S3 EP23: Andy Zaltzman

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Speaker 4 Podcasts, there are millions of them.

Speaker 5 Some might say too many.

Speaker 6 I have one already.

Speaker 7 I don't have any, because there are enough.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 8 But nobody is covering the most important topic of all.

Speaker 4 Why is that?

Speaker 6 Are they scared?

Speaker 8 Too afraid of being censored by the man?

Speaker 4 Possibly, but not us. We're here to ask the only question that matters.

Speaker 5 We'll try and say it at the same time, Max.

Speaker 6 What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday?

Speaker 8 That's it.

Speaker 4 All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday, nothing more.

Speaker 8 Day before yesterday, Max?

Speaker 5 Nope.

Speaker 8 The greatest and most interesting day of your life?

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 Hello, and welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? I'm Max Rushton and David O'Doherty is here too.

Speaker 5 Hello and welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday. Today's guest, alphabetically, is the final.
I mean, I guess he does, his name covers the entire alphabet. It's Andy Saltzman.

Speaker 4 That's not why we booked him. It wasn't just for alphabetical reasons.
We're desperately trying to get a person a cue. I haven't booked Nigel Quasi.

Speaker 5 Or Quentin from your football team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he is one of my oldest friends in comedy. You may know him in the cricket gear from the last series of Taskmaster.

Speaker 5 He is celebrating at the moment the 18th anniversary year of The Bugle, the satirical, beautiful podcast that he and John Oliver started. And now I do it sometimes.
Nish does it sometimes.

Speaker 5 You may also know him from Testmatch Special. Max, describe to the people what Testmatch Special is.

Speaker 4 I mean, it is heritage sports broadcasting.

Speaker 4 It transcends cricket is what it is. It is the BBC's cricket coverage, you know, their ball-by-ball Test Match coverage.

Speaker 4 And it has an amazing history of amazing broadcasters talking about the cricket, but also talking about buses and cakes.

Speaker 4 And he is, as you will establish pretty early in this episode, he is the uber nerd that they turn to for nerdy stats.

Speaker 4 And you will discern from this episode that he is not faking this, he is not bluffing when he's doing this. I think we established that.

Speaker 5 He's the right guy. Yeah, Andy is never going to appear on Love Island.
And you were like, wow, this is different to what I thought his personality was.

Speaker 4 He's going on tour. He's doing some shows in Australia while the Ashes is on, which starts on, well, started.

Speaker 5 If this is

Speaker 4 out, when i think it's out i think that it started two days ago so hopefully england are doing okay wow listeners i've never seen max do that face before his eyes were squinted

Speaker 4 he was performing a high level mathematical yeah those are some thinking it's my thinking face but if you go to andy zoltzman two zeds as in z-a-l-t-z m-an-n.co uk a-lz

Speaker 4 he really wanted to be the end of the alphabet so he put z z on it so no andyzaltzman.cok he's doing a few gigs in australia while he's over here and then he's got a UK tour coming up next year.

Speaker 4 This is what Andy Zaltzman did yesterday.

Speaker 4 Andy Oltzman, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Speaker 9 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 5 Part in Lee.

Speaker 4 There's a part of me, because I presume you're going to come to Australia for the Ashes.

Speaker 4 So I was hoping this might be a I was on a plane for 24 hours episode, but I don't know yet.

Speaker 9 No, it's not. I'm flying out in five days time, arriving the day before the cricket begins.
Oh, good. Well, I had a recording annoyingly scheduled for two days before the cricket begins in London.
So

Speaker 9 I'll be working on the stats aided by significant jet lag. But yes, I will be heading south shortly.

Speaker 5 To our listeners who have no interest in cricket, for example, me.

Speaker 4 He does this a lot. He explains things that everyone knows about.

Speaker 5 Ashes.

Speaker 5 when he said are you coming out for the ashes it's not a funeral scattering that they are both attending it's the stupid name for a stupid cricket tournament thank you we have listeners in america andy yeah well i mean if you have listeners who are not cricket fans then this podcast is worthless and all your listeners are losers

Speaker 4 interestingly andy and i have been to many funerals together we can't talk about them because obviously we didn't go to one yesterday, but there's so many.

Speaker 5 What's weird is Andy just talks about statistics while he's at these funerals. Just talking about what the longest funeral was, the longest that the speech has ever gone on.
He knows all those ashes

Speaker 5 statistics. Thank you.

Speaker 9 Got some sensational funeral-based databases.

Speaker 4 Coffin sizes, speed of cremation. It's good stuff.
Hey, come on, let's get down to business, Andy. Where did you wake up yesterday, please?

Speaker 9 I woke up in my bed at home.

Speaker 9 I reckon round about 7-ish, 7 a.m.

Speaker 9 I've had children now for almost 19 years, prior to which my general getting up time as a stand-up comedian was significantly later in the morning, stroke, early afternoon.

Speaker 9 And I don't think I've fully adjusted to parenthood yet in almost two decades. And I mean, I I devoted myself to finding a career purely in order to avoid having to get up at 7 a.m.

Speaker 9 And in that, I appear to have failed.

Speaker 5 What wakes you? Is it commotion in the house or is it the light of the Lord? You know, what is it that specifically wakes you at 7? An alarm?

Speaker 4 And please tell me, Andy, it's not your 19-year-old screaming because they've done a shit and you have to, because like I've got a three-year-old and a 10-month-old, and I keep saying I'll be out of the woods soon.

Speaker 4 And if if it's a 19-year-old getting up at five in the morning to play Fisher-Price train sets, I'm going to be very sad.

Speaker 9 They're fully house-trained. My children are

Speaker 5 18 and 16.

Speaker 9 No, it's an alarm. And

Speaker 9 I have an app on my phone

Speaker 9 which, when the alarm goes off, to turn the alarm off, I have to do a set of puzzles. And you can set what puzzles it sets you.

Speaker 5 Whoa, wow.

Speaker 9 It's very effective, actually. So I have three different sets of alarms.
The first one is just one quite simple puzzle. The second one is two slightly harder puzzles.

Speaker 9 And the third one is three slightly harder puzzles. So I can often go back to sleep off the first one, but I very, very rarely blast through all three without getting up.

Speaker 5 And remember, Max, Andy's a puzzles guy. So I'd say level three is like Fermat's last theorem or something.
It involves you having to take out a whiteboard and carry the bar.

Speaker 9 Accelerating particles and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 Build the Large Hadron Collider. That's just alarm two, isn't it? Okay, so the alarm goes off at seven, beep, beep, beep, beep.
And you pick up your phone.

Speaker 5 No, it's the cricket music. It's doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot,

Speaker 5 it's Booker T and the MGs.

Speaker 9 It's nice, although I did have that on

Speaker 9 the playlist for the disco at my wedding.

Speaker 9 It absolutely got the dance roll packed, telling you.

Speaker 5 Interruption. I did a festival in Seattle in about 2010, a comedy festival.
There was a music festival as well.

Speaker 5 And I got the airport bus from the hotel to Seattle Airport with Booker T from Booker T and the MGs,

Speaker 5 who we ended up having, because he's a jazz guy. We ended up having, my father's a jazz musician, so we had a good old jazz conversation.
And then we talked about that song.

Speaker 5 So to the listeners, the BBC theme music to the cricket for 30 or 40 years was an obscure Booker T and the MGs album track.

Speaker 5 And Booker T's joke to, if there was a new member of the MGs with him, was when they did a gig in England, he wouldn't tell the new member of the band that this is his most beloved track ever in this very specific country, among this very specific demographic.

Speaker 5 So the new bass player would just start playing it and the room would explode. And that was how Booker T got one of his big kicks from Cricket Slack.

Speaker 5 That's my only Cricket statistics/slash fact souls. And I've said it in the first five minutes of this podcast.

Speaker 9 Right, you've left yourself nowhere to go.

Speaker 4 So what's the first puzzle? So you look at the phone, the alarm goes, the Booker T plays, and then it's a Sudoku? What is it?

Speaker 4 Like a riddle?

Speaker 9 It's just a basic sort of four by four

Speaker 9 grid, and you have to sort of match up colours.

Speaker 9 So, you know, press press the top left and it's red and then you have to sort of match up the two reds and the two blues and all that so it doesn't take very long it's quite simple okay simon similar to the game simon is what i'm going to say yes but it gets your brain working not always enough to stay awake but as the puzzles get more difficult i have one where i have to copy out a sequence of sort of 15 letters and numbers which when you're quite

Speaker 9 sleepy on a phone is a bit tricky do you have to memorize them no no no you have to copy them okay right accurately but But if you make a mistake, it tells you often.

Speaker 5 There's an open-ended one, which is just the First World War was inevitable owing to conditions in Europe at the time. Discuss.
And it's just three blank pages then.

Speaker 5 You have to talk about the Austro-Hungarian Empire and France Ferdinand, all these things.

Speaker 9 I tell you, I mean, that is worth a quadruple espresso discussing the origins of the First World War.

Speaker 4 Claremonceau wanted a harsh piece of the money. That's the Treaty of Versailles.
Damn it. So yesterday, how many puzzles do you do before you decide? I'm puzzled out.

Speaker 9 Well, a total of six. So it took me three alarms to actually wake up.
Six puzzles, basically, before I was vaguely conscious.

Speaker 4 Wow, this is extraordinary. And so the first puzzle is the colours.
That's it. The second is write down the numbers.
What's puzzle three?

Speaker 9 Multiple choice capital cities.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 4 How many? How many do you have to do?

Speaker 9 You have to do six. Okay.
And there's like six choices for each one.

Speaker 4 And did you get them all? Did you get them all?

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's not too tricky because it'll say, well, you know, what's the capital of azerbaijan and it'll say things like london

Speaker 9 brasilia baku that sort of thing so it's not too tricky that there is i also have an if i absolutely have to get up i have what i call the nuclear option which has quite complicated mathematical equations including square roots and brackets and that i've never slept through that one i've never no guest's brain has ever been more switched on by the time they actually get out of bed so how long does this whole puzzle fiasco take with the puzzle stroke snooze alarm, I reckon probably 20 minutes.

Speaker 9 So I reckon I was probably up by

Speaker 9 well, sitting up in bed at sort of 20 past seven-ish.

Speaker 5 And when Andy sits up, his brain is so attuned, it just sees matter as just numbers.

Speaker 5 He just sees double helixes of DNA instead of people. He just sees numbers.
That's all he's.

Speaker 4 But it's so heavy that he falls asleep again.

Speaker 5 Do you bounce out of bed then, or do you sit there for an hour getting over the fact that you've woken up your brain with this kind of double fuel injectors?

Speaker 9 I think yesterday I then I did a bit of work before I got up. Now,

Speaker 9 the reason for this, you say, you know, this cascade of numbers, like you say, I'm going out to the ashes next week in my role as a statistician on the radio.

Speaker 9 But I went to bed the previous night halfway through building a spreadsheet because that's the kind of rock and roll life that I lead. You know, not for me,

Speaker 9 drink, drugs, groupies. I like to sit down with an Excel spreadsheet and calculate historic trends in Test cricket.
So I'd left one half finished when I fell asleep at about 1am.

Speaker 9 I woke up and thought, I'd better get this done.

Speaker 5 I've got to ask the questions also.

Speaker 5 What historic trends are we looking at here? I know there's a lot of stats in cricket. So is this specifically trouser width? You know what I mean? Use of helmet, things like that.

Speaker 9 I've got spreadsheets for those. I've got spreadsheets for beard, bushiness, moustache prevalence,

Speaker 9 both of which have actually had a bit of a recent resurgence after some difficult times.

Speaker 9 This one specifically was looking at how Australia have performed in home series over the last 45 years and looking for trends. It's rock and roll stuff.

Speaker 9 I mean, it might, if your listeners, as you mentioned, not all of them are cricket fans, just purely me describing this spreadsheet must have turned them.

Speaker 4 No, this is good.

Speaker 4 And if I can just jump in, David, I know you're a cricket expert, but as the host of the new podcast, The Guardian Ashes Weekly, if you're interested, if we could book you, and I don't know what your BBC rules are, that would be useful.

Speaker 4 Is this purely on Ashes home series or Australia home series?

Speaker 9 Well, I mean, look, Max, obviously, I built it to do both.

Speaker 5 Okay, of course you did.

Speaker 4 Oh, I see. Click tab one.
Click tab two. Of course you did.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that was my one piece of personal development. I'd like to say my one piece of personal development during COVID lockdown.

Speaker 9 What I really mean is my one piece of personal development probably in the last 20 years was learning how to use Microsoft Excel for cricket stats, which I'm not sure was what Bill Gates, I don't know if he sat down and developed it himself.

Speaker 9 I'm not sure he had this in mind for it.

Speaker 4 I really feel it plays to cricket strengths.

Speaker 4 It is worth saying for the tape that the job that you have on Testmatch Special, which is sort of the most historic cricket broadcasting possibly in the whole world, you know, you're sort of there all day and you have the commentators and then they throw to you, or you put your hand up, I guess, and say, ah, here's a nugget of information about this.

Speaker 4 So you are working all day and your predecessor, was it Bill Frindle?

Speaker 9 Bill Frindle, yeah.

Speaker 4 This is a legendary position in broadcasting. It's worth pointing this out.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, thanks for talking that up. I mean, it's basically sort of professionalized hypergeekery.
But, you know, I'm not ashamed of that. I'm proud of it.
That's who I am.

Speaker 9 And, you know, I'm not going to change.

Speaker 9 The old friend of mine, he used to carry a literal suitcase and trolley full of books around with him everywhere, but now it's online through the magic of the internet.

Speaker 5 It's all AI now. All Saltzman does is.

Speaker 5 All right, AI. Tell me who's ever hit the ball the farthest.

Speaker 9 And also, yeah, with statistics in sport, as in economics and politics, if you say it confidently, no one generally questions you.

Speaker 9 That's always the fallback.

Speaker 4 The previous guest on this podcast, Jonathan Wilson, which is doing something, and he'll say, well, that reminds me of Hungary in the 1940s and says some footballer.

Speaker 4 And obviously, there's no one on the panel that's going to go, actually, I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 I agree with you.

Speaker 4 I think Lobanovsky actually beautifully cut it on his right foot, to be perfectly honest. So how long does it take to finish this spreadsheet?

Speaker 5 Well.

Speaker 9 Finish. What does finish mean?

Speaker 5 Truly finished.

Speaker 5 Good point. Okay.

Speaker 4 How long do you work on this spreadsheet while you're in bed?

Speaker 9 About half an hour. Then I sort of have to actually get up and get more passes for my day going.

Speaker 9 So I'll pretty much be, I reckon half an hour sitting in bed and then it's time to move out of the comforting warmth.

Speaker 5 If I can just jump in there on the subject of never questioning statisticians because their geekery appears to be at such a high level.

Speaker 5 We didn't question Max when he said he's hosting Guardian Ashes Weekly, which is actually a look inside crematoria in England.

Speaker 5 What's up, what's down, popular urns, stuff like that. Yep.

Speaker 9 I assumed it was something to do with the funerals of specifically players for the Cleveland Guardians team.

Speaker 9 Also, just quickly, I mean, surely with Jonathan Wilson, it'd be more likely Hungary in the 50s than the 40s, wouldn't it? That was really when that was happening.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 Imagine if we got them together, David. Imagine if we got them together.

Speaker 5 The The world would explode, wouldn't it?

Speaker 4 Okay, so I presume we park the numbers for a small moment and you start doing more relatable stuff for the audience in terms of getting out of bed and sort of eating some things and that sort of carry on.

Speaker 9 Do you mind usually doing a spreadsheet before I get out of bed? I thought everyone did that.

Speaker 4 I think Omida Lily did one. Oh, yeah.
I'm trying to think of our other guests who did a spreadsheet.

Speaker 5 Anya Magliano, she did two hours of uh the different sorts of googlies versus yorkers the different swing balls those two are not mutually exclusive

Speaker 9 okay so are we up are we getting dressed straight away are we showering are we breakfasting what's happening getting fully dressed might be overstating things i chucked on a pair of tracksuit trousers um yeah no one's ever called them that before Breakfast then, that was a bit of a highlight yesterday, actually.

Speaker 9 It was

Speaker 9 quite a bonding experience with my elder child as we made jerk omelets.

Speaker 5 Wow. Very simple.

Speaker 9 Just a jerk-spice mix, chuck it in a hot pan, then put a bit of butter in, mix up an egg with a bit of pepper and some more jerk.

Speaker 9 A single egg in a quite a big pan, so you get a flat omelette that cooks very quickly. That is an excellent breakfast ready within about a minute and a half.

Speaker 5 No cheese?

Speaker 9 No cheese. I mean, you obviously can soup it up if you want, but if you just want a high-speed hot breakfast

Speaker 9 with a bit of a spicy kick, I can highly recommend that.

Speaker 4 Unbelievable. So it's quite a thin, crispy.
It's sort of a do you sort of roll it up when you eat it like a skin? Well, just flip it.

Speaker 9 Actually, I mean, the first one came out, I mean, aesthetically, it was an absolute abomination, but it tasted good.

Speaker 4 Sure, the first one always is, right? It's like pancakes. The first one's always better.

Speaker 9 As Aristotle said, all food ends up looking the same. So you can't be too fussy about it.

Speaker 4 Is that the name of your eldest? Please say yes.

Speaker 5 So who does the cooking?

Speaker 4 Do you cook or does your child cook?

Speaker 9 We both cooked a couple of omelets each. Okay.
Yeah, my older child does quite a bit of cooking.

Speaker 9 Generally, eggs and avocado with chili oil on toast as their speciality dish made approximately three times a day for about the last two years. But now branching out into omelets, so that's good.

Speaker 5 That's the problem with the young people, isn't it?

Speaker 5 All the bloody avocados. Not like me.
When I was 19, I had a huge monopoly-esque property portfolio because I was simply living off the jerk omelets and nothing.

Speaker 9 So trying to wean them off avocados so they can one day become a trillionaire.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Do you take a plate each and sit at the kitchen table? Or it feels like it's a kind of omelette on the go vibe.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it was sort of all alternating omelettes.

Speaker 9 I don't know, some sort of 1980s arthouse film, I think. But yeah, sort of one at a time.

Speaker 5 Do you attempt to bring up as a conversation starter? You won't believe what I've been at today, putting obscure cricket statistics into tiny cells on a Microsoft Excel sheet.

Speaker 9 My children and wife have known me long enough to just assume that's happening.

Speaker 5 No, I haven't actually verbalized it.

Speaker 4 So I like the idea of sort of if it's alternating omelets, it's almost like a sort of game of poker where it's like, who's going to fall?

Speaker 4 So you keep making an omelette, you stare them in the face, you eat your omelette, and then you see they eat their omelette, and you just keep going and going until it's three in the afternoon.

Speaker 4 You're both totally eggbound.

Speaker 5 I'm imagining the scene in Cool Hand Luke. Yeah.
Do you know where he he eats all the hard-boiled eggs, but instead of the hard-boiled eggs, just frying them up, just a minute each.

Speaker 5 It makes the scene a lot longer, you would have to say. Yeah.

Speaker 9 But I reckon he could probably have done more eggs had he done it that way.

Speaker 5 They go in basically like pages in a book, then. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, great. We've now fueled.
Yep. And where is this roller coaster of a day going to go next?

Speaker 9 Well, the next few hours are not particularly exciting because I had two deadlines, one of which I've met,

Speaker 9 which were both cricket-related. So one I'm doing during the course of the Ashes a daily quiz question that's going out as a kind of micro podcast for the BBC.

Speaker 9 So I had to write and record the first batch of them to go out before the series. So they go out, they start on Monday.
So that involved more

Speaker 9 stats research.

Speaker 9 And the quiz questions are sort of not just nuggets of

Speaker 5 fact.

Speaker 9 They're questions where people have to take a guess at a statistic, kind of ballpark it.

Speaker 5 Run one by us,

Speaker 5 you don't have to be an actual, but and see which of us, me with my just innate feeling for quizzes.

Speaker 9 Okay, I can't run one past you that I've actually recorded because that would be.

Speaker 4 Well, hang on, this won't be out until it won't be this week.

Speaker 5 Two weeks.

Speaker 4 Oh, right, okay. We could have the first five questions, I think.
We'd be totally fine.

Speaker 9 Okay, right.

Speaker 9 Well, let's start with the first question that I did, which would have gone out as you listened to this a little while ago before the series actually began.

Speaker 9 And that question is: in

Speaker 9 all cricket between England and Australia in the Ashes since the Second World War, which team has scored more hundreds and by how many? Wow. So, David, can you?

Speaker 9 And I know you have spurned cricket from your soul due to being an inadequate human being.

Speaker 5 So the Ashes probably involves five games of cricket, five matches.

Speaker 5 And each one of those, those, is it a four-day affair? Five.

Speaker 9 There have been times that it's been longer.

Speaker 5 So that's 20. Then it's every second year.

Speaker 9 Yeah, basically twice every four years.

Speaker 4 The question is: which team has scored most hundreds?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I know, but I'm doing the basic groundwork here. So since the end of the Second World War, we'll call that 75 years.
Yep. So therefore, there's been 33 of these.

Speaker 5 I would imagine there's 100 probably

Speaker 5 once per test match.

Speaker 5 So 150,

Speaker 5 okay, 160.

Speaker 5 So the answer, and I would imagine Australia have been probably

Speaker 5 better generally at cricket than England for most of that period.

Speaker 9 You could have broken that news a bit more sensitively, David.

Speaker 5 So I've got to say, Australia lead by 25 centuries. Right.
That sounds like something someone would say in a sci-fi film.

Speaker 9 Socially, that is not true.

Speaker 4 I think actually it's quite a good get. I mean, I don't know, but I would say Australia.
Yeah, I think Davis might be on the money. I'll go lower.

Speaker 5 I can't do this. I don't know anything.

Speaker 9 I'll give you a further. That's been 212 matches in all those series since the Second World War.
You can factor that into your calculation.

Speaker 4 He's gone 25. I'm going Australia ahead, but lower than 25.

Speaker 9 Well, the correct answer is Australia are ahead by 7,600s.

Speaker 4 7,600s? I was so shit at cricket.

Speaker 5 That's great.

Speaker 5 Is a century a bit like a hole in one in golf, whereby people who don't know anything about golf think there's one hole in one a year, whereas in fact there's like five in every tournament

Speaker 5 because no one talks about them. No, there's three in every tournament.
No, there aren't.

Speaker 9 Is that statistically true, David? I mean, you said it confidently.

Speaker 4 That's bollocks.

Speaker 5 Okay, I'm going to put in...

Speaker 4 I think three are tournament.

Speaker 9 Stats are outside my pay grade.

Speaker 4 Have you not got a spreadsheet for this?

Speaker 9 I do not have a spreadsheet for holes in one.

Speaker 5 We'll look at the British Open. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Here we go. There's no average number of holes in one.
There have been 26 recorded aces in the last 38 years of British Open.

Speaker 5 Okay, fine.

Speaker 5 That doesn't prove anything.

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 5 So a century is 100 runs.

Speaker 9 By one player. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You can save this stuff, Andy, for when you want to see.

Speaker 9 I'm making notes actually. It's been very helpful.

Speaker 5 You'll know Zultiman's really strict for questions. And it's a century in cricket refers to how many runs is it?

Speaker 5 Seven

Speaker 5 a thousand.

Speaker 9 Well, I mean, in answer to your question, Australia scored just over one per match in that period in England, about one, well, two every three games, roughly.

Speaker 4 Oh, so you were pretty much spot on there, David. That was good.
Okay, so we write this quiz, and that's the deadline you meet.

Speaker 9 And what's the the deadline that you don't meet uh well I'm working on a newspaper article previewing the ashes involving similar but different statistics that as we record well in fact as soon as I've finished talking to you guys about these issues of great social and political import I will finish that off so that but that's the research for that also took up a good chunk of the morning the omelets fuel you through that have you had any coffee yeah generally I operate on a two coffees per day strategy two stocks yeah one obviously to get you know, first thing, one after lunch.

Speaker 9 But the key is multiple cups of tea in between. And I have a bit of a class A tea habit.
Do like a good cup of tea.

Speaker 4 Are we thinking? Are we saying Twinings English breakfast? That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 9 I generally use leaf tea. I got addicted to high-grade

Speaker 9 teas.

Speaker 9 My brother gave me like a tea brewing device where you just put the leaves in and then put the water on, let it brew, and then you plonk it on top of a mug and it comes out the bottom.

Speaker 9 And that opened up the entire world of leaf tea without the hassle of it being stuck in a pot. So that changed my life about 15 years ago.

Speaker 9 It's the main totally unnecessary luxury expenditure in my life is high-grade teas. So I met a good Yunnan around about 11am, I reckon.
Took one in for the wife who was working at home yesterday. And

Speaker 9 there's no finer way to pass 10 minutes in the middle of a morning than communing with the ancient art of tea.

Speaker 4 What was the tea? Yunnan? That's a good name for tea, isn't it?

Speaker 9 Yunnan, which is, I think, a province in China. Not my nan ground down and made into paste.

Speaker 4 Yorkshire tea would be Yunnan, wouldn't it? Yunnan's tea.

Speaker 5 So do you buy a big, like, big vat?

Speaker 4 Have you got like cupboards of just leaves just falling out?

Speaker 9 I have quite a lot of little pots of huge vats. Yeah, I've got a very good supplier.

Speaker 5 It's even better than that. He's got an orangery filled with Your nan plants.

Speaker 5 And he goes out there, man from Del Monte style, when it looks good. In cricket, they have tea, don't they? It's still cold.
In a Test match, you stop for lunch. And then what time do you stop at?

Speaker 9 Generally, in Test in England, lunch, play starts at 11. Lunch is 1 to 1.40 and tea is 3.40 to 4 o'clock.

Speaker 9 But, you know, that's, I think, one of the greatest things about it as a sport, that it has genuine genuine meal breaks built into it. So I know you're a big cycling fan, David.

Speaker 9 Would the Tour de France not be better if they stopped for two hours for a massive great lunch in a French bistro halfway up a mountain? I think it would make it a better sport.

Speaker 9 And seeing them then struggling, carrying that added poundage from

Speaker 9 eating foie gras and chicken gizzards and all that kind of stuff and fine cheeses. That would make it a better sport.

Speaker 5 It'd be lovely to see them out out there with their trip advisors with the app. Just what does anyone fancy today?

Speaker 5 And big arguments breaking out among the team as to whether they want sushi or a full ramen and then cycling tens of miles off track then to find this specific restaurant.

Speaker 5 Do you think they actually have tea during tea in cricket?

Speaker 9 I imagine these days they probably have some sort of high-performance isotonic drink, whatever isotonic means. Yeah.
I don't know, actually. Village cricket, you definitely have a good cup of tea.

Speaker 4 Yes, because I mean, I was famously, you'll know, the wicket keeper for Ashwell in the early 2000s.

Speaker 9 Ashwell in Hertfordshire.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Ashwell in Hertfordshire, yeah.

Speaker 9 That's where my grandparents lived. I used to spend half terms in Ashwell.

Speaker 4 That's fine. It's the centre of the universe, this podcast.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 Little stepping stones across the...

Speaker 4 To the wreck. Yes.
Well, I scored. We needed five off two in the quarterfinal of the Cambridgeshire Junior Cup.
We were obviously Hertfordshire, but we were playing the Cambridge Cup.

Speaker 4 And I hoyed one over Long On.

Speaker 4 I was in the back page of the Royston Crow. It was probably my greatest.

Speaker 5 Everything sounds made up about this.

Speaker 5 The Royston Crow.

Speaker 4 As a single moment in your life, the way I connected with that ball, nothing has had that singular, amazing feeling.

Speaker 4 But the thing about tea was, genuinely, you would, you know, I must have been 24 or something.

Speaker 4 And I would, if I was keeping straight after eating like 10 chocolate mini rolls and three cups of tea, five ham sandwiches, it did affect my game.

Speaker 4 A completely mad idea that, even at that level, you would be doing that.

Speaker 9 Well, I think that might explain why England have been less good than Australia at cricket. I think we're just more committed to the meal breaks than

Speaker 5 I mean. I'm just guessing, but I would guess that Australia have had 75 more centuries of the Ashes.

Speaker 5 My question is this: so, if you are doing a century, you could be out in the middle of the cricket pitch for hours tediously tapping away all these ones.

Speaker 5 What happens if post tea, maybe you have had some isotonic stuff, maybe you've had a coffee as well, and nature calls? Is there a genteel way?

Speaker 5 Does the umpire signal a poo coming out of the back of one of the players and everyone just stands around?

Speaker 9 I don't believe there is a specific signal for that, David. You do occasionally see players running off the ground, particularly if they're suffering from food-related illness.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 No, I mean, generally, cricket operates on an extremely high plane of human existence in a sort of sphere of ethereal perfection where bodily excretions no longer occur because it's just so divinely awesome, David.

Speaker 9 You should know that.

Speaker 4 Okay, so now we've done our work.

Speaker 4 We've had a good cup of Yanan. Do we stop for lunch?

Speaker 9 Lunch yesterday, I actually went out for lunch with my wife, who David knows, and

Speaker 9 went to a very nice Thai restaurant near London Bridge Station we don't get that many chances to meet for lunch but yesterday worked out yeah so that was a a date a hot date did you arrive together or did you make it feel like a date by one of you turning up later and going uh is it andy you look even better than your picture

Speaker 9 we've been together for 30 years i just don't think either of us could pull that off that that kind of compliment without sounding sarcastic.

Speaker 9 Certainly, she couldn't pass that compliment off towards me without sounding deeply sarcastic. I mean, like a proper date.

Speaker 9 I was there 20 minutes earlier because she got caught up in a meeting and then had to cycle across London. So

Speaker 9 I never really dated. I met my wife at university.
So I missed out on the whole sort of dating world. You know, it was nice to feel that sense of being stood up, but not really.

Speaker 9 So I was sitting there for 20 minutes

Speaker 9 doing a crossword on my phone, thinking, well, this must look bad.

Speaker 5 You with a single helium balloon with a red love heart that's just slowly deflating as the 20 minutes go on. Are you still just in tracksuit trousers as you

Speaker 5 describe them? Have you changed into full cricket whites?

Speaker 9 Not full cricket whites. No, I save them for really special occasions, anniversary birthdays.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 9 no, I've put on quite a funky shirt. Yeah.
And non-tracksuit-based trousers.

Speaker 4 I mean, slightly sad you aren't just there in bare chests, tracksuit trousers.

Speaker 4 That is a very punchy way to go to a Thai restaurant in London Bridge. So what's the order? What's the lunch order?

Speaker 9 Well, so I said my wife was caught up, but also it was, I think, we had a sort of 2.45 booking and the kitchen shut at three.

Speaker 9 So I had the onerous responsibility of having to order for both of us. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 9 And that's the kind of thing, like I said, we've been together for 30 years, but if anything can break a relationship, it's inadequate ordering at a Thai restaurant.

Speaker 4 She's given you no instructions. She's not said, look, I want a pad Thai.

Speaker 9 No, I did message saying, what would you like? But she was on a bicycle and didn't see it. So,

Speaker 9 yeah, I went for a couple of prawn skewers. Yeah.
Some pickled vegetables. I love a pickle.
There is nothing in life that cannot be improved with the application of vinegar.

Speaker 5 Maybe an open wound.

Speaker 9 No, well, you just got to see through the pain. And also, you know, if you then get peckish and you want to feast off your own wounds,

Speaker 9 I've done a curry and a sort of braised pork thing which I think have been cooked long enough where they became kosher but I haven't checked the latest regulations

Speaker 5 the first time I met the helicopters incredibly impressive and intimidating coterie of three brothers I had a similar thing to this where I'd come from a gig and arrived at 845 and the kitchen is about to shut.

Speaker 5 I'm being very upstanding in meeting them.

Speaker 5 So, sorry, sir, can you just order now? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, give me a look. And I was like, all of that.

Speaker 5 And I'd ordered the duck jungle curry.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I should have known because the waiter was like, are you sure? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what I hadn't seen was, I think, the five chili symbols beside it.

Speaker 5 And then I proceeded to attempt to be charming for the next hour while in the most incredible discreet pain.

Speaker 5 Where sometimes I would just go to the bathroom and stick my tongue in the Dyson Air Blade to try it.

Speaker 5 But I style it out and I've never been able to taste anything since.

Speaker 5 Is it a successful lunch? Have you run out of stuff to talk about?

Speaker 5 No, not yet.

Speaker 9 No, I reckon that's still at least another 25 years away. By which time we'll just be sitting in a nursing home.
And by that point, I mean, it's already reached reached a point.

Speaker 9 I mean, basically, just put on old sports highlights on

Speaker 9 YouTube. It's quite hard to envisage not living forever now, I think, because generally it's lack of incentive that does for people in the end.
But if there's unending YouTube sport, yeah.

Speaker 4 My dad's 86 and not in a nursing home, you know, as right as rain. And he loves cricket so much, but he obviously can't remember, you know, the score from a game in 2012 or whatever.

Speaker 4 So sometimes I'll just get a text that says, Alan Lamb's batting well, or

Speaker 4 Triscothek's really on the base. And I'll be like, what year? What year are you on? And then I can get into the conversation.

Speaker 5 You're absolutely right.

Speaker 5 Frankly, I can't wait.

Speaker 4 They're going to be the best days of my life. I'm looking forward to them.

Speaker 9 My father was a big rugby fan. He had dementia for the last sort of 10 years of his life.
And he could barely remember anything.

Speaker 9 But one of the last times I saw him, I took down, he grew up in South Africa, and I took down on my laptop, showed him some sort of grainy black and white footage of South African rugby in the 1950s.

Speaker 9 He recognized every single player from this grainy black and white footage of people he'd probably have seen on newsreels more than in real life.

Speaker 9 And he knew them all and couldn't remember what he had for lunch. It is amazing the way that sport operates in the human brain.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I had a not dissimilar thing with my

Speaker 5 the last time I saw my grandmother. I don't know if it was dementia or what, but she was a very good age.
And I went to see her in the hospital. And

Speaker 5 she was like, oh, there he is. Just sort of quite nice, generic stuff.

Speaker 5 As in, probably couldn't remember exactly which one of the family that I was.

Speaker 5 There he is, the handsomest one of all, just classic sort of granny chat.

Speaker 5 And we talked about just nice things.

Speaker 5 And in the course of all of this, she had the Irish Times on her lap and was just filling in the cryptic crossword. A crossword

Speaker 5 to this day, I have never finished. And at some point during our nice gentle conversation, just placed it down in front of me.
Absolutely done.

Speaker 5 So, yep, it's a magical place that people can go into towards the end.

Speaker 4 So, we're now we've had our Thai meal 2:45.

Speaker 4 This is a late lunch. Are we having, do we have a bottle of

Speaker 5 vodka? A singer,

Speaker 4 A single bottle of Ellinger Jeroboam of Smyrna.

Speaker 4 Neat. Just shot for shot.
Like the alternate omelette, but you and your wife going at it, shot for shot, bottle on head, glass on head, next one, you, you, you, you.

Speaker 9 No, I'm not very good with daytime drinking, to be honest. And my wife had something, something she had to get to afterwards.

Speaker 9 So I had a small cocktail with a weird bit of sort of dried mango in that was surprisingly good.

Speaker 5 That was all.

Speaker 4 And So then we're back home. We're straight back home.

Speaker 9 No, not back home.

Speaker 5 Then

Speaker 9 an exciting expedition to buy some trousers, which is something I don't do very often.

Speaker 4 Okay, this is exciting. That's someone else who very rarely goes to buy trousers.
Like, it's got to be, they're all a husk. There's nothing.
It's windy down there.

Speaker 5 No, I'll tell you exactly what it is. Saltzman's still wearing his trousers from

Speaker 5 when was the last time the Ashles was in Australia? Four years ago.

Speaker 5 And the fact that you're now going back, you've realized I better up my game here, but also you're going to need an airier light, almost like a linen.

Speaker 9 Yeah, well, that's pretty much bang on, actually. It was sort of a pair of sort of smartest trousers that work in hot weather.
I hate clothes shopping. It is one of my least favorite activities.

Speaker 9 I firmly believe the world would be a better place if clothes were just issued randomly. Not everyone wearing the same, but just you were sent

Speaker 9 one set of clothes for the year randomly selected by a computer, and that was you done.

Speaker 9 Everyone would be happier, there'd be less stress. I mean, think of all the time wasted shopping for clothes.

Speaker 9 This is why, you know, we don't have Leonardo da Vinci's anymore because he didn't spend all his time shopping around for trousers.

Speaker 9 He just got stuff done. He built helicopters and painted nudie men, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 Oh, is that it?

Speaker 4 There's no characters in art these days, are there? You remember the da Vinci's? There's no personalities in art, is there?

Speaker 5 Mortanis. Yeah.

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Speaker 5 You of all the people I know, Andy, I think I would... I'm not a stylist, but I would love to give you a makeover.
Oh, right.

Speaker 9 Okay. I'm intrigued, David.
What would you maybe goth?

Speaker 5 I'd make you into a goth, but there's a specific sort of goth called a floral goth,

Speaker 5 where you have kind of a neon piping,

Speaker 5 sometimes with actual flashing lights in them that go down the side of your trousers and huge rubber boots all right so is that like the road traffic safety conscious goth look

Speaker 4 yeah the one rule is you're you're not allowed to reference it at all in the test match special commentary box so I've had a quite a long discussion

Speaker 9 with one of my kids quite recently. I think

Speaker 9 maybe when the Ryder Cup was on, because I don't really sort of watch that much golf. I was watching a bit of the Ryder Cup and we started discussing whether a goth will ever win a major in golf.

Speaker 9 Is that the last barrier to be broken in sport?

Speaker 5 A goth winning a major.

Speaker 4 But it's even better if a goth is the stylist or the captain and decides that they all have to dress as goths. So Ian Poulter doesn't really feel it.
Rory's there on the 13th team.

Speaker 4 Somebody I know, I don't know if it's a profitable story, but somebody I know, and I can't remember, like a friend of a friend said he went on a stag do

Speaker 4 and they dressed the stag and they all dressed as goths. They're sort of boring, like generic people like me that wear t-shirt and jeans every day, and they all dress as goths.

Speaker 4 And they went to Camden, and obviously no one gave a shit. And so they were all just there going, we look ridiculous, but just no one cared.

Speaker 5 Like, everyone was just like, everyone else is a goth. So, like,

Speaker 4 what a great use of that.

Speaker 5 Max, wear Andy to undergo this goth transformation

Speaker 5 before the ashes. His questions would then become of the 25 centurions who are from Australia.
How many of them are dead now?

Speaker 5 I'd be like, Andy, why do you have to bring death into all of your cricket statistics?

Speaker 5 Okay, do you find the trousers?

Speaker 4 Yeah, where do we go?

Speaker 5 Where do we go?

Speaker 9 Well, it's this little shop in Covent Garden.

Speaker 5 But what was a little shop in Covent Garden? You may well know it.

Speaker 9 It's called Uniglow, the massive generic trouser shop it wasn't that massive generic trouser shop it was a much smaller generic trouser shop i then walked so i got a train to charing cross walked from there to coffee garden then walked then back down to embankment after buying the trousers and around that part of town there are loads of pubs where I did stand-up gigs.

Speaker 9 So every corner, I'd turn thinking, I did a did an open mic spot there or something. And it was sort of haunted by a

Speaker 9 distant bus in quite a nice way.

Speaker 9 way this is the thing with haunting yeah haunting gets generally a negative rap but actually there's that sort of haunting i think is can be quite positive and i think i mean generally hauntings are i think better than they used to be i think partly because reality is so terrifying that actually ghosts are by comparison less frightening

Speaker 5 this is good garb stuff

Speaker 4 straight to death he can't help himself

Speaker 4 can i just go back to the trouser buying uh uh event oh yeah okay did you just walk straight sort of like jack reacher just walk in and pick one pair of trousers and buy it without trying them on?

Speaker 4 Or did you take three or four pairs and take a look in the very brightly lit changing room? What was your because trying trousers on, you have to take your shoes off as well. That's a nightmare.

Speaker 9 It is a complete and utter nightmare. People don't realize how tough life is these days.
Having to take shoes off.

Speaker 5 Those cave people, they know how good they had it.

Speaker 4 They could get whip trousers on and off like Bucksfist for Neanderthals.

Speaker 9 Put on your fucking elk skin wire fronts, paint a picture of a bison, and that's you're on your way. Well, it's a shop I've used before.

Speaker 9 So I looked at it online and thought, I'll go and just try them on. So I did that.
I bought them and the whole process took around about five minutes. And that is how to do,

Speaker 9 that's the only topic clothes shopping that I can really stand in and out.

Speaker 4 Here's a very personal question. Are we talking 49.99?

Speaker 9 What? As in 49-inch waist and 99-inch inside leg.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I've heard you think

Speaker 5 you're an interesting shaped man I've been always been told Saltsman is shaped like do you know those guys outside garage four courts the sort of inflatable man they're his exact dimensions

Speaker 9 so I guess in fact I met my wife

Speaker 9 to go home together we then saw our elder child on a train going the other way and they

Speaker 5 waved at us like a loon great that spruced up the journey that was nice what andy's not telling us is that they had stolen the other train and were in the driver compartment with a look that said i'm taking this to scotland would be hard to do that wouldn't it like provided because you'd need all the signals to be to steal i think it's easier to steal a car and get to where you want to get to the question is really could you take a train off the tracks and just drive it up a road i think that'd be difficult they're hard to steer i think generally that's considered a high tariff maneuver i think

Speaker 4 and if you can pull it off great it's more than a minor fault isn't it? I think it's a major fault.

Speaker 5 You know, you've had a big night in London when you wake up and the tube is just parked outside your house. Oh, God.

Speaker 5 What have I done?

Speaker 5 So we're home for dinner.

Speaker 9 Home for dinner. Dinner cooked by our younger child.
In fact, he and his girlfriend cooked us a vegan curry, which is very good. Wow.

Speaker 9 So that's quite a nice phase as a parent when your kids start cooking for you.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Mine are not doing that now. So, but this seems quite close to lunch.
Do you have to like eat more out of courtesy than you would want to eat?

Speaker 9 There was an element of that. We did have a late lunch, and dinner was around about half past seven, I guess.
So, yeah, I mean,

Speaker 9 certainly went easy on the rice. That was a key move.

Speaker 5 If you were four-year-old where to make dinner, Max, seeing as his favorite food is just dry, sawdusty oats in a bowl with nothing on them, I think that might be what you would get then.

Speaker 4 That possibly, he might push to plain rice if he was feeling extravagant. Okay, I guess.
Maybe it's just a phase. I don't know.

Speaker 4 And is, um, I don't know how long the girlfriend has been part of the family, but is she looking expectantly as to like hoping for compliments?

Speaker 4 Could you power play and you know, spit it out and say, This is disgusting, Janet? Yeah, get out of my house.

Speaker 9 No, we didn't play that card. Well, we're safe enough, obviously.

Speaker 9 Yeah, of course, yeah. It was nice, so we didn't have to force it.

Speaker 5 He didn't produce a spreadsheet of all of the X various X's meals that they had made, and then you plotted them on a graph on the wall. What do we do in the evening?

Speaker 9 Well, a bit more of the cricket stuff that I haven't finished earlier on in the day, including recording the sound, the audio for the quiz questions, which you can find via BBC Sounds if you're into cricket.

Speaker 9 Played a little bit of Bagatelle, Victorian Bagatelle, which is a very niche niche game. I bought this table on eBay about seven or eight years ago.
The table itself is about, it's a folding thing.

Speaker 9 It's about 100 years old. It's a sort of Q sports game where you have a little ball and then there's numbered cups at the other end.
It's about eight feet long with green bays.

Speaker 9 And you have to pop the balls in the little cups and you get different points for the... And I can't remember quite why I bought it on eBay, but it's an extremely satisfying game.

Speaker 9 Also, because it's made of basically wood with felt on it, and the wood has warped over the years, so it doesn't run flat.

Speaker 9 So, yeah, it was a bit like a kind of golf green where it's got all these kind of slight slopes that

Speaker 5 local knowledge, yeah, and a lot of local knowledge.

Speaker 9 But I find it really calm. So, you've got eight balls, yeah, and you've got to try and get the ball in the uh the appropriate hold.

Speaker 9 And there's a there's a black ball as well that starts on the table, and you've got to try and that's worth double. I mean, it's very, very niche.
There's a little bit of info on it online.

Speaker 9 It used to be very popular, apparently, in the 18th century and declined gradually over 150 years.

Speaker 9 You don't say I think there's still a competitive league in the city of Chester playing in various pubs, but nowhere else in the world.

Speaker 4 Well, actually, the Saudis have gone into it in a big way.

Speaker 5 The Saudis have bought it out.

Speaker 4 Oh, I see. So it's sort of

Speaker 4 snookery.

Speaker 9 Yeah, but the difference... Snooker is unbelievably fucking difficult, whereas this is quite simple.

Speaker 4 Is it the whole family playing?

Speaker 9 Just me. Just me, but it's very, quite calming.
You know, the game takes like, you know,

Speaker 9 a minute or two, but it's quite calm. You've got to hit the ball softly.
So it's, I highly recommend it.

Speaker 9 It's a very therapeutic thing to play if you can be asked to buy a knackered 100-year-old piece of junk on eBay with a break.

Speaker 5 My question here is: maybe it's not really easy. And maybe, in fact, you are the most gifted player that's ever.

Speaker 5 You are the Tiger Woods of Bagatelle, which is one of the most useless sporting talents of all.

Speaker 5 If it had been any other sport, you would be living living high on the hog right now but because it's an obscure victorian foldable table game this is the only opportunity the world will ever find out yep it's worth speculating what your world ranking is then i what do you think it is

Speaker 4 i've got to be top billion and that might be the only sport i'm top billion no no no you're winning of top billion how many people are playing bagatelle it's not a billion more than one but top 100 he's in the top 100

Speaker 4 top 100, Bagatelle.

Speaker 4 And you got ranking points last night, you know, so that's good.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 How long did you play Bagatelle for?

Speaker 9 Like I say, each sort of little end takes, I don't know, a minute or a minute and a half, two minutes maybe, if you really think through the shots and work out the end.

Speaker 9 You can be Ronnie O'Sullivan on it, or you can be Peter Ebden on it.

Speaker 5 Got it. I see, yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 4 the crowd booing you for slow play. Oh, no, him again.

Speaker 9 Yeah, when you end up slow hand clapping yourself in a game that no one else plays, they know that life has taken a few wrong turns.

Speaker 9 I'd probably play for about 15 minutes, I reckon. Beautiful.
Put up some solid numbers, nothing spectacular.

Speaker 4 Is this just before bed or is this sort of, have we got some TV time?

Speaker 9 Yeah, this would probably be about

Speaker 9 11.30. And then

Speaker 9 elected not to watch the final episode of a TV series that I've been watching with my wife, which is slightly hampered by the fact that generally when we watch television, it's quite late and we're both quite tired.

Speaker 9 And we almost inevitably, one or both of us, fall asleep before the end of an episode, but we can't then be asked to then watch it back.

Speaker 9 So we both then sort of make our way through the series, try to fill in each other's gaps of the bits that we've missed.

Speaker 4 So hang on, did you choose not to watch it because you're not going to watch it or you choose to watch it?

Speaker 9 No, I think I will watch it. I just didn't watch it.

Speaker 5 What's the series, Salt?

Speaker 9 The series is the Iris

Speaker 9 thingy.

Speaker 5 What's it called?

Speaker 4 You've not got all of it. You've not followed all of it.
You've been asleep for part of it. The titles, each episode.

Speaker 9 Yeah, the things we generally watch one thing at a time. Generally, you need to remember the title.
Just say, should we watch that thing we're watching?

Speaker 5 It's the Iris Affair?

Speaker 9 The Iris Affair. That's it.
Yep. All right.
Which has been

Speaker 5 good.

Speaker 4 You're not desperate. You're not clinging on for the last episode, clearly.

Speaker 9 It's kept us going through the first seven. Got one.

Speaker 5 Oh, these are pull quotes. These are the quotes.
They will.

Speaker 4 This is the poster.

Speaker 4 It's kept us going.

Speaker 5 When we're awake.

Speaker 5 And is it true that in order to go to sleep, and this is sort of self-defeating, you have to do three puzzles as well.

Speaker 5 Just when you're starting to doze off, once again, you have to match colours and numbers.

Speaker 9 To be honest, David, that is closer to the truth than would be ideal. I often do crosswords to get to sleep.

Speaker 9 Something that is distracting enough to stop me thinking about other things I might be thinking about, whether it's cricket stats or comedy or

Speaker 9 whatever, but also dull enough that it doesn't over engage you. So I find cryptic crosswords quite a good way of getting to sleep.

Speaker 5 God, what a super brain. If I start doing cryptic crosswords, I just end up punching the pillow really hard.

Speaker 5 Is this king the original question mark? Go fuck yourself. That's not a quiz question, which is what I want from a crossword.
clip.

Speaker 9 Actually, one of the answers was go fuck yourself. Yes, it was 248.
I think it was an anagram or something.

Speaker 5 What time do we nod off?

Speaker 9 I reckon half 12-ish.

Speaker 4 I think it's a productive day. It's a good day.
I do love the testimonial for a TV series. Between us, me and my wife were awake for all of it.

Speaker 9 That's above average, actually. Some of the TV series I've given up on.
Game of Thrones, I watched one episode, gave up on it.

Speaker 9 Breaking Bad, half an episode, gave up on that. West Wing, oh, I didn't get anywhere with that because my wife started watching it before me and I couldn't be asked to catch up.

Speaker 5 So actually, you know, the fact that I've got through most of this series puts it way above some of the

Speaker 9 greatest, most popular TV of recent times.

Speaker 5 Please remember, he's trying to tell us that these series are dull and yet he will sit through 46 hours of cricket for the next series. That's the greatest thing you can do.

Speaker 4 It's possibly the greatest thing you can do.

Speaker 9 It's going to be way, way more than 46 hours.

Speaker 4 Way more.

Speaker 4 I mean, that feels like a good day. It's productive.
You had some good family time, like with both kids, and you had a date in the middle of it, and you got your work done.

Speaker 5 Trousers.

Speaker 4 It was a sensational day. And you bought some trousers.
What a day. Yeah,

Speaker 9 I communed with memories of my early comedy career, which, you know, I try to shut out because

Speaker 9 the most striking moment in my early comedy career was being defeated by David O'Doherty in the So You Think You're Funny Number Family of 1999, A scar that burns me to the core of my soul on a daily basis.

Speaker 4 Sorry, Andy, you'll be really pissed off when you find out he's the statistician for the ashes now.

Speaker 5 Other people in that final, Josie Long, Russell Howard, we've now had four of that sacred group all on what did you do yesterday?

Speaker 9 Well, there we go. I'm glad to be one of them.

Speaker 5 An unsettling end to a lovely day, but one in which I am the champion. So we'll leave it there.

Speaker 5 Andy Zaltzmann, thanks for telling us what you did yesterday.

Speaker 9 Pleasure.

Speaker 4 Andy Zoltzmann there. Can I say, David,

Speaker 4 I don't know what is funnier or where you expose sort of less knowledge. Is it you talking to Andy Zoltzman about cricket or you talking to Angela Scanlon about waxing her bits?

Speaker 5 I can't tell.

Speaker 5 Since we have recorded the episode, in the brief time, Andy has sent me a photograph of his bagatelle table,

Speaker 5 which it's like a Viking banqueting table, but looks like a snooker table then. And I guess, yeah, you have to land the balls in the little egg cups.

Speaker 5 And is there a more perfect moment in this or any episode we've done than a man just retreating to his bagatelle room on his own

Speaker 5 just to

Speaker 5 gently roll some balls into some holes. I mean, that's living, isn't it?

Speaker 4 It's funny, isn't it? Without trying to turn this podcast into anything meaningful, because I don't think it is. Yeah.
But just how people are living in the same day.

Speaker 4 You know, if you think of some of our previous guests, I'm not going to name any names, right?

Speaker 5 But Andy Zoltzman has done more brain work

Speaker 4 while he's snoozing than I would say a huge selection of quite successful people.

Speaker 4 But, you know, I love a selection of, you know, an increasingly difficult puzzles to get him out of bed.

Speaker 5 It's just, and I only really know Andy.

Speaker 4 I know Andy best from TMS, and it is so on-brand. This is the most on-brand way for Andy Zoltzman to wake himself up.

Speaker 5 That's the, I think, in a way, the beauty of this podcast is Joel Dahmot, James Buckley, at no point do they use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate, to plot patterns in cricket statistics moving across 100 years.

Speaker 4 James had a spreadsheet for when he drinks his first 660 milliliter bottle of Stella. I don't think so.
But they're all beautiful people. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Different people. Yeah.

Speaker 4 We're all different, guys.

Speaker 5 Oh, no. Max has had his two counts.

Speaker 5 Finally, the

Speaker 5 philosophical Max has come in. If you would like to get in touch with this podcast, this is how to do it.

Speaker 4 To get in touch with the show, you can email us at whatdidyoudo yesterdaypod at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram at yesterdaypod.

Speaker 4 And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform.

Speaker 5 And if you didn't, please don't.

Speaker 4 Thank you, David. I'm in it for life.

Speaker 5 Thank you, Max. In it for number four, life, pointing at the world around me.
Thanks for doing it. Bye, Andy.
Zoltzmann. Thanks, Andy.