Today's show is sponsored by Roger Daltrey's Discount Poultry:
It's not fit for human consumption.
[Laughter] [Chicken sounds]
This is The Technical Difficulties. We're playing Citation Needed.
I have an almost randomly selected article
from everybody's favourite, reliable source of knowledge, Wikipedia,
and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right gets a point and a ding, [DING]
and there's a prize for particularly good answers, which is:
— Oh yeah! — Oh yeah!
I've got a button.
Yeah, thing is, when you whacked that, behind you, three chickens just shot in the air,
[Chicken noise] firing feathers off.
[Chicken noises]
Well, if it's discount poultry, there's only so many things you can do with it.
Irate pissed off prog rock member.
[Laughter] [Groans]
"Stay away from my chicken farm!"
"Who are you? Who ARE you?"
YES!! We've started!
(Oh dear.)
He does actually have a salmon farm though, doesn't he?
— Yeah, he does. — That's what he retired to do.
Wait, really?
Yeah, he retired to farm salmon.
Was it salmon or trout, er... Was it a fish?
Oh yeah, fish. Might be trout.
Sorry, are we arguing about the kind of fish
that the member of The Who is currently engaged in farming?
Yeah. Somewhere down the line, Roger Daltrey is just a fish farmer, now.
Do you, what do you think? Like, when you have fish,
you give them play things, like a castle or something.
Do you think they've got a Rolls-Royce in there?
That's a Keith Moon gag, everyone!
Yeah, it's okay, I was gonna help there...
Oh, it'd be brilliant if he was a proper sort of rock star style fish farmer,
Instead of, you know, some square lake in a field,
proper glass-sided house or some mansion house.
Gary: Oh yeah!
Just sealed at the windows.
People walking past with trout banging up against the glass.
And the fish have got a gigantic people tank.
That sounds amazing!
I change the air all the time... feed them bacon bits...
I've given them a castle to live in and walk out of,
and a giant skull that spits water at 'em.
I wanna be in a people tank...
— You are, Matt. — Join the army.
You are, Matt. You already are.
Oh, yeah, it's a house.
I've never thought of that.
Yeah, houses are people tanks, you're right.
All we need is some fish outside looking in.
We can sort that out.
I was gonna say, I can do some compositing work on this camera shot if it helps.
Excellent, excellent.
That has to happen.
No, I just want fish to walk past: Bow tie, bowler hat, kid in a pram...
You want a fish to walk past...?
There's no water out there, is there, dickhead?!
Someone will have to lob it, and it'll just slide...
Doonk!
Somebody offshot just hoying fish past the glass...
What did we do to piss off Grimsby?
Well...
Where do you start, yeah?
Do you want to get to the game at some point?
— Yeah. — That's a kookaburra.
— Yeah. — Yeah, f***. Yeah.
Instead of talking about Roger Daltrey's fish farm.
Just get Roger Daltrey up on the 'Pedia.'
Our topic today is The Big Lobster.
... which I swear I picked before we went off on the Roger Daltrey fish farm thing.
The Big Lobster.
Actually sounds like a New Orleans gangland boss's name, doesn't it?
Whereas I was going for a restaurant.
Maybe the two are the same?
New Orleans gangland-themed restaurant.
No, not themed, it's a front.
It's a front obviously, for the gigantic man-sized lobster that lives within!
Aha, now...
You're looking a bit bigger than man-size here.
Bigger than...? A lobster bigger than a man?
Yep.
A lobster the size of a bear!
We'd have known about this. It would have walked over Tokyo by now.
It did, they just cleaned up after it.
I just got the thought of the actual film version of the bloke dressed as the Giant Lobster.
[Roaring]
Everybody is giving it that!
All these lobsters comin' in here, givin' it that.
[Laughter] [Groans]
[Laughter] Hey!
Ladies and gentlemen: may I congratulate us
on the first visual gag of the Technical Difficulties?
First ever visual gag! Chin chin!
Okay, so it may not be an actual, "alive" lobster.
Oh, f***ing really? You reckon?
Is this one of these American things
where some state's got an enormous glass fibre one
to celebrate that fact there was once one there?
Oooh, you're right. It's not Aus... it's not America, I mean.
— Is it in fact Australia? — Australia?
I might just have given away that with the... Competent hosting, here.
Is it in the Tyrol of Austria?
[Laughter] Austria!
Just on the side of a mountain.
"Why have you got this lobster?"
"We stole it from Australia."
That's the worst accent ever; that's not from anywhere!
"He teaches them the folly of their ways, Hansel."
"From it, from its claws..."
"I say this lobster is a lesson! A lesson to the whole world!"
"From its claws will come fondue!"
Do you want any more Austrian stereotypes?
Do you want like a cuckoo clock?
— Yes. — Cricket ball.
— ...out of its mouth...or? — Yes!
— That'd be great! — Okay.
I just like the idea of a lobster doing a sort of "Alien" deal, just like a cuckoo clock.
Can you imagine Alien with a cuckoo clock?
Dramatic music, slime dripping down...
ALL: Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
...just the tension before that scene,
as it's coming closer and closer and closer.
[Growling]
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
"Three o'clock, everybody."
...and then he just hands over this note saying:
"Mr. Jones, you are late for your 2:30 appointment."
"Thank you, Miss Smith!"
Sorry, have we got an alien, cuckoo-clock-bearing Siri?
Is that what we're talking about?
Steampunk Siri.
No, sorry. Steampunk Siri is a butler.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't send that telegram just now.
"I'll try again later."
Completely forgets about it.
"Siri, would you fetch me some tea?"
"I don't understand what you mean.
"Would you like me to call Tim?"
"No, no. Fetch me some tea!"
To activate him you just press his crotch.
"Ooh! Yes, sir. Very good, sir."
"Can I help you, sir?"
Keeps going off in your pocket a lot.
[Laughter and groans]
Actually, now I've got the thought of a butler walking up:
[Siri noise] Dee-deet!
"Doo-doot!" And walk off.
You can get different voices for it. You just swap out the butler.
No, it's got a generic man and a generic woman that you can just put...
If you go outside the city, he just stops working.
Tell me about it, yeah. [Laughter]
— Er, the Big Lobster. — The Giant — the Big Lobster, everybody.
Does anyone want to take a guess at what it's nicknamed?
Big Red.
It's got a name.
Rudy!
— Lobby. — Lobby McLob-lob.
Lobby is a lot closer than Rudy.
We're looking for a name that starts with L.
— Are we talking about... — Larry.
Larry the Lobster! Spot on. Point! [DING]
Ahh, well done, sir. I was going to say,
if it's Australian, I'm going to go for LOBBO! Or something like that.
[Australian accent] "No..."
[Australian accent] "Castlemaine XXXX brings you..."
ALL: LOBBO! [Laughter]
"The fast bowling giant lobster!"
"Queensland, you're for it!"
It's actually in South Australia, so that's pretty accurate, really.
It's just the thought of him getting hotter and hotter,
going from blue to red.
I thought you said *you'd* been getting hotter and hotter then.
I thought we were going to get a police box striptease.
[Hums blues riff] I'm bigger inside than outside!
ALL: Heyyy!
Okay, so we're looking at an eighteen-metre-high...
— High?! — ...four-tonne lobster here.
Is it standing on its tail?
So Brannan was surprisingly close with his first guess.
Yeah! Yeah, I mean, that's one hell of a lobster roll.
And I'm actually giving you a point for standing on its head... [DING]
It was meant to rear up over the structure.
Horse style? It's a horsey lobster?
What stopped it doing that? Yeah.
What stopped it from being built...?
The... Terrifying the townsfolk.
Or is it near an airport or something stupid like that,
so with the airport it's going to get clipped on its big claws or something like that?
— Planning permission.
Yes. The local council stopped it. [Laughter]
Point! [DING] Matt, you are getting all the points.
Is some local authority bloke sat there:
"Garage... garage... extension... giant lobster."
[Australian accent] "Now, we like what you've done with the giant lobster...
"We're not saying that's a bad idea.
"What we don't like is having it rearing up over the whole township.
"I think you're going to see a lot of terrified folk there,
"We've all seen Godzilla."
"We're all worried about, what if it goes wrong?"
"We're known as a sunshiny country.
"What if somebody visits, they're stood in the shadow of the lobster...
"That's it, the tourism industry, it's over.
"We're going to have to lie your lobster down, mate."
"That said, I'd just like to raise with the council
the possibility of the shadow keeping tinnies cool."
[Laughter] [Groans]
[Laughter] It's this lobster outline of XXXX.
Oh dear...
There is a local legend about why it's quite so big.
Does anyone want to take a shot at what that might be?
Because some of... Is it a Spinal Tap thing?
— It absolutely is. [DING] — Hahey!
Not *quite* that much.
They apparently had the measurements in feet, and then read them in metres.
— Ohhh! — Okay, not a factor of ten then.
— No. — Brilliant. Someone just brings it in on a big lorry:
"Oh, s***, mate, how big did you want it?"
Did no one — ah, bollocks... Did no one ring up and go,
"Someone wants a hundred-metre lobster? Seems legit."
"There'll be no baths for the rest of northwest Australia
"...till we've got the fibreglass on this s***!"
Point! It's fibreglass and steel. [DING]
"What are we going to use it for?" "Strewth, I dunno."
"Keeping tinnies cool underneath its rearing body?"
[Laughter] [Groans]
Okay, quick fire round:
Australia has an enormous amount of big things.
Dickheads —
Oho! And ba-doomf, onto the cutting room floor it goes!
No, that's staying in. That is definitely staying.
Sorry, Australia. Sorry, sorry.
Oh, like we hadn't alienated that audience enough with the bad accent.
The many accents, I mean you've...
And the stereotypes...
Careful, I'm about to start slighting cricket as well, everyone.
I was just about to say... The hell with it. You can't play cricket.
On behalf of the Technical Difficulties team,
I would like to apologize to all Australians.
It is not our fault that you are convicts.
All right. Does anyone want to take...
Hey, on that — we've made a point, though.
Obviously, where I work — I work in the heritage industry...
We have records relating to transportees.
My favourite reason for someone
being transported to Australia goes as thus:
It's in Ecclesfield, so just outside old Sheffield Region...
Oh, good Lord.
South Yorkshire, as represented by my good colleague.
Hello.
The guy was done for the theft of a duck. All right?
[Laughter] [Groans]
[Laughter] That's a good start.
It's a "three strikes and you're out" system.
A duck: inherently funny animal.
Yeah. But if you think about the lack of criminal detection at the time,
the duck would have to have been in a bag, quacking.
And the guy caught doing it.
[Quacking] [Laughter]
"Put it back!"
Next charge is also for theft of a duck.
And the third one is theft of a duck.
In the end it turns out, it's the same man's duck three times.
In the end I think he was transported just for being a hopeless case, quite frankly.
Which, the thought of him being on a ship...
"What did you do?" [Mumbles]
"What did you do?" "I killed a man."
"What did you do?" "I stole a sheep."
[Laughter] "I stole the same duck three times..."
[Mumbles] "...stole the same duck three times..."
For a point each,
do you want to take a guess at some of the big things around Australia?
Platypus. Wombat. Kangaroo.
Hang on, I can only...! Yeah!
Tin of beer!
Platypus: yes. [DING] Tinnie: yes. [DING]
— No, haven't got a wombat. — Alice Springs?
Alice Springs: Er, no, but I'm going to give you a point,
because there is a big Uluru...
I was going to say, Uluru?
There is actually a *small* Uluru.
I was going to say, is there a tiny...
Wasn't Uluru in Star Trek?
Yes. The Enterprise's communications officer,
that falls in love with Spock in the new movie,
is a massive rock.
That would be a great — in a red dress.
Yes!
I've just got the thought of them walking along, and a...
[Rock crunching sound]
...sound of a rock just scraping along the floor behind.
Yeah. Other big things in Australia... Barrier Reef?
Okay, we're looking for models of things that have been blown up.
Like, I've personally been to the Big Pineapple.
Which is a big pineapple.
— Sense of entitlement. — Er...
Er, marlin.
— Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. — Yes, point. [DING]
Lego version of something.
Nope.
Sydney Opera House? Is there an even bigger version somewhere?
No! [Laughter]
You've got the Sydney Opera House!
Actually... no, er...
Sydney Harbour Bridge is a bigger version of the Monkwearmouth Bridge in Sunderland.
Yes.
I dunno. Big what? Are we talking big fibreglass things in Australia?
Big fibreglass things in Australia.
Crab!
Yes! [DING] Big mud crab. In Cardwell.
Have they got a gigantic pie or something?
I know pie and pea liquor is quite popular in Sydney.
It's the kind of thing I imagine a pie company would build.
Yup. The Big Pie is mounted... [Laughter]
[DING] ...above a ten-metre pole
next to the car park of a drive-through pie shop.
Get it!
— Drive-through... — ALL: Pie shop?!
We've got it wrong over here!
Yorkshire — Australia!
Australia, we take it all back! You've got a lot to teach us.
You've got a lot... yeah!
We want your knowledge of gigantic drive-through pie shops!
— I've had a... — In fact:
I've had a drive-through hot beef sandwich. That's the worst one I've...
You drove through a hot beef sandwich.
That's a euphemism. I don't know what it's for, but it's a euphemism.
No, there's a cafe! It used to be like a, I don't know...
A popular chain of takeaway restaurants, but it was taken over by a local cafe company,
and they just started flogging hot beef sandwiches out of the window.
You try eating a hot beef sandwich in a car!
No! It'll drip everywhere.
Exactly! Hot gravy down both your arms before a meeting!
Louisiana has drive-through daiquiri stalls.
— Like, alcoholic... — What?!
Because it's legal to have the alcohol in your car,
it's not legal to drink it because it's an open container.
So they give you the, like, two pints of daiquiri,
and a straw...
Which they haven't pushed through the...
And then they sellotape over the little straw hole. So you can't put it in.
Arseholes!
— Impossible. Cannot defeat this. — Absolutely impossible. Yup.
I was driving in America a couple of weeks ago,
and filled up at the petrol station, and the entire, you know — there are two queues.
— Yeah. — And the rope, the dividing line between the queues,
Not a rope barrier. Crates and crates and crates of beer.
Australia has drive-through liquor stores as well.
Like, it's basically just a big shed,
filled on the interior with beer on all the walls...
Whoa, whoa...
And then you drive in, you ask for what you want,
they load it in the back of your car, you pay, then you drive off.
This is why we're not allowed nice things, isn't it.
We'd just abuse that in the way that they obviously somehow manage not to.
Well, we already abuse the non-drive-through.
[Laughter] Yeah.
I know that in Australia there was some race, like car racing thing,
and they had to restrict it to just one slab, as they call it, of beer.
Yes, it's, er... it's the...
It's the 24 hours, what's the track called?
Yeah, it's the Supercar 24-hour — Bathurst.
— Bathurst. Right, yeah. — Bathurst 24 Hours.
So you're allowed 24 hours, 24 beers.
— ...is the rule. — Yeah, but there was an outcry...
But there was an outcry, because they restricted it to...
That's 24 beers *per person*.
Yeah. One an hour, per person.
But they said, there was an outcry at "just 24".
But actually, in all fairness, I go about one tin per half hour, so...
Well, I don't know if I could do that for 24 hours, though, seriously...
I was going to say, by the end of the twenty-fourth one,
— ...you ain't gonna be asking for more. — While driving.
Oh yeah, while driving. [Laughter]
Yeah, that was the driver.
"Come on, mate! Safety first!"
Pit crew, possibly.
[Air gun whirring] "Oh, s***, you want some more tyres? Oh, God."
"Eh, he'll be fine.'
"Inches of tread left, mate. F*** off."
[Laughter] [Groans]
"Rack off!" ...he cried.
We're going to be never allowed to go there, are we.
That's my visa application f***ed.
Erm... so, talking about the gigantic lob...
Are we still talking about gigantic things in Australia?
— Yes. — Cricket ball.
— Ohh. — Cricket ball...
— Or bat. — Or stumps. — Yeah.
I'm going to give you the Big Wickets [DING] in Westbury.
— Natch. — Mmm.
"Located at the front of the local cricket pitch."
I don't want you to give me the Big Wickets.
Somewhere out there, thanks to a nuclear accident,
is going to be a gigantic Fred Trueman bowling at those in Godzilla stylee.
Yes! Good Lord, that'd be brilliant.
But we'd have to invade and bring him back.
— Yeah! [Laughter] — Repatriate Giant Trueman!
King Kong with Giant Fred Trueman:
[Roars]
— Pipe. — Thwack!
Climbing the Media Centre at Lord's,
holding onto Jonathan Agnew like Fay Wray.
[Whoosh!]
That is a man who does not follow cricket.
— Big things in Australia that aren't... — Kangaroo.
I said that.
— Did you? — Yeah. [DING] Right near the start.
— Point. — You ignored it.
Ohh. [Laughter]
The, erm... big huggy thing that smells of piss and has an STD.
— Koala. — Thank you.
Er, point... [DING]
In fact, two points, because there is the Big Koala, and the Giant Koala.
All: Ohhh.
The difference in size being...?
— Er, not much. — Ah.
Kookaburra.
Ooh, yeah, good one.
[DING] Yep.
Because they're pretty big anyway.
Yeah. Four and a half metres, the big one, but yeah.
They're actually hummingbirds.
— Really? — Really?
— No, they're kingfishers. — Sorry, I meant kingfishers.
Hummingbird-sized kookaburra!
— I like the idea of a... — ...kookaburra-sized hummingbird!
Just sounds like a Huey coming through.
Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp! "F***!"
— There's a Viet Nam vet, just going back to the... — "Aaa! Aaah!"
— "I like the smell of kingfishers..." — Kookaburras...
— "...kookaburras in the morning."
The thought of the giant kookaburra model again:
giant fibreglass, light-up eyes... over a township, *squawking* on the hour.
— Ohh, yeah! — [Screech]
Oh yeah, because they've got a real horrible grating call as well, haven't they?
Yeah, they have, yeah. Well, it sounds like "kookaburra", doesn't it.
Oh, of course, yeah.
Well, it's the sound they use for the monkey in every jungle movie filmed before 1980.
— That kind of laughing monkey sound. — [Monkey call]
In a monkey costume.
Not even in shot. They just try and get it to feel the role, you know...
Flip the head back, light a fag between takes...
"I went to bloody RADA, luv, I don't know why I do this."
— [Kookaburra squawk] — The monkey obviously had better unions.
[Laughter] [Groans]
The Monkey Film Union!
That's why they don't work these days. The kookaburras do all the monkey work.
On that note, congratulations to Chris,
stealing it at the last moment with an enormous number of big things.
Love it!
You know it.
So congratulations, you win a DVD of the film
where the singer of "Purple Rain" trades places with a peasant who looks just like him.
It's The Artist Formerly Known As Prince and the Pauper.
Until next time, that's been Matt Gray...
That's been Gary Brannan,
That's been Chris Joel...
I've been Tom Scott. We'll see you next time.
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[1. PeriodicGamer [Trevor]] [2. Peter Ambos] [3. DieselWeasel]