Elis James and John Robins
#549 - Creativitine, Daily Life Stings and Ossification & Death
16 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What new thesis about existence does Johnny JR present?
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welcome to significant productions it says above the door of the office this is your last chance to escape if you've got an orthodox mind what the heck Inside, there was an elite-level meeting taking place between the company's two chief originality whirlwinds, John Robbins and Dave Masterman.
I couldn't be there because I had to take my son to Little Dolphin Swimming Club, which John said was for the best because my cognitive abilities had gone into managed decline. It was great running a company with your best friends. What about initiative symposium, said John, reclining in his chair. I like the word symposium. It sounds better than a convention or a meeting.
It was two minutes into the latest significant productions meeting and tensions over a simple definition were already running high. What's actually happening? Well, in audio these days, the word for meetings actually gab Fester a solution Congress and Dave slipping into his dungarees after emerging from the office cryo chamber, which was there to boost creativity.
The label on the communal office creatine had been crossed out and replaced with creativity, which...
which didn't quite work but John said there's no such thing as a bad idea apart from my idea for a health podcast it was late but Dave and John were trying to work out how best to capitalise on the fact that they booked the Royal Albert Hall for a gig without telling me and the fact that my wife was on the next series of Taskmaster
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Chapter 2: How does Elis tap into his musical talents after seeing Paul McCartney?
How could they introduce the show to a new audience? An impressive silence hung in the air as they both pondered, each using their own time-honoured personal tricks to stimulate the creative juices. Dave, by now, was adding Himalayan rock salt to his coffee to try and encourage new ideas, and like all media moguls, John was relaxing with an absolutely massive spliff.
LAUGHTER
Since he'd quit the booze, he'd found that big daily talks of Mary Jane allowed him to come up with lots of great stuff. But as a consequence, the Sportage glove box was full of Kit Kats and he was too anxious to do stand-up. Oh, let's call Elsa, Dave. I haven't got any ideas. If I start microdosing to get things moving, that'll kill me. Hi Dave, I said.
Listen, I saw Paul McCartney being interviewed by Rob Brydon at the Camden Roundhouse on Wednesday night, and now Maka is even more of an influence. I've been writing songs, Dave. Like Paul, it's the only way I can express myself. Dave's face brightened. If you need an advert to go viral for the show, I've come up with it. It's clean, snappy, melodic, and it will work across all platforms.
Put me on speakerphone so John can hear. You ready? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I live my life with Alice and John. I have my lunch with the podcast on. I send emails back to my dad. Didn't get read out. That must have been bad. I love it when Alice connects. If he doesn't, my mental health is wrecked. Tell me there's more, said Dave. Oh, there's more, I replied. I live my life with Alice and John.
I feel so alive when the podcast is on. Dave stood to applaud. Al, I love it. What do you think I said nervously to John? His reply was simple. You're sacked. So there we go.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Royal Albert Hall gig for the hosts?
We've got an advert ready to go for the, what do you think about that? So you wrote that? I wrote that because, for us, because I watched, as I said, I watched that Q&A with, well, it wasn't a Q&A, it was an interview with Rob Brydon and Paul McCartney. And Brydon was very impressed by the fact that Paul had one day off on his tour.
So he was in Costa Rica and he thought, right, I'm going to have a nice breakfast and sit by the pool. But then it rained very heavily. So he just wrote a song. Rob was like, wow, do you ever switch it off? Paul said, no, not really. And I thought, neither do I, because I'm always coming up with songs. You are, aren't you? But I just never record them and release them. Yeah.
So do you want to hear my best one? Yes. So when, you know, your phone will give you, you know, it will remind you of photos that were taken 10 or 12 years ago. Yes. Which I hate. Yeah, it's quite weird, isn't it? So my phone will, you know, remind me or Izzy of when the kids were little. And rather than say, oh, that's great.
If Izzy shows me a photo of, you know, Betty when she was two or something. Instead of saying, oh, I like this photo, I always sing, let's take a trip down memory, trip down memory, trip down memory, lane, lane. It's quite good, isn't it?
Similar melody to the other song. Yeah, it is.
Quite short.
They're always quite short. But they're stings. Yeah, they're stings. They're stings.
They're sort of daily life stings. Yeah. Are you doing this a lot at home?
All the time. Do you remember that ick text topic we did a couple of weeks ago? Why don't you F off, Dave? That would be peak ick, I'd say. What? His eyes just widened at me as if I'd just sworn it.
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Chapter 4: What creative methods do the hosts use to stimulate their creativity?
Yes, and his jaunty socks. But Michael is our producer. Michael plays the piano. Michael plays the guitar.
Yeah? What do you think about that, Michael? It was all right. He's the Simon Cowell of the room. I went to watch Paul McCartney do a live-in conversation. So they came on, there was a set, like it was sort of someone's living room.
So Rob Brydon was the unannounced guest, a guest host, which is quite irritating because I sort of know Rob a bit and I would have tried to get in to meet him if I'd known it was going to be him.
How many bouts of norovirus were you away from presenting that?
Well, this is interesting, right? Because it was great being with a load of Beatles fans and being able to go up to anyone and say, how many times have you watched Get Back? So I was sitting next to about five or six people and we were chatting about who we thought the interviewer was going to be. So the names in the mix were Samir Ahmed, Lauren Laverne, John Harris, Stu McConey.
Jeff Lloyd, maybe. And then someone, someone said, what about you, Ellis James? I was like, I don't know.
Imagine if you'd then put on your sparkly jacket and said, sorry guys, I got a job to do.
But I was right at the back. I was in the back row. So you could see the celeb VIP bit. And there were just people there, like Rob's family were there. And you're thinking, the podcast needs to be bigger.
I'm in the back row and I had to buy a ticket. We're doing all right. But I need to get in. I need to be in the inner sanctum.
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Chapter 5: How does the concept of life as a memory collection exercise come into play?
I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect that. We listened to the whole album. We listened to the whole album. It lasted two hours. Oh, wow. So Rob, and I wasn't allowed to take any food in, so I had to... Why not? So it was unreserved seating, which is quite a weird way of doing it. So my friend Gemma had sorted out the tickets. She was in the queue from about quarter past five.
Dolls were at half past six and the show didn't start till eight. So I got there at six and the queue was already massive. And there were people with, you know, fold up chairs, all this kind of stuff and umbrellas because it was raining.
It was outside?
No, no, it was at the Camden Roundhouse. They didn't open the doors up at six and it was unreserved seating. Oh, that's a nightmare. So you either had a ticket for upstairs or downstairs. So you had to queue to get a good, and I'm, so then I bought some food to eat at the queue, but unfortunately I couldn't be connected with a man called Mark.
And I had such a great conversation about Aberdeen that then I got to suddenly it was the front of the queue and they said, well, you can't take that in, it's food. And I said, but is there any food to eat in the Camden Roundhouse? And they said, no. So I had to eat it really, really quickly. Yeah. People were fighting past me. What did you, what was it? It was some sushi. Yeah.
So it was just, I don't know why you would do an unreserved seating for an event. Such an odd, just, why would you do that? Just, yeah, just name the seats. Name the seats. But yeah, it was really, really, I've only seen them live once. It was a really magical thing.
So you're all listening to the full length of each song. What's Paul and Rob doing? Just sat there as those songs are played?
Yeah, this is the thing. So Rob's was drumming his fingers and Paul was singing along and just looking at the audience. But obviously nobody knows the songs very well yet because the album's only just come out. It's just quite a weird thing. But yeah, what can you do?
I've done a couple of those, but in a much more intense surrounding. So I've been invited when we were at XFM. to go and listen to an album. Like an album playback? An album playback, but there was me, head of music Mike Walsh, and work experience Steve Ferdinando, just the three of us. What, and the band? The band, in a room no bigger than this studio.
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Chapter 6: What are the details of the Cymru Connecting segment?
That's impossible. And then they press play. No way. And then what you suppose, and the, I'm not going to name the band, but they were a flash in the pan at best.
So they're watching you for your response to their own record.
And then each song ends, and what can you do apart from wax lyrical about every single track? And then they wonder why you never played them.
In the half second between the last track and the next track. Oh, do they pause it?
Oh, it's horrible listening to music you haven't heard before. Oh, yeah, but the...
the band are there as well like when your partner or your friend says oh listen to this it's my favourite song and you're like well I'm just going to leave so we have to well I didn't say we couldn't say that because you know we had we had you know PR to uphold with the band and the record and the radio station but it was we all walked out and that was a bit much I was extremely impressed with Rob I thought he was so good because he didn't he loves music but he didn't go too deep and he didn't he didn't go too nerdy
Yeah. But he just kept the ball in the air. And it was also because it was about the new album. It was Paul's stories I'd not heard before, which was good.
And he's very down to earth, isn't he, Paul?
He's mega down to earth. It's great. What was funny was every time he would mention any musician, the musician would get cheered. So we're like, yeah, well, it reminds me of when I wrote the song with John Lennon. Yay! Really? Yeah, you know, so I was, yeah, I was just having a drink with Ronnie Wood. Yay! But then sometimes he would just say, yeah, because I lived on a housing estate in Speeck.
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Chapter 7: How do the hosts engage in their Made Up Game?
That's not for the podcast, though, is it? Have you? Well, it relates to what Dave Ellis was saying in his intro. Yes, it is, actually. It does, actually. We'll get you on the next one. Great. Yeah.
Is this going to be a nice surprise like the Royal Albert Hall or is it going to be a bad surprise?
You just say yes and nothing changes.
Great. Okay. Yes. Do you want me saying that in different ways? Yes.
Yes. And now I'm really disappointed, but you're saying yes anyway. Yeah. Thanks. We'll use that one.
Well, I had a big week as well, actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I carried out a SOC audit. Right.
Okay. So holes with socks, get rid of them. Socks you don't like anymore, get rid of them. Big time. All the socks are out. So what are you down to now? I had a sock audit about a year ago, actually.
Well, I split them into megas, which I always reach for. Neutrals. The first choice, yeah. Neutrals is like you can take it or leave it. If there's no megas, you go down to neutrals. I've only got two pairs of megas. Then it's down to avoids. And then below that is defunct.
Yeah. I had a pair of head socks that I had since I was 18. Really? I did eventually get rid of those.
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Chapter 8: What reflections do the hosts share about aging and memories?
They said, okay, here are five codes that have been successful on this website in the past. I tried them all. None of them work. I say, have you got any other codes? It goes, here are four more codes that have been used on this website. One of them was like obviously made for a mate of the owner. It's like... Craig's code. It is literally someone's name. Really? 20 and then a year. Wow.
I whacked that in. Go on. Johnny J is getting 20% off. 20. Is that theft? No.
No. It doesn't feel moral somehow. That's theft.
It's public information.
Yeah. Yeah. Protect your codes.
Protect your codes at all costs. You need another podcast or a kid...
but then I was like I can just ask AI for discount codes for everything I buy ever again.
That is quite a good hack if you're willing to go down AI lane.
Well, it doesn't take very long. I've got a little plugin in the browser, but this was every so often, it's just like, sorry, mate, can't help you with this website. They keep their cards close to their chest.
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