S3 EP14: Mike Bubbins

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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 that's it all we're interested in is what the guest 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?

Hello and welcome to today's episode of What Did You Do Yesterday.

I'm Max Rushton and over there is David O'Doherty.

Hello everyone from Ireland and today we travel

not that far from Ireland.

Correct.

12 Dublins.

Yeah to Wales.

The guest today is Mike Bubbins, a max booking.

Yeah.

My fourth ever, maybe fourth or fifth.

If we're including Ellis, then it's maybe fifth.

And he obviously knows Ellis very well.

You may know him from from the brilliant socially distant sports bar, which is a great podcast.

He's got a new podcast called Any Given Wednesday about the NFL, which we talk about a bit.

He's got second series of his sitcom Mammoth out on the BBC.

What a beautiful idea for a sitcom.

Yeah.

The guy who writes the theme tune, go, that was a good bit, wasn't it?

Wow.

It's amazing.

I guess in these intros, we shouldn't just talk about bits.

that we liked from it.

It's probably quite annoying.

But there is a very good bit about a theme tune coming up in this.

I like all the bits.

There's nobody's fast-forwarding this podcast, are they?

Can you imagine?

I can understand with a football one if it's a game that you haven't enjoyed or your team's lost.

But this, to get the whole arc of the day, you have to get the whole arc of the day.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people fast-forward through this bit if I think so to get straight podcasts.

There are millions of them.

Shut up.

I know this bit.

This bit's totally pointless.

Right?

Let's just get on to what Mike Bubbins did yesterday.

Here it is.

Mike Bubbins, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Thank you very much.

How are you, Max?

How are you doing?

Yeah, very good.

I'm very excited to have you.

Good, good.

I'm interested to know.

I wonder if, because you knew...

a week ago that you were going to do this whether your day because some people i think might think okay i'm just going to have a totally normal day or some people might go i flew to bulawayo There's a tiny part of me that thinks at the start of the day, you might have considered that.

It's interesting that you say that, Max, because behind Mike is just a darkness that to me says maybe it's a window.

Maybe he's somewhere in Africa and it's the middle of the night.

Yeah, I suppose.

It's actually in my spare bedroom/slash podcast studio for tax purposes, which

I've been told if I turn the light off in the room and use the light I've just bought here, it'll be good for my skin tone.

Yeah, it is really good.

I mean, the proofs in the pudding, look at at it.

Yeah,

what time?

What time did you wake up yesterday, Mike?

Oh, yesterday.

I always get up around sort of 6:30.

And is that natural?

That's my natural.

I'm up and awake at 6:30.

Max, just note that Mike said, What, yesterday?

There, like he had no idea what this podcast was.

Yeah, like this.

This is the one I'm parenting, isn't it?

Steph, hell, you look different.

It's a natural wake?

Is it an alarm or just a natural the Bubbin's body?

Yeah, Bubbin's body clock gets up.

And it doesn't really matter what time I go to sleep, which is annoying for my wife.

So if I go to bed at one, I'll get up at sort of 6.30.

If I go to bed at 10.30, I get up at 6.30.

Yeah.

I blame my dad.

I think when I was a kid, my dad is one of those sort of 70s and 80s dads who thought that if you stayed in bed, there was something morally wrong with you.

On a sad in lieu of having to lie in like all my rest of my friends before football, I would have to go with my dad down to the butcher's and the greengrocer's and be sat there with a bunch of old men at like seven o'clock in the morning in the back room of a butcher shop having a thoroughly terrible time.

Yeah, it's been the same ever since.

So did you go straight to the butcher's?

Yeah, yes, it's got to be asked.

I mean, he's long since departed, but I'd like to go down there anyway.

It's a bookies now.

It's a vape shop now, but I still go down there.

Six chops, please.

You get some weird vapes.

Yeah, I get lamb chop-flavoured vapes.

That is a grim vape.

You know, my friends always wondered the worst kind of fizzy drinks would be meat-based or pork pops.

Would be a sad fizzy drink.

Graviade.

Yeah.

Isn't it interesting, though, that somehow the pepperami clings on to existence?

Like,

as a tree.

My mum, any shop ever that isn't full, mum says it's a front for organized crime.

And I maintain that with the pepperami.

I mean, I hope we don't get in trouble here.

You know what I'm talking about.

You can believe what you like, though.

It's a green.

Do we know what a pepperami?

Yeah, I know a pepperami.

I don't actually live on Mars.

But it's like one that's in the sweet aisle somehow.

It's the one meat.

You can have it with a meal deal as a snack instead of like a Snickers or like a little tub of fruit.

Yeah, it's bonkers.

It's the closest we'll get to meat aid.

I do like it, though.

Well, if you're on a no-carb diet, you know, sometimes pepperami is an absolute godsend.

In terms of fronts for organized crime, there was a shop with very little footfall near me where I grew up in Cambridge called the Roll-On Blank Tape Centre that just sold blank tapes.

And I look, tapes were used in the 80s.

But even still, even back then, there just didn't seem the demand.

There was no one ever in there.

You couldn't see in the windows.

There's a fish and chip shop near where I used to live, and I've been here for three years, and I was there for 15 years.

I never saw it open.

The tagline was the freshest haddock in the valleys.

Now, we're not in the valleys for a start.

And that haddock's going to be at least 18 years old.

Okay, so it's 6.30.

Do you lie in bed and doom scroll or are you up and about?

In the days of the phone, I do get up and I do doom scroll for a little bit, not long.

I watched Johnny Wilkinson talking about how he's achieved so much in his life.

And he just said, I got up in the morning, like I take my shoes and socks off and I just connect with the lawn, the grass and nature and breathe in.

No blue screens, no technology.

I did it for one day, right?

I felt like such a waswack.

i never did it again but did you connect did you feel like you just have wet feet

otherwise other day that is so mike are you saying that johnny wilkinson for listeners england's greatest ever kicker in rugby has a great player gone a bit spiritual in

the beat of his own drum i think to a certain extent i think he just likes to connect with nature and that's up to him but you know i'd much rather look at 55 different donald trump posts before i brush my teeth

Is it doom scrolling?

Where are you heading?

Are you going to Instagram?

Are you going to X?

What's your well I came off Twitter a while back.

Right.

I've never done TikTok, although I've been I think I've now got an account, but I don't have anything to do with it.

I look at Instagram for a bit, because I'm old.

I look at some Facebook

and that's it really.

And then I get up and I'll probably I was saying the other day that I had a meeting.

I'm so awful at paperwork.

I think a lot of comics will sympathize with this.

I'm a very disorganized person.

So my agent detoured on the way back from Cornwall to London to meet me and my accountant who drove over to my house to try and sort out my online banking, which has taken two years so far.

They were deep in discussions about this and very important.

And then my agent said, what are you doing?

And I was looking at it.

I found a bloke on online.

He was sort of doing robotics, like sort of breakdancing slash robotics, but dressed as Woody from Toy Story.

And I was fascinated by it.

I just like to find daft little things and I like to look at them.

And then it sends me down a little rabbit hole then.

so it's awful though innit.

I bought a series of things.

I bought one like case you lock your phone into with a time delay on it.

We've had these before yeah.

Yeah so I broke that and then I bought one of those block things you put on your fridge.

Have you seen those?

No.

You tap your phone on it and it'll lock your phone.

Oh wow.

The whole point being if you're upstairs rather than just scroll for no reason, you got to walk downstairs, tap it on the fridge and walk back upstairs again.

So you don't bother doing it.

Right.

So I stopped using that.

And then, yeah, various restrictions over the years.

I come off.

The only thing I've stayed off is Twitter, to be honest.

All right, so where are we at?

6:45?

6:45, yeah.

Right, right.

Are we downstairs?

Where are no, we're upstairs.

I'll put some fresh underpants on, I'll put a fresh pair of socks on.

Like to start the day fresh in that respect, get changed, brush my teeth, you know, comb my hair.

If I'm going to be on a screen somewhere, I'll put some mascara on my mustache.

Otherwise, I'll just go a natural.

Oh, wow.

This is currently slightly mascara.

It's not.

And then, depending on how physically ruined I am I will either have some breakfast then or I will wait until midday for breakfast right and what happened yesterday we have no interest in any other day I know yeah so yesterday I had because I was going to be going to do some stuff which I'll talk about in a second I had two toasted crumpets and some cheese what cheese just extra mature cheddar I'm not sure oh lovely lovely are we melting butter on it before mounting the cheese so I mean probably burn your hands hot out of the toaster yeah and crispy not like a floppy crumpet Yeah, Chris.

Then the butter on there, let it melt, and then put just blocks of cheese on top.

The width of the cheese, is it one to one, crumpet to cheese, or sort of...

No, no, I'm not an animal.

I'd say it's probably, in old money, a quarter-inch of cheese slice on top.

Interruption here.

The crumpet has never really crossed the Irish Sea.

Is the crumpet the circular one with the...

hole like someone has shot a gun down through it not all the way through though okay Okay, so we've had our cheesy crumpets.

Yeah.

Okay, where are we going?

What are we doing?

Instant coffee and then...

Why instant?

Because you're in a hurry or you like the...

I'm not coffee snob Max.

I bought in a moment of weakness.

I did a job a while back and got some money for it.

And I thought, oh, I know what I needed, one of those bean to cup coffee makers.

So I bought one of those.

And it has just been gathering dust.

I'll use it occasionally.

I had a bloke to some Thailand recently and he insists on proper coffee.

So I used it for that.

I just like instant coffee.

coffee I'm very happy with instant coffee white sugar instant coffee polystyrene cup well a mug just any old mug you know social distance sportsboard mug here you know one of the leading comedy sports podcasts I do wonder whether in a reaction to the coffee movement of the last 10 15 years

instant makes a comeback you know what I mean and suddenly these cafes open where it's just 30 polystyrene cups and someone with a kettle just pouring hot water you know what I have this conversation with Ellis James all the time, who's a complete coffee snob.

I am.

I like coffee, right?

Don't get me wrong.

And if I go to someone that does nice coffee, I'll enjoy it.

Yeah.

But I haven't got the time or the inclination to weigh a load of beans out, get a grinder out, get some papers out, like a scientific experiment.

Because if I want a coffee, I want it then, right?

It's called instant coffee for a reason.

I'd like a coffee, I'll have a coffee.

If I need a shit, it's got to be right then.

I'm not going to wait 20 minutes.

Right?

Shit culture.

It's not like shit's got gentrified, has it?

I mean, we're not on that level.

I wouldn't have to go and find some ethically sourced bamboo fucking toilet paper and then in a padded seat somewhere and then let my seat warm up for 25 minutes.

Just sit on the toilet and go to the toilet, it's fine.

It's like coffee, just drink it now.

I think they're different things.

I think they're different.

Different things, yeah.

It's all atoms.

Oh, wow.

That's the justification you could use for most things.

That's a great name for a cafe that you wouldn't trust.

It's just Atoms.

This coffee tastes a feces.

I'm sorry.

It's just Atoms.

That's the t-shirt sorted.

No one's been in this coffee for over 15 years.

Is it a front for crime?

The Just Adams coffee place.

You know, when you're a kid, I used to go to my grandparents' house, you know.

There wasn't a great deal of stuff there.

But it was lovely.

It was nice.

It wasn't a problem.

Coffee was Mellow Birds, and that's it.

If you wanted coffee, there were two options, Mellow Birds or no coffee.

There was your two options and is that what we're serving it it's just atoms if someone says we got oat milk off it's just atoms whatever they set up with whatever the boat brings around

okay so we have our instant coffee that's good nice we've had a crumpy well do you know what i then go back upstairs because i like to be comfortable when i for breakfast the underpants and socks won't change But I'll take the shorts and the t-shirt off and then I'll put some nice strides on and I'll have a shave, bare-chested.

Picture that, if you will.

Have a shave, moisturize, put my mascara on because I was going to be doing stuff on camera.

Do my hair and then put my shirt on, freshly ironed.

Mike, is the shave manual or is it electric?

A wet shave.

Always a wet shave.

With a soap and a brush.

You use the shape, because my dad had a shaving brush.

I've not seen a shaving brush really in action since I was probably like eight years old.

I love it.

It's just a nice feeling on your skin.

And I'm not just saying this.

Every makeup artist I've ever worked with has told me, and not my words, boys, their words, right?

You have got lovely skin.

I'll put it down to the shaving soap and a brush.

I don't know about you, David.

I haven't wet shaved for probably 15 years.

It takes that top layer of skin off, you see.

So you're always exfoliating with a wet shave.

I generally don't want to take the top layer of skin off me.

Just atoms, mate.

It's not going to hurt you.

We've never got into this.

You're an electric man, and then does the electric get it right down to that smooth, rushed and.

So I'll just get basically hair beard trimmers on without a bit on the top, you know, without a grade one, and then I'll just do that.

Really?

At some point, I will be frustrated with my beard.

And now it's in such a position that my moustache is the only thing that isn't grey, and my beard is grey, so I look like a badger.

And as soon as I sort of look completely like a badger, it doesn't matter what time of day is like...

Suddenly, it becomes absolutely urgent, like you'll need for coffee, and I have to clipper it there and then.

So whatever the kids are doing, whatever.

I'm just Kenko shave.

It is the Kenko shave.

I'm like straight up, Red Mountain in the room.

I'm going, boom.

And it's just like, it's got to go.

Gareth Hunt in the living room.

Get out, Gareth.

And then Jamie says, I look like babyface and I don't look as good.

And actually, there was a comedian, I don't know who it was, who did this great song.

And it's basically middle-aged men going, you know, do I want to look older and better or younger and fatter?

And that is the choice for middle-aged men.

It's like

take a page from your friend Mike's book.

Yes.

The moustache.

You've already said your mustache is darker than the beard.

It's a halfway house, right?

If I had a beard now, I'd look less overweight than I am.

Truth.

Yeah.

I like the skin.

I like the look.

I've always had side beards since I was like 14 years of age.

Yeah, the moustache is the way forward.

You look slightly older.

Not much older.

Obviously, you have a sort of Jeff from Bikin Grove quality level of your...

Dear my dream.

Yeah, I mean, that is the dream.

This doesn't ever get quite that good.

Also, I think, Max, you would have to change your personality if you had a mustache.

As in, with the moustache comes a presence that mike bubbins has yeah whereas you'd have to silently stand in the doorway of every room you walk into until everyone sees you and nod and then sit which is not what you do i always think to myself in most things in life what would burt reynolds do this situation

what about you david you're as alan davis suggested a couple of weeks ago you're a man who hasn't looked in a mirror for 20 years or whatever is exactly yeah i have the dilemma beard-wise of exactly either I look like an old wizard or a fat baby

and I've experimented with the middle ground.

And certainly when I've shaved off a beard a few times, I have left a mustache and taken a photograph of it, but I've never sent that photograph to anyone.

Maybe the time's come.

I got a theory about moustaches.

The blokes would like to have a moustache, and most women that I speak to like a man with a mustache.

So I don't know when we sort of got sucked into the fact that moustaches weren't a good look.

Everton in the 80s when every single player had one.

Well I said a good moustache.

The problem with moustaches was they became ubiquitous I think.

Like I remember the glory days of the moustache.

I love the NFL fella called Larry Zonk had a great mustache.

Dick Butkers had a great moustache.

Let's cross to TV.

Tom Selleck had a fantastic moustache.

Oh yes.

Borello's had a good moustache.

Willie Thorne had a great moustache.

Graham Gooch had a great moustache.

Roger Mansl had a great mustache.

I could go on, right?

I'm enjoying it.

But then people with like an everton moustache came along

and they ruined the look right like moustaches are great look if you can grow a mustache that's the caveat if you can't then please don't so where are we now i've had food i've moisturized i've shaved i've done my hair done my moustache i've got my shirt on i'm waiting now for my car to arrive oh yeah sounds posher than it normally is yeah but this is just yesterday

Yeah, I've got a car booked for 9.30 to pick me up.

What part of the world are we in, Mike?

We're in northern Cardiff, Dave.

Yeah.

The leafy suburbs of Cardiff.

Yep.

I'm waiting in my little front room there for the car to turn up.

And does it turn up?

It turns up on time.

Do you get a text saying, you know...

Yeah, your car's outside.

Yeah.

Registration place.

Early, which annoys me.

So I thought, well, I'm not going to rush.

I'll potter around for another three or four minutes until 9.30.

Got it.

My wife panics.

As soon as a taxi turns up, she panics.

No, I panic.

I'm sprinting around the place.

What if he drives off?

I said, they won't get paid.

He's not stupid.

We said 9.30, so 9.30 is fine.

The last time I had a car arrive was in a hotel in Poole, I believe.

I was waiting, and then it pulled up.

It was bigger than I expected.

It was a sort of a Merck minivan.

Nice.

Very fancy.

And I got in.

And the driver started asking me about today's game.

And I

thought it was just football bounce.

And then we worked out together that he was in fact picking up the ref and linesman for an FA Cup match that was taking place there that day.

You should have done it, mate, like that blog on the news before the

taxi driver.

Just get the shorts and the whistle on and get out there.

Actually, of all the places to be Quantum Leaped into, like a Premier League, a febrile Premier League gamers ref would be absolute, that would be the greatest episode of Quantum Leap going, oh boy.

and suddenly you know Bruno Gimmeresh is in your face going that's never a fucking foul and they're just there going oh shit I can't remember any of

terrifying blow your whistle VAR in your ear going you're telling them to shut up you can't think what's going on

there's a 24.6% chance that's a penalty

it's the old question of Barcelona in their heyday

when everything is taken care of and everyone around you is the best footballer in the world.

How long could I conceivably stay on that pitch for before I am horribly exposed?

And this is you just own it.

You just become the play on ref.

Two hands in the air, play on?

Yeah.

Everything's play on.

Something like that.

Somehow I'm in a 1970s ref shirt as well.

I've got a massive comb over that keeps flopping up and down.

Big white collar, much too big.

Acme thunder a whistle.

You could get really into brandishing, couldn't you?

Really brandish that car.

There are very few jobs where you get to yell, go away, at people.

Like you can really, if you really embraced it, because I'd have the fear, but if you really embraced it, it was just like, go away.

You could really get off on just yelling at other adults to go away.

Oh, yeah.

All right, so the car arrives.

Are you in the front seat or are you in the back seat?

Normally, because I'm a chatter, I'll get in the front seat.

It wasn't quite a Mercedes minivan, but it was a larger car with a slide-in door.

He'd already slid the door open.

Got it.

And did he have maybe a jacket on the passenger seat to say this is my area?

He didn't, but I thought, well, if he's saying to me, get in the back, mate.

Yeah.

I will get in the back.

So I had quite a big bag of clothes to take with me anyway.

So chucked those in the cab.

Wow.

Got in the cab and off we went to BBC.

You're doing so well, Mike.

You get a limo to take you to the charity shop to drop off these ultas.

I'm usually picking up from the charity shop, to be fair.

Is it possible to have chats now over the seat that's facing towards you or do you?

Well, you could, but he was, I think, listening to this radio station he's probably Polish and he seemed to be banging to his music and he had a couple of phone calls going on I think in Polish hands-free of course yeah usually I will talk the years off I've ended up bringing cow drivers back into my house for a drink I will chat to anybody

but I thought I'll leave him to it you know he's taking care of business so has he left you like a miniature bottle of water and a Murray Mint oh none of that stuff it wasn't like a proper it was just a taxi pickup BBC got a taxi it wasn't like they'd sent me a nice like when I was filming properly then you get you know my my lovely driver picked me up in the mornings and there'd be like massage seats and hot coffee and all that sort of stuff.

There wasn't that.

This was very much the Kinko version of that.

When I was the breakfast show reporter on BBC London, maybe I was hosting the radio show as well.

I'd get picked up at 4.15 a.m.

It was a black cab and I used to quite often get this bald guy.

He'd never turn around.

And he'd just start the conversation where we left off.

You're very tired, but I'm polite enough to say, you know, how are you?

It would always almost always end up with, and there was claret everywhere, and he's gone there, and they've gone, you know, how it is.

And they'd always say to me, you know how it is.

And I'd be like, lovely.

Look, I, when I grew up in central Cambridge, there was very rare clarity.

If there was claret everywhere, it was just because my dad had bought a nice bottle.

Exactly.

And then he'd get out and I'd be sort of exhausted.

And have been decanted.

What decanter are you using there?

It was exactly that.

Absolutely.

Animals.

Straight for the bottle.

Max, who got your association with football, that people just want to tell you stories about fights.

I wasn't in football.

That was pre-I was like a news reporter.

I was even more of an average Joe then.

It was just, oh, this guy picks me up.

And he'd have trouble with his wife and his family.

I always change my voice in this.

My wife laughs.

If I'm in with a real Valley's taxi driver, I will revert to my mum's Mirtha route pretty quickly.

Oh, I'll go cockney in within.

If they do talk about aggro, and I live in quite a nice house now, quite a nice part of Calvin, I'm very keen then to point out through my accent that I grew up on the tough streets of Barry.

I go proper Barry then in that situation.

I have that.

But however Cockney I went would never compete with this man who just mugging him off, mate.

Yeah, it was just clarity everywhere.

Mike, just step in here.

My under-11s rugby team

played against Vale of Glamorgan and I stayed for two days in Barry when I was 11.

And that's where I I discovered my love of pitch and push.

How old are you, Dave?

49 years old.

Meg, I just missed you by a couple of seasons, because I played Virgil Morgan scores, and we used to host people at my mum and dad's house.

The one guy I remember was Jamie Ring, and he was the only man who'd ever been sent off for Wales.

He was one of the dads.

No, it's Paul Ring.

Jamie Ring is his son.

Jamie Ring was the...

I was playing against Jamie Ring.

Paul Ringer, and Jamie Ringer was his son.

That's who he was.

Redhead.

Yes.

Macro player.

He's a good mate of mine, Jamie.

Send him my best regards.

Yeah, Paul was the first blog seller for Wales.

Look at this.

Tell him if you remember.

Wow.

Long ringing this afternoon.

David, were you good then?

You must have been all right.

I was all right.

However, the main thing I got from my sports career was I did play with some people who were actually good, who went on to play

international and play for the Lions and stuff like that.

So I do know.

You know, if that's all you get from university is what smart people are like and that there are incredibly smart people and if all you get from your sports career is i know you have to want it more than anyone else and try more than anyone else but you have to be really good in the first place and i played with some people who were really really good in the first place so i was all right so who would have been the sort of star players your age of my era dennis hickey was all-Ireland 100 and 200 meters champion at under 15 and under 18 played for Ireland when he was I think 19 and then played for the Lions a few years after that.

Then just came after that was Shane Horgan, Brian O'Driscoll, those guys.

O'Driscoll, what a player.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, my boy, when he was under 11 Carlos Schools, we went to Ireland.

We played Terranur College over there.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the Irish rugby world is even smaller than the Welsh rugby world.

Yeah, it probably is.

My main memory of Barry, though, was it was where I introduced to my first love in sports, which is pitch and putt.

I love Carrie Golf Club.

Very short golf.

Down by the viaduct.

Yeah, it was by a viaduct.

Yeah.

Well, next time you're in Wales, we'll go and have a game of golf.

Right, so we're in the car.

How long's the journey?

Oh, in a taxi, because the bus lane's probably 25 minutes.

Do you listen to anything, like a podcast or anything, or you just sit inside?

No, I like to observe.

I like looking at windows and seeing people and doing it.

I used to drive to Edinburgh and not put the radio on, you know.

Wow.

It's not great to get a sea on the motorway, mine, but I...

I quite like the silence of a car.

I quite enjoy it.

Well, with the sort of Polish hip-hop in the background.

The silence of the Polish hip-hop.

Just puncturing the pot silence, yeah.

What's the view?

Tell us what these eyes are seeing as you make your way from North Cardiff to wherever we're going, because we don't know that, and I'm excited to find out.

Right, so we're in North Cardiff, we're driving through, it's just gone rush hour, so the traffic's died down a little bit.

I'm in a nice part, some lovely old buildings, a lovely old cathedral, and then

we move into town there, then we swing around and we head down towards lovely Cardiff Bay,

which is like a big marina there in Cardiff.

At Club.

Lee Club's just around the corner, Dave, as you well know.

And I ended up, we pulled into Rothlock Studios, which is one of the BBC studios in Cardiff.

All right.

What are we doing there?

So yesterday we were doing, or I was doing, a lot of the promo stills and videos for socials and print and TV for the upcoming series of Mammoth, my second series of Mammoth, my sitcom.

Which is great.

Series two.

So this is

when you get a sitcom.

As yet, current number of sitcoms I've made is zero.

But you know, we're working on one.

Are you?

I mean, I've got an idea, but no one's bit yet, but I haven't really put anything to paper.

The embryonic stages.

When you're doing series one, how much can you enjoy series one for what it is, or are you just sitting there going, oh, I hope we get another one?

You just have to enjoy it, thinking this is all I'm going to do.

And because I'm an innovative commerce, I was a new writer, even though I was 52.

They gave me a half series for network.

So they gave me three apps to sort of see if I saw more than a pilot.

We did a pilot of PBC Wales, and then network gave me a half series to go onto network.

But so you just got to think,

I'm going to enjoy this, and I'm love doing it, and work with good people.

I'm not going to put up with any bullshit.

We're going to do things the way we want to do it.

And there's every chance that this will be it.

I'm already thinking about next ideas and next projects and what I'm going to do after this.

It's such a fickle thing, right?

Commissioners could change and commissioning teams could change and producers can change, and people can drop out, and then, oh, people could just not like it, you know, let's be honest.

It could bomb.

And then you haven't got another series.

You can't, you've got to enjoy it because it's great fun.

It's great fun getting picked up and doing fun things with interesting people who are really good at their job.

So enjoy that.

And then think, this is going to be over in four weeks.

And then if it's not, brilliant.

Which was unusual for ours.

I don't know whether because it was such a short run, they let us know within weeks that they were going to commission nine more, which was fantastic.

Funny enough, Max, you mentioned Quantum Leap, iconic theme tune.

I think we all agree.

Written by Mr.

Mike Post, who wrote my theme tune.

Wow.

That's great.

And also wrote...

He's 100.

How old is he?

Or was he like eight when he did Quantum Leap?

Oh, Mike's like 75.

So he, I was, because I love the 70s.

I'm a massive fan of Mike Post's work.

So he wrote, as well as Quantum Leap, which I loved, he wrote The 18,

he wrote Blade Law, he wrote NYPD Blue, he wrote The Rockford Files, all my favorite theme songs written by this one man, right?

So I had a radio show on Radio Wales about the 70s, and they said, who do you want to interview?

I said, well, I'd love to talk to Mike Post.

They said, who's that?

I said, he's just my favourite TV composer.

We sort of have this five-minute pre-record, and I spoke to him for like an hour on the phone.

We just became mates.

And I was writing mammoth at the time.

He said, let me know how it goes.

So when I got the commission, we were on the train to London.

Emailed him.

I said, listen, Mike, I said, I spoke to you a couple of years ago on BBC Wales.

You probably don't remember.

I just let him know that that show I was written, got commissioned.

He went, I'll write your theme tune.

Yes, I said, I don't think I can afford a Mike Post theme tune, mate, but I appreciate it.

He said, Don't worry about the money, I got lots of money.

I'm writing the theme tune.

Yes,

he wrote the A team.

This is amazing!

He wrote the A team, and he wrote Mammoth.

He puts machine gun shots in every

there's no helicopter.

Why are the credits Mr.

T welding a tank together out of some hay in a barn?

And he's not in this show.

Don't worry about it.

Oh, that's so great.

But he was lovely.

And you know what?

Because we all like our sport.

This is the sort of the level that we'd all like to have, right?

He's not flash.

He could walk into your house.

No, you wouldn't know who he was.

You know, we can go with him, and no one, obviously, if you're in the industry, you'll know who he is.

But most people wouldn't know who Mike Post is if they saw him.

So he's got that lovely anonymity.

But with the means that goes with being on the top of his game in Hollywood for 50 years, right?

Yeah.

So he said to me in the summer, do you play golf?

I said, yeah, I'd play better golf.

Sawgrass.

Go on.

Well, he's played there.

He's played Bloody Augusta on numerous occasions.

He flies in on his own jet.

He's got a Gulfstream 5, right?

With two pilots.

I pick him up from Cardiff Airport.

We go for a game of golf in my club there.

We have a game of golf.

He then wants to go for a Chinese.

So we go for a Chinese takeaway, my local Chinese.

He comes back to my house to meet my wife, right?

And have a pint in my bar.

And then flies back to Los Angeles.

I said, this is the life.

Mike Post's life.

I want your life.

If you did like what happened yesterday with Mike Post, it would just blow your mind.

Just midway through the game of pitch and putt at the viaduct, he just hands you a TDK blank cassette.

There's your theme music, Mike.

And did you love the theme or did you want to say you couldn't just tweak it a bit?

You can't say that to Mike Post.

Well, Joe, I loved it.

And Smash the Fourth Wall, the BBC said it's too long.

It needs to be shorter.

I said, mate, I'm not telling him how to do his job, right?

I said, believe, make this part of the show like it used to be.

So then we ended up with like the Dallas style triple screen credits, the yellow writing, you know, very retro look.

Yeah.

Music by Mike Post and big yellow letters and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

On this day, you're just coming in to have now smile, now jump, now do costume changes, loads of costume changes.

Yeah, okay.

They said, what about one of the red snakeskin shirt with the grey fur coat?

I said, okay.

They said, where did they get this fur coat from?

I said, I brought it to them.

This is my fur coat.

Not real fur, fur, by the way, if you're listening.

So yeah, cute costume changes, did some still stuff on camera.

And then we did some, because it's all online these days, we did some

move-in bits for TikTok and the various socials.

And then we did, oh, this is going to be great, by the way.

Dave, next time, if you get a trainer to Cardiff next time, Christmas time.

There's a big sort of Times Square-esque digital advertising board now outside the Cardiff Central Train Station.

We do loads of clips for that.

So I think I'll be raising a pina colada to people as they arrive in the capital city.

My son's horrified at the prospect.

Oh, I bet.

But what an amazing thing.

There was talk when we started of this podcast, Our Faces Being on a Billboard, and I lost my mind.

Do it, man.

Just because a bit like for your son, a bit like my mate's going, are you fucking serious?

Well, my daughter loves it, right?

My daughter loves it.

She just turned 13.

My son's 15, going on 16.

And when the first series came out, he went, There was a BBC Wales sitcom called The Tuckers with Steve Spears, right?

And ended up on all the buses, excluding the school bus.

So I told him about Mammoth.

He was like, are you going to be on a bus?

I said, I don't know.

He said, please, just not on a bus.

So I had to say to Marketing, can you not put me on a bus?

A little spoiler, there's a scene in this series coming out now.

And as I'm writing it, I said to my son, he's a lovely boy.

He doesn't swear, certainly not at me.

I'm sure he does with his mate.

I said, listen, it's gotta be no mate.

There's a scene where I'm probably going to be naked in this scene.

He went, are you serious?

I said, yeah, yeah.

I said, but you'll just from behind me you're not gonna you won't see the front runner he went oh god why why are you doing that don't do that don't do that i said it'll be funny mate that's why i'm doing it he said please don't do it i said mate it'll just be literally a quick glimpse of my bum and then it'll be done he went oh for sake i'm 15.

so

so we had to get a bum double it so i spent a one afternoon just looking at bloke's bums deciding

Like a lineup.

Very amazing.

Behind a screen.

They did it like the police.

They should have done it that way.

Number two, step forward, number three.

Can you turn around, please?

Touch your toes, they did it like naked attraction, but backwards.

No, it was all on that.

They said, like,

just the weirdest email attachments of all time.

Mike, I hope you chose the buff 11 stone.

Oh, no, he is literally, he's a lovely fella.

He is a bodybuilder from Swansea.

He's got glutes like bowling balls.

That is kind of funny for the character if there's a shot of him from behind and he's ripped.

And my son said, I'll be down by faint praise.

He went, at least everyone knows it's not your ass.

So how long are we at the BBC then?

I was there all day yesterday.

So we left there at four o'clock.

Wow.

So hang on, there must be some lunch involved.

Yeah, oh yeah, there was lunch.

There was lunch.

So we had a little voucher and they took us into the canteen and we had,

I had a chicken souvlaki.

It was quite nice.

Okay.

Some salad

and a can of Dr.

Pepper.

Lovely.

Are they making you do social stuff in character then?

And are you having to improvise it?

Or is it as you?

The Q ⁇ A stuff was as me.

And then all the other stuff was in character improvised.

And that goes okay?

Sometimes, you know, people who do social media accounts are just a bit like, do something wonderful now that's going to go viral.

Just do something really funny there.

And then come over here and do some really funny there.

I said, all right, I'll try my best.

Yeah.

When we were doing the Champions League in Australia, and the TikTok guy said, you know, and I'm doing it with Mark Boznich and Craig Foster.

So Boz is sort of up for anything.

And they're both really lovely, but Craig Foster is like a human rights activist.

He is like a forensic analyst of football.

And there's one where it's like you've got Real Madrid or Chelsea.

You have to walk to the X and then go left if you think Real Madrid are going to win, or right if you think Chelsea are going to win.

He wants to do like 45 minutes breaking down, you know, how they attack.

And he's like, you want me to walk in silence to this and then go there?

I got the Afghanistan women's football team out of Afghanistan yesterday, you know, get them in.

And now you're making me do this, just walk.

Like, this is what it was so funny All right, but hang on the souvlaki because sometimes a canteen souvlaki right it's gonna be dry it's gonna sat like

it's very nice max it was very good was it okay i'm delighted they're lovely in there and they're over friendly because it's in wales they're over friendly the canteen stuff which is always nice is the wales bbc canteen is that because we were talking about the white city one where you when whenever i've been there that you know sort of you're standing behind clive anderson yeah clive anderson and then you know moira stewarts in front of them and it'll be a runner-off bargain hunt more likely

So there's the room we did the read-through there when we have the first series.

I fell a player, my grandson, it's a fellow called Joel Davison, right?

And I noticed Doctor Who screens here on his phone, right?

I said, oh, you like Doctor Who, Joel.

He said, yeah, yeah.

I said, oh, mate, I'll tell you what, this place is going to blow your mind.

I said, because they filmed all of Doctor Who here, essentially.

So there used to be a big Doctor Who museum just over there on the bay.

Upstairs, I'll show you later.

There's like Doctor Who wallpaper.

They've got a TARDIS.

It's amazing.

I said, you know, and then we were in the room there, and they'd been doing some Doctor Who stuff there.

There was Doctor Who stuff on the walls.

I said, Listen, this is where they would have had a read-through for Doctor Who.

And then one of the other actors said to Joel, Hi, Joel, how you doing?

How's Peter?

He said, I was all right, thank you.

Yeah, I went, Peter Davison.

I said, That's not Peter Davidson, Doctor Who, isn't it?

He went, Yeah,

I said, I've just spent half an hour telling you about Doctor Who, but he's too polite to say anything to me, right?

And then it turns out, not only is Peter Davison his dad, his brother-in-law is David Tennant.

So he's got like at Sunday dinner, there'll be two Doctor Who's there.

sylvester mccoy's come over I'm trying to blow his mind with doctor who facts are there any other unexpected things that were filmed in that BBC Wales studio that people would have just presumed were filmed in in London oh yeah so there's a series out now called

Death Valley oh yeah that's all filmed there with Timothy Spall and the fellow I write mammoth with Paul writes that they filmed all sorts down there I think at the moment as we found out when we we were filming Cardiff and South Wales has become a bit of a hotspot for filming.

It's a real sort of seller's market for crew and that.

So it's tough to get crew because they're always so busy.

There's so much going on.

Yeah.

It's brilliant for Cardiff and for South Wales.

But yeah, the loads of stuff gets filmed down there.

Loads of weird things.

And weird library footage that you see of Cardiff gets used in things.

I was watching Kirby Enthusiasm last year.

I said to Kelly, that's the Hays in Cardiff.

She went, well, what?

I said, look, that street of shops is central Cardiff.

And Larry Davis is supposed to be like Bel Air or something in Los Angeles.

What?

Yeah.

It's a lovely place.

Well, you've been, Dave, you know what it's like.

You haven't been to Max a few times, surely.

Yeah, I almost got into journalism.

Well, I did, I got offered a place at Cardiff Journalism School, and I went to City in London instead.

And actually, the course was shut.

But, you know, it was where all my mates were.

And they tried to throw me off for being disruptive.

And it was an absolute outrage.

What?

Can you imagine?

It was an absolute.

I've kept the notes.

I am still furious about it.

You're the least narcissist.

It's exactly.

Exactly.

What was the mix-up then?

Had they mixed you up with someone else that looked a bit like no, no, they were just bad people.

They may be different now.

They were bad people, and I'll never forget it.

No forgive either.

Never forgive, never forget.

One of them said to me, We will make you unemployable outside of Cambridge.

Fucking what a threat.

Exactly.

And I'm a professor of professor of neuroscience, so it's going to be tricky.

That does really limit your broadcasting possibilities.

again

right so the thing is we're done at four he's done at four okay yeah they got a car for me ready jump in the car sort of funnily enough paul the i write with was in town because he's filming some death valley stuff i take you're tired after all i was pretty naked i'm doing a series in welsh at the moment and that's really tiring so i got to try and think in a second language all day but i was quite tired yeah because my costume changes

is tiring and it doesn't sound tired.

It's one of those things like podcasting.

You can't say I'm tired after a podcast.

Well, because I love dressing up and I love the 70s.

And I think the look of something is important as well.

We had to split that nine into four and a five.

So we recorded the first four of the new ones.

And I had 49 costume changes in four episodes.

My Beyonce.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, jumped in the car, went home.

Kids were already home.

My wife was still in work.

Yeah, just had a little bit of a crash out, a nice cup of instant coffee.

It's just Adam's.

I think I look quick tied around before Kelly got back from work.

Well, that was it until dinner time, really.

Are you making dinner?

No, no.

That's not going to sound

as forceful as it was.

Absolutely disgraceful.

He's still in character.

He's still in character.

He's still mammoth.

Yeah, yeah.

I do sometimes make dinner.

Kelly makes it more often than I do.

We do get probably two takeaways a week.

No, Kelly made it yesterday.

She loves a mashup, Kelly.

She'll just sort of cook things.

Well, I think if I'm not going to cook it, I can't complain.

That's the deal.

So what do we have yesterday?

What does she cook?

It was a strange concoction.

I tell you, it was was like homemade sort of rice and peas, Jamaican style.

Great.

With a chicken coma from a jar, like, you know, a shop bought chicken coma.

Chicken coma with rice and peas.

And a little bit of chocolate trifle.

Very nice.

All on the same plate.

That is a mashup.

That really is.

Just before that, you, what, you've been at home for the kids for like a couple of hours.

Are the kids now of an age where they just go to their room and don't talk to you?

Or do you have like actual conversations?

No, I'm pretty lucky.

So they always talk about their day still.

And then my boy was up doing some math revision because he's got a maths exam in about a month for GCSEs oh my daughter's teaching herself just turned 13 teaching herself guitar which I'm really impressed with went to Liverpool she became not through me a massive Beatles fan in the last sort of two or three months wow so for a birthday wanted to go to Liverpool so we did all that and did the cavern club and the mystery tour and the and the

sort of Beatles exhibition down the in the dock there and then in the gift shop I bought her a Beatles guitar thinking it was just going to be like a show like a thing to put on the wall but it wasn't actually like an acoustic guitar guitar.

So she's been sat down there with the internet, with her phone, you know, another plus, just learning how to play chords.

What's she playing at the moment?

What songs?

She's playing a bit of Let It Be and a few of the slower stuff.

Yeah.

I bought a lovely Gretsch guitar about two years ago.

I'm terrible at guitar, but it was such a good-looking guitar that I bought it.

And she said, can I use your guitar, Dad?

I went, hmm.

I thought, well, it's been sat on that stand for two years, mate, and you never use it.

Of course you can use it.

I said, yeah, go on.

Try not to break it.

I said, I'll get the the amp.

What's the amp for?

I said, well, you'll need the amp to listen to what he's playing.

Why?

I said, because that doesn't make any sound on its own, just electric guitar.

So, but yeah, I got the amp for her, plugged it all in, set it up for her, and she was in there just playing electric guitar all evening.

She's playing Helter Skelter.

It's the loudest.

I love that, though.

Do you know?

I'm not one of these dads who ever tells the kids to keep it down.

I like a house to be loud and full of stuff.

And I hate silence in the house.

In the car, I want to get away from it.

When I'm at home, there's got to be something on in the background.

And that's why when the cricket with test matches on I always have a cricket on because it's just it's a noise all day and I love it Mike has your son's maths surpassed your ability to help him

he's a stars across the board he'd hate me saying that online he's a very intelligent and he's studious you know you know you said about sports you got to be good and work hard yeah he's clever and works hard which is a bit of a combination and he loves his rugby and he loves school so he hates your ass appearing on television yeah

he's gonna hate that big digital board outside the train station he will absolutely

because when the last time we had like static digital boards last time on some of the big roundabouts in cardiff and i would take the kids out for a drive and just drive around the roundabouts

keep going round and round and round this is going to be worse

no i'm very lucky with the two of them she loves her singing and dancing and acting and he loves his rugby and his school stuff so it's all good all right so we all round the table for chicken corner and rice and peace.

Well, no, I just made a table as well.

So, I've I made a table.

My friend Viv and I, with help from my friend Drew, made it like a 10-seater dining table from a tree they cut down on my garden.

It's lovely, it's really nice.

I've yet to use it as a dining table.

We've had like a dining room built because there was no so is it a big tree or a small table?

It was a big tree, it's a 10-seater, it's a nice table.

Yeah, that is a big table because you have a redwood in the garden.

No, it was a yew.

Well, I got lots of trees in the garden.

This was a yew tree, not that yew tree, it was an actual yew tree.

tree good good

it's not where you take the show in the 70s do you mike take us through converting a tree from your garden into a table good question you have to have it made into boards you need one of those cross so we got a lot of trees there a few had to come down when we moved in because the house hadn't been lived in it would have been rented for a long time and they hadn't really looked after it so we couldn't have afforded to buy it if it was in great condition.

So we needed a lot of work done.

The garden especially was in a hell of a state.

So the one tree had been previously sort of lopped or pollarded, as I found that was called, but badly.

And what was left was like a 10-foot stump.

So they were going to cut that down.

And he said, it's a really nice piece of wood.

He said, and they milled it on site.

They bring these massive chainsaws out.

They'll cut it into planks on site.

Wow.

And he said, what do you want for the tree?

I said, well, nothing.

I said, but why don't you save me?

Well, I'll have two planks.

Keep the rest.

Save me two planks of it.

He's got a kiln and he dried it.

And then about a year later, whatever it was, year and a half, dropped these two planks over which were lovely I took them to my friend Drew who makes kitchens and Lovely work as a proper craftsman carpenter They run into what I call a thicknesser to plane it down to the right thickness and Then my friend Viv who's a listener to my podcast who I've become friends with Yeah, we made a frame and we went online and had a look how they do these resin tables I bought some resin and we mixed it up and dyed it and everything else set the frame up put the planks in poured the resin sanded the hell out of it and buffed it and polished it and then drew made me some legs to go with it and it just looks i'm really pleased with it the long story short is that we will at some point i did that because christmas time we had nowhere even though we've got a nice house because we made my my wife's mother stays here a lot so we've sort of made her a little flat of her own so she can have her own space

we haven't really got a dining room so we've now built a little like a conservatory which the table's going to go in but we haven't met there yet so yesterday we're still we're still at the eating on our lap stage a lot of you know house decisions are based on christmas day Oh, there you go.

We're going to need an enormous kitchen.

Yeah.

Where are we going to see 10 people, little kill?

There's four of us.

Yeah, just in case we're hosting on Christmas Day.

And then you're not hosting on Christmas Day and you're like, what?

Why have we got this?

Well, you've got to build a room to fit it in as well.

An advent room, exactly.

I love the idea that when the kids have moved out as well, it's just the two of you, one each end of the town.

What's it in the JFK with Tommy Lee Jones?

Each night, one of you.

Yeah, Costner, and one of you Tommy Lee Jones.

You have to decide.

There's an amazing picture recently where I think either Xi,

Kim Jong-un,

and Putin were all sat around an enormous table.

I think possibly watching some display of military motivation.

Oh, yeah, they all got together, didn't they?

Because it was just the three of them around an enormous table that would fit 30.

It just looked like that point in a wedding where all the girls get up to dance and the lads are just sat there.

Watching cricket on the TV in the corner.

Yeah.

But that is a great Christmas, isn't it?

When Putin's like, oh, I've got G and Kim.

And Kim arrives.

I've done the sprouts.

There's like, what's that?

Shall I do the sprouts?

Sure, I'll do the sprouts.

How do you do your sprouts, by the way?

How do I do my sprouts?

Or is this what Putin is asking?

Well, Putin asked me, I say, Vladimir.

I saute them, basically.

Right.

Parboil, then saute with a little bit of bacon in there.

Lovely.

Bacon.

Cook a pou and bacon and it's delicious though.

Come on.

See, I like to cook a roast dinner and a Sunday dinner.

I always do the Sunday Christmas dinner.

Although Kelly will say that she did the last one, which is technically true.

But I usually do.

Apart from the one, the last one.

Yeah.

So we had a dinner.

We had sat down on our laps to eat dinner.

TV on?

TV was on.

Uh-huh.

We watched OnlyConnect.

No, actually, we didn't watch OnlyConnect.

We had someone on before that because if I'm quizzing, I like to be settled.

Everything away.

Yeah.

Sit down.

Pen and paper out in case you need to keep score.

Yeah.

And before OnlyConnect, you need to watch another quiz just to A, to get something right before you watch this quiz where you don't get anything right it's sort of like a warm-up for only connect i hate and anyone who knows me will tell you this i hate to blow my own trumpet right here we go

of course if i'd have played only connect yesterday against both teams i would have beaten both teams

on my own that is insane

dealing with a demius here david yeah i won mastermind didn't i i master famously won mastermind too easy uh house of games too easy who did you beat your mastermind who were you up again well i tell you came second

The vice-chancellor of Oxford University.

Well do you know what?

It was Chris Akabusi, right?

But listen to this.

Okay.

What do you think Chris Akabusi's specialized subject was?

One of our finest ever long sprint athletes.

What was Chris Akabusi's special subject?

I'd say the history of the Olympic Games.

You'd think.

I'm going to say the life and times of Dolly Parton.

Left field.

Not as left field as what he chose.

The life and times of Frederick Nietzsche.

Really?

In which, by the way, luckily I pulled it out of the bag in the general knowledge round because I got two questions wrong in my specialized subject.

Unlike Akabusi, you aced Frederick Nietzsche.

Every question on Nietzsche.

And I thought he's just boned up on this just for the show.

And he's a lovely bloke.

Yeah, he's not.

So after we're chatting about it, he said, because he grew up in sort of care and bits and bumps, he was given a book on Nietzsche.

and just loved his philosophy and the way they thought about life.

And he genuinely loves Nietzsche and he is an absolute authority on the subject.

When Nietzsche was on Mastermind, he actually picked famous hurdlers.

He did a bit on Tony Jarrett, a bit on Huey Tea and Colin Jackson, and then a bit on Chris Ecker.

Ed Moses.

Yeah, Ed Moses obviously got the Moses questions.

Mike, just before we move on to the quizzes, what was your specialized round on Mastermind?

Well, this ties back to Mike Post.

I did James Garner.

Oh, wow.

Well, this is the thing.

I love the rocket files, so I chose James Garner.

Little did I know that only probably two of those questions were rockefeller's question

right because he was in the great escape and he was in lots of other maverick and did lots of other stuff wouldn't he space cowboys and did you feel you let yourself down well i won it i got the trophy so i didn't feel too bad you know

okay so what what's happening before only connect we because normally it's the university challenge before only connect isn't it yeah i think i had some nfl on on uh okay yeah because my daughter was second like a woman watches in in the flat in my grandmother's place she went next door with her guitar and then the three of us watched a bit of NFL while Kelly was doing some work and eating.

And then after that, when the plates are away and the tables are cleared, so the coffee table's cleared, nothing to distract you.

No coffee mugs in the way.

If I'm on a quiz, I like to contract on a quiz.

Got it.

Phones away.

Everything away.

So you've got a pen and paper for OnlyConnect?

We do that with the University Challenge.

We don't with OnlyConnect.

For University Challenge, if you just say Oscar Wilde, every guess, get about five.

That's what I've worked out.

If they say who said, you just say Oscar Wilde.

My one for that is Walt Whitman.

I say Elgar for any bit bit of classical music.

And if you get one,

and it's totally random.

That's really good.

Yeah, I know, but you let yourself down when there's three pieces of classical music in a row and you say Elgar for all of them and it's none of them.

To the listeners, the show that Mike is watching is Only Connect.

People from overseas may not know.

It is the most difficult quiz, I would say, in the world.

Intriguingly, round two of it is basically what the New York Times seems to have stolen for connections, their game, because that's all it is.

It's 16 words, and you have to form them into groups that go across the screen.

In fact, I think that they were furious when the New York Times launched

their version of it.

Do you find that OnlyConnect is kind of quite soulless?

We're here to quiz.

There's no like, there's like a tiny bit of music, but there's a lot of silence.

You like that?

Yeah.

Yeah, where my wife and I differ,

just she still teaches i used to teach that's where i first met her when we taught the same school we took some kids on like an outward bound trip down to uh like a place in west wales and got out like a trivial pursuit on the first night there you know with all the sort of year 10 year 11 kids and us and a couple of other stuff but i just got incensed like i can't stand if you get a quiz it doesn't matter if it's a board game or a tv quiz then do it properly or don't do it i'm fine to not do it that's absolutely fine but if we're doing this we have to do this properly what i'm hearing from Max here is he might watch Only Connect if Barry Moore hosted it and was just running backwards and forwards across the

all white twisted flax.

Oh, why?

Oh, what?

Two research, Mark and Beryl.

When he's rapping, what's he doing?

I'll see you when you get there or something.

It's quite extraordinary.

Cho curling is the word.

Yeah.

A choir of ladies who've recovered from cancer and they're singing that.

And he comes out and raps.

And and if that's wrong I don't want to be right yeah the quintessential British TV host of the late 80s into the 90s I guess this I'm just describing who Barrymore was if not everyone knows who Barry Moore was but he would do shows in shopping centers

where you imagine the vibelessness of a shopping center at three in the afternoon and someone would just come out and sing that's life and people would be crying.

Well, I mean, I did do the world's longest ever radio show in the Grafton Center in Cambridge in 2004,

and that was 121 hours.

You think it's soulless at 3 p.m.

Try 3 a.m.

Yeah, the third time.

On day six.

That was tricky.

But hang on.

You surely didn't stay awake for 121 hours.

No, I could sleep during the songs and you could play two songs back to back.

Maximum duration of a song, six minutes.

So during the night, literally, I'd lie in bed and I'd have a microphone up here, and then someone would kick me awake after 12 minutes, and I'd just be like, Here's the Eagles, and then I'd just go back to sleep again.

How did you not swear?

How do you not come out of mid-dream just with some expleting?

I do know why, it's such a shame that I don't think it's anywhere, but it would be amazing to not listen to the whole thing back.

Talking about you, what

exactly?

Doesn't hold a world record.

Am I speaking to a world record holder here?

No, actually, someone in Slovenia started on the Wednesday, so it took me longer to get it than I held it for.

But I tell you what, the thing was, after after I finished, I went and had a pint, and then I got so tired, I started like like my fingers and toes started like pulsing like this.

And then I slept for 17 hours, and it was absolutely amazing.

All right, so we're sitting there with OnlyConnect, no one's allowed to talk.

It's like all focused on the quiz.

And are you playing as a team together?

Or are you

playing against each other?

And it's you and your genius son.

Yeah, he beat me in the University Challenge about three weeks ago.

And I was properly vexed.

Wow.

And so on OnlyConnect, you just get a point if you get it before they get the answer.

You've got to get it before they get it, yeah.

And you'd have beaten all of them.

It was mad yesterday.

Like I was getting the connection out of the second clue all the time.

You know, when they get sort of like 12-year-old grandmasters to play 30 games of chess against, you know, the 30 best players in Uzbekistan, you could do that on OnlyConnect.

We could get all the teams from OnlyConnect.

I could have yesterday.

Not normally.

Usually OnlyConnect, I'm a...

I'm not going to be falsely modest.

I'm an above-average OnlyConnect player.

For some reason, yesterday I was world class.

I don't know why.

Do you have a drink with this?

And we celebrate our like a champagne or something?

No, no, just a coffee.

Just a coffee.

Just a coffee, instant.

Another mellow bird.

I probably have one nine coffees a day.

My wife says I drink too much coffee, but nine.

So, have you had nine mellow birds in this day?

Whatever's in the jar, it might be mellow birds, it might not be.

I don't care.

Okay.

And at the BBC, are they delivering instant to you, or that might have been better coffee?

They brought me two lattes yesterday.

What do we do after the triumph of Only Connect?

Well, we watched two Only Connects, so we missed because we missed last week because I was working.

So we do back-to-back Only Connects.

And then at that point, I watched a Tom Brady thing because I've just started doing a new podcast with my mate Tom Parry, who you probably know Dave from Panasonic.

I know Tom.

Love Tom.

We've brought back an old NFL podcast we used to do called Any Given Wednesday.

We just started doing that again.

So, and we're going to talk about Tom Brady and the Patriots in the next one.

So I watched a little Tom Brady dock.

He's quite extraordinary guy, isn't he?

That's incredible.

He's like Tiger Woods.

You look at the stats and that can't be right, can it?

He played till he was 40 something, didn't he?

I think he's won more Super Bowls himself than any team in the NFL.

there's some you know he looks better now than he did at 22 and he was playing better football and he was faster they showed that 40 yard dash time and at 40 he did it faster than he did it at 22.

how would he go at only connect he'd be shit

absolutely shit i think because i used to teach pe i think comedians do well on those things i'm not just saying this because you're a day i think comedians do well on quizzes you've got to be quite sharp to be a comic

like adam jones on for uh series to do for bbc wales a rugby thing we do rugby player yeah British Lion.

And he's a quizzer.

He loves a quiz and he's an intelligent man.

So when you find a fellow jock

who loves a quiz, it's a wonderful thing.

I was only a runner-up on Mastermind to

Nikesh Patel.

We won't go into it right now, but let me just say my questions on the history of the Tour de France were really long questions.

And his questions on what happened in Scrubs were really short questions.

Thank you.

And you know what?

They say that if you time it, which I've done, they're not always the same length.

It is unfair.

You can answer immediately with no passes, and the other person can do the same thing, and you can have less questions.

I knew it.

I knew it.

Could you sue David?

Could you sue the BBC?

It would be bad for him because it was for charity.

Yeah, watch a bit of that.

And then an early night for me, I usually go to bed quite late.

Even the nine coffees?

Do the nine coffees give you a bit of a tingle?

I'm pretty much immune to it, really.

This is going to sound, whichever way you say this, it'll sound funny.

I had a really bad wrist yesterday, and I've had a really bad wrist today.

So my wife said to me, Google it, take some ibuprofen.

She brought two ibuprofen in.

I said, just give me one.

Just give me one.

She said, no, take two.

I said, no, I'll just have one because I said, the reason being, I said, painkillers don't really work for me anyway.

She said, yes, because you're only taking half the amount you're supposed to take.

I said, oh, that's a good point.

So I took two and it was fine.

What's it?

Is it old cricket?

Were you a spin bowler or is it an old rugby injury?

I mean, unfashionably, Dave.

I might have just slept on it.

Oh, yeah.

that's not cool.

I did a lot of stuff in rugby, it broke a lot of bones, but my wrist was never an issue.

I think I just slept on it funny, which is the thing when you get older, you know, what's wrong with your neck?

I just slept on it funny.

What's wrong with your wrist?

I just slept on it funny.

Yeah, I was away with some friends this weekend, and we're all 46.

Someone said the last four or five years, you've really the degeneration has really started.

We have a separate WhatsApp group for injuries

with our mate, Owen, who's a busier at Manchester United.

And he is just really annoyed because constantly people are like going, what's this?

In fact, one of our friends, Nick, on the weekend, his sciatica was so bad, he just couldn't really do anything.

He's just standing there like at some angle.

That's what's happening now.

We did the first series of mammoth.

My back went in the read-through the day before we started recording.

On the day we started recording, I had to have like two braces on, like almost like a girdle, just a ton of heat pads.

taped to my entire spine and a buttload of coproxamol.

It's great fun being older, isn't it?

I've started getting like really bad pins and needles in my hand, right?

So, being 50-year-old bloke, I thought, well, that's I'm probably going to die of this.

This is what's going to kill me.

And I googled it, and it's just because I'm fat and old.

On the Google search, are they that blatant or are they just trying to do that?

Well, no, I read with you in the lines.

They say, you know,

it has to do with circulation.

So your heart's, you know, not like it used to be, and I'm overweight.

So my sort of arteries and veins get crushed when I lie on my side, which I do.

So my blood doesn't get to my hand.

So they start going pins and needles.

There's no medical reason other than the fact that I'm overweight and I'm fat and old.

Pillow.

It's all about the pillows.

A lot of my life is a quest to find the perfect pillow at the moment, Mike.

How are we getting on?

Still haven't found it.

It's a common.

So if you played Vegal Morgan, you must be, if you're Jamie's age, you're either late 40s or just turned 50 then.

49, exactly.

Yeah.

Wow.

But are you still ending up sleeping on your, you want to sleep like a sarcophagus, but you end up face down.

That's still happening.

Ideally, I'd like to sleep on someone else's back.

Yeah.

That is not an option these days.

So

I start on my back and then I roll oars on my left side.

Do you drift off to sleep last night?

I'm lucky with that.

I've never struggled with that.

It drives my wife to distraction, but I'll be asleep within 60 seconds.

You played two games of OnlyConnect and you've changed outfits so many times.

And I'll get up at 6:30.

And I won't get up for P in the middle of the night, make some minds.

You're sleeping through.

I'll never get up in the night.

That's insane.

What time were we nodding off out there?

Well, I guess it was 10:30, 10:45.

It can be one o'clock in the morning.

On an NFL night, it might be two in the morning.

Straight to sleep, up a six up, bang.

Feels like a lovely day.

Feels like a lovely day for someone with a lovely life whose house got increasingly big as the episode went on.

And it sounds like you've kept Mammoth the perfect size for you.

such that there must be a lot of pride in a day like this because it's about to go go out into the world and you know you're showing the best side of it to people yes lovely dave and i i think because everything happened to me later on in life so i didn't start doing comment i was 35 and i wrote the first mammoth when i was 2017 i first came up with the idea everything's happened a bit later and then lockdown happened and then the podcast to do with the boys happened because that pays the bills that's the socially distanced sports part if people didn't yeah because that pays the bills without being too precious about it i mean i'm not flush and i've got a big mortgage, but

I can do things I want to do, which is such a

after 15 years of driving around the country, after driving to Leeds and back for like 70 quid, you know, of which 40 was petrol.

It is nice to be able to say no to stuff.

And it's nice to be able to say, well, I don't want it to look like that, though.

I want to look like this.

And also at a stage where you can say, I don't want it to look like this.

I want it to look like that.

Even for your own ass.

Yes.

I want a better ass.

If that arse doesn't look fantastic, you haven't got a job, mate.

Mike Bubbins, thank you very much for coming on.

What did you do yesterday?

Thank you, Dave.

Thank you, Max.

So there's Mike Bubbins yesterday.

Because it's interesting.

The number of guests where you go, look, they had a good day, but clearly not everything is fixed in their existences.

And

here is a man I feel is content.

You know, everything is working.

Everything is nice.

Everything was calm.

I'll build a table out of a tree out there.

You know, there's a beauty to it.

That's the key moment.

Also, just after we finished the recording, I remembered the name of the guy who I stayed with on the Under-11's rugby tour to Wales in 1989.

And turns out, I mean, Ellis literally has a bit on his radio show with John Robbins where he knows everyone in Wales.

Yeah.

And it turns out the guy I stayed with, Jimmy Pritchard, is one of Bubbins' best friends.

Yeah, that would have been a really good bit on the podcast, wouldn't it?

Yeah, but just...

That's what I thought.

I know.

I'm sorry.

But I didn't want to just, I only remembered the name when

two episodes of OnlyConnect feels like an ordeal to me.

Like, one I can get through and think, I need to be better at these things.

Yeah.

It's like if you did a cryptic crossword and then you had to do another one straight afterwards.

Yes, but there's a cleansed feeling after an episode of OnlyConnect, particularly one where you haven't got a single answer right, you do feel like you've bettered yourself.

Yes, I know that.

I did admire his commitment to the quiz, though.

When this is on, it's not background anymore.

Yeah.

This is full focus.

I wonder as well, David, do you think I didn't maybe let on enough?

the level of coffee snob I have become to Bubbins.

You did really well to hold that back, Max.

I was very proud of you.

No, no, I thought I was embarrassed to admit what I'd become.

I don't think it was a.

Even still, all I can think of is just me scooping a single, what's it called?

Mellow Birds.

I don't think we have that here.

Kenko straight into the and just handing it to you and just seeing how you would react to it.

The thing is, we sometimes have an incident in the afternoon, and I'm not against it.

Everything has its place.

I'm not backtracking here.

I'm honest about these things.

I'm I'm just a normal guy who goes crazy sometimes.

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Hey, thank you, David.

In it for life?

In it for life.

Let's get more Welsh people on the podcast.

Okay, I agree.

Thanks, everybody.