Three Bean Salad - Musical Instruments

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

When Anna of Bremen suggested the beans hit the topic of musical instruments she could not have known how lethally boring Mike is when he starts talking about the guitar. Luckily the beans navigate away from this sub-topic with skill and cover Henry’s youthful golden flute obsession and why Ben should stick to badminton. Listeners of a sensitive disposition should be warned this episode contains a bean crisis plus Emergency Pompidou.Get in touch:[e-mail]   @beansaladpod

How's it going, Henry? I mean, the microphone's backwards for a start. I know what you mean. Terrible technology. Hang on. There we go. How's that? Both the right way around. Working like a dream. Hello. Yeah, you're the right way around. The microphone's the right way around. Okay, good. I've got a cable here, which is on death's door, right? Yeah. It's literally hanging by a thread.

Didn't that isn't that new with the new microphone? Why is that this isn't new microphone, mate? Isn't it? I've been using this Yeti for donkey's ears. Yeah. Have you? Yeah. Why? Whatever for? What do you think this is a new? I assume there's a pandemic microphone. I see why everyone got microphones and puppies in the pandemic. And that's

now it's actually, I got it. I got it ages ago. What you've been recording on it, Henry? KFC, mate. Did you get the KFC gig? KFC went through this. I got the KFC gig. Did you? Yeah, did you? Yeah. Hello, kids. I'm the colonel. Are you sure it was actually KFC on the other hand emails? Not

some kind of fetishist? Yeah, all I had to do was cover myself in a special mixture they sent me in the post and take a lot of photos. Now, I did get the KFC gig and it all got recorded through this baby. What was that for? Like radio spots or TV or? TV. Oh, no, it's not mega massive, but it was, it was, it was good,

but it was, yeah, it's not, I'm not a big thing. Do you know what I mean? It's a springboard, isn't it? Really? Yeah, these things are always a springboard. It's a stepping stone. Have you got the kind of contract for it? If you now said anything negative about KFC on this podcast, people would turn up at your house and tell your clothes off.

Or chicken in any way, shape or form. That's where tarring and feathering comes from, isn't it? It's from people who've besmirched. Besmirched the kernel. It's the chicken that feeds them. Yeah. No, I just think they're great. Just a great bird with loads of uses.

They're economical, they're safe, they're clean. Friable. They're friable and you get different things out of them. Food, clothes, giblets, leather. Yeah, my chicken leather driving gloves always turn heads, I find it, on the A303. Well, they're so hard wearing, aren't they?

Because they've... And did you keep the talons? Because if you keep the talons on them... Only on the left hand side, excellent purchase on the gear stick. Exactly. They said it couldn't be done, but I've recently purchased a pair of chicken leather trousers. Oh yeah?

Yeah. Yeah, you must never wash them apparently. That's where I went wrong with my chicken leather. I mean, is that right? Chaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely ruined them. Yeah, just wipe them down with a damp cloth.

That sort of thing. You can't wash them. Basically, the way to maintain chicken leather products is think about how would a chicken deal with it, because essentially, it's an organic, you know, it's a live product. The chicken's dead. The chicken itself is brain dead, but the molecules still don't... They love the molecules.

The leather molecules are still alive. That's true. Anyway, if you buy leather off anyone in a shop, they always love going on about how the leather has to breathe, treat it with a special cream, then they sell you add-ons. But, you know, leather is alive. The chicken is dead. There's no brain controlling it anymore.

It doesn't have a central... It's organs are still, I mean, it's been intubated and everything, so it's still functioning from the neck down and could be used for transplants as and when. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. But it's not sentient anymore.

It's not sentient. But so, yeah, how does a chicken clean itself? Just do the same thing? I think they have a dirt bath, don't they? Is that a thing? They have a dirt bath. They have a dirt bath or a disgruntled farmer powerfully hoses them down in a rage when it's angry with its children.

Yeah. But the powerhouse by an angry farmer is going through some issues. Or a dirt bath. So just put it on a 40 cycle, but you just, instead of conditioner, you just pour in like two handfuls of dirt. Yeah. Okay. And you should be fine.

But that's the challenge with the trousers, why they said it couldn't be done, was because obviously if you got 40, it takes about 40 chickens to make a pair of chicken leather trousers. If you put 40 chickens just in a box together and left them for half an hour, there'd be absolute carnage. Yeah. Leave it for 45 minutes. You've got to eat yourself a pair of leather trousers.

Well, that's it. Yeah. Patience is key. But then the problem is, as Henry says, the molecules are still the same. They're still live chickens. So you will get a situation where the trousers will try and reject each other, they'll fight, different bits of leather will clash and peck your dick off. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. And a lot of the deep brainstem stuff, which is just instinctual, will still happen. So for example, if you're wearing those trousers and a fox is nearby. They'll go nuts. The trousers will go absolutely nuts. They'll go berserk.

And you just need to get them off as fast as you can. Which is why I suggest, always say, wear chicken leather trousers with slip-ons because you want to slip those shoes off, get those trousers off as fast as you can. Because imagine 40 chickens, right, in a coop and a fox goes in, they go fucking berserk. Yeah. Now imagine those chickens are all attached to your legs, 40 of them. Or if that does happen, at least make sure you've got yourself down to the disco tech or on a street corner and you've got a little hat out front and because you're

going to be busting some fresh moves. Make it work for you. Yeah. Monetise that. Always try and monetise it. If you can, make it work for you. Yeah, you'll be bopping hard. What kind of fly do you have, Mike, on your chicken leather trousers?

No fly. No fly. Just goes all the way up and I've got a... Is it the chicken mouth? Is it the chicken mouth you have at the front? Mine's the classic chicken head, yeah. The chicken head. I've got a pair of chicken leather braces that I used quite a while to clean them up.

Yeah. With sort of beak clasps. But what I always say to people is with a pair of chicken leather trousers, it's an investment piece and these are trousers for life. Oh, mine belonged to my great grandfather. Yeah. Yeah, he wore them when he was a Catholic missionary in Sub-Saharan Africa many years ago. The breathability would have really helped him there.

With the humidity levels. They're warm in the cold, they're cool in the hot. They're cool in the hot. They're cool in the hot. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why it's a superior leather. But also you can dress them up and you can dress them down.

So you can absolutely wear them for a formal event. You can wear them for the Oscars, you know, that kind of thing, wedding. But then similarly, if you want to slub around in your chicken leather trousers on a Sunday evening at home, just get them on. They work perfectly well. It's a leisure leather, isn't it, when it needs to be? Yeah. Yeah.

It's just such a great product, isn't it? And it's so great to see young people. Well, these days, increasingly, you see young people wearing them, you know, kayaking. Yeah. And just young people getting into chickens, generally. It's just good to see, isn't it? Yeah. It's like a new generation.

Just look up. Look up. Get off your screens. Look up. Look at a chicken. Look, as it arcs above. Soaring on the thermals above you. Flux of them.

And to watch them, it's actually around this time of year to watch them migrating. Incredible. You know, to watch them flying in formation as they migrate down to what? Over the Cape, the Cape of Cape of Good Hope, isn't it? Cape card, all the different capes. Cape paddock. Yeah. There's an avalanche.

And also, where I'm in Devon, we've just had the lovely, lovely event that happens every 17 years, where 14 million chickens have just burst out of the soil. That's right. Yeah. They're finally hatched out and have taken flight. Always mean to try and go down and see that. It's one of those things I've... Yeah.

Well, they come in combination again, kind of like a nightmare, you know. And the roads, you've got to be ready for it. Because they've been gestating down there for, how long is it? It's 17 years. 17 years, they've been gestating. I'll get you down next time. You already come down, bring blue belt. Oh, I'd love to do that.

We'll have a cracking time. Did you manage to grab any virgin leather, as they call it? Well, the price is, because if you get it from one of the vendors, A, it's ridiculous, and B, it's not always the actual stuff itself. I know, but it's important to the local economy here. We did manage to get, we got about four pints. Yeah, that's good. Four pints of leather.

And you weren't tempted to bring your own, just bring a Stanley knife and... No, we're treating it, we're drying it out and we're lathering it, and then we're going to make a nice new piano case for it. Oh, that's nice. For holidays and stuff. Because there's the long-running ethical argument, isn't there? Obviously, the leather is more supple if you get them when they're just out of the ground. But there's also that feeling that it's a bit of a shame

that something that just takes 17 years then immediately turns into trousers. I don't mind that, and I don't think the chickens mind it. What I do mind is the chicken diggers. I do object to people who come down here. That is disgusting. Well, they hoick them down from underneath, don't they? They get underneath them. Because they put down a special stick with a barbed hook on the end,

and they dig out the prime and short shape. But the leather's not ready, Mike. The leather's not ready. It comes to pieces. It's just a gelatinous leather you can always tell. It's too much shame to it. And who launched it this year, by the way? Because I know they always get someone.

It was the Lord Mayor of Columpton. Right, yeah. Which, as you know, is an honorary role. And this year was given to Bruno Mars. Bruno, of course, only wears chicken leather in all of his music videos. Actually, the rumor is he deliberately, they release a fox into the studio. To get him dancing.

To get him dancing. Because obviously the chicken molecule will start panicking, and that... That's the secret, that's how he does it. But look, even if you can't afford a pair of... Not everyone can afford a full chicken leather suit, whatever. But just get chicken leather wallet. I've got chicken leather wallet. And it's got a lovely little thing, which is the beak.

They've kept the beak on. And it dispenses the coins. So you can pour the coins out of the beak. Does it still have the voice box? It still has the voice box, yes. It does a little gargle as you turn it over. Obviously, they've only got a chicken and he has 20,000 crows. Noises in it, so eventually it'll run out.

But I'm enjoying it at the moment, yeah. Well, similarly, my 40th, I got a chicken leather watch strap. And it's the beak squawks the time. Oh, that's clever. But only on the hour, it can do it. 12 squawks, 12 o'clock and so on. But yeah, that'll last me a good few years. Should we activate the bean machine?

Let's activate the bean machine. OK, this week's theme, sent in by Anna from Bremen, is... Musical Instruments. Musical Instruments. Oh. That's quite broad. Perhaps they're wondering, Ben, how you managed to make your jingles. And if you're some sort of multi-instrumentalist, sort of maestro.

Like Phil Collins. Like Phil Collins. Phil Collins plays every instrument on his solo albums. Does he? Yeah, and not only that, he does a thing which I don't think any other albums have, which is on the back, there's a list of every instrument and who played it. And it's always Phil Collins.

So it'll be like, drums, Phil Collins, flute, Phil Collins, smaller drums, Phil Collins, guitar, Phil Collins, sitar, Phil Collins, everything. So he doesn't just write played by, written and played by. He goes for it, he wants you to know. Basically all the... Because normally that wouldn't be listed, it would just be loads of unnamed session musicians, wouldn't it?

No, they might be named, but they wouldn't also say Phil Collins, I'd say. They wouldn't also say Phil Collins. It'd be their names. Are you sure that that's what he does, or does he only employ people who are called Phil Collins? That is possible as well. So if he's like, oh shit, this track needs bagpipes. I need to find someone on it,

if you can play the bagpipes called Phil Collins. I think it's doable. I think there's got to be enough Phil Collins out there. But don't you think that, I mean, since the 80s, if you're called Mr. and Mrs. Collins and you have a kid, you've got to have pretty big brass clanker balls to call it Phil, right? Yeah. So there's probably a big drop-off in Phil Collins is...

After the age of, you know, 35, 40. That's okay, because then he's playing with musicians of his kind of age, you know, and sensibility. So I think if anyone could find musical Phil Collins, it's Phil Collins good. He'd have the reach. It must be in a nightmare around the studio. Oh, Phil Collins, if you've seen Phil Collins, I just need Phil Collins to come in here and play the guitar.

Where's Phil Collins? Oh, what? Do you mean Phil Collins? No, no, not Phil Collins. He's Phil Collins on drums. Hi, everyone, I'm Phil Collins. Do you think at any stage you'd ever force someone to change their name by Deedpole to Phil Collins in order to play on one of the albums? I think there comes a tipping point where,

if you're at a point where enough of the people in the band are called Phil Collins anyway, if there's just going to be like one who isn't called Phil Collins, he or she is going to jump out like a sore thumb on the back of that album when you're reading through all the individual instruments and who played them. And everyone's Phil Collins except for, you know, Susan Morrison on keyboards. There's going to be a lot of pay pressure on Susan Morrison, isn't there? Yeah.

To just bite the bullet. Just do it, Susan. Just have a nom to Phil Collins. Come on. Just at least for the album. Yeah. Come on, Susan Morrison, do it. And then she's like, no, I hate taking this.

I'm going to go off and then pursue my dream of trying to start a large mid-range supermarket. It's never going to happen, Susan Morrison. That's probably how it happened. Probably how it happened. Did Prince do the same thing? Prince is another one. Yeah, he's the one.

He plays everything. I was about to say. But did he credit himself? Or did he just... I think it was him. And then there were several dogs and horses called Prince. It's quite a dog and horse name, I think, Prince. It's very good for a horse, isn't it?

Yeah. Gentle Prince. Run. Run Gentle Prince. Run like the wind. Or gallop. Gallop. Don't run.

Don't... If you try and run, you'll break your legs. No. Are you saying that horses can't run? They have to gallop. It's the same thing, isn't it? I think what Henry is saying is that the word run specifically means that you do it only on two legs.

Which is very bad for horses. Run is a bipedal forward accelerant motion which involves inverse penduluming of the arms. That's what a run is. So right leg is forward, left arm is forward. Right, yeah. Then the right leg falls down. The foot hits the ground.

The weight transfers across your pelvis. And it falls down. Let's be accurate. It doesn't fall down. You've just got to let it drop. If you slow it down... If you slow it down enough... Because I know this, because I used to work in animation.

So I know all about the walk cycle, the run cycle. Edward Mueybridge, the Victorian man who took photos of horses and the different... He was the first person to work out how a horse actually gallops. So before him, it was just a blur underneath the body. He's the guy who worked out that they're actually technically flying. There is a point where they're not touching the ground. But as an illustrator as well...

So when you're drawing a horse, it's really hard to draw. And their legs are absolutely fucking nightmare. Don't get me started on... How hard is it to draw horses' legs? What? Would this be classic illustrator bands? Is this universal? I was just saying that.

I was just wishing I was with some of the illustrator lads down. One of the illustrator bars down in Soho. Just complaining about how hard it is to draw horses' legs. And probably getting shitfaced at the same time. Yeah. Down at the old pen. You've been to the... The pen?

The pen. The old illustrating bar down in Soho. The old pen. Down at the old pen and graph paper. The old pen and graph paper. No, but essentially... Up until Edward Maybridge was this Victorian photographer who worked out a way of taking photos really fast

so he could get stills of how a horse ran. Up until then, if you had to draw a horse running, the only way you could do it would be to draw a cloud of smoke underneath the horse where the legs were, which creates the idea of speed and motion. Or a fight, if you're reading the bean. Memories of the battered kids kind of poking out with a... Do a fist sticking out or a leg sticking out.

Or horse's head. Or horse's head if there's a horse in the fight. It's a classic illustrator technique for drawing things that you don't understand is you cover it in smoke and have little bits of it sticking out. Because also, a fight would be incredibly hard to draw. Anatomically. You know how complicated all the shapes are.

So you stick the smoke on it. Same thing goes for horses. The queen. And the queen. Well, yeah. Certainly if the queen taking a shit, that would always be... Because that's traditionally...

In fact, legally has to be drawn in a cloud of smoke. It's loads of smoke. Queen's head at the top. And then again sticking out of it. And sticking out of the smoke. Fists. Lots of fleur-de-lis. Fleur-de-lis.

Horse's head. Swan's head. Prince Charles' head. And typically just her crown round her ankles. So you know what she's up to. The crown is down nestled round her ankles. And she's reading a copy of the British constitution. Which doesn't scroll.

Which there isn't. Which doesn't exist. Which doesn't exist. That's a bit of a top secret. That's a bit of a satire. It's top secret. As a royal assman waits. And then there'll be a royal bowman standing at the window.

And as soon as she's completed the shit, he launches an arrow to and kills a first born child. Of just anyone who lives in central London. So if you live within the postcode of Buckingham. Just within range. Yeah. But that does keep the rents down, doesn't it? That's why it's mainly retail.

That's why it's mainly retail. What's the thinking behind that? I think it goes back to Saxon times, doesn't it? That's right. My understanding is that the royal turd is so sacred. Bestowed from God. That is felt to be a member of, is counted as a member of the population.

That's right. Oh, I see. So you need to level it off. It's a one in, one out. And they were all counted in the doomsday book, you know, when the Normans came along later. Essentially it's bookkeeping. In fact, modern accountancy comes from that idea,

which is that when the monarch has a shit, the first born child is killed. You basically can build up, build out from that. Wait, you eventually get to VAT, basically. Essentially, yeah. Well, what musical instruments do we play? Maybe that's a good starting point. Now, I'm aware that as soon as Mike starts talking,

we're going to go down an absolutely boring as fuck guitar, guitar wormhole. I'm just bracing myself. We've got an entire section of this recorded that we deemed too dull to go out, which is Mike talking about his guitar. It's fucking unreal. It's true.

It's been tried and tested. Yeah, I really let Rip. I had such a lovely time. Release the Bosniak cut. I understand that it was, yeah, obliterated and destroyed. It wasn't just how this is out. It had me actually set fire to his laptop to buy a new one.

I know, I think we should talk about Mike's guitar. We could have bit. I mean, there were others as a kid. I dabbled a bit of violin as a small child. Yeah, me too. My primary school violin teacher was so miserable. I mean, I immediately associated the violin with just abject misery.

I think miserable or moved to tears by the sweet, sweet, soulful and truthful beauty of your playing. The latter is unlikely. The violin is a notoriously nasty instrument to learn. There's lots of instruments where you do your 10,000 hours to become amazing, but a piano, for example, you hit the right key, you're going to play the right notes.

Someone who's learned the piano for a bit could play a perfectly nice tune on the piano. That's okay to listen to. Violin, you've got to get your 10,000 hours before you can even make a note that sounds acceptable that wouldn't kill a small rodent or something, or knock a bird out of the sky. So it's literally years of agony

until it suddenly flips into soaring beauty. I never got to that second phase. I remember there was a thing called the Suzuki method. I don't know if that's still happening. Yes, it does still happen. Is it like incredibly young when you start? I don't really know much about it. I think it's without all the formalities of theory

and all that kind of stuff. I think it's just a lot by ear. So it's not learning to play the violin from the back of a Suzuki motorcycle? It might be. It might be. I don't know. If you can do that, you can do that. It's almost incredible.

It's so hard. You'll spend years on the back of that motorcycle. You see them going up and down the motor. Just dropping, repeatedly dropping the... Is it the bow? The bow. Your bow will be mashed up in the front grill of some huge truck.

Trucks are covered in bows. You look at the front of me. Covered in bows from people learning the Suzuki method. And year after year, you're rubbish. It's impossible. But then one day, you actually try and play off the bike and you discover... And suddenly...

Actually, this is a piece of piss. I'm not going at 110 miles an hour. And it's like... And you're playing that disco version of John Beethoven's fifth... But on your own. I love that. I love that the disco Beethoven's fifth

is the best fucking piece of music ever written. You're right. It's unbelievable. It's a real shame that Beethoven died before he could ever. I know. He would have loved it. He would have done because... It's just so disco-fungy.

I also had a very miserable piano teacher who didn't let me go for a whiz in the middle of orchestra practice once. This is a nasty memory. And there were these peculiar plastic seats that were quite sort of bucketing. Oh, no. And I was pleading with him,

saying, you know, come on, mate. I'm eight years old. I really need a wee. Can I go? He's like, no. He liked saying, actually, he's not your shoe size as well.

That was one of his standard phrases. And he wouldn't let me go. He wouldn't let me go. Hang on, hang on, hang on. How old were you? Eight years old. When you're eight years old, you probably have a shoe size that's probably like

two and a half or three, maybe. Is that in child sizes? Child sizes. Also, if you're using European size, you could say, what, 44? Yeah. And we covered all this at the time. Oh, you did?

OK. Sorry, Henry. Henry, Mike is telling us a story about the time you had to piss down the clarinet. So let him finish off the story. I'm burying myself. And played sweet, sweet music as the piss was coming out

and realised he could only play while pissing through the clarinet. But he could play the most beautiful sound you'd ever heard with a cost. Such a cost. Hot piss all over your shoes. All over the shoes of the audience. But the most beautiful sound you've ever heard.

Truthful, poetic, like flying. But there's hot piss all over my legs. There's piss everywhere. Oh, no. What a wonderful fairy tale that would have been. Oh, it would have been. No. The hot pissing clarinetist.

Oh, Phonely. Of Bremen. She sounds like that's the kind of story you would get in Bremen. That was like a Bremen tale. It does sound like a Bremen tale. As a kid, I decided I had to learn flute. I could have learned any instrument.

And I have no idea where it came from. But flute has to be flute. What is this? Maybe eight, nine or something? Eight, nine-ish. I just decided that it was all about flute. Did it coincide with the popularity of the flutist James Galway?

The golden flutist. It is golden flute. You're referring to the greatest musician alive or dead. The man with the golden flute. Yeah. We actually had... I think you might be right.

I've never put something together. But we did have a vine, a record of his around the house. There you go. And it was Annie's song. Was his... Do you remember that? I don't know, Annie's song.

That was his big mega hit. I mean, his absolute smash. I mean, the year when everyone was wearing James Galway t-shirts and, you know, people were just going, I'm just going to get in a Volkswagen van and drive across America and just listen to James Galway.

You know what I mean? I'm probably going to go to Galway's stock. Pick up a second-hand flute and play it around a campfire. Yeah. Maybe stick a whole lot of, um, sort of drugs in the flute as well. Play them into someone else's mouth.

Yeah, there were a lot of deaths from flute ministers. A lot of it was actually not the drugs. It was metal poisoning. Now, I had a flute. Do you have the flute in your flat? I've still got the flute. I've never...

For some reason, I found it hard to part with, but... You can't just throw away a flute. You have to throw it into a volcano to release the music. The same volcano from which it was smelted. And you have to fight a huge, multi-headed James Galway beast. He's the only famous flautist, right?

I can't think of anyone else. Jethro Tull. Did he bust out a flute? Jethro Tull was like, yeah, it was like prog rock with flute, wasn't it? I think that one of the main... There's lots of drawbacks with the flute. One of the reasons that flautists aren't famous

is you can't sing or talk even while playing it. And that... I try... The best you can do is to play a bit few notes and quickly say something or quickly sing and then get back on the flute again. You could operate a PowerPoint or something, couldn't you? What do you mean by wiring up

so that when you played a note, it changed slide? Yeah, or just do the clicker with your toes. That's an interesting idea. Oh, Lizzo plays the flute. Really? Yeah, pop hit Lizzo in her live shows will sort of be dancing and she'll bust out a flute and do a flute solo.

I think to get to the point where you're any good at flute takes ages. Also, they made it even harder. I had a bit of a problem with music as a kid at school. There was this attitude to excellence and how hard and difficult and how good you had to be

and how much you had to work. I just didn't like. And there's this kind of attitude and grades and everything. It was like, hey, chill out, guys. Let's be creative. Yeah, let's just jam on some flutes. Let's just jam on some flutes.

Let's just like, you have a flute. You can have an electric flute if you want. Let's mix it up. Yeah, get some old fashioned acoustic flutes. That's what I thought flute was going to be about, but it turns out it's grades. Grades can crush a child's will. Yeah, that's definitely happened to me.

I found the whole grades thing. Even as a kid, I had the opinion I have now, which is the grades thing is, it's a terrible idea for teaching something. You can't measure creativity. And also, I also even think it should apply to things like sport, like tennis. You know what I mean?

You're playing great tennis. Does it need to be 30 love for 30 or all this stuff? Do you know what I mean? Why don't we just have like taking about tennis and have some fun? Like the level to which Djokovic, how seriously he takes winning is crazy. What are you doing?

Just enjoy the tennis. I had a similar experience, Henry, when I quite enjoyed playing football just when I'm enjoying it, but I came and played fiver side with you. And it was one of the most sort of broadly competitive things I've ever been involved with. And I got sort of clattered by a heavy accountant

who was willing to hurt others to win. Yes, I'm sorry that happened to you. And I remember seeing your crumpled form on the floor thinking, how, why did I bring this gentle, gentle child to this place? And I felt so guilty seeing a little, like a little, a broken bird.

To this testosterone arena. To this absolute mega ball zone of just male rage. You just swinging them all about until they're tangled in one big knot. Huge big ball knot. Some referees got to come and untie you again. That's the last for the next session, right? That's pretty much it.

That's it. And poor Ben, Ben wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't made for that world. He was made for the gentle place. Badminton. Badminton, which is actually just on the next court along, at the sports centre, literally, he laid crumpled but 10 yards away

from the badminton players that should have been his kin, his true kin. The gentle ones who hit the ball and then have five to six minutes into the fans. In which time they can discuss proofs, etc. Have a chat, maybe a sit down. Absolutely. But God forbid one of their little balls

gets knocked into the fiver side zone. It's not coming back, is it? It's not coming back. There'll be a shuttlecock ripped apart like a Greshma's turkey. I've seen Henry eat a shuttlecock. I've eaten shuttlecocks. I've eaten a shuttlecock and the arm that held it.

I sometimes, when I'm tapping my hands or tapping my feet, I sometimes sort of think, oh, maybe I could have been an amazing drummer. You know, like, you'll never know, obviously, which instruments you could have been amazing at. So sometimes I'll be like, like, Mike, tell me, is this really good on what I'm doing here? Like, I'll be like...

And sometimes I get so into it, I'm like... Oh, yeah, put a couple of congas in front of you. Mike, go on. Yeah, sometimes I'll be doing that. And honestly, a small part of my brain will be like, I just wonder if, like, if there was, like, a passing, like, drum scout. You might hear that.

Phil Collins. Maybe Phil Collins might come up to me and say, excuse me, is your name Phil Collins? And I'll say, no. Would you be willing to change it? And he'll be like, it will be. Hi, I'm Phil Collins and so are you. Come this way.

Come this way. On my left, that beautiful one on my left, is Phil Collins. And the really, really muscly guys over there, they're Phil Collins. Get into my car. It's called Phil Collins as well. I know cars that normally have a name.

I'll explain later en route to Phil Collins, my home. On the island of Phil Collins. On the island of Phil Collins. No, no, no. This is a being emergency. Please try to remain calm. And that's my four. Pompadoo section.

Pompadoo. So this is an emergency pompadoo, I think. Emergency pompadoo. I think we'll play the pompadoo theme tune, but maybe sped up just to give it a sense of urgency. We've had a catastrophic technical emergency. You know, in a sci-fi film, when things are going really badly, it's always the most relaxing voice ever on the morning.

You're like, emergency in quadrant four. And everyone's like on fire, and people's faces are melting off. And it's like, please make your way to quadrant seven. It's like that. We're in quadrant four, basically. We're in quadrant four. This is the last place you want to be.

There's a big sort of, sort of, Blemond-esque creature is materialized from a different dimension. And it's chewing through the wires. Brace. Brace. Brace. But you can't brace your face when it's melting off. You can't.

Mike has literally got handfuls of his own face, and he's looking at me through the bits of face on his hands. Yeah, but you've been turned into a vapor. You're still there. You're still able to see everything that's going on. I've been vaporized. Yeah. And Ben has been shrunk to the size of an ice cube.

He's tiny. And he's in the size and shape of an ice cube. And melt slowly. And melt within minutes. And we melted. Which you can't hear because it's recording machines. Shut down. Yeah.

Let me explain to the listener what happened. We were cracking-wise, the three of us. It was electric, I would say. Oh, it was. We were fizzing, you know. It felt historical, frankly. It felt like we'd reached a level of conversation where, like a surfer, that playing, essentially,

strativarius while going through, you know, the green, what's it called? The green zone. What's it that surfers talk about? The green room. The green, the green space. The green tube. The hot crest.

The hot crest. Surfers talk about hitting a space where, you know, it's like time is sort of still. And there's just them and the surfboard. A foamy wormhole. Foamy wormhole. Foamy wormhole. It's just them and the foam and the surf and the water

and the strativarius. In this case, it was a large piano. Is that piano? No, it's a violin. Violin. So, yeah, we'd reached those kind of heights of hot chat. And then it turned out my recording machine had turned itself off without me telling it to.

So, it's all lost to the mist of time. Apart from, well, Mike and Henry's bits have been recorded. Yes. We were very much the accompaniment to your bantz riff. I mean, if anything, you know, that's the real tragedy. Your thoughts you had, the clarity with which you explained. Yeah. I mean, you know, how we could deal with Syria and make it funny

at the same time while being tasteful was, I mean, it was, it begs us to believe, frankly. But what we could do is we could play you a chunk of the chat without Ben because we've got, yeah, because we've got me and Mike. We can add in some generic Ben. We can add in generic Ben. I mean, there's some responses. Can we have some, just some wild responses, Ben?

Perhaps an ooh. Ooh. Yeah. And perhaps an ooh of shock and disgust. No. No. No. No.

For God's sake, no. And maybe to say something like, Ben, can you say something like, this is a great conversation and I'm really enjoying being part of it. That's good. Yeah. One of those, please, Ben. This is such a great conversation and I'm really pleased to be part of it. Thanks, guys.

You're both so good at what you do. Okay, that's good. What about, what about Henry? What great insight. Thank you. And one for Mike. Mike, I don't think that's right. Nice.

Okay, I'll take it. That sort of covers it, probably. I was in the orchestra at school. I was third flute and it was really hard being an orchestra, but there came a point where I just really, I just stopped playing once during rehearsal and I realised that no one knew. So I could just mime and it made no difference.

Henry, what great insight. That's very hard to get away with on the violin. I tried that on the violin. Violin, that's very hard. Mike, I don't think that's right. The school orchestras I was in, they always, I think they treated the French hornists with a degree of scorn. No.

No. No. No. For God's sake, no. What about the person who's the percussion person that just has a whole box of tricks? Oh. Yeah, they've got loads of bits and bobs.

Oh. But I think you sense that individually each of them are really piss easy to play, but they've just got loads of wooden tubes and little hammers and things. Oh. Boom. Boom.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. This is such a great conversation. I'm really pleased to be part of it.

Thanks, guys. You're both so good at what you do. I mean, as our correspondent Spurbs has made very clear, my role really in this podcast is mainly just to sort of laugh at you too. This is almost putting it to the test, isn't it? We can kind of get a real sort of experiment here to see what Ben's contribution is. And if it is just like, you know, can Ben just be lopped out?

But hang on, hang on Ben, what with the easing of restrictions lately is, has anyone been in your flat lately that you didn't know before? Well, we had someone come around to look at the fridge, which is on the blink, for some reason pop into your, your little recording studio, perhaps looking for the toilet or were they unattended at any point? Oh my God. Are you saying that we've been directly sabotaged by Spurbs himself? That's what I'm suggesting.

That's what I'm suggesting. The kind of thing you do. He's put a timer switch on your recording device. Oh, God. It's the only plausible explanation. It is. Also, I mean, with that thought in mind, I just want to read out an email we received this week, give me a moment just to find it, which, which adds a whole new layer to the

Spurbs thing, given if this is true. This is from Sammy Rousseff. He says, Hello Beans, have you considered that Spurbs is Tony Blair? I mean, if it does stick his oar in, doesn't he, Tony Blair? He does get involved. He sticks his oar in all over. He does get involved. And also his kind of his role is on, it's unclear what his exact role is and whether

he's in any way relevant anymore, but he still pops up and just, he just pops up, doesn't he? Like Spurbs in feels like, oh, maybe it is quite important what he's saying, or maybe it isn't at all. He's kind of quite, he can't quite work out. I'm so ambivalent to when Tony talks. It's like, Oh, it's Tony. Oh, that's, I don't care what Tony is, but it's Tony Blair.

He's very sure of himself, but hang on, he's 90s, isn't he? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm guessing on that. He does look, still looks quite good in a suit, you know, and did, did he invite the Gallagher's round at any point during fixing the fridge? Did he? Yep. He invited the Gallagher's, both Gallagher's and Sylvia Berlusconi.

That sounds like a clincher to me. Have we got any other sweet correspondence? Of course we have. Thank you to everyone who's got in touch this week. You sent emails to threebeansaladpod at gmail.com. We've got a few. Let me just have a look. Tom, Tom writes, Hello Beans, I'd like you to imagine a scenario, a space odyssey style

monolith inexplicably appears in Regent's Park, and as luck would have it, one of the first people to be walking past is Bean Henry Packer. When he gently touches the face of the monolith, a set of galactic coordinates are burned into his mind. After a huge amount of haggling with Nasa and Elon Musk, finally a mission to the location of coordinates is planned. The Beans blast off and travel in space for months before arriving at this point in the star map to find absolutely nothing.

After returning to Earth, quarantining for the requisite 21 days, and cos space is on the red list, isn't it, and apologising profusely to Nasa and Musk, the Beans return to the monolith in Regent's Park to berate it, and in doing so punch it hard on the side, the front face of the monolith drops off to reveal a gorgeous oil rendering of spurbsy, shirtless, riding a horse and chucking up the double bird. It's the film that Kubrick didn't dare make, isn't it? He paints a vivid picture of something that could very well happen, so I found that quite chilling.

To a lot of people that will feel like a flight of fancy, but for us, that feels like a Mike Lee film. I mean, it's devastatingly real, it's devastatingly truthful, isn't it? It's kitchen sink level for us. Thereby the grace of God go to space to look for some coordinates that aren't there, then come back and find a picture of spurbsy in a monolith eye. The problem with the scenario is we don't know what spurbsy looks like. I mean, we're working on the basis he looks like the former Prime Minister Tony Blair,

but it's just one of many guys. Yes. I feel like it's the sort of thing that we'll know when we know, you know, when the final reveal comes. It's pretty clear to me that when we do finally look upon spurbsy, he will have our face. Well, like a composite of the three of us, like my eyes, your nose, you just change the angle you're looking at it slightly and it sort of shifts. A composite, so basically, you know, imagine all our facial features, so six eyes, three

noses, three mouths, six ears, three chins, those spread even, so give or take, but so two of each from them, but spread between three of us on his face. So it might be an eye from me, an eye from Ben, then two ears from Mike, an eyebrow from me. You know, it won't be spread evenly, but it'll be a mash-up of our facial features, yeah. But I'm sorry, and the body of a hog. A hairy hog? A hairy hog, and wearing a kind of Elizabethan sort of rough, sort of Elizabethan costume.

In last week's episode, we talked about Mike being, well, he sort of dubbed him a sleep bastard, someone who can sleep well, but does so by snoring and stopping others from sleeping. Cal got in touch on Twitter, it says, I have a sleep bastard in my life. Sleeps like he's strapped to a Catherine wheel, snores like a freight train passing through the Urals. It's a vivid picture, I don't understand, sleeps like he's strapped to a Catherine wheel. It means he's a thrasher.

Oh, I see. I don't think I am. I think that's the one thing I don't have. I'm not a thrasher. I don't think. I think I'm quite still. So he's got movement and sound going on. Oh, I see.

Frashing around. He's like an ultra sleep bastard. Yeah, yeah. What exactly is a Catherine wheel? It's the spinny, spinny ones. It's a spinny firework. Yeah, isn't it? We've actually covered this before, I think.

Yeah, we have, yeah. I did, but yeah. Got on what we learned. It's one of your famous gaps in your knowledge, Henry, and it remains so. Yeah, yeah. You'll never be able to learn what a Catherine wheel is, just something you can't remember. Yeah, there are certain things which just, there are certain things which can't stick. That's never going to stay.

Yeah, you're wasting your time. You can tell me right now. Yeah, you'll be wasting your time. You can manage it short-term, can't you? We've probably got about 20 seconds left. Yeah. We can continue talking about Catherine wheel before you just completely reset. Exactly.

Back to normal. Back to factory settings. Yeah. We also had an email from Ethan on the subject of sleep. He said, I very much resonated with the sleep episode. I listened to the podcast while trying to get to sleep. Mm-hmm. The voice of three middle-aged men fills the hole inside.

Strangely though, the night I was listening to the sleep pod, I slept through a fire alarm and only awoke when my partner shook me awake because the firemen were at the door. Good grief. There's a couple of things to unpack in there, aren't there? I mean, the hole in particular, the loss of his three fathers during childhood or whatever it was. Can you repeat that story because I forgot to listen to it properly? I was becoming aware that I was hungry.

It's quite hard for me to multitask, for example, listen while being hungry. The last episode I edited, there was a phase where, I mean, apart from your general, you sort of chewing nuts and stuff that you have to cut out, there was a phase of you muttering under you, but I was so tired and so hungry, so tired and so hungry while Ben changed the zoom link or something like that. That's my little towel that I'm tired and hungry. Yeah, that's my little towel because we know each other now, you know, my little things like that.

So can you read that one again, Ben, sorry? The whole thing? Was it quite long, was it? I can't remember how long it was even. I can't. I think you're just going to have to do, there's no shortcuts here, Ben, I think you're just going to have to do the whole thing or we just move on. What you could summarize it?

Summary, they were listening to our sleep podcast, then they went to sleep, then they were woken up by their partner who was shaking them awake because there were firemen at the door because their house was on fire. So he went down to the door and opened it and there was some firemen there and that was how he found out his house was on fire. That's not what he writes. Really between the lines, that's what this guy takes to know that something's on fire is you have to send an expert round, literally go downstairs, open the door and you get it

from the horse's mouth, but it is on fire, fine. He continues, I'm very much enjoying the podcast. I haven't listened to people talking about things they know nothing about with such confidence since I spent time in Trump's America. We are all Trump's children. In fact, I agree, Octopi have Kombi Mouthanes' secretary birds can't fly and Coca-Cola has never recovered from the recipe change. Thank you.

Yours, Ethan. There we are. Emma emails to say, I remember my mum telling me that my dad used to shout the word 17 in his sleep. No apparent reason. Mum said she used to get frustrated and work him up on occasion, but he could never explain himself. Emma.

It's a pivotal age, isn't it? It's an age that lots of songs are written about, isn't it? 17. The edge of 17. Just like the wide wind. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 17, by the way, if you are someone that wants to learn how to do a New Zealand accent, 17 is the easiest word to do with a New Zealand accent.

Why is that? 17. 17. 17. That sounds very Australian to me, Henry. So all we need to do is just go back and re-edit that to be me saying Australian. 17. Yeah, no, Australian accent.

It's quite an easy one to do, 17. So there's a narrow bit of casting I could get for a job in theory. Changing area of time as well, Henry, changing very slightly each time. They're all different Australian people. 17. That's quite bouncy, that one. Yeah, that was a happy, lucky Australian person. That was Russell Crowe.

Henry, given that this is your skill, let's imagine that you've been cast in a detective drama. Yeah. You're playing a sort of low-level policeman, and you're telling the main detective, PC Dingo. Yeah. That, or DCI Dingo, would be, of course, how many bodies you've found? PC Parker, get over here.

How many bodies are we dealing with in the warehouse? Seven fricantine. Sorry, I did something with the script there. Sorry, I just felt it. Is that okay? I felt it. I just, it felt right. But so it's going to be tougher to work with this actor.

We're going to have to make sure that every line he says in the script is the word 17. Yeah. Basically, any question that this character is asked is going to have to be framed by the person asking it in a numerical way, whereby the appropriate emotional answer is 17. How are you feeling about how the case is going on a scale of zero to 20, with 20 being terrible and zero being excellent? 17.

Do you seem to have a problem with alcohol? How many pints will you say you're drinking per day at the moment? 17. PC Parker, remind me. How old is your nephew? 17. And how old is his friend, Clive? 17.

And his cousin, Laura? 17. Thank you. That'll be all. I mean, that's the beginning of actual proper scene there. That's a good bit of dialogue. Yeah, it can be done. You know, these TV detectives, they all have to have a thing, don't they?

Oh, you've got to have a hook. You've got to have a hook. You're off the case. Yeah. It's so hard for people to work with you. In fact, you only say 17. It could become part of the story. I'll give you one guess for how many days you're going to be suspended for.

17. Yes. I wanted you to be less, but I had no way of verifying it with you. It's normally two weeks, but yeah, in your case, it's going to have to be 17. It is going to be coming off of your annual leave. Just saying. And last week, when you arrested the perpetrator, you were unable to read him his rights because you just kept saying 17, so we had to let him go.

So he's just murdered someone else. That's on you. How regretful are you between one and 50? 17. Only 17. You're a monster. He's murdered again. 17.

Bane. Thanks for all your emails. Thank you, everyone. Yes, thank you. Bye. Cheers, everybody. Bye, Bane.