Answer Me This! - AMT343: Mount Rushmore, Blood Crime and Heinz Beanz

Episode Date: November 3, 2016

At what age are you mutton dressed as lamb? What's the big deal about Mount Rushmore? And how do you prove that you are the world's greatest at dishwasher-stacking? Listen to AMT343 for the answers to these questions and more. Find further information about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode343. Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandolly Be our Facebook friend at http://facebook.com/answermethis Subscribe on iTunes http://iTunes.com/AnswerMeThis Buy old episodes and albums at http://answermethisstore.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do internet pirates have wooden legs? Answer me this, answer me this Can I hang up my laundry on my nipple pegs? Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this While the rest of the world frets about the presidential apocalypse, we here on Answer Me This are fretting about napkins. To be honest that that

is uh not even secondary in my frets that i'm doing right now it's it's secondary in my frots frotting into a napkin uh why not for the first time it's just your process i went to boarding school why do cafes serve cakes on napkins that's what we were asked in episode 342. So much anger. Helen, you asked for feedback then. Yes, insiders. People on the ground with napkin know-how. Well, Lily in Hebden Bridge has got in touch.

She says, I am a waitress in a cafe. I'm not entirely sure, she says, why we put the napkins on the plate. No! Wait, there's more. Go back and email me again, Lily. I want facts. Especially as it seems to make the food

move around more when carrying it. So my idea that it may be stopped food sliding off the plate is an absolute no-go. Fine. Why should your speculations be particularly informed, Helen? I mean, Lily is a waitress. Have you ever been a waitress? You were a bar i was and i nearly said maid would that be sexist to call you a bar maid you were a lady who was behind the bar i mean at the time i was a barmaid because it was like

2000 to 2002 but now i suppose i'd be a bartender yeah but also at the time i did work in our college dining room so i was wait staff there but i mean you'd be lucky to get a paper napkin there but also i i saw you play that role and mean you'd be lucky to get a paper napkin there but also i i saw you play that role and i'd go as far to say you like ironized the wenchiness of that i think because i'm not a drinker yeah i think i can't fully characterize someone who is unironically into that job but i did really enjoy being a bartender i felt like you were having fun with the bar flies the stereotype of the like 1960s barmaid. Spill all your troubles, but leave at midnight. Anyway, you never served cake.

That's my point. I would have if you could have put it in a plastic pint glass. Anyway, Lily's ideas are these. Firstly, if the food is particularly wet or sticky, it will drip onto the napkin instead of the plate, which makes the plate easier to wash. But makes the napkin harder to be a, which makes the plate easier to wash. But makes the napkin harder to be a napkin.

True, but that's thinking about the customer. I think what Lily's done here is she's thought, why would the owner or the kitchen staff suggest the napkin? And I totally see their point there. Yes, Lily, good one. But isn't the customer going to take the cake off the plate and eat it on the plate without the napkin and therefore get cake crumbs on the plate anyway? But maybe during the journey is when it gets its most slippery and slidy and messy.

Okay. Secondly, says Lily, it's just a lot easier to take a napkin on a plate than having to take napkins separately. That is one of the things we mentioned in the last episode. However... You've got a useless napkin covered in cake detritus the napkins essential function has been ruined by this process so it'd probably be better to

have some kind of napkin holster on the waitstaff or just have napkins on the table well the trouble is you've got to trust your customers not to go on a napkin binge and make off with their toilet paper for the week courtesy of you we have a different theory of napkins from Tori, who says, I used to work as a runner in a post-production house where the facilities manager made us put folded napkins under slices of toast because she said it looked fancy. No, you can't ever make toast fancy. Well, people have tried that with the sourdough and just ratcheting up the price,

but you can't ever make a paper napkin look fancy i think tori says every time i did it i used to think how stupid it was because the napkins ended up covered in crumbs and soggy with butter you were right to think that tori we often got asked for fresh napkins by editors so it was a bloody pain in the arse and a huge waste of napkins now an editor that's someone who needs a fresh supply of napkins yeah because you don't want that's someone who needs a fresh supply of napkins. Yeah, because you don't want to get grease on the equipment. Exactly. Very expensive in edit suite. Actually, talking about making crappy food look posh,

you were at an awards ceremony the other week, Olly, because the modern man was up for a radio award. Oh, thank you for mentioning it, Michael Aspel. And who's this coming through the door? Why, it's my good friend, Jeremy Beadle. Yeah, I was. And a friend who was also there facebook some uh photos of the food which uh doesn't seem to have been a very stellar selection and it was miniature things like miniature burgers miniature hot dogs and it looked kind of low end and i thought it could be ironized low end but a garish paper wrapper for those

things yes the plastic plate that's when it just becomes a quite shit plastic plate well look i don't mean to be ungrateful because we did at my other podcast the modern man uh modern man with two n's.co.uk uh get nominated for podcast of the year and we did receive the silver award and that was all really nice. Yay! Thank you. But all you got was glass of champagne upon arrival

and then something blue. Something blue? Just any blue? What, like a biro? It looked a bit like toilet duck in a glass. Oh, a blue drink. That is bad news. And everyone felt a bit odd afterwards.

Yeah, I mean, blue drink will do that. Did you wake up four hours later and they're like, yes, the ceremony's finished, everyone's gone home. Oh, that's a good cost-cutting measure, isn't it? Yeah, no need to hire a presenter or anything. It really went to everyone's heads. I think partly because there was no free food laid on.

Yeah. That miniature food you're describing, we had to pay for that. Oh. So it was actually quite tasty, but it was like mini burger, mini fish and chips, mini burrito. Each of them cost something like £5.50 and you definitely needed three to feel full. As it was when our award actually got announced.

By Jamelia. I was really jealous when I saw it was Jamelia. I wasn't even in the room. Because I'd gone for a piss. And then as I walked back in the room, heard my name mentioned with a round of applause. I didn't know whether I'd won or what. Oh wow, how weird.

And that was the sound of us coming silver. But had we won gold, my team, the rest of the show, would have had to have gone to the stage without me and I'd have come back doing up my fly. Well, it's a way to make an impression. Here's a question from Lucy from Nottingham who says, Ollie, answer me this. Sawn-off shotguns.

What is the advantage of sawing off the front of a shotgun? I've got the saw in my hand, I've got the gun, but I'm just not sure why I'm doing it. I assumed it's to make them more portable but they're often attached to a wall or carried in a truck but you still have to carry them to your truck yeah well exactly yeah it is transportability uh wherever you see them when they're dormant of course the point of a gun is not where it rests and resides but where it's used when you want to shoot someone in the face with it um and at that body yeah sure or genitals um and at that point

yeah and well actually more relevantly or feet taking it away from high levels of street crime and just talking about kind of its most common use actually which is defense against animals in the wild right um when you're using it in that circumstance transportability is quite important obviously because you can put it in a backpack for example or in a tent it's a bit more maneuverable on a on a kind of harness on your body. Yeah, but if you've got the full-on harness, then you want the full-on shotgun with nothing sawn off, I think. I suppose the question would be, why saw off a shotgun rather than just getting a shotgun? It's frequently now, in countries where handguns are illegal, that criminals criminals opt for the sawn off shotgun because in britain

for example it is easier to obtain a gun that you can then saw the end off and say i'm using it as a rifle to go hunting with than it is to try and get a handgun on the black market and there may even be a different level of crime involved in that i don't know but i imagine if you'd obtained the rifle legally it's probably not illegal to saw the end of it it's illegal to walk around with it in the street which is a different crime to getting a handgun on the black market and walking around with it on the street that's two crimes isn't it

I wonder whether it interferes with the trajectory of the bullet having lost most of the barrel it can do some serious damage up close and is harder to shoot from a distance so again quite good for close-up crime and also it's intimidating isn't it if you just want to threaten people with it it doesn't matter how accurate it is that's probably quite good doesn't it yeah if i was being threatened i don't think

i'd notice whether it was a sawn off thing or just a gun but unless there are whole sides to your life that i don't know you're not a smack dealer i think if you're in that kind of industry you would recognize a sawn off shotgun if i came for a meeting. I saw a copper write about this, actually, in an online forum. What you would think was, OK, there's been forward planning here. This isn't a crime of opportunity. This is someone deliberately saying, look, I've prepared a gun to intimidate you with. I mean business. But you don't actually have to saw off the end.

If you're in a country where they are legal, like in most states in America, although there's a lot of paperwork you have to fill in, probably not enough, but a lot, you can buy ready-sawn shotguns. Ready-sawn. Like ready-ripped jeans. That takes the fun out of it. It's like getting packets of chopped apples.

Can't you get one that's extendable? Like a telescope. Here's a question from Colin. He says, at what age is a woman considered mutton dressed as lamb? Is it higher or lower than the age that a man is considered ram dressed as lamb?

A thing no one has ever said Ram dressed as lamb, that's quite interesting The thing is though, men's clothes I think don't change as much over your lifetime It's plausible that a suit that you bought when you were 20 would still look good on you when you're 70 Whereas women's clothes clothes the type of clothes that you wear are more likely to vary but i think it's not so much there are things you can't wear there are

more ways in which you can't wear them or it might not match your personality or the messages those clothes are sending out feel like at different stages of your life there are a lot of stories you're telling with your dress and they may not be matched by your actual person but what age would you put this uh ranking well i think it's i think it varies person to person i think when people say this they mean a 50 year old woman is wearing a miniskirt but some 50 year old women look great in miniskirts yeah it's so mean i really hate that phrase i think with me even in my mid-20s there were certain kind of childish fashions I couldn't get away with. But to other people, they'd still look quite kitsch and sweet in them

in their late thirties or early forties. I think that's it. I think it does vary person to person. Because like in my case, for example, you know, my famous leather trousers that you've referenced before on the show. Oh yeah. I was ram-dressed as lamb when i was 21 wearing those yeah because i was trying to look like the kind of 21 year old who could get away with leather

trousers yeah whereas chrissy hind i think she's now pensionable age still looks good still looks good in leather trousers exactly so although i don't think it is necessarily true that a man can't be the equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb at the same age as a woman i think it's more typically true that women are trying to look a younger age than they are than men because the thing is that society possibly yeah it might also be that the clothes available there are a lot of shops catering to you if you are in your teens or early 20s and then some shops that will sell you boring clothes that don't really look like much and you don't want to wear them until you're old enough not to care. And then there's a middle...

Lamb dressed as mutton. Then there's a middle bit where you just think, I'd like to look interesting, but I can't shop at New Look anymore. I think actually when we met, you probably were lamb dressed as mutton. Yeah, probably. I've got photos of you as lamb dressed as mutton.

And now I've aged up, so it's fine. But at the time, I didn't realise because... You know when you're in your early 20s, you look at someone else in their early 20s, you see them as a I didn't realize because you know when you're like in your early 20s you look at someone else in their early 20s you see them as a grown-up it's only when you're in your 30s you look back and they look like kids yeah now I look back I was like oh we squandered our youth dressing up as old people but there are things as well that I think don't work the older you get so like looking bedheady bedhead looks better on young people because the older you get the more it looks like you are not good in your life but also the older you get like clothes that are cheap just just look cheap rather than yeah like a style that's true and it's it's annoying because you

don't necessarily have more wherewithal to spend more on better made clothes yes i can't go to h&m anymore and just buy off the dummy whatever the fashionable t-shirt is because i do look like ram dressed as lamb but if you went to liberty you probably could buy a t-shirt it would be 200 quid yeah well yeah which is how you end up at marks and spencer isn't it i mean that's how we all end up at marks and spencer just go and live there now see out out the rest of our days. But think of a specific example, right? Johnny Depp. At some point, and probably not till his late 40s, early 50s, Johnny Depp went from looking like an eccentric man

with an experimental style to somebody who was 20 years past his sell-by date and should have dropped the whole spiv dressed as a dreamcatcher style and it just looked tragic rather than it evolving with him and his age yeah i mean his get out was by that time he was a massive movie star so he was dressed as johnny depp yeah but he was dressed as a shit version of johnny depp yeah but it's like the queen mother isn't it like there comes a point where like his look had become iconic so oh yeah that like, oh yeah, that's how Johnny Depp dresses.

You can update your look. It's like the Queen, she still looks sharp at 90. It's not necessarily current, but she's evolved the look with her decades. How could Johnny Depp have evolved the look? Well, he could do what the Queen does and just wear matching pastel-coloured hats and coats. If you've got a question,

then email your question. Yeah, to answer mail, justPodcast at GoogleMail.com. Huh. AnswerMeAtThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com. AnswerMeAtThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com. Help cat. AnswerMeAtThisPodcast 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. Let's take a question from Adam in Yorkshire who says, Helen, answer me this. Why is Mount Rushmore? To promote tourism in the Black Hills of South Dakota where Mount Rushmore

is located. I always assumed that's why Mount Rushmore existed as well. That is why most tourist attractions in America exist. Okay, so that's the basic answer to inspire tourism to an otherwise unpromising area. Yeah. But Adam has further questions.

I bet. Of Rushmore. Okay. Who thought of this? The idea of carving presidents onto the side of a mountain. The historian, Dwayne Robinson,

thought of it. He cribbed the idea from Stone Mountain just outside Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, that's magnificent. I hate Stone Mountain. Oh, it's really good. I just thought it was horrible.

Do really, really big slushies. Slower. What's Stone Mountain? Stone Mountain is a just thought it was horrible. Do really, really big slushies. Slower. What's Stone Mountain? Stone Mountain is a big lump of rock, a very smooth curved cliff, and they've carved a scene into it. I just looked at it and thought, who gave them the right to go and scratch

a bloody great scene into a huge mountain? But we went to see the Cern Abbas giant. Yeah. A guy with a massive cock penciled into the size of a hill In the West Country Yeah but that's carved out of grass That's carved out of grass so you can relay the grass Whereas this is rock that is forever

Scarred now, it's rock that took Extraordinary amounts of time to form And now it's got this thing always in it What is the thing? What does it depict? It's a confederate scene Alright so he was inspired by that. And then he got the sculptor who did Stone Mountain, Gutzon Borglum. Amazing.

Dwayne Robinson originally wanted to carve into a geological feature called the needles, which is a cluster of tall, thin, pointy bits of granite. But Gutzon Borglum said that that granite was not good enough and it was too spindly. So they went and switched to Mount Rushmore instead. Was the plan always to put the presidents on it? Or did they have some other ideas to begin with? Yeah, Dwayne Robinson's original idea was... Bowl of fruit. Nudes.

Just some dogs playing pool. He wanted to carve local heroes into it. So General Custer and uh native american chiefs and gutson said no think more nationally think presidents he was right that gutson not been so successful internationally in his previous effort i've never heard of but rushmore that traveled like i know about it i've seen the picture it's only because it's got the presidents on it i guess so i suppose the hitchcock film could have been quite different if she was dangling over general custer's face is that north by northwest yeah vertigo north by northwest yeah i always get them muddled up i get them muddled up

too because north by northwest is the one with the crop duster right so that's the same film that's got the mount rushmore yeah yeah vertigo is the one that's shot really well but makes no fucking sense but you'd think if the film's about vertigo that at the end she'd be clinging to a notorious mountain but it's just like a church steeple or something isn't it i suppose if you're scared of it then it doesn't need to be big does it if you're afraid of heights you can be on a chair be frightened adam's next question is who are the four presidents on it george washington thomas jefferson abraham lincoln and theodore roosevelt and lincoln was the most difficult to sculpt because of his beard and also his worthiness his honesty yes just hard to replicate in granite exactly Adam says why was it those four presidents

is it something they've done like outstanding work like the outstanding work of being presidents I suppose the outstanding work of building the largest democracy in the world was probably the reason wasn't it well yeah it was to represent the first 130 years of American history and it was those four in particular because he felt they had

made a particular contribution to the country so yeah so they're not the first four in order are they they're just like the four that everyone knows yeah so lincoln and washington he felt two most famous ones then jefferson signed the louisiana purchase in 1803 which nearly doubled the size of the usa and incorporated uh south dakota and then uh the president at the time of the mount rushmore plans, Calvin Coolidge, suggested that Roosevelt should be the fourth because he founded the National Park Service. And also because he wanted there to be a split between Republicans and Democrats.

So this is like the mid-1920s that they're planning this. It was finished in 1941. What I'm next question is, did they plan to do all the presidents? No. It was always ever going to be four? Yes. And not added to at any point? I don't think so.

That seems very un-American. Yeah, but the mountain is limiting the dimensions of this. Yeah, but Americans are always thinking franchises. But they had to... Well, then they're going to have to pick another mountain. Yeah. But they had to change the layout of it already because there was weakness in the granite,

so they had to move where some of the heads were supposed to be. And also, they were supposed to be depicted down to the waist but after they'd completed the heads they'd run out of money and finally adam wants to know why is it called mount rushmore uh that's what the mountain was called before they carved it although only from 1885 so it hadn't been called mount rushmore for that long there was a businessman and attorney called charles e rushmore and in 1884 he was in the black hills area he was checking on the deeds of a tin mine or something there was a businessman and attorney called charles e rushmore and in 1884 he was in the black hills area he was checking on the deeds of a tin mine or something there was a dispute about and you're not going to say it was named after him allegedly allegedly he asked you've got a mountain carved of presidents and you name it after some bloke who was in town doing a job

well allegedly he said to his guide what's that mountain called and they said oh let's call it rushmore it doesn't have a name of course it had a name because these were native american lands they belong to the lakota sioux and it was called the six grandfathers but what a surprise they overwrote that history and took their territory see now that's interesting because you could have paid tribute i appreciate this would have been politically difficult but you could have paid tribute to its original name by calling it the four grandfathers couldn't you actually this is sort of effectively what it is grandfathers of the nation better name yeah much better i guess so um but i think the fact that they carved those white presidents into a native

american territory mountain as was that was controversial enough but now nearby not many miles away uh they've been carving a mountain since the 40s into the image of crazy horse um and when that's complete uh which probably won't be in our lifetimes it will be the biggest sculpture on earth because it's a mountain size but that's controversial as well so i think basically carving people into mountains will cause upset yeah but don't name them after just some loser who happened to be in town that's what i mean call it mount lincoln that's what it is or mount president face yeah exactly it's it's good to know though that if you want a mountain named after you just have to ask well some of our work that will be forever memorialized in the form

of mp3 downloads not actually carved into a mountainside but it's about as the permanent a format right as a carving into stone are our five special themed albums jubilee sports day love christmas and holiday that's all of them isn't it yes i did have to count on my fingers yes good um which are available through our website answer me this store.com and only 50 something shopping days until christmas it may feel odd to be uh trailing out of all of those a festive selection at this time of year when we've only just had Halloween. They have been showing love actually on various Freeview channels the whole year round. The mince pies have been in Morrisons for a month now.

Everyone's already thinking Christmas, so get yourself ready for the festive season with our special hour-long festive edition of Answer Me This, which contains questions about Christmas you will never hear on the podcast. And Kwanzaa. And an album that you definitely need in your life on Christmas Day. You know, it's become a staple now hasn't it? It's like the Bing Crosby album. I would say more the run-up to Christmas

and listen to it every day. So, if you want to buy Answer Me This Christmas, it's available for just £2.49 and all that money goes to supporting our show from our website. AnswerMeThisStore.com And here's a bit for today's intermission. During the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence commissioned a cracker maker

to tie bundles of cracker snaps together. And then they were used by soldiers in training when they were pulled apart to mimic the sound of machine gunfire so they got used to it. That's horrendous. Although obviously it's right to be prepared for the vagaries of war, isn't it?

With something horrendous. Insofar as you can prepare. Like a Christmas cracker. Yeah, exactly. I think they took the toys out as well. They probably left the jokes in to get them immune to real pain. As you foretold last time,

Skype took away our voicemail greeting, and apparently now there's nothing. Checking our voicemails this week, lot of hang-ups. You think people called us and then thought, this must be the wrong number. But it's the right number. The right number is this one in the jingle. Trust the jingle. 0-2-0-8-1-2-3-5-8-double-7 And trust Skype that if you type answer me this into skype you can leave us a a question but don't trust skype to maintain their voicemail feature no because they'll

just take it away at least one of you didn't hang up and uh here they are it's patrick in omaha nebraska uh i'm just buying some very bougie scented candles and i was starting to wonder when exactly scented candles became a big commercial success that they are now i'm i mean i know that probably candles that are scented exist as long as candles have but when did they go from something that like a rich person owned to something that like an asshole like me could purchase for 20 a set thanks bye uh if i have to put a year on it i'd say about 2010 um really yeah but it's been rather like podcasting it's been a slow steady build over time he might say it's been a slow burn

i think it's quite a lot earlier than that and we're talking about candles that come in jars aren't we yeah but he said big commercial success yeah i think it's quite a lot earlier than that. I mean, we're talking about candles that come in jars, aren't we? Yeah, but he said big commercial success. Yeah, I think it's pre-Credit Crunch because Girls Aloud effectively broke up in 2009 and Nadine was going to make a living out of having a posh candle shop in California. And so I think there was enough bourgeois candle industry before Girls Aloud split up.

There definitely was. I mean, I've seen it evolve over the years. When I was a researcher on This Morning morning when we used to have guests come in when they got their goodie bag to say thank you so much famous person for coming on our show and promoting your shit thing they get now the gloves are off they'd get given a bag from uh joe malone it was then that's good because i was thinking what you're giving them airwick candle joe malone those candles are like 40 quid yeah 40 qu Well, she's been at it for decades. So exactly.

So I'm aware, but that's what I'm saying. Slow burn, steady build. Slow burn. I would say it was the turn of this decade that, certainly in Britain anyway, that it began to see the huge growth we're seeing now. I mean, even just in the last couple of years. For example, between 2014 and 2015, the spend on scented candles in Britain went up 22%. Bloody hell.

So, you know, yes, they've been a thing, but they've only just become a thing that you can buy the own brand version in Tesco for a fiver, really, in the last few years. The point is the 20 quid one is in itself a budget one. Like it used to be the case that the high end scented candle, I mean, like you say, Jamie Loan's 40 quid. Diptyque 80 something. Exactly. Liberty sell them for 300 pounds Some of them Oh man But actually

When you compare that To the cost of a handbag That you can buy there That's fuck all isn't it Yeah but the handbag doesn't melt True You might in the right circumstances The thing is

I think like with All of these high fashion things When you're spending 300 quid On a candle It's a bit like Buying a wallet Or a perfume From that company It's a way of getting That brand into your house that you can afford because you probably

can't afford the coat or the handbag someone who goes to liberty and likes the coat but can't afford it that's who exactly that's what a 40 quid candle is for no no that's that's no the 40 quid candle is for you and me buying it for our moms at christmas the 300 pound candle is for the person who shops at liberty but can't afford the coat what a load of is for the person who shops at Liberty but can't afford the coat. What a load of shit. It's for the person who goes to the opera but sits in the £100 seat because they can't afford the £250 seat. It's a market that exists. It's just, you know, more rich than us. Let's talk household budgeting.

How much would you spend a month on scented candles? Well, as it so happens, my local post office does almost nothing of use but they have an amazing bargain bucket by the till in which you can find the randomest selection of things, including recently scented candles for a pound each. That's good. But how bad is the smell?

Well, it's not pretending to be high class. Is it beef and onion? It swizzles drumstick. Oh, that's all right. Yeah. Smells like drumstick. Does what it says on the tin. Can you pick one up for me next time you're in there i will martin that was when i first realized that i don't like receiving presents was when i kept getting given candles

and i was like god i hate being given candles as presents and i really started to resent them but actually it's i don't like getting presents right so now you just resent the people who give them to you i do and what a backhander that is what a joy you are to have as a friend but i can understand the reasoning why people would give you a candle, because they're like, it's a luxury good that you don't have to put up with for that long, because you can burn it. But don't give me one. I think it's replaced the bottle of wine as a dinner party accessory for a lot of people.

It's replaced smelly soap. Possibly. Given that choice, I'm coming to you for dinner. Yeah. Chocolates. I always like it when people bring me flowers. Martin does like flowers. Okay, fine.

So flowers for Martin, chocolates for Helen, and the candles go fuck themselves. Yeah. Yeah, they can. They can leave them in the car park fucking themselves. 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 her 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 The only way is up. of open sewers it would look beautiful using squarespace.com actually and and also if you wanted to sell merch that was open sewer related you can put a store page up on there and that's pretty easy to do as well isn't it absolutely yeah and if you wanted to take donations to keep

your gallery of open sewers alive um that would be easy too and also you get a url thrown in if you sign up for a year so you could see if opensewers.com is available yeah and it comes part of the squarespace package and you can get 10 off that package for a year if you use the code answer here's a question from callum ab negative from bath who says i am a regular blood donor same helen answer me this if another person received a transfusion of my blood and they committed a crime later that day this is already sort of Twilight Zone style question. Seems likely, doesn't it? If someone needs a blood transfusion,

they're going to be up right as rain after nearly four hours of having that pumped into their body, ready to do criming. They could do an online fraud. True. Probably then their blood composition is not going to be a problem. Well, this is it. Callum says,

Is there any chance I can be wrongly embroiled in the investigation if they were to cut themselves at the crime scene leaving a cocktail-like sample of our bloods on the windowsill? And if this is true, could I also use this excuse as a legal protection

if I did decide that my honest life so far wasn't working out? I.e., it wasn't me who committed the crime but someone who had my blood inside them. Well, the thing is,

unless you had a total blood donation, you're still going to have the dominant blood and the donated blood will be a relatively small proportion. I mean, it doesn't get pumped around your body pretty quick, like mixed in with your other blood. Yeah, and also often blood transfusions aren't the whole blood. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they are mainly red blood cells

which don't carry genetic material. Only the white blood cells do, but you'll have fewer of them. And I think probably blood tests can tell that it's not one person's blood. Particularly like if you've got blood from someone of a different gender to you, then that would show up. It would just look like an odd result. You might have certain like antibodies that are heightened. Because often after you've had a blood transfusion, another reason why you probably wouldn't be fit to crime that day you might have allergic reactions you might have fever dizziness tiredness but some of those can be very serious they can lay you out for a few days but also if you've had lots of new

blood yeah it's unlikely to all be from the same person isn't it right that's a good point yes it's almost definitely not because you're not allowed to donate nine pints of blood because it'll kill you. So therefore, if that sample showed up at a crime scene, I reckon whoever's analysing it would be able to say, there are nine people's bloods here. Yeah. Let's not use the blood sample.

Yeah. But you might have traces of someone else's blood for... It's usually about four to eight days it starts to fade. But if you've had lots of their blood, could be there for 18 months james bond wise this would be quite a good plot wouldn't it i mean more realistically shit jonathan creek christmas special i like the idea someone might commit a crime on purpose using someone else's blood to frame them like if you could somehow but why not just take a bit of their blood and leave it at the scene rather than pumping it into your own system. Because silly plots.

Because Jonathan Craig. Hello, it's Tom Barrett from Norwich. My question is, have Heinz baked beans always had a Z on the end of beans? I've never noticed it before and I wondered if this was phased in for the cool kids.

Is that cool kids with a Z? I suppose it matches the Heinz. It does. And I'm looking forward to you saying Heinz several times in the special way that you do. You can say it normally now. I've noticed this. Since we bullied you about it,

you've started to say it like a normal person. Exactly. And yet Helen still says penguin and yet it's fine to bully me for Heinz. Well, peer pressure doesn't work on me. I do say Heinz because I never realised until this is really something for retro fans of the show.

This was seven years ago or something. I was casually talking about Heinz on Answer Me This and everyone said that's not how you say it. You say it Heinz. Because it isn't. And also your mum phoned up to say that it isn't. Anyway, Heinz introduced this change in 2008. Right. So you're right, Tom.

They haven't always been called beans with a Z. It's not just that you didn't notice it. They were called heinz baked beans until 2004 in 2004 they added the z so they were called heinz baked beans with a z and then in 2008 they became just heinz beans credit crunch so you can't afford the baked anymore yeah which actually i hadn't noticed i'd noticed the z but i hadn't noticed they'd got rid of the word baked i suppose a lot of people would take issue with the idea that they were prepared by baking oh no i don't think that is the reason because you know if you look at their main competitors at branston for example they very much say branston baked beans um and so do all

the own brand ones in fact i think really the reason they changed it was because branston launched their beans that were quite popular quite quickly they felt the heat heinz and they were like how do we how do we really consolidate our brand in this market where people are preferring in some cases to go for our rival it's a boring legalistic registered trademark thing right so they can trademark heinz they can trademark 57 they can trademark a tin of baked beans that's turquoise And has that shape on it Exactly And they can trademark the word beans with a Z

The only things they couldn't trademark before Were the word baked beans Because that's a type of product When they had the slogan beans means Heinz Did all of those words end in a Z They did And that is what it's a throwback to And rightly so

Because I didn't even realise I thought that was a 1980s campaign. Yeah, I did. It's a 1960s campaign. It had been around for 20 years by the time we were watching it. And it was unanimously voted at the turn of the century in a survey of ad men to be the best ever slogan for an advertising campaign. Not everybody form. I'm sure that was a distant second 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 connery, 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 Paul who says, I know this may sound ruin your friendship yes here's a question from Paul who says I know this may sound like a bit of a brag but I honestly believe I'm the best person in the world at loading the dishwasher whoa there this is going to get brutal

a lot of people are going to say no Paul your way is wrong I get everything all lined up perfectly he says says, so I can fit in as much as possible, but not so much that it doesn't clean properly. I see. Oh, what a balance. I like what he's done there. He's revealed just enough of his technique that you understand how he operates. He's not

giving away his secrets, though, is he? It's like the magic fucking circle. Do you think he has gone so far as to buy crockery that is square so that it's taking up the available space? Because you can't tessellate a round plate, but a square plate you can optimise your dishwasher space. I think slates would be even better. No, slates

are awful in every way. Never eat off a slate. Stop this madness. But you don't have a lip so that it takes up less... They don't have a lip so the food drips off, Martin. It's not 2008 anymore, Martin. Everyone stops eating off slates. They haven't. Have you been to building sites and roofs where they belong. They haven't. They've been to a pub in London. They just will not stop with

the slate. Stop with the slate. Please. And then you're like, oh we've got bigger problems at the moment Helen. No. Stop our slates. Stop our slates. Well Paul says, Helen answer me this, how can I prove my dishwasher skills to myself and to the world? You've already proven them to yourself. No but he wants

some sort of arbiter doesn't he? He wants, it sounds to me like a sort of guinness world records type independent observation on on his skills paul you need to find the satisfaction within yourself that you are the best at dishwashing you don't need this external affirmation sometimes people want the independent verification he says it seems unfair we have the olympics to find the best at running and swimming but nothing to find the best person at dishwasher loading i don't think that counts as unfair i don't know directly comparable i mean i speak as someone who's formerly produced items for daytime television i think there is interest in this this could be the new supermarket sweep you have two people the same dirty crockery they've got one minute to load the dishwasher to maximum efficiency and then an

hour later you see whose plates have come out cleaner but do you know what paul i think this could be a youtube viral waiting to happen yes like the one there was a few weeks ago where the former bond girl rachel grant packed 130 things into a tiny bag um and i hadn't seen that one it's quite compelling sounds really satisfying the 130 things does include things like cotton buds and hair bands. So that is stretching the point a bit. But she does fit a lot of garments into a tiny bag. Yeah, hand luggage.

Something you could take on a plane. Yep. That's pretty impressive. And we got bored and I unpacked your handbag and took a photo of it. Yeah, we were on holiday earlier this year and I walked into the hotel room and found that Martin had taken everything out of my handbag and then laid it out in one of those Instagram square orderly layouts. It was really beautiful. You absolute pervert.

What were you looking for? I think I might have just snuck totally shit on the floor and had to do something about it. But yeah, I agree. I think self-publishing might be the way forward here because, you know, Paul, we didn't know or the world didn't know that we were great at answering questions until we just did it.

We just took to the web, answered people's questions. Here we are 10 years later answering questions. This is your field to take, Paul. Yeah. Just tell the world. You don't need independent verification. Put it out there. Film an incredible video of you loading a dishwasher

and see if the world gives a shit. Okay, that is the end of this episode of Answer Me This. And if you have a question, please do formulate it and then send it using the contact details on our website. AnswerMeThis this podcast.com whereupon you can also find links to follow us on twitter and facebook and buy our stuff from the answer me this store what a comprehensive website it is it is yeah even though it's incredibly old uh and uh it is thanks again to squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the show and our website is not hosted by them people do ask but it's just we couldn't be asked to move

2000 posts from the last 10 years I'm sure Squarespace would make it easy if we could but if I was starting it now yeah

Squarespace Squarespace all the way I do use Squarespace for the illusionist website and I use it for the modern man

website actually and I use that for the song by song podcast site so we put our money where our mouths are yes we all went for it

I got one for my dad as well oh really yeah that's very nice he does website so you know the 75 year old man can do it he can do it We put our money where our mouths are. Yes. We all went for it. I got one for my dad as well. Oh, really? Yeah. That's very nice of you, Dad's website. So, you know, if a 75-year-old man can do it, you can do it. Anyway, please return in two weeks' time for the next Answer Me This. Bye!