Wolf and Owl - Episode 16

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

We’re talking… swearing, childhood clothing, coping with growing up, filming cock-ups and getting into heaven, hell or purgatory. Plus, the long-awaited resolution to our cafe owner / jogger insult debate. For any feedback, questions or comments please email us at [e-mail] - we’d love to hear from you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah. Yeah, what you want? Beak or jaws? Feathers or fur? Sharp teeth or feet with claws? Yeah. That's an awful howler. Both of them are known to pull up at your shows. Have the crowd witnessing the murder like they rolled in with a gang of crows. Fuck the censorship. Let them see the whole thing. They stay dressed to kill. Never sheep's clothing. Dark enough to turn the sun to the moon. You'll see nothing.

All you hear is a huff, a puff and a... Expect killings. Red spilling and flesh ripping. Impressive in it. The death bringing, it's head spinning. Just kidding. Every word in this song's about two grown men dressed up as a bird and a dog welcome to the wolf and owl podcast uh hope you well um i'm robert shragg and athens the owl and i am yo i'm tom davis and i'd be the wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf yeah what was that that was me coming in hard and fast.

I sometimes think that the podcast people are about to listen to is indicative of the beginning that we give it. You mean the beginning that we give it is indicative of the podcast that people are going to listen to? Sort of said that arse about face, haven't you?

Yeah, I mean, either way, mate. It feels like you're dangling your bollocks there trying to be tight. Big Johnny Sweets is in the fucking house, yeah. I've got, listen, I'm going to say straight off the... Yeah. Do you know what I was about to say? I was about to get so sweary so early on.

I've been, I've listened back to a couple of these. And the only time that Tom and I really listen to these is when we think we might have said something cancelable, really, because it's very difficult to listen back to it. And we swear quite a lot, don't we? Do we swear more than... Can I just say, and this is... Is this because Lisa has started listening to this?

No. Lisa's told you off for swearing. No, so Lisa has started listening to these because Lisa. Lisa's told you off for swearing. So Lisa has started listening to these because Lisa's going to take over the email admin, but she doesn't care about me swearing. I'm just talking about, you know, when you pick up little things. Yeah. I mean, I swear a lot anyway.

I actually think you're one of the best swearers I know. Yeah, but you are. But also you have got a mouth. I swear a lot more around you than some other people. Wow. It's an incredible thing to you what you've managed to do that is blame me for you swearing more no that's basically what you said you go you went you got a toilet uh then you stopped and then you went i do swear around you a lot more than so what does that mean that means that there's something about me that makes you swear more that's what you're saying no no you've just got quite a sweary edge to you like i remember do you remember the first around you a lot more than that. So what does that mean? That means that there's something about me that makes you swear more. That's what you're saying.

No, no, you've just got quite a sweary edge to you. Do you remember the first time you ever heard swearing? Oh, God, yeah. I love swearing. I remember... Go on. Who was the first person you heard swearing? It was...

You know, we used to go and play out every day, all day, back in the day. God, what days? What days? You know what? I do love those days, almost as much as I hate the Facebook posts where people go, do you remember when we were growing up?

You used to go out all day, be around out all day. You'd eat wham bars. You'd be able to go back to a nonsense house and there'd be no danger. Those were the days. The thing I hate about them, I hate about them, right?

It's fucking, like, write that yourself. Write that yourself. Write your own memories because that's what memories are. I know. Don't copy and paste something that someone else in an office

has put back. Let's see if we can make this go viral. Remember it yourself. I know. And then you want to say things like, oh, do you remember, do you remember roller coasters? Yeah, we all do

because they were fucking all available when we were children. A whole generation remembers them? Yeah, we all do. Because they were fucking all available when we were children. A whole generation remembers them. Of course we fucking do. You know what my happiest memories are of those days of being out? If there was a big World Cup on, you'd just play World Cup Willie for hours and hours. Or if the Olympics were on, you'd just set up like running race, sprinting and whatever. Whatever the big sports that were like wrestling, whatever,

you'd just do those big sports events. You know what? They were such heady days. I was a bit of a strange kid, I think. Right. And this is really, I almost, as I'm going to tell this story, I almost, I can't understand the logic of what I was thinking at the time. So it's a bit weird, right?

So when I was a kid, my mum took me shopping. I had to get some new pants. I must've been about... I love the fact that you went shopping specifically for that yeah so we're like okay well romesh is gonna need some underpants that's how the decisions were made like because i went through clothes so quickly because i was so big for my age and i don't mean height height-wise, I mean just fat. I remember going to get uniform, and one of the members of staff at the uniform place

took my mum aside to explain how they're probably going to have to find adult trousers and shorten them, because they'd not come across a kid with a waist like this before. Mate, I looked like someone from Hoxton through the whole of my fucking ankle swingers. Nothing really fitted that well. Oh, it's so embarrassing. If I was to walk out in shortage to the Hoxton

in my old school uniform now, people would go, he's fucking edgy. But back then, I... Did you ever have it where, like, there were some kids, weren't there, that, like, September, the year would start, and they just owned their look, whether it was uniform or whatever.

The blazer fitted them, like, nice. The way they had their like nice the way they had their bag the way they carried their bag was cool their shoes look cool i mean i would just fucking bumble along do you mean sort of yeah one like one half of my shirt hanging out because i couldn't get it underneath the fucking muffin top of my stomach right the bag the bag on the shoulders pushing the blazer apart like i was presenting my breasts as a fucking exhibit. I was like the opposite. Me and you would have looked like cartoon characters

if we'd gone to school together. Because I was like about six foot. I was tall, I was skinny, and everything was just too short. And like, do you remember when kickers came in? Yeah. Like everyone had kickers. I remember because I got some about a

year and a half after they went out that's how I used to roll I was one of the last people to have kickers

but wearing kickers like I remember like you know baggy trousers are in those sort of Michael Jordan esque yeah I see like the

last dance documentary you see like him in those fucking sweet baggy pants and people wearing those with kickers right I had like baggy trousers and people wearing those with kickers. Right.

I had like baggy trousers, but they finished just, just above my ankles. And then I'd have white towel in socks and kickers. I remember, I remember I was like one of the only kids. There's a few, few of us that were into hip hop,

but most of the kids weren't like hip hop. You know, it's pretty, it's pretty, i don't know what it's like at your school but not many that many kids are into hip-hop when i was when i was into it when i was a kid and um i used to buy stuff that i'd seen in like a rap video and then like or on fresh prints or something and then i'd go in the school people go what the fuck are you wearing that like you know they wouldn't understand the content so i remember for example, I used to be obsessed with Flavor Flav from Public Enemy. Now, Flavor Flav's got a very particular dress sense, which if anybody out there is thinking about

taking on any of Flavor Flav's sartorial kind of influences, I would say don't do it because, you know, it's very much Flav's look. But I used to wear really bright-colored coats. So I bought a bright-colored coat thinking I looked like Flavor Flav. look. But he used to wear really bright coloured coats. So I bought a bright coloured coat thinking I looked like Flav. What make was it? I can't remember. Like market job?

I think it was a market job. But it had a similar sort of colour scheme to what Flav and Flav had worn on some TV appearance I'd seen. But, of course, people don't see you and go, oh, wow, he's like taking a little influence from flavor flavor there what they think is oh his mum's bought his coat for him right i essentially asked for begged for a coat that led to me being bullied for a year because mate when you're a kid yeah you get a coat and that is your coat for a year and you

wear it all the time by the way because you want to try and cover up your blazer. So it doesn't matter what the weather is, you put the coat on. Man, you know what I was obsessed with? The music I was into, as we've discussed, everyone go back and listen to my hip hop so you laugh where rubbish ruins me for my love of hip hop at that time, but I was very much commercial hip-hop uh but i was obsessed with like dreddy spliffy karkani um and i remember a mufti day where i turned up thinking because my mates outside like a group of mates inside like mates inside school but i'd mates where we sort of lived

before who are sort of my out of school mates and they were more into hip-hop they were more into that sort of vibe so i remember sort of being out with them and sort of it was all sort of dready spliffy karkani and whatever uh and then sort of like some sort of pokey old british knights or whatever and then uh but then going into school on a muffly day wearing that stuff and no one in my school had sort of really seen that stuff and like actually like racist towards me for the basis that I was wearing

these labels like what are you doing mate it was the first time I'd ever sort of like witnessed anything like that like but

everyone everyone then was polo shirt you know pair of jeans pair of Reebok classics that was literally uniform

of you know and it's what later on I'd sort of get into. But at the time I was like you trying to be different. What if there's any kids, if there's kids listening to this, like who are trying to be different, there'll come a time in your life actually,

where being different in body, that is the best thing that you've ever done because you'll be, um, a guy with demons and, you know, you can reminisce with another guy who's badly bullied at school on a podcast. But it's also the making you, you know what I find, you know, we've been, you've had quite a week now where we've been filming the show and

we've, we've worked with kids, different kids. And you sort of, it's weird, isn't it? Like when you see that sort of hierarchy of them, sort of the different layers and, you know, you watch them and you think, Oh, I'd have definitely been him. Oh mate. Yeah yeah i mean but it's so weird isn't it because i i get very it's interesting because we're working well on gary we've been working with a group of kids and seeing what kids do very very quickly is they work out what the social hierarchy is in that group you know and you can see them pushing the boundaries

saying stuff making jokes to fit to find out they're not consciously doing this but what they're essentially doing is finding out where they sit in that group whether they're like the alpha or whether they're following you know whatever and i find that you know now that we've we've got three boys that thing about being being individual. When I was a teacher, I used to see kids that just did their own thing and were very comfortable in who they were. And I think it's so good to see people that are moving away from the flock

because kids are, by their very nature, kids just want to, they're terrified of expressing even a view that differs from the main group, let alone looking differently. If I'm honest with you, I think that's men as well. Yes, that is true.

Like men. I think men as a whole, like having probably, I'd say, you know, 70% of my life worked in a very like masculine workplaces that I remember like, you know, where even like, you know, being 23, 24 and we're saying different to like a works though that wasn't sort of like you know a ralph shirt or a harrington with a pair of 501s and a pair of you know whatever patch you got it's really but you know daring to be we're saying a bit different and being absolutely smashed the bits for it have i told you the story of when i saved up for the ysl jumper no go on I think it's my I think I must have been about

18 and like so I'd saved up for this why I wanted this YSL jumper do you remember them they were like different colors and they just had big YSL print across the front and I wore that to the yeah the Christmas do and you wore a like shirt underneath pair of jeans turned up at the Christmas do I felt a million dollars i felt incredible and this guy and i will name him called martin ellman i doubt he listens to this yeah and he came up to me and um he said uh do you know what ysl stands for and i was like what he went you sad loser and he sort of laughed and then he went and told everyone in the pub what he'd said so for the rest of the night everyone was just going you sir loser you sir

loser and it was just like even now my heart breaks you know what i feel so sorry for you man that is gut it's gutting and also it's just every like everybody there's a couple probably a couple of people there that were thinking oh fuck this guy's got this fucking ysl jumper right they're like pissed off because you got like the hot the hot thing yeah yeah and then as soon as they get an opportunity to rinse it they do but but listen but mate at least you're wearing something decent so you know sorry so you know my mom so my mom and i go to go to buy pants right now up to this point i'd be wearing um briefs tidy white yeah yeah but sort of you know cartoon ones like i

think right because i only know adult rom right i only know adult rom i just pictured you now getting ready to go to work in a pair of postman pat knickers anyway so the point is i've been wearing briefs up to that point you know like y fronts or whatever and my and i was a weird kid remember this i'm just clarifying this as weird kid weird kid weird kid we go there and we discover for the first time i discover boxer shorts right and they were they're like a new thing i hadn't been aware of them before this is amazing these uh this is underwear that's like shorts right this is the kind of thought process i went through and i went mummy mummy please can we get boxer shorts instead of briefs and mum said i don't know darling i don't know if there's feels like everything would be hanging she used to talk quite frankly on it and i said so now i really want i really want boxer shorts

so anyway we get home i don't know why but for some reason i love these boxer shorts so much that i went out to play that day and a t-shirt and just boxer shorts on right with like you haven't even under the boxer shorts oh Jesus did you ever have been under the books oh jesus and the other kids are going do you not want to wear something do you know those are underwear that's good let's just keep going no yeah i know but i just like them they must have thought i was such a freak. I don't know what I was thinking, man.

So bad. Did you only do it once? I only did it once, yeah. Because once you do that once, you get a nice detachment doing that ever again, man. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That was a bad look.

That was a bad look. It is that weird thing of when you start going from going from like sort of juniors to secondary school. It's such a like, because I didn't get the memo when people, you know, when people pass it around and say, oh, by the way, all boys have stopped playing with toys now. I didn't get that memo. God, what's happened? So, yeah, you know that thing where you sort of go in the canteen at secondary school

it was kind of vibing and being whatever like sort of people have changed over that summer right people do check it's almost like for

I guess for girls I mean I can talk sort of like from you know what my little group of mates was like but everyone sort of

seemed to grow up and I remember like sort of it being like my birthday and whatever and I got it was like Ninja Turtles would seemed to grow up and i remember that sort of it being like my birthday and whatever and i got like it was like ninja turtles would have been the thing that we'd had right that's sort of the last bastion of toys that came our way and i remember thinking i was really cool because i'd sort of got you know quite a few of them and like you know you're in a new form and i was in the bottom form of everything so making new friends and then sort

of sort of like being like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Come back to mine if you want, like, you know, one day this week and we'll just like,

yeah, I've got all the new Ninja Turtles. And, um, I remember the kids that I was chatting to trying to be really cool and like, just sort of give me a little bit of a look and sort of not really registering it. Cause I was quite a naive kid in that way. And then probably about an hour and a half later,

it's sort of like another kid um coming up to me and go is it true you still play with toys and being like yeah yeah no no god and not even know what that was and then he carried on walking into it yeah yeah yeah and then i remember older kids hearing about it and coming and then being like where are you the kid who still plays it's like i remember in the canteen like queuing up for a ropey old gray beef burger and a group of just seeing some people laughing and i was used to people laughing at me anyway because i looked like i was like a weird looking kid i was spindly and tall and you know and i just used to sort of almost relish the fact if they were laughing it usually meant they weren't going to beat me up.

So it's sort of like laughing along with them and then being like, yeah, yeah, you're the kid who still plays your toys, yeah? And me being like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh wow, it's cool, it's gone around. I've got a Ninja Turtles. Couldn't fathom that, yeah. I think it took me about a week of people

asking and laughing at me to realise that it was cool. Do you know what, I find heartbreaking? And new humour had started as well. It wasn't just like the fact you weren't playing with toys. Like you'd gone from bums and farts and poo-poo to being funny

to actual sort of piss-taking and sarcasm and sort of a more, you know, which is indicative of the world that you walk into now. But, you know know people just started that thing and there was probably a naivety to me there though i was just like oh shit yeah um i'm going to get rid of yeah it was heartbreaking they had to sort of like box up but that's what i like you know i was about to say i feel like i want to give you back then a hug but then i would be i guess i'd have to be a child as i'd have to also revert to a child because

i don't want to give you as a child a hug as an adult. But the point is, you're then in a situation where a thing you love has caused you embarrassment. And so now, when you're packaging that stuff away, you're not packaging it like Toy Story, where you're done with it because you've grown too old for it. This is a Toy Story where the guy still wants to play with all his toys, but he's got to package them up because the fact that he's even got them

could get him beaten up. Yeah. Also, it's the one time in your life when you're packing something up and going, this is it now. That is a part of my life that will never ever come. You're not like oh you know like my dad would tell me i'm gonna tell him how to go oh don't worry about it mate when you get to 25 30 you start playing with toys again perk him up and you'll you'll be back yeah

yeah and also then you're at a loss because what do you what do you do then what is your what's your you know obviously today something is coming kong godzilla they can feel it fight together and teaming up or face extinction godzilla kong the new empire now playing only in theaters in today's economy saving money is like an extreme sport. Coupon clipping. Promo code searching. It takes skill, speed, sweat. Unless we're talking Kudo's new phone, internet, and streaming bundle. With the Happy Stack, you can sit back and stack up the savings on Kudo Internet, a sweet phone plan, Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime. All starting at just $99 a month.

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where all your investment gains are yours to keep and put towards your first home. With Questrade, you can open an FHSA online. No bank appointment needed. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. The sooner you get started, the more time your down payment has to grow. Open an account today at questrade.com. Yeah, whether it's consoles or whatever, or just, but you're like, it's literally, I remember

it being such a significant change in your life. And yeah. And then quite quickly having to go, not just the toys, but also going, oh, this piss taking, that's going to be a part of things now. That's going to be the banter. I find it really hard because I think to myself, I think back to my school days and you think about, you're trying to be such a commit, you're trying to,

it's self-preservation, right? You just don't want to be, you don't want to be the guy that's getting ripped apart. And half the time, the only reason that you take the piss out of anybody else is just the fucking, the sheer euphoria that it's not you that's the target of it, right? That's why a group of people, and then like, so now, like our eldest son, Theo's's like he's just started secondary school and he's a very individual kid like as you know right he sort of does his own thing or whatever

and he's pretty strong-willed but there's part of me that goes that's really great and don't ever lose that but there's also part of me that goes I hope that doesn't get you into trouble do you mean because you don't because he's just so unbothered about following the pack or whatever but like I sort of think to myself you need to do a bit of pack following just for fucking self-preservation do you know what I mean but that's the thing isn't it

it's like that is with my nephew I think that he's a really bright kid but he goes his own way with stuff and it's quite sort of you know

he's sort of what is he six now but he's sort of got you can see he's got that side of him where he doesn't really conform to and I was like that but then I was like that and then that moment the way you sort of realise he's sort of got you can see he's got that side of him where he doesn't really conform to and i was like that but then i was like that and then that moment the way you sort of realize he said it it's a ridiculous thing to sort of say but in school that's an element of school

and somewhere like where you watch a film of prison that's the only two places where you think well actually you're all forced together yeah you know and you're in a microclimate of like society and you're gonna basically have to find your place in this yeah and like by like by one sense you want like yeah i hope he's gonna walk his own path but by that token you still don't you don't want him to be the kid with bird seed in his pocket at lunchtime like you say it's like i remember just thinking wow like who can i attach myself here to here like i've you know i've come in on an absolute ricker at school at the moment not just within my own class but within the whole school i'm the kid who plays with toys right and also for a week i was a kid who told everyone i played with toys in quite a fucking showy offy way like thinking

that it was cool you went in big you thought you were going to be you thought you were going to be the alpha because of the number of ninja titles you had no it wasn't just ninja titles I was like

nah I got Rocksteady and Bebop Splinter I've got the Sous L'air mate so if you want to come out and play the Sous L'air

you're more than welcome man do you know Tom Davies is one of the only people who's actually got the 8 pro nil action figure

with like interchangeable Casey Jones yeah I've got Casey Jones in interchangeable mask mate I've actually got all like 6 masks where he goes into different situations

and stuff there's also the underwater mask where it's got like 2 vent things on it where he can go underwater if he needs to laugh by that conversation saying that as you're winded and you still think people are interested oh god now uh one of the we we can go into email shortly but um i i want to about a couple of things, first of all, before we do. You know, we had the argument about the email last week. We'll talk about the email in a minute. But a few people thought that you and I, well, I say a few people, we got a couple of messages from people thinking that we'd really,

they were made to feel a bit uncomfortable about the fact that you and I sort of had quite such a passionate falling out. Yeah. And I just want to sort of... Yeah, I will jump in here as well quickly. This is very much mine and Morish's relationship. Like in what we've just done here, where we're just chatting,

this whole podcast is very natural, isn't it? It is who we are. So we will go, me and Morish, quite often from being how we are right now, where we're both talking about how alike we are and that we're go, me and Maurice, quite often from being how we are right now, where we're both talking about how alike we are and that we're both these two douchebags at school

and we're very similar. But also we are very passionate and, you know, we argue in real life, don't we? We've made people feel uncomfortable in situations

where other people have been around and me and you have had arguments about ridiculous things. Yeah, but we're not, I'm never annoyed. I never really lose my temper.

It's just like, you know, It's just one of those things. Tom, you know, if I think Tom's utterly wrong, and I'm sure you can imagine that comes up a lot, if Tom's utterly wrong, you sort of get passionate about the discussion, don't you? And equally, Tom does his thing of sort of pretending to be nice and butter wouldn't melt, but actually is issuing a horrific set of body blows

that other people don't seem to notice. And so end up having to go at me for being horrendous to him. We were actually, we were put in a, I've had a tough weekend, mate, because, so I just did, I just did last weekend, I did the last episode of the Ranganation, which is obviously knackering. And then we came into, I would describe that in terms of the rangination which is obviously knackering and then we came into i would describe that in terms of the nature of the scenes and the length of the day as a very challenging day at

work wasn't it yeah and oh man so yeah there's one bit where i've got to apologize i haven't really spoken to you about it since we did it but i do want to apologize there's one bit basically there was a scene where tom does a bit at the top and then obviously i don do want to apologise. There's one bit. Basically, there was a scene where Tom does a bit at the top and then, obviously, I don't want to spoil anything, and then I arrive later on at his sort of request. Gary calls me into the scene. And one point, very late on, we were due to finish at 11. This must have been about, I reckon, 10 o'clock.

It's looking like we're pushing it to the finishing time.'ve been going to about 10 yeah worried about the the rain yeah it's like you know it's all that there's a lot of pressure in those situations because you've got to get this stuff done you can't set up all this stuff that's been set up again so anyway we're doing a scene and i didn't realize because i guess because i wasn't paying attention or something i didn't realize they were going as far as my entrance into the scene so bearing in mind they've set up cameras everybody's good to go they've done checks and everything it the scene starts it gets to the point where tom calls me in and i'm just watching from the side because i'm such a fucking idiot i haven't realized that it's actually going to the bit where i me in and i'm just watching from the side because i'm such a fucking idiot

i haven't realized that it's actually going to the bit where i come in and so they have to stop everything for me to take my coat off for me to get ready to actually act and then what do i say oh sorry i didn't realize that you require me for the scene that i'm a very key part of anyway tom was tom tom was he did a bit you know, he did a bit of laugh. Oh, look at this. What an idiot. You know, sort of doing, playing to the crowd a bit. Do you know what I mean?

Sort of really loving it. No, but at the time I felt a little bit sorry for you because you were all a mess. And like, you're sort of like, you know, you're all just sort of scruffy. You've been eating one of your vegan jerky snacks. But you bought for me. Thank you. By the way, Tom did a wonderful thing.

And I think these things really did. He went to the shop before he went to do filming and he's getting some snacks and he bought me a bag of vegan jerky. That means a lot to me.

Thank you. Anyway. But you know what was even nicer is the fact that then one of the runners came in and said oh we bought romesh um some vegan snacks and came in with a massive and when i say it's like a bag for life one of those big ones you get from i think tesco's and it was full of vegan snacks and i said was there anything for me and he said oh there's some paprika crisps that we've had for since no one else has touched so and also they'd be vegan as

well wouldn't they paprika crisps yeah well they were in my they were in my snack bag yeah you know what i would say that's i would say that's the one one not one one of the advantages of being a vegan apart from sort of just being a better person and kind of definitely going to heaven is is the fact that you sounded so posh when you said heaven said in heaven when you said you went yeah yeah yeah um yeah it's one of the good things about being a vegan you get to go to heaven like you think someone's listening now. God? Did he say heaven? You're not here because you're a vegan, but every time you talked of this place, you spoke of it well.

You always enunciated when you spoke of the heavens. Well done. I would say, but I don't want to get into this, but if I was to get into heaven, the bar must be so low. Do you not think that? Yeah.

I mean, do you think you deserve to go to heaven? If I'm honest with you, I think purgatory will be better anyway. Sort of middle ground. I quite like that because you're not, I can't believe you're talking about this, but you're not getting a hot poker up the arse every day. But at the same time, it's not sanctimonious. Do you know what I mean?

I think a lot of people that we know and love are going to be in purgatory. I think, look, when you look at the same time it's not it's not sanctimonious do you know what I mean I think a lot of people that we know and love are going to be in Purgatory I think look when you look at the bar it is to get into heaven I think like and also then you look at the people

who are actually going to be there Cliff Richard probably be there maybe you think so I mean I don't want to speak it all Cliff I'm not too sure how many how many...

He's the first person when I think of heaven that's probably going to be... I don't want to have a legal action against his podcast because somebody's upset that we said that they're not going to go to heaven. No, no, no, right. Yeah, but Cliff Richard, come on. He did Mistletoe and Wine and, you know...

Yeah, he's done a lot of good songs. He loves children singing Christian rhymes. So he is definitely going to go to heaven. Yeah, and I think there's an Ilka person who'll probably get there. And I think there's an Ilka, but I think there's just a lot of middle ground people who won't.

A lot of people I think you might think, look, this is what we've basically been talking about. Set your sights low. If you get to purgatory, that's great. We'll see you there. If you do end up getting, yeah, if you do get to heaven, wow, fucking hell,

you've smashed it. But also, you've probably not made most of the time that you've had here. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like...

I think Richard Harris is one of my heroes. He'll definitely be in Purgatory. What do you think the score is when you get to Purgatory and stuff as well? Do you think you'll be in a generational sort of...

Do you think everyone mixes or do you think... It's a good question. First of all, I would say I've not given purgatory anywhere near the, the level of thought that I have done as to what might, what hell and heaven might be. But so I started thinking about purgatory cause I,

I'm, I don't want to hurt you here, but I do think you're probably a bit. Okay. Thank you. And also, but I think purgatory would just be like a strip in one of the, but what is purgatory? Is purgatory, do you spend forever in purgatory oratory. Okay, thank you. And also, but I think purgatory would just be like a strip in one of the sort of Mediterranean... But what is purgatory?

Is purgatory... Do you spend forever in purgatory or do you spend however... You do a shift there. You have to build up points, don't you? And then eventually... Yeah, you build up like tokens

and points to then get into heaven. Or if you get to purgatory and you're a complete arsehole and someone turns around and says, look, there's nothing else for it, we give you a chance, you're going to have to go to hell.

But if you go to purgatory, I think you could probably spend infinity but in purgatory if if you walk the line and but i mean i think also by that token i think you could probably grab you know get loads of points and stuff get to heaven and if you don't like it just be a dickhead in heaven and then they'll send you back to purgatory did i ever tell you when cliff cliff richard went came to my school oh my god is this story does this story lead to us in a court, in a court case against Cliff Richards? No,

no, no. No, he came to our school and, um, we had an RE teacher called Mr. Sills. Yeah.

And he spent a long, uh, nice guy actually. He was one of the only few teachers actually like me, but, um, he, uh,

spent quite a lot of time, uh, getting, um, Cliff Richards to come to our school and, uh, sort of just perform and just sort of, you know, and he'd written to him and whatever back in the day when you had to write letters.

Anyway, he gets him to come and it's like, you know. By the way, this is, that's for him, isn't it? Yeah, that's for him. No kids are going, oh, I hope Cliff Richard comes back again. But I used to know all the words to a lot of these Christmas songs. I mean, I've got quite a few of these sort of stories. But anyway, we did one time where it was all the worst kids in the school

had to, at Christmas, do a choir singing Mistletoe and Wine, which was literally the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life. It was like butchered the song. But anyway, so he's like complaining to get Cliff there with this massive thing. You know, you taught at this school. It was an absolute shithole of a school. It was an absolute shithole of a school.

It was awful. Anyway, Cliff is... Mr. Seals stands on stage and he's like, boys and girls, you know, I'm so, so honoured. I know you're all so excited to say hello to one of the musical greats of our time. I don't know, does he speak? Oh, my God. Put your hands together for Cliff Richard

and Cliff Richard comes walking on stage and he goes, Hello, boys and girls. One of the older kids at the factory shouted out, Richard, you wanked! It's like... How did he react to that? He kind of pretended he didn't hear it and sort of started

like sort of like talking about god and shit but um uh mr sills mr sills this is like mr sills ruined it for him because he just honed in at this one kid at the back and shouted it and all the kids obviously are laughing yeah um yeah it was uh what an incredible thing to do. No, look, Tom, we've got to get to emails here, mate. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, man, we twisted off. But yeah, so look, the argument last week, it was quite intense. Yeah. I'd argument last week, it was quite intense.

Yeah. I'd say as well, it's quite explosive. It probably felt more explosive because we were both absolutely shattered for 90% of that podcast. And at the end of it, I think we rallied to sort of, yeah, we were both probably ultra sensitive. Yeah, we probably didn't do the... If anyone was upset or affected.

Yeah, we're sorry. Tom and I love each other very much and the friendship didn't suffer any ill effects from the debate. Having said that, I got really posh there again, didn't I? Yeah. Didn't suffer any ill effects from the debate. Okay. Now, speaking of which, we asked for your opinions on this, and I would say it's probably based on general

kind of emails 70 30 in my favor i would say in terms of what people thought okay that's the first thing i'll say off the bat but i have pulled out three emails to sort of summarize the various arguments right and i've picked out the people who i think sort of knowledge wise will be the best people to go to all right one of them is an organizational psychologist wow one of them is a lawyer and one of them is philip himself the cafe owner jeez phil bye yeah philip's back in the room so for those of you that don't know ph Philip, the cafe owner, was laughing at the podcast. Somebody was jogging, came past, saw him laughing, thought he was laughing at her, stuck a finger up,

started abusing him, and he said, I guess I've lost a customer there. She comes into the cafe, and then Tom and I had a massive argument about whether she recognised him or not. I said you couldn't tell. Tom said she definitely recognised him. That's the summary. Okay. Can I just quickly jump in with one thing my wife listens to this podcast and my wife did say to me um she said if that was you as in the woman's place and you saw someone laughing at you

when you were running you'd have lost your shit completely she said you would have done what definitely she said yeah the woman you called an absolute prick if I recall correctly I never said that to you I said so my my problem wasn't the fact

of her reaction it was the fact that did she not recognise Philip that was the whole thing Philip she looked at Philip's face

like you know and I can I completely empathise with her for the fact that she thought yeah but when she saw

Philip's face I still to this day, think she knows Phil from the calf. So that's good. So. I'm going to let you do it now. So this comes from Daniel Umphrey. And he says, hey, lads, great pod.

As an organisational psychologist, I work every single day with teams and leaders. In almost every case, my role is to untangle people's misaligned beliefs and misplaced assumptions these often are the reason why the onset of destructive conflict occurs and potentially why you two had your little verbal dust up as i get into the second paragraph i see tom smashing a shit ton of granola and yogurt into his face but in this case i'd argue rom is slightly more at fault than Tom. Why? Despite Rom brilliantly unpicking Tom's assumptions, 75% to 80% chance she knew who he was,

she goes in the cafe every day and so on and so forth, Rom has used his own body image issues as a mechanism to assume that she too has body image issues. Assuming she's nervous about it is equally not factual. There are so many other plausible reasons why she reacted the way she did therefore arguably rom knowing about tom's assumptions and then going into a whole appraisal of his own assumptions of her body image is actually more dangerous in my humble

opinion the game we're playing here is the game of confirmation bias using only your beliefs to form everyone's truth of the story and only observing things that only support your hypothesis i hope i haven't been too unkind keep up the great work uh there you go so i'm going to take away from that because obviously there's a lot i think i've got a good idea what you're going to take away from it go on no but he was saying i'm more of a i can i can look at things probably more clearly than you he's not supposed to make it all about, he's not said that. You basically make it all about you. He's not said that. You've inferred that from what he said. But he hasn't said that.

Yeah, but he said you've done a shit ton of inferring last week. He said basically you're the king of inferring and I'm just like fucking scurrying around your feet doing a little bit of it. Like a little... No, but... Yeah, go on. He was basically saying I was right, right?

He was saying it's more likely you're right. And actually, he said, for all of the criticising I did of your assumptions, I was actually making some assumptions myself. So, you know, as often is the way with these arguments, what you are angry with other people for doing, if you actually take a long, hard look at yourself, it might be you're angry at yourself

for doing the very same thing. And we will be getting that printed onto T-shirts when our new merch comes out. Okay. So that's Daniel. Now we've got another email from Toby, the lawyer, Toby Cummings. Here we go.

As a lawyer, listening to the arguments raised by both Tom and Rob on episode 15, regarding the facts of Philip's email, I couldn't resist the urge to write in. I'm a regular listener. So, facts as presented. Lady Jogging saw him laughing. Philip believes that he assumed that her... Oh, no. This doesn't really back me up when this sentence doesn't make sense.

Gave him the middle finger and cursed nonstop while the lights were red. We don't know how long this was. And later, there's a claim that she stares and was staring at him. But that's not set out in the facts. Only when proceeding, once the lights changed, did you notice it was a customer, suggesting they were either distant before the lights changed or that their views of each other were imperfect. Those were the facts.

Everything else. Order up for Damien. Hey, how did your doctor's appointment go, by the way? Did you ask about Rebelsis? Actually, I'm seeing my doctor later today. Did you say Rebelsis? My dad's been talking about Rebelsis. Rebelsis? Really? Yeah, he says it's a pill that... Well, I'll definitely be asking my doctor if Rebelsis is right for me.

Rebelsis. Ask your doctor or visit Rebelsis.ca. Order up for Rebelsis. What's better than getting a small premium roast coffee and your favorite McMuffin? Getting a small premium roast coffee and your favorite McMuffin for only $4 plus tax. For a limited time, only at McDonald's. Exclude Egg BLT McMuffin at participating McDonald4 plus tax for a limited time only at McDonald's. Exclude Egg BLT McMuffin at participating McDonald's in Canada prices exclude delivery. Only got small amounts of time but want big amounts of flavor? Knorr has got you.

Our new Knorr rice cups deliver all the tastes without the prep or wait time. We're talking yummy, creamy, hearty goodness. Choose from loads of delicious, We're talking yummy, creamy, hearty goodness. Choose from loads of delicious, more-ish flavours, ready in only two and a half minutes. It's not cup food, it's good food in a cup. Visit Knorr.com to learn more. It's assumed or inferred. Tom asserts that Phil is a good guy based on his email.

We don't know if he prefers Phil to Philip at this stage, by the way. That if she's a customer and recognises him, she's out out of order he then asserts that she knows phil twice tom assumes it's a small provincial town as well as the contents of a coffee order that's my favourite Romesh line. Romesh states that we do not know whether or not the lady knows or recognises Philip. Rom conceded there is a chance she'd recognise him. There is dispute about the percentage chance of that being the case. Tom goes on to vehemently assert that she's out of order because she knows Philip,

but that he feels sorry for her and can empathise with her because she might be body shamed. On the facts, Virx is 100% team wrong. 100%! Sorry, Tom. You might be somehow right about the circumstances, but you're definitely wrong in your assessments that she A, recognised him, and B, knew him to be the owner of the cafe,

which we cannot know that from the facts given. I therefore also blame Philip for this debacle. Keep up the good work gents uh now thank you by the way for your very detailed email there toby yeah what i would say is um thank you so much for presenting that i do think here what's becoming clear is we're both in the wrong here aren't we i will just say this we are a pair of idiots who've been asked to evaluate a situation. If you ask for a fucking idiot's response to saying

that's exactly what you'll get. If you ask for an idiot's response to something that's happened in your life, who's the idiot? Is it the idiot you've asked? Or the idiot who asked the idiot? I will say this. Let's hear from Philipilip and i think

we can then we can put this thing together okay all right i don't know what philip you've read the philip email i'm assuming i i sort of skimmed it because i wanted it to be a bit of a surprise for me as well actually okay okay okay i'm slightly nervous about this let me just tell you i'm very nervous about it no no let tell you something. Because even if we get this confirmed that she recognized him, you do know that still doesn't make you right. You know that, don't you? I don't think either of us are going to win in this situation. But if I'm honest with you, the one thing,

one person I really hope wins in this is the customer and... The customer you call the fucking arsehole. That one. No. No, I hope Philip and his customer can build some bridges from from this that's what i really hope here we go you really yeah hello again lads uh apologies for the heated debate between you two but can't lie i was quite chuffed to have caused it to answer your question yes i do know the woman and yes by name the reason we didn't. Wow.

Why is that double gun? But just so you know, Tom did double gun fire. Why is that double gun for you? Because he just fucking. Yeah. Your guess was correct. Fuck you, Toby Cummings. Fuck you.

The reason we didn't recognize each other straight away was that when the traffic lights went green and I drove towards her okay mate calm down that's when we clocked each other properly rom's point about her being self-conscious would have made sense if for the fact this woman is one of the few people who's clearly stayed active during lockdown and didn't drift in the other direction like myself when i went home and told my wife what happened she said yes we know her and that our kids did after-school activities with hers before lockdown she told me to explain myself to the woman next time she's in. When I told her Tom's shit gate story, she said she'd talk to her for me. Love the podcast, Phil.

Wow. How do you feel, mate? I don't feel anything. This makes absolutely no difference. Would you? Mate, I'm not going to get into this again, because, quite frankly, it feels like you've eaten a whole box of lemons. Absolutely.

I've even fucking had a sip of lemonade, mate, let alone eaten a box of lemons. The fact of the matter... First of all, Phil, I know you're delighted to cause this debate, right? But you're the prick here, all right, Phil? You've not given us the requisite detail. I'm only joking, Phil.

You're not a prick. We're actually delighted you've given us some content. But, Phil, can I just say thank you? Because I just thought it was a customer and client relationship. But you're friends outside of work as well. Yeah, but, Tom, accidentally we found that out. You were still assuming all of that. Romesh, Romesh, Romesh.

We've been friends a long time, right? You, right? Oh, God. No, no, noesh, Romesh. We've been friends a long time, right? You, right? No, no, no, no, no. On the front side of it, well, I was about to concede after Toby's email, by the way, and I was about to concede. On the front side of it, you open a paper, you look at you and your resume and all this stuff.

Yes, right? But sometimes what you lack is the ability to read between the lines. No, Tom, Tom, I lack the ability to guess correctly, which is what you do. No, I've seen the situation. I've seen it unfold. And you know what? I'm going to say this, Phil.

Before you carry on, I just want to say, this is the absolute, without a shadow of a doubt, this is the absolute worst version of you that we're seeing now. I just want you to know that. The way you're leaning into the microphone, you tilt your head slightly because you've got a bit of swagger about you. It's absolutely disgusting. But go on, do your little fucking, I have a dream monologue.

Go on. Yo, Phil, man. Yeah, bro. I want to extend an olive branch to you and the said lady. So when this is over and we're allowed to eat in your sweet, merry coffee shop again, me and Ramesh will come and we will buy the said lady a coffee. We'll buy you a coffee and maybe some muffins

and we can all just sit down together, the four of us, and put this thing to bed. And Phil, thank you. First of all, that was as rank as I thought it might be. Secondly, why do you keep offering to meet up with people? Because I guess I'm a bit lonely. Yeah, but look, the truth is we aren't going to go to this coffee shop. Yeah, no, I'll go to that coffee shop.

No, but you won't because I know that you... Phil, can you please, Phil, tell us where the coffee shop is? we aren't going to go to this coffee shop. Yeah, no, I'll go to that coffee shop. No, but you won't. Because I know that you... Phil, can you please, Phil, tell us where the coffee shop is? We won't disclose that information. Unless you want us to, we'll do it after that for you. What if he says it's in Nottingham? Or what if he says it's in Lake District? Beautiful. Look, Romesh, these people have given us their time to listen to us.

Yes, you're right. You're right. They've given us half an hour to write this email so it's only right that we spend seven hours driving to this cafe you're absolutely right by the way phil this is no disrespect to you if i was passing your cafe of course i'd come in and also i'm hugely grateful to you for giving us for for sending us this email. It's, it's, it's been great. I'm just saying Tom's insistence,

because what you're doing is you're, you're creating enemies now because Phil's going to, because Tom, you're like one of the busiest people I know, right? You are not. If this, if this cafe is far away,

you are not going to have the time to go to this cafe. And then you're, hold on. You're making a promise now that you, you might not be able to keep and then phil will be like oh when you come in when you come in and by the way you're not the one that's history this i'm going to be the one that's fucking spending hours going through emails of pictures saying rom is a sweet soul like and a picture of fucking harold shipman that i've been getting all week and getting these emails about tom said that you two were going to come and meet me.

What's going on with that? I will endeavour, because there's some people, right, what we need to do is put a list together and maybe that's something you can do today or tomorrow. I'm not putting a list together with people I've got no intention of meeting. If you want to do that, you go. Guy in Ireland. We both promised to go and see him

if we go to Ireland. Yeah, we go and see him if we go to Ireland. Yeah, we did. That's if we go to Ireland. Yeah. We've got Phil in the coffee shop. I think there's a couple of others. What I'm saying is let's get our heads together and work out a way that we can potentially see

some of these absolute guys, superstars that we've chatted to. Some real sweet souls. When I was about 18, 19, I worked at Sunglass Hut at Gatwick airport. And there was a group of lads that were quite hard. That's knocked about in Crawley. And they came into the shop. It was like my first few weeks there.

And they asked to try on the sunglasses, some sunglasses. And I knew this was going to be a problem because they were like real dodgy lot. And when they left, there's a pair of Ray-Bans missing. Right. And I thought now I've got to myself into a situation where some people I

know have stolen from this shop that have chosen to employ me. So it caused me a lot of anxiety, you know, as a teenager. So I, I went looking for, so the next day I had a day off, I went looking for them.

I like still like built up some courage in myself to go find these these guys and just confront them about it right and i went to i knew where one of them lived i knocked on his door i said to him i need to speak to you about these sunglasses were missing and he said it wasn't me it's one of the other guys well i need to you need to take me to him right now like i was myself but i i wanted to get this sorted out right because i put my my job at risk so anyway it takes me along. Fucking huge group of people I'm terrified of. And one of them goes, yeah, I started sunglasses, right? And I said to him, well, you're on camera.

I said, you're going to get in shit. You need to fucking give me the sunglasses back. And he said to me, I've sold them on. He goes, can we not just offer to pay the shop for them or something i said well if you want to buy them i'm sure we can figure something out and he goes what about if you and me go halves that is how i felt when he suggested to me that you and me put our heads together to I don't think we could say about Guy and Phil and some of our sweet sweet listeners

that they've nicked Ray Banswell's show I'm not saying that you've willfully missed the point of what I'm saying there I'm just saying if there's a way we can dust a little bit of magic in people's lives, then let's just try and do that. Tom, what we do is we email them separately and we go,

can we get the address for your cafe? And then if it comes to pass that you and I happen to be doing a show or something that's near them, we can drop in as a surprise. That is a better thing to do with zero expectation, a much better thing to do than set it up like some sort of celebrity outreach programme where we're definitely going to this cafe and we're going to buy Phil and this customer a coffee

and what, the fucking, wherever he lives, the Lake District Gazette are going to come down and cover it. It's a quirky little story. I never thought I'd say this, but actually that's the most sensible thing you've said today. I quite like that idea. If we know where the cafe is, I'd feel mortified if we went to another cafe in Phil's town.

Yeah. So, Phil, can you just email the show, wolfoutpod at gmail.com, and just email where your cafe is. And if we are in the area, we will pop by. And mine is a cappuccino and Romesh's is an oat milk latte. Okay, good. Well, thank you so much for all of your emails about that.

We got lots of emails about that and we read all of them. So thank you very much next week we have from next week we have a situation where my wife is going to be sort of helping me go through the emails um which is very exciting in order to do that she has started listening to the podcast because she hadn't listened to a second of it beforehand um and so she started listening to it podcast because she hadn't listened to a second of it beforehand. She started listening to it. This could be quite difficult for me. Please do me a favour and don't start sending me emails like, Romesh, when are you going to come and fuck me like you promised me you were going to?

But keep on with the pictures because Romesh told me this week. Please don't because honestly, genuinely, again, loads of them. Romesh is a sweet soul light and then there's a picture of Cruella de Vil. Romesh is a sweet soul light and then there's a picture of Rishi Sunak. Romesh is a sweet soul light and then there's a picture of Thanos.

I get what the joke is but please don't. Alright Tom, it's been a more upbeat episode hasn't it this one I think. I hope we haven't. Okay. All right, Tom. It's been a more upbeat episode, hasn't it, this one, I think? I hope we haven't upset anybody. We went back to that situation. And we dealt with it. And I think we cleared it up.

Yeah, I think we did. I think we know. Someone's right, someone's wrong. Anyway, let's not go over it. Tom, can you do me the honour of taking us out of the pod? Look, sometimes you are going to be fiery

and sometimes the fireworks are going to be insane. They'll light up the sky with their burning lights. But sometimes when you look at the fireworks, they're not there as aggressors. They're there to bring joy. Sometimes that is the actual reason of firework night it's not about a guy who ages ago was trying to set fire to a um house or whatever it's about all of us setting off the fiery side of us and for one night just letting the sky be ablaze.

And that's what friendship is. Sometimes you're just on a canoe, the two of you, you know, just bobbing along on a very calm and still river. And sometimes a wave's hit and you're shouting at each other saying, oh, you idiot, you shouldn't have come this way. We shouldn't have gone canoeing today. I knew it would be bad weather. But you find a way together to make it through

what i'm saying is friendship isn't always calm water sometimes it's a little bit more fractured and the fractured times they don't make you hate the person or loathe the person they make you love them that little more. As Katy Perry once said, baby, I'm a firework. God bless her soul for that. It felt like you were struggling for an ending, but you found it. You pulled a fucking delightful one

right out of your ass at the last second. I've got to say, I was lost at sea a little bit there, but that's a little bit of word for advice look at all of the work of katie perry and all the work of pink if you're looking for an ending to any speech i'm going to just say something before we end this podcast katie perry's firework all right what's a song to put on when you want a lift man like yeah i i think I know that that's what that song's about, but I defy anybody to put that song on

and not feel a little bit better about things afterwards. You know what I do? Sometimes, like, Friday with me and you acting together, and I knew I had to bring something big. I knew that I was tired and I was a little bit down, if I'm honest with you. I put on Wrecking Ball, and that was, everything was okay again. honest with you. I put on Wrecking Ball and everything was okay again. You sort of being uplifted by Wrecking Ball

is an image that I'm going to treasure for a long, long time. Well, look, with that, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. James Torrance, can you take us out with a little bit of firework? We'll see you next time. This has been The Wolf and the Owl.

Take care. Woo-hoo! If you have a problem, opinion, feedback or anything at all, please email us at wolfalpod at gmail.com. That's wolfalpod at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you, mainly because we don't have any content ideas. Thank you.