Joe Thomas Won't Listen To This Podcast And Neither Should You

Get ready to be serenaded once more by Joe Thomas, James Buckley explains the beauty of animated shows and the boys reveals the writers motto for The Inbetweeners. PLUS it's round 4 of the World 'Up! GET IN TOUCH: Whatsapp us - wa.me/447822034330 http://wa.me/447822034330 Fill in our Fact Up Form - https://forms.gle/uzF6XWPqaA5aNTtN7 Subscribe on Youtube - www.youtube.com/@JoeandJamesPod/videos http://www.youtube.com/@JoeandJamesPod/videos Follow us on Instagram - www.instagram.com/joeandjamespod http://www.instagram.com/joeandjamespod Follow us on TikTok - www.tiktok.com/@joeandjamespod http://www.tiktok.com/@joeandjamespod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  And this is Boots Off.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Listen every Thursday, just search for Boots Off.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  I was hearing myself eating on one of our podcasts recently and I was like, I don't like that.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Why are you listening to our podcast?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I like to listen to them back.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Don't listen to them back. Do them and forget about them.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I might stop listening.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, do stop listening.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I might stop listening.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  That's always been our mentality. I've carried that mentality like from the in-betweeners.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Where we just, and I genuinely think it does make, I genuinely think it stops you from going mental, but it also makes your work better.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  So whenever I do a podcast, whenever I do a TV show, way back when we were doing the in-betweeners, and I think we all had the same mentality where it was like,

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I forgot people were going to see this.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Oh, fuck it. Honestly, magazine articles have come out and I'd be like, oh yeah, God, that was quite like, we were very rude.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we were young and we were so excited.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  The thing is, is that like all of, like all of that was good and fine. Like it was just like, you can, you can like, you can start to see stuff that isn't there if you just keep on.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  I think, I think we're all right.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I think we're all right.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I think we're okay. I think.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I suppose in the end, you are either you think, you are sort of, you're, yeah, I mean, I'm contradicting myself here, but like,

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  You either, you either trust your judgment or you don't. But like, for example, I, but I get, I get thrown by stuff.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Right? I was doing a stand-up gig once and it was like an hour. And at one point I made that gesture and I was like, has that become like a kind of far right gesture now? And I've got the audio of me doing this gig and I can literally hear

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Where you're starting to panic.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Where I'm like, and.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  I should probably say for our, for our audio listeners, Joe was just doing a sort of.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  The okay sign.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, the okay sign.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  No, the divers make and stuff.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And I was like, and it's like. Now, the thing is, I didn't do that with any bad intention. And yet I was, oh, was that, does that, I mean, now I'm in this. And the point is, it did totally fuck up that gig.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  So stop listening to the podcast.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  I will never listen to this podcast again, and neither should any of you.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  We got, no, don't say that, don't, definitely don't say that. We got, we got Katie on it. We got, you know, it's fine.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  It's fine. Also, I think, I genuinely think that me, we're in a great position. Because I think that, uh, you know, being from the in-betweens.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  And, um, just how.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  The, the fact that the, the, like, a big part, the reason why the in-betweens was such a success, was because of the people watching it. I don't, um, I don't, I don't subscribe to that theory of being like, oh, the in-betweens was good, so that's why you watched it. I think it was, I, I think there was a. There was a lot of people in the early days that told all their mates to go and watch the in-betweens. And that's why we ended up where we ended up, which is absolutely brilliant. And I think.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  We are very lucky without.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  And I think, I think, I think we belong to Britain. I think we belong to this country. People wanna, people put their arm around us. They're like, oh, don't worry, they're a couple of idiots. People are cool with us. We're like the, we're like the country's little idiot brother.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  We're like, we're like, oh, he's got like, um, like, I remember when I, like, a couple of my mates had little brothers and stuff.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  You got past to him.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  They were genuinely quite funny and they wanted to hang out with us. And they would just be sort of wheeled out and be like, yeah, watch my brother do this. And they'd do something to try and impress us. That's what we are. People don't take any notice of what we've actually got to say. People don't take it seriously.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  I think it's funny because I'm, because the thing is, I'm an older brother in real life. So I think I find it difficult to. To be like the younger. I'm always like, no, I'm, I mean, I know, I'm aware, I'm not a serious person. I was like, no, I'm, I'm serious.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  But, but.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I think the reason, I think, to the extent. What am I saying?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  I think people are already locked and loaded to be like, oh, don't, don't take them too seriously. Which is a great position to be in. You shouldn't really take, apart from a couple of things, you shouldn't really take anything too seriously.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Well, I, yes, I think I probably agree with that. I don't think life should be taken too seriously.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I also, I just do take it seriously. So it's, I mean.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  It's easier said than done. Don't get me wrong. Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think I'm, I don't practise what I preach. I say, don't take it seriously. And then I.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I don't practise anything that I preach. I'm, I, I'm genuinely someone, I've got mates and they're always like, you're quite, you've got some good, you, you've genuinely got sage advice. You've genuinely got a great outlook and you, you, you, I'll talk to you about a problem and then you'll make it seem really simple for me and, and really cut to the, sort of cut out all the bullshit. And I'm, I think I'm really good on the outside looking in.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  And I feel like I've done that with you. I've had conversations with you and you've panicked about something. I've got, don't worry about it. Everything's great. We're gonna do this, we'll do that. It'd be fucking brilliant. Don't, you know? But I don't, I don't have that. I don't, I don't project that on myself.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Well, it's hard. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's difficult, isn't it? It's hard to kind of. It's hard to take the advice that you would give someone else.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  But I agree. I think your advice to others is pretty good in my sense.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  I think it's just all about simplifying stuff. I think when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, if you're out of the rain, you've got some food. A comfy place to sit.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Got a TV. What more is there really? What more could you really want?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  No, I do sort of, I, I am, I had a, a little mantra when I was in my twenties, which was if you don't want to do something, you don't have to do it.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Don't do it. And I think I just, I was aware, but I just wasn't really doing anything.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  But I mean.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  But that, but also if you do follow.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  When I think, when I look at people.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  If you do follow that philosophy.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  You might come to a point where you go, I don't, nothing matters. I don't really have to do anything.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Well, most people, most people who seem to have achieved some kind of enlightened state of mind.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Generally, they seem like they're kind of like nuns or like monks or something.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Buddhists.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And they don't really do anything.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Buddha. I mean, that's famously what he, he sat by a tree for about four years or whatever it was. I don't think it was four years.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  But he did, but that was the, that was the whole, um, starting of a whole religion. Was he sat by a tree?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  He got visited by some demons or something and he just didn't pay attention to him. I think I'm simplifying. There's a chance. There's a really big chance that I might be simplifying, but he, he reached enlightenment and enlightenment basically was.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  The idea of being visited by demons and actually you just.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Food and water.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  And the rest is all just sort of a brucy bonus.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  I like the idea of, um, you know, of ignoring the demons. I think, I think that's, I think that's a good. I think that's a good piece of advice.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And we do live in a world, don't we, where it's like, you're constantly being told there are demons there, like you're constantly being.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Like, um, I was listening to, um. Yuval Noah Harari.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Sapiens.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sapiens, I was about to say, yeah, yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  And he was saying that like.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Oh, was it? No, was it him that wrote? Yeah, no, it was. Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he wrote Sapiens. He wrote Sapiens. And like, he was sort of saying how, you know, in, in a kind of.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  In a, in a, in a, I suppose, yeah, like a state of nature, essentially, if you were.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I've already read this, but yeah, explain it to the audience that are listening.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  But if you were, if you were, if you were an early human, just kind of walking across like the African plain.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Most of it's fairly boring. You're like, oh, there's kind of a shrub there. And then there's kind of like, uh, you know, maybe a bird in the sky and you're kind of quite bored and yeah, of course. Actually, that's a bad example.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Chill out, guys.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  And then you see a snake.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And you're like, that has to, if that doesn't command your entire attention, you'll die. So it's really, really important. Evolutionarily, your biology is designed to make you pay complete 100% attention to that snake. And he basically said, and when you're on Instagram, it's basically just going, snake, snake, snake. I mean, I just, I mean, it's a point that I've heard other people make, but I just liked how he made it particularly. And um,

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  It is that Instagram is like snake, snake, snake.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  He's very insightful.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's,

• 9:05Speaker 02

  What's his name again?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yvonne Harari.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yvonne Harari.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you, yeah. And um, he um, yeah. But um, what were we saying? Oh, yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  No, we're just, no, we're not, we're not got to the podcast yet. We can just talk about bollocks for a little while.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fine. Well, the point is like,

• 9:24Speaker 02

  That's an offshoot of Hinduism, right?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  I don't know. I genuinely don't know. It's not one of, it's not, it's not one of the big three monotheistic religions.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  I thought that, um, I think it's actually, I think it's actually, uh, accepted that Hinduism is the oldest practicing religion.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I thought it was Zoroastrianism.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I thought it was Zoroastrianism. I think Zoroastrianism.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  That sounds old. I mean, the thing is that there you're like, well, that's the oldest one, obviously. Like that's, come on, Zoroastrian.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that's what like the Persians and stuff were, were, um,

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's just, it's just, it's got Z in it. And you're like, well, you know, clearly.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Xerxes and them lot, they were, um, who were, by the way, well, all right.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  What the, the, the Persians, right?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were sort of, a lot of the time they were seen as liberators more than conquerors.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Who were they?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  And when they did that, so they had that big thing with Greece. Uh, well, I say Greece, it wasn't Greece at the time, but Athens and, um, Sparta.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  The people that we would think of as like the ancient Greeks.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  But that, um, that big, the, the, the, the 300 battle.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Um.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  It's what the Odyssey is about and the other one. The Iliad.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Iliad, yeah, of course.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  There's two epic poems.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  And I think they're both about those. I haven't read them.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Thermop- Thermopolis?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Thermopoli.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Thermopoli?

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Sorry, I'm just hearing monopoly.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Monopolies?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Battle of Monopoly.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  There was a little bloke in a top hat with a monocle.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And he kept the Persians at bay.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Um, no, but the Persians are like, well, all right, because Athens and Sparta were like, oh, we don't want to get involved in them lot. They're going to come over here in a minute. They're taking over the world so far and they're awful. They've got all slaves and stuff like that. First of all, they didn't have slaves. All their, um, all their stuff, I mean, they might have had slaves. But all of their, all, all of their buildings that were built and things like that, and all the infrastructure and everything were, were paid by, paid specialists, paid, paid people that, you know, masons and whatnot. They were, they weren't slaves.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  And then secondly, when they conquered you, they'd be like, oh, if you want to get involved in Zoro, uh, what's it called? Astro.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Well.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Zoroastrianism.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Zoroastrianism.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  If you want to get involved, cool. But if you want to practise your religion, no, you know, we don't give a fuck. It's up to you. And loads of people were like, oh, yeah, they're cool. Like what? Like they weren't, they were like, literally like, they would liberate people. They would be, they were generally quite liberal.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Hmm, hmm.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Which is sort of quite, um, it goes against, I, I suppose the, uh, narrative.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  That we have in the Western world of the Middle East.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Um, of being sort of strict, sort of, you know.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, we tend to have this dichotomy of like, like the West.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Like, oh, women can't drive and stuff like that.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Was it called like, when I was at, when I was at university, there was this phrase, the West and the rest, which seemed to be bandied about. But I, I think as a kind of, that's how people in the, people in what they think of as the West think about the world. Like we can't. There's always that tendency in history, or yeah, in history to contrast yourself who's right with everyone else who's wrong.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  But it's funny with just a little touch, wasn't it?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Was there a little touch?

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Little toe touch?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  They have their own little world, don't they?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  They do.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  What are they on about?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Mummy and daddy talking again.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Which one of us is mummy?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Oh, who is it? Oh, we're both.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I think we're both mummy.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Both mummy.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  We're in a.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Neither of us are ready to.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  We're in a lesbian relationship.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  We're lesbian, we're in a lesbian relationship.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  And our children are our shoes.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  And our children are our shoes. No, that's all right. They've got their own little children's table down there. Um, but, um. What's it talking about?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Conver.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  I don't know at all.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Um, well, yeah, I mean, the thing is that if you have like. A, a, a, a large structure that kind of dominates over this sort of in a way. Links back to this other thing I've been listening to Goliath's curse, Goliath's curse.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Goliath's.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Goliath's curse is a book.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  It's a book about states and civilizations and it's like, you can kind of look at them. You, you can look at ostensibly benevolent civilizations and say, this is actually a structure of domination. Even like, you know, what we would call civilized liberal states are still in the end ways of dominating people. And you could also look at other types of, but you could also look at the other way, like, and there's quite a lot of examples. In history of like empires that because they were like a bit weak and kind of weren't really able to police things very well. Were actually quite a nice place to live. Like, I think the one that everyone was going on about a few years ago was the Austro Hungarian Empire.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  And, um, I was that Wes Anderson film, um, Hijo de Budapest? There was a kind of, I think there was a kind of, because the Austro Hungarian Empire, although it was an empire and it had an emperor and wasn't like. Maybe a democracy in the strict sense, I think in hindsight. It wasn't a particularly strong empire. So you kind of do what you wanted. And like, there was quite a lot of diversity. And actually compared to a lot of the stuff that came along afterwards, it starts to look quite good. And I think.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  It's like the famous thing from Life of Brian, isn't it? And it's like, the Romans.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  What have they done, what have they done for us?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, roads.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I think it is often, is often a bit like that. But it's interesting how people think of states, because I think you can kind of. You can look at them, that is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder. Some people seem to see them as entirely sort of structures of oppression. And then other people are like, well. Yeah, but I wouldn't, personally, I wouldn't want to live in a place that didn't have a state. It seems like, well, it's quite a lot of political ideologies seem to be like, oh, if we could just get rid of it. And you're like, well, do you want to get, you really want to get rid of it? I mean, anyway. But then in a way, they are maybe in the end structures of domination. What I'm saying is I want to be dominated.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  That's what I'm really saying.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  I do too. I don't mind it.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  It's fine. It's absolutely fine.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  I do like, I do like being told what to do. It makes my life easier.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe states just need domination, but we just need a safety word as, as, as citizens. That's what we need, isn't it?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just need a little sort of.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, keep tattling me, but then when I say banana.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  You've got to stop. That's it.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  The problem is though, is that you end up in a situation, um, like the League of Gentlemen. Where, uh, what was that episode? I think they run a B and B or something, that couple that run a B and B, but they're like into sort of dominatrix and sex games and stuff.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  And they end up in those sort of little, um, rubber chambers where they're all getting air through a tube. And, and this bloke who's just sort of like, his wife's well into it and he's not, and he's just, he sort of goes, I haven't watched it for years, but he's like, I'm just going to pop to the shops. And as he walks out, he like kicks off the, the pump that pu, like the plug that keeps giving everyone air. And there's about 20 people that just die, that just suffocate in his B and B.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Oh, God. League of Gentlemen was full on, wasn't it?

• 16:47Speaker 02

  League of Gentlemen, man, so good. League of Gentlemen is so good. They're real heroes of mine, all those guys.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely brilliant.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  They felt like they went slightly unsung, because the, mostly because the office came along so soon afterwards. And it was just, everything was about the office. And like, not unsung, but I felt like they were

• 17:07Speaker 01

  maybe slightly exalted by the office and everything. And that was, and that was all kind of like.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  I think they were a lot more.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Uh romantic than The Office, like that that third series of The League of Gentlemen. Where every episode sort of happens in the same day. And it all meets at the end, that car crash or whatever it is.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  It's genuinely genius, like it really, really is. Like that is like.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  That's peak. Like if I was to write something, it would be fucking set in a swimming pool or something.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I think it's.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  I would just sort of, I don't know, I would just be like, oh, here's, here's a situation and I'll write about that. Whereas they just sort of really went to places. Um.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  I think, I think as a young person, it was easier to look at The Office and go, I could probably write something like that.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Way more accessible.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I know people as well, like.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's way more accessible.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  It was the kind of thing where people go, oh, this is like the kind of thing I would have written. Do you know, like where, and you're like, well, yeah, of course you never would have done, but like.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Also, also, The League of Gentlemen, there was a very, it was very uncomfortable.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  It was.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Really, really uncomfortable. Cause there was a lot of tragedy.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Going through all the characters. They all had a really, really, and I think that's where you should go with comedy. I think you should.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Well, have you seen them?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  I think the best way to deal with tragedy and to deal with and stuff going on in your own life is to be able to. I know it's easy, as I say, it's easier said than done, but to find the funny side of stuff and to find and to be, to be a bit, little bit like, well, if I was looking at this, this could be a sitcom right now. I've dealt with stuff that's gone in my life and I've been like, fucking hell, this would be funny if it was written down.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I think both comedy and tragedy are to some extent to do with getting away from denial and moving towards this kind of acceptance.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Because all those kind of, the fucking, who's the guy that, um, the sort of local DJ or something that wants to get the band back to creme brulee? Like, and it's so heartbreaking. It's so sad.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  They're really, really interested in that kind of like. Bygone era of entertainment, like, go on, let's have a laugh. I've got all the old gear with me, look.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  We could get it out, have a bit of a, do all the old songs again. Oh, fuck off. Yeah, it's like, yeah, and there is, but I think.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  I mean, the, the town's called Royston Valley.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  One of the words you say more romantic.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's something.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. There's more of a kind of, there's a kind of yearning.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  There's this kind of like, there's a nostalgia to it and a, and a deep kind of sadness to it. Um.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I thought, um, Monkey Dust was the same as well.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Did you, have you never seen Monkey Dust?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I don't even know what that is.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  It was like, it's a cartoon. It's a sketch cartoon. Uh, it's absolutely brilliant. You could, like, it's not fucking laugh a minute.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  It's really, really grim. It's, it's basically, um, Black Mirror, about twenty or twenty-five years before Black Mirror was a thing.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Oh, right, okay.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  And it's really, really grim and dark, um, but genuinely quite beautiful, quite like, quite amazing, like. Monkey Dust is incredible.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I can't believe you've not seen Monkey Dust.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I don't think, when was it out?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Late nineties, early two thousands.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Early two thousands, two thousand and three, the first episode aired.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  BBC Three.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Do you know what I'm talking about, Lilyman?

• 20:27Speaker 03

  No, I've not heard of this, but it looks like it's got a great cast as well.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. It's really, really grim. It's really grim, but it is, it's very observant and very, and it makes you. It's not, it is a comedy that makes you feel a bit shit about yourself, because you're like, oh no, I'm like that.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  God.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Um, it's, yeah, Monkey Dust is genius. I need to look up, look up the people that did that and what they then went on to do.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Just in my head, obviously.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  And I see it.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  It's not about monkeys.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  No, it's got nothing to do with monkeys at all whatsoever.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  But it was, um, like, there's this one, there's this one long, uh, and it sketches in it, and I assume they're all made by different people, because the, a lot of the. A lot of the, um. What word am I trying to think of? The uh, the look sort of changes from one sketch to another. It's as if they've been drawn by another person.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  And um, like one of the ongoing things is like this dad. Who's separated from his wife, he's down on his luck and he's got a son. And his wife's moved on and the bloke that she's with now is such a great guy. And like he'll turn up with like a, a present for his birthday. He's like, oh yeah, um, I don't know his name. Jeffrey got me, um, got me the bigger one of those and stuff. And he's like, oh, all right. Yeah, that'll be good. And then, and then at the very end, like this goes on for like a whole series or whatever. And at the very end, um, the dad's just so heartbroken and he's got his son for the weekend or something. He's like, I'm just gonna go into the other room for a second, son.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  He fucking shoots himself or something. And uh, like it's, it's incredibly dark. It's like, um.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  I've, I'm amazed I haven't actually like.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  It's like, uh, do you remember Blue Jam?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I do remember that.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I've got that on DVD and I couldn't watch it.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  I think I watched one episode. He's like Kevin Eldon in it and.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  It's Chris Morris, isn't it?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Very, very.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's Chris Morris on steroids, Blue Jam.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Has it got an Aphex Twin soundtrack? I think it's got a lot of kind of like.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really, really.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Um.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  The writers are really interesting. So it's a guy called Harry Thompson. He played a part in, um, like big panel shows like Have I Got News For You? Um, and also the news quiz for Radio Four really early on. Um, and then he's also worked on things like Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  It is very, like Monkey Dust is quite satirical. It's quite sort of.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  He helped, um, create Ali G.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Um, and the other guy is Sean, Sean Pai, who worked on Extras. Um, he also has worked on a few other little bits, but less known, the eleven o'clock show as well. They both worked on together.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that always makes sense. So like extras, that's sort of like getting into the minutia of a, of a situation. An Ali G, a cultural, it's basically like, it's cultural commentary. It's, it's.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Sounds great.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  You've got, you've got to watch Monkey Dust. It's really, really, I'm surprised. I can't believe we've never spoken about it before, to be honest, because it's such, it was such a sort of big thing for me.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  British animation as well, which is British comedy animation is quite sort of few and far between, I'd say, like.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've got that. You've got Stressed Eric, which is really good.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Mark Heep.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Was that, I remember Stressed Eric's, again, it's about a single dad. Who's got a really stressful job and trying to fucking juggle everything and everyone basically takes the piss out of him because he's quite mild mannered and quite meek. And, uh, and the end of every episode, he gets so stressed that a vein comes out of his head and strangles him. Like, that's the sort of punchline of every episode.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, I did a thing with Mark Heep a few years ago and I went and spoke to him and I was, because he's fucking brilliant, like Mark Heep, Kevin Eldon, all those people, I absolutely loved a bit.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  That is an amazing group.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Like Mark Heep in, uh, Mark Heep in fucking Brass Eye. Um, when he's talking to the cow or something, he's like, fucking idiot, fucking idiot, idiot, idiot, stupid idiot, stuff like that. And, um. And I said to Mark Heep, I said, I've got to tell you this story, right? Um, you actually put my, not him, not, you know, but.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  I was like, you actually, uh, put my wife into labour. I was like, we were, she was like due, ready to go and stuff. And we started watching Stressed Eric.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And she claims to this day, watching that fucking got so intense and stuff that we ended up then having to go to hospital.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  And then we had a baby at the end of it.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Bloody hell. Well, because like it made her.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  It's a stressful watch. It is annoying to watch. But incredibly hilarious, brilliant characters.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Um, the Stressed Eric cartoon, uh, cartoon is a sort of, um. It's a, it's a partnership between, I think, I assume some British production company and the people that I think made um Rugrats and uh Real Monsters and stuff like that, Calypso something.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Um.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  We're getting really comedy nerdy now. This is the stuff I like. I don't know if people will enjoy listening to this, but I love like. Cause that was the thing, that was the thing.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I've always struggled, apart from The Simpsons, I can never quite get into animation. I don't know why. I think.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  I really like adult animation. I really do. There's some really good stuff. There's a really bizarre one. Uh, I say out now, I I'm sure I'm way, I'm really late to this bandwagon. There's this thing called Smiling Friends. And it's, i- i- it's really off the wall and really weird and really bizarre. I think it's like a um. What's the uh grown up cartoon network thing called again? Adult Swim or something like that?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, sort of that sort of thing.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Rick and Morty.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Morty's great. You'd love it. You'd be wa- if you watch Rick and Morty.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  My, one of my brothers likes Rick and Morty a lot.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Be well into Rick and Morty.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Is it, it's like the doc and it's sort of got this kind of back to the future.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  That's how it started. It was Doc and Marty.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  And then they, and then they sort of expand on those characters and they're like, well, we can't call it Doc and Marty. So they call it Rick and Morty and it's really, really like Rick and Morty's great. Rick and Morty's brilliant. I actually um. I was watching Rick and Morty a lot uh before anyone else in Britain was watching.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Uh, cause there's an American friend of mine was like, oh, you've got to check this out. And I managed to sort of get hold of it and stuff. And uh and then it became a thing.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I am, I think my, I almost have a sense with animation that like there's so much of it that I don't know how to kind of, cause with like The Office, it was like, oh, there's a season. There's a kind of, there's an arc to it. When The Simpsons was a slightly case apart, but.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  But what's.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't, I'm just trying to work out why I seem to have some massive block watching adult animation.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I think you'd like Rick and Morty.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Seem to for some reason.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  I think F for Family's really good. Bill Muh, is that his name? What's his name? Bill Burr? What's his name?

• 27:39Speaker 03

  I think it's Bill Burr.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Bill Burr.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  That one was quite, that one's quite sad as well. I remember like feeling quite tragic.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Quite sort of, yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Do you think the um cartoons tend to be sad because it's.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  It's a more poignant juxtaposition that it's a cartoon, which would normally be like.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing, yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Looney tunes and kind of.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  I think that's what you've got in your head. I think it's easy to write off a cartoon and be like, oh, well, the, you know.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Uh, Bojack Horseman.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Hmm. I love Will on it.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Bojack Horseman, you should watch. It's about a bloke that was in a successful sitcom at one point in his life.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now he's not sure to do themselves.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  And now.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  How am I supposed to relate to that?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Um, and he's, I mean, the thing about Bojack Horseman was like, it's, is it like, some of the people are people and some of them are animals.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  It's all, it's all nonsense. It's, it's, it's incredible pathos and genuine heart and tragedy. Disguised as a cartoon.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  And I think, I, I love that. I'm well into that. I love all that sort of stuff.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Why do you think that, why choose to make something a cartoon rather than live action?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Because you can, you can create a world that doesn't exist. You can completely just create a whole.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Uh, and you can go to places that you wouldn't be, you would, you can't go to on. I, I, I think it's a great medium. I think it's a really incredible, I mean, like us, the Japanese, all their anime and things like that. They go to all. Oh, like, it's all fantasy and, um, and some of that stuff, I don't know too much about it. My oldest kid knows more about it than me. He knows a lot more about like Spirited Away and stuff like that.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  And, um, but he also then talks to me and he's like, this is all hand drawn. This is all, this is all like, this was made in nineteen eighty four. Or something like that.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  And it's still breathtaking to look at. It's still like, you can definitely see there's so much care and thought.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I saw a thing on Instagram, which was like a scene.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, it's a cartoon.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  So it's sort of like.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  I think, I don't know, maybe I have some kind of inherent snobbery about cartoons I should push on, get rid of. Um, but then again, I did always watch Simpsons, so I don't know, like, um, there's, there's.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  The Simpsons traversed it, didn't it?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Quite quick. Are they just a bit too quick for me? I think there's a kind of, there's a sort of, they often seem quite, quite spiky and quite. Flippant and quite sharp, in a way that makes me feel like, oh God, well, I.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  It's like what you were saying before about the Simpsons, how they were. So engrossed in the, um, you know, don't sit too close to the TV or rot your brain.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  It's so, I think Simpsons is primarily.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  It was the MTV generation.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Where everything had to be.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Fucking like bright and yellow.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Had to be there right then and then.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  And now, now, now we've gone further. Now we've gone even further than that. Like, people can't watch something that's longer than twenty seconds now. I've put out Instagram reels that are like thirty seconds long and you can, you get the, um, analytics and stuff of how well that video is done.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  And it is like, people watch the first five seconds and then it just drops off and.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, yeah. It's weird, isn't it? Ah.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  But you've got to give monkey dust a little go. I think it's on, I've got it on iTunes. I don't know if it's still on there. I say iTunes. Is that antiquated now? You don't say iTunes anymore, do you?

• 31:12Speaker 03

  There might be a iTunes. I don't know.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Apple TV.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Um.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I still, I've, I only, until quite recently, I was trying to find iTunes or something.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called, it's called Apple Music, isn't it?

• 31:26Speaker 03

  I think, I think there might be episodes that have been put up on YouTube.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, go and check it out. It's really good. It's really, really good.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  I should probably say that, um, just as we did a little cold open there.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I needed to go to the loo before we actually started the podcast, so long we were talking for. And, uh, you know me, I like a little sit down way.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  I abstent, I absentmindedly just plonked myself on the toilet. The seat was up.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  The seat was up.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  I'm so sorry.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  It was all cold.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  So you were just on the, the.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  I was just on the porcelain.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Going to the shock of my life, I nearly jumped out my skin.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  My, yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  That's what happened to Larry David, wasn't it? In an episode, he hurts his back or something. He just falls into the toilet.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Anyway. Anyway.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  I always put the seat down. I would just like to put that.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  I never lift the seat up. If I'm at home, I'm not standing to piss in my own house. Sit down, relax, enjoy yourself.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I do on a case by case basis.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Watch a couple of Instagram reels or something.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  I also sit down to wee just so everyone knows.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Um.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Um.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Let's do the old podcast, shall we?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Can, so girls can't stand to piss at all.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  I reckon some could.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  I know nothing about the female anatomy at all whatsoever. I remember one time Claire was having a, Claire's.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Sorry, just false, false start there.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  I don't know if I spoke about this on mine and Claire's podcast before, but there was a, early on, I sort of get the gist of it now, of the situation. But early on, when I was going out with Claire, it's the first girl that I've ever lived with, by the way, Claire. And, um, and her period started at like a inconvenient time. We were supposed to do something that day or that evening or something. And I said, why don't you just like sit on the toilet and just push it all out in one go?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Fuck's sake.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  And she was like, that's not, that's not how it works. I was like, what if you really like gave a big push or something? I don't know. I know nothing about women.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I don't know very much more, but I know it doesn't, I know you can't do that.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  I don't know, I don't know how I'd be able to live if I couldn't like, you know, stumbling home from the pub or something and just piss, piss in a bush or something like that. Like that would be, that'd be such an inconvenience to my life.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Quite lucky, aren't we?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  We are quite.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  We should remember that. Anyway, welcome to Joe and James Fact Up.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  This is a funny appendage, but it is helpful sometimes.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  It makes sense to me.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? Anyway, welcome to Joe and James Fact Up, where each week we'll be bringing facts to one another that we deem interesting, and our policy is the more interesting, the more true it is. We'll also dig into the weird things that you'd like to think are true, but don't want to research yourself in a segment that we call Fact Check. We're also doing our tournament at the moment. It's called the World Up. If you think that you've got a real fucking, if you think you've got the best fact,

• 34:44Speaker 02

  better than anyone else's, then send it into us.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Put your money where your mouth is.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Our email is hello at joeandjamespod.com. Our WhatsApp is 07822 034330. And our socials are at joeandjamespod. And you can watch all our episodes in full on YouTube. Just search for Joe and James Fact Up. Now, let's get fact up.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Hello, this is Susie Ruffel.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  And Maisie Adam.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Okay, so you guys have been sending in some real Fact Up stuff for us to discuss. Got a, I got a message here via the WhatsApp from Sophie and Pete. Is this going to be another one of those situations where it's just definitely from Sophie?

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  And Pete has just been added to the.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Well.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Who was it? Wasn't it the couple from New York?

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  And it was just from her?

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  She just stuck his name on it.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  It's like when you do birthday cards or Christmas gifts, isn't it?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  I can't write, so Claire has to write all of those. But is that sketch with Carolina Hearn and Thompson? Steve Thompson? What's his name?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Where it was like, um, they were a couple and she'd be rabbiting on and he'd be like, right. And you're like, it's child dear.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Um, so Steve, Sophie, not Steve, Sophie and Pete say, hello, Joe and James. Thought you might like this as you spoke about E17 on the pod last week.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  It was a few weeks ago, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Back in 2006, my husband worked in a bar and E17 were booked to do a set at 9pm. They sat upstairs drinking and finally came down at quarter past 11, did one song and then fucked off. Yeah, rock and roll. They left the suitcase in the room that they brought to get ready. They left Henley's tops and Lacoste t-shirts, which were big at the time. So my husband and the other chef stole the t-shirts and wore them for the next few weeks. Love the pod, Sophie and Pete.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Not fact, but thanks.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  It's a fact. It's a fact.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  We don't always want facts, do we? We want other bits and bobs.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you know, fair enough, I think.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  E17.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like E17. Disappointed by this behaviour.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Who's, whose behaviour?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  E17. They should have played more than, you know, one song.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. In that situation, yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  They're playing, playing more than one song.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  But they were the bad.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Late to the stage, maybe, but.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  They were the bad boys of pop.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  They were the bad boys.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  They were street and they were real. They were the, the anti take that.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Uh, who I also love, love take that as well. Did you see Robbie Williams?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Um, get, send me a comment.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Did he send you a comment?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  He sent me a comment on one of my Instagram posts.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  I did not see this.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Saying, um, saying, oh, I saw what you said about me and, and I'm a big fan. And it was so, that was so kind of you.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  I was nice about it as well. Where's my, where's my Robbie Williams comment?

• 38:13Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Was just James was nice about him.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I was being nice too.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Not nice enough.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Well, that's lovely.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, great.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  One step closer to getting him on the pod.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Well, maybe you do a pod, maybe you do a pod to get rid of me.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  E17.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  In that chair, obviously.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Unbelievable thing to say.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Um.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Um, they left Henley, I'm not sure what Henley's tops are.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Henley's, yeah. Are they sort of, um, rugby?

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember Henley's.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Let me get a picture of that.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  And Lacoste, I know what Lacoste is, obviously the crocodile.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, Henleys, Henleys had that. Is that right?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Henleys.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, there you go with the text. It kind of looks like something you'd wear on the in-betweens.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  In-betweens, sure.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  That's the CBBC version.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like on the teletubbies where they have like the mini teletubbies.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  That's the next generation.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm a nerd, I'm stupid, I love the girls, I'm a big pervert. One, two, three.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  I remember when I first started going out with Claire.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Yeah, that's quite what like Neil would wear.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I remember when I first started going out with Claire. Claire's mum sent her a text saying, I'm trying to find the Incredibles on the television, I can't find it anywhere. It's the In-Betweens.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Oh fuck.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  I'm upset about that.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  The In-Betweens? No, it's, it's both good names.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Listen, don't get me wrong, stay tuned, there'll be a cartoon called The In-Betweens.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  Well, I want, I want some cash from that. I want some royalties.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Oh, we've got a message here from Rebecca. I assume she's going to follow up from our, it says here, burying sausages.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Yes, it's a follow up.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  We're moving on from E17, we're just saying, fine, you know, acceptable form of payment.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  That's just great.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Fine, sorry.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  That's just great. I've said it before.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Because I've got both my ears pierced.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  I had both ears, I had earrings in because I wanted to be like Brian Harvey from E17. But you've got to remember, I was Dagenham, sort of East London, they were real sort of, they were really, real heroes where I, when I grew up. I was in like primary school and stuff. Anyway, Rebecca's got a message. Hi, the sausage thing is true. Do you know what? I've heard the sausage theory thing outside of the podcast recently, over the last couple of weeks.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Because the weather, it was supposed to rain.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  And the bride to be said, I will bury a sausage or something. So, yeah, the sausage thing is true. My friend got married last month and she buried a sausage. Not sure if it was raw or cooked. However, the sun was shining all day long for the wedding. Mind you, she did buy us some Etsy spells for the weather too.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  So what is that? Some spells from Etsy?

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  You can buy spells?

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know about Etsy witches?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  So there's witches that live on Etsy and you can buy spells from them.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  So like hex your ex boyfriend or something.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I wanna know.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  So Etsy as in the, the, the shop?

• 41:29Speaker 03

  The shop, yeah, yeah. So that's where all the witches are these days.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  They're all on Etsy?

• 41:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  They're, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. So which, it could have been the sausage, could have been the spells.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Rebecca goes on to say, love listening to your absolute bullshit, Rebecca in Durham.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Oh, did I not take that bit out?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  No, but to be fair, this is accurate.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Very accurate.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  It's actually quite polite compared to what it is.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  It's, it could, like, that's what the, this podcast could have been, should have been called.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Absolute bullshit.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Absolute bullshit.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the sausage thing is, well, so everyone's doing it, it's working.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Wasn't the Inbetweeners gonna be called Pricks or something? No, Dickheads, that was it.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Dickheads, yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  No, like, oh, we can't, we can't do that. We can't call a show Dickheads.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Christian wanted to call it one, two, three, four.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  I know.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  What?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  One, two, three, four.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  The Inbetweeners, the name of the Inbetweeners show came really, really, like, it was made, it was ready to go on television. And it got to the point where it was like, what the fuck are we gonna call this thing?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  I think it's a good name.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I think it's a, it's, now it's the right name. At the time I was a bit like, oh, whatever. Like, you know when someone says the name of their kid and you're like, yeah, it's fine. I mean, it's not terrible, it's just like, that, the child can grow up with that name, fine.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  It was, it was, I remember the attitude being very much like, oh, that'll do.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  No one's got anything better. No one's, no one's suggested anything better than the Inbetweeners, so we'll call it that.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  In a way, they totally match the attitude of the.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  A song called An Inbetween, The Inbetweeners, isn't it?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is, it's, um.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  It's Darwin Albarn's ex-girlfriend. What was her band called?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Sleeper.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Is it Sleeper?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Justine Fishman.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Um.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  There you go. It's my era.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  I think, I think the name helped people understand themselves in their school setting, though.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, I think that was a very, very lucky coincidence.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Because a lot of people are like, well, you know, because it's in between sort of adolescence and uh and adulthood. And they're also, you know, they're not the cool kids.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Well, that was the original thing, wasn't it?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  The original thing was that we weren't the cool kids, but we weren't the geeks.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  We were sort of the in-betweens, but now, when you think about the in-betweens, they were fucking lunatic. They were like, they weren't, they were worse than the geeks. The geeks were fine. The geeks were all right.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  These boys were creating all kinds of problems to themselves. They should have just got on with some stuff.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  There's a bit of madness to be made in the middle, though, isn't it? When you don't have the attention from either thing.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I suppose one of the, Ian and Damon always said when they were writing the show, their kind of unofficial motto for the show they always had in their head was teenage boys are dickheads. So like, I think the idea is that even if you take like a fairly large, like median sample of teenage boys, they'll ju- that, these aren't even the worst ones, but they'll be like totally hopeless, useless, feckless.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, we weren't the Donovan's.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  They'll fuck everything up. Yeah, I mean, you, I think you have to go quite far to the extremes to find anything other than just the general sort of fecklessness. Teenage boys, that's what me and all my friends were and like.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  We were kind of comfortably in the middle, but it wasn't like we were even the most losery of that. We were, we were just.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  There was a pecking order.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  There's a pecking order. It's just the middle is very big, basically.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  The, the, the number of generic teenage boys is most teenage boys.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I think.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  I wish I was popular at school. I think my life would have been a lot easier if I was popular at school.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I was popular at school, but I think I did it by um.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Being being nice. See, I was I was unpopular, but I was also really sarcastic and had a joke about everything.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  I was just I was just a pathetic people pleaser. I was like, I'm gonna make sure everyone likes me.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  No, I was I'm gonna make sure that um people laugh at me and find me funny. I was unbearable at school. I hate bumping into someone I've met from school. Cause I'm just like, oh no. Oh, you remember when like I was just a fucking dickhead. But I wasn't popular by any means at all whatsoever. And I was still like bullied and stuff. I was still sort of. Had some problems with all that kind of nonsense. Like I wasn't a bully at school or or particularly mean or anything, but I was just. I was just a bit of a sort of like, I don't know, I sort of, it's really bizarre. I sort of wanted attention at school.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Now I don't, I can't think of anything worse. I don't want anyone to give me any attention. I'd rather just come and go, not have anyone look at me or anything. Whereas at school, I was like, I'm gonna be a star one day. Fucking unbearable, absolutely unbearable. Uh, anyway. And I don't have a lot of friends from my actual school anymore.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Um.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  I've got friends that I grew up with in my town, but I went to a different school to my town.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  You left, didn't you? Right?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  At sixteen.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  You were, yeah, everyone has to. Eventually.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Well. No, you left the town. Didn't you?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  You moved, didn't you?

• 46:48Speaker 02

  I did move, yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Your parents moved and then.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, not sure, not long after I left school, yeah. And I was stuck in a town where I didn't know anyone. Or there was no opportunity to meet anyone. And I had to constantly try and find ways to get back to Dagenham. I was like, how do I fucking get back to my mates? Anyway.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Hey, Joe.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know if you've heard, um, but there's a tournament going on at the moment.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, everyone's talking about it.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Everyone's going on about it. It's like.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Everyone's going crazy about it.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  It's just like every single piece of merchandise in every shop has got this just plastered over it.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. Everyone's cashing in on this tournament. Um.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  You've seen those big screens, like in like public spaces where people are like just going to watch it.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Box Park and stuff. They're all, they all wanna know what's going on.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  They're all outside Wembley at the moment.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Um, because they wanna, they wanna watch, they wanna know what's happening with the World Up.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Um, it is time for, what, what are we, round four? Match four?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Match four of five.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Match four of the World Up 2026.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Um, hey, we've got a jingle for it.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  I can't, at no point can I work out where like the first beat of the bar was.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  So we've got three, three more, three weeks, including this one.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this week, match five, final.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for the next three weeks, we'll be pitting your facts against one another to crown the ultimate fact up fact. It's important, Joe. It is important.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  It is important. I mean, you, you, I mean, we're sort of saying like, what's like the one truth that we can organise everything around?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  The world stops, doesn't it? Now that the, the World Up's happening at the moment, you know, uh, hotel room, uh, prices are going through the roof and people are selling their homes to, um, follow this tournament. Um, so it's a lot like, um.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  It's a lot like the Bella Hastings day, Joe.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  It is.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Where everyone just stops everything that they're doing. Um, you know, people are stopping work right now. So like, we've got to tune into Joe and James because we've got to find out the facts.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, all those, yeah, all those people having sickies.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Well, but even the bosses are going.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Fair enough. Go on.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Well, they're, they're bloody watching it as well.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, yeah, they're.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  That's why.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, Joe, I think, um.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  The manager's doing it.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  We're.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  And that's the boss. So what sort of day is it?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  We're in heat four.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  We're in heat four. Is that what the, uh, actual World Cup's being called, do you reckon?

• 49:55Speaker 03

  The what?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Um.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a football tournament.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Heat.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  It's a soccer tournament.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Sounds rubbish.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Cause it's sort of America, Canada and Mexico. They.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're probably.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  It's not group stages, is it? It's like heats and, uh.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  They probably call the teams like freshmen.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're going to get to the playoffs.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  And, um. Oh, it's going to be a disaster.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Bet they're feeling pretty embarrassed that it's been scheduled at the same time as this.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  I think it's going to be terrible.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  They weren't to know.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  I think the coverage of the World Cup's gonna be, it's gonna, everyone's gonna find it really annoying. But don't worry, because we've got the world up. Uh, Joe, who have we got first?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Uh, well, this, uh, fact comes from Charlotte via WhatsApp.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Okay. There's a chicken named Mike.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Oh, we can't do this one.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Why?

• 50:43Speaker 01

  What? Well, it is on, it's on the Ricky Gervais show, but like.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  I know, but we talk about the Ricky Gervais show too much.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  We haven't specifically done this fact.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  We definitely have.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  No, no, we haven't. I don't think we have. I don't, I don't think we, um.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  It's been sent in. I thought it was good.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  So Charlotte, who has also listened to the Ricky Gervais show, has, has given us their fact. Here we go.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  There's a chicken named Mike that survived for 18 months after its head was cut off because part of its brain stem was still intact.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  It was fed with an eyedropper.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Also, I met Joe after showing family last year. He was the most lovely man. That's nice.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  You are lovely.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  You are very lovely.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Charlotte from Redruth Cornwall.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Um, Charlotte, good fact. We all already know, and everyone listening to this already knows that that's true. It's a strong fact. Um.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  It's, I mean.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  It became a sideshow, didn't it? It became a sort of, um, a tourist attraction.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  He would.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  And he used like a pipette to drop nutrients and proteins and stuff into its hole.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, um, he, uh.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  I'll tell you something though, um, here's one thing that I've just, that I always think whenever I re-listen to the podcast, the Ricky Gervais podcast.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Um, but I never follow up. I never sort of go, oh, I should really look that up. So the brain stem was intact. So was there still a bit of the chicken's head flapping about?

• 52:14Speaker 01

  No, I, no, I think, I think.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  I assume the brain was in the skull.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  No, I think the idea is, is, the idea is that.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Did he chop it wonky or something?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  The, the, the nerve, the central nervous system such as is, is the brain, but also even in humans. Some of it is in kind of the upper spinal column, like some of the.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Some of the machinery.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  I saw a thing on.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  It's not all just up here. Some of it's kind of down here.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  A thing came up for me on Instagram the other day where a bloke was like, he went to the doctor or something. He went to hospital and he was like saying, I've got pins and needles in my legs and things. And they were like, well, we can't work it out. It must be a nervous thing. So they did like a CT scan of his brain.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  And it's fucking hollow.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  He's got like a bit of brain going round his skull, but the re, the, the in, the inside of the brain, he's got like a brain. If you had a, a model of a brain.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  That were like a porcelain model where they just sort of used a, um, some sort of mould or something. That's what he had. The inside of his brain, like 90% of his brain wasn't there. And still to this day, people like scientists and doctors are like, how the fuck has he got to this point in his life?

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I feel like I've heard a similar story as well. I th- I think the, the brain is incredibly good at, um. Repurposing neurons.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  So making connections somewhere.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  If you, yeah, so if you, if you lose, if you can recover from brain damage, because the brain will kind of move it somewhere else or like.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Well, that was sort of lobotomies in a way, wasn't it? They take out a chunk of the brain or they put a spike in the brain and sever some stuff. But they'd still, even though they weren't completely normal, but they'd still, you know.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, yeah, I know, I, yeah, I, I, I feel like I've, I've heard that, that story or like. Um, or maybe a similar story, um.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  But I mean with this one, I mean, yeah, it's just.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Do you wanna see a picture of him?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure I've already seen a picture of him.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, okay.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  His face kinda looks like, um, and I hate to say anus.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  It's a bit like, yes.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  It's like a beaver's anus a little bit.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Which will do this facts and favors.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  So that's a strong, that's a strong fact.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, well Beaver anus might start freaking out when it sees its doppelganger.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  It might.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Oh my god, I thought that was.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Listen, it might fucking, it might shit in the final. When it gets to squeaky bum time. Let's see how squeaky the Beaver's anus is.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  But yeah, no, it's a true, we all know this fact. It's a great fact. It's brilliant.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And I, to me, the fact that it comes via, you know, the

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Pilkington.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  It's fine. I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, via Pilkington.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  I think it does it favors. Especially on this podcast.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  And, and our listenership. Um, hey, Joe.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Is there anything else that we can sort of?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  It's sort of cut and dry, that one. It's been, we, we're going over really, really well trodden ground here.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  How long do you think you would last without your head?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Um.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  If you could just mention.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Well, if I had the bit of the, do I have the little?

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Well, you'd have to, if you'd have to see how many times I blink. Just count how many times I blink and then, uh, that's Pilkington.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Pilkington's got a really good.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Pilkington was obsessed with, uh, beheading for a look for a whole while.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  In one, so one version he says that the head got cut off and when it was in the basket, it blinked a certain number of times.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  To see how long, and that was a kind of, a kind of, that was a kind of genuine experiment. But then in another version of the story.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Was there a body walking around?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  He kind of misremembers it and says that the body without the head continued to walk, they said. He's got it that they painted a line on the ground and it was like walking along.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  How many steps it could take.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  And he says by the end it sort of just couldn't be bothered and it was like. Always, the reason why people don't do things in the ending, Carl Pilkington's stories, is always because they can't be bothered. It's like, he sort of couldn't be bothered doing it anymore and it was just getting a bit annoyed. I know, he said that was the head. No, no. And then there's another version where he said, no, no, in the first version. So the blinking is the correct thing. It was how it was the guy, he was a scientist, he was beheaded. He said, I'm going to keep blinking.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Was he, was he beheaded, uh, because like sort of crimes against God or something like that?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that, probably. Or maybe, well, no, probably, frankly, probably just because he was still, maybe if it was the French Revolution, it might even have been the other way around. It might have been that he was still practising Catholicism and they said, no, you can't do that anymore. Anyway, so whatever. Well, no, but then he was a scientist.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Don't know. Anyway.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  That, that is, that's the reaction after listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast. I remember listening to it when I, like years ago and listened to the first time, it was like me trying to connect the dots.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Uh, with Carl Pilkington. Me helping him. As a listener, I'd help him. Cause, cause Gervais emerged and be like, come on, mate.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in real life, it was the, he, the, the scientist was blinking. Pilkington had it when they, when it was just the head.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  He said, um, they chucked a load of questions at it.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  And it was answering. And then he said, by then it couldn't be bothered to answer.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  But isn't the funny, isn't the funny thing about that is, is like, oh, what's that story that you said about the beheading?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  He, he had gone from blinking to, oh yeah, and it was chucking, chucking a load of questions at him.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  And then, but then after that, it becomes that the body is walking along a line.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Um, they drew a line on the floor.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Anyway, so yeah, the, um, the, uh, yes.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Hey, listen.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  I think it's, it's, um, uh, the detail that always stands out to me is it was called Mike. It's just a sort of, kind of bog standard name.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Really? Sort of like.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  It's a brilliant fact.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, with an eyedropper. Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  And it, and we know, we know it to be true anyway.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  And I'm sort of predisposed to put Charlotte through because she's so, said, um, so was a lovely man in Falmouth. So.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's brownie points.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  You know.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  Well, listen, let's take a little ad break and then we'll find out what, um, Mike the Headless Chicken is up against after, after some stuff that you can buy, I suppose. Go and buy some stuff, why not?

• 58:26Speaker 05

  Hello, this is Susie Ruffel.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  And Maisie Adam.

• 58:28Speaker 05

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 58:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 58:47Speaker 05

  Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 58:53Speaker 04

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Um, Joe, we are right, that was half time, there was the half time whistles.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  The half time whistle's just gone. Maybe we could do a little whistle, um.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  Some sound effects.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Sound effect or something, I don't know. Um. This is one of those situations where me and Joe should be more involved and maybe give you some ideas.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  That's okay. The good thing about recording events.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Instead of getting towards the end of the tournament and being like, hey, it'd be good if we did this and did that.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  But maybe we'll do all that and then by this episode, everyone will understand why.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Brilliant.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  So that's nice.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Um, this one, um, oh, I do like this name.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  So, Joe, we were just talking about Mike the Headless Chicken. And we're going to find out now what Mike, uh, who Mike is up against. And this one comes from Monty. I like that name.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like it. Monty.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  What's the first thing you think of?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Monty Don. Yeah.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Oh, Monty Don?

• 59:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Oh, Monty Python.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  No, I wasn't even going to go there.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  My great grand had a dog called Monty.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Monty. That wasn't what I was thinking of either. I was thinking of Burns.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Oh, Monty Burns.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Um, anyway.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  They're all, they're all fine.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  I see him as Montgomery.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Montgomery Burns.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think Montgomery more than Monty.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Uh, anyway, Monty via Instagram says, uh, a day on, a day on Venus.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Lasts longer than a year on Venus. I love stuff like that.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  I actually love that. So it takes, it takes Venus longer to turn.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Than it does to go around the sun.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Which is amazing.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I, that is amazing. It is amazing.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Have you seen those?

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  I mean, it seems a shame. It's going to be difficult for us to.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  May, well, you know, do you think we'll ever experience that?

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  This is, this is, this is, yeah. This is the group of death.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  This is a group of death.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  This is a real group of death. Both these, both these facts.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  They are both quite.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Should maybe go through.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  They're both quite Javasian as well, actually. I think they like all space and stuff, don't they as well?

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  I love space stuff. Have you seen the pictures? Um, do you remember this? Do you remember? It was before we were born.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Did you, uh? When they went to the moon?

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  No, when they, the Soviets sent, um, a ship down to Venus.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  And took pictures of the surface and stuff like that. It like, it lasted, it lasted for about half an hour or something before it was completely destroyed by the.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  So it just got burned up and, but it did send some stuff back.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it got to the surface. It went to, it went to Venus's surface.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  I think, is there a lot of pressure on Venus or something? There's something going on on Venus. It's, it's so unhospitable Venus. Cause that's the irony. It was always like Earth's twin. Like when they first started doing astronomy and stuff like that. A lot of people theorized that Venus was another Earth. But it is so like this fucking, it's chock full of sulphur and all sorts. And it's awful. Um. I wouldn't wanna go there on holiday.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Also, you could, um,

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  spend a whole year there. Um.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  And you wouldn't, and you wouldn't be a die.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  If you booked seven nights in a hotel on Venus, bloody hell. Can I, um, recommend, there's a really nice song, it's for children really, about planets.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  It's, uh, Nursery Rhymes one, two, three, uh, the planet song. It's really good.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Do you wanna sing it? Do you wanna sing it for us?

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Sing it. So it goes, um, uh, the one about Venus. So it goes, I am the sun. I'm a burning pot of fire.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  I'm very big indeed.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Hang on a minute, isn't that just our house is a very, very, very big house?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's, no, I don't think so.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Our house is a very, very, very nice house.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Anyway, the verse about Venus goes, I am Venus. I'm the same size as the earth, but I spin the other way.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  And much more slowly. I have no water. I am Venus. It goes like that. It's a nice song, I just think for anyone.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  It's really lovely.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  That's really nice. Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  It does spin the opposite way, though.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  It does. I think there's only like a couple of.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Other way.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Planets in the solar system. There's one planet that's a bit wibbly wobbly. It goes all over the place. Can't remember which one that is.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Has it got an elliptical orbit? Is that what you?

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  No, no, the way, the way it spins, it's sort of.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  It's a bit like, um, but there's a thing, there's some sort of thing where after an, after an amount of time, it's sort of like, um.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  It's sort of like Darwin, Darwinism in a, in a bit, like. Eventually, planets that are all orbiting a star will basically turn the, they'll all go the same way. They'll all sort of, unless something drastic happens, they'll all be, they'll all be sort of going the same way. Whereas Venus does, doesn't. Venus, Venus dances to the, it's to its own drum beat.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Venus is like the Goth of the planet. So, yeah, fuck it. I got a Comic Con.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  No, that's Uranus, surely.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Cause it's all cold and dark and spooky.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  And they bully it. It's called Uranus.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  They bully it, yeah.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  Anyway, um, yeah, that's a great fact. It's a really good fact. It's come to the point now where we've got to go. Where we've got, whether we've got to go with Mike, the headless chicken, or the day is longer than. I go, I'm leaning towards the Venus thing, just because I love space. I know that the, um. The headless chick in fact is brilliant. We love it. And we've, you know, I've got years worth of entertainments out of that.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Maybe just because.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  And I know that she said that you were lovely.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  And I feel really guilty if we don't put the chicken.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Is that what's gonna, is that, is that what's gonna get Charlotte into the final, Joe?

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  No, you know what? I can't, that's no.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Are you thinking with your penis?

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  It has to be objective, doesn't it?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  You can't have flattery here and, and, um.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  No, I say do. Yeah, so we make our own rules up. We can do whatever we want. We're the governing body of this.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  This tournament. Because I wouldn't mind a bit more flattery. I wouldn't mind a bit more, you know, here's a fact for you. Also. Um, James, I like the shirt you were wearing the other day. That sort of thing. That might help out. Might help your cause.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  That's nice.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Each fact also comes with a little bit of, a fact and a compliment.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Lovely package.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Just, yeah, facts and a compliment. I remember that, that's.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Lily May, little compliment coming your way?

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  I'd love that. I mean, you've, you've got to get through me, which I'm, I'm, I'm putting them through to you.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, go through you first.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  And compliments will absolutely get you everywhere.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't even know. We, heaven knows what's happened further up the chain.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Has there been any really good facts that they've, they've just sort of slagged you off a little bit and you've gone, oh, you're not going through then, son?

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  And people, loads of people are slagging me off as well. None of them are getting through.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  No, they're not.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  I will, I mean, I wouldn't slag Lilleme off if you want to get anywhere, really.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  No, not if I want a podcast to be made.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  No, exactly.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Or to have any kind of structure.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Well, I'm sure there's, I'm pretty confident, I'm confident there will have been corruption higher up the chain, but I'm saying it's going to stop now.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  You can't have a world tournament without a bit of, you know, without some palms being greased and stuff, you know?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  It's just the way that things get done.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  That's the FIFA motto.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Certainly was.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Joe, I'll leave it up to you, Joe. I've said who I want to go through. Sorry, my ring doorbell's going on. I've said who I want to go through. Uh, now it's up to you, whether you're, whether you're a man of, uh, conviction.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Ultimately, the podcast has to come first. Uh, and I think that because the chicken fact has been well represented elsewhere.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I think the world up, if it's about anything, it is about actually discovering talent. And, um, I think Venus has got it.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  So Venus, I think you're going to go through.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Well done, Monty. Venus is through to the final. Congratulations.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Well done. Um, we'll have to try and, it's quite difficult to schedule Venus for the final because obviously we'll say, you know, it's in, it's in a week's time and then they'll turn up in 40 years' time.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  We'll, um, we'll try and, um, we'll work it out.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Well, Venus has got two Earth Weeks to go.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So just you work that out.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  That's right, isn't it?

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  From this point?

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Two Earth Weeks to go. So Venus, you, we'll leave it with you. Make your own way there.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, let's wrap it up, Joe. Um, that's it for this week.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  That's it for this week.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  What have we learned? Well, we've learned, not really learned. I know we already knew about the headless chicken, not to discredit it. It's still a fact. It's still a great fact. It's still very interesting.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  We've learnt about. Venus.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  About Venus, yeah.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Again, maybe relearn, maybe, maybe I knew about you. It's worth being

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  reminded about time on other worlds.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  We learnt about monkey dust.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  We did learn about monkey dust, yeah, that was, that was a good chat.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Um, we hope that you've learnt something, uh, or at least had a nice time. We'll be back next week armed with more facts, chats and another World Up match. I don't think I did that in the last episode.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  Nah, but it's fine.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  It's fine.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  Um, don't forget that you can get in touch with us, uh, if you'd like us to fact check something. Um, our email is hello at joeandjamespod.com. Our WhatsApp is 07822034330. And you can follow us on social media. Our name on social media is at joeandjamespod. And head to the podcast description if you've already forgotten what I said, or if it didn't quite make sense. Goodbye, guys. We'll see you next week.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Bye, everyone. Bye.

• 1:09:42Speaker 05

  Hello, this is Suzy Ruffel.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  And Maisy Adam.

• 1:09:44Speaker 05

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.