Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 83 - Banyan: The Defacening, Part 2 - The Refacening

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

It's MaxFunDrive! To support the show, go to maximumfun.org/joinMike Wozniak, Henry Paker and Tom Crowley join in for the second part of this investigation into what happened when Michael Banyan removed his cow face.Music credits courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com :Erasmus Talbot / When Hope ReturnsHenrik Andersson / Wave BreakerRiverworn / Backing TracksRiverworn / No More LoungeRedeemin' / In the Hotel LoungeTraci Bryan / Electric MixChristoffer Moe Ditlevsen / Born Sinister

Hello, first of all, if you haven't listened to part one of this, listen to part one first, because this is part two, and it won't make much sense. Secondly, it is the second week of Max Fun Drive, the two week period where shows on the Maximum Fun Network, such as Beef and Dairy Network, very gently let our listeners know that these shows are audience supported. A huge thanks to everyone who already supports Beef and Dairy Network. If you'd like to do so, why not go to maximumfun.org forward slash join. That's maximumfun.org forward slash join. If you love the show and want to chip in, then that's the place for you. All right. Enjoy this episode.

Hello, I'm the actor Roger Westcott-Lemay-Grelay. And whenever I'm holidaying in international waters, I kick things off with a big glass of Nodge. Barkeep, another glass of Nodge, please. Nodge me up, man, and fast. But increasingly, cruise ship bars are reluctant to serve Nodge to their passengers. Absolute madness. Well, luckily I have a solution.

Roger Westcote Le Magrelay's Nodge in a Tin. Finally, the drink that the Coast Guard won't stop talking about in tinned form. But won't the Nodge burn through the aluminium can, I hear you ask? Well, luckily, each tin is made of strengthened lead. Simply use a power drill, Dremel or jigsaw to access the sweet Nodge. So don't just drink it, Nodge it. Go on, bodge a Nodge into your godge. Remember, consuming Nodge is illegal in every country on earth.

Please enjoy nudge responsibly. Reface. Verb. To renew the face, facade, or front of. Hello, and welcome to Banyan the Defacening. Part 2. The Re-Facening. Re-Facening. To jog your memory at the end of part 1, we left Michael on the cruise ship where he was due to have his cow's face removed by a disgraced arse vet, and he'd just discovered that the novelist Jonathan Franzen was on board, disguised as a salmon moose.

If Franzen was on board, then Murakami, Rushdie, Amos, Qureshi, possibly even Mark Rylance, weren't going to be far away. Banyan knew that if he came into contact with them, he would be sucked into an apocalyptic bender. So my plan at this point was, get to my cabin, get my stuff, get onto a lifeboat, and take my chances in the North Atlantic. My thinking was, we can sort my face out another day i just need to get the hell away from these people i got to my cabin door it was one of those really annoying

ones you get in hotels with the card key it was really hard to work i was jiggling away i cannot believe this is happening i just need to get the hell out of here and i was jiggling away jiggling away jiggling away and i couldn't get it to open and then I heard a voice what are you doing Michael stop fighting it you can't escape us everything then fell into place someone had clearly got on board disguised as my door and I actually wasn't jiggling away at my door handle. I was, in fact, vigorously shaking hands with Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie. Wow.

So he was essentially in disguise as your door. My worst fears were realised. They were all there. Haruki Murakami, dressed as an information kiosk. Donna Tartt was there, in disguise as a couple of retired Bristolian accountants. One played by her, the other controlled remotely by Andy Serkis. And Mark Rylance was there as well,

giving one of the most quietly breathtaking performances of his career as a wall of pamphlets. So when you become aware that the luminaries of the literature world are on the ship, did you not think that there was a chance that they were there to show their support to you? They were once your friends, after all. I might have thought that for a millisecond, but if I'd had any illusions, they were swiftly removed when I saw Margaret Atwood dishing out t-shirts. When they go for a big bender, especially a themed bender,

they like to produce t-shirts. They all have accounts at Snappy Snaps. If Franzen clicks his fingers and says nautical bender, puts that on the WhatsApp group, you can be sure that Margaret Atwood will be on the phone to her local Snappy Snaps within minutes, sorting out the t-shirts i imagine in kind of various nautical based puns things like that um yeah yeah i mean i i i

there's no way of dressing up it said um ahoy me knob heads ahoy me knobheads yeah um each one had a picture of a uh a jolly roger but um instead of a skull it was jonathan franz's face and instead of the two interlocking bones it was a snooker cue and a very very long pint of lager with um drips denoting lager spillage going off the edge margaret atwood she puts these things together um alongside the team that designed her novel front covers so they're quite well done uh and ahoy my knob heads um so ahoy exclamation mark me me spelled mi to represent uh replicate a kind of maritime speech pattern and and then ahoy me knob heads um uh knob donating penis heads heads heads uh with uh three zeds right it's not spelt with the s but the three zeds to um just to to to enhance the mood because of course traditionally that would be ahoy me hearties

that's right and they very cleverly then swapped out the word hearties with with knob heads knob heads i see and knob heads would probably normally be spelt with an s but instead of the three z's denote the atmosphere of you know tearing down authority not respecting things and being generally rude right uh and those were dished out i look when i'm in the clutch of these guys there there's nothing I can do. I knew I was a goner at this point. I pulled the T-shirt on. If there was any part of me that stood the vaguest of chances of resisting a full-on night with these people,

that was swiftly wiped out when I heard the words I dreaded, I think, more than any other four words in the English language. Bring out Dr. Nodge. Right, so who's Dr. Nodge? Dr. Nodge is a... Sorry, can I just have a moment? It's just such a bloody shame that these people are like this. It's okay. Just take a moment.

They write such bloody good fiction. That's the... That's the real tragedy of it have you read time's arrow it's a decent book midnight's children has some strong passages these guys can write it's not fun no one's saying it's fun you don't want to read it no one's saying that but blimey they can string a load of words together these these guys they really can listen you don't have to tell me who dr nodge is if if it's too painful for you michael dr nodge is a he's a mythic creation he's the symbol of the lash he's he's the god of fun. He's Loki. He's the impish, you know, the impish, immortal spirit of the bender. Yeah, I see.

Getting crushed, getting out there, getting jaspered. Yeah. He's a totem for the total annihilation of a minibar, the ransacking of a regional hotel the destruction of street bollards ransacking of public high streets and pedestrianized areas city centers all over this country the past two to three decades that's dr notch that's dr notch and And you ask any policeman or woman in this country about Dr. Nodge, and you will get tasered. No questions asked. No questions asked. You will be tasered.

And Dr. Nodge gave the name to a cocktail, a cocktail beloved by this crew, and a cocktail which is banned in every country on earth including north korea and for that reason can only be drunk legally in international waters so you put two and two together and you get nudge in this situation it was no surprise that these guys wanted to roll out dr dr nudge and sit on the front row of a Nodge symposium. Banyan then told me the ingredients for Nodge. If you don't want your life to be irrevocably changed forever,

look away now. Two parts vodka. Three parts white rum. Fifteen parts Fanta. Four parts pomegranate shower gel. Five parts Cointreau. Two parts good olive oil. Four parts bad olive oil.

Six parts bishop's blood. A glass of 1974, no later, French petrol. Ninety-eight parts any old lager. Two bellinis, an old-fashioned, a porn star martini, three sex on the beaches and a screwdriver. And by a screwdriver, I mean a tool, not a drink. A handful of ham. A couple of roast potatoes.

Two drops of thigh sweat from a serving member of the Dutch parliament, a live male blue tit or any finch, a five euro note, the tears of a semi-professional wrestler, a sprinkling of pork and beef meatballs, and the whole thing is served straight up in a waste paper basket and topped off with the corner piece of a jigsaw puzzle depicting a crofter at work. And did you drink one of these Dr. Nodges?

I'm not proud, but I nodged. I handed in my dissertation to Dr. Nodge that day, yes. I mean, and that shows you the level of control these guys have, you know, these people have on me. You know, I knew that later on that day I would be under the knife in one of the most dangerous, ambitious,

completely unprecedented operations ever to take place on Earth. The fact is, when Dr. Nodge is, when he's visiting the campus and you get invited up to his study, you go in. Do you know what I mean? So you consumed the Nodge? I consumed the Nodge. Obviously, that's a pretty rich brew.

What kind of effects are you feeling off the back of a Nodge? Well, I tell you what, as it goes down your throat,'s very very hard to explain the the flavor of it uh and the feeling it's quite incredible um if you're aware have you ever seen one of those um those large round um glass globes and inside there's a kind of electrical power a kind of a kind of like lightning yes i mean kind of bottled lightning that electrical spark i think the feeling is like having one of those those globes just just smashed over your head so you're absolutely laid out but when you do manage to get to your feet you're then filled with a level of confidence that is utterly unbearable for anyone in your vicinity. You know, you are unspeakably arrogant. You just feel so utterly confident.

You feel you could do anything. They say that the level of confidence you get from a glass of Nodge is the equivalent of finding out that you've won the Turner Prize, the Booker Prize, a Pulitzer, and found a fully stamped Cafe Nero loyalty card in your wallet on the same day so what happened next i don't really remember much of what happened i do know that martin amos was sick in a hand dryer right and that haruki murakami tried to swim up the pipe feeding a hot tub right and um i believe that as he was restrained by staff he was shouting i am the

filtration system it's a pretty classic kind of nudge stuff classic nudge stuff i believe that jonathan franzen was able to actually legally marry a disco ball that afternoon um he he yanked it off the the ceiling of the uh the main ballroom and he was able to get together the people who qualified to do it and that happened so obviously all this is taking place am i right in saying that this is what i read that they the ship actually issued a a distress signal across the radio a mayday signal essentially and started sending warnings over the tannoy essentially to get everyone to the lifeboats that's right it was at this point that there was still part of my brain that was still me if you see what i mean i mean i i i was aware of the

separation between the the the internal me that was still me and the, essentially, the Nodge, you know, the sort of Nodge avatar that I'd become on the outside. Right. And that's what happens. And so on my outsides, I was aware of what I was doing. I was aware that the Nodge version of me was trying to eat all of the stuff in the casino. eat all of the stuff in the casino the playing cards the um the uh the chips that the um the little croupier sticks the ashtrays and all the bays but the internal me was still aware that there was a still there was me and then what happens at that point the only way to defeat nudge i mean obviously you can have your stomach pumped and you can be you can go into a kind of semi-coma for a couple of weeks the only way to get out of it quickly immediately is to close your eyes

and what you do is you say you say very quietly a mantra to yourself which is dr nudge dr nudge reveal yourself now dr nudge dr nudge reveal yourself now if you say that enough times with your eyes closed, to an outsider, you simply crumple into the fetal position. But what's happening in your mind is the Nodge battle has become internalized. What then happens is you open your eyes, or you think that you're opening your eyes, and you're actually in a vast black space with a bright shining yellow grid at your feet that recedes all the way to the horizon everywhere you

look you're in a virtual nudge zone you look down at yourself you can see your own body you then look up and you see dr notch and this is when you realize that you have to fight dr notch and what does dr notch look like it's different for, Dr. Nodge is a rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. But not, so it's not Paul Giamatti with the head of a rottweiler? No. No, no, no, no, no. I see. So just to be clear, for you, it is a rottweiler's body with Giamatti's head?

No, it's a rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. Oh, I see. Sorry, of course. Can I just ask some questions about this when i'm picturing this because it's a rottweiler principally is the paul dramatic body on all fours or is it standing as a man well the body takes the lead from the head so the body is indeed on all on all fours it's a uh it's a rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. You've made that very clear. So, essentially, the body is... It's a human body, but it's with the head of a Rottweiler.

No, but it's not. You said it wasn't that. You said it was a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. It's a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. It's a Rottweiler with the body of Paul Giamatti. It's not Paul Giamatti's body with a Rottweiler head. No, that's right. Sorry. Yes, you are right.

I got mixed up there. And again, the difference is around the neck there. Okay. And just general vibe, I'd imagine. Yeah, it's a different vibe, as you say. But, you know, they do make lovely pets. A Rottweiler with Paul Giamatti's body. Yeah. Yeah. Great family pet actually so so you you're faced then with the giamatti dog

the dog giamatti uh what next uh well that's when i um just just started um just punching it so you need you need to physically best the you need to physically best it in an internal way so so really you know it's a mental struggle but but actually in that moment very very physical as i'm beating the creature uh so with each punch i could feel reality coming back so with each punch i'd get a flash of the the cruise the landing on the cruise ship where i was i was collapsed in a corner that was coming and then i'd be back in the rock by where i'd punch it again and gradually bit by bit i started to defeat dr nudge essentially and the the cruise ship reality this level of reality the non-nodge level the level above nudge that we live

in started to to to win out actually just in the nick of time, because as I gave it that final punch, I became aware of the fact that actually it was actually giving birth. And I got out just in time because I could see a kind of hideous... Well, this one was more like a bit of the face of dramatic and a bit of the face of Giamatti and a bit of the face of Rottweiler on a body that was just an absolute patchwork of Rottweiler and Giamatti, there was no logic

to it, it was just a patchwork, it was like a absolutely horrendous quilt but lucky you snapped back into luckily i snapped back into into reality just in time yeah i stopped trying to eat all the stuff in the casino and i was able to get the gang back together i had to slap them around a bit, I'm not going to lie. And I said, look, guys, we've got to calm the hell down. And I used the expression you have to use in a situation, which is Dr. Nodge is facing a tribunal. Right. Nodge has gone too far this time, essentially.

Nodge has gone too far. He's going to be sent down from the university. He's up in front of a tribunal. Dr Nodge has lost control of the campus. There are students with placards inside Nodge's study. It's over. The Minister for Education is on his way. The Minister of Education is on his way, leading a fleet of tanks to take Nodge down and if you're more than three

quarters of the way through your course you will get a degree based on averages you'll get a degree based on the quality of your coursework and Nodge will still have to be consulted in terms of working out what that average is So the sad truth is not, Nodge will still long-term be having an impact on us. But for today, Nodge is as good as done. And when you say that to them, they know exactly what you mean. And yeah, they know exactly what I mean.

And then at that point, you see them all change. Their eyeballs stop facing the right way. And the upwards moving sweat starts to readjust and starts starts to move downwards which is a huge relief and what's happening to them is that internally they're having that kind of virtual reality fight against whatever their version of the geomatti dog hybrid might be each of them will represent dr nudge as the thing they fear most so uh for Salman Rushdie, it's a... Well, it's Midnight's Children, but it's a dog with the face of a copy of Midnight's Children. For Julian Barnes,

it's someone taking his van away. For Margaret Atwood, it's a snappy snaps with a sign saying permanently closed across the front door. For Martin Amis, it's a T-Rex

with the face of Sam Neill. And so really, they're having to go to war with their own subconscious. They're having to go to war with their own subconscious. They're having to go to war with their own subconscious. That's what Nodge forces you to do. It asks you the question,

can you defeat yourself? Can you defeat your worst fears? Can you defeat your inner demons? And one by one they popped out. They were all shaken. I could see that Atwood was taking a while to struggle with that snappy snaps, but eventually she did as well.

So they all popped out, calm, descended on everyone. We all looked at each other. Everyone breathed. And we decided as a group to go into one of the decks with a nice view of the sea. So we sat in the, I think, Aqua Lounge 4. Nice view of the sea. So we sat in the, I think, Aqua Lounge 4. Nice view of the sea. We all sat and relaxed.

And Mark Rylance, he had that lovely look, came back to his face, that lovely, tranquil, gleaming, like his eyes, like diamonds that have been crammed into the eye holes of a of a of an actor and we breathed and it was at that point that margaret adwood uh pulled out a large canister of pig tranquilizer with uh five spouts and we all had a we all had a jolly good go on it and it was at that point that I fell into a deep and terrifying sleep.

On a different part of the ship, while Banyan was guzzling Nodge and pig sedatives with a group of Booker Prize winners, Arsfett Bob Triscothic was preparing for the hardest operation of his life, the removal of Banyan's cow face. Ahead of the operation, he had agreed to record an audio diary for us on the day. Thanks to Bob for doing this on what was to be a very, very stressful time. This is an audio diary from me, the bovine arse vet Bob Traskovic,

on the day of my biggest challenge yet, removing the face of the poet Michael Banyan. Michael was retrieved from the aqua lounge and the operation began. As you might imagine, the operation didn't start quite as planned. Yes, we hit a stumbling block immediately. Unfortunately, the patient, Michael, hadn't strictly obeyed pre-op protocols and was absolutely chock-a-block with quite a strong pig sedative.

Oh my God, he's absolutely off his face on pig sedatives. Fucking hell. That rather muddied the waters for my anaesthetist, for whom the waters were already pretty muddy, given that he was not quite wholly, but almost wholly unqualified for the situation at hand, being a sort of former equine dentist. So getting Michael comfortable was going to be difficult, and therefore became our lowest priority at that point. The pig sedative meant that Bob and his horse dentist friend had no idea how much anaesthetic to give Michael. A pig is an animal that requires, I mean, if you're going to sedate a pig, it's going to be heavy sedation. So the pig sedatives

we use are, they are nasty, really nasty drugs. And Michael was absolutely ram jammed full of this stuff so it was it was impossible to know what was he even too too sedated i mean there were there were points where it was hard to tell whether he was he was even technically alive michael how did you feel at that time were you aware of the sedation were you completely out of it i uh i went through um a couple of different uh sensations um when i first took the um pig sedative i i mean it's an experience i've had you know i mean i've i've done my fair share of uh of d squealer over the years however uh there came a point where this as far as i'm concerned and and you know this this legal legally i can't say too much at this point but i will be suing bob hard for this because there came a point where halfway through the operation i

became aware that i was in a room on a cruise ship and that a man by the name of Bob Triscothick was hacking away at my face with two steak knives, which didn't even match. They were clearly from different sets. One of them looked like quite a nice John Lewis job with a chrome handle. The other one looked like, I think it had been, looked to me like it had been nicked from a pizza hut.

And the one thing Bob assured me of at length before we embarked on this medical journey together was that A, I wouldn't wake up and become aware during the operation, and B, I wouldn't feel any pain. Now, let's deal with A first. I woke up and became aware of what was going on during the operation. Now, Bob has subsequently said to me that I was having a dream that happened to coincide with what was happening.

Yep. Can you prove that it wasn't a dream? That's something I'm working on. Did you video it? No. I didn't video it, Bob, because I was having my face stabbed, frankly, repeatedly, by a man who was clearly drunk off Cruise booze. It's free.

I'm only flesh and blood. And regarding suing me, join the queue, mate, first of all. Regarding the steak knives, you try getting a matching set when you're mostly purchasing from charity shops. It's not easy. It's no mean feat. You're lucky one of them was sharp. So you're saying it did happen, or this was the dream? Well, I'm not going to be pinned down on anything at this stage

on the advice of my legal team. Yeah, because as far as I can tell, your defence for everything I say to you is it's part of a dream. Look, mate, you're lucky you're even breathing. You've noticed he's alive, haven't you? I mean, that was his main concern before this. Am I alive or am I dead and dreaming I'm alive? Because I don't know anymore.

I'm so confused. The amount of emails you're... Every time I send you an email, you reply to me saying that email wasn't real. It was a dream. And so is this reply. You're alive. And it's thanks to some very quick thinking, because that was not an easy operation, I can tell you.

After I'd made a bit of a hash of the initial incisions... We're losing him. We're losing him. We're losing him. I did manage to peel the face off. I managed to get my fingers under the subcutaneous layer, and it was an absolutely magical moment peeling that yeah been hours absolutely hours okay heels on my feet well jammed into your throat i was pulling back with all my might all my weight okay well let's get let's get on to point b which is the point where again now i i not only was i aware on the operating table, aware of what was going on,

I was in excruciating pain. And I know, Bob, I know you've said I was just having, I was so... You were having pain dreams. I was in such a deep sleep. That's when you have pain dreams. That I was dreaming pain. I was dreaming realistic pain. In fact, pain that's probably more realistic than actual pain, or more painful than actual pain.

Classic side effect of certain anaesthetics. More after this. Hello, I'm the actor Roger Westcott-Lemay-Grillet, and I love to holiday in international waters. It's about the only bloody place you can escape the rise and rise of Benedict bloody Cumberbatch. Apparently, I was down to the final two for Sherlock, but they cast Cumberbatch because he gave them five pounds. That's what he does, you know. He's always giving out five pounds.

Five pounds here, five pounds there. Anyway, finally my range of tinned nudge has hit the shelves. Well, I say the shelves. It's illegal to buy anywhere on Earth. So you have to go to somewhere called the Dark Web, which sounds like a very foreboding place, but it can't be worse than doing Hamlet for sixth formers in the Midlands, can it? Can it? Not only is my nudge conveniently tinned, it uses only the finest ingredients, including some very large male blue tits. And remember,

for that classic Nodge experience, serve in a waste paper basket. Or just bang the stuff down you. It really is the best way to make a week go by in the blink of an eye. So don't just drink it, Nodge it. Go on,

bodge a nudge into your gorge. Remember, consuming nudge is illegal in every country on earth. Please enjoy nudge responsibly. Hello, Benjamin here. May I have a moment of your time to talk about how the Beef and Dairy Network is funded? Now, you may or may not know that I'm in a huge amount of debt in grain to the actor Ted Danson. We're doing what we can, but it's not enough. Please help. We will accept any cereal grain. That's any cereal grain that you have. Barley, oats, rye, spelt, wheat, teff, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, chia seeds, maybe just any beans. Have you got any beans? Rice? Will you accept rice, the actor Ted Danson? Will you? Okay, I'm going to start this bit again.

I'm talking about Max Fundrive. It's the two-week period where shows on this network tell the audience about how these shows are funded. And the truth is they are funded by the audience, which is amazing. And for many years now, I've been able to put proper time into making this podcast. And I know it sounds just like kind of nonsense but a lot of time goes into it and it's all down to you guys I want to say thank you so much I personally really like the maximum fun funding model we don't run like 10 minutes of ads every episode just the one ad oh my god we don't put half the old episodes behind a paywall and what i really like about max fun is it's independent media where the people who

make the shows own their own shows in a in a landscape where it's all now big companies giving prince harry money to make podcasts, to an extent, I think. Listen to me, Harry. You must have access to some grain. You own half of Britain. Sunflower seeds? Hemp? Flax seeds?

Surely. Come on. Has Meghan got access to anything? Lentils? Fava beans? She seems like she's into that kind of thing come on you must have something we could just describe as grain please please and i just want to encourage you if the beef and dairy network is something you value then i'm not forcing you to do so it's always always going to be free, but why not, if you can afford it, support us a bit? That's what I'm asking you today. I know for many of you that's not possible, and obviously that's totally fine, but for some of you it will be possible, and if you

look forward to the show appearing, when it appears, then why not give something back? That's what I'm saying. In return, there's various things. Go and look on the website, maximumfund.org forward slash join. There's some wonderful gifts and things. If you join at the $10 mark, there's an amazing I lost it all on beef call patch available. Everyone signing up gets access to the bonus material.

This year, the bonus material from Beef and Dairy includes completely uncut audio and video of the live show we did last year. That did become a bit of an episode, but I've put the whole thing up and there's lots of fun to be had there. Also, audio from an Ask a Vet session I did with Mike Wozniak. That's up there for subscribers. Maximumfun.org forward slash join. And if you can't support or don't

want to, that's obviously fine too. I'm just really glad you're listening, honestly. Thank you for listening to that. I hope you're enjoying this episode. What will become of Michael Banyan? Let's see. While the huge amount of pig sedatives that Michael had taken was an issue, it was soon dwarfed by a much larger problem. As you're aware, before we went onto the ship, we were aware that there were going to be certain problems we might face, some problems we realised about later than others, but what was clear was that when this bovine face came off if there

was no face underneath that would be an unsurvivable situation without an emergency backup face okay we're about two hours into the operation now and it's become clear to me that michael's original human face is totally gone. We've taken off the cow face. That's already gone off in a bucket to Lorenzo Montecantini. But underneath... All we were left with was just a pool of salty water, really. Brine, effectively. Unsurvivable brine.

Just looks like a pond, basically, or a very wet, dropped pizza. Luckily, we have a backup face that was donated to us by the Bovine Farmers Union. Good of them. I suspect they felt bad about what they did. We didn't ask them any questions about where they got the face.

But as far as I know, you ask for almost anything at a dockside bar in Southampton, you can get it. So I'm just off to get the backup face now, and we'll see whether that'll stitch onto Michael's head front. However, there was a big problem with the backup face. OK, we've just opened the refrigerated box with the backup face, and I can only assume this is a sick prank by the Bovine Farmers

Union. It's not a real face at all. It's a rubber joke mask with the face of Prince Charles. This left Michael without a face. He's probably only got minutes left now without a face. Okay. Time for emergency measures.

What Bob did next is nothing short of extraordinary. And I took the heroic step of removing my own face and putting it on Michael Banyan's head front, at which point I realised immediately that that was an unsurvivable situation for me. So I then asked my equine dentist friend if I could borrow his face for a moment

while I just had a minute to think about what to do next, which he very then kindly did. But I then realized if I was going to wear his face, he's not a good looking man to begin with. And also he's going to be dead in 20 minutes. And he's one of the few people that will still go for a pint with me.

So we've then got to find a solution for his face. We call in a steward, a koshim, cross the back of the face, take his face, put it on front. But then the steward's left without a face. There's a little bit of guilt involved. The situation begins to spiral out of control. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, fuck.

Oh, this is a mess. Oh, no. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck it. Fuck. We're at N-1, faces-wise, on this cruise ship. Listen, anyone here

willing to have their face sliced off? Temporarily. You'll get it back, I promise. Every time we remove someone's face, we're calling in entertainers from the cabaret section of the ship, obviously starting out with choruses, backing dancers, but soon we're moving up through magicians, pianists, even ventriloquists. We're stealing their faces so you're in a kind of um a kind of moving

musical chairs face situation where people are swapping faces left right and center we make the mistake of them moving into the catering staff and that's when the the passengers get wind of what's going on and they don't mind too much that the cabaret's been disrupted but you you disrupt their their cruise buffet you're in real trouble okay because all of a sudden they're having to wait up to seven minutes for a pina colada up to 20 minutes for a club sandwich they're livid but no sooner are they swarming upon us than we're we're taking faces off them so passengers face as well it's it's horrific and before you know it you're busting through to the cargo section where the various pets are being transported.

I, for at least 20 minutes, had the face of an Irish wolfhound. And it started to get a bit stressful at that stage. Now, Michael, I believe it was unfortunately for you at this point that you actually fully woke up and the pig sedatives actually wore off. actually fully woke up and the pig sedatives actually wore off yes i was greeted by one of the most i think disturbing sights a human being can be greeted with on waking up which is a room packed full of people uh essentially sort of frisbeeing faces onto each other in a circle and me desperately, desperately trying to find my own face in a sort of moving sea of faces.

And I could feel that faces were going round in a circle and I felt a budgie's face from the inside slap onto my face. And so for a second, I had a budgie's face. There was a ship's rat. A ship's rat face was briefly adhered to my front head. And I was told apparently that it looked, from an outsider's point of view, it looked like, my head, to look at me, looked like a rat emerging from the middle of a pizza.

That's what I was told. And people were getting very stressed. It was so fast moving that people were losing control, losing tab of where their own faces were. At one point, the captain's face ended up overboard, and he just dived straight in and re-emerged, a quarter of an hour later, with the face of a marlin uh which he's kept actually since then so bob the thing was and this is something that the commentators have they can't believe really you didn't realize this that no matter how many people you got involved no matter how many

people were slicing their face off and giving it to someone else you're always going to be one short right because as soon as you take one off someone they then don't have a face you know you you their face off and giving it to someone else, you're always going to be one short. Right. Because as soon as you take one off someone, they then don't have a face. You know, you realise this now. Yes. Why didn't you realise this at the time? Well, in my defence, I was preoccupied by the difficulty of the first part of the operation itself.

That was quite enough to think about. That was quite enough to think about. Plus, let's not forget, I come from an honourable veterinary tradition, whereby if something hasn't quite gone to plan, you simply put your patient in a special yellow bin bag and you move on. That wasn't the case here. So I think my normal settings needed readjusting. Yeah, I understand that.

And I think you also, you still deserve some credit for the fact that Michael is alive. You know, something which most people didn't think would be the outcome here. Yes. And that is thanks to the ship's mate. He very nobly came down and sacrificed his own face for Michael, knowing full well what would happen to him, knowing full well that there wasn't a spare face for him, because he was a huge fan of Michael Banyan.

It emerged later, he was actually a huge fan of Michael Banyard, who it turns out is an Indy car racer from Arkansas. But by the time we'd realised that, it was far too late. And I was relieved because I, at the time, was trying to see if I could get the Prince Charles rubber mask to work with some spare horse teeth that my dentist friend always carries with him at all times. That really wasn't working at all. Michael, how do you feel when, when you know you hear about this now tell me about how you feel about the fact that somebody

essentially gave up their life for you to have their face even though they thought you were a racing car driver it's very it's very moving um the first thing i'd like to point out is i'm i'm pretty sure that he the the mistake was that he thought that the racing car driver michael banyard was the poet michael banyan and that was the mistake so no no he was he was no he was very very clear actually about who he thought he was and we we just decided to to let it slide yes well i i i'm pretty sure that it's that it's no coincidence is it that no we actually we went through it a few times with him and it was it was we were yeah it was clear that it was a total coincidence the ship's mate's mother has gone on record as saying that he actually deeply disliked your poetry it wasn't wasn't just apathetic towards it he actually disliked your poetry. It wasn't just apathetic towards it. He actually disliked it. Well, it's amazing the things that people will say, you know,

when they hear that their son has sacrificed his life in order to give his face to a poet that his son thought was an IndyCar racing driver. The things that people say in those situations. Well, his mother also, she is a sort of retired professor of poetry from, I think, Cornell University. And that's why he was very familiar with poetry. You have to ask, retired, isn't it? Why do you have to ask that question?

Why is she retired? Maybe she got things wrong yeah i think read between the lines there's a lot of confusion that found at the moment and they're the only thing they can hold on to at the moment is is is the idea that um that you know i think they're they're angry with me i don't blame them they're angry with me and they're trying to besmirch my poetry yes they're angry but um maybe they you know i can't speak for them but maybe they get some sucker from knowing that his face lives on his face lives on okay uh that's the operation finished oh god he looks like an absolute dog's breakfast. So, Michael, you've got this new face.

It's the face of a 24-year-old sailor from a cruise liner. And I have to say, it's strange to see you with a human face. Nevertheless, I would say it looks fine. It looks fine, I would say. Yeah, you're being generous. Look, there's been some teething problems you know i'm not gonna lie it was always good there was always going to be a degree of aftercare needed um with something like this what's happened is there's there's essentially some quite the the eye sockets are loose, basically. This was a young man, a fit, glossy-skinned American man

with a strong jaw and that tight American skin that is famous the world over. So tight. And that has had to be adhered to the, well, essentially the decayed underface or head front of a middle-aged man, but more than that, a middle-aged man who has had a cow's face stuck to his face for years. And essentially getting those two things to match up isn't a given. What Bob said to me was it was like having to use pritt stick to stick a post-it

onto a well a plate of noodles in a gale but this will improve i assume bob this will this will improve over time as it begins to take or um i so i one of the reasons i want i've had the career i've had i don't like to break bad news, really. I prefer it when the bad news breaks itself, you know, because the homing pigeon is clearly dead, or whatever it is that I've been treating. I'd rather hope that Michaelael um being an educated intelligent man would have would have by now worked out his own bad news but clearly that's not the case i mean it's not going well is it we we can all we can all see that yeah i've got i've got ears on my shoulders mate with any transplant typically there would be a degree of immunosuppressive

therapy to prevent uh rejection i can't get access to that kind of stuff with with the way my license is um so instead i've had to give michael just some uh old old tube of eczema cream i found in the bottom of my bag and um but that hasn't cut it really the face as it is now i mean what's left of it would come off in contact with a scratchy towel to be honest uh or a strong gust of wind yeah so i'm having to i'm having to exclusively use guest towels at the moment and i think you'll you'll be able to move on from that pretty soon because that what i'm trying to get out of here, Michael, is that face, it's not going to happen. The architecture of your underface has got so used to a cow's face

that there's simply no way that any human face is ever going to fully adhese with your head now. You're at the end of the line, I'm saying, human face-wise. What is left of that face is going to slough off within a week. You are going to be faceless, that's a certainty. And once you are faceless, then either you simply wait for the inevitable, or, and I'm presenting you with the only possible solution that is survivable here, you with the only possible solution that is survivable here, or, and this is some good news to soften the bad news, I can offer you a brand spanking new cow's face to replace your face. So that's great news. And not only that, I'm in a position to offer you uh a choice you know belgian blue hereford hungarian

gray or a pinch i could get you a guernsey yeah hungarian gray obviously but hang on are you is this serious is this some sort of i'm quite serious or because i think i think frankly i've been through enough over the last couple of weeks that i don't think i'm i don't see myself as like someone that really really needs pranking or is going to particularly enjoy a prank. Do you know what I mean? I am quite serious. And we need to act now, urgently.

Okay, so it's a Hungarian grade? If that's what you want, yes, I can get that. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. So what are you saying? Are you saying, Bob, that no human face will ever adhere back onto... No, I mean, that's been proven by what we've done. The architecture is just not there anymore. I mean, you could try an alpaca, but I wouldn't recommend it.

A horse? No way. No chance. So, Michael, it sounds like if you want to stay alive, you're going to have to be re-cow-faced, back to square one in some ways. How does that feel? For what it's worth, I think it's going to feel like coming home for me.

I think sometimes you have to go a long way to realise that where you were was probably certainly where you started out. Well, I'll see you the day after tomorrow. There's a disused railway sidings just north of Marseille. I'll send you the coordinates. Don't be late. Thank you very much, both of you. Michael Banyan and Bob Truskothic, thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks. With you, Michael Banyan and Bob Triscothic, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. A big thanks to Michael Banyan and Bob Triscothic for their cooperation in letting us cover the momentous events of recent times. Good luck to you, Michael, with that new cow's face. And thank you for listening to Banyan,

the defacening. Banyan the defacening, part two, the refacening. We should also spare a moment for the 24-year-old American sailor. His name, Chup Bupkins. That's Chup Bupkins. Sorry, just looking at it now, I think it's Bup Chupkins, who gave his life and face so Michael could have a face for a few days

before ultimately discarding it and leaving it in a bin in France. Sorry, no, I was right the first time. It's trap bupkins. Trap bupkins. Banyan the Defacening is a production of the Beef and Dairy Network. The producer was Alan Wamboni. The music and sound design by Erasmus Donkeyfield. Help came from Susanna Blanket, Hannah St. Sternald, and Hernald Yom.

Banyan the Defacening was created by Crabmeat Dixon, and was edited by Quincy Wincy Tramasco St. John, and a team of trained pigs. Our director of sound design is also a pig. Our fact-checkers are Adam Sitcombe and Caitlin Timetable. The exec producer was Talon D'Ambolié,

and there was this woman in the office, and after about three weeks, people started talking like, is she even working here? Like, I've never seen her before. Like, is she an employee here? Does she work for the Beef and Dairy Network? And why is she constantly sopping wet? And I had to admit, I've literally never seen her before.

So I went up to her and I was like sorry do you work here what are you doing here and she said what am I doing here what do you mean what am I doing here This is a municipal swimming pool. What are you all doing here? Yeah, we never got to the bottom of that one. Sorry, my mistake. It is Bup Chupkins. No, I'm sure of it this time. It's Bup. It's Bup Chupkins. Banyan the Defacening was made possible by funding from the Sid Onion Fund, the Buck P. Mitchell Foundation, and everyone who supported Beef and Dairy Network through the MaxFunDrive by going to maximumfun.org forward slash join. Hello, thanks for listening. Your final reminder, I'm sorry to keep going on like a broken record,

but that's it for this year, that you can go to maximumfun.org forward slash join to support the podcast also this week on thursday at 8 p.m uk time i'm going to be doing a live stream with tom neenan aka dr sam archer to watch that come to twitch.tv forward slash benjamin partridge and last time i promise maximumfun.org forward slash join go and have a look And thank you to everyone who signed up so far this MaxFun. And thank you in advance to those of you who are about to. All right, I will never mention it ever again. Until next year. Bye.