Parents, parents, aunt

We’re about to hear from Morrissey, which is a rare and special treat. But first we need an explanation.

Back in December, I posted Christmas mop-up, a list of things I had received. Ian asked who had got me the three things that were not for my new car. I replied that two were from parents and one from an aunt. Ian said I sounded like Essex Highway era Morrissey and asked if I could provide a sample of Morrissey’s voice saying those words.

Which brings us to where we are today, and the soft, crooning tones of the former Smiths frontman informing us where three of my Christmas presents came from.

Not Very Good – Shopping

What constitutes as not being very good? Who gets to decide these things and why should we listen? In this new series, the Beans goes undercover to try to answer some of these questions. Take for example this photo here:

Whoever this person was, they clearly were not very good. In this instance they were not very good at shopping. All they were going to buy was a bottle of Diet Coke and some mineral water. They have completely missed the sweet, biscuit and crisp aisles, and thus eliminated the opportunity to binge on Haribo and Jaffa cakes at home without anyone pointing and shouting out rude names. They were planning on only buying beverages. There’s not even some bacon and eggs for the following morning.

It’s very frustrating to come across this. I expect that this shopper realised how not very good they were mid-shop and fled Tesco in embarrassment. Here’s hoping the CCTV pictured up their rosy red cheeks as they sprinted towards the exit, blushing and squirming in equal measures.

The Not Very Good do have the advantage of being able to take hold of their lives and try to be less Not Very Good in the future. I bless all the holy pigs of Portugal that this person did a lot better the next time they went shopping.

Next time… Animals!

Book news

Are you ready?

OK then, here it is.

The Book is finished.

I have finally, FINALLY, written the final page of the Book and the story is complete. I’m going to scan it in so you can read it to your children and share it with your friends, and you’ll have to wait until then to get hold of the thrilling finale. What will happen to Eric Bins? Will Dr. Rombobulous Combobulation succeed? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I’ve typed it up so that we don’t have to read handwriting in the online version, and I can present you with some statistics.

The finished book is 34 pages long, which means we all did eleven pages and I did one extra at the end.

Ian wrote 2,563 words
Kev write 2,505 words
I wrote 3,220 words and am therefore the winner

The first page of the book was written on 10 January 2009, and I finished writing the last one on Thursday, so it has taken us 3,226 days to write it, or exactly eight years and ten months. We have averaged one page every 94 days – less than four a year – or, if you prefer, two and a half words a day. I think we can all be proud of that.

Episode 2: Cheery Polar Bears

Hot on the heels from Episode 1 comes… you guessed it, Episode 2!

In this episode, Kev and Ian discuss, amongst other things:

The musical zeitgeist
How to recognise a time travelling horse
The future of breakfast cereal
The economics of Chinese Manufacturing

How Thick Are Ye?

The great thing about television is that now, in 2017, pretty much any idea is marketable. So much so that there are now programmes about watching people get married, watching people having babies, watching people having opinions and watching people watching television. Personally I am looking forward to the programme where you get to watch people watching people watching people watch television, mainly because it might cause the universe to implode. Either that or Alan Partridge’s suggestion of ‘Monkey Tennis’.

My suggestion for broadcasting is called ‘How Thick Are Ye?’. It’s a very simple concept; we take a nice middle class family living somewhere down South who do not know any better: sensible adults, adorable children etc.. They earn a generous wage per month yet seem to spend an awful lot of it in the supermarkets. For whatever reason, they buy far too much food and then throw most of it away.

Our experts would travel to whatever godforsaken county these imbeciles live in to watch them spend £300.00 on a weekly shop and then despair that they have nothing to eat. After ten minutes of pointing out to the viewers just how wrong they are, they then jump out at the family just for kicks. The experts then spend the rest of the programme berating the family for being so stupid and telling them to stop shopping at Waitrose and try somewhere more reasonable such as Tesco or Aldi.

The family are rated on a scale of one to ten as to how thick they are. If they’re found to be less than five, they wake up the next morning to find themselves tied up and all of their worldly possessions have been thrown in a skip, covered in manure and crushed in a junkyard. The now frightened onlookers cradle their children, desperate to change their ways and look at the world in a different light. The experts untie the prisoners and let them return to their empty residence.

It would be a light-hearted one hour programme, perfect for the Wednesday night schedule on BBC1. A life-changing journey for all. I was considering Chris’ favourite Gary Wilmot and Dale Winton for the roles as experts. They’re decent enough to pull of a premise such as this.

Picture of the Week

My phone is gradually filling up with all the chaff of modern life so taking any new photos is completely off the cards. Sometimes, however, you see an image that needs to be captured. A picture just so vivid and beautiful that you cannot put into words how it makes you feel.

This photo, taken recently, is one of those pictures:

Breathe that sucker in.

It is not just a tree in a phone box. It is not just a futile attempt to avoid the responsibility of having to get rid of the last remains of Christmas, or some teenagers’ attempts at a funny “joke”. No, this is art in every sense of the word and I am making arrangements for this to be moved into the Laing Art Gallery as soon as possible.

Advent calendar

Christmas is nearly upon us, and so it’s time we launched the Beans Advent Calendar.

Starting tomorrow you can open a flap every day and find a delicious treat in the shape of an instantly recognisable Pouring Beans Running Joke!

If you’re still not sure (and you should be sure, they’re only a fiver plus P&P), here’s what to expect behind each door:

A chocolate Bean Counter
A chocolate champagne flute just like Chris’s
A chocolate Character Hatch (TM)
A chocolate Loinsford Academy
A chocolate Chris’s Erotic Calendar
A chocolate knee window
A chocolate Kev’s House (under construction)
A chocolate It Is Though Isn’t It
A chocolate joke about Kev not being here
A chocolate lemons 🙁
A chocolate tumps
A chocolate bust of EEFY McJEEFY
A chocolate £10.10
A chocolate tap saga
A chocolate Week Of The Week
A chocolate Saint King jewel
A chocolate Wang Chung
A chocolate book warehouse inferno
A chocolate owl in a chocolate Costa Coffee
A chocolate Mackford Files
A chocolate Chop
A chocolate Smidge Manly
A chocolate park bench with an unusual name on it
A chocolate So What You’re Saying Is
A chocolate Beans Advent Calendar

Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a Beans Advent Calendar. Buy now and get one free! Delivery guaranteed by Easter! Order today!

The Overwhelmingly Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline

Do you remember a time when Chris Tarrant was everywhere? He was just wherever you looked. You could not glance towards a lady with the hope of stealing a gaze without his mug smearing into your line of sight. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, far from it. Everyone welcomed his enthusiastic noises and laughter, whether winning a million pounds on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ or throwing a bucket of cold gunge over Lenny Henry’s head on ‘Tiswas’.

Come 2016 though and it is a different landscape. Your only chance of seeing his viso/volto is either from repeats on long-forgotten television channels or those lotto adverts that air at bizarre times.

What you need is more Tarrant in your life. What you need is our dedicated service: The Overwhelming Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline!

Call our hotline 24 hours a day and be greeted with tedious and unrealistic impersonations the likes of which you have never heard before.

LISTEN… for all those confusing Tarrant-esque noises missing from you life.

SMILE… as you hear your favourite Tarrant catchphrases such as, “… but we don’t wanna give you that”, “take your time” and, “is that your final answer?’.

CRINGE… at the poor quality of the service you’ve received.

We have dedicated centres based in Leeds, London and Newcastle so you are guaranteed to find one close to you. As well internet services, part of our expansion plans will also incorporate a drive-thru and the experimental ‘Street Tarrant’ which will see droves of men and woman flood city centres to give bite-sized taster teasers to the general public.

You don’t need to suffer in silence anymore. You don’t need to handle that difficult interview without someone at your side. You don’t need to go on that first date all on your lonesome. Here at the Overwhelmingly Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline we are here to help you in any way we can, as long as it involves crude vocal representations of Reading’s favourite son.

Call now!