BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 262 - Spinning Plates

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

The lads discuss zen, the ideal lifestyle, meditation, Phil's experience at the video game BAFTAS! Pierre's book diet and more, correspondence from Ally's bluebells experiencePre-order Pierre's book here:https://geni.us/pierrenovelliebook Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's BudPod 262. 262! You! You fixed... You fixed you. Well done, everyone. Yeah, that's empowering. You fixed you.

Hey, hey, don't thank me. I'm just your meditation teacher. You fixed you. Yeah, that's very... Don't thank me, but I'm still glad you paid me whatever it was per week yeah yeah yeah for all these classes it's like a personal trainer go thanks man thanks you really for thanks for all your work you really helped me achieve a better physique and they go no no that was you man you put in the work you can't then go all right can i have my money back yeah you can't say hey you're right hey hey start pointing at the him in the middle of the gym going police police

this man just admitted to stealing all my money uh you fixed you pierre you fixed you yeah um i fixed me today i did some meditation i set it to five minutes instead of 10 i meant to do 10 but it's five and it finished quicker than i expected uh but i was also like i'm not gonna do anymore how do you it's almost a bit of a trap isn't it to sort of think um how uh uh how much how much meditation do i need in advance it's quite difficult to for the foot and for the day yeah how unzen am i today right yeah it's kind of like sherlock holmes and his uh three pipe problems problems. Yeah. This is a full enlightenment problem day. I need to do full enlightenment before. It's like treating meditation like measuring pasta.

I think this is probably the right amount. If you throw your brain at the wall and it sticks, it's done. If you throw yourself at the wall and it sticks it's done if you throw yourself at the wall and you don't mind you can't you the pain doesn't break your concentration then you've meditated enough you've done it you're fully focused uh here's a question yeah yeah go on go on uh so here's a question that i've got i was talking to phil before we started recording listeners about uh i've got a work in progress tonight to the bill murray thank you in advance slash in the past to anyone who came who's a bud pod listener

and apologies for having so little new material to go through but that's the point of a work in progress i suppose yeah it's in progress one of the questions I've written down for myself is, what is the difference between a Zen Buddhist outlook on life and depression? Oh, both say nothing matters. But no, the Zen Buddhist does not say nothing matters. The Zen Buddhist would say everything matters, but not very much. I think that's what equanimity is, right? Everything matters, but not really that much,

which I think is better than nothing matters. If you looked at a guy, and he lived in a little one-bedroom bedsit and had sold all of his possessions, and instead of bothering with haircuts, was just shaving his head and stuff. And if you said to him, what are you going to do? I don't know, I'm just going to stare at the wall, I think, all day.

I think he's depressed, but he could be a Buddhist. It is true. He could be. He's either the most well or the least well guy I know. Yeah, I mean, there's no coincidence that the two most famously bald-shaved people are buddhist monks and some american pop starlets are the very bottom of a mental health crisis right i mean it's it's a dalai lama and britney spears and you go well

clearly they're not the same person but there's clearly a similarity between their outlooks yes that for the dalai lama desire leads to suffering and for britney spears the financial desires of her hangers-on have led to her suffering it does kind of work still yes absolutely you're right how has she been doing since she was freed she still seems mental she's uploading lots of videos of her dancing in her pants yes well she burnt down her home gym didn't she uh did she yes there's a there's this quite breathless video this is maybe at least a year ago now where she goes so my gym burnt down and it turns out that she like left a candle i don't know if she burnt down her gym her gym just burnt to the ground and uh people, and I think that's when people went,

maybe she should have been under some sort of care. Maybe she shouldn't have been freed. Maybe. Candles makes more sense because I was trying to think like, how fast were you lifting weights that you just started a fire?

The sheer friction of your amazing weightlifting. But no, some sort of candles around a meditation yoga mat scenario maybe i bet those yoga mats go up like a fucking candle as well like a match they seem so flammable to me they do spongy and flammable although i'm sure then they aren't and i don't think the buddhist monks are using lululemon yoga mats and lighting Joe Malone candles.

It would be... I would hate to see a Buddhist monk and then under his orange robes, some really like ass-hugging leggings. I would really hate that. Yeah, juicy. Written on a Buddhist monk's ass. Did I ever tell you my juicy joke in the style of Norm Macdonald? Maybe, but go for it.

It was, I saw a girl walking around with juicy written on her ass. But it's her ass, so what's the juice? Diarrhea? That's it. That's my tribute to the great man that's norm that's normal right it's that's norm filter through a bud pod sensibility yeah that's right yeah yeah I think so

I'd hate to see a monk wearing a brand I would hate that yeah yeah I don't think they are allowed. Are they allowed to wear anything except the robes? I don't know. I was surprised to learn something that made a lot more sense to me. Because every now and then I'll see a picture of Buddhist monks that people have encountered on their various fashionable western holidays to the to east asia and um there'll

be monks with like tattoos and earrings and stuff sometimes and i realized um we was i still had a western idea of what it meant to be a monk because in the west once you become a monk barring some sort of huge crisis or disaster or mishap or misbehavior, you're a monk for life. Right. Whereas apparently, especially in like Burma or Myanmar and Thailand and stuff,

you can be a monk for a bit. So it's not crazy to be like, well, I'll be a monk and I ended up being a monk for about four years and then I stopped. That's not because of any crisis. That not that's normal right yeah i mean when you go on holiday these places you and a bunch of monks are walking around there's always like a white guy pulling out the back and you're like you can't be here for the whole hog surely and

they usually are for like a couple of years i mean so i i i use headspace as meditation app which is started by i can't remember his name his name's andy andy puddlesworth or something like this very english guy and he went out and trained in buddhist monkism and he came back and created a meditation app that's made him, presumably, millions and millions and millions of pounds. And I always wonder how he squares that with his Buddhism or his meditation. He's like Mr. Burns learning about recycling.

It scrapes the sea clean. All the Buddhist monks are like, no, no! You weren't supposed to profit from this yeah you want to yeah to sell immaterialism is that the term to sell yeah can you sell it is it possible for me to reach enlightenment on my phone probably not subscribe for 8.99 a month and i'll tell you how to sell all your stuff yeah yes can you reach enlightenment on a subscription can a free trial bring you to the bodhi tree i don't think so yeah you go i was one of the lucky ones i managed to attain enlightenment uh just within the free

trial period so that was really lucky. Yeah, it really saved out a lot of money. That saved me so much money. I mean, if it had taken 50 years, my word. Because one of the main lessons that they keep reiterating in the meditations in the app is, and of course, meditation is a lifelong thing. It's not a brief, it's not a quick cure.

It's about practice and prolonged practice and you'll be doing meditation for the rest of your life and palmy always thinks well isn't that convenient for you well well what a surprise here i was thinking you were gonna say a year subscription should sort you out well but how wrong i was turns out it's a lifelong a lifelong thing you say interesting turns out that when it comes to big zen there's no time limit on how much big zen wants you to subscribe to its little monthly package of enlightenment big zen it's a real thing big zen yeah yeah he's in the pocket he's in the voluminous robe of big zen he's in the he's in the robe fold of big he's in the wooden begging bowl of big

big hanging sleeve of big zen the begging bowl of big zen yeah he's in the begging bowl of big zen yeah that's that's why he's pushing all that uh all those meditation beads and stuff yeah do you meditate i i give it a go sporadically every now and then and it does help but i can just about hear some weird drilling so apologies if that's coming through on the mic. It shouldn't, but someone somewhere is doing DIY. Anyway, I meditated a bit. My problem is that I get very stressed about having a to-do list, and I have this fear that if I did everything in a day that I was supposed to, I'd have no time to do my actual life.

By actual life, you mean reading social things yeah social things fucking around thinking of jokes or whatever just general ambient life whereas like if i took a day and i went okay today this is one of those days where i'm gonna do everything and i'm gonna buy everything i mean like i'll i'll go to the gym and I'll shower and you brush your teeth twice a day, floss at least once a day. Okay, I'll do that. And then I'll do these emails. You floss at least once a day? No, I'm saying you're supposed to.

That gave me a heart attack. I know. No, no, no. Exactly. You're supposed to, though. And then if I add meditation onto that, moisturize and fucking whatever, and do a little shave, trim my beard and be,

and make it all nice. And then go outside and get some sunshine and then go for a little walk and then do my emails and do my accounts and make sure I donate money to the nice charity. Everything just, I get this feeling that I wouldn't have any time left to do anything else. Make, make,

make a healthy meal three times in a day. Who's got the time for that? All the dicing, Phil, the dicing. Yeah, I know. There's a lot of dicing. There's a lot of washing. And then I add to that, sit quietly. There's a lot of washing vegetables.

I didn't think my adult life would involve so much washing of vegetables. Constantly shaking the water from the end of the broccoli floret. What am I, a Soviet floret. What am I, a Soviet fish wife? What am I doing? Half of my life

I'm washing vegetables. It's ridiculous. I've got a salad spinner because I was like, I cannot make this lettuce any less wet. It's made of water. This has become insane.

It's the wettest object I've ever touched. I have to put it in a fucking large hadron collider just to fix yeah like when you cut up a cucumber you're like well which is the bad wet which is the good wet is now there's wet on the inside but i remove the wet on the outside because i wouldn't want to dilute the lovely delicious inside wet isn't it yeah by the time I stop drying this cucumber I'll be dead it is wet I've started to believe

that life well a good day a good day is like a Jenga block tower and you know your vegetables your meditation your flossing each of these are another block in the Jenga tower but you know your vegetables your meditation your flossing each of these are another block in the jenga tower but you can build a stable tower with some blocks missing it's just the more blocks the better but you'll have a stable tower with enough blocks you can you can miss out a few

blocks here and there yeah this is the thing i always but i do worry that oh maybe if i meditated it would unlock all the other you know but then i think that about multivitamins i think that about multivitamins i in the back of my mind is a suspicion that i'm missing out on one herbal pill that's going to unlock everything that's going to get rid of my brain fog I'll finally be thinking how I've always believed I think And you know Because the whole time I'm like There must be some supplement I'm not having enough gingus root

Or something But then I go well That can't be the natural order of the thing It's because gingus root wasn't available here During the Scottish Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. I don't think they had Genghis root. And they did it.

So surely now every fucker should be inventing a new energy alternative in their living room with all the fucking Genghis root floating about. But they aren't. It should be a race of – humanity should be a race of humanity should be a race of like psychic gods just they finally got enough zinc and magnesium so now all limits are gone just hovering communicating telepathically just exactly like yeah what happened aliens aliens would look at us and go what what was this species is great leap forward and someone's like holland and barrett ah we need a holland and barrett in order we should start harnessing travel whatever yeah we should start eating raw

uncooked unsalted nuts yuck yeah have you ever had a raw cashew nut? I thought they were raw. But like the ones you get, you buy in a supermarket that are salted, they're roasted. Oh, fuck. Of course. Well, then no, I guess.

It's bad. Hard? Just kind of chalky. I wouldn't say it's any different in terms of level of... Yeah, chalky, brittle, not as good a flavor. It's, oh man, unroasted nuts. Like, ugh. Raw nuts.

No salt on. You just think, what's the point in this? Where do you even get that? Holland and Barrett. That's what I'm saying. That's it. That's it that's it man oh yeah and they always it you always have the sneaking suspicion that you could dispel your malaise with uh the right uh additive or or or meditating or what if i walked meditating does work meditating is the one meditating like flossing annoyingly does

work meditating flossing exercise they all work but they all suck meditation's not bad meditation's fun it's just when you have a busy day just like do i have 10 minutes to just sit here and you the whole time i'm thinking ah i kind of need this to end i need to go do something but that's what it's meant to solve and i do notice when i haven't been meditating i am generally more anxious and more foggy and it is true meditation is great and i i really resent i really resent and this is another thing i want to maybe try and talk about in the show if it ever exists is uh i really resent the idea that like i'm so i'm so close like you say to leading the kind of life that i would like i'm so i feel like i'm so close to it but it's this just one or two things that i'm not doing like meditating or or whatever

and then i think okay and then if i start doing the meditating then i fall off on one of the other spinning plates that's it yeah yeah and then you just go, but I can't. It's not fair. I was so close. You're like the guy from the Twilight Zone. There was time now. Exactly. And so when I was writing.

Well, I mean, today I finished my meditating. And I've been to the gym today, did my meditation, had a shower. And then August lunchtime. And I thought, it's already fucking lunchtime. I need to, if I had woken up at like six, it would be like nine now. But I physically, I cannot do it. I need so much sleep. I lose so much of my life to fucking sleep.

But then if I don't, if I get a minute less sleep than I want, my whole day is ruined anyway. So then I have to sleep. But then sleep takes so much time. You know that kind of old... Old people need like three hours sleep. I swear to God. Old people...

I want to get there now. Why don't they give them all the sleep? They're the ones with the time. Why can't we have old people sleep and they can have young people sleep? That's the way it should be. How do they do that? Is that just retirement?

What is that? It's also just their bodies are done growing. They're not doing anything. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's always about... I resent the compromises when I was writing my book

which is available to pre-order now exciting exciting when I was writing it I thought to myself okay I've got to write this book and be on tour

at the same time and do stuff like this podcast and the radio show on Saturday mornings and and and and and so I just thought okay here's the rule for getting the book done if I do lots and lots of writing and and and so i just thought okay here's the rule for getting the book

done if i do lots and lots of writing and editing and so on i i eat what i want broadly i just eat whatever i can fucking reward myself with harry bow like an ape that's that's the plate i'm gonna stop spinning and it did work phil but i did get very fat. I got a lot fatter. Well, I got the book done, but I did get fat. Yeah, yeah. Because I wasn't controlling my diet. But I think that's very mature. I think it's mature to understand, like, you can only spend so many plates and something else is going to have to give.

Because the book was a temporary new plate. It was, you know, the eating will never stop. They'll never stop being a plate the book was a plate for a bit the eating is a plate forever that's but that's again what like the meditation it's like hey this is a lifelong thing that's what i hate yeah i i hate that i'm gonna have to think about not having dessert till i'm dead yeah which is a bad example because i don't want to. I want another starter. But you know what I mean.

I want crisps. You ever have this? I've had a full lunch and I'd say, I really want crisps right now. Yeah. My dessert is always actually I want crisps.

Yeah. I've had a starter and a main and for dessert, can I have toast? Can I just have hot buttered toast? that a pudding the other day i had i think this is something that will just happen to everyone forever throughout their lives is from time to time you have a piece of just butter on toast and you go god you know just

butter on toast is really good yeah that happens to you like every three months i think yeah you'll go oh you know what just butter on toast is just really great and then you forget and then three months later you do it again you know this is great why do we ever put anything else on toast yeah i always had that i had that view as a child yeah i had view as a child where people like what do you have on your toast? I'd say, butter, and they'd go, what? no jam? and I'd be like, you are insane

they've never heard of butter on toast yeah, but they're like it would feel to them almost sort of Spartan these people they would be like, oh, you're missing out on the jam and marmite and peanut butter and I'd go, da da da da da just slow down you're g out on the jam and Marmite and peanut butter. And I go, just slow down. You're gilding the lily here.

I don't need any of that. It's getting in the way of the butter taste. Gilding the lily. It's lovely, lovely butter taste. Yeah, it is good. My natural umami. I am... Oh, by the way, thanks to any pod buds

who may have watched the BAFTA Games Awards. Oh, yes, yes, of course, yeah. On stream. It was available on stream. If you watched it... You were doing some hosting. I was hosting.

I did like an opening monologue with some jokes. Making very inside baseball jokes about the games involved and games in general. But it was a fun night. I met some real luminaries of the gaming world, Pierre. Oh, yeah.

I met Sam Lake. Sam Lake is an eccentric Finnish games developer who I think is Remedy heads up or creative director of Remedy they made Max Payne and he is the face of Max Payne so they got this great face and they just took his face and put on Max Payne

so they're kind of like eyebrow up, that's him he was cool I met Shelley Blonde who is the original voice actor of the original Lara Croft. No. Yeah.

First ever Lara Croft. That's pretty cool. Oh, wow. Yeah. Did she have a butler with her that you could lock in a big freezer? That was my closing joke. I said,

we're all going back to Shelley Blonde's house with locking her butler in the fridge. That must have killed. Come on. Yeah, I think that did pretty well. I think that did pretty good. Yeah. That's a formative memory for so many people.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a good night, man. It was a good night, man. It was a good night. And what a really cool bit was, afterwards I met the actors who play Spider-Man, the Spider-Men in the video game. Oh. So Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Oh, right, right, right.

Yuri Lowenthal and naji jita and naji had won best lead performance for miles morales in spider-man 2 and i got to meet them and it was so cool um naji complimented me in my suit and as a full-grown man in my head i went miles morales thinks my suit's cool and i found that really exciting and then we did this photo shoot where the three of us did the spider-man pointing meme oh that's great yeah yeah so i've done the spider-man pointing meme with two actual spider-men and you've been able to accurately and legitimately continuously use the word spider men which is always what a privilege yeah you can say to people when i met the spider man or you can say to people this reminds me of when i was hanging out with spider men

uh and uh oh this is yeah this is just like when i was hanging out with the spider men And this is just like when I was hanging out with the Spider-Man at the BAFTAs. Yeah. Yeah. That was sick. That was so sick. That was so cool. Oh, the other day I was chatting to one of the Spider-Men.

And yeah. Was there anyone there who was like getting mobbed who you had to have explained to you because like for me that would always be the case if i went to a a tv or a movie thing there's always something you haven't seen some streaming series where everyone's like that's that's the guy who plays alan clark in clark's dilemma or something and you're like well i don't have apple tv so i don't know what fucking clark's dilemma is you know what not really the the games people seem to be all pretty chill um i mean john romero was then john romero like created doom and quake and wolfenstein yeah he was just there he gave he presented the final award and then later i was having dinner with him i was having dinner with the guy who made doom and that's crazy which was crap yeah i mean i didn't i didn't really process it but if you

think about it like he's the reason we have first person shooters really i mean i suppose it's different with actors and musicians because you sort of like you you know them from their face and maybe from an ability that they could kind of bust out then and there. Whereas when you're meeting him, you can't be like, hey, just for me, just for me. Could you quickly revolutionize the world of video gaming?

Just a bit. Just do it as a bit. Just for me. Just quickly do some coding. I don't mind what it is, but could you write some code on the back of this photo? Yeah.

And also, I guess we aren't shown these people's faces all the time every day yeah and if there was any justice we would we would be yeah yeah he'd have his face on big posters saying thank you for thank you for walking so call of duty could run yes something like that yes exactly um but yeah it's really cool really cool um yeah uh and yeah i'm i'm still playing the games i'm still playing all the the nominees and that it's incredible it's incredible what they've done it's amazing how are you finding being back in the world of video games

i'm it's a long way i think it's actually good for my mind. I think it's actually helping me keep my mind clear and it's helping my memory. Because you have to remember things. You have to learn new buttons and storylines and missions and it is training your memory again. So I think it's quite good for me. Yeah.

I mean, I find that gaming is a chance to sort of stimulate my brain and turn it off at the same time yeah yes that's well put i think that is exactly it yeah there's nothing else i could quite manage that um i don't think because like even even reading a book or whatever it's stimulating but you're not turning your brain off in the same way i think my brain is extra on when i'm reading because i'm really i'm really trying to concentrate i really have to concentrate trying to learn here's um well i'm glad to hear that the people at bafta games were quite humble nice people because uh the other day phil i saw i you know how like on twitter now it just shows you stuff from just strangers oh well if you're on your for you i'm always on following

yeah well i've been spending too much time before you is fun this is the thing yeah i looked at my girlfriend's twitter and she's like your feed is so fun i mean it's crackers but it's fun and i realized oh she's on for you well that's it so you do get shown this kind of insane revolving sushi buffet of of lunatics yeah um and i saw one the other day see what you think if you would ever tweet anything like this um and they were talking about uh they were talking about themselves. And they said of themselves, and this is someone who doesn't work in entertainment. They work in quite a specific field.

So it's not like they're some crazy WWE wrestler or singer, pop singer. They said, I am one of the top voices of my generation. What? Yeah, about themselves in their field yeah yeah yeah yeah and i clicked through onto their profile they had like not that this means anything but they had they were just like a person who worked in a specific field had three thousand four thousand followers i'm the top person what's it like one of the i'm one of the top voices in my generation is it was this like a tech thing or a business thing it was something a bit fiddly but

it was it was something where like they manifestly it was a it was an absolutely cracker's thing to say yeah i guess there's no there's no context where that isn't mad yeah because even if you say you know i'm excellent in my field or i'm i'm one of the best out there but of my generation i don't care if it's in china i'm still better than them i'm still better than most of them i've got no idea of them but i'm gonna assume yeah i'm pretty sure i'm still better than the billions of people i haven't met met it's a fucking crazy thing to say um yeah how do i mean imagine saying that it really shocked me to see someone just say i'm one of the greatest in the world at what i do just really with a stony face it was so funny and mad and unsettling and that was the that's the whole tweet it wasn't like it was the whole tweet yeah basically um it was in response to a discussion of of of whether or not humility

was good or something like that it was in the on the topic of it ironic i know yeah i know but they were their their point of view was like no it's good to sort of boast actually you're right okay for example i'm one of the great greatest voices of my generation and they really meant it and i just thought that that's that's really perturbed me in a way that i'm yeah twitter's done man twitter's a fucking asylum twitter's just like arkham asylum has been left alone and everyone's gone you know what we'll just forget we ever did that they do what they want to do on there just try not to look in too many times a day

well speaking of asylums where you shouldn't look in too many times a day Phil let's do some correspondence yes let madness reign ring letters emails phone calls

your sister ring letters I cut my thumb knuckle open because I dropped a spirit level on it I was hanging up a picture and the spirit level fell and it hit my thumb and I genuinely went to my head, surely not,

and I looked down and the flap of skin was off. How soft is my fucking skin? Is this because you moisturize? Yeah. My skin is too supple and pure and nice. It's just so fragile. Yeah.

A spirit level it didn't even it felt like are you sometimes shocked by how little something needs to fall to hurt you it felt like two inches and it hurt yeah yeah the amount of momentum needed for it to burst open your soft peach-like skin was so little. Or when you just slightly walk into something with your head and you think, ah, fuck. And you think, what if I was running at that?

I was barely moving and it hurt. What if I ran at it? Can you imagine? Well, you'd have exploded into a shower of guts. Phil, we have an email from Ali Ali Algodpally Dear Robespierre and the Philatine

Ah I love that French Revolution The Terror The Terror Was he called the terror or did he die in the terror uh that period of time was called the terror when the revolution was eating its children yeah when they were doing all the head chopping and people like robespierre said no the terror should continue forever because it keeps everything nice and fresh revolutionary wow and then that didn't

go very well which is weird for a revolution normally they go so well is rob is robespierre is in the napoleon movie right yes yes he gets shot at the start he tries to shoot himself and misses through his own face yeah that's it did that actually happen i think so yeah oh fair enough i'm not sure my my robespierre knowledge is lacking the the terror gets very confusing because they have all these names for parties and waves and it would be nicer if it was yeah that was one of the struggles of the napoleon movie trying to excitingly depict the quite boring series of meetings that led to him actually taking over.

Yeah, they skipped a lot of stuff. It wasn't just straight to the defenestrations. That's it. So Ali says, I was prompted to write in after receiving the attached email, which I received after ordering some environmentally friendly toilet paper. Ah, I wonder if it's the same brand as me so uh it's uh it says it's from a the email is from bamboo oh okay okay no mine is not bamboo but uh but i'm very excited to hear this yeah bamboo and it just says welcome to the bamboo community let's plant trees together which is a funny way of talking

about shitting and i don't think they meant that they are logs they are logs fair i hey let's just say uh let's just say bamboo is great for when you're out planting trees you got to go plant a tree that would be a euphemism for a spectacularly large shit yeah it's like planting a fucking tree in the toilet bowl just you thumbing in the bathroom behind you going excuse me i need to plant a couple of trees sorry i was so long it was like planting a tree in there oh no yeah welcome to the bamboo community uh and ali says it reminded me of your conversation uh about everything being a community nowadays and how much phil disliked that yep everything's yeah you know it's not a community i bought luro from you it's not a

community yeah me and the other bamboo community members aren't meeting up every week to talk about how to help each other plant trees as it were wiping each other's asses yeah the no one from the bamboo community will be at my bedside when i pass from this earth yeah it's been a really tough time you know know. The wife left. She took the kids. I was fired from work. But the bamboo community really pulled together and they've been my rock. I would not be here today if it wasn't for the bamboo community. They saw me through the worst of it

i tried i tried this material out i need to bring it back about how i'd never want to be in a community because communities only have have to come together over something terrible yeah it's always bad to be in the community yeah yeah i uh yeah it's tough it's tough to sell material sometimes to normal people who are community-minded. Instinctively, the marketing works on them. And they go, but that's nice, isn't it? Yeah. And you want to say to them, no, it's not nice. And nor am I.

Okay? I am not nice either. And still be a sympathetic figure on stage. Anyway. Ali says, being a former English teacher turned journalist. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Well.

A hack. We've got a hack here. Hey? Yeah. What are the words for journalists, are there? We've got a hack, a journo. Journo. I want to say gumshoe, but that's a detective.

Yeah, but it's kind of the same vibe, isn't it? Big coat with a trilby with a little thing in it. Running into phone boxes. A snoop. Yeah. Being a former English teacher turned journalist, linguistically, when I think about being in a community, I think of it in terms of things that you would express that you are rather than things that you do. For example, I am British, but I shop at Sainsbury's.

Right. So British is the community. Sainsbury's is just something she does. Yeah. If I met anyone that identified themselves by the type of toilet paper they bought, I'm an Andrex man myself. Every time that person's name came up in conversation Until the day I died

That would be the first thing I think of That's interesting And in a way It feels like an American thing I feel like Americans Did used to say that about cigarettes Like I'm a Lucky Strike man myself

And beer It seems to be sort of addictive harmful substances That you can form I'm a lucky strike man myself and beer it seems to be sort of addictive harmful substances that you can form a sort of identity around I'm an Oxycontin man myself I think in America you are what you buy ah yes well observed I think that is probably right because there is so much choice

that they're so proud of, I suppose. Yeah. By making a choice, you are sort of planting a flag in the ground of your identity, saying, this is the one I chose. Yeah. Whereas the closest thing we have to that is like,

you know, if someone shops at Waitrose, you have to go, and make a noise. Yeah, that's it. I guess. But here, you just shop wherever's nearest i used to shop at a waitress now shop at morrison's it's just nearest it's also like even even that little noise about waitrose is still just a reflection of class which is the actual thing

it's reflecting it's not about the supermarket it's about the class it implies It all comes back to class So Ali says I also have a little tale to share Ooh Do go on I have a very dear friend That I met at university who is kind and sweet And has been a great support in some difficult times Sounds like the bamboo community to me

Really put together Oh wow During one of the lockdowns when activity was limited to just walking about she expressed the desire to go see some bluebells ah what a charming person enid blyton activity yeah without the racism well let her finish the story pierre we don don't know that. That's right. Yeah, sorry about that. Sorry, Ali. I didn't mean to presume. She expressed the desire to go see some bluebells.

So we went to Hampstead Heath in the hope of finding some and then having a crepe afterwards. A crepe? Yeah. This is crepe. A crepe. Very nice. When I was growing up and people would say

crepe paper yes is that the same crepe that very thin yeah so crepe just means thin does it I don't know actually it's a good point but I would always hear it as cray paper like the

cray twins paper yeah yeah yeah very thin gangsters paper yeah because no one could ever be bothered to say crepe paper cray paper cray paper yeah get some cray paper right some cray paper right got it paper from the craze anyway uh go to hampstead heath to see the bluebells and then have a crepe afterwards. We were there for a while walking all over the heath, but had no luck and decided to move on to the crepe part of the day. When?

As we were leaving the heath, I spotted some bluebells about 20 meters away in a wooded area. Yeah, success. Without thinking, I said quite loudly, look, bluebells! And pointed. Yeah. What I hadn't realized until the words were out of my mouth was that about 10 meters beyond the bluebells

was an exposed naked behind. Oh! Oh no. So 10 meters beyond the bluebells is a bare arse. Oh no. Horrible. Presumably in the middle of shitting in the woods. The owner of the arse quickly clothed themselves and disappeared into the undergrowth.

But it was too late. Running off like Bigfoot. Yeah. But it was too late. I'd opened a Pandora's box of butts in front of my kindest friend who had only ever wanted to see bluebells. A Pandora's box of butts. We continued on to get crepes,

a bit shell-shocked. I remember saying something like, there's an open toilet block just up the path. And my friend said in a very small voice, they probably get some kind of sexual kick out of it. they probably get some kind of sexual kick out of it. Almost to herself. Yeah, probably get some kind of sexual kick out of it.

And to transfer to that level of jadedness from being the kind of person who says, we should go see some bluebells. What a terrible decline. from charming innocence to jaded detective on the police force also it's quite a funny prank to say to someone look bluebells and they go and they just have to see a bear sort of farting ass where where ah and then the guy I mean let's be honest presumably a guy he's like he's bare ass going oh this is a terrible

emergency for me in my life this is a low point of my life and hearing two women going look bluebells huh and just quickly having to like yank your pants back up and like sprint away like a fucking fugitive. Oh, God.

People are vile. Also, how aware was that guy that bluebells were near his ass that when he heard that, he knew they meant near him? Ah. Yes, maybe he always shits near bluebells. So he always hears people coming. It's good luck. Yeah. shits near bluebells so he always hears people coming it's good luck yeah but then he's he's sort of it's self-defeating because he's he's he's standing in a place that is naturally attractive

to to onlookers which is a place with pretty blue flowers he should go somewhere where no one wants to look at the flowers yeah he should go somewhere where all he hears are people saying god this is the ugliest part of the park let's walk swiftly yeah let's walk swiftly without looking at the undergrowth how given how dull it is being flowerless and all that kind of thing yeah yeah whereas like yeah always always shit near bluebells is the kind of advice that like a medieval person would get you go right because it stops the plague somehow yeah yeah yeah yeah oh okay it stops the miasma from coming out your bum and hitting you in the face and giving you plague right right right that makes sense i'll

make sure to find some patch of bluebells next time thanks doctor thank you god bless you Thank you. God bless you. Well, now, Phil, it's time to go to the VIP patch of Bluebells. Oh, yes. And what lovely exclusive Bluebells they are. Just sign up for the Patreon if you want access to them. Oh, check out my Instagram if you want to see me trying to be a young influencer and unboxing some of the uncorrected proofs of my book with Frank Skinner.

We did an unboxing, Phil. I'm seeing you on Wednesday and you're going to get yours. Oh, great. Oh, excellent. Can't wait. So check out that on Instagram for a fun unboxing video if you like that kind of thing. Oh, and follow me on

Instagram for a very sporadic really release of uh reels sometimes there's a whole bunch sometimes it's nothing for months you're on your toes the whole time yeah with me edgier seat yeah uh but otherwise see you next time love you lots bye bye