Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 137: Michael Schur

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

‘Parks and Recreation’ co-creator and ‘The Office’ writer Michael Schur creates his perfect menu this week. But is his dream restaurant a Good Place to be or a Bad Place? Michael Schur’s book ‘How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answers to Every Moral Question’ is out now, published by Quercus. Buy it here. Follow Michael on Twitter @kentremendous. Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive. Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations). Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial. And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show. Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Welcome to the Off Menu podcast, taking the stilton of humour out of the fridge of the internet, letting it come up to room temperature, cutting it with the knife of good times, putting it on the cracker of great fun with the chutney of friendship. Worse one yet, obviously. Four of your spheezers hated it. Disgusting. Definitely not the worst one yet. Actually really nice. And I added so many elements to it because I was like, oh, that sounds lovely. Yeah, you really got into it and you really got lost in it. But look, if people are having

that for lunch or after dessert, fair enough. It is nice. You know how I feel about it. I've said it many times, but you know that you're riling me up early door, so you're going to send me in for a sip. Are you angry? No, no, no, no. Look, sometimes sugar gets too much and it's lovely to have something deep and rich and flabby. It's like a lovely bit of stilton on a cracker. That's what this podcast represents. It's like a stilton on a cracker. If you're wondering that piece of shit, it's called a gamble. My name is James A. Castor and this is the Off Menu podcast. We invite a guest into the dream restaurant and we ask one of the favourite ever, start a main course, dessert, side dish and drink, not in that

order. Making their dream menu, baby. And this week, the guest is Michael Sher. We're very excited to have Michael on the pod. James, what a back catalogue. What a body of work this man has. He's a writer, of course, a wonderful writer. A showrunner. I mean, you know, also, dare I say an actor, we've seen him in front of the camera as well as cousin Moes. Look, we're big fans of the good place, of the office. Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. I mean, we could go on for a long time. He's been involved. He co-created Parks and Rec, James. One of my favourite shows of all time. Yeah. It's a bit intimidating going into this. Sure. He's probably feeling the same. Yeah. Well, he's the dream restaurant. Gotta get

it right. So he probably is feeling pretty. He probably loves hypothetical. He loves sort of later period, not the week. Yeah. He's quaking in his little boots. Be quaking in his little boots having to talk to us. Yes. Yeah. Good, actually. Good to really remember that before we go in, so we're not intimidated. Yeah. And also, of course, even though we're big fans, look, if he says the secret ingredient, we're going to kick him out. That's how it goes every single week. There's a ingredient which we deem to be disgusting. Then we kick someone out. This ingredient, I actually don't think is disgusting. I actually like it a lot, but it's... It's thematically appropriate. Sometimes it relates to the guests that we

do. Yeah. So the secret ingredient is Beats. Beats. Beats. Michael was, of course, cousin Mose, who worked on Shrewt Farms in the office, an American workplace. Yeah. He also wrote for, of course. And that was a Beats farm. So Beats. It's Beats. There's a song by a band called The Hood Internet where they said the line, call me Dwight Shrewt, the way that I eat Beats. Oh, that's good. That's pretty cool. I like that. Also, Ed, Joe, I'm very excited about it. You're going on tour. You're on tour, aren't you? And it's going great. I am on tour. The show's called Electric. It goes all over the UK up until the end of April. Ed Gamble.co.uk for tickets. You know what? I'm excited about James. What are you

excited about? Your book. Oh, yes. I've got a book coming out in August and people can pre-order it now. It's called James A. Castle's Guide to Quit and Social Media, Being the Best Year You Can Be and Curing Yourself of Loneliness, volume one. It's all about how I gave up social media and you can, too. And if you're worried that that sounds a little preachy or heavy, don't worry. I've made everything up and it's really stupid. And volume two is all about how you gave up caffeine. Yes. And at the end of the book, there's a hell of a twist. Not a twist if you've ever listened to this podcast, of course. But speaking of books, the reason Michael is here is to promote his book as well as have a great chat with

his two heroes of comedy, me and you. But his book is called How to Be Perfect. So it sounds like more of a helpful book than your book is. Yeah. It would probably cover everything I would have to say. Yes. And then more. Yeah. I know whose book I'm going to actually read and whose book I'm going to get on audiobook. Yeah. Hey, you know, we don't get paid by the read. Actually, no, we do. Yeah. We're going to pay more for the book. Yeah. So, yes. Well, without further ado, let's chat to Michael Sher. Michael Sher. Here is the off menu menu you are. Oh, yeah. Michael Sher. Here's the off menu menu. Michael Sher. Welcome, Mike slash Michael Sher to the Dream Restaurant. Do I get the genie? Do I get the genie? There

we go. Welcome, Michael Sher to the Dream Restaurant. I've been expecting you for some time. I thought for a second that genie was just not going to show up for me, that I was going to get denied. What a normal start that would be if the genie just didn't show up to this episode of off menu. That would be so horrible. I know. Just like a sad, like, come on in, have a seat, you know, like it's like a moribund dream restaurant. That would be sad, actually. I was like, normally, I try and interrupt the guest when they start saying, oh, thanks for having me. I go, push out the back seat. You anticipated it. And so we both were looking at each other over zoom, like, oh, which one of us. Yeah. Well, I'm happy that the genie

showed up. That's great. Yeah. We were talking about this earlier, me and Ed. And this is exactly what, so, you know, awkward greetings and stuff like that. I was lucky enough to just visit very quickly the set of the good place one season and I went to shake Ted Danson's hand and I fucked that up. That's exactly the same as this. How did you fuck that up? What did you do? Did you put out your left hand or something? He admitted later on that it was his fault. I put my hand out for normal handshake and Ted Danson went in with his hand in making like a T shape with his hand and mines like straight in. I've never seen anyone do that before. He crashed his fingers just into my palm and then I still instinctively

just gripped onto them. So I was kind of like that. And then he just said, oh dear, that's not worked at all. And I was really panicking. It was in front of Janet and Cheedy. Oh no. It was bad stuff. It was bad stuff. So you really just like a T-rex just kind of awkwardly clinging to his hand. Yeah. Are you sure it's not something Ted Danson was trying out to make the T shape for Ted? Like a new sort of greeting. Oh, of course. Oh no. Of course. I was meant to just pip it and turn it into a D. Like turn my hand. So he keeps his hand there. I'll go D and we both forget each other and go Ted Danson. That's what he wants. Now when were you here? How did I not know you were on the set? When did you come? It was

season three. You were filming season three, 2018 I think. Sounds right. And I was visiting a friend and she was working on set that day and said just, I wasn't able to see her any other day. So she just said, just come. And I was very reluctant just so you know. I don't get it. And you wouldn't trouble here. I was like, I can't come onto the set. I was a big fan of the show anyway. I was like, I can't come onto the set. And then I probably pretended like I didn't want to come on the set for about two more asks. And then I went because I did want to go. The friend doesn't exist. He snuck on. He snuck on. He was at Universal Studios and just climbed over a fence. Did you have a good time? Did we treat you well

while you were here? Did you enjoy your visit? Yeah, I was there very briefly. I just watched a scene, get rehearsed and then I went and got some free food. That is the ultimate Hollywood experience. Just work for eight minutes and then get a bunch of free food. What was your, what was the first set that you were everyone? I started at Saturday Night Live in 1998 and that was my first job. And that was the first time I ever been on a set. So that was like my introduction. And that's not a good introduction to what it's like because it's a very, it's a one of a kind. Like no, no other show functions. That shows bananas. Like you go to work at one in the afternoon and you stay at work until five in the morning. So everyone has shifted.

Like it's the only job I got hired. They read it for college and it was, it's like the only job where your, your schedule shifts later than it was when you were in college. Like you sleep later and you go to bed later than when you were in college, which is bananas. So I was there for seven years and then I came out to work on the office, the American office. And that was the first time I was on a, on a real Hollywood set, like a with, you know, with free food and stuff like that. So yeah, that was my, that was the, that's my origin story. And were you able to dictate people's bed times when you went to the office? So we're not staying up to five anymore.

I made a chart and I was like, everyone in bed by 11 lives now. That was 2004. So I've been doing that, essentially that same thing since 2004. That whole SNL experience, it just sounds so intense. Like whenever people talk about working on that show, it just sounds so crazy to do all of that intense work and then you do it and then it's, it's gone. It's done. Well, that to me, it's a good thing about it. Cause you, if you have the greatest week of your life professionally, if you write like five sketches and they all do great at the read through and then they all go on TV and the audience laughs at all of them and you're feeling

incredible, like you wake up on Monday and you've got nothing again and you will get your ass kicked. Like the people who work at SNL tend to be very nice people because for most people, it's their first job and it just destroys your ego. It just drives all of the ego out of you because you bomb so hard. Like I've bombed so hard for so long at that job, like just miserable flop sweating, like famous people reading your sketches. And the only sound that you hear is a hundred people in the read through room, like slowly turning the paper.

That sound echoes in my ears to this day. So you learn to not be precious about your own writing. It's almost worse that bombing when you're not performing because I've had, I've had both of those feelings when you're bombing, when you're performing, you can sort of go, well, just keep your head in it. You keep going. But if you're watching someone else bomb with your words, you feel guilty and terrible at comedy. I heard this rumor in the seventies when the show first started, the readers were so terrible sometimes that Alf, I think Al Franken or Tom Davis, one of those legendary

old timey writers that used to work in the show, invented this system where there was a little bell, like a bell when you go into a hotel and you ring for service and they handed it to the writer whose sketch it was. And the idea was if you get like four pages into a 15 page sketch and it's bombing, the writer can just ring the bell and that's like, I give up. And it was a good idea in theory, but apparently the problem was that every writer, just as soon as a one joke would bomb, they were just going to get me out. So they had to stop doing it because every writer was panicking at every single sketch

they wrote. You've seen me have some pretty bad gigs. If I had a little bell that I could ring as writer and performer, how quickly do you think I'd ring a bell into most of my shows? I've seen you have gigs where you would have rung the bell like on the way out to the stage. This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work, everyone. Or doing the announcement offstage going, please welcome to the ding. That was fast. I heard you guys talking about this actually on one of the podcasts about how

a hundred people can be laughing and you will find the one person in the crowd who is like, a good friend of mine is a standup and he talks about that all the time. Like he'll just zero in on the one guy in row 83 who just is like miserable. And that's all you can think about. It's the same for me, by the way, like one bad review. I stopped reading reviews a long time ago because I realized that one bad one outdoes thousands of good ones. I come up with a really good segue.

But of course you don't have to worry about bad reviews anymore, Mike, because you're perfect and you can teach people who read your book how to be perfect. Is that correct? That was a great segue. Although the perfection I'm talking about in the book is ethical perfection, not comedic perfection. What would you rather have? Would you rather be an ethically perfect person or a perfect comedian who gets laughs at every joke? Yeah. I mean, you are absolutely correct to separate the two. And it's not possible to be both, as we all know, from the best comedians.

Yeah, I will tell you. You can't have good humor and make everyone laugh and be ethical at the same time. I don't have any aspirations to be perfect in either version. Being a perfect comedian would be like hell, right? If everyone always laughed at every joke, there would be no point in telling jokes. And if you were a perfect ethical person, you would just be annoying and no one would like you. No one would want to hang out with you. So it's bad either way. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. I mean, did you realize that when... Sorry. See, this is what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. Everything Mike says was going to go, that sets me up for a question about his work, actually. You know, that's what professional podcasts do, though, Jake. Yeah, we're going to have to stop on that one. We make me talk about food. Don't fucking go. Oh, did people being perfect, being boring and annoying, did that inspire you to win the good place to make sure it was about bad people and not the good people? And then they shut the fuck up, James. That's exactly where I was in my head.

It's a good question, though, James. It's a good question, actually. The premise was always that there was some kind of like perfect Eden paradise and that someone got in accidentally. That was always the starting point. Because perfect people are boring and I thought the only way to make it funny was that someone gets in who shouldn't be there. So that was always baked in. I didn't come up... I guess I should spoiler alert this. Spoiler alert. I didn't come up with the idea of the whole thing being like a torture chamber until much later.

Like I worked on it for a while, but I kept getting to this point where I was like, even though one of the characters is going to be a person who got in accidentally, if everyone else is actually a good person and they are actually perfect, that's still going to be boring. That's still going to be annoying. Then I was like, oh wait, if all of them are actually being tortured by Ted Danson's character, now that's something interesting. Because you can present them to the audience as like, these are what good people look like. And then reveal like, oh no, actually, they all suck in different ways.

So that was the key was coming up with that twist. And now when I was like, okay, now I feel like I know how to write this show. The book was a natural sort of like end of the show was a, I got to the final season and kind of just thought like, I feel like I still want to write about this stuff in some way. Like I thought of it as like an exit interview for myself of like, what did I learn? Can I talk about it in a way that is not boring? Because the books are boring.

Like the original texts are incredibly bone-crushingly dull. And I felt like I was a better person because I had learned about them and had talked to people who like explain them to me. And I thought like, if I could put all this stuff into a book that was for regular people, not PhD candidates, that it would perhaps be of some use to people. So I just try to dump everything that I learned into one conversational book about like, here's what I think it means to be a good person, take it or leave it. Here's a bunch of theories.

They're helpful to me when I'm in weird spots in my life. And maybe they'll be helpful to you. That was the basic idea. Love it. Thank you. I unwing the bell. It was a good question. Yeah. Good. So you just put the bell away, man. You put the bell. In fact, let me take your bell. I'll be in charge of your bell.

Thank you. Thank you, Ed. We always start with still or sparkling water. Do you have a preference? I do. Before I do that, let me make one disclaimer, if you don't mind. My food takes have been referred to by more than one friend of mine as like horrifying and basic and terrible. I'm famous among my group of friends for having terrible takes on food. So I hope that one of the aspects of the dream restaurant is that there's no judgment

for what I'm about to say. Okay, great. Well, actually, I'll say that. Well, actually, that's not true at all, is it? We've judged a lot of people, Michael. We've bullied some people. What do you put this down to, this taste in food? I don't know. I really like good food.

When I eat good food, I'm happy and I recognize it as good food. But when I eat bad food, I often feel the same way. I often feel like this is fine. I'm eating food and it's fine. So I think it's just unrefined. I just have no ability to discern really between good and bad food. So as a result, my favorite foods are I eat like a child, essentially. I eat like a 11-year-old boy.

That's how I would characterize my palate. It's not that I don't have an appreciation for excellent cuisine. I do. I just never think to seek it out. And I don't really care whether what I'm eating is... I'm eating it like French laundry or something, or I'm making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They would both rank high on your list. If you went to a restaurant like the French Laundry

and they brought you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you would go, oh, this makes sense. Yeah, this is great. I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So anyway, I know I'll be judged. I hope I'm not judged too harshly. And also, I weirdly hope that I say the secret ingredient and you guys just kick me out, because then I'll save myself a lot of embarrassment.

So with that qualification, still water, please. Thank you. Acceptable so far. We're not going to judge you so far. I find that sparkling water makes me thirstier. Is this a... Has anyone ever said this? Is this a new take for you? No, I think that is a new take. I think some people have said the opposite. Some people have said that they've read that scientifically

it's meant to quench your thirst more. Well, I disagree. I feel like when I drink sparkling water, my throat gets parched and I need more. It's like an endless loop. I'll just fall into this endless loop where I'll drink more and more of it because I'm thirstier and thirstier.

And then it'll make me thirstier and eventually I'll die. I'll get desiccated and die. So still water, please. So do you think this is something that the sparkling water people have developed over the years and allowed to sell more sparkling water? I think it's nefarious. I think they know what they're doing

and they've carbonated it in order to make you thirstier to buy more of their product. Yes, that's literally what I think. I'm not kidding. I've had that exact thought before. This is a loophole. Have you said it out loud to people? No, God no.

No, except for you right now. Yeah. I've never, because I'll be laughed out of just polite society if I suggest a harebrained theory like that. Well, then it's a rabbit hole situation, isn't it? You have that theory and then next thing you know, you're looking on YouTube for that theory

and you're queuing on within a month. And I'm listening. I'm watching Steve Bannon's podcast and I'm just going to, yeah. Everyone's very hydrated in LA. Is that fair to say? Yeah, there's a lot of water shaming that goes on. People are drinking, they have 128 ounce bottles of water

that they drink slowly over the course of a day and they tell you that if you're not drinking 128 ounces of water a day, you're failing as a citizen. There's a lot of that that goes on. And I can't do that in part because it just makes me have to pee every eight seconds. So I drink like one glass of water a day and I'm going to die young because I'm not properly hydrated.

That's all right. I've been getting into the drinking, trying to be as hydrated as I can this year, New Year's Res, still keeping it up. But I am very good friends with my toilet now. Yeah, every 15 minutes, it's too much. I think my girlfriend thinks that I'm addicted to cocaine in the flat.

That's less embarrassing than the truth, which is that you're just urinating every 10 minutes. Yeah. I don't think Coke addicts do Coke in their toilet when they're in their own house, right? But if I did cocaine, that's what I would do, right? Yeah. So that makes sense.

I'd do it in there and then come out and just talk about myself and my business plans to my girlfriend like she would have no idea. Talk about all the new apps you're developing and cryptocurrency and whatever. Yeah, it's a miserable existence. Bread, please. Thank you.

I like a hardy bread, like a bread with a lot of grains and nuts and stuff like that. And warm butter. This is a key to me. The butter has to be warm so that it spreads easily. Because that hard, cold butter, you can't do that. My problem is I like bread with chunks of stuff in it. And occasionally, if it's a dark restaurant,

there will be an olive bread that looks like the kind of bread I want and I'll take it and olive bread is horrifying and no one should ever eat it. This is one of my food takes. I hate olive bread. So I hate olives and I hate all olive breads. So I sometimes am fooled into thinking that I'm getting what I want and getting exactly the opposite.

This plays perfectly into you eating like an 11-year-old boy because there are no 11-year-old boys who like olives. It's exactly right. My nephew likes olives. And it's like, my nephew's liked olives since they were seven or six or something. And I used to stare at him and I couldn't believe it when he was just there eating olives.

And I remember once, while he was eating olives, in between olives, he went, I love olives out loud. I couldn't believe my mind what is going on. I say that I definitely liked olives when I was 11. You did? Yeah, I was that kid totally. I loved olives. I loved poached salmon.

I was a proper little gourmand 11-year-old fat boy in dungarees. I mean, that's impressive. That kind of like super savory, salty taste like that. I've never, that's not for me. No, no olives for me. Now, Mike, I hate to put you up on an inconsistency straight away because we've had the whole discussion about how you said sparkling water makes you more thirsty.

You prefer still water. And you listeners might have heard a little can being open there. And I saw you take a sip and it was a lacroix, which is that not a sparkling water? Oh my God. It is. So there's a corollary to my theory, which is, well, it's two parts. One is when it's the only thing that you have to drink

and you're doing a podcast, then maybe it's okay to just try to soothe your throat. But also, for some reason, the flavored sparkling water makes me less thirsty than regular sparkling water. I don't know why. It could be psychosomatic, but I'm worried that I'm going to start coughing because I'm talking so much.

So I need a thing to drink. And so I'm risking being extra parched just so to try to make this podcast go more smoothly. Fair. Look, you are allowed something to drink. I don't want you to think that I'm saying, don't drink anything during our podcast, Mike. But that is the closest we've ever got to like,

I felt like you were Colombo or some detective that you completely caught him out. Like, oh, yeah. I got him. I got him. It was on camera for like a third of a second and he somehow saw it. I can't believe it.

I was, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was there going, oh, what can I say about olives? That's what I was thinking in my head. You know, it's the can. That's what I like to do. I like to make, I guess, feel very uncomfortable about every move they make on camera. That's what I'm going to do.

Just question them, catch the minion consistency, challenge them. I notice on the shelf behind you there, you've got a jar of olives, Mike. Just throwing them into my mouth one after another. The cold butter thing, man. The amount of despair that I feel when I try and spread cold butter across the bread

and all that happens is it kind of digs into, tears the bread up. You end up with a block of cold butter with loads of bread stuck to it that's not spread around. The sadness that I feel, I think is too much. It's profound. I think I shouldn't feel as sad as I do when that happens. But I feel so sad that the whole day is ruined

and I should go back to bed. I think of it as when you're on an airplane. If you ever get butter and bread on an airplane, it's always like it's been in the freezer. It's not just that it's cold. It's like it's rock hard. And you have to hold it in your hand in the wrapper for like 30 minutes to get to just that level

that you're talking about. It's horrifying. And I feel like there should be a law. We should actually make a law. The Hague, the world court should try people who restaurants that don't make their butter spreadable. That's my official position. I'd sign that petition.

Well, I don't think I would. And here's why. I love butter. And I want any excuse to be able to eat as much butter as possible. And when the butter's hard, I like taking a chunk of butter, putting it on the bread, and just like almost more butter than bread and eating that like a little butter sandwich.

Oh, God. I mean, that's terrifying. Like your teeth biting into a chunk of butter that's a pleasant feeling for you. Yes, please. Wow. And you prefer it to an evenly spread level of butter over the bread? You know what I think I do?

Look, when I was a kid, there were occasions where my mum would go into the fridge and find teeth marks in the butter. Wow. Which will be the title of my autobiography. Look out for it. So we've got the hearty bread with loads of like stuff on the outside, there's a roughage on the outside,

and you want warm butter, and that's all you want for your bread. That's our one. No olives specifically. No olives anywhere. I'll take a pretzel bread too. I don't know if that's a big thing in London, but a pretzel bread is a good.

If there's no hearty, chunky, seedy bread, I'll go with a pretzel bread if that's an option. That is quite exciting. This is very German, am I right in saying? No, I think you're right. Yeah, it feels German. Because of Moe's coming out in you here. I don't know if Moe's would eat,

I think Moe's would more eat like a plow, a proper plowman's lunch. He was a farmer. I think he's just taken a big chunk of sourdough and a big chunk of cheese, and then quietly eating it alone somewhere like in an outhouse on his farm. Or he would eat like, I think he would eat a pretzel,

but if it was made out of jerky, that was made out of like a balls in testing, I think he would have that. Yeah, venison jerky or something. Yeah, just some horrifying farm meat that he cured himself. Thank you for bringing up Moe's, by the way. It's very kind of you.

I think about Moe's a lot. I think just that specific scene where I think people arrive in a car to the farm and Moe's just silently runs alongside the car is quite disturbing. It really is, isn't it? Yeah, the way it was written in the script was, the car pulls up the long driveway,

suddenly Moe's appears out of nowhere and runs alongside it like a dog. That was the stage direction. Your dream starter. Here's the problem. I'm a vegetarian, but since this is a dream restaurant, if there's no good vegetarian option, I will order fish.

I will be a pescatarian occasionally. So I don't know if this is cheating, but my starter is going to be a seafood tower. Is that cheating? No. Because that's more than one thing. Okay. When I do eat fish, which is fairly rarely,

my favorite thing to get is like a seafood tower with like multiple platters. So on my seafood tower would be crab meat, jumbo shrimp, sushi, some good like sushi rolls. I don't eat oysters or clams. So no oysters or clams, but like that, you can picture the genie putting an enormous three tiered seafood tower

with just loads of lump crab meat, lobster, sushi and jumbo shrimp, and then all the hot sauces and mustards and stuff like that. And I'm going to eat the entire thing. It's the first time anyone's employed the tower format to get around having more than one thing. And I'm here for it.

I love it. The tower defense. I definitely had a like, am I going to be kicked out for cheating slash finding a loophole? I'm glad to know that I didn't run afoul of your rules. I feel like when you're in a restaurant and someone orders a seafood tower,

I feel like everybody's happy. There's something about the variety and the excitement of all of the different things on the tower that just makes everybody happy. And so when I'm in a restaurant like this, I'm constantly and finding myself talking other people into the seafood tower. Like I feel like I'm like a salesman

and I'm like trying to sell them on how great this is going to be and everybody's skeptical. And then when it comes, everyone's happy. Now the jumbo shrimp, Ed might know this. Is that the same as King prawns, Ed? Yeah, I guess so. I guess, yeah, like a big shrimp. Yeah, like a shrimp is a prawn, right?

Yeah, the big guys that are like, you know, like that big. And then there's the hot sauce and the cocktail shrimp cocktail sauce and like a little big white dish that you can just, you know, the whole thing in and then one bite, it's great. You feel so, that is so fancy. If you get that, you feel like this is a fancy night.

Yes, that's right. You're in Las Vegas, like you've gone out, you're at like a bachelor party or like some kind of celebratory event. There's eight people, the seafood tower shows up. Everyone's happy. Everybody's always happy with the seafood tower. Yeah, that sort of thing feels like a gala event

in a Batman film before something goes really wrong. The Joker's about to show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You better enjoy that shrimp because the joke is on his way. Yeah, it's all the rich fat cats in their tuxedos who are in a rarefied location that's about to be raided by the Joker and his minions.

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing they even go to those in Gotham anymore. I know. Just stay away. Like if you get that invitation, you're like, Oh, that sounds fun. We wait a second.

No, this is a trap. The joke is going to show up or multiple villains are going to show up, depending on which film. And as you're driving in your tuxedo, you hear over the radio that there is a breakout at Arkham Asylum and a bunch of them escaped and you're like, well, that probably won't affect my evening.

Looking forward to my jumbo shrimp. Well, I think that's a great starter. And also, every time people mention lobster now, I got big into reaction videos during the pandemic. I never really used to watch reaction videos before the pandemic. And I think something about watching them now brings me a lot of joy.

Connects you to people. That's what it is, I think. And I've been watching a lot of this guy who plays his dad albums that he likes. And his dad is really open to his son's music. And so it's very heartwarming. And there was one of them where his dad turned to his son and went, you just feed him me lobster here.

It's all lobster. And I always think of that whenever anyone says lobster. I just think of... What does that mean? He basically was saying, I'm sure you could have been playing me loads of rubbish music, but all you keep bringing me is lobster. You keep bringing me the best.

And I haven't found an album that hasn't been an album I don't like so far. What a wonderful way to say that. That's great. I love that. It means you're giving me the good stuff is what he's saying. Yeah, you give me the good stuff. Oh, great.

That's adorable. Very nice Canadian father and son. We move on to your main course, the dream man. You've had a big tower. So for your tower as a start, oh, I'm expected a skyscraper now for your main course. Here's where it's all going to fall apart, because in my 11-year-old boy thing kicks in.

I legitimately thought about making my main course of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But in my actual choice isn't much better. So my actual choice is an entire 16-inch pizza with onions on it. That's my main course. And specifically, when I lived in New York, there was a pizza place called Ninos. It was on St. Mark's Place in the East Village.

I lived near there, and I felt like when I found it, like, oh, I found the best pizza place in New York. This is it. Like, everyone wonders where the best pizza is. This is it. Now, to be fair, 95% of the time I ate pizza there, it was three in the morning, and I was drunk. And so I don't trust my opinion.

But it closed a long time ago, and it was like a crushing thing for me that it closed, because it was like the place. If every time I went to New York, even after I left, I would go back. I would make a pilgrimage to that pizza place and get a piece of pizza. So I want to use the magic restaurant to reopen Ninos' pizza,

and I want an entire pizza with nothing but onions on it. That's my main course. Wow. Oh, is there cheese on it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, cheese pizza, cheese and sauce, and then the topping is onions.

Just done it. We suddenly worried that Mike was picking a pizza with no tomato, no cheese, and just bread and onions. Just bread and onions. It's so fun. Yeah, I was a bit worried. But it's just like one step up from the Kevin McAllister pizza. Yeah, a half step.

I would say a half step up from the Kevin McAllister pizza. But that is, here's the thing. In TV writers' rooms, you get lunch every day. And if you order from different restaurants, if you order from a restaurant that has as an option pizza, I try not to get pizza because I'm too old to be eating pizza every day. So I'll get like a healthy salad or something

or like a veggie burger. If I don't get the pizza, someone else will get a pizza. And as soon as it shows up, I immediately think I wish I had gotten pizza. Because pizza, it looks better than whatever it is that you're eating if you're eating anything else. And so when I thought about the dream restaurant, I thought if I'm in this dream restaurant

and someone at another table is eating pizza, whatever I'm eating, I could be eating the entire chef's menu at French Laundry. I would still look over and smell the pizza from the next table over and think, I wish I were eating that instead. I agree with that as a premise that pizza always looks better than whatever you're eating

if you're not eating pizza. I would say the one exception to that for me would be if the pizza only had onions on it. I don't know where this started. I don't know why. To me, it's always been like I will eat cheese pizza if it's around happily. But I will always then wish I were eating onion pizza instead.

And I know how weird this is. I believe me. Like there's nothing you can say to me that has been said to me a million times before. But I really think onion pizza is the best pizza. I'm also now imagining this in the Gotham fundraiser. So they've taken away the seafood tower and everyone's like, wow, what's coming next?

And then they bring out these huge pizzas. That would be the joker. It would be the joker. It would turn out it was the joker with the pizza. That's how they would know the joker's about to show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, fuck. Oh, no.

I was going to open it and they were like, oh, shit. Who ordered pizza? Actually, what it would be like is people would smell pizza and they would go, oh, interesting. And then they would see that there are onions on it and then they'd be like, the fucking Riddler, man. He's done it. Yeah, yeah, here he comes.

Yeah, I think it's the texture. I think I just like the little crunch. Add something to it. I don't know. I don't like any other type. I don't like peppers. I don't like, obviously, I don't eat pepperoni or sausage. But I just always want onions.

I always want onions on my pizza. I kind of get the onion thing in a way because I've started just doing a simple, dish where I just roast a load of vegetables and then put them with some couscous and chickpeas and stuff. And I put shallots in there every time. If I forget the shallots, which I did on one occasion, it really is a lot worse and not just for flavor,

but because I am missing that little, those little crunchy bits. It just makes the dish more interesting and it became a lot more boring. Because even if it's just roast, veg and couscous, it's amazing how much I've enjoyed it lately. I'm finding it very exciting. But I think the onions are doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting.

I agree. See? See? I'm not. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Look, I love an onion. I love the sweetness of an onion.

I love the crunch of an onion. But I just think that pizza is a blank canvas. You can fill it up with whatever you like. Maybe I need to try this. I think I get giddy every time when I'm ordering pizza and I think, what can I have on it? And I pile it up with so much stuff. Yeah, I think the mistake with pizza is too many toppings.

Because it is a blank canvas and you're like, ooh, that looks good and that looks good. I think you, no matter what it is, I think you want basically one or maybe two toppings. Like people who eat meat will eat sausage and onion or you'll eat like pepperoni and onion or something or whatever. But I think anything more than two toppings, you're ruining the pizza.

Because then all you taste is the stuff on top and you don't get the basic pizza taste. Is it Nino's you want the pizza from? Yeah. So you want it from there? Mm-hmm. Because I was going to offer you two other places. Okay.

Do you want it from Alfredo's pizza or pizza by Alfredo? Wow, that's a deep cut. I told you this was going to happen and James said that he wouldn't do this. Don't worry, we had Martin Freeman on and James spent the whole thing asking him to do his voice from Fargo. So this is actually going very well compared to that.

I heard that one. He didn't get it. It was clear that you wanted him to do the voice and he didn't understand that for a long time. Oh, he got it. He got that's what I wanted him to do the whole time. In my dream was not playing ball with the likes of me. Well, you kept saying like everyone else isn't good at it.

You're the one who's. Thank you. Thank you very much. Like he just didn't take the bait over and over again. I was like, he's not going to do it, man. He's wily. He's wily. But he got me to do it.

I was pretty good about that. But yeah, I've watched them all again recently because my girlfriend hadn't seen them. So he watched them all during lockdown. So I've got these, you know, they're fresh. They're fresh in the head here. Yeah, clearly. Was it like the most watched show during 2020 or something?

The office was, I think, the most watched show even before the pandemic. Like it was having this weird resurgence. And then the pandemic like kicked it into overdrive. Like I got recognized as Moe, even with a mask on, I got recognized as Moe's more like in the last two or three years than I had when the show was on. Like it was really a, I think that when

everyone has to stay in their house and there's nothing to do, that show had 201 episodes or something like that. And I think it would just became the thing that was like a ritualistic like family way to pass time. It definitely kicked up a notch. I tried to show my kids the British version and they were like, no, thank you.

They did not like David Brent as much as Michael Scott, which I kind of get, you know, for a kid. Yeah. Adults, adults love it, but. All the people in that version, they killed you. They said, don't do accents if you ask them to. They're not very fun. Yeah.

They're not very fun, are they? Your dream side dish. Yeah. What's a company in this? Onion pizza from Nino's. So my favorite individual food of all foods, I think, is sweet potatoes. And there's a restaurant in LA called Jar and they make this side dish that's a, technically, I think it's a purple yam, is what they call it.

It's just a whole purple yam cut in half and then they put this creme fraiche on it as a little sauce there. And it's so dense and hearty that you can kind of just eat that as a whole meal. And I always order something and then also the purple yam with creme fraiche. And I kind of then skip most of what I ordered as my dinner

and just eat the purple yam. So I'm ordering a purple yam with creme fraiche from Jar to go along with my entire onion pizza. This now sounds like a, I'm just realizing how horrifying a meal this sounds like. But I'm going to have a side dish of a one giant purple yam with creme fraiche. Purple yam sounds like,

I mean, this is not 11 year old boy food, a purple yam with creme fraiche. That's, this is big boy stuff now. This is big boy food. Yeah. This is the one thing that I feel like an adult when I eat. Yeah. No question. But it's really good. But it's really thick and hearty,

but also it's kind of got a sweetness to it. And then the creme fraiche is like a little exciting, I don't know, a little flavor added. I just, I really love it. And it has that, like my favorite Thanksgiving, I'm not a Thanksgiving food guy. The one thing I will always eat is sweet potatoes. Like anytime there's sweet potatoes on a menu,

I will order them happily and mostly eat that. So yeah, I'm not sure how it's going to, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about how it was going to mix with the onion pizza. I feel like it'll be okay with the onion pizza, right? Like, I can see you going to and fro between them. Yeah. Like taking a little break from my enormous onion pizza.

So go with your purple yam. Yeah. I mean, so far you've essentially ordered three things that you would have as a main, you said that this purple yam is pretty much a main course. You have it as your main meal. And then the starter is a tower of three different types of seafood. So you kind of got three main meals so far really.

So you could just space them out, you know, an hour apart and just have a very long. Is there someone else coming in after me or could I have this table for a while? You've got this as long as you need it. Yeah. For eternity. Yeah. It's the dream restaurant. Yeah. And you got this.

Also, you mentioned Thanksgiving there, just going back to like, right in TV shows, American TV shows. And this is maybe something that we noticed a lot being from the UK. But there's always like, especially sitcoms, they'll have a Thanksgiving episode pretty regularly. I don't know, it seems to me like that would be a fun thing

to do to be like, we've got our own show, we get to do a Thanksgiving episode, especially if it's about a community or a family. Is that fun when you get to kind of go, like, how are we going to do this one? It is, although now TV's been around for so long that there's kind of nothing left to do. Like the theme of Thanksgiving episodes is always the same,

which is if it's a workplace show, the theme always ends up being, you know what, this workplace is kind of like a family. Like that's always, it's like, so you're doing that over and over again. The network TV schedule, which is sort of now outdated, runs basically September to May. So you have a Halloween episode,

you have a Thanksgiving episode, you have a Christmas episode, you have a Valentine's Day episode. Those are like the four big staples of American TV holiday episodes. You never get July 4th, Independence Day. You don't really get like the summer, anything in the summer, like you don't,

that's sort of missing. You don't really get New Year's episodes, you sometimes do, but the show's already off the air from early December to January. So there's like holidays that you never get episodes for, and then there's certain holidays that every show does an episode for, and it's getting a little bit,

like it was fun for a while. And then like in season seven of a show, you're like, oh God, damn it, we have to do a Thanksgiving episode again. So it's not unfun, but it also now is a little bit, like it feels a little perfunctory instead of like exciting, you know? I had Thanksgiving dinner once,

and there was like sweet potatoes, but with marshmallow on the top. Yeah, yeah. That was the maddest thing I've ever eaten in my life. And I was like, I cannot culturally wrap my head around why this is a thing. Because you don't live in America. In America, it's like, take the sugary thing

and then put sugar on it, the move. But the craziest thing is that that's part of the meal, that's not dessert, that's part of the meal. And then after that, they're like, who wants pie? And you're like, I just ate pie, like I just ate exactly this thing, and then you eat like a pecan pie that has more sugar in it.

It's bananas, it's like a, it's nonsense, it shouldn't exist, it should be outlawed. Well, we get onto your dream drink now, which by the way, you were saying about the secret ingredient earlier. I don't think you need to worry anymore. We won't tell you what it is just yet, but I think you're out of the woods

with secret ingredient wise. Let's hear what the drink is. I'm a whiskey drinker, generally. And I usually just drink neat whiskey, but since this is a special occasion, I'm gonna have a proper old fashioned. That will be my drink. That's my drink of choice if I'm in the cocktail mood

as opposed to just a glass of whiskey mood. So I'm gonna get an old fashioned. I'm not gonna get super fancy with the whiskey, I'm gonna have a maker's mark old fashioned with a nice little dash of sugar and some bitters and a little twist and a nice one nice big clear ice cube. And I'll have like 11 of them because I'm assuming that I won't get drunk magically

in this dream restaurant. But that's my like, if I'm feeling like, it's like a special occasion, I'll get an old fashioned. Is this love of whiskey, something you funneled into Ron Swanson? Yeah, it's actually a crazy story. Well, not crazy, it's an interesting story. My favorite whiskey is Lagovulin,

which when I was living in New York, I used to go into the slicker store. I'm not a huge drinker, but I used to have a bottle of whiskey around if I wanted some whiskey at night. And I went into the slicker store and there was this really old Russian guy who ran the slicker store.

And I used to buy, I don't know, probably maker's mark. And one day I went in and I was like, I'll have a bottle of maker's mark. And he was like, you were like whiskey? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, he like did this like, come here thing with his hand. And I was like, okay.

And he brought me into the back of his liquor store. And I was like, I might get murdered. This might be it. But he said, try this. And he took a tiny little like symbol plastic glass and he poured some whiskey into it. And he had me try it and it was delicious. And he showed me, it was Lagovulin.

And I was like, this is great. And he was like, this is the best whiskey. This is what you should drink. It's don't drink maker's mark, drink this. So I was like, all right, old Russian gentleman, you're on. So I became a Lagovulin drinker. And at the time, this is like 2000, maybe 2001.

I was the only person I knew who had heard of Lagovulin. Like it was just a, you know, it's a tiny small batch thing from Scotland. And I was very proud of the fact that I knew about a whiskey that no one else knew about. So I got to LA and I created the show and I made Ron Swanson a whiskey drinker and the props woman said, what whiskey should he drink?

And I said, oh, he should drink this whiskey called Lagovulin. So she bought a bottle of Lagovulin and put it on his desk for the scene. Now, unbeknownst to me, Nick Offerman got to the scene. I wasn't on the set that day. He got to the scene and was like, oh, I must have told someone that my favorite whiskey was Lagovulin because he was his favorite whiskey too.

So we went two years not knowing and every time he had to drink whiskey, it was Lagovulin. And we went for two years not knowing that there was this coincidence. And then one day I was on the set and someone was like, why do you drink Lagovulin? And Nick was like, it's my favorite whiskey. And I was like, no, it's my favorite whiskey.

And we realized that we had this crazy weird thing in common and we just hugged each other and wept and had a great time. So it was this weird piece of tizmit that lined up perfectly. I love that. And it ended up, there's that absolutely beautiful scene where Ron visits the distillery. And it's just, it's stunning.

Because normally I don't like seeing sitcom characters outside of their natural environment, but it worked so perfectly. It was just such a peaceful, lovely scene. Yeah, we were shooting in London because Chris Pratt was doing the first Guardians movie and we went to London and we were like, well, if we're going all the way to London,

what else should we do? So we did a bunch of things. We went to Stonehenge for like an hour and shot a tiny little scene where Pratt, there's a moment where like he gets a job there and someone gets a letter from him or something and is like, it says, you know, he went to his first day of work and he got lost.

And then you just cut to him at Stonehenge going like, this isn't right. I kid you, this isn't right. It was like three seconds of an episode. We snuck off to Paris and shot a thing in Paris. And then I was like, well, if we're going all the way to England, we ought to take Nick to the Lagerville distillery.

So they broke off a little unit and he took a train and he went to a lighthouse. And like he did this whole like journey where he went to like the only place in Europe that that character would want to go, which was the Lagerville distillery. I mean, I'm now just saying things I like, but also because Chris Pratt had got so ripped for Guardians,

there's that one line in the episode where you have to reference the fact he's lost so much weight and he just says, oh, I stopped drinking beer and it just... Yeah, they're walking in. They're walking in, he's like, that's it? You just start drinking beer and he's like, yeah, lost 50 pounds.

And here's the thing. I have absorbed that line as fact. And anytime I don't drink beer and I'm doing dry January and not drinking for a month or whatever, I genuinely think to myself, oh, good, you're going to end up like Chris Pratt and that. And I genuinely think that in my head and think, yeah, because remember, he just stopped drinking beer.

And I was like, no, no, that was a line. In your mind, you saw a documentary once about health and there's a line in there about if you don't drink beer, you'll look like you're an action star. You look like Star Lord, yeah. I think it all the time, every year around this time when I've not drunk for a month and all that and I'm kind of like continuing to not drink too much,

I always think, I think of Chris Pratt all the time, thinking of him saying all he did was quit beer and in my head, I don't put it in parts of Rick, in my head, he's sitting on the sofa being interviewed by Ellen or someone. And it was like a real thing that he said once. I was like, yeah, because remember, Chris Pratt said that. He told me what it takes to actually get into that shape

and it's more than that. It's not just, there was a quick Chris Pratt story. He was doing a movie called Delivery Man, I think, with Vince Vaughn and he was playing the fat best friend and so he was like, I'm gonna get to 300 pounds. That was my, he was his goal. And he's a big guy, he's six, three or something, but he's like, I'm gonna weigh 300 pounds for this role.

So he just started eating a ton and just ballooning up and we did a scene for an episode where he was in an ice cream store, ice cream parlor and they were eating ice cream and like all the actors have spit buckets so that, you know, if the scene is going, they're pretending to eat the ice cream and then when they yell cut, they spit it out.

Pratt ate the ice cream every time and he ate, I believe the number is 14 ice cream cones over the course of the scene. And he woke up in the middle of the night with like tachycardia, like his heart was beating like 200 beats a minute, because he had ingested, you know, 10,000 grams of fat in one night.

So he got up to 300 pounds, then he got cast in Guardians and was like, oh no, I have to be like in superhero shape. So he started this crazy training regimen and just the pounds like melted off and he was doing like two-a-day, three-a-day workouts and like going down and down and down, he got to like 250 and then 240, 230 and then they needed to do reshoots for the first movie.

So he was like, oh my God. Man, okay. And he like went back up to like 280 and then they did the reshoots and then he like crashed again. He was like Robert De Niro. His weight was like fluctuating like 80 pounds twice over the course of like five months.

It was bananas. And if you watch, that's like season four or five. I can't remember now. And if you watch it, it's like from episode to episode, he's a completely different person. Like he just is like, he's either enormous and pudgy or looks like a superstar. My wife has occasionally said to me

that I remind her of Chris Pratt and we've never said out loud which Chris Pratt she's talking about. I think I know, but I've choose to believe the other one. Well, that ice cream chat brings us quite neatly onto dessert. I would have personally, I mean, when you were saying about him waking up in the night

with his heart going, I mean, that's a window into my future. I know that's how I'm going to go. I'll be having 40 ice cream cones and I'll be happy. I'll be happy with that. All right, so I have a extremely specific and angry belief about proper dessert in restaurants. Which is that there's only one dessert

that anyone should serve. And when a restaurant doesn't serve it, it infuriates me. I don't want anything fancy. I don't want any complicated hot lava, this or lemon meringue that I don't want any of that stuff. Here's what I want. A warm chocolate brownie with nuts in it and a scoop of ice cream.

That's it. Brownie ala mode with nuts. And if a restaurant doesn't serve that dessert, in my mind, it's an illegitimate restaurant and should be shut down by the health department. By the health department. Yes, so the health department are coming in. They're going, there's no chocolate brownie here.

You're being shut down. You may as well have had rats. Yeah, that's fair enough. Yeah, to me, it's the pizza of desserts, which is to say, if you're eating any dessert and you see anyone else eating that, you would rather have that. Do you want onion on your brownie?

Yes, please. No, it has to have nuts in it, though. Again, there's some kind of theme here of crunchiness, because chocolate brownie without nuts, take or leave it. Chocolate brownie with nuts to me is the perfect dessert. Interesting. So what nuts? Because I think for me, I'm almost live away around

because my mum is like a really good baker and made a lot of chocolate brownies when we were growing up, but they always had nuts in them. And then I think just what you've always had, as nice as it is, once you have something that's different, you're like, oh, this is the real treat outside of my house, even though your mum's being nice to you

and making you really nice stuff. You're like, oh, but I get this at my friend's house and I can eat that there. So if I had brownies without the nuts in it, and still now I feel like I get too excited about them, even though brownies with walnuts in them, I love them. Yeah, that's the right nut. Walnut brownie is a great nut.

Yeah, that's the right move. So you're saying that you would rather like reject your mother's love in exchange for just a different dessert. Maybe not these days, but as a kid, I think I was doing a lot of that. I think I did not realise how good I had it with a mum who was really good at baking,

really good at cooking. And then I would always like think, oh, those kids are just allowed to eat McDonald's. Those lucky kids, they're so lucky. And I was there eating something that probably tasted a lot better. It's a very James A. Castaway to rebel to have brownies without walnuts in your face, man.

Scoot your mum! You do what I want. I'm having no texture in my food. I grew up in a very no-sugar household, so any of my friends who had fruit loops or whatever, any kind of sugary cereal, that's where I wanted to be sleeping over because I was denied terrible food.

And so I was always finding the people whose parents took a more casual approach to their children's health. And that's where I wanted to be. We couldn't eat sugary gum, we couldn't eat sugary cereal. My dad was a health food nut. And so I ate granola every morning for like hearty, organic granola was my breakfast,

which is fine. I mean, I'm happy that he did that, but at the time it was like all I want is like apple jacks or whatever, you know? My mum's more like very healthy. My dad, the opposite, and yet he managed to completely hide that from us throughout our childhood.

And we thought he was just as healthy as mum was. And then I've grown up and it's really weird how we had the sugar cereal, we were allowed one, it was called special cereal in our house, one box of special cereal at the start of the month. And whoever went with mum on the big shop got to choose a special cereal.

So yeah, you're more likely to want to help out on the big shop and push the trolley and stuff. So you get to choose whatever the special cereal was. And when it's gone, it's gone. And you have to wait until the next month for it. Now we've all moved out. I go home to visit them. And all I want in the morning cereal wise

is something pretty sensible and boring. And I opened the cupboard and it's full of sugar cereal. Cause my dad, that's who he is. And I'm like, he's cookie crisp in here. You're in your sixties. You're going to go nuts. You can't eat cookie crisp in your sixties. Did you like try to make the one box last

for the whole month? Did you parse it out or you just wolf it down? Massive cereal bowl of it. We were allowed one bowl in the morning. So it'd be absolutely brimming to the point where it's nearly spilling over the sides, but not quite got very good at doing that. Wolf it all down, love it, be in heaven.

And then go to school. And so after, yeah, there's me, my brother and sister. Oh, so it's like one, two days. It's cool. That's it. Yeah. Interesting. Meanwhile, my dad was hiding ice cream in the freezer

underneath meats so that we couldn't see them. Oh my. And ate it himself. But I didn't know that until I was an adult. I mean, this is fantastic. What a, but I could do this to him for pulling it off. You went your whole childhood, never knew this. Yeah.

He absolutely nailed it. Yeah. And now he's out in the open. He's absolutely going for it. This guy. He doesn't care now. He doesn't care now. Cookie crisp is the perfect,

cereal for a 60 year old lunatic to be. Yeah. If you're in your sixties, you shouldn't be eating a cereal with a wolf on the box. If anything, I think if he'd been behaving like this when we were children, we would have eaten healthier. Cause I think we would have looked him and gone, oh no, we can't go down this path.

He's going, going crazy. This guy, that is the parenting question is always like, do you do the wrong thing and trust that your kids will rebel against it and do the right thing? Like that's a constant question in my mind of like, am I, should I be like letting up my kid, just like watch as much TV as they want and like playing with their phones and stuff.

And then they'll rebel and become very studious and like boring kids who study philosophy at Oxford or something. Like I think about that all the time. And clearly it worked cause now you want boring, sensible, healthy cereal, right? Like. Yeah.

In the morning. He kind of did, he pulled it off. Although, you know, there's a certain time of the day where I then go nuts. So like, I can't start the day off with sugar cereal. I just can't, my brain can't do it. I would feel like, no, that's it. The whole days are right off.

But there's a certain point in the day where I'm like, right, now I'm just like crazy dessert guy. I'm trying to get on top of it, Michael. I'm currently, I'm currently Monday to Friday, being a good boy. And then the weekends are like the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah, absolutely, absolutely insane weekend. Do you remember that in the Bible,

the tales about Sodom in the Bible where everyone had big bowls of cookie crisp? Yep. Listen, I might as well be doing what the people in that city did to the desserts. I might as well be doing it. That's how crazy I'm going. I'm going to absolutely crazy.

All right. Well, wait, walk me through that weekend then. What does it look like? Well, so I'm off the leash and I know it's Saturday. And so everything that I'm eating in the day is just followed up with whatever. Also, I've still got all the Christmas chocolate and fudge and everything in the in the cupboards

that all my relatives got for me. So now it's like I'm not eating that in the week. But in the weekend, I'm just dipping in those. I'm getting a caramel covered pretzel every five seconds. I'm getting, I'm getting these fudges as kind of cream fudge. There was these marshmallows that were like mango and passion fruit with meringue, bits of meringue in them.

I was eating those. I was eating these massive blocks of honeycomb that are covered in chocolate. I was eating those. Ed got me four different types of ice cream and a bag of cookie dough for my birthday. I'm still going for it. I've just finished them.

I finished the cookie dough the other day after, directly after, I'd eaten some fudge. And it was no, no, no gap between either of them as I wanted to come down after the fudge. So I need to level it out with this cookie dough. Do you eat all this just in your kitchen or do you take it to the toilet like you're in a nightclub? No, I go right to the toilet.

I'm eating it all. I'm coming out. I'm talking really quickly about an app I've designed that gets desserts delivered straight to your bedrooms. Wiping his mouth, hope no one notices the little bits of fudge on the corners of his lips. Powdered sugar all over his nose. Absolutely crazy.

I mean, yeah. When this runs, when the Christmas candy runs out, are you going to be okay then or are you going to go back and restock and keep this up? I tell myself every single year that, well, this is just because I've got it all in the cupboard because it's Christmas stuff. Once that's gone, I'll calm down.

And I know that that's not going to happen. I'll just have to, I'll just be buying it. I won't be buying that sort of stuff, but ice cream is the one. Ice cream is the one where I'd be like, well, obviously I'll buy a tub of ice cream today because I feel like treating myself. And I'll go and buy that.

I'm very good now at not eating a whole tub in one go. But that doesn't really count when you go, well, it's good that I only ate a few scoops and then followed up with a handful of caramel-covered pretzels, some marshmallow-crazy meringue concoction, and some cookie dough that my friend got me for my birthday, for my 37th birthday.

Do you do the thing of like, if there's like some kind of piece of candy, like you'll be like, I'm just going to eat half of this and you break it in half and eat it. And then 10 seconds later, you're like, well, now I'll eat the other half. You've got an idea of that stuff. Yeah, that's a, there's a,

on sets in, if you, if shooting early in the morning out here, there's always Krispy Kreme donuts. And I always see them and I'm always like, I really want one of this, but I don't want a whole one. So I take a knife and I cut it in half. And I eat it and as I'm eating the half of it, I'm reaching for the other half with my other hand. I was like, what was the point of this?

Psychologically, I'm healthier because I cut it in half somehow. Yeah, there's like a one second gap between the two halves that is like, you've taken a break to give your body a chance to like, you know, deal cope with it. Yeah, process the sugar to scream at you a bit more. Yeah.

Someone sent me some donuts from Crosstown donuts for Christmas and there was six of them because you know, I live with my girlfriend. So clearly we could share those donuts, but she looked to them and said, I'm not really into any of those flavors. And I was into all of those flavors and there was a stick on the box that said

must be eaten within a day. And I was like, oh no, I wish I hadn't met that. Well, you, you were just following the rules. That's a good ethical person right there. You're just, you're doing what the, what the rules were. He's got a whole roll of those stickers in his drawer and he puts them on everything and then pretends that they were there when they arrived.

I'm going to read your menu back to you now, see how you feel about it. You would like still water, Poblonso bread, hearty, grainy, nutty bread and pretzel bread with warm butter. Starter, a seafood tower, crab meat, lobster, jumbo shrimp, sushi rolls and mustard hot sauce and cocktail sauce. Main course, an entire 16 inch pizza

with onions from Nino's at New York, RIP. Side dish, purple yam and creme fraiche from Jar in LA. Drink 11 makers mark old fashions with a big ice cube in each one and dessert, a warm chocolate brownie with nuts and a scoop of ice cream. Otherwise we get shut down by the health, the health board. You know, when I hear it back, I'm pretty into it.

I gotta say. You know what, so am I. And I actually think that pizza is a stroke of genius in the middle of that. To have the seafood tower, you're feeling all fancy and then you're eating a big old slice of cheesy pizza. I think it's great. That's just what you want to eat for dinner, always.

Yeah, but I've got bad news for you, Michael. I know you think you've been in the dream restaurant. It was the nightmare restaurant all along. I was worried that this was gonna happen. Yeah. I texted Ed yesterday and told him I was gonna do that. So excited. He texted me yesterday going,

guess what I'm gonna do tomorrow? I'm gonna say it was the nightmare restaurant all along. He's like, yeah, you do that, man. That's pretty good. No, wait, what was the mystery ingredient? Can you tell me now? Can you guess what it is? It's specific to you.

It's related to you and your work. So it's probably an outfit. Is it like chili? It's even more specific to you. Oh, you're gonna kick yourself. You're gonna kick yourself so hard. But you're in the right show. Oh, Beats.

It's Beats. Which, when we were circling around the purple, yeah, and I thought, it's not not a beat, is it? No. Thanks so much for doing the podcast. It's a really, really pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, there we are.

What a lovely chat with Michael Sher. What a nice guy. Lovely chat, lovely guy. It was a privilege. Absolutely. And even more of a privilege because he did not say Beats, James. Thank you for not saying Beats.

We would have had to kick you out. And then who knows? You would have been, do you think when we kick people out now, they just like land on a pile on top of Jade Adams? Yeah, I think so. Or they go to the bad place. They go to the bad place.

Did you like my twists that I did at the end of that episode, Ed? Yes. It's good, wasn't it? I think Michael liked it. Very clever. I knew you were going to do it, of course, because you texted me yesterday

saying you were going to do it. Yes, I texted you telling you that it was going to happen. Always good to plan a twist in advance and tell the other person involved. Yep. So, yeah. I thought I'd tell Ed that I'm gonna do it

because if it's an awful idea, Ed would just tell me not to do it. However, I did forget that our relationship isn't that you don't tell me not to do bad ideas. You just kind of let me do them anyway. Yes. Good luck with your book. Thank you.

But Michael has a book that is a good idea. It's called How To Be Perfect. Yeah. If there's ever been a more alluring title, I'd like to know about it because we'd all like to be perfect. Yes, we would. And I'm very excited to read it.

It is out now and it's published by Quirkus and you can find it in all good bookstores. Your book, James, of course, is called Something Different. Yes. You can pre-order it now on all the usual platforms. It's called James A. Caster's Guide

to Quit in Social Media, Being the Best You Can Be and Curing Yourself with Loneliness, Volume One. And of course, you can also go and get tickets to Ed Gamble's live comedy show, Electric. It's tearing up the nation. It's tearing up the nation. It's tearing up hearts.

It's available on edgamble.co.uk. Tickets are available. Not the show itself, of course. Plenty more dates left. Get stuck in. Yeah. And listen, I don't know. Maybe Ed's not been paying attention to this,

but people are raving about this show. Man, my mom said it. She was proud of me. Yes, Ed's mom. Whoa. And people who aren't is mom. My mother-in-law didn't say anything to me about the rude bits.

Yes, which is, that's good, isn't it? Step forward. Yep, because that would have been awkward. She didn't punch me in the arm and say, just so rude, which she normally does. Yes, yes. So come and see that. A show that does not deserve a punch in the arm,

but I must emphasize, is quite rude. Is quite rude, to be fair. He's a rude boy. Also, hey, you can get us on all the socials. Talking about my books about quitting social media, don't quit social media just yet. You've got to follow Off Menu on Twitter, at Off Menu Official.

Yes, and of course, you need to follow us on Instagram, Off Menu Official, and go on our website, offmenupodcast.co.uk. There's also a list of restaurants on there for every restaurant that gets mentioned. Every restaurant that's ever been mentioned on the podcast is on that list. And sometimes, Ed, people come up to me and they say,

hey, thanks for that list that's on your website. It's really helpful for me when I'm going out to eat. And I'll say, oh, cool. What restaurants have you been to on the list? And I go, oh, I haven't actually been on any of them. I just go and look at the list, but I haven't been to any of them yet. That's always what people say.

They never say, I went to this one. They go, oh, no, I'm just saying, it's nice to look at the list. Yeah, you've never had any interaction with the general public that's gone like that. Someone said, hey, thanks for this. And you've gone, that's okay. That's cool.

Tell me more. Well, when I say general public, these are usually people who are working on TV shows that I'm already with colleagues. Yes, yeah, colleagues, colleagues. The general public, as you refer to them. General public goes like this. Hey, thanks for the fuck off.

Get out of here. Don't talk to me. Well, thank you very much for listening to the podcast. We will see you again next week, I'd imagine. We'll see you next week, but you won't see us because it's a podcast. Beep, beep. Beep, beep.

Hello, I'm Lucy Sanders. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, you might like my podcast, Cuddle Club. It's about cuddling, yes, but really it's just a way into relationships and asking cheeky questions like who is your mum's favourite and when we last unfaithful.

Previous guests include Alan Davies, Ashtonine Bee, Katherine Mayan, Rich Dozman, Ed Gamble, Nish Kumar, and other legends. Get it on A-Cast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your all podcasts. And remember to CC everybody in. If CC stands for Cuddle Club. Hello, it's me, Amy Gladhill.

You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread, I'm not gonna spoil it in case. Get him on James and Ed, but we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience.

To tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because, look, we're two Northerners, sure. But we've been living in London for a long time. The news stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes.

It's all kicking off. And that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy!

Is it? Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.