Extreme Sports

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Well, we shouldn't say good morning, should we?

Because the listener could be listening at any time of day or night.

That's the great thing about podcasts.

You're in control.

And that's something your parents just still won't and never will understand.

So good now to you.

Yeah.

Podcast generation.

Good now.

Because it is all about you at the end of the day, isn't it?

These days.

Putting you first.

Putting you at the center of your you-ness.

It's self-care.

Create boundaries and something.

Boundaries are the big things that kisses.

Boundaries is huge.

Yeah, and hand in your knife to the local police station.

Yeah.

Please.

Unless it's just a sort of tomato knife or a butter knife or something.

Unless you plan on using that as a weapon.

Yeah.

Use your judgment.

Use your own judgment, really.

To double down on that, tomato knives are fine.

Don't, don't, don't reach for your tomato knife.

I think I do actually have a tomato knife.

We have quite a lot, I swear by that.

I genuinely did don't know what a tomato knife is.

It's a small, very sharp, serrated

snub-nosed blade.

Fuck.

So that's to cut a tomato.

I tend to spread this about, but I use it to cut all sorts.

Tomatoes.

Oh, my God.

He's off the rails.

Yeah.

I can get five slices out of a cherry tomato with my tomato knife.

To make

the tiniest little cheese and tomato sandwich imaginable.

Yes.

For a tiny mouse.

For a tiny mouse.

Mr.

Patagonia, correct.

Yeah.

Your best friend, the mouse, Mr.

Patagonia.

It's weird that he hasn't come up on the podcast.

It's exactly the kind of thing we would normally talk about.

Because he's such a big part of Mike's life.

He's such a huge.

He knows this.

He's very private.

But he's Mr.

Patagonia, and that's named after the shopping brand, not the area of Chile.

That's right, isn't it?

Yeah.

He's not interested in that part of Chile at all.

He's not interested in travel, broadly speaking.

But he does like the brand.

Well, he likes the brand optics, doesn't he?

Yes.

Is Mr.

Patagonia involved, Henry, in your new brand collab between the outdoor brand Patagonia and your religion, Patagonia?

I'm glad you brought that up.

Well, the idea is to make the first fully breathable outdoor cassock.

That's what we're trying.

That's what we're aiming for.

Which actually has never been done.

Yeah, for all-weather religious parades.

For all-weather religious parades.

And also, we're trying to make

little choristers outfit.

Oh.

Yeah.

That

has

a little satchel, a little, well, a satchel sewn into it to keep trail mix.

But it also can be hooked up to a bungee as well.

What?

So you can keep your choristers on a bungee at all times.

Because they will run away often.

They will run away.

Because often they'll be like, oh, I'm 24 now.

This is just a phase of the kids.

Some of them want to let no.

Oh, in you come.

Oh, that's why we've got the bungee as an action.

You're a chorister for life.

You're a chorister for life.

Pacado, packadair, pacador, dear.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's not really even choral singing in the in the kind of classical sense, is it?

It's more.

It's a different kind.

Yeah.

And often when they're running away and I'm trying to reel them back, they'll be going, Pacado, no!

And I'll try and jump down a cavern or down a crevasse.

They'll be like, oh, it's an obstacle illusion, isn't it?

It's a crevasse.

It's a complete obstacle illusion.

It's actually a ravasse.

It puts them back where they started.

Before we started recording, Mike,

I asked you how your day had gone yesterday because you were doing an acting job.

Yeah.

And you said you'd had a major setback.

Well, not in the acting job, it was I had a personal health issue.

Oh.

Which feels very much in the realms of the provincial middle-aged man.

Oh, not the fabled omnihemorrhoid.

It wasn't.

No.

Thank goodness.

I'm so pleased you brought that up.

No, I had some definitive work done there.

Okay.

So you're talking about the extension.

Because you've been putting it off radio.

The extension is stable.

It's earthquake-proof.

The whole thing is

rigged to withstand.

So what you've done is you've...

You've looked at Uranus and you've thought, I could knock this all through.

And

I could go open planning.

You're adding value, aren't you?

We actually found some old letters from the Second World War that were

written to us.

That's interesting, isn't it?

You get to find that.

The lover that must have been hidden in the chimney by her mother or something.

Yes, amazing what you discover.

And some original features.

Some original features.

Well, you found an

old Victorian's man hand, didn't you?

Which had stayed pickled

in your stomach brines, hadn't it?

That's right.

And you had a pelvic stud wall, is that right?

Yes.

Yeah.

That was actually opens up to a walk-in shoe rack.

Oh, that's a nice little touch.

Thank you.

Well, one does put these things off, doesn't one?

But actually, when one does get round to it, one feels that one shouldn't and one should have done it.

One should have done it.

Correct.

A long time ago, actually.

Correct, because that has often been my motto.

Yeah.

No, it was the other end of things.

I woke up at about

five o'clock in the morning, aware that there was

quite a sort of pronounced uh a crunching sound and the sensation of something giving way inside my skull what and uh

how bad is this it was alarming i've i've never woken up so quickly at that time of day and um

i think it's probably not bad but i why what had happened and it was quite distressing is the the back the inside

of my of one of my top front teeth uh had just like cracked off oh oh.

So, which teeth are we talking about now?

This is the front inside of there.

So, the front, like the

front.

The Hollywood teeth.

The Hollywood teeth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've told you, Mike, don't watch documentaries about U-boats just before going to bed.

Because were you grinding your teeth in a sort of, in, in a, in your sort of...

I don't know.

I don't know.

My first thought, as is the thought of any

provincial middle-aged man, you know, when bits of you start to just come off,

you assume you've been the victim of a radioactive poisoning.

Of course.

It was quite alarming.

So do you think Putin has got to you?

Is that what you're saying?

Well, it's sort of five o'clock in the morning.

So there's no one to ask.

I've got no dental expertise.

And also, I've prided myself in the past I've got quite healthy, healthy teeth.

There are attractive teeth.

You drink a lot of milk?

I do a lot of milk.

I take my teeth swimming with me on a regular basis.

Do you know what I mean?

So I've never had, it was, I didn't know, is this the beginning of something?

Is this the end?

What is it?

I tried calling the dentist.

Obviously, no one's there.

Also,

you just can't just call a dentist.

Well, I called their landline and left a voicemail.

I mean, I think a bit of me was hoping they might sort of chopper themselves in from Exeter to Liverpool.

You were in Liverpool, of course.

So

you weren't even at home.

No.

So hang on.

Did you call a dentist at 5 a.m.?

Yes.

I left them a voicemail.

Wow.

Thinking that I would get ahead of the queue when they worked out their appointments.

Is that like a no-questions asked mafia dentist?

Yeah.

It's a mafia horse dentist, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a mafia horse dentist.

Just for a quick explainer for listeners.

So the teeth are, they're sort of, well, they're a vestigial bone, isn't it?

Leftover from when we were

left over from when we were beaked, when from when we were

baked horse fish.

Living in the trees.

Teeth are entirely ceramic, aren't they?

They're a ceramic, they're a mixture of sort of

display, but they also have crucial functions, don't they?

So the molars, was it a molar?

No, it was an incisor, it was right at the front.

So was it one of the kind of fang ones?

No, no.

It was an incisor, one of the very front teeth.

One of the front,

the crown jewels.

If you were going to imagine the sort of collapse of something,

sort of like

a human unzipping,

that would be a perfect point for it to start.

So, so, so, this sounds quite serious.

How do they look now?

I mean, well, they look just as they did.

Can we see something?

Can you show us?

It hasn't.

Do you know what I mean?

They're unattractive.

They're quite bunched up.

They're not unattractive.

The facial expression you pulled is unattractive.

It is hard to bear your teeth in a friendly way, isn't it?

It's literally one of the functions of bearing your teeth.

It's to terrify your opponent.

That's why you do bare your teeth.

It's a bit like when people...

look at a chimp that's smiling and go, they're not meant to smile, actually.

They're very distressed.

They're going to pull your arms off any second.

Now, Mike, before we go any further,

is this a cock and bull story you're telling us?

Because you went to Liverpool to do a bit of work and you're there on your own, your family at home annexed to.

Maybe you cut loose a bit of an evening before your next day in Liverpool.

Maybe you get into a street altercation with some toughs

who crawl into the inside of my mouth and punch their way out.

Thus managing to loosen the inside of one of my teeth.

I didn't even know that was a thing.

I didn't know it was possible.

It was so confusing.

I would have thought it was just it's a big solid thing.

You can't.

Well, that's it.

It was like a, it was the sheet.

It was like the back sheet.

I didn't know that was physically a possible.

I didn't know that that could.

I don't think that is physically possible, Mike.

Well, maybe it isn't.

Maybe it'll turn out as just a sort of old bit of cheese or something.

And I'll be very relieved when I see the dentist tomorrow.

I don't know.

So

can everyone just slow down a bit, Mike?

We live in an anatomized society in terms of attention, right?

We're in an attention economy.

Have I lost yours?

A lot of things.

That's all you're telling me.

A lot of things are fighting for my my attention right now.

Yeah.

We've got Instagram.

I've got my iPad open here.

I've got a mug with a picture of Theresa May on it.

And you've got my gob.

There's a story behind that, by the way, but which we weren't telling you now.

So essentially, my interest is it's a bit like on Netflix nowadays.

I don't know if you know, if you've realized this, but it's now tailored

to the viewer.

So on Netflix,

are we watching a drama now?

And the dialogue will be something like, okay, so we need to attack the White House at dawn.

Henry, come back, Henry, Henry.

And then I'll go back to it and I go, Okay, so we're going to attack the White House at dawn.

But they started putting that in.

Yeah.

There's a thing now, isn't it, famously, where they characters are constantly saying whose name everyone is.

They'll be like, Brian, we're going to attack the White House at dawn.

What time did you say, Steve?

I said, Dawn, Brian.

Yeah.

So they recap, and they recap what happened to the previous scene quite a lot.

Yeah.

Why are they doing that?

In case you're watching it in

everyone's watching.

Because I'm brushing my teeth.

I'm having a shit.

I'm investing in Bitcoin.

I'm playing squash online with a four-year-old in Korea.

Like,

so much is going on

that

the Netflix has to constantly, everyone has to be constantly topping up the plot and reminding everyone, people, what they're called and stuff.

So, essentially, Mike, your tooth story is just basically been like a unfollowable.

It's a pickled onion thrown into the Albert Hole.

Okay.

I feel like that would be noticed.

Well, it would be instantly pulverized by thousands of hidden lasers.

Anyway,

so Mike, what I'm saying is, can you just give us a quick, quick, so you've got my attention now.

Yes.

But can you, a quick top-up of what actually happened?

So you woke up

very early in the morning.

You felt, so what actually happened?

Or what did you feel in your tooth and what actually happened?

I felt a crunching and

a loosening.

Oh my lord.

That's what woke me up.

And then I was aware that

this hard bit of toss had come.

Did it come off?

It was there, loose and magob.

Have you got it?

I do have it.

I googled it and they said you should preserve it in saliva or

milk in a container, which I didn't have, but I did have a spare dog poo bag and makagool.

So I just spat into that and put in one of the old UHT milks for good measure.

Does it work with UHT milk?

Don't know.

Don't know.

We'll see what the dentist makes of that tomorrow.

You made what's known as the dentist's trifle.

It's never a happy dish, is it?

I'm pretty sure, Mike, that when you turn up with a bag full of spit and UHT milk in your tooth, the dentist is just going to put it directly in the bin.

Two days old as well.

Let's not forget.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the hope is that they can reattach this shard of tooth.

I don't think so.

I'd be very surprised if that shard of tooth is still in Goodnick come tomorrow.

Because they weren't in a rush to see me either.

Do you know what I mean?

I assume that they would literally drop everything.

Get in the Chinook.

This is what we trained for, guys.

On the voicemail, did you say, you must understand, I'm an actor, for God's sake.

I'm an actor.

It's the lifeblood of this country.

The creative industry's

one of the few things we can still be proud of.

So I've got no idea.

Could it be an enamel issue?

Well, yes.

Yes.

But you don't know what that means.

I think you could also just as equally, I think this is unlikely.

It just be some sort of great big sheet of tartar, but that'd be great.

That'd be grotesque though, Mike.

I'd be thrilled.

It'd be grotesque.

Yeah, I'd be very surprised if that was the case, as I say.

I look after the old Nashes.

What had you been eating the previous evening?

Had you been, you know.

Car picnic.

Car picnic, right?

Was that like half a pint of unleaded

antifreeze?

It was, well, just a sandwich, a sandwich I'd made for myself.

Yeah.

A little tea towel over the lap, an old tea towel over the lap, because on too many occasions have I dropped a little bit of chili sauce or chutney cheese onto it.

Always lands on the groin of the trouser.

But too many times.

A spicy cheese sandwich,

apple.

A little, I'd made myself a little sort of vegetable sort of salady pot as well.

And just, and just the usual 20 World War I bull bearings.

Correct.

Yes.

To round it off.

Encased in rock-solid toffee.

It's nothing to see here, basically.

No, you're right.

It is a mystery.

Let's turn on the bean machine.

Let's do it.

Good idea.

This week's topic, as sent in by Tom from Bristol, hello Tom from Bristol, Is extreme sports.

He's come to the right place, isn't he?

Yeah, it is always electric guitars, isn't it, stuff with extreme sports?

It's never a bright, sharp cornet, is it?

Today we're snowboarding.

Yeah.

Yeah, brass is all about.

Yeah, it's tournaments, isn't it?

It's old nightly tournaments.

Yeah, so what counts as an extreme sport?

So that's like

base jumping?

Yes, and have they got more extreme?

That's wind sitting.

There might have been a time when maybe windsurfing was regarded as extreme.

Yeah, I suppose now that's something that your elderly aunts might do.

Yeah.

And there's,

I want to say water skating.

That's not right.

Ice skating.

No, the water skating is, that still is an extreme sport.

Yeah, it's the

back of a speedboat.

Wakeboarding?

What is that?

Wind steward.

No, attached to a rope at the back of a speedboat.

Water skiing.

Water skiing.

That's quite old school.

That's quite 70s, is it?

Yeah, it feels old-fashioned.

I saw someone water skiing the other day and I was like, oh, that feels like something from Baywatch or something.

I think the carbon footprint of that must be quite bad.

Yes.

Why?

We need a huge speedboat.

That's a rodent right speedboat just to just to pull along one power a 50-year-old accountant.

Exactly.

Just to give one 50-year-old accountant the whole day of his dreams.

So, what's the closest that any of us have done to an extreme sport?

I have done that.

I have wake skiing.

Although it was called wakeboarding at the time,

there was just one, it was like the snowboard equivalent.

I was not successful.

In your head, while you were doing wakeboarding, Mike,

which also,

without wanting to be rude, people trying and not pulling off water skiing and wakeboarding looks like the lamest thing in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because if you pull it off, it's like the coolest thing in the world.

It's like, bow, bow.

yeah, whoa, hang to end, whoa, let's get some air.

And then, if it's if it's just someone sort of like struggling behind a wakeboarding is even worse for that because it's a single board and you're kind of sideways on.

At least I think with water skiing, I've seen this people who are really bad.

Like the boat can go fast enough that you can briefly be on the surface of the water, even if you're in no control at all.

Right.

Whereas the wakeboard is such you're sitting on a massive plank, basically, slightly sideways on.

So unless you catch it perfectly, I mean, you you're going straight back, you're going face flat into the water, hard.

You're not even getting started.

It's a pathetic spectacle.

And the water, people forget this.

Water is the liquidity of water is a purely relative phenomenon.

Depending on how you hit it and what angle and what velocity is, essentially like hitting a concrete car park, isn't it?

You're basically plunging headfirst into a concrete car park on one of those things, aren't you?

Because the surface of the water has a meniscus.

Yeah, I was multi-storying, basically.

Yeah, you were multi-story.

But I never got further than that.

You were totally NCP'd, weren't you?

Exactly.

That's how they describe it.

So, hang on, so wakeboarding,

is that like

water skiing, but it's one ski.

So it's like snowboarding, what snowboarding is to skiing.

What snowboarding is to sniing?

Yeah.

So you were wakeboarding.

And you must look like a real tosser, I imagine.

Correct.

Yes.

Even if it was going well,

I'd clock you as a tosser if I was

passing over there.

There's no way to hide in terms of tosser optics.

You're going to look like a tosser either way.

It's just different sorts of tosser.

Yeah.

And that's before you've even thrown the moustache in the mix, isn't it?

On top of that,

as a real rancid cherry on top of the turd pie.

So do you clip your feet, your legs, do you clip your feet in?

Were they clipped in?

I don't know if they were clipped.

They might have been under little hoops.

Ah, little hoops.

Were they clipped?

I don't remember.

I didn't think they were clipped.

Were they clipping two?

Do you know what I mean?

I don't remember wearing a special boot or anything like that.

Because really, the only way would be to sear you on using sort of meat tongs, like hot meat tongs, would be to sear you onto the board.

That's the only way to sort of join flesh onto something.

Yeah,

to seal in the flavours.

To seal in the flavours.

But yeah, I don't know if that's even a thing.

Because there's your fad the extreme sport.

There's your extreme sport where there's something that isn't extreme that someone makes extreme, right?

How do you mean?

Playing ping pong on the edge of a volcano.

Correct.

Yeah.

Or even just

your bicycle.

People have a bicycle.

Maybe they go a bit of mountain biking.

So they're just

in a forest somewhere on the bottom of the mountain.

And then there's people who like, take that and go, I'm going to mountain bike, but in a favela with a GoPro.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So anything can be taken to its extreme.

It's about the odds, isn't it?

It's about pitching the odds against yourself in a way to make it extreme.

For example, one extreme sport I like to do in London is actually going out on the the streets.

I'm actually trying to find an actual policeman actually out on the streets.

Yeah?

Ladies and gentlemen, please pray silence for a moment of satire.

Jonathan Swift.

Holding institutions to account.

Mark Twain.

Speaking truth to power.

Chaucer.

A core part of any healthy democracy.

Chumba Wumber.

Can our jokes actually change government policy?

Of course they can.

Quiet.

Please respect this important mode of humour.

So the beach has a lot of extreme sports options that are presented to you as a way of wrestling with the fact that

essentially what hits you right up in your grill on holidays that your life is meaningless is big time meaningless because you've been looking forward to this for ages and it's just some really really hot sand and like loads of water.

It's not, it's like, do you know what I mean?

The prawns last night weren't even that nice, were they?

The prawns

you could get.

They were like Wagamama standard.

They were just, yeah, you could get that deliverude on a Thursday and not have to get out of bed.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And

also, and things like the water is actually

basically, you know, I've done loads of beach holidays in my life.

You look at the brochure,

or these days an email.

Ouch.

Take that.

Holiday industry and tech in general.

And it's got a photo of that perfect beach.

Yeah.

And whenever you arrive at that perfect beach, the sea.

I didn't think I've ever in my life, and I've been on entire beach holidays where no one can even mention this to each other because it's like we all talked about how great the beach and the sea was going to be.

We'd all got the email

and we get to the beach and the sea.

And we all have to say it's all perfect.

But actually, the sea is just full of this like horrible dark kelp

and covered in a thick film of some kind of scum.

Where are you going, Henry?

You made the mistake of returning year after year to Shetland.

And I've been faithful to my Shetland holiday everywhere.

It's still there.

To be honest, I reckon Shetland, you might actually get better seas and less scum and stuff, but it's just freezing cold.

Yeah.

Like

there's always scum in the water, thick kelp everywhere, and loads of rocks that will like ruin your feet.

But no one, I've been on entire holidays where no one even mentioned it because it's like that would really put right up in our grills the meaningless of

the rest of our lives because we've been looking forward to this all fucking year.

So do you think that's why there's a series of extreme sports distractions?

Correct.

Beach, that'll be, that's mostly, they are getting more inventive.

It's sort of, it's just, it's a thing on a rope, isn't it?

Basically, powered by a speedboat.

And maybe it'll take you up in the air.

Maybe it'll be an inflatable thing which you'll you'll fall off and give yourself a life-changing injury when you come into contact with the water.

So I went to Corfu this year on holiday, which was my first beach holiday in like over a decade.

And there was a kid doing a thing where it's like a jetpack, but on his feet.

And he was flying.

Oh, wow.

Do you know this?

Oh, yeah.

Is this some I've seen videos?

Was it water-powered?

Was it?

Yeah, so water is sucked out of the sea and then comes out of his feet and then it goes up in the air.

It was mad.

It's sort of like navy seal kind of that feels like that's sort of military tech.

Doesn't it?

It just feels like if you need to go and like rescue a prisoner off an enemy battleship or something.

But also have a good time while you're at it.

The only reason why you shouldn't have fun at work.

Yeah, so that's extreme, isn't it?

Is that an extreme sport?

Maybe that's enough for an extreme sport.

Or do you need to get someone else doing it and

you put a bit of beach ball into it or a bit of fencing or something like that?

Do you know what I mean?

Or a gun.

Yeah.

Well, I think set that boy up on his on his like on his jetpack

sandals flying around over the ocean.

Give me a

crossbow.

And we've got ourselves the five-star deluxe.

We've got yourself

a spectator sport, haven't you?

I mean, it's probably just some Dutch billionaire's son.

There was quite a lot of hatred, I think, radiating off the beach towards this teenager.

It sounds noisy.

It was noisy.

It was annoying.

It was clearly very expensive.

I think, even without knowing, I think everyone was sat there going, I bet that's costing 200 euros.

500 euros for five minutes.

The other thing which goes into that category is jet ski.

Oh, God.

You might as well have a Tanoy.

Jeffrey Archer's voice saying, I'm a dickhead coming out of it on repeat attached to your head.

It's true.

Parachuting.

that is something which is that's something which is now quite available, isn't it?

You can just I could be okay.

I put it to you, I could be parachuting in 45 minutes and I could we could actually stream the part, that would be quite good.

Yeah,

no, I could be parachuting.

I could be parachuting central London, so I mean, you would be intercepted by the RF and police, and yeah,

you'd be destroyed mid-air.

I'd be brule aid mid-air, you would, yes.

Yeah,

and cremed on arrival in the central ground bring the ground.

Yes.

I think paragraphing, that's something I very much wanted to do as a young man.

I now have no desire to try it at all.

None.

It's gone.

Yeah.

And the same goes with, yeah, same goes with Bungie.

Would I, would I, Bungie?

Bungie I did as a young man.

And I think we just, the small group of us, we sort of peer-pressured each other into doing it before us.

It was in New Zealand.

And it's sort of very, very high one from a sort of cable car over a canyon of some sort.

I don't think any of us really wanted to do it.

Matt, my friend who you've met, the ultra quizzer,

he, I think, was having second thoughts and he was at the end of this little sort of platform, little gantry, and he was lashed up.

He had his harness on and the bungee cord attached.

When you say lashed up, do you mean completely rat-assed?

It was Mike and some medical lads in New Zealand.

Is that right?

He was

he would have been sober, but he was he was tied and tethered.

And I think it was having second thoughts, but he's not.

He's capable of moments of clumsiness, is my good friend, Matt.

And he basically tripped up over his own legs and fell off the cable car.

Thank God.

He was already attached to the cord.

Otherwise, this would be a very different story.

But you can see the video of it.

He's basically falling the wrong way around.

Yes, it's clearly a man who's tripped up and fallen in slow motion.

Oh, my God.

You know, he hasn't dived.

And I think we were all hoping to do like a golden eye pierce Brosnan type kind of off the dam sort of thing.

That's what I mean.

Well, you come up and you're shagging someone.

Exactly.

You get an MBE.

Yeah.

But I think he really got quite nastily whiplashed on the way down because he was completely the wrong way around

on descent.

So you meant to go head first, basically.

Yes, ideally, yeah.

And then you sort of slowly, you know, your descent is slowed and up you come.

Whereas he was like, he was sort of feet at the bottom, head up, but a bit sort of slightly sort of tangled up and

sideways on a slightly oblique angle.

And

when it flipped him back up, up I just whipped him around and um

you would have given him a real uh I mean he he would have been shaken not stirred for sure by my experience very good thank you so if I understand physics correctly the which you don't the uh go on

eventually if you go down what we know what comes up must go down

depending on which way around you're looking at it okay but this is the other way around

but eventually

the the the force would kind of mean you'd end up dangling halfway down a New Zealand gorge.

And at that point, what do you have to climb up the rope?

Are you on your own?

What do you mean?

It was an elastic, it's a big elasticated core.

Yeah, but you'd bounce, bounce, bounce, and eventually you'd settle

sort of halfway down the gorge, just hanging on a string.

So, how do they get you out of that position?

Well, they wind you back up again.

Oh, they wind you back up again.

Like a hose pipe, yeah, like a hose pipe.

Yeah, it's all dangly, dangly, jingly, hosepipe.

I never knew that.

Um, yeah, it's either that or lower you down and drop you, but if they'd done that, that to us would have we'd have ended up in some rapids, I think.

I can imagine the bit where you're being slowly winched back up to be quite nice.

That was nice, because it's all over and it's done, and

this ridiculous decision, needless decision to what, swing it about, prove something,

it's over and you can enjoy this.

You can, at that point, enjoy this view and this strange sensation.

And all the blood going to your head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It goes on a bit too long, I think.

One of the reasons I wouldn't like to do

bungeeing is my fear of harnesses and my distrust of harnesses buckles and anything we have to thread some

what do you call it

what was a flat rope what do you call that stuff

a belt something a strap strap yeah when you have to anything we have to thread a strap through something background upright because i've always got this sense that if you do it wrong it'll just open up completely you know

you know what i mean like it feels like there's a sort of trust involved in harnesses that i don't like i'm not no you're not harnessing it that's not your comfort zone is it's not my comfort zone when obviously when this podcast um

fails crashes and and burns and we're all seeking different forms of employment who knows what that'll be but but should any of you listeners end up at the top of a crane and see that the strathmeister is the former podcaster henry packer you get the hell out of there okay

i'll be very jaded i'll be heavily smoking i mean

i've gone back on the fags

the one end of a strat from from t'other and if the jump has already begun and you've just noticed it's henry but you have left the platform

you want to start getting health insurance as you fall.

If you can, just get your phone out.

Hopefully, by then we'll be on 8G or something.

So you should be able to do it quite quickly.

My advice, actually, put your phone away and just enjoy the last 45 seconds of your life.

Because they will involve your head being plunged into a massive tiramisu.

Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to flood that New Zealand valley with tiramisu.

And it's called extreme tiramisuing.

The overheads of your business venture are going to be enormous.

The overheads will be huge.

But your head, you plunge down into the Tiramisu right the way down to the sort of liqueur biscuit layer.

What the first thing is.

Because which layer do you get to?

That's what you can talk about with your friends afterwards, isn't it?

That's the thing.

Exactly.

But ideally, if you time it right, then.

So you hit the bottom of the massive glass ramekin.

Because

you'll know about it.

Believe you, me, me, believe me, me.

The early test test,

we tried it with creme brulee initially.

I can crack through that layer.

You can't put the hardest layer on the side.

You can't put the higher.

It turns turns out.

You can with precreme brulettes, but not in a bungee context.

So tartan tans were actually quite successful.

Yeah, or a cottage pie.

Or a nice cottage pie.

A nice hot, hot, hot cottage pie.

Imagine plunging into that from 3,000 feet.

Through the soft, through the soft potato.

Oh, love the soft potato and into the boiling holy mints.

Yeah.

I've been snagged on a bit of carrot.

I'm not going back up.

No, if you then bounce up to the top again, I then shove a bouquet garnis in your mouth, suck it in the chops, and down you go again.

Yeah.

And onlookers can throw side salads at you, can't they?

Side salads up.

And then second bounce up, I hosepipe you with hot Worcester sauce.

And down you go again.

It's a red letter day, isn't it?

And it's one to remember.

I did a thing once called gorge walking.

Oh, yeah.

Is that when you walk down the road looking bloody gorgeous?

Yeah.

You're doing that just this morning, weren't you, Ben?

Absolutely.

And they've lined up a load of outward bound instructors to go, oh, look at you.

Or

if you pay for the presidential package, the most expensive one, it's, oh, Plime wouldn't mind a bit of that.

Yeah,

that's really expensive, though.

It's a real tonic.

No, it's kind of like like going down a river kind of on your bum, basically.

It's sort of nature's obstacle course, isn't it?

Yeah.

We got it on.

Do you remember when there was loads of vouchers around?

Was it called,

what was that thing where for a few years everyone was buying vouchers?

Group on?

A group on.

That's right.

Yeah, what happened to Groupon?

So we got a group on to do this gorge walking thing.

And basically, it turned out it was the first day of the season.

So it was a bit too early in the year to do it.

Basically, what we realized as soon as we got there is you meant to do it in the summer because then you don't get horribly freezing.

And, you know, so where were you doing this?

This is in Wales, somewhere.

yeah and

we got a phone call on the way and he was saying oh it's been raining a lot and it's a chance that the river level will be too high for you to do it

but it's looking okay but just so you know you might get here we might have to call it off and we were like okay we got there he said right it's right on the limit but we'll be fine yeah and basically there was a bit too much water going down this thing and there was a bit where you had to go over a massive rock on your bum and then sort of go down a a big steep kind of yeah ben slide can i say you've just been conned someone has taken money off you just chucked you into a river i mean what you're describing isn't an organized sport it's

something that would normally happen during a tsunami or something you're you're in big big you're in deep shit you're flying down a river i mean what's the sport element you get tossed hither and thither

basically yes ping-ponged off a series of

rocks anyway the there was a bit where the guy went right this is the bit here where if there's a bit too much water it can be a bit dangerous which is when you go over this big rock and go down a big and so what and therefore what so what do you do?

So, he said, I'll go down first.

I'll go down first.

If it's too much for you, because I'll be fine, but if it's going to be too much for you, I'll let you know.

And then you don't have to do this, but you can get out of the river and we'll walk around it.

Okay.

And the problem was that there's too much water, so you go over the side of a waterfall, and then there's so much water going down on top of you, you get forced to the bottom of the river and can't get up again because there's too much water coming down on top of you, right?

So, that was the danger.

And also, the other danger is you get sucked in by the kind of water nymphs, isn't it, of drowning?

Come to us.

Come.

Oh, Benjamin.

You look really lovely today.

You perfectly judge your shorts length.

A little bit of D, but not too much.

If you start listening to those voices, the water nymphs have you.

That's true.

And you will drown.

So you've got to be careful.

Yeah.

So he said, I'll go over.

And then when I get over, I can tell you if it's okay or not.

Anyway, he went over.

The problem was it was so loud

that I couldn't understand a word he was saying.

So he went through, came out the other side, kind of sat on a little rock, and started shouting at us.

Yeah.

Preset hand signal would have been handy here.

Couldn't hear a thing.

No.

So I just thought, he seems enthusiastic.

You've been so conned by this guy.

This guy's not a like, you know, signed up,

certified extreme sports.

He's just

a bloke who lives near a river and needs like 20 bids.

So I went over.

What a sight for him as well.

Having screamed warnings, don't do it.

Then it's no,

it's the man who.

No, no, you I can see from here.

You're not strong enough to pick up aggression without both hands.

Don't whatever you do.

Well, he's hoping for a quick kill on Ben.

That's his best case scenario for him.

He can deny the whole thing, but what he doesn't want is an injured, legitis, Ben.

He's like, I hope those nymphs are

getting involved.

So I went over.

It was pretty awful.

He had to drag me out.

And then he said, What do you do, you idiot?

I told you not to come over.

And someone didn't hear you.

You look so enthusiastic.

But he was enthusiastic.

He was enthusiastic.

He's telling me, whatever you do, do not do that.

It's hard to the body language of, and isn't it, and the signals.

That could be better.

Yeah, come on, let's have a good time.

This is exactly what I'm finally living.

Stop it, you're gonna die.

Yeah,

he's swishing his hand back and forth across his throat.

What does he mean?

What can he possibly mean?

Yes, I know what you mean.

I do want to sing in a full-throaty way.

That's how

good I'm feeling.

Yeah.

That sounds like that's non-regulated.

That wasn't really very legit.

Was it cash in hand?

What was the deal?

He had a Land Rover.

I take all of that back.

And I really, really apologise to that gentleman and just

business associates.

Just

sometimes you get things wrong.

You make a call, you get it wrong.

Nothing happens.

I'm holding my hands up.

I'm sorry.

All right, time to read your emails.

Yes, please.

When you send an email,

you must give thanks

to the postmasters that came before.

Good morning, Postmaster.

Anything for me?

Just some old shit.

When you send an email,

this represents progress.

Like a robot shoeing a horse.

Give me your horse.

My beautiful horse.

This one is from Andy from Kenilworth.

And

it makes reference to an email we read out about somebody being on a pride march and being helped out by a provincial dad who knew what semaphore was.

Do you remember this?

I do, yeah.

They were having a conversation.

They couldn't think of the word.

And then a helpful provincial middle-aged man turned around and told them what the word was.

We also talked about whether, because I thought that there's a chance that that guy's also a bit of a knob.

Yeah, but he had my full support.

Yeah.

I didn't want to be negative.

I was just, I was just, I think there are two sides to that coin, is what I was saying, I guess.

As is so often the case with coins.

And Andy from Kennerworth has picked up the other side of the coin.

Okay.

Has this to say?

On a trip to Woodbridge in Suffolk with friends, we came across a huge workshop where a group of leathery old men were painstakingly constructing an entire Saxon long ship

using only historically accurate methods.

Brilliant.

Great.

As part of this, there was a room where you could try on replica Saxon helmets.

And of course, as men in our 30s, we charged straight for this section.

One helmet slipped so far down my friend Sam's face that he couldn't see.

And I jokingly said, I don't think you're in any danger of getting shot in the eye there, Harold.

Okay.

Yeah.

This was, of course, a very, very funny joke about the Battle of Hastings.

Very good.

Yes.

A bit too soon, perhaps, for some.

Sometimes you're so close to the epicentre of a funny joke that it passes through you and you don't actually laugh,

which is what happened to me with that one because I was almost so close to it.

It just reverberated through my body.

This was, of course, a very, very funny joke about the Battle of Hastings.

But as soon as I'd said it, a provincial dad appeared.

Oh.

As if from the shadows, and scoffed loudly.

I think you're thinking of the Normans.

And then, like smoke dissipating, he was gone.

And I was left to seethe for the next several months that I'd been incorrectly corrected on my excellent joke.

I'm so angry.

Best wishes, Andy of Kenilworth.

Yes, he was incorrectly corrected.

Wasn't he?

Was Harold a.

Was Harold a Harold would have been an Anglo-Saxon, wouldn't he?

Yeah, he was Saxon.

So

I think Andy's saying Andy's joke was bang on, which it was, a perfect, perfect joke.

That provincial middle-aged dad who appeared from the shadows may have been an imposter, because he's got that wrong, hasn't he?

I'm a bit worried about that middle-aged dad, because he would have realised at some point.

You know, if he'd been overheard by any of his brethren, they'd have torn him to pieces.

And I think Andy would have seen that.

But he would have had that realisation probably on the way home.

And

he will be sick to his stomach.

He's sick.

And rightly so.

Yeah.

If you witness someone just doing handbrake turns in a Hyundai all night in an Asda car park, it could well have been that man.

If you're going to pompously correct someone,

you've got to be sure you're right.

Emily emails.

Emily, hello.

Dear Beans, although Henry struggled to understand the visual link between Ben's sideburns and Dufflecoat,

that's true.

I saw them as referencing different cultural sort of heritages from each other.

Well, she writes, I recognised it immediately and felt it deep in my soul.

In fact, as soon as it was asked what shoes he would be wearing, I shouted, converse, you fools.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Here is the key for unlocking this look.

Pseudo-intellectual indie music softboy.

Nice.

Very good.

I mean, that's a bullseye, isn't it?

Very good.

And how do I know this?

Being only a few years younger than Ben, I was myself a pseudo-intellectual indie music soft gal.

For Henry's benefit, allow me to paint a more complete picture.

Brilliant.

Yeah, yes, please.

It's 2004.

As well as sideburns, a duffel coat and converse, he's also sporting a t-shirt from an obscure band and a cardigan he stole from a grandparent.

He raises his hand to adjust his ironically large spectacles and reveals a wrist full of redding festival wristbands of increasing crustiness.

He's listening to Franz Ferdinand on his MP3 player, but will claim to only have liked them before they were cool.

In his satchel is last week's copy of The Guardian, an unread copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and a hip flask.

One day soon, he will try smoking weed and be deeply rubbish at it.

I personally wore my Duffelcoat Two Big Jeans Converse and Satchel until they quite literally fell to pieces, but sadly didn't have the sideburns as a teenage girl.

Now I'm in my 30s, they're coming in quite nicely, so there's hope for me yet.

Beaniest Wishes, Emily from Gravesend.

Thank you, Emily.

Brilliant.

It's a perfect portrait.

Can I say that's absolutely superb?

That's a brilliant snapshot of that moment.

Can I add something to it, which is you're walking around, you've got a Franz Ferdinand CD

in

a bag from Fop.

Ooh.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Remember Fopp.

Fop records is a good reference, yeah.

I feel like I'm just ready to remember FOP.

Well, have people been remembering Fop for a a while?

Doesn't it still is a FOP?

The FOP marketing people are

hating this moment.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, FOP.

I think FOP were bought by HMV.

Really?

So it's no longer actually FOP, but there are FOPs around, or there is at least one FOP.

Mid-Nought.

So I quite often get confused as to what the Naught, you know, my awareness of what different

decades mean,

you know,

I've got a strong sense of 70s, 80s, 90s.

Noughts, I start to get mixed up.

What is noughts?

That's helped me sort of focus down on it.

Zero in a bit, yeah.

Zero in a bit on it.

Noughts for you, Henry.

I think is also difficult because that would have been a phase where your nearest and dearest would have been really anxious.

Yeah.

At some point, surely Henry's going to get on with it, get on with something, isn't he?

So it might be a bit of a lost decade.

It was quite a lost decade.

Yeah.

Well, I was experimenting with open bin policies

in my Baron's court laboratory.

I was trying to come up with a bold new future.

Yeah.

What it is to be

in the naughties.

I was watching the Sopranos a lot.

The Sopranos are responsible for a lot of people losing the naughties.

Yeah.

Franz Ferdinand, though, are we ready to say that they were completely shit?

Are we ready to hear that?

I went to see them live.

Did you?

But what was that posturing nonsense all about?

i didn't uh i know i'm aware they were huge and were well loved i i didn't jump on that bandwagon i have to say that wasn't they weren't my covert but i remember i went to see a franz fernand at um

brixton academy and halfway through i ended up going and i think playing a triple pursuit arcade game in the bar

for the majority of the gig

well you'd have been living in glasgow at the time of of the franz ferdinand yes boom yeah well because glasgow and scotland were quite were quite hot to that point because belle and sebastian were a bit cool at that point.

So Bell and Sebastian, that's the only band I've ever been a mega fan of.

Right.

You got me onto Belle and Sebastian.

Yeah, I loved Belle and Sebastian.

I was a mega fan.

In fact, I'm going to see them in Paris.

Are you really?

Yeah, in February.

Yeah.

But,

yeah, there was a whole sort of twee pop.

Is it Twee?

That was quite softboy.

Yeah.

But the thing is, I couldn't pull off Soft Boy because I just had too much dark charisma.

Do you know what I mean?

He's laced with danger.

Laced with danger.

Yeah, your personality sort of musically suggested industrial metal.

It was very much Berlin.

Yeah.

An old vacant warehouse, a huge vacant warehouse with a dead crow in the middle of it.

You pick up the dead crow.

There's a huge speaker inside it, playing

electronic dance music.

There's a speaker inside it.

Yeah, playing electronic dance music.

Very cool.

That was a great email.

Yeah, thanks, Emily.

I do like those.

I like that the science of different types.

What is that?

Yes.

And it's always uncomfortable to realize that you were and are just a type, basically.

So

what are kind of some other ones?

Current ones?

Yeah, or from now or then or any time?

You sort of need to look back on them, I think, rather than knowing them.

Tory mod.

There's ones where you're like, what is that?

I've never, how is that possible?

Because obviously Goth was a famous one, which still exists.

Yeah.

yeah yeah that's had that's had legs hasn't it

then you've got your cyber goth actually when i was in edinburgh recently i was walking along through the um park and suddenly there was this i was just in amongst this huge teenage gathering of like cyber megagoths

what what is a cyber goth i don't really know i may have made that that name but it just sort of felt it was all quite um steampunk mad hair just incredible

involved a lot of commitment goggles goggles goggles on a top hat My dark green, flat-fronted Chinos got a little bit of respect off them.

I think they.

There was a slight doffing of the caps.

Yeah.

Did they doff their begoggled?

They doffed their begoggled metal berets.

It's time

to play the ferryman.

Patreon.

Patreon.

Patreon.com.

Forward slash three bean salad.

Thanks to everyone who signed up on the Patreon.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad.

Bonus Epscalor.

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

From the Sean Bean Lounge, where you were last night, Mike.

Certainly was.

Well,

it was an intense one, wasn't it?

Because

it was the weaving of the great tea towel hot air balloon.

It was.

Thank you, Henry.

And here's my report.

It was the weaving of the great tea towel hot air balloon last night at the Sean Bean Lounge.

The balloon was to be crewed by Amy Eckler, Julie Heyman, Catherine Smithard, and David Tick, with the intention of, once and for all, establishing the highest altitude at which Sean Bean can be distinguished from a wax likeness of Sean Bean by the naked eye.

Dave Bond and William Taylor kindly donated their collection of Disney Princess tea towels.

Patrick LaHaze, Old Pedders, and Catherine donated their collection of tea towels adorned with words that are deemed rude in East Anglia but polite in Dorset.

And Matt Corner, Pete Kellers, and Emily handed in the Bay Watch tea towels that they have been trying and failing to to get the backing of David Hasselhoff for for 17 years.

Suzanne Frodsram, Nick Turner, David Lockhart and Luke Morgan were appointed by Sean Bean as tea towel bailiffs with the right to enter private homes within a 40-mile radius of the lounge and confiscate any tea towel deemed to have aeronautical potential.

As they roamed and pillaged, Richard Fuller, Rani, Zia Prazid 1 and Miles got to work weaving the available tea towels.

Regrettably, their weaving speed exceeded the available tea towel substrate by an order of magnitude.

And within minutes, they had also unintentionally woven the trousers of Sam Williams, the blazer of Jack L, the Espadrilles of NBC and the scabbard of Hope K into the balloon.

Joseph Mandaba attempted to free the stricken bean loungers but was mistaken by Thomas Johansson and Sean McClarty for a saboteur and set upon.

Keen only to damage the apparent ne'er-do-well and not the balloon, Thomas and Sean threw the bluntest thing they could find, which was Will Pearson, who took exception to this and declared himself the victim of a slander upon his character.

An emergency tribunal was established, chaired by Ava Lynch, who felt the only fair way to make a decision was trial by combat.

Stephen Hinton was invited to choose the weapons and selected orange juice.

This may have been a mistake.

The melee that followed led to such a soakening and stychification of the balloon that Ali Oops, Gavin Crosby and Bob also became adhered to it.

By now it was clear that the amount of fuel needed to dry and launch the balloon would be immense and so Keelan McRoberts, Tony Mackay and Kelly Elizabeth fracked as far as the eye could see until they struck gas.

They needn't have bothered.

After a recent dietary experiment involving the ingestion of only uncooked lentils, pulses, and carpet, Owen Baker was on hand to supply all flammables needed.

He was tapped by Dan H., lit by Charlie Maynard, and we have to assume the project would have been a success had not Rebecca ill-advisedly been using the balloon gondola to store Sean Bean's collection of antique Napoleonic gunpowder.

Thanks all.

Okay, that's the show.

We'll finish off with the version of our theme tune, made by one of you.

And this is from Sheldon from Melbourne.

Hello, Sheldon from Melbourne.

Hi, Sheldon from Melbourne.

He writes: Hello, Beans.

I'm a little late submitting a doo-op version of the Three Bean Salad theme tune inspired by your episode on the 60s some weeks ago.

Yeah, like Henry, I aspire to be a one-man du-op group, but also like Henry, I'm not a great singer.

Oh,

which Henry is he talking about?

I don't have a clear idea of what do op really is.

So,

same again, which

Henry

Henry Miller, that's a dead novelist.

Can't be that Henry.

Who else is that Henry Kissinger?

Kissinger.

Or as Rory Stewart calls him Henry Kissinger.

He's always got to say everything in the wrong way.

Yeah, that was.

Yeah, that's mad.

Come on, mate.

I'll let him say Aesia and Indigenous.

But that's pushing it too far.

I'd love to hear him ordering a Big Mac.

Can I have a big

Nick

with extra Frank.

He's going to be a full Inspector Cluzo.

With extra Freyas.

He's got quite middle English, though.

Extra freyers.

And a bar.

And a bar.

And a barbucu sauce.

Hen to knock it off the rooster.

You're really good, Mike, at just slipping into Middle English.

You're quite good at it.

I dream in it.

So, Sheldon writes: So, I'm not a great singer, I don't really have a clear idea of what Doop is.

So, this is my guess.

Recorded using the Jazz SCA setting on a Roland RD 700GX keyboard.

It's a reliable bit of kit.

There we go.

All right, so thanks for that.

See you next time.

Thanks for listening.

Cheerio.

Thanks very much.

Bye.

I really like that.

That sounds like a theme tune to like an 80s American TV show that would have been watched by 450 million people.

I was going to say, it sounds like the theme tune of a kind of call-my-bluff style British daytime TV program from the 90s.

Yeah.

With Bob Holness.

You know,

the vibes I got was: I'm strapped to a metal table,

and

the

and I've got like a the greatest, like the,

we're considered to be the one true genius of torture is about to walk into the room, and that's that's the music he plays.

So, well done, Sheldon.

You've got very different, we've all heard very different things.

That's uh, that's a compositionally a triumph, I'd say.

Thank you.

Well done.

Do you remember when the story goes about Bohemian Rhapsody that when it was was first sent to Radio 1?

Was it Kenny Everett?

I think he played it twice in a row because he liked it so much.

Really?

That's right, Henry.

There are eight circular sources.

And now the termites.

His own family call him Ivan the Bastard.