Three Bean Salad - Goblins

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

Chase (Bremen?) proclaims that goblins are the topic of the week. The beans tackle it with their usual rigour and in no time at all are back on the deck of the RMS Titanic. Spaniels get an honourable mention and we learn about Mike’s lesser known sub-specialty within the movie-making industry.Get in touch:[e-mail]@beansaladpodJoin our PATREON for ad-free episodes and a monthly bonus episode: www.patreon.com/threebeansaladMusic"That's Alright"Podington Bear soundofpicture.com

Quite warm where I am, are you warm? It's freezing where I am. Oh. I've got the heating on. I have got the heating on, yeah. That'll do it. I've got the heating on quite high, yeah. Got the heating on high, Henry.

Have you come into receipt of the Koei Nord Diamond, because these days you'd have to put the heating on. Am I right? Oh. Oh. Have you struck oil in your garden? Yeah, because the good thing is the scratch card paid off this morning and I've become one of Europe's biggest ever winners of a lottery, but thanks to that, I can actually

whack the heating on for half an hour today. Has it changed me? Yeah, it means I can have the heating on for half an hour, but have kept my job as a bus driver. That's what people who win the lottery always say, but I'm still just keeping my job as a bus driver. That's right. Isn't it?

They always say that. That's what they tell them to say. You have to say that. No bus driver has ever won the lottery. No. No, they give you a bus. Yeah. Well, the bus is what the money comes in.

You get a bus full of people. Right. And they say, for security reasons, please tell people that the reason you have this bus is because you are a bus driver. Yeah. Please remember to put the not-in-service bit at the front. And just keep driving. And just keep driving.

Just keep moving. This is full of cash. And if you stop and people spot you. Even right now, you need to be moving right now. Someone spot this. Go. Ignore the lights, because if they sit, they're going to be on you. Like hounds upon a lamb shop.

The next 50 years of your life are just running from bandits. That's what this is. It's basically bandit run. Go. I once saw, you have read it. It's like an internet message board type thing. Yeah. I saw on there, a guy wrote his experience of winning the lottery and his advice to

anyone else who had won the lottery. And his advice was just don't tell anyone. Oh, that's good. And don't even tell your partner. Oh, my God. That's quite good. You just can't, because everything it touches, it ruins. And then do you just sort of drip feed it into your life, so you'll have like...

You just do things like, you just go like, oh, darling, I was in the shopping centers today. I was in one of Mercedes. We just found this chandelier on the street, someone had left it. I mean, I put it up on a wall in case someone came back for it, but it'd been there for a few days. So I thought, well, you know, find his keepers. I've just found a two-week holiday in Dubai in three months' time, so weird.

I think what I would do is I'd factor it and just drip it, because you see that, Ben, if you do that, you're falling for the classic mafia mistake of... I'm always falling for mafia mistakes. Yeah, well, exactly. If you're buying yourself a big gold fur coat, the one with the really painful diamond lining, which really hurts to wear, but it's just a big status symbol. So is that a mafia mistake? Like that's...

They will then be obvious that they are... Yeah. Yeah. Then you're obviously the guys that did the robbery, however. So what I would do is I just drip feed it into lots and lots of small, slightly deluxe decisions. Like really nice pillows. Yeah.

Well, like, I will get the grab bag of crisps. I will get the grab bag of salt and vinegar discos, and I will buy a small pack of specifically for the human face tissues that have a kind of softening agent run through them rather than using kitchen roll or old newspaper to blow my nose. You've had to soak in vinegar to soften them. There's just little things like that. Just always taking the slight, dark compulsion. You take the edge of it with balsam, essentially.

Yeah. That's what I do. Like maybe I would stop wiping my arse with my barnacle encrusted stone that I use. Exactly. And you'd have someone else do it with the barnacle encrusted stone instead. Yes. But you wouldn't tell anyone about that work. That's right.

And they would also apply some balsam afterwards, just some sweet balsam. Basically, if you can get as much balsam into your life as possible without people noticing, I think I'd start to notice, though, Henry, that pervasive sort of aura of someone who's really balsammed up and so soft to the touch. Yeah. I'm going to have to put my hand up here and say, I'm not entirely sure what balsam is. No one knows what balsam is. That's part of it's allure.

You're playing dumb because you won the lottery. Oh, crafty, crafty. That's what you would say if you currently had a whole pot of balsam, not telling anyone in the shed that you've got that you don't tell anyone about. Kilo uncut balsam in your desk drawer. I don't know what balsam is either, but it's the thing that they impregnate the higher end tissues with. It's not to do balsamic vinegar, is it?

Oh, God, it must be. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. No. Maybe they're both high-end. So balsam, how does it relate to things like aloe vera? Oh, it's definitely in that sphere, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I think aloe vera, aloe vera is your pleasure dinghy and balsam is your super yonce. Okay. Okay. Well, okay. Other things I think I would do if I won the lottery, didn't want to know. I think I would have a storage unit somewhere because that's quite an expensive thing. I would have a storage unit. It's full of the bodies of your enemies.

Pack to the rafters. Pack to the rafters. With people who've gently slighted you over the years. And so you wouldn't get a sort of bigger home that had decent storage. You would get a storage unit that was a good sort of 45-minute drive from your house. A 45-minute drive. From industrial parks. A good 45-minute drive on the second bicycle that no one knows about.

I'd have a second bicycle. You know they say with the lottery, don't they? They say that you're more likely to come across a load of treasure statistically. No, really, don't. Or by mistake. But yeah. So that the maths, like the chance of winning the lottery is so small that you're more likely to literally just bump into some treasure by accident, like some ancient treasure.

So are we saying that that does happen because someone wins the lottery once a week, yeah? So are we saying therefore that someone does bump into some treasure more than once a week? That must follow, yeah. Maybe it happens so often that it's no longer newsworthy, which is why we don't hear about it. I think more people win the lottery than find treasure. Also, if you find treasure, don't you have to basically give it to the British Museum or something? Or can you keep it? To the crown.

Don't you get something as the finder? I think you get free coffees at the British Museum Cafe and Factory. Right. For life, set off in a gift shop. Free entry, although it is free entry to everyone. My partner did some work at the British Museum. And as a result, she got onto the best mailing list of all time, which was a mailing list where they would let you go to the exhibitions like an hour before it's open to the public on special days. And you can hide in the mummies and do it first now.

That's a pretty good feature. To a couple. And basically, it was me and her, and then whatever the exhibition was, there was a good one about the Scythians, the steppe people, but it was just us. And then kind of Yentob kind of characters, just proper, hamsteady Yentob's. Felt good. Felt like you were in the right place. It felt premium, you know? Tweed clad, portly intellectuals.

Yes, extremely small eyeglasses, cashmere coming out of every orifice. And Pashminas, I'm imagining. And also, he might be wearing some quite slightly out of place, big, chunky, quite bright, Nike trainers. Yes, I was about to say the shoes are often wrong. The shoes might be wrong, but also that might be just because, you know, he's got some issues with his back, whatever. His grandson may have helped him choose them. He's passed a level of vanity now, where it doesn't, you know, if they're comfortable. Has he passed a level of vanity or is it partly the effectation?

Are these things headturners on the streets of Hampstead? Oh, that's true. Have you seen Alan's latest shoes? His grandson helped him pick them and they're rather fun. Very zingy. They pop. They do pop out. I think we've probably mentioned Yentob before in the podcast, but I'm sure if you're not British,

if you're British, you know who Yentob is. He's the very fulcrum of our culture. He's the father of our letters. He's a state of mind. He's a state of mind. He's the kind of guy who, he doesn't go to an art gallery. He goes with a thermos and sits in front of one painting for four hours. And doesn't leave until he's, the weeping has stopped.

He's got a lot of sores all over his body and they do. And the only way they can stop is by looking directly at a broagle. It's only when he's moved, emotionally moved by the lighting in a sort of Dutch parlor or whatever, that his sores will briefly stop themselves transfixed by Broegle's mastery. And those sores hanging a gape a bit like Yentob's mouth. Do you know what I mean? In slack jawed wonder. And like Yentob's mouth.

Mucus pours forth. Mucus will, yeah, the mucus won't stop. Some of the liquids briefly stop. The mucus keeps going. Yeah. So if you don't know, listen, he is a kind of cultural, he's a documentary maker, I guess fundamentally, tastemaker and king maker. Yeah.

He was high up in the bee, wasn't he? I think he might still be. I think I may have seen him around London town pot. You quite often see him around London town. Have you ever seen him? We don't move in the same circles as you. I know. I know you don't move in the same.

But most Londoners, every couple of months you go, is that Yentob? Is that Yentob over there? Yeah. With a sort, yeah. With the weekend tour. Yeah. They've put up a careful, you might slip sign next to him.

Because all the way, big sort. Is that Yentob? Yeah, I think it's Yentob. I went to London last week for the first time in months and months and months. And I saw Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, celebrity chef. Did you? Yeah. On the side, a kind of novelty electric vehicle that's only big enough for him.

Like a sort of pod on wheels. The Hugh Fernley Whittingstall mobile. Yeah. Yeah. And he zoomed past. And I sort of, I could only see his face for maybe like a microsecond. But my brain and like, immediately, there's no, like, there's no, oh, it's there.

I recognise him. It was just bang. That's Hugh Fernley Whittingstall. You see the celebrity, you can go home now. Back to Wales. And you can tell everyone you meet. Doesn't he live in Devon or Dorset? Had he come all the way up in his little pod?

Do you think? I mean, it's going quite a lick. Well, in the same way that Londoners needs to see the odd celebrity, the odd celebrity needs to be seen occasionally by Londoner. You know what I mean? Yeah. So he'll have come up there in order for someone to go. To re-accredit himself.

To re-accredit himself. To re-accredit himself. With the celebrity body that officiates these things. Yeah, exactly. Offsleb. Offsleb. So there would have been offsleb inspectors there, probably wouldn't there? They need to make sure that you've got some skeletons in your closet.

That's all ongoing. Potential scandal on the horizon. They need to make sure that you're being seen. Yeah. They need to make sure that a regional person like Ben, for example, will spot you and go, oh, that's something I can tell my partner. My other regional. My regional partner about.

And few of the regional people that I see later on, when I make the nightmarish journey back to my region, will coo and go, oh, it's a bit different, isn't it, in London town? And you'll agree though that you wouldn't want to live there because all the people there are bastards. That's right. But then they can swap stories about the time that they were in London and saw Joanna Lumbley.

I think it might have been Joanna Lumbley. It might have been a mannequin. They don't really know. And then they'll reaffirm the fact that they wouldn't want to live there despite the fact that they saw Joanna Lumbley there because everyone there is a bastard. And one of them will also refer to one of the famous sites and monuments of London, e.g. the London Eye,

Nelson's Column, Yandtob's Cavern, and say, well, you know what? I went to see insert, famous London monument or area, and actually didn't really impress me much. In fact, I didn't know what all the fuss was about. Compared to say Cheddar Gorge and Wookie Hole and Babacum Model Village.

Everyone agrees and then just begins to slowly dread the day when one of their offspring will force them to take them back to London to see a musical. And then you will go back to various forms of kneading, isn't it? Kneading, weaving. Kneading flowers. Whittling with waddling. Whittling, waddling, dawbing.

Mining. Plottling, plottling, mining. Extracting minerals from that stash. Threshing. Pounding of grains into smaller powders. A lot of different powders. I mean, you'll be making so many powders, you'll be making at the same time.

How do you keep track of them all? In glass bottles that you've blown. Well, a member of the London Xerostocracy comes in and takes an inventory periodically. Shots your powders! Powders! Bring out your powders! We'll bring out our powders and our wavings.

Excuse me, sir. What powder have I been making? Well, son, that is gun. Oh, thank you. You don't need to understand the powder son to me. Don't worry. By the way, I am... You know, we were talking about lottery and treasure and stuff.

Before we started today, I went for a little walk. As I sometimes do, I go for a little freshening walk before doing the podcast around my local park with a coffee in hand. I saw a glint of... It's a very bright... It's a beautiful bright spring day here in London. What season is it for you guys?

At the moment, we're going through the darkening The moon is on the semi-way. And my left shin is bulbous. Then she'll begin the yellowing and the colouring. It's a beautiful blue, crisp London day today. It's one of those days when you just think, which of our many are Calhari's will I visit this afternoon? But there's a lovely quality to the light.

As I was walking along, I saw a gleam, a bright yellow gleam gleamed out from the path. I think it was Yentob's belly button. It was Yentob's amulet. From which he draws all his power. And keeps in his belly button. As I was walking past it, I just very quickly, my brain was able to go...

My brain went through a few things. At first it went, that is a perfectly preserved ancient gold coin. Then my brain instantly went, you've got all these checks and balances in your brain, almost certainly there's a news agent, so now you're here, you don't get old coins that well preserved. It's the bottom of a bottle of Lucas Ape. Of which the British Museum have plenty, thank you very much.

They don't use it anymore. So they thought, you know what, and the edges of it are so perfectly squared off. It's almost certainly a chocolate coin. Okay. Keep going. And I walked past it. But then basically another part of my brain went,

but what if, Henry, tomorrow, just even there's a tiny chance, tomorrow you read in the papers about our perfectly preserved ancient gold coin was found in a park and it was worth loads of money or whatever. And I just went, I might as well just, and no one was around.

Also, you know for a fact that more people run into treasure than win the lottery, so... Exactly. And I've never won the lottery so far, so I'm probably due one. So I just popped back, went up to it, picked it up, sure enough. Well, it's actually, it was hard,

but it's been out all night, I think. So it was almost as hard as it could have been a gold coin from the hardness. What was it? Like a dead toad or something. I could tell from the way, from the rim, I think it was basically a chocolate coin. So I just put it in a bin and carried on.

So close. So close. But you've got to check, as they say, isn't it? You've got to check a lot of gold chocolate coins. Haven't you, before you? Christmas is a real emotional rollercoaster for you, isn't it? It really is. Well, then it's a thing of,

there's no chance that a gold coin has somehow accidentally got into this bag of chocolate gold coins, for example, the one that they use as their basis for designing them. This year, I had some chocolate coins for Christmas, and inflation has got to such a stage that amongst the chocolate coins were chocolate notes. Oh, what?

There was a chocolate five-pound note and a chocolate 10-pound note. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, I'll be giving the kids for Christmas this year. Christmas bonds. Okay. Chocolate bloody bank transfer. And they go, hey kids,

try and pay for the heating with that. Oh, bloody Amazon vouchers. Non-fungible chocolate. Marshmallow bitcoin. Humour. Humour. It still matters. So how does a chocolate coin,

was it very, very thin chocolate, painted chocolate? Was it covered as well? It was as thick as a chocolate coin. And instead of being covered in gold, attractive gold foil, they'd sort of printed, crudely printed onto foil, the queen's face and the five-pound note.

It looked very chunky. That's a terrible idea. It makes no sense. The whole point of a chocolate coin is, a piece of chocolate in that shape does replicate a coin slightly if you cover it in foil. Yeah. The only thing you could make a note out of, say,

sushi seaweed, which I've actually got a pack of. So we could get this business off the ground now. Christmas sushi seaweed. For some reason, I bought a sort of, it comes in like, it's like, it's the closest thing to stationery. You can get in the non-stationery department

of a supermarket, of a food department. It's like paper, but it's made of seaweed. And you'd run out of printer paper. You'd run out of printer paper. Oh, the cost of printer paper these days, eh? You'd put it off on a seaweed. Good luck.

I quite like the sound of the chocolate notes. Nah. Nah. Nah? He's absolutely right. A chocolate coin's like a coin. A chocolate note's not like a note. Maybe I'll just slightly do a piece of chocolate.

That's a bit bigger than the other bit of chocolate. That might be what the draw is. I think you've narrowed it down there, Mike. The day might come where, once the world economy collapses and we realize that money, which I've always said, money's just an agreement between people, isn't it? That this is worth something.

You have always said that, haven't you? I've always said that. It's one of my opening social gambit. If you sit next to me at a wedding or anything, it'll be, hi, you look at the name card, hi, Derek. Derek's already been warned about you. Derek's trying to hide the fact he's got his earbuds in

his sideburns. He's listening to Five Live. He's had to build fake ears. He found, because he's at the reception, he found all the big portobello mushrooms they were doing for the vegetarians. And he fattened those into two big fake ears. He thought to himself, in vegetarian restaurants,

a mushroom will often stand in for meat. It's got the most similar texture. If I need to construct myself an ear here quickly, he's under pressure. He's thinking quickly, because he's looked at the table plan, he raises Henry sitting next to me. He thinks, I can either part with Henry's conversation or leave the wedding, or option three,

fashion myself some fake ears out of these portobello mushrooms. Stick them to some bamboo, put a couple of pickled eggs on, and cover them in so it looks like I'm making eye contact with him, but actually I'm underneath the table. Yeah. Thank goodness this is a panda themed wedding, with bamboo everywhere. That's played into my hands.

Let's hope the wedding night's more successful than it would be for pandas. He's had to sit through that joke in every single speech. The best man, the best woman, the father of the bride, everyone, the groom, the bride, the chef, everyone's making a joke. All of them who feel it's their premium joke, even though they are going to bloody well do it.

They've all had to look at their list of jokes and gone, this joke's now been done four times. But this is my closer. This is my closer. I can't lose it. It's the thread that keeps my bit together. It's written through my little speech like a sticker on. Can't lose it at this stage.

Yeah, so he's had to fashion himself a fake ear. He's also had to, so in order to be able to have five live in his air pods in his real ear, he's had to basically reconstruct one side of his head to be slightly further back. Or so he's tunneled into his head. Well, he's had to dip into... So he's going to need a sort of fake face, isn't he?

He's had to dip into the John Lewis steak knife kit that he's bought them for their wedding gift, to hack into the back of his head. And build a fake side of his head. And an escape tunnel. And he's had to dig himself an escape tunnel in case the whole thing doesn't work. Yeah, for his own mind.

For his own mind. He's had to use all the dill off the salmon plate to create the fake sideburn to go in front of the... The fake ear, doesn't he? Even though he knows there's a risk of Henry Pache talking about the fact that there's not a lot of dill knocking about. And that's half an hour of conversation he could do without.

It's worth the risk. He's also had the rumor that Henry also has a theory that herbs are a kind of... A social construct. It's an agreement between people. We just agree that they're herbs. Exactly. What makes a plant a herb?

What's the difference between a herb and any other kind of plant? Exactly. What's the difference between loads and loads of rosemary and a lawn? And a slightly crispy lawn? Think about it. And then you move on to spices

and he's in real trouble. Unless his disguise is working. So he's had to create a fake sideburn out of the dill. He's had to dye it brown. Obviously his hair isn't green with all the gravy from the pork remoulade sort of area. And he's just had to literally, for his fake eye, he's just had to take an eye out of the pig's head.

And place it with his niggle ball. And to his surprise, he can actually see through the pig eye. He's kind of plummed in. Better than before. So he's actually made a major medical breakthrough. Often that's the way these things happen. Okay, time to turn on the bean machine. Very good.

Lovely. And this week's topic sent in by Chase. Wow, from Bremen. Very strong. Cool name. Cool name. Yeah. Hang on.

I'm just going to de-jump her. Hang on a second. Oh. I'm all yours. It's tricky to get the temperature right at the moment. It's not just me. It's this, it's this ruddy season. Isn't it?

Is it warm? Is it cold? The sun's saying warm. The temperature's saying cold. The shade is saying freezing. What's the internet saying? Who knows? I'll tell you what.

I'll tell you what. Those bloody, those people who do the weather on television. Have they ever even got it right? Oh, Christ. I think it might be time for that joke to come back in, the thing about pointing out the weather, whether people don't get it right a lot. These things do come back in.

But the thing is they do, what I think is these days, they're incredibly correct most of the time. Yeah. And it's almost amazing the extent to which they can tell you what hour the rain's going to start happening. So all you can do now is make fun of their stupid shirts. Whatever it is when you're watching them.

Oh, look at that bloody, look at that bloody blouse. Doesn't have quite the same bite, does it? No. This week's topic, yes, please, is... Goblins. Goblins. It's a mincey goblin coming in your room and touching your feet.

It's a mincey goblin sitting on your pillow. And dribbling on your ear. Those ones. One of my first ever performing roles was as a goblin. What? Whoa, you were the green goblin in the Spider-Man movies. You were the goblin in Cats. I was the goblin in Cats, the one that got cat in the end.

Because it didn't fit with you. You were the goblin that got cut from Titanic. Was that goblin that was riding the iceberg? 14 weeks I spent in that bloody sound stage. That's right, hit the ship, my beauty. Hit the ship. And they wanted it all in camera. There's no CGI, there's no new tennis balls this time.

They actually had to construct a gigantic iceberg and I had to ride it and aww, my ass by the end of that process. Quiet, my penguin henchman. The moment is upon us. What we've been working for. Ever since we were slighted by a seafarer. This is going to bring about the iceberg atop a saddled walrus. It's a better movie.

My trusty Alfred. Truly, you are a noble walrus. And tonight we feast on a five-course deluxe meal on the Titanic. Only to find that an alwalt walrus had betrayed me and had tried to warn the ship about the impending iceberg. Clacking his gut tucks together in Morse code. But he was shot on sight. Because he forgot that the ship was full of Victorians.

Gum-toting Victorians. To see his head as the figurehead of the Titanic as it steered into the iceberg. They had to CGI off Alfred's head, didn't they, off the Titanic when they... Well, they say that almost half the budget was CGI removing Alfred the... Various walrus parts. Alfred the...

Well, because he was a double agent, wasn't he? We think he's working for Her Majesty's aqua police, or aqua espionage unit. Youth the Goblin King, Mike. Yeah. You think he's working for you? Yeah. And they didn't tell me anything otherwise in the script.

They kept the other side of his character very, very... Which is a... Very closed off to me. Which was partly why your performance will be on the clipping room floor, or the cutting room floor. At the moment of betrayal. Incredible. Incredible.

Well, that famous bit where Leonardo DiCaprio is at the front of the boat and he puts his arms out and he goes, I'm king of the world. Yeah. It doesn't really make that much sense without the walrus head because in the original, he picks up the walrus head and puts it on his head and wears it like a mask. It also doesn't make sense.

If you listen to his intonation, because they cut the previous scene, Alfred the walrus is saying to Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark my words, I'm going to be wearing your face as a mask. Because I'm the king of the world. And if you watch the scene, if you go back now and watch Titanic, you'll notice the intonation that DiCaprio uses is he goes, well, I actually, I'm...

He goes, I'm the king of the world. Not you. Not you, you dead walrus. Yeah. Not you, you dead walrus. Also, there's a very moving scene, wasn't there, Mike, where you... Where the walrus paints a portrait of you naked, the goblin.

Yeah, which she actually did, because Gerard Butler is actually very good at watercolors. So we tried to make that as real as possible. Even when his hands are inside those massive sort of rubber flippers, they make it. No issue at all. Well, he spent six months intensively painting in watercolors with his hands in flippers. And for that single scene. Because originally in the film,

they cut between the two scenes, didn't they? So as Leonardo DiCaprio is painting... For contrast, yeah. Yeah, Kate Winslet. Gerard Butler was painting you. Yeah. And in R1, I start naked. And I'm encouraged by the process to put some goblin clothes on.

Yeah. Yeah. A little leather jerkin. Yeah. Some rags. A little leather knee pads. And a necklace made of penguin teeth. Did they tell you they were...

Was it one of those things where you got to the premiere and then you went in it, or did they tell you beforehand? What they do is they literally iced me. So I got the message on a massive block of ice that was delivered outside my house, blocking the door so I physically couldn't get out to get to the taxi that they'd cancelled for the premiere. Well, James Cameron, all the communications on the film, another reason why the budget was so high were done in iceberg form.

He thought that would help people to... Yeah, and in Blue Ice as well, if you needed to get the message rapidly, Blue Ice would be dropped from an airship above your house. What's Blue Ice? Frozen effluent... from an airplane that is dropped. I see.

Whatever is dropped. Is that what it's called? But I'm sure Blue Ice is a kind of cop thriller from the 80s, isn't it? There is one. There is. I think that's intentional as well. I think it's reference to the movie. Why would you call it Blue Ice rather than yellow ice or brown ice?

Is it because of all the chemicals I'm mentioning, there's a lot of chlorate chemicals that go into it. It's like a caravan toilet. Well, no, if you go high enough in altitude, your piss turns blue. You know that. Surely. Of course. Because you're at a different level of the rainbow.

That's right. It refracts differently. So when people, you know, you hear about people getting killed by being run through by a giant shard of frozen piss that's fallen out of a plane, that's actually a message from James Cameron. And if you look it up close, I'll say something on it like... Told you I'd find you.

Yeah, I might have moved on to the Avatar sequence of films now, but I'm still looking after various bits of outstanding admin from the Titanic film, including your murder. And of course, he went from Blue Ice to Blue Aliens, didn't he? Yes. So is that a coincidence? Well, you were cut, Mike, from the first Avatar as well, weren't you? Yeah.

Well, again, there were no goblins. Yeah, that was just an error in the writing, I think, just to pop a goblin in there. But what you do now, Mike, is that you've got a thing which is you insist all your... You do all your things now on Green Screen Day so that you can be nipped out more easily. I think that's something...

Generally speaking, the industry has found that it does save a lot of problems in the long run if we're not wasting money on sets or times or... I've got my own Green Screen... It's at home, even now. They often ask me to not physically come in. Yeah.

And just to be on the safe side, I've just seen... So they can... Just film my own scenes on my own with my own Green Screen. Email it to them. Sometimes you'll... Yeah, so you can be nipped out almost in advance, almost, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's part of the way basically...

Oh, sometimes they'll encourage me not even to press record when I'm filming the scenes. Just... Well, anything that reduces the admin... And then, of course, they don't have to ensure you. If you press record, even though they're going to nip you out, they will have to ensure you, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

So I try and give them a good deal. Do you want to be so exploitable at the end of the day, don't you? But you've got a little kit you can take around with you, isn't it? It's a bit like a flip shot, but it's green. You can... A bit like a little portable screen, isn't it? You extract the green. Exactly.

I've got my little tripod for my camera, and I've always got my goblin costume underneath my clothes. You've got ping pong balls. You've got a little out of it with ping pong balls hanging off you. Yeah. That's right. In case you need any stuff like that's needed. Yeah.

Well, it's a bit like one of those Australian hats with the corks on, but I've just put ping pong balls on, and they go all the way down to my feet. And you've got a little jerking with ping pong balls hanging off, isn't it? If there's any naughty scenes that you do that might need to be cut. Yeah. You've got a little cod piece with jerking hanging off.

Yeah. With a little cod piece with ping pong balls hanging off. Also, what you told me, Mike, was that... What surprised me was that you were saying that often, they'll actually contract you. They'll have made the movie. They'll be screening it to an audience, and the audience will come out,

and I didn't like that, and they'll say, what's the problem? The audience will often say, what you need is to film a scene with a goblin and then cut it out of the movie. Yeah. And they'll like to improve it. Because, well, sometimes, anyone who...

Anyone in any creative pursuit, be it from making great painting, or writing an opera, to actually, literally, actually just making quite a good old-fashioned pie, like a meat pie, cutting off... Sometimes they say it's the pastry you cut off

that makes the lid feel the right shape. And often you can't see what's wrong with your own production until you have seen a man's self-shoot a goblin scene on green screen. And then, you know... Hang on. If we were to lose the goblin scene, and then suddenly it all...

That improves this. So you've actually carved yourself quite a useful niche in a way, doing this. Because the other thing is, the way films are funded now, I believe... Films are generally funded by consortiums. Yeah. Hedge funds.

Hedge funds. Carls. EU money. And found treasure. And so, a lot of the time... Well, there's various factors at play here. One is, do you know the theory of the blue boat? It's a theory from painting,

from portraiture, or paintings. You can't see a blue boat on the sea. You can't see. There's a bunch of ways of seeing. Same reason no one ever draws blue planes. Exactly. Or green cricketers. Can't see them.

There's a complete waste of time. Exactly. Because Mike actually is in platoon as a goblin. You just come to him against the jungle. They actually didn't cut you out that time. They didn't have to. But they did need to. Yeah.

And back then, the budget to have cut me out would have been absolutely massive. It would have been frame by frame to paint a leaf over. So they made a decision, bearing in mind the technology we have at the moment, let's keep him in, but dress him up in an outfit made of ferns. Didn't know.

They thought that's actually going to be cheaper. We've still got to insure him. We've still got to cater for him. But whereas now the technology's there, it's one of the greatest... Well, actually, the catering, they did cut the catering in the end, so I did have to sort of find a prep,

which is bloody hard to find in the 70s. In the 70s in Thailand while we were filming. Yeah. Or the 80s. Yeah. Because, I mean, at that point, the dream of a sort of portable croissant... Croissant ovens could be dispatched around a country.

Well, they didn't think it could be done. They didn't think it could ever be done. So, at that point, all they had was the seating. Basically, it wasn't in the tills. And the rest was just a figment of Mrs. Monge's imagination. So, Henry, what is the Blue Boat Theory?

What was it? The Blue Boat... Principle? The Blue Boat Principle is. Paradox. I can't remember who it was now, but there was a painter who'd paint paintings and portraits and stuff,

or commissions for people. And what he found was that whenever you presented the work to the client or maybe the person you're doing a portrait of, they'd always want to feel there was something that they didn't like. They'd get you to change. They'd go, oh, I don't like this.

I don't like this. This probably happens in all kinds of media. You know, someone gives you notes. So, you know, be it doing a piece of writing or, you know, for a modern twist, maybe you're designing a website. He's talking in a language the youth will understand. Or maybe you're coming up with, like,

the structure of, like, a web forum. Yeah? So, whatever it is, you present it to your client or whatever, and they will have some feedback. They always feel they need, and then it'll be a bit annoying because you've got to do that feedback. So, what this artist realizes,

if they put a Blue Boat into... in the background of every picture they were doing... Of a portrait of someone who's been painted in their study. Well, I guess... Yeah, it would sometimes be quite difficult. But then what they do is they show it to the client. They'd show it to the client. The client would be looking at the portrait,

and they know, the artist knows, the psychology of the client is they're going to have to come up with something to change, something they don't like. So, they feel sort of, I don't know, they feel powerful or something. And normally what they'd say is, get rid of me, that Blue Boat's staying. You know who I am?

I now want a painting of that boat, and that boat only. Who cares about silly old me with my moustache and my spaniels in an armchair? What about that bloody great Blue Boat that's barrowing through the wall of my study? I'm interested in that story. I don't know about that. You've got yourself a mini-series of paintings.

I want to commission three series, twelve paintings each, box set of these paintings. So what... And he'd look at it with the client, and the client would be going, hmm, yeah, I like it. There's something I don't like about it.

And then the artist would go, oh, is it that Blue Boat? And they'd go, yeah, I think it's the Blue Boat. And then the painter would get rid of the Blue Boat. So they knew that... So essentially, this is Mike. Mike's Goblin. So when you present the movie to the consortium of...

To the consortium of the evil cabal. Evil cabal of diamond miners who are funding the film. Exactly. Yeah. Halfway through the main action sequence, it crashes hard, hard cut into a goblin. Yeah. It's actually filmed in a flat.

Yeah. They've not even put CGI in the green screen. Well, the green screen, unfortunately, doesn't go all the way to the edges, because of the real problems. And they'll be like, hmm. They'll be thinking, what is it about this film about...

About the life of Van Gogh. The life of Van Gogh. I'm enjoying it. And they've really handled the ear thing sensitively, because that's always... That's always the thing, isn't it, with the film about Van Gogh? How are they going to handle the ear thing? And they've handled it pretty sensitively.

They've postulated that Van Gogh had a fake ear made out of a portobello mushroom. That he'd put on because he was really bored shitless by chatting to go-gan all the time. But that scene of the goblin chewing on a human ear, didn't you flat with some grain behind him? Yeah, I didn't. I think that might be the one.

Totally. Maybe that's the one to lose. Or it'll be like, I thought Daniel Craig was great in this film, wasn't he? Yeah, he was, wasn't he? But maybe that scene where... There's a goblin playing darts on his own. Maybe we don't need that.

OK, our first email is from Chiara. Hi, Beans. Hi, Chiara. Hello. We're listening to your slippers podcast, where one of you mentioned you were urinated on by a lioness at Marwell Zoo. Tigress.

It was a Tigress. Can I say something? Yeah. I-Tigress. Hello? Ooh! Did that... OK.

By the way, I'm really glad I got a chance to do that because it was one of those ones where, you know, last time after the podcast, you know, in... You were really kicking yourself, were you? Yeah. You know, because what we always do is after the podcast, individually we do this, we all walk along the cliffs of this great isle.

And we... We reflect on what went right and what went wrong and what is it already mean. There's a word for it in French, isn't there? Esprit de cliffs of this great isle. The idea you have when you're walking along the cliffs of the great isle. Yeah, after you've been to a party or a luncheon

or a webinar or whatever it is. Yeah. And afterwards you walk the cliffs of this great isle and think about it. And I was really kicking myself. I was like, oh, I should have said, I-Tigress at some point. So, yes.

I was listening to our slipper's episode where one of you mentioned you were uninated on by a lioness. Incorrect. Mm-hmm. My boyfriend was also tinkered on by that lioness when he was younger. And he tells me maybe somebody visited the zoo. So it feels like there's a kind of, you know,

sort of rival brotherhood maybe, Mike, of those who were pissed on by the lion. Well, I don't know, because she thinks that we talked about a lioness. Yeah. So what I don't know is whether or not, there is a pissing lion, whether she's got muddled,

I don't know who's got muddled. Someone's got muddled somewhere. Or whether the lion got muddled. The muddle lion might have got muddled and been in the wrong enclosure. We don't know. It's raised more questions. Absolutely.

Than it has given us answers, I would say. Rowan emails, dear beings, I was enjoying listening to your latest episode while I was doing my laundry and carrying a hamper of freshly washed Egyptian cotton bedsheets up the stairs. Lovely. What a life Rowan leads.

Congratulations, Rowan. Well done. Well done. You've arrived. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Premium listener. And who had tried to think of the people

he stepped trot on to get where he is, because he would have had to have destroyed several. You know, you didn't get to be in that position without. The rungs of the ladder are others' faces, is what you're saying. My ears pricked up when I heard Mike mention that he had been assaulted by a Tigris at Marwell Zoo. God, this keeps on giving, doesn't it?

It really does. I dropped my hamper and instantly knew that those sheets were going to require another delicate cycle. Or a rinse and spin at the very least. My pupils dilated. My clammy palms searched desperately for the banister as my knees crumpled beneath me. A memory buried deep and forgotten bubbled to the surface

with such velocity that it gave me the bends. The entirety of Mrs. John's class 4B were pointing and laughing at me in my sodden blazer and short trousers. The scent of ammonia ringing through my sinuses. The teachers stifled laugh. But worst of all, my soiled 99 soft serve with a flake that was undoubtedly rendered inedible. I, too, was pissed on by the Tigris of Marwell Zoo.

Not the soft serve. Anything but the soft serve. I'm seeking closure by campaigning to have this Tigris euthanised with immediate effect. That's harsh. That's harsh. She says, if this is a cause you could get behind, I'd appreciate the help because the lady at the zoo

keeps saying things like endangered species and captive conservation. And how did you get this number? I lost my pride that day as well as my thick end of Mr. Whippy. Rowan. Golly, Rowan. Yeah, it's possibly worth considering other avenues of closure, I would say.

Well, this is what happens is that when these things come out more and more people join sort of the movement, don't they? Well, the trouble is there's a schism now already because the movement was, initially, it felt like there was a great fraternity and sorority of, you know, a musk family was being built. But here we have Rowan who is actually still furious and wants to have at the Tigris at the top of the chain.

And if there are other people who join that cause, I mean, this could be the start of something huge, is what I'm saying. It could be. I mean, Marwell Zoo could be looking at multiple lawsuits. And now away from the Tigris story, although I'm sure we're going to get some more Marwell victims getting in touch.

It's almost getting to the point where we should ask people to write in if they haven't been pissed on by a tiger. Isn't it? Tell us you're not having been pissed on by a tiger. Three beans salad pod at gmail.com. Sam writes, dear beans, I've just been listening to the episode where an American listener, Bill, writes in to talk about his experience

with Branson Pickle. Speaking of someone who's half British and half American, I feel that there's been a bit of cultural misunderstanding between both Bill and the beans. OK. As everyone knows, there are only two types of cheese in the US. Orange, for on top of burgers,

and aerosol. Right. Yeah, we forget that. That's easy to forget. Let's just spray on cheese. Both of which wouldn't stand a chance against Branson. Branson Pickle does indeed entirely decimate the flavour of anything it is paired with,

but the British also have another vial substance that they take for granted and think is entirely normal. Extra mature cheddar. Much like Branson Pickle, this cheese will immediately overwhelm the flavour of anything it's paired with. Branson Pickle should be understood in the context of extra mature cheddar. That's quite interesting.

It's almost like there's a kind of arms race, isn't there, between the strength of the cheddar and the strength of the pickle. I think it's been going on in Britain for hundreds of years. Sam goes on to write, when the unstoppable fourth of Branson Pickle meets the immovable object of extra mature cheddar, a truly horrendous equilibrium is achieved.

They cancel each other out, almost. One man's horrendous is another's nirvana. An extra mature cheddar with a bit of Branson Pickle on top is, for me, that's a bite of happiness. He's trying to say that it's a kind of Mexican standoff where you've got one guy with a gun armed or something made of cheddar. Another guy with...

He's got a throwing pickle. Another guy with a jar of throwing pickle. And what needs to happen is everyone just needs to cool down, reduce your cheddar intensity, reduce your pickle intensity, get it down to maybe level four cheddar strength. Just like maybe a bit less vinegar in the pickle. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Maybe take that cheddar down to level three. Now, maybe a little bit less vinegar in that. Maybe pour in a little bit of tap water. Keep it tepid, tepid, tepid. Tap water, tap water in the pickle. Just cool that down. What are you doing? Are you going crazy? No, he's back after five. Jesus Christ.

Cheddar pickle, pickle, pickle. You can just go off like that. Is that what he's trying to say? It's a kind of mutually assured... Sandwich. Sandwich. I think your mouth gets kind of addicted to the intensity of the flavor,

so you barely feel alive until you've got... It's the vinegars in the pickle, and those intense... those kind of punch-to-the-face strengths you get in those old chedders. They get your kind of glands, they get your kind of sliver ducts going, and I think we need those now

to sort of feel alive in Britain. Sorry, I'm just like three emails. No, it's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't listening either, to be honest. I didn't care anyway if you were, because I wasn't. So, good to know.

Craig writes, Dear Beans, I often listen to podcasts while cycling. I was delighted to hear this week's subject of bicycles as I circled around to head back home. As you were discussing the inevitable decay into entropy of every bicycle from the instance it leaves the shop, my right pedal began to squeak. As the conversation continued,

the squeak devolved into a grinding noise. As the spaghetti western version of your theme surged at the end, my pedal snapped clean off and spun into the weeds beside the road, and I was left to limp my way home with a half-pedaled bike. Please have mercy and release us from your curse. Introducing me to yours, Craig.

Okay. Sorry, Craig. The intention wasn't to hex-active cyclists, but we didn't think that through properly. Not quite sure how we do a counter-curse. Well, that's the thing. I mean, if you could reverse curses by just saying, please, can you reverse the curse,

then I don't think curses would have quite the power they do. So, is it possible this week he'll be attacked by goblins? I think he needs to keep an eye out for them. Yeah, he could probably play the last episode backwards in the first instance to see if that helps. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the solution is. I think, as far as we understand it, curses can only be reversed with things like

a bouquet of dry herbs, rosemaries, times, lavender, things like that. A kiss from a minor royal? That sort of thing. That sort of thing, that could help. All stand for the king! We're entering the Regal Zone. Regal Zone.

Off with their heads! On with the show. Listen not to the whores and the shopkeepers. Bring me more advisors. The Regal Zone. If you can snog Princess Michael of Kent, we can find a way out of this. In the next sort of 12 hours, though, I'd say.

But from when we're recording it, not from when we released it. From when we're recording it. So, yeah, by the time you hear this, the curse will, you already have reached the, you'll either be a piglet or an adult pig. Those are the two things you can turn into. Some people actually prefer being the adult pig,

because... Well, there's less to endure, isn't there? There's less to endure. In terms of years. In terms of years, and also a piglet going through. Pig adolescence is particularly very, very difficult for pigs. Yeah, it's a horrible moment when you first get, you get your first pig pubes, isn't it?

It's horrible. What's happening? The little cally ones. Yeah, because when the little cally ones come out, you think, oh, God, I've got loads of miniature tails coming out. And then you go, oh, no, thank God, it's just my pubes. And you go, oh, no, my body's changing. My hormones are going crazy.

Are there any benefits for going piglet? You're adorable. You're briefly adorable. The change between piglet and adult pig on the adorable-ability sort of... That's stark, isn't it? Yeah, it's a tough one. Yeah, it's a real 180.

It's a hard handbrake turn, isn't it? From piglet to hog. I mean, the best chance you've got as a piglet is you'd be taken in by a celebrity as a pet. Some celebrities like them as pets. Well, try and pass yourself off as a micro pig, isn't it? Yeah. And hope the emotionally bond with the family

quickly enough that by the time you become full-size, you aren't simply rashed. Hope that helps. Sorry about your bike. It's time It's time to pay the ferryman.

Patreon Patreon Patreon.com 4-slash-3-bean-salad Good. Right. Thanks everyone. And also thanks to the people who signed on to the old Patreon.

Patreon.com Various tiers. Various goodies for those who do extra episodes, add free episodes in the UK. Have a squeeze. In the meantime, thank you to the Sean Bean Launders who we saw last night.

Particularly because it was a job of work, because we had to do our annual Sean Bean Launders Spring Clean, of course. Ah, yes. I think you've written it but a little report for us, haven't you, Mike? Yeah. Here we go. It's spring and so time to activate

the rarely spotted small print in the Sean Bean Launders agreement that clearly states members may be compelled to give the Launders a ruddy good spring clean. Adam Cooper swung the ceremonial bottle of Mr. Muscle Drain Foma into the bar and the event was declared open. Those press ganged included Hannah Banton

and Chris Jensen, who immediately regretted hosting their cheese and catapult night. James Laycock headed the mop unit. Sarah Young had just found out what colk was and wanted to clean that, while Matthew Keeney offered to DJ for morale reasons in an entirely transparent effort to avoid doing any work. Emily Nash disappeared

down the back of the sofa to fish out an old bit of crisp and hasn't been seen since. Fern Miller eventually descaled Ashley Milverton, Tom Jenkins chemically unblocked Brendan Sweeney and Sam Rollins got caught in a cobweb spun by none other than Sean Bean himself. Laurie Westley found a fiver under a poof which Stuart Cranny said should be his because

he lent Daniel Mears £5 worth of magic beans to give Jake Lawrence, who reckoned Amanda Waterman said she'd get John McLeod to pay him back through a shell company that sold shells to the shell illustrators at Shell Oil owned by Wes Hall. Meanwhile, Andrew Ross mopped like a beast, Joe Turner hoovered to the point of tears and Adam Packer covered himself head to toe in cellotape, sticky side out,

all about the bathroom floor picking up pubes. Only 18 hours later, the lounge was so clean that David Addis could see Sally Lucas' face reflected in James Puddlepad's face. Thanks all. OK, let's work out which version of our theme tune is going to play us out. Thank you to everyone who's sent in versions of our theme tune. We love them all. Thank you.

And if you're interested, send it to www.threebeansaladpod.com Mike, can you give me a number between one and 11? Eight, please. OK, eight. This is from Daniel. Daniel says, Hello, please find the touch to your theme as performed by me on the guitar

sitting on my couch. Very nice. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. And thank you to everyone for listening. We'll see you next time. We'll see you in the next video. Bye.