Three Bean Salad - Dystopia

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Listener Sam steers the Beans towards the nightmarish topic of dystopia. Naturally they cover goat silos, national service for children and Andrew Lloyd Webber but they also reveal the true nature of Henry and Mike’s working relationship.Tickets for the livestream of the beans' live show on 2nd September 2021 are available here: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/three-bean-salad-online-streaming-event/Get in touch:[e-mail]@beansaladpod

You've been in foreign climbers, Henry. Yes, I've spent a week in France. Lovely. When you come back, what kind of COVID things do you have to do? Oh, it's an absolute nightmare. Unless you don't bother to look it up, right? Unless you don't bother to look it up, which I, in a way, wish I hadn't. But I had to fall back on various better organised relatives of mine to help me, including a sister-in-law and a brother. Did they swab you in your sleep? Well, they just had, they just forwarded me lots of links. The whole last day of the holiday was basically spent clicking on links, looking at QR codes and swearing and driving around small French towns, going into the pharmacies and then telling me that they wouldn't give me an antigen test

because they were fully booked. Did you have to get a black market one? I had to get a French farmer to do me one. And basically, you know the way they make foie gras? Yeah. It was basically the same. They burst you and see if you got any COVID inside. Yeah. He ruptured all my internal organs. And basically, the theory is that good luck getting hold of that COVID, good luck getting a foothold on this slippery mush. Yeah. And that slippery mush, so all my little blood cells that go around. Blood cells. Blood cells, that's it. All my blood cells that they were like, they were like, we're almost 24-7 now, I got so much to deal with. So I swelled up all over the place. Yeah. I was peeking out of everything. You're peeking delicious batter.

I'm peeking delicious bags I have every morning. And local gourmands were scooping up. Local gourmands were queuing up with a little jar. Clutching little dry biscuits. They were spreading on dry biscuits, a little bit of quints on top. Turned out it was lovely. So the farmer had, he had his knobbo flip chart out. Or knobbo. And he was coming up with plans to monetize the whole thing. I'd have to travel around the country on the back of a sort of cart. A sort of cart adapted into the large sort of man-sized platter, presumably. Exactly. Yeah. And it was at the point where he was trying to talk me through, especially in French, was quite hard. The idea of a cranial tap.

Le tap-cranial. Le tap-cranial was at that point that I thought I need to move on from this, because my flight's in France. I haven't packed. But now, eventually I did make it back. But if you are listening to this on holiday in France... Start coming home now. Start coming home now. Now, you've got to ring fence the last day of your holiday for it. Well, or just book it in advance. It takes 10 minutes. Yeah, well, or you could be a square. I think I know which one I'd rather be. Yeah. You could be a square guy enjoying his holiday, getting to the airport in an orderly fashion. Maybe having a nice final lunch.

Or you could be watching your own internal organs transforming into human patter. And being shared on by a, frankly, evil French farmer, turned out. Yeah. Yeah, that was a mistake. Well, I'm glad you're safely back, Henry. No, I am safely back. But I tell you what I had on the last day. It was a real nightmare. I tell you what, I tell you why it was bad. Because on the one hand, I was sitting in a French garden. I could see roses. I could see a cherry tree. It's a lovely start.

Clink, clank. What's that? It's the sound of hazelnuts, pitter-pattering onto the old stone terrace about my feet. Being thrown at you by local children who want you to go. Being thrown at by, being thrown by the local children that hate me and my family. It was an idyllic scene, right? The sweat on a piece of brie. Sparkles astride a bit of baguette that it's on. Yeah, it's a beautiful scene. But I'm not enjoying that, though, because I'm sitting there on this terrace wearing shorts. Everything seems to be great, but I'm just lost in admin hell on my phone.

And it got to the point, you know, when you feel an admin disaster zone coming on you, you feel it bubbling up. Because to start with, you're like, it's okay. I just need to get, I need to book an anti-gen test in France and secure a home test for two days after my arrival in the UK. So at that point, well, admittedly, yeah, two years ago, that would have sounded completely bonkers, there's a thing to say. At that point, it's like, okay, I can do this. But then, you know, when one thing goes wrong, okay, so I'm trying to book the anti-gen test, all the French chemists are saying they're fully booked. That's okay. I'll go on to my phone, call some other chemists. Oh, my phone's very low on battery. Oh, another factor. It starts

building. Like a little sweat, a sweat breaks out then. On the brie? It's not the pretty brie sweat, is it? This is ugly human sweat now. The brie is sweating almost as, it's like a yawn effect. Yeah, sympathetic sweat. It's a sympathetic sweat on the brie. Then one of the pharmacists said, call this number. There's a sort of freelance nurse who works just out of a room. The town. And I didn't want that. Is there any precedent for that, Mike? Is the medical thing? I think that's all COVID, isn't it? So she's cashing in. There's a few medical professionals who are, yeah, there's a couple of them knocking about. Mike, didn't you once have to get tested by a vet? I once had to do a show and the COVID Coordination, when it was a very brand new job,

got a bit panicky and worked out that I didn't live in London where I should live, if you're trying to do any sort of show business and really struggled to book me in for a test in a year, but found, not even a vet's, but a veterinary laboratory in Newton Abbott, where apparently someone had said, yeah, you can do it, but it'll have to be after hours. A little bit sinister. And we need to take a swab from his udders. Yeah, I found a different solution in the end. Because everything in being a vet involves a rubber glove and hand all the way to the shoulder. That's how you cure every animal's problem. Step one, always step one. That's the equivalent of the GP saying, hello, please take

a seat, sir. Yeah. That's just just to get things started. So did you go and see, did you go and see this woman then? This is when another layer of stress got added. Let me guess what happened. You went to see her and there's a little sign saying, Suri, we are on lunch from midday till 6pm. And because it is August, we are on holiday for six months. And also we are on strike because my brother knows a truck driver. I am drinking wine with my children. But it was anophobia there from old BP. Classic. But also, that was just already kind of layered into whole experience, which is general stress around lunch hours. That was already part of it, yeah.

But you get stressed about that anyway though, right? Not stressed, but you're often thinking about lunch. I'm thinking about lunch right now, yeah, obviously. Lunch is the ambient sound of my life. It's the Muzak. But then this was the other layer of stress, right? I was standing outside this nurse's room on the street level at the door. There was a phone number. I called the phone number. My phone's running out of batteries. I need the antigen test booked. Yeah, I'm flying the next day. I call the number and I then get trapped in the infinite staircase of hell known as how do you formulate a number abroad on a UK phone? Oh no! Plus 4-4. Do you leave out the 0? 0-0-4-4. Do you leave out the 3?

And I was just calling it over and over again and getting this voice going, je ne sais pas ce qui se passe. The automated French voice saying, je ne sais pas ce qui se passe. It's particularly withering, isn't it? Yeah, it's so withering. And like my battery's draining. Everything's falling apart. So I got at a point where there's too many things that you're stressed about at the same time, then you know you're in the vortex now. You're in the admin hellhole. Yeah, and you're still getting pelted with hazelnuts throughout every single moment of this whole experience. At this point, most of the cells of my body is just

encrusted in hazelnuts. Pocked. Like when there's people with a beebeard. I'm just absolutely encrusted in them. And then you have to book the antigen test. You have to book this test when you get back the two-day test. And then there's this list of providers because it's been monetized and there's all these companies out there. And it's like, I've got no brand loyalty to all these fucking companies I've never heard of, like SanuCare, Omnichek. And it's like, I don't know who these people are. Like, why do I have to choose? Just give me a good one. And so eventually I've got my brother to decide.

And then obviously then you come back and then they sort of, they just sort of look at it so quickly. In fact, maybe I shouldn't say this actually, I wouldn't say it. But basically on the purchase side, the guidance went, have you got the test booked? And I went, yeah, okay, cool. So it turned out you just had to remember to say, yeah, when asked that question. Anyway. I think we can broadcast that. I don't think that's not your fault. Well, you know, this turns through, this turns through inside into a campaigning journalistic

podcast. So let's turn on the old B machine. This week's topic has been sent in by Sam. Don't know where Sam lives. We assume Bremen unless it's dated. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Of course. Bremen's the default. Yeah.

The topic is... Oh, well, we've been living in one of those for the last 18 months, haven't we? Hey. Oh, here we go. Thank you. About bloody times. Someone had the guts to say this on the podcast. It's been a bit rough. That's right. He's talking about the virus Boris Johnson.

And the host organism, the hope of the people of this country. Oh, wow. That's what he lives in and sucks dry. And the cure? A benevolent autocracy. That's right, guys. Smash the system. Just have a bloody monarch that's actually ruling us once.

Let's go back to the monarch because at the moment we've got a human slug. He's sucking hope. He feeds on hope. He dissolves it and it turns into what? Sort of sheen on his cheeks. On his shuffling, isn't it? Yeah. On his rosy, on his apple cheeks. I don't think I've ever seen Boris Johnson described as having apple cheeks.

I don't think he does have apple cheeks, does he? I don't know how to picture an apple. He'll be reeling from that, though. Oh, yeah. Particularly if he doesn't think of his own cheeks as being aptly. He'll be absolutely reeling. He's even capable of reeling. Of course, the truth is we're all signed up members of the Conservatives.

Founding members. Time traveling founding members of the Tory party. Sent into the future by the early Conservative party. Sent three of our best into the future now. To do some soft propaganda. Soft propaganda and to create chaos amongst the brain frame, which is what we refer to. Well, that's the phrase we use for just the general vibe of how people,

what people are thinking in the country, the brain frame. Send three of our best into the future to create chaos amongst it. That's right, Dominic. Twist upon twist. Your bloody right mate, you've got me bunged to rights. Tell you what, though, it's the civil service that really needs looking at. Hang on, was Dominic Cummings in Billy Elliot? No Son of Mine's going to assist the Prime Minister.

Tell you that. No Son of Mine's going to have a reasonably successful blog. I think we, I know last week we got into sort of, we got into this quite heavily about whether we need to explain things to Americans. I think we probably might have to explain who Dominic Cummings is, but it's a bit of a hard one, isn't it? He's a sort of oily Mandarin. Former Prime Ministerial Advisor and a Kingmaker power broker,

trouble-causer, slash bell-end, general bell-end. Most of all, yes, gigento bell-end. Imagine if Kafka had sex with a snake. That's what you're looking at. He's an oily manipulator of the levers of power. He's slippery, but he's got, well, he's got hands, doesn't he? He's a snake with hands. Yeah, he's an unpleasant knob.

Who is both a genius and an idiot, who in a way has actually been quite successful getting Boris Johnson to do his bidding, I think. But it seems to work quite well, it seems to quite work quite well that you have a sort of straw man in charge with a sort of slightly Machiavellian lever puller behind them. Yeah, like with Mike and you. You've got Mike, the public face.

Exactly, Mike. Channel 4's Mike Wozniak. Channel 4's Mike Wozniak with the body. The body. The face. Mike the body Wozniak. The Hyundai i10. The Hyundai i10.

It's all happening. But then behind it. Behind it, the lizard man. Behind my vacant eyes. The hunched, beady-eyed, slippery levermeister. Me, bug-eyed, just surrounded by screens. Withered. Withered.

My hands have just sort of, I don't know, they just sort of withered into red, bleeding little stumps that I used to push buttons. Yeah, apart from one extremely long finger with a long curved nail. Which I occasionally use to beckon people in a sinister way. Come close. Come close there.

Close there. Close there. We must position Wozniak in Channel 4. Get him on to task master. It will increase our power. He will be the housewife's choice. My data suggests that married women between the ages of 40 and 56. Will be his key demographic.

Then later, he will be on Richard Osman's house of games. That was a lovely day out, wasn't it? If we can combine with Osman, we'll become unstoppable. Maybe one day we'll front an advert for Benicol. That's spread that says it's good for your cholesterol. Oh, fingers crossed. I'm checking my emails every day, nothing's come through. I also think his market brand position would be strong in the ant-acid field.

Tablets, syrups, etc. I don't know why we've decided that's Mike's future advertising. Here's stuff you can buy at a pharmacy. Sturdy and dependable. And alkaline. And alkaline. Renny's. Peptobismal.

Does anyone know what that actually is? Wouldn't hurt him to occasionally come down to the cellar and just check in with me. Yes, but the main thing is the mission. I pull the levers. He fronts up to the public, but I mean still, you know, I am sort of still semi or 48% human. Wouldn't mind a blanket over my knees from time to time. Just maybe if you could just put a blanket over.

Could change the radio station or something. My one finger isn't strong enough to hold a blanket. I can manipulate data. I can control public opinion. I can't get that sodding blanket onto my face. And the radio station has been stuck between classic FM and Jazz FM for these past four years. It's created a whole new genre, driving me slowly neared. So, Henry, what do you guess out of this arrangement?

You know, Mike obviously, you know, his career continues to bloom yet. Henry though, you're just saying Henry probably just loves the game, right? That's what it is for these people. It's the chess grandmaster. It's the power. It's the sheer power. Because I know that the truth is, Mike might be getting the credit. But he's just an empty.

He's just an empty, great body. It could be someone else. It could be someone else with a great body. It could be Richard Maitley. Richard Maitley. Nigel Ravers. The latest incarnation of Greg Wallace. Only these people could do Mike's job.

Completely insoluble. It's only the lizard that is unique. The lizard man. And his one finger, which has started to seep, there's a transparent liquid is seeping out of it now. I think if this was a movie, it's the trope, isn't it, of the guy who wants power because he's obsessed by it. But the more power he gets, the more his body deteriorates.

It's the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Michael Ball relationship. Just as, isn't it? Every time Michael Ball sings, a high C, Andrew Lloyd Webber withers, another digit falls off, a piece of skin flakes away. And as Michael Ball becomes bigger and stronger and more beautiful year by year, Lloyd Webber, his dark shadow gets longer and more withery. But separate them, there's nothing, they can't work apart. Together, they dominate the West End musical scene.

And in turn, the cultural temperature of the nation. Sing for me, Michael. Sing, sing. Because the Phantom of the Opera, of course, was initially an autobiography, wasn't it? Of Andrew Lloyd Webber. They just had to shift a few details, didn't they? Making French. That's basically the only change, I think.

Pretty much everything else was pretty much paying off the money. Who wrote it? Some French novelist of yours? I think Phantom of the Opera is just original, isn't it? Oh, no. No, no, I'm talking absolutely... It is, but it was by Gaston Leroux, the Phantom of the Opera. Gaston Leroux. It was literally a book called The Phantom of the Opera. I didn't know that at all.

I think, though, if you were writing a musical and you wanted to give it some of the literary heft by pretending it was by a French novelist, you might come up with Gaston Leroux as the name of the... It's true, that is a... And it's no trouble learning to mock up a Wikipedia page about that. About Gaston Leroux, no. So, basically, it was originally My Story by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Yeah, repackaged as a sort of turn of the last century French novel. What's that guy called? Derek... Derek and the Dominoes. There's a guy called Derek Spermwale, or something. Yeah, Derek Spermwale. Yeah, he was a financier, I think, yeah. It's all made or happened. There's another guy who was one of the people

who was massive in the musicals in the 80s. Still go? No. It was more like... Cameron McIntosh. That's it. Cameron McIntosh and Derek Spermwale. They had a very powerful partnership, I think, which then fell apart.

Derek Spermwale now, I think, just lives on a Hebridean island. He's become a recluse. This lies on a beach? Yeah. Yeah, I think he would have tried to get it as... Yeah, so the Android Webber musical, My Story by Andrew Lloyd Webber. And I think Cameron McIntosh and some others would have looked at it and gone, this is a bit bleak.

Yeah. And then Lloyd Webber would have... His technique at the time in terms of how he got up the industry was to then assassinate everyone who'd been in the meeting and then try to relaunch it from scratch by this time. He'd have made up a French author, Gaston Le Roux. I mean, it could be that Tim Rice Helton come up with that name, I don't know. Well, the telltale signs, if you translate Gaston Le Roux into English, it's Gary the Source.

Which was his nickname for Tim Rice. Which is the name of his personal chef. Yeah, Tim Rice, who's his personal chef and friend and co-author. And alias. And alias. And then every package that's found for the opera. What is the topic again? Dystopia.

Ah, dystopias. Yes, dystopias. Well, what are some big ones? It feels like the sort of post-apocalyptic planners are preppers, I should say. That's become more of a thing. Yes. Someone I know has a new next door neighbor who's full prepper. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere and as soon as they moved in,

first thing they did, it was time to construct the grain silo. So there's a silo already there and he's adapting the silo. He's building, I think he built a silo from scratch on the land. How does that work with being a prepper, the grain silo? What is that? Well, you fill the silo with two years worth of grain and then you can see out the apocalypse eating grain-based foods. It's a very dry approach.

What kind of grains are we talking? Are we talking sort of Alpen kind of stuff? Is it? Well, what is grain? What sort of stuff is grains? It's kind of granola, muesli. And then you've got a grain tap, have you down there, that you can turn it on and it flows down from the silo into your...

Yeah, he'll have himself a millstone, I imagine. So to crush up the grains. Crush it up. So he'll be variety then, he'll have different levels of crush you'll be able to have. We're quite thick. Yeah, quite, you can just have the grains, just chew them slow and just sort of cudd. And I guess there's the option, he can do pancakes, he can do crepes, he can do unleavened breads. Well, he'll need milk and eggs.

He will. How's that going to work? He's going to have a goat on site, isn't he? He can have a silo full of goats. Yeah, a goat silo. You just pull a tap and a goat comes out. Imagine opening the top of that, just horrific. Also, what if these zombies whatever upstairs, while you're down there and what if they come

across your silo and they're like, I'm having that? Grain zombies, they don't tend to go for grain. The other thing that happened was that once my friend went round because they were collecting for a charity shop and I think they recently had a baby or the baby was now a bit older. And she said, you know, have you got anything you want me to take for you to the charity shop? Any clothes you don't need anymore? I know they're looking for baby clothes. So if you've got any old baby clothes, we can take that for you to this charity drive,

whatever it was. And the guy said, no, no, no, we'll be hanging on to the baby clothes because in the end times, baby clothes will be a really useful thing to bargain with. Plus, he might have to repopulate the earth, right? Or when the great shrinking happens to the human race, I'm going to be wearing this little dinosaur pajamas. That's going to be my main outfit once the shrinking happens. I'll button up conveniently around the crotch.

This might seem like a comedically small rucksack with a panda on it to you, but after the shrinking. When it's a full of tiny grenades. Full of mini grenades to combat the mini zombies. I mean, if the end times come in that way and it's all about self-sufficiency and, you know, doing battle of your home ground, I'm not going to last more than a day, I don't think. I'm just going to stove my own head in.

Yeah, I'm done with it. Even while Pam watches. Would you be able to do that with Pam watching you with all that love in her eyes? Hang on, I'm just going to close the door. Was that your family coming back and you were talking about saving your own head? Yeah, because they didn't have to do it to them as well. And finally he turned the stovings on himself. Self-stoveing, that's going to be hard.

Oh, it requires a bit of grit and arguably perhaps the grit that means that you could make it after all. That's the real irony. That's the irony, as the lights sloughed out, you'd realise, actually. Probably could have been, all right, yeah. Just as you bring up your hands for the last stove, the fatal stove, you see the sun come up, it turns out you just slept in. It was confused about because the clocks had gone back.

It wasn't an apocalypse. It's just British summertime. It's just British summertime. The guy outside you thought was a zombie is actually just a topless guy mowing his lawn. Just got a bit of a hangover. So what are the other big dystopias? You've got zombie attack. There's zombie, there's post-apocalyptic because of,

someone said the big red button, right? I remember becoming very aware of the big red button one as a child in the 80s. As a very young child. In fact, I remember specifically the moment it happened, I was having lunch somewhere. With a Cuban emigre. I said, tell me more, Mr Castro. I was talking to my brother and my brother just told me about nuclear weapons over this one lunch. Your brother's loved scaring the shit out of you as a small child.

They did. And he told me that, A, there are nuclear weapons that could destroy the whole world. I'm like, I was quite enjoying my fish finger a minute ago. And my main worry was how much ketchup should you have on a bit of fish finger? That was my main worry in life. Now you've just told me there are bombs that can blow up the whole world. And turn you into a fish finger. He'd be biting someone's arm off to a bit of a fish finger at that point.

Also, the world would be blown up. It'd be like the sky was on fire. He also said, you know, hopefully that won't happen. But all it would take would be one mad bloke to be in charge of Russia. And he wouldn't even have to be mad. He could just be sort of distracted by something and put his elbow. Just move his elbow in a certain way. Put it on the button.

If his desk was a bit wobbly and one of his apparatchiks had put a napkin under it to some micro angles had changed in relation to his desk and his elbow, we'd all be dead. And then I had to go back to my fish fingers. And from then on, I was like totally freaked out. I'm going to heard aeroplanes going about at night if I heard a plane going over. He thought this was it. I thought this is it. He thought that's the PM evacuating.

That's the PM getting out there. That's also growing up in London as well. Exactly. All right, that bit is a kid growing up in Portsmouth. Portsmouth is basically just one huge military base. So that would have been taken out big time. That would have been a majorly big target. Big time.

Yeah. It would have just been smushed to nothing. There would just been a sort of 10 mile square sheet of glass with your little face in it. Exactly. So I had an awareness of that. Although I think growing up, we were told to be more scared of the IRA, but we were. The school I went to had a real fixation over that.

I guess it was a military place. There's something called the CCF, which is the Combined Cadet Force, which is just where if you're interested in being in the army or whatever. That's like a kind of Hitler youth. Basically, yeah. Sort of scouts for the army. But they at this, the grammar school I went to, they essentially, they kind of wanted to have their own form of national service, really.

So they made you do a year in one of these services. There are a couple of teachers who ran it very clear that they felt that national service should be a thing. And this is as close as they could get to doing it. Thanks very much. And they thought it was important that we learnt to march and strip a gun or that kind of stuff. You're still doing maths in English. And yeah, this is at the end of school.

This is at the end of the school day. Right. So you had to get in your military togs. Bloody hell. And yeah, to be honest, mostly it was just Monday evenings, we just spent marching up and down the playground. That was it. But they had this real thing where they, at the end,

they, you must not go home in your military uniform. You must not get the bus. You must not get the train. You must not walk home. You must get into your civvies because the IRA is out there and they're watching you. And they're following you home. And if you do go in the military uniform, you must make sure you go on a different route each time.

But you mustn't anyway, because don't do it because you're going to get blown up. Okay. We're not trying to freak you out. Exactly. But you are all potential targets. We're not trying to freak you out. We're also not going to give you any sort of historical context whatsoever. We're trying to make you understand the Ireland situation.

And anyway, shape or form, we're just going to tell you there's this bogeyman here that's been in the news a bit and it's terrifying. Go. Is that how they operate it? Now stick your bayonet in this big beanbag Jerry Adams and go home. Pretty much. Yeah. Oh my God.

And I did the army one, which I think was a mistake. It was quite rough. Oh, could you choose? Yeah, you could choose. I didn't know why I chose the army one, particularly. You've got to go Air Force, haven't you? Now, the one rule is you do not fly these Apache helicopters home. Or at least put the safety catch on before you get in your civilian helicopter and fly home in that.

And they'd send us off on these great big exercises at expeditions where we'd be walking around with guns that were full of blanks and they would get so angry about what they called a negligent discharge, which is when you fire the gun when you're not supposed to fire the gun. What the fuck do you think is going to happen when you've got a bunch of like 12 year olds holding guns full of blanks? I mean, literally every five seconds, someone shoots the gun. Of course. Who was that?

I'm warning you, we're going to check your magazines at the end of the day. But bang, who was that? Right, wasn't it? I was like, you bang Smith. What's that you bang gunning? Stop that, you mean bang. It's endless all the fucking day long. Just don't give us bullets.

Just don't give us blank bullets. This is absurd. Yeah. What do you think it's going to happen? It's going to be guns. We're bored shitless on a cold walk. The only thing we can do is fire a blanket. You know, Jeff Furman's arse.

And then he'll do the same to you five minutes later. So you can basically kill a man within about five seconds, yeah? I can kill a man within five seconds, provided that I've had a little refresher course in how to use a firearm, provided that man is completely unaware of my approach. So did you actually fire the guns properly? We did have to do a target session. That was disappointing. That was a humbling moment.

But you don't need to actually now to fire a gun because, you know, if there ever was a war, you're very much, you know, off as a class material. So you're more just kind of going, pour in more troops, more troops. Wave upon wave of good men. I want you to pour two things, more troops into certain death and more brandy into this class. For the king. In a tent 50 miles behind enemy lines.

Why can't I see my face in my buttons? I want to be able to see my face in my buttons. What a war, damn you. Buff them. There's a lot of buffing, isn't there, in the army? Yeah. So much buffing. So I guess, yeah, in some sort of post-apocalyptic dystopia, you know,

slotted there and be able to do the buffing and the... You'd thrive. ...buffing and the shouting. So you kind of, you lived your own dystopia. There was a teacher who was in the TA who claimed that he was in the SAS bit of the TA, which I don't know if that exists. Doesn't make any sense to me. No.

Why would the most elite part of the army have some people who only do it on the weekend? I know. Most people sort of took it as red. Yeah, he was telling the tricks, but it always seemed a bit rum to me. So if the government has a hyper-secret mission, which isn't that dangerous, but it's very, very secret. And will be wrapped up by Sunday evening because we've got to be back to the school on Monday. It's got to be wrapped up by Sunday evening.

It's going to be quite hard. Not impossible, not mega hard. So what we need is too hard and the actual SAS platoon, they're all, they've all got, they're being, being creed. So they're kind of a bit of a breather at the moment. So what we need to do is we need to fly a crack squad of TASAS people. We needed a geography teacher. We need a mechanic.

We need a nurse auxiliary. Go. We're going to fly you to Prague. Just on a commercial air flight because it's not that secret. So you get to book that yourself. You're getting on Friday night. I would go for fly bee if I were you. Fly bee.

Good carrier. Fly bee, good. The leg room's not a pistachio. You're getting Friday night. Now the job doesn't start till 10 o'clock on Saturday morning. So you will have Friday to yourselves, but please don't go too heavy because you do have work the next day. You do have work the next day.

Now. But you will get a drinks voucher. And 10 pounds per deems. Yeah. Okay. On Saturday morning, your destination is the German embassy just next door to it. There's a coffee shop because the mission isn't, it's not important enough to involve the ambassador.

It's a coffee shop come youth hostel. It's a coffee shop come youth hostel and it's quite near the embassy. And one of the colonels from the actual army left his phone there when he was on holiday in your job. If you choose to accept it and you can choose because you're in the reserve. So you don't have to, if you don't want to, is to try and get that phone back. Please. Plus the whole mission isn't that important, but it's quite important and it's near the end.

He can replace his phone quite easily if it would just be a phone call really, but he likes the case. And he hasn't backed up everything to the cloud. So it's very important that. Now he thinks he may have left it inside the box of a board game because it's a coffee come youth hostel. They've got some board games to leave in the communal area. Now you're going to need your language skills

because these board games may be German language editions. So for example. Das Monopoly. Das Monopoly. Das Scrabble. Das Clüder. Of course, Kaplunk is a German word. Kaplunk is already a German word.

But you may have to pluralize it to Kaplunken if there are two. To Kaplunken. But Kaplunk is one of those wonderful German words. They have a word for everything. Kaplunk is the noise made when a horse that's heavily laden drops a load of stuff that's been carrying. No, that's not Kaplunk. You've got mixed up between, what's that?

Poppet Pirate? No, what's the one with the donkey? That's something else. Exactly. Kaplunk is the German sound of lots of marbles falling through a sort of thing with lots of rods through it. Exactly. And that's why we need that level of expertise.

That's why you're in the TASAS. What's the donkey one called? The donkey one's called Mr. Banjo or something. Flipper hippo? Horsey, horsey stress. Hungry donkey. Mega mules. No, it's called Wakadoodle.

What's it called? It's called Wakado. And you have to put a lot of old timey kind of mining equipment on it. Bucking bronco? Bronco. Pachunkan. Pachunkan. What's it called?

Buckaroo. Buckaroo. Das buckaroo. Das buckaroo. Yeah, so the colonel, he was staying in the Uthossel because he's not that high up. So he can't just stay in Uthossels. He may have left his phone inside one of the board games

when clearing it up at the end of the night, possibly. Or you can just not bother. I mean, he has already said that he really doesn't mind. He doesn't mind. If you've got plans this weekend, fair play. Thank you for your service. Then you will return by hovercraft in the dead of night from Prague. Yeah, it's going to be quite a bumpy journey

because it's going to have a long time before you get to the sea. Across Germany and northern France. And it takes diesel, by the way, please. Diesel. Now, here's your equipment. This is a pencil, but it appears to be just a pencil. But if you look at the other end, it has a small rubber on it. You can use this to make any notes.

We probably won't need to make any notes because mission is pretty simple. Here is your suicide tablet. We couldn't afford cyanide. So it is paracetamol. You will have to take about 40 of these. And it's going to take a bloody long time. But again, it's very unlikely that you'll need it

because this whole mission is a very low interest on an international level. So please don't take them, whatever you do, unless you've got a bit of a bond-sake. And this is a lonely planet for Berlin. It's 1997. I used it in my gap year. And obviously, you're going to Prague. So you may be able to swap this.

There might be some general tips in it, some general travelling advice. There's normally a bit of the front that's quite good. There's normally. And also, one European town is very much like another in terms of... They might be a central square, a big cafe is dotted around, pretty much. Map-wise, they certainly...

Humans tend to settle cities in a similar... There will be straight things which will be roads. Other straight lines will come off them. That'll be other roads. So a lot of the principles are the same in terms of the map, which does fold out. But there is a corner missing from when I had to use it to wipe my arse when I was staying in the youth hostel in Bavaria.

And I don't know, toilet paper. Also, I thought... But actually, I didn't realise that it was just... It was on a pole behind the system that I hadn't seen. So I took out the municipal baths, the Prague baths. To have a Berlin bath. Again, I don't... You don't see a difference between...

I think it's massively distinguished between European cities. That's probably why I'm in charge of the TSS. It gets not seen as being that crucial in terms of distinction. How much do these plans go wrong? Plans go wrong. In fact, in World War II, my father proclaimed that he'd taken Moscow when, in fact, he'd just taken Calais. That caused great problems across the Western Front.

And also, he hadn't actually taken Calais. I know he'd just taken his family to Calais. What turned out to be a really disappointing holiday. It's not much to do around there. It's still quite water on. Still quite water on. But you've got to get away, haven't you? You've got to get away.

He's got to get away. Even if it's in occupied territory. There's one other type of dystopia we haven't talked about. The bureaucratic dystopia. The 1984 sort of like lost in the system. Wellion vibe. The Orwellian. The Kafkaesque.

Hello, Henry. Or should I say 4937? And your job is like typing on a kind of typewriter that's also got steam coming out of it. Sort of nodules and cogs and shit like that. Pistons. Every part of your day is completely ordered in exactly where you're supposed to be and when. And I think it sounds quite nice.

It's the lunch point of the day. So I shall put my head into this cube. Slurp up your lunch paste, workers. Get your head into that pasty lunch cube. You have 14 seconds. The nutrients dissolve into your face so that there's no pleasure involved. Just nutrients. Oh, I've got home from work where I've been inputting data into a big faceless machine all day.

So now I'm going to finally get to sit on a cube. Quite cube based olive oil dystopia, isn't it? Now I get to sit on a nice hard cube. I've got back to my home cube. Back to my home cube. I've got the cube train. I've paid four and a half cubes to get on the cube train. And now I can sit on a nice hard cube and shove an information tube up my nose.

From the Ministry of Cubes. From the Ministry of Cubes, the cube tube. It fires info cubes straight up my nose. And now I know all the news of the day. E.g. cubes are good. All hail the mighty cube. The benevolent cube. The benevol cubes are his army.

What's that an explosion outside? Oh no, it's the revolutionaries, the marbleistas. Oh no, running around, throwing spheres and drawing circles on things. Playing marbles in back alleys and looking at lemons and melons. Or probably oranges more. Tracking grapes of people. I've never seen that colour before. That colour is...

What shade of grey is this? What's the song we sing our children? Grey and grey and dark. Grey and grey. Grey and grey and grey. I can see a sky cube. See a sky cube. See a sky cube too.

Yeah, so there's that one, isn't there? There's that one. Yep, there's obviously like virus based ones, but we live a bit too close to that. I tell you what, anyone who made a dog shit virus film in the last five years. Cashing in. Cashing in big time. There's that one, isn't there where there's like a monkey that gives everyone an illness?

Outbreak. Outbreak, yes. It's a monkey in a helicopter. Is it a monkey in a helicopter? Yeah, it's a monkey, he captures a helicopter and he's spitting out of a helicopter. Which he shouldn't do. There's the final scene, there's a helicopter standoff with Dustin Hoffman's in one helicopter and then the monkey's in another helicopter and they stand off and that's the end of the film, I think.

No? It's a terrible film. You can't make a good contagion film. As soon as you've got actors wearing those suits, you can't deliver a nuanced performance though through a hazmat suit. How long do you think it'll be before we get cube into pre-production? You know, it takes a while, doesn't it, these things? I think it's just about, I mean, it's just about getting the right team together, isn't it?

I do know. We've probably got, if we wrestle up between us, we've probably got a fair few cubes just in the house, you know, just at home that we've got. Well, I thought it was a little way to get the script noticed for it to stand out. I've write it on cube, well, on square paper, so that the script... It's perfect for Instagram, isn't it? Exactly.

Cube the movie. I'm going to write it on square paper and have the script, when you pile it up, is a perfect cube. So that's what the length will be determined by? Yes. Henry, should we cut this scene where they just dance around the cube for two minutes and even say, no, because then the script won't be a perfect cube. It has to stay in. It'll be Henry.

There's quite a few scenes where the story seems to be treading water. We've noticed probably about a third of the scenes are people just dancing around a cube. Yeah, you can explain that. That's a motif. It's a motif. It's deeply metaphorical in a way that you don't understand. Also, in terms of the budget, we've noticed that you seem to invest a lot of money in developing stapler technology, trying to develop a stapler that's...

That can staple a cube. You can staple a cube of paper. You can staple a cube of paper. It looks like you've diverted half the money into that. Half of the $300 million has gone into stapler. And actually, what you've done is, based on how they came up with the COVID vaccines, it looks like you've funded 12 different companies to develop that stapler technology in the hope that one of them will actually work.

But you've had to not go through the normal stapler testing protocols. Another result, you've sparked an entire anti-stapler movement. It's really gaining traction. And it says here that you're not going to give the plans for the stapler to the developing world. So that means that richer countries are able to staple a cube. Well, we don't want everyone making CubeShack scripts, do you know what I mean? Then we lose our USP. Because the last thing I want is an independent company coming up with a CubeShack

script and storyline and just bashing it out before I develop the technology. Because the moment it's going to take us, we think 30 years. By which point Russell Crowe will almost certainly be too old to play the main character. So a lot of the money's going into developing for trying to develop a new Russell Crowe. Which is not as easy as it sounds. Henry, I'm just looking at the budget and it seems you've already overspent by over 16. Have you? You've cubed the budget. We've cubed the budget.

This story depends on it being, you know, you should have cube written through it like a stick of rock. Cubic integrity. Cubic integrity. You cut any part of this project off and the cubes will fall out of the hole. The CubeShack hole that you've made. The cinematographer said that these new cubic lenses that you've given don't work. They're just blocks of glass. And it's impossible to rotate.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. I've had the conversation. You're just getting very heavily distorted images. Yeah, and it only has four focus levels because you can only clunk it around on the right angle. Yeah, and it's tearing his lens cap to shreds as well. I've just said, I've just chucked my investment at it. So currently we're developing CubeShack cameras. And if possible, can we can we sack that cameraman and replace him with a cube?

Yeah, with a sentient cube. Bad news, Henry. Disney's just been on the phone. They're releasing a film called Oblong next week. So that was dystopias. Thank you, Sam. Thank you. That was it, Sam. Thanks, Sam.

What's Sam? Or, as he'll one day be known, 394. All right, so we've had a lot of emails this week. Obviously, we can't read them all out, but we're thankful for all of them. So thank you for sending them. We've had this from Peter. Uh-oh. Lewed content warning.

Lewed content, content, content. He writes, Hello Beans. My brother, John, insists he saw two pigeons having sex in the missionary position on a grass verge outside Windsor Castle in 2005, all the best, Peter. Two pigeons or two members of the royal family wearing the traditional garb. Yeah, which is what they wear when they walk amongst their people. Yeah, disguised amongst the people, who the royal family picture as pigeons.

It was Prince Edward and Anne of Cleves. That's it would have been. And the distortion because of the, you're thinking they were normal pigeons will be because you're standing next to a castle. It's obviously very hard to distinguish scale in front of a castle, because you get massive castles. You get toy castles. In the bottom of a goldfish bowl.

So it's almost impossible, unless there's a Starbucks or some sort of recognizable branded shop as a control. They're all the same size. Yeah, they're all the same size. The equivalent of a 50 pp in a photograph can be used sometimes for scale. So actually you'd have just assumed they were small pigeons. They're actually life-saving. Or you might have been holding a 50 pp up just too close to your face.

And that might have. That's the other thing. Because really the only way to get the 50 pp thing to work in terms of dictating scale is to have another coin, like a jumbo 50 pp piece, which is big enough to dictate how far away he shows. It looks the same size when it's 300 yards away. It looks the same size as the far away. Well, the big 50p needs to be next to someone famously tall, so you understand how big it is.

So big 50p next to the row of Stephen Redgrave. Yeah, he's holding that. Then if he holds that away from his face, you hold the 50p piece in front of your own face. Yeah. Close one eye. You back away from Stephen Redgrave until the 50p piece you're holding exactly appears to cover the large 50p piece that he's holding. Then look down to the right and there are two members of the royal family having sacks in the

missionary position. And you'll realize that they weren't pigeons at all. They were just fully grown up. It was Prince Edward and the reanimated corpse of Adam Cleaves. That's right. So happy to have cleared that up. And I can't remember quite why that email was sent in, but if you have any other... If you've ever seen other animals having sacks in the missionary position,

please do get in contact. Or if you're also receiving the same email from Peter, maybe I'll explain. He's just rattling it off to every email address he can get his hands on. They're frightened centre and this is the first reply. We've had a long email from Stephen Smith. He writes, To whom it may concern,

While I have for some time been a fan of your output, I feel that this status is under question, even in jeopardy after listening to your latest show. I listened while on my own early in the morning, making and proving my excellent breads. Having put my rye and onion seed breads and my poppy seed plaits into the proving oven, I then turned my attention to the focaccia, slicing olives, measuring out oregano and thyme,

and enjoying your light-hearted chat about condiments. At the critical point of weighing and activating the yeast, I was interrupted by the mention of my own name. My name, spouting from the mouth holes of three beans. Bramston Pickle. No, Stephen Smith. Paul Dolmio. This is Stephen Smith, the proprietor of the Dragon Soup Cafe.

Oh. He makes his own bread. This is a good cafe. My initial surprise quickly turned to mild discomfort as my genuine and private offer of a discount to you all was then offered out to the vast, multitudinous hordes of the three bean-styled listenership. This led to me missing the final vital step

of activating and adding yeast to the bread, thereby ruining it. Oh no. We owe him some focaccia. Meaning not only the loss of the bread, but also the panzanella salad not being available for my customers that day. Oh my God.

What have we done? Did he end up accidentally reinventing pitter-patter? And where did the yeast go? Yeah. There's a amount of counted yeast. Spare yeast. After consulting legal counsel, I have the following points to raise.

I do not believe I'm legally bound to offer 20% discount to anyone who turns up and says the word pompadou. But not to do so could damage my own character and leave me open to counterclaims. Brackets, except on mocha and hot chocolate. Therefore, I have no alternative but to honour this discount thrust upon me and have had to reprogram my till

and brief all my staff as to the incoming pompadou discount. Wow. Brilliant. My second point is concerning the ruination of my precious breads. I'm placing the squarely at your door and I'm attaching an invoice that I'd be glad if you settled promptly.

I'm now having to deal with a slew of emails entitled pompadou and frankly, it's keeping me up at night, regards Stephen Smith. And then he has included an invoice. It's got the official Super Dragon logo at the top. He writes three perfectly good focaccia breads ruined. That's six pounds times three, 18 pounds total, payable within 14 days, payable by backs,

Super Dragon Cafe, and then he's got the sort code and the account number there. Well, we're best to see him write by the sound of things. I mean, I'm not sending him 18 pounds. So what's it called again? Is it called the Super Dragon Cafe? Super Dragon Cafe. Super Dragon Cafe.

I can't believe he doesn't mention that it's a bakery as well in the title. Super Dragon Cafe and Bakery. Yeah. It's pretty amazing that a cafe makes its own breads. Well, Stephen, there's a free piece of consulting advice. That's worth 18 pounds. Is it not? Yeah.

Some rebranding from Henry? I think so. You've got Soup Dragon Cafe and Bakery. Yeah. But do you have to include everything in the title? I like that. Does it then have to be Soup Dragon Cafe and Bakery and Toilet and... It's true that once you start tugging on that thread.

Yeah. And fire extinguisher. To make it more modern, I'm just saying, what I'm trying to do with this title is, do you remember what they did with Facebook in the film? It was called The Facebook. That's right. And then someone went,

I think you should just call it Facebook. And it was like, huge moment. Take off the ver. All right. Has he got a ver in there? Has he got a ver? Let me check on the invoice. Look, if not, can we just remove the letters T, H and E from somewhere else?

That's not a bad idea. That could work. So interestingly, I think the official name of the cafe is just the Soup Dragon. If the invoice is to be believed. So we don't have to... Hang on, hang on, hang on. Just Soup Dragon. His address is the Soup Dragon.

The little logo says the Soup Dragon. But his bank account is under the name Soup Dragon Cafe. Is it a front? Could be. Is it a Cayman Island account? Is the address unit 452139 the Cayman Islands or something like that? Got to watch out for that. So what you're doing, you're taking off the ver.

So it's then just Soup Dragon. Soup Dragon. Cafe and bakery and toilet. Or Soup... Soup Dragon bread. Or Bread Dragon soup. Soup bread. Bread Dragon soup addition.

Okay, I know this is... This is... Okay, no bad ideas, right? I'm just going to put this out there. Do we need the dragon when it could just be Soup Bread? Soup bread, cafe and toilet. Soup bread, cafe and toilet. I think we've done it, people.

You think that's £18 worth of... I think that's worth £18 worth of something. But I'm pleased with this, because I think this is now an official offer. I mean, there's no bones about it. We've got this from Stephen. If you are a listener and you go to the Soup Dragon Cafe... Although we've sort of done it by coercion, haven't we, a bit? That's not a problem, is it?

Yeah, okay. And I'm just wondering if it makes us a sort of... We are now the mafia of the podcast universe. Nice Soup Dragon Cafe you got here. Be ashamed if loads of people got 20% off. Exactly. And certainly, if you're a listener who goes to the Soup Dragon and gets the 20%, we need an email about that.

Because I think what will happen is you'll go in, you'll go to the counter, you'll say Pompadoo. They'll have no idea what you're talking about. It'll be really awkward. And it'll be... You'll have to say there's this podcast I listen to. And they had a thing they did with, I think, probably your boss. Yeah, he's not here.

He's not here today, right? Okay, so it's quite hard to explain. There's people behind you now. There's people... There's a cute developing behind you. There's a guy going, I need my morning for catcher. I'm on my way to work. If I don't have some for catcher, I'm going to be in a terrible mood all day.

Uh-oh. And you've come over, you've now got to go back and explain to your family who you've flown over from Wyoming. What's he going to car park? You've not even managed to get the discount. So you're just going home and you're not going to get... You're not going to have anything. You're just going to go back.

Just going back to Wyoming. And empty handed. Back to Wyoming. Rough stuff. Thank you for everyone who emailed. We've got lots, so we'll do some more next week. Lots of people sending in images of the UK section of their US supermarkets. Are they really?

We've seen a lot of those. Oh, good. We've probably got about 25 images that we can pull through. I think we need to go over those properly next week. Yeah, definitely. Nice. Um, and also this episode will be out on Wednesday. We're doing our live show on Thursday,

which will be the last time we will plug it. But if you'd like to come and watch the live stream of our live show, it's happening tomorrow. If you're listening to this on day of release. Please do. It's a journey into the unknown. Very much so for us. Will the format sustain it?

That's the question. And what is the format? Will we sustain the format? Will we sustain the format? What is the format? Is it a format? Now, I think the little phrase to have in mind, if you're going to attend the live show or the streaming,

is the greatest show on earth. That's what we've had in mind, planning it. Haven't we? And we've also got that heat. We've commissioned the big, the lights that are going to be behind us that spell out the words, the greatest show on earth.

The greatest show on earth. Because it's important to aim high. So we've used that as a kind of mantra, haven't we? And all in all the work, the preparations, all the, all the stuff we've done, the stunt stuff. And the band, the extras. And the pyrotechnics. Working with the, with the, with the real doves.

Yeah. The dummy doves, the animatronic doves. The band the doves. Yeah. The band the doves. Our sponsors doves so. And it's been a real mantra, isn't it? And a lot of the crew and the technical staff

and then the dancers and the jazz people, they've really got into, haven't they? They have. And a lot of the crew, they're the old kind of Led Zeppelin gang. So they are sort of getting on a bit, the roadies. So they're quite as ship-shaping as they were, but they're enthusiastic about the project, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. Also, can we just have a moment to think about all the people who sadly died testing out the zero gravity ice rink? Yes. Your death won't be in vain. Yeah, that will be available for the audience, but there's quite a heavy document that you'll have to read and sign before you step on it or up it.

Sorry, sorry to those guys. And if you're, the family of one of those people, obviously they did sign, they signed waivers. The small print was pretty clear, assuming you can read Beige on Brown, because that was probably the problem with the color printer. When we, well, when we printed the contracts, we only had Beige on Brown.

We only had Beige color left. And it printed out in Bask as well, which was nothing we could do anything about. It was just some sort of also translating thing. Happens as a problem. It's Hewlett Packard. It's a W4 519. Take it up with Hewlett Packard.

Also, Mike was still using El Padrón, the El Padrón operating system. Is that a Mac operating system or is that a laptop? It's own. Well, Mike's got a Mac, but it's Mac with a CH. It's not an official Mac product, is it? Yeah, it doesn't have a screen, for example. It doesn't have a screen.

It's what's called a digital input. If you've ever had a briefcase, a small briefcase with the metal circles that you twist around to get the numbers up in a row. Yeah, that's what Mike has a keyboard with. So he's got 20 little metal circles in a row, and he has to twist them to get the words he wants to spell. Yeah, and then there's a sort of kind of like a digital abacus

that's constructed on the side there as well. It's just quite exposed wiring, so you have to be a bit careful operating it. And I've got special gloves for that. And of course, El Padrón talks to you. He talks to Mike. Yeah, incessantly. Yeah.

In Spanish. Yeah. With the vibe of a kind of benevolent father. Yeah, I've picked up a bit, you know, so it's not all... Yeah. It swings it around like this, isn't it? Mi gusto, Miguel. Mi gusto.

Exactly, I like it when Padrón says that. And that plugs into a Hewlett-Puckard printer that can only print in beige onto brown paper. Yeah, and they don't speak to each other. That's the trouble is the printer, because the printer is using a different kind of technology. It's Hewlett-Puckard, so it's using circuit board technology. Whereas Mike's computer, his Mach book,

is using the technology in... It's all sort of fun fair, many fun fair technologies. So it's all water, a series of tubes with water pouring through them to Paris, a series of cogs and spokes and... And of course, the spirit of a long dead Spanish postman as well. Yeah. And also, obviously, the spirit of the long dead Spanish postman, he has to cover all the Mach books in a given hemisphere.

So he's covering what... There's probably 50 or 60 of these things operating at any one time. So you've got to hope he's free. And then, you know, you have to obviously have to light some candles and you have to do the chant. And the tiny glass of sherry comes out with a side. It's a ready you feel session. Yeah, but don't touch it.

Whatever you do, don't touch it. That's for El Padron. Yeah. Do you think, oh, I love your glass of sherry. As you say, way too hot to touch. And it's for El Padron. Yeah. And it's not sherry.

It's for El Padron. It's not sherry. It's diesel, anyway. Hot diesel. It's hot diesel. So, yeah, sorry about that. But, you know, I mean, admit, eh, who... Yeah, no, so that'll account for the fact that,

yeah, a lot of the people that died, preparing the... Zero gravity ice rink. Yes. Well, it failed every single safety test, didn't it, unfortunately? Yeah, but it does explain why no one involved has any sort of legal ability to gain compensation. Although I would like to offer to the families a 20% off at the Soup Dragon Cafe. Not including markers and hot chocolate.

Right, well, if you're coming to the live show, we'll see you then. If not, next week, dear friends, goodbye. Turn up. Bye.