S3 EP18: Ian Smith

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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?

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 another episode of What Did You Do Yesterday?

I'm Max Rushton.

Alongside me for this one is the Irish comedian David O'Doherty.

Welcome, David.

Do you think it's the 100th episode?

The 50th episode?

We'll say that.

It's some sort of anniversary, isn't it?

Yeah.

The thousandth episode of What Did You Do Yesterday.

Thank you to all the listeners for being on this journey with us.

Hang on, if it's once a week, that does imply 20 years.

We're 20 years into this.

And yeah, it's great to be here.

Because we are in it for life.

Do you think I'm, you know, sort of out of dogged stubbornness, even if we fell out and hated each other,

I want to be doing this in 20 years' time.

Even if podcasts don't exist, you know.

You'll be able to tell, though, what era of it it is.

I think our voices will change a bit as we get older, you know, with the various eras of Bob Dylan, from the sort of chirpy songbird to the sort of gravelly shouting man.

Or if you listen to In Our Time, you can tell as Melvin Bragg is getting a bit older, he's a little bit

huskier, maybe.

And also, in 20 years' time, it will be very rudimentary.

It'll just be like, today's guest, you know, is some YouTuber we've never heard of.

Time to get up, and then what?

And then, and then, and then, see ya.

But, like, it'll still be done with love and feeling.

Anyway, look, today's guest

is a friend of yours.

We have to be honest for the tape.

It's a fair guess.

Just if there's ever anyone on this podcast,

it's Ian Smith, who

is this wonderful stand-up comedian.

He's had a series on Radio 4.

He was nominated for the big award at the Edinburgh Fringe this year with his show Foot Spa Half Empty.

And that show is going on tour around Britain early next year.

I think there's some London dates before then.

He's exactly the right stuff for this podcast.

I couldn't agree more.

And now, obviously, we established pretty early on in the podcast that it's not Harold Bishop from Neighbors.

But yes, you're absolutely right because I think this episode, there are moments in this where I am thinking,

God, I'm so pleased that we're having this discussion and that people will listen to it.

Is it about measuring?

It's about measuring spaces.

Okay.

It's about that.

It is.

I don't want to give any more away, but, you know, when you're talking to your friends about this and they're like, Yeah, I just think people like you know the banality and the minutiae of life.

I think that really sort of strikes a chord with a lot of people.

I think this might be the most banal minutiae that we have got to.

And I had the broadest grin on my face when we got into really got into the weeds of

utterly mundane bullets.

I fucking loved it.

This is what Ian Smith did yesterday.

Ian Smith, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Good morning.

Good morning, David.

This is Ian.

I have organized this.

Ian would come from my side of the guest pool, as opposed to your side of generally weird divorced men.

But Ian, when I said we should get Ian on,

who's the first go-to Ian Smith that Max put in the WhatsApp group?

A photo of who's the premier Ian Smith at the moment in the world?

I imagine it would be the actor who played Harold Bishop and Neighbors.

Of course, of course.

Yeah.

So my apologies, Ian.

In fact, it could be argued that I have saturated our WhatsApp group with pictures of Harold Bishop.

No, it doesn't mean I'm disappointed.

It just triggers something, a synapse in my brain that takes me to Harold Bishop.

And if a synapse can take you to Harold Bishop, you have to go there.

You just have to, you have to give yourself up to Harold, I think.

He's such a fun character.

Do you remember when he had, well, I guess his main storyline was he had amnesia and he just come back and he played the trombone a lot.

Yeah.

Well, tuba.

Or the tuba.

People get absolutely, you know, murdered in the comments.

Tuba.

Very much tuba.

So to the listeners who may require a little context here, neighbors, I'm generally the person who has problems.

Now

I think some some of our american listeners there's a postman in maryland who may not know that neighbors is the long-running melbourne based soap opera harold was

was he married to madge or did he just fancy madge no he was married to madge and then he disappeared and she married lou carpenter and then it became i would say a sort of platonic love triangle i don't remember i never really watched neighbors nights but i don't know if they ever

oh yeah they had a freesome on neighbors nights

I had a Harold impersonation that I'll attempt to do now great

oh Madge that was it which is not bad any feedback there from the fake Ian Smith or Max Rushdood yeah I mean there's lots there's lots of positives

the name Madge was in there

What time did you wake up at yesterday, Ian Smith?

Well, no, hang on for the tape.

Just before we came on air, Ian said we've met in real life.

And I don't know when.

Oh, yes.

So I now feel bad in case we like work together for five years, in which case

I would feel quite guilty.

But hopefully it was like a social occasion.

Let me tell you this and then see if you think this is the sort of thing that you would be involved in.

It sounds dodgier, but so I used to work for a Manchester United YouTube channel that at the time was called Full Time Devils and is now Stratford Paddock.

I feel like I was introduced to you outside old Trafford and it was the Manchester United Liverpool game and I'm sure someone said, this is Max Rushton and you were trying to get a ticket to the game.

But someone called Max helped me get a ticket to a football game.

I don't think it was me.

Oh, that's a shame then.

I don't think I've ever been to Man United Liverpool.

What a pity.

I mean, the thing we've established more than anything on this podcast is I have a very generic face.

In fact, we got a message recently on the Reddit page where there's a photo of me from my radio Cambridge days, and someone said, I am getting a bit of Fred West.

So it sort of goes from that all the way to Gordon Brittas and sort of everything in between.

Yeah, maybe that's who I was thinking of.

I think it was Fred West.

Did you get you a ticket for the game?

Yeah, he got me a really good seat as well.

All in all, quite a nice chat.

Do you think then that that was one of the secrets of Manchester United's success in the Alex Ferguson years in that they would glance up into the stand occasionally, and sitting beside Ferguson was notorious serial killer Fred West.

And mysteriously, giggs would score a goal in the 93rd minute, so they wouldn't be buried under a patio.

I think that's why referees were pressured into giving so much additional time to Man United

because the Moores murderers were looking at the fourth officials.

Ian, where did you wake up yesterday?

Seven o'clock.

Yeah, okay.

Maybe earlier.

Average time.

A natural wake.

No, my girlfriend gets up very early.

Why?

So I think I just get up when she does.

Well, she also goes to sleep very early.

We don't have very compatible, ideal sleeping times.

So she'd ideally go to sleep at sort of 10 p.m.

and then wake up at six.

So I just sort of not grumpily, but

sluggishly awake sort of when she does.

Does she fall asleep while you're watching a TV series at the most exciting moment and then deny immediately afterwards that she was asleep, even though from her breathing and dare I say a little sound that was coming out while the breathing was taking place that she claims she was awake the whole time?

Is that what happens?

I feel I've got involved in an argument, Pete.

Correct.

I mean, she can fall asleep very quickly.

So she will have fallen asleep during TV shows and is someone who, like, if you sort of make that audible proclamation of like, right, not that we do this, let us go to sleep now.

She will almost immediately, you know, the scene in Father Ted where Dougal, I think he's on an exercise bike and he's told to just calm down or clear his thoughts and he'll go to sleep and he goes to sleep immediately.

Yeah.

it's a bit like that.

Well, yeah, we have an additional problem, which is the helencopter wakes and then tries to make cogent points to prove that she hasn't just been asleep, obviously.

As in the first thing she sees, she'll be like, Oh no, he's in trouble again, or whatever.

And it's like, Helen, you've just been asleep for 20 minutes.

Why are you now pretending to be re-engaged with this show called Task, which I insist on calling Taskmaster every single single time and saying things like, Alex Horne looks different to how he used to look when Mark Ruffalo comes on screen.

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Thanks, wow.

Thanks.

Right, so it's seven o'clock and Mrs.

Ian Smith has woken.

And so you are there and you're groggy.

Do you stay horizontal for a while or are you just sort of you're going with the motions?

She's up, you're up.

kind of rules.

I sort of stay in bed a bit groggy.

She's through to the living room.

She's got a big mug of coffee.

She's doing some work.

She's doing some reading.

And maybe sort of half an hour, 45 minutes before I emerge.

Right.

And what do you do in these 45 minutes yesterday?

Well, yesterday, before breakfast, before any liquids go into my body, before anything, I go straight to an electrical waste bin to dispose of two electrical products.

Oh, great.

Okay.

It's on my to-do list.

There's one, a 20-minute walk away.

Seven o'clock to 7.45 is lying in bed and then 70 45 you are going to what a specific electrical bin

yeah it is 20 minutes walk away yes this is good stuff are these sort of really because if it's an if it's a double a battery you'll probably just put it in the bin and think i'm not meant to put it there but i'll put it there max but this is something more serious than that oh yeah okay to be honest i Previously, I would have just put anything in a bin, really.

I once put a suitcase in a bin

and then I felt guilty about that.

So I've re, it really filled up the bin.

So I also filled a suitcase with bin bags.

So it is still bin bags.

Bin bags going on holidays.

Yeah, yeah.

Interestingly, I we have disposed of the kids' bath, not the bath we used at the live show, but one here because the plug broke.

And I put it in the recycling bin today, and it just fits perfectly.

But I don't know if I'm allowed.

It's quite a big bin.

And when I was back in London, what was i throwing away it was big

i can't remember but it came in two parts and i hurled this big thing in a bin as the bin men came up and this man said do you honestly think you can put this in a bin and it was really only i just said he was like really rhetorical you know like a policeman asks you things i was like but i'm not an expert i'm like you know i wasn't he caught me at a bad time i just said i don't know i'm not a bin expert and i took it out of the bin and put it beside the i get that i'm one of Europe's leading bad boys, but do either of you not think about going out under cover of darkness and finding a skip in the area belonging to one of your neighbors who's having a big job done, and then putting these large, I mean, okay, the electrical goods, I get it, but have you never snuck out and placed a large object in a neighbor's skip?

Not in a skip.

I will have, to my shame, I will have fly-tipped at least once.

Wow.

Six tons of snow.

Yeah, I wish I could remember what it was.

I feel like I've done a sort of guilty

nighttime trip.

Probably to a block of flats where you just walk outside and they have like a bin room.

That's not fly-tipping.

Come on.

That's just bringing the waste for a little day trip.

But it was three fridges.

Three fridges outside Missouri is one of my favorite films, actually.

I was once in

Prince William put on a football match inside Buckingham Palace.

Here we go.

Here we go.

And he wanted a proper amateur football league match.

And the team I played for are the second oldest team ever, amateur team, called Polytechnic.

And the oldest one is civil service.

So he put civil service with Polytechnic on their first teams.

I was not playing for the first team.

But if you'd been at the club for a long time, I'd get an invite.

And about 10 minutes into the game, me and a couple of mates were like, I've seen this football match so many times.

I'm not interested.

Let's walk around the gardens.

And we just walked down all these pathways.

And at one end of one long pathway were just two fridges.

And it was brilliant because it was just the thought that honestly, the queen had gone, oh, fuck, I'll sort this out later.

Just shut them in the garden.

So, hang on, what are you throwing away in?

What are the electrical goods?

Great question.

Thanks.

Okay, back on track.

Back on track.

The first one is a desk fan.

We currently have three desk fans, which is too many.

And this is the worst of them.

So that's going.

And a 2013

MacBook.

I was looking online, I remember looking during lockdown,

and you could sort of sell your old MacBook, and it would have got like a hundred pounds or something.

And I clearly left that for so long that I went on the same website and put in all the information, and it said it would give me £7.20.

I just thought, fuck that.

But there's a special, where's the special bin for fan?

And is it the same bin, or are there two different?

There's a fan bin and a laptop bin.

It takes up a lot of space.

It's the same bin, but there was a sign on the bin which was sort of faded slightly, but it said something about if you are disposing of laptops or mobile phones.

And then it sort of faded away a bit.

I really didn't concern myself with what the rest of that.

label said.

I just put them all in.

I'm pretty sure it said, if you are disposing of laptops or mobile phones, make sure you've taken the Bitcoin off them before you throw them in here.

Oh, yeah.

Isn't there some guy who has like six billion worth of Bitcoin on a laptop that's in landfill somewhere?

And he's considering mining the landfill to try and find the laptop.

Are you worried that there's stuff on this laptop?

Not sinister stuff, but just stuff that you may need going forward.

I haven't used it for a while, so I guess there might be some like bits of material from my 2015 Edinburgh Show,

which wasn't.

I mean, even if a sort of young, aspiring up and mic comedian stole that laptop, they're not getting good gear from it, really.

Who's seen Entourage?

Yeah, very dared.

But if you, you know, if you did have sinister things on a laptop, I wouldn't throw it away the day before you you were going on a podcast to discuss what you were doing.

Yesterday, it's a grave mistake.

Ian, you've left Madge in the sitting room and you've gone up Ramsey Street to find this bin where you're dropping it off.

A 20-minute walk, it's quite a heavy load to be carrying.

Do you have it just in your arms, or have you got it in bags?

Because if you had it in your arms, you'd look like a crackpot inventor that is trying to fly in the most basic possible way.

No, I didn't look that fun.

The laptop's in my rucksack, and the fan is in a plastic bag,

which you're not allowed to put in the electric bin.

You've got to put the plastic bag in a separate bin.

Well, you're not allowed to put the laptop in the rucksacks.

Yeah, yeah.

No, he could have said if you're throwing away laptops and mobile phones, this is the place to do it.

That could be a positive affirmation that

we need one bins more often.

It's barely possible, isn't it?

If anyone had seen you throwing away, even in a laptop bin, you'd think this is a spy drop and someone from Spooks is going to come over and pick up the laptop in just a second.

But did you feel like a spy, just a little bit?

Yeah.

The feeling I had, which is so stupid, I thought when I took the laptop out of my bag, if anyone saw me taking it out of my bag and putting it in a bin, that they would think, who the fuck does this guy think he is?

Just throwing his laptop in a bin.

He's got so many laptops, he can just bin it.

so i was really like primed to sort of explain to people like if someone went what are you doing to be like it doesn't work anyway it doesn't turn on even without the cable it doesn't turn on and i cleared it a long time ago it's only worth seven pounds twenty now i'm not like a big fucking guy here i'm just putting my laptop in a bin i felt quite defensive I think what I would have done, so I would have dressed like a novelist, okay?

So maybe with a bandana tied around my neck and like a jaunty trill beat to the side.

And I'd be in the cafe opposite the bin

and I would be sort of really giving writers block.

Do you know what I mean?

Where I'd keep ordering coffees like this and then knocking them back and just like, ugh.

And then there's a point where when, you know, all the hot babes in the cafe are watching, I just slam it shut and I walk across the road and throw it in and just throw my arms up in the air.

This novel is never getting finished.

I think that would have been it.

Just going forward, if you have another laptop, that might be something you could do.

My main question for that, I think, was the introduction of the hot babes.

What do you think they're thinking?

Do you think they're quite impressed

by going, fucking hell, that guy's not very good at writing, but he's angry and he's interesting.

Yeah.

Novelists get all the babes.

Have you never seen Salmon Rushdie's pictures?

There's always hot babes everywhere.

His Insta reel is just littered with them, isn't it?

You're right.

Lovely to meet at Monica last weekend.

Maybe we'll meet again.

Stuff like that.

Yep.

Miss Ecuador 2017, stepping out with Salmon Rushdie.

All right, so we walked there.

We walked, do we listen to anything?

on the way for the bin drop on the way home or do you do this solemn walk in silence well i thought if i had my headphones in i'd probably throw them straight in the bin yes if i had any electrics on me of course yeah so no i had to um just be there with my thoughts for 20 minutes and 20 minutes back.

Right.

And then we're back in the house.

Yes.

And that's great.

It's a day of achievement already.

Yeah.

We're just about eight o'clock, are we?

8:30.

Yeah, about 8:30.

Right.

Is it time to put a little nutrition into that hot, hot bud, Ian?

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

Yeah, and there's a crucial bit of information, I think, in this breakfast for what happens a couple of hours later.

I went home via, there's a Nisa local opposite my flat, and I thought I want to try and um cut down on sort of gluten and dairy.

I want to have a bit of a health kick.

Oh, yeah, so I bought some gluten-free granola and a um

kefir.

Is it kefir?

Oh, yes, it's sort of off yogurt, isn't it?

Yeah, it's gone off yogurt.

Is it

I don't know what it is at all.

I was looking for some like oat yogurt or something, but I don't know.

Is kefir dairy or is it

not?

But I got it.

I think it might be dairy.

What I like, Ian, is this like spur of the moment kind of I want my health kick?

Because with all due respect to Nisa Local, it isn't necessarily where you'd begin if you'd been long-term planning, you know, your sort of flaxseed hemp seed journey and you've gone in and all they've got is a rustler's chicken burger.

Yeah.

But they've got Kafir and they've moved on Nisa Local clearly from the last hour of it.

I'm back.

I've spoken to the news, to the wise one one on the hill.

Yeah, kefir is fermented dairy.

So

not only are you not gone on dairy, you've gone sort of like super dairy.

Oh, man.

What a way to find that out.

Was it delicious when you put those two products?

Like it all makes sense now because it does taste like sort of fermented yogurt.

But I thought, well, there's no way they're just selling fermented yogurt.

yeah but i've had that and um some gluten-free granola is there a bit of honey in there no the granola is sort of claiming to do its own flavor work it's got raspberry coconut it's very sweet and i've put a little banana on the side

i could have sliced it up and put it in but i'm a whole banana just sitting there

they never say oh marta ship do they they never go ian has cooked a rack of lamb on a bed of sauteed cabbage with a side of banana.

What I'm getting from this is, is this the start of a health kick?

Is that going to be the tone for the rest of the day?

You have gotten rid of some recyclable slash non-recyclables, and now you've had this awful breakfast.

And where are we going to go next?

Are you going to run an ultra-marathon, something like that?

No, I think it's just because I did the Edinburgh fringe, and then I sort of take September very easy, and I don't do too much work.

I like to do a lot of organization.

I like to have plans and aspirations of going, you know what, in October, I'll start being healthy.

I do no prep for that, and I just go into a Nisa local on the 30th of September.

But I'm doing lots of organizing, so I was also

in the morning.

So, this is at like, we're say about half nine now, just measuring the flat, just measuring stuff.

So take us through.

What are you measuring?

Right.

Well, so we've just moved flat and we've got some key bits to get.

So I was measuring the space between the, I'm looking at it now, a radiator and the kitchen bin for a sort of TV unit

and storage.

sort of space.

This is a fun quiz.

Okay, David, you have a first guess.

So this is from the radiator to the kitchen bin.

Okay.

And Ian Smith's kitchen.

Do you want this in metric or imperial?

Well, I think I want what's the right size telly for the space.

Well, no, he's talking about the whole, we're going to call it the entertainment unit, where he's going to put his board games underneath.

He's going to put a picture of Helen Daniels and the various people we've lost from neighbors over the years.

Do you want me to turn the laptop round and show you the gap?

wow or do you want to just guess do you want a blind guess david or do you want to see the gap give us a quick look at the gap give me a two second two second guess here it comes

no hang on i didn't that's all you're getting that's all you're getting you said a quick look at the gap

who should go first really because it doesn't i mean whoever goes first is are they an advanced or a disadvantage you want it centimeters or inches oh yeah okay i've been measuring in centimetres

Do you want to go first or second, David?

Brexit was, you're not allowed to do that.

So, yeah, I'm going to be sending your local UKIP counselor over to make sure you measure in inches in future.

Yeah, I've got it.

I've got it.

It's 380 centimetres, the gap.

What do you think it is, Max?

You've overclubbed that.

I just thought you were going to be able to do that.

You've taken a driver on a path three, on a short path three.

I'm saying 220.

Right.

Well, you've both massively overestimated the size of this flat.

I would say the gap is 160, but that would make it difficult to use the bin pedals.

So, ideally, we're looking for about 140.

Right.

I think, but now I've lost confidence in my measurements.

Because we were so off.

Should be the bin, but you would have a front-facing bin.

And so the...

the pedals.

It's a double bin.

Oh, it's a double bin.

It's a double recycling and regular.

Oh, yeah.

I wanted a triple one.

I wanted an electrical section as well.

so sorry is it an entertainment unit or just a box that the tv's going to go on and if so what else were you looking to keep in the drawers around us

i think we're looking for yeah like a unit and then we'll put the tv on it yeah lovely lamp maybe oh yeah i think all the cooking books could go in there oh interesting playstation

some blu-rays might find themselves in that.

Is this your 2015 stand-up material from the old laptop?

I'll still get a Blu-ray every now and then.

Yeah, that sort of thing, really.

What would be really nice is if a listener had the perfect sized sort of TV unit and would offer it to Ian.

You'll both remember this, but when I did Saturday breakfast on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire in 2004,

I believe the previous host was Mandy Morton, and she would do swaps and sales, which was the most successful part of Rodeo Cambridgeshire.

Oh, wow.

Where Dave and Cottonham would say,

I've got eight light bulbs unused.

I'd like seven bricks.

And then someone with seven bricks would ring up and they'd just do a deal.

They'd do a swap, not like a transfer.

Very rarely do you get good swap deals in football, but this was very much like a swap deal.

And so this could be, someone could offer the TV unit and want something in return.

And maybe Ian has something.

I mean, he's doing a lot of organizing.

With that in mind, Ian, do you have anything anything you would be willing to swap for an entertainment module?

I've got one of those, like a big,

a big bag with other bags in it.

Yeah.

So I've got loads of bags for life.

Yeah.

Two laundry baskets.

I think we're going to buy a new laundry basket.

So we've got two old ones going.

They have been used.

Bundle those together.

I think that's not enough for a TV unit.

Okay, one more.

We need one more thing, Ian.

What else have you got?

I've got some flyers from my last two Edinburgh shows, which I'd be happy to sign.

Well, see, Max has done this with

footballer-related trading cards because he is such an icon of the game.

And they are currently retailing for a really specific amount, Max.

Wasn't it?

One of our listeners bought one.

For £8,16, but it cost £17 something in total because that's a flyer from Shanghai.

What it's saying in Shanghai, I don't know.

What else did you measure in?

Can I just quickly say, though, I do actually, I've got some Pokemon cards that I reckon it'd be

okay value.

Oh, let's whack them in.

Helen Bauer would be interested.

Yeah, Helen Bauer is still playing Pokemon Go on her phone.

Yeah, yeah.

You still doing a bit of those?

No, not Pokemon Go.

I used to love Pokemon cards when I was a kid.

So like recently I thought, oh, I'll buy some to see if that's if the joy of like opening and seeing if you get something rare is still there but i didn't really get a lot of good stuff and i just thought that's quite a lot of money that i've spent the joy isn't still there is what i've is what i've found it's a great life lesson for you know leaving the path behind isn't it there using pokemon sometimes you've got to as a 37 year old buy some pokemon cards to realize it shouldn't be what you do with your life

because you if you're on a measuring spree presuming not just that area of do you measure yourself yeah quick measuring myself so max let's do a little guess there now you obviously have probably the advantage i've only met him when it wasn't me at old trafford you've probably met him in real life but i'm gonna go 510

i'm gonna go five eight

i must give off very small energy 511.

Oh, yeah, Maxwell.

Well, unless it's a direct hit, it doesn't really count.

Apart from measuring yourself, what else are we measuring?

I don't have a lot of wardrobe space.

When we moved in, I was

just about to leave to the Edinburgh Festival.

So my girlfriend, and she's well within her rights, has taken the big wardrobe in the bedroom.

So I'm using like the smaller additional wardrobe in the

spare room.

But what it needs is a sort of additional

like almost a little wardrobe extension.

So instead of a chest of drawers, I thought I might see if I can get just like a tall little mini wardrobe or some some shit like that that I can find.

So

I found a little wardrobe where you can have a mirror on the front and you sort of design what you want in it with like your shelves and your drawers.

It's only 50 centimeters wide.

That's I've got all this information in my head.

It's got a depth of 38 centimeters.

It's very snug.

But we're trying to be economical with the space.

So I was measuring whether that can get in.

And can it?

Yes.

It's quite tall.

It's 202 centimeters.

And the carbon monoxide detector is 203 centimeters up the wall.

So that was

very close.

You're going to have to weigh that down because otherwise it could teeter over, you know, if you open the window.

Yeah, that is an issue.

Bolted to the wall.

I'll tell you something about that wardrobe.

If you stride purposefully into it, you ain't getting to Narnia.

Like, that sounds like the least Narnia wardrobe that I have ever heard of.

You'd maybe at best get get sort of stuck in it.

Yeah.

You'd be able to see Nania, but you wouldn't be able to access it.

It'd be a shorter book, wouldn't it?

You can really have the whole adventures unless people would, like Mr.

Tumnus, would come up to you and you just have your head sticking out of the wardrobe.

Is that Mr.

Tumnus?

Yeah, you could shake someone's hand in Nania, I reckon.

Only if you'd gone hand first.

If you didn't,

your hand wouldn't get out.

No, I understand that.

What no one talks about is the prequel to the lion the witch and the wardrobe where the children just walk confidently into wardrobes for the previous five years just incur horrible injuries and getting coat hangers in the eye and stuff yeah

okay do we measure anything else there's a space where we might get a bookshelf okay

and

I measured the width of the existing wardrobe space I have because I'm going to buy a shoe rack and put it in the bottom of that wardrobe.

Yeah, lovely.

It's a big day for me.

We're on about 10.45 now.

Let's not beat around the bush here.

Are you going to go on various websites and find beautiful pre-loved pieces of furniture that fit these spaces?

Or are you going to just go to a Swedish big box brand and get stuff that fits exactly?

I think a mixture.

Right.

Okay.

I think I would love to get stuff that

is a bit more sort of unique.

Also,

just finding something the exact size is so difficult.

Yeah, who knows?

But my girlfriend isn't a big fan of IKEA.

I could kick this flat out for about £200, I reckon.

Yeah.

From IKEA.

But

it wouldn't look great.

Yeah.

So it's 10.45.

You're probably exhausted from all this measuring that you've done.

But we've got quite a lot of day left.

Sorry, interruption.

I have one more question.

Are you using the classic measuring tape where you pull the thing out of the box lovely question and if so do you is your girlfriend still there or are you alone in the in the house she's still doing work in the in the living room at this point or sort of like reading reading drinking coffee the reason i ask is do you take the opportunity to try and spool out as much of the measuring tape as possible to see at exactly the point where it cracks in half, just to see if you can break some sort of world record doing that.

I didn't do that this time, but I have done that before.

I think everyone, if you've got some joy in your life, must have done that.

Oh, of course.

And, you know, a lot of just, a lot of just 30, 40 centimetre pull up, bring it home.

You know, it's a few of those.

Just check it's, you know, in good working order.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure tradespeople, that's what they do all day as well just if you gaze into the van they're just having yet another contest to see who can get the head of the tape measure out just after they've done who's got the flattest head with the spirit level

they love that they love that one

right so 10 45.

At this point, I'm thinking,

my girlfriend's working from home today, so she's going to be using the desk.

We don't have a table yet.

That's a previous day's measuring.

We only have like one workspace.

So, I'm going to go to a cafe and do two hours of work.

Great.

So, I'm going to go to Gail's.

It's quite posh for me, but a good ham and cheese there.

I mean, I know it's not, you know, you're on your new nisa local health journey.

So, Gail's isn't necessarily the best choice, but their ham and cheese is right up there.

This is the issue, really.

I went to Gail's and I got an orange juice and a chocolate chip muffin, which is gluten.

So now both of of those are gone.

So hang on.

I need to step in here for our international listeners.

Is Gale's a chain?

I actually don't.

Presumably you're not.

There's more than one Gale then.

Yeah, they're sort of overly pricey, but I do think very nice, a sort of middle-class cafe.

Yeah.

And it's got good internet.

Often it can be a very quiet place to work, but sometimes multiple young mums come in and their kids sort of scream and they seem to have no no regard for um the radio 4 series on work working

you're talking about max and his children and his partner here yeah completely because i've lived both gales lives the three kids life with a laptop inside each of us there are two gales yeah i've been in going i just want a quartado and a ham and cheese i want to be quiet i've got things to do and then i've got

There are eight of us and there are five kids.

And this table in Upper Street Gales is not going to fit all of us.

And there are a lot of people around us who look incredibly disappointed.

But frankly, I've been in the playground for so long, I don't care about people anymore.

And hopefully, Ian, young Ian, will eat something that isn't a plain scon, but he eats a plain scone.

So I don't know if this happened to you yesterday if you were surrounded by the kids that weren't really concerned about the finer points of the Radio 4 series.

I can understand both points of view.

I would say this.

There's a special disappointment, and it's a very specific feeling.

It's happened to me maybe twice in my life.

It's when you decide a new local place is cool and you're going to invest some of your excitement into it.

I did this with a juice place not that long ago and then it turns out to be part of a chain.

And that chalk font they had outside, I was like, these people are really going for it with this great menu.

The exact same chalk font is being used in various other places and i don't think i ever went back then because yeah that doesn't fit my brand to be going to chains yeah i'd love to be a non-chain guy but um but these chocolate muffins have they've got me in a bind i remember going in one day i went in

and on the transition point of them slightly changing the recipe of this chocolate muffin, it really bothered me.

And they've since, I think, gone back to the original recipe.

And it really made me feel happy because I thought someone's done what I didn't have the courage to do and sort of written in and said, This hasn't made it better.

The chocolate chips are clumping together so much more than they did in the previous recipe.

And you've used a darker chocolate, it's a bit too bitter.

I'm not asking for milk chocolate, I'm asking for something in between.

Someone has done that on my behalf, and I'm very grateful.

Well, you should get in touch with Max because Gale's is owned by Dwight Gale, the former footballer.

And Max probably has his number.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Dwight Gale, who looks sort of Benjamin Button-like, looks like a really old man face, I think.

I can't remember where he's plying his trade now.

Forgive me, but I think he's still knocking about in the lower reaches of the EFL.

I should also point out that I'm Jamie, my wife in, she gets annoyed with how I'm over considerate to everyone else in the cafe and not her by sort of like apologizing continually about children running around while simultaneously letting them run around.

Do you have a successful two hours then focused on the Radio 4 show?

Can you tell us anything about the show?

It's the second series of a radio show I did about different things that are stressful and attempts to sort of solve them.

And I just needed to map out like these four episodes.

Each episode would have like a little weird excursion, like going and doing something that we would maybe film in a sort of documentary record sort of way.

So I just needed to map them out and sort of send them to the producer.

And I wanted to get it done again, this weird 1st of October, my life is going to be so productive.

So I was like, I need to get it done before October.

So I think I've got that done.

I wrote five episodes instead of four because I...

I thought one of these will be shit.

One of these will be a shit pitch that the producer goes, well, there's no way we can do that.

I'm trying to pitch

the BBC won't let you fly as part of like on BBC radio.

Like, if you want to go somewhere to do something for the series, you can't get a flight.

And I think a big reason for this, do you know if you know the comedian Sunil Patel?

Yeah.

He did a radio series where he flew somewhere like, I think he flew to El Salvador just to make a payment in Bitcoin because it's one of the few countries where Bitcoin is legal tender.

And then flew back like the next day and I think the BBC were like that is not great for our candidate footprint so now no one can fucking fly anywhere even if it's like Europe

there's a thing in Sweden it's called the flogster scream where university students apparently started doing this at 10 p.m.

every night or it's maybe like one night a week.

They all start screaming out their windows and it started as like a relief of exam stress.

I thought it'd be really good to travel to Sweden to just scream along with these university students.

Yeah, but if we're to do that for the radio, it will mean hiring a car and driving for 22 hours straight because we can't get a flight because of Sunil Patel.

So, that's one of my pictures for an episode: is that we

record it in a car for 21 hours, basically, scream, and then drive back.

That is going to take three days.

Could you release the whole thing?

Like completists would have to listen to the whole

ignition turning on the whole journey.

And you've also got, I mean, you do well to time it so perfectly.

It's hard to predict all the traffic through Belgium and Holland and Denmark.

Yeah.

A bit of Germany, I guess.

Yeah.

It's great to arrive at the exact moment when they scream, isn't it?

You're just in the lap of the gods there.

Yeah.

It reminds me of Sarah Pascoe's dad's 16-hour exploration of themes themes from Ulysses on jazz tenor sax.

In fact, maybe if you do release this as the full 21-hour version, he could then improvise over it

and Radio 4 hopefully would broadcast the whole thing.

Yeah, I mean, they must have a day, like a quiet day

where they sort of go, oh, we don't really have much going on and we'll just do that and then occasionally put like the news bulletins in between.

So, but you similar to J.R.R.

Tolkien, who famously wrote five Lord of the Rings books and then ditched one of them because it was shit.

Oh, come on, they're all shit.

Let's be real.

They're all shit.

No,

the Silmarillion, what's that

Silverfish?

You know that?

You know, there's three of them where an adventure takes place, and one of them is just like Roald begat Jamases in the epoch of the Lion.

You guys are staring at me like I'm just talking bullshit here.

I think I've been very plain and clear about how I feel about the works of J.R.

Tolkien.

All right, Ian.

I don't know if you have any strong thoughts.

I've never read a Tolkien book, but I've not been sold on them from this discussion.

So, do you think that this episode could be the one you ditched?

That's what I'm getting towards.

I think it logistically might be, but I think there's something funny about traveling all that way just to scream.

And also, I'm not a very confident driver, so I think it will be stressful in itself.

Yeah.

And there's also a chance that you go and it just doesn't happen that night.

Ian, I have an idea.

It's radio, so you could just pretend to have

like yogurt cartons or something that sound like cars on a motorway.

You know, I bet if you, there's a Reddit thread as to how to sound like you're in a car on the radio.

You need a Swedish chef from the Moppets to meet you at this

and play a bit of music.

So apparently, what you need to get the sound effect, you need an old laptop and a semi-broken desk fan, and you point them both at the mic, and it sounds exactly like you're in a car.

Right.

The plan is then, I'm going to go to the electrical bin and I'm going to see if I can put myself in it,

use one of the torches that's been dumped in there to find my electrics,

And I'll bring enough food with me to sort of survive.

I think it's great, especially if you don't say a word to anyone in Sweden.

Once you cross the border, the only thing you're allowed to do is scream.

So you can talk merrily through the Low Countries, but once we're in Sweden, at best, a nod

and then

scream.

How long do they scream for?

I don't know.

I think it's a bit of a sort of I'm Spartacus thing where someone screams, a lot of other people start screaming, and then I think it sort of dies down.

The more I'm thinking about this, the more I cannot imagine the producer or Radio 4 saying this is a good idea.

I can hear the continuity person going, and now on Radio 4, Ian Smith drives to Sweden to scream.

I think it sounds exactly what you'd hear.

I mean, it's not going to be like 8 a.m.

I think we've got to accept it's a sort of mid-afternoon type affair, but I can hear that.

Well, we'll see what they say.

Okay.

So we work on that.

Is there many disturbances in Dwight Gale's cafe?

Do a lot of people come in?

Any oddbods come in?

Anything to report in this little two-hour period?

There was a man who

tried to pay for something in cash, and they said we don't take cash here.

Wow.

He had his card, so he was able to pay and contact less, but he was doing quite a bit of, he was going, well, you don't take cash.

How long has this been happening for?

And you just think, well, who cares?

If she tells you it's been happening for two years, so just tap your card down.

It doesn't affect your life anymore.

Then he started quite loudly saying, this is the devaluation of money.

It's the devaluation of currency.

Yeah.

Because the bank is taking a percentage every time you make a payment.

So your money is worth less than if you had cash.

It's the devaluation of money.

The woman serving serving him, I would say, really didn't care about the devaluation of money.

And I reckon they had that conversation for a minute and all she went is, hmm, yeah.

I would imagine, though, in Gail's cafe, they are still taking cash in the little tip jar, though.

So she could have just pointed down at that and be like,

whack some of that in there.

my friend.

Yeah, I don't think he was up for giving a tip at all after this horrid incident which he's sort of looking around for affirmation from other customers you know a bit like hey you see you know he's gone over the top here and he's looking behind for the rest of the the cash warriors to come with him i mean he seemed like quite a lone wolf but maybe he's had that conversation so many times he's just like no one's going to get involved with this there's a farmer's market where we go to occasionally that there's a woman who sells apples and she always asks for cash and if you pay for card she will tell everybody paying with card how terrible it is.

And the apples are very crisp and very good, but there is party that just can't be asked to have the same conversation about cash when all you want is three jazz apples.

Yeah, let me have the apples, I'll give you the.

I'm sorry.

Does anyone ever say to her, um, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what, cash is good for though, tax aversion?

Is that what you're up to?

Why are you only taking cash?

You're doing this on the side, you're not declaring it.

She is selling him out the back of a Rolls-Royce.

Okay, so we leave Gail's, We're back home.

Yeah, back home.

And then it's a lot of your standard stuff.

I had a bit of food.

Yeah.

And then the main sort of the preparation for I had an event.

So it's six o'clock.

So I had to leave at about five.

I'm thinking about this at four o'clock.

I was sort of getting a shower and stuff.

I'd been invited to, and it sounds fancier than it is.

There's a company called Okra or Okra or something.

They were, along with BBC Studios, were doing a climate and comedy evening where

comedians and writers would go and learn about some different climate issues to maybe be inspired of something to talk about in your writing.

Yeah.

And I got that invitation after Edinburgh.

And in my head, I thought, here we fucking go.

I've been nominated for an award in Edinburgh, and now I'm getting invited to big swanky events yeah but it it wasn't really a big swanky event it was um sort of like speed dating

where you had a um a sort of what's the a lanyard yeah and it had different numbers on the lanyard and those were the tables that you would go to in the order you'd go to them and each table would be about a different environmental sort of aspect yeah and there'd be an expert on the table and they would talk to you about it.

There'd be 10 people around the table, and then you'd all chip in and ask questions, but just fucking table after table of bleakness,

flooding.

I love the idea that Ian Smith has arrived believing it's a big, it's stepping out into the world of showbiz.

He's on a white velvet

in a red velvet suit, and there's just a load of people talking about how we AI is going to destroy all the servers in the world.

Yeah.

It's relentlessly bleak, is it?

Everything?

Yeah, like I thought like Attenborough level sort of people might be there.

But there was a few comedians that I knew.

Yeah, the first table I went on was about flooding.

There was a table about mental health, how the climate affects mental health.

Then my next table was anxiety, which doing that immediately after mental health was just bleak.

Then it was like food and the scarcity of food production.

And then it ended on disease.

What a night out.

Yeah.

And I suppose it's tricky.

Because if you're on a table where it's all about the scarcity of food, they can't really put a massive spread on, can they?

I mean, there was hors d'oeuvres,

like finger food.

So you sort of, you were thinking, like, it's not all bad.

We've got plenty of arancine around here.

Is it free booze?

Was it free booze as well?

It was sort of cocktails and climate.

Wow.

Hang on.

sort of so.

When are we now?

Seven o'clock?

Because you've only had kefir, which you said would cause an incident two hours later that we have glossed over and a cookie.

Is that all you've had before you get to your swanky event?

No, the incident with the kefir was more, it was more the Gail's incident.

That I've started the day saying I'm not going to have dairy or gluten.

Okay, and then two hours after that, I've had a muffin.

But is that all you've had before the swanky event?

You're 5'11, by my reckoning.

You're gonna need a lot of nutrition to keep that achievement achievement machine going.

No, I had some food before I went, but it was

my girlfriend's vegetarian, so every now and then we have like a meal, which I would say is just lots of vegetables in the oven, delicious, some tofus in there, a bit of bread, some potatoes, and you just sort of have a bowl of

stuff.

The helicopter makes incredible like um courgette biryani and stuff where i know i sound like my dad here but you don't even notice that there's no meat oh yeah i'm a big i mean i'm balancing this laptop on let me get this out some excellent anna jones vegetarian cookbooks yeah yeah i don't know if we're allowed to advertise on this there's loads of good recipes in this one easy wins we're really trying to advertise on this but people aren't so forthcoming oh do you might get anna jones after this shout out yeah i would say david there's a difference between a courgette biryani and a bowl of stuff

in the gamut of vegetarian meals served.

I try to encourage vegetarian eating here, and I just felt even the way Ian went into that description was just, you know, she's a vegetarian, so once a month she just gets a load of grass and puts it in the bath and we all pee on it and then she makes us call it a soup, you know?

No, I like vegetarian food.

I think sometimes, if you're rushing, what you do is you just chop stuff up and put it in an oven.

Yeah,

no, I'm very positive about vegetables.

I love courgettes so much at the minute.

Yeah, a courgette pasta would be my go-to.

Um,

courgettes, you get some chili flakes in there, get maybe a bit of cream, maybe um, some smoked bacon if you want to make it exciting.

Make it good,

vegetarian eating added spiders.

But presumably, at this swanky dinner, there's a big table of don't meet anyone.

Like the vegetable table, you'd presume.

Yeah, because there was like some chicken options, but on the food table, this guy was just saying how bad meat production was and how we should move to a plant-based diet.

You had a burger, a chili dog.

I had loads of chicken tacos and some Bolognese arancini.

And at the very end, Attenborough comes on stage.

But the most important thing you can do is never put a laptop in a recycling bin for electrical goods.

Yeah, I didn't mention that to anyone there, just in case I'd made a big mistake.

Is your takeaway that this will influence your work going forward?

What are your takeaways from this event?

One of my takeaways is that I'm not confident.

in situations where I'm sat around a table and I don't know anyone else around the table with.

And that will make me occasionally have a question in my head when they ask for questions that I just don't say because I'm too shy.

And then you have to sit through other people's questions, which sometimes are bad questions.

Yeah.

But you can't jump in and go, stop answering that one.

When the sea levels rise, is there a way of just blasting loads of water into space?

That's a great question.

I wanted to ask that, but I didn't get to ask it because someone was talking about.

this girl was asking a couple of very, very sincere questions about water levels and their effect on people's mental health.

And I thought, why is no one talking about space

and blasting stuff into it?

Who else is there?

I mean, this sounds like a good idea, like to, you know.

spread the word but it also sounds like a really uncomfortable evening where i'd go home really early and go it's really sad i need to do more but i didn't want to go to the next I was full up by the time famine, the famine table came along, you know?

Yeah.

They should be putting the famine table first before you

full up on hors d'oeuvres.

It was a bit bleak.

There are a few things where you thought maybe there's some like dark humor in this.

There was lots of writers.

There was a guy who was talking about,

I can't remember what table we were on.

I think it was the mental health table about anxiety, climate change, affecting mental health.

And he said, I actually wrote an episode of Doctors about this.

Wow.

And I thought, right,

this is who we're dealing with.

The woman who was talking about climate-based mental health had seen that episode of Doctors and was sort of stunnestruck.

She's like, I've seen, you're the, oh my God, wrote the same.

They started talking in a way where you felt like,

well, about like a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh wheel of this date that they were having.

Do you know what what this sounds a lot like to me?

A writer has attracted a hot babe.

That's what I'm saying.

And he had earlier in the evening.

He'd been swearing at a laptop and he threw it out of the window.

I knew it.

So, I mean, the embarrassing part of this where you nod solemnly, and then your monster truck is parked directly outside, and you crank up those 6.5 litres

as you drive up Old Street.

Yeah, lots of people were pointing out the window going, what sort of disgusting pig drives that?

And I was just having to join in and I'm like, yeah, absolute asshole, I imagine.

And I bet he doesn't have a Patagonia fleece.

Sprayed on the side of it is Perrier nominee Ian Smith, then brackets not Ian Smith from neighbours, just in case there's any ambiguity in it.

Yeah, that was harder to explain away that bit.

There are a few Ian Smiths there.

Well, the cricket commentator was the former white supremacist leader of Rhodesia.

Well, there is that one.

Oh, yeah.

The cricket commentator.

They're not the same, are they?

It wasn't the white supremacist who was doing the commentary when they got the run out on the Super Over.

By the barest of margins, that guy.

You wouldn't last long in the job if you were trying to sneak white supremacy into your cricket commentary.

You're probably right.

Oh, Madge, we should move to an island where there's only people of the same skin colour as us.

Do you remember that bird friend neighbour so neighbors where harold bishop becomes a white supremacist

really took a turn didn't it he tries to recruit joe mangel and he doesn't joe doesn't get it keeps turning up to all the events i guess if he got amnesia he just forgot that he was really tolerant in the past

But that is sad, isn't it?

Because you get home and you realize, I mean, because it's so bleak and because there's so much other shit news that climate change is just not at the top of the agenda where it needs to be.

And we're all hypocrites in some way.

And when I've done stuff about this on football, we clean climate change, you know, because football is quite interesting.

Teams take private jets.

Lots of football grounds will be underwater in, you know, 50 years or 100 years or whatever.

And people will say, look, you can't do.

Just because you're not doing everything doesn't mean you do nothing, right?

You can't just go, well, they're driving cars in India, loads of cars in India, so I might as well chuck this laptop in not the right bin or whatever, you know, like, I don't know.

But you leave thinking, oh,

oh, god, humans are shit.

I guess so, yeah.

Like, they, they weren't spinning the kind of hopeful angles as much.

But my question to you would be: is there a way of blasting these football stadiums into space

so we can still play on them or just incorpor water into the game?

Similar to how, from as we've spoken to Mary Beard about, my knowledge of the classical world is mostly based on the gladiator films.

And they seem to be able to flood the Colosseum in that and change it from a land-based game with a trident and a net into little boats going at each other.

And I look forward to football in that era.

Yeah, that's just water polo, isn't it?

Pep Guardiola using, he's got one big boat at the back, and then he's got two little boats going up and down up the sides.

The game's gone.

The game is gone.

We get home from this event.

What time is it now?

Ian, say it's about

half 10, 11 sort of time.

Right.

Maybe even a little bit past 11.

So Madge is already asleep, I presume.

She was watching a bit of House of Guinness, which has apparently been

largely rejected by the Irish community.

It's a strange one because there's a...

What is it?

It's the history of alleged 19th century version of what was happening in the Guinness family in Dublin.

So you've got the rise of nationalism meeting the

Guinness family who largely only employed Protestants.

But the blurb at the start says, what is it?

This is a fiction.

based on actual events or something like that, which really gives you a lot of leeway.

You know, where someone to write a biography of me and just having written written at the start this is fiction based on some real events it'd be like david oddardi was born in 1975 in rhodesia and became a white supremacist leader or what you know what i mean there is a lot of leeway within this is fiction so i mean i i don't take it personally but yeah yeah apparently the accents are bad when you live in this country you're quite used to that well interestingly piers brosnan in whatever he's in, has a terrible Irish accent and he's Irish, and he can't do it.

The greatest, we've talked about this before, I think, David.

I don't know if you've seen this, Ian.

The final ever murder she wrote is called something like

Murder She Wrote and the Celtic Blani Potato Guinness Stone or something, River Dance.

And it is absolutely, it may be the greatest hour, or it might even be a feature film or two hours of television where they have found 15 American people who between them can't do an Irish accent.

And I'm here for it.

It's magical stuff.

Pierce is fascinating because Pierce Brausnan, although from Ireland, has forgotten how to do an Irish accent.

And then in Thursday Murder Club, the movie, he's a sort of northern English retired trade unionist.

And it seems like he can't do that either.

So I think with Pierce, you just get him to do just do whatever you want, mate.

Like when you reach a scale of your career career where you're like, oh, Welsh accent, I can do that.

Pop-de-ping.

You know what I mean?

And everyone's like, yeah, that'll do.

That's fine.

Yeah, I guess people are maybe,

as you get that established, you don't, I don't know how old Piers Prosner is.

He's like 70?

Or is that too old?

I go 68.

74.

74, fine.

Will I check it?

We all have a guess.

Come on, 68.

I think 71.

Okay.

He looks good for it, though, but I feel like he might be like a celeb.

72.

72.

Well done.

But I guess you're just not going to give a 72-year-old with that much experience.

It must be harder to say to him,

what the fuck are you doing?

What the hell is this?

What accent are you doing?

So maybe they just think, right, whatever he comes in and does is what do I get in for the film, unfortunately?

Yeah.

There's certain people who are of such an age and a status, it would be difficult.

Similarly, you know, if you tried to ask, say, David Attenborough to do it in a funny Scandinavian voice, you know what I mean?

He would also find that difficult.

Yeah, no, hang on.

That is different because

he's doing an active documentary.

He's on playing an Irishman.

That would just be a really weird producer decision, wouldn't it?

Whereas like Piers Bros.

wants to be an Irishman in whatever that show is.

And maybe

he doesn't know.

And if he listens to this podcast, this is when he finds out.

And everyone just goes, Piers, that that was marvellous.

That was marvellous, Piers.

And he's like, oh, they think I'm great.

This is so great.

And this podcast is where he finds out that his Irish accent isn't what it's up to.

I do love the idea of just inexplicably David Attenborough doing an Animals of Ireland show in his funny Irish accent.

Because we don't really have exciting animals to begin with.

So he'd just be like,

De Caterpillar is a little fella with lots of legs.

And people will be like, What the hell has happened to Attenborough here?

To be sure, to be sure,

he destroys his legacy.

I'd say a deer would love a pint.

What the hell, Attenborough?

This is absolute bullshit.

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Do you join anyone watching the House of Guinness or?

Yeah, I'm not excited to watch it.

Yeah.

And it feels like this was a solo watching activity that I would have to sort of catch up with.

So I had one email that I needed to send.

send i went through into another room and sent that email and then come to bed but i remember consciously thinking i was in bed about 11 45 my girlfriend's asleep and i thought we're still 15 minutes for the pod tomorrow so um i just went on my phone and um on the poker stars app i had um two pounds on it so i played a game of spin and go poker yeah and i lost and then i thought that'll do that'll do nicely

if you won 30 million quid well wait to end this episode and then I won 30,000 pounds good night yeah and then at one minute past 12 three masked assailants came into my house and I had to fight them off but we don't well I guess we shouldn't really go into that yeah just the idea of you winning 30 million at the end of this day is lovely because you can then go back and right all the wrongs of the day you can get you know the laptop back and recycle it correctly you can have bespoke furniture made to fit all these tiny orifices in your home and you can solve the climate you can be the one that builds the 60 mile tube that just blasts all the excess seawater into space

yeah and i go mad with the power and i i get rid of sort of 80% of the world's water

and then we've got more land there will will be, when you, you know, this is the way to solve the climate and you say it's just blasting shit into space.

I suspect some annoying scientist will say, I've actually done a bit of work on this, and this isn't actually the answer.

So then you'll have to kill them.

Yeah, well, guess where that scientist is going to go?

Getting blasted straight into space.

Anyone who says anything.

It'll be the opposite to Max's problem, whereby rather than football grounds being submerged, in 60 years' time, people will be like, why are Brighton called the Seagulls?

They're hundreds of miles from the sea, and a seagull has never been seen over Brighton.

That's because of Ian Smith and his late-night win on PokerStars.

They're 3,000 feet above the sea level now.

They should be called the mountain goals or something like that.

People are like, That's the difficulty of playing against Brighton.

The altitude, you get quite sick, so you have to spend a few days just in Hove acclimatizing before the it's just hard to get there you know the public transport links are terrible and also another big problem is environmentally bad to send the thousands of football fans into space every other weekend to the amex i don't think it's been thought i'm not an expert ian and i'd hate to profess yeah well at least i'm trying to do something good at least you've your big takeaway from this very important meeting that was arranged by the bbc is blast the amex into space we've got to start something somewhere.

It has been a a delight to be with you on this day.

This I feel a cusp of a new Ian Smith, where sure there's some elements of that old guy, but we see the new one, kind of like one of those lizards that just sheds its skin, and you see the new lizard just crawling out.

Well, you're at the exact midpoint where you're half out, but you're dragging this old carcass behind you.

Is that fair?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

The worst bit, really.

Because it's not like, I mean, at least with the old lizard, it looks like a lizard.

Yeah.

But the minute I look like, I'm sort of one and a half men and one half of that man doesn't have any, it's just sort of skin.

Yeah, well, it doesn't feel like a compliment.

Hey, thanks for coming on, Ian.

I had a lovely time.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Sorry,

my day did just involve quite a lot of measuring.

It was the most bin measuring chat we've had.

And frankly, that's exactly what I'm here for.

So I loved it.

Good.

Thanks for coming on.

What did you do yesterday?

So there was Ian Smith.

And we did allude to it in the intro, David, but I, for one, am here for any podcast where two people guess the distance in centimeters between a bin and a wall.

Frankly, what else do you need in life?

Especially, I mean, I don't know what it's like to listen to this podcast.

I will never really know because I was there for the recording of it.

But what are the listeners thinking when he turns around his laptop and just gives us a flash of the space?

I was also forgotten that Ian Smith is also the former not great

boss of Rhodesia, no longer a country.

This might be the zenith of this podcast.

It really defines it, I think.

And God on him for walking 20 minutes to that electrical bin.

And the fact that actually he wasn't meant to put his laptop in there, that's also really nice, isn't it?

But you know, you're doing the right thing.

You've gone all this way.

If you would.

Oh, did we plug his things?

Hang on.

Were we meant to plug his things?

Yeah, I plugged it at the start.

Oh, so you did.

I'll say it again now.

Yeah, say it now, yeah.

After Christmas, he's doing a British tour of his stand-up show.

He's Ian Smith, and you can work out how to spell that.

Comedy, I think, is his Instagram handle.

He's the comedian one, not the former head of Rhodesia or the guy from Neighbors.

Yeah, to our knowledge, he's not a white supremacist.

He is such a funny person.

Any feedback, whatever, we'll take it.

This is how to get in touch.

To get in touch with the show, you can email us at what did you do yesterday pod at gmail.com.

Follow us on Instagram at yesterdaypod.

And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform.

And if you didn't, please don't.

Hey, thanks, David.

Thanks, Ian.

And let's do it again soon.

Everything is show showbiz.

Thanks, Max.

See ya.