Original subtitles

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to Modern Life is Goodish.

My name is Dave Gorman.

My laptop may be loaded up with

hundreds of slides to share with you tonight,

but I want to start with something from the analogue world instead.

You see, we're living in an increasingly digital world,

and I think sometimes, it's worth pausing to ask if,

maybe, the real world might be better.

To that end, I want to share with you one of the most

remarkable things I have ever seen.

In my line of work, I get to do shows with all sorts of people,

and I was on a bill recently with an act -

an elderly Hungarian man

who didn't speak a word of English.

But he didn't need to.

He had the audience in the palm of his hand.

What he did, ladies and gentlemen, was truly amazing.

Let me just set the scene -

he had a length of rope, ladies and gentlemen.

He showed everyone that he had a length of rope,

and then, he flicked it into his hand to make a loop.

He put the loop - it was one of the most amazing things

I've ever seen in all my days, he really is.

He put the loop in his hand, he clicked his fingers,

and produced a pair of scissors, ladies and gentlemen.

It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen

in all my days, it truly was.

He then cut the rope in two.

He then clicked his fingers again for no reason,

cos he then just put those in his back pocket.

He made a big show of the fact that it was now

two different bits of rope,

and he tied the two bits of rope

together, into a knot,

like so, and then -

and this was the most amazing thing of it, it really was -

he then held the rope aloft and said...

.."Tada."

LAUGHTER

He was shit!

Can you imagine someone having the balls to do that

in front of an audience and think they'd get away with it?

That is amazing, isn't it?

And, in answer to my earlier question,

there is an example where the real world was worse than

the digital effects would've been. True!

The weird thing is, he's not even the worst magic act I've ever seen.

The worst magic act I've ever seen was a husband-and-wife Christian act

called something like

Johnny Jones and The Amazing Grace.

Now, don't misunderstand me,

I'm not saying they were rubbish because they were Christians.

I am an atheist, but I'm not a militant one.

I want my son to understand other people have different views

of the world, and that's all fine.

And so, in our house, we do a lot of "what some people think is"

and "well, according to the Bible," and so on.

I'm very much a "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

sort of a chap - in fact, I'd probably follow a religion

if it had that sort of thing in its good book.

LAUGHTER

Now, I mention that they were Christians

because it is an unavoidable detail.

This performance wasn't in a theatre, it was in a church hall

with all the cleaning equipment stacked up in one corner,

a trestle table loaded up with a tea urn and

jugs of weak squash in the other,

and an audience made up largely of children

and their attendant grown-ups.

Now, the act involved Johnny telling the story

of Jesus feeding the 5,000

while recreating the miracle

of the feeding of the 5,000.

And, rubbish as it was,

the weird thing is that he actually did end up

performing a real miracle.

I think they intended to have a set-up a bit like this.

Now, with a table and basket set up like so,

a magician can produce a seemingly endless supply of bread and fish.

Now obviously, that is not a normal table, is it?

That's a special table.

That's a special table that allows

an assistant to hide out of view.

LAUGHTER

Now I know how this works,

because I've got four friends who are magicians -

actually, technically, it's five.

One of them's identical twins,

but they don't want me to tell you that.

I can tell you that is done with mirrors.

There's a mirror there, and another mirror there.

Now, there was something missing.

In fact, actually, technically, there were two things missing.

The mirrors.

Everyone in the room could see the Amazing Grace

hiding under the table, being not very amazing at all.

She was just hiding under the table,

passing bread and fish up through a hole in the table,

her husband, there, just stood by her,

both of them pretending

that it wasn't happening.

It was excruciating!

All of the grown-ups -

conditioned by adulthood into a state of politeness -

sat shuffling in their seats, not sure where to look.

I might have been imagining this, but I swear,

even Henry Hoover looked away.

At one point, I actually made direct eye contact with Grace.

She went...

LAUGHTER

Lest I spoil it for the children.

Of course, the children, they haven't yet been conditioned

into a state of politeness, have they?

So, they're all there, just going, "What's happening, Daddy?"

"Why's that lady under the table?" And so on.

On the way home, the GorBoy was full of questions.

"Is that what really happened, Daddy?"

And so, obviously, I told him the story of the feeding of the 5,000

as it should be told.

And it was only after he was in bed

that night that I realised

that, because I had been correcting their incompetence,

I had forgotten to add all my usual codicils of,

"What some people believe," and so on.

And so, my son went to bed thinking that I sincerely believed in

this tale as a historical fact.

And that's what I mean when I say

Johnny Jones and the Amazing Grace had performed an actual,

bleeding miracle, ladies and gentlemen.

A week later, we went back, we saw the same act's

ill-fated attempt at Houdini's water tank escape.

Johnny was hospitalised,

and I ended up explaining how Moses parted the Red Sea.

LAUGHTER

Now, I'll tell you this - I love making this show, I really do.

But making it doesn't half mess with my internet search history.

I'll give an example, right?

The other day, I was Search-Wising for something, and I...

LAUGHTER

What? Are you not Search-Wise people?

This more of a Google crowd?

Oh, you want to get on Search-Wise!

Search-Wise is brilliant.

I've been using Search-Wise ever since I saw little Bobby Brazier

using it on EastEnders. Eh? There he is.

Little Bobby Brazier, tip-tapping away.

He was trying to look up a car called "Graham"

that I think he thought might have been related to him,

it was something like that.

The important thing is that his search engine of choice was,

ladies and gentlemen, Search-Wise.

And, yeah, I was right, it was a car called Graham.

He wasn't sure if it was a real car,

he thought it might have been his foster car.

It was something like that.

Typical EastEnders.

By the way, did you notice how bony his fingers were?

For a young man, they were surprisingly bony, weren't they?

Look what I mean, you see? Look at that!

I'm kidding, of course.

That is obviously Dot Cotton, isn't it?

And when she wants to find something on the internet,

what search engine does Dorothy.co.tton use?

Search-Wise! Course she does.

And don't go thinking that this only exists in the cosy confines

of the BBC or EastEnders.

The Bill was on ITV, wasn't it?

Their chosen search engine?

Search-Wise!

As you can see, that was in the days before they used

the magnifying glass logo,

that was back when they had Hooty the Search-Wise owl.

Of course, before that,

they had the all-seeing eye of the Illuminati.

LAUGHTER

I remember.

That was the version of Search-Wise that Billie Piper used to use,

isn't it? Yeah? There she is.

Oh, Billie!

Billie, you need to get an office chair, love.

Your posture's terrible.

You'll put yourself in traction, if you sit there like that,

you'll need to seek medical help if you're not careful.

I do wonder what she was looking for?

Yeah, knew it. Knew it. Knew it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will explain what's really going on here

after the break.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life is Goodish,

ladies and gentlemen, where, before the break,

we were discussing the use of the search engine Search-Wise

in various TV shows.

And, if you haven't guessed already,

Search-Wise is a fake search engine

made for TV shows to use

when they don't want to use Google.

It's not the only one, there are loads of them out there.

You've got FinderSpyder in Breaking Bad,

you've got Bing in...

LAUGHTER

It's not, is it?

LAUGHTER CONTINUES

Oh, apparently that one's real.

Anyway, the thing about all of these is that,

even in the most compelling drama,

the moment one of these crops up,

it suddenly feels unrealistic to me.

And I don't know why they don't just use Google.

So I tried to find out.

Do you know how I tried to find out?

LAUGHTER

I googled it!

Google themselves have got a Brand Resource Center,

and this seems to be the relevant section, so far as I can see.

"With so many people using Google products in their daily lives,

"we know that film-makers, television producers,

"and creatives of all types want to incorporate

"a bit of Google into their projects

"to make them more realistic and relatable."

Which suggests to me that they agree with me when I say that seeing

someone using Search Berzerk in the American drama Switched At Birth

makes it feel a bit unrealistic.

When you get into their guidelines,

it's basically just that

they want you to be positive about Google.

They have a list of dos and don'ts.

"Don't show our products in a negative light."

For example, don't show

"bank robbers using Google Maps

"to find the location of their next target".

You mustn't do that, because that would never happen.

They make it very clear that they

won't approve any submission requests that involve

"drugs, adult or explicit content, violence, illegal activities,

"armed weapons or hate speech" -

and in many ways, I think that's completely reasonable, isn't it?

I mean, I used Google recently.

I used it to search for

"best place to buy cocaine."

LAUGHTER

And when you do that, as I'm sure you all know,

what happens is a big red alert pops up saying that

"this search is forbidden,"

and that they have alerted local law enforcement authorities

as a result, doesn't it? That's what happens, isn't it?

LAUGHTER

No!

In less than a second, their algorithm returned...

..this not unhelpful response.

And the same thing was true when I searched for

"how to buy semi-automatic rifle"

and "best free porn site".

Now, I should point out that SafeSearch was off at this point.

I genuinely didn't really know what SafeSearch was

until I looked into all this.

I'd always thought that SafeSearch was a feature that Google provided

so that bank robbers could search for their next safe to crack.

Apparently not.

Now look, Google didn't create any of the content

it's showing you there.

If you don't like the fact that someone's opened a strip club

on your street, don't take it out on a sat nav for knowing where it is.

That's all Google is.

I should also point out that I understand and completely accept

that Google do not want you to find these things -

and for what it's worth, neither do I.

I don't want you to take cocaine or get a semi,

or get a semi.

LAUGHTER That is not what either of us want.

But I do think it's a bit rich of Google to tell people

who make up stories for a living that they aren't allowed to have

their pretend-bad people use Google

in ways that we all know real-life bad people can...

..and probably do.

For all I know, there might be something in

the terms and conditions.

Maybe when we all first used Google,

we clicked on something to say

that we wouldn't use it to find these things.

That doesn't really change my point of view, because

do you know what bank robbers don't really give a shit about?

LAUGHTER

Rules. LAUGHTER CONTINUES

Here's a weird thing.

Do you remember earlier when I said...

I googled it?

Well, Google don't want you to say that.

It's in their rules, look.

"Can you google that for me?"

Very much in the Don't Do This list.

Instead, you have to say,

"Can you look that up on Google for me?"

Essentially, what this comes down to is them saying

their product names should never be used as verbs.

Luckily, there is no specific guidance on adverbs.

So I think I'm OK when I say,

"He searched googlishly".

As I understand it, the reason for this is they don't

want to happen to Google what happened to Hoover.

Earlier on, I mentioned Henry Hoover,

and you were all instantly picturing this.

Everyone in Britain knows that that's a Henry Hoover.

But that isn't made by Hoover.

That is made by a company called Numatic -

who are not now, and never have been, owned by Hoover.

They haven't called it a Henry Hoover - we have.

And I can see that that must be a bit galling

for the people at Hoover.

When Hoover spend money to advertise Hoovers,

all they're really doing is advertising

the concept of hoovering.

You can say, "I've got a new hoover."

"Really, which one?"

"Dyson." LAUGHTER

Because we're all used to that, when it comes to the word "hoover",

it doesn't even sound that weird to us -

but if you apply it to other brands, it sounds utterly bizarre.

"Ooh, I see our Keith's got a new Rolls-Royce."

"Really, what sort?"

"Ford Fiesta."

LAUGHTER

"Oh, really excited! I've got the new Taylor Swift album!"

"Which one?" "Best of the Cheeky Girls."

I can see that Google don't want the same fate

to befall the word "Google".

But, no matter how much they want it,

they're not actually in charge of how language is used.

Dictionaries aren't rule books

telling you how words should be used.

Dictionaries are really just showing you how the language is spoken.

And if you look "Google" up in Chambers Dictionary,

for example, it says, quite clearly, that google means

"To attempt to find out about someone or something

"by entering their name into an internet search engine."

Not into the search engine Google,

into "an internet search engine".

People are literally "googling" on Bing.

LAUGHTER

And, no matter what they put on their website,

I'm not sure Google can put that genie back in the bottle.

And I genuinely can't see any reason why Google should be

afforded more protection than any other brand.

And yet I think they are.

I'll show you what I mean, right? Let's go back to EastEnders, OK?

In this scene, there's been a car crash.

Mel is dazed and confused,

and wandering back into the road.

But what's this, ladies and gentlemen,

emerging through the smoke?

If you're of a nervous disposition, please do look away now -

especially if you're the sort of person who's upset

by low-level CGI effects.

LAUGHTER

Very upsetting, isn't it?

Well, let's rewind to the moment of impact.

LAUGHTER

What's that emerging through the smoke, ladies and gentlemen?

That Mercedes logo could not be any clearer!

How have EastEnders got away with this?

I think I know how they've done it.

Very clever lot over at EastEnders.

I think what they've done with that logo

is they've rotated it 120 degrees.

LAUGHTER

They know what they're doing.

No. I think one of two things must have happened here.

Number one - the people from EastEnders have contacted

Mercedes Benz and said,

"Are you all right if we show your lorry?"

And Mercedes have gone, "What, killing someone?

"Yeah, sure. LAUGHTER

"Go for it, no trouble, absolutely fine."

Or, two, they haven't asked Mercedes,

and nobody gives a damn,

because we live in a world full of grown-ups who understand that

lorries do sometimes kill people,

and not everyone follows the rules of the road,

and it doesn't matter what lorry they're driving,

and if we all think that's absolutely fair enough,

and that a company like Mercedes should be all right with it,

then why on Earth don't we all think the same thing should be true

for bloody Google?

And if I get a bit worked up about this, it's because

we're often bumping into things on this show where lawyers

are telling me what I can or cannot show you, OK?

I'll give you an example.

I bought a poster recently.

An unframed poster.

Now, when the poster arrived,

I thought the way in which it had been packaged and sent to me

was a bit odd.

And I thought, maybe it would be a good source

of material for the show.

But our lawyers say I'm not allowed to show you the poster

because an artist designed it,

and they own the copyright on the artwork.

Now I'm fully onboard with the idea of artists

making a living from their art,

but I also think the way in which this particular artist

has monetised their art

is by allowing a poster company to reproduce it.

And now that I've bought one,

I think I also have bought the right to tell a true story about

my lived experience involving it.

Now here's the thing.

Most of us, if we were sending a poster through the post,

I think would use something like that, wouldn't we?

We'd use one of these, a tube - because that makes for the most

convenient parcel when you're sending something like a poster.

This poster was sent to me in a very different way.

I'll remind you, it was an unframed poster.

And it was sent...like this. LAUGHTER

My first thought was that maybe it was coming from one of

those people who write out the big charity cheques.

What they've actually done is they've created

their own improvised envelope.

Now, we've recreated it for you tonight,

because we're not allowed to show you the actual poster,

so inside the brown paper...

..they have got...

..two enormous sheets of plastic.

There's no markings on it to tell me if it's recyclable or not.

And, look, this is particularly galling for me.

I've genuinely been trying to cut down on single-use plastic.

In the last 18 months, I haven't bought a single cleaning product

that comes in a single-use plastic container.

Now, I'm not saying that to virtue signal,

and I'm aware that some of you might think that's

an utterly futile gesture on my part,

but I hope we can all appreciate it's a bit infuriating

to make that effort, and then, in one simple purchase,

unsuspectingly buy more plastic

than you'll find in a divorced dad's cutlery drawer.

LAUGHTER

Now, I'm not allowed to show you the poster -

the lawyers said I could show it to the live audience,

but then, we'd have to pixelate it on TV.

Then the producers said, "No, you bloody can't.

"Pixelating, in the edit, costs thousands of pounds,

"and we haven't got that in our budget."

So, we've reached a compromise.

LAUGHTER

Like that.

Pretty good, isn't it? Is it good?

APPLAUSE It's not bad.

I've just realised I've made a fool of myself,

it's that way round.

Not that it matters, we ended up replacing most of the material

with stuff about Google helping you buy guns and drugs.

LAUGHTER LOUD ELECTRICAL BUZZ

Whoa.

Google are more powerful than I thought.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Let's googlishly see if we can fix this during the break.

I'll see you in a mo.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life is Goodish!

Now, I don't know about you, but I find, as I'm getting older,

I'm increasingly struggling with change.

Who else sees a story like this, with this headline,

and has the first thought

that that is a story about three women?

My brain sees that, and the first thought is that

it's a story about that woman

having a very real friendship with that woman,

while that woman fishes around

for backstage Strictly goss.

Now, I'm not making a political point,

I'm not being all "not-my-queen".

This is really more about words than anything else for me.

For more than 50 years, I knew that the word "Queen"

defined that person.

50 years is a long time for something to be true in your brain,

and it's hard to rewire the brain to know that

it means something else now.

I can see that, for some people,

these people inspire emotional thoughts,

and that is muddying the waters of the point I'm trying to make.

So, let's take the royal family out of this and put it another way.

It's sort of like when they recast the lead part in a TV show,

and everyone just carries on as normal.

LAUGHTER

And I hate it when that happens.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

DAVE LAUGHS

Now look, I'll give you another example of change.

Sometimes, I think it creeps up on you.

It feels like I woke up one day and everything was different,

and I just hadn't seen it coming.

Who here remembers when they first realised

that Sainsbury's and Argos are now friends with benefits?

I didn't notice it happening,

it always used to feel like

there was an Argos on every high street,

and now all of the Argoses...

Argoes?

Argi?

All of them, they seem to be inside Sainsbury's.

And it's not just those two.

There are loads of other shop-in-shops now.

You also get Toys'R'Us inside WHSmith's.

Here they are announcing 30 new UK shop-in-shops.

Shop-in-shops - they just say it like we all know

what a shop-in-shop is.

Someone has clearly seen a gap in the market there, haven't they?

"Do you know what I've spotted?

"A GAP in the Next, that's what I've spotted."

Because that is where you'll find GAP these days.

"In 2022, we opened our first shop-in-shop within Next

"on London's Oxford Street,

"now our flagship GAP UK store."

Can I point out that, if your shop is inside somebody else's shop,

the word "flagship" is a bit strong?

That is a flag-lifeboat at best.

Surely, the offering from GAP and Next is quite similar, isn't it?

Putting a GAP inside a Next

is like putting a Caffe Nero inside a Costa.

For people who like their cardboard cups a bit bluer.

It's like buying an Ant and Dec,

and getting a free Stephen Mulhern, as well.

LAUGHTER It's just weird, isn't it?

This is another change that seems to have snuck up on us.

Have you noticed these things springing up around?

These are little pods you can rent by the hour to have meetings in.

I've been touring, and these were in motorway service stations

up and down the land, ladies and gentlemen,

and I cannot understand quite how the world has come to this.

Actually, I sort of can,

because I think this is one of those things where the reality

is much worse than the idea.

When I first heard about these things, they seemed quite cool.

I first heard about them on a TV show called Click.

Hey, welcome to Click.

Welcome to my new office.

It's a bit small, but it does have one advantage -

and that's that it can be absolutely anywhere.

Oh, Doctor Who's not what it used to be, is it?

LAUGHTER

But the thing about the phrase, "It could be absolutely anywhere"

is that it conjures up all manner of places in the mind's eye,

and none of those places are next to the bins.

You see what I mean?

When it's described with that kind of peppy, perky enthusiasm,

it sounds like quite a good idea.

It could be placed in the middle of an open-plan office.

Yeah, it could be, couldn't it? Open-plan office,

little breakout space for you, it could be, couldn't it?

Or a public place like a coffee shop.

Yeah, or a coffee shop, yeah, that'd make sense, wouldn't it?

And in many ways, a motorway service station is a bit like

a coffee shop, isn't it?

Especially the bit of the service station that is a coffee shop.

But it is nobody's chosen coffee shop, is it?

Nobody has ever said, "Oh, we must meet for a coffee sometime."

"Ooh, whereabouts?"

"I know a lovely little place just off Junction 12 of the M1."

I sometimes walk to a local coffee place with my laptop

and do a little work for a change of scene.

Nobody walks to these coffee shops, do they?

You need a car to get to them.

Is it just me, or are the people least likely to rent a private

glass-and-metal box for an hour in order to make a phone call

the people who've just turned up in their own pigging

glass-and-metal box?

I'm here for meetings, catch-ups, video calls,

phone calls, learning, studying,

reading, or just some peace and quiet.

Lovely idea. But d'y'know what?

I have, on occasion, sat in the corner of a motorway service station

and read a book.

Nobody paid me a blind bit of notice.

I'm not sure I would feel quite so anonymous

sitting inside one of those. LAUGHTER

That is essentially a human display case.

I think they've misread the British psyche here.

Anyone sitting in of these is going to look like that boy

who got stuck in the arcade claw machine that time.

Do you know the one I mean?

That boy, yeah!

I don't know much about this lad, but I tell you what,

I like his fashion sense.

He's got it sorted, hasn't he?

Incidentally, it was me who blurred his face, by the way.

He's a kid, he hasn't chosen to be on telly, so I blurred it.

Although, and this is quite fun,

you know those apps you get where you put a photo in,

and you can age someone or change their gender, or whatever?

I've aged him.

That way, I'm not showing him as a child,

I'm showing him as a grown-up.

And I think he's a good-looking lad.

LAUGHTER Good-looking lad.

Incidentally, I say "that boy,"

but this has actually happened loads of times.

I mean, loads of times.

Doesn't that make you think?

How powerful is the arcade claw machine lobby?

If seven children had got trapped in pretty much anything else,

it would've been shut down by now, wouldn't it?

When people talk about the powerful groups that control the world,

it's normally the Illuminati,

or the Fossil Fuel Lobby, or big pharma.

My theory is the people who can make bad news go away

must be the most powerful people -

in which case, I think the real power rests with

the big arcade claw machine lobby.

Them, and the Industrial Astrology Complex.

Those astrologers are powerful, aren't they?

I'll prove it, right?

Do you remember when NASA invented a new star sign?

That's how powerful the Astrology Lobby is.

I'm not making this up.

This did happen, and you've all forgotten about it.

Here it is in the Daily Express, look at that.

"What star sign am I? NASA creates new sign.

"What does that mean?" I'll tell you what it means.

It means the good people at This Morning are asking

the question, "Has your star sign changed?"

And not just the good people at This Morning. Oh, no,

Eamonn and Ruth were asking it, as well.

And this is for people born between November the 29th

and December the 17th, so that's you.

Ooh, that's Eamonn! Ah!

So, you were Sagittarius.Good.

Do you want to know what you are now?

Oh, I think we all know what Eamonn is now.

LAUGHTER

Oh, fuckers.

At least, I think that's how you pronounce it.

It's something like that - Ophiuchus, something like that.

Something like that, I'm not quite sure.

This was all over the press at the time, ladies and gentlemen,

but look how quickly the astrologers leapt into action.

Look at this. Story one.

"What does the new Zodiac sign, Ophiuchus, mean,

"and what dates does it cover?"

Published July 15th, ladies and gentlemen.

Story two - "No, your star sign hasn't changed, here's why."

July 16th! LAUGHTER

One day it took them to wipe that story away.

Now, with all these stories,

both reporting it and retracting it, I'm sure you can imagine

that the bottom half of the internet was wild.

I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen,

I've read every single one of these stories -

and not just the stories, I've read every single comment

I could find beneath these stories, as well.

And I've taken my favourite of those comments

and turned them into something that I like to call

a Found Poem...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..that I would like to perform for you now.

STRING QUARTET PLAYS

"Everyone knows astrology is rubbish.

"Maybe it made sense in olden times

"when science did not exist.

"But this isn't the 1960s any more!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"Having 13 star signs would be ridiculous.

"12 is the right number,

"because 12 is the number we do things in.

"It's not a coincidence that there are 12 months in a year,

"and 12 hours on a clock.

"There are 12 inches in a foot,

"and we each have 12 fingers.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

"To those who wish to poo-poo astrology

"and claim that only astronomy is a science, I say this.

"All OLOGIES are science.

"Onomies never are.

"Ology, onomy.

"Makes you think.

"What about apology?

LAUGHTER

"Apology accepted.

"Thank you!

"Before marrying my wife,

"I checked to see that our star signs were compatible.

"They were.

"And we have been happily married ever since.

"If this new revelation means that one or both of us

"must change signs,

"and, as a result, we are no longer deemed compatible,

"to whom should I send the bill?

LAUGHTER

"I don't think you need to worry about that.

"If you've been married a long time,

"you have more than proven your compatibility.

"We have not been married a long time.

"It has been just eight weeks.

"And yesterday, she said I was annoying.

LAUGHTER

"If you ask me, NASA are just trying to be controversial.

"Anything to get themselves back in the papers.

"Think about it.

"It's been more than 50 years since NASA put a man on the moon,

"and what have they done since?

"Absolutely nothing.

"We are all literally made of dead stars,

"so why wouldn't stars guide us?

"Magnetics isn't really something that science looks into.

LAUGHTER

"But we are all affected by it,

"as we have iron in our blood.

"I don't.

"I'm a vegetarian.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"Err, 12 fingers?!

"I don't think so!

"I knew someone would pick me up on that.

"Obviously, when I said 12 fingers,

"I was including thumbs."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The Billroth String Quartet, ladies and gentlemen!

I'll see you after the break.

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish!

Now, do you ever find that you get yourself trapped in a game

that you can't get out of?

Not like that.

No. Not the sort of thing I mean.

You know those pods I was talking about before?

When I first saw them, I went on a bit of a rant about them

to a mate of mine called James.

But James wasn't buying it.

I told him how awful they seemed to me, and he just went,

"Oh, they sound quite good."

I said, "To be fair, I thought that when I first heard about them,

"but the reality is a lot worse than that.

"They're sat there in car parks and service stations,

"and nobody's using them."

At which point, James was like, "Oh, Dave, you're being silly here.

"People must be using them."

I said, "I swear, they're not."

He said, "If those pods didn't have a single user,

"they wouldn't be there, Dave.

"If they're in all those service stations,

"they must have some customers."

"I honestly don't think they have."

And he just rolled his eyes and went, "Oh, Dave,

"this is like your Bounty argument all over again."

Allow me to explain.

For many years, I used to confidently expound a theory

that the Bounty bar only existed as part of an elaborate

money-laundering scheme... LAUGHTER

..based on the idea they are clearly so repulsive

that no-one would actually willingly buy one.

I have since accepted that this was blind prejudice on my part,

partly as a result of witnessing my mother-in-law hoovering up

all the Bounties - or should I say,

Numaticking up all the Bounties -

in a box of Celebrations at Christmas-time.

I accept there are people in the world who like Bounties.

But I wasn't so willing to accept that these pods had customers.

I insisted nobody was using them.

James refused to accept that and, long story short,

I ended up saying, "Look, if you can provide evidence of someone

"using a Book-a-Pod,

"I will give you £5."

He said, "Well, you're obviously not that confident, are you?

"You're only offering £5."

I said, "Oh, no, I'm confident. It's just I know you too well.

"They are available for £5.99.

LAUGHTER

"If I'd offered you a tenner,

"you'd have booked one in order to make yourself £4.01.

"I'm not falling for your games."

So, we took a look at their website.

And then, we both got the app on our phones,

and we had a look at it - and I swear,

every single pod we looked at for the upcoming 24 hours

showed up as available.

I did not owe James a fiver.

But he didn't accept that. He didn't think it was that simple.

He was like, "Well, it's probably more of an impulse buy, isn't it?"

He says, "People probably turn up, then book it when they get there,

"rather than book it in advance"

I said, "Fine, you check it as often as you like.

"If you find one that's been booked, that fiver is yours."

This is what trapped me in a game with no end.

LAUGHTER

Because the game didn't end that day.

Every day that week, James checked them and,

no matter how often he looked, they were always all available.

I'll be honest, it stopped being fun about two weeks in.

LAUGHTER

I started to feel a bit guilty about

the effect we might be having on this company.

I don't know what else their business might entail,

but I started to get the sense that for this product, at least,

things probably weren't going as well as they had hoped.

If you look on their website, for example, you can see

the sort of places they were imagining their pods would be.

They didn't have a single pod in any of those locations.

Maybe they had them in the past, maybe they will in the future -

but when we were looking in May, there were none.

It was motorway service stations,

multistorey car parks, and a couple of oddities.

I started to feel a bit guilty,

like we were hovering over the carcass of a business idea

in its last throes.

And, worse than that,

we were actively prick-teasing them, weren't we?

When we both downloaded the app,

I imagine the Book-a-Pod head office got some kind of alert,

and somewhere around a boardroom, they're all going, excited,

"It's happening, guys!

"We've got liftoff!

"Here it goes!"

And the only way we could see of checking on a pod's availability

was to behave as if you were going to book it, and then,

just at the last minute, not booking it.

So, every day, we were giving them false hope over and over,

and over again.

I just kind of wanted to stop,

because it had stopped being fun so long ago,

but neither of us knew how to stop.

It had just become a habit. It was sort of like Wordle.

LAUGHTER

And I couldn't really win, could I?

I was trying to prove a negative, that something hadn't happened -

and all I could really prove was that something hadn't happened yet.

I could only see two ways for this to end.

One, they had a booking -

which means I've lost....

..or two, the pods finally take their terminal breath

and disappear from the landscape -

which means that I've won,

but in a way that I couldn't possibly celebrate.

It got worse, ladies and gentlemen.

James got all excited one day and told me that

he thought they had a booking.

Then, he went away, and looked into it and came back,

looking a bit crestfallen.

He had discovered that the Motorway Services Company, Moto,

had asked them to leave.

And all of the service station pods were gone.

Now, they just had three pods in multistorey car parks.

That's not quite true - they had five pods in total.

Three of them were in multistorey car parks,

one of them was actually in the Go Pod HQ.

LAUGHTER

That's their headquarters,

which is on an industrial estate in Kent.

And I don't know about you, but it just doesn't feel like

a place with high footfall from members of the public.

Now that you've seen this,

you can probably guess where the fifth one is, actually.

There's a pattern here, if you think about it.

That's the HQ in Kent, OK?

Then they've got them in car parks in Carmarthen,

in Sheffield, and in Manchester.

It's sort of obvious now, isn't it, when you think about it,

where the fifth one will be, yeah?

You see the pattern developing, it's obvious, isn't it, yeah?

New York!

LAUGHTER

I'm not making that up!

Genuinely, in the middle of Manhattan, just off Broadway.

Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking,

"That must have been a mistake"?

"Surely that delivery was meant to go to York?"

LAUGHTER

Now, it felt even worse.

I think really, secretly, we both wanted it to end.

And then, one day, it looked like it finally might be over.

They had a booking, ladies and gentlemen,

in Manchester, at 12 noon.

James was bouncing.

I said, "Is this you just trying to make it end?"

He said, "Of course not.

"Look, it's a £9.99 booking.

"If it was me, I'd have booked one of the cheap ones, wouldn't I?"

I said, "That's what you would say if you were trying to convince me

"that it wasn't you, isn't it? Yeah, I'm onto you."

He said, "You're being ridiculous now!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I said something

I am very much not proud of.

I used a phrase that a man of my years should never use.

I said...

LAUGHTER

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I know, I'm sorry.

I happen to know James well, ladies and gentlemen.

Long story short, the next day,

he sends me this picture.

And the message, "I am on site.

LAUGHTER

"I repeat, I am on site.

"Reconnaissance begins.

"Pod empty."

He's there, as you can see, about 15 minutes before

the booking is supposed to start.

I sent him a message back, saying, "What's it like?"

And he replied, "It's a multistorey car park,"

which sort of does tell you everything, doesn't it?

Then he sent me this picture... with the words,

"But there's a seating area."

And also this, adding,

"And a vending machine."

What are these people thinking?

Just outside this car park lies the city of Manchester.

And yet, these people think you might want to hang out in

the car park breathing in the fumes of the bus station below.

James adds,

"I guess now we wait."

Ten minutes later, he adds,

"I'm secretly filming...

LAUGHTER

"..to capture their arrival."

DAVE LAUGHS

But at 12.01, he didn't send me anything.

And at 12.05, there was still nothing.

And so, eventually, at 12.10,

I message him to ask,

"What are you doing now?"

"Waiting.

LAUGHTER

"And reading a book to blend in."

"Who are you blending in with?"

"No-one.

"There's nobody here."

Of course they aren't!

It's a multistorey car park!

It gets to 12.20,

"What's happening now?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure somebody's booked it?

"You can admit it if it was you."

He wasn't giving in, ladies and gentlemen.

"They'll turn up." LAUGHTER

12.25, and I sense that James

is starting to lose hope.

"This is bloody ridiculous.

"These benches are really uncomfortable."

He wasn't alone, I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable

about the fact that he'd travelled from London to Manchester

in order to sit in a car park,

all because he shares my sense of stubbornness,

so I replied,

"You think you're uncomfortable?

"What about me?"

"Huh? What about you?"

So, I told him...

.."I'm hiding under a table

"in a bloody Book-a-Pod."

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Now, in this first one of James' videos,

I have gone into slow-mo at one point,

because I want you to appreciate a detail -

take a look at the door handle,

when you see those lights flashing on the door handle,

that is the person who booked the pod unlocking the door,

just so you know.

Are you...?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Hiya.

DAVE LAUGHS

LAUGHTER

All the way to Manchester.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of man who's thinking,

"Should've booked New York."

LAUGHTER

But I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen,

a lot of good has come out of this -

not least, it means that this is no longer single-use plastic.

LAUGHTER Oh, no. Oh, no.

Got another use!

And one more thing. Grace, if you're watching,

that's how you hide under a table, all right?

LAUGHTER Thanks for watching, goodnight!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media