Answer Me This! - AMT345: The Angel of the North, Cheese Juice, and a Cat Called Anus

Episode Date: December 1, 2016

Changes are afoot at AMT, as we prepare for our tenth birthday next month. Also in this bumper episode, a listener accidentally embarks upon a showbiz career, another needs to rename her pet, and another is angry at beds. Find out more about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode345. 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

Should we go to Panto this year, or just watch the news? Answer me this, answer me this Does Santa drink and drive after all that free booze? Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this Very shortly, it's Answer Me This's 10th birthday. Pretty exciting. I never thought we would see the day, and of course,

10 years ago when we started on the 2nd of january 2007 cereal hadn't even invented podcasting yet and wouldn't for a further eight years that's right and so you may rightly be wondering well how are we going to celebrate our forthcoming 10th anniversary well this podcast is eight days older than my niece matilda and she's planning to celebrate by boxing all right that's what she wants for her birthday a punch bag how curious yeah she's she's a clever girl yeah it's good to see that she's also uh exercising her physical side as well as in like you know it's almost like sort of classical approach isn't it you know you need to be a superhero of the mind

and the body she is the child of two people who studied classics i think she's also just quite punchy i wouldn't say that andy really uh particularly represents physical uh supremacy how dare you but we digress so you might be thinking right are we going to have a live event are we going to invite a load of celebrities to participate like we did before kids party um i'm not gonna do any of that what we we very nearly did, listeners, is stop doing this altogether. It's really my fault because I thought, it's coming up to 10 years and it'd be nice to go out on a landmark and while the show still feels like it's good,

it still feels like you like it, listeners. Yeah, more than that. Yeah, wouldn't want it to get to the stage like with a pet where you're like, well, it looks like the pet I used to like, but it is incontinent and senile and I can't hug it anymore because it claws at me. We didn't want to get to the point in our narrative

where Chandler and Monica got together. It was basically the issue. Or where Rachel and Joey got together. Exactly, that's more to the point. Very pertinent. Yeah, you're right, we're actually at the point where Chandler and Monica got together. Yeah, and I was 26 when I started.

I had a young person's rail card. Now my eyebrows are going grey. So, you know know our lives have changed and and also um i mean there are lots of reasons one of the casualties of 2016 along with all these celebrities has been my sense of humor it's been uh an existential year for a lot of people yeah but before you all take to social media and start doing hashtag pray for AMT. The Trump times happened and I thought, no, I cannot give up Answer Me This. We have to be the band on the deck of the Titanic playing as it goes into the water forever. So yeah, behind the scenes listeners over the last month or two, you never knew how close to the brink you were.

It's like the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is. It's our little tribute to Castro that we are continuing with Answer Me This now. However, we've decided to make some changes uh are we firing martin yeah what i have to say uh i don't think ollie wanted the show to end uh at this point and i don't think martin really gave a shit either way so it was being driven by me a bit and it was partly because i was feeling kind of overstretched and burnt out and like i didn't have anything to give any more listeners. I had nothing left to give. So next year, there will be less of the show, but there will still be show.

Well, let's be specific. There's a new Thursday for you to care about. Yes. Where you've spent the last few years thinking every other Thursday was important. Now it's every other other Thursday. It's going to be the first Thursday of every month. Add it to your Google calendars.

Yes. Circle it in your Filofaxes. Tattoo it to your google calendars yes circle it in your filofaxes tattoo it on your children's faces only one with a filofax uh first thursday of every month will be your new day for new answer me this so there'll be longer episodes and there will be stuff in between listeners we're not necessarily going to leave you hanging for a whole month right answer me this but but a whole new shiny episode of answer me this first thursday of every month but for those of you who are thinking okay fine yeah but your 10th anniversary episode is coming up next month what are you going to do desperate to do something i need to be involved i do uh you

can be you can send us voicemails telling us what this show means to you and we'll play them in the show or a funny story about when you listen to answer me this or if anyone's made friends or indeed found a partner because of this show those are the slightly self-indulgent stories we would like to play out in the form of voicemail montages in next episode probably not relationships that ended really badly because i can think of one or two listener relationships that went down in flames but that's fine i mean a story is a story we want to know how our show has in some small small way... Wormed its way into your life. Called the usual numbers. You can Skype answer me this or you can... Shall we sing it?

Yes, like the olden days. Call 020812358777. Or you could record a voice memo and email it to us. Yes, you could do that too. Get those in by New Year's Eve. Yes. I would say. So that we have time to cherish them.

So we have time to cherish them and cherish them as well yeah um and uh what what was that you said Ollie send us lavish gifts no we couldn't possibly absolutely not that would be very wrong particularly if you wanted to donate through answermethisstore.com um but one of the reasons listeners why I'm glad not to be killing the show is that I love to hear from you and um i have enjoyed hearing you telling us how ollie fucked up in answer me this 344 by saying the most expensive item in argos hold on was well a telly that costs like 40 pence okay i said it was a telly that cost four grand and actually i'm not no i didn't fuck up because i said on the show these are the three categories

of things that I assume are the most expensive products at Argos. Assumption fucked it up. If you know otherwise, please get in touch and let us know. Assumption makes an ass of you. No, I'm sorry. I was very clear. I showed my workings and I said, let me know if I'm wrong.

You've shown up this show's workings as being a load of shit. Nick has written in to say, I heard you talking about the most expensive products in the argos catalog yeah and as someone who works for argos oh wow okay i thought i'd share a few products you may have missed and i may have missed he's politely saying you missed you missed i was open about this checked four categories what are they what are they when i hear nick says uh the tv that you guessed is currently our 32nd most expensive product. Wow. Not even top 10, Ollie. You've really pissed

your pants. Well, let's see just how far off I was price-wise. Okay, yeah, fair enough. There was one category you totally missed which is permanent outdoor structures. Can you buy a branch of Argos in the Argos category? You can buy a retail park. So, in reverse order, Nick says,

the three categories you missed with the most expensive items were yes number three now you've got to do it in the chart style obviously it's a new entry at three women never get to do chart countdowns in a three conservatories a dwarf wall conservatory i don't know what that is i don't know what that is either for 4 999 pounds okay well actually price wise that is. I don't know what that is either. For £4,999. Okay, well, actually, price-wise, that is close to what I said for the telly, isn't it? Product 686 slash 0691.

Okay, well, you can tell he works for Argos because he's put the product catalogue number in just in case. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And at number two. Number two. It's the highest riser. Product 713 slash 8281. Yeah. Log cabins-8281. Yeah.

Log cabins. Log cabins. Very smart looking one for £5,699. I know what to get someone for Christmas. I do love log cabins. And Martin and I do need somewhere to live. At number one, product 539-6142. Yes, but how much?

£32,000. Wow, okay. Because the other two were close to my four grand telly 32 grand yeah hot spas a 20 foot long swim tub i once met someone who chipped their tooth trying to go down on someone in a hot tub oh romance was killed this is a fun family game though i think potentially over christmas well the argos price is right game yeah people could play this at home all you need is an argos catalog and your imagination it's the new call my bluff style game where you just choose a word in the dictionary and people have to write plausible definitions yeah and also

actually we've only of course played half the game really if you think it through the other half of the game is to work out what's the cheapest thing in the argos catalogue wow which of course is a more competitive field yeah i mean then you might get like little plastic replacement parts for a pound does that count i bet there's nothing cheaper and again you know you seem to think that i'm terrible at this but i bet that there is nothing cheaper in the argus catalog than 1 pound 29 i don't think you're terrible at the speculation i think you just slacked off on the research i was open about it didn't even look at outdoor structures we were on a break hey Hey, Helen and Ollie. My name is

Aiste, spelled A-I-S-T-E in case anyone was wondering. And I recently adopted a young cat. He's great, but there's one problem. His name is Anus or Anus. My roommate loves the name,

but having to yell out, come here, my little anus, and asking my friends if they want to see my new anus is getting a bit ridiculous. So please, can you help me find an alternative name for my anus? The cat. A cat called anus. Pretty much any name's going to be an improvement at this point, isn't it?

A cat called anus. It's the heartwarming children's film of the season your cat coco her name means shit in some languages it does coco actually is not her original quote-unquote name um so coco is a rescue cat her original name was winifred we didn't adopt her uh my wife and i's mutual friend uh jay he adopted her. And he couldn't say the word Winifred. So he changed it to one he could say. That's really interesting. That's a good reason. He couldn't remember it.

So he changed it. It was Wilbur and Winifred. And he changed them to Coco and Tiger. And Tiger is no longer with us. Tiger, unfortunately, went to play on the M40 within about six weeks of adoption. Tiger, your sense of adventure did for you. Did he want to see the Hoover building? So I'm actually quite ambivalent about changing cats' names. I don't think you have to stick with the one you've inherited.

Do you know whether there was a problem with Coco acknowledging her name when they changed it, or was she just never ever going to acknowledge whatever you said because she seems to be quite indifferent to most things? In my experience, most cats are indifferent to most things and they basically respond to tone when it comes to their owners and you as the person who's feeding them become the most important human they interact with yeah and basically so long as you've got food in your hand and you say something with this tone yeah then they will respond to it so i don't think it really matters how is a cat

called anus and why does your housemate love the name well we don't know where you're calling from aster but i assume that if your name is typical from where you're from then maybe anus doesn't mean what it means in english then why would you worry that you're calling your cat anus in other people's earshot unless i had maybe a housemate's english yeah or they you know are aware of its double meaning and then it becomes very difficult it basically becomes mrs slocum's pussy doesn't it you know if you're conscious all the time of the fact that you're always looking for your anus have you seen my anus what colors your anus and so on it just gets a bit tiresome my wife wants to rescue another cat right now oh really yeah i've put my foot down about it

actually why i would have thought you'd love to be surrounded by as many cats as possible well that's the thing i think i want a cat but i've got to think about what coco wants and if coco had a voice in the matter, she would definitely say, no more cats, this is my territory. I don't want to have a cat. Is that what she sounds like? It just went straight through me, Martin. It was like you're a psychic and you're channeling her.

I'm like having my own space. Tell me what else you like, Coco. There's so many things I wanted to ask you. I'm an independent cat. They will try and eat the birds that I like to choose. Would you prefer to be locked in the kitchen when we're away or the hall? In the kitchen.

I can break into the fridge and drink your beers. Okay. I always suspected this. Something like that. Sure. If I ever murder Martin, it's almost certainly because he's been busting out some character comedy.

Either that or he's picking his nose in public. And I've started doing that more and more. That's my favourite thing, actually. What, character comedy? No, picking my nose in public. Eating Eccles cakes and picking my nose. Is that you have to have an Eccles cake in one hand? No, no, no, not at the same time.

I mean, those are my favourite. These are a few of my favourite things. So anyway, if you had a cat called Anus and you decided to mitigate that name, would you just call it Janus or something like that? Or would you just go completely different? Oh, what, like Samantha? Yeah, like Samantha Janus or Janus. You could actually call it Samantha after Samantha Janus.

That would be a nod to the original name. Yes, and to a superb Eurovision Song Contest entry. I interviewed her on BBC Local Radio the other week. Did you? What did you chat about? She's in Dick Whittington in Milton Keynes. Lovely. And I just made some very lame puns, like I said, things like,

I mean, really lame, like I said, so if you want to go and see Samantha's dick, it's on at so-and-so. Like, stuff you do as a local radio DJ. Yeah. Pissed herself. She couldn't believe it. She loved it.

She was like, oh, this is the most outrageous thing I've ever heard. I was like, no way. You were around in Britpop. She's got a panto script and it doesn't have any dick jokes exactly yeah what about uh elvis costello because his birth name is declan mcmanus right so you call the cat elvis elvis yeah yeah yeah that's a nice name the cat the cat wouldn't

know the connection no but you would you might feel it well i suppose you could wean it off by calling it elvis costello formerly known as declan mcmanus and then just start dropping some syllables off it yeah and then eventually the cat will accept the word elvis yeah i think we solved that if you've got a question email your question to answer me in this podcast, give them a call. Answer me in this podcast, give them a call. Answer me! Oh! Answer me! Oh!

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 Ollie from Toronto, who says, I've recently moved from London, England, not Ontario, to Toronto, Ontario, not County Durham. OK. For a change of pace. It would be a change of pace going to Toronto. Yes. Beautiful place, I'm sure.

Yes. World's largest underground shopping complex. Well, I guess they'd need it with their cold winters. Ollie says, not long after arriving, I was able to get myself a great job in the field I'd been working in before. And thus far, I am loving the new city, job and lifestyle. Yay. Good result, Ollie. Four million square feet of underground retail space. However, I've got myself into a rather difficult position. I've been looking for some evening activities to make new friends. And I've suddenly realised there's nothing to do in Canada.

Why did I leave London? Oh, boo. Should have thought about this, Ollie. Ollie says, I recently auditioned for what I thought was a community theatre production and got a role I've always dreamed of playing in a show I've always wanted to be in. Okay, not seeing a problem here so far. On being offered the part, I discovered that I had unknowingly got a part

in a professional show, not a community theatre or amateur dramatics production as I'd previously thought. What? Bit of a humble brag here. How is that possible? How do you audition for something without knowing it's a professional show?

Oh no, I didn't bring headshots with me. How funny, are you just doing this to make this amateur thing seem like it's real yeah so when are rehearsals then oh every day yeah that's fine surely you must have had that conversational realization surely you must have realized you're the only one without an agent nope ollie says as someone who loves acting and always dreamed of doing it professionally this should of course be the best news possible but my problem is it's full-time for a month which naturally conflicts with the nine to five job i've now started and he said he was loving so ollie please answer me this is there any universe in which i can convince someone i've only worked for

since august to give me a full month off in order to pursue my dream to perform the role of a lifetime in a professional stage production or is the only way i can conceivably get to do this is to quit my job which seems like an extreme thing to do for a four-week acting job and job hunt again once the show is over the only thing i have going for me is that my employment is also in the theater industry so my bosses should at least understand what an opportunity this would be i love the idea that everyone who works in theater comes in in the morning dancing and god i hope i get it probably true ollie ollie has uh he's he's done the dream actually i did used to work at ticket master in the call center and everyone there wanted to be an actor really they would have all just

left immediately at the sniff of a job even the people who were the managers but also ever since say daisy donovan got discovered for the 11 o'clock show because she was working reference for the kids listening because she was working in tv production i think she was a researcher or something probably a lot of people in tv offices since then i thought i could get discovered newer reference actually uh steph mcgovern and nikki fox the new presenters of watchdog similarly were bbc researchers before they got poached as presenters absolutely beats me ollie you don't know who they are no it's not for you in the same way that the 11 o'clock show is not for anyone under 40 listening to this now um uh who's who's watchdog for is a great question and a consumer question of the type they wouldn't actually tackle on the show i i guess it's for women in their 50s

and 60s predominantly anyway i can't believe this has even happened to you ollie this is the kind of thing that happens in celebrity memoirs i read barry norman's and barry norman i'm paraphrasing here but essentially said i got offered the job of presenting the film program one day whilst taking a slash at tv center that's basically what it says and i turned to the Director General who was wiping his arse and I said there really should be a programme reviewing films and he said, aha Barry, you should present it. Here's ten years contract. And you think

okay, maybe that is how things used to work but that doesn't happen now. And you've just stepped into this situation that is just like, it's like one of those oh, you know, my friend was going to be in All Saints but I went to the audition kind of stories, isn't it? You can't ignore this stroke of fortune. Yes, you'd always be wondering.

But also, as you have said that your work is in theatre, you could ask them. Well, it sounds like you've made up your mind that you're going to do the job. You are. Can you use all of your paid holiday? Or could you be like, oh, I broke my ankle. So, yeah, obviously he should approach them

because he's made up his mind that he's gonna leave if they say no so you might as well ask so you're thinking go for the honest method don't tell a lie that can get him out of work for a month oh yeah yeah no don't lie because toronto isn't that big a place i mean i don't know how many professional theater productions are on there every night but let's say it's 10 they if they work in theater they might work that out. That is a good point. I suppose you could play it like, I've only been working for you for a short while.

Could you pretend I hadn't started until a month hence and give me the time to do this job? But then what if this is just the start and all it gets part after part? And then he develops an incredible career, like Gypsy. The toast of canadian stage yeah but then it will have been a punt worth taking wouldn't it i think you can't turn away from this because you'll always be wondering what if i thought you stumbled into this is extraordinary i'm wondering what the role is since you mentioned gypsy maybe it is that

yeah maybe i've never seen gypsy in drag before but why not why not yeah uh what would for you be the thing that would make you you don't't really have a day job, but would make you say... Yeah, what would be incompatible with my flexible hours? But what would be the thing that would make you say, well, I'm going to jack that in, I'm going to go and do that? What's the thing you've always wanted to do that's completely different to your day-to-day job? I would love to be in a big Razzmatazz,

Broadway or West End production, but given my acting and singing and dancing skills, just very unlikely to happen but why not put that out there yeah why not noel edmunds this um and that would be very time consuming as ollie has proven yeah or being in a sitcom like the american office where you were stuck being on set all the time because uh if you were working in office with each other you'd be visible in background shots so they were faffing around on computers it was long days every day for nine months of the year but i would do it to be in the american office okay something i would like to do which i couldn't believe this has actually

happened if there's any way just for one night i can be involved in bat out of hell the musical please get in touch with me manchester opera house it's really happening isn't it haven't i been saying for years every time someone's asked us something about musicals and be like what's the show that really should happen i've got two answers one is jukebox musical with the songs of pulp the other is i usually don't actually say bat out of hell the music i usually say a jim steinman musical using his back catalog not a shit one with andrew lloyd weber but one where you actually use his rock songs using his back catalog his bat catalog oh he doesn't say much, but when he does... Oh, Martin.

Andy was eating an Eccles cake at the time. His mouth was doing double duty. I'm an old Tusker. But this musical is finally go. Yes, but, yeah, OK, so my dream Jim Steinman musical, and I don't know, I don't know what the song list is, people. I've just seen it advertised. But my dream Jim Steinman musical would be

the hits from Bat Out Of Hell. Well, actually, Hits Out Of Hell. The album Hits Out Of Hell. I'd have that, plus Total Eclipse Of The Heart. advertised but my dream jim steinman musical would be the hits from bat out of hell well actually hits out of hell the album hits out of hell i'd have that plus total eclipse of the heart right that's what i'm very good the best of bat out of hell one and two plus total eclipse of the heart i think would be an amazing musical but it looks like by calling it bat out of hell i assume it is actually just the concept album bat out of hell the first one which means they haven't got room for i'd do anything for love or life is a lemon i want my money back which i would have put in there and i would have put in totally clips the heart but anyway the problem is always going to be the book because

you know you've got so many ingredients for a great night out a rock opera there yeah you know you've got people with big tits on chandeliers flying through the sky motorbikes on fire things crashing all around you big male choirs going ah it would be amazing but what actually is that story because it's completely incomprehensible basically there's a lot of story in each song how are you going to splice those together exactly does bat out of hell have a coherent narrative at the top um there's some stuff about lost boys and golden girls and people riding harleys and people crashing and dying but basically no it's all just a big teenage wank fantasy isn't it uh if you're listening manchester opera house who are staging bat out of held the musical i'm so excited to be involved in any way i can is it gonna only

be on in manchester opera house or is it gonna come to london it's coming to the eno whoa it premieres premieres at manchester it's the role of a lifetime for you you can play all the roles apart from the fact that i'm not american i can't sing and if i got on a motorbike i dislocate my shoulder instantly minor obstacles yes, don't you think? Yeah. So if it's at the Opera House, is it going to be performed as an opera in a more kind of classical style? Well, so the E&O has been doing these things over the summers recently

to try and raise money because not enough people go to the opera. So what they do is the orchestra from the English National Opera play contemporary music over the summer and charge £200 a ticket for it. Dumb it down, guys. Dumb it down. It was really good. So they did Sunset Boulevard

with Glenn Close this summer and it was amazing. And this is their effort for next summer. Are you going on your own? I haven't decided yet, Martin. What, do you want to come? You don't strike me as a Meatloaf fan, really. I like his film work, actually.

I really like him in Fight Club. Not really relevant to this musical. It's not really. He's a good singer but I find his work a bit broad. A bit broad? It's grand sweeping statements. There's little room for personalisation and nuance in my book.

Oh, this is a separate show where we go through each of Jim Steinman's songs one by one. Jim Steinman's song by song, right after the Tom Waits series. You should do that. I think there is quite a lot of lyrical flourish and subtlety i just think the musical production is so overwhelming that you sort of you lose the detail well that's a problem in itself in the well it's not a problem martin it's a style it's a stylistic choice what if the music's fighting the lyrics that's a problem ah well we're doing the podcast already anyway um i'd love to do that but i won't do that because i will never get asked to

do that oh come on keep over life no because I will never get asked to do that. Oh, come on, keep hope alive. No, come on, I'm being honest. It's fine, I know my limitations. Well, just as Ollie seems to be taking a hiatus from his new job, we're going to take a short break now from this episode for today's intermission. Yes, and as it's December, holidays are coming, holidays are coming. Always Coca-Cola. No, Helen, always the Answer Me This Christmas album. Always.

In which you can find out why Rudolph got a red nose, why we kiss under the mistletoe, and what the highest rated Christmas TV show was of all time. Wow. Plus you'll hear me bitch about Shane McGowan. So much festive magic. And that album, along with our other special albums and our first 200 episodes,

are all available at answermethisstore.com Correct. And Answer Me This Christmas was all new for 2013 but it's still all new for you if you've never heard it before. Christmas is one of the times of year where I'm happy to have a bit of repetition. Indeed, yeah.

It's somehow reassuring and familiar, isn't it, to hear something you've heard before. And if you've never heard it before then it's new to you. It's never been free on the podcast feed, never will be. And here's a tiny little taste of it. Well, here's another question of Christmas from the USA. It's from Trevor in Tucson, who says,

My girlfriend and I just exchanged Christmas presents, and for Christmas, she's taking me to Disneyland. Quite good. I got her a duffel bag. Amazing. Crash and burn. Awkward. So Helen answered me this.

What can I do to make up for the fact that I've got her such a shit present? Trevor's girlfriend might really like duffel. She might. Maybe he's underestimated. Just because she brought out Disneyland, Trevor, that doesn't mean that you didn't correctly judge. Absolutely accurately.

She bloody loves duffel. And also maybe it's an $800 duffel bag. Yes. In which case, absolutely, that is fine. Maybe it accurately she bloody loves duffel and also maybe it's an 800 duffel bag yes in which case absolutely that is fine maybe it's an army surplus stuff obviously yeah it's a cheap one isn't it the problem with this issue that trevor has on earth though is that she'll think trevor loves me less than i love trevor and that is the real heart of the issue isn't it yeah and there isn't much you can do about that, actually, is there? No. Even if part two was a house. Yeah. It would be bought out of shame. Shame house.

Here's a question from Chris who says, I'm an American living in London. He's like the inverse sting. I'll be without my passport and identity card for an indeterminate period as I'm sending them to the Home Office to process my application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Oh, good luck. Yeah, Brexit doesn't seem so bad now, does it, Chris?

My partner and I typically travel abroad for Christmas. As we can't plan for that this year, we'd like to visit somewhere in the UK that won't require me to show my passport or residence card. So Helen asked me this. Would the Channel Islands fit the bill? It seems that some ferry operators do require a passport to be shown, so should we just stick to somewhere on this landmass

that's accessible by road to avoid any potential passport-related snafus. Suggestions on where to go would be welcome. There are some wonderful and beautiful places to go in the British Isles. It depends, I think, whether you want city or rural and how tolerant you might be to... Extreme cold and grimness? Yes.

There are some beautiful places in the British Isles. We've been to many of them. We have. I'm not sure December shows them them at their strengths you have some places that have clement micro climates like um cornwall or bournemouth or the silly isles i've heard have white sand beaches and look quite tropical but maybe you do need a passport to get to the silly isles even though they're in britain yeah so they'll just be kind of cold as opposed to extremely cold isle of wight ferry probably doesn't require a passport. It's only a few minutes. And that's meant to be lovely like the 50s.

Really? Yeah. Lovely like the 50s? Or completely unsophisticated like the 50s? They've still got the tail end of rationing there. I just... There's something grim sounding about Isle of Wight at Christmas, but I've never been to the Isle of Wight, so I don't know.

I'm trying to think of towns that i would find festive at christmas and i imagine somewhere like bath or oxford or edinburgh yeah york yeah actually edinburgh is a great suggestion because um uh and all that yes whiskey there's the street-based festivities yeah and the old buildings and if you're an american okay you're living in london so you've seen your fair share of old buildings but there's a fucking great castle some great old buildings in edinburgh yeah that is a good suggestion yeah and yeah it's so beautiful and you can have some very heartwarming food and it's cold and inhospitable for quite a lot of the year anyway yeah what's the difference what's the difference yeah in fact a scottish road trip if you don't mind it i think scotland would be great i've never been there in winter i'm not

sure because you can't really go to the highlands because it's all icy and locked off in it unless you like ice obviously you don't have to go that far north. You could be in Skye or Mull or somewhere. Martin and I went to Mull last summer and I really, we went to quite a lot of places. We had a Scottish road trip but Mull I thought was really charming and we also

had some amazing meals there. So go to Mull. In December. In December Helen. You definitely didn't need a passport to get the car ferry to Mull. Ollie, if you're in the British Isles you're not going to be lounging on the beach. You could be catatonic on the beach. It's like you have these beautiful bits of coast, like the North East up around Lindisfarne. There's some really lovely places up there. I think city break is how to do it.

Okay. Because I think, although there are beautiful rural places in the UK, like the Highlands, like the Lake District, like Cornwall, if's really biting wind yeah and you're stuck to inside go to a place where there are things to do inside okay that would be my advice well it depends if what you want to do is just read and drink mulled wine you know yeah yeah but yeah but city break you can go to a museum then read and drink and all right so you could stay somewhere in the country just outside of oxford i think bath was a good suggestion i went to their christmas market last year quite good go to the cotswolds day trip to bath day trip to oxford day trip to blenheim and you're staying somewhere rural which has lots of log fires in pubs good

yes yes sort of cottagey cheltenham type vibe yeah probably a local panto very good yeah that's all right all right yeah fine hi helen and ollie and marcy soundman this is is Toria and Andrew. We are six hours and 58 minutes into a road trip from Surrey to Northern Bolivia with my parents, and we just went past the Angel of the North and we have a question. We know that the Statue of Liberty was not always green. Was the Angel of the North always rusty? Or when it was first put up, was it shiny or was it made out of rusty metal? OK, so you're on a road trip past the Angel of the North.

You want to know, was it always rusty? Yes. Surely it was always planned to be rusty. Yes, it was, because it's made of a special kind of steel called corten steel or weathering steel, if you're using the non-trademark name nice okay it would be very poor design though wouldn't it if if you know for that amount of government money yeah it's supposed to be shiny forever they haven't planned ahead a beautiful stainless steel sculpture yeah no it's this different kind of weathering steel it contains a tiny bit of copper and some other minerals and the idea is that a thin layer of rust forms pretty tightly bonded on the surface and unlike normal rust which flakes off and leaves the fresh metal vulnerable to more

rusting this stays on and it's basically weatherproofing the metal so that they don't have to paint it they don't have to maintain it, they don't have to maintain it. Apparently it can go for like 120 years without you having to do any surface maintenance on it. Take that, Eiffel Tower. I think it meant that the finish of it was quite predictable because it's fairly resistant to harsh weather. And there it's close to the coast, it's getting a lot of wind, it's in an exposed position.

And others would start to look a bit crappy or defiled, like paint would start to chip off if it was normal paint. Whereas this, the colour changes very slightly, but they basically know what the statue's going to look a bit crappy or defiled like paint would start to chip off if it was normal paint whereas this the color changes very slightly but they basically know what the statue's going to look like and something of that size they need to know it's britain's biggest sculpture so they don't want to fuck that up do they no no but if you look at pictures of it being assembled in 1998 the pieces are red when it's going up so it was meant to look the way that it looks but presumably as well it's it's reflecting the uh industrial heritage of the region it's on the top of an old mine yeah i think it only scores four stars on trip advisor the angel of the north yeah but i think that's because it's not much of a destination visit

like there's no tourist center is there there's no souvenir shop you just drive past you're like oh was that the angel of the oh yeah that's great you're like, fuck, it's big. It's fine, but it's not Madame Tussauds, is it? It's not a day out. It is a boom. Then you should be scoring your own expectation management rather than the sculpture itself. I don't think there's a category for expectation management on TripAdvisor.

Because the people are like, there's nothing to do here except look at the sculpture. No shit. I said the same about Yorkshire Sculpture Park. One star driven by... It's just a park with sculptures in. I'm trying to build a website to bring tourists to Radlet, but when I open it up on my smartphone or tablet,

something goes wrong and it just looks a bit shit. Unlike Hertfordshire itselfshire itself well try building that website using squarespace on desktop and devices it will look simply ace as well designed as hartfordshire with all that lovely green space county of opportunity and stevenage thank you squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This. And for making websites the world over, although obviously international boundaries are of limited relevance when it comes to talking about the internet, look beautiful.

And they've made them very easy to make as well. Oh, they have. Which is a real boon. There's not enough room in my brain to understand how to design a website, but luckily Squarespace took the baton on that. You can just do it. It's easy. It's so easy, isn't it? You want to embed a SoundCloud file?

No problem. You want to put an image from your computer? Go ahead, Jimmy boy. You want all of your URL redirects to be nice and not annoying? Consider it done. I mean, that's so boring. I can't even describe it without falling asleep mid-sentence. Even just saying the words is boring.

But the action of doing it is satisfying. Satisfying. Yeah, you've created a website. And you have assistance in creating and maintaining it because there is 24 7 support there certainly is yeah they write polite emails back do they helpful they don't go fuck off arsehole sort it out yourself yeah exactly read the fucking manual it's not the squarespace style anyway uh go to squarespace.com and uh try out the two-week free trial that's the point you get to play with it for 14 days before you have to give any money but then if you think i'm into this yes this is for me i'm gonna commit this is helping me and my business i'm gonna buy it for myself for a year

yeah and i want a free url thrown in yes i do yeah anyway you uh sign up for a year you can get 10 off using the code answer here's a question from david from wigan who says as the most popular and easily recognized chemist in the uk ollie answer me this oh that's so kind of you to say i've hardly even studied pharmaceuticals so many deaths to your name i'm the most recognized chemist ollie answer me this why is boots the chemist so named who or what or are boots it actually isn't called boots the chemist anymore just to pick you up on a technicality it is now called boots uk i mean the stores are still called boots but the company is now called boots uk when did this seismic shift occur uh i think towards the end

of the last decade when they were bought by a private company based in switzerland and then they were sold to walgreens they were sold to walgreens yeah they're owned by walgreens now wow and they haven't been rebranded they haven haven't because Boots has been going for so long. In fact, they've got the same logo that they've had ever since 1883. That's a good bit of Victorian graphic design there. It is. It's pretty beautiful, isn't it? There must have been a few decades where it looked a bit dated. Maybe the 70s, they were like, let's get some sort of chunky sans-serif thing.

It is called Boots because it was named after its founder, John Boot. Could have predicted that the founder was named Boot. Workman-like name that, isn't it? John Boot. I love the surname Boot. He was from Nottinghamshire. You generally like surnames that are nouns, don't you? I envy them. Yeah, I'm jealous.

It's a pleasure that I'll never know. There was a point when I was on LBC and you pointed out that most of the other presenters on LBC also had names that are nouns. Whale. Ferrari. Yeah, exactly. There were quite a few bull dale is dale a noun what yeah like hill and dale right yeah yeah yeah anyway um john boot was from nottinghamshire uh he set up a herbalist with his wife mary um and so m and j boot herbalists were they weren't kind of like tree huggers and stuff. It's just that then the idea of actual pharmaceutical drugs,

you know, that could properly sort you out and knock you out, being affordable was something that was just inconceivable. You know, the king had his own medic or whatever and rich people could pay for their own physicians. And also most drugs were made of herbs until relatively recently. I mean, actually, like even the ones now that are developed in the lab are kind of derived from herbal elements very often aren't they or like take their ideas from yeah you know what makes up yeah various different it's not so rustic occurring

things sure there is a herb garden in the hq of boots which sort of pays tribute to their history as herbalists or as americans would say herbalists But they are now an American company, effectively. They're owned by Walgreens. So they may have the same logo, but they're actually a very, very different company. It took generations of the family, because they weren't a rich family. They just had their own little herbal shop in Nottinghamshire.

It took generations of the family to turn it into anything resembling what we know now. And actually it was when the son, Jesse Boots, inherited the shop. It was literally a shop. And between 1883 and 1920 he turned it into a chain of 660 wow employing more than 14 000 people and at that time that was a pretty rare achievement yeah totally and he was very much of that generation like you know

cadbury and whatever where they wanted to build the workers as part of the company so if you were a chemist for boots, you were given all kinds of perks that were unheard of to the working class before then. So you benefited, but you were also giving boots your whole life. Yeah, and sort of helping the community by developing drugs. I mean, they actually invented Nurofen boots. Wow.

Yeah, which I didn't realize. Two things I didn't realize. I didn't realize, A, that Nurofen, the brand, came about at the same time as ibuprofen i assumed that nurofen the brand was just a brand for ibuprofen that came along after ibuprofen and i wouldn't think nurofen the brand was a british brand either no but actually yeah both things are true boots developed ibuprofen and created the brand nurofen which they then sold some decades later it would normally be the other way around in that you get a patent on a drug you'd market it under a brand name, and then as time went on, the patent expires, and then it's sold as a generic version.

So I would have thought it more likely that Nurofen came first, and then when ibuprofen fell out of patent, ibuprofen, you know, you can get it for 50p, as opposed to three quid or whatever. Okay. Hello, it's Louise in Yorkshire Answer me this Is the root of the word platonic anything to do with Plato and if so, why? Was he a very friendly guy? Imagine if it was nothing to do with Plato It's to do with plates, because plates are very smooth It's plate tectonics, it's a portmanteau

Because love is seismic even if it's a non-sexual But I've not thought why it is to do with Plato because he's aic, right? Even if it's a non-sexual. But I've not thought why it is to do with Plato because he's a philosopher, right? Yeah. Did he philosophise about the friendship between men and women that was non-sexual? Well, he philosophised about love in many forms.

He was an idealist really, wasn't he? He thought things had a perfect form beyond the physical manifestations that we see. In Plato's Symposium, there are treatises on different forms of love or sex a lot of that is between men or men and boys and some of it is about love that is so great it transcends human love so you move from being in love with one person and their beauty to being in love really with like an ideal concept that is so much greater than beauty or humanity so it's more like you

know a love of the divine and all these transcendental things the populist writers back then really did tackle the big issues yeah now where it's just like i'm gonna write about a scarf so i think the interpretation now platonic love is that it's like kind of tepid whereas actually it was like so powerful it was profound yeah exactly it was even greater yeah so it might have included sex in fact well in the middle ages there was a resurgence in interest in plato and there was a new translation of a symposium by the italian marsilio facino he concentrated on this idealized form of love that was sexless so he removed the sex from it i think it was because homosexuality

was so much more taboo then than it was in ancient greece that i don't know whether he either couldn't handle it or refused to i mean it's never been less taboo than it was in ancient greece to be fair they used to put it on plates i mean still you can't get one in john lewis like that that's what they call it platonic and so that really brought in the idea that it was a sexless love rather than one where it was like far beyond sexual feelings. Okay. But the point being,

it's not about his personal character. It's about the shit he wrote. Yeah, but that was probably reflective of his character. He's known for someone who wrote about love, but he also wrote about other things. But I suppose what I mean is, you know, so is Shakespeare,

but you wouldn't reduce Shakespeare down to one idea because everyone acknowledges that he was a very clever man who wrote lots of things. I wonder if Plato would be a bit pissed that, like, when most people mention his name now, it's in the context of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Like, it's reducing what he wrote a bit.

I feel like it's so influential that he can take it. He's, like, the most important philosopher in Western history. Here's a question from Helen in Stockholm who says, Helen, answer me this. What is the point of a div Western history. Here's a question from Helen in Stockholm who says, Helen, answer me this, what is the point of a divan bed? Is this a kind of existential question? I just don't see what they're achieving. Bedness.

Yeah, exactly, the thing you can sleep on. If we're talking ontologically about divans. The platonic ideal of being a bed. I see her point, though. She says, there's a normal bed with space underneath which allows you to store things yeah but this is not possible with a divan except for the kind with drawers why would you pick a divan it seems like wasted space i'm so confused well i emotionally i agree with you

helen i also don't like that pattern that you get on a very cheap divan you know that kind of tartan bag pattern yeah or very pallid floral thing yeah really pastely and also i've only had bad experiences with divans in rental accommodation yeah they're the classic where the drawers are the cheapest ones you can get on yeah yeah exactly they are cheap that's why a lot of people have them some people like the look they like the fact that their bed is just a block doesn't have other features they can add a headboard if they want but it doesn't protrude further than the mattress because the mattress sits on top right that is that decoratively it's bland and therefore fits in with everything um i suppose it provides a flat stable surface so i think maybe they withstand wear and tear more because they provide a more even surface for

the mattress uh that can be of multiple different heights because they can make devans different heights whereas if you made a bed with long spindly legs it'd be wobbly. So I think that's something to do with it. I'm now just wondering as you're talking, forgive me for thinking about this, whether there are sexual positions that are more easily achieved on a divan bed

than other beds. You do the research and get back to us. I just wonder because you can get more grip, can't you, with your feet or bending over it? I don't know. I suspect there are. Or brace your knees against the flat surface of the divans. Yeah, or like hold

on to the bottom of the bed whilst you're in the turn point yeah or your hands take if you like a bed-like surface but without the comfort you could take your mattress off just have the divan i think some people as well they don't want space under their bed gathering dust and maybe for some people as well having drawers in the divan which is an option for storage without the dust they might not be able to stoop that well or bend and therefore they think, fuck the drawers, just get the divan. But I think they're shit too. So I'm sure some people were writing with a spirited defence of divans,

but we're all taking the risk and going, fuck them, they're dead to us. Absolutely. I had a divan bed break on me when I was a student after I'd been jumping up and down for ten minutes. Yeah, one would think maybe you're not supposed to do that. Well, that's what beds are for, isn't it? Jumping up and down as an adult. Well, as an adult you were allowed to do it. Do you remember what you were excited about?

I was excited about the fact I could jump up and down in a bed and no one would stop me. Well, there you are. Physics stopped you in the end. How ironic. Yeah, that's true. Like with so many things. By the way, listeners, we're not doing an Answer Me This best of compilation episode for this year because it's been quite a short year.

Well, there have been 12 months in it. Yes. It's been short in the Answer Me This calendar. That's right, which is the one that counts. Yes, that's right. It's going to replace the Christian calendar one day. I feel like it's our time. But one of my favourite things to cut together every year

is the montage of melancholy calls to the answer me this question line that's usually in the best ofs, but I thought I'd chuck one in here. Hi, Helen and Ali. This is Alex from Sheffield. I've been sort of bullied into doing a drunken message because I'm told that that's the kind of message that you like. Hi, guys.

I've just got one question for you. Why is Vincent Mann such a bastard? I hate him! Answer me this. When you order Frog's List... Oh, bugger. I'm going to do that last one again because I completely fucked it up originally.

So, yeah. Hello, my name's Adam and I work for the London Ambulance Service, which... Hello, my name's Adam and I work for the London Ambulance Service which hello my name's Adam and I work for the London Ambulance Service I'm going to try that again Hi Helen and Ollie it's Joe

from Watford. Helen and Ollie answer me this. How were the emergency services I'm lucky I Hi my name's Adam and I work work for the ambulance service, which... Fucking hell! Right.

I feel better, Alan, don't I? Hello, my name's Michael Beer. I've been told to run by my daughter because when I eat chillies, they have a peculiar effect on me. I've got one here that I've grown. I'm going to bite into it. Hello, Helen and Ollie. This is Heston from Nottingham. My wife and I are just post-coitus.

It's ten past ten on a Wednesday evening. Helen and Ollie, answer me, this one? Can you please explain why this happens to me? Why this happens to me when I, as a certain threshold, which is, if they're hotter than that, then... Answer me this, answer me this. Where is the worst... Where's the furthest position? Where's the furthest place?

Oh, fuck off. Answer me this. Answer me this. I don't know, Dolly. Answer me this. OK, bye. Bye. Here's a question from Michaelael in sussex who says this week at a cocktail bar i had a cocktail that contained a mummified lemon rind and pine embalming cordial was that a cocktail or was

that the cleaning product pine embalming cordial i think what he's written this in a playful way that does slightly confuses us to what he actually drank, doesn't it? Oh, do you think he's just trying to exaggerate the strength of the cordial? Or do you think it is one that's used in the process of pine embalming? Maybe that's how they describe it. I think there might be a pine-infused element. Ah, pine-infused cordial. That's what he means.

Yeah. It's a weird drink and that's his point. Yes. He says, Helen, answer me this. What's the weirdest thing you've ever drunk? You've got to have swallowed i think there's been more interesting question if i drank more than the following drinks tea yeah cold tea fizzy water and water but um back when i used to drink some booze yes couple of booze drinks that come to mind both of which involve my friend amy uh the first one was at christmas oh god and she had some baileys or baileys like knockoff yeah iceland ripoff of baileys do not mix i think probably on brand baileys or off-brand baileys with orange flavored

gin because i thought orange orange flavoring and bays, that would be quite nice, quite Christmassy. Sort of like a chocolate orange. It curdles. It was basically like a lump of plasticine in a martini. Yeah, it looks like chewed chewing gum in a thin way. But did you drink it? I tried, but you can't really drink something that has curdled into a near solid. I think it blocked the drains.

And the other thing that, I think this is worse for Amy than for us Martin fed her a drink called the Orange Mary Which is like a Bloody Mary With orange juice instead of tomato juice But with garlic infused vodka And Amy said it was like drinking a burp I've also drunk cheese juice from a failed fondue

Which is actually similar texture to the Baileys and gin concoction where the cheese formed this like big solid lump in the middle and then there was this thin slightly acidic liquid around it uh so my friend morgan and i uh had a few swigs of that for my wedding you may recall listeners who have just joined us may not uh that we went to the costa del sol to get hitched we got married in gibraltar but before that we'd had a week holiday with 10 of our best friends and the night before the night before the wedding wedding eve eve wedding eve eve so my best man thought we should do something for ollie because i'd never had a stag do because obviously i didn't want one because the idea made me feel sick you didn't want a wedding but you went back on that promise so why not a stag do so he he was like, let's make Ollie his favourite drink

and then we'll have everyone back to my room and we'll find a way to connect the baby monitors so we can listen to the babies in the room next door. Party! And it was a really nice idea. So they went to the supermarket, they bought all the ingredients for a dirty martini. Of course that's your favourite drink,

but you like it mainly to contain brine and none of the boozes an ideal dirty martini as i make it is two shots of uh vodka one shot of vermouth you can use gin but i prefer vodka load of olive brine like maybe two teen spoofles this is where um listeners and you have differed in the past i believe it's all about the brine. Shake it up over ice, then an olive, squeeze of lemon. Yeah. That's my dirty martini. So he'd asked me earlier in the day, kind of obliquely, what are the ingredients of a dirty martini? I didn't realise what his plan was.

He was going to go and try and buy them. So I'd said to him, but I didn't mention the shaking over ice bit because, you know, it's not relevant if you're not going to try and make it. So we go back to his room. It's one o'clock in the morning. We're in hotel room on the costa del sol yeah it's hot there is no ice in the room there is no shaker and he says for your stag duoli we're all going to make dirty martini and proceeds to produce from his pocket a mineral water bottle which had a little bit of water left in the bottom of it. He then into that poured a bottle of vodka, half a bottle of vermouth.

That's a lot of vermouth. And then some olives, but the only olives he could find in the supermarket were the sort of local equivalent of Tesco Basic. Right. So they were pitted black olives. Yes. In anchovy juice.

Oh my God. And just poured it into a warm bottle it's a very fishy martini warm filthy martini i'm imagining it as well uh being a little bit cloudy with some tiny bits in it like when you buy a bag full of daphnia for your pet fish exactly um and then served it in uh disney frozen plastic cups that you get for like a girl's birthday. That is on brand for you. That's on brand. Yes, yeah.

So no ice, just shaken in a warm mineral water bottle. Oh, good. With fish juice. That sounds like crotch sweat, doesn't it? It's kind of smelt similar. And I wasn't really drunk enough to pretend that I enjoyed it or to turn a blind eye. And neither was anyone else there.

So that was comfortably the worst thing I've ever drunk. But it was so close to being my favourite thing. One of the best, except for the anchovy, which is challenging. And then luckily, one of the other people in the room,

I don't know why no one had thought of this until this moment. Hotel ice machine? Yes, realised we were in a five-star hotel and you could cool down for some ice.

That's what we did. Wow. And then it was fine, so we just got some ice. And it was still kind of horrible, but yeah, it was definitely better. You couldn't taste it

because it was cold. Yeah, exactly. and here we are at the end of this episode and thus the year's worth of answer me this is it's all over no it's not

in many ways it's not love shine a light because we are coming back with all new answer me this in 2017 on the first Thursday of every month so yes be there

supply us questions via email phone and Skype using the contact details that by now you should know are stored on our website answer me this podcast.com remember in the meantime that you can buy our first 200 episodes and our apps and our albums including answer me this christmas folks ding dong ding dong ding dong from our bespoke website answer me this store.com. They're also available on iTunes and Amazon.

We make less money that way, even though you're paying the same price. But any of those ways, we're happy with. It's all money. It's all money. Just different amounts. And also, please, listen to our other podcasts. In between Answer Me This is,

mine is The Allusionist. Mine is The Modern Man with two Ns. Mine is Song by Song. And we'd like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this episode and I would like to say congratulations to Will who wrote into episode 344 saying he was having his jaws

realigned but also he might have to accept an award and do a speech. He did win the award, did not have to do a speech. What a result for Will. Jaws realigned. It's all coming up Will. Mazal Tov. And Merry Christmas. It's a mixed message um and we'll see you in 2017 when we will be age 10 remember if you've got a message for that show call the question line now and leave us your voicemail and you could be in our 10th anniversary show yes

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