Desert Island Dicks - ALICE FRASER

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

Comedian and podcaster Alice Fraser joins Dan to share who and what she'd hate to be stuck with on a desert island. Be sure to follow the podcast @dickspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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hi it's dan here from desert island dicks. Our guest this episode is comedian Alice Fraser. She's got a special out now on Amazon Prime and we spoke while she was quarantined in Australia. So I think this is the first international Desert Island Dicks. Not that that makes much difference. Anyway, if you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe or leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. And now here's Desert Island Dicks

with Alice Fraser. Hi, I'm Dan Benedictus and welcome to Desert Island Dicks, the show that sees you marooned on a desert island after a plane crash with the worst things and worst people imaginable. Who they are and why they're a dick is up to our guest and here to share their Desert Island Dicks with us today is comedian and podcaster Alice Fraser. Hello, how are you? I'm very well. How are you doing? I'm going absolutely disintegrating as a personality in full quarantine. So not allowed to go for walks, not allowed to see people or touch people.

And it's a lot. And you're in Sydney at the minute. So this is a fully international desert island ex. This is, I mean, I am on a desert island in many ways. Okay. Well, so obviously you're quarantined and it's probably quite boring. Maybe this will sort of, I don't know, bring some joy into your life via the medium of hating people, if that makes sense. Yes, sure.

And in terms of choosing people, was it a difficult process for you or how did you find it? It was a difficult process. I find it very difficult to say my favorite or least favorite of anything because my particularly like favorites change a lot depending on my mood. And I don't like to hate anybody because I was brought up Buddhist and I tend to feel really sorry for everyone. That's my problem is I just feel so sorry for everyone, even horrible people people because I think it must be really hard to be that horrible well I'm hoping that this isn't too tricky for you as

a Buddhist I don't want to sort of like undo any teachings through through this light-hearted podcast that's all right I'll I'll do my best to bring up the the loathing that I feel for particular individuals. Do they all have to have names is the question, though? Well, it's up to you. Some people like to, you know, in the case of, say, like old bosses or business partners, they might allude to someone rather than the full name. It's entirely up to you, though.

But let's just crack on then, because obviously it's quite late at night where you are. So who's going to be your first choice for the island? The first choice for the island the first choice for the island for me is a lady who came up to me after a show and the show in the show i had done a joke about the fact that we want to think that we are rational people and then you look at domestic violence statistics or the fact that magicians exist and are popular and this woman came up to me after the show with the express intent of making me feel bad about that joke.

And you said, I want to have a chat with you about that joke. And I thought, Oh God, this is terrible. I've, I've offended. She's must be a survivor of,

and like, that's clearly not the target of the joke, but I've said something and it's made her really upset. And she said, what's your issue with magicians? That's amazing. Wow. And that, that, what's your issue with magicians that's amazing wow um and that that i don't think she would be a fun person to have on a desert island because i don't think she has her priorities straight that's that's incredible wow and did was she sort of was she a magician herself or affiliated with

any or she was affiliated with a magician herself or affiliated with any? She was affiliated with a magician. Apparently, he has a chip on his shoulder about the fact that comedians have contempt for magicians, which I don't really. Well, in that joke, the point was not that magicians are contemptible, but that they are encouraging irrationality. But I also do. I mean, I know plenty of magicians who are very nice. But I think there's a large segment of, let's say, the magician community, who are young men

who couldn't talk to women and decided that instead of trying to learn to talk to women, they would learn how to trick women. Yeah, I think there is just definitely something in that. I used to know someone at uni who was a lovely guy had no trouble talking to people but he got very into magic and after that you could never have a conversation with him without him pulling out some tricks or something and it became unbearable you just couldn't speak to him it's like I know this card trick is impressive but I haven't seen you in six months you've just been away can we just talk about how you are you know without making something disappear up your sleeve yeah yes that so that's if if i do have any beef with magicians it's with a small segment of the magic community

who are sort of parallel with maybe the pickup artist community yeah yeah you sort of mentioned is there is there a bit of animosity between comedians and magicians then? Is this a sort of a thing that the rest of us don't know about? It's not so much animosity, I think, or if it is animosity, it's sort of very specific. I think that comedians don't necessarily respect the performance skills of magicians, in part because magicians use um use each other's jokes okay so there's magician patter that is shared or setups that are shared which comedians know you know in the olden days in the cat skills you might have jokes that were being done by every comedian and they would do the same jokes or the same intros and even now you'll see emcees or

compares will tend to do similar things but for the most part it's very frowned on in the comedy community to use someone else's material or use someone else's jokes so there's a a kind of a a lack of communication on that issue and if if i went to see a comedy show obviously you know there might be things that i like more than others or some things i don't agree with but to sort of feel so strongly to approach a comedian afterwards i always just i mean for that reason i just think she'd be an awful person to be stuck with yes that it was it was the a that she didn't have her priorities straight and b that i think maybe she wouldn't um necessarily have the social skills or you know in a situation where the last coconut had disappeared she wouldn't be the one who is giving you the

benefit of the doubt yeah yeah well i can imagine if you know someone trod on a poisonous fish or something you know she'd be the one to sort of complain about having broken a nail or something you know yeah yeah you want someone with good priorities on a desert island i think and skills obviously yeah and also i suppose maybe one of her skills would be doing magic tricks which you know not i mean you want to keep your morale up but probably not the time and the place for that exactly i don't need someone sawed in half although i suppose if you could legitimately saw someone in half i mean she might be the one that ended up being, you know. Being sawed in half.

Yeah. Or she'd be first on the food pile. I know we're all hungry, but there's a coin behind your ear. Like, you know, we're sort of suggesting, how can you be hungry with all this food and then like pull a rabbit out of a hat or something, but it's a toy rabbit so you can't eat it. Okay.

So anything else on who what are we going to call this person a magician's assistant a magician's companion let's call her uh Delilah okay because it sounds like a moderately officious name okay so Delilah joins you on the island and um who's going to be your second choice my second choice uh for for a dick that I would not want on the island would be a guy in university who asked me out on a date and then ranked my body parts out of 10. Wow. Okay. So he said, your asses are 10, but your tits are a 7. Over a cup of coffee, you know, like.

Wow. Because I was going to ask him in what sort of format did he rank you? Was it sort of like online to his friends? But no, just to your face. To my face in conversation. He was German. I don't know if that's relevant at all. But he said it like he thought I would be interested

in his ranking of my body parts. That's extraordinary. I mean, a stereotype of a German would suggest that maybe they're more interested in statistics and data if we were sort of to go down that route. But I don't know if that makes it acceptable. There is a cultural educational emphasis on things like engineering and data.

Yeah, I still don't think that that's okay. No, oh no, absolutely. I'm in no way defending that. And so how did you react to something like that? I, at that time, was probably more polite than I would be now. It was early on in my life and I wasn't used to being an object of attraction. I was a sort a very awkward teenager and

then blossomed in university a little bit more and so I wasn't very good at processing both welcome or unwelcome sexual attention so I think I probably just made a joke and moved on and then never talked to him again that's extraordinary so and presumably he's doing that to sort of all the women he goes out with yeah it might it might be it might have been a negging thing to return to the game that i mentioned earlier the pickup artist game and i but i don't think it was i think it was just his his sense that he had a right to say something like that and b that i would be interested in his assessment and um can i ask was this before or after a date was this sort of just on meeting he just sort of said i think here is your stats so it was sort of one of those ambiguous dates where you we met up in class and

he said oh would you like to go get a coffee and so it was one of those maybe this is a friendship situation or maybe it was a date situation. This might have been his attempt to turn it from potentially, you know, we were talking about the class and our readings and things. So it might have been his attempt to turn things into a slightly more flirty direction. But it did not succeed. That's extraordinary. Extraordinary. I suppose the balls of the guy, maybe that sort of mentality would come in handy on an island because he's obviously so sure of himself. He'd try and make things work. But I mean, that's being very, very kind. I think mainly it would just be an absolute fucking nightmare.

Yeah. Yeah. So so not him. Yeah. I mean, especially struggling for food and shelter. If you've sort of cobbled together some makeshift hut out of palm leaves and then he comes in and goes yeah well the roof's innate but you know the walls are four you know well on one on the on first glance it might be a pat you know you might think well that kind of engineering efficient mindset would be useful but actually i think when you're on a desert island emotional support is also quite important and being able to get on with someone would would be quite important yeah

and and you know you're not going to feel remotely comfortable with him if you you know for a fact you're constantly being judged yeah you know there's no ambiguity about it he's telling you that he's judging you constantly yeah yeah he'd call you out for not shaving your legs on the desert island, if you know what I mean. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm assuming that he obviously had quite a high opinion of himself to sort of be able to give out these statistics on you. Yes, which is not what you want.

You want a cooperative spirit and a compassionate spirit on a desert island, I think. Absolutely. Okay, so German stat giver is going on the island with you. Yes. Let's call him Sven because that was his name. Okay. And I think him and the magician lady, sorry, what did we call her?

Dolores? No. Delilah. Del lady, sorry, what did we call her? Dolores? No. Delilah. Delilah, sorry. Him and Delilah, I think, together would be a particularly difficult pair. Yes, I imagine they would antagonise one another and yet work together to antagonise you. Yeah, it's a real pincer movement of dicks there, isn't it?

Yeah. Okay, now, Alice uh who would be your your third choice uh my third choice slightly counterintuitive one is a friend of mine um let's call him tom because that isn't his name but it's what most men are called in my experience yeah and he is a lovely lovely artistic person but he is too sincere right yeah so he will he will in the course of a normal conversation put both hands on your face and say i just want you to know how much i value you i really love you wow and and and just as a friend as a normal thing that he does with his friends and as an australian i can't cope with that level of emotional honesty and i can't match

it like if i match that level of intensity we would make out i mean you just i don't know how to process that that kind of sincerity i think it would be quite hard work that's like he was a dog in his former life or something and he's become a human but he still has the traits of a dog he's just so open and loving it's so beautiful and and yet so maybe this doesn't quite count as a desert island dick because he's definitely not a dick he's a lovely lovely lovely person but i think i'm not that lovely a person i would be the dick in that situation but it is it's very difficult with people like that isn't it because it's i know people like this and you know it's because i can't accept this level of of interaction that i can't sort of bear it but it's also you know

our culture you know as brits or australians it's a similar kind of mentality you just it's too much it's too much it's too much i can't i can't i can't process it i can't handle it i can't absorb it i find it deeply uncomfortable and uh yeah i think that would be quite hard work so am i allowed to have him even though i do genuinely love him yeah no absolutely i mean i think it's it's people that would you know great or make you uncomfortable over time or just I mean throwing him into the melting pot with the other choices as well I think that's going to be quite the quite the mixture yes I think I think combined with Delilah and Sven it would just it would be

a conflagration of incompatibility I think as well I mean you, you know, as you said, it's tempting to kind of feel when faced with someone like this that, you know, the, oh, it's me and it's my fault. I should just be open and loving and, you know, gracious with my love and respect for people. But at the same time, in our defence, you've got to read the room. You know, like if you're that far out of step with the rest of society i mean you know like be a normal human read the room know what's socially acceptable in you know in your society you know so this the fault lies at his door a little bit as well i think yeah i i maybe i think the thing that all three of these desert island dicks have in common is a different set of boundaries from what I would think is appropriate. Absolutely. And an inability to sort of distinguish about the sort of societal norms.

Yeah. One thinks that domestic violence is below slagging off magicians. The other thinks it's acceptable to rate your body parts to your face. And the other one is cradling your face in his hands and looking deep into your eyes and saying how nice you are. Too upsetting. How are you going to get anything done? I think your friend isn't American by any chance. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Because it feels like this thing. A friend of mine worked at Facebook and she said that this sort of thing was happening all the time. isn't American by any chance yeah yeah okay because this it feels like this thing a friend of mine worked at Facebook and she said that this sort of thing was happening all the time you'll be in a meeting and someone says guys can I just stop for a minute and just say how happy I am to be working with you at the minute because you know I just feel like this is a real dream team we're going to achieve great things and I just don't know how people survive that kind of yeah environment and then they fire

you if you're late yeah exactly it's cultural differences yeah okay we'll chalk it down to that then um now alice mercifully among the wreckage of the plane there was some food and drink left over unfortunately for you it's your least favourite food and drink in the world. What are they and why are they so bad? OK, capers. Capers. Capers. OK. Because I was bullied in high school and one of the things that happened was that a girl

who knew that I didn't like capers at that time poured a jar of capers into my school bag, which meant that my school bag smelled like increasingly off capers for the rest of the year oh man that's uh that's kind of like like a bully crossed with a delicatessen owner like it's quite a posh form of bullying yeah it's niche isn't it i mean it's it wasn't like I went to a fancy school or anything. I mean, in retrospect, I just want to know where she got the jar of capers. Yeah. But, yeah, it was no fun for me.

And you're growing up in Australia, so there's a hot climate and, you know, going off pickled. I don't even know what they are, capers. No one really understands them, do they? Are they from the sea? Are they a plant? What are they? Are they from the sea? Are they a plant? What are they? They're from the butthole of outer space. They're not... Yeah, I've had a very bad feeling about capers ever since.

And, you know, they're small and tiny. They're going to be difficult to clean out of the little crevices of your bag as well. So very difficult. Yeah, not fun. They're small and tiny. They're going to be difficult to clean out of the little crevices of your bag as well. So very difficult. Not fun. Has that extended to all sort of pickled foods or things like that? No, I'm pretty okay with pickled foods. I have that slightly sort of whole foodie, hippie aesthetic. And I like a kimchi or something, a sauerkraut or fermented foods.

I'm totally fine with fermented foods. It's just specifically capers. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't necessarily think they were that distinct, but in my mind, they are. I can smell a caper a thousand yards off. Well, I mean, at least it's given you a somewhat niche but perhaps useful super skill in one sense.

Maybe there is that silver lining. Very, very faint silver lining. Yeah, extremely faint silver lining. Plus, of course, if you're stuck on the island and all you've got is capers, I mean, even if you're desperate, it's never going to sustain you. I mean, the amount of capers you'd have to eat to survive is if you ate enough capers to survive the salt would kill you i imagine yeah although quite nice with fish which would be one of your primary dishes on the island but i mean again you hate them so that's that's sort of irrelevant anyway isn't it they wouldn't even be

a good seasoning for me they would they would make the fish even if I was starving, I'm not sure if I would eat fish with capers. I like this. I think this is quite a very specific one. You know, sometimes you get a very broad group of foods, but I think the caper is a very good choice. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements. Or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lips and Ads. Go to Lipsandads.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-ads.com. And what would be your drink to go alongside that?

Drinks that I don't like. Well, I don't drink alcohol. Okay. But milk, I think, would be a very bad thing to have on a desert island. Yeah. And if I drink too much milk, because I was brought up Burmese Buddhist, very specific, a lot of the food that I was brought up with wasn't dairy heavy which means if i drink too much milk it's not even like i throw up it just bounces off my stomach and comes back out

my mouth wow like it doesn't make me feel sick it just doesn't stay in yeah it's just your body just expels it instantly just immediately it's still cold when it comes out. It's a disconcerting experience. Sorry to get graphic. And, I mean, of course, it's one of those things that it's never going to quench your thirst, is it? I mean, there are people who like to drink milk with meals, which I always find a bit odd. Yes, people who drink a glass of milk is confusing to me. Also, I think on a desert island specifically it wouldn't last and a hot milk or warm milk isn't that nice no unless you're making it warm on purpose in order to make a warm milk drink that's a thing people do yeah yeah but i think we're going to take it sort of at room temperature for this one you know yeah it's yeah no fun i think do you think there's

something slightly creepy about grown-ups drinking milk because there shouldn't be like you know my son likes a glass of milk and that seems fine because he's you know he's three but it's every now and again you see a grown-up just drinking a glass of milk and it's something a bit like they're a murderer or something is something not right well sort of yes plain a glass of plain milk is a i think there's not really necessarily much of a flavor to it it's sort of a textural experience of maybe slightly oily water. As someone who doesn't drink milk very much, I can't really speak to why someone would like it. But yeah, it is disconcerting to see a fully grown person

drinking a glass of plain milk, though for some reason less disconcerting to see them drinking flavoured milk. Yeah, I don't know where the rules come in because if anything, that makes it more childish to sort of make it flavoured, but that is also more acceptable. Yeah, I don't know who invented these rules.

Yeah, these subtle currents of acceptability and disgust are infinitely fascinating. Okay, so capers and milk. Yeah, that's a heady... Also a bad combo. Yeah, really bad. I mean, that's curdling straight away, isn't it? Even if you could keep it down, I doubt you would. Now, Alice, fortunately, you won't be without entertainment on the island. The plane's entertainment system continues to work, but just your luck, it only has two working settings.

One is your least favourite film of all time time and the other is your least favourite song. What are they and why? Oh, now this is the really hard one for me. I can't... There's a genre of watching that I do not like, which is horrible people doing horrible things to other people. OK. Whether it's documentaries about drug dealers or abusers or criminals or

true crime or horror movies. I just can't, I can't stomach it. So I almost don't have a favorite because I can't even watch. I mean, I don't, I almost don't have a least favorite because I just will start watching. And once I realize what it is, I'll kind of walk away from it almost immediately. So I don't know, just think of maybe like something like a Saw movie would be the epitome of that genre for me. So let's say the Saw movie, I couldn't... It's weird, isn't it? Those sort of films seem to have got really big in the last kind of 15, 20 years.

And when I hear people even describe them, I just can't understand why people... I'd be terrified for weeks afterwards. Even if you're not scared, it would just stay with you, wouldn't it? So it's two levels of the thing, of the watching of the act on screen, whatever it is this terrible murdery horrible painful torture thing uh and then the fact that there were people who sat down in a room

and planned it out yeah there was someone who had to light that scene and someone who had to like lovingly pour the fake blood in and make sure that the effect of someone's skin ripping off was perfect there's something about that that upsets me and i know some people that the effect of someone's skin ripping off was perfect. There's something about that that upsets me. And I know that's kind of what some people love about it. They love the technicality of it or the special effects, makeup or whatever it is, but I can't handle it. I just can't handle it. It's almost something a bit stranger than saying,

oh, no, I watched all this horror, but it's just for the special effects. You know, that's quite weird in itself isn't it yeah i just want to i just want to back engineer how they made that person's eyeball pop out of their skull in such a realistically horrifying way like oh no yeah yeah it's very odd yeah even there's been times where so uh for my work i have to sort of sometimes edit trailers together and um i've had to watch you know trailers for horror films and even that i don't like that much because i and that's that's you know the sanitized trailer bit that everyone's allowed to see and they do the music and then the jump scare yeah i don't like it i really don't yeah i'm the even in the trailer i'll put, in a movie trailer where I'm with a friend, I'll cover my eyes and be like, tap me when it's over.

Like, I can't. And the nature of, you know, the franchises like Saw, there's been quite a lot of them, haven't there? And you know that to make a sequel or a third one or whatever, they have to kind of up the ante each time. So they have to be worse each time. Yeah yeah there's just what what could be more awful let me let's turn our mind and dwell on this even more awful thing and then yeah i mean i understand why horror movies by people like them i understand why you know they're very they're very cheap to make and they have a really good

return on investment has a kind of a commercial property, but not for me. Not for me. I'm too easily nightmared. Yeah. I have people sometimes that say, oh, yeah, but, you know, the human sense speed, you've got to watch it. It's so funny the way that this happens. I just think, no way. That sounds like the worst thing ever.

I just think there's so many opportunities to feel terrified in the world these days without inviting more into your life. Exactly. Exactly. And then, yeah, I don't I don't I don't think it's funny. It's the same thing as I said at the beginning. Like, I feel too sorry for everybody. I just can't like even even disaster movies, which I will occasionally watch because I quite like action movies, I really appreciate about the Fast and the Furious franchise, if you watch it, that whenever cars crash or get crushed or explode, they give you just a split second to see that there's no one

in the cabin of the vehicle. Right, right. You don't register it, but it's one of the reasons that people criticize the franchise in in that the the stakes feel so low okay but that's a deliberate thing i think okay i give them the credit for doing that um but like i can't watch disaster movies where the hero is running away and then you see like 20 000 people get crushed by a wave or a volcano in the background i feel sorry for those cgi people

i can't yeah there's someone i knew who who said he they felt really unsettled watching one of the big kind of action adventure blockbusters because there was whole cities getting destroyed and all he could think of was the infrastructure and the cleanup operation afterwards and how difficult that would be and they do that don't they there that sort of, as long as these five people survive, it's okay that that whole building fell down. Yeah, yeah. I don't like, again, that sort of almost the thinking behind the creation of the scene that disturbs me more than the scene itself.

Yeah, yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so we'll say uh a saw style horror franchise let's say saw three on the premise that it would be more upsetting than saw one yeah good call okay and what would be your your song choice my song choice for least favorite song oh that is particularly hard it would be do you know that i have a friend who is a programmer and he listens to this sort of very disconcerting alienesque um dissonant like dance trance music. It's sort of... Okay. I don't know what the name of it is, but I find it makes me upset just to hear it.

Right. It's like deliberately upsetting music. So is it sort of like a very kind of aggressive sort of electronica or something like that? Yeah, he likes it because it makes him feel stressed out, so he programs harder right so stressful music that that kind of music that anxiety stress music i'm sorry i don't have a better name for it yeah so so deliberately i don't really understand deliberately stressful

anything i suppose it's the sort of audio equivalent of of a horror film isn't it is i i i want to get my pulse racing to music in a nice way in a surge of kind of you just want to feel positive or or like something good or even even sad music if it's sort of beautiful and and has a sort of a there's a beauty to the melancholy but there's i feel with these people out there deliberately writing ugly music yeah as a kind of a rebellion against norms or a rebellion against formats or whatever it is. And I can respect that as an artistic choice, but when I feel it, I can't handle it.

But I'm also quite sensitive to music in that, that sounds really wanky, but like I can't listen to music in the background. I can't not pay attention to music if it's there. I can't listen to music in the background i can't not pay to pay attention to music if it's there i can't work with music in the background it draws my full attention so if it is like deliberately unpleasant or unsettling then i get carried away in that and and often this sort of stuff it's it's so deliberately sort of obtuse that you know they'll have very difficult time signatures and sort of beats that don't quite follow a normal pattern. So there's no way of it not bringing your full attention.

Yes. You know, it's sort of deliberately jarring, isn't it? So there's no regularity. You know, it'd be good torture music because you'd never just fade into the background. Yeah, it alienates you from yourself. And, you know, it's interesting because even within genres, I can tell, I can feel a really big difference so there's some like death metal or heavy metal or

that i'm totally okay with and others that i just can't handle like i love a bit of pantera which you'd think was deliberately disconcerting but it's got so much kind of musicality to it that i'm i'm down for it. Yeah, yeah. No, I get that. There's still a sort of a sense of what the song is rather than just everything just fighting against itself. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly that. I think sometimes as well, when you listen to this sort of music, it's like very complicated jazz or stuff that you just feel so out of the loop. You almost kind of think, is this, why don't I get it is there something wrong with me i don't understand am i am i just a bit vanilla or something you know it's like being in a conversation with friends who are doing in jokes that you're not in on yes yeah yeah deliberately exclusionary so we're going to

call it deliberately difficult electronica yesult Electronica. Yes. Arrhythmic Electronica. Okay. So while Saw III plays in the background, you're sitting in front of a plate of capers and a big glass of milk, a magician's assistant, well, a magician's companion, someone rating your body parts, and an overly sincere man i mean you're you're really acing this i've got to say thank you okay now finally the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals which animal is it and why? I've got to say a flamingo. A flamingo. Interesting.

They're just arrogant, French-nosed, knobbly-kneed, swamp-sucking pink. They just get way... See, I have nothing against them except that everyone thinks they're so great. And they clearly think they're great just just the the like the millennial pinkness of them the fact that they throw up blood red cottage cheese into the mouths of their children and think they're cool for doing it look at him look at him horrible creatures yeah it's hard to imagine him being a kind of easygoing chilled out animal to hang out with, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And they just steal other eggs and they suck up krill through their teeth.

It's a weird bird, isn't it? It's sort of, how did you become what you are? It's too strange. It's too strange. Basically, I didn't really have a thing about flamingos, except that I made a joke about having a thing about flamingos on the Bugle podcast, and then people started sending me pictures of flamingos all the time. I was like, yeah, actually, I was right.

I read a thing about them once that apparently the only reason they're pink is because of what they eat. If they didn't eat some sort of, like you said, some kind of krill or something off a lake floor. And if they didn't eat that, they would just be a kind of pale, pale color or sort of white color. So they're kind of one of their distinguishing features is sort of by accident as well, which kind of makes me respect them less. You know, because it's like the whole thing is your beautiful elegant pink thing but you didn't really mean it it's just just accident it's a lie the whole thing's a lie and they look sort of um there's something kind of this too fragile looking like their legs look too spin they look like they're about to break it's kind of kind of makes

you feel anxious yes Yes, it does. And then they stay in these salt things and they get salt on their legs in horrible big knobs. It's not okay. It's not okay. Big knobbly salt legs. I like that you refer to the millennial pinkness. It's a fun, every now and again,

there's a sort of an animal that becomes kind of in vogue a bit. And, you know, some like owls were very fashionable for a while. And it feels like flamingos have had a bit of a resurgence. You see people with flamingo tattoos and things like that. There's every now and again, one animal is cool. Yeah, but I think this is the thing. I can get owls. Owls seem to have a personality.

Flamingos are a cipher. They are an arrogant cipher. And they don't mean anything. And I think they sort of represent the utter emptiness of the millennial aesthetic in that it's elegant but without content. I was looking for a response to that, but I think you've summed it up so beautifully. I don't think I have a retort. I've thought about this too much. No, I think it's perfect.

Yeah, because what do we know about them? What do they do? Owls, yeah, you hunt at night, you know, like your heads rotate 90 degrees or 180 degrees. They look simultaneously clever and goofy. I love an owl, man. Yeah, I'm a very big fan of owls. But yeah, what do we know about flamingos?

Stand on one leg, you're pink. That's about it, isn't it? Yeah, they're just sort of... It's the self-indulgence of them. It's they're the excessively glamorous girl in a bar who's never developed a personality. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

God, you know what? I've never thought about flamingos like this, but I think I might fucking hate flamingos now. You've been very persuasive on this. Thank you. You're welcome. And being a Buddhist, I imagine you're unlikely to try and eat a flamingo. But in dire straits, they're probably not going to be good eating. I imagine they would taste oily and fishy. Yeah, I don't think't think that's probably stringy as well yeah you'd steal

yourself to finally kill this bird so that you could survive and it'd just be like really sort of muddy tasting meat wouldn't it i think yeah no good yeah okay okay i think gwyneth poltro would be delicious though yeah she i mean she's quite flamingo-esque isn't she i suppose yeah but she's grass-fed you know it's a very good point well alice flamingos join you on the island and um i think you've done a great job at picking uh quite a an inhospitable environment for yourself so uh well done but um i also don't envy you one bit so thank you for that um alice now obviously you're currently in quarantine but where can we hear or see more of you well i have a weekly podcast called tea with alice where i talk about difficult ideas with interesting people i have a daily podcast which is a satirical news comedy show daily satirical news comedy show set in an alternate dimension.

Wow. It's a short sort of 10, 15-minute shows, and they are very, very silly. And also I'm on patreon.com slash alicefraser, and my stand-up special Savage is coming out on Amazon Prime on the 17th of April. Perfect. So that's all my stuff.

So, I mean, you know, fuck quarantine. You've got loads of stuff going on. My workload has, if anything, gone up. COVID-19 has done little to slow your output. It's very impressive indeed. Alice, thank you so much for talking to us today. And yeah, thanks for sharing your Desert Island Dicks. Thank you so much for having me.