Andy Richardson: Findus pancakes, Michelin Man and baths . . .

Most people go home, plonk themselves in front of the TV and talk to the wife. I go home, settle down in a home office and pretend it’s 7am and start all over again. There’s nowt so queer as folk.

The BBC Radio Man had asked me to go onto his show to talk about what we’re up to. And, foolish me, I imagined we’d talk about the Venison guy and the Michelin-starred guy, whose books are almost complete. Instead, we spoke of simpler things: Findus Crispy Pancakes and Findus French Bread Pizzas, making ourselves laugh for an audience of, ooh, at least 27, I reckon.

I’ve always imagined radio laughter is false; that Steve Wright in the Afternoon and his team of merry pranksters are putting it on for the sake of the nation. And then I found myself exploding with a fit of the giggles as the BBC Radio Man started talking off the cuff about Crispy Pancakes and French Bread pizzas while I was expecting to talk about Vietnamese dishes called Duck Cao Lao. Life is strange. Especially when you get up early on a Sunday morning to talk to the Radio Guy.

Right. Here’s the segueway. I don’t do domesticity. I just don’t get it; though, hopefully, as I start to mature and my brain belatedly enters adulthood, I will. While travelling to pick up a bath – long story, but we’ve got time, so stick around – from Knutsford, she-who-must-be-obeyed and I realised that this was our first ‘normal weekend’ of the year; as though driving in a Transit to pick up baths from Knutsford is some kinda normal.

The bath was brilliant, incidentally. A richer-than-could-ever-be-necessary couple with a landscaped drive – yes, drive, not garden…. it even had it’s own water fountain next to the Porsche – had bought themselves something fancy for the price of a small, second hand car. The fella’s wife had decided it didn’t suit her so they’d asked their son to flog it on eBay. And, hola, we’d bagged ourselves a steal.

It wasn’t my first brush with conspicuous wealth. I remember visiting Corsica – or was it Sardinia – for a brilliant holiday and wandering down to the bay each evening to look at the multi-millionaires’ yachts. Groups of people had gathered, looking at their fellow humans for the simple reason that they were so rich. “Imagine being so wealthy that other people look at you?” said wife one, as we scuttled back to our ***-star hotel in our rental car.

Back in Cheshire, the bath seller was sorry to see the departure of his domestic goods. “You’ve got yourself a bargain there,” said the immaculate one, who clearly found gifting domestic goods as expensive as small second hand cars as ‘normal’ as we found driving in a Transit van to Knutsford. We nodded. Then put our foot down before he changed his mind. Before we knew it, the Stallion Transit was back in Shropshire.

And then it was onto the Radio Man. It’s funny the things you say when there’s a little red light on in a studio and you’re being asked questions that you weren’t expecting. So while I’d entered the lion’s den predicting we’d talk about the wonders of Venison Man and Michelin Man, I found myself ruminating on Pancake Day and telling the host about a chef who’d made his own crispy pancake; making a perfect crepe, folding it around a delightful cheese and ham filling before giving it a dash of egg wash, coating it in Panko and deep frying it until golden. Et voila. And suddenly, we were 12-years-old, two kids laughing about Findus Crispy Pancakes while the good people of Shropshire choked on their Cornflakes.

“Do you remember Findus French Bread Pizzas?” asked Radio Man.

I nodded. Then, in a nano second, realised radio listeners wouldn’t be able to hear my nod. “Yes,” I barked, forcefully. “You had two choices with a Findus French Bread Pizza. You could either eat them when they came straight out of the oven, in which case your mouth had to be made of asbestos and able to tolerate temperatures of 7,000C. Or, you could wait until they were cool enough to eat.”

“That’s funny.”

“Except, when they cooled, they solidified like a brick. They were literally hard like rock and could break a tooth.”

We laughed. Then realised we were supposed to be speaking. So we carried on waffling about venison and Michelin stars, but realised the only thing anyone would be interested in was the chat about Findus Crispy Pancakes and Findus French Bread Pizzas.

He wrapped up the show. His audience had enjoyed observational comedy from two unsuspecting talking heads at 11.27am. It would have been nice to go home and enjoy a relaxing bath. But it was still in the Transit.