S3 EP2: Tom Basden

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Honey punches the votes law perfecto depends on familia.

Conoju las crucientes and verdar qual los niños les encantas.

Ademas delicos trosos de granola, nuces y fruta que'todos van adis brutal.

Honey punches de votes for allos.

Today alban benefit more.

Podcasts, there are millions of them.

Some might say too many.

I have one already.

I don't have any, because there are enough.

Politics, business, sport, you name it.

There's a podcast about it, and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.

But nobody is covering the most important topic of all.

Why is that?

Are they scared?

Too afraid of being censored by the man?

Possibly, but not us.

We're here to ask the only question that matters.

We'll try and say it at the same time, Max.

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

That's it.

All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday, nothing more.

Day before yesterday, Max?

Nope.

The greatest and most interesting day of your life.

Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it.

I'm Max Rushton and I'm David O'Doherty.

Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Welcome to Series 3, Episode Not Sure, of

What Did You Do Yesterday.

David O'Doherty's there.

Hey, David.

There it is.

There's the intro.

It's great to be back.

It's great to be back.

There is an issue, David, that we recorded maybe two or three episodes of this podcast before we realized we'd ended series two.

So they'll be in series three, but we won't have made a fanfare about it being series three.

But we're now very much, we're really like knee-deep deep in series three now i don't think the listeners are as caught up in the mechanics of what number it is

as you in particular i'm only interested in the listeners who are interested in the mechanics of series two to series three i did like two people did say oh no come back soon and then two people said we'll see you on Wednesday or whatever

and no one else gave a shit this week we've got a lovely episode.

Good episode, yeah.

I, uh, for the tape, as you always say, we have just recorded, even though no tape is involved at any possible.

For the tape, it has just finished, yeah.

We're speaking to Tom Basdin, who is the writer and star of the same film, The Tim Key from Recent Times, is in the Ballad of Wallace Island.

Tom is one of my old friends from stand-up comedy, who, it turns out, can do loads of other stuff.

He has

acting career.

Yeah, where he's been in, well, peep show,

but stuff like wrong man's and afterlife.

But I think it's as a writer he's probably been earning his crust now for the last 20 years.

He made plebs.

That was his show, Fresh Meat.

Did he write Ghosts or was he just in Ghosts?

He's incredible.

And he's written, yes, this beautiful film, The Ballad of Wallace Island.

He did Plebs, of course, with

my friend Sam and Tom Rosenthal.

Did Tom write that as well?

But, you know,

famously the PDF, The PDF, what did you do yesterday?

If you're new to the podcast, you should go back and find Tom's episode because it's quite extraordinary.

The PDF episode.

Tom, i think will also forever hold the unbreakable record of he got up earliest of any guest we've ever had by getting up at midnight yes that's true and also he holds a record for eating the most pineapple in someone else's podcast um

anyway this is tom's and yeah it's a really i

you just said tom meaning tom rose and time now i'm back to tom bastdon we're back to tom bastdon again great it's like you care about the mechanics of the podcast something you famously said you didn't care about two minutes

ago.

So, yeah, look, we did talk about

the Ballad of Wallace Island with the Tim Key episode.

The film is still brilliant.

Next week, when we have Kerry Mulligan on, we will still talk about the Battle of Wallace Island because it is a brilliant movie.

This is what Tom Basden did yesterday.

Tom Basdan, welcome.

Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Thank you for having me.

I know, Max, you booked Tom as you book most of the guests, but Tom is in my phone, and I have been communicating with him recently.

And for some reason, his name on my phone is Fucky McBasden.

And I think you must have put it in there, though.

Well, of course I didn't.

Well,

like,

it strikes me you might be trying to get across more of a bad boy vibe.

Right, okay.

And you think the way that I'd do that is just take people's phones when they're not looking and change your own name on their profile?

Yeah, I don't remember doing that.

It's possible.

It's possible.

I think that it will have come from that weekend we spent together when I was throwing up because you fed me that toxic burger in Dublin.

So probably while I was doing that, you were just a bit bored and you thought you should just have a play with the names of the phone.

It was a horny time.

Yeah.

What time did you wake up yesterday?

Okay, so yeah, yesterday morning I woke up at 7.15, I'd say.

It's not exact because the radio comes on at 7.10 and then that creeps into my dreams for a bit.

So I have a bit of the last bit of my dreams is always kind of today program flavored.

I just get a bit of Amorajan talking about, you know, Ukraine or something, and then my dreams take a sort of sharp left turn into that.

And then my brain, I go, no, that's the radio.

It's time to wake up.

It's not a perfect system, but it's, it's slightly, I think it's slightly better than the alarm.

I don't like a harsh alarm, you know, the equivalent of sort of being shaken awake.

I don't like that, yeah.

And none of the alarms are good.

You could scroll through every alarm, and none of them are.

There's no, they haven't found one

because the purpose they serve isn't good.

That's true.

Yeah, that's a good thing.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like they're being a good gun.

It's like they, if it's going to do that job, it's going to be quite abrasive, isn't it?

Because I'm a very high-performance guy.

So when my alarm goes off, I'm like, yes, love it.

And I high-five the phone before jumping into my cold plunge pool.

Do you?

We're very different in that respect then.

The other thing I should say, though, I slept very badly on Sunday night because I started watching the new Adam Curtis series on Sunday night.

And that, so my dreams are already really weird.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then, so how long do you lie in bed listening to Radio 4?

Well, not long because my daughter will be in, usually both kids are in the bed but often it's just um our daughter and she will then we we made the mistake in about i think maybe around sort of october time of trying to explain to her that it's it's only morning when it gets light

because then the daytime daylight hours were kind of roughly aligned with when we should be getting out of bed and she's stuck with this and now we're in june so if it's like 4 a.m and it's bright sunset she runs in going it's morning time it's morning time so we've been slightly um fucked by our own, our own sort of you know, lack of foresight there.

So, she's often awake anyway, and in need of attention and the toilet and stuff, right?

The kids like Radio 4 as well, I presume.

The kids, um, yeah, they like Nick Robinson a lot, yeah, so they're hoping for Robbo.

It's getting wet, yeah, not fucking wet, if it's wet,

then it's a bad day, it's a bad day in the household if it's if it's wet, but yeah, do your children call you fucking McBasden?

No, they call me

Dad.

I mean, what I really like is the little one, who's three, calls me dad rather than daddy.

And I'm really proud of her for that because I feel like it's just a bit less pathetic.

But

my son's experimented with calling me by my first name, and I don't like that.

Sometimes my three-year-old, Ian Brushton, he calls me by my full name.

Uh, wow, Christian name and

what, like he's telling you off, or just um

just like let me ask you a question.

I'm not sure why, yeah.

So, I, there's no, there's no sort of, there's no moment where he would have, I don't know why he would have ever even got that, but I think Jamie has sort of said that's my full name.

So sometimes he will say that.

Sometimes he'll just say, I don't want to talk to you, Dadda.

Go away, like first thing, like straight off the bat.

So

yeah, maybe he's listening to you on the radio on talk sport, whatever.

Max Rushton to taking you through to the midnight hour.

That's your show, right?

Basically, no, but like, sometimes they do the man who does the they've got someone with a very deep voice, I probably finchy from the office to do the kind of you know, and sometimes it says it's just all like alliterative stuff, it'll just go, you know, occasional opinion,

you know,

angular accuracy.

And like, we'll come on air going, I don't know what, what is that, what are we meant to do with that?

High octane speculation was good.

So hang on.

Sorry, this is, we're about to talk to Tom about his day.

Just in the middle of nothing on Talksport, a man says, high octane speculation.

No, so the news will finish and then they'll just go, high octane speculation.

It's the warm-up with Max Rushton and Charlie Baker or Barry Gray.

Come on air, which is some scar music going, I don't understand what that.

I think you're not meant to really analyse what the man has yelled, but sometimes you think it'd be great if that man had listened to it.

But the man, the man isn't in the studio sitting next to you.

Like live continuity.

Hang on, Derek.

Just yelling.

Once, and we will get to your day.

Once it was the final of the US Open tennis, and for some reason, the bosses had got former British tennis player Miles McLagan, because we didn't have the rights, to sit in the studio with me and Barry Lane to watch it just there.

Sort of came on there, going, Barry, what do you think of Miles McLagan?

He's like, I don't know the guy.

I was like, well, he's just there.

And we just had to cross to him occasionally.

It was an odd thing to

put into the studio, but you know, yeah, you just went with it.

Your life would be easier if you could hear the narration.

You know, like, meanwhile, David's made another one of his characteristic balls-ups.

You know, that would, like it was sort of, you know, the wonder years.

I do think about the wonder years a lot, which is, and it was the last time I would ever say this.

Would you prefer that kind of wistful, like nostalgic narration or like a toilet time for David?

What would you prefer?

I think I would prefer if I could hear the incidental music.

Right.

Because then, you know, you'd hear the Jaws type, you know, John Williams,

and you'd know something awful was about to happen then.

Okay, so you'd rather just have the implication rather than like,

this was the point when David died kind of thing.

You wouldn't like that as you're walking down the street.

Yeah.

And it would be the last time he looked at a bus.

You'd think, this is not going to be good.

Right, so we're in bed.

How long are we in bed for, Tom?

Oh, no, not long.

Yeah, but because my daughter's such a difficult sleeper,

and my wife usually deals with most of it at night, she'll usually

just cling on to as much sleep as she can.

I'll get up, get my son up, and just sort of try and get the day going, get it on track.

You know, it's not, I'll be honest, yesterday was very boring from this point of view.

Just like get them up, get them eating granola.

My son had some homework to do, then we did piano practice.

What?

You know, it's that kind of thing.

Yeah.

But like really squeezing it in.

We're talking like 10 minutes, maybe.

Okay, so we can definitely get an hour out of this 10 minutes.

The granola itself, are you going, what level are we at?

Is it sort of Waitrose Own or is it one of those nice joints?

Well, it's a good, it's a, it's a, it's a better question than it sounds because

we've got a lot of um artisanal sort of bakery cafes near us that sell their own granola

and it's like it's honestly like 20 pounds a bag it's it's It may as well be sort of gold flakes or something.

And I have bought that occasionally because obviously it feels like it's going to be better and more healthy, I suppose.

And it's disgusting and the kids won't eat it.

So we now have gone back to Jordan's,

the country crisp, is it crispy crunchy?

I don't know.

You can get your continuity announcer to advertise that.

And I think my wife's not loving that.

I think there's there's the, you know, she's quite into the sort of healthy food movement, the sort of Van Tallican brothers don't eat things out of packets with 400 ingredients movement.

But it's the only thing that my kids will actually, you know, put up with.

So I don't really know what to do.

Whereas you come down in your honey monster costume

and just start loafing into a whole box of...

I just dig my face into a big box of caster sugar.

Well, actually, do you know what I do?

And I did do this yesterday and I did it today, is I get at some point in the morning, I'll go outside with a bowl and I'll pick some raspberries because we've got a really prolific raspberry plant.

What an interesting thing is.

It's pretty good, isn't it?

Yeah, it's not bad.

Really?

We've got an absolutely tiny garden, but this raspberry plant doesn't seem to know about that.

Like it doesn't realize it's not in the countryside.

So it's just doing incredible work for us.

And

yeah, I think we're probably getting,

you know, my son's very keen to work it out, but probably about like six pounds worth of raspberries a day in monetary value.

Yeah, they are expensive.

Max, beware of anyone that says we just have a tiny garden and then talks about raspberries.

Like there's probably a stream that runs through it that the whole family gets into and just

water.

And a water wheel that's got

it well, otherwise the stream would go brackish.

Yeah.

But public right of way, of course, on some of the landscape.

But that's annoying.

That is annoying.

And we try and seal it up, but they aren't very persistent, those people.

But you allow fox hunting.

So that's good.

No, we insist upon fox hunting.

What homework, Tom, are we doing here?

This is, so what's this?

He's year three.

It's like, I'll tell you what it is.

It's inverted commas around dialogue.

That's what it is.

It's punctuation.

But I had quite an interesting conversation with one of the dads at the school gates a few weeks ago, and he was complaining about the spellings that they're learning and the punctuation that they're learning.

And he said, Because, you know, they're never going to need it.

And I was like, what do you mean?

He's like, well, they're never going to write anything down as adults.

It's not a good way to approach it, I feel.

Education.

No, it's not, but it's quite chilling, though, isn't it?

That you're kind of doing this stuff with your kids as though it's 1995 and learning these things that we learn.

And you're like, what?

Are they going to, is that going to be a thing?

Are they going to have to remember inverted commas?

Get them a park a pen and, you know, and do some proper nib work.

Yeah, I think nib work's on the way out.

I think it was on the way out when we were kids.

So

look, hardly a day goes by when I don't need to do calligraphy.

Someone will be like, can you draw up a legal document in the medieval style?

Well, it's interesting you say that.

I'm not often asked for an autograph, but when I have to give one, it's so shit.

My signature's so terrible that I kind of hand it over so apologetically that I'm really embarrassed that it's that bad.

And I wish I did have better handwriting to do something that's more with a flourish.

I'd have a lot of criticisms of Trump.

I'd like to make that clear.

But it's a powerful signature.

Have you seen it?

It is.

I bet he practiced that for about 18 months straight.

Yes.

It looks like he's done it with a thick, you know, one of those texture pens you get high off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It just goes up and down like he's coloring in a box or something.

Like a sort of like a Geiger counter yeah exactly

this is this is how MAGA gets you David this is the gateway

few weeks why why were you um why were you asking him for an autograph David good point

what's the piano piece uh okay yeah yeah okay so at the moment he's he's doing a thing called tocatina by a guy whose name I can't pronounce and it's really really um like fiddly and it sort of goes

so there's a kind of there's a slight air of madness about the house at breakfast time that this is our soundtrack to like

getting everyone ready to get out of the house.

It does feel a bit like being inside a beehive.

It's the incidental music to your family, very much, very much so.

That's yeah, his teacher just sensed the music that he needed to provide us to make sense of our morning.

Do you know what I'm going to say here?

What's the point in learning that?

I mean, he's never going to use it.

Just he'd be like, AI, write me a slightly Spanish-y-sounding classical piece.

You think he's not going to be entertaining thousands of people at the Edinburgh Festival with his Casio keyboard when he's older, for example?

If this piece of shit goes near the festival with a small keyboard,

we'll run him and fuckie McMaster out of town.

I hope for your sake, as much as his, that you're doing something else, though, when you're like 75.

That you've graduated.

I also think that, I also think, with all the fears of AI, if all of the AI just goes into replacing David's performing, then like

it'll be bad for David.

I understand that, but it might be good for the

world if it really lasers in on comedians with tiny keyboards.

But yeah, I guess I don't know a lot about it, but my understanding is that they're not just targeting David, but it's like it's quite general,

right?

You know more than me, clearly.

See, I don't, listen to radio four in the morning so that's my problem

i wish i was smart enough to be scared by ai because everything i hear i'm just like oh yeah that'd be that'll be brilliant now i know

i know there's bad stuff coming down the line but the idea of you know ordering a

car to your house that no one's driving.

I know that's not technically AI, but it sort of is.

Look, all modern things are connected.

Thank you.

Yeah, good summary.

I think you should go on Radio 4 with that kind of insight.

Let's talk to our technology correspondent, David O'Donoghery.

What you should do, David, is don't tell anybody that's what you've done, right?

So just in about a year, disappear for a year and come back as Radio 4's technology correspondent.

But the people who listen to Radio 4 are so old, with the exception of Tom Basdin, it could be like, time may be up for your fax machines.

It'll be stuff like that.

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Okay, so we've done all the, we've done a, we've done a good work with the breakfast homework,

that's very much, but it's all against the clock stuff.

It's kind of, you know, just

getting the necessaries done.

Um, and then, um, and then when they go to school, and my daughter's child miner comes to take her out on a Monday, and then it's just quite peaceful.

And I can do a bit of admin.

I stayed at home yesterday, and I've just dealt with a few emails and stuff.

Um, and I had to stay in.

I had to, I couldn't, I usually leave the house to work, but I had to stay in because Yanni was coming at 11, who is a sort of mechanic body shop guy who was returning the car after my wife had reversed into the front door and

basically

knocked the front door and and but bear in mind she was in the she the car was was stationary parked in the drive at the start of the maneuver good she's yeah so it's it's sort of the classic thing you think you only see in films of people uh looking forward and then reversing and she she did that did she go right through your house into the back garden and kept going and suddenly raspberries were all over it

Then she went through a chicken coop and loads of feathers were stuck to and eggs were stuck to the raspberries.

Yeah, all of that.

It was basically a bit like that scene in Bugsy Malone where they go

back through a barn,

covered in custard pies.

Can I just ask a question about the car

that Mrs.

Spazden has reversed into the front door?

Is it a BPBP?

Because like my car, and famously, I did an excellent reverse park recently, which did some good numbers on Instagram.

It's a BPBP.

So like, you're not like...

I'm in Australia.

It's the most popular.

After the Ute, everyone's driving a BPP.

Now, what I mean is, if I was to start reversing to my front door, the car would start beeping at me to tell me to stop doing that.

Surely your car has got BPBPs.

Oh, I see what you mean.

Yes, of course the car's got BPBPs, but I think...

I think my wife just disregarded them.

Right.

But like, I think, to be fair, it happened very quickly.

The other thing I should say about the car in her defense is it's got one of those, and I think it's honestly called a lozenge rather than a gearstick.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like, it's like a sort of little,

like, you know, sort of rectangular piece of plastic that's really, it's, it's small, it's like half the size of a credit card in like circumference.

And then you, you, like, push it forward to go forward and push it back to go back.

And a lot of a lot of cars now seem to have these.

And so it's quite easy to just find you've pushed it the wrong way.

Sounds like the DeLorean to me.

It sounds like the most futuristic car.

Well, it's a Skoda Reniac, if you want to get specific.

How's Yanni done with the repanelling?

Oh, fantastic.

Absolutely brilliant.

I mean, I didn't think it would be possible.

And he's done an incredible job.

What came off worse,

the car or the front door?

Well, so bear in mind that there are about 25 bricks that were knocked out as well en route.

It was a really impressive thing.

I mean, what was quite interesting is that on the night that it happened, I was about to go into the, I was about two minutes away from going in to see something in the theater, and I get a call from my wife.

And she's so distraught and all over the place, I honestly thought someone had died.

That was my first thought.

So I raced back and then got the measure of what had happened.

And I was calling around, and all of my phone calls with these tradesmen around North London just basically involved them just laughing as I was explaining what had happened.

They would just be laughing

and they'd laugh in a way that it would become a bit sexist and you go,

but like, but

genuinely,

can you actually come and fix this?

And like, no, no, no, no, no.

So, I've just had quite a few phone calls like that.

And then eventually, a guy called Jeff came and he put, he, he managed to get the door back attached to the bottom.

Was it Jeff Capes?

It was Jeff Capes.

Yeah, it was Jeff Capes.

And he, as famous, he's very strong.

He is, yeah.

And all the jeffs.

You're the right Jeff.

That's right.

No tools at all.

Just his bare hands.

Just hammering nails in with his fists.

Well, okay, so Yanni comes over.

Yeah.

The panels look great.

Is it a catch-in-hand job, or do we, is it a.

He can't say that, do we?

I mean, this is terrible.

Yeah, you can't do that, mate.

And also, and for the record, it wasn't.

It wasn't.

I've actually, actually, we are.

This podcast is brought to you by the HMRC.

That's right.

For all of our friends that are up in Cumbernauld, it was very much invoiced and

VAT payable.

Question, has Yanni seen the ballad of Wallace Island?

Or do you think maybe he has seen it and he was playing it cool that he was dropping a car back to one of the stars of it?

I mean, if he has seen it, he was playing it so cool.

I suspect he hasn't seen it.

But you've got to bear in mind, Yanni is he's a he's a mechanic who used to run a car wash and before that did close protection for the special forces.

So I don't know that he's definitely our target demographic for the Battle of the Royal System.

Is that a natural career progression?

I guess it is.

When you're in the Special Forces, you're thinking,

if I keep doing this, well, I'll get to the car wash.

Is that

you've got to think about those skills and then sort of peacetime in the UK,

how you're applying your special forces skills because you're not going to get paid to go around like assassinating you know oil magnates.

I don't know, I don't know what they do, but you might you will get paid to fix um you know cars that have been that have been pranged by idiots.

Yes, good point.

Okay, so Yanni leaves, and you're free at home still.

What's interruption?

Oh, yes, David.

So, we spoke to co-star of the Ballad of Wallace Island, uh, Tim Cheese, recently on on this podcast, he was

checking the internet a lot to see how it's doing.

He compared himself to a Emperor Penguin, and the film was the egg between his little feet.

Are you tempted to do that, or are you more laissez-faire about the whole thing?

I think I'm a bit more, I think in parenting style,

to use the sort of the Attenborough, you know, obvious equivalent.

I think I'm maybe a bit more like

an eagle or something.

One of those ones where the birds nest in the cliff tops and then they come back every few hours to sort of like be sick into the mouth of the baby.

Yes.

And then otherwise they're doing their own thing.

So I'll spend a few hours not thinking about it and then I'll come back and I'll just vomit all over the film.

I don't furiously repost anything about the film and then I'll go off for a few hours and do something else.

That's a very good analogy.

Okay, so Yanni Lees, what are we doing now?

Well, this is a bit of a, can I, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention this because technically it's something that happened on Saturday, but the reason I bring it up is because it's on the kitchen table where I'm working.

Yeah.

I then have to move my wife's recent correspondence from

Ireland, where she's just been granted, I guess, not awarded, her Irish passport.

Welcome.

Okay.

Welcome.

I thought you'd like that.

Yeah.

Is it from David?

Is it from Terry Woker?

It is.

Well, there's a very elaborate signature, so I assume it's David.

It's either David of Trump.

Welcome, Mr.

and Mrs.

Fucky McMasden.

Okay,

Cade Mila Fulture.

Wow.

It's been a long certain project.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that arrived, that actually arrived on Saturday, but it's still currently on the desk where I work.

Well, can I just say, not after every meal do you have to purge hair?

do you puke your guts up i'm not referring to the film thing i'm referring to the last time you were in ireland where aha yeah that's right although there is a strong vomit theme isn't there in this podcast in this podcast and my life

actually no one's been sick yet on this if you i mean don't tell us yet but if you were at some point yesterday it'd be really great just to tick off on the

of you know bodily functions I uh it's possible I did I ate one of my raspberries one of my wild raspberries this morning uh after eating it I've discovered there was a spider in the bowl.

Okay.

And so that obviously gave me, you know, pause.

That's fine.

I don't think that's...

I don't think you should be worried about that at all.

Okay.

All right.

Is that how the English Spider-Man became Spider-Man?

It's his own clear version.

Yeah.

And what does he do?

He just hangs about in the bath and then he's sort of people have to put him under a big glass and get rid of him.

That's Daddy Longlegs, longlegs man which was one of the marvel universe's least successful characters he's just

on the roof of the bathroom mildly scaring like maybe a third of the population or just annoying them more than anything yeah um okay so you you move aside the the good news that you're back in the eu the bazdini

the bazdans the bazdans are partly back in the we've got one foot in the eu now excellent excellent yeah which is very exciting And then I'll just, I mean, to be honest, I think on a day like yesterday, I knew I wouldn't have like a full run of it work-wise, which is kind of what I often need to write, is I need to know I've got like a good four hours I can write in.

Otherwise, just psychologically, I sort of convince myself it's not worth it, which is a terrible attitude, but that's often what I do.

And then I listened to Tim Keys, What did you do yesterday?

Oh, okay.

What did you make of what did you make of it as a just as a podcast format?

The first thing was, I didn't realize that he

had was was i think i knew he was doing your podcast i didn't realize it was so close to mine to be the one directly before yeah and my first thought was you guys are crazy why are you doing this because you're going to have like it's like having you know uh two people talking about the same film on different episodes of graham norton we love the ballad of wallace and grammar island on this podcast that's great but your listeners must surely get get very frustrated by this No, but we love the movie, but we're not putting out this episode until 2034.

Oh, fine.

Okay, well, that all makes sense.

Don't worry.

Well, the AI stuff will not update it at all.

What you should know is that before this one goes out, we're talking to the woman in the shop, the guy who rode the boat,

all of the other small cows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, good.

Okay, good.

So

am I right in thinking that series three of What Did You Do Yesterday is entirely Wallace Island themed?

That was the start of Series 3, wasn't it?

Yeah, we're deep in Series 3.

It is, yeah.

It is.

We did both really separately enjoy the film.

Congratulations.

Thanks, Greg.

That actually sounded sarcastic, but it was.

Well, I listened to Tim's, and you didn't sound sarcastic on his one.

So, you know, I'll take that.

I'll remember your tone of voice on that one.

What has changed since then is that we have expanded the Wallace Island cinematic universe.

Yeah.

And we've, with the help of AI, written feature films about all of the most minor characters.

I love it.

So where are we in the day?

What time is this?

Yeah, so

Yanni came around at 11 and then I did, and then I was sort of dealing with him for a bit, and then I was doing some admin.

And then, oh, I know why I was listening to Tim's episode because I was walking to the barber's.

And I decided yesterday was the day to have a haircut.

And I've been feeling it for a while.

It wasn't specifically because I wanted to have something to say when talking to you guys that wasn't just about like eating granola in the morning.

So I walked to the barbers and thank goodness they were open on a Monday because a lot of them aren't.

Yeah.

And now, how regular are you?

Every five weeks?

What would you say?

No, honestly, I'm a, I'm a, I'm kind of once a year.

I like, I'm all.

But the thing is, I've just, in the last,

like in recent times, I've just relied on different acting jobs to get a free haircut and

then not really think about my hair in the intervening time.

And I haven't got anything coming up because I look at the, I haven't got an acting job on the horizon.

I sort of thought I need to actually deal with this myself, or I could, like, ironically, I could, my hair could get so long, I'm ruling myself out of loads of parts.

Right.

But I'm ruling yourself into sort of Lord of the Rings-based things.

Yeah, life of Jesus type thing.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I was the same.

I was at, I was at Channel 9 in Australia for three years, free haircuts.

I look so sharp now.

It's just everywhere.

Cause I, I, you know, I just Max, on your show, on that show you were doing in Australia, it would always say, Max is dressed by Dunbar menswear or whatever.

Did you get to, after that show ended, did you get to steal any of those?

No, no, I didn't.

None of them.

When Channel 9 got rid of me, I knew they had.

So I literally took bags of clothes with me.

During the soccer and glory years, they were all mine.

And then I'd have like monthly giveaways with my friends for, you know, Lyle and Scott polo shirts.

But now I'm very much in the same blue.

If we ever put any video clips out, you'll notice I'm wearing the same blue.

And are your friends, are they still your friends?

Or do you think that was all to do with the times?

We're still in touch.

Okay.

It's less and less frequent.

It is true.

Some of them like,

yes, you can come, but...

Do you have a low load of

vengeance?

You're just going to buy them yourself now.

You always know Max's friends because they're dressed in the most 2006 t-shirts.

Like, I like big butts and I cannot lie.

And I said, well, we wouldn't really wear that t-shirt anymore these days.

Well, you might in Australia.

Yeah.

Oh, you're absolutely right.

I just have a t-shirt saying, this hasn't aged well.

That's what I have.

Yeah.

Okay, so you're at the barber's.

Is it, you know, sit down and just wait for a seat?

Can you go straight in or do you have to do a bit of waiting?

Oh, this is very much.

I don't know how busy this barber ever gets, but I've never had to wait.

Okay.

She's always.

I was the only one.

Well, it was me and her.

It's very much table for one.

And she's just on her phone.

I think she knows me by now.

I've been there a few times.

She acts like she does.

She might not remember me.

Right.

But you're not her only customer in the sense that when you arrive, she's sort of covered in dust from a year ago.

I've got to be honest, it's not impossible that I'm her only customer.

But

the only other thing to say is there is a photo of Damian Lewis on the wall.

He must have been a customer as well at one point.

Was the photo of Damian Lewis him in the barbers or is it just

like a sort of a photo of Mao in the Chinese family's home in 1960?

Well, a lot of barbers, I noticed, have your classic rat pack Frank Sinatra picture.

There's no way that they ever, or Muhammad Ali, none of them were ever in my local barbershop as well as.

Yes, yes.

I think

I'm pretty sure Damien Lewis was in the barbershop, or what's happened is some kind of green screen, and she's made it look like her shop.

I don't know.

I'm pretty sure.

I mean, I know that he's local, so I'm pretty sure that

with respect.

Were I to do the green screen thing, I might have picked a bigger star than Damian Lewis.

Damian Lewis is really clever.

It's really clever, Lewis, isn't it?

Because you wouldn't make up Damian Lewis.

Whereas if you put Mandela there, you'd be like, I'm not sure.

Mandela.

Mandela got a skin fade.

Like a perfect fate.

Mandela just comes in wanting the Decker Rice Turkish fade.

Okay, Baston,

what do you say when you order the haircut?

She's like,

what do we want today?

Well, I'm saying grade six on the sides and then just quite a lot off the top.

It's a very, look, it's a very boring haircut that I've basically had since I think I was about six and I'm not changing it now.

The thing that happened this time that has never happened before

and slightly threw me, but I think on balance, I'm fine with it, is that at the end, when I thought it was over, I went to stand up to her.

No, no, no.

And she sat me back down and then she

trimmed my eyebrows.

Oh, okay.

Have you had that?

Yeah.

Could you come forward to the camera so we can have a look at them?

Well, I've never really talked to you before, so I don't know what your eyebrows were like.

They're not going to be, they're going to look quite normal now because I've just had them done.

But I mean, I didn't think they were long.

Did you look like Norman Lamont yesterday?

It was very Lamont, Dennis Healy.

I basically look like any number of Chancellors.

They were big, bushy rainbows yesterday.

Whereas

today, well, they've been trimmed.

But I've never had that done before.

And I sort of felt a bit like, oh, she obviously sees me as sort of an older man.

You know what I mean?

You wouldn't do that to like a 25-year-old.

Just go, let me just check your nose hair and your eyebrows and your ears.

I'm very manly.

Yeah, you're quite hurtsuit, David.

Is it all coming out of your ears and your nose?

Yeah, it's coming out of everywhere.

You've got to keep it in check.

If I let all this go, you wouldn't know if I was coming towards you or walking away from you.

It would just be a solid, like a bushel of hair moving in a direction.

I see.

I think you should give that a go.

Yeah.

Let it all hang out.

Have you ever had the one where they put fire in your ears?

Oh,

hang on.

Is this an earwax thing or a hair thing?

It's Turkish barber.

It's like a Turkish barber.

I've had that.

Because I've had the hoppy ear candles, but that's for wax.

Yeah.

Did you think that was a success?

I didn't think the hoppy ear candle really did a whole lot took a long time no i didn't think it was a success at all i thought it was um i thought it was nonsense but i've not had the kind of like creme brulee uh thing

yeah

brulee ears

i've not had that do you watch the conversation do you because if i when i go to the hairdresser i i have young children the thought of sitting somewhere for maybe 20 minutes in silence is great and i don't want to talk to the slightly mad uh woman who is at the barber who sort of talks about but it really gives you basically it's it's like she's doing a monologue and you just join when your haircut starts so you haven't had the back story from the previous you need sort of the previous person in the chair to tell you where she's going

previously previously on the hair

but when you sit down it skips recap automatically and you're like oh bugger so i just close my eyes and hope that i can just do it in silence and think whatever they do to my hair it's going to be the same so i just don't i'm not going to be checking it i'll just open my eyes when it's done and hope they haven't locked it all off.

Well, I think because we're in June now, we're close enough to the summer to mean that can dominate all conversations in hairdressers, I think, for the season.

So it was all about, it was all about

her not getting a chance to go back to Lithuania to see some of her family, but she will go to Spain and we might go to France.

And it was that kind of, it was all, it was generic summer stuff.

There was a barber's I used to go to when I was a student who was quite rogue.

He was a really good barber, but he'd say things like, like, you'd sit down and he'd say things like, you ever been in love?

And stuff like that.

Yeah, so I had to stop going to him because the haircuts were great, but it was just too much.

It was like

he'd open up with like those kind of 3 a.m.

sort of house party questions that you're talking about.

Podcast.

He sounds like a

podcast.

Adam Buxton.

Yeah.

Is the Lithuanian woman pretending she hasn't seen the ballad of Wallace Island?

She is.

Again, she is keeping up the facade, but she doesn't know who I am.

I stood next to Damon Lewis' picture and said, do you want one of me?

And she didn't understand why she would.

You had your guitar and you did the song from the end of the film.

That's right.

Yeah,

she's keeping a powder dry there.

How much are we talking?

How much for the haircut?

And this, again,

this threw me because I've been caught out before with

always forgetting that it's cash only in a lot of barbers.

And

you've got Wade Yanni in with the whole world.

Completely, completely.

And I brought cash and it used to be £16,

which I always thought was quite a good number because then...

you know, she knows she's getting four pounds tips.

She knows.

She knows.

But she's, but she's now raised the price to £20.

Okay.

So there's, I didn't really know what to do there, and I ended up not tipping her,

which I feel bad about.

But if it's 20 pounds, like I'd have to break another note.

I only had 20 in the 10.

Well, that was

that was Tom Barston on What did You Do yesterday?

And

now we're just going to play some library music for the remaining 20 minutes.

I get it.

I do get it.

I get that.

But I know the idea because you sort of go, oh, can I have two fivers?

And

that feels a bit awkward.

Yeah, but also the price was £16

not long ago.

That's quite a hefty hike.

That's like way over.

You only say you go once a year.

It's only once a year you go to.

And that's what you told us.

And also the eyebrows.

She spent ages on those eyebrows.

I know.

So let's just talk about this facial hair arrangement you have.

Okay, yeah.

I like it.

It's given you a lot of presence.

I looked at it the in the cinema yeah big big 15 feet face of yours smaller in real life yeah are you keeping it is it is it here for good well i i i no i don't think so and the problem with my facial hair as you can probably tell is that different bits grow at a very different rate So what happens is on the sides,

it's basically like a 17-year-old on the sides and a 70-year-old at the front.

And so i can develop an incredible goatee in the space of about five hours but if i want any coverage on the side that's that's like three weeks work so i need to kind of work out how to do that yeah you do have the advantage compared to david and i which is it's still dark whereas if i grow a goate it looks i have to just pretend i just haven't rubbed the sun cream in now it's just

completely white with you know i with respect i think it's quite um attractive isn't it to have the silvery the salt and pepper

so this this is the thing: salt and pepper was good when I was early 30s.

Oh, you think it's just salt these days?

I think just salt.

It's just AXA, it's just AXA cooking salt.

It's not, that's just not the same as oh, that's salty, the salty look.

It's not quite as yeah, okay, it's more Jeremy Corbyn after a while.

It is, it is, yeah, yeah, it's uh

doomed Antarctic Explorer is what it becomes after a while.

When I, when I get into the, when I go swimming with my son, when

when my hair gets wet, it looks like it's gone dark again.

And he says, you look young again, which is really nice.

But hang on, how old's your son?

Three.

I think he's got that.

Is he just thinking you look like you did three years ago?

Parenting has been hard for me, Tom.

I have a tipping story because tipping is interesting, isn't it?

And I once was dry, I used to drive a Y-Reg Clio, and i went round to helen chamberlin's house who was my co-presenter of soccer m and at the time she was going out with one of the greatest darts players of his generation james wade right who just won like the world championships or something wow but he used to be a mechanic and i was having trouble with the clio because it was really old and he fixed the cleo when we were over there he just tinkered with it and fixed it and i went oh thanks and Helen gave me a lot of stick for not like slipping him 20 quid to say thanks.

But he had just won like half a million pounds at the world dance championship and it wasn't like it was a mechanic it was just something like a it was like my friend how did it how did it come about did he offer or did you say oh james i don't suppose

i can't really remember i think he was like i i can't i don't imagine i'd have said could you have a look at this but maybe i did i don't know but i wasn't i thought handing a 20 to like would have been ruder do you know but maybe not well i think sort of like backhand slipping a 20 is quite rude

in that context.

But I think, I mean, the ideal thing is to give him a bottle of wine, isn't it?

That's what my granddaddy's used to say.

It's just try and give someone a bottle of wine if they've done something nice for you.

Yeah, but I didn't have a bottle of wine with well, no, this is it.

This is it.

And these days, actually, you don't often have cash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you're sort of seeing if James Wade takes contactless for bits of your spike.

Has he got a taffy-taffy machine?

Has he got a zettle?

He didn't have a zettle.

Right.

There you go.

Well, if I do see him again, I'll give him 20 quid.

I'm more than happy to.

Yeah, well, he might have been.

It was probably 10 years ago.

So the moment's probably gone.

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So have you had any lunch?

Oh, yeah.

So what did I do for lunch?

I walked into,

I walked down to, oh, I know where I went.

I walked through Kentishtown and to this lovely Chinese, like Sichuanese noodles place

in the market there in Camden.

And I had that, and I love that.

I think I go there once a week.

What did you order.

What's your order?

This is this is the Sichuan Mala broth with fried tofu and vegetables, and it's it's now it's like the closest thing I've got to a regular order where I don't have to order it now, they know what I want.

Oh, really good.

So, you feel a bit like someone in the cast of cheers at that point getting my noodles.

And do two stellar with that, just two and a cup.

You know, you've got a problem when it comes with just two half-litre bottles of Stella arrived with it as well.

Yeah, get the two Stella, but then just pocket them for later.

So I'm just walking around with them in my pockets.

Yeah, that was, I had that, no, nice, that was a nice lunch.

And then,

well, okay, on Mondays, I have to get back quite early because

this is looping back to the piano practice.

I have to take my son to music directly after school.

So I have to wrap up what I'm doing at about half two.

And I was just sort of, what was I doing?

I was doing a bit of, oh, I was doing some admin about the film.

I i was doing a bit of um

we've we've got our press day coming up for here we go series three so i've got to like kind of figure out what clips to put in the trailer and stuff like that and sort of you know do that kind of thing um and then um

yeah and then heading back to to sort of meet my my son after school and then begin the negotiations for what he can have from the uh corner shop.

This is exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

You've got all this to come if your son is three.

Or I assume you have.

You're probably not sort of like giving him nerds now.

Not yet.

No.

He doesn't really get the stage exciting.

Okay.

Oh my God.

It's so boring.

It's like it's just most of my life now is sort of, I'm in an episode of The Apprentice and I'm just arguing with a seven-year-old about what legitimately counts as

confectionery and what is in some way like wholesome food.

And

he just wears me down.

He wears me down.

And does he talk to you like you're in the apprentice?

Does he go, well, you're project manager, so if this doesn't work, it's on you.

Basically, yeah, basically, he flips between being

like an underling who wants my job and Sir Allen.

So I feel I did learn a lot about mathematics.

I learned a lot about mathematics from a few from darts because we had a dart board at home.

So you were always trying to work out what double and triple 17 were, etc.

I didn't really good.

I I did.

Thank you.

And from Scrabble, a lot of the time, because we would always notate the Scrabble where you would add the score to the last score.

You know what I mean?

Keep the totals coming in.

And then the third element of that, I feel, was when I would be in the sweet shop, their local shop, 25, mum would say, here's 30p or whatever.

And so then, because the big, the big polystyrene banana was probably 3P,

the classic

blackjack or fruit salad, they were 1P, and 2P were the ones that were shaped like flying saucers and had a toxic sugar in it.

Flying saucers.

Flying saucers.

And so I feel that I did learn a lot from because you'd be trying to maximize your resources.

Are you holding back his mathematics by insisting that he buys a big red apple?

It's a very good question.

I think these days though,

I'm not aware that it's done like that anymore, where there's like penny values for

they just come in packets.

This is the problem.

It's like, well, I haven't been to a sweet shop for a very long time.

I know that there's one in McCunneth because I remember it very vividly when I was there, where they've got the big glass jars.

Yeah, and

lemon bonbons.

Yes, and then you get the sort of the sweaty gentleman reaching in with his bare hands and taking out sweeties.

Roald Dahl is queuing behind you.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't think those, I haven't seen those shops in a very, very long time.

I suspect they don't really exist, certainly not in London.

They might sort of like, you know, at the end of the pier somewhere on the coast.

What was the point in voting for Brexit if we couldn't bring back the big sweaty and jar shops?

Yeah, well, this is exactly the reason I've got my European passport now.

Good for you.

Okay, so how are the negotiations going?

What do we end up with?

He ends up with a Twister Lolly,

And then my daughter wants a Twister Lolly as well.

And the problem there is that she's got her first ever ballet/slash tap class.

Wow.

It's in the same facility as his piano lesson.

Okay.

So it's very, it's very efficient parenting.

And then it becomes how do we prevent her from getting Twister all over her

sort of pink business that she has to wear for this ballet slash tap class.

And how do that?

Because she's badly, badly.

She sort of, you know, ruins it a bit.

But we're just kind of like, we're just finding stuff in the car that we can drape over her, like, you know, a Tesco bag for life, just sort of over her lap.

My friend, who's a very good actor now,

she,

the local community center,

Angela Lansbury?

variety of activities on there and no okay she saw he's not bicycing he's not bicycling coming out in uh judo in karate suits.

And she said, I want to do that.

Please, can I do that?

Karate.

And her mother looked up and saw a sign that said drama that was behind them.

And she turned up at her first ever drama class when she was six or seven, believing she was going to crack some skulls.

And instead, they all to pretend to be waves.

I'll just say ballet and tap are very different.

I would say one is almost the opposite of the other, where you clomp in one

and you don't don't clomp in the other.

Well, like potholing is more like the opposite of ballet, isn't it?

Yeah, penguin.

It's penguin ballet, isn't it?

Yeah.

I was in riverdance.

I know what I'm doing.

Well, really?

Okay.

No, of course.

Just because I'm Irish, don't presume I was in river dance.

That's not that kind of elaborate a lie, though.

I can see you, you know, puffing and panting next to Flatlink.

It's quite an elaborate lie.

Just like just on the end.

Okay, so but I guess it depends whether or not you mean like, because when you said I was in river dance, I thought you meant I sort of did Irish dancing as a kid rather than I performed next to Michael Flatley at that Eurohamission.

Toured the worlds for 25 years.

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Kitson, a comedian,

once tried to spread the rumor that I played the keyboards on the Irish version of the weakest link.

And because it's just mundane enough to potentially be believable that I played

you know when the

people come out yeah the light

the idea that that's live that the weekly thing has live music

so you have a choice Tom you have to decide whether to watch the piano lesson or watch the debut ballet and tap or can you flip between the two so uh here's the here's the thing that made that decision very easy you're not allowed to watch the ballet and tap right?

And I think the reason for that, or part of the reason might be, is that afterwards, I said to my daughter, like, what did you do?

And she just went on to describe, and bear in mind she's three, so it took a long time, the kind of thing they were doing.

And we realized after about 10 minutes that they were doing grandmother's footsteps.

So it's neither ballet nor tap.

I mean, you could, I mean, tap would be hard for grandmother's footsteps, wouldn't it?

I mean, tap would be exactly.

It's the opposite of tap.

Now, that is the opposite of tap, David.

What the hell is grandma?

You both seem to think that everyone knows what grandmother's footsteps are.

What's grandmother's footsteps?

Does this not make it across the Irish C then?

Not at all.

Okay, so you've got to watch it in 20 years.

This is going to be huge.

It's going to change Ireland forever.

Okay, so what it is, is you is you is hang on a minute.

Am I it's the same is it the same as what's the time, Mr.

Wolf?

It's the same as what time Mr.

Wolf, I think.

What the fuck is what's the time, Mr.

Wolf?

Stop comparing things to other things that I also don't know.

I'm trying to work out how you do it, but like you kind of say, like, what, what, so basically, one kid is facing the other way.

This is it, in essence, right?

And the other kids have to turn around.

He's up against the wall.

He's up against the wall.

He's up against the wall.

And the other kids have to creep.

And you start at the other end, and you've got to creep towards the person who's facing the other way.

And they can turn around suddenly.

And if you're moving, then you're out.

In fact, it's in Squid Game.

Have you seen Squid Game?

Yeah.

In the very early episodes of that, it's like the first challenge they do, and people get killed.

Where they're caught, if they haven't frozen, when the person opens their eyes, then they're out.

And in Squid Game, they're killed.

What's important?

What's the point?

Well, put it this way: there are a lot of ambulances were called, and my daughter made it through.

So I don't really care what happened in there.

But I don't know how.

I remember you said, what time is it?

And he goes, it's four o'clock.

Oh, that's it.

He goes, it's five o'clock.

You keep walking.

If he says it's time to eat you, it's dinner time.

You have to be still.

Dinner time.

It's not time to eat you.

It's dinner time.

I don't remember what grandmother did with the grandmother's footsteps.

I've made you a quilt

or something.

No, she doesn't.

You don't have to make a quilt when you're facing the other way.

Otherwise, the game would take such a long time.

But what does grandmother, What does she say?

I think that what it is, is it's like it's what's the time, Mr.

Wolf, for younger kids, and there's no dialogue.

I think there's no, there's no kind of like

performance element.

You just face the other way, and then the kids creep towards you, you turn around.

If they're if they haven't frozen, they're out, and then you keep doing that until one of them touches you.

I think that's what it is.

It's not the bullshit, it doesn't sound like the bull show.

Do you know what I mean?

I don't imagine they're doing that if they're warm up at the bull show.

They are they in tutus?

Is she in a cute ballet outfit?

She's in.

Well, look, this is the thing: is that I wanted to slightly resist the whole kind of pink, this sort of explosion of pink and sort of princess-style stuff that comes with having a having a baby girl.

And it's proven very, very difficult.

Yeah.

So I would say that family and well-wishers have

sent over something like five or six ballet and tutu combos over the years.

So it's slightly led the witness towards like this.

And now she's really into the kind of tutu and pink, the whole pink thing, pink little shoes thing.

Doesn't feel very progressive.

I mean, you know, I guess it's what she wants.

So, like, you just gotta give them what they want in that respect.

Is it CSI, the show, that ends when they're all in tutus?

I don't think so.

That ends suddenly.

And

the name that always it says executive producer dick wolf that's the that's the card you see the reason i mention it is just he's the original what's the time mr wolf

the cast would always be asking him csi time didn't they say that before every before every day's filming yeah that was their warm-up

okay so so you how's the piano lesson then you've you know you've that's where you are yeah fine i would say fine he's um, you know, he

because at the end of the day, he gets quite tired and he's prone to get a little bit distracted in his piano lesson.

I was going to ask you, David, did you, how, did you learn the piano as a kid?

Did you come to it later?

No, my father is a piano player, so he had had to teach many reluctant children how to play the piano, and none of whom ever liked playing the piano, consequently.

So, his thing was he would only show us how to play the piano if we asked him, How do you play the piano?

So, I grew up

hating jazz and

just trying to play loud hip-hop and indie music to annoy him.

And then, at about the age of 16 or 17, I was like, all right, how do you play the piano?

Right, interesting because I sort of didn't really learn as a kid and I came to it late myself.

And I wonder if, like, actually getting kids to learn an instrument young is a surefire way of them hating music for the rest of their lives.

That's what I'm slightly worried about.

Yeah, I really enjoy playing the piano still.

And I do wish I'd had really boring stuff like sight reading kind of beaten into me as a child because then I would just be able to sit down and play fly shit.

But

as it wasn't, I don't know, but maybe I would have hated playing the piano.

You know, I would have hated that and the people who were insisting you did it.

Yeah.

I used to, for piano lessons, I used to like one week I'd forget the music.

The next week I'd say, I've learned just the left or the right hand.

And then you could, you could really, you could like, just like stretch out one hand.

I deliberately excluded you from the piano conversation.

And considering I was

considering I was second clarinet, Cambridge County Youth Orchestra 2001 and 2003.

Those guys.

It is a strange oversight on your

fucking reed right now.

He's always got one in his mouth just moistened up ready to I thought I shouldn't ask you because I know that you hate sort of boasting and it's very hard to talk about music without it just becoming a kind of like you know

legacy about how incredible you were as a young man.

I like to keep my incredible musical talents very quiet.

So we won't include this bit in the show now right now.

For our first live show, I am trying to convince David that the two of us play Top Loaders Dancing in the Moonlight

keyboard.

And I think I've I've got him to do it, but I'm not sure if he's going to be able to do that.

So, you would do the

that'll be you on the other side.

That's lovely.

Lovely.

That's going to bring the house down, isn't it?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, definitely.

What do they play on in the original?

What's the instrument?

Oh, good question.

Yeah,

maybe a sort of Glockenspiel.

Maybe it's a cost.

Yeah, there is definitely a Glock.

But that's a cover.

Their version is the cover.

Yeah.

Much folkier,

much more low-like.

It's the Wu-Tang clan, I think.

It was not the Wu-Tang clan i think it was king crimson originally who did it do you do you feel the urge to join in you know as your son plays just

something like

yeah as you're sitting there watching us i i've resisted the urge to beat box thus far

i feel like you really want to do it though do you know what it's terrible i feel i i i get more of an urge to just slip the old phone out and check on the film in those moments and to be to vomit all over the the baby birds.

So I sort of that that's what I'm dealing with is kind of like being invested in the piano, but also thinking about other stuff.

Imagine how much pressure there is on the music teacher though, who

has obviously seen the Ballad of Wallace Island and knows that basically Elvis has entered the building and is attempting to hold it together while giving your son the lesson.

Knowing yourself.

He was very jittery yesterday.

His hands were all over the place.

He broke into one of the songs from the film as well, by mistake.

Yeah, bless him.

Do you know what, though?

There were a couple of parents who've seen it now.

So

when you're there in the music centre going through the corridors, I did have a couple of people stop me.

But it's very North London.

They'll say like, oh, enjoy the film in the way they might say like, oh, that was a good bit of parking.

You know, it's like very, like, kind of,

like, no, it's not like that kind of thing you might get, like, you know, when you're, when you're, you know, sort of out on the sticks and people, like, oh, my God, what are you doing here?

Kind of thing.

It's all like, oh, enjoyed your film.

You know what I mean?

That's sort of the way that interactions like that go in North London.

Yeah, and I mean by that, they really loved it and they're really impressed.

Oh, yeah, but no, it's, it's, it's, no, it's the most you're going to get.

But, you know, beyond them just sort of like committing ritual suicide in front of you, it's the most, it's the most you're gonna get we we get a very uh peculiar sort of faint praise for this podcast a lot people

are very nice enough to contact us or leave reviews but often it's like good to listen to after i put my dog down or something like that

I've never had gastroenteritis like it, but three episodes really got me through that kind of thing.

I see, I see.

So it's mainly for people with ailments.

This

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

It's a palliative.

Is it prescribed?

Please, it's chronic, not palliative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It won't make you laugh enough for it to actually aggravate your injury.

But it might make you smile

while you await death.

So do you, do you scroll?

Do you see?

Because you're yet to vomit over the film yet.

And I'm interested to know how you get it.

During the day, you mean?

Yeah.

No, it's little and often.

It's a little often.

I'm sort of, you know, just

I'll abandon the bird being sick metaphor, I think, in case it's confusing.

But

I'll check on the film, like, you know, every couple of hours as the day goes on.

What are you doing?

Because Tim was going on Rotten Tomatoes.

And then he said you were going into cinemas saying, could you put this film on, please?

Oh, yeah, I have done that.

I have done a bit of that, like sort of cold calling.

Basically, like a sort of, you know, a traveling salesman going around with my suitcase, taking out my film.

Two huge reels of film.

I know.

You are guys, show movies here, huh?

Yeah,

I did do that to the Everyman in Hampstead, but it works.

They did a Q ⁇ A for us on Sunday.

And they were very happy to.

I feel like once you get over the initial awkwardness and desperation of the people who've made a film coming to the cinema and sort of inquiring about their own film, people have been very lovely about it.

It's obviously just such a weird thing to do because you know hugh jackman's not doing that yeah

the thing i didn't understand was i sort of think once the film is out there's nothing you can do but you actually like it gets it gathers a momentum and i just presume

why do you think i'm talking to you two well because you want to tell us what you did yesterday i presume you want to

you just want to get off your testimony yesterday but but yes but i suppose that i understand like promoting the film but like checking on it like i don't know what you can do apart from just go it's people still like it that's good but like it can sort of yeah it can go up and up and up and up and up uh tom yeah

let me step in here max has a strange relationship with his output with his art form the art form of radio and podcasting where he just does it and then never thinks about it again

It's just

he just moves into another realm after I think I think that's quite Zen.

I mean, I try to do that.

I think with most of the things I do, I i will try to kind of do it and then like slightly obsess about it while i'm doing it and then once it's out never think about it again and never watch it again or anything there's a lot of stuff i've never actually seen like properly finished um but i think the film feels a bit different because there is the sense that like you can maybe agitate a little bit when it's on cinemas you can sort of agitate to sort of like you know just encourage people to see it or just but as you say it's mainly it's it's it's mainly kind of you know like whispering in a shopping center equivalent of like actually spreading the word about this film but there's not much you can do so so i need you to know that i'm doing my bit i was in exeter last week

and the uh there were two films on on whatever outside the cinema where i was there was uh your film ballad of wallace and grammat island yeah and then next to it was a film that's clearly a rip-off of your film with the woman from the x-files in it jillian anderson it's called like the ballad of some other island or whatever it's funny you say that there is a rip-off where they've taken grommet out of the film

yeah

that version exists and is out there

the reason i mention this is there were people reading the small print on the gillian anderson film and i tapped your poster and i said this one's excellent So

there you go.

Yeah, good man.

Well, the salt path is all set in Devon and Cornwall, you see.

Is it really?

So that's the oh, yeah, it's this, they're walking the uh Devon and Cornwall coastline.

That is the salt path.

That is nice.

So they're they're obviously trying to make that regional connection as big as possible down there.

But what they don't know is that my family all live in Devon.

And yes, and then that Devon poster,

it's become a bit of a peaky blinders episode with my family going around marching people into the cinema and making sure they're not seeing the salt path and they are seeing the ballad of wallers of Grumman Island.

Yeah, but I can totally see because this is such because it's so like personal to you guys, I guess, and it's like a film in a cinema.

I'm not saying, you know, us sitting on a Zoom call, you know, asking people if they had Weetabix isn't high art.

But I reckon if I did, if I had got,

if I did write a film and was in a film and I'd written the soundtrack for the film and it was really good, I'd probably would check.

Yeah, yeah, a lot.

No, I appreciate that.

I think, um, I think it's the other thing is, the other thing is, though, is it just becomes a slight habit, doesn't it?

Like, it's a bit like smoking or spitting.

That if you do it a lot during the day, you just keep doing it.

So, I now have to like, because I know I've never really been one for social media really at all in any meaningful way.

And I think once the film is out of cinemas, I have to get off, I have to get, like, get off the train and work out how to sort of return to not thinking about it and sort of like posting things and reposting things

because you're aware that it does take up quite a lot of your thinking time.

It sort of occupies, it just sort of has a presence in your head that like is sometimes unwelcome if you're trying to like concentrate on your son's piano lesson, for example.

Right, so we leave the piano lesson and we leave the grandmother's footsteps and we're home now.

What, five o'clock?

Okay, well, but the thing to say there is I have to take both kids home because my wife has to go off because she's got to go and do a samaritan shift so um she's doing that and i have to take both kids home and sort of bath them and get them get them ready for bed yes so dinner

um dinner we've had we had uh we had takeaway pizza after on the in the sun after the music things that was really good actually yeah it's it's you feel a bit like you've sort of you're letting yourself down just giving pizza on a monday do you know what i mean i think it's perfect.

But as the week goes on, you sort of earn the right to like not cook and just be a bit more dissolute.

But on a Monday, I felt a bit like that's not perfect.

What are you getting?

Stuffed crust?

What are the pizzas?

They will only countenance a margarita.

Okay.

My son takes the cheese off.

My daughter eats the cheese.

They're quite an efficient team in that respect.

We found it yesterday two days ago, right?

Now, Ian, young Ian Rushton, has refused to eat cheese, like sort of just don't like cheese, don't like cheese.

And then my wife sort of got the whiff of the fact that he was eating cheese at kinder and we weren't sure how this was happening.

And then she just we bought some pre-grated cheese and we put a bowl of pasta next to the cheese and he just ate the cheese in front of us, like he'd been gaslighting us for a year.

Hang on, what were you?

What were you doing before?

You were giving him like an entire wheel of barn's hand and just hoping he'd just get stuck in a cheese bowl of brie and blue,

casual blue

great cheese into his food and we found and he just wouldn't have it and then he just just this thing next to it it was just a real moment we just couldn't believe that he'd that he'd done it yeah tom have you done that thing where you're like where your daughter is like oh margarita pizza and you're like it's not a margarita pizza when we're telling mummy it's a pokey bowl and that

is a crazy salad that's what these are called.

I'll tell you what did happen to me on Sunday.

So, again, I don't know if this is allowed, but

my kids like this sort of kombucha drink that they sell near where I live.

I know.

And I was walking with my daughter, and I'd taken it off them because they were arguing about who was going to have some.

So I was like, just cool down and we'll figure out later.

And my daughter, who's three, was just yelling at me, Daddy, I want my kombucha really, really loudly across Hubscon Heath.

I know.

I know.

And that's the kind of thing where you're like, oh, for God's sake,

I don't have a lot of credibility anyway.

But that's not helping.

I nearly asked her to step out of the cargo bike.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, dear.

Bath,

are we bathing or are we just...

I gave her a bath because she was all over the place.

She was very tired and she had slipped while walking on the wall after I'd asked her not to walk on the wall.

And she slightly grazed her her leg.

So I gave her a bath,

telling her that would help and it didn't.

And then it was just that the sort of

negotiation with my son again about bedtime,

encouraging him to do some reading.

Just sorry, just for your daughter, in Tour de France, a lot of the time if they have a bad road crash,

you have to not let the scab form because that will restrict movement.

So every night in the shower you have to get a nail brush and rub off the scab as it's forming wow so that you and then uh so that you know you can ride as so that's maybe that's what but surely the wound will just keep weeping if you do that the yes but the movement isn't because when the scab forms the your your leg movement because generally it's on the knee is slightly restricted so i'm just saying maybe that's what she well that's yeah that's that's quite interesting because I

had cut my hand.

This is similar to the kombucha thing.

I'd cut my hand on a can of Pirello olives, if you know these olives.

You crossed it.

Do they have these olives in Australia?

Well, I'm uh well, I come back often enough to know the pirello.

Okay, of course, okay.

So, I was and the reason I did it is because I'd opened the can and then put it in recycling, and then I was punching down the recycling bin to make more space, and I just punched straight into the can

and and I had a ver quite a big cut cut on my on my hand you probably can't see it it's on this one actually it's here and um

and but because i kept moving my fingers i was having to play uh guitar at the time in texas where when the film was on they wanted me to play a song so every time i was playing guitar it would just keep opening up and it was impossible for a scab to form so it was really it was really difficult and i was bleeding like a lot i mean i guess it was a bit like that brian adams thing of playing till your fingers bled which is which is only possible if you've got your hand on some pirello olives before is that what brought what brian adams did yeah but you can't put that in the song

yeah great can we just run the numbers

yeah just very briefly run the numbers i know we're winding this down but if that's the summer of 69 okay he is 16 presumably then yeah

so he's born 53 uh-huh which now i think it checks out i think it checks out 73 he's 73 now yeah have you seen him he's back doing arenas again he looks ion i'll i'm just gonna get the age of brian adams one second i like i said we are winding down but we do have to actually fact check how old brian adams

otherwise his his legal team would be in touch he's 65 he's 65 oh

which means how old was he in 69

uh tan

no

he didn't play till his fingers bled and he was tan oh so it should be the summer of 75 should it well that's what i'm saying yeah

Yeah.

How would it be?

Why would he do it?

No, but it can't be that he was 10 because they get up to mischief, don't they?

He's going out partying with his mates and

sort of, you know, isn't he drinking in the truck and all that stuff?

I can't remember the lyrics.

Is it possible that not all music is completely autobiographical?

I don't know.

Yeah, but that's, but

there's like, there's sort of non-autobiographical music, like, I don't think the Beatles actually lived in a yellow submarine, for example.

Hang on a second.

and then there's just like dates that don't make sense where you're sort of where it's like, Well, that's it, just that's an easy fix, Brian.

Yeah, completely could have just moved it forward.

The whole edifice that we've been living our life on is now shattered, yeah, isn't it?

With this,

like a 10-year-old wouldn't be, you know, would be interested in other

things,

would be interested in, I don't know,

what are you interested in when you're 10?

Like obsessively remembering the name of every FA Cup winner for the last 50 years.

You know,

that kind of thing.

Also, because he says, you know,

we started a band and we tried real hard.

And then like Jimmy quit and like some joke.

He kind of got married at 12.

Can he?

Yeah, that's...

Hang on, maybe they were Mormons or something.

Do they get married young?

I'm not an expert on these things.

I guess maybe it's possible, but even so,

it feels like the parents should be referenced in the song, if that's what's happened.

It would be like Jodi's dad insisted that she get married, wouldn't it?

It doesn't scan along with the olives.

It doesn't scan.

It's a problem.

Yeah.

Okay, so

we've had a bath.

Is he practicing piano some more?

He's reading.

Come on, give the guy a break.

He's reading.

He's reading.

I've got him to read a bit of Wimpy Kid.

That's for, I'll take that as a win.

It's, you know, I'll tell you a great one of that genre.

The book called Danger is Everywhere by David O'Doherty.

No, I've heard of, I've heard of that.

He might really enjoy.

That's it.

But you know what?

He would enjoy that.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

I'm going to get him on that.

There's a book called Dog by the Bakery Door by Jamie Bruce, and I have no connection to her apart from she's probably

Dog by the Bakery Door.

She's probably watching Netflix in the house this house right now but there's no connection between me and her

that's a picture book though

well that might be good for my three-year-old then yeah it would be really good for your three-year-old yeah okay are you trying to undermine my wife definitely saying that tom doesn't buy that book

it did feel like that didn't it yeah it did that's a shit one

of those it's very similar it's very similar to what he's doing with the salt path just going around bookshops going not that not that one

have you not seen the play about roaldah he's got some extreme views about things

okay they both asleep now have we managed that yeah i got them i got them to sleep that's fine i've got them to sleep and then um

just oh i know i watched i watched uh half of because i didn't have time to finish it the new film by uh the pin you know the pin yeah um

ben and ace they've got a film with orlando bloom bryce dallas howard nick mahoward called deep cover that's really good fun.

I was watching that.

Um,

and uh, wanted to see what other films were out at the as at the same time as our.

Do you know what I mean?

Wanted to be across everything, yeah, yeah, okay.

But it's very different to our film, and it's uh, it's great, it's very funny.

Um, and uh, and then my wife came home and we watched more of Adam Curtis and just got in a really weird mood before bed again to sort of go full circle.

Did you add anything else?

Did you consume anything after the pizza?

Because that's quite a long time ago.

Oh, yeah, okay.

So, I did because um, my nephew had been staying on the weekend and um he

uh

listen this this this is going to tip us into another uh slightly lengthy anecdote but it's quite good he had ended up staying two nights rather than one because on the friday he was meant to go and get a flight to italy where he'd got a job that he's going out to do for a few days um but what had happened is he'd he'd taken his mum's passport from home oh yeah so he'd got to the airport and then they'd obviously seen that he's not his mum.

And then he'd had to call his parents who live famously in Devon, as I've established, and they then send it up to him.

He then has to get it on the Saturday and go on a new flight.

And because of that extra night staying at ours, he gave us a big box of chocolate Leibnizes.

Oh, lovely.

So I was just chowing down on the Choco Leibnizes while I was watching this film.

And just to be clear,

he is older than your kids.

When you said nephew, it did imply he was maybe five or six and then he's been sent to italy to gather those olives that tried to kill you yeah it does feel a bit like that doesn't it no don't worry he's actually nine so no he's not he's ninety he's 19 he's 19 he's got the adams is the best place of his life

Wow, so it's nearly bedtime now, Tom.

So then it's

eat those biscuits.

Watch the thing.

Eat my biscuits.

Eat my biscuits.

I have got some cheese from the weekend.

So I had a bit of cheese just to kind of just add to the Curtis kind of weird dreams thing.

Good stuff.

This is good.

Lots of cheese, disturbing TV show, and then bed.

And then I tried to go to sleep, but it's too hot.

So I'm thinking about Adam Curtis.

Well, rather, I'm thinking about his documentary rather than him.

And that doesn't go very well.

But I'm, you know, I'm doing my best.

I don't remember it being like a problematic night's sleep, but

it wasn't great.

It's quite an early time to go to bed, so maybe you don't feel you don't feel the tiredness yet?

Yeah, but I think that's possibly true.

I think

we're trying to sort of adjust to like the fact that our kids will wake up a lot and will wake up very early and therefore reduce.

the amount of waking hours at the other end of the day.

You gotta get out of here.

I know, but it's hard, isn't it?

Because then what can happen is that

you get them to sleep and then it's like, well, we're going to bed in like 25 minutes, yeah, and then life is just crap, yeah.

But then, what kind of life are you living?

None where you're watching like a third of a film, and then you're like, Okay, forget it then.

But we haven't done a film in apart from your film, I think I have that's probably the only film I've watched in the last three years.

It's the only one you need to watch, yeah.

I completely agree, and when you get time for another one, watch it again.

Oh, well, yeah, I absolutely will.

Yeah, good.

Um, yeah, it's it's it's demoralizing, but you know, I think that the early early bedtime is kind of the only way through it at the moment.

Was that a good day?

I feel like.

Yeah, I think it's a good day.

There we go.

Thanks, man.

There's Tom's day.

It's a good day, wasn't it?

I enjoyed the reversing into the front door was fun.

Yeah.

Wasn't it?

That was quite unexpected.

Easy enough thing to do, I guess, in this day and age with the automatic car with the electric car as well i think because you probably you put your foot on the gas and there isn't that

slow to am i wrong i don't know i doubt that car didn't sound like it had a choke uh you know that's and also that the fiddly gear stick was an issue but also you know that the fact that tom you and i between us unearth the fact that brian adams is a fraud i think is a you know that's a big learning from today's episode it's something Justin Moore house, imagine if he'd driven into the front of his house in the old French coffee wagon.

That would have been even worse because not only would you have broken the front door, but coffee would have started filling the house through the letterbox.

Yeah, but the image I had of that van would, the whole van would just fall down like a, like a, it's made of sort of bolster wood, like a clown car would just go.

Anyway, if you'd like to get in touch with this podcast, we love hearing from you, especially for the midweek mayhem episodes, which is basically you telling us things without that that episode it would be thinner it would be thinner David wouldn't it without the excellent interaction from our listeners here is how

to get in touch with the show you can email us at what did you do yesterday pod at gmail.com follow us on instagram at yesterday pod and please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform and if you didn't please don't

hey thanks david i had a nice time.

I'm in it for life.

I just really enjoy hearing about people's days.

And considering what this podcast is, I think it's probably quite good.

If you developed a late-in-life allergy to yesterday's,

that would be the only way this podcast could end.

And I don't see that happening.

So let's go.

It'll never end.

Let's go again.

Let's go again.

We've got it.

We go again.

See you next week.

Hello, Max Rushton.

Here, you might remember me from Series 9, Episode 2, of Parenting Hell.

I'm here to tell you about Dog by the Bakery Door, the debut children's book by author Jamie Bruce.

Dog by the Bakery Door is a charming story of the magical things a little boy sees on a normal trip to get a coffee with his mum.

Perfect for newborns, three-year-olds, six-year-olds, all children.

Just Google Dog by the Bakery Door.

Here's a review from my three-year-old son.

Dog by the Bakery Door.

I have this book.

Full disclosure: the author might be his mother and my wife, but even more reason to buy it.

She is to live with us and a baby 24/7, has sacrificed her career for mine while also being an amazing mum to two boys.

Thank you, goodbye.