Hello and welcome to a brand new arse blog arscast right here on arsblog.com.

How are you?

Hope you're well.

Thank you very much indeed, as always, for being here.

I don't know if my voice sounds any better than it did the other day

with James when we recorded the Arscast Extra. What I can tell you is that I feel about 700

times worse. It turns out that traveling a lot, hugging dozens, maybe hundreds of random people over the course of a weekend,

and sitting in an airport where people were just going around, coughing without covering their mouths,

leaves a man more prone to infection and illness.

Who would have thought, eh?

And when that man perhaps has left his immune system

a little bit compromised by a series of late nights and perhaps, perhaps just, you know, one or

two drinks too many over the course of that weekend, well, the results are not good. I'm feeling

pretty awful, like a bag of crap. I've got those fevery nights where you're freezing

cold one minute and sweating, and then you're roasting and clammy, coughing all over the place,

but crucially covering my mouth, even though I'm alone in my own office, whatever it is. There was a man

beside me in the airport in Budapest the other day

who had a coughing fit so bad I thought he might just die there and then. And not once during

that coughing fit did he think to cover his mouth. I mean, it's not like we don't have any evidence

from, oh, I don't know, let's say a recent worldwide pandemic

that you should cover your mouth when you cough. Be a little conscientious, which made the next

thing he did even more remarkable. He pulled a mask out of his bag and put the mask on, but it was

...