WDWDY #38: Trainspotting

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

Tito's handmade vodka is America's favorite vodka for a reason.

From the first legal distillery in Texas, Tito's is six times distilled till it's just right and naturally gluten-free, making it a high-quality spirit that mixes with just about anything.

From the smoothest martinis to the best Bloody Marys, Tito's is known for giving back, teaming up with nonprofits to serve its communities and do good for dogs.

Make your next cocktail of Tito's.

Distilled and bottled by Fifth Generation Inc., Austin, Texas, 40% alcohol by volume, savor responsibly.

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 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'Daherty.

Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to today's episode of Midweek Mayhem from the people that bring you What Did You Do Yesterday, the hit weekend podcast, asking people what they did yesterday.

I'm Max Rushton, and this is David O'Doherty.

Hello, and welcome to Midweek Mayhem from the people that bring whatever you said.

I was going to janky, but up for the whole episode where I just kept repeating the thing that you said.

Sort of like an annoying thing you do at school.

I really had persistence for doing that.

The Cambridge to Oxford X5 bus was a long journey.

Yeah.

It went through every Bista.

It went through everywhere, Bedford, Bista, Milton Keynes.

And I think I sat next to my friend John and just prodded him on the leg for the whole three and a half hours.

He was like, I bet you can't.

I was like, bet I can.

I've got some bad news, David.

Oh, no.

Julian Potter's been in touch to say, hi, Max, bad news on the sponsorship front.

After checking on everything in Showbiz, the first mention of Lululemon was June.

Since then, with you guys promoting them unofficially, the share price has dropped 48%.

It's like one of those Black Thursday graphs or whatever it is.

People walking out of Lululemon holding bags of pants.

You know, that's just there.

Shit.

And this was, you know, I've really been bigging them up a lot.

I use them as a keep the light out face mask.

Versatile.

Use them as underpants.

Yeah.

yeah on my holidays in France last week I started to use them as swimming togs and let's just say don't dive in right I understand unless you want a big reveal

the Lululemon big reveal swimmers a lot of people saw my Lululemons

if you were you know a mid-range high diving duo in the Olympics you know so you're not China the Chinese are going to win aren't they Britain we might be going for bronze Ireland yeah Ireland okay if you're the Irish diving team and you both went in Lululemons, and as you entered the water, you know, twistle, twistle, twist, twistle, tiny splash, and then the Lululemons popped up into the air, and then you get out of the pool, starkers.

I think you'd get good numbers.

Hey, lots of love for the Alan Davis episode.

Dermot writes, Alan's saying lovely things about David set at the fringe.

David annoyed that he didn't think he looked hot.

Us Irish, we cannot take compliments.

In many ways, David, he went further than saying you didn't look hot, I thought.

Oh, dear.

Yes.

Thank you very much, Alan, for coming to this show.

That was very nice.

And I should have just been happy that a legend of British comedy had come to my show.

But instead, yes, it did.

It rankled a tiny bit.

Every silver lining has a little turret in it.

But it's interesting that because it sort of goes full circle, because what he was saying was the way that you approached life was how Mary Beard explained the ancient Romans did, because there were no mirrors.

And so you are are living your life in the beardian ancient Roman way.

Jim says, as a fellow on-pitch organizer, this is regards Alan Davis being a sensible footballer and me talking too much.

Is there anything worse than coming off the pitch at half time and someone saying, no one's talking out there?

And you're as hoarse as an Iceland lasagna circa 2013.

Nobody's talking.

I do like he introduced something I'd never heard before, which is the person who's obviously not not getting past the ball at all, just resorts to saying, or me, or me, which implies the ball has been passed to someone else.

And I would have been a great option.

Still here.

Or me.

Maybe next time.

Now, we haven't recorded since the Sarah Pascoe episode as well.

And lots of reaction to her dad's Ulysses.

Mary said, I'd never wanted to read Ulysses more than I do after listening to this.

This is her dad's jazz odyssey, Ulysses, I don't know, millions CD collection.

yeah until this podcast began david i thought ulysses was you know written by oh no euripides or something good you know

i really thought i was urbane until this all began

we did big it up i found it on bandcamp yeah i think it might be a cut-down 16-hour version that you can buy on bandcamp but you can hear track one which i think is an hour for free

and it's beautiful.

I think because you hear the word jazz, you're thinking like firing a pet shop sort of screaming sounds, but it's really beautiful two-instrument thing.

Yeah, check it out.

I like that the cutdown is six.

You know, when you like, you don't want to watch the full highlights of the Champions League game between Fenebache and Leal, you can watch the three-minute catch-up.

The three-minute catch-up version on Bangkok is 16 hours.

My cousin Stuart bought it

and he likes it.

Lynn said, Brilliant episode.

Loved hearing that Sarah's dad has released a new album.

I have copies of his first four albums from the 70s.

He's an amazing saxophonist.

Who knew?

And Fresh and Minty says, Sarah's dad's album reminds me so much of a time gone by in the 90s when there were adverts on daytime channel 4 for 16 CD bundles like complete compendion of country music, instrumental versions of every country song ever written.

Phone this number now to order with a credit card.

The advert would always end with not available in the shops.

And I'd always think, I'm not surprised, no one would buy it if it was in the shop.

Poor Sarah Pasco, there's not been a single bit of feedback about her.

Just her

dad's gone platinum.

He's at number seven in the Bill Hot 100.

It's cracked America finally, Mr.

Pasco.

It would be difficult if, whatever, Radio One in the morning, if you did go to number one, because they would feel they have to play it.

Because they're probably only allowed three-minute chunks for the songs.

So which bit they choose from the 16-hour cutdown?

Now, I think you, David, stirred up.

I don't think it was me, but maybe it was, or maybe it was Alan Davis, stirred up another King Crimson-style angry hornet's nest.

Oh, no.

Nerd replies, writes Milesbar, due to a Star Wars factual inaccuracy.

Oh, dear.

Worse.

What a mistake at Omega.

Along the lines of this one from Adam.

Hello.

Jabber the Hut doesn't play in the cantina band and doesn't appear inside the Moss Isley Cantina.

He does confront Han in the landing bay outside, but there's no band there, and that's only in the special edition versions.

Unacceptable.

I expect more rigorous fact-checking and journalistic standards if you are going to be the self-appointed center of the universe.

That tune has been in my mind for years that they play do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, which is funny that La Hot Jazz de Paris of 1920 is still, or or rather was popular a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Makes you think maybe Django Reinhardt wasn't such an innovator.

He just had a flying saucer of some kind.

Did Tempor the Heart?

I'm nervous to ask questions about Star Wars, but he sort of had a big toothbrush, didn't he?

Or was it like the first Sheisha?

Was he the originates the Shisha pipe?

He's got Princess Leia in a bikini.

Yeah, in a ball and chain as well.

Yes.

But then, I mean, I'm not a super nerd at this stuff, but I know they inserted a little scene in one of the remastered Star Wars versions.

Like, with Star Wars, didn't they put in a load of CGI when they re-released them in the early 2000s?

The Ewoks were better, the E-Woks moved better or something.

Yeah, but the CGI looks so early 2000s.

I think Lucas then made another version in about 2015 that has a lot of that CGI taken out just because it looks like a Jennifer Jennifer Lopez video waiting for tonight.

Whoa, that was a mistake putting Lopez in, letting her sing the whole song.

Kate says, I was listening to the preliminary caveats of your chat with Alan Davis.

You just mentioned small boats when the special government alarm went off.

But you probably didn't have this, David, did you?

I was walking on the beach in Whitstable and then everyone's phone just went.

For an awful moment, Kate says, I thought Farage had stayed a successful coup.

That's how he announces it

here's some nice feedback from lizzy the implication being that was some awful feedback

I don't expect you to read this out.

I just wanted to say a big thank you.

This is from Lizzie.

To you and your Joyers podcast for helping me get through a difficult time.

I'm currently slowly getting over a traumatic breakup with the man who I thought was the love of my life.

I had to stop my nightly ritual of falling a sleep to episodes of the pod.

It made me too sad because I used to imagine my own episode, which would be a glorious day spent by me and my now ex living in North Yorkshire.

And we talked about moving in years to come.

I soon soon resumed my nightly listening.

It's helped stop my thoughts spiraling during those dreaded long nights.

Later in the year, I'll be spending a solo few days in the North Yorkshire town we'd hope to move to in a trip that was booked pre-split, obviously, that coincides with what would have been our anniversary.

It may well be a tough time.

I'm already changing my episode to one of me having a glorious day there as a strong, single, independent woman.

I'm now looking forward to making this a reality when I get there.

Thank you for making such a wonderful podcast and for keeping me company and keeping me laughing through this dark period.

I hope this hasn't been too depressing to read from lizzy

yeah you could have said and then i shat myself

in keeping with the podcast no

this podcast can cover real awful things and what a shitty time i think in situations like this you're meant to say something positive but i always think it's much better to say something

not negative but just like oh it's so hard lizzy yeah just carry on keep the old pandemic thing of just keep going.

Oh, God.

Oh, yeah, we love you, Lizzie.

Thank you for that.

Dear Max David and Mars Barr, though Max recognized Jamie's message during the midweek mayhem number 36 as quite a good poem, actually, he failed to acknowledge the beautiful simplicity of the traditional Japanese haiku that she had infiltrated into the podcasts.

No doubt this was an effort on her part to add culture into the void she knew his day would otherwise be.

Presuming his dismissive tone was out of naivety rather than anything else.

As Google summarizes, a haiku is a short, traditional Japanese poem composed of three lines with a 575 syllable structure, a focus on nature or a specific moment in time.

With that in mind, I present Jamie's WhatsApp retrieved from the transcript of your own episode.

I would love for you to experience my life on these solo days.

She evokes the crossing of cultural boundaries as the family have crossed hemispheres with the Japanese art form.

She shares the chaos of parenting, but using a medium reserve for the mindfulness in the moment, she expresses how it is a transient phase.

In a sense, she is saying everything is show business.

Her art is just not pithy enough to register on Max's radar, I suppose.

Keep up the good work from Jake.

That's a great spot, isn't it?

It'd be funny if Jamie knows what's going on too, and her next message is a perfect petrarch ensemble.

Iambic pantameter.

And there's every message she sent me as a poem, and I've never noticed.

She's like, This car, this idiot.

I wonder if you, for a moment, would like to share with me these feelings I have.

Wow, this is amazing stuff.

Julian writes, this is more criticism.

Hi, gents, love the pod.

Need to mention I am furious at Max's ignorance regarding the final game in the iconic The Adventure game.

The contestants were not up against a pot plant in the final game.

They had entered the vortex and had to avoid stepping into it.

The pot plant in question was, in fact, an aspidistra plant known as Uncle, who was the ruler of the planet Arg.

The contestants were attempting to get back to Earth.

A pedant such as yourself should surely know this.

On a side note, Uncle was operated by Kenny Baker of Star Wars R2D2 fame.

It all comes back to the center of the universe.

Thanks for your time.

Everything is show, Miss Julian.

I apologize.

Wow.

There is a problem, though, with any iconic quids show of your childhood.

If you explain it, you do sound like an absolute maniac.

You know, 3-2-1, what the hell was happening?

A bin.

A hot lady and a bin which

they had a meeting about that the production meeting going on so david do you think the bin is a good idea i think the bin i think we go with the bin yeah

and ted could you just do three two one backwards three to one three two one yeah i'd see i could do that wow to the listeners max down the zoom has just done the iconic 3-2 I mean it's so much explained here.

Ted Rocky used to host 3-2-1.

And every time

he said 3-2-1 he would do a thing with his fingers that went 3-2-1 really quickly and it's quite clear to me in the same way that I painstakingly learned how to draw Garfield when I was about nine Max

learned how to do this.

If they bring it back, you reckon I'll get that gig?

They'll give it Beckett, won't they?

Or Ranger Nathan.

I've got no chance of getting the 3-2-1 reboot.

It's devastating.

I'll watch it go.

I could do that.

3-2-1.

Look, I'll do it.

This is from John.

I've just had a moment where two very separate worlds collide.

I was on hold with BOC as I needed to order some oxygen for work.

They're not great at answering the phone.

So whilst I was waiting, I had the midweek mayhem episode on.

Strangely, the conversation turned to a very different BOC, and the person on the call answered just as the idea for the live show came up on the podcast.

This absolutely broke me, and all I could do was laugh down the phone and hang up.

However, my work mobile number is linked to our account with BOC.

And I've just received an email from them.

From the life of me, I have no idea how to reply.

From John, what is this?

The British Oxygen Council?

No, not the Bank of Cyprus, was another one.

No, Bank of Ceylon.

Bank of Ceylon.

That's what it is.

B-O-C Oxygen.

It's Buy Oxygen Online, B-O-C Online.

We've infiltrated that, haven't we?

The incredible...

revelation that the blue whale secretes 20 liters of steam.

I mean, is the idea that he was talking about at the live show that we get some blue whales in there and that's the big ending.

God, that would slow you down if you were an open-water triathlete, wouldn't it?

You think in the same way that James Bond fires an oil slick at the back of his wagon, the blue whale that up until now has been breaking the waves quite nicely in front of you at some point to die of that.

Imagine that funeral.

Imagine the speech,

he died doing what he loved,

drowning in cum

doing the front crawl.

Jackie from Kingscliff, New South Wales, Australia, writes: Hello, Max, David, and producer Miles Bar.

I listened to your pod on my afternoon dog walk.

I have to wait until I've exited my street and I'm doing laps of the sports oval before I press play, least my neighbours think I have lost my marbles because of the foolish grin painted on my face and random snorts of laughter as I listen.

Thank you.

While I love hearing about the mini-show of people's lives, including your own, what brings me the greatest joy is how much you make each other laugh.

It's delightful.

What is not delightful is the theme tune to their just normal countries.

I'm an English teacher.

In one of the novels I teach, the teenage male protagonist describes his rock band's horrendous wall of sound as music to shit by, as it is so bad it makes him want to move his bowels.

While I always understood the intention of this quote, I didn't appreciate its accuracy until I heard the theme music to their just normal countries.

It literally makes me feel unwell.

I have to turn the volume down or press jump forward 30 seconds.

I don't know whether it's the pitch, the pace, or the fact that it sounds like the singer is being tortured, but I simply cannot listen.

Having said that, you're the highlight of my dog walking week.

I really do hope you're all in it for life.

Everything is showbiz.

Jackie, David, let's play their just normal countries.

Here's the theme.

I am the one and only.

What country could I be?

I am the one and only.

Where in the world could our listeners be?

Okay, welcome everybody to their Just Normal Countries.

With apologies to Jackie.

She probably missed this bit on the fast forward 30 seconds.

We have never asked Mars Barr because I did hear the Chesney Hawks one-hit wonder song, The One and Only.

And because now I'm so used to hearing this,

I was like, oh, Chesney, slow it down a bit there.

Let's get a bit more of a tortured vibe into it.

We'll ask Marsbar one day where it came from.

The guess is so far.

Madagascar, Namibia, Costa Rica, Uganda, North Korea, Guyana, the Northern Marianas Islands, Bhutan.

Sail away, sail away.

Brunei, Nepal, Eswatini, U.S.

Virgin Islands, Equatorial Guinea, San Marino, correct.

Liechtenstein, Turkmenistan, and the Seychelles.

If you remember, in Marsbar at some point many months ago, there was a list of six countries that had just one listen.

We must be literally like missing the target.

It's like playing battleships, and we've just got every bit of water around the frigate.

Hey, David and Mars, but after listening to the John Robbins episode where he talked about doing crosswords in bed and it bringing him so much joy, and also hearing that David and the helicopter solve them too, I'd like to submit a cryptic clue for their just normal countries.

I'm a cryptic crossword setter for the Independent and a big fan of the pod.

After all the chat about how many years it would take to fill the notorious BOC, I had an idea for a clue regarding the potential aftermath.

Clue.

Yeah.

David O'Doherty nurses defunct Pecker for.

Can David solve it?

Defunct Pecker.

So it's this is cryptic now.

Cryptic, yeah, it's cryptic.

Yeah,

so this will be the moment where people wonder why there's never been a podcast where people try and solve cryptic crosswork lists.

Defunct Pecker implies we remove something from the Pecker, the word Pecker, two letters, to then make it fit the four space.

So we've therefore got...

So is there a country that is contained within that?

Even I can't bear this and I love quizzes going on for so long.

I'm trying to do it with my mind.

Give me a clue.

I know that's against your every fiber, but come on.

The clue is, the answer is dodo.

It's a hidden word in David O'Doherty where the definition is defunct pecker, i.e.

an extinct bird.

Oh,

that's so good.

During the 17th century, dodos were endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is my answer for you today.

Keep up the great work.

Tom, aka Raider.

So, Marsbar, Mauritius, is that one of the countries?

Are we huge in Mauritius, Marsbar?

I wouldn't say huge.

At the time that we started this quiz, we had had eight listens in Mauritius.

But that's big enough.

Eight.

wow i've never been a crossword clue before that'll stay with me though wow more of that now at university i was the sports editor of the paper and i said can i do the crossword one day

one of my clues was oval shaped food anagram of geg three letters

It really made me laugh.

But no one got it because one across was the presenter of turnabout and no one knew Rob Curling.

I wasn't asked back i once did a crossword i wrote a crossword for the irish times with my friend wonderful singer lisa hannigan and we love puns and we did an entire puns based crossword i didn't know it had to be kind of a mirror image mum was all over the place you know like a crossword is always a mirror image Oh, well, we didn't bother with that.

We just shoved a lot of words together.

But the Irish Paper of Record published it.

I'm trying to think.

One of the good ones was War Film, where Kira Knightley sets out to make her printer work.

Oh, Atona.

Atonament.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay, good.

Yeah, yeah, no.

I like that.

I interviewed her for that movie.

I was wearing flip-flops.

She found it a bit odd.

Anyway.

Do you have a question for me?

Max, what time did you get up at yesterday?

I'm guessing 5.48, but what time did you get up at yesterday?

Oh, I dream of 5.48 yesterday, David.

At 4.40 a.m.

I am summoned.

I think at 4.40 a.m., I'm in the day bed.

We're back in London.

We've been in Whitstable for the week.

We're back in London.

It's dark.

I'm on my own, which is great.

Jamie is in bed, in Mama Dadda bed with Willie Rushton.

Yep.

I'm so asleep that I can't hear Ian, who's woken up.

So Jamie says, Max, Ian's awake.

Yeah.

I'm bereft of sadness.

I come into the room that we're in now, which is where Ian sleeps.

I get into his bed.

He's not going back to sleep.

so then you sort of play the horizontal hits yeah i don't play the horizontal he plays the hits right so i'm saying go back to sleep please go back to sleep he is like i've got sand in my eye i need a wet wipe he doesn't have sand in his eye

but i go and get him a wet wipe then he wants a car and that in your mind you're just like you know tonight i'm just going to set up the room so everything is there so when he goes i want this i'm just like you know like wallace and grommet style bing bing bing but you never do that because when they're tired at six o'clock you're like just get them to sleep can't wait eventually i get my laptop because he is now, he's currently obsessed with trains.

It is incredibly cute, but there's one percent of me that's like,

like, obviously, I definitely want my children to just follow their heart and do whatever they want.

But, train spotters are a tricky one, isn't it?

Not that I care, but I just think just if you like football, life's easier for you.

It's just easier for you, isn't it?

So, I don't understand these videos he's watching.

It's shot on phones of trains coming out of tunnels.

Some of them are hosted by, you you know, very nice people who love trains.

And they'll go, this is a Mild May line 3714 if you want to add that one to your selection.

Yeah.

He got a southeastern train from Whitstable into London, Victoria.

So, and it was a tube strike.

He's very excited that the tubes weren't running.

So anyway, he wants to watch some southeastern trains.

So we watch some southeastern trains.

There's a train with one door.

I don't know where this train with one door is.

He says, I want the one door.

None of them have one door.

They've all got two doors.

But he wants the one door.

So, okay, so we watch a lot of that.

Then we get on to the fastest train ever, which is the maglev line, which is in China, which is sort of on magnets.

Oh, yeah.

It's quite interesting.

I think.

I don't know.

Maybe I've

got Stockholm syndrome now because it's not on the tracks.

So it can go in any weather and nothing ever affects it and it goes so fast.

But the line they've built is not long enough for it to reach top speed, really.

By the time it stops, it has to start slowing down again.

But it costs a lot, the maglev line.

Doesn't it?

I think so.

So we need more maglevs.

I thought it would cost nothing because, you know, magnets repel each other.

So I thought that was the basis of it.

But I guess...

It doesn't cost nothing to build the railway.

That's why you weren't in charge of HS2.

Or maybe you were...

I budgeted it naught.

Oh, actually, hang on a second.

Hang on.

It is fascinating to me, though, that kids usually come to trains through Thomas.

It might have been that.

He had a Thomas phase, and he likes building a train track, you know, that I wouldn't...

But yeah, I feel if you were to introduce Thomas now he'd be like what is this bullshit oh no i think he's still got time for thomas but he really now he just loves the youtube trains anyway he's got that on youtube i'm just lying flat just with my eyes closed thinking i'll be a good parent in a bit but he loves trains so maybe i'm i'm giving him what he wants so this takes us from 440 to six o'clock then willie is up i think willie and jamie have been up since five in the other room wow but we come together at six we go downstairs we make a train track the waitrose delivery arrives at 6 6.30.

So that's exciting.

Wow.

Early.

Yeah.

We go 6 till 7 because it's like, we'll definitely be awake.

So why not?

Get it in.

They don't do bags, good for the environment.

So there's three sort of pallets.

You have to run upstairs, unload them really quickly because the man's waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

Give him the pallets back.

Have a nice day.

He goes off on his way.

The only time I've ever got groceries delivered was in the early COVID era where you weren't allowed to leave the house.

And then they just gave you the pallets because they didn't want you to

get COVID on them.

So, maybe that's something you could have done.

You could have when they had taken the palettes, just being like, We're all absolutely riddled with COVID at the moment.

So, I'm gonna go on to these.

I didn't think of that.

There is the danger of the substitutions.

My friend Clive did get

we didn't have any all-butter croissants.

So, here's some multivitamin tablets, which doesn't feel like the right substitute.

Anyway, I think we get everything we need.

We just shove it all away.

Jamie makes a bolognese because we're awake, so it's there.

So, get something out of the way.

Bolognese on the stove 7 a.m

we go to popham's for a coffee get a long black very happy then we are meeting some friends of jamie's malachi and monica malachi big listener to the podcast they have flown from new york for three days to come to our show david what

what are they doing

surely come for a week it better be good it's tonight as for the tape the live show is tonight yeah we haven't done it yet yeah so they've flown from new york but they can't make it because of the tube strike now but you know it's okay really they are coming no they they are coming.

They're getting an Uber for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's nice.

We're meeting them, but they don't have kids, so they're late.

So actually, they don't arrive.

But I order a breakfast pitter, fried eggs with sumac onions and whipped feta in a pitter bread.

It's absolutely delicious.

So interesting.

I made that for my lunch yesterday, but with poached, I over-poached some eggs so they weren't too runny.

Yeah, it was some sort of srirachi nut butter thing and yellow pepper and then grated a load of parmesan on top.

Oh, just into a hot pocket y pitter.

That's not my only pitter of the day because I love a pitter bread.

Pitter the fool.

Yeah, I can't mr.

T.

He could do that.

Mr.

T came on Soccer M during the glory years and in the ad breaks he just threw snickers at the audience going, pitter the fool.

I mean he was everything you'd want Mr.

T to be.

It was wonderful.

It's like quarter past nine.

This is great.

We're really relaxed.

I'm having a good time.

I'm eating.

Now I'm eating the crusts of Ian's banana bread.

It's It's just a calm time.

I pick up my phone.

I have a message from you that says I'm here on my own.

And I'm thinking, is this a cry for help from David?

And then I realize that we're not recording at 10 a.m.

We're recording at 9.30 and it's 9.24.

And what Jamie loves the most is me just going, fuck, I've got to go and running out of a cafe, which he's got two children, right?

So anyway, then I'm like,

and this is like Wayland Jennings.

Wow, looks like you got yourself in a horrible little pickle, Max.

There are line bikes everywhere.

So I'm scanning them and none of them are available, except one's available, but it's only got one pedal.

It's like a nightmare.

So then I'm like, listen, there's nothing I can do.

I've got to run just under a mile to this seat that I'm in now.

Wow.

So we're about four minutes, 10 seconds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's 9.28.

Yeah.

By the time I fiddled with the line bikes, I messaged you going, I'll be there in 10.

Yeah.

So I managed to get to the flat, have a wee, get a pint of water, turn the laptop on, and I'm here.

Unbelievable.

It was Helen Bauer.

We can say that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'd strung her along a bit and said that you were late due to childcare.

And then you appeared absolutely sweating and just plugging pints of water.

What is this child care?

But I've had new fiber internet and listeners won't really notice because Miles Bar's done some great editing on some of the podcasts of the last few weeks.

But it's amazing.

Not only is it like, this is good, but when I send the files back, it goes, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Wow, honestly, absolutely mind-blown.

Listeners will never know how much work Marsbar had to do on the Alan Davis episode, where you froze, I would say, 12 times, but always in quite a placid position on the Zoom.

So we presumed you were just having a lovely little moment.

Just being a good listener.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's an important part of interviewing anyone.

I was just there.

And then eventually, the worst thing about it is, is the audio stays for me, but I freeze.

So I can hear the conversation and I can hear then two people going, oh God, is he frozen again?

And I can hear that bit.

You know, maybe when you die, you can still hear for like a minute, like a chicken.

Yeah.

And you'll hear people go, I didn't really like him anyway.

And you're like, oh, I've not said anything.

I'm dead.

But that's it.

It's like extreme Louis Theroux.

You know, the thing where he just stares at you for a while and you fall to pieces and you start saying, you know, I've never loved my wife or whatever.

Maybe it began because Louis Theroux was just buffering for ages.

And then the whole thing crashed.

And then he got this amazing answer from an interviewee.

And he thought, this is what I do.

Theroux's buffering.

Anyway, the family at home.

It's 11.30.

We finish.

Willie and Jay go upstairs for a nap.

Me and Ian are rebuilding the water play on the terrace.

It's missing a piece.

So we think, okay, well, we'll do that later.

Oh, well, what's a water play?

It's like a sort of blue plastic thing that's got like a little ramp.

You put little boats in it.

I'd say it's like a tiny tiny river rapids from a theme park, but you'd have to be a gerbil to enjoy it as a living thing.

But Ian enjoys it as a living thing, but he's using the things.

But we can't fix it because without one piece, the water just goes over the terrace.

Oh, no.

Anyway, you remember you were very critical of me for asking a bike shop to look after my bike for a week.

Yes.

But Janine just said she wanted some coffee.

So me and Ian go to the other side of London Fields.

to, I think it's called London City Bikes.

I give her two bags of coffee.

She's lovely.

And she gives Ian a bike tool.

You've probably got one.

It's got little, it's like a metal thing about sort of five inches long with little holes in it and little spanners and things.

So he goes around just tapping bikes with it.

He's over the moon with this.

She helps him pump up the tires.

This is great.

We go to Normal Park.

There's a little tunnel.

I have a thermos of pasta for him.

I feed him some pasta through a little hole and he eats the pasta.

We go on the bike to Spinner Park.

We get on the roundabout.

It's too fast.

It's too slow, but we're having a good time.

We go down the slide a lot.

Yeah.

He starts hurling a truck outside of the park and then putting his arm through the railings, looking sad for passersby to hand the car back.

Wow, this is extraordinary.

There's enough here, I would say, for I think he's possibly going to be like Isambard Kingdom Bruel or you know as in like he's watching the trains.

He's also trying to hack the minds of people by throwing his truck into the park.

He's got his little tool.

And by the way, if this was a well-written piece of drama, that tool is going to be very important.

Like later on, you get a lot of tafe or something like that.

And he pulls it out of his pocket.

I get back home.

I have another pit of lunch.

This is a classic.

Well, Jamie has used up most of the hummus for herself and Willie.

It's Willie's hummus debut, but he's enjoying it.

But he says there's another pot in the fridge, but there isn't.

Shit.

But it's okay because there's enough.

If you really scrape the pot, there's enough.

So I have hummus, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, salad, a few slices of Cornish quartz cheddar, which is one of the greatest cheddars.

Wow.

Let me say.

Yeah.

Willie chokes on a tomato, but it's feeding babies.

It's like the worst thing because they choke on everything.

But 99.9% of the time, they just choke and then they just sort of cough it out.

But you're just there standing next to them going, oh, I've forgotten what to do again.

I hang up the washing.

Jamie's bought some new clothes.

She shows them off to the three men in her life.

None of us give it the attention it deserves.

She puts on a nice sort of golden dress and picks up Willie and he vomits on it.

I mean, I did say that was an occupational hazard.

We could establish that might happen.

So now we're all together.

We're on the Mild May line.

Ian's excited.

We're going from Hatney Central to Highbury and Islington.

We are going to the playground at Highbury Fields.

I take Willie for a nap walk, half an hour, loop around.

When I return, Ian is in his underpants underpants at the splash pad.

He has befriended

another kid called Jasper.

They're playing Frisbee.

Great.

It's all quite nice.

They're sort of, you know, taking turns.

It's quite nice.

Jamie and I discussed the live show.

She wants to come, but it's going to be tricky with childcare, right?

Because it's tonight.

It's in a few hours now.

Depends on bedtime.

I suggest it might be a bit stressful.

She wonders why I don't want her there.

She then posits that there might be no live show at all.

I've just booked the Hackney Empire so you and me can have a takeaway and I just have a night off the kids.

kids.

Yeah, she's written three poems about this that she said to you.

We get the train home.

Now I've got Willie in the carrier.

And as we're walking out of Hackney Central, a homeless man looks up at me with Willie in the carrier and Jamie pushing Ian in the pram.

And he just says, rolls reversed.

I like that.

And Jamie is incandescent.

I do a fair bit of parenting, just this guy who's just sitting there, makes no reference to her whatsoever, but just picks me up for some real praise, being a modern dad.

Yeah, then she says, I might just have a live show.

She's just going to do a live show.

She's going to do a live show now.

Oh, this is what's going to happen.

You're both going to bankrupt yourselves by choosing more and more extravagant venues.

Jamie books initially Wembley Arena and then Wembley Stadium.

It's just her and Malachi and Monica just eating hummus on stage for an hour.

She's just said, I've booked the Britannia.

She's booked Stoke City's Ground.

Just see how that goes.

I get home.

A clarinet has been delivered.

Shit.

Why?

Well, I'm playing it at the live show.

I think we can say this now because the live show has happened.

I take it out.

I wet the reed.

I play C major.

We're in business, guys.

It's not the level of clarinet that I'm used to.

It's a buffet B12.

It's a very entry-level.

It's like the cannabis of clarinets.

It's a gateway clarinet to the real serious clarinets that I'm used to.

But anyway, I play a note and Jamie says, stop doing that.

Loud, isn't it?

You can't, like, with a tin whistle, say, you know, the little Irish traditional instrument, you can play it really quietly and you'll get the sound coming out through the little bit at the top.

But with a clarinet, you just got to blast it, don't you?

Pretty much.

It's very hard to be very quiet.

We'll get to that.

Ian has a bit more of his pasta.

Willie is losing the will to live.

Jay feeds him.

I get him to sleep.

Jay is going out for dinner with Malachi and Monica.

She wants to skip doing Ian's bedtime, right?

So how can we do that?

He's in a bit of a mood.

As she's sort of getting ready to go, he demands that she does his bedtime.

I take him upstairs.

We're reading a lovely book called The Dinosaur Next Door, but he just doesn't want me involved, doesn't want me to read it.

We're chatting about life, about things we're going to do when we get back to Melbourne.

It's nice.

I'm hoping that Jay has gone out because I reckon I can get him down.

But she comes in.

It's all right.

He's exhausted.

He's asleep in one minute.

Jay's out for dinner.

Wow.

I've got the rolling bolognese, the infinity bolognese, as we call it.

Yeah.

But first, David, exercise.

I'm on a new regime.

Yeah.

I'm time poor, but I'm on day seven of a sort of high-performance regime.

You know, the Instagram says just 15 minutes a day.

Yeah.

And you will be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Of what, though?

Like just walking in a circle around your sitting?

No, no, no.

So

Luke is a personal trainer that I've had for many years.

I don't obviously use him very much now because I don't live in this country.

But he said, right, 15 minutes on the minute, every minute, at the start of the minute, you do five press-ups and 10 squats.

Yeah.

Okay.

So minute one, you do that, then you wait until minute two starts.

You do that 15 times.

I'm now up to day seven.

Interruption.

Yesterday.

You keep taking a break.

So you do five press-ups, did you say, and five squats, and then

you pant furiously.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So you're your heart's going like

and then back down again.

So I'm now up to this.

Is day seven was was yesterday, and I've done seven days in a row, which I can't tell you how proud I am of myself.

And I'm up to seven press-ups and 13 squats per minute.

Oh, you're doing it that way.

Yeah, that's murder.

A problem with this is you need a cement floor as opposed to floorboards, I would imagine, because it would sound crazy.

Well, I'm on a carpet.

I'm on a carpet.

Is there anyone downstairs?

Maybe.

I don't think either allowed things.

You're not jumping.

Squats?

No, squats.

You're just standing and squat all the way down and then you stand up oh the squats I had in mind were jumber on superstars oh I show thrust when you jump in and out no no no I'm so I'll show you I'll show you you're standing up straight and then you just all the way down like a plie more than anything else sort of plie

sort of plie mate come on no I am sort of no you maybe I didn't show you enough I didn't go far back enough do you go right down onto your heels no I can't go right down to my heels but you sort of go quite low and up yeah you know by minute eight you're like oh this is taking it out of you great 15 is achievable so you sort of think okay so i'm interested but seven days you know on those instagrams they say after one day you'll be tired after seven days you'll notice a difference yeah after 28 days your wife will look at you in a different way and after two years your muscles will explode with power so

I'm interested to see where it gets me.

I think diet is an issue.

Well, that'll come into play now.

I cook the bolognese.

Willie wakes up, back up, dummy in, pat on the back, out.

It's a quick one.

That's good.

I cook the pasta, drain the pasta.

I mix the pasta and the mince in the pan together.

I pour a massive bowl of it.

Willie wakes up again, up, dummy in, pat on the back, boom, boom, he's out.

That's fine.

Great.

I get the bolognese.

We've still got the issue where we can only watch TV on the giant projector.

So I'm watching England, Serbia on the projector.

30 minutes into the game, I've eaten two bowls of bolognese.

Absolutely delicious.

And, you know, I'm not doing like a carb-free, you know, I'm eating as many carbs as I can.

Yeah.

I love them.

I'm eating my bonnets.

I'm messaging my friends and I'm watching Serbia England.

It's nil-nil after 30 minutes, but England are playing well.

Willie wakes up.

Willie is not going back to sleep.

So there's half an hour of me in a dark room with a very sad baby, patting, picking up, singing lullabies, et cetera, et cetera.

I come down with tune it up.

halfway through.

And I couldn't rewind ITVX annoyingly on the thing.

I pause it.

I message Jamie and I'm reluctant to message Jamie.

She's out for dinner.

Doesn't happen very much saying, Jamie, you probably need to get home.

Why?

Hang on.

What's the crisis here?

Well, he's got to eat and she provides the food.

Oh, yeah.

We're trying to reduce those feeds overnight, but we're not getting very far.

And then we're in this stone where he just was in Whitstable.

We think he was allergic to something because he had a massive rash for a week.

But once we established it wasn't meningitis, we're like, he'll be, you're fine.

Yeah.

But he's free of that now.

And it was so light there in the room he was in.

And then we're going back to Australia in two weeks.

We're like, oh, we'll just, whatever gets you through.

And then you do that for about five years and then you're through it.

That's the tactic.

Jamie gets home.

She hasn't looked at her phone, but I've sent Malachi a message.

He sends it to her.

He sends me a photo of her pre-message.

She looks really happy.

Post-message where she's running out of the restaurant.

She's messaging, going, I can't wait to be able to just have a dessert at a restaurant.

I'm like, fair enough.

I feel your pain, but I'm also in a dark room holding a screaming baby.

She takes, Willie, I go downstairs and comfort eat a slab of dairy milk.

But when you say slab, are we talking the regular eight square?

No, I'm saying David, the lovely owner of this Ebon Bead, left us a little hamper of like a coffee and a kilo thing of dairy milk.

I don't eat a kilo, but I eat not quite half, but you know, a good old chunk of this.

Yeah, you got to be squatting while you're eating that now.

Yeah, so that has maybe undone the whole week's work so far, but it was really delicious at the time.

I watched the England game.

We're brilliant.

It's really odd that we're brilliant.

So I'm doing the pod script.

Jay comes downstairs.

Willie's asleep now in a bed, which we're trying to move him away from a bed, but you know, that's life.

He's in the bed.

We chat.

We have a sort of diary meeting, chat about life.

Football finishes, do a bit more work.

10 o'clock, bang.

Great.

I lie down.

I'm asleep within eight seconds.

And you know, the key for us now is, did I get a good night's sleep ahead of the live show?

And the answer is, up at 4:40 again.

So you're carrying this shit tonight, mate.

I've never jumped in at this point before with this, but you did leave out one small, enjoyable, the the only thing i know about your yesterday oh yeah is because we want to end the live show oh yes sorry sorry you're right with us playing dancing in the moonlight by top loader you want keys and nish kumar he's a wonderful guitarist he really is but we all needed to make sure we were playing it in vaguely the same key now i can shift keys around a bit but the nightmare was that you would just come in in d flat or something because a clarinet isn't built in A, like a piano, right?

Most instruments.

So I had to play it so quietly so I didn't wake the kids up.

So it sounds so shit.

And you and Nish sound so amazing.

So I send this voice note to you and Marsbar going, Look, is this the right note?

The clarinet will sound better on the night.

And you both write back going, basically, this is the shittiest thing I've ever heard in my life.

No, it's

wonderful.

It brings a sort of 1920s

vibe to what is a tempo party song, but yeah, we're gonna try it out.

Have you got the clarinet there?

I've got the clarinet here, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come on, see how we go.

Yeah,

I'll play the intro to the tune, and you come in

with the way slight delays work.

This isn't going to sound as good to the listeners as it hopefully does to us.

But here we go, here we go.

Go.

Oh, I was waiting for you to do the because you know, the intro is twelve.

You do it again, okay.

Let's do it again.

Do it again.

Give me that note again.

Chorus, chorus,

dancing in the moonlight.

This show is going to be absolutely sensational.

And listeners, if you would like to get in touch with our podcast, hang on, hang on.

Can I just hang on?

This is from Jamie.

Max, Willie is down.

Shut up.

Willie's sleeping.

Max, shut up.

Shut up.

Capital letters, shut up, exclamation mark.

The next message is coming in now.

Typing, please don't say awake.

No, please don't.

You've got those three dots going.

Oh, shit.

It's my fault.

It says, I'm going to burn that fucking clarinet.

I'm sure this happened to Sarah Pascoe's dad when he was practicing the sacks early on, but look at him now.

Finally, do you want to guess the excellent quiz?

Guess the comedian and the footballer.

If you remember, I was in Teddington What Feels like years ago.

I saw a comedian putting up a poster for his show, and then a few days later,

a footballer walked past me.

And you get a guess, and Mars Bell gets a guess.

Dave Kitson and Daniel Kitson.

No, I mean, mean it would be quite incredible, but incorrect.

It could be related.

Marsba?

Stuart Lee and Jason Wilcox.

What a show that would be.

Incorrect.

But thanks guys for playing.

If you'd like to get in touch with the podcast, here's how.

To get in touch with the show, you can email us at whatdidyoudo yesterdaypod at gmail.com.

Follow us on Instagram at yesterdaypod.

And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it it on your preferred podcast platform and if you didn't please don't

please apologize to Jamie and your children i agent of chaos that made you play the clarinet there so sorry about that no no no it just proves that i i might need to have the notes written down You guys are buskers, but I'm a classical musician.

So I read off sheep music.

Do we have the sheet music for Dancing in the Moonlight Mars Bar?

Oh, fucking hell.

That's...

We've put so much strain on Mars Bar for this.

Just we need a barista at the back of the stage who Max can argue with about a specific sort of comic.

One of many of my ideas that was poo-pooed.

We need the sheet music of Dancing in the Moonlight.

Oh, my goodness.

Hey, I'll see you tonight, David.

I'll see you tonight.

I'll talk to all of the listeners very soon.

Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change.

Your receipt did.

The sausage mcmuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5.

Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Prices and participation may vary.

Coverage varies by plan.

View contract and exclusions at endurancewarranty.com.

Do you own a 2005 or newer vehicle with a manufacturer's warranty about to expire or no warranty coverage at all?

With the cost of living on the rise, Endurance is now offering a low-cost vehicle coverage plan designed to save you thousands off costly vehicle repairs.

Get your vehicle protected under this coverage and have all future covered auto repairs paid directly to the repair shop for you.

Roadside service, towing and rental coverage are included.

Visit EnduranceWarranty.com.

Endurancewarranty.com.