Rural Concerns - 2 day hangovers, scotch eggs & lazy taxi drivers

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Producer James is in the grips of a 40 something hangover, Sunil watches a really long film with London’s most eligible bachelors and Chris sounds like he’s going to cry throughout. The lads also get to grips with the economics of what it’s like to be a rural cabbie. You can now support Rural Concerns via Patreon. For less than the price of a pint, you’ll get bonus episodes once a fortnight and access to The Creamery, our nifty Discord hangout for top chillers. You can see Chris’ Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated show at the Soho Theatre on 19th and 20th September, which is quite soon! Grab your tickets, here. The Rural Concerns music suite is by the magician Sam O’Leary and our artwork is by Poppy Hillstead. Rural Concerns is edited by Joseph Burrows and produced by Egg Mountain for A Lovely Time Productions.

Welcome to Rural Concerns, a podcast where I talk about the city and Chris talks about having no mates in the countryside and James is here to make sure it keeps on track. Perfect. And can I just be honest? I think he does a terrible job. Have you ever listened to one of these? I am here. Yeah, I can see half your face as usual, not the eyes.

Oh. Is that better? No, that's actually worse. Can you see that? Yes, there it is. Best comedy show award. Yeah, I know. So I'll just keep that in shot for the entire...

What's it say? It says, for being the best, nicest guy... Who'd you steal that off? ...and having a good time. Is that your third one now, or fourth? Third. Two with a sausage, one on my own. How many more are you going for? None.

Right, you're crinkling a packet and eating on Mike. Is that... I'm having chocolate covered raisins. My body is shutting down. I need sugared raisins to survive. It does sound like that. Are you back home now? I'm back home. I came home yesterday. Nice.

I came home yesterday. My mum and dad took me back after the show but you know i i could feel as we were leaving amy did a charity food bank gig and that was i did i did a little bit that so that was my last thing but as i was doing my spot there i could feel i don't know you know like my body's shutting down as i'm doing it so mate well i'd got through the show but my throat started going and i was just, it's just the body saying, come on now, we're shutting down. Yeah, Dr. Showbiz is leaving the building. Yeah, come on now.

I said it, I was like, we need to get out of this town. Yeah, you need daily vitamin B12 shots to get through that month. I'm having little chocolate covered raisins. And I think that, I think that'll be good. Doping then, so basically doping is what you're advocating. I've just had some vegetable soup. Do you know when you're really hungover and you're under... Yeah, Jim.

Are you hungover now? I think I still am, yeah. I think this is a two-dayer. From what? I went to a wedding on Saturday. It was... You know, I just went to... I was at a wedding, so I drank a lot of booze

I find it's the two you do get two days in your parties don't you it's Prosecco wine then lager

then cider rum and coke because the lager ran out ah wow really and these little they sort of they had the look

and and slight vibe of a Pepto Bismol, but I think they were tequila. It's like tequila rose or something. Where were the kids? They were at their grandparents, which is where I am now picking them up. So you had a day off to sort of be unwell?

No, I had a three-hour drive to be unwell. Right. Yeah, cool. That's good, isn't it? I find when you're dangerously over the limit, that's when you do your best driving, because you really focus on good, isn't it? I find when you're dangerously over the limit, that's when you do your best driving because you really focus on it, don't you? I mean, Sundays in the summer,

the motorways are full of pissed-up people leaving weddings, aren't they? Leaving weddings, yeah. What do you... Whose wedding was it? It was some friends from uni. Well, a friend from uni, and she was getting married down near Brighton.

It was a festival-vibed wedding, so it was all outdoors. And just to sort of date this podcast, the UK was experiencing Storm Lillian at the time, and so it rained quite a lot. But to be fair, it did only rain at the bits when we had to be undercover, like when we were eating in the tent

and when the actual ceremony was happening. We were undercover. I didn't get any storm up here. Was it just down there, was it? Really? Oh no, it was quite a lot of rain. Quite a lot of stormage. Yeah.

But it got, you know, the bits when we were outside, it wasn't raining and everyone had quite a lovely time to be honest. Some people camped and we did not. We stayed in a nearby inn,

coaching inn. I watched Naked and Afraid the other day. Oh yeah? Yeah. That's a weird one. That's sort of like camping, isn't it? Is it? What's the premise? What is it? I watched Naked and Afraid the other day. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a weird one. That's sort of like camping, isn't it?

Is it? What's the premise? What is it? Take a step back. Naked and Afraid is where a group of strangers are dropped in a random location around the world. This one was in Colombia, and they're dropped. They get a pot between three of them to boil water in. They also get, I think, a knife each or some sort of tool each.

And apart from that, a little satchel and no clothes. So they start off in naked. No shoes either, completely naked. So they've got to blur out. No pants? No pants. You've got to blur out people bending over. Why would they do that?

Because it's called naked and afraid. Yeah, but it could be called afraid, but you've got your pants on. Yeah, they've got no pants. Do they make pants? Is that the first thing humans do? Not a single one of them made any pants. Yeah, could they have done? Yeah.

Almost definitely. Because think about it. The first thing they see, they're like, right, we need to get 50 miles to get to the end, to get to the extraction point. This place is crawling with little crocodiles called caiman or something. Oh, yes. Yeah, it's in Colombia. It's called the Colombian Badlands.

It's hot. They've got no shoes on. I think the number one thing I do is get some shoes on. Get some shoes. You've got to fashion. And prioritize shoes over shorts. Definitely. Your feet are very soft after years of wearing trainers.

But what you don't want is some sort of like Amazonian beetle or something like that. Going up your willy hole yeah yeah well yes that little fish swimming up your urine and getting inside there are so many different types of things that go up your little holes and crevices it doesn't seem worthwhile you know what's up there that's why we need to cut them all down yeah i said tarmac the whole thing tarmac cut the rainforest down tarmac the whole thing if you're looking to hitchhike i think put pants on there's no roads over over shoes oh right okay that's the thing i'm thinking like if you're they're not interacting with society so they

can go fully feral they're interacting with sort of little crocodiles sort of big big cat medium size cats like jaguar, something like that. Whatever's in Colombia. Yeah. It's like, they always say like, if you take away devices, people would be more creative and stuff,

but it's not the case, is it? I would not, I would say the Jaguar isn't a medium-sized cat. I would say there's not really many cats that come much bigger than a Jaguar, apart from. Is it a big one, is it?

The Jaguar, yeah. The Jaguar's like. What's a medium-sized one, then? I think, like, lynx and wolves. I'd say wolves aren't cats. Don't make me laugh. James, I know it's a podcast for people's enjoyment,

but don't make me laugh. It's hurting my throat. That's what Nicola's planning on doing to me this week. Naked and afraid. We're going camping. Naked and afraid. We're going camping, which is, to be totally honest with you, now that the festival's done, I've done this enough to know,

I think I said this before, but I have got an absolutely colossal adrenaline crash coming. Yes. All the adrenaline. It's going to be intense adrenaline it's going to be intense there's going to be tears so Nicola's making me go camping

and I said can't I take the Nintendo Switch she said no I'm not allowed to take the I'm not allowed to play Mario

Super Mario Brother's Wonder because if you went straight home you'd do something mad like build a mechanical keyboard or something like that

I'd do something like that or I'd update my seo on my website you know i mean i don't need to be doing that this week i can have a week off just to get the adrenaline going but it's good yeah i'm looking forward to it we're going we're taking my mother and father-in-law and i've got like a converted an old menzies delivery wagon over lockdown so we're taking that to this it's called a lock ken in scotland and we're just going to do that and i've made i said to nicola can we get do you know what marks and spencers do they sell a butter it's like a french butter with salt crystals in it so i was like you can't live day to day on

that but i was like as a special treat you can well why not the french do that's like people who say you can't have curry for breakfast look at at the mentality rates in French. It's very low. It's actually low, despite the fact they eat butter and smoke tabs. No, no, no, no, no. No French man lives over the age of 52. That's... 52 is old to a French... You don't see

a Frenchman with... Yeah. You need one of these for your trip to Scotland. What is it? It's an electronic bug killer. It's like a tennis racket, but it makes this cracking noise when it hits a bug and stuns them. Because you're going to hit your midge season now in Scotland. It's a nightmare.

Yeah. And now we've talked about this before, but I've been chemically marked by the midges. So I'm now like, it's like open season. I never used to get stung by midges, now I get stung by them all the time because I've altered my diet and they've put their parasitic chemical markings in me. You're like a nonce in prison, aren't you?

Yeah, if you want to boil it down to its most simplest form, I'm just like a nonce in prison, there we go. Chris, I do appreciate that those chocolate-covered raisins are medicinal, but could you keep them a little away from the mic? I've been trying to eat them quietly. Have you had a drink today? Of what? Water. Yeah, I've got one now

next to my chocolate-covered raisins. Nicola's basically feeding me. This is what we'll do. You know when you're really hungover, as James is, and you drink water, and your body is so in need of water that the water tastes sweet? Do you ever have this? Nicol's just given me some vegetable soup,

and my body was just like, this is what we want more than anything in the world. Did she get you some tray bakes as well? No tray bakes as far as I'm aware. And then we started, we sat down. I'll text her. Text her, I don't know. Maybe she's keeping them as a surprise.

But we started watching the Sopranos and I was like, that's all I want to do today. Yeah, great. Lovely little calm down. My son's playing out. We're watching the pilot episode and he come back in when Christopher Moltisanti shot that guy back in doing cooking. He came in at exactly that moment and was like, what's this?

You watching it from the beginning? Nicol's never watched it, but I'm like, it's very, very old now. So it's almost like a period piece, do you know what I mean? But it's still, oh, it still stands up. Yeah, it's brilliant, isn't it? Brilliant show, that. I've never watched it. Oh.

Shush now. What do you mean? I think I watched like one episode randomly and then I looked up like a list of the best episodes and it's the number one best episode. So it's like, well. Which one? Which episode's the best one?

I think it's the, is it the Steve Buscemi directed one where they're in the woods? Yeah. I just happened to like flick it on Channel 4 or whatever in the early 2000s. But you were like,

I peaked here. So why would I want to understand who the character is, who the characters are? I've seen good fellas. I know what's going on. It's quite a comedic under, it's quite, yeah,

it's quite a lot of surreal humor in it. Let's go back. I want to go back to, we've got to, we've got some new business to discuss,. I want to go back to, we've got some business to discuss, but I want to just round, come back on to James hitting the town with his old uni friends, reliving his youth. We used to drink loads in the late 1990s, didn't we?

It's no different. It's no different. I think the booze has got stronger. No, that's what it is, poisoned booze. Well, no, they brought back better sort of lower lagers, such as Madry or Coors Light, but you've lost your Carlings. Well, Madry is Carling, isn't it, or something? That's what the rumour mill says.

It's not. It's a complete made-up brand, yeah. Yeah, because everything used to be like your 5% and a bit, but even like Stella's not 5% anymore. It's 4% and a bit. That was export, wasn't it? There was Heineken export, Carlsberg export,

which was higher strength. And then there was, what was the really high strength one they made for Winston Churchill? Was that Tenant Super or something? Yeah, something like that. It was an extra, not Tenant's, but maybe Tenant's. Special brew, that's it. I lost a bet and I had to have Carlsberg special brew and a scotch egg

for breakfast once. Was that nice? No, it was horrible have carlsberg special brew and a scotch egg for breakfast once is that nice no it's horrible i was sick not even the scotch egg i don't like scotch eggs i don't can't be doing with this so it goes around but apart from when they're like you know like cooked fresh to order i think that's that hot one where the yolk is is the outside actually crispy was it always that sort of soft? I don't really like that softness. It shouldn't be that soft. That's service station packaging. It better be crisp.

Do you know what I mean? But, James, so it was in Brighton? Yeah, it was in the countryside, a bit north of Brighton, yeah. But you said in the messages that there was an issue about getting home. Oh, the taxis. The taxis in the countryside, Chris. We were told it was Uber, it was on Uber.

It wasn't. So for the whole week beforehand, we had to ring around taxis. I say taxi firm numbers, but what you're actually doing is you're ringing around the individual taxi drivers that live in an area to try and book a taxi. And you have to speak to each and every one

and you get responses like can i book a taxi for saturday oh not now you can't so it's like what so can i tomorrow or do i need to invent a time machine what is it no then is it simply no what are they saying then do they say are they saying call on the day or something oh you were too late because it's booked up in advance or something. Yeah, but it's not clear, is it? You need a binary answer. Yes or no binary answer. Don't all of you tell me to ring Colin because Colin's not answering his phone.

Yeah. Will Colin just do anything or something? We've got a few taxi drivers in the village, like you say, individual taxi drivers. But, oh my, they clock off. Like working out, they finish at eight o'clock. Do you know what I mean? So... Who were they driving around before then?

In office hours? Who were they driving around during office hours? I think they take old people to shops. They pick kids up from school and stuff like this, take them home. That happens a lot. And they'll give you a lift. But he's very much at the benefit of like,

at their whim of whether they want to work or not work yes nicola had a thing where one a taxi driver picked her up to get in there and like basically when he did the the pickup journey they were taking her and some people she was teaching to a restaurant in the next village or so and he took her fine but then he was like so it's what time do you want to pick up any but the guy was basically like well if you're gonna be late i might won't be able to come and she's like we won't be late just tell us when well i won't be able to come if it's late you know like he just decided he didn't want to do the return trip yeah what what do you are they encouraging drink

driving or something are they on the side of big drink drive but now when we go out and stuff i have just very much taken on i just don't drink if we go to if we mean it go to a pub or for a meal or something we get a little babysitting window i will just drive because i can't be bothered navigating whatever that is do you know what i mean it's and some of the like the zero percent beers i'm a big advocate of 0% beers, but I was at a wedding. And also, so we drove to the venue, so we got a taxi back and then thought that getting a taxi mid-morning on a Sunday to go pick up the car. Oh, James, no, they're all at church.

Well, yes, they are. Colin, R&R, Andy Cab picked us up. Andy Cab? Andy Cab. I don't know if that is his actual last name. Oh, sorry, if I said Andy Cab, you know the... The? Andy Cab. I don't know if that is his actual last name. Oh, sorry. If I said Andy Cap, you know the... Daily Mail cartoon from the 80s.

Daily Mail cartoon who battered his wife floor. Yeah. Like we said, we obviously booked it. And the second sentence, I think I said, oh, we were at a wedding. That's why we're all a bit ropey. And he went, yeah, I know. It's a shit venue.

Like, oh, that's a bad opener, mate. Come on. Read the room. Yeah. We've all just had a great time at our friends. What, it's a shit venue. Like, oh, that's a bad opener, mate. Come on, read the room. We've all just had a great time at our friends. What does he mean by shit venue, though? Because it's like a campsite, it's quite muddy, and he's like, I don't pick up from there. Because you've got to pick up at the door of it kind of thing,

so you've got to get people from where the thing's going on to the taxi in the middle of the night. What are the economics of being a rural cabbie? Are they just like, is it just pissing out money for them or something? They name their price. Like this was a six mile journey. It was 25 quid. Oh, it wasn't metered. It was a three, three and a half mile journey, 25 quid.

Yeah. You have to pay, like there's a thing up here where you have to pay for their outward trip. Yes. As well. That was it. Yeah. They will, you know, just picking one up and they're already there so you are chartering them to come from two villages away to pick you up so you pay as soon as

they leave the house which doesn't feel exactly right but i think it probably is sort of fair no yeah i think it's fair as long as they don't also be really grumpy about having to do it because I'm giving you a lot of money per mile to do this. So just nip the attitude. Thanks. Do you think years of living in London for both of you have reared your attitude towards people working in the countryside? I'll tell you what, living in London, I don't think it's made me quite attuned to lazy people.

Yeah, I suppose with a taxi, think you think that there is a you know like a public service element to it but it's not that at all it's like a completely commercial self-interested thing but you're like this is a public service network but there's no moral obligation past that point to be good at it or want to do it well the alternative was a two-hour bus ride on thursday no no thank you how many pints could you have before you think your driving would be impaired honestly i think i i don't i won't even i think i've the most i've ever had was one pint but that don't feel great so by and large if I'm no I'm driving I'm not in a

there's no desire for me to be like I've got to have one, I've got to have two or something like that you're like no I'd just rather cut it off before doing it James silent there absolutely doing donuts

in the wedding venue it takes 20 minutes to kick in so no I just unequivocally

absolutely against drink driving not even you pussies yeah can we can we just publicly come out

and say at least now this podcast is against drunk driving unless it's absolutely essential. I think that's fair,

isn't it? So now, what have you been doing? Something called the Bermondsey Art Trail. Don't know if you've heard of it. I have not. Well, it was an open house for a lot of artists' studios so you could wander around where they were. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I went to

Frances Stanfield. She had an open studio and went to see her art. She's an artist who's a good friend of my flatmate, Helen. I commissioned some art of her a couple of years ago and she's very good. The dog flying the fighter pilot or was that a different piece of art? Oh, you've broken up a bit. But yes, you're right.

It's the bulldog smoking two spliffs on a surfboard. I thought it was the dog that was flying the F-15 or whatever. Oh no, that's not mine. No, I commissioned Bulldog on a surfboard smoking two spliffs. Nice. Has it got two in the mouth at once?

Two in the mouth at once. And then the second commission she refused to accept, an alien smoking two spliffs saying, toke me to your leader. Toke me to two of your dealers. But what?

It'd be cool if that artist residence thing, the workshop thing, can you imagine just slotting a comedian in the middle of that, you know, like their workshop? It's just post-it notes, isn't it? They just post it. Is that what your workspace looks like? What does your workspace look like? Is it post-it notes?

Post-it notes, lots of post-it notes what do they say on them jokes sometimes yeah sometimes it's like structural i'll tell you i'll send a picture i've got a wall which has got my most recent show on it's like it's not what it ended up being but it was when i was trying to organize the bits into a structure do you know what i mean so that's a very useful process of like act one act two act three where we're going to have all the bits and pieces and stuff like that and like just getting there was a bit where i had so much stuff little ideas and that so it was like an organizational right but i think compared to the other one mine's just got dead flies on it. Yeah. Yeah. How many? How many are you up to? Killed three last night.

Yeah. Fly. It's the season. No, it's basically the bins haven't been collected. I remember seeing in a bin bag,

you know, when it's hot summer months, do you know like in a bin bag a blue bottle fly, a big one underneath the bin bag, you know,

like it was like. I've got some of them around. I've got like the really fat, lazy ones who you can just smack. I've got a lot of them around at the moment. But I think that means, I think it's like we're getting to the end. I don't understand how it works, but they start getting like sluggish. No, you thought a wolf was a cat. I don't know about blue butterflies too much,

but I think we're getting to the end of the season for them. So because you don't see them that much. I think they're always flies around, aren't they? But there's a, particularly when we used to live up on the hill, we were in the middle of fields. So basically there'd be lots of flies. So we had those strips hanging down. Do you know what?

There's flies there's a lot about, but I haven't seen a moth for a long time. I've seen a lot of moths. Yeah, well, we're not getting them down here and something sad's happening to the moth. I don't know what. I think some breeds of moth are in the UK are endangered. Let's bring them back,

especially the massive ones that scare the shit out of people. Yeah, the massive one that look like big Doritos. Yeah, bring them back. How about one of them smoking a couple of doobs? So what do we do now? I've met more people from the

creamery. They'd come to shows and I'd sort of said, do you know what I mean? Every day, I've plugged this podcast every day and I've said like at the end of my show, I'll do a little plug for it. So I've plugged this podcast every day and i've said like at the end of my show i'll do a little plug for it and so i've got a podcast and then two or three times during the run someone's hey so i said yeah i think i think we have got room to grow to be totally honest with you in a

room oh is that sorry when you said what are we doing i thought you meant for this this episode you mean in general in life just in general in life i'm feeling a bit existential at this point you know it's just because the adrenaline's seeping out your body isn't it but i'm just having a good time doing this podcast you know it's a lot of fun but the more you say that the less it feels like you are like you only ever say you're having a good time to reassure people oh i am having a good time it's been so much fun. It's been... It sounds more and more like you're about to cry. I don't feel like... I'm not going to cry,

but I feel like I could cry. All right, well, I've got more cultural highlights if you want. Yeah, let's do that. Imagine if I cried. Son-El would just never come back on one of these recordings. He wouldn't do it. I'd watch silently, expressionless, waiting. Yeah, turn the camera off.

Right. I had the boys around yesterday to watch Lawrence of Arabia 3 hours 47 oh which boys which boys going from left to right

Nathan Roberts Will Rowland Neil O'Rourke Patrick Spicer basically all the boys left in London Lawrence of Arabia 3 hours 47

a good 10 minutes of that was a black screen with music playing in the background was that the intermission? And the beginning. At the beginning? Yeah.

At the beginning, it's like a minute and a half, if not two minutes, of just complete black screen, just orchestral music. And then there's an intermission in it. Three hours, 47. What they used to do with films was mad. But I've been thinking about this recently. There are no good films now, really. What are you talking about?

You love Dune. Oh, darn. I love Dune. I love Deadpool. You've are no good films now really what are you talking about you love june hold on i love june i love deadpool yeah yeah you've only watched good films recently but i remember i watched a bunch of show that was basically a retelling of jurassic park camp cretaceous no you know it was um there was someone did a reason like a physical theater comedy what was it called hold on to your butts it was like nice you know like two people and a girl sat at a desk doing foley yeah it was that physical comedy and it was weird it's one of those things i put with the boy i was like this is so much fun to do but it was sensational it was so much fun but it made you think the writing in jurassic park is of a caliber that i don't really

think you get in films anymore there's a lot of interesting acting choices it's very simple but very tight throughout but the characters have so much personality spielberg though isn't it spielberg not messing around do you know what that guy knows what he's doing i'm gonna put my head above the parapet and say steven spielberg knows what he's adding to that mount rushmore portrait of people smoking doobs with king john and maybe it's just the fact that like there's a lot more films being made now i think that's true but they're all too long they're all unedited they're all safe it's boring that horror film was good to talk to me that was good yeah that was really good, wasn't it?

Yeah, but that's like coming out, that's what I would call some Hollywood creation. This is like, it's made by these two YouTube guys, isn't it? But it's an Australian thing, and it's interesting because it was Australian. Do you know what I mean? It comes from a slightly different background to what we normally watch films in.

But Hollywood blockbuster big films are not as tightly plotted as a Jurassic Park. I would say so. On the weird nostalgia things, I went to watch Alien Romulus. That was really good. But we are watching a calculated effort to take us back to 1979,

or whatever, whenever Alien and Aliens were. Like it's purposefully like put between those two films with the most successful of the franchise. And, you know, it was really good. It was really good. But I think you can just feel the calculated marketing energy behind stuff. And you're like, please just make good stuff, please.

Yeah. I was reading about this theory that like at the turn of the century for like a couple of decades you just regurgitate and remix stuff that came before and it takes a bit of time for a new culture to emerge after that a lot of what we've seen is a remix of everything from the 60s onwards really actually 50s onwards or like rehash put together with other stuff uh given yeah but stylistic choices and stuff like that don, they take a bit of time to emerge after you rehash all this stuff. You have to start with something new. And maybe it's up to us as leaders in our communities

to come up with a new vibe for the world. So it's, and it's two doobies, right? It's two doobies. In one hand. It's two doobies. We basically need to come up with whatever is Brat Girl Summer, but for men in their early 40s. Brat Girl Summer is just a, you know, there's been difference.

It's just another name for a different, it's another summer, isn't it? And it's like, you can't just keep coming up with different names for summer. You don't own a Brat Girl attitude now. Like I can, I've got it in my head, do you know? Doughboy Autumn. Yeah, Doughboy, yeah. Sit Down September. Yes. attitude now like i can i've got in my head you know dough boy autumn yeah dough boy yeah sit down september yes i think i'm gonna do a lot of sitting down october what did the boys the young men that you watched all in civil arabia think it's the first time any of us had seen it i think

except nathan who loves films and is a dork but the rest of us thought it was really really like beautifully shot it's like a beautiful film to watch a lot of eye makeup not a single woman in it i can't remember a single woman in it who was alive oh no there's some nurses right at the end they don't speak very male heavy very like english proper theatrical proper like theatrical stage acting on the screen yeah this is it's very you obviously look at things like a lot of the acting when you i mean not lawrence of arabia but when you watch films of that era what you've got is the film stars are the theatrical uh leading lights of the day and i think they which they bring the style of to the film. And sometimes it looks with a modern eye, like very hammy,

big acting. I remember watching, God, what was it? It was, you know, one of these Ray Harryhausen's, Laurence Olivier,

you know, the, it played Zeus. Yes. Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans. That's it. And it was very,

I would say it felt very hammy, but there's a huge stylistic shift in there between then. He's the king of the godsans that's it and it was very i would say it felt very hammy but there's a huge stylistic shift in there between then he's the king of the gods yeah it's hard to play that naturalistically isn't it yeah but now what you would get is the performances that you would get are much the stuff that we watch is much more grounded in realism you get russell crowe playing zeus yeah yeah yeah straight straight as a die. Yeah. Underplayed. Yeah. But he speaks with a little Italian accent in the Marvel ones, doesn't he?

And I suppose you still get, you know, like whatever Daniel Craig's doing in Knives Out, you're like, you know, not everyone's going small. I think apparently Ethan Hawke said that Nicolas Cage is one of the only few people doing anything interesting with acting oh yeah he's making interesting choices okay um final bit of business chris we've me neither me nor sonel have had the access or inclination to look at the emails you've you've held those keys and you've not you've not shared anything with us have we got an email that we could i need what i haven't had for the last wee while it's time to prep coming into this we need to get back to this i need to be coming in

we've got a review there's a good review a long review on apple that i can read for the end was it we haven't done the religious experience one have we what are you talking about jim's there's a review on apple that i don't think we've read. Yeah, let's read that. Just a reminder that you can, if you're not too busy, leave a review of this podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It would be appreciated because we are taking aim at Lily Allen and Makita Oliver. Are we?

Okay, this is a review from Scrappy Lou titled A Religious Experience. And of course, they left five stars. And they write, As a wimpy city dweller, I've always half suspected that the countryside is a myth used to scare us into compliance and hard work for fear that rebellion would lead to being exiled to that hellish place where you can't even get to live a room. If I'm right, this podcast is deep state propaganda.

If I'm wrong, it is a handy survival guide in case I ever end up on the wrong side of the M25. I now know what to do to pacify a prized bull, how to deal with a misogynistic jester, and I have learned of an ancient and terrifying ritual called camping. When the oil runs out, the world starts burning, and the remaining few begin to rebuild.

This podcast will be used as a sacred text. Farmer Bugerton will be our lord. Fucking hell, I hope not. Now that's a review. That's a completist's review. That's how you do it, yeah. I've been telling people when I've been doing my shows, I say, I've got this podcast.

I say, I am clinically depressed for the first 12 episodes, so maybe jump in after that. This person's listened to every single one. And then another one says, I wish Christmas, my friend. Five stars. Thank you. That's very nice. That's a nice one.

A bit rude, actually. A bit rude to me and James. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does feel, I mean, these two are all right. Yeah, they're good lads. They're good lads. They're good lads. This has been the latest episode of Rural Concerns, the podcast, with me, Sunil Patel, Chris Cantrell, and James,

whose surname cannot be mentioned on this podcast. Producer James. Producer James, who has no surname because he was never born. He came out of a mountain or something. And it was produced by Egg Mountain for a lovely time productions. The artwork is by Poppy Hilstead who did the artwork and it's Sam O'Leary

who did the music as well. Shout out. Thank you to Joseph Burrows for the edit. And Joe's. Thanks Joe. Cheers. Now listen,

listen to me for once. If you've enjoyed this podcast, we are an independent podcast that's put together with love for three lads having a natter.

But you can support us and maintain our costs and for the price of less than a pint and it helps us keep doing this having a laugh and i think if you can spend your money so that we can have a laugh that feels like a good trade-off most importantly where can they do that on the internet don't put a chocolate raisin in your mouth before you give out the most important URL. They could do it on the internet. He's back. You got a baby? No, that's a cat.

Is it? Bong. Like that.