Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 92: Sue Perkins

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

In a VERY memorable episode, national treasure and former ‘Bake Off’ co-host Sue Perkins discovers an unexpected loophole in the dream restaurant’s ordering process.Listen to Sue’s podcast ‘Sue Perkins: An hour or so with…’ on Audioboom or wherever you get your podcasts.Follow Sue Perkins on Twitter @sueperkinsRecorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive Productions.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Welcome to the Off Menu podcast. Uncork this podcast about 40 minutes before you want to listen to it and leave it on the side to air rate. You're in for a fruity treat. Hello, James. Hello, Ed Gamble. How are you? Very well. Thank you. How are you, James A. Casta? Good. Thank you. I'm very well, very excited to ask a special guest, their favourite ever,

starter main course. Oh, my God, for the first time ever. What's happened? I forgot. What would I say? Start a main course. Start a main course, dessert side dish drink. Why would you go dessert side dish, James? Why would it go in that order? It's the order that you eat it in, and then the main course inside is an order of importance. Why would you go starter main course, dessert side drink? Well, if it's in order of importance, it would be dessert. No, not for you. I mean, no, it's the order you eat it in, and then oh, I'd probably then go drink side dish starter in order of importance. You're a mess. The way you normally do it is you do starter main side drink dessert. Yes. That's the way it

is on the episode. Yes. Yes. So that's the way you say it. Do you want to try it again? Start a main course side dish drink dessert. Right. Okay. Good stuff. We have a special guest every week, and this week our special guest is Sue Perkins. National treasure. National treasure. You all know Sue Perkins. Look, there's nothing more to say really. I just want to chat to her, but the problem is, look, Sue's great. Sue's wonderful. Very excited to have Sue in the dream restaurant. But still, the rules apply. If she says a secret ingredient which we have decided upon that we don't like, then she's getting kicked out of the restaurant. National treasure or not. Fred, so? And the secret ingredient this week

is baby corn. Baby corn. I hate baby corn. It is bland. It's weird. It's weird hot. It's weird cold. It shouldn't be baby. I hate it. Yeah. I mean, I didn't think I had a problem with it. And then I think it was my mum the other day, put it out. She doesn't really like it. It doesn't really taste of anything. And then I thought it doesn't taste of anything. And sweet corn, proper corn on the cob, tastes delicious. I love it. So why have we shrunk it down to a version that doesn't taste as nice? But also it's not even that, is it? If I want a baby thing, I want it to be like an amusingly small version of exactly the same food. You wouldn't give a baby corn to a mouse, and it's like, oh, this is exactly

like the mouse having a corn on the cob. It's just not the same thing. That's the test is that if you gave it to a mouse, would it look like a mouse eating a smaller version of the normal one that we have? I know it wouldn't with this. It would be weird. You know, straw dollies, I always imagine that's what their dicks look like. Yeah, I think you're right. I think if you're a straw dolly, that's what your dick looks like. Yeah. It's a little baby corn. Awful. What way round do you go in there? Sort of small tip at the end. Yeah. I'm thinking like a tapered dick rather than a big old. Obviously, it's preferable for the straw dolly to have it the other way round. Yeah. But I think it would be tapered like

a planger. Yeah, sure. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Creepy. So anyway, let's get all that smut out of our system to speak to Sue Perkins, please. Yes. Yes. So this is the off menu menu of Sue Perkins. Sue Perkins, welcome to the Dream Restaurant. Lovely to be in the Dream Restaurant. Welcome, Sue Perkins, to the Dream Restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time. Hello, beautiful genie. So good to see you, Perkins. And I mean, we're over Zoom and there's an open door behind you. You're sat in front of an open door. Yeah, it looks like that's going into your kitchen, which makes us feel very, it's very appropriate. Yeah. It's the biggest room in my house for good reason. Oh, yeah. And I like disproportionate

houses. How small are we talking for the rest of the house? You've got a massive kitchen and then a box room to sleep in. Yeah. It's basically, it's just one studio room and then enormous kitchen. And it's, I'm sort of quite conscious because it's a sort of kitchen that says, yeah, I know my way around. So I have to be on, if people come, it's not a big thing during lockdown, obviously, because no one's here. But outside of lockdown, there's quite a lot of pressure I feel if I'm cooking. So do you have like some go to things that you'll cook if people come over to impress them to live up to your kitchen? Well, here's the thing. I've got what I'm going to loosely describe as attention issues. So I can't do recipes because the moment I start, I feel trapped.

I feel trapped in the method. Yeah. And I'm like this with all things. Like I can't read an autocue twice. It drives me mad. I have to make something new up. So I don't have any tried and tested things, which is why I don't bake because baking is really about process and you can't play fast and loose with those rules. That's chaos will ensue. It's amazing for someone who doesn't bake or doesn't like baking and hates reading an autocue that you used to host the Great Witch's Baker. I know. It was it was an act of faith every day, mainly for the poor people producing it. No, I love watching other people watching ovens. That's my favorite thing. It's very sensitive. And I love food. And so, you know, for me, it's just, and there's no autocue and no

script when we were doing it. It's just like absolute chaos. You know, I'd sit on a map and someone say, you're on a roll. And then that would be the beginning of the show. Oh, we remember. Or it'd be a Croatian week. And I go, hey, that custard's split. And no one would understand that I'd go and feel sad. At least it was parkland that I could walk in to feel sad in. You know, there was always the context of England's green and rolling hills to mitigate the unmitigated awfulness. You could go through a broody stroll after a failed pun. Yeah, there was always lambs. People are always trying to get us to have our photos taken with lambs. And I wonder, I remember once wandering and finding a lamb and somebody trying to do a

steal. And I sort of gently picked it up and it just did a very loose shit all over me. And it was very loose. I don't know what normal lamb shit is like, but this seemed to be almost a never ending fountain. They should have used that for the intro. That would be the best intro. It was just you. You and Mel walking along the field. And wordlessly, you don't say anything. You just pick up a lamb and then all the shit goes down you and then this title starts. Do you want us to say welcome to the Great British Break-off or just nothing? Actually, I think I'm very torn now. It's difficult, isn't it? Because nothing would be merely funny, but also it'd be funny if that happened. You stood there for a while and then

just said welcome to the Great British Break-off. I think you're right though. It's to do with the length of time you afford the sort of cascadence of shit. That needs some proper quiet sort of contemplative viewing. It's like those people that just watch Log Fires. It might be a sort of small subset of the population that just like watching lamb shit. There's a Netflix show where you just watch it's four hours of lamb shitting on a loop. Like white noise, brown noise. Just the one lamb though, which is an arse. Does the lamb get smaller and smaller over the course of the four hours? Yes. Like a whoopee cushion but made of meat.

People sitting on the lamb by mistake. Slipping the lamb under people's chairs. Here's a question about bake-off then. If you find baking stressful yourself, you're probably quite empathetic to the bakers when they get stressed. Here we go. Very much so. No, that's not about me. Okay. All right. One of the biggest news stories of my lifetime is the Pavlova in the bin. I was wondering if you, I can't remember now who had to talk him down. Oh, I had to talk him down. Yeah. I think it's him not to put it in the bin. Yeah. There was a lot of effing and jeffing, which was the first time we'd had that

on camera in bake-off. Obviously, there's a lot of it going on backstage, mainly because I just foul of mouth. But normally it's just, it's very mellow as you know. And he really lost it. And in that moment I was with him. It was life and death. But then slowly this creeping contextualization of just, with a man in a tent whose ice cream was melted. This is meanwhile in Syria. Yeah. So I had to take him out and we had to have a little chat, a nice guy and just say, come on, let's bring some perspective to bear on this. Maybe, maybe not, you know, somebody opened a fridge door and it might have affected the temperature. Was it, it was Ian's baked Alaska, wasn't it? It was Ian. But I have to say the

aplomb with which he just got the foot on the pedal of the pedal bin. Just, it was like something at a film of Louise when you see that close up of the going down. This is how I would storyboard it if I was, if they made a movie of it. They will. Which I think they will now. Yeah, yeah. It's a very extreme close up, foot smashing down on pedal bin, hard cut to, pedal bin lid, it just crisply. There was no, I don't know about you, but every time I do a pedal bin, it's a slow, do you know what I mean? It's a slow pneumatic wheeze as it comes, not this. Ian bang up and then it just slid with one motion poetically. Oh, it was, oh, it was beautiful. I was there with him like that, that is me. That's me baking and I've tried to do a bit of baking

recently. I did a carrot cake last week that turned out quite well, but there was a disaster halfway through and it nearly went in the bin. Luckily, I had my fiancee here to say, don't put it in the bin, don't be Ian on bake off. There's a bit of Ian in all of us really. I mean, people say, oh, yes, but you can eat your mistakes in baking. I know for a fact, most of the time, you can't because I've eaten everything that came out of this tent, whether it was raw or half baked. I've eaten, I've eaten, somebody made a trio of tarts and it was essentially a herring and mackerel tarts and they positioned all the tarts one on top of each other, but the sweet tart was at the top and it melted. So this sort of rosewater sort of drool ended up on a fish

tart. I've eaten all of it, but I do think that you're right that sometimes we need to be more Ian and just go enough already. Hard cut. Put it in the bin, get a delivery. Still though, a baked Alaska, I think even if you mess it up, that's going to be delicious. It was very hard for me as a dessert fan to watch a man put a baked Alaska in the bin because there's no way you can't eat every bit of that. And I wish my head, I wish, in that film that you just described, he puts his pedal, puts the pedal down, the lift, the lid comes up and inside the bin, all you can see is my face with my mouth open and the drink. I think the producers of Bake Off should look into casting James's a bin in the next series. Just have him lying on the floor with his mouth open and any

off cuts of raw pastry, whatever there is, just drop it straight into his gob. That was actually one of the things that didn't make the edit when I was on it was me hiding behind the bin for a while. I hid behind a bin for about 10 minutes on my second day because I was trying to catch Paul Hollywood and trap him in a box and that didn't make the edit. Do you know what it's hard to do? It's hard to do. I tried to net him for seven years, often by, I don't know if you filmed it in the same place we used to, but there was a little stream and I would always try and sneak up behind him, always wise to me. I've got a heavy tread, always wise to me that. And you stunk of lamb shit so he could smoke. Also, was he cocky about it every time he caught you?

So cocky. He said like, I know you're there Perkins. Because for a while, Paul and I only spoke through the medium of violence and there were a lot of early doors, a lot of props like, you know, sort of quite lifelike plastic baguettes and he was like, we'd sort of be Cato to each other's Cluzo. So we would appear and just, I mean, really hard as well. There was no messing around. Like I'd stab, like smash a cob into his bollocks. Or I'd just finish a sort of very unformed link that wasn't really going anywhere. And he'd appear and just uppercut me with a baguette that would just knock my teeth again. And what I loved about it is we never, we didn't formulate a plan to do that. It just emerged. And I don't know whether there was some bristling sexual

tension underneath it. Who knows what the real subconscious driver was. Yeah, it was pure violence. Yeah. But with really stupid props. There was once there was a French plat that I really got him in the twain with legs of Kimbo delivering some, I don't know, interminable verdict on something that was never going to make the edit. And I just ran and I just, I just got it. Oh, it was good. When I was doing it, it was a sandy and Noel. Yeah. And I can safely say that all four of them really got on together. Pro a big happy family, but I can not even imagine any of them doing any of those. Finish in a link and then Hollywood swinging the baguette. And that's all we did. Well, most, most of the time, if I'm doing a link with Mel,

we are trying to wed you one another. That's what we've been doing that for 25 years. And I can now deliver. But it was also the beginnings of Bake Off. It was, it was very, we were just finding our feet in terms of the format. So they'd be these quite long and I have to say deeply tedious historical sequences. When I'd be in a corridor of a safely home game, it was in, it was in 1847 that the meringue was discovered by Muriel Moran. And if we did them together, then I would get used to the feeling of like a lot of pants material being twisted, hardcore twisted, sort of creating in its own way, a sort of genital French plat. It's amazing how far I can go with a quite intense piece to camera without snapping under

those conditions. It's good training. It's good presenter training. I sort of think, I watch, yes, SAF, are you tough enough or whatever? I think, yeah, I've smashed that. Yeah. What I've put up with in the line of duty is to smash that. We could just ask you about Bake Off forever and be the happiest people in the world, but we need to know your menu. So we should start off with, as always, still sparkling water superkins. I'm not an animal, so it's going to be still. I mean, please, it's, I read this thing about, I've never liked sparkling water, but I read this thing about sparkling water that it demineralizes your bones. Wow. Mineral water that demineralizes your bones. Apparently, it leeches calcium and I'm a massive hypochondriac and I will take at face value

any negative bullshit whatsoever about medicine. So if it says it's going to do that in some strange corner of the internet, I believe it. So what does it do? It like, bubbles away at your bones and like, makes them weaker and stuff? I'm going to heavily caveat everything that I say from here on in with. I'm not a medical professional. Sure. And I only scraped a biology O level, but my scant readings at the margin, I mean, it's almost touching on QAnon. That's how marginal the internet reading has been. This is the lighter side of QAnon, though, right? Exactly. The sparkling water stuff, yeah. Su Anon. Yes, Su Anon. It's something to do with, something to do with fizzy drinks leeching calcium. And the process, I imagine, is a sort of, as you've suggested, a gentle nibbling.

Like those fish that nibble dead skin on your feet, yeah. Exactly that. So the water gets into your bloodstream, it hits the bone again. Of course. It hits the bone and there's just, it's not ferocious, it's not piranresque. Yeah. It's more of a, it's a trout tickling. It's a sort of, just that, or a sucking, a sucking of calcium. Or like a dishwasher tablet advert, where you see like the cartoon of all the bubbles getting rid of the plate. Yes. That's what it does to your bones. Yeah. Yes. Like, like cow gone. It's like cow gone-y thing, isn't it? So it takes it all and then I imagine after a heavy night on the Perrier, you wake up, you get up and you just crumble. Ed, were you deliberately referencing the cow gone thing because that's, that's what I

imagined fizzy water does to my teeth. Yeah. Sort of. It's, that's, it's, that's constantly in my mind now and I drink anything fizzy as James worries that that's what it does to his teeth. Yeah. No, I don't worry. I don't worry. I think it's nice. Oh, he likes that in the morning in a hotel. Does it conclude my teeth? If you were to put, like, James, a mouthful of fizzy water, like, and hold, I mean, this might have been asked before. Hold that mouthful of fizzy water. How long do you reckon before your teeth just eroded? You know what, see, that's never been asked before. Okay. Let's go into some specifics. You would see a non now. I've never been asked before. Well, first of all, it would just feel nice because they'd be getting cleaned by all the bubbles.

The difficult thing is that is keeping it bubbly. So obviously in my head, I think if it maintained the same amount of fizz for the whole time and never got less fizzy, then I reckon it would. How long does it take a tooth to dissolve in a thing of Coca-Cola? Overnight, they say, don't they? Man, that's quick. Yeah. Well, again, caveats here as well. Ed and non. Ed and non has just said one of the special facts. You leave a tooth, any of your teeth, or your mouth overnight in cola. That's it. Gone. Dissolved. Yeah. It's the Pogues by sort of 8am. That's all that happened to him. He was very healthy otherwise. He just had a mouthful of Coke.

I just randomly left it in. He fell asleep with some Coke in his mouth. So yeah, I don't really like... It fills me up as well, fizzy water. I just... If you want to be full before a meal, that's the point of the bread, isn't it? You don't want the two warring factions of fullness. You don't want the bubbling, sort of aggressive mineral. It's sort of calcium leaching water and bread. So still water, just to have a sort of neutral canter at the actual meal itself. You might not have bread, of course. I might not have bread, and therein lies a very serious question that I suspect you'll be posing. Do you like other fizzy drinks, Sue? Not since the Sue and non-investigation

I was going to say, you are consistent with the bubbles. Absolutely now. It's an absolute policy. And don't even think about bringing him in the house, because who knows what they're doing behind your back? No, I don't, actually. I don't. I sort of overdid it as a kid. Do you know when I was at that generation where it was just... You're off the teat at roundabout. You know, two weeks is enough for breastfeeding. Get her on the fanter. And it's a brightly-coloured, tartrazine-filled, fizzy drinks with a sort of... Yeah, they were the mainstay of my childhood. So I kind of... I'm just scared of them now. And I don't like beer for that reason. No? Really?

Yeah. Quite a flat ale. A light ale. A pale ale I can deal with. Tastes nice. Who knew Sue Perkins was afraid of bubbles? This is a great exclusive for us. What a scoop. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that the Great Benito is going to leak to the sun. We're going to love it. But yeah, I am. I'm scared. Champagne, I can't stand it. Right. Consistent. Absolutely. If nothing else. Would you ever, ever in your life, get into a jacuzzi? Forget it. But for different reasons. So for me, it's not that it's going to leech calcium from my bones. But a slick of somebody else's bodily fluids. I once got into a hot tub with a Shaman at about 5am. He said he was a Shaman. He was called John and he was wearing a grass skirt.

And he basically said he wanted to perform a ritual. And the ritual, which was a cleansing ritual, involved blowing raspberry vodka at my arsehole. And I went with it because I'm very open and I don't wish to be in any way demeaning to other people's beliefs. And I, since then, I have a very deeper version to getting into a hot, bubbling sort of arena with anybody, particularly someone in the grass skirt. So I'm going to put it out there. I don't think that was the hot tub's fault. That story took quite a few turns. And at no point did I think it's the hot tub's issue here. This is, I mean, for somebody who sort of looks quite square and nerdy like I do, I often sort of find myself, it's not an unusual situation that I would be in a hot tub with a Shaman. Because I just

accept and go with, these are my, I live my whole life like it's an improvised candy. Yeah. I mean, for me, yes, and would stop at the raspberry vodka at the arsehole. No, it's yes and and it's never no buts. It's always yes and. It's yes but. But it was a very, it was a very intense experience, I will say. It was very well aimed. And unforgettable. I'll tell you the experience of listening to it. Yeah. The experience of listening to you telling it. Here's my experience. I was there and at the beginning of it, I was like, right, at some point during this anecdote, I'm going to have to interrupt

Sue and shout poppadoms or bread because we've got to get on to that next section. Listening to it, listening to it, listening to it, and then going, it's the only time on this podcast, the whole time we've done it, I've gone, actually, I'm not going to shout poppadoms or bread. More questions about this because this is ridiculous. Now, it's the kind of story where you don't want to, you almost don't want to ruin it by asking too many questions because the bullet points alone are funny. It leaves a lot to the imagination. But I, I think, I guess what I really want to know is how John the Shaman phrased phrased to you. Yeah.

This proposition and made it sound like it was a ritual when it clearly isn't. Is that really the question you want to ask the most? Well, I guess there are other questions I would like to ask. It's a complex buffet, isn't it? I hadn't realized how complicated it was until I said it out loud. Imagine being in the thing, being in the hot tub and John the Shaman in any way making this sound legit to Sue and being able to say, Joe, there's a, now we're in the hot tub. There's a really great ritual we could do. And I've got some raspberry vodka, which is very convenient. Do you have an arsehole? If you have that, then we could combine them and we could do the ritual that I like.

But this was, this was at Mate's house. There was a collection of really good eggs, quite esoteric, quite, the Shaman didn't stand out. It was a, it was a sort of cabal of quite out there people. And I was really into it. And the hot tub came after a lot of vodka. It's like, oh, let's just all settle down and get in the hot tub. It was then he said, and I, oh, he said, you know, you, you, I can sense you, I can sense you're unresolved. Everybody in the world is unresolved, but they always get you with that. That's your unresolved. And I said, yes, really hammered at this point. Yes, John. I am. And he said, there's two things I can do in this situation. I can, but I, and he genuinely said, but I don't have my eagle feather with me.

So in many ways I dodged a bullet. That's all I could say. I feel out of the, had I been on dry land, had the Eagles feather, this could be a, it could be the sort of anecdote that I would never say out loud. We don't know. But he said, I haven't got the Eagles feather with me, but we can do a cleansing. And I think the Raspberry vodka was the nearest for, it just needed to be a spirit. And that, so he didn't, I didn't feel needed to challenge the nature of the alcohol. So it wasn't the, it wasn't the Raspberry flavor was not key to the, fuck, I didn't even challenge the asshole either. It's awful. I didn't even try. I just was like, oh, I've had a few, you know, I was a bit younger, you know, I was, you know, I was better put

together. I was like, yeah, look at it everyone. And it was just bang. And it was like an explosion from his mouth. It was like a real, and you know, I, yes, there wasn't awakening. So in many ways, he achieved the desired effect, which was, I was not unresolved anymore. I was very resolved and I was very resolved to never be in a foaming hot tub ever again. This is the first time on off menu that when we ask you for each course, we're going to have to ask you which end you want to consume it through. Yes. I want it blown readily, please. A high tensile. I don't know what kind of mechanism. It needs to be in a soda siphon and then delivered. Yeah. I hate to ask more questions about this. I'm really sorry that I've got more questions. And I wish I didn't. But like, I'm just thinking

about the listener here. That's so blowing our nose, by the way. Yeah, just so you know. This is going to sound too graphic a question, but I'm wondering if John the Shaman had a straw or something that he was blowing. Just before, thanks for asking this, mate. Yeah. Because obviously I wanted to as well, but I'm glad you were the one doing it. Yeah. Listen, I mean, if he'd not got his eagle feather, but had brought a straw, it's sort of weird in a way. That's intent. Straight from the mouth. Oh, man. So it was like... Oh, God. Yes, it was like, it was sort of like a massive slurp and then like that. And it was a shower,

which subsequently I've had done a couple of times, admittedly not rectally and admittedly clothed with camera crews and like, you know, feeling a bit safer on dry land. Sure. Yeah, just a big, like a really high pressure spit. Yes. It's conundrum, isn't it? Now I've unveiled it. It's a conundrum because like, I mean, I want to know what he's up to now, if you've kept in touch, if you know what he's doing. We didn't keep in touch, no. He was an absolutely charming man. You'd have to be. I think possibly still shamanizing on the West Coast. Possibly storming the Capitol building. We don't know. It could have been one or two ways.

I thought you had his eagle feather then. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's de regur. De regur. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know how we got into that. We just asked you if you like hot tubs because you don't like bubbles. Yeah. And I did not expect it to go that way. It's intriguing that you won't drink fizzy water because you think it's bad for you, but you'll let a man called John blow raspberry vodka up your arse. What can I say? You know, we're all made up of contradictions. You contain multitudes, Sue. Yeah. I mean, to be fair to Sue, she googled it, and there wasn't anything on the internet about that being bad for you. It was... It seemed perfectly fine.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're feeling unresolved, this is the way to go. Pop it on some bread. Pop it on some bread, Sue Perkins. Pop it on some bread. Right. I thought about this. And Poppedoms are one giant crisp, right? Who's not going to want to begin a meal with a giant crisp? It also kind of works better for the menu that I'm planning, although that may change. But I love bread. I can name you a billion types of bread that I would happily have along with a meal. But come on. Just to start with something as wrong as a Poppedom. Great. It sets you up. It sets you up for all manner of ills for what is to come. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's just a disk of fried nonsense that one has... Feels one has to karate

chop publicly. Have you done that? Yeah. You're going to... You're going to start... The ritual of like, let it load them up. There you go. Why? I am worried that the pandemic has ended the Poppedom karate chop. I think it's going to take a long time for public confidence to regrow enough for people to start karate chopping Poppedoms for the table. You know, you're right. Yeah. I'll tell you what else. I'll tell you what else I worry will go away thanks to the pandemic is blowing raspberry vodka up someone's mouth. Sterile. It's a sterile fluid. Come on. To be fair, it's sterile. It's happening in a hot tub. It's fine. It's fine. You're right, though, that those old customs that the single karate blown karate chops as stack of Poppedoms. Yeah. Had enough thought about that. You

see, these are the hidden costs of COVID. The hotel breakfast buffet. Oh, gone. Although, I don't do that anymore because I once ate an earring from some muesli and that one really took me off. Oh, God. Even thinking about it makes me get... Oh, God. I thought, oh, there's a tense... There's a high tense old hazelnut. And it was an earring. And I would eat... Oh, they've eaten it. Oh, Christ, I can't go there now. So I won't do it. I will not. How am I going to push the hotel? I will not go for an open bowl granola ever forget it. And I... Oh, the sickness is present now, I recall it. But you said you ate it. Well, I crunched on it. And then I'd eat half of it by the time I fished it out. Oh, Lord. And then I felt so... Oh, dear. So you're right. Yes, I'm happy for

the breakfast buffet to be the casualty, but the karate chopping. The chopperdom. Gone. But I think a poppadom, it's filth, it's salty. It also is a great... It's a great balancing mechanism, the poppadom. It's got the rigidity. Should you wish to load it with stuff? Will you be loading it with anything in the dream restaurant? Well, I mean, listen, you've not said it comes with anything. So... But what I might do is keep it to one side. So I might karate chop my own poppadom. I understand that people at the table or other diners might not want to join in because we're in different times. That requires a different response. But I've karate chopped it. I've probably gone for half of it. I might keep half. And later, we'll see if there's a point where I want to use

it as a sort of board onto which I can put things. What dips are you usually going for with a poppadom? You can forget lime pickle. That's just weird. I don't get it. Oh, hold on a second. Yeah, I know. That's controversial because I always tend towards sweet. So it's always going to be about the mango chutney. Yeah, the yoghurt is weird because it doesn't... It just cascades. Yeah, I agree with you. It needs to be thicker for me to go with a poppadom. Yeah. It's, look, it's very delicious. But you're right. It doesn't... And it also makes a poppadom a little bit soggy and reduces that rigidity. Have you ever had a poppadom cheese sandwich? I can't recommend it enough. No, and I want one now. Are you talking about poppadoms going in a normal

bread sandwich or are you talking about replacing the bread with poppadoms? The latter. Karate chop. You've got your two perfect halves. Thinly sliced here because it's going to have to be thinly sliced because it won't tolerate a thick wedge. Yeah. The mouth hits the poppadom. It cracks. It sort of explodes into shards and you go into a slight panic and then you hit the cheese and it's all right. Everything's okay again. And they combine to make this weird sort of savory, creamy, cornflakey textured mess. Delicious. What kind of cheese? Cheddar? Absolutely. We're going for the most basic entry-level cheddar. Don't waste a chuckle on it. Don't waste a chuckle. Don't unwax a cheese. Just go for something that's come in a multi-pack from your nearest

sort of Costco. It doesn't matter. Are you putting mango chutney in the poppadom cheese sandwich? Because a chutney and cheese sandwich is delicious. Oh, sweet God. That's an elevation. Yeah. And that's why I'm here. I have rudimentary thoughts, but together we can elevate them. Yes. That's perfect. It's not that I'm giving you that as a recipe, by the way, because I don't want you to get distracted halfway through. No, it's a recipe I can't follow and it's gone. It's a suggestion which I can play with over time. Great. Great. Great. How did you discover the poppadom cheese sandwich? Well, on the rare occasion that I'd actually got some poppadoms left and as we know, they become a soggy unappetizing mess the next day, but pop them in the oven

and they can work wonders. So I thought, hmm, okay, it's hot now. It's hot and toasty, slightly singed around the edges. What's going to work? Cheese. And I've got, I haven't got it anymore. I don't know what I did with it, but I've got one of these weirds. My mum used to have them. She's always weird. These little cheese slicer, but also those egg mandolins, like an egg guillotine that sort of comes down and just perfectly weirdly slices. But I've got the cheese slicer and thinly did that and it's slightly melted. So karate chopped it, slightly melted. Unbelievable. So I try and order extra poppadoms now and do it the next day. It's a shame that you mentioned the cheese slicer really, because I had imagined you karate

chopping everything in the recipe. Oh, no, I mean, I mean, it depends what cheese. I mean, I'd roundhouse kick a brie, but I would, you're right. A simple karate chop to a cathedral city is probably better. You'd need to be pretty good at karate to get a thin slice of cheese with a karate chop. It's going to come as a shot, but only an orange belt. Only an orange belt. I'm not there yet. Not there yet. That's very cheesy. That's the cheesiest of belts. Yeah, it's called a red Lester belt, I believe. Imagine being able to so finely karate chop you could slice cheese. What a waste of that power. It really is, isn't it? It really is. I would watch a series, though, of Sue trying various martial arts moves out on cheese.

Kung food. Kung food. Kung food. There we are. Oh, God, take the rest of the fucking day off. You prince among men. But we've got the title. So is it set in a different continent, each ep, or different food stuff? How's the format break down? I think I would have it that it's like a YouTube series. Each episode is 30 seconds long, but we do travel the whole world. So every episode is in a different country, and it's you just there with a different, and the title of the video will be the martial arts move and the

cheese. And it is just you doing a roundhouse kick on a breeze. So I think for the Japan one, what I want is an enormous tofu hanging like a punch bag. And then just warming up, just getting some basic moves in there. And then also, you know, you do the form in karate, you'd need some food stuff that you were doing it with. So you bring the hand out on it would be would be something. Yeah, that is good. All right, we need to work it up. We need to I mean, I'm no good at development because my brain is it can't do deep drill. But you know, I think there's something in it. We can do that. We can definitely we'll work up a PDF. If I may tweak the format, yeah, I think I would like it that every episode, we've got someone

who ordered a cheeseboard on off menu, one of the get one of the stupid idiot guests who have ordered a cheeseboard on off menu in the past, and they're sitting down to their cheeseboard. And then they're interrupted when you like fall through the ceiling or something and then just do the karate move on one of their cheeses. And then yeah, because the cheeseboard would be on like a plank, right? Yeah. So you could just you could just kung fu chopped through the whole thing you chopped through the cheese and through the plank. Absolutely. You're right. Yeah. Sort of what you ideally want is to when there's inevitably becomes a teeny version, you've got somebody who's got a cheeseboard, you make them eat it in an atrium. So you've got a glass ceiling. And ideally

what you want is I've been helicopter dropped. I come through the glass ceiling straight through I smacked straight through in a kind of, you know, a fighting pose, right through the cheeseboard, and it's supporting, you know, stuff. That's it gone. Yeah. And around me is just sort of, you know, detritus of sort of regional speciality cheeses. Yeah. I've never missed an episode. I have some training to do, but it's good. I've now got a focus. What are you doing? I'm just punching cheese. Just work out. I've started with a rock four, but I'm going to work my way up. I'm going to get to a voodoo by next spring. I'll be there as your assistant as well, just picking up all the shards of cheese and gobbling

them as you punch it. Yeah, you would be. But you've done you've karate chop your pop a dump. So you've got that. Yeah, I'm ready to go. Textural elements. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because cheese without texture is pointless. It's not eating a duvet. It's pointless. I'll eat straight cheese. I'm a go. I'll eat a cheeseboard. Cheeseboard with no crackers. I can do. There's no words for this. Do you not even have a grape to punctuate the funk? No. Get it off the plank. I don't want a grape. I can go straight cheese. Just give me a knife or not. No words. No words. Just actions. And I'll tell you what the action is going to be. Sue's going to chop up all the cheeses with her hands. It's going to be gobbling them all up.

And then the final karate move is going to be Sue grabbing Ed by the back of the shirt and the back of his belt and throwing him into Trafalgar Square. Final karate move. Well, you lie in a sort of cheese sweat for the next 10 years. Look, I can see James is relaxed now because you're clearly not going to pick a cheeseboard for dessert. So that's fine. There is no way. That's the devil's work. When someone says what's for dessert, you don't see a cheeseboard. Cheeseboard is not dessert. Thank you. Somebody said, what is it? French have this weird, you know, they do, they talk about foods that open and close the stomach when they're talking about degustation menus and stuff.

Raspberry vodka opens up lovely. Well, that opens everything. That's a nose to tail. It really is. Everything is attendant and expectant. But for me, cheese closes down everything. I can't really do it. I have no interest in it, you know, other than in between a popper top, which is quite full place. Yeah. Starter, your dream starter. Well, I don't eat meat anymore, but I've done a menu whereby I could still be eating it because it's things that have made me so happy when I think of them, when I think of eating them. So for my starter, I'm going to have crispy duck with pancakes because it reminds me of the first time I ate interesting food, which was when I was 19. And I was taken to a Chinese restaurant, never been to a Chinese restaurant before,

by my friend Nick. And we went with our dad. And it was the first time, A, that I had eaten crispy duck, but also had food where you pick things like you had the little shredded spring onion, you had the shredded cucumber, you had the thick, viscous, sweet, spicy hoisin sauce. Then you rolled it all up. But the best thing of all, it was my first restaurant with a proper lazy Susan. And it was like, what, what brave new world is this? And the whole middle of the table just revolved. And it was like, I am never leaving. I'm never getting up. I want one. My ideal kitchen would just have almost a series of concentric spinning circles with food on it. And millions of people around. And it's just this endless sort of rotating cavalcade. So that is just such a,

I mean, I've gone, I've been lucky. I've gone all the way around the world since I've eaten very weird shit, very, very weird things. But that was my gateway food into other cultures. And it came so late. I kind of had a, I ate really well as a kid, but it was just standard British. The idea we'd have a takeaway or we occasionally go to a harvesters. And it would be like a slightly wetter extension of food that we get at home. But this was like, what is this? It's got texture and spice and what you might call flavor. So that was, and it's kind of weird. It came so late in my life, but it was, it was massive. And now I think back on what Nick and her family must have thought, looking at me going, freaking out. Just spinning the lazy Susan around and around.

What is this spring onion? Also, I love that, like, you know, it was the first time you'd seen a lazy Susan. It's the first time you, you know, had to put your own meal together and stuff. And just imagine in you, like, doing your own meal, then hearing the phrase lazy Susan. I'm making my own dinner. Thank you very much. I don't think I am lazy. I'm working pretty hard over here. Don't usually have to make my own pancakes, guys. Every culture has a self-assembly dish. Like for heaters, it's just like, oh God, you put something in a nuffin. What do you want? You know, and you've stuck a firework in it sometimes, if it's somebody's birthday. How much applause do you need for this? You know, yes, it sizzles. I mean, also, it's that thing of

running, I mean, I'd never do it now, as I said, I don't need meat, but the running of the fork and the meat shredding, way before pulled pork, way before all these sort of food trucks and trends, they were, you know, they knew how to roast meat slowly so that it would have that texture. But you still have the crispy skin, which has been almost cured. And then you've got the heat from a bit of spring onion, you've got the smoothness of a bit of cucumber, sweetness from the sauce. God, it almost makes me want to eat meat again, but not quite. It's so delicious, but it's also the Lazy Susan for me. It's not just the fact that this is a, as you say, the irony of it being served at a Lazy Susan when you're doing all the work. It's perfect. It's a perfect joke.

And your name is Sue. And my name is Sue. Every time you have a Lazy Susan in front of you, is there jokes about me? Yeah. And I have to make the joke very early on. Otherwise, it will come at me. And then that would really annoy me. Yeah. What joke do you do? You say, I can't even be bothered to turn this. Yes. Yeah. I say, can someone turn this for me? Every time. And it's met with, it's gone from sort of, a sort of weak laugh to now, well, through to silence and now just hostility. There's a sort of hostile expectation that's going to happen. And in those moments, I enjoy it even more. It might have been a lot of early gigs where before we'd even come on, there was just hatred. And that's almost my happy space.

So, yes, I would make the same joke every time. So, oh, God, not again. Sorry, I can't be honest. I would love it. Yeah. James would love it every time. All right. Well, when the pandemic is over and we're karate chopping pop-a-dums with gay abandon, I'll make that joke. And then you'll be sad. I will love it. And then I'll get the Raspberry Vodka out. And you'll be really sad. Be really happy with the Lazy Susan joke. Can I make a confession to you, Sue, about your name? So, and this isn't, I don't get confused. Like, I know that you are Sue and that Mel is Mel. I know that. Okay. Yeah, sure. It's eggs is eggs. I do know that. Yeah. But I always,

pretty much all the time, go to call you Mel. Yeah. Because I think in my head, yeah, you look more like a Mel and so and no. I answer to both though. I answer to both. Over the, absolutely. Any, yeah, it doesn't matter. And she does too. She, she, I've seen her go down the street and somebody go, oh, I see. And she'll just go, yes, it doesn't matter. It's all, it's all grist in the middle. It's all good. I'm wondering now, I'm looking at myself, which is not an uncomfortable, which is not a comfortable thing, rather, on gallery for you thinking, this is going to really freak me out now. Do I look like a Mel? That's going to stay with me. You know, when you're really pissed, really, really ship-faced,

and you look into a mirror and you're trying to work out what you are and who you are, that is going to come to me in those moments. Yeah. Am I a Mel? Yeah. Am I a Mel? I just think you look more like a Mel than a Sue. And I think Mel looks more like a Sue than a Mel. Yeah. Every time you say this, I get really tense. Yeah. Yeah. We're all just treading on eggshells. I have no problems with your name because Alex Horne once referred to you as Superkins, so now that's, that's what I think of you as, is Superkins. I always bow when I see Alex Horne. We used to do, in Edinburgh, our shows, his show was straight after mine. And you know, it's just like this, this, this lovely, lovely camaraderie when you know, especially when you share a

dressing room in a venue or, you know, your show's about one another. And it's just, yeah, we would just bow. And as, as, as he took over the smelly room that I didn't habit it from another smelly comic and so on onwards forever. And I still do it and I love him so dearly. So if he calls me Superkins, I'm happy with that. Yeah. Main course. What would you like for your main course, Superkins? Right. I'm going, I'm going curry and I'm not going to be specific. I make a curry about five nights a week. Sometimes it's a chickpea curry. Sometimes it's lentil based. It might be Sri Lankan. My favourite, which is what I'd plump for would be Southern Indian. Loads of curry leaves, coconut.

And don't, I know you're going to push me to a side dish, but let me say this to you, right? A planet is nothing without its moons, not a single moon, multiple moons. And for me, the joy of an Indian meal is there's a constellation of stuff around it. Okay. If you try and restrict it to just a dal, I feel hard done by. Okay. I will feel aggrieved. So I would go for a, yeah, Southern Indian curry, maybe even this is going to make your stomach turn. Maybe even beetroot, beetroot curry. Wow. Wow. But it doesn't have to be, if you don't like that, you can, you can have an occural one. You can have, it's this thing, you can put anything you want in it and it's utterly delicious. So I have a camper van and when times were better,

I would go out and I would just drive to the middle of nowhere. And in my camper van, I've usually got a couple of books. I think somebody gave me a pen knife in the full and certain knowledge. I couldn't even open it. No idea. But it's there and it's good to know it's there. And I've got a little flip up thing above the kitchen and all it's got is Indian spices. Amazing. And every night in, I will open up the door and I will make myself a curry because it's easy. Once you know, you've got to put this, this, this and this in it in a bit of oil. So it pops and you've got a can of coconut milk. Everything else is just gravy. I love it. So that it would have to be that. And on the side, I'd have a masala dosa. Have you ever had that?

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the same. I'm obsessed with things that, well, it's following on from the sort of peaking dark, I suppose, is that it's stuff wrapped in a big, you know, comforting mitt of kind of pancake style stuff. So in this case, it's a rice pancake. But oh my God, I could talk for hours just eulogizing about how delicious that would be. And I've been, I've traveled a lot and that's always been the thing. I traveled up the Himalayas once with a couple of hot parathas in each pocket, which was useful for not only my sciatica, but also just bust one out when you're hungry. When the altitude feels it's got the better of you. Just smash that. You meet a holy man, he's hungry. Just smash out the other one. That's a gift. You've exchanged something meaningful.

And when you say a holy man, do you mean a real holy man? Oh, no, they were all, all the holy men I met were just eyes on a stick. And, you know, I'm quite old meat now. It's not like they must have been desperate because, you know, it's, you'd get to a sort of, you'd think it would be the end of the pilgrimage. And there's a study would come out of nowhere of ether. And there would always be a ceremony which would involve just sort of gawping at my jugs or smearing ash on something. I mean, I don't wish, and I'm saying, as I've said at the beginning, I respect all beliefs. But in my experience, I've traveled most of the way around the world now, I don't know if a lot of pervs will use the mechanism of spirituality to have a good old

ogle, possibly a touch, possibly a touch. And also, I mean, I sort of written about this before, but when you, when you go somewhere new, and somebody gives you a really firm grasp, how are you to know that that's not culturally appropriate? You know, so there's a lot of just thinking, this is probably, grabbing my buttocks is probably something to do with this form of Buddhism. You just accept it. It's only afterwards there's a slight shadow of doubt, like with the shaman, it all comes back to the shaman, there's a slight shadow. Is that really? Well, I'm wondering when the doubt crept in there, when you meet another Buddhist, when you get back home and you offer them your buttocks. And they just bow and think, oh, she's a little, she's a little strange.

But yeah, it's all that sort of food in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of winter. It's easily made from store cupboard stuff, really. Yeah. And Amazon or other more reputable and local retailers can provide you with curry leaves, which is all you need to make it taste of what it should taste, you know. A lot of your meal I've noticed, Sue, is circles. You've got a lot of circles in your meal. This is incredibly perceptive of you, because I'm always drawn to circles. I do all them almost constantly, and I'm going to have to show you now, which is going to be shit because it's a podcast, but right, I'm going to show you what I'm making at the moment, and this is going to blow your mind. This is going to absolutely blow your mind.

Here we go. Oh, oh, a knitted burger. Oh, wow. Yeah. And that is circles, man. Circles, circles all the way. This is what I was doing before. I was on the podcast, right? I was just crocheting some circles, which have formed this magnificent, great, almost fully operational burger. Yeah, because we've got the, we've got the poppadum, of course. We've got the pancakes for the duck on a lazy, on a lazy Susan. Yeah. And then the, and then the dosa as well. So we've got a lot of circles. Let's not forget the asshole. The asshole, of course. Yeah. Traditionally, so. Traditionally, so. Yeah. Everything you've mentioned, every

anecdote, every figures in the circle, the lazy Susan. And Mayanus. Do you know, I have to say this, since I've learned to, I've said to everyone that Wombats poo in perfect squares. Yes. That was in the news recently, I believe, wasn't it, weirdly? Circular anus. Yeah. Octo cube shit. Yeah. Any other foods? No, but I'm quite into it now. So Amigurumi is a sort of Japanese crochet of sort of creating life like things. And there's an incredible thing that I've seen, which is, you know, when you go to sort of reputable, like indie burger joints, and you get like a composite paper, sort of cardboard tray, they've replicated that perfectly. And there's fries and ketchup. And I still can't

work out how they've done ketchup at work. But anyway, I'm into it. I'm buying into it. I mean, if they knitted the wall over, they're just like, surely get a bunch of loose wall and just put it from the land from Bake Off. I managed to just, well, it was shitting on me. It's spent such a long time. I could tease out. It's beautiful brown fur. And I thought, I'm going to keep that because one day I'm going to knit a hamburger. I'm going to knit a hamburger. And I had that dream has become a reality over lockdown. It's all good. So you have in the curry and the dosa, that's your main on your side? Yeah. Can I have that? So the dosas, potato and onions and mustard seeds and curry leaves.

And then I make them. But I said, well, you have to think about that two days before because you should ferment the batter. Everything's, but I love a batter. I don't think I've talked, my love of batter is, it's the thing that I cleave to it in times of stress. You can always just make a pancake at any time. You can make a pikelet. And from then, you can upgrade to a crumpet. You could make a drop scone. It's a world. It's a whole world. You can make a soccer, which is that if you've had that, that's like a chickpea pancake. That's incredible. Batter is the way to go. Have you had a Welsh cake? I've had a Welsh cake. I only ever have Welsh cakes when I'm staying in hotels in Wales,

and they leave them in the room. Do they leave them in the room intentionally? Yeah. It's not the previous. I've got my passport. Policy is all Welshness. I don't know where that was from. You always forget your charger, don't you? Don't forget your charger. Here's a good accent here, by the way. Yeah, I noticed you didn't join then. I'm not making an accent, so you know I'm not making an accent. Go on. Do an impression of a Welsh man leaving his Welsh cakes in his hotel room.

Can I just say, this is going to ensure Welsh independence from the next year. What's about to happen? Okay, that's fine. I'm having to help out in that department. Oh, crikey. I've left my drop-scot in my hotel room. It's actually uncanny. It's amazing. It was a sort of distillation of Wales. It wasn't just... Do you know what I mean? It was an embodiment. So, we're on to your drink now, which is also circular? Well, the glass is circular. I mean, I can't make liquid circular unless I make it into a fluid gel,

and that's molecular astronomy, and that's probably a little too much for lazy Susan. I would... Well, I have a cup of tea with every meal, so I was torn between my two favorite beverages, a cup of tea, and vodka, particularly bison grass vodka. And I just sort of think I'll go for the latter because why not? It's so delicious. It's pretty weird. I'm going to go with a curry and Chinese, but, you know, I'm all about representing, and I think you have to just... Just try these things. It reminds me of my mate Ollie, who I travel a lot with, who is... They do this thing whenever we go away.

The idea is that one person orders for the group in a place where you can't read the menu, and he once got a microwave toad, and I always think of him, and he ate it because that's the game. You eat whatever appears. He was a big, wet, bloated toad that kind of collapsed into a sort of gooey, gooey mess. We played the game. I got a tarantula, a deep fried tarantula. That sounds quite nice. See, I think it's almost the thing that puts me off the microwave toad is the fact he's been in the microwave. Oh, just gelatinous. It was... I mean, the way he describes it is horror. But in the spirit of Ollie, I think I will pick vodka, even though it doesn't go, because you must embrace all flavours and textures,

even if they don't seem harmonious. You're torn between the cup of tea and the vodka. You are the only guest on off menu so far, who's worked out a way of having both at the same time. If you would like to bring John into the dream restaurant to give you a vodka while you have your cup of tea. Yeah, that's the point. That's true, because there's another delivery mechanism. If I don't have the vodka orally, can I have it as an addition to the tea? Of course you can. I don't think I'd be saying that this morning. I really didn't. To be honest, that's always been a rule in the dream restaurant. No one's ever used it yet. We've always had it the little unspoken loophole. Oh, it's good to test the boundaries of what the

restaurant can deliver. I mean, that's an ask for some of the serving staff, but I am a very generous tipper. That's all I'll say. There'll be a compensatory mechanism with hard cash for whatever they may have seen that will have scarred them during the course. Hold on a second. This is John doing the blow in, right? No, you're the waiter, actually. You're the genie waiter. I'm afraid John is not available at the restaurant. But maybe we can, because I don't want to, I want to spare people's blushes. I can self-adminish to own a sort of, in a sort of quasi douche-form. I'm happy to do that, because I wouldn't want to make anyone else feel uncomfortable. Sure. So I'm sipping my tea. I've got my southern Indian buffet and I'm

just almost simultaneously. And that's the great thing about batter-based foods. But pick them up on a doser. You've got one hand free to administer a raw alcohol douche. Because the Eagle's Feather is not available. Someone runs a very good Wikipedia page for this podcast where it says, Everyone's Choices. And I'm looking forward to your entry for drink. Raw alcohol douche. Yeah. So Bisongrass vodka. Preferably Shabrufka. But any Bisongrass vodka would be very, very, yeah, they could pop that in as a detail. It'd be really efficient. Of course. Of course.

Because that's the important part of that. You're having two drinks. You're having a cup of tea and the Bisongrass vodka. Yeah. And we're set on, it's that way round. It's the vodka. Oh, gosh. Douche and not the cup of tea douche. Well, let's open up for discussion. I mean, what would one rather, the bracing raw alcohol or warming meloatones of a standard building? Well, I'm worried that the vodka is for people who are unresolved, right? So it depends on the result. Yeah, I'm not unresolved anymore. I'm very resolved on that matter now. I mean, that's the great thing about it. Then why not go for the cup of tea? You're right. And I started this by saying I don't like to do things twice. So we were absolutely

right. It's a shot of vodka down the conventional chute. And let's see how, you know, let's see how a clipper goes up the old fun basket. Yeah. Okay. One lump or two? Oh, well, I mean, would I do, the thing is, if it's going, would I add my normal, normally I have tea with skim milk and a bit of honey? And I'm going to stick to that. I see no reason to change. I mean, does flavour come into it as much? What is? Well, I don't, I'm not aware of taste buds in the, in the rectal chamber, but I suppose after that I'll be able to tell you, you know, we'll see.

The honey will stick in it up a bit at least. Yes, there's a viscosity that will come as a welcome relief, I think. And also it's antibacterial, is it not honey? So it's all, it's all works. I mean, I hadn't thought about it before, but now I say it makes perfect sense. Lovely stuff. We arrive at your dessert, which I already know is going to be something that I approve of. We're absolutely fine here. It will be circular because it's going to be a steamed pudding, which is the, it's the king of all the, you know, because the thing about a steamed pudding is it's just filth. It's like, I mean, you know, do you know, autolum, the, the French dish, they have to

eat with a towel over their head. Have you heard about this? Oh, yes, I have. So this is the songbirds drowned in brandy and it's such a shit thing to do. It's such a vile, awful, anachronistic, bullshit thing to do that they would put the, put the towel over to say, yeah, we're embarrassed, we've done this. So for me, it, that, that, that there's a similar, albeit less violent sort of notion around the steam pudding, which is just, this is just filth. Suity filth. So let's just cover it in a bit of custard. Well, that's a lot of custard and then put some ice cream on top and just use all these sort of dairy diversionary tactics to mask the untamed horror of what you're about to eat. So I suspect somebody else will have picked

a sticky toffee and I thought, I'm going to pick something that people only have once a year, but I look forward to all year, which is Christmas pudding. Yeah. I love Christmas pudding and no one in my family likes it and everyone's like, I don't want to make it. And on my own, I will put it in the steamer. I will lacquer it with brandy, set it on fire, put some brandy butter around it, put some cream, get some ice cream, get some caramel, get some whatever I can put on it. I'll enjoy it for that one day a year, but it's everything I love about pudding. It's wrong. It's filthy. It's tasty. There's billions of different ways you can do it. You can do it with lots of alcohol, lots of nuts, fewer nuts, more fruit, but it just makes me so happy and

it's hot and I like a hot pudding. I don't like you, James, as a dessert fiend. I love a tiramisu and all that, but I want it steaming, furious. Because you want the hot pudding, so then you can add lovely cold elements to it and have the best of both worlds, BW. And you've got your own ideal thermostat. You know what the optimal temperature of your pudding is going to be. You can just take it down slowly with a bit of whatever, unctuousness. I've only got into Christmas pudding, I'd say, in the last five years, but now I love Christmas pudding. I've said it on the podcast before. My favorite bit about Christmas is Christmas pudding on Boxing Day, cold Christmas pudding, fry it in butter in a pan and then put

ice cream on it and brandy butter. Absolutely correct. So good. I'm going to do that today. What? It's February, mate. Have you got a Christmas pudding knocking around? How fast can the two of you get over here and unload some of this fucking Christmas pudding that I've got in this house? I'm there. So basically, remember in the Joe Brand episode, Ed, which we recorded in November and I've just eaten some Christmas pudding because my girlfriend had made like a test batch the day before. And then she made a massive humongous Christmas pudding that was delicious, but we didn't eat it all because my girlfriend doesn't like Christmas pudding.

So it's all down to me. And there's this massive Christmas pudding there. Not only have we got a massive Christmas pudding, like I had, you know, two servings of that Christmas pudding, maybe, two large servings, but there's still more than enough for like a standard Christmas pudding's worth of it in the fridge. And there's the backup Christmas pudding that she bought from Marks and Spencers in case that Christmas pudding didn't work. So I have two Christmas puddings in my fridge at the moment. And I constantly don't know what to do about it. But now you've said about the frying thing. I'm going to try it. Make a strudel, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Just get some filo pastry,

lay it, get all that out, crumble some nuts, break up the Christmas pudding, roll it around, bake it. Real. Do that, thanks. That sounds great. I'm going to do those things. And now I'm really excited that I've got the Christmas pudding. Yeah. It's every flavor that you want. Yeah. And it's not just that, you know, cinnamon is not just which is dominant. Not just Christmassy flavors, you know, like nutmeg and like an egg custard tart. It's like, oh, but all of that crammed into one thing. You can put some sardines in there. You could put everyone. It's happy days. I'd say just all year round. That is, and you're right, the next day. Yeah, bubble and squeak, whatever, great. But a fried Christmas pudding. Imagine battering it.

Imagine a deep fried Christmas pudding. Imagine that. Sweet Christ. Me for the whole day now. Right. I'm going to read your menu back to you now and see how you feel about it. It's nuts. This is a completely circular menu. Here we go. Still water. Yeah. You want poppy-doms, karate-chopped with mango chutney, or you would like the poppy-dome cheese sandwich with mango chutney to try that out. You have both. Start a crispy duck pancakes on a lazy Susan. Main course. Southern Indian curry. We're leaning towards the beetroot one with a side of the masala dosa. Drink. And here's where the podcast ended. Browsky bison grass vodka through the mouth. Orally. Yep. Orally. Cup of tea with skim milk and honey. Say it.

And doosh and ministered. Desert Christmas pudding, brandy ice cream, custard and caramel. And do you know what? Do you want Christmas pudding eight ways? Like some of that? Like all the things we just discussed. All the different ways. All the textures of Christmas pudding. Yeah. You can have all of that just the whole every way. You're right. Made into a fluid gel, made into a crisp. You could get it as just the smell piped in as a gas. Yes. I'm going to literally, as soon as we finish this, I'm going to eat it. You know what? I've just genuinely just done, as we're talking. I've gone on the supermarket delivery app that I use and searched for Christmas pudding and that, surprisingly, they're all out of stock. Bollocks. I think that's a delicious

menu. It's mental, but I'm happy with it. Douching aside, I think that's a wonderful menu. Very much aside. So thank you very much for coming into the dream restaurants. My pleasure. I loved it. Thank you, Sue. Well, there we have it. A wonderful menu from Superkins. I now want Christmas pudding so badly. I'm going to have some. As soon as we finish this, I'm going to go on a fried some Christmas pudding. Ed Gamble recipe. Yeah. You're fried with some butter, right? Fry it in butter, baby. I've got some butter Scotch ice cream in the freezer. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You're sorted, mate. You're absolutely sorted. You're going to have a joyous time. I've got a bottle of Bison grass vodka, so I'm going to go and do the stuff with that. And Benita's going to make himself a

cup of tea. That was a great menu. Very revealing anecdotes. I enjoyed that very much. It was lovely to have Sue on the episode and also she didn't say baby corn. Thank the Lord. Very glad because I was enjoying Sue's company so much. I'd hate to chuck her out. It's not like Jade Adams when I couldn't wait to kick her out of the restaurant. Also, when she was talking about that veggie curry though, I was thinking, oh, baby corn could make an appearance here. She was listing veggie. She put beetroot in the curry. She's not going to shy away from putting a straw dolly's dick in there. We may have overlooked it. I think we may have not. We've done a lot of tangents. I think at that point, we were trying to be quite resourceful and economic with our questions. If we had drilled

down, we might have discovered there was some baby corn in that curry. We may have been asleep at the wheel there. Apologies to any sticklers. But I'm glad we were asleep at the wheel because I was enjoying the road that Sue was taking us down. Yeah, absolutely. James, we've continued to be sent some wonderful things. The great Benito indeed was sent. Is it vegan? A vegan, honest burgers recipe box. Now, I've had the honest burger vegan burger at one of the restaurants before back when they were a thing and it was delicious. So, lovely to hear that the great Benito enjoyed his. Yes, he seemed very happy when he told us about it. We both complimented him on looking so nice today and then he said it must have been his vegan burger box. We can't definitely

tell you that eating a vegan burger box from honest burger will make you look better. It's just what's happened to Benito. We don't normally give him compliments and we both did today. So normally he looks like the beginning of Benjamin Button, but here he is like a little fresh baby boy now. Hey, Ed, do Superkins have a podcast that people can listen to? Superkins does have a podcast indeed. It's called An Hour or So with, I have done it, James. I have spent an hour or so with Superkins in the past and don't worry, she's also had some great guests. I would love to listen to the episode with you on it though, Ed. That's what I should start doing. That should be my gateway into podcasts to make me feel easy about things. I'll

just start listening to podcasts where you're the guest and then that will make me feel a bit better. Yeah, I've done a lot of them and that will ease that definitely easier way and maybe then maybe listen to the things where you've been a guest as well because you've done a lot of podcasts. Yeah, but I don't want to listen to those ones. I mean, I was there the first time, you know. That's true. That's how I feel when Benito asks us to listen to the edit of this. Yes. I don't need to. It was all great. Also, you know, I make my request of what I want to stay in and it doesn't stay in. James, that was a lot of fun. We'll be back next week, I'd imagine. See you next week, Ed. I look forward to it. You're a good friend.

Okay. Yeah, you're a good, you're a good guy and I like you very much. Bye, everyone. Bye. Hello, it's me, Amy Glendale. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato and our relationship's never been the same since and I am joined by me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case. Get him on, James and Ed, but we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because look, we're two Northerners, but we've been living in London for a long time. The new stories are funny. Quite a lot of them

crimes. It's all kicking off and that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy! Is it? Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late!