The Railway

It's 2025.

So it is.

Welcome to the future.

Meow, meow, meow.

Meow, meow.

Meow, meow, meow, meow.

I never thought we'd make it this far.

We're a quarter of a way through the century.

I did.

I was reflecting yesterday on the fact that 2025 seemed like a long way off, you know, when I was younger.

Yeah, flying car way off, right?

Yes, exactly.

Hoverboards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lots of promises made by Hollywood that haven't quite been realised.

Instead, it's all been about data.

I thought it was more going to be about floating.

Turns out it's all about data.

And it's not about hovering, is it?

Or floating.

Zero hovering.

I've still yet to hover in my whole life.

I assumed

we'd all be drinking cuff tea.

Really?

Could not manage that yet, have we?

Which is lamb kofta and tea.

Lamb cofta and tea.

It's the Levantine bobrel, isn't it?

It's a hearty Levantine bobrel.

Because it gives you, you get your caffeine, you get your caffeine kick and you get your protein and fat.

The meat undergirding.

The meat undergirding gets you through the morning.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're recording this in 2024, so we haven't yet stepped into it.

I haven't seen all the hovering postmen, etc.

So, for all we know, it's possible, isn't it?

Because this is one of the possibilities that was talked about, that the millennium bug is actually exactly 25 years late

and will actually happen.

And the whole earth will split open like an egg.

And what's inside one of those kinder toys?

Whole thing was a kinder egg all along.

It was a bloody kinder egg.

But the instructions are in Dutch.

Right.

I haven't fully done my morning water.

Sorry, you written this in my morning water earlier before we started.

Well, it's changed because it used to be the famous Henry Packard two pint glasses of water.

Yes.

Went down quickly.

But now it's this weird thing where you very slowly drink out of a bottle of water

yeah i'm doing it now still yeah i i i i drink one one sort of large one of the semi-sized water bottles one litre i believe yes i drink a litre of buxton it's buxton in this in this instance yeah it's got well it's got the uh it's got the semi-transparent buxton cummerbund

on the bottle

just slipping off a little bit doesn't look like it's fresh out of the shop it doesn't does it now i keep the bottle for it because of the environment mike but it's too cold because normally i drink it with boiling water.

You ever drink boiling water out of an

old plastic wall?

Well, that's why the shape has subsided a bit.

And that's why so much plastic has been ingested over the years.

Yeah.

Mike has his head in his hands.

Yeah.

I think it means your innards are unsurvivable for tuna now.

I think so.

What if tuna ate me?

Well, or tried to live in.

Or tried to live with me.

If I got eaten by egg the lost tortoise,

i wouldn't go down well because of all the micro micro

climate tragedy what are they called fiber microfibers i've got in me yeah i wouldn't put a past you having a bit of fiberglass in there as well well it's it's it's roughage isn't it

it's all roughage um no so i drink i drink this cold water but normally i pour boiling water in the top

why

because to warm it up Yeah, because ideally water, anything that goes into your body, should be at body temperature, ideally.

Shouldn't it?

Otherwise, you're creating stress

a lot of work for yourself well you're creating molecule stress aren't you your blood molecules are stressed you have your hemaphrodons

all the different elements in the blood

hemoglobins your pancreatic amylase yeah you're trying to get your body into a permanent state of sort of idling that's what it should

well that's how you want a car isn't it if you want to do it do a um not if you want to go anywhere you want it idling before you get in then you

the engine's on like everything's everything's sort of operating at a low level.

No, but like

I don't like creating stress on the way in because then, of course, your body, your tongue has to cool down the liquid.

That's using energy.

It's creating

a stress.

You'll rest a little espresso in a little tongue basin before you swallow it.

Well, the tongue is.

The tongue is the water slide down into the

abyss.

It's the fun pull of the innards, isn't it?

But Ben, you were asking me before whether I drink the boiling water and the cold water separately.

This is pre-recorded.

This is pre-record.

Yeah, we were being quite baffled by what you were up to before you started recording.

Yeah.

Because that reminded me of an experience I had recently in a West End theatre.

Here we go.

Where you were trying to drink boiling water out of a kettle

during the matinee?

Is that why they have bag checks for kettles?

All West End theatres.

There you go.

I think the body should be at exactly the same temperature as the play.

Ideally, it was waiting for Godot, which

operates between 14 and 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh, that's a terrible review of that.

Paul Ben Wishall or whoever it was.

Does that mean it's really hot or really cold?

That one?

I can't remember.

Very cold.

No, it was good.

Very good production.

But it was in a classic old West End theater, which have terrible, terrible toilets.

They make you feel like you're an absolute Russian czar when you're sitting in the...

There's this incredible, like, ornate beauty of the way the theatres are designed, isn't it?

With like gold, lap of luxury is the look.

Yeah.

But the toilets are absolutely like sub-caravan.

They're really cramped and awful.

But the toilets were never built for the Zars.

None of those guys were going to the loo when they went to the theater.

The way they dressed, like, it would have been, I mean, they're all wearing 18 different layers and accoutrements and accessories.

It's nowhere they could be bothered.

They would have starved and dehydrated themselves before any sort of public engagement.

Well, you just piss into your petticoats, don't you?

Yeah, exactly.

That's the alternative if you're in a fix.

Yeah, that's why they're called petticoats, isn't it?

You have a pretty piss in your petticoat.

it don't you?

And also, you'd have a you'd have a man for a lot of this stuff, anyway.

Who'd be, wouldn't you?

Have a small

trouser operative who'd just be sort of dumb,

a piss factor, which has been done and taken care of it, and you really wouldn't really have to think about it

who lives in the petticoats, yeah.

It was it was a layer of human, of human admin, wasn't it?

It was taken care of by a small bureaucrat

who'd um that's where Rasputin started off, wasn't it?

That's where Rasputin started off.

It was a real throwback because in the in this loo, the um the sink had the old thing you really

see anymore, which is it had, rather than one tap with a controllable temperature, it had two taps.

It had a cold tap and a hot tap.

Both like

over a foot apart.

So you cannot get your head under both taps at the same time.

It's impossible.

Well, if you're trying to do a quick interval scalp washing,

if you've been absent-mindedly drawing on your forehead and pen instead of listening to the play.

We know I've got an unusually greasy head.

Come on.

We don't have to go over it.

But it just reminded me of how, and obviously one tap was piping hot and the other absolutely freezing.

I was yelping.

I was yelping like a baby.

People assumed

I was just very moved by the play.

It's one of the things, isn't it, that Americans just can't

believe.

That's the thing they always talk about when they come to Britain is that we have two taps.

They just can't get their head around it.

I feel like it's quite rare because what it's well, what two taps is asking you to do is to create a bowl of water to your specifications temperature-wise.

Yeah.

But using a, and I didn't think there's actually a word for that thing, the little plastic thing that goes in the plug hole.

Because I tried to describe this to the person I went to the theater with and they couldn't understand what I was talking about.

What's it called, that little thing that goes in?

The plug?

There you go.

Yeah, the clues in the word plug hole, isn't it?

There was no plug, there was no plug.

Well, people nick them, don't they?

People nick them.

Of course, they do.

People nick them.

There's no plug in a public sink.

Exactly.

So they've taken the plugs up, but they've left you with this impossible situation, this impossible dilemma.

Do I freeze my hands or do I boil my hands?

I was genuinely yelping in pain.

But you do the thing where you very quickly move them between the two.

You have to do the quick hand drive, don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's that I'll pop a sock in it.

Or you pop a sock, what, pop a sock, pop a sock in your mouth to hide the screams.

You just pop a sock in your mouth.

Yeah.

And just bloody deal with it.

Yeah.

Have those been phased out, those kinds of things?

I think they have been phased out, haven't they?

The types of taps.

Well, when I moved house into this house, which is quite a new house, we don't have two taps anywhere, which I was quite sad about.

Have you got two taps, Mike?

Yeah,

we're single tap here.

I think single tap is the norm now, but I think it goes back to a previous era, which was the era of the freestanding bath.

Everything was freestanding baths and bowls, which you filled up with water from the cattle or water from the lake or whatever I don't know but like and and that's what's happening so so that that that that the plug hole turns it into a bowl that you're filling up with water and it was bowl-based a bowl-based culture bowl-based culture whereas we're now more more more more shower sieve colander based aren't we which is um more hygienic i would argue although an absolute

i felt an absolute grind every morning to have another another bloody shower well that's what we think i mean probably probably in like 30 years time someone will work out that's actually really dangerous and we should be lolling around in our own swill.

And that's the best thing for us.

We should do the partridge wallow.

Exactly.

I've not wallowed now for a while.

Really?

Do you not wallow anymore?

No, because I only did it because my shower was broken.

And then we got a man to fix the shower.

And since then, I've not had a bath.

Oh, really?

And I realized I was kidding myself for a long time that I liked barns.

It was just the only option open to me.

Because given the choice, which I have every day, I just have a shower.

My bath's now full of sort of dust and little weird bits.

Is it a separate?

It's a separate It's a separate bath unit, is it?

It's a separate bath unit, yeah.

Yeah.

It's not just full of weird bits.

Don't even know what they are.

It will gather weird.

I'd hate to take them to a scientist and sort of work out what they are.

Maybe we could put it in the merch page.

I'll do sort of weird bits all the time.

A lot of it will be wrapped to try to swing it.

It'll be leftovers from rap, rap volleyball sessions, rap,

rap dates.

Our listenership will now be the other side of Ratmus,

having experienced Ratmas.

I just want to say, thanks to everyone who sent sent us their Ratmas stories.

Unfortunately, due to the way that scheduling works, I put a shout-out on the podcast to say send us your Ratmas stories.

But then we recorded Ratmus

maybe four hours after that came out.

So since then, we've had so many Ratmas stories that there's probably enough for like a sort of maybe like a mid-summer Ratmas.

Maybe it could be Ratmas every day.

Oh, that's a good idea.

It'll get a bit annoying.

I think by about June, having spent an hour discussing rat anecdotes every day, I think by June it'll start to feel a bit.

Well, unless it takes over, it might be a bit disappointing.

It might be that we work out that's actually what people want.

But like, for example, I'm looking at the email account now.

The top email in there, and I've not read the email, has the subject title header, The Rat Man of Plymouth.

I want to know that.

I want to know the story.

We never read out The Rat Man of Plymouth.

Oh, come on.

There needs to be more rat action.

We never read out toilet rats.

We never read out soapy rat snacks.

Okay.

We need to.

I think there's going to be spring rats, isn't there?

There's a spring rat solstice or sort of...

The ratquinox

we'll need to introduce.

Yes, definitely ratquinox.

I think

marking the big turning points in the year by just immersing yourself in stories about rats.

It's just a really nice way.

Because we are part of a process.

We are part of a planet.

And a lot of it is absolutely barbarically disgusting and horrific, isn't it?

Should we read out rat stories at Stonehenge?

Oh, that's a nice rat critic.

That's a nice idea.

I think that's a great idea.

There's just something nice about marking things with rats, isn't there?

We've discovered

it's because they're the ever-present.

They are the ever-present.

They were there before us, they'll be there after us.

So the perfect,

yeah, these eternal, these eternal annual markings, and also King's birthday, that kind of stuff.

King's official birthday.

Big ones.

Yeah, exactly.

All stand for the king.

We're entering the Regal Zone.

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.

Does the king, you know, the queen used to have two birthdays?

That was a thing.

Yeah.

Does the king have two birthdays?

Oh, good.

Why does the queen have two birthdays?

Don't know.

She had an actual birthday, which was the day she was born, although that was a.

Obviously, she's a lizard, so she hatched.

But

they said a ball.

And then she had an official birthday.

Yes, I don't think I've ever known the answer to that.

I've definitely asked the question.

Yeah, I've never, I don't think I've ever googled it, though.

Maybe.

Maybe that's the issue.

Or maybe we're not supposed to know.

Maybe they just want two birthdays.

Maybe that's above our pay grade.

Okay, so there I've looked it up.

There is the king's official birthday.

Yeah, which is is when?

It varies by region.

What?

If he travels around the country, his birthday changes.

So he can maximize the amount of presents he gets.

It seems like every different Commonwealth nation

has a different official birthday for the monarch.

So, for example, the king's birthday in Belize is in May.

Yeah.

However, on Norfolk Island, which I think is in the Pacific, it's the 8th of June.

On calendar, it's the 4th of June.

What's going on?

Is that so you can travel around and have multiple celebrations?

He's basically just having a sort of worldwide year-long birthday celebration.

Yeah.

Cake and Brezzi's.

I guess he would if you're a monarch, right?

So this official birthday thing happens in other countries.

So, for example, in Luxembourg, there's the Grand Duke's official birthday.

In Belgium, there's the King's Feast.

In Netherlands, there's Konigstag.

In Japan, they have the Emperor's Emperor's birthday, and in North Korea, they have the Day of the Sun.

S-U-N.

S-U-N, yeah.

Which is the origin of all life.

It's when Kim Il-sung was born, who was the first, who's the sort of daddy.

And what did he do to Kirstama on his birthday?

He likes a quiet one these days, doesn't he?

Pizza Express with the family.

Trip to Arsenal.

Yep.

Have you ever seen Kirstarma at Arsenal?

I haven't, no.

He's been given a box, hasn't he, controversially?

Yeah, for free.

I don't find that particularly controversial.

No, no, it's not.

I mean, it's not at all.

Do you know what I mean?

I don't really.

I'm quite happy for, like, never mind assassins, but just for someone just to not sort of like throw a pint glass at him or just clonk him so he can get on with his work the next day.

Do you know what I mean?

I'm happy for him to have a break and I'm happy for him not to be attacked.

100%.

I think he should have a mobile.

Oh, yeah.

About a mobile.

Well, a prime minister mobile or a stamina mobile.

Oh, Oh, is it?

I think that's where.

A Batmobile.

A Batmobile.

I think that's where Mobiles come into.

Because there aren't, you know, there's only the Pope Mobile.

I think it's the only Mobile that actually exists.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We know there is an active Batmobile.

Sorry, there is an active Batmobile.

Yeah, we've talked about it.

But there's room for a third one.

You're right.

But I think it should be a Prime Minister Mobile.

So I think it should be based on his head, probably.

Just gets a big version of his head.

That's just simple brain.

Translucent, are we talking?

So we can see him inside.

I think maybe the toilet section is opaque, Mike.

Okay, good idea.

Lovely.

You see, this is where we differ.

I don't have my eye on sort of these design details, you see, but yeah, you're thinking these things through.

Yeah, I think it should just be his head.

Yeah.

Optional hats.

I think a series of optional hats, yeah.

So beanie.

Yep.

Tricorn.

Tricorn.

And bicorn.

Maybe even a monochorn.

I think the glasses at the front are the windows.

This is just simple.

Yeah.

So hang on.

It's a glass kierstarma head on wheels.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

It might have to be reinforced glass.

I think just glass is...

We're asking for trouble, aren't we?

You're almost safer outside of a glass of your own head.

I'd say.

But I think the glasses at the front are the windows.

So he sits in one,

wife or friend in the other.

Yeah.

Looking out of his own head.

The whole thing's fiberglass.

Fibreglass, of course, being the safest material known to man?

I think so.

Yeah, okay.

That's what POTUS's presidential beast is made of, is it?

We assume?

Yeah, the beast.

I was about to mention the beast.

That's the official presidential car.

It's called the Beast.

The POTUS Mobile.

And basically, it's a car that you could fire a missile at, and it would be fine.

Yeah.

It would fire it straight back.

Yeah.

With interest.

Back to the Star Mobile.

I think it's a floating mobile.

It floats around.

Okay.

How do you mean, literally off the ground, or like it's a sort of amphibious, like a hovercraft?

Oh, good.

Yeah, it probably should be amphibious.

I think it uses hover technology, the hover technology, which is now the norm now that it's 2025.

Yeah.

Okay.

And when he gets out of it, the mouth opens and a sort of metallic version of his tongue comes out, which is like a sort of ramp.

Yeah.

And he slides out of it.

Just wearing swimwear

in a sort of rubber ring.

Okay.

Just quite fun.

Yes,

it's a bit of fun as well.

It's quite disarming at the G8, isn't it, when someone does that?

It's disarming.

Everyone else just gets out of a jaggy war or whatever, but

Starma's in water wings.

Yeah.

But you've been there, but I do think, yeah, I do agree that, like,

generally, the controversy about that stuff is a bit weird.

It's the Prime Minister.

He's top job.

He shouldn't be.

He shouldn't.

I don't want to see him on the Hammersmith and City line or whatever.

No, I sort of feel like if you're the Prime Minister, I wish Keir Starmer or any prime minister, when faced with these kind of questions, would just go,

I'm the prime minister.

Fuck off.

Have you seen what the guy in North Korea's got going?

Genuinely.

I've tried saying, kill them to various different assistants and aides around.

I've said it to David Lamy so many times.

David Lammy won't play ball.

I've tried different phrases.

I've said exterminate him.

Nothing happens.

I've tried using different euphemisms.

You know what to do.

Maybe you could rid me of this problem.

Nothing happens.

Maybe it's time for the pigs to get fed, if you know what I mean.

He's tried all the phrases.

He's tried all the phrases.

He's even ordered in a hungry sow.

He's got a sow in the wagon number 10.

What's it doing there?

Yeah, and there's no...

I imagine he's prodded all the different bookcases and stuff to see if there's...

secret passages.

There's none of that.

I think you should be able to have like a Louis Vuitton hat made for

that looks like your body, but the other way around.

So it looks like you're wearing yourself and people don't know which way around you are if you want.

You know what I mean?

Like the weirdest whim.

You're the most powerful person.

That's the thing.

I think in terms of like heads of state worldwide and also historically what heads of state have been like, even if you're just a bit of a maniac, you're still quite a long way off the worst we've had.

Yes, that's true.

I want them to go hunting.

with a laser beam.

Like, that's what I want to see them for a snow leopard.

For a snow leopard, exactly.

A snow leopard that they've released and had released into Wolverhampton.

Exactly.

For their own convenience.

Just a bit of that.

It would just give us a bit more, I don't know, something.

I think the Prime Minister should have a separate train service.

Like Putin.

Called Ministerial Rail.

Nice.

Does Putin have his own train?

He's got his own train, yeah.

And train line.

It's an old Russian tradition.

I think they do it in North Korea as well, don't they?

You've got the Chechnyan options as well.

Nice sort of TikTok vids of you sort of...

shooting up land cruisers and things.

Hang on, is that what the president of Chechnya has been doing?

He's a big matcher man, so

he likes people to know that he likes to spend his Saturday afternoons just shooting the crap out of stuff

in a wilderness somewhere.

I think I'm right in saying that he's the same guy who was brought on as a sub for the Chechnya national team in a football match.

Well, that's the kind of thing, again, as a Prime Minister,

you might as well make the nose.

That's what I mean.

I love it.

Everyone just clears out of the way.

Movie cameos.

Lovely.

Lovely.

In fact, in Waiting for the Godo the other day, Waiting for Godo, he should be able to just walk on the second half and go, you know what?

I'm here.

I actually am Godo.

Now I'm going to rise around that.

You know what you're going to do?

Yeah, now what you're going to do.

We're sure.

Oh.

Yeah.

And then I'm going to bugger off.

I'm going to do the weather at the news at 10.

Yeah.

I'm going to get it wrong on purpose rather than accidentally.

That's what I want it to be.

Yeah.

And if it doesn't happen, heads are going to roll, literally.

Also, what better way to like announce getting rid of Winter Field Allowance than doing it on stage in the West End?

You know, people have been quite confused: is this part of the play?

Is this actually a policy initiative?

Just a bit of misinformation, a bit of confusion.

Bury the real news and a bit of excitement, a bit of intrigue.

I'm going to make myself the eighth course at the fat duck this weekend.

You better lick my hand with some chives on because I can.

Yeah?

Make the bloody most of it.

I'm also going to be third-desk clarinet in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

I've never played the clarinet in my life.

Let's roll.

Or been to Bournemouth.

This is your captain speaking, Prime Minister Kirstan.

That's right.

It's me, the Right Honourable Kirstan Rempy.

And you know what?

I'm going to be locker number 59 in Impswich Town Centre's Lido

swimming pool.

He's going to be the locker.

He's going to be in the locker.

He's going to be the locker.

So you've

got to get all your clothes

into him somehow and your shoes yeah and all clothes from this point on will be in his size yeah yeah there'll be two sizes s for starma or x s

extra stama extra stama

it can have two big macs and a um starma zone experience

which i have to order

and it

just means that i have to eat a sachet of ketchup without taking it out of the sachet

while being watched by a secret policeman because it was decreed.

Yeah.

You stuck in a little

star impression there.

Oh, yeah.

Hello.

Oh, policies.

It's not bad.

Yeah.

I do find his voice.

I mean, I know it's not fair to criticise people's voice, but I mean, that's something else, isn't it?

Excuse me, secret police here, why aren't you using your stama voice?

Why aren't you using the crease that we're all to use our stamina

on a thursday

it's important that everyone uses their stama voice ben that's very good that's not bad at all that's actually much better how do you do that he's just got a way of speaking where he's he's really it's really weird when you listen to it it's like what is it the pace of it is really strange like he's always sort of telling you off

we have to remember papa pa bapa it's like that all the time so true you've got to realize there we go there's a trot to it isn't there yeah

or a heartbeat he's had Also, there's a sense that he's got two quite ornate Japanese goldfish alive in his mouth already.

It's really stressful to keep them alive.

It was a comp, it's a complex curse that was put on me when I was Attorney General.

Let's turn on the B machine.

Yes, please.

This week's topic is sent in by Nick from Kent.

Hello, Nick.

Mike's least favourite county.

I've never said that before.

But the feeling is very much mutual with Kent, isn't it?

That's the impression I've been given.

Is the railway

toot toot

toot toot indeed?

Toot toot.

Recently, I was in London, Henry, and even though it's a 24-hour city, which it really is:

Soho, Battersea, Old Southwark, Streatham,

Vauxhall, Tuffmall Park,

Barnett, technically, Madame Two Swords, Personator,

Halfers.

Zone 5.

Mind the gap between your provincial existence and this metropolitan utopia.

Next stop, urban enlightenment.

The glamorous London life.

of Henry Macker.

Hang on a second.

Is that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber?

No, it can't be.

Because you're Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I know.

It is a 24-hour service.

It's absolutely there.

Any time of the night, you go out and it's there.

It's not open, but it's there.

Well, I was with you, Henry.

We went to see Arsenal play Monaco.

That's true.

And then we went to the pub afterwards.

And I looked at my Google Maps and I had to get back to Croydon, which is a long way away.

And it said, oh, okay, as long as you leave on at 11 52 or something you'll be fine but i left at 11 53 you fool and what that meant was what had previously been a tube then a train which would have been fine turned into four separate night buses oh you poor thing how is this global city

Why doesn't it have a train that goes all night?

What's going on?

Sometimes you get a, um you go, you put your journey into Google Maps and it presents you this thing, which is like an absolute horror.

It's like a moment in a horror film, what it presents you.

It's like a sort of the amount of things.

There's a little bus, there's a little goat.

I've got to go snake back to Sydenham.

I've got to catch the 320 snake.

But it presents these horrific journeys, which is like, it's like, it's much, you're safer off hunkering down.

But literally, had I left one minute earlier, I would have got there in about 54 minutes.

As it was, it was like two hours of night buses.

That's what, that's, that's, that's what happens.

If you miss that last one yeah i used to have that when i lived in crystal palace it was like quite a nice jaunt from london bridge but if i'm if i've missed that train the last one it's a sort of rosetta stone of like

bullshit that my phone presents me with like

and you do think to yourself maybe just check into a cd hotel did you have that thought and this start again tomorrow i had to keep getting off buses and then sort of getting on a new one but i'd get off places i'd never heard of it'd be like get off i'd plosenum yeah like okay yeah just weird places in south london nine witches

i've got to change it nine witches there seems to be about 20 places called norbury that i've never heard of east norbury yeah we junk left norbury wood norbury east norbury southwood norbury green norbury south green that's norbury left norbury right norbury middle norbury but but london i i like to play a game which is make up a london place northwood green eastwood northchurch green pigs south hill south hill wood northchurch green just you can just combine those words.

Yeah, those all sound totally plausible.

You look at the tube map.

There's all these places you've never heard of, and they're all called...

And

when you talk to someone, when you meet someone from London, first of all, you discuss what novels you've been reading.

Then you discuss what novels you've been writing.

And then when you ask where someone's from in London, most of the time they'll say, oh,

I'm from Eastwood.

Oh, right.

And

you don't know what it means because there's just so many bits of London that you don't know what they are.

Eastwood Green.

North Eastwood Green.

Southwood.

Northwood Hill.

Clum Hill.

Okay, I'm going to play a game with you called Which of These Are Real Tube Stops?

Okay.

Northwood Hills.

Northwood.

When do we answer?

Oh, it's classic.

So you want me to format it at the same time as doing it?

You want me to be inventing the quiz while doing the quiz?

The quiz happens, and then we work out what happened afterwards.

Channel Osmond.

I'm going to Channel Osmond.

Northwood Hills, Northwood,

Chorleywood.

Oh, that rings a bell.

Pontefrax.

When do we answer?

I think Chorleywood, isn't that one of the sort of kind of metropolitan out towards the, like, where it becomes Buckingham, like inexplicably, it's in Buckinghamshire?

It's the incredible bit of the metropolitan line where you look out of the window and there's like dolphins and like

rhinos and stuff.

It's like, what the heck?

Yeah, it's it

there ought to be a word for the particular weird sort of feeling of nausea you get when you're on a tube train and you're looking out the window and seeing like fields and cows and stuff.

Bizarre.

But

have you got a guest there?

Oh, so out of those four, I'm going for Chollywood.

As being made up, no, it's being real.

No, only one of them was made.

Oh,

that's the last one.

You said the ridiculous one at the end.

Oh, damn, I thought I'd got you with Pontefract Town.

I was, I was so.

Pontefract's in Yorkshire, isn't it?

No, no.

I was really sorry.

You must do it before the quiz with your sort of, you know, green,

green bays and sort of North Southington, all that kind of stuff.

North Southington.

North Southington.

Or it's like a, or it's like monument or bank where it's just, it's just a thing from history.

Do you know what I mean?

Gun.

Do you know what I mean?

Brick.

Head.

You're arriving at gun.

That happens more in France and European countries, doesn't it?

When things are named after battles, so you've got no idea, it doesn't help you for where the place is.

Well, you've got Waterloo in the same way.

It's like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes just, sometimes, you know, someone makes a point and like, they're generally right.

So why the fact that I'm specifically wrong ruins the fact that I'm generally right.

You know, you're trying to be right.

Also, I'm generally right.

I mean, generally that is true, but you've pricked it with one little fact prick.

You pricked my little balloon truthfully, with one little fact prick.

It's just London's most famous station.

That's all.

So here's a good one.

So which of these is made up?

Okay.

Headstone Lane,

Hatch End,

Carpenter's Park,

Roxley Bush Green.

Now these are quite good.

I don't know any of these, I don't think.

One of them's made up.

I mean, I'd love to live in Roxley Bush Green.

That sounds like

a soap from the 80s.

And now time to catch up with the residents of Roxley Bush Green.

I think the first one.

The first one was made up.

No, Hatch End was real.

Carpenders Park was real.

There was one before Hatch End.

Headstone Lane was real.

Oh, Headstone Lane, I thought it wasn't real.

But Roxley Bush Green was made up.

Wow, wow.

So you nearly got it.

Well done.

But I win, so you both have to send me £50.

I accept backs.

is that quite a good game should we camera with this game i'm enjoying it i don't know about you can i do one for you yeah okay okay which which one of these is real

okay turkey brook

i mean i know how your imagination works ben you're trying to make up something but i'm thinking carvery you're thinking carvery all you can think about is your post pod carvery

and i know you've hired a little recording booth in the carvery So at the end of the recording session, you just press a button, the walls fall down.

Well, I press a button and the gravy falls down like a gunchank.

The gravy gunch tanks you.

Because you see gravy

because

your philosophy, isn't it, is that gravy makes everything better.

So rather than put gravy on the product, put gravy on you and food feed the product through the gravy you.

Through the gravy layer.

Through the gravy layer.

Don't you?

It's not a bad idea.

It's a really horrible way of doing it.

Okay, so Turkey Brook.

Yep.

Turkey Hill.

Oh, you devilish dick.

Turkey Street?

What?

Turkey Towers.

Oh.

Is any one of them made up?

One of them's real.

Oh, Turkey Brook.

Mike?

Turkey Towers.

It's Turkey Street.

Is it?

Wow.

Turkey Street is a station on the Weaver line of the London Overground.

In the Bullsmore area, in the north of Enfield.

Nicely done.

Situated between Southbury Southbury and Theobald's Grove on the Southbury Loop.

That all sounds made up.

It all sounds made up, doesn't it?

Do you want some really boring South West Trains ones?

Yes, please, mate.

So this is near you.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

One is made up.

Okay.

Wimple.

Yeah.

Whereton.

Freshford.

Netley.

Oh, so hard.

Oh, you've done devilishly good work there.

Thank you.

So was it Wimple?

Wimple?

Whereton?

Freshford?

Netley.

I think that Freshford is made up, but it sounds like a lovely place.

Freshford Dairies.

Freshford Dairy Yogurts.

Freshford Correctional Facility.

I'm going to go for Wimpole.

I'm afraid it was Whereton.

Oh, damn.

You could have...

Where'em?

Absolutely.

Whereton?

No, sir.

Oh, nicely done.

Thank you.

So you've based the fake one on a real one that's slightly changed one of the syllables.

Okay,

one of these is made up.

We're on the central line here lofton

debden

theyden bois oh nodgeville

here's a new game okay which of these will you not find in the concourse of birmingham new street station

Okay.

Nice.

All bar one.

John Lewis.

Krispy Creams.

Oliver Bonass.

Dr.

Nodge's World of Fun.

There's no way it's a John Lewis in the.

But I think that's the trick.

I reckon there is a John Lewis.

Oh, because it's like linked somehow.

Is it linked to the Bullring Centre?

Yeah.

There's no further information available.

Give us them again.

All bar one,

John Lewis, Krispy Cream, Oliver Bonas.

I'm still going for John Lewis.

I think there is a John Lewis.

I think there isn't a.

I reckon there isn't an All Bar One.

Bonjamin has it.

He saw through me.

Yes.

Of course they have John Lewis.

Because you were monobluffing.

It was a monobluff, wasn't it?

Not even the double bluff.

It was an extraordinary concourse, that is Birmingham New Street Station.

And they've got a Leon guys.

For the love of God, how are you?

Are you getting this information?

We've got a five guys.

I don't think I've ever been inside an Oliver Bonas.

Bonas?

Bonas?

Probably Bonass.

Don't know.

It's a high-end gift option shop.

Lots of very

lots of sort of

rose gold picture frames, that kind of thing.

Okay.

I get mixed up with Robert Dias.

It's the opposite of Robert Dias.

Robert Dias is.

Isn't that Hoover's?

Robert Dias is Hoover's sort of industrial bleaches,

galvanized rubber gloves,

tupperware pots.

Tupperware pots, light bulbs.

The other day, I think I sent you a text.

I was looking for a Ryman's

and I put in Rymans to Google Maps, went to the Rymans, and the Rymans was inside a Robert Dias.

What?

It was just an area of the Robert Dias, was cordoned off, and it said, This is now Ryman's.

You are now in the sort of diplomatic space of Rymans.

It's very much like Vatican City, isn't it?

Within Rome.

Yeah.

It's a separate jurisdiction.

and the rymans was just a man stood behind a printer that's all it was because it was only some colourful pencils it was a rye man

it was a rye man

anyway the rymans the the printer didn't work and so he sent me to a mailboxes etc which i do really weird shop which i do like to go into because they're always really weird i've got a mailboxes etc near me they feel like a kind of um a bit like um do you remember love film the thing where they sent you dvds in the pose yeah yeah

I think I still have two DVDs.

I have

cinema paradiso

and three colours blue.

Yeah, it's always the two foreign films that you never watched.

Yeah.

Whereas

the adventures of the farting Dr.

Nodge,

the stinky adventures of Dr.

Nodge in Fart Town.

You always watch performance before it's out of the box, don't you?

And into the Nodgeverse, of course.

That's the one where he goes into a parallel universe as he meets another Dr.

Nodge.

Dr.

Nodge for the fart farticles?

Dr.

Nodge Stink Origins.

Yeah, so I think mailboxes, et cetera, reminds me of that love film company in the sense that it's a kind of company which can exist in between two great phases of technology.

Okay.

So it's a kind of brief, it has a moment.

Obviously, there's enough time in there for someone to become a millionaire probably for a hedge fund to do really well out of it.

But there was the DVD era, there was the analog era, and then there was the digital era where now, and in between that, there was something weirdly in between where love film was relevant.

Yeah, you'd go on a website to order a DVD.

So we were halfway there.

Exactly.

You didn't want to get into blockbusters anymore.

Yeah.

But you could see.

Yeah, you couldn't stream it.

And mailboxes, et cetera.

I feel it's just like, it's a weird, like, because it's quite a kind of Victorian sounding.

The very dead spaces.

People who aren't familiar,

you just go in and there's lots of sort of little lots of locked, tiny lockers and things.

Yeah.

It feels quite...

They can laminate something as well.

They can laminate stuff.

They can print stuff.

But it's actually really quite useful at the moment, but again, it's because we're...

I don't know exactly what eras we're between it, but it's something to do with...

I find it mainly useful returning stuff you've bought online.

Oh, really?

If you buy a jump process on

sister,

I could almost feel the sort of

the blackmailing documents oozing out of the little lockers.

I feel like it's full of dodgy Polaroids of the elite.

It does have that sort of feel.

But it's a really good one-stop shop.

If you need to return a jumper that's too big or too small, it's a one-stop shop because they'll print it off for you.

Or blackmail a Baron.

Or blackmail a Baron.

Or both at the same time.

Or both at the same time.

Or blackmail a Baron

with a jumper, which has a photo of him

being unfaithful to his wife printed onto it, which is something, again, in the era wherein now you could digitally, you could organize that from your own bed on your phone because it arrived the next day.

Couldn't Couldn't you?

And that's the incredible era we live in.

But mailboxes, et cetera.

So

it's partly because that's another thing we've discussed, I think, before, but

we're not yet in the era where a home printer works.

It has not been conquered.

You cannot have a home printer.

It doesn't work.

So you still need a place

where they've got an inkjet.

With surprisingly long hours, opening hours.

With surprisingly long hours, where they can print your label, stick it on your thing, and nodge it in the post.

But also, whenever you go in there, there's always someone there sending like an office chair to Argentina for some reason.

Yeah, and you think, Why are you doing this?

There's always some strange parts.

It's been hollowed out and it's absolutely full of euros.

Oh, that's right.

But again, but also that's because we're still at the we are in this inter zone where everything's kind of online, everything's virtual, everything's digital, but at the same time, you still need stuff delivered physically.

You still need to wrap stuff in brown in Manila.

I mean, Manila

as a product, you know, as a substance.

The manila envelope has probably never been doing so well.

Brown tape,

those things,

little transparent plastic, bits of plastic bags that you put a bit of paper in and stick to the front of a box.

All that stuff is still massive because we're not at a 3D printing stage yet.

Once 3D printing is universal,

Mike won't even need to travel around the country to do a gig.

Yeah, I could just print out my own tanix tea cake here, can't I?

You can print out your own tannix tea cake here.

But also you can print out a 3D mic.

You can email yourself sent to you to Glasgow.

They print out a 3D mic in Glasgow.

You just have to make sure you don't do anything in the meantime in Exeter.

But

that 3D mic can do your gig remotely

through pre-recorded MP3s.

embedded in its cranium.

And just at the end of the gig, they just have to make sure that mic is executed

and that you haven't earned money independently in Exeter because then that's a tax, then you create a tax problem, which is, can you be taxed twice?

Can the same person be taxed twice at the same time?

Do you know what I mean?

So, what happens is at the end of the gig, everyone has to execute Mike Wozniak, which is actually luckily what they want to do at the end of one of your gigs anyway.

Very nice, let's have a good time.

Everyone, come on, we're all having a nice time.

Yeah,

very good.

And

they bring their own hammers, don't they, normally, anyway?

Oh, yeah, usually, yeah,

I'm one of the few acts that does pre-merch, sell hammers on a trestle.

So I'd be afraid to join because they know they're going to want to use them.

Yeah.

Let's 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.

This email is from Jack.

Thank you, Jack.

Hello.

It's kind of hard to get into this, but Jack has created and illustrated a three-bean salad role-playing game in the style of Dungeons and Dragons.

That is totally playable.

I will include a link to this in the show notes.

And if you're the kind of person that sort of enjoys that kind of thing, then get involved.

I mean, it's incredible.

I don't quite know where to start with in terms of describing it.

What's the kind of goal of the game?

I'm interested to know.

Because it might help me with McGole in my own life.

I could maybe.

What is the the goal what does he think think of as being the goal of being a bean so the game is sort of marshalled by a benevolent autocrat okay mike wozniak lovely who sort of sort of runs the game okay yeah that's the dungeon master yeah yeah there you go then you have to name your bean

and choose whether it's a provincial dad or a metropolitan elite okay good that makes a difference to like your kind of stats as a character yeah yeah, yeah.

Then you calculate your Bonjamin stat.

Oh, okay.

Then you choose your bean's PhD field using a dice.

Yeah.

If you roll a one, it's polar science.

Two, Hamley's magic.

Three, Panini running.

Four, Gawp Core, five, egg carton geometry, and six, robotics.

Then you have to equip your bean.

You roll a dice, one, a stoking cudgel, two, a sword or ham from one of the great sword or ham cultures.

Yep,

three a baguette loaded with armor-piercing brie,

four an American pink sludge nozzle, yeah, five a miniature trebuchet painted by one of the Gallagher brothers.

That's a reference to something I can't even remember,

six, a snooker ball in a sock.

Very good.

Are they dice or die?

You roll the dice to see where you begin.

Roller one, you're in a branch of Petramange, two, you're at Diamond Harbour, three, you're at the Dragon Soup Cafe, four, you're in Bremen, five, you're in Slimbridge Wetland Centre, and six, you're in the biggest freestanding concrete dome of its size.

It's great.

That sounds brilliant.

That's superb.

Thank you.

Anyway, I'll put a link to it in the show notes if you're interested.

Thank you very much indeed.

It's a great bit of work.

Brilliant.

This is from Nat.

Hello, Nat.

Dear Ben, regrettably, I have to issue a bollocking

accessing the listener bollocking.

Bollocking loading.

In the summer

bollocking of

week.

Bollocking loaded.

Regarding your claim that the orientation of a horse's limbs has symbolic value and symbolically conveys how the doubtless distinguished rider met their demise, this is flat nonsense.

Hell no.

The kind of nonsense I expect from Henry.

But I've always imagined you to be above.

I like that a lot.

Well, do I accept that bollock or not?

Are you saying it's flat nonsense?

But not saying what it is, but

they're not giving us an alternative.

No, I wanted more.

I wanted the origins of the myth.

I wanted more.

Maybe it's because I like the fact so much.

Yeah.

I wanted to be replaced by something.

So it's hard to say bollocking accepted because it's like...

It's quite old-school knuckle fight of a bollock, isn't it?

It's just like, it's pretty like...

It is what it is.

It's just...

because anyone can email in and just say that's nonsense right exactly but they need to back it up with a bit of something yeah okay now you might you might it doesn't look like that's landed maybe maybe maybe that you can uh because normally you'd want to

supply some additional information or something yeah which means for me that's a reflecto bollock oh yeah

i agree reflecto bollock

It's time

to pay the ferryman

Patreon

Patreon

Patreon.com

forward slash three bean salad.

Thanks for everyone who signed up at our Patreon.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad is the place to go.

You can sign up at various tiers, but if you sign up at the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Mike from the Sean Bean Lounge, where Mike spent all of last week.

I did, indeed.

It was spectacular.

Yeah, it was a weird one, wasn't it?

Because it was all sponsored by Ridley Scott, and it was the Gladiator 2-themed CGI Baboon Fight.

It was.

Thank you, Benjamin.

And here's my report.

It was the Gladiator 2 CGI baboon fight sponsored by Ridley Scott last night in the virtual reality dueling suite at the Seanbeen Lounge, with Rowan Smith finally getting a chance to road test his hyper-realistic VR head and body sets.

Now with added stuff being drilled into your brain and spine.

Josh Yates, James Melton, Chris in Japan and Groovy Isaac opted for hand-to-hand mode and were torn into such small pieces it looked like a shaken up snow globe that was full of bits of bloke.

Holly Donahue, Dr.

Sarah Sarah Rock Bison, and Kit Preston on the other hand opted for poultry shears and to work as a team and Spatchcock to vanguard baboon in record time.

Aware revenge would be in the offing, they quickly cleared the field allowing Daniel White, Ocean Edwards, Danny Chapman and Craig Holden to step in and take the brunt of the baboonic wrath.

They were shaved, flayed, minced and molded into meat mannequins to be used in the training of the next generation of fighting baboons.

Becky Heathen and Grace might have had some success with their weighted net and trident combo, but they were completely ignored by the baboons as Dolly Hall was running around the outer edge of the melee, slapping baboons on the arse with a slotted spatula.

This came to an abrupt end when Emma A.

and Kay Knolls shot out of an attack flume in the two halves of a pantomime CGI war tiger.

The tiger knocked the spatula out of Dolly's grip, forcing her to persuade the baboons that she had been directed to act by the spatula, which led to the spatula being sent to the firing squad.

Meanwhile, Slady, Ryan Cliver, and Nathan Thorner tried a prison yard-style tactic of going for the strongest fighter first and attacked the CGI tiger.

It was an unfortunate bit of blue on blue which in hindsight could have been solved with dialogue but instead ended with a clear 3-0 to the tiger.

Liam Jones meanwhile tried the long game honey trap style, attempting to woo baboons one by one before inviting them on a coastal walking holiday, at which point he intended to push them off a cliff.

At the time of writing he has been ghosted by no less than 16 baboons and got off with a single macaque, whose means of entrance into the lounge remains unclear.

Brad Smoley and Edward went for a blunter approach by covering a Hyundai I-10 i-10 with glue and quite big splinters and driving it straight into the fracar.

Baboons of course are known to be able to leap three stacked Hyundai 10s from standing, so the plan was as ill-thought through as it was unsuccessful, and the two merely plowed through bean lounges, ruining the evenings and trousers of Luke Boyan, Guy Bronze, Benjamin Sleep, Kieran Bennett, Faust Yarsels, Duncan Wright and Ben.

Sebastian Kreutzer and Mike Downing took advantage of the chaos to attempt to steal Ridley Scott's refreshments trestle table, it being the same trestle table as seen in G.I.

Jane, Director's Cut Trestle Table Edition.

Wanting the trestle table for themselves, Ruby Louise Hillinger and Charlie Jones smeared Sebastian and Mike in reptile egg paste, had Alex Hum ring the halftime bell, and looked on as the paste was devoured, men included, on water biscuits with a sprinkling of poppy seeds.

At this point, Ridley Scott himself intervened, wheeled in on a CGI barrow by Jack Knights and AI Every Day.

The three of them switched out the trestle table for a fake CGI trestle table and made good their escape.

Tragically, this switch wasn't spotted by Joe Duffy, who attempted to shield himself from an Empress baboon with the CGI trestle table and found the trestle table was merely absorbed into the Empress Baboon, making her 50% larger and giving her the qualities of a trestle table.

By the time she finished with him, Joe was more buffet than man.

And what a buffet, agreed Sally Darby and Amy, who'd been able to enjoy watching the whole event without being disturbed by a single baboon, being dressed as they were as a crowned eagle, the baboon's natural predator, and as a trombone, respectively.

Thanks all.

Okay, that's the show.

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

Yes, please.

And this one is from Charlie.

Charlie writes, here is a cover of the main theme by my dad, in the style of pioneering Viennese composer of the early 20th century and father of atonalism, Arnold Schoenbein.

Lovely, thank you.

Brilliant.

Thanks for listening.

Cheers.

Goodbye.