened to Ratmus for the whole journey up to Aberystwyth

made a stop at the spa and they sang the 12 days of Ratmus as we perused the shell

what a lovely Christmas catch on

there's children and singing ratmas also Ben okay

Here's something I've

it's been like niggling away at the back of my mind.

This I'm going to share it with you.

This thought.

Okay.

What if

we decide to try this year

to try to write a Christmas number one?

We've got when we say we, Henry,

when I look at the weary expression on Ben's face.

Yeah, exactly.

Us.

Us.

As a royalties trio.

Yeah.

In all the significant ways.

I'm talking royalties, contracts, financial ownership, merch rights, IP diffusion,

horizontal media penetration.

All of that is shared

equally.

And that's what really matters.

But, Ben, Ben, should we try and write a Christmas number one?

And we can make it to do with Ratmas, maybe.

Because think about it.

If we start now, a lot of people, presumably, they try and get their Christmas numbers number ones together, you know, sort of late November, early December.

We start now.

We've got a whole year to run.

Okay, you might laugh.

Do you realize how much money you can make from a Christmas number one?

You know, um,

Chris Derg, yeah.

Do you know Chris Berg?

Yeah, he's always wearing shoes, isn't he?

He's

doing all right.

He's got so many shoes, he's got a special cupboard for shoes and a vacuum cleaner, to be fair.

He's not a Ford Mondeo.

Also, it's a boiler.

I mean, the boiler isn't there.

He stores shoes on top of his boiler.

Mariah Carey banked a cool $200 million sterling

from All I Want for Christmas is You because she co-wrote it.

Yeah.

So, okay, yeah.

Put the work in.

We've got all year.

You want a jacuzzi in the Hamptons.

Is that what you're saying?

I want a Hamptons in my jacuzzi.

Yeah.

I want a jacuzzi that's bigger than the Hamptons, and the Hamptons is just part of it.

Yeah?

What do you think?

So I've got some ideas I can throw around already.

Think, okay, a lot of the time it's Christmas number ones.

It's about...

Well, a lot of Christmas number ones have got a children's choir in them, and we've got some candidates already.

There you go.

So that's true.

International, no less.

That's going to be coming together from across the world.

That's good heartwarming.

Maybe we could use that bit for the bridge.

Yeah.

Okay.

The thing with Christmas number one is you think of an element of Christmas that hasn't yet been talked about in a song.

Baubles.

Baubles.

So that's our bit.

Now, Ben, you do the rest.

Take it away, Ben.

Take it away, Ben.

Oh, no, actually,

the post Sprouts Guff.

Has that been done in a song?

It could be a comedy song, keep it quite alive.

Festive miasma.

Anyway, I just wanted to think about it.

So, you know, after those nice emails, feeling pretty good about the podcast, you know, people sharing it with their kids, their kids singing along.

Yes.

You know, a nice, joyful thing.

Yeah.

This is an email that will drag us straight down to earth.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We probably need this.

Because this email comes apropos of nothing.

This is just the sort of thing people think is appropriate just to send us.

Okay, interesting.

We didn't ask them to send us this.

They just thought, I know, I'll send that to the guys at Three Bean Sand.

I've been wondering where I can send this.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

This is from Stu.

Hello, Stu.

In the mid-noughties in Albuquerque,

a city nestled in the heart of New Mexico, a vibrant tapestry of cultures, history, and breathtaking landscapes.

The scent of green chili, a local culinary staple, hangs heavy in the air, mingling with the aroma of blooming desert flowers.

Lovely.

Wow.

That is until I heard the words that will haunt me forever:

Leg it, Dave's shat in the kettle.

What the hell was going on?

Do we get any context?

Well,

I mean, why did they send us this?

The smell of the smell of Dave's feces.

Oh, God.

The smell of Dave's feces.

Rapidly cooking.

Oh.

Oh, What?

In a dry kettle.

Oh, dry.

Dry.

No, not dry.

Was a pungent, acrid odour

that was both revolting and hard to describe.

That is going to take more than a standard descaling, isn't it?

That's not covered on the warranty, is it?

There's no, there's simply no chance.

You can't take that back to Dixon's.

It had a strong fecal stench that was almost overpowering and was accompanied by a sour metallic smell.

Then he's written a poem that I'm just not going to read out.

Sorry, Street.

Is that Petra an extra?

Do we actually have context for what's going on here?

No, he just sent it to us.

Wow.

How does that make you feel that we've created something?

But people think that is.

But people think that's what we want.

I mean, they're sort of not wrong, they're right, aren't they?

Yeah, what's become of Dave?

Because what's, I mean, that's he's crossed a Rubicon there, hasn't he, Dave?

This was already something very stressful about a kettle that's on without water is incredibly stressful.

It's one of the most stressful dry kettle, yeah.

You know, even without a turd in it, just the crackling sound of

and the sense that if you don't turn this off, it will destroy first itself, yeah, and then life as we know it.

You know, like the sense that it will keep burning, because and once it no longer has itself, flames that cannot be extinct.

If it cannot boil water, it will boil first itself and then us.

That sense?

It must boil.

It must boil.

It is boil.

Email from Tori.

Hello, Tori.

Hi, Tori.

In the 80s, a woman called Ruth Mott had a TV show called The Victorian Kitchen, where she taught you how to cook like she had done as a kitchen maid in the 1920s.

Wow.

And I was obsessed as a kid, even though I was a bit scared of her.

She was very clear on veg boiling rules.

As well as the hot water, cold water thing.

She instructs the vegetables that grow underground need to be boiled with the lid on.

And if they grow above ground, the lid must be off.

As if they're more used to being in a dark environment.

Yeah, I mean, that's hot Victorian bollocks, isn't it?

I don't think that can make any sense.

Yeah, that's...

That's some early 20th century science going on there, isn't it?

That's pre-antibiotic science.

That's what we're listening to there.

And

it's interesting, though.

I was talking what that program would be.

Presumably, that's just all boiling and suet, isn't it?

That's an aspic.

Yes, exactly.

Interesting.

I might have to check that out though.

Yeah, it does sound good, doesn't it?

What is aspect?

Aspic again?

What is that?

Aspic is that kind of like pale brown see-through jelly.

Your pie jelly.

I had a restaurant experience recently where I ordered some sort of

you went for the 10 course aspic feast.

Yeah.

I went to that new cool place in Soho, 100% Aspic.

Yeah.

Aspects of love.

Aspects of love.

It's a two-for-one.

You do a pretty theatre aspic meal and you watch Aspects of Love and then your entire body is encased in Aspic.

By Andrew Lloyd Weber.

By Drew Weber.

And you kick down a sewer.

No,

I ordered like a sort of rabbit, some sort of like rabbit pate.

Yeah.

Wow.

We're not in Peter Express anymore, are we?

We're really not.

It was in a French restaurant.

It was

one of my Christmas parties that I host.

No,

it was a works Christmas party, dude, for something.

But this is your job, Henry.

Why weren't we there?

Yeah, it's weird.

It feels like you guys should be at the three beans at a Christmas party, doesn't it?

But actually, to be honest, it's the people behind the scenes that do most of the work, to be honest.

So those are the guys I should celebrate with.

The PR team, the graphic squad.

It was a French restaurant.

So everyone there ordered the French onion soup, which is a great order to make in a French restaurant.

Of course.

Everyone ordered French onion soup and I ordered French onion soup.

And then I had that thing of, you know, like you just get in your head over ordering.

Have I made a mistake?

What should I order?

French onion soup is a great option in a French restaurant.

Do we agree on that?

I don't think I've ever had it.

What?

I don't like the idea of onion soup.

Oh, it's lovely.

French onion soup.

It's insanely delicious.

I don't really like soup.

I don't think I've had it for years.

It's a dark brown, sweet onion-y gloupe that has a massive cheesy crouton on top.

That's what's great.

You'd be big into it, I think, Ben, if you try, if you gave it a chance.

I think I'd eat the crouton and then I'd be done.

Especially in the cold weather.

It's a great option.

Anyway, at the last minute, I backed out and I went, I'm going to go for the

rabbit.

Was it riet or something?

It was called.

Is that something?

Was that something else?

Oh, roulette.

No, no, roulette is.

Yes, I.

Yes.

You can see why I'd want this.

It's a French dish of seasoned meat that's been slowly cooked in fat and preserved in a jar or crock

lovely stuff the meat is shredded and packed into the container which is then covered with fat yeah let's not be more specific about the meat or indeed the fat

it's similar to pat if it has a causative texture but the main thing is that it's cooked in its own fat and it's then sort of in

it's then sort of hat well basically it came

and it had a kind of transparent fat fat hat on it yeah which i think but i wonder if that was aspect it had it had this but it's going to look like it had this kind of like see-through wobbly kind of hat yeah that you had to get through to get to the pate

it was incredibly unappetizing and i've massively regretted not getting the onion soup it was this kind of cold jelly sort of fez that was sat on top of the was this all born from the fear of of just everyone ordering the same thing and it seeming seeming like it was a boring vibe to the waiter or waitress who couldn't give a monkeys either way i think that's what it was mate that's a very good point i don't like it when everyone orders the same thing.

And I often am the sacrificial lamb

who will order something random

and pay a heavy, heavy price.

Thank goodness that I got an absolutely five-star top-draw cast iron anecdote out of it there.

Tori has also sent us a rhyme.

We made up a rhyme last time.

If you want to include the lid, the specious lid science.

Oh, yeah, yeah, great.

So she says, the rule should be, remember you this rhyming dance for perfect veggies at a glance, lid on cold for dark delight, lid off hot, who seek the light.

Oh wow.

Oh Torre.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's good.

Tori's done it.

Well done, Tori.

We've also had some alternative rhymes from Joe.

Okay.

If it stays above soil, put the water on boil.

If it goes underground, in cold water be drowned.

Decent.

Decent stuff.

It's a bit confusing though, because you are fundamentally boiling it.

You get to the end, and by the time you get to the end, you're like, okay.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I get which way around this is supposed to be.

Joe's also says,

if in earth it is grown, chill to the bone.

If in soil it is not, let the water be hot.

Very good, very strong stuff from Joe.

Thank you.

If it grows to the sky, boil the water on high.

Good lord.

If in earth it is dug, the kettle unplug.

Is this all Joe?

This is all Joe.

Can I say they're good?

These are all really, really good.

And far be it from me to criticise these.

But it would be nice to hear one which starts with something which anyone would ever say.

Do you know what I mean?

Rather than if under the sod ye bury the thing.

Like this something that you'd actually say would be quite nice to make it easier.

If thine hast shat in a kettle,

smell the feces and metal.

It's time

to play the ferryman

Patreon

Patreon

Patreon.com

forward slash free bean salad.

Okay, thanks to everyone who signed up on our Patreon.

Yes, thank you very much indeed.

There are different tiers to sign up at.

If you sign up at the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Mike from the Sean Bean Lounge.

You do indeed.

Where Mike was last night.

I was.

Oh, it was.

It was

creating miniature historical tableaus out of herbs.

Nice, isn't it?

Thank you, Henry.

Yes, that's right.

And here's my report.

Ike was creating miniature historical tableaus out of Herbs Night last night at the Sean Bean Lounge.

Simon Todd, Georgia Baby, Yelka Ludolfi, and Evan Smith opened proceedings strongly with a tableau depicting the creation of the Central Bank of Uruguay as an autonomous state entity in 1967 out of Cherville.

Kate Finley, Snake Rally, and Mandible Man constructed a young Ptolemy out of Basil, while Anna and Rose used dried sage to recreate his Circle 100 CE diagram of a prototype Panini.

the tableau being completed by Boombatron, John Biome and Drew Pickles, using bay leaves to construct a crowd of ancient Alexandrians mocking his design, humiliating Ptolemy into terminating his efforts and setting the invention of the Panini back by almost two millennia.

A disproportionate number of Sean Bean loungers chose to render the sinking of the Mary Rose with mixed results.

Johnny Bloston's Ginger attempt sank in Papa Pottymouth's Toad Flax Solent before it could be displayed.

While Rebecca Mumby, Greta Warbash and Madison Funicello's Aloe Vera galleon was so sturdy it wouldn't sink at all.

And had that been the case, the ship's purser would have survived and gone on to Sire Line that would have eventually bought Portsmouth Football Club and changed its name to Glen Chern.

Cora Hardy's Mary Rose, appropriately made from marjoram and rosemary, was exceptional, and her tableau even included a Welsh Onion Henry VIII looking out on the sea battle that Sean Bean himself described as definitive.

Kirsten Bywater's sonneil'mière caraway tableau of the expansion of the Assanti Empire under Ose Tutu was lifted by both the lumiere of a decent hand torch and the song of jingle cover maestros Max and Miles.

Emma Collier Baker, Barry Fair, Pobby Robinson and John Potter used Borridge and Dill to create a tableau of the famous meeting at which Thomas Jefferson dissuaded Benjamin Franklin from taking a gap year to work on his Keepy Uppies.

Beth, The Shrew MacDonald, Martin C.

Edwards, Boulder Dash and Ollie's horseradish birth of Genghis Khan looked unappetizing but was delicious.

Jessica Hall, John Buxton, Gordon Brown and Wilf Scott took the unconventional unconventional step of using gravelroot to make tableaus of all the major news events they'd been unaware of in their early 20s, while Alexandra Consadine Tong, Bonnie Black, Rachel L and Paul Grafton used chicory to make tableaus of the historical events they unwittingly and indirectly provoked, ranging from the crash of the dot-com bubble to the spreading of an unfounded rumour of a betrothal between Charlie Saron and Sean Penn.

Greg Sawyer, Patrick O'Harran, Gavin Burnett and Watts and Joe presented a Hasselback-style triple cheese-filled garlic bread bread, which of course failed to meet the requirements of the evening, although it was well received by Sean Green's mouth.

The boo-boo was blamed on Patrick's sleep deprivation, which was also a major factor in Patrick taking a nap in Grey Hendy and Nina Bailey's licorice Lord Nelson, making it look like he hadn't been killed by a sniper's bullet, but by mega-crushing.

David Mapman Sharon, Barry of Galway, but in Iowa, and Katie and Meg claimed to have only used lemongrass to depict the establishment of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1024, but were widely condemned when it was shown by Douglas Burgess and Patrick Campbell that they had also used pipe cleaners and PVA glue, which Douglas and Patrick had been hoping to use to make mini Russell Crowe figurines.

MVP, however, went to Rose Westrick, who presented a series of A to Z tableaus of positive historical events from Apollo 11's moon landing to Zambia's recall avocado harvest in 2019, in which every principal figure had their face replaced with a saffron-sean bean face.

Thanks all.

Okay, that's the show.

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

And this is from Graham from the New Forest.

Lovely place.

Graham from the New Forest writes, it's hammer time.

Hammer horror time, that is.

For a cinematically inspired theme tune, a tribute to Hammer Studios' Dracula films.

Brilliant.

To experience the full gothic majesty of my composition, picture in your mind's eye an imposing castle silhouetted by flashes of lightning, a frog, a fog-shrouded graveyard, not a frog-shrouded graveyard.

A cloud of bats skittering across the face of the moon, and Christopher Lee suffering through his seventh Dracula film so that he can finally pay off his ruddy mortgage.

All the best, Graham.

Thanks for that, Graham.

Thank you.

Sounds great.

Thank you very much for listening.

Yeah, see you next time.

Cheerio.

Thank you.

Bye.