The Little Dum Dum Club with Tommy & Karl - 587 - Andy Zaltzman & Tom Ballard

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

It’s our incredibly timely pre-Christmas spectacular with TOM BALLARD and ANDY ZALTZMAN! Andy’s in the country doing cricket commentary for the BBC so we attempt the impossible: getting him to convert Dassalo and Ballard into cricket fans. We also hear about Tommy’s history with the Boxing Day test, Andy’s video game credits give us an idea for a new platform for the podcast PLUS Tommy’s stressing about Christmas Day, so he road tests some Christmas cracker jokes to see if we can punch them up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the Little Dumb Dumb Club, a great new episode with guests Andy Zaltzman and Tom Ballard. If you want to see us live, we are going to be doing our 500th episode, Melbourne, January the 15th, with an after party. That's right. Then we're in Brisbane, 29th of January, doing Talking Dumb Dumb after that. Yes, then we have Adelaide, February the 26th. That's correct. And then we're in Perth on March the 3rd. And then, of course, we have our Month of Melbourne podcast, Saturdays in April. You can find all of these tickets at littledumbdumbclub.com.

We will talk to you a little bit more at the end of the episode in Talkin' Dumb Dumb. But until then, enjoy this great new episode with guests Andy Zaltzman and Tom Ballller. Hey, mates. Welcome once again into the Little Dumb Dumb Club for another week. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Tommy Dasolo.

And with me as always, the other half of the program, Carl Chandler. G'day, Dickhead. Now we've got two very special guests joining us. Please welcome onto the show Tom Ballard and Andy Zaltzman. Yes. Hello. Hello. The Zaltzman.

I just realised we haven't told you the name of the podcast. It's the Little Dum Dum Club. So sorry about that, Andy. Sorry. Yeah. A classic one of these episodes where where as I'm doing the intro, I'm looking at my feet because I don't want to see the look on the face

of the guest who's doing it for the first time. We started this podcast when we were five years old. Oh, that's fair enough. Yes. I loved it. I got to what Eddie asked before we started. Can you just run me through exactly what is this? And I was like,

would love to know the pitch that you give to people coming in cold. How do you do it very quickly? It's been going on about, what, 11 years we started before there's a concept. I was explaining this to you

just before. We don't have to, you know, get you on here to name your favourite town in Hawaii or whatever it is, whatever the angle is these days.

We've been to Thailand three times for the podcast festival. Right. We've dragged hundreds of people from Australia and around the world to inexplicably just go to the place I like to go on holiday.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah, that's good. Let me, it's like... You've created it so you guys have an entourage with you wherever you go. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. It's a little bit like your podcast, The Bugle, where you satirise the news,

except the news is our own fucked lives that we're satirising every week. We're going, check out this guy. Imagine if he'd done it like this. But it's not someone who's been on TV. It's just us. Unlike yours, it's like, I think people who listen to this show feel good about it because they feel

better than the host. They feel like they're better. They can look down on the host. Because I like to make my audience feel massively inferior to me. Supreme alpha male. Sultry is notoriously high status as a comedian. No, well, I mean,

I was at your stand-up show last night and what I was very impressed by was that everyone was there before the show. Like, unlike a show like ours where people just walk in whenever they want because I think

kind of maybe because we're first on the stage and then the guests come on afterwards they think if we just turn up late we'll just miss those two just by themselves we'll just get there

in time for the guests I think what marks Andy's work you know I've started the bugle with John Oliver one of the greatest satirists of our time

I would argue and Andy himself a beloved stand-up comedian who's been accepted by and really loved like there's a passionate and respect from his fan base towards Andy's ultimate and what stand-up comedian who's been accepted by... And really loved, like, there's a passionate and respect from his fan base towards Andy Zoltan. What's going to happen at the end of this run-up?

And what he does. And then there's the Dumb Dumb Club. It's the most exercised balance I've had in years. Oh, I'm going to the gym back there. Not so much as a run-up as a crawl-up, but yeah, sure. And then you're already Stinky Dumb Cuts. We got there. Yeah, there we go.

I like that Andy's show is the first show you've ever experienced where the audience turn up before the game. You see so little of the comedy that you're like, wow, this guy's got a really weird fan base.

No, no, no. The punctual pound. Yes. Huge in Britain. I'm at comedy every week. It never happens like that. People just come in whenever they feel like it.

But having said that, what I found funny was last night that everyone was there really early and I was like, wait, and you started the show early. I was like, that never happens. You start the show before you're supposed to start it.

Everyone was there just bored. And then I realized, I looked at the ticket. I'm like, oh, no, you guys, I think you guys fucked up. You started half an hour late. That's why everyone was there in time. Oh, right, okay. So I don't have a punctual crowd. Yeah, so it was like, oh, okay.

Well, I don't have to have any respect for your crowd anymore. I do like that, though. Gone, oh, I've sold 120 tickets. They're all here. Ten minutes before it's meant to start. Let's just get this show on the road so we can get home a bit early. Yeah.

But that's interesting what Tom said, that you started the show with John Oliver. Now he's gone on to what he's doing now. That's a tip you can take from me and Tommy. What is he doing now, Andy? I forget's a tip you can take from me and Tommy. What is he doing now, Andy? I forget. A tip you can take from me and Tommy, don't align yourself with someone that good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a massive error strategically in my career. Did you know when you started it, you were like, oh, there's a chance this guy's going to pull away from me? Well, we started doing student gigs together in about the year 2000. And it was pretty hard to see much beyond student gigs at that point, particularly when you do a show at Huddersfield University.

You think, really, there's nowhere else to go from here. I've seen the nadir of performing arts. Honestly, who books that? The student union at Huddersfield University when we had to beg the student union whoever was running it that night to switch off

the arcade machines that were next to the stage while we were doing the gig. What arcades are we talking? Well, I can't remember what they were, but he said, oh no, I can't switch them off. They bring in quite a lot of money. So you're being heckled by the sound

of someone playing Daytona next to the stage. Yeah, yeah. Great. And then there was a sort of barrier between, they put the mic on the sort of, I don't know what it was, it kind of raised a bit that had a fence around it. So you were kind of caged away from a bunch of students.

Blues Brothers style. In Freshers' Week getting hammered. It was truly horrific. So at that point, you know, it was kind of hard to really imagine that one day I'd be sitting in a hotel room in Melbourne with you guys. Wow, things could get worse. That is a good equivalent. You playing in a game where they won't turn off Galaga and his podcast.

Yeah, this has gone pretty well. Carl, bring out the Pac-Man machine. Let's fire it up for the rest of the pod. What was involved in the double act? I've never asked you about this, but when you were joined, what were you doing? Little characters or satire? Not really. Who's on second?

He was my support act initially. I've had some amazing support acts. Russell Howard supported me on the student circuit. John Richardson supported me a bit. I mean, basically, if you perform with Andy Zaltzman, you're destined for fame and fortune. That's why Tom does the bugle. So we did a couple of radio series together, that's why Tom does the bugle so but our

sort of double act, so we did radio a couple of radio series together and our double act was, I'm not sure I don't know if it was a double act, it was more kind of simultaneous stand up if that makes sense, there were kind of sketches in it but it wasn't a sort of classic double act, it was, I mean it worked

pretty well, we did two Edinburgh shows together and we're just about to do the third one and john got offered the daily show job so um so he went off to do the biggest satire show in the world and i was suddenly doing a solo show instead of a a double act show with about two or three weeks notice to about 30 people a day in edinburgh so it was definitely a fork in our careers. Was there a conversation at some stage, you going, can't you just hold off on that massive US TV show for a couple of weeks? Not really, not really.

I mean, that would be like if you were in Neil Armstrong's quiz team, saying, what do you mean you can't do next year? It was not really an opportunity he could turn down what do you call him on the bugle again what are some of the names you've used to refer oh I don't know

well I mean yeah Jackie Showbiz was one I think Jackie Showbiz but there's there's been there's been two I can't really remember

actually but there were old Johnny old Johnny Late Show or Fuckface or something I'm pretty sure it wasn't Fuckface no it Show or Fuckface or something I'm pretty sure it wasn't Fuckface

no it wasn't Fuckface it's always beloved it was always rooted in a resounding level of showbiz bitterness that was always always very entertaining

you like the guy but fuck that fuck that guy as well I like the idea that then you do the solo show that was meant to be a double act

and you just haven't rewritten it in any way so half of it just pauses and you're like folks take it up with Comedy Central if you're not having

a good time you do his bit you quickly jump over and put glasses on you do the worst stand up of all time and make him look terrible or do your half hour

there's a played episode of the Daily Show yeah yeah yeah I did actually I can't remember what was in the show, because when I say we were supposed to be doing a two-handed show, we'd been doing radio,

we had two radio series that were simultaneously cancelled, but we'd been working on them sort of up to about a month before so we hadn't really started writing the show yet. But it would have been easy to write with two people rather than one. No, that is fair to be like, I'm doing a show about the news.

I wrote it a year ago. So I got this, like a mannequin's head and put a wig on it and some glasses and pulled it out of a bag. So I went on and told the story that John was supposed

to be doing the show but he said he had to go and do this thing in America but anyway, and then I pulled out his severed head. Oh, Kathy Griffin style but hey no but you're living the dream now

because you're here in Australia because you are doing a bit of comedy but more importantly you're working for the BBC covering the cricket yes your true love

it goes part of my contract of doing this pod was to not mention the cricket right man you don't have to mention it. No.

That's the thing. You're obviously a massive cricket head. I'm a massive fan of it. And then we've got two people who probably couldn't spell it. Could not know less about it. Right. But, yeah, you're the guy, right? This is your job now.

Yes. I thought maybe, because I do, I want to get into it. I kind of like what I see of it. I like the general vibe of it. People that I know that are into it seem really into it. They seem really happy. They seem happier than me.

Yeah. So I thought maybe you could try and, yeah, you could try and like, get me, what are some like starting points to get me and Tom in? Well, I think firstly, you have to just accept deep in your soul

that it's the greatest thing ever invented okay um despite all the evidence it's uh it's uh despite the way england play it currently um but um well it's i think the fascination of it is particularly the test matches is it's a sort of perfect form of narrative and it has all these kind of it's been described as a game of infinite possibilities and at the start of the game there's all these potential things that could happen and then each ball advances the narrative in some different way and this spans out sort of epically over five days and in the series over five or six weeks it's called dungeon and dragons this sounds a lot like an arcade machine that's plugged in next to a stand-up game to be honest you can you can you can see it sort of like a box set with kind of sweeping narratives, individual subplots.

It's like The Wire. Yeah, it's really long. Tommy's quite a big video game player. It's one of those ones that's got a lot of missions and little tasks within it, I think, isn't it? Side quests? The players have their own little side quests. Texting your penis to someone?

That's one way of going about it. That's the Maverick route. What's one of those big role-playing games that you play on your little console, Tommy? Final Fantasy. Yeah, one of them. Okay, it's like that. Because the people that I know that love it,

part of what they say the appeal is, it's like you just kind of have it on, you're just in front of the TV all day, and you just kind of drift in and out. You don't even need to pay that much attention to it and it's like that's a strange positive quality to have so you can choose the extent of your engagement with it so because this narrative is evolving constantly you can sort of dip in and out of it and you know it's sort of just sort of imperceptibly shifts and then we'll take a right you know a fast turn one way one way or the other so you can totally immerse yourself

in it but at the same time you can sort of follow it by checking the score of your 15 minutes and it can still be quite fascinating I'm trying to sell it to you

in lots of different ways some of them are working because a friend of mine that's saying that he's not ending up in your position with a job where he's like flying around

the world commentating on it just going like sorry I kind of missed all that I was just in the group chat fucking around for a minute but you guys at home I would appreciate it if there was a cricket commentator going what's going on

who's that guy again yeah what's the rule of that thing what's lbw it should be like silent disco every broadcaster has two channels it's like one guy that's massively into what they're commentating and another person watching it for the first time one guy one guy say now explain the offside rule to me again. I mean, none of that sells it to you. Also, it can involve eight hours sitting in the sunshine getting drunk.

Yes. Yeah, right. Now you're speaking my language. I went once with my friend Jeremy to watch a match at the Gabba in Brisbane and it was,

yeah, we were just drinking beer. We got very drunk because it was so hot so it sort of hit you very quickly and that was fine. It's a summer sport so they're beautiful.

You're outside. Sure. It's it's summer then a woman walked up an aisle and all the men around me started chanting tits out for the boys and i thought this is not my place and this was at your solo show did you say or what where was this this is at i had the cricket yeah i mean i don't think that's necessarily cricket's problem so much as society's problem no I played the sport the cricket made them yes if they weren't in the cricket

they'd all be out there respecting women the men on the pitch didn't even stop the game to call it out disgraceful behaviour cancel cricket is cancelled

the men on the pitch but you have like you have cricket stats from the 1970s in your head yes and the 1870s that's so crazy that's that's the thing so your job on this tour in your head, right? And the 1870s.

That's so crazy. That's the thing. So your job on this tour and on tours like this is statistician. Yes. So I do that for BBC Radio cricket coverage. Now that must be...

Look, a dream come true given that you come out and you involve yourself so deeply in it. But also, given that you're doing the stats on England getting their ass

absolutely kicked, it must be pretty brutal to go, fuck, now I have to examine every little detail of how bad we are at cricket. I love listening to soccer podcasts, but if we lose, I'm skipping that. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's sort of like doing a post-mortem on your favourite dog. Yes! There we go.

Sometimes. It doesn't make me love the dog any less. Yes. Little snuffles. Yeah. So it's going quite badly. It is going badly, Tom. Yes.

Spoiler alert. Okay, so England are doing badly. Okay, now this could get me in. You're right. Okay. I'm going to see England get thrashed. Well, it's a great vehicle for Australian triumphalism as well. Yep.

All right. All right. Okay. I'm getting in. I'm getting in. I'm getting interested. Being that nerdy about sport, I mean, it is two worlds colliding, isn't it? Do you ever feel like flushing your own head down the toilet? I mean, metaphorically, maybe.

Not often, literally. Yeah, it is. I mean, you must take, I mean, obviously you would take your work home with you. Is there, like, heaps and heaps to do? Well, in terms of prep for cricket stats? Well, yes. I mean, there's sort of... Is it the ultimate, like, stats sport?

I'm not sure the ultimate one, but it's up there. I don't think it's quite as stats heavy as baseball. Oh, that was the only other one I thought, yeah. But it's close, and there's almost as many stats as you want there to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can, you know,

if you stick it through a spreadsheet, you can make up new ones as well. It's amazing. I love sports movies still. I can still really enjoy it. I'm not a big sports fan obviously but i love and i really love moneyball and and i find all that kind of world interesting i just don't want to watch the actual right by blow match like i like the

narrative and the story of someone like an underdog rising up and winning and that's fine do you think could you moneyball the cricket team could you go through the stats yeah people do that particularly in in sort of shorter forms of cricket and you know my abiding passion is the one that takes the longest because that gives me the longest distraction from other forms of reality and responsibility so do you think the big bash stuff is like trash is that like mcdonald's of cricket to an extent it is but at the same time it's become quite a sort of technically detailed and sophisticated game

and the sort of moneyball strategies do apply in that and teams do use that maybe not quite to the same extent as baseball, but it is becoming more and more prominent, certainly. Does the BBC give you any leeway given you're a comedian and you're doing the stats? Do they let you round anything up to 69?

They positively encourage it. What's your craziest cricket stat? Because you do know all the shit from the 19th century and the longest match and all that kind of stuff. Right. I don't know the craziest one. Well, you know what I was impressed by? The kind of stuff. Right. I don't know the craziest one. Well, you know what? What I was impressed by...

In the context of cricket. Right. What I was impressed by was that you did Mastermind in the UK and your specialty subject was Victor Trumper, which A, was an Australian cricketer out of all the people you could have picked, but B, I thought, as a comedian, picking a guy called Trumper, good move. Yeah, well, I mean, I think if you're a proper cricket nerd, then Victor Trumper's one of the most fascinating players of all time.

And also, we don't have that word here, but in the UK, Trump means to... To break wind. Yes. We just idolise this guy over here called, oh, Victor Trumper, what a player. And in the UK, you're like, fucking hell, can you believe they had a guy they think's good called this

yes so well I was going to do the entire history of Test cricket but they said can you narrow it down and I said

okay I'll do pre-war Test cricket and they said can you pick one player so I think their researchers just couldn't really be arsed

I've done that job before and that's exactly what was happening so I picked Victor Trumper what should I know about Victor Trumper? Well, Tom, you should know that

other than that, died tragically young. Now I feel like a piece of shit. But they all do back then. Yes. Buried in Waverley Cemetery in Sydney in the lovely view over the sea, which he enjoys on a daily basis. No doubt. One of the first cricketers to provoke sort of an artistic response to the game

in terms of how it was written about and how people watched it. And one of the first Australian national superstars died and his estate was valued at £5 because he had a sports shop and used to give kit away to kids if they asked nicely. Aww. So everyone loved him and he died tragically young. So he's this kind of figure

from the kind of pre-mass media golden age that's sort of shrouded in this golden glow. What year are we talking about? So he played for Australia from 1899 until up to just before

the First World War. What do you think could be in your head instead of those stats? Well, probably something that could make me a fuck of a lot more money. You know, if all the numbers from cricket I had were numbers to do with, say, stock markets,

then I'd probably be living in the flat above John in Manhattan. But, um... You could get into match fixing. Seems like you know enough of the stats. I mean, I probably shouldn't really say that on anything recorded,

but not really my game, to be honest, Tommy. I know about this crazy... In the 1890s or 80s, was the Aboriginal cricket team. That was 1868. It was the first Australian touring team to go to England, was an Aboriginal cricket team. That was 1868. It was the first Australian touring team to go to England was an Aboriginal team.

Oh, an Aboriginal team, which is insane. I think that's pretty amazing. And I also know that Don Bradman was an arsehole. Is that... Well, I mean... He's very cheap. Well, look, I don't know. I've heard of different reports.

Don't you say anything about it, Don! I look at the stats, Tom. I've heard of different reports. Don't you say anything about it. Don't. I look at the stats, Tom. Numerically, I can't prove it one way or the other. There's a story of him, like, they won something, and then he didn't shout. He never shouted at everybody. You know, he's supposed to do the rounds and stuff.

Yeah, but look, you get someone that great at something, and everyone can't wait to pull them down on something. You know, they look perfect and so someone's got to find something. I cop this all the time. We had a great gig. Chandler didn't even shout us all dinner. Disappointing stuff. Really disappointing.

I do have, I've got a personal link to the Boxing Day test. When I was in high school, late high school, I think I was like 17, there was a there was a i can't remember the guy's name he's an ex-cricketer and he did like a fundraising thing for a uh foundation that my dad was on the board of and he walked from i believe it was from sydney to melbourne and the final leg of it was he was like walking around the grounds of the MCG, like before the test kicked off on Boxing Day. So I did like the final leg of it with him and I walked like with him, behind him, like around the perimeter of the MCG before the Boxing Day test.

Come out like huge pressure. Got a lot of my family's there watching. Got a lot of mates who are there watching. And they're like kind of, you know, they're like looking down on the ground, like, oh, there he is. I come out and because it's being filmed, there's like a news camera like in front of us, like kind like, oh, there he is. I come out and because it's being filmed, there's a news camera in front of us walking backwards

and there's a long cord stretching out as we're walking and I stack over the cord and eat shit in front of an entire MCG. I think that might have been my first comedy gig actually. I think that was just before I started stand-up. I was like, wow. And a lot of guys going, get your tits out. But then just being like, maybe no one saw. And then just like checking my phone afterwards

and like dozens of texts from mates in the crowd going, play of the day. Good one, fuckhead. So yeah. Maybe that's why I've cricketed. Yeah, I can see. It's like traumatic memories of when I walked on the field. What about every other sport, though?

Yeah, I mean, they all take place in kind of a similar environment. Right, right, right. So it's just kind of... Easily triggered. It was in a sporting ground. Yeah. The MCG. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah. Sure. Well, look, now that we've punished all our audience for talking that much about cricket, let's just glide away from that. You know what I was going to say? So do you live in London? Yes.

Yes, right. So we went there before all the nastiness and we were there, what, three years ago maybe now, something like that. I want to bring this up now. You know, England and London have a reputation of being bad food. Right. What do you think about that? I think they get a bad rap i think maybe things have changed i think things have changed i mean london there's pretty

much every food you could possibly want from all around the world uh what's i mean i think the reputation of england for food britain for food, probably predates Britain becoming such a multi-ethnic society when our foodstuffs were largely grey. Now that there's Brexit, is that back? Is it just back to... I think we are going back to just mushed up vegetables and the sort of connective tissue of long dead goats, which is what made Britain great in the first place.

So I think that reputation was hard. Flesh from Polish workers. It was hard won over centuries in which people ate sort of pulses and mud. So it's quite hard. It's hard to shift a reputation, isn't it? Yeah, but, I mean, look, in the week or two that we were there,

I have to say two things stood out to me. I've talked about them on the show before, but the quality of sandwiches in chemists and supermarkets and newsagents is excellent. Okay. I'm sure there must be some kind of international index that ranks countries. Like you have the Big Mac index for prices. The quality of sandwiches from chemists. Yes. Yes. The ranks countries. Like you have the Big Mac Index for prices. Yes, exactly. Yeah. The quality of sandwiches from chemists. Yes.

Yes. You guys are excellent. Ours, you think the reputation of Australia is great food and people think that, I don't know, we eat shellfish for breakfast every day or something. But our sandwich in Servos and Woolworths and stuff are fucking shitheads. Right. You're not talking about like Pret-a-Manger or whatever. No, no, no, no.

I'm talking about W.H. Smith and what's the other one? Tesco. Boots. Boots. Excellent sandwiches. I would say

excellent might be overstating things but really certainly possible. You go out and get a sandwich here at Coles or at

Coles Express or something like that and then come back and talk to me. Don't lie. Andy's tearing up. He's getting homesick. Just want a half-eaten sandwich.

Yeah. You are winning the sandwich ashes. Believe me. Not even going to a service... Like, yeah, the quality of our service station sandwich is no good, but to speak of the quality of our chemist sandwiches, non-existent. The only food you're getting in a chemist is some jelly beans.

That's it. Well, they're a in a chemist is some jelly beans that's it well there are notoriously medicinal substance the jelly bean that can cure 90% of all known diseases if you use them right

you've just got to know where to put them I did wonder why you guys did have sandwiches in chemist to start with but then once I ate one I was like

well I do feel better these are excellent this jelly bean sandwich is delicious yeah if those two can be brought together then this whole crisis would be over and your muffins yes another thing that i judge countries by right your muffins are very very moist and they have the like you know moist chocolate in

the middle right here very dry muffins in australia right well i mean it's a hotter country isn't it i mean it's just? It's just generally damp in the United Kingdom. So you're going, the reputation of food in the UK gets a bad rap. It's really, really good. Imagining you moving to UK and all you do is just eat from chemists and just

muffins. Well, that's sort of what I did do. Yeah, it's not far away from what you do here as well. Pizza for lunch, followed by a chocolate bar followed by not eating until the next day that's the plan today travel really broadens the mind do you have an australian delicacy that you particularly enjoy andy um i like this kind of sushi rolls that you get everywhere traditional australia i don't know i mean what what what would be an Australian, like a traditional Australian?

Have you eaten kangaroo? I haven't. I'm not sure I have, actually. Have you eaten vegetarian? No, I'm not vegetarian. I would have eaten kangaroo twice in my life. Really? Like, it's not a thing that we have in the tuck shop or whatever here.

It's not a... You can't get it in Chemist. No, exactly. You can get kangaroo jerky at a lot of airports, which I would not recommend. I think there's a place in Chinatown where you can eat crocodile. Right. Would you do that? I mean, in some ways.

And he's a Jew who eats pork. He's up for it. Very lapsed, very lapsed. I don't know where crocodile stands in the... God, walking into Chemist Warehouse and just seeing a crocodile sandwich in the eye, that's when you'd know that we've really caught up to the world standard.

Just logically, you'd think, if something can eat you, you should be able to eat it as a defence mechanism. So I see this... In terms of the evolutionary race, which with the end of the world seemingly closer and closer, we've got to maintain our position at the top. So eating the opposition is probably quite a good strategy.

Does that extend to human beings? Surely our fellow humans will become the opposition very shortly. I think what Armie Hammer was doing. Got to stay at the top. That logic holds up in Darwin, maybe. It's like, well, you've got to eat them because otherwise... But there's not a lot of crowds in Bourke Street Mall. That's why it's called Darwin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the obvious thing is you go there, there's not a lot of crowds in berkeley mall that's why it's called darwin yeah yeah yeah yeah well i mean the old the obvious thing is you go there there's not a lot of people that look like they're following the evolution there we go comedy yeah yeah um andy we're talking before about the cricket like uh yeah as i said as as has been brought up a few times already my uh a huge interest in my life is video games. So I was thrilled to find out that you, a version of your podcast, is in a video game. Oh, yes. You're the radio station. You're like an option that people can listen to in a game called Watch Dogs.

Legit Larry. What? People can fuck Andy Zaltzman as Legit Larry. They can buy condoms off Andy. Wow. Gig's a gig. What's the video game, sorry? It's called Watch Dogs.

It's a franchise, and it's basically like it's a... When you're driving around, you can listen to different podcasts, and yours is one of them. Yeah, I've not played it. I don't really play video games, but the concept of the game

is it's set in a sort of hypothetical near-future London where everything has gone to shit. Now, muffins are like bland, sandwiches are shit. Muffins are positively arid. And many of the sandwiches barely even have a slice of cucumber in it. It's quite tragic. I mean, you could see it as a satire on, a predictive satire on Brexit.

I don't know if they ended it as a satire on a predictive satire on brexit i don't know if they ended it as that but yeah so when you're driving in your car you can tune into uh a version of the bugle so it's me and alice fraser who's regular uh co-host um on the bugle and uh we called it the bug and it was satirizing the the hypothetical government within the computer game so we would so yeah they gave us all this information about the premise and the backstories and things. And so we wrote these seven or eight little micro-podcasts. This dystopian future where the only thing to listen to is podcasts.

Terrifying stuff. Also, now you do SEDAR. Now that's the SEDAR that speaks to me. That's like a mad magazine SEDAR, turning the bugle into the bug. That's classic. Classic Alfred E. Newman work. The spugle. Oh, that's better. That's the set art that speaks to me. That's like a mad magazine set art, turning the bugle into the bug. That's classic. Classic Alfred E. Newman work. The spugle. Oh, that's better.

That's better. The oogle. Have you played it? I haven't played it, no, but I read that last night, and it really did, like not knowing you, it sort of reeked to me of the kind of job that you do where you don't really even end up knowing how it's been used. I was like, I reckon this guy came in and recorded a few lines

and doesn't really know what context it's been put into. It's a strip poker game with Samantha Fox and Andy Zaltzman. We were briefed in reasonable detail about it and quite a few comments from bugle listeners on Twitter who sort of just came across it. Did people not know until they were playing it and then driving around? They're like, wow.

That is cool. I mean, there's a lot of video games where that is a thing where when you get into a car, there's licensed music, there's radio stations and they'll employ comedians and stuff to be the hosts of the radio station

as you're driving around. That is an ultimate dream for me. The last time I really played video games was on an Amstrad 464. Here we go. The 1980s. So I imagine they've come on a bit. Yeah, what comedians are doing the voiceovers in that one?

Yeah. Is there any podcasts in Ghosts and Goblins back there? Yeah. If we could just kill this podcast and restart it as a radio station in the new Donkey Kong, that would be the dream. If that was the only way to get this content behind the ultimate paywall

an $80 video game. I'd be surprised if there was room for podcasts in the world of Donkey Kong because the news would just be there's a fucking giant monkey bashing the shit out of everything, wouldn't there be? These bananas get stolen and all that so we could kind of riff on that. There's like a little

Diddy Kong. He'd be up to some scrapes. What was going on with the government in the... Because Alice Fraser also had another podcast in the world of the Bugle, in the Bugle family, that was in a parallel universe where you had to do satire. I did a few episodes of that, and I'll be honest, it was a fucking nightmare. I couldn't keep track of every crazy thing

that had happened in the parallel universe, but then we were also really trying to satire stuff that was happening here but also in the parallel it was a fucking nightmare so what was happening in the the the world of the bug that the bug oh yeah in the dystopian watchdogs world is there a john oliver that left the bug now yeah he's just selling uh selling arms to saudi arabia it's very much the subtext of last week tonight i think um He's now, yeah, he's just selling arms to Saudi Arabia. It's very much the subtext of last week tonight, I think. It was, there was, there were various sort of huge sort of corporate interests.

It was a couple of years ago that we recorded it. I can't quite remember the exact date, but there were, you know, the government was sort of corrupt, if you can imagine that. And there was a sort of, I think there's a sort of, without wishing to be libelous, a Murdochian type character involved as well. But I can't quite remember. But we did go into quite a lot of detail. And, yeah, it was quite fun to do, actually. We should get, because what you can do with games that are on the PC,

people like... There's all this community where people will mod games. So they'll be like, oh, you can... We took this game, this Zelda game, and now all of a sudden you can play as Goku from Dragon Ball Z. Or Thomas the Tank Engine is in this medieval fantasy game or whatever. So we could...

We had someone hit us up about making a video game of the little Dum Dum Club. There would be people who listen to this who know how to mod video games. If someone can mod

like Grand Theft Auto to put us in as a radio station, that would be good. Now that would explain why there's been a lot of murders in that game

if they're listening to us. They would, yeah, contextualise it a bit more. There's an interesting fact about Grand Theft Auto that the first one came out about 1997. that game if they're listening to us they would yeah contextualize it a bit more interesting facts about grand theft auto that the first one came out about 1997 i think and there's what be now six six seven different versions and certainly in britain the rates of violent crime and road deaths has come down significantly okay so people know, let's draw a causal connection between those two.

So people are playing that game and going, this game sucks, I'm going to call off my murder, I was going to do that. I think it's more giving people an outlet. Oh, right, okay. Like, I mean, since chess was invented, fewer people have moved their castles. And he's also a tenorist for hire, everybody.

Andy's also in Santa Respire everybody now was that a stat that you just came across organically or was that somehow

linked into the world of cricket that you were like oh okay I'm finding out stuff about the rest of the world I don't know the

impact of Grand Theft Auto on cricket certainly England have done less well in Australia since Grand Theft Auto was

launched but I don't know there wasn't a body line in 1932, 1933 for example. No computer games at all.

Hey, too soon. It's still a bit sore down here. I see that. It's insensitive. Now there's the body lining one and then there's the

underarm thing. They're very different. They're two very separate scandals. Maybe the absolute opposite of each other.

One is a scandal about aiming balls at your head and one is about basically aiming the ball at your head and one is about basically aiming the ball at your foot. I see. And they're different, are they? I don't know if you know that much about cricket but head and foot are different.

Doesn't come up that much. The body lining was against England and that's when they bowled the head. They dared to bowl the ball near your head and scare you from hitting the ball. Very scary. I know less about cricket than Tom Ballard. This is a real wake-up call.

That is a huge claim. This is a real wake-up call for me. Huge claim. And then the underarm was with New Zealand. Yes. And Australia bowled underarm. Yes, to stop them hitting a six. Which was very unsportsmanlike.

There was one ball to go in the entire innings, and if they needed to hit a six to win, so they made sure they could not possibly hit a six by rolling the ball along the ground like a baby. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. But we won. Oh, okay.

Is that something? How is that told in the legends of cricket? Is that quite shameful? Yes. Yes. I think so. Yeah. No, no, of course.

That's why the term sportsmanship exists. It's like, that's why the term sportsmanship exists. Like, it's like, we want to win, but you don't want to win it in the worst fucking possible way.

To put it in context, the New Zealand players who faced the ball got so angry that he threw his bat in disgust. Yeah. And they're a pretty

placid country. Yeah. So when, you know, that really puts it in. I mean, they'd lost the 2019 World Cup final in the most ridiculously unjust circumstances and just kind of smiled and said, we've had a lovely day. Yeah, they copped us away, didn't they?

Yeah, which I thought was, I mentioned this in the gig last night, I thought it was absolutely appalling. Those of us who've devoted our lives to sport as a distraction from reality, we want to see people crushed by defeat, not taking it on the chin. I feel like, yes,

sometimes the mystique of sport is cracked and someone goes, ah, it's just a game. No, no, no! It's my life! Don't say that! I hate everything else! This is it!

Everything's pointless. Why do anything? And on top of everything else, when there's anything between Australia and New Zealand, they've finally got something on us. Like, they had nothing on us before, and now they get to say, you did the underarm thing. It's like, yeah, fucking alright, we did. We actually

did do that one. Yeah. We've got a few other things. What have they got? The fact that we send back a whole bunch of their citizens, even though they've been born and raised in this country and then become criminals and then we say you're a Kiwi now

even though you've lived here since you're nine fuck off back to New Zealand bit too long for me underarm fuckhead so there you go nice and punchy

Andy so this is the last podcast of the show for the year and yeah we're heading into a new year we always like to kind of look ahead and kind of do bigger and better things with the podcast every we're heading into a new year. We always like to kind of look ahead and kind of do bigger and better things with the podcast every year.

We've had a lot of fantastic guests on over the years, including now Andy Zaltzman. But I was wondering if we could maybe... Oh, you're still here. Sorry, carry on. You're sort of third co-host at this point. Oh, God. Something that I thought we could maybe get your help with.

You know, we've had a lot of great people on. There's a few white whales out there that we've never been able to get on the show. Right. And coming up, we have an engagement in Adelaide, South Australia, where we're doing the podcast directly before, in the same room, directly before the solo show of a friend of yours, as I understand it, Daniel Kitson. All right.

Now, what better way to kick off 2022 than by landing one of the biggest white whales you can hope to track down in broadcasting? One of the hottest names of 1999 as well. A man who famously does not want to ever have his voice on record. A man who, one time we were at the steps of Town Hall and me and you were standing next to him and you said

hey Daniel I'd love to have you on the podcast tomorrow and he said absolutely not but he's going to be in the same room

he'll be watching us do the show from backstage he'll be in the vicinity we're actually literally right behind right before him

in that venue we're probably going to run over and delay the start of his show. Yes. But yeah, is there any advice you can give us to sweeten the deal for him? Do you play football with him in London? I do play football with him, but that doesn't generally lead to podcast appearances. No.

Right. But there is a relationship. He's a great guy, but he's very much someone who makes his own decisions so I can ask I can ask but it might very well be another

absolutely not but he's got a cave sometime but you so you play in a football team in a comedian's football team

in London and the same as I do in London well yeah sorry sorry I'd like to that's why you go to Thailand all the time it's on the way London and the same as that I do. In London? Well, yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

I'd like to. That's why you go to Thailand all the time. It's on the way to London to play in this football game. It's half time. There's usually like a UK players versus local players in the comedy festival here. There is a Melbourne Comedians team I'm seen maybe slightly

unfairly maybe slightly fairly as the aggro one down here I'm the one that's

yelling at not only opposition but teammates probably more do you play in the league or do you just

play against each other because in London we just play whoever can turn up on a Tuesday afternoon

against each other and it's really more about Kitson's banter than the football we just play whoever can turn up on a Tuesday afternoon against each other and it's really more about Kitson's banter than the football right

you've got to wear a wire under your kit and record him and then release it as a podcast yes I'm not sure that would be

in the current climate I don't think that would be a wise thing for anyone to do I did kind of do have I ever told you this Kitson story

of Kitson I'm obsessed this Kitson story of kids. I'm obsessed with Kitson and he released a bunch of shitty recordings of his standup shows on his website and they were like terrible quality. And so I downloaded them all and like just bump this used the radio technology that I had access to at the time to bump up the quality. Just so you can hear everything a lot more, um, a lot more clearly.

And then put that on my website, be like, Hey, for for other kids and fans if you want to hear this clearly here it is and he contacted my management and asked him to ask me to take it down that is insane well what did it turn into tombela.com into the pirate bay what are you doing he gave it away for free yeah he put it out there for free so i thought well this is terrible quality daniel you fool i'm with Kinson. I'm calling your management right now. There is a lot of insanity happening in that story. I charged $5.

Did you claim it was you speaking as well? Hey, guys. Try that some new material. Doing this new stutter bit. I'm good, good, good, good gay. Carl Chandler. It's Christmas. That is one of the most audacious things I've ever heard.

That is truly wild. Am I the bad guy in that story? There's two, not bad guy, but two dumb guys. There's two dumb things happening there, isn't there? Did he take umbrage at that just because it was coming from the wrong place? Not bad guy, but two dumb guys. Yes, two dumb guys. There's two dumb things happening there, isn't there? That's probably fair. Did he take umbrage at that just because it was coming from the wrong place or because he wanted it purposely shithouse quality? I don't know. Who knows the workings of the minds of Daniel Kitson?

Have you talked to him about it since? No. And that was before I had any kind of friendship with him. Oh, okay. You didn't know him at the time. No, no, yeah, I didn't know him. I was just a fan, really. So someone ratted you out.

Someone's gotten the recordings off your site and emailed hello at Daniel Kitson and gone, Tom Ballard's actually releasing his own version of... No, no, no, yeah, he's gone. Yeah, hey, you should download the new versions of your show over at tomballard.com. It's way better than your dog shit version. I think Daniel...

My understanding is that Daniel gets it regularly. Google searches his own name. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, that is... He's always to call, oh, I'm not on Twitter, and then searching Twitter quite regularly.

Right. Daniel gets it frequently. Right. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so if we want him on the show in Adelaide, we need to not book you for it. Okay, that's good to know. Well, we're quite friendly now. I show in Adelaide, we need to not book you for it. That's good to know. Well, we're quite friendly now.

I beat him in pool once. It was the greatest day of my life. Famous pool hustler, Daniel Kirsten. He really loves pool. He does. Until recently, he had a table in his house. Okay. Confirmed.

So who's the aggro players of football? I'm not at Liberty to divulge. Oh, you swore that blood oath, didn't you? That's part of Tuesday Afternoons. I'm not too much

aggro. That's not me. Do Ant and Deck ever go fucking mental? Jimmy Carr out there, give him a few headbutts.

There has been a theory that comedians who specialise in one-liners are more selfish footballers than, say, storytelling comedians. I don't know. I think there needs to be a scientific study. That's a fascinating link. What do you think the parallel is?

Delve into the psychology of that. That's a real shame because I do a lot of one-liners. But I'd like to think that as I've gotten older, I've become more generous on the field. Look, I hold everyone to a certain standard, but I'm not hogging the ball. Right. Which is something.

Mainly because I've lost all my speed, and I just sit in the back and play sweeper. Well, as they say, first 25 yards are in the head. Yeah. I'm the puppet master at the back. I'm yelling at everyone, getting them to do the things my legs no longer do. Yeah, the yelling is the most important thing in football.

Yes, thank you. on and off the pitch yes totally so we talked about this a couple weeks ago but yeah by the time this comes out it will be after Christmas

but yeah Christmas as we're recording this is in a couple of days I'm hosting Christmas at my house for the first time alright congratulations thank you

what are you getting paid for that is that a good gig who books that yeah I've got mum and dad coming around it was just going to be small theme me and my girlfriend Congratulations. What are you getting paid for that? Is that a good gig? Who books that? Yeah, I've got mum and dad coming around. It was just going to be a small thing, me and my girlfriend, mum and dad. And then now my girlfriend's family are coming too. So her sister and brother-in-law and their little kid.

And, you know, a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure. I want everything to go perfect. I want the food to be good. I want the atmosphere to be good. What's the most magical day? It's celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Isn't that right, Andy? Would you like to say a few words

actually about that? The lad did a terrific job. And then what happened? Then what did your people do? They found him guilty of certain technical infractions. And applied the letter of the law at the time. Fair enough.

So what's the menu? and applied the letter of the law at the time. Fair enough. Go on. So what's the menu? Menu is a ham, a glazed ham, a chicken, some stuffing. I'm more interested in the vegetables. A couple of salads. I said vegetables. Salad. What?

You're roasting vegetables though, aren't you? I wasn't planning to. Are you not having any vegetables? I wasn't planning to. Are you not having any vegetables? I wasn't planning to. Are you kidding? Is this Christmas we're talking about? You eat pizza for lunch every day. No, I don't.

I'm just buying a few servo sandwiches for my Christmas. Roast chicken sandwiches. I mean, at this time of year, you can get all manner of Christmas-based sandwiches in all manner of chemist shops in Britain. Yes, you can too. What of Christmas-based sandwiches in all manner of chemist shops in Britain. Yes, you can too. What a magical place. It is.

It's a fairy country of an Elysium of perfection. I'm legitimately jealous. I'll send one over next year. Yes. I'll pop it in the post. They don't even, like, honestly, I have to try so hard to even find, like, a chicken and mayo sandwich in any of the, like, servos and supermarkets around here. Like, that's your that's your absolute

literally your bread and butter over there it's just what all these protests have been about recently it's nothing to do with the vaccine I think it's a big part

of the new UK Australia free trade deal we'll be sending sandwiches back and muffins or whatever they'll just rank by the time they get here

yummy sandwiches are like a warm weather food, I think. It should be like easy over here. We get it. Get back to the dummy story.

Okay, well, let's get back to me being mad at another thing, the fucking vegetables. I'm happy to keep talking about sandwiches if it keeps my kitchen out of the firing line.

No, we never had a, even at mum and dad's, it's never really been a roast veggie day in the Daslow house. That is insane, and Carla's right to be outraged by that veggie day really in the Daslow house that is insane and Carl is right to be outraged by that

thank you I think that's the first time you've ever said that about me this is the one point in which I'll agree with Carl you've never had roasted veggies for Christmas lunch no

extraordinary but well you know I can institute it I've still got you know still got a couple of days it's all in your power you can create new traditions

if this is your first if this is your first Christmas at your house this is the start of the institute right now. Start of the institute. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Institute of Christmas vegetables. Interesting. Go on. To start my own traditions. Yes. We watch Tropic Thunder. Yeah.

And then we watch it again with the commentary where they're all in character. Merry Christmas, everyone. But I want the day to go perfect, right? I went out yesterday and I bought a bunch of stuff for the day, including I bought some bonbons, some Christmas crackers. And that's stressing me out a lot because this should be a thing on the box. You should be able to get, you know, they go, they've all got like a little toy and a joke inside.

But they never include on the box what's actually, you know, what the toys are or what the jokes are. You can't get a flavor. Oh, you want to know what the jokes are? So I've got with me, I've got some bonbons from this packet that I bought. Oh, shit. And I thought we can bring out the jokes. Yeah.

And if they're no good, we've got some great comic minds in this room. Right, okay. And me and Carl. Do we not have to guess the punchline? You give us a setup and we have to guess the punchline. Well, we can punch them up. If they're no good,

I want everyone to have a great... I want people to be pulling the bonbons and actually having a good laugh at the quality of the jokes. I want to make sure everyone's having a good time. Now, I will warn you

that Eddie Zeltzman is quite partial to a pun. Let's not do this. Carl Chandler hates, but he's very popular at Christmas. What's your general relationship to Christmas as a Jewish man? Do your kids want to get into it, or is this just another world to them?

No, they love it. It's largely a non-religious festival these days. Yes, totally. Anyway, I also brought up lapsed youth. We always had Christmas as a family thing. Oh, okay. That would be funny, given that you're saying you're a little bit lapsed, and it's like, yeah, I just eat pork, but my kids are not having Christmas.

That's the one bit where they must call on the tradition of my people. Well, I did a few years ago now, when they were still a bit smaller than they are now, I found some... I can't remember if I told this story in the Bugle recently. I found this chocolate cake in the freezer. It was like months old and I sculpted it

into a shape and put it on the roof of the car outside the house and then Christmas morning opened the curtains and said to the kids oh you'll believe

what the reindeers have done to the car and I think that was the high point of my parenting career and say to the kids, oh, you'll believe what the reindeers have done to the car. And I think that was the high point of my parenting career. Andy! Totally. The reindeers shat on the car. Oh, what a wonderful time of year.

Don't just take bite marks out of the cookies and say Santa did it. Just put a big old dump on your car. Or just take a shit in the living room and go, look what Santa did. Dad! He's an animal. This is why we're Jewish. Okay, so I've got a couple out here ready to go.

Can I say this very quickly? That my first ever solo comedy festival show, for some reason, this is the thought going on in my head back then. This is what I did. I did the show, and because I did a lot of one-liners, I put my jokes into Christmas crackers and then gave them to people on the way out.

Incredible. The show wasn't anywhere near Christmas. No. In April. In April. It was in April. Sit on this. One Christmas cracker that everyone in the family

can fight over in eight months' time. Yes, and then gave them jokes that I'd just done in my show. So when they opened them, they were like, oh, yeah, I heard that like 10 minutes ago. Oh, right, right. And not like a – because generally they're like – the bonbon joke is like a, oh, what do you call? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No format of that. No, no, no.

Just like, oh, I was in a cafe. Just stuff that they'd heard literally 10, 15 minutes beforehand where they're like – And did you ever hear from anyone who wheeled them out on Christmas Day? No, I just saw a lot of them on the floor outside the venue after the show. I think that was when I was sort of maybe first getting to know you and coming to say hi before your show, and you're just in the green room frantically just stuffing these bits of paper into a box of bonbons

that you'd just bought from the reject shop around the corner. And you know what? Surprisingly hard to find bonbons in April as well. So that was a lot of time put into finding them. The ones you did, though, real cheap. Did you take out the existing jokes in there and then replace them with your own? I had to reprogram the bonbons.

Yeah, you modded the bonbons and then reading the odd one and going like, actually better than what I'm putting in. I'll keep that. I might actually put that in my show notes. Was duck sandwich ever in one of the mod mods? Duck sandwich is not. This is pre-duck sandwich.

Interesting. Go on. What do you think of this one? What do you get if you cross a fish and two elephants? Now, look, classic setup. I mean, if only we were allowed to get away with this setup these days. What do you get? Just getting up on stage.

Folks, great to be here. An investigation from the people who run your laboratory. That's good. What were the two items again? What do you get if you cross a fish and two elephants? A fish and two elephants? Two elephants. Like maybe a fish that's surely got to be fucking remembered by someone.

Okay. The world's most remembered fish. Well, not most remembered. That is the answer to that joke. Because there's two elephants. So they're both never forgetting. The world's most remembered fish. Yeah, I like that.

I'm telling you what, I've read the answer, and what I just said, better than the actual joke. Go on. No, let's say... Right, all right. Any more guesses? Two elephants and one fish. Two elephants and one fish.

Now, I'll tell you that the quantity of elephants is key. Is key. Oh, okay. What a great... This would make a great quiz show. Yeah. Contestants on... So a pair of...

We got pair... Is the word pair involved in the answer? It is not. Oh. All right. Two elephants. Elephants known to have... I mean, I don't even think...

Is that an actual thing that elephants have great memories? Or is that just like sometime they saw an elephant once like a year apart and it sort of vaguely came up to them and went fuck they remembered what a memory on that thing yeah that's how science works yeah but isn't that isn't that i forget i think i do think it's apocryphal the fish thing is also apocryphal someone recently in the past couple of years disproved the fact that fish only have five second memories. Really? Yeah, that's not true either. But I do drink to forget. Sutter is fine.

Well, I'll tell you that. The scientific facts of the animal kingdom do not play a part in this Bond world. Okay. It's a word play thing, I assume. It's hard because you always to, you always do like that first Christmas cracker of the day and then you kind of,

and then from that you work out the baseline of the quality of joke that you're going to be getting from the other bonbons. Do you think they're deliberately shit? Every Christmas, my family's quite cynical generally,

but every Christmas I involve, people get out the jokes, they read out the jokes and then we're just grown. It goes, basically, I feel like we're all bonding saying fuck the cunts

who wrote these terrible jokes yeah and i think maybe people have a lot of stress about christmas day is going to be this like kind of awful experience and a bit a bit irritating or whatever and then you read a bad joke and it kind of puts it all into perspective it's like well grandpa's racist story is sort of it's it's slightly better than reading this rot i guess and also if we could do this it'll take off time from talking about the vaccine so yeah absolutely absolutely but also i mean it's a scientific thing like if you do a pun you even people like puns you you would know if you're doing them people are like oh i like this but oh you can't help yourself do that noise yeah all right well yes i think during your pun runs

famously in the bugle and he does very funny pun runs which I despise with every fibre of my being but yes it is a weird mix of like genuine joy in the pun and a a hatred that's taking place would that be fair?

and even in even in like set up jokes in short set up jokes you know people have that thing in them where they groan or they have a negative connotation towards that

or at least in my experience that's what I find so yeah people always boo a joke at any time, whatever it is. Even when I get up and say hi and they say fuck off and throw things. There's something about jokes that just make people storm out of whatever room they're in en masse and demand refunds.

Or not buy tickets, yeah. All right, okay, what do you get if you cross a fish and two elephants? A fish and two elephants. You've got to have something. Fishy, fishy, double dumbo. All right. Okay. No, the answer is a cross between a fish and two elephants.

Swimming trunks. Oh, yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah. But elephants kind of can swim. But trunks, you get that bit of it, right? No, I get that bit. But why do you need the fish?

Because the elephants can already swim. Well, they're more known. You wouldn't look at an elephant and go, classic swimming creature. Yeah, true. The Mark Spitz of the animal world. No, I prefer Andy's punchline. I think I'm going to... My goal is I'm going to rewrite all these and then put them back in the bonbons.

What was that? The most remembered elephant? No, that was me. That was you. Wow, what a burn. Take it as a compliment. No, yeah, the experiment. The most remembered elephant, I think, was a 1970s art house thing.

Two French actors just staring at each other for two and a half hours. Okay, so imagine if you're At Christmas lunch And that comes out The most remembered The most remembered Fish of all time I'll try it on The most remembered Fish of all time

Okay I'll put it in I'll type it up Because there's no groan There's no family Like around the table Going oh There's just people going

What? Yeah It's like you know Why did Rebecca Fall off the swing Because she was a fridge Or whatever Yeah It's like that category Of jokes The anti-joke Yeah Awesome stuff why did Rebecca fall off the swing because she was a fridge or whatever?

It's like that category of jokes. The anti-joke. Yeah. Awesome stuff. Go on, give us another one. Okay. Maybe it'll take their minds off there being no vegetables in the fucking house. A rapid anti-joke test.

There's no vegetables on the plate, but there's one of them right in the jokes. All right. How does Jack Frost get to work? He's a fridge. Here we go. Here we go. Now, that's good.

What does Jack Frost do for work? Look, that's a two-parter. How does Jack Frost get to work? Okay, here we go. Get to work. Well, Jack Frost is a mythical creature who makes it cold, right? Is he a snowman or not? Doesn't he bring winter? I guess, yeah.

Isn't he? I'm not familiar with his oeuvre. Yeah. Jack Frost. Yeah, what did Jack Frost do? I know that I'm good with names, not with faces. I know the name.

You'd know him if you met him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I ran into Jack Frost. You know, Jack Frost, he looks like the Green Goblin from Spider-Man or whatever, and he's like casting coldness. I thought he was a snowman.

Is he not a snowman I thought he was Maybe a snowman No You're thinking of Frosty Yeah The name Yeah that name

Jake Frost's mates Call him Frosty So it does get confusing Right That's how I know him Frosty Frosty Yeah

How does he get to work Andy I don't know I mean Snowmobile would be too obvious It's got the name in it. It's not really a pun. It's not really a joke. That's better, though.

It's better than what I've read. Snowmobile. Right. How does he get to work? You know what? On the brrrr-us. That's good. I don't mind that.

Fucking hell On the Chilli something Yeah but chilli could mean hot That's true Depends how you spell it On a icicle There we go

He's done it Oh yes Buy Yes Buy icicles There we go Buy icicles Sat There we go. Buy icicles. Satirist fall.

Well done. Well done. Holy shit. Where was John Oliver on that one? This is my new quiz show. Are you funnier than a bonbon? Or are you just as funny as a bonbon? Yeah.

Okay. I feel like this one's an old one that people might know. Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers? Oh, that's a good one. Come on. Come on. It's a sponsorship deal. Look, you know what?

I think this is an obvious one for Andy and I because we're sports fans, but maybe you haven't come across this one. Tom Ballard. Because there's a hole in one? There we go. Fuck, even him. Even Tom Ballard knew that one Yeah

What does an angry kangaroo do? Oh here we go Well we've got the advantage here But you know Being so familiar with Animals Yeah I've eaten one of these All over across it

Right I believe it's Hopping mad Yep God come on Real dip off in quality Yeah sorry Come on you've got to vet these

Come on One more I to vet these Come on One more I'm wanting to have a unique experience Will this one Oh here we go Alright one more One more Oh

Okay I literally don't even know what this means Right Okay Great What's furry and minty? I can't wait to try and guess the answer That was actually the name of John Oliver and my double act

Which was which? It's to try and guess the answer. That was actually the name of John Oliver and my double act. Which was which? Furry and Minty. What's Furry and Minty? All right. This is a good one. As in, this is genuinely tricky. I have a feeling, I have a feeling based on some of the wording

in one of the other ones, that these are British-based. Oh, okay. And I have a feeling that the punchline refers to something British that I'm not familiar with. Oh. The only possible explanation for me having not heard of something.

What about, in that case, what about this? What's very minty? A couple of right slappers. Is that possible? Someone. Someone.

Abbot it large. Yeah. Furry and minty. What's furry and minty? Furry and minty. What's minty really? I don't really know what... Toothpaste?

Yeah, so toothpaste... Well, you wouldn't bloody know what that is, would you, mate? Oh, English. I'm just having a laugh. Furry and Minty. Austin Powers after brushing his teeth. There we go. That's something.

Furry and Minty. What about this? What's Furry and Minty? Molegate toothpaste. Because mole is furry and minty is the toothpaste. Yep. Mole gate. Mole gate.

Mole gate. Yep. Hooray, says everyone at Christmas dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Any other guesses? Some pun on Chewbacca and chewing gum. I mean, that could work.

Okay. Tom Bellow? Tom Bellow? Furry and minty. Furry and Minty Furry and Minty A woman named Peppermint's vagina Okay there we go Not bad

That's quite good That's quite a laugh Not bad Yeah That would be sick You have like a You have a box of Christmas crackers Where just one of the jokes

In one of them Is just incredibly bawdy Yeah It's just Filth Just like yeah Oh what do you call a snowman With a And then just Yeah What do you call A snowman with it And then just like

What do you call A woman who you've just Just like Brutal shit In the mix What joke did you get grandma Imagine Imagine that joke

Coming at You know Christmas dinner Over at the Allsops And Mrs Allsops Absolutely Spitting out the lack Of parsnips

That are in there Spitting out her Unseasoned lettuce leaf That just has nothing on it Enjoy your salad Yeah And get out at 3pm Her roast cabbage

Comes flying out What's furry and minty A polo bear A polo bear So we have polo mints Polo mints Knew it They're little round mints

And they're USP Okay So they have a hole in the middle Right Okay Like our lifesavers That's basically what we have

a polo bear so there you go brilliant they're all British they're all based on things from Britain

I've got to chuck them I think you need to give that to Andy to send home with him that's his

souvenir from Australia very nostalgic your children won't believe their luck when they arrive

in February finally I'm letting you guys have Christmas this year, and this is what you get. All right. Well, I've got to go get another box of bonbons. This has been a disaster. Yes.

You know what? Why do you call them bonbons, by the way? Because we call them crackers. They're called bonbons sometimes. In the box for these, it said they're called bonbons. Yeah, yeah. I've always been a little bit confused by that. I've always known it was Christmas crackers,

and then all of a sudden some people are fruiting them up and calling them bonbons. Yeah, bonbons, a bit more fun, a bit more fun to say, but I'm going to take a leaf out

of that story. What's more fun than the word cracker? Why is it bonbon? I don't know. Because cracker, it makes a crack

noise. Yeah, yeah. But bonbon, that's, I mean, it's, you know. That's French for good, good, good, good, good, isn't it?

I feel like I'm at trial here As if I came up with the name Yeah yeah Crack is a little bit Racially charged You know Oh is that why No No it was a joke

On your fucking comedy podcast You dumb piece of shit Well I don't know that much I have to go Alright I'm taking a leaf Out of Carl Chandler's story From before I'm gonna

I'm gonna sneak some Chandler originals. Oh, put mine in. Yeah, into the box of bonbons that I buy. Okay, please. And see how they go down. Oh, my God, I would love that. Okay. And you need to record the response.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need these laughs. Send me a couple of ones that you reckon will play well in a bonbon. I will. And I'll replace the ones I've taken out of here with some Chandler originals. Please. I'm there on Christmas Day. I'm eating my lettuce

and I unwrap my little surprise. Do midgets call mini golf golf? No, that's old. That's no longer in the set list. But by donating these jokes, that will disprove the cliche that people with one-liners are selfish because I'm very generously passing off my material to your lunch.

Yes, exactly. All right. Well, we'd better wrap it up there. Thank you, Tom Ballard. Thank you, Andy Zaltzman. Thank you. Andy, people can check out The Bugle, your podcast. Yes.

Anything else you'd care to plug? When's this going out? Next week. Next week. So you have shows in Sydney. I've shows in Sydney on the 4th of January. There's a Bugle live show and then I'm doing

a Saturdays for Hire show straight after it at the comedy store and tune into the Bugle and the BBC cricket coverage yes and I saw Andy stand up last night

it was excellent very very funny Andy's the best everyone can see Andy Tom what have you got people can listen to my podcast like I'm a 6 year old

and my other podcast Serious Danger about the Australian greens And how good the greens are My Christmas lunch Spinach And cos I suppose

People are in Melbourne The Just for Laughs Australia event is happening Which Tommy and Carl Are very aware of It's going to be great And all your favourite comedians are going to be on there. Why are we very aware of it?

We're just aware. Oh, okay. Good thing you give them a plug. The little green man's not on there anymore. I think he got cancelled or something. He's been cut. But I will be performing details at Just for Laughs Australia or whatever. Great.

All right. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time. See you, mates. And they've done it again. Oh. Bernie has kicked a big, moist, sandwichy one.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. A lot of fun. New person in the show. No, shouldn't it be Bernie's bolder big one? He's bolder.

Oh. Because it should be cricket themed in honour of our guest. Bernie's turned a big one. Sure.led a big one? He's bowled a... Because it should be cricket themed in honour of our guest. Bernie's turned a big one. Sure. He's turned one. He's a spinner.

Bernie's kicked a big duck. Is that something? Not really. No, that's bad, isn't it? Nice of you to try. Yeah. I'm taking an interest. Yeah.

I'm trying to broaden my horizons. When I don't get a laugh doing a joke, I've gone out for a duck sandwich. There you go. There you go. Which, yeah, which reminds me, I've got to feed you those one-liners for the crackers. So that'll be fun. Fun to have someone in for the first time. Andy, didn't know him before we did this.

Saw his stand-up last night. It was excellent. So go and check him out. Yeah. If you're in Sydney. January the 4th I think he said. He's doing. Yeah.

His solo show. And he's doing a live bugle. But yeah. Very. As always. With people like this. Very nice of him to say yes to coming and doing the show. In spite of the fact that he doesn't know us from a bar of soap.

Yes. And we're both very distracted because a small dog has just wandered into the room that we're recording in. Yep. And he's got better stuff to do as well at the moment. Yes. Yep. So good for him. None of those things are applicable to Tom Bellow.

He's got fucking nothing but going to see Spider-Man today, which we had to change the time of the recording so he could go and see Peter Parker bitten by Will Spider. It's Spider-Man. It's Spider-Man. He's Spider-Man. His parents got shot to death by a big spider with a gun. Actually, that's Batman you're thinking of? Oh, Batman got shot by a spider. That's weird of him to come up with the idea of being a bat after all that. Bat v. Spider.

Yeah. But I'll bow to your knowledge. Yeah, heaps of fun um end of the year yeah next week uh look little spoiler alert should we say this next week uh will be a little best of best of 2021 i mean there's so much to choose should be a fucking short episode oh we're bad. Imagine being us. Yeah, but we'll have plenty of new content within that as well, but just a little trip down memory lane, and you guys will have voted by now online on the socials.

If you missed out, don't miss out next year. Or maybe there might be dribs and drabs of things still happening. Who knows? But anyway, get onto our socials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Yep. Find out all the fun that we have online there. But yeah, look, it's been not a bad year for us considering in terms of episodes, a lot of Zoom stuff, which is not ideal, but we did the best job we could.

Still churned out some good ones. Yeah. Even with the Zooming, we had some pretty fun ones. Yeah. churned out some good ones even with the zooming we had some we had some pretty fun ones yeah looking back as i was uh making the uh the poll list for uh for people to vote yep on the best episode of the year yeah and uh you know it's funny because i'm got you know i'm typing them in individually and going through and you know it's like a bit of a flashback through the year and then it's like oh yeah we didn't know it at the time that was the last one before lockdown

and then getting into the lockdown ones and it's you know the first week of it you're like oh man what a what a what a drag having to do this again and we're in lockdown and it's a bit depressing and then getting to for example the cam james and jen fricker one going like yeah that was really fun yeah we were laughing our ass off in that one yeah the dave callan and andrew wolf one it's like yeah i feel like we i feel like a good over you know basically two years of doing it we by the end of the last lockdown we'd gotten we'd you know gotten pretty good at it i'm looking back at the list i'm looking at some fun episodes actually yeah i wonder who i'm gonna vote for who are you gonna vote for tommy i'm gonna vote for this one that we just did. No. Ineligible.

There is one or two episodes every year that miss the cutoff. Then, you know, we almost should include them in next year's one. But too bad. Yeah. Too bad, Zaltzman and Ballard. You will not be making the best of 2022 that we do next year. Sorry. Sorry, guys.

Yeah, I'm just looking. I'm just looking. The Melbourne Live ones, I always like the Melbourne Live ones. They're always heaps of fun. Yeah, what else? The Sydney Live one, maybe? Maybe not. What else was this year? I mean, this is pointless to riff on because the voting's basically closed by the time that this comes out.

I know, but I'm still, you know, it's nice to walk down memory lane. You'll get to walk down memory lane when we record our intros and outros for all these eps. It is funny too, putting all this together and trying to predict, you know, trying to, as you're typing them out, you're like, ah, yeah, I reckon I can, I reckon I can see the five. I reckon I can see the five in my head. Is that what you think?

I think so. Really? I think I've got a pretty good five. I reckon I can see the five in my head. Is that what you think? I think so. Really? I think I've got a pretty good idea. Okay. Yeah. I'm looking at them not really knowing, actually. Yeah. Nothing.

They all look pretty good without any of them super jumping out. You know what the thing is? I've got to remember what the story... I'm just looking at the faces. I'm not thinking about the content. I'm looking at the stories. For example, like, you know, Dave Callen, that was a pretty good riff. Spy school.

The whole spy school sort of stuff. Yep. So you're right. It's a little bit, yeah, you need that content. You need that, for example, like, you know, the Danielle Walker episode where you know that there's heaps of weird family shit going on. Yep, yep. where you know that there's heaps of weird family shit going on.

Yep, yep. There's a nice little through line you can attach your wagon to. Yeah, okay, all right. Well, I'm looking forward to that. There's no super clear winners to me. Plenty of time to look back, yeah, next week when we do that. In the meantime, if you want to look into the future, people probably not in a huge ticket buying mood right now, just relaxing post-Christmas.

But just to remind you, the 500th episode. Never too early to start shopping for next Christmas. Exactly. The 500th episode coming up January the 15th in Melbourne. Few tickets left and then the after party at about 11pm or so at the European Beer Cafe. Tickets to that as well. Yeah, finally we're doing it.

Big, yeah, huge, the biggest theatre we've ever done. Heaps of friends of the show popping in. It's going to be a great, big, spectacular show. We've got a lot of stuff planned that I think is going to really surprise a lot of people. Yeah, the after party will be straight after the show. I did put it as 11 o'clock

and now that I'm looking at it, I'm going, why did I put it that late? It'll probably be earlier than that because the show will be like, the 500th episode will be like 8.30 till 11 o'clock and now that I'm looking at it, I'm going, why did I put it that late? It'll probably be earlier than that. Yeah. Because the show will be like, the 500th episode will be like 8.30 to 10 o'clock, I guess, or something like that. How can we just bash it out in 30 minutes and get out of there? Just make the after party really big?

Make the after party longer. Yeah. Make the 500th episode celebration the shortest episode we've ever done. Yeah. After waiting two years to do it, just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, 15 minutes, we're in the building. Fuck you. Got him. Should be back.

All right, thanks. What a great 500 episodes. Then, of course, we have Brisbane, January the 29th, sold out. But do remember, if you had a ticket to the original date in August, it is still valid for either the live podcast or the Talking Dumb Dumb across the street yeah both sold out Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne after that

won't go too crazy into it you know what's going on just get a ticket great heaps of great live stuff to look forward to for us we're going to be doing man it's going to be interesting doing so many live shows in the next three months or so.

Yes. It's a mammoth start to the year. Yeah. But yeah, get on all that. Meanwhile, if you're looking for some extra content over the break, you're looking for some stuff to listen to, you can get onto our Patreon where you get access to the backlog of episodes that we've been doing over the last two years. of episodes that we've been doing over the last two years.

Two mini episodes every week, Mondays and Fridays. It adds up to anywhere between 30 and 40 or so minutes of extra content a week with guests. Some really spicy ones that we've done. Always lots of fun. So, shout out to that. I would say this, Tommy. I don't know if you agree. They are more fun to do than the regular apps.

Absolutely. Yeah. We put less planning in and the regular apps. Absolutely. Yeah. We put less planning in and they're often funnier. Yeah. They're a real... Look, no offence to Andy Zaltzman because we just heard about his love of Test Cricket. Now, I suspect not so much love of the shorter game of cricket, but it's a real hit and giggle version of Little Dum Dum Club.

I'm not a big fan of 2020 cricket, but I am fan of 2020 dum-dum 2020 comedy yeah here we come in maybe just a vague idea of something to kind of riff out and we often end up on a yeah but um that's a very good point it's a best time to sign up potentially um if you are on holidays and you're on the beach if you'd you know this is the new summer reading isn't it instead of getting a book it's get some extra podcasts yeah sitting on the i'll tell you what i don't particularly like sitting on the beach and reading i i like to read i like to sit on the beach i don't think it's a great combo but i'll tell you what listen to podcasts on the beach is a way better one so i would i would be i would be if i was you guys out there i'd be doing this getting the extra content

and doing a bit of chuckling on the beach. Yeah, looking like, people were looking at me like I was insane because I was just laughing on the beach. Whenever I see someone laughing, I'm like, why isn't this kind of locked up? What's wrong with this person? Sometimes I'm like, maybe I need to take the law into my own hands. Maybe I need to shoot this person. Yeah, they have to be insane.

They couldn't possibly be just enjoying something. And I work a lot at my, you know, at Basement Comedy where people are laughing a lot in that show and I'm still thinking,

what the fuck are these idiots doing? I've seen you push Husey off the stage to lecture the crowd and go, what the fuck? Okay, we need to stop this gig because we currently

have a hundred mentally unwell people in here. And also, on top of that, a bit of respect for Dave Hughes. He's like a famous celebrity. Stop making noise while he's trying to talk. He's trying to vent his spleen and admit about things that make him angry. It's not easy.

Not everyone has the confidence to do that, and you're mocking him. He is a respected virologist. Yes. Yeah. Please, listen to the advice. But yeah, so if you get on the Patreon now, you can get close to 200 of those mini-apps with all sorts of your favies from across the little dum-dum canon.

But most importantly, you will go into the draw to get your name read out in this segment that we like to call Talkin' Dumb Dumb. Yeah, what a thrill for people last week to get red out on a live episode. Yeah, we're coming off the high of having done our first ever live one. Yeah, big thrill for those people. But we get to do it again in a few weeks. Oh, we do too.

That was a nice little drive. Look, to be honest, that was a nice drive run for Brisbane. Yeah. Because it was like a little show. Brisbane sold out. It's a bigger room. It'll be a match fit for Brisbane. Yeah. Because it was like a little show. Brisbane sold out. It's a bigger room. It'll be, we're going to be match fit for Brisbane. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Get all the kinks out of the first ever live talking dum-dum we've ever had. Well, we just know now, you know, we've got to make sure there's a screen behind us. Yes. And we've got to make sure one of the people's names we read out has a Facebook where they're saying that they're gay every second day. Yes. And then the rest of the gig just takes care of itself.

It's all easy from there. All right. Well, let's see if we can adjust back to the test cricket version of Talking Dumb Dumb. So the, yeah, just the relaxed, no one swinging for the pickets. Yep. Just this is more of a five-day or maybe even a five-name event than a sort of trying to get a six every ball. Because it is a bit like that, isn't it? Live performance when you're out in front of people.

You need to go a bit crazier, whereas here, I know you guys are sitting at home listening to this, but we don't really give a fuck about that. We're just trying to entertain ourselves. This might be being played live in a jail or an oil rig in spite of the copyright notice that we put before it, but that's not what it was designed for. So that's not...

Yeah, it's being done under different conditions. Sometimes people play this as the music at strip clubs, as someone is disrobing, and you'll hear the tail end of Dr. Feelgood and then into a bit of Talking Dum Dum as some peroxide blonde is taking off her knickers. Yes. God, I really hope that we can fulfill the thing that came up on this episode

of someone who has the knowledge of how to mod PC games and putting us, if we can record our own GTA radio station and someone can put that in as a mod that then people can download, nothing would make me happier, honestly. Can they at least switch the audio? So isn't it in one of those games, in one of the GTAs,

that Ricky Gervais is doing stand-up? Can you at least mod it so when he opens his mouth, it's our podcast coming out instead of his dog shit? I wonder if, because that one is from, that's from quite a while ago,

that GTA that he's in. Okay. So I wonder if that's easier to fuck around with or harder because it's older. But let it, happy to do, happy to be in whatever GTA

is easiest to mod. Right. And if that just so happens to be the one that, yeah, it's us heckling Ricky Gervais, that would be fucking great. That would be great because he's he's definitely a one for saying oh you can't say anything anymore well he literally can't in that game he can't say anything because we're

over the top yeah yeah yeah okay all right well uh yeah get to get to work on that any pc boffins listening but in the meantime we got to start reading some names we got to mod this segment with some names yep because we got we got i think we've got, I think we're both hungry boys. We're both hungry boys and yeah, I've been fucking potting my little ring off for the last couple of weeks with banking these and banking the other show that I do. So I'm ready to fucking. Oh, is this it for you? Yeah, after this.

Wow. This is it for until Christmas. Yep. Hit the out of office. Apart from the dummies we're about to do. Oh, how many have we got? A couple. A couple.

You fucking lied to me again. No, we just got one. Oh, we just got one. Just then. Yeah. And yeah, look, we do, oh, look,

I kind of guess it's a mini little ad, but we do put in too much effort to those things. So anyway. All right, let's crack in. First name off the,

first name off the cab rank. There's a name in the cab rank. Instead of cabs, there's names in First name Off the First name off the cab rank There's a name in the cab rank Instead of cabs There's names in the cab rank This week People are drunk They're lining up to try and get home And they can't get home

Because there's just names there Or the little light up thing On top of the taxi Just says like Darryl on it Yeah Thank you very much To Patreon subscriber Johnny Slocum

Johnny Slocum Yeah Or you could say Slocum. Johnny Slocum. Yeah. Or you could say Slocum, as in he's lasting a little while in the cot. But maybe, potentially more importantly, is it is the same surname, and I'm sure he's copped this a lot of times over the years, unless he's a kid. It's the same name as the infamous Mrs. Slocum from Are You Being Served? I would say if he's my age, he probably hasn't copped it.

Well, you said it before I said it, so you must know it. I know it from hanging around you. Right. So I reckon he's maybe heard it. Maybe like an uncle or not an uncle because they may even have the same. You know, like a family friend or something. Just the way you heard it from Uncle Carl. Yeah.

Yeah. So it just depends like what kind of people he's having. I think it may be 35. I was definitely aware of are you being served growing up, but I was never invested in the canon of it. Right. Well, just for people that don't realize what is going on, Mrs. Slocum worked at the department store in Are You Being Served? And she was very, very, very want to mention about the condition of her cat. Right, okay.

Because I know, I think for some reason it's you and Adam Rosenbach that always bring it up on this show. Really? Do I talk about it? It comes up a bit. I would have thought it would be a tony martin thing maybe yeah i've just i've got a memory of rosie bringing it up maybe the last time he was on but anyway sure mrs slocum's pussy yes i know is a i but yeah i've never really known i mean i can kind of put the pieces together yeah but so that there's a lot of jokes in the show about her what talking about her cat what you know a lot of her talking about her cat, but, you know, the, oh, you know,

hey, it's winter, middle of winter. How are you, Mrs. Slocum? Wow, it's pouring out there. I've only just got in. My pussy is so wet, et cetera. And this is just in a sitcom. Yes. This is a late 70s sitcom.

You'd never get that now. You'd never get that in a prime time. Maybe in England. I mean, you're saying, oh, that would never happen again. I mean, Mrs. Brown's Boys is still going red hot, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I assume there's a lot of stuff there.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about your Big Bang Theories and your big sitcoms where they're... I mean, they'll dance around it, but they'd never be that direct. They're, I mean, England is known a lot more for that sort of stuff. That's true. Yeah. You know, Mrs. Slocum was always like, oh, what's, you know, she walks in, what happened this week?

Oh, I copped it up the ass. I mean, my cat's doing okay. Probably a fair few Mrs. Brown's Boys DVDs having just been unwrapped over the weekend. Fuck, what a brutal present. A, Mrs. Brown's Boys DVDs having just been unwrapped over the weekend. Fuck, what a brutal present. A, Mrs. Brown's Boys, B, DVD. God. The fact that you can't really give entertainment anymore as a gift. You can't just be like, hey, this movie that you loved or this series that, you know.

It was such an easy gift back in the day. It's like giving it to my parents. It's like, hey, they were always going on about how they love midsummer murders get them a box set you can't really go hey here's hey mom and dad here's my uh here's my stan login he's um this is the gift i'm giving you and then i'm going to change the password after a month um but get on there and just watch as much midsummer murders as you want yeah that's my gift to you we should have we should have done that with this we should have gone okay you, you know what? Patreon subscription.

Let's package it together as a present. You can get it for someone else. And maybe it's like it got a guaranteed name readout at the end of it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not bad. Maybe that's a good idea. I was watching a documentary about Martin Shkreli the other day. And it reminded me of how we were going to do a Wu-Tang podcast.

It's still sitting in the depths of my uh of my mind of that idea i think about it every now and then it's it's yeah we should do it the thousand dollar the thousand dollar podcast yeah there's one we put it on a usb and then that's it yeah only person to hear it is the person who buys it well with the martin scurrly with the wu-tang one- album, it was like, it did have the thing of like, you're not allowed to play it on an oil rig and the rest of it. He did have to sign a thing saying he was never going to release it, did he? Or did he just not do that because he's a troll?

No, you're not allowed to commercially release it. Yeah, but he could have just put it up for free if he'd wanted. Oh, I'm not sure about that. Because he does, in the doco, I never realised this, but at that time he was constantly doing live streams just on YouTube where he would just sit in his house and he'd read out his phone number and people would call him up. And there's all these clips where people are like, hey, man, play the Wu-Tang album.

That'd be great. And he's like, oh, yeah. Oh, you want to hear it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you a big Wu-Tang fan? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really am. Okay, what was their last album? Don't, yeah, okay, Get Out. tang fan yeah yeah yeah i really am okay um what was their last album uh um i don't yeah okay get out hang up on them like he just he's got this thing that it's like the stream is just him doing

nothing just sitting there and it's like mate you could get some fucking big views off this yeah play the album people will love you yeah yeah oh yeah well he uh but also the i think the great thing about that was it was like oh i'm the only person to listen to this wu-tang album it's like cool by that stage there wasn't that many people listening to the other ones yeah yeah yeah like well he you know they did it as like an art piece where they were like this should be music as an artwork that only one person owns but then what would have been funny is if he had have played it just like say off his phone on that youtube live stream people would have recorded that and then that would have been the publicly available version of it would have been a version that sounds like dog shit because it's been through youtube compression and played off of and then maybe he's talking over

the top of it which is awesome i love that that's the that's the readily available version of it is like a fucking watered down shitty thing but of course you don't want to do that because he's probably got it's probably a six out of ten album he's sitting there going you know what if he sells it there's no selling a better version of something that people have already heard and knows it's not that great you just go ask the mystery is more oh totally that's why we're still talking about it yep yep um but and then he was saying at one point he was going to melt it down and use it as a coaster and everything. And they asked, they talked to Ghostface in the documentary

and they're like, what do you think about him doing that? And they're like, I mean, he's a cunt, but that's why we did it. That's funny. We love that he was just like fucking whatever. Well, also, from what I believe is most of the Wu-Tang Clan didn't realise they were participating in this project at the time of recording. So it was a lot of them were just doing bits and pieces and then all of a sudden one day

in the news, oh yeah, we sold an album for $1 million. Oh, did we? I'll check the bank account right now. Yeah. Well, thanks, Johnny Slocum. Thanks, Slocum. By the way, he does look... Like an old woman's pussy?

No, he's in the wheelhouse of possibly, very possibly, as you suspected, not having any idea of who this person is. But if you grow up with the surname Slocum, sorry, but it is... I don't care what year you're born in. Someone's coming up to you and fucking saying it at some at some point along the way yeah yeah yeah even if it's your you know what probably your teacher is giving you a fair go yes i think so yeah i reckon um and then the teacher's like doing a bit of mrs slocum's pussy gear in maths yeah i'm going i can't believe i'm

not killing this fucking class yeah this is this awful Because it's full of year sevens that don't know what the fuck you're talking about, you idiot. I mean, it probably still would kill. Just going, oh, yeah, my pussy's wet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A bunch of year threes are going to go, fuck yeah, this is great. Just a teacher saying pussy. I love maths now. That is funny.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. All right. Thanks, Johnny. Let us know. Let us know the first time you heard about your name and a pussy attached to it. Yep. All right.

Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Alex Bishop. Okay. Yeah. We had a little bit of chess talk in this episode very briefly. Oh, yeah. Good chess piece. Is it? Moving around diagonally.

Pretty good. Good board coverage. Is that? Moving around diagonally. Pretty good. Good board coverage. Is that how it works? Yeah. I believe so. Now you've got me doubting it. Yeah. No, I'm pretty sure it's the diagonal one.

Yeah. I've got nothing for chess. I'd quite like to know. It's like wine to me. Would enjoy being good at it. Yeah. Not going to put in the effort, unfortunately. Yeah, I can still remember how to play it.

I played it a little bit when I was a kid, but it really is like, yeah, it's a lot of games you can kind of like, you know, Monopoly you can play casually and still have a good time. But chess is like you really, really need to know the ins and outs to get any kind of enjoyment out of it. If you just stumble in, you're going to probably get the floor wiped with yourself. You know, I just, I don't want to put in any effort. I don't want to learn it. I just want to skip to playing some old cunt in a park.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. On a bench. Is there anywhere in Melbourne you can do that? I would absolutely presume yes. And the first person I would ask would be John Safran. I've got a very good idea that that's the sort of thing that guy does. Yeah. Probably he just can't wait to get old and be the guy that people, the young punks come and play.

Yeah. There's probably like bits in, actually, you know what? I have a feeling that there's a bit in his book that he put out a few months ago where he goes and interviews someone in that very context. They're playing chess in a park. Possibly. Maybe where my subconscious is getting that from. Yeah.

Because I did read it. But I don't remember that scene. But Alex, look, I'm on the record saying I like Alex as a name. For sure. It's pretty good. Bishop, fine by me. I'm happy to sign off on this name. I'm happy to let this continue.

I don't need anything altered. I don't need anything changed. Happy for him to get married and not change either of his two names. You know what would be cool? Him getting together with someone called, with the surname Actor, as the actor said to the bishop. Oh, there we go. Yeah.

You'd be having a bit of fun around the house with that one. I believe it's Actress. Is it Actress? Yes. Well, you're not allowed to call them that now, I don't think. Oh, right. Okay. Right.

Yeah. Well, it's still, you know, Jennifer Actress is a great name. Yeah. Yeah. I like that too. Jennifer Actress. Has she you know, Jennifer Actress is a great name. Yeah, I like that too. Jennifer Actress. Has she even got the surname Actress? That's good.

I'm reading a book at the moment where, and this name is meant to be funny, and it succeeded. Someone has the name Juliet Napkin. Julia? Juliet Napkin. Napkin, yeah. Napkin is a surname I quite like. Yeah, yeah, I like it.

But yeah, Jennifer Actress and Alex Bishop. And her proposing to him, getting down on one knee and saying, as the actress said to the bishop, will you marry me? Worth it. I genuinely encourage anyone called actress to look up Alex and see if, you know, see what you think about him, see if it's worth committing life to him for one little gag that would probably get a very small reaction out of us.

Yep. Probably you'd message us in, you know, this is a couple of years down the track, presumably by the time all these things happen. And we just have no memory of this riff. So the message just stays on read. Or gets a ha-ha. Yeah.

It's like, oh oh is this the one after the slogan pussy thing oh right yeah yeah even that okay yeah yeah

I was really tired that day I was getting hungry yeah it was the end of the year yeah yeah we just

done the we just done that cricket cunt yeah oh that's right he was on the show wasn't he yeah yeah

yeah yeah okay yeah cool alright thanks for reaching out but Alex Bishop if this is how

you meet your wife you're welcome yeah let us know you're welcome thanks Alex thanks Alex let us know

let us know if it happens if not let us know who you do marry so that we can change our saying to, as the smith said to the bishop. Yep. Yep. Yep. As the slocum said to the bishop. Yep.

Don't mind that. Yeah. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber, Suze Morris. Suze. Suze. Not Suze. Suze. Not Suzy, not Suzanne. The S-U-Z-E. Yeah.

Yeah. I like it. You don't like it? It's a bit strange. A bit familiar? A bit strange. Too familiar for you. Suze.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm into it. I like it as abbreviations. It's quite... It's one of those attractive names to me it's like uh it's an old woman name to me famously all of whom are unattractive well at the moment i mean you know look once you get older you know you you you notoriously always

are repelled by the young and you only if you're, you only want to fuck 70-year-olds. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to stay in your lane. Yeah. It would be crass of me. It's just like, you know, the opposite sex or the same sex, whoever you're attracted to, famously becomes exactly like dark chocolate.

All of a sudden, yummy yum. Yes, yes. I want to eat that out. I want to fuck that club bar. Yes. Absolutely. My dick doesn't get hard for under 60% cocoa. Yes, yes.

I feel like we were talking about this very recently, the chocolate thing. But it is so bizarre that it's like, yeah, it's like frequencies that you just can't hear. It's like the ringtone. It's like something happens where you cross a line where you're like, my grandpa gave me this when I was eight and I wanted to spew, but now I would drink it. Eating a block of Cadbury dairy milk is like water. It's nothing.

It's not doing the trick at all. It's like flat lemonade. Fuck this. It's for fucking babies. It's like Amil now for me. my asshole is fucking loose and wide opens right up yeah for a bit of dark chocolate darker the better um i need my my chocolate from deepest africa don't fucking worry about it um i i'm i'm a i'm a demon for it at the moment. I'm fucking loving it. Someone, you know what?

I put this on the socials the other day, but I was walking through a park over the road from our house with a little blanket, and a truck did pull up. And look, I did do a bit of a double back because I did suspect that they were giving out free ice creams. And they gave out the, oh, you got the pack of Rolo? Someone gave us a Rolo block at the Heathcote show and I've only just remembered it's in my bag.

Do you want it? Sure. If you're only going to have it. No. I'm going to... I've got no... I've got no... What do you call it?

I have to eat everything at once. I can't just sit there and have one little piece at a time or something. So if I have that, I have to have the whole thing or I have to chuck it in the bin. I know. That's why I'm putting it in front of you. Don't you want to have some of it? No.

All right. All right. Well, I've never had a Rollo, so I'll try it. I'm saving myself for the lack of veggies on Christmas Day. Oh, right, right. Roast some Rollos for your beer. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, actually, what am I thinking?

I could put these out. Yeah. Break them all up. In your beaten up Rollo bag that you've got out of your bag. I feel like it's gotten pretty disintegrated by being at the bottom of... Oh, no, it feels... I feel like it's just kind of... Like the little bits are broken up, but not the...

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the little blocks are the ways that... Look, the person did the right thing by giving us this thing of Rolo. Look, a lot of times people do give us stuff at live shows and they get it gets left behind because we're in the middle of trying to fucking do a live show yeah and also yeah and it's either like it's too big to carry around or it's like as is the case with this and it's exactly what we were talking about before it's like hey two weeks ago yeah

you mentioned Fanta for three seconds in a riff so here here's a two-litre bottle of Fanta, and it's like, I don't want this. I don't want to drink Fanta right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But look, hey, if you're going to do that stuff, I still encourage it. But just, you know what, next time someone comes up, say, here's this thing you talked about on the show, and you go, cool. And you go, now put it in your bag right now so you don't forget. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'll actually help me. Sure. Give it to us at the end of the gig when you can, cool. And you go, now put it in your bag right now so you don't forget. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll actually help me. Sure. Give it to us at the end of the gig when you can see that we're already in the bag. Not when, as was the case with this, and not to be rude,

I was in the middle of setting up and finding out that the tech was not going to be at the gig. So I had bigger things on my mind because we specifically, we'd been talking about how, well, I think then on the social since,

I put a video in 7-Eleven. Couldn't find a rollo anywhere to fucking save myself. Yeah. So this person was going, but also this isn't the rollo that I want. I don't want the block rollo. I want the rollo in the little tube. That's half the fun. It's kind of like popping them out.

Yeah. Oh, look, that'll do. That'll be all right. What were we saying just before that? Before you pulled that rollo out, what was I saying just before that um before you pulled that roll out what was i saying uh you got ice cream in the past yeah yeah yes dark chocolate that's what we're talking about yes um i uh yeah we got given um big big boxes of uh ice creams and stuff and it was dark chocolate coating and i put up on the socials and all the people going no not for me

dark chocolate what are you talking about you fucking little three-year-old? But it's also, I love when people do that. It's like, not for me. It's like, yeah, I wasn't asking. I was just posting something that I'm enjoying. It's like when you go like, oh, I'm at this restaurant or cafe, it's really good, and then someone will get in the comments and go, oh, I went there once and it was shit.

Thanks. Yeah. Also, it was free, so I could put it in the bin. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. Yeah, but it was good. You know what? Some of our friends have got like sponsors for their podcasts and stuff.

We need an on-brand sponsor. We need to fucking hook up with someone. We had Moose for a very long time. Yeah. We need something in that wheelhouse again. Yeah. I want to get a yummy sandwich. I want to get a fucking ice cream.

I need a... That would be the dream. Even a beer would be fine by me. Yeah, a store here going like... What we're talking about in this episode. The chemist going, we're launching sandwiches. Or supermarkets going, we're going to start to take more inspiration from your Tesco's

and your Lawson's in Japan and we're going to up the quality of our sandwiches. Yes. And where are we promoting it? The little dum dum club yes someone

someone you know every time we put a shout out like this a weird shout out where you go no one's ever going to get back

to us on this we'll get it we hear from people so someone's got to know some podcast appropriate sponsor it doesn't even have

to be some gangbuster huge deal we want to fucking pin our wagon to something we love yep yep just a little bit of bunts yeah some freebies yep we don't you know it doesn't need to be a massive contract something to do with us something to do with what what we're on about so it doesn't sound like we're just doing it we're shilling for the money we want to we want an emotional investment in a brand and a product yeah Yeah. So if someone out there can give us some ideas to do with their company, to their business,

or they've got an in somewhere, that'd be great. But, fuck, we've got a long way from Suze Morris. Thanks, Suze Rollo Morris. Yeah, thanks. Suze Morris, if you've got a business, being a professional old bitch, or in my opinion, being a professional hottie. Yeah. Yeah. Pro hottie.

Yeah. I mean, that's not a great occupation. I'm pro hottie. Being a pro hottie does make you think of something that maybe is illegal. Now, what do you do? You're blowing your nose every three seconds and I'll be honest, it's really stressing me out. Because we're a couple of days out as we're recording this

from the huge event that's happening. I will be livid if I have to miss out on the big event of December the 25th. What? Paul Thomas Anderson's licorice pizza in cinemas. Genuinely, I think I'd be more... No veggie day. I think I'd be more devastated about having to miss seeing that in the cinemas. Genuinely, I think I'd be more devastated about having a miss, seeing that in the cinemas the day it comes out,

than I would missing Christmas Day. Look, I felt a little bit flu the other day, so I went and got a test, and it is all negative. It's just literally like a bit of flu. Right. So that's what it is. I thought that you had this, like, you felt sick, and you went and got a test.

It felt like you dodged a bullet. And then you were like, I got the all clear. I'm going to Chadston. I was like, this guy is out of his mind. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Well, yeah, you got to live your life. I cooked a beautiful ragu the other night and then had a bit left over last night for dinner. And I was eating it and I thought, fuck, I'm not

tasting this. Oh. I'm in trouble here. And then I realized what I was doing, what actually had happened was I was funneling it into my mouth so quickly that it was spending no time on the taste buds. Cartoon style. Yeah. It's like gobbling it down like, oh yeah, actually if I'm leaving this on the taste

buds for more than 0.5 of a second, it is actually registering in my brain as tasting of something hasn't touched the teeth straight down wow um no well look be uh it's all good i did i did have to go just to go shopping but um no just feeling a little bit a little bit uh sniffly and sore throat and uh all fine no No big drama. Just, hey, look, the only thing you're going to do is get really sick from the flu from talking to me. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, nature really is healing.

We're back to the good old days when it was like someone would come around and go, hey, I'm sick, by the way, so you're also going to get sick. Yeah, that's all. I've just got the chicken pox and whatever. So it's fine. Thanks, Suze Morris. That's all. I've just got the chicken pox and whatever.

Yeah, yeah. So that's fine. Thanks, Suze Morris. Let us know if you're... Let us know which one you are out of the two predictions that Tommy and I have had. Thank you very much to both you and subscriber Shane Grigg. Shane Grigg. What a disgusting last name. Yeah.

We had a Grigg at my high school. Did you? Yeah. Grigg. Grigg. What were your thoughts uh fine you know one of those people that you just kind of know vaguely and even through all your schooling you've never really interacted with them all that much yep they're just very poetry by the end you're

like you know you'd maybe get like have once or twice where you've been put in a group with them right for something for like some kind of assignment, and even then you barely talked. But it is so weird. It's like you go through your schooling, and by the end of leaving school, it's like, I know everyone at my year level. On some level, it's these people that you've spent every day with for a few years,

but they're still the people that you just barely interacted with, and then you'd be forced to for some reason. You're like, wow, this is what's been going on here the whole time. What's the one memory you've got from your Grig? Because this is the thing I was thinking last night. I was thinking of a guy I went to school with when I was in grade four or whatever and this one very distinct memory came out. I thought, that's so weird that I just defined this guy by that one memory

and that is it. So what defines your Griggo to you? Very skinny. That's it? That's it. That's all I've got. Not one little interaction, not a conversation, not a word, not a thing he did, not a thing he dropped. Nothing.

Just his skinniness. Yeah. Wow. That's it. That's all I've got. I was just thinking last time about this guy I went to school with in grade four. And all I remember in terms of interactions, direct interactions, I remember being in the same car as him and playing indoor cricket with him and he had just won the uh best and fairest in grade four or whatever it was and i very

distinctly remember him being dropped off and his dad being out the front mowing his lawn and and him saying and even us yelling out the window oh your son just won best and fairest and the dad absolutely not giving a fuck about it and me just thinking he's the best at indoor cricket how would you not yeah how are you not just like fucking accidentally running into traffic with your lawnmower yeah anyone can be the best but to also be the fairest yes that's no mean feat you know, he didn't even fucking stab anyone whilst playing indoor cricket. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, so that's how a man, a now man I assume, called Jason Hare in my childhood memory.

That's how he is defined. I wish I had anything about Greek, but yeah, that just speaks to how opposite ends of the school we were operating too many drugs in grade four for you yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah i was high that entire time wow well i mean grade four was when i was in hospital high off my head on morphine at one point so actually yes right wow and you were just a visitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool. Grig, yeah. What a caveman. Like that's the thing.

You would call someone Grig. That's a caveman. It's very like kind of B science fiction alien race name. Oh, the Grig. Yeah. The Grig aliens. Yeah. It's, well, you know, like I don't know if I said it once before, but people getting surnames from the occupation of the ancestor.

That was, maybe they were, that's the first surname. That was Grig the caveman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's got rig in there, so they could have been shredded. No one in their family has ever had a job since then. Right. It's just a... Professional caveman.

Yeah. Right, right, right. And they were going to reset the surname as soon as someone ever got a fucking job, but it just never happened. Just doll bludgers all the way through for thousands of years. Go to their house, get driven around in their car, there's no floor on it, they're driving around with their feet. Well, no, not even even any car because they've been

unemployed the whole time oh so oh right okay I thought you meant they're still they're still like you know there's like an old fashioned

you know there's like people that are obsessed with the 50s oh yeah yeah like going to someone's house and they're like they've got a pig doing the dishes for them

right like real yeah real hipster yeah yeah yeah real hipster yeah I've got a car that's got no engine in it. I just power it by using my feet. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, if you're going to do that, I mean, you can't have a job and do that. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's it. Exactly, yeah. But just maybe the idea of everyone's evolving and going, I can't wait until jobs are invented and we can name ourselves something new instead of these caveman names. Yep.

And this guy just slipped through the net. It's like, no. I'm happy. Look, walking upright, honestly, sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. I'll stay hunched over. Thank you very much. Industrial Revolution, not for me. No, no, no. No, no, no.

Just keep the... Never got married. No one female in the family ever got married and got the new name. Nope. And yeah, just the last man standing in terms of caveman surnames. Yep. That's you. Yeah.

That's you, Greg. Mr. Greg. Well, thanks for somehow getting the money together despite absolute centuries of unemployment. Probably stole it. Yeah. Probably just didn't know about money so much that it was just like, maybe sign up on someone else's credit card. Maybe that's it.

Yeah. That's probably it. So we really should be reading out someone else's name, not you, Griggo. Sorry, Grig. That's the only one we could find. So thanks, Grig. Thanks, Griggy.

Thank you, Grig. Okay. Well, this is it. This is it for the year for you, Tommy. Yep. Let's just do one more and then that's it. And then you're off on, you're going to Podcast Ibiza. Long service leave.

Yeah. Going to Podcast Ibiza, Podcast Gold Coast. What are you doing? Yes, that's what we're calling doing two dummios. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, your sister says you're fat. Yeah, fuckhead.

Merry Christmas. Bye. Thank you very much. Last one for the year. Last Patreon subscriber for the entire year. 2021. So thank you very much to Patreon subscriber. Okay.

Well, maybe what we were talking about before, maybe this is what's happened. Someone signed someone up as a Christmas present because this is, yeah, look, this isn't. Anyway, you'll find out. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber, Mrs. Comedy's Pussy. Oh, awesome.

So this is for like a pet. Yeah, that's funny stuff. Yeah. Okay. It's for, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a pet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A pet. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Okay, no further correspondence. Mrs. Comedy's wet pussy or just? Oh, it doesn't say that. Oh, okay. Yeah.

All right. I mean, look, maybe after hearing, you know, a shout out like this maybe, who knows? Yeah. They have doused

themselves in the shower to just calm down. Yeah. From being so excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see it.

I can see getting aroused by having your name read out. Yeah. And that's what's happened here probably. Yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. Happy New excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see it. I can see getting aroused by having your name read out. Yeah. And that's what's happened here probably. Yep. Thanks, Mrs. Comedy. Thanks, everyone.

Happy New Year. Yep. Get fucked. Whoa. Bye. Whoa.