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Podcasts. There are millions of them.
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Some might say too many.
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I have one already.
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I don't have any because there are enough.
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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.
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Why is that? Are they scared?
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Too afraid of being censored by the man?
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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. Nothing more.
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Day before yesterday, Max.
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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.
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And I'm David O'Doherty.
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Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Hello and welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? My name is Max Rushden. Alongside me, David O'Doherty. hello David
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welcome to what did you do yesterday
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an intriguing episode today because we have a former co-worker of Max's so I know Waleed Aly because I was on so it was one of the most popular
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shows in australia when it was on before you came on board but waleed is even more interesting than that show because do we call him a public intellectual
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so yeah he hosted the project for
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years and i suppose a uk version is kind of the one show but it's the one show with a bit more journalistic chops than that and he is i mean a sort of i would say yeah an academic
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he is an academic
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like that's his thing he sort of fell into broadcasting and in this episode i think he sort of he doesn't underplay how smart he is but like yeah just so smart it's ridiculous and i have
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seen like i've been on the desk most of the time i would only sit on the desk when he was off like the main chair but sometimes i sat on the end like bloke on the end who doesn't have to do anything
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and like each interview would be oh with interviewing you know the labor mp for sydney about this and then you'd all have your planned questions and then you just well he'd he was just like i've got you know he would never say it
2:30 - 2:37
he would just i don't think i've seen a better forensic political interviewer i'm trying to think who early present is like james o'brien-y type
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you know brain that he has exactly and he's sort of a philosopher but what is very apparent from this episode is that all he really likes is football v
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arious forms of football what i
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like about this and this is not giving spoilers is it's a nice mixture of highbrow lowbrow where he's doing very smart things and then is capable of explaining it to two seven-year-olds like us
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it's interesting to see you know when i say oh i think i could do news night and then you watch someone actually interview a politician in a way that i would just go i would just softball them
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and then they'd be like i can't believe you didn't ask them that you know it's difficult because they were sitting next to me and I didn't want to upset them, you know, and like this guy. But yes, this is, it's a full day. It's a day where a lot happens, but mainly football happens.
3:35 - 3:48
I don't think he wants us to plug anything, but like he does a radio show on the ABC, he writes a column that's just far too intellectual. Sort of like the economists, like the font is small, you know, that kind of clever type of writing.
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He's a tiny font guy.
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He's a tiny font guy. But this is what Waleed Aly did yesterday.
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Waleed Aly, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?
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Hello, Max. How are you?
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Yeah, I'm very good. David, this is Waleed Aly. A couple of things important to say here. One is, this might be our first ever intelligent guest, so we've really got to have our wits about us today. You know what I mean?
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I'm hearing Professor Mary Beard on line one, who's now just been called unintelligent.
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Let's be real. Beard was thick as mince. Let's be real.
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secondly i was on waleed's very successful tv show the project several times and that show was very successful it was winning big awards here and then one thing changed in it they got
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you on as an occasional co-host and the whole thing was binned so i am interested in the tension that obviously exists here
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i was just trying to help a kid out you know what i mean
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yeah You did.
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You did help me. Yeah. And I'm sorry I ruined it.
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But what you perhaps haven't picked up, David, is that my long-term plan is to force Max into reciprocating so that I can come on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast.
5:14 - 5:15
And then finally I can ruin that.
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So when I said, do you want to come to the podcast? Waleed said yes because he thought it was Football Weekly. And now he's on this shit and he's like, oh, God. It's a first step. It's a first step.
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I have to admit that I was a little – because you sent me a text, Max. and just said, do you want to join the podcast? But you didn't write the name of the podcast.
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You just wrote the initials, I'm looking at it right now, the initials W-D-Y-D-Y. Yeah. And at first glance, without paying much attention, I didn't really read it very carefully.
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It does rather look like the What Would Jesus Do podcast. And I'm beginning to fear that I've prepared the wrong material.
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We're thinking of doing a spinoff.
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Yeah, so this could be episode one of What Did Jesus Do?
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Well, no, no, no. Can I just be clear? Not What Did Jesus Do? I don't know what Jesus did yesterday. What would Jesus do? And I just thought, well, you know, the media and podcast landscape generally is quite spiritually bereft.
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Maybe Max has opened up in your front. I thought I'd support you, but now, I mean, this will be a wild ride.
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Although Jesus would be a good guest, wouldn't he? I think he would be good.
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Hard to get, tough to get.
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Tough to get, but it'd be a good spike in the numbers. We'd have to do video for that.
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You'd be better off pulling the old Guardian Football Weekly stunt on the J-Man, you know what I mean? Where you're just slightly ambiguous, coming towards the Champions League final end of the season.
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Would you come on and just give us 10 minutes? Like the time you got Mamdani on for some bizarre reason.
6:44 - 6:51
That was amazing, the Mamdani interview. And then all he wanted to talk about was ticket prices. And I'm like, man, this is just wasted on Rushden.
6:51 - 7:01
How dare you? I mean, the funny thing about Mamdani, which is obviously not relevant for this podcast, is everyone at the Guardian had been trying to get an interview with him and we hadn't.
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His people had just emailed the Football Weekly email. And then in vintage Barry Glendenning style, we got a text from the producer going, are you free at three because Zohran Mamdani can come on? And Barry was like, I've got my finger on the pulse and I don't know who this guy is.
7:16 - 7:28
Do I recall correctly that Barry didn't even know that Sergio Ramos had gone to Paris Saint-Germain? Okay, well, I don't know what pulse Barry has the finger on. It may not be a relevant one.
7:28 - 7:45
But there's an even bigger danger here that like the next person to contact Max is like Viktor Orban and Max thinks he's just going to come on and talk about Szoboszlai and the history of Hungarian football and then it turns out he's the awful prime minister.
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Do you know what's amazing? So this will come up in this show, I've got a feeling. I'm a big Liverpool fan and Liverpool have two Hungarian players, Dominic Szoboszlai and Milos Kerkez.
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If you ever watch the Arne Slot press conferences every week, all the questions go in order of like the same journalist.
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And at some point, about two-thirds in, there is always a Hungarian journalist who puts his hand up and no matter what is going on, no matter what issues are prescient,
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no matter what Liverpool have been up to, he just wants to ask questions about Dominic Szoboszlai. It's quite an extraordinary thing to watch. Maybe Victor has a permanent place now that he's free.
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He's got some free time, by the way.
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For the tape, he lost the election yesterday. If you come to us for politics, then yeah, all bands out, breaking news. Okay, listen. Now, Waleed did say yesterday, he said it will not be a normal day for me.
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And I said, don't worry, we can make any day boring. So let's begin. At the beginning, Waleed, what time did you wake up yesterday morning?
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I woke up at 6.06.
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Okay. Wow. Is that a natural wake up or an alarm?
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No, that's an alarm. Okay. I'm very much not a morning person. So I set an alarm for 6am flat and then another one for 6.03 because I don't trust myself to wake
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up to the first alarm. I think this is a common experience. Am I the only one?
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No, no, I'm with you.
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Yeah. And then I finally convinced myself to get moving at about 6.06, but the timing was quite tight because as you're about to see, I had to get up because I had work to do. Y
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But I also had to get up because sunrise, I was in Canberra. I woke up in Canberra yesterday and sun rises at
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six, I think 24 yesterday. And well, this did seem more relevant to the, what would Jesus do podcast, but I had to get up because of course I'm a Muslim and the first prayer time finishes at sunrise. So you have to get up.
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Do you have to get in before?
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You have to get in before. And so I looked up the Canberra and the Canberra sunrises earlier than the Melbourne sunrise and that hurt, but I had to do it. But also because I had to then go and do work, it was like, well, I might as well just stay up. So that was the time that I got up.
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Do you make sure you're fully awake for it? Or would you ever risk it and be like, it's sunrise is 624. I'll set it for 622.
10:01 - 10:11
I don't have the guts for that. Because I know that means I'm not getting up to 627, at least. But I reckon in that scenario, I might have gone as late as 617.
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Okay, right.
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Here's a question. And we asked some very basic questions about Ramadan to bilal zafar so some more basic questions if you are like a minute late
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is that okay can you be a minute late
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there's no late note procedure as far as i'm aware
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you have to go to the doctor you have to get a sick cert
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yeah but if you wake up and it's a minute late you just do it and then just get on with it but what you don't do is wake up 20 minutes before and go i think i should just make a coffee first
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and in ramadan it's a very serious issue though, Max, because there's a point at which you stop eating. If you go a minute after that, that's it. You haven't fasted the day. That's a big problem.
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So are you looking to eat before sunrise then?
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In Ramadan, yes. Not yesterday. I wasn't fasting yesterday.
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So when did Ramadan end? Because Bilal was in Ramadan, which we recorded maybe a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Six weeks ago.
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I think this year was like late February through to late March.
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Perfectly time for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. That's not a small issue because in the last few years it's coincided because Ramadan, it's a lunar calendar, so it gets earlier by like 11 days every year.
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And for the last few years it has overlapped with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and there was one year where it was almost exactly day for day. And I have a friend, Nazeem Hussain, who's a Muslim stand-up comedian.
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Oh, I love Nazeem.
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And he didn't even clock that there was going to be overlap and he managed to book his show every night at sunset.
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And so he had to literally break his fast on stage. And I just said to him, mate, I'm not coming to see your show. But also, I really hope you stop down for like five to ten minutes.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you'd get up, pray straight away, or do we do anything before?
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No, pretty much straight away. Make sure you get that done. And then I was in Canberra because I was doing a show called Insiders.
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Now, I don't know how many Australian political junkies there are listening to this podcast.
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Every single one of our audiences.
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All the biggies.
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Very tuned in.
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No need to explain what Insiders is.
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Just imagining there was someone who didn't know what Insiders is. And obviously we both know what Insiders is.
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Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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How would you describe Insiders?
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Insiders is a federal politics discussion show every Sunday. It's a bit of an institution on the ABC. And it is at 9 a.m. every Sunday.
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And so there's a host, David Spears, who's like the main federal politics guy. I think he's the federal politics lead. Basically, think of him as the politics editor of the ABC. And then every week they have three different guests who come on and it rotates.
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So I might get called up to do it every couple of months or whatever it might be. And yesterday I happened to be on.
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Big gig. This is good now. So you immediately need to get the papers.
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The news wires coming in. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
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If I know this guy, he hasn't looked at the papers for weeks and he's just being amazed by David Cameron's gone. He's saying stuff like that.
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Hillary Clinton didn't win. So the interesting thing was I'd spent all of last week doing morning radio in Melbourne, just filling in on the ABC. So I'd kind of been in the news cycle, but that's local radio and this is federal politics.
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So it's not always the same thing. So I'd been a bit across it and then on Saturday night I'd kind of decided, look, I should probably read some things and I started reading some things.
13:40 - 13:54
By the time I got up on Sunday, I was kind of a little bit, yeah, I was feeling okay, but there was more work to do. And Pakistan were hosting the negotiation of the ceasefire between the US and Iran, and I'm like waking up, and what have I got to do? I've got to catch up with everything that happened, and who said what, and all this sort of thing.
13:54 - 14:01
And I've got to be on television discussing this in a moment like I've been in the room. But I got bored with that and decided to watch the Liverpool game instead.
14:02 - 14:13
So this is a fun thing in Australia. You wake up and you don't know the scores, and you can go to the app. It's on Stan Sport. It was really brilliant between 2021 and 2024. They were the glory years of Stan.
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I think it's really kicked on, actually. I don't know what you think, David. I've checked it out, but it is just kicking goals.
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This podcast is a graveyard of Rushden's former work.
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They didn't even replace me with a host. They just don't have a host now. The game just appears. There it is, like a mirage, and they're just suddenly, poof. The game is there. So now you've got an option, Wally. You've got this important politics show.
14:36 - 14:46
And I guess there's not a lot happening in the world, so you can sort of bluff that. But you can watch the whole game. You can watch a 45, 25, nine or four minute game. What do you go for?
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I never watch anything less than the whole game.
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Of course. What a purist.
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Do you watch it at 1.5 though?
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Oh my, you take that back.
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I support Spurs. I watch it in the fastest available.
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With your eyes closed.
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David, you don't need to do that. I can just tell you how it ends. You have to watch it at normal speed because, A, I don't think there is actually the functionality of Standsport to speed up the video.
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But even if there were, I need to know what is the pace with which they're playing, what sort of level of control over the game are they exerting, all these things that I need to know in case I get asked to appear on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast at any one.
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I need to be ready. And so I need to see this in full time.
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Because you're sort of, you know, you're a learned man. You would watch that with no other, and you don't have social media.
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I know which one of us are you talking about there?
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Sorry, sorry. I should have specified. Of the two learned men I look at, you don't have social media. And I see you as a purist in the sense that you will watch this and you won't have like other things going on around you. You are in the moment in the game.
15:50 - 15:53
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
15:53 - 15:59
So hang on. It's like 6.30. The show's at nine and a game is basically two hours. So this is good stuff.
15:59 - 16:10
You've spotted a problem. Yeah. I should point out the game actually kicked off at what would it have been, 2.30 a.m. Eastern time in Australia.
16:10 - 16:23
So the game's finished. But because I don't have social media, it's not very hard for me to avoid the score. And because I'm looking at Australian news websites when I'm trying to catch up with things, I mean, they're not talking about the Premier League unless you really look for it.
16:23 - 16:29
So it's easy enough to avoid. But you're right. Not only does the show start at 9, but Max, I'm meant to be in the studio at 8.
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Now, that's 90 minutes to eight o'clock, but it's not going to work out that way because I have to watch the pre-match, Max. I can't just go straight.
16:40 - 16:52
Interruption here. Is part of you hoping it's, what's the famous date where the BBC World Service says there is no news today?
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It's 1948 or something? And there's no way that's the case because I'm sure in Ireland, incredibly exciting things were happening.
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but yes i mean that would be the nightmare for insiders where you just sit there in silence with you watching a game on your phone occasionally looking to the camera
17:10 - 17:23
i think you're overlooking the possibility of a real thrill ride as i commentate the match live on air well on delaying the match has already been played but you get for those who want to catch up by watching a political
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discussion show then that's one thing i could do but what i understand so it's very hard to take you through my day without foreshadowing
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that's okay
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but i also know i'm going to do this show i'm in canberra after the show i'm going to have to end up going back to melbourne so there's a flight involved
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by the time i land back in melbourne my australian rules football team richmond will be playing a game
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which i also have to watch
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somewhere in there i'm going to have to get through the liverpool game as well
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with pre-match with halftime with post-match
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all these things non-negotiable
17:59 - 18:03
yeah so i decide the only way to do this is to serialize it a
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and i just have to watch as much as i can before i get to the abc studio and then get through the game as much as i can in the interstitial moments of my day if you understand
18:15 - 18:29
sure but is there a chance that during the show they'll cut to an interview with Penny Wong, and she'll be like, and much like the Liverpool back four, they've lost a lot of the pace, the opposition.
18:29 - 18:41
You know what? I'm pretty sure Penny Wong would be an Arsenal fan, and Liverpool is not Arsenal's business right now, so probably not. But I am on hyper alert because I know once I get into the ABC, there will be television screens on.
18:41 - 18:41
Yeah, yeah.
18:41 - 18:52
And there will be sports bulletins, and so I have to be on hyper alert to make sure that as soon as anything remotely world game related appears i'm out of there i'm blocking my ears whatever it
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is can you do the show with blinkers on when as soon as the show starts and it goes insiders hi i'm dr spears big news today world war three is about to happen on the panel today
19:03 - 19:11
you know it's the yellow wiggle craig mccloughlin and Waleed Aly and you say don't tell me the scores whatever you do don't tell me the scores can you do that
19:11 - 19:14
max you show touching familiarity with the format of Insiders.
19:15 - 19:24
And also the fact that they just go to the ABC canteen moments before it begins. They get one of the bananas in pyjamas, a wiggle.
19:24 - 19:37
If they'd filmed it in Sydney, they could have got Big Ted. Big Ted's a big presence. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You know what? It's actually worse than that, Max, because there's another show that follows on from Insiders, which is called Offsiders.
19:38 - 19:52
That is a sports show that goes for half an hour, and I do that show as well. I did it a couple of weeks ago. And there have been times I have done that show with Liverpool having played overnight and me not yet having had a chance to watch the game.
19:52 - 20:04
And I have given instructions to the host, the other panelists, and the executive producer that they are not to mention the Liverpool game or the score or anything like that under any circumstances whatsoever.
20:04 - 20:09
And thankfully, because it's an Australian sports show, there is no danger of that.
20:09 - 20:20
I once agreed to do like a Sunday breakfast interview for some Australian sports radio station when I was back in the UK. And so it was Saturday night, our time, and I hadn't seen Match of the Day and I didn't know the scores.
20:20 - 20:35
So they came to me and they said, and now with a roundup of the Premier League, it's Max Rushden. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know the scores. We can do a fun five minutes, but I can't. Anyway, they really enjoyed the chat, but it wasn't perhaps, I should have probably thought it through why they booked me.
20:35 - 20:39
But I was like, no, do not. Let's not do the scores. Let's talk about something completely different.
20:39 - 20:44
Surely, Max, you would be tempted in that scenario to just riff some scores.
20:44 - 20:49
Yeah, it was another stalemate at the den where Southampton came against their old nemesis.
20:50 - 21:03
Also, sorry, we're talking about football too much here, but I do love the idea that the Australian weekly politics chat show, The Offsiders is hosted by Francesco Totti, Alan Smith,
21:03 - 21:10
just a bunch of traditionally offside strikers. Don't know that much about Australia politics.
21:10 - 21:18
Oh, not Jordan Ayew again. Okay, this is getting niche. Okay, so how much of the game do we watch before we're into politics world?
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Okay, so I'm on the clock, Max.
21:21 - 21:27
So whatever time it was, I start watching. I've got nine o'clock. I know I need to be at the studio by eight.
21:27 - 21:36
studio is probably a five to 10 minute walk because they booked me a hotel near the studio okay so i go start watching and it's this thing that always happens to me is like
21:36 - 21:48
i'll get through 15 minutes and then i'll go get ready because i gotta get changed i gotta get tv ready this is not commercial tv i'm gonna have to dress myself it's a complicated process so
21:48 - 21:53
i'll be disciplined 15 minutes liverpool start pretty well
21:53 - 21:54
let's do 20
21:55 - 22:04
so have the talks in Pakistan broken down are you double screening Liverpool with the stuff you're going to have
22:04 - 22:11
no you don't double screen David no the talks can wait I've got business to attend to
22:11 - 22:20
anyway I'll get through the pre-match I start the game Liverpool actually start pretty well I start looking at the clock it's 25 minutes in Liverpool still playing well we're playing
22:20 - 22:32
Fulham at Anfield then Fulham start to get a bit of control of the game I'm like oh I don't know about this and just as i'm about to pack it in 17 year old Rio Ngumoha scores a worldy of a goal
22:33 - 22:44
to put liverpool up 1-0 sets a new record as the youngest liverpool player to score at anfield it's bedlam with me on my own in the hotel room and so i can't stop now can i
22:44 - 22:56
well the only thing is donald trump is calling like the pope the worst pope ever you know the various things are happening away from this game
22:56 - 23:01
it's not a bad point but i think i can get around it well actually
23:01 - 23:12
to be really precise donald trump hadn't yet done that so i was kind of in the clear at this point and and to be totally honest i had just quickly scanned the news and it seemed like that was
23:12 - 23:19
still in talks nothing much was going to happen so i'd kind of rolled the dice a bit but i was really glad to get to the Rio Ngumoha goal
23:19 - 23:21
and then i look up at the clock and now i'm late
23:22 - 23:25
You're an established, presumably you can just wander in when you like it.
23:25 - 23:25
Yes, swan in.
23:25 - 23:27
He'll be across this stuff.
23:27 - 23:28
Mid-show, he just comes in.
23:28 - 23:43
It's not quite like that. There was a time at the project, Max, you wouldn't have been in the country when this happened, where I literally did miss the start of the show. They'd already started and I didn't know they'd started. And I just walked on and the security guard looked at me like, check out how cool this guy is.
23:43 - 23:51
And I'm like, seems like a weird thing to say. And then I looked up on the screen, I was like, oh, the audience is clapping and there's an empty chair right there.
23:51 - 23:59
that's fine. So I didn't want to be in that situation, but I meant to be there at eight o'clock and I, it's about seven 50 now and I haven't had a shower and I haven't gotten changed.
23:59 - 24:10
So I run into the shower and I very quickly get the clothes that I'm meant to wear out of the wardrobe and all that sort of stuff. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and let's just say I'm disappointed.
24:10 - 24:16
You're in the full Liverpool kit. You haven't been thinking about it. Standard and chartered is written on your chest.
24:16 - 24:31
Think more of full body paint, but you get the picture. So I'm disappointed. My hair's not great. I had a haircut the day before. And do you have this thing when you have a haircut? You never know if it's any good until the next day. But when you're
24:31 - 24:37
in the chair and you have suspicions, you can't say anything about it. But I also have to be on the television.
24:37 - 24:48
Yeah. I mean, as a 50 year old man, for many years, it would just be the same. I had kind of Lego hair, so it would get shortened a little bit. And then the next time I looked at it would just be the same again.
24:48 - 24:53
Probably what I should have done is get the Lego haircut because then it's simple.
24:53 - 24:58
I hate to say this, but it appears like you have a real kind of Lego haircut.
24:58 - 25:02
Hey, Max, there's shape to this. There's shape to this. Anyway.
25:02 - 25:10
Because I've worked out during COVID that hair dressing for men is a complete racket and I cut my own hair and no one's ever noticed.
25:10 - 25:12
We just don't like to bring it up, Max.
25:13 - 25:23
So I run into the shower and then I run into this other problem in my experience in the hotel there are always two types of showers there is the one that is really underwhelming and disappointing and frankly you've paid too much
25:23 - 25:28
for that shower and then there is the other that is glorious
25:28 - 25:29
oh you're in a good one
25:29 - 25:30
it's glorious
25:31 - 25:41
i'm living in a hotel at the moment that has the classic 90s stand-up comedy routine shower where the two options are Sir Ernest Shackleton's
25:41 - 25:51
living in the Antarctic or the hottest geezers of the South Island of New Zealand. And there is no in-between whatsoever.
25:51 - 25:55
Can you flick between them so that it might average out if you can do it quickly enough?
25:55 - 26:06
Yeah, exactly. You start too hot and then you put it freezing and then you end up, you've still got mud on your knees because you played football the day before yesterday. I mean, we won't go into it anymore, but that's what's going on.
26:06 - 26:09
No, I think I watched that game just before I went and did Insight.
26:09 - 26:10
And the full pre-match as well.
26:10 - 26:12
Yeah, the full pre-match.
26:12 - 26:17
All of this. Okay, so you're really lathered up. You're lathered up and you're like, this is the best show I've ever had.
26:17 - 26:27
Having the best time. And Canberra's cold, by the way. This time of year, it's gotten really cold. And I'm just enjoying this so much. But I have to rip myself from it and then get changed. I do. I run in.
26:27 - 26:37
I get to the studio late. By the way, I have to check out. I have to get all my luggage, all that sort of stuff. So all that's delaying me. I haven't factored this in. And thank God that goal from Rio Ngumoha was such a great goal.
26:38 - 26:39
Yeah, of course.
26:39 - 26:44
I rush in, I'm at the ABC, I walk in, and I reckon I'm about 10 to 15 minutes late.
26:45 - 26:46
No one could care less.
26:46 - 26:46
Right, of course.
26:46 - 26:51
And I'm sitting there thinking I should have watched the rest of the first half, really, is what I should have done.
26:51 - 27:03
Are you thrust into a makeup chair and then a producer says, we're going to do this and then this and then this, and then you've got your panelists on other makeup chairs and you're the sort of woke guy, then there's like a racist next to you
27:03 - 27:06
and then there's like a middle ground person. And that's the sort of the plan.
27:06 - 27:09
Max, not every show is the project.
27:09 - 27:14
There's an English guy who doesn't have a clue about anything.
27:14 - 27:16
Yeah. He can't say medicine.
27:16 - 27:29
Oh, well, hang on a second. So this is an issue with the project, David. Is that in the pre-recorded packages, you'd have like voiceovers to do. And I said, you know, this is, you know, terrible news for medicine in Australia.
27:29 - 27:43
And they said, what did you say? I said, this will be terrible news for medicine in Australia. and they said it's medicine and i said well no it isn't and they went yes it is and they said if you don't say medicine we'll get someone else to say it and i went okay and i was always thought
27:43 - 27:52
it was strange because like during the show when it's live i would just say words and they'd never stop me and make me do them again because the show is happening but in the pre-recorded bits
27:52 - 27:59
i had to get every word and also i mean i had to call it the project and i was like well it's not call that guys so
27:59 - 28:13
yeah i would say medicine as well so what's happened to us like in the way that some people say nuclear they've added in an extra syllable we seem to have whacked one out there and you come from a famously a medical background
28:13 - 28:14
i do yeah well yeah
28:14 - 28:16
so you should know how to say
28:16 - 28:17
max spell medicine
28:17 - 28:25
m-e-d-c-i-n-e thank you i rest my case where's guy montgomery get me in Bye, I'm ready.
28:26 - 28:36
That sounds more like the Italian medcine, which is a very different word, different meaning. I know you're very worldly. The other one that I don't understand is what comes after fifth?
28:37 - 28:44
Sixth. But listen, the way you say croissant, honestly, you lot, it's almost worth moving back to the UK.
28:44 - 28:45
We need to get back.
28:45 - 28:47
Yeah, we need to get back to the serious thing. Come on.
28:47 - 28:50
I'm trying to look up medcine in Italy, but.
28:50 - 28:51
It's not working.
28:51 - 28:53
We've got 45 minutes to the program.
28:53 - 28:55
So I go into the makeup chair.
28:55 - 29:05
I apologize for my haircut. They managed to fix it up. But I did notice that one of the differences between the ABC and commercial TV is the makeup process seems to be a lot slower.
29:06 - 29:16
You probably haven't done much ABC, Max. Yeah, it's noticeable. Anyway, so I'm there. We're chatting. I'm drinking a coffee. I'm kind of getting through it. And at this point, I'm perhaps thinking I should have read more news.
29:17 - 29:39
Interruption. i once was on spics and specs which is a legendary australian abc music show and at the time i had a thick thatch of hair and the makeup person attempted to make it look like a french
29:39 - 29:55
king or prince from the 18th century like by curling it into this and i think that might be the first time i ever wore a cap on television so that's my meddling abc hair and makeup tale
29:55 - 29:59
so maybe they did it because you said medicine and they assumed it was french
29:59 - 30:03
right okay so you're chatting away have you had any breakfast
30:03 - 30:04
okay just a coffee
30:04 - 30:15
just a coffee and apart from that, I'm raw-dogging it. I might have made myself a cup of tea amidst the pre-match flurry or something. But no milk or anything like that. But that's just details.
30:15 - 30:27
Are you not worried that you're going to get the bonk, as we call it in cycling, during the show where you'll just look at the ground and be like, what's the point of anything? This is all bullshit, isn't it?
30:27 - 30:29
What did you call it?
30:29 - 30:45
In cycling, if you haven't taken on enough nutrition, there are people, it used to happen more in the 80s on sort of mountain stages and 90s before drugs where you just your bike just fell sideways because you had didn't have a single watt of power left
30:45 - 30:49
wow i've never heard it called that i think it means something else in australia
30:49 - 30:52
certainly shouldn't do that on the insiders
30:52 - 30:54
the green party member for wollongong
30:54 - 30:58
it's strictly pre or post match no i'm not worried about it because i think adrenaline
30:58 - 31:10
will get me through david and here perhaps that's where the cunning plan completes itself by not preparing. I've saved myself from whatever you called that thing because the adrenaline means
31:10 - 31:13
I will have to stay alive and survive on my wits.
31:13 - 31:24
It's so true in panel shows, in the sort of heyday of panel shows, I would write, I'd spend ages writing these great jokes and someone like Ed
31:24 - 31:38
Gamble would just specifically not do any work. And I would do one of my great jokes, the people wouldn't laugh and ed would say well no one like that and would get a huge round of applause the opportunity to do that are the insiders
31:38 - 31:43
yeah i just have to wait for someone else to make a failed gag on this political analysis
31:46 - 31:58
no anyway we eventually get there we go through the show a little bit um we have to get in a bit early they take photos they do various things and then i did the show i feel a bit like i shouldn't talk about the show because you can literally go watch the show
31:58 - 32:03
yeah completists will now stop this watch the whole episode and then come back
32:03 - 32:08
or you could just rip the audio from wherever it is and just check it in yeah
32:08 - 32:21
just for people who don't want to do that are there any big sort of gotcha moments you know what i mean is someone well minister i remember when you had a problem with your expenses also any of that
32:21 - 32:30
no fortunately it was a fairly sedate show in that respect um because i was just one of the panelists we don't do the interview with the minister they had the
32:30 - 32:40
transport minister on it was largely about fuel and evs and tax breaks on all that sort of stuff and she did a very good job of not really answering any of the questions or committing to anything much
32:40 - 32:44
interruption because you've done that so much are you just itching to get in
32:44 - 32:44
Oh good question.
32:44 - 32:47
You're going, come on, Spearsy, I can do this shit.
32:48 - 32:49
You know, ask this. No?
32:49 - 32:58
I'm just sitting there saying, don't do the bonk. Don't do the bonk. No, no, I'm okay because I don't mind watching that because I know we're going to have to come off the back of it and start talking about it.
32:58 - 33:01
So you could say, here's what I would have asked. I would just say, you know.
33:01 - 33:13
I think at one point I might have turned to David Spears, a consumer professional, very accomplished and experienced political interviewer, and just said, the most interesting bit of that interview was this.
33:13 - 33:20
and I think he might've looked at me like, who the hell are you? To tell me that was the bit.
33:20 - 33:25
What rating would you give yourself out of 10 for your performance on Insiders?
33:25 - 33:29
Well, all I will say is my mum sent me a proud text.
33:30 - 33:32
That's got to be at least an eight.
33:32 - 33:34
What did it say? I'm proud of you or?
33:34 - 33:36
I think it might've just said that. Yes.
33:37 - 33:46
Which is good. But it's in perspective. My mum does text me often after my appearances. she recorded i think close to every episode of the project
33:47 - 33:50
she must be running a server more than bitcoin
33:50 - 34:05
i think she might be yeah i think they might have set up a data center near her house and she would not have liked the project that's not her she's much happier with me on the abc i think but the other thing that she will do is she will routinely correct my grammar
34:05 - 34:06
did you drop any clangers
34:06 - 34:14
because i've ironed out most of them but here are some hits some of the greatest hits the word none is singular
34:14 - 34:18
as in I saw a group of nun coming out of Abbotsford Convent
34:18 - 34:24
no I mean that would also be singular I guess but no as in none of us is hungry
34:24 - 34:29
I mean that's pedantry at the highest level Mama Waleed I'm gonna say
34:29 - 34:31
she's very good at it
34:31 - 34:40
although when I was reading the news on BBC London my dad text me and go on Radio 4 I can't hear them breathing
34:40 - 34:50
hey david did you notice max's desperate attempt to inform us that he'd read the news on bbc london
34:51 - 35:03
oh how dare you i can hit those headlines i got told off for doing gags at the start of the new you could do an and finally but don't do a gag into the lead story that was my mistake
35:03 - 35:16
My mother's other favorite grammatical mistake is if you say the reason for X, you don't say the reason for X is because Y. You say the reason for X is that Y.
35:16 - 35:17
Oh, for goodness sake.
35:17 - 35:22
I can't be bothered to spend any more time with your mother. Yeah. I don't want to say that.
35:22 - 35:28
You know why also, Max, she's an extraordinarily good cook, and I know you're not very good with good food.
35:29 - 35:31
Well, just beige food. I like beige food.
35:31 - 35:32
Yeah, that's what I mean.
35:32 - 35:39
Yeah. Okay, right. So you've got a proud text. That's good. You've done the show. Is there a debrief or is it right? Thanks, everybody. Bye. I'm running to the airport.
35:39 - 35:41
It's one of those ones where everyone just disappears.
35:41 - 35:43
Great. Yeah. Best type.
35:43 - 35:45
But the problem is my flight isn't for several hours.
35:46 - 35:52
So I decide I'm going to have brunch with the EP of the show, who's a man by the name of Chris.
35:52 - 35:56
You're wheedling in on Spears' gig by going to the exec.
35:56 - 35:58
We know your game. Okay.
35:58 - 36:12
No, no, no, no. Max, you know me. I'm very generous. I like to incorporate new talent into it. I tried this with an up and coming English broadcaster. But Max, you will know the executive producer of the show because he's a man by the name of Chris Bendel who used to be the executive producer of?
36:12 - 36:15
The project. He was the man who told me I had to say project. But a lovely man.
36:15 - 36:18
A lovely man in a new job in a new city.
36:18 - 36:19
What are we having for brunch?
36:20 - 36:21
Well, it's complicated.
36:21 - 36:32
Because I have brunch with him, but then I also have to catch up with my in-laws because they live in Canberra. So my wife's brother lives in Canberra. And so I know I'm going to have to do a double brunch situation.
36:32 - 36:34
Oh, the Vicar of Dibley Christmas special.
36:34 - 36:35
It's a bit like that, yeah.
36:35 - 36:39
Are you running between the two? You've got chili eggs in front of your face.
36:39 - 36:54
I probably should have done that. I'm not sure there are a sufficient number of cafes in Canberra to be able to pull that off. But no, so I decide I'm going to have coffee at the first one and food at the second one. I think that's probably the best way to do it, and I rely on local knowledge for that.
36:54 - 37:00
Do you make it clear that you're two-timing each other, though, or do you just leave that out?
37:00 - 37:07
No, no, no, no. I make it clear because A, Chris won't care. He's the EP. And also I need a lift to the second place.
37:07 - 37:08
From Chris.
37:08 - 37:16
Yeah, I need Chris to drop me off the second place. Yeah. It wasn't just Chris. It was also Robin who's the other producer. But anyway, we're getting into a lot of detail now. But we just had coffee.
37:16 - 37:19
Are they happy with how Spears is doing on that show?
37:21 - 37:24
David, at this point, Max is asking for himself.
37:24 - 37:39
could you imagine max hosting the insiders on a sunday morning on the abc a lot of things happening around the world at the moment what's your favorite country head of the green party
37:42 - 37:44
he'd get told off for a joke on the way in
37:44 - 37:52
if that's how you started it i reckon the audience would go bing this is the stuff i want on a sunday morning i'm a guam guy right what about you transport minister
37:52 - 38:00
look there might be other reasons max but that might be why you're not hosting that show i don't know there might be other reasons
38:00 - 38:03
we eat at the first or just coffee at the first
38:03 - 38:14
oh sorry i left that a crucial detail what before brunch while i'm waiting for chris bendel to come and take me to give me a lift to whatever cafe i have to sneak in as much of the liverpool game as i possibly can
38:14 - 38:15
oh of course yeah
38:15 - 38:30
i'm back on my phone uh before i was watching my laptop this time it's my phone and i have a problem because sometimes they don't always sync up so i have to go back and find what i was watching but i've time coded it in my head i can't skip ahead i might miss a goal or a red card or something might happen
38:30 - 38:30
yeah of course
38:30 - 38:34
what i love is that max the football guy thinks this is pathetic
38:34 - 38:47
absolutely couldn't be bothered to watch all of it i'll be like 20 minute one i'll give you enough although sometimes the cutdowns do miss like a goal or something and you're like okay i think i should have kept that in okay so how what chunk do we watch
38:47 - 38:51
amazingly i watched from Rio Ngumoha's goal which was the last bit i saw
38:51 - 39:01
right up to the point where Mohammed Salah scores liverpool's second goal what four minutes later yeah okay good brilliant so a little bite-sized chunk there are five minutes two nil
39:01 - 39:10
i'm not quite at halftime but i'm close good and we're two nil up and as it would transpire that would be the final score but i didn't know that at the time obviously chris walks in he says hey
39:10 - 39:19
just a couple of minutes. I'm, take your time. Take your time, Chris. Eventually he comes. I can't get through the first half. We go, we have brunch, et cetera. So I go from brunch number one, where I
39:19 - 39:26
have a coffee to brunch number two, where I eat and I eat a Thai chicken salad. I don't know why that's relevant, but I assume you're going to ask.
39:26 - 39:32
Really important. And what time is this Thai chicken salad? It might be the earliest Thai chicken salad we've had on the podcast.
39:33 - 39:37
Is that right? Well, I don't know what the record is, but I suspect it would be about 11.45.
39:38 - 39:41
So it's just about lunchtime. This is an early lunch, I would say.
39:41 - 39:47
Yeah, or a late breakfast, depending on how you want to take it. But I first have to check that the chicken is halal.
39:48 - 40:02
And so I go through that process. And to my great surprise, it is. And so when that happens, I was going to order some eggs. But when that happens, I feel it is almost compulsory upon me to order the halal meat, even if I don't really want it.
40:02 - 40:07
Got it. Although that is an issue if you feel like you have to eat all the halal meat that they have in the cafe.
40:08 - 40:11
Out of duty, that might be a lot of meat.
40:11 - 40:13
Yeah, but I really do like it.
40:13 - 40:19
It's like when I'm in a pub here and they have Guinness, I feel out of duty, I have to drink whatever they have.
40:19 - 40:23
I think it's exactly the same thing. It's the exact same as that.
40:23 - 40:31
The Irish thing is you just have to put your head under the tap and they pour it until it is empty. Right, so we have a good chicken salad. That's nice.
40:32 - 40:34
The in-laws are fine. Are they okay?
40:34 - 40:43
Well, it's kind of. So it's my wife's brother who lives there and it turns out him and their daughter have nicked off to Sydney anyway.
40:43 - 40:53
And so it's really just his wife and their son who decides not to come at the last minute because he'd rather play video games. So now it's just me. Is she my sister-in-law?
40:54 - 40:59
We're kind of in-laws of in-laws now. I don't know what to call this.
40:59 - 41:12
I'm happy to say that. And you both absolutely knock strips off the family. You know what I mean? And you're like, greatest mistake I've ever made was getting involved with this shambles of an operation. Is that the vibe?
41:12 - 41:26
So you got the recording, David. No, weirdly, because on Insiders, there'd been a whole conversation about electric vehicles and tax breaks and all that. And she'd just bought an electric vehicle. She was the full bottle and just ready to go.
41:26 - 41:34
And so I did a second episode. More or less live. But she's a fascinating woman.
41:34 - 41:43
She's a scientist. She's very, very smart. But she has this thing I didn't know people have that exist in the world where she cannot imagine an image.
41:43 - 41:44
What do you mean?
41:44 - 41:52
Okay. So if I ask you, Max, to close your eyes and then imagine David, can you see David in your mind zone?
41:52 - 41:59
Yeah. I mean, obviously it's easy with David because he's right. I can open him. You could have said something that I can't see on the screen to make it trickier.
41:59 - 42:00
I did ask you to close your eyes.
42:00 - 42:01
Can you see the polar bear?
42:03 - 42:05
What do you mean, though?
42:05 - 42:06
She gets no image.
42:06 - 42:08
I didn't know this happened.
42:08 - 42:12
Well, I don't know if I'm getting an image now or if I'm just thinking about a polar bear.
42:12 - 42:15
No, you're getting an image, surely.
42:15 - 42:19
Hang on. We're about to sort of like platonic metaphysics here.
42:19 - 42:38
Platonic, not in the contemporary friendship sense, but like whereby you're thinking she presumably knows with polar bears come white furriness, coldness, a sort of cuteness proximity to snow maybe an iceberg and yet she just can't picture all
42:38 - 42:49
she can't picture it so she would know that she could answer that but she is thinking of the words to say to describe it but not picturing the image so she can't form an image in her mind's eye
42:49 - 42:52
have you ever played pictionary with her the game
42:52 - 42:54
that's a fantastic idea
42:54 - 42:55
would be a disaster
42:55 - 43:06
i've got to try it though because i didn't know this happened anyway and it's a family of four and two of them have this. Apparently it's quite, it's like maybe 2% of people or something like that.
43:07 - 43:17
And the amazing thing is she's a PhD in, I think in organic chemistry. And if anyone has ever studied organic chemistry, you would know that one of the most important things to be able to do is
43:17 - 43:26
picture the molecule and rotate it when you think about the bonding and all this sort of, and she got through her whole PhD without being able to do this.
43:26 - 43:33
David, when are we going to get to an episode when we're not talking about modeling the covalent bonds.
43:33 - 43:36
Sorry, Max. Some traditions have to be upheld.
43:36 - 43:49
No, no, you're right. Now I just keep closing my eyes and thinking, am I thinking of a polar bear or just thinking of a polar bear? But okay. And that's what all the listeners are doing right now is that every listener, even the ones driving and closing their eyes and imagining a
43:49 - 43:54
polar bear. Okay. So we get through this. This is interesting. And then we say goodbye. And then we
43:54 - 44:02
she drops me off at the airport because i even though i have a cab charge famously very hard to get cabs in canberra it's just a nightmare sorry
44:02 - 44:12
is it like you know like an old australian you know town in the bush where the taxi service is just like jeff and it's just like you don't get jeff he's like jump in the back
44:12 - 44:21
yeah yeah yeah that's pretty much what it is yeah jeff and about a trillion uber drivers but no one you can't get uber passes from the abc
44:21 - 44:22
come on the abc
44:22 - 44:43
interrupting the podcast so it's northern hemisphere spring right now it's melting this is the exact time of year when ice flows break off from the arctic and they float down to as we've covered before islands in the north of norway even further north than bodo glimt
44:43 - 44:59
and in iceland once a year a child is killed by a ravenous polar bear who has floated down sees the first meal in front of it and it could happen that that person was listening to this
44:59 - 45:09
podcast attempting to picture a polar bear and next of all its giant canines were sunk into the back of its neck and to that person i apologize
45:09 - 45:13
our thoughts are with your friends and family
45:13 - 45:14
were you able to picture that max
45:14 - 45:20
do they close their eyes because i think i can pick i'm finding it easier to picture it when my eyes are open than
45:20 - 45:24
david why is max finding this difficult i think it's a fairly straightforward
45:24 - 45:27
no i can obviously see the pictures of the things
45:27 - 45:40
do you know the there's a homer simpson meme where someone asks what are you thinking of and it's just it's like a screensaver in his brain a lot of the time i think max is just pipes connecting onto other pipes going around in his car.
45:40 - 46:01
Waleed, my only interaction and memory of Canberra Airport ever was the first time I ever encountered autonomous aircraft, now known as drones, because in Canberra Airport, you don't get ads for like Toblerone and, you know, vodka or whatever.
46:01 - 46:16
you get sort of government potential contracts for want to buy 36 miles of highway or want to buy 5,000 drones from us. And I found it to be quite an unusual place.
46:16 - 46:20
Well, all of Canberra is a bit unusual. I gather, given you've been at the airport, you've been there, David.
46:20 - 46:35
I've done one gig ever in Canberra. And I do, I get asked to return and I will return. Can't wait for it but the vibe was because it's sort of canberra was just because they couldn't decide
46:35 - 46:41
is this true they couldn't decide whether to make melbourne or sydney the capital they just built a new city directly between the two
46:41 - 46:48
more or less there may have been a settlement there i don't know but yeah it's think of it as washington dc minus the kind of cultural infrastructure
46:48 - 46:59
um except they do have now all the cultural infrastructure because all the national library and the National Galleries and the National whatever are there, just not the people to go see these national institutions.
46:59 - 47:00
Right, yeah.
47:00 - 47:05
But for like a comedian or someone, it would, I think, be a good place to go because it's a very educated crowd.
47:05 - 47:07
It's all public service. Everyone's university educated.
47:07 - 47:09
That won't, it's not going to help David.
47:09 - 47:11
Oh, it's the wrong act.
47:11 - 47:23
Well, it is still the case that because of that quite civil service vibe to it, it was also the birthplace of Aussie punk because all of those people's kids
47:23 - 47:30
were all like nah we're rebelling against this like it also has that sort of an undercurrent to it doesn't it
47:30 - 47:38
i don't know about the punk thing specifically but i do know it was very famous for things like fireworks and maybe even pornography at one point
47:38 - 47:45
because of its status as a territory there's some weird kind of thing about that so yeah there's definitely undercurrents there
47:45 - 47:51
well i'm going to be taking my show fireworks and pornography right to Canberra i think It's going to be a hit.
47:51 - 47:55
Max is the host of the Guardian Football Weekly, this podcast, the What Would Jesus Do podcast.
47:57 - 48:00
My brand new show, my live show, Fireworks and Pornography.
48:00 - 48:02
Have you ever been to Canberra, Max?
48:02 - 48:08
No, because basically you're all skirting around the issue that everyone thinks it's boring. Although I might fit right in.
48:09 - 48:10
Oh, yeah, Max.
48:10 - 48:14
I'm time poor. It could be my Nirvana. It could be utopia for me.
48:14 - 48:17
You might be the most Canberra non-Australian I've ever met, Max, actually.
48:17 - 48:18
That's very kind of you.
48:18 - 48:31
this is a great observation you know those sort of a 1950s american sort of ideal towns like honey i'm home everyone parks their car at the same time in the drives and you know there's
48:31 - 48:36
going to be a murder in the next scene that's max's dream place to live absolutely there
48:36 - 48:48
you can only get chicken nuggets and a spaghetti bolognese on a friday okay so we're at the airport presumably we're waiting for the flight and we've got the rest of the game to watch is my I guess.
48:48 - 48:48
Back into it.
48:48 - 48:53
This is the longest ever viewing of a not quite meaningless game between Liverpool and Fulham.
48:53 - 49:02
You take that back. We have a fifth place position to clone. So yes, I'm watching as much as I can before. Oh, by the way, in between all that, another prayer time
49:02 - 49:11
arrives. So I have to find a place that's more complicated than it appears because there aren't necessarily prayer rooms and all that sort of thing. Unlike, for example, at Anfield.
49:11 - 49:14
I thought there would be a prayer room in Canberra Airport. of all
49:14 - 49:26
there might be but i don't know exactly where it is and i would have to look it up and that can be complicated and i know for example in sydney it's a nightmare because the only one i think is in the international terminal which is a totally different place
49:26 - 49:35
and in melbourne it's different because the airports are kind of all joined but anyway the long and the short of it is you very often find yourself running around trying to find some nook or some cranny
49:36 - 49:49
somewhere that you can try to squeeze in and this becomes a whole other talent but i have a brief period of time whereby I have to do that, get a coffee and then watch as much of the Liverpool game as I can before I board my flight.
49:49 - 50:04
Interruption. Yes. And actually I should have asked you this at the time, but there was an apocryphal story and I never saw it because I only hosted the project when you weren't hosting it because I was sitting in for you, a like for like replacement. They all said that after the project, you went and got like a
50:04 - 50:17
two hour long head massage off the makeup lady. Like a hot towel and like all this kind of palaver. And I was like, there's no way man of the people Waleed, he's doing that. But did you do that and did you get one at the ABC?
50:17 - 50:20
Did you notice, David, this has nothing to do with the conversation?
50:20 - 50:26
I know. Normally he's the one that's keeping us on track the whole time.
50:26 - 50:29
Everyone told me about his secret head massage.
50:29 - 50:38
It's not a secret head massage. No, that's not true. What I used to do was I would, once I got off set, I would go to the makeup room and they would take my makeup off.
50:38 - 50:47
and they would use like a hot towel to do it because that's how they decided to do it. And that was just common practice. Like when I got there, that's the way it worked.
50:47 - 51:00
Then when Pete and Carrie, who were my co-hosts for a long time, David would have met them obviously being on the show, when they left and the new people came in, they didn't do this. And so they thought it was some thing of being like hugely pampered.
51:00 - 51:01
Big dog, the big dog.
51:01 - 51:06
Yeah. And let's be honest, not an impression I was willing to disabuse because they needed to know their place.
51:06 - 51:17
still you know i frowned upon you for doing that i really wanted it myself okay so we're watching the game you can be like you know the flight's taking off in one minute and no one cares you know
51:17 - 51:20
but unfortunately it was one of those little planes
51:20 - 51:22
do you have them in the uk
51:22 - 51:29
yeah sometimes sometimes you go really you're like flying to manchester and you're like what this tiny thing yeah
51:29 - 51:38
yeah some of the ireland to the uk like uh dublin to leeds or somewhere it will be on a slightly indiana jones type twin propeller you know
51:38 - 51:43
someone has to spin the propeller at the front and you're like i don't want to be in this
51:43 - 51:46
yeah yeah i think they're called dash eights or something
51:46 - 51:49
and then the pilot is having a sword fight against a big guy
51:49 - 51:52
on the plane on the top of the plane yeah
51:52 - 52:01
and then manages to start the propeller and then push the big guy into the propeller and blood splatters the lens in raiders of the lost ark it's one of those kind of airplanes
52:01 - 52:11
right so we've all had the same experience okay exactly yeah so it's one of those planes so it doesn't take that long to board so it's very hard to stall to get through but but
52:11 - 52:19
i it's also a plane that doesn't have any wi-fi because a lot of the Qantas planes now there's wi-fi if you doesn't have any of that it's not well appointed there are no screens of any kind nothing
52:19 - 52:28
so i'm just sitting there trying to squeeze in as much of the Liverpool game as i possibly can but we get to halftime and you know what that means halftime analysis
52:29 - 52:32
and there are two goals to analyze max that's a lot of goals
52:32 - 52:32
that's true it's two
52:32 - 52:35
yeah it is two and then there are missed chances
52:35 - 52:38
so sorry are you sitting in the plane while this is happening
52:38 - 52:42
i'm now sitting in the plane in seat 1a which sounds like business class but it's not
52:42 - 52:43
1a look at this guy
52:43 - 52:44
no no no no no no no
52:44 - 52:48
you're getting a head massage you've got the makeup guys from the project going oh
52:48 - 52:51
slip off his top hat just to massage him
52:51 - 53:06
no the point with 1a is 1a is the same as 24c and this they're all the same. The difference is I'm at the front and I have to do the emergency whatever thing if the plane crashes, but there's no, there's no business class on this flight.
53:06 - 53:11
So I look at the ticket and I go, 1A, woohoo. And then I realized that it's not very good at all.
53:11 - 53:24
I have a good question here, which is a flight on a Sunday afternoon, Canberra to Melbourne. I bet there's some top brass on that flight. I bet looking around you, it's what I like about
53:24 - 53:39
Australian internal flights. A lot of the time the Melbourne Storm Rugby League team are there and also the Minister for Foreign Affairs is there and you know what I mean, various bananas and pajamas. Is there any notables on this one?
53:39 - 53:45
I love the thinking behind this, David, because it is true. You do get to see that, especially on routes that are so popular.
53:46 - 53:55
I remember recently I saw, I was on a flight and a former premier of Victoria, who I won't name, was having a real battle finding a place in the overhead locker.
53:56 - 53:56
Good stuff.
53:56 - 54:08
He's back. And it was really quite a lot of fun watching this luminary, no longer in office, having to battle it out with the rest of us and no one really rushing to help,
54:08 - 54:17
which I may have said something about the political stance of the travellers. I don't know. But no, I'm sad to say on this flight, no, maybe they don't fly the little Dash 8 planes.
54:18 - 54:20
Maybe they're in the good seat 1A, not the bad seat.
54:20 - 54:23
Because they're a little bit bumpy, these. how's the flight is that okay
54:23 - 54:35
it's okay yeah the flight to canberra the day before not great because canberra is a very bad city to fly in because there's hills all around it and there's a point where you hit the hills and you're in this little plane and it's just it's horrible
54:35 - 54:38
so you just hit the hills and you're just basically in traffic then on the hills
54:38 - 54:41
yeah yeah there's all that you got a lot of trees in the way
54:41 - 54:55
the pilot decides to just sort of fly right down and hum the top of his parents' house, you know, like in Top Gun. Yeah, I know. I know this route. So we're back in Melbourne. We're heading back to Melbourne.
54:55 - 55:04
Well, not quite. Not quite. I'm heading back to Melbourne. Yeah. I'm trying to watch the game, but I also know I'm about to lose connection. And they say, put your phone on flight mode.
55:04 - 55:10
Does it not have a download function the way Netflix does, where you can download the whole game onto the phone?
55:10 - 55:20
So I don't know the answer to that because I didn't think of it until the crucial moment. So anyway, I decide just to take aviation safety into my own hands and ignore the instructions.
55:21 - 55:25
Can I tell you, we are well in the sky by the time my stream stops.
55:25 - 55:37
But also you're in seat 1A, the cabin crew are sitting right opposite you in their really straight up chairs and you're there and their guy and this guy, this looks like a guy who gets a two hour head massage after every show he does.
55:37 - 55:50
No, you know what they're doing? Because I was still wearing the clothes I was wearing on television nice jacket actually i think it was this jacket nice jacket crisp shirt a person like that looking at a screen they've definitely downloaded it
55:50 - 55:56
they just don't know that i'm the scurrilous imposter that has ruined the presumption
55:56 - 56:08
so i'm about to put out what is possibly fake news in the olden days they said turn off your phone because it can interfere with the plane's navigation systems i don't think that's true anymore and the reason they don't
56:08 - 56:23
want you looking at your phone is in the case of an emergency in the takeoff or landing that you won't be engrossed in Eketike's cool run while everyone's sliding down the chute without their
56:23 - 56:24
high heels on.
56:24 - 56:32
Well, Eketike was on the bench, didn't come on, but apart from that, David, apart from that, David, I think you might be exactly right. In fact, they should have been
56:32 - 56:44
happy that I was looking at the screen instead of at the propeller when there was a body being churned up i think that might be right because it didn't bother like i certainly wasn't going to
56:44 - 56:51
interfere with anything but i also happened to be sitting next to someone and i noticed i don't like to look at people's phones when they're looking at them but i just happened to notice he
56:51 - 57:01
was reading the times and so i think he was english yeah and in fact i'm certain he was english and then he started watching the liverpool game because i think he was quite interested in
57:01 - 57:08
that and so i think we had a bit of a protection racket going on he wasn't gonna dob me in
57:09 - 57:10
and i had no problem
57:10 - 57:18
whoa australian mail online here so-called woke commentator in dangers flight of true blue aussies
57:19 - 57:19
does not care
57:19 - 57:22
yeah from the nation's capital
57:22 - 57:23
yeah exactly
57:23 - 57:29
we land in melbourne and then it's a bonfire the taxi rank because no train to the city
57:29 - 57:31
no that might be your story but it was not my story
57:31 - 57:33
oh you part your car in the long stay?
57:33 - 57:34
he's got a lift
57:34 - 57:43
no no well skipped over one thing one is that once i'm out of range and i have to put my phone on flight mode i then have to figure out a way to occupy myself
57:43 - 57:47
i'm on the plane no entertainment system nothing and i remember
57:47 - 57:50
you get a ukulele have you got a ukulele
57:50 - 57:56
australian mail online woke commentator annoys passengers with terrible versions of Natalie Imbruglia
57:56 - 58:07
you take that back david it was good enough for our prime minister scott morrison to play the ukulele it's good enough for me that'll be a lot funnier to our australian listeners i realized so
58:07 - 58:16
one of the other things i do is i host a radio show on radio national every week which is a very pretentiously highbrow like philosophy ethics type show
58:16 - 58:17
like this yeah exactly
58:17 - 58:29
kind of like this but not quite at the level of fireworks and pornography which is a very so i it occurs to me i've got to do that show on thursday and we're going to record two shows one
58:29 - 58:40
is often topical and then the other one, sometimes we do something that's a bit timeless, a bit like a book club. And I totally forgotten that this week we are doing a show that is dedicated to
58:40 - 58:52
Dr. Faustus, the play, the 16th century Marlowe play from which everyone knows the basic story, you know, sell your soul to the devil, et cetera, the Faustian pact, all that. And I realize I've
58:52 - 58:58
not thought about this or prepared for it. And so I come across it in my email by accident and I go, I better start reading this play.
58:58 - 59:03
Ooh, a PDF of Dr. Faustus. Who isn't reading that on the 4.30 from Canberra to Melbourne?
59:03 - 59:15
Well, I'm going to say if you're going to find a flight to do it, it better be a flight from Canberra. I think that's true. Canberra to Melbourne is the flight for that. But I'm trying to read a play written in 16th century English, and that's how I'm spending my flight.
59:16 - 59:16
Interruption.
59:17 - 59:23
You've got an Englishman next to you. Do you say, I'll be Dr. Faustus? Could you just be all the other characters?
59:23 - 59:35
that would have been amazing because the opening scene which is the only scene i got through because it was hard going it has him in his study alone and then it has the good angel and the evil angel
59:35 - 59:38
talking to him and i would have loved to have seen him act out both those angels
59:38 - 59:43
well then you need to be sitting in the middle seat and i guess this is only two seats either side you need middle seat
59:43 - 59:56
and then you've got a person in a is good angel and c is yeah unless you've got a cabin crew you could ring the bell and the cabin crew lean over as they do and that is actually the perfect position for one of the angels and
59:56 - 1:00:01
if you're in seat 1a that's the kind of thing you can ask the cabin crew to do
1:00:01 - 1:00:06
yeah could you just not have you got a pen it's could you read all of this
1:00:06 - 1:00:17
what's great is when you're on an international business class flight you can request that the entire cabin crew do Book of Mormon for you. They've learned all the songs.
1:00:18 - 1:00:22
Yeah. Dr. Faustus is deeper in their repertoire, but yes.
1:00:22 - 1:00:29
There's echoes. I mean, am I just trying to be on your Thursday show now? There's echoes of Dr.
1:00:29 - 1:00:38
Faustus in Sinners, the movie, is there not? Because of Robert Johnson and the deal with the devil that allows him to play blues guitar, et cetera.
1:00:38 - 1:00:50
I haven't seen Sinners, but that makes perfect sense because it is such a deeply embedded trope in Western culture. For some reason, this thing has survived, this idea. But we'll talk about this on the minefield.
1:00:50 - 1:00:52
Obviously, Radio National.
1:00:52 - 1:01:03
Now, obviously, I know it verbatim. There might be listeners who aren't aware beyond doing a deal with the devil of what happens in Dr. Faust's. I don't know if you want to do no spoilers, but since it's from the 16th century, I think it's probably okay.
1:01:04 - 1:01:09
Could you just give us – I mean, unless you have only read Act 1 and so you don't know, but could we have a bit of- Act one.
1:01:09 - 1:01:10
I've read scene one.
1:01:10 - 1:01:11
Scene one. Okay.
1:01:11 - 1:01:16
Would you like me to do a reading now? No? I can have a crack.
1:01:16 - 1:01:29
All I know about deals with the devil is Roberto De Zerbi, the news Spurs manager, is desperately trying to contact the Dark Lord at the moment to arrange some sort of finance for points situation.
1:01:29 - 1:01:38
I think it's possible that the Dark Lord has said, no thanks. well i do know actually max that there are various versions of this play
1:01:38 - 1:01:39
yeah obviously
1:01:39 - 1:01:46
so it's very complicated actually to try to figure out what exactly at what point for example faustus's
1:01:46 - 1:01:56
damnation was complete did he have much say over it was this something that was all written there are all these arguments about it but part of that depends on whether you're reading the a text or the b text it's very complicated
1:01:56 - 1:01:59
well no i mean we did this on talk sport on saturday
1:02:00 - 1:02:05
we had some really good calls on it he's an arsenal fan what's your point well max
1:02:05 - 1:02:10
i think a west ham accent discussing dr faust this would be really great to listen to
1:02:10 - 1:02:17
i once sorry i know we need to crack on now we've got the richmond game to look forward to but i once took Josie Long's
1:02:17 - 1:02:30
daughter to she liked disney movies and liked tangled and so there was a theater group at edinburgh putting on rapunzel okay i was like it's bound to be the same thing but this was rapunzel based
1:02:30 - 1:02:44
on the original brothers grim story and featured such lines as you will stay in the tower till you bear me a sire and she's just like when do the songs start please
1:02:44 - 1:02:47
is there a modern dr Faustus musical
1:02:47 - 1:02:48
if not come on guys
1:02:48 - 1:02:49
has to be
1:02:49 - 1:02:50
set on an airplane
1:02:50 - 1:02:54
i'll look it up max you continue with the questioning
1:02:54 - 1:02:55
right so the plane lands
1:02:55 - 1:02:59
the plane lands i get my bag i go now i've already arranged the cab
1:02:59 - 1:03:00
great stuff
1:03:00 - 1:03:08
this is very important there's cab driver well there's a guy used to drive us around on the project a lot and so whenever i am going anywhere if i need a driver
1:03:08 - 1:03:20
i'll ask him but because i want a cab charge it needs to be a cab so i get a cab but they do this amazing thing i don't know if i should say this because i don't want to ruin the secret They pick me up from the departures area.
1:03:20 - 1:03:21
Oh, I see.
1:03:21 - 1:03:22
Have you done this?
1:03:22 - 1:03:24
I do that in Dublin. Yeah, yeah.
1:03:24 - 1:03:36
I didn't know. This is new to me. But you have to time it right. So you have to tell them you've landed and then they'll come through. And instead of the arrivals and you go through the normal process, I just go upstairs to where I'd normally have dropped off and I'm away.
1:03:36 - 1:03:42
I am, at all relevant times, once the plane has landed, watching the Liverpool game.
1:03:44 - 1:03:46
Okay. Surely it's done now. Surely it's over.
1:03:46 - 1:03:59
No, no, it's definitely not over. We are now early phase of the second half, having watched the halftime analysis. And I landed about 2.55, but I also know that the Richmond game starts at 3.15.
1:03:59 - 1:04:02
So we've got to get this done in 20.
1:04:02 - 1:04:15
I've got to get as much as I possibly can. So I'm watching the Richmond game, trying to be polite to the driver to the extent that I can. And then it hits 3.15 and I'm about 65, 70 minutes into the Liverpool game. And it's a time for discipline.
1:04:15 - 1:04:24
so I have to stop and then switch over to the app that is streaming the Richmond game to watch that, which is taking place in Adelaide, the Greater Western Sydney Giants versus Richmond,
1:04:25 - 1:04:31
the Tigers, my team. Now, what you do not know, I assume, Max, because you refuse to engage with Australian sport.
1:04:31 - 1:04:37
Unless, of course, Triple M Breakfast want to hire me, then I am. Western Bulldogs all the way. Go the doggies.
1:04:37 - 1:04:40
Can you just say for me, Max, Triple M rocks football.
1:04:40 - 1:04:49
Okay, I can't do that program. It's a bit like I once did a really good demo and sent it to KISS FM and I had the meeting with the boss and I listened to KISS FM in the morning and it was like,
1:04:49 - 1:04:56
oh God, this is so noisy. I had to be honest with him. Okay, so anyway, I don't know whatever you're going to say about this AFL game.
1:04:56 - 1:05:00
David, do you know anything about Australian rules football?
1:05:00 - 1:05:03
So many things are based on Faust.
1:05:03 - 1:05:04
Oh, okay.
1:05:04 - 1:05:17
So we got Robert Johnson, but then there's a song called Faust by Gorillaz, Muse, Cradle of Filth, Tom Waits, Lucinda, tenacious d's the pick of destiny
1:05:17 - 1:05:18
don't tell me that
1:05:18 - 1:05:32
here's what i know about afl years ago i was doing some gigs in regional victoria i was very cold i went into an op shop and i bought the most colorful scarf because all the other scarves were drab and when i came out with the
1:05:32 - 1:05:47
scarf everyone said i didn't know you barracked for the dockers barracked means support here and since then i've been sort of faking this relationship with my beloved dockers to the
1:05:47 - 1:06:00
point where i once went to see them and it was legendarily one of the worst games in the history of the mcg there was a cloudburst during it the dockers jerseys just had anchors on the front
1:06:00 - 1:06:13
like they were in a sort of 1930s musical and i relayed this story on perth morning radio recently to plug a forthcoming show there and it didn't get much of a reaction and then the guy who'd asked
1:06:13 - 1:06:18
me the question said he used to be the captain of the dockers yeah there you go
1:06:18 - 1:06:19
was that sean mcmanus
1:06:19 - 1:06:21
yeah i think it was sean mcmanus yeah
1:06:21 - 1:06:24
sean mcmanus is rove mcmanus's cousin i think
1:06:24 - 1:06:25
wow awesome
1:06:25 - 1:06:25
mcmanus
1:06:25 - 1:06:27
a very chat show host here
1:06:27 - 1:06:32
and also who owned the company that produced the project
1:06:32 - 1:06:34
i've ruined his life too right
1:06:34 - 1:06:36
yeah and he was your boss
1:06:36 - 1:06:39
graham norton's invented norton antivirus
1:06:39 - 1:06:42
so you're into purple are you david
1:06:42 - 1:06:54
they were the only team with a bit of pop to them the rest of the of the colors certainly from a scarf point of view seemed more traditional more like
1:06:54 - 1:06:58
football teams where this seemed a little more exotic you know
1:06:58 - 1:07:05
right so in wanting to avoid football team colours, you chose, well, a team that's the least like a football team in the
1:07:05 - 1:07:14
league. So yeah, that's a fair point. That'll mean nothing to both of you, but there's someone in Perth screaming at me. Yeah. So I have to now watch this game. The thing to understand is
1:07:14 - 1:07:28
Richmond is a powerhouse club. In some ways they are equivalent to Liverpool actually. They're very similar in a lot of ways. Working class history, all that sort of thing, have recently won three premierships, but right now are the worst team in the competition by a long way because
1:07:28 - 1:07:29
they're just full of kids.
1:07:29 - 1:07:30
Oh, yeah.
1:07:30 - 1:07:39
Might be very good one day, but every week you are turning up to get kicked in the head and go back home and you console yourself with the premierships we've recently won.
1:07:39 - 1:07:49
But it's not an option to miss the game and finish the Liverpool game. I have to watch the Richmond game live to preserve my integrity.
1:07:49 - 1:07:53
That's presumably like a bit on your phone in the taxi and then you get home and you put the telly on.
1:07:53 - 1:07:54
That's exactly what happens.
1:07:54 - 1:07:57
Okay. Do we have some snacks while we're watching that?
1:07:57 - 1:08:07
No, I haven't time for snacks, Max. I'll tell you why I don't have time for snacks. Because in Australian rules football, there's quite a lot of goals. Not like basketball. It's not crazy. But it's not like the round ball game either.
1:08:08 - 1:08:21
So I think the other team might have kicked 18 goals or something in the game. Michigan kicked maybe 10 or 11 or something. Actually, they kicked more than that. Let's not discuss it. So what happens is in between the goals, there's usually an ad break.
1:08:21 - 1:08:26
While the play gets reset, these are crucial moments to catch up on the Liverpool game.
1:08:27 - 1:08:31
This is exhausting. I can't believe the Liverpool game hasn't ended yet. How many minutes in are we?
1:08:31 - 1:08:45
Well, I was only really at about 65 minutes by the time I got home. But now, as I watch the Liverpool game in roughly 45-second increments between goals, the race is on. Which game will finish first?
1:08:45 - 1:08:53
But no one has ever watched a Liverpool game in between doing a political chat show, reading Dr. Faustus, taking a flight.
1:08:54 - 1:09:04
This is a very interesting way to consume a match. Okay. So this is kind of nice. They're both building to a climax, even though both games are kind of finished early. So they're sort of tapering down these games at the same time. Right.
1:09:04 - 1:09:11
I feel it's necessary at this point, just to point out, this is not a normal day for me. I don't want people to think I just, my regular routine.
1:09:11 - 1:09:13
All we have to work with is this.
1:09:13 - 1:09:16
And then read Dr. Faustus and watch football.
1:09:16 - 1:09:23
Sorry, just on the point of Dr. Faustus, I've now gone through the, all of the movies that are based on it. And there are hundreds,
1:09:23 - 1:09:32
Some of them, I think probably anything that involves a deal with the devil, like you've got the Omen, Rosemary's Baby, but then intriguingly, the last one on the list, The Little Mermaid.
1:09:32 - 1:09:40
And I do not remember that from The Little Mermaid. At no point does the Dark Lord appear in that Disney animation.
1:09:41 - 1:09:49
Unless they sugarcoated it for the kiddies. And the mermaid is a darker figure than we thought. By the way, can you send me all this research? It could come in really handy on this.
1:09:51 - 1:10:02
just play this podcast instead of your regular show yeah my question and this is a very basic question what um animal or color is richmond
1:10:02 - 1:10:03
richmond are the tigers
1:10:03 - 1:10:04
oh yeah
1:10:04 - 1:10:06
and therefore yellow and black
1:10:06 - 1:10:12
well that's sad because only last week did i learn of the existence
1:10:12 - 1:10:23
or rather non-existence of the Tasmanian Tiger, which was once Australia's most scary animal. And it turns out this team, they all got them to play for this team.
1:10:24 - 1:10:27
And they were all crushed to death by Carlton or something.
1:10:27 - 1:10:37
Yeah. Well, we were crushed by the Greater Western Sydney Giants, which was not a whole lot of fun. I think we lost by nearly 10 goals, so about 55 points.
1:10:37 - 1:10:38
Oh, no.
1:10:38 - 1:10:46
For the tape, is Susan having a book club in the room behind you? I don't think it matters, but I just wonder if listeners will be able to hear.
1:10:46 - 1:10:47
Oh, sorry, I could hear that.
1:10:47 - 1:10:49
You can hear something. I think it's okay.
1:10:49 - 1:10:50
I'm sorry. It's not okay.
1:10:50 - 1:10:51
No, don't worry.
1:10:51 - 1:11:04
She's welcoming a colleague into the house. So she's doing work and I'm doing whatever this is. It's over. The house is quite open plan, which seems a good idea until COVID.
1:11:05 - 1:11:11
Until podcasts. Until podcasts. Okay, so the game, which finishes first? And, you know, presumably they both end eventually.
1:11:11 - 1:11:20
They do both end eventually. And I get to stop each time in the second half of the Liverpool game, up to about 88 minutes, and the final siren goes in the Richmond game.
1:11:21 - 1:11:22
Ah, this is exciting.
1:11:22 - 1:11:25
Richmond won something. They won something.
1:11:25 - 1:11:36
Waleed, is there a tradition in live AFL of the fans leaving the stadium? Do you know what I mean? Like, do you feel you need to watch it till the Hooter, as they say here?
1:11:36 - 1:11:39
So, fans do leave early. I refuse to do so.
1:11:39 - 1:11:41
Yeah, this is good.
1:11:41 - 1:11:54
And that's true on television as well. Unless I have a very good reason that is beyond my control. But let me put this in context. There was a game in 2007, famously, where Richmond played Geelong.
1:11:55 - 1:11:58
And in that game, Richmond lost by 157 points.
1:11:59 - 1:12:01
Yeah. That seems like a loss.
1:12:01 - 1:12:13
I want it to be clear that 157 points would be a high combined score in a game of Australia Rules 4, much less a margin. We were behind by 100 points at halftime.
1:12:14 - 1:12:16
I stayed for every single minute.
1:12:16 - 1:12:21
Good. Good for you. Hey, what time are we at, Waleed? What time was it now?
1:12:21 - 1:12:23
I think we're about 6 p.m.
1:12:23 - 1:12:24
Okay, right.
1:12:24 - 1:12:27
There's still Liverpool work to be done.
1:12:27 - 1:12:28
Yes, okay.
1:12:28 - 1:12:40
So I have to finish the game. I think maybe Fulham look like they might score, but honestly, it's hard to tell when you're watching the whole game in 45-second increments.
1:12:40 - 1:12:41
Yeah, I understand.
1:12:41 - 1:12:48
So I will admit to having lost a little bit of the flow of the game, but by this stage, I think we're safe at 2-0.
1:12:49 - 1:13:01
Now, without wanting to talk too much football, Max, try to keep up. The thing about Liverpool is they have been very good at conceding 2-0 leads this season. They've been very bad at getting them, but once they've gotten them, they've tended to concede them.
1:13:01 - 1:13:13
So you never feel entirely safe. But by this stage, I'm starting to feel safe, and the game more or less peters out. I think it's four minutes of extra time. It finishes in 94 minutes, and then the whistle blows. And you know what happens then?
1:13:13 - 1:13:15
You watch three hours of post-match.
1:13:15 - 1:13:15
Post-match.
1:13:15 - 1:13:21
Sorry, are you watching the Richmond post-match as well as the Liverpool one, or does the Richmond one go off full-time?
1:13:21 - 1:13:25
The Richmond one goes off because they went straight to the news. They were like, we're done, we've got to go to the news.
1:13:26 - 1:13:37
And also the first story on the news was about a new announcement from the Victorian state opposition about trying to recruit police officers from the UK, Ireland and New Zealand because we have a police shortage.
1:13:37 - 1:13:50
And I've been told that I have to interview the opposition leader on radio the next morning. And so I have to watch that particular story. But since I'm talking to representatives of the UK and Ireland, I guess I would like to ask you, would you like to be a Victorian police officer?
1:13:51 - 1:14:02
Do you know what? Actually, David, I don't have a lot to do. If I could work day shifts, I don't really want to be a police officer, but most of my work's in the evenings. I could probably do it. If you're really struggling.
1:14:02 - 1:14:16
Okay. Waleed, can you put it to the opposition leader? If they're looking for, I would see us more as detectives. You know what I mean? Cold cases, stuff like that. If they're looking for a couple of unconventional cops who will get the job done.
1:14:17 - 1:14:30
Interruption. I'll be very conventional. Yeah. doing a good job with a good attitude, with no drink problem, turning up on time and just meticulously going through the case. It won't rate well on Netflix, but we will do that.
1:14:30 - 1:14:35
No, but this is great. Max is by the book and David is the grizzled, brilliant veteran.
1:14:35 - 1:14:36
Yeah, yeah.
1:14:36 - 1:14:40
Crazy stuff. Opium shooting into me, Sherlock Holmes style.
1:14:40 - 1:14:43
They'll throw you off the case, Bachansky.
1:14:43 - 1:14:47
If the Liberal Party wins the next state election in November, you're both in.
1:14:48 - 1:14:54
They'll even pay you a $5,000 inducement to help with your resettling. which I think amounts to roughly £4.50.
1:14:54 - 1:15:09
What I want to know is, Balal Zafar, when he looks to see if the great opposition of his team, he supports Arsenal, he likes to go on Tottenham fan TV just to watch his rivals flounder.
1:15:09 - 1:15:16
Would you ever go that far to watch Everton fan TV and see people being sad?
1:15:16 - 1:15:19
Everton, no, but Manchester United, I have done.
1:15:19 - 1:15:30
Do you remember the day we beat Manchester United at Anfield 3-1 where Shaqiri came on and I think scored, might have scored two, there were deflections involved, and then Jose Mourinho got sacked?
1:15:30 - 1:15:34
Do you know what? There's part of me that thinks we should put this on the Football Weekly feed.
1:15:36 - 1:15:40
Anyway, let's just say on that day, I watched MUTV a lot.
1:15:40 - 1:15:48
Okay. Now, listen, we need to get a rattle on, Waleed, because we've been talking a lot and we've got to get through the day, please.
1:15:48 - 1:15:58
So I begin the post-match, but now it's time for dinner. And we have to eat now because my son, Zaid, who is now 18, he has actually been fasting yesterday.
1:15:58 - 1:16:11
He was fasting yesterday because after Ramadan, in the next month, if you do six days from that month, anywhere in the month, the idea is it's as though you fasted the whole year. So this is his sixth day. Which day is it, Max?
1:16:11 - 1:16:11
The sixth.
1:16:11 - 1:16:14
There's an X in it, Max. There's an X. Just say sixth.
1:16:14 - 1:16:18
You say croissant and we'll get on with it. Anyway, so we're having a big old meal.
1:16:18 - 1:16:32
So we all eat together, which is rare, but also delightful. We do that. And then I get back to the post-match. And then while I'm getting back to the post-match, Susan comes over and says, would you like to watch Drive to Survive together or should I just get a book?
1:16:37 - 1:16:43
Susan says, meet this attorney who is arranging our divorce. And you don't notice.
1:16:43 - 1:16:46
You know Alan the dentist. I'm moving in with him.
1:16:46 - 1:16:53
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's at that point that we watch Drive to Survive, which reminds me, I still have to finish the post-match.
1:16:53 - 1:16:54
Oh, my God.
1:16:54 - 1:16:58
If we do this show tomorrow, then I'll tell you today that I've finished the post-match.
1:16:58 - 1:17:01
You don't get through it. In 24 hours, you don't get through it all. That's amazing. Okay.
1:17:01 - 1:17:12
But I have to finish it. That's just non-negotiable. So we're watching Drive to Survive. And at some point, I think we're in the fourth episode. It's the one where Christian Horner gets sacked as the team principal of Red Bull.
1:17:13 - 1:17:22
Really good episode, actually. And we always enjoy watching it. But at some point, Susan turns to me and says, hey, you know, there's a whole new genre of women's erotic literature based around Formula One.
1:17:23 - 1:17:24
Really?
1:17:24 - 1:17:25
Had any of you heard this?
1:17:25 - 1:17:28
What's it called? Pit Stop. What would you call it?
1:17:29 - 1:17:41
I don't know. But she quoted me a line from an ad she'd heard on a podcast that was something like, he just got off the podium and he smelled of champagne and expensive friction. Oh, no, the worst kind of friction.
1:17:41 - 1:17:53
So there is certainly a documentary I once saw on James Hunt who was an english driver in the 70s who's one of the last playboy drivers would have a stiff
1:17:53 - 1:17:55
rink before the race that sort of thing
1:17:55 - 1:17:58
leave the helmet on damon that's what they say
1:18:02 - 1:18:06
Damon Hill the most boring formula one driver ever great example
1:18:06 - 1:18:10
what a lover he is that's the point a safe driver but a wild man in the bed
1:18:10 - 1:18:17
why do i feel like max is spricking himself here There's something going on that doesn't quite make sense.
1:18:17 - 1:18:23
Listen, I, Waleed, have the testosterone of an unambitious panda. I'm just very, very tired.
1:18:23 - 1:18:26
I think you once described yourself as very 442.
1:18:26 - 1:18:31
When was that? Why were we having this discussion? Okay, right.
1:18:31 - 1:18:37
No, you were having it with the country. I'm not sure that you are. So, Max, why are you volunteering this?
1:18:37 - 1:18:40
Okay, so how many episodes of this did we watch?
1:18:40 - 1:18:55
We just watched one because it's getting late for Susan. She goes to bed roughly 4.30 p.m. most days. And so she has to go to bed. And I have to get up at 5 a.m. because I'm doing a radio show the next day. So again, it's not a normal day. I don't even know what time we're talking about now.
1:18:55 - 1:19:07
It's probably close to 8 o'clock. I'm pottering about. I'm doing the things I need to do to get ready. I go to sleep. I'm sleeping in the back room. Susan is sleeping separately because she doesn't want to wake up at my 5 a.m. alarm. At least that's what she tells me.
1:19:07 - 1:19:12
She says, but Alan the dentist is here. I'm just having my molars looked at in the main bedroom.
1:19:12 - 1:19:25
But darling, why have all these books arrived? Anyway, so I'm at the back and I'm about to get ready to go to bed. I'm in bed and I'm like, I think I might go back to Dr. Faustus because I've got to-
1:19:25 - 1:19:28
Suddenly it's 4am and you're on act four.
1:19:28 - 1:19:34
And then you know what happened? I got bored and listened to a podcast about Dr. Faustus.
1:19:34 - 1:19:43
Cheat the book club. I'm going to go back and read it, but I just needed a bit of a leg up. And my co-host on the show had sent me the podcast. So
1:19:43 - 1:19:53
I thought this is very good. I think the podcast is called Not Just the Tudors or something like, it's a history podcast. Very good podcast, wonderful discussion. It's how I knew all
1:19:53 - 1:20:03
about the A text and B text, et cetera. And so I start listening to that. But just before I do that, I decide to look at the news. I don't know why, it's almost a reflex. And I'm thinking also about
1:20:03 - 1:20:15
the interview tomorrow i've got to do with the opposition leader and so on and i i'm looking at the ages website age is very famous paper in melbourne and i come across an article with an irish comedian
1:20:15 - 1:20:16
oh yeah
1:20:16 - 1:20:21
listing a bunch of women and just telling us about them
1:20:21 - 1:20:30
look between the three of us that was an odd interview where i thought it was just an interview and then the
1:20:30 - 1:20:43
first three questions were about tell us about your grandmothers like that was the first one so i was like okay and then do you have any sisters etc so it was a piece that i don't think anyone
1:20:43 - 1:20:57
had told me was about the women in my life but it does always seem like with an article like that i contacted the age and said i want to talk about babes just put me on the magazine wherever it is
1:20:58 - 1:21:02
I think I've worked them out and I'm going to tell you everything I know.
1:21:02 - 1:21:08
I think I might have done that interview before. I think it might be called What I Know About Women or What I've Learned About Women. I think there's a series.
1:21:08 - 1:21:18
People from this podcast will know there's nothing we don't know. I can't remember what episode David was asking about bras, but it was really sensational stuff. And also waxing. Yeah, this is the place to come.
1:21:18 - 1:21:22
So anyway, I was trying to, Dr. Faustus or David O'Doherty talking about women.
1:21:22 - 1:21:36
What do I choose? And I thought maybe I'll read the David O'Doherty article tomorrow, But then I thought, you know what, given I'm doing this podcast that turns out isn't about what Jesus would do, maybe I'll finish the David O'Doherty.
1:21:36 - 1:21:44
And apart from that, one of the most interesting facts in it, which kind of made a bit of sense to me, wasn't actually about one of the women. It was about your father, David, who's a jazz musician.
1:21:44 - 1:21:49
And I didn't know this. And then suddenly the Casio made perfect sense to me.
1:21:49 - 1:22:03
And the fact that it has a volume control on it. so he would be practicing with good musicians in the sitting room and i'd be in my bedroom hammering away and just his hand would slide across it and just put the sound right down on it so yes
1:22:03 - 1:22:08
and meanwhile max is a guitarist who quite likes two princes by the spin doctors
1:22:08 - 1:22:11
yeah now we're talking all right so what time do we go to sleep
1:22:11 - 1:22:23
i was trying to go to sleep about 9 30 but i think by the time i got engrossed in faustus and david o'doherty's discussion of women i think it might have got to close to 10 15 10 30 for a five o'clock alarm i think was pretty good
1:22:23 - 1:22:37
my advice for you is for this highbrow podcast on thursday just try not to mix the two together that in some way i spoke to the dark lord and that's why i'm with helen copter now uh nothing no deals have
1:22:37 - 1:22:39
gone on with me and the ladies
1:22:39 - 1:22:52
you might say scott what did you make of that scene where dr faustus met an irish singer who he'd had a crush on who just turned up at his house one day and told him to keep it down. It was jarring for me.
1:22:52 - 1:23:06
Max, that's how I once met Lisa Stansfield, the singer. My friends were having a party. There was a knock on the door very late at night. I was the most together, so I opened the door and Lisa Stansfield was shouting at me to shut up.
1:23:06 - 1:23:13
So there you go. A bizarre ending to a very beautiful day. Thank you very much, Waleed.
1:23:13 - 1:23:21
Unfortunately, there were no articles about Max. I just need to make that clear.
1:23:21 - 1:23:37
i understand so there we are wally today i what i think's funny firstly is david is there was more analysis by about 25 minutes of liverpool fulham on this podcast
1:23:38 - 1:23:41
there was on the guardian football weekly
1:23:42 - 1:23:46
that i recorded shortly after i recorded this episode
1:23:46 - 1:23:53
what i find intriguing is also the you approaching him to ask him to be on the podcast and leaving
1:23:53 - 1:24:08
that ambiguous and him a massive football fan just thinking finally now is the hour the guardian want me to talk about so are there any other guests we can sort of is that honey potting what
1:24:08 - 1:24:13
do you call that sweethearting you know where honey trapped them into doing
1:24:13 - 1:24:17
i've honey potted the honey pot such a winnie the pooh way of honey
1:24:17 - 1:24:27
honey potting is a different thing oh no honey potting is probably when you put your willy in a pot of honey or something and i'm just
1:24:27 - 1:24:41
don't google honey potting it'll ruin your algorithm yeah i honey trapped him i did that i don't know anyone who's taken that amount of time to watch a single football match like if he started at 8 a.m and he finished at what 5 p.m
1:24:41 - 1:24:53
yeah and the beautiful principle that extends obviously to his aussie rules as well where he watches all of these games like there's a point with most games even when ireland are playing
1:24:53 - 1:24:56
i'm like this is done and you just shut the laptop
1:24:56 - 1:25:10
if you know it's happened it's impossible not to fast forward or to just watch the 20 minute one just because you're like i know it's happened it's so different so yes that commitment that's how an academic would approach watching a sport like this
1:25:10 - 1:25:21
i enjoyed checking if he wants wanted spearsy's gig he'd be really good at it but thank you waleed i had a lovely time and if you'd like to get in
1:25:21 - 1:25:34
touch with the podcast this is how to get in touch with the show you can email us at what did you do yesterday pod at gmail.com follow us on instagram at yesterday pod and please subscribe and leave
1:25:34 - 1:25:42
a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform and if you didn't please don't
1:25:42 - 1:25:51
i wonder if you lean on much of my analysis of faust and dr faust the little mermaid for example
1:25:51 - 1:26:03
i do like in first class can i have a glass of water and also look could you just perform hamilton for all the parts
1:26:03 - 1:26:06
thanks for doing it max
1:26:06 - 1:26:07
thanks david