Hello! The long and short of it is that I’ve made a short film - Daddy Superior - which is now available to watch on Youtube. I think it’s good and I’m proud of it.

The most liked comment on the Youtube video is this one:

... which really makes me laugh. Partly because it’s a great sentence. But also it’s a reference to a bit from Three Bean Salad podcast where I shared that my film had just been turned down by Cambridge Film Festival and then the following week we received an email from the man who’d written the rejection email. And then we slagged off the email. It’s all good clean fun.

When I made the film, I wasn’t really sure why. I’d wanted to make one for a long time, but I’d always been put off by the cost and the potential faff of having to find a sound person and book them a Travelodge and make sure they’ve got a sandwich that they aren’t allergic to at the right time. But then I heard a podcast interview with Pete Ohs, a director who makes zero crew feature films. Just him behind the camera, directing, shooting and running the sound. He then does all the editing and post production. He talked about how he wanted to reclaim the feeling he had when he was making films with his mates as a kid with a camcorder.

It’s possible I’m about to misrepresent and bastardize what his principles are but they’re something like the following:

Find an interesting location first - then build the story around the space. Also to save money, stay somewhere you can shoot in. (For this film I had the idea of chapel first and then wrote the script based on that. Also see why part of it is set in a glamping pod)

Prioritize fun - the experience of making the film, the fun and the collaboration, should be prioritized. The goal is to recapture the joy of making films with friends. (If you’re not having fun making your daft film then what is the point? I can’t speak for the cast - Mike Wozniak, Chris Cantrill, Sammy Dobson, Amy Gledhill - WHAT A CAST and what smashing people - but I had a nice time.)

Use the gear you already have - Pete uses a camera from 2012 and I think two small portable lights. His films look brilliant. Which is so good in a world that constantly tells you that you need the latest thing. (I was PRETTY good at this if not 100% - I did buy a tripod from Amazon and a light off a man on Facebook marketplace and to get to his house in the valleys I had to drive up the steepest hill I’ve ever driven up and I was fairly convinced that the car was going to tip backwards like a tortoise. I know tortoises don’t tip backwards and that’s a bad simile but I can’t explain it, the car felt like a tortoise. A tortoise in danger.)

Ohs also devises full feature films with the cast as they go along, which I didn’t want to do as I wanted to write something. But I just found his whole approach really inspiring. DIY stuff has always really appealed to me. It’s why I love podcasting. And also by going zero crew I wouldn’t have to fanny around booking a Travelodge for a sound person who might turn out to be a wanker, which remains my biggest fear in life.

And so it was.

But then the film is made and you’re not really sure what to do with it. And the thing you’re meant to do is submit it to film festivals.

I didn’t know much about this process, and it turns out that you sign up to a website called Film Freeway and through that you can send your film to these festivals, each one charging a fee. Thanks to the lovely and brilliant Welsh film maker James Button for talking me through this process and also recommending some festivals to apply to. I also just randomly applied to a load of festivals one time in the middle of the night. Not really sure why. The whole thing cost me £638.78 in submission fees.

Now follows a run down of all my film festival submissions in order of when they announced their line ups, whether the film was accepted by the festival, and if I can remember, some info on why I applied:

Pigeon Laughs Festival - ACCEPTED! - a comedy film festival here in Cardiff. Was pleased to be screened!

Berlin Indie Film Festival - WINNER, BEST COMEDY - this one is curious - I only applied because it was in Berlin and they had a picture of the Babylon cinema on their page where I once had my best ever cinema experience watching Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus with a live orchestra. One of the best things you can do in my opinion. However, they seem to give out these “awards” on a monthly basis and don’t actually screen the films. Or at least they didn’t screen mine. Strange. Hmm.

Sunderland Short Films Festival - WINNER, BEST COMEDY - was really pleased with this. Got a piece of perspex in the post. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because of a work commitment.

So it all started well. And then....

SXSW London - not selected - I had heard of SXSW and so I clicked and paid in a stupor.

Odense International Film Festival - not selected - I fancied having an excuse to go to Denmark.

Galway Film Fleadh - not selected - I fancied going to Galway, I think because I was once in a pantomime at university with a guy from Galway who was insanely charming and I’ve always wondered if everyone there is like that.

Edinburgh International Film Festival - not selected

Kino London Short Film Festival - not selected

Exit 6 Film Festival - not selected - you’d have to be a stronger person than I to turn down the opportunity to potentially get to go to Basingstoke.

Spirit of Independence Film Festival - not selected - it’s in Sheffield and I’ve never been to Sheffield - I drove past it recently and that was quite exciting, so to actually go would have been good.

Show Me Shorts Film Festival - not selected - can’t remember why I applied to this one. It’s in New Zealand. Not a clue.

Encounters Film Festival - not selected - it’s in Bristol which isn’t far from me.

Short Com International Comedy Film and Animation Festival - SELECTED! - was very pleased but couldn’t go to the screening because I was at my cousin’s wedding in Cirencester. Congratulations, Andrew and Hannah.

HaHaArt Film Festival - not selected - this one is in a Portuguese town called Pombal which I’d never heard of but put me in mind of the potato snack Pom-bärs.

Aesthetica Film Festival - not selected - my friend Rose said it was good.

Orvieto Cinema Fest - not selected - I think it was cheap to apply for and the word Orvieto put me in mind of a pasta shape and thus the idea of eating pasta in Italy, which is a hard idea to shake.

IndieCork Film Festival - not selected - I wanted to go to Cork because I really like the sitcom The Young Offenders.

Nottingham Film Festival - not selected

Locarno International Film Awards - not selected - due to a train problem, I went to Locarno by mistake last year and it seemed like a sign.

(I’ve now copied “not selected” to make this quicker to write - it’s CTRL-V all the way)

Leeds International Film Festival - not selected - for some reason I get quite a good vibe from Leeds. I may have become emotional thinking about what has become of footballer Kalvin Phillips.

Annual Copenhagen Film Festival - not selected - another tilt at a trip to Denmark - I do understand that I can go to these places without having been selected for a film festival. In fact, it would be easier to do that if I still had £638.78 in my pocket.

Cork International Film Festival - not selected - a second bite at the Cork cherry. I have now come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see its historic food market.

Uppsala Short Film Festival - not selected - Sweden. See Copenhagen.

Cambridge Film Festival - not selected - I’ve only been to Cambridge once, and that was a very ill-advised cycle from London to Cambridge which I did on a Brompton and as soon as I arrived my arse was in tatters and bpoth my legs had died so I couldn’t stand. I ate a pie in the train station leaning against a wall and then got on the train back to London.

PÖFF Shorts (Black Nights Film Festival) - not selected - just liked the word PÖFF.

So yeah... maybe I was naive? Maybe these events are too big for me to submit my scrappy short film to? I once knew someone who graduated from university and applied to a job advert to be the assistant editor of the Guardian. Was I essentially doing that?

I’m not really sure what point I’m trying to make about festivals. Maybe my submission wasn’t right, maybe it’s too long, maybe there are just loads of really great short films being made and it’s hard for them to screen everything. Maybe what I make isn’t what they’re after? Maybe my film exclusively appeals to something in the psyche of people from Sunderland?

Or maybe my film IS shit?

But I really don’t think so. I think it’s good!

Anyway, despite having a written a whole email about it I’m not complaining at all - I’ve loved this whole process. I’m lucky enough to have been able to put on screenings of my own in Cardiff, Bristol, London and Manchester which were great fun, and it’s been really gratifying to put it on Youtube and watch the view ticker creep upwards. So why not give it a go?

Also I’ve just realised it’s Guy Fawkes night! Remember: try as much as possible to stay inside a sealed biscuit tin. DON’T go back to a lit firework. DO put a sparkler up your arse.

Bye!

BP x

Hello there!

I almost didn’t send this newsletter because I read it back and thought it was a bit boring, and then I remembered a comment under a recent Youtube video I made:

And fair play, I think they’re right.

Long story short, I’m doing a Beef and Dairy Network live show on Saturday 6th September in London. Tickets can be found here: IN-HALL and STREAMING tickets.

Short story long, it’s been ten years since I started Beef and Dairy Network Podcast. Ten!

I had wanted to make a podcast for a long time when I started B&DN - I got into podcast listening very early on. I remember a girlfriend I had at university introducing me to them - I think neither of us had an iPod at the time, we were listening on iTunes on her laptop. I then got an iRiver H120, a truly great mp3 player that I went on to leave on a Megabus a couple of years later. Occasionally I meet someone who also had an iRiver H120 - you don’t even have to talk to them about it, you can just tell from the way they hold themselves.

After university I moved home to Cardiff and lived with my parents for a couple of years. Two paths were laid out in front of me. I could either buy a fedora and begin writing a manifesto, or spend an absolutely huge amount of time on Megabuses between Cardiff and London to try and make inroads in radio and comedy. I went for the latter and was probably spending an average of 14 hours a week on coaches and so podcasts, and being able to tune out the smell of a ripe chemical toilet, were vital in keeping me sane. (In this period I was listening using a Sansa Clip MP3 player - another absolute beauty)

It’s generally thought that you can split the history of podcasting into three waves.

The first wave was the beginning. The term was coined in 2004 and iTunes added podcast support in 2005. I think I cottoned on in early 2007. My first podcast was Answer Me This - which feels like it must have been the first indie British comedy podcast? Maybe? And the Bugle! And the News Quiz. And also there were the American prestige-o-pods like This American Life and Radiolab.

The next wave is the mid-2010s - my “generation”. The big one was Serial, of course. And Adam Buxton, Elis and John, Reply All, Mystery Show, My Dad Wrote A Porno, Griefcast. Even though many of these pods were quite professional, podcasting still felt quite DIY-y then, and felt to me like a medium that was full of possibility. I think the idea that a podcast is some people just chatting on mic hadn’t yet crystallized into being THE IDEA of what a podcast is. (That’s not a criticism of those sorts of pods, I listen to many of them! The one I WILL NOT listen to is one that I think is called “Three Bean Salad”.)

The next boom was the pandemic-o-pods, when suddenly lots of celebrities realised that they could keep working by doing a podcast. WITH MIXED RESULTS. Lots of good stuff, and also lots of podcasts that the world just doesn’t need. I believe “Three Bean Salad” began in 2021.

What’s the fourth wave going to be? The trend now is that podcasts are moving to video - lots of podcasters are now building SETS to film their podcast on. Something that started as a thing that can be done cheaply with an £80 mic, some strategically placed duvets and a laptop is now TELEVISION. I read somewhere that the verb that under 30s associate with podcasts is “watch”. So maybe that’s the future? And maybe audio-only podcasting will die out like the iRiver H120? I hope not. But then I thought blogging would last forever. RIP blogging.

(My specific iRiver H120 didn’t die, I left it on a coach. I rang the depot to see if anyone had handed it in and they said no one had seen it. A LIKELY STORY I CAN HEAR IT GLINTING OVER THE PHONE)

I recently had a conversation with another podcaster who said that he’d been told by his advertising people that listener numbers are down for most “old podcasts”, by which they meant any podcasts that pre-date the most recent pandemic-o-pod wave. It was the first time I thought of Beef And Dairy Network as being an “old” podcast. Off the top of my head I would think the reason why “old” podcasts are slightly withering on the vine is explained by “old” podcasts not getting any buzz (in the media by-and-large the only podcasts that get written about are new podcasts), the competition hotting up, and people having enough and moving on. Or maybe us “old” podcasts aren’t used to the new way of doing things with video?

Anyway, I’m happy. I’m just looking at my numbers now and it looks like they’ve stayed relatively steady. A happy plateau. A loyal band of worldwide beefheads. The only interesting thing I can see is that for the first time now since 2016, there are more listeners in the UK than in the US. 40.2% of listeners are in the UK, 38.01% in the US. For most of the ten years the US has been in front. What does this tell us? Does it track the USA’s waning status as a world super power? Does it say something about the confidence at the heart of the American psyche? Would the USA intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan? All questions that my podcast listenership stats simply can’t answer.

If you’ve listened at any point in the past decade, thanks for listening. And if you can, do come to the live show! They’re always fun. Although I haven’t had a single thought about it yet - who knows what it’ll be. But whatever it is it’ll expertly walk the tightrope of tedious and amusing.

Tickets can be found here: IN-HALL and STREAMING tickets.

Also I’m on a UK-wide tour with Three Bean Salad starting in September. Most venues are sold out or nearly sold out, but I have great news for you if you’re from Newcastle or Glasgow. Tour info here!

It's time for another email from Benjamin Partridge PLC - now a proud subsidiary of Unilever.

Re: Unilever. The whole affair was a whirlwind, culminating in some slightly confusing negotiations which took place on a golf course in Jersey. Long story short, I thought I was shaking hands on a free sachet of Persil ColourFast with Sicilian Lemon scent, but according to their lawyer (and not mine, who has disappeared) it represented a binding agreement to let Unilever acquire Benjamin Partridge PLC.

It was only driving home from the course that I realised that what I had thought of as a slightly boggy game of golf was in fact a hostile corporate takeover. Of course I fought it through the courts. However due to several emails going into my spam folder, and my lawyer still being missing (his wife said he’s gone rollerblading - but for 6 months? Unconvincing if not impossible), I left with a bill for £250,000 and another sachet of Persil ColourFast with Sicilian Lemon scent. Which to be fair to them is great stuff.

Anyway.

Yesterday a programme I made with the poet and comedian Rob Auton went out on BBC Radio 4 and is now on BBC Sounds and can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001s53w

It's about the experimental novel "The Unfortunates" by BS Johnson.

I've been a huge admirer of Rob's for such a long time so it was a real treat to get to work with him.

As with all of these sorts of programmes, as the producer you end up having to edit out a lot of good stuff. The principle example in this case is a bit we recorded outside Nottingham Forest's football ground where Rob compares the 1960s experimental author B.S. Johnson to Roy Keane.

Also a nice bit where Rob considers whether Nottingham Forest winger Anthony Elanga has ever used a paperclip. I think that’s a really good question.

With those sections littering the cutting room floor, just imagine what stayed in

-

In other news, I received an email from a stranger out of the blue this morning with a copy of a film made for BBC One in 1971 by my great uncle, the ethnographer Dr Arthur F Partridge. I’d never seen it before! I've put a clip of it up on Youtube here:

Bye now! Bye!

Hello,

I've had one of those days where you get absolutely nothing done. I tried to salvage things and find some energy by having a mid-afternoon nap, but now my body clock is totally screwed and I feel like a sparrow during a total eclipse. That's not a great simile, which only serves to underline how groggy I am.

A related thought: why has no one tried to bring back grog as a drink? I could imagine that taking off in a kind of anchor tattoo hipster-y way. And then a few years later it makes its way into the mainstream.... maybe the thing that tips it over the edge is a sparkling fruit grog? The new prosecco? Sparkling mango and heritage raspberry grog with the girls? I'll talk to my bank manager.

An unrelated fact for you: I found out recently have Americans don't have punnets. Or maybe they do but they don't call them punnets.

I've made a couple of videos recently, reviewing the most recent Magnum ice cream releases: the Double Sunlover and the Double Starchaser. These are bad names for ice creams, but do they taste nice?

Double Sunlover:

Double Starchaser:

Have a nice rest of the afternoon. Don't nap! Even if you're tempted!

BP x

Friends, Romans, Mini Countrymen,

If you're a subscriber to the full diamond package of Benjamin Partridge PLC content - you've probably gathered that it's MaxFunDrive, which is when podcasts on the Maximum Fun podcast network (such as my very own Beef and Dairy Network - "Laugh? I wept." John Major) ask their listeners for money. And as such I have had my hat on the pavement for the past 2 weeks. So it may well be that you've already heard my pitch so I won't give you the hard sell. However, I made some videos in support of it and maybe you'll enjoy them.

For those who have already seen these filmic masterpieces ("Laugh? I wept." John Major), perhaps whilst on the toilet and looking at Instagram or on the toilet and looking at Twitter, I have included exclusive behind-the-scenes facts about each video ("That's the sort of added value I look for when I sign up for an email newsletter." John Major).

1. Behind the scenes fact: I filmed this one in Gravesend and when I was walking back to the station I walked past the church under which it is thought that Pocahontas is buried. I also bought all the microwavable bologneses in Gravesend’s Tesco Express - sorry Kentish bolog-fans.

2. Behind the scenes fact: Half way through filming this a woman popped her head over a wall and said "are you alright? I was worried that you were unwell" which is a British way of saying "please be quiet, I can hear you in my garden".

3. Throughout the outdoor part of filming this, there was a fox turd on the ground which we had to constantly pivot around. It's credit to Tom's abilities as an actor that he doesn't let that constant panic play across his face.

Go to maximumfun.org/join if you fancy chipping in - MaxFunDrive runs until the end of the weekend.

MORAL DILEMMAS THE BIBLE CAN'T HELP YOU WITH:

1. You're in a charity shop and you notice they have a rare early pressing of a Beatles record signed by Ringo Starr that you estimate is worth £100,000. In this scenario you're also eating a jam doughnut. The volunteer running the shop politely tells you that there is a no food policy in the shop and you fly off the handle: "Are you kidding? You've got a record there worth £100,000, and I could have bought it for 50p and made over 99 grand profit but I didn't, and you're worried about this doughnut? Fuck's saaaake!" And then you open your paper bag of doughnuts and start pelting the shop with doughnuts, jam spraying hither and thither. You hurl the final jam doughnut at a dress on a rack infront of you and realise that they've done it again: it's Queen Elizabeth the First's coronation dress, which has inestimable value. It's now absolutely covered in jam and ruined forever. Do you tell them?

2. Should we send planes to Ukraine?

3. I watched agog as a huge ginger cat took a shit on my plastic grass. A few hours later I went for a walk around the block and noticed a missing cat poster with a picture of the very same cat. I texted the number on the poster saying I'd seen the cat in my garden and they replied thanking me and saying they'd come and have a look in the local area. From a moral point of view, should I have been able to ask them to come and clear up the cat shit, given that they would be nearby and it is their cat?

Yes I know the most morally abhorrent element of the above scenarios is the existence of the plastic grass but it was installed by the previous owners of my house and I can't be arsed to pull it up.

Thanks for reading! Bye now!