Three Bean Salad - Rome

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

Rome is the topic this week so Coventry, sponges and Russell Crowe all get a mention and that's just for starters. Once again, thanks to a man called Gareth for the theme. Soon it'll be your turn to point us in the right direction.

one, two, three, four, five, six. That should help. I reckon. So that helps you see you align those up right? Yeah. Is that why we've been doing them all along? Is it? Is that what? So is that why we've been doing that all along the counting? We haven't been doing that. That's the first time we've done it. Double trick question. Yeah, I double bluff myself. Okay. But does that answer the question? It's very hard to know.

Not even sure the question is in the first place. I have to listen back. Okay. So yeah, normally we just do an intro and we just talk about something rather, but well, do we even need to start? I mean, do we do we need to have a bit when we go welcome to three beans salad or whatever? Or you just said it now.

Oh, yeah, there you go. That solved it. Well, what do you think? Do you think it should kind of fade up on us having a conversation about Mozart and Salieri or something? Exactly. It's about creating the illusion that we're in a sort of salon. The three of us are in a salon that we have very, very high brow but at the same time with a light touch chats. So Mark Lawson style.

Yeah, imagine Mark Lawson as naked as the day he was born. Is that the light touch element? Imagine Mark Roscoe, but he's also naked. Yeah. And Evelyn Glany, the xylophone player, she's naked. Yeah, and they're all just sitting around on Shayslongs around a kind of swimming pool with the sort of the Tuscan hills behind them.

And where there is? Are we naked? We're naked. We're bobbing about in the pool. Right. We've got a thing that Lawson likes to do, which we've all had a sort of metal tray strapped to our heads, which with sausage rolls and cannabis. Which the rest of the crew get to enjoy and we just bob around. Right.

And we get summoned to different sides of the pool. We have to swim along, making sure obviously we don't. With incredible posture. With incredible posture. If any of the sausage rolls fall into the pool, obviously Lawson will obviously punish. He'll deal out a Lawson punishment. Yeah, that sort of vibe.

What was the question? It's hard to imagine a question that that was the answer. By the way, I've been thinking about this rather. I think we could have a section of the podcast that's called Pompadoo. And it's the bits where we discuss how the actual podcast should work. Why is it called Pompadoo?

Because it, because at the Pompadoo Centre, you can see how I see the tubes. You can see the escalators from underneath, can't you? That was the whole breakthrough of it. Yes, I see. Which was incredible. And the ducts. When it first came out at the Pompadoo Centre.

Blue people's absolute. Because before that, people didn't believe in pipes, did they? People had no sense of what was going on in a pipe. And suddenly you could see inside pipes. What is there? Wires and smaller pipes. And feces. Feces.

Well, that's why the Pompadoo toilets. Really. There they are. I mean, to be fair, since the 60s, they have sort of, they become less and less transparent. Well, that loss of transparencies is the great irony, isn't it, of the Pompadoo Centre? It's the great irony, it's become less and less transparent.

But from the beginning, you can imagine what it was like. This is what they say, isn't it, to have been young, yes, but to have been young in the 60s and watching someone take a dump in the Pompadoo Centre. That truly could even be the turn of a revered chef, Charles Escoffier, that you might be seeing whizzing past your family. Oh, exactly. What a time.

I mean, I just want to let you know that the Pompadoo Centre opened in 1977, so. I don't know which feces you're watching in the 60s. No, but anyway, I do think we could have a Pompadoo section like that. Sorry, what do you imagine happens in the Pompadoo section in a pot? Well, it's things like this.

So we're discussing the actual, we're actually discussing how the podcast, the nuts and bolts, should we have a little intro, should we not? And potentially you could have a little Pompadoo section theme at the beginning. Yeah. Just to go Pompadoo, whatever. I don't know how it would go, but do you want me to make one for

this episode? Yes, please. Okay, can you, can you intro it and I'll drop it in afterwards? Um, and here is our brand spanking new jungle style Pompadoo theme. Jungle style, right? Yeah, I, uh, you, yeah. Structure under the bus there.

You've got to make it jungle style. I really don't know what that means. Musically. Well, we'll see. Hang on. I think it was the, I think you're allowed to probably sub the jungle genre, aren't you? Ben, if it's the, if it's the Pompadoo section.

Well, does he mean, does he mean in the jungle genre, as in that, that's like a sort of fast version of drum and bass, right? Or does he mean like, you could imagine it being played on xylophones by like monkeys and hippos and, you know, like an umbongo. I don't know what he means. Henry, what do you mean? I, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure actually. So it's up to you.

I think maybe a bit of both. That's why I liked what I like to do with my challenges like this is just let you go, you know, let you interpret it and see what you come up with. Okay. I might need a bit of, um, I might need you to say the Pompadoo center and I can use that as part of the jingle. So can you record that now?

Okay. And now it's time for Pompadoo section. Is it Pompadoo section? Well, it's your section, mate. Okay. And now it's time for a little bit of Pompadoo. And now it's time for Pompadoo section. Pompadoo.

My question for you, Henry, is visa. I'm totally on board with the Pompadoo section. I'm just a bit concerned about its potential longevity. I think, you know, we've already had this conversation about whether we do a fade in at the beginning. That's one. I can't imagine what we're talking about next week. Okay.

I mean, I don't want to, I mean, okay, but just put it this way. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up hearing that theme. A few more times. I'm just going to put it out there. Kind of guys we are. Sure. Yeah, I don't put any money on it necessarily, but yeah, I've got a little feeling here. I'm also worried, Henry, personally worried that if you start throwing in

new sections in episode three, by the time we get to episode, what, 15, there's going to be several sections. If we add the new section every three episodes, you're already worried about the rate of that section to be first section added. Episode three is a very early episode to begin a sort of kind of sort of self-reflective, introspective, meta, sort of slowly begin the long journey of crawling up into our own assholes. Through a transparent tube.

So you're saying that you're saying we haven't earned Pompadoo? Well, I don't think, I don't know if we necessarily earn Pompadoo. I'm happy to give Pompadoo a go. I think we should just be careful because the path into your own asshole, it's a one-way street. A lot of people. That isn't true, by the way, because by definition, a digestive tract has two entry points, anus and mouth.

So it's only going one way, isn't it? Unless someone's gone very wrong, classically. In a perfect world, then. We don't live in a perfect world. We talked last week about how an octopus has a combianus mouth. The animal world does. I've just thought another section we could have. I think it's wise time, isn't it?

Digestive tract tour. You're laying down the train tracks as the train is careering out of control. That's what Dr Pompadoo is doing with sections of transparent tubing by the end of his life. So the whole reason we're walking around sections of transparent tubing, walking through them as he went around. Or was it because it wasn't actually a planned design? It was purely because he hadn't done his homework.

And then he, oh, fuck I'm close to designing time municipal buildings. What am I going to do? He's just caught drawing it on the little bench outside the meeting room. Yeah, this is deliberate. This is intentional. This is another section we could do. Hang on, hang on. It absolutely wasn't designed by a medical doctor.

Yes. Yeah, Pompadoo was the president of France in the 70s. Anyway, sorry, Henry. You were about to introduce yet another section. What was the first one? What was the second one going to be there? We had Pompadoo in the middle. Digestive tract tour.

Because things would come up. Royal family could be one. I mean, there are already themes that would get coming back to you. Anything to do with. Just going back to Digestive tract tour. What genre of jingle would you like for that? I think baroque harpsichord. Can you just give me the voice that I can put over the baroque harpsichord?

Digestive tract talk. Was that okay? I was thinking Mozart is baroque. No, I was thinking like Bach. Bach is baroque. Sure, yeah. So that was your impression of Bach? Yeah, Vienna kind of.

Is he Viennese? Are you telling us that was specifically Viennese? Yeah, I was going for a mid-Europe lowland imperial. Yeah, I thought it was very good. Yeah, a bit of Hapsburg in there. Just a touch though. The kind of accent that would go well with having about 50 medals on your lapel.

Never lifted a bloody sword. Didn't sound that military to me, Henry. Well, okay, this isn't about politics, but I've always had a bit of a thing about the Hapsburgs. You know that you don't get me on the Hapsburgs if you want to have a good night. Because I'll ruin any night out. Is that another section of the Hapsburgs section? I'm satirising the Hapsburgs.

By giving them that voice, that was the point I was making. Oh, I see. I did. I did know a lot about the Hapsburgs, I'm going to be honest. I think we know that, Henry. Deep down. So if I'm going to go to the trouble of making a jingle for the digestive tract section, what goes in it?

Must come out. Sorry. Well, in terms of the musical style, I've told you, harpsichord, baroque. I mean, how much more do you want to... Digestive tract talk? Oh, yeah. So I make your baroque harpsichord version of the jingle, and then the jingle dies out. Yes.

What do we hear then? Well, is that when we hear the digestive tract, and then it's us talking, what do you want, another line? No. I think it's just going to be digestive tract talk, and then you hear the jingle that fades out, and then we're talking about the digestive tract. And you're just going to say something pithy about a bile duct or something? No, no, the way I see this working is, as a post-edit thing, so basically,

if we end up talking about the digestive tract in post, Ben goes in and sticks in. This is a bit of a pompeh jingle. No. Exactly. We're pompeh-doing during a digestive tract talk. It's quite an advance. Quite an advance measure in terms of jingles. Good luck writing the jingle for that.

Are you pre-pompeh-doing? Pre-pompeh-doing. I mean, one person might say you're pompeh-doing. Another person might say you're tearing away the very threads that hold together this podcast. The delicate threads, as they are. The very fabric of what we're doing has been completely destroyed. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's high stakes, yeah.

Okay, great. So we're now ready for future pompeh-do sections and ready for future digestive tract sections. It feels like a strong position to start the actual show proper. Yeah, there's nothing in this episode's digestive tract section. As far as we know, it's just good clean fun. It's just all it's got is just the natural bacteria that live in there anyway. The natural bacteria of chat. See if you can hear them squelching away in the background.

The yakult of banter. Indeed. As we discuss Rome. Yeah. Yeah. Rome, is it? This episode? Rome.

This is another one. Again, we're sort of making a mockery of the format here, because again, we recorded this before we even put out the first episode. So this one again was suggested by our friend, Gareth, who suggested the team Rome. But soon we'll do that. Put on your sandals. Get on a donkey. Get on a Vespa donkey.

Get on a Vespa donkey. And make sure you've got some mamas a best of sound. Oh, no. That's not going in. Today's theme is Rome. Rome. Rome.

City of Rome. Just so primal. So isn't it so just the city, the eternal city, the city that's in my DNA, certainly. Your mixture of Turkish and English DNA. But if you draw a line between Turkey and the UK, what's halfway? Rome. Probably Bulgaria or something like that. But all roads lead to Rome.

So it depends how you look at it. From a map point of view, you're always halfway to Rome, pretty much wherever you are. The cradle of? Certainly the cradle of public baths. The cradle of public baths. And wiping your arse with the sponge. That's the thing I remember mostly about the Romans.

About your visit to Rome. Yeah. If you've ever been to Rome, you have to wipe your arse with the same sponge. Everyone in Rome hands around the same one. That wasn't exclusively Robiner. Your medieval seafarer enjoyed the same trick. Yeah, where is it? Not far from me.

There's a mock-up of St. Francis Drake's old gaffe. And the main attraction for the ship, the tiny ship that he used to sail about. The Golden Hind. The Hind, that's him. It was much smaller than you think, isn't it? It's very small, but they were small as well, of course. So many other times they were much smaller. But it was almost like one of those tiny fiat's you see going around,

like a sort of smart car, but a ship wasn't it? It was just him and one other crew member. Oh, it was very much a commuter city ship. But he used it long range. And the thing the kids get excited about is the fact that, right at the back, there's a shitty stick with a sponge on the end. But they remembered more canny because they could, at least when they were done, it was on a chain and they'd chuck it over the back.

And the force of the sea would rinse it clean for the next arse. And was that a living sponge then? You've really, your luck's not in, is it? I think it would have been living, or at least not for long. If it was being put back in the water between uses, you think it would have been the most savage of all deaths. Well, I think it would be praying for death, but it'd be like, please let this be the last sort of scurvy ridden bum crack that I have to.

Spend time in. Let this be the coup d'arse. Let this be the coup d'arse, be praying to dry out and die, and then be just chucked back in that chain into the sea just to resuscitate it again. It's the most perfect torture. If you brought a Roman to a modern bathroom and asked him to have a shit, would he then take the toilet brush and use that on his That's the closest thing we have to a sponge on a stick in the modern bathroom.

Yeah, he'd be forgiven for doing that, wouldn't he? I think. Another thing a Roman might do is he might go, look, how am I supposed to go just sitting here on my own? I can't go unless upwards of 30 people are watching. And I need to be discussing the matters of state. I need to be discussing matters of state with a good 30 or so of my peers. Before it can trigger any sort of evacuation.

Yeah. I need to hear the ribald philosophy of Cicero and... Budget. Mate, Cicero's come in. All right, and everyone moves up a seat, D, and then Cicero comes in. You move up a seat and then you know it's time you better crack a window as well, because once Cicero gets going, then everything gets going. Oh, yeah.

Well, Cicero was the equivalent of a morning coffee, I think, for Romans. Yeah, very much so. Cicero started doing some rhetoric and you'd loosen you up. I sort of can't go if someone's eyeballing the odds. Yeah, it's literally a nightmare, isn't it? It's something you might have nightmares about. It's not being private in that state. So what happened to humanity?

How did we go from that? And who first put the lock on the toilet door? Was it the Emperor Augustus? It means the beginning of individualism as the building block of human civilization. So you're saying this is the start of the American dream, you're saying? Well, democracy, capitalism, yeah. None of that would have happened if we were still sort of communally shitting. So do you think the very modern idea of the self?

Yeah, before we were like bees or ants, we were just part of the... The hive brain. Yeah, part of the swarm. Yeah. And then someone locked themselves in, did a private shit, and suddenly they were like, hang on, I'm an individual with my own wants and needs. And they looked down and went, these are my knees. These knees don't belong to anyone else.

I always thought there was just loads of knees in a room and loads of faces, and quite a bad smell. So that all began. That's an interesting thought. I wonder when that came in. Would that be to do with the Enlightenment, maybe? Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to shit alone. Well, he famously drew a solo toilet cubicle, didn't he?

It was one of his many inventions at the time. He invented the stall. Was, yeah. Yeah, which people often mistakenly think was a design for a helicopter, but it was actually a fan. That was the first ventilated toilet cubicle. Yeah, and then we're saying we're trying to make it fly. One thing we say about Rome is they say, yes, but the food isn't very good.

Who says that? Middle-class tosses. Why you really would need to be going is Bologna. Bologna, yeah. Yeah, people do say that. Well, I think the perception of food in Rome is that Rome, the food in Italy is amazing, but you know your local Italian in Britain. You're sort of like lasagna, spag bowl, big, big, big pepper pot.

The ratio of the pepper pot, the size of the height of the pepper pot to the weight are as important. Yeah, crucial. Yeah, it should be about one to two. So two of the weighters, the weighter could fit inside the pepper pot twice. Exactly, yeah. But that classic sort of bog stand, that's the food in Rome. So where do you go then, in Italy?

I think Rome doesn't have a thing, does it? So if you want pizza, you go to Napoli, because that's where the pizza's from. If you want Bolognese, you go to Bologna. If you want lemons, you go to the Sorento. That happens in Italy. Each town or bit you go to has like one food. Exactly. So you go to Sorento, it's lemons.

Everything's lemons, there's huge lemons on sale everywhere. There's pictures of lemons, there's posters of lemons, people with lemon hats. There's the drink Limoncello. There's always a local liqueur as well, based on that product, which they offer you at the end of your meal. So in Bologna, it's a Bolognese liqueur. The weight she gives you at the end. Heady digesty for the end of your meal.

It's not much of a palate cleanser, is it? But it does the job, it does the business. There's a film, isn't there, called Roman Holiday? Oh, that's a Cliff Richard one, isn't it? No, that's Summer Holiday. Summer Holiday. Which one's Roman Holiday? With the young ones.

Roman Holiday's quite a bit different, it's because it's more Cary Grant than Edwin Edkinson. Of course, yeah, yeah. It's one of those 60s capers kind of films, is it? Oh, okay. Cary Grant, I assume, plays some sort of spy. I watched my first Cary Grant film over Christmas. I'd never seen one before.

He's from the era of stars, Cary Grant, where before they were like buff. Well, that's what I liked about it, is that he was the world's heartthrob, but he just looks like someone's dad. Totally. And he's good looking, but you can tell he doesn't have that insane body that actors have to have now. Well, they would also, they would occasionally unbutton a shirt in those movies, as well, you know, you would see a flash of hairy chest, but there was zero definition.

I mean, even there's no V shape anywhere, possibly a bit of pigeon chest going on, slightly skinny arms, upper arms the same girth as the forearms. Where did it all go wrong? What was wrong with that? What was wrong with that? That's fine, isn't it? What's his face? Kirk Douglas had that kind of...

He had a bit of tone. He had a bit of tone. They were quite, they were flat pecs, but you could tell that they, you know, they had a good twitch on them, right? As opposed to a sort of great big heaving pair of sort of muscle tits, which is now the expectation. And it's a lot of work, Jesus. To keep those muscle tits going, yeah.

Because also you're on a horrible tightrope where as soon as you stop exercising, they just turn into regular tits. Yeah. Yeah. But also you could tell that, like, Cary Grant, he's never in a... He's always just basically either standing up or sitting down. And you'd have almost, you'd have like an entire sort of thriller. But he's just either standing up or sitting down.

He might do both within one scene occasionally, but very rarely, yeah. Well, there might be that probably the finale. The finale scene might involve him initially sitting down and having to stand up. But like, you never see them running. Like, I just got no image of... And even if he's going to exert himself to that degree, they'll make sure that they write into the scene that he does get a drink at some point during the scene.

So he's refreshed. Yeah. There's just no physical agility sort of needed, is there? They've got no kind of... The range of motion is very narrow in those stars. James Stewart as well, just always standing up. Just picture him now, he's standing up, isn't he? Or sitting down.

Whereas you picture Hugh Jackman, either he's upside down, he's dangling off something. Or Tom Cruise. I literally can't picture Tom Cruise standing up or sitting down. I can only picture him running or possibly flying through the air or dangling on something upside down, do you know what I mean? Like, they're always on the move. He won't run downstairs.

That's my only Tom Cruise fact. Is that because his knees only hinge one way? No. I think this is... He's like a horse. He's like a horse. He's a hypochrophal. I mean, I've got this off a man who got it off another man,

who got it off another man. Does he sleep standing up as well? On some shoot with him. Apparently going through for one of the mission impossibles, going through a stunt sequence and the stunt guy is going, and then you run down these stairs. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no.

Tom Cruise does not run downstairs. Tom Cruise only runs upstairs. Allow me to demonstrate. And then he ran up some stairs like a bloody gazelle, looking just like a sleek piece of action beauty. And then went downstairs. Suddenly his gate goes very wide. He's sort of, you know, he's sort of flapping about

very wide, his feet are about two meters apart. He's very unsteady, very unsure of himself. Is that because he spends hours a day on a stair master? Just working out. He goes one way. Maybe. The muscles only go one way. He's overtrained them to go in one direction.

So he's just going up. I think also horses can't go downstairs. I don't know how I know that, but I'm pretty sure that's true. I think cows can't go upstairs. Is that true? Also pigs can't look up. Yes, I've heard that before. They've never seen the sky.

Wow. That's so sad. Next time I see a pig, I'm going to pick it up and point the tent towards the sky. Look at that. Look at that, mate. So Tom Cruise can't run downstairs. So if they need him to run downstairs in a Mission Impossible film, they'd have to build a kind of MC Escher staircase thing,

where he's actually running up, but looks like he's running down. That's what Mission Impossible refers to. Just a big set of stairs. Mission Impossible is getting... Can you grab that bag of nuclear codes? Can you grab that bag of nuclear codes so I stuck down in the basement? No. For the first time in this franchise, I'm going to say no.

I can't. I can't deliver that. I'm going to reverse the Earth's gravitational pull so that I jump down the stairs. Well, if you pushed him down the stairs, would he fall down the stairs? He can fall down the stairs. No trouble. Okay.

He can walk downstairs. He can hop downstairs. He can ride a motorcycle downstairs. What he can't do is run downstairs. What have we not discussed with your own? Centurions. Love a centurion. There's little shin pads they've got.

They had good shin pads and war sandals as well, which always seemed very brave to me. Good war sandals. Yeah. Gladiators. The film Gladiator. What a great movie. Stands up very well on that film.

You've seen it recently? I've seen it the last few years. It stands up incredibly well, Gladiator. Yeah. It's unbelievable how well it stands up. It's just terrific. You like all the big battle scenes, see? He's just like seeing some...

I love all the big battle scenes. ...Visigoths getting mashed up. Love the battle scenes. Do you like the bit where he's running his fingers through some wheat? That's all I remember. He does that a lot. One of my favorite bits. Yeah.

He does that at the beginning. And he does it through various points throughout. Yeah. I think he does it at the end, because I think when he gets sent to heaven, it turns out he gets sent to a wheat field as well. Which would be a bit gawling after all you've been through. Yeah.

This is it. Is it? It's a bloody wheat field. Harvest that. Forever. Well, I can't just have loads of grain. I can't just have a sandwich. Can I just have a cheese and pickle sandwich?

I'm starving. I've been frying all day. No, there's a field of wheat. Now run your fingers for it. Forever. There is, of course, such a thing as the Roman candle. The spinny firework. No, that's a Catherine Wheel.

You fool. Oh, sorry. Which one's the Roman candle then? That's just a little thing in the ground. Oh, yeah. Going upwards. Right, you are. We didn't discuss the whole sort of

massacring of Christian stuff, because is that what Roman candle's to do with? Oh, I don't know. I've got it in my mind that it's to do with setting fire to Christians. And we celebrate that. At children's parties. We haven't yet discussed Romulus and Remus,

suckling a wolf. Quite a weird origin story, that, isn't it, for a city? Especially when most cities don't really feel the need to have one. I don't think. Yes. You don't go to Coventry and they say, well, this all started when, you know, a little girl suckled an eagle.

Yeah, you don't go to a town and go, God, this is an interesting place. So tell me, who suckled who? Who suckled who? Out of this stuff. Who suckled what? No, what suckled who? Yeah.

What suckled who to make this place? Go and ask me. Yeah. Spit it out. Maybe it's a cagey. Someone must have suckled something. When the council built a sort of new development on the outskirts of a town,

maybe like a new town, when they built Milton Keynes, the local council members had to suckle various animals before. Yeah, often there would be a prize draw for something like that to see who wants to be suckled by what, you know, people, you know, gold and... Or you did go to a place that's a bit of a dump

and go, God, I reckon a priori, priori lizard probably suckled a bat. I reckon. God, this place looks like a lizard suckled a bat. What a slam. And it ended up, after that suckling, it was Rome. It wasn't Reem.

Romulus got the greatest city in the world named after him, and Reem got a quantity of printer paper. I wonder if his adults, they ever went back to the wolf teat? To go and visit the she-wolf in a nursing home. Make sure to see her some fresh-cut flowers. My boys.

They never come and visit. I miss the feel of them. Let Chon to that. Have a suckle go on. Mom. God, it's embarrassing. I'm a king now. I'm a king of a massive city.

Found in a city. Corn, I've got eight nipples. One of them would be good. Rome's done quite well in the international city-based phrase world. Rome wasn't built in a day being the principal one, I think. Yeah, so it's got two phrases. It's got Rome wasn't built in a day, and all roads lead to Rome.

It's a two-phrase city. London's a one-phrase city, which is if you're bored of London, you're bored of life. New York has got so good yet to name it twice. Paris has got a half one, as it is Paris in the spring, dot-a-dot, fill-in-the-blank. Berlin has got,

Berlin is a sort of decent weekend away. By the way, there's a third Rome phrase that actually we forgot. It's not a two-phrase, it's a three-phrase city. Go on. Well in Rome. Of course. Well in Rome. It's a big one.

It's got three phrases. It's got the hat trick. That's huge. When in Rome. And that means, I guess it means kind of... Like you're asked with a sponge. Yeah. Guys, I'm about to blow your mind.

Go on. You ready? There's not a fourth phrase, is there? I think currently we're with our three phrases, we're fiddling while Rome burns. Oh my lordy. It's got so many phrases. You know, I always thought that phrase meant fiddling,

as in fiddling with something. Like fiddling with your fingers off fiddling. Is it playing the violin? Doing a violin practice. Playing the violin while Rome burns. Is it? Yeah, because allegedly Nero did that, because he was such an absolute prick.

He was doing his violin practice. What, so while Rome was burning down, he was playing the violin? I think so. I think I may have learned that from in our time with Melvin Bragg. Do you think that the violin is a very Nero-era instrument? There's a lot of stuff that you don't think the Romans had, but they did have. Like Plasma TVs.

They had Plasma TVs. People just assumed they didn't, just because they didn't have electricity. But they did have violins and Plasma TVs. We've established these two. They had violins and Plasma TVs. And they had Alexa. But she was called Alexis.

She was called Alexis. And she was just a boxer of slaves. She was a boxer of slaves, and you'd ask me a question, they'd run off and a couple of days later, they'd come back with the answer. They don't tell you when. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band was first released.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was Rome. May it stand proudly for another 2,000 years. But only 2,000 years. And then met four, really, really just dramatically over the course of like an afternoon.

Well, it would make a bloody good car park. It would. It's absolutely ideally located. Such good access. Near the airport. But the problem is it's ideally located for Rome, which would no longer be there because it would then be a car park.

So it's kind of over chicken and egg thing. You know what? There's actually been some Rome news. Since we recorded that. Yeah. They're doing something at the Coliseum where... They're bringing back gladiators. That's going to be huge.

It's going to be huge. It's that thing about politics becoming more populist. I think that's... It was always heading that way. It's now it's always what the people want. That's actually what they want, as it turns out. It is genuinely what people want.

Enchewed towards slowly. Yeah. Watching a local councillor getting ripped apart by a tiger. Exactly. What are they actually doing in the Coliseum, Henry? No, it's something like that. No, not really. But it's something like you can...

You're going to be able to know what it was like to be a gladiator by standing. As it was standing on a special platform or something. They've built a special platform or something. Oh, yeah. And then Russell Crowe comes out and beats you across the head with a stick. Beats you to the self.

Um, is it there's a gladiator experience where you get to feel what it was like to be a... I assume it was to be a gladiator or possibly to have worked on a film gladiator. So you stand on a special platform, you put a VR headset on, and then an animated... This is it, Russell Crowe's Winnebago. Character tells you to go and bring a bacon panini to Russell Crowe

and look sharp about it and make sure it doesn't get cold. Where's my panini? Hear that from far left, really visceral experience. Will you get the right panini in our interactive Russell Crowe panini challenge? Don't make him angry. Experience the difficulties they had getting the light right on certain days.

In our join the cameraman experience. Oh, this intermittent cloud passing overhead. What are they going to do? Listen, mate, if we don't get the right fucking angles, I'm going to fucking kill all of you. This is why I simply shouldn't have any fucking green screen. Fucking plans. Where's my fucking panini?

Put on our special gladiator outfit with a sort of scabbard for the panini. That's what Russell Crowe insisted that his runner on that was dressed as a gladiator with like five scabbards, each with a different panini flavour. In a sort of thermos, thermos technology, panini scabbards. Exactly. Kept it piping hot.

Got me popping hot all day, mate. Yeah. You don't understand what actors have to go through. You were Mr Crowe too. I want a fucking salami panini now. Do you ever make your panini later on for when you want it later on? No, just get it out of your fucking scabbard.

Why do you think I have the fucking scabbard designed for you, mate? I'm afraid we're out of salami. Would you mind if I was a prosciutto panini? That's in your quiver. You got a fucking salami quiver on your back, mate. Yeah? You got salami. Listen, mate, how many times do I have to explain this to you, right?

The salamis are in the quiver. The paninis are in the scabbards, yeah? It's not rocket science, mate. It was actually just a coincidence as well. In every film, he filmed previous to gladiator. He had a runner dressed as a gladiator with scabbards for the panini. It just happened to... Yeah.

It just happened to seem more... The clock struck twice. He actually had a bit of a crisis of confidence about it, and he talked to his agent about this the first time. I'm just a little bit worried because, you know, you know how I always have a runner dressed as a gladiator? Of course, Russell, yeah. Yeah, you do get through, Russell.

I don't tend to last, but yeah, carry on anyway, yeah? And then after six months, I've murdered them. Well, that was fine on LA confidential, right? It was fine on all my previous films. It was fine on the one where I play a skinhead. LA confidential, yeah? Well, I'm just worried with gladiator, right? It's just a bit weird.

People are going to think it's weird because the film actually is about a gladiator. Sorry, I've got a couple of olives in my throat, mate. Yeah, well, that's my breakfast. They've come from his breakfast slingshot. He's just slung them in. Well, he's slung them in a bit hard. He went down the wrong way. You know what I mean?

He does love, yeah. And anyway, yeah, so... But anyway, listen, as long as I've got a hot boiled egg in a trebuchet lined up, ready to go five a.m. every day, I should be fine. Yeah, so that was Rome. Thank you to everyone who has sent us emails to the email address, 3Bean Salad Pod at gmail.com. We've had lots of lovely emails.

We haven't got time to read them all out. But there's one I wanted to read out to you, Japs. This is from Simone. We had a few on the same theme. Hello, beans. Can we get an update on Henry's bean anecdote? This is from episode one. Of course.

Has he now eaten all the beans? Has the bean smell dissipated? Is the anecdote still hot? We also have another email, which I'll read out before you come to answer that. Dear beans, it is not necessary to boil beans for an hour over. Leave them in a bowl of water in the fridge for a minimum seven hours or longer overnight. Then boil them in a large pan of salted water, and they'll be ready to eat in 25 to 30 minutes.

If left even longer, like 48 hours to soak, they can be cooked in as little as 20 minutes. They will retain their shape, color, and nutrients. If the bean dish includes brown rice, save time and cook them both together. This is getting quite complicated now. Civ and rinse with boiled water drain it, and you are good to go.

Equally, if a slow sauce is being made, part of the beans cooking can be done in the sauce by adding them. It's not World War II. Well, people often approach controversial topics like bean preparation with such certainty, don't they? Even though there are so many gray areas and gray beans. It is like World War II. Henry, what do you feel about that attack on your technique?

And it was an attack. One thing I'd say is just saying things like it's not World War II doesn't mean it is World War II. Well, they're right, it isn't World War II. In this case, it isn't World War II. That's all I'll concede. It does feel like that strengthens their argument about the beans because they're absolutely right about the last bit,

which makes me sort of assume that they must be right about the previous bit. But are they? Well, they're using a rhetorical technique. World War II technique. Which is you say something with absolute bollocks and then you say something true at the end. That it wasn't World War II. And as we know, that's the only bit people really listen to.

You know what I mean? Two and two is four. I've just done it there. Yeah. So you're saying the thing you said before that was bollocks? Probably. But that's a huge paradox, isn't it? Because what you were describing was exactly the thing that you then went on to do.

You've shown how trapped in a kaleidoscope of paradox. You hugely undermined yourself, Henry, with a single stroke. Look. Okay, look, guys. Let's get this puppy in the water. Let's get the puppy in the water. Yeah. Get it splashing about.

Look at its little pink tongue sticking out. Look at how cute it is. It can't swim yet, though. So let's get it out again and dry it down with a towel. It looks even cuter now, doesn't it? First thing first, is the anecdote still hot? I think that's what the nation is waiting to hear with bated breath. Okay, I'll tell you what happened with the beans.

So I ate 80% of the beans. This is a recap to people who haven't listened to the first episode. You boiled beans for hours and hours, and I was filling your house with a beanie fug, and they all went in grey. So the remaining 20% of your wife and your cat had to show the remaining 20%, as you gorged yourself on 80% of the beans. No, what happened was, collectively, I'm going to say, plodded our way through the beans.

Okay. And I tried putting them in salads. Nothing worked, despite all of those innovative ideas. I couldn't make those beans sing. I've just got to be honest, I couldn't. And you know what happened, though, by the end, right? So it was about 20% of the beans left. I don't know why.

For some reason, they were being stored in a cart door. Or ice cream plastic box. You don't need to necessarily focus on your storage solutions at this point. Yeah. I'd probably move on. Sorry. I'd move on hard. Okay, so here's the point.

The point is, I basically, I slightly forgot. I was eating beans quite a lot, and I wasn't hugely enjoying them, if I'm honest. A lot of that's probably down to me and not the beans. Not being good at preparing them. They're generous of you. I lost track of... I sort of forgot about the 20% of the beans, right?

That were still in the fridge. Then, what happened was people started to notice a weird smell in the flat. People? People? My wife and me started to notice a weird smell in the flat, right? And basically, it was a kind of... It's just hit you every now and then. And I kept on opening the fridge and looking around the flat.

I just couldn't identify what could be the source of this smell. And this smell was... Dead Magpie. It wasn't Dead Magpie. It was... Do you know the smell which is like... It's almost like a sickly sweet, too much fecundity, kind of sordid, like, papayas.

Oh, old papayas. I was with you at the beginning when you lost me at old papayas. You know that sense of like too much sweetness, too much fecundity? Old papayas. Old papayas. People sometimes talk about that sickly smell, like a tropical kind of like... Too much tropical fruit that's gone hot and gone too ripe.

Okay. Anyway, I just thought I've got no idea what was making that smell in here. I must be imagining it. Or my nose, all of our noses here, are imagining it. I've just gone maybe collectively mad. You hear about it, that kind of thing. Anyway, it turns out it was actually the beans. It was the 20% of the beans.

Well, I guess that bit because the story started with the beans. So, I mean, you were building up to a big reveal there, but I think probably most of our listeners thought it's the beans. It was a bit line of duty finale. It was Inspector Beans. That wasn't a very good twist, was it? But it turns out the beans are one of those things, which when they go off, they go off hard, they go off fast.

They go off fruity. They go off fruity. Because I thought that beans were kind of things that you could probably just have sitting around sitting in the fridge, like for the first time. They'd eventually just fade away like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that would be that. But it turns out they turn on you fast and hard.

And it's like, there is a narrow window where it's like, you've got to enjoy them. And if you miss it, you're like, you are out in the cold. And fuck it out, it's scary. And what steps have you taken since then? I mean, is it a cold, dead anecdote now, or is it still in play? I think the anecdote has reached its natural conclusion.

Which is, I threw the beans away. I didn't have any plans to buy beans. Yep. I do have some chickpeas that I bought on the same supermarket trip. That's a nice little teaser twist at the end, isn't it? A little, it has, he learned his lesson really. Little shot of Henry Packer picking up the chickpeas. Well, it's like the end of the horror film, isn't it?

It's the end of the horror film where you think he's dealt with it, and then suddenly, hang on. He's buying some chickpeas. He's buying some chickpeas. It's blood curdling. Absolutely blood curdling moment. I wish you all the best, Henry, with the chickpeas. Thank you.

Yeah, keep us posted. But any advice, I suppose, on what I could have done with it? I think it was called 10 bean mix, is that possible? There's a lot of different beans in there. We just had a lot of advice. It was all about if you soak them for longer, you only have to cook them for 25 minutes, and then they retain their colour.

Well, you're not listening. That advice didn't grab me. It could be some advice that's a bit more grabbing. It still felt like he was moving around the same basic part, which is a fridge, some beans. Large amounts of time. And amounts of time. And the Western front of World War II.

He was moving chairs around on the Titanic. Do you know what I mean? It's just moving. It's just, look, it's the same. It doesn't matter where these chairs go. We need to get on a bloody life. I don't care if the string quartet are still playing, and we can now get excellent seats.

The irony, of course, there, is the beans on the Titanic aren't just now, this year, coming in to be ready. After over a century of soaking. That feels like a kind of oligarchs, one of those incredibly expensive dishes. The most expensive vegetarian dish on earth. £450,000 for beans soaked on the Titanic beans. The Titanic beans.

They're going to have a lovely briny texture to them, aren't they? Oh, lovely. Right now. They'll have a real tang. They'll have a real tang. There'll be a lot of shark puke on them. All kinds of things. A couple of old deep-sea crab pubes.

Served in a captain's hat. We've also had lots of nice email suggesting topics. They've all gone in the hat. For example, someone called Dominic Montefiore writes, Good afternoon. Please could you talk about Dominic Montefiore? You're sincerely Dominic Montefiore. You know what?

I wouldn't mind talking to Dominic Montefiore. Yeah, put it in the hat. It's gone in the hat. It's gone in the hat. So there's every chance it'll come up. I'd feel there's a lot of pressure on him to be living an exciting life at all times, though. Yeah, you can't just sort of wander around co-op

when you're called Dominic Montefiore. You can't just pop down to carp to get some ham. No, you need to be on the phone to a vintner almost all the time. So yeah, so Dominic, thank you for that. That'll go in the hat. And thank you for having us who sent those in. They've all gone in the big hat. I'm looking forward to putting something out of the hat.

It will be in a few times, isn't it? It's quite a big, heavy hat at the moment. It's a big, heavy hat and bless good old gas. You know, he's done his bit. And we're nearing the end of Gath's little hat, his pre-hat. But it'll be good to get in the hat proper. So that's the episode for this week. We'll be back next week.

Until then, nanananu. Beans. Cheerio.