Avatar Suggested new slogan

Ten years ago, when the New Beans was still new, we had a discussion about a marketing slogan for the website. Eventually we settled on Pouring Beans: The Thinking Man’s Casserole which adorns all of our advertising to this day.

Since then a whole decade has gone by, and I wonder if it’s time for a new slogan to appeal to the world of 2024. Until recently I wasn’t sure what I could ever suggest that would beat the current one, but a visit to a coffee shop bathroom in London last week gave me the answer.

One Team. One Pream. We.

Avatar Great British programme pitches

Years ago, someone had a brilliant idea. They’d get a big tent from somewhere, fill it with ovens and home cooks, and then run a low-stakes baking competition where people put in a lot of wholesome effort to see if they could make the nicest cake. Some family-friendly presenters would make gentle innuendo and hug contestants who dropped things on the floor. It’s still on TV and it’s still doing well.

What TV executives really like is more of the same. If you find a thing that works, and pulls in an audience, they want to produce more TV exactly like that. So after the Great British Bake Off, you got the Great British Sewing Bee (pitch: like the Bake Off, but people are sewing things), the Great British Pottery Throwdown (pitch: like the Bake Off, but people are making pottery), the Great British Menu (pitch: like the Bake Off, but for main courses), Interior Design Masters (pitch: like the Bake Off, but for making rooms look tasteless), and now Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas (pitch: like the Bake Off, but with Christmas decorations).

I reckon I could have a go at this crap as well. First thing tomorrow I’m marching into Channel 4’s headquarters, demanding a meeting with the boss and giving him my snappy pitches for these shows, now in development:

The Great British Veg Patch

Like the Bake Off, but for growing vegetables. A really slow, relaxing watch, since a single challenge takes the contestants all year. Most of their time is spent sitting in their potting sheds waiting for the rain to ease off. In the showstopper challenge they have to present their most humorously-shaped root vegetable. Hosted by Scott Mills.

The Great British Drag Race

Like the Bake Off, but for racing noisy muscle cars over very short distances. Has nothing to do with drag queens. The grotty, macho world of drag racing will be made softer, cuddlier and more family friendly by having the drag races happen inside a big tent on a giant gingham tablecloth. Hosted by Matt Hancock.

The Great British Steel Works

Like the Bake Off, but for producing industrial grade steel from iron ore. Contestants race to turn out neatly shaped ingots of pure steel at white hot temperatures while trying not to set the tent alight. Before each challenge, lovingly-drawn colour sketches of the precise cubes of steel each contestant plans to make will be shown on screen. Hosted by Lorraine Kelly.

I’m pretty sure this is my path to fame and fortune. If you want in on it, pitch me your Great British rip off ideas in the comments and I’ll see if I want you in on the meeting.

Avatar Business Smock

What do you think of when you think of ‘smocks’? Comfort? Practicality? Style and fashion?

As everyone knows, a smock-frock is a coat-like outer garment often worn to protect clothes in specific lines of work. If you’re huddling in a field somewhere or working the mean streets, you definitely need a smock. I personally have no need for a smock as a data monkey however if I could get away with wearing one I would. There has to be some kind of middle ground whereby I can still look presentable for work and also protect my frail body from the wrath of winter. What I need is a business smock.

Businesses are varied in what they need so we would have to ensure the business smock was varied or adaptable to almost everyone. For those working in the service industry, it would have to give the appearance of a fashionable suit or tuxedo. For those rocking the office look, there would have to be various pockets for pens, notebooks, coffee cups, maybe even one big one on the front (or inside) to put a laptop in. A CEO of a Fortune 500 company would need secret compartments to hide, I don’t know, fat wads of money and secrets? Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Our designers have thrown together this mock smock. Please don’t knock the smock as it’s still a rough sketch and is not in stock.

Smooth with a capital smooth

Given the ludicrous nature of the fashion industry in this decade (for an example of this, please look up anything involving an ‘oodie’, a ‘shacket’ or, my personal favourite, the ‘coatigan’), I believe that the business smock would not be out of place. There’s even currently a website called Smock London – ROCKING SMOCKING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. They’d be the perfect fit for the model. They’re all about the smocking.

You may not work in business but you may mean business meaning the business smock could still be for you. A range of colours and designs to suit your desires.

The business smock; ready to smock you right in the kisser.

Avatar ‘Iansurance’

Modern life sucks. We all know this and it’s reached the point now where there’s no point saying it because everyone knows it. We all need a little humour in our lives to raise the spirits and keep the home fires burning. Given the recent decline in the state of the country, doctors are prescribing laughter more and more for curing most common ailments. I rubbed a chuckle on a bruise the other day and felt much better.

I have been toying around with ideas for sitcoms for years now. Chris and I even challenged each other to write pilots for sitcoms in unlikely places (remember that?) way way way back in the day. Now that I have taken the leap into a brand new place of employment it’s only right to use my skills to aid the rest of the human race. I need to show the world that even though things are pretty pants right now you can forget all your troubles for around 24/25 minutes each week with my sitcom, ‘Iansurance’.

The main character is some berk called Ian. He works as a service agent at the Clifford Makin Insurance company. He’s on the phone most days and, boy, does he get into some hysterical comical scrapes. The thing is that Ian daydreams so the time between phone calls his mind drifts into bizarre places: sometimes he’s a horse flying through the sky, sometimes he’s a clown handing out leaflets to cats about making sure they have a mouse pension for when they retire and sometimes he imagines that every time he speaks rainbows shoot out of his mouth and they explode into chocolate muffins when they collide with solid objects.

His boss, Gloria Cookiesnatcher, doesn’t know about Ian’s daydreaming and continually praises him as the best on his team even though he’s the most lackadaisical of the bunch. The times when he suddenly wakes up to take a call saying, “Eugh, I didn’t know peach trees were flammable!” are laughed off as part of his quirky personality. Tsk tsk, there goes Ian again, he’s such a zany character.

As a strange twist, the love interest is the coffee machine. Ian loves coffee a lot. It’s what powers him, gets him through the day, fuels his imagination. The machine in the corner of the kitchen area doesn’t have a name but he refers to her as Susan with two e’s i.e., Sueesan. He doesn’t remember why he started calling her that nor why he assigned gender to an inanimate object. Ian professes his love to Susan each and every morning for handing him the wake-up juice. She responds by handing him said wake-up juice.

We’ll fill the rest of the roster with some wacky office types, a snidely cleaner, a religious man, two cats that we can hear the thoughts of and, I don’t know, a wise old woman who lives in a cupboard.

I am in the process of writing the first few scripts and expect a lot of attention when I’m done. Best jump on the golden gravy train trip now, guys.

Avatar Improving songs: a how-to guide

Are you bored of listening to the same old songs, saying the same old things? Or maybe you’re bored of all the new songs, where the lyrics don’t seem to ever offer anything new? Don’t worry. I have just the thing for you.

Presenting, for the first time ever, my 100% proven and patented method for improving any pop song. Simply take any of the common pop song words from the left column of the table below, and replace it with the word on the right. The more words you replace, the better the song will be, guaranteed.

Please share below, in the comments, the songs you’ve improved with this groundbreaking method. Please also send payment by postal order or cheque to my home address.

Replace…With…Examples
HeartArseTotal Eclipse of the Arse by Bonnie Tyler
My Arse Will Go On by Celine Dion
Open Your Arse To Me by Madonna
YouHughHugh And Me Song by the Wannadies
She Loves Hugh (Yeah Yeah Yeah) by the Beatles
Hugh Stole The Sun From My Arse by the Manic Street Preachers
DancePranceLet’s Prance by David Bowie
Prance the Night Away by the Mavericks
The Safety Prance by Men Without Hats
DiePiePie Another Day by Madonna
Live and Let Pie by Wings
Never Say Pie (Give Me a Little Bit More) by Cliff Richard
NightFightDecember 1963 (Oh What a Fight) by the Four Seasons
Boogie Fights by Heatwave
Saturday Fight by Whigfield

Avatar Changing the past

No, don’t look at me like that. I am not retconning anything so you can put your tut books away and save them for something else on the internet.

Now look at me a different way, in a more pleasing manner. There, that’s much better.

‘Innerspace’ is a 1987 film by Joe Dante, the guy who directed Gremlins. It starred Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan and Martin Short. In it, Dennis Quaid gets shrunk down (“shranken”) for scientific reasons and accidentally injected into Martin Short. This then continues for approximately two hours with gleeful comic elements a-plenty. I even believe that this is one of my sister-in-law’s favourite films. I have fond memories of watching this as a child and believe it still holds up today (it also includes everyone’s fondest actor’s actor – Robert Picardo a.k.a the doctor from Star Trek: Voyager).

So what’s going on then? What am I trying to change? A friend recently told me that he had never seen it so I decided to treat him to the blu-ray. That said, when it arrived in the post there was something amiss. The title didn’t quite fit with me so after a few modifications using paper and glue I believe I have fixed it.

I’m not asking for every single copy to be changed only that sometimes it should be referred to by its “correct” name.

Avatar Extrance

A new year needs a new you with a sick haircut and a bad ‘chude. Unfortunately as all the barbers are shut at the moment you’ll have to make do with clipping away with a pair of scissors yourself and hoping for the best.

We can, however, help you with your ‘chude. I bet you’re so tired of all this “help each other” and “be nice to your neighbours and fellow humans”. What you want to do is put your fist in the middle of everyone’s faces and then laugh about it afterwards when you’re shoving Cadbury’s chocolate fingers up their exhaust pipes. Pipes.

What you need is an Extrance.

The Extrance is a brand new thing for 2021. It’s an entrance that’s also an exit, so it’s totally confusing. How can one thing be another, you may ask yourself, that’s impossible. Well you’d be right but thankfully our boffins have managed to come up with the impossible and it’s available to pre-order right now.

Plus the ‘x’ makes it sounds modern and sexy.

It may look like a simple opening yet when you are within the presence of the Extrance the sheer power emanating from it will blow your socks clean away, right off your feet and into the streets, even if you’re wearing shoes. Find someone you dislike and make them walk through the Extrance. They will be immediately confused, unable to move because of the bewildering nature. Then, when they start to work out what’s happened, you press the button on your secret keyring and blast them from the hidden speakers in the Extrance’s frame with both barrels of Menendez-filtered Techno Jazz from our in-house band, X-Trance, right into their ear pipes. Pipes.

X-Trance between recording sessions

You’ll leave them dazed, deaf and possibly demented. The Three D’s as we have taken to calling it. Triple D to the max. The Extrance has so many possibilities from hilarious ruses at birthday parties to spamming the nincompoop at the office party. Your friends will whoop and cheer when they realise you’ve set them up with this year’s hottest item. They won’t want to miss out.

They come in a whole range of sizes and colours, from snooty green to snotty yellow and turdy brown, we’ve got the whole rainbow covered.

Pre-order now and receive a free ‘Entrance’ sign to go on your Extrance. The ‘n’ secretly peels off to reveal an ‘x’ underneath. Nobody will ever know, the fools.

From Kevindo Menendez – a name you can trust!