The Kitchen Is On Fire (general)

It’s the 2020 TickyOff Christmas special and once more it looks like The Tickyoff Boyz could be flat out bading you farewell. Is Zoom podcasting the way to go? Should they hang up their podcasting spurs? Is there anywhere left for these two podcasting titans to go? It remains unclear.

Before that though there are topics. These topics are vast, as ever. They are dissected with the skills of a back room vet paid for his shoddy scalpel work with equally as cut rate narcotics. Speaking of dodgy veterinarian education, they also wonder a while, perhaps for the second time, on whether or not horses lay eggs.

Other animal chat topics include vertical whales, James’s capon and Sam sees a dead wolf by the side of the road.
Moving away from the animal kingdom they answer a bunch of questions from listeners, share some good news about Manny from Pidgin, are very touched by the success of the Pidgin Gofundme, and James asks an incredible question about living your life on Uranus.

All the above diamond caper content plus 'The Sopranos' vs 'The Wire', Sam wears pyjamas, a coda where they basically worship Jimi Famurewa for a while and James tells all about the night Fay Maschler came to Pidgin.

It’s TickyOff and if this is farewell, just be grateful, for the rest of your lives on Planet Earth, that you were lucky enough to hear it.

This episode is sponsored by wine titans dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP262-THE_END_PART_THREE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:37am EDT

Vibes are mixed up this week on the damn TickyOff. We begin with a solo intro by Sam which is as magnificent, insightful and flat out vibey as you’d expect without that heavy horse shaped vibe anchor weighing his vibe down.
This is followed by a secretly recorded meeting between The Pidgin Boyz and Pidgin GM and Head chef Jack and Hamish. They discuss reopening Pidgin, the potential for London to move into Tier 3 and some thoughts on the current hospitality vibe in London. So many vibes. We thought a little honest peek behind a Pidgin shaped curtain might be of interest.
We then move into the real vibe of the podcast with a brilliant guest, Rebecca Seal is here talking up a goddamn storm about her new book ‘Solo: How To Work Alone’. She also gets into poisonous printers, fractal patterns, why the 8 hour work day is a nonsense and why she carries a pot plant around with her at all times.
It’s some darn fascinating chat right here and as ever, you are at least somewhat, welcome.

Here is a link to the Pidgin GoFundMe campaign:

https://uk.gofundme.com/f/keep-pidgin-flying

Anything you can chip in would be greatly, vastly, mightily, appreciated.

Rebecca’s book ‘Solo: How To Work Alone’ is available via a hidden portal in the trunk of an old ash tree somewhere due east of here, also from bookshops both real, online, and probably imagined.

This episode is sponsored by wine tinsel dancers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP261-THE_PROBLEM_WITH_PASSION.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:39am EDT

This week it’s TickyOff with The TickyOff Boyz. And no one else. It’s been a tricky old week so James and Sam sit down late on Friday night to discuss said tricky old week. There’s beating a joke to death chat, James’s life in the 10 Cases kitchen discussion and a fair whack of Latin banter.
They wonder on whether or not cooks can actually cook, Sam bakes his ragus now and there’s a weird detour into a priest parking an ocean liner.

They also discuss this week’s last minute closure of Pidgin, their hopes for reopening this week, some sad news about a long term member of the Pidgin team, and try and find some positives in the current plight facing many in hospitality.

There’s also some detail on the upcoming Pidgin GoFundMe which is due to launch any day now including vouchers, wine tastings and a meal cooked by The TickyOff Two…..

This episode is sponsored by wine beasts dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP260-IT_TAKES_TWO_TO_TICKYOFF.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:21am EDT

It’s unclear whether this week’s guest was named after a drum or a popular sat nav system but ultimately, that is more than a moot point. He’s Tom Kerridge and he’s here flat out talking about the new ‘Hand And Flowers’ cookbook, meeting Miss Marple, how and why his restaurant group has expanded and his deep love for the extremes of life in the kitchen.

Before Tom arrives The TickyOff Boyz wonder whether or not their grandmothers actually liked them, whether or not they would ship their children to the police if they committed a crime and whether or not they remember Maradona’s Hand Of God goal. Meanwhile, James tells an incredibly erotic tale involving The Crusades, tagine, and some very frisky elderly folk.

All this plus, fun with meat-glue, The Doncaster Grill, St John at Christmas and Tom reveals exactly what Gary Neville eats….

This episode is sponsored by world cup of wine winners dropwine.co.uk

Tom’s new book ‘The Hand And Flowers Cookbook’ is available from sheep shearing stations across New Zealand and also probably from a bookshop or two. It’s a beauty. Go get it.

Oh and finally, the link to the boiled goose video discussed within the pod: https://youtu.be/8yvEYKRF5IA

Direct download: TKIOF-EP259-LEFT_FIELD_LIFE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:25am EDT

This week aural events upon Thee TickyOff kick off with some braised sausage chat from Sam and somewhat more dramatically James has been in a car crash. But don’t worry! Chill out. Sam is fine, the sausages were braised to perfection. Oh and James is alright too.

Then things take a unique turn in the grand and hallowed history of the pod….they talk golf. Now hold on to yr equine creatures! I know maybe you’re thinking, golf is gross, I hate golf, I have no interest in golf. However, bear with us here. This pod attempts and achieves the impossible, much as The TickyOff Boyz have done throughout their incredible podcasting career.

Fortunately they, and you, have a hell of a sensei on board to yap up a storm about why maybe golf isn’t quite what you think it is. That wise shaman is none other than New York Times bestselling author Tom Coyne calling in from Philadelphia.

Tom talks about walking the perimeter of Ireland playing every single golf course and eating many kebabs, finding community and less division than you might expect travelling across America, why he’s anti-mayo in salads and he also explains the wonders of the Burger Dog. There’s discussion as to why golf maybe isn’t just your grandfather’s game these days and he reveals the place he could eat at least ten Georgia peach ice cream sandwiches…

Finally, there’s the long awaited return of Who Eats What? and Tom tells the best ghost sighting tale you’ve ever had on TickyOff.

It’s TickyOff, it’s golf, it’s one of the loveliest people we’ve ever had on and you need it in yer ears people. Trust us. Wake up.

This episode is sponsored by the Gentle Ben of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk

Tom’s upcoming book ‘A Course Called America’ is available for preorder from all hardware and fancy dress shops….or just from all places that sell books. I can’t do everything for you. You decide.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP258-A_COURSE_CALLED_TICKYOFF.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:20am EDT

It’s been a while. Some things have happened on Planet Earth. None of them compare to this event. The mighty return on The TickyOff Two. The TickyOff Boyz. Mankind’s only hope. That’s right. The world may be on fire but so is the goddamn kitchen so wake up and strap yourself the hell in.

Since we last met Sam has failed to quit drinking, is in thrall to a fitness tracker, and again professes his love for the world’s finest steakhouse, Aberdeen Angus. James made a foul Halloween soda, is very upbeat and is again taking freebies from a very provincial steakhouse mini-chain called Crowless or Robinfew or something….

Fortunately there is someone else making a return, that person is the incredible Asma Khan who returns to TickyOff to talk Netflix, crummy landlords, hiding from her relatives in her kitchen, the problems with mentor loyalty and the myth of the tortured genius. She also reveals all about the new Darjeeling Express opening this very week.

All this plus, Asma says something very nice to the TickyOff Twits, there’s a dead crow in a jar and James’s Dad makes a truly grim sounding ice-cream involving Daim bars, and fish.

It’s TickyOff, an interstellar burst, and it’s back to save the world again.

This episode is sponsored by lockdown wine gods dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP257-THE_TICKYOFF_TWO_RETURN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:35am EDT

This episode of the greatest podcast series ever features comedian Alexander Owen talking up cruel childhood nicknames, the future of theatre, juggling during a Kafka performance, Zoom humour and his new series for Audible ‘The Special Relationship’. Alexander also reports in on what James was like in school and gives the inside skinny on just how wild the ‘Midsummer Murders’ cast WhatsApp group gets.

Before Alexander shows up James is feeling ill, made a terrible salad for some guests in his home and reveals all about staff food at The 10 Cases. Sam meanwhile lies about pate, wonders if anyone actually talks around a watercooler and compares his own restaurant to a dead body in the boot of a Volvo.

There’s also time to wonder if a skeleton can be ripped, discuss a musical about Arsene Wenger and ponder what moving house while wearing a giant prosthetic penis might be like.

It’s TickyOff and to be perfectly honest, that’s all you’re getting. Wake up.

This episode is sponsored by the same wine folk as always dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP256-SKELETOR.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:55am EDT

This episode of thine TickyOff features food science legend Harold McGee talking his new book all about the wonderful world of smell. Harold also talks Heston, his McDonalds order of choice, the time he whipped some eggs in a prize given to his wife, the most disgusting bit of research he’s ever done and how he cooks at home.

Before Harold shows up on the line from San Francisco, James reveals all about his new role in the kitchen at The 10 Cases and how a ramekin of mustard nearly caused a full blown temper tantrum. Sam meanwhile has been to Brat, talks his favourite word and gives a shout out to the new book by friend to the podcast Tim Hayward.

There’s also time to diss tomato risotto, congratulate Thom Yorke from Radiohead on his wedding and talk ugly wine bottles.

This episode is sponsored by wine bananas dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP255-NOSEDIVE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:02am EDT

We’re back with part two of a chat with the wondrous Petra Barran. This week things get even more serious as these three human mouths get properly audible on some flat out VAST topics. Diversity, recalibration, social capital, gatekeeping and the lack of space within capitalist structures. Wowzer…TickyOff gets serious….and anyone who thought that was ever likely has an irregular head.
Before Petra arrives there is of course time for some standard TickyOff nonsense. James has a new job and some new trousers. Sam has eaten a pie and had toothache. Oh and they begin what will no doubt be a long running discussion about ‘Tenet’ which predictably moves into another hefty dollop of Tom Hardy chat.
All of the above plus Petra and The TickyOff Boyz somehow move from The Ego Triangle into The Love Circle via some other Circles Of Fuckwittery…..

This episode is sponsored by love circles of wine delivery dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP254-TACTICAL_URBANISM_PART_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:48am EDT

This week’s episode is beamed into yer ear canals from The Garret where James and Sam are reunited upon the microphones in person for the first time since the worldwide covid calamity hellscape we all find ourselves in now, began.
Said microphones are actually bust so huge apologies for the shoddy sound this week, and last week. We assure you said garbage sonics will be remedied by next week.

Anyway, it’s worth battling the mildly irritating sound to hear about the Ramsden family’s very first visit to Sam’s house. Yep that’s right, James has never ever been to Sam’s house, until a week ago. This summit of the two mighty Families Of TickyOff was quite the affair, involving Sunday Sauce, a vomiting child, a free handbag and a vast Kilner jar full of orange squash.
There’s also discussion of another twitter kerfuffle involving an Italian restaurant and the pair ponder whether or not insects drink liquids.

After that highest of octane starts finally Petra Barran arrives. Among many other things Petra is the founder of Kerb, the street food facilitator par excellence. Petra discusses moving to New Orleans, being rather than doing, how to grow and surviving the recession. She is also incredibly wise upon some pretty grande topics such as financial empowerment, feeling a part of a place and why food is the canary in the coal mine for landlords and developers.

All in all, there was far too much we didn’t get chance to yap about so Petra will be back soon for part two of this pretty goddamn interesting triple mouthed babblefest.

This episode is sponsored by wine sellers of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP253-TACTICAL_URBANISM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:35am EDT

This week’s episode features author of ‘Which Wine When’ Claire Strickett talking publishing a book in lockdown, not drinking alone, demystifying wine and moving house during a pandemic. Claire and The TickyOff Boyz also manage to draw parallels between sweet wine and ‘Breaking Bad’, wonder whether snooty sommeliers exist anywhere other than Paris and ponder one of the greatest questions of our age: When should the cheese course appear?

Before Clare arrives upon the scene James discusses his recent conversion to becoming a flat-earther, his hatred for beaches and he mixes butter with tomatoes for a delightful dinner dish for his children. Sam busts out a mean Chris De Burgh and Roxette mashup and they both get into the price of cod if purchased from Will Hunting in Boston in the early 18th century.

All this plus Tim Henman as a pirate, Cuban Pete (yet again) and Sam wonders where the undertaker is taking James’s granny.

It’s TickyOff and it means a huge amount to humanity that it’s here.

This episode is sponsored by wine pirates dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP252-DANCING_WITH_DE_BURGH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:55am EDT

On the pod this week James begins proceedings with a hot head, a couple of bream and a wild fact about an ice cream brand. Sam meanwhile is braising some lamb necks, schooling James on ancient farming techniques and helping the aged by giving them his old clothes.
The TickyOff Two are considering opening an ice cream shop, reminiscing about an old character from the early days of Pidgin and also wondering about how cool Burial and heroin actually are.

Then an old friend of Sam’s arrives. Paul Wilson is a semi-big shot in the Wagamama empire and he’s here to talk lockdown and reopening for a large restaurant chain. We often have independent operators on the pod and we thought it worthwhile to get a take from someone who operates from deep within a vast and probably evil corporate behemoth. JOKE!

Oh and also, Paul played bass in Hope Of The States so he’s perfectly placed to reveal all about playing Guitar Hero on a tourbus and letting everyone know just how much of a nightmare it was to be in a band with Sam.

There’s also time for inclusion in hiring chat, ‘hail fellow well met’ discussion and hash brownies at the Tower of London yap.

This episode is sponsored by wine mamas and papas dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP251-TOOTY_FROOTY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:09am EDT

Humanity can rely upon The TickyOff Boyz for many things. Incredible insight, semi-raw sensuality, arguments about vegetables and wraith chat. They can also be relied upon to somehow forget amazing milestones. This week they’ve managed to utterly fail to notice that this is their 250th episode. Therefore, expect nothing more special than the usual unbelievably special high end, top shelf blend of sounds from mouths.

This week they’re talking the great reopening of restaurants post-lockdown. To that end The TickyOff Two have brought Emma Underwood, GM of Darby’s and Selin Kiazim chef and owner of Oklava and Oklava Bakery to tell all about their respective reopening experiences and their hopes for the future. Emma talks customer expectations and how their lockdown takeaway business went. Selin talks dropping service charge, luck and the need for a reset of the hospitality business.

Before these two wise and wonderful women arrive James has shaved his head again, lost his son (temporarily) again, and is cooking a rubbish vegetable again. Sam meanwhile is about to eat a chicken burger and gives a truly woeful, completely circular answer to a question. It’s appalling and he still feels ashamed of his fence sitting, noncommittal, wishy washy nonsense response.

Anyway, 250 episodes in, it’s still TickyOff and you still probably need to wake up.

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

Direct download: TKIOF-EP250-THE_PIDGIN_POSITION.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:57am EDT

This episode starts off with a song from James. It’s quite the thing. James is here after a day of some quality DIY commitment, Sam is not loving beer, there’s carbonara chat and cannelloni yap too. This is followed up with some ‘reopening of the pubs’ discussion, Sam’s father in law’s digital sea sickness and the sad demise of Cafe Rouge. Before this week’s guest arrives there’s also some No Seat Christopher Nolan verbals and Sam has a weirdly erotic dream…..

Praise be that aforementioned guest Jimi Famurewa shows up in the nick of time to talk lockdown, making his mum happy, Kid and Play, what the role of a food critic looks like post-pandemic and what happens when one Googles themselves.

There’s also time to discuss the fall of ex-Lucky Peach Editor Peter Meehan*, the hopefully inevitable fall of toxic food world twat energy culture and Jimi discusses what and where he feels his lane is in food writing.

*To be clear, which this episode is not, (due to the loss of some audio to Zoom glitching), all three of us stand in complete sympathy and solidarity with anyone who had to deal with the grim sounding Peter Meehan. Listening back maybe it’s not crystal clear but the part where I (Sam) said exactly that, has been lost to the digital ether and I wanted that to be made, if required, abundantly clear. Ta, and apologies for any confusion.

This episode is sponsored by wine seat users dropwine.co.uk
Direct download: TKIOF-EP249-THE_STEALTH_KAYAK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:12am EDT

This episode features Eddy Tejada and Matthew Scott from Hot 4 U creating a vast swathe of mouthsounds all about setting up their food delivery business in the midst of the pandemic. They talk learning on the job, friendly accountants, eight hundred potato bears and cooking from the hip. They also tell all about how they really need to start writing things down and buy a calendar.

Before they arrive the weather is hot, the TickyOff Boyz still can’t agree on the future of Pidgin and Sam has parked in a peculiar carpark. Differing vibes for the respective TickyOff Brides this week too as Rosie Ramsden tucks into a healthy week and Abbie Herlihy reveals that she has never ever eaten a chilli con carne.

All of the above plus, there’s also more than enough time for Barbara Cartland to jump an egg shaped shark, Sam wonders on exactly what the Catholic Church’s position is on sexual congress and they both create potentially the greatest (or most foul) method of omelette cookery you have ever heard.

This is TickyOff, and if it aint broke, then it aint TickyOff.

Check out Hot 4 U here: @hot4u_ldn

This episode is sponsored by wine churchgoers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP248-MOUTH_COOKERY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:32am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features a third appearance by Will Beckett of the mighty Hawksmoor empire. Said steak and great service empire has, like other lesser empires such as The TickyOff Boyz meagre cut-rate ‘empire’, been shut for ages because of the goddamn coronavirus nightmare. Now however, Will and his bird of prey themed meat house gang are working on how reopen safely into the new world of hospitality.

Will talks distancing, Hawksmoor At Home, masks, trying to stay optimistic, trust in operators and why his partner in Hawksmoor, Huw Gott, is very lovely and very persuasive.
He also tells all about Today’s Special, a charitable endeavour Huw is in the process of putting together to help charities with covid related shortfalls in funding.

So all the above sounds very serious, and it is. Gravitas, intelligent discourse, calm heads prevailing. We know this is not why you come to TickyOff however. Fear not! Before William shows, James is stuck on a hard shoulder for seven hours, has seen elderly folk kissing in the deli aisle and thinks all humankind is a cow in a field or something. Sam meanwhile wonders if body heat alone can cook an egg, in your bed.

This episode is sponsored by wine bird of prey dropwine.co.uk

Please visit the below to check out Todays Special:

Instagram: @_todays.special

Twitter: @specials_todays

Direct download: TKIOF-EP247-GREY_BUTTERFLIES.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:14am EDT

Listen up listeners. This episode of the greatest podcast about food that humankind has ever even dreamed of is here. The gratitude y’all must/should have coursing through yer veins means there may not be room enough within those veins for blood! Be careful. If you feel lightheaded, lay down. If you die, lay down too. I guess you will lay down naturally to be fair, if you die. Anyway, don’t blame us.

This episode features a second appearance by (possibly) Sam’s favourite person on earth (Apologetic shout out to his children, wife, family and James) deputy editor of Q Magazine Niall Doherty. Niall yaps up a goddarn storm on his legendary airport beers, spatchcocking chickens and how to approach tough subjects in interviews. There’s also a solid ten minutes of connection issues and bad sound which I left in because it made me laugh.
Niall also tells perhaps the greatest celebrity hangtime story you’ve ever heard which somehow manages to include Noel Gallagher, Joe Biden, Peroni beers and a magician in a perspex box.

Before Niall drops by Sam has had a huge surprise, an Alex Turner moment and no sausages. James has had a weird skin condition, has a theory about Blue predicting the pandemic and may have had a traybake.

All this plus Frank Sinatra, a Coldplay related hair transplant and a decent amount of borscht chat.

This is TickyOff and what doesn’t kill you might make you stronger, or might kill you in the end. It’s tough to tell.

This episode is sponsored by wine para para paradise dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP246-A_RUSH_OF_BLOOD_TO_THE_HEAD_OF_HAIR.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:12am EDT

‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for?” So asked brother of Guy, Lionel Richie, in his 1964 hit cover of Adele’s ‘lover as ghost’ spooky hit song ‘Hello’.
Now, Lionel R raises a more than interesting question here. It’s all a question of perception. Let’s start here:

1. Is the person you are looking for Lionel Richie?
2. Is the person you are looking for Margot Henderson?

This gets more than complicated at this stage in that we now must consider whether Lionel is asking this question of humankind itself or merely addressing the globe spanning vastness of the TickyOff listenership direct.

It’s tough to tell. I’ll leave you to ponder on that and wonder why Lionel might choose to impersonate Margot Henderson of Rochelle Canteen, Rochelle At The ICA, The French House back in the day, author of ‘You’re All Invited’ and all round legend of London hospitality.

Anyway, my train of thought has completely derailed and I'm very sorry for the stupid digression above. Margot Henderson is on the pod!

Margot tells all about life in lockdown at the Henderson’s, mould on the march on the Mall (that’s a weird line), her move from New Zealand to London and the perils of skinning eels. She also talks about her favourite cooking utensils, turnip cake disasters, sausages with artist Sarah Lucas and getting a certificate from Pizza Express.

Before Margot arrives James is wearing some sort of animal on his head and really digs Michael Bolton but might be less keen on US policy hawk John Bolton. Sam has just woken up from a nap, once made a veloute and has never seen ‘The English Patient’.

Who knows what in all hell any of the above means, I feel like I may have hit my head before writing this nonsense. Anyway, it’s TickyOff and if you don’t know what that means by now then you will never ever ever know me.*

*Shout out Simply Red. Real talk.


This episode is sponsored by wine stars dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP245-POTATO_TECHNOLOGY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:55am EDT

Hello. This is TickyOff. This is episode two hundred and forty four, If it was a fruit, this episode would be a peach fruit. Peaches are a very rare fruit which I believe is grown in cans. Peaches are also covered in the fur of human people. This fur is not harmless. It is sweet and delicious. Anyway, that’s peaches, this is TickyOff, which is also sweet and delicious and covered in human fur, but is not a fruit. It’s a podcast. Wake up.

This episode features Katie and Rick Toogood, the restaurateurs behind the brilliant Prawn on The Lawn in London and also in Padstow. K and R get into buying a restaurant while drunk, having their first child a week before lockdown, fish being in fashion and going up against The Codfather himself, Rick Stein, on his home turf.

Before the Toogoods show, James talks for a long time about Adrian Chiles and picks his favourite end of the world scenario. Sam meanwhile bangs on about the theme song from ‘Terminator 2’ and has eaten a cake his daughter baked. All this plus another serious chat about their business. This time whether or not they should change the name of Pidgin.

This episode is sponsored by wine duckers and dancers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP244-THE_CODFATHER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:26am EDT

You weren’t expecting it. Neither were we. But here we are. Listening to a pretty sensible, serious, thoughtful episode of the generally wacky and dumb TickyOff.
This episode features two guests, The Goddamn TickyOff Boyz.
Said boyz of T’Off basically have a disagreement about the future of their business for forty odd minutes. James thinks Pidgin should be one thing. Sam thinks it should be a thing that is a different thing to the thing that James thinks it should be.
Neither of them think that Pidgin should be The Thing. Don’t be silly. Pidgin is a restaurant, not an alien creature in the ice looking to do some serious physical, and emotional, damage to Kurt Russell in a cool parka.

Anyway, this episode is for anyone looking to hear two people yap honestly about how their restaurant can hopefully survive, adapt, and possibly thrive in a hostile environment….the more I think about it actually, maybe Pidgin IS The Thing!

All this honest disagreement plus: David Foster Wallace, Thai sausages, the death obsessed people of Brittany, thousand year old apple trees and Sam looks like Aslan.

It creeps, it crawls, it strikes without warning! It’s TickyOff.

This episode is sponsored by the Goldie Hawn of wine delivery services dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP243-OPEN_TO_BEING_OPEN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:08am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and all round wonderful being of a human kind Ravinder Bhogal. Ravinder talks her initial breakthrough into the world of food, fighting for her restaurant site, supper clubs and pop ups and some dangerous geese in Kenya. She also gets into her celebration of immigrant foods, the mini economies that homesickness can create and some utterly life changing guava fruit.

Before Ravinder arrives Sam shares a recipe for Big Tray Chicken, has been singing about carrots in the supermarket and has seen a bottomless pond. James meanwhile is very garlicky, reveals the aphrodisiacs of the ancient Greeks and learns all about French synth wizard Jean Michel Jarre.

All of the above top drawer content plus Tom Hardy as a punchy Roman, Ross Kemp’s podcast and another sensual instalment from Barbara Cartland.

It’s TickyOff. And that’s all we have right now.

This episode is sponsored by the very straight roads and advanced plumbing pioneers of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP242-GLADIATOR_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:17am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features food writer and cookbook author Rachel Roddy Zooming in from Rome. Rachel has just had her first restaurant meal post-lockdown, explains all about a pet tortoise called Secret Agent and seemingly suggests that all Romans ever eat is tongue. Rachel also describes growing up in her Grandmother’s pub, a delightful town in Sicily famous for its oil refinery and discusses the similarities between Roman and British cuisine.

Before Rachel roams in from Rome, James has visited yet another weird woodland with his kids, bought a load of cheap Budweiser and coughed in a shop. Which people loved. Sam meanwhile has visited a post office and learned from Barbara Cartland that he really should start eating honey.

There’s also time for great beer-based scenes in movies, a briefly fashionable blue cheese and Rachel pretty much trolls The TickyOff Two by bringing up Magpie.

This episode is sponsored by wine hive dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP241-TONGUE_SANDWICH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:31am EDT

‘Search for the hero inside yourself' sang M People on their third single from their multi platinum selling album ‘Bizarre Fruit’. Here at TickyOff Industries we’re not the sort to go around telling people what to do. If you want to listen to Heather Small’s instruction and look inside yourself somewhere for a hero then go right ahead. That’s your shout. We would gently suggest however that perhaps a hero can be located somewhere far more accessible, and lets be honest, more hygienically. Said hero is Ainsley Harriott and while he might be found in your heart, he can definitely be found on this darn skybusting world shaking episode of Thee Most Holy TickyOff.

That’s right people, wake up. Ainsley Harriott is here. And The TickyOff Two finally meet someone as magnetic, charming and lovely as themselves.

Ainsley tells all about his dog Shy Basmati Bob, his pianist father, alternative cabaret, cricket and sexy James Martin in a bandana. He talks about soul searching during lockdown, what it’s like being Ainsley Harriott in a supermarket and the ups and downs of his long career in food.

The TickyOff Boyz also hassle Ainsley on what he cooks at home, where he likes to eat out and whether or not he rocks Ready Steady Cook reunions with the legendary likes of Paul Rankin and Anthony Worrall Thompson.

Before Ainsley shows, James witnesses a horse attack on a dog and has run a ludicrous distance. Meanwhile Sam has wet hair and a book about Posh And Becks.

All this plus, Ainsley’s grandfather’s face is attacked by a ghost!

This episode was a vast pleasure to record and we couldn’t be more grateful to Ainsley for his time. Now you can experience this vast pleasure and be grateful to us for giving it to you. You are welcome.

This episode is sponsored by wine red tomatoes dropwine.co.uk

Please do visit our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31987206

Direct download: TKIOF-EP240-AINSLEY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:07am EDT

This spectacular episode of The TickyOff features self confessed ‘anal pastry’ legend Calum Franklin of The Holborn Dining Rooms absolutely mouth-audioing all over the damn place about pies, craftsmanship, Ginsters, time pieces made of sausages and making many a pie to help the NHS. Calum also has no idea how old he is which may have something to do with the nature of chefs and their memories.

Before the C-Frank shows James reads another highly erotic recipe from Barbara Cartland, is covered in his daughter’s blood and is once more eating some salmon fish. Sam is waking up too early and eating tom yum. Oh and they discuss the whole Alison Roman disasterpiece…

This episode is sponsored by Team Teigen wine merchants dropwine.co.uk

Calum’s charity pies can be found here: drings.co.uk

Calum himself is on Instagram: @chefcalum

Direct download: TKIOF-EP239-SAUSAGE_CLOCK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:16am EDT

Episode two hundred and thirty eight of the damn TickyOff is what they call a doozy. I am however concerned that I have no idea who they are and what exactly a doozy is. Anyway, it is what it is, just do it, I’m lovin’ it, etc.

The T-Boyz begin irritated at tedious people and the low standard of pandemic gags on Twitter., James has a new bike and may have taken his children to a dogging spot. Sam meanwhile makes a ‘vegetarian’ kimchi jigae and buys some mashed potato.

Then Phil Bracey (@philbracey) of P Franco, Bright and Peg renown shows up and these three legends of East London based hospitality begin by trading sad memories of the day they had to close all their restaurants dude to this accursed viral contagion of doom.
Fortunately they then move on to cheerier topics, restarting your career discovering east London, becoming a chef kingmaker of sorts, huge early success and the hype which comes along with it.

There’s also saffron chat, bay blindness and a deep dive into restaurant communications at Pidgin.

This is TickyOff and it’s pretty much all you have left so appreciate it.

This episode is sponsored by wine hypebeasts dropwine.co.uk

Phil’s fine establishments can be found on Instagram: @bright_restaurant @pfranco_e5 @peg.london @noblefineliquor

Finally, do visit our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31987206&fan_landing=true

Direct download: TKIOF-EP238-THE_CROCODILE_HUNT.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:54am EDT

This episode of TickyOff is a true first for humankind. Unlike the moon landings and ventriloquism however, this is real. It’s the first transatlantic episode. That’s right. The TickyOff Two thumb their noses at many vast bodies of water, none more so than the Atlantic. They fling their mouthsounds from these foul green shores of Albion across that pathetic puddle of an ‘ocean’ and in return, from Gotham City aka NYC, they hear the mouthsounds of Youngmi Mayer, comedian and Mission Chinese Food co-owner.

Youngmi brings her usual searing honesty to her life in lockdown, dating online, swearing in front of her son, what it means to be ‘chaotically single’, shutting down the Mission restaurants in San Francisco and New York, and why Beach House are the true sound of dating hookups in 2020.

Before Youngmi arrives Sam looks nice, calls James a turtle and cooked a dish by a disgraced chef. James meanwhile reads a grim recipe by Barbara Cartland and was insulted in the street.

All this plus TickyOff takes another one of it’s patented controversial issue stances, this week they are very anti a certain war criminal. And they all agree that lockdown would be very easy indeed if you got to do it with Tom Hardy.

This episode was a damn joy to record and it will be a damn joy for your ears so wake up and tip it in ‘em.

This episode is sponsored by the true romance novelists of wine dropwine.co.uk

Youngmi can be found on Twitter and Instagram @ymmayer, her podcast @feelingasianpodcast and Instadate Live @instadatelive

Direct download: TKIOF-EP237-CHAOTICALLY_SINGLE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:29am EDT

It’s been a tough week for the TickyOff Boyz with not a whole lot of positives to kick off with. However, things could well be looking up, James has some solo chop-time upcoming alongside a snack of squid. In other cephalopod news Sam heard rumour of some cuttlefish nearby but didn’t find them and instead spent too much money on tomatoes.

Moving past these epic rubbery seafood tales they get to talking bookshelves and the books upon them. Sam bought a fine book from Alcatraz and James reads a lovely passage about a salmon fish from a book he describes as ‘presciently old fashioned’. Delightful.

Then Miles Kirby of Caravan arrives and is seemingly partaking in the pod from the set of ‘Silence Of The Lambs’. Miles is about to whip up some gong bao chicken which sets all three of them reminiscing about the awesome Sichuan cuisine at Bar Shu and what a wonder (friend of the podcast) Fuchsia Dunlop is.

Miles also delivers mouth delivered audio on the Caravan origin story, working for Peter Gordon, and flying to Germany to cook venison in hypermarkets….

There’s also some serious chat on transitioning out of the kitchen, the stress and pressure of personal guarantees to set up restaurants and Caravan’s plans for moving into delivery during these grim old pandemic shaped days.

This episode is sponsored by wine shaped wine delivery kings dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP236-BAD_TOWNS_EVERYWHERE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:55am EDT

Right, guess what? It’s still lockdown and jokers are still joking on with jokey joke sourdough. Therefore, The TickyOff Boyz decided as a public service to invite on a real bread whisperer to school you jokers. Martha Delacey (@marthadelacey) is here and she’s upending a yeasty, grainy, floury, rising, dutch oven full of bread related knowledge upon yr joker heads. Martha schools all on not following recipes, calming the hell down and her experiences setting up online classes during lockdown.

Before Martha arrives James befriends Ainsley Harriott, bigs up a pretty weak Beatles album and (it says here in my notes) ‘channels a parrot’. I have less than no idea what that means. You work it out. Let’s be honest, it’s coronavirus and I’m probably off my head.

In other ‘news’ Sam is very rude about an upcoming guest and has started running again, there’s new adverts at the start and they talk about meatballs. If that ain’t groovy, I don’t know what is.

This episode is sponsored by wine shapers and bakers dropwine.co,uk

For more information on all things Martha: marthadelacey.com/welcometothemuffkitchen

Direct download: TKIOF-EP235-RUBBER_SOUL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:18am EDT

The episode of TickyOff that lies before your ears contains four mouths.
Two of these mouths belong to the TickyOff Boyz. One each. One apiece.
The remaining two mouths belong to the TickyOff Boyz wives.

You come to each episode of TickyOff searching for qualities you cannot find in other podcasts. Traits such as speedy wit, semi-raw sexuality, towering intelligence upon such subjects as ghosts and skillets. Some people would tell you that these things do not in fact exist upon, within, The TickyOff. These people are wrong. At least for this one episode. With their wondrous brides alongside them The TickyOff Two reach new heights of wonderment for the betterment of humankind….

Before they arrive James kicks off at bathtime, sends an aggy email and goes on a rant about the much misunderstood service charge issues facing hospitality. Sam talks about Blink 182 again.

Then Abbie Herlihy and Rosie Ramsden arrive and it becomes very clear, very quickly, that the true power behind the TickyOff Throne, belongs to these two.

Abbie talks about her kids cooking school Kitcheneers and how her parents met inside a windmill. Rosie tells all about her life drawing supper club Charcoal and why she’d pick Goose over Maverick. Meanwhile Sam is puerile, did something grim with a tin of tuna and is attacked by a crow while inside a tent. James disses toastie machines, has a vast collection of decorative napkin rings and doesn’t understand Monopoly.

There might not be a vaccine for coronavirus just yet, but while we wait, there’s TickyOff. Be grateful.

This episode is sponsored by wine test and tracers dropwine.co.uk

For more information on Kitcheneers please visit: www.kitcheneers.net

For further information on Charcoal please visit: http://www.rosieramsden.com/charcoal-art-club

Direct download: TKIOF-EP234-MUM_SOUP.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:42am EDT

The very definition of ‘scenes’ on this episode of TickyOff, Sam has grown a moustache. It is foul. Be grateful you cannot see it and only have to hear about it. Meanwhile, James has cooked a disappointing lunch, they both discuss a controversial article by chef Gabrielle Hamilton and Sam completely misunderstands the plot of ‘The Lion King’.

Then author Evie Wyld arrives for her second appearance on the damn pod. Evie’s mouth creates noises which we, and you, interpret via human ears. These noises concern a naked son obsessed with Transformers, not writing during lockdown, socially distanced hangtimes, and how it’s been releasing her new novel ‘The Bass Rock’ into the current pandemic-screwed world.

There’s also a fair measure of serious chat in this episode too regarding looking after your kids, domestic abuse and vulnerable people. But fear not, there’s more than enough time for a long sausage discussion and plenty of jigsaw puzzle chat too.

Hmmm…..TickyOff you say? Yeah, I do. Wake up.

This episode is sponsored by wine peeps dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP233-SLIM_BLOODY_BOOKS_BY_WOMEN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:31am EDT

This episode of TickyOff features a second appearance by Tim Anderson, (@cheftimanderson) chef owner of Nanban and cookbook writer. Tim talks recording the Kitchen Cabinet during lockdown, using up strange flours in his pantry, and the benefits of laugh tracks. Tim also gets into disliking restaurant food despite being a restaurant owner, katsu sandos, caponata and selling his plasma to buy an iPod.

Before Tim arrives, James tries to think of his five perfect films, attempts to film a potato advert and reveals to all exactly what ‘The Rule Of The Twat’ is. Sam meanwhile has a rant about a doomy article, nearly smashes a window, has been teaching his kids to play high stakes poker and is convinced he’s a better guitarist than Prince was.

All of this top drawer, and shelf, content plus Ainsley Harriot, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci and Drew Barrymore.

If TickyOff was a human, and you were a cannibal, you’d eat it.

This episode is sponsored by the wine delivery version of that ancient old fella walking circles around his garden dropwine.co.uk

Finally, please visit our Patreon site and throw us a few pennies if you can spare 'em for all this incredible life changing content we give you....you're welcome. lol. etc.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP232-ANIMAL_HUMANS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:28am EDT

This episode of Thine TickyOff (we do it all for you because we are kind and generous) features Joe Warwick creating mouthsounds, with his mouth of all things. It’s quite the performance. Joe is fresh from a tricky Instagram Live debut with Rene Redzepi of Noma and Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy in NYC. Joe makes it very clear that his appearance on TickyOff is a far greater honour than yapping it up with the ant man and the veggie botherer…

Before Joe arrives, Sam ‘reveals’ he’s hungover and once more ‘reveals’ he doesn’t like salmon very much. James ‘reveals’ that he made burgers and also ‘reveals’ that you can now buy a kit with which to make burgers at home. This kit chat then devolves in to a long joke that seems likely to only be found amusing by the TickyOff Boyz themselves and no one else….apologies.

Then Joe shows and these three bros get into The Strokes. More specifically how good a singer Julian Casablancas is and whether or not their new record is any cop.

There’s a long discussion about runners and the etiquette of running during lockdown and Roger Moore comperes the World’s 50 Best Awards. They also cover the fall of influencers, apologising to your children and the hope that we could maybe come out the other side of this crisis a little healthier.

Is this it? No, it’s TickyOff.

This episode is sponsored by fab wine folk dropwine.co.uk

Also, if you could possibly spare a penny or two for the pod in these tricky as all hell times, we'd be most grateful. Hit up our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31987206

Direct download: TKIOF-EP231-ZOOM_ON_FIRE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:29am EDT

This episode of The World’s Greatest and Most Popular Podcast Ever Made, Thee TickyOff, features Alex Andreou, writer, cook, man about Twitter and a whole bunch of other stuff no doubt. Alex calls in from Mykonos to discuss burning bread, elongating time, preparing snails for dinner, annoying Italians and some high grade tekkers on how to make a Greek burger. There’s also some very honest, and if I’m being honest, very moving, chat from Alex about caring for his mother in the late stages of her dementia. Maybe you don’t come to TickyOff for that kinda yap, well wake up people. Quiver, meet yet another kinda arrow!

Before Alex arrives James and Sam find time to discuss James’s lovely skull, Sam’s new found urge to Fridge Forage, an extremely dated burger recipe (Shout out to Jimmy O’s Botham Burger!) and they wonder on whether or not horses eat hemp.

It’s still TickyOff, you’re still in lockdown. Wake up.

This episode is sponsored by wine twinkle twinkle little stars dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-THE_SNAIL_AND_THE_WAIL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:34am EDT

James has shaved his head. It looks decent. Sam has recently eaten a saveloy in a mildly disturbing manner. And with a foundation like that, how could The TickyOff Boyz fail to deliver yet another episode of podcastical genius?
Spoiler alert, they don’t fail. It’s an absolute aural triumph that the world should be very grateful for indeed.
Today they are ably assisted by food writer Jonathan Nunn. Jonathan discusses lockdown forcing him back into the kitchen, his fear of baking and how much weight he’s lost since being unable to dine out every night.
He also talks about Vittles, his newly launched food newsletter, why the sourdough trope is ultimately a good thing and why platforming new voices in food is vital.
There’s also time to discuss a controversial piece, the slow destruction of London communities and what in all hell anyone hopes the food world will or could look like post Coronavirus.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine wanderers across London dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP229-KEYSER_SOZE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:15am EDT

This Easter episode of Thee Most Holy TickyOff features a second appearance by chef and owner of King restaurant in NYC, Jess Shadbolt (@jessieshad) Jess is in lockdown in the wilds of Essex fighting over her mother’s stove, drinking lots of rose and watching Floyd get drunk across France in some relaxing British cookery television classics.
Jess describes the coronavirus shutdown of NYC, how she’s trying to keep her business afloat, the coming together of the US hospitality industry and her fears for the future of New York’s dining scene.

Before all this absolutely top drawer Jess content there’s more than enough time for Sam to startle a pig and for James to potentially poison himself.

Finally, somehow, there is also room in this episode for a dream about Rene Redzepi and a horse and Sam reveals the secrets of ‘Maff’s Meat Drawer’…..

It’s TickyOff, and it is risen, like a dough of some sort.

This episode is sponsored by wine delivery merchants dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP228-TERRITORIAL_KITCHENS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:28am EDT

This was the last episode of TickyOff recorded within the hallowed walls of the hallowed TickyOff Towers. Said episode was recorded at the start of the coronavirus hell that we all find ourselves in. Please forgive any comments underestimating the challenge that would present itself to us all following this. We didn’t know. We ain’t Marty McFly. And James ain’t Doc Brown.

Anyway, its a great damn episode. Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley of the Ottolenghi empire are here to talk their new book ‘Falastin’, nature vs nurture, facial tattoos and a rat-catcher named Spiderman.

Sam wants to open a Nobu in Malibu. James wants to work with other people’s wives. Sami may want to open a swingers club and Tara was obsessed with Buddy Holly.

It’s TickyOff, and while it fully respects social distancing measures, it flips the bird at people being bland.

This episode is sponsored by wine fellows dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP227-THE_DAY_BEFORE_TOMORROW.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:56am EDT

John Craven of 'Newsround' fame is sadly not on Thee TickyOff today. If I’m being entirely honest then I can’t remember why I named this episode ‘John Craven’. All I know is that John Craven is mentioned at some stage. I wonder how John Craven is. I hope he’s holed up with his loved ones and taking good care of himself. Great jumpers, great news related mouth sounds, great guy.

Anyway, J Crave ain’t here but we have someone far better, Zoe Adjonyoh is here. Zoe utilises her mouth to create noises that we can hear via our ears. These sounds concern such topics as growing up Irish/Ghanaian, the community kitchen she’s in the process of setting up, protectionism and tokenism, and also hang-gliding in America.

Before Zoe shows up, The TickyOff Two chat up some solid gold content, there’s a very wet lasagne, Taika Waititi at Sons + Daughters, nasal science and James’s triumphant return to Twitter.

Also, to help with Zoe's crowdfunder please go here:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/were-ghana-feed-vulnerable-people-help-our-kitchen-stay-open

This episode is sponsored by wine gods and monsters dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP226-JOHN_CRAVEN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:49am EDT

Yeah yeah yeah. TickyOff is back. Wake up. What else do you have to do with your time?
Today James and Sam kick off with some lockdown boozing chat, a little Michael Gove yap and they wonder a while on whether their wives should guest upon the TickyOff.

Then Ryan Riley of Life Kitchen appears before them digitally via the new found miracle of video conferencing technology and those two digital mouths become three digital mouths and all three mouths speak, digitally on a number of topics. These include Ryan’s origin story to setting up Life Kitchen following the death of his mother, his move back up North, going on ‘Lorraine’ and what to do with one’s hands on ‘Saturday Kitchen’.
There’s also a deep dive into creating flavour in dishes for people with compromised palates due to medical treatment, synergistic umami and a taco made from pineapple.

All this plus, Sam yet again thinks baked potatoes are far too hot and James makes soup for his kids. Wow. Hot spuds and bad soup equals good TickyOff times.

This episode is sponsored by wine delivery folk for humanity dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP225-THE_ONE_POUND_SIDE_BET.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:05am EDT

Today on the damn TickyOff cook and author Jack Monroe is back. Jack reveals all about their hashtag #jackmonroeslockdownlarder and what’s been going on at Tin Can Cook HQ since the coronavirus lockdown began. It seems to involve twenty one hour work days, an undercut rapidly growing out of control and the wearing of many hats. Jack also discusses maintaining their sobriety during this crisis, why stewed steak is a great product and wondering why the Daily Mail is now being nice.

Before Jack arrives via the digital ether, James and Sam go deep on their initial experiences of lockdown with their respective families, homeschooling victories and failures, the Diego Maradona documentary and what James found when he cleared out under the stairs.

There’s also time for Sam’s hair to reach ridiculous proportions, James quotes a great joke by a disgraced comedian and they all wonder just how people are managing to keep up affairs while confined to their houses.

It’s TickyOff, and whatever happens, it’ll survive.

Today’s episode is sponsored by wine pedlars for the end of days dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP224-APOCALYPSE_JELLYFISH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:54am EDT

The second episode in yer ears this week was recorded, in a first for TickyOff Technologies, via Zoom. So forgive the occasionally ratty sound quality, we’ll get better. One positive is, for anyone who dislikes James, his signal sucked so he vanishes for large swathes of the pod. However he does then pop up near the end with an absolute worldy of a zinger concerning Richard Gere.

In the midst of this technological ballyhoo, praise be to writer, restaurateur, journalist and all round legend Tim Hayward who shows up virtually to regale all, and indeed sundry, with word from his family bakery Fitzbillies in Cambridge, project dishes and the sheer joy of creative labour.

There’s obviously a bit of early coronovirus chat but then these three digitally united mouths make digitally transmitted mouth sounds on a bunch of calming and actually pretty damn interesting topics such as the origin of tuna melts, the wonder of an assembly line and also, why TickyOff is so damn vital in a time of crisis.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine suppliers to locked down folk everywhere dropwine.co.uk

Also we’d be most touched if you could possibly visit our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31987206&fan_landing=true

Direct download: TKIOF-EP223-A_BRIEF_HISTORY_OF_THE_AMERICAN_DINER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:27am EDT

This episode of TickyOff was recorded before the sweeping shut down of restaurants across the UK. Humble apologies therefore for any out of date statements. Having said that, if you’re listening to TickyOff for well considered and cutting edge thoughts…you’ve got bigger problems to focus on.

This week James and Sam are joined by Neil Rankin, chef and owner of Simplicity Burger on Brick Lane in London.
Neil utilises his mouth to create sounds concerning good agriculture, why he decided to get into vegan burgers and a childhood haunting in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile James takes a swing at a beloved institution and Sam has a weird idea for a panacotta recipe.

There’s also time for quantum mechanics and a tag team wrestling match.

It’s Tickyoff, and in times like these, sometimes there’s nothing better.

Wake up. And self-isolate. And wash your hands. And don’t stockpile.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine suppliers for the apocalypse dropwine.co.uk

Also, this:

***Hi everyone. Crumbs. You'd think we'd be amused by an actual ghost town but it's not really very funny anymore. We've both come off payroll and are doing our best to keep the roof on at S+D and Pidgin. We're also going to keep doing the podcast because we feel everyone is going to need a little light entertainment in these coming months. Guests may be hit and miss and can join at their discretion. Anyway. At the risk of going a little cap-in-hand, we've set up a Patreon account.

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31987206&fan_landing=true

That means you can support the podcast - and, you know, us - by bunging us a few quid each month. Absolutely no pressure at all but if you felt moved to do so then we would be eternally grateful and will give you a shout out on the show. Thanks so much.***

Direct download: TKIOF-EP222-LEATHER_GLOVES.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

This special episode of TickyOff features Will Beckett of the Hawksmoor restaurant group discussing the impact of the Covid-19 virus on the world of hospitality.
James, Sam and Will discuss the impact on Pidgin, Sons + Daughters and the Hawksmoor restaurants around the country. They answer some questions received through Twitter and Instagram and discuss the hospitality industry’s response.
This is an extremely fast moving situation and perhaps TickyOff isn’t the perfect medium to discuss it. We felt however that a special episode to address honestly the challenges we and others are facing in the food world might be interesting to people.
Do keep yourselves safe and well, and fear not, normal dumb and wacky TickyOff service will resume soon.

Direct download: TKIOF-THE_CORONAVIRUS_EPISODE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:40pm EDT

Today on TickyOff, the TO2 begin with no energy, a frog orgy, a roti to the face of a small screaming child and some really interesting hat chat. With a power start like this, there’s only one way to go, up. Up in a lift, as Sam rambles on about lifts in restaurants for way too long.

The reason behind all these elevator mouth sounds is soon revealed when this week’s guest arrives. Patrick Powell is the chef behind Allegra in Stratford and Allegra has itself a fine lift situation. Fortunately for all concerned lift chat is soon left behind and three mouths in three human faces begin sounding out human words concerning treating your staff right, inspiration from Melbourne, celery and the up and coming great restaurants of Ireland.

Patrick dishes up tales from his days as head chef at The Chiltern Firehouse including Bono trying to find the toilet and Bruce Springsteen’s deep fascination with restaurant HVAC systems. Patrick also discusses opening Allegra, building a great kitchen, Star Trek, and bungee jumps.

Finally there’s just enough time for a walking tree, a little man in the snow and banshees screaming in the sky.

This week's episode is sponsored by wine myths and legends dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP221-BONO_IN_THE_COLD_ROOM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:39am EDT

Revolutionary moments happen rarely in life. This week could well be one of them however. This week The TickyOff Boyz are releasing, for the very first time in TickyOff history, Episode 220. They have never before released the two hundred and twentieth episode of the podcast. That’s right, this week, history is made. Be there at the birth of something incredible. Download this episode and become pioneers, brave voyagers, the lucky few on the cutting edge of cultural achievement. We are thankful, mainly to ourselves and I guess a tiny bit to you, that we have reached this totemic moment in human discourse.

This week, chef, man of nature, author, tv chap and all round lovely tall fellow Valentine Warner is here and he’s talking the Lofoten Islands in Norway, snow grouse, art college, Alistair Little and bizarre goings on involving goats, an octopus and a sawmill. It’s nothing if not highly erotic. Valentine also gets very honest on grieving, divorce, and moving on from television.

Before Valentine arrives James and Sam yap egg pellets, asteroids and doctors of the penis. There’s also time to pitch Netflix on The TickyOff Show, why the Obamas are bored, homemade stock discussion and an eerie tale of a ghostly deer in the woods.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine hunters and gatherers dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP220-THE_CURRENT_CULTURAL_ENVIROMENT.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:38am EDT

The greatest night in podcast history lies before your ear holes. Mouth sounds delivered with panache, aplomb and lets be very honest here, a semi-raw eroticism.
The TickyOff Awards 2020. A recording which will no doubt go down in the annals of humankind. Whatever ‘annals’ are.
Sam is wearing a delightful couture gown. James, a horsehair tuxedo. Together they raise the art of award show hosting to levels hitherto unknown by homosapiens.

Before the awards begin The TickyOff Boyz also deliver firm opinions and magnetic personality in the first TickyOff AUA (That's an 'Ask Us Anything', dummies)

Expect runners, riders, a food world Royal Rumble, an attack by a sea beast, a delightful bucolic lunch and a huge upset in the Best Potato Dish category which makes the whole ‘Moonlight’ and ‘La La Land’  Warren Beatty kerfuffle look like something... very small and unimportant indeed.

This week’s awards show is sponsored by Academy Award Winners Of Wine, dropwine.co.uk.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP219-THE_TICKYOFF_AWARDS_2020.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:43am EDT

Yeah yeah, it’s TickyOff again. It’s another week, another episode, yet another glittering aural extravaganza that has put James and Sam on the covers of Time Magazine, Pulitzer Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Nuts, Railway Modeller, Playgirl and The Chichester District Council in-house quarterly. Verbal performances at this level have also seen The TickyOff Two hosting world events such as The Oscars, The Grammys, Rear Of The Year and that restaurant magazine one sponsored by a Spanish beer company that they never get invited to…

This week begins very strangely as James calls Sam ‘mate’, which he has never ever done. It’s weird but they push on into organ donation, Egyptian death rituals and a horrific toad in the hole that James made.

Then author of ‘The Flavour Thesaurus’ and ‘Lateral Cooking’, Niki Segnit arrives and things take a turn towards parenting twins, recipe genealogy and the benefits of using cup measurements. They also discuss James's very odd 1950’s breakfast set-up, Niki’s vast and deep seated Radiohead obsession and the zen that can be found in utter boredom. Furthermore, a real gang of folk are discussed including David Foster Wallace, John Nash, John Lanchester and Nicole Kidman.

All this plus, vampires vs werewolves, ‘Shallow Grave’ and why Baileys is proper underrated.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine genius type folk dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP218-OK_CLAFOUTIS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:50am EDT

It’s a low energy start for Thee TickyOff Boyz this week. James deep dives into a steaming bowl full of pommes aligot while Sam has again been watching far too many films. They discuss cold rice, drinking paraffin and drinking tequila. Sam also finds time to take a few more swings at a friend of the podcast for a shoddy salad recipe.

Then Tim Siadatan of Trullo and Padella fame shows up and things get deep on the excitement of pre-opening a restaurant, new kit giddiness, following up a hit and the benefits to biding your time with expansion. Tim also reveals his stoned-golf playing days, the all round good vibes of Jamie Oliver and his heady days as a microwave chef in a Reading shopping centre.

These three mouths go on to mouth off on whether or not The River Cafe is a rip-off, why horses can only kick with their back legs, Annie Lennox, Freddie Krueger and Lee Tiernan. PLUS there is yet more goddamn cacio e pepe discussion….

This week’s episode is sponsored by minimal ingredient purity maestros dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP217-CACIO_CONUNDRUM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:51am EDT

TickyOff is back! Back with a new episode after last week’s episode of TickyOff. That is correct. Your ears do not deceive you. TickyOff has returned seven days after it was last within your ears. It is truly un be god damn lievable….

This week we begin with a strange few minutes of yap involving Dr Dolittle, Grayson Perry, Daniel Day Lewis and Roald Dahl. Baffling, inane, nonsensical perhaps, but classic TickyOff all the same.
Then hospitality PR titans Gemma Bell and Alice Grier of Gemma Bell And Company arrive and both the verbal wheels and the chat gloves come off.

Gemma and Alice patiently explain the whats, whys and whens of the world of PR from how to be a good client to a deep dive into how the London restaurant world has changed over the last ten years. Sam compares restaurants to old dogs needing haircuts, James explains all about his beloved out-of-office email manoeuvres and all four corners of this incredible…. babble cube eat cakes from Ottolenghi.

All this plus, lonely farmers, the heady days of Marco Pierre White’s Titanic restaurant, weird boots, ‘Pretty Woman’ and an extremely unimpressive idea for a new barbershop based business.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Jack and Rose of wine, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP216-TITANIC.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:39am EDT

Hello. This is TickyOff. If you don’t know the drill by now then wake up. This is the 215th episode of this jazzy chat based ballyhoo and it’s a damn fine one.
This week James opens huge with a long chat about an imaginary engine, goes to the pub with his children and has a weird obsession with doughnuts. Sam just about manages to equal this unbelievably top rate chat by de-icing cats, arguing with a customer about sourdough and possibly becoming pregnant.
Then chef and restaurateur Gary Usher arrives and one of the great pyramidical mouthnoise structures is aurally created for you. Gary has had a chat with a cabbie, made himself redundant in his own business and came up short in a 'This Morning' screentest. He may also, possibly, have been watching ‘The Fugitive’ in the back seat of his car and/or eating sausages with a spoon. Like much of TickyOff, it’s a little unclear.
Despite such weapons grade hilarity, this episode features some very honest reflections on regret, social media, the frustrations of the restaurant industry and taking responsibility.
Episode two one five proves once more that there is pretty much nothing the TickyOff Boyz can’t deliver on the podcast stage. From addled nonsense to tearful confession, TickyOff is basically Amazon Prime for human emotion, just minus the awful working conditions and the fella with the naughty videos on his phone. Know this.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Prime of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP215-THE_BEAMER_PART_ONE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:38am EDT

This week on the end of the pier/end of the world podcast TickyOff, James and Sam are joined by Robin Gill, chef and restaurateur behind a whole bunch of fine restaurants including The Dairy, Darby’s, and Sorella. Robin has the ability to make sounds using his mouth and he puts this skill to perfect use on the podcast. Said sounds include opening his new place, proposing to his wife after one week, giving his son a very cool name and a discussion of the insanely good chorizo at Asador Etxebarri.

Before Robin appears, The TickyOff Boyz sell a whole bunch of joy, ride a horse while drunk and smoke at school. James goes to Silo, offends a charity for the blind and sucks pennies to avoid jail time. Sam reviews ‘1917’, previews Christopher Nolan’s new film ‘Tenet’ , looks at a slideshow of grim eye afflictions and considers just how similar Rasputin and Charles Manson looked.

All this top grade nonsense plus Irishmen with their own farms, Val Kilmer in ‘Willow’, Robin’s mashed potato tekkers and James gets called ‘a conker on a string’…..

This week’s episode is sponsored by the ‘chicken and egg question’ of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP214-GILL_COMMUNICATION.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:10am EDT

Welcome to the year 2020, potentially the final year of mankind’s existence on Planet Earth. Along with cockroaches, scientists believe that the only creatures that could survive the coming apocalypse will be The TickyOff Boyz . It is unclear why they think this and how they expect one horse and one grumpy ghost obsessive to repopulate the planet. The TickyOff Two are however, willing to give it a try.

Before you all die though, here is Episode 213 to pour aurally into your ears. Vice and Time Out (among many others) journalist Angela Hui is here and she’s brought crisps. She’s also brought G Ramsay chat, Asian Flush yap and a portion of babble concerning a holy place, Chippy Alley in Cardiff. There’s also time for Sufjan Stevens, Greggs and the benefits to having woolly hands.

Before Angela arrives, James makes a stupidly boozy gravy, has a lovely pair of new boots and has started dressing like evil chucklehead Dominic Cummings. Sam meanwhile has a sushi and dog walking face off with the singer from Razorlight in Osaka. It’s quite the tale of fish and hounds.

This weeks episode is sponsored by wine knights of the apocalypse drop wine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP213-HANDS_OF_WOOL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:28am EDT

This is the New Year’s Eve special 2019. This is an episode with no intro. This is an episode in which Sam and James spray aural mouth noise around with a) abandon and b) Richard Corrigan of Bentley’s, Corrigan’s and his newest restaurant, Daffodil Mulligan.

Richard talks about opening in Shoreditch versus Mayfair, spoken word and traditional folk music, laziness in success, why he rides a flowery yellow moped and his love for young Dublin punk legends Fontaines DC.

There’s also room for Riverdance Disco, Sam plays pool with Coldplay, James has a terrifying lunch with Rowley Leigh, why real oystermen don’t eat oysters and Richard reveals his favourite pub in the world.

Finally, respects are paid to the much missed Gary Rhodes and Richard shares his tips for a proper NYE. The main takeaway being you should probably just go to Corrigan's Mayfair.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Jools Hollands of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP212-NEW_YEARS_EVE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:33am EDT

For the 2019 TickyOff Christmas Special Sam and James have lunch with two absolute heroes; Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver.
Said lunch takes place at St John.
For twenty five years, it is said that Fergus ‘puts it on the plate’ and Trevor ‘puts it in the glass’ at St John.
Since before time began, The TickyOff Boyz have been said to ‘put it on the pod’.
So a recording of the lunch has flat-out been put….on the pod.

Great quantities of wine are drunk, greater quantities of food are eaten.
However, the substance in greatest supply during this feast, is chat. Solid gold festive chat.

Is that angels singing? No, it’s Fergus and Trevor’s origin story involving hotdogs at a dog track.
Is that the sound of jingle bells….jingling? Nah, that’s Lee Tiernan yap, AA Gill discussion and Jonathan Gold babble.
Ah, the gentle pop of chestnuts roasting on an open fire! Alas no, your ears deceive you, that’s James eating snails, Sam’s cat dying during recording and Fergus teaching the correct irrigation technique for Worcestershire sauce on a rarebit.

Other Christmas miracles on aural display include Paul Bocuse’s ever growing toque, stuffing as a Christmas lunch prep jazz moment, ‘Master And Commander’ and the serenity of bread sauce.

The TickyOff Boyz were and remain, very honoured and grateful to have been invited to lunch with two such legendary fellows.
In much the same way as you are no doubt honoured and grateful to be able to listen in.

Happy Christmas dear listeners. We have love for you. In a way.

This week’s episode is sponsored by your very own Christmas miracles at dropwine.co.uk

RIP Ripley x

Direct download: TKIOF-EP211-THE_POD_OF_ST_JOHN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:43am EDT

This week James has been mean to Sam. It’s unclear why but could have something to do with a chat about oysters and lemons that hasn’t even happened yet, but happens three weeks from now. It’s another example of the TickyOff Two bending time itself to their will. Or just misunderstanding how clocks and calendars and podcast release schedules work. That, like much of what they babble on about, is unclear.

Between dissing Sam, James has also found time to carry a coffin and make a lot of edgy, but hilarious, jokes at a funeral. Sam has been to the cinema and drops a fascinating review of ‘Knives Out’ direct into your ears.

They then depart TickyOff Towers and head off to Passione Vino, one of London’s greatest wine shops. There they meet up with proprietor Luca Dusi and get stuck into a lot of wine and even more chat.

Luca talks about joining the army, leaving Verona and why he has a fetish for gorgonzola. There’s a deep dive into the whole natural wine debate, a little cannibalism discussion and James regales all with an incredibly depressing Italian biscuit recipe.

All that classic chat vibe and yet there’s still time for Luca to heartily recommend a hard cheese as a precursor to….romance.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine casanovas dropwwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP210-FUNKY_WINE_AT_THE_FUNERAL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:22am EDT

Let’s open big here. Let’s open on a massive part of this week’s episode. Listen up listeners, this week.... James’s data problems continue! It’s a real nail-biting affair.
It’s tough to follow that up I know but here goes..
Sam wonders whether people are actually nice and the pair of them wonder on what car chef Gary Usher drives. James apologises to Sam’s wife and Sam wants to know how many extras peed in the water on the set of ‘Titanic’.

Then Guardian food Lord Bob ‘Bobby’ Granleese arrives and basically erupts all over the place with his renowned brand of good cheer, positive mental attitude and all round smiley demeanour.

Bob chuckles up a storm about Mourinho to Tottenham, editing Will Self and being attacked by teenage fans of The Cure. He radiates joy and happiness concerning his new desk, the brilliance of the late Deborah Orr and he finally answers one of the longest running questions in TickyOff lore: Is Angela Hartnett stern?

These three titans of chat also try a microwave Rustler burger live on air, Sam meets a helicopter gunship pilot and James’s dead body gets left on a runway in Thailand.

This is pure TickyOff. Babble but better. The best a man (or woman) can get. Once listened, forever smitten. Wake up.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Castrol GTX’s of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP209-BOBBY_ADDITIONS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:52am EDT

Another week, another episode of TickyOff. This week the damn Sam and the darn James open strong, with some scarf chat. The ground shakes at that level of chat. The seas boil with dialogue that powerful. A plague of locusts may well be released with mouthsounds so fascinating.
There’s only one way to follow that up, and that’s with the long awaited return of GhostChat!
Sam tells the usual scientifically-rigorous tale of a haunted suburban house in North Wales where a phone has gone missing, there is the stench of rotting flesh and it’s impossible to ascertain how many kids live in said house. Chilling.

Then all round big deal chef Marcus Samuelsson arrives and discusses his visits to football stadiums, why lingonberries are much better than cranberries and why paella is so tricky to make well. He also discusses slow expansion, what it was like coming up in the industry as a young black chef and how he learnt his love of cooking from his adoptive grandmother.

Finally, he describes cooking the first state dinner for Barack Obama, the benefits of cold water dips and why all food needs proper context to make sense.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the presidents of wine, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP208-PORTAL_IN_THE_LIVING_ROOM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:21am EDT

Great Danes, tiny bottles of rum, milkshaking and gerrymandering. On no other damn podcast would you get an array of subjects so bewitching within the first half hour.
James and Sam also find time to exercise their mouthmuscles upon other equally as enticing topics such as Doncaster, Blur Vs Oasis, citizens arrests and their love for Emile restaurant. Oh, and they explain in great detail exactly what 'browning the cream' means. What that immortal phrase means for you, and the rest of humanity.

Then chef and new Byron Food Director Sophie Michell basically arrives at TickyOff Towers and things take a turn for the more interesting and less idiotic. There’s the violence and sexism of old school kitchens, the madness of night shift hotel cooks, and the deep sadness of James getting bullied by Jean-Christophe Novelli.

Plus, tall poppy syndrome, turning around a troubled brand, moving to Beirut, private cheffing for Claudia Schiffer and a long pondering on which Batman you’d most want to hang out with.

It’s TickyOff, and it’s just brilliant isn’t it?

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Batman and the Robin of wine drinks, dropwine.co.uk

www.tickyoff.com

#browningthecream

Direct download: TKIOF-EP207-SAM_GOT_SCAMMED.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:30am EDT

Upon this week, upon this episode, James and Sam are drunk.

James has drunk a stein of beer, Sam has been watching 'The Martian'. Despite these issues, they've also managed to create a website www.tickyoff.com and have begun plotting the world's first ever TickyOff Awards.

Then Will Lander of Quality Chop House, Portland and Clipstone fame (among others) arrives and this wondrous triple mouth threat go deep on expansion, retail, wine, The Portland Pivot, backing talented chefs and having a wine expert for a mother.

There's also a very long discussion of 'El Camino: A Breaking Bad Story', a pondering on whether or not a banana is proof of God's existence and Sam once more thinks pork chops are dry....

This episode is sponsored by your wine friends and mine, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP206-A_NAUGHTY_BISCUIT.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:03am EDT

This week on mankind’s very greatest greatest achievement, The Goddamn TickyOff Boyz are joined by Ferhat Dirik, twitter legend, operator of Mangal 2 (Hands down one of the best restaurants in London). Ferhat opens his mouth and sounds basically fall out. These sounds concern, expansion, taking over a family business, Gilbert and George, why he hates his house and his very sneaky visits to Padella.

Before Ferhat arrives, James and Sam begin plotting the first TickyOff Awards 2019, wonder when one is officially middle aged and Sam apologizes to a previous guest…

Plus, there’s the perils of working with Deliveroo, questions from Twitter and the most underrated dishes you should be ordering at Mangal 2.

This episode is sponsored by wine gods dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP205-A_BED_FULL_OF_SPIDERS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:02pm EDT

This week Sam and James get straight into the biggest issues currently facing humankind/themselves. Namely, how many murderers listen to TickyOff, whether or not food should ever make an appearance in the bedroom, whether James is scared of anything whatsoever and what happens if you throw eggs at space shuttles. James also drops a powerful review of ‘Joker’ and Sam has seen some sharks swimming by a nuclear power station.

After an opening like that, there’s only one person who could possibly stand toe to toe, aurally, with the TickyOff Two. That person is chef and restaurateur Stevie ‘Steve’ Parle. Stevie tells his tale from Ballymaloe cooking school, to the River Cafe, to opening Dock Kitchen, closing Rotorino and opening Pastaio at Westfield. He also shares the beauty of Japanese builders, the difficulties of setting the right tone in a kitchen and he provides an in depth recipe for his favourite Italian soup.

There’s also time for a long chat about colours, some glove discussion and some dried bean banter.

It’s TickyOff and be honest, there is nothing even close to as wonderful as this in any of your lives.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine pedlars of great repute dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP204-STEVIE_BOUGHT_A_HAWK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:21am EDT

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

Last week the TickyOff Boyz visited the ancient pyramids. As they approached these magnificent desert triangles, Sam jumped down from James’s mighty back and noticed something.
“A triangle has three points!” Sam bellowed powerfully.
James snorted in agreement and they both immediately reached the same conclusion. They should find a guest who had been on the TickyOff twice before and invite them back on the TickyOff for a third TickyOff appearance so that they could be the first triangular guest on the TickyOff. What better way to pay homage to their favourite shape, the triangle? There was only one possible human who could achieve this milestone, Eater London editor, Adam Coghlan.
Sam jumped back astride his trusty steed with a powerful cry of:
“To home, my equine buddy!”
They turned away from the sandy three sided brick stacks and rode home to TickyOff Towers to anoint the very first TickyOff Triangle Human.

Adam ponders on why some people hate Eater London, the AA Gill award controversy, influencers, nuance torpedoes and reaching across an aisle. He comes out in support of a foul crisp and raves about Tata Eatery.
Also, Sam has had an operation on his back and legged it from a nurse. James went to Yorkshire and cooked a rubbish salmon-based meal. There’s gildas discussion, Adam wears something called The Bill Oddie and Sam goes up to the top of the Royal Opera House only to discover a strange genre of toilet.

This weeks’ episode is sponsored by legendary whisperers of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP193-CHRONOLOGY_OF_OUTRAGE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:16am EDT

This week on the fun filled and friendly Kitchen Is On Fire podcast James Ramsden and Samuel Herlihy have a lovely chat about the wonderful world of food. James offers up some very useful tips on spatchcocking a chicken. Sam shares a fascinating tale about a very unusual fish. If you’re a ‘real foodie’ then you’ll love this episode. Sunday Times food and Code Hospitality editor Lisa Markwell then joins the boys to share her deep wealth of knowledge about pesky restaurant lists, savoy cabbage and her incredible, and incredibly educational ,visit to Palestine. Food broadcasting at it’s very very best I think you’ll agree……..

Right, that was foul. This week on the goddamn TickyOff:

Are bears canines?
Sam doesn’t understand poultry skeletal systems!
There’s a fish with a human face! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05XMQqCfba4
James finds a mystery cheese!
Lisa Markwell goes on a boat with Mick Hucknall and Sinead O’Connor!
James was a brat when he worked in a pub!
Lisa has never ever drunk Coca-Cola!

It’s a podcast with more legendary chat than any other and if you describe yourself, ever, as a real foodie, you’ve come to the wrong damn place. Wake up.

This week’s episode is sponsored by awesome wine people dropwine.co.uk

Done.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP192-HUCKNALLS_LOOP-AROUND.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:17am EDT

It was a dark and stormy night….
No it wasn’t!
That’s a complete lie!
Wool, meet my pulling hands, meet your eyeballs!
It was an early evening in London in June. Therefore, British Summer Time. So it wasn’t dark and it wasn’t night and the weather was fine.
What a trickster I am. And you totally bought it. Unlucky.

Anyway, the scene is now set. Great British Bake Off series one winner Edd Kimber turned up at the TickyOff Towers and two mouths became three mouths and sounds from those mouths were heard. From all three mouths. 'Twah boosh' as our Gallic pals might say.

There’s Paul Hollywood chat, Edd’s new deep dive into sourdough, baking in Israel, the best bun and everyone’s favourite windy day activities.

Sam eats a taxi driver’s cookie in New York. James turns on Sam. Edd gets his revenge on the kids who bullied him at school and they all eat delicious yucca flour based treats.

Oh and before Edd arrives, The TickyOff Two go very long and very deep on a mysterious business card belonging to a man who can raise the dead, stop evil eyes in their evil tracks and may or may not be able to fix James’s poor quality golf swing.

This is TickyOff and it sure is swell.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the witchy wine voodoo of those wacky kids at dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP191-THE_MANY_MYSTERIES_OF_MR_CAMARA.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:17am EDT

The TickyOff Boyz have been present at many of the greatest events in human history. When the pyramids were being built Sam was there, complaining that all of the snacks had too much honey in them. When JFK was shot, James was grazing on the grassy knoll. They were both at the filming of the ‘Big Break’ season 14 finale when John Virgo finally had enough of boorish scumbag Jim Davidson, clobbered him about the head with a snooker cue and started feeding him those blue chalk cubes.
They were also present in TickyOff Towers a week or so ago when Emma Underwood, legendary GM of newly opened Darby’s in London showed up to utilise her mouth to create audible noises on a wide variety of subjects.
This is a record of this world-cleaving event, Episode 190: Welcome To Woho.

Revel in Emma’s origin story from anarcha-feminist PhD to working for Gary Usher! Thrill to Sam using too many spoons! Listen in awe as James says ‘hella’ a lot!

This triangular chat-based cohort also manage to discuss diversity in hiring, windmills, mentorship, moats and Marcus Wareing’s stag do.

It’s TickyOff, and you should know by now, it’s very special indeed.

This week’s episode is sponsored by wine mavens dropwwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP190-WELCOME_TO_WOHO.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:23am EDT

Sam and James went to a donut* shop in Brooklyn.
The donut shop is owned by Wylie Dufresne.
Wylie Dufresne is a legend among chefs for his pioneering work at the sadly now closed WD50 and Alder.
He then decided to open the aforementioned donut shop.
They sell donuts.
Which are lush.
They also sell a grilled cheese and egg sandwich which is also, lush.
Wylie Dufresne very kindly agreed to trade off mouth noises with James and Sam.
So that’s what happened.
And that’s what this is.
A TickyOffWorld first, a bonus episode.
Wylie Dufresne is a lovely dude.
Sam and James are lovely dudes, on occasion.
Happy Christmas people!
You are, at least a little, welcome.

*It's Gotham, that's the spelling

This week’s episode is sponsored by the kind and generous people at www.hotel50bowery.com

Direct download: TKIOF-BONUS_POD-DONUT_MATHS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:42am EDT

The TickyOff Boyz have sailed across the North Sea in a galleon. A traverse which no one has ever managed to survive despite humankind attempting it for millennia. Upon reaching the far shore, James and Sam discover a strange land, a city named Gotham, and a vast number of sandwiches.
Fortunately for you they record their discoveries and provide great insight into them by rubbing their teeth together and shaking their tongues to create mouth sounds which your ear bones can detect.

They have made this incredible, and brave, journey on a research trip to discover whether the people of Gotham can make better sandwiches than the TickyOff Gang. It turns out, no they can’t. They also see some spooky black smoke, are yelled at by a taxi driver called Dennis and they eat a pickle-packet on a busy intersection. James tries to outwit a buffet, Sam has fallen deep into a Coldplay shaped rabbit-hole and they both wonder, once more, where exactly Jackson Boxer has got stuck this week.

Then they meet up with chef and co-owner of King restaurant Jess Shadbolt and things get more than real. Jess adds her mouth noises to proceedings concerning restaurant scene camaraderie, disastrous services, the realities of running a restaurant in NYC and advice and help from food world heavyweights Dave Chang, Gabrielle Hamilton and Will Beckett from Hawksmoor. Will also seems to pop up throughout the pod as everyone thinks that he and the drummer from Coldplay may well be the same person.

There’s also time for flapJack, a lot of borlotti bean chat, ’Sleepless In Seattle’ and Sam and James reveal exactly what Le Page is.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the kind and generous people at www.hotel50bowery.com and by the Bane and Batman of wine at www.dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP189-LIVE_FROM_GOTHAM_CITY_A_CHEWY_SCENARIO.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:23am EDT

It’s another week in TickyOff Land and that can mean only one thing; the moon has circled Jupiter once again, it’s orbit controlled, as science tells us, by magma, magnets and mountains sinking into the Earth’s mantle, or crust.

Now there’s a paragraph that made close to no sense. Much like most of Episode 188. James has been to Sweden and is fascinated by deceased actor Powers Boothe. Sam has been camping and believes old people to be dry to the touch.
There’s a return of new segment ‘Where’s Jackson Boxer Stuck?’, there’s morteau sausage cooked on a fire, anthrax from dead deer and we finally work out exactly what Postman Pat and Mrs Goggins get up to when Pat ‘visits’.

Then chef and restaurateur Tom Aikens arrives and sounds created in his lungs, as science tells us, are delivered into the ears of the human race. These sounds concern his new steakhouse in Abu Dhabi, running a frankly ludicrous number of marathons, his origin story from Norfolk alongside his twin brother, and a blue cheese addiction which pretty much gets out of control.

A selection of other noises erupting from Tom include old school restaurant culture, working for Pierre Koffmann and what happened when he sat astride a runaway race horse.

This week’s episode is sponsored by sausages.
That’s a lie. It’s sponsored by dropwine.co.uk

YOLO!

Direct download: TKIOF-EP188-BEWARE_MRS_BENDY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:53am EDT

Gary Rhodes in his spiky-haired prime, delicately basting a filet of beef with foaming butter…

Nigel Kennedy in an Aston Villa shirt picking out a heartrending melody on his violin…

Les Dennis effortlessly controlling a studio audience with wit, good looks, and pure charm…

All masters in their respective fields. Operating at the very top of their games. Providing inspiration, inspiring jealousy, moving humankind forward, showing the way. Proving what is possible with God-given talent and almost superhuman dedication.

None even come close to James Reginald Colin Ramsden talking about postboxes on this week’s TickyOff. None.

It’s obviously slightly downhill after a start as incredible as this one but music photographer Edu Hawkins steps up and more than holds his own.
He provides ample mouth-created sounds about photographing BB King, Gil Scott Heron, Jarvis Cocker, and perhaps less impressively, Ed Sheeran.
There’s also New Orleans food discussion, the problem with The Foo Fighters and strange toilets in restaurants.
Finally, Sam is very anti reckless activity, James reviews Gloria Trattoria, Edu can’t burp and they all decide what they’d want to see if they peeled the skin of their faces off.

This is TickyOff and if you don’t know what you’ve signed up for, then read the small print ya phony!

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Levi Roots of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP187-KILLER_PHOTOGRAPHY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:14am EDT

Horses are beautiful creatures. Powerful animal shaped beings with long faces, wavy manes and metal feet.
Sometimes you just have to set them free.

In a move which again illustrates Sam’s heroic, humble and truly depthless humanity, this week he unhitches the saddle from James’s back, unties the plaits in James’s mane, feeds James a sugarcube and lets him run free for the very first time. As the leather seat of bondage falls to ground, and the sugarcube crunches beneath those big horsey teeth, James turns to Sam and in those dark, somewhat vacant equine eyes, there lies a question:

Can this be true? That you would give me….the world? The world entire in which I can canter?

Sam says nothing, but the look in his powerful, and stunning, blue eyes, says more than any words ever could. But if there were any words the four legged ass would understand, they would be something like:

Of course I give you this, donkey buddy. I am just an everyday hero.

Then the horse runs off to Thailand.

That’s right, this week, Sam heroically steps aside and allows James to carry the pod on his broad mule-like back. He’s in Thailand talking to food writer Kay Plunkett-Hogge and chef and restaurateur of Pok Pok, Andy Ricker.

Don’t worry though, there’s at least a little Sam this week in the intro where he emits mouth sounds concerning unexplained falling objects over Chichester, cooks something which James says is gross and takes a swing at both his mother and his sister for complaining about a prior podcast.
Plus there’s a very serious chat about redemption, hand to hand combat with vegetables and teaching your kid how to behave via the movies of James Bond.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Redrum’s of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP186-TICKYOFF_IN_THAILAND.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:35am EDT

The humility and truly humble nature of the TickyOff Boyz is what many people believe has led to their vast success in life, and in podcasting. Sure, there’s the wonderful humanitarian work they do. There’s Sam’s work with people affected by ghost hauntings or James’s selfless support of people who look like horses to name but two. These vast achievements on behalf of humankind itself generally fly under the radar completely because Sam and James don’t do them for the recognition, the fame, the well wishes or the financial reward. They do these things because they are probably two of the greatest human people ever to have lived. You wouldn’t know it to meet them though, they’d just shrug and bat away any compliments.

‘It’s just who we are’ they’d say.

'It’s just what we do’ they’d say.

You’d be honoured to be in their presence and you’d be left with more questions than answers. How can two people be that kind, that handsome and that successful yet also that pure of heart and endeavour? It’s incredible. They really are very special indeed.

All of these qualities are in full effect on this week’s episode. Sam has been digging a river and named it after himself. James has a Vicks stain on his teeshirt which only adds to his raw sexuality. There is a fascinating discussion of names, learning from burning, and James keeps naming members of semi-obscure British rock band of the early Noughties, Oceansize.

Then comedian, rival food podcaster and heavy music fan Ed Gamble arrives and two mouths become three, like viral bacteria multiplies but in an aural sense.

Ed talks about his start in comedy, 'Big Train', dressing like a rabbit (consensually) and why he may or may not be wearing chainmail underwear. There’s also a discussion about sensitivity in comedy, the fall of Louis CK and what the most metal of woodwind instruments might be.

Somehow they also manage to fit in Dungeons And Dragons, dal, Ed’s fiancee burning a Jamaican curry, James names yet more members of semi-obscure British rock band of the early Noughties, Oceansize, and Sam flat out demands that Ed picks a pulse.

This is God’s work, if God is in fact two boyz named TickyOff. Humanity, you are welcome.

This week’s episode is sponsored by an incredible bag of wine from dropwine.co.uk. Buy it and drink it. It helps.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP185-THE_GAMBLER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:21am EDT

Serious stuff before the nonsense begins….

This Sunday James is running the Hackney Half Marathon along with his brother Will in aid of Bipolar UK, in memory of their uncle George. You can sponsor them at:

www.justgiving.com/jandwramsden

The computer has crashed at TickyOff Towers and sadly for you, a vast slab of pork chop based chat has been lost forever. Awful as this is, Sam and James manage to recover from the loss with an even heftier chunk of mouth sounds. James is fed up with London, may have hair plugs and proposed to his wife while watching a somewhat saucy movie. Meanwhile, Sam is concerned about a room service order in ‘Ghostbusters’, has meddled with Ash Nute’s pork chops and steals food from his son’s plate.

Then food writer Rosie Birkett arrives. She is late, but fortunately her tardiness is more than forgiven as she comes bearing a swathe of gifts for the TickyOff Two. Then, this trio of mouths in three skulls get to delivering at a high level on such topics as the music venues of Leeds, the joy of baking sourdough, dining in Mexico and the long list of food related words which get one’s back up.

Also, find out why Rosie was known as ‘Food Perv’, learn her thoughts on Dad Fashion and begin to understand exactly what strange behaviours Sam would get up to if he was ever invited on ‘Saturday Kitchen’.

Finally there is a chilling tale of Rosie’s near demise in the jaws of a giant lizard, also called Rosie. James takes a meal to a blogger and his nan who may or may not be nude, and Sam wears a name badge. Thrilling stuff.

It’s wild, it’s the opposite of mild and it sure does go on for a while. It’s TickyOff, and it’s the very best thing human beings can experience. Clothing might be optional, but safety is always paramount.

This week’s episode is sponsored by great adventurers on both sea and land dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP184-EDIBLE_FINGERS_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:57am EDT

We know that our listeners worldwide come to TickyOff for many things, solace, James’s raw eroticism, Sam’s happy go lucky demeanor, ghost focused discussion. What few are looking for is a working knowledge of human, or animal, biology. That can only be a good thing. Especially in this week’s episode.

Somehow there are foul tear-ducts, talking sausages which may contain the ghosts of deceased pigs, the intelligence of corvids, sharks scaring whales and sheep stuck in blackberry bushes. Oh, and a mechanical spider.

Contributing to this menagerie of nonsense is author and bookshop owner Evie Wyld. She proves that she can communicate words via sounds created in her mouth not just on a page. It’s amazing. She discusses reviews, how she writes, unsuitable books for kids and treating escaped criminals like hedgehogs.

Meanwhile, Sam has stolen some erotic fiction from his mother, had a terrible experience in a highly regarded restaurant and thinks he looks like Harold from ‘Neighbours’. James has been to a theme park, is planning on test driving a Lamborghini and wants to make an Isle Of Wight based remake of ‘The Rock’.

Also, a little trigger warning for any dinner ladies listening in, James says ‘scrotum’ to one of your kind and Evie’s son punches one of your gang full in the face. Apologies in advance. We know that is no way to treat elderly slop-delivery folk but we have to keep it honest on the TickyOff and these things happened. This is real life. Wake up.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Marty McFly and Doc Brown of wine dropwine.co.uk

Please hit us hard with a subscribe, a review, and a follow on Instagram: @tickyoff

Direct download: TKIOF-EP183-JUST_DONT_CRY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:57am EDT

When James won his first Oscar for his incredible turn as an aged Bane coming to terms with his saggy body and his life of crime and carnage in Richard Curtis’s wonderful ‘An Old People’s Home Near Watford’, many commented on his stirring acceptance speech. How he dedicated his win to his ‘most incredibly handsome and wise best friend Sam’. How he refused to take the credit for that scene, the one where Bane and Martine McCutcheon make (grey) love on a row boat during a delightful day trip out to Whipsnade Zoo, instead thanking ‘from the bottom of my heart, my sensei of love, Sam’. As honoured listeners to this podcast will know, this was classic James. And there’s plenty more classic James on this week’s episode of The TickyOff.

He’s been playing a weird game in his parent’s garden, delaying his pleasure and styling his hair like Abs from Five. Sam meanwhile doesn’t trust Easter, regularly dresses up like a mummy and wants people to cheer up at funerals, just not while attending his own.

Then Ben Tish arrives like many, not all, but most guests, arrive to TickyOff Towers. Via the door. Ben’s mouth opens and closes, laying eggs of sound all around. His new book ‘Moorish’, the perils of Saturday Kitchen and his early days in cooking with Oliver Peyton, Jason Atherton and Dan Lepard. Other aural oeufs crack wide open and drip sound albumen on his hometown of Skegness, how much he enjoys dressing up like Stevie Nicks and Marcus Wareing acting like a twat.
There’s a lot of these audible eggs and yet somehow there’s also time to ponder on whether or not mountains are worth the hassle, couscous and the trials and tribulations of fast expansion.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the funky jazz sax and slap bass wonders of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP182-FEATHERED_OR_LEATHERED.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:54am EDT

A number of etchings were recently unearthed in a system of caves many miles beneath the Andean mountain ranges just south of Carlisle, in Peru. At first these strange hieroglyphs baffled the archeologists who had dug them up, with a big digger. They were on the verge of just filling in the big hole they’d dug, with their big digger, and admitting failure. Just in time though someone realised there were two humans who would definitely be able to crack the spooky etching conundrum. Those two human ‘men’? JR and SH, the TKIOF Boyz.
Flown to the site in a very expensive hovercraft, the TickyOff legends quickly deduced that the ancient cave wall vandals had simply written: The Kitchen Is On Fire Is The Best Podcast Ever and Forever. They’d also drawn a big…..element on the wall too. Very immature.
This week’s episode yet again proves the cave-scrapers’s correct. There’s waterpolo, Michel Roux Jr rueing the day, a lot of pie chat and a journey around the entirety of Ripon town centre. James has cooked a weird wellington and may be in line to become a hornblower. Sam will not reveal what he does in his house when his kids are out but he does reveal a tale of a woman with haunted bees in her eye.
Then Owen Barratt from the mighty Monty’s Deli arrives with tales of the toll cooking professionally takes on the body, Kickstarter, beautiful tiles, the wonders of Reading and the joy of pleather.
Owen has also been playing a lot of ‘Farming Simulator’, has some concerns about Thom Yorke and is very much down on lemon thyme.

This week’s episode is sponsored by seventh wonders of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP181-AUGUST_AND_EVERYTHING_AFTER.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:16am EDT

This week restaurant critic and food writer Tom Parker Bowles is sat in the hottest of seats upon the mighty TickyOff. Imagine an internally heated saddle on a TickyOff shaped horse, that's the vibe and that's why cowboys wear chaps. Heat dispersion.

Things get off to a Brexit-themed start as Tom talks about Brexit. That doesn’t last long however as he then tells all about tabloid stings, death metal versus bagpipes and firing guns off the back of a flatbed truck in Guadalajara.
Also this week, James has crumbs on his lip, is making kombucha and wasn’t allowed to watch the start of ‘Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves’. We learn that Sam loves grouper, Tom finds dolphins sinister and James makes an incredibly niche indie-rock circa 2003 reference.
And if this episode wasn’t stuffed full enough with fat topics like a pod-based cotechino sausage, there’s also fun at a medieval fayre, a haunted tudor mansion, William Sitwell stealing people’s lines on ‘Masterchef’ and…….Sam and James go to a Smeg showroom.

If that isn’t a mountain based Sly Stallone vehicle with a hell of an opening scene, I don’t know what is.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the incredibly gifted archers, whittlers, weavers and wine experts at dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP180-FULL_BODY_GOUT.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:16am EDT

Recently James and Sam were mildly honoured to be invited to give the commencement speech to the 2019 class at the hallowed Massachusetts Institute Of Technology or MIT as some call it. Gushes of absolutely classic TickyOff mouth sounds were sprayed from the dais directly into the ear openings on the eager students headskulls. It was then the nerdy youngsters chance to be feel truly honoured when they were given the opportunity to offer up some Quickfire questions of their own to James and Sam. Unfortunately the be-robed Ivy Leaguer’s questions were far from the incredible standard required so the TickyOff boys bailed on the entire soiree in disgust. That’s why you haven’t seen any YouTube videos of the shindig alongside other commencement speech classics like the David Foster Wallace one about the fish or the one to Grimsby Polytechnic’s woodworking class of 1976 by turkey legend Bernard Matthews.

Fortunately Sam and James are back from Boston to bring the Quickfire, the Over/Under and the world class audible mouth noises to you, the most loyal and the largest audience in podcasting history.
This week chef and restaurateur Enrique Olvera is here and he’s a stone cold big deal. Pujol in Mexico City rides high on the World’s 50 Best list, Cosme and Atla in NYC are packed and critically acclaimed, he’s got a new book out ‘Tu Casa Mi Casa’ and he knows how to drink large amounts of mezcal without embarrassing himself. Unlike the TickyOff gang.

Enrique offers up a guide to the best restaurants in Mexico City, the five year old mole at Pujol, collaboration, and the pros and cons of a culinary education. There’s also just enough time for the first ever outro to an episode of TKIOF. In this aural appendage, Sam is poor and greedy and James says ‘arena of conflict’. There’s a new chef going great guns at Pidgin and they spill a vast variety of legumes about their upcoming trip to Greece to cook in a haunted monastery.

This week’s episode is sponsored by winged and b’whiskered wine champions of the world dropwine.co.uk.

Direct download: TKIOF-EP179-MILITARY_TERMINOLOGY.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

It’s another week, another journey around Jupiter, another wax and wane of Europa, our favourite moon. This intergalactic road trip also provides human beings of Earth with another incredible episode of the TickyOff podcast.
This week James has been roped into cooking bread with a bunch of children, only one of whom is related to him. Sam is ratty about a long, and to be fair somewhat dull, chat about the colour pink in restaurants.
They discuss flashing, ‘Grief Is The Thing With Feathers’, noodles and ‘Us’. Then beer expert and writer Melissa Cole shows up with a cool box full of beer and things improve no end. Melissa rains down chat-honesty like a cloud bank of verbal truth has just blown in from the West…or something.
She tells all about the grim idiocy of (some) in the craft beer world, changing demographics in beer drinking and drops more science than has ever been heard around these here TickyOff parts.
There’s also time for nursery rhymes, the difficulties of recording the sounds of a live hawk, tarot cards and mediums, and Melissa explains the benefits of Sam turning his back on his beloved Budweiser…

This week’s episode is sponsored by the entirely hairless, three fingered, web footed wine experts at Dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP178-HAMMER_OR_MALLET.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:14am EDT

This week on the damn pod things get off to an appalling start. There’s yet more moaning, some wild chat about how to spell the word for a hand-rolled cigarette and Sam wants to know which trees are found in the woodlands of Thailand.
The bar is set so low in these opening exchanges that things can only improve, and they do. In a way.
James has discovered that scientists have reversed time and it somehow involves racist ‘funnyman’ Jim Davidson and also poor John Virgo, whose name it would seem has been sullied by his ‘Big Break’ association with the aforementioned massive racist bellweasel, Davidson.
All of this high minded science chat is then somewhat undercut when Sam again disputes whether black holes exist and asks what they are actually doing at CERN. Sam then offers Brian Cox a sugar cube and the wheels fall off the podcast entirely….
Then journalist, and the man Gloria Hunniford wishes she was if she wanted to be a male consumer affairs legend instead of a female consumer affairs legend, Harry Wallop shows up.
This triumvirate of facially placed mouthholes spew forth on a £15 cup of a coffee, the inefficiencies of cheese, the wonder of Cumbrian Hotpot, the inanity of Quidditch and what it’s like writing for the gawddamn Daily Mail.
Oh and they talk about moths too.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Orion’s Belt of the galaxy of wine dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP177-MEDIEVAL_WARFARE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:55pm EDT

Sam begins this week’s episode with a war on science. He disproves ‘The Five Second Rule’. Yes that’s right. A towering pillar of humankind’s understanding of existence itself, is pushed over like a poor quality Jenga player might topple down those funtime wooden blocks.
James is back from Thailand, and he’s in love with the food, the vibe, a man of the woods and with his very own Mongolian donkey.
They also manage to cover people reading showy books in public and Sam gets very ratty with the Renaissance.
Then Mollie Goodfellow arrives and within actual seconds, teachers are getting their comeuppance, Joe Wicks is in Eastenders, Greggggggg Wallace is working out his back muscles and real life people are being met in real life and some people feel uncomfortable about that.
They also blabber on about pasta, private school guilt, the legend of King Arthur and The Sopranos.
And Mollie brings up ghosts. Which James loves.

This week’s episode is sponsored by myths and legends of the world of wine, dropwine.co.uk

Direct download: TKIOF-EP176-WEREWOLF_MAINTENANCE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:49am EDT

This week Sam and James are both incredibly depressed. It’s amazing how despite this, they still open with this much world-beating chat gold to be honest. No one else could deliver chat at this level with black hounds humping at their haunches. No one. That’s why you come here and these guys just turn it on like it’s nothing. Impressive I’m sure you’ll agree.
No other human mouths could spurt kombucha updates, sleeping bag considerations, packing books for a trip in the Arctic based on weight and fake interview confessions, in this manner and at this level. No one.
After an opening like this week’s, only two people could possibly arrive and immediately match the TickyOff Boyz chat diamond for sparkling chat diamond. These two people are Sarit and Itamar from Honey & Co.
This rarely spotted quadruple of mouths go deep on how to and how not to open a restaurant, growing at the right pace, and the benefits of being your own boss. There’s also a whole bunch of truth delivered aurally concerning how to maintain a relationship under the pressures of running a business, they take a swing at French patisserie, might want their neighbour dead and Sam bites his tongue as they go big on the wonders of honey.
All this plus, a harp playing ghost in the bakery and Sarit and Itamar share both the best and worst traits they see in one another which is insanely cute. Which no one has ever, in the entire history of the mighty TickyOff, described any of the content as being.
That was a truly awful sentence to end this blurb with but…you know. The gold is on the pod yeah, it ain’t here. What do you want from me? Wake up.

This week’s podcast is sponsored by amazing wine fella-me-lads dropwine.co.uk and brilliant vodka whippersnappers ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP175-THE_RESTAURANT_EXORCIST.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:36am EDT

Episode one hundred and seventy four comes around only once in a TickyOff lifetime, in that perfect moment between episode one hundred and seventy three and episode one hundred and seventy five. We thought we’d celebrate by opening with some powerful Nandos chat, how bus drivers deal with the bonnets on their own cars having worked in a bonnet-absent world at work and cinematic titan ‘The Human Centipede’.
Oh and before I forget, Sam has interviewed the dude who saw three UFOs a few weeks back!!
This week James’s eyes are absolutely screwed up. He may or may not have been huffing down some doobie smoke offstage mid-pod. Sam has had a tooth out and has been miserable all week. Luckily for you he brings his usual friendly and cheerful demeanor to proceedings. He also brings word of a spooky unexplained canoe in his grandparent’s garden and a spooky unexplained whale in the Amazon.
Then ES Magazine restaurant critic Jimi Famurewa arrives and delivers some strong aural, orally, backed up by (allegedly) stoned James and toothachey Sam.
This triton of babble is plunged deep into your ear canals delivering such topics as Jimi’s journey to his current gig via fanzines, lads mags and Bexleyheath. There’s also the pettiness of school, Nigerian soft drink fueled parties and lots of words about being a decent father.
Somehow they also manage to cover the all out war of restaurant reviewing from both critic and operator manned bunkers.
It’s pretty much the King Tut of podcasts, in that it’s solid gold, and potentially haunted.

This week’s episode is sponsored by ‘The Sopranos’ of wine (minus the criminality and violence and whatnot) dropwine.co.uk and ‘The Wire’ (minus the criminality and violence and whatnot)
of vodka ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP174-FATHER_TIME.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:08pm EDT

This week on English Country Garden Naturist Patrol, James and Sam discuss inner-thigh chafing, brunching in the buff and what to pack for a naturist's masquerade ball in Ipswich.

Apologies, that's their other pod..Anyway, this week on the TickyOff things get off to a mellow start as James relaxes himself by placing a stress reliever toy somewhere foul. He is also planning on babysitting some yeast. Sam has cooked some Palestinian food, cuts his fingernails in a grim fashion and starts bleating on about shoe horns.

They then move on to weightier topics such as heavy drinking in the hospitality industry, colonic irrigation and Sam's Ma's steak sauce recipe.

Then noted grain peddler Alex Hely-Hutchinson pretty much arrives in the office to add another mouth to the mouth duo that was there mouthing with their mouths prior to her arrival, with her mouth in tow.

The mouth of Alex rambles forth on celeb visitors to her shop (PAUL M'F&^KIN THOMAS ANDERSON!!! Spoiler alert....horse, wave your tail at the stable door way way behind you), broccolo, grains vs seeds and how to evolve a breakfast led business. James’s mouth erupts with his porridge tekkers. Sam's mouth seems to spurt in all directions as they cover Queen, The Queen and how to maintain the warranty on your Sodastream machine.

And in a final brave stance, as a two fingered salute to all the haters, all the negative nellies, and to The Man, the TickyOff Boyz proclaim that murder.... is bad. Bravery like that deserves a goddamn Nobel prize or at least some Squarespace sponsorship surely?

This week's episode is sponsored by wine nirvana providers dropwine.co.uk and vodka babylon kings ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP173-HIGHWAY_TO_HULL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:28am EDT

Another week, another episode of solid gold mouth sounds. The greatest human (or animal) minds throughout time could all get in a room with flowcharts and overhead projectors and abacuses and protractors and whatnot and still not fathom just how it is that James and Sam manage to deliver at this level, with this measure of consistency, this weight of genius ideas and this volume of ghost chat. It’s nothing if not flat out impressive.

We begin with a bunch of egg chat, Paul Danan’s struggle with fame and Sam’s struggle with Greggs steakbakes after his band split up. Then, via a detour into a headless purple mule in Brazil, James reads out a letter from a listener concerning, once again, the grim world of toxic restaurant culture.

Then cookbook author and writer Ella Risbridger arrives and this triumvirate of mouths spray forth on notebooks, board games, Sylvia Plath’s driving license and the rights and wrongs of pickle plates. Ella is learning Hindi, gets some props from Nigella and feels scarecrows are overrated. James considers the fall of Kings Of Leon, collects stranger’s shopping lists and has something very erotic, yet creepy, in a place he calls ‘The Naughty Cupboard’. Meanwhile Sam has stolen four pickles from James, is petrified of chip pan fires and seems to be hiding a secret concerning what he gets up to at night in James’s house.

They go on to discuss mental health struggles, moving on from your old life and whether winning Euromillions would actually make you happy.
Oh, and Ella has to choose between having a beak or having gills and Bane might be mentioned too. To be fair it has been a while since they last talked about their favourite big dude with a funny voice.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Captain Kirks of the planet of wine dropwine.co.uk and the Captain Jean Luc Picards of the galaxy of vodka ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP172-_SPIKY_THE_HEDGEHOG.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:43am EDT

This week on this thing some people call a podcast, others describe as a legendary chat kerfuffle and one dude called ‘actually the greatest mouth sounds humans can apply to their earholes’ James and Sam are joined by restaurateur Amy Poon.
Now, journey isn’t a word that we here on the TickOff have any interest in throwing around like an aural knockoff version of the grim ‘X-Factor’ but Amy’s journey from a kid growing up in restaurants, to advertising in Tokyo, to a champagne bar in a Singaporean red light district, is an origin tale that deserves the journey word. So there it is, a journey. Make like a fun hiking club, and walk it, with us…aurally…I guess.
Anyway, before Amy shows up there’s more than enough time for James to talk about leeks for a pretty long stretch and wonder on one of the biggest questions humankind has ever grappled with: Just how much is that doggy in the damn window? In other news, Sam is wary of old men and wants to wear a sleeping bag on a plane.
Even though it may well seem like a single episode couldn’t possibly hold more, this one can. The binbag of chat is overflowing, it’s split, it’s dripping chat all over the floor as you carry it to those holes on your skullsides. There’s a friendly ghost named Uncle Chan, there are Amy’s secret Chinatown recs and there may well be the paw of a wolf in your soup. Know this, and act on it people.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Pulitzer Prize winners of wine delivery dropwine.co.uk and the Nobel Prize recipients of vodka making ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP171-WOLF_SOUP.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:20am EDT

Another week, another episode of the world’s most popular podcast, TickyOff. You are more than welcome. Don’t call us heroes. We’re just everyday folk like you. We have mouths on the front of our heads and via these mouths we make sounds that drip into the holes on the side of your heads. We also have those holes on the sides of our heads but we don’t use them as much as you do. Maybe we should. Who knows? Anyway, let’s just be clear: our mouths, your ears, you’re welcome, we’re awesome. Done.

Sam has toothache and thinks that while naked in a shower he may have seen Nuno Mendes in a black speedo. James is one half of a ‘foodie power couple’, has a mate who lives in a haunted house and tells all about his Sam-less trip to the incredibly dated but seemingly quite wonderful Oslo Court. They ponder on taking TKIOF on the road, The Chicken Bloke, UFOs over Chichester and also get into the recent grim reports from the world of London restaurants.

Then Melissa Hemsley shows up and topics erupt all over the damn place. There’s church chat, Lego babble and porn on public transport….discussion. Melissa reveals her favourite sausage, cries in the Albert Hall and goes to war with squirrels.

These are sounds from three mouths, entering the ears of millions. A shared experience like no other. Wake up yeah? What else is there?

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Leathermen of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk and the Swiss Army Knives of the world of vodka ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP170-SASQUATCH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:38am EDT

Do you remember that awesome bit of 'Empire Strikes Back' when Luke Skywalker is on Hoth, the icy ice nightmare of a planet and he's silly cold so he guts a wampa, that big hairy moose-esque fella, and climbs into them hot guts like a saveloy into a Pukka Pie? Well this week on TickyOff, pretty much exactly the same thing happens but instead of Luke Skywalker, it's Jamie Oliver and instead of Hoth, it's Wyoming and instead of a wampa, it's a big horse and instead of being in 'Empire Strikes Back' it's in a dream Sam had once.

Despite that tale for the damn ages there's also somehow time for Prohibition, Bane vs Shia LeBoeuf and haunted pubs. James may be a myth and Sam disappoints his buddy Ash Nute.

Then Anna Jones shows, which rhymes kinda, and things improve no end. There's Gloria Hunniford on Anusol, Gino Dicampo on a beach and the aforementioned Jamie in a horse.

And if that wasn't just about enough, there's igloo chat, tea with Colin from Radiohead and we learn exactly what 'living room balls' are...

This week's episode is sponsored by wine Da Vincis dropwine.co.uk and vodka Van Goghs ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP169-JAMIE_OLIVER_INSIDE_A_HORSE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:01am EDT

Two 'men' known by many as James and Sam get right into some sound noises from within their gullets this week. There's a firm but fair chat about Eater London. There's a dark and spooky chat about a creepy cave and the turnip thief who done doth dwelled there. There's also a sweet and kindly chat about a cute moment between James and his daughter. Oh and there's castratos, dangerous dogs and James in a speedo. Wake up. This is TKIOF and it ain't our first rodeo.

Jeremy Lee is here this week and he basically just erupts with chat over the entire room, our ears, your ears and the ears of the world at large. He's got winter ingredients, tripe tales, Alistair Little/Simon Hopkinson/Rowley Leigh banter, and he explains how the behemoth that is Quo Vadis operates. He also reveals that he once got lost in his own building, wishes he could juggle (?) and LOVES the 'Blade' movies....

Meanwhile, Sam may have taken acid, James says something saucy about Elizabeth David and they ponder on whether saddles for dogs could be a wise business venture to undertake.

This week's episode is sponsored by Ian Botham Fan Club Treasurers dropwine.co.uk and Devon Malcom's social media officers ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP168-THE_YELLOW_DOG.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:04am EDT

Things that have been shot:

Evel Knievel from a cannon across a canyon

Digital ducks in the old Nintendo game ‘Duck Hunt’.

JFK

And something else that’s been shot? The breeze on this week’s wonderful new installment of the lovely podcast known to some as The Kitchen Is On Fire, to many others as TickyOff and to a fair few as Mouth Sounds From Legends.

After a festive season delay due to grim glands and poorly wives James and Sam reconvene at the office to pretty much howitzer the hell out of the damn breeze. Sam’s had a bad Christmas, James has cooked the Christmas food and they check in with the predictions they made for the year just past.
They also find time to discuss the Bros documentary, the creepy items James keeps in his desk box and Sam tries in vain to find out what creepy secret New Year’s resolution James has made. A lot of creepiness going down….

Then Alice Levine shows up dressed like a pilot with some very hot porridge in tow. The steamy oats are put to one side so this thrupple of chat can cover other equally as steamy topics such as recommending porn to your mother, pickled onions, a boot full of béchamel and Dame Emma Thompson.

There’s also hairy eyelids, big soups, the joys of eating club sandwiches in the nude and Alice reveals her new found favourite canned good. A clue, it rhymes with ‘porter mess shunt’. Cryptic, and not as gross as that clue might lead you to believe it is.

This week’s episode is sponsored by 2019’s greatest wine providers dropwine.co.uk and 2019’s most brilliant vodka creators ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP167-BATMAN_ON_THE_BOUNCE.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:56am EDT

Christmas etc. You know the drill. Presents, drunk uncles, wool-based clothing, dry birds, Babycham, an incredible amount of paper based recycling, murders on sitcoms, listening to the music of glam rockers with an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps there are yet more of of these spangly jumpsuited bass playing clowns still to be caught and brought to justice by long running police investigations.....Wow. Everyone loves Christmas, and everyone loves a TKIOF Christmas Special.

The TickyOff Boyz are here to upend a sack full of nonsense into your goddamn meatus acusticus externus. That's right, James and Sam are filling up yer ear canals with a dungheap of festive mouth sounds. This week there is weird heavy metal, there are Icelandic people and there is also Sam making a desperate plea for an old friend to get back in touch with him. Meanwhile, James is distracted by his Apple Watch and they both ponder on what to look for in a swinging partner.

Then, like a man with God's beard but dressed like an old-timey fireman sneaking down a chimney in the dead of night to leave pagan offerings beneath a dying tree in your front room, comedian Jamie Demetriou arrives and Sam and James turn into (drunk) giggling fanboys.

Jamie reveals all about his journey through the world of comedy including the Edinburgh Festival, working with his sister and his series 'Stath Lets Flats'.  He also creates sounds using his vocal cords upon his love for Frank Ocean, his dislike of Morris Dancers and the strange things his father gets up to.

Very similarly to a family-size box of Quality Street there's also the coffee cremes of chat, a lot of shouting about soup, a long winded discussion of anti-stomach ulcer medication and James favourite site for long braised, Aga-based pornography...

This weeks episode is sponsored by the 'Last Christmas''s of wine dropwine.co.uk and the 'Fairytale Of New York''s of vodka ourvodka.com/ourlondon

 

Direct download: TKIOF-EP166-A_STRANGE_PLACE_FOR_BREAD.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:44am EDT

The TickyOff Boyz have just had their Christmas party and after all that festive ballyhoo, there’s only one thing for it: Ghost chat. This week there’s a ghost with an eyeball in a proper weird place and a talking pig.

Then Will Beckett from Hawksmoor arrives and these three ‘men’ get into far more than three topics. There’s the Hawksmoor origin story, company culture and tricky expansion. There’s side dishes, opening in NYC and the skill sets that restaurateurs require. That’s right, this week is serious and packs a hefty girth of genuine information. Who’d a thunk it?....

Also though, it is still TickyOff so there’s pretty niche ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ chat, Steven Gerrard and Phil Collins and Will reveals who ClamDad is.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Santa Claus of the world of wine dropwine.co.uk and the Father Christmas of the land of vodka ourvodka.com/ourlondon

Direct download: TKIOF-EP165-THE_SAUSAGE_KING_OF_CHICAGO.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:43pm EDT