Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 63 - Michael Banyan, Podcaster

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Henry Paker joins us for this episode in which we speak to former bovine poet laureate Michael Banyan, who has started his own podcast. By Benjamin Partridge and Henry Paker. Thanks to Hal Lublin and Angela Sullivan. Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.com

Hi, I'm former Bovine Poet Laureate Michael Banyan, and I've just launched a new podcast, Jumanji CWS. That's Could, Would, Should. It's the podcast that takes you back to Hollywood in 1995 and talks to the real people who could have been involved in Jumanji but weren't asked, the people who would have been involved with Jumanji had they not been unsuccessful in their application process, and the people who should have been involved with Jumanji but weren't asked, the people who would have been involved with Jumanji had they not been unsuccessful in their application process, and the people who should have been involved with Jumanji but weren't for various reasons, often politics. CWS.

In season one of Jumanji CWS, I talked to the actor who could have got into Jumanji if he'd been auditioned and passed the audition. I didn't even hear about the auditions. So the first I knew about Jumanji, I was watching Jumanji. The producer who would have been involved in Jumanji but had insufficient experience to be considered. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now.

The nephew of a guy who worked for an LA-based catering company at the time that could have been in the mix while they were choosing a catering company for Jumanji. I don't actually know if they formally put themselves forward for Jumanji. I don't even know if he's actually my uncle. I think he's just kind of one of my dad's close buddies. That's Jumanji CWS with me, Michael Banyan. CWS. 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 printed magazine, brought to you by Jumanji CWS. The new podcast from the former Bovine Poet Laureate Michael Banyan, and this month we were lucky enough to get an interview with the man himself. For those of you who don't know, Banyan was formerly the Bovine Poet Laureate, until he was stripped of his title by the Bovine Farmers Union after he disgraced them with a foul-mouthed drunken rant at an awards ceremony. Then, as a punishment, a cow's face was sewn onto his face, and he was told he had to leave the UK, so he went to Spain, where he lived in exile until he was found by the angry Bovine Farmers Union president

Runyon Cradge, who then died in the course of a high-speed donkey chase. Luckily, with Cradge dead and the interim leadership council of the Bovine Farmers Union, who are now in charge, taking a much less hard-line view on Banyan, it was safe for him to return to the UK. We spoke about his new podcast and how he is found moving back to the UK from Spain. But first, as you'll hear, we got a bit hung up on the moon. bit hung up on the moon. Michael, welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast. It's great to see you down the link. Hi. Last time we spoke, you'd just left Spain. That's right. Of course. How long has it been since we last talked? It seems like a while. Oh yes, many moons, many moons. 18 moons i think and uh well well no it wasn't 18 days ago maybe it was 18 months ago well yeah well 18 moons that's right yeah 18 18 months 18 moons same i don't think that's what people mean when they say many moons i think they mean the moon rising and falling and so there's

one moon per day i think in that but obviously they're talking metaphorically throughout that time it's throughout that 18 month period there is just one it's a lunar cycle isn't it so every month the moon the the you know the the the the latest moon goes across the sky and disappears into the sun uh and there's no moon and then the next moon next moon comes along the next month so it's the same. No, it's the same moon the whole time. Well, they look very similar, obviously, because they're moons, but obviously they're round and yellow. You've heard the phrase, the moon? Yes, it's the moon, it's the prime minister.

It doesn't mean it's the same one. It's more of a role, isn't it? Whichever large spherical rock is hurtling through the sky is the moon of the month, yes? It's just one moon. Oh, really? It's not a new moon every month.

Oh, I thought it was a new moon. Sorry, I always assume moons were just coming at us you're wrong about this i just thought the phrase many moons you know suggests there's more than one doesn't it i understand that i do understand that and and maybe when people say many moons they they mean many moon cycles which are monthly so maybe you could say it's been 18 moons since i saw you last but it is still just the same one moon and poets have talked about sorry poets have been talking about moons for thousands of years, haven't they? You yourself wrote the poem A Thousand Moons.

A Thousand Moons, exactly. But I thought it was an allegory. So with every moon that you said in the poem dipped into the sun, that was like the end of a day that you can never get back. I thought that's kind of what that meant. No, it's a moon that you can never get back because the the moon because the moon the moon the moons explode every time that they end up in the sun don't they every year at christmas that we celebrate how do they wait until christmas then to explode they just hang around the sun well they obviously it's gravity isn't there so

the moons they go straight into the sun the moons they they pass the earth they sort of curb gravity curbs them and they kind of spiral they kind of spiral down into the sun as if into into a kind of hot drain right yeah again i'm just gonna make this clear this isn't this isn't what happens but when when when you thought that's what was happening was there any evidence in your mind that the moons were exploding on christmas day i felt the the um the candles and and and and the shining lights. You know, there's an emphasis on bright bursts of light, isn't there, on Christmas? The shining lights on the tree and the candles and so on. I always assumed that that was linked to the fizzing and exploding moons going into the sun.

I mean, as I describe it now, it does feel like it probably deserves a bit of looking into. It might be something I look into, yeah. I mean, you don't have to look into it because it has been looked into by scientists going back thousands of years, none of whom I think tried out this particular theory, though. So I guess you're right in that respect. Well, if it hasn't been tested, it can't be ruled out. As far as I know, that's how science works, it so you'd need you'd need to test it out you need a control

moon um to well you're a placebo someone who wasn't looking at uh looking at the moon and someone who was looking at the moon and um get them to write down their findings um i suppose let's imagine that experiment taking place the person who's looking at the scientist not just anyone a good scientist but carry on yeah okay so decent scientist yeah it's a solid you know good good university someone really high up is going to be probably too busy with their own stuff to be doing this yeah so you're probably going to lower your expectations a bit nottingham nottingham university that kind of range yeah solid okay so like a solid red brick university a good red brick university with um you know with um quite some modern canteen rounded chrome handles are on the doors the doors are are almost every door in the entire university. Five or six squash courts

and a small Starbucks concession within walking distance of the squash courts. So, yeah, there's a fully branded, with all the livery, Starbucks concession within the sports hall area. Sounds nice. Everything works, session yeah within within the sports hall area sounds nice everything works but it's probably a slight sense of of despair coming off the carpet tiles

just low-level despair and the vice chancellor has um clearly got some skeletons in the cupboard let's say no one's quite clear what happened like the university may have taken money from the libyan regime of uh colonel godaffi for example that kind of thing in return for giving his son saif al godaffi and a phd for example e.g that sort of area yeah so they could build a new toilet block so they could build a block that's entirely dedicated to to toilet rather than rather than having the toilets equally spread throughout the campus, invested in an entire sort of deluxe toilet block

with maybe five or six floors of toilets, all different kinds of toilets, different shapes and sizes, just an area where basically people from the university, from the staff, you know, right down to the students, the cleaners, you know, right down to the students, the cleaners, caterers, right up to the top professors,

everyone, you know, shitting, shitting under the same roof. And relaxing. And relaxing. Possibly even video link-up facilities between the toilet cubicles so that people can exchange ideas, test theories, you know, things that are coming to them while they're in that state of nature,

that relaxed, that truly, the only truly relaxed moment, you know, you could argue that a human being ever has. If people could be linked up in that state, maybe audio tubes, they'd talk down. Well, the Romans famously would sit in a kind of communal area and all be in that, as you say, state of relaxation. And that's probably why they became the foremost power in Western Europe and the Near East in the late BCs.

No coincidence, some would argue. Oh, yeah, it's interesting that. So we're slightly straying from the point, but it's that sort of universe. I don't think that really exists, actually, especially not the huge sort of omni-toilet block. I don't think that exists in any UK university. No, but it's definitely an interesting idea, isn't it?

I think we need to be thinking creatively. So to do your experiment with the moon, maybe a scientist who is open to that kind of thinking is the kind of person you're after i yeah i don't want anyone you know excessively dogmatic you want someone who's well read but not maybe wasn't paying attention to every page so this person they're looking up at the moon and they see it going through its usual you know crescent moon full moon cycle in the meanwhile your placebo person they are also procured from that university maybe but they're not signed so maybe they work in the

starbucks it doesn't really matter what um where they're from exactly as long as they're roughly the same height and i think you'd have to probably want to put them in the same clothes for the duration of the um of the experiment are they the same clothes for the duration of the experiment. Are they sitting on one of the toilets during the experiment? That's a nice idea. They could be in some... Because I think the toilets at the top would probably have panoramic views for stargazing.

So yeah, they could be in the roof toilets, yeah. Nice idea. Okay, well, you know, I haven't got the the funds to to commission this study myself but you know we've got lots of influential listeners and so maybe we can get this going i'd love to i'd like i'd love to see it tested i mean for me it's always been a given that the the moon's disappearing to the sun but um i you know i'm fully prepared to uh to have that uh to have that put to the test and uh yeah let's explore if you work at a major university and are interested in building a glass ceilinged toilet block to carry out experiments to see if we indeed have a new moon every month

please drop us a line i have to say you're looking uh very good thank you uh, Michael. Long-time listeners will know that at the hands of the Bovine Farmers Union, after you had a bit of a disagreement, they stitched a cow's face onto your face as a kind of punishment. Yes. And in the past, when I've interviewed you, you have looked, I would say, there's no other word for it, but disgusting. You know, it was hard for me to look at you.

Rank. Rank, that's the word i'd use yeah um but actually you seem to have sort of grown into i can't really thank you i'm not sure what it is that it's working for you now it's it's cow skin so it's leather and it just ages well then last time we spoke um you were having to have injections directly into the into the leather to keep it supple and i think every two hours is that something you're still having to do that's right i did used to have to have a qualified nurse um do this process for me but i can do it myself now it's actually really quite easy i self-administer the whole process every two hours i just have to rub a mixture of paraffin and gravy into my face

that soaks down into the leather fibers gets them nice them nice and supple. So I leave that to soak in for about 40 minutes, that's about it. During that time, my face bloats up to about twice its usual volume. At that point, all I have to do is just wrap the whole thing in cling film and cram my head into a small hotel minibar fridge, leave it in there for about 20-25 minutes because it needs to cool down quickly. So that quickly cools it down. The gravy paraffin mix, which is by this point, is now congealed in with some face fats.

That whole thing kind of solidifies into a thick viscous paste. Right. And then all I need to do then is attach a special wick into my forehead, set fire to it, and that just burns off. And the whole thing just burns off, turns into a gas. And then a red hot residue then sort of drips down drips down off my face and i catch that in a jam jar and i sell that online oh really i guess it cools down so you've got a kind of gravy you've got a kind of a sort of

a puck a puck it's a kind of it's a kind of like a wobbly puck i sell it to farmers and um they rub it into hens and uh it makes them waterproof and of course the benefit of that to a farmer is that you can rear your hens underwater which of course makes them instantly fox proof i imagine they do have to sell carp for air occasionally so if you are an enterprising fox you might wait there ready for them to come up and take their gasp well that's why i also now sell the um so you get free basically the whole package is you get the wobbly puck you get 15 chicken snorkels and you get an applicator glove and and you know that's you're selling that specifically for chickens could you not waterproof anything else could Could you waterproof an old coat? Oh, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Could you waterproof yourself? Oh, no, absolutely not. Please don't make that mistake. It really, really only works with hens. I'm not entirely sure why, but if you try and waterproof yourself with this, you'll end up covered in sores.

Your skin will sort of blister. You'll be blistering all over. You'll have sores, weeping, weeping sores your skin will sort of blister you'll be blistering all over you'll be you'll have sores weeping weeping sores and you'll have canker sores you'll have boils it's an absolute disaster for the skin did you don't do not rub this into anything other than a hen that is crucial and do try to use the applicator glove that's what it's there for what i don't understand is this substance seems to be quite dangerous to other people um but you're rubbing that into your own face every day is that does that never cause problems uh no it very much can do so i have to get the i have to get the proportion exactly right of paraffin and gravy if not um uh yeah but things that my face can seize up quite badly if that happens.

I have an emergency syringe I carry with me at all times, and I'm very good at it now, and I just have to inject it directly into my eye socket, and that contains a mixture of adrenaline, white wine vinegar, Nutella, and diesel. I'll pass out for about a day, day and a half, and then I'll pass out for about a day, day and a half, and then I'll be fine. I asked Michael how he was readjusting back to life in the UK. I did have a bit of culture shock actually coming back here. I mean, the attitude to chorizo is so different here. I mean, there's a lot of chorizo here, don't get me wrong.

I mean, you don't have to walk far to find chorizo on a menu in this country. But here it's seen as a meat, whereas over there in Spain it's a way of life. You know, chorizo, it's a greeting. It can be a hat. There's a sport called chorizo. Oh, really? It's a big, big sport in Spain. It's much, much bigger than football.

It's huge in Spain, this chorizo. So, really? It's a big, big sport in Spain. It's much, much bigger than football. It's huge in Spain, this chorizo. So how does that work? Is it like football, but using a big round chorizo? No, it's more, it's basically you're just chucking, contestants are chucking bits of chorizo at a pillar, and the pillar's made of chorizo as well. Right. And how do you win that?

Every time one of your bits of chorizo hits the pillar, you eat a chorizo, an entire chorizo, and then you have to carry on going. And the idea is you get more points from hitting the chorizo pillar with the chorizo, but every time you eat a chorizo, it gets harder. I guess you'd feel pretty sluggish after a couple of chorizos. You feel very sluggish and all the paprika goes up into your eyes,

you get very bloodshot and you get very, all the fat starts seeping out through your skin pores. You get very slick and very slimy and bloodshot in the eyes and it becomes very hard to stand up. So how long is this game lasting? Four and a half days. It's a bit like test cricket, actually. It's very nice.

You go along in the morning with the family you'll watch you know all the the traditions are very highly regarded the people that compete in this in this game they come out to great acclaim fabulously bedecked in in tassels and and pom-poms and wonderful outfits and you watch them start and you know by the end of the day you may have seen six or seven of these people die you know it's it's fantastic to uh from just over consumption yeah of course it's obviously fatal the the amounts of treats they're eating will be fatal so yeah i've sometimes you know it's a bit like cricket you can't guarantee it sometimes you'll turn up and maybe only one any maybe one of these guys

will die but you know on a really good day you'll get you get good seven or eight when someone does pass away i assume their liver will explode probably visibly i imagine after that much chorizo or maybe just a full bowel drop there'll be a lot of bowel drop and and obviously members of the crowd are encouraged to um chuck those those pieces of bough around, catch them, and if you catch a bit of the bough, it's good luck. And also, I imagine, pretty delicious if it's that steeped in chorizo. It's so steeped at that point, the paprika and the garlic has really penetrated through the whole... I mean, these people are basically living, breathing,

and then eventually dead human chorizos. When someone does pass away, what's the feeling like in the stadium? Is it like a huge cheer? Is it silence? Are you happy? Are you sad? Is it like mournful or is it celebratory?

It feels like quite a conflicting kind of thing. And that seems like a very interesting sport because normally with the sport, if someone scores a goal, you know how you're meant to feel, don't you? You're meant to feel elation and you're meant to feel hope that your team is going to win um it's not obvious to me what happens when you watch a human chorizo man die the best way to describe it is probably imagine um imagine having an orgasm and being told you've won the lottery at the same time and being handed

a birthday cake it's just the most incredible rush i i it seems a little bit odd to me but it's just the most incredible rush i i it seems a little odd to me but it's just the most wonderful gut-wrenching scream of sort of primal joy and pleasure that you get really and you know you'll see you'll see children really just just screaming screaming with pleasure it's a wonderful sight to see these little infants just you know they're know, they're all sort of bug-eyed and just screaming and tearing bits of viscera to pieces in their teeth, smearing it on their siblings and so on. It's the essence of life and death to the Spanish. They're deeply passionate, deeply alive people, and also deeply dead when they die. No one dies as hard as a Spaniard.

Hi, I'm former Bovine poet laureate Michael Banyan, and I've just launched a new podcast, Jumanji CWS. That's could, would, should. In this new podcast series, don't miss my stunning interview with a guy who was meant to be driving a van around the set of Jumanji, but had to pull out because he woke up with diarrhea. And I woke up and I was like,

oh my God, I shouldn't have ordered those prawns. Just let that sink in. This guy should have been on the set of Jumanji. It was on the walls. It was on the ceiling. That's Jumanji CWS with me, Michael Banyan. Find it wherever you get your Jumanji podcasts. CWS.

It was like hot soup. CWS. In the past, Michael was one of the most successful poets on the planet, regularly selling out small cafes, medium-sized university classrooms and tiny independent bookshops. But along with that rockstar status came a rockstar lifestyle. Partying. Drugs. Drinking. Lager. Lager was like air to me at one point. lager was like air to me at one point and many banyan fans myself included were worried that once michael was back in the uk surrounded by the british literary establishment and their hell-raising ways he'd slip back into the old michael banyan told me that he had wanted to come back into the country quietly so as not to alert the literati but it wasn't to be. As soon as I arrived in Gatwick from Spain,

my phone started pinging. I turned on my phone and I saw that I'd been sent 12 obscene GIFs by Ian McEwan. So Ian McEwan, the famous novelist, also makes his own GIFs. Oh, he makes his own? They're generally of him re-enacting iconic moments from history with a lewd twist. So, hang on, so you're sitting on the runway, I guess, and you turn your phone on and here come the gifs. Yeah, I had Sexy Napoleon. I had Naughty Bodicea.

It was Naughty Nebuchadnezzar. That was the one where I knew I was in trouble. That was a sign to me, which is, you're back and it's party time and we're going to get Babylonian. Um, and, uh, I knew that the literate, you know, I was back and they, and they wanted to get, they wanted a party hard and, but I'd been basically been teetotal for a year and I wasn't gonna let myself fall back into that, into that routine. So I walked out into, into arrivals at Gatwick, and obviously my heart sank when I saw Salman Rushdie waiting for me,

his face looking more like a collapsed turnip than ever, and holding a sign with my drinking name on it, Colonel Thunderbuss, and a tray of shots. Ah, right. So they wanted old Banyan back. They wanted old Banyan back because frankly you know i i was the life and soul of the party in those days and you know like jim morrison and many before me that that was that's the route to so you know that's the route to self-destruction and i and i didn't want to be on that bus i didn't want to be on the thunder. I didn't want to be on the Thunderbus anymore. So I tried to slip past him.

Of course, the cow's face drew his attention. So two seconds later, Salman Rushdie had his arms around me, whispering in my ear, it's fun o'clock. That's when I realised that everyone was there. I looked around that terminal. It was crawling with literati. pretty much every booker prize winner from the last 20 years was there katsuo ishiguro was absolutely off his off his tree he was in sunglasses hut and he put a pair of ray-bans on his penis right they were waiting for me and you know they they were they were enjoying themselves you know my my my flight was delayed i think by about 45 minutes so these aren't the kinds of people that just wait in a line they start having fun so jermaine greer she was going

around on the uh going around on the uh one of the baggage carousels going through people's luggage taking out the sun creams and squeezing out all the cream and lobbing it at children and the elderly martin amos had got control of the public address system somehow. He was reading out sections from London Fields. So obviously this was causing chaos. Customers were angry. People were missing their planes. They wanted flight information.

They were just getting absolutely turgid prose, baffling, impenetrable prose. Margaret Atwood, she'd hijacked a shuttle bus and was driving it on the runway, racing the planes. Absolute chaos. Of course, novelists love airports. She'd hijacked a shuttle bus and was driving it on the runway, racing the planes. Absolute chaos. Of course, novelists love airports for two reasons. They love writing about how an airport is a kind of liminal space that isn't quite... It's an interzone. It's not one place or another. It's a kind of interesting space for the the mind to sort of explore and

also that the pubs are open 24 hours and then get utterly shit-faced you've mentioned there that there's all these novelists there in the past it's not just been uh novelists and poets of course um someone who's figured quite heavily in a lot of your more hell-raising moments yeah of course was he was yeah he was in duty free um he does the thing where he dresses up as a giant eminem hell-raising moments with the actor Mark Rylance. Yeah, of course. Was he there? Yeah, he was in Duty Free. He does the thing where he dresses up as a giant M&M.

Obviously, he's very compelling. He's Rylance. You really do believe he's got a nut inside him. Which of the M&Ms is he

dressing as? Is it the red, sort of dick-head-y one or the yellow, dopey one? Yeah, the dick-head one. Yeah? Yeah, the dickhead one.

Yeah, the dickhead. But of course, in the hands of Rylance, it's so much more complex than that. He's very, very layered, you know. And this is what he does when he's in an airport. Rylance, he dresses up as the M&M, goes up to the cashier in the Duty Free with two massive boxes of Marlboro Lights. The cashier says, can I see your boarding card? At which point Rylance says, this is the only boarding card I need.

Pulls out his BAFTA and pushes his tongue through the eye hole. These people are monsters. These people have no respect. You know, when you're with them, it's fun. I'm not going to deny it. I've done that routine with Rylance in airports. You've pushed your tongue through his BAFTA. I've pushed my tongue through his BAFTA.

I've pushed an Oscar up his arse. Really? Right. In the duty-free shopping area of an airport. Right. So you get off your flight, you get into the terminal. They obviously clock you, and I assume then you're faced with a choice. terminal they obviously clock you and i i assume then you're you're faced with a choice you know you can get involved go into the pret and start um kicking the sandwiches at the staff

huffing absinthe out of alan de botton's hands whatever it is that you might be doing there's that path ahead of you and then there's another path and it sounds to me like you took the other path. I very much did. I put my head down. I pushed Salman Rushdie. I pushed him into a WH Smiths. And here you are today. Now, looking back, I can understand why you made that choice. Do you ever regret doing that? Could things have been different?

I think I made the right decision. I mean, I might not have a career, but I think if I had gone back to hanging out with those guys, right now you'd be talking to a dead man. I mean, a dead man with a smile on his face, but a dead man.

And not because you'd eaten 20 chorizos? Not because I'd eaten 20 chorizos, no. Probably because me and Carol Ann Duffy had smoked a fatal dose of crack in a spaghetti house. Michael's shunning of the literary establishment that day in Gatwick Airport meant that not a single publisher would pick up the phone, and he hasn't published a single piece of poetry this year. However, Michael isn't one to take things lying down. I did what anyone does when, you know, when you can't get your work published

and when no one fundamentally cares what you have to say. I started a podcast. Hi, I'm former Bovine Poet Laureate Michael Banyan and I've just launched a brand new podcast, Jumanji CWS. That's could, would, should. In this brand new podcast series, don't miss my incredible interview with a woman who could have played one of the lead roles in Jumanji had she not been born in 1998. The thing is, I just wasn't alive. The thing is, I just wasn't alive.

In this exclusive interview, I get to the bottom of what it takes to be someone who could have been in Jumanji were it not for one insurmountable obstacle. I'm also an absolutely terrible actor. That's Jumanji CWS with me, Michael Banyan. Find it wherever you get your Jumanji podcasts. CWS. Oh, I also wasn't in Space Jam. CWS. CWS.

CWS. Oh, I also wasn't in Space Jam. CWS. CWS. I asked Michael why he chose to make a Jumanji podcast in a market that is already so crowded. What can I say? It's a bandwagon and I've jumped on. It must feel like you're at the bottom of Everest and you're looking up at the summit. And of course, up there is Jumanjaniacs.

Yes. Well, I mean, obviously obviously my humble jumanji podcast i don't expect it to hold a candle to what the the jumanji acts have achieved deep diving into the jumanji law it's a it's a cultural institution you make a good point there you know that podcast although on hiatus at moment, has turned over every stone in my mind. There's not a single frame of that film that hasn't been explored in great depth. And we're not just talking about Jumanji.

Of course, we've got the other Jumanji podcast. We've got Jumanji with Angie. Angie's a huge celebrity in her own right these days. That's right. There's Jumanji, the German people talking about Jumanji. The Jumanji podcast. Yeah, and it's very worth, if you can get the German people talking about Germanji. The Germanji podcast. Yeah, and it's very worth, if you can get the translations,

it's very worth listening to. I actually like to listen to it in the original German. Do you get anything from it? You don't speak German. The only word I recognize and understand clearly is Germanji, which obviously comes up quite a lot. But it's nice just taking part in the rhythm of it. Germanjinus is a big one.

Yeah, people with very, very high IQs talking about jumanji some incredible stuff recently last week of course they talked to the team at cern who were behind finding the higgs boson yes and they they revealed that actually the the inspiration for doing that was the film jumanji that's right because they thought if a board game can lead you into an imaginary jungle, think what you could achieve with a huge sort of collider. I think it just opened up their imaginations to what was possible, because a board game, of course, is circular, isn't it? Like the Hadron Collider. And indeed, it was an interesting perspective to hear

that actually what they were trying to find wasn't really the Higgs boson at all. They were just trying to get it so that a rhino would come out that's what the Higgs boson initial the initial sketches of what they thought the Higgs boson was going to be was as you say a rhino which they thought was going to gallop out of that hole and run round and round in circles and they didn't really have a plan particularly with what they were going to do with the rhino they just wanted to get it in there sort of take it from there the sad bit was when they revealed that the beginning of the experiment when they first had the glider and they weren't really sure what to do with it they you know they'd raised billions and billions of euros to build the thing and there was a lot of pressure

on them to do something useful with it and they say they've they've wiped the tapes but apparently you can get them and them just ushering rhinos into it to see what would happen. And, you know, they become pasta sauce very quickly. They do. And they become, I believe it's the Dolmio Arrabbiata range. Huge scandal when that comes out. I mean, we're talking about it openly here. It seemingly hasn't sort of got through to the mainstream yet. If you do buy a jar of Dolmio Arrabbiata,

that is made by basically sending a rhino at the speed of light through a tunnel turns it into hot paste and um and i believe that'll be the arab the uh the arabiata range until about they're thinking about 20 20 45 around then they'll have you know they'll have finished the rhinos and and um it'll go back to being um what it was before which is of course a uh just a mixture of tomatoes and peppers. Yeah, it's not clear to me why they don't use the tomatoes and peppers anyway. It seems a lot easier than trying to catch a rhino and then trying to coax it into the collider must be hard

because it's hard to get a rhino to do anything, I would imagine. It's a colossal piss-take, the whole thing. Because you'd assume, wouldn't you, the cost of a jar of Dolmio arrabbiata sauce is probably one pound 69 in a local corner shop but the actual cost of that must be in the billions it's running at a huge loss a huge huge huge loss but they can't admit that now you know the whole thing's become a become a vicious a vicious a whole thing's become a vicious circle. Quite literally a vicious circle.

Well, precisely. And they're ushering in more and more rhinos and churning out more and more Arabiata. You know, the fact is they'd be better off cancelling the range. Just going back to tomato and basil, bit of oregano and salt. You know, that's all you really need. Yeah. As we were talking about,

the number of Jumanji podcasts is incredible. But I would say that that means for someone starting a new Jumanji podcast, it's going to be very hard to find a niche. And I think that's where you've done something very clever indeed, Michael. No one else has done this yet. And that's amazing in a very crowded marketplace. Well, what I thought was, you know, Jumanji, it's been covered, as you say, from every angle.

I thought, what can I bring? What can I bring? Bearing in mind, I have no special connections to Jumanji, it's been covered, as you say, from every angle. I thought, what can I bring? What can I bring? Bearing in mind I have no special connections to Jumanji. I have no special knowledge of Jumanji. Because there were rumours, though, that you were brought in as a script doctor. I wish. I applied to be brought in as a script doctor. But it turned out that the script was literally perfect.

Didn't actually need any doctoring at all. Which is, I believe, the only script, the only Hollywood script that's ever been declared perfect. The perfect script. And there is nothing about that movie, what would you change about that film? It's a question that's raised by the existence of the sequels, I think. Yeah, I'd rather we didn't talk about those.

Do you mind? It's a bit of a... I don't want to get angry. Listen, it makes me angry too. I just don't understand why they did them. Why, you idiots? Why? It's Jumanji.

It's finished. It's done. It's perfect. Fucking off. Fuck off. Sorry. Sorry. It's okay. It's perfect. Fucking fuck off. Sorry. Sorry. No, I feel exactly the same way. Piss off and die. Piss off.

The rock. I'll take a piss on that rock. Shit on that rock. Sorry. Jack. Jack Black. Come off it I mean

he was perfectly he was fine in School of Rock but it's not you know you don't put Rob Schneider and King Lear but even King Lear isn't perfect

you know Jumanji I think stands above of course you know Shakespeare was a great playwright. I'm not saying anything against, you know. But, you know, you could do Othello too with Jack Black. And I'm sure that's in the pipeline.

I'd watch it. I think every other work of literature, every other work of art, you can argue is a sort of a draft on the way to Jumanji. Everything is preparing the way for Jumanji. That's what culture's been. If someone was listening to this now thinking, this is a bit overblown, I'm sceptical about this, what if they were to say, I'll put this to you, Michael,

the Sistine Chapel is a wonderful transcendent piece of visual art. I don't see how that connects to Jumanji coming out several hundred years later. Well, think about it. There's God pointing his finger at Adam and there's that connection, isn't there, between the fingers. He's giving him life.

He's transforming him. He is making his ordinary life turn into something else, turn into a rhino for example so you think that in what we're seeing in the sistine chapel is the moments before god turns adam into a rhino i believe that there was a second chapel planned it was supposed to be a sequence and in the second one adam was going to be a rhino and had we seen this second chapel planned it was supposed to be a sequence and in the second one adam was going to be a rhino and had we seen this second chapel and maybe you know who's to say a third or fourth chapel with a continuation of exactly it was going to be a sort of comic a bit like a comic strip

where you look up but of course budget wise it was crazy and they had to stop it after the first panel that's essentially what happened and there is is, of course, the theory that, you know, many of the great composers died young and they didn't always finish all of their works. They left behind unfinished symphonies. And there's the theory that had they finished that symphony and scientists and musicians have tried to sort of keep going along the lines of what they were creating there,

you end up with the theme from Jumanji. Yeah, and it's a compelling theory. Also, I mean, Beethoven's Fifth. Da-da-da-da. Have you ever heard a rhino walking along? I've seen a number of rhinos being ushered into a van that was going towards the Large Hadron Collider. So, yes.

And that'll ring a bell then, won't it? Da-da-da-da. Four. Four steps. Rhinos have four legs and that's the rhythm they tend to walk in it's the last two are slightly quicker and that's amazing because Beethoven didn't even know that Jumanji existed or did he precisely I think he knew that it was coming if this is true and i and i have to say i don't like to give my

own opinion often on this show because i like to be neutral i like to be journalistic but i think you're you're really on something here and it's something that i i i agree with i'm gonna say it is there something not quite tragic about that though that the human culture peaked in 1995 you know we should have seen it because the following year the biggest film was space jam it was like coming down from from a high peak and suddenly we're back in the valley the dark valley of basketball-based nonsense and from there it's been down and down and down and down you know you watch films these days like the shape of water just complete nonsense absolute tenet where it's total crap any film i can name they're all rubbish since jumanji they're all terrible the artist

sorry to cut you off the artist i mean the artist won an oscar for best yeah best movie it's absolute crap no one even talks about it anymore absolute bilute bilge. It seems like you agree with me. There's something deeply, deeply tragic about the fact that we've now been going 25 years and we're on the other side of the slope. It is sad. But on the other hand, you know, we've seen it. We've been lucky enough. You know, only a small proportion of people ever been born have actually got to watch Jumanji. Yeah, that is true.

I'm certainly glad to have been born in the 20th century and be part of the golden generation who got to see it in the cinema. Although, of course, and this is one of the more outlandish theories, I don't know if you've heard this, I don't know what you make of this, but there is the argument that the only way

the Egyptians could have motivated the workers to build the pyramids was to show them Jumanji on huge screens as they worked? Because that would have been the only way that they could have motivated them in the desert heat. What do you make of that one? Well, if you do look at some of the hieroglyphs from the Tomb of Ramesses III,

it is actually the storyboard of Jumanji. So what does that tell us? That they saw it or that they wrote it? I think it tells us that it's not inconceivable that every couple of millennia Jumanji is created, culture comes to an end, the civilization destroys itself, and then a new civilisation is born

which again heads towards Jumanji and that we're in an infinite cycle. Jumanji. Now this is all fascinating stuff, Michael, but all this stuff is covered quite thoroughly by a number of Jumanji podcasts that are out there. And I'm just trying to bring us on to your podcast, really, because you've realised that that's been covered,

and I think that's a very intelligent step, and you've found your own little niche, and I think it's a great one. So this is your chance just to, you know, we've got a big listenership. This is your chance just to get them we've got a big listenership um this is your chance just to get them hooked give them the elevator pitch um and get them subscribed to listen to uh the your jumanji podcast so give us the give us the give us the pitch so yeah so um my podcast uh is called jumanji cws cws and uh the cws stands for um could would should

it's all about talking to people who weren't involved in the making or the production of Jumanji in any way, but could, would, or should have been. It's essentially going right back to the time, right back to LA, Hollywood, 1995. Who are the people who weren't involved? You know, to say, I'm the director of Jumanji. You can only say that knowing that there are 6 billion people out there who aren't the director of Jumanji. You can only say that

knowing that there are six billion people out there who aren't the director of Jumanji. Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything. But also, truly, could that person ever really say they were the director of Jumanji? That's like saying they're the sole custodian of world culture. It's just not true, is it? No, that's true.

It's taken a million human geniuses created that film since the first time one of our very, very ancient ancestors first picked up a rock and started, you know, scraping it along a larger rock. That's where it started. The inception of culture from that moment till 1995. That's the human story. You know, it's done. Because I like to think, you know, the first time that half fish, half monkey creature clawed its way out of the sea. Yeah, it's got gills, got a big, big red, huge blue anus. Yeah, the first time that thing clawed its way out of the boiling sea and it looked up at the horizon.

It's got those scaly eyes, fangs sticking out of its gills. It's got gills with fangs sticking through. A sort of half beak, half mouth. Half beak, half mouth, and a pouch with one of its hideous, shiny cubs. And that thing looked at the horizon, and it looked at the world around it that it had inherited. And I like to think that even if it's in a rudimentary and very early nascent way it thought this is the canvas on which we create jumanji the other thing to remind people by the way is you know it is it actually holds up holds up all right as a film as well it's actually not you know it's not a bad not a bad watch you could certainly do worse than than that. Yeah, it's decent as a film. Yeah, it's a solid three stars, I think.

It's okay, isn't it? I mean, certainly as a film. It's a kind of family, you know, if you go into it looking for your Citizen Kane, you're not going to find it. But Citizen Kane, as we've established, was just a step on the way to Jumanji. The idea that Citizen Kane is in some way,

you put it on a higher shelf. I mean, that's ridiculous. The fact is the point, you know, what everything in human culture has been heading towards is a workable, as you say, three-star, solid Sunday afternoon film. Okay, an okay film. You wouldn't watch it on Christmas Day.

You might watch it the day after Boxing Day. But doesn't that say something about who we are as human beings? That's what we are. We are, at best, three-star. We're a three-star species, and Jumanji is a three-star film, and that's why it's the perfect three stars. No other film hits that perfect balance point of being funny but not that funny.

Moving, but not that moving. The concept being interesting, but not brilliant. The effects being entertaining, but not compelling. And when you do see a film that the critics rate as a five-star film, I watch it and I think, well, this doesn't tally with my experience of what human beings are like. You know, we are somewhat disappointing some of the time, but we're ultimately fine often. You know, that's what I want to see reflected back at me on the screen. I want the screen to be like a mirror on society. And when I see something brilliant and confounding and transporting and transcendent, I just think, who are you trying to impress who do you think we are because we ain't this we're jumanji we're jumanji you know we are a loose

set of ideas based around a semi-interesting premise michael banyan thank you so much for coming and talking to us about the podcast and um and i wish you all the best thank you so much for coming and talking to us about the podcast. And I wish you all the best. Thank you so much. It's been a huge pleasure. A big thank you to Michael Banyan for that interview. And Jumanji CWS is out now. And before I go, I just want to talk about some feelings that Michael's podcast brought up for me. Realising that Jumanji is the apotheosis of human culture, and also at the same time realising that you weren't involved in it,

can be hard. The knowledge that you didn't have a front row seat, that you were just a bystander in mankind's defining performance. But, you know what, I've come to realise that it's okay. And I've come to realise that, if I'm honest, Jumanji would have been worse for my involvement. It was perfect, and I could have only made it worse. If you ever feel disappointed that you weren't involved in mankind's crowning cultural achievement, just use the following affirmation. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me.

Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now.

Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. And I realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me.

I've come to realize that now. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. For real, Jumanji fucking sucks. Shut your mouth. Jumanji needed someone bigger and better than me. I realise that now. So, that's all we've got time for this month.

But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to our website now, where you can read all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, which this month includes our rundown of the top 100 bits in songs where the singer goes, Until next time, Beef out. thanks to henry packer hal lublin angela sullivan and everyone who realized that jumanji needed someone bigger and better than them hey you've reached dr game show leave your message after the beep hello this is ste is Steve from Albany talking about my favorite podcast, Dr. Game Show. Dr. Game Show is a show where listeners submit their crazy ideas

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