Answer Me This! - AMT261: Iced Coffee, Wimbledon and the Stoicism of Sheep

Episode Date: June 13, 2013

Iced Coffee, Wimbledon and the Stoicism of Sheep Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is prison board shit this by reading my emails? Has to be this, has to be this I'm drenched in Lynx Africa so where are the females? Has to be this, has to be this Helen and Ollie, has to be this Last week Ollie revealed an ingenious system that he used to hide his arousing magazines that he enjoyed as a teenager That's right, take boring looking magazines that he used to hide his arousing magazines that he enjoyed as a teenager.

That's right. Take boring looking magazines and nestle your porn mags spine inwards between them on the shelf. And many of the rest of you have also been in touch to tell us how you hid yours. How do you hide yours? It's an adult subversion of the classic Cadbury's refrain. Indeed.

Alistair says, My brother used to hide his porn mags on top of the suspended ceiling in the bathroom so the ceiling could one day collapse and shower pornography upon the people in the bath that's american pie levels of uh inconceivability i would say megan highter's in a beanbag chair that's texturally wrong for anyone sitting in the beanbag they're going to wonder what rustles beneath here's quite a cunning one from Corey, who says,

my ex-husband kept his in a box for a board game that no one else played. In my house, that would have been Postman Pat's race game. Just would have felt wrong putting pornography in there. We had one called Escape from Colditz. That would have been quite good. I wonder if it's the same game, just got rebranded in the 80s.

Anyway, here's a question from Lauren, who says, Helen, answer me this this why is iced coffee so delicious i think that's uh arguable i don't like hot coffee but i do quite like iced coffee but would you use the phrase so delicious no no debatable you see but then you know i tend to underplay things that's right i want to leave some room for ecstasy when something really is so delicious. Can you give an example of something that you do think is so delicious? My friend Eleanor made an incredible cake

for her fiance's birthday the other day. Was that salted caramel? I think it was, yeah, it had layers of salted caramel in a chocolate cake that was not too sweet and it really is one of the best cakes I've ever had. Did you have it and say, this is so delicious, Eleanor,

or did you say, I like to save my ecstasy for moments of true pleasure but this is very good in the manner of my father who practices light i would say this is it's quite good actually not bad that was a real haymaker that cake it was amazing fine okay well lauren thinks iced coffee is so delicious so delicious she says why is iced coffee so delicious but but but coffee that's just gone cold tastes so rank. All right. Is it because they stick a lot more sugar in iced coffee, maybe? I think that's the one word answer.

Also, coffee is strong tasting, right? But in its hot form, aromatics are released. So you're smelling quite a delicious smell and that influences your taste. Iced form, you can't taste as much because very cold things don't taste strong, are released so you're smelling quite a delicious smell and that influences your taste iced form uh you can't taste as much because very cold things don't taste strong which is why you know if you if you melted a lolly it would taste way too sweet but doesn't when it's frozen but cold coffee you're tasting all the bitterness of coffee you're not getting the pleasant smells everything is um probably going to hit your taste buds in its most unpleasant form but apparently certain taste receptors in one's

mouth are most sensitive when food stuffs and drink stuffs are 20 to 35 degrees celsius and so i suppose tepid coffee would be that which means you're you're tasting far more than you normally would when it is hotter or colder than that yeah before you gave up coffee you would have the cans of coffee that we got at wing it with the stereotypical italian on the front yeah exactly um and mr brown's and were they just essentially cold coffee no those were like drugs right but they just follow condensed milk and speed yeah just so much sugar i mean i can't remember i actually took that into a radio studio once and uh paul ross who regular listeners will know has advised me well in the past right looked

at what I was drinking and just said mate you shouldn't be drinking that have you seen how many calories are in that I mean that's seriously seriously bad for you and it's not even a very big can this is TV's Paul Ross telling me this I better listen up and take notice yeah if he's worried about the calories because I've seen him on come down with me and lavish yeah yes sure I mean as we were discussing with Red Bull last week with Thailand, I think, generally speaking, in the East, they tend to be pioneers for drinks which wouldn't meet our usual health and safety concerns. Yeah.

You know, they'll push the amount of chemicals and sugar they can get into a drink, because they work long hours out there. These iPhones aren't going to make themselves. Exactly. Jack from Leeds. Tell her and I, answer me this. It's, like, two o''clock, I'm walking home,

and there's a load of sheep staring at me. Answer me this. Do sheep ever sleep? Of course sheep sleep, but they don't sleep that much. They only sleep for about four hours per day, and it's in naps. Like Margaret Thatcher. Yeah, that's why they're so steely-eyed. The woolen lady, they called her originally.

They have to remain vigilant, because they're pretty vulnerable. I mean, what weapon does a sheep have apart from the fact that if an animal tries to grab it, then it's going to choke on all the wool? It's usually the case as well that some sheep are sleeping whilst the others are remaining vigilant, and they can sleep standing up as well. So apparently if they're standing up with their heads sort of slumped down, they might be asleep at that time.

But he's saying sheep staring at me So presumably the eyes are open It sounds like those are the ones that are keeping watch Maybe the inside huddle are asleep Night is when they're most vulnerable to attack from toothy creatures So probably they are more awake then And maybe they nap at tea time Interesting sheep facts

Because sheep are so easily preyed on They've evolved not to show easily recognizable signs of suffering because that would show the prey that they're vulnerable and can be attacked oh no so they die sort of going oh this is great yeah if they're sick or injured they're like no i'm fine like my mum is actually when she was in a car crash she's like no don't call an ambulance i'll drag myself home with my broken pelvis but apparently it it means that people often don't spot the subtle changes in behaviour that may indicate

that the sheep are in pain or distress. Well, it's not that subtle, is it? Because if they get separated from their mum, you hear the lambs, meh, meh, don't shut up, do that.

That's pretty clear. Yeah, but lambs are idiots. The cliche is that sheep are idiots too. Yes, but that's because they have to be so inexpressive. Well, isn't that interesting? So actually it could be

an evolutionary thing they've designed to do actually being very clever but that trait makes them look stupid. I didn't think they seemed very emotionally clever. It's hard to know.

When someone is so inscrutable as a sheep how do you know their emotional intelligence? They might just not be very forthcoming. I just don't think they're very in touch

with their own feelings. Well I don't think you'd probably have a successful relationship with a sheep, Martin because you're so bloody needy. Oh, demonstrate affection, please! They're just not heart-on-their-sleeve type creatures, have a successful relationship with a sheep martin because you're so bloody needy oh demonstrate

affection please they're just not hot on their sleeve type creatures are they sheep here's a question from sam from london who says i've recently begun a career as an accountant congratulations now when someone asks me what i do for a living i'm always met with the same groan a glazed and bored expression, and then no further questions. Don't sound like you have very nice friends. No, that's rude. Yeah. A groan.

An actual groan. The polite thing to say is, oh, how's that? Even if you're not interested. Or actually what I say is, oh, that's fascinating. Even if it's not fascinating. Yeah, but we know that you use the word fascinating to mean the opposite. No, you know. Most people I meet don't.

Well, he says, Helenen answer me this how can i make accounting sound sexy uh by typing boobs on your calculator or should i pretend that i do something else when i'm in conversation with strangers uh probably not because then you'd have to talk about your work all the time yeah so if you say that you do something terribly interesting that you think there might be follow-on questions for if you say you're a theater director or a spacecraft manufacturer then people are going to ask you questions about it that actually you're then going to have to make up loads of stories to justify i have a friend who is a doctor of rape which is an interesting job i mean she's she has a phd she's a forensic psychologist who is an expert in rape and uh other the crop and sexual

violence no not the not the crop uh and uh does mean that she's talking about rape all the time because everyone's interested in her job. That's a party killer, though. So what have you been doing this week? Well, I was at Broadmoor talking to sex fiends. I've spoken to her and I find it difficult when you're drinking at a party with her because I'll be standing there with a beer in my hand

and I'll say, what have you been working on? And she'll say, well, the connection between young men who drink a lot and rape. Oh, right, OK. But I'm very interested in her job as i am uh in my friend nick's job he's a divorce lawyer and i think he always feels like it's boring to talk about work i think he feels that other people are not interested in his job but they are yeah that's a fascinating job all human life is there you mean fascinating this time don't you i do yes i do nick if you listen i'm genuinely fascinated she can't hear the difference can you that's how i get away with it uh also i suppose you could use euphemistic

terms for accountancy you could say well i'm i make the deals a bean counter well that's interesting we took different uh perspectives on the same thing that you went for something that's sort of almost self-deprecating i went for something that bigs himself up i make the deals most accountants presumably don't make the deals they don't actually in reality they in reality. They analyse the deals. They facilitate the deals, don't they? But you could say, I'm an accountant, but we could talk about other things if you prefer. Preempt it. Well, I did have a look online at an accountancy forum

to see if other people had shared this issue. One person said that a funny way to introduce oneself at a party as an accountant is by saying the, I think, unbearably smug line, I'm someone who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way you don't understand. Sounds like a poptologist. That sounds like a joke that's for other accountants. Yeah. Sounds like a joke that a non-accountant would just think, well, he's a bit of a dick. The thing is, what is it you do then? Yeah. People are asking what you

do because they're desperately fumbling around to find something to say to you. Just change the question immediately if you don't want to talk about say uh i'm an accountant i also love playing softball do you have a sport that you do exactly yeah it's not fair on you sam that your job ends the conversational pathway but since you know that it does just have a few bits of conversation prepared to lead the conversation somewhere else is there any advice that either of you have for the person on either side of that conversation so if someone says to you i'm an accountant i mean when i when someone says that to me, I'm like, okay. I don't have an obvious follow-on to that.

I have. I go, oh, I've heard that's lots of exams. Oh, that's good, yeah. So sympathetic rather than actually bored. Yeah. Yeah, that's clever. Also, all sorts of jobs are exotic to me because I'm just in the house on my own and I don't understand things about business.

Well, actually, you know, I genuinely am interested to meet people who are accountants if they're not boring people, if they can explain their job in an interesting way because I've always got loads of questions. You know, tax avoidance, that's an interesting issue, isn't it? And whether it turns out well or disappointing, either way, you will be fascinated.

If you've got a question, then email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospective, 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. Time for a question from Max, 15 from near norwich uh he says i live in a quiet little village full of old people and boring middle-aged couples and what i particularly like about the way he's written this email is he's put middle-aged in capital m and capital a like the middle ages like they're actually from the middle

ages they might be they're not that old some things move slowly in east anglia uh he says it is quite a plain village i bet it wasn't in the middle ages when norwich was being rampaged by disinherited barons here's the problem he says i really don't fit in you're a teenager you're 15 you just have a few years of feeling like nothing fits you yeah of course you don't fit in you've got more hormones going through your body than the average pregnant woman and you need the urge to fly away max yeah and you can't you can't go to the park and you can't have sex you are trapped you're designed not to fit in basically this is when you need to be working on your web entrepreneurialism exactly because

there's nothing else you can do yet exactly he continues i love the almost gothic emo punk style studs etc and regularly wear it out and about however lately i get lots of tutting and funny looks from people around the village because of my personal style oh he hasn't done up his uh 32 hole boots properly he'll trip over well this thing isn't it nowadays a lot of the people that he sees as middle aged being 15 you know they're probably only

20 they're probably in their 30s aren't they and they probably are well aware and familiar with the goth style

from when they were teenagers yeah it's a cliche now they actually may be tutting because you haven't done it

right Helen asked me this should I adjust my fashion to suit them and not wear all the bright

jeans and gory tops bright jeans doesn't sound very gothy well he was a bit vague wasn't he he did say the almost gothic emo punk style that takes in a lot doesn't it liked bright it does i mean that just sounds like clothes i guess he's kind of mixing things up he says well what do you think of alternative more unusual tastes like mine well max i don't really feel like the gothic emo punk style is that alternative at the moment all of these things have been around in a fairly mainstream way for a long time and so

when i see people who put a lot of effort in into looking uh goth punk emo i think oh they're just like all the other goth punk emos isn't that sweet they're part of a tribe i don't like such an old fart yeah that's my that is my look and i've been working it since i was a teenager but actually but actually i did used to think that as well even when i was at school i don't think i fitted into any one particular category there were categories at my school and and and there were categories as well for ugly kids do you know what i mean that i could have chosen to go into right and you know the german army jacket thing i just thought i don't want to wear a german army jacket what the hell is that

supposed to say about anything i don't think your parents and grandmother would have liked that at all i'm sure too soon i had dm's knockoffs that my mum bought at bhs which is about the most unpunk type of dm you could get i think that's right but i would love it if people dressed more in a way that was genuinely surprising for instance the other day on the tube i saw a man who must have been in his 60s and he was wearing heart-shaped lolita sunglasses and usually i disapprove of people wearing sunglasses on the tube of all places but i thought that is a strong look and particularly for a man getting towards elderly um do you think they were reading glasses in fact maybe those photochromic ones to protect him from the harsh lighting of the tube yeah and i thought no he

probably really likes those and he's bloody gone for it. Good for him. Maybe, or maybe he's just given up on life. I mean, that's the other thing that happens. Either way, he's doing it with panache. My mate's dad at school always used to walk around with the sunglasses he got free in a Happy Meal. And they looked like they were free in a Happy Meal. Yeah, my dad for years wore sunglasses

that came from a cereal box and were missing one arm. And I did say, you know sunglasses are not expensive. And yet he wore them for about ten years. But having been a bit dismissive of goth style, in answer to Max's other question, should he adjust his fashion to suit the others? No, I don't think you should. I think you should dress how you please, Max,

as long as it's within the boundaries of taste and decency. Also, if these middle-aged people are sort of stuffy, conservative middle-aged type people then adjusting your dress to suit them is i'd say almost impossible well actually almost anything a young person could wear is going to be deemed inappropriate by those kind of people isn't it if i had a teenage look it was probably that look of trying to dress like a 70 year old yeah no but that's kind of cool it's this now but but it wasn't then. But that's not what they expect a young person to do either, dress like them.

They sort of expect a young person to look like, I don't know what, I guess what a young person looked like when they were young. Dungarees. Yeah, which is just, it's absurd. Spitting polished shoes. And almost impossible to buy the clothes, I should think. Keep the bright jeans.

Maybe tone it down on gory tops whatever they are. I mean I'm picturing tops that depict open heart surgery and I could understand why people in any village Norfolk or otherwise would not find that

an enjoyable thing to look at. But I think actually Max as a teenager take this opportunity now for people tutting at you because when you're older you'll probably

naturally tone down your dress and become a bit more small C conservative. So enjoy it now. This thing is so expensive. That's the thing about being a teenager. I like it's going to get expensive.

Like the goth stuff is really expensive, isn't it? To have the boots and the... Oh, maybe they're tutting at what they view as your profligacy, Max. Oh, look how much you must have spent on jewellery and those novelty trousers. That might be a nice thing to hold in your mind, Max, whilst you walk down the street. Hey there, podcast listeners.

Each week, Helen andllie answer your questions you can send your questions to answer me this podcast at google mail.com again answer me this podcast at google mail.com okay back to the show ah well that comes in from ken in San Francisco, who says, I took the liberty of throwing together a little announcement spot in the style of this American life. Thank you very much, Ken. Here's a question from Phil from Treorchy, who says, Ollie, answer me this. When and why did the word cabinet come to mean government?

Why is the highest and most important office in the land named after a piece of furniture? I suspected before I looked into this that it might be because the cabinet is made up of secretaries. What? But I was thinking 22 secretaries, as there are ministers, then could fill up an office cabinet, a filing cabinet. Wow, that is a really... It is preposterous, but in my head.

That's the kind of thought process people have where they're trying to do that kind of memory test thing where you think of a stupid chain of things. He's got a stoker on his head, he's wearing a hat. Is it because the room that they gather in was known as a cabinet? Sort of, yes. Okay. Cabinet was interchangeable as a word in the 16th century for small room.

The modern cabinet as we know it now, the government cabinet, was only founded by Lloyd George during World War I. The way it's been sold to us now is that the cabinet is the place where decisions are made, but it's a recent thing and it's not a crucial part of our political system, really. Well, it is now. Well, it kind of is, but sometimes they only meet, apparently, for half an hour. So it is sort of just to tell people that they've met.

It's just to have formally approved things that they've all done privately. God, even we work harder than the cabinet. But anyway, the cabinet is a modern thing in a sense, but it does come from the 16th century when cabinet meant small room because the king, as it was then, would have meetings with his cabinet

in the cabinet council. Right, so just the council room. Yeah. Apparently it was quite a controversial thing to have a cabinet because people believed that the monarch should rule absolutely, divine right of kings and all that. Yeah. watertight so according to the oed the first

reference to cabinet in this sense goes back to francis bacon in 1605 right expressing this very controversy helen he said for which inconveniences the doctrine of italy and practice of france in some kings times have introduced cabinet, a remedy worse than the disease. Wow, so somebody didn't like James I? Yeah, exactly. But then, as the kings got foreign, like George I and George II, English was no longer their first language.

George I and II were foreign? Correct. I had no idea. They had to have a cabinet around them because they needed their councillors to be able to translate to the people what they wanted to do. And then it became a thing as a word.

It was in common use by the time Lloyd George came around to naming his group of ministers. So for George I and II, it was almost like an entourage of a big star. So like the glam squad, but linguistic. Here's a question from Victoria in Tootingbeck who says, Ollie, answer me this. In The Apprentice, where the hell is the cafe the losing team go to after they've lost the week's task? Is it an actual cafe, in which case I'd be concerned

for their business as they never seem to have any other customers, or is it an invention of the show's producers and actually part of The Apprentice studios? I think with that question you show a lot more savvy than the average BBC One viewer because... because studio indeed what what a lot of people think that the boardroom even if they know it's not lord sugar's boardroom think that it is actually a boardroom somewhere you know they've probably read that it's not really in canary wharf they probably think it is his boardroom in brentwood

but it isn't even that it is a studio just off the A40 near Park Royal unbelievable pretty glamorous huh and so when they've done the boardroom scene obviously they need somewhere nearby to go naturally producers of The Apprentice in about 2008 I believe stumbled across this cafe up the road which is a real cafe it is called The Bridge is it unpopular with other people or do they just close it off when it's full of Apprentice crew and cast the latter right that would make sense it's important when you've got a crew of producer director sound person a lighting person a producer an assistant producer someone taking down notes who has a lowly job probably yeah a researcher or some sort of logger runner yeah so you're talking that just that

minimum crew is seven people plus the up to 12 people you're filming so then to do that you've probably got two cameras actually and also you have to then position them so they're all visible you can't have them crammed in with their backs to the cameras indeed when you imagine how many people are in that tiny little room it's not practical to have members of the public there as well no also and this is why you often see empty restaurants and things in reality shows you'd have to get release forms from everybody you can't tell what they're going to. Often they're filming at non-food times of the morning. They might be filming dinner at a restaurant at 10am. Also, because if you've got people in the background,

they mess with the continuity. If they're eating eggs and chips... And then they're replaced by a little girl eating a burger. Exactly. Then you know it's all been cut together. So they get more control that way. And the sound would be a problem as well, with background chit-chat.

Potentially, yes. All sorts of problems. Well, here's another question of shitholes. It's from Harvey. He's from Streatham, but we're not casting doubts on Streatham. I wouldn't dare. The hideaway is lovely. Who says, Helen, answer me this.

Why is tennis played at Wimbledon? Well, it would seem a shame to waste all those courts. He says Wimbledon is a bit of a shithole now. What? Wimbledon Village is super, super posh. There's two sides to Wimbledon, aren't there? I quite like what Seth Wimbledon's got

a bit of character to it. Yeah, a bit of scuzzy character, but it's not... It's just not so bloody gentrified as Wimbledon Village. It's a bit nicer.

He says somehow during the tennis they make it look at worst presentable. Well, they get the Wombles to have a little whip round, clean it up.

Why did they put Wimbledon in Wimbledon, though? That's a good point, isn't it? Well, I mean, you might as well ask why they put Wembley

at Wembley or why they have a regatta in Henley. To make it though? That's a good point, isn't it? Well, I mean, you might as well ask why they put Wembley at Wembley or why they have a regatta in Henley. To make it a place where things happen. Otherwise, why would you go there? No, it's because the... Well, that is why they put Wembley in Wembley. Right, OK. Well, it's where the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club was founded

on the 23rd of July, 1868, at the height of a croquet craze. So then it was just the All England Croquet Club. And then what happened was that lawn tennis became very popular so they started playing that and then they first held tennis championships which were men's singles in 1877 in order to fundraise so they could get a pony drawn roller for the croquet lawn hi uh greg from uh boston helen and ollie answer me this Hi, Greg from Boston. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. How did Casper die? I assume he means Casper the Friendly Ghost.

He seems really melancholy about that. People think of Casper, oh, the Friendly Ghost, Friendly Ghost benevolent. But you don't think, oh, that's a child that lost his life. That's sad. The problem was that people did think that. And so in the early years of Casper the Friendly Ghost, it was a book first and then it was cartoons and i think then it was also comic books so they were desperately trying to get away from the notion that everybody was enjoying a friendly dead child built a rod for their own

back with the title though didn't they yeah so exactly ghost not casper the friendly boy who lived so this is the friendly translucent floating boy yeah exactly so in the 60s and 70s harvey comics put it out that casper was in fact born a ghost because his mummy and his daddy were ghosts when they got it on bollocks i know it's not how it works not how it works the whole point of casper the friendly ghost is that in itself that's a comic idea isn't it because you think of ghosts as being scary oh scary i mean why is that i suppose people will say because they're in the in-between worlds then you know they're in the in between worlds then you know they're not rested they haven't gone to heaven or hell it's difficult for them

to communicate maybe nonetheless they keep popping up when you're trying to sleep shouldn't be such an anomaly that you get a friendly ghost should it i mean yeah a proportion of ghosts should be friendly you've seen the film the sixth sense right like a lot of those ghosts are trying to be friendly but because they're portraying the man of their death they terrify the young boy yeah in the 1995 film of casper, starring Christina Ricci, when she was still a child... I was going to say... You're not interested in a child film.

Oh, that's why. It wasn't hot then. They actually specify that he was a young adolescent who went sledding and died of pneumonia, but he doesn't look adolescent in the film. He looks like a kind of translucent baby. But do you know what? I think that a clue lies in one of the first incarnations of Casper.

In the 1945 cartoons, the first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons. He's already a ghost, but no one will be friends with him. And as we know, he's friendly. So it's extremely upsetting for him that no one will be his friend. So he throws himself under a train, not realising that as a ghost, he can't kill himself.

You can't even kill yourself properly casper you friendly idiot but that does indicate that he has suicidal tendencies yes yes so maybe that is how he died in the first place incidentally if all this talk of casper the friendly ghost has left you with a wanton craving for more answer me this podcast.com slash love film free love film trial so you could actually watch the 1945 cartoons on love films well tell us how many suicidal tendencies you spot in the young Casper

what's your favourite question from our first three years that's really made you guffaw Tim Curry or Tim Rice disposing of dead mice Dave from Smethwick

on Kosher Law if you like fact or bawdy talk or just a soundtrack for your walk we've got stuff to entertain you cos for 79 pence each Thank you. To visit in the night from our band of hired goons. Hired goons. Whack, whack, whack to what they say. If you value your knees. Well, we have come to the final question of this series of Answer Me This before we take a little holiday.

Savour it then, listeners. And the great responsibility of the last question of the series falls upon Jordan, who is age 19 from Bridgend in South Wales. And it's a question about his forthcoming holiday. That's right, yes. He says, I'm going abroad without my family and about a week before I go,

I'm getting my hair cut and at the same time, I may get it dyed. However, my mother advises me not to. That's not a surprise. I would say most mums generally don't love it when their sons dye their hair. Oh, Jordan, you had such lovely hair. Yeah.

Even if actually you probably didn't. Mums are a bit hairblind. Why change? You were such a lovely little toddler. Because my hair definitely looks better shorter, I think. My current haircut's better, isn't it? Although I did like your childhood fro. In pictures it looks sweet.

Yes. But my mum, I think because she Although I did like your childhood fro. In pictures, it looks sweet. Yes. But my mum, I think because she thinks I look like Richard Gere, she thinks therefore... You do look a bit like Richard Gere. What? Have you ever seen Richard Gere? I might look a bit like Richard Gere's arse on a face, but I don't look like Richard Gere himself. He's either going super bad, right?

Or the other guy in super bad. So the point is, I think my hair at a certain length would be good if my face were different. But I think on my face, you've got to say, better to keep it short. But my mum seems hairblind to this fact. Hairblind. Is it because she's hair nostalgic with you?

And when she looks at you, she doesn't necessarily see a 32-year-old adult man. That's right, yeah. She sees the young child she'd dandled on her knees. I don my mum says if i dye my hair it may turn a different color due to chlorine in the swimming pool so helen answer me this is my mother just jealous that i'm going on my first holiday without my family and she's bullshitting she's already been on a holiday without your family before you were born she's probably scheduled turning your room into a gymnasium for when you left. Or is she being serious?

Would you advise me not to dye my hair before holiday? Well, I feel like you're going to do it anyway, no matter what we advise, Jordan. You planned the haircut with the holiday booking. I mean, that's a commitment. And you haven't specified what colour you're dyeing your hair. But it is particularly dangerous if you dye your hair blonde to then go swimming because it may turn green.

Right. Why? And is that the chlorine? So your mum's not bullshitting? Well, some say chlorine but others say, no, it's not the chlorine, it's oxidised metals in the water which bind to the protein in the hair shaft and deposit their colour. When people say things like that you just can't argue with them, can you? Because you don't know about hair proteins. Oxidised metals?

Yeah. You just have to go, oh, right, okay, that's the science bit. So if you have blonde hair, discolouration will be particularly noticeable, and especially as blonde hair is the most damaged of the dyed hairs. But any dyed hair is more porous than normal hair.

You could dye your hair if you really want to, Jordan. It is your head and your life. But maybe you need to take some precautions if you don't want to wear a swimming cap and let's face it really who does i love the idea of a lad's holiday with a swimming cap on that is beautiful especially one of those ones covered in rubber flowers with a chin strap you can soak your hair in fresh water before going in the pool so that the the hair is already swollen with the other water and therefore will absorb less pool water that sounds like bs helen i'm sorry or you can cover your hair

in a protective conditioner before you go in and then as soon as you come out of the pool rinse because then otherwise the chemicals will have more time to wreak their havoc well jordan happy holidays indeed and happy holidays to us from you listeners i'm speculating because uh we have come to the end. That's it. Of this series of Answer Me This. We're taking a little break for three weeks. Which means no more Answer Me This podcast until the 11th of July.

However, there will be a new Answer Me This album. Answer Me This holiday. Holiday, because it's holiday time. It's summer, isn't it? Except for our listeners in the Southern Hemisphere. Well, it's still holiday time. You can deal with it. You know what holidays are like surely um so you can identify if you don't know what holidays are like then the answer me this holiday will give you some

clues basic information uh so yes we recorded a special exclusive all new one hour album it's top notch stuff which is just us talking about so like our sports day album was about sport and our jubilee album was about the royal family if you haven't bought them they're £2.49 each on itunes please do this year we've done one that's all about holidays so it's questions about eating foreign food and holiday reading and stag do's abroad holiday romance brits abroad all that sort of stuff it's not out yet but check back next thursday when you would usually be feeling the hunger for a new episode of Answer Me This and instead, perhaps, if iTunes have seen fit, it will be out.

And it'll also be on Amazon as well for people that don't like Apple, although they'll probably charge £3 more for it for some weird reason. Whichever. Come back and check at answermethispodcast.com slash albums.

And another thing we think you'll like is Martin the Soundman's most recent endeavour, which is a video. For the song 10,000 Letters of Love for my new album, which is all done in paper cuts and animations. When you say done in paper cuts, you haven't been cutting your fingers with paper and then making it out of blood, have you?

You should explain. That would be a good idea, actually. No, no, I did something. No, no. No, no, it's sort of paper sets. It's scenes made out of paper. You've spent a lot of time on this video, which means, listeners,

you can spend five minutes watching it. It's a very beautiful thing. Every time I've come around, Martin's been making weird things out of paper and filming them. Yeah, he's been green-screening himself and projecting himself onto the paper. I've got to wear a top hat.

It's a wonderfully elaborate video, listeners. And Ollie said, as he saw Martin doing all these things, using all these crafts, is Martin having a breakdown? The answer to that question is almost always yes. But if all breakdowns looked so good more people would want to have them

so do go and watch that video and you can find that at Martin's website. TheSoundOfTheLadies.com And one final task for you listeners during our absence is to send us questions. And we'll be back answering those very questions on the 11th of July. So we'll see you then.

Bye!