#325 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (7th February 2020)

Hello and welcome to Jason Newland. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen to this recording when you can safely close your eyes.

This is let me for you to see. I'd just like to say thank you for listening and you may hear the odd ferret sneeze in the background, but that is exactly what it is. A sneeze from a ferret.

Now, I'd just like to invite you into my world, the world of an annoying ferret. Will you shut up? I'm doing shush. And yeah, hello.

Sorry, I got a bit, uh, what was that kind of like really, really calm, really calm radio voice. So I'd like you to maybe join me in my quiet moment. I used to have a friend that did that.

It was, I'd be talking to him and he'd go, hmm, hmm. And he'd like nod his head enthusiastically. I didn't get the sense that he was actually listening to what I was saying.

It was more like nodding the head, waiting for me to stop talking so he could talk. But that could be down to me talking excessively, which may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you that maybe I can be a bit chatty at times, but not always, not always, not always anything really. I mean, I know, oh, by the way, please subscribe to this here, uh, podcast, you know, podcast, podcast.

That way you can be informed of new episodes. My website is not up and running yet for some reason. It's all up and running as far as the website goes, but the domain name has not connected.

Oh, don't you love, can you hear that little sound of a lovely bright, bright person in a car stopping outside and bibbing the horn, thinking that's what the horn is actually for, is, uh, so they don't have to get out of the car to actually knock on a person's door, even though most people have mobile phones now. You can just phone them, but no, let's bib the horn. And those people that still, you know, say goodbye to someone, person gets out of the car and they drive away and they bib the horn again.

You've already said goodbye. Was it your car saying goodbye? You're saying goodbye on behalf of your car? What's that about? I want to say goodbye, but you know, I just want to disrupt the neighbors as well. I wonder if he's going to treat us to a nice, I don't know what he's doing.

He's running around. Oh, what are you doing Andre? He's grabbed, he's got his girlfriend. You might hear him go.

Well, what do you want? Okay. I'm going to pick him up and he's backing off. I want to do a poo, leave me alone.

No, I want to just do a little wee wee. Now he's going back to his girlfriend. Every now and then I hear him go.

You might hear it if you listen. Did you hear that? So basically he's just run past me and out of the room with his girlfriend in his mouth. It's my slipper.

That's his girlfriend's head and the body is, he sounds wrong, but he, he changes the body depending on his mood. So, you know, sometimes it would be a carrier bag. Sometimes it would be some dirty underpants or a towel or something.

You know, he's got lots of different things he uses. He seems to choose my dirty clothes for some reason, possibly because it's got my smell on it. And he, you know, I suppose he's used to my smell.

Who knows? Who knows? I'm just glad I've never found him on my bed, humping me pillow, because that would be the line. That's, that's the drawing of the line that they are. Wouldn't want that particularly.

But it sounds like he's, he's either in the bedroom or the kitchen. I think he's in the bedroom and it sounds like he's using, not using, he's, he's spending date night with a carrier bag and he has lots of date nights, sometimes three or four a day, depending on sort of how he's doing. I sometimes think it's his way of building up an appetite.

Because it's got to be a bit boring having the same sort of food every day. He's got dry food and he's got the wet food, which is cat food with gravy. Although it comes in different flavours, about six different flavours, it's still got to be boring.

You know, I do, what I'm going to do when he gets on his last legs, I'm going to treat him and give him everything that he's not allowed to eat. So I will, I'll be, you know, I'll be giving him whipped cream because he loves whipped cream. He'll do anything for whipped cream, but it's not good for him because it upsets his stomach.

Which is why I don't give it to him. I bought him some at Christmas and gave him a few little treats because he loves it so much. But, you know, the whole time I've had him, I think I've bought three canisters of whipped cream in the last four years.

And I, you know, I never give him the whole canister because I use it for myself as well. And so it's a really rare, like once a year thing where I'll give him a bit of whipped cream and he absolutely loves it. Really, really loves it.

He'll climb, he'll climb a mountain to get to it, seriously. He would, no, I'm joking. If I put whipped cream on the ceiling, he would find a way to the ceiling to get it.

So, I sometimes think about giving him some raw meat and I just don't like the idea of it. Just, I don't know, just, I don't like touching raw meat. I don't like meat really.

You know, I'm kind of a vegetarian, but not, I'm sort of semi, semi-vegetarian. And I eat very little meat at all. You know, I don't eat much in the way of meat.

And yeah, I gave him some chicken, some raw chicken when he first moved in. And all he did is he grabbed it and ran off and hid the chicken somewhere. And the last thing you, well, not the last thing you want, but it's definitely not a nice thing to have a bit of rotten chicken hidden under the bed.

It's not, you know, it's, my friend's a ferret, which is Andre's uncle, when he was alive, he had, he did the same with some lamb. It was apparently, it was like stinking the flat out, couldn't figure out where it was coming from. And he found this big bit of lamb hidden behind the wardrobe or under the bed or something like that.

And it was just grim, grimy, grim, grim, grim. So for those that are interested in my current stats, just I've posted them on Facebook, so I won't talk about them here. But I will tell you one thing.

I made a long, it's a Sleep Hypnosis Weekly recording, but it was a relaxation slash body scan recording. And I shared it on the Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress and Anxiety podcast. Because although it was sort of aimed at sleeping, it turned out really to be aimed at relaxing.

That was quite a good recording, I think. I was sitting up in my bed. And I really noticed that I was drifting, really drifting.

I mean, I was falling asleep whilst I was talking. And that, that is how I used to make recordings. Well, it still is.

But I don't make many sleep recordings in bed. Simply because I do find myself falling asleep. I'm not always sure what I've said, which concerns me a little bit.

Because I'll be going in and out of consciousness, like drifting, you know? You know that feeling where you kind of, you wake up, but you don't really wake up. But you're aware that you weren't awake. And your mind is just drifting.

And it's like, oh, okay. But it feels comfortable. And it's natural.

And it feels nice. But when you're talking at the same time, it's a quite unusual experience, quite unusual indeed. And there have been times where I've had a conversation with someone, this is in the past, a long time ago, where I was falling asleep talking to them.

And the worst place to have a conversation with me is in bed. Because if I'm laying down, I will fall asleep. And I'll, you know, I'll be going, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. Yeah, let's get married. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, we can have a large family. Yeah. I'll sign my will over to you.

Yeah, that's fine. I'll prenuptial to make sure that you have everything. If we ever get divorced.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll put the carpet down myself.

Yeah, I'll fix the boiler. You know, when I wake up, what have I said? What have I said? So, I've been watching the news a little bit. Now, for those of you in, well, I try and get a perspective on the news to try and sort of get my head around the idea that the world does not revolve around my country or America.

Because that's all the things I really see on the news. Unless there's like a natural disaster or something like that. So in Australia with the bushfires and that kind of stuff.

So we just had that on the news. But at the moment, it's been all about American politics, which doesn't really interest me, to be honest, because it's not my country. I'm as interested in American politics as I am in Indian politics or the politics of Spain.

Or, you know, it's a different country. However, I keep getting told by people, yeah, but it affects us more. And I do actually think that a lot of people in this country, my country, seem to class the American president as their president.

Even though we don't have a president, we have a prime minister of our country. But it seems sometimes like the press is more interested in the current U.S. president than our own prime minister, which doesn't really make sense to me, apart from the fact that he's way more entertaining. And especially, I've never known any politician to brag so much.

I think it's funny. But you know what's really weird is, and I didn't really notice this until, it's probably because of Facebook. I wouldn't know this if it wasn't for Facebook.

And the majority of my people, majority of my online Facebook friends are American. I have a few English people, but mainly American and Australian, Canadian, Norway, you know, all over the world. But there's a big percentage, but the largest percentage is American.

And there seems to be a real, really taking politics seriously, like really taking sides almost. But if you don't agree with me, if you don't agree with my politics, then you're the dead end. You're on the dark side.

The only thing we have here is with the Brexit thing. People basically calling each other stupid on both sides, which is never a good idea really, to be fair. No one likes being called stupid.

And it was kind of like you had the people that wanted to stay in Europe, you know, were being told that they were stupid by the people that wanted to leave. And the people that wanted to leave were being, were faced with the truth that they were stupid, and they kind of didn't like that. So it's kind of just, it's, yeah, it's weird.

It's very weird. I think the rule from now on in my country should be no more referendums of any kind ever again, because they don't work. They divide.

They do not work. And no more referendums. That's what I would say.

That's it. The end of referendums. I actually thought referendums were a brilliant idea.

I almost thought we should have everything as a referendum, put every major decision to the public and ask them. But after the last three and a half years of this made up word Brexit, made up word, it's not a real word. Imagine no words are real words today, I suppose.

They're all made up. But it's not based on, it's not like a Latin. It's not a Latin based word, is it? In a sense of a lot of the English language and well, European language is based on Latin, isn't it? The roots of Latin.

I don't know if that's true, but it sounds good. Sounds like I know what I'm talking about. Didn't learn Latin at school.

I can't imagine if my teachers, they got told, yeah, you've got to start teaching your kids Latin. I think the first thing they'd think is, but we've got Jason in our class. We can't teach him anything.

How are we going to teach him Latin? It's hard enough to get him to sit still at his desk. So yeah, it's hard. What I found funny is with this recent impeachment thing in America.

Oh wow, there's a lot of angry people. There's a lot of really angry people there, these politicians. And I don't know what his name was, but there was, you'll know if you're in America or wherever, you watch this, you'll know him.

And starey eyes, starey eyes scared me. I mean, he looked, he's probably the scariest person I've ever seen in my life. He looked so angry.

I just thought his head was going to just pop. Seriously, he just, he was like really taking it personally. And they're not supposed to take it personally.

It's, you know, it's, especially when things go to court, it's supposed to be, okay, there's a defense and there's the offense or whatever, prosecution. So of course they're going to be fighting each other. But even then it's not personal, is it? The judge isn't supposed to be taking it personally.

I always wonder, you know, I've not ever been to prison. I know people that have. And I just think, you know, if you've been through the whole prison court case and you've just been sentenced to a certain amount of time in prison, that's an awful situation, everyone involved.

But you know, personally for that person, it's going to be a horrible situation. And then you've got to listen to this judge after saying how many years or whatever you're getting. And then they start to have a go at you.

It's like, wait a minute, you've just given me life, imprisonment. I ain't got to listen to your crap. And now this is what I think of you, you're very immature.

Why would a prisoner keep quiet during that? That for me is supposed to be impartial. The judge is supposed to be impartial. They give the sentence based upon the jury verdict.

So it should be as simple as, okay, this is a sentence you get, next. Not this is a sentence you get. Now, I'm going to tell you off.

You've been a very, very, very naughty girl. Very naughty. Please, you should never do this again.

I'm going to send you to prison. You're going to jail. No get out free cards.

Of course, you won't have to serve your full sentence because the law makes no sense. But just, I just, I don't, it's like, no, just give the sentence and move on to the next person. Your opinion does not interest it.

No one's interested in that. Who cares what judge thinks? Apart from the, the actual judgment itself. Give the sentence and go away.

Go away with your little wig. So I think in America, they wear those silly traditional wigs, the white wigs. But I've never been into crown court.

I've been into court once during one of the divorces I took. I don't know if I went in the court, but I was out of the court. Actually, I did go to court with my bankruptcy, but it wasn't, it was like a civil, is it a civil court? So it was, it was a different kind of environment, but it was definitely a judge and he was beautiful.

So, but he didn't judge me. He, he was the judge, but he didn't, it wasn't personal. It's like, it wasn't saying, well, you've been irresponsible and you, you know, you should know better.

And then, you know, that would have been awful. Even if he'd have sort of said, yeah, you've got no choice but to go bankrupt, which is what I was told by him. And this is a long time ago.

And he said, you know, you're working part-time due to illness. You got into debt due to illness and you've got no choice but to go bankrupt because you can't afford to pay the payments and it's going up every month. So he made me bankrupt, but he didn't have a go at me.

He didn't sort of tell me off. If he had told me off, I probably would have felt I deserved it, to be fair, but it would have been horrible. As it was, I was scared.

I was so scared going in there. You know, honestly, I decided, because it took, it took a couple of months, the process took from pretty much, I think I was declared bankrupt in December. And I think I started the process in September or early October, probably September.

So it took quite a while to get the process through. But man, I tell you, what I find weird is, you know, people say, it says in the papers, yes, the person was sentenced to five years imprisonment and 14 months driving ban. What's the point in that? They can't drive on in prison, can they? It don't make no sense.

But yeah, never, ever have another referendum, ever. I have hysteria eyes. What was that about? And what about, is it Pelosi? Some lady, I don't know, is she the Speaker of the House or something? Because I know the American Parliament, you know, the whole thing is kind of based on the English Parliament, obviously, because we was, the English Parliament was the American Parliament, wasn't it? A few hundred years ago, because America was England, wasn't it? But we were, we owned it, owned it.

And then we've rented it out here for a little while. We're going to have it back later on. And so I was watching this thing and it's, I thought, you know, I need to hear a president bragging about his achievements, just like I like to do, you know, I love to brag, you know.

Oh, I went bankrupt. Oh, there's now people thinking, oh, I wish I could do that. That's just, that's so impressive.

And yeah, I couldn't get any credit or anything for six years. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, it was brilliant.

It was. And I had, I was watching this thing, this impeachment thing. And there was a lady sitting behind him, behind the president.

There was a man sitting behind him. The man was on the left, the lady was on the right. And as you looked at, you know, the front of the president on a podium talking to, and I know it's very staged.

The whole thing was very staged and very, very, very tightly organized and almost turned into a TV show. There used to be a TV show on in England called Surprise, Surprise with Cilla Black. And she used to reunite family members.

So she'd have someone in the audience, she'd go up to them and say, oh, I hear your husband is, for example, in Afghanistan. Back then there wouldn't have been, I'm not sure if Afghanistan existed back then. But and she's saying that the lady would say, yes, he is.

And Cilla Black would say, I hear your husband's in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise. And she said, no, he's not.

He's here tonight. And the husband would come down and they'd all reunite and it'd be lovely. It really was nice back then.

So basically, the United States of America president did exactly the same thing as Cilla Black did with this lady. He said, oh, Mrs. Jordan or whatever, I don't know what her name was, your husband's in Afghanistan and you haven't seen him for living here and you're waiting for him to get in contact. And she said, yeah, well, you haven't got to wait any longer because surprise, surprise, he's here.

And he runs down, you know, like the price is right, whooping and hooping and screaming. Okay, that didn't happen. But he came down and he had a little girl and a little boy.

The little girl was up to his, probably his waist as she was, she, you know, I don't know how old she was, probably about five, six. And she was like cuddling him. He went to the little kid.

The kid didn't know who he was. And so I imagine he was a little baby, a toddler. So that must have been quite overwhelming for them.

The toddlers seemed to think, I don't know who you are. But he picked him up and then he sort of embraced his wife. So there was a lot of pressure, you know, on him and on her to do that on national television.

And they might not even like each other anymore, but it's a bit of pressure. And what was weird is she happened to be standing or sitting next to the president's wife. So I kind of got a feeling she must have known something was wrong, not wrong or right.

You know, something was going to happen. The fact that she was sitting next to the first lady. So yeah, so that was nice.

And the lady behind, is it Pelosi? That's a type of, it's a type of meat, isn't it? Pelosi. Yeah, I like some Pelosi on that. Cheese and Pelosi sandwich, please.

And she was making the weirdest faces. Honestly, it's all the way through the bit that I watched while he was talking and she was staring in, staring away, making faces the whole time. She was almost like she had an agenda.

How many horrible faces can I pull? How many ways can I show my disgust with my facial expressions? I mean, she should get a job doing impressions. Admittedly it would be a very angry lady, but it's just the way her face was contorting. It was, it was very off-putting.

And on the left of her was, I don't know who he is, but he seemed happy enough. He was just sitting there. He seemed to be enjoying the evening.

And most of the people seem to be having a bit of fun and I was going to say frolicking, but I don't know. I guess that would be afterwards. Yeah.

The after party. But this lady, Polotsky, or whatever her name is. See, I don't know who she is.

She's the, the speaker of the house. Is that right? So we've got a speaker in our house. It's me.

And we've got a speaker in our parliament. And it used to be Burkle, but now it's a bloke with a girl's name. And so I've kind of, I didn't, I didn't mind him when he was, because he was the assistant speaker or the deputy speaker.

And now it's become the actual speaker. But as I say, he's got a girl's name, but it actually is a female name that he's got. And in fact, I'll tell you what it is, just in case you think I'm lying.

But I don't know. I just, I don't really, I think he's friendlier. He's a lot friendlier than the Burkle.

But at the same time, he's not, I don't know how to word it. Doesn't really do it for me. This is a, yeah, it doesn't have the, I mean, he's only just started doing the job, but he doesn't, to me, have the wit.

He's not entertaining. And I know, I know that the House of Parliament isn't really there just for entertainment, but it is for me. Speaker of the House.

Speaker of the House of Commons. Okay. Let's have a look.

The current speaker is Lindsay Hoyle. He was elected speaker on the 4th of November 2019, following the resignation of John Burkle. Hoyle began his first full parliamentary term in the role on the 17th of December 2019, having unanimously been re-elected after the election.

So yeah, I told you, Lindsay, that's a female name, isn't it? It's a girl's name. You've got a girl's name. Yes, you have.

Yes, you have. Yes, you have. So I don't know what it is.

I just, for some reason, I found Burkle just funny because he would put everybody down. Now, anybody that tried to sort of raise their voice or cause trouble, he'd put them down. He had like a fist of iron and he'd put them down verbally and he'd treat them like the kids, the little kids that they were, because they'd be like shouting out, you know, like basically like at school and he'd be a really strict head teacher, but at the same time, he'd be funny.

So yeah, I just, I think what happened is this year, because we had the general election in December, there were so many politicians changed, so many retired or lost their seats. And now the parliament, of course, there's still lots of the same people, but there's so many new people sitting in there on the seats and it's just not the same anymore. Because I used to watch last year, the last couple of years, I've been watching so much of the parliament channel, watching the debates, watching, you know, all the the different votes that they've had.

So I kind of got to know or felt like I knew a lot of the politicians that would be talking. And now loads of them are gone. It's almost like your favourite soap, you know, when they kill off some of the characters.

They can't do too many characters at once because it ruins things. But that's what the House of Commons has done. It's ruined the programme because they've taken too many people out.

And you can't introduce too many new characters all at the same time. Now with a soap, they generally introduce a family, but maybe gradually over a few weeks. And then eventually they integrate with the other people in the soap and become part of their lives and start dating them and marrying them and arguing with them and working with them, you know, having dramas and that stuff.

And then it's almost like they've always been there. And then you can invite other members of their family in, like cousins and that's what they do with EastEnders. You had the Mitchells, the Mitchell brothers, Phil and Grant.

And then, oh no, no, that's wrong. Wait a minute. You had Peggy Mitchell first.

No, no, it's Phil Mitchell first. Phil and Grant Mitchell. And then I'm not sure if the sister came in before or after Peggy, but Peggy came in, their mother, and then Sam.

But Sam might have been in first. So that's Sam Mitchell, who's their youngest sister. And then two cousins, Ronnie and Danny, Ronnie and something, they were in it.

So any other Mitchells come in? Oh yeah, then there's Ben Mitchell, which is Phil's son. And then Ben Mitchell's, then Phil's daughter, she's came in it over the last couple of years. And then there is Billy Mitchell, who's been in it for a long, long time.

I'm not, he might have even been in it before. No, I think he's, no. I wonder who was in it first.

I need to check this. I don't know who was in, is it Phil Mitchell or, I don't know if anyone here knows what EastEnders is. EastEnders, EastEnders.

This really is just, I'm tapping on the thing, trying to get it to work so I can search, but it's not coming, nothing's coming up. Come on, the screen's just not working. I wonder where that is.

Can't be bothered with that then. No, you had your chance to work, no you're not. I used to watch EastEnders back in, I think it was 1985, when it very first started.

And I'm still watching it. Was that 20, 36 years later? 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 1000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, so that's 20 years. 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, that's 30 years.

2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, so that's 35 years of that program being on. And I think, as far as the original characters go, let me work it out. Ian Bill, I'm pretty sure he was in it right from the very start, when he was a kid.

He was probably about 15, 16, maybe a little bit younger, but he was, you know, he was a teenager. And now he's about 50, or 45 or something. So, I don't know, would it be 15? Yeah, it's got to be about 50.

Just thinking about it, it must have been about my age when he started, because I was at school when it started. And he's, I think he's the longest running. But no, no, no, no, he's not.

Because Sharon is also in it. But she's come and gone. You know, she's disappeared for the odd time, a few years, comes back.

But she was in it right at the beginning. And Ian has been in it consistently the whole time, apart from the occasional disappearance. But he's, you know, his character never really left.

And who else? Sharon, she was a kid as well, went to school with Ian. Ian, Sharon. Now Ian's mum, Kathy, she was in it right from the beginning.

But she was out of it for about 20 years. Or something like that. You know, they killed her off and then they brought her back.

I think they must have bought Bobby Ewing's shower and used that magic shower to bring her back or something. So she's back in it. So she's one of the original cast members, but she hasn't been in it consistently at all.

But she's in it now. So I guess that does, she still fits into the category of being an original cast member. Dot Cotton, she's still in it and she was in it from the beginning.

And she's about 117 now. It's amazing. Still got pitch black hair.

The hair is, you know, it's like boot polish black, really, really, really dark black. Which is amazing considering how old she is. I don't know how she does it.

And so there's those four. Who else is there that's still in the show that was... No, no, no, no. I think that's it.

I'm trying to think of anybody else that was in it from the beginning. But I think that's all there is. I don't think that there are any one else.

So Ian Beale, Sharon Watts or Sharon, whatever her surname is in the show. Ian, Sharon, Kathy. It used to be Kathy Beale.

I don't know what she changed her name to. And Dot Cotton, but she changed her name to Dot Brannan because she married, got married. So those four, I don't think there's anyone else.

I'm just trying to think back. I don't think there is anybody else that is still in it that was in it at that time. And the characters that used to be there, there was... What was it? Oh, well, no, no.

Because I'm thinking the Mark Fowler. Mark? Is it Mark? Yeah, Mark. No.

The kid. He's not a kid now, but he's... He is Mark. What was his brother's name then? So anyway, Pauline and her husband, which was Ian Beale's auntie and uncle.

They had a baby and they were probably in their 80s and they had a baby and called in, was it Mark? Or was that the older one? Martin. His name's Martin. Mark was the older one.

He used to be in Grange Hill. So Martin. So technically the character has been in the show for a long period of time, but a lot of different characters, a lot of different actors have played him.

And I think at one point a little girl played him when he was a baby because it made no difference. So he had grown up on the soap, on the show, but he did leave for quite a while and then he came back a completely different face. So that was weird.

Another one that they keep changing is Phil Mitchell's son, Ben. He's had about four different actors play him and it doesn't take too long to get used to the new one, which is weird. And I think it was easier because they, he was growing up, he was a kid and he was growing up, so he was going away for a deal, you know, some time, coming back.

So he would have looked kind of different anyway. So they were quite clever with the way they did that. I don't know who else.

So behind the bar, so there's a bar lady or barmaid or bar, it used to be called barmaids, didn't they? Bar server. I don't know what the right term is, but she's been in it for years and years and years. And I think she may have been in it right from the start and she's never, ever involved really in any storylines.

She's just there, but she's had, she is a character in the show called Tracy. I don't know why she's not involved in anything because that doesn't really make sense that someone that works in that bar, possibly full time, is not involved with anybody else's life that goes in that bar, because they're all so connected with each other. How come she's never anywhere? She's never at any of the parties.

I've never seen her at any of the weddings, but she's constantly behind that bar. Explain me that. Yeah, that's a bit weird, isn't it? Unusual thing.

I don't understand it.