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Had a lovely and quite romantic day of driving around in the sunshine with producer Ben as we went to do two interviews with men with one bollock. First up was Newmarket, a town that is so horsey that it almost looks sarcastic. There were so many people riding around on horses that I suspected they were employed by the Newmarket Tourist Board to keep up the impression that there are a lot of horses in Newmarket. It’s too many horses. No one will believe it.
No it’s not. Send out more horses.
There were so many horses that I expected to look across at the opposing traffic and see a horse driving a car.
We were going to talk to highly decorated, Grand National winning, one-balled marvel Bob Champion. I remember him well from the early 80s when he had cancer, very nearly died, but bounced back within the next 18 months to win the biggest race in the UK on Andaniti. Even though it’s only 40 years ago, testicular cancer was a lot more deadly back then and Bob discovered his rather late and had the choice of having 5 months to live or trying out the new procedure of chemotherapy. Obviously he chose the latter, though it was an incredibly brutal process back then and sessions took the best part of a week. It makes my own chemotherapy look like a pin prick. Maybe not even that.
His story is remarkable (so much so that they made a film about him), but he’s also done an awful lot to raise awareness of testicular cancer and also money for his charity (sixteen million pounds so far, which I guess is OK).
It’s always good to see somebody who has had the same cancer as me and who is now in their seventies - and he looked extremely fit and well (even though he’s had another brush with death quite recently). It was an honour to chat with him. I can’t claim to be the king of the one ballers while he still walks the earth (in the kingdom of the eunuchs, the one-balled man is king).
We then drove across country to Bedfordshire to meet up with my old friend Simon Munnery, who has been a monoballer (or as he prefers it semi-eunuch) for about 20 years. We had a bit of time before the appointed interview time and needed some lunch, so we got to the general area and looked for a pub, restaurant or cafe to have some food. I was anticipating a service station ham sandwich, but we chanced across a pub called “The Plough” which was just about to open, which looked rather nice.
https://bolnhurst.com/ We felt sure it wouldn’t be a problem getting a table at midday on a Wednesday. It was a pretty isolated spot.
It turned out to be a rather posh restaurant and we seemingly got the last table in the place. Once we saw the menu we realised we weren’t going to get chicken in a basket here. It was the kind of place you’d go on a date where you really wanted to impress someone or for a 10th wedding anniversary. Had I orchestrated all this in an attempt to impress and seduce Ben? No, I couldn’t have. He did all the organisation. Maybe he had done it.
As we settled down to order a tiny bird flew into the room. It swooped over our table and bashed against the closed window. After the crows we had in our house before we put a cage over the chimney pot I am pretty freaked out by stuff like this, but Ben remained cool. He took his serviette (a cloth one, because we were being classy) and threw it over the bird, capturing it in a napkin net and then let it out of the window. He’d learned this technique from the podcast Do The Right Thing, which he produces. It was very impressive. If this had been a date I would definitely have slept with him after this. He was so cool. But thinking about it it seems unlikely this happened by chance and maybe this was all part of his set up.
The meal was incredible and best of all it would all go on the show budget. We’re paying for this podcast with the revenue we’ve raised from ads on RHLSTP and so this fine meal was all on Ian American-Express or Ian Sky. It was a business expense. I felt like the greatest businessman of all time! To be fair, after his years of work on my podcasts Ben deserves a nice meal as a thank you.
We then drove over to Simon’s house, where we recorded the interview in his shed - where he makes his extraordinary props which decorated the walls and corners. His story is, as they all seem to be, rather extraordinary. He became aware of his own cancer after spending a day helping to castrate bulls on his parent-in-law’s farm in Australia. Not because he had seen a cow with weird balls, but because it gave him a hernia and then during the scan, testicular cancer was picked up on. He fathered three kids after his operation (not directly after) so it’s another story with some positivity to it. Simon is an eccentric but brilliant comedian, probably too brilliant for this world. He has big and crazy ideas but also loves jokes. And is good at one liners which is one of the hardest comedic skills. He should be heralded as the Spike Milligan of this generation, but then again Spike Milligan should really have been heralded as the Spike Milligan of his generation too.
He has some brilliant ideas and some unconventional ideas and it’s always an amazing experience spending an hour in his company,
as you may remember from his RHLSTP. You should go and see him live - he’s doing the Fringe this year.
I drove Ben back to the station. We didn’t kiss but I think we both wanted to. Then I went to the gym to work off some of the lunch (aside from a bit of ice cream I managed to keep it pretty healthy).
