Desert Island Dicks - ROB COPLAND

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Comedian Rob Copland joins Dan to share who and what he'd hate to be stuck with on a desert island. If you're at Edinburgh you must go and see his show, he's very funny. Be sure to follow the podcast @dickspodLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi I'm Dan from Desert Island Dicks and this episode features comedian Rob Copland. Some of you might remember when we did the Paul Foot episode that I said I'd went and saw Paul Foot do a work in progress at a club called the Poodle Club in South East London and that night Rob Copland did a little set as well and I thought he was absolutely brilliant so I was really glad to get him on the podcast that's one of the lovely things about doing this podcast is that you can see people that you think are great and then invite them on and have a chat with them so yeah it was great to sort of have a chat with Rob and I think he's really funny I like this episode a lot it's a nice long one and yeah he's up in Edinburgh at the minute but I think by the time this goes out he might have

finished his run because he was only doing a short one he talks about that a little bit right at the end but yeah if you get the chance to see him when he's back from Edinburgh I really recommend it because I yeah think he's very good so anyway before I turn into a complete and utter fanboy I'm going to move on and just say thank you for downloading this podcast. It means a lot that you all listen to it. And if you're new to this podcast, well, thank you for downloading the podcast. It's the same message, basically. You know, we're just thankful that you downloaded it.

If you subscribe, then obviously you will never miss an episode. And hey, if you'd like to leave us a rating and a review we like that very much indeed um i am a needy person as much as anyone else and it is nice to hear your feedback and nice to see what you like and and that kind of thing i've got to be honest it's quite late it's quarter to 11 at night and i've just finished editing this episode so i'm quite tired and babbly and i think probably it's best for all of us if I just shut the fuck up. And we get into the podcast. Where it will also be me talking. But also mostly it will be Rob.

And we'll just have a nice time. Look, you get the format of the show. It's easy to explain. So let's get on with it, shall we? It's Desert Island Dicks with Rob Copland. 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 people and worst things 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 Rob Copland. How are you?

I'm alright mate, it's nice to be here with you. Well it's nice to have you on. We're not together, that's the thing. I'm up in Edinburgh now and I've been living by myself for a while, it's nice to speak to somebody well i'm happy to be a a nice voice for you in in your darkest hour but um unfortunately we are going to talk about some pretty bleak stuff obviously the people and things you would least like to be stuck with on a desert island how did you find the process of uh whittling down your choices i've been thinking about it for quite a while it's interesting isn't it because there are

there's different reasons you might not want to be stuck on an island with somebody there are people in my life who are friends but they bring out the worst in me and someone like that do you know the hedonistic side of yourself you know those friends that you just hang out with and get fucked up with like you're thinking well would would they be a person who you don't want to be but then you're on desert island so you're just like why not just get hedonistic until you go crazy and die so there was that and you don't you don't want to be like oh yeah by the way mate yeah you'd be the least person i want to be trapped on a desert island with even though we love hanging out so there was there was thinking about that kind of stuff there's people that you know on in the comedy circuit or people who are like part of your life and you see on a regular

basis who you might think god fucking hate to be but you don't want to name them on a podcast and then bump into them and be like i'm sorry but yeah um and then there's like your classic celebrities that I bet people say all the time like Bear Grylls or Donald Trump or blah blah blah Boris Johnson, you don't want to hit just like

I don't know these people, they might be hilarious to people watch it might be quite funny being stuck in a desert island with Boris Johnson because he might be so pathetic that you know and you could eat him he's he's he's porky he'd be tasty um i've it's been it's been one of those things that's been at the back of my mind for a long time i've been thinking about it a lot and i've got three people and i'm proud to put them in my desert island of dickery okay great well uh i'm excited to hear your choices then and who made the made the list who's going to be the first person joining you um

the first person on my list is my old math teacher mrs phillips okay good good i like it when there's like a a nice sort of i suppose it's like revenge is a dish best served cold and this feels right when you're talking about an old teacher i just hate to be it's i mean you say revenge like i'm getting one over on them i'm stuck on the island with them it's it's going to be awful for me that that's the way i've thought about it like who would be the worst people to be stuck with on this island yeah and my maths teacher from year 10 and 11 so gcSE level, Miss Phillips, fucking cunt of a human being. I hope she does. I hate her so much, man. I'm sorry I just used the C word so early on. OK, well, what was what was so dependent on how well i did in the subject

on how well the teacher could handle my me and um i could find a teacher who'd be like rob yeah that's funny but come on we're in maths or a teacher who's just like get out of my classroom right now and it's like that that kind of like zero tolerance to my energy or my playfulness was in equal measures painful and difficult um when someone's not willing to kind of come on we're in maths it's this is this sucks we both know this sucks like let's try and find some joy in it um i remember she got um what's it called when you almost die uh well like a near-death experience yeah like an illness that people get she got really ill she got really really ill and she was off school for like two months and it was amazing I actually got better at maths in those times we had a substitute teacher who was a teacher I used to have called Mr Child who made math weirdly

somehow I don't know how give the man a Nobel Prize he made maths really fun and engaging and um with Miss Phillips I remember once Miss Phillips caught me. I devised like a new technique for zoning out during maths where I was like, if I look at the whiteboard and just like look at the numbers she's writing on the board, but don't think about anything. If I just go to like an empty place in my mind, she'll never know because I'm looking at the I'm looking at the board. So she can't say shit. And she about five seconds in, in she was like you can't just look at the board and not think about anything wow wow so she saw through it she saw through it man she could read the matrix she was she was evil short hair really into cars and had scissor sister earrings the only time i ever saw her smile was a night after she'd seen the sisters sisters live and i was like they fucking rule like okay you have a fun side let's see it let's see it in the

classroom but she just came down on me hard she'd always send me out but the worst the worst part about this is the thing that like brought her into my mind was the year i finished uni i worked at tesco's at the checkouts during uni. And I came back to Southampton and was working for a short while on the checkouts at my local supermarket. She came in. I'm checking her out. I'm doing her beep, beep, beep. And I said, hello, Mrs. Phillips.

And she's like, I'm sorry, who are you? Oh, Mrs. Phillips. And she's like, I'm sorry, who are you? Oh, no. It was like that scene in World's End, you know, where he confronts his bully and his bully has no idea who he is. Oh, man. Yeah, that's really annoying. Although I suppose the other side, she could be like, ah, Rob, I knew you'd end up working on a checkout or something like that. You know, obviously there is nothing wrong with that. But she actually still managed to say something like that.

She said something like, oh, it's good to see what you've amounted to. She genuinely said something like that. No. Oh, man. What a bitch. I hated this woman so much. Being stuck on a desert island with her would be hell.

Yeah. No, she sounds like a mean person that would just be really difficult to live with. I mean, I hated maths and similarly just found it quite difficult and challenging with the way my brain works. And I'm sure that like there were other subjects that I disliked, but I felt like I had a better ratio of like good to bad teachers. You know, like I was never very into history, but I had some good history teachers and some bad ones. I felt like my entire run of maths teachers throughout school was pretty bad. Like, I don't think there was ever one that I really enjoyed thinking, OK, I hate maths, but this guy's OK.

Yeah, man. Like a maths teacher who knows how to have fun is like a it's like finding Mew on Pokemon. It's essentially impossible. They are out there somewhere. But for the most part, it's, yeah. Yeah. And like, when they're like years and years into the profession and they've just lost the joy or the patience, the zero tolerance approach to tomfoolery in the classroom was the biggest thing, you know. Like, I could be, I could, I, before, I'd turn around to speak to the person behind me.

Before I'd even spoke to them rob go stand outside for five minutes it's like what this is chaos this is actually like chaos for me so on a desert island that would be difficult man yeah because i think also i don't think like that dynamic of teacher student would ever leave you know it wouldn't be like okay look we're on this desert island we're both grown-ups now water under the bridge and all that how are we going to survive i think you'd still end up having this awkward kind of teacher student relationship with them yeah absolutely yeah it would uh that would be really really difficult to navigate and the the the the incident when she forgot who i was and stuff like she had a kind of a profound impact on my confidence in in an

intellectual and a personal sense and then to not remember me that has like that it that that knocked me for six when that happened so to be on the island I'd be like pacing around forget about Rob how can you not remember me you know I'll be going crazy. Come on, I was second row, always talking. How can you not remember me? I'd be fuming about that for a long time. That would be horrible. Yeah, that is one of the really harsh things about bad teachers is that it just stays with you forever

and they will obviously forget about you because they're teaching hundreds of people a year. And it just feels like there's no justice in that because like it's I mean it's so shit being I mean I guess as an adult you can have a an annoying boss or something potentially and that can like make your life quite bad but I think at least you have the rest of your life and you're a grown-up and you can do what you want just school just feels like you're always in this grind of like of just putting up with this person and often you know you change years and you might still get the same teacher and when they sort

of follow you around like that it's terrible i would i would i would dread the class going to her mass lessons and time would seem to stand still and if those two things transferred across onto the island time stands still and i'm dreading being around them that that is like uh like a purgatory yeah okay well i think it's a really strong first choice for the island just even thinking about some of my math teachers i can't even remember their names now but i can just sort of see their faces and just the idea of being stuck with those people on an island just sort of gives me the fear to be honest i'm trying to think like what they'd be um what she like you know with her mathematical skills and her penchant for the scissor sisters you know maybe you know

we could get some like fermented coconut water in her and get her singing the scissor sisters like that'd be a bit of entertainment but i mean what what is she gonna do find the the mean you know the mean of how many coconuts are on the island and the average the average sea temperature throughout the year like what what good is maths going to do you when you're on a fucking desert starving to death what good are your numbers going to do you now miss flips you know fair enough well i think it's a strong start so um it's already a hateful place and you've only picked one person so who's going to be joining her who's the next person on with you on the island okay my next one i struggle i struggle to i struggled with my second one um first i wrote

down john taffer do you know who john taffer is i don't know john taffer presents a tv show that me and my girlfriend are obsessed with my fiancee are obsessed with called um bar rescue okay and it's it's basically gordon ramsay's kitchen nightmares but for bars and it's great it's got this guy called john taffer his parents owned the troubadour when he was a kid so he's like a bar expert and he helps struggling businesses and he goes in and he's very gordon ramsay-esque he fucking opens his eyes nice and wide and he says shit like what does he say he says i don't embrace excuses i embrace solutions and he gets real angry he shouts at people he's he's kind of like unbearable but there's this side to him that's like gordon ramsay and there's an

aspect that i quite like about tough love and kind of um although being firm being fair and i kind of thought if he's on the island we'll probably end up having like a father-son relationship and it'll probably be quite good even though he's a nightmare at times so i crossed him off my list okay so he's not coming onto the island but he's an honorable mention i basically wanted to mention that because i wanted to talk about this tv show everybody has to go and watch bar rescue on amazon it's the best tv show on tv yeah i'm gonna have to check it out now then i wrote um this one's crossed out as well but it's another honorable mention uh beard meets food oh yes yes i've seen this person on youtube yeah so he's he has a beard and he does like food eating challenges like um oh what was it man versus food it's that kind of thing isn't it like god that's the biggest

burrito in the world it weighs as much as a tiger but can i eat it that sort of thing yeah not only eat it but eat it fast and with my well i mean burrito is a bad example because you it's okay to eat a burrito with your hands but he'll eat like the uk's biggest fry up and he'll eat it all with his hands like fried eggs lifted up with his hand and he's all going in his beard and then he's mopping up he's mopping everything up he's getting it all in a little pile he's eating beans with his bare hands get the fuck off my desert island if you're in big beans with your bare hands what you're doing man use a spoon at least use the toast as a spoon the man's fumbling beans it's such a weird thing isn't it where we find ourselves like um at a place in humanity where like you can earn a

living from eating too much food with your hands and videoing it yes like what the fuck are we doing it is we've crossed a point of no return now and people are selfie videoing themselves in little quiet quiet quite often he goes into these like quiet little cafes and they'll be just like a family because quite often it's little cafes and they'll be just like a family because quite often it's in the uk they'll just be like a family like you know aunties and aunties and grannies sitting near him and they're like oh and he's like yeah for my youtube channel and just just makes an absolute embarrassment of himself it's it's intense and he he kind of like jokes around about it coming out as well like oh this is gonna be a bit of a nightmare coming through

some of his videos end with like like you know like um maybe the camera's on the ground and you can see his trousers around his ankles on the toilet like what what is what is going on man we've all eaten food we're familiar with the process and the eventual exit i don't think it's adding much to the video here no it's it's really off-putting to watch a man scoop beans into his face and then talk about it coming through and you know being on a desert island that guy, he'd be gobbling up all the coconuts. Yeah. Yeah.

He'd be gobbling them straight up with his bare hands. And I bet he is friendly. I bet he is fine. But with that kind of like OCD eating and because it's not he can't be he can't be normal. None of us are normal. He can't have a healthy relationship with food he can't have like he's he's got something going on like you don't end up knowing that you can eat that amount of food that quickly like an anaconda like going weeks without food and then

shoveling loads of it in he he's gonna have some psychological stuff going on that I don't want to have to deal with. There's such a sort of bleakness about those kind of things where it's just like an impossible amount of food for no reason and you're just sitting there trying to get through it. And it's like, you know, I don't want to bring up all the starving people in the world, but is this the best thing you could be doing? It just feels so kind of just...

I think the anaconda metaphor is quite good because, you know, doing it just feels so kind of just and i think the anaconda metaphor is is quite good because you know you just see them like choking down a gazelle and you just think there is no joy there it's just like food must be in me now get in my fucking body how old are you how old are you daniel i'm 41 i'm 33 and i'm just getting to that age where i'm like i need to slow down when i eat i need to chew my food properly i need i tell you what though i have taken something from this guy's videos beardy meat beard meets food when he's if you notice when he he's he's like shoveling it in and he kind of for every bite he does he does a sip of water bite water bite water and it's supposed to lubricate

the food on the way through your intestinal system i that kind of always comes into my mind when i'm eating like a big meal now and i'm like make sure you get some drink in there as well i think i might i think i actually wanted i i actually think i want him to be my next person i had i had him crossed out but the more i think about it the less i want to be on the island with him i just think as well the fact that it's just you know he has a big beard and it's called beard meets food and i just think is that your defining characteristic you know like some people have beards that's fine but if you're like hey guys i'm the guy with the beard you know

it's it's like is do you not have anything else? No, I know exactly what you mean. Because I have a moustache. And I worry that I'll... Sometimes I see guys who have moustaches and they've gone... Like, they've built the personality around the moustache. Rather than the moustache around the personality. Do you know what I mean? So, like, it's waxed up on the corners.

And they're wearing, like, tartan and a waistcoat. And they've got a walking stick it's like all of those things it's like the mustache came first and then those things followed whereas with me it was just like i don't know i've just weirdly always had a mustache i was born with a mustache everyone on my island has to have a mustache i tell you what i would hate it if everyone on my desert island had a mustache i recently have been working in like a shared work office space and i sit near a guy who works for another company and he has a very similar mustache to mine where it's not like a personality driven one it's just a mustache and for some

reason we just can't look at each other in the eyes we can't like we can't we can't just have like we've had i've had friendly conversation with pretty much everyone else in the office but for some reason me and him we're just it's like two magnets going like you know the two negatives like they can't we just for some reason we can't so if everyone on my island had mustaches we'd all be like just repelling each other i'm able to truly connect well yeah i just i just think like i don't know i think that you like you say there are people who have who have them and can wear them well but sometimes i just feel like it's covering up a

lack of something else and um obviously that is not the case in your i mean i'm i currently am very unshaven myself but i like to think I've got more stuff going on that if I started a YouTube channel, I could think of something else to call it, you know? Yeah, and he probably got a bit hung up on the meat's food because it's M-E-A-T-S, like beard meat's food. Oh, I hadn't even noticed that. And there's that double...

You know, people who aren't semi-professional comedians like myself will hit on a delicate, like a very easy breezy pun and be like, that's fucking genius, that. This is bringing out the worst in me, by the way. I feel like I'm being cruel. I generally keep it a rule to be quite a nice person, but I'm making fun of people for doing shit poems but that's okay i mean look we're gonna we're gonna this is a safe environment for you to expunge all your anger and then you know we can have a thank you a happy-go-lucky rob copland afterwards once more yeah he's 100 on there uh he's he's also i'm jealous of him

because he's probably he's probably making a shit ton of cash doing it he's traveled the world with it he eats i i'm a horrible little pig boy i love to stuff my face with food and he eats some really delicious stuff that i want to eat yeah i just think everything around kind of like competitive eating is a bit odd like i watched a documentary once about and there was this famous japanese guy who like took america by storm and uh like his dad is like a buddhist priest and was sort of going yeah obviously i found it quite difficult to come to terms with my son's career being that it's like a horrible fucking waste of food and i'm a buddhist you know but eventually i just sort of realized he was trying his best at something and that's what he had to find you know that was his destiny but then like you know you'd see like the one guy

who then you know this American guy who could then was the only person who could like challenge him and eventually kind of usurped him and he was doing like he had like a regimen of like special exercises to like strengthen his neck and stuff like this that he could like force down the hot because a lot of it was like hot dog eating contests and stuff and he was like doing these weird sit-up moves that he'd invented that kind of helped like helped him choke it all down and just think fucking hell man like what are you this is insane yeah that's a lot to put your body through it's kind of admirable to see commitment to an art form like that but when it comes to something that is seriously off-putting for 90 of the people who see it happening it's like you're actively trying to make yourself more grotesque yeah and i just

think you know like the places that offer those kind of foods as well and it's like i guess it is just a sort of hey if we offer like an insane fry up maybe you know you'll get some publicity for it but it's like of course no one can eat that because you've put like five packets of bacon on a plate and a loaf of bread it's like oh it's wales his biggest bacon butty it's like it's too big like you don't need all this stuff yeah yeah it's just that's just ridiculous yeah i wonder what the profit gain loss is on those how well they actually do they're kind of it's kind of like for a chef it's kind of like putting bait out into the ocean for like the moby dick like do you think that chefs kind of like see these competitive eaters and they're like yeah we'll show him they try and like throw stuff

i saw one in america actually of beard beard meats food where he went to um he went to a place where they did they did like a really really really hot ramen and it was like gallons of ramen like boiling hot because ramen is supposed to be served inedibly hot. And the spice levels on this thing were like crazy. Like, you know, like when it's like Scoville rating a million or something, you know. And he tried to take on one of those. And it's such a horrible video to watch because not only is he suffering and struggling with it, you get the sense that the guys who invited him in and asked him to do it are kind of like bullying him.

Like, oh yeah, you like gallons of food. How about this, mate? And it's like, consumed quickly could potentially kill him. And he's like... Going through it. Oh, God. I just find it really bleak. It's really bleak competitive eating.

Yeah. Talk about spicy stuff. I've seen it before where they're like, oh, this is America's spiciest chicken wing. And we have to use a gas mask. We have to wear a gas mask in the kitchen when we're preparing it because the fumes of the chili is so strong. I don't want to tell you how to do your job but i think once you're having to wear protective gear like a gas mask to stop you inhaling the fumes maybe you shouldn't serve that to people you know it's just all so stupid and pointless it's such a funny it's a really funny form of um machoism and alphaism

to to be the man who can stomach the hot you know like you see if you go out for a curry with your friends there will be a bit of like oh he's got the fucking window with the fucking helmet you if you look at it like that through the lens of like toxic masculinity as soon as he opens his mouth and starts talking he's like he's he's a beta male he's he's like oh you're right hey hey yeah i'm just gonna eat all of this and not that you know i i i like to think that i exist outside alpha or beta because it's a bit of a it's black and white isn't it you know people are different in different situations you know the the beard meets food is alpha when he's at the

food eating competitions but oh god it's all so bizarre it's all so chauvinistic yeah i think it would be difficult to to establish a bond with him on the island because it feels like you've got that as a talking point and once you kind of go i kind of think what you do is pointless and disgusting there's not a lot past that so true apart from talking about his beard maybe so right so we've got um miss phillips and the the man from beards meets food let's just call him the beard i suppose um so this is this is a good strong couple of dicks we've got here who's going to be your third person my third person is somebody that i used to I worked with on a couple of occasions. She's kind of a British national treasure,

but I found her to be just like, you know when you like kind of joke or fantasize about celebrities being a nightmare, like I demand this and i demand that stop it and stop that so i worked with angela rippon okay yeah she's a an old bbc presenter i think she was a newsreader yeah well she used to present um i always get confused with like gloria honeyford it's that sort of vibe isn't it like just sort of well so her gloria honeyford and and uh angela ripon gloria honeyford and uh one other so i worked on this tv show rip off britain as a runner and um she was one of the presenters on that and just you know like the kind of like imagine like

the biggest nightmare talent when you're working with she was just that like when i introduced myself i tried to be so courteous so oh oh angela i was like oh hello my name's you must be angela i'm rob nice to meet you and she was like of course i'm angela what kind of stupid question is that haven't you seen the show and i was like oh man i tried so hard to just be like soft and welcoming. Yeah, that's just so abrasive from the start, isn't it? It's unbelievable. She wanted she didn't want to try and create a dynamic where we could work together and have a nice time. She wanted to create a dynamic where I was the stupid idiot who should stay out of her way

and uh it sucked it creates it creates a working environment when you're working with toxic people where you kind of hate yourself hate them hate the tv show can't get your head around the power dynamics can't understand why someone would want to abuse their power just really really nasty i wonder if it's because she was the sort of person that was like quite big in the 80s and i think that's like a different kind of fame you know if you're used to being like one of the main news readers and tv hosts when there's only four channels you know you're going to be massive and i think that you know probably fucks up some people a little bit but i mean just being that rude straight off the bat i just think if i was that rude to someone i wouldn't be able to then look at them again after like the incident

had happened so to then keep working with them how do you fucking just come out with that i don't know yeah i i i remember one time i've like only ever really like lost my temper with another human being who i didn't know like once and it was because I was having a really really bad day I'd just been rained on and I was cycling to a Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the summer hall and I got there it was tipping with rain I was soaking wet I locked my bike up to a gate and then I walked into the exhibition and just a guy who like worked on the grounds there was like mate you can't you can't lock your bike there and I just flipped on him and I was like ah why like what's the it doesn't matter okay well you fucking live here

and I was such an arsehole to him and then I went around the exhibition I just couldn't enjoy it because I was like oh my god I'm a piece of shit I can't believe I just flipped at that guy and then left and had to go and find him and apologize and Angela was just happy to work with me all the time constantly being that shitty person and then also like I had to go and get her lunch and it's like how can you be so confident that I'm not gonna put put a put a dog shit in your sandwich yeah it's it's very bizarre because you kind of deserve it I suppose they have such a high regard of themselves and the power they wield that they just assume that you're going to be sort of subservient

and, you know, take it and that's fine. I mean, what I find, I've worked with similar people to this and the annoying thing is, like, I still find my... I don't know if it's the same with you, like, I still find myself trying to be nice and polite and sort of grease the wheels a bit, though they've just like set out their stall as a complete prick you know what i mean and i think well it's already a horrible working environment for me so why do i care if it is for you as well but i'm still like oh i'll laugh at your jokes and

get your tea and stuff and then you just end up hating yourself because you're like why don't i just tell this person they're a prick i don't know i just it's just such a weird way of of being in life yeah yeah that is a really cool trick of being being on the positive side of things that like it's so hard to step up and be like like as as like a because i was like a runner on these tv shows to step up and be like hang on a second you shouldn't speak to me like that. Like we're going to be working together all day and I want to have a good working relationship with you. So, but for some reason you just can't vocalise

those kinds of things. You just like, yes, yes, boss, I ran off and get the sandwich for you. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's horrible. I think with these people, it's generally the people who are doing the least work out of everyone, but getting paid by far the most and you think god you should be walking into work like

skipping along just so happy or like you know i'd be so sort of grateful for it and just thinking god what if i lost this gig just from being a prick for no reason you know most most people are most people really are i've um shout out to Alex Horne, who I worked with on a TV show called The Button as a runner on a Saturday mornings we'd do. And that could have been awful. I had to travel all the way across London, get there like bright and early, start recording.

I'm going around getting everybody's breakfasts, handing everything out. And Alex Horne was like, obviously he was, I think it was like one of his shows. He was doing the voiceover stuff. And I was waiting on him like hand and foot, but he was just so cool. Like he was so like, your name's Rob Copland. Okay, great.

Thank you so much, Rob. And how are you doing? And everything all right for you, mate? We can get you stuff. And like just making the job a pleasure. It's such an easy decision to make to be the arsehole or like you know the tyrant or the or the other buddy and it's like just pick like just choose light just choose the light i just think it's easier to just be neutral than be like mean you know if you

just think oh i can't be bothered to speak to this runner here's another one i've seen loads of them before i'm bored blah blah blah but you But you just think, just be like, just be slightly aloof. Or like, you know, that's better than just outwardly being an idiot, you know. So, yeah. So true. And I mean, Christ,

that energy with your old math teacher as well on the island, Rob. I mean, that's going to... Oh. That's not great. Yeah. They'd probably buddy up and I'd be stuck with Beard Meets Food.

Yeah. It's annoying that I don't know his name either. I don't ever want to know his name. On the island, he should be called Beard Meets Food. Yeah. Every time I say it, I'm like... Yeah. And Angela Rippon just will never...

It doesn't matter how long you're on the island, she'll never understand the premise of his thing. So let me get this straight. You eat food on camera and that's it? That's it? But really big food? Really? Let's get this straight.

For fuck's sake, he's told you. This is what he does. What an awful thing to do. What a terrible thing to do. Disgusting. Don't you know there are starving children in Africa who I never help? Yeah, she'd be a nightmare nightmare she's very old as well and i i always

felt that like because on that show the the presenters were elderly ladies who also are their target demographic that's why the presenters are older ladies and i'd noticed that they would have this kind of defense shield up because really they should be pottering around a garden center getting tired having a cup of tea going home and going to bed they're old ladies but because they're on tv they're like i'm not old i'm young i'm sprightly i can still do it i can still pull it out the bag and actually they're knackered and when you're knackered you're a bit grumpy you're in a place you don't really want to be the stories are weird because it's like oh someone came and did my gutters and then they sucked all the money out of my savings account and you don't really know they don't

really know fully what's going on so quite often i feel that they're in a vulnerable position they're about to be on camera they're tired that. It's hot, you know. So what they're doing is coming from a place of, like, defensiveness. They're kind of like, I don't want to be here, so fuck you. And it's like, we were on the desert island. That's like a ground rule. No one can do that. None of us want to be here, so let's just try and work together. Yeah, yeah yeah definitely and i yeah i

just don't think that that attitude from her is gonna is gonna change i think she's gonna always treat you like a showrunner and treat you badly as your maths teacher is always going to see you as a pupil oh man so it's you and beard meets food my power dynamics on the island are fucked yeah they are fucked you sit and you watch me eat food boy you sit and you do numbers in silence boy you run off and get your it i'm all it's i'm all like um yeah i'm all on the receiving end of a backhand from all of these people for some reason yeah it doesn't look good for you rob but look we're gonna distract you a little bit from the people now because mercifully amongst the wreckage of the plane there was some food and drink left over unfortunately for you it's your least favorite food and drink in the world what are they and

why are they so bad um okay so my worst food is one specific meal from my life it is a meal that i had while i was on holiday with my fiance una and we were in Ireland um someone on her side of the family has a family home and it was it's on the west coast of Ireland really really rural and Una bless her got incredibly ill on this trip and she was just knocked out and I was kind of waiting on her hand and foot the whole holiday just making sure she was all right. We're talking cold flannels on the forehead, opening windows to get fresh air. So ill she couldn't go outside. And yeah, she was in a sorry, sorry state.

And one day she started to feel a little bit better. So I was like, I'll cook us up a real, real nice meal. And I decided to do like pork ribs, real slow cooked in the oven for ages like all day and I like made like a real nice seasoning like onions in there garlic in there everything like it was I was so excited about these ribs I did a side of like mash and veg and stuff and served the meal out Uno got out of bed like it's like you know seeing her walk around it's like she's on the mend sat down and started eating and as soon as i bit into the ribs i realized that i bought like a type that were meant for i don't basically they were just insanely salty and they were like a type they were in they were like shrunk wrap and i think they were meant

for a certain type of cooking or like i don't know what i bought and i kept like pulling the bag out of the bin and looking at it and being like what what have i done i spent all day cooking these ribs and they were inedible they were you could you could not eat them. They were so salty. I'm trying to think what purpose they could have. Like, are they just like, you put one rib into a huge pot of chili to season the entire pot or something? It's like, is that weird? I don't know.

Like, I can't imagine. I don't know what, if anyone out there knows why they'd be that salty, I think they were supposed to be cooked a certain way or something. But I, and then i felt like an idiot for not understanding that as well and i'm sat there in front of this inedible meal that i spent all day on and it affected my yeah you know it made me feel like an idiot and i was

hungry i was a hungry idiot man it's so bad like the weight of expectation on a long long slow cooked meal like that and then to have something so inedible as well and it's like you know it's not like just you didn't like it very much like you physically can't eat it it's horrendous and imagine that on the island as well you've got that beard meats food is trying his best but you know you're breaking him down because he can't he can't do it but that's his thing he has to he has to eat it all but you know even he is finding it tricky what'd you start what'd you start at the clock mate you can't stop come on you know you've got angela rippon just like giving you withering stares because oh rob how could you what have you done this isn't how they're supposed to be what did you do you silly man yeah yeah miss phillips has got the she's got the packaging of the ribs out and she's looking at the salt content on the back and she's like if you'd done your maths you would have realized

but i think as well it's like you know like you're saying it's it's the sort of mystery around it as well that makes it so annoying it's like there's no reason that this should taste like this and you can't find any explanation that makes it better it's just a really annoying unexplainable frustrating thing like what are you gonna do like write to the factory and ask them what's going on or something like you know then i'll send you some more ribs yeah i will if anyone knows can you reach out and dm me why there would be ribs that are so salty that they're inedible? Why would they be on the shelves? Are they for, like, dogs to eat? Do dogs need more salt?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why I said that. No, I like the idea that dogs need... You know, like, horses and stuff have a salt lick. Like, some animals have to, like, take in salt, don't they? Maybe it's like that. There are animals take in salt yeah maybe maybe it's like

that there are animals that have salt licks sour about yeah come and have a lovely big block of salt to lick that'll make you feel better now in rib form have you salty well that does sound like a crap thing to be stuck with on a desert island just because i mean it's even making my mouth feel a bit dry just thinking of the saltiness so but what what are you going to try and wash it down with what's going to be your your drink to save the day uh wait it's a good drink or a bad drink it's a bad drink sorry i misled you there with clumsy language like it's not going to save the day yeah absolutely ruin it um this is a drink that was made for me on a holiday in 2008 in turkey on a lad's holiday we we went to an all-inclusive hotel and the bar staff on one night said we'll make you a drink that will like

fuck you up seriously because we were like 18 we were like yeah drinking all the time and they made a drink that was essentially just every type of alcohol that they have mixed together with green uh food coloring they called it i think they called it a fuck face um and they they made a pint of it i think about this a lot it just comes to me and i shudder and i just get scared i get really scared about what might happen if someone drank all of it oh man that's a great name for a drink like that yeah the it was like petrol it tasted like petrol and licorice oh man I mean I'll take one but not both oh god it was it was really really intense and to get around like there was like this kind of like sense that, you know, we had to drink it. You know that horrible feeling when you're, when you were younger and that kind of toxic drinking culture of someone getting up in your face and being like, finish your drink, neck your drink, skull it, skull it, skull it. You know, that weird peer pressure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And so was it one drink between all of you or did you all have a fuck face each i think i got it from the bar and then i brought it back to where we were sitting and no one wanted to drink it i couldn't drink it but i there was part of me that was like you gotta you gotta drink this to be like legendary or whatever just like that really stupid oh god i'm getting i get i'm getting anxious thinking about the drink yeah yeah um and the way i got rid of the drink was to um start like uh i had two empty i had another cup that was empty and i'd pour it all from like glass to glass being like a cocktail mixer like

but like spilling it all all over the shop just to get rid of it nice yeah it's very much in the sort of beard meets food drink sort of aesthetic isn't it it's like you know this fry up doesn't need to be this big this drink shouldn't have all these drinks in it you know like this this is not a cocktail this is a bet exactly yeah this is not a cocktail this is a bet this is not um this is not like um nutrition this is not something that will will help you this is a bet this is not um this is not like um nutrition this is not something that will will help you this is a challenge or like something that can really hurt you like if you ate too much food your stomach could explode if you drank too much alcohol your heart could stop it wasn't like a cocktail it was like a loaded gun do you know what i mean i'm like

holding something that could kill yeah and i just think if I was running a hotel and I had a bunch of 18-year-old English lads in on a holiday, the last thing I want to do is give them the strongest cocktail note to man. Yeah, I mean, or they were trying to teach us a lesson. Like we were annoying English tourists and like, this will shut them up. Kind of like the ramen was for Be meets food when he went to america and those guys set him up with a ramen that could have fucking ruined his life oh my god imagine being in an intensive care unit and they're like what happened to him

ramen so he spent his life around food ironically it was the food that killed him yeah oh rest in peace beard meets food and we never knew his name yeah he's got his he's got his um instead of like the dates he was born and died he's got like his youtube subscription followers number on his headstone 3.5 million a really long unwieldy link yeah link just carved into the stone. Hyperlink. Oh, man. Well, that does indeed sound like a horrific food and drink pairing. So, yeah, it's working for me.

Now, Rob, 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 two working settings one is your least favorite film of all time and the other is your least favorite song what are they and why i wrote i studied film at university and film is like a real real great love of mine um it's it's it's next to stand up it's it's it's one of the most unique and interesting art forms in my opinion um i i've written down anything by wes anderson okay and that's a new opinion for me i used to think wes anderson was the fucking bollocks i I thought he was really cool, really interesting, like so unique. But every time I watch his films,

so my favorite kind of films, we're talking something like This Is England or Short Cuts or Magnolia. Films that show people being very human, all of their kind of, all of the all of the worst aspects of ourselves

but trying to be the best and you know films that kind of like break down the human psyche and are just you know very human stories okay i like human stories the tree of life terence malick baby um wes anderson's films are so alien to really understanding what human beings i think wes anderson might be like ocd quite far along the spectrum of autism and asperger's or like, and not that there's an issue with that, you know, I have, I have ADHD and sometimes, you know, I've got autism in the family and I think, you know, where, where do I sit on the spectrum? And, but when I watch a film, I want to have an experience where I'm like, fucking man, we're, we're just human. We're just human. We're just complicated beings and And we're all trying to work it out.

And that's okay. But Wes Anderson's got this kind of like, this fantasy of what people are like. And the way they even turn their heads isn't human. Like it's so alien and weird and non-organic. And I've seen making of Wes Anderson films, and he is so hands-on that I reckon the crew hate him.

Like, he wants to go in and do everything himself. He wants to be in control of every last little aspect of it. And, like, sure, every frame does look like a dollhouse it is kitsch and cute but like the stories are just like people who aren't really aren't really human i don't feel like the people in wes anderson films are fucking human anymore yeah it's weird isn't it i'm sorry i've gone i've gone off on one no that's this this is your space to do exactly that i mean i i think he's he's interesting because it's like when people

make albums and after a while you go you know sometimes it's like exactly the same thing album after album and that's okay and sometimes you're like why is this just the same as your last album like i don't know why with where that was anderson it's sort of like i think because he just sort of go oh look there's the little cutaway shot and there's that everything's in that font and I suppose it's kind of familiar and comforting in some way but it is quite like when the film when the story behind

it isn't that good you just kind of think what is all this bollocks like the French dispatch I just thought felt like a film someone made to imitate Wes Anderson you know what I mean with all these funny little touches and like the the way it's done I hated that I hated that film so much it was not a good film and then it's just so much that was that's when it that's when everything flipped for

me yeah because then at that point where you're like this isn't actually a good film and you've just put Wes Anderson stuff all over it to make it so to sort of distract us from it you know and about halfway through you're like I think this might be shit actually you know and I think I would have realised sooner had I not just been looking at all the flourishes it showed that film for me showed a real lack of respect for the

consumer and a real lack of care for truth or like it's about this newspaper it's about like this newspaper and it kind of i can see like when you're first coming up with the idea like okay that's a great way to like have different avenues and we have like the sports people and we go off and find about like all the sports world and then there's like the political side we'll go that's a great way to explore humanity and the ecosystem of society a newspaper that's an amazing way to investigate

society but it's not it's timothy chalamet smoking cigarettes and like these cool shots of like buildings from the outside where the camera goes up and along and every everything moves at a fucking 90 degree angle up or down and it doesn't get it doesn't get under the surface of its own of itself of the style its style over substance the last the the one before that the grand budapest is like a good film because the structure of the film is satisfying i can't remember any of the characters names i can't remember any of their motivations really but the the story is exciting the way it plods along is quite good so it's quite an exciting watch but again everyone in the film is is robotic oh god i want to i want to beat wes anderson up i want to i'm not a violent

person but i just want to shove him around and like i want to pull his little little his cravat off him and be like who are you wes who are you what's going on to the surface did your parents love each other do you like yourself what do you really want to fucking do with your life no one gives a shit about all of this fucking style brother like you look amazing mate but you're boring as fuck there's a friend of mine brian murphy who who was also on this podcast a very long time ago. And he always says about artists and musicians, particularly the musicians should have a contract where you get five albums or 10 years

and you have to decide at the beginning of your career what it is going to be. And I feel like with Wes Anderson, that could be applied to him. I think five Wes Anderson films would be a perfect amount. I feel like now, the longer it's going on, and I do enjoy his films,

apart from that French Dispatch one, I kind of feel like the longer it's going on, he's sort of like becoming like a pastiche of himself. And it's like, you know, and you get the thing on YouTube with lots of people like,

sort of doing their day in their life in a Wes Anderson style. And it just sort of feels like, you know, the genie's out of the bottle. We know how it works now. People are doing spoofs you know of your stuff and I just feel like how how long can it go on for yeah yeah I want to see him take the camera off the tripod and turn it on himself I just yeah Wes Anderson films any I mean I would probably enjoy it if it was like um if the darjeeling limited was the film i'd be okay but let's make it let's make it the french dispatch uh yeah because i was going

to offer you a box set of his films but i mean some of them are i think a lot better than the french dispatch so maybe just having that and i think because of the nature of his style you're just going to keep noticing things that are going to grate on you over time you know because there's so many little things that will just you know wouldn't annoy you the first time but you're like oh just look at the way they open that bottle of wine god that's not how you do it yeah fucking hell and because it's the only thing we have to watch on the island people on the island might start saying things like oh look at that that's a bit Wes Anderson-y okay what's your song choice going to be okay my song choice so initially i've thought of like what's a song that i've had stuck in my head really badly because i have i don't know undiagnosed

ocd or like you with my adhd and my dyslexia i'm a bit crazy um I've had periods in my life where I've had songs obsessively stuck in my head and it's actually been to a degree where I kind of want to speak to a psychologist or a doctor because it's actually causing me psychological pain where it's just on a loop like I don't know if you've ever what kind of experiences you've had with drugs but if you've done like ecstasy and things like that on a come down quite often, you can have like one refrain of a song stuck in your head over and over again to a point where you're like, you know, suicide is a way out of this, you know, the drop, the ultimate drop of life um anyway so i thought would it be a song that has like a hook or a melody that gets stuck in my head so the song that when i was a kid that i got stuck in my head that i was like maybe i need to speak to my parents about this was the red hot chili peppers song is it the zephyr the zephyr is that zephyr song yeah yeah there's a bit in that

song where they go um take a look it's on display for you coming down but not today i had that bit stuck in my head for like a month as a kid and it was like to the point where I was like psychologically worried fucking red hot chili peppers so that song got stuck in my head really bad once and I thought about that

being an option then I thought about do you remember the song Baby Cakes oh yeah that's a garagey song yeah Baby Cakes you just don't know how I I like it down low low

and i just wanted i i thought it would be that because that's like a really really catchy song but then i put it on and i fucking love that tune man it's uk garage is not something I appreciated at the time. No. But my partner Una loves UK Garage. That was her fucking jam growing up. And she puts it on sometimes and I fucking, yeah, ladies crew coming in. Oh, lady crew, shout out. I love it so much. It's, I like how, I like how British it is. I like how it's very, very London. Anything that is unashamedly uninfluenced. As an artist myself, I feel it very hard to not have the things that inspire me affect my work and it's something that i'm always focused on always being like to be the

true rob copland to be the true artist i have to cut this out of my act i have to stop thinking like this person i have to stop like watching this person's i mean all those things are in the way of pure artistic expression when i listen to uk garage i'm like these people are being so pure right now and it's wonderful. So, so, so, so, uh, baby cakes is, I can't, I thought it would be on. I thought it might be something like baby cakes, but it's not. Okay. My answer is between two songs. And I think, I think my answer is all the small things by blink 182. And this is coming from somebody who has a blink

182 tattoo oh interesting okay so i mean was that well explain your thoughts behind that then is that just like for you like they're one misstep or what is it about that song it's a perfect pop song all the small things it's perfect it is a great i can i know why it's as popular as it is it makes sense but you know what else is really fucking popular mcdonald's and it's gross like no one enjoys eating mcdonald's everyone eats it and they're like oh fuck i hate mcdonald's like the the things in this life that have the biggest mass appeal quite often are the fucking worst. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's, it's, it's so simple as a song. A lot of people play it at me because they know I love Blink-182. Rob. One of the worst pieces of music I've ever seen in my entire life was an actor, an American actor who's in the American Pie films. He plays Kevin in the American Pie films. His name is Thomas Ian Nicholas, a.k.a. The Tin Man, right? He performed an acoustic set at the Bostonoston music rooms in archway in london and i i i have a podcast that isn't even released yet but i'm recording it it's called explaining the american

pie universe and it's me and a friend explaining every american pie movie scene for scene um it's going to take us years to complete but one day it will be out there. But as part of research for this, we went and watched Thomas Ian Nicholas live, because he's an actor from the American Pie movies, and he was performing an acoustic set. He played all the small things on the acoustic guitar. Just him, yeah? Power chords on an acoustic guitar.

It was so, like like i felt so much shame and embarrassment for myself for everyone there it was just that does sound horrendous if that was the only song available i would just never press play are we gonna go with his version of it then do you think would that be would that be fun oh that's fantastic that is fantastic dan yeah i would be pining for the original yeah something you hate still better than this version of it i know that that cringing thing i watched recently did you see that there was like the british grand prix and damian lewis sang the national anthem did you see that i haven't cringed so hard at music in a very long time who's damian lewis he's like you know he's an actor and he was in that in homeland you know

that series yes ginger hair guy yes and for some reason he and i can't remember there was one guy accompanying him i can't remember if it was on like a saxophone or piano what but it was like in this jazzy style that was kind of like he was trying to be a bit throw away and a bit kind of fast and loose with the timing you know like you know when the people like hey i'm i'm gonna do some like smooth jazz style singing now and it's like oh just getting the timing all weird like wrong on purpose i was so bad but i feel like imagining that actor from american pie doing all the small things on the acoustic guitar it would be close to that because it just feels like the most earnest thing you could be doing you know he he played it he played it he didn't he didn't like make it his

own he just played it like it as a song, it's just... It's... I imagine if someone was really good at classical guitar, they could do a version of it where they take the root chord and then they play like a beautiful serenading kind of you know they mess around with it but this was just a guy who yeah had the the had the tabs for all the small things and was playing it it was just brutal um i really want to see damian lewis doing a soft jazz version of the national anthem though yeah you'll have to check it out because it is i mean oh god i don't know if i can bear to watch it again honestly i haven't had such a visceral reaction to something in a very long time you know when you like i think it was just on twitter and someone put 30 seconds of it and i almost couldn't even watch the short clip it was it was so bad but yeah i just think i mean cover versions they need to be handled with care i mean

obviously we have the greats you know some of the best songs but you know like all along the watch tower you know it's one of the greatest rock songs obviously it's a cover but in the wrong hands i don't i mean i don't think anyone needs an acoustic version of all the small things sung by an actor from American Pie. Yeah, man, it was crazy. He also did a cover of Bowling for Soup, 1985, but changed the lyrics to 1995. And that was the year that American Pie came out. So the lyrics were about the characters in American Pie. And he did a cover of Stacey's mum.

Right. But he changed the lyrics to Stifler's mum. Oh, no. This is just getting worse and worse. Dude, I can't even tell. This night was so funny. We went to that show. We were, like, following him around.

We tried to get an interview with him, but he didn't want to interview us because he was too busy chatting up this girl. It feels like you either exclusively you know you just own the american pie thing or you go off and have a fledgling music career you can't combine the two unless you're going to make it funny in some way which this just sounds so tragic so just it's making me feel quite sad thinking about it yeah yeah it was it it depressed me as well a little bit what would you think would be worse having just all the small things by him or having

the entire recording of of that evening's uh music maybe just having the one song would be worse because there's no variation i think just the one recording and and it should be my recording off my phone where you can hear me singing along pretending that i'm having a good time like this like fake version of myself i'm like all the small things truth care this is crazy dude we're having a good time like i there'll be so much like self-loathing and stuff oh yeah yeah okay well that's going with you to the island i think it's a very good choice and rob finally the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals which animal is it and why this is probably a very common answer for you this is probably a seriously

seriously common answer but i'm just gonna say seagull okay yes i think we have had it but not it's it's not what i don't think it's one of the top ones so i think we still just going to say seagull. Okay, yes. I think we have had it but I don't think it's one of the top ones. So I think we still have more to say on the topic. They can just fuck off, can't they? Seagulls can just fuck right off. I don't know what they add to our food chain. I don't know how much they do to kind of, I don't know, just keep the balance.

But I can't see us missing them if they were all gone no no i think sometimes when you go to a seaside town you kind of like when you get off the train and you hear them in the distance there's a part of you like oh i'm by the sea and then within maybe 10 minutes you just think what is this fucking avian klaxon going off all the time? Like, you know, it's like, I don't know. And they're just mean bastards. Yeah, they are. Birds in general seem pretty, they're very, they're very, they're very fucking, I don't want to say evil because evil just feels like the easy grab of a word to say but they are they're rough birds like they they live outdoors well

all animals live outdoors um they they feel like prehistoric and calculated and simple like intelligent enough and oh there's kind of like birds that kind of like a robin he's like oh little robin but then there's there's seagulls and there's crows and things like that where you're like oh keep an eye on that yeah and i and i think like a crow at least sometimes you can sort of they seem quite intelligent whereas a seagull just seems just just like a bastard you know like they're like you said they're intelligent enough to get stuff done but not to sort of do it with any dexterity they just steal your chips you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah very simple-minded seafood get food when i was at university in canterbury in my third year we

lived right opposite the uni on the same road it was just across the road and there was a flat roof opposite us and there was like a whole like generations of seagulls that were like born raised and died on that rooftop it was carnage up there there'd be like wars there'd be orgies there'd be everything and anything going on on that rooftop yeah seagulls just getting wild up there yeah and i think it's weird because birds are normally something like we never get close to you know it's very rare that you can get more than a few feet away from a bird but seagulls have kind of crossed that boundary you know they're not afraid like they're in your face they're like you know flying at you and doing a drive-by and like stealing your food and running off or like dive bombing at you and stuff like that and i think that's maybe what's

so unsettling also they're massive as well which doesn't help one time this is when i was at uni this is one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me. And I think about it quite a bit. We'd been, group of us hanging out, smoking a lot of weed all day. And we were heading to the pub. We're like, let's go to the pub, start our evening. And we were walking as a group. There's like six of us. And we're walking down a kind of thin back passage kind of, you know, shortcut. And you can kind of only really walk single file

at a certain point and we see a group of kind of like like heavy looking locals like they look a little bit tough you know when you're in a place like that you're a bit stoned as well you're like oh we're not gonna have a confrontation are we you know these people look like they could you know just just say something nasty or something could kick off and as they get closer i'm i'm not at the front i'm not at the front of the pack i'm in the middle of our group and every everyone's kind of moves to one side so there's a row of people coming through us like through the middle and us kind of parting as they come through the middle but there's like a space at the front of this group that's like really open like there should be a person walking in that spot but there's no

there's no person and as the kind of the body of people move towards me i i come back i you know i get out the way and i look down and a seagull is leading this group of guys seagull seagulls like the alpha at the front like hey fucking boys getting into tonight hey fuck off turned to everybody i was like did you did we all see the sea like there was a seagull leading that group of lads and they weren't like they weren't kind of relaxed enough to be like oh he, he's not with us, that we're not. It seemed like this seagull was the leader of this group of scary lads. Wow. Maybe he was.

I sort of believe that it's the next logical step, isn't it? Yeah. Alpha gull. Yeah. Are you fucking up for it tonight? Then you can't just fucking do it. Oi, oi, oi. Just controlling the humans. humans like use your human hands

to make me some chips because that's what we eat yeah exactly yeah he's got them up here mate yeah i think they're nasty things and they're just it's not like you would ever tame them if you're on an island surrounded by seagulls you're never going to sort of reach an equilibrium with them where like they suddenly understand that you know if they're patient you'll throw them a bit of fish now and again they're just going to steal your stuff make a lot of noise yeah and they don't seem to sleep like when i lived in brighton they were 24 hour birds like they never slept like you'd hear them they are 24 hour partners yeah yeah but not in a fun way do you think they'd be tasty like if you caught a seagull and

barbecued it no because like i'm thinking like chicken meets fish but then fishy chicken is not an ideal situation no no it reminds me of a fray bentos pie i had once and i was like i think this i don't know i couldn't tell if it was like chicken or tuna it was like and that's kind of how i imagine a seagull meat would taste i I used to run the social media accounts for Frey Bentos and maybe I should have tweeted that. Hey, it's what seagulls taste like. Do you seagull bite? Yeah.

Okay. Well, look, I think it's a very fitting animal to what has been a terrible island, Rob. I really feel you on this, on your choices. And I think you've made a a superb selection of people and things for your own island hellscape and i just hope it hasn't been too depressing for you and um you know as you say you're a positive person i hope that you can return once more to to a positive place but um rob look you're in edinburgh as we speak tell us tell everyone

about what you've got going on um i've not got a lot going on i'm i'm kind of using this fringe as a personal boot camp to work and perform on in a different way every day i'm i'm last year i had a like a finished and prepared show that i was really really proud of and that did really really well and i had a great time performing the show pretty much exactly the same every single day but I'm in a place with stand-up where I want to grow and progress and I didn't write a show this year that I had nothing to write about or I didn't I just didn't feel like it um so I'm doing a short run this year of a kind of experiment to see what I can do each day with not a lot of prep without a lot of like written material so each show I think is going to be me doing like working on a new 20 minutes at the

beginning like like building that over the month I mean over the two weeks so that's kind of like pre-written jokes and like that that would be something that i could do at clubs and festivals or whatever um and then after that it's just going to be crowd work and improvised stand up and trying to grow and learn and become a better comedian nice cool well i urge anyone who's up in edinburgh at the minute to go and check your show out because I saw you relatively recently and absolutely loved it. So, yeah, I recommend it.

Thank you, Daniel. But I hope it goes really well, Rob. And thank you for coming on Desert Iron Dicks today, mate. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's been really, really fun. I'm glad to put all of this somewhere. Do you know what I mean?

It's not good to hang on to weird rage. No, no. Well, it's safely tucked up in the podcast now for lots of people to enjoy. But you can forget all about these awful people and things, Rob. Arigato. Cheers. so there you go rob copland there and i hope you enjoyed that i had a great time doing it and uh yeah like i say go and check him out if you get the opportunity that's one of my sort of not new year's resolutions because it's aug, but my just general resolutions is to get out and see more comedy.

I just think, why wouldn't you want to go and be made to laugh a lot for a couple of hours? I mean, it's a good way to spend your life, isn't it? God knows we've got enough to be upset about these days. So that's what I'm going to do. And if I have any recommendations then I shall of course tell you or even better get them on the podcast if there are people that you would like us to get on the show then please do let us know we're always sending out emails and reaching out to people to get on the podcast so yeah by all means get in touch and tell us who you think would be a good

guest they don't have to be comedians they could could be anyone at all. You can email us by going to dixpod.com slash contact, or you can get in touch on Twitter and Instagram at DixPod, and we will try to make your dreams come true, if your dreams are just to have someone on the podcast. But yeah, we're always up for suggestions, so do get in touch and we'll see what we can do desert island dicks has been a sync clap production it was created and produced by james deacon it was produced and presented by me dan benedictus a big shout as always to the big man john deacon

and uh yeah i think that's it we'll be back with more desert island dicks very soon thank you for listening goodbye