I Was in Crisis Long Before Midlife

Boo!

You know what Cotsanash was?

I have a mobile phone connection. Your whole phone is connected to me! [LAUGHTER] I'm sorry! Not my phone!

[SIGHS] Just an old trauma. With mobile phones in real life,

“Frank, just a mobile phone for 10 Euro a month.”

Inclusive EU roaming. And also in Switzerland. Frank! No. Frank.

[MUSIC PLAYING] We're here, you made it, we're back. As Jimmy Fallon would say, you're here. It's illidby's by Bill Knight. And we're in season three, who knew who knew they'd be a season 1, or two, or three, but we made it.

And we're here, and concurrently, with season three, you can also join us in the back room, which is where some of the big stuff happens. You'll have to get past the dormant, who we have yet to cast.

“There are many candidates, because those who attend the back room will remember that Gordon”

was our dormant was very successful and much below. Nobody frisked you quite like Gordon, and people miss him. But we are auditioning replacements, but that auditioning process is ongoing. And you get to pick about that. Anyway, we're very pleased to be back, and we're hoping for some rain, because the

long hot summer has been too long and too hot for the likes of me, frankly. I don't have clothes for that. I've had to get used to being jacketless. If there were any climate change deniers left around after this summer, which I'm sure there will be.

One of the sureest indicators that climate change is a thing is the fact that I go out

in public without a jacket, which I have never done in my adult life until two years ago.

When it became kind of impossible, I used to wear a jacket whatever the weather, because I felt exposed without one. But I'm almost more accustomed to being jacketless than I am to be jacket-a-ted. So if that doesn't mean there's something happening, I don't know what. And I forgot to say, "Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you

are on the planet, which may not give you too much pleasure, but gives me an enormous amount." So thank you. Welcome back. We've got all kinds of stuff. The usual features, including the band word feature, which is without question the most

popular. The band word feature went boom across the world from the moment it was suggested. And also our other, we hope, well loved feature, called, "But you don't understand, I'm like with the band." Where we invite you to tell us about bands you had, hopefully embarrassingly named, when

you were teenagers. And some of the, hopefully embarrassing lyrics that you wrote for your signature tunes, they will also be "Buck of the Week," and I will read a bit of the book and tell you a little bit. I'm not a critic, but I will tell you a little bit about the book, and perhaps why I like

it. And then of course, there will be another popular feature, playlists, which give me quite a lot of pleasure to compile. So there will be all kinds of music coming away. That's exciting.

And we'll have many questions from all over the world, hopefully about the most inconsequential elements of their lives.

“And remember, this is what they currently call a safe place, it's a refuge for the clumsy”

and the awkward for people who don't get out much and can't handle it when they do. So let's get started. My bill, Bob here from William's town, Massachusetts, has a child.

I was a New York Yankee Spaceball fan, and always wore a Yankee Spaceball cap.

My grandmother said it would make me go bald. It did. Now I'm in my 70s, and my had addiction is spiraling out of control. I own all kinds of hats, some quite expensive, that I only wear a couple of times a year,

I recently shopped for a denim flat cap.

I found one that was sold in four shades of denim, so I had to have all to match my various shades of denim blue jeans. Any advice on how to tame this madness bill? Should I tame it? Thank you, Bob.

Thanks for that question. It's a good question. And I have an immediate response, which is, why do you want to tame it? Come on. You've come this far, and it could be a lot worse.

It could be porches, or it could be, you know, illicit substances. I think hats is fine, and the fact that you, I don't think, for instance, I don't think your grandmother was right. I don't think the baseball cap made you bald, and I don't suppose you do either for a moment, but therefore don't blame the cap.

“But given the absence of hair, even more reason why you should indulge yourself.”

And if I was in your situation, and there were four different colors of denim, I would have done exactly the same thing. I would have had to have had all four. I wouldn't have left the shop without them. It's why would you do that?

I love when I was young and didn't have any money, and I used to hear about people with money going into shops and buying like there was a shirt they liked, so they bought four of them, or they bought five of them, or they were socks they liked, so they bought six pairs or underwear, they bought six pairs. And I thought it was so glamorous and such an exotic idea that you would ever have enough

money to buy more than one thing at a time. And I'm not getting the violence though, it's just that there was a time when you didn't have any money. And now I have got money, and I have bought two shirts or six pairs of socks, or I'm about to buy six pairs of socks tomorrow, because I'm going to Hong Kong next week, and I figure

“I deserve six pairs of lightweight summer socks, because it's going to be, I think it's”

going to be hot in a way that I've never been hot before, so I'm going to buy some appropriate

socks, and some, it's just too much information, but also some box of shorts for the same reason. And yeah, and the hat thing, you need a hat, and you need all kinds of different hats, and why not? I mean, I went to a funeral recently of a very, very, very dear friend of mine, who was

she was famous for her hats, and they were mostly wide-brimmed, quite, you know, highly colored hats, a various shapes and sizes, and at her funeral, all of the women from nine to 90 all wore one of her hats, and they put her very favorite purple, wide-brimmed floppy hat on the coffin, as she was brought into the church. And it looks so great, because all the women were wearing these glamorous hats in different

colors, and it was just a, it was very witty and funny, and it was dear and affectionate. So maybe I don't want to talk about your funeral, but, you know, we've all got to work it out somehow. So maybe you could get everyone at your funeral to wear one of your hats, which I think would be a pretty cute idea, and they get to take it home, so that's something to remember

you by, so if it's up to me, Bob, keep going, you can't get enough hats. Hi Bill. My husband is having some kind of midlife crisis. He's joined a gym, he signed us up for an ultra marathon, he's built in an extraordinary amount of Lego, and he's talking about buying a Porsche.

Whilst we have a solid marriage, this is a testing time, could you please advise how we navigate this? Thank you, Tracey, in Durham, UK.

“Tracey, I think maybe you should book an appointment with the doctor and just have his thyroid”

checked, because I have a very, very good friend who had a thyroid issue, and I went around his house once, and he was like a man on fire. He was an only a very relaxed figure, but he was insane with energy and ideas, and he was saying things like, I was wishing I had a little red sports car, and then I remembered, I've got a little red sports car, you want to go for a drive, and I was like, okay, and

we went for a drive, and I thought I thought it was the last drive of my life, and he

was in the middle of a thyroid examination, and finally they got the dose right.

Maybe it's something just something physical, I don't know about midlife crisis, I think I must have probably had one, I don't think nobody took a blind, but I noticed, including me, I think I was probably in crisis long before midlife, so it didn't really make a lot of difference, it was hard to spot, you know what I mean?

wrong guy, I'm breaking a rule here because I never normally answer questions that are

important, like, you know, anything to do with in a relation or sexual relations or romantic connections of any kind, because if I start talking like I know about that stuff, as I think I've said before, call a cab, because you've come to the wrong guy, I mean, he's gone to a gym, nothing wrong with that, the Lego thing, we're all here a little concerned about the Lego part of it all, but again, no great harm will come to him or

“you, with the ultra-marathon, I think you said, I think you can, you know, you can explain”

that he'll be doing that all by himself, because there's no need for you to suffer just because his hormones or his nervous system is doing the okikoki, and I don't think your marriage,

I think your marriage is going to survive this, but so you're asking me to invite, this

is exactly the sort of thing I don't know how to do, so I have to declare myself, you know, as a beyond amateur in these matters, and tell him, he's not buying a Porsche, forget the Porsche, the Porsche's embarrassing, and you have to lie down to drive a Porsche, and then you have to get up out of the car, and I don't know how old your husband is, but it sounds to me like his way past the Porsche stage of his life, so tell him to buy, I

don't know, a vintage Mercedes, or a vintage Rover 3.5, they were, give yourself one range of the environment would probably just kill you, anyway, I don't know much more to say about that, apart from, I think it's all going to work out, once he's done the ultra-marathon,

“he'll be absolutely wiped out anyway, so, you know, I think you should encourage him with”

the ultra-marathon, maybe get him to do a kind of monthly ultra-marathon, and that way it's going to take him three weeks to recover, and he's not going to be lying down in a Porsche, so apart from that, how do you feel about Lego? Hi, Belle, this is Anna from Bristol here, and I need your help. I'm almost divorced, and having taken his name when we married, I now want to change

my surname. I'm not keen on returning to my maiden name, because my father was an arse, I could use my mother's maiden name, but her father was an arse, I'm a singer, so I was thinking of songbirds, that they all sound either very pretentious, or very rude, and indeed the thought at my friend Simon, to suggest I went with Stitz, spelled STITZ, which although

a great drag name, and quite glamorous, I'm not sure I want Anna Stitz on my driver's license, plus I am not a drag queen. Do you have any alternative suggestions, or advice on how to settle on a new name? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Anna, hello, yeah, well, I think you've come to the wrong guy.

I ran away from home once, and I threw my suitcase out the window, I could have used the door, like anyone else, but I didn't want to have that conversation with my father, and I thought that I would be kind of on the run, and I figured, well, I was on the run, because I was underage for running away, and I selected a name that I could give people

other than my real name, and this is embarrassing, and I never thought I'd say in public,

but the name I chose, and I was in through all the time to all things Celtic, and the name I chose was Patha General, I warned you that it was embarrassing, imagine how I feel.

“So am I the person you should come to looking for something as crucial as your own name?”

I don't think so, and my phone, on my phone, I always forget, but my phone was serviced by a friend, and during the hacking scandal, when everybody's phones were getting hacked, I took advice from a lawyer who dealt with such things, and he said, "Well, you can either have a burn-off phone," which is what very famous rich people do, and they get given a phone every day, and they throw it away at night, or you can have an anonymous phone, and I was

like Watson and anonymous phone, and he said, "Well, you know, you have a phone that you don't own." Somebody else owns it for you, so somebody that was sort of 60 degrees removed from me, and my phone, you would have to really work some to make a connection between her and me, and the person servicing my phone shows, so I don't, this is not my fault, but the

name they chose for me was Aspen Baxter, but that was for fun, and I didn't choose

I have a colleague here who we are all very engaged with this question, it's a very unusual

question, it's the only time we'll ever be asked such a question, and I like the refreshing thing that you've disqualified both those men in your life in the way that you have,

“I think it's admirable, and if you are thinking of songbirds, as given that you're a”

singer, one of my colleagues has suggested "Oreal," which is a bird, and it's a nice name. I sometimes get to name characters, I play, and I thought for one character, I was going to be called Robert Chamberlain, and I think Chamberlain is quite a nice name, it's not snappy, but it's a nice name, and it's the name of a very, very, very, very good friend of mine, other than that, I don't know that I have much to suggest, I'm just

looking around the room, give me one moment, my sister is called Anna, and we agree here in the room, that Anna Chamberlain, it's a kind of dignified name, we also have from the floor here, we have another suggestion from Alice, my producer, which is "Starling" Anna, "Starling," another songbird, beautiful word, flies south in the winter, what's wrong with that?

My other colleague has a couple of suggestions, one is "Yellow Hammer," I'm just a mouthpiece, I'm just, you know, and the other is "Great Tit," I've told you in previous broadcast that I am basically in a room full of children, who can't recover from words like "tit," I mean, if you could see what I see in this moment, it's just people weeping, actually weeping,

it's shame, and hilarity, but always with shame.

Hi Bill, it's Kim from New York City, I was surprised to hear you describe squeezing a tea bag to make the strongest tea, isn't the only proper way to make tea to do it using loose leaves in a pot? Yeah, Kim, I know, I know, and when my father, my father, who never touched alcohol in his life, but he was devout when it came to tea and cigarettes, if my father poured a cup of tea

carelessly, and it resulted in bubbles on the surface of the cup of tea, that cup of tea was dead to him, and it went down the sink, and he would start all over again, he would warm the pot, he would then boil the kettle some more, introduce the tea to the pot, and then the absolute boiling water at the optimum moment, and then leave it for a long time, and he'd have, probably have a wood bind while he was waiting, I'm not sure about that, he probably

waited for the tea before he had to cigarette, and then he would pour it very, very carefully

“through a strainer, obviously, and when he heard about, I remember walking down the street”

within when my father heard about tea bags, and he was absolutely, predictably, appalled at the prospect of a thing called a tea bag, with what he considered to be the sort of drugs of the barrel of the kind of dust that they were getting rid of to put in tea bags, and he didn't consider them an option at all, and I suppose I felt the same, I'd respect to my father for a long time, but then tea bags became my thing, and the thing about

is if I go, if I have tea in a cafe, and it's like a posh cafe where they use a pot, I always

ask to buy past the pot, I don't want the pot, and it's quite difficult to explain to people, you put the tea bag in the cup, and then you hit it with the hot water, and you put the milk on the side, it sounds simple, but it's quite difficult to pull that off, particularly

“if it's someone making the tea, who doesn't drink tea, I want the tea to be, the only thing”

I want from the tea is that the tea should be as strong as it can possibly be, as my grandmother would have said, Konimara tea, tea where the spoon stands up in it, all those cliches, and it should be somewhere between orange and chocolate coloured, and it should be powerful as anything, I don't have any finesse about tea, I just want maximum caffeine, and that's all I'm in it for really, and I love tea, and I smuggle Yorkshire tea reaching out to sponsorship,

I smuggle Yorkshire tea across borders all over the world, along with Marmite reaching out to sponsorship, and the thing about cigarettes and tea, I used to get up to smoke, and

cigarettes, and I was in the miserable time where I was trying to invent, not smoking as a bad thing, before I discovered that it was like I'd hit the jackpot, I used to regret

“it, but now I get up to drink tea, if I have trouble getting up I think, yeah, but if you”

get up, you can have a cup of tea, anyway, but I know what you're saying, and I know I should, Territ Stamp, who was a great pioneer in terms of food and drink, once told me that the journey was from black tea to green tea to white tea, if you go to Fort Nammer

Mason's in London's Picadilly, I think they have the first pickings of the crop tea, which

is the lightest tea you can get, but that's not going to get me out the house in the morning, do you know what I mean? I'm a committed tea bag squeezer, and I used to get brown fingers, because I used to squeeze them for so long, it was like I smoked, it was like nicotine stains, but it was actually tea stains, and somebody a dear friend of mine bought me a thing that you could use to squeeze

“the tea bag without having to use your fingers.”

There is such a thing, yeah. We're very pleased to announce for the third season of ill advised by Bill Knight a new feature calm down, everybody calm down, but it's the feature which doesn't have a name yet, but what it concerns is, things my grandmother used to say will think of a name at some point, and I'm going to start it off with my grandmother who had a couple of things

you would say, one of which is such a mouthful that you imagine how it ever caught on, but if you came home from school or wherever, and you were boasting about something, my grandmother would say, I saw a shabby funeral they need a trumpeter, which apart from any else takes quite a long time to say, you know, and you think where did that come from and who would have bothered to compose that sentence?

Anyway, that was one of the things she said, the other things she used to say was, "All's neat and tidy and the pose on the dresser." And the "po" I know, this is too much information, but it was a generation two generations ago, but the "po" was the "pot" that you would urinate into to save you going out into the uncentary heated house to get to the outside toilet, so you'd have a pot inside,

which would be emptied in the morning, and which would be kept under the bed. But in the daytime, you would of course, being, you know, civilised human beings, you would wash the pot, and in my grandmother's case, put it on the dresser. They were decorative, you know, they were decorated with flowers and some of them, like that.

And then the other thing she would say is, he left his fiddle by the door, which was

what she said about my grandfather, who I never met, but it meant that he was very,

very, very charming as he went around about his business outside of the house, but as soon as he got home, he hung his fiddle by the door. In other words, he wasn't such a sweetheart in his own domain.

“So those were three things that my grandmother used to say, "And you have to imagine”

them in an Irish accent. I'm not going to mimic my grandmother because it's too weird, but you just have to imagine them in an Irish accent." Anyway, that's my inaugural contribution to things my grandmother said. It could also be, I now want to broaden the range.

It could be things my grandmother never got around to saying, just for kicks, but mostly

it's for things my grandmother used to say, and we could include, if you didn't have a grandmother, or you don't know your grandmother and you've only got a grandfather, grandfather will do. So things my grandparents used to say, see what you think. That's the cue for our very popular feature, but you don't understand, I'm like, "We've banned." And we have an entry or a contribution from Louisa, or Louisa, in Canada.

And she says, "Hi Bill, in 1998, I was in middle school in British Columbia, Canada, and formed a band with my two best friends, three singing girls, one guitar, and a lot of rhyming. We called ourselves the toe nails, give me a break, and our hit song was neon brown potatoes, and the lyrics to neon brown potatoes go something like this.

his bike, neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes,

neon brown potatoes. Hugh's house is filling up. Hugh's mom has had enough. She kicked him out of town. Hugh's life turned murky brown. Guess what? Neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes says times five. Neon brown potatoes, neon brown potatoes, mashed, baked, fried, and then it's written our capital R-A-A-A-A-A-W-W-W. I would suspect neon brown potatoes times five. I'll spare you the other four. Well, that's

“absolutely delightful. So everyone here is very, very happy that you should get us doing that”

on a Wednesday morning in West London. That's a clue to where we are. So that's this week's contribution to, but you don't understand. I'm like with the bandender. And welcome now to this week's band word list on ill advised by Bill Knight. We have been overwhelmed by the response to the band word list. Planet wide people are urging us to ban hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of words. This week's words are fact-toid, which is not even

a word, but anyway it's banned now. Pamper, interesting. Yeah, I can see why people would be irritated by Pamper. It's got one too many peas in it and it's sort of suggests something unattractive. Somebody wants the word nostril band and I've checked with my colleagues and none of us can find any attractive reason for banning the word nostril. I mean, come on, a nostril is a nostril. I have two of them and I maintain them impeccably. I have a special attachment, which I

which I spent quite a lot of money on and without, let's face it without them. What are we going to do? Walk around with our mouths open. I mean, come on. I'm much as I respect you. Think of another word and we'll do that point. Then there is a course, the kind of front page problem

“of triggering. And my colleagues are rolling their eyes as we speak. So I think triggering has done”

its job. If it ever had a job, which I'm doubtful of, that job is done and it can now go and it can be banned from the English and any other language. Game changer. Yeah, get that out of it. That's like business speak. It's like when you get nice decent regular people who are persuaded

into business speak. It's always very sad if you overhear them in hotels. Glamping?

Yeah, I'm all about banning, glamping. I don't know, it was probably, you know, a bit of journalies that got out of hand and then it entered the language, like a lot of these things. So no more glamping, bring your wellies. That's the end of this week's band word list. Thank you for contributing. It's now time for this episode's playlist and this week's playlist is called

“No, I was awake, honestly. And it starts with an easily brothers tune, call, don't let me be”

lonely tonight, which is what you call, sumptuous, or one of those words, like delicious. And another delicious song. In a similar kind of vein for the nighttime vibe of no I was awake, honestly.

And the second one is from Prince and it's called Dam You, which is also a very, very beautiful

ballad. And then there's Mary J. Blyage live singing, "A mini ripeting song, Misty Blue." And at the beginning she says, "If my mother was out there, this would be for her." And then we have a song that we've had fun with in the back room because we have a thing in the back room about speaking on records. And this was one of the examples. It was one of my early examples of memorable bits of talking on a record. And it's called Tiltamaro, "Tiltamaro by

baby. It means you're wearing credible. He really says that. And then Curtis Mayfield with another

soul ballad, which is called "Between You, Baby, and Me," which I love. And then the incredible

“Alicia Keys in a duet with Maxwell and another slow ballad called Fire We Make. And I think”

you'll find. If you have a late night cap or a cup of, I don't know, Bovero or Horlicks, this could be the playlist for that. So I hope you enjoy it. And just for those of you who are not aware, the back room is our bonus episode on Patreon. So we look forward to joining us there, which features various things, including me reading "Night and Day" by Virginia Wolf. It's fun now. And now it's time for Book of the Week or Book of the Episode. And this week's book is called

Beside the Syrian Sea by James Wolf, W.O.L.F.F. No need to remember any of this because it will be in the show notes. And it's the first of three, a trilogy written by James Wolf. The second one is called "How to Betray Your Country." And the third one is called "The Man in the Corderoys suit." And their crackers, they're cracking. They're very, very good espionage novels. He's newly around James Wolf, at least to my knowledge. And they do interconnect. You can read them

independently of one another. But I suggest you read all three. Just buy all three and read them. They're in paperback. And they're really good value. They're contemporary. And they will explain apart from being entertaining. They will explain some of the complexity of the international situation.

“I'm going to read just the first couple of pages because I think that's probably best to do.”

This is chapter one. Jonas couldn't remember the last time he had felt so ill-prepared.

He'd never been inside the bar before and wouldn't have been able to answer basic questions

about the layout exits cameras in customer profile. He didn't know which group controlled this part of Beirut or how they would react if it all went wrong. His target was probably drunk from his position. He could see the open doorway clearly enough. But the women at the bar inside were impatient for customers and at least one of them had seen him loitering across the street. There's is the oldest profession he thought they are the better watchers. They're livelihood

“more honestly linked to their ability to observe and to manipulate. Spies are the second oldest”

and the second best. At least that was how he felt. He had decided to allow the priest enough time for one drink. The woman in the doorway waved at him and he turned away to light a cigarette. He felt weighed down by grief by the gentle rain that had soaked into his clothes by simple tiredness. His dark beard was long and unkempt and the stress of the previous months had left him looking older than his 35 years. Somehow he brought his mind back to the task ahead to tell the

priest who he was and what he wanted to deal with his confusion and anger to identify what might

motivate him to help. Jonas had never done anything like this before. As an analyst it was his job

to come to terms with the rogue's gallery of assumptions, bendettas, half truths and bald lies that constituted the majority of the intelligence that crossed his desk and make it useful to elevate it to something approaching fact but he had never been operational. At his temperament had kept him away from much of what went on around him. He remembered an agent handler talking about ways of keeping the door open to a second meeting even if the initial pitch went disastrously.

This struck him as fantastical. His plan would either work tonight or it would go wrong. There would be no second chances. The interior was smaller and darker than he'd expected. A poorly stocked bar stretched along the right side. A few tables were pushed up against the opposite wall. The woman who had waved at him took his arm and led him to the bar. She pushed her breasts against him. "You're going to buy me a drink," she said.

It's very, very good, buddy. Decide the serenity by James Wolf.

Thank you for listening. That's all for now. I wish you well wherever you're going,

“whatever you're up to. Remember, it's nice to be in part and place in part into the ice.”

And I sign off and offer you all my weary disco love, signed bill.

El advice by bill 90 is produced by Alice Williams and Keata Grigori, with a system

“production by Anjaliq Somers, pronounced Somers and Charlotte Ross, pronounced Ross.”

And it's an iPod Studios production.