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Episode: Ep 274: Andy Zaltzman (Christmas Special)

Author: Plosive
Duration: 01:21:42

Episode Shownotes

Joining us for a Christmas Special second helping is ‘Taskmaster’ champion and ‘The Bugle’ podcast, Andy Zaltzman.Andy Zaltzman is on tour now with ‘The Zaltgeist’, running until 9th May 2025 at London's Leicester Square Theatre. For full dates and tickets, visit www.andyzaltzman.co.ukFollow Andy on Twitter @ZaltzCricket Off Menu is a

comedy podcast hosted by Ed Gamble and James Acaster.Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
Benito, James Acaster here. I forgot to record an advert for my new special, Hitler's Welcome, which is going to be on Sky, NOW TV and HBO Max. It's on all of those, like, right now. I'm very proud of it.

00:00:19 Speaker_00
Can you put this at the beginning of the next episode so that people know the special is out, please? Because I'd like them to know. OK. I hope you're having a good day, Benito. Bye.

00:00:42 Speaker_02
Welcome to the Off Menu Podcast. I've definitely done this before. Heating the brandy of conversation. Lighting the flame of chat. Pouring over the Christmas pudding of the internet. You've got yourself a Christmassy Off Menu. Have you seen Black Doves?

00:00:58 Speaker_02
No.

00:00:59 Speaker_01
Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Black Doves, but the very last shot of it. I haven't.

00:01:02 Speaker_02
I already told you I haven't seen it. So why are you giving me a spoiler alert?

00:01:05 Speaker_01
Well, it's not really a spoiler.

00:01:07 Speaker_02
Okay.

00:01:07 Speaker_01
Because what's funny is that it's got nothing to do with anything. There's been this whole kind of like spy like drama. Yeah.

00:01:13 Speaker_01
And then the very last shot is a Keira Knightley pouring brandy over a Christmas pudding, lighting it and then looking in the camera. That's Ed Gamble, my name is James Acaster.

00:01:23 Speaker_01
Together, we own a dream restaurant and every single week, we invite in a guest house and their favourite ever starter, main course, dessert, side dish and drink. Not in that order.

00:01:30 Speaker_02
And this week, our Christmassy guest is... Andy Zaltzman! Andy Zaltzman, a fantastic comedian, podcaster, taskmaster, champion. A cricket commentator.

00:01:42 Speaker_01
A cricket statsman. I told my dad, we've got Andy Zaltzman on this week, and I didn't know my dad knew Andy, but my dad does like cricket. Well, if you like cricket, you know Andy. Well, that's the thing.

00:01:54 Speaker_01
And my dad just went, it's like, he was genuinely happy for Andy, and he just went, that man has a great life.

00:02:02 Speaker_01
That man has a great life and a great career, and it must have been his dream growing up to be... I bet he can't believe he gets to do all that. I'm really happy for Andy Zaltzman. To be on off-menu. Yeah, I think that's what it was.

00:02:13 Speaker_02
Yeah, people who like cricket are jealous of Andy's career and are very happy for him.

00:02:18 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:02:18 Speaker_02
John Robbins wants Andy Zaltzman's career, I think. Yeah. Yeah, as said on multiple occasions. We can't wait to chat to Andy. I love Andy. He's so funny.

00:02:26 Speaker_01
Yes. Hilarious man. Lovely man. I don't know if he's a lover of food. We'll find out, I guess.

00:02:32 Speaker_02
We'll find out. We'll find out. I think he is. I think I've heard some stuff in the past about him. Oh, yeah? Cooking and, you know, dinner parties and all of that sort of stuff. That's promising. I think we're on safe ground.

00:02:44 Speaker_01
You know what I've heard about him? Go on. That he's got a brand new show, The Zoltgeist, which he is touring nationwide as part of his biggest UK and Ireland tour. Run into the 9th of May at London's Leicester Square Theatre.

00:02:54 Speaker_01
For full dates and tickets, you know what? AndyZoltzman.co.uk.

00:02:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, go and see Andy on tour. He is always brilliant. The amount of material that he generates for his stand-up as part of the Bugle, his podcast. So definitely get along to that.

00:03:10 Speaker_02
But if Andy says a secret ingredient on which we have pre-agreed, he will be kicked out of the Dream Restaurant and at Christmas no less.

00:03:17 Speaker_01
Oh, this week the secret ingredient is... Wax Lettuce!

00:03:22 Speaker_02
Wax Lettuce, of course, picked by last week's Christmas guest, Rose Mattafeo.

00:03:27 Speaker_01
Yes, and instantly we're like, great, we can use that as a secret ingredient because it's a weird thing to order on your dream menu.

00:03:35 Speaker_02
I mean Andy can be a weird guy so he might pick wax lettuce.

00:03:39 Speaker_01
We've seen him subvert things on Taskmaster, go the surreal route. So this is not out of the question here and it would be quite satisfying to kick out a guest the week after for something that was on the previous menu and inspired the choice.

00:03:54 Speaker_02
And it's rare that we record so close to release and after the last one has been released. So the fact that we get to use a secret ingredient from a previous episode that was only a week before is very exciting.

00:04:07 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean for the listener, we're recording this on the day last week's was released. So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, this is exactly a week ago. This is only a week ago.

00:04:17 Speaker_01
These words could be hitting your ears exactly one week before since I said them.

00:04:22 Speaker_02
Yeah, but a lot can happen in a week. A lot can happen in a week. They might have found that guy who shot that other guy.

00:04:27 Speaker_01
Who popped the CEO? Yeah. Benito thinks they found him. If they found him. There you go. That's how quickly things can happen. If you're listening to this podcast, mate.

00:04:35 Speaker_02
Well, anyway, enough of this Christmassy chat. Let's get on with some more of it with our special guest, the brilliant Andy Zaltzman. Andy Zaltzman. Off menu. Welcome, Andy, to the Dream Restaurant. Oh, it's great to be here.

00:04:55 Speaker_01
Welcome, Andy Salzman, to the Dream Restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time.

00:05:00 Speaker_02
That was unusual, Andy. I mean, we've done nearly 300 episodes. And James, as the genie, normally bursts out of the lamp with the sound you would expect. So you're a Christmas turkey bursting out of the lamp today.

00:05:14 Speaker_03
Do turkeys make that? I'm not sure turkeys... I don't think that's a turkey thing, is it? It would be turkadoodledoo if they did.

00:05:24 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, turkle doo-doo-doo. For me, a turkey would say gobble-gobble. Right. Well, it depends on the turkey, I think, doesn't it? I don't think it does depend on the turkey. I think standard turkey would be gobble-gobble. Right.

00:05:36 Speaker_02
But... It's cockle-doo-doo-doo. Cockle-doo-doo-doo. Text in now. Text in now, listeners, what you think it is. And if you found a magic lamp, and you rubbed it, and a turkey came out of it, how would that make you feel?

00:05:51 Speaker_03
Well, I think I'd be disappointed. I'd be respectful of the turkey, I hope. You know, I'd invite the turkey to go back into the lamp. That would be my first wish, actually. I mean, can the turkey grant me wishes or is it just a turkey? Right, here we go.

00:06:06 Speaker_03
Absolutely, if it pops out the lamp it can grant you wishes. Yeah, it's got lamp powers. Yeah, get back in the lamp. But then would I then lose my other two, I presume it's a three-wish turkey, isn't it?

00:06:15 Speaker_01
Yeah, you'd have to whisper your other two lamps into the spout of the lamp. Yeah, it's what you'd be faced with.

00:06:20 Speaker_02
Would you be hoping that there'd be other things in the lamp? So if you put the turkey back in, you rubbed it, maybe a genie would eventually come out?

00:06:27 Speaker_03
Yeah, you'd expect there to be probably a fox and a bag of grain in there as well.

00:06:33 Speaker_02
Well, you're a Christmas turkey genie today.

00:06:35 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah. Cock-a-doodle-doo. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Gobble-gobble. In terms of the evolution of the turkey, training yourself to say gobble-gobble when you are a foodstuff is probably not really... Not particularly helpful, is it?

00:06:51 Speaker_03
It's putting ideas in people's heads. Exactly.

00:06:52 Speaker_02
Well, that's why it's so popular on Christmas. You know, it worked out that it's the driest meat. Right. So it needed to do something to establish itself on people's menus. Right. So Gobble Gobble is what it went with. It's a PR move.

00:07:02 Speaker_03
See, if I was a potentially edible animal, I'd probably have evolved so that my natural core sounded like, I taste disgusting, don't eat me.

00:07:13 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:07:13 Speaker_03
Rather than gobble, rather than, you know, inviting... Yeah.

00:07:17 Speaker_02
...people to gobble.

00:07:17 Speaker_03
...industrial exploitation. So what sort of call would you go for? Well, I don't know, I mean it's cock-a-doodle-don't, don't eat it, I don't know.

00:07:28 Speaker_02
Cock-a-doodle-do not eat it. Or something that suggested you were smelly, maybe like poo-ee, something like that. That would put me off eating animal, I think.

00:07:38 Speaker_03
But you know, there's so much for Darwin.

00:07:41 Speaker_01
One of the little birds in a Beatrix Potter book calls out little bit of bread and no cheese. I remember that as a kid.

00:07:49 Speaker_01
In one of the Beatrix Potter books, I can't remember what animal it is, but she was like basically trying to say what it's bird song sounds like. And it was little bit of bread and no cheese. And I remember it very distinctly as a kid.

00:08:03 Speaker_02
Yeah, but she had hedgehogs wearing dresses and stuff.

00:08:06 Speaker_03
It's not scientifically accurate, that stuff. to Potter. I mean if you're choosing between Potter and Attenborough in terms of reliability of facts about the natural world you go with Attenborough any time. You've got to go with Attenborough. Yeah yeah.

00:08:21 Speaker_03
Big Dave.

00:08:22 Speaker_01
Yeah. Oh David Attenborough. Fair enough. I was thinking dinosaurs are real. Yeah. Yeah. They were real originally. Yeah.

00:08:31 Speaker_02
Yeah. This is not the big revelation that James doesn't believe in dinosaurs.

00:08:35 Speaker_01
Yeah. I do. I do believe in them. They're the OGs.

00:08:37 Speaker_03
The OG turkeys in many ways. That would be different. Christmas would have been huge back then.

00:08:44 Speaker_02
Imagine eating one of those. I'd like to see Jurassic Park but with the sound redone so the T-Rex is saying gobble gobble. And voiced by Andy.

00:08:54 Speaker_03
I'm happy to do that. Do you like Christmas Andy? I do like Christmas. Probably more than the average Jewish person. Uh, yeah, we've, uh, yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's good fun, Christmas.

00:09:07 Speaker_03
And, uh, also there's generally cricket on the television at midnight in Australia.

00:09:12 Speaker_01
We had to, we had to, as long as we could, get to talk about birds and, like... I've been quite disciplined, I think.

00:09:22 Speaker_02
Yeah, I was gonna say this feels like a long time that you've not mentioned cricket.

00:09:26 Speaker_01
And there is cricket on TV during Christmas, I didn't know that.

00:09:29 Speaker_03
Well, yeah, so the Boxing Day tests in Australia usually starts at midnight at the end of Christmas Day, UK time. So, you know, however bad your Christmas is going, you've got that little beacon of hope.

00:09:42 Speaker_01
Do you have a, if this has been asked to you before many times and it's already common knowledge, the answer then, you know, I apologize. But do you have a favorite test match of all time that you, like, that is the best one I've ever seen?

00:09:54 Speaker_01
That's the game? Um... Wow, we're really doing this, okay. Yeah, I mean... I won't ever get the opportunity to ask Andy this again. How long is this podcast generally? The answer doesn't have to take as long as a game of cricket.

00:10:06 Speaker_01
You're one that is like, that is the best game. That was such a great day.

00:10:16 Speaker_03
Well, I mean, Edgbaston 2005 test match, hard to look beyond that. I wasn't there.

00:10:21 Speaker_03
I was actually in Edinburgh doing the Edinburgh Festival, sharing a flat with Stuart Lee, who probably his greatest flaw as a human being is that he doesn't like cricket.

00:10:32 Speaker_01
But his routines are basically the same thing over and over again for ages.

00:10:38 Speaker_03
We all find that rhythm in life in different places though, don't we?

00:10:41 Speaker_02
He really reads as someone who likes cricket though.

00:10:43 Speaker_03
Yeah, he should like cricket. I don't think he's completely lost as a long-term project.

00:10:49 Speaker_03
But anyway, at that point in 2008, he wasn't really into it and when England won that test match by two runs at the end, I basically sort of collapsed onto the floor hyperventilating.

00:11:01 Speaker_03
and I think he was quite concerned about my state of health at that point. It was quite hard to explain that. That wasn't just the culmination of the one single match, that was the culmination of a lifetime. 16 years of pain and suffering.

00:11:15 Speaker_03
Where were they playing? Australia. The Ashes. Yes, there we go.

00:11:21 Speaker_02
Do they still go in for tea, in cricket?

00:11:23 Speaker_03
They do. Yeah, yeah. So they stop the game and then go in. In test matches. Yeah. Very good at bringing back the food order. And you know, village games or whatever, yeah. I mean, that's one of the great things.

00:11:32 Speaker_03
I mean, you think on this podcast, the fact that cricket, you know, a test match has, if it goes the full five days, ten built-in meal breaks. That should be right in your guys' hitting zone.

00:11:44 Speaker_02
I love that. I want to know more about it. Do you ever get in there and get to have tea with them?

00:11:48 Speaker_03
Well, not with the players, but in the media sense of where I work when I'm doing cricket commentary, we get some pretty spectacular food. Not at all the grounds. I mean, without naming any specific grounds, there was one where

00:12:04 Speaker_03
There was a rumour that we were getting the same food as the local prison. And... It sort of lived up to that.

00:12:14 Speaker_02
Did you get those segmented trays?

00:12:16 Speaker_01
Luckily the local prison was the one Paddington was locked in. That is the best food ever.

00:12:23 Speaker_03
But, I mean, Lourdes and Edgbaston, I mean, you'd expect those press boxes have Michelin stars lurking around somewhere.

00:12:29 Speaker_02
And what are we talking, do you get the same stuff as the players, do you know, or do you get even fancier stuff?

00:12:35 Speaker_03
No, well, the players are generally the other end of the ground. I mean, the Lourdes food is quite, I think, players food is off the scale. Yeah. I don't know, I've never done a statistical analysis of

00:12:47 Speaker_03
How bad players are in the half hour after lunch at the Olympics. Gorge themselves.

00:12:52 Speaker_02
That really feels like you should look into it. Stats wise.

00:12:56 Speaker_03
What about the oval? The oval, a little bit up and down.

00:13:01 Speaker_01
I've heard bad things.

00:13:03 Speaker_01
I used to work at a school as a classroom assistant and the class I was with went to the Oval one day but I'd stay behind and do something else and I saw them the next day and there's a kid called Georgie who had been melting off to the guys showing around and he made him run around the Oval ten times and I saw Georgie the next and Georgie was quite naughty anyway but I liked him and I was like, how was it yesterday?

00:13:22 Speaker_01
He went, promise me you never go to the Oval. You've got to promise me. And have you been? No, I've never been. Kept the promise. Georgie, if you're listening, I'll always keep my promise. I respect you so much.

00:13:32 Speaker_01
Even when the dental truck came in and you stood in the gap between the dental truck and the school building and you threw stones at the other kids. Right. What's a dental truck?

00:13:41 Speaker_01
It was a truck that came in to check all the kids' teeth to get them used to going to the dentist. It was this organisation who did it. They got booked for the day, but they didn't park tight enough to the wall.

00:13:49 Speaker_01
There was a little gap, a little hidey-hole that Georgie could go in and get tiny stones to be fair to him and antagonise the other kids with them.

00:13:57 Speaker_01
What he didn't foresee is that he had boxed himself in so that when they then decided to get their revenge, he was absolutely fucked. Yeah, yeah. They shouldn't have left that gap, they should have filled it in.

00:14:05 Speaker_03
The Oval has an important place in the history of History of British food. So in 1882, there was a test match, England versus Australia. It was so tense, and it was a game that then led to the Ashes beginning.

00:14:21 Speaker_03
A spoof obituary was printed in one of the papers, after England lost the death of English cricket, the Ashes will be taken to Australia. And that was how the Ashes began.

00:14:30 Speaker_03
But during that test match, it was so close and so tense that someone in the crowd chewed through the handle of his umbrella. Like a wooden umbrella handle. Apparently, he chewed through it. I mean, it's one of the... He was 1882.

00:14:45 Speaker_03
Do we have documentary evidence of this? No, but I'm prepared to believe it. And of course, the fact that he sat there chewing this umbrella handle, they then had to legalize the hot dog as a stadium food. Stop any further confusion.

00:15:01 Speaker_02
So that's why it's important to the history of British food, because the marinade is umbrella.

00:15:05 Speaker_01
Yes, yes. And look, anyone who's seen Andy on Taskmaster and his approach to the prize tasks will not be surprised if one of his food choices is an umbrella. At least today. The guy thinks outside the box.

00:15:19 Speaker_03
Tell us about your tour, Andy. Well, my tour... That's a very good question. Well, it wasn't a question, actually, was it?

00:15:24 Speaker_02
No, no, no. It was an order.

00:15:26 Speaker_03
It was a demand. Yeah, my tour is a show called The Zoltgeist, and it's sort of analysing where we are as a planet, species, hemisphere. Big fan of the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah.

00:15:38 Speaker_03
Want to shout out some disses to the Southern Hemisphere while you're here? I think that's too divisive, James. I think you can love the Northern Hemisphere without necessarily hating the South. Have we not learned that?

00:15:49 Speaker_03
Is that not one of the lessons of history? We can love something without having to hate the opposite. That way I'll have a future to learn stuff. You and the rest of the human race.

00:15:57 Speaker_03
So, basically seeing where we are, coming to the end of 2024, so that is the psychologically critical 2.5% of the way through a millennium, and history shows that when millenniums start badly, it's quite hard to pull it around.

00:16:10 Speaker_03
So we've only got 975 years to pull this one out of the bag. So can we do it? What do you think?

00:16:15 Speaker_02
Well, it's not looking good so far, but I mean, you're the expert, you're the one doing the tour about it. Do you think we're going to get there? We need to start now though, right?

00:16:25 Speaker_01
But Andy can't spoil what's in his show. He can't tell the conclusion. Everyone goes, I don't know what you think. So the tour's going to go on for the next 975 years. Oh, congratulations. I mean, is that you intending to live that long?

00:16:38 Speaker_01
Are you going to franchise it and other people can do it? Or are we looking at the Zoltsgram, the hologram that's going to come out?

00:16:43 Speaker_03
Well, I mean, that seems to be the likely future of comedy, doesn't it? You know, it's the future of 1970s Swedish pop. So it really should be the future of... 2020's British stand-up as well.

00:16:54 Speaker_03
So I intend to do a hologram tour for the rest of the millennium. I don't want to dissuade people from buying tickets to see it now, because obviously it's going to evolve. I'm not going to still be doing jokes in the year 2983 about the world in 2024.

00:17:11 Speaker_03
Hopefully.

00:17:13 Speaker_02
Maybe I will be, who knows. Would you tour the hologram or would you have it in one location like ABBA Voyage?

00:17:20 Speaker_03
Well, I think, you know, thinking a little bit ahead, thinking, you know, six, seven hundred years into the tour, you'd expect that the technology would be there for just like a single, you know, an atom-sized microchip for people to just like shove it into their eyeball, and they'd be able to see any show that they wanted, and obviously they'd choose the Zoltgeist 2700.

00:17:41 Speaker_03
I can't wait for the iMicrochips. Yeah, I think Ed will be happy. I mean the human eyeball has proved fallible over the years. You know, it doesn't always see what it thinks it sees. So the sooner it's replaced by the apple eyeball.

00:18:01 Speaker_03
The apple of your eye is what it becomes.

00:18:04 Speaker_02
The marketing mark writes itself at this guy.

00:18:08 Speaker_03
you know that can then record everything you see so you know you can you can check yeah you thought you saw something or you know or someone's yeah meet them again so I saw you then they said no you didn't and then you can go check back through and then you can prove you're on fucking did yeah sorry viewers

00:18:29 Speaker_03
I can't wait. I mean the facial technology, at the moment it's on the face isn't it, the smart glasses, but you think it should be in the face, like I say the eyeball, the 6G, AI, nose, whatever.

00:18:48 Speaker_01
That could be their tagline, it should be in the face. Not on the face, in the face. I get my feelings hurt whenever my phone doesn't recognise my face. As a celebrity. And also, I just think to myself, oh god, go to the gym.

00:19:07 Speaker_02
I don't think that's why it doesn't recognise you.

00:19:08 Speaker_01
Yeah, it's just going, I don't even recognise you anymore, eh Custer?

00:19:12 Speaker_03
Well I was very suspicious of that technology when it first came in, so I took my profile picture wearing a fake beard and glasses and a hat, so I haven't actually opened my phone in eight years.

00:19:24 Speaker_01
So much important stuff on there. We always start with still or sparkling water, Andy?

00:19:30 Speaker_03
Well, I've got to go for sparkling because, you know, I'm a big fan of the environment. Oh yeah? And, you know, the more carbon dioxide we can get out of the atmosphere and into drinks, then surely the better for... the future of the planet.

00:19:45 Speaker_03
So, I mean, every time you drink still water, you're basically saying, I don't care if we live or die as a species. So, you need to trap the carbon dioxide. There's only 0.04% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide.

00:19:59 Speaker_03
You know, I think, I don't know what the goal is to get it down to absolutely zero or, you know, 0.02, whatever. But, you know, so the more sparkling, and obviously you have to then swallow the bubbles, otherwise they re-escape.

00:20:11 Speaker_03
Yeah, they spit the bubbles out. Back into the atmosphere. Yeah, doing my little bit for the... I also like to think of those little bubbles as the souls of dead fish trying to escape. You like to think of those?

00:20:25 Speaker_01
And you love the environment?

00:20:27 Speaker_02
Yeah, but fish are our evolutionary rivals. Fish live on as well, so yeah, through the bubbles. Are they?

00:20:35 Speaker_01
Why are they our rivals, evolutionarily speaking?

00:20:37 Speaker_03
Well, I mean, because they must resent the fact, yeah, because we obviously emerged from the seas back in the day.

00:20:45 Speaker_03
And, you know, when fish look at what we've achieved on land, and the increased lifestyle choices that you have as a land-based species, I think there's got to be a little bit of jealousy and... And resentment.

00:20:59 Speaker_03
You know, my old double-act partner, John Oliver, went to America and became one of the most famous comedians in the world, so he's very much...

00:21:05 Speaker_03
the humans to my fish, and that, you know, I can understand the... You're still in the pond, watching Oliver.

00:21:14 Speaker_02
So you're the fish in this scenario? Yeah, yeah. So you know how the fish feel? I empathise. Yeah, you empathise with the fish, yeah.

00:21:20 Speaker_01
Do you think Oliver ever just thinks to himself, I wish I was back in the pond?

00:21:25 Speaker_03
No doubt, I think he looks wistfully out of his window in New York, he can probably see the pond.

00:21:32 Speaker_01
So, why don't fizzy drinks companies harness this?

00:21:34 Speaker_02
They should be promoting that and being like... We're pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. I didn't know that's how it works. They're pulling it out of the atmosphere and they're putting it into the drinks.

00:21:47 Speaker_03
They should be using that as a... It's carbon capture basically, isn't it?

00:21:51 Speaker_02
Do you then neutralize the carbon dioxide within your body?

00:21:54 Speaker_03
Yeah, I think so.

00:21:55 Speaker_02
Because you're not pissing out the carbon dioxide, are you? And it goes straight back into the water system? Do you do fizzy piss? I hope not. Sometimes I worry. You ever had fizzy piss? Sometimes I do a really big foamy one and you do panic. Oh yeah, yeah.

00:22:13 Speaker_02
Bit of a head to it? Yeah. Cappuccino.

00:22:17 Speaker_01
Is that what you call it? What did you say about that?

00:22:20 Speaker_02
Cappuccino.

00:22:21 Speaker_01
Oh, yeah, yeah. I thought you were talking about the pun work. Yeah, yeah. I just thought you were being funny.

00:22:25 Speaker_02
It's difficult. Andy's a real punster, so I'm trying to match up to him.

00:22:28 Speaker_01
I've been clean for a while. We all saw Taskmaster. Every time you did a pun, Greg looked like he was going to rip your head off. What's that like, episode one, making a pun, seeing how angry it is, and knowing I've got so many more of these.

00:22:42 Speaker_01
I said I'm all in the house. I've got them for every prize task. He's going to be furious, this guy.

00:22:47 Speaker_03
Oh yeah, it's a rush isn't it? To know you have that hold over someone who likes to think of themselves as an authority figure and yet you just like, just needle your way in. By the end he was an absolute wreck of a human being.

00:23:01 Speaker_01
He was actually, he softened by the end, he was enjoying the puns.

00:23:04 Speaker_02
Yeah, he had to. I think it's just attrition.

00:23:08 Speaker_03
POPPADOM'S ON BREAD! POPPADOM'S ON BREAD ANDY SOLSMAN! POPPADOM'S ON BREAD! What bread? What are the bread options? Whatever you want. Your favourite bread. Right. I do love a poppadom. Yeah. I think I'd go with poppadom.

00:23:18 Speaker_03
You don't want to fill up a meal like this. Yeah. You don't want to fill up too much on bread.

00:23:23 Speaker_02
Just for listeners, Andy is one of the first guests ever to have a full laptop out in front of him.

00:23:28 Speaker_01
It's a big laptop, it's a PC. We haven't had this before. I don't think we've even had someone bring a Macbook in. We've had people bring in notes on their phone. Sometimes they printed them out. You have a ginormous laptop.

00:23:46 Speaker_03
What's my stats laptop?

00:23:47 Speaker_01
Yeah, the stats laptop is there.

00:23:48 Speaker_03
I've got one with an especially high screen so I can see more stats on it. And, you know, you look through the stats, it's like a magic eye picture. You look at, like, just a screen full of stats in a spreadsheet.

00:23:59 Speaker_03
You just let your eyes relax and you see the blinding light of pure truth, James.

00:24:05 Speaker_02
That's good. Chance did suggest before we started recording that you have your food stats here. Everything you've ever eaten on a spreadsheet.

00:24:14 Speaker_01
Wouldn't be surprised if Andy Saltzman as a little boy bought that laptop and started putting in his stats for what he's eaten all the time.

00:24:24 Speaker_03
I mean just checking the latest stats, I think my career average is 402.3 sausages per annum.

00:24:34 Speaker_01
That's a good going. It's not bad at all. It's impossible to imagine Andy as a little boy without that same hairstyle. Yeah, impossible. I can't imagine you without it, Andy.

00:24:43 Speaker_03
Well, in fact, my receding hairline was a lot further back when I was a child and it's just gradually coming forward. You have me back on the show in 50, 60 years time.

00:24:52 Speaker_02
I'll just be like a very specific Benjamin Button type.

00:24:57 Speaker_01
Yeah, end of the millennia when you're still... Exactly, yeah. You'll be Cousin Ed. Shout out Cousin It.

00:25:04 Speaker_03
Shout out Cousin It. But yeah I think, I do like, I mean the Indian breads, Asian breads give you a lot of options.

00:25:15 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah, I mean they're pretty banging as well. If you want you could set your dream meal in an Indian restaurant and you could cheat the system that way, get poppadoms and bread.

00:25:24 Speaker_02
Yeah, but of course the rest of the menu might not be. It might be, I mean look, the stomach's going to do it.

00:25:30 Speaker_01
Mine started as well. It was the most cartoon stomach rumble that we've had on the podcast. We've had quite a few stomach rumbles on the podcast. We've done it, both of us. Oh, all the time. I did one earlier.

00:25:42 Speaker_01
Benito's never does because he's a goddamn robot from space. So he doesn't have any emotions, even hunger. But Andy's went... It sounded more like a turkey than you did. Yes, it was a perfect turkey impression, I wish I'd done it earlier.

00:25:56 Speaker_01
What was it, the stomach rumble there, the thought of bread or the thought of poppadum?

00:26:00 Speaker_03
I think just the concept of the poppadum. The ingenuity, and this is something that you probably talk about a lot on this podcast,

00:26:10 Speaker_03
how food reveals the ingenuity of the human species compared with all the other species that we've outdone over the years in terms of what we eat.

00:26:19 Speaker_03
So I don't think any other species would have looked at a chickpea and thought, well, I tell you what, if we roll that out and then deep fry it, turn it crispy, that's going to be awesome.

00:26:29 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's quite hard, isn't it? It's mad when you see all of these foods that we take for granted that took all of that work. So think about all of the things that they tried and then discarded.

00:26:39 Speaker_02
you know this is not the first time they did that they've obviously tried so many different versions of it.

00:26:44 Speaker_03
I mean probably the early versions of papadums that were shaped like a javelin and the number of people who got like speared in the face by it before they finally thought let's go with the discus rather than the javelin.

00:26:56 Speaker_01
India have a brilliant cricket team. Yes. If you were going to go to an Indian restaurant with any Indian cricketer who's ever lived, who would it be?

00:27:07 Speaker_03
Who's ever lived? I have actually been to restaurants with some Indian cricketers. Have you? I had lunch with Rahul Dravid, a legend of the Indian game, many years ago in Bangalore. We were both writing for the same cricket website. Delightful man.

00:27:25 Speaker_03
Oh, that's nice. That's a nice story. But you've had lunch with them, so... Yeah, so what? I don't want to repeat... But it's also going to an Indian restaurant.

00:27:32 Speaker_01
Right.

00:27:32 Speaker_03
So it has to be specifically an Indian restaurant.

00:27:35 Speaker_01
Yeah, because we'd already said you were sitting there, so... And they've planned it as well.

00:27:40 Speaker_02
So it's not you going, I'm taking you out for dinner, we'll go to an Indian restaurant.

00:27:43 Speaker_03
Okay, so any Indian cricketer from history?

00:27:45 Speaker_02
Yes.

00:27:46 Speaker_03
Oh, well. I might go with Vinu Mankad, who played for India after the Second World War.

00:27:53 Speaker_02
I don't know why James has asked this question, because he's not going to know who the person is. You're not going to know who they are?

00:27:59 Speaker_03
Yeah. He was a very good player, spinning all-rounder. And I'd probably choose him because he's been deaf for quite a long time, so I'd get more food. Yeah, and his stomach's gone again. I love how adorable Andy's stomach is.

00:28:17 Speaker_03
Whenever I do a podcast I bring thematic corporeal noises.

00:28:22 Speaker_01
That's what the laptop's really for. He's secretly pressing the spacebar every now and again and setting off the stomach grumble sound effect. They'll love it. They'll love him. So you are choosing poppadoms, or you're choosing bread?

00:28:33 Speaker_03
I'm choosing poppadoms. Are we talking the dips? Absolutely. Absolutely. I want chutney options. I love a mango chutney, but it's nice to have, you know, like a sweet plum chutney.

00:28:46 Speaker_02
Sweet plum chutney?

00:28:47 Speaker_03
like the little raw onion dip, hot pickle, a bit of that yogurty sauce I never quite know the name of that isn't a writer but it's similar consistency.

00:29:00 Speaker_02
I love that, I think that's my favourite.

00:29:02 Speaker_03
We used to call it grasshopper sauce when I was young, that's what my dad called it. Oh nice! Why? It just looked like it was made of minced up grasshoppers.

00:29:11 Speaker_01
Grasshopper sauce, well that's lovely. Maybe the listeners could adopt that. How many poppadoms do you reckon you're getting through?

00:29:18 Speaker_02
Two and a half. Yeah, that's good. I think that's solid because when you go to an Indian restaurant and they're like, how many poppadoms do you want? I'm always like thinking about it and then the person I'm with is like, oh just one each.

00:29:28 Speaker_02
What are you talking about? That's nothing. Yeah, yeah.

00:29:31 Speaker_03
That's very disappointing when that happens. I think you have to go 2 each. I think 2x plus 2, where x is the number of people at the dinner. That's good. And you've got a bit of leeway.

00:29:43 Speaker_01
Did you say that at the start of the video? Make it fun? 2x plus 2. It'll be 2x plus 2, guys. And don't skimp on the grasshoppersauce. Everyone's like... Poor waiter, so confused. How's this guy doing?

00:29:57 Speaker_01
Is somebody running a ruler over the side of their desk?

00:30:01 Speaker_02
And twanging the ruler and then drawing it in quickly? No, that's just my stomach. Anyway, poppadoms, 2x plus 2, please, and plenty of grasshoppersauce.

00:30:13 Speaker_03
Your dream starter? Well, there's a couple of choices for this. One is a single scallop that I ate in Scotland when I was on holiday with my then girlfriend, now wife, a millennium ago, in fact. And I'd never had a scallop before.

00:30:29 Speaker_03
And we went to a little pub on the west coast of Scotland and ordered scallops for starter. And it turned out it was one scallop, but it was pretty much the size of a tennis ball. Yeah.

00:30:42 Speaker_03
And it was one of those culinary moments where you feel like the sort of scales are falling from your eyes. What have I been missing for the last 23 years of my life at the time? It was just a glorious perfection.

00:30:57 Speaker_01
I know exactly what you mean. The first scallop you have is insane. It's so good. And congratulations on saying tennis ball there. That must have not been easy for you.

00:31:09 Speaker_03
I was advised to try and bring other sports into it.

00:31:13 Speaker_02
You're diversifying now, aren't you? How was it prepared? Did it have like a sauce with it? Quite simply.

00:31:21 Speaker_03
It had a little, I think a little, just a little bit of sort of peppery sauce and a bit of a salad garnish. But really it was just a scallop on a plate. There was no need to

00:31:33 Speaker_02
It's, they're so sweet, they're so delicious.

00:31:35 Speaker_01
Yeah. Oh, man. Did your then girlfriend know wife? Which, is that how you still introduce her to people?

00:31:41 Speaker_03
Well, I mean, showbiz, I introduce her as my first wife. Yeah, yeah, of course.

00:31:46 Speaker_01
Did she know it was your first scallop?

00:31:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were very open about these things.

00:31:50 Speaker_01
Oh, yeah.

00:31:50 Speaker_03
You know, there's no point, like, claiming you've had loads and loads of scallops just to impress a new partner, isn't it? You've got to be honest, isn't it?

00:31:57 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah.

00:31:57 Speaker_03
It's my first one.

00:31:59 Speaker_02
Especially if you're then going to be blown away by the scallop so much. You can't control that. We already know you can't control your bodily reactions to things. This is, I've had loads of these. Oh no!

00:32:12 Speaker_03
Little tummy giving me away again. But my choice is not that. My choice is dahi puri. Which is, I'm going, following up the papadums with another crunch based. Have you had dahi puri? It's like, chaat. So you get your little crispy shells. Chaat.

00:32:32 Speaker_03
I don't think there's enough A's in the word chart. There's not, there's not. You get your like crispy shells, which I think are also made of sort of chickpea flour.

00:32:39 Speaker_03
Fill them up with like chopped up boiled potatoes, tiny little chunks of boiled potatoes, chopped up raw onion, chickpeas, pomegranate seeds, spices, bit of chaat masala, bit of chilli, dollop of yoghurt, chutneys, tamarind chutney, maybe mint chutney.

00:32:54 Speaker_03
Coriander top with sev.

00:32:55 Speaker_03
She's like crunchy chickpea micro noodles some coriander leaves, and it is the perfect mouthful I don't think it's possible in this universe or any other universe to come up with a better mouthful than a than a dahi puri It's got everything cuz it's like a perfect size as well.

00:33:10 Speaker_03
You can just pop it in just pop it in yeah Yeah, and again the first time I had that was a A restaurant in Tooting called Castori, which sadly shut down. It was a South Indian vegetarian place.

00:33:20 Speaker_03
Shut down, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago and I still haven't really recovered from that. It was possibly the greatest trauma of my life when I drove past that and it had closed.

00:33:29 Speaker_03
I still remember, you know, it's like that for people of an older generation. where were you when you heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated?

00:33:36 Speaker_03
For me it's where were you when you drove past Castori and saw that it shut down and always remember that I was driving my car past Castori. Because Castori was where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated as well.

00:33:50 Speaker_03
It was a fantastic little restaurant, and the dahi puri, and I've had dahi puri in many places around the world, in India and wherever I can find them, in Britain, in America. That was actually quite a weird one in America.

00:34:05 Speaker_03
I was in Los Angeles, and I was staying in an Airbnb, I was doing a stand-up tour, and I saw there was a little Indian restaurant at the bottom of the road where I was staying in an Airbnb.

00:34:15 Speaker_03
And I got back there late after the show and I thought, and it was still open, I thought I'll go and get something there. And I walked in there and the guy at the counter said, hello Mr. Zaltzman.

00:34:26 Speaker_03
And at the time I was writing a blog on a cricket website and it had quite a big following in the Asian expat community in America.

00:34:35 Speaker_01
I just thought John Oliver is so famous in America. What's the fish doing on land?

00:34:44 Speaker_03
It was, yeah, very odd. And then they had pani puri, which is similar but without the yogurt on the menu. And I said, can you do dahi puri? And he said, for you, we'll do dahi puri. Amazing. And it was about midnight. And that was glorious.

00:35:03 Speaker_01
Oh, man. Anyway, but it's... So Pani Puri's got, like, stuff poured into it as well. Yeah, yeah, there's lots of different variations.

00:35:09 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's... But you're cracking the top, so there comes the little pillows, right, and you crack the top and then pour them in?

00:35:14 Speaker_03
Well, uh, you, yes. I mean, it slightly depends which ones you're having. Yeah, yeah, so the diaper comes prepared with the top pre-cracked and filled up with... But it's got everything, it's got crunch, it's got gloop, it's got sharps, it's got beats.

00:35:28 Speaker_02
Tamarind chutney is so good. The tamarind is my favourite bit of that sort of stuff.

00:35:34 Speaker_01
So good. I love you getting one in LA, like a sneaky midnight one just for you. That's got to feel special. You probably didn't care how the gig went at that point. It wasn't worth the trip.

00:35:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, but I mean I've long since learned in my career not to care how the gig goes.

00:35:53 Speaker_01
Just think about the puree after. And how many of them do you want on your dream? I think six. Yeah, six of them. You're sinking those one after the other. Yeah, yeah.

00:36:02 Speaker_03
I mean, that's probably quite a lot for a starter, but... Well, yeah, it depends. Are there two of you at this meal? Or is it just me? Whoever you want. Whoever you want. What's your dream meal? My dream meal? Yeah. Yeah, so do you dream guests at the meal?

00:36:11 Speaker_03
What are the chances of my wife listening to this show? You know her better than us.

00:36:16 Speaker_01
You're now wife.

00:36:17 Speaker_03
Also, very much, she knows you very well, so... Oh, I don't know. I don't know who I'd have at my... I mean, if it's just you on your own.

00:36:24 Speaker_01
Any historical figure. Any historical figure. Let's be honest, it's a cricket player. It could be a historical figure, it could be friends that you... It could be people that you know. It could be as many or as few people as you like. It could be us guys.

00:36:35 Speaker_01
Some people sometimes choose us, and it's nice, but in the back of our minds, obviously, we're like, well, that's bullshit. Yeah. You wouldn't have us, no? It's because we're in front of you now. No, it's because we're in front of you. Yeah.

00:36:45 Speaker_03
But, uh, there's no way. Yeah, it's good. I'm not sure who my perfect dinner companion would be. If it's alone, that's also fine.

00:36:52 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's fine.

00:36:53 Speaker_03
Mine would be alone. I like to commune with fine foods, um, on a deeply spiritual level. I mean, I've had a lot of wonderful meals with my wife. Yes. So, it feels ridiculous to have another one. Unnecessary, I would say.

00:37:08 Speaker_03
Yeah, especially the best meal you've ever had. I don't know, I mean, anyone from history, that would be... I mean, Jesus would be quite interesting. Just to see if he could turn, you know, a dahi puri into like 5,000 dahi puri.

00:37:28 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's more than two eggs plus two.

00:37:33 Speaker_01
Yeah, because that's never really covered how we did it, because like, with that feed of the 5,000, it just seems that it just keeps on going.

00:37:39 Speaker_01
But there must have been a point where they're picking it up and they're dividing it and they're going, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah.

00:37:43 Speaker_03
My assumption is he just, new vocals ain't gone mad for me, isn't it? I mean, yeah, in terms of what you're actually getting as a...

00:37:48 Speaker_02
With tiny portions, I assume. He just really divided it up.

00:37:53 Speaker_03
The other potential explanation is that it was a scheme whereby he made a few fish finger sandwiches and then encouraged everyone there to get the fish finger sandwich and then lend it to the person sitting next to them. Right.

00:38:10 Speaker_03
So, and that keeps going until everyone thinks they are owed a fish finger sandwich at the end of it. So basically people go away thinking we are one fish finger sandwich better off.

00:38:19 Speaker_03
So it's basically a sort of, I don't know, some kind of Ponzi scheme, basically. With all due respect, like I said, I'm Jewish, so we have to be a little skeptical about it. Happy Christmas, everyone. Your dream main course?

00:38:37 Speaker_03
My dream main course, well, this is a specific dish. I mean if I had to, you know, choosing one main course, I do love a big chunk of hake. I think it's a much underrated fish.

00:38:54 Speaker_01
Yeah, we went through a hake phase. A hake phase, yeah. When I was a kid, my mum and dad got big into hake for a while. Right. Yeah, so it's breaded hake. Right. At least one day a week.

00:39:05 Speaker_03
Yeah, I think it's a really underrated fish and, you know, I mean, I think the people of Spain do a lot of good things with food. Yeah. They really, really know how to treat a dead pig.

00:39:18 Speaker_03
And, you know, I mean, it must be exciting, I think, being a pig in Spain, thinking, you know, I mean, obviously you might, I don't know if you enjoy your life as a pig, but to think what awaits, you know, what joy you will bring.

00:39:31 Speaker_02
Spanish pigs go, eat me! Yeah, they do.

00:39:35 Speaker_03
They definitely go gobble gobble. But, yeah, Hagar's a glorious fish. But my main course is a venison wellington.

00:39:45 Speaker_02
Specifically a venison wellington made by the aforementioned wife We used to have so she's not invited to the meal, but she is cooking this You can come you can bring in the venison wellington, but you got to leave straight away

00:40:02 Speaker_02
Don't look Jesus in the eye.

00:40:04 Speaker_03
Yeah, we used to do these New Year's Eve parties where we'd have about six or eight friends around and they'd give us 25 or 30 quid and we'd go and buy a mother load of food and cook an eight or ten course meal.

00:40:16 Speaker_03
Which I was generally responsible for, I think it's fair to say, fewer than half of the courses.

00:40:22 Speaker_03
The Venice and Wellington, and to put this in further context, I'm pretty sure this was 2008, and we'd just had our second baby on the 15th of December, so this colouring masterpiece was created two weeks after, well, 16 days after giving birth.

00:40:41 Speaker_03
So it's pretty impressive. So it's a great big bit of venison fillet or loin, I can't remember which. And you have a sort of wild mushroom chicken liver pate around it, wrapped in parma ham and then pastry and baked.

00:41:00 Speaker_03
And it's, and then with a sort of sharp fruity sauce on the side. and it was absolutely spectacular. That sounds good.

00:41:11 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean it's no secret on this podcast how much I love Wellingtons. Yeah. We've done our dream menus twice now, 100 episode and both times I've picked the same beef Wellington as my main course. Oh right, okay. I can't get over it. Right.

00:41:23 Speaker_01
I think I'm coming to your house for New Year's Eve to throw on episode 300, I've got a different main course.

00:41:28 Speaker_03
The venison Wellington from Andy's house. It was glorious. Venison's a great meat.

00:41:32 Speaker_02
It's a great meet. The Wellington format is one of my favorite formats.

00:41:37 Speaker_03
Was it named after the Duke of Wellington? Is that what he was nibbling at at the Battle of Waterloo? Look it up Benito. He's already on it. He's already on it.

00:41:45 Speaker_02
Yeah, I'm guessing he's got a large part to play in the naming of it. Right. Because he's the boots as well, right?

00:41:50 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah. So the Wellington boots are named after him.

00:41:54 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:41:54 Speaker_03
Because before that everyone just wore green flash trainers in there. battlefields can often get quite muddy.

00:42:00 Speaker_01
So we invented the key military edge, wellies. It's unclear and it's not defined.

00:42:07 Speaker_01
While historians generally believe that the dish is named after Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, the precise origin of the name is unclear and no definite connection between the dish and the Duke have been found. There you go.

00:42:19 Speaker_02
I mean, it's just the best pie, isn't it, really? Yeah. It's a pie where you know you're going to get good filling.

00:42:26 Speaker_03
I mean, other wonderful main courses I've had over the years, I've been to a few of the restaurants, the American celebrity, celebrity chef, Scloot and Malvayne, and in one of his restaurants,

00:42:38 Speaker_03
His signature thrice-slap-shotted puck of ruthlessly executed guiltless cow served on a sesame-besieged matrice of yeast-inflated and heat-metamorphed wheat-influenced didot besourced with a deconstructed and reconstructed ketchupine rouge of tomate squeegee, comfortingly blanketed with a rectangulant of time-right and coagulated udder-origin lactotum of maternal bovioid.

00:43:01 Speaker_03
Or, to give it its nickname, a cheeseburger.

00:43:04 Speaker_01
See, this is what I thought would happen every course. I thought, Andy's gonna have written a bunch of stuff that doesn't exist, and we're gonna have to engage with it. No, that exists.

00:43:13 Speaker_03
But that exists, it's a cheeseburger.

00:43:14 Speaker_02
It's a cheeseburger, yeah.

00:43:15 Speaker_03
I don't know if you've been to any of Malvane's restaurants. His Emoto Bistro, where each dish is intended to provoke an emotion as well as a flavour. Right. Fantastic.

00:43:24 Speaker_03
Signature dishes include hollow-eyed haddock, pessimistically served on a resigned bed of fait accompli seaweed.

00:43:30 Speaker_03
Gunpoint served ransom of lamb's liver, frightened into a territory presented with a harrowed memory of spirit broken split peas and giggly hen sausages aroused in a pseudo-erotic ketchup of seriously buff stripped tomatoes.

00:43:43 Speaker_03
I mean, they all sound quite nice.

00:43:45 Speaker_02
It was like you hit your threshold of saying stuff that was real. And then you were like, I've got it, hang on, let me just do this before we carry on.

00:43:52 Speaker_01
I must have done nearly half an hour. Yeah, it's amazing. It's interesting because your two main passions are stats, which couldn't be more real. And absolute bullshit. Absolute nonsense. I love it.

00:44:07 Speaker_01
On this New Year's meal, you said less than half the dishes you were responsible for, but what were those dishes?

00:44:12 Speaker_03
Well, we haven't done it for quite a long time now, but I did once make a very good cheesecake, so it was like an Indian-influenced cheesecake, and so the topping had rose water and cardamom in it, and then sort of crushed pistachios on top.

00:44:34 Speaker_03
It was absolutely delicious. Yeah. I don't remember. I mean, did... That'd get you a Hollywood handshake, surely.

00:44:39 Speaker_02
You'd think so. Yeah. Well, was it a baked cheesecake? Yes. Oh, it was? Okay, good. I think so. There. To me, it sounds like one of those cold cheesecakes that you just do in the fridge. Yeah. No, I think I baked it.

00:44:53 Speaker_03
I really can't remember. It was a long time ago. It was a Bollywood handshake.

00:44:59 Speaker_01
Oh, lovely. Absolutely brilliant. Bollywood bandshake. So fast. Not fast enough. That was great. Bollywood handshake. He contested it to begin with. Is it baked? I'm not going to do the joke if it's not baked. It is? It's a Bollywood handshake then.

00:45:19 Speaker_01
Absolutely brilliant. Merry Christmas everyone.

00:45:27 Speaker_03
Andy Zaltzman's Christmas dinner. Okay, can I... So I had possibly my greatest individual culinary triumph at Christmas in 2021. So I'll talk you through the menu that I did then. I was in Australia for the cricket with the BBC radio.

00:45:42 Speaker_03
And it was still, you know, in the Covid times. And we'd been in Adelaide for the second Test match. And a couple of our team had had positive COVID tests and a couple of others, so they and two others had to isolate.

00:45:59 Speaker_03
So the two had the positive tests that were stuck in Adelaide over Christmas. Didn't get to Melbourne until after Christmas. And two others had to isolate until I'd, I think, done a week. And then they flew into Melbourne on Christmas Day.

00:46:12 Speaker_03
And so I said, right, well, I'll do dinner. So there's three of us. And I went up to the Victoria Market in Melbourne. I'm sure you guys probably both know. It's an amazing market.

00:46:21 Speaker_03
And I did a five-course Christmas lunch, which I think was my greatest, in a little apartment hotel with a fairly limited... So the first course was... I mean, I say I cooked it, this was just assembling some hams and a bit of mozzarella.

00:46:42 Speaker_03
Charcuterie board. Yeah, basically, yeah. Then prawn and lobster risotto. Wow. That's a big deal. I can't remember the recipe he was from.

00:46:53 Speaker_03
But basically you roast up a load of prawn shells, make a stock out of the roasted prawn shells, cook the risotto in the prawn shell stock, and then Cook off the actual prawns and a bit of lobster tail to give it a bit of Christmas-es.

00:47:10 Speaker_03
And it was absolutely delicious.

00:47:14 Speaker_02
That sounds so good. But I know those apartment hotels and I ain't cooking fish in them. The bed is about four steps from the oven.

00:47:22 Speaker_03
Is this the Adena? It wasn't the Adena, no. I can't remember which it was, but it was not an Adena, I don't think. So that was the starter. Main course, we had one non-meat eater, so other than the ham starter.

00:47:37 Speaker_03
And there were non-meat options on the charcuterie board, obviously. did Japanese salmon with fried garlic shoots as a side, garlic shoots in oyster sauce, the Japanese salmon marinated in mirin, some ketchup mayonnaise, some Shaoxing cooking sherry.

00:47:57 Speaker_03
The stomach is non-stop.

00:47:59 Speaker_01
I love it. It's non-stop. We know it's your favourite courses.

00:48:03 Speaker_03
I've just decided to reference it again. Yeah, so just marinate the salmon for half an hour in that and then cook it, cook it hard but short. Yeah. Roar on the inside. That sounds so good.

00:48:18 Speaker_03
Dessert was a chocolate and passion fruit mousse with a little kind of mango fruit salad underneath and then a load of cheese.

00:48:30 Speaker_02
So when I say I've cooked a five course meal The top and tail were just organising really, arranging.

00:48:36 Speaker_03
Yeah, but still. But it was, yeah, not your traditional Christmas meal.

00:48:42 Speaker_01
Excellent. But also like, in that part of the world as well, I think they're more likely to have like, you know, fish and stuff on Christmas Day. Because it's boiling.

00:48:51 Speaker_01
Yeah, they're not doing like Christmas dinners the same as in your favourite, the Northern Hemisphere.

00:48:59 Speaker_02
It sounds incredible, I'd be so happy with that on Christmas day I think. I would love it.

00:49:02 Speaker_02
Especially being away from home and you don't think you're going to get like a nice sort of sit down meal, and then Andy Zaltzman's whipping up a five courser in his hotel room.

00:49:09 Speaker_03
Yeah, I don't usually go that big on cooking. I love cooking, but I generally just riff stuff. But yeah, that was a definite triumph. Did you call it Versailles Touhouhou?

00:49:23 Speaker_03
Well, no, because we're in the Southern Hemisphere, so it goes backwards and it's not ho-ho-ho, it's oh-oh-oh.

00:49:32 Speaker_02
Is that how Santa speaks in Australia?

00:49:35 Speaker_01
Yes, everything is ho-ho-ho. It speaks backwards. Well that sounds good, I think that's a lovely Christmas meal.

00:49:41 Speaker_02
That sounds great, I want that for my Christmas meal this year.

00:49:44 Speaker_01
I would like that. Can you come round to either of our houses on Christmas Day? If the money's right. If the money'll be right, you wait.

00:49:58 Speaker_03
Your dream side dish, hun. Right. My dream side dish. Does it have to be edible?

00:50:03 Speaker_01
So it could just be like a video of David Gower's cover drive. Yeah. To be honest, you can have that. I mean, I have a Christmas special that we've done. They chose a non-edible course at one point. So we have to let you.

00:50:16 Speaker_03
Does it have to be a side dish that complements the main dish?

00:50:20 Speaker_02
No, not at all. This is your dream. If you don't mind. And I'm perfectly happy to serve whatever you're going to have on a VHS copy of David Gower's cover drive.

00:50:29 Speaker_03
Maybe we'll just serve it on a picture of David Gower's cover drive so we'll get that factored in.

00:50:33 Speaker_01
What is, what's a cover drive?

00:50:35 Speaker_03
Right, it's a, it's a, okay, James, I mean, how old are you?

00:50:39 Speaker_01
I'm 39. The only thing I know about cricket is that Atherton rubbed dirt on the ball. Right, and that is true, he mentions that a lot. Right. That's all I know. James really brings that up a lot.

00:50:49 Speaker_01
We're on a text group with some other comedians, a lot of them like cricket, every time it comes up, I say, did anyone rub dirt on the ball? I hope Atherton's nowhere near it because he's a cheat and he will rub dirt on the

00:50:58 Speaker_03
Right, I mean, I think that's, you know, when you're just remembering that one incident from a really illustrious career of well over 100 test matches and, you know, one of the finest opening batsmen of the 1990s, which of course was a very difficult era to be an opening batsman because of, you know, high quality bowling around the world, James.

00:51:14 Speaker_03
I think that's pretty unfair on Atherton. Well he let himself down, he shouldn't have cheated.

00:51:19 Speaker_02
Is that cheating? Yeah, he shouldn't have cheated. Rub the dirt on the ball?

00:51:22 Speaker_03
Don't ever rub dirt on the ball. Yeah, I think he's acknowledged that it was not the right thing to do. There's more gamesmanship than... It was to make it spin funny, weren't it?

00:51:32 Speaker_03
The point is, Mike Atherton is absolutely beyond criticism as a human being.

00:51:36 Speaker_01
Yeah, obviously. What do you think about when the guy in Cool Runnings put weights in the front of the bobsled to make it go faster? John Candy's character. That's the other thing I remember. About cricket? Yeah.

00:51:46 Speaker_03
So, well on the subject of bobsleds, my side dish could be, well, two things. One is a whole mozzarella. I don't know why that's on the subject of bobsleds, but you know, I think you could fit a mozzarella in a bobsled. You could probably churn it up.

00:52:01 Speaker_02
You could probably stick a couple in there, I reckon.

00:52:03 Speaker_03
Is that how it was invented? Just rapid, you know, speed churning in a bobsled?

00:52:07 Speaker_01
Just put buffalo milk in a bobsled and send it down the course. Someone was caught in a snowball fight, and they weren't looking. They were building their snowballs, but not looking at the snowballs, and then they picked up some cheese by mistake.

00:52:17 Speaker_01
Balled it up, about to throw it. That smells different.

00:52:20 Speaker_03
To me, a good mozzarella, and obviously there's a wide range of mozzarellas, but a good mozzarella, and I stayed with my wife in an agriturismo in Italy when our first child was about one. This is before the venison wellington.

00:52:38 Speaker_03
And it was an agriturismo attached to a buffalo farm. So we just had mozzarella pretty much every meal. And a good mozzarella, I think, is one of the purest delights.

00:52:50 Speaker_03
The kind, you know, the big, gloopy, globular, the kind of thing you want to bury your face in. The kind of cheese you want to climb inside and live in.

00:53:02 Speaker_03
When you take a bite of a really good mozzarella, it makes you feel connected to the birth of the universe. It's that kind of thing.

00:53:08 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah. You'd like it like James the Giant Peach, but Andy and the Giant Mozzarella.

00:53:13 Speaker_02
Could you live in a mozzarella though? How quickly are you going to start eating your own house from the inside? Pretty quickly. Yeah.

00:53:18 Speaker_03
Pretty quick. Yeah, but I think you'd enjoy those minutes before you started eating your way out to get some air.

00:53:24 Speaker_01
What do you think of Beretta then? We've mentioned Beretta a lot on the podcast and how it's basically the end of the mozzarella. Because people are like, this is creamier, it's like mozzarella but better.

00:53:35 Speaker_01
Do you feel that way or is mozzarella still the king for you?

00:53:37 Speaker_03
Mozzarella is still the king for me, but I like a mozzarella like a schmortzer. I love the word. It's one of those words that's almost impossible to say without putting on a New York accent.

00:53:48 Speaker_02
Well it sounds like it's the rank above capo in the mafia, doesn't it?

00:53:53 Speaker_01
When you put on a New York accent, does John Oliver feel more at home?

00:53:57 Speaker_03
Does a whole mozzarella count as a side dish?

00:53:59 Speaker_01
Yeah, totally.

00:54:00 Speaker_03
Especially if it's on a picture of David Gower doing his cover drive. And you maybe chuck in some deeply tomato-ish tomatoes, bit of olive oil, maybe a little... So it's not quite a caprese. You're not having basil leaves on there?

00:54:11 Speaker_03
No, you could caprese it up, definitely. But the key is, it's just a mozzarella. Uncut. just a big blob of mozzarella.

00:54:20 Speaker_02
I had mozzarella last night and yeah, I was making, I had a steak, steak and asparagus I was making for myself. And I thought, you know, get some mozzarella, get some tomatoes, do that.

00:54:31 Speaker_02
And quite disappointing, when I poured the mozzarella water out, which I don't, you might drink it, I just pour it away. It's really small mozzarella. You pour it in your ear before you go to bed and you dream of mozzarella.

00:54:44 Speaker_02
Quite disappointingly small mozzarella. Yeah, so I did have a whole mozzarella last night. Yeah, because it was quite small.

00:54:50 Speaker_03
The really, really fresh ones. Yeah. I used to, at the end of the Edinburgh Festival, after I did my last show, I'd generally mark the occasion by buying a mozzarella and eating it. Stuart Lee even more confused.

00:55:08 Speaker_03
The other option for my side dish is back to Spain for some octopus, porpo, ala galega, paprika. And again, it's slightly, I guess, you know, a lot of food is about memory, isn't it? And the first time my wife and I went to

00:55:27 Speaker_03
Northern Spain, we went to Galicia and we stayed in a beautiful little town called Pontevedra and had some octopus which, you know, just basically cooked up fresh in front of us.

00:55:37 Speaker_03
And, yeah, again, I'd never even contemplated eating octopus before and it was, yeah, so delicious. It's like grilled octopus. No, I think it's just boiled actually. Then a bit of oil on it, a bit of salt. A little bit of paprika.

00:55:55 Speaker_03
And also, in terms of the evolutionary race, The octopus is one of the most intelligent species that there is. And some people say, oh, you shouldn't eat them. It's disrespecting an intelligent species. I say, we are in an evolutionary race.

00:56:11 Speaker_03
If you don't eat an octopus, they're going to evolve, aren't they, and overtake us. You're very suspicious of the sea.

00:56:17 Speaker_01
I love the thought of someone who did it with you. I think you should eat that, Andy. They're quite clever. We are in an evolutionary race.

00:56:24 Speaker_03
Same with pigs, isn't it? And pigs are, I mean, not strictly kosher, but like I say, very lapsed.

00:56:33 Speaker_02
There's loopholes. You've mentioned pork products over 50 times this episode.

00:56:38 Speaker_01
Yeah, that can't be, if you're saying we are in an evolutionary race, and then you bow to the rules of religion. You're going to be in trouble there.

00:56:49 Speaker_03
Yeah, so it's, we've got an octopus versus cheese battle here, but I think I'm going to go with the cheese as my favourite.

00:56:56 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:56:56 Speaker_01
Well, I mean, both of those things obviously are delicious, simple side dishes.

00:57:00 Speaker_02
I think out of those two as well, the mozzarella is the one that goes better with the Wellington. Yep.

00:57:05 Speaker_01
Would you like a mozzarella Wellington? Have a big thing of mozzarella and then cover it with olive oil and salt just all around it. Yep. and then basil leaves all around it and then the pastry.

00:57:21 Speaker_01
Or maybe hollow out a tomato that's slightly bigger than the mozzarella.

00:57:26 Speaker_02
I think me and Andy both think it's not going to work. Because it's just going to melt straight away isn't it?

00:57:34 Speaker_01
Heston might be listening to this and will think, by Jove.

00:57:38 Speaker_03
I mean in terms of octopus, Scloot and Malvane does some wonderful octopus dishes.

00:57:45 Speaker_02
I've sensed Andy had zoned out in that bit.

00:57:48 Speaker_03
He's reading his doc. If he did this document, he was teeing something up. His protestorant, which is the first protest-themed restaurant in the world, where waiters take your orders by chanting through a megaphone, what do you want?

00:58:02 Speaker_03
And then you announce what you want, and then they say, when do you want it? And you say now, and then they go off. But it's an amazing start. It was a crusade of crudités, rioting rillettes of real grouse.

00:58:19 Speaker_03
Placards of Icelandic elk ham vitrioled with squid ink slogans and brandished on a Soviet-influenced sausage stick.

00:58:26 Speaker_03
And the main course is, I mean, the octopus dish, which is a pastry-fenced occupation of octopus, riot-policed with carrot batons and swayed by propaganda of lefty lattice. Hard to look beyond that.

00:58:39 Speaker_03
The beefs from around the world served overdone or under-reported, they were pretty good. And force-fed opinions of sheep dribbled in an evangelified sauce de rizentement, re-dribbled in a half-baked tomato motto. That was also excellent.

00:58:52 Speaker_01
Cannot believe kettle chips isn't in there. Absolutely waiting for kettle.

00:58:58 Speaker_02
Yeah. Yeah.

00:58:59 Speaker_01
Plum grumble was excellent.

00:59:00 Speaker_03
Yeah And the furious banana banners with an absolute fool that was uh, that was also good Good got that off your chest.

00:59:10 Speaker_01
Yep. Yep You seen finding Dory's is the sequel to finding Nemo. Oh

00:59:15 Speaker_03
No, I'm not seeing it. I did see Finding Nemo when my kids were quite small. Octopus drives a truck in that. Really? In Finding Dory, yeah. Yeah.

00:59:22 Speaker_02
It just proves my point, doesn't it?

00:59:24 Speaker_03
Proves my point.

00:59:24 Speaker_02
Yeah. We can't let that happen.

00:59:26 Speaker_03
It's eat or be eaten, isn't it? Yeah. We can't let that happen.

00:59:36 Speaker_01
Your dream drink, Andy? My dream drink? A cup of tea. Yeah, so happy. Joe, what's nice, you're a very sweet man, and everyone knows this, and you have the same little self-satisfied smile as the great Benito does.

00:59:52 Speaker_01
And I don't think the listener knows that Benito smiles, every now and again he does. Yeah, but it's always when he said something he likes. It's always about his own thing that he's just said, and he'll smile to himself, really pleased with himself.

01:00:03 Speaker_01
It's a nice little U-shaped smile, and you got the same one. It's just very sweet. This is a specific cup of tea.

01:00:12 Speaker_03
Which is... I love tea. I think tea, good leaf tea is one of the greatest luxuries. Because you buy one of the best teas in the world, and it works out about 40, 50p a cup. It's cheaper than a tea bag at a station, by a considerable amount.

01:00:30 Speaker_03
And, you know, the variety in tea is like wine. where it grows. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention brands or companies, but my chosen supplier of Class A teas, Imperial Teas in Lincoln.

01:00:43 Speaker_03
They have a fantastic shop, fantastic website with a little essay on all the teas and some of them come from like a specific tree, but a specific height, halfway up a mountain somewhere in in China.

01:00:57 Speaker_03
And my two favorite teas, one is one that they sell called Honi Hon Cha, which is, it's like drinking optimism. It's, as the name suggests, it's got a sort of honey-ish taste, that's the Chinese black tea.

01:01:11 Speaker_03
You can have it, you can like brew it long and have it with milk or brew it for a couple of minutes and have it on its own.

01:01:20 Speaker_03
And the other is a tea called Opium Hill, which I got from a French tea shop in Paris when I did a really weird BBC World show with the American economist Max Kaiser. also featuring one of Boris Johnson's brothers.

01:01:38 Speaker_03
And it paid not a great deal but they did take you, you know, you had to get the Eurostar out to Paris because it was filmed in Paris.

01:01:46 Speaker_01
Were the three of you on the same train?

01:01:48 Speaker_03
I did share the train with Boris Johnson's brother, Leo. But anyway, so basically, did the... got Eurostar over in the morning, back in the evening, did the recording.

01:01:58 Speaker_03
It was like a... I can't remember, a 20-minute chat about the state of the global economy or something, I can't remember.

01:02:04 Speaker_03
But then I had like an afternoon in Paris, and went to this tea shop called Mariage Frere, and got this tea called Opium Hill, which is... Sorry about that.

01:02:15 Speaker_01
That happens when you bring a full PC into the studio, I guess. That was his stomach again. It's that run out of noises. It's so hungry.

01:02:24 Speaker_03
Full digital. It's what they call a blue tea, which is like an oolong from Thailand. That is like drinking liquefied truth. It's a tea that affects me on a deeply spiritual level.

01:02:38 Speaker_03
In the same way that listening to Muddy Waters singing, I see that as the tea equivalent of the depth of... Ironically, that's how I see tea.

01:02:48 Speaker_01
He's good. The depth of truth that you get. He's good. It's no Bollywood handshake, but it's good. It's good stuff. Yeah. So that would be my... I love it. Yeah. That's good.

01:02:58 Speaker_02
It's rare we've gone to such depth on tea. Yeah.

01:03:02 Speaker_01
We haven't had such an... Normally people go, oh, let's have a tea. I just like it, but that's lovely. And like, do you want to listen to Muddy Waters while you drink your tea?

01:03:09 Speaker_03
Yeah, I mean once, yeah, if you, and particularly if it's tea during the tea interval of a cricket match and you're listening to Muddy Waters, I mean that's quite hard to see where humanity can go that would ever be better than that.

01:03:19 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's the end of the... There's a certain disappointment in having done the greatest thing that could ever be done.

01:03:25 Speaker_03
So maybe you want to leave that as a hypothetical rather than already have done it and the rest of your life seem like a desert of nothingness. Or you know it's the end. What a way to go, that would be. I mean, there's a lot of talk about

01:03:37 Speaker_03
you know, assisted dying. But in fact, if you could do it like that, drinking a cup of opium hill tea, listening to Muddy Waters, or watching cricket during a tea break.

01:03:49 Speaker_01
Sign me up. bit more serious about it. He absolutely wants to do that. Any particular Muddy Waters song that you would want to choose from?

01:04:01 Speaker_03
Not a specific song but a specific album which is Folk Singer which is an acoustic album he did in the early 60s which had a Buddy Guy playing guitar on it as well. Lovely. And that I picked up in Norton Cain's services on the M6 toll road for £3.

01:04:16 Speaker_03
Back in the days when cars had CD players.

01:04:21 Speaker_02
Remember that?

01:04:22 Speaker_03
Remember that? Yeah, put it on. I was already a big Muddy Waters fan and that's beautiful.

01:04:32 Speaker_02
I'm going to listen to that after the recording. Glad you're treating yourself to the toll road as well.

01:04:36 Speaker_01
Yeah, why not? Your dream dessert, we arrive at your dream dessert.

01:04:42 Speaker_03
Right. So again, a couple of options for this. One is just some ice cream from a shop called Giolitti in Rome, which is near the Pantheon, an old Roman temple.

01:04:56 Speaker_03
And they just do fantastic, I mean obviously there's a lot of fantastic ice cream in Italy, but this, again, sort of, you know, specific family memories.

01:05:05 Speaker_03
buying ice cream and sitting next to this 2,000 year old temple eating pistachio ice cream from... There's no way to talk about your wife. From the gods. Particularly pistachio ice cream from there.

01:05:17 Speaker_03
I think a good test of an ice... a pistachio ice cream is a good test of an ice cream shop. Yeah. If you can't nail a pistachio, you've got no business.

01:05:26 Speaker_01
So a lot of people would say that about the vanilla. They'd go, if you want to test how good it is, you go for the vanilla. But you're a pistachio guy, you want to see how good they do that. Yeah, yeah. OK. Why the pistachio?

01:05:36 Speaker_03
Well, it's... I guess it's not too sweet. It's sort of mellow and smooth and rich, deep flavour.

01:05:46 Speaker_02
You want to taste the roasted sort of nature of the pistachio, right? You want to get that flavour without it being overbearing. I agree with you, I love a pistachio. Same with a hazelnut as well as a good gelato to go for.

01:05:59 Speaker_02
Peanut butter ice cream, peanut ice cream?

01:06:01 Speaker_03
I'm not such a fan of that. No, no, no. I don't mind it. It's a good black fruit sorbet. I'm not a fan of that.

01:06:09 Speaker_01
Yeah.

01:06:10 Speaker_03
Are you going cone or cup? Cup.

01:06:12 Speaker_01
Cup. Yeah, good. You've passed. You've passed the test. I mean, you know, you don't get cones in cricket. They all wear a cup. Loves it. Your stomach is- I'm really struggling here. Well you say you're struggling. I'm loving it every time.

01:06:31 Speaker_01
It's absolutely phenomenal. It was from the moment we started, it's not stopped. It's going crazy Andy. It's going absolutely crazy on you.

01:06:39 Speaker_02
Is it picked up on mic, Benito?

01:06:41 Speaker_01
Surely it's been picked up on the mic. That first one has to be picked up on the mic.

01:06:44 Speaker_02
The first one was louder than Andy speaks.

01:06:46 Speaker_01
That frequency, it was a very high pitch frequency cuts through all of us. But that last one just then must do as well. It was quite a- Well it's basically my, literally my internal monologue.

01:06:58 Speaker_02
How many flavors per cup? Because sometimes I get excited and I'm like three scoops in a cup and then they all mix up and you're losing the purity of it.

01:07:07 Speaker_03
Two is optimal and you can always go back and get a bonus if you've done well on the first two.

01:07:15 Speaker_01
Yeah, I find it hard not to go free because I love ice cream so much and I always I always go I should have just gone to like I was like now remember next time just go for two because you know that's enough and it's nice and they complement each other and free is this always yeah too much ice cream and they're not gonna complement each other as much and they got going different ways

01:07:32 Speaker_03
One of the best ice creams I ever had was a vanilla ice cream at a restaurant in London. I can't remember, possibly Andrew Edmonds? And it just had Pedro Ximena's sherry poured on the top, and simple but divine.

01:07:45 Speaker_02
I love it, I absolutely love stuff like that. Yeah, with the sherry poured on top. It's proper.

01:07:51 Speaker_01
Yeah, vanilla ice cream with booze on it. Yeah, whiskey as well with like, with that kind of ice cream.

01:07:58 Speaker_03
But and I don't know if this counts as dessert, but I could a cheese trolley.

01:08:03 Speaker_02
Mm-hmm.

01:08:03 Speaker_03
Is it either or now?

01:08:04 Speaker_02
Listen, here we go.

01:08:05 Speaker_01
This is the controversial point here Andy we have That was the sound of the sound of the trolley wheels on the floor

01:08:23 Speaker_03
And he's bought him props. This has never happened to me before.

01:08:26 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Don't worry, it happens to a lot of guests. It's great having two guests on. the tummy. Um, so listen, there's transparency. Yeah. There's guests on the podcast before who decided that they want a cheese board instead of a dessert.

01:08:42 Speaker_01
I've gone absolutely apeshit at them. Uh, it makes me furious. Ed and I have both on our dream menus chose a traditional sweet dessert and a cheese board and had them, you know, one after the other in whatever order. And we've had other guests do that.

01:08:58 Speaker_02
And we know you've got a history with that after your Christmas mail in Melbourne.

01:09:02 Speaker_01
I like that because I do like doing that myself. I like the cheese course as either a bridge from the main course to the dessert or afterwards by the fire with your friends, just like taking your time with a cheese board, that's fine.

01:09:15 Speaker_01
If you have it in place of the ice cream, especially because it sounds delicious, your stomach is going to be making way worse noises. I don't know what it's currently making, I'm gonna weigh it on you.

01:09:24 Speaker_02
I think this is a Christmas episode, it would be a shame to not give you the ice cream and the cheese board. Right, good. It would be a huge shame.

01:09:30 Speaker_03
So I mean, a good cheese board is one of... It's hard to switch it off. The stomach. Sorry about this.

01:09:38 Speaker_02
The stomach's run out of battery and it's still bloody bleeped. Anyway. I'm really tired. Sorry. Your stomach's on vibrate and your phone's on loud.

01:09:52 Speaker_03
One of my favourite ever cheeseboards was in the Wandsworth restaurant Chez Bruce, which is constantly rated one of the best, certainly in London and possibly the country.

01:10:08 Speaker_03
And we went there to celebrate when my wife and I found out she was pregnant for the first time.

01:10:16 Speaker_02
So this is pre... Pre-Wellington. Pre-Wellington. Pre... The buffalo mozzarella farm. Yep. But post scallop.

01:10:24 Speaker_03
Post scallop. We're doing a timeline of Andy's relationship. We went to celebrate and they have a fantastic cheese trolley there. But my wife just found out she was pregnant so was unable to eat the... A lot of the cheese run past your eyes.

01:10:39 Speaker_03
So I just vaunted my cheese freedom in her face. and still one of the greatest moments of our relationship as far as I'm concerned.

01:10:52 Speaker_01
Well maybe that's your dream meal. The person you're having it with is your wife while pregnant and you get to just like go absolutely wild and eat whatever you like.

01:11:02 Speaker_03
But in terms of, we mentioned food showing the ingenuity of humanity, I think cheese does that more than anything else. How Humans have taken the idea of milk and turned it into thousands and thousands of cheeses. Yeah.

01:11:18 Speaker_03
I think, you know, that tells you... A lion wouldn't do that. a shark wouldn't do that. It took a very special species to do that. Do you remember any of which particular cheeses that really I can't remember from that, I do like a strong blue cheese.

01:11:46 Speaker_03
So we've been to northern Spain on holidays quite a bit and the Cabrales cheese, I don't know if you've ever had that, it's from the north of Spain and it is a kind of combat level blue cheese.

01:11:59 Speaker_03
You know, it's the kind of cheese that needs to be cordoned off. I mean, it's borderline assault more than cheese, but it's quite spectacular. I had an outstanding Mimolette in Paris once, which is like a hard, orangey cheese.

01:12:17 Speaker_02
So you like the big cheeses? I do like a big cheese. It smacks you in the face, that sort of cheese, yeah.

01:12:24 Speaker_01
Do you want to hear the worst joke I've ever said on this podcast? Go on then. Cabrales' um, Charlie Dimmock's favourite cheats. Have a Charlie Dimmock. Yeah. Everyone was obsessed that she didn't wear a bra. Yeah.

01:12:36 Speaker_01
It was like the main news in this country for ages. Yeah. As a topical comedian. Yeah, the Dimmocks. Saltzman would have covered that every week. Yeah.

01:12:42 Speaker_02
Would you? Would you have done?

01:12:44 Speaker_03
Uh, well look, if it's in the news, you know, I have a sacred, sacred duty. Yeah. Given to me by almighty Zeus to uh, try and make jokes about it. Yeah.

01:12:54 Speaker_01
It's a curse as much as a gift, Ed. I'm going to read your menu back to you now and see how you feel about it. You would like sparkling water, of course, saving the planet.

01:13:03 Speaker_01
You would like two and a half poppadoms with chutney, all the chutney options, raw onions, grasshopper sauce, of course, hot pickle. Starter, six dahi puris. Main course, venison wellington made by your wife on New Year's Eve.

01:13:16 Speaker_01
And your Christmas meal is the charcuterie board, the prawn and lobster risotto. Japanese salmon, chocolate and passion fruit mousse, and the cheese board afterwards. Side dish, whole mozzarella. On a picture of David Gower.

01:13:31 Speaker_01
David Gower's cover drive, which I still don't know what a cover drive is. Your drink is Opium Hill cup of tea from Paris while listening to Folk Singer by Muddy Water. Dessert, you would like a cup of pistachio ice cream from Geliti in Rome.

01:13:47 Speaker_01
And what was the other one? Is it just the pistachio you want in that cup? I wanna chuck in a... I wanna chuck in a sorbet. Chuck in that fruit sorbet that you said. Yeah. Joe, I'm also going to chuck in the vanilla ice cream with the sherry on it.

01:13:59 Speaker_01
I'm just going to throw that in. Separate bowl. Because it sounds so great. I think you should have it. And then you want to follow that up with a cheese board from Chez Bruce while your wife is pregnant. Yep. Sounds pretty good. It does.

01:14:11 Speaker_01
That does sound good. Weirdly, me reading you that menu back was the quietest your stomach has been though. It completely stopped for the full menu.

01:14:21 Speaker_02
I think your dream menu is more Christmas-y than your Christmas menu.

01:14:25 Speaker_01
Yes, that is.

01:14:27 Speaker_03
Does that sound good to you? That sounds excellent. Yeah. That sounds good to me. Do we cook it now? Is that how the show works?

01:14:35 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a little kitchen out there. And listeners might be like, no, you never do that. We actually, for the listeners, we always do an episode afterwards where we cook the meal and eat it.

01:14:45 Speaker_01
We put those in the vault, like Prince does with albums, or used to. and we're going to release them all posthumously.

01:14:52 Speaker_03
I brought my own deer for the venison wellington. Oh, I was wondering what that was. Let's go and wrestle it to the death. That's the best way to do it, you sort of ready tenderise it.

01:15:03 Speaker_01
We're in an evolutionary race, so I'm going to take on that venison.

01:15:07 Speaker_02
Also, we release some best of episodes at the end of the year, where we have all our favorite clips and there's going to be a separate section. It's going to be like, oh, we had Andy Zaltzman on to talk about Christmas.

01:15:18 Speaker_02
There's going to be all my favorite clips from this, but then we will have a separate section saying, but our most surprised guest was Andy's tummy. And then we'll just have a compilation of all of your tummy sounds.

01:15:27 Speaker_01
Yeah. Yeah. So you pick up all the tummy sounds and then someone out there will undoubtedly auto-tune all those into some Christmas song, using your tummy gurgles. And you'll be able to play that every Christmas, as a family being a new tradition.

01:15:42 Speaker_03
I think tummy gurgles plays baseball for the New York Forks.

01:15:48 Speaker_01
Anything you want to say before we go, Andy?

01:15:49 Speaker_02
Yeah, any more bullshit on the laptop for us?

01:15:51 Speaker_01
Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't want you to have written a whole dish out and we don't get to hear it.

01:15:55 Speaker_03
I think that's, um... I think we've, uh... Yeah, I think we've covered it, I think. Oh, there's... Malvane's got a new insect restaurant. Oh, fantastic! Oh, Andy's got a new restaurant in Paris.

01:16:10 Speaker_03
It's an all-you-can-eat shellfish seducto-brasserie called Moulez-Vous Buffet à Vossois. He's, uh... He's got a couple of Christmas recipes he's just put out on social media.

01:16:28 Speaker_03
One is a regretful wood pigeon hand-haunted in a memory of asparagate wrongdoings, bondage to a bed of covertly assassinated scallops and hard-punched potato faces.

01:16:38 Speaker_03
Or you can go with a high-speed car crash tenderized paragon of overbearingly mothered beef groin, with a splenetic reduxio, gruffly manhandled chanterelle mushroom willies, and a pert bouncer of cabbage tits.

01:16:48 Speaker_03
But he's got a new insect, because obviously insects are going to be the future of food.

01:16:52 Speaker_04
Yeah.

01:16:52 Speaker_03
And his latest insect menu is a trio of breast of ladybird, filet de wasp and tarantula web snaffled moth sweetbreads, heartened by a sauce squigglish of fear-motivated larvae.

01:17:04 Speaker_03
Then you've got an amuse-bouche of a ready-to-pop cocoon of caterpillar flouncing into a mouth flutter of freshly buttered butterfly.

01:17:12 Speaker_03
and then a magatine of swath orphaned fly infants confronted by an encroachment of filth-fed cockroaches counter-intuited on a tally-a-tally of hand-splattered worms.

01:17:21 Speaker_02
Beautiful.

01:17:22 Speaker_03
Well... That's the future of food, people.

01:17:25 Speaker_02
Andy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Andy. Pleasure. Thanks, Andy.

01:17:29 Speaker_04
Merry Christmas.

01:17:35 Speaker_02
Well, there we are. What a wonderful way to see Christmas, the Christmas period in.

01:17:40 Speaker_01
Yes, with Andy and his very vocal tummy. Oh my goodness, the tummy, man. The tum.

01:17:46 Speaker_02
Look, it happens a lot on the podcast, but maybe it would only happen once or twice. And it's often me, there'll be a little gurgle, but it'll go on reference because it's quiet enough to get away with.

01:17:56 Speaker_02
But we just couldn't leave it because Andy's stomach was louder than his voice.

01:18:01 Speaker_01
The first one was so loud and then it didn't stop. We had to, you know, not reference it every single time, otherwise we'd still be recording. But like, it happened so much, I'm very curious to see how often it is audible to the listener.

01:18:15 Speaker_02
I'll tell you what we're going to start having to do. Sorry, this is more work for you, Benito. It's having three extra mics in the studio at tummy level.

01:18:23 Speaker_01
Yeah, you will have to do that and make sure they're at tummy level. Otherwise, we'll be in trouble. I have a few guests complaining. Neither Andy or his tummy mentioned a wax lettuce. Yes. So that was good.

01:18:37 Speaker_01
That means we don't have to kick either of them out.

01:18:39 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly. But don't forget to go and see Andy on tour with his brand new show, The Zoltgeist, touring nationwide until the 9th of May at London's Leicester Square Theatre. Plenty of dates. Go and check them out on andyzoltzman.co.uk.

01:18:53 Speaker_01
Thank you so much, Andy, for coming on again. Ed, do you want to do some food shoutouts. We've had some food sent to us.

01:18:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, we've had some lovely stuff sent to us. Which we appreciate very much. Always very grateful for it. We've had some kombucha from Low Bros and Leftfield. Two different types of kombucha. You're a boochhead.

01:19:08 Speaker_01
I'm a boochhead, so I'm looking forward to contrasting and comparing these two brands. Yes, like fine wines. Drinking back and forth. Yeah, exactly like a fine wine. A vertical tasting. Yeah, so I'm all doing vertical tasting on both of them.

01:19:20 Speaker_01
That is exciting. I like discovering new kombuchas. Yes. You know, I've shouted out my favourite one on the podcast before, but maybe this will be a challenger. We've got some great coffee as well from Elsewhere Coffee.

01:19:30 Speaker_01
That Benito has described himself as lovely. Yes. He is a big fan of it. It's here in the offices, in Benito's office, which he runs a pretty tight ship here.

01:19:40 Speaker_02
He does, but we get so much nice stuff that any guests coming in, they got the pick of the crop here.

01:19:46 Speaker_01
They got the pick of the crop and now they've got some lovely coffees to drink while they're waiting to talk to these two hunks.

01:19:52 Speaker_02
We got some beer from Pressure Drop, which Benito thinks got drunk at the Christmas party.

01:19:56 Speaker_01
He said thinks very uncertainly, because clearly he had a bit of a rowdy one at the Christmas party, Benito, going on the sherrys.

01:20:03 Speaker_02
I didn't get to taste any of this Pressure Drop, but I like Pressure Drop, I've had their beers before, so I am happy to give a big shout out to Pressure Drop. Oh lovely, thank you Pressure Drop. Thank you Pressure Drop.

01:20:13 Speaker_02
We got sent some grounded plant-based protein shakes. You drink that at home, don't you? I have drunk that at home, and I didn't realize we got sent free ones until I came into the Christmas party and there was a box of it sat there. Uh-huh.

01:20:25 Speaker_02
Well, actually, first time I saw it, Anya Magliano was walking around the party drinking it like it was a party drink, and then said she was gonna take the whole box, and then messaged me the next morning saying, I forgot the protein drinks.

01:20:35 Speaker_01
Why was she drinking them at the Christmas party?

01:20:38 Speaker_02
You met Annie, right?

01:20:39 Speaker_01
I guess so, but I mean, is it because it's like a milkshake? Yeah, I guess so.

01:20:42 Speaker_02
It's the closest thing to a milkshake she could get. Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough. She was loving it. Needs must. Yeah, but they are, I really like those and they help my games. We got sent some whiskey from Compass Box Whiskey and a lot of fun, James.

01:20:55 Speaker_02
They put it in like a leather pouch. with a padlock on it, and you've got to solve the puzzle to open it to get to the whiskey. That's more up your street than mine. Well, it wasn't up my street.

01:21:05 Speaker_02
I worked out that the bag was quite loose, so I could just take the bottle out without opening the padlock. That's lateral thinking. Lateral thinking. That's in my bag. Thank you very much. Congratulations, Ed. Lovely whiskey. Ding ding.

01:21:16 Speaker_02
Well, that's it from our Christmas specials, but fear thee not, we'll be back with best of the year episodes, as we always do. We do compilations of our favourite bits from across the whole year. And it's the best episode of the year.

01:21:28 Speaker_02
It's the best episode of the year. It's the only one James listens to while he cleans his house. That should be the best of. Yeah. It's clips of the best of. Yes, that's true.

01:21:35 Speaker_01
Because that's the best. It is. No, no. What we should include is that clipped up. But that's what it would be. We should do another episode at the end of the year which is clipped up. The best of the best of.

01:21:44 Speaker_02
And then it just gets shorter and shorter and shorter. Until you get the best. Yeah. So looking forward to that. I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas period. Whatever you're doing, however you're celebrating, just have a lovely rest.

01:21:54 Speaker_01
Yes, look after yourselves. Bye-bye! Bye! Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble! Cock-a-doodle-doo!