You Are Being Unreasonable

"Don't put yogs up your foof." Good news! We're temporarily moving to weekly You Are Being Unreasonable episodes to help provide some relief from... everything. In non-COVID-19 chat, we discuss "tricking" friends into eating vegan sausages and going on holiday with the Sausage Lads, dating dog-owners and dating Human Centipedes, when it is and is not right to throw something from a colleague's desk into the bin, what to do when you get spice in and around your "foof", and how comfortable we both are throwing shapes (?) on the dancefloor. This episode is accidentally brought to you by Richmond's Vegan Sausages and The Amazing World of Gumball on Cartoon Network.

"My knives are stabbed into the garden with the handles sticking out..." We recorded a little further in advance than usual this week so we take some time to predict the future which is now your past when you read this in the present. Clear? Good. This week we discuss the frankly horrifying prospect of turgid chicken skin and decide which foodstuffs can accurately be described as "flaccid"; how to dispose of knives without looking like a knife fetishist and why not to create tiny knife cemetaries in your background; being elected Toilet Monitor on a train and using the train toilet as an office space; the COVID-19 conspiracy theory that's all the range among the gullible of Mumsnet and how Illuminati HQ came up with the virus.

"Just care yourself up by your bootstraps." Some weeks we cover the tough questions about politics and economics and etiquette in the modern age. Some weeks we ask, 'Should you literally steal candy from a baby?'. How is a hapless husband supposed to get snacks if his wife doesn't buy them for him and he's not allowed to eat baby snacks? This week, we also listen to the reasonable and knowledgable claims of the Flat Earthers, we assess a Classic Mumsnet Scheme to set up a job-share between one million UK unemployed people to be a single care worker, and we panic over how to write invitations to events. Thanks to Imogen for providing us with the 'snack bitch' thread.

"I was just grateful that we didn't have a dead old man under a washing machine." Gregg Wallace gets an extension this week as we discuss the rules of etiquette for offering a worker on your property a drink (if you're the host of BBC's Eat Well For Less and Inside the Factory). If a houseguest comes to stay, should they bring a gift? And what should it be: some Frubes; a cheap Zinfandel? What motivational songs do out-of-touch Mumsnetters send to another out-of-touch Mumsnetter to pump up a Gen-Z-er? And should we let children go to pirate-themed parties so they can learn to torrent and dress up as Napster?

"'Your very existence is a hot take' is a weird thing to say to someone." We're big into the social media this week. This episode is practically a lesson in social media etiquette and frankly we should be charging you for this training. We get into bosses who want you to advertise to your friends via Facebook and WhatsApp; printing out and laminating memes for your meme in-tray; what the flame emoji means and whether you should use it to comment on your friend's jacked husband on Facebook. We also discuss what to do if you have a parcel from China to collect from the Post Office, what to do if your hamster is infected with the coronavirus, and what to do when someone you manage is going for the same job interview as you and the interviewers make you buzz in like University Challenge.

"You've got a slotted spoon to try to eat that satsuma? What are you on about?" What is irony? What is sincerity? We discuss this philosophical and cultural conundrum in-depth as we look into someone's "sincere and heartfelt apology". This week, we take out three billboards and bake some apology muffins to apologise for delaying a driver at a crossing, we discuss a boyfriend talking about breasts with a friend and "what they could do with them", we take a double bedroom in our new new-build house as a dressing room and confine our children to smaller rooms, and a colleague uses a mountain of plastic every lunchtime to cut up pineapples with plastic forks.

"Bonkers or normal?" Another year; another You Are Being Unreasonable. Please settle yourself down for the annual shareholder's meeting of YABU Industries. We start the year by pondering if instant coffee is a disaster at a child's birthday party, how you get recruited by MI5 and MI6 and meeting spies in fields, the history of French plaits and their cinematic representation, and how we should all answer the phone in 2020.

"Christmas is my favourite time of the year and I don't want it overshadowed by pigs." Ho ho ho and "Merry" "Christmas"! This is the recording of our Christmas live show performed at the Effra Social in Brixton, London in aid of Mermaids UK (https://www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/). Thanks to the generosity of everyone who came to the show, we raised £450 for Mermaids UK to help support gender-diverse and transgender children in the UK. This year, we think of the best Secret Santa presents you can get for £3 in Asda, we dress children up in yellow leggings to be the Beyoncé of the school nativity version of Kill Bill: Vol. 1, we employ a cleaner to clean up our palatial mansion for 30 hours per week (but not over Christmas), we ponder over extensive arguments about what to do with micro-pigs over Christmas, and we tackle Am I Being Unreasonable questions from the audience.

"Why not trickle out your truths over the Christmas dinner table?" It's been a tough week but we're still here to bring community, solidarity, and hope through the medium of a snarky podcast about Mumsnet. This week, we meet our favourite new recurring character, Trickle Truth the festive fairy who drip-feeds truths, and we talk about offensive company names for banterous lads, using 'partner' to describe your husband or wife and what 'other half' refers to, people filming in houses without the homeowner's permission and the possibility of being Home Alone-d, look at IMDb's incorrectly-regarded-as-goofs section, and, unsurprisingly, we get political with some chat about negotiating salaries and the importance of collective organising to improve pay and conditions in the workplace. 

"We're not saying people have to stop: we just wish they would." As the Christmas season approaches, we're thinking about our Christmas dinner: a roasted Gregg Wallace, too much sriracha sauce and Neopolitan layered Angel's Delight pudding in an ornate crystal bowl. This week, we get into TV cooks who use too many utensils and the differences in portion control between gourmet cooking and cooking at home, cover versions versus originals and those slow piano covers for John Lewis ads, inventive ways of eating Angel's Delight, and calling people cockwombles, wankspatulas, twunts, and the like.

A bonus episode in which we pop in on GransNet for a catch-up with the grans. Bad language on TV, pineapple pies, grans at death metal concerts, granny ticket scalpers, and cold-calls from funeral directors: we get into what's afflicting the grans nowadays.

"You disgust me, you sickening mummy's boy." We pitch a jukebox musical film about Billy Bragg's catalogue: Billy, get in touch if you're interested. We would also accept interest from Danny DeVito. We also immediately blow the chances of that film getting produced by the biggest media conglomerate in the world by laying into The Walt Disney Company and it's history of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-unionism, and opposition to basic labour rights. Oh well. We also discuss the breast-y wrapping paper at Paperchase and the possibility of boob bubblewrap, whether an adult boy should share a hotel room with his mother, and we offer our standard advice of 'leave the bastard' to a woman whose husband finds her knitting "unattractive".

We rashly promised a bonus episode on the birds section of Mumsnet and here it is. We briefly discuss birds and bird-related issues including big poos, which bird to get for an elegant child, and how to keep birds from tweeting.

Sunday 8th December 2019 from 18:30 at the Boulevard Theatre, 6 Walker's Court, Soho, W1F 0BT. Go to https://boulevardtheatre.co.uk/whats-on/sunday-service-podcasts-8-december/ for details and to book tickets.

"Would it be spiteful to release the hounds after the interview?" This episode is brought to you by Blinds.net where you can buy the concept of blinds. This week, midwives steal our morphine, we rush to the airport, we buy blinds for our naked neighbours, we use 'spite' as the reason for our hiring decisions at work and get into the legal ramifications of dismissing someone based on spite, we get gut feelings of deep deep yuck from someone who hasn't done anything wrong but who maybe runs a fight club for children, and we get search results for absurdly large (and "vividly shaped") fake penises when we search for T-shirts on Amazon. Standard Mumsnet.

"You won't believe what this jacked gander did next." Thanks to Flora this week for pulling their advertising from Mumsnet and, for Flora representatives listening, we are available for advertising and we are not a hate site. This week we tap into the zeitgeist by asking how to deal with a horrible goose, we hold hundreds of doors open for other people, we hold individual pet-owners to account for their environmental impact rather than, say, a few massive energy companies, and we unravel the mystery of the suitcase full of damp clothes. 

"Just post a picture of you going about your business but wearing a T-shirt that says 'My body; my choice' and people will tell you what choices they would make about your body." You know what we need? Men's opinions! This week, we solicit men's opinions on women's physical attractiveness. Great stuff and not problematic at all. We also discuss those beautiful and smooth seal models; Helen gets into her thoughts on roast-ownership and whether you should have macaroni cheese on a roast dinner; we lawyer up to get a refund on some clothing that doesn't flatter us; we wonder which Pied Piper-like figure took away all the Emos; and we determine what teenagers are into these days that aren't Zach Braff and Keane. Tickets are now available for our December live show at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho, London on Sunday 8th December at 18:30. Book now! https://boulevardtheatre.co.uk/whats-on/sunday-service-podcasts-8-december/

"Live in the group chat; laugh in the group chat; love in the group chat." There are some questions which have haunted humanity since the start of civilisation. 'Should you take part in a nude calendar at work?' is not one of them. As well as discussing collecting nude photos at work, we tackle a baffling third-person logic problem involving babysitting and invent a new union for babysitters, we discuss the byzantine internal politics of group chats and the anxiety of thinking there has to be another group chat that you're not included in, and the horrors of not being able to drive on the one weekend when students arrive in a university town. Keep an eye out for our official You Are Being Unreasonable nude calendar.

"Am I being unreasonable to ask who is the worst performer you've seen live?" This is the recording of our live show performed at the Chapel Playhouse in London as part of the Camden Fringe 2019. Thanks to everyone for coming and to the Chapel Playhouse and Camden Fringe for hosting us.  For the summer holidays, we picked some holiday-related threads full of Mumsnet mishaps and confusions. We discuss what to do if an Ed Sheeran cover band plays bad Nirvana homages in the square under your holiday villa all night; teachers going on strike in the summer holidays outside a silent school with no-one attempting to go in; how to deal with the universal situation of an AirBnB host who keeps walking in on you when you're lying on the bed naked on a wet towel; and what to do on a holiday ten minutes from where you live. We also discover bilingual dogs and the perfect golf gift for any golfer with a penis.

"I would buy Potato Frownies... I don't want to grow up but I'm also not happy." It's Carbs Week on You Are Being Unreasonable as we discuss the fine distinctions between chips and various other types of potato products, we invent the Po-Table, a table made off and built for potatoes, and we discuss how to peel potatoes with the arm of an executed serial killer. We also get into anatomically correct dinosaur clothes for children, getting a photo with your EXtended family of exes, whether or not to tell your partner if you're working from home, and how to dress for an interview as a spooky undertaker. Oh, and the benefits of planet-wide voluntary human extinction.