Triforce! Mailbag Special #41: We're in the wrong job!

Pickox.

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Welcome, chums, friends, well-wishers, ne'er-do-wells, haters,

and all the rest.

The mailbag.

One's more bad.

The mailbag here.

Once again,

I love that rendition. Yeah, that's a good one.
Of the classic mailbox. One of the best.
It's beautiful. One of the best.
All right, let's dive straight into it.

This is an email about airport security.

This is airport security, my dad's airport disappearing act finally adds up.

As a kid, I usually went on holiday once a year with each parent. They were divorced.

With my dad, it was always an odd experience. He would always disappear in the airport, arriving again once I'd gotten on the plane, sometimes even late where the plane had to wait.

He would always just say, be right back, going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I never really noticed this was odd when I was super young.
It was just always that way.

And I thought it was kind of cool I could make my own way to the plane. But as I got older, I'd think, why does he always do this? One day we were going on holiday.
I was 19.

This time, I knew it was coming and I was finding out what on earth he was always doing. So he tries his move.
I go, no, I'll just come with you. He tries to talk his way out of it.

And eventually, he just knew that I knew something was up. So he just gives in.
We walk through the airport together. I scan my passport.
It flashes green and the doors open. My dad scans his.
Boom.

Red. Alarm goes off.
And he says, I'll see you on the plane. The alarm goes off.
Security comes out and drags him off. He explains himself later.

Turns out my dad used to smuggle heroin over the border from Africa and has spent time in jail for it.

Later on, this opens him up about his alleged gang affiliations, my granddad being a gangster from Africa, apparently worth millions, and my granddad's brother being a historical figure now.

My grandma is the one who ran the UK brothels for him. My other UK family members turned out to have records too for similar things.

So every time he disappeared, he didn't want me to see him getting dragged off and being late was just it taking longer. So the plane had to wait.

It's also why we couldn't go to certain countries, it all makes sense. Oh my god,

that moment where you finally realize, like in the usual suspects, did you drop your coffee mug on the ground and

look at look around? And it's it all started to happen. Wow, I kind of didn't know what I was expecting, right?

Like with that, I sort of thought it would be some I wasn't expecting major gang affiliations, especially major African gang affiliations.

That was not at the forefront of my mind. In my head, it was more like a thing where he was going off to

put money in those fruit machines or whatever. I don't know.

Yeah, or he was friends with people in the airport security and he just went to have a coffee with them or something. Yeah.
He couldn't bring his son.

Yeah, I wasn't. Maybe he just had to take it.
Maybe he was really scared of flying and he needs to take a really big shit or something.

thought it was just going to be something sort of slightly embarrassing rather than like yeah a reasonably good reason i mean i guess in a lot of ways that is kind of embarrassing as well right like uh you know your your checkered past and your your son that you didn't want to find out about it finding out about it interesting i just uh

think it was hard to guess but yeah thank you all right let's move on yeah cheers that was a great one yeah that was a really good one hold on keeping names anonymous on no yeah yeah here's another one um hello my shit superpower which we spoke about in a previous episode, is that I wear hearing aids and I have a microphone that connects to them via Bluetooth.

I can leave this microphone in a room nearby, and as long as it is still connected, I can listen in on conversations. Wow.

While training in my current job, I'd accidentally did it one time and found out that my colleagues were saying I was doing well, but needed to develop one aspect.

When I met with them later on, I made out that I want to develop that aspect, making myself look good. All the best.

That is a good superpower, actually. That's

concerning as well.

Now I'm thinking of all the times I was in a room talking to somebody and if somebody left their Bluetooth hearing aid in there and I was saying, you know, like, oh, man, my gang affiliations.

Yeah.

All the brothels I ran. I don't know whether that's just spying.
though. It is kind of spying, yeah.

I mean, you couldn't. You couldn't develop that superpower by, you know, leaving, you know, gluing a little camera in the corner of the room or something, you know?

I suppose, I mean, I suppose it's a bit like if you think about Batman,

he doesn't have any superpowers. He's rich and smart and physically capable.

He doesn't have any superpowers. Technology aids him, though.
Yeah. And there is some sort of mystical quality to some of his technology, or maybe that's just from being rich.

I think he's meant to be a wealthy genius.

He's the world's greatest detective, dude. No, he is absolutely, but that's not a superpower because there is a lot of people.
Bruce Wayne is the greatest detective. Yeah, he's a detective.

He's famously he's known as the world's greatest detective. I know it doesn't feel like

every case, pretty much.

Ben told me this, right, when we were doing the Batman Games Night video, because I was just like, I didn't realize that that was supposed to be a thing.

I thought he was, like you said, P-Flax, like a kind of

playboy.

That's what I liked about the Batman, the Robert Pattinson Batman, was he actually does some fucking detective work in it.

He doesn't just catch people unawares and get jumped by baddies and do action shit. He's like solving a case.
Get out the way.

I gotta spray my little bat spray over here and see if there's any blood residue. Oh, it's lit up.
That means there was DNA here. Let me get my bat scanner out so I can scanner roll.

Give me a bat latte, please.

With bat oat milk. With just bat milk.
Jesus.

They are mammals, so they're milking. You could probably milk them.
That's probably going to be the new thing, isn't it? Bat milk. I reckon that'll be it.

You know, you've got to change one letter on the packaging for oat milk to make it bat milk. So

I feel like that's going back towards. Yeah.

No, but you just put a load of, they hang upside down in a cave. If the bats are lactating, maybe it just drips off.
Oh, and somebody puts it out and catches.

It's like it would have gone to waste otherwise. Yeah, exactly.
You just lay a load of tarps down in a cave.

A load of bat milk. Delicious.
All right. This one's called You Cruise, You Lose? Question mark.

I thought I would share the below story of a cruise ship called the Odyssey run by Villa V residences because we spoke about living on cruise ships previously. Yeah.

That should have set sail for a round-the-world voyage in May, but has been stuck in Belfast due to issues with paperwork and mechanical failures. It's just about to set off.

It sets sail on Monday, the 30th of September. So it just set off.

Only to return to port the same day with further issues. Supposedly, it will set sail for good this week, but it seems that people have been waiting in Belfast for around four months.
Yeah,

so once they once it sets sails, it's out. It's sailing for like a year.
No, it's not. It's going to sail for a week and then it'll stop somewhere else and it'll stop there for four months.

And this is how they extend the tour. I reckon this is how they save on.
But these are people. These are people that have invested in

residences on board forever. They will live on these cruise ships forever now.

Instead of of a retirement home or instead of

retirement homes. Use the four months to really pump out their so this is like a fucking trailer.
It's like a cheerleader. It's like

producing a residence in a factory, right? And then shipping it out where it's needed. It's like making houses in China and just shipping people off around the world.

It's like, where's the cheapest fuel? Where's the cheapest like port to stay in? They can just like bimble

you get the same uh trappings of a cruise ship though like your meals are all included you have to pay like extra for alcohol or whatever um there's activities on board that are kind of all included uh you can pay to do like excursions or whatever if you want to um or how do they handle a three-year tour yeah how do they handle post like there are some things that you still need to get physical copies of yeah they just say send it to like what is your address How do you post things to a cruise ship?

If anybody knows, let me know. Well, what is you live on this? What do you really need, though?

Like, what, um, like, maybe, I mean, most things like bank statements and stuff you are accessible online. You don't need to have them mailed anymore.
Um, it would only be physical health

stuff, but I, but that's another question as well. What happens if you get sick? They really don't.

No, but really sick. Like, I think they drop you off at a hospital.
Oh, right. Um, like at a a port that they're going to.

Or, yeah, where are you? We've just stopped in Belize.

Go find the hospital. But there are some things like wills, property stuff, and lots of legal stuff.
You still need physical copies.

Here's my speculation. This is not true.
I reckon the cruise ship will give you an address and that will be sent to their office. And then they're appealing.

They probably collect that in the ports that they're going to periodically.

Also, I suppose if you stop at a port in your the country that you currently have citizenship in,

you could, you know, if it if it stops there for like a week, then you could just you know get off, pick up your money.

Yeah, order some stuff, go to the doctor, do all this stuff. You reckon they have a satellite for internet on board.
I guess they do, they have, yeah, they must do.

They're probably using I bet it's a shit Wi-Fi. What ping are you going to get when you're playing dots on board a ship? Fuck that.
Yeah, but it's all it's all boomers, man.

they're not playing dotes on

oh god damn shame they're playing that it's that's the generation

they're in their scarroom grandma they're in their final years that's where she's doing her youtube videos from

all right this is uh this is from alex this is called tupperware at the local fair i love that

showed up at the state fair here in my hometown in the us and thought it was interesting to see this booth front and center after the recent news now it's not an important picture.

It's just a small picture of a Tupperware stand. So it's got all the Tupperware with a little Tupperware branding at the front.
And remember?

No. So we spoke about how Tupperware was going bust.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's gone bust.
Yeah. So, well, now hold on.

I was joking with my wife that I felt they need to buy something as it was the end of an era.

I was then approached by the lady who was at the stall who was all too happy to inform me of the difference between bankruptcy and going out of business.

She told me they were filing for bankruptcy to address mismanagement of finances in the past so they could make changes and bounce back stronger than ever. My wife and I laughed and went on our way.

Little did she know she'd lost a sale. But yeah, fair enough.
But the point is, I suppose they're restructuring. Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean Topperware's gone.

It just means that someone else will come in because it's a big brand. I think someone would.
I think, even

I get that there's a difference, but I think that when you're at that point, the bounce back is nearly impossible. Like, I think, I think

they're just trying to salvage the unsalvageable at this point.

I think it's doomed to.

Do you think it's just because of the rise of cheap alternatives, you know, cheap.

Yeah, maybe they just didn't keep up with the

technology as well. There's like some pretty good,

you know, there's some pretty, there's some other big brands that have sort of come in and taken over some of their space, if not all of their space. And Tupperware seem to not have really

done much. Are they still making the same shit? I'm going going to look up Tupperware.

Do you think also, like, there's this fear now of,

you know, how, like, okay,

plastics are in everything, obviously, and our brains are full of plastics, and everything we eat is full of plastics, and we plastic microwave meals and plastic and microwave.

And everything's, you're eating plasticable, plastic, plastic, right? Yeah, yeah. Do you think people are like starting to, I'm not saying everyone, but like middle-class,

upper-middle-class Cliftonite families from Bristol, you know, who who are, are they the kind of people who are like, oh, we don't use Tupperware anymore.

The plastics,

I'm worried about little Timmy getting plastics in his brain. You know, so I wrap everything in a naturally sourced fiber from the local forest, which me and my husband collect in the leaves.

We wrap everything in leaves.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, there's definitely people like that.

But on the flip side of that, there's people who just really don't give a fuck.

I don't know. I don't mind looking here at the Tupperware website, Upperware UK, and it's a great time to buy Tupperware.
It's all, everything is on sale. Yeah.

Their product list is only 10 items long. Yeah.

I mean, for example, the selected films. They did not diversify.
Do they still have that green bowl?

No, I don't see that.

This is a very limited selection.

The green bowl. This is a very limited selection.

Look, I'll get a picture for you. Just wait.
Fridge Smart, the three-piece starter kit, was 63 quid for three bits of Tupperware, now down to 20 quid.

The Bread Smart Junior, which is a thing for holding bread, they've knocked a tenner off that price. They've knocked 30 quid off the Bread Smart bundle.
There is a premium Eco bottle.

That's just a water bottle, 27 quid, and now down to 9. I think the pricing was a big problem because you could definitely get containers cheaper than this.
This is crazy.

This is an image of the Tupperware Vintage Fix and Mix Bowl, Green Bowl. Yeah, Yeah, look at that.
I think every family had one of these in the 80s.

Some iconic shit. This is

fucking good. We've got something very, very similar to that.
Flat on the bottom, and then, yeah,

it's slightly different to this, but it's that kind of foundation. Oh, I totally, I see what you mean.
Yes.

It's that opaque plastic with the rubber. Slightly rubbery, though, isn't it? Tupperware.
You know, it's got a kind of a little bit of a break. This is the one I remember.
It was like kind of.

We never had that one. This one is more like of a deeper, I don't know, slimline bowl or something.
It's kind of hard to explain. This is a vintage green Tupperware bowl.

I guess I want to know what plastic it is these days, you know?

I think it's just

the standard plastic. It's plastic.
It's plastic.

You know, plastic. Plastic is all the same, isn't it? It's all they talk about.
Plastic, baby. Bisphenol A and all these other things, right? It's all named so much.

This is Tupperware, a company that has 10 items on their product page and hasn't diversified since the 1980s. They use just plastic, whatever

the basic plastic is, that's the one they're using. I think they're just overpriced and fairly limited.

Sometimes you see a,

and I like this, right? Sometimes you see like a cyclist with some massive, there's like some cyclists in Bristol, like pulling these giant like wagons behind them.

And it's like emission-free deliveries. And I'm like, great, you know,

but at the same time, there's like

you know, people, the amount of, the amount of cars being made.

I saw like a container ship coming in with like a hundred, a hundred thousand cars on it, you know, like, oh my god, yeah, do you know what I mean?

I'm like, I'm like, this, maybe they were all electric cars. I don't know, just like, and I guess like it feels like, I don't know, there's such a lot of waste, right?

Like, I bought something from AliExpress the other day just to see what it see if I could get it. So we, we do like Games Night stuff, We do Lego.

We were looking at doing, because there's some weird Lego you can get, right? That's not official with like soldiers and stuff.

And so I wanted to buy some from AliExpress and I thought, fuck, you know, we'll give it a go. And so I ordered it.
And this was like two or three months ago, I ordered it. And it finally arrived.

And it's just, it cost me nothing. It cost me like three quid or something.
And it's all this fucking Lego. It'd be like 50 quids worth of Lego.

And because it was later than a month or whatever, they gave me my money back. And so I got all this Lego for free.

And I'm like, God, it's like, it's, it's just the amount of plastic it was wrapped in and plastic pollution. And it had to come all the way from China.
I just crazy. I felt like terrible about it.

I just wonder, like, the margins for these companies must be fucking razor thin. For some of this stuff, actually.
How can it be worth it? Exactly.

For them to manufacture this stuff, to then package it. to show what i mean and then for the depending

they're depending on volume but that's never getting

the volume on AliExpress. If you're selling the same thing as everyone else, how much are you making?

I mean, any of these companies that sell something that's like a quid, you think, how can it be? You've got to get the resources, you're going to turn them into whatever it is that I used to make it.

It doesn't seem worthy of it. You've got to have anything for one.
Yeah, like the molds, the labor, the transport costs, because they're going to have to take it to some depot.

The depot takes it to the port. The port loads it onto a ship.
The ship takes it to another. It's like all these logistics.
How much is anybody making off this stuff? Like, it's just bonkers. Yeah.

When you're like you said, when it's volume, I assume it scales and you're fine.

But if I order one small thing from one small company in China and it arrives here, how much are we really making here, folks? Is this surely? Yeah, but

you're not doing that, though, realistically.

You are ordering a lot of stuff at one. No, no, but I mean, if you're a retailer or whatever,

if you're buying all this stuff, the people who are making it,

you're paying to have it shipped to you, right? You're buying it from the manufacturer. And so

for them, if their cost to make something is like 5p per unit, but they're selling it to you for a pound, then they're making a ton of money because their involvement is limited, right?

All they do is make it. You buy it from them.

Right, right. But again, that's like if I'm a toy store or a chain of toy stores and I buy a shitload of this toy.
Yeah.

You buy a shitload, you buy a shitload of this toy for one pound, and then you ship it all over in one huge container, which is going to cost you far less.

And then you're distributing out all of that stuff to like your 300 stores, and you're selling them for like 10 pounds. I know.

You are not talking about scale. Right, but I'm not talking about scale.

Obviously, that's how that works. I'm talking about Lewis buying one small pack of Lego.

It's not like they waited until thousands of people in Britain had all bought the same kind of Lego and then did it. No, but if they're not.
I mean, maybe that's what the delay was.

I've kind of seen this shit before though. Like

you look on eBay or Etsy or Amazon even, and they'll be selling like one fucking minifigure on there for like four pound or whatever, right?

Or you look on any Amazon thing, like anything like, I think I talked about it on this podcast before, but like a dog grooming kit or whatever, right?

You look on there on Amazon and it'll be, there'll be 20 of different named ones, different colored ones.

They all look the fucking same, but they are they all called like, oh, Flimmy or Arimbus or whatever the fuck they're called thumbnails right and and they're all the same but then you go on an express and you realize that you can buy 50 of these for a pound right and they're just being upsold on amazon right

there's so much potential for that and there always has been um where people what do they call that but amazon there's an amazon drop shipping or something it's called i can't remember yeah it's something like that but basically the idea is that like um

the problem is is that it took three months to fucking arrive right it's not responsive it's like you throw in your orders on an express for nothing fucking roll the dice.

Sometimes you'll be given an absolute shitload of stock.

And then I guess you could just try and fucking shift it on Etsy and maybe double your money straight away in the first sale because, you know, it costs you fuck all. Yeah.

And you got a refund because it was delivered today. You didn't do that.
You bought it from China. You just did it.

I have seen a lot of shit on eBay or on Etsy and on these places, which is like, oh, look at this. Clearly, not actually Lego,

but it's the Lego set and it's like way fucking cheaper. Grego.
um, that's Greg Wallace's line of Lego.

And part of me doesn't want to buy

Grego.

Grego. Oh, man.

Comar unar susenas festivas, y lebino un idea of mars retorcidas, sarpiquar es papitas verde, constazon de pepinillo, y cones feos qualcetines, era mi retorsido motivo.

Así que siquires probar lo que crinch preparo ver McDonald's y veras lo que tremor, en new cringe mio, ya en McDonald's en McDonald's participants asagotar existencias. Para, pa, pa, pa.

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All right, next up, public toilets. Oh, Christ.
I was listening to the latest mailbag where you briefly mentioned public toilets disappearing unthought of the world.

We are such old men lamenting the decline of public toilets. Yes, but these are young people

yonder patrons supposed to be. It doesn't matter how old you are.
You need a toilet. And when they're all gone, you're going to be like, what the fuck? We live in a society and there's no toilets.

It's a toilet-free society. No, it's no one's friend.
It's like a cashless, a toilet society. We're moving towards a digital society.
If you want to take a shit, you have to do it digitally.

You have to do it on your phone.

An AliExpress toilet will be shipped to you.

Oh, God.

You say we're old people, drop shipping is good. But these are emails from young people bemoaning the state of things as well.

So I'm just saying with just the voice of the people, whatever you're age. Clearly.
And this is it.

I work for a local authority, which about six years ago had the idea to remove the public toilets from a district center as part of a revamp of the high street.

This was due to the relentless complaints about drug use. and rampant sexual encounters taking place there and not due to the maintenance cost.

Spring forward to today. And the black country is currently being flooded with government funding.
The black country, by the way, is like the Midlands, okay?

This part of the Midlands, Wolverhampton, all that area.

Currently being flooded with government funding as a result of cancelling HS2, the high-speed rail network. And they are now considering rebuilding these toilets because they've got all this money.

Okay, if they're going to rebuild the toilets, can I just say, don't build toilets like you did in the 1960s, where you had like a big men's toilet with cubicles and then a big women's toilet with cubicles.

Just build those little individual, they each have their own door and lock toilets, and they have a baby-changing thing in it. There's a toilet, there's a sink.

Build like four of those instead of like the big, stupid, open cubicle toilets. You know what I mean? Because

you won't cut down on the drug use, okay? People will go in there, lock themselves in, and do drugs. There's no avoiding that.
You might cut down some of the sexual encounters, and honestly, those.

well, I mean, maybe, maybe

the unwanted sexual encounters. If you have your own room with a door and a lock,

you know, if, you know, if you're going in there to do some sex or whatever with somebody, that has to be pre-planned to some extent, right? Between the two people.

I guess it cuts down on some of the other people.

It would cut down on some of the issues around that. And also, it's just better for everybody.

You need to have those, you know, the individual toilets with the door. And I don't know what they call them, but they're way better.

You see them a lot now at like newer places. Like, there's a trampoline park here

that we take our kids to, and all the toilets, there's about 10 of them, and they're all like that. They're just like the individual toilets.
They each have their own door with a lock.

It doesn't matter what gender you are, nothing. You go in if there's a free one, there's baby changing.
It's fucking perfect. Like, just build way more of those.
And everybody.

I think the only issue is with those is they're probably more expensive to build, is one thing. Second of all, you cut down on the volume.

So if you're in an area that you're expecting a lot of people to want to use the toilet, you might have a problem there where there's just less capacity.

Like you're taking up, if you think about, let's take Waterloo Station toilets, which is quite a large toilet area. You've got the gents on one side, ladies on the other.

They used to have a turnstile. You had to put 20p in.

I think they got rid of that.

But it's a lot of space, a lot of urinals, a lot of sinks and a lot of um cubicles so that's using that space if you converted that into a series of individual rooms like you're saying it would be lovely but i don't know how much you'd fit in there six maybe eight on each side yeah a lot less so i think from a public service perspective the government wants to have the cheapest because it's public money and most volume-friendly toilets.

I mean, the biggest problem is like, how do you police?

I get that they want the cheapest because it's public money, but man, they don't fucking skimp on their wages with public money.

Why can't we get the cheapest fucking MPs as well? Like, if, you know, if we're going to cut the toilets and stuff, too.

I find that

they're stupid.

They should only get paid if they build the toilets that I want.

I guess you could just vote them out. I think that's the answer.

They're like cockroaches, man. They never leave.
It doesn't even matter what they do. They're always hanging around.
Like

all these people that, you know, they're caught up in controversy and they're shamed and everything. And they're still getting jobs as consultants and all this shit.

And you just think, Jesus Christ, they never fuck off. Like, you can never fucking get rid of them.

Well, be ready to get annoyed because the emailer who wishes to remain anonymous because they want to keep their job.

I personally am am disgusted with the waste of public sector funds. This isn't isolated, as the proposal and the demo of the old ones, like

the demolition of the old ones, will probably have cost the council a quarter of a million pounds, if not more.

I think instead that we should look at other ways to address issues that bring different teams and organizations together instead of just thinking about what we can do in our department.

What are your thoughts? Obviously, you've heard our thoughts. Yeah.

But they then have some further interesting stories from councillors owning strip clubs. Yeah.

People stealing roads.

I'd love to hear more. Please do send in those stories.
I want to hear

strip clubs. Yeah.
Wow.

I want to hear about that. That's a new one for the books.
Yeah. You don't hear that very often.

This is a, this is an interesting one called Riyadh Fashion Week. Dear Triforce, I am a student at uni in London and also work part-time as a male model.

This is not as glamorous as it sounds, and the work is very infrequent, but I am extremely grateful and fortunate to be able to do this while at uni rather than work in a cafe or a pub.

I'll try and keep this short, but I wanted to let you know about a bizarre week I had last October.

Normally the way you get work is by going to a casting or audition and you will get an email asking if you're available for a job on a certain day.

If you get the job, you're told through a follow-up email. If you don't, you hear nothing.
Sure.

One such email I received was from my agent entitled Riyadh Fashion Week and detailed a potential week working in the Saudi capital. for the inaugural fashion week there.

When I saw this email, I laughed and thought nothing of it, as these usually go nowhere. But to my shock, a week later, I was told I had been confirmed and would be heading to the desert.

I felt pretty uneasy about the whole thing, even going as far as to tell my close friends, other than my partner and family, that I was instead in Paris, but ultimately decided to go ahead with the trip.

This was the craziest week of my life. Upon arrival at the airport in Riyadh, a man approached me telling me he was my driver.

Despite not knowing my name or me being told about him, I was convinced he was trying to abduct me.

It turns out he was actually my driver and me and a few dozen other boys were shipped off to our hotel.

The hotel is around a mile from the airport, but it would take us almost an hour to get there, as a city's highway roads mean you have to drive straight for 10 minutes to reach a junction to turn into a different road.

So it's all very straight roads, and you just can't deviate from them.

Hotel was all normal and everything. And here are some things that happened.
At the place the fashion show was happening, there were vending machines being restocked by a team of five people.

When you took a can, it was replaced in seconds.

Jeez.

Okay. All of the fashion brands were copies of Western ones with generic names like Noble and Fresh, who on their Instagram claim the name comes from the ideas of nobility and freshness.

This brand was a direct copy of Zara.

One of the looks they put me in had a headscarf, which the designer was anxiously adjusting as it had been put on my head in a way that looked, quote, too feminine. Right.

We saw Al Nasir, which is a football club, play, that's Ronaldo's team, for about £7.

with a ticket bought on the day. Everyone else there was just there to see Ronaldo and would scream as if he'd been shot whenever he was fairly tackled.

Being unable to drink or smoke, me and some guys I met would just eat McDonald's and smoke shisha all evening out of boredom.

And the city had no public transport, but a large monorail was under construction while we were there.

All in all, the people of Saudi Arabia are really great, but the place is bizarre with strange rules, systems, and ideas of how to appeal to Westerners. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Sure, any other stories you've got would be fantastic. What an interesting

that is such an interesting story and not something that you would hear every day. It's the kind of thing that you expect, though,

from the very high-end kind of Saudi

culture.

Going to because Ronaldo's playing for the Saudi

football team? Oh,

Al-Nasir, which is like one of the biggest football clubs in Saudi Arabia. They pay him.
Do you want to know how much he gets paid? Yes. Goodness.
Right. Here is highest.

paid athletes. Hold on a sec.
If you hear me. Okay, really? Is that

how you're going to find find this. This is, this is, um,

he, he earns $260 million a year. Well, I mean, what coincidentally is how much the MP who's in charge of the toilets at Waterloo Station was paid as well.

And he just picked the cheapest toilets that money could buy. Oh, so actually, sorry, this is the list of contracts.
So these are the current largest contracts in the world.

So that was how much he earned. This is the dollar value of these contracts.
Okay, so Shohei Otani, you've spoken about him before, phenomenal, probably the best baseball player ever to play the game.

His salary is worth $700,000. Sorry, $700 million.
Jesus. In the year.

But he only earns $2 million a year. But he's got to play like 160 games a year.
Yeah, but he's got a 10-year contract. He's the best ever.

He just had the best season. of all time.
He's in the middle of the year. Yeah, but he had a lot of practice.
He played like 160 games. Okay, I'm sure they're all just as good.

So, oddly enough, he actually only makes, I say, only $432,000 per game. $400,000.

$432,000 per game? Per game, because there's so many games. But that's a 10-year contract.

It doesn't really mature until the end of the contract when he will get paid annually a large sum. At the moment, he makes $2 million a year.

And then they're going to pay it all to him at the end of the contract. It's kind of a weird contract.
Anyway, so he could

buy every time he plays baseball, he could just straight up buy a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey. Easy.
Yeah, easy. And over the course of a year of 160 games,

that's a lot of flash. I mean, dude,

so his per game is 432,000. Ronaldo, his Al-Nasir contract is $536 million.
That's a two and a half year contract. So he earns $7 million per game.
Jeez.

Yeah. Pretty crazy.
That is crazy. Yeah.
Pretty crazy.

So apparently, Ronaldo's presence in Saudi Arabia has been cited as a cultural phenomenon setting the foundation for numerous top-level European league players to move to the Saudi pro league and generating mass exposure on Saudi football.

It's revolutionized Saudi Arabian football.

Where did you read that? I read it on Wikipedia.

So the thing is, I don't know anyone that watches Saudi football. But I know a lot of these big name players.
It's not interest, it's money.

Like Kareem Ben Zinmar, all these guys are all, they've had these stellar careers in Europe. Then they go there for a final payday.
Messi went to America.

Is he rounded out? Is he going to be? Yeah, he is. Is Messi there? He's still there.
He's still there playing for Miami. Oh, wow.

But yeah, it's

a huge payday. I mean, it dwarfs their earnings to that point.
Yeah. It's ridiculous.
Is it sustainable? Surely not. No, not really.
I think it's...

It's weird, though, like America, Saudi Ray, like these leagues,

they must be popular, somewhat popular in their home countries. I know the tickets are seven quid a pop according to that one.

Yeah, I still don't even really know how big

European football is in America, if at all, because it's oh, I think the Premier League is quite big. You think? Yeah, I mean, in terms of it, Jerry

managing Al Etifac. Yeah,

just money, isn't it? Wayne's

managing a club. I think it was an English club, though.
Derby County,

yeah. I think he's Plymouth now.
That sounds more like a hobby thing than a money thing.

I think he was getting paid the half a billion a year, like Ronald. No, not at Plymouth.
Oh, my God.

So here is one. This is dumbest injury sustained in bed.
Dumb. Okay, we're moving on.
Thank God. We're moving on.
This is fascinating. This is a fascinating world out there, isn't it, honestly?

God, there's so much happening.

I wanted to share my story of how I sustained an injury in bed. This was alone, I hesitate to ask, to mention.
I awoke one night and opened my eyes to discover that I was struggling to see.

I blinked repeatedly and strained to focus, but all I could see was a sort of white haze in front of my eyes.

I couldn't see anything in the room through the haze, and I immediately thought, oh my God, the room is full of smoke. There must be a fire.

Panic, I attempted to leap from the bed, only to smash my face directly into the wall, which, as it turns out, was two inches in front of me, and I had been staring directly into it the entire time.

I guess I was disoriented in my sleepy state and had not realized the direction I was facing.

Luckily, my injuries amounted to nothing more than a couple of bruises, but it was one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Dean, that is very dumb.
That's really dumb. But I think waking up,

your brain is not really in top gear yet. God, God, God, it's not.
So this morning,

I was woke up. I was convinced it was Saturday.
I got up. I like had a shower.
I made a cup of tea and a cup, and I got a bowl of cereal.

I'm interested to hear this, this, this Saturday routine.

You were convinced it was Saturday, and these are the things you did when you woke up. Yeah, I was like, I was just getting on with my day.
I was like, oh, what are we going to do today?

And then my partner was like, don't you have to go in today? And I was like, what? And she was like, yeah,

it's Friday. You said you had to be in at 10.
And I was like, oh, shit. And I think it was because I obviously, I think I dreamed.
And sometimes you do this.

I dreamed like the whole day. Yeah.

And

like,

in my subconsciously, I was just sure it was Saturday. I was like, I've done that day.
Yeah. It went fine.
It was like unmemorable. It was a unmemorable day.

Do you ever do that thing where you're dreaming, like you're sort of half awake and you're dreaming about just getting up and getting ready? Like I have some dreams sometimes.

The last dream before I wake up, my brain is obviously preparing to wake up. So in my dream, I'm getting out of bed.
I'm putting on my pajama bottoms. I'm going downstairs and making a cup of coffee.

saying seeing the kids off to school and then i actually wake up i'm like shit i've got to do that all again oh man i wake up every day to

dad i want to go downstairs now

dad i want to go downstairs now okay i'm i'm getting up just give me a minute i want to go downstairs now okay i'm getting up i want to go downstairs now this is my three-year-old yeah who will just keep asking until finally I get out of bed and take her downstairs.

Because she wants to go downstairs and watch Frozen. That's why.
Of course. She doesn't want to be stuck in her bed.
What, the movie, or is there a TV show? No, the movie.

There's been a bunch of like little mini spin-off things. But yeah, she just, we got Disney Plus.
She just watches the movie. She watched it like six times yesterday.
God. I know.
They are funny kids.

They will just do the same thing. They will do it.
Yeah, they will do.

It's very good.

We have people visiting.

We have relatives visiting. They're visiting from France.
They don't speak any English. They just only speak French, which is fine because I can speak French.

So I've been taking them around and stuff. And I brought them over yesterday because they wanted to see the kids and stuff.
They're going back in a couple of days.

And the three-year-old had one of these, like, you know, those old Fisher Price record players? Oh, hell yeah. But she got one of those.
And so my

eight-year-old daughter was being the DJ, putting the discs on. And the three-year-old was giving like a ballet show.
Not just any ballet show.

It went on for like five hours. But

they were loving loving it they were like bravo bravo clapping like she does one move like it's so funny oh it went on and on and on it was great god oh your life i remember when i was when i was about six or seven me and another kid on my road made a museum slash art gallery in my bedroom where we like did a load of drawings put them on the wall like a gallery and then arranged toys and objects as if they were little sculptures.

Yeah.

And then charged my parents and our neighbors who are uh two gay guys uh to come and look around our museum right and we we charged them money to do that did they actually pay they paid oh my god i tried to we tried to sell baseball cards uh

like at the end of our driveway when we were kids you know you ever do that you ever have like a just set up a table at the end of your driveway and try to sell your toys or baseball cards whatever everything yeah we had baseball cards but no good baseball cards like they were just doesn't matter it was

any baseball cards we could find. But some of them, like the ones that we thought were worth more money, we were charged for we were trying to sell baseball cards for like 20 bucks.

Nobody bought a single card. It was great.
We were out there like all day. We did like, obviously growing up in the States, I think certainly in America, but in New York especially, I found.

But I'm sure it's true all over. People love kids.
Like they're very, very sweet and sort of generous to kids. Yeah.
And And they'll talk to you a lot more than they did when I moved over to the UK.

I was obviously very chatty, annoyingly chatty person. And I was no different when I was a kid.
I'd talk to anybody. I talked to grown-ups all the time.
And in the States, they'll talk to you.

But over here, when I came over here, I would talk to people and they wouldn't say shit. It was, it was kind of a more kids were meant to be quieter.
That's certainly how it felt when over.

So I would do things like the art gallery. The thing is, like our neighbors, obviously being two gay guys, they didn't have any kids.

So they sort of looked after me and and my sister a lot and saw us as like their sort of nieces or nephews or whatever.

And it was, it was like we were very, very close with them. And so they spoiled us all the time.

Like anytime we set up a lemonade stand, they'd always buy lemonade and they'd give us way more than we were asking. But people coming home from work would stop and chat and buy lemonade.

And it was just, it was really, really sweet. Yeah.

I missed that from my childhood. I missed that a lot.
Yeah. But it's funny.
But doing those little shows and stuff like that,

your parents, you get sick of it because because you're used to this shit. You see this all the time.

Yeah, but the neighbors or people who don't have kids, to them, it's like a real treat to spend time with kids. It's nice to hear.

Yeah, like it's weird with kids because you like my kids are, I would, they're not shy, they're just like a bit reserved, you know, like you won't get a lot out of them immediately, but if you're around them for like a little while, they'll

slowly warm up to you and open up to you and stuff. So it was because

our three-year-old, especially, you know, at first is like, is quite, quite shy.

It was a bit of a treat for them because she just like all of a sudden opened up and was doing this whole routine.

She was like trying to explain. Like they couldn't understand a word she was saying, but she was like really fully explaining what she was doing.
Like, now I'm going to lift my leg.

Now I'm going to point my, like, just basically parroting everything she's been taught.

And she's like, got this little like baby like ballet class that she goes to it was really funny wow yeah so speaking of kids sounds adorable i've got an email here i this will be i i want to see if we can record the shortest possible answer to this email because i already know what you guys are going to say okay all right i'm going to say maybe no it's not that kind of thing

uh this this is uh from scott and the the topic is never been on holiday I am a single dad with three kids at home, a girl of 12, a girl of 10, a boy of six. We've never been on holiday before.

Yeah, fair enough. Do you lads have any suggestions for a holiday destination? I could take them.
You all seem to have traveled a lot. Figured you'd have some thoughts, blah, blah, blah.

It's a one-word answer. I know what you're going to say.
How old are the kids?

12, 10, 6.

Okay. Sips is going to say Disney.
I thought he would say Centre Parks. I would say either one of the two.
Honestly,

in terms of... taking your kids somewhere and not having to

bust a gut getting stressed out about everything, they're good shouts. Disney's obviously expensive, especially online.
Yeah, Disney is far more expensive, though, I will say. That's the thing.

Like, Centre Parks shouldn't be as expensive. Centre parks is cheap as chips.
It's compared to Disney, it is, yeah. There you go.
Yeah. All right.
Cartoonists' salaries, Lulu.

You mentioned, I think it was Matt that you talked about. Yes, the Daily Telegraph guy who does that.
Here you go. Long time listener, first time emailer.

On Triforce 293, you were discussing cartoonists and you expressed some skepticism about whether they make much money.

I thought it might be of interest to you to know that Matt, the Telegraph's long-standing cartoonist, is the best paid member of staff on their books.

I have this on good authority from a friend who has worked there for some time.

I figure it's just seniority. Like, Matt has been there forever, get a little pay rise every year, and all adds up.

Journalism, you must have a lot of people moving from paper to paper and all the rest of it.

And he's just sat there making bank for his cartoons. He's on about $650 a year according, but that was six years ago.
$650k a year. How does he live? Live off £650 pound a year?

How do you get off that in London?

650 is that's that's insane amounts. That's insane.
That can't be right. I'm in the wrong place.

Yeah, Jesus.

I should make little, I should make little double cartoons.

What is this voice? I love it. I don't know.

It's the angry,

angry man. Yeah.

Angry, incredulous man. Yes.

This is

the wrong business.

Oh, man. All right.
This is Lewis. This is directed at you.
I hope you take it

in the right way.

I'm ready.

It really made me laugh because it's an email with a follow-up email. All right.
Okay.

So, this is, and the follow-up email was sent almost exactly 24 hours after the original. Oh, wow.
That's the first one.

This is, hello. I think that my sister and Lewis would be compatible.
She's in her 30s. She works for Spin Master in Toronto, Canada as a senior project manager.
I would classify her as a nerd.

She has no idea who he is or that I am writing this. If Lewis would like to start a long-distance conversation, I will share her email with you.
I could also share her Instagram.

P.S., my boyfriend has a tiny penis and I have a gaping vagina. We make it work.
Elaine.

What's your immediate response to that, Liz?

Very kind and thoughtful offer, but I would, I, I just, I just don't think it's likely to work. You know, people are, people are very different.

And, you know, these days, I don't know, it's doomed to fail, right? This whole setup by your friend's sister. I don't think so.
I'm sorry.

But I'm assuming from... Stop from me.

I'm assuming from the second email they had uh they had actually thought about it and they were like do you know what i don't want my sister's friend anywhere near your uh you please ignore the previous email well uh the second the follow-up email is lewis is lady nipple shaming and i instantly changed my mind about my sister and him

so

offer retracted offer retracted i think this is when we were talking about nipples showing through clothing right and you were like the women shouldn't do it it's their fault it's disgusting Or something.

It's from episode 261. People are going to look.
No, I said, like, I said, I'm fine with it, but do they know?

No, that was not it. Well, that's how I, that's how I am now.

I think your memory is

mind people's, um, people's, you know, nudity or lack of nudity or whatever. My line, though, is definitely

60-year-old men who don't wear their shirts in Primark on a hot day.

That I wish didn't happen. Look, you know, most of the things I'm okay with.
You know, the Olympic guy who had his, who banged his boner on the

pole vault or whatever?

No.

No, it was. There was a guy who knocked the high jump pole off with his stick.
Oh, yeah. His dangled angle.
Yeah. It was not erect at the time, though.

I'm not a fan of people, the cyclists, wearing those really tight shorts that shows the outline of their dick and balls. Well, they have.
I just feel like...

Look, it's. I'm just saying.
It makes them more aerodynamic. It's hard riding a bike.

What do you want them to do? Wear those big baggy jeans like they used to wear in the 90s when they're on the bikes.

We're not going to wear it again because summer's over and I'm not going to have to deal with it for a while. Medieval people wore tights, but they wore a cod piece to conceal their genitals.

Why cod piece, mate? It's more aerodynamic. I don't look, I don't mind.
You could, I, you do what you want. I'm, I, I'm above it all now.
Um, okay, it's fine.

Okay.

Thank you for your blessing. Nipple shaving.

I'm not prudish about it, but also I'm not like, whoa, let me

listen

to the listen to the episode. God,

it's a very difficult path to tread, the whole

bringing this up. And I think most men have also worked out that they just don't talk about it.
People just assume when somebody says pepperoni nipples that it's a negative thing. It's not.
It's fine.

Exactly. Thank you, Sid.
It's positive. Yeah.
I mean, everybody loves pepperoni, right? Most.

This is a lot of people. I think there's a lot of that in life.
Certain times people just are like, do you know what? I just don't acknowledge this. I don't talk about it.

I don't get into a debate about it. I just sit there quietly.
And, you know, that way I can never be

misconstrued.

Yeah.

I should take my own advice more on that. That's fine.
Don't worry about it. This is from Regan.
Move on with this palette cleanser. A bit of context before the question.

My wife and I play a silly game when we watch TV. We regularly watch with subtitles, as do I, and we crack up whenever we see closed captions for audio that is just downright bizarre.

If you don't watch with subtitles, it is worth it just for the audio captions.

For example, in Stranger Things Alone, and these are always in square brackets, the audio description, tentacles rolling wetly.

Desiccated withering. Unsettling Russian folk music.
Another good one is whooshing.

Yeah, whooshing. That's meant to make sense to people.
So the one that me and me and Mrs. F do this as well with subtitles.
This is really funny. I thought we were the only ones that did this.

The one we always look for is scoffs. Scoffs.

You will see every show, it'll say scoffs. It's anytime anyone goes,

like that, scoffs. And

it'll have sometimes asterisks either side of the word scoffs.

So

we say that all the time, scoffs. And every time it pops up on the subtitles, no matter how intense the TV show is, we'll be like, scoffs.
Like, it's a stupid thing that we do.

I think lots of couples who watch tell where you have a stupid thing like that that you look out for like a horrible joke i think there's i i think like the more you have of this stuff sometimes the it definitely takes away from the experience right like it it's like it it makes a horror movie less scary to have the subtitles on for sure and um i mean i can imagine the audio description

actually because there's certain certain horror movies or suspense movies that i can't even watch because i'm too scared but maybe now putting the suspension they

they usually tee up the jump scares for you as well. It's like killer smashes through window.

Nice. Like Mobo.

This might be my inn to finally enjoy some

horror movies.

One of my favorite subtitles you see sometimes, because these are generally done, these are done by people.

And I know that when I was at Sky, you could go into the broadcast room and it was always ladies because for some reason I think they have typist qualifications because you have to be able to type like blindingly fast.

So they're watching the show live and doing the subtitles live on the news. I suppose you'd have to, yeah.
Yeah, of course. So they're doing it live.

If it's a pre-recorded show, they'll do it and then it just

works.

But with the live show, they have to be there

like subtitling live. It's incredible, eh? Yeah, it's really amazing.
I don't know if they now use computer because like I think YouTube does auto-generated subtitles, but it's often wrong. Yeah.

So So they do it and it's sort of, it queues up and then they'll, they'll sort of, you know, they'll send it and send it. So they're just constantly doing it.

If you watch BBC News Live and pop the subtitles on, there's some, someone's out there, like I said, normally a slightly older lady who's an amazing typist doing it live. But

sometimes I guess the people that do the movies either get lazy or it's done by computer because sometimes it just says speaks in foreign language. Yeah.
And I'm like, that's Spanish.

That's not foreign language.

It might have just been a placeholder to like come back to, but they forgot. Maybe.
It's just weird. But sometimes the subtitles are just fucking awful.
Yeah. Like they're wrong.
They're way wrong.

Or they skip some really vital word. You're like, that's not what he said.
And I can't imagine how that could speak for subtitles in a different language.

You definitely get a lot of that when it's like subtitles for

a translation.

Say you're watching an Italian movie, but and it's subtitling in English. You lose a lot, apparently, because the translation is sometimes difficult and

certain

key words in a delivery or whatever are missed out. And it's fine.

You wouldn't really notice the difference. But a lot of people, you'll see them commenting, saying, Oh,

the subtitles are really bad for this.

It didn't properly capture what was being said and stuff. It's interesting.

I know that in certain languages, like in Russian, there are a lot of things where one word means a lot, right?

Like, isn't it famously there's that one word that means the feeling of an autumn breeze on your face in the woods or something?

Like, there's all kinds of weird words that mean like one really long thing. I don't know how the fuck you put that in in subtitles.

So, I do, I wonder if sometimes they just put a word in italics and just use the native word and be like, we're not even going to try it.

I was reading something recently where there's like a, there's a term that's very, very commonly used in the UK, for example, that we would, you would say to anybody and they know exactly what you're talking about.

But it's one of of those kind of terms where it's just like, if you're not from the UK, and in this case is particularly in Russia, there was no direct translation for that.

It's not a theme or term that's ever used at all in Russia. So

for the translation of that,

it would be difficult, right? Like you'd have to...

You'd have to

find

some big workaround for it.

Happiness. What is this?

Joy. What is joy?

We do not have word for this.

I can't remember the specific example, but it was

a weird one. But it's the UK, I feel like, maybe not more so than other places, but there's definitely some odd sayings and terminology, right?

That like that for an outsider wouldn't make any fucking sense at all.

No, there's cultural too. I think that you always hear about these Japanese words that there's no, or or German words that

have no English translation. Yeah.
Because

it's like, I don't know, the, what is it? The, um,

but they try and they're good. They're good ideas, but I think they do, they do fit the culture.
In a sense, it's a little bit like how the Inuits have 20 different words for snow or whatever. Yeah.

Because that's. Their culture is more aware of that.
Isn't that bollocks? I don't know. Was that an urban myth? Was that one of the things that? I think it might be a single single race.

It raises like a scale of emotions. So there's like snow in the middle, and then it goes like fucking snow.
Fucking fucking fucking snow. A fucking fucking snow.
That's one other way of describing it.

Well, they've got 20 words for it. Just different volumes.

This is quite a sweet one, actually. And I do have a solution to this one.
This is called My Neighbor. This is from Rob.

Hello, Dads and Lulu. I have a neighbor in their 70s who is nearly always just outside their back door.
Whenever I go to leave the house, he will start a conversation with me.

We live in Victorian terraced houses, so our gardens are lacking privacy.

Even if he's not outside, if he spots me outside, he will soon be out making it look like it was a coincidence by taking a single milk bottle to the recycling room. He's just lonely.
I know. It's

it. I mean,

if you're not in the mood for it, it sucks for sure.

Well, so Rob says, I know he's probably just lonely, like he said, but I will be starting garden renovation soon, And I can't bear his watching and idle chatter while I'm trying to get things done.

Any advice? Rob, I think, look, like you said,

disguise yourself as a foreigner and claim that no Abla Ingless. No, I just think, look, like you said, this guy's just lonely,

maybe living on their own. or just looking for some conversation.
This person might be fascinating. Put up.
Dig into their life a little bit. Find out.
Put up. Might be a serial killer, though.
So

be careful. Put up some unnecessary scaffolding and then align it with tarp, making like a wall.

Make a text. The thing is, though, he will probably phone the council and report you.

I think what you could do is you could always like make the bring the conversation round to something that he'd be uncomfortable with.

This is the Lewis solution

to make it awkward.

You know, and that way he would actively try and avoid you. I think you're being too interesting is what I'm saying.

If you instead went with something like, Oh, I

love Nigel Farage's new

suit. Have you seen it? I've got a picture here, dude.
What if this guy's in his senses? He's got Nigel Farage.

He's a big supporter, yeah. He's good.
Well, that would backfire then. You got a new friend.

I've got loads of solutions.

I've got a solution. Come on to him.
No, you know what you hit on it. You say, oh, I'm building a rave club back here.

Just say,

tell him how sexy he's looking and ask him if you can get away. Yeah, I'm just waiting for the shipment of glow sticks to arrive.
And we're at Lube as well.

We're going to have foam sprayers, techno, you name it. People love it.

You're invited.

Bring your own ecstasy. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, you've either got to drive him away by really doing something that you know he wouldn't like. Like, like I said, like hit on him.

And maybe he's like homophobic and doesn't want to talk to you anymore. Problem solved.
Uh, or you uh get him involved, just be like,

get him to do some work for you. Hey, James.

Do you mind helping me dig this ditch? And then, when he starts, just be like, oh, you just got to go to the bathroom and then go inside and can do all the work.

You can't be anything too weird or bigoted, right? You don't want to appear to be an actual like asshole. You know, you just need to maybe, maybe just.

I'm just trying to think what would actually be. I mean, The nicest thing to do is just be polite and just accept that he's just lonely and wants someone to talk about it.

Put up with it. Be British about it.
Yeah. How long are you even out there for?

What are you building back here?

Have fun with some mud lab.

He might have fascinating stories.

Maybe say, what did you do during the war?

He's in his 70s. I know.
I know. He might have stories of his ancestors being in the war, though.

His mum and dad or something. He was was over gripping Fura for Army Group Center.

He could have been.

Can't judge. Oh, God.

What Rivers's tail?

Ask him what speck his nipples are.

What spec?

Oh, my God.

What's the spec on those nips you got, dude?

Checking them out. You got two and a half inches.

Pretty nice, sir. Pretty nice nipples.
Yeah, perky, perky ones. You want to touch mine? You want to compare yourself? Jesus Christ.

This last email is a pretty spicy one. Okay.
I wondered if you guys wanted to. Is it like a spicy story? Or like a story?

It's a spicy story. This is one of the spiciest ones.
Is this explicit? Is this going to get us banned? No,

it's not explicit.

It did make me laugh,

but it is quite... It's quite raunchy.
Right, okay.

I can deal with a bit of raunchy. That's fine.
As long as it doesn't get

taken off the air, you know? No, no, no. So this is, I put this at the end.
So if anyone doesn't want to hear a raunchy, slightly, moderately raunchy. How can you resist now? The buildup is just.

I know, but some people are prudish and they don't want to hear it. So it's like,

this will be the end of the podcast for you. Adieu.
There's no emails after this one. You might like to.
I'm going to get nipple shamers.

You can clear off now. If you're in the middle of the day.
Oh, no, no, no.

Why not leave right now? Okay. Cool.
Let's go. All right.
So this is the email for those of you who remain.

This is from Josh.

When I was at the start of my final year at Sixth Form, a guy in our year hosted a house party for about 100 people. Essentially, that's a big party.
Jesus. Yeah, the entirety of our year.

All the first years, and all the first years who just came up to Sixth Form.

For context, this guy was a bit of a dick and generally unliked, but had a massive house and his mum was out of town, or so we thought.

And it was a good excuse to meet all the new people coming to the school. The party was a good one.

Lots of groups mixing, everyone getting familiar, but it took an unbelievable turn about three to four hours in. Now, bear in mind, everyone here was 17 to 18.

So we started to notice older men popping up, guys in their 40s and the late 30s. Some of them just joined in the drinking games.
Others came in with drugs and were offering them around to us.

Oh, geez. But as the night went on, more and more of these guys start turning up.

After a while, word started to spread that the guy who was hosting's mum had come back home and she'd gone up to her bedroom with some of the guys who were in the house.

A little while later, one of my friends came down to me and looked completely gobsmacked. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, Josh, there is a queue of men at her bedroom door.

Obviously, I dropped everything and went to take a look and there it was.

As I walked up the stairs, I saw with my own eyes at least 12 men queuing up at this guy's mum's bedroom door while they were waiting to drop a parcel off at the post office, waiting for their turn to go into the room once the previous guy was finished.

I spoke to one of the guys and asked who he was and why he'd come to the party and he told me to mind my own fucking business.

Wow.

As I turned to leave and walk away from the line of guys, it took an even more absurd turn. Two more men were coming up the stairs carrying a third man in a wheelchair.

I almost burst trying to hold in my laughter as I waited at the top of the stairs for these guys to carry up their disabled friend to this sex conveyor belt.

Anyway, it's safe to say the rest of the night was spent by our entire school talking about this queue. Before you ask, his mum was not a sex worker.
She had a high-paying job in finance in London.

She clearly just wanted to destroy any credibility her son had built up hosting this party and then nuke it into oblivion by bringing home every man in the village. Oh my god.
Fucking that is hell.

That is some tale. If you stuck around, I hope that was worth it.
Fuck.

First of all, like, what the fuck with the queuing? The queue is fucking weird, man. It's very British.

I mean, very,

it's got a very dogging-y vibe. Luckily, she didn't do that in Europe because it would have been chaos up there.

That would not have happened in France. That would have been very disorganized.

Oh, my God.

That's so funny.

It's just like a family push it to the front. Sorry, sorry.
Oh, God.

Jesus Christ. Jeez.
Is that a power play by the mom? I mean, I know.

Oh,

that's one way of ruining your son's

house party. Or giving it, you know, giving him like, you know, memorable.

Making memorable. I mean, I think that maybe their schedules just clashed and she thought he was going to a party.
and was expecting her, you know, usual Saturday night hijinks with the queue.

I mean, from the sounds of it, this happens regularly. All these guys knew where to go.
Yeah.

There must be some WhatsApp group

they all coordinate or something. Who knows? Holy crap.
What a tale. Love that.
I love that they all mobilize so quickly. Like they just got a scent that

somebody was ready for action. And then, like, someone's mum's doing the

turn off. Let's go, lads.
Oh, God.

Someone asked me what a MILF was the other day. And I was like,

I'm not, I'm, how do you not know this? Yeah, you know, it's awkward. Well, like, it's a very awkward phrase to

I guess it's old, though. It was very like America, it was a very like teen comedy.
It was American Pie, right? That's where it originated.

That's where I had it. Stiffler's mom is a MILF man, dude.

Yeah,

it was from that. I'm sure it was from that.
Good lord. Well, what a story.
Thank you. I don't, what to end on.
Um, we can all just

leave with that in our minds. Thank you so much.
Thanks.

Yeah, God. All right, that's the mailbag.
Keep them coming. Yeah, keep them coming.

Oh, that's what she did. Just like that guy's mum.

All right. Send in the next one.
It's like a fucking dentist.

Well, more tales. Please don't try to top that one with, because I do get a lot of articles with letters where people write in

their accounts.

Don't send in those. Although someone sent me one about a really massive shit, so detailed and disgusting, I stopped reading it.
Please, please, please. Yeah, amazing.
Please know.

But yes, more really good stories. Josh, I think that's one of my favorite emails we've ever had.
So congrats on that. That was a very good one.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right. And that's us for this week.

More mailbaggery to come next week. Until then, take it easy.
All right. Thank you.
Bye-bye. Goodbye.