S13 EP19: It's Exhausting Having an Opinion

Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe

Rob and Josh navigate a series of personal anecdotes ranging from the overwhelming nature of carpet shopping to the excitement of school fet

Key takeaways

• An Irish syndicate successfully exploited the 1992 lottery by purchasing nearly every combination for a profit.
• Josh Widdicombe experienced extreme decision fatigue while browsing thousands of beige carpet options in an industrial warehouse.

Main topics

• Lottery syndicates
• Carpet shopping fatigue

Notable quotes

It's exhausting having an opinion.

Conclusion

A humorous look at how even minor life decisions and modern technology

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This episode is presented by TUI. Look, you've got to Speaker 2 (0:02) love a family holiday, Josh. Oh, you've got to love it. Who wouldn't love it, Rob? You know what the problem with the holidays is, right? You don't get enough of them. That's the problem. Exactly. So you need to make the most of your holiday, which is why TUI gives you more. So Speaker 3 (0:13) that's got to be easy booking for incredible destinations with amazing hotels that offer all the things you love. Perfect beaches, mouth-watering food, on-site splash parks, wellness centres, swim-up suites, and fun stuff for the kids. And now Speaker 2 (0:26) you can get even more by joining the brand new TUI smiles rewards Speaker 3 (0:29) club for free we're talking members only deals personalized rewards from tui and some of their brilliant partners and plenty of chances to win amazing prizes love Speaker 2 (0:40) it get more from your holiday book now and discover the tui smiles reward club at tui.co.uk at all and abta protected hello you're listening to parents in hell with Speaker 1 (0:54) Luna, can you say Rob Beckett? Rob Beckett. And can you say Josh Withicombe? Speaker 2 (1:01) Josh Withicombe. Good Speaker 1 (1:03) job. Speaker 3 (1:04) Good job. Luna. Luna Rose Skilling, aged five, from Stirling in Scotland. She really wants to be in the intro because her big sister, Layla, is in your audio book. She does Chapter 13, Entertaining Your Child. Stay sexy and relatable. Thanks, John Skilling. Speaker 2 (1:21) There we go. There we go. Job done. Look at that, one each. One on the pod, one in the book. Oh, Speaker 3 (1:27) wait a minute. John Skilling. Oh, good on John Skilling. Who's John Skilling? The dad. You can see he sent this three times. July the 6th. Monday, July the 6th. Monday, the 3rd of August. Monday, the 31st of August. Monday, the 21st of September. Today? Four times, yeah. And Michael's finally bitten. He's been changing his time of sending. His first send was Monday at 8. Speaker 3 (1:59) 8.49 p.m. Absolute disaster. Couldn't be further from a record. Worst possible time. Then Monday at 3.01 p.m. Terrible. You might as Speaker 2 (2:10) well do it on fucking Saturday night. Yeah. Then Speaker 3 (2:13) Monday at 8.34 a.m. Good try. Solid. He's getting there. And then this morning, 7.34 a.m. Bang Speaker 2 (2:22) on. Early bird. Early skillet catches the worm. The worm. Yes. Talking of working the system, I saw a really good documentary on Netflix about these Irish syndicate that bought every single lottery ticket combination to win the jackpot. I'd like to watch that documentary. You'd love it. It's great. That sounds good. And does it work out? Do you want a spoiler? Yep. So, yes, it does. But they have to share it with three other people. So they only get like a third of the main jackpot. But because they bought so many others, they earned loads of money on the matching four, matching fives. Of Speaker 3 (3:00) course. Speaker 2 (3:00) So, yeah, they did well out of it. When did they do it? 1992. This is so you, Josh. Speaker 3 (3:05) Oh, Speaker 2 (3:06) wow. You love it. And where's the Speaker 3 (3:08) documentary from? Speaker 2 (3:10) A couple of years ago. It's on Netflix. Let me find out what it's called. But you will love it. Speaker 3 (3:16) That is my scene. We're currently watching the Kylie doc. I Speaker 2 (3:19) haven't seen that. Speaker 3 (3:21) It's good. Speaker 2 (3:22) Love a doc. Love a doc. Well, there's nothing good on TV anymore, is there? So I thought I might as well go on to the streamers. Exactly, Rob. It's called Beat the Lotto, but it's leaving soon. It's leaving on... Last Day to Watch is the 8th of October, so you've got enough time. It was done in 2025. What? Where is it leaving to? Just into the... Well, it's sort of like space junk of content. If stuff doesn't get licensed, it just floats around in space junk. Speaker 3 (3:50) So their theory is we will win the lottery by, because the jackpot is... So they have to spend... Speaker 2 (3:56) There's a guy that does an equation where essentially it costs £975,000 to buy every ticket. Yeah. And then the jackpot was about £1.5 million because there'd been a few rollovers. Doesn't feel enough, does it? Speaker 3 (4:11) Because what if... two other people win it and you share. Speaker 2 (4:15) So basically, ultimately, I mean, spoiler alert FC, but everyone that was involved in this massive syndicate earned about 40 % profit. Speaker 3 (4:23) Worth it. Speaker 2 (4:24) So it was worth it, but it could have been massive, but it was still, because of all the other ones, it's still done really well. Did Speaker 3 (4:29) they have to physically fill them in? Speaker 2 (4:32) Yes. And yeah, so it's great. And then they had to go round to all the terminals and then the lottery people got wind of it. So they started shutting down terminals so they couldn't buy the tickets. Oh my God. So they only actually spent 700,000 because they couldn't get all the tickets done. Speaker 3 (4:45) Oh no. And they still won. So that was a bit more of a lottery. Sounds good. Oh my Speaker 2 (4:49) word. Anyway, Speaker 3 (4:51) how are you? I was going to say you can fill them in in advance, I suppose. They couldn't have filled them in themselves though. Speaker 2 (4:56) Yeah, one man did it with his family. It took him 10 months. No. So one man came up with a plan and then he sold it to these rich people, a few people with spare money, and then he just took a percentage of winnings because he didn't front the money. This is so you. Speaker 3 (5:10) This is so you. So me. So you. It's Speaker 2 (5:13) the Speaker 3 (5:13) kind of thing Michael would do. We'd say, what have you been doing this week? Michael. Yeah, I could imagine Michael going, I've worked out a way to play the lottery so that I win, and I've done it myself, and I've got no one else involved because I don't want to split the cash. Speaker 2 (5:28) No, I think Michael would more likely film the documentary of it. Of Speaker 1 (5:32) course. Of course. Speaker 2 (5:34) Have you ever done a big grand plan to... Get a win over the big guys, Michael? I'm Speaker 1 (5:39) just thinking of the legality of what I can share here. Let's just say yes in a past life. This one, Speaker 2 (5:45) Michael, doesn't show his face. He's Speaker 1 (5:47) like Speaker 2 (5:47) Frank Abagnale Jr. He's wandering around 1950s America with little necklaces. Is Speaker 1 (5:53) that Speaker 2 (5:53) catch me if you can? Yeah. He's currently on Pan Am now to New York. I can't really remember catch me if you can. Did he pretend to be a pilot? Do you know what I'm really enjoying is? All this, which is our normal general tangent chat, and there's Strictly Hardcore's waiting for us talking about Strictly. Speaker 3 (6:10) Yeah, but let's talk about Catch Me If You Can first. Speaker 3 (6:15) So tell me about Catch Me If You Can. Have you ever seen it? Yeah, but I saw it when I was a student. So it's 25 years ago. Speaker 2 (6:22) Yeah, that's where all my reference points are from. Speaker 3 (6:24) Leonardo DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale. Speaker 2 (6:27) And Tom Hanks is trying to catch him, if he can. If he can, yeah. And so he basically is forging checks and pretending to be a pilot and getting the jump seats all around the world and then paying for stuff. And then it's a bit like a computer hacker. He ends up working for the people that hunt down con men. I love Speaker 3 (6:43) that. That's a classic. Mainly Speaker 2 (6:45) men. Speaker 3 (6:45) The poacher has Speaker 2 (6:47) become the gamekeeper. The poacher. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that's good. Do you want me to talk about my week first? Yeah. Or do you want to talk about your week? No, I'm happy to talk about your week. In a slightly less show-busy Saturday, I attempted to buy or pick or look at carpets. Because I'm getting the office done. Yeah. So I've got a... A room where I'm going to record the podcast in and then another room that's just going to sort of be my room to work from. Yeah. I like carpets. Speaker 3 (7:16) Great as Speaker 2 (7:16) your Speaker 3 (7:16) golf swing. Speaker 2 (7:17) Yeah. I wanted a nice soft squidgy carpet that could be bare face. Speaker 3 (7:20) Green values that Speaker 2 (7:21) you could do putting on. Yeah. And then I wanted a harder carpet that isn't going to bounce the sound around like this hard floor does now. Speaker 3 (7:28) Surely a squidgy carpet is what you need in your podcast room, isn't it? Speaker 2 (7:31) Yeah, but it's harder to move like furniture around and stuff like that. You know, if there's going to be desks in there and chairs and stuff like that. So maybe I could. But anyway, I walked in. Have you ever been in a carpet shop? Do you know what? I don't think I have. It's like a fucking simulation. I cannot believe it's real. What do you mean? It's just carpet everywhere. But I'm talking like 3,000 things. I walked in. Speaker 3 (7:56) How Speaker 2 (7:56) did you choose a carpet? So basically, I had Speaker 3 (7:58) a Speaker 2 (7:58) World Good Saturday because the kids had parties. One was over in like Windsor Ascot way, right? Bloody hell, that's a journey. Journey, but it's like friends outside of school, but we get on with the parents. So it's like a bit of fun as well as just the party. And then one was at Blue Water. So Lou... That's a double up. So basically, Lou had something to do in the morning. I just chilled indoors in the morning. I took the dogs for a walk, chilled indoors in the morning. Then Lou said, I'll take one of the kids to the Windsor one, which is like, you know, three hour round trip, essentially. I was like, cool. No, I'll do the Blue Water one. And she went, oh, there's a few people going, so you might be able to just... drop three kids off and then another parent will bring all the kids back went great anyway then Lou goes oh you had an absolute winner here one of the other kids mum said oh don't worry I'll take them and bring them back so I had to drop so I was watching the football first half of the football the Tottenham Villa game yeah then in the half time managed to drop my daughter off and come back to watch the second half of the football and had nothing to do till six o'clock she went to a carpet shop well yeah because I had to do because Lou was like well, if you're at home, you might as well go and pick the carpet. Honestly, Josh, I walked