Desert Island Dicks - TOM PRICE

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

My Mate Bought A Toaster's own Tom Price joins Dan to share who and what he'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

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lips and 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. 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 Hello guys, thank you so much Dan for having me on this.

I have dreamed of doing this show, even before it was conceived I wanted to do this show. Well we're very very lucky and fortunate to have you thank you for coming on absolute pleasure mate absolute pleasure i mean we're just gonna bitch about things right this is dreamy yeah pretty much imagine as someone who spends a lot of time broadcasting on the radio it must be quite um cathartic to be able to really vent now and again what can i finally say i don't really like dido because one of the hardest things about my job is saying ah dido here with me and we're all here with you this morning on magic weekend breakfast and i don't have to do that now i don't have to do that mate very good well this

yeah this can be your your oasis not just a desert island but an oasis perhaps good tom how did you find choosing your picks for today i found it um i i you know much like they always say on the other show with a similar title to this very difficult to eliminate so many assholes and horrible things that have plagued my life so yeah the the editing process was a tricky one and there's a lot of people who didn't quite make it um but at the same time i feel like in it's an interesting thing i recommend to any of your listeners that even if you aren't lucky enough to get on the show, you should still write this down anyway yourself because you really crystallize what you don't like in life. It's quite a good therapeutic process.

Do you know what I mean? You really, you know, you're writing rules in a sense. Things I don't like, people I don't like, and this is why. Values I disagree with. Yeah, I think it can be a positive experience. I'm trying to tell myself that as the new host that I'm not just going to be consumed with bile and anger through the process. I think we can make it a positive thing. That's what I love about this podcast.

It's such a celebration of that, isn't it? It's a celebration of dicks. Very much so. Okay, well, let's dive in then. Who's going to be your first choice for the island? So the first person who I have known for a long, long time and I would find very difficult to spend all this time on an island with is myself, Tom Price.

He is a fucking dick. It's a surprisingly popular choice, you know, having yourself on the island with you. Oh, I'm just... I have the same four or five thoughts every day. I'm quite bored of them. I'm very lazy. I'm a lazy man. i can't even bother to do

anything um i just want to be left alone i i am very judgy i just took an absolute dick the the worst of of of everyone uh is in me comes together in me and um it's a weird thing though isn't it it's a bit like in um in the philip pull novels, you know when they've got demons? You know there's some characters who are the real baddies. They fight with their demons. Have you seen this in his dark materials? And I feel like maybe that's me. Maybe I'm a bit of a demon fighter. I don't know what animal my demon is.

Probably like, I don't know, an old slightly mangy fox with a dodgy back leg. And I'm just constantly bickering with myself. And you know what? In choosing myself, it makes me think maybe I need to love myself more. But no, I'm an absolute dick. Absolute bell. Well, you'll have plenty of time to learn to love yourself on the island.

So there is that potential chance of reconciliation down the line. Yeah, that's true, isn't it? If you take all your traits that you mentioned, things like laziness, and you're watching yourself not quite pull your weight on the island, you have a word with yourself, but you're also resenting yourself because you know it's you. I mean, it's a real tangle of emotions. I know. The bone idol thing, let's pick up on that first of all. If I go into a clothes shop, like a big sort of superstore, like a River Island or something, a high street clothes shop and the men's clothes are on the

first floor. Walk straight back out, I'm not bothered. It's mad. Even if there's an escalator, nah, fuck it. I don't care. I don't need a pair of distressed jeans that badly. I'm just so fucking...

I've got a new card at the moment, a new bank card, and I can't remember the three digits on the back. And my computer has remembered the rest of it for me, as is their want these days. And to get the three numbers on the back, twice this week alone, I've had to go all the way downstairs. And twice, I've just tried to remember it

and locked myself out of my own bank card and my own online banking, right? Just because I couldn't be bothered to walk and i'm not gonna lie to you dan the walk downstairs under three minutes that would take yeah unless it's in the separate wing of your house i reckon that's not too too far no no so yeah i'm bone idle but i feel like you're you're almost sort of getting to a new level of of idleness i mean there's something quite admirable about that in a way yeah but the problem i have is that then i i yeah i have accepted it and i'm very self-aware of it but then i will

do you get the guilt when you're not doing anything yeah you know when oh my god i give myself so i give myself such a going over come on man you've got to be doing you should be making something or writing something or emailing someone and this is the curse of the self-employed and of the actor and of the of the presenter type but everyone gets it you know and i just think i need to you only live once if you want to sit down and do nothing give yourself that time yeah i i agree and especially now in these uh times of lockdown you know when we're recording this i mean it's really sort of a lot of us are learning to work from home and kind of that feeling it's like being

you know at school again when there's always something you could be doing when you're watching telly you should you know be doing this or that or now's my chance to sort out my house but i'm really tired from working at home all day and looking after a child yeah absolutely it's amazing and also that in fact um talking of kids that's another reason you start to loathe yourself because you see your own traits that are hardwired into your personality and you see them in your child. So, for example, my eldest son is this crazy, spontaneous. It's like housing. The only animal I can think of is a rat, which is unfair on him because i don't think of him as permanent but but a way that a way that a small um animal like that will scurry around and scuttle around and an unstoppable brain just

going all the time yeah and that's like me and and going but to no particular constructive benefit just complete flim flam falling out of his mouth the whole time. I'm like, oh, that's me. God, I'm such a dick. You put on a pretty good case for yourself so far. I mean, there might be some advantages. I mean, at least you sort of, you already know your traits and stuff. You don't have to get to know yourself. Or maybe you're getting to know yourself in a whole other way that you're not keen on. Yeah, I don't know.

The idea of being by myself, with myself, I just feel like that. Maybe I'd go through the insanity, you know. There's this sort of initially i would go a bit crazy and and as we all would just literally by yourself in solitary confinement but maybe i don't know the psychology of this dan you come out the other end and you're like i don't know maybe that is how your personality splits or i don't know what happens maybe you start to love yourself again and then maybe you run towards your other self and you just join into one super Tom. Yes! And that's Nirvana. Fucking great, a Super Tom. That's what I want to be. Now, I would definitely not take Super Tom to Desert Island Dicks

because that guy's a dude. But I think that it's quite interesting at the moment, and we are recording this in the time of the madness and the pandemic, but I feel like I'm on some sort of societal detox at the moment. I feel like I'm on some sort of societal detox at the moment. I feel like I'm consuming, you know, the same way that people decide to drink nothing but water for three days and not eat anything else or drink anything else. I feel like I'm doing that with all my interactions with the world, you know?

And at the moment, I can only feel the high of that, the adrenaline rush of that. Maybe that's what I'll get when I go on the desert island. I'm so happy. I'm having an amazing time yeah well i mean you know i think for anyone who has children and is a bit tired at first the idea of being cast away on a desert island isn't that bad you think well i could get a week before i start really missing everyone yes yeah everyone's going what are we going to do about fresh water it's like i don't know i'm just gonna have a nap.

Again, you've just woken up. Oh, I don't care. But that is what I'm capable of. And again, this comes back to the laziness thing. I'm capable of having a morning nap, having lunch, and then having to sleep that off. Like, I will sleep off a nap. That is my way through it.

I don't know what it is about me. This is the sloth-like energy. And then suddenly it flips, and I become like that child that i've got just constant energy unstoppable energy um oh god maybe i'm bipolar dan oh christ this is becoming a horrible exercise in self-discovery okay well we can move on to your next choice if that'll make things easier and stop all the the uh self-analysis who's going to be your next choice for the island yes so uh next up i'm not going to put a name on this dan there is one person in my life who does this a lot i'm definitely not going to name him and it is a man and it's often men who do this and it's a personality trait it's the conversation peeler okay so say you're at a dinner party or some kind of gathering right and you're in any

kind of social event and there's a group of you chatting maybe five or six of you and conversations pinging around and you're listening a bit and you you're you of you chatting maybe five or six of you and conversations pinging around and you're listening a bit and you you're you're you're riding the energy well you're dividing your time between uh a little bit of you know contribute a little bit you sit back and you have a nice listen to everyone and then you'll get a conversational paler who seems to switch off the rest of the conversation the group conversation and just turns to you and starts a conversation with you yeah oh my my God. Oh, my God. What is that?

Why do men do... And it's instantly mundane. It will be instantly something like, you tried this bit before. It's all right, isn't it? And you're like, yeah, but someone's telling a story about when they got burgled. That's way more interesting. What? It's so annoying. Yeah, it's a very well-identified type.

And also, it sort of stops you then rejoining. way more interesting what what it's so annoying yeah it's a very well identified type and also that it sort of stops you then rejoin you can't even hope that other people will join your conversation they'll kind of sidle up and i go oh no those guys having a heart to heart or something and then you'll get you know a drift aren't you you're on your own little island there and no one wants to join in and you can't join in no that's right you'll completely start and everyone thinks oh oh tom's getting on well with x he's a he's good mates with x and i'm like i'm not i'm not really he just he conversationally uh mugs me essentially he's a chat mugger and it's always when there's there's no way of getting you know you've just been to the toilet so you can't use that excuse your glass is

full so you can't say i just need a new drink you're stuck there with an empty bladder and a full glass and conditions are perfect for this person, aren't they? They know it. Yes. Yeah, they sense it. They're like sort of roaming the plains

looking for the weak gazelle to pick off or whatever. The one that I heard a great tip, if you're at any kind of party, any kind of big shindig thing, and maybe it was Stephen Fry who said this, always walk around with two drinks because then if you get stuck with someone, right, if you get,

oh, hi, how are you? You can have a little chat and then say, I'm sorry, I'm just taking this to someone else. I'm just taking this over to, right? That's good. That is good. That is good, isn't it? And if there's no one that you can take it to,

at least you've got two drinks as well. Then you've got two drinks, right? It's perfect. It's a win-win, isn't it? It's perfect. So, yeah, no, the conversational peeler really annoys me. It's the... And then there's the how to get out of it.

So you're right. Once they've got you, I find it really hard because I'm still listening to someone telling a story about being burgled or whatever. And sometimes I'll try and re-guide it and move the tracks back to that conversation sometimes i will go oh see what sarah's saying she got burgled twice in a week oh that's mad isn't it like like almost trying to trying to take a child and and distract it it's

it's ridiculous i find that um i mean dinner parties are bad because you know it's quite a small group so it's hard to break out. I find work dues are really bad for that you know and you go oh this is quite nice you know I'm quite glad I get along with a lot of my colleagues and you walk into the room you see oh all these people I haven't hung out with socially for a while and then you get stuck with someone who does

something quite tedious and you don't always see them that much and they latch on and you're like oh no what a waste of time. It's the Christmas party. We really bonded at the Christmas party last year. What are you talking about? Jesus, Dan.

That's really hurt. No, it's true. And so then here comes the next question. Do you leave a party in that situation? Do you say goodbye or not? Are you a saying goodbyer or not? It sort of depends. You mean if i'm trying

to get out of a social appealing event yeah do you pretend you're leaving and then get i've done that i've pretended i've done that twice now i've pretended i'm leaving and then an hour and a half later oh you're still here yeah i'm still here just not with you love that's all yeah um i haven't i don't think i've done that i've made some pretty paper thin excuses to get out of it you know like saying i'm going to the toilet but literally just walking five feet and then getting stuck with someone and then if i bump into that person again i'm like oh god i haven't even been to the loo yet god i left here i've been bursting for three hours i just got stuck talking to this guy who i really like the idea there's just loads of people in toilets at parties and none of them are

using the toilets they're all just standing there going, oh, fucking hell, you've got to help me. You've got to help me. They're all just hiding. It's brilliant. No one's doing drugs in the cubicles. It's just trying to get away from bad conversations. Definitely. I find it really hard. I don't know if it's because I've got a low boredom threshold or what, but I'm really bad if I'm in a boring conversation. It's a real skill to be able to to to keep that going and not just go oh absolutely fuck this i'm off i am out of here but this is why if you're at dinner party and there's only say you know a handful of you sitting around a table

this is why i find them so um terrifying because you're stuck you're so stuck there and you just got this drone of of you know traffic chat coming from a man who's just peeled you know often say he's just on my right and he's just peeled off and everyone else is on my left and i'm having to physically turn my body away from everyone and and and get taken by that chat yeah and sometimes you can sort of feel the energy you can sort of feel them waiting on your your shoulder can't you yes you know they're just looking for that little chink in the conversation where you can be like oh yes actually that happened to me like no no no no no quick yeah keep asking questions keep this going keep this going yeah yeah yeah i found myself doing that

i'm going to contribute to the group chat here because i know he's trying to talk on my right shoulder so i'm just going to say some things and it's great and everyone's like god tom's talking complete shit today well yeah it's because i'm scared because i'm about to be conversationally mugged on the island as well you know if you're trying to sort of group together and work together as a team having this guy on your arm the whole time sort of pulling you away slightly it's it's going to be terrible for a dynamic really bad for morale really bad for energy levels as well because nothing makes my heart sink more than, oh, God, that person. Here we go then, let's do it. And that is in many ways what football was invented for,

so that, you know, you can have those chats. And I feel like I wasn't really into football until about sort of 10 years ago. I supported Liverpool for years and years and years, but I wasn't really into the world of it. And I've got much more knowledgeable about it in the last 10 years to use as conversational ballast.'s no doubt i find those sometimes these people can peel you off of a conversation and then when you've got nothing so say in the football example i know nothing

about football i've had it before where i've been having a lovely chat with a group of people someone's seen their opening gone who do you support then and i was like well no one really i don't follow football and they've gone football. And they've got nothing past that. But then the group has moved in. They've moved on. I can't get back in again. So now I'm just bereft with this guy who literally only has football. And that's it.

And I've ruined it for them. It's like the doors closed and everyone left on the train. And now you're stuck with him on the platform. And it is always a man. I'm sorry. It's always a man who does this. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think women are much better at conversation,

this conversation lark than us. The chat business, yeah. Okay. It's so weird. Well, we're calling them conversational peelers and he's going on the island with you. Who's going to be your third choice? Okay, so this is, again,

there is one person who I'm thinking of here and I'm not going to be your third choice okay so this is again there is one person who who i'm thinking of here and i'm not going to name them but um they represent they're emblematic for me of small town tories and i would say almost tories with a small t i'm not particularly anti-tories a lot of my family are tories it's not i'm this isn't very political but there's a type of small town tory mindset that i loathe because Because I grew up in South Wales, Dan, right? I grew up in a little town called Monmouth. A very Tory, very safe, very parochial, in a positive as well as negative way, kind of place, right?

One high street. Really the best example of small-town Britain, okay? And everyone knows each other's business that's the first thing isn't it that's the first thing we get with with the small town uh places and uh so my mum right um a lot of people knew who she was in the town she was all sorts of things happened with my mom over the years let's not this isn't grief cast we're not going to delve too deep here but one thing i've talked about before on the podcast is she had an alcohol problem when i was growing up she was an alcoholic and then she got dry it was an amazing moment uh

when i was about 15 she she went off to a clinic and she came back and and i've talked about this before it was like i met my mum for the first time when she when i was 15 years old um and then a few years after that she decided to uh learn how to drive as part of her you know doing stuff and a more positive outlook and more more constructive and when she was having a driving lesson one morning in the small town Monmouth, there is a rat run near us where loads of people go for driving lessons. Happens to be right next to our house. And various staff who work at one of the private schools in the town use it as a rat run and they drive really quickly down this bit.

And my mum was in a lesson. And this woman who was driving to school to work came around the corner completely cut the corner and drove straight into my mum's car all right so quite a bad crash no one was hurt but a lot of damage the police were called right and the police arrived and this woman in their small town britain way knew my mum's history she knew knew about the alcohol thing. So she, right, she insisted, and the police had no intention of doing this because it was nine o'clock in the morning, she insisted that the police breathalyze my mum

because she knew she had a history of alcoholism, right? Now, if there is not a better example of nosy, and this is my mum trying to rebuild herself and trying to restart her life and doing new things, that sort of small-town Tory who is judgy and thinks they know your business better than you do and here's the real crux of it, thinks the worst of people.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Awful, awful. It's that sort of person who's always talking about sort of making Britain great or the good old days days but they never sort of tell you what that is and you get the feeling that no time in history would ever have been the good old days it's like so how far do you want to go so the 20s when there was more poverty or like you know post-war like what's your what is the good old you just mean not with these people around me basically i mean i for me i would base the best time to be alive as let's look at infant mortality for a start shall we in which case it's very much today

are the good old days do you know i mean it's that thing of people in the 1950s probably going ah this is fine but i tell you what the 1890s that's when it was really magical when we could all gather around after the ball like everyone's always looking back and and you're right this that weird nostalgia informs on everything and also brings in a sort of value system. And honestly, maybe I'm digging too deep here. It's almost colonial. It's almost like we are the rulers of the world. And that is still in the DNA of some people.

And I know that's probably a reach to put this onto this woman who was a bit of an arsehole 20 years ago. But there is something entitled and arrogant and and i am going to police other people because i am the best that drives that makes my blood my hackles go and i'm furious yeah sort of neighborhood watch you know maybe in magistrate in their spare time that sort of thing yeah exactly exactly and and uh gossipy but and this is and this is the thing as well and it's the the the the energy of this is all built on negativity that's what annoys me well this is i always think with these sort of people it's it's very much a kind of i love my country so much you know like this is why i want things back to how they used to be because i love my country but the people always talk about that always saying how bad everything is they're always

going this so much hate to the dogs everything's wrong this country is you said you loved your country i'm pretty positive about it you know i live in london it's got its problems but there's you know a lot of people living together mostly getting on you know yeah yeah yeah it's it's weird how they're defining love through only the emotion of of hate and and misunderstanding and so many negative emotions. It's so strange. It's so strange. And, you know, there was a lot of that in the world that I grew up in, and I think there's a lot of it still around now.

And the pomposity, the self-importance, you know, you don't behave like that because you're at this school, or, you know, all that sort of stuff. It doesn't feed the human spirit in the right way, you know? I agree. It just makes you feel crushed. It's a black hole because it's so meaningless. It's so unidentifiable.

What does any of these values actually mean on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, you don't love where you live. You just hate everything else more. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's like being a stand-up comic for years. You go to Portsmouth and slag off Southampton. And people in Portsmouth will be like, yeah, weortsmouth why because it's not Southampton well done everyone

way wicked yeah I know what you mean I can just imagine that sort of like they're always very helpful but it's sort of help that's not needed like I'm sure they're sort of always calling the local police force to let them know about something very insignificant and the police yes even the police put the phone down like oh god damn again yes yeah absolutely suspicious as well that's a big part of it suspicious and i was doing a thing with danny baker recently and he talked about and and it it comes back to class as well it's a very middle class thing i think danny baker was talking about the one of the reasons that he always got into hot water at the bbc was because he wasn't clubbable and i love that phrase i'm not clubbable are you

wouldn't i wasn't at your Oxbridge and you wouldn't be in the club with me, would you? And I was like, fuck, that's just another way of saying I'm not your class. It's true though, isn't it? It's true. It's class. So many problems in Britain come back to class

and this weird value system, which is they couldn't begin to write a single word of what it actually means. I saw the comedian Reginald D. Hunter talking about it. He was saying when he first moved to the UK, people from where he's from, the deep south, were going, oh, are people racist over there? And he was like, no, it's different.

They've got the class system. It's like being racist against yourself. It's like a new thing. Yeah, it's so good. That's so true. It is that. And I couldn't get away from that fast enough and it's funny isn't it how it often spreads up in middle-class places that

are safe and beautiful and maybe it's part of us trying to protect that they're they're i think a lot of these people are very scared to be honest yeah and i always think it's a shame because these are the sort of people you hear about being scared of immigration and things like that and you think well but you don't know any immigrants so why don't you come to somewhere where there are lots and we'll explain how it's integrated beautifully and we you know we appreciate each other's culture and we all get along fine and then you'll know there's nothing to worry but don't just sit there being worried about something you're never going to see you know come and ask someone about what's it like when this happened you go well well this happened and it was totally fine and then we can all just be okay again yeah that's

it well that's it and it's um the the the thing that's weird is that we often it's become defined recently because of brexit in terms of sort of small town versus big city and they turn on themselves as much as they turn on us and the story of my mum is a good example of that they are as quick to try and attack each other as they are to talk about, oh, liberal Londoners or cosmopolitan elite or any of that crap, which I'm sure has been touched upon

on this brilliant podcast many times before. But I find it interesting that that blue on blue, you know, my mum's a massive Tory and this woman, definitely a massive Tory. And my God, they went for each other. They really did. And I should say that my mum, when she got breathalysed, absolutely shit-faced, off the charts. So, you know, she was right to get her breathalysed. a massive Tory and my god they went for each other they really did and I should say that my mum um

when she got breathalyzed absolutely shit-faced off the charts so you know she was right to get her breathalyzed she wasn't she definitely wasn't um but it really and it really upset my mum and it took away her confidence and she she stopped driving not long after and it wasn't her fault the driving instructor was with her and he was furious he couldn't believe it because he was a working class guy from Newport who'd come up to teach my mum for the day and he was like he was like what what is this? How does this woman know your business? And why, here's the other thing,

the police officer went, oh, I will breathalyzer then. Yeah, because of course, she fucking knew the police officer. Yeah, of course. Awful, awful person. Arseholes, get them on that island. I mean, maybe the relief of,

I mean, you've got the conversational peeler in there. Maybe they'll be able to provide some light relief, you just when when the awful small town tory's talking to you they'll just peel you off and you're like oh thank god oh maybe you've got a purpose after all this is true this is true maybe it'll work it's a good system maybe it'll be okay uh good choice you're a podcast listener and this is a podcast ad reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from lips and 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 lips and ads.com now that's l-i-b-s-Y-N ads.com. Okay. Now, 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? Cheese. Cheese. Okay. Yeah. Cheese. Now, I love cheddar.

Let me just say that straight away. And I know that is technically a cheese, but for me, cheddar is like a clean, sanitized product in its own right. It has a cleanliness to it. It has a sense that it should be eaten. It looks and smells like a food. Cheese that I'm talking about is your breeze, anything soft, any other cheese, anything that the French have come up with.

It is an atrocity. It is the death of milk. It is like a science experiment gone wrong. It looks like disease. It looks like someone is eating cholera. I do not understand it. I do not understand those people. Wow. Okay. I mean, it's hard to sort of come back at that. I mean, you've made it pretty clear. It's one of those things that sort of, even if, I mean, I, you know, I like cheese, but sometimes you do look at what you're eating and think, how did we get to the point where, you know, like Stilton, I like, but was someone just desperate and tried it and then went, do you know what, after a while, this is really good.

Yeah, and how many people died because they ate the poisonous version before they got to Brie? Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I've been in restaurants sometimes and they bring a cheese board over and it just looks like a weird collection of rocks and minerals and stuff. Things all kind of oozing and melting. And I think, yeah, I know that I'll enjoy these things, but they look like if you found them in the garden, you'd sort of, I don't know, you'd pull your family away in case it released spores or something.

And then you've got things like quince, you know, just a very, very posh jam. It's just all art. And again, cheese, there's a bit of class in there as well, isn't there? It's a little bit of a middle class. There was some cheese and pork. Delightful. Ugh. I just, you know, and the other thing i should confess at this point is that my wife um

she's in a thing you know like you get a book club where you all read the same book she does a thing and this is the height of arseholery right she does a thing called the cheese club okay and her and her pals of which there are eight of them they all go around to one of their flats and they have a cheese board and they all have to bring a cheese and they eat the cheese and talk about the cheese and make notes on the cheese. Oh, wow. Is there a lot of booze involved? Because it could be a good front

for just drinking a lot. I mean, that's not why I use Cheese Club. Absolutely. Any social activity for my wife involves a lot of booze, including, it turns out, home teaching.

Who knew? But yeah, she does, there is quite a lot of booze. But the worst thing is because I don't do it i won't do it um she comes back she fucking stinks she fucking there's nothing worse than the breath of someone who's eating nothing but cheese all night it is disgusting yeah i don't think i've

been on the other end i think i've always sort of eaten cheese with the people i'm with i don't know if i've gone out for a big cheesy night and come back. Big cheesy night? Big cheesy night? What are you doing on Tuesday? Big cheese night, mate. Big cheese night. Big night on the tails. I mean, the slab. Big night, yeah.

Big night on the slate. I'm going to paint the town yellow. It's just, it's rank. And I will never understand it. And I'm not as bad as my brother. He won't even eat melted cheese on pizza. And he's just, that's idiotic. Really?

Did something happen when you guys were young to turn you you both against it was it is there a whole family aversion uh i think my dad ran off with a woman from double gloucester maybe that's what it was something happened i think uh on the island as well it's not going to be a good you know being hot oh yes yes and people always do weird shit with cheese like they will do that they'll bury it for 100 years and say oh this is very rare egyptian cheese you know yeah that it's like uh there's people always try weird shit out and a baked brie a whole wheel of brie put in the oven and you and you bring it out and it's just it oh it just looks like insides it's so gross i do think that sometimes i mean a lot of things that we take for

granted are just humans running out of ideas i mean god knows what will come out of this lockdown maybe something amazing will happen but you know there's lots of times when i remember eating some cheeses that i now like as an adult i remember eating them in france being like on holiday as a kid and just i just couldn't believe that all the grown-ups, like, this was food. I was like, what the fucking hell are you people playing at? You know this is disgusting, right? Have you tried Vimto? That's nice.

And then as an adult, you go, oh, I like this weird, ethereal hum that this cheese has got. It's so strange how you go, the brainwashing that goes on as you grow up it's so true when you first come across it as a kid you're like what is this and then suddenly like going for walks as a kid why are we walking in a on a hill this is awful and now i love a countryside walk love a walk yeah it's very strange but it doesn't i mean yeah it's just sort of your body running out of ideas, isn't it?

I mean... It's your body not being able to beat them, so I might as well join them. But I will never join the cheesers, never. Fair enough. Well, I think that would be an awful, an awful thing to be stuck with on a desert island. And Tom, what's your drink? Whiskey. Whiskey.

Oh, mate. Do you like whiskey? I do like whiskey. I'm not... Do you know what? I'm less and less fussy as I get older. I don't know. The older I get, the more I like all booze, basically, as well.

It's not just cheese and stuff. It's just everything. The best way of injecting alcohol into my bloodstream. I don't like the whiskey scene, mate. Don't like the scene. You know, people talking about, I don't even know, scotch and brandy are different. Or is scotch like a feminine version of whiskey? i don't even understand what's going on with all that stuff i do all i know is it just tastes acrid and i drink it and it burns my insides

and i feel like you know in total recall when arnold schwarzenegger is outside and they open the thing and there's no air and he just goes and melts i just i just melt when i drink whiskey it's i just i will never understand why people like it. Yeah, it's a weird one. I find that, I don't know, I mean, I like it, but no one else in my house does. So now it's problematic in that I can really see how much I've drunk, you know, because as the bottle goes down,

I think, God, that was all just me on my own. Yes. So now I try not to have it in my house. And then I can't have it in a pub because you realise that what you thought was a double at home is actually like a quadruple in a pub. And maybe it's all getting a bit too much. So I sort of, yeah, it's kind of rare that I actually have it these days. Yeah, it's just, it's so strong. And it's like, it's like drinking a gas.

It just feels like this, this shouldn't be consumed. I cannot understand people who drink it, especially when it's a sort of, like, several times I've been out drinking with, often actually, with dad friends from school, parent colleagues, as I like to call them. And, yeah, and you get to the end of the night and someone goes, let's get whiskies. And I'm like, absolutely fuck that. What's wrong with you? Why would

you do this to yourselves? You've just, you've got six litres of ale swilling around in your stomach and now you're going to yourselves you've just you've got six liters of of of ale swilling around on your stomach and now you're gonna throw in some poison what so you've built a good fire here now what you need is some petrol on top of that yes exactly really really burn the house down yeah it doesn't really make sense it does feel like you can breathe fire afterwards doesn't it and also there's something that's so sort of like no messing you know you want a mixer in your whiskey have some water that's all you get you know you can put coke

and stuff but you know like the real proper way it's like as as little respite as possible you know yeah yeah the only the only whiskey that's acceptable is when it's uh mixed and becomes baileys which is the finest fluid known to man which i know is technically whiskey i um was once uh i was once on a skiing holiday about 15 20 years ago and my auntie had a new boyfriend right she obviously has grown up so she was like uh probably in her 50s or 60s and um we were in this little chalet and we're all sitting around in the circle including my auntie's grown-up kids and the new boyfriend clem reached his hand out the window in the chalet and pulled out from the snow outside a bottle of baileys and everyone was like oh this is amazing clem's got snow snow

cooled baileys and he poured us all a glass each and we all had a drink at the same time of baileys and it was wonderful and then at this point clem said the worst sentence i've ever heard come out of anyone's mouth ever right bearing in mind my aunt's there they've been going out for about six weeks and she's got her grown-up cat family around her. He just took a sip and went, oh, that is like entering a lady. Why did you say that? Why did you do that?

Why would you compare whiskey and milk to the act of intercourse in front of all her family? And they split up. What, instantly? Pretty much. Get out, go for a walk in the snow. Yeah, an interesting way to technically exit a lady. Yeah.

Oh, I really did not see that coming at all. Neither did we! Yeah, well, that's enough to put you off whiskey and Baileys, to be fair. So, you know, I can feel your pain there and yeah again warm cheese and whiskey they're not going to be sort of easy companions are they they're no friends of my palate dan let me tell you that fair enough um now tom fortunately you won't be without entertainment on the island the planes entertainment system continues to work but just your luck it only has 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 okay so my least favorite film of all time this is a weird one because technically this film is absolutely flawlessly brilliant okay so i hope this will be allowed it's more the connotations and the the from the film. The film was American Beauty, which is, I think, in 1998 it was released. Sam Mendes directed it. Of course, Kevin Spacey, who has since been cancelled, was in it. And Annette Bening as well. Amazing cast, amazing script, amazing director. But here's the problem with American Beauty for me.

First of all, the main guy in it has since been outed as a sex pest that makes me worry and doubt and and it it it will remind me of how flawed and and how easy it is to have to switch off whole streams of art that i love i'm looking at you michael jackson i'm looking at you louis ck that is a problem that we have the other problem with this film this is a big one is that the main character in the film is obviously kevin spacey when i first watched it i was 18 years old and i was the kid in my head i related to the kid looking at the plastic bag flying everywhere who was looking for his meaning in life and looking for his artistic outlet in life and that was me you know right there i was at warwick university that that um thrumming hub of uh of artistic creativity i felt really related to that

and now i look back on the film and realize well if i watch it now that i am in fact the the frustrated bored stuck in a rut middle-aged man and and this film is emblematic of how my life has passed how a whole chunk of life has happened. I feel like that film is one of those films that when everyone first watched... I remember a lot of people first watching it and just going, that's beautiful, it's amazing, what a film. But it didn't stand...

It aged very badly, very quickly. Well, the plot where Kevin Spacey is... I mean, his actual character in the show, in the film, is also a massive sex pest with that girl. That's so... It's awful what he does yeah awful he grooms he literally grooms her and when when the whole thing about you know this is the most beautiful thing i've ever filmed and there's a plastic bag floating and at the time yeah in the cinema you're like yeah yeah wicked and then you know as soon as you come out it's like you've gone through a spell has been lifted

and you go that's a bit pretentious isn't it plastic bag but that is and again this is what that film tells me this film reminds me a that i was a massive pretentious dickhead when i was 18 or 19 years old that is that it really there is a very very clear route uh to to undermine everything that I thought was brilliant. It was like, no, you were just a dickhead. And yeah, I really believe, that idea that at one stage you really believe in an artistic thing and you pin it on your shoulders and you go around saying, what's your favorite film?

American Beauty, mate. American Beauty's amazing. And then one day you wake up and go, well, that was an error. Why have I said that for years? I think I'll go back to Jerry Maguire, thanks. Yeah, it was too easily parodyable yes yes it was yes like you can imagine you could just straight away see the sort of sketches being written on saturday night live and things like that yeah yeah yeah we're gonna need some roses and a naked teenager

i see i remember going to watch it and i think i was about 17 because i just started driving and i felt quite grown up because i drove to the cinema with a friend of mine and we saw american beauty and it felt like we were grown-ups because it's like an arty film you know and afterwards we talked about the film and i drove us home and i was like yeah i'm a grown-up i like these kind of films now yes yes exactly and then i remember watching it with adults like my mum and some family friends and they all just went that's bullshit and i was like yes i think it was like the first arty it was like an arty film for young people so to try and be kind of you know like at that age when you're like just out of adolescence and you're like

yeah i'm an adult now and then the adults went no you're not like no you're not yeah this is so true and now what makes it even worse is that I'm now the adult myself going yeah yeah the other adults were right in 1998 or 1999 it really wasn't that good um so yeah American Beauty just the the connotations of it and it reminds me of time passing and it reminds me that that any uh certainties I have about anything artistic are all completely flawed and I'm probably wrong. And it's only going to get ground into your psyche more as you watch it over and over again on the island. Yeah, oh God.

Okay, so American Beauty joins you on the island and what about your song, Tom? Any jazz, absolutely any jazz. Okay, it's a broad canon. Oh, I feel genuinely purged. The idea of jazz, cheese and whiskey being put somewhere else away from me is just genuinely making me happy. It's a broad canon, it is.

There's a lot of jazz out there. You've got to be careful, kids. Wash your hands. It's just made up, mindless, unstructured, joyless, probably too complicated for my musical taste in actual fact um i i loathe it and my father-in-law's really into it he really loves it they go to a jazz festival every year and they buy me for christmas every year a t-shirt from this jazz festival and i wear it because i'll as you can see on this video call dan i'll wear absolutely

anything um and i i uh wore the jazz festival t-shirt to my hygienist about six months ago who was a weirdly racist Scandinavian but that's another podcast. Sure, yeah, I just think there's too many of them. And so she started doing my teeth and then she spotted the jazz shirt when all of her hands were inside my mouth and she went, oh, you like jazz?

And I was like, oh, no. And I couldn't explain. It's an ironic t-shirt. She put some fucking jazz on right because she was a massive fan and then started asking me about jazz stuff and i had basically i had a whole conversation about jazz with a racist scandinavian's fingers in my mouth yes a lot of times you have to pay extra for that kind of thing i i wonder if it's something to do with sort of hardline right-wing people in dentistry because the hygienist I go to has always got LBC on when I go.

And at first I think, oh, there's something to listen to while she's drilling or doing whatever. And by the end, when she stops and I hear whatever their name is, some grumpy divorcee talking about why James Bond's not allowed to smoke anymore and how it's ridiculous, just think please can i have some more fillings i don't i don't need them just do something loud the loudest treatment possible please yeah like get a pneumatic drill or something just smash my face in whatever whatever it takes yeah um okay so jazz right yeah i can imagine is that's going to be tricky on a desert island

there's a lot to get your head around with it. I heard a quote recently, someone saying it's like life because it seems to go on forever. And as soon as you've worked it out, it all just stops. That's excellent. That is excellent. The worst thing is that, as you know, Dan, we work in a building where several different radio stations broadcast. And they always have a different radio station on every day in the toilets. and some days a very well-known jazz radio station plays in the toilets and those are some of the quickest most agonizing shits i've ever taken because i will i will get i will get uh i will get that stuff out of me as quickly as possible to get out of that toilet

and what i'm saying is i've nearly torn my arsehole because of jazz fm it's funny as well when the lift doors open and jazz is playing because it seems like normal lift music. And I always forget that other radio stations get played in the lift too. And I always think, oh, they're putting music on in the lift now. And then I realise it's just one of the stations. No, no, that's the whole station. It can just sound like lift music so much.

Yeah. My wife is very into jazz. And as I say, it's a very broad church, isn't it? You know, some stuff you think, oh, this is, yeah, I could get into this. And other stuff you're like, I don't, I feel like a child. You know, it's like that sort of feeling of going, I don't feel grown up enough. I don't quite get this. Yeah, again, I haven't got a mature enough palate,

as I'm sure is the case with whiskey and cheese and jazz. There is a similar sort of appreciation to its complexity that changes your ability to enjoy it and i don't have that appreciation i just can't be arsed i'm just too adhd i'm like moving on mate moving on just play a three minute song by the beatles thank you somewhere someone in a velvet jacket is listening to this thinking that's their perfect evening, isn't it? You know, whiskey, cheese and whiskey. If they are listening, they're a cunt. Okay. Well, I think we've summed that up beautifully.

Finally, Tom, the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals. Which is it and why? This is going to... Some people aren't going to be happy with this. Horses. Horses. Yeah, right. Horses. I just think they're... um this is gonna some people aren't going to be happy with this horses horses yeah right horses i just think they're well they they've got often they've got massive dicks but i do think they are massive dicks they're they are arrogant they are aggressive can you tell i'm scared of them by the

way they um they just stare at you when you go past in a field that stare looking down the long nose that i find that so unnerving because that stare is saying i'm gonna fucking gallop on you mate i'm gonna kill you via the medium of gallop i feel this is true of many grazing animals like like they're just waiting for the right moment and something's gonna happen you know it's like there's something going on in those big heads of theirs you know yeah their heads are big exactly so there must be a lot of brain yes exactly just taking it all in and sometime they they're going to fuck us up. I know, mate.

That's exactly what I think. That's exactly what I think. They are conspiring. The horses are conspiring against us. Also, the other disappointing thing about horses, there's a lot of horses around near where my wife is from, in the Peak District, the beautiful Peak District. And you always think, oh, they're nice animals, maybe.

You know, they look pretty in a field. And then you realise they're all owned by fox hunters and I fucking hate fox hunters fox hunting is vile there's a whole scene of velvet jacket wearing, she's eating brandy drinking fox murderers who are

riding horses, so the horses are emblematic of that but also I did try and ride a horse once when i was 13 um for my dad's birthday party we all had to get a horse and i had a horse who turns out was a psychopath they couldn't control him it was way too big for me and to stop the horse they had to ride him into a wall wow yeah because because that's the thing you get on it and you think i don't i can't trust something that's this much bigger than me that I'm supposed to be in charge of.

Because, I mean, that's a weird power dynamic. They don't know that I'm cleverer. Absolutely. How does it work with any animal that's bigger than me? They're big and they're powerful and they sweat. Never trust another animal that sweats. Because I can tell they're lying. I can tell they're thinking.

Also, the thing about horse racing as well, I don't like horse racing. I think the they're thinking... Also, the thing about when horse racing as well, I really don't like horse racing. I think the Grand Nationals are gross. They just whip animals. It's disgusting. I'm not a fan. Don't at me. And they talk about the animals afterwards.

You know, he's a great animal. He loves this sort of course. And they really sort of... They're given these whole personalities as if they are high-end sportsmen, which I'm sure they are in their own world. But they are high-end sportsmen which i'm sure they are in their own world but they are also evil horses yeah i i agree with everything you've said i think as well they can't they can't sort of look after themselves if a horse was left on its

own for a long time don't know if hooves just continue to grow or something really weird yeah it was a sort of thing in the paper once about an abandoned horse and it had just grown these enormous long hooves and like how how how do you live in the wild i mean you do get wild horses i don't know how it all works like why can't you sort yourself out don't know what i don't know what the system is and if anyone's going to at me again i don't want to know i don't care i just don't trust them i'm not a fan and also and also the other things that annoys me about horses and this technically isn't horse's fault fault, but Lloyd's Bank, using the horses for their adverts, they can absolutely do one. That whole thing when they've got horses running down a beach,

that whole thing with Lloyd's, like, we've been there for you for the last 100 years. No, you haven't. You've been a building I've put money in, and you've invested my money in often dodgy, dangerous places, and now here are some horses on a beach. Come and put your money in our bank a fucking what no to me what's what's trustworthy about a load of horses that have clearly escaped and they're just hooning it along a beach that doesn't seem i want absolutely i want

the symbol of a bank to be loads of horses in a stable asleep in a successful business for me the horses on the beach with no one riding them, that suggests that a stable has gone under because their bank were charging them too high an interest rate on a business loan. And now the horses are free. Yeah, exactly. It's like The Walking Dead, but with horses. Do you want to know an amazing fact about those Lloyd's horses? Go on.

So it's a bit of a... Someone I work with had worked with someone who worked with Lloyd's, you know, a bit of a chain. But they said, apparently, to get horses that uniformly black and to get enough of them is very difficult. Because even black horses, they don't have like a, you know, velvet-like coat. You know, it's kind of slightly patchy. To get, you know, when they have like 12 of them in the advert, what are you going to do? They paint the horses black.

They're not black horses. They just paint them. Because that's why they've got such beautiful coats. Are you telling me the horses black they're not black horses they just paint them because that's why they've got such beautiful coats are you telling me the horses are blacking up that's the most well racist thing i've ever heard i know so yeah if those horses are members of equity then there's big trouble there that's awful that's awful they're worse than justin trudeau okay and just an unpredictable animal to be on an island with as well, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

So you're having to get up, muck it out, maybe it'll trample you, kick you in the face. Cut their nails or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. You just can't be arsed with that. So that's going to be a living nightmare. But this whole show is going to be a living nightmare. That's the plan. Well, Tom, I think you've picked very wisely in that i think the island for you

would be an awful place to live so you've done very well thanks mate i've enjoyed this thoroughly i do feel genuinely purged it's been really nice thank you i'm glad good good tom um obviously it's a bit of a weird time with lockdown and the global pandemic but um where can people hear more from you uh so i've got my own podcast called my mate bought a toaster uh which is where i go through comedians amazon purchase histories so i sit down with in fact we just did a brilliant one yesterday with alex horn uh where he had no idea what i was about to do i opened his amazon purchase history and said right so alex in 2002 you bought how to be a stand-up and he was like what you people have no idea you can go right back to the beginning of their amazon purchase histories um so you can find that on your podcast platforms.

And I also host Weekend Breakfast on Magic Radio. But you knew that, Dan. I knew that. Great. Well, Tom, thank you very much for coming in. Thanks, mate. And staying where you are and speaking to me over some technology so that we can make this podcast.

It's quite difficult to sign off in these times of pandemic. But thank you. And that's it bye bye yeah stay stay safe wear a mask uh wash your hands