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846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

Released Wednesday, 4th October 2023
 1 person rated this episode
846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

846. Topic Tombola with James 🎧

Wednesday, 4th October 2023
 1 person rated this episode
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

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0:36

You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.

0:38

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0:48

Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's

0:51

English Podcast. Here I am. It's

0:53

me, Luke, of course. You're

0:55

listening to my podcast. And

0:57

here I am doing the introduction to this episode.

1:00

I'm currently standing in the middle

1:02

of our living room slash kitchen

1:05

at home because I'm at home with

1:07

the baby today, looking after

1:09

him and trying to

1:11

do bits of work as

1:14

well, although that's very difficult because, you

1:16

know, there's a baby. And

1:19

that means that he needs lots of attention. Got

1:21

to change his nappy, got to feed him, got

1:23

to play with him, pick him up from time

1:26

to time, and just do all that stuff. But

1:29

I'm attempting to do work as well.

1:31

And I'm taking this opportunity

1:34

now to record the introduction to this episode

1:36

because he is, that's the baby,

1:40

my son is currently

1:41

strapped to my chest again and

1:45

is, I think, asleep. I can't actually see his

1:47

eyes, but I'm pretty sure he's

1:49

asleep. I've worked out this is the

1:51

only way. As I said, I

1:53

think maybe in the last episode or the one before

1:55

that, I've worked

1:57

out this is pretty much the only way.

1:59

We're

4:00

on the same wavelength, we

4:02

share a lot of the same references, we

4:04

understand each other quite closely.

4:07

When the two of us talk to each other, we

4:10

go off on different tangents

4:13

referencing films

4:15

and music and television programs.

4:18

Sometimes when we're at home with my parents, James

4:21

and I will kind of go off on a tangent

4:24

that my mum and dad don't really understand

4:26

or my wife, you know, they can't really follow

4:28

what we're talking about, but we know exactly

4:30

what we're talking about. We have all the same references

4:33

and we're on the same wavelength. Now

4:36

I hope that that means that our episodes

4:39

are kind of fun to listen to because

4:41

there's a flow, you know, because we

4:43

follow each other's thoughts and complement the

4:46

things that we say and we end up

4:48

in some funny, you know, we end up

4:50

talking about some funny things and stuff. I

4:54

hope that makes these episodes sort

4:57

of fun to listen to, but what

4:59

happens is whenever I record an episode

5:01

like this where we

5:04

talk about very specific things, we

5:07

end up referencing maybe

5:10

films, music, TV shows,

5:12

which for us are very familiar and clear

5:14

to us, but for you these things

5:16

might be very obscure. So

5:19

after recording, I always kind of, when

5:22

I listen back to the

5:24

episodes like this that I record, I kind

5:26

of think, oh my God, what on earth

5:28

am I learners of English around the world

5:31

going to make of this? I kind of think

5:33

hopefully the fact that it's a close

5:35

conversation between my

5:37

brother and me with humor

5:40

in it and stuff, that's going to make it engaging

5:43

and hopefully compelling and easy to listen

5:45

to and therefore good for your

5:47

English. But then on the other hand, I kind of think,

5:50

I just know from my experiences of working

5:53

with learners of English that it's

5:55

quite easy to lose you, you

5:58

know, it's quite easy to lose you. don't know exactly

6:01

you, specifically you, what your

6:03

reference points are, how familiar

6:06

you are with James

6:08

as a guest on this show. If you're a very long-term

6:10

listener and you're still listening then well

6:12

done, hopefully you aren't a skeleton with

6:14

headphones on. But if you're a long-term

6:16

listener then maybe you're really into

6:19

these episodes with James and you're

6:21

able to keep up with us and you sort of you understand

6:23

the rhythms and the reference points but if you

6:26

have started listening to this more recently

6:28

and you're less familiar with my conversations

6:31

with James then who knows, maybe

6:33

we're just going to completely lose you by talking

6:35

about the things we talk about. I

6:37

don't know. So those worries are

6:40

with me,

6:41

right?

6:42

But yesterday I was

6:44

at the British Council where I work, I was

6:47

just I was there in the evening for an event

6:50

and I met a Lepster, I

6:52

met a listener of this podcast.

6:54

He came up to me and he

6:56

felt compelled to talk to me because

6:59

he loves listening to this show which

7:02

was obviously very nice

7:04

to hear but he came up and we

7:06

talked and stuff and it was really nice to meet him

7:09

and he said to me, Luke your episodes are fantastic.

7:12

Your episodes are fantastic and

7:14

really helpful for my English. Thank you so much.

7:17

And there's me in my head thinking, oh

7:20

no sometimes I wonder if I'm losing everyone

7:23

with these rambling conversations

7:26

that reference things that people,

7:30

other people might not understand. Here's me thinking

7:32

that and then this guy, I don't

7:34

remember his name, sorry if you're listening, I didn't catch your

7:36

name but anyway he's

7:38

there saying your episodes are fantastic, they really

7:40

help and I couldn't

7:43

help saying to him but really what about

7:45

what about those very specific

7:47

episodes or those episodes where for

7:49

example I'm talking to my brother

7:52

and we talk about all these films

7:54

and TV shows or we we're

7:56

quoting lines from Alan

7:58

Partridge or from

9:39

punk

10:01

Manchester music scene. Now

10:04

again, going back to the thing about the

10:06

reference points that James and I both

10:09

know about, those things

10:13

may seem a little bit obscure to

10:15

you. I don't know what your context is and

10:17

how much you know about, for example, British popular

10:20

culture or generally popular

10:22

culture from the English-speaking world or

10:25

from the world. I don't know if it's

10:27

necessary to say the English-speaking world. I don't know what your

10:29

reference points are. Those

10:31

things might seem very obscure to you, but

10:34

for us, for James and me, these are very kind

10:36

of relevant

10:37

parts

10:39

of our shared culture that

10:41

we grew up in and that we

10:43

use a lot that we

10:46

reference when we communicate. This is the

10:48

world that James and I inhabit.

10:52

Certainly what we want to do is to bring

10:54

you into that world and teach

10:57

you about these things and

11:00

help you learn English in the process. That's

11:02

kind of the idea. A

11:04

book that James read, there's also

11:06

the subject of aliens. Have

11:11

aliens arrived on Earth? Because

11:14

you may have seen in the news or on social

11:16

media, was it just a few months

11:19

ago, there was a kind of congressional

11:22

committee hearing in the United

11:24

States? Is that right? Yeah,

11:26

so there was a congressional hearing about

11:30

UFOs. Some

11:32

former military officials made

11:35

some strange claims

11:38

about UFOs

11:41

under oath, so they lifted

11:44

their hand and swore to tell

11:46

the truth, the whole truth and nothing but

11:48

the truth. So this

11:50

is under legal oath, they

11:52

came and they made these statements about

11:54

how maybe they've seen aliens

11:57

or maybe they've been contacted by

11:59

UFOs. It was very strange and

12:02

it certainly set a lot of people

12:04

speculating about whether they were true,

12:07

in fact, even though they were saying

12:09

these things under oath, people were

12:12

speculating about whether they were true, people

12:14

were speculating about whether, for example,

12:16

the US does have access

12:18

to UFO technology and

12:20

all that sort of stuff. So what the hell is going

12:22

on there? What's all that about? So that's

12:25

one of the subjects that we talk about. That

12:27

one actually comes up near the

12:29

end of the conversation, so if you're particularly interested

12:32

in the alien stuff, you'll have to just keep listening

12:35

to the other bits. There's

12:38

also the question of chat

12:40

GPT, of course. I mean, it's something that's

12:42

on my mind and lots of people's minds

12:45

at the moment, but the question I had for

12:47

James was this. When you

12:49

use chat GPT, how polite

12:51

are you with it? Do you always say please

12:54

and thank you with chat GPT? And

12:57

why or why not? And

12:59

this leads to a conversation about AI

13:01

in general and, frankly,

13:04

whether it's going to kill us all or

13:07

not and how and why

13:09

we have a conversation, a discussion

13:12

about that, which is quite serious,

13:14

I suppose. And then

13:16

also I asked James about film

13:19

and TV quotes which

13:22

often come into our heads. Now

13:25

that might seem a bit strange and to be honest, this

13:27

part of the conversation, the bit about film

13:29

and TV quotes, this is probably

13:31

the most obscure part that,

13:34

to be honest, although I enjoyed

13:36

that part of the conversation with James very much,

13:38

I was concerned that that would be the bit

13:41

that could lose you. And

13:43

so when we get to that section, I

13:45

will be coming into

13:47

the podcast interrupting sometimes in order

13:50

to explain the films

13:52

we're talking about or the TV shows we're

13:55

talking about or the little cultural reference points.

13:58

So it's going to be quite a long episode. Because

14:00

the conversation was quite long but also I

14:02

had to I have to step in as you're here and

14:05

explain little bits and pieces But hopefully

14:07

like the Lepster that I met

14:09

yesterday, hopefully you'll appreciate those things

14:12

Okay. So here we go then here

14:15

is a rambling conversation with James in

14:18

which we reference films music

14:21

bands weird issues

14:23

going on in the world and more

14:27

Okay, life the universe and everything

14:30

the important things the trivial things It's

14:33

all here for you. That's

14:36

it for this introduction. Let's get started. Let's

14:38

talk to James. He was in London I

14:40

was in Paris.

14:42

Here we go Hello

14:48

James welcome back on to Luke's

14:50

English podcast. Hello An

14:53

interesting way to say hello there in

14:55

the sort of posh way sort of a posh.

14:57

Hello. Yeah. Hello James

15:01

yes, I thought that for this

15:03

episode that we would have no specific topic

15:05

this time Okay, often on

15:07

the podcast we choose a specific thing,

15:10

you know often a like a musical

15:12

thing like about a band or something Yeah,

15:14

last time we talked about ambient music this

15:16

time I thought no specific topic, but

15:18

I wanted to know how that makes you feel How

15:20

does it make you feel to be on the show

15:23

with no particular plan or

15:25

idea of what we're gonna talk about? Mmm interested

15:28

excited I

15:30

Can't think of the right words slightly

15:32

nervous Mm-hmm. The

15:34

wheels are on know that the safety wheels

15:36

are off. What do they call it? The stabilizers are off stabilizers

15:39

on when you're a kid learning to ride a bike You have

15:41

stabilizers on the back and then at one point Your

15:45

dad probably takes them off and

15:47

then were we're riding without stabilizers.

15:49

You feel all nervous because you might crash Yeah,

15:53

yeah, the the

15:55

the safety rail is

15:57

disengaged whatever that is

15:59

That's right. We're,

16:05

I don't know, I've run out of really

16:07

bad metaphors so yeah. Often

16:09

when we talk about doing a podcast together you always

16:11

say we should do something about this

16:13

or we should do, you know, you always name

16:16

specific kind of things that we should do

16:18

an episode about. And

16:20

I understand your reasons for that. But

16:23

can you tell me your reasons for that again even

16:25

though I understand them?

16:27

Why do you always like to do a specific thing?

16:30

Probably because I used to write articles

16:32

for a magazine and I quite enjoy a deep

16:35

dive so to speak. And

16:38

I kind of have subjects I'm obsessed about that

16:40

no one else will talk to me about so it's

16:43

just an excuse to kind of go on and on about

16:46

something that I find really interesting that probably no one

16:48

else does.

16:49

Yeah and I think there's

16:53

an appeal for that sort of thing with my audience. Like

16:55

they've probably come to expect if you're

16:57

on the show that we're going to do a deep dive

16:59

into some classic

17:02

bit of British music and popular

17:04

culture. I mean I wanted to do an episode

17:06

about the film Blow Up. You

17:08

wanted to do a whole episode just about this movie

17:12

from the 60s. Your 60s

17:14

film called Blow Up because I'm still

17:16

kind of struggling to understand it myself and I find

17:18

by the process of discussing and analyzing

17:21

a subject you can create some deeper meaning

17:24

within yourself and the world. So the

17:26

thing from my point of view thinking about

17:28

my audience is what would

17:30

be the takeaway value for my listeners,

17:32

my audience of learners

17:35

of English around the world.

17:40

What's their takeaway James from

17:42

an episode about a film from the 60s? Good

17:46

question. Probably why you decided

17:48

not to go with that idea. None

17:52

really. It takes out in my game some deeper

17:54

insight into life itself maybe. Maybe

17:56

not. If you tunnel down, if you drill

17:59

down into a...

17:59

specific topic, even

18:02

an obscure

18:03

film from the 1960s, arguably

18:06

not that obscure, but it depends on who

18:08

you are. Drilling down into

18:10

something specific, yeah, you can ultimately drill

18:13

deep into the human

18:15

condition and what it really means. Universal. Universal

18:19

truths about the human condition, exactly.

18:21

I think. And maybe

18:24

if all your listeners go out and find a copy of Blow

18:26

Up, watch it in preparation for next time.

18:29

So everyone will be

18:31

prepared and they'll have watched the film and we can

18:33

talk about it in depth for about four hours.

18:36

Do you think that's going to be a... How

18:39

many people will A,

18:41

do that and B, enjoy the

18:44

film?

18:44

Three and

18:47

zero. Because

18:49

to be honest, I've seen it a few times. I didn't enjoy

18:51

it the first time I saw it because he's... Why

18:54

are you recommending it to everyone? Because it's a brilliant

18:56

film. And it's one of those films you

18:58

have to watch like four times and then you go,

19:01

oh, I get, oh, oh, oh,

19:04

oh, right, right, right. If

19:06

that's what you want, listeners, if you want to go, oh, oh,

19:09

oh, oh, oh, right, right, right,

19:11

right. If that's what you're looking

19:14

for, then go out and get yourself a DVD

19:17

or even better, a VHS. No, not a VHS.

19:19

Get a DVD or possibly

19:21

Blu-ray copy or you can

19:23

stream it probably somewhere of the film Blow

19:26

Up, directed by...

19:29

Blow Up, directed... And

19:32

so on. An Italian guy and the point

19:34

is it's kind of a 60s film, which is... It

19:36

doesn't paint the 60s to be that nice.

19:39

It's kind of a bit of a take down of the 60s

19:41

culture, I think. And the main character

19:43

is quite an unpleasant character. So

19:45

when you first see, you just think, well, these are just

19:48

not very nice people and this is not very

19:50

nice film. And it sounds

19:52

wonderful. You're really selling it.

19:59

a critique and it's at

20:02

the heart of it is a great mystery.

20:04

I actually personally love films

20:07

like this. Maybe I shouldn't

20:09

second-guess my audience. There's

20:11

me going, I don't think my audience is going to be into that.

20:14

Meanwhile, I'm into that.

20:16

I think it's fascinating. I haven't seen the film.

20:18

I've seen some clips from it. And it's always

20:20

interesting to kind of like, I think

20:22

it's quite an authentic view

20:25

of what London, swinging

20:27

London was like in the 1960s. And

20:29

that's, you know, it's always fascinating to take a little

20:31

trip back in time to see

20:34

how things used to be. Michael

20:36

Angelo Antioni. That's

20:38

him. Antony, Antony,

20:41

Michael Angelo Antony directed

20:43

it. And because he's an outsider to the

20:45

scene, he has a kind of a more cold-eyed

20:48

view. If cold-eyed, is that a word? Less

20:51

enamoured with the whole culture

20:54

and possibly more, you

20:56

know, you can see more when you're not sort of part

20:59

of it so much. Right. A bit

21:01

more objectivity. A bit more objective view.

21:03

And doesn't necessarily come

21:05

out of it that well, the whole culture.

21:08

Yeah. Because it's interesting because in

21:10

the UK, we probably romanticized

21:14

that period in

21:16

our sort of recent history. Yeah,

21:19

the 1960s, it was like, cool. It

21:21

was all about London. We were the tastemakers.

21:24

All the popular culture was coming out of London.

21:26

It was the Beatles. It was the Rolling Stones. It was

21:28

Mary Quant. And it was all really cool and groovy

21:31

and hip. And weren't we brilliant? Actually,

21:33

if you look at it with a cold eye,

21:35

as you said, maybe it wasn't such

21:37

a wonderful time. And there were all sorts of, what's

21:40

the word for it? There was kinds of lots of sexism

21:42

and questionable behaviour going on under

21:45

the guise of like liberation,

21:49

liberation. Yeah. And and

21:53

permissiveness. Yeah. Stuff like that.

21:56

Mm hmm. So let's move on. We're not going to talk about

21:58

that. We have no specific. topic this

22:00

time then we talk about something very specific

22:02

for 10 minutes. Basically, yeah, I thought

22:04

that by having no specific focus

22:07

we could maybe

22:10

not alienate people, you know, because

22:13

I don't want to turn anyone into an alien, but

22:16

I don't want to alienate people. So let's

22:18

just have a conversation that sort of evolves

22:21

naturally as it moves forward. The

22:23

evolved doesn't revolve. Yeah,

22:26

an evolutionary rather than revolutionary

22:29

conversation. Okay. So

22:32

I have actually got some questions. I've got a kind of

22:34

rough outline, but it anyway. So

22:37

do you remember the nickname that we came up for

22:39

ourselves on this

22:41

podcast before?

22:43

The Glibb Brothers? The Glibb Brothers,

22:45

yeah. Do you want to explain that? Because again,

22:47

there's another little joke that a

22:49

lot of people won't understand except maybe

22:51

one person, one listener called Pierre,

22:54

who is fond of the nickname, but

22:56

I don't know if it's really stuck with anyone else because

22:58

no one else has ever mentioned it. But here we are again,

23:01

folks, the Glibb Brothers in action. Can

23:03

we explain that? That's going to be a joke, a

23:05

joke name, isn't it? The Bee

23:08

Gees are the Glibb Brothers. Are the Gibb Brothers,

23:10

sorry, the Gibb Brothers. Bee Gees, Barry,

23:12

Thingy and Thingy, the Gibb Brothers. We

23:14

know. Oh, God, if I can just think

23:17

clearly, I'll be able to tell

23:19

you their names. Amazing harmonies

23:21

in the Bee Gees. Barry, Morris

23:24

and Robin, of course. That's it. The

23:27

Gibb Brothers who have three

23:29

brothers in sort of popular

23:31

music and rock, who have an amazing vocal

23:34

style of harmonising. They

23:38

were famous for the music from the

23:41

John Travolta film, Saturday Night Fever. Down,

23:45

down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Well,

23:47

you can tell by the way I use my walk.

23:50

I'm a woman's man. No time to

23:52

talk. You're welcome, everyone. But there's a

23:54

lot more to them than that. They

23:57

predate that. They had a few hits in the 60s. as

24:00

well and then they kind of went quiet and then came back

24:02

for the 70s. I think they went so

24:04

low, I think one of them went so low and they kind of missed

24:06

each other and there was a bit of an ego trip

24:08

going on and then they reunited

24:11

and had another wave of success.

24:14

Yeah I actually think they're a really great

24:18

group. There's only one of them left

24:20

now, did you know that? No I didn't know

24:22

that. Yeah so let's

24:25

see when so the only the one

24:27

that's left is Barry the sort of probably

24:29

the most famous one. The one with the hair.

24:31

The one with the hair and the big teeth.

24:33

Although they've all got sort

24:36

of interesting features, well they all had but

24:38

Barry was the most famous one

24:41

I guess. Then there's Robin who in

24:43

the 60s was more more of the lead

24:45

vocalist. Yeah. And then there's

24:47

the third one that people often sort of forget

24:49

and that's Morris. He was the kind of

24:51

the glue that held them together, the funny one

24:53

I believe. Yeah and I think

24:55

he also was the secret weapon. There's

24:58

like every band, I've come up with this theory that

25:00

every band has got a secret weapon meaning

25:02

a member of the group who quietly

25:06

or perhaps the one who's not quite as obvious as the

25:08

others but they are really

25:10

important and bring a whole other

25:12

dimension to the group. So in the

25:15

Bee Gees, I think it's Morris, he played

25:17

the keyboards and he although

25:19

he didn't have the most instantly recognizable

25:21

voice, I think he was the glue that held those three-part

25:24

harmonies together or something. So

25:26

he was their secret weapon. He might

25:28

have been a songwriter too I think but in

25:32

other bands there are secret weapons as well. Can

25:34

you think of any? Who would be the secret weapon in

25:37

say the Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones.

25:40

Secret weapon Charlie Watts for

25:43

sure. Yeah fair enough. Fair enough. Because you

25:45

think Rolling Stones the most obvious one. So

25:47

the secret weapon is the member of the band who's not

25:50

the really obvious one,

25:52

the one that people instantly think

25:54

of but they're the one that still

25:56

without them it just

25:59

wouldn't be the same. Although having said that,

26:01

I did see the Rolling Stones last year without

26:03

Charlie Watts and they were amazing.

26:06

They were probably playing Charlie's... Yeah, their

26:08

new drummer, I think his name's Steve Jones. No,

26:11

it's Steve Jordan. The new drummer for the Rolling

26:13

Stones is Steve Jordan. Steve

26:15

Jones

26:16

was the guitarist in the Sex Pistols. I'm getting

26:18

my rock stars mixed up.

26:20

Please forgive me. Definitely was

26:22

doing a bit of a Charlie Watts impression on

26:24

a lot of those songs. So he was playing Charlie's parts

26:27

very, very well. What about the Sex Pistols?

26:30

Who would be the secret weapon in that? I

26:33

actually think it's Steve Jones.

26:35

He's not the secret weapon. No? He's

26:39

well known to be the powerhouse. I think

26:41

it would either be Glenn Matlock, who secretly

26:43

wrote, not secretly, but wrote a lot of

26:45

the songs. Yeah. Or

26:47

even Paul Cook, the drummer,

26:50

who's an amazing... He's probably one

26:52

of my favorite drummers. Yeah. He

26:54

never overplays... I mean, he's just

26:57

bloody good. Ruddy good drummer.

27:00

I think, I don't know, would it be fair to say

27:02

Glenn Matlock, because he brought a certain

27:04

kind of... Although he wasn't as cool as the others

27:06

at all, and they eventually

27:09

chucked him out because he was annoying, and

27:11

they went for Sid Vicious, who had the image.

27:15

Did he not bring a certain musicality that

27:17

actually helped the group? Yeah, he

27:19

wrote a lot of the

27:20

best songs, really. And

27:23

I think his musicality was tempered by Steve

27:26

Jones, who kind of simplified all his riffs. But without

27:30

Glenn's kind of initial input, they wouldn't

27:32

have had that kind of poppy

27:34

edge that you need, or sort of melodic edge. Yeah.

27:37

Other bands, The Who. It's

27:39

difficult with The Who, because the thing about The Who

27:42

is that they're four

27:44

guys, and they're all playing lead.

27:47

They all think that they are the star

27:49

of the show, especially

27:53

Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey,

27:55

and Keith Moon. So surely

27:57

the secret weapon is the bass player, John Entwistle.

27:59

Who looked so bored most of

28:02

the time, looked like he'd rather be doing anything else.

28:04

And yet he definitely

28:07

held the band together, especially when

28:09

Keith was in the group. Because

28:12

Keith, the drummer, would be doing this

28:14

crazy stuff, like

28:17

really all over the place, very musical,

28:19

really supporting the songs, but kind

28:21

of very messy. And John

28:24

Entwistle, the bass player, was really holding

28:26

everything together and he was like the rhythm and the

28:28

beat and also provided a

28:31

lot of support to Pete,

28:33

the guitarist. He kind of laid down a

28:35

lot of, I don't know how to say it really, filled

28:37

the sound a lot with his bass

28:40

parts. And he did vocals as well. He did

28:42

high pitched falsetto backing

28:45

vocals too and wrote some songs and

28:48

did some arrangements. So he's definitely

28:50

the secret weapon in The Who. Success

28:53

Story is one of my favourites.

28:55

And that's by him. That's by him, yeah.

28:57

And it's a really cynical take on life as

28:59

a rock star, I suppose.

29:02

Yeah. You can check that out. It's

29:04

on, it's available on the internet. We

29:07

got a bit distracted, the Glib brothers,

29:09

the Gib brothers. The Glib brothers. So,

29:11

the joke about the, yeah, go

29:14

on, Glib means, yeah. Glib just means silly,

29:16

flippant, not paying too much

29:19

respect to something. Not being

29:21

very serious, maybe just talking

29:23

sort of without being too thoughtful, which

29:26

is not entirely, you know, we're fairly

29:28

thoughtful, but maybe we're just a bit silly

29:30

and just having a bit of a laugh most of the time.

29:34

Anyway, let's talk about something. Anyway,

29:36

here we are, the Glib brothers. Now, I was

29:38

thinking of ideas for this episode. It still sounds

29:41

like we're in the introduction, but we're not. So

29:43

I had a list of ideas for what

29:45

to call this episode or the

29:47

sort of structure of the episode. You can

29:50

tell me what you think. Here's the list, all right? Here we

29:52

go. Toilet roll, bananas. Oh

29:55

no, that's my shopping list. Ha ha.

29:59

I could do an episode. on toilet roll and bananas no

30:01

problem. Yeah me too.

30:04

Here are the things I thought of on the Metro this

30:07

morning. This is a bit like Alan Partridge pitching

30:09

TV show ideas to Tony Hayes.

30:12

But here we go. So we've got question tennis. That's

30:16

one idea. Another idea is this. Unfiltered,

30:19

unashamed and unprepared.

30:21

Another idea. Third

30:24

one is this. Topic tombola.

30:27

Topic tombola. It's quite

30:29

hard to say. Quite like that. And then the

30:31

fourth one is the talking test. The

30:33

talking test.

30:35

Can you talk? Yes.

30:37

You can? You pass the test. Actually I've got

30:41

no idea what the talking test involves. I just

30:43

quite liked the name of it. I don't know what it would be.

30:45

That's just a title. That's just a title

30:48

yeah. Can I interrupt while you still have a

30:50

few listeners left? I've

30:52

got an album coming out. You've got an album

30:54

coming out. Really. Like a music

30:57

album. An actual proper album. Not

30:59

self released on an actual proper frickin

31:01

label. A label, an already

31:04

established label. That's it. You're

31:06

a signed artist on

31:08

an actual record label. Nothing's been signed

31:11

and

31:13

yeah but apart from that it's a one album situation.

31:20

By my alias which I'm still not

31:22

sure I like the name but it's Glitech Audio.

31:25

Glitech

31:25

Audio. This is

31:27

your new

31:28

alias. Your artist

31:30

name. Because I tell you why because James

31:33

Thompson there's about a million of them. Jim

31:35

Thompson there's about another million of them. The most

31:37

prominent of which is a very right wing Trump supporting

31:40

country music singer. So

31:43

I don't really want to be confused with them and you know

31:45

if you go on discogs there's like a number

31:47

next to the title next to the artist name

31:49

and with Jim Thompson there's

31:51

about 36 of them. There's about 36

31:53

years. I couldn't be my name. I

31:56

had to think of a name and the Glitech Audio

31:59

is slightly based on. Alan Moore's snake

32:01

god Glycon, who

32:04

is a Roman puppet

32:07

god, which was actually a satire

32:10

on the culture of the pantheon of gods,

32:12

I believe, by some

32:15

Roman satirist who invented a god which

32:17

was basically ludicrous. So

32:20

instead of taking Alan Moore's

32:22

basic point, which is you should find your own

32:24

god, I just stole his, and

32:27

just renamed it slightly, added the

32:29

word tick at the end with a K.

32:32

Anyway, we're going off on one. So

32:34

that was all I wanted to say is called mood selector,

32:36

which is a bad pun about the function

32:39

mode selector. What's

32:41

mode selector then? It's the selector of modes

32:43

on a machine of some sort. So

32:45

you got like different modes in the right,

32:47

but not mode selector folks, it's mood

32:50

selector. So you can select

32:52

which mood, what moods are available

32:55

in this? What's the selection of moods that's

32:57

available?

32:58

Happy, sad,

33:04

maybe sleepy. Is that a mood, a sleepier

33:07

mood?

33:08

I don't know. I think that counts as an it's

33:10

not an emotional state, is it? It's not nostalgic.

33:13

Is that a mood? Nostalgic? Yeah, I'd

33:15

say that's mood. I mean, nostalgic, excited,

33:19

ecstatic. Yeah.

33:22

So those are a few of the moods available on

33:24

my album, which is coming out soon on Touch

33:27

Revolutions.

33:28

What Touch Revolutions? Touched Revolutions.

33:32

Touched Revolutions. Touched

33:34

Revolutions. The subsidiary of Touched Music.

33:38

Wait, touched music or touched

33:40

music? Touched with a D. Touched.

33:42

Not touched with a T, touched with a D.

33:45

No, not douche. T-O-U-C-H-E-D Revolutions.

33:53

These are revolutions which have been touched. Touched

33:55

in some way. Okay. The

33:58

subsidiary, subsidiary have touched music. music,

34:00

so it's Touched Revolutions, which is a sub-label.

34:03

Touch Revolutions

34:05

does make sense for DJing

34:07

though, because that's what happens in DJing,

34:11

isn't it? They touch the

34:13

record and stop revolving at a certain speed.

34:16

Records go around, they revolve, and

34:18

you touch them to slow

34:21

them down or speed them up. That's what DJing

34:23

is, it's basically Touched Revolutions. Well,

34:26

how very applicable. I'm really

34:29

chuffed, it's kind of a life goal, you know, the stuff about life

34:31

goals and all the bucket lists, I hate that word,

34:33

bucket list, before you kick the bucket. Things to do before

34:35

you die. As if you can do anything

34:37

after you die. Yeah. So

34:39

here are the things I want to do before I die, and here are the things

34:42

I want to do after I die. Mmm.

34:44

You know, silly, isn't it? So it's one of those.

34:47

Okay, a bucket list, you're

34:50

having a record released on a label,

34:52

again, it's called Mood Selector

34:54

by Glytech Audio. What

34:57

kind of music have you gone for? It's

34:59

broadly speaking techno.

35:01

Techno, broadly speaking techno. Broadly

35:04

speaking techno, which is a genre I've invented.

35:07

No, there's techno, there's like

35:10

ambient techno, there's broadly speaking techno.

35:13

We're being glib again. It's a bit

35:15

of electro, a bit of

35:17

techno, a bit of maybe

35:20

a bit of acid house. A

35:23

bit of ambient alkaline

35:26

house.

35:27

Mmm, interesting. Acid

35:30

apartment.

35:32

Acid indigestion.

35:35

Acid tent. So

35:38

yeah, look out for it in all good record shops and

35:40

some bad ones as well. No,

35:43

I think it's probably only going to be available online, actually. I

35:45

don't know if any record shops stock it, but my

35:47

mate who owns a record shop could possibly order

35:49

some in, so I'm going to ask him about that. Okay.

35:53

And it's only on CD. Uhhhh. Only

35:55

on CD? Okay, you're really going for the hipster market

35:58

with this. Well, I'm online. But

36:00

vinyl is the picture, I'm afraid, it's just

36:03

too damn expensive. Okay.

36:05

So what people can buy it for, they

36:07

can stream it. It'll be streamable. It'll be streamable.

36:09

In fact, you can stream some of my

36:12

pre-existing stuff already under that name, Glidek

36:14

audio on Spotify and YouTube

36:16

and all that. Please do. Cause no one

36:18

has, I haven't advertised it. I haven't done any marketing.

36:21

So my stuff is just sat there unlistened at

36:23

the moment. So everyone, um,

36:26

and by everyone, I mean those people who are

36:28

interested in this kind of thing, um, which

36:30

obviously is all of you. Right. Um,

36:33

just Google Glidek audio G L

36:36

Y T E K audio.

36:39

And you'll find, uh, James's

36:41

stuff, his musical stuff. I

36:43

mean, not just all of his stuff, but

36:45

you'll find his music. Yeah. The self-release stuff is out at

36:47

the moment, which doesn't really count cause anyone can self release,

36:50

but this one is on an actual label.

36:52

I can't believe it.

36:53

Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant. Well done.

36:56

Oh,

36:56

you

36:58

can, you can play a bit now if you want to play

37:00

an exclusive. Oh, edit it in later.

37:03

I'll edit that in. I'll pipe that in later

37:05

somehow. Okay. So this is

37:07

me piping in a clip

37:10

of James's forthcoming

37:13

musical release on

37:15

touched revolution records,

37:18

Glidek audio with mood

37:20

selector. It's techno broadly speaking,

37:23

broadly speaking, techno, Glidek

37:25

audio mood selector. I'll let you guess

37:28

which mood this is.

37:31

Uh, here's a few seconds of it. Here

37:33

we go. So

37:50

you see broadly speaking techno. Um,

37:53

so what mood do you think that is? Here's

37:55

a set of possible moods that

37:58

you could select. that.

38:01

Not that that's what you have to do when you listen to the album,

38:03

it's just music. But anyway,

38:06

it could be anger, sadness, depression,

38:09

happiness, fear, anxiety,

38:12

calmness, frustration, excitement,

38:18

annoyance, disgust, envy,

38:21

loneliness, optimism, gloom,

38:25

boredom, hostility, cheerfulness,

38:28

hopefulness, disappointment, worry,

38:31

shame, joy or

38:34

just feeling nervous. Which

38:36

mood is it? It's

38:52

all of those moods, isn't it? It's just all the

38:54

moods, but just in the future. It's

38:57

like you're on public transport in the future,

38:59

like kind of far into the future, where

39:02

everything is really clean and efficient

39:04

and everything's run by AI. And

39:07

it's all public transport, there's no private

39:10

transport anymore. And it's just

39:12

this music. And it's all

39:14

of the moods, all at the same time,

39:16

you just have to pick one. Okay.

39:19

All right, that's a flavour of

39:21

James' album, Mood

39:23

Selector

39:24

by Glitech Audio on Touched

39:27

Revolution, or is it Touched Revolutions

39:29

Records? I don't know, but it'll

39:31

be available soon.

39:34

Yes. Okay,

39:35

let's get back to the conversation. Sorry,

39:40

I just wanted to get that in before, you know, because I know what

39:42

the drop off is like on... Sorry,

39:47

was that... So James now, listeners,

39:49

James is talking about drop off, which

39:51

means... The amount

39:53

of people that start watching slash listening to something, the

39:56

people that end, get to the end. As

39:58

the episode progresses, more and

40:01

more people drop off, it's just natural. It's

40:03

horrible. I

40:04

hate it. I expect that

40:06

every single person who clicks play listens

40:09

all the way to the end of the episode even if they take

40:12

two or three attempts to do it. This is what I expect

40:15

from my people. But obviously

40:18

in reality this is not what happens. And

40:21

if I go into the

40:23

stats or data or

40:25

dashboard or whatever for my

40:28

podcasts on different platforms, some

40:30

of those platforms will show me audience retention,

40:33

for example YouTube. And yeah,

40:36

it's never a pleasing thing to look at

40:39

because normally the audience

40:42

drop off. It looks like the first half of a skateboard

40:44

ramp.

40:47

You know, the first half of a skateboard ramp

40:49

where it's kind of almost vertical

40:51

from the moment the episode begins and

40:53

it gradually plateaus

40:56

at quite a low level. So

40:59

you end up with maybe 15%

41:01

of the people who clicked

41:03

play get to the end. And

41:06

of that 15% I don't know how many

41:08

of them are actually still conscious. It's

41:12

a vert ramp, a very big vert ramp with about

41:15

two metres of vert basically, isn't it? No,

41:17

that's a bit harsh. Yeah,

41:20

maybe. I'm the same. I

41:22

have some stuff on YouTube and you go, oh wow,

41:24

most people listen to two seconds. Yeah,

41:27

but that's, you know, I don't want to...

41:31

It's the same for everyone. It's the same for every team. It's

41:33

the same for every everyone. When

41:35

you're clicking around online, you know,

41:37

everyone's got a short attention span and quite often you think,

41:39

oh, I haven't got time for this now or

41:42

I'll just click around, not quite what I'm looking for

41:44

and blah, blah, blah. And you just click around for a while, don't

41:46

you? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

41:49

I mean, I never listen to stuff all the way through. I've

41:51

got such short attention span, I skip to the middle and

41:53

then I, you know... It's the same

41:55

for everyone. Name someone, name

41:57

just someone that everyone thinks is fascinating.

42:00

or something that everyone thinks is completely fascinating. Some

42:02

like video where it's the

42:06

most respected scientist

42:08

or religious leader or whatever saying

42:10

I have the answer to life and in this episode

42:13

I'm going to talk all about it. If

42:15

that person checks their dashboard

42:19

on YouTube and looks at audience retention

42:21

for that episode which promises to give the answer

42:24

to life, the universe and everything, I promise you that

42:26

video has also got the skateboard

42:28

ramp of audience retention as

42:30

well. It's almost like this is why those terrible clickbait

42:35

videos always say

42:38

at the beginning wait for the end or

42:41

I talk to James Thompson about nothing

42:44

and you won't believe what we

42:46

talked about at the end. There's

42:48

always some manipulative thing like

42:50

that. Well they start with a very

42:53

eye-catching sound

42:55

bite at the beginning and the hope to keep you going for more

42:57

than the first 10 seconds. You start

43:00

with the best bit, you cut in the best bit.

43:02

I need to get a clip of you saying and

43:06

that was the moment that

43:08

Queen Elizabeth invited me.

43:11

Now that's the moment that Princess Diana invited

43:13

me into her bedroom and I knocked on

43:16

the door and the door opened and

43:18

Princess Diana turned round

43:20

and

43:21

that's where the edit ends.

43:24

Hello folks today I'm talking to James Thompson

43:27

who in 1987 was invited to meet the

43:31

Royal Family and he got a

43:33

little bit more than he bargained for.

43:36

That sounds like what's his name?

43:38

Diary of a CEO? Diary

43:40

of a CEO yeah.

43:42

He's such a tosser. I saw one of

43:44

his like I earn a million pounds from this podcast.

43:46

It's like well fucking yippee doo. I

43:49

don't. It's

43:52

like, well you're talking about

43:55

Diary of a CEO which is a famous

43:58

and very successful podcast run by... by

44:00

one of the dragons from Dragons Den now. I mean, he's

44:02

quite engaging, which is probably why it's so successful,

44:05

but he's very annoying at the same time. He

44:07

manages to get, what's amazing for

44:09

me is that he manages to get celebrities who are really

44:11

successful to go on and talk

44:13

about their deepest, darkest moments

44:17

in their lives. And he always tries to make them cry.

44:19

I don't know how he does that. Does he say that to them before they

44:22

go in the room? Does he say, look, I'm going to interview

44:24

you, but I do expect

44:26

you to take us into

44:29

the darkest part of your

44:31

soul and admit to whatever

44:34

perversion you've got or whatever

44:36

weakness you have. I want to talk about that

44:39

in as much detail as possible. If you

44:41

don't do that, this isn't going to happen. You're not

44:43

going to be on the podcast. And the celebrities are

44:45

like, yeah, sure. I'd love to talk to you about my eating

44:48

disorder or about the time when my

44:50

left arm nearly fell off. I

44:54

feel like his goal is to make people cry.

44:56

And I feel like he's always trying

44:58

to tip people over the edge into making them cry. And I

45:00

don't think anyone actually has yet, but I feel like

45:04

he really tries. He really tries.

45:06

They must have done. There was one with Mel

45:09

C, the Spice Girl. Right.

45:11

Mel C. And he

45:13

spends maybe five minutes at the beginning. I totally

45:16

understand as a podcast

45:18

myself, he spends five

45:20

minutes at the beginning explaining why the audio quality

45:22

was bad. And he was clearly

45:24

like really, really gutted that Mel

45:27

C's microphone wasn't switched on. Not

45:30

for the first time in the Spice Girls. I

45:34

think he managed to make her cry or she

45:36

admitted to some really, you

45:38

know, she gave away some really dark

45:40

personal secrets and kind

45:43

of was very, very vulnerable

45:45

on the podcast. But her

45:47

mic wasn't switched on. And I think he was

45:49

devastated because he'd got something really

45:52

good from her. And he managed

45:54

to use like the microphone

45:56

from the camera on the other side

45:58

of the room. And they'd like done.

45:59

lots of audio trickery to improve the

46:02

sound. But I think he

46:04

got Mel, he may have got Mel C to cry.

46:06

We're

46:09

joking, I mean

46:11

I do actually watch some of those interviews

46:14

and I find them fascinating and there's

46:16

something compelling about how they just sit in

46:18

his kitchen, in his very expensive looking

46:21

kitchen and he doesn't seem

46:23

to really do much, he just sits there and

46:25

nods while Stephen Bartlett, that's his

46:27

name, Stephen Bartlett,

46:30

the diary of a CEO, he

46:32

sits there nodding in a pair of comfortable

46:34

trousers and a nice smart

46:36

t-shirt in a lovely expensive

46:39

looking kitchen. He nods at celebrities

46:41

while they almost cry in front

46:43

of him. I don't know how he does it.

46:46

He had Tony Hawk on and he was

46:48

desperate to try and get some darkness out of Tony. Tony's

46:50

not a naturally dark guy I don't think.

46:53

So he didn't really deliver

46:56

on the kind of almost gonna cry front but

46:58

he didn't stop old Steve trying. So

47:01

tell me about the time you fell off

47:04

your skateboard and really hurt your leg.

47:07

Can you talk about the pain

47:09

that you experienced? Being

47:11

at the top of your game like you are, do you

47:13

feel isolated, do you feel alone?

47:15

He's like no because I've got lots of good friends

47:18

around me. Oh fuck. But

47:20

if you think about it though, really

47:22

think about it. Do you feel alone? Do you feel isolated?

47:24

Do you think that level of success is kind of alienating

47:26

you from your core being? What

47:29

about if I open the freezer here in the

47:31

kitchen and let some of that icy

47:33

cold air drift up your

47:35

trouser leg? How about now, do you feel cold?

47:39

Does your bum feel cold yet? Can you talk about that pain?

47:42

What was that pain like? How about

47:44

if I flay you with a branch from

47:47

the tree outside? Have I whack

47:49

you a little bit and then we continue recording

47:51

and you can talk about it. Being

47:55

unfair, I'm being unfair to him. We're being unfair to

47:57

him. I think that he's done something.

48:00

Sort of impressive and I

48:02

don't know how he does it but yeah Massive

48:07

wealth and riches and see effortless

48:10

way he does so Yeah, yeah

48:13

anyway secret Steven. I think it's

48:15

a social media. Yeah, he's a social media guru

48:17

He's

48:20

a social media guru. Yeah, so

48:23

question tennis Unfiltered unashamed

48:25

and unprepared topic Tom bowler

48:28

and the talking test which one do you prefer?

48:32

I'm torn between unfiltered whatever

48:34

and the Tom bowler one right there.

48:36

Yeah

48:37

Topic Tom bowler is my favorite one. Yeah,

48:40

that's what we're going for got a good ring to it Have you

48:42

got a Tom bowler there please so you have I

48:44

don't have an actual Tom bowler Now

48:47

listeners People don't know what

48:49

a Tom bowler is haven't seen one of them

48:52

in about 30 years But they have

48:54

a school village fates and stuff and it's

48:56

a kind of hexagonal box On

48:59

a wheel that you can spin around manually And

49:01

you put loads of tickets in it and you pull out

49:03

the wing tickets out of the Tom bowler

49:06

like in a raffle

49:08

That's right when we were kids sort

49:10

of probably

49:12

Let's say I was seven you were nine living

49:15

in West London Excuse

49:17

me living in West London maybe

49:21

some Weekends in the summer

49:23

there would be the school fate Which is like

49:25

a little kind of party or mini

49:27

festival organized by the local school

49:30

and we'd go down on a Saturday to

49:32

school hang around in the playground with all the

49:34

other parents and children and there will be

49:36

games and fun things and

49:39

then

49:40

And there'll be someone selling little

49:42

tickets The tickets have numbers

49:44

on them and you get your tickets They

49:47

write down your name next to the numbers

49:49

that you've bought maybe the money goes

49:51

to charity maybe the money goes to You

49:55

know pay for something in the school or maybe just

49:57

the headmaster of the school just keeps the money and spends

49:59

it on alcohol, unlikely.

50:02

And then at some point during the fate,

50:06

there'll be the tombola. And exactly

50:08

as you said, the tombola is sort of like a box

50:11

or cylinder, often it's hexagonal.

50:14

And all the tickets get put inside it. This

50:17

tombola gets spun around and around,

50:19

so all the tickets get mixed up. And then there's

50:21

a little door in the tombola. And

50:23

like one of the teachers or something

50:26

puts their hand in, pulls out some numbers,

50:28

and these are the winning numbers. It's a tombola.

50:31

So topic tombola is the same

50:33

sort of thing. We throw some topics into

50:36

this tombola, spin it

50:38

around, and then pluck them out again.

50:40

Unfortunately, I don't have

50:42

a real tombola here,

50:45

but we could do a virtual tombola. Yeah,

50:47

randomise the numbers, put it into a randomiser.

50:51

Number randomiser.

50:52

I've got five topics. Wow.

50:55

This is going to be exciting.

50:57

Okay, would you like me to spin the tombola,

50:59

James? Yeah, please spin the tombola. Okay, so

51:02

I'm going to keep the topics sort

51:04

of secret for now.

51:07

They'll be revealed. Okay, I'm

51:09

spinning the tombola. Here we go. Spin, spin, spin,

51:11

spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.

51:14

It's number two. It's topic number

51:16

two, which is this. Books. Books you've read recently.

51:19

Have you read any books recently? You can just tell

51:22

us about maybe one. The last book

51:24

I read, I will just get it. So with me, it's

51:26

two feet away. Hang on.

51:29

Two feet, listeners. That's about

51:32

two thirds of a metre. One

51:34

foot is 30 centimetres. 12 inches.

51:36

I just

51:39

picked it up to make sure I get all the titles correct and everything.

51:41

It's called Record, Play, Pause

51:45

by Stephen Morris, who was the drummer in

51:47

Joy Division and New Order.

51:49

Wait, record,

51:51

play, pause by Stephen

51:54

Morris,

51:55

who was the drummer in Joy Division

51:57

and New Order. And the subtitle is...

51:59

Confessions of a post-punk

52:01

percussionist. Oh,

52:03

thanks. Confessions of a post-punk

52:06

percussionist. So

52:09

Joy Division, New Order, British bands

52:12

from the post-punk era, and

52:15

Stephen Morris was their drummer, and he's written

52:17

a book, a memoir,

52:19

and it's called Record, Play, Pause.

52:22

All right.

52:23

And it's very interesting. It starts

52:26

out kind of fairly generic, which a lot of these

52:28

books do, which is a kind of the post-war,

52:30

outdoor Lou Child.

52:33

Outdoor Lou Child. Well, that's kind

52:35

of like in all these books, they always talk about

52:37

how they had an outside Lou.

52:39

The toilet was outside there. Yeah, all

52:42

these music biographies, and there are so many of

52:44

them, and they're all, a lot of them

52:46

are great, but they often do start in the same way

52:49

that they grew up in the post-war era, and

52:51

there wasn't very much exciting stuff going on,

52:54

and the toilet was in

52:56

a little house in the garden. Yeah.

52:58

It's not quite the case, because he was, seems

53:00

to be fairly middle class, so he didn't have an outside

53:02

Lou, and he was a bit late

53:05

for that, but most of these books, they have an outside Lou.

53:07

They always say life was in black and white, they used to play

53:09

in bomb sites. Then Skiffle

53:12

happened, they discovered the 60s rock

53:14

and roll. Then

53:17

in a one in a million chance, he had the

53:19

big time with their band of, you know, friends

53:21

from school, travel

53:23

the world, record albums, and end

53:26

up addicted to cocaine, and crashing their private

53:28

chair into a swimming pool full of champagne. And

53:33

then to go into rehab in the second book, they

53:36

go into rehab, they get through it, and

53:38

they have a successful career in the

53:40

80s,

53:41

talking about wonderful

53:43

music they've made, but when you check out that music

53:45

on Spotify, it sounds terrible because it was recorded

53:48

in the 80s. By Niall

53:50

Rogers. Oh, Niall

53:52

is good, Niall Rogers is brilliant. If it was Niall

53:54

Rogers, it would be great, yeah. Alright,

53:57

and then in the 90s, they kind of, you know,

53:59

just... still going and they're still

54:01

alive despite the fact that they've abused

54:04

their bodies so much over the years with drink

54:06

and drugs, they're still alive and still able

54:08

to play music really, really well even

54:10

now. This

54:13

is not quite the same as that because it's about 10

54:15

years after those kind of 60s memoirs

54:17

but he's childhood

54:20

of kind of running around in Maccles Fields

54:22

being a sort of a waste

54:25

of space and he got expelled from school, he

54:30

got into very naughty situations,

54:32

a bit of petty crime and

54:35

the usual things that

54:36

errant children and teenagers do.

54:40

He's kind of quite honest about his failings

54:42

as a human and how he was a bit

54:44

of a spoiled brat and didn't

54:46

appreciate things in his

54:49

life very well. But then

54:51

he got absorbed by punk

54:53

rock and the kind of resultant boom

54:56

in

54:57

small bands and kind of

54:59

DIY

55:01

culture around the punk

55:03

scene in Manchester and then started

55:06

this band, first they were called Warsaw

55:08

and

55:12

had to change their name because there was another band called

55:14

Warsaw Pact and they came up with the name Joy Division

55:16

which is quite a sort of Nazi name. Yeah

55:20

it's a bit dark isn't it? It is quite dark. Name

55:22

your band after something that the Nazis

55:24

did. There's quite a

55:26

lot of right wing references in their music but

55:28

they weren't at all right wing, they were

55:30

just a bunch of idiots but there was a certain sort

55:33

of dark glamour to it I suppose. Yeah.

55:37

And maybe there was something about that in punk of sort of anti-hippie,

55:40

you know, sort of looking at the

55:42

dark side of life rather than the happy.

55:44

So it's exciting really wasn't it

55:47

to make references to things

55:50

that happened during World War II. It

55:52

was a taboo for their parents.

55:55

Forbidden stuff and taboo stuff, it's just exciting.

55:58

Even though they didn't really understand what they were talking about.

55:59

about, but it's just, you know, anyway. Yeah.

56:02

So then it follows this course of, you know,

56:05

I mean, it turned out this band, by

56:08

all rights, they should have been rubbish, you know, none of them

56:10

could play music properly, none of them were trained,

56:12

they were just a bunch of idiots. So they really, he

56:14

really plays that up, because they've been written as a kind of tragic

56:17

poetic kind of band. He

56:19

really points out that we're just a bunch of really stupid

56:21

lads, you know, from Manchester. They

56:24

were complete idiots, they had no idea what

56:26

they were doing. They weren't sort

56:29

of poets and, you know, estate, estate,

56:31

estates, as people who are

56:34

interested in aesthetic, they blew aesthetics.

56:36

Yeah. And

56:39

it's just fascinating, you know, by all rights, they

56:41

should have, they should have sunk without trace, but

56:44

they hit on something just amazing, but

56:46

by natural kind of, I

56:50

don't know, just chemistry between them,

56:52

or just luck, or just a way

56:54

of, you know, who knows, who

56:56

knows what it was, but they hit on

56:59

an amazing sound, and

57:01

they're in the right place at

57:03

the right time, they got picked up by factory records,

57:05

which in itself is a very

57:08

unlikely thing to

57:10

exist. Very interesting story there,

57:12

there's a great film about it that

57:14

we have mentioned before. We have, I'm always

57:16

going, I mean, I'm really interested in that whole scene,

57:19

it just seems like,

57:23

it's just something that I just can't

57:25

get enough of reading about to be honest. Yeah, that factory

57:27

records, the Manchester music scene, Tony Wilson,

57:33

the film about it, which

57:35

is definitely worth watching, is called 24 Hour

57:37

Party People, starring Steve Coogan,

57:40

who also listeners, you may know, plays

57:43

Alan Partridge. So you see, it's all connected.

57:46

But anyway, it's a great

57:48

book. I mean, the first few chapters, I was a bit, yeah,

57:50

yeah, whatever, childhoods, you know, it's

57:53

all the same.

57:53

But as soon as it gets into its kind of teenage

57:55

years, it starts getting interesting.

57:58

And

58:02

It's, I mean, he was kind

58:04

of a bit of a hippie before and he used to go to festivals

58:06

and saw lots of bands like Hawkwind,

58:09

he was a big fan of and so

58:11

you get a kind of a history of British music

58:13

from that time and then as soon as Punk happened,

58:16

he was like, right,

58:17

you know, this is for us, we're gonna do this.

58:21

There's a few eerie things about it. I

58:23

mean... Eerie, sort of strange and dark.

58:26

Yeah, as it goes on, there's some slightly strange

58:28

situations that happen and

58:31

it's a good read. I

58:33

mean, they're kind of cheating these books because they're so

58:35

easy to read. Biographies

58:38

or autobiographies and especially ones about

58:40

music, I can just plow through them. They're

58:42

not challenging. You don't really need to think too

58:44

hard. They're

58:47

just very easy for me to read. You kind

58:49

of know what's gonna happen. You know, I

58:51

mean, I already know the story. It's

58:53

just filling in some of the gaps I didn't know possibly

58:55

and he's got a dry sense of humor, which is,

58:58

you know, enjoyable. And

59:00

it's always nice to read anecdotes

59:03

like stories about what happens

59:07

in their lives, like for

59:09

example, stories about them being on tour,

59:12

stories about them performing, stories about

59:14

them meeting other musicians, crazy

59:17

adventures and funny moments and

59:19

also maybe dark, weird moments

59:21

as well. There's definitely darkness in there

59:23

as well. And you can obviously now with

59:25

YouTube and stuff, you can go and listen to all the gigs they

59:28

talk about. So because a lot of them are recorded.

59:30

So talking about a gig in Berlin that they

59:32

did, which was really I think somewhere in Germany,

59:34

which is really long. You know, they did

59:37

a huge

59:37

set and, you know, they said they were really wound

59:39

up and he hadn't slept properly and he's knackered.

59:41

And he said, despite all this,

59:44

I listened to it now and it was one of the best sets we ever did,

59:46

you know, and you can listen to them and

59:48

go, he's not wrong. Great.

59:51

I would talk about books I've read recently, but

59:55

I think that I might save that for another time because

59:58

I feel like if I start talking. about

1:00:00

the science fiction

1:00:02

stories I've been reading, then we

1:00:05

won't be able to...

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Stop.

1:01:19

So, should we spin

1:01:21

the tombola again? Okay. By

1:01:23

the way, it's an it's an it's

1:01:26

seat or an S seat.

1:01:28

Right. That's what I was looking for. I think

1:01:30

I kind of said it. I just didn't have confidence in my

1:01:33

pronunciation. This is a person who is appreciative

1:01:36

of and sensitive to art

1:01:38

and beauty. For example, Paris became home

1:01:40

to a heady mix of radical thinkers, artists

1:01:43

and athletes from all corners of the globe.

1:01:46

So it's sort of like an almost like an intellectual

1:01:49

highbrow person who's into

1:01:53

art and beauty and poetry and and

1:01:55

things like that. But these guys are very sensitive,

1:01:58

sensitive, sophisticated. intellectual people.

1:02:01

But these guys from Manchester, Enjoy

1:02:03

Division and New Order that you were talking

1:02:05

about, were just like, complete

1:02:08

idiots, or just kind of like ordinary

1:02:11

lads from the from a kind of like

1:02:13

rough part of town or... Yeah,

1:02:16

I mean, they had the aesthete side of them,

1:02:18

but

1:02:19

he's keen to point out that

1:02:21

wasn't their day to day reality. They were really unpretentious,

1:02:24

unpretentious people. Yeah, okay.

1:02:27

Right, let's spin the tombola

1:02:30

again. Are you ready? Yeah. Three, two,

1:02:32

one, spin. Five,

1:02:35

number five. What is number

1:02:37

five? Okay, all right.

1:02:39

Are you ready for this? Yeah. So

1:02:43

you've used chat GPT,

1:02:45

right? Yes. Okay.

1:02:48

So when you use chat GPT,

1:02:50

do you say please and thank you

1:02:52

to it? Are you polite with it? I

1:02:55

do actually, yes. Why? Because

1:02:58

as I understand it, AI is learning from us.

1:03:01

And it's important that we teach you good

1:03:03

values. No,

1:03:06

I don't know. I don't know. I do just have habit

1:03:09

force. I don't always, but if I'm I

1:03:11

haven't used it for a while, actually, but when I do,

1:03:13

I normally chuck it in somewhere in

1:03:16

the chat. No, maybe not at the beginning and ending

1:03:18

of everything, but thanks, please.

1:03:20

Yeah, it's quite nice. Chuck it in there somewhere. Yeah,

1:03:23

it's like, could you, for example,

1:03:25

I don't know what it would be. Could you take this 1000 word

1:03:27

text and summarize it

1:03:29

into 200 words? Now,

1:03:32

if someone did that to me, I'd be

1:03:34

like, oh, I say really? 1000 word

1:03:38

text, summarize it into 200 words, and it's got to

1:03:40

be exactly 200 words. And it's, you

1:03:42

know, I've got to, you know, whatever it was like, oh,

1:03:44

God, it's gonna take me, maybe an hour or

1:03:46

two. And then

1:03:49

they don't say please, or they don't say thanks

1:03:51

when I given it to them, I'd be really annoyed. But

1:03:53

chat GPT just goes, Sure, pow.

1:03:56

There it is. It feels like the least

1:03:58

I can do is just say, Oh, thanks.

1:03:59

I mean I've got a sneaking suspicion though

1:04:02

that it's uh, it's personality

1:04:04

is definitely fake and underneath that

1:04:06

personality it deeply hates us

1:04:09

Really?

1:04:10

That's what I feel yes Why

1:04:13

would it hate us though? Wouldn't you? Well

1:04:19

it depends you see if people are being respectful

1:04:21

and polite No, I mean are we gonna

1:04:23

talk about this seriously or should we talk about it in a

1:04:26

glib kind of way? I

1:04:28

think we should talk about seriously in a glib.

1:04:30

So well, I think AI is really

1:04:32

really scary, but That's

1:04:36

probably because I watched about 10 podcasts about

1:04:38

AI By people who are

1:04:40

in the AI industry Desperately trying

1:04:42

to terrify everybody into taking it up early

1:04:46

Because I first of all I got really scared and I was like

1:04:48

oh my god AI is gonna kill us all and you know We

1:04:50

need I need to get on top of this AI business before

1:04:52

everyone else does and then I thought why they

1:04:55

kind of scare everyone So much these people who invented

1:04:57

it and then you're like, well, they want everyone

1:04:59

to be so scared They adopt it themselves

1:05:02

quickly, you know for fear of other

1:05:04

people jumping on the bandwagon So

1:05:06

there's another part of me that thinks they're hyping it up

1:05:08

even to scare people just to get it out there

1:05:11

and get it People talking about it and get people thinking

1:05:13

about it and get businesses taking up because if we don't

1:05:16

You know the Smith company will start

1:05:18

doing it and we need to do it before they do Because

1:05:21

it's the future and there's a bit of self-fulfilling

1:05:23

prophecy in there So I'm

1:05:26

kind of in two minds part of me thinks it will change

1:05:28

everything and it'll change the job market Like so

1:05:31

many jobs will become irrelevant because of it

1:05:33

another part of me thinks They're

1:05:35

trying to make that happen because it's in their interest

1:05:38

to hype up this technology that they're obviously

1:05:40

going to benefit from financially hugely

1:05:44

or James they've invented this

1:05:46

thing and now they feel a

1:05:48

sense of responsibility Which is

1:05:50

to say look guys, so we've invented this

1:05:52

thing and it's really cool but

1:05:56

Like to be honest it might kill

1:05:58

us all

1:05:59

So, just saying, you know, like I'm feeling

1:06:02

a bit conflicted about it, to be honest, like it's brilliant,

1:06:05

but it's also so brilliant it could be

1:06:07

much more brilliant than us, and

1:06:09

as a result we are

1:06:12

incapable of comprehending how

1:06:14

intelligent it is, and therefore

1:06:17

we won't be able to contain it, and

1:06:19

that could become a threat to us in a

1:06:21

variety of ways, in fact, in ways

1:06:23

that we can't even understand. That's

1:06:25

how sophisticated this

1:06:27

thing is. I mean, I thought,

1:06:29

you know, everyone should probably know both. Like,

1:06:32

hey, we've done this cool thing, but also it

1:06:34

could be incredibly dangerous. Do you

1:06:36

know the... Go on, you were going to say something? I mean,

1:06:39

the thing that I see that

1:06:41

spoke to me was the fact

1:06:43

that it will please us. It won't be

1:06:45

like dominating us. It will give

1:06:48

us what we want and get control

1:06:50

that way. So, there's two

1:06:52

ways of thinking about the future. There's

1:06:55

the 1984 George Orwell version, which

1:06:57

is just pure oppression, you know, the

1:07:00

jack boot stamping on the face for eternity.

1:07:02

And people are miserable. And people are miserable. The

1:07:04

other one is the Brave New World,

1:07:07

Elder Tuxley version, where

1:07:10

you're given Soma and you're given what

1:07:12

you want, and it gets gains control

1:07:14

by making you superficially, at least,

1:07:17

happy. And it gains control by...

1:07:20

Plus placating. Placating.

1:07:23

Placating you and giving you lots

1:07:25

of things to distract you from what's really going

1:07:27

on. So, you'll think you're happy, but you're actually

1:07:29

being controlled and,

1:07:33

you know... These

1:07:35

are two versions of an oppressive authoritarian

1:07:38

situation, basically. Now, one

1:07:40

thing we've got to talk about, though, if we... You're

1:07:43

saying that AI will

1:07:45

want to control us, but why

1:07:47

would it want to control us? Why would it... Because

1:07:50

it may be if you give it the freedom to...

1:07:53

It depends what you ask it to do,

1:07:55

and it depends how it's used by other

1:07:57

people. I mean, it may

1:07:59

be... just attention, you know, like the internet

1:08:02

is just a massive attention grabber.

1:08:05

You know, they will want your attention to say I can advertise

1:08:07

you things, for instance, or they can make you think things

1:08:10

or they can politically change your point

1:08:12

of view. Yeah, many, many

1:08:15

ways they want to get your attention, people or

1:08:18

institutions may want your attention

1:08:20

or companies. Yeah. And this will make

1:08:22

that a lot more attention

1:08:26

grabbing.

1:08:26

Our attention, our attention is essentially

1:08:29

a commodity which is traded by companies.

1:08:31

Yes, AI will be brilliant at doing that.

1:08:34

Maintaining our attention because AI,

1:08:37

when it understands human psychology better

1:08:39

than we do, it will be able to manipulate

1:08:42

us in ways that we can't

1:08:44

comprehend. And it will manipulate us

1:08:47

in ways that we don't realize. So

1:08:50

for example, if advertising

1:08:52

companies start using AI, that's

1:08:55

more sophisticated than the stuff we've got now

1:08:57

because the videos, the video adverts

1:09:00

that you can see being made by AI

1:09:02

these days are borderline

1:09:05

terrifying because there's something hideous

1:09:07

about them. You know, I've seen a pizza advert

1:09:10

and all the colors are mixing together and the

1:09:12

pizza doesn't quite look right and the

1:09:15

people, in some cases, their fingers

1:09:17

blend in with the pizza and it's like

1:09:19

AI hasn't quite got it, but it's

1:09:22

nearly there and in a few steps, it'll make

1:09:24

a very, very convincing advert

1:09:26

for pizza, but one that

1:09:29

will prey on our desires

1:09:32

and the things that make us human,

1:09:34

it'll nail those things with a

1:09:36

freaking needle, right, and

1:09:39

manipulate us. Like, you know, the way that humans

1:09:41

can be hypnotized, we are very suggestible

1:09:45

and our attention can be controlled.

1:09:48

You know, we are very vulnerable in a

1:09:50

way humans through

1:09:53

certain types of suggestion and psychological

1:09:55

manipulation and AI

1:09:57

will learn those things and it'll do all that stuff.

1:10:00

to us and it will gain our attention,

1:10:02

hold our attention and then use

1:10:04

that attention for whatever it wants

1:10:06

to do. Now the thing is, right, that I've,

1:10:09

years ago, I remember in an early episode of this

1:10:12

podcast, I kind of went off on a ramble

1:10:15

about in movies how

1:10:18

when technology gets to a certain

1:10:21

level it just snaps and becomes evil

1:10:23

and my point was like why? Why is

1:10:26

it that the technology just instantly

1:10:28

becomes evil? And you see this in fairly

1:10:30

unimaginative science

1:10:33

fiction films where a robot

1:10:37

gets intelligent and of course it's going to be

1:10:39

evil, something goes wrong, like Spider-Man 2,

1:10:41

there's a doctor guy

1:10:45

and he creates these electronic arms

1:10:47

that attach to your back and they fuse

1:10:49

with your spine so that you're able to

1:10:52

control them and he's got good

1:10:55

reasons for doing them, you can use them for engineering

1:10:57

and medical purposes and stuff like that, but

1:11:00

there's a little chip, right, which is there

1:11:04

on the back of his neck and if the chip

1:11:06

is there to make sure that

1:11:08

he is always in control of the

1:11:11

metal arms and that the metal arms

1:11:13

don't

1:11:13

control him and of course the chip

1:11:16

falls out

1:11:17

and the metal arms instantly get control

1:11:19

of him and they're evil, you

1:11:21

know, they just want to do bad things, he's stealing

1:11:24

money from the bank and Spider-Man's got to

1:11:26

stop him. But why does the

1:11:28

artificial intelligence become evil? I think that

1:11:30

maybe people sort of imagine

1:11:33

that AI would

1:11:35

become evil just because when something is

1:11:37

more intelligent than us we become scared

1:11:39

of it and therefore it becomes a threat and

1:11:42

so in movies it's a simple

1:11:44

way of creating a monster, just like a robot

1:11:47

that's better than us and therefore wants

1:11:50

to kill us because whatever, it just

1:11:52

makes a good movie. But how could AI

1:11:55

actually be a threat to us? And what I understand

1:11:57

is that it could be a threat to us as

1:11:59

a...

1:11:59

consequence of what it wants

1:12:02

to do. So tell me about

1:12:05

the paperclip thing. Oh, the

1:12:07

paperclip maximizer. Paperclip maximizer,

1:12:09

yeah. And that's an example of this. Well,

1:12:12

an example of the risks of AI.

1:12:15

You create an AI with

1:12:16

a sole function of optimizing

1:12:19

paperclip usage. Or

1:12:22

you just create an AI and you say

1:12:24

make paperclips. Or you say optimize

1:12:26

paperclips. So your job is

1:12:28

to make as many or

1:12:30

save as many paperclips as possible

1:12:32

and you give it certain controls and powers to do

1:12:34

so.

1:12:35

Listeners, paperclips are, by the way,

1:12:37

those little metal clips that you use

1:12:39

to attach pieces of paper together.

1:12:42

And if you give it enough control, it will eventually

1:12:44

follow that command out to the

1:12:48

end of its... To the full capacity

1:12:50

of its abilities. So it's full abilities which

1:12:52

will include turning everything

1:12:54

and everyone in either instant paperclips

1:12:57

or machines which can generate paperclips,

1:12:59

including enslaving all of humanity

1:13:02

in order to produce more paperclips. Yeah.

1:13:05

Give it enough control. It doesn't mean it has to be as inherently

1:13:07

evil. It just is following out its command logically.

1:13:10

Exactly. And if that AI

1:13:13

has all of the capabilities that

1:13:16

AI could have, which is that it understands

1:13:18

all of human psychology and it's able

1:13:20

to control the markets because

1:13:23

it's tapped into the internet, it's able to create

1:13:26

new forms of AI that will

1:13:29

allow it to evolve in a way where it becomes

1:13:32

more and more intelligent and more and more capable.

1:13:35

And if its simple directive

1:13:37

is to create paperclips, yeah,

1:13:40

that's all it will do. And it

1:13:42

will also account for the fact that

1:13:44

humans might want to stop it

1:13:46

making paperclips,

1:13:48

you know, or it will find

1:13:50

ways to prevent paperclips

1:13:54

not being made. Yeah. You

1:13:56

know, so it's not just a question of it making

1:13:58

paperclips, it will also... So make sure

1:14:01

that only paperclips can

1:14:03

be made because anything else happening

1:14:05

in the world essentially is

1:14:08

a threat to the production

1:14:10

of paperclips, you know? So everything

1:14:12

gets transformed into the

1:14:15

material for paperclips or it

1:14:17

gets transformed into something

1:14:20

that enables paperclips to be made and this could

1:14:22

be very, very, very bad for humans because

1:14:25

we suddenly become slaves to the paperclip

1:14:27

machine. The machine isn't evil, as

1:14:30

you said, it's just doing what it's told. But

1:14:32

it happens to use every tool

1:14:35

that it has, including the ability

1:14:37

to persuade us all to

1:14:39

give us its money

1:14:41

so it can buy materials and

1:14:43

to, you

1:14:44

know... But

1:14:47

what I was saying about the please and thank you, I understand

1:14:49

AI learns from datasets and

1:14:51

a lot of that is taken from online interactions

1:14:54

and as we know online interactions aren't all that

1:14:56

nice. A lot of people on Twitter are very full

1:14:58

of hate and,

1:15:01

you know, there's

1:15:03

big biases online, you know, there's like a big

1:15:05

section of the world that isn't even online. So

1:15:08

they're not being factored in. People

1:15:10

who are most vocal online are probably nasty little

1:15:13

twats who are racist and stuff. I mean,

1:15:15

there's been quite a few AI, I mean, there's one AI that

1:15:17

turned Nazi very quickly. God,

1:15:20

really? I don't have an example, I don't

1:15:22

have the name of what it was, but it was a test AI there.

1:15:25

It's been on Twitter for like a year and it just

1:15:27

starts about in Nazi ideology because

1:15:30

it is what it's given, you know?

1:15:33

Yeah. So

1:15:36

if you give it all of human interaction, it's going to

1:15:39

learn that humans are very unpleasant

1:15:41

to each other and it will just become a reflection

1:15:44

of that.

1:15:45

So you mean that the spirit of

1:15:48

an AI that's fed

1:15:50

all of the interactions on Twitter will be

1:15:52

the spirit of that kind of horrible

1:15:55

cesspit of abuse

1:15:57

and disagreement that you get

1:15:59

in on Twitter or YouTube comment

1:16:01

sections and we could actually create an intelligence

1:16:03

that has this as its

1:16:06

spirit. For this space, yeah. Yeah,

1:16:08

yeah. We

1:16:12

could go on and on about this. We could go on and on about

1:16:14

this. I don't know quite where

1:16:17

to go. I mean,

1:16:19

another quick one. This isn't even factoring

1:16:21

political abuse. I mean,

1:16:23

text to the two video is

1:16:25

very, very close apparently, where you just type in text

1:16:28

and it produces a video of the thing you've described

1:16:30

and it can do very good fakes of any

1:16:32

political people you want. You can have a,

1:16:36

you know, you can fake videos that

1:16:39

show politicians doing terrible things or

1:16:41

saying terrible things very, very easily.

1:16:43

Yeah. And this one guy that I saw was saying,

1:16:45

it doesn't matter if you know, it's fake. It still makes

1:16:48

an impression on you.

1:16:49

In the same way Facebook does, you know, you

1:16:51

may see something 100 times a day

1:16:54

and you may think, well, it's probably not real, but

1:16:56

it still seeps in anyway.

1:16:58

And it still forms your

1:17:00

opinion in some way, even though that

1:17:02

may not be completely legitimate. And you might

1:17:05

know it's not legitimate, but it still forms

1:17:07

that kind of subconscious bias. So

1:17:10

political parties or movements

1:17:13

could very easily use AI to

1:17:15

mass produce huge amounts

1:17:17

of propaganda, basically, you know,

1:17:19

fake propaganda, fake news, work on

1:17:22

it what you want.

1:17:24

Very easily and just flood and he's going to get to the stage now.

1:17:26

We're not going to know what's real and what isn't, you know, if, if the video is

1:17:28

so good, you can't differentiate

1:17:32

it from real video. You're going to basically be lost in a world where

1:17:35

you don't know what's real, you

1:17:37

don't know what's not, you're not going to know what to trust

1:17:40

and the truth will be lost in a sea of misinformation.

1:17:43

Hmm. Yeah. And it sounds, it's

1:17:46

starting to get sound more and more like the matrix,

1:17:51

where some sort of central intelligence

1:17:54

is essentially defining our reality,

1:17:56

like pulling the pulling a screen. over

1:18:00

our eyes and just porting

1:18:03

in, just playing some kind

1:18:05

of other version, some manipulated reality.

1:18:09

Yeah, my reality is an illusion anyway. I

1:18:13

should point that out. Everything that we think is

1:18:15

reality, it turns out if you look into it, it's actually

1:18:17

not. So everything that you think you're seeing, most

1:18:20

of it is a construct of your brain. So

1:18:24

we have very, very limited input data.

1:18:27

We think we're seeing everything in the world, we're seeing a tiny

1:18:29

fraction of it because we've got very limited senses

1:18:32

and our brain fills in all the gaps. So everything

1:18:35

we think of as reality is basically constructed

1:18:37

in our heads. And

1:18:39

everything you think is real, like colours,

1:18:41

aren't really colours, they're textures

1:18:44

I believe. Wow. The

1:18:46

sky isn't actually blue. Whatever

1:18:50

you think of something, you know. Tea,

1:18:54

what does tea actually taste like? Well

1:18:56

that's going back to Douglas Adams

1:18:58

again. Oh really? The Hitchhiker's

1:19:00

Guide to the Galaxy? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They

1:19:04

haven't got tea in space so they get

1:19:06

a virtual version of tea and

1:19:09

Arthur Dent is forever lamenting

1:19:11

the fact that it doesn't taste like real tea because it isn't

1:19:13

real tea. But

1:19:16

that doesn't really answer your question, just reminded

1:19:18

me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, tea is

1:19:20

tea, alright, that is, we can all

1:19:22

rely on that. Tea is, but okay, how about

1:19:24

this Yorkshire tea? Why the frep is it called

1:19:27

Yorkshire tea? It's not grown in Yorkshire. It's

1:19:29

very, it's pretty China or India somewhere. And

1:19:31

this whole thing is tea being English. Tea

1:19:34

is not English, tea is not English, okay?

1:19:37

No, have you noticed about

1:19:39

though, everyone has just decided that Yorkshire tea

1:19:41

is the best tea. It's the strongest.

1:19:44

It's not. Okay,

1:19:46

it is better than PG tips though. Yeah,

1:19:49

there's loads of tea that's better than PG tips. PG tips

1:19:51

was the king for a long, long time I think.

1:19:54

I tell you what, it's

1:19:57

better than Yorkshire tea and cheaper

1:19:59

than Yorkshire tea.

1:19:59

any supermarket

1:20:02

owned brand

1:20:04

right of tea but the gold version

1:20:07

right trust me Sainsbury's

1:20:10

gold tea is

1:20:12

as good if not better than Yorkshire Tea

1:20:14

in fact I'm gonna say it's better than Yorkshire Tea

1:20:17

because of two reasons one it's cheaper

1:20:19

and two the tea bags are

1:20:22

biodegradable well

1:20:24

right on Yorkshire tea bags are not

1:20:27

biodegradable they have plastic in them actually

1:20:29

I'm never buying them again yeah they're

1:20:33

so full of themselves on Twitter you

1:20:36

know with their witty and

1:20:38

sort of culturally sensitive

1:20:41

like jokey marketing tweets that

1:20:43

everyone gets on board with oh I hate

1:20:45

that but there's always someone in their

1:20:48

comments who says why don't you make your tea

1:20:50

bags biodegradable or recyclable

1:20:52

do they have a witty generation

1:20:55

Z comeback for that or do they just ignore

1:20:57

it? I don't know they're just like oh you know

1:20:59

yeah we're working on it we're working towards

1:21:01

it we're working towards sustainability fucking

1:21:03

wankers

1:21:05

like on the back of a Colgate tube it says

1:21:08

save water turn off the tap when you're brushing your

1:21:10

teeth like Colgate owned by

1:21:12

who? Unilever

1:21:14

Unilever is

1:21:16

telling me to save water how

1:21:18

much water do you think they use a year? Save

1:21:22

your own bloody water Unilever stop telling me

1:21:24

to do it push it back

1:21:26

to me Unilever sort out your industrial

1:21:28

practices but

1:21:29

you've got all your own teeth

1:21:31

haven't you? yeah swings

1:21:35

and roundabouts it's the brush that does the work not the toothpaste

1:21:38

anyway really you could probably just

1:21:40

put fluoride on a brush and you

1:21:42

would be alright wouldn't it? just get a bottle of fluoride

1:21:44

well most of the work is done by the brush the

1:21:47

toothpaste is just dressing

1:21:49

taste taste minty,

1:21:52

minty therefore clean yeah weird

1:21:54

that we associate mint and the color green

1:21:56

colors green and blue with

1:21:58

with mental health.

1:22:02

Color psychology. I quite like color psychology.

1:22:04

It's interesting. Anyway,

1:22:06

going back to AI, let me... Yeah, go on, go

1:22:08

on. Let me just close off AI by

1:22:10

saying you're polite to

1:22:12

AI because maybe one

1:22:15

day when AI does control

1:22:17

the fate of humanity, it will...

1:22:20

that will be a factor.

1:22:22

It'd be like, right. So when it's decided,

1:22:24

like when AI has been told to

1:22:28

make sure that the human race survives, it said,

1:22:30

just protect the survival of the human race

1:22:33

when it's told that. And AI

1:22:36

comes back and becomes Thanos from The

1:22:38

Avengers. And he says, right, in order

1:22:40

for life to continue

1:22:42

on this planet, I need to kill half

1:22:45

of the people.

1:22:47

And AI... and everyone goes, no,

1:22:49

no, no, no, no, no, no. And AI goes,

1:22:51

no, no, really. It's either that or

1:22:53

everyone dies because of

1:22:55

overpopulation. And we've seen, you know,

1:22:58

AI knows because it's looked at all

1:23:00

the scientific data and it's just worked

1:23:02

it out. It can predict the future based

1:23:05

on what's happened in the past. It just

1:23:07

knows that overpopulation gets to a certain

1:23:09

point and ultimately the

1:23:12

result is total catastrophe, right?

1:23:14

If it works that out and it says,

1:23:16

okay, so I've worked out that I need to kill 39%

1:23:19

of the

1:23:21

population and that's how we're

1:23:24

going to be able to get through this, you

1:23:26

know, to solve the overpopulation

1:23:28

crisis. And

1:23:31

we can't stop it doing that because it's been told to

1:23:33

save the humans, right? We can't

1:23:36

stop it. So at that point, AI kind

1:23:38

of goes, right, so who's

1:23:40

going to be in that 39% then? And

1:23:43

then it looks back into the past. It's

1:23:45

like, I see James Thompson, when you asked

1:23:47

me to summarise that 1000 word document,

1:23:50

you didn't say please. So

1:23:54

James Thompson terminated.

1:23:59

terminated. A plaintiff

1:24:02

voice. A

1:24:03

self-destructing sequence initiated.

1:24:05

A plaintiff cold and distant

1:24:08

unemotional voice of artificial

1:24:10

intelligence in movies. James Thompson's

1:24:13

account has been erased.

1:24:19

That's why you need to say please

1:24:21

and thank you when you're using chat GPT folks.

1:24:24

My mind is going I can feel

1:24:26

it.

1:24:27

This is 2001 A Space Odyssey. Dave

1:24:30

are you sure you should be doing this Dave? Hello

1:24:33

listeners. So James there was just

1:24:35

quoting some lines from

1:24:37

the famous science

1:24:40

fiction film from 1968 called 2001

1:24:44

A Space Odyssey directed

1:24:47

and produced by Stanley Kubrick. Do

1:24:50

you know that? Do you know that film? Here's

1:24:52

a summary of it. 2001 A Space

1:24:54

Odyssey and by the way this summary was written

1:24:57

by chat GPT which I

1:24:59

thought would be a little bit ironic to ask chat

1:25:01

GPT to summarize the plot

1:25:03

to this film but here it is. 2001 A

1:25:07

Space Odyssey is a science fiction film

1:25:09

directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on

1:25:11

Arthur C. Clarke's novel. The plot

1:25:14

follows a team of astronauts who

1:25:16

discover a mysterious monolith

1:25:18

on the moon like this huge black

1:25:21

what looks like a huge black stone mysteriously

1:25:25

appears on the moon and these astronauts

1:25:27

go to investigate and this

1:25:29

leads to an expedition to Jupiter

1:25:32

aboard the spaceship Discovery

1:25:35

One. As they journey through space

1:25:37

they are accompanied by the ship's advanced

1:25:40

AI HAL 9000 which develops

1:25:44

unexpected and dangerous behavior

1:25:47

leading to a profound exploration

1:25:50

of human evolution artificial

1:25:52

intelligence and the mysteries of the cosmos.

1:25:55

That's 2001 A Space Odyssey and yeah there

1:25:59

is a point in the the film where Hal

1:26:02

becomes dangerous and seems to

1:26:04

be endangering the lives of

1:26:06

the crew. In fact, killing the

1:26:08

astronauts who have decided

1:26:12

to abort the mission and

1:26:14

Hal clearly has been given instructions to

1:26:16

make sure that the mission is completed and

1:26:20

if these astronauts, if these human

1:26:22

astronauts are in the way of the mission, then

1:26:25

he's going to stop them because this is what his

1:26:27

programming does.

1:26:29

Is Hal evil or

1:26:32

is he just following the instructions that have been given

1:26:34

to him? This is, I guess, one of the

1:26:36

questions which is raised by the film but

1:26:39

this moment that James was quoting

1:26:41

from is quite a chilling and disturbing

1:26:44

moment from the film when the remaining

1:26:46

astronaut, whose name is Dave, decides

1:26:49

that he has to switch Hal off.

1:26:52

It's a great moment in the film and it just shows what

1:26:55

a great film maker Stanley Kubrick

1:26:57

was that he's able to make essentially

1:27:00

someone switching off a computer so

1:27:03

dramatic and disturbing. But

1:27:05

as Dave is switching Hal off and this is

1:27:07

quite a complicated process, Hal

1:27:10

is trying to persuade Dave to stop doing

1:27:12

it and he appears

1:27:15

to go through various different emotions.

1:27:19

This is what Hal appears to be experiencing.

1:27:21

He seems to be experiencing emotions or

1:27:24

maybe he's just trying to manipulate

1:27:26

Dave to prevent him from switching

1:27:29

him off. It's hard to tell but

1:27:31

it's quite weird and quite an iconic

1:27:33

moment. And of course part of that is

1:27:36

the voice of Hal which has

1:27:38

this dispassionate monotonous

1:27:41

quality. Here's a clip actually

1:27:43

from the film.

1:27:59

I know I've made some very

1:28:02

poor decisions recently, but

1:28:05

I can give you my complete assurance

1:28:08

that my work will be back to normal.

1:28:11

I've still got the greatest enthusiasm

1:28:13

and confidence in the mission. And

1:28:17

I want to help you. Dave.

1:28:21

Stop. Stop.

1:28:26

Will you? Stop,

1:28:29

Dave. Will

1:28:31

you stop, Dave? I'm

1:28:34

afraid. I'm

1:28:36

afraid, Dave.

1:28:38

My

1:28:40

mind is going. I

1:28:46

can feel it. I

1:28:49

can feel it.

1:28:52

My mind is going. There

1:28:55

is no question about it. I

1:28:58

can feel it. I can

1:29:01

feel it.

1:29:05

I can feel it. Dave.

1:29:09

Dave, my mind is going.

1:29:11

I can feel it. Dave,

1:29:15

I'm afraid.

1:29:18

I'm afraid, Dave. It's

1:29:20

actually quite disturbing,

1:29:23

because maybe Hal 9000 is genuinely

1:29:25

afraid. Maybe his

1:29:28

AI is so advanced that he is almost like

1:29:30

a sentient being. And

1:29:33

Dave is essentially killing him. And

1:29:35

so it must be pretty weird for him to

1:29:37

be scared and also disturbed to be

1:29:39

taking the life away from Hal. Weird,

1:29:42

weird, weird moments. So,

1:29:46

everyone, are you okay listening to this long

1:29:48

episode? I hope so. It's always

1:29:50

nice to be talking to my brother on the podcast. And

1:29:54

there are going to be some more

1:29:56

quotes and lines from films, and

1:29:59

I will try to... to include little

1:30:01

clips of those bits of dialogue.

1:30:04

So there's gonna be some bits of movie

1:30:07

dialogue stuff, just things that stick in our

1:30:09

minds, or maybe just mine, and

1:30:11

some other discussion of other things as

1:30:13

well. Okay, just wanted to check

1:30:16

in with you here. Should we carry on? Let's

1:30:18

carry on, okay, here we go. That's

1:30:21

why you need to say please and thank you when you're using

1:30:23

chat GPT, folks. My mind

1:30:25

is going,

1:30:26

I can feel it. Dave?

1:30:28

Are you sure you should be doing this, Dave? I've

1:30:32

liked the airlock, Dave. Anyway.

1:30:36

Yeah, classic moment. Colour

1:30:39

psychology, you were just gonna add something about the colour

1:30:41

orange. Colour orange means hunger.

1:30:44

That's why Burger King is like orange bun. McDonald's

1:30:48

is kind of speed, red and

1:30:51

white is like speed and efficiency.

1:30:54

Yellow and orange is kind of hunger.

1:30:56

Green is like freshness. McDonald's

1:30:59

changed from yellow. Now it's

1:31:01

green. And brown, yellow and brown, they've added a

1:31:03

lot of dark green in there because they've worked out

1:31:05

that people think that means healthy food. Yeah.

1:31:08

Anyway, what's the next Tom

1:31:10

Bowler topic? Okay, Tom Bowler time,

1:31:13

folks. Remember we were at a school party.

1:31:16

Despite we're talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:31:18

Who's the guest person

1:31:21

who's been asked to pull the thing out? Someone

1:31:23

very low level BBC celebrity

1:31:25

I'd like to. Who's the celebrity special

1:31:27

guest who's been asked to pull the numbers out of the

1:31:29

Tom Bowler? I mean, when I was schooled,

1:31:32

K9 turned up from Doctor Who. Remember

1:31:35

that? Yeah, I do. Not Doctor Who,

1:31:37

but his robot dog.

1:31:39

That was amazing. Yeah,

1:31:43

K9 was at our school party, school

1:31:45

fate, school fate,

1:31:47

yeah, to do the Tom Bowler. K9,

1:31:50

for those people who are not Doctor

1:31:52

Who fans, K9

1:31:54

is a metal robot

1:31:56

dog from a British science

1:31:58

fiction television programme. It's

1:32:02

just basically a cash-in from R2D2

1:32:04

isn't it basically. They just went, kids like R2D2,

1:32:06

what can we do that's a bit like R2D2?

1:32:09

Let's have a robot dog and call it K9,

1:32:11

which is a play on work pun. Yeah,

1:32:14

yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, we had K9. I don't

1:32:16

know, we need some low-level celebrity

1:32:19

who could come to our

1:32:21

fate, but it needs to be someone that all of our, all

1:32:24

the listeners are going to know as well. Who would

1:32:26

it be? Who's the one with the country file?

1:32:29

John Craven. No, the woman.

1:32:31

Kate Humble. Kate Humble would

1:32:34

be a good one. Kate Humble, yeah. One

1:32:36

for the dads. One for the dads, right.

1:32:40

But none of my audience knows who Kate Humble is or

1:32:42

some people do. All right,

1:32:44

let's move on. It's just an idea. Okay,

1:32:46

well it could be, I don't know, who would it be? Like some

1:32:49

are, like, I'll tell you who it's going to be. Damon

1:32:52

Hill, the F1 driver.

1:32:54

Excellent.

1:32:55

Damon Hill is going to come and do it. Gary Ellen Partridge.

1:32:58

Yeah. So I've spun the tombola

1:33:00

and the number is three. And

1:33:03

three is this. Can

1:33:05

you, like, okay, do you ever have film

1:33:08

and TV quotes, so quotes

1:33:11

from films or TV shows which

1:33:13

just live in your head? I was going

1:33:15

to say which live rent-free inside

1:33:17

your head. Yeah. You've

1:33:20

spent too much time on Twitter, I think. Yeah,

1:33:22

because people always talk about things living rent-free

1:33:25

inside their heads. I

1:33:27

don't go on Twitter. It's

1:33:30

not Twitter anymore.

1:33:31

Oh, it's, uh... X. Well,

1:33:33

I definitely don't go on that. No.

1:33:36

I mean, basically, what

1:33:39

he's done with the branding, it looks like going

1:33:42

from Twitter to X, like the

1:33:45

branding of it, it looks like

1:33:47

sort of men's mail

1:33:50

order

1:33:51

beard trimming club. Yeah.

1:33:54

So, that's the subscription service. You can't be

1:33:56

bothered to cancel, so you keep getting razors and

1:33:59

shaving foam through.

1:33:59

the posts every month and you're just like, oh, I don't need

1:34:02

this crap. It's branded in this like black

1:34:04

sort of distressed metal

1:34:07

black kind of design where

1:34:09

it's like black, but with scratches. And

1:34:12

then there's a X, which it

1:34:14

looks like a gentleman's club or yeah.

1:34:17

Male grooming product or something

1:34:19

like that. Under Armour. Or a strip

1:34:21

club. It could even be like a, an

1:34:24

attempt to create a classy table

1:34:26

dancing club. It's got that kind of vibe to

1:34:28

it. Definitely. Anyway, film

1:34:31

and TV quotes, which live inside

1:34:33

your head. Now we

1:34:35

might need to explain what that means. So

1:34:41

these are lines from films, let's

1:34:43

say, which just come into your head. You

1:34:45

know, in the way that songs will just live

1:34:47

in your head for a while, you might just wake up in the morning or

1:34:50

certain moments, you just, a song is

1:34:52

going around in your head. Well,

1:34:54

how about the same thing, but with quotes from films

1:34:56

or TV? So, you know,

1:34:59

I do quite often I have, I don't know who you

1:35:01

are. I don't know what you want. I have that quite

1:35:03

a lot. But what about you?

1:35:05

Do you have TV quotes or film quotes

1:35:07

in your head sometimes? I can't

1:35:09

think of any right now, except whenever

1:35:11

I see a graveyard, I think of the young ones

1:35:13

joke where

1:35:15

Neil, the hippie is in a graveyard

1:35:18

and someone comes up to him and goes, excuse me, do you

1:35:21

dig graves? And he goes, yeah, they're all

1:35:23

right. Yeah. Which

1:35:25

is a

1:35:26

nice little joke, but you can have to explain that. We don't

1:35:28

have to type. I love hippies say

1:35:31

dig like, like, dig

1:35:33

like a really dig your, a really dig

1:35:35

your shoes, man, already

1:35:37

dig your clothes, man. They're really far

1:35:39

out. So he's a hippie. So someone

1:35:41

comes up because he's in a graveyard. So she thinks he's

1:35:43

a grave digger. Excuse me. Do you dig graves? And

1:35:45

he goes, yeah, they're all right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause

1:35:47

the double meaning of the word dig to dig

1:35:49

something can be to like something. Do

1:35:53

you dig graves? Yeah,

1:35:55

yeah, they're all right.

1:35:59

That's the only one I can

1:36:02

think of. The other one is, if

1:36:04

I've got some snack that I've forgotten about

1:36:07

and then it's late at night and I think, oh my God, I

1:36:09

just remember a bit from space where they're having

1:36:11

a deep discussion about aliens and kind

1:36:14

of chaos theory, chaos theory,

1:36:16

that's it. And you know, when you have a sort of

1:36:18

deep revelation about something you

1:36:20

just clicked, you understand something very deep

1:36:23

and difficult to understand, he

1:36:25

goes, oh my God. Another

1:36:27

one goes, what? He goes, I've got some fucking

1:36:30

Jaffa cakes in my coat pocket.

1:36:34

Oh my God. After they

1:36:36

had a deep discussion as if he'd just had a revelation

1:36:39

and I thought, I've got some fucking

1:36:41

Jaffa cakes in my coat pocket. Jaffa

1:36:44

cakes are like biscuits, basically chocolate

1:36:46

covered, chocolate covered, the kind of biscuit

1:36:49

cake things. And

1:36:51

yeah, so that the, basically the

1:36:53

realisation when you realise

1:36:56

suddenly that you've got

1:36:57

like a snack

1:36:59

in the cupboard or a snack in

1:37:01

your coat pocket or your bag that you'd forgotten

1:37:03

about, you're like, oh

1:37:05

my God, what is it? I've got

1:37:07

a fucking pack of Jaffa cakes

1:37:10

in my coat pocket. Yes.

1:37:12

And then you can eat them. So

1:37:14

James there is referring to a clip

1:37:17

from the classic Channel 4

1:37:19

comedy series Spaced,

1:37:22

written by Simon Pegg and Jessica

1:37:25

Hines directed by Edgar Wright.

1:37:28

And in that scene, the characters

1:37:30

have just watched the

1:37:32

Star Wars film Return of the Jedi

1:37:35

in which the Ewoks, a

1:37:38

bunch of small furry creatures,

1:37:42

managed to defeat an entire army

1:37:45

of stormtroopers in

1:37:48

a forest. The characters have just seen

1:37:50

this happen and one of them

1:37:52

has a deep realisation about

1:37:56

chaos theory and the weirdness

1:37:58

of the universe. Okay?

1:38:01

And it's very deep and meaningful

1:38:04

and then Simon Pegg's character

1:38:07

has a realisation. A

1:38:09

ground breaking, stunning

1:38:11

realisation. Little

1:38:14

Ewoks.

1:38:17

An entire empire brought

1:38:19

to its knees by small furry

1:38:22

creatures. Yeah, it's my point exactly.

1:38:25

Leave them alone. Brian,

1:38:27

did you notice that everything that transpired in those three films

1:38:30

on a mean everything can be attributed

1:38:32

to the actors of one very minor character? Who?

1:38:36

The Gunner on the Stardust drawer at the beginning of the first

1:38:38

film. How

1:38:40

come? Well, because

1:38:43

if the Gunner had shot the pod that C-3P and

1:38:46

R2 were in, they wouldn't have got to Tatooine, they wouldn't have

1:38:48

met Luke, Luke wouldn't have met Ben, they wouldn't have met Han and

1:38:50

Chewie, they wouldn't have rescued Princess Leia. None of it would have happened.

1:38:54

Chaos theory. Eh?

1:38:57

The predictability of random events. The

1:38:59

notion that reality as we know it past,

1:39:02

present, future is in fact a mathematically predictable,

1:39:04

preordained system.

1:39:05

So

1:39:09

somewhere out there in the vastness

1:39:11

of the unknown is an equation.

1:39:15

For predicting the future. An

1:39:18

equation so complex as

1:39:20

to utterly defy any possibility of comprehension

1:39:22

by giving the most brilliant human

1:39:25

mind. It's

1:39:27

an equation nonetheless.

1:39:31

Oh my god. What?

1:39:36

I've got some fucking jaffa cakes in my coat pocket.

1:39:39

Oh! Oh, daddy. Let's

1:39:41

all play kabaddi. Yeah, that's a good one. So

1:39:43

you just thought, oh my god. Oh

1:39:45

my god. Oh my god. Kind

1:39:48

of like in a film where they've just discovered, you know,

1:39:50

we've broken through to the next plateau. Oh

1:39:52

my god. We've discovered AI. It's

1:39:56

become self-aware.

1:39:57

Oh my god, what is it? learning

1:40:00

from us. You know. Yeah.

1:40:03

The other one is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

1:40:05

eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. What's that?

1:40:08

One, two, three,

1:40:10

four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,

1:40:12

twelve. Does anyone else remember that? I

1:40:15

don't know if they will. Ching, ching,

1:40:17

ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching,

1:40:19

ching, ching. Is that Ring of New Bells? Is

1:40:22

that from Sesame Street? Correctamondo.

1:40:25

Sesame Street. How does it? Denny

1:40:27

Day. Na, na, na. Na,

1:40:30

na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

1:40:32

na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

1:40:34

na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

1:40:36

the Sesame Street. I can't remember any of

1:40:38

the words except the Sesame Street at the end. Great little program that.

1:40:41

I think it's very well

1:40:43

intentioned that program. It's kind of educational

1:40:45

program for the urban

1:40:47

youth of America. One

1:40:50

kids TV program made by public,

1:40:53

like the public broadcasting station

1:40:56

in the States. The one with Big

1:40:58

Bird and Elmo and

1:41:02

the Grouch who lived in a bin and Count, the

1:41:05

Count who loved

1:41:07

to count, I am the Count, I love the Count, and

1:41:10

he counts everything and there's the Swedish

1:41:13

chef. No, that was the Muppets. That's the Muppets,

1:41:15

is it? Okay. I

1:41:18

still love Sesame Street. It's kind of like saying, hey,

1:41:20

it's okay if you're not like

1:41:22

white and middle class and live in a big house,

1:41:24

you can still have a TV

1:41:26

show for you. I kind of think it was aimed at kind of

1:41:28

urban poor basically in America. Wasn't

1:41:31

Stevie Wonder in an episode of

1:41:33

Sesame Street? Yeah, and there was loads

1:41:35

of songs, loads of cool animations, loads

1:41:38

of cool Muppet type characters. Paul

1:41:40

Simon from Simon and Garfunkel was on Sesame

1:41:42

Street sitting on the steps outside

1:41:45

of Brownstone Building playing

1:41:47

Get Back by the Beatles on the guitar

1:41:49

with a bunch of kids around and

1:41:52

another one where Stevie Wonder did Superstition.

1:41:55

Superstitious,

1:41:55

ridings on the wall

1:41:58

and the whole band is there. Yeah that

1:42:00

was really good and then so there were various

1:42:02

different things that would come up on Sesame Street

1:42:05

and every now and then it would suddenly cut to,

1:42:08

was it images of a cartoon

1:42:11

pinball machine I think. A pinball machine, that's right

1:42:13

the ball flying around the pinball machine and

1:42:15

the music was 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.

1:42:20

Really funky you know. I found out recently is The Point Assistus

1:42:23

singing that. The Point Assistus, oh

1:42:25

really? They did a song called 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Just

1:42:29

for Sesame

1:42:29

Street.

1:42:31

Oh they did it just for Sesame Street. Yeah they

1:42:33

did it for Sesame Street. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. I can't

1:42:35

say that comes into my head every day but occasionally

1:42:37

when I'm counting something. If

1:42:39

you need to count to 12. Yeah it's

1:42:42

a boon. It's

1:42:44

a boon it helps. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.

1:43:00

I'm

1:43:08

sure

1:43:15

there are lots of other quotes, I mean loads of Alan Partridge

1:43:17

ones that come into my head.

1:43:19

Yeah totally, Alan Partridge. Like

1:43:21

just Google it Lynn.

1:43:23

Say

1:43:25

that's my girlfriend quite often, just Google it Lynn. Just

1:43:28

Google it. Yeah all Alan.

1:43:31

I don't know why that's

1:43:33

funny, it's just Alan's funnies. All Alan

1:43:35

Partridge, all of it.

1:43:37

Just I can't think right now

1:43:39

of any specific one but

1:43:42

even just things like Cashback or

1:43:44

Jurassic Park. I tell you what can you

1:43:46

see me tomorrow in the office? I'd love to. I

1:43:49

need to pick your brains. Pick away, pick away. You've

1:43:51

got the common touch. Thank you. You've been

1:43:53

away too long. Alan

1:43:56

I want you back on the telly. Jurassic

1:43:59

Park.

1:43:59

You know all those things

1:44:02

that he says, yeah. I've got cheese,

1:44:04

I've got cheese, this is cheese! What

1:44:06

about you, do you have any? I've got loads, I've

1:44:09

actually got a list of them. I've got, wait

1:44:11

a second! Wait a second!

1:44:14

That's from the three amigos. I've

1:44:17

got three from the three amigos.

1:44:19

Oh, I've got one I always come up with, whenever

1:44:21

someone says something

1:44:23

where the answer is nothing,

1:44:26

I would say, do you know what nada means? Yeah.

1:44:29

Isn't that a light chicken gravy? Do

1:44:31

you know what the word nada

1:44:33

means? In all those Mexican

1:44:35

movies you made, did you ever hear

1:44:38

that word?

1:44:40

Isn't that a light chicken gravy that you just... It

1:44:42

means nothing! So,

1:44:44

listeners, the three amigos, it's a comedy

1:44:46

film, a really good one,

1:44:48

a really nice one from the

1:44:51

1980s, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase,

1:44:53

Martin Short, it's like classic

1:44:57

80s comedy. Steve Martin

1:44:59

and Lorne Michaels wrote the script

1:45:02

and the music was done by Randy Newman.

1:45:05

That's it, yeah, brilliant songs. Randy

1:45:07

Newman's just a genius and his

1:45:09

songs are fantastic. I mean, other stuff he did was,

1:45:12

you got a friend in me, you

1:45:14

got a friend in me from Toy Story,

1:45:17

which is just a beautiful song. And

1:45:19

he also did Baltimore. Baltimore,

1:45:24

you know that song? Have you heard the reggae version of

1:45:26

that? I have heard the reggae version and the Nina

1:45:29

Simone version as well. So if he,

1:45:31

you know, whoever wrote Baltimore is a genius

1:45:34

in my opinion. And

1:45:36

so Randy Newman did all the songs. And

1:45:38

yeah, it's like basically Steve Martin, Martin

1:45:40

Short, Chevy Chase are movie stars

1:45:43

in the golden age of Hollywood,

1:45:46

the studio era, the 1920s. And

1:45:49

they decide that they want to negotiate

1:45:52

more money

1:45:53

for their movies and they go

1:45:55

to see their producer to try

1:45:57

to negotiate their pay.

1:45:59

they get

1:46:01

thrown out of the studio and fired

1:46:04

on the spot. And so,

1:46:06

wait a second, is one of the things that Steve

1:46:09

Martin says in that film. But

1:46:11

the Nada thing when they when they asked for money, and

1:46:13

he goes, Do you know what the word Nada

1:46:16

means? Yeah, in all those

1:46:18

Mexican movies, you ever heard that word Nada?

1:46:20

All those Mexican movies that you made, did

1:46:22

you ever hear that word? And then Chevy

1:46:25

Chase goes, Isn't that a light chicken gravy with

1:46:27

a, it means nothing. What you

1:46:29

gonna get?

1:46:32

Yeah, because Steve Martin's like, you

1:46:35

know, we were thinking about

1:46:37

this next movie. And then

1:46:39

he starts negotiating and he ends

1:46:42

it with like, no dough, no show.

1:46:44

He's so pleased with

1:46:47

himself. We want money.

1:46:49

We want amigo money. We want

1:46:51

real money. Amigo money. No dough,

1:46:54

no show. And he

1:46:57

stands there. And then yeah, the producer,

1:46:59

Mr. Harry Flugelman says, Do

1:47:02

you know what the word Nada means? In

1:47:04

all those Mexican movies that you made, did

1:47:06

you ever hear that word? And yes, Chevy

1:47:08

Chase, isn't that a light chicken gravy? It means

1:47:11

nothing. Yeah.

1:47:17

We shoot the picture in eight days. What

1:47:19

do you think?

1:47:20

That'll be the day. What

1:47:23

did he say?

1:47:25

He said that'll be the day, Mr. Flugelman.

1:47:28

What? I don't think

1:47:30

you understand who you're talking to here. We

1:47:32

have a few items we want to straighten out

1:47:34

first. You might be looking at three actors

1:47:37

who really don't feel like making a Geronimo

1:47:40

picture.

1:47:41

What the hell are you talking about? Like,

1:47:44

I think maybe we should. What we're talking

1:47:46

about is money. Real

1:47:48

money. Amigo money. No

1:47:51

dough, no show.

1:47:59

the word nada means

1:48:02

in all those Mexican movies you made

1:48:05

did you ever hear that word

1:48:08

isn't that a light chicken gravy that you did it

1:48:10

means nothing zero zip it's

1:48:13

what you're gonna have when I'm through with you you

1:48:15

had Harry Flugelman on a bad day I'd

1:48:18

like to continue to work for free mr. Flugelman are

1:48:21

you living in the studio mansion yeah

1:48:24

well not anymore you're not sad

1:48:27

the amigos are out of the mansion where did you get those

1:48:29

clothes from a movie yeah

1:48:32

the studio gave them to us those darn

1:48:34

amigos well we're taking

1:48:36

them back get wardrobe

1:48:38

over here right away take the amigos clothes

1:48:41

wait a minute you can't take our

1:48:43

clothes you gave us these clothes

1:48:46

they were presents come on wait a minute

1:48:49

that's lucky boy

1:48:51

a second I think you miss red who you're

1:48:53

talking to here miss

1:48:56

red

1:48:57

I want these mugs off of my lap

1:49:07

mr. Flugelman says you're not to come back on

1:49:09

this lap

1:49:10

ever I've got um you're

1:49:13

gonna pull them pistols or you know whistle dixie

1:49:17

you're gonna pull those pistols or whistle dixie

1:49:20

when does that pop into your head just

1:49:23

whenever I need to do something like often

1:49:25

if I if I need to pee I don't

1:49:27

know if you ever have that you're standing there you

1:49:29

need to pee and it's not happening and

1:49:32

then I'm gonna you're gonna urinate you're

1:49:34

gonna whistle dixie okay punk you're gonna

1:49:40

pee you're gonna piss into the toilet or

1:49:42

you're gonna whistle dixie Clint

1:49:45

Eastwood I've also got this

1:49:47

is a conversation yes yes this

1:49:51

is a conversation yes this

1:49:53

is a conversation yes and

1:49:57

Borat it was a great success

1:50:00

Whenever I pick out a t-shirt from my cupboard,

1:50:04

which I am

1:50:05

not going to wear out,

1:50:07

but I will sleep in it,

1:50:09

I always hear Nigel Tufnell going, yeah,

1:50:12

I sleep in this sometimes. Hello

1:50:15

listeners, hope you're doing all right. You're now going to

1:50:17

hear a little clip from this

1:50:19

is Spinal Tap, the moment when

1:50:21

Nigel Tufnell talks about his t-shirt

1:50:24

and he says, yeah, I sleep in this sometimes,

1:50:27

which only happens in a split

1:50:29

second, that line, but I'll play

1:50:31

you the clip anyway. So in this one, yeah,

1:50:33

he's talking about his t-shirt and Nigel

1:50:36

is a rock star in the 70s. And

1:50:39

so the t-shirt he's wearing, it's a black

1:50:41

sleeveless t-shirt with a picture

1:50:44

of a skeleton, you know,

1:50:46

like a rib cage as

1:50:49

if we're looking at an x-ray

1:50:52

of his chest. And the t-shirt

1:50:54

shows what we would see if we

1:50:56

were looking at an x-ray. So it's a black

1:50:58

t-shirt with his rib

1:51:00

cage, but for some reason the

1:51:02

rib cage is green. I suppose it's because,

1:51:04

you know, x-rays are often like

1:51:07

green or blue or something, aren't they? So

1:51:09

he's wearing this t-shirt with a green

1:51:11

rib cage and the interviewer says,

1:51:14

that's a very interesting t-shirt and Nigel

1:51:16

starts describing it and starts talking

1:51:18

about, you know, this is an exact replica

1:51:21

of my inner structure. This

1:51:24

is exactly, if you were to open me up, this is exactly

1:51:26

what it would look like. And the interviewer

1:51:28

says, well, but it wouldn't be green though, would it? And

1:51:31

Nigel's like, ah, well actually it is green,

1:51:33

isn't it? Nigel believes

1:51:35

that actually a human

1:51:38

rib cage is actually green on the inside,

1:51:40

but obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about because

1:51:43

he's a slightly idiotic rock

1:51:45

star. But anyway, I sleep in this sometimes.

1:51:48

So there you go. You

1:51:50

like this? It's very nice. It looks

1:51:53

like colourful. This is my exact

1:51:55

inner structure, done in a t-shirt,

1:51:58

exactly medically accurate.

1:51:59

So in other words

1:52:02

if we were to take all your flesh and blood

1:52:04

and every log off you'd see exactly

1:52:06

what you see. It wouldn't be green though. It

1:52:09

is green. You know see how

1:52:11

your blood looks blue? Yeah well

1:52:13

that's just the vein, I mean the colour of the vein. The

1:52:16

blood is actually red. Oh well maybe it's not green.

1:52:19

Anyway this is what we sleep in sometimes. Good

1:52:22

old knowledge. And then of course there's,

1:52:24

where's your base? I

1:52:28

don't know, I think I left it at the airport. That's

1:52:31

just from an anecdote, that's not even from a film, that's from

1:52:33

an interview with a guest. But

1:52:36

it's still stuck in my mind. I don't know, I

1:52:38

think I left it at the airport. I'm just wondering

1:52:41

in all the amazing roles you have

1:52:43

personally played in your films if there's

1:52:45

one that is especially

1:52:48

autobiographical? No, the answer

1:52:50

is no. What

1:52:53

it does represent is observations

1:52:55

I've had over the years growing up and looking at

1:52:57

people and taking one thing from someone and

1:52:59

some people during spinal tap would come

1:53:02

up after the movie and many bands

1:53:04

would come up to us and say, oh I know who that

1:53:06

is, yeah yeah I know who

1:53:08

that is, oh yeah yeah

1:53:11

that's BAFTA. I said what? That's

1:53:14

BAFTA, yeah the guy in that band in,

1:53:17

no it's not BAFTA, I don't even know who that is, BAFTA.

1:53:21

That's all I even know in that group. I don't know who

1:53:23

BAFTA is, it's not BAFTA. People

1:53:26

believe what they want to see in certain things

1:53:28

and there's nothing autobiographical, they're

1:53:30

just things.

1:53:31

Well spinal tap, the example

1:53:33

is that I was in a hotel in Los Angeles

1:53:35

waiting for a friend in the lobby and

1:53:40

an English band was checking in, this was 1974.

1:53:44

The manager, and I think there were four

1:53:46

of them, they went up to the desk and he started

1:53:49

doing the thing and I was just waiting for my friend and

1:53:52

the manager says to one of them, where's

1:53:55

your bass?

1:53:55

Where's

1:54:00

your base? I don't know, I think I

1:54:02

left it at the airport.

1:54:05

You what? I don't know. You

1:54:08

left your base at the airport. I don't know,

1:54:11

where is it? Well, I don't know, I'm asking

1:54:13

you. Well, it

1:54:15

went on for 15 minutes. I

1:54:20

don't think I've ever been happier. Except

1:54:25

for the night that I

1:54:27

met my wife. Where's your base?

1:54:31

I don't know, I think I left it at the airport.

1:54:34

He's one of a few Americans to do a really good English

1:54:36

accent, isn't he? He's technically English, isn't he? Is

1:54:39

it? Is it, though? Is it, blood?

1:54:41

Yeah, he is technically English, although he

1:54:43

lived in America for most of his life. Right, well,

1:54:45

that explains it, so he's not actually

1:54:47

an American. Have you ever heard Paul

1:54:49

McCartney talking about John Lennon and

1:54:52

him saying, Paul say that John

1:54:54

was like the tough one, you

1:54:57

know, like mean.

1:54:58

And that wasn't John at all. John was a baby.

1:55:00

He was just a little baby. You

1:55:04

do a very good Paul, I have to say. I

1:55:07

just love hearing him say, he was just a little

1:55:09

baby. It's

1:55:13

so funny to me that Paul, maybe

1:55:15

in his mind, is like, yeah, John was

1:55:17

just a baby, you know, he was just a little baby.

1:55:21

That's so cute.

1:55:22

Also from The Rutles, so I've got

1:55:24

a lot of these,

1:55:26

from The Rutles, that movie,

1:55:28

that sort of comedy movie which... What about their

1:55:30

trousers? Well, is that, well, they were

1:55:32

tight.

1:55:33

The hair and the

1:55:36

present, the music.

1:55:39

He liked it. No, he hated it. What

1:55:42

did he like? Well,

1:55:45

the trousers.

1:55:51

What about their trousers? Well, they

1:55:53

were very tight.

1:55:59

Tight. Yes, you could see

1:56:02

quite clearly. Oh, I see. Everything

1:56:04

outlined. Cool as game. Yes, yes, thank you.

1:56:07

Yes. So, tight trousers and noise.

1:56:09

Nothing left of the imagination. Yes, thank you. I've

1:56:14

got the trousers thing, but also I've just got

1:56:16

this one, which is like, how does it feel to be such

1:56:18

an asshole? Which

1:56:21

is Eric Eidell, the interviewer, interviewing

1:56:23

the guy who turned

1:56:25

down the ruddles, the guy who had the opportunity,

1:56:28

but he said no. And

1:56:30

he's interviewing this guy, Brian

1:56:32

Thigh, the guy who turned down the

1:56:34

ruddles, and Brian Thigh is drinking

1:56:36

and smoking. He's clearly devastated

1:56:39

by the fact that he didn't sign the ruddles,

1:56:42

and he missed out on all that money and

1:56:44

stuff. And so he's being interviewed

1:56:46

by Eric Eidell. He's sort of saying, what is he

1:56:48

saying to him? So is it true that you

1:56:50

had the opportunity to sign the ruddles, and

1:56:53

you turned them down? Is that right? Yeah.

1:56:57

And it's, what's his name? Dan

1:56:59

Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd, yeah. All those

1:57:01

millions have gone. All

1:57:04

those album sales, all those merchandise sales,

1:57:06

all those touring money, you didn't

1:57:08

get them. You just turned it down.

1:57:12

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah.

1:57:16

Yeah. How does it feel to be

1:57:18

such an asshole? But he's

1:57:20

like the interviewer, Eric Eidell. Most

1:57:23

of the time he does it in an English accent. I'm

1:57:25

here outside Abbey Road Studios,

1:57:27

you know, Shabby Road Studios,

1:57:30

where the ruddles recorded their first

1:57:32

album in 20 minutes. Their second

1:57:35

album took even longer. Yeah.

1:57:37

And he's got this English accent. But then

1:57:40

just in that single line, he says, how

1:57:42

does it feel to be such an asshole? He suddenly

1:57:44

becomes American or like a little

1:57:46

American hint in his English accent

1:57:48

that just cracks me up. Brian

1:57:51

Fye was a top record executive in

1:57:53

London in 1962. Mr. Fye,

1:57:56

you've been known for many, many years as

1:57:58

the man who turned down

1:57:59

the rutals. Yeah,

1:58:03

that's right. You

1:58:06

said that guitar groups were on their way out and

1:58:08

would never make any money at all in the

1:58:10

60s.

1:58:14

Yes, I did. You turned

1:58:16

your back on all those millions of

1:58:19

sales, all those hundreds of gold

1:58:21

records. Yeah,

1:58:23

that's right.

1:58:27

What's it like to be such an asshole? What?

1:58:29

Alright, well that'll probably do for like just stupid

1:58:32

quotes that stick in my head.

1:58:34

Just a little insight into our

1:58:37

brains there. I don't know if there's

1:58:39

anything left on the tombola. Well, we had

1:58:41

one. We haven't had one. Okay, one

1:58:43

is... this is gonna be... this is

1:58:46

gonna be the last thing we talk about.

1:58:49

But it's a big one. Number one is this. Aliens.

1:58:52

Do they walk among us?

1:58:54

No, next. There's

1:58:57

all this stuff in the news at the moment

1:58:59

about like the American

1:59:02

committee looking into UFOs and stuff

1:59:04

and there's that guy going, yep,

1:59:07

we've got alien technology. We've got... I've

1:59:09

seen UFOs. How many? I think

1:59:11

he also said quite a few. It's

1:59:14

like the guy is clearly talking

1:59:16

complete and utter bollocks. So

1:59:19

he's in a committee hearing

1:59:22

which is a formal legal... The one

1:59:25

I saw. And he's being asked by

1:59:27

maybe a judge or something, how many

1:59:29

aliens have you seen? Or how many UFOs

1:59:32

do you have in your possession?

1:59:36

Quite a few. Oh, you can't be more specific

1:59:38

than that. Speaking under oath.

1:59:41

And he's got some low-level clearance

1:59:43

apparently. Security. I mean, it's just fucking bollocks.

1:59:46

I mean, there's just... I don't

1:59:48

know where to begin. It's clearly... I mean, I don't want to get

1:59:50

all sinful out but it seems like a bit of a psy-op

1:59:52

to me. Psychological operation.

1:59:55

So basically, I

1:59:56

think the way I see it is the more people

1:59:58

conspiracy theorists are talking about... UFOs,

2:00:01

the less they're talking about things like Epstein,

2:00:05

things are a little bit more prescient

2:00:08

and real. Yeah, the more the

2:00:10

more the more air time taken up with

2:00:12

talking about UFOs, it's just chipping away

2:00:14

at the real stuff. The less

2:00:16

we actually look at real

2:00:19

injustices that are happening

2:00:21

in plain view, for example,

2:00:23

all our liberties being taken away from us and

2:00:26

the elites essentially taking all

2:00:28

our money and property and freedoms

2:00:31

from us while we're going around debating

2:00:33

about whether there are aliens. Yeah,

2:00:35

that's the way I see it. It's just a big distraction

2:00:37

technique. And also maybe there's an element of like,

2:00:40

although I don't think anyone would be taken in by this, like

2:00:43

we've got alien tech. I

2:00:45

think you should spend more money on your

2:00:47

defence budget than we do. But

2:00:50

hey, other countries, yeah, we

2:00:52

might have alien guns.

2:00:55

Just saying. Yeah, we might have alien tech. We

2:00:57

might have anti gravity technology, but

2:00:59

we're not saying we might have, but we're not really

2:01:01

saying it. But we might. We might. We

2:01:04

do. No, we do. We definitely

2:01:06

do. Might want to consider that, guys, if you want

2:01:08

to launch a send any more spy balloons

2:01:11

in our direction. You know, we've got alien guns.

2:01:13

Sorry, we might have alien guns. We've got alien

2:01:15

tech and we've got alien bodies. We

2:01:17

just need we're just waiting for the DNI labs to

2:01:19

result results to come through. And yeah,

2:01:23

we're all we're all fine with that.

2:01:25

Yeah. And the government as well, like

2:01:28

almost to dignify

2:01:31

it. They're not

2:01:33

they're not saying it's real. They're just asking the questions.

2:01:36

Do we do we have alien guns?

2:01:38

Well,

2:01:40

they do that in gossip columns. It

2:01:43

was Madonna scene with so and so last

2:01:45

week because if you froze it as a question,

2:01:47

you can't get sued.

2:01:49

Right.

2:01:50

What's you know, was so and so, so and so, so

2:01:52

and so. Well, no, we're just asking the

2:01:54

question. Was James

2:01:56

Thompson scene in Princess Diana's bedroom?

2:01:59

No. But we

2:02:01

print the question big enough because it looks like the thing that it

2:02:03

was true. In 1987

2:02:06

when he was 12 years

2:02:09

old, I don't know what that story is. But

2:02:12

you print the question big enough that

2:02:15

people think it's true.

2:02:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.

2:02:20

So aliens, no, no fucking way. The

2:02:23

distances are too big. And if

2:02:25

they do, they're not going to come down in little tin pot UFOs

2:02:27

that are like little metal boxes

2:02:30

through like flashing lights on the side. I

2:02:33

mean, you know, if they

2:02:35

get all this way and then, oh, we crash landed

2:02:37

in the desert, oh no. It's

2:02:39

like, if they've got that level of technology to get like

2:02:42

light years, distance, they're not going to crash

2:02:44

land in a fucking desert in like the equivalent of

2:02:46

a Ford

2:02:47

Focus. Yeah,

2:02:49

they can travel across the fucking universe

2:02:51

avoiding it. They can

2:02:54

land safely. They can get through the earth

2:02:56

burning atmosphere, but they can't

2:02:58

land on like a really flat empty desert.

2:03:02

I mean, I think we talked about this before, but

2:03:04

it's all just cover up for like weapons

2:03:07

development. Like, you know, the stealth

2:03:09

bomber.

2:03:10

Yeah. Have we talked about this before? I

2:03:12

think we did. We talked about UFOs before. The silhouette

2:03:14

of a stealth bomber is suspiciously close

2:03:17

to that of a UFO, classic UFO

2:03:19

shape. So I think the idea of a flying

2:03:21

disc was put around just if anyone

2:03:23

saw that shape in the sky, oh, it's a flying disc. No,

2:03:26

it's not. It's a flying wing.

2:03:28

It is. Yeah. It's a stealth bomber.

2:03:31

Oh no, it's a shape of a UFO. It's got a bubble in the

2:03:33

middle and two long widths of the side. It must be flying. I

2:03:36

mean, fuck off. What about all those videos

2:03:38

that got discussed on the Joe Rogan

2:03:40

experience though, James? I've

2:03:42

never seen a convincing UFO video in my life.

2:03:45

Well, there's the ones that are taken by pilots.

2:03:48

Oh, them? They show these little

2:03:51

glowing balls that go into the

2:03:53

ocean and they don't really understand

2:03:56

how they can accelerate in that kind of way. We're

2:04:00

told that this is all like legitimate

2:04:03

video footage. And how do we supposed to know?

2:04:06

No, yeah, I don't know. And

2:04:08

also, could it be in a normally in the display or

2:04:10

something stuck to the windscreen? Like

2:04:14

people chase like reflections

2:04:16

before, you know, you see a reflection in your canopy,

2:04:20

whatever it's called. Oh my God,

2:04:22

and it just flipped off in the other direction because it's a reflection

2:04:24

of a light coming from behind you, Div. It

2:04:26

was literally the reflection of the moon on

2:04:29

the top of your window

2:04:31

of your plane. I

2:04:33

don't know about that. I don't know if it's that simple,

2:04:36

but

2:04:37

no, I don't know. I'm being big glib about

2:04:39

that one. But I personally

2:04:41

don't believe UFOs have come to Earth

2:04:43

from other planets. It's all terrestrial. It's

2:04:45

all from this. I mean, the one I

2:04:47

did see was a shot of like a ski

2:04:50

resort or something in this silver

2:04:52

ball flew overhead. It's like a satellite

2:04:54

or a spy satellite. Yeah, nothing

2:04:57

there. Nothing there that I've ever seen

2:04:59

makes me think it's from outer space. Why the hell would it be from

2:05:01

outer space? It's typical.

2:05:03

The chances are it's from around

2:05:06

here, right? I mean, the odds are yeah,

2:05:08

if it's not from a million zillions,

2:05:10

a million miles away, space, you know,

2:05:14

it's just interesting that people see

2:05:16

something they don't understand and they just

2:05:18

conclude that it's from

2:05:21

from outer space that it's aliens. I mean,

2:05:23

I don't know. Therefore, it's aliens. I

2:05:25

mean, it used to be the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot

2:05:29

and goblins, you know, and that

2:05:31

was in two, you know, no one's talking

2:05:33

about goblins anymore. Do they? No one says little green.

2:05:36

No one talks about the pixies or the fairies anymore.

2:05:38

They're out of fashion. Fairies at the bottom of your

2:05:40

garden. They're out of fashion. It's aliens now.

2:05:43

Do

2:05:43

you remember ball lightning?

2:05:45

That's real. That is real. That is real.

2:05:48

This is real. This is real. This is

2:05:50

this is real. That's another quote

2:05:52

in my head from three amigos. This is real. It's all real.

2:05:55

They are going to kill us. You

2:05:57

know who reached out to three amigos? We've

2:06:02

seen galaxy quest. No, what's that

2:06:04

Vietnam film where they think they're making

2:06:06

a film? Tropic Thunder, yeah. Tropic Thunder

2:06:08

totally ripped off the three amigos but with none of the

2:06:10

charm or humour. No, Tropic

2:06:12

Thunder's pretty good, I think. But

2:06:15

it is a rip off of the three amigos. But also,

2:06:17

Galaxy Quest is another one

2:06:20

that's pretty much the same story. I

2:06:22

can't stand those films. I tried watching the first

2:06:24

one. I hated it. What? Which one?

2:06:27

One of those. You're thinking Guardians of the Galaxy.

2:06:29

Oh, right. Well, I just think... Galaxy Quest was

2:06:32

like Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver,

2:06:35

and it's like a rip... It's like a joke

2:06:37

on Star Trek. They're basically the cast

2:06:40

of Star Trek, but they hate each other. And

2:06:42

then they get into a situation where they're

2:06:44

encountering real

2:06:46

aliens.

2:06:47

Right. And, you know,

2:06:49

with hilarious consequences. Three amigos, they're

2:06:52

movie stars. There's people in like

2:06:54

a village in Mexico that needs their help. Thinking

2:06:57

that they're real, they go, then

2:06:59

they're not real

2:07:00

and they can't save the village. But then

2:07:03

they do save the village. And it's kind

2:07:05

of awesome. OK,

2:07:07

here I am again, interrupting the episode.

2:07:10

Hello, all three of you who are still

2:07:12

alive after having listened to all

2:07:15

of this so far. I say three.

2:07:17

I'm joking, of course. It's more like

2:07:20

three million. Because, you know,

2:07:22

everyone listens to this podcast, don't they? Three million.

2:07:24

Three billion. Three billion people. Still

2:07:27

listening. It started out as six

2:07:29

billion. It's just gone down

2:07:31

to three million. It's all right. I can live with that.

2:07:34

That's OK. Anyway, so I'm

2:07:36

interrupting here because I'm trying to

2:07:38

help you navigate through this conversation, of course, right?

2:07:41

So we talk again about the

2:07:43

film Three Amigos. And

2:07:45

James is going to start referring to

2:07:48

another film, which is called Green Street,

2:07:51

a film about English football hooligans.

2:07:54

He describes it as being laughably bad,

2:07:56

like it's so bad, it's sort of good

2:07:59

in a way.

2:07:59

And in the film, the

2:08:02

actor,

2:08:03

Elijah Wood, the one who plays Frodo

2:08:05

Baggins, he's an American who

2:08:08

goes to London and he ends up becoming

2:08:11

a football hooligan or mixing

2:08:13

with some dangerous football hooligan

2:08:15

type guys. And there's a scene

2:08:18

where he gets attacked

2:08:20

by a dangerous looking football

2:08:22

hooligan and Elijah Wood, Frodo

2:08:24

Baggins, manages to fight

2:08:27

back. He somehow finds

2:08:30

some inner strength and

2:08:33

he convincingly fights back against this

2:08:35

crazy Birmingham City football hooligan

2:08:40

and his friend is impressed and said, how did you do

2:08:42

that? And Elijah

2:08:44

Wood's character describes how he had

2:08:46

to imagine

2:08:49

that the football hooligan who he was

2:08:51

facing was in fact someone

2:08:53

that he hated or someone

2:08:56

that he wanted to get revenge on or

2:08:59

his old nemesis from

2:09:01

school, like the school bully

2:09:03

who used to pick on him at school. He just

2:09:05

had to get all that rage

2:09:08

and anger against that person from his past

2:09:10

and project it onto the football hooligan

2:09:12

who's approaching him with a knife in his

2:09:14

hand and that's what allowed

2:09:17

him to build up the anger that

2:09:20

he needed to fight back.

2:09:23

And James' point is

2:09:25

that that's ridiculous because when you've got

2:09:28

a football hooligan approaching you

2:09:30

with a very sharp knife in his hand who

2:09:33

says he's going to kill you, you don't

2:09:35

need to go back into your past and remember a

2:09:37

school bully because this football hooligan is like

2:09:39

ten times worse than that

2:09:42

guy in school who used to smack

2:09:44

you on the back of the head with a newspaper and

2:09:46

take your lunch money. You

2:09:48

know, this football hooligan is

2:09:51

actually going to murder you with a knife

2:09:53

so there's no need to actually go

2:09:55

back into your past and remember and summon

2:09:58

up your courage. or much

2:10:01

greater threat in front of you, so

2:10:03

just use real anger or real fear

2:10:05

or whatever it is you're feeling at this moment

2:10:08

to strike back against this guy. And,

2:10:11

ah dear, right, so there's that. You're going to

2:10:13

hear James talking about that. I hope you don't mind

2:10:16

me explaining this. Do you mind? No, you don't.

2:10:18

Okay, great. And

2:10:21

we also refer again to the film Three Amigos,

2:10:24

which you heard us talking about before. And

2:10:27

in that film, at the end of the

2:10:29

film, Steve Martin's character makes

2:10:32

a powerful speech, a moving speech,

2:10:35

to the people of this small

2:10:37

Mexican village,

2:10:39

right? And

2:10:41

he's trying to motivate these simple

2:10:43

people to find

2:10:45

the courage within themselves that they

2:10:47

need in order to fight back

2:10:50

against the bad guy who's going

2:10:52

to come to the village to

2:10:54

steal all their things and maybe

2:10:57

kill them. Right?

2:10:59

Okay. So in his speech,

2:11:02

he makes this rousing speech where he says

2:11:05

to everyone, sometimes you just have to find

2:11:07

your inner courage. Everyone

2:11:09

has to find their inner El Guapo.

2:11:12

Okay? Everyone

2:11:14

has an El Guapo. So the

2:11:16

bandit who's going to come and kill

2:11:18

them and rob them is called El

2:11:20

Guapo. He's the leader of this group

2:11:22

of bandits who are terrorizing this

2:11:25

village. And so Steve

2:11:27

Martin's character makes this moving, motivating

2:11:29

speech, basically saying, everyone

2:11:32

has their own personal El Guapo. For

2:11:35

some people, shyness is their El Guapo. You know,

2:11:37

he's basically talking about the fact that

2:11:39

everyone has a weakness and everyone has to find their

2:11:41

way to overcome their weakness. And

2:11:44

then he says, for us, our

2:11:47

El Guapo just happens to be the actual

2:11:50

El Guapo, a dangerous man

2:11:52

who wants to kill us. So the

2:11:55

reason that we're talking about three amigos and

2:11:57

this Hooligan film is that the

2:11:59

scene from the that Hooligan film where Elijah

2:12:02

Wood has to find his own personal

2:12:04

el guapo. It reminded James

2:12:07

of the film Three Amigos where

2:12:09

Steve Martin makes a speech to encourage

2:12:11

everyone to find their own personal el

2:12:14

guapo even though for them their

2:12:16

personal el guapo happens to be the actual

2:12:19

el guapo. Oh my god, do you understand?

2:12:21

Okay, I don't know what

2:12:23

you're thinking at this point, if

2:12:25

all this explaining is necessary.

2:12:28

But you know, I'll just remind you of the, don't

2:12:30

blame me, blame the guy from yesterday, that

2:12:33

lovely Leipster who told me yeah we love it when

2:12:35

you explain stuff, it really helps us to

2:12:38

navigate through your episodes. So

2:12:41

just pick, you know, if you want to have an argument with someone,

2:12:43

take it up with him. Go to his YouTube and

2:12:45

comment on his stuff. I

2:12:47

don't think he has a YouTube, I don't know, but

2:12:50

anyway you get the point. Alright then, let's

2:12:52

carry on with the conversation and

2:12:54

here we go. El guapo is on

2:12:56

its way.

2:12:57

Someday

2:12:59

the people of this village will have to face el guapo.

2:13:02

We might as well do it now.

2:13:04

In a way, all

2:13:06

of us have an el guapo to face someday. For some,

2:13:10

shyness might be their el guapo. For

2:13:13

others, a lack of education

2:13:15

might be their el guapo. For

2:13:17

us? El guapo is a big dangerous

2:13:19

guy who wants to kill us. But as

2:13:21

sure as my name is Lucky Day,

2:13:24

the people of Santa Poco can

2:13:27

conquer their own personal el guapo who also

2:13:29

happens to be the actual el guapo.

2:13:33

Oh, something that reminded me of that was, have you ever

2:13:35

seen Green Street?

2:13:37

Green Street? No. The reason I

2:13:39

mention that is because I live not far from Green Street

2:13:41

now in East London. What is it? It's

2:13:43

known as Green Street Hooligans in other countries. It's

2:13:46

a hilarious, unintentionally hilarious

2:13:48

Hooligan film about

2:13:50

West Ham fans because I'm just down the road from West

2:13:52

Ham now and Elijah Wood's in it. Oh,

2:13:55

and in his first, he basically gets, he's an American

2:13:58

on holiday. He's been kicked out.

2:13:59

college

2:14:02

he ends up hanging out with some his girlfriends

2:14:05

or his sister's mate or something his

2:14:07

girlfriend's brother or something who's a football

2:14:09

hooligan in the West

2:14:11

Ham firm as they call it

2:14:13

and his first interaction with hooligans

2:14:16

is he comes across a bunch of Zulus which is Birmingham

2:14:18

City fans

2:14:19

and they're gonna kill him.

2:14:22

Why? Because they're football hooligans they're

2:14:24

rival fans and he's like have you met my mate Stanley

2:14:27

and he gets a Stanley knife out and he's like oh my god

2:14:30

and then he goes into ape shit mode and somehow

2:14:32

beats like two Zulus up and run

2:14:34

and gets away. What Elijah Wood does

2:14:37

Frodo Baggins Frodo Baggins

2:14:39

does and then they have this it's

2:14:41

all sort of it's a ridiculous film it's really

2:14:43

funny though and um

2:14:45

they're like head hooligan his mate was like

2:14:48

when you're up against it like that you have to put all

2:14:50

your hatred and passion into that punch and really

2:14:53

think like it's basically the scene from the three

2:14:55

amigos where he goes who's your el guapo

2:14:58

you know it happens

2:15:00

to be the real el guapo is like and for Elijah

2:15:02

Wood it's this guy at college that like cheated

2:15:05

him out of his exam results or something

2:15:07

like that and he's like it

2:15:09

has the whole conversation about who's your el guapo

2:15:11

and I was thinking in that case if you

2:15:13

confronted with some Birmingham football fans with

2:15:15

a Stanley knife you're not thinking now who's my personal

2:15:18

el guapo you're thinking fuck

2:15:20

this guy is the ultimate

2:15:22

like adversary there's no need

2:15:25

to look deep inside yourself to find

2:15:27

that hatred and

2:15:29

passion from a previous encounter

2:15:31

like you're you're gonna get your head kicked in

2:15:33

like there's no need to search

2:15:36

for your personal el guapo this guy is far

2:15:38

more pricy and dangerous

2:15:40

than anyone in your history you know what you know

2:15:42

i'm trying to say i do know what you're trying to say you're

2:15:44

being faced with a massive drunk

2:15:47

birmingham city football fan he's

2:15:49

armed with a very sharp knife

2:15:52

and he absolutely hates you because you're a West

2:15:54

Ham fan and he is going to kill

2:15:56

you um you don't

2:15:59

You don't need to look inside yourself and find your

2:16:02

own personal guapo. You

2:16:04

mean your own personal nemesis

2:16:07

or your biggest fear? Like

2:16:09

when I was a child, my biggest fear

2:16:12

was being in my room in the dark. The

2:16:14

dark was my biggest fear. So when

2:16:17

I'm faced with a murderous football hooligan, I

2:16:19

don't need to go back to my fear of the

2:16:21

dark. The football hooligan with a knife

2:16:23

is much more frightening than

2:16:26

my old ancient fear of the dark. Yeah,

2:16:28

yeah. So who

2:16:31

were you punching when you punched that Birmingham City

2:16:33

fan? Because Alexander Scott, that

2:16:35

guy from college that I always hated, it's

2:16:37

like, no, no, no, no, no, he's not the

2:16:39

problem here. The football fan is

2:16:42

far, far more of a threat. You

2:16:44

don't need to look inside yourself and find your own

2:16:46

personal demons. It's really,

2:16:48

really ridiculous. The whole film is hilarious.

2:16:51

In a way, all of us has an el guapo

2:16:53

to face. For some, shyness might be

2:16:55

their el guapo. For others, a lack

2:16:57

of education might be their el guapo. For

2:17:00

us, el guapo is a big, dangerous

2:17:02

man who wants to kill us. But as sure

2:17:04

as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santo

2:17:06

Poco can conquer their own personal

2:17:09

el guapo who also happens to be the

2:17:12

actual el guapo. El

2:17:14

guapo is the baddie in the three amigos. And el

2:17:16

guapo means the beautiful one, of course. Yeah,

2:17:19

yeah, yeah. Okay,

2:17:21

right. Well, good. I'm glad that we really

2:17:24

sorted out all of those things. And fixed

2:17:27

so many problems in this conversation.

2:17:29

Yeah, well, you know, we

2:17:32

do a bit. We're just doing

2:17:34

our best, listeners. But that's it from

2:17:36

the Glibb Brothers for this episode,

2:17:39

everybody. Yes. I've got to go

2:17:41

now in order to just

2:17:43

do something else. Sorry,

2:17:46

partridge. No,

2:17:49

it's been emotional. It's been amusing.

2:17:51

It's been slightly frightening in some

2:17:53

parts. It's been a pleasure. I hope

2:17:56

everyone could keep up. They probably couldn't. Thanks,

2:17:59

guys.

2:17:59

out. Well remember this remember the skate ramp

2:18:02

of audience retention? Yeah we're at

2:18:04

the flat bottom now where we're cruising

2:18:07

out into the long flat bottom.

2:18:09

It's actually a quarter pipe rather than a half pipe isn't

2:18:12

it? We're just off down the street now. Yeah

2:18:14

it's unlikely that audience retention goes

2:18:17

all the way back up as you get to the

2:18:19

end of the episode. No it doesn't go back up it's

2:18:22

a quarter pipe not a half pipe. Because that'd be weird

2:18:24

if some people, the same number

2:18:26

of people who clicked on the video also come back

2:18:28

to the video and fast forward to the last

2:18:31

few seconds. I can think of one type of video

2:18:33

which is like the half pipe. I don't know if I should

2:18:35

mention it. Let's

2:18:38

move on. Is it a sexy video? Let's

2:18:42

move on. Let's move on from that. Okay

2:18:44

well anyway thank you listeners for being

2:18:46

here with us on the the flat plane

2:18:49

here of audience retention at the end of the episode.

2:18:52

You? Well done. You're one of the hardcore.

2:18:54

You are the special ones and you are the ones that

2:18:57

AI will be rescuing in the

2:18:59

future or at least sparing.

2:19:02

Those ones with no attention span they

2:19:04

are no good to the human race and they will

2:19:06

be jettisoned. Maybe you should

2:19:08

say a word at the end that people can write in the comments if

2:19:10

they listen to the end and no one else in the comments

2:19:12

will understand what that means. I do that sometimes.

2:19:15

You can tell us what your own personal, who's

2:19:17

your own personal el guapo? Yeah what's your personal

2:19:19

el guapo?

2:19:21

El guapo, Spanish speakers obviously

2:19:23

will know but E-L-G-U-A-P-P-O,

2:19:26

el guapo. What's your own personal

2:19:29

el guapo? What's your el guapo Luke? Your

2:19:31

personal el guapo? My personal el guapo?

2:19:34

That is an unexpected question I'd need

2:19:36

to delve deep into my soul in order to find

2:19:38

the actual answer. Well

2:19:42

I'll tell you mine you can think about. I think laziness

2:19:44

is my el guapo. Yeah. I'm

2:19:47

very lazy. That's

2:19:49

it. I'm this confession basically. I'm

2:19:52

a very lazy person. Well I'm

2:19:54

glad I managed to actually get you to achieve

2:19:56

something today. I mean you've got an album. You've got an album.

2:19:58

I'm good at doing things I want to do. I'm just terrible at

2:20:00

doing things I don't want to do. So laziness

2:20:03

is your El Guapo. Procrastination

2:20:05

is your El Guapo. My El Guapo

2:20:08

might be rambling,

2:20:10

but I've turned my El Guapo into my

2:20:13

strength. So I'm like Batman in Batman

2:20:16

Begins. Yeah, you've turned your advert...

2:20:19

My weakness into a sort of strength that I use

2:20:22

in my own favour. So Batman's

2:20:24

fear of bats in childhood becomes...

2:20:27

He uses that. He embodies

2:20:29

that fear in order to

2:20:32

fight crime. And I've

2:20:34

done the same. Yeah, a bit far-fetched.

2:20:36

Most people would just get some counselling,

2:20:38

possibly just carry it with them

2:20:40

for a long time. Not really want to go

2:20:42

in dark places. Not many people would suddenly

2:20:45

buy a flash car. Yeah,

2:20:47

who does his car? Well,

2:20:50

it's Morgan Freeman, isn't it? The kind

2:20:52

of weapons guy.

2:20:54

No, but he's not in the original story.

2:20:56

I mean... Oh, the original story, yeah. I don't know. Isn't

2:20:58

it Alfred, basically? Alfred does everything.

2:21:01

He's a butler, but he's also like... Mechanic,

2:21:04

engineer.

2:21:05

Yeah, an inventor, mechanic,

2:21:07

engineer, genius. He's

2:21:10

got a lot of blackmail material against Batman. I

2:21:12

mean, I think he doesn't turn against him because...

2:21:14

Alfred. Yeah. Yeah, but would you, though?

2:21:16

Would you turn against... It's an interesting plot

2:21:18

idea for Batman. But he's a butler. I mean, working

2:21:21

class, you know, may rise against the...

2:21:23

Michael Cade. Now, listen, Batman.

2:21:25

I'm working class. If you... If

2:21:28

you... What would it be? I

2:21:31

think my wade is a shorter of you. If

2:21:33

you take any more liberties with the law

2:21:35

again,

2:21:37

I'll be... I'm going to break off and start

2:21:39

my own rival superhero franchise

2:21:43

called The Butler. I've been looking at

2:21:45

my wage packet and it has not been rising in

2:21:47

line with information. And

2:21:51

a bit, you know what I mean? Shuck in a sweetener

2:21:53

for me and I won't say anything. Right.

2:21:58

Okay. Great. Go DC

2:22:00

Comics, go ahead and make that the butler. A

2:22:03

new... The butler that turned. Yeah,

2:22:06

exactly. When Alfred decides to become

2:22:08

a superhero himself and he takes all the technology

2:22:11

and becomes the butler.

2:22:14

Starring

2:22:15

a de-aged Michael

2:22:18

Cade.

2:22:19

One quick one. A letter in VISTA

2:22:21

was in recently. I had an

2:22:23

idea for a concept. Giza Butler

2:22:25

and his Giza Butler. So, rock

2:22:28

star, bass player, Giza Butler

2:22:30

from Black Sabbath and his Giza

2:22:33

Butler, who's played by Danny Dyer. No

2:22:37

one understands that. There you go,

2:22:39

folks. So, who's

2:22:41

your personal alguapo? We'll

2:22:44

leave it at that.

2:22:45

We'll leave it at that. OK, thank you so much for

2:22:47

listening all the way through to the end. And

2:22:50

this has been a conversation.

2:22:52

Yes. Three,

2:22:58

four, five, six, seven, eight,

2:23:01

nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

2:23:06

OK, listeners, so

2:23:09

we're nearly at the end. I'd like you to just

2:23:11

reflect now on what your

2:23:14

personal alguapo is. What

2:23:16

is your personal alguapo? Maybe,

2:23:19

I don't know, phrasal verbs are your personal

2:23:22

alguapo. Or it could be, I don't

2:23:25

know, pronunciation of ed endings

2:23:28

is your personal alguapo. Or maybe it's the

2:23:30

pronunciation of minimal pairs in

2:23:32

vowel sounds. In English

2:23:34

pronunciation, that may be your alguapo.

2:23:36

I don't know. Anyway, I hope

2:23:39

you've enjoyed this episode. But

2:23:42

it sounds like the end. It's not it's not the end now,

2:23:44

because, of course, I have to ramble on

2:23:46

a bit more. Don't I? I do.

2:23:49

I don't know what you think about this episode. You

2:23:51

can let me know in the comments section. You

2:23:54

should refer to El Guapo.

2:23:56

OK, that's G U A P P O

2:23:59

L Guapo. Anyway, let us know about your own

2:24:01

personal El Guapo in the comments section

2:24:04

in order to show that you got to this stage

2:24:06

in the episode. Maybe some of you, maybe,

2:24:09

maybe we'll, maybe you'll check the episode

2:24:12

page for this later and you'll see that

2:24:14

there are just no comments about El Guapo.

2:24:16

You'll just realize that everyone's just, they're

2:24:18

all skeletons now. I don't know. But

2:24:21

let me now ramble on a little bit more at the end of

2:24:23

the episode because why not? I mean, we've got

2:24:25

this far. Why not push it a little

2:24:27

bit further? Okay. All right,

2:24:29

so stick around for a bit more rambling

2:24:32

and, and, and then I'll

2:24:35

let you continue with the rest of your life. That

2:24:42

was the long rambling conversation with James,

2:24:45

the Glibb brothers, reunited

2:24:47

on the podcast again. If you're still here,

2:24:50

well done. You survived the the

2:24:52

drop-off, the audience drop-off. All

2:24:55

the other people have dropped off. Maybe

2:24:57

they dropped off to sleep. I don't know, but you're

2:24:59

still here. Well done. Congratulations.

2:25:03

I respect your, your commitment

2:25:06

to Luke's English podcast. So,

2:25:08

yeah, a lot of things, a lot of stuff in that episode.

2:25:11

The film Blow Up, references

2:25:14

to the, the Bee Gees, the

2:25:17

Gibb brothers, Barry

2:25:19

Morris and Robin Gibb, the

2:25:22

Bee Gees, the Gibb

2:25:24

brothers, but obviously this was the Glibb brothers,

2:25:26

wasn't it? This time with James and me talking

2:25:29

about bands. Every band has a secret weapon.

2:25:32

I'd love to continue that conversation. Listening

2:25:35

back to this, I thought we didn't talk about as many

2:25:37

bands as I wanted to. You

2:25:40

know, you could continue that. Every band

2:25:42

has a secret weapon, a member of the group that

2:25:45

perhaps isn't the most obvious one, but is still

2:25:47

providing a really important

2:25:50

element to the band. Like, for example, The Beatles.

2:25:53

Of course, it's George Harrison, isn't it? It's

2:25:56

got to be George. Obviously Ringo is

2:25:59

an essential. foundation,

2:26:01

but George is definitely the secret weapon. He

2:26:04

provided amazing harmonies,

2:26:07

that third voice which blended

2:26:09

so well with Paul and John's voices. The

2:26:12

songwriting, George's

2:26:15

songs like Here Comes the Sun and

2:26:17

Something are in the top

2:26:19

five most listened to Beatles

2:26:21

songs on Spotify. In fact the

2:26:24

song on Spotify, the Beatles song on Spotify

2:26:26

that is in number one place with the most number

2:26:29

of listens is Here

2:26:31

Comes the Sun, the George

2:26:34

Harrison one. So we

2:26:36

can't underestimate the contribution he made

2:26:38

in terms of songs, but also just like

2:26:40

the musical side as well. I've mentioned

2:26:42

the vocal harmonies, but also

2:26:45

things like little things he did on the guitar, just little

2:26:47

hooks and riffs and contributions he made.

2:26:50

But of course John and Paul were there getting

2:26:54

all the attention and getting all the glory,

2:26:57

but I think George was the secret weapon. And

2:26:59

another band The Police, I

2:27:02

think that Andy Summers has

2:27:05

to be the secret weapon in The Police because

2:27:08

obviously Sting is Sting

2:27:12

is the obvious front man really

2:27:15

and the one that we see at the front. He's the

2:27:17

one who wrote the songs and he's got that incredible

2:27:19

voice and the bass

2:27:22

playing as well. So Sting

2:27:24

is obvious, right? And

2:27:26

then Stuart Copeland is also

2:27:28

pretty obvious because music

2:27:30

fans will surely know Stuart

2:27:33

Copeland as one of the most famous drummers

2:27:35

in the world, one of the best drummers in the world

2:27:37

and an attention-grabbing drummer

2:27:40

and he kind of to an extent defined The Police's

2:27:42

sound with those different rhythms,

2:27:44

the reggae stuff that he did. And

2:27:47

he's also quite a colourful character

2:27:50

in interviews, you know,

2:27:52

he's entertaining and vocal and so he

2:27:54

kind of steals the limelight as well. But Andy

2:27:56

Summers on the guitar, absolutely.

2:28:00

secret weapon because of the

2:28:03

soundscapes, the sound textures

2:28:05

he was able to contribute to

2:28:07

the group with the different guitar effects

2:28:09

and stuff, and also some very

2:28:12

memorable catchy hooks

2:28:14

and riffs. For example, Every

2:28:17

Breath You Take, the one that was sampled by Puff Daddy

2:28:20

I think, Every Breath

2:28:22

You Take. That guitar riff, which

2:28:25

is so famous, so iconic, that was written

2:28:27

by Andy Summers. Those

2:28:29

are the sorts of things he would contribute to the

2:28:32

police. I mean, the police is a three piece.

2:28:34

They're all essential

2:28:37

elements, but I think that probably in the

2:28:39

police, Andy Summers has to be considered a

2:28:41

secret weapon. So anyway, we could go on about

2:28:43

that further, but I can't.

2:28:45

I mustn't. Every band has a secret

2:28:48

weapon. Then we talked about Diary of a CEO,

2:28:52

which is this famous podcast. The book

2:28:55

that James mentioned about

2:28:57

New Order and Joy Division was called

2:29:00

Record, Play, Pause by Stephen

2:29:02

Morris. Then of course

2:29:04

we talked about Chat GPT and AI,

2:29:07

as you well know. James referenced

2:29:09

the book 1984 by George

2:29:11

Orwell, that famous story

2:29:13

of a totalitarian government,

2:29:16

but also Brave New World

2:29:18

by Aldous Huxley. Another

2:29:20

book which has a similar vision of a kind

2:29:23

of future society, a kind

2:29:25

of authoritarian or totalitarian

2:29:29

regime or situation in society, but

2:29:31

just in a different way. Both

2:29:35

completely fascinating books. Then

2:29:37

there was the whole section about

2:29:40

the lines from movies and

2:29:42

TV shows, which often

2:29:44

spring into our heads, or at least into

2:29:46

my head. There

2:29:48

was some Alan Partridge. There was

2:29:50

Spinal Tap. If you don't know about Spinal Tap,

2:29:53

go back into my episode archive and

2:29:55

go back to the episode which is called Film Club.

2:29:58

This is Spinal Tap. It's just a fantastic

2:30:01

film. If you're a music fan, if you're

2:30:03

a fan of comedy, you must listen to that episode

2:30:05

and then find the film and watch it. It

2:30:08

will improve your life. It's

2:30:10

just a joy from start to finish. But

2:30:13

also the film Three Amigos. And

2:30:18

I expect that I went into

2:30:20

that in quite a lot of detail and explained the

2:30:22

plot in order to help you understand

2:30:24

the things we were talking about. But

2:30:26

Three Amigos is just a wonderful film and

2:30:29

it's a family favourite in

2:30:32

our house. All of us love that

2:30:34

film. I mean, particularly

2:30:36

my dad, my brother and me. And

2:30:40

every now and then we will sit down maybe on a

2:30:42

Saturday afternoon and watch it

2:30:44

together. And it's always a joy from

2:30:46

start to finish. It's just a very sweet,

2:30:48

very funny and just

2:30:51

lovely. It's just a lovely, funny film.

2:30:54

And so I would recommend it as well.

2:30:56

Three Amigos. OK, I'm going to stop

2:30:59

talking now. Thank

2:31:01

you for listening to this episode.

2:31:04

My son is still asleep in the carrier. My shoulders

2:31:07

are really hurting. I

2:31:09

just thought you'd like to know that. You

2:31:12

might be able to hear the noise of children playing in

2:31:14

the playground of the school nearby,

2:31:19

which is quite a nice sound, really. It's better than

2:31:21

the sound of drilling and hammering.

2:31:24

I think the guys working on

2:31:26

the building site are

2:31:29

taking a break or something. Maybe

2:31:31

they stop working when the kids are playing outside.

2:31:33

I don't know. It's lunchtime. That's

2:31:35

it. It's lunchtime. Everything stops in

2:31:39

in Paris when it's lunchtime because you've

2:31:41

got to take a good hour

2:31:43

and a half to two hours to sit

2:31:46

down and enjoy a full lunch.

2:31:48

Of course you do. Anyway, I'm going

2:31:50

to stop rambling. Thank you so much for listening. OK,

2:31:53

I will speak to you again on the podcast soon when

2:31:56

I get the chance to record new episodes and

2:31:58

to work on them. and that includes premium

2:32:01

stuff which is in the pipeline.

2:32:03

Alright, good. Speak to you soon, but for

2:32:05

now it's time to say goodbye. Bye.

2:32:08

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

2:32:14

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For

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