The Protest

Guy goes to Iceland (the country) even though that was never his intention. His critics act against him.

Transcript

Welcome to the one-hundred-and-twenty-sixth episode of The Undercover Intern podcast, coming to you live from the centre of London Luton Airport. I'm your host, Guy Snapdragon, and today is Monday the 30th of June 2025.

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Please stop emailing in, I know how much you hate me. You guys are so sensitive to the Auntie Gwen stuff. It was last Millennium, for god’s sake. Communications are cancelled again, permanently this time. Eloise is fine. She entirely manipulated me - I would never have allowed a dentist to open up her body like that. Dentists need to stick to the mouth, I’ve always said that. If my younger brother Guy is listening, please give me a chance to explain. It turns out that I took Eloise to America without my brother’s permission and during a vital part of the school year. That, added to the experimental right breast enhancement perpetual alarm clock implant surgery and the resulting sepsis means that he’s really rather peeved with me. When I say it in full and out loud, that makes sense, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it sounds. None of my brothers are speaking to me now. Well, my older brother, also called Guy, spoke to me the other week when I was in America but only to tell me to get away from Eloise and to stay away from the family. My oldest brother, also Guy, hasn’t spoken to me since the pineapple incident in 2016. So it appears that I don’t have any brothers now. Guys, if you’re listening, you have to help me, I don’t think I’m going to make it.

[Sound of keyboard; slight pause] Sorry about the background noise, but I’m multitasking. There are only four hours remaining to vote for The Undercover Intern to win The Interns’ Choice Award at the Internship Podcasting Awards. I’ll be voting throughout this podcast, as I hope you all are. One last push. I’ve checked with them and they will award posthumously should the winner be dead. I tried to end my life on Saturday. I just thought you should know and the publicity about my death would have provided a last-minute boost in the voting that might have made all the difference. I’ve touched on the underlying reasons for ending my life in previous episodes, but I have nothing left to give. This overwhelming sense of worthlessness - I can’t do anything right, I’ve lost everything, basically.

I’ve been writing to Bianca again, even though I’m not allowed and I don’t think she even reads my letters. I know when I get to this point that I’m in trouble, but I can’t stop. I hide my pens, but I always know where I’ve hidden them. I don’t have the energy to do much else. Actually, it took me like an hour on Wednesday laying in bed just to muster the energy to go and have a wee in the corner of the studio. I just can’t do things any more. The thought of brushing my teeth occupies me for hours but I don’t get up and do it. My mouth is so horrible now and it has this metal taste all the time. I just want to lay here until I’m rescued. I don’t even want to talk. I want people to know that I’m too ill. I am totally gone. I just need somebody to care for me. All I did last week was lie down, write to Bianca and then lie down again. My perpetual alarm clock goes off at noon, but I’ll still just lie there all afternoon. On Wednesday afternoon I hid in my giant suitcase while the Airports Now podcast guys were in the studio. I’m sorry it smelled of wee in here.

Before Friday, my thoughts of suicide were still somehow abstract, but I actually came up with a plan on Friday. It’s true what they say; once I had a plan I regained some of my energy and I went over to Caffe Nero for one last Frappe Latte. Cream on top this time, because who gives a swear? Everywhere around me were families off on holiday, or mates off on a stag do. I’ll never get to go on a stag do, and I wondered what it is that I’ve done so wrong. Why am I broken so totally that nobody wants to be my friend? An attractive woman smiled at me as she passed and I just started to cry. She recoiled when I tried to hug her. I’m not sure why I’m telling you any of this. I know I sound pathetic but I don’t know how to explain what depression is without these stupid examples. It’s just a total absence of vitality, of basic tasks becoming beyond me. I have no idea how I’m recording this podcast, to be honest. But it’s just like the whole world is recoiling from me, that I’m not able to exist anymore. The dark cloud metaphor approaches the feeling, but isn’t sufficient for this agony.

Around 5am on Saturday morning I took my giant suitcase over to the terminal while it was still quiet. To know I was doing everything for the last time. My last sunrise. I went to the toilet and used the fourth urinal one last time. I looked in the mirror for the last time. I’m so old. I washed my hands for the last time. I took my clothes off for the last time. I climbed into my giant suitcase for the last time. I zipped the suitcase up, activated the lock and waited for the explosion. 

What I want to know is, why do they make those announcements that if you leave your baggage unattended in an airport it will be removed and may be destroyed? That isn’t what happens. Well, it’s removed I guess. But what actually happens to unattended baggage is that it’s checked-in, put on an interminably long conveyer belt, loaded onto an airplane and flown to Reykjavik. Being inside that suitcase was like the darkest and most uncomfortable seven-hour long roller-coaster ride ever. Do you have any idea how cold it is in cargo without clothes? At least the first time I travelled in cargo I was insulated by bubble wrap. This time I nearly froze to death and who in their right mind would choose such a chilly death? I guess few people choose the exploding suitcase route either, but I just don’t have the courage for more traditional suicide methods like hanging or pills or raking myself to death. The exploding suitcase option seemed like the best option for a coward like me.

I’m perhaps oversharing here, but I really needed a poo almost as soon as I locked the suitcase. I think it’s because everything was pushed together, internally. How does one explain to an Icelandic immigration officer, alerted by a perpetual alarm, why he has just found a fat naked middle-aged internship podcaster, covered by his own excrement and curled up inside a giant suitcase? I don’t mean how to say this in Icelandic as he spoke really good English. But what is a reasonable explanation that isn’t going to get me into trouble? I mean, is there any scenario where I was forced into this? An Instagram challenge? I didn’t even have my passport. I think the only reason they allowed me to come back to the UK is because they were embarrassed that they’d transported me like this. God knows what the baggage screener was doing when my giant suitcase was being x-rayed. Oh, it’s just somebody transporting 206 human bones and a fat suit to Iceland. That’s fine. Next! Oh, a Kindle, let’s frisk her! …  I had to sign an NDA with the Keflavik Airport authorities and I can certainly never go to Iceland again, under any circumstances, but they let me have a shower, gave me some clothes and put me on a flight back to London Luton Airport. My suitcase was exploded eventually, for hygiene reasons, but alas not with me in it.

I’ve broken the NDA by speaking about it, but what are they going to do? Join the queue. I mean that literally as there’s a pretty hefty protest outside the studio right now. The ironic thing is that we all want the same thing. I should just let them in to kill me, but you know what the Welsh are like. They’ll torture me first, I’m sure of it. But it’s not just the Welsh, there’s loads of women and I can see their placards: “Guy Snapdragon hates Women.” Not true, I barely even think about them. “Gay Is Wrong”. I disagree. Oh, actually, maybe that’s a ‘U’. “Hands off our giant carrots.” That last one’s not a placard but written on a tractor that’s right at the front. Farmers always have to get involved, don’t they? Shouldn’t they be harvesting at this time of year? I see a bunch of manual airport workers, and I’ve never been anything other than polite to them. There’s some women playing netball on the runway. Jim Davidson’s here, obviously. Is that Kevin Costner? Surely not. I know I said that Yellowstone is the most swear piece of television I’ve ever seen and that I’d rather ingest every parasitic worm known to humanity and put a hot iron on my genitals while rats gnaw at my face and lions feast on my legs while listening to Coldplay than watch one more miserable minute of your incoherent melodrama. That was back in episode 20 of this podcast, I think. But you’ve got nothing better to do than come to Milton Keynes to join the protest? What are you going to do, Kevin, lasso me to death? Your Horizon film is swear.

Why would lions listen to Coldplay? That doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, the airport has been closed for the past couple of hours but as far as I can see, the police aren’t even here. Greg Rutherford and Kevin Whately are trying to move the protestors away from the runway, but they’re hopelessly outnumbered, and Greg just seems to be jumping about all over the place. I think this will be the end for me, one way or another. Bianca, if you’re listening I love you. I love you today as much as I did in 1997. To my loyal listeners, I loved you too, once, and there’s still almost four hours to vote for me. I’ll keep voting to the end. All I’ve ever wanted is to be a podcaster for interns and to win The Interns’ Choice Award at the Internship Podcasting Awards. It’s too late to save me, but you can secure a legacy for The Undercover Intern podcast. Please vote for me.

By the way, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in Walford, especially the stall on Bridge Street Market where Bianca used to work. Can somebody at least put my penis ashes there?

I’ve been your host and producer, Guy Snapdragon. May you use your time wisely, and may your use of wise be timely. Goodbye.