B (2:45)

I had a professional setback about a month ago, probably maybe a few weeks at this point, and I. I had friends that were very lovely and caring that when I told them, I was like, you know, this is. This is a bummer I'm feeling a little bit flustered by it. And they were like, well, you're great. And I was like, thank you, that's really nice. But that wasn't what I was mad about. This wasn't me thinking I'm bad. This is me being mad at other people.

A (3:16)

Yes. That's so frustrating when that happens because often as well, people think you're fishing for a compliment.

B (3:22)

Yep.

A (3:23)

And no, I don't need that. If anything, that's the last thing I need. My ego is out of control. Currently. I'm the greatest thing in the world. Why won't other people believe me?

B (3:32)

And I definitely have other periods of going like, oh, this project I'm working on isn't coming out quite how I'd like it. And I hope I can figure this out, this writing thing. I had a couple bad sets in a row on stage and I'm feeling a little tentative about the new material and those things happen and I. That I deal with better, like the self doubt stuff because I know that I can like regroup and work harder. And I think that applies to kind of any field. Right. Of like if you're wired a certain way, feeling bad about yourself for a minute is like, oh, what can I do to feel better or do better? I find when I'm frustrated by other people, it feels like a little out of control. And so I'm just kind of like, what do you even do about this?

A (4:23)

I think that's exactly it. It is the control, isn't it? Because that's. Yeah. It's not something that you can do anything about. But in a professional capacity, you are. Right. Like if you have a bit of a rough couple of days or you know, the sets aren't going exactly how you want them to, there is quite easy ways to fix that. Cause like I had a weekend just gone where like the Thursday night wasn't great, the Friday night wasn't brilliant. And so the Saturday I was like, right, I'm can doing all my new stuff in the middle. I'm gonna bring out just the gold, play the hits and then just. I know that I'm not actually achieving anything by doing this, but it will make me feel better.

B (5:06)

I know that feeling so well. Of like, okay, I thought this was gonna be a little more for me, but this is a little more for them. This is for the people who came and bought tickets and I'm performing for them when I thought I would be getting to do a little more creative expl. Exploration. But it turns out they Are not into that. And my job is to put on a show for them, so that's what I'm gonna do.

A (5:32)

Yeah, it's very easy to forget that, I find. But, yeah, that is. That is what you should always revert back to. I think that always helps.

B (5:39)

I think so.

A (5:48)

But I'm curious, Josh, if you have, like, a bad day in terms of. I don't know, you know, just stuff goes wrong. Like, my boiler broke down a couple of days ago, and frustratingly, actually, this is so typical. And in fact, you know what? This is a lesson to everybody listening that if there is a problem with something, just ignore it. Because I tried to be so proactive. I saw an error code on the boiler. There was no hot water coming through. I immediately phoned the plumber, and I thought, I am going to get this sorted right now. Plumber came out. He said, oh, yeah, that part's gone. Anyway, cut to that evening. The valve that was sort of stuck managed to dislodge itself. Everything is absolutely fine now. Not had a problem all week, and yet the plumbers come in with all the parts on Sunday to fix something that doesn't need fixing.

B (6:40)

Oh, geez. Frustrating, I almost always feel. And this is wrong with me. I know that I'm wrong about this, but I find often when there's a problem like that, you could deal with it now and it's a pain in the neck, or you can put it off and deal with it later, and maybe it'll be a pain in the neck and maybe it'll fix itself somehow magically. And I find when I'm faced with those two options, I'm almost always like, well, let's deal with it later. I'd rather feel good now and bad. A different imaginary time.

A (7:20)

Yeah. I believe in magic.

B (7:22)

That's right.

A (7:23)

Something will change. Yeah. And you are right as well, because that's not you suffering. That's future you.

B (7:29)

That's future me.

A (7:30)

Abstract. Doesn't exist you. Whereas this you right now doesn't want to be inconvenienced.

B (7:35)

I don't want to feel bad right now. No.

A (7:37)

Who does? Why would you do that to yourself?

B (7:40)

It is like I've had moments recently, I forget what it was. Oh, you know what it was. It was like a little customer service thing where I had to get on the phone, and it was. I had, like, booked the wrong flight and had to change it. And by the time I did that, like, I was like, I'll just get on the phone right now. There's a 24 hour window and the process of fixing that made my day so much worse that I was like, I should have just gone on the flight, I didn't want to go on. Yeah.

A (8:13)

You just see the minutes ticking by and it became more and more of a pointless exercise.

B (8:18)

Yep. And I was just like, never try to improve anything. That's the lesson.

A (8:23)

Yeah. Just deal with what you've got. Suck it up.

B (8:27)

That's right.

A (8:28)

When you've got to change anything as well. I think something that winds me up possibly more than anything else in the entire world is when you go to change something and they say, right, well, there'll be a 15 pound admin fee for that. And I want to say, well, you can waive that because I don't want it. And if anybody's getting the admin fee here, it's me. I called you.

B (8:54)

You're right, I'm doing the admin.

A (8:55)

Yeah. I've never understood that because I swear they weren't a thing or certainly not to the degree they are now. They weren't that much of a thing sort of 15, 20 years ago. I mean, admittedly I was like a 15 year old kid, so I might not have known, but it's such a. It's just a tax on stupidity, isn't it? And I pay it all the time.

B (9:20)

Years ago I had again a plane ticket and my name I think was like slightly wrong. Like I think that the somebody else had booked it for me for a work trip and I was like, oh, this isn't right. So I should just go get it changed at the airline counter and it should be easy. Like I know who I am, I have all the information. It's like pretty obvious what happened. And they tried to charge me as if I was changing a flight. They were like, oh yeah, any adjustment to your ticket is like a $200 fee. And. And what I was like, but it's just putting the last letter of my middle name onto the ticket so that it reflects my id. And they were like, well, we can waive it this time. And I was like, well, it doesn't. You're already here. I'm the only person in line. Like those admin fees of like, you have employees, that's part of your job as a company is to pay your employees. Why am I paying them your salary?

A (10:22)

You're pet, you're paying administrative staff. Yeah. Your admin costs are your staff costs.

B (10:27)

Right.

A (10:27)

But with that like 200 quid to change it, like you're in the territory there of it possibly Being more economical to just change your name. I don't know how much deed poll costs.

B (10:39)

That's it.

A (10:40)

But that's not a million miles off. I'm terrible with putting names in, so I sympathize with you totally. Like, with all my utility bills and all that sort of thing. I'm so careless with it because I find it such a boring job, signing up to an electric company or whatever. It's a nightmare. Whenever I phone up my phone company or the electric company or the water board, I've genuinely got a different name for each one because I've typed it in wrong and it's just stayed that way. So I'll phone up, like, Vodafone or something and say, oh, it's Matt Bragg. And they'll go, no, that's all right. Okay. It's Mort Borg. It's like all the letters come under different names. It's. Yeah. A really, really, really depressing double life.

B (11:34)

Some of it is even like, oh, I guess I used my full legal name to fill out this paperwork. So, like, there's the Amtrak train service in the United States. Not to brag, but I'm an Amtrak rewards member. Yep. Pretty hot stuff. And I always have to remember that, you know, my legal name is Joshua, but it is Josh for the Amtrak rewards program. So if I put in my full name, it goes, we don't know that guy. And I go, come on, you know me.

A (12:08)

Come on.

B (12:09)

I take the train all the time. World friends.

A (12:13)

What do you get with the. With that?

B (12:15)

Okay, so this is another problem with me. We've talked about a lot of my issues running my own life. I don't know. I belong to so many rewards programs that I just go. And I just. I don't know how to use the points or what they even are good for. So I just have, like, enormous numbers of points. Points. I might have set a new points record on the Dunkin Donuts app because I just accrue points and then go, look at all those points. That's. I feel like I'm a points dragon with just, like, stacks of gold under my scaly limbs.

A (12:58)

I would love to know the science behind that because I'm the same with, like, super supermarket club card points and stuff.

B (13:06)

Yep.

A (13:06)

I would go well out of my way to buy my petrol from a certain supermarket chain.

B (13:14)

Totally.

A (13:15)

So that I could get the points. Because I drive so much. As a comedian, you get it's like 30, 40, 50,000 miles a year. So that in petrol, that's worth so many points. And I would go out my way, collect all these points, and just think, one day I am going to buy something big from here and it's going to. And I would fantasize about this day coming. And then overnight, one day they just all went out of date. Oh, no, it's horrible.

B (13:45)

Oh, that's such a nightmare. And that happens to me all the time.

A (13:49)

I don't know what we're saving them for, but psychologically there's something holding us back there, isn't there?

B (13:54)

There's a great bookstore in my neighborhood called Books are Magic, and they have a great rewards program. And every time I go in and buy something, they go, do you want to use your points for this? Like, you can get this book for free. And I go, no, no, no, let's accrue more points. So I have like $75 that I could just spend on like two to three free books. But instead, right, there's some untold benefit that I think I'm going to get in the future. If I just like cling to these points, like, there's going to be some golden see and go like, ah, that's the one. That's. That's where my points go.

A (14:39)

I'm gonna take over that company. I'm gonna buy that company with their own points.

B (14:43)

Do you remember the. I don't know if you would have even seen this, but I think it was Pepsi did a promotion that was like, Pepsi points, like they used to. They would still do like Marlboro Miles with cigarettes. And you just like, you know, they have a catalog of stuff and I believe it was with Pepsi. They went, and if you get 10 million points or whatever, you get this private jet. And it was like a joke at the end of the advertisement and some guy figured out that, like, the cost of just like using cash to acquire. I might be getting the details wrong, but he was like, oh, if I can just buy these points for $0.30 apiece, that's actually so much cheaper than buying a private jet would be. It's like the cost of a car. So I'm just going to use cash to buy this private jet. And Pepsi was like, oh.

A (15:35)

How did that shake out then? Did they still have to give him the private jet?

B (15:39)

I don't think so. I'm gonna look it up in the hatch encyclopedia because I like, truly.

A (15:45)

Yeah, we've gotta know the ending to that.

B (15:48)

Okay, so I was pretty close. They said the jet would be 7 million Pepsi points. And the jet was valued at. At $37 million. So this guy was like, oh, it's only 10 cents per Pepsi point. So for $700,000, I can buy a $37 million private jet. So he did. He was like, okay, I'd like my jet, please. They were like, no, that was clearly a joke. And then he sued Pepsi and the judge sided with Pepsi, saying like, come on, this is silly.

A (16:28)

I'm surprised about that. That's an open and shut case. Surely they said it, it was a mistake. Just, you've got to take your medicine there if you're Pepsi, I think.

B (16:37)

I agree. I think Pepsi's gotta eat it on 36 million of those dollars or whatever. But I guess the judge said, look, they land this jet, like at school. Like, it shows a guy, like, dropping his kid off at school or something in the jet. And they were like, this is obviously a joke. No one's doing that. That's ridiculous. So they, they were absolved. They didn't have to give the guy a fighter jet. And then they edited the advertisement to say that it was 700 million Pepsi points. So that would entail actually accruing $70 million. So they were like, that's the cost of two jets, so no one will do this.

A (17:23)

I don't know. If I had enough money. That would potentially be the funniest thing you could have done there.

B (17:29)

Such an incredible bet.

A (17:31)

Yeah, it would have been unbelievable.

B (17:33)

The other thing I love about this is like, even if you have $700,000 to spend on a jet, that's like a lot, a lot of money to just have to write a check. You probably don't generally lead a private jet life. Like, where do you put it?

A (17:54)

That is very, very true. You have to have enough money to have the private jet life.

B (18:00)

You have to pay for lodging and fuel and a pilot. And so it's just like, maybe the upfront cost of the jet is what was keeping you out of that private jet life. But I feel like most people are not set up to absorb those additional costs.

A (18:19)

Yeah, the expenses are huge. Unless you maybe just never took off. You could just sort of taxi to the shop.

B (18:27)

Yeah, that'd be fun. Do you think you need a pilot's license to drive a private jet around an airstrip without taking off?

A (18:37)

That is a very interesting question, actually, because, I mean, if you made the plane so that it couldn't take off, you are basically just driving like a giant bus around, aren't you?

B (18:49)

Yeah. So maybe you could get away with like a commercial trucking license.

A (18:55)

Yeah, yeah. Or it's a private jet. So like a minibus license would probably do.

B (18:58)

That's fair. Yeah, yeah. Cause I'm not licensed. You know, my license is just for a regular car. But I think I would upgrade if I had a jet to tool around in.

A (19:07)

Yeah, 100%.

B (19:10)

I'm so glad we got into this. I haven't thought about that story in years and it was. I was very glad to get to share it with you, but all this talk about points and numbers and rewards programs and home problems has really got me tired out and I think I gotta turn in. Good night, Matt.

A (19:27)

Good night, Josh. Talk to you next.

B (19:32)

Sa. Sam.

A (20:29)

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