Bonus Ep 92 - 'This is Your British Life' Ft. Chris from Instant English

From the studio that brought you one to vision, I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. The vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. Are you sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Don't miss the two episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy. Now streaming only on Disney+. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything goodness world stop. With Mint you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course if you enjoy overpay no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at MintMobile.com/switch. A upfront payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full turns at MintMobile.com. Yeah, she was my first love. I think it was year three, so I must have been again. Sorry, your first love. At year three. Okay, I'm in love. Mommy, I'm in love. Do you think you can love it? Yeah, it's a year three. What is that? You're a seven to eight year old. I feel bad you're not really in touch with your emotions like me. But yes, I was. I was about two years old and my grandfather also from Ireland. Not that we should be plugging stereotypes. But he actually gave me a spoonful of whiskey. My first ever memory was a bad one, which I think quite common, right? I don't know about you. My first one is me going through a cat flap. Could be traumatic for the cat. Yeah, right. I never thought about the cat's opinion in that story. Selfish. What can a school dinner, a first point, a playground chant, and a childhood telly crush tell you about British culture? A surprising amount, actually. Today, I'm joined by Chris from the YouTube channel Instant English for a brand new chat show style episode where I basically raid his memory and force him to relive the most British moments of his life. We're talking first memories, first freedoms, first jobs, first embarrassing obsessions. All of the weird little cultural details that native speakers grow up with but rarely stop to explain. And as always, this isn't just a chat. It's a culture-led English lesson in disguise. You'll hear natural expressions, real native grammar, pronunciation, humor, awkwardness, nostalgia, the lot. So yeah, grab a drink, a tea, a pint, an orange juice or squash. And welcome to this new style of interview called This Is Your Life. Hello Chris, how you doing? Splendid. Doing well, how you doing? Yeah, very well, very well. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Always and on a, never a chore. Good, yes, very nice phrase. Well, I mean, we've got to make it less of a chore and give you a fictitious drink, I think. I'm treating this like it's kind of like a. You know, Alan Carr Chattyman? Do you remember that? I think, so have a little drink with you. Just like a panel, not a panel show. What is it? An interview? A talk show. Just talk show. Talk show. Yeah. It's been a while. It's been a while since I've watched mainstream TV. So it's all left my brain. Yeah, because do I get an option then? Or do I have to choose? It's all just your imagination. So whatever you want. Whatever you want. This is crazy. Summing it up, like a genie. So what is your go-to. What's your tip-all? Is your go-to drink? Tip-all. Okay. I think if we're going, it's going to be quite a long podcast because I've got a lot to say. So if I'm going to have a long night, I would normally have a few espresso martinis. I feel like. Okay. Yeah, three of those and you're rocking until 6am. You know, I can actually make them. Really? Oh, yeah. In your imagination or really? Both. Both. Yeah, I'm doing it right now. Yeah. No, we did a contest at Christmas in Australia, just to throw Australia out there. So it was hot, right? So it wasn't like. Got to have brandy and eggnog. No, we did like a cocktail competition and I went for espresso martini. So I got the little espresso beans. Did the little three on the wide glass and I've got a good coffee machine. So I could whip you up. A lovely one. Yeah, my only thing is they're too small normally. I wouldn't. You know, you get like a mug of coffee. I kind of want to get a mug of espresso martini as well but it's normally like a little cocktail glass out there. Wow. Okay, okay. So I've got two questions there. One, are you an alcoholic and two are you a maniac? Because that's a lot of caffeine. One answer, yes. No. They're just so. They're so morish, you know. They are quite morish. They're just like. You finish them, you're like, "Oh, I could have more." Whereas if you have like some other cocktail, I feel like I can taste the alcohol too much. So I'm an alcoholic in disguise, really, or. I'm an alcoholic, but I don't know it yet. Yeah, okay. I have a lot of sweet to sort of disguise the alcohol. Yeah, that's more me. Yeah. Okay. So a sex on the beach. You like that? I think so. What's in that one then? I'm not very. I'm not really a cocktail connoisseur, but I've had a few of those. Okay, so what is sex on the beach? So it's vodka. Vodka, peach, snaps, orange juice and cranberry juice. I feel like the orange juice and cranberry juice make a big percentage of it. Right. So that does sound. I mean, I like juice. But it just sounds a bit too basic bitch to kind of go for that. You know, it's like, "Oh, everyone knows that one." Yeah. Yeah. I want to be cooler. Yeah. No, I do want you to look cooler than drinking a sex on the beach. But I was just thinking if we're disguising the alcohol. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. It's a genuine dilemma of mine that I've discussed many times, mostly when I'm drunk. Like, I don't have a cocktail of choice apart from espresso martini. But then again, if you have espresso martini, you are awake all evening, all night. So I would like to have another one that kind of I drink as a gentleman. Like, you know, that you see in. What's the advertising program from the US? It's a straw. Mad men. Mad men. I want to have like, they all have a cocktail that's like, "Oh, give me a thingy." Yeah. Well, do you like whiskey or not? Yeah, I do actually, yeah. What about an old session? Yeah. So what is that then? That's whiskey and. So that's Angostua's bitters. Okay. If you know that little thing that is quite strong, it's a very small little dash of it. Then you've got orange, whiskey. And I think that's. There's something else. But it's lovely. Yeah. I should try that. I definitely have had one. It's apparently got water as well. Oh, yeah, the ice, I guess. Sugars and bitters. And then a nice zesty orange. Maybe a pisco sour. But then again, like that's something you can't really get everywhere. So it's quite niche sometimes. Yeah. Got to stay in the south of America. Which I hate. I hate being stranded in South America. Yeah. Oh. Terrible life. Okay. So we've got your espresso martini. Are you feeling good about that? Feeling settled on the talk show? Yeah. Feeling great. You know, don't worry. I didn't know. Can't wear the cameras. Yeah, they're everywhere. Okay. Camera A, camera B, camera C, the crowd. They're constantly raising cards for them to say. Stop heckling the poor man. Laugh now. Don't laugh now. Yeah. Okay. So the first thing that I wanted to ask you about, the first first, because that's the running theme of this one, is your first memory. What's your first memory, Chris? Do you have one? Yeah, I do actually. I was talking about this the other day, which is why it kind of came to me quite quickly. You think of something like bad happening. My first trauma. A door. Yeah. Right. Selfish. Selfish. Yeah. Quick pause before we carry on. I don't know your exact level of English, but in this conversation, you've probably already heard a few intermediate to advanced expressions. And there are plenty more sneaking in as we go. Now, I could stop and explain each one, but that would absolutely kill me. the flow of the conversation and we don't want that right? So instead I've created a free PDF that goes with this episode. It breaks down the key vocabulary, gives you clear meanings, natural examples, collocations and a few cheeky quizzes to help it actually stick. If you want it, just scan the QR code on screen right now or click the link in the description, show notes or comments section and that link will take you to this screen that video podcast viewers can see right now, fill in your name and email and that will get sent straight to your email inbox. So if you take a couple of minutes to use that PDF with this lesson, then you will likely 3x your learning today. All right, let's get back to it. Oh, is this possible? Now streaming. Oh, not decent plus. Tammy regularly hauled stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods even they can't screw up. Have you met my kid? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home road warrior mom, home of the save. Join for just 20 dollars at BJ's.com/maskete and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon, limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. So, sorry, mine is basically my family and I were living in a cul-de-sac, let's say, but it was probably a two minute walk from the supermarket. Let's say an eight minute walk to the supermarket. It's not far, but also not like extremely close. And I have an older sister and she was, I think she was about five at the time, six maybe, and I was, let's say four. And for some reason, we were desperate for some chewing gum. I don't know if it was, you know, what the cool kids in the street were doing at the time. So she took me to the shops with her and the thing is, when you leave the cul-de-sac, you kind of go up a little hill and there's a main road. Nothing, you know, it's not like a highway or a motorway, but it's still pretty dangerous road. And it had like a little island in the middle, so we kind of crossed and then got to the island and then we crossed again. And then we got to the supermarket. I think we, I think we had enough money by chewing gum, but somehow, I think someone just kind of was like, took pity on us. We had like 10p at the time, which you could buy half a packet of chewing gum or something, you know, back in 1975. And then we got back home. I remember, so I vaguely remember going to the supermarket vaguely, but I remember vividly coming back, walking up the stairs. It was like, you know, it was a semi-detached house and it had like a stairway where you go in the front door, you turn right, and then you have to turn back on yourself, so it kind of like snakes up. So you can't really see up the top until you turn up the landing, or the little part. Yeah, the landing, yeah. And I turn up and I saw my father looking down at me, and he went ballistic. He went crazy, because obviously it was extremely dangerous for my sister and I to do that. And they didn't know where we were, they didn't know where we were at the time. So that's my first memory. Him just going back to shit crazy, which was, and I don't know why I'm asking this is the worst, I'm the worst talk show host. Was that verbal abuse that he gave you? Give me a good spanking. No, yeah, just verbal from what I remember, unless I blocked it out, it could have been blocked out, but just yeah, verbal abuse. Let's talk about that more. I need one more. Okay, I'm making it. Okay, there you go. So he wasn't a fan of you going to get chewing gum, or he wasn't a fan of you going to cross the road on your own. Yeah, it was more of the crossing the road part, because it was, it was, people were flying up and down that road really, so it wasn't ideal. And then we were very young, like I was four, three, you know, I had no sense of direction or danger. And how old did you say your sister was if you did? She must be six, six, six year old, and a three or four year old. Yeah, no. Well, in our culture, but have you seen that Japanese program where they follow the kid that does all of the things on his own? That's insane, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I used to live there, when I see them in the morning on my way to work, it was just like, it's bonkers, they just live by themselves. They're like independent adults. So it's, it's not just, you know, Netflix trying to make a culture apparently independent. That's actually what you saw. Yeah, they just chuck them on the train, and then they kind of sometimes they go in groups together. They're kind of like survival in numbers, so they'll be like tiny little humans. And they all have the same outfits, you know, they're like these little rucksacks like made leather little hats on. And they kind of like, they're like little minions basically. Yeah, they just kind of taste like autopilot, they get on to get on and they all, they know what they're doing. They must do it with an adult first. They must do a few trial runs surely. Hopefully. Yeah. Basically is incredible. You've made me, you've given me the idea of that Attenborough nature show where the, I think it's the snake trying to catch the little lizard or crab running to the ocean. And in numbers, they're safe because it's just like all of them going at some time. And then, but you know, statistically, 2% of you are going to die kind of thing. And I wonder if the adults say that to the kids as they leave as they go. It's like a hunger games, but to go to school, like, one of you is coming back, but luckily it's only 1% of yeah. Okay, so they're very independent, but your dad felt like it was not the right thing to do. You said earlier, a cul-de-sac, which the listener might not know, it's the end of a road, yeah? Yeah, a dead end, I suppose, but normally it's kind of shaped in a circle. So you have you, you don't really have cars passing through because people only enter that street if you live there, you suppose. So not much traffic goes along a cul-de-sac. So it's a very quiet tranquil one, which was in comparison to the motorway that you were crossing. Yeah, which I suppose you didn't really have too much growing up in London. I was outside of London. I was in leafy Surrey. And I grew up raising sheep. I had sheep as pets in the gut in the field adjacent to mine. Not mine is my parents, still is, but yeah, that's another story, I guess. But yeah, okay, so that was your first memory. Do you remember the flavor of gum that you had? I have a faint feeling it was hubba-bubba. I don't know why, but you asked me and I'm like, I think it must have been hubba-bubba, which was the go-to gum of that time. I'm not sure they still make it. Do they make it? I don't know either. I feel like it's probably very bad for you. But in that day, it's a 90s era. Yeah, 90s. This must have been 95, for example, when this happened. Classic hubba-bubba period. So that was bubble gum, not chewing gum. Yeah, I was thinking it day after. What is the purpose of chewing gum? It doesn't even make your breath smell better. It just exists in your mouth. I feel like it does it at the beginning. It's a bit of a wake-up of the mouth, spearmint, peppermint. But bubble gum, it does something different. I mean, it says it exactly. What's the phrase? It says what it does on the tin? No, it does what it says on the tin. What does it do, though? It just bubbles. It makes bubbles. You can make bubbles. Huge bubbles. And then it goes all over your big beard. Yes, I was actually a hairy child, so I'm not sure. I'm not sure, I'm not sure, beard-y, but yeah, you probably were all right to cross the road, then. Sorry, the truth was I actually went there with my sister to buy a crater beer. But I wanted to say chewing gum for the audience. Yeah, a bit more relatable. If you're looking for a new way to learn English, something that you've never quite experienced before, then I highly recommend checking out my academy. My approach was quite simple. but a real game changer. If you've ever had one-to-one conversation classes and then after a few months thought hmm, am I actually getting better or am I just getting more comfortable and have built up a bit more rapport with this one native teacher? Or if you've ever bought an online course and lost motivation to actually finish the thing, then I think I might have found your new home to actually leveling up your English. So, head over to the BritishEnglishPodcast.com/academy to learn more. Okay, so you have your first memory and thankfully your first memory isn't the first television program because that's the next one I wanted to ask. Can you remember what your first bit of tele was, Chris? Yeah, I also that round at the same time, that same period, 1995 to 2000s. I used to be fascinated with London's burning. What about London's burning? London's burning. It's not actually coming to me right now, obviously the name is very famous. I think it was only on Sunday evenings and basically it was just like firefighters that would, you know, it was basically like kind of the bill or casualty, but the firefighter version. Oh, yeah. Okay. Is it called London's burning? I think it is, right? Yeah, yeah. There's one that ran between 88 and 02. Yeah. So I was absolutely fascinated with that. I don't know why. I suppose it must have been quite thrilling to see firefighters fight fire. Yeah. That one really gripped me. I don't know why. Well, I think at that age, especially boys, very fascinated in anything that has big vehicles to do stuff. Like a building site, you're obsessed with diggers and lorries that carry big stuff cranes. If only there had been the programme about bin men, I would have been like, whoa, what's going to happen today? From the studio that brought you one to Vijay, I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. Nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy, now streaming, only on Disney+. Fall never arrives all at once. Verse the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf, because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross. Actually, my nephew right now is obsessed with bin men. It's got to the point where it's actually quite annoying, because every time he's like, bin men is like, yep, I don't want to go down there again. It's six in the morning. Look. It stinks. It stinks. What about fire engines? Bin men? No. Yeah, getting obsessed with fire engines, that would be quite thrilling. What was your first one? First telly. First bit of telly. I don't know why, but Ricky Lake is coming to me. Do you remember Ricky Lake? No, who's Ricky Lake? I think she was the British version of Jerry Springer. Really? Or she was American, but it was on all the time. No, she was American. She was American. Yeah, so it was like Jerry Springer. What are they called? Not talk shows. Jerry Springer. Yeah. What are they? What are they? What are they? I went to January Carl one time in Manchester, where I was at university, by the way, and it was a bit of a side segway into something else, but that was wild. It was weird. He's the British version, isn't he? He was at the knob as well. I remember a very vivid story, or one of those titles that they really try to grab you. And it was, is my gay lover, my brother? What was it? I'm gritty. The test came back positive. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. Isn't it just? But it just, it just amazes me that people have that sort of drama and conflict, and they're like, let's go on public TV. Yeah. Yeah. Five minutes of fame is quite appealing, I suppose. What could it be, money? Really? For that? Yeah, I know. Yeah. A day-time talk show, that's what they're called. Okay. A day-time talk shows. Yeah, so if anyone doesn't know any of these names we've been flinging around, it's people that go onto a little stage with a live audience, and then a host talks about their problems and tries to help them resolve the conflict often between two people. It is often an affair, or something like that, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Something family related, isn't it? Relationships or, you know, brother or sister? Yeah. Probably before that, I wouldn't have been allowed Ricky Lake until later on. Flintstones, that came up early in my mind, I think. That's a good one. That was great. Yeah. The Simpsons. And Frazier. All right, Frazier. I've been watching Frazier recently, well, when I've been back with my mum, she's addicted to Frazier. And it's actually pretty good. You know, when you look back at some of those TV series from the '90s, I know it obviously went back to the '80s, but I've rewatched Friends with my sister, or just by myself. And I'm like, it's actually not great. You know, the fake laughter and stuff, I don't really get it. But when I was young, I was like, this is the one. This is the greatest show in the world. But Frazier still holds his own, I think. Okay, yeah, fair, fair. I think I agree with you. I actually saw it recently, because I've been out of the UK for a while, came back and was able to get proper TV. And I was like, oh, okay, let's get some TV. We just relied on Netflix for the last 10 years. So I put it on channel four. And it was the same stuff in the morning, airing 30 years ago. Yeah, it's true. It's still got Frazier. And they've still got everybody loves Raymond. Exactly. That's my morning when my mum and I go back. Yeah. And I was like, how is this still airing? How are they still getting views? But apparently it's to do with the fact that once you've owned, once you've bought the rights to a show that has a lot of episodes, it's quite a good show to put on repeat because once you get to the new one, people can't, or the old series, people can't really remember it because it's been so long. To look at Simpsons. Yeah, but crazy for me that it's still crazy. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so what did we have next? First, oh, first school dinner. First school dinner. Yeah, that's the one I probably got a little bit stuck on. I don't usually remember to launch. Yeah, probably more packed lunch than anything. It's a little bit hazy that one. I'm not 100% sure, but for some reason, I remember turkey twizzlers, obviously. Yeah, which were disgusting. I'm not even sure they had any turkey in them, but the time they were scrumptious. It was just turkey twizzlers. I think you got used to get two of those, two scoops of mash and some beans. And I think that was it. And I was like, okay, there you go. Good luck. Otherwise it was like we've had all that. Yeah, okay, okay, turkey twizzlers was the actual canteen dinner. Yeah. Can you remember what was in your lunchbox whenever you got lunch? Like packed lunch. It was normally something like a sandwich. It would be something like cheese, for example, because I grew up a vegetarian. Right. And then it would be like a baby bell. It could be cheese string. It's cheese string or baby bell. I remember something like, oh, just let my mind now. There was something else. The derrily little triangles. It could be like that. Or the derrily dunkers. Yeah, it could be that as well. It could be cheddar as well. You know, there's what they called, they're like biscuits, but crisps. They're not, they're like in between biscuits and crisps. Cheddar, cheesy chedders. Mini chedders. Mini chedders could be mini chedders. Something like that. It was like a sandwich, a bit of cheese, and then like a some sort of snack. So again, zero fruit, zero vegetables. Yeah, awful guy. But yeah, probably similar for me, it's amazing what guidance we've had over the last 50 years of food. It's my turn. I feel like we're only just kind of realising that cheese strings were just unacceptable. They're fun, but they're not food. Okay. If you can play with the food, it's rubber. Yeah. Yeah, true. Okay. First playground game. This is, is it a game? I remember, it's not really a game, but I'm going to just pretend it is. In my nursery, there used to be a racetrack around the outside of it, so the nursery was in the middle, and the racetrack was around the outside. And they had like go-carts, not go-carts, but you had the pedal go-carts. Do you remember those ones? Oh, I thought you meant like a NASCAR racetrack. Well, in my mind it was NASCAR, but it was basically just pavement with lines and a little fence around it. So there was like a child's track around the outside of the school. Yeah. I didn't know, diminished my memory, yes, it was just a track, a walkway, a park. It was just a pavement, mate. It was a bit of fence and a line, but to you, that was a racetrack. Yeah, I remember that being, it was mental, it was race around that, and I was like this is the best place in the world. And so it was not really a game, but we were racing, yeah, kind of like Mario carts but real. Yeah. I checked your cheese string to try and get them. Try POD? No, try sickle, sorry, not try POD. Try sickle. I can't read, is the go, it's like you know they had like the go-carts things, it would look like a go-cart but it would be pedals, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do remember those. Yeah, they were quite sturdy and you could race. Yeah, yeah, I was quite, I was quite the Hamilton back in my day. Yeah. So I wonder if you would have beaten him if he was at your school. Yeah, he would have been in my wake, you know, if that's an expression, he would be smelling my cheese string. Eating my dust. Eating my dust, thank you for saving me, that one. I imagine you are more of a kiss chaser, you have to come now. I do remember playing kiss chase, but it was more like a chase and then scream. As this is the free version of this episode, we are going to leave it there for today, but if you did want to listen to the full version along with manually corrected transcripts, unlike the captions in this video, along with a glossary of all the native expressions and cultural references and flashcards, then check out the premium podcast. Then if you'd like to really get active with your learning, join a community of wonderful students and see genuine improvement in your language skills going from upper intermediate to near native level, then check out the academy. Okay, well, thank you very much, Chris, for coming on and for giving me your firsts. This was a first for me, I haven't done this torrential style game yet, and never again. And never again, yeah, exactly, no, of course not, that was really nice, a lot of memories, a lot of British culture, and that is exactly what I hope for in these kind of conversations. So that was really, really helpful, thank you very much. You very much. Appreciate it. Okay, so we will leave it there. Thank you very much for getting to the end of this conversation, everybody. Remember to go check out Chris's channel, instant English. Do you want to plug the Brazilian Portuguese one? Yeah, that would be great. If there are any Brazilian speakers in here or Brazilian speakers, any Portuguese speakers in here, it's called Bapu Britannical, which basically means British chat. British chat, okay, so Bapu Britannica, nice. I will leave the links in the description, but yeah, that was a pleasure. And I look forward to speaking to you sometime soon. Thanks. Appreciate it. Bye guys. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. or jeopardy, now streaming, on Yardisan Plus.