Answer Me This! - AMT346: Mickey Mouse, Warhol's Soup Cans and Rubber Fetishes

Episode Date: January 5, 2017

Ten years. Ten years! TEN. YEARS. Ten years we've been doing this show. TEN. In that time, technologies have waxed and waned; world leaders have come and gone; yet here we still are, answering the questions that you supply. To celebrate our birthday, in AMT346 we provide a thrilling glimpse into the AMT Process, receive a gift from a musical hero, and tackle a question on Olly's favourite subject. Or, at least, his third favourite subject. Find out more about the episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode346. 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

Will we always be ten, just like Bart Simpson? Us or be this, us or be this? Or in another seventy years will we still limp on? Us or be this, us or be this? Heaven and lonely, us or be this? We're ten, huzzah! Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us We want lots of attention and some lovely fuss

it's okay it's okay i tell you what i'm going to be doing quite a lot during this episode is playing this from gross point blank 10 years man 10 10 years 10 years 10 10 years 10 years when we started this show listeners tony blair was still prime minister iphones didn't exist yet that's alone ipads yeah oh my god you guys actually had somewhere to live it was a different world so what were our lives like 10 years ago martin what were you doing what was your day job uh god what was i so i was 28 so i was a medical physicist i was lasering men's prostates saving lives from cancer what were you doing helen i was not employed that much 10 years ago which is how this came about i was working at the culture show at the bbc as a researcher and i used to

spend my lunch times on a wednesday listening back to each weekly episode of answer me this as it was then to write you my edit notes and get this listeners Helen used to send me the episode on a CD in the post yeah yeah only for the first few because then we got pretty high tech and I uploaded it to a secret MySpace profile which was called something like Vagina Gods I think it might still be and then somebody told me about file transfer services and that saved us a lot of time. Well, loads of you have been getting in touch with your birthday messages.

The first is from Neil in Leighton, Buzzard. Neil says, my wife, Beth Sedgwick, gave birth listening to Answer Me This. It got her through without an epidural. There's a whole world of hypnobirthing that we could have capitalised on. Our daughter Jennifer is now three years old. That's a pretty special time in your life to be listening to anything.

When my wife was trying to give birth to our son naturally, in the end we ended up having further medical intervention. These things happen. We listened to all three albums by Boy and Bear, and I have not been able to listen to them since because of the association i've had friends who have planned some really cool playlists for when their baby entered the world because they wanted that song to be top notch and then the timing hasn't worked out as it is want not to and they've come into the world to the

sound of moves like jagger being played on the radio no yeah or you know however delightful the kings of convenience album you've put on it's not designed to be soundtracked with someone going elena from london says 10 years guys 10 years wow wow indeed thanks elena wow wow back at you reflecting on the past decade helen answer me I've just got a few here. Okay. What have been your favourite type of questions? Ones where I get to be nosy into the questionnaire's life. Yeah, me too. What do you hate being asked?

I find questions about flatmates who are kind of annoying. I don't have that much to say beyond what I've already said. Yes. I sympathise with your pain, but I don't really have anything helpful to say. And which single question have you been asked more than any other why does martin the salmon's voice sound like that like what uh i agree with you that the personal stories are my favorite uh favorites over the

years cupcake lady very good that was the woman who had an office nemesis who brought in cupcakes that she'd clearly bought from the bakery but pretended to have baked them herself cake full of lies there was also that one from the woman whose neighbour was washing her car without permission. That was my next choice as well. Amazing. And the one, this was pretty early, I think it was a 17-year-old guy asking whether he should have an affair with his neighbour

who was his mum's age. Yes. And in the end he decided not to because she sent him some naughty pictures and he didn't fancy her anymore. Also, the questions that we get asked a lot that we don't want to answer it's been a few years now so i'm almost loathe to mention it but for about six years no no no there was the why don't you see white dog poo anymore

question and we don't even really know where that came from in popular culture but it seemed to be a thing people used to ask often we got asked things that had been on qi or on a ricky gervais show so we didn't know that those questions had appeared elsewhere because we hadn't necessarily seen or heard those things and then we'd get the same question five times in a week and that's how you knew also why do round pizzas come in a square box because making a round box is really hard yes that's an expensive apology yes and wasteful because you're still getting a big sheet of cardboard and wasting bits of it. And uniform.

You know, a round pizza doesn't have to be exactly the same size. It can spill over a bit. Can't it squish in a square box? Why not just make more square pizzas? Blame the pizza, not the box. Easier to make a square pizza than a round box. We wouldn't normally answer questions which were pulling back the curtain on the workings of the show,

but as it's the 10th birthday... Glimpse under the magician's cloth. So here's an email from luke in uganda who says i've listened religiously to your podcast for about four years while living in very odd parts of the world and it's still one of the highlights of my week good thank you luke yeah thank you for taking the time to chat shit into a microphone please don't stop well it's a bit more complicated than that actually ollie answer me this how do you make an episode of answer me this we go to the magic faraway tree and we clap our hands three times and we summon the comedy fairy god and when the spirit moves us our process in brief yeah is

i turn up at helen's house or as she lives now in a cardboard box thank you we open up uh our joint email account which you fondly know the address of we read genuinely the two of us do read every single one of your emails except some of them that we can't read because they're really long and they don't have any paragraph breaks and after a while our eyes get tired or if they're written in comic sans um that's just prejudice but i'm prepared to admit that we both have that prejudice was i born with it did i learn it don't know the effect is the same i think it's experience um anyway we do see all your emails we obviously don't have time to reply to all of them but we do read all of them there are lots that i want to reply to that is why there

are over 4 000 drafts in the draft box and i'm really sorry and that after a few tea breaks and we breaks uh the stereophonic second does take about five or six hours yeah and then we put together a big document of the questions that we both agree are interesting yes that we haven't answered before this is the thing you might be thinking why haven't they answered my question we may have got a killer question sorry no one will have asked it before why is humpty dumpty an egg episode 15 I think done it we have actually repeated questions a couple of times accidentally and there was another one more recently uh white gloves in the national lottery we can't bloody remember as far as we know those are the only two questions that we've actually done twice like 5 000 yeah either that or sometimes you ask a very good question but

the answer is not that interesting so that's frustrating or we think we're not that interesting on that subject correct so don't blame yourselves we decide amongst ourselves which of us is going to do the research or answer it but we don't necessarily know what each other is going to say so that you get this wonderfully spontaneous feeling that you're listening to now listeners i don't even know what i'm who knows what magic is going to come out i mean i have no idea about any of this stuff i just turned up late i'm slightly drunk what else does he want to know he wants to know how do you choose the questions you answer? It's just whether it arouses our curiosity on the day.

In fairness, there probably are some questions that we don't give a fair hearing to. Because on the day, we're like, we just don't want to answer a question about chairs today. It'd be a really good question about chairs. And it does get overlooked. It happens. Shit happens, people. Or sometimes you want to provide a home to all the questions about Disney. Yes, exactly.

But if you've had a run of questions of Disney, you want to leave it a few episodes. But we just try our best. We just try our best to provide a mix. Luke's final question is, Ollie, answer me this. If you don't answer this question, why not? Well, that's a meta question now, isn't it, Luke?

Because we bloody have. We wouldn't have answered it if it hadn't been our 10th birthday episode. Because the truth is boring and we didn't want you to know how this show's made. The answer is project management

and the hard work. And I think, if anything, this bit illustrates why we edit this show so fiercely. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you so much

for phoning in and leaving 10th birthday greetings such as these. Hello, Alex from Cumbria. Just calling to say how much I appreciate your podcast

over the last 10 years. It's gotten me through some very difficult, long journeys. Hi, Helen Ollie. It's Gemma from Cannock. I just wanted to phone and say thank you so much for the past 10 years. I don't think you will understand how much just a silly, funny comedy podcast I have meant to be all these years. Whenever I needed distraction or cheering up

or if something wasn't right with the world I would pick my phone up or my iPod and listen to you guys and I credit you almost entirely with keeping me sane while I applied for medical school and today I finished my first semester I've suffered bereavement and breakups

and losing jobs and all of it has just been made a little bit more bearable through listening to you guys. So I just want to say a massive thanks and congratulations on reaching your 10-year milestone. Hi, Helen and Ollie. It's Naomi from Oxford. I'm about to turn 20 and I was 10 when I started listening to the podcast with my sister who was bedridden because of epilepsy and me and my entire family have been listening to the podcast since year one. I first listened to Aunt to Me This nine and a half years ago on a flight to New Zealand when I was 19.

My mum had just emigrated there and I figured this new podcast that I've been hearing so much about would be a really good way to kill the 26-hour plane journey. Now, almost 10 years later, I'm 29 and I've just hearing so much about would be a really good way to kill a 26-hour plane journey. Now, almost 10 years later, I'm 29, and I've just moved to New Zealand myself. My subscription to and enjoyment of ArtsMedia has been a valuable constant over the past decade

of turbulent life choices. Thank you lots and lots from Helena, originally of Brighton, then Leeds, and now Auckland, and also my cat Meg, who I think you can hear in the background chasing something. Helen, Ollie, and Martin Sandman, you guys have been my secret best imaginary friends for the past three years. So happy 10th birthday.

Keep up the good work. It's been fantastic. Thanks, guys. Wasn't that lovely? Thank you, listeners. You mean nearly as much to me as we do to you. So thank you very much. There'll be more of those later, but, well, let's go on with some questions. Okay, well, this one's a treat for you, Ollie,

because it is about one of your favourite subjects, I think we can guess. Oh, musicals? The other one. The other favourite subject. Porn. Musical porn. Yeah, musical porn. Seven porn seven brides for seven

brothers next let's have a pv section on that with us uh it's from anna from edinburgh who says i've been thinking about mickey mouse ah disney yes the third favorite subject considering how mickey is the mascot and the ultimate symbol of Disney, he hasn't been in many Disney movies. Yeah, one, I think, Fantasia. He has a memorable appearance in Fantasia, but otherwise has been confined to a few shorts that no one remembers. I think his shorts are iconic, red and white spots. And there is no defining Mickey Mouse movie to point to,

so Ollie, answer me this. Why, in our age of reboots and remakes, hasn't there been an attempt to make a mickey mouse movie ah well in our age of reboots and remakes there has been an attempt to make a mickey mouse movie in fact there have been numerous attempts uh if the leaks from within the walt disney company are to be believed is it like the superhero films where they go from being kind of shiny and primary colored to being all dark and gritty and like oh what about their psyches more like the avengers so you know how in recent years the thing for comic book fans has been getting together loads of different characters from different franchises and putting them in one

movie they've thought about doing that and apparently there was a movie being developed which got very close to fruition a few years ago called the search for Mickey Mouse, which was an Avengers-style film in which I think Mickey gets kidnapped, Minnie has to find him somehow, and ends up employing Basil the Great Mouse Detective from the 1984 shit kids film, and along the way meets lots of other Disney classic characters, Peter Pan's there, Alice, Mary Poppins, et cetera.

Fox and Hand. Basil the Great Mouse Detective does not fit in with all those iconic characters. I know, right? It might be that the original animators might have been brought back on board.

You know, some of these guys that are in their 80s and 90s. Oh, you really mean original? Because I thought you were joking. They've been brought back from the dead like Walt Disney and his cryogenic head.

No, because some of them are still very much able to draw. They get wheeled out for these TV specials and stuff anyway. And it would be a sort of nerds tribute film. It would be a bit like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but now. So you get lots of classic cartoon characters all in one movie. And anyway, it got shelved.

And the reason I think that it got shelved and over the past 20 or 30 years, all attempts to put Mickey Mouse into a feature film have been shelved is this mickey mouse is a crap character there i said it mickey mouse represents love friendship virtue all these things that you know as a parent you want your child to exhibit but that's boring for a film storyline a plot needs jeopardy it needs weakness it needs someone to do something like a little bit precarious and interesting it's why little

women focuses on joe and not beth sure fine i think the calculated risk for the disney company was if we fuck this up if you think mickey mouse and you think massive film that bombed that's of no benefit to the corporation that's bad isn't it but mickey as the symbol for the corporation meaning bland friendship he's a he's a corporate logo that's really powerful yeah he's like the apple logo exactly or the nike swoosh so he's too important to put in a shit film right that makes a lot of sense they also don't need a mickey mouse film to shift mickey mouse merch no exactly because parents just buy it habitually for their children because what they grew up with and it's not like mickey has disappeared from kids lives i think adults look around and they're like well i haven't seen mickey for 20 years apart from in

teddy bear form so it's been in rehab how how will three-year-olds respond when they go to disney and they don't know who he is and the answer is on the disney channel there's fuck loads of mickey you just don't know it until you're a parent when you're a parent and your kids watching the disney channel there are all these ropey tv shows with cgi mickey and so the kids know who mickey is but it's not the big investment and risk of having a theatrical release that bombs and there's a third and final reason which is when it comes to the big movies and the accompanying merchandise they tend and i'm not saying this is right in fact i my instinct says it's wrong but they tend to be gendered yeah you know we're gonna go to a cars movie that's for

boys we're gonna do a princess movie that's for girls that is important because that then dictates what everyone buys their kids for christmas that year and if mickey the centrepiece, well, yeah, everyone loves Mickey, yeah, but that's not going to provide an explosion in Mickey toys to one gender or the other. It's not going to be the must-have toy. But you could have gendered characters within that. You could. Or maybe they should bust through this gendering, because it's all bollocks anyway. It's absolutely bollocks.

That Disney are perpetuating. Did Mickey and Minnie have children? Because mice are prolific breeders uh no i guess that's why they enjoy the company of other people's children so much okay well i'm satisfied with that answer good i have another treat for you ollie what more i can't handle more treats on this i think you are going to find this treat quite hard to handle okay um because um heath sledge wrote in i know what you're thinking who's heath sledge you're right to think that wait well she is the wife of robert sledge who used to be in benfolds 5 now this like i mean i get a boner just thinking about this so i mean actually when i was like 16 benfolds 5 with the first band that i really properly loved lovely

choice i grew up loving sort of rem and michael jackson but like properly loving in a way that i'd have posters on my wall it was benfolds 5 when i was 16 and they're a trio if you don't know even though they're it's a joke it's a joke it's a funny joke and so one of the three is robert sledge and his wife has written to us yes what did she say helen they'd noted that one of our jingles is in the style of Ben Folds 5. Can I just say I take that as a huge compliment because I cannot play the piano. Yeah, I'm amazed that they... We still haven't worked out whether the one that they think is in the style of Ben Folds 5 is the one that you deliberately did

in the style of Ben Folds 5. I've inadvertently done a song in the style of Ben Folds 5. I think it's one we used to play touting our archive episodes. Yes, I think it's that one too. It sounds a bit like the beginning of Underground. Anyway, Robert Sledge has provided a jingle for Answer Me This. I'm stoked. The last ten years have finally

been worthwhile. If you've got a question then email your question. If you've got a question then email your question. If you've got a question, then email your question. To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com

Here's a question. 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. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Question from Ben, who says, I lent my very expensive dehydrator to a friend. Wow.

Is that the same thing as a dehumidifier? No, it's one of those things where you can dry out fruit and things. Oh, what's the point of that? So you can have dried fruit. So you can make your own dried fruit. Yeah. Okay, fine. And vegetables. There's a whole Friends episode about it. Okay. point of that so you can dry fruit so you can make your own dried fruit yeah okay fine and vegetables there's a whole friends episode about it okay when weird eddie is living with chandler and instead of

a foosball it's a dried watermelon or something whereas a dehumidifier is a thing you plug in the corner of the room that sucks the air out of the room and takes the water away it sucks the moisture out of the room to make your air less damp to make your walls less uh i suppose i suppose they both remove moisture okay yeah but the intent is different yeah i mean the scale and operation or to eat rather than environment to be in you don't think you can make dried fruit with a dehumidifier okay but you can just make just be clear you can make dried fruit with like a grill can't you yeah my brother used to do it by putting nectarines in the airing cupboard to dry that's kind of delightfully forward-thinking and victorian

at the same time somehow very confusing if you grabbed one instead of a fresh towel but delightful in a way just made it work um anyway ben's tale continues he lent his friend his dehydrator very expensive dehydrator i then disappeared to work overseas for six months. Six months. I have now returned. Hooray! I met up with this friend, this so-called friend, on Saturday, and we had a pleasant day,

but we did not discuss the dehydrator. Didn't talk about me while I was away. Didn't miss me. I suppose with six months of overseas gossip to catch up on, you wouldn't automatically leap to discussing the kitchen implements you'd loaned out before you left you wouldn't i wouldn't you wouldn't ben had this burning question you and ben are cut from different parts of his brain we are yeah

i don't even know what dehydrator is to him it's the world i sent my friend a little message today asking if she was finished with it. Can you ever be finished with a dehydrator? Yeah, it's an ongoing project, isn't it? While there's still hydration in the world. There's so much moisture out there. Suck it away. And if so, whether I might be able to have my dehydrator back as I have things in need of dehydration.

My friend told me... Have a really wet apple. My friend told me that she thinks my dehydrator might have been given to a charity shop by her mother-in-law. No! What? No offer of compensation or assistance was made. Oh, no. The dehydrator was my most grown-up purchase to date.

It does seem grown-up. Well, now that's interesting. What's the most grown-up purchase to date. It does seem grown-up. Well, now that's interesting. What's the most grown-up purchase that you've made? Ask someone else. It's true, you don't even have a car, do you? Sofa, you've bought a sofa. Oh God, yeah, that was pretty grown-up. Computers, that's grown-up.

I'd say my most grown-up purchase to date was a new boiler. That's very grown-up. That's really grown-up. Yeah. Is grown-up equals dull? Yeah, something expensive from which you derive little to no pleasure exactly i agree but ben's end of sentence says uh the dehydrator is my most grown-up purchase today and as such was sentimental now if something grown up is

something boring it's not usually something it has a significance it's a milestone in your life you know paint that boiler i don't care as long as it works and it's keeping the water warm i don't know you know that you've got that boiler yeah you're growing up anyway it had sentimental as well as monetary value says says ben how much is a dehydrator i don't know you can you can get them from a few dozen pounds but a lot of people he's saying he's saying it's very expensive conventional measurement three score pounds you can basically get some racks to do it they're not that expensive but if he's saying very expensive conventional measurement three score pounds you can basically get some racks to do it they're not that expensive but if he's saying very expensive i reckon i reckon about 150 quid 150 quid seems to be like the more elaborate dehydrator yeah i think if you're

buying a dehydrator rather than using a more analog form of dehydration then that's what you're probably looking at you need your dried fruit 50. 50 to 150 quid. Right, okay. I'm not sure, says Ben, how I feel about my friend now. I think we're guessing. I'm trying to work out which of the five stages of grief is it. If she was a fruit, your affection would have been sucked out of her like the moisture from that apricot. I'm a bit worried that she's going to be sliced up into bits and dehydrated.

Well, that's probably why she lost the dehydrator. Why did her mother-in-law even have it so helen answered me this do you think i should call the feds or hold her cat ransom dehydrate the cat uh or should i just quietly forget about it i'm not sure i want to forget about it you can't there's sentimental attachment uh if you have any advice i'd be very grateful to hear it uh well i think it's like printed out and dehydrate that dehydrate my tears i think it's slightly difficult because you've already had the conversation where she said oh i think my mother-in-law might have given it the charity shop but i think you could try a follow-up in a few days saying

oh any luck finding my dehydrator yet yes and then when she's like ah sorry no then i think you have to go well i was kind of expecting that back and it did cost me quite a lot of money but then i'd probably be too pathetic to really drive that to its conclusion which is give me my dehydrator all the money if it's your birthday coming up though you could just sort of go oh it'd be quite nice to have a dehydrator for my birthday yeah but actually it's still a net loss there isn't there for him i nice to have a dehydrator for my birthday. Yeah, but actually it's still a net loss there, isn't there, for him? I mean, he has no dehydrator, then he'll have a dehydrator, but no birthday present. Well, unless she wasn't going to get him a birthday present. Yeah, but what if he

gets an inferior dehydrator from her than the one he bought himself? He got a very expensive dehydrator. Maybe she should just get him a shopping spree in Holland and Barrett. All the dried fruit he wants, but, you know, they're not saying they can compete with his own home dried. Look, buy a man some dried fruit and he has

dried fruit for a day. Buy him a dehydrator and he can dry everything. I mean, I've been on the other side of that guilt trip on a much smaller scale but Helen very kindly, about six years ago, lent me your copy of Heathers on DVD. Oh, that's good.

That's the great commentary from the screenwriter oh yeah what happened i only saw the film and there's some great impact it talks about the influence of john hughes right okay that's really good well i wouldn't know because i lost the dvd you did and then a few years later helen was like yeah have you got my copy of heathers it came up conversationally and so i said no because i thought if i said oh yeah you lent it to me and i've lost it i mean you look like a bit of a selfish twat if it was worth 150 quid fine i would have said that but i knew at that point heather's dvd was worth about three quid because who uses dvds anymore apart from his coasters so it's quite difficult then if you're the person who's lost it doesn't

know where it is it may well have ended up in a charity shop by mistake with my dvds but that's all right how to deal with it that's all right because that is a replaceable object for not much money yeah and also now i probably wouldn't have dvds anyway because that's my fault but i kept the thing you lent me for so long that it lost all purpose as function see at this point i've just got used to the fact that if i lend someone something there's a good chance i'm not going to get it back so books um i lent jeffrey kramer from night vale my favorite tote bag which had to get that back i hope so well you will now you're publicly shaming him which wasn't his fault if you see jeffrey kramer with his tote bag what is it i did a sort of feminist creative arts festival in oslo in 2015 called femme brutal and they gave me this tote bag and it has this amazing

graphic on it, it's quite 70s style art of some women with their tits out. If you see Geoffrey with that tote bag If he's using it then I'll be kind of pleased Last year I did lose something with significant sentimental value which was my engagement ring. Oh! Yes So that was pretty bad. Did you get it back?

No. How did you lose it? I don't know if I know this story I'm not sure I know exactly where I lost it. i think i lost it when i was staying in a hotel in la and i think it's not impossible that one of the staff may have pocketed it went entirely in my room but i didn't really want to go down that avenue and it was vintage wasn't it it was an antique ring so you can't even get the same one again no it wasn't high cash value it was more what it meant because that's my engagement ring so martin was like it was no fruit dehydration device no it wasn't that i mean i can feel a fraction of your agonies and it's hard to truly sympathize and i think since then i've just thought okay it's just objects it's just objects you have

the things that matter which are the people in your life um but the thing is like obviously objects matter because otherwise we wouldn't have museums would we exactly and we wouldn't have dried fruit um i don't know if i have that much need to dehydrate things i quite like the hydration in things maybe i'm old-fashioned in that way yeah well i'm someone who doesn't drink as much water as i should so i kind of need to take hydration where i can find it good point you know although i can see why people might need dehydrators if they're you know if they like using plants as medicine say but ah if it's gone it's gone and so you're

going to have to get used to the fact that you've lost this thing of sentimental value if it's of sentimental value then you can't necessarily transfer it to someone else who doesn't have the same sentimental attachment now something that is of huge sentimental value are the first 200 episodes uh you can buy the first 200 episodes of answer me this from our website answer me this store.com and they're an absolute bargain yes 79 pence each i believe that's right well it's 7.99 for 10 so uh if you divide 7.99 by 10 you don't quite get 79 pence but close enough as 79.9 pence yeah that's right you see why that's cumbersome to say like 80 pence that's inflation isn't it yes but critically martin 0.1 p less than 80 pence or if you're american a dollar which is probably easier to remember a

book they call it a book they don't call it a book martin they call it a book they don't call it a book they say it's a book they don't call it a book they don't call it a book martin sorry two against one yes democracy if you want to get those episodes it's a bookage there is also the answer me this book and that really is of no money which is worth less than a dollar here and as you know in every new shiny episode of answer me this we like to take you on a trip down memory lane for the intermission in the form of our intermission yes but we've got a special treat for you sort of in this special edition it's more like an anti-treat for us because it's a temptation for us to crank up the price of our early work so that fewer people hear it but the problem is that that would create more mystique around it for people

and they might think it is worth more well and it kind of would be like in market value terms you know if there was more scarcity then it would be rarer nonetheless we have decided to play you a little bit of our very first episode our very first episode what did this show sound like 10 years ago embrace yourself this is young helen and Ollie. This is like Muppet Babies, but for Answer Me This. Forgive us. Oliver, what's our first question from the listening public? Well, we've had a question from a lady called Claire. Answer me this. When I'm constipated, why am I unable to think of anything else?

Oh, Claire, my sympathies go out to you. Yeah, my sympathies too. I mean, I very rarely get constipated. I'm regular as clockwork, frankly. What's your secret? I'm a scientologist. But I have had that once when I was about 11. And my God, it is like trying to, you know, push an oat cake through a keyhole.

Why didn't you just crumble it up? That's an interesting analogy. It's incredibly painful, so I'm not surprised that your mind is incapable of going on to other things. But it's a shame that it is, because then you could go on to things like eating prunes. That's what my Jewish grandmother swears by, but on the other hand, she manages to constipate herself again

by eating so many anti-constipation remedies that it actually goes around and bumps her up again. Listeners, you will know, of course, by this point, that you can send us questions in the form of voicemails to answer me this question line, and you reach that by dialling the following number. 0208 123 58 007 Or you can type Answer Me This into Skype.

And, as we've been saying for the past few episodes, if the whole not having a voicemail greeting from Helen anymore thing freaks you out, email us a voicemail if that makes you feel better. Anyway, this person managed. Hi, Helen and Ollie. It's Simon from Bolton. Helen and Ollie, answer me this did the guy who first designed the campbell's soup can or anyone from the campbell's soup company make any money out of the andy warhol paintings because they they drew it first so surely surely it's their it's their art not his under. Under law, American law, fine art,

which you can have a debate about whether or not ripping off a soup can and turning it into a canvas is fine art, but there you are, that's modernism. Isn't it post-modernism? Well, pop art, isn't it? Whatever. Look at this debate. I mean, would it stand up in a court of law?

Very difficult. Whatever. Yeah, you see the problem. Andy Warhol's work, as it is art of some description was governed under the laws of fine art okay under the laws of fine art there is no such thing as copyright if you're reproducing something you've seen with your own eyes so if you are reproducing a street scene you know monet didn't get charged copyright for drawing lilies that he spotted in a pond right i know i've just oversimplified horribly but you see what i mean basically all there is to it um he should be paying royalties

to ever design that little bridge so andy warhol owed no royalties for reproducing the campbell's soup can in art form yeah it did seem to be a more direct reproduction than art often is yes but it is a painting yes so it isn't the can it is a representation of the can it's just the same as if you've taken a photograph of it where andy warhol got in trouble which is quite interesting is when he based his artwork on a photograph because the photograph is subject to its own artistic copyright by the photographer right so if someone had taken a photo of the Campbell's soup can and then he had done his painting of that, then it would be different to him just painting the soup can.

Which is exactly what happened with his other iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Wow! That was some bloke's picture of Marilyn Monroe, and there were lawsuits against Andy Warhol for taking other people's photos and reproducing them. Did he manage to turn those lawsuits into art? Anyway, the Campbell's Soup Company themselves were quite pleased with this association. And in fact, on letters of note, there is the letter from the marketing manager of Campbell's Soup in the 1960s.

Of course. And Warhol said that he ate Campbell's Soup every day for like 20 years. Yeah, that's right. That helps as well. Lived off Campbell's soup and Coca-Cola. How revolting is that? It was that thing that David Bowie in the 70s was eating peppers and drinking milk. And that was his diet.

Thin white puke, more like. But anyway, the marketing director wrote to Warhol and said, thanks for this. We'd actually like to buy one, but you're too expensive for us now. But we've heard that you like our soup. So've arranged for two cartons of not two cartons like two crates of cartons of tomato soup to be delivered to you as they did they sent andy warhol like 53 cartons of soup that's nice of them and that was that all the way up until warhol's

death they had a kind of friendly arrangement whereby campbell's were like we're happy with this association and warhol was able to say it's art i'm not using your imagery then when andy warhol died and he himself became a kind of properly iconic figure and people were reproducing his work his depiction of a campbell soup can then became itself something that was being moved out of the context of an art gallery. So it's stuck on a T-shirt. Yes. And at that point, it's not fine art anymore. It's graphic design again.

Exactly. So at that point, if you'd just taken the original Campbell's Soup label and put it on a T-shirt, then of course you would owe Campbell's Soup a royalty. It's not art. If you take a picture of Andy Warhol's art of a Campbell's Soup label and put it on a t-shirt you actually technically owe a royalty to campbell soup and to the andy warhol estate huh so that's the arrangement they struck up so there is now a trading relationship between the warhol estate

and the campbell soup company for any merchandise when they put it on a pencil case but not for the original paintings that's very interesting yeah isn't, isn't it? It's fucked up. It's such a weird world in which there has to be such a pivotal and lucrative business arrangement between a tin soup company and a fine artist. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? But then again, you know, if someone took your soup design and put it in a gallery,

you would think that's really cool. And if someone sold hundreds of millions of T-shirts, you would think I deserve some of that money. It's kind of common sense, isn't it? Yeah, I think I agree with it, yeah. Dennis Hopper was one of the first people to buy an Andy Warhol Campbell soup canvas, $100. Really? Wow.

He was a big art collector, wasn't he? Him and Steve Martin was the other one, wasn't he? The thing is, I imagine he just turned up to stuff like off his tits on drugs and just said, well, I've got some money, here goes. I don't know if he was a man of great taste or whether he was just in the right place, right time, part of that milieu, you know?

I think later in his life, he was known for his collection, wasn't he? I mean, I'm only going on documentaries I've seen about him. Yeah, well, I'm going on no knowledge at all. So I think you'll find that's better. Post-truth universe. So who's in the right?

I think Naomi Campbell has one as well. Oh, right. Yeah, well, now Campbell Soup have one too. tools so i think you'll find that's better post-truth universe so who's in the right i think naomi campbell has one as well all right yeah well now campbell soup have one too oh they can afford it now they can afford it now from the pencil case rights yeah but there is one hanging in their lobby now that's that would be ironic if they literally use the money for the marketing of the thing of the sort of a production of their thing to buy so own label. Can they just paint their own version of Andy Warhol's can? My legal brain is struggling to work out the rights issues there. Then they're doing an art

of his art. Yes. Yes, they could. Of their thing. They could, yes. And it would be churlish of the Warhol Trust to say Campbell's. Knock it off. This was his idea, yeah. But I suppose it took his brain to contextualise it as art and they just thought it's soup.

What did contextualise it as art? Just the force of his willpower? Basically, that's how art works, Martin. Isn't he part of that generation of artists that kind of conceptualises the idea and actually gets lots of other people to create the artwork? That's artists throughout time. Like Rembrandt had people doing it for him.

A lot of medieval painters did so that's a pretty normal thing. But I don't really understand that like if you're an artist surely the pleasure is in making the art and not coming up with an idea and going, well I'm going to just say the art is the idea itself and taking an everyday object and turning it, you're making a statement by putting in a gallery something that you know

next to a picture by Picasso you put in something that's taking you no effort at all and then you're saying what is art and that's the point i've had a lot of these chats with my dad as he's a sculptor and sculptures take him many many months or years and someone who does objet trouvée they can just uh get it done in an afternoon and what's that it's where you find an object and you present it as art even if you have not created the object yourself so he's very pissed off at that but really really, who's smarter? Well, yeah, I mean,

and the art is actually your dad being pissed off. That's the bit that's the art, isn't it? It's the reaction. If you ignore it, then it's not worth anything. You know, if I'd videoed that, it would be in the Tate Modern by now. So I'm the idiot. Hello, this is Martha from Kent.

I featured on episode 299 talking about my husband's secret personal trainer. And I wanted to thank you for your advice because it actually helped. And it was also brilliant to be able to email you in my fit of rage and get it all out. And that helped me feel better, even if you hadn't answered it. And also, an update, i've now got my own personal trainer so it's happy ever after so thanks guys everything you do love you bye hello helen ollie and martin this is jenny from vancouver i am also known as the anonymous cupcake lady from episode

271 i'm calling to wish you a happy 10-year anniversary and to tell you why you all matter to me. In the great scheme of things in life, I think it's the little things that make a difference. And you guys make me laugh. Not just a little bit, but a lot. And I'm a cynical bitch, so my friends will tell you how hard that is.

Classy gave me my 15 minutes of fame, so yeah, there's that too. Hi, Helen, Ollie and of course Martin the sound man. I'm just ringing to wish you all a happy 10th anniversary. I started, this is Ed from what was London and now Ed from Leeds. I started listening about episode 50 or 60 and I was lucky enough to be invited to a show in the Roundhouse. That weekend was actually the weekend of my son's first birthday. And since then, he's grown up. He's now an eight-year-old, and he's got two sisters, a five- and a one-year-old as well.

And to me, this has very much been the backdrop to a lot of the midnight feeds, the drives in the car, trying to get them all to sleep um so it's been very much part of the family so i just wanted to thank you for all the uh all the episodes you've done so far and say how much i'm looking forward to all the ones you're going to do further on lots of love hi hello and ali i'm martin what answer me this means to me is that in 2007, you answered my question about whether mints have laxative effects. And I've been sitting on the toilet ever since. So thanks for blowing up.

Bye. This episode of Answer Me This was sponsored by our old friends, Squarespace. And they are our old friends. They've been with us through thick and thin or actually not in the early days mainly just the thick maybe just the thick squarespace thank you very much for your support over the last few years and also for allowing people to build websites that work and look good and are user-friendly and idiots like us have managed to build them yeah i'd say enabling rather than allowing enabling they've enabled us to be less bad at

website i think it goes far to say empowered forgive me for getting a bit like drinking the Yeah, I'd say enabling rather than allowing. Enabling. They've enabled us to be less bad at websites. I think it goes far to say empowered. Forgive me for getting a bit like drinking the corporate Kool-Aid here, but Squarespace empower you to make a beautiful website. All right, well, that's a thrilling message. True, man. And if you want to do that, then you go to squarespace.com and have a go because you get a free two-week trial.

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Yourname.info if it isn't. Yourname.fashion if you fancy available yourname.info if it isn't yourname.fashion if you fancy hello hello this is adam working out of alterloo here um answer me this uh you know the old idiom of a file in a cake being used as a method to a break out of prison. Is that something that has come from literature or was that something that really happened at one point? Has anybody ever managed to break out of a prison using just a file smuggled in in some sort of birthday confectionery? Answer me that.

The file in a cake trope has been used in real life, yes. Whoa. Although there are more records i guess sort of understandably there are more records of plots being foiled that involved cakes than plots being successful because often prisoners escape and no one knows how they did it otherwise they would have stopped them yes good point i'm surprised that they allow prison visitors to bring in cake then it's a non-essential thing isn't it because also you can hide surely a lot of drugs in there or you know all sorts when they say baked a file

in a cake i have trouble visualizing the file because in my mind it just goes to a nail file which is not going to get you out of prison at all something in between that and a chainsaw is what they mean like the between a nail file and a chainsaw. So that's something quite big like a saw. Do you have those CD2 classes? Yeah, I'm very handy. I make tables, Martin. Don't patronise me. So how do you know what a file looks like?

It is like a supersized nail file, but it's not as big as a saw. Right. So something like a chisel, but rougher. Yes, yeah, like a chisel. Exactly. With a rough edge. The earliest example of a reference to Jail Cake is 1804. A compendium of criminal behaviour shows the pickpocketer William Blewett in the USA

being pardoned from his seven years aboard a prison ship by dobbing in his fellow inmates, and they were trying to utilise this very plot. I wonder how they were going to get off the prison ship and survive because because you drown yeah you'd think when you can't swim to shore with a file because i'm assuming they didn't put the prison ships right next to the shore i think that this was before the ship had set sail he'd got wind of the fact that they were getting gingerbread cakes delivered on on board somehow and within the gingerbread cakes were escape tools and weapons i think also on a ship obviously you've got the possibility of mutiny so uh you

know it's not so much a case of you just jumping off into the sea as you taking control of the ship or killing the captain or hijacking him of course i suppose the staff of a prison ship uh at some risk yeah exactly at that point you'd say you know what i don't care if you're a pickpocket mate we're in the middle of the atlantic fine i'll go wherever you want i think the uh most exciting instance that i found of the cake technique being used would be the third president of ireland emin de valera he was imprisoned in 1916 during the easter rising uh whilst he was in there, during Mass, he borrowed the master key of the chaplain.

And whilst the church service was going on, imprinted it into wax candles in the church. Old favourite, that. The wax imprint of a key. Is it? I mean, you've watched a lot more Columbo than me. I've never seen that happen. I've read books.

Anyway, by making an impression of the master key, he could send the mould to his conspirators on the outside and they created for him a key so that he could then just walk out. And how did that work? And it came back in a cake, is the important thing. The metal key came back in a cake. Even sending out the wax, because prisons usually check what the prisoners are sending out, don't they?

So wouldn't they be like, oh, it seems perfectly normal to send someone a big blob of wax well nothing weird there you know he was in prison effectively as a terrorist but there were those around him who saw him as a freedom fighter probably easier for him to manage to get it out um anyway he did the metal key came back in a cake and he walked out and but they did have complications it was only the second one that worked is there any data on what kind of cake is usually used for this? Is it like a dense fruitcake? Is it something very frilly?

I think, again, as to avoid suspicion, it's often the dullest and blandest and brownest cake. So, fruitcake. Probably fruitcake, yeah. And of course, as well, you're not going to notice the weight there either. Good point. It's heavy anyway. You might, even if it went off in the metal detector,

say, oh yeah, put a coin in there for good luck well yeah because that's a traditional free cake isn't it having metal intrusions yes a coin and a revolver good luck in our family how do they stop the the file spoiling the flavor of the cake they might not eat the cake martin i'm not sure the culinary properties of the cake are that important prisoners will happily eat a condom full of cocaine no but if you wouldn't say happily but i mean you know it's a workaday scenario but wouldn't you rather have a fruitcake and if you're if you're someone who's a baker wouldn't that be like a like wouldn't you take a certain amount of pride in your job my imagination is so limited um that i don't know what i would do with the file once I got it. Well, I mean, the problem is, the answer is, of course, manual labour.

Yeah. You know, which, I mean, if I end up in prison, it will probably be, I mean, I don't want to speculate. But if you're investigating on your man for anything, it would be... Some sort of Jewish white-collar crime, right? That's why I would go to prison. So if that ever happened to me, I'm not going to be the guy who's going to be hacksawing my way out with a file that came in a fucking cake i mean i if i'm like having to dig out my smart shoes from

under the cupboard under the stairs for more than five minutes i'm just in pain being on my hands and knees and craning my neck and not being able to see properly you know and i'm just getting a bit of sweat down the back of my neck it's just like oh god i hate this i hate my life the idea of spending 12 hours filing out of a toilet you'd rather just wait out the rest of your sentence wouldn't you genuinely I would rather just

I'd just rather like get into the bible take it read the book oh I thought you meant by being such a pious prisoner that you'd be written about by biblical scholars

I you know I know that that book is available there I would just read it you know it wouldn't be my first choice a lot of stories in it

a lot of cracking stories exactly you know and I'm sure I'd get some sort of sucker out of it more than trying to dig my way out of a toilet hello we're tom and jenny and drunk on new year's eve just before midnight we've listened to your show for quite a while now. I introduced Jamie to it a long time ago. She's my

fiancé. We're getting married in May of next year. Happy 10th birthday. So I started listening to Answer Me This when I was 16. I'm now 22 and you guys have absolutely guided me through all of the shittiness that happens when you're turning from

a teenager into a sort of adult. You were there for me through my first love, my first heartbreak, when I moved away from home through a shitty Arabic degree. And now you're with me as I move to the West Bank. When I was about 20, the boy who I was in love with who was the first person I'd ever been in love with broke up with me and said that I should really meet the girl who he'd been chagging on the side because I quote

guys are really similar she loves answering me this too so yeah if she's listening fuck you two years later and I'm still angry Hi I'm Richard in Gibraltar I just wanted to so yeah if she's listening fuck you two years later and i'm still angry hi i'm richard in gibraltar uh i just wanted to apologize for being a little drunk and quite ill but i just want to say thank you i have been listening since episode 28 and for the past

nine years or so from the age from my age of 17 until now I've turned 26 you've been a constant in my life and I've gone through

no heartbreak or relationships where I've needed you to be happy or sad or or even

you've not really represented any massive milestone in my life but just that constant for such a long time. Thank you very much for the last decade. I truly appreciate it. Hello, Helen and Ollie.

It's Lexi from London. And I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you still sticking around, even if it's only for once a month now. I totally get it. I don't want to get out of's only for once a month now i totally get it i don't want to get out of bed more than once a month either solidarity cheers guys bye happy new year bye here's a question from joe in seattle who Helen, answer me this. In the UK, did you historically have bears? Yes. We had Eurasian brown bears,

but they have not been here for about 1,000 years, probably because they were overhunted. There are still 17,000 brown bears in Europe, but I think it's because if the population dips somewhere, then it will start to revivify somewhere else. And then because it's because if the population dips somewhere then um it will start to revivify somewhere else and then because it's not an island like britain is they can spread around but people are campaigning to have wild bears reintroduced to britain i think the problem is that the habitats aren't really there for such wild animals like even the national parks in

britain are really too small and have too much human intervention in them. So that's the problem. Where are the bears going to live? That they also won't altercate with humans. What about Scotland? But maybe, maybe there are some hiding somewhere in Britain because they thought that beavers were extinct from Britain.

In 2014, they found a family of beavers living in the River Otter in Devon. Irony. And beavers, they thought, were extinct in the 16th century. So where did those beavers come from? I think you can't really hide the bears, though. Bears are bigger than beavers.

Yes, that's right. So there probably aren't any hidden bears. Here's a question from Carl in Bristol, who says, I've recently been catching up on back episodes of answer me this with my husband while renovating the spare bedroom into a kinky sex dungeon yeah you are as we both enjoy a bit of alternative slap and tickle i like the fact that you both enjoyed the same thing enough that you can agree on what your spare room is going to become yeah

you never hear it mentioned in empty nest syndrome discussions do you should it should it be a gym or a dungeon well i want a cross trainer yeah but my dungeon while sorting through our fairly extensive selection of equipment all right carl no need to boast i began to ponder helen answer me this why do people find some materials, such as rubber or leather, inherently more kinky or sexual than others? You tell me, Carl! I have such a boring life. After all, says Carl, a rubber shirt is still just a shirt. In your household, maybe.

Exactly. Wear it to work. And rubber, in this context, is just another type of fabric. Well, it isn't, though, because it's not woven. I think, firstly firstly rubber and leather they feel better to the touch than most woven fabrics which have a bit of drag on them and are a bit rougher you know they feel like a second skin in leather that is literally the case and that's a lot to do with it it's a second skin but it's it's like a better version of that skin because it's it's no matter what age you are it's it's going to be smoother and more taut than your real skin and it's it's going to be even toned it's not going to have freckles or

spots or scars or or bristles and it's usually worn tight so it's not wrinkly or baggy well is there any choice but to wear it tight well you could wear a baggy baggy rubber suit it would probably be quite noisy but generally people wear it tight and um and that's something for spectators as well that's very revealing of the body and um i think a lot of wearers they enjoy that feeling of confinement yeah the the confinement thing is the thing that i jumped to immediately it's that it ties in doesn't it with a slightly kind of snm bondagey vibe well exactly i think car Carl is wondering, perhaps, whether these fabrics are inherently more attractive or whether it's just the association with BDSM

or leather daddies, which I think evolved out of biker culture with military undertones. There's even some police connotations as well of wearing leather. I guess you kind of have to be lubricated in and out of it as well, don't you? Which itself, for some people, I suppose, is a sexy thing.

It is also a shiny surface uh for liquids and for some people that is a big thing yeah the bodily excretions to me it just smells a bit like quick fit but some people some people like the smell that and crotch sweat is like their favorite smell could it just be like stepping into a different uniform like that when you change your appearance that radically, you become this more liberated person and you can drop some of your inhibitions because you're playing a character who is, I don't know, covered in rubber.

But also, like if you wear fabric that tight on your body as people wear rubber, it's not going to look that good. It's just going to look too tight rather than skin tight. So maybe that's an element of it as well. and it's not as mobile as these things where they they fit you so well that you can get a decent amount of lunging in say if it was cloth it would probably just tear i'd imagine that loads of listeners can tell us more accurately because none of us are sitting here wearing rubber or leather right now well use your imaginations

oh yeah maybe i am wearing rubber yeah you'd been able to hear it squeaking, I think. Well, you don't know. All you can see is that I'm wearing a fleecy top and some Debenhams chinos. What lies beneath? You don't know what lies beneath. I could be wearing rubber pants.

But I guess you're not. Well, that is the end of our 10th birthday episode of Answer Me This. Next time, no birthday cake, no balloons, no presents, just the hard grind for another decade please

do supply us questions for the next decade of the show oh wow now you know some of the mechanism as we were talking about earlier in the show you can uh i hope that doesn't make you feel extra pressure that you have to no you just ask the questions that matter to you and we'll sift through the ones that aren't any good we'll put the good ones in the show you don't need to worry about that our contact details are on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com Whereupon you can also find links to buy our first 200 episodes and our apps and our merchandise and our book and albums.

Yes, Answer Me This Love if you're already getting in the mood for Valentine's Day. Gosh, not far now, is it, till Valentine's Day? There's always time for love. Love was our original album for 2016 so it's only a year old never gonna be released for free on the feed it's an hour of us talking about love and romance and sex and stuff yeah genitals balls um happy 10th birthday happy 10th birthday ollie happy 10th birthday i know that we haven't gone from a mentor celebration but, but I do feel pretty happy right now. It's an achievement, isn't it, of sorts? It is. You tell my mum that,

because she's still dubious about that achievement. One day, someone else will recognise that. Anyway, bye! Bye! Ten years! Ten years!