The Kitchen Is On Fire (general)

This week’s episode is brought to you by the letter F.
There’s fish, fascinating chat, and the vast majority is fool-free because Sam isn’t here.
He is around for the intro however where he discusses his beautiful hair and the time he had to kill a mouse humanely. In a verbal parry back at those incredible yap thrusts, James makes mouth sounds about his glamorous visit to the Observer Food Monthly Awards and also seemingly has no idea whatsoever about which animals live in canals.

Things improve no end once this week’s guest Josh Niland arrives. James takes on the renowned chef and fish butcher one on one, face en face, mano a horse..o.
Josh shares some unbelievable fish based knowledge such as how to make fish fat ice cream, crackers from fish eyeballs and mortadella from fish sperm. He also explains why water is the enemy of decent fish, how to write a book in a couple of months alongside two toddlers, a newborn baby and a hectic business and he also takes some questions from Twitter.

It’s not your usual TickyOff in that it’s pretty damn informative, sensible and near enough entirely ghost-less. Take this information and do what you will with it. I am not the boss of you.

This week’s episode is sponsored by winemongers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP203-HERMAN_THE_MERMAN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:56am EDT

Guess what’s on fire?
That’s right, the planet is.
You can also add ‘The Kitchen’ to that flaming hot list.
I feel like I’ve made that joke before. I’d look back and check but I can’t. I am a shark and I cannot reverse.

This week The TickyOff Boyz utterly fail to deliver an intro to the episode. This is because they were in the pub. Sometimes, these things happen. I’d apologise but to be honest, water meet underside of the bridge. Bygones. Etc.

Anyway you don’t need an intro when you’ve got Selin Kiazim in the house*
*It’s not a house. It’s an office. Just for full disclosure.
Selin tells all about how she ended up owning and running two (and a half) restaurants, writing a cookbook and appearing on ‘Great British Menu’. There’s Peter Gordon at The Providores chat, modernising the food of her childhood discussion and operating in a tricky business environment…..verbals.

Meanwhile James drops an enormous jug of Bloody Mary mix on a train platform, Sam explains competitive hot-dog eating contest technicalities and Selin admits that the cooking show that inspired her to start cooking may well have involved a pair of legends known as The TickyOff Boyz of the early nineties, Gary Rhodes and Ainsley Harriot.

This week’s episode is sponsored by The TickyOff Boyz of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP202-FAIRGROUND_BY_SIMPLY_RED.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:06am EDT

After last week and the incredible staging of their own (podcast) deaths, James and Sam return to the usual ballyhoo and tomfoolery that has defined them for decades now. They turn their backs on the wondrous illusions and, if we’re being entirely honest, pure magic of last week and leave that to the likes of David Copperfield, Paul Daniels and that weird uncle you only ever met at birthday parties who had a cup with a vanishing ball in it and a multi-coloured hankerchief and subscriptions to….magazines and wore brown trousers and drove a 1970’s sedan car even though it was 1992. You know the sort.

Anyway, this week Chinese food expert and author Fuchsia Dunlop arrives in TickyOff Towers and explains how she became said expert and wrote a number of cookbooks including Sam’s all time favourite.
She schools our heroic pair on stir frying tekkers, the city of Chengdu and explains why she once set her own cookbook on fire.
Before Fuchsia shows up James has had a birthday, Pidgin has come up with a bad dish, they talk a bunch about spaetzle and ponder on a huge question: Can any fish reverse?

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Siegfried and Roy of wine delivery, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP201-THE_FOOD_OF_SICHUAN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:31am EDT

So this is it. The end of the line. Game over. Butch and Sundance going out in a blaze of glory or John Virgo and Jim Davidson going their separate ways after ‘Big Break’ is not renewed for another series of brilliant snooker themed light entertainment.

The TickyOff Boys have towered over the world of podcasts for decades now. The awards too numerous to mention (Three Nobel Peace Prizes, a Field’s Medal in advanced mathematics, four A* at A-Level, a fifty metre swimming badge, Most Improved Player Chichester City Colts 1989, Horse Rear Of The Year 2001 and many many more too numerous to mention such as Grand National Winner 1974, Miss World 1980, 1981, 1982, Largest Marrow Widnes County Council Allotment Fete 2002, Grammy awards for best packaging and best guitar solo on a Latin Salsa track, WWF Wrestlemania Tag Team Champions 1988, and other awards far too numerous to mention).

It’s time for them to pass the torch, hand over the baton, step aside, let others attempt their own journeys to the very peak of human achievement via the medium of a vaguely food based podcast.
They go out as they came in, talking nonsense, delivering great wisdom and basically keeping it so real that reality itself somehow becomes even more real than humankind ever believed it could be in reality…..

In this emotional final farewell, James wants to kill cats and had a terrible salad at his own wedding. Sam really wants a hug from a prior podcast guest and is afraid of trampolines. There is a long and involved discussion about horse feet, why you shouldn’t kiss your Dad on the lips and they finally answer a question TickyOff fans have asked for years: What do you wear in bed?

There’s also time for a long promised deep dive into why Magpie failed, Dame Barbara Cartland and some discussion about piles.

This was TickyOff and one day the true majestic wonder of it will be studied and appreciated by the human/alien hybrids that will rule Planet Earth millennia from now. The TickyOff Boyz accept the gratitude and the love of you all. We know what we have provided, how much we have raised up civilisation. We are very humble human/God people. You’re welcome.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine providers to the stars dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-THE_END_PART_TWO.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:31am EDT

Guess who’s back this week for their second bite of a TickyOff shaped apple?
MiMi Aye, that’s who. MiMi is back to talk up an aural storm about her new book ‘Mandalay’, family trees, Twitter beefs and eating chicken on Burmese trains.
Meanwhile, James regularly risks decapitation on trains to Yorkshire, has an Apple Watch and is a huge fan of ‘The Princess Bride’.
Plus, Sam doesn’t enjoy the music of Prince, discusses the physics of ice skates and reveals that his Nan used to buy him some very unsuitable music when he was a kid….

Somehow Episode 199 also features a vast array of celebrities including Rutger Hauer, Nigella Lawson, Ryan Reynolds, Jet Li and David Bowie. If that ain't a TickyOff-shaped dinner party, I don’t know what is.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the atom splitters of wine delivery dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP199-ANIMAL_CROSSING.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:52pm EDT

Albert Einstein.
Marie Curie.
Paul Daniels.
All incredible scientists whose insights and incredible brains pushed humankind to ever greater heights. Add to this absolutely legendary braintrust two further names, James Of Ramsden and Sam O’Herlihy AKA The Gawddarn TickyOff Boyz. The reason their names deserve to sit alongside the science nerds named above? This episode of TickyOff.

Who else could conceive of a ghost named Derek? Who else could open a sandwich shop yesterday? Who else could slag off a beloved steak based restaurateur this much? Who else can update the humble fork to a new and spectacular level?

Get those wacky Nobel folk on the phone, The TickyOff Boyz just ordered a few Peace Prizes and a bag of medals. To go. Wake up.

This week esteemed baker, writer, photographer and general Flour Lord Dan Lepard is here. Dan creates mouth sounds for your ears on topics ranging from learning before the internet, eating at other people’s houses, wanting more anger in food writing and why restaurants should maybe stop trying to bake their own damn bread. The three mouths available for this week’s episode also get into the problem with ‘cucina povera’, food as a psychedelic drug, the world marmalade awards and the genealogy of classic restaurant dishes.

I get it, this much incredible content has probably already melted your grey brains out through your earholes but guess what? There’s even more packed in here, like a porky farce in a chicken’s chest cavity. Sam thinks he might have seen the Turin Shroud, Dan visits a number of Turin adult cinemas and James wonders on a decision with planet destroying possibilities:

Is it time for them to quit The Tickyoff for good?……..

This week’s episode is sponsored by the really lovely and kind people at dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP198-PROVABLE_IDIOCY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:14pm EDT

This week on Thee TickyOff Sam and James get straight into vast, slab-like topics such as James’s son’s first day of school, a weird/nice message on Instagram and the stressfest that is opening Sons + Daughters. James is so British he makes his own daughter poorly and Sam may have seen his first actual real-life, scientifically undeniable GHOST!!! It’s a hell of a Devon based tale.

Then Dishoom’s Naved Nasir arrives and the three mouths on aural display, display sounds (again, aurally) to your ears in a non-visual, an aural, manner. Naved dishes all on his origin story, giving away his recipe secrets in the new Dishoom cookbooks, building a great company culture and keeping control of an ever expanding menu. He also gets into how it feels to run such busy restaurants while maintaining what first attracted guests through the doors.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine chaps/fellows/gents dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP197-THE_SECRETS_OF_DISHOOM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:15am EDT

Firstly a little note, our mighty sandwich shop Sons + Daughters opens soon in Kings Cross! Listen to this episode on the way there and you may hear word of a TICKYOFF FAN EXCLUSIVE OFFER!!!

Now, on with the babble….

Guess who’s back?
A bunch of easily preventable diseases? Correct. Anti-vaxers, a plague upon yer unvaccinated houses.
Fascism? Correct. Fascists are, much like love is in mega hit ‘Love Is All Around’ by Wet Wet Wet, all around.
Twee and dull indie pop band Bombay Bicycle Club? Yep. I was surprised too, but they are indeed back and dropping some more twee and dull indie pop 'bangers' as we speak.

In a world where awful things keep coming back, we need something amazing to come back. Something magnificent and brilliant and mindblowing. Something like the goddamn TickyOff Boyz packing another galaxy humping episode of the solar system’s favourite podcast* The Goddamn TickyOff.

*We checked, and aliens think all that NPR nonsense, and Maron, and that buff fella and the freakynomics chap all SUUUUUCCCCKKK. We are massive in Saturn and could not be bigger on Pluto. Don’t write in to our email address that I’ve forgotten to tell me: ‘Oh well actually Pluto isn’t classified as a planet now actually I think you’ll find actually’. Because if I could remember the damn login then I’d reply: ‘Actually, don’t be unkind to Pluto. you can’t take that designation away just because someone cleaned the lens on Hubble and found that Pluto was actually just some birdmess on the glass that made it appear as if there was a planet there. That’s incredibly mean to them and at this point considering what we’re doing to Earth I’d say that our rock barely still qualifies as a planet too so pipe down planetary nomenclature pedant!’

Well, that really went somewhere.

Anyway, this week the Boyz slip right into some pig offal chat, Yorkie bars, holiday romances and the merits of cargo pants. James is irritated by a French fishmonger and Sam tries to impress a girl by killing someone.

If that wasn’t controversial enough Giles Coren shows up and……is Giles Coren. Unrepentant, Gary Lineker dissing, risotto loathing, music hating, peacock eating Giles Coren. He’s back from Greece, might be a secret vegan and while he may not enjoy eating dormice, he’s not shy of putting down a peacock or two.

This is what you’ve been missing all summer. While the world burned itself and its moral compass to cinders, The TickyOff was just waiting for its moment to return, like a soothing aural salve for the grim ills of humanity. Sound based Savlon for the sore graze of humankind. You don’t get that from bloody Maron now do you? Wake up.

This week’s episode is sponsored by intergalactic wine pedlars dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP196-EATING_PEACOCK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:41pm EDT

This week on TickyOff there is the usual mix of witty banter, interesting food tips and tricks, béarnaise technique, a deep dive into Escoffier’s legacy and how to help your children if they happen to be fussy eaters.
The above is a bald faced lie, despite the fact that my face is very much un-bald. It is haired. Non-bald. Like a rugged peach.

What there actually is a masturbating ghost ape, hawk excrement, Tilda Swinton eating rats, how to turn into a bat and turning Matt Berry into Kris Kristofferson.

Natasia Demetriou, star of ‘What We Do In The Shadows’, ‘Stath Lets Flats’ and ‘Ellie And Natasia’ is here and the TickyOff Boyz are nervous because they think she’s just swell.
They try and quell the nerves before she arrives with the aforementioned sexy chimp spectre and the raptor mess. Sam wants to know if birds can smell. James gets annoyed and laughs a lot.

Then Natasia arrives and yaps up a goddamn storm about auditioning, her deep love for free snacks, visiting a half built EuroDisney and she reads a moving passage from her teenage diary about her heartfelt concern for her friends when they started smoking in a playground.

There’s also room in this meaty stuffed goose of an episode for the Goss brothers eating Ginsters, pigeons eating Mighty White and Natasia comes out swinging at schools for clowns.

This week’s episode is sponsored by rare Giant Condors of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP195-FIRE_SEX_MONEY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:14am EDT

When the human race looks back upon the greatest mistakes that civilisation has made throughout the span of life upon planet Earth, the first part of this episode of TickyOff will no doubt take it’s shameful place upon the list.

Yes, Season 2 of ‘Prison Break’, Donald ‘Duck/Dick’ Trump, and Magpie on 10 Heddon Street were all calamitous nightmares. They were all utter disasterpieces that seemingly paid no heed to the vast swathes of human progress that came before them. None however are as awful as the first twenty minutes or so of the episode about to drip, grimly, into your ear things.
It could all have been avoided. Things get off to an alright start as the TickyOff boys open serious with a deep dive into a dreadful customer at Pidgin. However what follows can only be described as a aural pile up involving multiple failures of imagination, poor quality decision making and pretty base stupidity.
All is not lost however! You can skip forward to the arrival of this week’s guest, Pod Lord, Luke Moore. The minute he shows up, things get a huge amount better.

Luke spills mouth-made sound beans all over the damn place regarding his (nearly as popular as TickyOff) podcast, 'The Football Ramble', the wonders of Gosport, his deep love of pop music, and a dog he knows who ate a sock.

There’s also ‘Midsommar’ chat, Sir Richard Stein discussion and a goalkeeper who believed an ancient Mayan prophecy and missed training. Finally there’s time for the return of Who Eats What?, mousse love and the much missed aeroplane-eater Monsieur Mangetout.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the very best wine pedlars in all of Gaia, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP194-MOUSSE_LOVER_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:09pm EDT