Ben and James Could Do Better: Two Teachers, No Idea

This week, Ben and James return with oversized cans of Coca-Cola, questionable television habits and a surprising amount of discussion about people called Jill. Ben reveals his latest obsession with Hunting Hitler , recalls his days on Why Don't You...? and discovers that he appears in Russell T Davies's latest book. James questions whether Hitler really needs hunting, considers the pecu...

There's tension in the studio this week. It begins with a disagreement about how to open the podcast, escalates into an argument about the cleanliness of James's car and reaches breaking point when Ben commits the apparently unforgivable offence of cleaning James's office fridge. Along the way, we discuss questionable Christmas jumpers, dirty coffee mugs, the rights of fridge owners...

This week, we discover that the secret to success is apparently nine minutes a day. Nine minutes of what? It hardly matters. Whatever your age, whatever your problem, the answer is always the same: perfect. We begin with a missing teacher planner, a colleague in a state of panic, and a remarkably effective system for avoiding messages in your pigeonhole. Then we turn our attention to the increasin...

This week, we reflect on how we became friends, which apparently involved a territorial dispute over who was the funniest person in the room. Somehow, this eventually led to a podcast. We revisit the glory days of hospital radio, including a specially commissioned jingle that hospital management didn't appreciate, and investigate whether a shopkeeper really does have more authority than a tea...

Ben and James receive some unsolicited advice about how to improve the podcast from someone who hasn't actually listened to it. There's also a charity-shop shirt, an unexpectedly detailed assessment of a window at Montacute House, the return of Ask Ben and the thorny question of what Ben really thinks about primary school teachers. Plus, James continues introducing his family to Ben via...

£79 down, gym card uncollected and not a single lap swum. Ben joined a gym five weeks ago. He still hasn't collected his membership card. James, meanwhile, has somehow actually joined a gym and gone to it, which leads to memories of running marathons, arguments about whether either of us has ever been fit, and the disturbing discovery that Ben can apparently let James finish a sentence if he...

It's seven o'clock in the morning and, for reasons that James proclaims to be largely Ben's fault, we're already at work recording a podcast. It's also been quite a week. We can't really talk about what happened this week, although we can apparently spend quite a long time discussing what sort of window you should receive for the various possible Ofsted judgements. El...

Ben and James have moved seats—and somehow this has become a dispute about branding, lighting and whose name should come first. There’s also the small matter of what to call the people following the podcast now that it has cameras. Listeners? Viewers? Consumers? Whatever the answer, there aren’t currently enough of them to require a particularly large collective noun. There’s new feedback to addre...

That sinking feeling that arrives with the Antiques Roadshow theme tune? We know it well. By the second week back, the summer holidays can already feel like a distant memory. The first-day enthusiasm has worn off, the timetable has started to bite, and you’ve remembered exactly how many things there are to do before you can even think about getting home. So we talk candidly about the Sunday scarie...

We’ve gone visual. After months of making an audio podcast, we’ve finally made the jump to video — and it turns out the camera is both a brilliant upgrade and a fairly ruthless truth-teller. Suddenly lighting matters. The room matters. And all those little editing tricks that are invisible in audio become considerably more obvious when there are two faces on screen. In this episode, we talk throug...

Six weeks off sounds like endless freedom, but when we actually try to remember our school summer holidays, the picture is oddly specific: a bike you used to ride everywhere, a scooter you couldn't keep up on, and the kind of local roaming that now feels almost unreal. From there, we tumble into the background noise of the time: children's daytime television, cinema trips to town before...

A house that “might feature in a gritty BBC drama” is not a metaphor. It’s a running maintenance plan. We begin with a simple question about DIY progress and end up in the strange reality of renovating a house on a budget: windows that should have been fitted by now, a galley kitchen measured up with shaky confidence, and flat-pack units arriving next week whether the timing works or not. If you’v...

Summer holidays sound like freedom, until you realise you're still packing the car, juggling childcare, and trying to find five quiet minutes while life carries on at full volume. We start with a very real chat about time off: being a bit pedantic about continuity, craving routine while simultaneously rejecting it, and planning a shorter, budget-friendly break to the West Country based largel...

We start with a small family milestone as James realises this episode will go out on his daughter Matilda's birthday. At the time of recording, plans for the big day are still very much TBC —an August birthday can be brilliant for cake and presents but terrible for guest lists. From there, we tumble into the reality of soft play, party rooms, pizza, and the uniquely stressful moment when you...

A smoke machine goes on, the fire alarm follows, and suddenly the last minutes of the school day turn into a full-blown evacuation. It turns out there's no better way to end term than standing on the school field wondering whether anyone actually knows what's going on. From there, we celebrate the end of the year in the most teacherly way possible: Kong Strong Wild Power , generously don...

Milk first or milk last? It sounds like a harmless question until you ask it in a British staffroom. We tumble from casual brew chat into a proper national obsession: tea-making etiquette, why coffee somehow escapes the same scrutiny, and how a single mug can generate stronger opinions than most staff meetings. Along the way, we pit science against George Orwell in the great milk debate, discover...

A checklist can look impressively professional and still be completely useless. This week's proof is an "ultimate guide to organising school trips" that can't even keep track of its own Step Four. Before we get there, though, we wander off into the story of Jack Wild, the Artful Dodger from Oliver! , and the way celebrity encounters slowly evolve into family folklore until some...

Crisps on a microphone shouldn't lead to a serious conversation about education. And, to be fair, it doesn't. Instead, it leads to a deep dive into the world of crisps, followed closely by Ben trying to recreate James' morning routine as though it were a gritty Sunday night TV drama. Once we've finished auditioning actors for this dark, brooding biopic, we drift into the rest o...

Crack open a lukewarm can of Aldi 'Red Thunder' and get your pencils ready—we are taking an impromptu stroll down a very specific, tape-tangled memory lane. We kick off this week’s second-half double header by tackling the ubiquitous world of sugar-free drinks. They are absolutely everywhere, but we’re not entirely convinced they deserve the health halo they’ve picked up along the way. W...

That first bite of a "healthy" ice lolly can tell you everything you need to know. We try a supposedly premium fruit lolly that somehow tastes more like frozen sweetener than fruit, before rescuing the mood with a proper classic: the Fab. From the chocolate coating to the hundreds and thousands, we get surprisingly forensic about texture, flavour, and why some frozen treats still feel li...

Kwik Save, Gateway, Safeway, HyperValue... say any of those names out loud and you can practically smell the fluorescent lighting. We start by correcting our own questionable supermarket history before disappearing down a rabbit hole of UK retail nostalgia, value ranges, and how Aldi and Lidl quietly changed the way Britain shops. Normally, this is the point where we'd introduce an education...

A pair of polyester trousers, a slightly posher tie, and the social politics of the stockroom should not lead to a conversation about literacy, but somehow it does. We start by reliving our early retail jobs in Cardiff, from Boots uniforms and "Men's Technical" departments to the legendary stockroom guru who somehow holds the entire operation together. Along the way, we revisit late...

Party rings that somehow taste stale straight from the packet, a Huntley & Palmers tin, and the brutal truth that the quality of a school meeting can be measured entirely by the biscuit selection. That’s where we begin — because school life is often defined by the tiny details nobody ever writes into policy. For once, we’re recording on location in an actual school during half-term, complete w...

You can get a GCSE in Welsh, grow up in Wales, and still completely freeze when someone actually speaks Welsh back to you. That confession sends us into a proper wander through language, identity, and the massive chasm between passing an exam and confidently speaking a language. Meanwhile, our kids are somehow becoming bilingual in French despite barely visiting France — yet still maintain world-c...

This week, a crumbling Flake somehow turns into a full conversation about childhood, school life, and the packed lunches that still haunt us. We revisit frozen sandwiches made on Sunday nights, budget crisps in blank packaging, and the strange mix of shame and comedy that existed in every school canteen. We’ve also reached Episode 7 — the point where many podcasts quietly disappear into “podfade.”...