Answer Me This! - AMT314: Tinfoil Hats, Stealing from Castles, and Giraffe Heads

Episode Date: May 14, 2015

In AMT314 we tackle questions about how to dump your slowpoke training-buddy, what your children should call you, and what's up with tinfoil hats.Full notes about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode314Send questions to [e-mail], or the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis)Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandollyBe our Facebook friend at http://facebook.com/answermethisSubscribe on iTunes http://iTunes.com/AnswerMeThisBuy old episodes and albums at http://answermethisstore.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Toyota, for what matters most. Are the job centres full of former-lived MMPs? Has to be this, has to be this. Are all opinion polls just a cocktease? Has to be this, has to be this. Helen and Ollie, has to be this, Helen and Ollie has to be this. Well, it's the election result you've been waiting a week

for. Did Oliver Dowden's campaign of face and fields win the day in Hartsmere? How can you beat face and fields? It's the new tits and teeth, isn't it? Well, big shout out to all you One Nation Conservatives. Yes, indeed. He was elected to serve Hartsmere with an increased majority of 18,461.

18,000, wow. Yeah, so remember next time, fellow candidates, face and field. Is he going to take the posters down now or will he just leave them for five years? I really like the idea that they might just be there forever and ever. He's like a god of the country. In other news from last episode, you may recall Daveave the man who's bringing hankering back he wanted to know uh what he could eat that was older than himself toby and cheshire has been in touch to point out an obvious omission from our answer last episode uh he says i wonder if there

is a bar of kendall mint cake in the bottom of someone's rucksack somewhere left over from the 1980s every rucksack uh not just edible after a decade or more, but energising and almost nutritious as witnessed in episode 296. Yeah, fair point. He's right, and we've talked about it before, how it survives the decades in some sort of nuclear fallout way. Do you think the latest Magmax film

features a lot of candle mint cake that survived the nuclear bomb blast? It could be a simple form of trading. They're just living off that and tinned Fray Bentos pies. But those are a lot of the deleted scenes. Charlie's trying to get into the tins. Also on the sugary tip,

John in Melbourne wrote in to say, I have got an unopened tin of travel sweets in a special Charles and Diana Royal Wedding commemorative tin that I bought in 1981. So a tad older than your 33-year-old listener. That's probably worth something though i think if you open them they're going to be worth less in the future yeah it's true he said i paid

about a quid for it in 81 and they're now worth nine quid on ebay is that all unopened charles and diana wedding memorabilia i suppose though there was so much memorabilia then like the mugs are not worth anything millions of them were produced sure and ditto i'm sure the souvenir copy editions of the Daily Express and whatever. But when it comes to travel suite memorabilia, I'd imagine over time people will give in and eat one, wouldn't they? There's only so many decades you can keep it in a dash for. I think the point is that travel suites are so resistible

that it's easy not to eat them and leave them for posterity in this way. Well, Niall has written in with an inarguable suggestion for eating something that's older than you. He says, convert to Catholicism, take Holy Communion, eat Jesus, age 33. Hashtag transubstantiation. Eat Jesus, age 33? Well, that was the alleged age at which he died. Also, a lot of communion wafers have probably been in the cupboard since the 1800s.

I mean, I can't help feeling that is a slight oversimplification of the sacrament of the Eucharist, but... Well, transubstantiation is very controversial, isn't it? I do quite like the idea of the Catholic Church bringing about a poster campaign that was just Jesus on the cross with eat me written across his torso. Hey, this is Elliot from Manchester. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. What was the first on-screen kiss between a non-heterosexual couple presumably

he means in a fictional thing rather than like news footage of the stonewall riots or something yes and i'm going to take this to mean in a mainstream production as well because of course there were gay filmmakers making effectively art house soft porn that's not really the point is it the point is when in a mainstream product did we see a gay kiss it's actually earlier than i thought it would be 1927 um it's on youtube it's a silent movie called wings uh it won an oscar i'm not sure i'd call it a gay kiss it's fairly clear what the subtext is it's what we'd call a bromance uh in today's uh language okay but a bromance is usually not a sexual thing exactly so the subtext is that they probably fancy each other probably love each other more than the girl they've been fighting over that's the plot of

the film i see but nonetheless to the audience of the time they would have seen it as these are two straight characters sharing a moment of brotherly intimacy. Like Brokeback. So the moment where it happens is on the deathbed. So you've got Dave and Jack, who are World War I pilots. Jack is mortally wounded. Dave has a tender final moment with him where he basically says, love you, brother, kisses his forehead, twirls his hair. They're looking sort of, from a modern perspective,

lovingly into each other's eyes. And no doubt, you you know there were gay people working on the production at the time who knew that that was the clear subtext but i'm still not sure the audience would have necessarily picked that no forehead is not a smooch no exactly no i think this is disqualified then what's the first lip on lip kiss between the same-sex couple well that would be in a mainstream film 1971 then is sunday bloody sunday right um so that is later than I would have thought. Here's a question from Ben who says, Helen, answer me this. Why are conspiracy theorists often referred to as the tinfoil hat brigade? Did it all start with Joe Wicks in EastEnders in the mid-90s?

No, it is much earlier than Joe Wicks in EastEnders in the mid-90s. What's he talking about? What did Joe Wicks do? I don't know. I've never seen EastEnders in the mid-90s. What's he talking about? What did Joe Wicks do? I've never seen EastEnders. Joe Wicks was the young guy who went very paranoid and covered all of his windows with tinfoil and stuff

and was very mentally ill. I think. But yes, like you, I am not an EastEnders watcher. So the tinfoil thing being linked to conspiracies, it is a phrase I've heard a lot and I've never questioned it until now. Why is that? I don't know where it comes from. The story I heard was that if you wear a tinfoil hat,

it prevents electromagnetic waves being able to read your brain. So it's like a sort of mind control conspiracy. I can beat the government with this packet of kitchen foil. And yet, interestingly, although it does work in that way, like a Faraday cage works, because the tinfoil hats tend to be just hats and they're not covering the face, it means the government can get your thoughts through your face.

So they've not thought of that. Should we wear a fencing mask? I suppose. They found also a metal mesh might be more effective than tinfoil. But MIT did a study on the efficacy of three different styles of tinfoil hats, the Fez, the Centurion and the Classical. But incidentally, they found that while it did the mod did this

study mit oh okay university mit i thought you i thought you actually suggested that government money went into this particular area of research which would be ironic and also would underline the case for government well well they said they have actually found that the hat amplifies certain frequencies oh god which uh are ones reserved for government use. So they are wondering whether the tinfoil hat thing was a plant by the government. They're wondering this in a tongue-in-cheek way. But the frequencies are ones used for mobile communication and broadcast satellites and also aeronautical radio navigation and space-to-Earth and space-to-space satellites.

So the government can read your thoughts more if you're wearing a tinfoil hat. Whoopsie! See, now though, I mean, it is kind of a nostalgic amusing reference isn't it because even if uh you genuinely believe that the government's primary focus in your life is to find out everything about you then you know they're doing that through your gmail account yeah you know you put tinfoil hat on it and you've got that plug-in that would be a great app wouldn't it tinfoil hat on it and you got that plug in that would be a great app wouldn't it tinfoil for iphone actually surely surely someone has done that so where's the story where does the story come from the tinfoil hats well um the first documented use is from a science fiction short story by julian huxley called the tissue culture king in which the protagonist

finds out that caps of metal foil will block the effect of telepathy and that was published in the yale review in april of 1926 wow but they may have been tinfoil hats in the 18th century uh which may have been the opposition to uh free masons what they thought the masons might have been um exacting mind control on them so they began their own fraternity called the Mad Hatters. And when they heard about the protective properties of aluminium, they created their own aluminium hats. So they're tinfoil hats, a rich heritage of hat. If you've got a question, then email your question, yeah,

to AnswerMailThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com. AnswerMailThisPodcast at GoogleMmail.com answer me this podcast to googlemail.com answer me this podcast to googlemail.com answer me this podcast to googlemail.com so retrospect is 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 a lady called S from Newcastle who says, in a couple of weeks, I'll be doing a 55 mile charity bike ride along with a number of other people in my office. I'm not new to cycling cycling it's been my primary mode of transport for the past five years hippie i'm not the fastest thing on two wheels but i'm not bad i was worried that i'd be the only one there not on one of those fancy pants road bikes the super light ones with the skinny

little wheels and the curved handlebars so i suggested to a workmate that she sign up too as i knew her bike was a secondhand mountain bike similar to mine okay whatever the problem is and i'm gathering you're about to complain about the person you know that you encouraged to sign up this could go anywhere ollie uh let's just remember that fact immediately you encouraged her to sign up yes okay you suggested she should sign up put an asterisk next to that hashtag just saying she did and i was pretty chuffed at first figuring we could train together and it would be super fun what could go wrong however after a few training rides i've realized this was a huge mistake could have predicted that she is the slowest cyclist i have ever known out of a sense of camaraderie i initially tried to ride alongside her that's not

going to win you a race is it uh but i physically cannot go that slowly without losing all forward momentum and falling to the side she seems to think this is a leisurely ride and is taking her sweet time about things because you signed her up so she's probably just thinking well this will be fun this is like you said in the previous paragraph this will be fun yes that's right yes i've been roped into a leisure activity i'm certainly not going to treat this like business as i'm the one who knows the route Says S I can't just go off on my own

And I need to wait for her at every junction and turning So she doesn't get lost This means I'm not really training for five hours of continuous cycling As I have to take a five minute break every mile or so Yeah I see the issue The one time I didn't wait for her at a turning She went the wrong way Despite the fact it was signposted

I have a lot of sympathy for this girl. Can I just say? I really like her. She's our people. Yeah, exactly. I know that the way this is written, we're supposed to have empathy with you, Es. We do, we do.

A little. We like you both. I don't. But actually, if I was part of your hellish fun ride, I would be exactly doing what your partner's doing at the moment, treating it like a laugh and going the wrong way because I'm male-commoderated. I'd put it on purpose at times.

Just to sabotage it. Yeah, if my friend was abandoning me, he'd rope me into something and then just head off. I don't get it if their starting point was like, oh, you've got a shit bike, why don't you make me feel better about myself? Anyway, she missed the signpost and got lost for an hour. Yeah.

Did she or did she go for a drink? Also, it's hilly around Newcastle. You need a little break. I'll tell you what, actually, cycling around Newcastle would be a nice thing in the summer. Yeah, but still hard. Steep. Absolutely.

I don't think I can continue to train with her, says S, but don't want to tell her it's because I can't handle her slow pace. Also... Why? Why can't you say that? I don't know. Isn't this a bit like that question we had a couple of episodes ago from that woman who said,

I can't dump this guy by telling him he's got a small penis? It's a bit like that, Helen, but the difference is I can't dump this guy by telling him he's got a small penis. It's a bit like that, Helen, but the difference is I can't imagine, and I could be wrong, that your friend would take her lack of acceleration on a bike quite as personally as a man might the unchangeable size of his manhood. Maybe she's a real speed queen, though.

Maybe. Also, after some solo training rides, I've realised the real one will be three times as hard as the rides we did together, and it's going to take her about six hours to complete. Whereas the longest she's been able to go for so far is four hours. The two of us will also be going to a conference in America a week after the event. So I don't want to fall out with her because it's going to make the eight days together alone super uncomfortable. Yeah, no longer super fun, super uncomfortable. Yes. So Ollie, answer me this. How can I get out of inverted commas training with this girl?

And how can I tell her that she needs to go faster or she'll be doing this stupid bike ride until the end of time? P.S. To give you some idea of the speed differences, my average speed is 12 miles an hour. Hers is eight miles per hour. The end. She probably doesn't want to do this stupid fun run that you've roped her into. It does seem a little bit that way, doesn't it?

Yeah. And also, it's not your problem if she can't finish the race. She'll probably take a wrong turning anyway, because you're not going to hang back in the race to tell her where to go. She'll probably just go off and have lunch. She knows. She knows. You think she doesn't know, but trust me,

as the fat one who on every schoolboy walking expedition had to be looked after by a teacher specially delegated to stand at the back with me and sometimes leash me, I can tell you for a fact that she knows. She knows she's holding you back. She knows that she's slower than you. And it doesn't make her feel better. It's not going to make anyone feel better to be the slow one, is it? No. But also, she wouldn't want to hold you back in the actual event. I think it is perfectly reasonable for you to point out with her over a drink one evening. Look, obviously our speeds are different.

She'll have noticed that. Obviously, when it comes to the real thing, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you behind. So let's study the route together now. And I also think once you've had that conversation, you then say, would it be OK if a few days before, you know, for the final training, I do it myself so I can build up my speed. I don't think you even need to have this conversation. I think you just start training on your own. It sounds like the whole exercise is propelled by you. So if she's not going, hey, when are we going to train next?

Should we do it tomorrow? If she's not doing that, then you don't have to make any excuses. You just have to stop setting up the training sessions if she is doing that just say i went out yesterday i'm really tired after i went out yesterday or something like that she's not as bothered as you it's not that's not really a problem then is it if she was equally bothered that would be a problem i still think it's a bit crap to rope someone into an event they clearly didn't want to do well that's not clear is it she willingly? Maybe. Or maybe she was doing it as a favour and then go, oh, but you're not good enough,

so I'm just going to leave you behind. No, but you're not saying that. You're just facing up to reality and saying, look, thank you for training with me. Now I need to train by myself and then we're going to do the race. The experiment hasn't worked.

No, you don't even need to say that. It will be evident to her that you're faster than her and I don't think it's an issue. She spent a lot of time looking at your sweaty arse while in front of her. I just don't think you need to training dump them I think you just need to stop calling them I think I think this is time for a cowardly dump and I don't I

think the conference you'll be jet-lagged anyway which means you'll be horrible to each other regardless there was some talk for our work away day which is happening in the month or so being going skiing a dry ski slope I just thought the number of injuries when you get a bunch of nerds on a ski slope. You must be quite difficult whilst you're skiing downhill at speed to discuss ideas at depth to do with the workplace. Yeah, I don't think we're going to have any mobile meetings as we portal towards the barrier.

We need a new invoice system! Where would you go? The Milton Keynes Indoor Skiing Bowl? I don't know. That's quite good. That's the only one I've been to, but it was quite good. Did you actually make it down a slope that time?

I did. That's what gave me the false confidence so that then when I went skiing for real, I fell over instantly. If only at the Milton Keynes Snow Bowl they had had a simulator, which is like, if you're trying to get over to your ski instructor

and you fall over and dislocate your shoulder, what happens then? What happens then, yeah. They did have a sort of alpine-themed bar there, which is like if you're trying to get over to your ski instructor and you fall over and dislocate your shoulder, what happens then? What happens then, yeah. They did have a sort of alpine-themed bar there, which is quite cool. I mean, I suppose if you were doing a Milton Keynes-themed bar, that would be very depressing. It'd be quite flat. Yeah.

Organised. Everything would be pissed in 1960. But imagine if there was a cultural exchange, and then when you actually went skiing in Switzerland, they did have Milton Keynes-themed Lederhhosen lodges i think that could be quite cool you could turn the bletchley heath connection have some computers i don't know what that would look like i quite like the idea though that you'd have this sort of beautiful alpine scene and then at the bottom a recreation of the uci point what is the uci point it's the uh first multiplex cinema in england wow how many screens uh i

believe it had six. It's no longer with us, but it had a distinctive triangular shell. Now, Victoria in Belfast has also been in touch. She says, Recently, I was admitted to hospital for an indeterminate amount of time. That's never good, really, is it? Indeterminate.

No, that's not the word you want to hear. I hope you're feeling a bit better, Victoria. I hope you've got someone to bring you food that's edible. Yeah, that is probably more important than what she's about to say she says to help keep myself entertained uh i decided to buy some of the answer me this back catalog well thank you for turning your unfortunate situation into money for us yeah if anything good is going to come out of this uh she says uh the back episodes of the show have really really helped keep me sane during one of the most horrible experiences of my life

so thank you so much well that's lovely of you to say thank you Victoria because what we're doing is pretty stupid but if it's useful to any of you that's always wonderful to hear it's also nice as well that people who are hearing our early work for the first time now can say you know as fans of our current work

that it holds up because our instinct is always to play it down a little and say oh you know the early stuff's a bit dodgy but actually you know we do of our current work that it holds up because our instinct is always to play it down a little and say oh you know the early stuff's a bit dodgy but actually you know we do get as feedback from people who are buying our episodes at answermethisstore.com that they are enjoying the early stuff so thank you yeah we've gone pretty early for today's intermission which is from episode 15 oh good lord this is the equivalent of muppet babies but for answer me this so we're still finding our legs, I think. Yeah, I think my voice was an octave higher at this point.

So this is from early 2007, and is available along with all of our classic episodes and our albums and our apps at answermethistore.com. Russell says, Oli, answer me this. Do devil worshippers, of course, when they die, get sent to heaven or hell? Because hell is what they want, so as a punishment, they die, get sent to heaven or hell? Because hell is what they want, so as a punishment, surely they would be sent to heaven, right? Good question, Russell.

That is a brilliant question. Really, seriously now. Do devil worshippers actually really properly exist? Do they actually even die? But do you know what I mean? It's the kind of thing when you're 16 you'd say you were a devil worshipper, unless they're involved in a tragic accident early in life, like trying to plug their electric guitar into some water or something. Probably most of these people who claim to be devil worshippers,

by the time they die, have realised that they're being a bit silly. Yeah, they grow out of it. Yeah, it doesn't really come into it, does it? Listeners, please do send us questions using your voices by calling us on the following number. 0208 123 5877 Or by Skyping Answer Me This. Let's hear who's been in touch today. Rob from

London. Hello Molly, answer me this. Why is it that at every hotel I stay at, the concierge has two crossed keys over their lapel on their jacket? I don't think I'd noticed this in real life until I'd seen the Grand Budapest Hotel. I haven't seen that.

Is it as irritating as it looks? No, I think it's less irritating than that. Yeah? You think I should give it a go, even though all Wes Anderson films irritate me deeply? Not necessarily, but it's... It's a caper. It's my favourite of his films, I think, so far. Yeah.

But anyway, there's a plot strand with a lot of concierges with their secret cross-keys society thing. And now I notice it's real. Are they all in a secret society like in the film? They are in, it's basically a union. It is the society called Le Clef d'Or. The Society of the Golden Keys translated into English. But it was founded in 1929 in Paris.

And basically it is a sign of quality that the hotel you are staying in. So obviously, Rob, you stay only in the very best places. It's not a travelodge thing then. Exactly. Obviously, the whole idea of the concierge is they're supposed to have the magical kind of strings to all the puppets that you want to control all around town. And really, the only way you can harness that effectively is if you have a group of you

across all the different hotels so that essentially every good restaurant in town has a table left over for a concierge to call that day and book so it's like a network and also a cabal yeah so there's cooperation sharing information going on you know someone from the waldorf will write to someone from the ritz and say hey we've got two tickets phantom of the opera tomorrow night do you need them because we don't anymore etc that's the idea can they press the keys and that opens up like a walkie-talkie thing immediately to all the other concierges? But I quite kind of prefer the idea that the concierge at a really good hotel wouldn't have to be part of the Golden Keys because they'd have all their own contacts.

They'd be such a strong totemic figure in the world of priority booking and so on that they'd be able to just know the right people. You're basically describing the part of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Am I? Okay, unwly, without having seen it. But there is strength in a network, Oli, because you're sharing resources rather than everyone having to expend effort to get the same resources. Well, look at you, Captain Radiotopia. They've changed your mind. Take my blood.

But the official version of the cross keys that you're spotting, Rob, on the lapels is actually developed by the Swiss jeweller, Bucherer. How is that spelt? B-u-c-h-e-r-e-r bucherer i suppose who created that official version in 1998 until then you just had all different versions all over the world chaos yeah there's there's actually one manufacturer who makes the pins so they are the same everywhere modernist yeah the other day i was booking an airbnb room and i was reading reviews on one that got really really well reviewed and looked quite cool but also saying oh yes you get to hang out loads with uh rita and stan who uh immediately i said i can't especially if i'm jet

lagged i'm not here to make friends do not want yeah do not want and so i put one where the guy was like you will never meet me i come in to water the plants every other evening but you will not see me yeah i'm a bit like that even in hotels i don't really want a warm welcome i just want to be dealt with efficiently uh and yet you don't like the robot checkouts in tesco very inconsistent ollie yes that is inconsistent isn't it that's you inconsistent i think because those are obviously replacing a person's job i want a person to be there like a machine to act like a machine right that's that's the worst no no that is that is consistent, though, isn't it? So it's literally dehumanising.

Yes, I want someone to be dehumanising efficient. That's what they're getting paid for. But I want them to be able to answer my question if I can't use the machine. I think that's reasonable. I think that's what a lot of people want. What about a robot butler? Would you like one of them?

Here's a question from Matt from Cheshire. He specifies, not the posh bit of Cheshire. He says, My eldest son is a normal, well-adjusted, sociable chap, turning into just the sort of decent bloke that we aspired to as parents when he was born. However, despite his maturity and growing worldly wisdom, he still

calls us Mummy and Daddy, and not in a posh-landed gentry sort of way, as we're northerners. They have gentry in the north. Ollie answers me this, Should we do something about this? So, I presume you you want to be called mar and dar like in the darling gods of may maybe he's rebelling he's turning out so well in every other way he's like i don't want to take up smoking or something what is a way that i can

nettle them well the thing is matt from cheshire hasn't actually told us how old his eldest son is yeah if he's seven then i think this is all right i think the age at which i self-determined and i did make the decision myself having observed popular culture that i was going to try and sound uh like a kind of middle class suburban kind of guy rather than upper class toff kind of guy and i could have gone in either direction because i went to a bosch school but the age at which I decided that my destiny was more David Baddiel than Julian Fellows, I chose, right, from this day on, I'm going to say mum and dad. And I just did it.

I switched one day from mummy and daddy to mum and dad. And I think I was about eight. I remember deliberately thinking it. You're a very class conscious infant. Okay, I think if your son is pre-adolescence, Matt, don't worry, because he'll go through the phase where he doesn't even want to talk to you. And on the other side of that, he'll probably call you mum and dad. If he's an adult, I don't know, there could be something ironised

because I grew up calling my parents mum and dad. You turned to mother? Yeah, sometimes I flippantly either call her mother or mumsy. And very rarely the normal things in between. And dad is pops. And then if I'm slightly telling off my mum, then I'll call her Alison, which is her first name wow if i'm trying to discipline my dad i do it in a south african accent because i figure that that will remind him of the discipline of his childhood you're trying to discipline anyone that's pretty good advice but also how do you decide between

say grandma and granny or nan that's a parent's decision isn't it yes yeah and also to distinguish from the different sets of grandparents i suppose well yeah in my case, my dad's mum was called Anne, so she was Granny Annie, because it sounded funny. My dad still calls me son. Do you think that's just so your dad can remember who you are? You're a man, Ollie, who seems keen to be a parent someday. What would you like your child to call you when they're, say, five years old, 15 years old, 25?

Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I do, yeah. You're thinking ahead, obviously, because you haven't got a child yet. No, but you're absolutely right. It is daddy when it's five, isn't it? And I don't know why that is, but I suppose because it's cuter. Things that end IE or Y sound cute out of a child's meal. Gary.

Not so much Gary. Yeah, I guess that's true. Barry's an amazing name. I'd love to call my kid Barry. Well, better get on with it Barry Mann Barry Mann Yeah

Barry Mann Yeah But then yeah At 15 it is dad Yeah And at 25 I'd just be grateful I'm still alive really I think Well

That's optimistic isn't it Yeah But I think that's it though isn't it I don't think I'd care When the kid's 25 What he calls me I'd just be grateful To still have a relationship

Yes That's a good point I wouldn't want him To call me twat's 25 what he calls me. I'd just be grateful to have a relationship. Yes, that's a good point. I wouldn't want him to call me twat, don't get me wrong. Yeah, get over yourself then, Matt. You should just be happy. Do you think Matt's just embarrassed if it's in front of other people? God, Matt's kid is calling him daddy. God, there must be secret poshos in the North.

Yeah, well, exactly. Matt's question is full of the worries of ingrained class prejudice, isn't it? You know, I come from Cheshire, not the posh bit. We're northerners, so we can't be posh. I mean, Matt, it sounds like you've got a lot of issues about this that actually perhaps the next generation are ignoring. I mean, perhaps this is a good thing. Easy solution. Move to my hometown of Tunbridge Wells.

We're all Tunbridge Wells now, Helen. One nation. One nation Tories. I warned you, nation. I warned you about Tunbridge Wells. Did you listen? No. I only like things that feature the number seven, like the secret seven and magnificent seven. I've even got time for lucky number seven. Who doesn't love Lucy Liu?

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And the good thing is you can make the changes right at the front so it's not messing around with code. Yeah, you just drag and drop and push things around and it all magically falls into place. You change all the fonts into orange,

you get to see them turn orange straight away. It's good stuff. Is it good for embedding YouTube and SoundCloud and stuff? You could embed the shit out of everything. Yeah. Maybe I should do mine. Yeah, treat yourself. And if you do do that, then you can get 10% off for a year

if you use the code ANSWER. Here's a question from Moira who says, when we registered to vote, we were asked for our national insurance numbers Which got us talking About what the letters on the end Of the national insurance numbers mean So many people listening to this now Moira

Want your life National insurance numbers Two letters at the beginning Then six numbers And then a single letter at the end Correct That's the format That is

Moira says I was always told that the letter dictated What order you would be called to the army If we went to war D's being first a's being last mine is a i'm a d what whoa yeah maybe it's um a gender thing i don't know ollie answer me this is there actually any truth in that if so how come i'm a d and my husband has wangled his way to an a if not then what could they possibly mean what could they possibly mean get the enigma machine how could they possibly be just a boring bureaucratic collection of prefix suffix and some random numbers yeah well uh the suffix which she's referring to the letter on the

end uh goes from a to d in order uh some people are A, some people are B, some people are C, some people are D, depending on when in the year you're registered. And the reason for that was back in the day when employers had to purchase national insurance stamps and stick them onto their cards for each employee. When the cards were complete, they'd then be processed in order by the Department of Social Security. So imagine like when everyone returns their tax return, for example, if everyone did it all at once on the 5th of april then the system would be overwhelmed with people trying to process that information as it is they give you a year or whatever it is to do it so that

they come in slowly throughout the year it's the same idea they didn't want everyone's tax returns coming back at the same time everyone's employers cards come back at the same time so they spread it out quarterly that is the boring reason why but i'm an a and my birthday is 22nd of april yours is 12th of may close together you're a d yeah what gives well there are um regional differences as well uh so for example that is sometimes reflected in the prefix sometimes not uh so it might be that your prefix is jx and that's just random uh but for example if you have JY that is Jersey MN is the Isle of Man BT is Northern Ireland

so there are some regional variations going in as well depending on which office would be processing your national insurance returns at the beginning

but at the end no no but the point is there's regional differences so we were born in different places so they got to A and D at different times what about yours Martin

what letters at the end of yours I'm an A A for Austwick but sometimes people say well hold on hold on they're obviously not random because my kids have got consecutive numbers and in that case that that is true they're not random and that's because they adapt the child reference number for child benefit and those are consecutive based on siblings in the family and then turn it international insurance number but otherwise they're basically random sometimes the prefix is completely random the suffix is just when in the year they

decide to process your application on return it is i'm afraid that dull well that's what you get for asking a question about something dull i think it was answer yeah i thought you did the best you could with it thank you i i kind of wanted to find something more interesting about it yeah but there isn't like a secret code like who would get eaten first yeah if need be uh but unless of course i mean if there was a secret code if if the tinfoil hat brigade were interested in this uh then of course the answers that i could find through a simple google wouldn't be the truth would they so actually maybe i've just given the conventional answer that the man wants you to hear and you propagated it you're a tool of the big evil mission yeah here's a question from jennifer in loxley alabama um the dallas zoo she says has a

giraffe that just had a baby a baby giraffe i'm assuming if not that's a new story that i really would have liked to have tuned into animal planet and the zoo live streamed the birth online. And as I watched the giraffe prepare to give birth, I began to wonder about the knobs on the giraffe's head. Like me with the royal baby. When she came out of the hospital, I was like, I can't see the start of the horns. They're probably hidden by the blanket. Helen, answer me this.

Did giraffes ever have antlers? Maybe. Why do they have those knobs? No one is quite sure. they're called ossicones and they're made out of ossified cartilage rather than bone which what antlers are made of and they're covered in skin and fur and i think in male giraffes the fur comes off the top so male giraffes got bald ones whereas female giraffes got little tufty ones so it's unusual for male and female creatures to have antlers usually it's just the males have antlers and

horns and also they don't shed them like antlers so if you saw a giraffe skull it would still have the ossicones coming out of it like two little aerials but also they're really tall giraffes i think it's fair to say yeah therefore uh why would they need antlers i guess that's why evolution has got rid of them um because you know they're not going to be headbutting anything that's uh anywhere near their own height anyway. Well, now when giraffes are fighting each other, they kind of twist their necks around each other's necks and headbutt each other and like bang.

Well, when would you like going down the Edgware High Road? Yeah, and then they'll like bang each other's heads. And so they've got bony protuberances on their heads for fighting. They think maybe the ossicones were the base for antlers. And then as giraffes evolved to have longer and longer necks they did evolve out of the antlers because it's a bit of an inconvenience isn't it if you've got a long spindly neck to have a big set of antlers on top you need quite a sturdy neck for that and it is quite difficult for rotting um but they also

thought maybe they're for thermoregulation because they are they do have a blood system so maybe it's just like a little heat vent on the giraffe's head good explanation do you think if the royal baby had equally been live streamed people would have watched oh my god probably not on animal planet of dignity to the family i still would not have watched because i would still be so automatically bored you'd look once though to see henany wouldn't you no you would once mean no not to be mean if i'm saying if she'd volunteered if the whole family had volunteered i would like like to see Kate Middleton screaming, fuck! Yeah.

I'd watch for that. Yeah. I'd like to know as well how hands-on William was, because everyone talks about him being progressive and modern and, you know, he's the man by the bedside, and I'm sure he is. He didn't have any afterbirth on his blue jumper when he came out, did he?

You know, by royal standards, of course, he's more hands-on than Prince Philip was, who sort of did a thing in a chair and then went around the world for two years until the children came out. But... It was the style at the time. It was the style at the time. I still wonder whether he really was perhaps as intimate as other modern dads are these days. I think, though, most modern dads are still going to stay at the head end, having their hands crossed.

Yes, I think that's probably the right thing. Helen? Oliver? Though life is full of questions, there are answers you must know. One. No, it will not fall off, but moderation

in all things, too. Yes, there probably is, but we won't find out in our lifetimes. Three, most people prefer colliery, but my personal favourite is Dalton. Four, if you try and slip a one, it would ruin your friendship.

Yes. Here's a question from jess from toledo who says i've only once had the opportunity to visit the uk about 20 years ago when i went on a trip with my grandparents and parents at the age of about 11 or 12 honestly this vacation took place so long ago that i remember very little of it yeah 1995 yeah windows 95 would have just come out wouldn't it that's I remember queuing to get that in 1995 uh the band Space they were probably in the charts yeah yeah yeah yeah I remember very little of it I remember very little of it she says though I know I picked up a few souvenirs maybe a Space CD I have no recollection of what they were or where they may have ended up with one exception oh intrigue tease yeah like it if only

your parents had got a t-shirt that said uh my parents went to london and all they got with this lousy t-shirt then you'd have a reference point wouldn't you know for sure uh what they'd got and what they did but she also went to london and got that lousy t-shirt doesn't matter it's still a reference point isn't it she says my grandfather was kind of a rascally guy and at one of the castle ruins we visited he picked up a stone that had been part of the castle and then gave it to me when we got home. It's a piece of flint with what I believe is some limestone mortar stuck to it.

Okay. I'm not sure exactly which castle it came from but my best guess is that it may have been Canterbury Castle because my grandmother is Episcopalian and she was totally stoked to visit the cathedral so we spent time in the area. It's amazing isn't it? Someone from Toledo. Has been to Kent. because my grandmother is Episcopalian, and she was totally stoked to visit the cathedral, so we spent time in the area. It's amazing, isn't it? Someone from Toledo.

Has been to Kent. Jess says, I thought the stone was pretty cool, and I've displayed it in a place of honour in every home I've lived in since then. But I've come to be of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, or one mind, if she's of two minds,

my grandfather passed away a few years later, and I've always considered it as much of a memento of him as of the trip yeah i can see that on the other hand i have a piece of rock that probably spent a thousand years as a piece of an english castle sitting on a shelf in my living room in ohio yeah but then that piece of rock was rock for millions of years and then got misappropriated for a few hundred years to be a castle yeah i think that's right and i don't know i know this is kind of exciting in ohio but in england i mean any rock you see on the street could have been part of a famous castle couldn't it i mean there's a lot to go around yeah so ollie answer me this what crimes did my grandfather commit in taking this stone and transporting it off british soil what should i do with it should i keep it and feel no further guilt

about the matter or should i find some way to get it back to the place whence it came which you don't know which place that was and if the latter how do you suggest going about that oh no i don't think you should return to the seat of the crime what they're going to do they're just going to like put it in the bin because they're like well someone could turn their ankle on this but just leave it on the ground there would be such an amusingly underwhelmed reaction if you tried to call canterbury council and say that you wanted to return a piece of limestone but you're not even sure that it's from the castle there so can they possibly test it is there a castle in canterbury yeah there is yeah no the whole thing fell down after he took the stone that was it

why would you take the good stone the keystone i mean the technical answer is of course there is a crime we're called heritage crime, which is, you know, desecration or vandalism of a historic site. It might not have even been a valuable stone, though. It could have just been like some grapple or some shit. Well, that's it. I can't imagine anyone is going to prosecute you for that crime unless you've literally stolen a bit of Stonehenge.

Doing them a favour, you're tidying up the street. If everyone went and did it, that would be a problem and you would get prosecuted because it is a historic site. But it's like pissing in a stream, isn't it? If one person does it, really, you're not upsetting the ecology. Really, the environment can deal with it. If everyone at a music festival goes and pisses in the stream, that's a problem and all the fish die. And that stream is just piss at that point.

Then it's just a stream of piss, yeah. So it's that thing, isn't it? Really, your granddad stealing one stone 20 years ago isn't going to make any difference but if your story inspires others to do the same if every tourist who came did it then we'd have a real issue i sort of disagree i think the fact that he's done it is bad but having been done there's no benefit to taking it back like it's not like you can sort of you know get a bit of limestone mortise and stick it back in wherever it was well you're imagining it being taken from a fully formed ruined ruined wall. But if it was lying just on the floor...

Yeah, there is no harm to that. Yeah, if you see it lying around, I think that's a different issue to actually hacking it out of the wall. Yes, yes, that is archaeological vandalism. Let me return to the neighbours' references. There are two. One, when I went on a bus tour to Pinnock Court, which stands in for Ramsey Street,

you were forbidden to take a lemon off the tree because souvenir hunters were always taking lemons off the lemon trees yeah you see again one person does it fine everyone does it no lemons where they're gonna get lemons from yeah their gin and tonics will taste bad uh the second thing is a memory neighbors button you know that character that we love to hate rebecca ritters uh she and helen daniel when i went on a trip to illaroo uh known as airs Rock at the time, I think, and she took a bit of stone and that is bad luck. And so there was a whole like wobble board soundtrack plot

where Button had bad luck because of this cursed bit of stone and it's cursed until you return it to Uluru. So I think Uluru had cleverly written in to its own contract the fact that you can't vandalise it by taking bits away. That is, you know, it's obviously had a lasting impact for you because here you are all these years later, years later probably same sort of time still remembering it very strongly very different experience to this jess yeah when i went to ularu i did not take anything do you sometimes take natural souvenirs though yeah i've got bits of like uh black stones

off um an icelandic beach because it's hard to see black beaches except there of course it's very common so you're not really doing anything vandalistic. And also, volcanoes go off a lot, and so they have new land forming all the time because of the volcanoes. Now, that's cool. What have you done with this? It's on top of the clock that you gave me for my 30th birthday.

Okay, I'll have a look on my way out. Like a little tableau. Okay, I've got some... We did one of those things you can buy in John Lewis, like one of those frames that you pin things in. Oh, yes. And we did one of those for our trip to Florida, and there is, for example, a leaf, an autumnal leaf how dare you which is a bit weird because uh

we get leaves lots of them in hertfordshire we do have a lot of leaves in britain there's a new england style to the leaf arguably but in florida well it was uh i didn't i didn't bore you with the details it was when we were in new england before we went to florida but it's in the florida frame with the florida i'm sorry it was from the earlier part of the road trip um but thank you for being a stickler for accuracy as ever uh but uh when we went to oregon last year went to sisters yes beautiful almost sort of alpine forest fuck loads of pine needles just so many and pine cones why would you want those those are all over the place well they're all again but they look different because they're grander in structure everything's bigger in amer. Everything's bigger in America

than the ones we get here. So we, and it was coming up to Christmas time. We were there in October. So we came home with a bag of five pine cones because we thought we'd spray them and do a Christmassy thing with them.

And we just put them on our mantelpiece by the fireplace. They look really nice. And now I literally can't move them because they've somehow got sharper as they've dried. They've got really prickly and I can't even go near them.

To defer thieves. Yeah, if you touch them. So they've dried, they've got really prickly and I can't even go near them. To defer thieves! Yeah, if you touch them. So they've got an inbuilt alarm system. So it's Christmas permanently in my house now. I had a much, much darker ending to that story

where he said, and then all these spiders started coming out. And then my girlfriend started acting really weird and her eyes turned black. Could you not wear gloves to pick them up

and dispose of them? I suppose there's a solution, Helen. Or tongs. There are several solutions, Ollie. There's all practical solutions and Ollie's not a practical man as we've established. I think nature is teaching me to respect the pine cones and not move them about too much. Yes. All of which brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This.

But wait, there's more. Maybe. If you send us more questions, our email, phone and Skype and our contact details for your convenience are on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com Ollie made a kind of triumphant punching the air gesture as he read out the website for the nth time. Yes, it wasn't really excitement reading out the website so much as excitement that we finally reached the end of this recording. It is sunny outside. We're going to go for a walk.

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