Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 149: Adam Buxton

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Podcasting royalty Dr Buckles drops by the Dream Restaurant. And this meal’s on him. Listen to The Adam Buxton Podcast on Acast or whatever you listen on. 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 protein powder of conversation, the plant-based milk of humour, mixing them together in the blender of the internet, hitting high for 10 seconds, downing it all and then being really strong, big, strong boys. Yes. Big, strong boys named Ed Gamble and James Acaster. We are big, strong boys, actually, aren't we? We're big, strong boys. I hope our parents are proud. Yes, indeedy-doody, strapping young lads. We own a dream restaurant, Ed is the matriot D, I am the genie waiter.

We can get people any food from any place, any time. We always invite a guest in and we ask them their favourite ever, starter, main course, dessert, side dish and drink, not in that order. And this week, our guest is Adam Buxton. Adam Buxton. Adam Buxton. God, I mean, if you were building a Mount Rushmore of British podcasting, Buckles is on it, right? Buckles is on it. Me and you. We're on there. Herring. Herring. The Ramses. Josh and Rob. Josh and Rob. Dad about the porno. I don't think this mountain's a good idea. The elves. QI elves. He's a very successful podcaster, writer, broadcaster. He does all that sort of stuff. He's a legend. Yeah. Actor, comedian. He's done everything. He's

done everything. And we've got him on the pod. And look, much respect, but if he chooses the secret ingredient, ingredient that we deem to be gross, then we will kick him out of the dream restaurant. He's out of here. Yes. And the secret ingredient this week is ginseng. I don't know what it is saying. I don't know what it is. I've had it in tea before. Yeah. Don't like those teas I had that have it in it. No, I don't really, look, I don't really know what it is. I think anything that sounds like tea based stuff is not really up my street. I'm not really a tea boy. As you know, I'm a coffee lad. Yes. So ginseng sounds like the sort of thing that was medicine and now people are going, Oh, imagine that. Yeah.

We'll eat that. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, I've liked herbal teas and stuff in the past, but those ones, no. Because you're a little hippie, aren't you? Little hippie. I'm a little hippie boy. Peace and love. Peace and love, everybody. Peace and love. Obviously, that whole phrase has been absolutely ruined by that Ringo star video. Ringo star, you know, be the hippie himself, but he really did. Now it's like, sounds like I'm telling people not to send me fan mail, which you've not seen that video. I'm sure you have those videos. It is everybody. This is James Acaster speaking to you with peace and love. I am asking you, please stop sending DMs to Ed Gamble to pass on to me. They will

not be responded to from here on out. No DMs said to Ed Gamble will be passed on to me anymore with peace and love. I ask you that peace and love, fantastic. You know what? A pretty good impression of Ringo star. As your impressions go, there was a lot of James Acaster still in there, but the rhythms were very Ringo. Yes. I tell you what does have a lot of great voices in it. My tour show. Oh, yes. Electric, which is going all over the country. Ed Gamble.co.uk. A lot of the shows are busy, so you better get those tic tics soon. It's a hot ticket. It's a hot ticket. Just like electricity. Yes. Good link. Yeah, it must be. Yeah, I've never felt it, but do go and buy a ticket for that. But broadly,

I think what we're all trying to get across here is if Adam says, Jim's saying he's out. He is out, but let's see. Will he say it? Why don't you say it? It's only one way to find out. This is the off menu menu of Adam Buxton. Wow, that's the most I think we've ever seen. Yeah. Welcome Adam Buxton to the dream restaurant. Howdy. Nice to be here. What the hell was that noise? Welcome, Adam Buxton to the dream restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time. Wow. I just saw a genie. Yes, you did. Is that normal? Yeah, that's pretty normal for a lot of people in this dream restaurant. They should see a genie. How many genies have you seen in

your life? Only the two that played the beautiful lady genies in the TV shows. Barbara Eden and who was the other one? We don't know. You were talking about I Dream of Genie, right? The TV show. Yeah, me and Ed are not the people to ask about the casting choices. You might not know this, Adam. It's actually very bad form to reference other genies in the presence of a genie. Is it? I'm sorry. That is not cool. That's the kind of thing that would have been fine before 2015. Yeah. In the last five years, that's come to be frowned upon. So yeah, it's not your fault. You don't know. Just don't do it again. I'm sorry. I'm 51. But listen, that's fine. I've taken that on board. You know, some 51 year old guys would go screw you. I'll reference anything

I want in the presence of a genie. Genies are getting too sensitive these days, but not me. If that's the way genies feel, that is totally cool. Let's all grow together. I really appreciate that. You're a true ally to genies. Thank you very much. James, there was a new noise there that I've not heard before that the genie made when he popped out of the lamp. Can you just repeat that for me? Whoa. What's happened? Well, I burst out of the lamp as usual, but actually went up a bit higher than I would have liked. And so when I landed, I decided to really put my all into it. I really put my haunches into it when I landed. Yeah. And it just made a real shebam noise because loads of sparks and extra magic dust kind of flew out from under my feet as I made impact with the

ground. So it was a big one for you, Adam. Is it like, and apologies if this is very root one kind of conversation for a genie, but is it like the TARDIS inside the lamp? Have you got a lot of space in there or is it cramped? Actually, that's a perfectly fine question to ask. You're right there. It is actually, it's massive in there. It's humongous. It's kind of the size of Heathrow Airport. Whoa. Yeah, in there. And it's just empty, just like whatever I want to fill it with on any given day. Sometimes during this pandemic, I have made it look like the inside of Heathrow Airport because I miss it. I miss travel. Yeah. Who doesn't? So the genie has to get planes normally? If I want to. Yeah, if I want to. Yeah, so often I've got a lot of hookups with magic carpets

and stuff like that. So I don't always need to get a plane. Does it require a great deal of genie energy to transport yourself to different places? I was watching Ghost the other day, for example. Okay, listen, I'll stop you there again. Ghost and genie are different. And if you're going to just kind of come here and make out like we're all the same. Honestly, I wasn't. I was just referencing the idea of non-material, non-corporeal transportation and body switching and things like that. Okay, fair enough. And in that film, when the ghost occupies someone else's body, it takes a great deal of energy and they're knackered afterwards. They can barely stand up. Yeah. Well, Ed knows that a lot of my genie powers take it out of me. And at the end of every off

menu episode, I have to have a long lie down. I'm really sweaty and just quite exhausted by the whole thing. And it takes it out of me emotionally as well. I cry a lot after every episode. Oh, yeah. It's pretty tricky when we've got back-to-back records, I'll be honest. You can always tell when it's the second of the double bill. Yeah, you can tell the second one. Oh, I'm really struggling. Luckily, you are the first and only episode we're recording today, Adam. Okay, cool. And it's a Friday, so it's genie party night. It's genie party night. I did a big shebang when I landed. I'm feeling really good about making your meal. Are you a food guy? I am, you know, I've come to realize that I am. And I think it is one of my principal pleasures

in life. And I'm only just at this midpoint, well, I'm way beyond the midpoint. But at 51 years old, I'm only just beginning to realize that actually, I love food. And I wish that I had been more adventurous as a youngster. And only in the last five years have I just started to, you know, widen my horizons a little bit and eat different types of food that I used to turn my nose up. I was at, turn my nose up at, I was, that's the order that I want this sentence to go. I was such a picky eater when I was little, I was terrible. I mean, I still don't like cheese, so that's still off the menu. I didn't like a lot of vegetables like no tomatoes, yuck, I mean, pretty much no salad of any kind. Lettuce was the only thing that I would,

you know, tolerate. But apart from that, no, I didn't like anything. And now you into vegetables, you have tomatoes? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, in the last five years, I've been trying to eat more vegetarian and vegan dishes. So in the process of doing that, I've discovered the wonderful world of all sorts of amazing vegetables, cherry tomatoes, I was having some earlier on today, yum, yum, yum, I was thinking as I bit into those little bastards. I'll be honest, when you're talking about this journey of discovery you've been on

in the last five years and truly discovering the world of food, I wasn't expecting cherry tomatoes to be the headliner. Yeah, because it used to be, for me, a fancy meal used to be having spaghetti bolognese. And then, you know, you take a couple of frankfurtos, Erta Ferta, you know, the Erta brand. And I honestly swear to you that I thought, I'm kind of like a brilliant chef, because I suddenly one day thought of the idea of taking two frankfurtas and chopping them into little slices and adding and sort of sprinkling them like croutons on spaghetti bolognese. Because, you know, because it's nice to have just a bit more meat on just spaghetti bolognese of a slightly different kind, a bit more, you know,

synthetic kind of piggy meat on top of the spike bog. Now spaghetti bolognese obviously is Italian, frankfurtos are German. What voice do you do it? Yeah, so that is my generic offensive euro voice. I love it. I guess if you don't like cheese, what are your options to sprinkling over the top of bolognese, right? So it's pretty much only chopped up frankfurtas. Yeah, I mean, I probably would have gone with hundreds and thousands if there hadn't been any frankfurtas to hand. But that was my idea of a pretty classy meal. Otherwise, it would have been frankfurtas in white bread because my mum never used to buy the buns.

Now you said when you were younger, you thought of tomatoes as yuck, yuck, yuck. And now you're eating tomatoes and you're thinking yum, yum, yum. So that's been the story because Ed's making out like it's some laughable narrative arc for you, but it's actually quite a big deal that you've used to think yuck, yuck, yuck, and now you think yum, yum, yum. So it was yuck, yuck, yuck, you went to yum, yum, yum. Was it ever yuck, yuck, yum, or yuck, yum, yuck, or was it just straight to the yum, yum, yum? Yeah, good question, Ed. Initially, that is a good question. Initially, I was sort of holding my nose and thinking yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. But then I think what

you realise when you actually do start to cook things with a bit of seasoning and, you know, mixing things up, different flavours is like, oh, this is interesting now and I'm not so offended by the textures as I used to be. Like I didn't like the texture of tomatoes and it was too squishy and not nearly as good as ketchup as far as I was concerned because I was fine with ketchup and my parents always used to say, but you like ketchup. And I was like, even then, I knew like ketchup is not tomatoes, really. So yeah, there was a short period of resistance, but like everything, you know, you kind of realise, oh, it's great. This is what all the fuss is about. One day, maybe I'll have that epiphany with cheese because I do look at pizzas and think, yeah, I totally get why that's

good, but I just personally don't like it. Because a lot of people say they don't like cheese, but they make an exception for melted cheese or they make an exception for pizzas. Are you off pizzas because of the cheese? Yeah, no pizza. Oh man. And I've been through trying to have pizzas without cheese and it's just too much like a blasted barren surface of an alien planet, really, isn't it, without the cheese. We always start with still a sparkling water. Do you have a preference, Adam? Well, I used, a few years ago, I would have said sparkling like a shot because it's the champagne of the waters. Yes. But then I had the misfortune of being on a bill with Nick Helm, the comedian, in Dublin a few years back. And after we did our set in the club and we killed,

we absolutely killed everyone. We said, wow, we killed everyone. Let's go and celebrate. So me and Nick Helm and Tim Vine, what the trio repaired to the hotel bar where we were staying and we lived it the heck up. But Nick Helm ruined everything by blithely announcing that sparkling water, which I started off, actually, no, after we'd been boozing for a while, I said, I'm going to switch to water because I've got to get up in the morning. And I ordered a sparkling water and he said, ah, that stuff rots your teeth. And I was like, yeah, whatever, Nick Helm. And he said, no, it really does. It rots your teeth. What happened to it in between when you said it the first time and the second time?

Did he ever sip a sparkling water? I inhabited him. It's exhausting. I thought he was just taking all the piss out of me. But it turns out he wasn't. And that stuff is absolutely deadly, as I'm sure you probably realize. I didn't know that. What do you mean that if it's deadly, it literally wears your teeth away? Yeah, look, I've got some factoids. Okay, great. The process of making fizzy water involves adding carbonic acid. That quote, feel good mouth sensation you get after sipping a carbonated drink is in fact the chemical activation of pain receptors on your tongue, responding to this acid, giving it a more ish taste. Acids are very damaging to teeth. They weaken the enamel surfaces, making the teeth vulnerable to

decay and sensitivity. If you're desperate for sparkling water, use a straw. Because when you drink with a straw, you can enjoy the flavor without the liquid coming into direct contact with the enamel, reducing the risk of damage. Is that from Nick Helm's website? That is, yeah, that's from helm.com. Information about dangerous food and drink. So at that point, did you return the unhealthy sparkling water and carry on drinking copious amounts of alcohol with Nick Helm? No, I just drank it down and totally ignored Nick Helm because I thought, I'm not taking any advice from you. And then I googled it the next day and I said, oh, shit, Nick Helm's right. So from that day, you haven't been able to drink sparkling water

without thinking of the health implications. And I'd imagine thinking of Nick Helm telling you about the health implications. Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things that they are forever linked now in my mind. Yeah. So it's going to be tap water. Tap. Tap specifically. Yeah, I like tap. And we live out in a hard water area out here in South Norfolk and I love hard water. Do you? Go on. Yeah, the harder the better. What's the best thing about hard water? Oh, man, it's bracing. You can feel that calcium going in there and calcifying everything. Yeah. I can feel all my insides gradually turning into the inside of our kettle getting all white and furry and crusty. And no, I don't know. It feels as if it's got more flavor. It's got more edge,

you know, it's more refreshing. I don't know. I'm probably imagining that, but that's how it feels to me. Oh, it's called something different for a reason, right? There must be a difference there. And you notice it. I mean, you're doing trips to London all the time for work. You're going to be an expert on this stuff. You got your chili bottle there full of hard water? It's full of hard water. Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. So the layman, it looks like you've got a sort of chrome bottle, but that's actually a see-through bottle and that's how hard the water is, right? Yeah, exactly. Like drinking mercury. It's calcified and turned it rose gold. Do you think the hard water, all of the calcium and stuff in the hard water is

slowly rebuilding your teeth from your years of sparkling water consumption? Yeah, there you go. Maybe that's what I'm doing is subconsciously compensating for all those years of, I mean, it's no, it's a scandal for sparkling water. It's deadly stuff. Yeah. And people have known about it for years, but it just, the information has never gone overground. If it weren't for brave people like Nick Helm, I would still be drinking that deadly shit. I mean, Ridley Scott in the first draft of Alien, I think the alien didn't bleed acid, it bled sparkling water. That's how dangerous that stuff is. So do you think this is a conspiracy then? You feel like you're getting a conspiracy theory out there?

Yeah. Also, I don't think Ridley Scott wrote Alien, did he? When I was asking that question, all you were thinking about was that you might have got that wrong, right? And people were going to come for you. I was just thinking he was going to be attacked by nerds. Who knows his fan base? They'll be on him like a shark. If he went to Scott like Alien. It was Dan O'Bannon. I wouldn't say his fan base. I mean, including Joe Cornish, he would absolutely destroy you for that. Yeah, that's true. And I would deserve it. So as a hard water guy, do you bully soft water kids because they're dweebs? Because they're not hard like you? No, I understand. Some people can't take hard water. It's not for everybody.

Some people, especially children, you wouldn't want to give them hard water. That's crazy. To be honest though, when you meet someone who lives in a soft water area, do you have the urge to beat them up because you're a hard water boy? I mean, I am thinking snowflake. Sure. But I don't like that term and I wouldn't use it against anyone. But you are thinking? I am thinking. I want to sock that dweed between the eyes. Yeah. That pathetic softy. You don't know what life is like with your soft, slimy water that doesn't even fur up the kettle. That's what I'm thinking. Poppidom's all bread. Poppidom's all bread. Adam Buxton. Poppidom's all bread. Bread every time. I mean, there's nothing wrong with poppidoms.

They are, of course, great. But I do love bread. I love bread. I'm bread boy. Yeah. I should write a song about bread. I've written a song about almost every other food stuff. Did you ever write food songs, James, in your band? Well, I was in a band called the Capri Sun Quartet for a while. So we were kind of food related anyway. But I've written most of my food songs on this podcast, a lot of food and drink songs over the years that have made an appearance, improvising sometimes on the pod. Yeah, they're not written, are they? You just sort of improvise them. Improvising is writing. Now, Adam, the difference between our podcasts is that you'll put a lot of effort into yours in terms of writing jingles, doing research and

things like this. Not so much on this podcast. We tend to just sort of see what happens and James will occasionally make up a song about Causton Press. Not true. Ed isn't a musician, doesn't know what he's on about. Me and you know what we're talking about, Adam. We both written songs. You write songs for your podcast. I write songs for my podcast. Let's just agree that that's what happens. Were you ever in a band, Ed? I was in a band called Tethered Priest very briefly. Tethered Priest. What was your best Tethered Priest song? We had one song called Lovin' an Abattoir. Wow. There you go. It was about two people falling in Lovin' an Abattoir. Yeah. Can you remember any of it? Lovin' an Abattoir, Lust in a Cemetery, The Eve of Lucifer.

That's all I can remember. Wow. Wow. That was pre-written, not improvised. Yeah, didn't improvise that. Sat down and wrote that in probably a math lesson, wrote that on the back of a folder. I mean, I think a lot of people, when they're trying to write music, they gravitate towards food, maybe just while they're developing the lyrics as a placeholder, you know. But actually, I think food is pretty good to write music about because it is such a universal thing. And it's generally derided as being hacky subject matter in the same way that people look down at toilet humor, fart jokes, etc. All of which I'm a great fan of. And I personally, I don't think it is hacky per se to do those things or make jokes about those

things or write songs about food, for example. It's the way you do it. Like, you know, if you write a good food song or do a good fart joke, mate, life doesn't get better. Well, then allow me to ask you this, Adam. At the end of this meal, are you going to do a big stinky fart and shit in your pants? I'm not going to shit in my pants. That's never, so far that hasn't been a problem. I'm looking forward very much to that day. Have I ever shat in my pants? I'm just trying to think. I want to be honest. I don't want to be just like… Because of food. Let's keep it, you know, let's keep it on theme. Have you ever shat in your pants because of food, Adam? Yeah, you're doing a big glorious farts,

and you're really enjoying the farts as a petroleum moment at the end of the meal, and then you shit your pants. You see how happy it's made me? Yeah, out of me to be fair. It's right up both of our streets. No. I never have. I only ever shat in my PJs because I was on antibiotics for an earache, and I was watching the man who fell to earth with my mum. I was 11 years old. It was already embarrassing because David Bowie was getting his knob out. I thought it was going to be like Star Wars with David Bowie, i.e. the perfect film, turned out to be very pretentious and arty and difficult to understand, plus long, extremely embarrassing sex scene towards the beginning of the film

that I had to watch in total silence with my mum. Then I felt my stomach rumbling and thought it was and went to enable the fart, and then discovered that it was not a fart. It was some bad stinking lava from my insides. As if watching a sex scene with your mum in the room is not embarrassing enough, you then shut your pajamas like a nightmare. It wasn't good. Imagine all the ties I've been watching films with my parents has been sex scenes and I've been embarrassed. I can only imagine during that point, shitting my pants. This is so awkward. Oh no. It's such a strange scene as well. It's like it's Rip Torn. You know who Rip Torn is, right? Arty from The Larry Sanders Show, and he is playing a kind of aging college professor, and he's having an affair with one of his students,

so it's already fairly unsavory, and they start bonking and taking photographs of each other, and it gets very animalistic, and they're sort of shouting and grunting and squealing, and the whole scene is intercut with Bowie in maybe a Japanese restaurant having a bowl of soup and watching some kabuki dancers shouting and screaming at each other as well. It's very odd. So you'd like bread? What kind of bread would you like? Yeah man, I'll have some. I mean pretty much any bread I'm happy with. Soon as the bread arrives, I'm delighted. I used to like garlic naan when I was in my Indian takeaway days in South London, Stockholm, and I would order from the takeaway. I would ask them if I could have extra mango chutney, and then it ended up with me just saying, can I have 12 pots of

mango chutney please? And the guy was like, 12. Like yeah, yeah, I really like mango chutney. He's like, well you can just buy a jar. Just buy a jar of the mango chutney. I was like, that's not as good as your mango chutney. But I also like Moroccan, I think it's called cobs, k-h-o-b-z, sort of flat bread. We had that when we went to Morocco, me and my family, and stayed in a place in Imlil. In the mountains, and it was a bit of a culture shock, and the children weren't very excited about the prospect of the tagine dish that we were about to consume, because they're kind of as unadventurous as I used to be when I was little, when it comes to food. But when that flat bread came out, all warm and dipping in the oil and a bit of salt, everyone was happy. So what's it going to be

then? The flat bread that's sat with the oil and the salt with your family in the hills of Morocco, or your student days eating a garlic 9 and 12 pots of mango chutney. I wish it was my student days. It wasn't that long ago. It wasn't? Where was it? I just assumed you were a student. No, he didn't say student days. He said take away curry days, which didn't specify the time. Yeah, it was when I was first married, and me and my wife bought our first house in South London. So it was like, we've got a house. We can do anything we want. And we didn't have children at that point. So what we used to do was just watch 24, sometimes five episodes in a single night,

and eat takeaways. And I think I would have to go for the garlic naan with the chutney. Now, Adam, you say your kids are as picky as you were when you were a kid. Have you decided on an age where you're going to sit them down and introduce them to the joy of cherry tomatoes? Actually, gradually they're shifting. So my eldest is 18, and he's quite adventurous now when it comes to food. And he has, he's kind of a self styled East Thief. I think he has turned into that really in opposition to his brother, who's much more of a monkey man. And so his younger brother about the most adventurous he gets his fish fingers. Your dream starter.

Dream starter. I think the most amazing time I ever had with a starter was one of the more memorable restaurant experiences I had, which I talked about on my podcast ages ago, actually, with my friend Garth Jennings, who's a film director, he directed the film Sing. And a couple of other things. And he was working with Disney towards the beginning of the 2000s. And when it was my wife's birthday in 2006, as a special treat, me and Garth kind of conspired to book us a table in a fancy restaurant in Paris. And Disney booked us this table at a super fancy restaurant called the Les Ambassadeurs in one of the most flash hotels in the world called the Hotel de Crayon. I think the restaurant has since closed. But inside, it was like a kind of comedy version

of a fancy Parisian restaurant, you know what I mean? Like gold and very ornate. It was like the Palace de Versailles, big mirrors and marble floors and one waiter per person. And only a few tables with loads of space in between each table. And it was really fun. And we dressed up and everything. And I'd made a big deal out of saying, I'm paying for this. This is my treat. You know, Garth, I'm really grateful that you got this table booked. And this is exciting and fun. But this one is on me. And then we sat down and we looked at the menus. And everyone was like, oh, there's no prices on these menus. And then I looked at mine, there was prices on mine, because they knew that I was the sort of lead diner I was paying. And I took a look and I

realized quite quickly that even if we went for the cheapest options, the meal for four of us was going to cost not less than 1000 pounds. So I was thinking like, oh, shit, that isn't worth it. I'm going to spend 1000 pounds on a meal. That's insanity. But I'd made this big song and dance about it. So I was like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. So I told Garth, and he's like, mate, we can split it if you want. I was like, splitting is the least of it. I think we did split it in the end. But even so, I mean, that's still 500 quid each. But basically, we went ahead and we had the meal. And actually, it was worth it. I mean, if by worth it, we're saying, you know, like, okay, so what is worth

1000 pounds? I mean, it's something that I've remembered for the rest of my life. And I always will remember. But is it the food that you remember? Or is it that you were panicking because it was so expensive? Everything, the whole experience, the place, the feeling of panic. But then also the food, it was one of those places where you get about 11 courses or something. And they're all presented with a flourish, all the waiters arrive at the same time. And they lift off the dome and there it is. And it's small portions. So in a way, it was like 11 starters. And each one of them was this crazy kind of, you didn't know what it was just by looking at it. It was a sort of little piece of art, Heston Blumenthal type construction, although I've never eaten at a Heston Blumenthal

restaurant. So I don't know what that food is like. But you know, it was like a little bit of He's back. He's back. This is a bit of a warm ball, a breast of warm ball. And it has been lightly bullied and served underneath a little lattice made of stretched fingers of fudge. So it could have been anything. I don't, it was impossible to tell, but every one of them was beautiful. You know, it would be like a little miniature tower of something with dust over it, yummy dust. And you'd eat it and you won't, it was like, is this meat? Is this, you know, is this Snickers? What's going on here? But every single one was amazing. So your starter is any of those dishes from that restaurant because you don't actually know what any of them were?

Yeah. And one of your guesses is breast of warm ball. Yes, with a lattice of fingers of fudge. You want that to be your starter? Or do you want the stack of something with the yummy dust? I mean, either is fine. Honestly, anything that they had in there, buckle of jerkin with marinated joy beans. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I literally couldn't tell you any actual thing that we ate. But I, all I know is that every single one of those little tiny art pieces was amazing. And we were just looking at each other. And also, you know, the whole thing about a restaurant experience, isn't it? It's the whole thing. It's the presentation, it's the place, and you've got some wine. So that makes you a little bit more

tooty and up for enjoying yourself, I guess. And there really is something to be said for the feeling of when you panic about something being really expensive and then just realizing you have to buy it. So you've got to just lean into it and enjoy it. Yeah, that's right. And then the joy of not regretting it as well, the joy of realizing afterwards, actually, that was money well spent, relatively speaking. You know, let's not even begin to think about all the other things you could do with a thousand pounds or all the people who would just kill for a thousand quid for all sorts of reasons. But when we got out of that restaurant, ah man, we were on, we were on a high. I'm intrigued by this menu situation of

the person paying is the only one with the prices on the menu. Yeah, surely the point of paying for something is everyone can see how much you're paying for it and you look like a big generous man. I know. I mean, you could go either way with it, couldn't you? I think the idea is that your guests, they're not even bothered because they don't want to feel bad about how expensive everything is. Right, okay. That makes sense. So they're not thinking about the money. It's like, have what you want. Don't, don't you worry about the money. Only one person is going to worry about the money at this table. For me, I'd be tempted, though, if that was me with the menu with the prices on it and I'd said, I'd pay. If someone was like, I think I'm

going to have the squid. I'd go, yep, just give me a second. Nope. That's basically what I did. On the squid? Yeah. Oh, guys. I did say that about the wine. I said, because we had a conversation about it. I told the others because I said to my wife as well, like, I wanted her to know what was going on because I didn't want her to come out and just say, you spent what? So we did talk about it and we agreed that we would economize by, you know, only having a 50 pound bottle of wine rather than the next cheapest, which was about 150. So you're trying to negotiate with you've been like, Adam, are you sure you need 12 pots of mango chutney? Can't we just get... What? I mean...

Let's look at your main course now. So we started out in Paris, having wombo breast, where are we traveling to now? Well, I don't know where this dish originates, but this is, I think, a standard sort of salad option that you can whip up at home and it is my current fave go to lunch option. And it is the cauliflower taco bowl. Okay. And it represents to me an encouraging chapter in my eating evolution. As I said before, I used to be very picky and it's everything in one meal that I used to absolutely despise. Even after I started eating vegetables, which was in my 20s, the only vegetable I would really eat was broccoli. And I thought, well, I found I used to go out with a girl who really looked after herself and ate very well and

stayed fit. And she was like, you've really got to eat better. Otherwise, you're just going to die soon. And I said, all right, well, I'll eat one healthy thing. And she said, okay, eat broccoli then because it's really good for you. And so I was like, okay. And I tasted it and I thought, well, it's horrible. But I can get it down without vomiting everywhere. So I'll go for broccoli. And then over the years, I sort of ended up quite liking broccoli. But cauliflower, forget about it. I just thought, no, I'm never going to eat that. It's it looks like brains. It's all anemic and disgusting. And also, I think I was traumatized because I was forced to eat cauliflower cheese at school. And I think I did puke then. And that was, that was traumatic.

What David Bowie film were you watching when you puked? Labyrinth. Yeah, I always hated cauliflower. And then I don't know, I tried this recipe. Because I get these I get these recipe boxes delivered. Yeah, I thought that would be a good way to expand my horizons. And actually, it's really worked well. And you follow the they give they deliver all the ingredients. And you've got a little recipe, you follow the recipe, I follow it to the letter to the second I got my timer out there. And it's really enjoyable. And one of these dishes was the cauliflower taco bowl. And you chop up the cauliflower and you kind of put it in sprinkled sort of Piri Piri rub over it, you know what I mean? Like a load of spices,

onion powder and paprika and hard man and ginger and all that stuff, a bit of oil, stick them in the oven, roast the hell out of those little cauliflower florets. Meanwhile, you're making yourself the taco bowl, right? So you get a floppy taco wrap and you fold it into a heatproof bowl by just folding in the sides a few times. You know what I mean? Yeah. Have you ever done that? Never done that. But I like the way it's going. You make I didn't realize you were making an edible bowl at this point. Making an edible bowl. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone make an edible bowl at home before. And I absolutely love it. Yeah, because because usually it's you go to one of those restaurants and you can have the big bread bowl, right? Yeah. And that's fun. I get that.

But as you say, not something you can necessarily do at home, but you can with the wraps, the tortilla wraps, you fold them in, you kind of do little pleats so you can fit them into the bowl and then you stick them in the oven for two or three minutes or something like that until they start going brown at the edges. Then you take them out and once they cool down, they retain the bowl shape. And so then you can fill that with the rest of the ingredients for the taco bowl, the roasted cauliflower in that Piri Piri rub, chopped onions, a halved cherry tomatoes, black beans, strips of carrot. That's the other thing I learned how to do because normally I would just chop them up and it would be carrot coins. That would be my go to serving suggestion for carrots.

But then I got this recipe and I said, no, no, you don't have to do the carrot coin. You can take the pillar, pull down the pillar on the whole carrot until you have ribbons of carrot. And that is nice. And then you squeeze a bit of lime, chop up some coriander, or if you are American, cilantro, and then it is a great taste party for your mouth. I'm not sure I trust this guy because he was the guy who was telling you to sprinkle Frank versus over Bolognese earlier. He's got absolutely no consistency. He's gone on quite the journey as well. He has. Yeah, that was in the old days. He was younger as well. Now it's all about cilantro.

I just, when Americans used to talk about cilantro, I was like, what? They're eating food that we just don't have in this country. What the hell is cilantro? Did you always know about cilantro? No, I always heard them say it. Didn't know what it was. What I discovered was coriander. Couldn't believe it. So different. Because you don't hear about that one as much, do you? Because you don't hear about that being coriander. Eggplant, everyone knows what eggplant is. Oh, Belgian. Yeah, exactly. And zucchini, we hear about that. What is zucchini again? courgette. But the cilantro problem very rarely comes up. Zucchini. It's so show offy, isn't it?

We come to your side dish. Yep. Side dish. I'll tell you what I'm going to have. I'm going to have a bit of sushi, specifically the Inari. Now, do you know what that is? No. I do. Yeah, you tell me. No, I'm not going to tell you. You tell, I just wanted, I need to make it very clear that I know what it is before you say what it is. Oh, no. How about you both say it exactly at the same time? And then I'll know that you both do not. Because it's not like a song lyric. There's not an official description of what it is. It's not me and Adam are not. Ed's worry because he doesn't really know what it is. I'll count to three and then you both say one, two, three. Seasoned and fried tofu bean pouch. Sweet tofu pocket.

Yeah, pocket is a good description. Yeah. Pocket and pouch. And inside the pouch, generally you've got rice, but you can put a bit of avocado in there if you want, chop some other salad items in there and go nuts. You can put a few smarties in if you want. But I will usually have just the classic rice pocket with the tofu bean wrapping. Yum. It's amazing. God, it's good. Hold on a second. You said sushi. That's sushi, isn't it? Yeah. Is there no raw fish in this? No, maybe you're right. Maybe sushi means raw fish, but it's generally like if I go to a sushi restaurant, then there will be an Ari on the menu. You got me all excited for raw fish. I love raw fish. I really love raw fish as well,

but I mean, I could also have one of those little salmon rolls, mackey rolls. Those are amazing too. The fact that you love raw fish now, Adam, surely that's more of an adventurous leap from your previous picky self to eating cherry tomatoes. You really buried the lead here. Yes. Yeah, that's weird, isn't it? I mean, I was always okay with raw fish. Well, actually, no, I would never have wanted to eat sushi. When sushi first became a thing in the 80s, it was a byword for absolute twats. The only people outside of Japan, obviously, who ate sushi were dickheads and yuppies and people in adaptations of Brett Easton Ellis novels. And then in the late 90s, I met my beautiful wife and she said, you know, sushi's good. Let's go

to a sushi restaurant. So that was one of our first dates going to a tsunami sushi restaurant. Were you already in love? I was pretty far gone. Yeah. How quickly did you fall in love with your wife? I feel as if it was fairly instant. The first time I saw her at a party sitting in a corner, she's very tall and sort of haughty looking. I tell you, to me, she looked like Sean Young in Blade Runner. Is that how you opened the conversation, Adam? I think it was actually, yeah. I said, have you ever seen Blade Runner? Because she had one of those big jackets with a big massive collar, big furry fake fur collar thing. And she had big hair and she's pretty great looking and still is, obviously. Yeah, pretty instantaneous. And then the deal was sealed

in the sushi restaurant over some warm sake. But I love, I mean, I really love sushi. I wrote a big long song about sushi and did a video for it that I think is offensive. So I don't know if it may... I think... It may not be on my YouTube channel because there's some problematic stuff in there. It was a really nicely made video, but I think the director just got a little carried away with some of the imagery and it perhaps wasn't as sensitive as it could have been. It was made back in 2012, but I was really happy with the song. During the Olympics. I found the... Was it during the Olympics? There you go. Yeah, yeah. I found some of the lyrics. Well, you don't have to read those. All right. These are just choice lyrics. I won't read the

whole thing. Well, you have to. And this deals with wasabi. You know, the paste, right? Yes. Yeah. This is a verse about wasabi. I used to be afraid of wasabi, the green paste that comes with sushi and has a very strong taste. Mix it with soy sauce to make wasabi joy you or take it on its own, but be careful because boy, you can blow your head if you overdose. It's not as bad as chili, but it comes really close. It'll cauterize your sinuses and fry up all your brains, but there's something that I love about wasabi pains. And then the other verse I was happy with was ooh, sushi restaurants, you see them more and more. I only wish I had one that delivered to my door. There's a sushi chain called itsu, where I often go to scoff it, though that Russian spy

was poisoned there. Don't let that put you off. That's not very nice, is it? Where's that? What's that from? That's my song about Causton Press, the drink I just share in songs of each other. Insists on singing despite knowing that his mum listens to this podcast and hates it when he says he drinks Causton Press from the breast, has called him about it and said, please stop doing that. I don't even know what Causton Press is. It's a delicious, lightly sparked in drink. It's a compromise between people who love sparkling water and the Nick Helms of the world. It's like a lightly sparked in drink that it's like apple juice, but with rhubarb in it is my favourite flavour of the Causton Press. You can get orange, you can get

straight, straight up apple and elderflower, but rhubarb one's my favourite rhubarb Causton Press. James, are you singing this again because you've run out of Causton Press? There's another crate in the post right now. Oh yeah, I've had Cloudy Apple. There you go. It is refreshingly crisp. Now Adam, you've mentioned, or fish, you've mentioned Sushi. Sushi Ruffle came on the podcast and she talked about Sushi Me. She likes to have Sushi Me from the Sushi Samba in the Shard. Mmm. Prompt in the Tongue Twister. Sushi likes Sushi Me from the Sushi Samba in the Shard. It's very hard to say. Very tricky. Would you like to have a go and see how fast you can say

Sushi likes Sushi Me from the Sushi Samba in the Shard? James currently struggling to say each word individually with big gaps in between. So difficult for me. Sushi likes Sushi Me from the Sushi Samba in the Shard. That's the best image I've ever done it. First time. Pretty good. Sushi likes Sushi Me from the Sushi Samba in the Shard. Oh yes. That is good words. Wow. Sushi Ruffle. That is good. Good for her. That sounds great. I'd love to go to that place. That sounds cool. And actually thinking of Sushi, as you know, Sushi is Japanese. I'm thinking of something Chinese now when it comes to my drinks. Like, so you haven't asked me about my drinks, but I'm getting ahead of… Or moving on to the drink

right now. So let's just slide on into it. Okay. Because I was going to say, I was going to say Carlsberg. Ah, the famous Chinese drink Carlsberg. But then I thought, actually, I was thinking of going to a Chinese restaurant in Soho in London called New World. Have you ever been there? No. It's massive. It's one of the biggest ones in Europe, as far as I'm aware. It's on like about, I'm not joking, six or seven floors. Right. And it is absolutely huge. My girlfriend used to call it the factory because it was just like the service was terrible. You go in there. It was terrible as far as, like, you get served okay. Like, you get served the food quickly. So in that respect, it was great. But they were so surly. And there was absolutely no question that they

were going to help you with anything or explain anything or do you any favors or change anything like that. It was like, there you go. Deal with that. But the food was incredible. And we used to have this sparkling lychee wine. Have you ever had that? No. I think I have had similar stuff to this. A lychee wine. I can't even imagine what that was. I don't think I've had a lychee in a decade, let's say. Did you like it when you had one? I think it's, I'm rarely put off by texture. And I think, I think lychee is something that does put me off. It's the eyeball thing. It feels like you're popping an eyeball in there. It's a bit. I'm a celebrity Bush Tucker trial, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Which you're going to be on. Do you want to

announce that now? That you're going to be on the next series of I'm a Celebrity? I can dream. But I know what you mean. I've always quite enjoyed, maybe it appeals to a sadistic side of me that I quite like imagining it, some alien bollock that I'm biting into. Okay. And getting down to the nut in the middle. I broadly don't like eating anything that you could put in like a Halloween thing. You know, like you put something in a box and then you put your hand in and you say it's eyeballs. Yeah. I don't like anything from those boxes in my mouth. Very weird category that Ed doesn't like that. Yeah. But what about spaghetti though? That's that's your go to thing for those mystery Halloween. That's a good point. What and then say is it what are they worms?

Worms or guts? Or witches hair? Witch's hair. Yeah. That's not scary. The least scary bit of a witch is her hair. What? Oh, it's really scary. If someone was like, feel a witch's nose or brush her hair, I'd be brushing her hair in a heartbeat. But it might have it might have snakes on the end though. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But she can do that with any of her bits, right? Yeah. Yeah. But witches, I mean, she could probably do some bad things with her hair. Yeah. So you do have to be careful. But she doesn't wash it very much. That's right. There's all sorts of things living in there. There's probably some terrible dandruff. Yeah. It's greasy. It's I realized the other day that there is a I always sit in the same spot on the sofa in our front room. And there's a witch

that usually and I married to her. No, there is like we're usually in there in the evening only. And the other day I went in during the day when it was all light. And I saw that behind where I sit. There's kind of a greasy stain where my head goes. I'm such a greasy hair guy. It was revolting. That's why only you sit in that seat. Yeah. No, thank you. It's like a kind of old guy couch. No. And I thought like, oh my God, I've reached the point where I'm going to have to invest in an anti-Makasa or a hat or a hat or some shampoo, I suppose. Yeah. Or some shampoo might be the first protocol. Like on the tube, when you sit on the tube by the window, there's always like a big grease spot on the window where a greasy guy is falling asleep. That's you're the greasy guy.

I'm the grease ball. So no one else in the house has noticed this though. Well, I pointed it out because I was so appalled. I didn't want them to discover it for themselves. You know what I mean? Like when you when you transgress or when you've done something bad, one of the responses available to you is just to go, this is me. I did it. I did it. I'm horrible. That's what I did. I am lifted up my side of the sofa, the cushion the other day. And there were so many crumbs and like bits of food under there. And then I lifted up my fiance's half of the sofa. It's completely pristine. Oh, wow. I'm obviously just sat there just like shoveling food into my mouth and missing it most of the time. Horrible. I think that your fiance, when you're out the room, just eats all the crumbs and

stuff in her part of the sofa. Yeah. Sticks her head in the sofa and eats all. That must be it. Yeah. She's a crumb sucker. Yeah. She's like a little Dyson. She gets in there. A couple of 10 Ps as well for her trouble. Remember money from the olden times. Crazy, right? People used to just pass it to each other. Yeah. So I'm going to have either some lychee wine or a Carlsberg. I do like Carlsberg because it's fizzy. I like a fizzy lager that is fairly low in alcohol. Like I want to, I'm into volume. I just want to chug that stuff without getting absolutely hammered. And Carlsberg, as far as I can tell, is one of the few alcoholic beers that is, what is it about? It's less than 4%, I think. It's about 3.8 or even 3.5. And for

some reason, they just don't have it in very many supermarkets anymore. You used to be able to get it really easily and now I can't find it anywhere. It's weird. And my conspiracy theory is that, especially during the pandemic, the supermarkets were all pushing high alcohol products and all the alcohol started getting stacked at the front of the supermarket. Did you notice that? No. Oh, maybe it's just where we live. But in our supermarket, like our local Sainsbury's, from about, I think it was the second lockdown, especially in November or December or whenever it was, suddenly, I guess it was coming up to Christmas as well. So that's boozy time. But boy, they were really pushing. It was like, OK, here's the only way you're going to be able to deal with

this. Just drink loads. It seemed really strange to me. And lower alcohol options just didn't seem to be there. And it's still like it's one or the other now. It's a bit like the political climate in this country. It's either get absolutely off your tits or it's zero alcohol lager. It's like, mate, can I not just have something in between? But you want either a fizzy lager or a fizzy wine, despite your opinions on water. Yes. Yeah, I do love fizzy drinks. The thing is that water is one time when I can avoid the fizz, I suppose, and protect my teeth. But I love, I mean, I do like drinks. And it was a real tough choice between Carlsberg. I do love a cherry Dr. Pepper. When you mentioned your cherry Pepsi Max, I perked up. You did. I actually did see that in your eyes. When

I said cherry Pepsi Max, I genuinely did see you. Yeah, right. And up a bit like, oh, well, you went, oh, you were quite quite interested in that. Yeah, because normally people are fairly rude about the cherry options, aren't they? They can be. They can be a bit snobby about them. I remember a blog you wrote, just literally just popped up in my head from when you were doing the fringe. And I think you're doing your show I Pavel. Oh, yeah, that's when I first met you, isn't it? Yes. And you wrote on a blog that you would finish your show and go out into the courtyard and drink a left beer and then go home. Yes, that's right. And for some reason, that really stuck in my mind because I think I was doing a student show at the fringe, perhaps. And we were getting

absolutely shitfaced every single night. And I think we were really tired because of alcohol and staying up really late. And me and my friend Tom Neenon read that blog that you were having one beer and then going home. And we both looked at each other and said, that sounds lovely. I mean, I probably had more booze when I got back. If that makes you feel any better. That wasn't in the blog. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I was a little more restrained in those days. The other thing is that that left is really quite strong. This is the cloudy stuff. So one big old glass of that was more or less all I needed, especially after doing a show. And I was jangling and fairly drained anyway. But yeah, delicious. That was the first time I'd ever had

it. Yum. So which of the drinks are you choosing? Well, I'm going to go for some Carlsberg. That feels like a solid point. I'll tell you this about Carlsberg. The Carlsberg brewery is in Northampton. There was a comedy gig for a long time in Northampton where the Carlsberg employees always attended it at the picture drink. It was always a bad gig because the Carlsberg employees would show up and just heckle the comics for the whole thing. And I think one of them, James Downswell, was doing it and getting heckled. And eventually he just said, Carlsberg, don't do comedy clubs. But if they did, you pricks wouldn't be invited or something like that. A horrible gig. Really, really bad gig that. Oh, dear fuck. How about a strawberry margarita?

And moving on to your dessert. Dessert time. Hmm. I get the feeling you like dessert. Yeah, that's the most excited you've been going into a course, I think. None of the other courses have had something time in front of them. Yeah, in that voice. With a lovely little voice. The thing is that normally I'm such a piggy band that I would overeat in the earlier courses, and there wouldn't be any room for pudding. And I would just say, oh, no, I'll skip pudding. Well, then you're not a true piggy man. No. A true piggy man then tucks into the dessert. But I'll probably just, what'll happen is I'll wait till I get home, and there's a bit more room in the old piggy bank. And then I'll start shoveling some more food in there. And one of the things I

might have shoved in there would have been, this was for about a five year period. I was obsessed with goo puddings, gousillionaire specifically. I think the gousillionaire was also called, the description was chocolate cheesecake pudding. So that initially put me off. I was like, cheesecake? No, thank you. I hate cheese. But then I found out that cheesecake doesn't necessarily have anything to do with cheese. Is that right? Well, there is nothing that is associated with me. It doesn't taste like cheese. It's cream cheese, isn't it? Well, it depends on the type of cheesecake, because like a cheesecake that probably, a gousillionaire, if I may, they'd probably use cheesecake and like, cream cheese. Now, I don't know what's happened. Now, Adam, I know you're

big on the podcast scene, but on our Zoom, it suddenly come up in the right hand corner. Adam Buxton is the host now. I don't know how this has happened. This is the power of Adam Buxton's podcasting. Is Benito still here? Maybe Benito's internet went out. I think Benito has vanished from the call, and we are just for the first time. Well, Adam, it's a pleasure to be on your podcast. You're welcome. I want some tears, some confessions, and then we'll end on a laugh. No, I think cheesecake does have cream cheese in it. But maybe with a baked cheesecake, it doesn't. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you're right. But anyway, for whatever reason, I didn't realize that it was described as a cheesecake, and I started snaffling these things. And if you've

never had one, they're the ones that come in the little glass ramekin, and the gazillionaire is multi-layered. I think you're dealing with about four layers of joy. And on top, it's the sort of chocolate layer, and then you get the caramel-y stuff, and then you go down a bit further. There's some biscuit at the base, and just above the base is probably the cream-cheesy zone, even though it just tastes sort of like marshmallow. And, oh, God, it's great. And I went through an extended period of liking those and incorporated into a sort of live bit. When I was trying to write a few more actual stand-up style bits, I did a whole thing about the gazillionaire pudding and my collection of ramekins, because I still have all the ramekins. I mean, I think I have about 500,

and they're just the ones that I save. Where do you keep your gazillionaire ramekins? In all the cupboards, you know, like open any cupboard in our house, and you'll find some ramekins. What are you using them for? They're quite good for ketchup, especially during the ketchup years for the children. They're coming out of the ketchup years a little bit now. They don't have to have ketchup on absolutely everything. But during the ketchup years, sometimes they'd have an individual ramekin of ketchup at dinner. And other times, when I'm doing art, they're quite good if I'm painting for some, you know, gouache. I'll use the ramekins. I mean, they're very useful. Peanuts you can pop in there. You can keep your cocaine in there.

Nuts, bolts, all sorts of applications. Can you foresee a situation where you would need all 500 of them? Yes. And it would be an amazing party. On stage, I used to talk about the fact that I felt these puddings were aimed at someone of my class. And that class I described as middle premium. And they're the middle premium pudding of choice. And one day I was going to have a middle premium party and invite all my other middle premium friends. And to decorate the whole house, we would have tea lights in the gazillionaire ramekins. So there'd be all snacks being served out of the ramekins and tea lights everywhere. And that was my fantasy. And then I got into this whole thing about one night, I was eating one of these puddings, watching TV, and I was just

enjoying it so much. I was thinking, oh my God, every single bite of this thing is unbelievable. And then I looked down and I thought, shit, I'm already halfway through. And then I thought, this is like my life. I'm kind of at the midpoint of my life. It's halfway gone, probably more than halfway gone. And now I've got to make every bite count, every remaining bite of this pudding and of my life has to count. And then I wrote part of my bit, which I got rid of on stage because it wasn't good, was it was like, and then you have when you when you get halfway through, you have a mid pudding crisis. And at this point, some people will go out and buy a flashy spoon or come back with a really young looking pudding. And is there anything more pathetic

than seeing some middle aged guy fucking a munch bunch yoghurt? That was my line that I did on stage more than once. I mean, yeah, it's a good observation. There probably isn't anything more pathetic than seeing that. No, yeah, that'd be awful. But the life, the pudding is your life in the analogy. And then you're saying that some people, when they get halfway through their lives, go out and buy a younger life. Yeah. Yeah, it's all over the place. Yeah, I should have taken it to some joke scientists. And look, we appreciate you, the podcast king, you took over this podcast, it became the host of the zoom. But now we're going to score you one standard property. Yeah, how about this? I mean, I got rid of that bit. And then I ended on, you've really got to make

the most of those last few bites of the pudding. But almost as you're thinking that you realize, there's only one bite left. And then you get cancer. And that takes most of the fun out of the last bite. Interested. And so how would that go down? Never that well. Put the roof off? No, I mean, I think it sort of bummed everyone out. There was a couple of gasps once or twice when I did it. I think it's not what people wanted from me. No. Or maybe anyone. You do that line, and then you'd walk off, not much, and just sit down in front of your left, just drink that. Yeah. And then while you're drinking your left, thinking, oh, God, I should have made the analogy of being left because it sounds like life anyway.

You get to the last bit of left. Oh, Jesus. So mid-left crisis. That's funny. Mid-left crisis. A whole show called. Jesus Christ, buckles. What the fuck are you doing? Whoa. I mean, listeners, this, you are getting a comedy masterclass. This is the difference instantly between a comedian of the caliber of Ed Gamble or James A. Kester and someone like me whose strengths lay elsewhere. I love how much you were loving the pudding though, and I do agree with you that the problem I have with goo dessert, whenever anyone brings it up, I think, yeah, exquisite, delicious, too small. Too small. Four teaspoons full, and you're done. But very rich. And then you've got a glass of American forever as well. So you've already

highlighted everything that I don't like about it. So it's like, I love how it is delicious, but I don't like it. It's over really soon. And then the bit of the dessert that I wasn't bothered about is there forever. The bit I wanted has gone in seconds. The bit I didn't want is in my life forever. So it's like life. Isn't it more sustainable though? Like, glass is easier to recycle than plastic, a plastic tub. And I think there's a foil topping as well. I think you can recycle the foil. And the ramekin is good for what we've been through all the various uses. And I agree with you about them being too small, hence the brilliant routine. The way I solved that particular problem was by having another one. Yes. 12, I imagine. 12 and then use the ramekins with mango chutney,

right? That's the both worlds. And then I've vomited into the ramekins. It's too too many. Do you need like a 150%? No way. I think you're right. Yeah, I think one and a half times the size. Gumax. Gumax. I could comfortably eat a jam jar full of good. I could do it. Yeah, but you say that, but look at you. You're not someone who does that. I am. Whereas I have no self-control and I would comfortably eat a bucket. I just don't get what I deserve. One day I will get what I deserve, but so far in life. We live in hope that James is eating all these desserts and they're sort of, he's almost storing them in the cloud. And then one day they're all going to download into his body and we're all going to laugh so much. Yeah.

I know some people that's happened too. It all happened. I mean, the only other options for dessert were Sarah Lee chocolate cake with vanilla icing or slash and a bag of revels. With all the revels or would you like us to mock you up a bag with just your favorites in? No, I'm happy. That's why I love revels. Happy with every single revel. Are you? Yeah. Wow. What would I not be happy with? Coffee. Coffee. I don't think they're even in there anymore. Oh, you want a modern bag? Interesting. Yeah, get out and taste the modern revels. Does it have the orange one? I love the orange one. I quite like it. It's a bit chalky.

It's a bit, I don't like the texture of it as much. Love it. I was talking about this on the podcast with Lee Mack the other day and we concurred. They are terrific. What I don't like about revels is they have Maltesers in them and I'm always disappointed when I pop a Malteser in because I can just buy a bag of Maltesers for Maltesers. Agreed. And I don't like eating a single Malteser. I would rather eat Maltesers by the handful than have a single one on its own. If you did tackle a bag of revels or if you're tackling a bag of Maltesers, are you going one at a time or popping multiple balls in? Revels, I'm going one at a time. I'm going one at a time. It's all about the journey.

It's a lot like life, I think, when I'm eating a bag of revels. What are you doing with your revels books and you having handfuls? Try revel. Oh, yeah. The trifecta each time. And what are you hoping for? What's the what's the combo that you're hoping for? Well, I mean, it's what are the potential number of combinations? I'm not a mathematician, so I can't tell you, but loads, I'm thinking loads. It's around loads, isn't it? Yeah, so it's just great. You know, you get a couple of those chalky orange ones and then the third one turns out to be quite a hard toffee one. Brilliant times. That's a very,

varied textural party that's happening right there and to say nothing of the taste. And then sometimes you get the Malteser with the orange cream and I do. Do they have the raisinettes in there still? I'm not sure. Yeah, they've got. I think they're still looking. Surely they've got the raisin ones in there. I'm going to read your menu back to you now, Adam, and see how you feel about it. All right. Adam Buxton, you would like my internet's gone. Be back in one minute.

Apologies. Bonito always texts us the menus on the WhatsApp. I'll just start from the first thing that he sent us. Sorry, apologies. Adam Buxton, you would like water, hard tap water, hard. Yum. Yes, please. Popped on some bread, garlic naan with 12 pots of mango chutney. Starter, anything from the restaurant in Paris? Is there anything from there? What was it called again, the restaurant? I think it was called Les Ambassadeurs.

Les Ambassadeurs. Main, cauliflower taco bowl. Yeah. Side dish, inari, drink, Carlsberg dessert, goo, gazillionaire cheesecake. Times one and a half. How do you feel about that? I feel pretty good for you, Adam, because when we bring the bill, which is zero in the dream restaurant, sometimes you might get mints or something with the bill. But for you, we're going to bring a bag of rebels.

But then somewhere in the bag of rebels, there's one cherry tomato. No, that's okay, because if the rebels do still have raisins, then that's the vegetables in there. Yeah. Ed said that the bill is zero. It's actually not for you, because I'm afraid you've ruined our chair with a greasy head. So we are going to have to charge you for that. Despite the soilage cost, Adam Buxton, thank you very much for coming to the dream restaurant. Thank you, Adam. I loved it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been the greatest night of my life.

Well, there we are. Thank you so much to Adam for coming onto the show and into the dream restaurant. Much obliged, lovely menu. It's made me want a goo now. Like a goo. Yeah. Yes, let's please. I love a goo.

They're great, aren't they? Yeah, really good stuff. But I agree with him. You know, you get to the end and you go, more please. Yeah. I could shot a goo. You could shot a goo. I've seen you shot a goo. Yeah, you've seen me shot a goo. Yeah.

I'll shout it to you. Look at this. I got a shot a goo. And thank you for not saying ginseng, Adam. Yes, thank you. Very considerate on you. That would have been awful if we'd had to kick you out of the restaurant for saying that. Would have felt bad about it. And we would have never have got to the goo situation, so.

No, exactly. I would have never have got to hear about the goo because that's my fear always with kicking people out of the restaurant. That's why I'm glad that the only time we've had to do it so far was during the dessert course. So I've got to at least hear about some dessert. Yes, exactly. Adam does a podcast, but you know that if you're listening to this. Yeah, surely. But if you don't know it, hey, what a treat for you. You've got a lot to look forward to all the Adam Buxton podcasts.

Yeah, they're real good. Now, I tell you where I might be taking a goo is on my tour. Oh, yes. Electric going up and down the country, up and down many countries. Yeah. Do go on my website, edgamble.co.uk for ticket details. Thank you. Yes, please. Spare no expense.

Spare no expense, but I must stress it's all the tickets are all of a similar price and are quite affordable, I think. And Ed showed me the images that are going to be the backdrop of his show. And they are fantastic. I'm not going to spoil them here, but you need to see them in the flesh because they are a visual feast for the eyes. Yes. So if you're not interested in what I'm saying, there will be something to sort of look at.

Yes, you put a lot of effort into it and I'm proud of you. Thank you very much. Come and see the show, not you. No. The listener. Yes. You're very welcome. Please.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Hello, it's me, Amy Gledhill. 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 going to 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 new 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 new stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off. So 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 Gledhill'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.