Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 16 - Live At The London Agriculture Festival

Episode Date: October 24, 2016

Josie Long, Mike Wozniak, Tom Crowley and Martin Austwick join in for this month’s episode, which was recorded live in front of an audience at the London Agriculture Festival. By Benjamin Partridge, Mike Wozniak, Josie Long and Martin Austwick with thanks to Tom Crowley.   Music: Dreams Become Reality Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.com

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is sponsored by Steel Hoof Deluxe, the new hoof-strengthening supplement from Mitchell's. If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck. Steel Hoof Deluxe makes your herd's cloven feet so strong that in the event of a nuclear attack, all that would remain once the mushroom cloud had dissipated would be cockroaches and hooves. For a free sachet, use the code DELUXE next time our rep comes a-hawking. Hello, and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, the number one podcast for those involved,

or just interested, in the production of beef animals and dairy herds. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website and the printed magazine brought to you by Steel Hoof Deluxe. We've got a treat for you today because this month's episode was recorded at the London Agriculture Festival. The edition of the podcast is a very special one as it's being recorded live in front of a sold-out audience at the London Agriculture Festival. London, London, London, London. We've had a great time at the festival so far. Highlights have included a candlelit reading of farmer Derek Garton's moving memoir about being the first British citizen to successfully escape conviction after shooting an intruder, a panel discussion about classic soils of Europe, and a great seminar about how to coax a pig off a roof. The London Agricultural Festival is of course part of the

European Farming Network, which is sponsored by Mitchell's Europe. If it's not Mitchell's Europe, get back on your charming bicycle. In today's podcast, we speak to a former pop star who is curating the festival, as well as the leader of an influential political lobbying group, Butchers for Brexit. But first, we received a number of letters this month in response to the big question on our website. What is your most memorable beef experience? Julian Bristol writes... I don't have any actual memories of this but my parents have told me the story again and again, the story of my first beef. As soon

as I was born I was taken by the midwife who checked my vital signs and it was clear that I was healthy and raring for the beef. Before long the entire staff of the maternity unit was stuffing beef medallions into my tiny mouth. As a result, by my first birthday, I was the size of a nine-year-old. And very, very ill. Thanks, Julie. Our next letter comes from Francis in Kent.

He writes... My parents didn't give me beef when I was young. They were both New Zealanders and had other ideas as a result. Luckily, as I was ingesting high levels of mint from a very young age, I built up a tolerance, which meant I was able to weather the piles of lamb

I was having to eat on a daily basis. It was only when I left home to go to university at 18 that my eyes were opened to the world of meat. At Freshers' Week, I could be found in the canteen gulping down whole roast chickens, pork tenderloins and most unforgettably, I once ate a whole side of beef during a foam party. Even though my taste buds had been ruined

by years and years of caustic mint sauce, it felt good. When I graduated, I received a BSc Ons degree in candle making and candle studies with a year abroad in Vienna. But the real lessons I learned were about beef. The other thing I learned was never to eat beef, or indeed

anything, at a foam party. Don't open your mouth at all. Seriously. No one knows what's in that foam. That fucking foam thanks Francis and our final letter is from Quentin in Surrey Quentin writes

looking for adventure I had decided to spend the summer in Germany working on a bean farm the work was hard and my bean-heavy diet left me down, depressed, fragile and incredibly flatulent. After meals our old farts hung in the air like Christmas decorations in the spring that someone had been unable to take down because they died from farting too much. My fellow workers were Pavel, a Czech whose job it was to pick the fava beans, black beans and butter beans.

Juan, a Spaniard whose job it was to pick the mung beans, the pinto beans and the kidney beans. And Alan, a twat from Bristol. After two weeks, I was considering going home. Every night we would dolefully eat our portion of beans as we watched the farmer tucking into rich beef-based dishes. Stroganoffs, bolognese, beef puddings, candied beef lollies. However, one evening, my fortunes turned around

when the bean farmer's wife joined us for dinner. As she slumped down on the bench beside me, covered in bean debris, she was the picture of sexual attraction. Long brown hair, a barrel chest, and huge rough farmer's hands. It was love. Later that week, we received what was presented to us as bad news. The bean farmer had got his leg caught in the bean thresher and was going to be in hospital for months. As I walked back from the bean field,

the farmer's wife appeared in the doorway to farmhouse, tears welling in her eyes. She gestured for me to enter. As soon as I crossed the threshold, it began, the greatest love affair I've ever embarked upon. She couldn't speak any English, and I couldn't speak any German, but we could communicate perfectly

as we shared a language, the language of beef. Also, we both spoke some French. Over the following weeks, she taught me everything I know about God's favourite meat. Eating mince off each other's bodies, pouring hot gravy onto our nipples, slapping each other playfully with handfuls of carpaccio.

We ate boiled sirloins late into the night. And also, we boned My days of back-breaking work on the bean farm flew by As I looked forward to our evening sessions of adventurous German lovemaking And our stilted conversations I told her about life back in Surrey And she told me all about life in World War I Sorry, I forgot to mention she was 109 years old.

However, like all good things, it had to come to an end. At the end of the summer, I had to move back to England and she went to prison for tax fraud. Thanks, Quentin. And she went to prison for tax fraud. Thanks, Quentin. Now it's time for our first guest. He is best known as the bassist from Britpop band Hype.

However, since the band split in 2001, he's been running his own farm in the Cotswolds and this year was asked to curate the London Agriculture Festival. London, London, London, London. The festival has always been organised by a different guest curator every year, but it is only in recent years that the festival has begun to ask people from the world of popular culture to curate in a bid to make the festival more relevant to the youth. Please welcome Jim Crayfish.

Hi. Hey. Hey. Great to see you. Hi. So, Jim Crayfish, thanks for coming. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming to the festival. It. Great to see you. Hi. So, Jim Krafich, thanks for coming. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming to the festival. It's very exciting, yeah. Now, you're probably best known as the bass player from Hype. The other members of Hype are doing well, aren't they? Yeah.

Your singer, Stephen, has been doing lots of high-profile collaborations in the genre of world music. Yeah. Collaborating with artists from northern France and Jersey. That's right. Well, I guess, you know, We all had our passions, right? You know, I mean, Jefferson, he had his music,

obviously. The Arthur is now a Lib Dem NEP. And Bobby, still missing. So we had different stuff that we were into. And for me, I always had a vibe for nature and for food. And just, you know, for kind of you know for nature and for food

and just you know i took the time out to create my own little uh perfect little uh farm boutique farm super organic super free range and you know one thing led to another it's been a great success no doubt many of the people here have been enjoying the festival you've put on so far um is there anything you're particularly excited about? Well, we've had some great... Just looking at the programme now, we've had all sorts of wonderful things. You mentioned a couple of the events that we've had so far. The pig coaxing, obviously. Did anyone see the pig coaxing

off a roof? Yeah, exactly. If you missed it, it's just... I mean, it's basically just a helium balloon in the shape of a sow. And sort of rig that up to a bit of twine um i if you can uh sort of spray the the rear of it with a little bit of sort of porcine uh vaginal musk and um it's all um it's all sex appeal um really and uh down down the pig comes um don't expect the pig to survive obviously on impact but Impact, but it is off the roof.

You know, and I'm very happy to sort of, you know, I've taken some of the classics, you know, Derek Garton earlier on, you know, some of the classics. There's all the usual favourites that everyone always has every year in, you know, competitions, you know, vegetables that look like dicks, dicks that look like vegetables, and all that kind of stuff. In the Kiddie 10, we've had a kind of sort of udder jazzle competition

that's been enormously successful. And there's been other things coming up. There's something I'm really excited about. Tomorrow afternoon, if you're free, we're going to be sort of reenacting the 1980 Iraniananian embassy siege uh using hoofed animals um and uh we've had a few problems with some of the abseiling elements of that and um yesterday afternoon of course we went down to the embankment and had our

our bird bird competition um inspired by the very famous bird man competitions off brighton pier uh where we just take sort of series of flightless animals and um and push them off the competition inspired by the very famous Birdman competitions off Brighton Pier where we just take sort of series of flightless animals and push them off the end of a pier. Who won that one by the way? I didn't get down to the Bird Bird. Who won that? Well there was a sort of kind of adolescent emu that went the furthest but it was pushed by a two-man team so it was kind of it's contentious at the moment so yeah but very exciting stuff and uh yeah all kinds of stuff you know the stuff that we've rejected as well we can't we can't do everything obviously um you

know the campaign for the re-spelling of wheat you know those guys um you know i feel like they've they've had their time and i don't want to don't want to rub people up the wrong way. There's Professor Sandalbanks, who wants to do the history of the nose bag, and everyone knows about that already. It was invented, it was named, it didn't work, and people just put it over their mouth instead, and it was fine.

That's it. So you're painting a very rosy picture of how the weekend has gone. Yeah. And just to add a bit of counterpoint to that, really, questions have been asked about the sponsors that you've brought in personally. Obviously the main sponsor, of course, is Mitchells Europe. If it's not Mitchells, get back into your antique citron. Which seems fine, but then you look a bit further

down the list here, it starts getting a bit more interesting. You've got BAE Systems, the Saudi Royal Family, the IRA, North Korea, Hezbollah and ISIS, Momentum. I mean, the list goes on. Yeah.

I mean, I think people have complained about that, but, I mean, people should be impressed. You know, it's bloody difficult getting all those people in a room at the same time, right? So in a way, you're just getting them around the table. You're getting the table to you know and you know and what you know to agree on a logo really and um some people felt that other things should have been on the agenda at the time but that's not our remit really our remit is to you know raise awareness and sponsor an agricultural uh festival um yeah um and so you think it's kind of had a um a positive effect on kind of prospects of world peace?

Is that what you're getting at? I don't know. I think it's all about attitude, isn't it? Perceptions and preconceptions. People didn't realize that ISIS have got a sort of strong view on hen husbandry, for example. But they've got strong views, you know, across the board. So why wouldn't they, you know?

Yeah, so, you know, if anyone's, you know, razzled up by that, then, you know, I think that's great. I think it's a step in the right direction. Just to go back to the money, I've got a copy of the budget here. Yeah. And this was leaked to me by one of the festival staff earlier is it true that you spent 80 of the budget on the personal appearance by michael buble yeah right okay but this is people don't understand about pr and marketing you've got to have some sell okay i mean obviously

a lot of people are coming for me and see me i mean i mean, I'll stop you there, because when that actually happened, the Michael Bublé personal appearance, and thankfully I wasn't there for it, I don't know if any of you were, it wasn't really Michael Bublé at all, was it? No, it was you dressed as Michael Bublé. Yes, but if you examine the promotional literature, Bublé was spelt B-double-O-B. I mean, it was clearly implied that it was a tribute act

and that people would come and see my... You know, I am a professional musician, so... And you also advertised a personal appearance by Rod Stewart. And in reality, that was just you again, still dressed as Michael Bublé. Yeah. I do live in the Cotswolds and I hadn't... I mean, my rod hadn't made it.

I'd forgotten to put it in the car. What this all points at for me is a kind of lack of respect for the farming community, really. And another thing, I mean, in all of the years of the London Agricultural Festival running, you're the first person to choose a venue in the heart of central London. Right, yeah.

So I've got some quotes here from some farmers just I've collected over the weekend. I had to take my four-ton bull on the Jubilee line. I had to pay the congestion charge for my cows. I never liked hype. I always preferred Oasis. I was on the Jubilee line when 80 sheep were herded onto the train. It obviously wasn't as bad as when a school trip gets on, but it was up there. Well, it's the double doors on the Jubilee line when 80 sheep were herded onto the train. It obviously wasn't as bad as when a school trip gets on, but it was up there.

Yeah. Well, it's the double doors on the Jubilee line that we had a few sort of snagged in that sort of no-man's land. And, yeah. But I'm trying to reintroduce ideas here, you know. I mean, I've got this... There's a lot of themes around, you know, my curation of this festival, and part of that is, you know, getting the public to embrace agriculture and, you know, mix views and whatever.

But also, you know, there's a growing movement that I'm spearheading. I think that, you know, the rural community and the urban community should swap. I've been living out in the countryside for a while now and like my complexion is a lot better. My IBS is really cleared up. You know, I feel happier, healthier. People are better

off in the country, right? Okay? And animals, they couldn't give two shits where they are. Okay? So even if it's just for a trial period, like, empty the cities, get everyone out living in the countryside, you know, and put, you know,

goats in terraced housing or whatever. Yeah? I've got another quote here from a farmer. He said, it was as if he had no understanding of how a farmer's life works at all. I arrived with 25 goats only to find that my venue was on the third floor.

His advice was, and I quote, to get in the lift, you pricks. And he definitely said pricks rather than prick, and I was the only human there, so he was definitely calling at least some of the goats pricks. OK. Yeah, stand by that. I mean, in what way can a goat be a prick?

I mean, what goat is not a prick? And it's not their fault that they're pricks. I mean, if you... I mean, if you'd spent most of your life, right, standing with ease, vertically on a sheer surface without holding on

you're going to be a prick aren't you arrogant right final question you don't really have a farm do you I had a I had a farm I had a farm I mean what is a farm okay

there's another... That's something else I want to kind of reintroduce, okay? Into the, you know, what is... If you've got, like, a back garden that's mostly paved and you manage to, you know, put a couple of heifers in it and a goat and a, you know, a bit of a chicken, not all of it, because it got caught on the fucking wheels when you're backing out of the...

Right? Technically, right, multi-animal, that is a farm, okay? So I am a farmer. I had a farm. It has been taken away from me legally. I can't own a farm for ten years minimum, but at this point, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Jim Crayfish! Thank you. Enjoy the festival.

More from the London Agriculture Festival after this. Hi everybody, I'm Justin McElroy. I'm Travis McElroy. I'm Griffin McElroy. And we host the first podcast ever made, My Brother, My Brother and Me. Every Monday we put out the first ever advice comedy podcast ever. They found our podcast on Dead Sea Scrolls. We're the Hammurabi Code of podcasts and we're ready to entertain you with jokes

that we invented, the first jokes. So join us every Monday on MaximumFun.org. You'll never crack our code, Dan Brown. Just try me. It's history in the making. And in the faking. And it's all yours for the taking. Next, to news of entertainment double act and friends of the show, Cheese and Onion.

Best known for their annual Christmas specials and their catchphrase, You've got no evidence. Cheese and Onion were TV staples, and are probably best known amongst network members as being the regular entertainment at every year's British Beef Council annual dinner and barn dance. However, half the double act, Sid Onion, has now been in prison in Turkey for two

years and has yet to face trial. Talent obviously runs in the family as the popular singer-songwriter Glenn Onion is Sid's nephew and has written a protest song that he hopes will raise awareness and money for the cause. I'm very happy to say that Glenn is here to perform it with us today. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Glenn Onion!

APPLAUSE I'm not gonna mince my words Set the onion free His only crime is passion For delicious British beef and dairy He's in a pickle, there's so much at stake So warden let me say There's a pint of semi-skimmed for you if you look the other way so jailer jailer jailer

won't you leave the door ajar? Laughter used to echo around the British Beef Council dinner and barn dance. But now this onion just brings us tears. Surely he's got a chance. He's a man of many layers. and he's probably not to blame for all the crimes his lawyers would prefer me not to name so Jayla Jayla Jay, won't you leave the door ajar? Hello, Les Cheese here. Legend of traditional, old-fashioned, honest, wholesome and sometimes blue entertainment.

Most well known for my part in popular double act Cheese and Onion. In recent years, the actors come in for quite a bit of stick from so-called modern comedians with their political correctness and inability to tap dance. What they fail to appreciate is that what me and Sid did with Cheese and Onion was actually very clever and operated on a number of levels. It's like Pixar. There's something for the adults and there's something for the kiddies too. So the adults can enjoy the searing sexual innuendo while the kiddies simply enjoy a charming song about a farmer washing a sausage in a stream. As you may know, Sid, my double-act partner,

has now been in prison in Turkey for two years. In order to get Sid out, I've started a Kickstarter. Have you heard about these? It's brilliant. Basically, you have any old idea and then people give you money and then in return you promise them rewards

which are basically like any old shit, which they'll never end up receiving anyway. So please, donate today. All donations over £5 will receive a signed photo of me meeting Princess Margaret. Donate over £10 and I'll throw in a DVD of my ill-fated collaboration with the English National Opera. This money will be used to bribe Turkish officials and prison guards. And any money that we don't get round to using will go towards funding my crippling vets bills.

And anything after that will go to the Biafran National Front. Please give today. And jailer, please leave the door. Ajar. So jailer, jailer, jailer Won't you leave the door ajar? Sing it! Everyone!

Won't you leave the door ajar? Once more. Won't you leave the door the jam For Sidonion please Glenonion ladies and gentlemen please give generously.

Our next guest has had a life-changing year. In January, she started her campaign and lobbying group, Butchers for Brexit. And in June, not only did Britain vote to leave the European Union, she also picked up an MBE. Please welcome Jenny Boulder, MBE. Hello. So, Jenny, start by telling us a bit about yourself. When did you become a butcher?

Oh, it's difficult to say because, you know, do you mean amateur or professional? Because I've always cut up meat. It's an industry that's dominated by men. Was that something you were mindful of when you started out as a butcher? It's interesting that you ask this question, because I doubt you're asking that of the male butchers, but nonetheless... LAUGHTER

I mean, sorry, I should say butcheress. Yeah, I do prefer to be called butcheress, butchery-en, butchery-et. Baby butcher. Not quite as good as the Men Butcher. But, yes, I used to get shouted down a lot. I remember when I first got into butchery and I tried to sort of bring out slightly more progressive cuts of meat, you know, the skirt steak, lipstick chops,

high-heeled fish but also you'd just get a lot of prejudice you know you'd get every day oh why do you want to have beef in your shop beef's a men's meat you know why don't you use the girly meats but I'd just get on with it what was it that moved you to set up the group Butchers for Brexit?

Which, by the way, has had a huge impact, I think, since you started it up in earlier this year. Thank you. One word. Halal. Halal. What does it mean? We don't know. And there's no way to find out. That's the worst part. There is no way to find out.

All I know is halal is the biggest threat to butchery, to Britain. Until we ban all halal, we won't have our sovereignty. Right.

So you think that by leaving the EU, somehow that will have an impact on the way that halal meat is sold in the UK? Absolutely. It has to. It makes perfect sense. So you think that halal is something that the European Union started? Well, it's imposing on us. Yeah. Look at it.

I mean, I'm sorry to say this, but you look on a tin of baked beans and even that's halal. I don't think it is, but... I mean, I guess it's just a way of killing the bean, isn't it? It's a different way of killing the bean. When you were sort of casting around trying to get other butchers to join, did you come across many who were going to vote for Remain? I mean, generally, what you did... Scum. Scum of the earth. Traitors.

Yeah, traitors, you know, say things like, oh, it'll be catastrophic for my business. Or, like, our regulatory system will suffer and so quality will go down. And I'm like, what I am fighting for is a little Union Jacks on a toothpick that you can put into your displays. I'm fighting for better quality of plastic Union Jack bunting in all of our butcher's shops. You've got to look at the whole picture. I've got some of your campaign literature here,

and I was reading it earlier, it was quite interesting. I was just wondering whether you could substantiate some of the claims made on this particular leaflet. Oh, I'm so happy to. So the first one we've got, the EU wants to ban beef. Yeah, that's true. Does it outright ban? Well, here's the thing.

I'm a very empathetic person. And what I can pick up on is unvoiced desires. So what I'm saying is the EU wants it. That is what they want deep down. You cannot tell me that is not what they want because you do not know how to read people the way that I know how to read people. So they haven't actually said it?

No, but you can see it. I've got some other claims here. When a baby is born in Greece, it's immediately given a strip of lamb to suck on. It's disgusting, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, if true, that is disgusting, yeah. But you can see, if you look at that, you can see why they've got all the money problems they have,

why they elected that guy on a motorbike. It starts from that first lamb. The EU is a conspiracy by the New Zealand government to create a marketplace for lamb. The thing is, you're asking me to back all this stuff up that I said, but what you don't understand is you don't have to back it up. You just have to say it. Right, okay. We've got another one.

John Claude Junker once ate a horse, hooves and all. What? This is what I say to the people listening at home. I don't even know who John Claude Junker is. So I do not even have a stake in this game. No pun intended. What I would say is that one was never a promise.

Right. Now, obviously, we have voted, all of us, to leave the European Union. I voted to leave. We all voted to leave, of course. Talk me through how it felt on the day. Tell me through the day, what it was like. Oh, well, I just remember the day so clearly because I woke up, my phone was going,

and it was my sister, and she was just saying to me, we did it, we did it, you know. First I thought she was talking about eBay because we actually do a lot of stuff on eBay. So I was like, oh, cool. so then we sold that chest of drawers then and finally she said to me we did it we left and oh oh my heart first thing I did went downstairs and I went to my butcher shop which is it's in an annex on my house it used to be a dentist surgery and I just went around it and I was just looking I just had tears in my eyes I thought this is all mine again you know it's all mine again and

this is gonna sound weird but what I did was I got all my knives out and at first I was just looking at my reflection you know and I was thinking about Winston Churchill and then I just kissed each one. And I said, thank you, thank you, thank you. And then I went upstairs and it was just like a normal day, so I listened to Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech. And I just prepared myself a plate of tripe and I just had that. To be honest, after all the excitement, it was good to just know, you know, we've taken our country back to the past.

Now, how do you think the world of butchery is going to change now that we've gone ahead? We will be leaving the EU soon. How do you think that will change your life and our lives? The first thing I want to say is all the people that didn't believe in us, poultry for remain, fuck you.

Chickens by name, chickens by nature. Secondly, what I'm going to say is everything is going to change. You can sell the whole animal. You can sell an animal to another animal now. Europe can't stop you now. But the main thing for me is it wasn't really about butchery it was about immigration so

yeah so final question now we've voted for Brexit is Butchers for Brexit going to disband or? No, no, definitely not we're going to start up a kind of paramilitary organisation where we do knife training for young people who have

a lot of anger. Right. Well, thank you. Jenny Boulder! Thank you. Thank you so much. So that's all we've got time for from the London Agriculture Festival. London, London, London. Swansea.

Sorry, London. So until next time, beef out! Thank you to Josie Long, Mike Wozniak, Tom Crowley, Martin Ostwick, everyone who organised the London Podcast Festival, all of you who came to the live show at London Podcast Festival, thank you so much for coming, and to Catherine who helped on the night. Listen up, Midwestern Max Funsters.

Do not miss out on the inaugural Chicago Podcast Festival, November 17th through 19th. Catch the hilarious ladies of Lady to Lady and the witty and incisive Eneke and James from Minority Corner. Plus, Bullseye with Jesse Thorne will feature interviews with some pretty heavy hitters, like Andre Royo and Dwayne Kennedy. Don't snooze. Don't lose. Tickets are available right now. Visit MaximumFun.org and buy them. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported.