Sunday Roasts

Mike, I have been on Tenter Hooks

since last week's show.

Ah.

The old Nasha development.

How are the teeth?

Oh, yeah.

It's a bit of a disappointing end of the story, really.

Hmm.

What, you mean you're fine?

It was totally psychosomatic.

You don't have serious long-term dental health issues.

I had a.

You didn't have to have a transplant from a crocodile.

None of that happened.

They haven't accidentally given you a replacement cursed tooth that used to belong to a necromancer.

Brilliant.

It turns out there was just an old repair, like a crown or something, from a trauma I'd forgotten I'd even had as a child, sort of was versus wall kind of issue.

This is in your wall-eating phase.

This is my wall-eating phase.

So do you have any memory of that?

Now that he mentioned it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah,

that was what it was.

The little sort of foundational remains were still there.

So he could tell

this was a man-made discovery

as he did his little dig around.

So I'm sort of hugely relieved.

As a child, you

ran into a wall.

Wanged into a wall.

Wanged into a wall harm.

Sorry, what's the difference between wanged and ran?

in this context?

I like to imagine that there was an airborne component.

Okay.

Okay.

Were you wanged by a second party?

Were you self-wanged?

Was this when you were exploring self-catapulting?

Wasn't it?

That's right.

Yes.

And self-trebuchets.

That's right.

Mike, did you invent parkour as a child?

Yes.

They thought if you went legs first rather than mouth first, that it might be more successful.

So did the dentist sort you out?

Yeah, he just put in a load of, I don't know, what, some cement or something.

I've got no idea what it was, but whatever it was,

he just sort of did did that

again uh charged me 800,000 pounds and sent me on my way and everything was completely fine

did he redo it yeah yeah then then and there and he strangely you were right Ben he wasn't interested in my um dog poo bag full of uh what I thought was shattered tough saliva and new HT milk he had no interest in that at all but I assume you got it out I brought it with me yeah sure so you were thinking he might actually reattach some of it or was that I wanted to give him the option I thought I thought it was it was for the pro to say no rather than for me to.

I didn't want to presume.

You can't second guess an artisan like that, can you?

But you'd essentially taken a small shard of cement covered in splitted milk in a bag.

Yeah, but it looked like, yeah,

a small bag of liquid feces is what it looked like.

I hadn't decanted it into a more appropriate container.

I'd forgotten to do that.

So did you genuinely keep it in milk?

There was a little pot of UHT milk.

One of those little ones with the peel off top.

Yeah, yeah, one of those.

Yes, I really.

Because I Google it and it said saliva or milk, and that's all I had.

I had my saliva.

Is that something to do with calcium on some level?

Keep it calcium rich because it's teeth.

I assume, but I mean, I don't really know what's in UHT milk.

And also, I kind of forgot it was there.

So

it spent a couple of days of just sort of basting in my hot car.

So I don't really know what sort of state it would be in.

I think it's still there, actually.

The other way to do it, Mike, if listeners are interested interested and they don't have access to UHD milk or a dog food bag, you will need a bag of some sort, maybe a Tesco bag or a Sainsfield bag, whatever.

Get a live cuttlefish,

put that in, put the tooth in, and then just let them do that.

Wait for the cuttlefish to lactate,

which it will do when placed in a waterproof bag with a short of tough.

It's a bit like making a bechemel sauce, isn't it?

Anything to do with teeth, it's in the same ballpark, isn't it?

It's teeth, it's milk, it's calcium, it's flour, it's butter.

Saliva, saliva, but all of these things, anything that's rich and creamy,

and even like mushroom soup would probably work, wouldn't it?

If a tooth falls out, stick it in that, and that'll keep it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The inside of a fish pie would be perfect.

The inside of a nice fish pie, it's whatever you've got available, whatever you tend to travel with, would be really good.

But that's why you can buy at the Three Bean Salad Shop travel Bechamel sauce kits, can't you?

Just add your own cuttlefish.

That's all you got to do.

Just add your own cuttlefish.

And also, if you do do it in one of the Tesco's banks, you have to reseal the breathable holes, which is illegal.

Yes.

So that becomes very dangerous.

That's on your shoulder for the cuttlefish.

Including for the cuttlefish.

Well, I'm glad it wasn't a huge emergency, Mike.

That's good news.

No, it was a panic over very little, as it turned out.

My dental hygienist is currently battering my doors down.

Right.

To what end?

Well, just to get access to my gob again.

I feel like it gets quicker and quicker that follow-up text.

I feel like I've barely got over the trauma of my last visit.

And

I'm just getting battered.

They're just battering.

It's one of the things when I get the text about dental hygiene,

I very much put it in the, I'll think about it in sort of, think about it in three months or something.

It's like it's the beginning of a process of battering my door down.

Which they must get a lot.

So they're relentlessly ghosted, these poor people.

Well, that's the thing about dental hygiene.

I think it's one of those things where if you fall out of the system, once you're in the system,

I don't want to cast aspersions on dental hygienists, but I think that they are a malevolent and cruel

cabal of sadists.

Society's biggest backward step.

They really are.

I think once you're in the system, they know we've got someone that respects their own dental hygiene.

Let's hammer them hard.

Yeah, we do have bills to pay, sort of thing.

Do you know what I mean?

So you've got to judge your own.

I don't think going every time they ask you would, I think that's probably a bit too much.

I had this with my dentist recently, so I think I was on an annual go-back thing, sometimes every two years.

Is that possible?

I don't know, but it wasn't that frequent.

Yeah, it's either biannual or biennial, don't you know which one, but Mike does know which one because he's that kind of person.

Oh, does Mike know, though?

This is interesting.

I think I do know, yeah.

Come on, stake your colours to the mask, Mike.

I think biannual is twice a year, and biennial is every two years.

Damn you!

That's what I think.

So, anyway, I was on, maybe I'm wrong.

Do you know what I mean?

I was on a quite an infrequent but regular thing.

And then recently I just went and they went, oh, we'll see you in six months.

I went, what?

And I think they're just turning up the money button, basically, aren't they?

That's all they're doing.

Okay.

But why is that?

Were you upgrading something in your care?

Is it the gold caps?

What is it?

What is it that's making them?

No, no.

I had perfect dental health.

I've said this before, they keep trying to get me to do Invisalign.

I keep saying no.

And I think they just want to batter me a bit harder with that hard sell, maybe once every six months.

Yeah, okay, okay.

And what are they selling Invisalign to you on the basis of?

Because you've always deliberately gone for the decrepit old tombstones in an E oldie gothic graveyard, like, haven't you?

With your

it's Bronte-esque, isn't it?

You've always wanted a bronze sort of gothic, 19th-century Bronte.

Wizard old man with a secret.

Yeah, some man with a secret.

When I go in there, I'll often take in a photograph of Giants Causeway and say, is there any way that this could be this kind of achieved?

It's expensive, expensive, though, isn't it?

But yeah, crabbed old man who approaches you in an inn, he claims to have a sacred emerald,

and you have to kill him on the spot with snakes, or you're fucked.

And so are your children, your children's children.

You have to kill him on the spot with snakes.

He's not telling you all his shitmates are dead, but why are they dead?

Yeah.

What's happened?

No,

just

point out,

I was being ironic.

I wasn't tooth shaming, Ben.

I've literally never noticed you having anything wrong with your teeth ever.

That's why I.

Oh, no, I think I think my teeth are fine.

That's what I keep telling them.

But they I it it I think it is just a hard sell, I think.

You know the you know the thing which is a shame about it is that it's almost like there's a tax on caring about your own dental health teeth situation, which is if you care about it, you get given more and more options to sort of

I mean, obviously I'm not slacking off the dental health community, irrespective of a lot of the words that I'm saying, which appear to add up to doing just that.

Yeah.

But I'm not.

So my problem was that my teeth were were all crumbling and falling apart.

So, you know, there is that.

As you say, perfect dental health.

That's what they're there for.

They're the last line of defense.

So if they're crumbling, that means they're putting up a fight against me.

How else are we supposed to age people if not by their teeth?

Yes.

No, basically, like they would all, all the tops were all like,

like I was grinding.

They were like, oh, you're grinding because

your bite is incorrect.

But it wasn't.

The truth is that I didn't tell them was that I used to bite my nails all the time.

And I think that's what was causing it.

And then I've stopped biting my nails and it's stopped getting worse.

So I think I've dealt with it.

But it hasn't cost me £5,000.

But that's why they did not just offer you Invisalign, they also offered you a full set of plasty nails

to replace the bleeding stumps on your fingers.

It's the full enamel package.

And it's not just nails.

Please don't worry if you are biting your nails, but we're talking about Ben's nails as a result of his attachment to the bean machine.

They're very, I mean, they are, they're more like hoofs, aren't they, really?

They're sort of

callused.

Yeah.

It's the hard keratin that creates a rhino's horn, for example.

Exactly.

It's that kind of stuff.

And they've got Nosferatu length as well.

Yes.

But they also do, they emit a kind of

a bison pheromone,

don't they?

So actually, you're very, very sexually attractive to

bison, aren't you?

Only when they're on heat.

Thankfully, only when they're on heat.

It's an annual thing, so I have to block myself away for probably months.

Stay away from Montana.

But you've also made a small fortune, haven't you, reselling all the bison semen you're able to collect.

Which

so it's kind of yeah, swings around us, isn't it?

From your suit of many pockets.

But listen, what we're talking about, let's just

talk about the enamel and, well, calcium-rich ceramic sort of ornaments that bedeck the human body.

Because the human body is mainly flesh, but there's also nails, teeth, and fingernails,

and footnails.

Vestigial tail, protruding bones, vestigial tails.

And the hard, dry skin around my heels.

My pectoral fin.

Both pectoral fin, and of course, Mike's dick antler.

Or dantler.

Shed every year.

Just after Christmas.

We shed it every year during a fight fight with a stag, don't we?

That's right.

Yes.

I go toe-to-toe with a stag in the middle of Dartmoor.

Once it falls off, you boil it down, don't you make it to a rich stock, and you make yourself a little chocolate penis ant lefondant pudding, which you means on New Year's Day.

Which means on New Year's Day, don't you?

But

I do think that Invisalign is a bit like this hair replacement therapies and stuff, like tweakments, just getting cosmetic stuff done is just becoming more and more prevalent, isn't it?

Do you think me getting Invisalign is the first step on a long journey to boobs?

boobs?

And a dumb truck ass.

I've already got that, Mike.

That's all natural.

Bib bib.

And also to a massive relaunch of the Kardashians TV series where cousin Bonjamin's come to visit.

And it's like

bootsy reversing.

You have to have a reverse beep on your touch because it's so big.

Yeah, there's there's a lot of it about now.

Yeah,

I think it's, if you want to do it, fine.

I've got no problem with it.

It's just not necessarily what I want to do.

But go for it, if that's your thing.

Go for it.

But for the love of God,

don't say a quack.

There's a lot of quacks about those as well, isn't there?

Well, because I did some research into Invisalign and

it

because

my front two, these two are out of whack.

They are, honestly.

No, stop it.

These front two are out of whack, right?

Yes, they are wonderfully character four.

Shut up, they are out of whack.

But you wouldn't be able to notice if you couldn't see them, would you, Can?

Genuinely, are they quite badly out of whack?

No, I mean.

Whoa, what?

When you point them out, you can see what they are.

I'm booking my two tickets to Istanbul.

Why two?

Why for each ticket with you?

One for me and one for my grotesquely misshapen and protuberant teeth.

I'll have to have a separate seat for them.

Thanks very much.

I'm going straight to Istanbul.

We're going to have a nice holiday.

We're going to eat loads and loads of tomatoes, really nice tomatoes, proper feta cheese, lovely dark olives.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Going to feel better about myself and come home.

When I went to Istanbul, it is quite funny in Istanbul airport.

The number of men walking around with full head bandages is quite noticeable.

It's like there's been a mass concussion event.

But that is the only thing that we really get plied with, I think, isn't it?

By the marketeers and the algorithm.

As men.

Because most of it, I think the teeth and the other tweakings, for the middle-aged man, it's largely speaking, it's pissing in the wind, isn't it?

Really?

Or struggling to piss in the wind.

It's dribbling in the wind.

Struggling to not constantly piss and constantly be emanating wind.

But either way, it's a piss wind debarcle.

Whichever way you slice it.

Yeah.

So a little bit of filler ain't ain't going to solve.

So seriously, have you noticed my two front teeth then?

Only since you've pointed it out.

When did I point it out?

About 10 minutes ago.

They point themselves out, really.

So I actually, I did some research.

I went quite far down the line.

And then...

And you can do it yourself with orange peel

and just a set of absolutely ordinary off-the-shelf pylon wires.

Pylon wires.

and honestly, people think, oh, this doesn't sound safe.

I'm not joking.

You can do the whole, you can buy everything you need in a trip to BNQ and

the nearest pylon.

And just a midnight trip

to a nearby pylon.

Make sure you either are or aren't wearing reinforced rubber boots, though.

And always make sure you don't or do constantly piss on it while you're doing it.

I can't remember which one.

You genuinely do or don't stand on it with one leg or both legs.

Or the other way around.

And you should or shouldn't be carrying a fishing rod.

I can't remember which it is.

So, obviously,

it's expensive.

Yeah.

It's a major hurdle.

Also, it just seems to involve an extraordinary amount of pain.

And force.

Yeah, that's why I think...

Yeah, too expensive, therefore.

I think you just need to try and...

See if you can get a new event going at a sort of slavakin strongman competition or something like that and see if

maybe people will pull prize them apart for free.

Oh, you know what?

That is a great thought.

Yeah.

Just get it done in an afternoon.

Yeah, exactly.

Just pop over to some sort of public park in Bratislava.

Get a couple of tough guys to Yanko Strain.

And I'd have to present myself as something like the incredible beaver man.

And it's, can you correct

the incredible beaver man?

Yeah.

So give it a kind of folkloric vibe.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, you mentioned

the way that the algorithm, you know, will sometimes feed feed us with hair treatments and all this kind of stuff because it knows that we're men of a certain age or whatever.

The thing I've been getting loads recently, and I've got no idea why, but this is basically exclusively what I get, is fishermen holding up like a squid or something,

then going, look,

chopping it open, like slitting it open, and then pulling fish from the inside

and going, look.

And then all the comments are just like, you've stuffed that squid with fish.

That feels like.

i think you're being targeted by soothsayers ben i think they're trying to tell you something

really that does feel like a very y oldy it goes with the teeth to be honest yeah yeah yeah yeah you do have that it's that look of

the crabbed man he scuttles up to you in an inn yeah

he's they're trying to warn you about an impending disaster ben i see and if you don't believe me come to the car park where i where i'll gut a squid in front of you

yeah ben just whatever you do, don't set sail for the Indies, I would say.

Okay, this is interesting.

Yeah.

And also, I wouldn't be setting too much store by your asparagus harvest this year.

Just a word to the wise.

You might want to let those asparagai run fallow this year.

Possibly use it to feed your goats.

Because I'm not caring anything bad about your goats.

Get your goats nice and fed up.

Don't allow them to mate this year, though.

Yeah.

And don't trust them.

Don't trust them.

Trust or trust?

Either.

Yeah.

Neither.

It's a tricky situation you're in because you can't trust them.

So your natural instinct will then be true.

But to stop them from breeding, I was going to trust them.

You can't trust them.

You can't do that either.

You can't trust them.

You're going to have to leave them untrust.

Also, don't trust them either.

So it's tricky.

The squid does not always bring great tidings.

But it never lies.

But it never lies.

Oh, yeah.

I'm getting a lot of these videos.

Sometimes it's a a fish.

They'll open the fish and inside it other fish.

That's cool.

It's all pretending that the fish has eaten something whole and that you can get it out.

But I don't think.

I think it sounds serious.

If it escalates, then let us know.

Like if they're cutting open a fish and out comes a baby wolf, something like that, then you really are.

You're in big trouble.

If it's from a different zone.

Yeah.

Okay, that's interesting.

Hang on a minute.

How many fish are we talking?

Well, they cut open a big fish and maybe take out five small fish.

All hail, hail your excellency for you are our next pope

is that the catholic pope or the the coptic pope or the or the patadonia pope the first unifying pope

okay unifying aquatic pope

neptune's master arise

yeah so with this invisaline thing So I did talk to a friend who'd had it done and he said, it's like having, it was like, he said, it feels like having your head head in a clamp but but then he said he sort of got into it well that's it I was about to say that so I had a brace when I was a teenager and you'd go to the orthodontist and they would tighten it every two months or something and there's this it's quite painful but there's something quite good about the pain it's kind of like it's quite nice after a while you sort of there's something about it that's quite compulsive and I can't really explain why but it's good is that what your friend said well I'm yes yes basically you're now reminding me of a friend I had at school who I'm going to call Roger Panko

okay From the breadcrumb family.

From the breadcrumb billionaires, yeah.

So Roger Panko, he was this guy I was friends with for a bit.

We were well into gaming.

You know those ones where it's like rat-faced robots?

Warhammer 4,000, 40,000, I think.

Do you not know?

Come on, guys.

Look.

What I can't look at is Mike sighing because Henry is playing Warhammer or is Mike sighing because he's said the wrong thing about Warhammer?

40,000, Henry, you idiot.

And they're not rats.

They're an interstellar form of rodent, which actually does not even originate on Earth.

So how could they be rats?

Yes, that's why I can't work out for more.

Which one is it?

I have no understanding of this sphere of existence at all.

It's great stuff, Mike.

It's great stuff.

So they were these cool, like, these robot rat kind of creatures, and you'd get look, and I was what I thought they were brilliant and really cool, and not really cool, but I liked them.

And so my friend, my friend Roger Panko,

I became friends with Rend with Roger Panko, and he was wearing this stuff.

He was a slightly weird guy there.

I went back and did a sleepover with him, and we were playing with the rat robots, and it just all got a bit weird.

And I got freaked out.

You know, sometimes that could happen at school.

You made friends with someone too quick, suddenly you're doing a sleepover with them, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, things have gone

way too fast.

I'm like, you're suddenly inserted into Roger Panko's life, his family, his lifestyle.

They only ate boiled onions for dinner, and it was weird.

Exactly, that kind of thing.

And all they ate was Panco breadcrumbs.

And I I just got a bit freaked out by it.

The game took a sinister turn.

Also, I was one of these people where I fell down on D and D and all these things

where it all just came about dice with loads of sides and it was all just a bit too administrative.

Too mathsy.

A bit mathsy, a bit admin.

I was like, I just want to be...

Well, to be honest, I wanted to be holding the little toys

and having them run up and down, going, oh, come on, I'm going to get you.

Ow!

Ow, you've shot my leg.

Ow.

You know, like playing with them like toys not like if you roll over a three then we will roll the ten sided dice to see exactly how much damage has been done yeah and that'll open up the whole 50 sided dice

okay right anyway i got a bit freaked out by him and i felt uncomfortable and i was like i just need to get the hell out i just need to get get my head down get some sleep and get the hell out of it and i went to the loo and came back and i walked in and the lighting was quite dramatic there was just like a small desk light on i walked in and went hi roger and he looked around he was wearing his head gear

What was he wearing?

He was just wearing that external metal brace headgear.

Ah, kind of.

Oh, I see.

So, it's kind of because I was deep in the sci-fi world there.

So, I sort of just for a minute felt like he'd turned into a cyborg or something.

Sort of a bit of junior Hannibal Lecter, kind of junior Hannibal Lecter, slash some sort of alien of mystery on Earth.

It's going to kill me.

Mike, before we move on, in three sentences only, how is your trip to Germany?

Superb start, outstanding middle,

complicated end with the loss of luggage, but

that's very first world, isn't it?

That's why you're wearing

a bikini today.

That's why I'm only wearing my old denim, my old denim bikini.

Well, no, you actually received, you got the wrong luggage, didn't you?

You got the luggage of a

24-year-old

Anglo-Merkel impersonator.

It was excellent.

Thank you.

We got a bit.

Yeah, we got cyberpunked,

as many other, many thousands of people got cyberpunked.

But we did make it home.

Is that what it's called?

Getting cyberpunk?

I mean, cyberpunked.

Well, there was a big cyber attacks in a few airports.

And two of the airports we were interested in.

Yeah, yeah.

I think Brussels, Berlin, and Heathrow.

And two out of those three we were interested in.

So the poor sons at the airline were basically trying to do everything, just like some post-it notes and a couple of pencils.

Oh, no.

On the way back, so you put your luggage into the hold on the way back.

Yeah, yeah.

Knowing full well at the time that

I was rolling the dice.

And then you got to the UK.

Can we name the airport?

The Heathrow.

Heathrow, yes.

It's already said Heathrow.

It's been quite widely arranged.

Okay, but we're not naming it.

I think you're right to not name the terminal.

Five?

Terminal five.

Terminal five.

So you say say you got to

throw template five and then what happened at that point?

Did you go to the to the um to the luggage carousel?

And it is a carousel.

Did you?

Yes.

Yeah, I didn't, I did not get my luggage just because I just sort of glided past the carousel.

I'm just checking you did all the steps that we need.

We need to go through these checks, Mike.

I'm sorry, but I have to check.

I have to tick the one of these box.

I have to tick this box somehow.

I did everything they asked of me.

And then was it just nothing that came out or did it come out?

No, but they've been completely.

I mean the Paul Sods, they've been, yeah, they've been absolutely hammered for days.

I was quite pleased to just end up in the right

nation on the right day.

So yeah.

So just there was just no luggage?

There's just no luggage.

And the announcement says, well, there's no luggage, sorry, or it's gone to the wrong place or

it's just some people's luggage came out and some people's luggage didn't come out.

I don't know where it is.

So you waited and waited, that grim wait, till the end?

Yeah, and yeah, I don't know where my trousers are.

Hopefully, they're having a lovely time somewhere.

Hopefully, they've gone somewhere I've never been.

Do you have an easily recognisable bag?

Not particularly, sort of black leather hold all.

No, it's not particularly recognizable.

It may be that I never see it again,

you know.

Black leather hold all, yeah.

That's classy.

Well, it's quite, it's quite um assassin, isn't it?

It's quite bond, isn't it?

It's quite bond, yeah.

Jason Bourne,

yeah, it's full of it's full of a series of blades

Blades within blades.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

But I'm hoping that wasn't the issue.

I've got this thing, I like to think that overall in my life, my luggage comes out slightly sooner than the average on a carousel.

I think it's like one of those, it's like a little talent I've got.

I don't know why.

I've just generally

why it is.

Because you'll be one of the last people to get the bag on the plane, right?

Oh.

We may have an answer here, people.

That's definitely true, yes.

Well, you can.

Last on, first off.

Yeah.

It's win-win.

You'll be near the door.

That'll be it.

Yeah.

One thing that always slightly amazes me at a baggage carousel,

the amount

of different types of bag there are.

How has I just find it incredible that society has got to a point where it's not even something we think about.

It's like, I'll see my bag and I'll know it's my bag.

There are so many different bags available in society that you don't even think, oh, will it be mine or will it be someone else's?

You go, that's my bag, it's my bag.

You know what I mean?

But how have we.

This makes sense though, because I remember when we flew back from

Berlin together, we were standing in Gatwick and you were just quietly welling up as the

bands were going around and you were just going, the diversity of life is so inspiring.

So much.

So much luggage.

Please give me a moment.

Some of them off cellophane wrapped for some reason.

I've never really understood why they do that, but some of them are.

I think it's a con.

No!

Let's turn on the beam machine.

Not off.

About time.

This week's topic, as sent in by Lee from the Black Country.

Oh,

hello, Lee.

Hi, thank you.

Is Sunday roasts.

Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho.

Now, this is a good time to let people know.

Yeah.

Although it sounds like I'm advertising on their behalf, I'm not.

I'm just excited about it.

The My Local Carvery.

Yeah.

Oh, here we go.

Where it's Sunday every day.

There is no Lee in the Black Country.

Actually, Lee in the Black Country is an exact anagram of probably.

Of Toby Carvery.

Toby Carvery.

So my local Carvery, which isn't the Toby, and recently gave you an honorary doctorate.

Yeah.

That one, another one.

Yeah.

So for the next two weeks starting yesterday, that's time of recording.

The cover is unlimited.

You can return to the meat station as many times as you like.

And they they do have a St.

John's ambulance team on hand, don't they?

Because they know much they can do, but it is nice to see them there.

Well, they're mainly there to distract the rest of the punters.

So

while you're passing on, they get out their little horse.

They've got a mini horse, they've got a St.

John's ambulance horse.

The main thing they do is if you do succumb to the meat

feast

and pass out face first in your gravy, they can pull you out before you drown.

They'll throw you a little ring, basically, won't they?

Yeah, exactly.

An onion ring.

Yeah.

But, of course, meat death is

increasingly a problem, isn't it, in Calvaries?

Meat death is when the human body takes on so much meat that the amount of protein you've got more external proteins.

Well, your brain assumes that you are a pork chop.

Well, exactly.

That's right.

So the brain doesn't know whether...

Yeah, essentially you've got more external protein than you have internal protein.

The brain therefore processes you as a chop or a shank or a steak.

And that could be a rump steak.

That could be...

It could be a slow-cooked antler.

It could could be all kinds of

brisket.

Well, you begin to self-baste, don't you?

And then it's only a matter of time.

The body just can't take it.

For our foreign listeners, I think it's pretty obvious.

A Carvery is a restaurant where you can have the Sunday roast meal.

The Sunday roast meal is

a traditional British pastime.

Eating roast meats on a Sunday, or if you're a vegetarian, something disappointing, like a nut loaf or something.

Yep, with a selection of vegetables, roast potatoes, possibly even a parsnip if you're feeling fancy, although usually that's for Christmas, gravy.

You get the idea.

Also, we're coming into roast season, aren't we?

I've had my first roast, in fact, on the weekend, I had a roast lamb with my parents.

Did you indeed?

First roast of the season.

Because it's very much an autumn and winter thing, isn't it?

I think true patriots, Henry, would eat it through the summer.

Yeah.

Well, they have to keep your local carvery open just for you.

That's why they fucking hate you there.

Don't they?

He's not.

He is.

It's the hottest day of the the bloody year and he's here again the hottest day of the year

they're closing down schools he's here how does he do it

no summer break for the crackling wrangler down the hallway is there

here he is and with his briefcase into which he siphons off the gravy at the end of the meal he takes it home with him i made them open throughout covid yeah

yeah i mean well the so the roast it's a winter thing so it's coming back in i think the roast has become, I think, kind of,

I don't know if fetishize is too strong a word.

No, it has been, yeah.

It has, hasn't it?

It's become this sort of, I guess it's probably like,

is it like, I guess it's probably like an Instagram thing a bit, is it?

Like, like, is it?

I don't know.

Here's me and my roast.

No, I think you're right.

There's been a fetishization of autumn as a whole.

Yes.

Much more so than earlier in my life, where people just sort of thought of autumn as just being a slightly transitional period.

Whereas now it's like, oh, I can't wait to get my

racking spice coffee and go for a nice walk in a jumper.

And

it's not like that in real life.

It's not.

It's sideways rain.

It's wind.

Wind has reared its grotesque, invisible head again in my life.

Yesterday, I was walking down the road and I thought, why am I so deeply, deeply unhappy at the moment?

And I realized it was wind.

Wind straight at you, you invisible bastard.

Wind is so annoying, and people just don't give it enough enough thought about how annoying it is.

And is there a way I'm not, I'm just spitballing, can we wall in the whole United Kingdom?

Just wall it in on the outsides just for wind.

Just indoors.

Just make it an indoor country.

First indoors nation.

We did it with supermarkets.

Yeah.

Now let's do it with the United Kingdom.

Would you kind of dome it?

Or is it more like just huge Asda style?

I'd actually centre parks it.

Yeah.

Just extend centre parks.

So like, yeah, nice sort of geodesic, geodesic, geodesic, geese

domes.

Yeah.

What are they called?

Geodesic is a thing, but I don't know what it means.

Yeah.

But obviously, yeah, talking about walling in the United Kingdom in the current climate doesn't sound like a very yeah, as far as that could be misinterpreted, couldn't it?

Yeah, I purely mean in a weather, in a weather sense.

But you hit the Calvary the other day, then, did you, Ben?

Oh, I did go recently, but I wasn't going to tell you that.

I was just letting you know that as of yesterday for the next two weeks, it's unlimited meets.

But I think I'm going to mainly be away on tour with you guys.

Oh, no.

But can you get a...

What's referred to, isn't it, by insider as a patty-patsy, which is someone that goes in, collects meat on your behalf, and simply posts it to you.

A meat page, I think is what a meat page.

Who can take your orders?

Obviously, they can siphon off the gravy into

a series of envelopes.

Or deliver it.

Has anyone tried to deliver a roast?

Can you deliver a roast?

I think that happens, Mike.

Don't say that as if that's a kind of fanciful thing.

I think that's very much a big business.

Is it really?

Yeah.

Sounds nightmarishly difficult.

I I can't envision how you would do it.

No one has served the roast on a plate.

The meal is like your classic roast.

It's in the middle of the table and you're going for it, right?

And you're refilling and you're

true.

There's a ceremony to it, isn't it?

Oh, there's a ceremony.

There's a ceremony to it.

When you squish that oxo-cube into a mug.

A fizzy water.

A fizzy water.

And stir it up because people love a little bit of bubbly, don't they?

They love a little bit of bubbly with a roast.

You know that it's um well, it's a special time, isn't it?

Same thing happens as when you put that packet of salt and vinegar, mccoys, crisps, still in the packet, into the cavity of the bird.

But these are all, it's all part of the tradition, isn't it?

And the

ritual of it.

What I can't work out is, so, you know, there's this like pervasive idea that British food is kind of bad.

Yeah.

From the rest of Europe, certainly, they kind of think that British food is bad.

By the way, I think that might have started post-war.

Napoleon?

Something Napoleon?

No, I think maybe post-Second World War.

It's something to do with rationing

and huge advances were made

while in America they were sort of struggling to master the bomb, whatever.

Britain were just struggling to master, can we fully dehydrate a noodle?

Can we do it?

And there was just a lot.

I think a lot of work went into dehydration and the creation of

a lot of American GIs had to eat things like powdered egg and things.

Yeah, yeah.

Whereas back in America, they didn't have rationing because they weren't really affected in that way by the war.

So they were all just eating nice eggs and we were eating powdered eggs.

So I think that's where the American angle comes from.

I think the European angle goes back a long way because didn't

there's that thing where the French

nickname for Brits is Le Ross Beefs.

Yeah.

Because we're obsessed with roast beef, according to them.

Yeah.

There was also.

I always found that to be a weird kind of cuss.

Yeah, because it's so roast beef is lovely.

Roast beef is lovely.

Yeah.

Is it a compliment?

And we overreacted.

We started hating the French when they were really trying to say something.

Roast beef, Cobe,

yes.

Damn.

We also like roast beef.

We also like roast beef.

There's some suspicion about how we handle vegetables, though, isn't there?

Like,

often they get overboiled.

If the half of the plate's full of boiled carrots and boiled broccoli or what have you, then.

Or dare I say boiled potatoes, which do appear in roasts, but I

yeah, I'm not a fan.

I'm not a fan.

I like a boiled potato.

It's very prison.

It brings back prison for me, a lot of it.

It just does.

That smell.

It's a whole part of my life.

I deliberately haven't talked about it in the past.

I don't want to bring it up now.

But it does bring back that.

It's institutional cooking, isn't it?

It brings back school, hospitals, prison.

What about some lovely new potatoes dripping in butter?

In the right context, sure.

I mean, put them an extra trout.

You've got my full support.

But that's true for all food for you, though, isn't it, Mike?

Yeah.

Putting an extra trout.

Yeah, yeah.

And Mike's digging in.

And Mike will give it his full support.

I mean, I think Sunday roasts, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look.

It's like anything, isn't it?

There's good ones and bad ones.

Cheers.

Yeah, but yeah.

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

What I mean is, I think it's particularly evident in roasts that there's a big there's a big difference between a good and a bad because sometimes you have a roast where you really feel it's a cynical roast.

Essentially, it's a monetization

of

herger, whatever that thing is that people the fact is w when when when it's September in the United Kingdom, people want

people are in in love with this idea of a roast.

And sometimes you go to a place where they know that and they've exploited it and they've you know, you can have like lifeless grey meat, over-boiled veg, not crispy potatoes,

and a sort of tepid, flavorless gravy, and the whole thing's covered in piss.

I mean, how much do you want me to say?

Yeah, and there's a badge of shit on top of it.

What am I going to say here?

For you to.

It all sounded all right to me, after the word.

You were fine with that.

Because a lot, it's just, it's a big money maker for pubs, isn't it, on the weekends?

So just sometimes you feel it's cynical sometimes there isn't the love that's gone into it and it really is they're just rattling these things off because also there's a kind of there's a roast tax

it costs more than well king john brought it in didn't he

famously to pay for a war with the burgundians that's right so 30

of all the money that you put down for a roast goes into funding a campaign against the burgundians still

still amassing that

army, aren't they?

So I think you're right, but I think there's another sign to this coin, Henry.

Oh, good.

Are you talking about dark gravy?

Because if you are, I'm always.

No, I'm talking about the pub that makes a roast that's probably a bit too nice and as a result, far too expensive.

And kind of they're trying to do a sort of too fancy kind of roast.

Why have they wrapped a miniature carrot in bacon?

Exactly.

Here we go.

It's because that means they can charge you £27.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And will they use words like jhu?

And there'll be quite a lot of description of the roast

in the menu,

that kind of place.

Okay.

Yeah, so you're right.

There's an over-high-end.

Yeah.

With very pink beef.

Yeah, and very pink.

Which I know is kind of how you meant to have it, but like I sort of, when I want to roast, I sort of want it to be cooked to fuck.

Do you know what I mean?

Is that how you do it at home?

I don't do it at home, Mike.

No?

There's two of us.

You can't roast for two.

But you've done some pretty ornate meals in your time.

Yes, it's a good point.

But you don't do a roast.

That's interesting.

I find it too stressful because there's too many.

I thought you'd be quite handy at a roast.

Out of the three of us.

I think you'd be the one I trust the most

at a roast.

Henry is looking really indignant.

Henry's looking really annoyed.

Fucking absolute fucking bullshit.

Why do I fucking bother?

If you've not given me a few minutes,

Henry's made you a roast every weekend for the past 15 years.

And it's as if I'm not there.

I make it, I put it on the table.

Now, you know what?

I go into my bedroom and I just wait.

I wait for him to eat it and leave.

That's how loveless it's become,

isn't it?

Time for a wee plug.

Truly good.

It's something that features our old friend, Henry Packer.

Oh, what the?

Hello,

Dolly.

Hello, Dolly.

I'm appearing.

Hello, Dolly.

Extra one man.

Hello, Dolly.

Put it this way.

It's happening in the London Palladium.

Palladium.

It's happening in the London Palladium.

When did you realise it wasn't the Palladium you'd booked?

Yeah, it was when I turned up at the London Palladium for dress rehearsals that I was told.

Yeah.

To make your way to the Suez.

To make your way to the Suez.

And so, yeah, so it's very much in the Suez.

And it's not the Suez in a kind of cool, like sort of like, you know, the lair of Bane in Batman or the um the home of the teenage mutant turtles in in in that it's it's very much like a real it's a real work it's a working sewer

of course i did want to plug that i also wanted to plug um icklewick fm

oh yes oh i love it

it's a great radio series it is have you done a bit in that henry have you i have i did pop up i did a little bit in that and i think that one's coming out at some point soon it's a really good series well they are all up on sounds so i don't know if you've been on the radio yet but they're all up And it's featuring Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill.

They're both brilliant.

You've done a stint in there as well, haven't you, BB?

I was in series one.

Henry's in series two.

I wonder who's going to be getting the call for series three.

Hmm.

Me again, maybe.

It's probably Henry again.

It's probably Henry again, isn't it?

If the pattern continues, and I see it, it's Ben, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry.

And then the final episode of all time, which gets it cancelled, Ben again, which

bookends it, doesn't it?

There's a nice symmetrical pattern.

Yeah, so that's on BBC Sounds.

I think that's the only place you can get it.

So if you're outside the UK, you might have to do some illegal kind of dark web stuff, but worth it.

Oh, more than worth it.

So that's Icklewick FM.

And it's time for an unprecedented second plug.

I am currently in my hotel room in Leeds between two live shows in Leeds.

We did one last night, which was good fun.

Another one tonight.

If you're listening on the day this podcast comes out, the coming Sunday, we're doing a gig in Newcastle at the Tyned Theatre and Opera House, and there are tickets available for that still.

So that's Sunday, the 5th of October.

Half our seven, why not come along?

When you send an email,

you must give thanks

to the postmasters that came before.

Good morning, Postmaster.

anything for me just some old shit

when you send an email

this represents progress

like a robot chewing a horse

give me your horse

My beautiful horse let's read your emails although I'm actually not going to start with an email I'm going to start with

a celebrity voice note.

No.

We've had a voice note from celebrity friend of the show, John Robbins.

Ah, certainly you're going to say Russell Crowe for a second there.

John will do.

John will do nicely.

John will do very nicely.

And this is in response to I was recommending people maybe try Pomelo.

The citrus fruit, the Pomelo.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, let's see what he has to say.

I've added the music to this.

It's not that he sends musical-backed voice notes.

Just to make that clear.

Hi, beans.

It's John Robbins here sending a dispatch from my kitchen.

Why am I in my kitchen and what am I looking at?

Well, I'm looking at...

I suppose it's a pith apocalypse in front of me.

Why am I looking at it?

Well, I've just had my first Pomolo.

I like to keep up with the beans.

When you introduced the flightless bird zone, I fostered an emperor penguin, but that spills alone were crippling.

When Ratmus came on horizon, I made changes to family gatherings, which remain to this day a bone of contention.

So when I walked past my local fruit and veg stall and saw encased in its red netting and cellophane, a pomelo for $2.99.

I thought I'd got to find out what all the fuss is about.

Why do we back apple?

Why do we support the orange unthinkingly?

Why does pear reign supreme?

So I bought the pomelo.

The lady said it was a bit

needed a bit of ripening, maybe two or three days.

So I placed it on my kitchen counter and watched as it turned from green to a sort of slightly yellowier green.

No hint being given as to whether it was ready or not.

And then a friend came round who had previously pomeloed the prior pomelist.

They said that's about ready.

So I got out my knife with ceremony and cut it in twain.

My first

reaction

was a bit like a Franco Manca pizza.

There's an awful lot of shore before the sea.

The rind, slash pith, was easily two inches thick.

Wow.

Containing a sort of regular to small-sized grapefruit shape of flesh.

Made a mockery of the red netting and the cellophane because, I mean, the whole fruit is protection.

There was no way to scoop out the flesh, so I just sort of went at it with a knife.

It was the worst texture experience of my life.

Oh, wow.

I'm going to say equidistant between plastic and glass.

It was somehow dry, but still organic.

So it was like eating polystyrene.

It crunched.

Oh, God.

It was a crunchy grapefruit with the worst 10% of what a grapefruit has to offer flake-wise.

I got through maybe two segments.

It was awful.

And then I had to chuck it out.

And because it's so enormous, because the packaging it has created for itself is so huge, this foamy sort of buffer zone,

I filled up my waste food food caddy, emptied it, put a new bag in, filled it up again, emptied it.

Now it's half full with pomelo.

That's two and a half food waste caddies full of pomolo foam and organic polystyrene.

So I have to say I am disappointed and I can see why the apple, the orange, the pear reign supreme.

Consistency and ability to tell when it's ready to eat.

Because I've no idea if this pomolo was too ripe or not ripe enough.

Think on.

Thank you, John, for that.

Thank you.

Feel the ball strong.

I have a very strong reaction.

That was fantastic.

And nice to hear people actually going out and exploring and giving this stuff a go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I don't know if a lot of people tried any extreme sports last week.

Well, a lot of them won't be in a state to email in.

Probably, that's true.

Now, my reaction to that was

shame, obviously, that I'd sent him on this path.

Regret that I'd promoted the Pomelo.

I mean, he called it a Pomelo.

I was interested in that.

That, to me, brought up the whole Alfred Molina, Alfred Molina

debate, doesn't it?

But at least with that one, you can ask Alfred Molina what it should be.

Yeah, and he can say Molina.

Yeah, whereas Pomelo, Pomelo, we don't know.

Apparently, it can also be known as a Shadduck,

in case you're worried about.

That's like they've concocted the least appetizing sound

that a word can make.

It sounds like a really grey little fish.

It's between shatt and haddock.

Oh, appetizing.

I'm really sorry I've got to go home early.

I've had a shaddock.

I'm going to miss the end of the play.

Yeah.

Mike, you're shaducking so often now.

We have to start talking seriously about plastic trousers.

Come on.

Some of them are quite trendy.

They've got some trendy cuts.

So, hang on, you can call it a Pomelo or a Shaddock.

also known as a Shadduck.

No one's called that a Shadduck.

You know, the interesting thing is, Shadduck, to me, sonically, is the kind of, it's the opposite sound to Pomello.

Exactly.

Yeah, Pomelo is beautiful.

Pomelo is slightly Italian.

It just feels...

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It's sonorous.

It's

gentle.

Pomelo.

Shadduck.

But what's the truth?

The Wikipedia entry, the pronunciation guide, it's suggesting that

John's onto something oh really with his pomolow action okay john's the kind of man who likes to get things right so i think he might have

he knows he's interested in like language and things isn't he he knows that bins are actually called caddies for example

a lot of us would have been labouring under the delusion that bins were called bins no there's a difference between a bin and a caddy henry you take your caddy to the bin is a bin is that a bin on wheels no it's like a mini bin that you put on your kitchen shelf or your you know oh is that a caddy?

Yeah.

Is it like the little brown one with the handle that you put organic waste in?

Yeah, that's a caddy.

Oh, all right.

Well, to me, it feels like the Pomelo is really struggling for identity.

And I think those two names really sum it up:

Pomelo and Shadduck.

They're so different.

Like,

what are we talking about here?

Also, the presentation of it in red netting.

Did anyone else find that a bit sexy?

What I want to say is, I'm sorry to John for sending him

in the direction of the pomelo, pomelo.

I did some research afterwards because basically my memory of the pomelo was one of the greatest fruits I've ever eaten.

It was on Christmas morning, so that sort of does colour it.

But I went back, I asked my partner about it, where we got it from, what it was.

Turns out it wasn't a pomelo.

Oh, no.

Was it a chocolate eclair?

It was something called a sweetie grapefruit, which is a grapefruit crossed with a permelo.

Are you now just sadistically sending John Robbins off on fruit missions?

I think you would like to see John eat the sweetie grapefruit because I think that would.

It's a sweetie grapefruit.

Yeah.

It's a cross between a permelo and a grapefruit, is it?

So, yes, I'm officially rescinding my permelo recommendation.

I'm instead reinstating, or instating rather, a sweetie grapefruit recommendation.

It's a bit late for John, isn't it?

Well, it's too late for John and his poor caddy.

Yeah.

And if you've never listened to Ellis and John, that is is the Ellis James and John Robbins podcast.

What are you doing?

It's the best.

Okay, the next one is an email.

It refers to something that Henry talked about a while ago.

In order to give you, or the listener, mainly, I guess, a recap on what Henry was talking about, I've created a little trailer.

Okay, nice.

Okay, yeah, go for it.

I was at university and I

had an unplumbed toilet in my room.

I was walking around and I spotted a skip near where I was living, which had a toilet in it.

I want to foster a reputation

as an eccentric.

Basically, I thought it'd be quite funny to have it as an option for people to sit on.

Looking back,

it really ill thought through on

I'm gonna say almost every level.

One day, towards the end of the time, I noticed like a really,

really gross smell in my room.

Oh, come on, this makes me more like that.

Eventually, I

thought, hang on, it seemed about maybe it's coming out of that unplumbed toilet that sat in my room.

And basically,

a friend of mine had had a shit in it.

for some reason.

I tried to pour all old turd

into the bath.

Come on, mate.

Why?

Please don't.

No.

This summer,

Jesse Plemons

as the janitor

Chalamay as the turd.

Superb work.

Superb work.

Introducing a de-aged Steve Buschini

as the eccentric dickhead.

So yes, this is in response to Henry talking about the time he put a toilet in his bedroom from the street and then his friend shat in it.

We've had an email

from the shitter.

No.

Yes.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

It's quite a long one, but I think it's worth reading.

It's got the subject culprit impact statement.

Oh, God.

They write.

I'm not going to say their name.

I'm 98% sure it was me.

Wow.

The statute of limitations on crimes like these is usually nine years.

But luckily, DNA testing is no longer feasible, let alone desirable.

So, okay, it was me.

But let me elaborate on the logical side to this most scatological of crimes.

First of all, the wider cultural context.

This happened in 1998.

People are sugarcoating the 90s now, but it wasn't time of innocence, especially towards the end of the decade.

In the late 90s, Britpop was waning.

Oasis' third album was a disappointment.

New Labour's honeymoon was coming to an end with a series of high-profile scandals.

Loaded magazine was beginning to lose its allure.

That was the backdrop.

But you have to understand the immediate context of our friendship group at university.

We were a very close-knit bunch of single lads, with some female friends thrown in the mix too, who we'd been together with every day for about three years.

But around the time of the third incident, Henry had begun to change.

He had found a girlfriend.

Oh my god, I've forgotten this.

All of a sudden, he would disappear for days, then be found making avocado salad or preparing a picnic by the river, things that were highly out of character.

That's so true.

I've completely forgotten about this.

But I used to get really violently bantered.

This is so places in its time.

So, Bissy, I developed a girlfriend.

You didn't develop a girlfriend.

That sounds a bit patriotic, I'm afraid.

Ananova is yet to be born.

So I hired a girlfriend.

And suddenly, there was my sort of like beery laddie 90s lager mates.

And suddenly I was off.

And I think that was it.

An avocado was discovered in my cupboard.

I'm absolutely bantered to within an inch of my life for having an avocado.

Well, that must have cost about 15 quid back then.

You did.

The third incident was an attempt, however misguided, to lure him back to the fold using shock tactics.

Like a Damien Hurst artwork.

It was like saying, look at what you're missing.

A cat bringing a dead bird to its owner.

It was actually a sign of loyalty and affection.

A trusted source told me how Henry found out.

He was in his flat, lying on his bed with his girlfriend.

The pair were preening and cooing like lovebirds.

And the window opened to catch the beautiful summer breeze.

Suddenly they caught a whiff of an unpleasant aroma on that breeze.

The lover's spell was broken.

Henry then explained what happened after that in your podcast.

My source told me that Henry figured out it must have been me, and that if he found me in the next 24 hours, I would surely be killed.

Luckily, I was far away at that time, so it was geographically impossible that he would reach me.

Yeah, it was the first, by the way, that was the first death wager I ever made.

It's good there was a time limit on it.

Yeah, yeah.

You must understand something.

Henry was like a poor man's Tyson Fury.

A real brute, known for the long range of his arms and clunking fists.

This isn't true.

Bracketts, he used to boast about his range.

That's true.

I do have great range.

His trademark trench coat signalling his air of menace.

Yeah, that's true.

Brackets, in his more mellow moods, he would wear a duffel coat with soft buttons.

Possibly true.

Luckily, it was several weeks before he found me and he confronted me in person.

He was angry and vowed some kind of vengeance, but the red mist had passed.

Time can really heal anything, and Henry seemed to forgive me for this episode.

Luckily, it's almost too grotesque to really think about for too long.

Also, there were no mobile phones back then to record the incident.

Younger listeners may note that we did stunts like this back in the day, not to chase likes or subscribers, or to police some algorithm, but for the sheer love of the prank.

I would argue Henry and I are quits due to something that happened about two decades later.

Okay, I don't have no idea what this is.

I went on holiday and trusted Henry to cat sit.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I do know this.

How could the keeper of the beloved bluebert let us down?

On day two, he managed to lock himself out of our house.

We had to get neighbours to throw cat food over the hedge to keep her alive.

Yeah, that's true, yeah.

So that's my perspective on the toilet prank episode three decades on.

It's like the film Rusherman.

You need to hear the story from different narrative viewpoints to understand what really happened.

Yes, and still there's Rusherman is four, so there's the lover.

That's true.

There potentially is someone who in a janitorial role.

Yeah.

Or,

of course, the terred.

Or the person who's wondering where that toilet went

when they were trying to refurbish their flat.

That's true.

That's true, actually.

Didn't Rory Stewart recently talk about how

he was partly inspired to walk across Iran because of a toilet that had gone missing from his skip when he was.

It wasn't a skip, it was a delivery van.

It was a delivery van.

And he was trying to start a business as a toilet delivery man.

And he saw it as a sign that the first toilet, he'd luckily managed to lose the first toilet he was due to deliver.

And that's when I knew that I had to walk across Iran.

Oh my god, look,

and to cross the Euphrates.

Well, thank you for emailing in anonymous.

thanks for a nice friend of mine.

Yeah, yeah, well done.

It's time

to pay the ferryman

Patreon.

Patreon.

Patreon.com.

Forward slash free bean salad.

Thank you to everyone who signed up on our Patreon.

Yes, thank you.

Patreon.com forward slash three bean salad.

It's the place to go for bonus episodes and video episodes at different tiers.

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

I did.

It was a slightly bloodthirsty one down there, wasn't it?

Because it was a reenactment of the Battle of the Nile.

It was.

Thank you, Benjamin.

And here's my report.

It was the reenactment of the Battle of the Nile last night at the Sean Bean Lounge, the famous maritime toe-to-toe between Napoleon's aquatic lackeys and Norfolk's favourite son, Horatio Nelson.

Dylan Taylor portrayed Georges Le Curieux, the encounter's only surviving ship's monkey, who escaped to northern Italy via Alexandria, disguised as a financial advisor and went on to make millions making canine gumshields during the brief but ubiquitous craze for dog rugby.

Hello Yanu's sister John John, Lenners and Owen Baker were instructed to play the French ships of the line, but didn't know what that meant and made the fatal error of turning up as single-masted sloops.

They were rounded upon by Will Baxter, Lex Keene and Liam and his dog Ben as Nelson's top-secret amphibious Coracle unit and sunk to waist height.

Levo and Stefan Ristick attempted to flee to the Egyptian coast, feigning to be Flotsam and Jetsam, respectively, but were seized by a French beachcomber platoon and converted into whimsical ornaments by John Boy the Pale, Peavy, and Sir Geoffrey Delamer de la Auclaire de la Lune.

John Hailstone, Hugh Munculus, and Danny Tunker were demasted by Anna Edelstone as a Cornish schooner.

Tom Meade, Graham Marshall and Yolanka Grace were surrounded by Peggy, Roddy and their father, dressed as Captain Berry of the Vanguard but in fancy dress as a recycling bin and dry-docked.

Liam Welford was struggling to come about in his five-deck 84-gun destroyer costume and had no chance of making evasive maneuvers when mortared from a canoe made of hollowed-out gherkins by Chopper Dunford, Lex Lou Thor, Mark and Melissa.

Soon the flames reached the magazine, which thank goodness was only a copy of Smash Hits from 1997, otherwise the damage would have been catastrophic.

The cover of the magazine had featured British boy band 911, and so an armistice was declared, allowing David Button, Joseph Hegerty and G to rehearse and perform their signature single, Body Shaken, as tribute.

Battle resumed with Sarah Helen Proudford, Minu Sundaram and Claire Lenihan pulling on Hamish McClure's left ear until he capsized.

By now it was clear the French army, portrayed by Molly Oxley who generously supplied 35,000 French-speaking clones of herself, was cut off from supplies and reinforcements and stranded in Egypt, which was portrayed respectfully, if a little gushingly, by James Barton.

That army came under opportunistic attack by an Ottoman force played by Hannah Eastwood, Luke Zapp, Liam Murphy and Joe Walker, with Daisy Raven adding texture by reenacting the Ottomans inventing catheters, military marching bands and bird boxes.

Henry Smith and Edwin Johnson squabbled over who should play Admiral Nelson himself to offer final words to proceedings, and couldn't agree on whether or not he should be wearing a sling.

While they dithered, the event was brought to an end in style by Archie Williams, Daisy McKay, Katie Wilkes and Andrea Solomon as a pantomime hippopotamus emerging from the Nile and lamenting the futility of war.

Thanks all.

Okay, now it's the time in the show where we finish off with the version of our theme tune sent in by one of you.

If you would like to send send in your own version of the theme tune, please do that.

Send it to threebean saladpod at dream.com.

Lovely.

Now, obviously, there's a fairly large temptation for me just to play this again.

Which I'm kind of obsessed with.

But we've got another one.

This is from Nikki who says, Hello, please see my feedback-laden version of your theme.

Okay, thank you, Nikki.

Hopefully, it's kind of like guitar feedback rather than sort of a critique of what we're doing here on the book.

Who knows?

We'll see.

But until next time, farewell.

Goodbye.

Farewell.

Thanks for listening.

Cheerio.

Thank you.

Bye.