Jazz

Mike went to a young person's music festival

for 15-year-old girls.

Who's the main constituency of the audience?

Would you say, Mike?

It was whatever that gen is.

Is that a Zed?

Gen Zed.

Or Gen Alpha, are they?

I don't know.

But yeah, very much lots of teens.

Lots of people in their 20s as well.

Okay.

I don't think I stuck out like a sore thumb.

no i don't i don't think i don't think i was obviously there escorting some some small children but that's because you're wearing a system of uh of bum bags across your front

around your house hoping to trigger as a as a new trend yeah yeah yeah and so what what your set was was i'm i'm just

thick thick 90s house was it what what were you laying down

I brought my own gazebo because they wouldn't let me on the official listings.

Okay.

So I

parked up because he was next to the hot dog stand and did a guerrilla techno set.

It's Retro Mike.

Next to the St.

John's Ambulance.

Which mercifully was being staffed by another group of provincial middle-aged men who are bang up for it.

I think we had a scene.

There was a scene.

And it was thriving.

As Retro Mike.

And it's Retro Mike.

Is it three exclamation marks?

Yes, but they're spread through the words.

They're spread through the words, aren't they?

And some of them are upside down Spanish ones.

That's right.

And one is on its side, which just makes it look like it's been underlined and there's a full stop at the end.

But that's wrong.

It is an exclamation mark.

It is an exclamation mark.

Because

young people want energy, don't they?

That was your thinking, wasn't it?

Yeah.

They want emphatic punctuation is what they want, I think.

And I was going to test that theory.

And everything's egg yellow, isn't it?

Egg yellow.

And lights are important because you're putting on a show, right?

You're not just playing some tracks.

You're putting on a show.

So you've got to have, I mean, I didn't have access to a decent set of sort of DJ lights that go on the side of your shades or whatever.

So it was very much busting out the old Christmas tree jobs in the attic.

Your Christmas tree lights wrapped around your head, didn't you?

Yeah, well, I wrapped up as much as me as I could.

And am I right in thinking that, so towards the end of the,

it's a bit when you shout, Raws, let's make it raw, people, which is it's the bit where there's a bit towards the end, isn't there, of a house song where it goes,

and you really go, oh yeah.

Yeah.

And at that point,

you get a doo doo doo doo dudo.

When the big beat comes in,

if I remember rightly, house music would go,

and you'd be all there

in the crowd, all sweaty, going,

and there'd be a point where you go, can I actually do a quick piss

and come back before the doo dos and?

Well, because it does, the vibrations interfere with your bladder, I find that.

They'd increasingly, yeah.

But that's why you've got a urinal built into your DJ sort of booth, haven't you?

Well, yes, and then that's the advantage.

Well, I'm a sort of

I move as one, I'm like a snail, effectively.

The only negative of that is obviously the speakers of the Hyundai I-10 meant I couldn't attract a massive crowd.

No.

But you've got your Hyundai I-10 under the under the under the gazebo, which unpacks from the boot.

And yes, the toilet is in the boot.

It's

a series of buckets, really.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you can have what?

Three clubbers max seated in the back of the Hyundai at any one time.

In the VIP zone, yeah.

Roped off, roped off, always roped off, yeah, yeah, with my 10-year-old on security, yeah.

And so you're you, it's halfway between sat and squatting, isn't it, on the on the bonnet of the uh of the Hyundai, which is the way you drive on I-10, yes, yeah.

And then the bit which is really great is because you've got your wrap, you've got this Christmas wire wrapped around you, Christmas lights, and when it goes,

there's a pause.

If I remember right, 90s house correctly, there's a pause

and then things get mega.

The beat goes.

And that's when Mike starts hitting the horn.

And then, seconds after that, it's when the battery cuts out.

Because unfortunately, I didn't bring a battery back for the Christmas lights.

They're in the cigarette lighter, they're plugged into that.

And it was a bit too much in the end.

So I didn't quite finish the set.

It was too ambitious, wasn't it?

Because the other thing you tried to get to happen, which would have been brilliant if it worked, was the idea was, because those Christmas lights you've got, I've got three settings.

They've got uniform flash.

They've got mobile flash.

And then they've got just one light sort of traveling up and down the pulsing.

Pulsing.

So the idea was it would go from unified flash to pulsing.

It's called the Rudolph's footsteps.

The Rudolph's footsteps.

Setting.

But in a different context, it feels like pulsing.

Yeah, that would have been incredible.

Still, the next time you'd ever learn, right?

It's an organic thing.

It is an organic thing.

A techno, a heavy techno set.

The other thing that Mike fell foul of is if you wrap yourself in Christmas lights, you're creating essentially a coil of electrified wire.

That's when you do become a magnet.

And of course, because he was next door to the St.

John's ambulance.

Oh, I was covered in syringes.

Covered in syringes.

Which people assumed was part of the act.

And people started hugging you at that point because

people were very, very loved up, weren't they?

Bite your drugs aren't cool, extra, which you go in between each track.

Well, I'm still going through the correspondence.

I've got a lot of letters to parents about why their child came home so heavily pierced yeah yeah and why they had so many leaflets about how herpes is still uncurable

which is my phone croissant at the moment yeah

irrespective of the um of the the wade-through yogurt zone which you had set up behind the honder didn't you whereby people anyone with with right armband could wade through that yogurt couldn't they it's what it was supposed to be a foot dip really was the was it was the idea an antimicrobial yogurt exactly but people people thought it was a catering so

again, these are teething troubles.

I'll get that right next summer, I think.

Yeah.

Again, Ben, you think it's ironic, don't you, the way you said that, that

yogurt can be antimicrobial.

But of course, anyone with any understanding of how medicine works is often it's you cleave close to the danger to turn it in your own well you make it super microbial so that if if your feet are caked in supermicrobial yoghurt then that they will oust any any negative or you know or foreign bacteria uh between your toes because of course the power of yogurt is actually quite terrifying isn't it if you spend too long thinking about it which is why which is why there's those those those canisters of yakult are so small a full tub of yakult would be terrifying well they've been they've been on our supermarket shelves for years haven't they that's very much been the beachhead and what people aren't talking about is what's there now is this legion upon legion of of much larger bottles of kefir

i do you like a kefir do you like a kefir i do yogurt revolution is upon us yeah what does kefir do do for you, Ben?

It tastes good for you because it's a little bit horrible.

Yeah.

It's fermented, isn't it?

Yeah.

So it's all got that.

That's a tang.

I'm enjoying that tang.

Should have been chucked.

Tang.

And it makes me feel a bit like a Mongolian goat herder in some way.

Yes.

Do you know what I mean?

Like I'm just walking across the steppe.

Wearing an incredibly wide and sort of boxy, very, very thick, thick sewn woolen

sort of

carpet top, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's incredibly wide, though.

Wide caftan.

It's just really, really wide caftan, isn't it?

Yeah, and they've got like an eagle on one shoulder.

Yeah.

And then they've got like a miniature horse.

Yeah.

Yes.

Superhuman archery skills.

Oh, yeah.

So you can shoot a scorpion from a distance of 500 yards and cook it for your dinner.

And that's how I feel when I'm in Tesco and I go, oh, cafe is on 241.

But I don't know where it's from in the world.

It's kind of Turkish, isn't it?

Or that part of the world?

I think that's all Near Eastern thing.

Yeah.

There's a Turkish restaurant near me, and I'll often.

They've got like a little yoghurt drink that's just like salty yogurt that I'll buy.

It's not very nice, but again, it's that thing of going, I'm doing this authentically.

Yeah.

Well, I had a thing on holiday called curds.

There's so many colours on the spectrum between cheese and milk, aren't there?

It's such a, such a broad spectrum.

At the very, very, very far end, you've got Brie having you on one side.

You'd put a soft cheese at the far end, would you, you, Henry?

Yeah, no, I didn't say the furthest end.

I said the far end.

We're going all the way, are we?

Yeah, fine.

If you want to do that,

yeah, the furthest end.

You've got your hard cheeses, you've got the parmesan.

You've got your parmesan, yeah.

You've got your brick cheeses.

Well, the far end is the ultra-hard black cheeses, isn't it, that are forged under deep pressure under volcanoes?

Yeah,

like a 25-carat Parmesan like that could be worth

more than diamonds.

Or an obsidian cheddar.

Yeah.

Obsidian cheddar would crash an economy if it was introduced into a normal supermarket environment.

It's got to be black market, that stuff.

Oh, yeah.

So, what are you putting at the other end of the scale then?

Just milk.

See, they only got milk.

Okay.

Then, in between, you've got so many of these halfway house things.

You've got yogurt, you've got kefir, you've got curds.

What about hui?

You've got hui.

I don't even know what that is.

What was hui?

A hui.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, sorry.

Sorry, you mispronounced it.

Hui.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah.

What is Hui?

I don't know what Hui.

I don't know what Hui is.

But actually, I ate, when I was eating curds on the holiday, I actually googled Hui and read about it, but I've forgotten already.

Well, I think to have eaten curds, someone somewhere on the opposite end of the earth must be eating hui.

They're the dairy yin-yang.

And then

you've got your mini yogurts, which are much more kind of dense.

And then you've got your Greek, you've got so many different types of yoghurt.

French set?

French set.

From ash fray.

Greek?

Froube.

Froube?

What the hell's froube?

Froube is a soft, liquidy yogurt, a sweet yogurt served in a tube.

Blame me.

What's that?

When do you use that?

To distract toddlers, basically.

Okay.

You know how a burglar might toss a lamb chop at an Alsatian?

It's the same sort of thing.

It's used to placate and distract.

If a house has guard toddlers, for example.

Yeah, exactly.

Which are no longer legal.

but

yeah, you drop a few sort of laced frubes through the letterbox, and you're in because I've got a problem with yogurt and all of its derivatives.

It sounds like it, yeah.

My problem with yogurt is tread carefully here, Henry.

No, I realize this, I realize I'm going to be very, very sensitive here, be very, very sensitive.

But my sort of lingering suspicion with yogurt is that it's shit.

Oh, my God.

Okay, not reading the room, not reading the room at all.

Sorry, sorry, no, no, no, no.

Ben's genuinely

looking.

Absolutely.

Ben is furious.

The reason you can't see Ben from the nipples up is because the rest of him is in yoghurt as we speak.

Well, the beam machine is always immersed in yogurt.

Well, it's it's such a it's it's a very very versatile product.

We we've established that it's the only thing which can it's the only sort of bulwark we've currently got in the global war against herpes,

isn't it?

The yoghurt bulwark

is is it that's it.

It's the firewall.

It's all we're clinging to.

Because it's so biotic, it can clean and it can stain.

It can clean and stain.

It's probiotic, it's antibiotic when needed.

These are all pro.

These are all in the pro column, honey.

It's alive or dead.

Yes, isn't it?

It's a washing powder.

This isn't adding up to shit's product.

It will one day become sentient.

All of these things.

And it's going to be the answer to AI.

And the Great War, in a thousand years' time.

Yogurt will probably be all we've got.

But yogurt and AI with a crab watching on from a hillock at a picnic because they destroy each other.

It's true.

And all the end of days mythology feature yogurt, don't they?

Be it rains of yoghurt, plagues of yogurt, yogurt bubbling from the mouths of elders,

all of our children turning into yogurt.

There's many different apocalyptic visions, isn't it?

The Nordic giants tricking the gods with poisoned yoghurt.

Yep.

Yep.

What are those little French ones?

Puti Filu suddenly going up in value so it costs £50,000 for one pot?

Yeah, we've not even gotten to your fruit corners yet.

We haven't gotten to fruit corners.

So I don't really know how you can be besmirching this.

No, what I'm saying is it's an incredible substance.

It's an intelligent substance because obviously it is effectively a liquid fungus

that's global in size.

It's the biggest animal.

Yeah.

When you're eating yogurt, you're eating a tiny bit of one huge organism.

Yeah.

So generally speaking, yeah.

Remember, it is not vegetarian.

Please remember that.

Because you can, obviously, sometimes it's alive, sometimes it's dead.

Dead yogurt

is still not vegetarian.

But you don't need to worry about that if you are a vegetarian, because it can neither be created nor destroyed.

It just passes through you on part of its journey.

That's all it is.

We're pretty sure now the reason the Milky Way looks like that, the reason it looks like loads and loads of yogurt in space.

The Milky Way.

The Milky Way.

It's because it's whey.

Yes, it's a liquid sentient fungus.

It's the biggest organism on Earth.

It's the oldest organism on Earth.

It's also the youngest organism on Earth.

Did it originate from Earth?

Did it originate from Earth?

Probably not.

Did Earth originate from it?

Possibly.

What flavor of yogurt are there in the pyramids?

We don't know.

We're not sure.

Because they won't let us know.

Is there any credence behind the theory that the reason they won't let us know is because it's a combination of fruits of the forest flavours, your berries, your strawberries,

your summer peach flavours, which have never been combined successfully in any commercial yogurt.

If those flavours could work together, the impact on global fruit markets would be...

I mean, I'm literally lost.

I mean, I can't even explain, but I can't, I can't put it into words.

No, the thing about yogurt is, as a food, right, people have often encouraged me to eat yogurt, especially my parents who are huge yogurt hens.

I just don't like, so occasionally I buy it, but whenever I come, whenever I try and get it into my life, I just have this thought, which is, why?

Why am I, why would I eat yogurt right now?

Like, what's it for?

It's a breakfast, it's a pudding.

But

it's a meal in and of itself.

It can bolster a musely.

It can take the edge off a chili.

Have it with a curry.

But it's with, isn't it?

That's the thing.

I just said, Henry,

it can be on its own a breakfast or a pudding very easily.

So you could just eat some yogurt and that's your breakfast?

You could do, yeah.

Would you ever do that, Ben?

Did it yesterday?

There we go.

You just had yogurt for breakfast.

Not for breakfast.

It was like a sort of lunch.

There's no point trying to define what time of day Ben is having what meal.

We can't pull on that thread now.

Because you don't really know what it is, Ben.

And maybe if it is a sentient mega beast, which it is,

maybe you're actually, you know,

you're living your life to its drum

because you can't really tell me why you ate it just now.

You went, oh, it's between, it wasn't really breakfast, it was a this.

Mike's saying it can bolster a muesli.

Why are using words like bolster?

That's a deeply, deeply weird word to use in a conversation about yogurt.

Oh, it's lovely.

Oh,

oh, bolster.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, can I just say three words?

Can I say three words to you, Henry?

Go on, Ben.

Honey delivery system.

Okay, but again, you're using words like system and delivery.

These aren't food words.

They're sort of admin.

I can't just sit down in the middle of the day and eat spoonfuls of honey.

I can't.

It's not right.

Okay, so it's there as a kind of cushion.

Madras coolant.

It's a madrasa.

So, okay, so it's like a kind of, it's like a lubricant in a vehicle or something.

It's like...

As a kid, I used to watch those ads for cash roll GTX, and I'd be like, what the hell is cash roll GTX?

And I still don't know,

but mixed with yogurt, it does make a good afternoon snag,

it goes down incredibly smoothly, it goes straight out as well.

Oh, I see

it cleans you straight through, it cleans you straight through.

Um, no, but I think I'm actually making quite a strong point, which I don't think either of you have really managed to counter, which is like so

essentially what you're saying is true of any food.

You can add this argument to any food, I don't agree with that.

Parsley, I buy yogurt,

Parsley?

Try eating a Nissoise without

a delicate sprinkling of that.

Yeah, it's bolstering the Nissoise.

Well, no, herbs.

Okay, well, okay, I would say yogurt.

Okay, I would say, yeah, herbs are a non-necessary food product.

I'd say yogurt.

Yogurt is a kind of flabby herb, isn't it?

It's a kind of wet, flabby herb.

Okay, I'm interested in this.

If we drill down into this,

what is the food in the middle of this Venn diagram that you will allow as being a sort of vital thing that isn't just

interfaced with another food?

Yeah, I've got a very simple answer for you, Ben.

Frittata.

It's the basic food.

Couldn't be simpler.

Frittata.

It's a combination of protein and fiber.

I'll buy yogurt and it'll be in my fridge.

And yet somehow the moment doesn't come where I reach.

Is this because you're still getting parental pressure to buy yogurt, though, and to eat your turtle?

I am still getting parental pressure because I'm not getting any of that pressure and I so I don't feel like it's

I'm getting yogurt on my own terms so maybe if your parents let up with the whole yogurt pressure would that change things because at the moment the yogurt is emblematic it's duty yoghurt of your arrested development it could be that i i probably need to have my own yoghurt moment

a reach to yogurt story because i mean everyone has their story don't they like that that that summer where the first time you got off with a yogurt that crazy summer

on summer camp you were working as a as a pool you were working as a as a as a pool as a turd collector and a pool

children's pool when you saw that that middle-aged man walk in holding it walking in holding a yoghurt and you just you just watched it didn't you as he sluttered it all over his back thinking it was sun cream

because it's so versatile it is so versatile um yes it so for example i've got let's tick off the reasons you're using it so for example I've got my honey delivery system, toast.

I've got my muesley delivery system, toast.

I eat a lot of toast.

I don't really eat muesli because

it's not the 1980s.

Again, that's a daily thing for me, the muesley.

Yeah, that was the emotional.

With yogurt.

Sometimes.

On high days and holidays.

Sure.

And when you're eating the yogurt and the muesli, do you ever have this thought which is

why am I doing this?

Just like, is there a

invigorating health?

That's his

gut health.

It's lasting me through the morning.

Gut health, I can understand, but that's then that's medicinal.

That's a medicinal use.

So just you move it from the kitchen into the bathroom cabinet.

Fine.

You know, that I can understand, but it's like, where does this thing actually belong?

Because what my parents do is they have yogurt at the end of a meal for some reason.

And I don't know why they're doing it.

It's a lovely pudding.

So like, I'll get at the end of a meal.

I could eat a yogurt, but I could just not eat a yogurt.

yoghurt it's exactly the same so like why i could eat the yogurt i could not eat the yogurt you get a nice you get a little something sweet it's it's cool what's sweet yeah but the yoghurt isn't sweet what you put in the yoghurt might be sweet but the yoghurt's just well if you're having a pudding if you're having a dessert yoghurt you'll uh you know you'll you'll have one of the sweet ones that's not the time for your kefir generally speaking you know that's that's your mid-morning meeting isn't it so when you hit the kefir but but why but i yeah i'm i'm i'm i'm just yeah i i still don't understand you i i i don't want i i don't want to be difficult about it i i want to learn And maybe I just need to have

that sort of rites of passage.

You have to arrive at that moment yourself, I'm afraid.

Yeah, it can't be forced upon you.

This yogurt thing is going to run and run.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben, I can see he's actually quite hurt by this.

It's less hurt, and it's more like, I don't know what it is.

I just feel all at sea.

Do you feel sorry for me?

I thought I liked you.

I see.

You see?

Okay, so I have known for a long time

about Henry and his, because a very, very long time ago.

You've been keeping this from me Mike yeah to because I hoped that his yogurt moment would come I remember offering Henry a yoghurt are you serious yeah yeah long time ago

we were writing in my flat in North London and we'd had some food and I offered you a yoghurt at the end of lunch and you were just baffled

you were almost rude

I'm really I am sorry just the misunderstanding of why that would be on you know Wow yeah I think I think if I'd if I'd passed you a Grisham and asked you to read it to me in its entirety after lunch lunch, you'd have been less confused than you were.

Can we play it with that?

Can we recreate the scene?

Yeah, so I remember it quite vividly.

I don't remember much, but I do remember this quite vividly because I was living in Archway at the time.

Gosh,

about this.

And we'd been writing all day,

all morning.

Well, not all morning.

Henry would have arrived probably at the crack of half past 11, so we'd have been probably chatting for half an hour, done two minutes of writing, and then broken for lunch.

So all day?

Yeah.

All day.

All of the effective working hours.

We had a lunch, and we definitely had a salad because I remember Henry complimenting me on the heavy, vinegary leanings of my dressing.

Oh, see,

I love a tart dressing.

He also was pleased that I had put some toasted pine nuts in it.

Oh, I love a toasted pine nut.

But then, to my horror, I saw while I was preparing the dish,

that he was attacking the bag of pine nuts as if they were an amused bouche.

Bear in mind, this I didn't have a lot of money.

I mean, that was like a, he put about a month's worth of wages into his golb in pine nuts.

It's a premium nut.

It's a crazily expensive nut, the pine nut.

So generally speaking.

It's so hard to track that.

Each one.

Yeah.

I mean, the amount of people that have to die to

capture a whole bag of pine nuts, it's sucking.

It's the elusive pine nuts.

Each pine tree creates one pine nut in its lifetime, right?

That's right.

In its 200-year lifetime.

And you have to be there on the day that it sprouts.

And then, of course, there'll just be a melee of pine nut hunters that you'll have to sort of, you know, machete your way through if you want to go.

Oh, it's a horrible scene, but it's a horrible, horrible scene.

It's delicious.

But when you toast it,

and if you over-toast it, all those people died in vain.

Absolute tragedy.

It's an absolute tragedy.

Very easy to over-toast them.

So

you prevent that pre-toasting by just eating them out of a plastic bag.

Just eating them straight out of the bag.

You know what, Mike?

I literally over-toasted a handful of pine nuts the other day.

I'm sorry to hear it.

Well, maybe that's why you're being so crotchety today about your bag.

It could be, it did piss me off.

I was going to scatter them over a

grave.

Yeah.

It's what you scatter over the grave of a Greek widow.

Why has she got a grave?

Well, no, if she's her husband who's dying, when she's dead, she's still a widow.

Or maybe you'd like to be chased around for the rest of your life by the flaming-cursed fetter man.

So sorry, Mike.

So you got off to to a good start with the with.

Yeah, I was feeling thrilled, and he was, he was, he was happy, he was sated.

I think there would have been cheese and bread and all that kind of stuff.

He eats it, he likes a big lunch.

I mean, I love a big lunch.

It's only back then you could get through it.

And

I was aware of this.

I did not run out.

You were very happy.

Well, the thing is, Mike, Mike, we were both financially struggling at the time, which is why I would always insist that the meetings happened at your place.

And

I wouldn't eat for several days before a meeting.

But also, I'd also let you know through a series of subconscious, subliminal signals over the preceding six months that I absolutely adored the premium end of the nut market.

Cashews.

So you were happy and yeah, yeah, and it would have, you know, applauded and belched gratefully and all the rest of it.

And I was just putting a pot of coffee on and I thought, well, maybe, maybe he'll fancy a little sweet, a little pudding.

And what I had were yogurts.

which would have been my go-to at the time.

I offered him a yogurt and he was just,

I mean the the the atmosphere went from it would have done just glorious to total pig shit and that's in a nanosecond.

Yeah, frankly, there's no amount of pine nuts you could have given me that that I could have that could have prepared me for that you did stay for your coffee, I think, but uh things were drawn to a close and uh I think I just have a thing which is when I when I look at yoga I it's sort of the blood drains out of everyone's face

in the room, my face, and it drains so fast out of my face it'll drain out of anyone looking at me's face as well.

Yeah, so I did but I didn't warn you, Ben, because I hoped that he would have his moment before you ever needed to find that out.

I still hope that moment's in his future.

Yeah, but for now, screw yogurt and screw both of you.

Well, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go and have a yogurt right now.

No, no, yogurt, to be fair, yogurt is, you know, obviously, yeah, no, I can see why it's so big.

It is, after all, a flavorless and textureless non-liquid.

F you!

There's a pause

and then things get mega the beat goes

Let's turn on the beam machine.

Yes, please.

This week's topic, as sent in by Cameron from Milton Keynes.

Thank you, Cameron.

Is jazz.

This is shit.

Henry, you're turning into quite the naysayer of this episode.

Stop the jazz!

No, no, I do think I'm not into jazz.

I think what a lot of people probably have this is: I went through a very demonstratively being into jazz phase at university.

Okay, that's quite a classic, though, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, I see.

When you went demonstratively, were you going for like the classics or were you going deliberately into quite a difficult jazz, modern jazz?

How hard did you push it?

I went big classics so we're talking um miles davis yeah

um kind of blue yeah

we're talking rod stewart rod stewart

um

kenny g

well the thing is when i was at university there was quite i think

retrospectively quite a heinous musical era was happening which was acid jazz oh see i think i quite liked acid jazz.

Well, I did like it at the time.

I don't know if it's aged well.

Were Jamiriqui technically acid jazz?

Or were they merely inspired by acid jazz?

Because I definitely, while you were doing that, I was probably being demonstratively very boring about the fact that the Jamiriqui bassist was really good, actually.

Listen to this, listen to this.

It's really tight.

Listen to this.

Stop walking away from me.

Can you come back and listen to it?

Can someone listen to me about how tight this is?

Yes, it's the gods of the soundtrack, but it is funky.

Was never a really a fan of Jameriquoi myself.

Yeah, I definitely had a couple of Jameriquoi CDs back in the day.

You still didn't like them?

No, just not for me.

Yeah, it felt a bit like a parody of something else.

But hang on, he could both dance and sing

and have a big hat on

it was all going on it was going on below the waist it was going on at pipes level and and from the crown up so what is acid jazz

maybe i don't know there was a man called cordroy i remember you're evading the question um who were big it was it was big thick funky kind of kind of vibes was it modern funk jazz i think i yeah If that's what it was, I think I did like it.

I'm a fan of funk.

I still love funk.

So certainly when I was in university anyway, the 70s were back in in in the same way that i think the 90s are back in now yeah

for young people so like

funky stuff was kind of back in and that's why like acid jazz was happening yeah i dip my dipped my toes into it um but but in terms of proper jazz art blakey

it was such a i mean do you know that art blakey and the jazz messengers yeah they all had really cool names the albums had really cool covers yeah it was just it was just very cool except for the listening to it experience which was really really quite funny

It wasn't.

It was good.

Herbie Hancock.

Oh, he's amazing.

The names, Herbie Hancock, they all had incredibly cool names.

Yeah.

And it's like Oscar Peterson.

It's a cool name.

Yeah.

Or is it?

Or is it just because he's good at jazz that it's a cool name?

I don't know.

No, Oscar Peterson's a cool name.

Chet Baker.

Yeah.

Chet.

I mean, what?

I couldn't pull off Chet.

Oh, yeah, okay, maybe.

Yeah.

No, I'm being hard on it.

Are you saying I couldn't?

Yeah.

No, but could I?

Was your jazz flute?

Was it a jazz flute?

I did, you know, I had the flute.

I had the flute at university.

I did grade four at school.

I'm not, not a big deal, right?

Grade four is pretty, you know, it is, it's not a big deal.

You know, so I took it to uni, and people were trying to tell me to get into jazz flute.

I think it's fantastically difficult, isn't it?

That's because it's cool, but it's fantastic.

Like jazz, I played the violin as a kid at school very, very poorly for a very long time.

Yeah, I got into jazz as a teenager, but I can remember asking my violin teacher if he could teach me

teach me jazz.

Like, you know, I've got to grade five now.

I'm ready.

It's time.

And he just sort of looked at me and sighed and rolled his eyes and said,

just

eat this six pack of yogurt.

This is your reek to do yoghurt moment.

It was a clear no.

I think it's one of the first times in my childhood that someone had just

like I'd have to do something relatively constructive.

And someone just said, no.

We're not even going to try that.

No.

But you see, that's why you reap for yogurt at that moment because yogurt first comes to us as a salve.

A salve to the mediocre.

A salve to mediocrity, isn't it?

That's what the word yogurt means.

That's the word archaic.

Yogurt means.

Because think that music teacher, he said that to you.

He's right.

I assume he snapped you.

He snapped your

arms in half

to make sure you could never play the violin again.

So

he would have snapped your arms and also he would have snapped one forward one backwards

because if you'd snapped them both backwards you still theoretically could have played the violin behind you so he'd have made sure he would have set fire to your moustache i'm guessing yeah but using a sort of a long burning sort of paraffin paste so

it burned for weeks as a warning to other children because because if he just used lighter fluid it would have burnt off um and it would have just been agonizing but only for a few hours yeah it would have left a lot of crispy sort of hair ash in his in his practice room, which he doesn't want.

And of course, he would have presumably got some Bunsen burners under the music stand to heat it right up.

Yeah.

So when I, as I was folding my music stand back up with my horribly broken arms,

my palms were

being burnt to blisters.

Yeah.

And when you've had a day like that

and

you're on your way home and you pass a supermarket and there's a big sign in the window and it's a picture of the general manager of that local supermarket up to his nipples in yoghurt.

Yeah.

You go in, don't you?

And that's that's how that's how yogurt gets you.

I think because it's um, it obviously has a maternal quality, doesn't it?

Yogurt, so there's a comfort, there's a comfort there, especially if you go to one of the larger Sainsbury's where it's vended from a huge teat.

That's right.

And, but, of course, I maybe the reason I don't have yogurt in my life is because I've never had that moment.

I played the flute, they said, Henry, you're very good at flute.

I did biology at GCSE level.

They said, um, let's leave it there.

But do you know, I never had that door slammed in my face.

Yeah.

Ben, I assume that,

what was it for you?

Very similar story.

Yeah.

14 years old, grade four violin.

Yeah.

Don't know what it was that morning, something in the air.

But I looked at

Mr.

Jones and said,

Could I ever play jazz on this thing?

And yeah, snapped my arms off,

heated up the music stand, forced me to.

Yeah.

And the words, what's the matter?

Isn't Pachabel good enough for you?

Still rings in my ears.

Yeah.

They're right.

They're right, these people.

And then I got home and just smashed 50 Muller corners.

Yeah.

But you also discovered why it's called Pacabelle's Cannon, isn't it?

Because he snapped you onto the cannon, didn't he?

Get in, Pachabel's Cannon.

Get in now.

And it shoots you out and you land, didn't you, in the yogurt section of a hypermarket?

So, Henry, did you spend your university years playing jazz flute?

No, but I, to be honest, they were begging me to practically to continue with flute.

And in a university scene, was it this university specifically they were starved of jazz flute?

They had everything else.

When I was at school, there was an orchestra in my school.

I was made third flute.

People who know about orchestras will know that, generally speaking, often there isn't more than two flutes.

Well, oh, and I suppose bronze athletes don't deserve congratulation.

So,

were you scoring?

What were you doing?

Well, were you fully corked?

I was corked that the flute was cling-filmed.

And

it was cheesed.

So a grade two-level cheddar had been

run through

the mouthpiece and all the way up the.

And you'd just be warming up your umbrellas on the sideline, wouldn't you?

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

I was a super sub in theory.

I never called on.

But anyway, I was so flute, but I realised, what happened was during a rehearsal once, I realized that.

So we were all rehearsing.

I thought, I'm just going to stop playing for a minute and see what happens.

No one noticed.

Do you think that the whole thing would grind to a halt?

For the love of God, man.

Something's missing.

What is it?

You're keeping the brahms alive, Packer.

Don't cut off Brahms' oxygen.

You're strangling Brahms.

Even the kettle drums are abruptly silent.

Brahms is dying a second time.

Yeah, sorry, I could play nothing.

It didn't make a difference.

So that eased things off a bit during Russell.

But then I realized I should actually probably move my fingers around a bit and keep the puckered lip position.

At which point I may as well just play.

I mean, if you go into that much sort of effort to not play.

Exactly.

It was almost more effort to not play.

Yeah, to physically not breathe over the top of the flute.

Yeah, that's quite challenging.

Really, really quite hard.

So what I did instead was I

randomly played...

So then I would experiment, and I've actually ended up randomly playing London's Burning in the main school concert at the end of the year.

Everyone else was playing Brahms, and I was sat there going, you fucking losers.

I'm playing London's Burning here, and I'm getting the same amount of accolades as everyone else.

You fucking fools.

Packer, you said that through the flute.

You shouldn't.

No, but yeah, so I used to play London's Burning during all the concerts.

Pretty cool.

I mean, that's quite a jazz move, isn't it?

It's actually quite a jazz move, weirdly.

Yeah, it's the kind of thing that Oscar Peterson would have done, like an album of covers of London's Burning in different cool ways.

Yes.

But you know what?

I remember I developed a dislike of two things at the same time when I was at school, I remember, which I've forever linked.

Classical music and

tennis.

Because they were both

things

that I was bad at at school and got and got and got sort of

talked.

So you could, tennis was a sports option at my school.

You had to sort of audition for tennis so i turned up i did a speech from henry v

not the main one i thought quite interesting it was a post-dash and call speech

and they said they said it was um one word one word hammy

um

lacking in top spin yes

i i uh

i failed to get into tennis they just didn't let me in

i thought screw you tennis and also i was bad at classical music and i thought screw you classical music.

I've been plotting your revenge ever since.

So, for you, the ultimate act of rebellion would be playing London's Burning on the flute on a tennis court

at the Wimbledon final.

Yeah.

But that's why, because that's why I sort of gave up flute.

But I remember

there was a sort of conversation about jazz flute.

Because I thought that might be a cool way to continue.

Because it was obvious to everybody that I was going to be cool.

I was too cool for classical music.

I was too cool for tennis.

Not too cool for judo.

Really?

i did judo i watched a bit of judo at the olympics this year i don't love it as a sport i did a bit of it this way it's quite fun

i can wrestle anyone to the ground as long as we're both wearing we're both wearing sleeping gowns and the right way round the right way round and if he's worse than me at judo which is weird and a very thick belt and very very very thick correctly and and on a padded floor area so if you ever try and mug me wearing straight out of bed yeah straight out of bed maybe it wasn't um judo i was watching at the olympics what's the one where it seemed like basically the the ancient wrestling because the aim of like no the aim seemed to be just to kick the other guy's head off oh that was taekwondo ah taekwondo i found taekwondo quite disappointing because i i assumed i'd tune in it would be like a sort of jackie chan type yeah thing and you just see the most spectacular martial art the greatest martial artists in the world yeah doing their crouching tiger thing But they're wearing too many pants for a start.

They can barely move.

What you want, Mike, is the dark Olympics, isn't it where it's all the same events but no rules everything is to the death shot put to the death steeplechase to the death diving into lava

well they have to dive up the other way don't they it's get it's get out

just try to get out of the lava and up onto the diving board very very hard

to do dressage on a tiger

that you've just met javelin done by the main judge at your face you the competitor

so which ones judo?

That's more wrestling, is it?

That's more wrestling, yeah.

Up close.

I suppose there's a sort of throws and grapples and holds.

It's like a sort of respectful fight that two wise people might have if they were having a sleepover together.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's kind of unusual.

But it's still very painful.

And actually, it still goes down as a sort of traumatic,

it still goes down as a painful school memory along with the tennis humiliations, the classical music humiliations, going to judo, because every day at judo,

I would have to suffer physical pain because a really really tall boy called alan would basically pick me up and drop me on the floor and it really really really hurt i we had namer dactid who went through puberty when he was two and a half years old yes and he yeah that was our alan or or also there was name redacted who was very lightly built but just naturally gifted at judo and just would utterly destroy you wow to get to judo i had to take a bus weirdly and i remember once getting um

getting off the bus and then three muggers or like people who were trying to mug me chasing me and running as sort of running to get back on the bus.

I remember thinking, I'm trying to avoid getting mugged on the way to somewhere.

I'm definitely going to get hurt by Alan.

Time to read your emails.

Yes, please.

If you'd like to email us, do so at threebeansidpod at gmail.com.

This is from Sam.

Hello, Sam.

Hi, Sam.

Dear Beans, this week I decided to head out for my first ever solo wild camp on the Isle of Hoy.

Oh, where's that?

This is my official entry for the title of Most Northerly Listening in the UK.

Oh, cool.

So that must be a Scottish island.

Scottish Isle.

Sounds like it, doesn't it?

Isle of Hoy.

Have you found it?

It's in the Orkneys.

Named High Island by the Vikings.

Hoy certainly lives up to the title.

It's Orkney's second largest island.

Some writes, I hiked for about three hours to find the perfect secluded spot under beautiful sunshine and didn't mind the difficult and boggy terrain.

However, as the evening drew in, it began to rain quite heavily.

I was cold and soaked to my skin as my posh new raincoat turned out to be devastatingly shit.

I panicked as I couldn't find a safe place to pitch up.

All the while the native aggressive bonksy birds.

Hmm.

The native aggressive bonksy birds.

Is that an adjective or a species name?

I don't know.

Bonksy with an X.

The Bonksy birds of

the Isle of Hoy.

You look up a Bonksy bird.

I've heard about those, Sam.

Oh, it's a real thing.

It's a great skewer, sometimes known by the name Bonksy.

Well, there we go.

So, all the while, the native, aggressive, bonksy birds circled ever closer to me, with their threatening, yet slightly sexy, warning calls.

Oh, yes.

But it was too late to turn back.

What if I couldn't get dry and was left a shivering mess?

What if I broke my ankle in an unseen rabbit warren?

What if the bonksies decided to take my eyes?

Surely I was destined to perish and haunt this desolate mountainside.

I was overwhelmed with pessimistic thoughts, so in an attempt to lift my spirits, I decided to re-listen to an old episode of Three Bean Salad.

Very good, good choice.

Very good choice.

In a survival situation, it's page one of the survival handbook.

A lot of your mountain warehouse stores now,

they'll sell you things like Mozzie Sprays that have a little episode of Three Bean Salad.

In liquid form.

In liquid form.

Aerosolid.

You can aerosol.

Because it's

that and Kendall mint cake now, isn't it?

Are the two things that

are the two matters we've been able to get an episode into in physical form, yeah.

Yep, yep.

The next hour was one of the most challenging of my entire life.

Grueling, miserable, and I nearly lost the will to live.

The walk was pretty hard going, too.

Oh,

Sam, wonderful stuff.

Play the jingle.

Oh.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the old switcheroots.

Okay, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, you're saying that.

What?

Hang.

I thought you were trying to say...

Oh, he's gone the other...

What?

Oh, he's gone the other way around.

He means that...

Oh, that's what he meant.

Oh, what?

So,

what he said before wasn't that...

I thought he's gone the other way around for there.

Oh, God.

It's the old switcheroo.

Nice level of lead up to that, I thought.

Nicely done.

Didn't see it was coming until it was upon you, which I like.

Wasn't too much build-up.

I mean, well done, Sam.

Obviously, your boundaries in the post.

Yeah.

And thank you.

For me, that's, you know, when

the judges hold up the numbers in gymnastics.

That for me is an eight, I think.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very

strong.

Very, very strong.

Well done, Sam, for doing Switcheroo.

It was at our expense, though, wasn't it?

It often is these days.

Yes.

It tends to be, yeah.

Yeah.

So

a bit of a shame.

Does that mean you can't, you think you can't get to perfect tens if it's

you feel that you've been disparaged in some way?

Yeah.

But it's out there, isn't it?

The perfects were true.

It's out there.

Oh, it's out there.

It's out there.

So

we still await it.

Well, we'll know that we've read it out when all of our brains explode.

Yeah.

But so what I would say to the emailer is thanks very much, but I do hope that Bonxy Birds shits on your head at some point this year.

But he still gets the badge.

Yeah.

Badges in the mail.

Ben emails.

Do you remember we were talking a while ago about, I think we were talking about what year biscuits were created?

And I think my question to you is, what do you think is the last great

biscuit?

The last great biscuit in the canon.

What did we decide?

Well, we went a ways back, didn't we?

Yeah, we got it all wrong because I think Mike went for Custard's Creamy, it turns out they're from the 1800s.

Oh, right.

And then we discovered that MNS was starting to cover them in chocolate, right?

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

Anyway, kind of on

that topic, we've had an email from Ben.

And basically, the long and short of it is all in the email subject title, which is:

Chabata is younger than my dad.

Was he sired by the very stones

of Stonehenge?

He says, I would have put my pension on Chibata being a 1600 delicacy,

but Chibata was actually invented.

Let's have a guess.

By Margaret Chiabata.

I'd have said that Chibata is pre-human.

It's so old.

I mean,

we evolved in order to eat Chibata.

Yeah.

There's nothing that can be older.

I mean, for me,

there's no figure that's old enough for Chibata to be.

Really?

I would have thought it would have been a Victorian...

It would have been like it would have been designed

for grand tour tourists.

Okay, that's good.

Posh Northern Europeans

would have been horrified to reveal, to discover that bread was just the same everywhere.

So they sexed up bread.

for the tourists.

Interesting.

It's the only bread that has so many air bubbles in it that you can use it as essentially as a purse or wallet or sort of luggage, isn't it?

Because you can put stuff in it.

Or a float.

Or a float.

If you're loaned to suede, exactly.

It's more than 50% air, I'd say, a lot of the time in Gibata, isn't it?

Well, the Giabata was invented in 1982.

Good lord.

You two are both older than the Trabata.

Yeah.

Screw you.

Who buy?

And I did some research.

It was invented in reaction to the success of the baguette.

Which was invented in 1981.

Well, no, I think baguette.

I think baguettes are old, but they had a bit of a.

In the 70s, lots of people got into baguettes.

I'm sure before the 70s, you couldn't get a baguette in Britain, for example.

So, but where was it invented?

Italy.

So, a guy in Italy was like, Italy needs to raise its game because the baguette's taking over.

To take on the baguette.

Yeah.

Okay.

And the people of Europe need something else to talk about apart from the Falklands War.

Everyone's a bit bummed out.

Let's.

Yeah.

Let's invent a new bread.

In my mind, I don't think this is true.

That baguettes were invented during the Napoleonic Wars as a way, as a little to conceal swords.

To conceal swords.

Is that right?

Yeah.

So you go, it's a so instead of fighting the enemy, you'd invite them around for lunch or for a picnic, and you'd give them a baguette sandwich.

And they'd say, I've never heard of a baguette.

What is it?

And you'd say, oh, don't worry, it's a new kind of bread and it's got prawns in it.

And then they'd chew on it.

Just rest the end of it against your chest there.

Just rest it.

It goes straight in.

It goes, also, you put it straight into your...

Yeah.

It's the only sandwich that you put straight into halfway down your esophagus

from the outside.

And in the confusion, you kill them.

No, I think it was invented by Napoleon because it was

the same shape as Josephine's leg.

Josephine, who's famously very self-conscious about her legs,

was absolutely furious.

About her crunchy legs.

Her crunchy, kneeless legs.

No,

I think

they may have been invented because they're easy to transport something in the Napoleonic Wars.

Okay.

So Chibata was...

That's a cool...

That's a cool fact, if it's true.

Joe, emails.

Greetings, Beans.

I must say, your podcast has been the talk of my household lately because my two young lads, aged seven and ten, have become absolutely obsessed with your lukewarm banter.

Just last week, we took the family on a trip to West Midlands Safari Park.

As we approached the giant snake slide, where you emerge from the serpent's gaping moor, my youngest piped up and said, Dad, that must mean that you get on the slide through the snake's bum.

This prompted my eldest lad to let out a gloriously camp,

digestive track talk in a spot-on German accent.

As you can imagine, the other parents in the vicinity weren't overly impressed with this outburst, but I have to say, there was a glimmer of pride in my eye as I told him to keep the noise down.

Lovely stuff.

I do hope the three of you are comfortable with the influence you're having.

Keep up the great work, Joe.

Very much so.

Thank you, Joe.

Lovely stuff.

Congratulations on a fine set of sons.

Really good.

And also, good to let people know.

It's quite a nice bank holiday option, is it?

So, the West Midlands Safari Park is essentially a safari park where you get to drive up really quite close to people from the West Midlands.

And

isn't it?

They will take your windscreen wivers off, though.

They will.

So please make sure your radio aerial is inside the car before you start because they'll have that.

Yeah,

don't try and stroke them.

It's It's actually not ethical.

And yeah,

look out for dung in your tire treads.

But it's a lovely way to almost feel like what would it actually be like, you know, to

be to be from the West Midlands or to.

It's a nice thing for children to witness, isn't it?

Well, so many of their storybooks are set in the West Midlands.

So many of the storybooks are set in the West Midlands.

They know certain things.

For example, if you get attacked by someone from the West Midlands, they know that you should run diagonally up a tree.

Shouldn't you?

But perfectly still.

But while remaining perfectly still.

But kids, it really feeds their imagination, doesn't it?

And that's why you can see so many kids have sticker books, or it's stickers of

anthropomorphized West Midlands people.

Exactly.

So imagine like a man from the West Midlands, a lot of anthropomorphized it so that...

So he's got a face.

He can speak.

So there'll be a face.

There'll be a face.

But on the other side of his head or just to the left of his actual face, you know, there'll be a sort of cartoony, a more cartoony version of the face,

or sometimes in the middle of the torso.

But of course, it is important.

There's another message, it's actually important that we do protect places like the West Midlands, isn't it?

And actually, people say, is it wrong that there are also holiday tours now where you can go and hunt people from the West Midlands?

And so, my attitude to this is,

okay, it's a bit distasteful when you see

some sort of rich American guy who's got

the pelt of a West Midlands Ryman's manager, for example.

Sometimes they'll display the tusks.

And the meat's gone to waste.

That was the tragedy.

Yeah.

But

my personal view is if it's done legally,

you can actually use that industry to help protect people who are actually from the West Midlands.

And the offal can be used to boil down into a very nutritious soup as well.

It can.

And also, you can build on it.

As Joe no doubt will have seen from the gift shop section on the way out of the Safari complex.

Exactly.

It's much chewier and much stringier than animal built on,

but twice the protein, actually.

Sorry to all of our listeners in the West Midlands.

The Poles.

And then Henry's already struck out Derby, so we've basically got the whole of the Midlands now kind of.

Is Derby in the West Midlands?

East Midlands, I say Derby is.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

So you're kind of covering both bases there.

Yeah.

This is from Caroline.

Hello, Caroline.

Hi, Caroline.

Dear Beams, I recently started listening to your podcast after my partner recommended it.

And I love it, but something has bugged me since following your Instagram.

I had seen a picture of the three of you prior, and apologies to Ben and Henry.

I only really knew who Mike was.

Right, this one, we're not.

Fuck this.

We're not recording.

This one's

not going in the show.

Let's move on.

Because he got a hemorrhoid on Taskmaster.

It's back in.

I then assumed, silly of me really, that Ben was bald and that Henry had hair.

Yeah, I couldn't believe that.

I've got hair energy.

I've got actually some of you, close your eyes, listen to me.

I've got some of the most fabulous hair.

Yeah, but it's in the wrong place.

But it's in the wrong place.

It's all just under my eyes.

And I sort of perfect monk's tonsure all the way around the middle of my head.

With your nose coquettishly poking through.

Yeah, exactly.

This was not because of the alliteration, bald Ben, but because the bald man look struck me as if you could work in an office, and Ben was an office name.

Oh.

And then the name Henry suited an ex-Oxford student, a floppy-head artist.

I thought she was going to go asshole, you know.

I would have put money on arsehole.

It went ply.

It wasn't ply, wasn't it?

It's kind of the same.

It's definitely been typed and then deleted a bit and then rewritten.

The etymology of the words are the same.

It's the same thought.

When I learned this wasn't the case after watching one of your Instareels, I have thought about you both every day.

I can usually get a grasp on what a person is like, but I now feel lost and unsure if I know anyone truly at all.

Caroline, I'm sorry to hear that.

I'm not quite sure how to help, really, with that.

I don't, I'm not that pleased with the idea that

my vibe is like Office Drone.

No, there's a lot of stuff.

There's Henry, the artist, there's Mike, the television comedian, then there's Ben, the office dullard.

Who seems to do most of the work in some house?

Why is Ben's skin that colour?

Is it because

we think it's because he's been around the photocopier for so long that his body has started to blend in?

See, because he's photocopier white, isn't he?

Yes, he's become photocopier white.

And some parts of his body are manila buff.

That's right.

And don't panic.

If you go into the toilet after him, he has magenta piss.

But don't panic.

Please, please don't press your buttocks on him and try and find the button, please.

He can send

imprints of buttocks to other Benz in other offices around the world.

Quite embarrassing.

Yeah, interesting.

I saw an article the other day.

You know, every now and then, an article pops up going, cure for baldness found.

A, it's not a disease.

B, but is there a cure, please?

Because I am interested.

But it's not a disease, but I would like to be cured, even though it's not a disease.

Can you cure it, please?

But every so often there's an article in the newspaper.

And so when I was initially

going bald in my early teens,

I would pounce on any news about cure for baldness found or whatever, or new hair, new hair replacement technique discovered or whatever.

But I gradually sort of started to lose interest in them, realize they were never really true.

And also, they happen less and less.

It's sort of bereavement, isn't it?

Really?

It's a form of bereavement, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's a, it's, yeah.

But also, because actually, it kind of takes you, because I've reached the accept, I thought I'd reached the acceptance stage of bereavement, in fact, when

it occurred to me that actually, if you draw a face on an egg, it is quite attractive.

And

I realized that,

do you know what I mean?

Anyway, no,

I thought I'd reached acceptance.

But then I saw,

but then a few weeks ago,

I think it was BBC News website where there was a thing about cure for baldness.

And against my better nature, I went, I thought, oh, maybe.

It's been quite a long time since I've looked at one of these things.

It's been 10 years.

There's AI.

AI has happened in the meantime.

Vapes.

Vapes.

The band Gorillaz,

an entirely animated band,

were quite successful.

You know, things have moved on.

The future is now.

The future is now.

And I read it, and

it was like,

these articles are such bullshit.

It was just the usual thing of there's been some breakthroughs.

This scientist at this institution is saying they're excited about something.

And then it's just like,

but at the end of the day, sorry, you fucking snookable-headed pricks.

It's basically not happening.

And that was, and the usual thing at the end was just like, you know, oh, one day, maybe, sort of thing.

I shouldn't have gone down the road of reading the article.

No.

I think it will be a few years till I do so again.

But you do get more and more people who have hair replacement therapy, and it's become less of a kind of social taboo, hasn't it?

Do you know what?

Maybe I should actually think about it.

What do you think?

Is what you're saying?

Is it too late, though?

Am I.

If I stopped being bald.

So, what when you first think of me do you think bald Henry

Look

Caroline, I don't I'm not sure exactly how we can help you necessarily but take some comfort however triggered your feeling you can hear that Henry is substantially more triggered by the whole conversation.

Yeah, it's sorry, it's thrown up a lot of stuff for me this

So yeah,

yeah, old meathead forever.

Thank you.

Right.

Yeah, cheers.

Is that what you're saying?

Really Really stirred the stew, didn't you?

You really did stir the stew.

I'm a bohemian.

Yeah?

Little leather waistcoat.

Yeah.

Kilt.

I organise the annual office quiz.

I'm a free thinker, but there's always a cheeky round.

Yeah.

On dressed down Fridays, I bloom.

An email now from Adam and Hannah.

Hello, Adam and Hannah.

My wife and I are around halfway into the latest beans, which we strategically listened to towards the end of our two-hour journey from Norfolk to London.

We plan to listen to the second half on our return leg later this evening.

As ever, it was top stuff.

We found the contents around doing everything 12 hours early particularly funny.

Unfortunately, we have taken this to an extreme.

We've just had a delicious pizza at the Franco Manca next to King's Place, the venue for the three bean salad live.

My wife asked me to confirm I'd check the tickets before setting off, which I had, safely in my email inbox and opened.

12 hours early as amateur.

We are a full week early for the show.

No, God, no.

Oh, God.

Alas, our childcare for tonight is not available for next weekend, so I'll be sending tickets.

Attached is a picture of my confused wife.

And of all the places, Norfolk is notoriously impossible to get to or from at any

conditions.

My sat-nav literally doesn't believe that there is a place called Norfolk.

Like, it just panics.

The amount of times I've given up on a journey to Norfolk, and I'm still well within the M25 when I give up.

It's not going to happen.

It's too hard.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, it's a night.

Oh, dear.

So, I've just sent you the photo of

Hannah standing outside the venue looking.

Oh, Hannah.

She's taking it well.

She looks like she's taking it well.

I mean, they went to Francomanca.

It's a lot of Francisco.

It's a home of Francomanca, but it's not bad, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, it's gone downhill.

Um, she seems, yeah, she seems sanguine.

Let's hope it was, yeah.

There's a loveless quality, I'd say, to that, to the pizzas.

I mean, I think Francomanca is someone that fell

deeply head over heels in love with sourdough pizza bases in the sort of late noughties, whenever it was.

Yeah, and he's gradually fallen out of love with them since.

And I'd say Francom Anchor and Sourdough can barely look at each other right now.

Do you know what I mean?

I know what you mean.

Yeah.

And the paucity of topping breadth.

The topping barely covers the breadth of the base.

But they wouldn't have been worried about that.

Hannah Manadam.

Hannah Madam.

It's Palindroma.

It's the same both way around, isn't it?

Hannah Manadam Adam and Hannah Manneman Adam.

They wouldn't all have been worrying about that at the time because they thought they were about to go and see a

top-end show.

A premium show.

A premium London.

False.

I mean, it's an illumination.

So, yes, our live show is coming up this week.

I think Friday and Saturday nights.

We've sold the tickets to be there, but if you want to watch a live stream, you can buy tickets for that.

And I'll put a link to the live stream tickets in the show notes for this.

And join us.

I think it's Friday night at 7 o'clock and Saturday night at 7 o'clock.

Yeah, it is.

And there's a beef and dairy show as well.

You're streaming that, Ben, the beef and dairy.

Yes.

That is also sold out, but you could stream that.

Stream that.

Two?

Saturday afternoon at two o'clock.

Nice.

By the way,

I've got a bonus thing to talk about.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is on Thursday, the latest children's book by Adam Kay, illustrated by me,

is out.

Hooray!

It's called Dexter Proctor, the 10-year-old doctor.

I like it.

And it's a fiction book for children.

It's really good.

It's got fantastic words by Adam Kaye and some semi-decent cartoons.

From old HB.

Yeah.

Have you read it, Mike?

It's absolutely brilliant.

I have read it.

My children have read it.

They absolutely loved it.

We read it.

We enjoyed it.

Adam sent us a cheeky little copy to enjoy at a point when he had written it, but the illustrator hadn't got round to doing the pictures yet.

So it was

a completely illustration-free copy that we've got in the house.

And would you recommend that as a way of experiencing it, Mike?

And it's that level of supportiveness from Mike

that I find so touching is that he will read my books, but he insists on reading them before my illustrations have gone.

well, it's a good control experiment, isn't it?

To see how good the illustrations are.

If you ever got around to reading it with the illustrations, if you see me leafing through a book in a water stones anytime soon and spitting tacks, you'll know why.

Finally, seeing the illustrations.

What's it called again, Henry?

It's called Dexter Proctor: The 10-year-old doctor.

Lovely, really, really good stuff.

It's time

to pay the ferryman

Patreon

Patreon

Patreon.com

forward slash three bean salad.

Thanks for everyone who signed up on our Patreon.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad.

Thank you very much.

There are various tiers you can sign up at.

You get ad-free episodes, bonus episodes.

And if you sign up at the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Mike from the Sean Bean Lounge, where Mike was last night.

Indeed, I was.

Uh-oh.

It was the annual trip, wasn't it?

You all went off to see the Blackpool leguminations, didn't you?

We did, thank you, Henry.

And here's my report.

Sean Bean loungers gathered in the Sean Bean coach depot at high noon yesterday to be conveyed to Blackpool for the hotly anticipated annual Leguminations, the number one Lentland Pea-based light show in Lancashire.

The highly desirable back row of the coach would ordinarily be occupied by Sean Bean himself.

But as a Yorkshireman passing through Lancashire, Sean Bean insisted on recreating in part the Wars of the Roses and sacking Lancaster en route to the show.

He rode astride a steed comprised of George Andrew at the front and Non Taylor at the rear, and was accompanied by a retinue of white rose bedexed knights including Brady Boy and Richard Blakely Casey carrying sword and mace, Sonia Field and Hannah Holst with 24-foot lances and Jamie Smith who only managed to rustle up a slotted spoon.

To keep the hierarchy clear, these knights rode on donkeyback with donkeys provided by Thomas Ahern, Gib Nos Redna, Bort, Kyle Jane Ray, and Alex Bailey, the last of which developed asinine TB and had to be destroyed.

Following on foot was a host of non-combat support personnel including Mike and Alini, arrow sharpeners, Christian Harding and David Haverberg, first aide and pillage admin, Thomas Haynes and Ramish Varsani, war drums, flags and merchandise, and Pidgin GL as squire charged with facilitating the R-swiping of knights who did not wish to remove their armour.

This of course left the back row of the coach free, and after a brief but intense scrap in the aisle, those prized seats were claimed by Jonathan Chaffer, Rob Smedley, Princess Trishy, Damian Tavenor, and Rupert.

The journey itself passed largely without incident, except that Ross Stanley became weepy as Tommy Fox had promised to sit next to him before actually sitting next to Ricky Irving after discovering Ricky had the use of his older brother's Game Boy, Jock Fraser discovered his packed lunch contained salami sandwiches which he had specifically asked not to have, and Matt Bray was accidentally left behind in the arcade at Charnock Richards' services.

In Blackpool itself, Alice Hardman, Kieran Bennett and Gabby Oakes were all entranced and had their vision corrected by the Chick Pea Laser Show.

Dan Knight and Steve Tregidjo were awestruck by the soybean strobe, while Brian Ebden was moved to tears by a brilliantly spotlit peanut.

Cries of alarm went up at this stage, however, when locals noted that an altogether different light show was afoot.

Hilltop beacons outside the city had been lit, suggesting the approach of enemy forces for the first time in more than 500 years.

It was, of course, your friend and mine, Sean Bean, whose militia, having taken heavy casualties, had attempted to strengthen their number by setting free and trying to recruit the larger carnivores from Blackpool Zoo.

Sean Roach, Ariani, and Open Coven were set upon by a pack of Iberian wolves.

Philip Hatton, Chris Ford, and 7 Pilk 7 were torn apart by a troop of baboons on the Atkins diet, while Alex Calder and Esme Hawks found themselves toe-to-toe with a 600-pound tigress.

Lucy Mitchell and Tricia W.

were carried away by an American hog-nosed skunk, and Peter Elliott was taken to Blackpool Winter Gardens by an Orinoco crocodile and forced to read all the blurbs.

Mercifully, not a single legume was harmed.

Thanks all.

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

This is from John.

Hello, John.

Thanks, John.

John says, in listening to your theme tune, I realized that the melody line was basically one of the standard bass lines or the left-hand piano lines used in various New Orleans songs.

So I've created a version playing on that vibe with some contemporary bounce ad-libs.

Bounce being the the New Orleans version of hip-hop.

Wow.

Nice.

Let's see what that's like.

Anyway, until next time, goodbye.

True.

Thank you.

Bye.

We're going to do it straight out of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Let me see you.

Let me see you just dance.

One means

two beams.

Three beam.

Let's just have it right there.

Woo.