After deliberations about who could make a difference as Prime Minister in a one month stint, Callum, Negus and Prideaux reveal their specialist subjects. We’re not talking the thing they do best at work, nor what they excelled in at school (if anything at all). No, we are talking about the random things that they have more knowledge than they should about!
Also find out more about Bingo cards, T-shirts and where you can meet up with us at The Game Fair if you are going!
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.You can contact us by email on: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Edited and Produced by Amy Green.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Negus
What sort of song would you like me to sing, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Do you know any R&B songs?
Richard Negus
No, I'll be honest, I don't.
Richard Prideaux
Rugby and [bleep].
Richard Negus
I thought R&B was like the Rolling Stones, but I discovered it's not.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You're thinking of rock and or roll.
Richard Prideaux
Could you say the Rolling Stones again, please, for the audience?
Richard Negus
Rolling Stones.
Richard Prideaux
Stones.
Richard Negus
Stones.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You say the rain in Spain falls mostly on the plain.
Richard Negus
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Richard Prideaux
I swear the more public speaking you're doing, the more and more you're sounding like Olivia Colman pretending to be the Queen.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The water.
Richard Negus
Never see us in the same room.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The water in Majorca don't taste like white water.
Richard Prideaux
Olivia Colman, to find the accent, had to say, ‘Ears.’ Ears.
Richard Negus
Yes. Oh, I've had friends who speak like that. Do you know, Sam Carlisle's father, Sir Kenneth, is absolutely cut glass. And I remember once asking him about one of his cabinet colleagues when he was in the John Major cabinet. And he went, yes, he was much more, how shall we put it, much more ambitious than me. I was just delighted to be there. And I thought, yeah, that's probably true actually, is that just delighted to be there. Like so many of these, the fashion walk that we saw coming down Downing Street to be given or not their position in the Burnham thing. God, that was so funny. It was, they've obviously been dressed, haven't they, by someone?
Richard Prideaux
Yes. I'm going to sit this cabinet out, I think. I'm going to wait for the next one in about six months' time.
Richard Negus
Yeah. Six months? That long? Blimey.
Richard Prideaux
The rate of churn is getting faster every time, isn't it?
Richard Negus
Yes, I mean, it is for us. Do you think we.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Could we eventually just get governed by, like, a stand-up meeting? Like a ten o'clock stand-up meeting, all in an office: what government stuff are we doing today? Then someone takes over. Maybe it'd be like Fieldsports Journal: you'd just have a guest Prime Minister every month, who could come in and shift some policies around, just have a crack at it.
Richard Negus
Who is your Prime Minister? He's a Prime Minister at large. Yes, it could be anybody. This week, who's Prime Minister? We'll go, ‘Where's Prudhoe?’
Callum McInerney-Riley
Vinnie Jones for a bit.
Richard Negus
No, Prudhoe's Prime Minister just this week.
Callum McInerney-Riley
If you could have, if you could have just a couple of people for like a month to be PM, who is, who'd be your first, who'd be your top three?
Richard Negus
Ian Coghill, because he would just wind up so many people.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Solid choice. Yeah.
Richard Negus
I think Will Self, the comedian and writer, well, he's not only a comedian, the comic writer, because he's just so dour. And then I would definitely go for the real sensible choice, Andrew Neil, the He'd come and get stuff done. Well, exactly. You see, so I'd get those two coming in. So Coghill would just go and annoy the wick off all the right people.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Anarchist, pragmatist, wild cards. That's kind of what you need, right?
Richard Negus
Yeah, exactly. Well, who are you going to have, Richard? Who's your PMs for the trio of months?
Richard Prideaux
I think first in we'd have Ewan, who does the dodgy plant hire down here in town, because he's always got an opinion on everything, but he also knows literally where all the bodies are buried. So I just want to see, if you give somebody complete local power, what they would do with the country—if they could run it like the dodgy plant hire place, where you've got the wood chipper where all the safety devices have been removed from it because they just got in the way and slowed everything down. So if you fall in that wood chipper, you're going in. I want to see how a man like that would run a defence budget. Who else? This is the thing, celebrities, there's not many you'd want now because now we know what every celebrity thinks because they're on social media. We found out they're all very dim-witted, apart from anyone we want as a future guest, in which case they're marvellous. I'd like to have Hugo Campbell Hill in. Oh yeah. Oh yes. Just I want to see what pure creative ADHD could do for a country because they're never allowed in at the proper, they're not allowed in front of cameras and things like that, but Hugo does manage to be in front of a camera. So Hugo for PM. We probably need a woman in there at some point because that'll be our fourth female Prime Minister.
Richard Negus
Yes, all Tories.
Richard Prideaux
So we need a, yes, we need a Conservative. Who should we have? This is quite telling that I'm struggling to think of a woman I should be, I think should be in power. Can you come back to me on this when I dig myself out of this hole? Let's do Callum's.
Richard Negus
Yes, go on, Callum. Who are you going to have?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I think on the woman's subject, the lady that has what's it called? Country Food Alliance.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Country Food Trust.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The Country Food Trust.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley
She just gets things done and she's just a teensy bit scary that you just know not to mess with her. So I'm going to say her as the lady to run things. Also any London taxi driver, doesn't matter which one because you're offered an opinion on anything around government, and they will tell you what the problem with this country is, whether you want to hear it or not. Like a proper London taxi driver, not like Ahmed from Uber, like the old school ones that you've all been in a taxi.
Richard Prideaux
Do you mean a pre-Boris wave taxi driver?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah, one.
Richard Prideaux
Just say you're horrible, greatest little thing, Callum.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Those guys.
Richard Prideaux
The moment someone says that, there's no easy way out, there's no good answer out of that, is there? It's like saying, when did you stop beating your wife?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Basically, yeah. You'll always get that. Some of them are quite randomly left-wing as well, strangely, which you find, yeah, it's an odd mix, but some of them are quite hard-right. But yeah, any London taxi driver, just find one.
Richard Prideaux
Any London taxi driver, okay. So any someone in the black cab.
Callum McInerney-Riley
And you said about ADHD creatives. And you got me thinking, Marco Pierre White, I just think it would be just great to let him loose on the country.
Richard Prideaux
That's two chefs we've had then, if you include Hugo.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah, I think their creative energy is just the perfect thing. If they can give proper attention to detail to just about anything, and Marco Pierre White basically completed cooking, so he just didn't need to do it any more.
Richard Prideaux
I've thought of a woman that we can have as Prime Minister. I finally remembered what women are and where they exist because of course I only have eyes for Amy now.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
She's the only woman that exists in my life apart from my mother and [unclear] as well. Megan Lock of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. Because we've never actually had a proper conservationist in, not in the last 50 years.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah.
Richard Negus
No, I think the last conservationist we probably had was Harold Macmillan.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, as I said, pre-Heath. Anyone before Heath is probably a better bet. It all went downhill after Ted Heath.
Richard Negus
Although that being said, you have to remember that Margaret Thatcher was the person who first brought in any form of environmental grants, which is something I do like to remind people when I particularly have an audience of clearly sort of green leaning voters, is to go and sort of just mention the fact that the first environmental schemes in what was then MAFF only came about because Margaret Thatcher, being a chemist by training, actually listened to her some of her agriculture ministers who also happened to own shoots and said, do you know, Margaret, I've noticed there's a lot less birdsong about. And she then looked into it and hey presto, the first environmental land management schemes came about because of Maggie Thatcher, which is quite funny. And it's also another thing which is always fun to tell lefties is that actually, Labour closed more pits than the Conservatives did. And they get very cross about that, the fact that they actually shut more mines than the Tories.
Richard Prideaux
Speaking of chemicals and reduction in operations, hot off the presses, as we're recording this on Tuesday night, there's the announcement from British Sugar that they are reducing their operational footprint from 4 factories to three, ceasing beet processing at Cantley at the end of February 2027. Where's Cantley?
Richard Negus
Cantley is over on the Norfolk coast. Nearish, not in the Yarmouthy sort of way. It's not good. In fact, it's a terrible thing. And I know a few blokes who are in my wildfowling club who will be made redundant as a result—they're engineers at the plant. It will put more pressure on the whole process of sugar beet harvesting because a lot of the time British Sugar will tell you, I mean if you speak to a lot of the guys who are actually producing sugar beet, they will tell you that British Sugar are not actually that great to work with because British Sugar will tell you we want it now. And you say, it's been raining for the last four weeks. And if I go on this field, I'm going to completely ruin it for the next year. And they go, sorry, what didn't you understand that we want it now? And if you reduce the number of plants, then that makes it even more Lastminute.com. So I mean, sugar beet used to be a really big earner in the East. It was something that paid more than anything else. Now it doesn't. The sugar taxes have obviously impacted everything. There's more subsidy for actually imported sugar cane sugar rather than our own.
Richard Prideaux
And I think the plant at Bury, near you, can do both—Cantley as well, I think. It can do beet or cane.
Richard Negus
Correct.
Richard Prideaux
So yeah, you're kind of screwed.
Richard Negus
I mean, it's, yeah, people will lose their jobs, but it will just make farming that bit more difficult. And what it'll probably do is go and inspire more people to come out of sugar beet. Now I know that there's a lot of down sides to soil health, which may be a good thing, but I often think that one of the great things about sugar beet is it provides one of those winter cover crops that actually pays the bills. And there are a lot of little grey partridges about that owe their lives to having some sugar beet cover over their heads. And so I think it would be a loss to it. And I suppose it's yet another bit of a nail in farming's coffin.
Callum McInerney-Riley
What would they replace sugar beet with if they weren't doing that?
Richard Negus
I suppose they have to do another root crop, Callum, I suppose, if you're putting it into a rotation. So, I mean, so perhaps you put in something like stubble turnips and then grazed sheep over it. It's a lot of sheep, and it's not that profitable. Not really.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, sheep farming hasn't been profitable since about 1770.
Richard Negus
Although this is really bizarre. The price of a cull ewe when I came up to Wales—where did I get this? When I was in Montgomery. It's so very Welsh. I sat down to have breakfast in this lovely little cafe, which was also the shop and the post office. And she was trying to do three different things at the same time. And she said, oh, you'll want to read this. And she passed me the local sort of Montgomery and wherever it is, courier or something. And about four or five pages were dedicated to the livestock prices and the market returns from Montgomery, whichever the local livestock market was. And I looked down through what prices the averages were returning, and £140 was the average price for a cull ewe, which is exactly the same price as a tonne of wheat at the moment. And you think, my God, the idea that a tonne of wheat is now only the same as a cull ewe, I mean, a cull ewe, Callum, if you didn't know, is one which is basically no longer going to have lambs any more. She is destined for the kebab shop. And yeah, £140.
Richard Prideaux
Speaking of wheat, you got yourself in trouble last week.
Richard Negus
Did I? Oh yes, I did. Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Which is a strange thing. We don't often get complaints into the show, but we had a complaint last week from a lady on Instagram saying that she wished we'd spoken to her about her content before we went into our uninformed rant about wheat prices and the amount of damage that pigeons cause. The problem is we weren't referring to that lady and I have no idea who that is. But I think she sort of saw herself within the role you're describing of shooting eight hundred pigeons or whatever it was.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I wonder how many people might think that could possibly be about them.
Richard Prideaux
That's the thing.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Should we just start throwing generic accusations out? I saw a man at the Game Fair with red trousers on and I thought his attitude was terrible.
Richard Prideaux
Well, it raised a question. I was talking about this with international man of mystery and occasional odd hat choices, George Brownee. And we're trying to work out, you know, what weight of 12-bore cartridges would you need to shoot eight hundred pigeons, assuming a one-to-one ratio.
Richard Negus
Crikey.
Richard Prideaux
Well, I mean, that's a pickup bed.
Richard Negus
That's a lot. I can remember dear old Archie Coats saying—or writing—that when he shot his world-record-breaking number of four hundred and something, he basically broke his old Webley and he said he had to send someone back for more cartridges, because he'd only bought six hundred out with him and he had to send back for more. And he said, and he had these lovely old-fashioned heavyweight springers. And he said, and my dog, well, it had shell shock. So I mean, it's a serious amount of cartridges. I mean, that was an amusing thing. Firstly, someone saying that I wish you had checked out with us first because of what we've done. I think it was because you see she was saying this particular person who I have to say it's very weird the fact that we should have checked with this individual saying is neither Richard nor I nor you have a clue who this individual is and she only came to our attention by complaining. Yes, but more to the point I think she was saying because I don't think she understands perhaps the nuance of it is that she said that pigeons will cause damage to standing crops, she said, because they tread it down and they will then, which is very true.
Richard Prideaux
They knock their heads off, don't they?
Richard Negus
They knock their heads off and they will flatten it. Now this is very true, particularly in years when it rains. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere in the British Isles has it rained. It's also fairly unlikely to be perfectly honest in most modern wheat varieties because the straw length is incredibly short. So therefore it's one of the things that good plant breeders have bred out of straw, which is why we don't have thatching straw anymore. But thirdly, the weird idea that she didn't seem to get the hang of is that the comment was about that wheat prices are so low. So therefore rather than ranting about because the fact we say it was a bit gauche to go and talk about how many pigeons you had shot and it doesn't really matter we do. The whole point of Countryslide is the fact we're supposed to represent real rural life. So therefore to indicate that wheat is an undervalued product, which is why our farming system is completely going down the toilet. And to be perfectly honest, whoever this woman is, I don't really care because you don't understand about farming. So therefore I suggest what you would be better off doing is just don't complain. Don't complain all the time. If you want to complain at anybody, tell the global wheat markets to pay a fair price to our farmers.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah. And if you actually do want to unblock me and reply to the message, your future guest opportunity there.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
We'll come and talk about come and talk about pest control. Anyway. We've got the Game Fair coming up. So we're recording this on Tuesday. Patrons get this on Thursday and this is.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This might be in their ears as they drive up.
Richard Prideaux
Yes. And then for the rest of the world, it's coming out at 4 pm on Friday. So you've already missed the first day of the Game Fair. But you have a chance now to go to the links in the show notes. There's a link there that says bingo cards. So this is something we've been talking about for a few weeks. It started as a joke a couple of years ago. Oh yes, that's on the Game Fair bingo card. Well, I actually realized no one had done them. So you now have your Game Fair bingo cards and you go there and it's just a little thing we've drawn up. You click on that, you pay a quid per card and you get a download and then you go around the Game Fair. They're knocking things off. So it's everything from red trousers, mustard cords, a dog in a pram, I think is in there on one of them, pith helmets, chums called [bleep]. A man in a pair of Dubarrys standing in a pond in a paddling pool. Too much flesh on display.
Richard Negus
What else is on? Oh, I'll tell you what the other one was: that thing about the flipping whirligig, the pigeon magnets going around constantly.
Richard Prideaux
It's still going, yeah.
Richard Negus
Hugo Campbell Hill.
Richard Prideaux
There's some of your celebrities. Yes. Celebrity hedge layer, Richard Negus. So you can go along there and there's four different types. You can choose one, two, three or four. You can buy the bumper set, which is a whole £4. But anyway, everything after the card processor fee, which we can't control, the rest of the money goes to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. They haven't actually said they're willing to take our donation or be associated with this, but they're getting the money either way.
Richard Negus
Do you know what? I reckon they'll be prepared to take the donation. Have you seen some of the people who donate to them? They're absolutely rotters. Do you know I actually donate?
Richard Prideaux
That's a that's an invite rescinded here.
Richard Negus
I've donate £12 per month to them.
Callum McInerney-Riley
We did take a large donation in crypto.
Richard Prideaux
Offload your Dogwifhat, or whatever this cryptocurrency is. So other Game Fair news, because we said that we would meet outside, there'd be a sort of a fans-of-the-show meet-up, which could be anywhere from two people with a dog on a bit of string all the way up to 2000 people, who knows, on Saturday morning outside Hugo Campbell Hill, AKA the Game Glutton, on his stand, and I have his stand number fresh off the presses, stand T1526. So he's right in the middle of the food vendors bits. There's a sort of a double row of food vendors. They're all facing each other. It's like a big jousting arena right at the top end of the hill. And he's in the middle of that. So go and find him there. The Game Glutton. And I think we're meeting there at what time on Saturday.
Richard Negus
At 10 am.
Richard Prideaux
10 am on Saturday. So we're meeting just outside there. So if you're not going on Saturday, so you're going on Friday or Sunday, and this is if you're a public listener, you've already missed the Friday one. I suggest that if you want to go and meet some Countryslide fans, just wander there for 12 pm on any of the days, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. We can't guarantee that we'll be there because we've got interviews and things to do, but if you're at a loss and 12 pm is a good time to be visiting the food area, Just say the code word. If nothing else, you'll see Hugo. Yes, and there is a code word.
Richard Negus
Look for the increasingly large number of T-shirts that are being sold.
Richard Prideaux
Yes, we sold some T-shirts. So we have T-shirts for sale. I'm not going to repeat the story once again of how I was too busy and I was bullied into doing this.
Richard Negus
Bullied, bullied. Oh, that's a harsh word. It's just because Callum and I are incompetent, that's all. Don't blame bullying.
Richard Prideaux
You had utter faith in a mate who could definitely do it, and you rang him and said, I'm at a beach in Bali.
Richard Negus
He was on a beach in Bali. Look, he's in the household was in the Household Cavalry. What do you expect?
Richard Prideaux
So there are some T-shirts which are available. We're going to come up with a better solution for later in the year. But that'll do for now. So there are T-shirts available in that. But that's it, game-fairing. And then if you see us say hello, one of us may or may not be wearing a pith helmet, possibly in a short pair of shorts.
Richard Negus
Okay, let's just narrow each ditch one down. Callum, do you own a pith helmet?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I don't think so.
Richard Negus
I just want to put it out there. I do not own a pith helmet. So if you see someone with a pith helmet and a kilt, the chances are it won't be Callum or I. It will definitely be Richard. So you can guarantee if you go up to them to avoid Richard, it's a, yeah, exactly. So hobbling in a kilt.
Richard Prideaux
Hobbling. And I'm going to go to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's Taylors, whatever they are of.
Richard Negus
No, Taylors of Harrogate is the tea company.
Richard Prideaux
Oh, that's tea company, yes. They're doing port, not tea. And we go to their drinks party in a pith helmet and see if they can get thrown out.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Just to let you know that Taylors is the second-best port brand in the country. But you know...
Richard Prideaux
That's a photography gig you don't want, isn't it? Anyway, so we have a topic for us chosen actually by producer Amy.
Richard Negus
Good topic it is too.
Richard Prideaux
It's quite a good topic, yes. I think this is why we let them vote in the end, because it turns out they do have quite good ideas.
Richard Negus
Yeah, I think it's that. And also, Any woman who wants to suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. Sorry, chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. That's a Blackadder quote, Callum. It's before your.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I was just going to say, I have no idea what you're saying.
Richard Negus
Any woman who wants to chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. It's [unclear]. Exactly. It's Blackadder.
Richard Prideaux
I think we should sit Callum down and make him watch everything that we give references to. It'll take a long time. Everything from the Lord of the Rings, the Blackadder, to the Railway Children. Daddy, my daddy.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Are you okay, hun?
Richard Negus
Come on. You must have seen Railway Children. Anyway, back to Ransome: Swallows and Amazons, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, [unclear]. Do you know? Do you not know Swallows and Amazons? Arthur Ransom.
Richard Prideaux
Do you know who [bleep] is? No.
Richard Negus
That's what people do for middle-aged men.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This is what happens when I wake up and it's really hot and the missus has got the fan. I just see little ticks like that. It's like.
Richard Negus
Just hear [unclear] in your ears. The schizophrenia hasn't stopped. This is what our patrons pay for, I'll have your fever dreams, people pay for. So what did Amy suggest that we do, Richard?
Richard Prideaux
So the topic is, you know, given that we all do several different things and not all of them well at the same time, it's about special interests, though not those type. The topics that you would choose as your specialist subject on Mastermind, Amazing Factoids, what's our special thing? If you had to say that's our thing that we know about and that we do well, I can't stand there and talk about or answer questions about, because it may not be what you expect. I mean, it's not your profession, certainly. You're a bit of a head start with this one, Richard, because you've written about, you've got a whole book about hedges.
Richard Negus
I'm not going to choose hedges. I think it would be unfair because that is the day job. So I would say my other thing, if I actually had to go on Mastermind and had a chosen specialist subject, because I think I'd do all right on the general knowledge because I am a mine of useless general knowledge information. But if you ask me what seven nines are, I'm having to go and take my fingers and check my fingers and toes. I think I would go probably for the works of R. S. Surtees. He wrote books like Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities and Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour. So he was basically the author who was like the rural version of Dickens. In actual fact, Thackeray said that he wrote a book called Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, and Thackeray said, I wish I'd written that. You know, so he was highly credited. He edited The Sporting Magazine. He was a squire from up in the North East, Jedborough sort of way, and just in the sort of English borders up in Northumberland. He was ridiculously curmudgeonly. He had no time for new money to people. He had no time for snobby people. He had no time for anyone who was gutless. He was an out and out. I mean, basically, we've already mentioned him. I'm going to mention it twice. Imagine Coghill, right? But with some money and he was a trained barrister who went the law's [bleep] and then he happened to inherit his sort of family estate, which is a relatively small thing. And he just went hunting and he wrote these hilarious books, most of the time for his own, because he edited his own magazine. So he wrote all these things and they were serialized. And he had this major character called John Jorrocks, who they think was more or less where John Bull came from, is that they more or less modelled it on his character John Jorrocks of this bluff Englishman who was a self-made man who was nobody's fool, but drank six bottles of port a night. And I think I would do it on him. And I love his works. And although it's very long and Victorian and rambly, which I suppose perhaps I'm typecasting myself. Yeah, I know a guy like that. Victorian, long and rambly. I don't know why I like him. But I think that it would be the works of R. S. Surtees. I've read everything he's ever written and even his slightly indecipherable ones and I've got them all sat on my bookshelves just there next to me and I've even read Hawbuck Grange, which is literally unreadable, but I read it anyway. And yes, that would be it. R. S. Surtees.
Callum McInerney-Riley
It's sort of 1800s sort of early, right?
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, back before the Victorian age kicked in, really. So the best bit of the 18th century was in the beginning of the 19th century.
Richard Negus
Yes, more or less.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Weirdly, I remember you mentioning him before some 10 odd. Wasn't he a grocer?
Richard Negus
Yeah, that's right. Jorrocks was a grocer from Great Coram, Great Coram Street in London, and he actually used to go hunting. And he meets up, which shows you how life has changed. He met up with his favourite hunt. Well, he went to Croydon, of all places. Croydon, from Central London, the Surrey, the Surrey hunt. Well, it was a village still.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You could probably do that now, to be honest. There's enough foxes in Croydon.
Richard Negus
Funny thing is, I've actually, I went on a pilgrimage because I'm so sad to have a day with the Surrey.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I thought you were going to say to Croydon.
Richard Negus
Jesus Christ. No, I can tell you a story about Croydon actually. My wife, bless her, we went to meet my mother-in-law off the train or drop her off to the train at Croydon because she'd come to do it. My sister lives in Reigate in Surrey. And we dropped off my mother-in-law on the train to get winged away back to York. and we dropped off in Croydon and Claire made a bit of an error. There was sort of basically five Yardies in a car and they pulled out without indicating and Claire beeped them. And I went, oh my God, this, you know.
Richard Prideaux
It just killed us.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I didn't know where the story was going.
Richard Negus
I'm going to have to die now, Claire, because I'm not going to stand up for them going and ripping our car apart. So I'm going to have to go down fighting. And I went to open the door and they must have been busy because they sort of put a hand out the window waving something and I don't think it was a pen. And then they drove off very fast. And I have to say, I've never felt that close to death. Well, the last time I felt that close to death was when the IRA mortared me. So yes, not fun. So yes, Jorrocks used to go hunting in Croydon of all places and then he buys his own estate and becomes a master of hounds and all sorts of things.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Because of Croydon, there's still quite a lot of shooting on the estate there.
Richard Negus
So yeah, isn't that... Can I say there's lots of drive-by shooting? I don't know how much the driver is.
Richard Prideaux
My drive is nine millimetres, I think.
Richard Negus
Yeah, exactly. So what would your chosen specialist subject be, Richard?
Richard Prideaux
I've got so many.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I know. This is like, what kind of autism do you have?
Richard Prideaux
Basically, he's asking me what flavour I have. It's.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Please tell me it's World War Two history.
Richard Prideaux
No.
Callum McInerney-Riley
OK, can you list? Can you just list off a few that you've had an intense obsession with that bordered on unhealthy.
Richard Prideaux
Civil defence and nuclear-fallout defence.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This is [unclear].
Richard Prideaux
Carry on. Yeah, brilliant. World War II history, the Battle of Britain in particular.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley
No, specialist, specialist.
Richard Prideaux
Welsh mountain names. I mean, I don't want to list all the stuff for work because work's boring. It has to be weird, random stuff, isn't it? Okay, so my topic I'm going to actually have is the relationship between the human brain and being outdoors. That's my thing, because that's pretty much been my career, whether as an outdoor instructor or whether as an instructor of the weird and wonderful things that I used to teach and don't do so much of any more. The foraging and the wild food aspects of that and things like that. Because I used to get asked to do, and I still do every now and again, to go and do talks on stage. Can you come and do a talk about foraging? Yes, but in your mind, you're expecting me to hold up plants and tell you their names, aren't you? That's a crap talk. Instead, what I'm going to do is talk about the relationship between the hunter-gatherer brain and where we are now. And once you start digging into that, you see how much about who we are now as a species and how we interact with each other and how we've built things, which is basically anthropology and evolutionary psychology. It's fascinating stuff. And when you start looking around at other people, it explains so much. So things like your hunter-gatherer brain is, I mean, you are the result of lots of people having sex with each other and successfully breeding who are all good at spotting resources in the distance, in the edges of grassland and on rocky beaches and in woodlands and things like that. You have good sort of visual acquisition of things. You can spot things and say that's a resource. You also have good resource mapping, which is you know where the things are in your house that are useful to you. So I think we've done this on the podcast before, but Mr. Negus, if you could just point to the nearest copy of Surtees from you.
Richard Negus
Just there. It's about just over an arm's length away.
Richard Prideaux
Okay. And the nearest bottle of household bleach.
Callum McInerney-Riley
That's a pink job.
Richard Negus
I think it's in the downstairs loo. I wouldn't guarantee it though.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, you got the upstairs loo, by that wall, haven't you?
Richard Negus
Yeah, I do. It could be in one of three bathrooms. I don't know.
Richard Prideaux
But you have a map for every item in your house that's useful to you. That comes from standing in a woodland, knowing where those things grow at that time of year. And anyone who works on the land who has to work with certain species, they know that already. Any forester, any woodland manager, gamekeeper, whatever, listening to this knows where the really big patch of wild garlic is on the estate and where the small patch is and where the little bits are that are down by the stream that are there but no one really bothers with, that sort of thing. Your brain does that, but your brain also does that for every object you own and everything in the supermarket. The way they lay supermarkets out is based around the hunter-gatherer brain, because your brain carried on processing information that way, even though we invented farming between 8 to 12,000 years ago, depending where you are. So we have that relationship between the hunter-gatherer brain and who we are. And then you have things like Dunbar's number, which is a number of people you can form meaningful relationships with, which is anywhere from 100 to 150 or so. So that's the number of people you can remember who they are, their relationship to other people, their relationship to you, friend or foe, and your status relative to them.
Richard Negus
So that explains why Keir Starmer never spoke to any of his backbench MPs. It was the fact that he couldn't physically.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This tees me up nicely. If anyone does recognise me at the Game Fair, you'll have to state your name, where I know you from, the interactions I might have had.
Richard Negus
Where the bleach is kept in your house.
Callum McInerney-Riley
And then I might have an idea because my cash, my token allowance has been expired for a long time. My 150 is full. And I am awful at this stuff. You'll have to be like, I'm this person on Instagram and then take a picture and then show me it.
Richard Prideaux
Can you show me the last three memes you posted that I organised?
Richard Negus
Yes, correct. Provided they were nasty memes. Callum, what would yours be and you're not allowed to say anything to do with fish.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I thought long and hard about this because, well, since you sent me it about 3 hours ago. But.
Richard Prideaux
How many topics did you cycle through in those 3 hours?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I am a generalist and having the brain that I do, I could go really deep on absolutely any subject and then just happily move on from it. I find that people who memorise the exact date of some historic event, I find that just, I appreciate that you're interested in it, but That is not information that should be retained. Like a good head injury should wiggle that out, and you should be getting regular head injuries if you're a real country folk or just stupid like I am.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley
With the burns. You don't do the burns.
Richard Negus
It's a long way of trying to explain your burnt head.
Richard Prideaux
Well, yeah, head injuries are sort of the universal Etch A Sketch, aren't they? Just give it a shake and it all goes.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Basically, yeah, that's how that works. But like, there are just so many things that I have studied over, just bought the top 10 books on it and sat there and listened to all of them in the car. It's like, right, okay. You know like The Matrix where he loads the thing in it and then 10 minutes later he's like, I know kung fu. I'll just do that with like finance or the secret to happiness and I'll just do a whole binge of it.
Richard Negus
So, what are you going to have? When, what's his name? Your man Myrie, what's his name? Clive Myrie, who is now the presenter of Mastermind, says, ‘Name?’ ‘Callum McInerney-Riley.’ ‘Occupation?’
Callum McInerney-Riley
So I think the only one that's given me occupation. Good. I'll just pick one of them. Probably photographer would be the one I'm best known for.
Richard Negus
Chosen specialist subject.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Dank memes from 2017 to the present day.
Richard Prideaux
Questionable internet material.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Question.
Richard Negus
Is that what a dank meme is?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Questionable in the present day. Who said what a day? Harvey Price.
Richard Prideaux
He hasn't taught a pug how to do a Nazi salute yet, but he has thought about it.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Complete the catchphrase by, yeah, the phrases, the popular phrases of Harvey Price, particularly with being my specialist subject.
Richard Negus
I'll be perfectly honest is that is a bit like a real-world Mastermind because you see people go on there. I think I'd have a good.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Go, to be honest. I think I'd probably have a good run if it was.
Richard Negus
This is the problem. They would let you do it now. Back when I was watching it as a child, people would go on and they would say, the battles of Sir Thomas Fairfax, 1624 to 1640. And this guy would be listing off all the things you say that you think are completely worthless because he'd be asking about, you know, the great Parliamentary General and these people were going to do it. Now they have things on that.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I saw one with the Simpsons. Yes. And I was just like, I know all of these answers. It's like I've only watched a few episodes.
Richard Prideaux
It's 50% of how you communicate to me.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah.
Richard Prideaux
It's Simpsons references.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Like I'm wearing nothing at all. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Do you know what? One thing I say quite regularly is the Milhouse quote, which is, my feet are wet, but my ankles are bone dry. Everything's coming up, Milhouse. Just the epitome of optimism in a single quote.
Richard Negus
I know this isn't.
Richard Prideaux
You never talk about evolutionary psychology. I want Callum studied by science.
Richard Negus
Now listen, we don't have very much longer left here. So we've worked out that Callum's going to do dank memes. You're going to do this fascinating thing, right, about how basically we have evolved to eat how we eat and find our food. And I'm doing some obscure old author. Here's a question for you, which would be your final question when they go, I've started, so I'll finish. Richard, When we first discovered that we could find these things called red kidney beans and we ate them or you watched your mate eat them and then they died, what thought process went through the people who saw their mate die? Obviously it would kill you, but if we boiled them then they might not kill us. What the hell possessed these individuals to do that? And how did they go? Oh, phew, that's all right. You know, that's the worst chilli con carne ever.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Is this neophiles and neophobes?
Richard Prideaux
It's not food preferences. It's not whether you like Turkey Twizzlers and therefore you can't be deported. There's a niche reference. Do you want the actual answer?
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Because there is an official answer.
Richard Negus
This is mastermind.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah. It's to do with the fact that there are quite a few food types that are made edible and made safe to eat by a process of washing, purging, boiling, whatever.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Richard Prideaux
You know, quite a few different edible roots and tubers are like that. In a process of starvation, if people are eating it and dying, then not to do it again. But you could experiment on prisoners of war.
Richard Negus
Okay.
Richard Prideaux
So, with prisoners from tribal battles, you'd have to feed them something if you wanted to keep them alive. So you may as well try and feed them on experimental foods. There we go. And that would be how you'd gain information. But then the passing down of that information would become one of the most important things if you lived in the area where red kidney beans were or different roots and different things that have horrendous amounts of tannin in them or something that you have to leach out. So you have to pass that on to your children and to keep the tribe alive, in which case the tribal groups that developed language and complex language first survived.
Richard Negus
There you go. You see all that from a kidney bean. So that slightly trumps your dank memes, Callum, and it makes my knowledge of R. S. Surtees look positively rubbish, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux
That's the episode title now, isn't it? Dank memes, kidney beans and R. S. Surtees.
Richard Negus
This is actually the reason, dear listeners, why we are going, however, to Hugo Campbell Hill's stall at the Game Fair, because he is basically our leader, because he knows that he gets a pheasant and then he smashes the hell out of it with a hammer and he turns it into something quite edible. So there we go. You see, so actually...
Callum McInerney-Riley
You might want to say that the pheasant's dead.
Richard Negus
Oh yes, it is dead.
Callum McInerney-Riley
He doesn't just smash the hell out of pheasants with a hammer.
Richard Negus
No, that's for [unclear]. He does that one at the Scottish Game Fair. [Unclear].
Richard Prideaux
[Unclear] Campbell.
Richard Negus
In 45 minutes, yes. And he's got a Campbell in it. You can imagine all the non-Campbells going, I hate them Campbells. So haven't we learned a lot in 45 minutes?
Richard Prideaux
Thank you everyone.
Richard Negus
Bye, driver. Bye.
Richard Prideaux
Bye. Bye.
Richard Negus
Bye.
Richard Negus
What sort of song would you like me to sing, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Do you know any R&B songs?
Richard Negus
No, I'll be honest, I don't.
Richard Prideaux
Rugby and [bleep].
Richard Negus
I thought R&B was like the Rolling Stones, but I discovered it's not.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You're thinking of rock and or roll.
Richard Prideaux
Could you say the Rolling Stones again, please, for the audience?
Richard Negus
Rolling Stones.
Richard Prideaux
Stones.
Richard Negus
Stones.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You say the rain in Spain falls mostly on the plain.
Richard Negus
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Richard Prideaux
I swear the more public speaking you're doing, the more and more you're sounding like Olivia Colman pretending to be the Queen.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The water.
Richard Negus
Never see us in the same room.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The water in Majorca don't taste like white water.
Richard Prideaux
Olivia Colman, to find the accent, had to say, ‘Ears.’ Ears.
Richard Negus
Yes. Oh, I've had friends who speak like that. Do you know, Sam Carlisle's father, Sir Kenneth, is absolutely cut glass. And I remember once asking him about one of his cabinet colleagues when he was in the John Major cabinet. And he went, yes, he was much more, how shall we put it, much more ambitious than me. I was just delighted to be there. And I thought, yeah, that's probably true actually, is that just delighted to be there. Like so many of these, the fashion walk that we saw coming down Downing Street to be given or not their position in the Burnham thing. God, that was so funny. It was, they've obviously been dressed, haven't they, by someone?
Richard Prideaux
Yes. I'm going to sit this cabinet out, I think. I'm going to wait for the next one in about six months' time.
Richard Negus
Yeah. Six months? That long? Blimey.
Richard Prideaux
The rate of churn is getting faster every time, isn't it?
Richard Negus
Yes, I mean, it is for us. Do you think we.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Could we eventually just get governed by, like, a stand-up meeting? Like a ten o'clock stand-up meeting, all in an office: what government stuff are we doing today? Then someone takes over. Maybe it'd be like Fieldsports Journal: you'd just have a guest Prime Minister every month, who could come in and shift some policies around, just have a crack at it.
Richard Negus
Who is your Prime Minister? He's a Prime Minister at large. Yes, it could be anybody. This week, who's Prime Minister? We'll go, ‘Where's Prudhoe?’
Callum McInerney-Riley
Vinnie Jones for a bit.
Richard Negus
No, Prudhoe's Prime Minister just this week.
Callum McInerney-Riley
If you could have, if you could have just a couple of people for like a month to be PM, who is, who'd be your first, who'd be your top three?
Richard Negus
Ian Coghill, because he would just wind up so many people.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Solid choice. Yeah.
Richard Negus
I think Will Self, the comedian and writer, well, he's not only a comedian, the comic writer, because he's just so dour. And then I would definitely go for the real sensible choice, Andrew Neil, the He'd come and get stuff done. Well, exactly. You see, so I'd get those two coming in. So Coghill would just go and annoy the wick off all the right people.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Anarchist, pragmatist, wild cards. That's kind of what you need, right?
Richard Negus
Yeah, exactly. Well, who are you going to have, Richard? Who's your PMs for the trio of months?
Richard Prideaux
I think first in we'd have Ewan, who does the dodgy plant hire down here in town, because he's always got an opinion on everything, but he also knows literally where all the bodies are buried. So I just want to see, if you give somebody complete local power, what they would do with the country—if they could run it like the dodgy plant hire place, where you've got the wood chipper where all the safety devices have been removed from it because they just got in the way and slowed everything down. So if you fall in that wood chipper, you're going in. I want to see how a man like that would run a defence budget. Who else? This is the thing, celebrities, there's not many you'd want now because now we know what every celebrity thinks because they're on social media. We found out they're all very dim-witted, apart from anyone we want as a future guest, in which case they're marvellous. I'd like to have Hugo Campbell Hill in. Oh yeah. Oh yes. Just I want to see what pure creative ADHD could do for a country because they're never allowed in at the proper, they're not allowed in front of cameras and things like that, but Hugo does manage to be in front of a camera. So Hugo for PM. We probably need a woman in there at some point because that'll be our fourth female Prime Minister.
Richard Negus
Yes, all Tories.
Richard Prideaux
So we need a, yes, we need a Conservative. Who should we have? This is quite telling that I'm struggling to think of a woman I should be, I think should be in power. Can you come back to me on this when I dig myself out of this hole? Let's do Callum's.
Richard Negus
Yes, go on, Callum. Who are you going to have?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I think on the woman's subject, the lady that has what's it called? Country Food Alliance.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Country Food Trust.
Callum McInerney-Riley
The Country Food Trust.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Callum McInerney-Riley
She just gets things done and she's just a teensy bit scary that you just know not to mess with her. So I'm going to say her as the lady to run things. Also any London taxi driver, doesn't matter which one because you're offered an opinion on anything around government, and they will tell you what the problem with this country is, whether you want to hear it or not. Like a proper London taxi driver, not like Ahmed from Uber, like the old school ones that you've all been in a taxi.
Richard Prideaux
Do you mean a pre-Boris wave taxi driver?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah, one.
Richard Prideaux
Just say you're horrible, greatest little thing, Callum.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Those guys.
Richard Prideaux
The moment someone says that, there's no easy way out, there's no good answer out of that, is there? It's like saying, when did you stop beating your wife?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Basically, yeah. You'll always get that. Some of them are quite randomly left-wing as well, strangely, which you find, yeah, it's an odd mix, but some of them are quite hard-right. But yeah, any London taxi driver, just find one.
Richard Prideaux
Any London taxi driver, okay. So any someone in the black cab.
Callum McInerney-Riley
And you said about ADHD creatives. And you got me thinking, Marco Pierre White, I just think it would be just great to let him loose on the country.
Richard Prideaux
That's two chefs we've had then, if you include Hugo.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah, I think their creative energy is just the perfect thing. If they can give proper attention to detail to just about anything, and Marco Pierre White basically completed cooking, so he just didn't need to do it any more.
Richard Prideaux
I've thought of a woman that we can have as Prime Minister. I finally remembered what women are and where they exist because of course I only have eyes for Amy now.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
She's the only woman that exists in my life apart from my mother and [unclear] as well. Megan Lock of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. Because we've never actually had a proper conservationist in, not in the last 50 years.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah.
Richard Negus
No, I think the last conservationist we probably had was Harold Macmillan.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, as I said, pre-Heath. Anyone before Heath is probably a better bet. It all went downhill after Ted Heath.
Richard Negus
Although that being said, you have to remember that Margaret Thatcher was the person who first brought in any form of environmental grants, which is something I do like to remind people when I particularly have an audience of clearly sort of green leaning voters, is to go and sort of just mention the fact that the first environmental schemes in what was then MAFF only came about because Margaret Thatcher, being a chemist by training, actually listened to her some of her agriculture ministers who also happened to own shoots and said, do you know, Margaret, I've noticed there's a lot less birdsong about. And she then looked into it and hey presto, the first environmental land management schemes came about because of Maggie Thatcher, which is quite funny. And it's also another thing which is always fun to tell lefties is that actually, Labour closed more pits than the Conservatives did. And they get very cross about that, the fact that they actually shut more mines than the Tories.
Richard Prideaux
Speaking of chemicals and reduction in operations, hot off the presses, as we're recording this on Tuesday night, there's the announcement from British Sugar that they are reducing their operational footprint from 4 factories to three, ceasing beet processing at Cantley at the end of February 2027. Where's Cantley?
Richard Negus
Cantley is over on the Norfolk coast. Nearish, not in the Yarmouthy sort of way. It's not good. In fact, it's a terrible thing. And I know a few blokes who are in my wildfowling club who will be made redundant as a result—they're engineers at the plant. It will put more pressure on the whole process of sugar beet harvesting because a lot of the time British Sugar will tell you, I mean if you speak to a lot of the guys who are actually producing sugar beet, they will tell you that British Sugar are not actually that great to work with because British Sugar will tell you we want it now. And you say, it's been raining for the last four weeks. And if I go on this field, I'm going to completely ruin it for the next year. And they go, sorry, what didn't you understand that we want it now? And if you reduce the number of plants, then that makes it even more Lastminute.com. So I mean, sugar beet used to be a really big earner in the East. It was something that paid more than anything else. Now it doesn't. The sugar taxes have obviously impacted everything. There's more subsidy for actually imported sugar cane sugar rather than our own.
Richard Prideaux
And I think the plant at Bury, near you, can do both—Cantley as well, I think. It can do beet or cane.
Richard Negus
Correct.
Richard Prideaux
So yeah, you're kind of screwed.
Richard Negus
I mean, it's, yeah, people will lose their jobs, but it will just make farming that bit more difficult. And what it'll probably do is go and inspire more people to come out of sugar beet. Now I know that there's a lot of down sides to soil health, which may be a good thing, but I often think that one of the great things about sugar beet is it provides one of those winter cover crops that actually pays the bills. And there are a lot of little grey partridges about that owe their lives to having some sugar beet cover over their heads. And so I think it would be a loss to it. And I suppose it's yet another bit of a nail in farming's coffin.
Callum McInerney-Riley
What would they replace sugar beet with if they weren't doing that?
Richard Negus
I suppose they have to do another root crop, Callum, I suppose, if you're putting it into a rotation. So, I mean, so perhaps you put in something like stubble turnips and then grazed sheep over it. It's a lot of sheep, and it's not that profitable. Not really.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, sheep farming hasn't been profitable since about 1770.
Richard Negus
Although this is really bizarre. The price of a cull ewe when I came up to Wales—where did I get this? When I was in Montgomery. It's so very Welsh. I sat down to have breakfast in this lovely little cafe, which was also the shop and the post office. And she was trying to do three different things at the same time. And she said, oh, you'll want to read this. And she passed me the local sort of Montgomery and wherever it is, courier or something. And about four or five pages were dedicated to the livestock prices and the market returns from Montgomery, whichever the local livestock market was. And I looked down through what prices the averages were returning, and £140 was the average price for a cull ewe, which is exactly the same price as a tonne of wheat at the moment. And you think, my God, the idea that a tonne of wheat is now only the same as a cull ewe, I mean, a cull ewe, Callum, if you didn't know, is one which is basically no longer going to have lambs any more. She is destined for the kebab shop. And yeah, £140.
Richard Prideaux
Speaking of wheat, you got yourself in trouble last week.
Richard Negus
Did I? Oh yes, I did. Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Which is a strange thing. We don't often get complaints into the show, but we had a complaint last week from a lady on Instagram saying that she wished we'd spoken to her about her content before we went into our uninformed rant about wheat prices and the amount of damage that pigeons cause. The problem is we weren't referring to that lady and I have no idea who that is. But I think she sort of saw herself within the role you're describing of shooting eight hundred pigeons or whatever it was.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I wonder how many people might think that could possibly be about them.
Richard Prideaux
That's the thing.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Should we just start throwing generic accusations out? I saw a man at the Game Fair with red trousers on and I thought his attitude was terrible.
Richard Prideaux
Well, it raised a question. I was talking about this with international man of mystery and occasional odd hat choices, George Brownee. And we're trying to work out, you know, what weight of 12-bore cartridges would you need to shoot eight hundred pigeons, assuming a one-to-one ratio.
Richard Negus
Crikey.
Richard Prideaux
Well, I mean, that's a pickup bed.
Richard Negus
That's a lot. I can remember dear old Archie Coats saying—or writing—that when he shot his world-record-breaking number of four hundred and something, he basically broke his old Webley and he said he had to send someone back for more cartridges, because he'd only bought six hundred out with him and he had to send back for more. And he said, and he had these lovely old-fashioned heavyweight springers. And he said, and my dog, well, it had shell shock. So I mean, it's a serious amount of cartridges. I mean, that was an amusing thing. Firstly, someone saying that I wish you had checked out with us first because of what we've done. I think it was because you see she was saying this particular person who I have to say it's very weird the fact that we should have checked with this individual saying is neither Richard nor I nor you have a clue who this individual is and she only came to our attention by complaining. Yes, but more to the point I think she was saying because I don't think she understands perhaps the nuance of it is that she said that pigeons will cause damage to standing crops, she said, because they tread it down and they will then, which is very true.
Richard Prideaux
They knock their heads off, don't they?
Richard Negus
They knock their heads off and they will flatten it. Now this is very true, particularly in years when it rains. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere in the British Isles has it rained. It's also fairly unlikely to be perfectly honest in most modern wheat varieties because the straw length is incredibly short. So therefore it's one of the things that good plant breeders have bred out of straw, which is why we don't have thatching straw anymore. But thirdly, the weird idea that she didn't seem to get the hang of is that the comment was about that wheat prices are so low. So therefore rather than ranting about because the fact we say it was a bit gauche to go and talk about how many pigeons you had shot and it doesn't really matter we do. The whole point of Countryslide is the fact we're supposed to represent real rural life. So therefore to indicate that wheat is an undervalued product, which is why our farming system is completely going down the toilet. And to be perfectly honest, whoever this woman is, I don't really care because you don't understand about farming. So therefore I suggest what you would be better off doing is just don't complain. Don't complain all the time. If you want to complain at anybody, tell the global wheat markets to pay a fair price to our farmers.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah. And if you actually do want to unblock me and reply to the message, your future guest opportunity there.
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
We'll come and talk about come and talk about pest control. Anyway. We've got the Game Fair coming up. So we're recording this on Tuesday. Patrons get this on Thursday and this is.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This might be in their ears as they drive up.
Richard Prideaux
Yes. And then for the rest of the world, it's coming out at 4 pm on Friday. So you've already missed the first day of the Game Fair. But you have a chance now to go to the links in the show notes. There's a link there that says bingo cards. So this is something we've been talking about for a few weeks. It started as a joke a couple of years ago. Oh yes, that's on the Game Fair bingo card. Well, I actually realized no one had done them. So you now have your Game Fair bingo cards and you go there and it's just a little thing we've drawn up. You click on that, you pay a quid per card and you get a download and then you go around the Game Fair. They're knocking things off. So it's everything from red trousers, mustard cords, a dog in a pram, I think is in there on one of them, pith helmets, chums called [bleep]. A man in a pair of Dubarrys standing in a pond in a paddling pool. Too much flesh on display.
Richard Negus
What else is on? Oh, I'll tell you what the other one was: that thing about the flipping whirligig, the pigeon magnets going around constantly.
Richard Prideaux
It's still going, yeah.
Richard Negus
Hugo Campbell Hill.
Richard Prideaux
There's some of your celebrities. Yes. Celebrity hedge layer, Richard Negus. So you can go along there and there's four different types. You can choose one, two, three or four. You can buy the bumper set, which is a whole £4. But anyway, everything after the card processor fee, which we can't control, the rest of the money goes to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. They haven't actually said they're willing to take our donation or be associated with this, but they're getting the money either way.
Richard Negus
Do you know what? I reckon they'll be prepared to take the donation. Have you seen some of the people who donate to them? They're absolutely rotters. Do you know I actually donate?
Richard Prideaux
That's a that's an invite rescinded here.
Richard Negus
I've donate £12 per month to them.
Callum McInerney-Riley
We did take a large donation in crypto.
Richard Prideaux
Offload your Dogwifhat, or whatever this cryptocurrency is. So other Game Fair news, because we said that we would meet outside, there'd be a sort of a fans-of-the-show meet-up, which could be anywhere from two people with a dog on a bit of string all the way up to 2000 people, who knows, on Saturday morning outside Hugo Campbell Hill, AKA the Game Glutton, on his stand, and I have his stand number fresh off the presses, stand T1526. So he's right in the middle of the food vendors bits. There's a sort of a double row of food vendors. They're all facing each other. It's like a big jousting arena right at the top end of the hill. And he's in the middle of that. So go and find him there. The Game Glutton. And I think we're meeting there at what time on Saturday.
Richard Negus
At 10 am.
Richard Prideaux
10 am on Saturday. So we're meeting just outside there. So if you're not going on Saturday, so you're going on Friday or Sunday, and this is if you're a public listener, you've already missed the Friday one. I suggest that if you want to go and meet some Countryslide fans, just wander there for 12 pm on any of the days, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. We can't guarantee that we'll be there because we've got interviews and things to do, but if you're at a loss and 12 pm is a good time to be visiting the food area, Just say the code word. If nothing else, you'll see Hugo. Yes, and there is a code word.
Richard Negus
Look for the increasingly large number of T-shirts that are being sold.
Richard Prideaux
Yes, we sold some T-shirts. So we have T-shirts for sale. I'm not going to repeat the story once again of how I was too busy and I was bullied into doing this.
Richard Negus
Bullied, bullied. Oh, that's a harsh word. It's just because Callum and I are incompetent, that's all. Don't blame bullying.
Richard Prideaux
You had utter faith in a mate who could definitely do it, and you rang him and said, I'm at a beach in Bali.
Richard Negus
He was on a beach in Bali. Look, he's in the household was in the Household Cavalry. What do you expect?
Richard Prideaux
So there are some T-shirts which are available. We're going to come up with a better solution for later in the year. But that'll do for now. So there are T-shirts available in that. But that's it, game-fairing. And then if you see us say hello, one of us may or may not be wearing a pith helmet, possibly in a short pair of shorts.
Richard Negus
Okay, let's just narrow each ditch one down. Callum, do you own a pith helmet?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I don't think so.
Richard Negus
I just want to put it out there. I do not own a pith helmet. So if you see someone with a pith helmet and a kilt, the chances are it won't be Callum or I. It will definitely be Richard. So you can guarantee if you go up to them to avoid Richard, it's a, yeah, exactly. So hobbling in a kilt.
Richard Prideaux
Hobbling. And I'm going to go to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's Taylors, whatever they are of.
Richard Negus
No, Taylors of Harrogate is the tea company.
Richard Prideaux
Oh, that's tea company, yes. They're doing port, not tea. And we go to their drinks party in a pith helmet and see if they can get thrown out.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Just to let you know that Taylors is the second-best port brand in the country. But you know...
Richard Prideaux
That's a photography gig you don't want, isn't it? Anyway, so we have a topic for us chosen actually by producer Amy.
Richard Negus
Good topic it is too.
Richard Prideaux
It's quite a good topic, yes. I think this is why we let them vote in the end, because it turns out they do have quite good ideas.
Richard Negus
Yeah, I think it's that. And also, Any woman who wants to suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. Sorry, chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. That's a Blackadder quote, Callum. It's before your.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I was just going to say, I have no idea what you're saying.
Richard Negus
Any woman who wants to chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote every time. It's [unclear]. Exactly. It's Blackadder.
Richard Prideaux
I think we should sit Callum down and make him watch everything that we give references to. It'll take a long time. Everything from the Lord of the Rings, the Blackadder, to the Railway Children. Daddy, my daddy.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Are you okay, hun?
Richard Negus
Come on. You must have seen Railway Children. Anyway, back to Ransome: Swallows and Amazons, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, [unclear]. Do you know? Do you not know Swallows and Amazons? Arthur Ransom.
Richard Prideaux
Do you know who [bleep] is? No.
Richard Negus
That's what people do for middle-aged men.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This is what happens when I wake up and it's really hot and the missus has got the fan. I just see little ticks like that. It's like.
Richard Negus
Just hear [unclear] in your ears. The schizophrenia hasn't stopped. This is what our patrons pay for, I'll have your fever dreams, people pay for. So what did Amy suggest that we do, Richard?
Richard Prideaux
So the topic is, you know, given that we all do several different things and not all of them well at the same time, it's about special interests, though not those type. The topics that you would choose as your specialist subject on Mastermind, Amazing Factoids, what's our special thing? If you had to say that's our thing that we know about and that we do well, I can't stand there and talk about or answer questions about, because it may not be what you expect. I mean, it's not your profession, certainly. You're a bit of a head start with this one, Richard, because you've written about, you've got a whole book about hedges.
Richard Negus
I'm not going to choose hedges. I think it would be unfair because that is the day job. So I would say my other thing, if I actually had to go on Mastermind and had a chosen specialist subject, because I think I'd do all right on the general knowledge because I am a mine of useless general knowledge information. But if you ask me what seven nines are, I'm having to go and take my fingers and check my fingers and toes. I think I would go probably for the works of R. S. Surtees. He wrote books like Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities and Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour. So he was basically the author who was like the rural version of Dickens. In actual fact, Thackeray said that he wrote a book called Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, and Thackeray said, I wish I'd written that. You know, so he was highly credited. He edited The Sporting Magazine. He was a squire from up in the North East, Jedborough sort of way, and just in the sort of English borders up in Northumberland. He was ridiculously curmudgeonly. He had no time for new money to people. He had no time for snobby people. He had no time for anyone who was gutless. He was an out and out. I mean, basically, we've already mentioned him. I'm going to mention it twice. Imagine Coghill, right? But with some money and he was a trained barrister who went the law's [bleep] and then he happened to inherit his sort of family estate, which is a relatively small thing. And he just went hunting and he wrote these hilarious books, most of the time for his own, because he edited his own magazine. So he wrote all these things and they were serialized. And he had this major character called John Jorrocks, who they think was more or less where John Bull came from, is that they more or less modelled it on his character John Jorrocks of this bluff Englishman who was a self-made man who was nobody's fool, but drank six bottles of port a night. And I think I would do it on him. And I love his works. And although it's very long and Victorian and rambly, which I suppose perhaps I'm typecasting myself. Yeah, I know a guy like that. Victorian, long and rambly. I don't know why I like him. But I think that it would be the works of R. S. Surtees. I've read everything he's ever written and even his slightly indecipherable ones and I've got them all sat on my bookshelves just there next to me and I've even read Hawbuck Grange, which is literally unreadable, but I read it anyway. And yes, that would be it. R. S. Surtees.
Callum McInerney-Riley
It's sort of 1800s sort of early, right?
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, back before the Victorian age kicked in, really. So the best bit of the 18th century was in the beginning of the 19th century.
Richard Negus
Yes, more or less.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Weirdly, I remember you mentioning him before some 10 odd. Wasn't he a grocer?
Richard Negus
Yeah, that's right. Jorrocks was a grocer from Great Coram, Great Coram Street in London, and he actually used to go hunting. And he meets up, which shows you how life has changed. He met up with his favourite hunt. Well, he went to Croydon, of all places. Croydon, from Central London, the Surrey, the Surrey hunt. Well, it was a village still.
Callum McInerney-Riley
You could probably do that now, to be honest. There's enough foxes in Croydon.
Richard Negus
Funny thing is, I've actually, I went on a pilgrimage because I'm so sad to have a day with the Surrey.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I thought you were going to say to Croydon.
Richard Negus
Jesus Christ. No, I can tell you a story about Croydon actually. My wife, bless her, we went to meet my mother-in-law off the train or drop her off to the train at Croydon because she'd come to do it. My sister lives in Reigate in Surrey. And we dropped off my mother-in-law on the train to get winged away back to York. and we dropped off in Croydon and Claire made a bit of an error. There was sort of basically five Yardies in a car and they pulled out without indicating and Claire beeped them. And I went, oh my God, this, you know.
Richard Prideaux
It just killed us.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I didn't know where the story was going.
Richard Negus
I'm going to have to die now, Claire, because I'm not going to stand up for them going and ripping our car apart. So I'm going to have to go down fighting. And I went to open the door and they must have been busy because they sort of put a hand out the window waving something and I don't think it was a pen. And then they drove off very fast. And I have to say, I've never felt that close to death. Well, the last time I felt that close to death was when the IRA mortared me. So yes, not fun. So yes, Jorrocks used to go hunting in Croydon of all places and then he buys his own estate and becomes a master of hounds and all sorts of things.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Because of Croydon, there's still quite a lot of shooting on the estate there.
Richard Negus
So yeah, isn't that... Can I say there's lots of drive-by shooting? I don't know how much the driver is.
Richard Prideaux
My drive is nine millimetres, I think.
Richard Negus
Yeah, exactly. So what would your chosen specialist subject be, Richard?
Richard Prideaux
I've got so many.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I know. This is like, what kind of autism do you have?
Richard Prideaux
Basically, he's asking me what flavour I have. It's.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Please tell me it's World War Two history.
Richard Prideaux
No.
Callum McInerney-Riley
OK, can you list? Can you just list off a few that you've had an intense obsession with that bordered on unhealthy.
Richard Prideaux
Civil defence and nuclear-fallout defence.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This is [unclear].
Richard Prideaux
Carry on. Yeah, brilliant. World War II history, the Battle of Britain in particular.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley
No, specialist, specialist.
Richard Prideaux
Welsh mountain names. I mean, I don't want to list all the stuff for work because work's boring. It has to be weird, random stuff, isn't it? Okay, so my topic I'm going to actually have is the relationship between the human brain and being outdoors. That's my thing, because that's pretty much been my career, whether as an outdoor instructor or whether as an instructor of the weird and wonderful things that I used to teach and don't do so much of any more. The foraging and the wild food aspects of that and things like that. Because I used to get asked to do, and I still do every now and again, to go and do talks on stage. Can you come and do a talk about foraging? Yes, but in your mind, you're expecting me to hold up plants and tell you their names, aren't you? That's a crap talk. Instead, what I'm going to do is talk about the relationship between the hunter-gatherer brain and where we are now. And once you start digging into that, you see how much about who we are now as a species and how we interact with each other and how we've built things, which is basically anthropology and evolutionary psychology. It's fascinating stuff. And when you start looking around at other people, it explains so much. So things like your hunter-gatherer brain is, I mean, you are the result of lots of people having sex with each other and successfully breeding who are all good at spotting resources in the distance, in the edges of grassland and on rocky beaches and in woodlands and things like that. You have good sort of visual acquisition of things. You can spot things and say that's a resource. You also have good resource mapping, which is you know where the things are in your house that are useful to you. So I think we've done this on the podcast before, but Mr. Negus, if you could just point to the nearest copy of Surtees from you.
Richard Negus
Just there. It's about just over an arm's length away.
Richard Prideaux
Okay. And the nearest bottle of household bleach.
Callum McInerney-Riley
That's a pink job.
Richard Negus
I think it's in the downstairs loo. I wouldn't guarantee it though.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah, you got the upstairs loo, by that wall, haven't you?
Richard Negus
Yeah, I do. It could be in one of three bathrooms. I don't know.
Richard Prideaux
But you have a map for every item in your house that's useful to you. That comes from standing in a woodland, knowing where those things grow at that time of year. And anyone who works on the land who has to work with certain species, they know that already. Any forester, any woodland manager, gamekeeper, whatever, listening to this knows where the really big patch of wild garlic is on the estate and where the small patch is and where the little bits are that are down by the stream that are there but no one really bothers with, that sort of thing. Your brain does that, but your brain also does that for every object you own and everything in the supermarket. The way they lay supermarkets out is based around the hunter-gatherer brain, because your brain carried on processing information that way, even though we invented farming between 8 to 12,000 years ago, depending where you are. So we have that relationship between the hunter-gatherer brain and who we are. And then you have things like Dunbar's number, which is a number of people you can form meaningful relationships with, which is anywhere from 100 to 150 or so. So that's the number of people you can remember who they are, their relationship to other people, their relationship to you, friend or foe, and your status relative to them.
Richard Negus
So that explains why Keir Starmer never spoke to any of his backbench MPs. It was the fact that he couldn't physically.
Callum McInerney-Riley
This tees me up nicely. If anyone does recognise me at the Game Fair, you'll have to state your name, where I know you from, the interactions I might have had.
Richard Negus
Where the bleach is kept in your house.
Callum McInerney-Riley
And then I might have an idea because my cash, my token allowance has been expired for a long time. My 150 is full. And I am awful at this stuff. You'll have to be like, I'm this person on Instagram and then take a picture and then show me it.
Richard Prideaux
Can you show me the last three memes you posted that I organised?
Richard Negus
Yes, correct. Provided they were nasty memes. Callum, what would yours be and you're not allowed to say anything to do with fish.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I thought long and hard about this because, well, since you sent me it about 3 hours ago. But.
Richard Prideaux
How many topics did you cycle through in those 3 hours?
Callum McInerney-Riley
I am a generalist and having the brain that I do, I could go really deep on absolutely any subject and then just happily move on from it. I find that people who memorise the exact date of some historic event, I find that just, I appreciate that you're interested in it, but That is not information that should be retained. Like a good head injury should wiggle that out, and you should be getting regular head injuries if you're a real country folk or just stupid like I am.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley
With the burns. You don't do the burns.
Richard Negus
It's a long way of trying to explain your burnt head.
Richard Prideaux
Well, yeah, head injuries are sort of the universal Etch A Sketch, aren't they? Just give it a shake and it all goes.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Basically, yeah, that's how that works. But like, there are just so many things that I have studied over, just bought the top 10 books on it and sat there and listened to all of them in the car. It's like, right, okay. You know like The Matrix where he loads the thing in it and then 10 minutes later he's like, I know kung fu. I'll just do that with like finance or the secret to happiness and I'll just do a whole binge of it.
Richard Negus
So, what are you going to have? When, what's his name? Your man Myrie, what's his name? Clive Myrie, who is now the presenter of Mastermind, says, ‘Name?’ ‘Callum McInerney-Riley.’ ‘Occupation?’
Callum McInerney-Riley
So I think the only one that's given me occupation. Good. I'll just pick one of them. Probably photographer would be the one I'm best known for.
Richard Negus
Chosen specialist subject.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Dank memes from 2017 to the present day.
Richard Prideaux
Questionable internet material.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Question.
Richard Negus
Is that what a dank meme is?
Callum McInerney-Riley
Questionable in the present day. Who said what a day? Harvey Price.
Richard Prideaux
He hasn't taught a pug how to do a Nazi salute yet, but he has thought about it.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Complete the catchphrase by, yeah, the phrases, the popular phrases of Harvey Price, particularly with being my specialist subject.
Richard Negus
I'll be perfectly honest is that is a bit like a real-world Mastermind because you see people go on there. I think I'd have a good.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Go, to be honest. I think I'd probably have a good run if it was.
Richard Negus
This is the problem. They would let you do it now. Back when I was watching it as a child, people would go on and they would say, the battles of Sir Thomas Fairfax, 1624 to 1640. And this guy would be listing off all the things you say that you think are completely worthless because he'd be asking about, you know, the great Parliamentary General and these people were going to do it. Now they have things on that.
Callum McInerney-Riley
I saw one with the Simpsons. Yes. And I was just like, I know all of these answers. It's like I've only watched a few episodes.
Richard Prideaux
It's 50% of how you communicate to me.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Yeah.
Richard Prideaux
It's Simpsons references.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Like I'm wearing nothing at all. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Do you know what? One thing I say quite regularly is the Milhouse quote, which is, my feet are wet, but my ankles are bone dry. Everything's coming up, Milhouse. Just the epitome of optimism in a single quote.
Richard Negus
I know this isn't.
Richard Prideaux
You never talk about evolutionary psychology. I want Callum studied by science.
Richard Negus
Now listen, we don't have very much longer left here. So we've worked out that Callum's going to do dank memes. You're going to do this fascinating thing, right, about how basically we have evolved to eat how we eat and find our food. And I'm doing some obscure old author. Here's a question for you, which would be your final question when they go, I've started, so I'll finish. Richard, When we first discovered that we could find these things called red kidney beans and we ate them or you watched your mate eat them and then they died, what thought process went through the people who saw their mate die? Obviously it would kill you, but if we boiled them then they might not kill us. What the hell possessed these individuals to do that? And how did they go? Oh, phew, that's all right. You know, that's the worst chilli con carne ever.
Callum McInerney-Riley
Is this neophiles and neophobes?
Richard Prideaux
It's not food preferences. It's not whether you like Turkey Twizzlers and therefore you can't be deported. There's a niche reference. Do you want the actual answer?
Richard Negus
Yes.
Richard Prideaux
Because there is an official answer.
Richard Negus
This is mastermind.
Richard Prideaux
Yeah. It's to do with the fact that there are quite a few food types that are made edible and made safe to eat by a process of washing, purging, boiling, whatever.
Richard Negus
Yeah.
Richard Prideaux
You know, quite a few different edible roots and tubers are like that. In a process of starvation, if people are eating it and dying, then not to do it again. But you could experiment on prisoners of war.
Richard Negus
Okay.
Richard Prideaux
So, with prisoners from tribal battles, you'd have to feed them something if you wanted to keep them alive. So you may as well try and feed them on experimental foods. There we go. And that would be how you'd gain information. But then the passing down of that information would become one of the most important things if you lived in the area where red kidney beans were or different roots and different things that have horrendous amounts of tannin in them or something that you have to leach out. So you have to pass that on to your children and to keep the tribe alive, in which case the tribal groups that developed language and complex language first survived.
Richard Negus
There you go. You see all that from a kidney bean. So that slightly trumps your dank memes, Callum, and it makes my knowledge of R. S. Surtees look positively rubbish, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux
That's the episode title now, isn't it? Dank memes, kidney beans and R. S. Surtees.
Richard Negus
This is actually the reason, dear listeners, why we are going, however, to Hugo Campbell Hill's stall at the Game Fair, because he is basically our leader, because he knows that he gets a pheasant and then he smashes the hell out of it with a hammer and he turns it into something quite edible. So there we go. You see, so actually...
Callum McInerney-Riley
You might want to say that the pheasant's dead.
Richard Negus
Oh yes, it is dead.
Callum McInerney-Riley
He doesn't just smash the hell out of pheasants with a hammer.
Richard Negus
No, that's for [unclear]. He does that one at the Scottish Game Fair. [Unclear].
Richard Prideaux
[Unclear] Campbell.
Richard Negus
In 45 minutes, yes. And he's got a Campbell in it. You can imagine all the non-Campbells going, I hate them Campbells. So haven't we learned a lot in 45 minutes?
Richard Prideaux
Thank you everyone.
Richard Negus
Bye, driver. Bye.
Richard Prideaux
Bye. Bye.
Richard Negus
Bye.