Answer Me This! - AMT318: Juliet's Balcony, Bluetooth and The Snip

Episode Date: July 9, 2015

Today's questioneers wonder about Noel Edmonds's small Twitter fanbase, the oldest pub in Britain, and vasectomy aftercare. For more details about this episode, and different ways to obtain it, visit http://answermethispodcast.com/episode318.Send 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

When Arnie said I'll be back, did he mean this many times? Has to be this, has to be this Is spelling Genesis with a wire linguistic crime? Has to be this, has to be this Helen and Ollie, has to be this Sometimes we forget that this show has an international audience who may not be fully availed of all of the vernacular that we're deploying. But we don't forget that there's people listening

who might not know what vernacular means. Anyone can look up vernacular. For instance, we've had this email from Benji who says, Not being British, I was very lost in Answer Me This episode 317 as I had no idea what a pasty was other than the bits of material strippers use to cover their nipples. Yeah, that's how it evolved, Benji. In England, strippers traditionally used lumps of pastry for that

and it just caught on. Though it wasn't until 1970 they were allowed a lunch break, so they just had to get it where they could. Benji says, After performing research, I've determined that a pasty is basically a beef and turnip calzone. They're pretty close, although it's made of pastry rather than dough.

But yeah, it's a sealed pastry containing hot ingredients, Benji, and all those listening who aren't sure what a pasty is. It's usually meat and veg. Sometimes cheese and onion. Sometimes cheese. It's British fast food, basically, isn't it? It's street food. It was an old working food because it was a single lunch object that you could take to your job and then eat it

while you were still down the mineshaft or whatever and you didn't have to have cutlery or anything. Hello, Helen, Ollie and Martin. This is Chrissie calling from Telford. I'm actually calling on behalf of my husband, who always has loads of random questions and never calls to answer me this. This week, the question that's been troubling him more than usual is, why doesn't Noel Edmonds, beloved entertainer from Noel's House Party and Deal or No Deal,

have more Twitter followers? He's only got 4,000, which doesn't seem like a lot. It is an intriguing point because, you know, Noel Edmonds used to be one of the absolute biggest stars on British television. I mean, probably the biggest, along with Cilla Black Also, you'd think loads of people would just follow him because they watched him 20 years ago And the point is, he's still on Channel 4 every day

It's not like he's just a faded star Deal or no deal, still going So, I was thinking, why is this the case? Why are people not keen to follow Noel Edmonds? He needs more laughs See, Paul Daniels has quite a lot of funny tweets Noel Edmonds, just a bit bland, isn, Paul Daniels has quite a lot of funny tweets. Noll Edmonds is just a bit bland, isn't it?

Well, it's also just got that edge of quackery that most of his modern day pronouncements have. So, for example, you look at his biog on Twitter, car mad broadcaster. What? I mean, no point fishing for that job, mate. Chris Evans got it. Well, he could just get rid of car. Indeed.

Then writer Of what You know I mean He may have written a book But that's not what He's known for He's very prolific Post-it note leaver Health detective

Oh no Eh Is that a TV show He does No I think that's Relating to the book That he's written Which is you know

Some of this new age Stuff that he's into Which is fair enough But again even if You were looking For someone who was A practitioner of that stuff I'm not sure the phrase Health this new age stuff that he's into, which is fair enough. But again, even if you were looking for someone who was a practitioner of that stuff, I'm not sure the phrase health detective means anything. I think he's invented it. And then positivity guru.

Oh, no. I mean, we did know about that. But again, I don't think that's what most people are thinking when they think Noel Edmonds. You know, they're thinking Noel's house party. They're thinking Deal or No Deal. They're thinking here is one of the few broadcasters from Radio 1 in the 70s that apparently it's OK to still like do you think it is partly because the noel edmunds fan

average age might be rather older than that of the average twitter user yeah partly that and i think that partly explains as well why fellow entertainers from the 80s who were at their peak back then uh have not not actually as small numbers uh as no but i was looking for example sally jesse rafael. What was it she did? She was like Oprah, but white. She had big glasses, didn't she? She had big red glasses. She talked sense to people that were going through emotional dilemmas

in the pre-Springer era. She was like a Brusca Ricky Lake. Yeah. Only 20,000 followers on Twitter. Really? Michael Barrymore, 31,000 at the time of recording. Again, I know he's been through his troubles. You'd think that in a way that would make him more compelling on social media, but no, 31,000 at the time of recording again you know I mean I know he's been through his troubles you'd think

that in a way that would make him more compelling on social media but no 31,000 how many has Tiffany got what's the possible

relation between Tiffany and Noel Edmonds well I mean she was like a one hit wonder wasn't she and I caught an affinity for her

because she lived in Cunwick for a little while but I just think like someone who's had a sustained TV career should have a bigger follower

than someone that really just had a couple of songs okay would you guess that she has more or less than Michael Barrymore? I'm going to guess fewer than Barrymore. It is fewer than Barrymore. About 25k? I'm going to guess 8,000.

Martin's closer. It's 23,900. That's respectable. I think that's pretty good, actually. She's doing an 80s cruise, apparently. Of course she is. At the moment. She's probably only in her early 40s isn't she she she's got at

least a couple more careers ahead she's looking pretty good in the twit pic uh i follow her you don't have to show me oh okay i see a pop-up on my feed regularly this is a game that ollie and i sometimes play we'll name a member of an expired boy band and then play play your cards right basically how many twitter followers they have it's a good game it is a good game good game good game but often quite sobering okay edward furlong oh fewer or more than tiffany fewer edward furlong edward furlong yes i he must have 50 or 60 000 followers so pick a number 2 000 55 helen's closer what 6 000 what 6 000 and actually his his twitter feed is a bit depressing he's not been well it is a lot of like oh I've got writer's block today

oh would you like to see me talk about this it's just all a bit desperate and needy and sad he's not doing anything wrong in terms of the biog says very clearly what he's known for lifted from obscurity by JC to star along Arnold and Ed Norton now thinking about it he means James Cameron,

but he's deliberately employed an acronym there that could suggest Jesus Christ. Well, of course. What's your point? I think... It could be a word limit issue. It could be. I just think the phrasing, it just makes you think, oh, something's a bit weird here.

I think he's just trying to do a joke, but a lot of people are not good at jokes in 140 characters. No, exactly. And it's often that, isn't it? If you do have a skill with jokes, you'll get more followers. I mean, Noel's mullet on Twitter has 1,200 followers.

And he doesn't even really have a mullet anymore. No, exactly. I mean, that is his hair from the 80s, having a quarter as many followers as the man himself. Hey, it's Pip from Bristol. Is Juliet's Balcony in Italy

actually Juliet's Balcony? And did Shakespeare even go? Because I don't actually believe that he was ever there. Oh, Pip, you truther. Where is it? Verona. Okay. All right.

So as in two gentlemen of, you know, the hints would suggest that Shakespeare had visited. Well, there is... We don't know if Shakespeare was real, really. So, I mean, actually, you know, you go into a whole quagmire, don't you, when you start talking about... Yeah, they wrote all of Shakespeare's plays in the 70s

using an algorithm. I heard that they were actually all written by Dave Grohl. I heard it was Gary Barlow. But anyway, did Shakespeare ever go to Italy at all? There is no evidence saying that he did. So he could have because the theatre companies he was associated with, some of them went on tours of Europe. But they don't have evidence that he did.

However, Italian culture and stuff was very fashionable in Britain at the time, so there would have been a lot of sources from which to draw. And that's where Romeo and Juliet comes from, isn't it? That's why other people wrote their version of that story, because it was a popular Italian story. Yeah, they were all nicking for the same source material, weren't they? Yeah. I have been to Juliet's balcony on a school trip in 1992.

Is it on a residential building? It's on a 13th or 14th century building. However, the balcony was added in the 1930s. Bullshit! So I think Juliet was standing on it, pining for Romeo. I think a lot of tourists went to Verona because they loved Romeo and Juliet. And Verona had the same thought that King's Cross has had by putting in the platform

nine and three quarters trolley for people to pose by and they were like, okay, well, Juliet was in the Capulet family. There's a house that belonged to the Dal Capello family, which sounds a bit like Capulet so they bought that house off them in 1905 and declared it to have been the Capulet family residence

and created a tourist sensation. And then they added lots of like gothic oldie looking bits to the building that weren't really genuine. I mean, if it was an American story, the Americans would actually have then an actress dressed up as Juliet that you could have your picture taken with. Well, they do have a statue of Juliet that is also 20th century. And the legend is that you get good luck if you touch her boobs.

So one of her boobs is really shiny. One of her boobs is really shiny. Yeah, what's wrong with the other one? The other one is not lucky. The other one means that all of your letters will go astray with tragic consequences. There's also Juliet's tomb, but I think that was because he named a particular chapel where they were supposed to meet,

and that chapel does exist, and it's very small, so the number of tomb options is limited, and the one that was big enough for someone to, spoiler, kill themselves on is one. So people go to to that too but it's kind of meaningless and also really when shakespeare was setting stories in italy uh i mean there were two reasons he was doing it one was because it was fashionable and because people liked italy and as you say because the source material was italian and so that's why you end up with two gentlemen of verona and twelfth night and merchant of venice and whatever but the second reason think, is distancing the political realities

of the comment he was making from Britain. So, you know, very often he's talking to a British audience about British society, but it's a parallel. It's not a description. So they feel more comfortable. They completely understand that it's a comment on whatever it may be. Oh, was it like Catholicism and Protestantism? Well, exactly.

Romeo and Juliet can be any racial divide. Divided society. Yeah, The Merchant of Venice could be about anti-Semitism in Britain, couldn't it? But it's not. It's about Italy, so it's that little bit easier to digest, isn't it? And he plays in Scotland and Denmark as well. Yeah, but why set Hamlet in Denmark, though?

It's not a particularly Danish piece. No, well, we now know... They don't wear the jumpers. We now know that it isn't, but that's the thing. To an English audience in 1600, I presume that Denmark was as exotic as setting a movie in space now.

So it's just escapism as well, isn't it? I guess also, he set six plays in Italy, and I wonder whether part of that is because there was this rich theatrical tradition already in Italy that was drawing on all the Commedia dell'arte and stuff like that yeah all of the above i think but that doesn't mean he ever went to a house and pointed up and said right i'm going to set a play here and it's going to be on this balcony and in the future tourists will pay to be here and touch her boob and i think

that's all right i think it's fine that a lot of writers have not been to the places they're writing about the world of pure imagination here is a question from zed who says i work in a costume hire shop today a customer came in saying she wanted a cinderella costume i took her to the big fluffy gown section and she said yes these are good but it needs to be blue ollie answer me this since when was cinderella's dress blue please tell me that it was specified in the book that she had a blue dress the book the cinderella book the one source otherwise i'll be forced to conclude that some film it's just some film yeah was made in which

she was portrayed with a blue dress and all of a sudden everyone's imagination shut down i actually haven't seen disney's cinderella it is a gap in my disney knowledge you immediately leap to disney um and there are so many other classic cinderella films even i know it is the film it is the canonical depiction of cinderella in the 20th century it's not just any film it's not just some film it is understandable that particularly little girls might want to emulate the cinderella they've seen on screen well even in the kenneth brannan live action film they made the dress a huge puffy blue dress yes Yes. However However? If you actually look at the original film, her dress isn't blue.

It is a kind of very light pastel shaded bluey white. Kind of like these trousers that I'm wearing. This kind of summer shade. People can't see that. But that's still blue. I know people can't see it. I'm saying it for your reference. Sort of like an ice blue rather than a sky blue. When Disney released the dvd in the 1990s of cinderella for the first time film um

they looked at the cover art and remastered it because you remember when dvds came out it was all a case of buy all the same old films again because they've been digitally remastered yeah so they redid the cover art on all of the boxes so that it looked like a new film did they make her wear cargo pants and skunk stripes in her hair well to make it look a little bit crisper basically they updated the cover art she was wearing the white gown the bluey white gown in the original artwork for the film but then when the dvd came out because there's this kind of magic pixie detritus all around her to indicate that the fairy godmother has waved a wand or she's got dandruff or either in the shape of stars um all down her dress uh they decided that if you made the dress blue then that would show up the stars a little

bit more clearly that does work so that was the decision and then the other thing that happened around the turn of the century uh was the turn of the 20th to 21st century correct right was the creation of the disney princesses merchandising brand um which you know if you have daughters you will know is quite a big deal and essentially that was a way of trying to revivify the corpses of cinderella and snow white by teaming them up with snow white they already revivified when he knocked the apple out of her mouth by teaming them up in the same uh branding family as jasmine and ariel and the rest i thought it was just a totally organic decision not based on marketing um and when you look at the disney princess family in other words if your little girl wants to collect all of the dolls all of the outfits all of the duvets or whatever it is they all have their own colors so very clearly uh bell from

beauty and the beast is yellow jasmine is turquoise and so on and so forth and so uh yeah it seems like cinderella has become blue she's the blue one in the disney princess so it's a very recent turn of events well it's a combination of those things but yes it's it's all in the last 30 years you watch the original film it's it's the only time she actually wears clearly blue uh is actually in the opening scene when she's in her nightdress oh right so it's not just the last 30 years. You watch the original film, the only time she actually wears clearly blue is actually in the opening scene when she's in her nightdress. Oh, right. So it's not just that the blue of the gown

has faded from the original print because blue pigment often fades before the other colours. No. Not as far as I can see. But in any case, bearing in mind that most people think, even if it's revisionism,

that Cinderella in Disney Cinderella wears blue to the ball i think it is explicable that people going to a costume hire shop people who can't be bothered to make their own costume or find a costume in a place that isn't called costume hire shop i think it is explicable that those people uh would be requesting the blue they think cinderella wears in the film what's wrong with that well it's because also if they're going to a costume party as cinderella in a dress they've bought they want people to know that it's c also if they're going to a costume party as Cinderella in a dress they've bought, they want people to know that it's Cinderella and not just a dress that they're pretending is Cinderella's dress.

Yeah. Right? Then it'd be easier if they went as Cinderella at the beginning, wouldn't it? Where she was wearing rags and soot and stuff. Yeah. But again, I sort of understand why people might not want to be walking down the street, catching the night bus, effectively blacked up and wearing rags. Yeah, but I think that would be more like modern day living than a huge puffy crinoline.

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. Here's a question from Alex who says, when you hear a report on the news about someone's terrible traumatic experience, or if they're whistleblowing, they often say something on the news along the lines of,

to protect this person's identity, their words are being read by an actor. But, Helen, answer me this. Do they ever actually use an actor, or is it just some poor intern dragged in and forced to read it out? Because if it is an actual actor, they don't ever seem to be putting much effort into this, thus wasting their opportunity on national TV to get their talent noticed. Not necessarily the time or the place,

if they're playing a victim of a horrible crime say yes plus surely this is unnecessary added expense for the show they may sometimes have an actor but what i have definitely seen happen and heard happen is uh the producer reading out stuff so we used to be on a show on bbc five live where often the producer ravi would be called upon to read in solemn tones a witness statement or something like that and i'm like yeah and also listening definitely and it's really funny when you recognize their voice i've had this as well with the managing director of sky news who gave us both work experience circa 2001 he has quite a distinctive northern accent i've heard heard him voice President Ahmadinejad before and that's

a good laugh. Wow, is that him? Wow. Not in every address just sometimes. Good job Peter. When you recognise the voices it is amusing. But of course the audience at home hopefully won't make the connection. It would be embarrassing if they were like

hold on. So the person who was in the earthquake in Hull last week is now the prime minister of turkey how did that happen upwardly mobile society i think also you don't want an actor to be using it like an audition piece and doing the full olivier on news no although of course they do actually sometimes use actors they do is the answer because as alex uh suggests when it's a traumatic experience when it's a long form interview not just 10 seconds of francois zolan saying we agree to this deal, when it's a traumatic experience, when it's a long form interview, not just 10 seconds of Francois Zolan saying we agree to this deal, but when it's actually going to be

a 10 minute long interview on Panorama of someone talking about when they were abused as a child or something like that. Obviously, you do want a professional actor there because you want it to sound like someone who is as sensitive and fragile as the real person being interviewed.

You want to have an emotional connection with the audience. It is better to have an actor. The whole point of good acting in that scenario is that you don't notice their acting you would notice it if it was someone who wasn't a trained actor doing that voice for 10 minutes you would notice it if that was the producer and of course occasionally you get examples don't you jerry adams was the famous one where someone gets employed regularly to be their voice on the news here is another question of behind-the-scenes entertainment from Jennifer in Cheshire who says,

Ollie, answer me this. Do people actually ever drink the drinks on daytime chat shows? Are you suggesting that they're spiked? Are you suggesting that Phil Vickery

goes around wanking in them all? Is that the problem? Yeah, even on channels he's not on. Is there even tea in those mugs? I thought, Ollie,

as you had experience, you might be able to tell us. I do have experience of daytime television. Both backstage and on stage. You just completely hyped up my role in the style of a Victorian ringmaster. Start of screen and screen. All I can say is from recent personal experience, when you do Lorraine, it is 8.30 in the morning when you're sitting there on set.

So you don't want the triple vodka. Exactly. Of course those mugs have tea and coffee in them. I why wouldn't they it's 8 30 in the morning they want to give you a caffeine hit um and they want a little thing with the name of the show on yes so what happens actually is when you are in the green room uh the runner will come and ask you if you want a tea or coffee it's on the house it's on the house although if you try and be nice about it and as you know sometimes i'm actually almost disarmingly trying to be nice really you know i'm like i'm like oh i can look after myself like trying to

be nice to them but then like a rake hits you in the face or something well exactly so i then go and queue at the coffee bar and then i get to the front and then they say yeah you're not production you can't get coffee so then i have to go back in the green room and ask around this brings me you haven't got the lanyard when someone brings you the coffee that you want they bring it to you in a paper cup so that doesn't look very good on telly so what happens is as you get on set the floor manager decants your coffee that you're still carrying into a lorraine mug oh god i think it's pre-warmed even if you were a diva about that you'd be all right because of course the heat of the studio lights means it

does stay hot yeah um so at least blood heat i actually was experimenting for a long time because i used to do the paper review on-view on Lorraine once a week. I don't do it anymore. But when I was on it every week, I was experimenting with whether it made me look relaxed or whether it made me look like I thought I owned the place if I was actually sipping from the coffee during the item. Yeah, wearing your dressing gown, legs apart.

Exactly. Because on the one hand, it does send out a signal that you're very comfortable, which is part of the skill of being on telly, obviously, is to look like you're not on edge. But equally, there's just something a bit like, it's her show. I'm sitting there with a mug with her name on it, drinking. It just looks wrong.

Whilst you're talking, when you're going, well, this tragic news event. Exactly. And also, of course, you've only got about four minutes. So you don't really want to be taking even three seconds to take a sip. And presumably they use mugs rather than glasses because continuity, you want the level of the liquid to be somewhat invisible. But also you do need the liquid there because when you're on mic, the sound of your mouth gets amplified.

And I hate this. I hate being able to hear it on my own work and other people's. You know, that's when you're speaking. But I can't find a way to eliminate it on my own tracks. So you need to take regular sips of a drink just to minimise that. Yes, that's right. Although not if you're doing your own mixing desk, as I learnt to my cost at LBC costing the organisation £3,000 last year

when I managed to, at three in the morning, spill an entire pint of water all over the mixing desk. I am amazed that that doesn't happen more often in the middle of the night. I think secretly it happens quite a lot, but they made it sound like it didn't happen very often. They should get you one of those hamster bottles and strap it to the mic stand. Well the thing is apparently in the old days if you spilt a glass of water over a radio mixing desk obviously if it caught fire that wouldn't be good but if it didn't immediately break then the water would just drip out the bottom and it would be okay. Analog. Analog but now they've got

these digital mixing desks that of course look like the old analog mixing desks with faders and sliders, but actually it's a computer in there. So of course it's completely fucked as soon as you get any water on it at all. An example of how things have got worse. We've had this email about classic entertainment

from Catherine from Glasgow who says, I recently got a waterproof MP3 player to keep me amused while I go swimming. Naturally, I throw on a lot of old Answer Me This episodes, vintage ones. Oh, of course. of course it's well known isn't it for motivating people through exercise isn't it i'm surprised that mp3 players don't come with those pre-loaded i was swimming along listening to episode 20 feeling nostalgic at all the old jingles when occupation interrogation came on wow that is a deep cut blast from the past

a long-running series of, I think, three? It was a sketch, you could call it. A feature, you could call it. Don't tell them what it is, because people who haven't heard the old episodes yet that are available at answermethisstore.com, you want them to have the surprise. Like when Martin got into a bath

that he had laced with too much menthol. That kind of surprise. You think you know what you're getting. Catherine says, Ollie, answer me this, will it ever make a return? I couldn't stop myself from laughing and choked on a load of pool water.

It was that good. Yeah, something we haven't done for nearly 300 episodes is probably time to bring that back, isn't it? Yeah. I think it's unlikely it'll make a return, but hey, TFI Friday's come back. You never know.

You never know. It might be when the 20th anniversary of Occupation Interrogation comes around. We'll all think that it was worth it just for the theme tune. I wonder whether it's a bit of a surprise for people who do buy those episodes when they hear that. I think the show is pretty similar in format to when it began,

but we do try experimenting in the first few months, particularly, just throwing a lot of shit at the wall and seeing what leaves a mark. And we sound younger as well. Yeah. We sound notably younger. It's a bit like looking through your own family photo album if you're a regular fan of the show. It's a bit like looking at us as toddlers,

like Muppet Babies, but if I were to be this. Also in the early days, we used to have every few months a day when we would get all of our musical and performing friends around and make them do jingles for us and then also get them to do the other features that are sadly no longer with us.

And that hasn't happened for years and years. Yeah, well, it's regular features that are a pain in the ass, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, that's why Gavin Osbourne's not here every year doing a song with all our favourite questions in. Well, also, it's because the first two years

when he summarised the years worth of Answer Me This in a song... I thought they were brilliant. I forgot what they were. They are brilliant. But the first two years, he lived in Crystal Palace, 15-minute walk away. Then he moved to Bath.

So, not as convenient. Do you remember we had that feature where we'd um pull together all of the google hits we'd got on the blog that people had found there was a little tune that was a really good jingle for that yeah the quick fire quickle quiz remember that oh yeah so many so many misguided features yes if you want to take an unaccompanied jaunt down memory lane with our old episodes they are available at answer me this store.com and today's intermission is from episode 61

And I think you should be relieved that What you're about to hear did not become a regular feature in the show We've got a new hot young questionnaire Oh yes Warwick, who is 14 and from Enniskillen Is that in Northern Ireland? Could be Hello Warwick

That's my accent Oh my god Let's say other places Warwick might? Could be. Hello, Warwick. That's my accent. Oh, good God. Let's say other places Warwick might be from. Warwick is from... Warwick? Hello, Warwick. Warwick is from Aberdeen, Ollie. Hello. That's pretty good. Warwick is from

Southern France. Bonjour. I can play this all day at home. I'll always have the upper hand. Of course. Warwick is from Japan. Oh, I can't this all day home. I'll always have the upper hand. Of course. Warwick is from Japan. Oh, I can't do it. Here's a question from Pete in Southampton who says, There is a pub in Winchester, the Royal Oak, which claims to be the oldest pub in Britain.

There is another in Nottingham, ye olde trip to Jerusalem, which claims the same thing. Yeah, they only sell kosher wine there. And there is yet another in St Albans, ye olde Trip to Jerusalem, which claims the same thing. Yeah, they only sell kosher wine there. And there's yet another in St Albans, Ye Olde Fighting Cox, which is recognised by Guinness as the real oldest pub, but that is disputed by many people. It's also been in the news recently due to a campaign to rechristen it Ye Olde Clever Cox to reflect compassion for animals.

There are seemingly lots of other pubs around the country which claim to be the oldest pub, but surely it would be a simple thing to identify which is really the oldest pub oh surely so ollie answer me this simple thing yeah which pub is really the oldest pub in britain well guess what it isn't simple you can't so there drink that there isn't a history of a public house it's just a house where people drank it well the issue is and i refer you to the buzzfeed article 11 pubs that might be the oldest in the uk 11 um it isn't a simple thing to date them because it could be that you're dating it from and I refer you to the BuzzFeed article, 11 pubs that might be the oldest in the UK. 11! It isn't a simple thing to date them because it could be that you're dating it

from the moment it became a pub as we know it now. It could be that you're dating it from the moment it became a brewery. It could be that you're dating it from the moment that a pub stood on the site where it literally is now or a pub with the name that that one has now. There are so many things that it could be.

It might have been a hostelry before. Yeah, or a coffee things that it could be. It might have been a hostelry before. Yeah, or a coffee house or something like that. It might have been a private drinking establishment. How do you possibly date it? I'm afraid, actually, that I am going to go with the Guinness one, which is Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, because they've done... Funny name. They've done more research than anyone else,

and they've applied the criteria that they have. It was founded in 800. Wow! But it's only had that name since 1872 and it's only been on that location since 1539 so it's still not actually that old when you think that you know brits like to drink and have done for centuries so when you say it was founded in 800 does that mean what there was just a barrow there or something yeah it means a pub which later became the old fighting cocks was on a similar site in St Albans since 800.

But I think the licensing laws came in fairly late, didn't they? And a pub was just, I'm going to let people drink in my living room, but I won't brew the beer myself, I'll get someone else to brew the beer. Yes. So the living room thing is interesting, because that's where the Jerusalem one that he mentions in Nottingham comes in. The old trip to Jerusalem. That's a very cumbersome name for a pub.

It is. It's in the foundations of the castle, or what used to be the castle. It's like when people have bars in their basement now. Yes, exactly. If you include private establishments before they became public-facing pubs, then that's the argument for that one, because when they actually did an excavation into the foundations of the castle there in the 1970s, there were suggestions that the caves below the pub

had belonged to the castle's brew house in the 12th century. So theoretically, drinking has been happening exactly in that site since the 12th century. And probably before. And probably before, because people like to drink. But it was private drinking, it wasn't public drinking. So, you know, does that count or not? Also, weren't there a lot of monasteries?

Didn't they have distilleries and stuff like that?, you know, does that count or not? Also, weren't there a lot of monasteries? Didn't they have, like, distilleries and stuff like that? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I heard this theory that alcohol co-evolved with human beings because the fermentation process made things easier to digest. So there's an argument that bread co-evolved with human beings, but there's also an argument that alcohol was actually the real thing that followed humankind through its process of civilisation. So actually, like, the first pubs are probably, like, 10,000 years old,

but they don't have a licence and they're not a weather spoon so yeah and also i mean drinking has always been actually associated with the church hasn't it to some extent because you have celebrations and then also you uh free communion wine for communion wine so actually you could say every church in britain is an older pub than the pubs yeah yeah yeah can i just say as well to anybody who's already sharpening their pencils to write us an email about ye in these things being pronounced thee, I know, but I just said ye

because you all know what we're talking about. I didn't know. When the printing presses came and they got rid of the old English letter th, they replaced it with y. And so the ye is actually supposed to be pronounced thee. And the old with an e, that was just to justify the sentence

rather than to be pronounced oldie. but those people and i'm glad you address them directly because they're your people those people are pedants aren't they yes because because as we often debate when it comes to anything linguistic in these in this way surely most people seeing that sign in st albans now would say ye olde fighting cocks so that is what it's called yeah it's not called the oldie it's called ye oldie um i think my favorite of all the old pubs that are vying for the title all the oldie pubs uh is probably the skirrid mountain inn in abigavenny um because their first floor was once used as a courtroom with hangings carried out from an oak beam above the staircase and they still have a noose they still have a noose on

the beam they still have a piñata on it have a noose on the beam. They still have a piñata on it, though. If you go to the prospect of Whitby and Wapping, they've still got a noose outside the pub. Do they? Yeah. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Alcohol is a depressant. Why on earth would you celebrate the history of the establishment that used to hang people?

I mean, it just has to go wrong once, doesn't it? One stag party has to go wrong once, and that's on your conscience forever. Hey, look at me. I'm a 15th century dead man. Oh. wrong ones and that's on your conscience forever hey look at me i'm a 15th century dead man why are all yaz fan sites just about one thing the only way is up is not the only song she sings what about abandon me one true woman or good thing going a single from 96 you should make your own yaz site to fill in the gaps

since you seem to think all the current Yaz sites are crap go to squarespace.com build your Yaz site and put Yaz back on the map the only way is up thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this episode

of answer me this very good of you and thank you also for making it so easy to design websites. I've been using it for theallusionist.org and it's a real piece of piss. It is.

And also, I'm sure that's their slogan. Yep. Squarespace. It's a piece of piss. That's a compliment, Squarespace, in case that didn't translate to American ears. I can't imagine Ira Glass saying it, but I imagine on this show...

That's why we're better. Exactly. The VW handles like a piece of piss. No, but it it's very easy you make changes to the website without having to use complicated forms and they show up instantly on your screen drag and drop point and click well you just you just change the text on the front of the website oh my god messing around with html and also very easy to embed things which is often a problem with other website things that i have used and sell digital products as well so if you want to sell digital audio, for example, maybe you're not so keen

on this whole Apple Music idea, then do what we've done. Answermethisstore.com. You see how we sell our digital files. That's all done through Squarespace. They host it for you and then you can sell stuff through their templates as well.

It's a real dream. It is. And remember, you get 10% off if you join Squarespace for a year by using our code. Answer. Here's a question from Alison who says, we've just bought our four-year-old daughter a nifty Bluetooth speaker.

She's constantly repeating Bluetooth enabled and forms it into songs, which is getting a touch annoying. Well, then don't buy a four-year-old a Bluetooth speaker. Too late. Pandora's box is open. She knows the phrase Bluetooth enabled and she is sticking with it. She's taking it quite literally. So she checks the mirror to see if her teeth really are blue, like the lady in the speaker says.

Lady in the speaker, sinister. So Ollie asked me this. Where does Bluetooth come from? Sweden. Created by Ericsson in 1994. Ericsson. As in the phone company, not Sven Jorunn. My first mobile phone was an Ericsson.

Was it? Yeah. Oh, you've got me thinking now. Was mine an Ericsson As in the phone company Not Sven Jorund My first mobile phone Was an Ericsson Was it? Yeah Oh you've got me thinking now Was mine an Ericsson Or a Nokia No mine was a Nokia I had the banana phone From the Matrix

That was my first one Oh Pretty cool I had a very large Motorola But mine You press the sides No need to boast My one

Didn't have the thing Where you press the sides And the thing slid down like Keanu's one. My one, you had to manually pull it down. Oh, how you suffered! Did it have a little bit of string on the bottom to tug, like a bathroom light fitting? It was a cool first phone.

Anyway, yeah, Ericsson developed the technology in 1994, but weirdly, and in a sense, I think, in a very Swedish way, they decided not to own this technology. They formed a special interest group. Yeah, I know. Wow. Still be in massive profit if they had. They formed a special interest group with Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM.

So no one owned the company. No one owned the technology. And it was as a result of that open sourceness that it took off as the platform they wanted to use. And so the name Bluetooth comes from an allusion to that openness as well, because it comes from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blatand, which translates to Harold Bluetooth in English. Wonderfully. And King Blatand was known for uniting warring factions across Scandinavia. So there you go. So it's the equivalent in open source IBM versus Nokia versus Ericsson ways. It's similar to uniting Norway, Sweden and Denmark in warfare.

I love how something as boring as Bluetooth has thousand-year-old Scandinavian origins. And you know why his nickname was Bluetooth? I don't. He was a big fan of eating blueberries and his tooth got stained blue. Ah! Down and lonely, Life is so confusing I need some answers Preferably amusing

Now I find A podcast that will suit I listen to Helen Arley On my half-hour commute. Time for a question from Matt in Lincolnshire, who says, I'm very happy to say that I've met the love of my life. Congrats. And we have three gorgeous children together.

Having run out of bedrooms in our house, we've had to draw the line there. I don't want to have to go to Ikea to buy another bed. So, says Matt, last Augustust off i popped to my gp to be snipped i spent an uncomfortable 45 minutes flat on my back having my balls fiddled with i'd always thought that once the tube was snipped that would be that no sperm were getting through and away i went to get my end away probably made a big weekend out of it right vasectomy on the saturday morning whilst the kids were the grandparents let's go for it but no says matt i had to wait four months ensuring regular servicing of my member throughout and then provide two samples a month apart to make sure the job was done yep i didn't know you had to

do that when you have a vasectomy well i suppose I suppose you haven't had one, have you? I guess, but they do make it seem, and by they, I mean people I know who have had one and also depictions on neighbours. Yeah. They do seem to make it seem like it's a straightforward process. How surprising that people you know who've had them done and depictions on neighbours don't go into medical detail. They just make jokes about how much they hurt. Yeah, but I wasn't expecting this, though.

Matt says, I've now been through this rigmarole three times. He's had his balls fiddled with three times and had to go through a load of wanking in a jar for a month. The love of your life has given birth three times. Stop complaining. Wait, no, no. No, come on. Just because he's not saying it's as bad as that, Ellen.

I think he's implying it. No, no, no. This isn't a feminist issue. You're allowed to feel sympathetic with a man for having painful balls and being humiliated. I had to w sympathetic with a man for having painful balls. I'm going to give a sperm sample three times. Being humiliated. I have to work twice a month. Women win every argument if the answer is not as bad as giving birth. We know that.

It isn't. I know. Although my mum said having gallstones was worse. So she won her own argument. That's something men can suffer from as well. That is true. People tell me... Try having gallstones, Matt, once a month.

Apparently, having a dislocated shoulder can be as bad as giving birth. And I've had that three times. Yeah, try doing that in your balls. Anyway, says Matt, I've been through this rigmarole three times, and yet now I have a further appointment for a more detailed analysis, including the production of a sample on site, i.e. a wank in a storage cupboard. So ten months down the line,

it would seem my balls are working perfectly and my discomfort was for nothing well it doesn't necessarily seem that way matt it seems like they're checking true but i mean if if the ratio continues as it has been you know if it seems like his balls are resistant to all vasectomy uh interferences then it has been for naught well he doesn't know yet because he's got a further appointment he hasn't't had it yet. The law of probability. We're preparing him psychologically for this eventuality. I think that's reasonable.

If he's one of the one in 2,000 whose vasectomies don't work. Is that all it is? Yeah. Okay, good. Well, he says, Helen, answer me this. Where are all these sperms

still coming from? Your balls. Your balls. Your balls are still making as many sperms as they were before. It's just now they're not going in the same direction. They get re-digested, I think.

Sperm that aren't used. A lot of them build up in the epididymis, the 16-foot-long tightly coiled tube behind each testicle where sperms learn to swim. So, okay, anecdotally, and by that I do mean personal experience, I know that the longer it's been between sessions, either administered by someone else or by myself, there is a larger discharge.

Yeah. But that's seminal fluid yes it's not quite the same thing sure if it's it's been a month do you ejaculate like a horse well you're supposed to ejaculate quite regularly like he's saying he is ensuring regular servicing of his member throughout he specifies yeah because it takes up to four months but i think averagely a couple of months or 15 to 25 ejaculations to ensure that your tubes after the site of the snip are free of sperms so you're not likely to get someone pregnant so they have to keep checking his sperms and it's good that he's going for the appointments because apparently a lot of men don't get it

checked and that's why the vasectomies fail they They check that he's cleared all the sperms out from lower than where they snipped his vas deferens off, and also that the scar tissue has formed, thus stopping the sperms from continuing to go out of his penis towards the neck. You just need to check that there isn't any sperm in your seminal fluid. Okay, but when you say you need to check, the medical practitioner needs to check. You don't need to, Ollie.

Sure, but Matt can't self-check that. Because you don't look at it under a microscope. Probably he could. Probably there's an Innovations Catalogue product that does just this. I think it's the kind of thing where just if you didn't know what you were looking for, you could easily be misled by what you saw

under a microscope. And also you'd have to ejaculate on that tiny bit of glass. I think the point at which you've just wanked onto a microscope, afterwards you'd probably be feeling enough shame that science would go out the window. Yeah. I think the point at which you've just wanked onto a microscope, afterwards you'd probably be feeling enough shame that science would go out the window. Yeah.

I've had worse. Matt says, even if the vasectomy had all gone to plan, why would it take four months to work? And he admits, these are questions I should have probably asked my general practitioner at the time. Yes, like all the medical questions we get. Yeah.

But the thing is, actually, when you're with, not just a GP, but actually a surgeon, any medical professional, I'm fine. Yeah yeah you're prepared to be guided by them and also i think particularly as an englishman you're less likely to question it you feel like you're being rude by asking questions sometimes even when i've gone to private health practitioners and they create the impression because you're paying a lot that they're giving you all the time in the world you still feel like you're taking up the time of an intelligent person and they'll tell you anything you need to know some people are really ill exactly you're getting in the way but that's ridiculous because everyone

should ask these questions because then you go home and you think oh my vasectomy hasn't worked why is that do you think that a lot of people agree to have the vasectomy before they really know about the full process they or their partner has decided that that is what is going to happen to them and so they don't necessarily know that there's like a four month healing period in which you have to use other forms of contraception i think that's probably right yeah i mean i've i mean i've i suppose distantly in the back of my mind i've considered that one day i might get a vasectomy just something to do but now i'm not convinced because of this i mean i i'm not someone who objects that much to using barrier contraceptives but if i was i'd still probably hear this and think not sure my friend um julie who is uh the

third child of five said that her dad went to have one and he was chatting to a guy in the waiting room who was like it was your first time of course it's my first time not mine he's had several before and so julie's dad didn't have one and had two more children. Oh, because he was put off by that statement. Yeah, what's the point if it's not going to work? What's the point if it's not going to work? Yeah. Well, it's time to snip off this show now, but there will be one in two weeks' time.

And your questions are our sperm. To send them up our urethra, you can email, call or Skype them. All the details are on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com And also in the intervening two weeks, don't forget to check out our other work. Ollie is on LBC every weekend.

Every Friday and Saturday night till 10. And also on the media podcast. And the tech weekly podcast from The Guardian. And I make The Allusionist, which I think you'll like, listeners, so give it a go. Yeah, it's about words and stuff. If you like Helen talking about words, you'll probably like that.

Yeah. And you can listen to the same of the latest podcast, The Global Lab and Braintrain, which is a bit out of date, but we'll be having new episodes over the summer if you'd like to. Well, there's a promise. I think you'll find that is quite a lot to be getting on with. There's plenty. The next four nights.

There's plenty. Yes. It just remains for us to say thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This. Yes, thank you. And thank you for listening. Bye! Bye!