Answer Me This! - AMT292: McDonald's Marriages, Toaster Trouble and Raccoon Poop

Episode Date: June 19, 2014

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do pg tips sponsor the pyramid stage who was so well known by elaine page well we are kicking off with the feedback you have been waiting all week for the listeners who hear their parents have sex uh it's good to know right at the beginning of an episode we've already made this podcast awkward for any families listening together in the car right now mercifully this never happened to me but even though i grew up in a large house with the bathroom far away from everywhere else there was something about the acoustics that magnified bathroom noise oh no i want to enjoy it's like there was an intercom in there

maybe there was oh god well a there Maybe there was, oh god Well, Alex from Australia has been in touch to say Your last episode segment on dealing with parents having sex Brought back disturbing memories As I have been in this position Great choice of words, Alex Yeah, we specifically did not ask to know about positions My father was in a loveless marriage for 12 or so years

Hooray, no sex there then. Score. And recently got out. He quickly found a new partner. And I was living with Dad at the time. And yet not cramping his style. Apparently not. My room was not only right next to theirs,

but I didn't have a proper door, just a weird folding one. Oh no. I tried a couple of tricks to stop the noise or block it out I would, for example, listen to my iPod with a pillow over my head and that worked most of the time apart from when I had to change song

Why would that be? I suppose you have to retract upwards to view the screen and then you're allowing a small amount of noise in Yeah, well there's a couple of seconds of pause Oh I see, yes of course You get the sound well, there's a couple of seconds of pause. Oh, I see. Yes, of course. You get the sound bleed, don't you? You need noise-cancelling earphones then.

Alex needed to have planned a playlist beforehand and made sure that iTunes was set, that the tracks overlapped. Yes. Gupless playback. Gupless, yeah. Thanks, mate. I also tried playing angry music loudly out of my laptop, hoping they would get the message.

Fuck the pain away, fuck the pain away. It was probably so quiet from a laptop they wouldn't even notice, would they? Yeah, very tinny. Very tinny. Probably need more bass. Mid-coitus, you're not going to think hmm, what is that thrash metal I can hear? Unless you're seeking a distraction. I confronted my dad, continues Alex, but he persisted

in the loud sex. He probably thought, you've already heard it, so he might as well continue to get his you're already traumatised and broken. It's almost as if the carnal instinct is somehow stronger than the paternal one. He had 12 years to make up for. Unfortunately for your listener, my solution was to move out as soon as possible

and trade loud parent sex for traffic noises, a dramatic improvement. It's nice when something bad becomes good just because it's not the same as the old thing. By comparison, yeah. Yes. It's like now that we no longer live next to a railway line, the occasional siren in the night doesn't seem as bad. We've also had Gary in Lincolnshire

writing in on the subject of last episode and he says, regarding our discussion of WeBuyAnyCar.com and cash for gold type websites I was told by a friend who was told by the police after he was burgled that those We Buy Gold and We Buy Watches services are used by burglars.

They already have the envelopes written and ready in their pockets. They fill them up with stolen items from the house they're raiding. Then they drop them into the nearest postbox second after the robbery. See, now that is so obvious, but actually hadn't occurred to me because I'm not a criminal. And yet, try finding a postbox when you need one.

Quite difficult these days. Gary says, it solves two problems in one fell swoop. No possession of stolen goods and no need to deal with a fence. What's a fence in this context? It's the middleman between the stealer of the goods and the buyer of the stolen goods. Oh, OK. That's known as a fence, is it? Yeah.

Plus, says Gary, they're getting a guaranteed price. These places should be shut down. They're scandalous. Go on, Ollie, LBC DJ respond. Well, presenter, Helen, not known as DJs. Sorry, no discs. I don't spin discs, I spin opinion. Yeah, but you do ride a pony while you're in the studio.

I mean, presumably, in defence of these companies, they still have a record of what they've bought. So if the police were to ask them, you know, have you sold, in this combination, a Cartier watch and one diamond earring, then they'd be able to say yes, and it came from this person, because they then send that person the money.

So it's not that sensible of a thing to do. They've got their address. Exactly. Which you probably don't have with the fence. It was weird, wasn't it, when there was that particularly heavy spate of thieves stealing metal, because scrap metal had become so expensive,

and they stole... Railway lines. Yeah, but also they stole a Barbara Hepworth statue from Dulwich Park. Like a six foot huge statue. Surely that would be more valuable as the statue rather than melted down. Yeah, but it's...

More identifiable. But again, it's sort of the lowest common denominator, isn't it? They're in a desperate situation. They want money for drugs or more crime. They're going to think, well, I know I can get money this way. Webuyanysculpture.com. It's only a matter of time.

Maybe my dad would make more money out of sculpting if he sold his sculptures melted down for scraps. Hello, it's Kirsty from Greenwich. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. What are you meant to do with birthday cards and Christmas cards? I just have piles of them, and I just don't know what you're meant to do. Are you supposed to file them away? Are you supposed to just chuck them?

It seems really callous. I just don't know what to do with them. I keep the good ones in a drawer, the ones that are quite personal. They've got a decent amount of message in. Yes, yes. But it just means I've got a drawer full of cards that I probably won't look at until I'm dying. I have a technique for this as well I bet you do

do you have files per year colour coded? no I have a section at the bottom of my bedside table where I keep memorabilia but what I found is that I'm not in a position to judge on the day I've received the cards or realistically a week or two weeks later when you're taking them down from display

I'm not in a position at that point to judge whether five or ten years down the line i'll still be interested in it um and i guess morbidly what i'm thinking here is you know what if this is the year my grandmother dies and this is the last card she sent me and she said you know she's so proud of me because of this and this that's not the one i want to throw in the bin yeah i never threw away my grandma's postcards even though she didn't necessarily say anything particularly interesting on them and now that she's dead i'm really happy whenever i turn one up and i see her hand exactly yes so what i do is i keep all of them for a year okay yeah then the following year two weeks after my next birthday yes i review the ones from the year before and i think right grandma's still

alive do i need this one as an example of grandma's card or has the one from 2014 superseded the one from 2013 nostalgia wise wow that's a very uh sober assessment yes yes it's sort of uh brett easton ellis like but i find it useful if it's a really cool picture you could put it on the wall in a little frame yes more for birthday than christmas now as a crafty crafter type craft person. Sew them into a toy. You can make a beautiful dress. I was going to ask if you would ever re-gift a beautiful card. Well, we did used to turn Christmas cards into the next year's parcel tags.

We would just cut off the front if it didn't have any writing in so you got the picture. Which is better than throwing it in the bin. But at the same time, someone might feel disrespectful if they knew the card they gave you got chopped up and given to someone else could you use nice cards as bookmarks of course you could you could use anything as a bookmark was bookmark size theoretically that's smaller than a book the question is should you but yes you absolutely could could make them into giant playing cards if they're all similar size here's a question from Pat from Canada who says, Helen, answer me this. Raccoons are pooping on my cabana.

Any suggestions? What a delightfully succinct question. What's a cabana? It's like a gazebo. Sometimes it's attached to a house. A bandstand in your own garden. You could get rid of the cabana. One option.

Well, I think the implication is she does not want to do that. The implication, if anything, is she wants to get rid of the raccoons, but I guess best option, the raccoons poop. There are preventative options, which is sealing off any entrance points into your garden, which might not be possible, I guess,

and get rid of any sources of food that they might be enjoying. And what do raccoons like? Rubbish. Really? Apparently mothballs repel them. Really? Maybe raccoons are genetically linked to moths. One of the things that will get rid of a raccoon

is ammonia. So apparently the best thing to do is to save your first piss of the day and then just before dusk, because that's when the raccoons come out, pour it around the perimeter of your cabana. Because raccoons like to be clean and hygienic, so they're repelled by that.

And if you repeat it enough, they're not going to come. But if you don't like that, then you could chop an onion and a jalapeno pepper and mix with one tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Boil in two quarts of water for 20 minutes. Once cooled, strain the mixture through a cheesecloth and pour it into a spray bottle.

Through a cheesecloth? That's a thin piece of cloth. I'm just having to go and buy quite a lot of things just to make this repellent. Use a sieve with a paper towel in it. Look, Ollie, it's like you're pissing on your own gazebo. Spritz any area where the raccoons are congregating. Repeat every three to five days until the raccoons are gone.

So 20 years later, she should be like, they must be going soon. Your basic options are have a gazebo that smells of piss or a gazebo that smells of onions. Well, or you could install motion-detecting lights on your cabana because apparently raccoons hate lights. Now, that's a good idea. Or, of course, you could get Cyril Sneer involved to boot them out the forest.

What has he been up to the last 30 years? You know, I didn't realise, it's only just recently reconsidering the raccoons, one of my favourite Saturday morning kids' TV shows of the 80s. Oh, that was amazing, that show. I'm surprised that you watched it, actually, Helen, because you didn't have any childhood pleasure. No.

But you were allowed that. That's good to know. Yes. I can't really remember much about the story. Yeah, because you're old. You're old. It was a bit like Wall Street, wasn't it, but played by raccoons. I think possibly, yeah.

They ran a newspaper, some of them. Cyril Sneer had a big cigar, didn't he, and a long, bent nose. Yeah. It was kind of like Mr. Burns. They all had phallic noses, retrospectively, you realise. Flaccid, but large. Like that Muppet. Yes, exactly like that

There are animals that have long noses It's not all about You make a choice don't you when you animate Those animals whether to accentuate that Cartoonishly or not In the raccoon's case Oh they went for it But I never realised until reconsidering it now

That the raccoons actually Were Canadian that show was made by the canadian broadcasting company wow because raccoons as pat is telling us are a canadian rather than american issue largely like orphan black as well yeah or michael j fox canadian but people don't know jim carrey canadian michael cera canadian i knew about them dan akroyd canadian yeah Ryan Reynolds and Gosling Wow Gosling as well Yeah Gosling

The Gos Gosmeister Gosingtons Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood You always have to lower the tone don't you Martin

I'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 retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's round 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 is a question from Alex from Bury, who says,

Ollie, answer me this. Is the urban myth true that you get a free McDonald's on your wedding day? If it is, I know who I'm proposing to this weekend. Is it the Hamburglar? So my girlfriend and i can start planning to raid our local chains for free meal every week well how would you kind of wedding days i think you just uh go in a tux and a wedding dress saying it's hot wedding day give us a free that's a lot of effort so much effort probably you'd spend more in dry cleaning the mcdonald's

stains off your tux and wedding dress than you would on just buying mcdonald's i suspect that if the manager is present and it really is obviously, evidently and provably your wedding day, then of course they're going to at least chuck in a free burger or drink because that's what students get anyway just by being students. Really? If you buy a meal, you get a free McFlurry or burger. But you still have to pay for a product. You still have to pay for the value meal, yeah, but free burger included.

Right. So really, the manager's going to do that kind of deal for you without even thinking about it. I can't find any evidence that this so-called urban myth is true. In fact, I've never heard this urban myth. It's not really urban myth like hook-handed person on the roof of your car when you break down in the night kind of urban myth. Well, it certainly doesn't seem to have those kind of legs. Or hooks.

If you look into this on the internet, what you find instead are there are quite a scarily depressing amount of people who have got married actually in mcdonald's oh no i say it's i say it's scary depressing and it is because it's more than zero but why don't they go burger king at least that's the king of something well in fairness you you watch the video because usually the local press turn up and film them you watch the video there's i've seen one couple in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1999 talking about why they chose their McDonald's. I saw a couple from Bristol in 2013 explaining why they chose McDonald's.

And actually both times I watched the videos sort of preparing myself to sneer in the Jeremy Kyle style way. Did you find yourself tearing up at the romance? A little. I kind of thought, well, actually, they were really sincere in both cases. The first couple were like, well, the thing is we love McDonald's. We come here every Saturday night for dinner. romance a little i kind of thought well actually they were really sincere in both cases the first

couple were like well the thing is we love mcdonald's we come here every saturday night for dinner and uh it's a place where we feel at home and we wanted to remember that sort of 1950s about exactly the idea that an american family would get for a burger meal on saturday night exactly on their way to the sock hop and the and the bristol couple were saying this is where we met um and so i just think well you know they were saying other people don't like it but it's our wedding it's our day this is how we wanted it and we're saving the money that their wedding cost them 150 quid saving the money to uh to spend on the honeymoon we met on a pedestrian crossing a long wall straddle and please we just chose not to get married there would have been dangerous i thought we met in a mosquito infested amphitheater in the

dock in our college oh that might have been a better place actually that would have been quite a good place to get married that That would be really nice, yeah. Oh, too late now. Yeah, fuck that one up. I guess we blew it. Okay, fine, that's sort of sweet, but also still completely shit. Well, they did get a free bottle of champagne from the manager.

They weren't permitted to drink it on the premises. But they were given it by the manager in return for the thousands of pounds worth of free publicity that he was getting. Although McDonald's is not an under-advertised company. It's not, but it's not necessarily advertised in such a wholesome way. I mean, it fits so perfectly with their brand, doesn't it?

As you were saying, the American burger meal, the family. Yeah, starting a family, get married at McDonald's. Also, I've been to weddings where the food is much more expensive than that and not very good. So actually, this could be a lot worse. Although we had fish and chips at our wedding, so just because it came in an old tram is much more expensive than that and not very good so actually this could be a lot worse although we had fish and chips at our wedding so that's just because it came in an old tram yeah doesn't mean it's much classier than mcdonald's does it good fish and chips it was really good fish and chips

and there's nothing wrong with that i mean everyone likes well not everyone vegetarians don't well they had deep fried brie and deep fried mushrooms and stuff like that well everyone likes a fast food treat is what i was going to say yeah and although mcdonald's my least favorite it's still in the category. Now, if you do want to get a free McDonald's, there is a way you can do it. There are many videos online of people doing this. Is it standing outside by the bins waiting for them to throw the stuff away? It is technically breaking the law.

And I'm, again, I want to stress, not advocating this. Holding up a McDonald's with a gun, though. Don't. It's along the lines of my free pret orange juice idea. Oh, no, you're so bad. I'm sorry, I'm not advocating. I'm just explaining. McDonald's with a gun though. Don't. It's along the lines of my free Pret Orange Juice idea. Oh no, you're so bad. I'm sorry, I'm not advocating,

I'm just explaining, this is what... First the free Orange Juice, the discount cinema tickets because you pretend to be an OEP. What next?

You mastermind. The con is basically this. Go to a McDonald's drive-thru when it's busy. Okay, so there has to be a car in front and behind

otherwise this doesn't work. Do not order. Drive past yeah i know it's bad go to the first window where they take your money and say oh actually sorry i've changed my mind i was gonna have a mcflurry but i've changed my mind uh so i'm just really just seeing the line out and they'll wave you through what are they gonna say you have to order something no go to the second window and take the food that the people behind you have just ordered oh my god so the victims are both mcdonald's and the people behind you well you might keep some upset children waiting five minute longer for their mcflurry but really what are mcdonald's going to say to those people i mean they have lost their food they're going to think they're the hucksters whereas it was you your criminal mastermind as i say i don't advocate... You sort of did, but just by telling people how it's done.

That sounds like you've done it. It's interesting though, isn't it? Have you done it? Of course I've not done it. There's videos on YouTube of people doing it. Mostly French teenagers, which is interesting, doing it. Well, stay tuned for Ollie's next grifting tip coming up in a moment.

It's like John Cusack is in the room. Well, here's another question of really high-end food and drink. It's from Sam, who says, My wife, six months on is still incensed by alexander armstrong's assertion that people would be happy to pay an extra 50 pounds over and above what you would normally pay a fiver in our case for a bottle of wine for christmas dinner 50 pounds well alexander armstrong is loaded yes he's wealthier than the rest of us all those voiceovers it's the daytime quiz if you do a daytime quiz that is money for old rope brilliant

if you're in that business because you go you go to a studio you record five in a day so that's a week's worth in a day it's on over 300 days a year that show yeah so you go and you record basically a whole year's worth in three months and then you're on telly every day you get all the repeat fees when it's sold to Challenge. And it doesn't dent your career afterwards for some reason. People don't think of it like doing commercials. And yet he does also a lot of commercials. Armstrong gets away with it, doesn't he?

He does. So charming, isn't he? Like Mitch LeWerp get away with it. Yes, they're charming too. We can be charming corporates. But I saw the programme to which Sam is referring. It was a Christmas special in which Alexander Armstrong and Giles Corrin, who apparently is his brother-in-law,

which I didn't know, basically just had a huge jolly. What was the programme? Massive jolly on the BBC. It was on BBC Two and it was called something like... Alexander and Giles' Christmas Piss Up. Essentially.

And it was just them doing that thing where you completely unnecessarily... Hugh Fernie Wessingsill does this as well. I'm interested by this type of fish, so I'm going to travel to Vietnam to meet someone who knows about it. Classic Heston Blumenthal show type tactics, isn't it? Where does pepper come from? Oh, it just happens to be a really glamorous hotel in India.

Let's go there. So there was a lot of that going on. So Alexander Armstrong and Giles Corrin went on a booze trip around the world to find out about different wines. I did not realise TV had the budget anymore for this kind of thing. I know. They should just lock those people down. You're going to do something about wistful oysters and

steak and kidney pies and you're going to lump it. Yeah. Yeah. Look, get in the room and banter. That's what we paid for. Don't need any backdrop. Corrin Armstrong, here you go. Here's 20 grand. Now, talk. Could be like Smith and Jones doing that talking head thing. Exactly. It would be just the same, wouldn't it? But anyway, the premise of the show was

that, I can't remember which of them, but from the way Sam's asked the question, I presume Armstrong. Apparently. One of them had suggested a more expensive bottle of wine than the other, and they both had to travel the world and find a bottle of wine to challenge each other with

at the end for the perfect wine to accompany Christmas dinner. Such a hardship. How do they cope? They should be made saints whilst they're still alive. So Sam has a question relating to this programme. He says, my wife thinks that for the majority of people in the UK, £55 or £60 at Christmas could be more than their Christmas dinner altogether. So you can buy a lot more booze for that money than one bottle of wine.

I once bought the Iceland, I think it's £15 Christmas dinner. It wasn't for my Christmas dinner. It was for a kind of friend one that we did a week before Christmas. But it can be done. How was it? Three stars, but not terrible. How many people? Fed four to six.

Okay. Yeah. I think there were four of us, but enough food for six people. You know how it is. Impressive. That's amazing. I think, says Sam, that there are plenty of people who can afford an extra £55 or £60 at Christmas for a bottle of wine.

Which of us is right? Well, you're both right. You're both right. Some people can, some people can't. They're not mutually exclusive statements. You need to work on your logic, mate. I do think, though, that even people with pretty good taste would balk at spending that much money for a bottle of wine. I would never spend that amount of money on wine. I wouldn't even spend that much on a good bottle of whiskey. Look, I know people are going to disagree with me, but you can get good wine for a fiver, and you can definitely get good wine for

a tenner, and definitely £15 and £20. It's such a huge leap to over £50. But you're not a drinker. It's not really your thing at all. Do you acknowledge that for some people, if they love wine and they can taste the difference of a £55 bottle, then it is worth it? I think a tiny, tiny number of people,

even those who are interested in wine and keen to drink would see the difference. Apparently even in blind taste tests people don't necessarily notice the difference that much. And also I think Christmas is kind of wasting it.

You're so full of food and other things your palate is screwed. And actually you've been drinking cheap alcohol over the whole period. Unavoidably. You've been going to parties

drinking mulled wine made up of those Sainsbury's wine boxes. Bucks Fizz with like sometimes Ready Mix from Lidl. I mean it's not quality stuff so you're going to parties drinking mulled wine made up of those Sainsbury's wine boxes yeah Bucks Fizz with like sometimes ready mix from Lidl yeah I mean it's not quality stuff

so you're shot if you're drinking snowballs and eating cranberry sauce there's no way yeah you're going to tell the difference between a £5 and a £55 yeah

I think for most people as well Christmas is a particularly bad time to spend this extra money on wine because Christmas is expensive especially if you're feeding a lot of people and if you buy one bottle

of £50 wine but you've got 12 relatives coming it's not going to go around everyone so maybe if you're thinking treat wine this should be for when you've got an anniversary coming up or a special date or something like that i think that's probably right and i think if you're going to spend extra on any of the details at christmas buy a better turkey buy a better turkey that's the centerpiece of the whole meal and it is a living creature that's died for it. Yeah. Buy a twice as big Christmas tree. You won't regret it until you have to get it out of your house afterwards.

You really have lived your life by that, Maxim. I can verify. Yeah, a full bin of pine needles after this one and there's still ones around six months later. What a fantastically unseasonal question this is. It is. Well, the wife is still angry six months on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you can't rewrite these things. Yeah, that's right. No, indeed. I discovered this't rewrite these things. Yeah, that's right. No, indeed. I discovered this week reading a BuzzFeed article celebrating 30 years since the release of Gremlins that Gremlins was a summer film, which seems so odd. No, but so set at Christmas.

Exactly. And Zach Gallagher, the main guy, was saying, well, we just didn't really think about the fact that it was set at Christmas. Like, die hard. Later, it just became a Christmas classic because it was set at Christmas, but it wasn't intended to be one full of facts helen's altsman even when you haven't specifically requested them i know they just flow out of me like eat my facts that's gonna be my

new podcast that's a great title i like it i am i'm thinking of making some new shows listeners if you want that one send me some emails eat my facts well it's like it's a wonderful life wasn't meant to be a christmas film either stop it helen save it for your future podcasting career very hot summer apparently it was unbearable having to wear all the coats and stuff amazing any more facts about christmas films that aren't christmas films i'm done i've eaten all the facts you have to offer you've cooked all the facts up well it might not be the season for christmasy questions but it is the season for sport sport sport sport which is why i'll be retreating to my bunker for the rest of the summer and not coming out but even given my feelings of sport

i had a lot of fun making the answer me this sports day with you ollie and you martin because it's a bloody good album all about sporty things it is and for this episode's intermission we are going to bring you a clip from it if you like what you hear folks you can buy the album at answer me this store.com how do male athletes guarantee that they don't get erections have there been televised cases of professionals getting a stonk on and do gymnasts in particular tape down their meat just in case well the thing is there's a lot of pressure when you're representing your country at the olympic games it's probably not that arousing to be stared at by thousands of people and people with scorecards that will usually keep any kind of erectile activity down

well here's a question from ryan who is a designer at a small printing company in washington state one of our customers is a homeopath slash hypnotist slash Reiki practitioner. She puts doctor in front of her name. She might have a doctorate. And a bunch of BS credentials after it. Anyway, for an upcoming trade show, she wants me to update her brochure to describe how amazing homeopathy, Reiki and hypnosis are. What exactly else do you expect her to put in her brochure? And how they can help with just about every ailment Including cancer, PTSD, addiction The list goes on and on

As a rational person, continues Ryan I know it's all BS But by helping this woman promote herself Am I contributing to the potential death of someone Who either out of desperation or ignorance Goes to this homeopath and dies Because they got magic water instead of a treatment that is actually beneficial. I can't turn the customer away. That's not my prerogative. It's my boss's and he's a believer. So Helen,

answer me this. Help. What do I do? Well, if you can't turn the customer away, then you've got to do it, haven't you? You can't sabotage her brochure because she'll notice and tell your boss and then you'll probably get, if not a severe reprimand fired i think also you're blowing this out of proportion because surely if somebody was ill enough to die but in a way that was still preventable one would hope that even with the health care costs in america they wouldn't solely seek the advice of a reiki practitioner for instance well exactly and even on the nhs they say these things could be beneficial what they say is they they might not be prepared to pay for them because there isn't scientific backing and you should take traditional medicine too but even if it's just the placebo effect at

work all she's claiming is that she's seen positive results for a wide range of ailments which indeed maybe she has and also i don't think you would get people who would otherwise go and have chemotherapy or open heart surgery going oh oh, well, this has really converted me. People who are already somewhat interested in this will be inclined towards it. So I think she'd be preaching to the converted, wouldn't she? And there's a big difference between someone who hypothetically gives up their chemotherapy to have this

and someone who, I don't know, is a bit miserable or has joint pain and goes and feels a bit better about it. So, you know, you can't make generalisations about the kind of placebo treatment this woman's giving. Bottom line, in the commercial world, occasionally we're all asked to do things we don't entirely subscribe to, aren't we? And everyone does that for money and if you're not ethically happy with that, then

quit, but that is part of the job. There's a middle point. You could say to your boss, can you just not put me on projects where I have to work on complete bullshit. She is just going to get someone else to do it if he doesn't and the company doesn't even. So you can't prevent this information coming out. Should you stand idly by and allow it to come out?

I don't think if you go to her and go, look, this is rubbish, she's going to come around to your viewpoint. Yeah. People generally don't, do they? If in my job at my radio show, I was handed a piece of paper by the producer that was to read out a little tease

for a competition you could enter, and I deliberately sabotaged it and read it in the style of, well, I'm being paid to tell you all about the new nokia lumia don't bother entering this sounds a bit shit that wouldn't be fair would it that would be wrong it's not your job to diss the nokia lumia is it it's paying for the commercials which are on a commercial station which are ultimately paying my fees which is why i'm there i accept that that is part of the job and i get to do other things i do like in return for doing those things yeah but you wouldn't have to

say nokia lum. It's fantastic. Call in. You could just say we've got a Nokia Lumia. We've got a great competition. Yes, the competition can be fantastic. Yes, it can. You don't even really have to judge the product, do you? And I suppose the thing you could do is you could, for example,

if you really don't believe in this, take the fee that you're given as a result of this work and give it to an organisation which campaigns for reikiists and hypnotists to have more regulation in their practice okay i thought you're going to say take the fee and give it to a pharmaceutical giant well that would be the logical conclusion in a way but because the point being she's not doing anything illegal at the moment is she she's advertising her wares in a way that is legal you find bs you find dubious but until there's more regulation on alternative health she's playing within the rules.

I think it's highly unethical. I mean, I kind of agree with a lot of those things. I think you're right, the placebo effect's quite an important point, but the placebo effect doesn't work if you tell someone the medicine you're giving them is rubbish. Exactly. I suppose what he's really asking is for permission to put a little asterisk next to some of the claims he disbelieves

and then on the back page just put BS, tiny letters, next to an asterisk. You'd probably get away with that. Wouldn't you put BS in tiny letters on the backing like a wallpaper? I think what annoys people like Ryan about this is that it's very unscientific. I mean, you can show the evidence that these things don't have any effect above and beyond doing nothing

or above and beyond placebo, but yet people start talking about the alignment of the energies and how it rearranges your DNA. Yeah, but he works for a printing graphic design company i mean he must print ads all the time for you know drinks that are advertised in a way that suggests they're healthy and fun whereas actually they're full of sugar and they're going to give you type 2 diabetes i mean that's the job i've got an idea for ryan then he sets up his own business called the principal printer and he only will print brochures for things that he personally believes in and

endorses sounds like a great business idea but i think if you've got an alternative therapist going to a trade show then the cause is already out of your hands well here's a question from james who says i'm watching stephen fry in america and i noticed a greyhound bus station how observant of you ollie answer me this how did Greyhound Bus get that name? Greyhound dogs are not well known for long distance travel or carrying several thousand passengers in their tiny rib cages. They're quite quick, though. Yes. They're known for their speed, aren't they?

Yes, swiftness. Although buses aren't necessarily known for their speed. It's faster than walking. Yeah, because buses aren't known for their speed. That doesn't mean they wouldn't want to associate themselves with something that is. They're faster than American trains, to be fair, because American trains go about twice as quick as walking pace. The subliminal message, clearly,

corporately, is we will get you from A to B quickly. As long as you put a rabbit in front of the bus. But actually the answer is a little bit more complicated than that, because it could easily have been called yellow buses or blue goose lines,

or grey line, or even the superior white bus line. Terrible. A little bit racist. That sounds a bit, yeah, that's a bit Ku Klux Klan, doesn't it? They're all crap names. Well, those are all names that existed amongst fellow coach companies, which over time Greyhound bought as franchisees and co-owners, and in the end, they decided to consolidate under the name Greyhound, but they could have gone with something else.

Yeah, because it's the best one. Greyline just sounds like bus route for pensioners, doesn't it? Sounds boring, yeah. And the other one's just gibberish. And they chose Greyhound initially, although, as I say, it was a much smaller network of buses when they did, simply because apparently the owner looked out the window once or the reflection of the bus in the window thought he looked a bit like Greyhound.

How would you think a big cuboid bus looks like a skinny dog? With a bit of imagination. Or a bit of blindness. Well, you know, this is how the American dream works. A bit of imagination and entrepreneurism, you can make anything happen. Hallucination, obviously. Have you ever been on a greyhound bus?

I have, from New York City to Upper New York State, Lake George. How was it? It was fine Like the coach trip I took a greyhound from New York to New Jersey once, yeah it was quite pleasant That's just across the river isn't it? Took about ten minutes

Is it a bit like being on a coach in Britain where there are people mooning out the window and writing funny things in their breath on the window and mucking around? Everyone's a bit depressed on greyhound buses Because it's such a mythologised sort of thing. I think it depends where you get it from. Mine was full of very jivey people from New York. Jivey?

Yeah. What does that mean? Well, you know, street talk was going on at loud volume. Right, okay. A lot of hand gestures. Animated people. They were saying you were a wanker. Are you sure it wasn't the bus of the New York Sherrard team

going to an away match? No, I'm just saying, like... Lake George is a big mime centre. Like, for example, I can't remember an exact incident, but, like, someone would say something like, whoo, is it hot on here or what? That kind of thing. You've got it, Ollie.

Even though they were travelling by themselves. That is sassy. That wouldn't happen. Sassy is exactly what happened. Whereas I'm sure that wouldn't happen if you were on a Greyhound bus in Portland. It wouldn't be the same crowd. It happens quite a lot on London buses In South London

North London people don't even talk to each other No sass Sassy South But anyway this is a very apt question at the moment Because Greyhound buses are actually celebrating their centenary As we speak Congratulations Greyhound They are doing a tour around America

That's an unusual thing for them to be doing So here's what we're doing for our centenary guys We're going to have a network of buses going interstate It's just business as normal What they're doing is some buses are going interstate They're historic ones The ones that are going to break down And they're going to have onboard museums

Documenting the history of the company That would keep passengers busy for about 5 minutes And then they've gone another four-hour journey. Exactly, for a local news story it's fine, but actually if that means they've taken even just one bus out of usual service so that they can have a silly corporate exercise for local news, that's one less bus that takes me to Wisconsin. Not happy.

How many buses have you ever taken to Wisconsin? Nought. Well, it's one less than that. Okay, minus one. I know that my baby is the absolute best. I put Facebook photos up daily and my friends are impressed apart from ones who block me because they're jealous because their babies are so ugly well why not build a gallery of your kid on Squarespace with special pages for its cute feet and cute hands and cute face so my Facebook feed won't have your kid all over the place.

He looks like a scrotum. Thanks very much to Squarespace for funding this episode of Answer Me This. Yes, it is thanks to the patronage of Squarespace that we can bring you this episode. But you also should be grateful to Squarespace for providing excellent templates to help you design beautiful websites and get ready to leak gratitude all over the place because also they're offering 10 off for a whole year if you sign up to their service and use the code answer here's a question from tyler in manchester who says i go through a lot of toasters well every questionnaire brings their own skill to the table, don't they? You're supposed to eat the bread. I am on to my third toaster in 12 months.

I've had the same toaster since 1999. Yeah, well, internet dating, this is what it's doing to people, Helen. It's making everyone promiscuous. Dilettantes. Tyler says the previous two toasters had not proved fit for purpose. Do you think he thinks they're for warming up the house with? Or has he watched the Bourne films too much and he puts books in there? Does that happen?

I love that bit of the Bourne film. What happens? He rolls up a magazine, puts it in the toaster, turns the gas on, exits the house and it blows up. Oh, wow. So good. In Bourne 2. Whereas actually what would happen is... Is it would pop? Yes. Because he'd only put it on to warm.

Yeah, nothing dramatic about that. As if Tyler hadn't thrilled you enough, Ollie, he continues, I always use Warburton's bread. Me too. Tribute to Chris. And its normal size sliced loaves are always too big to fit into what would appear to be the standard toaster slot size. Buy another toaster then.

Stop buying the same type of toaster. Yeah, that's the thing. What would appear to be the standard toaster size. No, Tyler, you're buying tiny toasters. I think that's right. Because my parents have got toaster with a long slot so they can cook pita bread in it that's what you need that will fit almost any width of bread long slot i don't know what he needs is uh width no it's saying long

because one has to trim the crust before insertion oh okay interesting i was thinking thickness in in and if it was normal size sliced loaves for all those of you out there who do have a problem with thickness, obviously you would be looking for the ones that deal with bagels. Yes. Wouldn't you? There's expanding ones for you as well. There's toasters for every type of personality. And yet Tyler keeps buying the wrong one.

Tyler still struggles. It's almost like it's not the bread that's thick, but him. Deep burn. Oh, setting five. Take the bread with you when buying a toaster and make sure that it fits in it since you always buy the same bread

you weirdo. I'm not sure that's going to fly though. Tyna says I often require toast when drunk and on these occasions will dispense with the necessity of cross trimming. Do it before you go out.

Opting instead to forcefully stuff the bread into each slot resulting over time in irreparable damage to the toaster. But then surely the following morning you can wake up and clean the toaster. It's only irreparable damage if you keep forcing bits of bread into it. I think Tyler must keep forcing bread into it. But why don't you just cut the slices

in half? Then you don't have to do anything particularly fiddly. Rip it in half. Those are two brilliant solutions. Why is everything so difficult for Tyler? What Jamie Oliver would say is he'd say great tip money saving meal

you come back you've had a few drinks been out with the lads you come back you want a toasty you want Jamie's toasty cheesy marmite treat

what he'd do is he'd prepare it in some sort of plastic and then put it in the freezer ready to go into the freezer they'd be half size

the crust would already be off he'd say prepare a year of hangover meals and keep it in the freezer for when you need it keep your toast in the freezer brilliant that's what you do what i don't understand is how tyler has not figured this out and yet has sent us an email which is perfectly

punctuated and spelt tyler says the other night saw me several sheets to the wind and predictably i reached for the bread and a large jar of marmite and approached the toaster determined to make toast as mr warburton intended, fully crusted. I inserted the two slices awkwardly and pushed down the handle. Can you guess what happened next? Can you? It's pretty exciting, isn't it? The suspense! Someone call HBO.

This guy has a series in him. This is like a horror film, isn't it? The bread popped straight back up again. I tried again. It popped back up again. Right. With the dogged optimism of the perpetual drunkard I tried a third time with the same result Oh see in a fairy story the third time something different would happen

You'd learn a life lesson The toast fairy comes And magically shrinks the toast at perfect It was then that I realised the toaster wasn't plugged in Right Once plugged in the mechanism kicked into action I have noticed this with previous toasters Oh you're more observant than I'd thought

You can't engage the bread holding slots unless the toaster is switched on so finally yes ollie answer me this all right why don't toast why won't someone let me end my life i have nothing more to give toaster in the bar why don't toasters allow you to do this when the power is off is it some sort of safety function okay why don't toasters allow you to do this when the power is off. Is it some sort of safety function? Okay, why don't toasters allow you to engage the toast holding mechanism when they're not plugged in? Yes. Is that right? That's the question he's asking. Yes, and also I would say if you've been using the toaster too much

then it will pop the bread up until it's had a chance to cool down a bit. So the answer's obvious, isn't it? Well, the answer as I see it is because it is, because it is the action of pushing the toast down, which activates the heat in most toasters, imagine if, Tyler, the toaster was unplugged, as it was when you were forcefully trying to push Mr Warburton's finest down into its crevices,

and you'd succeeded in locking the mechanism. Yes. But there was no bread in there at all. Oh, damn. Imagine you then turned the plug on and the heat was activated. You could then cause a fire. Even if the bread was in there and you'd just forgotten about it by the time you switched the plug on.

Yeah, because you're so drunk. No, that's not the reason. Why? Because that could still happen when the toast was on, couldn't it? You could still do the same thing. You could still push the mechanism down while it was on. I think the more reasonable reason is, let's say you depress it, you start toasting, the toast gets really, really hot, you turn it off, but there's still residual heat coming through the system,

and so the toast continues to heat, and that's when it could cause a fire. And at that point, you'll have wandered off, left it unattended. Anyway, yes, it is a wandered off, left it unattended. Well, well a day. Anyway, yes, it is a safety function, isn't it? Whichever thesis you accept, it's obviously a safety function and quite a sensible one. And I'm still searching for that toaster which throws the toast up into the air like in adverts.

Or in the Morecambe and Wisecatch. Yeah, never found one. I think the whole idea of the dramatic popping toaster has actually been in decline since the 1950s i think people prefer a subtle emotion these days if anything i think toast has been in decline for the last couple of decades but apparently now it's the new ridiculous artisanal trend food well of course it is because all of these artisanal trend foods are about taking something for which the ingredients are very cheap and then charging you too much money for them so as to maximize profits

yeah if you can do it with hot dogs and burgers and now popcorn, hello, it's corn, then obviously, yeah, the next thing would be just bread. Absolutely. Because, yeah, if you charge a hipster five quid for bread

and it costs you a slice of 5p, yeah, brilliant. I remember in the early 90s there was an item on Watchdog because, yeah, remember in the Pop-Tart adverts, the Pop-Tart would fly up and people would grab it and eat their Pop-Tart adverts, the Pop-Tart would fly up and people

would grab it and eat it. Yes. Burn yourself. People actually tried to do that and of course it's full of molten

liquid and there was a whole TV programme about people that had got something directly out of the toaster, grabbed it and

tried to eat it. Even the slogan, do you remember So Hot They're Cool? Yeah. So hot they're cool.

They mean two different types of heat and coolness. It's a very clever piece of wordplay by Kellogg's. It's a very dangerous piece of wordplay. But it's a dangerous piece of wordplay. I think, Tyler, do not attempt the Pop-Tarts. You're not ready. Oh, well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This.

But don't worry, because if you supply questions by email, phone or Skype, well, there will be another episode of Answer Me This. That's all I ask of you. So go to our website, answermethispodcast.com to observe our contact details and also to find out where we are on Twitter and Facebook. And all that remains for us to say

is very big thanks again to squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode. Thank you very much. And we have other podcast side projects which we do, which you might like to know about. To keep you going for the next two weeks before we're back with the next episode. Currently, I am the presenter of a new podcast which is all about the media in Britain. And what's it called? It is called The Media Podcast.

Where did they get that idea from? And you can find it at themediapodcast.com so check that out. Helen, your side project? Well, I'm doing Sound Women. Obviously I'm going to start Eat My Fact. Every Thursday when there isn't an episode of Answer Me This, I am putting posts up on our website with other podcasts I've been listening

to and been in, so if you're interested in extra ear matter, then check those out. And Martin? I am involved in a podcast called Braintrain, which is clever people asking other clever people questions about clever things. Sounds a bit elitist. It's cool, actually.

It's good fun. This week was about tenancy law, which is way more interesting than it sounds, so I do really recommend it. I think I'm interested in tenancy law. Yeah, it's quite like... Let's not have the discussion now. Not that interesting.

Listen to Braintrain. Braintrain podcast on SoundCloud. And listeners, we just beseech you to join us again in a fortnight for more answer me this FANS SING