#499 - Digital Oil, Peak Christmas and Love Shakes Piles

Elis James and John Robins

BBC

Comedy

4.8 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John's eaten two helpings of pancakes and we’re in a race against time. Can this bantercast cram in enough badinage before one of its hosts succumbs to a sugar crash? It’s a question that’s been asked many times before, and one that will no doubt be asked again, but it’s a critical question nonetheless.

Elis has spent the week telling his wife Isy that he ‘must be alone’ in order to finish John’s book. He successfully wrangled enough solo time to do so and delivers his verdict. It’s praise all round, but Dave appears to come out of it badly.

Elsewhere it’s peak Christmas. Listener gifts are opened, Elis is dreading his drive to Cardiff, and John doesn’t want to talk about his Christmas lest the show turn into another mental health podcast.

And we end on the question: how do you inject digital oil into a podcast to make it rise to the top? Answers on a postcard.

All Elis and John want for Christmas is your correspondence, so send it to: [email protected], or WhatsApp the show on 07974 293 022.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.
0:11.1	You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.
0:14.0	Ho!
0:14.3	Ho! Ho! No, no, no.
0:17.5	I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.
0:20.4	Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay?
0:23.7	It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely.
0:26.4	Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day.
0:28.6	Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of Lapland.
0:30.9	Get all kinds of Christmassy.
0:32.6	Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.
1:11.1	The Christmas music on BBC Sounds. Hello, thank you very much for downloading this week's episode of Ellis and John and probably Dave, because obviously Dave doesn't get mentioned in the name of the show, at his behest, as we discussed last week,
1:12.4	but we have had lots of emails in on this.
1:16.0	And having been asked to put our Christmas chimpers on,
1:19.6	which I hate, because I think it's enforced wackiness and zaniness.
1:21.2	I think it makes this look like gooners.
1:24.7	I've now been asked to take my Christmas chumper off,
1:27.0	which I hate because it's ruined my hair.
1:32.9	But John isn't quite plain ball because me and him had a Christmas breakfast about an hour and a half ago,
1:38.2	and he's still got his complimentary Christmas hat on from the restaurant.
1:42.2	I've neglected to take off the Christmas hat because I had such a lovely time.
	...

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