86: Cheese, Salmon flies and Foreign food that you can’t live without

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I'm sweating like Chris Packham next to a bacon sandwich.

Richard Prideaux: If I can find the person who wrote into us and said you should stop moaning about asking for the rain, I'd like to then just insert into their underpants a million bees right now.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Bees, take some bees.

Richard Prideaux: I want rain. Rain, rain. Please rain. Please, dear God, rain.

Richard Negus: Hold on a second. You're being a farmer for one day and you're suddenly complaining about rain. There we go. It's just...

Richard Prideaux: No, a charcoal burner and I can't burn anything because it will set fire to the whole of Wales.

Richard Negus: Oh, we've had a right old two and eight. I went away for a couple of days to Southwold, came back and the Farm Watch WhatsApp group because the harvest has started here. The oilseed rape and the beans are coming in or the beans are as shrivelled as a politician's brain. And hey presto, I think they'd only be going for about sort of 45 minutes and the first field fire announcement came in and someone's barley completely shot up, lost the combine harvester, which I think is sadly going to be the shape of things to come this year.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, it's early this year. I've seen tons of blackberries come out already in certain places, which I think feels Frightfully early.

Richard Prideaux: Canalside raspberries, blackberries and raspberries don't count. They sort of have their own calendar.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, I've seen the sloes as well.

Richard Prideaux: Yeah, they come out stupidly early.

Richard Negus: Because of the water.

Richard Prideaux: I think it's the water and the warmth and the tramp [bleep].

Richard Negus: Callum's wee. He's a magnet to early blackberries. Yeah. But did you say you've seen sloes, Callum?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, there's quite a lot of sloes. So I dropped my daughter off at nursery this morning. There's the whole bush seems full of them already. And I thought, they're all turning that sloe colour rather than the green colour.

Richard Prideaux: Is that Callum's school-gate repartee with the other mums?

Callum McInerney-Riley: They'll be like, no, it's only your kid that's slow actually.

Richard Prideaux: Their bus arrives later. Yeah.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Let me tell you, so I go—not in Harlow—to a place to drop my child off and this particular school is not inhabited by the people of Harlow, but the surrounding villages that have lots of land. So I get mums in cars worth more than my yearly salary turning up and sort of they're in their gymwear; they've already done a two-hour PT session and then they come and have a little saunter in and they probably go off to their coffee mornings and whatever else.

Richard Prideaux: But this isn't a private school.

Richard Negus: I bet it is. Basically, he's been [unclear].

Callum McInerney-Riley: It's actually a thing called a forest school.

Richard Prideaux: Is this just a forest that you leave your child in?

Callum McInerney-Riley: It's essentially that, yeah. I had to sign a consent form to say that I was okay with my two-year-old using a drill independently. So, a drill, yeah. An actual drill.

Richard Negus: Hand drill, I take it?

Callum McInerney-Riley: I assume so. I didn't really go into the detail too much, but.

Richard Prideaux: Is she putting a shift in on the tools? Has she got a CSCS card?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, she has got a CSCS card and they make her have steels and a hard hat on site every day and a hi-vis. They do actually wear a hi-vis, they have to.

Richard Negus: I rather like that idea. That is a hell of a good way is that if you went and looked at it every single major infrastructure project that ever gets done in this country is a complete disaster. And eventually it will come out as to why HS2 has taken sort of, 50-odd years is because it's been built by two-year-olds.

Callum McInerney-Riley: That's the problem. What you needed was more kids, more kids down the mines, just generally more kids just putting a shift in.

Richard Negus: Oh, the good old days.

Callum McInerney-Riley: No, but on a serious note, Forest School is really good for kids. Couldn't agree more. Being outdoors is significantly better. I know in the winter it's a bit it's a bit brutal and they do go outside in it.

Richard Prideaux: You lose a few every year.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, but only the strongest survive.

Richard Prideaux: I'm the fattest.

Richard Negus: So listen, I want to know because Mr Prideaux put a cryptic thing on that he's been pretending to be a farmer today. To what degree have you been masquerading as a farmer then?

Richard Prideaux: To the degree where I've been helping people point cameras towards farmers. So doing that kind of thing. So I've been talking to a very nice farmer who makes very nice milk that goes into making very nice cheese and I've been converted over to the cheese mindset.

Richard Negus: What is the cheese mindset?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Are you cheese maxing?

Richard Prideaux: This cheese is okay, because I don't think cheese is okay. I hate the idea of uncooked cheese, as I've discussed before.

Richard Negus: Yes, you have.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, you're strange.

Richard Prideaux: On day two of the three-day gig of working with the cheese people, I have to admit that I don't like cheese. I don't like your cheese. I don't like any cheese.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Was there a lot of [unclear]? It feels like that was a moment—a crisis moment where they all surrounded you and poked small holes?

Richard Prideaux: We were in a cold, cold store, and a man was aggressively pointing a sample of cheese at me. And I was about to try it. And it was actually, it was a very nice cheddar. It was a very rich cheddar. And it was actually quite good. Did quite like it. So I wasn't just saying that to get out of there alive, to not get buried in the effluent pile of whey that's out the back of the cheese dairy. I did actually enjoy it. Although I did pick up a nice tidbit. You grade cheese with a cheese iron. You put like a core-sampler thing in and you twist it and pull it out. And then you crumble a bit off and warm it in between your hands and then that's how you sort of grade that the cheese is good and that it's suitable for sale and it's a suitable type. The traditional thing, and I'm fairly sure this is for Cheddar, it might be for Cheshire as well, is gunmetal. So they traditionally used to make them out of the barrels of .410 shotguns. No way. Yeah, this beautiful little metal tool is a piece of gunmetal.

Richard Negus: Oh, I know the thing. Yes, that circular, it's got like an angle then to it that they dive it in with almost like a screw top handle on the top, like a bottle opener.

Richard Prideaux: Yeah, it looks like somewhere between a bottle opener and something you'd jam into a birch tree to get the sap out. Somewhere between the two of those. But I thought that was a nice little touch. I thought I'm having that in the back pocket for a pub quiz at some point.

Richard Negus: With a .410 barrel. Isn't that wonderful? Because the .410 is going to become obsolete, courtesy of...

Richard Prideaux: Yeah, you won't be able to get it.

Richard Negus: No, because courtesy of the lead ban is that, you know, that's it. You can't use steel really in a .410. That's going to become an obsolete thing.

Richard Prideaux: Well, I don't think anyone will make a steel cartridge, will they?

Richard Negus: I know that the guys at Shooting Star that I think it's Joker have got this hybrid shot, which is of an alloy type thing. And they can make that down into .410 cartridges. But it would suddenly become an expensive thing. So what used to be like a rabbiting cartridge, you're suddenly going, God, I've just shot £1.50 at a rabbit. What's a rabbit retail for—23p? So.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Bismuth round for a rabbit.

Richard Prideaux: In this age of efficiency and using AI and things like that to constantly increase production, I was having a conversation with Amy on the way to this place this morning and we realised we needed a shorthand for animals and roadkill animals. You know how you use roadkill as a sort of landmark?

Richard Negus: Yes.

Richard Prideaux: If you see a particularly interesting bit of roadkill, you send it to your friend, don't you?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I don't.

Richard Prideaux: You're wrong. Turn right after the very large red deer carcass or something like that. To say ‘the carcass of this type of deer’, or whatever, is too long. It takes too long to say. So what we need to do is shorten it into a sort of portmanteau. So we need flat and then name of animal. So you don't need the whole word flat. You can just go for ‘fla’. A flat rabbit becomes a flabbit.

Richard Negus: Yeah.

Richard Prideaux: A flirrel.

Richard Negus: Squidge hog.

Richard Prideaux: No, you're going to be, or you could be fledgehog, couldn't you?

Richard Negus: I was thinking more squidge because it always seems to be poor old hedgehogs. They don't get flattened, they might get smeared. Smeared. Yeah, poor old things. And their little teeth, they're going, and they're sort of smeared across the road.

Richard Prideaux: What else would you get? You get Fluntjac.

Richard Negus: I've called them similar. Fleasels. Fleasels.

Richard Prideaux: Fladger.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Flidgin, I suppose.

Richard Prideaux: Flidgin, yeah, I've seen a few flidgings.

Richard Negus: We've had a large fled-deer stinking and slowly decaying on the road between [unclear] and Thornham Parva, on the way to Eye. No, they're made up for the show Midsomer Murders, I believe.

Richard Prideaux: You're on your way to solve a murder that's meant to be in summer, but is somehow filmed in winter.

Richard Negus: That's right. And it's been, it's laid there for a heck of a long while. Although I have to say, I don't know if you saw the news report, but it did make me chuckle is that the supposedly really [bleep] reform councils is they had to put a set of temporary traffic lights. This was in Essex.

Richard Prideaux: Yes, Callum's fault.

Richard Negus: They had to put a set of temporary traffic lights around a muntjac that had been run over and was lying on the side of the road. And because it was now stinking—it had blown up and was a bit reeky in the heat—it was apparently easier, in inverted commas, to put up the road into a single lane, a set of temporary traffic lights and cones around this carcass of a muntjac. So, you know, if we are actually looking at this DOGE thing, come on, Reform, pull your finger out and just get some council employees with a stronger stomach. Hunt servants, they're all going to be made redundant because of the trail hunting ban. They're cutting up stuff like that for a living.

Richard Prideaux: I've got a top tip for moving roadkill of any size. The key word there is ‘kill’. For road-maim, you need a different tool for that.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Just identify that it's definitely not alive.

Richard Prideaux: Just go along and tap its eyeball.

Callum McInerney-Riley: And just an angry badger just on the side of the road.

Richard Prideaux: ‘I'm just having a rest—clear off.’ Something called a hookaroon, a pickaroon or a sappie, which is sort of a, it looks like a pickaxe with a weird shortened hook on the end. You use it in forestry for dragging logs around, they're great. But one of those, you just hook it into the leg of something and just drag it out the way.

Richard Negus: Yeah, but what if you're a bit inaccurate and you then puncture its guts? And then it just sprays you in [unclear]. No, see, I would go for the tongs.

Richard Prideaux: Claymore.

Richard Negus: I'd go for the tongs and go for whatever bit is least squished. Gouldy bought me a pair. It's so funny. I've got a pair of steel log tongs that he bought me because he was so fed up with me trying to pick up big, heavy logs that he'd just dropped on my head with my bare hands. He bought me that as a Christmas present. It just shows you that ours is not just a business relationship, it is one of caring. My business partner bought me that.

Richard Prideaux: In our semi-occasional series of taking Callum out to do things he hasn't done before, I think we should go and do a day of identifying and using forestry tools.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Why don't you just get, we'll do an Instagram Reel. I'll just blind rank. You just show me pictures of forestry tools and I'll just tell you what I think they might be for.

Richard Negus: I think we'll have to do it in the Forest of Dean though. I think we should go because I know there is a communication problem between our good friend Nick from the Forest of Dean and Callum: they both speak English, but not in a way that one another of them understand. And they could go out and we could just lay these things out. And we say, Nick, what is that? And they go, [unclear]. And then Callum goes, ‘You what?’

Callum McInerney-Riley: And I'll say, what did he say? What did he say? Subtitles.

Richard Negus: Subtitles. Is there a captions option on Nick? What is this for the hard of hearing? Now listen, I'm interested, Callum. Angling and this sort of weather. Is it ethical to go fishing when the water temperatures are so high? Talk me through that.

Callum McInerney-Riley: So, with certain fish—pike—if you're pike fishing now and you catch a pike, it will probably die. So it really is a poor choice to go pike fishing in this kind of weather. So what happens when you get this kind of weather is the sun hits the water, oxygen is always dropping at night because you've got lots and lots of pondweed and stuff. The oxygen in the water gets used by all of the plant life and then you'll just find oxygen crashes all the time and you get things like algae blooms and then the algae blooms come up and when the algae blooms die off, as they often do once you get a bit of water and the water temperature drops quickly and then they take all the oxygen with it so you go from half decent oxygen to like terrible oxygen and a lack of wind as well. Luckily yesterday it was quite windy but the lack of wind does no good for oxygen levels. So when you catch a fish in those conditions, they stress themselves out and then they don't do too well afterwards. Some places are different, but certain fish aren't very hardy. I fish for carp in the summer months. You can probably fish for chub because the sort of places you're fishing are usually streamy water that's running and they're pretty [bleep]. But most other fish I won't tend to fish for.

Richard Prideaux: What about, because the river levels are so low, you've got the few pools and deeper areas that you do have, that's where people are going fishing and canoeing and paddling around now as well. What about the effects there? Because is that just driving the fish back into shallower water away from the pools or what?

Callum McInerney-Riley: I'd say if they've got someone paddling around in there, that's probably good for the water because it agitates the water and gets some oxygen in. Like the best thing you can do if you want a fishery to do well and not suffer from oxygen crashes, just put an aerator in it. Just get yourself some kind of like water fountain or something like that. And that's what the Environment Agency will do. If you see a place with a, if you see fish in distress, you should call the Environment Agency because they will often, there's a lot of bad things said about the Environment Agency, but if you do see fish in distress and you ring the Environment Agency, they will usually come out and try and rectify the problem. They will put aerators in and it will sort it out. And I'm reliably informed it is the NRW in Wales.

Richard Negus: Natural Resources Wales.

Richard Prideaux: What if I throw a SodaStream in there?

Callum McInerney-Riley: You could probably throw a SodaStream in there. All of this is just for entertainment and should not be used.

Richard Prideaux: Do not revive your fish using the advice of Countryslide.

Callum McInerney-Riley: We cannot be held legally responsible for the death of your pike.

Richard Negus: Now listen, I've got an idea, right? Because we've just veered off onto angling, right? I was thinking at my wedding, because I got married on the banks of the beautiful River Tweed at Dryburgh, one of the finest salmon pools, the Dryburgh Abbey stretch of the Tweed. And on each table, rather than putting a table number, I painted my favourite.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Shooting Times contributor.

Richard Negus: No, I didn't do it. I painted dry flies that I've caught trout on in the River Tweed. Now, I've got before me the [unclear] book of salmon flies, right? Now, I want to do true or false. Are these names of salmon flies? Okay.

Richard Prideaux: You can play along at home.

Richard Negus: Play along at home. Is it true or false? The kidney punch. I'm going to say true.

Richard Prideaux: I'm going to go false.

Richard Negus: Richard is correct. It's actually the Winter Punch. Yeah. Okay. The woolly [bleep]. Black.

Richard Prideaux: True.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I know this is true.

Richard Negus: Yes.

Richard Prideaux: Didn't you lose one because of my fly tying? Yes, absolutely.

Richard Negus: You used to fully [bleep] on it so they went, oh [bleep] as it flew off and landed.

Callum McInerney-Riley: It's a good fly.

Richard Negus: It's a really good fly. It's a multi-purpose fly, particularly I've found in very light, bright water conditions. Okay, here we go. Candlelit Dinner.

Callum McInerney-Riley: That's got to be, that's got to be false.

Richard Prideaux: I think true because it's got the meal at the moment.

Richard Negus: Well, it's a good thought, but it's actually Winter Candlelight. It is a spider. No, it's a fly with silver tinsel, fluorescent orange floss, and medium-dark orange seal's fur. I've never seen an orange seal.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I come to Essex. It's just, it's mostly just fake tan.

Richard Prideaux: Is that the old singer? The singer gives him a rose.

Richard Negus: I read the singer of Essex. Right, final one. Traffic ticket.

Richard Prideaux: True. False, but the real one's called traffic light.

Richard Negus: No, it's a traffic ticket is actually a real thing. It's gold tinsel, lemon wood duck fibres, peacock herl, lemon wood duck flank and a badger hackle. Basically you've got every single thing that makes that fly would probably get you five years in Pentonville if you were found actually killing those things. So I've been through this book of salmon flies, feather wing and hackle. There are a further eight different editions of this for various other things because fly tying and the reason it went into my mind was because friend of the show and without a shadow of a doubt the fewest-fingered person who listens to this. Do you want to rephrase that? Okay, he has the fewest fingers of any of our listeners, Nigel.

Callum McInerney-Riley: That survey, we told you that you couldn't put that question on the audience survey, so you don't know that's true.

Richard Negus: Yeah, but he was showing us, wasn't he, on the WhatsApp group about how he set up his fishing rod, because he has fewer fingers than most of us, and how the reel works, but also how he ties flies on, which was fascinating. But I don't think he's into fly tying. Now, Callum, you are a bit of a fly-tier, aren't you?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, no, I'm not. But look at this. Look. I went on.

Richard Negus: He's got the new vice. Ladies and gentlemen, he is showing us his vice. Now, I'm not talking about...

Callum McInerney-Riley: So I went on my favourite Chinese auction site.

Richard Negus: Yeah.

Richard Prideaux: And I was going to say other versions are available, but not really now. It's all Temu.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, no, it wasn't Temu. It was AliExpress, which, you know, go AliExpress. And I bought a general-porpoise fly tying kit. It has literally every bit you could possibly imagine. And I went on to Essential Fly. Their website looks awful and you might feel like you might get scammed but I ordered all the stuff from there and then a lady phoned me up and she said to me, ‘Oh, you've ordered the 120-denier thing, and that's really that's really strong, but we don't have that in stock. We have this one and this one's this tension and this one comes in this colour, but you know if you tie it too tight, what kind of hooks are you using? She went into all this detail and I was like, Look, I know some of the words that you just said. I do not know what you are—see, the string stuff, I'd really like the string stuff for putting it round the hook. And she said, Say less, I'll sort you out, so she sent me this stuff, but they literally rang me up. It's like a family-run business. She said, ‘If you call back tomorrow, there'll be like fly tying expert here who can guide you through absolutely anything.’

Richard Negus: Which company was that Callum?

Callum McInerney-Riley: It's called Essential Fly.

Richard Negus: Okay.

Callum McInerney-Riley: And they've got a stock of everything. They sort you out with whatever you need. And then I've got—I had to buy it, but I don't know anyone that kills deer, unfortunately. I don't. I know lots of people. I was just impatient. But I bought the deer hair.

Richard Prideaux: He's holding up to the camera, ladies and gentlemen. The smallest piece of deer fur that I have ever seen. It's like, that would basically be one corner point of a mankini of deer skin.

Callum McInerney-Riley: [Unclear].

Richard Negus: I have to say, I did a wonderful Shooting Times piece back when Shooting Times was not done by AI. And you know, Patrick—allegedly—Patrick Galbraith said, give me an idea. And I went, okay, what dog hair? And a friend of mine called Adam Bragg, who's a brilliant stockmaker who makes beautiful gun stocks and also beautiful cabinets and whatnot. He's a very, very good fly angler. And we tied flies from different dog hair with a slight nod to Hugh Falkus because Hugh Falkus, the great angler, he rather infamously once went fishing with someone who'd invited him to their place. He then promptly slept with his host's wife and then realised he hadn't brought his fly box with him. So he plucked some hairs from out of the chap's golden retriever and hey presto, one of the finest sea trout flies that's ever been tied, the golden retriever came from it. So he not only slept with his wife, he also nicked his dog's fur and turned it into a fly. So we tried different breeds of dogs.

Richard Prideaux: I was about to say, I thought you were about to say you tried different wives.

Richard Negus: Yes, hundreds of different wives.

Richard Prideaux: Went through the entire audience of Shooting Times.

Richard Negus: I was too tired to go fishing afterwards. And if memory serves me right, it was the Springer Spaniel what won it. And I tied cocker spaniel, golden retriever. I took some golden retriever fur from Jeremy Squirrel's dog, Margo. And I also took some cockapoo fur, which I [unclear].

Callum McInerney-Riley: Hypoallergenic flies. Love it.

Richard Negus: Sat there on top of the water like a flipping balloon. That was no use at all. But Adam, who I have to say is a far better angler than I am, he won with some rather cunning sort of Klinkhamer type thing, which he'd tied with springer spaniel fur. And so we could safely say by scientific analysis that the springer spaniel is best at killing trout.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Fair.

Richard Prideaux: There's nowhere to go from that, is there? There's no segue.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I'm going to have to try dog fur as a thing. So with the deer hair, does anyone want to guess what you make?

Richard Negus: Dog-biscuit fly. Yeah. Have you made a dog-biscuit fly?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Here we go. Here's one I made earlier for just describe it for the audience at home.

Richard Negus: Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, what he's done basically looks like, you know, the fluff that you get in your belly button. It looks like that. So it's a sort of round pom-pom of, I mean, it looks slightly like a Pedigree Chum Mixer, which I assume that you would use that for.

Callum McInerney-Riley: So you throw the chum mixers out and then you put the fly out. But the ones you buy, if you can get them from Fulling Mill and stuff like that, the ones you buy there are huge. They're like five times the size of an actual dog biscuit. So what I do is I always go to the farm shop and whatever they're discontinuing that week, I just buy those dog biscuits. They've got like one bag of Skinner's Pup or something like that left before they start stocking a different puppy food. I just buy whatever it is. And usually it's a tiny little dog biscuit. So at least now I can buy tiny little dog biscuits and I make my own flies.

Richard Negus: And then you call the fly... It hasn't quite got the ring of something like a Campbell's Fancy.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I looked up—I wrote down some funny names for flies. Chernobyl Ant, a [bleep] monkey, Sex Dungeon, Meat Whistle.

Richard Negus: Sex dungeon. Shut up. There's one called a Sex Dungeon?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Shuttlecock Emerger.

Richard Negus: Oh, I've had a, I've got Shuttlecock Emergers, yes.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I know, I've got some cream for that. Charlie Boy Hopper. That's quite, that's quite good for you.

Richard Negus: Yeah.

Callum McInerney-Riley: A trout tickler.

Richard Negus: That sounds like the sort of chap would be thrown out of the club. He's a trout tickler, that one.

Callum McInerney-Riley: The Mortgage Nymph.

Richard Negus: Yeah. Oh, I've met him. He was at school with me. He got done for fraud.

Callum McInerney-Riley: The Full English Emerger.

Richard Negus: Yeah, he was equally so. He's in the other house.

Callum McInerney-Riley: There's also a fly called the Greggs Hopper, which is also the career title of Glenn from HIKMICRO. It's a good joke.

Richard Negus: Right.

Richard Prideaux: It's a good joke. Go on. Where are we?

Richard Negus: Where we are? We've done fishing flies and we've done Callum imitating dog biscuits. So rather than just supergluing a dog biscuit to a hook, which a normal human being would do.

Richard Prideaux: Correct. Before we move on to the inevitable next segment, I would like to thank everyone who's sent in their suggestions for Game Fair Bingo. And if you don't know the hell I'm talking about, go and listen to last week's episode. We've had quite a response.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Any favourites?

Richard Prideaux: Yes, but I'm not going to spoil them. You have to buy your bingo card and give your money to the GWCT to find out.

Richard Negus: Yeah.

Richard Prideaux: But I expect to see people out there filling their bingo card. Yeah. Well, one square is: have you been leered at by the rep from one particular thermal imaging brand?

Richard Negus: Has he given you an excessive hug?

Richard Prideaux: Yes. Dogs in prams was one of them.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, nice.

Richard Prideaux: The fox call [bleep] as he's known. So we've got several things there. So thank you to everyone who submitted. It's most useful. So it'll be bundled together into a thing that'll be ready for next week.

Richard Negus: Next week, I think we ought to go and reveal where the Countryslide massive can meet up and eat pheasant-meets-McDonald's-related food on Saturday so that we can go and support one of our loyalists and most handsome listeners.

Richard Prideaux: He's a loyalist.

Richard Negus: A loyalist. Yeah, that's right. He's a perfect loyalist. There we go. Bow him up there. Nay, was it not on this day in 70? Anyway. So listen, there's another thing that I am quite interested in. I was reading in the newspaper today that we've had this ridiculous roadmap for farming or whatever the government's called it.

Richard Prideaux: Subtitled, you're on your own.

Richard Negus: Yes, you're on your own. Yes, exactly. And all of a sudden, all these London types who write for the Telegraph and the Times have suddenly realized that actually perhaps British food is really quite important and that you could cut the NHS budget if we stopped eating [bleep]. And so therefore most of the food that Britain produces is really good stuff. Now, I am sat here drinking a Birra Moretti, which is Italian, although it may be one of those ones that's actually made in, oh, it seems to be it's made in Amsterdam. So there we go. So it's Italian, but they're.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Normally, you know, Burton on Trent.

Richard Negus: Yeah, exactly, Burton on Trent or Tadcaster. But what I'd like to ask you is that we are all, three of us, we are loyal, buy-British sort of type chaps. What could you not live without that has to be imported food-wise?

Callum McInerney-Riley: For me, there's quite a lot of ingredient stuff that would have to be imported, but.

Richard Negus: Like spices and stuff.

Richard Prideaux: You do non-linear cooking and ADHD cooking where you don't cook the same thing twice. You buy all the things to cook one thing in one particular very elaborate way. You do it three times.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Never do it again.

Richard Prideaux: And then it goes next to the blender and then the soup maker and you know it's over there with the other £3,000 worth of kitchen gadgets.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Sometimes I don't even know what I'm having for dinner. I just get in the kitchen and I just vibe it. Suddenly I'm like, oh [bleep] we're having—I don't know—I'll just do something really random, a chicken ballotine on like a Wednesday night just because, you know, I saw it on a YouTube video and I was like, yep.

Richard Prideaux: Do you ever have fish fingers or anything like that? No.

Richard Negus: Shop-bought pizza from the co-op.

Callum McInerney-Riley: For the kids maybe.

Richard Negus: Okay.

Richard Prideaux: A sausage roll and a can of Shandy Bass.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I might do that.

Richard Negus: Take the spices out of it because obviously in the good old days these spices usually used to come from the empire anyway so it was still circular production. What fruit, vegetable, something which is actually tangible you could hold in your hand rather than sprinkle on?

Callum McInerney-Riley: Olive oil, soy sauce, Dijon mustard. Tomatoes are often, when you get tins of tomatoes for cooking anything, they're never British. You don't get, it's not, I don't think there is a British tin of tomatoes, is there?

Richard Prideaux: No. Is there no British passata or anything like that. Peanuts, peanut butter.

Richard Negus: Oh yes, peanuts, that's very true. I quite like nuts and so therefore that would be something that I would struggle with. That's good.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Do you do the dad thing? What's that? You get to that certain time in your life where you get peanuts and then you shake them in your hand and then throw one of them in.

Richard Negus: Oh yeah.

Callum McInerney-Riley: And just do that for no good reason whatsoever. I don't know if you have to have children or you just get to that stage in your life where you're juggling. You can do it with M&M's as well. You're juggling six M&M's and then put one in your mouth because that's a dad thing to do.

Richard Prideaux: Well chocolate's off the cards entirely.

Richard Negus: Yes, that's true. Yes, because we can't grow cocoa beans here.

Callum McInerney-Riley: You could have vegan chocolate.

Richard Negus: That's not chocolate.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I know.

Richard Negus: So we look, anything that's vegan, we just ignore because that's not proper food, is it? I mean, there are vegetables, that's proper food. Then there's vegan food—not proper food. We can just draw a line under that.

Richard Prideaux: Get the chart out. Proper food above this line, not proper food.

Richard Negus: Exactly. You could, yes. Yeah, that's it. I mean, my wife likes an avocado on toast.

Richard Prideaux: Is that another fly?

Richard Negus: No. She just, you know, she puts that on with a poached egg on top. She'll have an avocado.

Richard Prideaux: I think she would have a banana.

Callum McInerney-Riley: There's certain things that I worry about, like avocados. I just think to myself, that's come from a long way away. So I will eat them occasionally, but they're like, they're almost like a treat food. I would never have one every week because it just feels like, not that I'm a mad environmentalist, but like when you can eat muntjac or something that you know that is not only doing positive good for the environment, but you're taking an animal out that's going to destroy a hedge. You're doing good and it only comes from up the road and you support people locally. Great. But when you're like destroying entire habitats and flying it in jets or by sea in great big tankers across the ocean so you can have, so you can let it go bad in the fruit bowl. Yeah, I'm not that keen on avocados.

Richard Negus: So we're having a Countryslide veto on avocados. Now, interestingly, courtesy of friend of the show, Mike Warner, the fish man, put me in the direction of Cornish sardines. So they're tinned. And now this is the weird thing. This shows you how utterly bonkers it is. They're caught off the coast of Cornwall, shipped to Spain where they are canned. And then they are brought back to the UK where you can buy Cornish sardines. But I now have those because I have sardines for breakfast or tinned mackerel every morning because I am, I don't know, Richard will probably diagnose me with the 'tism. But I've now decided that I need these good fish oils. And your coat looks really lovely for it. Look at my lustrous locks. I mean, it's grey. Admittedly, they are grey, dear listener. I am brushing my fingers through my grey hair. But I discovered something even better that Mike Warner told me to do is I decant the tin into a frying pan with good British butter in and you actually cook tinned sardines briefly, then you put them on a piece of toast, which I have made my own gentleman's relish butter. So that is anchovies, one of those funny little green things, capers, butter, Mix it and blitz it together, you know, so therefore those capers are from Italy or something like that.

Richard Prideaux: But you can make your own with the seeds of wild garlic, the little seed heads that you use, the little triangular three-seed things you get on.

Richard Negus: Do you put them in brine then, do you?

Richard Prideaux: Yeah, you just pickle them kind of with a garlicky caper.

Richard Negus: I mean, it's delicious, but I mean, I'll put it this way: it's very fishy and then with a poached egg on top for breakfast every single morning.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I swap the capers out now for chopped cornichon pickles. For the simple reason that I open a jar of capers and then as you rightly pointed out, you open capers, use whatever it is, a teaspoon of it once and then never use it again. So they all go in the bin and it costs me like a few quid. So I use cornichons for things. Because I know they'll get used up at some point because we'll have a cold dinner and pickles at some point.

Richard Negus: So because of Starmer's Britain, we no longer have gentleman's relish. I've had to make my own and I have to say it's better actually.

Richard Prideaux: I've been making my own for decades.

Richard Negus: Well indeed, that's why your eyesight's not what it was.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got a sock under the bed that... What?

Richard Prideaux: Could you rehydrate that one? Hydration break for Callum's sock.

Callum McInerney-Riley: 20 minutes. It needs hydration.

Richard Negus: Yeah. Okay, so, I mean, could you live without bananas?

Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I mean, I do quite like bananas.

Richard Negus: Yes, I don't like them, but I mean.

Richard Prideaux: See, my secret easy dessert when you don't want to make, I was about to say, well, you don't want to put any effort in, but actually I was going to say when I want Amy to make it without putting much effort in. Bananas, custard, a spoonful of peanut butter and cinnamon on top.

Richard Negus: Oh, see, that's all foreign, isn't it? Other than the custard.

Richard Prideaux: It's all foreign. Nothing in there came from our field.

Richard Negus: No, custard.

Richard Prideaux: Custard.

Callum McInerney-Riley: We used to have the Bird's Custard factory in Birmingham.

Richard Negus: But I think they still imported the vanilla pods, I would imagine.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I can't imagine there were British vanilla pods, no.

Richard Negus: No. So, therefore—okay, custard. Chillies, you can grow those in this country. Now you can grow those in this country.

Callum McInerney-Riley: But do we ever get British chillies? Have you seen a British chilli in the wild?

Richard Negus: They're in the co-op in Bottersdale.

Richard Prideaux: I can give you a chilli plant if you want.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I had some good chilli plants in my day. I had one when I was in a shared house and I had it in the conservatory and boy did it grow. It went really well and they would absolutely knock your socks off. We used to shout at it and not water it and play heavy metal to it and they shrivelled up like an old man's old boy and they were aggressive.

Richard Negus: What, because of the heavy metal music. This is something that the King should know about because he plays Bach to his.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, and they'll be like snowflake chillies. They'll just be like, they'll just be, if you water them, give them good hydration and play them peaceful music. They'll be like mellow chillies. But ours were [bleep]. Ours got played death metal and got forced to watch videos of the towers coming down.

Richard Prideaux: So, to finish this off: rice. That came in afterwards. That snuck up on me, that one. There always used to be this thing that you couldn't grow chillies in the UK, but it turns out you can. And I'm currently growing a small section of an acre of quinoa at the moment. So you can grow that in the UK. That's our middle-class [unclear].

Callum McInerney-Riley: I used to eat quinoa, but and then I suddenly thought, this is actually not nice.

Richard Prideaux: It's just bits.

Callum McInerney-Riley: It is just bits. Never eat anything that sounds like a karate move. I'm not interested in it.

Richard Negus: Actually, if you think about that, most wild bird seed mixes have got quinoa in them.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Is that the fat hen?

Richard Negus: Fat hen is the wild version of it, which I can assure you is growing very well in my wildflower patch that I'm looking out at the moment. But you can grow quinoa very easily in this country. I just don't think.

Callum McInerney-Riley: I think Jamie Oliver convinced me to eat it for probably about a year. And then I was like, this tastes like [bleep]. I don't want to eat this. It's just bits of like nothing. Don't want to eat this, Jamie.

Richard Negus: Stop making me eat quinoa. No. So, okay. So we're at a point where basically, other than I mean, have you got any other uses for, say, something like a one of those green things? What are they called? I was going to say aubergine because you can grow those in this country. What are they called? No, the thing we were just talking about, the posh one. Avocado.

Richard Prideaux: Avocado.

Richard Negus: Is there any other? Hang on.

Richard Prideaux: Claire has these.

Richard Negus: Yes.

Richard Prideaux: You've just admitted you're posh as you sit in your orange room.

Richard Negus: It's not an orangery, it's my study.

Richard Prideaux: It's a handmade oak conservatory with a proper roof.

Callum McInerney-Riley: And he's on the chaise longue.

Richard Negus: Yes, and it's got even a retro bronze fan, which Amy's made me stop it from oscillating because it was affecting my microphone.

Richard Prideaux: Yes, we bought him a nice microphone so he can actually hear him and he immediately plugged in an electric fan on the opposite side of the room.

Richard Negus: It's not my fault that it's suddenly gone ridiculously hot. You know, it's, well, it probably is actually. I mean, you think of the cars. Yes, well, quite, you know, the amount I've smoked and the petrol guzzling cars I've had. Ed Miliband's got me nailed down as a net carbon bloody emitter or something probably. He's got a fatwa on me. So anyway, we have done enormous amounts of good today. So we have advised people on what flies they should be tying and what dog hair they should use. We have given an insight into that there are very few things that you actually need to buy that are foreign. In actual fact, there's nothing you need to buy that's foreign. In fact, I would like anyone who is a Countryslide patron to sign a pledge, a bit like people used to do when they stopped drinking back in Victorian times, is that you will sign a pledge that I will eat nothing that hasn't got a union flag on it. And we have also agreed that Paul Powsland shouldn't be anywhere near rivers at this time of year because it's bad for pike. Was that what we decided?

Richard Prideaux: And fleasels and flabbits.

Richard Negus: Oh yes, absolutely. And you know, if loyal listeners would like to go and make any other suggestions for roadkill that they have seen and a pet name.

Richard Prideaux: Roadkill portmanteau, yeah.

Richard Negus: So anyway, is that the main show done? Because I'm just very aware that Amy has also had to become a cheese farmer for the last few days. So she's got to edit this nonsensical squit into something that almost sounds like a show.

Richard Prideaux: Right, on to the aftershow, which is where we say all the things and we can relax and say the things that we don't want to say out in public because we'll end up in jail or sacked or in Callum's case, the yummy mummies at the forest school will pick up on it and, well, ostracise him.

Callum McInerney-Riley: Choke on their matcha lattes. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Richard Prideaux: Goodbye.