Triforce! - This could be a big mistake | Triforce Mailbag #72

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Triforce Mailbag 72! We get a message from an ant who's starting a family under a money pit you might recognise, argue the pros and cons of having The Cheeky Girls at the next Triforce Live Show and Lewis gets heated (heheh) about heat pumps. Go to http://buyraycon.com/triforceOPEN to get 15% off Go to http://shopify.com/triforce to sign up for your $1-per-month trial. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickax. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little pallet cleanser for whatever's queued up, which by the way should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going.

Hello chums and welcome to another male bag episode. of the podcast, The Mailbag is a song if you guys are ready. I'm ready. This is from Martin. Hello.

Attach is my TriForce mailbag intro slash song, none of which is AI. My studio singer is Natalie. Right. All of it is written and produced by me is royalty free. Help yourself.

It's only one minute 50. I think you will find it professional and funny. I wanted to say thanks for all you guys do. I've been following you for many, many years. Oh, nice.

To TriForce from my cockpit at 45. thousand feet. I fly golf stream jets all over the world. Thank you for all you do. Now, that's interesting. It took a while to get to that. It was just the most generic thing ever I've ever heard. I know. And then all of a sudden. It's very professional, though. I feel like the email was very professional ahead of the song being very professional as well. Kind regards. Kind regards. Yours, yours, etc. Yes. So he actually signs off, take care. I will. Thanks. So yeah, so here is the song.

Are you ready? We'll play it in three, two, one play. This is London. Oh, and Bristol. And Bristol. Oh, and Jersey, sorry. Nice. Jersey.

Nice. Four, six. Yes. Oh, my God. It turned into German techno very, very, very. quickly. I know. This is like music from a like a hitman level. Okay. Wow. Coming to all the Ibita clubs this summer. I know. God, that's just so good.

Well, I think it's the intro bit that makes it long. The actual techno-y bit was not that long. Yeah. And also I feel like it's useful to give us more to work. But then we can clip a little bit for like a cool action sequence, you know, like they do in movies. Like they don't use the whole intro for a song when we do CSI and stuff, right? Yeah. Also, I feel like the take care that he sent there was kind of a little warning to us. Oh. You know, I was like, take care.

I was a bit threatened. Take care. Yeah. Watch your back. It was like a, like that kind of take care, wasn't it? It was. It was like a watch out. Right.

Well, this one's from Braden, who's been listening since they were. I have a music production diploma, and while I haven't done much producing, since I got it. Raiden. I decided to give it a go. This is for Braiden. Like Mortal Kombat Raiden. Braiden with a beat. Oh, no.

Right, okay. He's from Ontario, so we gotta give my shed it. Oh, Braden, okay. All right, try for us jingle, this is called. I can't remember if this is any good or not, but here we go. Ready? It's only 30 seconds. Okay, I'm ready.

Three, two, one, play. Oh, nice. I like that. I like the drums come in and that's really good. I recognize the tune straight away. Mmm. This is good, yeah. This is great.

It's like Saturday morning cartoons. I was expecting the Pet Shop Boys to start singing over that. I'll be real. It sounds like a Pet Shop boys song. That sucked. No, listen, it's nice where they don't have us talking in them because then it's really confusing for me, and the listeners, I'm sure, which of us are talking and which of us are in the song.

That one didn't have any of us talking. The over-commentary of us was live. I didn't think that that sucked personally. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was nice. I thought it was fine. I don't think it was the best one that we've ever had, but I don't think it sucked either. Listen, you don't want it to drag attention away from us.

I want a jingle that's in the background, innocuous, and all the spotlight's on me. Yes. It focuses on me. Okay. Well, then you might like this next song, Lulu. This is the last one. We're only doing three. Don't worry, mailbag haters

and music despises. It's only 21 seconds of your little lives. It's just so important. Let's get ready to play it. Three, two, one play. Try force. Nice. Are you ready to shit?

It's a trice, don't try by force. Just keep it natural like inner course. To podcast shudder, you don't need hair. To talk with daddy, you don't need air. And if it's all too much, you can always share. Bring it over in the double way. Oh, my God. I like that.

I was tapping my feet like Technotronic or something. Like it was like a salt and pepper kind of vibe to it. I just didn't have a salt and pepper vibe. It definitely had like a, yeah, like a kind of a cool dance. They were doing a cool dance against like a yellow and green sort of, you know, green screen. And they were wearing like kind of, I don't know, beach clothes. That's what it felt like. That was good.

They were bop and lock it or whatever it's called. Very good. Yeah. Pop and lock. Pop and lock. That's what you kept in. Bob and load. What's it called?

Pop and lock. Pop and lock. Pop and lock is like, who are you going to dance in this weekend? One of the music clubs, you're going to be bopping and locking. Yes, Granny. That's what you sounded like.

This is from Sam. I've listening to Lewis glaze the leftovers and avoiding the spoiler section. I spent my weekend watching all three seasons of the leftovers. The core concerts. is cool and the ending reveal that Lewis spoiled was cool, but all the shit that happened in between was giga-wank. Did Lewis explain the part where the main character dies three or four times

and then has to do side quests in the afterlife to get revived? I challenged Lewis to re-watch the show and tell me that it's not utter garbage. I enjoyed it. I watched it sort of in the background, though, but there's a big, I saw there was a huge leftovers fan boy in the comments who was like saying, this is my favorite show ever, and I hated that they didn't like it. Look, there's so many TV shows out there. And guys, there's no time to watch all the good ones.

So don't waste your time with the leftovers. Or do. Make your own call. Maybe if you like it after a couple of episodes, just consider that most things, the first couple of episodes are a good benchmark for what the rest of it's going to be like. If it's like some wishy-washy-willy nonsense,

it's going to be more of that. If it's like family drama, it's going to be more of that, you know, you can pretty much, these shows, TV shows, they don't suddenly take a hard right turn. into something different. Some of them do, to be honest, like dark and stuff like this. But, yeah, if you like it, check it out, why not?

That show was also too fucking slow. I feel like a lot of these shows. Yeah, it's just so much, so much of that show was people in a room looking at each other and looking sad. Fucking get on with it. Anyway. Yeah.

This is from Lisa, who emailed me, you have a tiny penis according to a brick in Atter Cliff. Now, I didn't know what that meant, but then I discovered that, What happened is someone has left this note whilst geocaching. I will show you the note. It is a small piece of like a post-it note paper and it says, I have a tiny penis emailed pyrionflax.com when found with the location.

So someone who doesn't know anything about the TriForce podcast has emailed that. But there's also a follow-up. I don't know why Lisa felt the need to include this, but she has also sent me a picture of available on Amazon. A penis pump. A penis pump. With a fairly graphic picture of a penis. Made famous by Austin Powers, if you remember, he had a lot of penis pumps in the Austin Powers movie.

He did. He was always pumping his penis in that movie. He loved to pump it. I mean, I assume it doesn't work, but I definitely remember there was a thing a few years ago where people talked about. The penis pump. Yeah, but Clint Eastwood had some kind of inflatable cock. Really?

Well, listen. He had like a thing that he had to put around it and he would pump it. So it would like make it seem like it was hard, but it wasn't. I remember Clint Eastwood's penis thing. I don't know where I read it. But for a long time, I thought, gosh, that sounds awful. I hope when I'm old, I don't need a Clint Eastwood inflatable cock. Right.

There was, who was it? There was quite a famous story that goes around on Reddit sometimes of a woman who disguised as a man in a couple, probably 100 years ago. And she'd made her own like dildo, basically. Right. And that she would use to sort of, you know, perform in bed. And so the wife wouldn't know, right? They were married and stuff. Well, she just had a fake dick.

Yeah. The whole time. It was like this huge lie the whole time. And how would you keep that? You'd have to get to a point at some point where you just think, like, man, I'm sick of pretending. My dick is fake, baby. Love it or leave it.

You know, like you wouldn't be able to keep that going. don't think. I think from what they read of the story, again, you're going to have to look it up. I'm sure you can find it. But it's, um, they really, I think they enjoyed the advantages of living as a man, you know, because it was obviously, there were more opportunities in terms of jobs and it was a different, it was obviously a different time. They got treated differently because they were men. Yeah. I think so. I think they were like a trans person or whatever, do you know, in terms of like, I don't think they wanted to be a man. I think they just felt like it was a better life.

Maybe, who knows? Listen, who knows? I'm not an expert. Also, the penis pump thing. I always assumed that that was just like basically a machine that made you have like a love bite on your. It basically was like giving your dick an entire, like a one big love bite. It would be very painful, I think. That's kind of what you're thinking about.

I mean, it just seems like a way to injure yourself really badly. I always thought it was just a gimmick, like a novelty thing. You don't think that anybody actually used them. Well, you know, there's a lot of real fucking dumbasses out there, P-Flex. There are, yeah. The tiny dicks. I'm one of them. A lot of the listens to this podcast.

God. All right, this one's from Sam. It's directed at you, Chris, love us. Right. Hey, Perian, see-going dad here. Currently serving on HMS Tye in a batch one O-PV. Look it up. It's one of the smaller but harder-working ships in the fleet.

It's always the way, isn't it? The guys on the small ship have to point out how hard-working they are. Yeah. A section head of the electrical. engineering department, we'll be coming into Jersey for the boat show. And I was wondering if Sips and the fam would like to check out how we live and what life is like on board. Man, I would have loved to.

The boat show happened like last weekend, though. Oh, shit. Sorry. It's late. Yeah, this is from the end of April. Fuck. I'm sorry. We didn't do a mailbag for so long.

You missed out. No, I know, I know. Sorry, Sam. Yeah, I would have definitely taken you up on that. That sounds super interesting. We'll have to coordinate next time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, apologies. They look like pretty fancy boats. O-PV? What does it stand for? Yeah, offshore. It's an offshore patrol vessel. Oh, yeah. Damn, right?

It's not small. This thing looks like a beast. Well, exactly. Look at this thing. They've got to be ready. They've got to be ready to go. Yeah. Oh, damn.

It's got batch, well, it's got mini guns. Mini guns. Mini guns, dude. Mini guns. It's got two mini guns. Mini guns. So mini guns, they may be small, but they're some of the hardest working guns out.

You never know when you're going to need a mini gun. This is from Emil. We talked about the CERN shutdown. This guy's a Danish tiny penis haver who works at CERN. Right. An electronics engineer working there. This will be a five-year-long shutdown three. Five-year long shutdown three.

I don't know what that means. Starting in June, where the four major experience will be upgraded to be able to get higher luminosity, i.e. a higher rate of collisions. Right. Not just the magnets, but also the sensors, the trackets, etc. Personally, I'm working on the trackers. So he's also sent a bunch of pictures.

Right. I can download the pictures. Don't download those. You don't know what they might be. Well, no, they just, I can see them. I mean, I'm looking at them. Oh, right. They're from CERN.

And I mean, the current picture I'm looking at is a picture of a penis pump. So I'd rather... CERN made the fucking... The internet. Do I mean? Yeah. I think we can trust stuff that comes from there. What do you mean?

It made the internet. What are you talking about? Well, the CERN wasn't the way, like, isn't that where the internet like basically started? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. So the start of the internet was America. It was like, after that.

The World Wide Web was invented at CERN by Tim Bernersley in 1989. Yeah, but not the CERN fucking underground thing. They didn't need this, did they? They didn't need a big underground thing to run the internet unless I've massively misunderstood. The internet doesn't run on the CERN Hadron Collider thing, does it? Well, CERN, CERN is the European Organization, the European Organization for nuclear research is cool. What are they doing with the internet? How deep does this rabbit hold go?

They're scientists. Do you know how this stuff works, don't you? Like, people who are doing science and like NASA, they, like, a huge amount of these things that they develop as part of trying to get into space end up being in founding, you know, the technology that we live on every day and we don't realize. Fair enough. There's all the images of CERN, look. And there's our humble listener, Emil, standing in front of what looks like an extremely dangerous piece of equipment. He's got a good hard hat on, big old hard hat. Oh, man.

That thing's a big load of magnets and shit. If you're not careful, that thing will make a portal to hell and suck you right in. What if none of this does anything, eh? And they just make up results. Well, at least it's keeping all those guys busy, I guess. You know, it gives them something to do. Yeah, all these scientists getting rich off experiments. Yes.

Well, listen, that's the other great thing about science period. And even no results is a result. Yeah, you've tried. You turned up and you tried. True. You found out that something doesn't work and you can prove it. So they build CERN and turn it on and nothing happens. They're like, hey, we learned a lot.

Told you. Told you this would work. 30 billion euros down the drain. Yeah. So we were talking about therapy. And for some reason, I got quite a few angry emails about I don't even really remember saying anything outrageous. I think I said that my eldest struggled with therapy.

because he found that it meant bringing up things he would rather not think about and kind of dragging stuff out. Right. I remember this conversation. And you said basically to just... Bottle it up inside. You were like push it all down. Push it all down.

Any time... Of all the troubles that you've experienced, just build them up. And let him build and build and build and build. Imagine like a really, like a jar, jam jar. And then you'll just explode like Steve Martin on trains. on trains, planes and automobiles. And then just like squeeze that bad boy closed. Yeah, that's exactly what I said, I'm sure.

That's what you said. And people were furious. Yes. So I know you're going to have a bunch of emails about therapy and how to do therapy correctly. Don't listen to them. Mental health and coping is extremely complicated and variable. There's no universal way to deal with trauma. Everyone's different.

Some people, like my mom or Perian, apparently, can't think about trauma or tragedy for very long before getting terribly depressed. But other people like me need to confront a car. contemplate in order to deal with it properly. When Perian said, just shove it down. He worded it poorly. It's not pushing down your emotions. It's distracting yourself from reflecting on something that sucks.

My advice is to try a therapist, et cetera, et cetera. Well, yeah, I was probably just joking. I didn't even really remember what I said. Well, I feel like in some cases, though, there's a topic that you find uncomfortable or something you don't like thinking about. Your brain will kind of allow you. you to think about it, like it'll drip feed it to you sort of thing, you know? Like, it'll, it'll, it'll know a time when like you can, you can just about handle it for a couple of

seconds or whatever and then back to like not thinking about it sort of thing. And I think that's like all a process in it in and of itself too, right? To help you. So I also think there's like grief kind of works like that too. Yeah. You know, like your brain just won't like overwhelm you immediately with all of the feelings, it'll just, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll sort of like, you know, give it to you like in burst. We have a very, yeah, a hundred percent. The human brain is very complicated and has a huge amount of different things, influencing it, right? In terms of, it's just like, boobs, pizza, boobies, boobies, world of all crap. It's, it's, it's, the thing is like, you're influenced by how other, how other, how you

should feel, how other people expect you to feel, you know, how you expect yourself to feel. And you're, you're resting with like, oh, am I being selfish by feeling this way? Am I, am I? And it's like, it can sometimes be a real vicious cycle of like, oh, I feel bad. So I'm ruining this thing. And so I feel bad about ruining this thing. And it gets, gets you into a real, it can be really a negative doom spiral, right, often with these things. So having outlets for it. sometimes just talking to someone else and getting a different perspective or trying to reframe it and different things like you said, Pfax work for different people. And I mean, obviously, like, time is the ultimate healer of all wounds, right?

Partly because you just forget, like, you just start to, you, it sounds bad. Like, you know, maybe you're sad that, you know, Ethel died. But over time, you just forget why you liked her. And so you're like... I suppose so, yeah. You find out deep, dark, dirty secrets about Antethel over time. And the woman that you once loved becomes the object of just your pure hatred because... Yeah.

Everyone knows what she did that bitch. Everybody knows that she pronounces it GIF and not GIF. This is from Sir Guy. This is for me. This is one to cheer me up, he says. Right. I don't agree with anything. Sorry, I don't agree with you on everything.

and some of your opinions drive me up the wall. But thank you for being a voice of reason about food. I don't know how the other two mutants live their daily lives, but if I had to stick to their daily diet, I would probably just kill myself. Out of the three, the only person I would share a meal with is you. I also love cooking. I cook daily and sometimes experiment with new recipes.

I cannot imagine my life void of interesting food experiences. Anyway, stay strong. All right, thank you, Sergei. I appreciate that. You two are apparently mutants. Yes. According to that emailer. Well, you know, it's just the way it is, isn't it?

Yeah, everybody's different. If we were all the same, life would be really boring, wouldn't it? Listen, we hold each other to our own standards. I always feel like I am judging, the worst judge of you is yourself, right? And I feel bad when I do things that I consider to be not good. Ex well said Perfect Perfect execution

I was convinced that You know Eating a lot of meat Was not Was not good And I think You know For me mentally

I feel better I think The joy of the The joy of the delicious Taste of a steak Is outweighed by The Feeling of

Guilt That I have Attached to it This is for you Sips Right In 249, Sips was about to tell us about Poop Feast 420's first time watching Indiana Jones before Lewis cut him off. Right.

He said PF 420 sighed at the intro, but never confirmed if he liked the movie or not. Well, he didn't even make it about five minutes into the movie because he said he didn't like, it was it, is it the Columbia Pictures thing at the start of Ghostbusters? Was it at the start of Indiana Jones as well? it looks a bit dated now. I mean, not to me because I'm used to it, but, you know, it looks kind of old. But like, he saw that and then he saw the intro and he just thought like this movie just looks old and boring and then decided that this movie is old and boring.

It was an attention thing because he's a TikTok boy. Yeah. He can't possibly watch a 30 second long credits intro. It has to have like a cold open. Yes. You know, this is it. Oh, my God. That's what it was.

It probably is. Yeah. But no, he just was not interested. at all. I think we watched the whole sequence leading up to the very famous weighing the bag of sand versus the idol and then

running out of the cave with the ball chasing after him and he was just like... Well, you watched that like a clip did you on YouTube? No, we watched, we started watching the movie. I think it was on TV. I was like, oh, you'll love this. It's so good. These are like amazing movies. And we got to the end of that sequence. He was like, I don't know if I want to watch this. Like, I think

He just thought, like, you know, the effects weren't great. Like, the ball does look like a big piece of styrofoam and stuff. And it's just like, he just like, he had no appreciation for it whatsoever. He just didn't want to continue. When you were a kid, older movies, you automatically thought this is going to be shit. But now I've watched loads of older movies, like really quite old movies and some of them are fantastic. A lot of classics.

But when you're a kid, the moment you see black and white, you're like, uh, not watching that. God, when I was a kid though, like, if I look back, there was just nothing else to do. Like it was kind of fucking boring. Like, uh, you know, it was either like, you'd go to the movies because the alternative was standing outside, basically. Like, there's nothing else to do. Yeah, there was there wasn't like we don't have the, we didn't have video games were kind of like up and coming, but they were still kind of like, uh, you know, arcade games that you could just play in your house. You couldn't put the hours in.

You didn't put the hours in. You play them a little bit. You know, friends came over, you'd play them or whatever. But like, it wasn't really until like big RPGs started coming out. Right, right, right, right. I think that's why Wow was so big. I guess so. Because it was like, probably the first game where it's like, oh no, you really can sing.

Yeah, this is my whole life I can spend in this game sort of thing. Whereas like, gaming wasn't really like that before. TV shows, you didn't have streaming services, so you couldn't binge through stuff. You know, you were either watching what was brand new in a drip feed once a week or what was in massive syndication, which was at the time, like Simpsons, Seinfeld, whatever. You could watch those on demand pretty much any time. But I mean, you know, there's only so much of that stuff you're going to watch anyway, right? Like it was just on in the background most of the time. And other than that, it was just going.

like you'd go to the mall and walk around i didn't have we didn't have money so you're just walking around the mall hoping that you'd bump into somebody who had something fun to do or like i said you'd be outside hanging around like in your front yard or in your neighborhood with other people who were bored uh and then occasionally he was like let's go to the movies oh my god yeah i don't even care what we're going to see like just anything but this and then you went so it was like i don't It's different now. For sure. That's fair. But I think there's like there's no sort of like tolerance for even giving something a chance now, right? Because on the internet, everything is immediately reviewed. Everything is is immediately decided if it's good or bad or worth your time or whatever. So there, you know, no, I feel like my kids especially aren't going to waste their time trying something, you know, when they when they have all the information that they need right there to say whether something's going to be good or not. Well, this is it. What's changed is like from there not being enough stuff that you either had to watch,

you had to sort of get invested in stuff or like mediocre stuff more. Yeah. Or just be bored, right? But now it's the competition for attention, right? Everything is competing for your attention. Do you play this game or watch this movie or watch this fucking social media shit? There's, I feel like we don't, there isn't boredom in the same sense. there's exhaustion and there's tiresome and there's like the feeling of like,

oh, there's nothing I want to do when you're surrounded by like, a million things to do. A million things to do. Yeah. Piles of things and unplayed games. You know, oh,

don't want to play any games. And you've got like 100 unplayed games on Steam, you know, all these critically acclaimed games you ever paid. Do I mean, that's still exists. Yeah. I mean,

that's just humanity. Like, you know, you can have fucking steak and chips for dinner every day and still hate it, you know, you're obsessed with meat. You're obsessed with meat. Yeah.

He only talks about. meat. It always comes back to meat somehow. It's because you miss it. You know you want it. It's a referential podcast. You want it. You want it.

The reason I said steak was because we talked about it. Because you're hungry, hungry for it. Desperate. Dreaming about it. I am. I'm drooling right now. Hello. I am an aunt living in a village around the Bristol area.

Our ant hill is located right under this total dump of the house. Faulty wiring, mold, walls and flooring, barely holding together, asbestos and almost completely overgrown. Seriously, it's an absolute money pit. I really pity whatever human has to deal with that pile of crap. Anyway, things are going really good in our ant hill. My wife and I have been trying for so many years, and finally she was able to lay some eggs. I'm so excited, really looking forward to being a dad. Plus, the forager guys managed to bring in a bunch of sugar from that house we live under, which will be great for celebrating and feeding the eggs so we know our baby will be strong and healthy. Seriously, things could not be going better for me right now.

It's a huge responsibility, but I know I'll be overjoyed when the egg hatches. I can't wait to experience the life of a father, living to see my kid grow up and become a parent themselves. And becoming a grandfather, I can't wait. I'm so happy. One last thing, my wife came in and told me, it's a boy. We've already decided on your name, Lewis. Amazing. Did you get the ant sugar to kill the ants?

No, I just put some of that powder down in the holes. They're all dead. You kill them all. That email was from Anthony. by the way. Ant. They're dead now. They're all dead now.

Well, Rip, I guess. You should have set up a house and home somewhere else where Hitler wasn't living, I guess. You are Aunt Hitler to those ants. Yes. You realize that, Lewis. Yeah. Yes.

You've done them dirty. You've done them so dirty. This week's sponsor is Shopify. Are you thinking about starting at the business if you've got a really cool idea. Do you make a hat shop? Do you have doubt though? Do you think like, oh no, what am I going to do? How do I make a website? Well, one of those problems is very easy to because Shopify can let you set up a very easy platform full of tools, helpful things and expertise to sell whatever you need to sell. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions

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Right. I don't think you can refer to something as a betwixt, but it just means between. Anyway, in MailBegh 59, you suggest that the cheeky girls would cost a grand for half an hour. With the recent TriForce live-Forest live-out-cheeky-bun's fantasy, perfect for a warmer-backed or intermession entertainment. We talked about this recently when we were talking about the live show, The Cheeky Girls. Okay, I'm looking them up.

This is where we are. You won't find a price list, I tried. I already tried looking for an actual price, and it's just by inquiry. The live show is currently in the phase of production, where we talk about the idea of doing it on the podcast. That is how far along we are. That is not how far along we are. That is how far along you are.

I am much further along than that. Because I know that you two will not contribute anything to the planning or preparation for this. I found it. Hire the cheeky girls, booking agent and contact details. To book the cheeky girls as the speaker for your corporate event function or conference, contact champions, music and entertainment. There you go. Yes.

That's my... I did that. You did. I already did that. I didn't contact them. No, because they're going to cost a lot of money, I'm sure. Well, you don't know until you phone them and find out. I mean, A, I'm not going to phone them.

I'll probably just email them. And B, the chance of us getting them for anything less than, I mean, probably 1,500 quid is extremely low. And I don't think the gag is worth that much. And I also think that as soon as they start playing, do we, are the cheeky girls, I think people will realize, oh, this is going to be a lot longer than I thought it was. Yeah, no, is the we are the cheeky girl's song, the cheeky song, Touch My Bum, is that it? Yeah. Touch my bum. You think the joke is going to.

A big laugh into, oh, we actually have to sit here and listen to this. And then the other song. So this is like 10 minutes. The other song is take your shoes off, apparently. Have you ever heard that one before? No. It just sounds like they got sick of, you know, someone come in to visit them to talk about the Touch My Bum song.

Yeah. And then they were like, we keep asking this guy to take his shoes off. Maybe there's a song in that. Take your shoes off. Apparently there was not. No one knows how that one went. Right. Is it go, please, take your shoes off.

It goes like that. Yeah. It probably is. Yeah. Mostly those songs go like that, right? They have one hit and then all their other songs sound just like the one hit. Yeah. So I have contacted a couple of theaters.

In my experience, what they apparently do is they just do the touch my Bubba song back to back three times. Right. That's their set. When you say in your experience, Did you hire them for like a private party? Maybe, you know. They work for good value. How much were they?

How much were they? How much were they? Can you hire them just to do like a performance in your lounge just like for you? Just like a... I think I actually, I hired them to do some cleaning and stuff for me actually as well. I had some spare. Like the Romeo cleaners from Eurodray. And yeah, it was...

You remember the Romeo cleaner. Sips. I don't remember the Romeo cleaners. The Romeo cleaners with these two German. lads with mustaches who would clean in their underwear and they referred to themselves as the Romeo cleaners. They were like, yes, we've a clean your house for you. And they do it while wearing like tiny, tiny speedos. And they're like they're called the Romeo clears, but they're both really not attractive blocs. Buzzy smugglers. It's really, it was really funny. They were

always on Euro trash anyway. Euro trash was very funny. Yeah. So I spoke with several people who had done live shows, asked them about pricing and about cost and about organization, ticketing, everything. I've spoken to a couple of theaters, been approached by a production company. So, yeah, things are moving along. Right. It is not the- What are the costs looking like here?

I don't want to go into details on the podcast. Very mind, we make about 150 pounds per podcast, according to Lewis. I don't know where he got that number from. It's very low. I can look it up. No, no, no, you don't need to look it up. I'll tell you what, I've actually, here's an email for you, Lewis, when it comes to money. This is a mailbag, Lewis's tax affairs, very concerned in all caps.

This is from an accountant who's very, very concerned. Right, I shouldn't have mentioned. I'm an avid listener of the podcast. I'm also a chartered accountant and plan to fully qualify as a charter tax advisor this summer. I frequently listen while I'm at work. I was revising for my final tax exam whilst listening to the most recent episode, episode 353, and was stunned to hear that Lewis just doesn't file his tax returns. There is no such thing as extensions, unless for serious illness or bereavement.

And Lewis immediately incurs a penalty of £100 for each late filing. In addition, he now incurs additional penalties of £10 per day, starting on the 1st of May 26 for his 2024-25 tax return. He can keep up with all the fines. He does two podcasts a week. That'll cover it. Listen, I think I've paid that 100-pound fine and the fines on top of it every year for the past five. Why don't you just file your tax return?

Well, this year I got a return on my tax. I actually got some money back because I paid too much. Yeah. And you bet your ass I filed that immediately because I knew it was coming back. It was the quickest I've ever filed a tax return. It's just that there's always something that stops my, I have got a problem. professional accountant and we have got accounts people at the Yolkscast who help me with this. It's not like I'm doing it on my own.

Yeah. It's then who are the problem. They don't work in the office. They work out of a phone booth and they don't have briefcases. They have pizza boxes. He doesn't have a briefcase. It's just full of jelly beans. It's a pizza box and it's full of jelly beans.

Yeah. It spills open every once in a while. Yeah, I did get an extension. I told me I could wait. I could wait until. I didn't have to file it until June or something. What can I say? I'm being told this by an accountant who's a professional.

They worked for a big company. It's not like, you know, I pay them. Well, I think it's good that he was very concerned anyway. Like, it's worth mentioning. I understand the concern and the frustration, to be honest. And I've, you know, but I'm getting on top of it. Okay. All right, as long as you're on top of it.

Good. This is from Josh. This is in defense of your aga. Right. Okay. Lewis is Arga. As a proud owner of an arga, I felt behooved to defend these expensive but not overpriced British-built cookers.

If they were a substitute for a regular oven, the price would be ridiculous. But there are a lot more benefits you may not realize. They last a lifetime and add to the property's value. They save money on heating. A gas-fired agaer does not waste a lot of heat that isn't used for cooking, but heats the house. It's also great as a clothes dryer. And any relatively modern aga has a scheduling system where you can reduce the temperature to slumber overnight or on a hot day and holiday mode while you were away,

so as not to be constantly at full temperature. They will add this when converting Lewis's arga to electric. Having three or more ovens and two hobbs allows you to cook multiple items, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, they're expensive, but very unique. Lewis, your thoughts, how's the arga going? Because I spoke to your partner when I was down last week about the argar, and she said that cooking a pizza was an absolute fucking nightmare

because it's never as hot as a regular oven, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's true. you can basically the nice thing about it is you can put frozen food in there and it'll never burn it'll just sort of you know stay it'll it's great to de-frost stuff yeah but she said it's you've got to allow 45 minutes to oven-cook a pizza yeah that's the that's that sounds like this is not working rather than it's an aga problem it sounds like it's just fucked well i think possibly a service would fix it um you know because i think it but it is it is service look the The cargo is a nightmare, P-Flax, but I am, I have booked to upgrade it to electricity,

and so that is going to happen. However, they are going to have to run an electrical, they're going to have to, it's a lot they have to do to get electrified. And it's going to cost me about $4,000 to do just the electrics. God, I'm sorry to hear that. What about heat pumps? Weren't you talking about heat pumps? Yes.

Right, do you want to know all about heat pumps? Because I've had an email from Luke, a tiny penis haver who knows all about them. He knows all about heat pumps. This is my life now. It's so weird that I'm looking at buying a lawnmower. I'm looking at like, you know, I bought like some tools. I bought a drill and like an impact driver and a load of a streamer. Have you got a sledgehammer yet?

You bought a striker. I haven't. I was thinking about getting a sledgehammer actually because I need to have you bought a power washer yet. No. I have looked at those as well. Yeah. Because I need some. I was thinking of just getting a guy in.

Power washed our garden. And we paved it with like paving stones, like kind of, they're sort of Mediterranean-style paving stones they were listed as. They're quite nice because the nature of the houses around here, you can't really have a lawn. So we didn't want an astro turf lawn. So we just put down some nice paving stones and that way we can have like, you know, garden table and stuff like that. And every year, power washing the garden and getting all the sort of mold that grows up over

the winter when there's wet and there's leaves on there. It's very satisfying. I need to do that. It's a lot of fun. But I'm really scared of getting dirt up all on the walls of my house. Yeah, well, don't worry about that. You can just blast it off with the power washer. Anyway, you power wash away from the house.

Okay. That's the key. So you sort of stand with your back to the house and power wash away. They need to like wear like proper waders and watch your stuff because you get soaked. Just don't. No, no, no. Not at all. No.

No. By the way, so I had an email corrected me on my pronunciation of Karcher, which I was talking about the Karcher like window cleaning thing or you can get a carcher, power washer. How did you pronounce it? I said, Karcha, it's Karsha, sorry. And the landing in the email, in correcting me, said that the CH is pronounced like the word Reich. And I thought, why would you go to Reich, like the third Reich as your, here's how to pronounce it.

He's Austrian. They can't help themselves. Yes, this is to pronounce Kasha, like the Shire. I see, Reich! Calm down. This is heat pumps. This is from Luke. He bought a house.

this is the heat pump situation. These are the different ones you can get, okay, Lulu. Propane heat pumps, which are good for previously oil-fired houses as they reach a higher temperature, which might be needed for the tiny pipes used to deliver the heat to radiators in an oil-fired, yes. Can handle less well-insulated houses a bit better. However, they need to be placed away from windows, which is why... What is he talking about?

A propane heat pump. That's a thing. I thought the whole point of a heat pump was that it would either extract heat from the air, the ground or water, not propane. That's just a gas boiler. Next. Geothermal. What's the next one?

High upfront investment, but high efficiency. The house needs to be pretty big for it to pay off. So that's a ground source. We call that a ground source heap up. Carry on. Return air. Cheap and efficient, especially when paid with other ventilation and heating solutions.

It needs a well-sealed house with good ventilation. An air source heat pump. Standard. It doesn't need a well-sealed head. Standard is good solution for most use cases. Standard? Yeah, I learned that nowadays you can get quite easily one that can handle both heating of water and air,

but as you previously spoken about it, it most likely needs a bit of re-insulation. All right, Luke, you're wrong. This guy's talking shit. Lewis has done far more looking into this than you have. He genuinely have. And he knows a lot more than you do. And he knows a lot more than you do. Heat geek, he's talking to heat geek, Luke.

Who have you fucking talked to? Exactly. Exactly. And they've come out and they've had a look around my house. You've been visited by a heat geek? Yeah. Nice. These, they were really nice lads.

And they actually filmed a bit of my house and filmed talking to me as well. But I don't think that will go out for a while because they, if I carry on with the process, they're going to make it into like a video, I think, like the installation stuff. Because I've got, I was doing quite a big old house and it's got like an oil leak out the back garden. It's like, I don't know, it's interesting. And I was like talking about, talking to them about why I wanted to sort of change over from. Because at the moment, the whole house is powered by oil, right?

The hot water, even in summer, I'm going to be burning oil to fucking, yeah, have a shower. That feels crazy. It does feel crazy. Yeah. Just get a boiler. What's the deal? I don't understand. Just get a boiler.

Electric boiler. No, a gas boiler. It's like, just get that. Get a gas boiler. Well, then you get an electric one. I can't, I don't have gas connected. I'm in the countryside. Oh, you don't have a gas.

Gas is like a combi boiler, right? Or you can get like, you can get like an oil-fired one. Can you find it? Amazing. There's no natural gas coming to your house. Well, no, but not, not down my road. I mean, I'm in the country. Well, you know, they could just fucking send bags of it to you.

Dig up the road and put gas pipes down the whole road. Put it in a bag. Put that in a bag. Put it in a bag. So anyway, I'll keep you updated on the heat pump process. You clearly know what you're talking about. I've had these guys come around and it was very nice. And they know what they're talking about.

And I know, it sounds like I know far more about this than whoever that was he wrote. Yeah, exactly. That goes a bozo. All right, this is from Kyle. I'm sorry, he's not a bozo. Thank you for your email. He hates you. I was in my local Asthma branch earlier and the kiosk.

Now my arched-ed-eat-be. I saw someone in front of me buy 202 pounds worth of Lucky Dip lottery tickets. No way. I can't even fathom how desperate you need to be. Didn't even ask for a receipt, nor did she bat an eye. What's something you've seen someone excessively purchase in person? I've seen people buy lots and lots of bottled water before. If you go to Costco, there'll sometimes be people that are just buying water.

There is a fascinating thing that happens with the difference between doing stuff in real life and paying for stuff in cash, because I had to pay a guy who mowed my lawn $200 quid in cash, right? $200 for a loan loan. Jesus Christ. It was more than that. But it was there for the whole fucking day. Anyway, it was definitely worth it. God, I would have paid him more for the amount of work he did.

And I was just thinking in terms of like, you know, you see someone buy $200 lottery tickets and you think, damn, what's wrong with that person? But people are dropping $200 quid like it's nothing on apps or like some in-game currency or some or these online casinos on your phone or like sports betting. Like 200 quid on your phone is if you're having to do 200, you know, I think the nice thing about physical gambling is that at least you're aware kind of. of how much you're spending because it's sort of very, you get the chips, you get the tickets, you know,

you're notified of what's happening, you know. Yeah. I mean, I love that energy of buying 200 scratches and,

you know, hoping for the fucking best. No, these were lucky dip lottery tickets. What is that? You just, so if you go and buy a lottery ticket,

you can say, Lucky Dip, and they just randomize the numbers for you. Oh, right. Oh, I see. You don't have to choose your numbers.

Right. So I always do lucky dip. Like when I do the regular lottery or the national, or the Euro millions, I always just do two lucky days. But then when the show happens, you have to sit down and go through every single one of those 200.

How do you know which tickets you've got? So you can take them back and they will scan them for you to tell you if you've won. So you can just give them in and they'll just go beep, beep, beep, beep. And it'll be like, no, no, no, no. And if you win, confetti shoots out of everywhere or something. I don't know. But either way, yeah, you can scan them. Or you can just check them.

You can scan them with your phone if you've got an app. He could be part of a work syndicate where people, put money in and they buy a bunch of tickets to try and win. I always buy two because I know it sounds silly. You do double your chances. Apparently it goes from one in 14 million to one in seven. So there you go. One in seven million, I should say.

That sounds much more reasonable. One in seven million. Yeah, much more likely. Exactly. So what was the question? Have we seen someone buy something mental? Yeah. Not really.

No, I haven't been outside much. I don't really go anywhere. Yeah, I don't know if I've seen anybody buy like tons of stuff. like an excessive amount of, I remember one time I went to the co-op. Do you remember the co-op used to have like a value range and the packaging was very simple, it was just like white and yellow.

I've never been to a co-op. Packaging, right, okay. Well, they used to have a value range and it was just called co-op value. And the packaging was like very, very dumb down. It was just yellow. It would just say co-op value. And you could buy all sorts of stuff,

like tin beans, whatever. And I saw a guy. who I remembered he owned like a small business locally. And I didn't know him to like stop and say hi to him or whatever. But I saw him in the co-op and his shopping cart was just completely full of like co-op value stuff. Like it was so yellow. It was like blinding like because of all the packaging in his car.

And I just remember thinking, holy shit. Like I hope his business is okay. That's a lot of value stuff from from the co-op in one shopping cart. So that's my experience with somebody buying a lot of something. I feel like that kind of thing tends to happen when someone discovers like a little arbitrage hack where they're like, okay, this is really cheap and cheaper than it should be. And I can buy enough to run my restaurant. Do you mean, I sell this many beans at the restaurant?

This is cheaper than going to the wholesaler or whatever, right? So that's why I'm here. And I think it gives you a little bit of a kick when you feel, when something like, that happens, you know, when you feel like an opportunity like that. It's quite, it's like you're playing the game properly. Yeah, yeah. It's rewarding to find these little loophole, these little things that work, you know? Yeah.

You can't not do it. No, yeah. I do sometimes think how wasteful we all could be if we wanted to be on these types of things. Do you want to be more wasteful? No, but how easily and how nothing's stopping us. Oh, yeah. The whole system is set up for you to be wasteful.

It wants you to be wasteful. shit. You know, you could just order garbage. Yeah. Constantly. If you don't, if people aren't wasteful and don't order a shitload of crap, capitalism kind of falls over, to be honest with you. You need people to buy disposable crap these days. That's how it all works. This is from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous. You were talking, Lewis, about freedom of information. From a council perspective following episode 70 of the mailbag,

Lewis said about a freedom of information department usually would be handling F-O-I requests. Though they do exist, it usually gets passed onto the department it relates to to provide the answers, i.e. number of pot holes would go to highways. Some of it is just busy work people give us, and unfortunately a lot of hoops have to be jumped through at times in order to decline an F-O-I. So usually if you can provide the information, it's easier to just do it. That being said, there is a clause that if it would take over 18 hours, I believe, of work to obtain the data or the you're allowed to decline. Working with FOIs soon makes it that FO and I become your least favorite letters of the alphabet because, at least in my case, our department pretty much

drops everything in order to get the answer sent out and get it out of the way. So, yeah, wasteful FOI requests, very tedious for the departments involved. Interesting. Yeah. The 18 hours thing is good advice though, because that means that you should, when you put your F-O-I requests in, you should put multiple small ones in rather than one large. Something big and tedious, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Follow-up requests, this is from Charlie.

This is for you, Lulu. In a previous episode, you once declared your willingness, Lewis, to plant a redwood tree upon acquiring your own property. Now that his dream of the cover a property, could you please confirm whether the redwood tree initiative is underway? Well, it is a very glamorous. idea, isn't it, to plant a redwood. I did notice

some pictures of my house from when I moved in, because I found an old survey in the loft, and it's amazing some of the trees that they planted, the extent to which they've grown. So there's like a vegetable patch, right, which, and I was always like, why is this vegetable patch here? Because it's so

shady. It's like, it gets no light at all. But obviously, 20 years ago, it did, but they planted these fir trees along the road, and they have grown like so much. Now, I don't know whether they were supposed to be, and probably were supposed to be continually cut to a certain length

to make them into a nice fir bush or whatever. I don't know how things work with horticulture, but they certainly have not been, and they are gigantic. And so, yeah, I think, like, it doesn't take long for nature to reclaim the place. But yeah, I do still like the idea of a big, redwood tree somewhere in my garden. I've got, it's very glamorous. It's a very old country house thing to do, right? Yeah. So yeah, I'll think, I haven't planted it yet. In fact, I haven't planted anything in the garden yet. I've really

trying to be trying to tackle. So this guy I hired to come around, he basically took a rough cut mower, which is like a seven grand beast. It looks like a little car. And he just drove it around the garden and cut everything down. It was like waist height. You know, you see sometimes on the grass. You see, like this little clover or something, right? Yeah. A little spiky, brambly, weird thing in the grass. And it's like, you know, the size of your thumb. Yeah.

Imagine if you let that thing grow for five years and it becomes like a waist-high hydra. Oh, yeah. These things look like they were nuts. And so, yeah, he went over it with this rough cupboard, and it completely transformed the whole garden into, but while he was going around, I would occasionally hear from the house, this crunching and banging. where he'd hit something, like a stone or a brick or a paving slab or an old breeze block

or something that was in the garden, I mean, and he sort of was like, God, there was a lot of shit under there. So I went through and I've been clearing out the garden of old logs. But he did an amazing job trying to get into the corners. And he really, it was like the garden's like three times as big as I realized because of all the stuff he cut back. It's a fun journey. but it has made me

the first step is to identify what the fuck is going on you know there's like old just get rid of the old sheds get rid of the old all the rubbish you know I've been just my days I've spent just carrying stuff to the front of the house

I don't really want to hire a guy and just say to him can you move all this shit from this pile to this skip because I feel like you can do that you should just do that it's much cheaper than you think

you man with a like rubbish clearance garden clearance hump and dump lift and shift those are some classics it's given me a reason to be outside in the sunshine

and to shirk all my responsibility sunshine we got hail the other day that was so much it woke me up from my nap and I also I woke myself up

so two weird things I woke myself up farting the other morning it was such a big fart I woke up and Mrs. F was laughing and putting her makeup on the mirror

and I was like what's happening and I also, I woke myself up yesterday talking in my sleep and I was saying, yeah, boy, like Vincily Harriet. Yeah, boy.

I was like, yeah, boy, I woke myself up. I was like, why am I saying that? Oh, that's good. I know. I know. I've got to go, lads, so we're going to have to call it there,

but, uh, thanks for all your mails. Keep them coming. Let me say, I've had to go. Yeah, my. Yeah, boy. I had to go back to April

to find any good emails. Up your fucking game listeners, all right? Stop sending in dogs. shit. All the way back to April. You know who you are. Stop sending in shit.

Get back to the good stuff, please. The good stuff. Like it used to be. Yeah. Don't be sending in the shit that you've been sending in lately. It's been very poor quality the last two weeks. I basically couldn't use any of it. You know who you are.

Stop it. Damn. Anyway, on that bombshell. Yes. Well, the poor listeners. The poor man, you want to be careful. Lewis, we've been here before. Lewis, we've been here before.

I read you the bad emails and you made me stop and you edited it out of the podcast, it was so bad. So don't question me on being the editor for the podcast for the mailbag episodes. Because I'm telling you that it's just people know what they're doing. They're sending in Wank. You're calling me and Hitler. We'll have to do an episode again. You're like Mailbag Hitler.

Run down how to write an email to get in the mailbag. Don't make it 80% qualifications of how long a listener you've been and how much you love Lewis and Sips. I'm skipping all that. And then it's just, what's your favorite movie? Keep those ones up. Stop sending those. Stop sending those. Don't listen to Sips, please.

Come on, I need that. I need to be in the doors. I can read some Sips glazing emails. We can do a special. What if they glaze you more? They never glaze me. And if they did, it goes straight in the bin. Oh, right.

Whoa. Okay. Keep the emails coming, but increase the quality. Yes. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. Goodbye.