James and Dick compete to decide ‘who is the best Christian’, which brother had the best recent holiday excursion and James’s sudden career-changing aspirations. ↓ ↓ ↓Here is the link for this week’s product https://nutrahealth365.com/
↓ ↓ ↓
James and Dick’s CHRISTMAS Special 2024
Featuring Dick. And James. And quite possibly some Special Guests, if we can be arsed. Also: Dick is threatening to play his bass! Not included in ticket price but available so you don’t starve/die of thirst: nice pizzas out of wood-fired ovens; street food.
Tickets cost £25.
Location is: My neck of the woods. Northants. Nearest stations, Banbury/Long Buckby. Junction 11 of M40.
Saturday, 30th November 2024. Starts at 5pm
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Christmas2024/↓ ↓ ↓
Buy James a Coffee at:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jamesdelingpole
The official website of James Delingpole:https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk
x
Welcome to the Deli Point with me, James Deli Point.
I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but I'm not, because it's not a special guest.
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Um, Dick...
It's been a long time.
And it's down to you, mostly.
You know, I was about to say the exact same thing, but pointing the finger of blame at you.
All I did was go away on holiday.
You went on endless holidays and all sorts of excuses and...
You...
Look...
How many holidays have you had since I've been on holiday?
It depends what you count as a holiday.
Oh, don't give me that.
If one was make wife better with some son, so that was purely selfless, the other was bond with daughter...
Are those holidays or are those important?
Well, okay.
So my trip to Iceland was make daughter happy by going by her agenda and make wife happy by giving her some iciness.
Sounds to me like we're owed a holiday, Dick, because we haven't had one yet.
Yeah, I think we should have a holiday together and go and do boyish things.
Oh.
What would we do?
I don't know.
We'd like to think we'll get up to no good, but it would end up being...
No, we wouldn't.
Yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't like to go drinking with you.
Because I can't.
I never go out with the express purpose of drinking.
It's purely a means to a social end for me now.
And I hate it when I have to go out with work for drinks and things like that.
But never as an end in itself.
No, it's a lubricant, as P. Diddy would say.
That was quite good. - Good.
Yeah, no, but I think we agree that really we drink now purely as a kind of relaxant to fuel better, more relaxed conversation.
Yeah, absolutely.
Rather than as a kind of means to an end.
Yeah, I mean, rather than a device of getting ourselves out of it.
But you've taken it to a whole new level where if you can't be in bed at 10 o'clock, you're grumpy.
I know!
I know!
It is true.
You're not even exaggerating.
If I can't be in bed at 10 o'clock, I resent whoever is keeping me from my bed.
Yep.
It's not that bad.
It doesn't make you the social creature that some people expect you to be.
I know.
I know.
I'm trying to think of what...
What there is left that gives me pleasure in terms of sort of vices.
I do like a coffee and a cigarette.
So that's a vice.
I mean, I think, you know, I think in a way the Arabs have got it right, you know, that they smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all the time, don't they, because they can't alcohol.
I'm talking about the observant ones.
I wouldn't have gone without my time of life when I was perhaps drinking to exist.
My time in Belfast, for instance, when...
A friend took me aside and said, the reason you're falling asleep every time you drink a pint of beer is that you're not doing a neat vodka chaser immediately after.
So he got me doing that and it sort of made me realise I could go for longer if I mixed it all up.
And just horrific hangovers.
Yes, it works.
But who'd want to go through that though?
Especially now.
I know.
And I'm thinking about...
I'm thinking about...
Drugs.
Suppose on this imaginary Dick James outing that you say, I've got this wrap of really good coke.
I'd kind of not be...
Would I be excited by that?
No, what are you going to do?
Go off and be an arsehole somewhere?
You know, it's sort of...
But if you were to say, for instance, I got this really expensive wine, I might get quite excited about that.
Or a really nice Japanese whiskey that you'd never tried before.
I was going to say, not Japanese wine.
No, Japanese whiskey.
Then I'm in.
I'm all over that.
If you said you'd got me a bottle of Domaine Romaine Conti from a good year, 1996...
What would you pay for a bottle of that?
Somebody listening to this podcast can Google it.
And if they go back in time and interrupt our recording, they could tell us.
I think it'd be quite expensive.
Or, do you know what I wouldn't, I kind of wouldn't mind if, say, you said, I've got this rap of really good mudma.
And we're going to this private rave party with people about our age.
And it's going to be somebody really good DJing.
And they've got bedrooms that you can go to bed in when you want to.
You know, you don't have to sleep in a tent.
That would be quite tempting.
No?
There you go, you see.
It's a lubricant.
It's a social lubricant for making you enjoy the thing that would have been fun anyway, but makes it easier to enjoy.
So, yeah, with the right people around.
That's sad, though.
And the right circumstances.
But what about activities?
It'd be like we'd want to go to a good art gallery or something, wouldn't we?
Or what?
Or what?
You and I were never that into the dancing side of raving.
I could only dance if I was completely off my tits, but even then I was vaguely aware of how ludicrous I looked, and I don't think I'll ever get over the self-consciousness of dancing, but I suppose in your head you're throwing some shapes, aren't you?
If you could ride Dick, the best experience we could ever have would be for me to take you hunting.
It's just that you can't ride well enough.
Well, you say that, but the riding you took me out on when I came to keep you company when your poor ailing wife was in hospital, and you took me riding, which was absolutely brilliant.
Now, because of that, I was confident when we went riding in Iceland.
Yeah.
Daughter had arranged...
Tell me about Iceland, Dick.
Well, okay, because we haven't, genuinely, we haven't talked about this, even though for me it was a month ago.
You're stupid.
Daughter arranged everything and paid for just about everything.
I think I paid for the car hire or something like that.
Five of us.
Me, son, daughter, wife and daughter's boyfriend.
She paid for it because of money she'd come into from our poor recently departed friend Dave, who was her godfather, and she wanted to spend some of the money on a family outing.
We're going to go to Vietnam to see brother-in-law but he was coming over here anyway and you know what Vietnam doesn't float my boat in quite the same way that Iceland does so we all agreed you know what we'd really like to go to Iceland So we arranged the trip, and as luck would have it, it was perfect weather.
Everything fell into place.
It barely rained at all.
Iceland could probably be quite a miserable place to be if the weather was foul, but it simply wasn't.
Well, I looked your photos.
Yeah, blue skies all the time.
The lack of chemtrails was quite extreme.
The lack of chemtrails was very noticeable, as was the quality, the purity of the air.
It was so pure that after 10 days when I came back, I walked into our house and I could smell the ash in the fireplace.
I could smell the detergent on the sheets of my bed from just standing in the doorway.
It was really weird.
So it must be so pure up there.
And the water, you'd love the water.
Out of the taps, you've got spring water.
Really drinkable spring water coming out of the taps.
And the hot water you shouldn't drink, but you shouldn't drink anyway, but that's volcanic and it smells slightly sulphurous.
Is it not true, you obviously wouldn't know the answer to this because you haven't tested it, but is it not true that after a week you write up things to do and you get quite bored in Iceland?
Could be the case, but we did the entire circuit of the whole of the island of Iceland, which you can't do really in a week unless you're going hell for leather.
So we started off, I don't know if you know the layout of the place, but...
It's an island.
Well, yeah, but Reykjavik, where it is in relation to everything else.
It's kind of bottom left-hand corner.
So a lot of what you can do is down that end, and not many people go to the east, and even fewer to the north.
So there are fewer things to do over to the north and the east, and a lot of the stuff is in the southwest.
So we start at places like Vic, and there's the island down at the bottom.
Is Vic there?
He's been there.
Vic.
There's Vic there.
Yeah, very good.
I'm going to struggle to get beyond that.
You know, you see on the internet a lot, a picture of an isolated island with a scoop of green and a little house in the middle of it.
And it says, would you live here for £10,000 for a month without internet, whatever.
Have you ever seen that meme?
I probably have.
Just remind me to pick up on this thing because I will say something that really annoys me.
Okay, come on.
We're on the boat taking us to this island just off the south coast and we look over and sure enough that The island that we've seen a million times and a million memes with a little house on an isolated island is there.
It's Iceland.
So you're going past all these things you've seen before.
It's a bit like going to America for the first time.
You see a lot of things that you've seen many times before.
So some of the waterfalls you've seen in Vikings on TV. And a lot of the sites are immediately familiar.
Like from Sigur Rós videos and things like that.
So we saw all of those things.
And just the general, you can't help talking about Iceland without saying rugged beauty.
It's just like, it's everywhere.
And you kind of can't get enough of it.
Each waterfall is more beautiful than the last one.
And despite the fact that it's not conventionally beautiful, it's quite stark.
It is just lovely.
And of course the people are lovely, but there's hardly any of them.
It's mostly tourists, it seems.
Yeah, just a whole series of waterfalls and ice flows and hot springs, walking up volcanoes, horse riding on a black sand beach at sunset, staying mostly in wooden shacks, which are really nice, highly recommended, and great food, great drink, lovely people.
What's the food?
Whale.
Well, their national dish, it would appear to be fish and chips.
Obviously fish.
But, you know, you're going to eat what's local and fresh.
I wasn't going to eat the fermented shark, just to say that I've eaten fermented shark.
I'm not going to do that.
Or puffin.
I mean, we didn't even see any of the bloody things.
I'm not going to eat them.
It's like I was once in the Seychelles, and you can eat bat there.
But do you want to eat bat?
No, you don't want to eat bat.
Of course you don't want to eat bat.
Not when there's plenty of really nice tropical fish you could be eating.
Yeah, exactly.
I ate this wolf fish.
It was on the menu and I thought I'd better try something other than cod.
So I had wolf fish and that was very nice.
Was it?
Yeah.
But the towns away from Reykjavik, they're tiny.
They look like...
Chocolate box images of...
Viking settlements.
They're kind of like that, and there's nothing particularly glamorous about them.
They're very functional and workaday, a lot of little wooden churches and things, which is all just lovely.
I think I've seen TV crime series set in Iceland, maybe.
Were they not all Danish, what have you?
No, I think I've never seen one in Iceland.
Oh, right.
But just, yeah, sort of bleak, empty.
Well, by the end of the trip, I was thinking, what did Iceland do in the war?
Do you know what Iceland did in the war?
Because I always like to sort of relate things to the war.
I imagine it had, I don't anymore, by the way, but I imagine it had visits from German U-boats.
Well, on the last day, I sat in a bar in Reykjavik, because we started and finished in Reykjavik, and I found a sort of alehouse type thing, a taproom, where they did interesting beers.
And I got chatting with some of the locals at the bar, the barman himself and one of the young chaps propping up the bar, who happened to be a teacher.
And so I said, what did Iceland do in the war?
A... They have never had an army.
There's never been an Icelandic army.
Good.
Which is probably why I won't get to re-enact Iceland's army of 1940.
They've got a Coast Guard and they've got a police force.
And I said, what happened in the war then?
He said, well, initially the British occupied us.
I said, occupied?
He said, well, it was a friendly occupation.
They came here to stop the Germans getting here.
And then they were replaced by Americans.
And the Americans virtually outnumbered the population and started shagging all the women, of course, as Americans do.
And then the locals, the locals didn't like that.
They were saying, no, they're not getting any sex.
So there was conflict there.
So that was the war, the great Icelandic sex war.
Well, yeah, I imagine it's nothing compared to, yeah, the Cod War would have been nothing compared to the Icelandic Sex War.
But, yeah, that was pretty much it.
And, of course, they got their independence from Denmark during the war.
When Denmark got taken over by the Germans, they said, right, well, now would be a good time to declare independence.
So there you go.
That's my history of Iceland in a nutshell.
A highly recommended place, not as expensive as everyone says, and completely lovely in every way.
And you would love it.
You should definitely do it.
And you should follow my daughter's itinerary.
You can actually put up this section of the podcast...
On, you know, this fashion for young people.
Okay, well, older people talking about holiday experiences.
And then people who are going to Iceland would go, let's just see what Dick says about it before we go.
And there's a house he describes on an island in a meme.
Yeah, let's try and find that meme.
Oh, wolf fish.
That sounds different from cod.
Let's see how different it is.
We went to Keflavik.
Which is in, not Keflavik, that's where the airport is.
Ah, I've now forgotten the name of the place.
In the north.
Husavik, which is where the comedy film Eurovision was set.
It's got, I'm going to forget all the names of these people.
Will Ferrell.
Is an unlikely Eurovision singer from Iceland in it.
And we visited the house he lived in in the film.
And this town, Husavik, is still dining out on the fact that it was the star of this film.
It's a town of population in the low hundreds, so obviously it's going to be quite a big deal that they had such stars visiting there.
But that was another mini highlight.
Just as a brief interlude, can I just pick up on two points?
Two points.
First of all, the meme about the house thing.
You know, would you live on this island?
Could you?
Yeah, I hate those memes.
But do you know what I hate even more?
I was looking at Twitter the other day, and there was a picture of this castle built right on the edge of the cliffs, and there was an interior with a sort of gothic, spooky interior, and it said, would you live in this spooky interior, and it said, would you live in this castle or something?
And I looked at the comments because it was just really annoying, Somebody said there was too much CGI, whatever it is, or AI, is it?
These fake interiors that you now see, like imaginary castles generated by a computer.
I really, really hate that.
Don't you?
I hate all things to do with AI, and if either of us are going to be put out of a job by this, it's going to probably be me first.
Mind you, you might do.
If you were still a journalist, you'd be put out of business by it.
No, because I don't think AI could fake me.
It couldn't fake you, but it could fake a lot of mediocre journalists.
Most of them it could fake, but I don't feel threatened by it at all.
I mean, if you say, AI, can you please regurgitate this press release as if it is an article in The Guardian, then I think every Guardian journalist is suddenly out of a job, because as we know, that's pretty much what they do.
Ah, well, except, you know how that...
This is quite interesting, maybe.
You know that phase you went through where we thought, well, arts graduates are completely buggered because in this new age, the ones who are going to make all the money are...
You remember STEM subjects?
Everyone was talking about STEM subjects.
Everyone was becoming a computer programmer and stuff.
And, of course, now the computer programmers are pretty much all out of a job.
And all the science grads have been...
Now that everyone's realised that science is fake anyway, it's all just made-up shit.
I wish everyone had realised that.
At least the arts don't pretend they're anything other than made-up shit.
Whereas science pretends that it's actually real.
But anyway, apparently, I don't know if this is true, but apparently that...
The graduates are at a premium now.
Things like English graduates who can...
Write better than AI. Or D-A-R. You know, look at an AI script and then D-A-I it.
Because they've got the special skills that are kind of a bit like the sniffer dogs in the ones that tell you you're not a replicant.
You know those ones?
Yeah, yeah.
Terminator.
Terminator, yeah.
Terminator 1.
Yeah.
So English graduates like me are the equivalent of sniffer dogs.
Yeah.
Probably.
One of those jobs you never thought would exist while you were young.
What are you going to do when you leave uni?
Well, I'm going to re-humanise the AI script.
What?
But I suppose the same could be said for what I do.
Even as a young art student, I was aware that Because photography didn't kill painting, I never need to worry about that sort of thing.
Traditional crafts and skills will always be in demand, perhaps more so the better computers get.
So, what would you rather have?
A beautiful painting by someone or a clever piece of AI that is almost indistinguishable from a photo?
I'll tell you what I would like, which I saw for the first time.
What's that?
The Velasquez Pope.
It's really good.
You saw it in the flesh?
Yeah.
The one that Francis Bacon did a pastiche of.
It's in this place that...
You know how when you go to the Prado or the Louvre or the ones in New York or the National Gallery...
And you kind of get world-class paintinged out after a while.
There's quite a few competing for your attention and you get seated.
I always get overload in big galleries.
But this one is in a private collection.
It still belongs to the same family.
They've got to be one of the bloodlines, I'm convinced of it.
Or at least, yeah, they must be.
Dora Pamphili.
Have you heard of it?
No.
Dora Pamphili.
In Rome, they've got this palazzo.
I suppose it is.
And in it is a vast collection of masterpieces.
They've got three early Caravaggio's.
They've got Bruegels, they've got all sorts of stuff, but they've got the Velasquez Pope, because that particular Pope was the founder of their dynasty, or helped them accumulate their vast wealth.
And it's in its own special room, and it just blows you away.
You look at it and you go...
It doesn't give you that feeling you get when you see the Mona Lisa.
When you look at the Mona Lisa, you go, oh, God, is that it?
Oh, no.
I've seen it now, and it's really disappointing.
Which I felt, by the way, about the Sistine Chapel as well, slightly.
Really?
Yeah, I just thought, you know, okay, you can see it was quite hard, lying on his back, doing all this stuff, and probably painting in all the sort of Masonic symbols and secret codes and stuff.
But, yeah, you're in a room surrounded by loads of other tourists, and you're being ushered through, aren't you?
Whereas when you see the Velasquez Pope, you're in a tiny room on your own, because nobody goes to this gallery, hardly anyone, because everyone's such a philistine.
They're so busy going to the Colosseum.
They're all in the Colosseum.
They are all in the bloody Colosseum.
Well, good on the Colosseum for drawing away the riffraff.
It's, yeah...
Oh, that was hell, Dick.
Have you been to the Colosseum?
I haven't been to Rome, except once when I was almost a down and out there for 24 hours while I was waiting for a flight and I had no money.
And some beggars gave me some bread.
Sorry, carry on?
Yeah, yeah.
The weird thing about Rome...
Is that there was a whole chunk of the middle bit, say maybe one-fifth of the surface area, which is just ruins.
The Colosseum and the bit stretching, the Palatine Hill and stuff, and it's...
It's a bit like one of those wasp traps that you put up in your fruit cage.
All the wasps are attracted away from the real fruit, which is just the nice streets and cafes and places where you want to hang out.
And they're all drawn into the ruin area.
Did you even go to the ruin area?
Yeah, I did.
I've been to the ruin area twice.
Once I went with the wife and we had a fantastic experience partly it was a fantastic experience because while we were there We heard this interesting guy giving a really interesting talk on just a good sort of lively account of the lives of the Romans and stuff.
And we hadn't paid for at all, so we half listened to him, but we felt slightly embarrassed, so we moved on.
And then...
About an hour later, he said, I got this direct message on Twitter saying, was that you I saw in the, you know, wandering around Rome?
I said, yeah.
He said, I'm a real fan of the podcast.
I'll give you a free tour.
So this was the tour guide.
This was the guy giving the tour.
Yeah, yeah.
So Anton gave us this tour.
We'd already been to that bit.
So he gave us a tour of the Pantheon.
The Pantheon, which is maybe the greatest building on Earth.
In that it's this dome with a hole in the top, which is 2,000 years old.
And even if they tried to do it now, they couldn't.
But the Romans built it.
Hmm.
You should look it up.
You Google it.
It's just amazing.
I vaguely know about the Pantheon.
I just wouldn't claim to know any more than what you've just told me.
Anyway, so when we did the Roman bit with the wife and she was entranced and I was entranced with her because I was sharing in her entrancement.
And the second time with Daughter, it was like, have we done enough yet?
Yeah, we've done enough.
We've done enough.
It's all just bloody ruins.
Go and have a coffee and a fag.
Go and have a coffee and a fag.
And I did kind of come to the conclusion that if somebody said to me now, you can never see another classical ruin again.
I mean, just Greek or Roman.
That's just it.
I wouldn't feel that gutted.
I don't know.
I just think I've had enough.
I don't have the imagination to look at this pile of rubble with the odd pillar and reconstruct in my imagination how it might have been.
I just can't do it.
I've been to Ephesus.
On my cross-Asia trip in my sort of gap yard.
And it meant nothing to me, apart from it was a pile of ruins.
But now I think in terms of Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
And if someone had made that connection to me, I might have at least been able to make it relevant in my mind.
And now, of course, I'd have to conjure up the images.
The same if I went to Capernaum.
I'd have to try and imagine I might be standing on a spot where Jesus once stood in his early ministry.
Little things like that.
I don't think I'd have too much trouble.
And did those feet in ancient times.
Yeah, but if you read Lost Kingdom, is it?
You'd find that the Glastonbury thing is a misdirection.
And it probably wasn't Glastonbury he went to.
But that's another story.
What?
It was more likely to be Wales.
Is this the...
The Blackwood, the two that...
Wilson and Blackett.
Yeah, Wilson and Blackett.
Are you going to lend me your version?
Yeah, for sure.
While we're on books, by the way, and while you're talking about Rome and all things Roman, I'm just about finishing this one.
Do you know it?
Yes.
No.
No.
It's brilliant.
I haven't read it.
Is it good?
It's lent to me by Sir Dan of Sea as part of our Thursday Circle exchange of books and ideas group.
When you finish the Bible, don't you kind of then want to go, well, that's all well and good, but how did we get in 2,000 years from that to where we are now?
How did we end up with three or four, five, six, seven, eight different Christian churches, from the Orthodox to Catholic to Protestantism?
How did we get where we are?
How did we decide what Easter was?
And why Christmas?
And why priests in robes?
And are they allowed to marry?
Aren't they allowed to marry?
All of that.
And this, it just covers the whole lot.
It's really, really good for that.
So I've been learning about how the split from Rome happened and how Rome moved to Constantinople and briefly to France under Charlemagne and And which emperors adopted Christianity and those that rejected it.
You know, atheism only ever really came in in the 19th century.
It was a really relatively new invention.
And the damage that Darwinism did to faith, generally.
But it does a really good job of explaining how we got to where we are now.
So when I've done all of this, and the other one I've just finished reading, of course, is this.
I'm just about at the end of that.
Yeah.
That's a biggie.
We like that.
And the tilde on that one is we are God's gardeners and ultimately we will return to becoming God's gardeners in the New Eden if we play our cards right.
So that's a pretty cool one.
So, yeah, the whole your trip to Rome thing and why I would feel it was relevant was from reading that book and wanting to know about, yeah, what they did to Christianity.
Did you not get any of that when you were there?
Did you not do any of the sort of Christian bit?
Yeah, I did, but only reluctantly.
I'd already persuaded daughter that we weren't going to do the Sistine Chapel.
I said, look, it's just kind of ruin a morning, and you don't want to do that.
You want to be in cafes smoking cigarettes.
It's much more fun.
And so he did my good advice, but we did...
But I said, well, you may as well wander over to St Peter's and just check out the atmosphere and stuff.
And I said, maybe you can see why it's my least favourite part of Rome.
Because the architecture is really, really heavy, isn't it?
It's just heavy, heavy...
Oppressive.
...buildings.
Oppressive.
And I said...
I sort of pointed out St Peter's, well, you can't miss it.
And I said...
Do you remember your reading of the New Testament?
And she said, no.
I said, you do.
You did the Gospels.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did at school.
And I said, do you remember when reading stuff Jesus says, Do you ever get the feeling that what he really wanted, representing his path, was this enormous,
enormous building with a huge, huge dome on it and this arcade of pillars with an Asherah pole standing in the middle that had been pillaged from pagan Egypt?
And she said, no, I don't know.
I said, yeah, that's kind of my feeling.
This is why I wanted to read this book.
I wanted to know how we got to the stage where we need these amazing buildings.
Now, you and I wouldn't be without a beautiful cathedral, would we?
I mean, they are amazing and beautiful and wonderful buildings, and they are incredible.
But it's...
Yeah, it's clearly not what Jesus was asking us to do.
He'd be happy enough if you were in a hut as long as you were gathering, because the church is the people.
And yet, who would be without a beautiful cathedral?
It's a tricky one.
I think he would prefer Santa Maria Trastevere to St Peter's.
I think it'd be more his style.
I don't know, but I just think if he were going to make a list of his favourite Favourite churches and cathedrals.
I think he would like, even though the Venetians were probably devil worshippers really, I think he would quite like the cathedral with the mosaics on the island.
The islander's name, I can't remember.
Hang on one second, I've got a wife at the door of my shed.
Hello, I'm podcasting.
Oh, within the last hour?
I heard dogs and wee.
Dogs and wee.
While I've been in here podcasting, the dogs have weed in the house.
And do you know what?
I know whose fault it is.
I'm looking at him.
Do you know how I know?
Because whenever the dog in this house does some annoying shit, it's never the dog's fault.
It's always my fault.
You shouldn't have left it on the corner of the table.
Why did you leave it upstairs?
Why did you let the dog go upstairs?
How could you not know that door should be shut?
Imagine that times two.
Imagine multiplying all of that grief by two.
Do you think this is a universal thing?
That men all over the world are blamed for the behaviour of their dogs?
Yeah, absolutely.
By their wives?
Yeah.
And never credited for any of their loveliness.
No.
Like when the dog comes and gives wife a big hug and curls up on her lap, it's never, oh, this is so lovely, you're so clever to be loving like your dog.
No.
Yes.
But the moment there's a shit on the floor, that's you.
That might as well be you that coiled one off in the kitchen.
It is.
I find the animals never get the blame for their bad behaviour.
No.
So I am now in the doghouse, literally, so that's your fault.
I can tell you're in the doghouse.
You were ticked off, almost on camera.
Yeah.
You didn't need to see Lydia to see her face.
No, no, no, you didn't.
The expression of disappointment on her face.
No.
It's a bit like the maid who appears off camera in Tom and Jerry.
You know?
Yes.
Thomas?
You're good for nothing, Kirk.
It's like that.
Yes.
So...
Where were we?
With Jesus not liking St.
Peter's?
By the way, I don't think...
Sorry, carry on.
I don't think Jesus would...
I think Jesus would like loads and loads and loads of our Catholic friends.
I'm not dissing the Catholics here.
I think he'd look at some of them and go, yeah, you're great.
Keep it up.
Keep it up.
But I think it's okay for me to diss some of the trappings of the Catholic supremacy.
I'm not a Pope fan.
I'm really not.
I mean, especially now that Satan himself has sent his envoy on St Peter's.
Put him in the Vatican.
I think that's not good.
The history of Christianity, in a nutshell from reading this book, was essentially what we're doing here.
Because once the Bible has finished, everything else is like, what do you reckon Jesus meant by that?
Would Jesus have liked this?
The Council of Nicaea, where we get the Nicene Creed from, they had to work out what it is we as Christians believe.
So everyone got different ideas.
One of the big arguments was...
Jesus.
Was he actually the son of God, or just a really amazing bloke, or was he God himself?
Has he always existed?
Is he a subdivision of God?
Is he secondary to God?
Is he equal to God?
They had to sort out all of these things, and there's at least one senior cleric who held One of those views.
So they're all arguing and they're all falling out.
And eventually they settle on various ideas that Jesus is God, always has been, is inseparable from.
And they eventually come up with the idea of the Trinity.
So it's not just Father and Son, it's Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Which is why, for instance, the Muslims don't believe in the Trinity, but they believe in Jesus.
And it's kind of like we could have gone in many different directions, and the church did go off in many directions, but it's all what we're doing now, saying, do you reckon Jesus would have approved of this?
Like the Inquisition.
It says people got the Inquisition quite wrong.
It wasn't as bad as all that, and actually the governments were far worse than the church at that time.
In fact, the Inquisition was saving people a lot of the time.
They did burn and torture, but by and large, they were trying to do good.
They cuddled them into righteousness.
Yeah, well, they're killing them with kindness.
But yeah, it's definitely worth reading.
And, you know, trying to get to the bottom of it all.
And then I'm going to go back and re-read the Bible again.
I don't think I'll ever stop.
That's what I did.
Yeah, I think you're going to get...
It's an onion, isn't it?
You're going to get through the layers.
So, this is why I get slightly...
I'm not sure what the word is, the emotion I feel.
I mean, he's like the irritated, I would say.
Whenever you start talking about Christianity in chat groups or whatever, you get these schisms and you get these divisions and you get people who are arguing forcefully for pretty much antithetical positions.
And I'm thinking, well, how do you know?
Like, there was a chap called Henry.
Henry is a young chap, and he's Oxbridge, and he's city, so he has a certain amount of ego about him.
He's also a Catholic.
And he's completely down the rabbit hole in everything, except where Roman Catholicism is concerned.
And as far as he's concerned...
Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church is just it.
It's just like, if you're not a Catholic, you might as well be a Satanist, frankly.
Because, you know, you're going to burn in hell regardless.
I mean, I'm sort of slightly exaggerating his position, but not by much.
And I'm thinking...
You're supposed to be awake.
And the one thing we awake people know above all is you cannot trust authority.
You cannot take the official version on anything.
You've got to question everything.
And yet here you are, citing everything that the Catholic Church tells you as gospel, when your current boss is...
It's a wrong one, to say the least.
So how do you square that, for example?
And what about all the other wrong ones who were involved?
Going back to the Council of Nicaea, how do we know that the people who made the decisions at the Council of Nicaea made the right decisions?
What if they...
One of them was more forceful in expressing himself than the others.
He sort of bullied the others into a wrong position.
And then you get people who say, oh yeah, but God's divine...
I can't remember what the phrase is, but God makes sure that the right decision is made.
It's a bit like the theory that...
The King James Bible is the most perfect expression of the Bible.
You run it through a computer and the computer says, yes, this is the most perfect thing.
It's so symmetrical and clever.
Yeah, and then when you look into this stuff, you find it's complete bollocks, by the way.
It's just made-up shit that some really quite high-powered and generally wise Christians have believed in.
Some of those American ones, for example, the ones that you can listen to old recordings of on the internet, who are really good on the Bible.
But then they fall for this just rubbish about the King James Bible.
I thought the chat you had with Richard Vobes, I only listened to that yesterday, you do the Christianity bit there, and he's a lovely, intelligent chap who talks really nicely, and he took everything you threw at him really well, and in very good nature.
He didn't bridle or get offended, and he took the chat on...
No, well, he didn't roll his eyes and try to belittle you in any way for believing stuff that's in a book where you would dismiss any other book.
But it was a good meeting of minds, I thought.
I do like Vobes, and he's a good chap, so I was relieved that he took to you, apparently.
Yeah, well, I liked him.
I thought he was...
I thought that was a good example of a Christian talking to a non-Christian who is also open-minded.
Yeah.
And as you say, if you're not open-minded and you call yourself awake, then you're kind of missing the point.
Yeah, I think so.
By the way, we talked briefly the other day about...
Are you going to get...
A higher place in heaven than me.
You thought yes?
I go to a more highbrow church than you.
Why did we decide that I was going to You were the one who came up with the idea that I was going to outrank you in heaven.
Well, the thing was, you were going to Choral Evensong at Worcester Cathedral.
Yep.
I was going...
And I told you that the Gloria on the Nunc Dimittis was really rather fabulous that night.
And you were going, you bastard, we don't get the choir doing a Nunc Dimittis.
No, we don't.
So I went to the special Harvest Evensong at one of our local churches because I got seven within walking distance.
I mean, with reasonable walking distance.
And I do feel slightly that you have the edge.
Because, for example, I did not set up this nationwide Christian talking group, which you have.
God's got to like you for that.
I've got big points for that, surely.
I think you definitely go to church more than me.
I don't know about that, actually.
I don't get off their...
All that often, and I would like to go more often.
But I can recommend to our listeners, Choral Evensong, 4 o'clock, Worcester Cathedral.
Look up on the website to see whether you're getting the full choir.
Sometimes it's a visiting choir, which is good.
Sometimes it's the voluntary choir, which is good, but not as good as the full choir.
I was asking my friend the Canon about...
How the choirs work in cathedrals.
You know, they're paid professionals.
Are they?
Yeah, it's their job.
What are the boys as well?
Well, the boys, men, women, it's like the boys generally do it on the basis that they get a scholarship to Kings Worcester as a result of their choral scholarship.
So they don't get cash in hand?
No, but I mean to the parents it might as well be.
Just hold that thought.
I'm going to open the window because the dog's farted.
You're going to throw the dog out of the window?
I'm going to throw the dog out of the window.
Yeah, sorry.
Had to let the dog out.
It was annoying.
Well, I thought you were going to chuck him out the window for a moment.
Her, sorry.
Misgendering your dog.
So...
Yeah, tell me about the choir as a moment, Dick, but can I just say...
No, I'm done.
That was it.
That's all I want to say about the choir.
I think it's important that we have these things out.
I would...
I would not like it, I'm honest, if...
I went to heaven and you had, I don't know, better wings or, you know, you were closer to the throne of God than me.
I think if you were in a position where you took that grudge with you, you're probably not fit to be up there with me.
You probably have to spend some time.
That's a really low blow.
That is just...
I thought you'd like that.
You're fighting dirty now.
Actually, I think...
Do you know what?
I think God actually can...
You know you can see into all our hearts.
I think he could see the calculation in that comment.
I don't think he'd like it very much.
It might give me a slap, but funny, one of the things you were talking to Vobes about, which stuck with me, was the mini rewards you get in prayer and things like that.
Yes.
And I've been thinking a lot on that.
It's sort of like, has my life become better since I started being a proper Christian and praying and believing and all that stuff?
And I'm thinking, yes, it has.
But I think you only can get many rewards because if there's anything provable...
I think the whole faith thing will never be provable.
We'll never convince our scientific friends who want proof because it's one of those things that you simply will not be able to prove.
Otherwise, what's the point?
So the mini rewards have to go below the radar.
They have to be little things like the last cake being available when you get to the bakery or the chicken lays a double yoker that day or something like that.
Mini rewards.
The thing is, you read in the Bible about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego going into the fiery furnace.
And they're just going, like, we don't care because God's got our back.
And they don't burn up.
I mean, that is absolutely...
And in the same way when Jesus talks about moving mountains with your faith.
And yet, I... Well, I suppose this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I know that my faith would not be strong enough.
I couldn't move a mountain, you know.
And if I were to be put into a fiery furnace, I wouldn't be so confident that I wasn't going to burn up, that I wouldn't burn up.
That's the problem, isn't it?
You're never going to get that level proof.
You don't know until you get there, do you?
Well, do you think...
So, what about all those Christians who got eaten by...
Torn apart by wild animals in the Coliseum.
Exactly.
Now, that would take pretty enormous...
It was all they had to do not to get eaten by the wild animals.
It would take guts.
All they would have to do...
They were given chances.
All you've got to do is just renounce your faith and you won't get eaten.
You can walk away from here now.
And yet they were so faithful that they said, no, we're not going to de-Christian ourselves.
We're going to go and be eaten by lions.
Even with faith like that, I don't believe that when the lions came to disembowel them, it was like the pain was all magicked away.
No, I've been through all this in my mind as well, that they had to go through that a few moments of still being alive while their guts were being eaten and all of that sort of stuff.
You kind of hope that you get sent holy anaesthetic at the last minute of some description.
Like in The Hunger Games, where Katniss, where the, I mean, I think in a way the movies tell us things about how the other side works.
The other side is a sort of an inversion of our, you know, the dark side as represented by Hollywood.
So Katniss is living out a kind of, sort of their version of the world, where The sort of supernatural forces in the way are the ones that live in the capital, and they can vote on potions and things being sent down to the players, as it were.
Taking the place of gods, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Will you say that those early Christians, all they had to do was renounce their faith?
Actually, there was more to it than that.
The various Roman emperors were saying that it wasn't enough that they recanted.
They had to start doing things like making sacrifices to the Roman gods and things like that.
And so it's a bit like apologizing on Twitter.
It's never enough.
Once you've apologised, you've admitted you were wrong and then they want to take you to court and they want money and then they want to destroy your career and take your family down.
It's never enough.
So I think those early Christians knew that it wouldn't be enough to say, yeah, yeah, I don't believe in God and Jesus anymore.
It's never enough.
They want more and more.
And they would always live as second-class citizens as a result.
Sorry, you just made me think when you mentioned Twitter.
Liam Payne.
Do you think he was richly sacrificed or do you think he's in Antarctica?
It's been one of those things I don't want.
I didn't even want to.
I didn't want to have to drag myself into normie world, but this isn't the normie world take on it, is it?
It's kind of a...
I don't know, but maybe that is what they're talking about on Mumsnet and the TriggerPod chat room.
I don't know.
I don't go to these places.
No, quite.
I'd like to think they did.
I'd like to think they were with us.
I wouldn't have been able to tell you who Liam Payne was before he died, to be honest.
No.
Just one thing to make you think.
Where was he when he died?
Argentina.
Where is Argentina near and has the same beginning and end letter?
Antarctica.
A hop, skip and a jump.
So what was the purpose of his sacrifice?
They don't like it when you try and escape your contract with the devil.
When you start sort of resisting, pushing back.
Somebody posted some footage of him on Graham Norton.
Did you see that?
Yes.
Yes, I did see that.
Did you see the really interesting thing?
The expression on...
Salma Hayek's face.
Something more interesting than that.
Oh, to do with her husband?
I urge you to go back and look at it.
So he tries to tell.
He's obviously desperate for a story that kind of validates him.
He's thinking, I'm on this bloody show where I've got to tell showbiz anecdotes.
What's...
And he starts telling this anecdote about how he was at a Diddy party.
And that's where the Selma Hayek of Face Like Thunder comes.
But who is the person between Selma Hayek and...
Is it David Walliams?
He's so fat that I didn't recognise him at first.
I mean, I don't watch much TV really, so I hadn't realised how much weight he's put on.
But go back to that footage and see what Walliams does.
When Liam starts telling his story.
Yeah, he tells him to stop dropping names.
Yeah, so in the old days we'd have thought, oh, this is David Walliams looking for the laugh angle.
But looking at it now, it seems to me like he is trying to mess up his anecdote because he doesn't want him going into the realm of P. Diddy.
It's definitely intervening.
He's definitely intervening.
And he's kind of...
He's throwing...
What's he called again, the guy?
The pop star?
Liam Payne.
He's throwing Liam off his stride.
And you look at the body language, and you look at the gestures, and if you watch it with the sound down, you can really see what's going on.
It's as if they are at a P. Diddy party.
And Hayek and Walliams are schooling.
Schooling him in how to behave.
These are things you don't talk about.
Nobody talks about Diddy Club on Graham Norton.
First rule of Diddy Club.
Yeah, first rule of Diddy Club.
As somebody else pointed out, you look at Harry Styles, his whole life is a giant humiliation ritual.
All the dresses, the clothes, everything.
And it's clear to me that Liam Payne was not...
You know, he was like trying to break out of his monarch programming, as it were.
He wasn't saying the right things and doing the right things.
And I think that's when they retire you.
Either they off you or they take you to Antarctica.
He's probably staying with David Bowie, maybe.
Yeah.
Well, it's when you see things, when you see everything differently, scratching the surface, it's the way we have to think now about absolutely everything.
Could you do David Bowie welcoming Liam Payne to your house in Antarctica?
No, I can't just Bowie on demand like that.
Oh, hello Liam.
Hello, hello.
That's laughing no mirror Bowie.
There is only one ear of Bowie.
I've come to show you around.
I've come to show you Antarctica.
Come and see my little pad.
This is why I keep my laughing gnome.
You missed the line.
He says, haven't you got a gnome to go to?
Oh, God.
Haven't you got a gnome to go to?
Exactly.
You see, that's an outtake that would almost go on YouTube.
Are you on YouTube anymore?
Can your stuff be seen on YouTube?
I think...
This chap at work was asking me where he gets to see your stuff, and I was saying, oh, just on really obscure places like Rumble.
Yeah, that's the problem.
I'd be huge, except the problem is if I were on YouTube, I'd be so big that they'd have to kill me.
So it's a trade-off.
Do you want to live and be on Rumble?
Or do you want to die and be on YouTube?
I was losing you temporarily then.
You briefly went into Dalek voice and your image.
That's really annoying.
That's really annoying.
And I had been going to say something.
Oh, yes.
So I did do...
You know I did Owen Benjamin?
I've only just been catching up when people have been talking favourably about that on the Batshit group.
So I've got to catch up with that.
Give me it in a nutshell.
Hang on.
just just give me give me one second we obviously had to talk about pandas um Where were we on this?
You were on that.
Because, I mean, where are you on pandas?
That's your next t-shirt, by the way.
I struggle to think that they're not as a magpie.
I've got to salute it.
Dick!
What?
That's a pagan thing.
Is it?
Yeah.
Oh, well.
I don't think...
Again, you know, I'm not sure that God is going to make you burn hell for that.
I think...
Pandas?
Magpies?
They're black and white?
Yeah.
Good point.
That's spooky, that is, that coincidence.
Are pandas magpies?
So, seriously, actually, this is an important question.
Let's not be sure this about it.
I struggle to...
Not believe in them, especially having seen them.
What is it, the things that we're meant to have been seeing?
Where did you see them?
The zoo.
Which zoo?
Dudley Zoo, probably.
Regent's Zoo?
Regent's Park Zoo?
I bet Dudley Zoo never had a panda.
It would have been the most miserable place to end on.
It would have been the most miserable bloody panda.
Can you imagine?
Even if it had a view of the castle.
Oh, please not Dudley.
Oh, it's great.
You'll love it.
You'll be next to the lions.
Or lion.
Lion.
They've got a wolf and a lizard and there's some bats.
And they've got a dry ski slope where you could learn to ski.
Well, you won't be able to learn to ski.
We learned...
What's that?
That was weird, wasn't it?
That freaked me out as well.
There's no one ever in your house.
Who was that?
Do you know what it was?
No.
That was a roofer.
Oh.
Yeah.
Where are they from?
We're having the roof done and it's made me want to be a roofer.
It's artisanal.
I've been watching them do it and I've learned how you fit slates onto the wooden strippy things.
Are they called struts?
Or are they called battons?
Battons, isn't it?
It's battons.
Is it?
Yeah.
Probably.
So I've been watching how they do it.
Dick and James talk roofing.
No, you knock it.
But Dick, there is a market for this kind of men talking about...
Roofing with Dick and James.
Yes, but complete incompetence talking about stuff that they know very little about.
Ah, excuse me.
What are the nails made from that they use to nail the slates to the strip, to the batons?
Panda's fingernails.
Close.
In fact, accurate if Panda's fingernails are made of copper.
Oh, right.
Copper.
You know why it's copper?
Because it doesn't rust.
Yeah?
Or something like that.
No, that's not the reason.
That's not the reason.
No, that's not the reason.
Is it because...
I don't know.
Why are they copper?
Yeah, you see, you don't know about roofing, do you?
No, I thought...
Just a little gentle questioning, and I think you're...
Yeah.
So what...
The reason they're made of copper is because if one of the tiles needs...
If a leak develops, you obviously can't take all the tiles off and take the roof off every time there's a leak in one place.
So what you do is you shove this device underneath the tile...
And there's a hook that grabs the copper nail and pulls it out and the copper nail bends because it's soft and you pull it out.
And how do you get it in again afterwards?
I hadn't got to that stage of finding it, but I just knew that detail I thought was good.
I've seen those slidey things they put up between them.
They're good, aren't they?
Yeah, like a crowbar, flat crowbar-y type thing.
And lead.
Lots of manipulation of lead.
I think it's called the gully, is it?
The gully?
Does that make sense?
Is it gusset?
Or valley?
No, gully.
Gully.
All right.
Anyway, so what they do all day is they're very cheerful.
Flashing.
Lead flashing.
That as well.
Yeah.
Yes, but I think the part...
So they go up on the roof so they have a nice view all day.
Obviously, they try and not do it on rainy days because that would be pointless.
So they don't work in the rain, probably.
And, you know, you make them a cup of tea and you have nice chats with them.
And it's a craft.
They do things that we can't do, that we ought to be able to do.
Do you know what?
I almost said to him, will you take me on as your apprentice for a few weeks?
And I'll just learn how to...
I can absolutely see how that would really appeal.
And you know what would be even better than that?
Thatching.
Although it's very tough on the hands.
Is it?
Well, it's a coarse and unpredictable material.
You sound like you looked into this.
I think I've watched way too many documentaries on thatching.
Right.
But there's a whole load of weird esoteric stuff to do with thatching and finding ancient things left in the old thatch when you take it apart.
You know, a lot of folklore-y type witchcraft stuff.
Especially around Worcestershire.
If you had to develop one particular skill...
For the apocalypse?
Yes.
Because I think all these schools are going to be useful.
Would it be thatching or roofing?
Brick laying?
Joinery.
That'd be quite a good one, wouldn't it?
Joinery.
Plumbing.
I've already thought this one through.
Wait, wait, wait.
Butchery.
I bet you won't come up with the one that I'm going to say.
Butchery.
Tracking and hunting with a crossbow.
Or hunting bow.
Or a hunting bow.
Or an electrician.
Or kimchi maker.
In general kind of herbalist.
Keep going.
That'd be quite good.
Herbalist.
Smoker.
You know, as in smoking, preserving meat rather than just having a fag.
Although you'd need fags to keep you going through the tribulation.
I'd just be the bloke who has a fag occasionally.
I've got that skill already.
Here's my one.
A distiller.
The ability to make moonshine, you can make fuel, you can make whiskey, whatever.
The ability to do that, knowing how to set up a still.
You will always be in demand in a community if you can do that.
You would, because people always want altered states.
And, yeah.
And they want to be able to run their land.
Yeah.
So that would be my thing.
But talk about protected professions.
It would be, you know, they'd welcome you into any post-zombie apocalypse, farmstead-based home area.
I'm thinking fences and things here.
My sheep story.
Go on.
Because I've picked up a bit of sheep knowledge over the years, because I'm surrounded by sheep, and Robert, the sheep farmer, who sells us sheep every year, and they're really good, he's made me his deputy shepherd, because I go around spotting sheep that are trapped, or if they're cast, I pick them up.
Is it a badge?
There ought to be, wouldn't there?
A woolly star.
A white woollen star.
You could design one dick for me.
He could give me loads.
A knitted sheriff's badge.
I think that'd be perfect.
That would be really good.
So, I often have sheep conversations.
And I was walking...
Actually, I was walking to church one morning and I saw a man, a young man.
I was quite surprised by this because normally it's old people because no one wants to farm anymore.
He was demaggotting the botfly had laid their eggs in the sheep's feet.
And he was...
He had the ewes on their backs and their legs up and he was painting this gunk on the feet and I could see the raw flesh between the hooves and they were pollulating with maggots.
It was really disgusting.
It was the sort of thing you don't want to see before you have your breakfast.
And I was thinking, oh, sheep farming is just like, stuff like bot flight.
And if you talk to sheep farmers about sheep, they always say the same thing.
They say, if there's a way it can kill itself, the sheep will find it.
They are always looking for ways to kill themselves.
They're suicide machines.
And I'm always coming across sheep which are just like doing stupid things like one tried to get to the trough on the wrong side of the fence and as it was doing it, it strangled itself and lay there, you know, and you see the body pitifully.
You think if only I'd been walking past a few hours earlier, I could have saved that stupid sod.
Hang on, where am I going with this?
So then, yeah.
So I was out riding with this Kiwi girl who grew up on a sheep farm in New Zealand.
And she, I got talking to her about sheep, as you do, and she was saying that Organic farming in the UK certainly really doesn't work that well with sheep.
She said that she's been to organic farms in the UK and maybe it's because we're an island of, you know, everything's close together and we're diseased or whatever.
But she says in her experience...
Sheep on organic farms.
I'm open to correction here by listeners who can speak otherwise.
She said that sheep on organic farms, they just have a really, really, really shit life.
Because there are so many pests that get them while their owners are being virtuous and not using chemicals and stuff.
That the sheep are just crawling with all sorts of parasites and lurgy.
And it was quite an eye-opener for me, this conversation, because I'd...
You know, you think about organophosphates and you think about all the poison that poor sheep farmers have to put up with when they dip their sheep and they give them sort of life-ruining conditions and stuff.
So I'm not a fan of chemicals either.
But it had never occurred to me that organic is not the panacea either.
There are people who talk in terms of their flocks or their produce for other animals as being not technically organic but as good as because to tick all the boxes to get that organic certification They've got to kind of achieve an almost unachievable level of being chemical-free,
and yet you can go for some of the more sensible ones without going for the ones that are essentially, I don't know, let's say a lazy farmer's way of doing things because it's less work.
But there are certain things you want to do that might completely ruin your organic certification but are entirely necessary.
So...
I'd probably go along with them where you trust the farmer.
You know he's generally a good egg and his other stuff is good.
Therefore, he's probably doing the right thing even though it's not technically organic.
I found a farm shop here recently.
They've got a lovely website.
They're called Roots.
And they're my side of Worcester.
And I tried some of their home-produced beef the other day.
Really very, very nice.
And if you come up to stay, we'll probably get a chicken from there next time.
All produced on site, all humanely slaughtered.
I don't know if he's organic certified, but I think he's the kind of farmer you would want to go to because you trust his meat and you trust his methods.
Is he called Kunta Kinte?
No, he's not called Kunta Kinte.
Hmm.
That's disappointing.
Oh, rude.
God's sake, James.
That's appallingly bad.
And also, you know, I'll just say, it will sail over the heads of most of our audience, though actually it won't.
Except for those in their 50s.
Yes.
I think that's where I... Are there any young people watching this drivel?
Yes, there are.
Let's give a big shout out to our under 50 audience.
Yes, exactly.
Because that's young.
Hello kids.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm slightly obsessed with the roofer behind you.
If you are a young person and you like the James and Dick podcast, will you get in touch and say, I'm a young person?
Because I'd be quite excited, wouldn't you, Dick?
Not in a sexual way, not in an Epstein Island way, but I'd be pleased.
It would be reassuring, wouldn't it?
It's like when we have young people turning up in the very old man hobby of reenactment, when we get someone who is of a plausible age that could actually conceivably have fought in the particular war we're presenting.
There's one unit of World War II Russians, and they're all in their 20s.
Except for the odd old boy.
And it's really plausible because he's like the old sweat who's been through a war before.
And the youngsters just look really good in their kit.
It's so encouraging when you see them doing it well.
And you can do that suspension of disbelief a lot better when you see them at a plausible age.
It's really good.
It's the same sort of thing.
They speak Russian.
None of the ones that I know can speak Russian.
One of them is a French girlie.
She's quite convincing.
She looks really good in her kit.
Do you not think...
I'll send you pictures.
Do you not be the coolest thing?
What's that?
If you formed a fiend of the Eastern Front.
Would I get to be Captain Constanta?
Of course you get to be Captain Constanta.
Although I believe that he was clean-shaven.
Again, there's going to be a reference over the head of just about everyone.
He was clean-shaven, wasn't he?
He was what?
Isn't he clean-shaven, Captain Constanta?
No, I think he's got a moustache, hasn't he?
Let's check now.
LAUGHTER Hang on.
I wasn't going to Google the other thing.
It's only going to be probably Mark Miller who will get this reference.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's alright.
I don't know whether Mark listens to...
I think he thinks he knows it all.
He thinks...
Captain Constanta...
Fiends at Eastern Front...
Images...
Do you know what?
This is everything she says here.
There's a...
Images of all sorts of people who aren't...
Oh, I see.
It's hard to say...
You studying the screen.
This is great pod.
There's a picture of a German, but it's not...
You'd have to put in 2000 AD, maybe.
Refine the search to 2000 AD, Captain Constanta, fiends of the Eastern Front.
It's hard to see...
Oh, okay.
Captain Constanta fan art.
I don't want fan art.
Well, at least you'd know if he had a moustache or not.
Oh, dick.
This is...
The internet is supposed to contain everything.
And actually, when it comes down to it, when you really need...
An important question answering.
Captain Constanta fiends.
He has what might be a...
I think it could be a moustache.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, he wasn't drawn by one of those artists where it's very clear.
Wasn't he drawn by Carlos Esquerra?
Yeah, Carlos Esquerra is quite not clean.
He's not like Brian...
Who's the...
Brian Bolland.
Brian Bolland, yeah.
He's quite clean, isn't he?
Very.
The cleanest.
The most clean.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um...
All legendary Incas, though, in their own style.
Yeah, legendary.
I'm thinking I've got to go and pick up my weekly supply of raw milk.
Lovely.
I'm still looking for a supplier, but I'm tracking one down, I think, in Redditch at the moment.
So I might have to start going there.
I think it's missing from my life at the moment.
Do you know about Paul the hairdresser?
Is he the one that gave you your cat?
No.
That's Mark, the trainer.
My personal trainer.
Paul the hairdresser of Jeeves in Daventry goes on a collection run every Friday to a farm in Leicester.
And so, all the kind of awake people in Daventry...
You've temporarily gone Dalek, by the way.
Oh.
That's annoying.
They get raw milk.
Right.
Because of his...
If we were all driving to Leicestershire, except to go hunting with the corn or the beaver, I mean...
It would be pointless, but it's a trek, so he makes it possible.
And raw milk, you know, it's so much better.
One of the mums who buys it says that she gives it to her son, and it cures his asthma.
Oh, I should definitely get in there.
It's nice.
It's nice.
So you've got things to do.
I've got things to do.
Because we did this slightly earlier than we'd planned, A, I've got to go indoors and get grief for pissing on the kitchen floor.
And B, I will probably take the dogs to the pub.
Because that's what dads do.
Our Airbnb, Dick, was right above this cafe...
Which I think you would have absolutely loved.
And it was the cafe that, it was in a kind of, it was right by the train station, so it was not in a kind of fancy area.
And it specialised in this local delicacy called maritozzo.
Oh, that's what you were eating in the picture that you sent to the family chat group.
Which is like a bread roll with cream in it.
It's a bread roll with whipped cream, which sounds disgusting.
But...
If you had to make bread roll with cream in it nice, this is what you'd do.
So the cream's got a bit of honey in it and it's very lightly whipped.
The bread is not like bread bread, it's light sort of sweet bread.
And I saw some people eating it and I thought, that looks horrible.
But I'll do it, because obviously it's like...
When in Rome.
Yeah, when...
That's...
Come on, Dick.
So, I did.
Yeah.
And it was...
And it was really nice.
And do you know how much?
It's probably the sort of thing that wouldn't travel.
You could probably only have it there.
Okay, how much for two due cappuccini and a...
A roll of some kind, maybe a maritozzo or a crema or something.
Ten euros?
Six, actually.
Six.
Wow.
I know.
That's the difference between...
And I thought Iceland was cheap.
Yeah.
No, that is the difference between being in the kind of fancy area of Rome where you're paying...
Well, one place I went to, I paid €4.50 for a cappuccino.
And I went inside and I saw a sign saying, a cappuccino €2.00.
And, or even, yeah.
And I said to the guy, but you just charged me nine euros.
Oh, come on.
Do you remember the old Italian thing for a different charge at the table just standing at the bar?
You'd forgotten.
You knew that at one point.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course I did.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course I did.
Of course I did, yeah.
I remembered it.
Yeah, you're right.
And we discovered that on our Venice trip, didn't we, those years ago?
Always stood at the bar, neck your drink, eat your sticky bun, that's your breakfast, off you go, do a church, have another beer.
When we did that, we did it so long ago that there was no obligation to be outside because you could smoke indoors.
That's the difference.
You're now paying that premium for your right to be able to have a fag with your coffee.
Yeah, I suppose.
But the Italians have always been on to that whole sort of, if you want to do this in comfort and string it out, then you...
Search pricing, location, yeah.
You know what?
It wouldn't be a bad thing to have here because it would do away with the laptop wankers who come into a cafe and nurse one coffee all day and take up a whole table.
So they'd be stung by that.
There should just be a laptop wanker tax full stop of about 20 quid, I'd say.
Hear, hear.
There you go.
There's the Libertarian brothers coming up with oppressive ways of...
I don't believe...
I'm not a Libertarian anyway.
No, I've even taken away that description of me in Twitter, I think.
This is a chat for another day, but I don't think libertarianism is compatible with Christianity.
There's a big grenade to chuck in the room at the last minute.
Good.
Well, I think we've covered it all.
Yep.
Everything.
Do it again soon.
Sooner.
Yeah, yeah.
Sooner.
Okay, good.
If you like this...
Oh, you've got to talk about...
We're going to do a Dick and James Christmas thing somehow.
We are going to do...
We're very likely going to do a Dick and James Christmas special.
So, why don't you write to me at my website if you want to know what...
I think it's going to be at the end of November.
Well, do tell me what your plans are before you do, because I know nothing about it so far.
People are already asking me about it.
They're saying, well, what are you going to do?
And I said, this is the first I've heard of it, literally.
You know what you should do?
What?
You should grow some facial hair and get a red outfit.
