Answer Me This! - AMT297: Sea Monkeys, Peppers and 'Gobbing in the Pot'

Episode Date: September 4, 2014

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If Scotland get independence, can we send back the bagpipes? Us to be this, us to be this Is a travel lodge shower any better than wet wipes? Us to be this, us to be this Helen and Ollie, us to be this To pick up where we left off in last episode, talking about cake, Ian has written in to say, I bought a large bar of Kendall Mint Cake in the late 90s.

It was a great vintage of Kendall mint cake, wasn't it? I mean, if I just listed everything I bought in the late 90s, we actually know I'll save that for a future episode. Yeah, really unflattering trousers. Some fake DMs that were from BHS and therefore the least DMy DMs you could possibly imagine. CDs for 15.99. Films on VHS.

Yeah. Enough of this 90s nostalgia though. Ian says, I kept my Kendall mint cake in my rucksack just in case I needed a sugar hit when out in the mountains. We moved to Australia and 16 years later found ourselves walking up in the Blue Mountains inland from Sydney. Very beautiful, I can confirm. It's a good cake shop, so you don't need this candle mint cake.

He says, it was a real slog down into the valley and several hours later, after having taken a wrong turn, we found ourselves at the foot of the massive cliffside vertical ladder route out. Terrifying. The only thing we had in the rucksack, assuming it means food rather than otherwise why I'd be carrying an empty rucksack, was this battered, bent and slightly worn block of candle mint cake. Wow, after 16 years. Yeah.

It tasted as you would have expected. Remoting. Sugary with a mint taste. I shit you not, the effect on our energy levels was surprisingly good and quick. And we did manage to hike out. Yay! I reckon if it was not for the mint cake, we would have simply perished and end up as dingo fodder. Well, there you go.

Mint cake saves lives. 16 years on, the mint cake finally comes into its own. Isn't that a beautiful story? Well, sort of. I mean, I could look at the same story from the perspective of you know cynicism that i was expressing in the last episode and say this tells you everything you need to know about the taste of kendall mint cake it was in a rucksack for 16 years and at not one point were you even remotely tempted to eat the thing until you thought you might die and there was literally nothing else to eat except

your partner or your own legs apropos of foods that we don't particularly enjoy eating every year i make a vast amount of gingerbread for my annual gingerbread day festivity in december you know i love gingerbread day i hate gingerbread yeah i don't like gingerbread that's why it's wise for someone like you to host a food party with gingerbread because you're not tempted to eat it all year not at all yeah but there's the thing i've got some gingerbread dough i made in december in the fridge that i never got around to cooking so we had so much gingerbread it's still not gone off what sorcery is in gingerbread dough I made in December in the fridge that I never got around to cooking because we had so much gingerbread. It's still not gone off. What sorcery is in gingerbread?

I made it myself. It's not full of preservatives or anything. When the whole world explodes, all that will be left is your gingerbread. Respect the gingerbread. People will somehow try and clue together what our civilisation was from that. Hello, my name's Sam and I'm from Bristol. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Is there any nutritional difference

between the different colour peppers? Because I've not really got any preference, but in a state of mild racism, I often find myself leaning more towards the red peppers. I actually have a strong preference. Yes. Strong preference for orange. I'm very anti-green.

I'm so anti-green. But do you know, you know, it's the same pepper, it's just the green one is picked when it's not ripe and if you leave it on the plant for longer it becomes yellow, then orange,

then red. Yes. Wow. Yes. Good fact. We are early in this episode for that kind of quality fact. Pepper fact.

Curd surge last time, pepper fact this time. Stuff me with couscous and put me in the oven, I'm done. If you were to characterize the difference between the flavor difference between those peppers how would it how would you characterize it why is a red pepper better i'm not sure in a blind taste test i could

taste the difference between yellow red and orange but i could taste green and what's the difference and is green the earliest stages yeah it tastes like that it does less flavorsome it's so sweet isn't it yeah yeah the skin is more of an annoyance. Yes. So the texture is also less pleasant. But yeah, the taste is like, I don't know, bitter? Yes. I mean...

And I think what it is as well is often I put a pepper into a salad to colourfy the salad as much as anything. But also so that you can eat a rainbow, which is meant to be a very nutritional thing to do. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Is that a fad diet thing or is that a real thing? I think that's a real thing. Okay. But not Skittles.

That doesn't count. And not one of those fruit pastels lollies but um you know very often obviously the base of a salad in certainly in western europe is is lettuce yes and often cucumber and spring onion green is done yeah so then i'm kind of thinking right i want orange yeah that's why orange tomatoes are bringing the red i'm quite pleased that orange is the same pepper i'm pleased to know that because i somewhere in the back of my mind i was worried it seemed to me that green and red were natural but orange might have been man intervened you don't see as many oranges around i wonder whether it's just quite a short picking season here's the thing they bother picking the green ones that we don't like and presumably therefore no one likes because i think they

travel a bit better because they're firmer because they're nastier i presume they probably have a slightly longer life as well if they're babies. Yeah, if they're not ripe, then they're not going to go off as quickly, are they? So anyway, as an anti-green pepper person, I was delighted to find that they are less nutritious than the other peppers. They truly are pointless, aren't they? I imagine the reason then that they get sold in those weird multi-packs that you can buy in Sainsbury's, you know, you get green, yellow, red, get green yellow red i think typically traffic light of peppers yeah i think the reason they're sold

like that is to sort of fob off the green one on the consumer because they must be i assumed cheaper for the supermarket yeah like when your parents send you out like right you can go and do this as long as you take your little sister with you no but mom well then you can't go exactly yeah obviously it's not a familiar scenario to you but as the youngest of three it is to me no i can understand that. I feel a bit sad that in that story Helen just told, she was the green pepper. Oh, God.

She was the youngest. I'm the red pepper. I'm unripe. I feel brilliant. I'm of less nutritional value. I'm a butternut squash, proud and alone. You're a butternut squash in a pepper's world. So, anyway, they do all have roughly the same number of calories

and the same amount of carbohydrate and protein and so on so they're very nutritious food but when it comes to vitamins uh green peppers have much less than than yellow and red has more than all of the other colors of peppers so red's the best red's the best interesting red i would happily say is the funnest one yeah i mean i i prefer orange but i'm now I know That red's the best I might just go for red Here's a question From Trevor Who says

Ollie answer me this Why do some men Gob in the pot Before urinating Please explain This phenomenon to me Because as a woman I do not know

What this is Gob in the pot He's talking about When you're having A wee at a urinal Some men I say some men I do this

You look down And you spit Before you have a wee Have you ever done that No Why Have you ever Observed it happening Have you ever urinated No I mean I do this. You look down and you spit before you have a wee. You ever done that? No. Why? Have you ever observed it happening? Have you ever urinated? I guess I must have seen men spitting.

Maybe I just thought it was a good opportunity for them to play their thoughts. It's not like a physics thing, is it? Well, I don't know. I'll tell you my reasons and then you can tell me whether it's a physics thing. I have two reasons for doing this, Trevor. And the two reasons are as follows it's all right it's fine there's nothing weird about this you like to leave your dna wherever you go

i'm pleased to be demystifying this because i think it's quite simple um and it's something that i developed intuitively you know i didn't think oh i'm going to partake in this gobbing in the pot phenomenon i just thought oh i'm going to start doing this yeah it's just something that i do naturally gob on that bandwagon and i think, to me, this is the same as whether you squeeze or shake at the end. It's just... I do both. Well, that's fine as well. It's very thorough, Martin.

I think we're a broad church in Britain's pissing community. Britain's pissing church. No, I'll go there. I'll go to the pissing church. Generally, I think the word community is totally misused, but that was one of the biggest misuses since everyone pisses. There are two reasons why I do it. Reason the first, spitting almost anywhere else in public is disgusting.

Good point. But I do sometimes get a residue of spittle and I would like to evacuate it. Sometimes I do it into a tissue, sometimes I do it into a bin, but more frequently I feel more comfortable doing it into a toilet because into a toilet it's not frowned upon. And it feels quite satisfying to spit into a tissue, sometimes I do it into a bin, but more frequently I feel more comfortable doing it into a toilet. Because into a toilet it's not frowned upon, and it feels quite satisfying to spit into a toilet. You see it go straight away, cleanly.

When it's a communal urinal like a trough, it's not so nice, but if you've got your own personal pot I feel that's a safe and hygienic way to evacuate fluid from my mouth. Do you enjoy seeing the splosh when it goes into a toilet? Enjoy is too strong a word. Relish. Revelling. No is too strong a word. Relish. Revelin.

No, none of the above. Simply divine. Is it like an amelie thing? It's like the same satisfaction you get from popping the lid off a bottle of beer. Satisfaction is the right word. Small tactile pleasure. You get a small amount of satisfaction from it. Satisfaction and evacuation. Indeed.

So that's the first reason. And the second reason is I find that by evacuating liquid from my mouth into the urinal, I am simulating the effect that I'm about to follow up with with my urinary contribution. It's like a little clue of the throat before you

go into the aria. And I find that that helps me relax and get in mode. I can do this. Guys, we can do this. Yeah. Because you're the kind of guy that talks to his penis. But if I'm feeling a bit parauretic that day, I can think, right, OK, relax. It's OK.

We're here to piss. You know, you're taking your time. You've evacuated some other fluids. Let's walk up to this. Yeah. Let's try one from every orifice before we go to the main event. No, but you know how sometimes if you're struggling, you can think about a water fountain. It's more likely to happen. Yeah, yeah. Or a waterfall. You know, sometimes if you're struggling you can think about a water fountain it's more likely to happen yeah or a waterfall you know

whereas if you're talking to someone or looking around less likely to happen is that if you're looking at liquid coming out your body and you're following through with more liquid it helps so those are the two reasons is that physics martin no i more thought i was thinking of if it's an unfamiliar vinyl yeah and you're a little bit concerned about getting a lot of splash back yes or pissing on your own feet yes you want to just kind of go what's the if liquid comes out of my body what's the arc that's going to follow

to go into the to go into the iron line it's the canary down the mine yeah it's like firing a test shot across the bows yeah okay

yeah well maybe there's that element going on somewhere in the back of my brain as well but not purposefully I have got pretty good physical intuition

I think at this point so I just go straight for it but I can understand if you're not a physicist why you would do that. It's also habit forming, I think, is the other thing. Like heroin? Yeah, or Steve Wright in the afternoon. You know, whatever it is. He's going to be so flattered if he ever

discovers the comparison. Whatever it is that you do on a daily basis, you know, based on environments. I think if it becomes psychosomatic, you see the spit and then you follow with piss. You know, it becomes part of the pattern Pavlovian Exactly Like heroin

Or Pavlova I've got a question Email your question To answer me this podcast At googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Right, 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 Darius and Claudia writing from Shanghai. But I assume they're not from Shanghai. I assume they're staying in a hotel there because they say,

Helen, answer me this. Why are the glasses for orange juice at hotel buffets so bloody small? More often than not, you are on holiday and hence hungover and in need of lots of liquid. Well, first of all, I'd love it if more often than not that I was on holiday. But more often than not, I'm not on holiday. And more often than not, you're never hungover. I've never been hungover on holiday. I can't imagine it.

Martin was hungover when he had a beer at 10 in the morning, but that meant the breakfast orange juice was a whole day away I just went and had a lie down, it was fine I had my once in a decade spewing up from alcohol hangover just the other week Congratulations And I managed to do it all over a VIP queue of PR people at the V Festival

Ideal V for Vom It was a great way to introduce myself into the backstage area Thanks for the in-night Hello Jesse J Anyway, Darius and Claudia continue It's a great way to introduce myself into the backstage area. Thanks for the in-night. Hello, Jessie J. Anyway, Darius and Claudia continue. You know, when you're hungover, when you're on holiday, you're necking back orange juice, three or four glasses, they say,

before finally taking another two or three glasses to the table. So they're drinking three or four glasses. Seven glasses of juice. Standing at the buffet, they're knocking back the juice. That's insane. I love doing that. They continue The obvious answer

To this pressing question As to why hotels Provide small glasses Is that they're trying To save money And hence Not provide big glasses They're trying to save

Waste juice too However We don't buy that Since plates Are often normal size And a few extra glasses Of juice Is not going to

Break the bank I wish Alan partridge was real and went on holiday with these guys i think you're my big glass i think you're misunderstanding buffet psychology here um because i think the psychology for most of us even when we're told eat and drink as much as you like is we fill the plate yes that's why they provide smaller plates that's the reason and you're right it's not going to break the bank for one person for you to give you a larger glass but across say a year of people getting orange juice that might save them a few hundred quid and so it's worth it isn't it when they're choosing cutlery that's

that's the reason also unlike most of the food on the buffet even in i'd imagine that they can use the orange juice on the subsequent day whereas the fried eggs not so much good point and also i imagine once it's made contact with the air you can't you know you need to keep it inside the receptacle as long as possible you don't want extra juice being poured out into glasses that isn't gonna get drunk yeah you just don't want to come out and clear the room and there are three quarter full pint glasses of orange juice to you because it's an expensive product compared to a lot of the breakfast products that said although i understand buffet psychology as i have just illustrated expert thank you if you're an expert. Thank you. If only I could.

I went to the Pizza Hut salad buffet the other day. Oh, did you? It's a fiver. I was on the strand. I wanted a salad. It seemed to tick boxes for me. Even though there's a branch of Leon on the strand. Yeah, but you can't sit in Leon for two hours

listening to music from 15 years ago that you don't hear very often and no one bother you. You make a strong case. And so I went in to have the salad bar. I know it's basic but i was happy and these days you get couscous on a pizza salad bar i know truly we are all middle class now they've joined the 90s um and i paid for a main course salad bar and that's fiverr

and that's a fiverr good deal what size plate now well this is the issue what they have as a standard salad bar receptacle is a small bowl very round i'm imagining very round small bowl and that's a bit like a cereal bowl really and that's because and i understand this as well like i say i understand buffet psychology that's because bloody did most most people who get a salad bar and pizza are getting it as a freebie with a pizza for them it's just a side show indeed and they want to discourage you picking out on the salad because they want you to eat the pizza because that's cheaper for them and then they want you to buy ice cream factory but by the time you actually get it be too full

to consume much which is fine however i the health conscious consumer have gone in there and asked for a main course salad bar you know something other people literally get for free i'm willing to pay a fiver for it wow i think i should be allowed a plate but no i had to go up and help myself using a bowl. So to have a main course salad... Oh, the humanity! You know what? You could have popped into the paper, Chase, that's just down the way, bought a plate,

decanted your salad bowl onto the plate. And of course, that's what I did. What I actually did is the staff were quite busy and didn't seem that bothered. So I reached down into where I noticed the staff keep the plates next to the salad bar. So if anyone asks for an extra plate for their pizza, I took one of those and I put the salad on there. I thought, I'm not going to keep filling up a bowl and emptying it onto a plate.

I feel like an idiot. Yeah, you're wasting time. Exactly. And I didn't eat any more salad than I would have otherwise. Well, there's no control experiment. That said, you know, I've become an expert of the downmarket salad bar recently. You are the buffet psychologist, the foremost buffet psychologist of your generation. May I say...

One must research. Snobs are missing out on the Harvester meal deal. £11 for half chicken, chips, unlimited salad, a pint of carling and a giant chocolate sundae. That's extraordinary, isn't it? Is that the original spit roast? No, it's similar to the original spit roast. And how much, though, to get them to call an ambulance for you afterwards?

It'll be £200 for the phone call. Also, returning to Darius and Claudia's question, you can fit more small glasses into an industrial dishwasher than large ones. If you're getting a lot of people through the hotel, you need the glasses to come back quickly. Do you think because the small glasses have a lower centre of gravity, there's less opportunity for hungover guests to commit acts of spillage also uh another area we haven't really discussed here so much to say often breakfast buff i know in a three-star hotel probably would just be orange juice but in a

four or five-star hotel often there'll be a selection yes you want to go back you want to try them all. Exactly. Not the apple because it's always that weird sugar water stuff. Yeah. Rubbish. But because they're small glasses, I think you are more inclined to try a bit of everything. And that's quite nice about a hotel buffet, isn't it? Like I would never have cold meat for breakfast at home.

But since it's there, I'll have a little bit. I'd never have cheese for breakfast at home since it's there, I'll have a bit. But when in Rome. Exactly. If itami for breakfast I think I will Yeah Actually Rome is not renowned

For its breakfasts No probably not Italy they don't go for it so much But I wouldn't know That Like Bob Dylan As I get older I like grapefruit juice

Does Bob Dylan like grapefruit juice? No I like Bob Dylan Now I'm getting older Really you do? A little bit A bit When did you start liking Bob Dylan? I was listening listening to absolute 60s the other day and the track came on and i was like oh that's quite good shit it's bob dylan what have i become who am i i'm a lie to myself it's okay it was like a roaring stone it's mainstream and it wasn't it wasn't wow it was one that i didn't know but i thought this is quite good under 10 minutes long because that will help date it it was a two minute pop song Almost certainly early 60s

But I thought fuck I'm really changing And if it weren't for the holiday in Media City Offering a very small serving of grapefruit juice So that I could try a bit That was the absolute 60s of the juice world for me I tried it and I thought oh actually yeah Grapefruit it's alright my taste buds are changing As I get older

I love grapefruit juice for breakfast It's like a slap in the face with a wet I get older. I love grapefruit juice for breakfast. Yeah, but you're older. It's like a slap in the face with a wet coat, isn't it? Well, we're sticking with the breakfast theme for today's intermission, which is from episode 20 from way back in 2007. And it's available now, as are all of our first 170 episodes and our albums, at answermethisstore.com. And if you buy anything from there, you're supporting this show.

So well done, you. Regular question here, Nick. He he says helen answer me this where does the word or maybe even the substance muesli come from i can't imagine a culture he says where all that oat and rusk crap is so readily available and would come up with a word like muesli well that's because nick can't imagine switzerland which is where muesli was invented. Well, actually, I think I've got a bit of a mental block on Switzerland as well. It's just too neutral for you to be able to take in. The word comes from a German word that meant mush. I can also tell you that muesli was invented in the early 1900s

by the Swiss doctor Maximilian Bertabene, and it was to feed invalids and fill them up with lots of vitamins and carbohydrates. What do you mean to feed invalids? Well, because, you know, they can't digest real food that tastes nice, so they have to eat stuff that looks like horse biscuits. God, it doesn't rain at Paws, eh? Can you

imagine? Got TB, you're in a sanatorium. You wouldn't want some muesli. It's the last thing you'd want. You might want a kinder surprise just to cheer up your days as you're being sat on the side of a mountain with fresh air going through your damaged lungs. Yeah. Just to cheer up your days as you're being sat on the side of a mountain with fresh air going through your damaged lungs. Shall we take a question from our phone line, Helen?

I feel like it's time. I feel like it's time. I'm glad you said that. If you'd said no, I don't know what I would have done. You would have just steamed ahead regardless. And if you want to ask us a question using your voice rather than your email skills, then you call this number. 0208 123 58 007 Or you Skype answer me this. It's reassuring to think about email as a skill. Makes me feel I have one more thing to offer the world.

It's Ben from North Norfolk. I was taking a walk at the beach after work and I was thinking about sea monkeys. I had them on a couple of occasions as a child and as far as I can remember you seemingly create life out of a packet mix. So Helen and Ollie, answer me this, how are sea monkeys a thing? How is that physically possible? I'm surprised that Ben had sea monkeys a couple of times because I think once is really giving you the gist of sea monkeys and the repeat is only going to be even more disappointing than the original time did you

have sea monkeys no you know they're on my very long list of toys that I was deprived as a child wow and yet I had them well if it's any comfort Ollie sea monkeys are an awful toy because they're not a toy they're living creatures yeah because they're living creatures not a toy but they're horrible living creatures because they're just they're just shrimps so on toy, they're living creatures. Yeah, because they're living creatures, not a toy. But they're horrible living creatures because they're just shrimps. So on the box, they're these cute little slightly alien smiley creatures. Triumph of marketing, isn't it? Yeah, what they grow into are small beige skinny shrimps. And apparently the guy who marketed them just called them sea monkeys

because they have long tails. That's like monkeys. And yet they've got the front end of a horrible insect. Didn't go with that, did he? But I think it is remarkable that something can be freeze-dried. Is it eggs, then? It's shrimp eggs you add to water. Yeah, so it's a kind of brine shrimp, and their eggs go into a state known as cryptobiosis,

which various species can do if conditions are adverse. For instance, there's no food, or the weather is too freezing, or too hot for them to survive, or dehydration. So they artificially induce that into this particular hybrid of brine shrimps that this guy invented. Well, of course, we can do that, can't we? If you freeze semen or eggs. Whereas these are the eggs ready to hatch.

Oh, okay. Oh, right. And then you put them in the water. Can't be tap water because the copper will kill the sea monkeys with the special food stuff, which is just like spirulina and something else. And they hatch into horrible little shrimps. I think that's kind of a brilliant thing for kids to do, though. Sure, yeah, the idea is brilliant,

but actually what you've got is just something you can look at that is ugly. But it was invented in 1957 by Harold von Braunhut, who was an American mail-order marketer and inventor, and he had 196 patents for... Like, one of them was that, you know, when you get this card with a face on it and you get it wet and crystals grow out like hair oh yeah that's one of those and he also uh created x-ray specs and also he had a patent just for hermit crabs i bet you can't patent those

well i bet he was really irritating at a party yeah and also look what i got yeah it's like oh just put it away look at my patented invisible goldfish guaranteed to stay invisible what a dick you'd just be like has anyone got a fork and he'd be I have

bendy fork just go away look at me 196 bad jokes patented so yeah he marketed them as instant life

and then changed it to sea monkeys presumably because more kids want monkeys than something that sounds like a biblical miracle and I read that

what he did which was interesting and I guess links the x-ray specs to the sea monkeys was he used to spend a lot of advertising in comic books yes before anyone else thought about doing that yeah seems obvious now isn't i mean it's comic-com now isn't it's grown to be a massive industry but at the time the idea of targeting squarely basically 11 year old geeks yeah i wonder whether there was a sort of taboo about advertising directly to kids but i think it meant that he could introduce this sci-fi adventure idea

to a packet of freeze-dried shrimp cysts. That's right, there's a sense that they're from another Earth, isn't there? Yeah, exactly. And they still have that in the way they're marketed now. Although the thing is, I get why parents think it's a good idea for their children to have a gerbil or a bunny rabbit, because it teaches the value of life because inevitably at some point during the ownership the death the pet's gonna

die yeah and that's supposed to be one of the life lessons that your children learn by looking after a small furry thing and also they realize the responsibilities of looking after a real life furry thing indeed and yet it seems to me that sea monkeys is almost the exact opposite lesson of that thankless completely. Completely thankless. They die and then you just go and buy another one from Tesco for a tenner. You have no emotional attachment to it. You can get free refills. Yes.

Seriously? Yes. Well, see, even worse then. There's no emotional connection and you don't learn anything about responsibility because they're going to hatch whatever you do, basically, so long as you follow the instructions. The only interest is seeing what a tub full of water that you've poured a sachet of what looks like

dust into eight days later is full of beige shrimps after you've had that realization like wow yeah where are you going from there at least when you grow cress on a damp piece of kitchen paper like wow plants growing on kitchen paper you can eat it how do the shrimps live for they can live for quite a long time and the eggs can stay valid years. So if you've got an old set of sea monkeys that you haven't animated yet, they could still be good. Wow. It sort of gives you a bit of a God complex, doesn't it?

I will bring life to these creatures when I feel like it. Now, why do you think no one gave you sea monkeys when you were a child? Again, the opposite lesson you want a kid to have, really, from owning a pet. But it shows you that being the lord of a world full of living creatures is quite boring. Has its responsibilities as well.

Yeah. Being God is not as much fun as you think it is. No, you're just looking at these little dicks wandering around doing nothing of interest. Can't even contemplate your incredible intelligence. Obviously, I did cast them out of the Garden of Eden. I, at the age of 10, rescued, in inverted commas, a worm from the garden of my boarding house. You kidnapped a worm. Yeah.

And I thought I'd look after it as a pet and i called it freddie and i put it in um like a tupperware container you fritzled it um yeah uh i didn't put holes in the lid and i didn't feed it um i just thought if i had some mud in some tupperware that that's what it's like outside what would be the difference the worm will live so you put some mud in the tupperware yeah no no no absolutely i put mud and grass and everything i thought freddie would need to live. You basically made a hospice. I basically made a gas chamber for the worm.

You made a Swiss clinic for worm. I thought that that's all it would need and I thought I was liberating it in some strange way because it was you know, it had guarantees. You were liberating it from the hell that is being alive. Yeah. Anyway, I kept it under my bed in the boarding house. Oh, God! For a week without looking at it

did you tell anyone about it no because you know i knew that we weren't allowed pets and i'd be in trouble if i did oh you just you just wanted something to love yeah exactly it's beautiful and anyway a week later i opened up the tupperware to see how freddie was doing and there was just this massive furry decomposed worm there and mud yeah were you sad um were you like freddie you left me you bastard they! They all leave. I was sad, but I instantly realised it was my fault. I realised what had happened here is I'd killed a worm. And try as I might,

I couldn't really recontextualise that to tell another story here. But then were you like, Freddy, it was your fault for crawling into my hands. You were victim-blaming Freddy. No, it was humbling. What I didn't do is I didn't think, and I think this is what makes me different from the serial killers that you mentioned. What I didn't do is i didn't think and i think this is what makes me different from the serial killers that you mentioned i think what i didn't do is think

oh that one didn't work i'll try again but you know at risk that i might kill it again yeah i thought right okay i'm killing things here that was the opposite of my intention i'm going to stop so when you got coco your cat you did you thought i'm not going to keep her in tupperware uh no i didn't even have that thought ellen you'll be pleased to know didn't even occur to me, Ellen. You'll be pleased to know. Good, good. Didn't even occur to me. You've really come a long way. I have. I put my picture on Tinder, but nobody swiped right. I went on Match and OKCupid, no suitors would bite. My body clock is ticking and I need to find my Mr. Right. Or at least a willing donor.

With a personal website built through squarespace.com, you can edit text and pictures till you look like the bomb and if you don't find a man at least be comforted by the peeping toms. It's a cold comfort I just want to be loved. Thanks be to squarespace.com for supporting this episode of Answer Me This and for beautifying the web with their easily customizable websites. You can enjoy all the possibilities of those during a free two-week trial and then if you want to sign up for one of their excellent hosting packages use the code answer to get 10 off for a whole year right ollie what's next on the question conveyor belt following our discussions about

bridal bouquets and also i guess the general onslaught of summer weddings. Onslaught! Well, it can feel like that. Release the harms. It can feel like that when you go to wedding after wedding in the summer. Yeah. We have received quite a lot of questions of weddings over the past few weeks. People will insist having them and inviting people to them, and that creates queries, doesn't it?

It does. Anyway, we've had quite a few questions of weddings, so we're going to try and get through as many as we can. Yes. This is from Claire in Allestock, who says, Helen, answer me this, who is responsible for supplying the confetti at a wedding? The person in charge of all of the armaments.

I thought the bride and groom, continues Claire, bought it for their guests and left it on the side for them to pick up before or after the ceremony. But when I told my mum and fiancé this, they looked at me like I was mad and said that the guests bring their own confetti it's terribly impredict to provide confetti for the guests i've never even heard

this tradition before says claire and none of the online suppliers for things like confetti and chair covers and all the other random shit you apparently need resist the chair covers down with chair covers seem to be pitched at wedding guests um it's honestly i i've never known the codification of confetti because i've never bought it it's just there isn't it i've never even thought about it and yet it is always there i bet if no one bought it would still be there somehow i don't even know if there was confetti at our own wedding can you remember martin were we confetted i don't think so no i think it's the responsibility of the best man in the ushers. Best man? Now I feel bad because I've been best man twice and not even thought about it. Or maybe a head bride's match if there's one of those.

It feels like the kind of thing that would more likely fall to the women, doesn't it? And in fact, thinking about it now, I've usually been offered confetti by women who are attached to the bridal party but not in an official capacity. Yes, me too. Maybe a sister-in-law but not a bridesmaid. I think what you just said would sound sexist if I'd said it. Why is it something that naturally falls to the women? Because, in broad brushstrokes, I don't think I've ever seen a man

willingly acknowledge the presence of confetti. Yeah, well, imagine how upset the confetti-loving men of this world that are listening to this podcast are now, Helen, that you're judging them. Maybe they'll start making confetti in masculine shapes like racing cars. I really like confetti. Do you? Why? Yeah, why? It's great. Everything feels like a party when there's confetti why why yeah why it's great it's just

why is it great everything feels like a party when there's confetti everyone looks like they've got loads of dandruff when the confetti's falling on them i do like it at a pop gig when you're not expecting it and there's a confetti explosion silver confetti yeah sure different yeah but at a wedding you are expecting it you feel like you're in a winter wonderland no you don't okay right here's the distinction at a pop concert when it explodes it comes out of a massive gun and showers the whole audience and that's fun at a wedding

three middle-aged women throw it out their hands and it comes out in clumps that's not the same so take a confetti gun to the wedding then you'd have a better time if weddings had confetti guns

I'm in I'd heard dry flower petals is the new thing at the moment well I think because they don't kill birds they're biodegradable as well yeah because I've been to a wedding

where they threw rice which is traditional in a lot of places but it's quite painful for the bride and groom to receive to clean the eye and also i think if the birds eat it then they can die as we've covered in a past episode good to recap it though it is yes yeah you know we've got to do our bit for the birds it's so synonymous as well with weddings confetti isn't it even though it does get used at sporting events and other things kind of like popcorn with cinema yeah people eat popcorn it's one of the big snack trends of the year and yet still you say popcorn you think cinema you say confetti you think wedding yeah i think it's because it's such an unnecessary thing and again feeds into this

novelty of things you do at weddings it's like fancy rain like seat covers like seat covers why do they make you so angry why do you really want me to get into this on agent really want me to because i'm going to start smashing stuff because they're so completely unnecessary people obsess over i don't know we're like how much how much am i going to spend on seat covers no one cares anyone at the wedding if their enjoyment is spoiled by the appearance of the chairs you failed at every other aspect of the wedding true but almost everything about the presentational aspects of a party pin lighting wedding favors the cake it's all unnecessary really yeah but cake is nice to eat chair covers alcohol that's necessary yes cameras necessary and people the marriage vows

everything else is gratuitous so why not think about seat covers if you can they're a flash point for me here is my favorite sentence from the wikipedia article about confetti confetti are commonly used at social gatherings such as parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs but are considered taboo at funerals.

I just love the idea that anyone's ever tried that. Do you think there's been a niche for black funeral confetti? Throw little lumps of coal. Oh, that would be like maybe at a New Orleans funeral when you're awake

with a big brass band and people start chucking black confetti around. That'd be great. People say, don't they, I don't want it to be a funeral. I want it to be a celebration in my life chuck my ashes around like confetti yeah but actually no one's in the mood um here's another question of weddings it's from

steven who says in october i am marrying my partner digby congratulations our six nieces are going to put on lovely dresses and do their hair all fancy and proceed us down the aisle. But what does this make them? They can't be bridesmaids, as there is no bride. And groomsmaids just sounds wrong. Grooms ladies. Well, I don't know. I mean, look, gay marriage sounds wrong to a lot of people. The point is you are blazing a trail.

You know, you should just go with it. If you're having a groomsmaid, why not? People have got to get used to the terminology haven't they um they're also too old he says age 22 to 13 to be flower girls and too young to be maids of honor so helen answer me this what do you call female aisle procedures not that in gay weddings for your information we are calling our best men best people as some of them are also women. For a long time,

people have called bridesmaid-ish people attendants. Attendants? That's like someone that works on a toilet. Is that too flight attendant-y? What about entourage?

Entourage is quite... I mean, the thing is, look, I think that the whole point of gay marriage... Posse! The whole point of equal marriage as opposed to just civil partnership

was that there are people who wanted a marriage that was on equal terms with what a man and a woman can do that weren't happy with just signing a piece of paper and wanted the ceremony to be exactly the same on that basis if you're calling it a marriage then why not call them bridesmaids the fact that isn't a bride isn't that a bit technical like you know like when when you have a female chairman you know i just think when people start calling them chair yeah but it's just bollocks isn't it everyone knows what bridesmaid means so why can't you have bridesmaids without a bride what's the problem so do you think the the usage has effectively devolved away from the bride absolutely everyone knows what a bridesmaid is also the term maid is kind of offensive well

exactly yeah but you know my position on this i find lots of things about the wedding ceremony very weird if you're going to do it just do it But I would say groomsmaid is the equivalent. So if you insist on changing it, then that is fine. What about acolytes? Or what about sputniks? Why? Sputniks means travelling companions. Yeah, but you can't provide a glossary for everyone in the audience, Helen. Here's another question of weddings from Will in Oxford, who says,

there is a charity shop near me that seems to specialise in secondhand wedding dresses. At least the window display is always full of them. Maybe they've just got three and they never sell. It is one of those items that is a destination shop. I mean, you're not shopping generally in Cancer Research, are you? And you think, right, I've got a copy of Adrian Mole. I need a Toby jug. And, oh yes, a wedding dress.

So, I mean, at least if you're advertising the fact that you do second-hand wedding dresses, you know, put them in the window. Makes sense. Yeah, probably one of the more expensive items as well. Exactly. Well, Will says, to me, this seems to suggest a cavalcade of broken marriages in the local area. So, while he answers me this, is there a more positive explanation for this, or am I living in a hotspot for divorce?

You're actually not living in a hotspot for divorce. How does Oxford score? Well, the most recent Office for National Statistics top 10 hotspots for divorcees um although this of course doesn't mean that they got divorced in that area because they could get divorced and move to a nicer place so it's just where divorcees are living post-divorce indeed the highest proportion of divorcees is blackpool 13.1 percent of the population divorce there interesting um something to do i guess in hastings it's 12.8 oh that's sad they couldn't make a go of it amongst all those wonderful charity shops and funicular and what's interesting

actually is almost all of the top 10 are seaside towns uh the rest are torbay weymouth portland thanet gosport eastbourne great yarmouth and worthing do you think it's just that people um get divorced and they're like i'm gonna go and live by the seaside and be free. I think that might be more what's happening. Maybe they get married in a fever because of the excitement of the seaside and then they go, well, actually, I don't really want to marry this person.

I just wanted to live by the seaside. If we were living in a shanty, then their wives would all drown. But I don't think that's really what happened. But anyway, in Oxford, I don't know that it is particularly a hotspot for divorce. It's certainly not a hotspot for getting together, is it? It's like the ninth least pullingest university.

As a student, that's the case. I imagine if you're a non-student trying to get it on with students, you'd probably be more lucky in that regard. Yeah. But anyway, in terms of the secondhand bridal costume bit... Doesn't mean their marriages have broken apart. Not everyone wants to keep their wedding dress. They take up a lot of room in many cases some people actually for whatever reason and i

find it hard to relate to this but i'm not married and i'm not a woman and i've never bought a wedding dress but um some people seem to feel that the idea of of this dress that they have so many memories fond memories of you know even if they have a happy marriage hanging in their cupboard never being worn again is sad yes you know that it's like keeping dead skin yeah and they see it almost as their duty like a blood donation or something you know i had a happy day out of this and i want someone else to benefit from it who couldn't afford it and that's why they actually sell them or indeed give them that's quite a nice uh gesture isn't it yeah or they may be the wedding dresses of people who are dead well maybe you should look at that

will cavalcade of uh spouse aside yours was vintage wasn't it yes so effectively that's a secondhand dress even though it wasn't designed as a wedding no exactly i'm not sure it was explicitly wedding uh so i've still got it because it doesn't take up a lot of cupboard space and but i can't imagine wearing it again even though it's the kind of dress i could get away with wearing again so i feel that if people saw me wearing my wedding dress they were like helen's out in her wedding dress What does this say about her mental state? I think if you just put the right word for that People probably wouldn't pick up on that

Yeah, it was green, wasn't it, from memory? No Oh, purple No It was Don't describe it Because then when you do go out in it People are going to go, Helen's gone mad

It was an orange jumpsuit Yeah, and I thought it was very becoming Down and lonely Life is so confusing I need some answers Preferably amusing Now I find A podcast that will suit

I listen to Helen Arley On my half-hour commute Here's a question from a nosy parent who says, We have a teenage daughter who is continuing to push the boundaries we set her along with our nerves. She's not pushing your boundaries, you just don't understand her. Oh, he's so embarrassing. And she has recently started to attend numerous, inverted commas, gatherings with her social group. I'm sure that it's just a book club.

That's probably what's going on there. Maybe they take food to the needy. That'll be it. These parties, as we used to call them. Always good, isn't it, this nosy parent? Basically an excuse to drink, smoke and generally get up to no good. Unless they're anything like I was as a teenager. And actually, you know, the parties which my dad assumed were non-stop orgies were essentially us ordering a pizza from Domino's

and then watching The Box until sunrise came. Yes, we would play Worms. We watched The Prisoner on VHS. Oh, good choice. Pretty racy stuff. I mean, there were occasional racy elements Don't get me wrong Helen There was the odd fingering

Of you picking your nose The nosy parent says Whilst I accept that all teenagers go through this Apart from the ones who are really failing at being a teenager And pretty much all parents have the trauma Of picking up little Johnny drunk off his head And lying face down in his own vomit At some point in their teenage years

We have become increasingly concerned as our daughter is now lying about where she's going. Well, that's part of it as well, isn't it? Actually, did you never used to lie a bit about where you were going as a teenager? I'm not sure I lied about much serious. I just didn't tell the truth. Exactly. I withheld the truth, which is different.

If they asked specifically, where were you at three o'clock in the morning? I'd have to say Stevenage Leisure Park trying to kiss a 24 year old. But if they didn't ask i'd just be like well we're going out for the weekend yeah you know and that's fine i didn't want to give them the details it was just like yeah well it's next to a bowling center so let them think we're going bowling and also because my parents supplied booze and privacy usually my friends were at my house and uh they knew that i wasn't much of a drinker so it was fine as lovely lovely as she is, Nosy Parent continues,

she is the world's worst liar. No, she's not, because Martin is. And her friends have proved to be even more rubbish at covering for each other, to the point where we recently received a phone call from Phil, her friend's father, reassuring us that she was staying with her friend at his house. Sounds perfectly kosher to me so far. Well, now, Phil sounded suspiciously like our daughter putting on a man's voice whilst drunk.

Slow claps. So not very convincing, to say the least. Is it not at all reassuring to you, nosy parent, that teenagers are still massive idiots? They're still rubbish, yeah. They seem sophisticated, but they're capable of that kind of folly. Yeah, just because it looks good in Home Alone 2, you know, just because you think there's a Dixaphone out there that can change your voice on the phone. There isn't.

The nosy parent says, this has led us to start tracking our daughter via her iPhone. Whoa. Yeah. Suddenly jumped on a league, haven't we? This is all going very friendly and familiar. Suddenly we're in state surveillance territory. My parents didn't have that option. No.

I'm pleased my parents didn't have that option. I'd have to do the tech spec for them. Dreadful. As we set the phone up in the first place and are aware of her login details for iTunes, we can use the Find My Phone app to search for her location this has proved useful in checking her whereabouts on many occasions i bet it has it is so accurate we can even check if she's still in bed or has made it to the kitchen if we're away from home we can even check if she still loves big brother and whether she devotes her soul to the party. Do your exercises. So, Ollie, answer me this.

Are we breaching her trust by tracking her? Yes, clearly yes. Or just making use of the technology available to ensure the continued safety of our daughter? Well, both. One day we will confess to her, but for now it is the best way to check where she is at any given time.

It's difficult. Yeah, so don't blame you for this. But you're doing both. The things are not mutually exclusive you are breaching her trust uh you are also doing it out of the right intentions exactly and the continued safety of your daughter so uh you know i understand why a parent would make use of that technology since it since it exists i also understand why the same parent would not tell their presumably increasingly hormonal teenage daughter what they're doing and also because although she may not be tech savvy enough to be able to track when you're

tracking her she would be tech savvy enough to beat you at this game if she knew that you were looking maybe she'd start going to really weird places just to freak her out more yeah you'd see her at some really dodgy tattoo parlors or something just because she knew you'd flip your shit you could have some fun with that she could strap her phone to a carrier pigeon and just leave it for a week yeah that's what most teens would do isn't it carrier pigeons first thought so i think if you told her then she'd she'd flip out at you and she'd find a way technologically to stop you doing this is it not at all reassuring as well to see where she's going because you haven't actually said and we found that she was out at an orgy exactly i wonder whether if she's not's not in immediate danger, yes, she's drinking, yes, she's smoking,

yes, she may be getting up to sexual things, but if it's not going to be unusually harmful, could you just say to her, look, we know you lied and that you were Phil, and that was ridiculous. If you can say this to her not angrily, we'd appreciate it if we just knew where you were and we'll respect your freedom

as long as you respect our wish to know that you're safe and the fact that we're paying for your phone. Oh, teenagers. What a hell. Oh, people are so nostalgic about a time when you're so stupid and so angry. Yeah, well, I think people are nostalgic weirdly about the confusion of the time.

You know, actually, it's the fact that life wasn't simple in a strange sort of way. People look back on it and think life was simple because I didn't have responsibilities. I didn't have demands in the same way. But actually... I had a lot of hormones that were ruining everything. Life is emotionally so much more complicated.

And actually, in a way, that's actually what you're being nostalgic for, is everything feeling fresh and vital. Well, yeah, it wasn't more complicated. It was just like an unstoppable force. The first time you'd felt these things, first time you'd felt that passion, first time you felt that drunk,

first time you felt that confused. Whereas now we're all just jaded, cynical. Felt everything there is to feel. Yeah. Apart from worse. But the thing that takes us out of our shell, listeners, is when you send us a question. Every time is like the first time.

That's right, yeah. There's no cynicism at all, is there, Helen, when we're browsing through our inbox? We never say the words, oh, we've had this question a hundred fucking times. Never say that. I can't believe it. Someone sent us a picture of an AMt coffee kiosk heavens some people want to know a thing about

blind people where do the guide dogs dog poos go ask a blind person but anyway if you'd like to send us a question for a future episode of the podcast and you have got a good and up your sleeve do share it wherever you keep it all our contact details as always on our website answermethispodcast.com and also on there I'll stick a link to a Guardian Masterclass that I'll be participating in to teach people

in a day all they need to know about podcasting it'll be me and producer Chris from The Bugle and Jason Phipps who makes Guardian Podcasts

oh that's a good line up and Drew the man who invented Reaper editing software you've got to go if you're actually genuinely interested in podcasts that sounds like a good day.

I really wish it had been around when we were starting. Otherwise, we might not have been groping around in the dark for nearly eight years as we have actually been. Good. Well, check that out and come back with either your ears or your own podcast next time. We'll be back in two weeks with Answer Me This episode 298. Oh, and indeed, thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode.

Love you guys. Yeah. So square, thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Love you guys. Yeah. So square, so spacious. From the heart, dudes. Bye!