Middle Raged Podcast – Episode 8 Transcript

This is the transcript for episode 8 – if you’d like to listen to it, rather than read it, all episodes are available on this page.

Hello, and welcome to this episode eight of the Middle Raged Podcast with me, Keith A Pearson, and my co-host, Adam Eccles.
Good morning to you.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Morning.
One day, we should do this at a slightly more sociable time, which we will come on to, no doubt.
So thanks for your rant, I guess.
It’s, yeah, yeah.
I’m not very sociable, generally, I suppose.
Mornings especially, though.
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s just hard work in the mornings, isn’t it?
Lots of coffee, though, so, you know, we get there in the end, but yeah, it’s a lovely sunny day here in County Clare.
I suppose we should mention the solar storm that’s probably gonna rip apart our planet anytime soon.
I overdo you, I might argue.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you know, we should be blasted out of existence by nuclear energy or whatever it is, but yeah, good.
Yeah, so that’s the…
Yeah, but it is a lovely day.
Let’s talk initially about talking of lovely days.
Our rainy night in Crawley.
Is that…
I think it’s Gladys Night in the Pips.
It’s either that or like a late 80s sort of rom-com.
Yeah, a rainy night in Crawley.
If you have no idea what we’re talking about, it was our little author get-together in Crawley.
And this was last month now, wasn’t it?
It’s a few weeks back.
Right, yeah.
It was…
Two weeks ago.
I think it was two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, yes.
Two weeks.
It was the 27th, wasn’t it?
I think.
Sounds about right.
And we had a splendid evening.
It was, I think, intimate is the word, isn’t it?
Well.
Poorly attended is another.
It was good.
I think about 10 people came.
I’m not sure.
I think it was about 10, maybe a dozen or so.
But it was good to actually sit down and be able to have a conversation with the readers and the likes.
So very, very useful.
And I managed, when arranging all of this, to find the only pub in the UK that called last orders at 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening.
Yes, wasn’t that a very weird thing that we got kicked out at whatever it was and-
It was a half 10, they kicked us out.
I mean, fuck’s sake.
Pubs complain about a lack of trade and they’re kicking, I mean, it wasn’t as though the place was empty, was it?
No, no, it was pretty busy, yeah.
They could have gone on much longer.
That sort of thing would be very much frowned upon here in the islands.
Well, to be fair, I think it’s frowned upon in most places.
And you can understand if it was like a Tuesday evening or something, but on a Saturday evening.
So, fuck you, that pub.
I won’t name them, but…
Yeah, it was cut short.
We were cut off in our prime.
And yeah, that was that.
Or cut off before we got to Drunken Larry, I suppose.
Well, there was that, yeah.
And it was too much of, it was pissing rain, right?
So nobody could be asked to go into town and find somewhere else.
But well, despite that, it was a great night.
And thank you very much to everybody who made the trek.
Indeed.
And that brings us nicely on to our weekly, our episode, is episodeal a word?
Is it episodic?
Should we do, let’s go with that.
Our episodic roast of those very kind souls who’ve made a small donation via buymeacoffee.com forward slash middle raged.
And two patrons have actually stepped up to the plate in the last week or so.
So thank you kindly to firstly, Simon McNally, who actually bought us three coffees.
Nice.
And Simon, now he did tell us how to say surname, didn’t he?
Well, it’s an Irish name, right?
So it’s-
I’m gonna let you butcher it.
Tooey.
Tooey.
It’s spelt much different to how you think it is, but yeah, there’s a fellow at work called Tooey as well.
So yes, I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Is that Louie?
It rhymes with Louie.
Oh, no, no.
I mean, it’s the guy you work with called Louie.
Louie Tooey.
It’s like you’re a bit slow on the uptake this morning.
Yeah, Louie Tooey.
No, I don’t know Louie Tooey, but that is a character, isn’t it?
He’s definitely going in a book at some juncture.
And his lesser known brother, Huey.
So thank you very much to Messrs Tooey and McNally.
And accordingly, this is a first for the Middle Raged Podcast.
We’re going to do a combined roast because we’ve never had Two Simons.
That’s right.
The first event of the Two Simon collision.
The Two Simon phenomena.
So I thought, yeah, what a perfect opportunity to combine them and give us a new way at coming at this.
So do you want to kick us off, mate?
Right, yeah.
So just in case it’s not clear, it’s characters from a book that we may or may not write based on your name alone, right?
And so this is going to be a 1,000-page, very dry courtroom drama, true crime story.
1,000-page?
Yeah, at least.
It’s a good meaty one.
Featuring actual cross-examination dialogue from the courtroom, right?
So it’s, if you’re into the really nitty gritty full ceremony, that’s what it’s…
Yeah, yeah, extreme tedium.
So it’s McNally versus the Irish state.
These chaps are from Dundalk, north of Dublin, near the Northern Ireland border, right?
So yeah, Ture is the barrister and McNally is the defendant.
And we follow the intricately detailed defense of Simon McNally, who has been accused of the murder of six people in Dundalk.
Wow.
And it is known as the tractor killer, which is also the name of the book.
So he’s not killing tractors?
Well, he’s killing people with tractors.
Right.
So all the victims were found on a farm where McNally had been working and they were run over or impaled, but you see those massive spikes on the back of a tractor.
Yeah.
You know, that they’re just driving around and you think like, isn’t that like extremely dangerous?
But they just don’t care.
So yeah, people have been impaled and run over and just mauled and found dead on this farm, right?
He pleads innocence of the guardee, the police here, guardee, of DNA evidence that links him to at least four of the murders.
Um, which is, you know, sloppy, horrific.
Well, so Simon Tewy is tasked with proving McNally’s innocence.
And we’re led on a complex journey of lives and loves, debt and wealth, rags to riches and bags, back to rags again, with Simon’s eloquent and verbose soliloquy.
You’ve got a hit on your hands here, mate.
It’s a tough ride.
It’s a tough read, to be fair.
Yeah, you have to be really dedicated for this.
The jury are moved, but they’re not convinced, right?
However, McKay’s is turned upside down, you know, near the end.
Plot twist.
Yeah, big plot twist, because whilst McNally is in custody, another murder happens at the farm.
And so it turns out that by some freak of nature, that McNally’s DNA is almost identical to that of a violent alpaca that was on the farm.
And this alpaca was able to drive a track just sufficiently to have been killing the victims, right?
Wow.
The alpaca is named Steely Dan for reasons we can’t get into.
And he was actually caught on camera in this last murder.
And the footage was uploaded to YouTube, where it became a viral hit, obviously.
And then, subsequently, Steely Dan escaped from the farm and ironically, shortly after, was impaled on the prongs of a runaway tractor.
Obviously McNally was, what’s the word, acquitted.
Vindicated, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
He was let go and the whole thing was blown over.
But yeah, still seven people died and an alpaca.
I think it’s very brave of you to put this out there.
I mean, anyone could pick that up and run with it.
And for depriving you of a potentially, yeah.
I mean, yes, it’s, you know, you get to learn the intricate history of McNally and his long life of seven wives.
Jesus.
On the farm.
Yes.
Well, that’s something to look forward to, folks.
Should Adam ever have an entire year at his disposal?
The tractor killer.
Oh, well, I’ve gone off in a slightly different tangent.
I sometimes wonder, I read these things back and think, what the fuck is going on in my head?
So, in my version, okay, Simon McNally and Simon Toohey, they met at school and they bonded over their love of electronic music, you know, New Order, Yazoo, Pet Shop Boys, that sort of stuff.
And then they went to the same college, and Simon T, as he became known, bought a synth.
Yeah, and the pair started creating their, Simon T and Simon Mack.
And they started creating their own tunes under the name Simon vs Simon, ironically.
Late 80s, bear in mind, there was lots of this sort of shit going on.
And one of the tunes, Better Together, actually became popular in the rave scene.
Do you remember the rave scene back in the late 80s and 90s?
Yeah, people wouldn’t know the venue until the last minute.
That’s it, you’d be normally in a field or something, and you’d go nowhere.
You’d just get off your tits until 4am.
Anyway, they were offered a record deal for that particular one, and it reached number 26 in the UK charts.
This is Better Together.
It was a good grounding for their fledgling dance music career.
So they got together and carried on penning tunes.
They were confident that they would go on to bigger and better things.
Anyway, halfway through the production of their first album, Simon T discovered that Simon Mack had been diddling his girlfriend Claire.
So consequently, they had a massive fallout.
Well, you would.
And that was the end of Simon vs.
Simon.
Now, Simon Mack eventually went on to marry Lisa, and he became a home economics teacher in the home counties.
It changed the name there, did she?
Lisa?
It was Claire and then it was Lisa.
Yeah, I edited that badly.
Isn’t Claire and Lisa are interchangeable?
They’re those generic sort of 80s woman names that I tend to overuse.
I think we all know that if you’re Claire, you can be Lisa, and if you’re Lisa, you can be Claire.
Yeah, fair enough.
We’re going to assume that he married either Claire and or Lisa.
Okay.
Thank you for pointing that out.
If you hadn’t, somebody else would.
Anyway, let’s just say that Simon Mack eventually married Simon T’s first love, Lisa Droucler, and he became a home economics teacher.
That’s like cooking for kids, isn’t it?
That’s it.
Basically, yeah.
Buying things and stuff.
How to make a lasagna.
How’s that wine?
I think, I don’t know.
I would never pay.
I don’t know if they do that anymore at school, home economics.
Probably not, because…
Too practical, isn’t it?
Yeah.
I remember doing that and the teacher was a woman and she had sort of…
Bit sexist.
Yeah.
Subliminally, that’s not the word.
Subliminally.
Just decided, I suppose, that men, boys, whatever, shouldn’t be cooking.
That was her sort of outlook.
And so every single week, me and another few kids would get sent down to the shop to buy something for her.
Yeah, like her weekly shopping.
Just go and get this.
Different times.
Yeah.
Oh, brilliant.
While the girls were cooking or sewing or something.
The irony is that I went to catering college after that and became a chef.
I can’t remember her name.
So you’re very good at shopping now, I’d imagine.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Anyway, so what happened to…
So Simon T obviously was very angry and fueled by bits and decided to join the Army.
Yeah, so anyway, fast forward to 2016 and the duo’s song Better Together actually became very popular amongst anti-Brexit campaigners.
To the point that it actually re-charted and skyrocketed to number one in the charts.
Wow, nice.
And one week before the actual referendum, there was a pro-EU rally in Hyde Park.
200,000 people turned up.
And the organizers actually managed to convince the both Simons to perform their hit live on stage.
So they haven’t seen each other since, you know, the incident with Claire Stroke, Helen Stroke.
Jenny.
Jenny, that’s another one.
Dilipa.
Anyway, but they go on stage together, shake hands, everything’s cool.
And then two minutes into the performance, which bear in mind this is being live streamed across the UK and Europe.
Simon T pulls out a pistol and he shoots Simon Mack in the face, killing him instantly, obviously.
Yeah.
Well, that went dark.
Dark, yes.
It turns out they really weren’t better together.
No, I guess not.
And you know, grudges in the last decades to not treat it.
And actually, it was then basically blamed.
The Brexit happened purely because of this wonderful event.
Yes, it was the trigger.
It was literally the trigger.
So clearly, Simon Mack, fatally wounded, and Simon T now resides in Broadmoor, serving a 30-year sentence.
He has no regrets.
Fair enough.
There we go.
Nice.
So there we go.
That’s my gentle roasting of the two Simons.
And I apologize.
I don’t know where that came from.
And terribly Helen, Claire, Jenny.
I apologize also for…
Yes, Lisa.
And Lisa, most importantly.
Is it Lisa Stan said who lost her baby?
Lisa Stansfield.
Yeah, one of them.
It’s been around the world and I can’t find my baby.
I thought that my god is going to dark territory.
When you said she lost the baby, I thought she miscarried.
Is that the right woman?
Yeah, Lisa Stansfield.
People will hold on with…
Is it cold cut?
Yeah, anyway.
What’s the ham?
What’s the ham?
That is Lisa Stansfield.
She lost her baby.
Did she ever find it, I wonder?
I always thought it was been around the pub, and I can’t find my…
I don’t know where…
Are these copyright?
Are we allowed to cite lyrics?
I’m not going to sing them, so I think it’s implied.
You don’t have a good singing voice?
I don’t know.
I only do it in the car, alone.
Maybe one day.
A special episode.
We can mark the 100th episode of Middle Raged.
100,000th maybe.
Okay, that’s something to look forward to, folks.
Like and subscribe.
Actually, we should say, if we get 10,000 downloads in one calendar month, Adam will sing the intro.
There’s no words.
Well, we’ll have to make some up.
We’ll create some lyrics.
All right.
Okay, there we go.
Right, should we get on with our ranting?
Right.
So how many hours of sleep do you reckon you get on average a night?
I get seven hours and eight minutes.
And I know that because I’m one of those annoying pricks that has an app that tells me.
Yes.
Well, I was going to say, right, so I also have an app and mine is six hours and 42 minutes.
Apparently over the last year or something that was average.
So, I mean, yeah, you know, you’re sort of told that you should get eight, but does anyone actually get eight hours?
I doubt it.
Who’s got time for eight hours?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But anyway, do you think it matters, particularly the time that you take those seven hours and eight minutes of sleep from a from a sort of religious aspect, let’s say, I mean, ignoring the fact that, you know, in ancient times you get up when the sun gets up and go to bed, you know, because you had to, right?
There was no lights or whatever.
So, you know, get the fire going and, you know, go to bed.
But yeah, but these days, obviously, we have lights and, you know, get up and go to bed.
Even in Ireland.
And even in Ireland, yes.
And so this is what I’m raging about here today is morning people.
And by that, I mean people who deliberately, with no work or other social need, get up at like five in the morning, you know, every day, regardless.
And then, you know, here’s the worst part about it is that they are then, chirpy and excited and, you know, vigorous and all kind of jumping around and posting it on social.
And there’s this sort of undercurrent of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, piety, bollocks.
Oh, yes, it’s, you know, so wonderful to get up in the morning and just, you know, watch the sunrise, yeah, and go for a jog at four in the morning or something ridiculous.
And the implication, right, is that if you get up at eight or ten or whatever, that they are better than you.
I know what you’re talking about.
Yes.
Yeah, and so this is the really angering thing here is that you get up at five, right?
So you probably also got roughly seven hours of sleep.
So what you had to go to bed at ten.
And I go to bed at probably one or two.
And I don’t see where the holier-than-thou element comes here.
It’s not like you’re sacrificing hours of sleep.
You’re just choosing to have them at a different time to me.
I should rewind and say I’m absolutely not a morning person.
Don’t talk to me for at least an hour after I get up, right?
Because I just can’t function.
I’m completely on the same page as you with this.
I go to bed at one o’clock, and I get up at about a quarter past eight, allowing a five, ten minute window to actually fall asleep.
And that gives me my seven hours, and that’s fine.
But I find like these people who get up and do shit, and go, God, I’ve done so much more.
Well, have you though?
You’re just dicking around, aren’t you?
You’re taking pictures of fucking sunrises, and you’re blabbing about it.
Oh, do you know the worst ones, right?
These are the people who must get to a coffee shop at like the minute it opens, and then they post, oh, first coffee of the day.
That you’ve spent 8 euros on here, 10 quid or something.
Yeah.
There’s also in our kind of realm, there’s these people who get up and then they tweet something like, 5am writing club.
Yeah, I’ve seen that before.
They’re getting up at crazy o’clock and writing in the morning.
And then, of course, you can’t just do that and be done with it, right?
You have to tweet about it and, you know, masturbate.
There are two things I distinctly have an issue with.
Not necessarily about morning people, but people that do this type of stuff.
Based on my own experience, the first one is something cool.
Have you heard, you know what networking is?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So back in the day, I was invited to a breakfast networking event.
And I only went because it was a client of mine who was, you know, been banging on about it for fucking ever.
So I reluctantly got there, and this is a hotel, it was like a Premier Inn or Holiday Inn or something like that, for 7am.
So this is normally an hour before I’m normally out of bed, I was in a suit standing in the breakfast room of some shite two-star hotel off a ring road somewhere, just surrounded by these grey-faced people that had no desire to be, I mean fucking networking at that time in the morning.
That’s insane.
Absolutely awful.
And then they all sit around a fucking table and introduce yourself.
Over your plate of eggs and bacon.
Yeah, well, you did the intro, then you had your breakfast, and then you did the actual bit where you would go around and shake hands and just talk shit.
Honestly, it was horrendous.
Horrendous.
So that’s my first beef with morning stuff, because that should be criminalized.
I mean, there should be law against that.
The second thing, and this occurs, I don’t know if this happens in reality, maybe it does, but you see it a lot in TV dramas and films.
Couples that wake up and then just start, you know, having shenanigans.
Like at the crack of dawn, they literally wake up, oh, good morning, darling.
And then they, oh, you know, French kissing and oh.
So they haven’t gone for a pee?
No.
They haven’t brushed their teeth?
Certainly haven’t had a shower.
Yeah, no, obviously.
That is, I mean, you got to be.
No, no, no.
That’s a kink in itself, isn’t it?
That’s just wrong, isn’t it?
It’s just, and I’m sure there are people that, you know, are into that type of thing.
You never see dogging in the morning.
You never see sort of…
They’re doing that at night, aren’t they?
They’re not doing that at the sort of, you know, just pre-dawn.
You don’t see doggers out and about because…
Oh, okay, right, sorry.
Exclusive here to the Middle Raged Podcast.
I actually haven’t ever seen a dogging incident here in rural Ireland.
Maybe I’m just not in the right place, but no, I’ve never seen it at all.
If you are a member of the dogging community and you’re aware of any dogging sites in County Clare, please drop us a line.
Or specifically, Adam, I do not want to know.
I mean, I’m not really steamed up windows and rocking.
If she’s rocking, don’t come and knock in that sort of thing.
It’s a weird thing, isn’t it?
We’ve really, really gone off on a tangent.
You wouldn’t dog at five in the morning, though, Christ.
Doubt it.
Doubt it.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I agree.
But yeah, I mean, so networking with people, that has got to be after 6 p.m. in a pub.
Yeah, 100%.
You get a lot of stuff done, because everyone’s like, you know, sort of chilled.
They’ve got their workday out the way.
You know, can relax a bit.
There’s no alcohol, is there, at 6 a.m.?
Not at 6 a.m. Unless you’re an absolute raving alcoholic.
Well, that’s something else that I might get to in the future, is when you go through an airport at crazy in the morning, and the bars are open because of some weird law or something.
Yeah, they’re not covered by licensing laws, are they?
No, and you see people at 5, 6 a.m. having a pint of Guinness.
It’s almost like a kind of a ritual, isn’t it?
Whatever time you land at an airport or you get to an airport, you’ve got to be at a Wetherspoons and have a pint.
And no other point are you doing that?
I couldn’t.
Like, I mean, no, my body would not be able to take that fluid.
It just wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t work.
So, yeah, I need an hour to get up, to get my head together, have a cup of tea, coffee.
But, yeah, but then, I mean, the other thing is people who say, oh, you know, if you’re complaining that you haven’t got time for anything in your life, they’re like, well, just get up an hour earlier and, you know, go for a walk or go to the gym.
Like, fuck off.
I can’t get up an hour earlier.
I already don’t get enough sleep.
I already have a full day, you know.
But they would argue you need to go to bed earlier.
Well, yeah, but I’m productive.
That’s when I do my writing, right, is usually before I go to bed, or in bed even.
So I can’t go to bed earlier.
What benefit would that bring me, right?
And this is the whole point, is that the time where you exist consciously in the world is irrelevant.
And certainly there’s no religious connotations to that, I don’t think.
I mean, that’s the impression that they give, is that you’re getting up in the morning makes you holy somehow.
It doesn’t, it fucking doesn’t.
There are a finite amount of hours in the day, and we are asleep for some of those hours, and we all wait for the rest.
And whenever you do your sleeping, is of no consequence, really.
It’s what I reckon, yeah, exactly.
But that productivity thing is a very good point.
I mean, I cannot write, actually that’s not true.
I’ve tried writing in the morning, not even like early morning, like 10, and I just write garbage.
It’s on, A, I write garbage, and B, my brain is just fogged.
And I just, it’s just like pulling teeth.
So, and yeah, so I can spend two hours between 10 a.m. and noon, and I can just about pull out 500 words, maybe 200 of which are worth keeping.
Yeah, I can sit down at five o’clock, like, and then knock out a thousand words within an hour.
Just, so from a productivity, most people are clocking off at five o’clock, and I’m thinking, well, this is now in my groove.
So, the fact that you’re writing at, you know, midnight.
What works for you?
Exactly.
It’s circadian rhythms.
Ah, okay, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of that.
Yeah, so it’s, you know, your body has a cycle, and, you know, it’s probably unique to you.
Whatever it is, you get into it, and, you know, if you have trouble sleeping and stuff, people would say, you know, you need to get into a rhythm and stuff, and get the same hours every day and everything.
But the particular hours don’t matter.
You just need the rhythm.
And yeah, you will be more productive at certain hours, and less, and, you know, you need your lunch, and you need fluid intake, and yeah.
Do you know what you don’t see?
You don’t see, okay, and this is the thing, is the number of your point, you don’t see night people bragging about it on social media.
You don’t post on social media at half midnight, you know, hey, hey, hey, look at me staring up at the stars.
You don’t get that, do you?
It’s only the smug morning pricks.
That’s it.
And I can see some benefit of getting up at, you know, it must be nice to go for a walk occasionally on a nice summer’s morning at 6am before it’s stiflingly hot.
Yes, yes.
But you don’t have to tell the world about it.
Just do your thing.
Exactly.
And yeah, that’s the thing, right, is that if you are a morning person, you get up at crazy o’clock and you do your thing, and you don’t brag about it, that’s all fine.
It’s not brag, it’s trying to make out that this is the right way to live, and somehow you’re going to heaven for that, right?
Because those things are irrelevant, and they’re not connected.
You need to stop.
Even on a non-religious basis, they seem to think this is some sort of spiritual benefit, and it just makes them a better person.
That’s it.
And in fact, it’s just, okay, look, that’s how your metabolism or circadian rhythm or whatever, that’s how you are, Bill, and great, good for you.
Knock yourself out.
It’s not a virtue, though.
No, it’s not.
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, so, anecdote here.
I was in Germany once, visiting a friend many years ago now, and it happened to be, there was a beer festival in this little town just that night that I was there.
It wasn’t planned, it just happened to be there, right?
And the ridiculous thing was my flight was the next morning at arse o’clock, and my mate had to take me to the airport, right?
And so we were out, obviously, drinking beer and German town beer festival, brilliant, right?
And then, you know, the effort required to A, get myself conscious, get crazy o’clock, and then get my mate to also be conscious to be able to drive me to the airport.
Well, that was a whole other story, right?
I mean, yeah.
But as we were driving to the airport, like, I don’t know, it was like maybe 6 or 7 a.m., right?
We saw all these marching bands around, right?
And they’re, you know, all dressed up in their gear and marching up and down this little town playing, you know, trumpets and stuff.
I’m like, what the fuck is going on here?
And apparently that was just part of the festival, is that that’s what they do.
And I’m like, but it’s 6 in the morning!
Just like, yeah, that’s what they do.
I was getting up at presumably half four, five.
Oh, something, yeah.
After a hard night drinking beer, and then them doing that.
And I’m like, at least in Ireland, right, people have the fucking decency to have a hangover.
What they call umpah bands, aren’t they, or something?
That’s it, yeah, yeah, all of that.
Well, that’s the sort of stuff that starts wars, right?
Just, what are you doing?
So yeah, don’t go to Germany if you value your quiet mornings, I suppose.
Yes, but conversely, if you like early morning umpah bands, then fill your boots.
So yeah, that’s it.
My closing point would be, do you think that the 5 a.m. club tweeters are actually worse than vegans?
You know, in the, what’s the word?
Sanctimony.
I can’t think of a word.
Jim-jim-jiru.
Sanctimony.
Again, if you’re vegan, it’s absolutely fine, right?
You just don’t need to tell me because I don’t care.
If you get up at crazy o’clock and live your life, wonderful.
Happy for you.
Just don’t tell me or don’t tell anyone because, you know, just get…
No one cares.
I mean, first and foremost, nobody actually gives a shit what you were doing at 6am this morning.
Unless it’s the police asking you for alibis or something, right?
And in that case, you’ve got a whole different…
And if you’re having sex at 5am, fuck off.
In a sweaty car.
Probably quite cool though, Adam.
Not cool as in, hey, that’s cool.
I mean, like, temperature-wise.
Maybe that’s why they do it at night.
I mean, obviously the cloak of darkness is a benefit, but it would be slightly cooler to do it in the evening.
Yeah, you don’t want to be in a hot car roasting your arse off, do you?
Sticking your arse on the sweaty arse.
I would also hazard a guess that the type of people that do do this, probably if you saw them in, you know, daylight.
If you are a docker, what is the optimum time for your dogging?
Dockage?
Oh, on that dogging bombshell.
Anyway, so that’s me.
Don’t, you know, don’t worry about what time you get up.
Just live your life.
Yeah, and be free.
Be free.
Good stuff.
Excellent.
Right.
Well, for morning people, I’m going to take a slight detour towards something I’ve noticed more and more online.
It’s the amount of courses that are being offered.
It’s very hard now.
Maybe it’s just me.
But to scroll through life on whatever platform you choose without somebody trying to sell you a fucking course.
Yes.
I should differentiate here between courses that, you know, VQs, A-levels, academic or industry courses that you need to do a job, right?
So I’m not talking about them.
I’m talking specifically about the kind of courses that have been created purely to make someone money.
And they sort of fall into two parts.
There are two types.
So there are the sort of self-helpy typey ones.
I did spot one yesterday, and I immediately thought of you, okay, because I thought you would love this, right?
And it’s called How to Be a Better Man.
What?
Now, that one immediately pissed me off, because I thought, well, firstly…
Better than what?
Exactly.
So it’s highly subjective.
I mean, my mates might suggest that I would be a better man if I could talk coherently after five pints of Peroni.
So that’s one thing.
But who defines what better is?
Was the course run by a man?
No, don’t be stupid.
You’re going to be a woman, isn’t it?
You’re going to be distilled off.
But ultimately, who defines better?
And if you are a complete prick, right?
Let’s just say you’re a bloke and you’re a complete prick.
You’re probably not aware that you’re a complete prick, are you?
Well, indeed, and you’re certainly not interested in…
Being a non-prick.
Yeah, letting go of your prick.
Releasing your inner prickness.
You’re just happy to be a prick because you’re a prick.
I don’t know who’s…
And here’s the kicker with this, right?
This course is $3,200.
You’re fucking kidding.
I’m not.
Holy shit.
So you could argue they’re definitely aiming this at a particular type of man.
I mean, wow.
It’s an online course.
Yeah.
Presumably what you just watch a few videos.
I’ve got the…
Where’s the syllabus?
So the duration is…
Oh, the next one’s not till August, I’m afraid.
Fucking hell.
So it’s four days and it’s a live webinar.
Okay.
Seven hours a day.
And it’s 7 a.m. till 3 p.m. So that’s not right for starters, because 7 a.m. you can fuck right off with that.
Because we’ve discussed.
So we’ve failed at the first…
You’re not going to be better men, are you?
Gaslighting mechanics, really.
Is this about fixing the cooker?
Relational integrity theory.
I don’t know what that means.
I don’t know.
Honestly, it’s persistent negative relational patterns.
Oh, honestly, just fuck off.
We shouldn’t listen to our podcast show though, these people.
No, I’m going to guess they’re not.
Well, I hope not, because they might sue us.
But anyway, so it’s this type of course that’s just utter wankery, really, isn’t it?
Oh, big time.
So there’s that.
California.
It’s American, so yeah.
We’ve got to take it with a pinch of salt.
Apologies to American listeners.
I bet you know people that subscribe to this type of crap.
So it’s this type of sort of selfie-helpy stuff, how to meditate, menstruate, and how to have a better…
All this sort of stuff.
And you think, fuck off, right?
What’s it called?
Mindfulness?
Mindfulness and all.
Can’t be doing with that.
So it’s all highly subjective.
And ultimately just, you know…
It’s just pointless.
I mean, if you have to spend three grand to be a better man, then where are those shitty men getting three grand spare from?
And actually, the word webinar really pisses me off as well.
Webinar, what the fuck is a webinar?
You can imagine that.
I don’t know how many people are on this course.
How many do they allow on?
I mean, maybe six, I guess.
I mean, that’s not bad, is it?
A chunk of cash, yeah.
Yeah, for four days of chatting shit.
But imagine being on that webinar with five other blokes who’ve been stupid enough to stump up $3,200.
Yeah, it’s not even the sort of thing that you could get work to pay for.
I bet you could in some companies.
Wow.
Best we don’t do that.
And it’s the sort of thing that you’d be forced to do instead of prison time.
I’ll do the bird personally, honestly.
Christ.
So that’s, there are these sort of self-helpy type courses.
Now, there are some courses, but you can look at and go like, if you wanted to learn basic chords on a guitar, I know nothing about music.
So you think, okay, that’s a practical thing.
Or how to do certain things on, how to be better at Photoshop.
So it’s process driven, okay?
And you know, step by step, if you want to do something in Photoshop, this is how you do it.
Get that, okay?
I’d say that that’s a justifiable course.
But there are now courses on how to sell courses.
So essentially, it’s the productisation of all knowledge and information, no matter how banal, trivial, pointless, everything has been turned into a course.
And even the BBC are at it.
So they have this thing, and this is the one that really gets my go.
Okay, because it goes beyond teaching people how to do practical things in easy bite-sized chunks, right?
And it goes into more sort of the creative sphere.
So let me give you some of these courses that the BBC are currently offering.
Okay, and I’m not going to use the word grift because the BBC will probably sue me, but judge for yourself.
So the first one is, have you heard of Jojo Moyes?
Jojo Moyes, author.
Yeah, she writes sort of rom-com, women’s fiction, that type of stuff.
Okay, very big name.
So her course is on writing love stories and some elements of this.
This is one that caught my eye.
How to write an effective sex scene.
Effective.
Now that was a word of that particular sentence.
I thought, write an effective sex scene.
What’s unaffected?
I don’t know.
I mean, I genuinely don’t know.
Maybe we need to take the course.
This is where we’re going wrong.
We do not know how to write.
And do you know what the best effect, the most effective way to write a sex scene is not to write a fucking sex scene.
Indeed.
I just fade to black usually, you know.
It’s implied rather than…
They do this on TV dramas.
I mean, I know you don’t watch a lot of TV, but on movies and things.
Why do they show people having sex?
Yes, you know.
Why is that necessary?
Yeah, we know what you’re doing.
Move on.
Yeah.
It’s like, you know, two, three minutes of a, you know, 40-minute drama.
And you think…
And especially if you’re sat there watching it with, you know, the kids or whatever.
We don’t need this.
Anyway, so Jojo Moyes is how to write…
Effectives.
Now, that was the least…
That was only the sex scene that caught my eye on that particular one.
But the next three.
So you’ve got Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, how to write a global bestseller.
Oh yeah, nice.
If you’re Lee Child.
And this is his own user manual.
I guess you could say how to write the same book 20-40.
27 times.
Slightly change the characters and get paid a mint for it.
That would be a slightly more honest…
But okay, the next one is…
I know there is a point to me, Ronny.
Sibili Connolly, one of the greatest living comedians of all time, I think we’d all agree.
So get behind the mic and learn the magic of stand-up comedy from the man who pretty much invented it.
Right.
So you can take a course led by the great Sibili Connolly.
And then you too will be a world-leading stand-up comedy.
And then it goes on.
Jed McCurio, you’ve probably never heard of him, but he writes TV dramas.
Over here, he wrote something called The Line of Duty, which was a fantastic show.
I will stress it was BBC.
But he’s like, how to write a gripping screenplay.
And lastly, Gary Barlow.
Does it say gripping?
Sorry.
He did say gripping.
How to write a gripping screenplay.
You don’t grip a screenplay.
You don’t, you know, you grip a book because, you know, you’re tensed up and you’re reading it and you don’t want to let go.
You can’t grip watching a TV show.
So I’m going to have issues with that.
I think you should write a stone letter to the BBC about this one.
Gripping.
Come on.
And last but not least, we have Gary Barlow.
Are you aware of his work?
Is he in Coronation Street?
No, he is not.
Although he could be.
He’s got the accent.
He’s the lead singer of Take That.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
So he’s going to teach you how to song write because apparently everyone has a song inside them.
Jesus Christ.
So it seems like anything that you’re successful at, you just make a course about it after you’ve stopped being successful at it.
Yes.
Or you’ve made your money and now you think, OK, how can I continue to bring in a residual income?
But all of these things overlook one minor detail.
Fucking talent.
Talent.
Skill.
So I spotted one that was seeing like a pro within 14 days.
Now, I’m assuming it meant a professional singer rather than a prostitute.
Right.
I don’t know how prostitutes sings, but I’m assuming it meant you would have been able to sing proficiently.
Yeah.
So 14 days.
I reckon I could be tutored for 14 years and I still wouldn’t be able to sing because I do not have that in a talent.
Yeah, that is the missing thing, isn’t it?
Like you can’t buy that in a course.
You either got it or you haven’t.
Yes.
You can practice, but that’s not the same as having the skill.
Like there’s people who play chess and all of that stuff, those grandmasters, you’ve got that by being in your DNA, right?
It’s not something you can pick up from a course.
And this is the crux of it.
It is selling the idea that taking this course will give you the necessary toolbox, the skills to do something.
And so it’s almost like a miss selling or it’s playing on people’s dreams and aspirations.
Now, if I want to learn to use Photoshop for the sake of argument, I will go on a course, it will teach me how to use Photoshop.
Now, it might require a degree of patience.
It may, you know, some people might be more adept at picking up the, you know, they’re just more IT illiterate.
But most people would, by the end of that course, would be able to proficiently use Photoshop because it’s just a process, isn’t it?
But learning to sing is not a process.
Yeah, yeah, that is the missing pin.
So I am…
You need the vocal cords, you need the hearing to be able to know that you’re in key and all that sort of stuff.
Pitch and all that type of stuff.
He’s gone on record himself, but the lead singer of Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant, has said that he’s had multiple singing lessons over the years.
And by his own admission, his voice is weak, very weak, and it is.
But, you know, he sings of a fashion.
It’s more…
Yeah, I mean, if left to his own devices, right, he probably would.
Yes.
Very good.
We’re going to get sued now for using that lyric.
But it’s more sort of speaking, isn’t it?
Yeah.
There’s a few singy bits, but yeah, he is more sort of quietly English-ly rapping.
Yes, I think that’s a good way of putting it.
But he’s realized that, yeah, he’s a guy who is, you know, was already a singer in a very successful pop duo and he could not improve his voice.
You know, he probably had access to some of the best singing coaches in the world and his voice has changed at all.
Not really.
They just released a new album.
They have.
Yes.
I haven’t listened to it yet.
I’ve had a listen to it a bit.
It’s very good, but we’re not here to review albums.
No.
Fair enough.
I’ve lost my train of thought now.
Yeah, talent.
Talent.
So essentially it’s this.
So the whole thing about courses, the first one is the selling of psychobabble and crap, how to contact the dead in seven easy steps, this type of stuff, how to be a better person, all that sort of crap.
And then there is the selling, the misselling of dreams without the very bold caveat that you need some…
I mean, if you took writing a book, for example, so some might argue you need a good imagination would you agree?
I would say so, yes.
Okay.
But nobody ever talks about the other skills that you need and you need these skills, like for example, the ability to actually do something that you really don’t want to do.
So what, self-discipline, that’s the term I’m looking for.
Some people are very self-disciplined.
Some people are not.
Yeah, I’m not, I’m not.
I would say you possibly are.
And it goes like for those who are self-employed, right?
Okay.
You can be really good.
So let’s say, for example, a landscape gardener, we could be the best landscape gardener.
And then you’ve been working for a company for 20 years and you think, I’m going to go it alone now.
And if you don’t have the various skills that you need to work for yourself, like self-motivation, discipline, organization, all that type of stuff, it doesn’t matter how good a landscape gardener you are, your business will fail because you don’t have those skills.
You can actually outsource them, but you need a certain amount.
And this is the thing, we cannot all be everything, much as we’d love to be, and we cannot learn everything, and they come to a point in life where you just accept, or you should accept, that something just isn’t for you.
Exactly, yeah.
And it’s not necessarily a failing, it’s just, that’s not your thing.
To do something else that you are good at, right?
That is the thing here, isn’t it?
That the idea that by paying us this extortionate amount of money, you’ll watch this video and suddenly then you’re the new Pavarotti, you know?
And they use the word secrets a lot, I’ve noticed, in the sales blurb.
You know, the secrets of, there are no secrets.
Yeah.
And the other thing that they don’t take into account, and this plays a massive, massive part, there are two elements to this.
The first bit is luck, right?
Because there’s a huge amount of luck in all these people that have reached the top.
They will all admit that they’ve been very, very lucky at numerous times.
You know, from the, you know, just meeting bandmates and the first record deal, all these sorts of stuff.
It’s luck.
So that’s the first element.
And the second element is, and it’s that old adage, it’s not what you know, it is who you know.
Yes, very much so.
I learned a stat the other day regarding the publishing industry, which I wasn’t aware of.
Seventy five percent of debut novelists actually work within the publishing industry.
I mean, I suppose that if you’re, you could argue that if you’re inclined to be a bookie type person, that you would go towards that sort of line of work.
But it’s probably not so much that as you find yourself in that line of work, and then you’re like, oh, I could do this.
And so you do, and then you ring up your mate and it sorts you out, yeah.
Exactly.
And where I heard this, I won’t mention the guy’s name, because I wouldn’t want to put him in an awkward position, but he mentioned a specific book that was a massive, massive, massive global bestseller.
And it turns out that the author of this, but at least it was a debut, okay.
And I think it had got an average of four out of five stars on Amazon, which actually isn’t great.
So, but they still, I mean, it’s got over 100,000 reviews just on the UK.
And it turns out that the author used a pen name, a surname, and this individual turned out to be like something like the chief financial director of one of the major publishing houses.
Yeah, I wonder how that all happened.
Imagine, right, this piece of shit manuscript turns up at, on the editor’s desk, and they look at it and go, this is Durge.
But then you see the name of your immediate boss on the cover.
Yeah, right.
And then the same happens when it gets to the marketing department where we’re allocating budgets and they read it, Durge, oh, it happens to be my bosses.
Yes.
So again, you know, this idea that, you know, you could write a fantastic novel, but first you need a lot of luck for it to, you know, for it to be successful.
And secondly, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, it’s circumstance, isn’t it?
Yes.
And they can’t teach you that in a course.
They can’t.
Even for $3,200.
Unless you go networking, I suppose, at 7am.
We should write a course about that.
I was going to say, should we do one about making a podcast?
Well, ever since we started doing this, I’ve been fucking bombarded by emails from people trying to sell.
And this is the thing now is you see something and it’s like, download this cheat sheet or something like that, you know, it’s like, Oh, that might be useful for something.
It’s like a checklist or whatever, and you download it.
And next thing you know, you’ve been fucking bombarded with emails that somebody trying to sell you a course.
And it doesn’t matter what it is, as soon as you Google something or click on something or dare put your bloody email address on something, that’s it.
It’s buy my course, buy my course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of, a lot of that in everything, right?
But I get a lot of how to market your book course, you know.
But again, with that, if everyone’s doing the same thing.
Yeah, that’s exactly.
I was trying to explain this to someone on a, and I don’t know why I do this, because it just infuriates me, but I think it’s an outlet.
But somebody went on to a Facebook group and they said, what’s the best day of the week to release your book?
Okay.
So I said, if there was a, my best day, I think you’re probably suggesting the day that you would get the most amount of sales, right?
That would be anyone’s definition of the best day, right?
If there was a best day, bear in mind, there are only seven of them, then surely everyone would release on that day, it would no longer be the best day because there would be too much competition and therefore you would sell less.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No, that’s a, why are they even thinking about best days to release a book?
It’s just not a one-off event, is it?
It’s not like you’re holding a concert.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Like there isn’t 10,000 people just sitting there, if there is 10,000 people sitting there waiting for your book desperately, they won’t give a fuck what day it is, just buy it.
Yeah.
No, to build up that hype, you do a lot of work in preparation or not, but you know, it’s the best day.
I mean, what do they think is going to happen is like, Amazon is going to buy cannons and, you know, put planes in the sky above people’s houses like, here’s a new book, no, they don’t even send an email.
Do you know what really riles me about this is I will put that there.
And lots of people would like that particular post because it’s anyone that’s been doing this for a while will know that it’s and then the person that actually put the post up never never likes it or never comments never goes, Oh, do you know what that actually makes perfect sense?
You think you’ve just pissed on their cornflakes or something?
They wanted a quick fix like, Oh, Fridays are the best.
Yeah.
Next time I say I’m just gonna put Christmas Day.
Actually, Christmas Day is always the worst.
Is it?
I’ve had a shit sales on Christmas Day, if you’re writing non-Christian fiction, maybe it’s a great day.
Well, I suppose some people have got the get their new Kindles out of the box and I suppose they want to fill them up.
But I think they’re just busy with other stuff.
It never ceases to amaze me that I’ll look at my stats at the end of Christmas Day because I’m a sad prick.
And you’ll see that there are people who have bought books and people who have read on Kindle Unlimited and you think, wow, okay.
Maybe, but you think, actually, do you know what, some Christmas days I’d rather just go and hide.
I think I would actually.
I’d much rather be reading a book quietly than dealing with anything else.
Yeah, so maybe we’re the weirdos.
Definitely, yeah.
So, yeah, so courses, yeah, I’m done with it, stop trying to sell me courses, stop trying to teach me how to sing, how to be a better man, all that crap, all right, okay.
I don’t care.
I don’t want to know.
Yeah, we all have innate talents.
Do you know what the best thing people can do?
And I don’t know why they don’t do this with kids, right?
I don’t know if I mentioned this to you before.
If you had, took a year, if you’re going to go on a gap year as a youngster, fuck off, right?
What you’re better off doing is doing one day of something, okay, and then doing some, so day one, you’re going to spend the whole day doing pottery.
Day two, trying to play the guitar.
Day three, trying to learn Korean.
Day four, I don’t know, jogging.
Do that for an entire year and you will find something that, A, that you’re really, really good at, that you didn’t know that you’ve had an actual talent for, and B, something that you absolutely love, okay?
And if you’re really lucky, you’ll find something that you’re both really, really good at and you love doing.
And then you will have the most contented, happy life.
That’s it, isn’t it?
That’s fucking profound, you know, for this time on Saturday morning.
You know what?
You could write a course about that method.
But before that, I need to get I need to buy the course about how to create the course.
Yeah.
Course course.
Oh, actually, I wonder if there was a course that teaches you how to create a course to sell courses.
And around and around it goes.
Christ.
There we are.
Raged out.
Rage.
Rage against the machine.
Right, so I think that brings us nicely on to our happy endings.
Yes.
Happy endings.
Yeah.
So I can always feel the joy in your voice.
So please share with me and the listeners.
What has brought you to your peak happiness this morning?
Well, it’s not so much me who’s happy here, but it’s the sort of societal norm that you should be happy at such an event, right?
So what the event is that I turned 50 yesterday.
And I’m not specifically, I mean, you know, it’s just a number, right?
It’s just, you know, it feels like it’s unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but you know, there’s all this sort of pressure that you should be excited and celebrate.
Yeah.
And I’m like, whatever.
I didn’t really do anything.
I might do something at some other point, but you know, whatever.
But yeah, so I’m now 50.
I think that puts me firmly on the top side of the middle aged.
I think at some point, we’re going to need a rebranding exercise, aren’t we?
Old cultures or something like that.
One foot in the grave, isn’t it?
Well, you know, you could live to a hundred if you don’t have a coronary.
I suppose.
But you get really angry about something.
Yeah.
But I agree.
I mean, I did not.
I mean, I’m 52 now and I had a buckle interest in.
I feel there is nothing to celebrate about being 50 other than the fact that I’m still around.
Yeah, well, that’s it.
You know, but you could do that every day, couldn’t you?
I didn’t die yesterday, so today’s worth celebrating.
But to actually celebrate, celebrating 21 and 18, you think, yeah, I kind of get that.
You know, they’re sort of benchmark ages.
But 50?
Fuck off.
It’s not worthy of celebration.
I mean, commiseration.
Yeah.
Just, you know, it seems to be like it’s all downhill from here and, you know, knees and back problems.
I saw a thing the other day about essentially 50 is the point where you’re that warning light on your dashboard comes on and never goes off as quickly as you fix one thing.
Yeah.
By service now, by service, I don’t mean, you know.
Right.
Oh dear.
Anyway, so that’s my semi happy ending.
I mean, you know, OK, fair enough.
It’s, you know, happy birthday and all that shit.
You’re happy you managed to get through it without anyone wishing you happy birthday.
I mean, I got a few, but.
I have to confess, dear listeners, I completely forgot.
But then you get into that awkward thing on Facebook where people you rarely ever speak to wish you a happy birthday.
And that annoys me, because now I’ve got to fucking say thank you or.
Yeah, yeah, no, I don’t.
Don’t bother, please.
If you listen to this and don’t tell me happy birthday or belated happy birthday or don’t remember the date for next year.
Yes, I don’t care.
Doesn’t matter, you know, if you want to, I don’t know, leave a review, a nice review on my books or something, right?
Yeah, that’s all I need.
Yeah, exactly.
Much more than than worrying about my my day, which was shit.
So anyway, anyway, what’s yours?
My happy ending.
Well, I changed it at the last minute because on my bucket list was to go to Iceland, the country, not the supermarket, to see the Northern Lights.
And I’m sure many people are aware, because you’re going to go look at social media, see the absolute fucking overwhelming amount of photos.
We had a solar storm yesterday, or last night, I should say.
And we actually got to see the Northern Lights in the UK and Ireland, in the southern mass.
But I’m in Surrey, which is South East England.
In my 52 years on this planet, I don’t think it’s ever happened.
Yeah, it was crazy, wasn’t it?
Yeah, that made me very happy, indeed, standing outside my house at half past midnight.
Looking up at the sky.
Actually, what’s pissed me off, though, about this is that people have gone on to put pictures on Facebook, and you know they fucking enhanced them and used filters.
And you think you’ve just taken something which is so incredible to witness, and you’ve fucking just pissed around with it for likes.
Yeah, it wasn’t any better in your garden.
No, exactly.
You didn’t need to put a bloody filter on it and ramp up the colour and the gamma and all that shit.
So it actually ends up, you look at this person’s photo, and it looks like the backdrop of a Jean-Michel Jarre concert.
Look, we were all there, mate.
You live around the corner.
Okay, you were looking at the same patch of sky, right?
Okay, and we should stress something here.
The pictures always look better, don’t they?
Because the camera catches the exposure.
To the naked eye, it’s supposed to be better this evening, but it was, you could see it, but it was more like a sort of wavy, smudgy, sort of drifty.
Yes, yes.
It looks so much better on a camera where you could delay the exposure slightly, whereas, obviously, naked eye, it wasn’t quite spectacular, but still a sight to behold.
It was, I mean, it was, yeah, it was interesting.
But yeah, I have actually been to Iceland, and I went on a go and see the Aurora bus tour, right?
And so a big bus of people desperately trying to look out the window, right, middle of the night, didn’t see any fucking Aurora, right?
And at one point, actually, there was these two girls, few seats down, and they start screaming, oh, we can see it, we can see it.
And everyone goes to the back of the bus, and they’re looking, right?
And turns out it was a reflection of their phone on the window.
I can’t think of anything more depressing.
Do you know what maybe did make me happy, though?
And this will probably make you happy.
All the morning people missed it, because they were in bed at 10.
Yes, yes.
So there you go.
Yeah, you see, there are, what’s the word?
Benefits.
Yeah.
We got to see a once in a lifetime, well, probably not once in a lifetime, probably again tonight, but all the morning people would be too knackered, wouldn’t they?
Because they’re at 10 o’clock, they’d be, oh my God, is it dark yet?
I’m low, I’m just so, I’m so tired.
And we’ll be perky and, well, actually I’ll be drunk, but…
I don’t know about perky, but at least awake and able to appreciate it.
This is our time, night time.
Yeah.
My last book was about a fellow who was a night shift person, so he actually prefers the night.
You want to give that a plug, because there are night people out there.
There you go.
If you’re a night person, you want to read about a chap who enjoys the night.
The book is called 22, 22, 22, Frequency Show.
I suppose I actually should say that I am still writing the sequel to that, and I’ll get around to it as soon as I can.
Is it Tractor Killer?
That wouldn’t explain why it’s taking so long, wouldn’t it?
It’s a long, long book.
Yes.
Maybe you need to take a course on upping your productivity.
Yeah, shortening my books, yeah.
Yeah, there we go.
And on that, I think we are done and dusted.
So thank you very much if you made it to one hour and 11 minutes-ish.
Jesus, we’ve run on this time.
We’ve run a bit late.
Thank you very much again to Simon T and Simon Mack, the RIP, for your coffees.
If you would like to buy us a coffee, go to buymeacoffee.com forward slash Middle Raged.
That would help to keep the podcast ad-free.
Yes, and ongoing.
And ongoing, yeah, because we’re poor office.
There we go.
All right.
So until next time, it’s a very good bye from me.
And a good bye from me.