Answer Me This! - AMT268: Noah's Ark, Glacé Cherries and Barry Scott

Episode Date: August 22, 2013

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Did the earth move for you, or was that just fracking? Answer me this, answer me this Without Theo and Hillary as dragons they're lacking Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this Last week we were contemplating really quite a deep and serious issue for Answer Me This What constitutes losing your virginity if you are not bound to the heteronormative penis into vagina virginity loss method?

Jim says, sticking anything of yours in someone else's something counts, right? No. That's like saying sticking your teaspoon into someone else's yoghurt counts as virginity loss. No, I think you mean part of the body. Fork and a toaster.

But still, we wouldn't say if you put your finger in their ear that counts as virginity loss. No, if you French kissed, not virginity loss. No loss no uh well celeste says the opinion of this hetero female is that cock in vag is the definitive moment that one's metaphorical cherry is popped well sorry for gays and lesbians it was not one decisive thunderclap for me because i did actually say is it in yet oh what a lucky guy uh to the horror of my then boyfriend who was totally useless and small well you say that but then actually it could have been a learning experience couldn't it he could have improved his technique i hope he has since the first very first moment

don't think any of us performed at our best on the first uh try well you don't know that helen you weren't there with me well and it's just been downhill ever since for you i don't know something to be proud of ollie maybe celeste just has a very large vagina. Yeah, indeed. It's all speculation, of course. Luke has a different sort of spin on this definitions thing. He says, I've had sexual encounters, oral handjobs, fumbles, etc. with a number of women. Some of these went on to full sex where I climaxed

and often they did too. Good, it's nice to know when that happens. Others were just brief drunken shags and i didn't climax so if someone asked me how many people i've had sex with should i count only the women i've climaxed with or does the act of penetration count too for god's sake how of course it counts otherwise you i mean you could a lot of housewives from the 50s. Never lost their virginity. No. As a man, if I'd had numerous penetrative experiences and not had an orgasm, I could see how, and like I said last week,

this is much more important at the time than it is in retrospect when you look back on it, but I could see that at the time, I might consider that I hadn't lost my virginity until I'd ejaculated inside someone. That's ridiculous. Well, that's, but nonetheless, nonetheless, I can see the argument there.

It's really stupid. What if you'd had sex with somebody for three hours and just not reached Climax League? Would you be like, nope, never been near her? My name is Charlie. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. How do I get people to take my flyers

during the Edinburgh Fringe? I'm part of a comedy group, a show, a variety show called Stand Up Tragedy. And one of my roles within the troupe is to get people to take flyers on the Royal Mile. But I am one of hundreds of people trying to do this. Surely the answer to this is it's the same as any marketing trick. You know, how do you get people to do anything? Well, with good advertising.

Bit of patter. Bit of patter. Is the flyer well designed? Are you located in the right place on the royal mile indeed yeah we had patter because our flyer i feel safe saying this now 12 years later for our student production of peter nichols's passion play was not well designed but because peter nichols's passion play revolves around doppelgangers my fellow actors and actress uh went out in our doppelganger gear and went up to people and said in unison, come and see our play.

It's got doppelgangers in it and it's half price today with a flyer. And they would laugh and take the flyer. But only now did we think, why is doppelganger a selling point? Yes. I mean, in fact, even to understand what the word doppelganger means, probably helps if you're either German or quite well educated. So it's not necessarily targeting all of the stand-up fans in edinburgh is it yeah well they would be sorely disappointed

anyway this two-hour student production of a play about middle-aged marital collapse isn't it weird the plays that students choose to do when they can choose all of literature they choose plays about middle-aged people having a sex crisis i was always playing middle-aged people yeah in fact one person stopped me outside passion play one day and he said you were the only one who i really thought was 45 i was 25 what a compliment you have mentioned this before on the podcast which might be why you're not mentioning it now but i would like to repeat it for listeners who've only just joined us in the last few years you also wrote the words passion play on your tits yes in eyeliner that worked yeah perhaps try that charlie although you don't really want the stand-up tragedy written on your boobs. You can't really tell who's come to the play

as a result of these efforts. But I did hate flyering so much that sometimes I would go over to the quiet side of Edinburgh where people don't really flyer and just walk around and then put my flyers in a toilet. Another thing that we did to flyer,

another show that I was in, which was a children's show, but terrible, so I felt kind of guilty whenever we did convince fly another show that i was in which was a children's show but terrible so i felt kind of guilty whenever we did convince children to come the producers had spent virtually all of the show's budget on face paints and they've got a book of the things you can paint on children's faces like tiger face that kind of thing the first child came and he chose a wolf and essentially I blacked him up because it was just black face with yellow eyelids

with kind of eyes drawn on them and I thought oh god this is awful but then someone came along saying you can't do this because you need a license to do face paintings you're supposed to have clean brushes for every child oh really which the producers had not researched at all

so then they just had hundreds of pounds worth of completely useless face paint I've actually seen Paul Daniels fly around the Royal mile before what was his technique um he did magic tricks with fair enough he's paul daniels he's not dynamo though is he's not really a street magician but he did a few did he levitate debbie mcgee just picked him up um actually one thing i have done this is a genuine tip actually for you charlie our other tips are genuine don't black up children write things on your tips okay i mean this is a genuine tip actually for you Charlie Look our other tips are genuine Don't black up children Okay I mean this is a specific tip

That you could definitely do this year Instead of just flyering the whole of the Royal Mile indiscriminately Go and flyer the queue of people Who are queuing to buy tickets From the Edinburgh Fringe box office Now play it soft don't be like full sales pitch Because it is a bit intimidating But they are a captive audience

They've got credit cards and they're paying they've chosen some things if your show's on two hours before a show they're going to see anyway and they're holding the flyer in their hand when they actually get to the box office i think they're more likely to buy than just a random who's walking up the street smart move thank you and i guess sometimes if there's a link as well between a show that's just finished and for example if you're doing a musical i guess you could flyer the most popular musical at the fringe you could stand outside and fly people for your one more likely that a musical audience would come to another musical for example now apropos of musicals at the edinburgh festival ollie you told me something truly upsetting oh yeah about the time

you were in a chorus line yes edinburgh yes this was upsetting yeah i was in a student production nb yes yeah and in edinburgh you get fined if you go over your time slot because there's usually only about five minutes in between shows. And you told me because the show was overrunning on so many days, most performances didn't get to the climactic one singular sensation and you can forget the rest at the end, which is the redemptive ending of the show. And apt lyrics as well,

because literally most people do forget the rest. They don't remember any other songs from Chorus Line. There were people that were waiting to hear one. You do hear,

for those of you who know a Chorus Line, you do hear one being rehearsed in the second half but you only get the sparkly jackets and the full

Broadway version. You only hear that in the curtain call basically. And you spent all the money on the lamé suits presumably.

Yeah, they did. I have literally no idea what you what you're talking about it's the big showstopper yeah did you even get to the point where the director was choosing who was going to be in the chorus line yeah but in the version we were in to try and keep it spontaneous and fresh feeling i chose different people each night which was i mean in a way quite a clever device but of course inevitably inevitably the actors in the show i was playing the director i was playing michael douglas the actors in the show felt that i was actually casting judgment on their performance that night well hopefully that gave them incentive to be better the next day and i think that's what the director was thinking he was thinking this would be a way of keeping everyone at the top of their game because they'll want to on some level

they'll be competitive with each other and they'll want to get into the final selection they want ollie man's favor but in truth uh i was well i was thinking two things one there was one standout diva who clearly could sing and dance and was amazing and it would be upset the audience would throttle me to death if i didn't put her in it right so she went in every night apart from one night where tokenistically i didn't put her in and i you i could feel the audience gasp the other thing was the other thing was because of that thing of thinking oh everyone's got to have a shot there were some people who were a bit shit i had to put in because i didn't want them to feel victimized and actually it was nothing to do with the performances it was also almost

a mathematical equation you know more often than not i went with the ones in the script and then a couple of nights a week i'd vary it yeah but i'm imagining that few people would go and see that version of the chorus line twice so the pattern was only really in your head yes yes well but it was for the benefit of my other performers who were getting very insecure about and they were not benefiting from it which probably why it's scripted who gets rejected even if they're better at singing and dancing exactly well here is another question of the arts from annie who says i'm studying advanced high english at school part of my coursework is to write a comparative essay on two texts by the same author. My dad happens to be one of the playwrights on the approved list.

Wow. So Ollie answered me this. If I write my essay on my dad, could the exam board say I was cheating? Would they know that he was your dad? If your dad wrote the essay for you, that would be cheating. Yeah. If you are using him as a primary source, that's going to look incredible. Now, some would say that you've got an unfair advantage.

That's not the same as cheating, is it? You're making the most of the resources at your disposal, and that's enterprising. I would actually suggest that she might be at a disadvantage if she wants to regard his work with the objectivity that others would be perhaps she would be clouded by personal knowledge of his character you might not actually be as good at analyzing the text as somebody who does not know your dad well actually indeed and of course he probably isn't either and so if you asked him for help actually he'd go no that's not what i meant at all exactly what are exactly. What are these York notes saying? They're idiots. And it's not about what he intended, is it?

It's about what people have interpreted over the past years and decades. The intentional answer of the author is important still, I think. But the point is, most of the time you can't know because they're dead. Yeah.

Whereas you can go and ask your dad. You see, I think that's why at school level people like to teach war poetry because it's really obvious what they meant. War's bad. That's what it means. I don't like it. We got conned into it and it's bad. meant. War's bad. That's what it means.

I don't like it. We got conned into it and it's bad. My friend lost his leg. That's basically it, isn't it? Bit chlorine-y down here. I've got a question. Then email your question to answermedispodcast

at googlemail.com answermedispodcast at googlemail.com answermedispodcast 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 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 Donna in Kentucky, who says, Ollie, answer me this. If the only people who survived the flood were Noah, his three sons, and their respective wives...

Isn't it amazing that all these years later we can still refer to it as the flood? I remember 1990. I was there, Donna. Yeah, Herne Hill had a massive flood the other week. Yeah, it did. Are you talking about The great flood of Edgware Ollie

I am It's about a foot of Water came into our Kitchen in Stanmore You only survived By going up Harrow Hill Eat that Noah

Says if those are The people who survived And we're all Descended from them And not from the Animals on the ark Yes Are we not

All Jewish Oh No I don't think so Because Noah Noah wasn't Jewish technically, was he? Because to be Jewish is to follow the Old Testament scripture, and he's in it. They hadn't written it yet. So it hadn't been written yet. What about if he followed all of the Old Testament scripture up until that point? I don't know if there was much scripture, and what there was was probably awfully wet from the flood.

He was certainly monotheistic. I think we can conclude that about noah but i think it's reasonable to assume that from noah if you believe the bible came people of different religions including jews because in fact i'm pretty sure noah's in the quran as well oh noah is a massively important figure in islam i understand right so there you go so the abrahamic faiths came out at that time so no noah wouldn't be jewish in that case would he do you know what I had not observed about Noah from all the childhood Bible stories about him was that he was a real wino.

Yeah, he was a drinker, yeah. Actually, and that's a clue that he probably wasn't Jewish. Because, I mean, I know we've got Ollie Reid, but apart from that, generally speaking, Jews tend not to be massive drinkers. Really? They tend to overindulge on food or drugs, if they get into that.

Oh, it's probably because kosher wine is like cough syrup and you can't drink too much of it. Just tend not to be drinkers generally. Obviously, there's generalisation, but it tends to be the case. So I think if Noah was really into his bottle, it probably wasn't a Jew. How did the practicalities of the Ark work? Nightmare. Because obviously it was a real historical thing.

Stinking. Yeah. How do they... I mean, seriously, how do Bible scholars say Noah fed all those animals? Because you think about a zoo and the amount of staff that are required. London Zoo, 200 volunteers a day. How many people are required just to clean out their crap and feed them? Not just Noah, the three sons, and Noah's wife and the son's wife.

Yeah, and not just with the anthropological species that are on display in London's biggest zoo, but every animal in the world. Yeah, but they might have just had a few animals then, and we've had a lot more speciation since. That is the kind of thing a Bible scholar would say, isn't it? I don't think it's really accurate to ecology, though, is it? Like, if you think about it, let's take a spider. Like, it probably eats a lot

of flies. More than two flies. Yeah. And it's like, what else is it going to eat? What's it going to eat? Yeah. So, like, almost immediately, the biggest animal would eat all of the smaller animals, and that would cascade cascade down you'd just be left with a really fat lion and being honest it would be difficult for noah's family not to think i'm gonna have a bit of ostrich or whatever yeah you know it's just after what were they eating pulses i presume i suppose and sea water yeah well i suppose there were still uh the aquatic creatures that they could fish out of the floodwaters.

The Bible says he took two of each animal, but that could just mean at least two. Maybe he took a hundred of some so that he could feed. But even so, what are you going to feed the animals? In fairness, the Bible doesn't, in my recollection, pretend that it was a logistical simplicity, all this. I think it makes it quite clear that Noah was heroic for doing this. I think it's a bit of a bell-end request from God,'m going to go look i've created this thing i don't like it much

anymore look you here's a big job for you while i just wipe the slate clean rather than properly trying to fix what i did yeah um if you were on a boat for 40 days and 40 nights or however long it took to withstand the biggest flood the world had ever seen yeah what would you do as a leisure activity and would you take up would you take up any of the space on board that you could have had more animals in because you'd feel a responsibility there wouldn't you you'd think even if just one monopoly set you think well i could have had a penguin there yeah but i don't know firstly whether there would have been much excess space and secondly most of your time's gonna be taken up shoveling animal shit yeah that's right and stopping them from eating

each other and maybe get some exercise i mean just like a chin-up bar doesn't take up much space. I know, but it's the chin-ups on the bench. It can't be all work in the play. At some point you've got to unwind, even if you just take a little bit of five minutes downtime. I'm not sure that the vengeful god of the Old Testament was really that attentive towards people's leisure needs. His work-life balance.

No. Did they have a cruise ship singer on the ark? Well, on the subject of transporting animals by sea, this is from Lindsay, which is talking about transporting animals to SeaWorld. Because she says, Helen, answer me this. How do they get whales to SeaWorld and sea life centres? As they're far inland,

do they transport them using giant fish bowls? Giant fish bowls. If you've ever tried transporting a fish bowl any distance, and I have. Just across a room can be a problem. You'll know that If you've ever tried transporting a fish bowl any distance, and I have. Just across a room can be a problem. You'll know that the water spills everywhere in a car. It really depends on the size of the whale and the journey, but generally either they put them in a big water tank

or they put them in a kind of padded sling in a container and then they put that onto the truck or plane or ship and transport the whale that way. Wait, when it's in the sling it's not in water? Oh, because it's a mammal.

They're air breathers of course. I think it's kept moist and cool by its human consorts. I've seen videos of them transporting a massive killer whale

from SeaWorld and it was on the back of a truck and there were about ten adults standing around the truck with it just pouring water on it and tapping it on the

head. Tapping it on the head? Yeah, as if saying they they're there, basically. Oh, wow. What a strange experience that must be. What a strange job. What do you do?

I calm whales down whilst they travel across the States. Oh, the whale whisperer. I've read about just them trying to get whales out of SeaWorld back into the sea, and even that, just a couple of miles, seems to be an enormous operation. Yeah, well, especially because, as I understand it, they grow often when they're in captivity. So you may have had a whale that you've even because obviously

seaworld they have whales that are born natively there that they then put in their performing shows and whatever but they also have a program where they take injured whales and nurse them back to health in seaworld and those ones they don't make perform they put them back in the wild but then when they put them back in the wild they've grown like three times the size they were when they got them so that in itself becomes a logistical difficulty rather yeah anyone would think that whales aren't supposed to be in buildings on land that said um i'd quite like to be and i'm a mammal i'm a big mammal you'd like to be transported in a sling with people patting you on the head and squirting water at you yes because think about your arm in a sling when you've injured it it's not fun because you've

hurt your arm but if you were the arm it's quite fun isn't it it's being a bit airborne swinging around i do like hammocks it's true yeah exactly it's a hammock exactly if they use the word hammock instead of sling i know the whale doesn't understand what's going on which is what makes it problematic but if you could explain to the whale look you're going back to the ocean mate this is going to be fun yeah and you get to be in a hammock for 10 hours yeah or alternatively you're coming out of the ocean you you're going to be a star. Yeah, that's maybe not so much fun. Sea world. Da-da-da-da-da-da.

How many social networks are you on? Vivo, Friendster, Parkview, Porn, MySpace, Ping and Google Buzz. If you want to be our pal, go to this URL facebook.com slash answer me this or twitter.com

slash Helen and Dolly. But please don't follow us in real life. Listeners, you are always very welcome to submit questions using your voice via our telephone line, for which you dial this number. 0208 123 58 007 Or you Skype answer me this. And let's hear who's been in touch this week. It's Phil in Stoke.

Hi, answer me this. What let's hear who's been in touch this week. It's Phil in Stoke. Answer me this. What is a glacier cherry? My partner thinks it's not a real cherry. They say it's made of sugar, but I don't agree. And if it is a real cherry, what have you done to it? It's a bright red colour. With climate change, glacier cherries are severely endangered.

They're melting! He means glass-ay cherry, doesn't he? Yeah. The two concepts are severely endangered. And melting. He means, he means glace cherry, doesn't he? Yeah. Yeah. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, actually,

what you and your partner say. Your partner says full of sugar. You say real cherry. I say it is both a real cherry and full of sugar. That is what it is.

You're correct. Preserved in immense amounts of sugar. Yeah, exactly. It's been put in a sugar syrup and then heated again and again and again to preserve both the flesh and the flavour.

Although I can't taste any cherry flavour in a Glacier cherry. In a Glacier cherry. I'm doing it now, Phil. It just tastes of Glacier cherry, which is just super sugar. In the process of being heated up in sugar syrup, they lose their colour, which means the colour has to be put back in much more intensively than ever before. That's so weird, isn't it? Why would you construct a process where you actually drain the flavour out and then have to paint it? Well, can I guess what it is?

Modern Life, Ollie. Is it cochineal? No. Is it anate? No. Oh, go on, what is it? It is erythrosine, a.k.a. E-number 127. Oh, jeez.

And that is made out of coal tar. And weirdly enough, in Canada, they consume 10 times more of that colourant than in most other countries. So what is it that Canadians are eating that has so many Glace Cherries in it? I wonder if they put it in maple syrup. They eat that, don't they, in Canada?

Maybe. Or they colour their bacon with it. But in American Glace Cherries, they put a colouring called Allura Red, which is derived from petroleum. So no wonder Americans are so fond of drilling for oil. Now, in Dragon's Den, they would say that this was a problem that didn't require a solution, that the person who'd invented Glace Cherries

had come up with this thing that no one was asking for, and therefore, omut! I don't know, because they were preserving fruit, so people were asking for it, preserving it for a different season. Right, well, that's what I was going to go on to ask. So there is a logical reason for doing it. It's not just that it's the tradition of making cherry break the walls with them it's that if you made them with real cherries they'd go off well also you

might want to make something with fruit outside of that fruit season and at christmas people have a lot of preserved fruit things because it was the middle of winter and you hadn't seen fruit for four months yeah yeah yeah so it can be a nice surprise can't it if it doesn't taste of horrible fruit cake but i remember the um glace fruits in childhood they always looked so tremendously exciting they're all very vivid colors they all look a bit like a familiar fruit but they crucially aren't and yet they all just taste like thick sugar which was rather disappointing i can sometimes quite enjoy the taste of the fluid that they're preserved in have you not invented some kind of martini that's got that in i was just thinking a kiddie martini you probably could do that

with that couldn't you do you ever miss a glace cherry though where you're having something that would normally have one on like say a Belgian bun but it does not have one on no

is it a critical component to anybody of anything maybe on a trifle I'd miss it cherries though I think are one of the most wonderful fruits and I'd rather just

eat them all in season than have this pretender to cherry in January. You can put them in almond milk. Almond milk cherries are amazing. Yeah, not so suitable for kids' Sundays, though, is it? It keeps them quiet.

Here's a question from Tom, who says, Ollie, answer me this. Why is Barry Scott, Barry Scott, on the adverts for Sillit Bang? Because people talk about him by doing that, like we are now. That's why. Did he invent Sillit Bang?

What do you think? And happens to be very loudly proud of it. Or is he like all of these mascots, just the product of a corporation that has numerous cleaning products in its stable and needs to differentiate them in the marketplace? He's another Mr Kipling. He is, basically. No!

Who owns Sillit Bang? Sillit Bang is owned by the same company. I can't remember their name, but they're a big multinational And they own Mr Sheen and Dettol and Lemsip So yeah They came up with the idea of Barry Scott As an advertising wheeze It's just weird though isn't it? Here is a shouty man who you don't know about

Endorsing a product But it works because he comes on doesn't he boldly Hi I'm Barry Scott Straight away the question who the fuck is Barry Scott? Why do I care? Whoever he is he's very confident doesn't he, boldly. Hi, I'm Barry Scott. Straight away the question, who the fuck's Barry Scott? Why do I care? Whoever he is, he's very confident, isn't he? And confidence is persuasive. And actually, what's interesting is they obviously came up with Barry Scott

as a kind of pre-viral marketing, viral marketing ploy. And back in 2005, the company got in trouble, silly bang, for having Barry Scott, in inverted commas, putting posts on people's blogs blogging very much a burgeoning medium then um and barry scott would comment on people's blogs about cleaning and stuff and bloggers rumbled that this was actually barry scott the creation of the sillet bang company what rather than a genuine barry scott rather than a real barry scott there's a guy that plays barry scott not called barry scott no it's called neil burgess he's an actor what

else has he been in uh he's. He probably doesn't need to. He's got his silly bang box. Neil, if you're listening, I'm not demeaning your theatrical career. That isn't written about on the internet. You might be in rep at Birmingham for the last five years. I wouldn't know.

It was the role he was born to play. Your Malvolio might be marvellous. Bang and the dirt is gone, he said in an Olivier way. But your television and film credits, let's be honest, are a bit shit. He has played the chestnut vendor in Macorber. He has played a paramedic

in the last series of Waking the Dead. Someone died from drinking Cillit Bang. And in the last series of Life Begins, he was a removal man. I haven't seen a Cillit Bang advert for rather a long time. I can't remember that he's still on them. But I feel like he's not the kind of character

that you could replace with a different Barry Scott. I think you could get away with a different Mr. Muscle because it's just a weedy guy. You could get away with a different Captain Birdseye. You could even replace the 118 guys

with similar looking guys. Barry Scott, I think it would be hard. Just find that amazing. Like, all those things you mentioned, they're mascots. They're archetypes. Yeah, like Ronald McDonald. mentioned, they're mascots, they're archetypes. You're like Ronald McDonald.

You don't think he's a real psychotic clown. You don't think a hamburger is actually stealing things. Barry Scott's just a bloke's name. I thought maybe he was someone who ran the company or something. It's very male-marketed, isn't it? Really? We can't have something which men won't go for, so we're going to have someone really blokey

and it's going to be called something like Ramrodrod i never thought of it as being blokey because i think the packaging is quite bright pink yes but it is it's ironized is what it is i think it is there is an element probably i'm guessing here but i think there's possibly an element of single man frat pad type vibe if you're going to buy a cleaning product because you have to sometimes buy the one advertised by barry scott because funny. Yeah, but there have been those rival campaigns aimed at hapless men because there was that one for a few years where I think it was flash spray or something.

It was like, oh, I've just shat on the kitchen floor the Mrs. Jerome. She's never going to know. Squirt, squirt. You know the one I'm talking about. Jack from Bushstrokes. Is that who it is?

Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're right, the implication was kind of like I've just had the woman I'm having an affair with round. And there's vaginal discharge all over the sofa.

The golden shower is really not going to make my wife happy. But I'm a stupid man, so I don't know what to do. Or hold on, I do. It's called flash. Because I'm a man who's learnt not to use cleaning products,

I've rendered women obsolete. Don't tell the missus, though. I've got too much money! I've got too much money! Buy an auntie me this satchel or an auntie me this apron. I I've got too much money I've got too much money Buy an Antimedist satchel Or an Antimedist apron I've still got too much money I've still got too much money

Buy an Antimedist mug Or an Antimedist yellow t-shirt I do not like yellow I don't look good in yellow There are also available in red And white and black Where can I get these things from? Where can I get these things from?

From cafepress.com slash askmebiss. I've got too much money! I've got... Oh, no, I haven't any more, because although the items were very reasonably priced, the import duty was cripplingly expensive. But no matter, it was still worth it, because I'm a fly mofo! A question of travel now from Paul in Koenji, who says,

I live and work in Tokyo and, of course, feel the obligation to go back to the UK to visit my little old mother each and every Christmas. On the way back home last Christmas, I was coincidentally sat in the seat directly in front of a colleague who I've never been overly chummy with. That would make me very awkward, by the way, if a colleague was behind me on a flight. It's a long time for them to be behind you and also they could see

everything that you're watching on the screen. I got a text from my mum this week to say that she was on a train with Andy Zaltzman and that he'd helped her with her bag. They've never met in real life have they? They've never met no and she didn't want to declare herself to him because she was conscious that she didn't want them to make four and a half hours of small talk of him to feel obliged. That was very thoughtful

what she could have done is when they were getting off the train If they were getting off at the same station She'd be like oh oh you're Andy hello Well must be going You've got to act that very well though haven't you Your mother's an actress I know if you gave any indication that that was an act And that actually the whole way through you'd been waiting to do that

Because you didn't want to speak to them for four hours That's worse than not saying anything Yeah but as Andy has never met your mother before he wouldn't have known Yeah Not a problem Anyway the reason I'd be uncomfortable About a colleague sitting behind me on a plane Is because of my bum gas

Nothing to do with anything else Are you very windy on a plane? Well I'm windy everywhere Helen But it's just that on a train You can't really get away with it Because of the noise On a plane no one can hear it Because of the low rumble of the engine

So I just fart away freely on an aeroplane And everyone else slowly expiates No one knows it's you But if my colleague was behind me, not that they'd recognise the smell of my farts necessarily. I think I would.

Yeah, you probably would. Well, if it was you, I would feel nervous about it. No, you wouldn't. Anyway, returning to this flight that Paul took from Tokyo to the UK, six months passed

after that flight with barely any mention of it until recently when said colleague decided to speak his mind and unleash half a year's worth of pent-up air rage over me having reclined my seat too far the nerve of it i'll be the first says paul to

admit that i've been less than content with strangers reclining in the past but since it's their prerogative i always shrug it off with an oh well tough shit me and proceed to partake in the cabin long reclining domino effect that is a very good description that's exactly what happens and then when the person in the back tilts theirlining domino effect. That is a very good description. That's exactly what happens. And then when the person in the back tilts their seatbelt, the tail falls off. So, Helen, answer me this. Once the seatbelt light goes off, is it wrong to recline? Are you suggesting that the option to recline is a kind of divine choice?

If it were wrong, why don't they just not give you the option, but know God wants to test you? If you have to choose on one side or the other, it's right to recline. I never recline. And I don't miss it, but also it's because I dislike it when people recline upon me and I don't want to inflict that upon another person. However, if the airlines were slightly more generous

with the leg room, this wouldn't be such a problem, would it? Having people recline into your face. So even when you're trying to sleep, and I know that you can't ever actually sleep on an aeroplane an airplane but nonetheless when you're trying to do that thing where you've got the blinkers on and you're in someone else's armpit curled up into a ball listening to terrible music when you're doing that that's parties you're getting mixed up with when you're doing that uh are you not at least a slight recline no you don't press the button at all i never recline you're

being cruel to yourself no not you are you've paid for the option to recline they're giving you the option to recline i'm paying with my comfort for someone else not to have me recline. You're being cruel to yourself. No, I'm not. You are. You've paid for the option to recline. They're giving you the option to recline. I'm paying with my comfort for someone else not to have me recline at them. Yeah, but the point is they don't appreciate it, Helen. No one's ever come up to you at the end of the flight and said, thank you for not reclining. They don't need to. It's more like a passive appreciation. They might not think I'm glad that this person has not reclined, but they would certainly

be unglad if I did recline. Despite my own personal beliefs, I don think paul was wrong to recline i do think it was wrong and silly of his colleague to be stewing on this completely inconsequential slight for six months that is not a very adult way to behave it's not a sign of a healthy emotional attitude i mean in the workplace maybe you just don't feel you've ever had the opportunity to raise these kind of issues maybe it's not about reclining yeah well that's the thing because otherwise the only time really to confront somebody it's not about the reclining seat at all. Yeah, well, that's the thing, because otherwise the only time really to confront somebody you know about the seat reclining issue

is while you're on the flight, because now you can't go back in time and give them a bit of extra room, can you? Probably the context this came up was they were showing how you are selfish. They probably said, oh, Paul, you're so selfish, like when we were on that plane.

And it was probably the first example that came into their head. I wonder if they've actually been stewing on it. They probably actually couldn't find another example. Well, Paul, there's a little psychological project. Come back and tell us what was really the matter. That brings us to the end of today's podcast. That's it. You're getting no more.

I hope you can cope with this. There might be another 30 seconds of this left, but it's all just waffle. That's it now. No more answering questions. This is just to ease you off. Yeah, it's the wind down. But before we go, We must just urge you To send us your questions Via email, phone or Skype

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