Chris McCausland (Christmas Special)

Yuletide is here, and joining us for our first festive special is stand-up superstar and ‘Strictly’ champ Chris McCausland. ChrisMcCausland. ChristmasCausland… Chris McCausland’s autobiography ‘Keep Laughing!’ is out now in hardback and audiobook, published by Michael Joseph. Buy it here https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/471824/keep-laughing-by-mccausland-chris/9780241777367. Chris is on tour in 2026 with his show ‘Yonks!’. For dates and tickets go to chrismccausland.com https://chrismccausland.com/tour/ Follow Chris on Instagram @chrismccauslandcomedy https://www.instagram.com/chrismccauslandcomedy/ and TikTok @chrismccausland https://www.tiktok.com/@chrismccausland Watch the video version of this episode on the Off Menu YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@offmenupodcast on Thu 11 Dec. Off Menu is now on YouTube: @offmenupodcast https://www.youtube.com/@offmenupodcast Follow Off Menu on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/offmenuofficial and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@offmenuofficial: @offmenuofficial. And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk https://www.offmenupodcast.co.uk/ for a list of restaurants recommended on the show. Off Menu is a comedy podcast hosted by Ed Gamble and James Acaster. Produced, recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive https://www.plosive.co.uk/. Video production by Megan McCarthy for Plosive https://www.plosive.co.uk/, and Felipe Franco. Artwork by Paul Gilbey https://www.instagram.com/pushgilbey/ (photography and design). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Everybody, listen up.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Welcome to the Off Menu Podcast, taking the mini sausages of conversation, wrapping them in the bacon of humour, roasting them perfectly in the oven of podcasts. Pigs in blankets.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  Merry Christmas.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Pods in blankets.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Pods in blankets. It's a Christmas special.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  It's a Christmas miracle.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  So Ed's done a little, Ed, that's a gamble, by the way.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's James J. Castro over there.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  And we own a dream restaurant and every single week we're inviting a guest, asking their favourite style. Make course, side dish, drink, dessert.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  And Christmas.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  And Christmas dinner. Not in that order.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Not in that order, thankfully.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  And this week, I've guested Chris McCausland.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Chris McCausland. Chris, if you say it quickly, it sounds like Christmas.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Christmas Ausland.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Christmas Ausland.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Christmas Ausland.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  And that's, of course, not the main reason we've got Chris on. We've got Chris on because he's a fantastic comedian.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Amazing comedian.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  A lovely man and he won Strictly Come Dancing, James.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  This is our first Strictly Champ?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know anything about Strictly.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Of course you don't.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's our first Strictly Champ.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  I think it might be our first Strictly Champ. I couldn't name any others apart from, Bill Bailey was here Strictly Champ?

• 1:55Speaker 03

  He was.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  We've not had him on the pod.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  No, which is criminal.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially at Christmas, Bill Bailey's.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, of course. Very Christmasy.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Dooley, we've had Dooley on, actually, James. Ben's just informed us.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Dooley loves a party.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Dooley loves a party?

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Dooley's, do you remember Dooley's toffee vodka?

• 2:11Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Okay. Chris has got a book out, uh, his autobiography, Keep Laughing. Chris has obviously done a lot in his life. He's got a lot of things to say. Can't wait to read the book.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  It's gonna be a fantastic book.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  The book, James, is also available in audio. Chris is reading it, the audio book. A great way to consume comedians' books, I think.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  And this podcast is available in audio and also visual on YouTube tomorrow.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Yes, very good. And also Benito's typing it all up as a book.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Is he?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, every single episode.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Is it just gonna be Benito's book?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called The Great Benito, the Off Menu Podcast.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  In my own words.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  And there's gonna be every episode available in loads of volumes and it's, you know, for people with library space.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Do we get any money from that?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Just him?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Wouldn't have thought so. Yeah, just him.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  But if Chris chooses the secret ingredient, ingredient which we deem to be unacceptable, we will have to kick him out of the dream restaurant.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  And this week, the secret ingredient is?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Chris Stingle.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Chris Stingle.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  It's another, another name thing and also it's Christmasy.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an orange that has loads of stuff stuck in it.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Um, you know.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Clothes.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Scholars have covered it.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Some of the great minds of the last millennium have covered the Chris Stingle.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  In a humorous fashion.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And some people thought they made it up.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, some people have said to those great minds, that's made up. And the great mind has had to say, no, it's real.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  What an awful routine that would be.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  An observational routine about something that you've made up.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Actually, that's quite funny.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  That's quite good. That would be fun.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Good idea, actually.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Um, but that makes me, it's unlikely that Christmas Ausland will choose the Chris Stingle, but, uh, if he does, he's out of here.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  He is out of here. This is the Off Menu Christmas Menu of Christmas Ausland.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Welcome Chris to the Dream Restaurant.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you very much for having me.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Welcome Chris McCollum to the Dream Restaurant.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  We've been expecting you for some time.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Now, James has lost his voice recently, Chris, so normally he'd do a big explosion and he'd shout.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  But what you went with there was actually, it was from the stomach, it was quite a good projection, I thought.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Wogan. Projected, he's also spilled a breakfast spaghetti down his trousers today.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  God damn it, Chris.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  And, and, and, you know, he has the perfect guest in front of him for this to be the day of a disastrous spillage. But yet still felt the need to, to talk about it, so he's.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  He also texted me about that and I thought, well, I must remember to bring that up on the episode because that'll annoy him. Luckily, I've got Chris here. Good one, quicker than I ever thought I would.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Well, it's not often I'm the only one without food down my trousers.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  It was, it was a breakfast wrap and they put too much sauce in it and they should let you know.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, did you, did you, did you kind of have a bit of a disaster yourself or did you bite one end and it squirted out of there?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Well, actually, so, yeah, first of all, I dripped on my right leg when I was eating it.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  So like dripped out of it and then I was like, oh no.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  You're so OCD that you had to do the other leg.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  But when I was sorting out my right leg, it came out the bottom on my left leg, so.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  See, to me, what this is.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  My left leg's worse.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  You know, when you're at school and someone came, came to school with like a big stain on their trousers and they'd be like, oh, I had a yogurt this morning and I spilled it or it's tiffed.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  It feels like that, it feels like.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's exactly where, if I had jizzed in my pants, it, it would be.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  So like, yeah, it's pretty annoying.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Because we've got three episodes today.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  And then after that, I've got to go and like try and pitch a TV idea to someone, well, that's not getting away.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Well, what's the TV idea? Is it about a man who doesn't wash his clothes and stuff?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  What?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  You could pivot, you could pivot and say you're in character.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  I mean, the state of TV in this day and age, it could be a reality TV show called Jizz or Not and then you've just got to guess whether somebody jizzed in their pants or have they had a bit of a food disaster.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Chris, that's a brilliant idea.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Oh, God, Channel 5.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  The follow up to Is It Cake or what?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is it jizz?

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Oh, have you ever had an episode star so low?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. It'd be nice to say no to that question.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  But let's elevate the episode. Let's talk about your book, Chris.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Keep laughing.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Keep laughing.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  The autobiography.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yes. Let's elevate this episode and not talk about jizz unless the whole book is about jizz.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Chapter, chapter 12 entirely about jizz.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Respect.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you read the index, the J page goes on for about.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Now, is this your first book?

• 6:54Speaker 04

  It is, yeah. At the minute, it's also the last one.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  It's both. It straddles both first and last, otherwise known as only.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  So you enjoyed writing it then? You enjoyed the process?

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Do you know what I did? Yeah, I wrote it this year. I wrote it this year.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Michael Joseph, part of Penguin. I never know whether I should call them Michael Joseph or Penguin, but you know, it's no one's heard of Michael Joseph. I don't know who Michael Joseph is, so people have heard of Penguin.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  They had a stroke of genius. They put the book on sale before I started writing it. There's nothing puts a rocket to your arse. Like a book being on sale, it doesn't exist.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  And what that meant is I didn't plan any of it. I just got stuck in and if I'd have been left to my own devices, I'd have gone round in circles and overplanned it and just, you know, what about this? What order should I put the chapters in that don't exist? And so I just started writing and I made sure I got to like 50,000 words before I even started looking how it went together and it's mad when you start writing because you've got no idea whether you've got the word count, you know? Like you don't know whether your story is the minimum word count and in the end it was like, well, it was well over to the point of arrogance, really.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  I'm thinking, I'm thinking people need to read 122,000 words about my life.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  How often are you checking the word count? Every time I've written a book, I just keep checking the word count like all the time to the point where I'm like, this is too much.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I'm just, I'm pushing the font size. Every time I'm writing it, I'm going bigger font every single time.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  It doesn't affect the word count, does it, mate?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but it affects how it looks on the shelf.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, more pictures. That's one thing they asked me. They went, we need to sort out the photographs for the book. I said, what do you mean the photographs? For the book? They went, oh, people put photographs in autobiographies. I said, I'm not putting photographs. I'm not being the only one that doesn't know what the photos are in my own book. People can use their imagination. I've used words to describe things. They can picture them in their minds.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  But no, do you know what? It was, it was good. It was easy. Well, that wasn't easy, but it was easier than it would have been a year before. So, you know, like, I, I did strictly and it kind of just changed how I felt about, about a couple of things really, about, you know, all the things that you'd be, you'd be typically closed off about and like, all your emotions and you keep them kind of buried away and you don't let people in. You've had a written area a year before, I'd have written just the jokes, just the funny stories. And they're all in there, but like, once you've cried on the telly in front of the 10 million people, you kind of feel a little bit more open.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Things, but also like, I was such a perfectionist, like, in that I would, I wouldn't kind of put things out if I didn't think they were good enough. And then all of a sudden, you know, you do this thing that teaches you that, you know, it, it, things can connect with people in a way that you don't expect when, if you just put yourself out there, it doesn't have to like it, I do, my, you know, the dancing wasn't the best dancing. And there are, you know, there are, there are greater works of, of, of, you know, literary kind of non-fiction out there. But if it connects with people, then that's the main thing, isn't it?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've said that, 4.9 stars on Audible.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  If you get half way through that sentence and realise I'm supposed to be promoting my book here and I've just said it's not the greatest work of literary.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Well, it's not, is it? I mean, it's hardly, it's hardly bloody Charles Dickens, is it? But, you know, for a comedian's autobiography, I think it more than holds its own.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Also do the comedy clubs of the UK and win a dance competition, Chris.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Also never had a chapter entirely about jizz.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  I know, I've never read any of his books, actually. He could have, Charles Dickens could.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Towards the end of Great Expectations.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, he always named his characters, didn't he, about like how they, their personality traits and things. That was the thing. You probably had a Mr. Jizz in one of his books.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  But it'd be like Mr. Jizzle, Jizzlekins or something.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  So we always start with still or sparkling water, Chris. Do you have a preference?

• 11:06Speaker 04

  I just think it's, I mean, I don't, I don't really trust, I don't really trust people who drink sparkling water.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Don't really, um, doesn't sit right with me.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  It's like someone sucked all the fun out of lemonade, innit?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  And, do you know what, like, I, I, you drink sparkling water, your brain expects fun.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  It's like you got Covid.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  It's just, there's just, it's missing something. It's the beverage equivalent of when you stand on an escalator that's not moving. Your brain's expecting one thing and you get an entirely different thing and there's just something not quite right about the universe.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  And I think people who enjoy sparkling water are people who are just so void of any fun and joy in their life, but like to pretend that they've got something going on.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's their idea of fun then.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I love bubbles.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  But not bubbles without the fun. The bubbles add to the fun. The bubbles make the fun better, but the bubbles aren't the fun.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  It's such a good comparison, that escalator thing, because even, even when you know the escalator's not working.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, your brain can't handle it.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Brain can't handle it and it's the same with sparkling water, you think, but even though you know it's sparkling water.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Your brain can't handle it. There's a moment where you just go, something's not right here. I feel like I'm kind of in a bit of a, the, the matrix is revealing itself.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  And, but the, the escalator thing's not even a visual thing because I, I still get it and I'm not seeing the escalator.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  It's, it's a, it's a psychology thing, you know, I still, I have the same thing with, you know, still water in a can. I still haven't got around that. My brain hasn't evolved yet to handle the fact that still water comes out of a can. And so that for me, still, there's a moment of where something isn't right.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, there, we've got a long way to go there because like, it, it, it's pretty important that we have water in cans for the planet and whatnot.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  But is it?

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Great question from Chris.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Is it, James? You've, you've said that because you've heard it somewhere. You've said that because somebody said it to you.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  That's one type of thing.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  You've regurgitated it like a piece of wisdom. You can't put the lid back on the can.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  That's not your idea.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  You've got two choices with the, with the water in the can. You either finish the can or you leave, you have your three swigs and you leave a can of water. You you can't take it with you. You don't trust a can in a bag. You got a laptop in a bag or you got your stuff. You don't trust the can.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  You you trust the bottle. You don't trust the can.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  For the environment, but bear in mind, every time I have a can of water, I take two sips and then throw the rest of it at a bird.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  I didn't know you did that.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you but you're the one who thinks it's good for the environment because someone else said it to you.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Jimmy, are you talking? I mean, I don't I don't know your your vernacular here. Are you talking like kind of tweety tweety? Or just some um just some woman walking down the street talking.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  No, I'm not. I'm I'm not going, yeah, I chuck it. I chuck it at a bird.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Because that would be bad for the environment, just sort of like.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Just your career.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  That'd be I'd post this podcast on my own. Benito would have to develop a personality pretty quick and get in that chair.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  How's Benito taking the flak here? He's just sat there. I'm the one who's just been accused of throwing cans at women and suddenly Benito's taking it in the neck for not having a personality.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  This is what I'm talking about. The dogs that the the guns are aimed at everyone.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Mexican standoff.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  I think Benito's just been told that there's a career opportunity there for him and he knows what he needs to do if he wants to take the make the most of it.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Chris, I've got to say.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Have you just met Benito for the first time today?

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it it would be his absolute nightmare to have to be on the podcast. He refuse. He sometimes his voice is in the edit because he can't get rid of it and he hates those days.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  He hates it. I imagine that when those days happen, he thinks in the edit, oh, can I get someone to like re-record that line? So it's someone else saying it.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  It's a funny name as well, isn't it?

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Benito, yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it sounds like what it like Benito sounds like some you'd order like a version of a taco or something.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  You're in, I like, do you want a taco or do you want a what's the other one you get? A fajita or do you want a Benito?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a cross between the two of them.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Sounds like something that James would have down his pants.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I don't need to do any work today. Chris has got this.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  He's absolutely roasting me for chucking all the food down my pan.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  What was in the breakfast wrap?

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Well, I made a mistake of ordering extra sausage. Um, so two sausages.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Um, bacon, scrambled egg. That was the killer, actually, because the scrambled egg then mortars down all the sauce and the sauce is like a a hot sauce, like a like a sriracha-y tomato sauce.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Sounds nice.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was nice, but you have a lot of liquid in there.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Do you want to shout out the place?

• 15:46Speaker 04

  I don't think he's done anything. I don't think they'd appreciate it.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think they would actually. Although the man was very nice, he gave me my food.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  So that was nice. That was a nice start to the day.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  And then I stupidly decided to eat it while walking, which I don't know why I did that.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Madness.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  Let's just have a moment there. Oh, yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  This is now what I know.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  I knew it. I knew this was gonna happen, Chris. I've given him the responsibility, as you saw before we started the podcast. I gave the responsibility that he's got to do the shouting. And I've said, that means you've got to know when to do it. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And during this whole bit, I was like, he's forgotten.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I didn't forget. I was just enjoying the chat. That's the problem. Because I enjoy just a nice chat, Chris.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  What shoutings you gotta do?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I gotta shout poppadoms or bread in a bit, but the idea is I surprise the guest, but it's not gonna surprise you now.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  To the least surprise.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  I wasn't listening.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Talk about something else for a sec.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Uh, Chris.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  Yes, mate.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Uh, you said.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Poppadoms or bread, Chris McCollum, and poppadoms or bread?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Were you surprised?

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Uh, oh, do you know what? Phew. Phew. That's all I can say to that. Uh, poppadoms or bread? Where am I? Who offers poppadoms or bread?

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Ed? Why did you do that, Ed? That's weird.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, good point.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. What kind of restaurant? In what kind of restaurant is that an option?

• 17:03Speaker 02

  It's the dream restaurant, Chris. It's, you know, over three hundred episodes. Um, it's the sort of thing you'd get at the start of a meal. So, you know, obviously, if you're in an Indian restaurant, they bring poppadoms at the beginning.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  If you, you know, many other restaurants bring bread.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  You know, there's other things as well, if you wanna hack it a little bit. But if you, if you had the choice between poppadoms or bread, which would you go for?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Do you know what? I mean, it depends. Like, bread's a funny one, isn't it? Like, we've kind of conditioned ourselves to think the bread dipped in vinegar is cultured. It's like, it, it, it feels like something you'd eat if you're in prison.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Oh, do you know what? Alls we got left is bread and vinegar.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  What, what was the crime?

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Have you ever tried dipping the bread in the vinegar? Well, it's, it's better than just the bread or the vinegar separately on their own.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the vinegar decontaminates the bread or something, isn't it?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  It's like, it's, it's probably one of the greatest successes in marketing, in the history of marketing, that they've managed to make bread and vinegar with a bit of oil. Like, something that we, we, we become excited about and feel cultured about.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  What crime did you do that made you go in prison for the bread and the vinegar?

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Um, throwing cans of birds.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Straight in the slammer.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, no, I, I, I mean, I love bread, but like, is bread dipped in a bit of oil and vinegar as, as good as people make out? I think we pretend it's better than it is, to be honest. Um, poppadoms, um, they, they stress me out. I can't handle the, um, the logistics of the sharing of the, um, sauces, especially because, you know, I don't have the, um, the, the optical, um, ability to kind of, um, interact with the, the sharing from the other people. I kind of hog one. Uh, the mango chutney I like, and then you get an oniony one, which is, um, you know, a bit too oniony. Uh, there's a hot one, and then a yoghurt-y one. I don't like the yoghurt-y one. Sometimes I get the yoghurt-y one, and I think I've

• 19:00Speaker 04

  got the mango one, because somebody's taking the mango one and put the yoghurt-y one where the mango one was, and I've spooned it on. I don't know what it is until I get it in my mouth. Um.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Who are you, who are you hanging out with that's having dinner with you and swapping the mango one with the yoghurt?

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Well, they're not swapping it. It's just that they'll have the yoghurt-y one, and then they'll go, oh, fancy a bit of mango on. So they pick the mango one up, then there's, there's a, because they take up too much space as well, don't they? Then there's a spacer, they put the yoghurt-y one where the mango one was. I picked that up, thinking it's the mango one. I spoon it on, mouthful of yoghurt, when I'm, when I'm expecting mango.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  And, and again, you know, the world's a bit funny then, isn't it? Because you're expecting one thing and you get another. Yeah. Um, so I, I find it quite, quite stressful. Um, I mean, the poppadoms, they're so minimalistic in their, um, you know, solidity, aren't they? Really, it, it's such a thin line between poppadoms and, and, and, and what do you call them? Do you call them dips or accompaniments or whatever?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Condiments, maybe.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  It's such a thin line between poppadoms and them, and just spooning the substance into your mouth, isn't it? It's like, there's, there's so little between. You might as well just go, just pass this out in the spoon, and I'll just eat mango chutney.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  And every so often, I'll have a bite of poppadom. I mean, why don't people do that? Actually, that'd be a lot less hassle, wouldn't it?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  You'd need a spoon each, I think.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Spoon a mango chutney, stick the poppadom in your mouth, have a bite of that, it's all in there. It would have been in there anyway. Um, and then have that. So.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  You could say that about all food though, couldn't you, Chris? Like, why are we having it all prepared as meals? Why don't we just eat each individual ingredient and it all mixes up in our stomach?

• 20:34Speaker 04

  Well, I'll tell you what, why do, why do, why do people spend so much effort balancing toothpaste on a toothbrush just to put it in your mouth? Squirt it in your mouth.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Balance it.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  What's the point of that?

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Balance it.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Everybody does it. Yeah, I'm gonna balance this on because it needs to ride the toothbrush into me mouth. Squirt it in your mouth and then just brush your teeth. It's all in there.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So do you put a line of toothpaste across your teeth?

• 20:59Speaker 04

  No, I just squirt it in.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Just squirt it in?

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. But like, I, I do that because it's a pain in the arse for me to try and balance the toothpaste. Like, I'll balance, I, I went through a period in my life when I was losing me sight. Trying to balance the toothpaste on the toothbrush and I get the toothbrush to me mouth and realise there was no toothpaste on it.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Right? So I just realised, well, I just squirt the toothpaste in my mouth, but now I do that.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  I don't know, why don't, why do, why does not everybody do that? Why do you all go through the palaver of putting it on the toothbrush?

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  And it's the same with poppadoms.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  You know when?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  You know when someone says something that you know you're gonna think about every day?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  So now every time I brush my teeth.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  I'm gonna think of you, Chris McCollum.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  I've just realised that, um, my electric toothbrush died this morning and then I forgot to put it on charge.

• 21:45Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  So now I'm gonna get home and I'm gonna have to wait before maybe to brush my teeth.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  You're gonna have to go manual.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  I mean, do you brush your teeth as soon as you get in?

• 21:52Speaker 03

  No, but like.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Well, then put it on charge.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  What's the problem?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  But I know I'm not gonna remember until I actually come to brush my teeth.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he's also gonna use it to clean his trousers.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, and that's why it all looked the way it does.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, so in answer to your question, um, I'll, I'll take the poppadoms and dips, but if I can get rid of the, um, the, the two I don't want. And, um, and if I can have my own.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  And if I can, um, just spoon the, the mango chutney into my mouth and then just have a p, a bite of poppadom to go with it. That makes it easier. I'll, I'll do that.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Brilliant. Perfect.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Dream starter, Chris.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Uh, do you know what? I love, um, I, I never, antipasti. Is it antipasti or antipasti? Yeah. Did I, did I say that right?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, antipasti.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  I'm looking, I'm looking ahead because.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Well, it depends what you're gonna say you want, Chris, because if you say antipasti and then you start, you're describing spaghetti.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  I've got to know what you said.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  I said it, I said it out loud and then I was like, is it antipasto?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  No, antipasto is right.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the starter. I, I, I love an arrangement of foods that I can just put in my mouth. And again, again, do you know what? I mean, completely coincidentally, we followed on here with a theme, haven't we?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  But I, I like the idea of just putting separate things in your mouth in different, in different combinations.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  And, um, and, and, you know, I, I kind of make my own little version of it at home in a way in that, you know, I'll, and I, I like standing up while I eat it as well. I'll, you know, I'll just stand in the kitchen and I'll have some meat and some cheese and some tomatoes and some maybe sun dried tomatoes, some olives and I'll just, I'll just sit there and I'll stand there and I'll, I'll just munch.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  And, um, and, and so the meats, the little bit of cheese, the mozzarella, some dried tomatoes and some different meats. I don't even know, I don't even need to know the meats. I just need to know that there's different meats.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And like, oh, that one's different to that one. I don't need to know where they came from, how long they've been aged.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  What part of the animal they're from or what animal it is. It's just, um, different meats.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Now, the only one I'm going to pick you up on there is you don't need to know what animal it is.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  Well, no, I mean, what, what I mean is I could probably tell when I eat it, but like, I don't need to know when it's on the way up to my mouth.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  You know, I'm happy with like, you know, just give me some different meats and I'll figure it out as I'm going. I'll play a little game. Um.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  That's good. We always like to add a game, a game element.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Don't, don't be, don't be giving me animals that don't belong on it.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  You know, but like a little bit of beef, some ham, um, you know, different types of, of, of, of ham. There's different names for that, isn't there?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  I don't need to know them. Just.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  I was going to list some and I was like, he doesn't want to know that.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Just, just give me them and, and, and those, those, you know, I've just slagged off the bread as a starter. Yeah. But those lovely soft, long breadsticks.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  That you get, that, that's where they belong. Get them on there. Cause you can, you can, you can wrap some meat around the end.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Put a bit of sun dried tomato with it. Have a bite of that. Then you've, you've kind of got a ham, breadsticks, sun dried. Something going on.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  And then next time, get a bit of mozzarella, put that on with a bit of olive. And then you've got like a completely different thing.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  You're basically cooking at this point.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Oh, cooking in my mouth.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  I would say balancing, isn't.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you're balancing.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  You're balancing here again.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  I am, but I'm. I am, but I'm holding it on with my fingers.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  My fingers just get, they just, yeah, they just get out of the way at the last minute, my fingers. Um, but anti-pasty, yeah, but I want anti-pasty for four, right? I don't, I mean, because if I'm, if I'm in a restaurant, I've, sometimes I've ordered the anti-pasty for two. Cause the anti-pasty for one is just not good enough.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  So I've ordered the anti-pasty for two just for myself and I've, I've, I've eaten it all. This is a dream restaurant, so sorry, I'm having the anti-pasty, I'm having the anti-pasty for four, don't know if they do it. Give me two anti-pasties for two, put them on a bigger plate.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Well, we can do it, absolutely.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  We'll do it for four.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  But we'll do it for four, like it would traditionally be in a restaurant, that amount. But here at the dream restaurant, we'll call it anti-pasty for one.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  But no.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  No?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  No, because then I feel like it undermines what I'm getting. I wanna know I'm getting it for four.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Would you like to know, like, would you like to, like, have three people in mind who aren't getting it?

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Do I wanna eat my anti-pasty for four in front of three people who are, who are salivating?

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Who do you want those three people to be?

• 26:23Speaker 04

  No, let, let them have their own anti-pasty for four.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  So, yeah, yeah, they can have their own thing. It's not, this isn't, this isn't a gluttonous thing of, oh, look what I've got and you've got nothing.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  It's not that kind of thing. It's just, um, it's just, I, I like a bit of anti-pasty. And, um, if it's for four, that's all the better.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  I completely agree. This is a perfect starter for me.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  The, the, the arrangement of hams, just like, yeah, you want all of those hams.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Oh, just like kind of slightly overlapping, found out, almost like pick a card, pick a meat. Pick a meat, any meat, don't, don't show me where it is. Put it in your mouth, put it in your mouth. Was it the, was it the pastrami? It was the pastrami.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Mozzarella, sun dried tomatoes, olives, that sort of stuff.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  Sun dried tomatoes. It's another one of those kind of weird foods, isn't it, that they've managed to sell to us? But it works, works, adds a bit of sweetness.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  I don't know how many, when you have sun dried tomatoes now, I don't think they could really have been dried by the sun.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  No, no, there's a process, isn't there? There's a, there's a, I mean, there's sun dried tomatoes and then there's some blushed tomatoes where they just, they've lost it, they've just been impatient. Just, just get them out, get them out, let's get the next lot in.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Legally, we have to expose them to the sun briefly.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not dried enough. Then call them something different.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  How long have they been around for, sun dried tomatoes? Cause someone's shown me some standards.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  As long as the sun, I think.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  What?

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Well, I would, I would actually say, I think the sun was around first, so as long as the tomato.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, as long as, yeah, they would have both had to been around, unless the tomato came before the sun, which I don't think it did.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  God said, let there be light and tomatoes.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  And then very quickly afterwards, he said, let there be tomatoes and then sun dried tomato and that, that begat, sun dried tomatoes.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  I've got to read the Bible again.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  Begat? I loved, I loved the authenticity of begat there. That was a, was a nice little use of language.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  People are going to bring begat back, I think.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, sometimes people order a begat when we, um.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Well, you had a, you had a breakfast begat, didn't you?

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Oh, god damn it.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Oh, god damn it.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Breakfast begat.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Breakfast begat, you're dirty as trousers.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Dream main course, Chris? Um, dream main course, we didn't talk, did you want to know who I want there?

• 28:43Speaker 03

  What?

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Did you want to know who I want there at the dinner?

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. I, I thought you did it one of the, yeah, yeah. Who are the three other people you're going to eat?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  They're also, they also get an antipathy.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  I don't want to give them an antipathy. I want them to have to watch Chris eat an antipathy for four.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's weird. Who do people pick on this usually? Like, do they pick like?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Sometimes their friends and family, sometimes from celebrities I'd like to meet.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Sometimes they say that we can be there, but.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I don't want that.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Um, although, you know, James, James would take some of the heat off any spillages I have.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? Like, I'd imagine people on this a lot kind of pick people who like they, their dream kind of dinner guests, they go, oh, do you know what? Like, imagine having dinner with Jimi Hendrix or, but like, do you really want to have your dinner with Jimi Hendrix? I mean, does Jimi Hendrix want to have his dinner with you? That's the thing. Is there any point in picking somebody that's gonna be miffed that they're there?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Hendrix would be livid, wouldn't he?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, he wouldn't.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Oh, he wouldn't want to have dinner with me. He's ruining the whole thing.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Would you not want Eddie Vedder there?

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Again, again.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Chris loves Pearl Jam. I didn't know you loved Pearl Jam, Chris.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Pearl Jam on Celebrity Mastermind.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Oh, great.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  I just, yeah, I think sometimes these people will add a little bit of pressure to dinner that you don't need. You always feel like you've got a kind of, um, you can't, I can't, I can't enjoy the antipasti in the way that I want to enjoy it. Do I only shoving random foods into my mouth in front of Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm not sure. Do you know what? I'd love to have, I'd, I'd love to have, I'd love to have my dinner. If I can, um, enter a fictional world, I, I'd love to have my dinner in an episode of Frasier. I'd love to be there with Frasier Crane and Niles. And, um, Daphne and Martin, like the original Frasier. Um, I'd love to be in there. I'd love to be, I could be like a less annoying version of Daphne's Northern Family.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  From the later series, yeah. And, um, just to be in there and to be part of the farce, the pretense and the, um, yeah, and, um, I think my favorite thing on, I, I loved Frasier. It was my favorite sitcom. I loved when Niles, um, was going out with Daphne and she was taking him to a concert and he said, "I might dress appropriately for something called Bananarama."

• 30:52Speaker 02

  I love that this man's gonna be in an episode of Frasier.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  We know what the side dish is gonna be.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. There you go. So, um, I'd love to have my dinner. Yeah, I'd love to be, um, in an episode of, um, they do a good antipasti.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, Niles.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, they would, they would put that together beautifully. But they'd tell you what all the meats are. They'd love to take you through what all the meats are.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  They, they would. I, you know, I'd put up with it for that.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, they would love to do it.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Today's episode of the Off Menu podcast is sponsored by Cozy, the home of possibilities, James.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Ah, man, Ed, Cozy has everything you need to make your home feel like it has a plan. Do you know what I mean?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  I know what you mean. Cozy is a wonderful furniture company. It makes furnishing your whole home easy. Sofers, dining, storage, rugs, bedroom, even outdoor, all designed to make your space feel put together without the usual furniture stress. And James, we talk about dream meals on this podcast, but you know what? We very rarely talk about where we want to eat this dream meal.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, I like it when it does come up. It is very important. It changes the whole meal, the setting, the vibe. And Cozy's modular, customisable furniture for the whole home does just that.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  And the meal, James, doesn't necessarily end at dessert. We've often talked about wanting to take our maybe final course through to a comfy room. And I think this is where Cozy can really come in handy. Go and relax on the sofa, maybe even eat your meal at a lovely, beautiful, cosy table, linger a little bit, move through with coffees and dessert to a lovely couch. But I know what you're like, James, you're a mucky pup.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  I'm gonna spill stuff everywhere. Is that gonna ruin the Cozy furniture?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  No, don't worry about that, James, because it's highly washable, James. It's sauce, wine, sparkling water, dessert crumbs, you telling one of your big stories and sloshing a coffee everywhere. Don't worry, you can pop it in the wash.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Oh, so you're saying Cozy makes every day at home feel like my best day?

• 32:40Speaker 02

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• 32:56Speaker 03

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• 33:08Speaker 02

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• 33:14Speaker 03

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• 33:28Speaker 02

  Okay, back in course.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Me wife's Brazilian and I must admit that the Brazilian offerings of food are absolutely solid.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  They are, you know what I mean? Brazil, solid offerings.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Um, they love steak, you know.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I love that cheese bread, you know, it's like pandecaho or something where it's like, looks like a bread roll and then you tear it open and there's more cheese than bread in there.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely amazing.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  They've got a lot of the baked goods are nailed in Brazil. A lot of kind of pastels which are like, you know, egg and chicken and in like a pastry kind of suet thing and chicken and cheese fried sandwiches, it's phenomenal. But like, so they do pecanha, which is steak and it's steak cooked on a, I think they cook it on like an open flame, but it's just salted, it's really salted, just salty steak. And then they'll carve it thin into small pieces. There's only one thing better than, I love a meal, you might have figured out that, I don't have to use a knife, right?

• 34:48Speaker 04

  So you get the steak kind of in bite sized pieces, you can just eat it. Comes with like black beans, garlic and onions in, they've got this thing called farofa, which I always take the piss out of because it's like sand, it's like someone who's emptied their flip flop on your plate. It, you know, it's like a pile of sand, I think they make it with flour, it looks like a grain, but it mops up the black bean sauce and the garlic and just kind of gets involved with the other foods. And I'll have some chips with that, some chips and yeah, steak, black beans, farofa, it's good.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  The farofa thing is wild because I've been to Brazil and I had no idea what it was, but you're right, it sort of, it soaks up whatever moisture's left, right? And then you've just got a completely flavoured, flavoured sand, but it's almost like clumping cat litter is.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it works.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  It does well.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  It works.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  It's delicious.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  You wouldn't eat it on its own.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it'd be like a little cup of sand. A cup of sand. Um, but when you've got a bit of juice going on, you've got a bit of meat juice, you've got a bit of black bean juice. Um, it, it, it all lends itself and everything on that plate can be eaten with a fork. You can just kind of stab and shovel and get involved and get like, there's loads of garlic in the, in the, um, black beans and that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's good.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Do you like the Brazilian barbecue places where they bring around the skewers and just cut, cut it off for you?

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love it. Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  And they just keep going.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  And you have your little, uh, traffic light on your table and they completely ignore it.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  You know, green means meat, red means come over and check if I want some meat.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I just noticed your thing because I'm ready. You sure you don't want to? Oh, go on then, go on then.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would have been to one of those places once, but that was, that's exactly the experience. They, that, and, and also they told me about the system really strictly beforehand, as if I wasn't going to be able to do it.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  And then they didn't do it.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  I went to one in Philadelphia.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Called Fogo de Chao, which I think is a chain.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  That's the one I went to.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, but in LA.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Oh, and I went absolutely wild, obviously. I, I ate so much meat. And the salad bar as well is basically like, you can just go and get huge chunks of Parmesan. So I did that and I was only staying in Philadelphia for one night and went back to the hotel room and did the worst farts I've ever done all night, to the extent the next morning I checked out and I felt guilty. It was like they're gonna have to burn, they're gonna have to burn the whole hotel now. This is the worst. It was in the curtains by the end.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Oh, man. You have to, uh, my mother-in-law does this thing whenever she, whenever she, she wants to get rid of an odor in the kitchen, in, in the kitchen, in the, in the bathroom, she'll, she'll, she, she, she lights a match and waves it around as if she's just burning the, the fart.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  I think that works.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  You reckon?

• 37:45Speaker 03

  In his bedroom that night.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  In his ship, Brazil?

• 37:48Speaker 02

  It would have been like a terrorist.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Flame in head in the toilet.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  But does it, but does it work because it does what, what like she claims it does? That it burns the aroma in the air? Or does it work because the room just now smells a burnt match?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  That one, yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  It's definitely just because it smells of it. You just put a stronger smell in.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Just the stronger smell in, yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  How often have you been to Brazil, Chris?

• 38:10Speaker 04

  A few times. Um, yeah, not as often as, so my, my mother-in-law lived over there, but she was, she also, she came over when we had our daughter. And, um, she lived over here for, for ages. Um, it, it, you know, for all of its good points with the food, it, it, it's bloody hot, isn't it? Oh God, it's so hot.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  It's, I remember when first time, I remember when the first time I went, me, me, me wife was like bigging it up and she was going, oh, the food, you're gonna love the food, you're gonna love.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  She was bigging it up?

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, bigging it up.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Her country?

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, but this is.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  She knows his feelings on some country.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  She goes, it's, um, oh, the food, the steak, the blah, blah, blah. And she goes, the beer, the cold beer, oh, they love a cold beer. Brazilians know a good beer, they love a cold beer. And I turned up, do you know what it was? Skull, skull everywhere. They sell it in the shops, they sell it on the beach, they have guys walking up and down the beach with bags of skull. I said to her, skull is like literally like, the only place you can buy it's Quick Save in nineteen ninety-two. Um, but yeah, so they love a cold skull. Um.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  But in that heat, anything, any cold beer is good, right?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it, it's, it's so hot. I, I, I had this thing with it where like we were, you couldn't walk on the sand. It was so hot, the sand that you couldn't, it burned your feet trying to walk across to find that where you were gonna go to like pitch up on the sand. And I said to her, why can't I just wear me socks? And she said, I'm not taking you out with socks on the beach. I said, well, why can't I just, like, it makes no sense because we're walking on the beach, it's too hot. Then we're putting the towel down and we're standing on the towel and we're letting our feet regain a little bit of normality before getting off the towel and wa- walking, carrying and walking, then we're putting the towel down. We're standing, I said, if we put socks on, it's like we've got towels on our feet. We've just got towels on our feet. We can just walk and then take the socks. She said, no, I'm not being seen with socks on the beach.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  I said, well, there you go, you're putting completely kind of aesthetic qualities of a practicality.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  It's a fun return home for your wife.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, feet towels.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  And wait till you hear my ideas about toothpaste.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you know what, though? If like, if there was no such thing as socks.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  And then somebody like, somebody said like, oh, I've invented something. You just put it on your feet and then you can walk on the beach. It's called feet towels.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  They, they would sell like hotcakes. Everyone would be like, oh my god, feet towels have changed the world. My life is now completely different.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  With feet towels.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Feet towels.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Cause of feet towels.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  This is, it's a shame really that socks got in there.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  Socks got in there, they've ruined it.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Now people can't view them differently.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  I guess you could bring out feet towels and just make sure they're made of the exact same material as a towel. It could be your, this could be your Dragon's Den moment.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  What do you reckon Stephen Bartlett would say to him? I'm stood up there in front of him. I'm saying, he's saying, how high up the leg do they come? I'm like, well, they just need to be trained a size because it's only the soul of the food that is protecting Stephen.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  And they are made of, of regular towel material. Um, and, and I reckon they'll, they'll sell like, um, hotcakes in, um, a very small.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  That phrase, cause it's, you're meant to be cooling your feet down. So don't, yeah, maybe selling like cold cakes.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  They'll smell like cold sandwiches.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  In a very small number of countries.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you might lose Bartlett on a very small number of countries.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Your dream Christmas dinner.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Merry Christmas.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Merry Christmas, Chris.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Ho, ho, ho. Um, cream, a cream, dream Christmas dinner.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Great. If your dream Christmas dinner is just some cream.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Um.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  A bowl of cream, please. I'll laugh like a cat.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Do you know what? Like, I had, um, I, I remember going back years. I had this Christmas dinner that I, um, so I would. This must be like in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, somewhere around there. And I'd cooked it, right? And, and we had, um, friends coming over and one of them's an Italian chef. And so I'd really, really planned this Christmas dinner. Yeah. And like, you know, there's a lot, a lot of things going on. I'd researched what I need to do to make everything good. I didn't want to be showing up. Yeah. And I'd like worked out the times. I kind of half cooked some things and then put them on the side so I could put them on. Have everything done at the right time. I had the times all worked out. Four different timers going at once for things and I had it, it couldn't have been

• 42:36Speaker 04

  gone better and then he turned up and he, he rolled a spliff. And, and he said, have some of this and I just, I, I, I, in, in the space of two minutes, I forgot everything that was on the oven. I literally, there was like, honestly, I, you, you can imagine that this, the chaos in my mind of like, I couldn't even see what was on the oven. I couldn't even remind myself visually. I lost track of all the times, I lost track of what I was cooking. I, I, I, I just ended, the whole thing was so farcical to me that I thought it was all ruined. I thought that's it, the dinner's gone and then he stepped in and he saved the dinner because he's an Italian chef.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  But, but the combination of having this dinner that I was half responsible for, that I thought I'd lost, that suddenly somebody else stepped in and saved and probably made better than what I would have made it and combined with the fact that I now had the munchies.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  I absolutely love that sliding doors moment of you've got everything prepared and then an Italian chef comes over and says, do you want some of this? And it's just, it's yes or no and the day is so different based on which question, which answer you go with.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Oh god, I couldn't even tell you what vegetables I was cooking. Oh, it's just, I was just, I had no idea of anything. I didn't even, I didn't know where to begin and um.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Oh god.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that, that was, that was a good Christmas dinner for a lot of reasons.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Oh wow, was that, so was that like the traditional Christmas dinner? Was it like turkey and all the?

• 44:08Speaker 04

  So I don't, I don't really go for the turkey. I don't, I, I can't, I can't cook a turkey. I'll have a, you know what, like, uh, just for tradition's sake, if I'm out somewhere that's doing Christmas dinners, I'll, I'll have a turkey, a turkey dinner like once a year, just to say I've done it. Um, cranberry, I don't, keep your cranberry sauce. I, I, do you know what, I, I don't get it. I don't understand why. It's like one kind of mad person did it 200 years ago. Like, you know what, I'm gonna put jam on a dinner.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  Like, like just some absolute loon. What, what's, what we got? Well, we've only got five things left. We've got some turkey. We've got some jam. Let's have turkey and jam.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  It was probably like, um, like a member of the aristocracy or something, or someone in the royal family. So everyone had to agree with it and eat it at the same time.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like a thing that we have to do. It's, it's just, it's, do you have a Christmas dinner sandwich? Oh, it's, it's, it's just like someone, it's like somebody's combined a, a meat sandwich with a jam sandwich.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  You like jam, don't you? You like Pearl Jam?

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Which I just remembered what Pearl Jam means.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all down your trousers.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  There's just no way of you editing that out now, is there? It's been such a key part of the thread of the podcast.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  It's a runner.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  Um.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  I'm on my trousers.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  I, I, you know, get rid of that. I, I, I think Christmas dinner is as much about enjoying the leftovers.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  As it is about the dinner itself.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  And on that regard, yeah, just a ham, ham, lovely ham. Uh, ham for your, cause ham's great cold, ham's great hot, ham's great cold, ham's great sliced thin fat chunks. In a sandwich on its own, used as a vehicle for something else.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  Almost like it's like a meaty poppadom, you know, you can just.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Ah, so ham, lots of ham.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Christmas ham?

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Christmas ham, yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Something like a lovely gammon, basically, like a big slices of gammon.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah, and then it, it's, it's good then in any form over the next few days, isn't it?

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Um, love a ham. Um, the stuffing's good. Again, with the apple sauce, like, I'm not as anti-apple sauce as I am cranberry, but I still wouldn't put it on my dinner.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Now, like, just give it to yourself. It's, it's not as harsh and as jam-like as cranberry.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  But still, it's not for me.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  I do kind of agree with you on the, on the sweet sauces. I would do it out of tradition, but, um, how do you feel about bread sauce?

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a bit savoury, isn't it? I mean, you have it with the turkey, don't you? You don't have it with ham.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  You could have it with ham.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Could you have it with ham?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  I'd I'd I'd have bread sauce with ham. I'd have I'd I'd pop horseradish with ham. I'd pop mustard. I'd pop mustard with ham, Chris.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's weird, isn't it? Because like I've only ever had mint sauce with lamb. I wonder where the mint sauce would go with other things. It's never been it's never been an available option for me to just.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Work in a kitchen and we'd make a like an onion salad with mint sauce and just had to mix it all together and it was actually really nice.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Put send that out and that was with other dishes that weren't just lamb. They because I can't actually remember what it was with now, but like it was quite a popular item on the menu.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  I'd go mint jelly over mint sauce anyway. I love mint jelly.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Know that about you.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  I I I remember when I was a kid, this has gone back years. I I remember having um like a a side, like a little spooned out kind of um combination on a salad of of um of celery, um beetroot and apple. Like chunks of apple and that that was that was good. Like apple adding a bit of um sweetness on like in that form to a to something that's um savoury was good. Um but not I think the sauces just get a bit a bit sickly, don't they?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  They sort of take everything over.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, they take over, yeah. Um no, I'm happy with the gravy, to be honest. Gravy, parsnips, carrots, get a bit of bro- I know broccoli's not traditional, but it it it it absorbs gravy. It's a good. I also like to pretend I'm a giant when I eat broccoli and like I've pulled up trees from the road. And then I like go, ah, and I eat it. Like, I honestly do the noise like I'm kind of. I don't know, like giants can't eat anything without going, like before they put it in their mouth. They probably just eat like us, don't they? Just bigger.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I just imagine your Brazilian wife sat there now.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  So why she doesn't take me out? So why she doesn't take me out? I'm at the restaurant.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Feet towel.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Roast potatoes, parsnips. I, I, do you know what, like parsnips for me, that I, there, there seems to be a trend of trying to make the parsnip the full length of the parsnip. You know?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Interesting, yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you, um, and it, it, it's quite lethal for a blind man, having a, a sharpened parsnip.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  On a fork, because you don't know, first of all, often you don't know what you've got on your fork. Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  Also, even if you do know what to pass them, you don't know where you've skewered the parsnip, you don't know how much of the spike, you, I've had them up me nose and everything. So, you know, you go to, you go to kind of get one in your mouth and it kind of hits you with it up the nose, in the, in the eye. Quite a lethal vegetable, especially if it's well roasted, quite sharp on the end.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we've got to stick to the tradition with parsnips, which is you get the fat end and then the spike, the spiked end, right? Two separate parsnips.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I shorten them.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. You shorten them even more.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  The thing for me, when that happens, it's often the short end, the flat end, looks like a roast potato. So I think I'm, it's like, it's like you with the poppadom dips. I think I'm getting a roast potato and then it turns out it's a parsnip. I'm not happy with that. I don't like that.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  No, is, is, is there, do they look the same or you just, wow, okay, yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Chris, I'll, I'll offer a counter argument and say they don't look the same.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  They don't, I wouldn't imagine they look the same.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  They look the same?

• 50:07Speaker 04

  No.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  They're identical, Chris.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Are they, they're not identical, mate? I think you're cutting your potatoes too small.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're cutting your potatoes too small and cutting the ends off weirdly.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Chris is the one who's in the right here and Chris is blind.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Well, Chris is telling you, they don't look the same and he's.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  It's a low point for me. Of the podcast.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  They don't look the same and your trousers look fine.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Do you know what, like, the amount of times as well, I tell you, this is the worst, this is the worst, is when you're having your dinner, like, not being able to say, it's like Russian roulette, you don't know what you got, so you got it, yeah? And then the number of times I've thought I'm biting into a juicy quarter of tomato and it's a whole piece of lemon. And yeah, but I mean, that is the, that is the opposite of fizzy water. That is, you know, the fizzy water, you think you're getting something and you're getting nothing, yeah? That, you think you're getting a little bit of something, you're getting everything. You're getting too much, too much.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Your dream side dish, Chris? Now, is that just the chips that you chose earlier?

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there was chips with the pecan, you're right.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  But if you have a different side dish you'd like to pick?

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this is really sad, but when I was in uni, I, I used to love pot noodle sandwich.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  And it's sad, yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Piece of white bread with a beef and tomato pot noodle.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Spoon it onto the white bread.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  Don't even butter it, just fold it over, just a pot noodle fold over.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  And that was, that was a hearty meal for a starving student. And I'd never dream of making one now, you know, at the distinguished day, distinguished age that I am, but this is a fantasy dream restaurant, isn't it?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Where, what, what, what, what goes on in the fantasy dream restaurant stays in the fantasy dream restaurant.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Um, so, um, yeah, I think I'd like one single white bread pot noodle fold over. I also remember, do you know what, like, I was so kind of, um, unworldly with my foods. Like, the first time I ever had pizza was, um, um, when I was a student at uni. I'd never eaten pizza, it just wasn't a thing that would like, I mean, it was a thing, but there was, like, there, there just wasn't, we didn't go out for, we didn't go to pizza restaurants when I was younger. Going to a restaurant just wasn't a thing that we did really, do you know what I mean? And I, and I also didn't like cheese when I was younger. And I didn't know that melted cheese tasted so much differently to blocks of cheese.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  And, um, and a mate of mine at uni said, do you want a piece of this pizza? It was a ninety-nine piece Sainsbury's kind of thin smear of cheese on a burnt bread base. And with like eight pieces of pepperoni on it. And I said, no. And he went, you sure it's good, you know? And I had a piece. And it was the greatest culinary revelation of my life. Is that piece, that single piece. And I'm glad I started with a ninety nine pence pizza, because if I'd have gone straight in Domino's, I don't, I probably wouldn't be here to tell the tale. I, it would have been too much for me.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  So that moment was um, one of the greatest kind of shifts in my eating, was the realisation that melted cheese and pizza was incredible. And, and I, I still had the world of pizza to enjoy from that moment. I'd started at the bottom. It's the best place to start.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, now we're here.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  Um, but you know what? If I could recreate that moment.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 04

  Of that first piece of pizza, back then, just give me that as a little side.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Nice. So we're dispensing with the pot noodles.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  I think I, I'm gonna give Chris both, because I, I like both.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  The pot noodle fold over.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  I think we're like doing like Chris's uni years.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, uni, university years.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  University platter.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  As the, um, as the side dish.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Because I don't think we'll ever have a pot noodle fold over again on the podcast.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this, we've got to grab this with both hands. Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Very much sounds like an invention that Chris has come up with.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  I could add it to towel socks or whatever.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:15Speaker 04

  Feet towels.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 04

  Trademarked, TM, copyright, two thousand twenty five.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  I don't know how Bartlett is gonna respond to the pot noodle fold over. I, I can't see him going in on this.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Well, if he's out, if he's out for.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Sprinkle some heel on it.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  If he's out for the feet towels, imagine Dragon's Den, he's out for the feet towels. Chris doesn't get investment leave. The next person in is Chris, clearly just wearing a hat.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Holding a sobby.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  He's like, right, it'll be out. That's you. I know that's you.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  I tell you what, as well, back in the day, like going back to like, I don't know, late nineties or something like that, um, you go into a festival, like you went to the Reading Festival or something like that in the late nineties. They would have a pot noodle stand, an official pot noodle stand.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Right? And, um, and it was a giant pot noodle.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  And you'd go into the pot noodle to order a pot noodle. And I like, I would, I would go in to get a pot noodle.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Just because the thrill of being in a pot noodle was so much fun.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  That you're like, the idea of being in the pot noodle was better than the pot noodle. So you almost feel like you were going on a ride.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Do you want your dream meal to be in a pot noodle?

• 55:24Speaker 04

  A massive pot noodle.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  A Christmassy one.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, if it fits, if it fits the format.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Can we not, let's not forget that this is, this will have to be a big pot noodle restaurant in the middle of an episode of Frasier.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. I love it.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Giant pot noodles, size of the Seattle Space Needle.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  But hon- honestly, like walk, like, so the whole, it just looked like, cause I could see back then, so we did, for the people at home, it just looked like a huge pot noodle.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  And, but the front of it was cut out like a little doorway and you'd walk in the pot noodle and you'd come out the big pot noodle with a little, with a little pot noodle. Um, and even just, even just now, the thought of it's making me giddy with like, it's, it's a thrilling thing to do. Where, where else do you get to go in a big thing and come up with a littler version of the big thing?

• 56:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's not enough of that in life.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Eiffel Tower, maybe?

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, okay, that's a commemorative thing, isn't it? Like, yeah, but.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  But not an actual, it's not a working, yeah, I know what you mean.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Outside of landmarks.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  The, the pot, big pot noodle is probably the only example of that.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  I mean, if you got to like, if you were at a burger shop, make it a big burger and then the amount of people that would go in the big burger to come up with a little burger.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  Oh, your burger sales will go through the roof.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Your dream drink?

• 56:48Speaker 04

  I don't think my dream drink exists.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I love.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Bart, Bart, that's getting ready to hear this.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  This is the third time you've been in it tonight, Chris.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Here we go, Chris again.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  I, I love, I love it, um, and I, I always get confused, I, I always got confused with between ginger ale and ginger beer, right?

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Hmm. And, and now I came up with a way of remembering it and it is the, um, ginger beer, cheer. Ginger ale, fail.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 57:20Speaker 04

  And um and and that's because ginger ale, I think, is like a bit too lemonadey.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  Um and ginger beer is the gingery bum with a bit of a kick.

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  Um no, I don't like it sweet. I like it quite, you know, dry and gingery. But whenever I have a ginger beer, I always think, I wish this was more gingery.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  So I want the most gingery ginger beer, like so like I want it hot. I want it to burn the back of my throat. I want it to be, I wanted to, I want it to come with some pain. Like you would get with a chili, like you get, you know, people enjoy hot foods and hot sauces and and and there's a certain level of kind of pain that comes with the enjoyment. So there's this physical reaction, there's a sensation to it. I want a ginger beer that kicks my ass.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we we could do that for you. I can use my genie powers and make it the most gingery fiery ginger ginger beer.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  What's the, what's the ginger beer that's commercially available that you think gets closest to that?

• 58:20Speaker 04

  Um I I lo- I I mean, I like, I like a Fentiman's because the Fentiman's comes in a decent sized bottle. Sometimes if you order a ginger beer, you get like a tiny little miniature that they'd use the top of a like a a a short. Um the Fentiman's comes in a decent sized bottle, like two hundred milliliters or something. And it's, it's not too sweet. It's quite, it tastes quite dry. Um so that's kind of the go to if you're out and about, but like it could do, like I'd love like an ultra version.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Extreme, Fentiman's extreme.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I really want a ginger beer now.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've sold it well, haven't I?

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  And imagine going in a massive ginger beer to get a smaller ginger beer.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's gonna happen for the the dream restaurant.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  I can make sure, we can make sure that every course.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  You're in a giant. When you're eating.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Drinking it.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  That that would be um that that that would be good, yeah, except I don't know how you do a big poppadom. It'd just be like a, like a gazebo, wouldn't it, where the top was the poppadom?

• 59:17Speaker 03

  It would have to be.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Otherwise it'd just be a door, wouldn't it? You just walk through and you're out.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, you smash right through it.

• 59:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think if you had a gazebo as well with the top as a poppadom, you'd get sick of having to point it out to people, wouldn't you?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  Because like massive pot noodle, looks like a big pot noodle, where you'd have to say to people, do you like the gazebo? And they go, yeah, it's it's nice, and then you have to go, the top's a poppadom, don't you? Oh, is it? Yeah, I never noticed that. Yeah, it is. Oh, I can, now you've pointed it out, I can see it.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  We know that all too well. We had, we had, we did a live show, this podcast, we had a set behind us with a massive giant poppadom. And everyone just thought it was the moon.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like the moon.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Every guest was like, it's the moon.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  But it's not the moon, the poppadom's from the show.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Come on, it's from the show.

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  They, they, no. Ginger beer always makes me think of the famous five.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  They would always have ginger beer, lashings and lashings of ginger beer. Do you think you'd be a good addition to the famous five, Chris?

• 1:00:13Speaker 04

  Um, do I?

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  If you were solving crimes with four kids and a dog?

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  Um, I go, do you know what, like, I, yeah, I, I think I, it's of a time, isn't it?

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. They solve crimes.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  I, I like the words.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  They caught criminals and stuff.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  I like the words they use, you know, there's always those words, isn't there? The good food words that she used in those books, like she'd mix the words up, wouldn't she? Like dolumpshus and skrilicious and things like that. So, um, yeah, it's innocent times, isn't it? Yeah, I'd imagine being in a gang that sells crimes.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  They didn't solve proper crimes, though, did they?

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, there'd be like drug dealers in the lighthouse or something.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  They didn't do drug dealers in a lighthouse, did they?

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  I thought they stayed clear of murder, and did they do murders?

• 1:00:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, five, um, five finder, shipload of cat.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  We arrived to drink dessert, Chris.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Do you have one?

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  What, what are we in a giant one of now?

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  Oh, God, this meal's dragging, isn't it? Um, yeah, no, um.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  When we can see the exact moment our guest runs out of energy.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  I, I, I, so I love, or I did love, I probably wouldn't love them now, but like I did, I love a school dessert. And when I was in school, I loved school desserts. And I always remember the joy of a pink custard day. Or a chocolate custard day. And they're probably so sweet for my forty eight year old palate now. But like if I could eat those desserts with the palate of a child. And the the just the amount of custard, the the like I uh. What winds me up is when you go somewhere and you order a pudding that should be in a bowl and it comes on a plate. And and they, you know, you get like, oh, I love the treacle sponge and custard.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  And you get a block, a little block of sponge on a plate with a drizzle of custard on it. And you wanna send it back and go where where where where is this an acceptable vehicle? For treacle sponge and custard, I I I want it swimming in it. I want a bowl, I want a bowl that facilitates the custard being higher than the sponge. I wanna be surprised when I see sponge in there. You know, I want it to be a bowl of custard and I wanna excavate the sponge like I'm an archaeologist. Um, so good old school desserts with huge amounts of custards. Of various fluorescent colours, yeah, with with the palate of a child.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  So we're going with the treacle sponge, is that the one that you you would have?

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  Love a treacle sponge, yeah, a good old spotted dick, a um, even like a Bakewell Bakewell tart with custard.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  Um, love all them, yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  I love jam rolly poly a big time.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  With a good old, I mean, a pink custard. Do do do, I mean, do does that still exist? Do people still have pink custard?

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  I've not come across pink custard for a while. When you did strictly, did you have to change your diet at all?

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  When I did, so when I did strictly, which I um, talk about in my book, Keep Laughing, which is out for Christmas, um. Makes a um, the the PR guys out there, they'd be, they'd be like, oh god.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  They left ages ago, Chris.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  Thank god he's brought it back to the book. I I could eat what I wanted, like literally, it was insane. Like, we'd be training eight hours a day. I I would have a I would have a burger for like a Tuesday dinner time. Who was having a burger for a Tuesday dinner time at the age of forty eight and then? And then I'd go, John, I'll have a burger again on the Wednesday or. And I it just didn't matter. I I was, I was eating chocolate like it was Christmas. And and then it was Christmas. And and so there was, the calories didn't matter. I ate what I wanted and I still lost weight. It was in, it was insane. Um, but you know, to counterbalance that, I was also held together with physio tape.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it was, um, physically kind of slowly ripped me apart over four months. People go, do you feel healthier? I literally feel like I've been in a car crash.

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  Like, um, me, um, me, me arse is literally sellotape to me back. I like with actual pieces of tape. They've, they've taken tape, they've attached it to my cheeks. And they've stretched that up to my shoulders.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  And they've gone, this will hold you in the form of a human for another week.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  You just say to your wife, that's a Brazilian butt lift.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  Lovely.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, so I could eat what I wanted. It was, it was good. But then you've really got to rein it in when it finishes because you don't carry on dancing. And that's the one thing you can't carry anything like that. Otherwise you, uh, it, it all goes wrong, doesn't it?

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  It was great. Uh, it was great to watch it every single week, but, but every time we like, I can't believe I'm still in it.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I, I honestly told, I said no to it a few times because I didn't think it was possible. I thought like, I'm all for diversity. I'm like, we should have more diversity, more representation across mainstream programme. Do you want to do strictly? Are you insane?

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  Literally insane.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  In what world do you think this is even possible? And I didn't, I didn't know what it was they were asking me to do because I couldn't, you can't describe it. Describe it. It was dancing, but how good, how technical, how fast, what are the dances? So the only way I, I was able to figure out what it was they wanted me to do was by doing it. So it was so the unknown, most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life. And, you know, top 10 scariest things I've ever done in my life, 10 episodes of Strictly, hands down. It was, it was that, that feeling of eight million people watching at home. And you're in the studio while that VT plays and you're just waiting for this moment of reckoning. And then it comes in the studio and they go, dancing or whatever, Chris. And hon- honestly, the, the nerves, I've never felt anything like it.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  Um. And you just have to flick those switches in your head and just try and belt through it, you know, but it is um, it's terrifying, which is why as soon as that dance was over, if I felt like I'd done a good job and we put the hours in, we'd done all right, I went straight into comedy mode, because that was my safety, that, you know, that was like, uh, I've just blacked me, well, I've just blacked myself as a dancer for the last two minutes. Yeah, now let's take the piss out of Craig and have a laugh and, and do something that I, I know I can do. And um, and it, it worked. People kind of, um, people liked it. But the thing is, is that, I mean, the thing I'm proud of with it is that for none of the weeks, throughout the whole thirteen weeks, were, were me and Diane ever kept in above somebody

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  that got more points than us. Every, every week, the person that went out had less points than us, but from the judges. So we always held our own, even though it connected with the audience at home and, and they liked what we were doing and we had people supporting us and stuff. We, we always held our own up, up until the final. And then in the final, over three dances, we only, we only, we're only four points off a maximum. So I couldn't be prouder of what we did, you know, it was um, re- re- remarkable. And even when we got to February, two months after, I'd look back and like, just when you're out of that bubble for just two months, I'd look back and I'd go, how the fuck did we do?

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  It just felt, it felt, it felt insane that that was even something that happened. So um, yeah, but it's um, it's all in the book.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look at you now on a giant pot noodle.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  She did a dance in a giant pot noodle, Chris.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I, I suggested a lot, you know, I, I, a lot of the music that you, you, you dance as well, you, you, you, you're allowed to kind of, it's, it's a, it's a three-way kind of conversation between strictly you and Diane and your, your dancer. And I, I, you know, I have my input on some dancers and some ideas and, but I'd say most of the things I suggested on that show were shut down quite early on. A lot of my musical, I mean, me and you, Ed, share a lot of musical tastes, yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  Uh, a lot of my musical tastes were like, I'd, I'd play Diane something that I thought had a really good beat and a really good rhythm. And she'd say, you just can't dance to this. There's nothing in it at all that even remotely resembles. I'm like, listen to that bassline, Di.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  And examples of the ones that got away?

• 1:08:25Speaker 04

  Um, you know, I did play some Pearl Jam, I played, so I was told that like, well, the couple's choice, you can do something that's kind of means something to you. And also the Paso Doble, I was told, is kind of the one that you could do something heavier to. I, I went through a whole morning of playing, um, playing Diane Sepultura and Soulfly songs, which is Brazilian thrash metal, uh, thrash slash groove metal, and, and, and kind of arguing with her in disbelief that she was saying there was no rhythm to them.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  What, it's pure rhythm?

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  It's pure rhythm. Too much rhythm, I would say. I would say it's the, it's the cranberry sauce of the musical world. Um, but too, too much.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  Dancing to roots, bloody roots.

• 1:09:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, um, I see your point. And, and I realised doing Strictly as well, that it's as much about the song as it is about the dancing. Like, people will only like a dance if they like the song. And, and I think that the song really, unless it's a Paso Doble, which is like traditional kind of, um, it, it works well with the traditional music. I think it needs to, it needs to have words to the song. It needs to be, it, they work better than like a score. Or I remember, I remember Shane, Shane who I was on with, did one of his dances, I can't remember which one it was, but he did it to whatever that tune is that's the theme tune for Alton Towers.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  Fall of the Mountain King?

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  I can't remember how it goes, it's, it's.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  But it gets faster and faster, doesn't it?

• 1:09:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the Fantasia thing as well, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did it to that. And I, and I was listening to it, because I'd do that every week. I'd be up there, like, there'd be an amazing dance gets done, and they'd finish, and I'd say to Diane, God, the band's amazing, aren't they?

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

  But he did it to that, and it sounded amazing. But I was just thinking, I don't think people are gonna like the song compared to, you know, the other choices on that week. So I think that's important, isn't it, you know?

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, I really wish I'd been able to see you dance to a Soulfly song.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  Would you do it?

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  No, never. I, I, I, I wouldn't hold up, Chris. I, I, I, I'd be out week one, from, from stress. I'd be pleading the, down the ban of the camera for them to vote me off. Please, no one vote for me, I can't take this anymore.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Costume would have an absolute nightmare with him when he just gets egg on it every single week. Please stop eating breakfast wrap just before you go on.

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  I can't help it. Um, let me just make you back to you now, Chris.

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, let's have this. Okay.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  Still water.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  Pop it on. So spoons of condiments straight into your mouth.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  Start an anti-pasty for four. Beef, different types of ham, breadsticks, sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella, olives. Main course.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  Green. Let's get rid of the black ones. Let's just go with the big green ones.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  This is the big green.

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Big green ones.

• 1:11:11Speaker 03

  Main course, bacana, Brazilian salted steak cooked on an open flame with black beans, garlic, frofer.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  And chips. Christmas dinner, you would like a Christmas ham. You love ham. Stuff in roast potatoes and parsnips. Side dish, beef and.

• 1:11:26Speaker 04

  Did I make it clear how much I like ham?

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  You didn't really say ham enough.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  No, not enough. Side dish, beef and tomato pot noodles, sandwich, a fold over on white bread and a bite of your first pizza when you were at university.

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. Life changing, life changing.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Drink the most fiery gingery ginger beer that we can make for you.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  And dessert, a school dessert, huge amounts of various custards with the palette of a child.

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  Hmm. Well, can I just say that it sounds like the palette of a child is the thing that's been eaten there. Um, can I just, I don't want a bowl of custard on the palette of a child. Just if anyone's tuned in at the end, I don't know why they would, but maybe they got bored and just skip to the end to see how it finishes.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe people do that sometimes with our episodes.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  I'll hear the menu at the end.

• 1:12:15Speaker 03

  I'll hear the menu to know if I'm gonna like this episode.

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Oh my God, he's eating the palette of a child.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  What the hell? Thought this was a nice guy from Strictly.

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  A little bit more context to it than that.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  What a lovely Christmasy way to end it. Um, Chris, thank you so much for coming to the dream restaurant.

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  Thank you, Chris.

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Ham.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Well, there we are, James. What a lovely start to our Christmas specials.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, a crazy journey there. We're in giant pot noodles, wearing towels on our feet.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Frasier.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  Frasier was there. That was the most normal part.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was the most normal part. But lovely to see Chris, lovely to chat to him, always funny. Get his book, Keep Laughing.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  On audio as well.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  You can get it on audio. I'd say buy it in, in hardcover.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  And buy it in audio.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Um, makes a lovely Christmas gift. Maybe get one for yourself and one for your loved one.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Wait till the paperback comes out, get that?

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  Complete, for the completists?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  You go for the completists. And also, Chris did not say Chris Stingle.

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  No, he didn't say that.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Glad about, because I was enjoying the chat.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  I would have been surprised if you said Chris Stingle, with, given what his food choices were.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  I don't, I thought, I don't think he'll really like an orange with like, donny mixtures of raisins stuck in it and cloves.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and cloves. We've had cloves already as a secret ingredient, disgusting.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Yes. Uh, next week, there's another Christmas episode.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Yes, there is.

• 1:13:39Speaker 03

  Of course. And, you know, let's just say, uh, similar vibe. That, that, that, that's the clue.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  That's the clue. It's a good clue. Why it's a good clue is it's not true.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  So it'll really throw people off the scent.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  Okay, well, you know, we'll see. See, see what, what people think, if, if I'm right or you're right.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yes, okay. Uh, this is available tomorrow on YouTube. Uh, if you're listening to this on the day it came out, otherwise, pop on YouTube, it's probably there anyway. Had a few messages from people saying that Benito's winning, that they're listening to the episode on audio and then watching it on YouTube.

• 1:14:13Speaker 03

  Benito's, oh, that's because of us, that's because we're doing his bidding for him and saying that it's on YouTube.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  I love to do his bidding.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  We should stop promoting it.

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  Just stop promoting the YouTube.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  I love to do Benito's bidding.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Oh, I hate it. I hate doing his bidding. It's the worst part of my life. I'm gonna do his bidding all the time.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Well, Merry Christmas, James. Merry Christmas to all of you. We'll be back next week with another Christmas episode, but for now, bye-bye, Jingle Bells.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  Bye-bye, Jingle Bells.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Everybody, listen up.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.