Title: Bumming C3PO

Soundcloud Time: 1:13:42
Youtube Time: 1:14:25

Original Record Date: November 7, 2015
Soundcloud Publication Date: January 6, 2016
Youtube Publication Date: January 6, 2016

Please Welcome a Man
*RH is accidentally seen through the curtain.* You’ll never guess who’s coming on now.

Cool Kids
N/A

Guest Best Known
For his appearance on Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

Audience

Better or Worse than Last Week: N/A
Like or Unlike Wikipedia: N/A

Member Member Note
Matthew shown on RH’s hand-held camera
in the front row
wearing two RHLSTP badges
likes to think he’s semi-retired
postman
RH says that he’s “much better than the bloke in the front row at the last podcast”

Emergency Questions

If you had to go on a week’s holiday with one of the puppets from Spitting Image, which would you choose and bear in mind the puppet would choose the holiday destination?

So they will just continue to play the person represented by the Spitting Image puppet? So it would be going, as it were, going on holiday with a caricature of an 80’s politician. Or another 80’s celebrity. Um, I don’t know. It would probably – the easiest-going holiday would probably be the ’80’s Spitting Image puppet of Melvyn Bragg. I think that they would probably choose a nice – I’m thinking of them as “they”; two puppeteers and the object. Choose quite a nice destination. Not too challenging. And it wouldn’t be too… Whereas I mean the obvious, showy choice would be some member of the Thatcher Cabinet. You know, the screeching sort of Douglas Hurd puppet, but I just think that would be wearing. And I wouldn’t just be going on this holiday for the anecdotal value. I’d want to just have a nice, relaxed time. So maybe, if not the Melvyn Bragg one, maybe one of the general “members of the public” puppets that weren’t a specific celebrity. Because I imagine whoever did the voices for that would be grateful for the holiday. The puppeteer – there wouldn’t be the best puppeteers on those, you know, normal members of the public, so yeah, maybe one of them. If not the Melvyn Bragg.

Kettle Crisps are not as nice as they once were. Have I changed or have they? That’s a rhetorical question. If you could travel back in time to compare any food of today with an equivalent in the past, what time would you go back to and what food would you taste?

But you don’t have to compare a contemporary version… Well, I think what distracting me about this is are they not called Kettle Chips? I mean, I will be the first to admit they are a type of crisp, but I think the brand name is Kettle Chips. Well they are crisps but they can still have a name that contains the word “chips”, can’t they? I think they’ve always been called Kettle Chips. It’s true, I have started to see the word “crisp” to be the word “chip”. I also, I agree with you and I don’t think they have changed but I think there was something amazing when they first came out, about how they were different from the standard crisps. And then that thing that was different about them turned out not to be nice. But it took several years before you realized, Oh yeah, they’re so much crunchier – and then you realize, No, it’s annoying. It spikes the roof of your mouth. And what’s nicer is the Pringles turn back to their constituent mulch. Um, what food would I compare? I don’t know. I think maybe… maybe beer? I’d quite like to do a sort of time-travelling, sort of, beer tasting. Nerdy beer tasting thing. Go back to where it was like, the beer was just so weak it was just there so it wasn’t water so it didn’t kill you and then maybe the really strong beer that maybe Henry VIII enjoyed. Apparently Guiness was a bit of a mistake. That they sort of burnt something. Tastes quite burnt. Tastes like a mistake. So I’d quite like to try what they were making before that mistake because maybe it’s nicer. Maybe I could actually put in a word for it. “I think you’ve gone a bit mad, because this other beer is much nicer but you’re probably bored of it because you make it every day and now this mad idea of making the stuff that tastes burnt has taken over the whole company and you could be ruining a lot of people’s evenings for hundreds of years to come.”

What is the worst emergency you’ve ever been involved in?

I don’t think I’ve ever really been involved in an emergency. No. No, I mean, no. Fire drills at school but they weren’t real emergencies. There was never a real fire at school. Oh, although, I don’t know if I was there, but I think a disgruntled ex-pupil at my school put a sort-of explosive in the organ loft of the chapel, which resulted in the organist going deaf for two days. But I wasn’t aware of when that happened.

Why do elephants have such low rates of cancer?

Um, I didn’t know they do. Fresh air. Um, I don’t know, I suppose maybe they get their tubes rinsed out a lot.through the inhalation of liquid. Is grey an anticarcinogenic colour? I don’t know. Smoking, that’s very bad for the, like, the tubes. They don’t smoke but I would say even less likely to suffer from serious catarrh than a non-smoking other mammal. Because they’re able – I mean, we can’t do it, can we? We can’t sluice out our noses by just simply – you, know, I would love here, while talking, to be able to just simply place my long nose into that water bottle and, you know, sluice everything ’round. It would be very useful as an actor if you need to cry; you just, you know, in a scene just make sure you have plenty of water up your nose and then close off the other areas and then a little tear would come out there. You could do it, if you had different coloured drinks, you could have different coloured tears. That’s immediately a special effect. So, I mean, I’m literally guessing.

Can you name another animal that is very cancer resistant?

Uh, the cockroach, isn’t it? I’ve always assumed the cockroach was sort of cancer-resistant because they would apparently do very well after a nuclear, you know, a nuclear winter. *RH advises the naked mole rat was the correct answer.* I certainly feel the fool.

Do you think if you have sex with a robot that should count as cheating on your partner?

Well, I hate to be pedantic, by which I mean, I’ve found an opportunity to be pedantic, but something being an infidelity and something being disallowed… it’s not the same thing. You are allowed to be unfaithful. Chris Huhne went to prison for it. But they say it was about speeding points but it wasn’t; it was the whole country was so cross with the terrible way he treated his wife. Um, which I genuinely thought was an interesting sign of deep propriety in British culture. And just to get a laugh I’m going to say “boobs”. And you can edit that together. The stuff in the propriety in the British culture really went across well. […] What if you thought you were having sex with the real person and then it turned out to be a robot. So you think that would be fine? It would retrospectively turn out… *RH describes scenario where apparent human revealed herself to be a robot.* Would they be trained to say “I am a robot” at the point of orgasm? That’s the bull’s eye for someone who thinks they’re destroying their existing relationships. *RH points out that humans could also say “I am a robot”.* Now that’s what I say while having sex. No, I think there’s no getting around the fact that it would probably be almost exactly as upsetting. *RH points out a robot is just an object.* Essentially you’re making the reasonable point that the fact that this sex toy has become elevated to a more realistic level shouldn’t – you know, that skill in the manufacturing shouldn’t be penalized, in the conventional sense, you know, for its own success. Well, my wife is in the audience, so I’m going to say… I don;t think she’d mind me having sex with a robot that looked like C3PO.

Would you consider sex with a ghost as cheating on your partner?

I, ah… a ghost? Yes, probably. Can ghosts have sex? *RH describes being mounted by a ghost.* What, raped by a ghost? “Get off me, Headless Highwayman.” I think it would be possible at that point just to allow – if you want it to – allow the ghost to finish the process, but then claim that you didn’t have the opportunity to intervene before it reached fruition. Just say, “Yeah, only just at the last moment when I ejaculated I woke up and realized I’d been raped by a ghost and I’m so sorry, darling. But also I’m not sorry. I feel, I want to go on television and say about my terrible experiences of being violated by a ghost. And more people need to realize that this can happen. Also, ghosts int his world, what do they feel… Because sometimes ghosts are just a sheet with two holes in it, sometimes they’re sort of a see-through person you imagine if they walked through you’d just shiver, and sometimes, like in Ghostbusters, they’re sort of made out of gloop. I think we need to know what they actually are before any of this conversation has any meaning.

Notes

RH apologizes to DM after having listened to their previous podcast (episode 13) to prepare.

DM wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day.

RH suggests that David Mitchell named named his daughter after RH’s mum.

RH asked DM if his brother had seen any more ghosts.