Three Bean Salad - Buffets

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

Accordionist Alex directs the beans towards the subject of buffets this week. Pile your plates high with UN etiquette, poker with The Boys and how best to handle a fire in a chemical warehouse.Tickets for Beef and Dairy Network live on 11th September 2021 are available here:In theatre tickets - https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/beef-and-dairy-network-podcast-3/Livestream tickets - https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/beef-and-dairy-network-podcast-11-9/Get in touch:[e-mail]@beansaladpod

my girlfriend has just texted me from Estonia. Yeah, she's there for work. She's been put up in a hotel and she sent me a text that says, the shower here is just a hole that you sweep water into. So does that mean that does that mean the person showering is underneath the hole? That is, you have to press yourself against the edges of the hole. And it's like a sort of action hero. Suspend yourself when they sort of hang up in the corridor. But I think it works is probably the guest in the room above sweeps into their hole, right? And then your shout the water as you sweep water, the same water into the hole below. So it's a symbiotic hotel. Yeah, it's the first fully symbiotic Estonian hotel that

I know of. Presumably the cheapest room is the top floor then. I don't know how you get the water from the bottom or back up to the top. That's one of the reasons this hasn't yet become rolled out across all hotels. Probably using bowling ball moving technology. Well, the only other way you could do it is you'd have to set up the hotel, the rooms to work a bit like the London Eye. So the road, all the house, all the rooms would have to also be rotating constantly rotating central spoke. And the water from the showering would be that actually rotates the water. Exactly creating momentum itself. So a bit like a mill, like the water wheel of a mill, but instead of but the water is the water is the water

in this analogy. That's good. So it's a half analogy. So that helps. But what I've said, the water is almost it's the water and and it's the grain, I think. Okay. And then the wheel is also the wheel as well in this wheel. Also the wheel. It wasn't clear. Yeah. Okay. But the grain in a more real sense is personal hygiene. And the people are the are the trapped otters that have got caught on the in the mill on the mill wheel. Yeah. I'll hang on. At the end of the text, I didn't finish the text. She said also there's 25 otters in here. So the otters are the otters. That's what obviously why eventually mills gave way to tech. There were obviously stages in between, but basically we went from

mills to the tech revolution, didn't we? The dot com bubble. The dot com bubble. Because it was the last point on that journey. But started out as a sort of grainy, sort of quite a dirty, dirty, literal bubble. Yeah. Exactly. Quite a scummy on the river. It's not a slimy bubble. Scummy bubble full of otter shit. Full of otter shit. Which would roll around in the bubble as it went along a bit, a bit like a horribly unhygienic Zorb. Was it like an early unhygienic Zorb? And that bubble gave an entrepreneurial miller the idea for the tech bubble. Correct. Which also gave someone the idea for the shower.

I'm quite, I'm quite discombobulating in general. Yeah. The shower came, the shower is one of the in between stages, I think. Entrepreneurialism, Ben, is not, it's not dominoes going down in a row. I can't emphasise this enough. Right. It's more like a network of dominoes. It's more like a Jenga. It's more like Jenga. I mean, of course, the other scenario with this hotel is that maybe at midnight, the whole thing just appends and the whole thing is on a big kind of hinge. And then it goes upside down and then all the water comes back down from the bottom to the top. So it's just a pendulum, a pendulum, a pendulum hotel possible. Kind of

like a snow glow, I guess. Yeah. So at that point, it becomes, it's starting to be a metaphor for society now, isn't it? That's one of the risks of this kind of hotel. Because it's like who's at the top, who's at the bottom? As the water goes down through the shower levels, presumably you get the best shower at the top. You get the dirtiest shower, but you also get the most vigorous shower. At the top or bottom? The bottom. Yes. Well, it's got a lot of soap suds in it. It's got a lot of piss. But it does. There is going to be some force. Well, it comes down to the old question, isn't it? What's cleaner, sitting in some static water or having very, very, very fast piss shot at you and access to a sturdy broom with which

to sweep it down? Exactly. To the resident below. So Henry, you're saying you'd rather have a high-velocity jet of piss fired at you than sit in a bath? It's a thought experiment. It's like trading as cats. It's one of those ones you can discuss for it forever. But it comes down to what is the actual cleaning agency of water? Is it moisture? So the moisture in water reducing the dirt on your flash? Or is it physical? Actually, the action of water bashing stuff off your flash physically. Like a sand blaster. Like a wet sand blaster. It's an imponderable, isn't it? But I think one thing we can all agree on is it's sitting in

static piss isn't the way forward. It's top of the tree. Well, yeah, obviously it depends how you look at it. Well, I hope none of our listeners are currently sitting in static piss, feeling judged. And if they are, let us know. I mean, what does it do for your complexion? There's going to be fringe benefits, isn't there? I imagine you won't... Well, I imagine you'll either... My guess would be you'll either suffer from very, very few skin infections or total skin infection. Yeah, 100%. It'll be one or the other. Because obviously, we all know about pissing on wounds, don't we?

As a prank. As a fun Christmas prank. Yeah, so she's in an Estonian hotel. She is. I've never been to Estonia. Because Ben, you liked holiday, didn't you, in the former Soviet bloc, don't you? Yes. Given the choice, I'll go east. I didn't necessarily understand or know that much about Eastern European cuisine and stuff. But for some reason, breakfast wise, I'm picturing loads and loads of very,

very pink circular hams. Correct. And slightly different sizes of ham, of circle, and slightly different shades of pink, but just loads of them. Yeah, the ham situation is usually pretty advanced. And often perfectly circular, right? Oh, yeah. So, it's suggesting that something has happened to that meat.

Something cylindrical. It's not just a sort of a fresh cut from a horn. From stable to plate, there's been some intervention. A powerful pneumatic tube has been involved at some point. I'm sorry to let you know, Mike, every time you're eating ham ever, something has happened to that meat. It's not just patience. Well, what about wild ham?

Or found ham? Well, found ham, we know you're a fan of. And that's come up before. Line caught ham. You've got your line caught ham. You've got your... Your trawled ham. Your trawled ham, which sometimes, unfortunately,

brings in some of them all closer to the surface hams that you didn't actually intend to. That's true. Your trawl. Because you'd be looking for those sometimes the deep sea. Destroys a bit of ham coral. Some of the ham coral might go. Because you're really looking for those big slow hams that work around the ocean bed very slowly. Quite old ones that have already had ham babies as well, right?

They've had the ham babies, which, of course, they give birth to in eggs, which actually very much look like a Scotch egg if you see one. It has a crusty bread to have a crusty breadcrumb sort of surface. And the ham baby nibbles its way out. But you can tell when they've had all our ham babies, because they tend to either smoke or honey themselves, don't they? And then they'll tend to do that. They'll sometimes run themselves through with a very, very long boiled egg.

It's not known how they do it. It's one of nature's mysteries. My mouth is genuinely watering. But I would say, I think the European buffet breakfast is basically the same wherever you are. I think it's largely set up to please German businessman wherever you are in Europe. It's there for the German businessman. He is the king. He is the economic powerhouse of the continent.

Exactly, yeah. We must furnish him with the right sort of dried rindbread and meat-based goods. He needs protein. Europe needs protein. Your children's futures are dependent on him having at least the option of eating brie before 9 a.m. So this week's topic has been sent in by Alex Cumming, who describes himself as a singer, accordionist, pianist, dance caller, workshop leader, and session musician.

Wow, that's pretty exciting. Nice to have an accordionist listening. And the topic is... Buffets. Oh, buffets. And that's been randomly generated. Yeah. Wow.

Oh, well. Well, we've covered fairly comprehensively, obviously, Eastern European buffets. Do we have any expertise elsewhere on the globe? What do you mean in the buffet of buffets? Here in Cardiff, there was a business which was a world-class buffet. Wow. Which is not all you can eat buffet, where I think the tagline is eat your way around the world. Lovely.

And then crap it all out in one homogenous, world-unifying turd. And that will be cast in bronze and placed in our wall of mega turds, which bestrides every wall of this fabulous buffet area. Digestive tract talk. I have eaten that. I have to say that it's fair to say that it didn't come out as one glorious homogenous turd. If only life was that simple. But unfortunately, if...

Yes, at least you managed a rainbow turd or something, Ben. Come on. Was it a troubling sectarian turd? Sort of torn apart by violent infighting. I think had I gone in to the floor of the General Assembly of the UN and done that turd on the table, you'd have made the news, certainly. No country would have been untouched. No, certainly because you'd have thousands of translators shitting down microphones to

shush it out, give a sense of what's happening orally. I think what would happen is, initially, there'd be a hush. Then there'd be murmuring. When you look around, all the different delegations from all different countries, they're all, there's a bucket, I don't know, different languages. People looking at their interpreters are confused. Some delegates are mopping their brows, sweats breaking out on people. And you're like, oh, no, this hasn't worked.

And you're about to get the dustpan and brush that you've brought with you because you knew there was a risk. You need to hose this one off, I think. Yeah, you've got a pump action hose. You've got a big, yeah, you've got a sort of crate of soapy water on your back, and a little pump action hose just in case. Yeah, you're not an idiot. Yeah, and also, going to the texture of it, you realize that the hairs of the brush,

if anything, you're not going to be able to brush it onto the dustpan. It's going to get just lodged into the brush. It's going to make a real mess of the UN table. UN table, and then it becomes a more and more toxic metaphor for, the opposite of what you're trying to achieve here, which is... Well, pushing a turd around a table with a broom is the ultimate metaphor for the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But then...

But then... There's a quiet applause. Then there's a quiet applause. Oh, Bono. Bono's clapping his hands together. Yeah, but then you look up and what's happened is... Hang on a minute. A miniature version of the South Korean flag has been planted in your turd.

Out of the ass of the South Korean Massacre. And then, wait a minute, what's that that's joined it? It's the flag of the Kingdom of Bhutan. It's the flag of the Kingdom of Bhutan. Okay. And gradually, all the delicates start adding miniature flags, and they're all sticking out of your turd. Again, I want to make clear that this particular turd you couldn't have done that with.

The only all you can eat a buffet I did was in Vegas, where, because it's Vegas, I think they similarly had a fairly all-around-the-world type theme, but you, I mean, you really, I really did myself a mischief at that buffet. Christ alive. I was quite a young man at the time as well, but I just couldn't stop. And you don't stop, I think, in Vegas. That's the general vibe.

Well, they've got, they've designed the lighting on purpose, haven't they, to disorientate you in Vegas. So you don't stop eating. You don't stop eating. You don't know if it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, what's up, what's down. Isn't that right? Because it's all artificial lighting. There are no windows there.

There's no windows. It's all artificial lighting. Very attractive young men and women and very skimpy, sparkly outfits are going around all day with trays offering you bacon, bacon, baps and stuff at all times of day. So you're eating the bap. You don't know if it is this breakfast bap. It looks like it, but is it dinner? Don't worry about it.

It's a chicken-tigue masala. Don't worry about it. Just get this down here. This man dressed as a centurion who just gave me this bacon bap. Is he my wife? Is he my dad? Is he my wife? He looks a bit like my wife.

He's got an easy manner around. Maybe I can dress as he might be my wife. Or is he my brother-in-law? Am I on a stag do it? I honestly can't remember. You know what? I'm going to put everything on black. Isn't it?

Because when in doubt... Gamble everything. Gamble everything. I'm going to do that thing that I've only ever seen done on TV shows where I put my house keys onto the table. I'm not sure what quite happens and how that works, but I'm going to do it. Well, if you're living in a rental, it does get complicated. It can lead to a lot of red tape and that can be quite complicated.

You're probably not getting your deposit back if you gamble away the entire property. I think that that key is in the middle thing. The way I would try and argue it afterwards would be... So what I was actually putting in there was what was gambling was access to my house. So you now have complete access to my house because you've got the keys. So I'll still live there, but you... If you're ever passing. If you're ever passing.

You need a bog. And you need a bog or something to stay. You probably won't because you're a very, very intimidating international criminal. From your gold tooth. From that gold tooth you've got on your slick back hair, your white tuxedo, and your machine gun legs. And your machine gun legs. I mean, the idea that you want access to an upstairs...

Well, to be fair, a nice upstairs flat and chiswick. It's amazing. It'll shoot you in any time you like. It'll shoot you in. Also, I see me get up the stairs by shooting downwards, do you? And then, yeah. So it's almost like you're sort of bouncing on a kind of bed of bullets, yeah. But if you want it, you can come around any time of day.

But also, do they get access to every key that's on that bunch? Because I've also got my bike lock that's on there. So that's gone. Might be the spare key to your mum's house. I've got a spare key to my mum's garage. There we go. So they can go in there. Fish out an old tennis racket or something.

Whatever she's got. Use the tumble dryer. There's an old key here which I don't know what it's for. So give up with that. I mean, if you've got the time and resources to research, you'll need to start by identifying what type of key it is. You'll probably need to bring in a locksmith and a few experts. You'd have to then start trying every lock in the UK.

Probably starting at my property. Moving out was like a circle. That's probably how I'd do it. It turns out it was just my locker from a job I left about 10 years ago. All this in there are some sachets of oats so simple. Which have expired. Which have expired. Yeah, and if not, you could use the oats for...

You could use them decretively. Criminal purposes. You could use them nefariously. Obviously, that'll be your first instinct. I'm guessing from the machine gun legs. I don't want to prejudge you on those. Have either of you ever done something that appears quite a lot in American television? Poker night with the boys.

Oh, I've done a poker night with the boys. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. I've never been involved in this. Well, the weird thing about poker night with the boys is, and I think why it's a game which has sort of slightly criminal or sort of dodgy associations, doesn't it, poker? Sopranos-y.

It's Sopranos-y. It's not like battleships. Or UNO. Or UNO. For example. Tony Soprano never had a good old game of UNO, did he, at any point? Exactly. And parents don't say, we're very worried about Sam.

He seems to be getting in with the UNO crowd. That's not something that happens. I mean, yeah. Pick up four, motherfucker. I've been to a couple of poker nights with the boys, although that was with a couple of friends who had got very into it, like including possibly starting down a slippery slope of getting a bit too into the online version of poker. And I realised I was out of my depth very quickly with that lot.

Well, here's a tip, Mike. I've never actually been to one of these evenings, but I think if you start to feel out of your depth and you're not sure what's going on, you just put down your cards and go, Aces, hi. Snake eyes. I'm pretty sure that helps. I'm not sure what it means. Three hot mummers.

Coming down the chimney. Ollie. Texas wins. I feel the Texas wins are coming. Say that kind of thing and then narrow your eyes while you look at the criminal nefarious types around the table. Of course, there'll be, by the way, quickly, quick rundown of the classic people around a poker table.

Of course. There will be Stetson Jim. His head is the shape of a Stetson. He doesn't even have to wear one. Yeah, there'll be Fat Steve who's like a string bean and smokes constantly. And then there'll be Pupushka, a Russian beauty. 17 foot tall and with fingers as long as legs. And speaking of fingers, let's not forget Fingers McGinty.

Fingers McGinty who is just a pile of fingers in a plastic bag. He's more of a warning. He's more of a warning and very, very, very hard to read. Then, of course, there's Raw Dog, Dog McGlabrador recently out of prison, maybe on day release. And he looks to all the world like an absolutely lovely Labrador, doesn't he? He looks like a good boy. He looks like a good boy.

He's got big brown eyes, floppy blond ears, big nice warm wet tongue, but the body and attitudes of a killer. Oh, so he's got Labrador's head, but a human body. Labrador's head, human body. Yeah, that's Raw Dog. You've got the professor who's a four-year-old boy, that's right. Yep. He's extremely dangerous.

And then you've got the risk bot 5210 slash 00 backslash 4 deluxe edition, which comes with the teak finish, isn't it? And that's just a... And that's made by IBM. That's made by IBM. And it's operated by six very, very sweaty scientists. I do love the aforementioned European hotel breakfast buffet. I would put it above the much-vaunted American breakfast.

Yeah, I think American, you know, it's a celebrated breakfast, but it's a pudding-y breakfast, isn't it? Yeah. I feel like I could have a European breakfast to start the day. And that would see me through until sort of late afternoon, and then I'd have an American breakfast, and that would probably do me. American breakfast for lunch, basically. Yeah, for late lunch.

Yeah. I like... When I went to Toronto, I had a North American-style breakfast at midnight, because it was like an all-night diner where you could just have a breakfast. That's very good experience. That's... But that's the perfect time to have it, basically. At 7 in the morning, eating a pancake is absolutely crazy. There's no way around it. There's nowhere left to go for your day.

It's the stuff of dictators and of the do-far, the sort of, yeah, that the favourite child of the emperor, sort of like this. No. What are you supposed to do? You can... Basically, you can recline, I think, after that. The amount of feudal power you would need to have to justify eating a pancake for breakfast. And yet, and yet the Americans are capable of eating such a breakfast, and then going forth and ranching, I assume.

Yeah, or ranching. Or juggernauthing across the Midwest. I want some bacon in New York. Okay, I like the beginning of this. I like this. I'm quite excited about this. It's got a great city. It's got mates. It's got everything, so far. If there wasn't rights issues, I'd be playing a little...

Quietly in the background, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Just imagine that opening clarinet. Yeah, as it slides up at the beginning. Oh, great. Now we have to pay £500,000, Henry, for that. I bought a bucket of bacon in New York, and I took it back to the small apartment I was staying in. Oh, sorry, I thought we were at the climax. And when I took this bacon out of the packet,

I genuinely thought that it was essentially broken, or like a duff batch. Too much white? Yeah. What does it paint the picture? What does it look like? Well, as Ben said, it was like pure white. So I thought, oh, obviously it's America. It's Ford. It's some sort of huge conveyor belt factory, and it's just there's been a little mistake.

I almost put a one instead of a zero into a machine, into a data input, and it's come out, and I've just got a pure fat bacon. It's got a pack of fat. Like when you get a Kit Kat and it's all chocolate? Exactly, but a horrible dark inversion of that. It was all fat. I didn't know what to do.

I was like, do I go back and change it? This isn't bacon. I was pulling them out. It was just lines of fat. But I thought, well, I might as well try frying them now. So I fried them, and it kind of curled up into... Somewhere in there, there was like the gentlest thread of... Imagine a red bi-row on absolute last legs. You found it in the desk, the back of your desk,

doing a clear out of this red bi-row. It's absolutely fucked. You know it's fucked. But you think, you know... I'll try and get it going again on this bacon. You think, I'll just... I'll try and get it going again on this pack of fat I've got, because it's obviously never going to work on paper. It hasn't got the strength to work on paper this whole bi-row.

But the gentle pull of fat, you know, the gentle soft sort of suction of fat, of pure white fat might just pull some ink out of it. So basically, if you just wrote... If you just did the tiniest little line of red, imagine, you know, along the fat was in there. But when you fried it, that kind of just took hold, and it was enough to kind of grip onto the fried bacon

and turn it into this, you know, basically a version of bacon, which is just 99.9% fat, but is just about bacon. It's like a sort of mechanized process to get as much as possible out of a pig. It's a bit like someone... It felt like someone had said to America, you've got one pig left. Well, you know, let's mechanize this.

We can string this pig out until, you know, the great... The great pig comes, until the great pig comes. Yeah, of course, yeah, of course. Until the great pig comes and delivers us some new pigs. Well, that's why they built America, wasn't it? In Reddience for the big pig arriving. He's not arrived yet. In Reddience for the big pig arriving.

And at that point, obviously, all the deep sea hams will rise up in the ocean beds. Yeah. What were you doing in New York? My brother's wife was living there in a flat. She was working in New York, and I had this flat. I managed to just get this flat for a couple of weeks. I went with a friend when they weren't there, staying right in the heart of Greenwich Village.

Was that all brilliant? And, um... Bob Dylan hanging around? Bob Dylan was hanging around, you know, because, you know, he was, they were all... Janice Joplin. Joplin, they were all at their peak, because it was what sort of late 90s.

To be in Greenwich Village, to be listening to Dylan in the late 90s, was, you know, it was wonderful. On Minidisc. On Minidisc, Leonard Cohen, obviously, to speak, all of these people at that point were and really, really cooking on gas. They'd got past their early forays,

and, you know, their early sort of... Deasy stuff. Easy, but embarrassing sort of stuff, and they'd got into proper, quite a lot of synths, massively well-produced... A lot of them had found religion in a big and slightly weird way. A lot of them had found religion and thought,

maybe we can make sort of a religious rock with, again, with a lot of synths and a lot of very, very expensive production. Brilliant stuff. Quite a lot of them are spectral, of course, by the time as well. Exactly. So, could you do another edge?

Some of them are their spectral form, are actually really, really hitting their peak as well. So, no, it's a good time. But they said, that bacon, I did eventually just fry it. Yeah, yeah, so I've already said the end, haven't I? Mike, cue the music. Now, I made the bacon, and actually, the bacon, it was actually quite good

because it turns out the bigger the fat ratio to meat, it is incredibly nice, that bacon. It's that really thin, crispy American bacon, which is quite different from the British bacon. God bless America. I know, you know, when you go on holiday, do you do this?

You go, you always extrapolate from restaurant experiences, what you think the national sort of character of... You sort of try and extrapolate grand sociological statements about the country, because you're analyzing the country, but all you've got to go on is going to restaurants. So, you always have to end up saying things like,

yes, interesting isn't how the, you know, these Polish napkins are folded, probably something to do with World War II. Yeah? I saw, I know what you're getting at. Is that okay? Is that okay? I think I get my read off the roads.

Oh, do you get the cultural read off the roads? The general vibe of the roads. That's a really big dad energy from Mike Wozniak there. That's big dad energy. Yeah, yeah. That's big, big dad energy. Levels of chaos, safety, size of vehicles. He's got his family absolutely sardined into a fiat 500.

Is it not this day one of the holiday that they're careering around the Arc de Triomphe for the sort of seventh... Just so I can get the sense of it. Yeah. The car is at gas mark nine on the inside. And he's going, right, listen to me, kids.

You're going to start learning French in school soon, but I can tell you something for nothing. It seems like there isn't a word for indicator. Yeah. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, that's true. You do try to kind of divine the national character in a way that's not really on.

And that makes no sense. And that has to be impossible. And that might not necessarily even exist. But I'm, because I'm aware that happens, that's why if you're lucky enough to be a tourist in Britain, and you're lucky enough to get lost on a street where I'm lolling about, and you ask me for directions,

I'll always be incredibly polite and nice to tourists because I know... You're doing it for blighty. I'm doing it for blighty. And these people are going to go home and their anecdotes to people are going to involve how people bathe on the roads, restaurants, and how the two or three people

they asked on their holiday for directions reacted. And they're going to say, we met this lovely man. He offered us, you know, great... Anecdotes. Great anecdotes. He talked a lot. He talked a lot.

And it was quite hard to understand what he was saying. We weren't clear what he was saying. Half of a time. And we missed... We missed Les Mis. There's that thing, isn't there? Are you aware of this? It's called Paris Syndrome.

Oh, no. Which is when people from Japan... This is real. It's like a Wikipedia reel. People from Japan go to Paris on holiday. Their expectations are so high, but also so wrong about what Paris is going to be like, that when they hit the reality of Paris,

they sort of have like a nervous breakdown. So they're like, why isn't it entirely quaint? Why is there a film of scum on that bin? So they're imagining Emily, essentially, and what they get is Spira. Exactly that. Exactly that. And lots of Bagnia and people on Moped's

Bayesian Accra. That is quite interesting. I'm reading it off Wikipedia. Paris Syndrome is a sense of disappointment exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris who feel that Paris was not what they had expected. The condition is commonly viewed

as a severe form of culture shock. The syndrome is characterised by a number of psychiatric symptoms, such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, de-realisation, de-personalisation, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations, such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others such as vomiting.

Grums, that's quite severe. I think Paris suffers from having... Its PR is just too good, almost. Yeah. Because I know that it's certainly true in American films and TV shows and stuff. People are obsessed with Paris or the idea of going to Paris.

Yeah, when you meet Americans in London, they're always like, I'm going to go to Paris and you're like, fine. But they sort of want you to go, oh, my word. The things you will experience there, the things you will see, the music you'll hear. I know, the atmosphere. I think in America, as a romantic move, it's like...

He invited me to Paris. Or like, we're going to go to Paris. It's so romantic for them. I just think it's crazy. But then you're feeling up in a sort of two-star hotel in the 21st arrondissement. Yeah. Sort of endless car horns throughout the night.

Endless car horns. Brothel in the next room. Brothels to the left and right and underneath you. Just brothels, just hemmed in by brothels. And I'm sorry, guys, but this news is just in. Some of the croissants aren't that great. And I've got this fresh off the press because I was in France a few weeks ago.

And this is a big moment for me. I had my first ever croissant in France. Oh, God. Where I thought, I think I may have had a better croissant than this in Britain once. Oh, no. That's a tipping point, isn't it? I think the tipping point, I think the croissant race is.

So there is such a thing as a bad French baker. And you spent an awful lot of time in France. I know. But no, I just think I think we've caught up croissant wise. Do you? I think we may have finally caught up croissant wise. Do you think this is what Brexit was about? Can't be a coincidence, can it?

You think the government got the intel? I think we got the intel. I was like, we don't need them anymore. Here's a question. In your mind, do crisps go up or down in sort of value when they're in a bowl being presented as part of a buffet or when they're in a packet? Do you know what I mean?

I know what you mean. I'm a bowler all the way. Do you think a crisp is more valuable and more exciting to you when it's in a bowl? It's a more exciting proposition when it's in a bowl, I think, yeah. Because I think that might be true. But that means that that's the opposite of what happened to croissants and pound chocolars.

When they're presented on a central plate in a meeting, then they become worthless, I think. No. Wait, hear me out, hear me out. If you go to a shop and buy a croissant, that's quite an exciting thing. If you go to a meeting and there's a whole pile of croissants and pound chocolars in the middle.

No, for me, that's so exciting. And all I'm thinking about throughout the meeting is the pound chocolard pile. And I can't think about what anyone's saying. I'm in a whole different mental universe where it's just me running through a valley of pound chocolars. So your girlfriend is like, how did the meeting go, Ben? And you're like, yeah, really well.

Nice, crispy outside, but then soft inside. Right, okay, Ben. And in terms of the work wise, did anything else come out of the meeting, Ben? Do you remember anything else from the meeting, Ben? What about the stocks, Ben? What about the stocks we invested in, Ben? You can come back to the meeting without any commodities, Ben.

What about the commodities I wanted us to get? I sold all the stocks in return for five quattos. There's one show that I worked on as a writer where, I don't know why, but the production company would always like lay on a weird buffet for the writers. But like just in the writer's room, like on the day, just, it was just like skittles and M&Ms and yeah, and those big bags of whisper bits.

And everyone else managed to just sort of have a couple. Whereas basically, for me, it was just an eight-hour shift of eating Cadbury's products with a very small amount of writing. Just channeling as much of that stuff down through your gob, just getting it all down, yeah. It was your main sort of focus. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't think of anything else. I think in a lot of different walks of life, I think, initially,

there's a period in your life where people first start putting croissants and pachal claws on a central plate. Yeah? Yeah. I think in a lot of walks of life, that'll happen. I don't think so, actually. I don't know. I feel like... You're a firefighter.

You came to an early firefighting meeting. Chemical warehouses burning down, bundling the van. Someone's been thoughtful enough to bring a fruit bowl, and it's stacked up full of pastries. Look, Mike, you might think the best thing to do is get straight down to that chemical factory that's on fire and just start putting it out willy-nilly. Well, you go ahead and do that,

because I'll remind you of the story of the horse and the... And the truss hole. E-sobs? Lesson and fable. No, not the rabbit and the tortoise, okay? The rabbit. The hare and the tortoise? Do you mean the hare and the tortoise?

Well, exactly. Well, frankly, I didn't care about that. Floppy. The rabbit and the tortoise. It's just a slightly more nuanced version of the same thing. Well, frankly, I didn't care which floppy-eared loser it was, rabbit or hare, because they... Who cares about them? It's the tortoise that wins the day.

My point is, while Mike's going down there, trying to put out the fire willy-nilly, people go, where's Henry in his squad? I mean, if I know this town, if I know anything about this town, it's that we have two rival squads of firefighters, because we thought the best way to... Is the one next to the patisserie,

and the one out on the roundabout. Because, you know, if there's any way to, you know, gonna use healthy competition, if we're really gonna master these fires. Anyway, I don't go straight down the fire. I go to the patisserie next door. I get two pachaculas, two crussles. I know Clive likes the...

He likes the savoury cheese twirls. He likes the savoury cheese twirls, but it's four. So, it's not lunch, it's not dinner. It's one of those tricky times. And the guy behind the counter is like, shouldn't you be going to that... Because there was explosion going on. The fumes have actually reached the patisserie.

It's coming through the windows. Quite violent. It's spoiling all of the pastry. Purple fumes going in. And I'd get us all round, and we'd sit and break bread together. Eat the croissants, and just spend that time together to bond as a team,

come up with different theories. How should we approach this chemical fire? It's all moot now, because the whole thing's burnt down. Turns out the whole thing's moot. And I haven't even finished my cinnamon swirl. Do you know what I mean? That's how effective it can be.

There is, of course, a third way. There's, of course, a third fire house. A third fire squad. That I'm in charge of. Yeah. We hear about the chemical fire. We get straight down there. They go, hang on,

they're not even stopping at the patisserie. But we've got the uncooked croissants, which we then put on a rod and put over the chemical fire. Heat over heat. For the freshest... Oh, fierce potassium flames. Exactly.

Creating the ultimate croissant. The ultimate croissant. And it'll be delicious. It will kill your bone marrow two years later, but... But what are two years? What are two years? You are riding hard. Yeah.

It's bucket list stuff. So, hang on, you were saying there was... I mean, I think you went too far in saying in most walks of life, you end up in a place where people are putting croissants in front of you. But certainly in certain walks of life, you are ending up maybe as part of your job,

someone's putting a croissant on top of a croissant. Yes, exactly. And I think there's a phase in your career, in these walks of life. Certainly, I think anything to do... Certainly anything to do with the media or the creative industries. There's a period in your career

where it probably takes a few years, where you just... It's just getting over the fact that there are croissants in the room. Yeah. And you're like, what the f... There's literally... There's a bloke on the other side of the table.

He's got a thin leather tie. He's got, you know, gray hair and his mouth's going up and down. But he's got black thick rim specs, but you don't really give a shit about that. He's pointing at a chart. But all you can see is this big sort of swell... You know, these croissants...

And is that deliberate then? Do you think this is a thinning of the herd? Are they trying to see who's more interested in the bowl of croissants than who's actually concentrating on the task in hand? I think if that's true, my career is over. I'm sure Henry's has probably hit the skid as well. Yeah.

Suggest that we're all finished. One of the signs that you might not be cut out for this business is if you're starting to imagine... Even if it just curves to you, that whether... If you put your head... If you've got on your knees and put your head down near one of the corners of the table

and the guy at the other end with the thick rim specs was to lift it up. Could actually... Could all the pastries tumble into your gob? Even if it even just crosses your mind, you're probably not cut out for this industry. Yeah, they'll only if you actually suggest that. When he's in the middle of making quite a serious point.

Yeah. I mean, the thing... The ones that really get me, this is a killer for me, occasionally I'll go to a meeting and someone has bought from Sainsbury's a little sort of see-through plastic square full of tiny millionaire short breads.

If those are anywhere near me. Yeah. That's a wrap on the rest of the day for BP. Yeah, and I'm not listening in the meeting at all. It's the bucket of sort of fudge squares. Yeah, and everyone will have maybe one and then I will eat 89. Yeah.

And of course what's happening, Ben, in that meeting is one of the walls on that meeting room is glass. It's one more glass. Standing behind that is Alan Yentob. Yes. Yeah. Clare Balding.

Yeah. Pauline Quirk. And the other king makers of the media industry. And the other king makers of the media industry and they're looking at you, shoveling that down you, and they're like, he's finished.

He might as well, those delicious millionaire shortbread chunks might as well be full of cyanide for what he's doing to his career right now. At the other end of the table, Mike, he's looking eager as a beaver. He's got two notepads out.

Yeah. Scribbling away. Behind Mike, there is a rucksack, possibly Jan Sport, possibly Falk Raven. It's lying semi zipped. That's no coincidence. You can see,

and Yentob is eagle, I can see. Inside Mike's rucksack, nestling is a shiny red apple, some tinfoil containing a very basic meat paste sandwich. If I could be a meat paste, or if it's a Thursday or Tuesday, it'll be a dairy paste sandwich.

And a child's size packet of crisps. He was certainly really salted. Because it's not a Friday, otherwise I'd have my little tub full of pumpkin seeds. Exactly. And they can see, and they know,

this guy, and they look back to Ben. Ben is literally, his mouth is covered in chocolate. It's disgusting. He's got, he's wearing that. His intestines are already beginning to set with the amount of caramel and fudge.

He's got. Put inside. He's got the little bucket thing. He's wearing it as like a sort of fez on his head. Yeah, and that's how deals are done in Soho to this day. No, it's true that there is that,

it does take a while to get your head around the fact that there's free snacks and stuff around. But then you know what the other end of the spectrum is. And I won't name any names, but I know someone in this industry is doing very well.

And I was in a meeting with this person. Gary Delica. Look, read between the lines as to whether you think it's Gary Delica or not. But put it this way. I was in the meeting with this person. The heavily capped striker sat there across from opposite me.

And this person brought out, not only did they not take any of the crosshairs that are available, they brought out a sort of Tupperware container inside of which was a kind of gray, sort of off-grey sort of silt. They brought their mother's ashes to the meeting to eat.

And that is the commitment that Yenton wants to see when he's looking through that glass, that one-way glass. Eat this or forget it. So how hungry are you? Because do you think you can get on question of sport if you haven't eaten your own mother's ashes? Dream on.

So that was buffets. That was buffets. Now, we've got ahead of us a real buffet of correspondence. Lovely. Lovely. Now, really nice. Like a buffet, it's got its good points, it's got its bad points.

It's got its dark corners. Yeah. Do you want to start with a positive or a negative? Start positive, shall we? Yeah. Okay. You're going to enjoy this one, Henry, I think, because, you know, finally something positive has happened

because of this podcast. About bloody time. This is from Nick. Hello, Nick. Hi, Nick. He writes, Dear barons of bean, as one of your filthy yank listeners,

I became interested in Branson Pickle after your condiments episode. I'm a lover of sauces and Henry's description of overwhelming flavor intrigued me. I managed to find and purchase the pickle at a quaint online marketplace called amazon.com. Ever since then, I've been topping nearly everything I eat with this wonderful, chunky stuff.

Oh, gosh, he's gone into a Branson hole. I'm worried about this. Yeah, okay. My only gripe is on several occasions after consuming the Branson, I've broken out into a cold sweat only to wake up in a roadside ditch after a multi-hour lapse of consciousness.

Yeah, yeah. Overall, I'd give it a four out of five rating. Thanks for bringing this potent concoction into my culinary life. I may have to make room in my fridge to install a pickle vat next to my mayonnaise barrel. Cheers, Nick. Wow.

So you've... It's lovely. Henry, you've converted an American to Branson Pickle. That's lovely. He's having a pickle adventure. Well, what can I say? That's good luck to him. I mean, yeah, I know about the dizzy spells

and the waking up in ditches. That's all part of it. The life is never quite the same again afterwards, is it? No, never quite the same. You can't unknow Branson Pickle once you've known it that well. You can't. It's very much a blue pill, red pill, or dark brown, shiny pill.

Brown, cubular pill? It's the brown cubular, dark brown, shiny, cubular pill, Branson pill that he's taken. And he will feel to him now, like everyone else in his life, is possibly suspended in a transparent glass vat of liquid and with nodules and tubes and so on. Up their noses, living in a semi-conscious state

while he is experiencing reality, he'll feel. He can see the vinegar. It'll feel like he can see the vinegar and other people can't. Yeah, those close to him will end up giving him more and more space. He'll become isolated. And the quest initially just be a question to do with self-pickling. Then he'll dismiss it, but gradually over the years,

self-pickling, self-pickling will become a sort of mantra in the back of his head, maybe to shut up the voices, telling him to pickle himself. Until he's essentially a six-foot gherkin. Until he's a six-foot sentient gherkin. So, yeah, good luck with that. Well, good luck, Nick. Now, we've got an email.

This is such a confusing email. I talked about the dark corner of a buffet, the curling sandwiches, the hot meats, the sweaty meats, the ketchup stain that someone's hidden under a plate of hams. The crusty mustard. This is an email from our old noses. Oh, no.

Spurbs. Spurbsy. Oh, Spurbsy. Boop, boop, boop, boop, get this. Dear Spurbs. What? How? Thank you for your continued correspondence throughout the show. We'd love to read all of your suggestions and questions.

And I appreciate that you've been enjoying the show for so long. What? I'm not sure if there's some miscommunication, but that seems to be a recurring bit of confusion. Three Bean Salads has three hosts. Mike Wozniak, Mike Packer, and me, Benjamin Partridge. Not one host, not two, three. From here on out, I'll be accepting emails from you,

only if you include my name. Let me reintroduce myself. Hello, my name is Benjamin Partridge, and I exist. Please, for the love of God, Spurbs, just write my name next time and acknowledge my existence. I've acknowledged yours, whoever you are. What kind of name is Spurbs? Sounds made up.

Sounds like some nonsense an idiot would come up with, an idiot who wants attention, or an idiot who isn't real. Maybe you should make your own goddamn podcast and make a name for yourself like I have, a name like Benjamin Partridge. It's a good name, and it's mine, and I've received from my own marriage an existence. Me, Benjamin Partridge, that exists, and you don't,

because you're not real and I am. Damn it. Me, who is named Benjamin Partridge, the one and only who is writing this right now, just say my name, damn it. Just acknowledge me, Spurbs, for fuck's sake. I'll do anything, please, for fuck's sake. My name is Benjamin Partridge. Much love.

Benjamin S. Partridge, brackets, who is real? God, he's even thrown in an S, a suggestive middle name. I think we all know what he's angling for there. I do not know where to begin with this particular piece of correspondence from Spurbs. You've just got to not just take off your hat, but somehow take off more than your hat, haven't you? You've got to sort of take off your neck and just go, look.

There's nothing, you know, it's full vanquishment. It's Spurbs vanquishes all, and he's pulling at the seams. He's pulling at the seams. He's targeted you in particular from the get-go, Ben. But in this email, he's embodying me like a virus. It's like, have you seen the film arrive? It's like if the aliens in arrive or were actually bastards. Do you know what I mean?

Rather than big-friendly squids. Rather than big-friendly squids. But he's so many steps ahead, and he is the steps. There's no metaphor that can control him or define him. I don't know what he's playing at. He also knows that we can't help but broadcast his messages. We haven't, of course. We were recording this post-the-live show we did last week,

where he obviously promised that he would be there. There was a palpable sense that he was there. He didn't show himself. But I think as you prophesied it, anyone who was on the live stream, if they go and look at their bank account now, it will be empty. Those guys are finished. Yeah. It won't just be empty.

It'll be, you'll be able to see the zeros and ones, and the numbers, as it goes down and making a noise. You know what I mean? It'd be scarier than that. A lot of those guys would have found themselves waking up on a black site somewhere on an archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic. And if you go down to your kitchen and open the fridge, you may find it's been completely emptied except for one egg.

When you crack it open, what's inside? Spurbs. Spurbs. Hard-boiled spurbs. Anyway, it's fair to say I would say we're fairly confused by your most recent email spurbs. Yeah, classic spurbs. I mean, he's infiltrated, hasn't he?

What's his email address, by the way? I don't think we should give that out. Okay. Another victory for spurbs. Okay, Fraser emails. I've just watched the Kings Place live show via cyberspace. But wait, what's going on? Henry Packer, no curly hair.

I had imagined you with it. What? Mike Wozniak. Not fat and not bald. That's not what I pictured. And Ben, you were just right on the money, were you? Well, you're right. It's Ben Partridge.

I guess he was young. But he didn't organise the other two to sit under the right beans on the screens. Well, I'd like to just say I did identify this as a potential problem when Ben and I were on the stage going through our warm-up. I was late. Mike was late. Yeah, we had a bean backdrop. And I noticed that we were sitting next to the wrong beans

from the backdrop. And I had a feeling it might trouble some one or two people. And Ben said, pretty much these exact words, it's too late for me to re-edit the video. Absolutely true. It was, to be fair. It's way too late to re-edit the video. And you felt it was too late to swap chairs, presumably.

I felt it was too late to swap chairs. Now, actually, we could have swapped chairs, couldn't we, Ben? Well, there was a kind of laptop plinth. Right, there was a laptop plinth. God, the people who didn't see the show must be really feeling they missed out on something here. The laptop plinth, the three chairs. I'm expected hair combos.

I'm expected hair combos. Mike being slightly late and missing the warm-up. And feet like a 1980s lifeguard slash detective. There was a lot of talk about Mike's feet. Mike's feet were like, we're introducing a new character into Baywatch. It's season four. This guy's going to have quite a big impact in this series.

He's a provincial father of two. There's no lifeguarding qualifications whatsoever. But we need him to make a big entry. We're going to start with a close-up of his feet. And we want not just the other characters, but the audience to really notice this guy as he comes in. He gets killed halfway through season four, so he gets brained by a lifeboat.

So the footwear doesn't have to suggest necessarily a particularly deep or three-dimensional person. I mean, we should just explain that Mike was wearing a very nice pair of flip flops. They're the nicest flip flops I've ever owned in my life. A bright powder blue. They were very big. They almost looked like,

if you saw them out the corner of your eye, you might think, hang on, it's like I got two specially built individual jet skis, one for each foot. Have they finally managed to mel roller skate and jet ski technology? Foot jet hoverboards. Foot jet hoverboards. Because they were soaps.

Hoverflops. Hoverflops. Have they finally mastered hoverflop technology? And they were very bright, weren't they? They were sort of some turquoise. I think they did discuss some people. There was at least one person who tweeted something. They had some sort of like no exposed feet in an urban area rule,

which I wasn't to know in advance in my defense, but I think they were so horrified. I think they've written me off in some way, this person. For which I apologize. I mean, they're probably not listening. They're probably unsubscribed. How was filming season four of Baywatch? I enjoyed it.

I think my favorite episode is the one where the girls are drowning and they go, quick, quick, get the lifeguard. Where is he? And it turns out you're just, Pam's done a shit on the beach and you're having to pick it up. Yeah, because you can't leave the turd unattended on the beach. And that's very much the ethical quandary one there. Do you clean up the turd first?

Or exactly. Do you save the bathers? What do you do? And my character, he's got to get the turd first, of course. Because if you save them, what world do you save them into? Well, exactly. Yeah, you're just dragging them half drowned onto a beach covered in turds.

Who wants that? Exactly. Yeah, but it was a lot of fun. Great guys, really nice team, you know? Yeah. Sure. It was really the scripts that attracted me to the job. Our first place.

They were doing some really inventive stuff with them. You know, the juxtaposition of drama and sand, really, which I've not seen before. Yeah. A couple of final emails. One relates again to the live show. In the live show, the idea was that people would send in their ideas for topics and we could talk back to our email address.

So we put the email address on the screen, but I wrote the email address wrong. Because our email address is quite confusing. I think it's 3beansaladpod at gmail.com. I put up a different one. Someone's email saying that they've been regularly emailing us, but they've been sending it to 3beansalad at gmail.com, including an email about his experience of getting nibbled by an octopus's combi mouth anus.

Imagine my horror when I realize this week I've been sending them all to the wrong email address. And the poor people at 3beansalad at gmail have been receiving all this random drivel from a stranger. They've been giving some prime combi anus. Oh, that's a shame. Based on anecdotes. I mean, Adam, who emails, I'll just say to you, please do send forward through again your story about being nibbled by an octopus's combi mouth anus. Yeah, go into your sent box and we want to see that.

It will still be in your sent items, won't it? So, dig it out. We want to see that. We want to know. Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Yeah, thanks, everybody. Ben, do we need to do a quick plug for Beef and Dairy? Oh, we could do.

No harm in that, is there? Good idea. All right. Go on. I do another podcast. What? It's called the Beef and Dairy Network. We've got a live show in the same place that we did our live show for 3beansalad.

It's on Saturday, if you're listening to this this week. And I sort of, when I choose my guests, I like to cast the net wide. I like to think outside the box, put together a real dream team of fellow travelers from all walks of life to try and And just, and actually just freshen things up a bit, isn't it? You've got to keep surprising yourself. Yeah, you've got to. And challenging myself as well, and making something new happen. And so the guests I have for my live podcast on Saturday, available via live stream or in person,

are Mike Wozniak. Oh, wow, okay. Baywatch is Mike Wozniak. Baywatch is Mike Wozniak. Okay, that's a fresh choice. I like that. That's singing. And alongside him, a Mr. Henry Packer.

So excited to get the call. I did not see this coming. Just like, hello. Wow, one of those moments where you're just like, what? If I could have told myself a year ago, that I'd be doing another of Big Beath and Dairy Live show within 12 months, I would. And the live still hadn't moved on from the cycle of live engagements. Essentially treading water for another 12 months.

Yeah, wow. It's a three bean salad Trojan horse. Couple of extras though, right, Ben? I also, yeah, not just you two, Dave Cribb at the piano. The man of a thousand, Ebony Keys. Ebony? And Ivory. And Ivory.

He's got the biggest piano. He will be playing a very big piano. All the octaves. Oh yeah. He's got every octave covered on that thing, isn't he? Yeah. So based. And Nardjie Kamal.

Lovely. Nice. So that's 11th, 11th of September. 11th of September. 2021. Just in case you're not listening to it this week. I'll put a link in the show notes. Lovely.

Lovely stuff. Until next time. Cheers all. Bye. you