Answer Me This! - AMT307: Happy Meals, Grumpy Cat and Coconuts

Episode Date: February 5, 2015

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Is Nirvana's heart-shaped box about Valentine's chocolates? Answer me this, answer me this Can I nickname my micro-penis a cock-let? Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this In the last episode, but like pretty much every other episode of Answer Me This, we talked about people being dicks when weddings are happening and... It's a really popular trope.

It is, isn't it? Which is a shame. Come on, humans. You don't have to be a dick just because a wedding's happening. You don't have to be a dick to get married here, but it helps. We've had another question on that subject,

and this time it's from Rowan from Darlington, who says, I've become a real dick when I got married. Who says, I'm getting married in August of this year. Congratulations, Rowan, he has to say. Yes. And have therefore started ultra-planning in the last few days. Well, of course. says i'm getting married in august of this year congratulations rowan he has to say yes and have

therefore started ultra planning in the last few days well of course yes because it's half a year away yes but everything you book they're like wow all the other brides booked in 2012 i suppose yeah comparatively it is just around the corner don't start ultra planning now though rowan seriously simmer down yeah chill out you're just doubling the amount of stress you have than if you ultra plan in four months yeah my partner and I have started discussing who we would like to give a speech at the reception

as due to the fact I don't have a father around we have a gap where he would traditionally speak on talking about the wedding my mum said oh well I've already

started planning my speech darling don't worry I absolutely and completely do not want my mother to do a speech she is a cringy anecdote kind of speech giver

as I discovered at my sister's wedding oh dear so there's real precedent here where my mum spoke for a speech she is a cringy anecdote kind of speech giver as i discovered at my sister's wedding oh dear so there's real precedent here where my mom spoke for a horrifyingly long time about my sister as a child i know that my speech will be full of she's the baby of the family and horrible stories of how i didn't grow any hair until i was two and that everyone thought i was a boy so ollie answer me this how can i gently tell my mother that i think her speech is a terrible idea and that it is absolutely out of the question well this again i mean actually it's so nice in a way

that i'm getting this idea affirmed to me weddings are a nightmare aren't they there is no way out of this uh this is why i don't want to get married no one wins in this situation there is no way out of it i've got way out of it well i have a way out ofope? My compromise is ask her to make a toast. Oh, my comp... Right, I had two compromises. But it's too late now because she said she's going to do a speech. You should have got in early

and said we'd love you to do a toast. Yeah, what you do, get her to make the speech at a pre-wedding dinner, like the night before when you've got a bunch of family members together. So it feels like an occasion. And they're all drunk anyway. She's opening the wedding weekend.

Yes, nice. Right? But far fewer people will see it and then it will be out of her system and then you could also add to that her doing a reading during the ceremony a reading that you have chosen with her but it is definitely not ad-libbed it is definitely not written by her and then she will have done some talking in front of everybody twice and express stuff yeah but sell it up to her don't say to her i want you to have a shitter option sell it up make it seem like the biggest honor you could possibly confer

i like that yeah it's good it would mean so much to me mother if you would speak the night before our wedding i would really feel like that was truly the beginning of our wedding you introduced me into this world then you'd be introducing me into my marriage weekend absolutely on the day before the wedding yeah which is the most important day as if one knows. Wedding Eve. Absolutely. Well, here is another question of wedding fuckery from Richard from Rayleigh who says,

I am going on a stag do soon. Stag! Which I'm okay with going on, apart from the fact that the organiser has been swayed by the stag's dad. Dad! To hire a midget and also go to strip clubs. I have said I would go before i knew about the itinerary i don't mind the odd look at a nice looking woman who does but strippers i find are

a step too far so they're always complaining about you richard as well that richard from raley with his reluctance to look at me as a step too far he and his respect for women has no place in here ollie answered me this how do i at least get out of going to the strip club Without looking like a Mary White house Well my only advice Is to wear highly inappropriate shoes And then they might not let you in Oh good idea

Turn up in flip flops Because then you can pretend to be very very eager Even a really shitty strip club In a really dodgy part of town Is still going to say In fact in a way the shittier the area the more likely that is yeah and then you can just be really sort of mock embarrassed with the stag and be like oh god i'm so sorry i've ruined your evening and then they'll say oh don't worry we won't go in and then you'll be like no no no it's

fine i'll wait out here i'll just have a drink in the pub next door it's happened to you ollie that's a way through um so i would recommend. You could do a little bit of play acting, Richard, and turn up the stag do with what looks like a heavy cold, which is just you having made your nose red with... Rub it a lot with sandpaper or rough kitchen towel and then just look more and more wretched throughout the stag do, which should be easy, given how most stag dos are. And then you can peel off by the evening.

There's an easier solution, which is, I mean, most stag do's involve something like a curry, just fame or not fame, diarrhoea. Isn't it interesting? What is staggier than that? None of us are saying tell the truth. None of us are saying, I feel awkward around women demeaning themselves

and I would feel awkward laughing at a small man making fun of his own height for your benefit. Or a small woman. We don't know what gender this small person is. But the reason why we're not saying that, and I think all of us would feel uncomfortable making fun of his own height for your benefit. Or a small woman. We don't know what gender this small person is. But the reason why we're not saying that, and I think all of us would feel uncomfortable with the idea of going to a strip club, it's just not really our scene.

Not really our thing. No, but I think it's because if the dad has persuaded the organiser to do it, Richard's feminist protest will fall on deaf ears. Well, on the other hand, if you got in early, and if enough people said, I don't really want to go to a strip club, then the the organizer could say look the green doesn't want to go to the script i think it's a taboo the reason we're not saying to the truth is it's a taboo no one wants

to go to the strip exactly exactly it's the only bigger taboo on a stag do than abstaining from drink is abstaining from tits and actually looking awkward at the strip bar is kind of the fun for the other guys who don't feel awkward like i know because i've been the awkward person that actually the part of the amusement for everyone else is watching me ride around in displeasure as i have to sit there pay a lot of money for a beer and then try and talk to a woman who's sitting on my lap horrifically awkward you're wasting her time though exactly she could be off presenting the goods to more enthusiastic that is entertaining for other people in the group you're basically like elaine in the graduate aren't you exactly graduate themed stag do that's inspired everyone get on the bus everyone sit at

the back looking awkward the other thing is richard imreli your tolerance for this may change with alcohol it does for a lot of men you know there are other men who in the cold light of day would say oh i wouldn't go to strip bar and then actually if they've drunk seven eight nine ten pints on a stag do by the time they get there unlike me i remain firmly in your camp i mean i can enjoy a strip show aesthetically i can always see the underlying sadness much as with most callers to my lbc show i can always sense that there's something else going on under the surface and i can't just enjoy the boobs personally damn it a lot of people can get drunk and they can and you might be one of them.

Give it a go. It just seems really old-fashioned now to me. Am I being approved? It just seems like something that none of the men I know, I know many men, would enjoy this kind of thing. It's almost like the commodification of something

which is an intimate human act is somehow disgusting, isn't it? Even if you take away the patriarchal gaze. If women seem to enjoy the seedy side of flaunting their own bodies as much as men did enjoy looking at them yeah then i'd feel a bit differently about it it's because i feel like the women that are there i know they're there of their own free volition and they can choose some of them some of them have been trafficked well yeah okay let's say it's a classy establishment none of them have been trafficked and some women enjoy the job of stripping indeed but it's just there's always that doubt hanging over it so are you looking at the stripper going is this one empowered

or is she trafficked exactly if that subtext wasn't there and we lived in a society where we knew everyone was empowered and everyone had the same sex drive i'd feel more comfortable with it but it's just you don't know um for example i've been in vegas and watched a strip show in vegas i'm kind of okay with that because that is literally a show it's a theatrical event yes people involved in it they're models yeah they're performers and they're choosing to do topless modeling and that to me is different we've all seen showgirls a borderline prostitute and you're not sure where she's from you're not sure if she has any choice about it so you feel like the fundamental dishonesty underlies any kind of bawdy fun that could present itself.

Basically, there's a lot going through my head. Which is odd when you're drunk at a stag do. You should take a book. When there's a lot going through my head, there's not enough blood to go to my cock. I think that's basically it. One at a time. I mean, I know that my friend, let's call him John, because he didn't want his true identity to be revealed. He asked for no pictures at his stag do, no photos.

Second rule was no demeaning of women. Like he genuinely, he asked for no pictures at his stag do no photos second rule was no demeaning of women like he genuinely he laid that out right at the beginning which i think is quite enlightened and interesting he probably thought this is a watertight way to get out of any stripper action but actually what happened is instead the best man hired a male stripper oh which still provided the requisite levels of awkwardness, obviously. You were still laughing. In this case, it was a slightly more palatable joke, laughing as a man shoved his penis into my straight friend's face

because it took away the sexualized element. It's still a bit schoolboy, isn't it? It was very schoolboy. And there was still the feeling that someone was being demeaned, even though they were doing it by choice. There was the feeling that this bloke had turned up. We'd all rented a country house and we were all dressed up in fancy dress.

It would have been awful had it been a woman, I suppose that would have been worse. And maybe if it had been like a group of five or six women, it wouldn't have felt so bad, but it would have felt a bit like, what's that film? Annabelle Chong. The Riot Club with a bloke.

That was nullified to an extent, but it was still horrific. It was still horrific. It didn't actually matter that it was a bloke. Hey, Helen, Nolly. It's Nolly here. Is a coconut a nut or a fruit? Because we really want to know.

Well, if you want to get really technical about it, a coconut is a droop, which is a new word for me. Yeah. Droop? Is that a genre of fruit? Yeah, it's a classification. Droop, droop, droop, droop.

Droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop, droop. Droop is the classification for stone fruits, which include apricots, dates, coffee, mangoes, peaches and almonds. And so the coconut... That is a great little group. Coffee, mangoes, peaches and almonds. What an amazing group. Really strong contenders.

If that was the only group of fruit, that would be the one I would... If they were nominated for best fruit at the Oscar, you'd be happy with that shortlist, wouldn't you? No, but then cherries would come in on a video link. Sorry, I'm filming in Africa. I can't make it. But I also found out something which I did not know because I'm not that fond of coconuts.

So I had no reason to know. Okay, but before we get on to your fact, is that your answer? They're a droop, they're not a fruit or a nut? Well, the definition of nut is really broad and unwieldy. Do you remember when we tried to define a salad? I and it was something that rumbled on and on and on still hard to come to a definitive explanation of salad i think nut suffers from the same thing how we usually see a nut right is a hard outer shell with the soft flesh within so like a walnut or a hazelnut is like that

whereas a coconut is actually like the stone so the brown husk is the stone there was flesh that was on the outside but is removed before we get to it in britain and then the white flesh inside is the inside of the stone okay what does it look like on the outside because when you see them growing on trees they're green yeah so you know when you see people in adverts for tropical holidays and they've just lopped the top off a coconut and stuck a straw in it and you've got this big green blob. My holiday photos, I had one of those in Barbados last year. Amazing.

Filled it with rum. You had one of those when you're on holiday in Cleethorpes. You're clutching onto it with your mittens, trying not to freeze to death. I love that. I've never had it. Oh, it's so good. I dislike coconuts, but maybe fresh coconut juice is normal. Now, I've got a question of supermarket etiquette for you on coconuts.

Oh, heavens. How many coconuts can you eat from the coconut bar before you buy one? How do you make a coconut shy? No, my question is... Spying it in the shower? How do you feel about pre-preprepared cut up chunks of coconut being sold in upmarket supermarkets like waitrose because the reason i ask you is i know that you would be naturally not only cynical but actually like furious vicious yes if i was to

be mixed with yeah if we went shopping to tesco and i picked up a packet of say sliced onions for example yeah celery sticks rather than celery which comes in sticks. Great example. Fruit salad, I think you'd be like, well, it's out of season. But, you know, at least they put four different types of fruit in there. If you're travelling, that's useful. Yeah, exactly. So you'd be tolerant, but you'd object.

Tolerant as I get. Exactly. How do you feel about chopped up coconut? And the reason I ask is, it is just one, I was going to say fruit, but indeed, i ask is it is just one i was going to say fruit but indeed droop it is just one droop in a packet just one lonely droop but uh were you to buy a whole coconut cut it up at home yourself that really is an effort and so i think you have to drop it out of a window or something just get it to break exactly it's a huge effort and then some of it will go off yeah and actually what they're giving you is a manageable portion it

costs 1 pound 50 or whatever it is delicious how do you feel about Waitrose selling cut up coconut chunks because they're one of my favorite things to buy from the chilled cabinet well you having said that just means that I'm unlikely to venture an opinion because I know already how angry how much it means to me yeah exactly well you've you've ventured on that ground before Helen I know I don't feel strongly you've hurt me in all kinds of ways about fruit and veg well because you're wrong I don't feel strongly about this particular thing but what I do like even though I dislike coconut is sometimes in Italy in the summer on the street there'll be a little fountain with usually a plastic ball bobbing right in the top and the fountain

gushes over and keeps cool cut up coconut and fruit lumps that you can then buy for refreshment. That sounds amazing. It would be perfect for you. you should rig one up in your garden in the summer if you've got a question then email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com So 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. Well, I'm happy because we've got a question about cats. And I'm doubly happy because it's not a question about Cats the Musical, which I hate. Do you hate Cats the Musical? Yeah, well, hate's a bit strong, isn't it? But considering it's a musical and about a thing that you love. Considering all of the elements in it are things that should amuse me,

it's thoroughly disappointing. I haven't seen recent production apparently nicole scherzinger is good bothered not bothered cats not bothered i just it's too much dancing and there's no proper story and it's for girls anyway what wow what they played with blue lego didn't you i like starlight express a lot and i guess when i's about the choo-choo trains which are for bots and I don't know, Cats is boring it is boring well is that because it's based on T.S. Eliot you're like, did that university, don't want to be entertained by it now not fair, I didn't come here to learn

there's a strong anti-semitic undercurrent to Cats yeah well you should see the musical of Four Quartets anyway it's a question from Nate who who says i just read that the owner of grumpy cat see it's about cats but it's about specific famous cat grumpy cat off the internet has earned 100 million dollars from marketing the cat not bad for a couple of years work you've got to be careful where you read this though because i've read lots of things that say actually it's more like two million dollars those but i've read

those but they were from a couple of years ago before the cat appeared at south by southwest i still think a hundred million dollars from marketing your cat on the internet sounds extreme as a believer in feline rights continues nate i feel what does that even mean i feel the cat is the star here and the owner is essentially a publicity agent with a cat obsession yeah but the cat does also have an agent same agent lashes nyan cat the same agent as keyboard cat and doge all the internet's famousest animals that is a brilliant niche that's a really clever thing it's an awful niche imagine going to your deathbed like well at least i oh no wait no, I need my time again. Wait!

Nate continues, the money should at the very least be spent entirely on the cat. How much does cat upkeep cost though? Cat food and litter and entertainments. That's not going to come to... $100 million. But also, it kind of goes back to that child modelling question we had where the parents in child modelling don't get money and yet they're spending all their time taking the child to castings and being there to superintend it. With the cat, the money is all going to the person

who is putting the work in, just as shill this cat. But that's because the cat will never be of an age where it will understand that it could have given consent or otherwise. Cats operate on a different economic plane to us humans. That's right. So our human money is meaningless to them. Nate continues. Since spending $100 million on a cat is fucking stupid do you agree ollie

this is a test um yes okay good he says helen answer me this are there legal requirements for something like this do charities try and claim some of this money and above all helen above all is it fair on the cat to be exploited if it's visibly not bothered okay um well I don't think it is fair it's not necessarily the exploitation as much as grumpy cat does a lot of public meet and greets where it's in a place for hours and people queue and they make a lot of noise she she tardar sauce please for tardar source will be somewhere like south by southwest approximately once a week i think she does public appearances and it's noisy and people are being idiots and and cats don't like that no cats like their own property not being poked in the eye not

being startled etc probably not being on tv under studio lights so if you take a picture of the cat as as her fame began with a picture of her looking grumpy being posted on reddit yeah cat's not really aware of that but i do think the public appearance is a problem there's another cat called little bub yeah who suffers from like i don't know little bubs work suffers from a i think a growth defect yeah so does grumpy cat grumpy cat's got a dwarfism yeah but little bub um only does appearances at animal shelters and the proceeds go to animal charities and raised 75 grand for animal charities last year. Lil Bub's the Chris Martin of cats.

Yeah, but Lil Bub's not wearing like masking tape on her legs and everything. Yeah, but Lil Bub's just become a lot more annoyingly sanctimonious. Yeah, but I think that is better than Grumpy Cat and you said Grumpy Cat may have only earned one or two million. I think those figures are from a couple of years ago because since then Grumpy Cat is the face of friskies.

Grumpy Cat is... Yeah, but online. Grumpy Cat has a huge product range, like from electronics to leggings. Yeah. And Grumpy Cat has all the YouTube advertising money and Grumpy Cat has written two books and you do think really, well, you know of course the cat hasn't written the book, but also

you've seen the cat's face. The cat's face is always the same and so what has it got to say in two books that you don't already know i feel the same thing about russell brun to be honest but then there was the grumpy cat film that came out just before christmas and when you've got a film then there's money it was a lifetime film right so it's made for tv yes this wasn't people talk about the grumpy cat film like it was you know out in cinemas uh to rival jurassic world but you know in future it bloody will be there will be these cult screenings of Grumpy Cat the movie in future. Oh, probably.

And you're probably going to be at them all. I'll probably go to the Prince Charles pour along with Grumpy Cat. Yeah. Pour or purr. Well, I said pour, but a purr is probably better, yeah. Yeah, purr along with Grumpy Cat. Joe from Newnan. Helen Dolly, answer me this.

What is the point of those weird Chinese waving cats? Do they actually have any sort of significance in chinese culture or are they just a torch thing now here's a curious thing the chinese cats are not chinese but everything's made in china like even souvenirs you buy from other places sure sure yeah like um a lot of native american artifacts are made in china um but um they are japanese what they might be manufactured in china like everything but um it's actually a japanese thing it's it's not even waving its arms are beckoning it looks like it's kind of putting you down like it's saying you are shit oh it's like oh you're

too funny yeah yeah it is quite camp i never really thought about that well there's meaning behind which paws they're holding up so if it's the left paw that's supposed to attract customers into a business premises and if it's the right paw that's to invite good fortune and money right um in 2007 90 of cats sold had their left paw up beckoning customers and then after the lemon brothers crash that swung over to the other paw and then to hedge their bets they got ones made with both paws up but one paw slightly higher than the other so it didn't look like kind of i give up cat's rock right and did they exist as an ornament before cheap batteries yes they did because they originated in japan during the edo periods sometime between 17th and 19th centuries they

were definitely around by the 1870s period bd before urasel exactly very popular at the beginning of the 20th century most of them don't need power really do they just run on um what's the word i'm looking for momentum well a lot of them are just still with no moving parts and others i think they can be caught by a breeze they've just got a little hinge right okay but usually if you walk through chinatown they're all moving aren't they oh yeah what i couldn't find out though is why these cats became so popular by the chinese yeah exactly i wonder whether it was because japan invaded and left them all over the place or whether it's more of a Chinese abroad thing, wherebymission from answer me this episode 88 which is available along with all of our first 170 episodes at answer me this store.com graham from stoke-on-trent says

since my wife of 28 years left me for another woman three years ago oh crikey i have had a nagging question just one yeah surely the nagging stops when your wife leaves you, Graham. Hey! Hey, it's 1975. I assume it's going to be double nagging in her new relationship, eh? That's true. Nagger central. And I wondered if you could shed any light on this matter.

Helen, answer me this. When two large ladies are in the throes of passion and giving oral attention to each other's lady parts, is this known as an 88 rather than the more traditional 69? I'd imagine it's more just like a 69, but in large type, isn't it? Yes, in bold. It's like a 69 in bold, exactly. It's that moment of the show where we implore you to send us questions,

not only via the written word, but also with your voice. Please, please, I implore you! Please! And here's the number to call. 020-812-358-007 Or you can Skype answer me this. Bloody can. Skypers. Skyper's going to Skype.

Skyper's going to Skype, Skype, Skype, Skype, Skype. And let's hear who's been in touch. Oh, it's really windy. It's Richard here, 23 from Bradford. Yeah, McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, yada, yada. Why do they not deliver food? They're the biggest takeaway people, and they'll deliver takeaways forever.

But these ones don't. I mean, when I lived in Salford at university, there were individual people who said to write a service to pick up and deliver these takeaways, but they don't actually do it themselves and they seem to be eccentric. Why is that? Is there an issue with the price point of fast food

not being sufficient to make delivery economically viable? Yes, because if you look at Domino's, for example, which obviously people think of as a delivery place, I know you could technically go and pick it up, but really their whole raison d'etre is they'll come and bring it to you. They are charging £15 for some dough with some cheese on it. So although they claim it's free delivery, it's not really, is it? The pizza, even if you were paying a fiver for it,

would still be quite a lot of profit for them. Really, they're charging you for the delivery. McDonald's would then have to follow suit and offer free delivery but free delivery on a cheeseburger is obviously going to cost them a loss so you'd have to be ordering 50 pounds worth of food for it to be worth it it's just not scalable is it it's just not worth it that said in some countries uh mcdonald's and kfc do deliver really um but i think those countries got that we don't have i think fewer branches and an upmarket clientele also don't you have the issue of food like mcdonald's just not really lasting that well when it's hot you have to eat it pretty quickly otherwise the bread is just going to disintegrate and it's pretty gross whereas a pizza can sop up oil for a good while

while it's being shunted around the motorbike yeah exactly again the whole menu is designed to be served as it's meant, literally as it's been made. But if you go to the McDonald's website, as part of their drive to show what an open and transparent and friendly company they are here in the UK, you can ask them any question about their service and they'll answer it. So plenty of people like Richard.

Any question? Yeah, within reason. Not if you're abusive, but like you can say, what's in this food or why don't you do that? And their PR team answer it. But there have been probably a dozen students from different universities with the same idea as Richard, saying, look, everyone on our campus loves a Big Mac.

I want to set up a business where I sell Big Macs on campus. Can I do that with your permission or not? That's a burger van. Yeah, but they want the McDonald's one specifically. It's all about the branding, Helen. McDonald's branded burger vans that went around university campuses. Now that would be an OK idea. It's a little tune like an ice cream van.

Well, let me tell you exactly what the McDonald's response is. They say, if an unauthorised company were to set up a service delivering McDonald's food, we would not be able to guarantee the quality of the food or that it would be delivered with the high level of customer service we would expect. In addition yes operating a delivery service which advertises our menu and products using mcdonald's intellectual property without a license from mcdonald's would constitute trademark infringement thanks for your question but despite that being on their website if you google mcdonald's delivery or indeed kfc delivery

there are services that if you want will charge you a fiver or whatever on top of the one that I saw offered, McDonald's, KFC, Subway or Wagamama. Okay. And what it relies on is you knowing the menu, asking them for a specific thing, then go and buy it for you. So you're just paying for a person to go and pick it up for you. Yeah, exactly. And I don't see really what the big companies can do about that.

I bet that's exactly the sort of service that TV companies would use when you're trapped in an edit suite for 24 hours and you haven't got a runner because they've all gone home. Everyone soon could have their own food runner if you don't work in television. Well, actually, Uber are planning on a spin-off like this. I think they've tested it in San Francisco or LA or something. Because their argument is,

why is it you can only order delivery from the places that offer delivery you should be able to order delivery from any takeout and that's what they do so you're on your app you say get me some uh pad thai prawns or something and i'll go and pick them up for you well you're talking about sitting being the new smoking it's not going to get better if you can just get whatever you want delivered to you no it's only a matter of time there before amazon do it as well they probably are already beta testing it i think basically so long as you don't use the intellectual property so long as you don't call it get a big.com, there's not much that the big companies can actually do about it.

Well, that's you told, Richard. Here is another McDonald's question from Peter in Hayward Heath, who says, I've got two lovely children, Abigail and Arthur, and they like a happy meal if we're out shopping for a while at the weekend. Of course they do. Makes them happy. Yeah, they've been ruthlessly targeted. Clap along if you feel you've been ruthlessly targeted. Clap along if you feel you've been ruthlessly targeted. As a result, says Peter, we've got a lot of cheap plastic toys cluttering up the house and causing severe pain whenever I accidentally step on them. Oh, yeah. They seem to have a new set of Happy Meals toys out every week to advertise

or twist my arm into taking my kids to see the latest film. Ollie, answer me this. When did McDonald's start issuing Happy Meal toys with the meal? 1977. How many different toys have ever been issued thousands and does anyone in the uk or the whole world own the complete collection of them there is a bloke in america that's been collecting them since the 80s so the answer is no but he's got a lot wow a hell of a lot and i think uh he had a visit from i think it

was bill clinton but in any case a president who was doing a tour trying to get elected when he went to his state did go and visit this guy's collection of Happy Meals. I thought you were about to say some sort of sex crime police because that is a collection that no adult should have. Well, it started in fairness when he started taking his kids to McDonald's once a week for a treat. Oh, OK. And he wasn't going alone and just playing with the toys himself.

No, but then long since his children grew out of it, they're all in their late 20s now, but he's still got the world's largest collection of Happy Meal toys. Once you've started it as well, with any kind of intent, he can't stop now. He can't be like,

I'm just going to collect matchbooks or something. No, exactly. I just really hope that McDonald's ceases to exist before he does so that he can, you know, have a finite collection. As an old man, go to the final, like McDonald's store in the country and like, hey, the final Happy Meal?

Well, it's actually not unthinkable that the McDonald's Happy Meal might die before he does. Oh, is that because of marketing to children being a hot button issue?

Oh, really? Yeah, in countries and counties where they're very, very hot on that. And in the UK they've become hotter. Like nowadays,

I remember when we were kids, Ronald McDonald as a character used to advertise on Saturday morning TV. Would you like a balloon? Used to advertise how to keep your house safe. You remember that?

Ever see that? No, because I was at school. Of course, yeah. Learning Latin and shit. So like if you watch children's ITV on a Saturday morning in the 90s, Ronald McDonald would sing a song where he danced around the house with a load of kids trailing behind him like on Sesame Street going, here's how to make sure you stay safe.

Plug in the plug, don't put water on it. Yeah, all of that sort of thing. Nothing to do with burgers. And the message was just, Ronald McDonald is your mate. Yeah, but he'll say... Just Ronald. He's like some celebrities now. He'll say anything if you pay him enough.

He's like Carol Vorderman. So the point being, obviously, you know, they wanted to establish a connection between children and the iconography of McDonald's. Yeah, yeah and scary clowns and children what goes better together than that um but that's now all banned in the uk so we've gone that far we won't have that's a ruthless kind of uh slightly deceiving marketing going on and in fact in mcdonald's adverts how long has it been since ronald mcdonald featured it feels like the last several years have been going hey you're a lonely adult

just getting out of your business job. Why don't you come into McDonald's? It's like a cool cafe with Arnie Jacobson furniture to hide your secret shame. Well, I mean, they're an international company. Ronald does still feature in some of their marketing,

but it does vary territory to territory. And indeed, you know, in places where they're very hot on advertising to children, they have killed off what we would think of as the happy meal. They've said you cannot, you cannot, but you can have a meal for children but you can't market it in a way that has the latest disney toy in it that suggests that you know you should be buying

this if you're a fan of whatever the kids are into it's called the somber meal now and they've got a copy of pilgrim's progress in there well it is kind of depressing like they did do a fitness meal for adults which was like a pedometer you got a pedometer as a toy and it was like a bottle of mineral water like a slice slices of apple because that's why you get to mcdonald's a burger without a bun yeah just to be depressed a burger between two slices of apple and actually get to look at the burger that is a terrible idea so the idea of the happy meal initially was uh if we create a box because it always came in the little box with the golden arches handle, they actually got, the advertising agency that created the box

spent ages putting it out to tender, getting artists to make little cartoons on it and stuff that would appeal directly to children. If we put it in a box, then people will buy more because they're not just buying the burger, they're buying the whole experience. They're buying the chips, the drink,

and the toy as well. And a special kind of ecosystem for those to exist in. But the firstney toy wasn't until 1987 so what was cluttering it up before then so for 10 years well the original products you've got a mcdoodler stencil a mcwrist wallet what a tiny etch a sketch or some shit like that yeah an id bracelet a puzzle lock a spinning top or a mcdonald land character eraser so they're like cracker presents really before, before Disney came along.

And then they became more like a Kinder Surprise. Yes. Biggest ever selling Happy Meal toy, care to guess? 1997. Oh, not Toy Story 1. Terminator 2. No. Armageddon.

Full range of characters drilling on the asteroid. Beanie Babies. They would soak up all the oil. Because, again, that's tapping into the collect them all mentality So kids would go and order five Happy Meals Discard the burgers just to have the toys 100 million Beanie Babies McDonald's sold You could just buy a Beanie Baby

Yeah but not for that price What if you just keep getting the same What if you've all got the same one What if all of Tunbridge Wells was flooded With one type of Beanie Baby You'd have to go outside the borders To do swapsies What if you've all got the same one? What if all of Tunbridge Wells was flooded with one type of beanie baby? You'd have to go outside the borders to do swapsies. Sure.

You've really identified the issue here, Helen. God, McDonald's was sailing close to the wind, weren't they, when they sold 100 million? They must be kicking themselves now if only they'd listened to you. 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 ever so much to Squarespace for funding this episode of Answer Me This and for giving you listeners

10% off for a whole year if you sign up to Squarespace using the code ANSWER Yes and by so doing you're sending a clear signal to Squarespace that you enjoy our work

so thank you for doing that because then they give us more money, which means we can afford to make the show for longer. So really, it comes back to you. And in any way, it's good because you get a free domain chucked in if you buy their service for a year and you get to design a pretty website.

Here's a question from Jeanette who says, Helen, answer me this. Did Femidoms ever get popular anywhere? Well, I've read a few articles going, well, you know that no one likes femidoms well they're big in senegal or they're big in sri lanka or they're big in zimbabwe comparatively i think nothing i think the the sad truth is that femidoms didn't really catch on anywhere because although the un really tried to push them in developing countries they thought these are a

good idea because there are a lot of countries where men refuse to wear condoms but women need to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy and stds and try and stem the spread of hiv and stuff but they're three times more expensive than condoms are they yes but they're not three times the size well they are pretty huge they are pretty they're like a rubber glove with no fingers it's a bit like fucking a costco bit that is exactly what it's like and people hate them because they make so much noise oh really there's this huge rustling and they're not necessarily that easy to use they just don't really work on a practical level i read that they were originally designed in fact as an incontinence sheath yeah because they could a whole person could fit in one and just urinate away yeah which if there's anything left in the design to indicate the origins thereby

you're not going to want to screw that. It's already not a very sexy origin. And the name as well is a pretty awful portmanteau term. It is terrible. I read an article as well that was saying they were very popular in Senegal and they used to sell them with a sexy string of beads and the rustling sound came to be a sexy

sound because everyone associated it with sex. I was like really? Here's another question of unsavoury Noises from Ed in South Australia who says, Uli, answer me this. Why, when people human beatbox, do they move their hands like they're scratching a record, etc.,

when it doesn't actually do anything to the sound coming out of their mouth? I suppose it identifies it as a record scratch rather than a squeak, doesn't it? Well, it's performance art, isn't it? You know, why... Why do anything, Ed? Exactly. Why get out of bed at all? It's all art, isn't it? You know, why... Why do anything, Ed? Exactly.

Why get out of bed at all? It's all pointless. We're just going to die in the end anyway. Why carry on this facade? Why carry on this facade when, you know, everyone knows they're just acting? I mean, it's part of the show.

I think if you're a human beatboxer and a lot of them, obviously, are street entertainers or they're doing spots in nightclubs where people otherwise aren't interested in looking, what you're doing is you're saying, guys, the action's here. The action's's in my mouth if you stand there with just your

hands down by your side or indeed over your mouth so you don't spit on people um it's a bit less attractive doing something with your hands diverts attention it also creates a little force field around you um so that otherwise you would be mobbed by howling fans but if you're on the street you actually there is a danger you could end up spitting on someone if they're if they're too close so it keeps them away by doing the hand scratching thing and also i think it interprets what you're doing to the layman who may not be familiar with the uh the work of the scratch perverts for instance indeed the hip-hop genesis of the music to which you're referring you know they you know street entertainment you've got

people walking past who are on their way to the royal opera house yeah what you're saying to that person is sir on your way to see carmen check this and then when you do the hand gesture they're like oh it looks what's he doing dusting oh no he's scratching a record when you were doing the would you would you would you did actually do the hand gesture it worked didn't it see if i didn't do the hand gesture it wouldn't mean anything people at home don't know you're doing the hand gesture. Yeah. But do you think it's also to show that it's a record scratching

rather than just a stupid noise? Because so many of the noises are not really identifiable. Well, that's the... In truth, that's the thing. Sometimes they'll start, you know, apparently sampling something and you don't know what it is.

All they're doing whilst they're boxing, all they'll suddenly do is to like do a sound of something something like that and you're like well i don't actually it doesn't really sound like you're sampling something because i don't know the song you're sampling you don't sound like eartha kitt whereas at least when they're doing the scratching you're like oh okay that's the you're doing the record scratch sound that's close well round of applause for you here's 10 pence i saw a really good band uh busking oxford circus yesterday there's a guitar. There was a guitar player, it was a singer,

and then there was a guy beatboxing for the drums, like a rock drum beatboxer. That's unusual. It's really convincing. I was like, where's the drummer? There's a guy beatboxing. I went to a church service, and instead of an organist, they just had someone beatboxing the organ.

It was astonishing. That would be amazing. It would be good, actually. You've finally managed to convince me of something that I might like at my funeral. Yeah, or I'd like a full brass band, but it's just people doing mouth trumpets. Well, we've come to the end of this episode of Answer Me This, but if you want there to be further episodes of Answer Me This, then please supply your questions via email, phone or Skype. And our contact details are on our website, answermethispodcast.com.

Remember, you can always listen to Helen's podcast, The Allusionist, by going to theallusionist.org. And you can listen to Ollie's podcast, The Media Podcast, by going to themediapodcast.com. We should say thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring the show. And please return in two weeks' time for the next Answer Me This. Comes with a free toy! Bye!