BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 91 - Tough Goblin Questions

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

We're well into the nineties! Rad! Sketches include electric scat and Sgt Mungo the hostage rescuer. Topics covered: dedicating your life to maths, orc and goblin society, insomnia, correspondence includes flaming volvo side quest and borrowed phone rude boy.PIERRE ON TWITCH: twitch.tv/pierrenovelliePHIL'S CHARITY DnD GAME:  www.comicrelief.com/dnd Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Budpod 91. Is 91 anything? The numbers aren't... They're not really meaning anything to me anymore. I don't know. They're getting... I guess... They're getting too high now. It's a year in which we were alive. 1991, that's right. Yes, okay, okay, this is something. Yes, we're finally into the years where we're alive i guess this is the first that you were alive you haven't born 1991 yes i'm a 1991 baby

i just seem sound and uh appear old that's right um i'm a 1990 baby i just appear and sound young but pierre and i are in fact direct opposites of one another that's right yeah that's right um in in all ways were you with it with a yin the yin and wang the yin and wang correct i am i'm the patriarch of the pod um they may not seem like it and I have all that healing feminine energy that's right good old fashioned spunk you're

you're yappy do you're the podcast yappy do scrappy do I said yappy do listeners Phil is dealing with some sleep deprivation at the moment, so you have to forgive his unusually lax details of Scooby-Doo. Yeah, I got absolutely no sleep last night. It was just one of those nights where you're just up and you're up and you're up and you're up and you panic about being up and and and then in the end you know you go through it's

like you go through the stages of grief first like there's bargaining it's like if i if i get some sleep now i promise i won't sleep tomorrow or and then there's like anger. It's like, why won't you fucking sleep? And then eventually there's acceptance when you're just like, I guess I'm not sleeping tonight. Wow, maybe I'll just be really productive. Maybe I'll actually get things. I'll get extra work done today. I've basically got double days now.

I've got two days. And then I don't think it's a stage of grief, but a loss of short-term memory is the final stage. Yeah. Did you try in the midst of your sleep deprivation, did you try and do something which I've tried in the past, which is when you can't sleep and you think, well, I have writing to do or I have work to do, so I could just do some of that. And then you're kind of like lying in your bed and you open up your laptop and the second your hand moves to like typing stance,

you feel your brain just go, I'm exhausted. And then you go, oh, I guess that worked immediately. And you close the laptop and you lie down and you're awake again. I guess that worked immediately. And you close the laptop and you lie down and you're awake again. Yeah. The human body sometimes fucking sucks.

Yeah. It's the equivalent of when there's an error message on your old Windows machine and you move the Windows around and it's like the cards in Solitaire and they just go like... Yeah. It clones itself a thousand times um there's nothing worse than being up that late and not being able to sleep

it's a cliche but it really does feel like you're the only person who's conscious on earth that's right there's the sense of loneliness there's no lonelier feeling it's what it must be like to be that sad old man on the moon from that Christmas ad. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a John Lewis advert we need to see. Some dude just can't get to sleep. And then what he gets for Christmas is a set of prescription drugs. And everyone's like, do it, try it now, try it now. And then he's like, oh, no, I'll wait till after dinner. They're like, no, Grandpa, do it now. And he takes it and, oh, he's immediately asleep.

And everyone's like, yay! And he's asleep. He just sleeps through dinner sleeps through everything and everyone's like why he's enjoying his present and then we reveal that that's what santa does that's why he only works one day a year he's he's on fucking valium the rest of the year he can't he's he's a he's a he's a druggie who's just conked out yeah yeah or is it that on christmas day he's all red cheeked and cheerful and fun the rest of the year for santa's life is fucking is like train spotting basically i do you think it's because like um all of that like cheerfulness and all the energy he has to use like that's how bad the crash

is after that amount of like just cheer like how if people use MDMA it depletes all of their endorphins or whatever it is happy chemicals and then they have like blue Monday father Christmas has blue year

because his brain his human his mortal mind can't handle the burden of of that amount of christmas joy expenditure you know yeah yeah yeah yeah for him like yeah the rest of the calendar, January to November is one big come down. All the elves are, like, bringing him slices of oranges or whatever. Isn't that what you're supposed to... I remember reading that somewhere or being told that that if you're on some sort of terrible acid trip, then it's citrus that you want.

I think it's vitamin C that is supposed to stop it. Is it, really? Maybe that's where it comes from. I swear there was a Huntress Thompson thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've still never seen it. quite cheerful in las vegas have you

huh i've still not seen fair and loathing in las vegas is it good um i would say uh you should read the book first not because because the book is necessarily better than the film, but you might watch the movie without reading the book and make the mistake a lot of quite... You'll make the mistake that a lot of teenage boys who are a bit much make, and they'll watch the film and they go, it's a film about how fun it is to do drugs.

And it's like, well, not really. Yeah, but that's not what it's about. Yeah, we're not dealing with Santa Claus over here. Exactly. We're not dealing with that wrecked hippie Santa. Yeah. That fucking Arctic

bumpkin. No. Yeah, I'd say the book, yeah, it's worth reading the book. It's an interesting book, and it's got amazing illustrations in. And then the movie is, like, an interesting attempt by Terry Gilliam to try and capture a very odd, kind of weird, not, like, abstract in what happens. Everything that happens is, like, concrete. Like, there aren't, like, you know, spiritual forces or anything, but it's abstract in the sense of what it's trying to describe, I think.

It's a bit out there. But yeah. No, it's good. It's good. I quite like Huntress Thompson, even though he sounds like the worst person to work with in the world. That is the curse of the genius, Pierre. It's why I'm famously impossible. I, I, maybe I should start becoming more impossible

and then people would ascribe to my basic positive qualities, the hint of genius. Well, this is the thing, you know, there's some emotional expression and the emotion itself have found to be reciprocally linked. So, if you start smiling, just physically smiling,

you will feel happier. If you start pumping your fists in the air you will start you will feel victorious it just those things are so linked that they you know you can kind of uh create the the emotion um and i wonder if you just start being an impossible alcoholic dickhead you become a literary genius. I think it's worth trying. I think if you become an impossible enough alcoholic dickhead you'll wake up and there'll just be a draft of a

novel about a sailor next to your bed. About a sailor. Yeah. Why are they always about the sea? Why is it always the sea? They love the sea. they love a bit of sea those guys i reckon it's because they they're they're now so detached from everyday life experience they don't even know what goes on in the normal world so they just have to

be at the sea where they can make up whatever happens. Yeah. I think that's definitely a part of it because they live the life of an impossible literary genius. They can't write a novel about, you know, collapsing onto a chaise longue after your 15th whiskey of the morning kind of thing. Yeah. And that means that you can't write about what it's like to have a dramatic time

while you work as the deputy manager of a Sainsbury's. So you just have to go, um, a sailor. And then at some point your publisher will have to pay like to have a dramatic time while you work as the uh the deputy manager of a sainsbury's so you just have to go um a sailor and then at some point your publisher will have to pay 50 quid to a sailor to go through your book and say oh that's not what we call that rope um actually they'd try to set sail in the morning if the tide was like that and you yeah, yeah, yeah, put it in. Put it in. It's not about that anyway. It's about he falls in love with the moon, okay? Get me another drink. Is that how book research happens? Do they get experts to just come in and fix the thing at the end?

Well, I mean, it's up to the author i suppose but there's certainly a fairly a fairly decent industry of it especially when it comes to things like um crime novels or stuff to do with the police you can hire ex-policemen to go through your work i see so like um i mean i'm sure they charge quite a lot of money but like if you're writing some kind of like murder mystery then you probably want all your shit to be on point you know yeah like how do you learn all the slang and stuff and like that's right because whenever i whenever i read something like that i'm like wow do they do they work in the force? They know all the words.

There's a lot of jargon here. I'm way too trusting. Here's an interesting tidbit for you, Phil. You know how if there's someone working for the enemy inside an espionage, a spying organization, we call it a mole? Yes. That was coined, and if not coined, heavily popularized by John le Carré. Ah, I'd assume that was an industry term. I think there's some interview where he says it isn't an industry term,

but now it's become one. I think there's some interview where he says it isn't an industry term, but now it's become one. Because it's just the general word in the English language for that concept. Yeah. I think it's a good word. It evokes digging about, sniffing around. Yeah, sneaky mole sneaky mole emerging tunnels what what i'm always disappointed by is when there's a real world story about a real like it's particularly modern spy and they they just look like an accountant

like actual spies look nothing like film spies they they just look like normal just regular guys just regular people wondering about do you think um if you showed up as a as a not as a spy as a civilian but like let's say you fly to St. Petersburg or Moscow airport and you land in Moscow and you walk around looking like a spy. You're all suave and handsome and tall and you keep just throwing credit cards around and whatever. Do you think they'll just be like, we finally found one at the airport? They just rugby tackle you to the ground immediately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why if you ever go to Russia

make sure to dress like shit. But then if you show up looking like an accountant and you're like, excuse me, does this sandwich have mayonnaise in? Then they'll probably ignore you. continent and you're like, excuse me, does this sandwich have mayonnaise in?

Then they'll probably ignore you. It's that person going up to the police asking if there's mayonnaise in the sandwich. Yeah, because they don't know what uniforms are. They're just going, I thought maybe you were someone who worked at the shop. I'm sorry. Just this bumbling fool. The best dressed policemen I've ever seen are the

Carabinieri in Rome who are like the top, well I mean, technically speaking, the elite policemen but they just kind of stand around not doing anything but they're all, I swear they doing anything but they all they're all i

swear they're picked for their looks they all look like models and they wear and their uniforms designed by hugo boss and they just they just hang it's the most italian thing you can imagine just policemen hired for their looks put in designers designer uniforms and just kind of shrugging oh yeah with them come up to them with something with mayonnaise in your side. I always find it funny when if you read about like some mafia thing or some crazy shit happening in Rome

and they're like, and the mafia boss was apprehended by the Carabinieri and it would be like the Carabinieri's investigative department, like they're very serious FBI star thing, but in my head it is just one of those guys covered in gold braid tackling a guy tying him up with all his medals it's um i think i think it must be like a loop right like if the uniforms are handsome and you get to stand around and tourists admire you then like that's who goes for the jobs and stuff and right i think as well the the horse guards is

that is that the ones that you can't that you that you can shout out and they can't move well those are the guards generally yeah so you've got the grenadier guards coldstream guards irish guards scots guards etc yeah yeah yeah do, like, who sees that job and goes, I want to do that. I want to get shouted at by annoying tourists all day. Well, I mean, it's funny, isn't it? Because, like, American, well, none of the tourists really seem to realize that those guys do that on rotation in between combat deployments

Right Yeah, so they are actual soldiers Yeah, yeah, yeah Those are the barracks that they're in when they're not in Iraq or Afghanistan Yeah, very much so Is that the only time they have to use their mannequin special power?

I think they use it on any parade. Right, okay, okay. Like, if you're standing for a parade generally, even if the public aren't around, if someone goes, and you flinch, you're probably not supposed to be in the army. That's a different world, man.

They're just... Lives can be so different. Are you ever struck by this feeling? You just go... that's a different world man they're just lives lives can be so different are you ever struck by this feeling you just go you just read about or you meet someone

and it's like their life has just become so different from yours you just go they might as well be on another planet a different species

speaking a different language like there's so many different lives you can have. I think that about... This is listeners being acquainted with the thoughts and rhetoric style of knackered Phil. Just you with huge bags under your eyes standing outside Buckingham Palace

gesturing to one of the guards going like, what kind of a life is this? We're on different planets, man. But I mean, you are correct. I mean, I think that about Olympians. That's right. That's right. Where you say to someone like,

what are your fondest memories of childhood? And they're like, oh, getting up at four to do somersaults. What the fuck? Sir, as far as we can tell, every single person in that block of flats been taken hostage. Sir, as far as we can tell, every single person in that block of flats has been taken hostage. No one's accounted for outside of it.

And the heat sensor's showing that every single flat is occupied and has been taken over by armed gunmen. My God. It's over 350 people we're responsible for, Sergeant. What do you suggest? I don't think there's anything we can do, sir. Give in to their demands,

sort out a helicopter, private planes to Belize, and just let them keep whatever's in that fucking suitcase. You know we can't do that, and I can't have something like this on my record. What do you think, Sergeant Mungo? Whoa! What if we try juggling?

People love juggling! It's true, sir. People do love juggling. But it's a high-risk strategy. What if the hostage-takers don't like juggling? Most people do, but there's no guarantee that those boys will like it. It might kick off. I'm afraid it's the only plan we've got Sergeant Mungo

do you have your brackly coloured bean filled balls? always! tell the SWAT team to stand down oh man I watch this this is actually picking up on something we just we touched on very briefly last episode firm eyes last theorem um after after hearing the episode our mutual friend sent us a link to an old bbc um bbc documentary our mutual friend julian hi julian BBC documentary

our mutual friend Julian Hi Julian Hello and it was of the Fermat about the it was basically about the guy who solved Fermat's last theorem

which is this mathematical problem that hasn't been hadn't been solved for the entire time it had been posited, which is like since the 17th century. And this guy, it's his life's work, and he decided he was going to solve Fermat's Last Theorem

when he was 10 years old. And he came across it. He was just looking through maths books anyway, and he came across it. He was just looking through maths books anyway, and he came across this problem that hadn't been solved for 300 years. And at 10 years old, he's like, this is what I'm going to do for my whole life. Can you imagine?

Like, I haven't stuck with the same breakfast since I was 23. I've changed my mind on breakfast. You know, I can't, I can't commit to a breakfast. And this guy committed to a single mathematical problem from 10 years old and carried it on to completion. He did it. He killed it. He did it. It's a really it it's a really it's a really good little documentary i think it's called firm as last theorem it's part of the horizon series it's on iplayer

really really good yeah it's that thing like i think the the thing i envy isn't even necessarily his success in doing it i think i envy not only i don't just envy that he was single-minded enough to say that to himself and stick with it i envy the fact that it was the right choice right right right so if like he'd stuck with it and he never sold it you'd feel vindicated you'd be like that's what you get for committing to something at 10 years old yeah i'd be like you stupid genius that's what you get um or even if even if he solved it and then after he solved it he was like oh that was that was shit and then just offed himself he solved it and immediately went oh god and went like tick tick tick and just jumped off

a bridge and then just left the notepad with the answer on it right and I'd be like well there you go you'd be like well there you go greatness has a price but because he solved it and had the gall to continue living you're furious

no no because he was right because he solved it and he was like ah and then was just fine with it because what i almost want it to be like there's a consequence not just a price to greatness but a consequence to leaning everything about your existence onto one purpose. Okay, yeah. I want a little bit of Alexander falling to his knees and weeping for there were no more worlds to conquer, that kind of thing. He does cry. Like, when he recalls the moment of realizing he'd solved it, he starts, like, crying.

But it's not like, oh, oh god what have I done tears it's it's he's just he's so emotional and so happy so I'm afraid it's not the tears you want I guess it's such a big deal that also like I guess the high practically never dissipates like if he wants to get the high back all he

needs to do is visit literally any university and everyone's just like oh just freaking out and he's like yeah yeah yeah he's not really a you might have guessed from from what it is he committed his life to but he isn't really as a yeah kind of guy imagine how many dinners you get invited to if you solve something like that. His name's Andrew Wiles, by the way. I think Andrew Wiles. Yeah, I mean, all pretty maths.

I think he was like one of the Times People of the Year or the Decade or something. That was sort of the height of his celebrity. But beyond that, I think it was probably mainly maths dinners. But if you love maths, then you love maths dinners I guess that's true that's true but I bet even they

couldn't solve which fork to use first some problems not even a genius can overcome god I don't know where I If he solved Fermat's last theorem perhaps he could take a look at my tax return

Maybe he can solve Phil's last stationary claim Shall we go to a maths dinner and demand from everyone what weapon they think stationary claim. Should we go to a math dinner and demand from everyone what weapon they think numbers look most like? Well, that was actually Fermat's penultimate theorem. That was solved just before.

Yeah. By weapon numbers math, actually. By our good listener and friend weapon numbers matt and number weapons matt number weapons matt that's right um always busy working away um i i think it could be worth asking them because they probably have some kind of crazy maths answer they'd be like they'd give you some really long number and they'd say well and it's prime and if you root it it looks like this which looks like A throwing star

Oh my god they probably know even more symbols Probably worth writing a letter to A university It's so funny the maths that's involved in this problem That's in the documentary is that level of maths Where there just aren't any numbers anymore It's just like brackets and curves And the letter E in different

fonts you go why is spiky E different to friendly small E that's all it looks like differently shaped E's like this one is like a sideways M that's the important E

yeah we need to make sure that this E equals that other E in brackets That's the important E Yeah We need to make sure that this E Equals that other E In brackets with A kind of Greek Z And then A symbol you've never seen in your life Yeah

Yeah It's that level of maths Where they've had to go into The Babylonian alphabet to get symbols because they've run out. Yeah, Greek's done, Russian's done, it's time to go Babylonian. But you know, this idea of someone committing their life to something completely, entirely, like, incomprehensensibly specific i think about it a lot

you know and especially because as stand-up comedians we are hypocrites to to laugh at it because to any normal person we've committed our lives to something the most specific thing it's a form of entertainment a subcategory of a form of entertainment that most people think about once a year maybe yeah but but but that that one time a year they get to enjoy whatever comedy show they've gone to that year because one of us has committed our entire life to it. And that, in a nutshell, is... What is it? Specialised? Not specialised labour.

Yeah. Specialised? Yeah. Is it specialised labour? Whatever, the stage of human civilisation after we discovered agriculture that meant people could become fucking poets and engineers and whatever.

Yeah. And commit their entire life to something that will only affect one person once. But lots of people in the time. I don't know, I think, yeah. It's so hyper-specialized, and you are right, we are hypocrites, because we've dedicated our lives to like yeah it's so hyper specialized and you are right we are hypocrites because we've dedicated our lives to like it's not it's like you say it's a subcategory

where it's not even just comedy necessarily it's like comedy where it's only us and there's a microphone and a stage and it's in this type of building yeah um it has so many requirements and then if our set doesn't go well we're well, the audience is into mainstream stand-up. The stand-up I do is actually a subcategory of the subcategory of comedy. They haven't seen enough of the sub-subcategory to understand what I was doing up there. That's right. Yeah. They should feel ashamed at even having tried to understand my subcategory of the subcategory of comedy.

Yeah. But it's mad. Someone committing their entire life to one problem in maths is the reason we can bank online. You know what I mean? Oh, it's fucking crazy. Did you see that thing about them unlocking protein strands or whatever this week?

No, I feel like I've read some protein news this week, but I don't know, it might have been on a pack of food. The people over at DeepMind have created a sort of AI program that can calculate the god the the way proteins are generated or something basically it's like the building blocks of of of not just sort of human life but also like proteins and cells like viruses and things like that and dna what was it basically they figured out something headline this there's one of those things where they've gone okay when we want to figure out how

something in the human body happens it used to take sometimes like five years and now the computer can do it in a day and it's only just figured out how to do that and so it's just anytime you hear news where they go like i don't even care if i understand what it is that you're up to if you say it used to take five years and now it takes a day I'm overjoyed Yeah, sure I'm delighted I scammed the article And I went, yes, go humans

And then I went on Twitter again The hyper-specialized thing is, you're right though And it's also also you can tell like i'm always reminded of it when you remember how much we care about stand-up and like very little things in stand-up and then when you try and talk about them to literally anyone else yeah yeah i don't know if you i don't know if you've ever made that mistake because trying to trying to speak to someone as their eyes rapidly glaze over about why it was

funny for that syllable to be at the end of the sentence i yeah i i i know now not to do it it comes after years of people very kindly coming up to me after gigs and going hey i really enjoyed that that's really good and and me then taking this as an invitation to lay out my play-by-play analysis of my set and going oh do you think i felt like the third joke people could see the punchline coming i shouldn't have gone with the rule of three maybe i think by that point they were all they were expecting that pattern i should have i should have blindsided them with maybe just a two uh and i think the callback at the end was a bit too loose i I don't, did you get that? Did you pick up that it was a call?

And at this point I'm seeing them like slowly back away and just sort of nod, smiling. Just like, mm-hmm, yeah. And so now I just go, thank you. Thank you very much. And that's it. But even just like in conversation with someone you know, like just sort of saying to them like,

yeah, and I think that that hit extra hard because I don't normally do this, but I inflected at the end of the sentence, even though it wasn't a question, but it implied a question. And that made me seem more incredulous. And you can just they would have like the dead eyes of a fish and they just go, oh, uh-huh. They don't understand i mean literally i've had at least one bit in a stand-up show that went from getting nothing to being one of the bigger laughs in the show because i instead of going i went and that was the whole that's the whole difference required that fixed the whole thing yeah it's it's it's and it's funny because like, I always end up feel like a mad conspiracy theorist

because I'm always end up sort of almost trying to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say, it's all a trick. Don't you see? It's a trick. Yeah. The comedy truth is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Comedy QAnon no jokes exist what does that pertain to no jokes exist no no I'm just saying like that's an idea oh right right right jokes don't exist I thought that was like a central tenet of QAnon

theory was that something didn't exist well god knows those people are insane tenet of QAnon theory was that something didn't exist well god knows those people are insane if you're listening to this and you're a QAnon believer we know where you live and we're tracking your phone there you go enjoy

I'm being electrocuted enjoy it Enjoy. Please do spread word that Budpod is the home of QAnon news news and we could uh listening figures would be good actually we should announce that for listening figures we've hit a milestone yes we've hit a milestone in viewing figures we finally figured out how to check our viewing figures it's a real step forward for us. No, I'm only joking. Yeah. Pierre, you want to tell them the news? Sure. Well, we found it out. I don't even remember when.

Time has lost all meaning with all these lockdowns and stuff for us. But recently, in the last week or so, week or two maybe, Budpod hit and is now well over a million downloads. So thank you very much for everyone for downloading it and liking and subscribing and do remember to rate us five stars on itunes and uber five stars please that that is what the uber five stars gets you to a million downloads and it's only taken five um like farms in China that we've hired, but it pays off. I can highly, highly recommend the Chengdu like farm. They do great.

They do great deals on your first million likes. And I think you can just catch the black black friday sale uh for downloads yes yes yes yes um great guys great to deal with um very friendly uh much better than the experience we had with the russian bots um yes yes yes uh yes not as not as reliable I'm afraid yeah yeah all their names were spelled with mathematical

operators for some reason yes exactly oh Phil you have a thing to promote as well oh yes this Friday I am taking part in Comic Relief's live Dungeons and Dragons game so

please watch me I've never played a game of Dungeons and Dragons before but we're playing for charity and you can you can donate now actually you can if you go on comicrelief.com slash dnd, as in the letter N, comicrelief slash dnd,

you can donate and find the details of how to watch on Friday. I think it'll be on Twitch. But yeah, it should be really fun. I've not played Dungeons & Dragons before. I should probably say the other guests are, because this will help. They're very appealing. Lou Sanders, Sally Phillips and James

Acaster. So quite the gang of Dungeons and Dragons. Nice. And it's all for charity of course. This Friday at 7.30pm. Can you tell Pierre that I've never done a promo on a podcast before? I don't know which details are salient. I don you tell Pierre that I've never done a promo on a podcast before? I have no idea.

I don't know which details are salient. I don't know which ones I've already said. I don't know what people need to know. It was a bit like if I'd said to you, oh Phil, could you quickly make up a promo? Could you fictionalise a promo, please? That sounds like I did really badly on the first day of an improv course

that that at the end of that the instructor went okay okay uh let's break that down the instructor went and where would you expect um other improvisers to go with that they're really down on it that sounds like fun man you've never done dnd before really no no no have you but of course like for a while like when you're when you're young no um when i was young it was all a bit like the rule books are very expensive mean, I played like similar games and like I read a lot of fantasy novels and stuff. So I've only ever really played D&D as a comedian. But my advantage is that if the dungeon master is like a kobold approaches you, I already know what a kobold is. Right.

Okay. So I know the world and it's like there's a lot of crossover with warhammer as well man all right all right all right um yeah well i don't have any of that knowledge the closest experience i have is things like skyrim which i you know it's sort of based that's kind of where you know dnd is where all where all those things come from. So, you know, I understand like hit points and, you know, health points and all this sort of... Mana. Mana. Mana.

Yeah, I mean, you're a guy who plays video games and you've seen Lord of the Rings. That's more than enough to play D&D. Excellent. As Smeagol says, excellent. Excellent. As Smeagol says, excellent. Do you know what kind of character you're going to play as or do you get to choose? I do know which character.

I don't know if we're revealing yet. Maybe we aren't. Or maybe it's under embargo. It might be. Under fantasy embargo, which is a spell. Do you reckon contract law in fantasy lands are all bound with spells? So a super injunction is a spell that shuts everyone up about that footballer's affair? Yeah, if you try and say it then your mouth just goes and gets all sewn shut by magic yeah it must be yeah like yeah in fantasy world like lawyers are

the most powerful wizards in the land because it's like a massive spell on everyone yeah why why i you know what pierre i think i'm feeling another one of our brilliant film ideas coming on. The legal world of a fantasy land. What's the legal... What are the legal... Hmm. I like this idea. I think it's a good sitcom, actually.

What would you call it? Yeah, and what happens if a wizard has to sue another wizard? You call it Middle Earth Legalearth legal or wizard legal Yes, why would you There's definitely a pun in there somewhere If you come up, you need the name of the fantasy land And then, you know Gandalf your legal

Yes Or like wizard and partners Or something like this yeah graxnor and and smith graxnor and graxnor would be good it's like the oh like graxnor graxnor and smith you know something like that like it's two from the same family yeah it's like two orcs and then just a guy. I think that's actually quite... I mean, this might be my sleep-addled... Does that mean not having sleep? This might be my sleep-addled hysteria,

but I think we're onto something again. I think addled might mean you had too much. That's what I was thinking. That's what I was thinking as I said addled. You could say addled is unable to think or confused oh it means rotten if you apply it to an egg as well that's interesting next next time you you encounter a rotten egg i implore you to say oh i think this egg is adult as if it's the most normal thing in the world does this just like put pasta something to someone's nose. Does it smell addled to you?

And the others, they'll go, and they'll go, wait, what? Just go, can you smell addled eggs? Yeah, yeah. Giving like,

giving a lecture on the mythical elements of religious depictions of hell. The most famous, of course, has that hell smells quite sulfurous, sort of like addled eggs. But, of course, this has been... Like, it's just almost normal. And just playing it cool as a thousand hands are raised in query all of the one noise at the same time someone yelling at the back beg your pardon

please leave the questions to the end, thank you the end of the lecture well that's cool, man. Well, hopefully you will win. I mean, you can't really win D&D. Well, I guess you can complete the quest. But beyond that, you're a roving band of adventurers, for God's sake. That's right.

We're four adventurers just helping each other out, trying to get to the end of the adventure and raise some money along the way. Yeah, that's it. It should be freewheeling and fun. Yeah, that's it. It should be freewheeling and fun. You should try and continuously...

You can only behave in a way that would be broadcast acceptable to comic relief. So it's like, well, normally, of course, we'd kill all the goblins, but I guess this time we have to negotiate with the goblins there's um yeah i don't know if you've seen the animated series of batman the animated series of course yeah not for a long time but yeah it's it's so fantastic i think it's frequently like ranked under simpsons as like the best animated series of all time. Yeah.

Or the most finely made, you know. And because it was a kid's show, they couldn't have anyone die in it, really. So it meant all these villains would fall out of a helicopter. Batman would throw a villain out of a helicopter, like a thug and then and then the shot would change to the water beneath and it'll show them go plush go in but i would have to hang on the shot for them to to come back up to the surface

and then move on with the story like every single to every single person they had to show they were still alive at the end um yeah well it's like all the early sci-fi to show they were still alive at the end. Yeah. Well, it's like all the early sci-fi for kids. They were like, it's robots. They're killing robots. Yeah, yeah. Like Marvel. That's one of the reasons I can't really get behind the Marvel franchise is that all the enemies are these sort of like bug aliens,

and I just don't feel any weight to them. But they're the only enemies that that the children can watch iron man tear apart well we've discussed the bug aliens before and what on earth they were doing before they decided to invade my my main question especially like dnd or even in lord of the rings is that inevitably at some point you'll go through like a mine or a series of caverns or you know some abandoned uh tunnels uh deep under sort of mountains and then you'll find sort of goblins in there and you sort of go did you come here to bang what are you doing down here is this dogging

yeah you're not mining you're not doing any fucking work What are you doing down here? Is this dogging? Yeah. You're not mining. You're not doing any fucking work. Did you call me a bang? And it's also all, like, in those games, all the torches are always lit. It's like, who's maintaining these torches? Are the orcs, like, going,

just walking around in their preset paths. And then one of the torches goes up and he's like oh and then gets out a box of matches yeah and also then yeah well there's an orc who's like oh thank god that we've got uh an air circulation system through a series of natural chimneys. Or lighting a load of fires under the earth would be a bad idea. Gosh, I hadn't even thought of the oxygen depletion consequences. Yeah, and you want to say to the goblins, like, do you live

here? You know you could live not here. You could live just on the surface of the Earth. Or it's like, do you hate the sunlight? Like a vampire, maybe? Is that the deal? I have a lot of questions about goblin society, Phil, and I refuse to apologise for that. Not should you.

Not should you. These are the difficult questions that we have to confront. There's no use skirting the issue anymore. We have to... We've been silent for too long. Look, I will not stop asking

questions about Goblin Society despite the demands of the MSM. Despite the critique of the liberal metropolitan elite and their pro-Goblin agenda. I'd love to post something online that was just like... Just some fantasy, like some fan fiction about one of the orcs in Lord of the Rings and his personal life. Just posting on Twitter with the caption, Won't see this on the BBC.

just post um just post a photoshop of garfield where he has a human dick i won't see this on the bbc today for some reason i'm gonna start i'm gonna start using that as the caption if I post clips of my own stand-up. That's funny. That's very funny. What? Too afraid to put this on the BBC? Oh, gosh. That's very funny. Yeah. Fan art of Frodo and Gandalf making out.

I won't see this on the evening news. Why isn't this being reported? Why have I only just heard about this now? I shouldn't have to search for this to find it at Laura Kunzberg at BBC Breaking at BBC News at Channel 4 News i shouldn't have to look for this that's so funny uh speaking speaking of disgusting uh fan fiction shall we read some correspondence it's a good idea correspondence

correspondence okay so Geordie gets in touch Geordie sure give us some more of your words yes why not he uh dear seven and nine uh and says i'll let you

decide which digit of these you are using the logic from episode 50 i think it's the seven eight nine oh okay okay so who's afraid of who um maybe we mutually fear each other And that's called respect, thank you Could be Geordi says It's not been discussed in a while But a few years ago I experienced something That fits the definition of a real life side quest perfectly Oh great, yes

I do like a side quest Yes, for unfamiliar listeners Side quests in real life Like you would find in a video game. I'd like to quickly apologize for the hammering noise you might hear. The flat beneath us has taken the incredibly generous decision to completely redo the entire thing whilst everyone is locked in their flats that's good which is wonderful it's and because of the way sound travels through solids it sounds like they're in my fucking walls but aside but we'll persevere i just want you to know that i know

there's a fucking banging going on phil this is it sounds like it could sound like you're recording this while like just the last thing you do before the police come in and take you so Geordie says real life side quest as I walked home down a quiet street of semi-detached houses I could hear a gentle crackling to my right

interesting there in someone's drive home down a quiet street of semi-detached houses, I could hear a gentle crackling to my right. Interesting. There, in someone's drive, was an old Volvo with a small flame right in the middle of the bonnet. Whoa! In the bonnet. So that's where the engine is.

There's a little flame in the middle. What, like, on top? Mm. Huh. Yeah. Not usually where the fire in a car goes. Well, that's it, yeah. Oh, yeah.

He says, what disturbs me is that I immediately shrugged it off and thought to myself, well, I'm sure they know about that. Yeah. And carried on walking to complete my main quest of getting home a few steps later i realized oh wait of course they don't so i fumbled for my phone before realizing it was dead wow oh man extra challenge added to the quest that's it yeah i think that's it's the only time my phone has ever

been allowed to reach zero percent battery so i skirted around the volvo with an already now hefty flame and banged on the owner's door but no one answered i tried knocking on three or four neighboring doors and could see them peering out of their windows just ignoring me because i'm stood in their drives in a hoodie at 1am like a lunatic. Gosh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just to say, look at that fire. Look at that peculiar fire.

And you've got to take your hoodie down if you're banging on people's doors at 1am. Fucking hell. Yeah. It continues. I then found two surfers just getting back from Cornwall. Oh, are we in Cornwall? are we have we even given a location No they're getting back from Cornwall So they're probably just like arriving late at night having driven

I guess I like to think they're on their boards just coming down the road Like the whole way Chiseling them to bits Yeah I asked if any of them had a phone and while they stuttered clearly shitting themselves thinking i was mugging them take your hoodie off jordy i explained the quest yeah look all i did was put a big hoodie on and mask my face and put on a deep scary voice

it's like you can't do that man. As they were ringing 999, we heard a massive explosion. Whoa. It turns out cars do explode quite quickly. Huh? Gosh! It's like in Grand Theft Auto 3 when the car goes upside down. And you go, no, no, no, no, no. Brought up an entire generation

of kids to think that if a car goes upside down for more than five seconds, it will explode. Which makes a loop-de-loop even more daring. But I didn't think they actually went like, ka-pow! I just thought they went

like, vroom, vroom. I thought you had quite a lot of time, actually. Well, who knows how long this little candle had been going for, I suppose. That's true. That's true. We heard a massive explosion. It turns out cars do explode quite quickly. As we got back to the street, the shell of the car was now completely engulfed in flames

and was melting the guttering off the side of the house. Jesus. Yeah. The fire brigade were concerned about the flames jumping into that weird gas cage you get on the side of a house. Why does gas need to be caged? Anyway. Gas cage? What's the gas cage?

I think... Oh, like with canisters? Like gas canisters? Yeah, maybe that's it. I don't know. Anyway, there was still no answer, so one fireman booted the door off its hinges while the rest hosed out the fire. still no answer so one fireman booted the door off its hinges while the rest hosed out the fire a woman in a pink dressing gown finally came bounding down the stairs to see her car looking like a forgotten chip at the bottom of the oven she wailed who did this i mean it's not funny but

that is funny it's a terrible thing to happen but that is a who that is the equivalent of last week's run for your lives who did this never mind that run for your lives she should go live with that guy what a dramatic couple and despite me explaining that i found it like that, she started going apeshit at me. It didn't matter how many times I explained how strange it would be for me to torture a car and then hang around. She was having none of it. My hoodie was really fucking me over at this point.

Yes! Well, at last. At last, Geordie has seen the problem. Yes. She then explained how it wasn't her car, but her friend's, and it wasn't insured as it was waiting to pass its MOT the next day. It fire i can tell him what's good i'm sorry what was that

what george did you say that he said it took every fiber of my being not to piss myself he's amused at this point that is funny yeah it is the mot yeah as you say it will not pass. That's like the car equivalent of one day from retirement. But like the opposite, I guess. One day from being hired. Yeah. I just got a new job! No! He says,

I guess I failed the quest because I didn't receive the standard reward of 200 gold I just got bollocked by the old lady in a dressing gown NPC yeah yeah I think you took a wrong decision your because you selected

your armor as hoodie it had it had an effect on the outcome of the quest. Yes, if you select hoodie armor, it will have a minus 50% convincing people to open their doors buff late at night. Yeah.

And also, yeah, like a little text pop-up appears in the middle of the screen saying, you failed to wake the lady. As the screen goes red and it slows down. You failed to make the lady. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that is very... I wonder what

happened. Yeah, just the idea of a fire just starting on the bonnet is the craziest thing to me. I wonder what... Yeah, and also, to be fair, so that Geordi doesn't feel too bad,

if the car spontaneously combusted and exploded, it shouldn't have passed its MOT the next day anyway. Yes, that's exactly right. It went... It took the mot of life and failed exactly exactly but this is i mean as as far as uh side requests go this must be our most action-packed this is like mean, this is proper video game stuff. An exploding car.

Yeah, and also like a glowing flame being like a sort of point of interest that you have to walk your character to to interact with is quite good too. And a slightly misogynistic representation of an old woman. Very video game. It's a crone, really.

A crone. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah if if that character was in grand theft auto i'd be like oh come on come on man we've all grown up come on maybe in grand theft auto maybe vice city but this is grand theft auto six now and we've all grown up with you. Big rollers in her hair and a big rolling pin and a big green face mask on. What are you doing to my car? That's a good side quest though. It's a good side quest. It's a very good side quest.

A quick email from joe joe don't be slow give us the low down he says oh hi there bud pod i'm kind of a founding father i have been trying to catch up listening from episode one and i'm currently on 47 i don't know if it's OCD but I just can't skip to the present episode although it has been nice hearing the buds growing in the pod to soon blossom into a putiful butterfly I like it, I like it

I'm the same way, I can't just jump in, like when someone says oh don't bother with season 1 of that show just start a series two. You're like, what? What? Just start reading the book from the middle.

You're just like, no, I'm going to suffer through series one like the rest of you idiots did. Or I'll never watch it ever. Either one. So he says, keep up the good work. Thank you, Joe. The other day, an OK, thank you memory popped into my head, so I thought I should send it over.

I'm a serial people watcher. I can't help but watch the world go by, even while walking around the city center listening to music, or yours truly. This unfortunately means I make a lot of awkward eye contact, and I get a lot of potential side quests and interactions with strangers that I do not necessarily want. This is kind of an okay...

He's presented this as an okay thank you, but scanning ahead, I'd say it counts as a side quest as well. Mmm, crossover. One particular interaction was while i was walking home from work past bristol train station with a seemingly nice boy he was about the same age as me i could see him trying to stop many people before me but he had no luck and he looked agitated our eyes met and he pleaded with me to let him borrow my phone so he could try and find out where to meet his friend

as he was not from round here and his phone was dead. Very similar beat to the last side quest. I love appeals for phone calls. I felt cautious. Yes, telephones and, yeah, trying to sort of contact other parties uh i felt cautious and awkward but felt he seemed like a nice guy in a bad spot so i said sure and i gave him my phone um he was very polite and said thank you and then proceeded to take a few steps back away from me the man's dialect and tone changed in an instant and he now spoke in a Londoner rude boy voice oh no

wow he put on a character voice oh I see yeah but on the phone now by implication it's on the phone I thought he was running off with it and he was going at first he was like please sir would you lend me your mobile telephonication device

and he handed it over and went ah yeah sucker and ran off I thought that's what he meant that's what I think is a rude telephonication device. And he handed it over and went, ah, yeah, sucker. And ran off. I thought that's what he meant. That's what I think is a rude boy accent, by the way. That sounded rude. He's rude to someone.

I'm not sure who. Yeah. No, he's on the phone by implication. Yeah, he's on the phone. Right. So he steps away from him, dials his friend, and now he's talking in a rude boy voice. And he asked his friend where he was and then continued to have a chat about the night out they'd had on the weekend

using slang words I'd never heard of. I awkwardly stood there waiting and thinking about how badly I wanted to continue my journey home. The man kept glancing at me and turned so I was facing the back of his head, as if that would stop me from hearing his conversation. To then ask his friend if him or anyone he knows wants to buy any weed, coke, or pills.

Whoa. He then proceeds to take a few orders, and then finally he hung up and passed my phone back to me. I said, okay, thank you, and wandered away. It's Grand Theft Auto day on the side quests today. Yeah. He didn't even ask me if I wanted any of his delicious drugs. How rude!

I'm a pilot. Keep jacking it forever, yours Joe. He should have at least offered you some free drugs. Well, he turns out he really was a rude boy. One of the rudest boys I've ever heard about, certainly Yeah, that's what he should have said when he gave him his phone back Rude! Just rude! To which I presumably would have responded, thank you!

Yes, good! Good Good Very rude Good lord That's so funny though To borrow a stranger's phone To sell drugs on That's funny Very gritty side quests today Really gritty

If any of you have ever been asked To carry a suitcase which contained A self-assembly sniper rifle Very gritty side quests today. Really gritty? Yeah. Yeah. If any of you have ever been asked to carry a suitcase which contained a self-assembly sniper rifle by a Jason Bourne character, do let us know. Right. Well, I guess you'd better start reading up on orcs, Phil, and their mining and engineering habits. Yes, yes. better start reading up on orcs phil and they're mining and engineering habits um yes yes i better have do that yes

also get some sleep man i'm gonna try and get some sleep are you a napper no i'm not a napper never have been so i just have to um i just have to I just have to tough it out

oh yeah well Koji everybody if you oh and I guess I should promo at the last minute I am as ever on Twitch in fact it's

what I'm about to do pretty much straight after this and if you are on Twitch then watch me Twitch enjoy all right thanks very much everyone catch me and others on Friday And if you are on Twitch, then watch me Twitch. Enjoy.

All right. Thanks very much, everyone. And catch me and others on Friday night on Twitch. Yeah. The link to Phil's gig on Friday will be in the information and the link to my Twitch as well. Okay. Okay. Bye, everyone.

Bye.