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Podcasts, there are millions of them. Some might say too many. I have one already.
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I don't have any, because there are enough. Politics, business, sport, you name it, there's a podcast about it, and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.
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But nobody is covering the most important topic of all. Why is that? Are they scared?
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Too afraid of being censored by the man? Possibly, but not us. We're here to ask the only question that matters.
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We try and say it at the same time, Max. What did you do yesterday?
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What did you do yesterday? That's it. All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday.
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Nothing more. Day before yesterday, Max? Nope. The greatest and most interesting day of your life?
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Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it. I'm Max Rushden. And I'm David O'Doherty.
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Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Welcome to Midweek Mayhem Series 2, Series 1 of Midweek Mayhem Series 2, Episode 30-100.
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David O'Doherty, how are you? I've never had a cliffhanger on our podcast, particularly these midweek ones.
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But last week you did have a possible threadworm problem, so you took special chocolate.
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Yeah. Do you think that's all cleared up? It's a cliffhanger in a sense. Well, the interesting thing about the worming chocolate is you take one and then you wait two weeks because what it doesn't do, it kills the worms, but it doesn't kill the eggs.
1:39 - 1:49
So at this stage, it feels very much like, and our mate Barca Jim, the comedian, did send a message going, quote, I haven't inquired about Jamie's anus.
1:49 - 1:59
It's not a statement I ever expected to hear you answer in a podcast. But as it is, at no stage was my anus itchy.
2:00 - 2:05
Again, I failed to inquire about Jamie's, but she's never mentioned it. Ian's has cleared up as well.
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And Willie was too young to take the chocolate, and also he can't talk. No real way of knowing how itchy his anus is.
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Because I was thinking of using it as an excuse with the Helen copter. If she sees me like tucking into a big milker, I'll be like, what the hell are you doing?
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It's actually a medical condition, Helen. I've got possibly awful throat. You'll have to print out a label.
2:27 - 2:37
Yeah. It's clearly a Toblerone. It's clearly a giant, duty-free Toblerone. It's a box of Gillian.
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Why are they shaped like seashells? What is that about? It's just what they do for worms these days.
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Tombo wrote, are they just normal anuses? Good question. Peng replied to Barza Jim saying, it's not really the first time it's been mentioned on social media, though.
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This is regards Jamie's anus. If I remember some of those touching congratulatory messages following the nuptials.
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Have you ever seen this, David? So we got married in 2018. Congratulations. Thank you so much.
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And I put one photo on social media. I don't know if I did it on the day, maybe, but I can't remember.
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And it just said, news, married, ends. I think it was a week later. And I put a selfie of us having a nice time.
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That was it. Even I felt that was a bit too far, right? You know, who needs to know that?
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Whatever. But I did it. If you don't like that kind of personal, that feels acceptable.
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It's not like a silhouetted pregnant woman holding. The bump, you know, me behind, you know, holding the bump.
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Anyway, the first reply, right? The first reply. Yeah. And you're right to say, oh, no.
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Was from shuttle bus 71 at McBifter, right? At McBifter, who said, get in her shitter.
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This is the most like, the first reply. Oh, no. Oh, no, Max. I know.
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I mean, we did think about getting that, you know, sort of Twitter shop framed.
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But it's just sort of a bit too much. It's quite amazing. On the inside of the ring, which sounds like a further pun I'm making there.
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But yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to get with shuttle bus 31. Look, it's a big day, isn't it, for the podcast?
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Well, last week was obviously with the end of Curdle. And I sort of, I feel slightly bereft.
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I don't know about you. When we're doing these episodes, I like the fact we've got feedback, Curdle, one of our days.
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It's got a nice flow to it. So we're missing that. We'll obviously have a mushroom update.
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And we're not going to force it. Something new will come. But there has been some response to the end of Curdle.
4:43 - 4:51
John saying, the person who got the final cheese should be in the next Knives Out movie as Daniel Craig's genius assistant.
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Colm said, I mean, I love all those cheeses, but they are not normal cheeses, David.
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But at least your shame is now ended. Are we still at this? Normal cheeses thing.
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Congratulations to Roxanne and Felix. Yeah, well done, Roxanne and Felix. This is from David Mitchell.
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I don't think it's that one, but it really sounds like him. I'm not sure I'm ready to trust again yet.
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The Chevra incident, the just normal cheeses lie. I don't know what to believe anymore.
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Do you even shower in water that was slowly filtered through a decomposing rat? Or was that all a lie too?
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I mean, I feel like he's just cut and paste in Would I Lie to You?
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Someone called David Mitchell. Now, amidst this sort of excitement, of Roxanne and Phoenix getting Breberus d'Argentelle, I didn't spend enough time saying, in what world did you ever think that was a normal cheese?
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I know I'm a man of simple food taste, but I would have thought I'd have known how to pronounce the cheese if I'd never even seen the cheese.
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Look, for you and for the dozens of haters that have been thronging outside my residence, I was going to accept sheep's cheese.
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Breberus d'Argentelle, correct. It's not a normal cheese. It's not a normal cheese. But then we discover Manchego is also a sheep's cheese.
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And so then that's when I felt I had to react publicly. And this is the thanks I get for being honest.
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Well, maybe I will never be honest again. I went on a Reddit thread about Breberus d'Argentelle.
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Just a couple of things. Breberus d'Argentelle, creamy, crowd pleaser, made of sheep's milk. Creamy crowd pleaser.
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This one says, it's one of my favorites, so rich and creamy. It's the perfect cheese to impress guests or indulge in a solo cheese night.
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Who's that? Well, is that the Scotterby? It's just Dinner Party 1987, isn't it? Have you ever brought out a cheese board?
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I mean, maybe you did on Christmas Day and people went, oh, with this Breberus d'Argentelle, I am so impressed.
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No, there's various courses in the O'Doherty Family Christmas, that are there by tradition, but we never get to.
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And the cheese course is basically one of those whereby still in their packets, they're just distributed to members of the family.
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Just take this home, take this manchego, take this Cashel Blue home. So as of the 1st of May, 2025, do we know who got the Breberus d'Argentelle?
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Has it been eaten? I think we might've got it. And I think to be honest, I think I possibly just thought it was a brie, as it went down, because that's the thing about it.
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It's just a normal brie. Geniusly worked out by Roxanne and Felix. You don't necessarily know it's come from a woolly lady.
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Emma on the Sunshine Coast says, hi Max and David, my husband and I do the wordle every day before bed.
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If one of us is struggling to think of a word that fits, we ask the other if it's a normal word or something obscure.
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Right, you're doing it separately, I see. These days, when we ask, the answer comes back, it's just a normal cheese.
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I thought you'd like to know, love the show. Thank you, Emma. I appreciate it.
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Thank you to Jim who says, this is on the subject of Weetabix. As much as I love and respect David O'Doherty, I can't be having his Weetabix slander.
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It's just normal wheat. It's 95% wheat. So let me have it. Yeah, but everything's 95% something.
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It's that dreadful 5% where it's like, you know, expanding foam, glue, condensed hats, whatever else is in that dreadful 5%.
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I think I'm on it. I'm on to a winner here. Chris writes, Dear Max and David and producer Mars Bar.
8:44 - 8:51
Well done, Mars Bar, for getting a shout out. Yesterday, I was on a flight back from Morocco, so this should apply to your podcast.
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I was listening to the new Pierre Novelli episode and my wife was watching an episode of Reacher season three.
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She's a few episodes behind me. I'm trying to catch up and had the subtitles on and I was watching over her shoulder.
9:02 - 9:12
After our hero had obliterated a few more bad guys and made his way to a hideout, he then brought up the fact that the coffee he'd been drinking the previous days had come to a cat's arsehole.
9:12 - 9:19
Almost instantaneously, you and Pierre started describing the noodles from the Chinese as being used to floss a cat.
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When people read back what we've been talking about, I just think, did we talk about that?
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I'm starting to worry about the coincidence and synchronicity of two totally unconnected forms of media, both speaking about cat's bumholes within mere seconds of each other.
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And as I type this on my phone, I'm slightly worried to open Instagram as my algorithm might be completely destroyed.
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Pierre Novelli is Jack Reacher. And everything he talks about will tie into one of the Jack Reacher movies.
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He asked me not to tell anyone that, but Jack Reacher is based on the life of touring comedian Pierre Novelli.
10:00 - 10:06
On the Pierre Novelli episode, Mary says, I like to Google the guests before I listen to the episodes.
10:06 - 10:11
It's nice that people are now Googling the guests and not Googling me. So that is a nice touch.
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So I can put a face to the voice if I don't recognize the name.
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I didn't recognize the name Pierre Novelli, mea culpa. So I put his name in the Google.
10:19 - 10:27
Having a touch of dyslexia, I rely heavily on the autocomplete suggestions. And when I typed Pierre N, I wasn't sure what letters to put in next.
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So I threw in a few vowels. And suddenly the top result was Pierre Noivi.
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Looks good to me, I thought. And I clicked on the name. Pierre Noivi is a professional poker player from Belgium.
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I pressed play on the pod. And for the one minute introduction, I had many thoughts about this choice at first.
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Fair play, Max. He's obviously upping his game and getting more guests on. Pierre Noivi must be an absolute legend if he was picked to be the next guest.
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This is going to be a good episode. What do professional poker players do? An interesting and fun thought exercise.
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I'll be honest, when you then introduce Pierre Novelli as a comedian, I was gutted.
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And I did another Google search and saw where I went wrong with the vowels.
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I wasn't disappointed for long. It was an excellent episode. But what did Pierre Noivi do yesterday?
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I desperately want to know, says Mary. Do we book Pierre Noivi? He went for a cycle through a forest.
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He read some Tintin. He played some poker. And then he, what's another very strong Belgian thing?
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Probably had some chocolate, didn't he? He had a massive worming tablet. That's what he did.
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That should be the new branding for Easter. I played the first round of the Poker Millions tournament, which was a celebrity round.
11:44 - 11:52
And the winner got to go through into the professional tournament. And my co-host, Helen Chamberlain, had done it the year before and had won half a million dollars.
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What? She actually won the whole thing. So I was in a game against Steve Davis, Teddy Sheringham, Dave Gorman, and Abby Titmuss, right?
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Sheringham and Davis, they're serious poker players. But I somehow won. It took hours, hours and hours and hours.
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But I got through to play the... This is incredible. It was really fun because it was where you put the cards, you know, the cameras underneath the cards.
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So you had to put your cards in a special place. And then the commentators were like, oh my God.
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It's like this really enthusiastic, American going, trip threes, blah, whatever. So I got through to play the professional poker players.
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And I would say, as a rule, they were really a bit odd. And the guy next to me wouldn't stop playing with his chips for like four hours.
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They'd all watched my game and they described me as a wet fish. But I couldn't say, it doesn't sound good, does it?
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I don't know if that is good or if that isn't good. But that is what I was known on the poker tables of Eiselworth.
12:58 - 13:11
Shit. So this is so gloriously 2009. 2008. You, Titmus, Davis, Sherrigan. Yeah, and Gorman. And maybe Costa is just watching.
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Costa from Blue is just watching. Yeah, yeah, probably. Did you win any money for beating them?
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No, no. Is this another string to your mysterious gold clarinet playing bow? Did you win 20 million pounds?
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No, no, I didn't. I think if I'd won the next game, I'd have won like 20 grand.
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I was knocked out third. There were maybe six people there. I did okay, but I wasn't very good at it.
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Were you playing using high-level tactics or were you just playing on instinct? The first game was like four hours long and it was so dark.
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I was like, these people never see natural light. They're all calling me a wet fish.
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I was quite keen to get out. I would have rather won half a million dollars, but I didn't win.
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I struggle with it just because three of the same is better than two pairs.
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That's correct. Yet in my mind, there's something more substantial to the two pairs. There's more cards, isn't there?
14:04 - 14:09
There's more cards. Let me count them. Four cards in that, but there's only three in three of the same.
14:09 - 14:16
Would you have a big row? You're in Vegas. Mr. Big has just dropped three tens and you're like, no, no, no, no, no.
14:16 - 14:30
I've got jacks and fours. Give me the money. And then, especially if my fifth card didn't match one of the pairs, but was like an ace or a picture of a queen or something like that,
14:30 - 14:42
I'd be like, well, shove this where the sun don't shine. And then I put my arms out like this and just grab all of the locker tokens from the swimming pool towards me.
14:42 - 14:53
Simon says, for a second, regards Pierre Novelli. I thought you were talking about the leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, Pierre Polievre, who just got done by Mark Carney.
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I mean, at some point we might go, I interviewed Keir Starmer twice on the election trail.
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Did you? To drop his people a line. Yeah. That guy did lose the Canadian election.
15:05 - 15:16
And I wouldn't put coming on this podcast as the reason why. But I think when there's only limited time to take, you know, because it takes an hour and a bit to record this,
15:16 - 15:22
but there's probably another like half hour of faffing either side of that, make yourself a cup of coffee or whatever.
15:22 - 15:31
It wouldn't have reflected well on the Conservative people of Canada if they, had voted not Pierre Novelli as their leader.
15:31 - 15:38
Or indeed, if they had voted Pierre Novelli, again, another spelling mix up. Just on spellings here, Max.
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Yeah. And I still haven't checked this and I don't want to. Right. But I attempted to type the word diarrhea yesterday.
15:46 - 15:53
Very hard. Yeah. Can I ask why? I mean, it is your yesterday later, but should we get to that in a bit?
15:53 - 16:02
Why did you want to type it? Did you have it? I'm trying to write a new show at the moment and you go down a lot of dead ends, but I'm trying to,
16:02 - 16:08
in my life, there's times when I felt a sort of happiness, like a pure satisfaction.
16:08 - 16:19
Yeah. And very often it doesn't coincide with things that it's supposed to, like the achievement of a goal or a moment of great love or whatever.
16:19 - 16:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's happened like once I was drunk walking home from the pub and I was like, I think, I'm really happy.
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This is brilliant. It was, there's a chimney beside where I live and trees were being projected through a street light onto it and they were moving.
16:36 - 16:46
And I was like, that is beautiful. Like despite the chaos of this urban landscape, you have moments of true beauty like that.
16:46 - 16:54
Yeah. And then you always think when you are happy, oh, I'll just remember this feeling for the rest of my life and just, I can call it up at any time,
16:54 - 17:06
but that doesn't happen. But the reason I was writing Diarrhea because it once happened, I was in a hotel that had an outbreak of some sort of, oh, I don't know,
17:06 - 17:22
some terrible... Norovirus or gastro. Yeah. Okay. And the moment was sitting on the loo and then, look, I had to part my legs to barf down through the gap.
17:22 - 17:29
Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's the choice you made. But I had an intense moment of, actually, life is brilliant.
17:29 - 17:38
Because when I've been both ends, I've tended to throw up in the bath and just shit on the floor.
17:38 - 17:44
I don't know why that is. Clearly a bucket is better, but there's something about vomiting.
17:44 - 17:49
It's really the lowest, this part of the leg on, that I need to really be on all fours.
17:49 - 17:56
I just can't, you know, I can't be sitting there with that. The reason this has come up, though, is so I go DIA.
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So, Norovirus, normally I'll just have a tilted spelling word and the little red line will come up under it.
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And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. But it wasn't even getting it.
18:07 - 18:20
You've just got to stick an H in somewhere and then surely it'll auto-correct. I think I ended up D-I-A-R-R-E-A and then I just whacked the H on the end thinking this will get us out of here.
18:20 - 18:27
No, so we've just left it in the document with a red line. And there's no way of finding out.
18:27 - 18:36
There's no way of knowing. Sarah says, on the subject of famous people stealing from listeners, of course, Mark Pugach, Mark Pugach land.
18:36 - 18:42
Hi, David and Max. When I was a child on the Isle of Man in the 90s, I was sat on the promenade beach eating an ice cream.
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Along came Norman Wisdom with a carer. He said hello and without asking, leant over and took a bite of my ice cream.
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I was in shock and did not know what to do. I cannot recall if my parents bought me a replacement or not, but I really hope they did.
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Keep up the good work, Sarah. That's quite a moment, isn't it? There's a danger you run though with those sort of, you know, there's the famous Bill Murray once going up to someone and I don't know,
19:08 - 19:16
it's something similar, like taking a drink of their beer. Then he'd do guess who, he'd put his hands, he'd be walking behind people and put his hands over their eyes and go, guess who?
19:16 - 19:21
And they'd say, Bill Murray. He'd go, yeah, well that is quite cool if you're Bill Murray.
19:21 - 19:28
Harder if you're, if you're my level of Z-list. Yes, exactly. It's Max Rushden. Here's my Wikipedia.
19:28 - 19:34
Honestly, this will be an anecdote for you later. It's actually almost tempting to do, isn't it?
19:34 - 19:42
Yeah, because the line I'd heard was he drinks someone's beer and he goes, no one will believe you that this happened.
19:42 - 19:53
And I always think that would be a funny one to do. Yeah, exactly. If I just went round just my local here, just drinking out of old fellas' pints and just saying,
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saying it to three in a row. This is from Dag in Oslo, in Norway, finally.
20:04 - 20:11
Hi, David, Max and Mars Bar. I was listening to What Did You Do Yesterday, number 16, the one with the milky vomit, just now.
20:11 - 20:19
As Max was telling the incredible story of the locked door, the painted trousers and the triumphant discovery of the lost keys, I thought, wow, this is a great story, almost too good to be true.
20:19 - 20:24
It was only later in the episode when Jamie revealed that she'd planted an apology for the pod.
20:24 - 20:32
When David accused her of being a Series 2 big brother contestant about it, that the thought popped back up, was it too good to be true?
20:32 - 20:38
Who lost their house keys the previous week, leaving them in the sort of absurd place you'd only search in the deepest desperation?
20:38 - 20:47
Who started two arguments earlier in the day, building up the tension? And who ultimately locked the entire family out, all on the day before her husband's What Did You Do Yesterday?
20:47 - 20:53
Only someone with a vested interest in the ongoing success of the podcast. Gentlemen, I present the puppet master, Mrs. Rushden.
20:53 - 21:10
You are all but pawns in her little game. I definitely think that's where this is going, where Helen Copter and Jamie start doing their own podcast, where they both have headphones and they're listening to this.
21:10 - 21:21
And they're just clarifying. They're like, that's, no, no, no, no, no. Dag also says, P.S. everyone knows there are only three Danes in Aqua.
21:21 - 21:30
I do not recall when this came up. As the vocalist, Lena is Norwegian. I did get, some feedback from Mrs. Rushden and I'd completely forgotten this.
21:30 - 21:35
Apropos nothing, she just sent me a WhatsApp message that went, reason for divorce? Question mark.
21:35 - 21:41
Quote, I'm on my bike. I'm free. And I didn't know what she meant. I thought she was talking about this morning and I was like, what do you mean?
21:41 - 21:47
Well, I was free on my bike because I'd just dropped Ian at kinder. But I was like, I think we'd had quite a nice morning.
21:47 - 21:51
And then I recall that that is what I said when I said I'd left the house.
21:51 - 21:57
I said, I'm on my bike. I'm free. And maybe they were the wrong choice of words.
21:57 - 22:01
Because a lot of people have always wondered, you know, what do men talk about?
22:01 - 22:11
Yeah. I'd say a lot of, in the past, a lot of partners and wives would have been like, I wonder what he's like down the, well, she knows.
22:11 - 22:20
And it's you saying things like, I'm free, free from these shackles, these loveless shackles.
22:20 - 22:25
I was yelling to the neighbors. There we are, the passing chimney sweeper. I was like, good day, sir.
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Have a groat. It was like that. Hey, so we have one more message and then we will do your yes.
22:33 - 22:39
It's your yesterday, isn't it? Great. Aurel. A-U-R-E-L. Aurel? Aurel? Yeah. Hi, Max and David.
22:39 - 22:46
Many thanks for your podcast, which entertains me wonderfully without being too absorbent. Faint praise.
22:46 - 22:55
Faint praise. Regarding your questions about the activities during which we listen to you, yesterday I listened to your podcast with James Buckley while getting a tattoo.
22:55 - 23:02
When James casually mentioned that, his first meal of the day was two pints of Stella, I couldn't help but burst into uncontrollable laughter.
23:02 - 23:09
Fortunately, my tattoo artist's needle was not on my skin at the time, though he kindly and firmly reminded me to stay still.
23:09 - 23:14
So I had no choice but to switch to more serious and dull podcasts to avoid risking a ruined tattoo.
23:14 - 23:23
All the best from Switzerland. Most people who listen to The Rest Is Politics are getting tattoos.
23:23 - 23:32
They are, yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that famously why it exists? A little ego boost from Max Orrell says, after listening to the first episode, I had to Google who David O'Doherty is.
23:32 - 23:38
Yes. It's your day, David. Tell us about, yeah, what happened. There's no curdle, of course.
23:38 - 23:43
Mars Bar will probably introduce a swoosh. Yeah. You could be joining us into your day, but maybe that's...
23:43 - 23:58
The bejoing is done. No, you're right. It is done because Boxing Day 2025, when you bring it back, when we bring back curdle for the disappointing second series, it's going to be so exciting.
23:58 - 24:04
And also, you're going to think so... You're never going to have thought so hard about the cheeses to get.
24:04 - 24:09
Not for your family, but for the guesses. It's going to be wild, that one.
24:09 - 24:25
Okay. Tell us about your day. Before we do, I just feel the most beautiful thing that we've done, for me, as a duo, Max, was your description of your football match.
24:25 - 24:34
Just the sheer tragedy mixed with joy. It's not so much raging at the dying of the light.
24:34 - 24:41
It's just dancing at the dying of the light. You're so happy at the end when the 20-year-old hugs you.
24:41 - 24:47
You know, that was the highlight of your day. Oh, yeah, it was lovely. You've still got a few tricks, old man.
24:47 - 24:53
And you're like, maybe I do. Maybe I do. And then I limped home and I've been limping for a week.
24:53 - 25:01
Ice packs and so many peas ice packs on my knees at all times. But it was worth it for that hug.
25:01 - 25:08
It's beautiful. It's the closest we ever got to the wonder years. Except it was yesterday.
25:08 - 25:16
Yesterday was a wonder year for you. And you know, maybe that's the point where I realized you still can have fun.
25:16 - 25:20
You can still do the things you love. Maybe not as well as you once did.
25:20 - 25:26
But maybe that's just growing old. It was just, yes. The tragedy is I spent so much time.
25:27 - 25:30
Thinking about if my left leg was as good as my right leg still is.
25:30 - 25:35
My right leg is fine. But my left, you know, knee, hip, ankle. I'd be good, you know.
25:35 - 25:47
That's sad. That's. It's sad. It's really bleak. You put me in a bleak. Carry on.
25:47 - 25:53
I wake up. There's too much light in this room. Where am I? Reach out.
25:53 - 26:09
Helen Copter's not there. What? I am on the island. I did a gig in the west of Ireland and drove one hour in the rickety rain to Ackle Island.
26:09 - 26:14
Why am I there? I was there recently. You're there to meet the Fraggles, presumably.
26:14 - 26:20
I've come back. I do need doozers, is what you will learn from this episode.
26:20 - 26:29
There is a sheep known locally as Houdini who has got through the fence into our garden.
26:29 - 26:36
So hang on, this is your, who's on Ackle? Your grandparents were there. So my granny lived there.
26:36 - 26:46
It is the largest island of Ireland. It's connected to the mainland by a bridge and it is simply my favourite place.
26:46 - 26:54
It's the only place we ever went on holidays, but particularly from this time of year onwards when you're getting a bit of weather, I love it.
26:54 - 27:02
It's in my bones. It's a pretty, brutal, awful place. The storms come off the Atlantic, but...
27:02 - 27:13
The crime, mobile phone theft. There is no mobile phone theft. So a sheep, an animal you've probably never encountered, has jumped...
27:13 - 27:22
Just a normal sheep. Just a normal sheep. Yeah. A neighbour told me that she'd seen Houdini, this wild local sheep, in the garden.
27:22 - 27:30
Now the problem here is I want my parents to come down in a few weeks and enjoy it down there.
27:30 - 27:41
And if you were to have a sheep in that garden, which is basically the equivalent of a Michelin-starred restaurant for a sheep, it will be destroyed.
27:41 - 27:50
And by destroyed, I mean every single growing thing will just be gone. It'll be a brown basin of sadness.
27:50 - 28:00
So this is just some backstory to why you're on the island. This is why I've travelled down for the second time, I thought I had fixed the fence the previous week.
28:00 - 28:13
I had not fixed the fence. And worse than that, the sheep have been spotted in there, which means they may be stuck in there because there's a cattle grid and sheep can't get across a cattle grid.
28:13 - 28:21
So it's possible they're stuck effectively in the larder, just eating their way through it.
28:21 - 28:33
And this is a family home. The O'Doherty's have retained the property. Yes, it's a little cottage that clings to the side of a hill despite the best efforts of nature.
28:33 - 28:41
Right. Erosion, the waves are lapping at it and in 20 years it will just crumble into the Atlantic.
28:41 - 28:48
Yes. But right now it's there. Okay, and is it like there's 25 miles between each cottage or is it in a little strip of cottages?
28:48 - 28:55
Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's a good distance. There's a couple of hundred metres between each cottage.
28:55 - 29:03
There's large sections of the island with no one living there. Right. Notable people who've lived there.
29:03 - 29:10
Heinrich Bohl, the German Nobel Prize for Literature winner, moved there. Ah, Die Philora Ere von Katharina Blum.
29:10 - 29:17
Whoa! How did you know that? Well, I've just read a bit of German literature recently.
29:17 - 29:25
Whoa! No, I did that for A-Level German. Cool. Can't remember a thing of it.
29:25 - 29:35
Then... Gráinne Weill slash Grace O'Malley, the pirate queen of the 16th century, had her castle on Ackle Island.
29:35 - 29:53
She controlled shipping along the whole west coast of Ireland and demanded fees. She is notable for once having gone to visit Elizabeth I, where Elizabeth I met her as another queen.
29:53 - 29:59
And they talked about being ladies at the top of their game, whatever they took them in.
29:59 - 30:03
It's sort of, it's got a lot of good history. They did a podcast, the two of them together.
30:03 - 30:09
Women in Business podcast. Women on the Top. Yeah, it was those two and Deborah Meaden.
30:09 - 30:15
They did it for years. It had a good stint, but nothing lasts forever, apart from this pod, of course.
30:15 - 30:21
In that era, podcasts were done by tapestry as well. So, like the Bayeux Tapestry.
30:21 - 30:28
Some people call it the first podcast. And, you know, the tapestry man, what are they called?
30:28 - 30:33
We'll call them a loomer. A loomer. The loomer is there going, oh, don't read out 20 emails at the end.
30:33 - 30:39
I'm like, come on. We don't need that. Oh, like at the start when they're like, hey, how are you?
30:39 - 30:43
How's your week been? Don't do any of this. Just get to the subject. Come on, I'm looming here.
30:43 - 30:59
If anyone would like to tapestry this podcast, I'm particularly interested in the first minute where we discussed the chocolate and Max's bum bum.
30:59 - 31:07
No, it's, what a wonderful gift for Jamie is to say is, yeah, well, we were talking about this and someone's made a tapestry of Uranus.
31:07 - 31:13
So here it is. You can give it to your dad. It'll be wrapped. So what we need to do is...
31:13 - 31:16
Hang on, when do you wake up? You know, I don't have any timings here.
31:16 - 31:20
Okay, okay. Because it's an unusual one, it needed a little bit of backstory. Yeah, I understood.
31:20 - 31:29
What I'm attempting to get across here is because it's a classic, so I'm woken by the sun and, you know, that's the sort of place we're dealing with.
31:29 - 31:34
Even lined curtains, Max, it doesn't give a shit. It's coming straight through those bastards.
31:34 - 31:43
Yeah, go ahead. So it's probably about half seven. Everything happens, I would say, a little earlier on Ackle because you're closer to nature.
31:43 - 31:48
You know? Sure. You're not trapped in a matrix like you are there. They got the iPhone first.
31:48 - 31:55
Movies used to come out there and then the States and then the UK. Everything just, it's at the forefront of everything.
31:55 - 32:06
You're aware of wearing Puma disc system shoes. I'm watching Tron. Okay, so the scene is, this is beautiful, right?
32:06 - 32:10
And it doesn't sound like an episode of Father Ted, but it sounds like an episode of something.
32:10 - 32:15
You're on an island on your own and there's a sheep that's gone, is running around your garden.
32:15 - 32:22
Yeah, it's not Father Ted. It sounds like the start of an Ernest Hemingway book or something, you know?
32:22 - 32:28
Okay, yeah, okay. And it's two sheep. It's Houdini and young Houdini as well. How big's the garden?
32:28 - 32:32
Because you could have got, when you arrived, surely the first thing you'd do would be like, let's get the sheep out of the garden.
32:32 - 32:37
Again, this is the problem with doing this podcast with the city boy. You know what I mean?
32:37 - 32:46
You've grown up with soot in your lungs and a little boxy thing. You just kicking the ball against the wall, that sort of thing, you know?
32:46 - 32:52
Yeah, no ball games on the estate, yeah. When will the war end? When can we play football outside the garden again?
32:52 - 33:02
Soon, son, soon. No, everything's spatial here. So there's a driveway up to the house, just a rocky...
33:02 - 33:07
Like, I hope this isn't coming across as fancy, but it's a few acres. Yeah, okay.
33:07 - 33:14
The house is up here and there's quite a lot of fencing around it. There is a hole somewhere in this fencing.
33:14 - 33:21
Right, okay. So I enlist two of my best friends. Sorry, question. Who's told you there's a hole in the...
33:21 - 33:26
Like, old... The neighbor has told me that the sheep is on the property, okay?
33:26 - 33:31
Got it. Again, to get onto the property, I mean, all of our listeners have learned this.
33:31 - 33:45
The sheep has traveled... I mean, they can't jump fences, so it's either gone under it, which they can do, more likely because there was a storm a few months ago called Storm Oam, was it?
33:45 - 33:52
It had a Welsh name. The giant storm that did Ireland and Britain. Tom Jones.
33:52 - 33:59
Was it Storm Tom Jones? It was the stereophonic storm. And a hole has developed.
33:59 - 34:06
Something's happened out here. So what I'm trying to introduce is a whole new version of Doddles here.
34:06 - 34:14
You know what I mean? This isn't me sitting here in my Lycra, you know, waiting to go for a cycle after a podcast.
34:14 - 34:19
No way. This is like rugged Bear Grylls odyssey, if that's what we're... Okay, so it's 7.30.
34:19 - 34:25
You presumably just drink from the sap of a tree outside. Now you're in this...
34:25 - 34:32
I drink my own and I'm ready to go. Yeah, yeah, good. Okay. No, I brought...
34:32 - 34:43
So I've asked some of my best friends who live on the island, Saoirse and Colm, to come over and they're going to help me look at these fences because they actually know...
34:43 - 34:52
Although I have presented myself as quite a rugged version thus far, I don't really know how to fix fences beyond just wrapping a wire around holes.
34:52 - 34:59
Right. And they're going to show me how to do it properly. Do they come over straight away or you have breakfast?
34:59 - 35:05
No, you see, they say we'll be there and I know that's going to be earlier than if someone said I'll call over in the city.
35:05 - 35:13
They'll be there around nine. So I wake up, as always. I don't remember who I am, why I'm here, etc.
35:13 - 35:20
It takes a while for these elements to load. I look at a picture of myself on my phone to remind me who I am.
35:20 - 35:27
What do I do? I check my Wikipedia page and off we go. I've brought down a few provisions.
35:27 - 35:32
So I have eggs for breakfast because that's what you eat on an island. Yeah, okay.
35:32 - 35:37
What are we doing? Are we going? Yeah, you see, I do slightly undermine it by doing them in quite a fancy way.
35:37 - 35:47
I throw olive oil in a pan. I finally chop some garlic. I don't whip the eggs into it.
35:47 - 35:56
I fold them into it while grating cheese on top. Wow. And then three eggs, one bit of bread, bang, we're ready to go.
35:56 - 36:08
I put on waterproof trousers then because it's drizzling. Before the eggs. I put on a warm jacket and I'm ready to go.
36:08 - 36:16
I go outside, immediately realize it's too warm, although it is raining. And I go back in, put on a less warm jacket.
36:16 - 36:27
Sturgeon Column arrive. They have fence posts. The thing about fencing is that what effectively happens is the wood in the posts, rots.
36:27 - 36:37
Right. So they've got to be replaced. You then have to tension the fence using a thing called a strainer, which pulls the, yes, question?
36:37 - 36:46
In my episode of Father Ted, they put a fence up. So I've seen the whole, you know, the sort of machinery they've got to put the fence posts in.
36:46 - 36:59
It's quite interesting. Carry on. I'm trying to make this sound like a WB Yeats poem or, you know, Seamus Heaney at his most powerful and your only reference is the speed episode of Father Ted.
36:59 - 37:04
We get into it almost immediately. We have a little bit of small talk, but we're here to work.
37:04 - 37:11
We're hardy island people. So have you found the hole? You got to walk around the whole thing on the outside.
37:11 - 37:21
Yeah, I mean, I presume that's how you find the hole in the fence. The hole could be a few places as in Houdini the sheep can jump.
37:21 - 37:28
So anywhere where the fence has gone low, we need to tension that. And you can't, mention it when the fence post is rotten.
37:28 - 37:32
We got to get that fence post out of here. How do you get a fence post into the ground?
37:32 - 37:45
We got a big sledgehammer. We each do 20 powerful pumps on it because a fence post is about a third longer than it needs to be because that's all got to go into the ground.
37:45 - 37:49
But it's like an iceberg, isn't it? So you only see that 60 feet long and you only see.
37:49 - 37:55
Pow, pow, pow. Do you hit every time? Do you hit every time? Okay, sorry.
37:55 - 38:11
You're trying to do a poem and I'm interrupting. Carry on. It's correct. There is because one of my friends will hold the pole and at the start, my immediate concern is not just to bop them on the head,
38:11 - 38:24
you know, missing the whole pole. But after a while, you learn to trust in the force, trust in this elemental skill that's been passed down through the generations of the authorities that I didn't even know about.
38:24 - 38:29
Pow, pow, pow. Pow. We get them in. We get them in. We get them in.
38:29 - 38:37
What's that up by the top, by the mountain? Whoa. A sheep. Clearly, a wall has collapsed.
38:37 - 38:43
There's a style of stone wall you get on the island and this wall is a bit lower than it should be.
38:43 - 38:50
So let's whack the fence in front of that. Let's do it. Pow, pow. The two islanders know.
38:50 - 38:54
They just know it in their bones. That was the problem. That was where Houdini was getting in.
38:54 - 39:00
Okay. Great. We get Houdini out then. So we've seen the sheep. We say hi to the sheep.
39:00 - 39:08
In order to get the sheep to go out, you can't worry it. You have to just let it find its own way out.
39:08 - 39:13
And is he worried about the new fence being put up? But he doesn't. That's the fear.
39:13 - 39:23
He's worried about planning permission. No. City boy, sheep don't care about bureaucracy. This fucking red tape.
39:23 - 39:28
That's why I'm voting for the other lot. I'm voting for reform. Because they're just going to cut all this.
39:28 - 39:41
These sheep, they do, however, know of the delights that exist in the O'Doherty property now, which may make them search even farther for another way in.
39:41 - 39:54
Do we know that we fixed the problem? We do not know. We'll only find out either the next time someone goes down, if it's all been decimated, or if the neighbors happen to see Houdini and Houdini's offspring up there.
39:54 - 40:01
Job done. Wow, that's amazing. I know. There's a lot more to me. I'm like an iceberg, you know?
40:01 - 40:04
Yeah, I know that. When I'm standing here. You've actually got a little body and long legs.
40:04 - 40:09
You've already talked about this, haven't you? So you are literally, you're the personification of an iceberg.
40:09 - 40:13
Oh no, do you have a long body and little legs? I've forgotten. Yeah, a long body and little legs.
40:13 - 40:17
Oh, so you are the opposite. I have a polar bear in my hair at all times as well.
40:17 - 40:25
So it took about five hours for the whole thing. Because you made it sound like it was rapid, but okay, five hours.
40:25 - 40:33
You must be exhausted. I know, I couldn't do a one-for-one, five-hour breakdown of what had happened like you did in the last episode of your stupid game of football.
40:33 - 40:41
So surely you get in and there is a, you know, everyone has a doorstep cheese and pickle sandwich.
40:41 - 40:46
No, we just have coffees and I got to get back. I got to get back to town.
40:46 - 41:05
I got to help the Helen Copter. Now it's a four-hour journey back and I'm really high on nature I feel I've got closer to my true elemental self and that's why it's so disappointing when after an hour of the journey back
41:05 - 41:13
I pull into the McDonald's in Castle Bar to get a McCrispy. Ah, it really tastes good.
41:13 - 41:24
Terrible stuff. Now, because every time I go to McDonald's I think I won't get a Big Mac meal and just when I approach the ordering person that's what they're called.
41:24 - 41:27
Actually, now you actually can just do it on a screen. Just go, Big Mac meal.
41:27 - 41:38
I can't help it. It's probably once a year and like the, you know, the joy of it when I'm eating it is just amazing but the regret begins sort of mid-second bite.
41:38 - 41:45
So you have this period where you're instantaneously joyous and regretful and then you're just regretful when it's all gone.
41:45 - 41:51
So talk me through the stages of regret of your McCrispy. I have a very specific order.
41:51 - 41:56
I get it at the drive-thru because I can't bring myself to enter that temple of sin.
41:56 - 42:07
I'm ashamed, Max. Although I took, when Ian really wasn't sleeping, there's a 24-hour McDonald's up the road and it was about half past five and Jamie just needed to sleep and I was like,
42:07 - 42:19
all right, I chucked him in the car and I drove to McDonald's and he was so excited because everybody's in high-vis and he loves construction and obviously at the sort of wanky,
42:19 - 42:27
gentrified cafes that we go to, no one's in high-vis. He was like, wow, the construction cafe and he absolutely loves it.
42:27 - 42:35
I disgrace myself with the order. I mean, they've worked out all the psychology of it.
42:35 - 42:39
So when you say I want a McCrispy, they say, is that a large meal?
42:39 - 42:47
And this is through the crinkly drive-thru. So I say, obviously, yes. What drink are we having?
42:47 - 43:03
Sprite or 7-Up Zero, which is some attempt. Yeah, taste the edge off. No, but then even more ridiculous than that, I get a Minecraft McFlurry, which has small cubes of fake apple in it.
43:03 - 43:10
Oh, God. That's disgusting. I know, it's awful. Oh, no. So I can't tell Helen that I've done it.
43:10 - 43:23
So as soon as we set off and I'm doing the thing where I'm driving and eating and just forcing, I'd say it's the worst eating anyone ever does is McDonald's drive-thru eating.
43:23 - 43:30
They should just have it in a bag. Like a horse where it goes behind your ears because that's effectively what I'm doing.
43:30 - 43:39
And it's finished. I hide the bag shamefully behind the seats, which she will then find later that evening.
43:39 - 43:47
I can't tell her I've been there. I don't explicitly lie, but she says, let's go to the nice ramen place.
43:47 - 43:51
Hang on, what do you listen to on this journey? On the way back? Interesting.
43:51 - 43:59
This is bad stuff, but I am working on this new show and we're still in the foothills of it.
43:59 - 44:12
So I'm listening to myself. So at the McDonald's drive-thru, I have to turn down myself so the man can hear me order this dreadful food.
44:12 - 44:18
I get back fairly uneventful. I'm bursting for a piss for the last, I'd say, hour.
44:18 - 44:26
So that when I get back, I illegally park the car outside and sprint into the house.
44:26 - 44:34
And do a pee that is so long. I announce this is the biggest we have ever done.
44:34 - 44:42
And we're halfway through, it turns out, at that point. Racehorse is not the word, Max.
44:42 - 44:55
Helen said we're going to the ramen place that she loves. And I can't tell her that I've had probably 2000 kilocalories of fucking Minecraft food.
44:55 - 45:00
Why can't you tell? Would she look? Would she look down on you sort of ethically and gastronomically or just in every way?
45:00 - 45:08
Not particularly. It's a mixture of shame. She wouldn't care that much. But it's the fact that she said, yeah, and we'll get food when you get back.
45:08 - 45:13
And I'd be like, yeah, absolutely. Great stuff. So you've sort of got a Vicar of Dibley Christmas special vibe.
45:13 - 45:18
You're full, but you've got to have some ramen. I'm the drive-through Vicar of Dibley.
45:18 - 45:24
That's what they call me. We go to the ramen place. The ramen place is good.
45:24 - 45:29
It's really good. But my issue, we get a bao bun to start and a ramen.
45:29 - 45:38
My issue is it's 73 euros at the end and they're sort of closing up as they're doing it.
45:38 - 45:45
So we're effectively chucked out. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of restaurants fit into that.
45:45 - 45:52
Is it a canteen type cafe thing? Like that's the cool vibe. Any chance of an old bit of canteen prices there, lads?
45:52 - 45:58
No, no, no, no. Full restaurant. They're cleaning around you. They've got like, you know, Jif on the tables next to you.
45:58 - 46:05
They're certainly taking in the seats from outside and banging the metal off the metal of the door and all of that.
46:05 - 46:12
And the music has gone off. That's the worst point. Music goes off and she says, no, no, no, take your time.
46:12 - 46:22
It's fine. And it's like we literally can't take our time. You know, you can see the staff in the kitchen are doing the full on, you know, the pink liquid cleanup.
46:22 - 46:28
They put the bill in a glass just sticking out on your table and just take your time.
46:28 - 46:46
Yeah, I entertain Helen Copter with my tales of island life. And we then a friend of hers is moving out of her flat, but has broken the front door.
46:46 - 46:52
I mean, this goes back to your locksmithery. But as you know, I love to try and fix things from YouTube clips.
46:52 - 47:10
So I have a look at this. I'm pretty sure I can fix this. And I bring over a selection of my best bicycle tools and end up effectively smashing it with a hammer because there's a point where we're up to about 11 o'clock now.
47:10 - 47:16
And it's just let's just get this done. I'm really tired. I got up at half seven and I've been fencing all the time.
47:16 - 47:32
Exhausting day. And the small screw that's been holding this in. I'm not proud of this, Max, but sometimes when I'm doing a good job, a good turn like this, I sort of go quiet as in I don't need to be entertaining.
47:32 - 47:46
You should just be happy that I am trying really hard with no know-how whatsoever to not so much fix this, but just make it OK such that the next people won't start some legal action when they see how fucked it is.
47:46 - 47:54
It'd be really fun if the next Edinburgh show you do, you say I'm not here to be entertaining and you just invite people with a series like the repair shop.
47:54 - 48:02
You basically become the repair shop, just the repair shop live on location. I'm not playing the hen and chickens.
48:02 - 48:09
I'm just going around Dave's house who he's got his window doesn't quite shut. I'm going to shave like you do.
48:09 - 48:12
We know you can do the door. Just shave it down. You can do that.
48:12 - 48:18
So serious, David, what we have is serious doddles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what you've got a serious game face on.
48:18 - 48:25
Too tired. Yeah. Do it. Get the thanks. Sort of almost like Little Sobo. I'm not here for the thanks.
48:25 - 48:29
I'm just here to. I like things. And as I walk away, you know. Stick red hanky.
48:29 - 48:39
Yeah, that's it. I'm going to bed and me and Helen Kupter. I, for the first time ever, we got the connections.
48:39 - 48:47
I don't lose consciousness during the what's the easy crossword? The one where with the downs and the crosses where it's in a box.
48:47 - 48:54
Mini. Yeah, yeah. I don't bother with that one anymore. Well, for the first time ever, I'm like, this is too hard.
48:54 - 49:04
I don't. And that was my yesterday. Wow. God, that's action, David. Yeah. That would be a different doll in the pack.
49:04 - 49:12
Rugged farm, David. That's so interesting. You could have a day that's, you know, because I listened to that.
49:12 - 49:18
I was thinking, basically, apart from two days, every day I've done has been exactly the same.
49:18 - 49:24
Do you know what this podcast is like? It's like series two of The Wire, you know, or series one where you're just like, oh yeah, it's drug dealers in Baltimore.
49:24 - 49:29
Series two, they're working. They're working down the wharf. What is this? This is a completely different show now.
49:29 - 49:36
I'm just showing you, sometimes in my life, it's slightly different. Very impressed. If you'd like to get in touch with the show, here's how.
49:36 - 49:44
To get in touch with the show, you can email us at whatdidyoudoyesterdaypod at gmail.com.
49:44 - 49:51
Follow us on Instagram at yesterdaypod. And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform.
49:51 - 49:59
And if you didn't, please don't. Well, David, I've got to up it for my next day.
49:59 - 50:01
I've got to really work on it. I've got to find out when my day is.
50:01 - 50:06
And then I've just got to absolutely got to shake this shit up. Which isn't the idea of the podcast.
50:06 - 50:15
It's to live your life. What's happened? You've changed the game. You know, in Diary of a CEO, in the original episodes, they just talked about what they did yesterday.
50:15 - 50:22
And then suddenly, that guy had to be like, and then I invested six billion pounds in crypto.
50:22 - 50:29
I'm going to knock my house down and buy Ethereum. I can't wait. All right, well, let's do it again, David.
50:29 - 50:55
Thank you. Thanks, Max.