Triforce! - Triforce! Mailbag Special #41: We're in the wrong job!
Episode Date: November 14, 2024Triforce Mailbag Special 41! What's it truly like to live the Cruise Ship Life? How does Ali-Express possibly make any money? What happened to Public Toilets? Have we wasted our time making Triforce w...hen we could have been drawing cartoons?! 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
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The mailbag.
Beautiful.
The mailbag.
The mailbag.
Beautiful.
The mailbag.
The mailbag. The mailbag. The mailbag. The mailbag.. Once again.
I love that rendition. Yeah, that's a good one.
Of the classic male back tune.
It's beautiful.
One of the best.
All right, let's dive straight into it.
This is this is an email about airport security.
This is airport security.
My dad's Airport Disappearing Act finally adds up.
As a kid, I usually went on holiday once a year with each parent they were divorced.
With my dad, it was always an odd experience.
He would always disappear in the airport, arriving again once I'd gotten on the plane,
sometimes even late, where the plane had to wait.
He would always just say, be right back, going to blah blah blah blah blah.
I never really noticed this was odd when I was super young.
It was just always that way.
And I thought it was kind of cool
I could make my own way to the plane.
But as I got older, I think, why does he always do this?
One day we were going on holiday, I was 19.
This time I knew what was coming
and I was finding out what on earth he was always doing.
So he tries his move.
I go, no, I'll just come with you.
He tries to talk his way out of it
and eventually he just knew that I knew something was up.
So he just gives in.
We walk through the airport together.
I scan my passport.
It flashes green and the doors open.
My dad scans his.
Boom! Red alarm goes off and he says, I'll see you on the plane.
The alarm goes off, security comes out and drags him off.
He explains himself later.
Turns out my dad used to smuggle heroin over the border from Africa
and has spent time in jail for it. Later on, this opens him up about his alleged gang affiliations,
my granddad being a gangster from Africa, apparently worth millions, and my granddad's
brother being a historical figure now. My grandma is the one who ran the UK brothels for him. My
other UK family members turn out to have records too for similar things.
So every time he disappeared he didn't want me to see him getting dragged off and being
late was just it taking longer, so the plane had to wait.
It's also why we couldn't go to certain countries.
It all makes sense.
Oh my god.
That moment where you finally realise, like in The Usual Suspects, did you drop your coffee
mug on the ground and look around,
and it all started to add up.
Wow.
I kinda didn't know what I was expecting, right?
Like with that.
I sort of thought it would be something more...
I wasn't expecting major gang affiliations.
Especially major African gang affiliations.
That was not at the forefront of my mind.
In my head it was more like a thing where he was going off to put money in those fruit
machines or whatever.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Or he was friends with people in the airport security and he just went to have a coffee
with them or something.
He couldn't bring his son.
Yeah, I don't know, maybe he just had to take it, maybe he was really scared of flying and
he needed to take a really big shit or something.
And I thought it was just gonna be something slightly embarrassing rather than like, a
reasonably good reason.
I mean, I guess in a lot of ways that is kind of embarrassing as well, right?
Like, you know, your checkered past and your son that you didn't want to find out about it, finding out about it.
Interesting. I just, I think it was hard to guess, but yeah.
Thank you.
Let's move on. Yeah. Cheers. That was a good one.
Keeping names anonymous on that.
No. Yeah.
Here's another one. Um, hello.
My shit superpower, which we spoke about in a previous episode is that I wear hearing aids and I have a microphone that connects to them via Bluetooth.
I can leave this microphone in a room nearby and as long as it is still connected, I can
listen in on conversations.
Wow.
While training in my current job, I'd accidentally did it one time and found out that my colleagues
were saying I was doing well, but needed to develop one aspect.
When I met with them later on, I made out that I want to develop that aspect, making myself look good. All the best.
Yeah, that is a good superpower, actually. That's concerning as well. Now I'm thinking of all the
times I was in a room talking to somebody and if somebody left their Bluetooth hearing aid in there
and I was saying, you know, like, oh man,
my gang affiliations and all the brothels I ran.
ALICE I don't know whether that's just spying, though.
SEAN It is kind of spying, yeah.
ALICE I mean, you could develop that superpower by, you know, leaving, you know, gluing a little camera
in the corner of the room or something, you know?
I suppose, I mean, I suppose it's a bit like, if you think about Batman, he doesn't have
any superpowers.
He's rich and smart and physically capable.
He doesn't have any superpowers.
Technology aids him though.
Yeah.
And there is some sort of mystical quality to some of his technology, or maybe that's
just from being rich.
But...
I think he's meant to be a wealthy genius.
He's the world's greatest detective dude.
No, he is, absolutely.
But that's not a superpower.
Because there is a living person...
What, Bruce Wayne is the greatest detective?
Famously, he's known as the world's greatest detective.
I know it doesn't feel that way.
He cracks every case pretty much.
Ben told me this, right, when we were doing the Batman games night video, because I was
just like, I didn't realise that that was supposed to be a thing.
I thought he was like, you said, P-Flax, like a kind of rich playboy.
No, no, no.
He does detective work.
That's what I liked about the Batman, the Robert Pattinson Batman, was he actually does
some fucking detective work in it.
He doesn't just catch people unawares and get jumped by baddies and do action shit.
He's like solving a case.
Get out the way.
I'm going to spray my little bat spray over here and see if there's any blood residue.
Art lit up.
That means there was DNA here.
Let me get my bat scanner out.
So I can scan the DNA.
Bat crime lab.
And bat testing from crime lab.
Give me a bat latte, please.
With bat oat milk.
Or just bat milk.
Jesus.
They are mammals, so they must be bat milk.
You could probably milk them.
That's probably gonna be the new thing, isn't it?
Bat milk.
I reckon that'll be it.
You're gonna have to change one letter on the packaging for oat milk to make it bat
milk, so.
Easily done.
I feel like that's going back towards...
Yeah.
No, but they just, you just put a load of...
They hang upside down in a cave.
If the bats are lactating, maybe it just drips off.
It's like it would have gone to waste otherwise.
Yeah, exactly.
You just lay a load of tarps down in a cave.
You catch a load of bat milk.
Mmm, delicious.
Right.
This one's called You Cruise You Lose?
Thought I would share the below story of a cruise ship called the Odyssey, run by Villa
V Residences, because we spoke about living on cruise ships previously.
That should have set sail for around the world voyage in May, but has been stuck in Belfast
due to issues with paperwork and mechanical failures.
It's just about to set off.
It's at sale on Monday, the 30th of September.
So it just set off only return only to report.
Turn to put the same day with further issues.
So supposedly it will set sail for good this week.
But it seems that people have been waiting in Belfast for around four months.
Yeah. Once they once it set sales, it's out.
It's it's sailing for like a year.
No, it's not.
It's going to sail for a week. It'll it's not. It's gonna sail for a week.
And it'll stop somewhere else, and it'll stop there for four months.
And this is how they extend the tour.
I reckon this is how they save on fuel.
But these are people that have invested in residences on board.
Forever.
They will live on these cruise ships forever now.
Instead of a retirement home, or instead of...
Yeah. I see.
There's a couple that use the four months to really pick out their room.
So this is like a fucking trailer. It's like a...
It's like a big trailer, yeah.
It's like living in a big RV, I guess.
It's like mass producing a residence in a factory, right? And then shipping it out where
it's needed. It's like making houses in China China and just shipping people off around the world.
It's like, where's the cheapest fuel? Where's the cheapest ports to stay in?
You can just like, bimble around.
You get the same trappings of a cruise ship though. Your meals are all included,
you have to pay extra for alcohol or whatever. There's activities on board that are kind of all included.
You can pay to do like excursions or whatever if you want to.
So it's a three year tour.
How do they handle post?
There are some things that you still need to get physical copies of.
They just send it to, like, what is your address?
How do you post things to a cruise ship?
If anybody knows, let me know.
Well, what do you live on this?
What do you really need though?
Like what, um, like maybe, I mean, most things like bank statements and stuff,
you are accessible online.
You don't need to have the mailed anymore.
Um, it would only be for health, um, stuff, but, but that's another question
as well, what happens if you get sick?
They go to Drumble.
No, but really sick.
Like what if you-
I think they drop you off at a hospital.
Oh, right.
Like, at a port, they're going to.
Where?
Or, yeah, wherever.
We've just stopped in Belize to go find the hospital.
But there are some things like wills, property stuff, and lots of legal stuff, you still
need physical copies.
ALICE Okay, here's my speculation.
This is not true.
I reckon the cruise ship will give you an address, and that will be sent to their office,
and then they probably collect that in the ports that they're going to periodically.
RILEY I think you're right.
ALICE But also, I suppose if you, if you stop at a port in your, the country that you currently
have citizenship in, you could, you know, if it, if it stops there for like a week,
then you could just, you know, get off, pick up your mail and prime.
Yeah.
Order some stuff, go to the doctor, do all this.
Can they have a satellite for internet on board?
I guess they do.
They have to.
Yeah, they must do. They're probably using shit. Wi-Fi. What thing are you going to get when you're playing for internet on board? I guess they do. They have. Yeah, they must do.
They're probably using.
I bet it's a shit wifi.
What ping are you going to get when you're playing Dotes on board a ship?
Fuck that.
Yeah, but it's all it's all it's all boomers, man.
They're not playing Dotes on board.
Oh God.
Damn shame.
It's that generation.
They're in their Skyrim grandma.
They're in their final years.
That's where she's doing her YouTube videos from.
Alright, this is from Alex.
This is called Tupperware at the local fair.
I love that.
Showed up at the state fair here in my hometown in the US
and thought it was interesting to see this booth
front and center after the recent news.
It's not an important picture.
It's just a small picture of a Tupperware stand.
So it's got all this Tupperware with a little Tupperware branding at the front.
Is it brand new?
No. So we spoke about how Tupperware was going bust.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's gone bust.
So, well, now hold on.
I was joking with my wife that I felt the need to buy something as it was the end of an era.
I was then approached by the lady who was at the store, who was all too happy to inform me of the difference
between bankruptcy and going out of business.
She told me they were filing for bankruptcy to address mismanagement of finances in the
past so they could make changes and bounce back stronger than ever.
My wife and I laughed and went on our way.
Little did she know she'd lost a sale.
But yeah, fair enough.
But the point is, I suppose they're restructuring.
Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean Tupperware's gone, it just means that someone else will
come in, because it's a big brand, I think someone would buy it.
I think even, I get that there's a difference, but I think that when you're at that point,
the bounce back is nearly impossible.
Like I think, I think they're just trying to salvage the unsalvageable at this point.
I think it's doomed to, uh, to,
Do you think it's just because of the rise of cheap alternatives, you know, cheap,
Yeah, maybe they just didn't keep up with like the, you know, technology as well.
There's like some pretty good, you know, there's some pretty, there's some other big brands
that have sort of come in and taken over some of their space, if not all of their space, and Tupperware seem to not have really done much since...
Yeah, are they still making the same shit?
I'm gonna look up Tupperware.
They must have a website.
Do you think also, like, there's this fear now of...
You know how, like, okay, plastics are in everything, obviously, and our brains are
full of plastics and everything we eat are full of plastics, and everything
we eat is full of plastics, and we eat plastic microwave meals and plastic in microwaves...
Tupperware's all plastic as well, yeah.
And everything you're eating is plastic, plastic, plastic, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Do you think people are starting to, I'm not saying everyone, but like middle class, upper
middle class, Cliftonite families, from Bristol, you know, are they the kind of people who
are like, oh, we don't use Tupperware anymore, the plastics, I'm worried about little Timmy getting plastics
in his brain, you know, so I wrap everything in a naturally sourced fibre from the local
forest which me and my husband collect in the leaves, we wrap everything in leaves.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, there's definitely people like that.
But on the flip side of that, there's people who just really don't give a fuck.
I don't know.
I'm looking here at the Tupperware website, Tupperware UK, and it's a great time to buy
Tupperware.
It's all, everything is on sale.
Yeah.
Their product list is only 10 items long.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, for example, the fridge smart. They did not diversify. Do they still have that green bowl?
I know I don't see that this is this is a very limited
The green this is a very limited. I'll get a picture for you
Just wait fridge smart the three-piece starter kit was
63 quid for three bits of Tupperware. Now down to 20 quid.
The Bread Smart Junior, which is a thing for holding bread.
They've knocked a tenner off that price.
They've knocked 30 quid off the Bread Smart bundle.
There is a premium eco bottle.
This just a water bottle.
Twenty seven quid now down to nine.
I think the pricing was a big problem because you could definitely get
containers cheaper than this.
This is crazy expensive.
This is an image of the Tupperware vintage fix and mix bowl.
Green bowl.
Yeah, look at that.
I think every family had one of these in the 80s.
This is some iconic shit.
Yeah, look at that.
We've got something very very similar to that.
Flat on the bottom, and then yeah, curved.
It's slightly different to this, but it's that kind of family.
ALICE Oh, I totally, I see what you mean, yes. It's
that opaque plastic with the slightly rubbery, though isn't it, tupperware. You know, it's
got a kind of bendable...
ALICE This is the one I remember, it was like...
We never had that one.
ALICE This one is more like a deeper, I don't know,
slimline bowl or something?
It's kinda hard to explain.
This is a vintage green Tupperware bowl.
ALICE I guess I wanna know what plastic it is, these days.
You know?
What rubber it is.
ALICE I think it's just the standard plastic.
RILEY It's plastic.
ALICE It's plastic.
RILEY You know, plastic.
ALICE That's plastic.
RILEY It's all the same, innit?
ALICE It's all plastic, baby.
ALICE They talk about bisphenol-A and all these other things, right?
It's all names, so we don't know what the fuck it is.
This is Tupperware, a company that has ten items on their product page and hasn't diversified
since the 1980s.
They use just plastic.
Whatever the basic plastic is, that's the one they're using.
I think they're just overpriced and fairly limited range.
Sometimes you see a, and I like this, right?
Sometimes you see like a cyclist with some massive, there's like some cyclists in Bristol
like pulling these giant wagons behind them.
And it's like emission free deliveries.
And I'm like, great.
You know, but at the same time there's like like, yeah, the amount of, the amount of cars
being made, I saw like a container ship coming in with like a hundred, a hundred thousand
cars.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
I'm like, I'm like this.
Maybe they were all electric cars.
I don't know.
Just like, and I guess like it feels like, I don't know.
There's such
a lot of waste, right?
Like I bought something from AliExpress the other day, just to see if I could get it.
So we do like games night staff, we do Lego, we were looking at doing, cause there's some
weird Lego you can get, right?
That's not official with like soldiers and stuff.
And so I wanted to buy some from AliExpress and I thought, fuck, you know, we'll give
it a go.
And so I ordered it and this
was like two or three months ago I ordered it and it finally arrived and it's just, it
cost me nothing. It cost me like three quid or something and it's all this fucking Lego.
It'd be like 50 quids with the Lego. And because it was later than a month or whatever, they
gave me my money back. And so I got all this Lego for free and I'm like, God, It's like, it's just the amount of plastic it was wrapped in and plastic pollution and
it had to come all the way from China.
I just felt like terrible about it.
I just wonder, like, the margins for these companies must be fucking razor thin.
For some of this stuff, absolutely.
How can it be worth it?
For them to manufacture this stuff?
To then package it, to ship it?
Yeah, well, I mean, they're depending on volume, but that's never guaranteed.
Yeah, but the volume on AliExpress, if you're selling the same thing as everyone else, how
much are you making?
I don't know.
I mean, any of these companies that sell something that's like a quid, you think, how can it
be?
You've got to get the resources.
You've got to turn them into whatever it is that they used to make it.
It doesn't seem worth it to sell anything for one round.
Like the moulds, the labor, the transport costs,
because they're going to have to take it to some depot.
The depot takes it to the port.
The port loads it onto a ship.
The ship takes it to another.
It's like all these logistics.
How much is anybody making off this stuff?
Like it's just bonkers.
When you like you said, when it's volume, I assume it scales and you're fine. If I order one small thing from one small company in
China, and it arrives here, how much are we really making here, folks? Is this surely?
Yeah, but you're not you're not doing that though, realistically, you're just you're ordering a lot
of stuff at one level. No, but I mean, if you're a retailer or whatever, if you're,
if you're buying all this stuff, the people who are making it,
you're paying, you're, you're, you're paying to have it shipped to you, right?
You're buying it from the manufacturer. And so they, so for them,
if their cost to make something is like five P per unit,
but they're selling it to you for a pound and they're making a ton of money because their involvement is limited, right? All they do is make it.
You buy it from them and then it's up to you.
That's like, if I'm a toy store or a chain of toy stores and I buy a shitload of this
toy.
Yeah. You buy a shitload of this toy for one pound and then you ship it all over in one huge container, which is going
to cost you far less.
And then you're distributing out all of that stuff to like your 300 stores and you're selling
them for like 10 quid a piece.
You're not talking about scale.
Yeah, but I'm not talking about scale.
Like, obviously that's how that works.
I'm talking about Lewis buying one small pack of Lego.
It's not like they waited until thousands of people in Britain had all bought the same
kind of Lego and then did it. Maybe that's what the delay was?
I've kind of seen this shit before though. You look on eBay or Etsy or Amazon even, and
they'll be selling like one fucking minifigure on there for like four pounds or whatever, right? Or you look on any Amazon thing,
like anything, like I think I talked about this before, like a dog grooming kit or whatever,
right? You look on there on Amazon and it'll be, there'll be 20 of different named ones,
different coloured ones, they all look the fucking same, but they're all called like,
oh, flimmy or a rimbus or whatever the fuck they Thumbnails, right? And they're all the same.
But then you go on Aliexpress and you realise that you can buy 50 of these for a pound,
right?
And they're just being upsold on Amazon.
As in, there's so much potential for that, and there always has been.
Where people just...
What do they call that?
Amazon... there's an Amazon...
Dropshipping or something it's called.
I can't remember what it's called.
Yeah, something like that.
But it's something like that.
But basically the idea is that, like, the problem is that it took three months to fucking arrive,
right?
It's not responsive.
It's like, you throw in your orders on AliExpress for nothing, fucking roll the dice.
Sometimes you'll be given an absolute shitload of stock, and then I guess you could just
try and fucking shift it on Etsy and maybe double your money straight away in the first
sale.
Because, you know, it cost you fuck all.
And you got a refund because it was delivered to you.
You didn't do that. You bought it from China.
I have seen a lot of shit on eBay and Etsy and on these places, which is like, oh look
at this, clearly not actually Lego, but it's the Lego set and it's like way fucking cheaper.
Grego. That's Greg Wallace's line of Greggo. And part of me doesn't wanna buy it.
Greggo.
Greggo.
Greggo.
Aw man.
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Alright, next up, public toilets.
Oh, Christ.
I was listening to the latest mailbag where you briefly mentioned public toilets disappearing
and thought I'd share...
We are such old men lamenting the decline of public toilets.
Yes, but these are young people.
Where is me?
Where is YonderPatron supposed to defecate?
It doesn't matter how old you are, you need a toilet.
And when they're all gone, you're gonna be like, what the fuck?
We live in a society and there's no toilets.
A toilet-free society is no one's friend.
It's like a cashless, toiletless society.
We're moving towards a digital society.
If you want to take a shit, you have to do it digitally.
You have to do it on your phone.
An AliExpress toilet will be shipped to you.
Oh my god.
Dropshitting.
The thing is, you say we're old people, dropshitting is good, but these are emails from young people
bemoaning the state of things as well.
So I'm just saying, we're just the voice of the people, whatever your age.
And this is it.
I work for a local authority, which about six years ago had the idea to remove the public
toilets from a district centre as part of a revamp of the high street.
This was due to the relentless complaints about drug use
and rampant sexual encounters taking place there and not due to the maintenance costs.
Right.
Spring forward to today and the black country is currently being flooded with government funding.
The black country, by the way, is like the Midlands. Okay, this part of the Midlands,
Wolverhampton, all that area. Currently being flooded with government funding as a result of cancelling HS2, the
high speed rail network. And they are now considering rebuilding these toilets because
they've got all this money. Okay, if they're going to rebuild the toilets, can I just say,
don't build toilets like you did in the 1960s, where you had like a big men's toilet with
cubicles and then a big women's toilet with cubicles,
just build those little individual,
they each have their own door and lock toilets and they have a baby changing thing in it. There's a toilet, there's a sink.
Build like four of those instead of like the big stupid open cubicle toilets.
You know what I mean?
Cause you won't cut down on the drug use.
Okay. People will go in there and lock themselves in and do drugs. There's no avoiding that.
You might cut down some of the sexual encounters and honestly those,
well, I mean, maybe, maybe the, the, uh,
the unwanted sexual encounters, if you have your own room with a door and a lock,
you know, if you're going in there to do some sex or whatever
with somebody, that has to be pre-planned to some extent, right? Between the two people.
Will Barron I guess it cuts down on some of the issues around that.
And also, it's just better for everybody. You need to have those, you know, the individual toilets
with the door and I don't know what they call them, but they're, they're way better.
You see them a lot now at like, uh, newer places.
Like there's a trampoline park here, uh, we'd take our kids to and all
the toilet, there's about 10 of them and they're all like that.
They're just like the individual toilets, each have their own door with a lock.
It doesn't matter what gender you are.
Nothing.
You go in, if there's a free one,
there's baby change. It's fucking perfect. Like just build way more of those and everybody would
be happy. So I think the only issue is with those is they're probably more expensive to build,
is one thing. Second of all, you cut down on the volume. So if you're in an area that you're
expecting a lot of people to want to use the toilet, you might have a problem there where there's just less capacity. Like you're taking up, if you think about let's
take Waterloo station toilets, which is quite a large toilet area. You've got the gents
on one side, ladies on the other. They used to have a turnstile, you had to put 20p in.
I think they got rid of that. But it's a lot of space, a lot of urinals, a lot of sinks and a lot of cubicles.
So that's using that space.
If you convert that into a series of individual rooms, like you're saying, it would be lovely.
But I don't know how much you'd fit in there. Six, maybe eight on each side.
Yeah.
A lot less. So I think from a public service perspective, the government wants to have the cheapest because it's public money and most volume friendly toilets.
I mean, the biggest problem is like, how do you police these?
I get that they want the cheapest because it's public money, but man, they don't fucking
skimp on their wages with public money.
Why can't we get the cheapest fucking MPs as well? Like, you know, if we're going to cut the toilets and stuff, too.
But I don't. It's I find that really annoying.
And pay, remember, they get to vote on their stupid.
They should they should only get paid if they if they build the toilets that I want.
I guess you could just vote them out.
I think that's the answer.
And though they're like cockroaches, man.
They never leave.
It doesn't even matter what they do.
They're always hanging around.
All these people that, you know, they're caught up in controversy and they're shamed and everything.
They're still getting jobs as consultants and all this shit.
And you just think, Jesus Christ, they never fuck off.
You can never fucking get rid of them.
Well, be ready to get annoyed because the emailer who wishes to remain anonymous because
they want to keep their job.
I personally am disgusted with the waste of public sector funds, this isn't isolated,
as the proposal and the demo of the old ones, like the demolition of the old ones, will
probably have cost the council a quarter of a million pounds if not more.
I think instead that we should look at other ways to address issues that bring different
teams and organizations together instead of just thinking about what we can do in our
department.
What are your thoughts?
Obviously you've heard our thoughts.
Yeah.
But they then have some further interesting stories from counselors owning strip clubs.
Yeah.
People stealing roads.
Yeah. I'd love to hear more.
Please do send in those stories.
I want to hear those owning
council clubs. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. I want to hear about that.
That's a new one for the books.
Yeah. Yeah. You don't hear that very often.
This is this is an interesting one called Riyadh Fashion Week.
Dear Triforce, I am a student at uni in London and also work part time as a male model.
This is not as glamorous as it sounds and the work is very infrequent, but I am extremely
grateful and fortunate to be able to do this while at uni rather than work in a cafe or
pub.
I'll try and keep this short, but I wanted to let you know about a bizarre week I had
last October.
Normally the way you get work is by going to a casting or audition and you will get
an email asking if you're available for a job on a certain day.
Right.
If you get the job, you are told through a follow-up email. If you don't, you hear nothing.
Sure.
One such email I received was from my agent and titled Riyadh Fashion Week and detailed a potential week working in the Saudi capital for the inaugural Fashion Week there.
When I saw this email, I laughed and thought nothing of it, as these usually go nowhere.
But to my shock, a week later, I was told I had been confirmed and would be heading to the desert. I felt pretty uneasy
about the whole thing, even going as far as to tell my close friends, other than my partner
and family, that I was instead in Paris, but ultimately decided to go ahead with the trip.
This was the craziest week of my life. Upon arrival at the airport in Riyadh, a man approached me,
telling me he was my driver, despite not knowing my name or me being told about him. I was convinced
he was trying to abduct me. It turns out he was actually my driver, and not knowing my name or me being told about him. I was convinced he was trying to abduct me.
It turns out he was actually my driver and being a few dozen other boys
were shipped off to our hotel.
The hotel is around a mile from the airport, but it would take us
almost an hour to get there as the city's highway roads mean you have to drive
straight for 20 minutes to reach a junction to turn into a different road.
So it's all very straight roads and you just you can't deviate from.
OK, me. Hotel was all normal and everything.
And here are some things that happen at the place the fashion show was happening.
There were vending machines being restocked by a team of five people.
When you took a can, it was replaced in seconds.
Geez. OK.
All of the fashion brands were copies of Western ones
with generic names like noble and Fresh, who on their Instagram
claim the name comes from the ideas of nobility and freshness. This brand was a direct copy
of Zara. One of the looks they put me in had a headscarf, which the designer was anxiously
adjusting as it had been put on my head in a way that looked, quote, too feminine. Right.
We saw Al Nasser, which is a football club play, that's Ronaldo's team, for about £7,
with a ticket bought on the day. Everyone else there was just there to see Ronaldo
and would scream as if he'd been shot whenever he was fairly tackled.
Being unable to drink or smoke, me and some guys I met would just eat McDonald's and smoke
shisha all evening out of boredom. The city had no public transport, but a large monorail was under
construction while we were there. All in all, the people of Saudi Arabia are really great, out of boredom, and the city had no public transport but a large monorail was under construction
while we were there.
All in all the people of Saudi Arabia are really great but the place is bizarre with
strange rules, systems and ideas of how to appeal to Westerners.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Sure, any other stories you've got would be fantastic.
That is such an interesting story and not something that you would hear every day.
The kind of thing that you expect though, doesn't it?
From the very high end kind of Saudi culture, you know?
Yeah.
Because Ronaldo is playing for the Saudi football team?
Al Nasser.
Oh, Al Nasser.
Which is like one of the biggest football clubs in Saudi Arabia.
They pay him.
Do you want to know how much he gets paid?
Yes. Good.
This. All right.
Here is highest paid athletes.
Hold on a sec.
If you really is that is that's how you're going to find this.
This is this is he he earns
260 million dollars a year.
I mean, coincidentally, is how much the MP who is in charge of the toilets at Waterloo
station was was paid as well.
And he just picked the cheapest toilets that money could buy.
Oh, so actually, sorry, this is the list of contracts.
So these are the current largest contracts in the world.
So that was how much he earned.
This is the dollar value of these contracts.
Okay, so Shohei Otani, spoken about him before phenomenal,
probably the best baseball player ever to play the game.
His his salary is worth seven hundred thousand dollars.
Sorry, seven hundred million dollars.
Jesus Christ.
But he only earns two million a year.
But he's got to play like 160 games a year.
Yeah, but he's got a 10 year contract.
He's the best ever.
He just had the best season of all time. He's in the middle of it. He's had a 10 year contract. He's the best ever. He just had the best season of all time.
He's in the middle.
Yeah, but he's had a lot of practice.
He played like 160 games.
I'm sure they're all just.
So oddly enough, he actually only makes, I say only four hundred
and thirty two thousand dollars per game.
Four hundred and four hundred and thirty two thousand per game per game.
Because there's so many games.
But that's a 10-year contract.
It doesn't really mature until the end of the contract when he will get paid annually
a large sum.
At the moment he makes $2 million a year and then they're going to pay it all to him at
the end of the contract.
It's kind of a weird contract.
Anyway.
So he could buy, every time he plays baseball, he could just straight up buy a two-bedroom
apartment in Jersey.
Easy. Yeah, easy. And over the course of a year of 160 games, it's a lot of flats. I
mean, dude, that his so his per game is 432,000. Ronaldo is Al Nusayt contract is $536 million.
That's a two and a half year contract. So he earns seven million per game.
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
That is crazy.
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
So apparently, Ronaldo's presence in Saudi Arabia has been cited to the cultural phenomenon
setting the foundation for numerous top level European league players to move to the Saudi
Pro League, generating mass exposure on Saudi football.
It's revolutionized Saudi Arabian football.
Where'd you read that?
I read it on Wikipedia.
So the thing is, I don't know anyone that watches Saudi football, but I know a lot of
these big name players.
It's not interest.
It's money.
Yeah.
Like Korean, Benzema, all these guys are all, they've had these stellar careers in Europe.
Then they go there for a final payday.
Messi went to America.
Is he there now or has he done it?
Yeah, yeah, he's still there.
He's still there playing for Miami.
Oh, wow.
But yeah, it's why not?
It's a huge payday.
I mean, it dwarfs their earnings to that point.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Is it sustainable? Surely not.
No, not really. I think it's
it's weird, though, like America, Saudi Arabia, like these leagues,
they must be popular, somewhat popular in their home countries.
I know, the tickets are seven quid a pop according to that.
Yeah, I still don't even really know how big, you know, like European football is in America,
if at all, because it's...
Oh, I think the premier league is quite big.
You think?
Yeah.
I mean, in terms of viewing numbers.
Steven Gerrard is managing Al Etifak.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just money, isn't it?
Wayne Gerrard is managing a club.
I think it was an English club though.
Derby County.
That's right.
Yeah.
I think he's Plymouth now.
Sounds more like a hobby thing than a money thing.
I think he was getting paid the half a billion a year like Renell.
No, not at Plymouth.
Oh my God.
So here is one. This is dumbest injury sustained in bed.
Okay. We're moving on. Thank God.
We're moving on. This is fascinating.
Fascinating word out there, isn't it? Honestly.
Yeah. God, there's so much happening. Yeah.
I wanted to share my story of how I sustained an injury in bed.
This was alone.
I hesitate to ask to mention.
I woke one night and opened my eyes to discover that I was struggling to see.
I blinked repeatedly and strained to focus, but all I could see was a sort of white haze
in front of my eyes.
I couldn't see anything in the room through the haze and I immediately thought, oh my
God, the room is full of smoke.
There must be a fire.
Panicked, I attempted to leap from the bed only to smash my face directly into the wall,
which as it turns out was two inches in front of me and I've been staring directly into
it the entire time.
I guess I was disoriented in my sleepy state and had not realized the direction I was facing.
Luckily, my injuries amounted to nothing more than a couple of bruises.
It was one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Dean, that is very dumb.
That's really dumb.
But I think waking up, your brain is not really in top gear yet.
God, it's not. So this morning, I woke up, I was convinced it was Saturday. I got up,
I had a shower, I made a cup of tea and I got a bowl of cereal.
I was like eating.
I'm interested to hear this Saturday routine.
I was convinced.
You were convinced it was Saturday and these are the things you did when you woke up.
Yeah.
I was like, I was just getting on with my day.
I was like, oh, what are we going to do today?
And my partner was like, don't you have to go in today?
And I was like, what?
And she was like, yeah, it's Friday.
You said you had to be in at 10. And I was like, yeah, it's, it's, it's Friday. You said you had to be in at the 10.
And I was like, oh shit.
And I think it was because I obviously, I think I dreamed, and sometimes you do this,
I dreamed like the whole day.
Yeah.
And like, subconsciously, I was just sure it was Saturday.
I was like, I've done that day.
Yeah.
It went fine. It was like, I've done that day. Yeah. It went fine. It was like
unmemorable. Unmemorable day. Do you ever do that thing where you're dreaming, like
you're sort of half awake and you're dreaming about just getting up and getting ready. Like
I have some dreams sometimes the last dream before I wake up, my brain is obviously preparing
to wake up. So in my dream, I'm getting out of bed. I'm putting on my my pajama bottoms.
I'm going downstairs and making a cup of coffee, saying seeing the kids off to school.
And then I actually wake up.
I'm like, shit, I got to do that all again.
Oh, man. I wake up every day to.
Dad, I want to go downstairs now.
Dad, I want to go downstairs now.
OK, I'm getting I'm getting up. Just give me a minute. I want to go downstairs now. Okay. I'm getting, I'm getting up.
Just give me a minute.
I want to go downstairs now.
Okay.
I'm getting up.
I want to go downstairs.
Now this is my three year old.
Yeah.
Who will just keep asking until finally I get out of bed and take her downstairs.
Cause she wants to go downstairs and watch frozen.
That's why, of course she doesn't want to be stuck in her bed.
What the movie or is there a TV show? No, the movie. There's been a bunch of like
little mini spin-offy things, but yeah, she just, she's, we got Disney plus. She just
watches the movie. She watched it like six times yesterday. God, I know they are funny.
They will just do the same. They will do it. Yeah, they will do. Yeah. We have, we have
people visiting. Uh, we have like relatives visiting. They're visiting from France.
They don't speak any English. They just only speak French,
which is fine because I can speak French.
So I've been taking them around and stuff and I brought them over yesterday
cause they wanted to see the kids and stuff.
They're going back in a couple of days and the three year olds had a,
has one of these like, um, you know, those old Fisher Price record
players.
Oh, hell yeah.
But she got one of those.
And so my my eight year old daughter was being the DJ putting the discs on and the three
year old was giving like a ballet show.
Not just any ballet show.
It went on for like five hours, but they were loving it.
They were like, Bravo, Bravo. Like, she does one move.
It's so funny. Oh, it went on and on and on. It was great.
God.
Oh, your life sounds good.
I remember when I was about six or seven, me and another kid on my road made a museum
slash art gallery in my bedroom where we like did a load of drawings,
put them on the wall, like a gallery, and then arranged toys and objects
as if they were little sculptures.
Yeah. And then charged my parents and our neighbors who are two gay guys
to come and look around our museum.
Right. And we charged the money to do that.
Did they actually pay? They paid.
Yeah, I got I tried to we tried to sell baseball cards And we charged the money to do that. Did they actually pay? They paid. My God.
I tried to we tried to sell baseball cards,
like at the end of our driveway when we were kids.
You know, you ever do that?
You ever have like a just set up a table at the end of your driveway
and try to sell your toys or baseball cards, whatever?
Everything. Yeah.
We have baseball cards, but no good baseball cards.
Like they were just.
We just have any baseball cards we could find.
But some of them, like the ones that we thought
were worth more money, we were trying to sell
baseball cards for like 20 bucks.
Nobody bought a single card.
It was great.
We were out there like all day.
We did like, obviously growing up in the States,
I think certainly in America,
but in New York especially I found, but I'm sure it's true all over.
People love kids. Like, they're very, very sweet and sort of generous to kids.
Yeah.
And they'll talk to you a lot more than they did when I moved over to the UK.
I was obviously very chatty, annoyingly chatty person.
And I was no different when I was a kid.
I talked to anybody. I talked to grownups all the time.
And in the States, they'll talk to you.
But over here, when I came over here, I would talk to people.
They wouldn't say shit.
It was, it was kind of a more kids were meant to be quieter.
Certainly how it felt coming over.
Yeah.
So I would do things like the art gallery thing is like our neighbors, obviously
being two gay guys, they didn't have any kids.
So they sort of looked after me and my sister a lot and saw us as like their sort of nieces or nephews or whatever.
And it was it was like we were very, very close with them.
And so they spoiled us all the time.
Like any time we set up a lemonade stand, they'd always buy lemonade
and they'd give us way more than we were asking.
But people coming home from work would stop and chat and buy lemonade.
And it was just it was really, really sweet. Yeah. Um,
I missed that from my childhood. I missed that a lot. Yeah. But it's funny,
but doing those little shows and stuff like that, it,
your parents, you get sick of it because you're used to this shit.
You see this all the time. Yeah.
But the neighbors or people who don't have kids to them,
it's like a real treat to spend time with, with kids. It's nice to hear.
Yeah. It's, it's weird with kids. cause you like, like my, my kids are,
I wouldn't, they're not shy. They're just like a bit reserved, you know,
like you won't get a lot out of them immediately,
but if you're around them for like a little while, they'll, they'll,
they'll slowly warm up to you and open up to you and stuff. So it was because
our three year old, especially, you know, at first it's like, it was quite, quite shy. It was, it was,
it was a bit of a treat for them because she just like all of a sudden opened up
and was doing this whole routine. She was trying to explain,
like they couldn't understand a word she was saying,
but she was like really fully explaining what she was doing. Like,
now I'm going to lift my leg. Now I'm going to point
my leg. Just basically parroting everything she's been taught at. She's got this little
baby belly class that she goes to. It was really funny.
Wow.
Yeah.
So speaking of kids.
Sounds adorable.
I've got an email here. This will be, I want to see if we can record the shortest possible
answer to this email. Cause I already know what you guys are going to say. Okay. All right. I'm going to say maybe.
No, it's not that kind of thing. This is from Scott and the topic is never been on holiday.
I am a single dad with three kids at home, a girl of 12, a girl of 10, a boy of six.
We've never been on holiday before. Do you lads have any suggestions for a holiday destination? I could take them.
You all seem to have traveled a lot, figured you'd have some thoughts,
blah, blah, blah. It's a one word answer. I know what you're going to say.
How old are the kids?
12, 10, six.
Okay. Sips is going to say Disney.
I thought he would say center parks.
I would say either one of the two, honestly, they, they, they,
in terms of taking your kids somewhere and not
having to bust a gut, getting stressed out about everything.
They're good shots.
This is expensive, especially a lot.
Disney is far more expensive.
That's the thing.
Like center parks shouldn't be as expensive.
Center parks, cheapest chips.
Compared to Disney it is.
Yeah.
Cartoonists salaries, Lulu.
You mentioned, I think it was Matt that you talked about?
Yes, the Daily Telegraph guy who does like one a week.
Here you go.
Long time listener, first time emailer, on Triforce 293 you were discussing cartoonists
you expressed some skepticism about whether they make much money.
I thought it might be of interest to you to know that Matt, the Telegraph's long standing
cartoonist, is the best paid member of staff on their books. I have this on good authority from
a friend who has worked there for some time. I figured it's just seniority. Like Matt has been
there forever, get a little pay rise every year and all adds up. Journalism, you must have a lot
of people moving from paper to paper and all the rest of it. And he's just sat there making bank
for his cartoons.
He's on about 650 a year.
I called that was six years ago.
650K.
How does he live off 650 pound a year?
How could he live off that in London?
That's right.
That's crazy.
650 years.
That's insane.
Christ. That's insane. That can't be right. I'm in the wrong business. Yeah, Jesus. I should make little- I should make little dub cartoons.
What is this voice?
I love it.
It's the angry, angry man.
Yeah.
I love it.
Angry, incredulous man.
Yes.
Why?
This is the most-
I'm not sure what this is.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What is this voice? I love it. It's the angry, angry man.
Yeah. Angry, incredulous man.
Yes.
What?
I'm in the wrong business.
Oh man.
All right.
This is, Louis, this is directed at you.
I hope you take it in the right, in the right sense.
Fine, I'm ready.
Hit me. It really made me laugh because it's an email with a follow up email.
Okay.
So this is, and the follow up email was sent almost exactly 24 hours after the original.
Oh, that's the first one.
This is hello.
I think that my sister and Lewis would be compatible.
She's in her thirties.
She works for spin master in Toronto, Canada as a senior project manager. I's in her 30s, she works for Spin Master in Toronto,
Canada as a senior project manager. I would classify her as a nerd. She has no idea who
he is or that I am writing this. If Lewis would like to start a long distance conversation
I will share her email with you. I could also share her Instagram. PS, my boyfriend has
a tiny penis and I have a gaping vagina. We make it work. Elaine."
Right, okay.
What's your immediate response to that? Very kind and thoughtful offer, but I just don't think it's likely to work. People are very
different and these days, I don't know, it's doomed to fail, right? This whole set up by your friend's sister.
I don't think so. I'm sorry. But I'm assuming from the second email they had actually thought
about it and they were like, do you know what? I don't want my sister's friend anywhere near
you. Please ignore the previous email.
Well, the second, the follow up email is Lewis is lady nipple shaming.
And I instantly changed my mind about my sister and him.
Offer retracted.
I think this is when we were talking about nipples showing through clothing.
Right.
And you were like, the women shouldn't do it.
It's their fault. It's disgusting or something.
It's from episode two six one. People can look. No, I said, like I said, I'm't do it, it's their fault, it's disgusting, or something. It's from episode 261, people can look at it.
No, I said, I'm fine with it, but do they know?
No, that was not it.
Well, that's how I am now.
I don't really mind people's nudity or lack of nudity or whatever.
My line though is definitely six year old men who don't wear their shirts in Primark
on a hot day. That, I wish, didn't happen. But most other things I'm okay with.
ALICE You know the Olympic guy who had his, who banged his boner on the pole vault or whatever?
There was a guy who knocked the high jump pole off with his dick.
Oh yeah, his dingle dangle.
It was not erect at the time though.
I'm not a fan of people, the cyclists, wearing those really tight shorts that shows the outline
of their dick and balls.
Right?
Well they have to.
I just feel like...
Look, it's...
It makes them more aerodynamic.
It's hard riding a bike.
They must know.
What do you want them to do?
Wear those big baggy jeans like they used to wear in the 90s when they were on their
bikes?
No, they should wear a codpiece.
We're not gonna get into this again, cause summer's over and I'm not gonna have to deal
with it for a while.
Medieval people wore tights, but they wore a codpiece to conceal their genitals.
Just get a codpiece, mate.
It's more aerodynamic.
I don't, look, I don't mind.
You could...
Do what you want.
I'm above it all now.
Okay.
It's fine.
Go for it.
Okay.
Thank you for your blessing.
Ripple shaving.
I'm not prudish about it, but also I'm not like, fwoar.
Let me see those...
I'd have to relisten to the episode.
God, it's a very difficult path to tread, the whole bringing this up.
I think most men have already worked out that they just don't talk about it.
People just assume when somebody says pepperoni nipples that it's a negative thing.
It's not.
It's fine.
Exactly.
Thank you, Sid.
It's positive.
Yeah.
Everybody loves pepperoni, right?
I think there's a lot of that in life. Exactly. Thank you, Sid. It's positive. Yeah. Everybody loves pepperoni, right? Most.
Yeah.
This is from Regan.
I think there's a lot of that in life.
Certain times people just are like, you know what?
I just don't acknowledge this.
I don't talk about it.
I don't get into a debate about it.
I just sit there quietly and you know, that way I can never be misconstrued.
Right?
Yeah.
I hate to be misconstrued.
I should take my own advice more on that.
That's fine. Don't worry about it.
This is from Regan, move on with this palette cleanser.
A bit of context before the question, my wife and I play a silly game when we watch TV.
We regularly watch with subtitles, as do I, and we crack up whenever we see closed captions
for audio that is just downright bizarre.
If you don't watch with subtitles, it is worth it just for the audio captions.
For example, in Stranger Things alone, and these are always in square brackets, the audio
description, tentacles rolling wetly.
Desiccated, withering, unsettling Russian folk music.
Another good one is Wushing.
That's meant to make sense to people.
So the one that me and Mrs. F do this as well with subtitles, this is really funny.
I thought we were the only ones that did this.
The one we always look for is scoffs.
Scoffs like, yeah, you will see every show.
It'll say scoffs.
It's any time anyone goes like that scoffs and it'll have the sometimes
asterisks either side of the word scoffs.
So we say that all the time, scoffs. And every
time it pops up on the subtitles, no matter how intense the TV show is, we'll be like,
scoffs! It's a stupid thing that we do. I think lots of couples will watch Telly, you
have a stupid thing like that that you look out for. Like an in-joke.
Yeah. Of course. I think there's... I think the more you have of this stuff, sometimes,
it definitely takes away from the experience, right? It
makes a horror movie less scary to have the subtitles on, for sure. And, I mean, I can
imagine the audio description.
That's a good shout actually, because there's certain horror movies or suspense movies that
I can't even watch, because I'm too scared, but maybe now, putting the subtitles on, will
soften the blow a bit. They definitely tee up the jumpres. They usually tee up the jumpscares for you as well. It's like killer
smashes through window. Oh nice. Moments before that happens. This might be my inn to finally
enjoy some horror movies. One of my favorite subtitles you see sometimes, because these are generally done, these are
done by people.
And I know that when I was at Sky, you could go into the broadcast room and there was always
ladies because for some reason they, I think they have typist qualifications.
They have to be able to type like blindingly fast.
So they're watching the show live and doing the subtitles live on like the news.
I suppose you'd have to, yeah.
Yeah, of course. So they're doing a live TV. If it's a pre-recorded show, they'll do it and then it just goes to tape doing the subtitles live on like the news. I suppose you'd have to. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So they do.
And a lot of it's a pre-recorded show. They'll do it. And then it just,
yeah, of course.
But with the live show, they have to be there like subtitling live.
Yeah. It's really amazing. Uh,
I don't know if they now use computer cause like I think YouTube does auto
generated subtitles, but it's, it's often wrong. Yeah. Um,
so they do it and it sort of it queues up and then they, they, they'll, they'll sort of, you know, they it's it's often wrong. Yeah. So they do it and it sort of cues up and then they they'll sort of,
you know, they'll send it and send it.
So they're just constantly doing it.
If you watch BBC News live and pop the subtitles on there, some someone said,
like I said, normally a slightly older lady who's an amazing typist doing it live.
But sometimes I guess the people that do the movies
either get lazy or it's done by computer, sometimes it just says, speaks in foreign language.
Yeah. And I'm like, that's Spanish.
That's not maybe it was just like, it might have just been a placeholder to like
come back. Yeah. But they forgot.
Maybe, you know, it's just weird.
Sometimes the subtitles are just fucking awful.
Yeah. Like they're wrong. They're way wrong.
Well, they skip some really vital word.
You're like, that's not what he said.
And I can't imagine how bad it must be for subtitles in a different language.
You definitely get a lot of that when it's like subtitles for like a translation, you
know, like say you're watching an Italian movie, but and it's it's subtitling in English.
You lose a lot apparently because the translation is sometimes difficult and
so certain like keywords in a, in like a delivery or whatever are missed out and it's, and it's
fine. Like you, you wouldn't really notice the difference, but a lot of people, you'll
see them commenting saying like, Oh, that's not subtitles are really bad for this. It
didn't, it didn't properly capture like what was being said and stuff. Like, it's interesting.
I know that in certain languages, like in Russian, there are a lot of things where one word means
like a lot, right? Like, isn't it famously there's that one word that means the feeling of autumn
breeze on your face in the woods or something. Like there's all kinds of weird words that mean
like one really long thing. I don't know how the fuck you put that in and subtitles.
I do.
I wonder if sometimes they just put a word in italics and just use the,
the native word and be like, we're not even going to try it.
I was reading something recently where there's like a, there's a term that's
very, very commonly used in the UK, for example, that we would, you would say to
anybody and they know exactly what you're talking about, but it's one of those
kinds of terms where it's just like, if you're not from the UK and in this case is particularly in Russia,
there was no direct translation for that. It's not a theme or term that's ever used at all in Russia.
So for the translation of that, it would be difficult, right? Like you'd have to,
translation of that, it would be difficult, right? Like you'd have to, you'd have to find some, some big work around for it.
So happiness, what is this?
Joy.
What is joy?
Do not have word for it.
I can't remember the specific example, but it was, uh, it was a weird one, but
it's the UK, I feel like maybe not more so than other places, but there's definitely
some odd sayings and terminology, right?
For an outsider, it wouldn't make any fucking sense at all.
You know?
Like, you can't think of specifics.
It's cultural too.
I think that you always hear about these Japanese words that there's no, or German words that
have no English translation.
Because it's like, I don't know, what is it?
But they try and they're good ideas.
But I think they do fit the culture.
In a sense it's a little bit like how the Inuits have 20 different words for snow or
whatever, because
their culture is more aware of that.
Isn't that bollocks?
I don't know, was that an urban myth?
Was that one of these...
I think it might be one of those things.
It's just like a scale of emotions.
So there's like, snow in the middle and then it goes like, fucking snow, fucking fucking
fucking snow, fucking fucking snow!
That's one other way of describing it.
Yeah.
Oh, they've got 20 words for it. Just different volumes.
This is quite a sweet one, actually. And I do have a solution to this one. This is called
My Neighbor. This is from Rob. Hello dads and Lulu. I have a neighbor in their 70s who
is nearly always just outside their back door. Right.
Whenever I go to leave the house, he will start a conversation with me.
We live in Victorian terraced houses, so our gardens are lacking privacy.
Even if he's not outside, if he spots me outside, he will soon be out making it look like it
was a coincidence by taking a single milk bottle to the recycling bin.
He's just lonely.
I know he's.
It sucks.
Exactly.
I mean, it's if you're not in the mood for for it, it sucks for sure
But well, so Rob says I know he's probably just lonely
Yeah, but I will be starting garden renovation soon and I can't bear his watching and idle chatter
Well, I'm trying to get things done. Yeah advice Rob. I think
Disguise yourself as a foreigner and claim that no Abla in glass.
No, I just think, look, like you said, this guy's just lonely.
Maybe living on their own or just looking for some conversation.
This person might be fascinating.
Dig into their life a little bit.
Find out.
Might be a serial killer though.
So be careful.
Put up some unnecessary scaffolding and then align it with tarp,
making like a wall.
Make a tent.
The thing is though, he will probably phone the council and report you.
I think what you could do is you could always like make the,
bring the conversation around to something that he'd be uncomfortable with.
This is the Lewis solution.
You know, and that way he would actively try and avoid you.
I think you're being too interesting is what I'm saying.
If you instead went with something like, oh, I, I, I love Nigel Farage's new, uh, new,
new suit.
Have you seen it?
I've got a picture here.
Dude, what if this guy's in his seventies?
He's probably a Nigel Farage supporter.
He's a big supporter.
Yeah.
He's good.
Well that would backfire then.
You got a new friend.
You've got loads of backfires.
I've got a solution.
Come onto him.
No, you know what you say?
Oh, I'm building a rave club back here.
Tell him how sexy he's looking and ask her if he can come over and suck him up.
Yeah, I'm just waiting for the shipment of glowsticks to arrive, and lube as well.
We're gonna have foam sprayers, techno, you name it.
You're invited.
Bring your own ecstasy.
Yeah, I don't know, I...
I mean, you've either got to drive him away by
really like doing something that you know, he wouldn't like, like, like I said,
like hit on him. And maybe he's like homophobic and doesn't want to talk to
you anymore. Problem solved. Or you get involved, just be like, get him to do
some work. Hey, do you mind helping me do this ditch? And then when he starts, just be like, I just got to go to do some work for you. Hey, do you mind helping me dig this ditch?
And then when he starts, just be like, I just gotta go to the bathroom and then go inside
and he can do all the work.
You can't be anything too weird or bigoted, right?
You don't want to appear to be an actual asshole.
You just need to maybe... maybe just...
I'm just trying to think what would actually work here.
The nicest thing to do is just be polite and just accept that he's just lonely and wants someone to talk to.
Put up with it. Be British about it. How long are you even out there for?
You know. What are you building back here?
Have fun with it. He might have fascinating stories, you know. Maybe say like, what did you do during the war?
The war? He's in his seventies. I know, I know.
He might have stories of his ancestors being in the war though.
That's true.
His mum and dad or something.
He was Obergruppenführer for Army Group Center.
He could have been.
You can't judge.
Oh God, what a riveting tale.
Ask him what speck his nipples are.
What speck?
What's the speck on those nips you got, dude?
You got two and a half inches?
Nice.
Perky, perky ones.
You want to touch mine?
You want to compare them?
Jesus Christ. This is this last email is a pretty spicy one.
Okay.
I wondered if you guys wanted-
A spicy story?
Or that's a spicy word?
That's a spicy word, what we had already today.
It's a spicy story.
This is one of the spiciest ones.
Is this explicit?
Is this gonna get us banned?
No, it's not explicit.
It did make me laugh.
But it is quite raunchy.
Right. OK.
I can deal with a bit of raunchy.
That's fine. OK. As long as it doesn't get us
taken off the air, you know.
No, no, no. So this is I put this at the end.
So if anyone doesn't want to hear a raunchy, slightly
moderately raunchy.
How can you resist now?
The buildup is. I know.
But some people are prudish and they don't want to hear it.
So it's like, this will be the end of the podcast for you.
Adieu.
There's no emails after this one.
You won't miss anything.
Fellow nipple shamers.
You can clear off now.
If you're also prudish, why not leave right now?
Okay.
Yeah.
Cool.
Let's go. All right. So this is the email for those of you who remain. This is from Josh.
Okay.
When I was at the start of my final year at sixth form, a guy in our year hosted a house party for about a hundred people.
Essentially-
That's a big party, Jesus.
Yeah, the entirety of our year.
That's wild.
And all the first years, and all the first years who just came up to the sixth form.
For context, this guy was a bit of a dick and generally unliked, but had a massive house and his mum was out of town, or so we thought.
Oh.
And it was a good excuse to meet all the new people coming to the school.
The party was a good one. Lots of groups mixing, everyone getting familiar.
But it took an unbelievable turn about three to four hours in.
Now bear in mind, everyone here was 17 to 18, so we started to notice older men popping up.
Guys in their 40s and the late 30s.
Some of them just joined in the drinking games, others came in with drugs and were offering
them around to us.
Whoa, Jesus.
But as the night went on, more and more of these guys start turning up.
After a while, word started to spread that the guy who was hosting's mum had come back
home and she'd gone up to her bedroom with some of the guys who were in the house.
A little while later, one of my friends came down to me and looked completely gobsmacked.
He tapped me on the shoulder and said,
Josh, there is a queue of men at her bedroom door.
Obviously, I dropped everything and went to take a look and there it was.
As I walked up the stairs, I saw with my own eyes at least 12 men queuing up at this guy's
mum's bedroom door while they were waiting to drop a parcel off at the post office, waiting for their turn to
go into the room once the previous guy was finished.
I spoke to one of the guys and asked who he was and why he'd come to the party and he
told me to mind my own fucking business.
As I turned to leave and walk away from the line of guys, it took an even more absurd
turn.
Two more men were coming up the stairs carrying a third man in a wheelchair.
Okay. What? Okay.
I almost burst trying to hold in my laughter as I waited at the top of the stairs for these guys
to carry up their disabled friend to this sex conveyor belt. Anyway, it's safe to say the rest of the night was spent by our entire school talking about this queue.
Before you ask, his mum was not a sex worker. She had a high paying job in finance in London.
She clearly just wanted to destroy any credibility her son had built up hosting this party,
and then nuke it into oblivion by bringing home every man in the village.
Oh my god.
Fucking hell.
That is some tale. If you stuck around I hope that was worth it.
First of all, like, what the fuck with the queuing.
The queuing is fucking weird, man.
It's very British.
I mean, very British.
It's got a very dogging-y vibe going on.
Man, luckily she didn't do that in Europe, because it would've been chaos up there if it were real.
And it had white to queue!
No!
That would not have happened in France!
That would've been very disorganised.
Oh my god!
That's so funny.
It's just like a family pushing to the front.
Sorry, sorry!
Oh god.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus.
That is a... What a power play by the mum! I mean... front. Sorry, sorry. Oh, God. Jesus Christ.
Jesus.
What a power play by the mom.
I mean, I know.
Oh, that's one way of of ruining your son's house party.
All all giving it, you know, giving him like, you know, memorable.
Memorable.
I think that maybe their schedules just clashed and she thought he was
going to a party and was expecting her, you know, usual Saturday night hijinks with the queue. I
mean, from the sounds of it, this happens regularly. All these guys knew where to go.
Yeah. There must be some WhatsApp group. If they all coordinate or something, who knows?
Holy crap. What a tale. Love that.
I love that they all mobilized so quickly.
Like they just got a scent that somebody was ready for action and then like...
Someone's mum's doing the shocking thing. Let's go lads.
Oh god. Someone asked me what a mill for the other day and I was like, how do you not know this?
Yeah, it's awkward.
Like it's, it's a very awkward phrase to, uh, to, I guess it's old though.
It was very like, it was very like teen comedy.
It was American Pie, right?
That's where it originated.
That's where I heard it first.
Stiffers mom is a milkman, dude.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It was from that.
I'm sure it was from that.
Good Lord. Well, what a story. Thank you. I don't, what, what was from that. I'm sure it was from that. Good Lord.
Well, what a story.
Thank you.
I don't want to end on, um, we can all just-
That's a great one.
I will leave with that in our minds.
Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Yeah, God.
Right.
That's the mail bag.
Keep them coming.
Yeah, keep them coming.
Oh, that's what she said.
Just like that guy's mom.
Send in the next one.
Like a fucking dentist. Just like that guy's mom. Send in the next one.
Like a fucking dentist.
Well, more tales.
Please don't try to top that one with, because I do get a lot of articles, letters where
people write in.
Oh, maybe she was doing their accounts.
Don't send in those.
Or someone sent me one about a really massive shit.
So detailed and disgusting, I stopped reading it.
Please, please, please.
Amazing.
Please no.
But yes, more really good stories.
Josh, I think that's one of my favourite emails we've ever had.
So congrats on that.
That's a very good one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
And that's us for this week.
More mailbaggery to come next week.
Until then, take it easy.
All right.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.