Answer Me This! - AMT263: Steampunks, le Tour de France, and ROYAL BABY MADNESS

Episode Date: July 18, 2013

Steampunks, le Tour de France, and ROYAL BABY MADNESS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know I'm really Robert Galbraith? Has to be this, has to be this Can't even pull over my face, stand, pull over my face Has to be this, has to be this Helen and Ollie, has to be this At the time of recording, the royal baby has not been produced yet, so if you're listening a bit later, maybe this whole question will seem delightfully quaint and historic yeah we didn't know it was a boy slash girl delete as appropriate andy from st albans says i was sent a voucher offering me 10 of mind mapping software to celebrate the not yet birth of the royal baby weird this is perhaps the worst example of spurious

product linkage i've seen for a while. Ollie, answer me this. What possessed them to make such a link? Money, obviously, and clicks. Publicity. This. And have you seen worse? Oh, I think there's plenty worse. I know Star Radio in Cambridge is going to change its name to the name of the baby for a week.

What if the baby's called Star? It would be worth it if the baby was going to be called star i think that's a brilliant name for a royal child it's quite nice actually king star sakura queen star or queen star and then the middle name could be whatever boring thing they would choose anyway victoria is the current favorite isn't it i meant to put a bet on around christmas that it would be victoria really yeah thing is though they've done everything very diana based haven't they i don't think

They would go for that Maybe middle name Maybe they'll give her The same middle name As Diana That's nice If you're listening to this And it's after the birth

Of the royal queen Then if Helen's got that right Yeah And if it's a boy Their middle name Will be Spencer or something Yeah What's Diana's middle name

I don't know Rocky No wonder it didn't work out. Unsuitable. But anyway, I mean, they've been trying to eke this information out of the Royal Family for the past nine months. Clearly, we're going to have to wait until the official announcement comes through. What is the point of all those journalists camped outside St Mary's Hospital? What are they hoping to glean from being there?

For two weeks. So do you have any pent up excitement about it at all? No, it's just a baby from some people i don't know i don't care about i know it is i find it sort of less interesting than other celebrity babies because we know what's going to happen with it it's going to be kind of toothy and wholesome and lose all its hair when it's 20. what if it's got a vestigial tail you know what though everyone's going to be like oh it's got pippa's bum hasn't it when you ask me about weird uh tie-in merchandise,

that is one of the weirdest things I've seen. You can buy a bib online which says, I heart my auntie Pippa. That is so niche, isn't it? That's very specific. Who's that for? People who have an auntie Pippa. Yeah, exactly. Is it for if you actually genuinely are called Pippa

and you have a niece or nephew and now you want to commemorate that in Legion with the royal thing by having a bib that says what it might have said anyway apart from now it'll have a crown on it. Or is it for people that liked Pippa's bum or want to ironise Pippa's bad book and then give their children that don't have an aunt called

Pippa a bib that says I love my auntie Pippa. Who are these people? I think the reason you're overthinking this, and you are clearly overthinking this is because it's completely pointless. It is presumably for people to buy for the royal baby because all babies, royal or not, dribble and that baby will

have an antipipa. No, of course. I hadn't thought about that. Of course, that's exactly who it's for, isn't it? It's a kooky present to get off the web to leave outside Kensington Palace, isn't it? For the weak minded to buy, Ollie. Oh God, that's so depressing, isn't it? It's going to end up in a massive pile of bib landfill, isn't it? The's going up in a massive pile of bib landfill, isn't it? The garment industry is the second most polluting in the world,

and it's all these bibs' fault, I've decided. They're leaching bleach into the sea. And actually, Prince Charles is guilty of that as well, and he likes to present himself as an eco-royal. Well, he should dress more in burlap. Because on his Highgrove shop online, you can buy, wait for it, children's flat caps for £40.

Children's flat caps. I mean, who wants their child, their baby, to look like the Duke of Edinburgh? Me, me, hilarious. Yeah, that is quite funny actually, but £40 a bit, Steve. For a joke. Yeah, I guess if rumours are to be believed, then there's plenty of kids that do look like the Duke of Edinburgh in aristocratic circles anyway. When my niece was a baby, instead of a flat cap, I got her

a headband with felt lobster claws on it. That's cool. Yeah, Charles should get onto that, really. If Victoria Rocky Diana comes out wearing one of those lobster hats, I would be very impressed. Well, here's a question about something equally awful. It's from Richard in Finsbury Park, who says,

My friends Andy and Thea are steampunks. He wears a pith helmet with welding goggles. What is it with the goggles? Like the ultimate... The steampunk is encapsulated for me by, say, a top hat with some goggles around it. It's not even on your eyes.

He also has a big purple beard. OK, I can get behind a big purple beard. And he plays the saw. Of course he does. Yeah, cool. She wears frilly Victoriana Yep Goth makeup

Standard And carries a parasol If you're a goth, you need to stay pale in the sun I love them dearly, but I don't get it So Helen, answer me this What are steampunks all about? Well, Richard, steampunks are all about balancing form and function And mixing old and new

In this case, the usability of modern technology with the design aesthetic and philosophy of the Victorian age. Right, and where do the welding goggles come into form and function? Well, that's so you don't take your eye out welding. I mean, why are you wearing welding goggles when you're out for lunch?

Yeah, you took your steam zeppelin to get to the local pub and they often go wrong. Yeah, you need to do some spot welding. I mean, I don't know why you need to wear a fob watch with all the cogs showing as well, but you do. And I don't know why everything has to be made out of brass. I have to say, I was only dimly aware

of steampunk being a thing people could wear. Like, I know what steampunk is in an aesthetic Blade Runner, Baron Munchausen kind of way. Yes. But I didn't realise there actually were steampunks out there. Why are they doing it? Well, I think it started really in literature, and the term apparently was coined by the author K.W. Jeter, who has written

sequel to Blade Runner, actually, since you mentioned it, as well as Star Wars and Trek. Oh, brilliant. I'll add it to the list of books I'm definitely never going to read ever. And in a letter to a magazine in 1987, he said he thought that Victorian fantasies would be the next big genre, and he gave it the name steampunk to distinguish it from cyberpunk. Why dedicate your life to that, though? It's a commitment to a way of life which is based on how people in the past thought the future might look like. Yes, but you can combine the future things which we now have with the aesthetic of Victorians as you see them from your modern perspective?

Because probably most Victorians didn't go around with cogs and goggles, did they? No, certainly not celebrating the fact that they did. If they did, it meant that at any moment they could be blinded. And do you suffer from Victorian diseases like diphtheria? Here's another question of ridiculous clothes

from Maria who says, Ollie, answer me this. Why are cartoons always wearing the same outfit? Surely it wouldn't be that much trouble to change it. Characters in sitcoms don't always wear the same clothes. It annoys me. Okay, so why do characters always wear the same outfit episode after episode?

Why is Lisa Simpson always in an orange strapless dress with a raggedy hem, for instance? And the pearls. Eight-year-olds don't really wear strapless dresses. Or pearls. No. No. It's because they're icons.

Their whole image is an icon and the clothes are part of that icon. Lisa Simpson, like Nick Cave, has found her look and she's sticking to it. There's a whole range of reasons. Partly it's because they're easier to draw, if you know how to draw them. Yeah, sleeves would be harder to draw than the sleeveless dress. Yes, oh yeah, well there's all kinds of things that apparently are just really hard to draw. Like patterned clothing is very difficult, so almost all cartoon characters wear straight characters.

There's some famous books, buddy ones, where there's like a kind of game show character and he moves, but the checks stay still. Exactly, yeah. Because it's very hard to draw from cell and even on computer animation now it's quite hard to get

the texture of clothes moving. And the perspective. Yeah, we'd have to rotate a bit. So that's why they tend to be solid colours. Why they tend to be the same outfit every time is on these huge

animated TV shows, you know, like the Flintstones or the Simpsons, throughout the ages, you've had hundreds of animators working on them. And actually sometimes if you look at the credits to Disney films, you'll see that each character has sometimes 20 animators

who have worked exclusively on that character. And so if you've got loads and loads of people drawing the same character, it might be that they're not drawing it for a particular cell. They may just be drawing, this is Bart surprised. This is Bart angry and if

he's always wearing the same clothes then you can duplicate the cell from show to show well dare i say as well that if you kept varying the character's clothes you might not be able to tell one member of the flintstones cast from another because their faces are of a type yeah which is something the simpsons plays with actually isn't it with homer and crusty because obviously voiced by the same person when crusty takes his makeup, he looks a lot like Homer. Shame on you for mentioning it! There was also, though, apart from the issue that Martin mentions of the characters being iconic and therefore easier

to squeeze merchandise out of and so on... Not just that, if you're going to create an image of something, like having them with a recognisable face is just one part of their hairstyle their outfit they want a visual brand yes yeah the whole thing unless you're mr ben in which case you have to change outfits but the the i guess the really iconic cartoon characters the ones you'd recognize in silhouette like mickey the ears you know straight away as mickey bugs bunny holding the carrot etc like you know straight away and of course all the simpsons you could see in silhouette know exactly which is which. So you're right. But there's also apparently a theory that younger viewers, you know, when cartoons were actually for kids, younger viewers find it easier to differentiate characters if they're always wearing exactly the same things.

Which is why, even when it's not a cartoon, even if it's puppets like the Teletubbies or Sesame Street, they too are always also wearing the same clothes. You know that's Bert and Ernie because they're wearing the Bert and Ernie clothes. Here's another question same clothes. You know that's Bert and Ernie because they're wearing the Bert and Ernie clothes. Here's another question of clothes. It's from Alex, who's usually in Manchester, but currently poolside in Lindos in Rhodes. Wow, we've got an exact location on Alex. Right down to the lounger.

He says, I've accidentally seen some of the Tour de France coverage on television lately. And it made me ponder this. What am I not changing channel? The leader of the Tour de France wears a yellow jersey. But Helen, answer me this. Do they have just one jersey that gets passed to the new leader?

A one-size-fits-all top? Yeah, as soon as one of them gets half a wheel ahead, they have to take their tops off, during which time all the rest of them surge ahead. It's a very stupid system. Or do they have a small, medium and large? And who launders it between riders? Or does each rider have his own yellow jersey?

In which case, if you're a bit shit and never realistically going to lead the race, might you just leave your yellow jersey at home? So many questions, Alex. It's not like they're having to carry all of their possessions on the bicycle basket. No, I think they have a support team. Yeah, and they have breaks of several days in between some of the stages of the race yeah

plenty of time to buy a nice jersey and to get all of your belongings out the back of the car but i'm guessing uh that the answer to this is even if the organizers fancy being a bit frugal they'd probably buy separate jerseys no one wants to wear a jersey that's covered in your opponent's sweat the next day they do have quite a few jerseys, you know, because they get several per day. And this is why quite a lot of them come up on eBay. But the ones that have been genuinely worn and sweated into do fetch a much higher price. So it must be quite unpleasant.

It must be stingy. Doesn't the acid damage the... Doesn't the sweat damage the fibres? Well, it looks like very artificial fibre. It looks to me like a very sweat-inducing jersey, but I assume it's one of these ergonomic sports fabrics. But they have a ceremonial one for the person who wins the yellow jersey

at the end of the day, and that has an open back like a hospital gown, so that is one size fits all. It's essentially a pinny. Why is it? So it's like a straitjacket then? Well, it's just so they can pop it on them, they can have their photo taken with the yellow jersey,

and then presumably they can go round the back and pick one that actually fits them, and then they get a couple of them. They can even order a long-sleeve one if they want, if it's going to be cold the next day. That's how weird that it's just for the photo. That's like one of those old timey wedding photo shops. Where you just put your arms into the dress and suddenly you're an Edwardian. Yeah.

What I hadn't really clocked is that there's also a green and a white jersey. And the best one of all, the polka dot one. They're all awarded for different things. The polka dot one is hilarious because also they have matching bike shorts sometimes and it's white with huge red polka dots on. So they look like ladybirds. What's that one for? That one is for the race's best climber.

So the one who is best at ascending slopes. Oh, that's such a consolation prize, isn't it? That's like when my girlfriend's got a few special rosettes that she got given when she came like seventh in a horse race when she was 10. Nicest hooves. And you just think, oh, at the time you can say to your kid oh look you're special you're special not special

at all the opposite of special theoretically you could win more than one jersey per day i see yes but then you get to choose which one you want to wear so if you've won the yellow jersey and the spotty one and a green one you can choose but everyone historically has chosen the yellow one surprisingly yeah because it means the best although men's fashion has uh evolved a lot i'd say and become a bit more outre it's rare the man that wears a large polka dots even now that's right yeah basically mr majica but yellow is a difficult color for a lot of people to pull off so i don't know why they're all putting in such effort to get it oi shut up and answer me this come on. Why don't you shut your ugly face?

I'm not ugly. It's the condition. It's no condition. It's the tugginess, mate. Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Now, I'm thinking, seriously, though, go back to your 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. Email from John from Wrexham who says he's changed his name to protect the innocent. You could have called yourself anything, John. John is a boring alias. I think he wants to divert attention from himself, perhaps.

He says, I met my girlfriend nine years ago and we've been together ever since. We are very happy. We have a wonderful son, a nice place and a comfy lifestyle you're just writing to us to show off i think we can all feel that you're setting us up for a fall here

yeah i have a skeleton in my closet and it's dangerously close to exposure i think he's talking metaphorically with that 10 years ago he says i was in my early 20s and spent my time driving around town in jazzed up cars, listening to loud music and picking up girls. Lucky you. One Saturday night, we were in a glass fronted, all drinks a quid bar when we spotted some good looking girls across the street. After a few comments, a bet was placed that I couldn't pull the bird in white.

I accepted the bet and I won. But if you're thinking the question is do I tell my missus she was a bet you're wrong oh I wasn't thinking that no but actually

that's quite a nice way of telling us that he did go on to start a beautiful nine year relationship with the girl that he had a bet about yeah

quite sweet yeah quite sweet in a way but that's sort of the she's all that plot isn't it it's a romantic it's a romantic story the bet is something

that usually comes out in the fourth out of five acts in a film like in ten things i hate about you and it means that the fifth act is uh there's a lot of sadness there's a lot of regret don't bet on people that's what i'm saying uh anyway he says that's not the problem that he's writing to us about he says this real problem that he's writing to us about makes that problem seem microscopic in comparison okay so brace yourself during the first six months or so of our relationship i was still driving around picking up girls and going out on

a weekend in this time i had a few regular hookups and the occasional saturday night conquests i suppose it's honest of him to admit that isn't it as soon as feelings developed i stopped this and i've given my life and soul to my partner but several years ago my partner decided to learn to drive she had to ask her parents for her birth certificate this is when a life-changing conversation took place my partner discovered her dad was not her dad and she was a result of a failed marriage kept secret for 20 years. That's so weirdly old-fashioned. You would think now it's just a lot more stressful not telling the truth about these things.

I'm always amazed by those stories. Like, it's Jack Nicholson, isn't it? It was brought up by his mum thinking it was his grandmother. No, his sister was his biological mother, but they were brought up as siblings because that was actually quite common in a lot of families when a young girl had a baby. You just wonder what psychologically that does to people i can understand that more than this

though because this they were actually married which means they weren't 12 well hold on this isn't even the problem he's writing about this is just this is fine yeah this is like the plot of chinatown what's gonna happen water at this point we were given letters that she'd never seen from her real dad that included contact info. We met her biological father, and he's a top man, and we all get on great. So there's a happy ending again. But here's the money shot.

One day, we were invited to dinner to meet her brothers and sisters she never knew she had. Here we go. All went well. Really? This sounds like a psychological clusterfuck already. This is what Kerry Katona's life must be go. All went well. Really? This sounds like a psychological clusterfuck already. This is what Carrie Katona's life must be like. All went well until the eldest sister arrived.

She was only one of the girls I was regularly involved with in the early days of our relationship. Whoa, whoa. Oh, dear. They never got on for years. So obviously the partner did know this woman a bit without knowing it was her sister. That's so weird, isn't it?

And the sister is still a good friend of mine. So I wasn't worried, but over the last 12 months, they've now become close and now often go out together. And they've pulled my secret brother. No. Good Lord.

So if the truth was out, it could destroy everything. Helen, answer me this. Do I hope I take this to the grave or is this likely to come out eventually or do i tell her beforehand and if so how regular listeners will know that i'm generally in favor of truth it seems like the best and easiest option in this one i think so much time has passed that maybe firstly your partner john will not be that pleased to hear that you were cheating on her regularly in the early days it won't help anybody to know and i think

maybe the first and maybe only thing to do is to talk to the sister quietly on your own saying look i don't want to hurt my girlfriend um so should we just agree never to mention this to her because it was all a long time ago and I think both you and I know our feelings are purely neutral now. Yes. But there's no good way out of this, is there? I think that's right, but I do rather fear, John, that this will come out eventually. At some point, someone's going to have a row.

Someone's going to get drunk. And this is the ace in the hole. This could be your sort of children's wedding or something, the way your life story's been going. It's going to be some big dramatic flamboyant moment. Yeah, this is like Katy Perry saying, well, I'm going to be dignified about why Russell Brand and I split up, but I am keeping that secret in my safe for a rainy day.

Exactly. It seems like a Mike Lee film. All these secrets and lies. There's going to be a big confrontation at some point. Can we come? That's going to be amazing. I, like you, do think, in a way, it's best just to come that's gonna be amazing i like you do think in a way it's best just to do it now and be in control of it but why now rather than when he first realized that this was the deal well okay let's analyze the psychological issues here

because really you can't this will take a really long time no but really this is about how your partner feels not about you right yes and your partner found out that the people that raised her from a child weren't in fact her biological parents. Even though she seems happy and comfortable and she likes her biological father and everything seems rosy. Too many wounds in too short a space of time. There's a lot of rejection going on there, isn't there? There's a lot of, why wasn't I brought up by my royal parents in the first place?

Even if she says she's resolved that, that's a psychological problem people carry around for a long time. Why has everybody important in my life lied to me for years and years and then there's exactly exactly what you're doing is the one thing that she holds secure and safe you for nine years you're then going to tell her it would be bad enough if you were telling her in the early years of our relationship i had an affair or still dated girls for the first six months that we went out but to actually say and by the way it was with your biological sister she might begin to feel that the world is conspiring against it yes exactly so that's why you shouldn't tell her

yes yes well no i'm completely the same i thought you were saying you should tell her i'm saying my instinct is you should tell her but actually when you look through what it's going to do to her nothing good it seems all perfect offerings for jeremy kyle yes it does just get everything out on one day which john do you think is worse for your girlfriend to discover is it the fact that you had sex with her sister or the fact that you had sex with her sister or the fact that you had sex with other people when you were together with your girlfriend? Because if you think it's worse for her to find out that you cheated,

especially if she didn't know that it was her sister at the time, you could say years and years ago, before you and I ever got together, your sister and I went a few rounds. That's a slippery slope. That won't hold up under much scrutiny. Also, we're just assuming that she didn't know that he was stepping out in the early part of their relationship it might have been mutually agreed at the time

if, plain devil's advocate, you take the family business out of it if it was just Helen answer me this I've been in a relationship for nine years should I tell my partner that for the first six months I was unfaithful to her because it's bothering me, I'd say yes I'd say the problem though is the amount of time that's elapsed between uh the the act I think it just means that she will be aware of how long you were capable of lying to her about it or covering

things up and I think that's more uncomfortable because if you'd done it and you felt guilty about it and you blurted it out straight away I think that's probably slightly easier to come back from after anger is expressed and and forgiveness sought but actually lying about it for this length of time and i think again the recent deception since her sister returned to your lives in a different context i think that would be quite difficult for her to reconcile herself to if my girlfriend said to me and we've been together the same sort of length of time if she said to me first six months we went out i slept with a couple of other people i think i think i'd be okay with that because we are talking about eight and a half years ago.

Would it change things for you, Ollie, if your girlfriend said in the early months of our relationship, I had sex with somebody that you now know to be your secret half-brother? Actually, yeah. I mean, even if she just said I had sex with your cousin. Yeah. I'd probably find that a bit weird. Well, one of your cousins was like 10 at the time, wasn't he? Yeah, sure.

Gross. The part of this story we haven't even addressed because it is so extraordinary is the fact that john's taste is so ridiculously in line i know you hear these stories what are the odds yeah see i mean do they look similar is there is do you have a type and if so isn't that extraordinary i mean i rexum i guess is a relatively small place nonetheless to sleep with two sisters and you didn't know they were sisters and they didn't know each other were sisters that's extraordinary i've got a very very risky strategy for john to deal with this uh i think you could tell her the truth tell her all of the truth

if you secretly goad her into doing something worse that she then confesses to you and then to make her feel better you tell her this okay so what kind of thing would fit into that category because i'm struggling sleeping with john's dad yeah that would work i guess again we need to know a little bit more about john's personal circumstances she could tell john that the child's not his yeah problem solved why does god need both a staff and a rod In the 23rd song And the founder being Romulus

Ain't it odd We don't call the city wrong My knowledge is too slight So I think I shall write to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com dot com dot com dot com

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the wherewithal to do so. You can also Skype Answer Me This if you have the wherewithal to do that. Let's hear who's been in touch this week. Joe in Cornwall here. Hello Nolly. Answer Me This. I was talking to my nephew this morning and he told me the Swiss government has installed bombs under all of the bridges leading in and out of the country.

This is to prevent any kind of cut off any land access for invasions in the future. The thing is, my nephew told me this in such a convincing manner I wasn't sure if he was pulling my leg or if he was being serious. So, was there any element of truth in what he told me or am I just being a gullible twat?

I think Joanne Cornwall has much more sophisticated conversations with his nephew than I do with mine. Yesterday, mine just wanted to play a game where we rolled a ball along a floor. Maybe that was to initiate a conversation about bombs under bridges in Switzerland, but he didn't know how to ask. Yeah, when we got the ball wedged under the sofa,

it was metaphorical. That's right. Yes, but actually, no, you're not a gullible twat, Joe. This is based in truth. So actually, you're an over-sceptical twate uh this is based in truth so actually actually you're an over skeptical twat in the second world war and then right through the cold war as well um the swiss army had a mandate that all bridges and hillsides and tunnels must be designed so they can be remotely destroyed so they can be or are actively prepared to be bit of both okay so the

story is that there aren't live bombs under all the bridges but there could be and on the railways and all sort of strategic routes both into and around the country so that in the event of societal collapse or pan-european war or invasion or everyone coming for their money back switzerland would be safe so they've got things like um quaint cottages that are actually houses for huge cannons and they've got army bases built into the side of mountains and disguised um so that is all still extant and now some of them have actually been decommissioned so you can go around and have a look at bunkers in fact some of the old bunkers now contain servers and other internet things i went to switzerland in um

about 2001 and i visited a flat of one of the academics and we went down to the underneath his building where there was a nuclear bunker and he told me that every Swiss building had to be built with a nuclear bunker. They have to have enough capacity

to fit every Swiss person into a bunker in the event of Swiss catastrophe. Isn't that incredible? That's so paranoid. Do you think they eat a lot of Swiss roll in Switzerland? Do you think they eat

a lot of Swiss cheese in Switzerland? I'm think they eat a lot of Swiss cheese in Switzerland? I'm going to say no to both. Swiss roll, I wonder if they even have in Switzerland and whether we just have it called that because it seems sophisticated. Oh, probably for some racist reason that we've forgotten. We caught a Swiss man and we rolled him up in the rug and rolled him down a hill and then we ate him for tea. I can't think of any classic Swiss food apart from the holy cheese.

A clet. Well, yeah, like, at the times I spent in Switzerland, fondue seemed to be the big thing that everyone was trying to advise me to try. And it was very hot weather, so I was just like, well, no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, liquid cheese is not a good hot weather food. And yet, in a lot of southern USA cities, they have a branch of the melting pot, the fondue chain restaurant. I used to really like going into fondue restaurants

and then someone pointed out to me that the smell you get when you go in there is exactly the same as a fat girl that we knew used to sweat a lot and then i couldn't eat there anymore hi it's tom from norwich helen and ollie answer me this how was the euro introduced into europe i was having a chat about old currency with my mum when we got talking about what a massive undertaking that must have been this it must have been rather a pickle, mustn't it? What a bother, getting that in order all those countries, getting rid of all those lira and drachma and whatnot. That's right, yes, it was a bit of an undertaking, Helen.

First of all, you have to realise that the euro was decided in principle at the Maastricht Treaty, which was in 1991. Yes, so they had 11 years to plan. Well, actually, it was introduced in 1999, but not as coins and notes. I'll get to that in a minute. Okay. But they had eight years to plan.

Like now, we have eight years to plan for when we're only using Bitcoins. They had until the 1st of January 1999, when the euro was launched as a unit of account. Yes. That means that you are able to do BACS transfers and stuff. And the money markets were using things in euro. But actually, in the real proper shops with people in where you'd hand over notes,

you were still using the currency of your country for another three years. Well, yes, I remember because I was staying in Italy for a bit in early 1999. And in the cheese shops, for instance, everything would be priced in both lira and euros. Yeah, which is mental, isn't it? But then you, I mean, that is, I guess guess the only way to get the old money out of circulation is get people spending it and realizing what it would be worth in a euro so they get their head around it presumably as well when they introduced decimal currency in britain there was some overlap yeah yeah i guess you have to run the base in tandem for a while you have to get out of your brain all of that

difficult math that's not based on a metric system and this is why any country switching from driving on the left to driving on the right is best advised not to because you can't have any overlap there you very much have to make a firm decision no compromises um uh and then on the 1st of january 2002 i remember it well presto euro banknotes were there in people's hands god they loved it god they did drug dealers particularly because there was a 500 euro note it's the forger's friend it's the forger's friend indeed you know i had to get my passport photocopied the other day for a legal document and the place that i did it did such a high resolution copy they said you cannot tell anyone where you got this done wow yeah in case you copy money or in case i try to use that

passport to get through a gate actually i remember when my dad first got a scanner in about 1993 it was pretty hot stuff ollie man's laundering factory was uh really good that year you didn't have to do your toothpaste business anymore the first thing he scanned well the first thing he scanned that he could show his child uh was a 20 pound note wow and i had it on my wall i just remembered this for about 10 years because i was so impressed that it looked like the real thing and it's very decorative but he made it slightly bigger than 20 pound notes i wasn't tempted to use it as forged currency. I think it was maybe a quarter bigger. Smart man, Stanley man.

I took it into school and I tried to fool people. I said, this is a £20 note! And they were like, no, it's not. And I didn't realise that... It's a different kind of paper and it's only got one side. Well, I didn't realise that if you had a real £20 note, you wouldn't go up to people saying, this is a £20 note!

Because of course it is. What's interesting about that? So you needed to have worked on your cover story. That's right. I need my patter. You've learnt since. I have, I have. You really have. Yeah, you don't see dynamo doing that did you this is the card you've chosen oh bugger uh i mean choose a card well listeners that brings us to the end of this week's answer me this sorry well you will be sorry listeners if you don't send us your questions because firstly you won't know the answers to your questions and secondly there won't be a podcast

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