Three Bean Salad - Forests

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Forests is this week’s lukewarm topic for which Rowan of Bremen is responsible and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Henry blindsides the Beans with a revelation about his foresting past, Benjamin is exposed as a ruthless negotiator and Mike is forced into discovering a skill he never knew he had (albeit one that could land him in in hot water). Join our PATREON for ad-free episodes and a monthly bonus episode: www.patreon.com/threebeansaladGet in touch:[e-mail]@beansaladpod

I did a, um, I've done a gig in a military encampment in it, in, in, in, in, in, in, in places. Uh, well, I don't ask too many questions, Ben. I just, you know what I mean? I, I see it as entertainment. It's everyone needs it. Everyone needs it. I don't judge, um, you know, an audience as an audience. Um, but I, uh, I did a gig where I had to be driven through military checkpoints to get into a military base. It's a military base, basically. It was, it was a, um, where was it? It was UK military base. What was, what was the big eyes here? It was it absolutely just an absolutely ridiculous, terrible booking mistake. And you know, it really made me worry about the state of our army, frankly, because they're

lack of appetite for surreal whimsy. Exactly. You've got to be able to think outside of the box. And this is route one and your enemies are going to be all over this. It's very, very obvious. Come on, guys. I think it was a Christmas gig as well. I think it was some sort of Christmas sort of, um, I don't know what it was. The army was relying on you to decompress these veterans before sending them back to their families after a nine month tour. I think they wanted something that was somewhere between as enjoyable as fighting in Afghanistan and civilian life. And they thought half an hour with me. Yeah, something to bring them back gradually. The perfect house. The exact perfect half way house.

Yeah. And was it, um, was it, was it kind of like squaddies? Or was it more like kind of like the officer class? Like corpulums going, ha, ha, ha. Or staff college. Yeah. Huge sort of Tricorn hats. No, it was, um, Oh, no, it was very much. Well, it was a mixture. It was the squaddies. It was mainly squaddies. But there was a few top brass as well who were sort of mucking in with the lads. And, you know, it was, uh, it was clear they all liked each other. That's something that, um, well, sometimes I'm sort of common enemy will, you know, exactly. And I did see that the speed with which they were able to. Yeah. Identify me as an enemy. I thought in a way it was quite encouraging.

And unfortunately, you were unable to call in an airstrike of humor. That's right. Um, and in fact, actually, in fact, I really needed a, uh, certainly my confidence could have done with a, uh, a military, um, Medevac. A humor, Chinook. Sounds quite intense. It was terrifying. I think going into a gig, I think somewhere in the back of my mind, mentally, whenever I've done gigs in the past, I've actually always, not consciously, but I've always known actually looking back what my physical escape route would be from that

room. If I had to get out of it within, say, 60 seconds, you know, I could get out. If this goes really badly, I can get out. It's the sign of a true pro. It's the sign of true. So you check the toilet windows. You, um, you're looking for access to alleys. Um, you want a clean, a clean thoroughfare, ideally not through the audience, but if you have to barrel through the audience to get out, you always make sure you leave the engine of your Herndon I-10 running outside. That's always running. It's always running. Often it's through the kitchens as well, isn't it? Through the kitchen, smashing over big piles of plates and some bewildered sous chefs wondering what on earth is going on.

Yeah. Yeah. I've got, um, I've always had to employ three dummy Henry's that can deploy, they can be released so that, um, essentially the idea is, and ideally more for bigger venues, more than that. The idea is, yeah, those rapid inflation ones that you can set off with remote control, but on your belt. That's right. Um, and eventually it was, you know, um, if some of the bigger, bigger gigs are, I'll employ actual actors. And the idea is that they're looking for Henry. Where's Henry? We want to lynch him. The guy who was on the stage, we want to hurt him. We're not sure exactly how yet, but we're not going to stop until we can taste his blood. Yeah. We want blood taste. That's all we know. Carol here, she insisted on blood taste. We all

agreed with it, didn't we? Yeah. At that point, um, ideally what you do is you release a troop of, uh, of, uh, actors who are playing me. So, so then the bloody Henry's flooded, flooded with Deco Henry's and soon flooded with the blood of the Deco Henry's because the audience will make that it's the only decision it can, which is we're going to taste everyone's blood here. Just to guarantee that we have tasted some of Henry's blood. So yeah, it can escalate. But now I've always had that thing of, I think it's important to subconsciously to know there's a window there. Um, there's, there's a customer toilet. I can get through. Um, I can, if I have to barrel my way down into the sewers, you've got your pneumatic drill with your bum bag.

But, but some of the worst gigs I've had, uh, I remember once I did a gig, I think it was, it was a, um, trials for the Hackney Empire comedy competition. Do you ever do that one? I didn't do that one. No. No. And I don't know why. I think I went in for the others, but yeah. It was one of the many new act competitions that there are and it happened at the Hackney Empire and, um, the green room was positioned in such a way that it was basically behind the stage. It, there was, there was, there was a tiny window that you could never get through. And the only way out was to walk basically over the stage pretty much and up through an aisle, through the whole audience. It was a very long, long room to get out the back, the gauntlet, the gauntlet.

And I thought, well, the gauntlet's there. All you can do, Henry, is pick it up. That's why you're in this game. Yeah. I mean, that's why you always perform in running sparks to this day. That's why, and I have the, the microphone stand, which is adapt towards telescopic intensive to a pole vault. And I can pull that over any, pretty much any bar, um, unless it's pre-Victorian, some of the very, very tall, tall medieval castle bars I'll struggle with. But that's why you've always got your backup. You always make sure that you're tied by a very taut bungee to the nearest fire exit as well. So your core is incredible these days. It's extraordinary. Because if you manage to get through the whole set with that, that line

around you, around your waist, you just simply have to relax and out you, things straight through the thing and out you go. So I can, I can bungee myself sideways, essentially across the shiny floor, a bit like air hockey, but with a person. So I can get out of all sorts of, um, situations. I've, um, yeah, in an emergency, although a lot of the time it makes the gig actually, ironically, it actually makes the gig more of a struggle, which is because, because there was a lot of time, the audience think, why isn't he referring to all this equipment that he's got on it? He's just launching, he's just launching in some quite tepid observational material. Why isn't he referring to the huge harness? Why is he tensing his abs so much?

I can see them through his shirt. Yeah. Why is he, why is he bollocking the tech guy that, that hologram backup has failed? What's the, yeah. Also, how many girdles is he wearing? And is that James Nersbitt dressed as Henry Packard? Why is he, why is he crouched by the side of the stage? Must have fallen on nine times, but apparently he's a really high-paying gig. It's danger money. So it took, yeah. It's incredible deep-sea oil rig fixing, but, but in the comedy world, he just wants a bit of winter sun and he needs fast cash. Oh God. Yes, that hackney empire one was one where he was like, fuck you know, I'm just going to have to do well in this because if this is bad,

and I remember during the gig, as, you know, within the first 15 to 25 seconds, I felt the gig hopelessly falling away from me. It was absolutely nothing I could do to save this. Those first impressions. Yeah. Yeah, I was screwed. They count. But I thought, I thought, I'm going to have to walk through the entire audience to get out of here. I mean, I probably shouldn't be concentrating on trying to rescue the rest of my gig. I mean, six minutes left of my set. But I was really thinking, I need to get out. Plus, the other thing is I'd left my bag in the back. Oh, that's cool. And sometimes I've got to, I thought you just got to sacrifice.

You're just going to leave that behind. Loose the bag. Loose the bag. And the person you're dating is there as a guest. It's all just got to go. Yeah, it's got to go. That person, yeah, they're not, they're not getting back in touch with you. Your mum, the treasured uncle, they're all, they're all there. They're all there. They just, they change the sport. But yeah, we all know. In fact, I saw my mum give me a little nod, which was to that. That's it. That's it now. Is it like the nod of that, the gif of Robert Redford doing the little nod in the woods? Yes. It was exactly like that gif. But imagine if the emotion was just pure malevolence and

disappointing. It's got a fatalistic tinge to it. Yeah, with a fatalistic tinge. So that was, that was what I, I remember noticing that feeling as I went into that military gig because it was literally no escape as we went through the barriers. You're not getting out of there unless you want, they want you to get out of there. Exactly. Yeah. They've got, they've got a few sensations that are going to have something to say about that. Yeah. And I think that really added to the kind of fear,

this sense of doors locking kachunk behind you. Kachunk. Would you have great escaped it on a motorbike over the walls? You might have needed, I assume, a sort of crash course in riding a motorbike first. It's hard to organise in the middle of an escape. Very hard to. It's very, very hard. Now, I think I just, I just had to accept that, you know, this is, this is what it is. It's happening. It was, it was, it was bloody awful.

I've only ever done one military gig and that's, that wasn't stand up. That was years ago, a student sketch troupe got invited. Have I talked about this before? We got invited to do a sketch performance at an RAF base in Anglesey. Oh my God. Have I not told you about this? Sketch comedy is hard at the best of times. It isn't it to pull off in a live situation.

Never mind students. Sketch comedy. Right. That is absolutely honking. Yeah. That's a, that's. We had, but we had no idea how high risk that was. And it's quite an interesting experience because we arrived the night before. They wanted us to come the night before to sort of set up and all that kind of thing. And when we got there the night before, we were shown through to the, to the mess.

You know, it was a kind of, they used it as a training base as well. And these trainee pilots, they took us through to the mess and they were literally listening to the top gun sound rack at the loudest possible volume. And all still in their, in their flying onesies. And they look so brashed when we came in that I go, we don't normally do this. Why wouldn't you do this? We would do this. All of them. The whole thing.

Logging's in and out. That's hugely embarrassing. But then the next day, the trainee pilots, they were quite, they were quite a welcoming crowd. They even took us on a little tour the next day. I had a lovely, lovely time. But then on, when it came to the main event, they were there. But so were the, the officers and the rest, the senior staff.

And we had one song that was about the, the queen mother. Oh no, Mike. Pull that one from the gig. Look at, look at the set list. Because we, we were, we were edgy, right? We said the unsayable. Okay. There's nothing stopping us.

It didn't occur to us that we were in a base of, of the royal air force and there might be some people there who into the royal family. And so when you were pulling on the, the queen mother outfit costume, was there anything going through your mind of like? Nothing. Mostly just thinking, oh, oh, Pank's got a wicked line of this. They're going to love this.

This is going to be on a trip. And even he was unfurling the seven dildos. The seven prop dildos. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. But someone, one of the, you know, I think the squadron leader sneaked out and he set off the fire alarm. What?

And that. Yeah. It was, it was a powerful heckle. Wow. Just got from his, got off a seat, dusted himself off, made sure his creases were in the right place, marched out around the back. During the Queen Mother song.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bloody hell. He thought that was the most effective way of bringing it to a close, which it was, to be fair. I mean, these guys, you know, they know how to respond in a crisis. So, so was the fire, does that mean the fire, was the fire brigade called?

No, I don't think so. Because I think they're just, they could sort of do, they might even have their own fire brigade. On these bases, they can do what they, little kings, right? They can do what they like. So, so, so there's a fire alarm went off. You heard it. Yeah.

And it was at the end of the gig, the whole gig. Or just that sketch. I think, I think we then, we had, we had a realization of what had happened. So we were allowed back on stage. And I think we then did a sort of fairly pitiful final number in front of a very disapproving audience. And did you then have to improvise a kind of pro-royal, a pro-queen mother sketch?

And you can never return to the island of Angus ever again. No, that's it. So, so do you reckon the, so the Air Force, the Air Force boys and girls, are they, are they a bit, what are they like? Are they a bit, do you think they're a bit different from the other, from the sort of infantry, what do you call them? Land squaddies. From land squads.

I don't know. It's a different thing. I don't know, because I've never been in these. Was there a romance to them? Did they have a kind of... They have a romance to them. They have a slightly different thing, don't they, where they're, are they a bit posher?

That, well, I guess the thing that they have, and this has been often talked about, is that with the army, the officers will sit in a nice, and this is probably going to get a complaint from an army officer listening, but my understanding is, if you're an army officer, then you stand in front of some little mats with some little sort of toy models and stuff, and you say, you run over there. As they're listening, someone has just smashed the fire alarm in all the shop.

Exactly. Some officers just with reflexes to smash. Yeah. Whereas in the RAF, it's the officers who are physically in the thing that's going to be fired at, right? And all the non-officers who are sort of pumping up the wheels and all that kind of thing. Oh, is this?

Oh, I see. That's interesting. Whereas in the Navy, they're all together. All of them are on the boat. So if the boat gets sunk, they're all going down. So there's a slightly different attitude, I think. Slightly different culture in each one. Oh, covers.

But this is all second hand, you know. Do you think there's room in the 21st century for a bit of out-of-the-box thinking and a fourth military space force? Well, what would it be? Like, we've got land, we've got sea, we've got sky. I think, by the way, if it was space force, I think it should be called Space Force Nine. Just randomly.

Just nine. Space Force Nine. Vibe Force? We do have cyber, don't we? Yeah, the cyber squad. Yeah, cyber warfare. I reckon we might go down quite well at a base for cyber warfare operatives.

That might be our niche in the sort of nerdy computer people. I'd be up for that. You know, last time we were recorded, you caught me doing my morning admin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you were leafing through bills. That's right. And there was another bit of morning admin

that I was in the middle of, which you stopped me from doing. So, A, this bill, I still haven't leafed through properly. Okay. Look at that. You can see it's not been leafed. And also, the other bit that I haven't done, which is another thing I do, is extract. I have one hair that grows from the centre of my nose.

Okay, I wasn't wondering why you were rubbing your nose throughout the entirety of that. Yeah, yeah. So, because what I do is I... Try and coax it out. It's a gentle rubbing. You gently coax it to start with. It's very much like if you've ever hunted a meray eel.

You can't go in all guns blazing. You coax, you sweet talk, you befuddle, you amuse, you... You confound. You confound, you mesmerise, you entertain. You bribe, and then you strike. You stab. You stab. You strike.

You stab. You gut. You behead. You steam. Steam. You deep in. You garnish, and only then can you say... That you have an all-weather scarf.

For the first time in your life, you have a scarf, which is just as appropriate in summer as it is in winter. Suits all occasions, formal, informal sport. But will attract protesters. But will attract... Virulent protests. And rightfully so. But it's very similar with my nasal hair.

So I've just got one. But it's not coming out of your nose. It's not a nostril hair. Oh, no. Oh, no. I mean, we could... I could talk for hours about that. I mean, this might even go there.

That's the whole... I mean, that's literally a separate sub-series. So I coax it, and I think about once I've read... Fortnite, and I extract. But it's part of my morning routine, as it's bills, parking fines, visa applications. A lot of long-hand correspondence. I'll be normally talking to a couple of emigre writers.

Has your Belarusian visa come through yet? No, not yet. They still use 19th century technology. There's a lot of rubber stamping, a lot of steaming of emblems, a lot of melting of wax, of stamping through wax. And your telegram machine needs servicing as well, doesn't it? That's right, yeah. Very hard to get the parts.

And obviously, everything has to travel by hawk. It's from Belarus, and hawks are notoriously impossible to train. Because they all speak Belarusian, of course. They're an entirely Belarusian species. That doesn't matter how many times you watch Kez at the end of the day. That's more of a parable about the north. Actually, in terms of what you can actually take from it, to actually train and work with the hawk,

it's not that useful. Plus, it's about a kestrel. They're not. Oh, don't even get you starving on peregrine falcons. Please don't. Please don't. I don't want to get this angry this early in the morning. I just don't.

Yeah, so that's why I do my correspondence. I have my letter dagger. I have this. I've got my backup letter. Well, this is actually a letter dagger and human dagger. Oh, yeah, your Freemason stiletto. It's my Freemason stiletto. I do all that stuff.

Oh, yeah, and then there's the contraction. Do either of you have a sort of a nasal hair, or any sort of particular it? I've got a forehead straggler. Oh, okay. So is it one? Because this is one. It's one.

It's quite silvery, and it appears I don't notice it until it's about four inches long. Yeah, I've got one of my thigh. Lovely. Really? I think everyone has one. Yeah. So you've got a thigh straggler.

Yeah, and like Mike, obviously it's on my thigh, so I won't notice it. And then suddenly I'll have a sort of eight-inch-long hair. Yeah, a thick course. Yeah, like a greasy hair. Yeah. And it's strange to think, isn't it, in a way we are just the custodians of these hairs,

but they will long outlive us, and they will continue growing long after we perish. I think that's a myth, isn't it? Do your hair keeps growing after you die? It is, yeah. And I think, Henry, haven't you illustrated a textbook that busted that myth wide open? Or was it fingernails that you did in that book?

Maybe it was fingernails. I can't remember. But I think either of those is probably true. Hats off to any part of my body that keeps growing after my cremation. Just a single hair protruding from a pile of ash on the battlefield. There it is, that beloved thigh hair.

It can't be burned. But yeah, no, so it gets to a certain point and then extract it. But I have a thing, I notice these things with other people and I have a real, very, very hard to contain urge sometimes. Well, that's why I've never shown you my thigh, Henry, because I know what you do.

You'd be straight on it. That's right. And with the tweezers. Whenever we've gone scuba diving together, anything, you always, you have a special... He's always in the long trousered wetsuit, isn't he? He's always in there when you're in your Boy Scouts. Henry's got the wetsuit hot pants.

Look, I just want that reef to know what's hidden. Yeah, whoa, hello. Yeah, why not look fabulous? Yeah, why not? Yeah, the reef is a vibrant place. The reef is a vibrant and very permissive place. It's very, very laissez-faire. It's very easy going.

The only thing is that anyone could eat you at any time just for no particular reason at all. That's all there is. Also, crucially, you want the Moray Eels to think you're there for a good time and not to spear one of them until the minutes were all by the scarf. Exactly.

And I was just going to say, the Moray Eels scarf with the scuba hot pants is dynamite. It's time to turn on the bean machine. This week's topic, as sent in by Rowan. Thank you, Rowan. From Bremen is Forests. Forests. The dark forests of Central Europe.

That's not what they say, they just say forests. But it's implied, isn't it, the dark forests of Central Europe, if you just say forests? I've actually, have you actually been in a forest properly? I'm going to stun you by saying, yes, obviously I have. Yeah, I second that, yeah. You probably have been too, Henry.

So, Henry, I think you're getting at maybe. Yeah. Well, I'm in a forest. You're obviously on a path that has been sort of created, either that you've been warned not to stray from. Yeah. Exactly. When you do look off the path,

it does look pretty mad in there. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, well, there's, they'll obviously, exactly because there'll be young, obviously there'll be attractive young ladies going, I'm not a crone. Come hither. Come hither.

Come hither. I'm not a crone. Then there'll be crones. The beady eyes of a centaur on the other side, period. Yeah. Being ridden by a crone and the crone, the crone will say, I am a crone.

I am what I appear. A crone. So essentially anything that looks like a crone is a crone and things that don't look like a crone is a good chance they're a crone. Absolutely. Yeah. I guess the nearest to me that I would visit

would be the forest of Dean. Yes. But you stick on, you stick on the path. I stick on the path, yeah, because we know what happens when you stray from it. But why, I hardly ever feel I'm in a proper forest. Like this is, like you can always see through the forest. You can always see the car and the Tescos.

Yeah. No, no, you mean? You don't want to see a dog poop in anywhere. You're saying? Exactly, yeah. But there's always direction. No woodchip paths, no zip wires. Yeah, the visitors enter sort of ruins it, doesn't it?

Yeah. So what you long for is the foresty wilderness, basically. Well, I don't say how long for it, but I wouldn't mind tasting that even if it's just being dangled into it in a secure cage from a helicopter for a couple of minutes. But I wouldn't want to be properly lost in the forest, obviously.

But there was a TV show, I think, in America. I can't remember what it was called. But at the beginning, they would drop in two people into the middle of the jungle. I'm not sure where the jungle was, either. I think South America. And the twist was, well, the game was, you have to get out of the forest,

you have to find your way out. And the twist was, you're both naked. I think it was called naked and alone, I think. And basically, when you think about it, first of all, you think, well, that's all right. Might be OK. The mushroom fairies are naked. Look at them.

Exactly. They're proud. But what you forget about is the sheer number of insects trying to get up your arse. Because in the same way that you are terrified of the forest and looking to find a small, dark cave to hide in, the insects are in exactly the same situation. They feel exactly the same about it.

So your arse is, I mean, it would be the equivalent of walking into the lobby of a good four-star hotel. Mid to low level four, four-star hotel for those insects. So we're talking. The kind of four-star hotel where you go in and you go, is this four-star? I think this is a three-star. Really, it's a three-star.

It says it is on Google Maps. But otherwise, there's no other proof. But you know what? We're on holiday, so let's just get on with this and have a nice time. And this man's arse. Going up your arse, yeah. It's like those insects will be like,

you know what? We probably could have done better. Like maybe like a wild hog's arse. But we didn't book ahead. So we can't be picky. Yeah, just got to make do. So I've looked at the TV show. It's called Naked and Afraid.

It was on the Discovery Channel. Each episode chronicles the lives of two survivalists who meet each other for the first time naked and are given the task of surviving a stay in the wilderness for 21 days. 21 days? It sounds like the sort of show that must have been cancelled at some point.

Following a catastrophe. Surely. Each survivalist is allowed to bring one helpful item, often a machete or fire starter. What would you go for, Henry? Pajamas. I'm not a PJ wearer. Yeah.

Not even an extremist. No, I never, I've never been. You get chilly though, don't you? I do, I do get chilly. But there's something about PJs. It doesn't work for me. I think I would probably go for a Gresham. You've got 21 days of chilling out in the forest.

Really take your time with it. But also you can smack an insect with it, you know. So it's... And probably the other person's brought something useful, like an axe or something. Yeah, so you can lean on them a bit. You know what I'd bring? I would bring a roll of kitchen roll.

Just for mopping up the spills. For mopping up nasty spills and keeping those surfaces shiny because you've got to maintain your standards. No, I think I'd bring a kitchen roll. I found kitchen roll hugely useful. I'm always using it. I get through it really quite fast. So I just think that there's always cool for it.

Good fashion, a decent outfit, absorbed of outfit out of it, couldn't you? Yeah. Fashioned a little tent or a bivouac. Pretty much. Fashioned a small camping stove. Fashioned a companion for the lonely nights. I've had the whole lot.

What are you taking, Mike? Maybe one of those inflatable armchairs? That'll be good because you're going to want to relax at some point, surely. That's why I got my question, but now I'm thinking about it. What am I going to sit on to read the question? Mike's inflatable armchair. This is how the team goes wrong, isn't it? Mike's on his inflatable armchair with nothing to read.

And there's Benjamin dangling from a branch upside down trying to read his question while Henry mops up. I just keep everything. Well, I just make sure everything's in place. Keep everything. Well, I just make sure everything's just so. Mike, I'll give you a go on my Grisham. You can have an hour a day of Grisham time in return for six hours on the inflatable chair.

Six hours for one. Six hours of chair for one of Grisham. But I know you're going to be reading your Grisham when you're in the armchair. Yeah. That's outrageous. That's the deal. Do you want it? No, no deal.

Oh, fine. I'm going to imagine my own Grisham. I can't be that hard. I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to sit on my inflatable armchair. Oh, I don't think. She was Magna Cum Laude at the Tup Law University in North Carolina, Florida. This is the best Grisham I've ever heard.

I've ever heard. Do carry on. This is a top Grisham. The Tup firms were queuing up to hire her, but she chose to go with one little rinky-dinky firm who said that they were going to be campaigning for human rights for people on death row in the Mississippi Delta. Can I just say something? I'm massively behind this rinky-dinky firm.

I don't know why, but for me, it's like I really want this rinky-dinky firm to be a success. Or to have a secret going on where it's not actually as rinky-dinky as we think. Exactly. That's what's coming, Henry. That's what they think. They say they're rinky-dinky. They say they're ethical. But they're actually rinky-dinky.

They're rinky-dunk. No, they're rinky-dinky. And that's the title of the rinky-dunk attorney. Okay, so, and then I guess her first day is probably the first chapter? First day goes like a dream. She makes a great friend. Her name is Charlemagne. She's going to get killed later on.

The friend's called Charlemagne. The friend's called Charlemagne. Yeah. She's just a local girl. She's a paralegal. She sees something fishy in the documents she's copying. And she smuggles it out to try and get it to her. Handsome young journalist.

And she dies on page 274. With Grisham's, you can literally, you know the page, don't you? She'll be the page to you. That's when you know it's really hit the fan. The page 274 death. Yeah, and you're quite invested in Charlemagne as well. You like her. Yeah.

You know, she's funny. She's a bit kooky. She's the one who persuades our hero to just put her hair down once in a while and they go up there and they get hit on by some right wallies in a bar somewhere. And Charlemagne, that's one of them. And they leave them alone. And they go off in Charlemagne's Cadillac and throw bottles into a lake. That was very nice.

And then it's back to the case. What did they throw into a lake? Bottles. Bottles. Is that also the one where this, they sort of lie, something you never really do in Britain, I think, is you lie down on the bonnet of your car and look up at planes coming over. They do that.

They're shooting stars there for this because they're on the Mississippi Delta. And they don't want to ruin the nighttime skyline. With planes. No. OK. But then... On one night, there is a plane. Hang on, what's that plane doing there?

We're in the shooting star lane. Why is there a plane in the shooting star lane? This is a no-fly zone. This is a no-fly Delta zone. It's a small craft with Venezuelan insignia. Oh, my God. What the heck? She remembers that from when her dad was a navy seal.

And he would teach her the insignia of aircraft. If only he were still around. And then she puts two and two together, you see. It's the aircraft. And it's something that Charlemagne said before she was squashed in what looked like just a timber accident. Just some timber accidentally fell out of a small Venezuelan aircraft onto where she was trying to get into her Cadillac.

But she doesn't think it was an accident at all. This wasn't just a simple one-of-the-mill timber falling off a plane and crushing someone on a car. Something else going on. And any other lazy-minded person would have just taken that as red, but she's got a razor-sharp mind. She's whip-smart, you understand? Whip-smart, this kid.

Whip-smart. You're crazy. That happens all the time round here. People are getting flattened by a timber falling off planes every day. Well, my own mumma was free. By some beach planks out of a Panamanian twin engine. Well, she nearly survived it, but then a shard of frozen piss finished her off.

Straight through her eye. Now, why don't you sit down and eat some peaches with me? Oh, peaches. Sweet peaches. Glass of peach juice on the porch? On the peach porch with my peachy wife. I'm already drinking a glass of my mumma's fizzy nectarine juice on that special sofa that goes on chains that goes up and down.

Nectarine juice. Why? You ought to get yourself to Kentucky with your nectarine juices. Peach country here. Now, I actually don't know about the world of Gresham. Is it all this southern? Is everyone sweaty? Is there a lot of descriptions of the heat?

Everyone's sweaty, but they look great. Yeah, okay. There's no sweat bands going horizontally across people's midriffs. None of that. Okay. There's just glossy sheens. Because one of the main differences between books and films is that you can't see everyone all the time in a book.

Well, that's why they're careful to make sure that all of the books are also films. So you don't have that. Okay. So you can actually, if you need to reference it, you can reference across. It's recommended in fact that you watch the film. It's the other way around with Gresham books. It's recommended that you watch the film first so that you can clearly visual Matthew Mahonahi.

Yeah, it's always Matthew Mahonahi. Yeah. And he's filmed in a light film of sweat because it's hot. And he's drinking peach juice. Ice peach juice. And is he sitting on one of those special sofas? He will do one of the reflective scenes. Okay.

It's his lowest moment when he thinks he can't do it. Okay. So what you have to do is, but obviously in book form, they can't be telling you everyone's sweaty all the time. It's pop-ups. They're also all pop-ups. They'll be pop-ups. Yeah, quite sweaty, sort of moist pop-ups.

Okay. And often quite extensive footnotes where I would just say, yeah, he's still sweaty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in case you're wondering. Yeah. Still sweaty. So you can look, you can just glance down, can't you?

Yeah. Still sweaty. The fan is still turning, making a chugga-chugga noise. You'll be reminded of that in the... Yeah. There's still flies around which are being swatted away. Very few flies. Very few flies.

If there are flies there, they only tend to trouble one character. They will tend to be sort of the comical, fat and competent local mare. See, that's what I'm picturing. I'm picturing the fat and competent local mare in these kinds in this sort of world. He always has, he sweats worse than everyone else. He sweats, yeah. He sweats in an unsavory manner. He's plagued by flies.

Constantly dabbing his brow with a big kanky. Because it's a sweat sort of... All books have a kind of language whereby certain physical attributes have a moral sort of equivalence. So in 19th century novels, it's all about the size and shape of your forehead. Right. Right. That lets the character know, so that lets the reader know what the character's like.

So it'll be like, he had a wide noble forehead. That means he's a wide noble person. Or he had a knobbly, mean little forehead. I think he's a knobbly and mean little person. Whereas in the Christian world, I'm assuming it's all sweat based. So the sweat was literally pouring off his horrible face. It's sweating the scholarships. Yeah, yeah.

If they're not sweaty at all and they had a good scholarship, they got into the best law school through a scholarship, you know, they're an absolutely top draw hero. Okay. Right. If they're not sweaty, but there's no mention of a scholarship, they're probably an arched villain. If there's no scholarship, but they are sweaty,

trustworthy, but ultimately useless. Okay. Scholarship and sweaty, second fiddle, going to die on page 274. Okay, so scholarship and sweaty means that's the sort of... Yeah. Okay. The two by two matrix. Page 174, you're going down.

And how often is the death because they're so sweaty they can't get purchased on something? They slide off things or they fall down? Only in first drafts, apparently. Very rare, the rare Grisham polios. Can you find those? Okay. And then someone points out, let's not waste this on a slippery banister. No, let's use this death.

Yeah. Let's make it suspicious. So I do need to actually read a Grisham, I think. What do you think should be my first Grisham? I think one of the ones that's a good movie. So you're talking the firm Pelican Brief? Pelican Brief. So that's a good one, is it?

That'll get me up to speed. Well, I don't know, just till I can think of the names of right now. Okay. Okay. With Grisham books, Henry, it gets to a stage where there's so many of them, you're measuring them not in novel titles, but more in kind of weight or just in pages. You're just doing some Grisham. You know what I mean?

It's like using 200 grams of flour. It's not... Yeah. Or getting your 10,000 steps or whatever it is, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so it's almost like units of Grisham. Yeah. It's a homogeneous mass of...

It's not like certain things are measured numerically. You can have like... You know, you can have like... You can have five chickens. Yeah. But you can only have... But you can't have five chicken dishes. Oh, no, hang on a minute.

No, you can have five... You can't have five breads. We can. You can't. You can have five loaves of bread. But bread, it's like you can't have 10 milks. And in milk, it's a kind of... It's unmeasurable.

It's the same with Grisham. Yeah. So why are you addressing my example of flour, which I think was a good example? Yeah, exactly, mate, yeah. Nice one. Yeah, no, I'm not rejecting it. I was trying to add to it by copying it

and giving less clear examples. If anything, you're strengthening my other example. I just wanted to piece it. I liked it so much, I wanted to be part of it. I sort of saw your flour comment as a bit of a gang and I want to be a member. And so I've tried a bit too hard to get in on the... And then it became increasingly clear

why you'd never been invited to be a member of that gang. I would never be invited to be a member of that gang, which simply would never happen because I can feel and I'm just annoying. But so, yes, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you'll enjoy a length of Grisham. Yeah, or for example, you might say to someone, how much Grisham are you bringing on holiday with you? Yeah, and they'll do it in grams, probably.

Yeah, and they might sometimes measure it in books, but that's just one of the many ways. And some people might go, I said I don't measure it in books, but that's imperial, can you use metric? To measure it in books is quite old-fashioned, isn't it? 17 legal suspense cubits is what I'm saying. Yeah, that's another way of doing it. Because they're good for killing flies, basically, as well, aren't they?

Well, in the naked and afraid context, absolutely, yeah. So you could measure in how many flies you could kill. So how much Grisham are you bringing on holiday? 450,000 fly deaths worth, whatever. And also, when we're one end, same with flower, where one ends and when another one begins, isn't really a... Flower is a really good example, actually, of that. Great example.

But also, things like, I don't know, flowers. I was just going to try again. Yeah, where does one end when it doesn't matter? It's just... The other thing is, you can read them in any order. You don't have to read from page one to the end. You could start in the middle, go backwards, start... Hold it the right way around, necessarily.

Just hold it the right way around? I think somebody who isn't on the inside of the Grisham world would say to Mike, maybe, oh, what's that you're reading? The runaway jewellery? And Mike would just answer, doesn't matter. It's not... Sorry, that's not rid of the question. Yeah, it's a bit like, if you say to someone,

I'm eating some bread at the moment, and they say to you, which bread is it? What do you mean? Well, you could. You could say it's a nice Trebata or it's a... Yeah, yeah, you're right. You could. Can I just say, Ben, I really admire how good you are at this.

I think it's brilliant and I know I can't do it, but... I think it's just something to work on in your own time. You know, it's something for me to work on my own time, but I just wanted to do... Yeah. I mean, I think definitely there's a kind of... There's also a liquid equivalence that you could start working on, you know?

Yes, you know. He's emin. Yeah. How much beer have you got? What do you mean? I don't know. It doesn't feel quite as good though. I mean, it doesn't work.

Yeah, so that's... It's a Grisham. It's almost... Yeah, it's just a sort of... Well, it's a bag of flour, isn't it? It's a bag of flour that you take on holiday with you. It's a bag of flour. And I'm going to enjoy my, yeah,

my own little Grisham on my inflatable armchair. Well, it's Ben's armchair. No, it's Mike's armchair. Oh, it's Mike's armchair. But because Mike's able to self-generate Grishams. But Ben wants it. Mike's in the kind of Nirvana state where he can now generate his own Grishams.

Yeah. He needs for nothing else. He's... You've cut out the middle Grisham, really. Which is why they're after me. It's my life. It's now like a Grisham thriller in and of itself. If Grisham finds out that there's a man out there

who can dream up his own Grishams, I'm done for. He'd think, I've got, I'm going to get a bloody good Grisham out of this. The pretender. All you have to do is turn Mike into a lawyer who works in Kentucky. Is that right? It's not bad.

Yeah. It's not bad at all. And top lacrosse player. When you send an email, you must give thanks to the postmasters that came before. Good morning, postmaster. Anything for me?

Just some old shit. When you send an email, this represents progress. Like a robot chewing a horse. My beautiful horse. Okay, time to read your emails. If you'd like to send us an email, send it to 3beansaladpod.gmail.com.

Yes, please. This is from John. Hi, guys. Your chat about pest control a couple of weeks ago. Henry, by the way, how's that going? Oh, so, well, I can tell you, there's been a few different stages to this, but I can tell you that there came a point

where we realized we did not have a mouse or a rat problem. You had a mouse and rat's opportunity. Reframe it. So we talked to a really interesting pest guy from pestreframers.com. And he completely made us rethink the way we prioritize our space. So now I live in the recesses of my own flat.

I can crawl. Actually, it's not that difficult. I can crawl from the bedroom to the bathroom in under a day. You do a lot of rat laundry, don't you? Do a lot of rat laundry because they are, I tell you what, they're sociable, but they aren't dirty.

But the fact is, as was explained to us, the rats are highly intelligent, highly sociable species. There's more of them than there are humans in London. And actually, you're closer to a rat than you are to... The other rats, most of the time, within five meters at any one point in London. So that kind of thing really made us rethink stuff.

So now, yeah, I keep an eye on them. There are various little holes that have been drilled so I can still see what's going on in my flat. And the rats are... Well, they've created a sort of rat kingdom in there. They always tend to go for the sort of monarchy, but you always hear about rat kings, never a rat democracy.

That's right. That's true. No, that's... We've given you leave to remain as well. They've gone, yes, exactly. Well, we're officially exiled, but there is no imminent risk of being executed. Rat babies are allowed to, if they can get into my throat,

they are allowed to eat it. So just to breathe through your nose from a time being. It is nose breathing for now, yeah. So this email from John is about someone who's taken a very different path to you, the less enlightened path, maybe. So your chat about pest control a couple of weeks ago reminded me of my partner's aunt's experience during the waning days of lockdown.

If anyone remembers, tradespeople were difficult to book as the world opened up and she found herself with a rat living in her kitchen. She eventually tracked down someone through the back channels of her odd friends who turned out to be a man from Amonford with some rather unclear credentials. Yes, it's quite a murky world, actually, pest control is. Let's see.

When he arrived, she showed him the poison and traps she'd tried to catch her little guest with, of which he was quite dismissive. He began bringing his own equipment in from the car and suggested she take her dogs to the sitting room. It's a good sign. Is he about to release an alligator? There's so many different approaches to pest control,

there isn't a kind of agreed orthodoxy on how to do it. So it's quite Wild West, go on. After a while, there was a very loud pop. Electromagnetic pulse. Bursting, though. And some disgruntled swearing. My partner's aunt stuck her head into the kitchen to find the guy laying siege to the back of the fridge

with a large air rifle. Oh, my God. Picking them off one by one. But with a kind of, just a smarting pain, not killing them, just giving them a kind of warning shot. She insisted he couldn't fire guns in her house, to which he responded by asking if she had a broom or mop he could borrow. Furnished with the broom, he fashioned a spear

by taping his knife to the handle with electrical tape. Wow, bloody hell, gone rambo. Suffice it to say, several hours later, the rodent remained at large. But two days after the man's unsuccessful departure, fell prey to one of her elderly shitsuits. All the best, John. That's a lovely email.

Fell prey to one of her elderly shitsuits. That's really got sort of Alan Bennett quality. Suffice it to say, several hours later, the rodent remained at large. Two days after the man's unsuccessful departure, fell prey to one of her elderly shitsuits. And now it's time for Pompidou's section.

Pompidou. Hello. Hi, Mike. I'm just editing this week's episode of Three Bean Salad. And there's just a bit where I launch into a impression of Alan Bennett. Don't know if you remember that bit. But yeah, vaguely, yes.

I just don't think it's a very good impression. I just wanted to apologize. I think, I do think anyone's got very high expectations of your Alan Bennett impressions. And I think because it's clearly labeled, you're okay. But yeah, I don't know. I just feel like when a podcast gets to the stage where it's just doing really poor impressions of Alan Bennett, it feels like it's maybe on its last legs a bit, do you know what I mean?

Oh, the podcast is on its last legs, absolutely. I mean, as long as no one realizes that, I think we're okay. Yeah. Okay, well, if you think so, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay, well, thanks, Mike. Yeah, all right. All the best.

Bye. Hi, Henry. I'm just editing this week's episode of Three Beans Salad. And I don't know if you remember, there's a bit where I did quite a, I did an impression of Alan Bennett. Oh, yeah. I do remember, yeah. And I'm just ringing around to apologize because I don't think it's a good enough

impression of Alan Bennett. Okay, yeah, I think it probably wasn't, was it? I think we were all having fun, like the idea of Alan Bennett talking about a rat being killed by an elderly shitsuit was funny, was fun. Yeah, yeah. But then the reality of me actually trying it as Alan Bennett, I really screwed the pooch, I think. Yeah, well, I think you probably might, I think you probably did.

And I'm not going to lie, it has stayed with me, how bad Alan Bennett was. Just hang on a minute, it's cast quite a long and quite a deep shadow. Yes, I'm just apologizing to you, apologizing to Mike. I'm obviously apologizing to the listener. I haven't cut it out because I feel like we need to be accountable. It's one of the things where you should probably keep it as a warning, isn't it? Yes, a useful warning for sure. A bit like them in the old days, when they'd catch a smuggler, hang him,

and then they'd stick his corpse in a metal jibbit and hang it from a high post so it would slowly decay. Yeah, okay, well, I'm going to get back to the edit now, but I just wanted to let you know, and yeah, I'm just saying sorry actually to you personally. Appreciate it. I'm not going to say apology accepted, but I'm going to say apology acknowledged. Okay, I get that, I get that. All right, I'll see you next week, Henry. Bye.

Bye. Okay, sorry about that. Back to the show. And I remember thinking, oh, I must remember to get some more custard cream. Hello, Henry. Hello, Henry. I'm just continuing the edit, and this is something I'm sure you knew actually when we just spoke, but as soon as I finished my Alan Bennett impression, you yourself do a dog shit Alan Bennett impression.

So all that stuff you were just saying to me about me being hang on a jibbit like a smuggler, and you knew that you'd done exactly the same thing, you bastard. Oh, fuck, have I just effectively signed my jibbit warrant? Yeah, you're probably right, aren't you? Yes, I'm just here to, can you also apologise to the listener and then we can move on? Yeah, yeah, I'm really, really sorry to everyone. Yeah, just not good enough. I've let everyone down.

I mean, I'm sort of feeling a bit like I've let Alan Bennett down. Yeah, I think that's actually at the heart of all of this, isn't it? He's just a lovely old man, and yeah, I don't know what we were doing. He's just a lovely man, and you know, I've been there. I'd hate him to have to actually hear it himself, you know, and end up, you know, saying to me, oh, no, I can't believe it. No, I'm hanging up. I'm hanging up.

Back to the show. And that's that's fabulous. Yeah, what a little tale. By the way, just quickly to finish off my my Impest Control experience, what's actually happened is we've decided it wasn't rats and mice. We decided it was squirrels because of the quality of the sort of the quality of the sound. Oh, also, I spotted some squirrels. Having a shower.

Um, I spotted some squirrels behaving suspiciously in the loitering. Loitering. With a set of your keys. With a set of my car keys. And it turns, I think it was squirrels. And what we decided was they were doing, because we were sort of monitoring their sound patterns, time of day and nature of the sound. And we decided they weren't doing, they weren't living there.

There wasn't any sort of, there wasn't, wasn't home building. But we decided that it was basically the only, the only conclusion we could come to was that they were holding a kind of large scale squirrel sporting event in our, in our ceiling space. So between up between our two floors. So we think some, basically some sort of squirrel and Olympiad, some sort of squirrel Olympics, because it was running up and down. It was, it definitely had a new one.

And you won the hosting rights. The competitive sport. We wanted the, well, we wanted the hosting rights. We wanted marketing opportunities. No, this kind of thing could be true. Gillette were on board. Yeah. Yeah. Gillette were on board. You know, some people will call it squirrel washing.

I don't agree with that. But Henry, what will the legacy be? What will the legacy be? Well, I think every squirrel should believe it has the opportunity to become a sports squirrel. You know what I mean? Because you can only be it if you can see it. Yeah.

And you've now got piles of squirrel shit in your attic for generations. Huge piles of it. For generations to come to enjoy. Grassroots. Exactly, it's grassroot stuff. But they were scurrying up and down so fast, we thought it has to be some sort of competitive race. So we thought they were using it as a kind of leisure space.

And then they were going, and then at night they were going. So we thought, you know, that's like, you know, a sports stadium in the day when the night will be deserted, won't it? I mean, it all adds up. They're going back to the athlete's village. Where they're rutting. Even though they've been told they shouldn't. Even though they've been told they shouldn't.

But you know, when you're... You've got that many buff squirrels in one place. Exactly. I mean, to be alive during the Squirrel Olympiad, but to be alive, young, buff and a squirrel. You know what I mean? You've got to enjoy that. But actually, then, so then what happened was,

and a bit like an actual Olympics, the day after it's finished, dead, the whole place is dead. And they've gone, they seem to have gone. So it's a happy ending. Golly. And obviously, it'll just be a question of who's applying for that one in the next one in four years. Will it be in the Middle East?

Yeah, we'll see. It's time to pay the ferryman. Thanks to all our Patreons or Patrons on Patreon. I'm not quite sure what the nomenclature should be. Thank you very much. But thanks to all of you over on Patreon.com for us three bean salad. You can get ad-free episodes.

You can get bonus episodes that we do every month. And if you sign up at the Sean Bean Tier, you get a shout out in the Sean Bean Lounge, where Mike spent a long legubrious evening last night. Sure did. Well, it was the... It was topical glass-blowing roulette. Wasn't it?

It was. And it was spectacular. And here's my report. The stakes were high last night at the Sean Bean Lounge as we indulged in a night of topical glass-blowing roulette. Francis Ashley Lopez was established as the new lounge croupier, the position having been made vacant following the disgrace and expulsion of former croupier John Wiles,

who claimed he knew the rules of craps, but whose no trousers at the table decree made it clear that he did not. Constantine Felix Dalamanca opened play with a perfectly blow-piped ball of soda-lime glass which landed on Belgium's swimming pool vandalism. Michael Colville put everything on Peruvian inflation, but his free-blowing was underpuffed,

and he accidentally glazed cybercrime and Icelandic mackerel quotas. Muriel Haslop Harrison cast a rainbow centaur with satin finish, which smashed onto undeveloped building sites in the northwestern province of Zambia and doubled her money. Inboldened, Tom Carroll put everything on European car import rates into South Korea, but his borosilicate abstract egg cup melted into school funding in the Cocos Islands,

costing him his house, his laptop, and his uncle's Nissan Micra. DWLX raised eyebrows by marvering his hot mold directly on the spinning table, but an even spread of bets across the Malvinas question, cruise ship parking in Venice, and Teutonic nanostates meant not leaving the lounge empty-handed. However, it was Holly Chandler with the big one of the night after her offhand lamp worked, shit ornament,

ricocheted, and shattered its way across the table. Its central trunk finally coming to rest right where she wanted it on the proposed expansion of Kickapoo Turnpike, Oklahoma. We hadn't even pulled the glass shards from our foreheads and cheeks before she'd ordered four jet skis. Congratulations. Okay, time to go.

Let's see who's version of our theme tune will play us out. This is from Cooper. He is recording for me banging out the three beans out of theme tune on various pots and pans from my kitchen. Brilliant. Thank you, Cooper. You're welcome. All right.

Until next time, goodbye. Cheerio, thank you, bye. Thank you, bye.