The Kitchen Is On Fire

This week on The Kitchen Is On Fire there are so many sounds. Many of them are conjured from the mouth holes of three human man beings. These ‘men’ things are named James, Sam and John Maclean.
James has holes in his shoes and is wearing dishonest socks. He cheers himself up by cooking at Magpie in an oversized headband. Sam is also back in a kitchen, his own, and he has somehow decided to start cooking like a cut-rate Escoffier despite his wife’s pleas to stop inflicting gout upon her.
Thank the lord that John Maclean, ex member of The Beta Band and the writer/director of ‘Slow West’ arrives just in time to aurally take control of the situation. He backs up a dump truck filled with knowledge, flicks a lever and upends the lot all over your ears, on your heads. There’s Beta Band origin tales, working with Michael Fassbender, lunching with an aging action hero and Cullen Skink chat.
There’s also just enough time for reminiscing about what fun it is to be in vast debt to a record company, whether or not ‘Shame’ had a big CGI budget to expand Fassbender’s…….fassbender and a deep dive into John’s favourite sausage genres.

This week The Kitchen Is On Fire is sponsored by big wine winners dropwine.co.uk and huge vodka champions ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP162-THE_DORITO_WASHER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:33am EDT

It never rains but it pours they say. Not true, let me tell you about a little wet thing I like to call, drizzle.
A watched pot never boils they say. Nonsense, I’ve watched loads and they’ve all boiled. Every single one, ever. I rarely do anything but watch pots until they boil. They call me the old pot-watcher.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush they say. I very much doubt that. I put a chaffinch in a solid gold suit of armour encrusted with diamonds, then threw him in a hedge. Meanwhile in my left hand, I’ve had a flea ridden pigeon with one eye and a bald patch on it’s head. If you surveyed a thousand people, I think they’d all say that the fancy-ass bush-bird was worth more than the decrepit grandpa street-pheasant.
What the above clearly illustrates is the need for truth and for facts. You have come to the right place.
This week James and Sam are spreading truth all over your minds as if truth is manure and your ears are a field and their mouths are the nozzle on a giant manure cannon.
Now they have made your mind-soil fertile, they go ahead and sow fact-seeds concerning such matters as Xian Biang Biang Noodles, Thom Yorke’s new record and pushing back boundaries in gymnasiums.
Then food writer, journalist and activist Jack Monroe shows up early (fortunately) and corrals the TickyOff Dumbos into some semblance of order. Jack talks about cooking with tinned ingredients, dream Dorito flavours, and the wonders of grated Spam. Sam wonders why all the recipes have prunes in them. James wonders how he can continue to avoid answering questions in the Quickfire Game in a timely manner. Jack wonders how to be more like Hugh Grant and how many Christmas trees can fit in a single house.
All this, plus: Explaining the concept of tax via the medium of Muller Fruit Corners! The stench of tinsel! A bad Mexican bandito impersonation! and Houdini, The Killer Lovebird!

This week’s episode is sponsored by ‘Fort Boyard’ semi-finalists in 1992: dropwine.co.uk and ‘The Generation Game’ coffee-machine with built-in alarmclock winners from way back in 1988: ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP161-HOLY_WOAH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:30am EDT

The TickyOff Boyz are well known across the globe for their searing insight, for their deep seated ability to get to the true crux of many of humanity’s greatest imponderables. Sometimes however, our heroes need to take a step back from the coalface of vast issues and giggle about a rude word for a solid half an hour like a pair of idiotic, immature, school boys. James and Sam regularly skirt close to intellectual perfection, this episode is not one of those instances. Feel free to skip the first thirty minutes if such behavior holes your hull instead of floating yer damn boat.
This week there are toilet flushing ghosts, large babies and some solid biscuit chat. James takes a huge swing, and misses, at this week’s guest and Sam says that seals are like divers with cat faces.
The aforementioned guest this week is food writer and blogger Ed Smith who spurts out information from his mouth opening concerning his two cookbooks, the history of Borough market and his origin story from lawyer to writer.
There’s also the spooky tale of Issac McHale in a bonnet haunting people, mashed potato techniques and James eats a huge number of ginger nut biscuits while in an alcohol-free induced depression.
If I was a foolish fool, I’d say this episode is proper cray cray. But I am not, so I shall not.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the wine warriors at dropwine.co.uk and the vodka gladiators at ourvodka.com/ourlondon.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP160-A_SURVEY_OF_1000_PEOPLE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:59am EDT

'You never give me your money' sang The Beatles. That's also true of this here relationship between you, the listener, and us, The TickyOff Boyzzzz. You never give us your money despite the fact that we give you all this premium mouth-sound based content. Think on that yeah?

Anyway this week Sam and James are babbling all over the place about the Beatles, baklava, Ballymaloe and other topics that do not begin with the letter 'B'. Many of these other topics are raised by this week's guest, Tara Wigley. Tara opens the release valve on a silo full of chat and fills the room with tales of Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbooks, finding your dream job, eating as a family and tricky issues of cultural appropriation.

While surfing this torrent of yap James creates some fake nieces, Sam says a lot of things he doesn't mean, they discuss the Pidgin Cookbook, and the whole William Sitwell 'catastrophe' is flat-out covered.

Finally, there are some very mysterious rubber ducks, the wonder of a man in a nightshirt and Tara reveals all about what is quite possibly the strangest breakfast dish known to humankind. A dish that she prepares and eats, every single day........prepare thyself!

This week's TKIOF is sponsored by our wine buddies dropwine.co.uk and our vodka pals ourvodka.com/ourlondon

And finally, the TickyOff is now on Instagram: @tickyoff

Hit us up with a follow and like all our stuff and tell everyone else to like it too please. Come on. We do loads for you. Loads. And it's all brilliant. Every minute = pure solid gold. Ka-bloom!

Direct download: TKIOF-EP159-BUZZ_AND_WOODY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:26am EDT

1