Answer Me This! - AMT224: Caffeine, Kissing and the Women's Institute

Episode Date: July 19, 2012

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Why would you get the band G4 to guard the Olympics? Answer me this, answer me this It's Sebastian Coe, now shitting bricks Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this Last week we told you to tell us what you've been falsely accused of Manslaughter, it was murder you see And Ian from Belfast has been in touch with something he

has been falsely accused of and it is pretty serious he says one afternoon a friend and i decided to go to a bar after work to play a game of pool at this time in my life i was bearded with long curly hair and despite me being in my early 20s, two girls approached me, insisting I was the ageing pop star Mick Hucknall. No! How old's Mick Hucknall? Never mind how old. The point is surely how ginger.

Surely the defining feature of yourself, Ian, that you haven't mentioned unless these girls were so drunk they couldn't see, was that you must surely also be radiantly ginger and thus confused for Mick Hucknall. Did he have a ruby tooth? That's another one of Mick Hucknall's defining features. Yeah. Do you know that every year Mick Hucknall has a special party

for when he had his ruby tooth put in? It's his ruby tooth day. Yay! Well, anyway, Ian continues. This led to these girls taking photographs with me whilst they took the opportunity to grope me repeatedly. Due to my general fear of girls, enhanced by their sexual aggression

and the fact that they were exceedingly drunk In the early afternoon I quickly left the pub Never to return again Did he go straight to the barbers? There was a rumour that the reason why he cut off his long red dreadlocks Is because Martine McCutcheon threw up on them And he couldn't get the smell of vomit out of them

In the 80s He bedded 3,000 women Planted them in a flower bed. That's like one a day, isn't it? He said that really, now he looks back on it, he realises that actually he was trying to replace his mother because he'd been abandoned by his mum when he was little. And I just sort of read that and I did think,

you know, I'm very glad that I had a happy childhood, but in a way, would it be better? Would I have seen more action if I'd been abandoned by my mother? I'm just saying, you know, if she'd just, like, you know, just been a bit cruel to me. I don't think that necessarily follows because if he was looking for a mother substitute maybe he would be like I went home with 3,000 women and they did my washing and they made my tea yeah and then they tucked me into bed and no sexual congress took place

I absolutely agree with you in that sense because when a journalist proposes that theory which in this case is what happened the journalist had said to him were you looking for a mother substitute the journalist sort of assumes that female loving is the same whether you get it from a mother or a girlfriend. Very different, isn't it? He put his dick in these women. Maybe he was looking for his mother substitute using the eye

on the end of his penis. Maybe she's up there, up this vagina. Well, moving on from the cheesy music of Simply Red to a question... And the cheesy knob of Mick Hucknall. Yes, to a question of cheese. Just cheese, not knob cheese, just cheese. Just cheese. The question is from Roz, who says,

My husband and I have recently moved to Singapore, and while the food is amazing, we've been bemoaning the lack of the UK's wide range of amazing cheeses. Oh, that's right, yeah. 700 cheeses on the UK's shores. Nobody does it better. Not you, France. Yeah, not even the French.

More types of cheese than you. Ross says, Ollie, answer me this. What is the most popular cheese in the world? Cheddar. Basically, it's cheddar. The reason it's the number one cheese

and the reason that mozzarella is sometimes said to be the number one cheese instead. Whoa, really? But probably not proper mozzarella. Probably that crap that comes grated. It's because, yes, basically, it's because what Americans put on their pizza and burgers... It's called cheddar.

Well, a variant of cheddar or mozzarella. It's not that people eat it by itself, it's that it tops things. Is it that if you've got a cheese that is solid and yellow and kind of brick-shaped, you can call that cheddar, whether it's anything like real cheddar or not? Yeah, well, it doesn't have a protected order on it, does it? West Country cheddar does or whatever but not not cheddar you can just say you're making cheddar out of anything out of mick hucknall's knob cheese i don't say that tomato i gave you earlier that was cheddar so yeah cheddar or derivations of cheddar but otherwise

it is kind of a complicated picture yeah i bet france they're the major exporter of cheese oh okay but those are relatively artisan cheeses. You know, like Brie and Camembert. Is that artisan? Well, they're not the mainstream cheeses, are they? Brie is mainstream! Yeah, it's mainstream to you, Helen, because you were brought up

in Sunbridge Wells. And what about cheeses of the kind of feta and paneer type? Yeah, well, in Greece they actually eat the most cheese of anyone in the world.

Really? But that's because they put feta in everything so that's just feta. So it still doesn't make feta more popular than cheddar. Because there's a limited supply of Greeks. I've got a great cheese fact, though. Great!

More than one quarter of total UK milk production every year ends up in cheese. Oh, that's brilliant, isn't it? Well, why don't they make more Wigmore? Yeah. Wigmore's an amazing cheese, and yet they only make it with the milk that they're not using for double Gloucester,

which is an average cheese. I don't drink milk. If people could put that other 75% towards making more Wigmore and Cashaw Blue, I'd be extremely happy. Well, I do drink milk, and I'd be very disappointed if I was topping up my cinnamon graham's with a load of runny cheese, Martin, so I think the proportions

are roughly right. A question of literature now, from Heike, who says, it took me a long time to figure out that the girl with the dragon tattoo is the same book as Men Who Hate Women. So Helen answered me this. Why was the name changed? I've never heard of Men Who Hate Women.

Well, it's what The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was originally called. I've learned that now, Helen. No point pointing that out to me now. But I'd never heard of that before. Well, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you would take great interest in. What, literature? Yeah. Yeah, I've only got an English degree.

What's that prick? He's got pages, don't want it. had you heard this men who hate women yes because i thought actually that would be a far better title for the content yeah but i mean all of em forster could be men who secretly love men but that's not the point is you don't have a title that reflects the content boring people but uh i can understand why the brit British publishers and the American publishers thought that a book called Men Who Hate Women was not going to be commercial because, well, they thought people might think

it was a factual book. They thought it would alienate both genders in different ways and they could get a picture of a naked woman with a tattoo down her back on the cover, which everyone likes. Yeah, apparently. Yeah. I suppose you could put that on any book though as well. Couldn't you put back on the cover, which everyone likes. Yeah, apparently. Yeah.

I suppose you could put that on any book, though, as well. Couldn't you put it on the World Atlas if you wanted to? Actually, she could have a little tattoo of the world. Actually, that would work very well. Well done, Ollie. Yeah. It's kind of like, with this Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, everything seems to be tied in, in some way, to Fifty Shades now.

So if you go into Smiths now, there's actually signs saying, if you loved Fifty Shades of Grey grey you will love the julox catalogue you you should try this and they'll have a book that's a bit like 50 but obviously isn't oh so cynical isn't it yeah but they've just done the cover to look right well so they've just put a great eye on it yeah basically like gardener's world handbook i found some interviews with the people that translated this book so they had a kind of in in about why these titles were changed and they theorised that it was to fit in better with the rest of the series because the middle one was called

The Girl Who Played With Fire. Or was it originally called that? Yeah, pretty much. Well, it was originally supposed to be called The Girl Who Fantasised About A Gasoline Can And A Match and I'm glad that they contracted that to The Girl Who Played With Fire. But then the third one in Swedish is called The Castle In The Air That Exploded.

So that's not The Girl with Blah De Blah. So I'm not convinced by that reason. The Castle in the Air That Exploded. Which is now The Girl That Kicked the Hornet's Nest in English. I just remember thinking when I saw the title of those books that they were just ridiculous. They're like, girl, what done the thing? Girl, what's got a thing?

What a brilliant trilogy. I'm going to go and read those. Great. But you'd be laughing all the way to the bank, wouldn't you, Martin, if you'd written them? He wouldn't be laughing all the way to the bank if he'd written them, because Stig Larsson died before any of them were published, and he didn't even try to get them published himself. But you would be laughing

if you were the person who bought the international rights and then gave them those titles. Yes, you would. And then sold the film rights. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! I'm not going to stop until the buses reach the bank! Ha ha ha! Anyway, here's a question about something else. It's me. It's from Simon from Moscow who says,

If my mother and grandmother are both right and fabric conditioner is not supposed to be used when washing towels, then Ollie, answer me this. Why do so many sodding bottles of the stuff have pictures of toddlers and young children wrapped up in towels? Is there some sort of fabric conditioner towel conspiracy going on in which they want me to use their liquid, thus making my towel unusable and needing to be replaced?

Or are the old ladies both wrong? I'm actually as disgusted as you are, Simon from Moscow. I don't know what to say because I'm dumbfounded How could they not have my best interests at heart I'm not a kind of read the back of the bottle Type of guy Reading with the stubless And the picture is as you say

A toddler wrapped in a towel And it does create the impression that fabric conditioner is at it's best When used on towels That is so unrealistic because i've never seen a toddler do anything but scream when they're taken out the bath and put in a towel yeah they hate coming out the bath okay fair enough they hate transition a crying toddler or perhaps a baby shitting on a towel that's not gonna sell fabric conditioner so i understand why they've chosen a pleasing image but nonetheless the implication is very clearly your towel's so soft it's so you can use it's

like a surrogate teddy bear well you can't you can do that you can use the towel for comfort it's just not good for drying because a lot of the molecules in fabric conditioner are hydrophobic meaning they repel water that's why your mother and grandmother are useless towels only good as a surrogate teddy bear that's not what the message is saying but you don't have to buy a new towel in your weird towel conspiracy simon you can just wash the towel without the fabric conditioner i'm sure it'd be fine the point he's making is that he's being missold something here they make it very clear that you should be using fabric conditioner on towels and what you're telling me, what I'm finding absolutely revelatory, is that you should not, under any circumstances, of all things, use it on a towel.

Moreover, most fabric conditioners are extremely environmentally harmful because they're not biodegradable and they're made from non-renewable resources. But it would be quite hard to get that caveat onto a child's face. If you've got a question, then email your question, yeah, to AnswerMidThisPodcast to GoogleMail.com. AnswerMidThisPodcast to GoogleMail.com. AnswerMidThisPodcast to GoogleMail.com. Help cat. AnswerMidThisPodcast to Google Googlemail.com Help cat Answer me this podcast Googlemail.com

So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car.

On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Katie,

who says, one of my closest friends is a professional actress The real kind Recently at a drunken girls night in We decided to tally up The number of men and women we'd kissed When we all revealed our magic numbers We could not work out

Why Ellen the actress Had a number that was double ours Maybe she's more popular Or maybe more outgoing Or maybe she's just doing her bit To propagate the myth of the actress slash whore Maybe she kisses a lot of tramps it then turned out that she had counted everyone she'd ever had to kiss in a film play music video or advert now we had a vote fun and decided that this does not count because she did not have the choice as to whether to kiss them

well we've all been there in our teenage years to be honest say no more and the previously mentioned men had no choice to kiss her either so ollie answer me this is she right to count the male actors or does that not count yeah i think she is right i think a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss i don't count the people i've kissed in plays and some of them were really good but i don't count them but i know i think you absolutely should count them if we were asking the question casually at a party how many children have you murdered and you're like should i count the ones when i played fred west then in that circumstance i understand that you'll make a distinction there because there's the fictional narrative of the character that you played but we're talking about a physical action here if you said how many packets of pringles have you eaten

and in real life you'd only eaten two but you played a character in an alan aylton play who every night ate a whole tube of pringles on stage it would be accurate to say that you'd eaten 562 tubs of pringles it's gone into your body yeah so i think you know if the tongues come out of your body and into someone else's body that's kissing whether it's uh as a character or not what if you're not using tongues it's a stage kiss the terms of katie's magic number i think are the men that she she wants to know how many people Ellen has kissed through natural, normal circumstances. She should have made it clear without you having to ask.

She should have said, well the real number is whatever, ten or six, but if you include the people that I've snogged on stage It's a million. She should have said that because it's not fair to compare it to the other women who were just saying people that they'd kiss naturally. But as you say, in every woman's life, nay, in every man's life,

there are moments at the school disco where, frankly, you're pressured into kissing the other person. You didn't want to, but you still did, and you have to count those, I'm afraid. Here's a question of Office Politics now from Megan from Portland, Oregon. Yay! Who says, I'm about to quit

my long-term job and move across the country. Why? Stay in Portland! When do you do a life swap with us? She continues, I'm about to quit my long-term job and move across the country. Why? Stay in Portland. When do you do a life swap with us? She continues, I work with a horrible woman, and I'm afraid she might try to hug me on my last day. I don't want to burn any bridges as I've enjoyed my 10 years, but the thought of this bony old hag trying to hug me is causing me some concern.

So, Helen, answer me this. How do I avoid this physical contact whilst appearing to be friendly? Which is more important to you, avoiding the physical contact or appearing to be friendly? If the latter, just do it. It's about half a second of your life and yet you've worked yourself up about it

more than no minutes before it's going to happen. Can any woman, I mean, actually any person, but since we're talking about women, can any woman be so horrific that you wouldn't want to be hugged by her once? Yes. Once? Yes. Once? How do you know this woman is a hugger anyway? Maybe she

doesn't want to hug you? Maybe just stick your hand out as if for a handshake, pre-empting the hug. But why rock this boat? It's completely unnecessary. You're never going to see her again. There's a real danger that with a handshake, they can grab your hand and then clasp you close. I do that with men sometimes when they think they're just getting a little handshake and they get a big man hug.

I mean, we're sympathising with Megan because she's the one who's written to our show, but actually, you know, just to go a bit beautiful mind on this, maybe Megan's the weird one who doesn't like physical contact. Maybe she's leaving this incredible place of Portland to go to the other side of the country

because there's a threat that someone might touch her. Are you saying that this woman is a figment of Megan's imagination? No, but I'm just saying... Megan, you've got to leave this workplace because you keep writing maths on the window. I'd be interested to know what Megan's employees think about her and whether they'd like to hug her.

That's what I'm thinking. Have either of you noticed a sort of complication in hugging etiquette? Because I'm sure when I was younger, it was very easy. You just went in for a hug, gave someone a hug, whether it was a man or a woman. Now I know some women, they don't want to do it. They kind of, like, they hug me with one arm and kind of angle their body away like I'm invading their space.

They don't want to press their tits on you. Other women go in for a kiss, and it's like, no, I don't want a kiss, I want a hug. I find the women going in for the kiss thing very difficult. In a business situation, I mean, obviously not socially, but when I meet someone in a business situation, if it's a woman, I don't, I think it's patronising to offer a kiss just because it's a woman.

If I've never met her before, I put my hand out. And pat her on the head. Hello. I'm Wilson, the ball from Castaway, and here is my song about my favourite balls. Football, rugby ball, volleyball ball. Tennis ball, zoe ball, basketball. Netball, handball, debutante ball.

Bowling ball, baseball Big sweaty ball Answer Me This Sports Day A marathon of fun and games Out now at answermethispodcast.com Slash albums Have you ever been in that situation When you can't find your keys And you've forgotten our phone number

That's my tribute to my favourite act From Britain's Got Talent this year Helen doesn't know what it is No, I've no idea what you're doing But to those of you that do Here's my tribute to the only act I know That was in Britain's Got Talent this year. Helen doesn't know what it is. No, I've no idea what you're doing. But to those of you that do... Here's my tribute to the only act I know that was in Britain's Got Talent. Ruff! Ruff!

You win. Here's two million pounds. Go and crack Hollywood. Well, here's another number that's not two million. 0-2-0-8-1-2-3-5-8-double-7 Or you can Skype answer me this if you want to get in touch. Hello, Helen, Ollie. It's Andrew from Manchester.

My wife has just revealed to me that she drinks an average 20 cups of tea a day. And so, Helen Olly, answer me this. Is that a safe amount of tea for one person to be consuming? Depends how big the cups are. Depends how big your wife is. They do recommend that you keep your caffeine consumption to under 300 milligrams a day right how many cups of tea is that well estimates varies to the precise amount of caffeine in a cup of tea don't care give me a number because of the strength of tea but it's somewhere between about 30 milligrams

and 50 in a cup and about 75 in a mug so how many mugs of tea can i have you can have four okay fine four yeah four do i have more than? I never have more than four cups of tea. But it's pretty much only two filter coffees. Yeah. It's not loads, is it? Well, I have given up coffee this week, listeners. To what end? I had something approaching a palpitation. I thought, you know what?

I'm going to stop drinking coffee now. It did take an actual physical thing to happen to me to think I'm going to stop. But once I took that decision, I've really surprised myself at how well I've done. Because, you know, if you're a hardcore drug addict, you know, maybe you're on crystal meth, something like that. I totally get you now. Like I understand your pain and I can identify with you. I mean, I can't even watch Trainspotting anymore because it's too disturbing. Yeah, you were injecting coffee, weren't you? No, but I kind of was. I didn't realise how reliant I was on it. And the thing that's made me realise over the last week is that, yes, I've woken up and I felt a bit of a slump because I haven't had the

caffeine injection and also because waking up and facing this world is painful but at the same time although I have a bit of a slump what I've noticed is that the slumps aren't so bad either because the highs aren't so high but I have had a few people I tweeted that I'd given up on coffee and a few people wrote back and said why didn't you just go to instant and i was like honestly it's like saying i'm gonna give up water i'm just gonna drink piss why would you do that it's just so weird it's like a completely different thing i'd honestly rather eat coffee granules than have instant coffee however once i'm over this cold turkey phase and i'm prepared to start drinking something resembling coffee beans again without having a full-on relapse and bouncing all over the floor. If anyone out there would like to recommend

a decaffeinated brand of coffee beans that I can actually grind up like proper coffee, I want to know what's the best. Now do you think that this is an option for Andrew's wife to cut down a bit, to start drinking decaf tea, particularly after lunchtime? Yes, probably. You can get decaf tea bags really easily, can't you? Maybe it isn't actually a physical need at all. Maybe it's an emotional one. Maybe you need to address the causes for drinking to excess.

Even though tea is virtually the only drink I drink apart from water. Every time I have the first sip of my fresh mug of tea, I think, oh, I love tea.

That's, you see... Maybe Andrew's wife wants that emotional experience 20 times a day. She's a love addict. That's the problem. Maybe you're just not giving it to her, Andrew. Anyway, whilst we're talking about tea,

here's a question about an organisation that are known for making tea. It's about the Women's Institute. Oh. Because it's this question from Maria who says, I had an illusion shattered during Answer Me This 220. Were you doing Magic Eye at the time and then your cat ripped the page? Shattered. I'd always believed

that the WI because we were talking about the Women's Institute I believe in relation to the Freemasons. Yes. The WI was a group

of women who fought for their rights like a feminist group but the way you described it it suggests I may have been horribly mistaken.

Well that's not my fault. This classic case of shooting the messenger, isn't it? So, Helen, answer me this. What is the WI? Thereby passing up the opportunity to say WTF is the WI. You've just taken it, though, and I admire you for taking that. Yeah, thanks very much.

Well, now it seems to be groups of women who bake cakes and make jam and do a bit of light fundraising. And in some areas it seems to be quite fun, because there's a new wave of younger Women's Institute members who are a little drinky, and they join the Women's Institute to get away from their kids. Yeah, there's a cool Shoreditch branch, I believe, of the WI. Really? Shoreditch?

I know. It's not where the WI should live, because the WI, actually, in the 60s, they changed the rules, but before then, you were only allowed to start a branch in a place that had fewer than 4 000 inhabitants why well it was initially started in canada in 1897 by an educational reformer named adelaide hoodless and she went to address the wives of the farmers institute in stony creek ontario she used to teach things like um child care and home economics and stuff because these people in rural areas and very remote communities didn't necessarily have that much access to education

and so she thought let's get these people together from remote communities and they can learn these useful things like animal husbandry and light farming tasks and what not to panic about when you're raising a child and within the next decade, over 500 branches of the Women's Institute sprang up across Canada and they thought, let's launch it elsewhere. And in the UK, there was essentially no interest until the First World War and everyone was like, oh, hang on,

we need to grow food. Yeah, because they're known in this country, aren't they, for their roles in both wars. Probably for their field roles, literally, and also... Their Swiss roles. Including knitting socks for semen. No laughing at the back there.

Socks for semen. That's a campaign you don't see much anymore. I can't think why. Except in boarding schools. But now they've got a membership of 205,000 people. Oh, more. In the UK alone. More than that, over 6,000 WIs.

The first one was in Anglesey, I believe, and they were trying to spread the revitalisation of rural communities and get people more involved in food production because obviously that was expedient yeah but see that is kind of a political thing isn't it so to say that I mean they may not be rabid feminists but it obviously is about engaging women particularly out of a time when women didn't get to do very much and doing things that did benefit everyone yeah but that is sort of softly political isn't it yeah but the men were, so it made sense to use the women. But they were very keen, actually, to disassociate themselves

from the suffragette movement, which was lively at the time, because they didn't want to be that political. But I guess the point of women working in solidarity is in itself quite a feminist principle, even if you don't label yourself a feminist. Now, you're very much a kind of modern Women's Institute-type woman, I would say, and yet you're not a member are you that's because i'm not a team player yeah i'm not a team player but have you thought about you

must have thought about it i suppose so but then i thought if i do it then i'll be probably stuck with the kind of people that are doing it because they think it's delightfully retro and kitsch yeah and don't really want to hang out that's probably true the local wi around here would be exactly like that wouldn't it from crystal palace you could go out somewhere a bit more you could the bromley women's institute is probably fairly serious, isn't it? Oh, I don't want to be amongst those Tories. Would you consider it, though, maybe if you moved to a village? Oh, I think I would, to meet people,

but then I'd probably form a splinter group and leave. In 2008, the Women's Institute made a sex tips video. Ugh. Now, that to me is just them trying too hard to put out a press release that they're no longer about jam and Jerusalem. Yeah, or Calendar Girls is seeming a bit too cosy even. Yeah. Now that to me is just them trying too hard to put out a press release that they're no longer about jam and Jerusalem. Yeah, or Calendar Girls is seeming a bit too cosy even. Yeah.

And therefore they have to go full internal. Apparently included practical hints, such as the best sexual position to adopt if your husband suffers from arthritis or has a heart attack. Slightly different to what you get in Cosmo, isn't it? The correct noise is to make, to fool him when you're actually thinking about jam. Helen and Ollie, answer me this I don't want you to dance or kiss But reveal your theories and take off your muzzle

Ponder my query and solve this puzzle It's swell, good golly, you crazy kids Oh, Helen and Ollie Answer me this OK, time to leave your morality at the door for this question from Lauren from Brooklyn. It's a bit of a ride, ladies and gentlemen, so buckle up. She says,

Two weeks ago, my roommates and I awoke to fire trucks, ambulances and police entering the lobby of our three-storey building. Well, someone had called 911, hadn't they? That's right. Got the full set. Got the full set. Turns out they were there to get into the first floor apartment where our weird and reclusive though generally

sweet landlady lived who was suffering from colon cancer it turns out she was dead and could have possibly been in that state for a few days in which we'd gone about our drunk weekend activities and dismissed the odor from her apartment as the general not-so-pleasant scent that usually wafted from in there. Fair enough. Often when I walk past my neighbour's door, the smell of their dog wafts out, but I don't think, what if they've died and the dog's eating them? I'm not that superstitious, but I've been waking up at night thinking her ghost might be in our apartment, because we didn't discover her body sooner.

That's just incredibly self-involved. Yeah, it's not how ghosts behave is it why didn't the ghost pop up as soon as she was dead going excuse me lauren could you call the authorities my body needs to be disposed of well hold on it gets worse she says the other reason she thinks she might be haunted by this ghost is because of that one time she asked us to take her to the doctor and we all lied and said we'd be out of town oh but your landlady's gonna know that you're not out of town because she'll hear you going up and down the stairs can i just say for the record i know we're sort of making light of this by including this in a podcast but i just want to say you know to the to the very small extent that we're role models but hell if lampard and rooney

are we are it's not cool to leave your neighbors to die and fest okay i don't think that's cool if it's an accident where you had no idea that they were going to die then fest, okay? I don't think that's cool. If it's an accident where you had no idea that they were going to die, then I can understand why you might not clock it for a few days if they have colon cancer. And they need taking to the doctors.

Take them. Give them a hand. It's such a short bit of your life and now you're going to be haunted forever. Tough shit. But this apparent absence of morality is about to get far worse because Lauren continues.

She, the landlady, didn't deposit last month's rent before she died. Lauren, dear, do you think you could help me to the bank? No. I'm going to be in Poughkeepsie

all weekend. And since no one has contacted us since her death, we could live rent-free for a bit. Yeah, I'm grieving too much to move. So, Helen, answer me this. Should I move out immediately to avoid the wrath of her ghost? You know ghosts can walk through walls.

The ghost can follow you to your new place. Yeah, or track down Whoopi Goldberg and communicate with you that way. Whoopi's very busy, though. I'm not sure she's got the time. Is she, though? Is she these days? Yes, on The View. Oh, yeah, you're right.

And that's on the other coast. No, you're right. You know, just because she's not in movies, you're absolutely right. I'd made a judgment there. She's actually got probably busier calendar than at any time since the late 80s. Bet she's doing loads of voiceover. I can't help feeling we're drifting off the subject here. Or...

You brought it up! Should we comfort ourselves with the fact that this lady was old and in pain and is in a better place now? Well, it's not really for you to decide that, is it? No. It doesn't sound like you've got a strong emotional attachment to this woman. So go ahead and live rent-free. It does sound a bit like

you might be going to hell anyway so you might as well just enjoy it i suppose is one angle one good thing might as well come out of this sad situation right no good i mean not morally good i mean good for you no no i'm sorry i i know you're paying devil's avocado here but no absolutely no it makes the best guac though ollie never goes brown uh absolutely you should be feeling bad that you didn't take her to the hospital she is feeling bad enough to write us this email in this kind of jokey tone about her ghost you should be feeling bad that no one recognized that she was dead in her apartment and you should be contacting her family to offer them your rent at the very least that's all you can do god i didn't know you had this in you you always seem

to be so incredibly selfish what's happened if our letting agent just suddenly died and yeah i wouldn't have much compunction about them no that's very interesting actually i hadn't really imagined myself in a building where the landlady isn't living downstairs but yes if the landlady lives in a sort of luxury apartment in monte carlo and i hear after six months of no one asking me for money that she's died yeah i wouldn't feel that guilty affluence she was crushed under her own wallet i wouldn't feel that guilty and i would be really pleased that no one asking me for money, that she's died. Yeah. I wouldn't feel that guilty. She died of affluence. She was crushed under her own wallet. I wouldn't feel that guilty, and I would be really pleased that no one asked me for money for six months.

So actually, yeah, okay, you brought me around a bit. I can sort of see where that's going. I'm not saying it's right. It's wrong. But since she died in the building and you feel bad anyway, that won't make you feel better,

depriving her family of their income. Well, if she has a family, what if she has none? Oh, well then just take over the building and it's yours. Rent it out forever. Win, win, win, win, win. Nail the doors shut doors shut squat is right why why not just find her corpse and zip

a hole in the back and put it over your face and live as her the fact is rents are so uh so expensive in new york and uh places are so competitive that maybe this has given her quite a hard-nosed attitude to the whole thing oh sure yeah i mean why while you're at it why not just commit arson on the building next door and get that as well and then move into the whole street brilliant let us know how that goes for you lauren everybody else keep your morals in your pocket for the rest of the week but do send us some questions please yes don't keep your questions in your pocket if you've got them written down take them out and convert them into an email perhaps by scanning them or a phone call something modern that o Ollie can understand thank you for helping me out of that

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