Answer Me This! - AMT347: Vampire Bats, Mugshots and Shaven Eyebrows

Episode Date: February 2, 2017

After AMT347 we have more questions than when we started, eg: Is Michael Parkinson really a giant? Are chocolate fondant puddings actually sexy or is that Olly's desperation talking? Is there anything funny about a dead dog? Find out more about the episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode347. 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

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Is that love in the air or just pollution? That's to be this, that's to be this How big did Gala Bazaar's look to a Lilliputian? That's to be this, that's to be this Helen and Ollie, that's to be this We may be broadcasting to you from an attic in South London but this is a truly international show Yes, the internet works in a lot of

countries, Ollie. Must I explain this to you again? And this email starts with a sentence that I feel could not be written by a Brit. It's from Erin in Ohio, who says, I recently moved to a new city and I was able to meet some friends pretty quickly by going to neighborhood potlucks can you explain to me what a potluck is a potluck is informal party where everyone brings a dish that's the potluck ah a dish in the sense of cuisine not as like your mother might say oh that man at the gym's a bit of a dish or some crockery it's some crockery filled with food how common do you think a neighborhood potluck is i mean eric says it like it's a normal thing she's in ohio i don't know what goes on there i've not been because it i've

never had anything like that happen here not even for the jubilee or whatever where they say everyone have a street party have you ever had your neighbors gather together off their own accord everyone bring some food no the only event that had ever happened as a neighborhood vibe at the block of flats where myself and my wife used to live in London was when someone burnt some toast and the fire alarm went off. And everyone had to wait outside. Burnt toast for everybody. For the firefighters to arrive. And that was the most socialising we ever did.

And everyone was like, oh, hi, I live in number 36. Oh, I live in number 39. That's the only time we spoke to them. And I was determined when we moved to the quotequote country that we would make more of an effort so the first christmas we moved out 2013 we invited every neighbor in our row of houses round for a sort of mince pie and mulled wine affair yeah it was fine i wouldn't leave the house for mulled wine or mince pies well just as well you weren't invited helen the people that turned up seemed very happy to be there oh mince pie oh but then haven't invited us to anything since so maybe the mince pies were

horrible maybe they'll invite you to their mince pie thing at the end of this year no this was 2013 oh they've had three opportunities since to invite us for mince pies and i failed to do so that is awkward yeah not but not even like a picnic not a barbecue not a we're all going to the pub nothing not oh i made some mince pies and I've got some spare. Here's a Tupperware with some spare pies in it. Anyway, she says, there is this one guy who always goes to these potlucks who I'm quite interested in and I've been trying to casually flirt with. Is flirting allowed at a potluck?

I tend to find if you try to casually do anything, then it doesn't look very casual. That is so true. She says, I haven't really gotten anywhere with him. Maybe he doesn't like your mac and cheese it's possible isn't it anyway erin says to my surprise i just saw him on tinder oh it's like an electronic potluck isn't it a potluck where all is on the menu is each other's genitals and commitment and love sometimes potentially it's sometimes a one course meal and sometimes a three course meal yeah so helen answer me this what should i do if i swipe right and we don't match that means that he saw me and wasn't interested which would make me feel shitty at subsequent potlucks i mean

sandra's off shrimp's gonna do that but if i swipe left and he swiped right, he will think I'm uninterested. So do I do nothing? Do I do something? Woe is millennial me. Just swipe right. Because even if he doesn't swipe right and you don't get matched, at least then you'll know. Whereas being trapped in the wondering will make you feel shitty

and also add a bit of tension to the potlucks anyway, because you'll be like, oh, am I flirting? Is he getting my signals or is he rejecting my signals so i think it's probably better to know in this way that's not face to face so i think it's relatively low risk isn't it yes i agree wholeheartedly because she says woe is millennial me but actually what you have erin at your fingertips is an ability that thousands of people in generations past would have loved to have had, dearly loved to have had at these neighbourhood potlucks, which is a technological icebreaker, which is, in theory, less embarrassing than having to say to him, you know, you've met each other, you've done some real life flirting. Now you know he's single and interested in women. Yes, exactly.

That's helpful. Behind closed doors, you basically say, so so how about it and if he doesn't swipe you just don't you don't have to worry about it you have to mention it again yeah it's a time saving device surely but isn't isn't that thing where people say oh i just want to know who's interested isn't what they mean most of the time i i just want him to be interested yeah but you can't make someone be interested you can't but what i mean is it's an empty wish. Actually, people don't want to know if they're interested. If they're not interested, they don't want to know if they are interested.

Yeah, but you don't get to find out one without the potential of the other. I mean, my romantic advice is just try and avoid showing your real feelings because you might be disappointed. She already has avoided showing her real feelings and she's already feeling disappointed, so she might as well go for a decisive verdict keep it up happy 15th anniversary by the way martin anniversary it's your 15th anniversary yeah a few days ago martin what is it the 15th anniversary of do you know us becoming a romantic couple is there an event by which that's

measured yes and that's the last we'll hear about it email your suggestions answer me this podcast at googlemail.com here's a question from uh sam in dunedin new zealand is that how you say that i don't know okay sorry i don't know don't laugh don't laugh helen answer me this why do they have a height chart positioned behind prisoners when they take their photo? Does Sam mean when people are arrested? Yeah. That's traditionally when you... They have a mugshot, so there's a straight-on photo

and a profile photo, and there's always some lines behind with height measurements. There's an obvious answer to this question, Sam, that I wonder did not occur to you when you were typing it out. Why did they have them? So they can tell how tall those people are i suppose the nature of his slash her question is why is that important they've arrested them why does it matter how tall they are it doesn't have other facts about them it's for

future identification because other factors of a person's appearance are apt to change you can change your hair your face your weight even your tattoos and yet your height barring the passage of several decades or an extreme injury is liable to stay the same and it's just it's not a subjective measurement of someone's appearance so yeah short or tall is quite opinionated but like asking about someone's build or even the color of their hair like that's not necessarily that empirical compared to the mathematical height. Mugshots, I found out, were originated by a French criminologist called Alphonse Bertillon. And this was because around the time he was operating in the 1870s in France, there was a big increase in repeat offences, but really terrible record keeping. So all they had at most were people's names and

addresses both of which can be faked and very occasionally a picture because photography had started so they didn't know if they captured somebody whether they had committed a crime before any of that so he developed forensic anthropometry so he would record lots of different physical characteristics like the length of your limbs your digits the distance between your eyebrows and your nose and the shape of your mouth and your eyes and he also developed a lexicon for describing like the shape of your eyes and your mouth but that lexicon was much harder to use than just taking a photo of people so in all of that information with the length of your body parts he included a photo it was he who came up with having the classic mug

shot the front shot and the profile shot because he thought the ears were a particularly unique identifying characteristic when was Bertil developing this technique mug shots were adopted as a general policy uh around 1888 the standard mug shot but because around the same time fingerprinting was starting to come in and that was a lot more likely to be correct if you're trying to definitely identify somebody because otherwise you could mistake somebody for someone else if they had similar length shins and a similar face so much of his Bertie Ornage system died out but the mugshots remained I mean it's a staggeringly simple idea in retrospect to take a photo and add it to things, but I suppose we're looking at it now from a world where...

We've had photography for ages. Yeah, and we've all got a camera in our pocket. So the technological question now is why not take a photo rather than why take a photo? Yes. I suppose when taking a photo was expensive, that's a different thing, isn't it? You wouldn't expect a police station to have a photographer unless you suggested they should be implemented. But also a photo of someone's face doesn't point out their height.

And yet that is really going to be significant if someone says I was mugged by someone who was six foot tall rather than I was mugged by someone who's five foot. I actually appreciate being photographed in front of a height chart because I am taller than most people think. You're like six foot three, aren't you? Yeah, two and a half, yeah. What do you think you read as?

5'11"? It's not that. It's that people... People think you're like six foot three aren't you i'm yeah two and a half yeah what do you think you read us 5 11 it's not that it's that people people think you're shorter than you are i think it's i think i guess a lot of people encounter me first in audio form before they see a photo of me and it's so hard to tell height from audio they say audio text two feet off don't they um and i guess they you know create a mental picture in their mind of what i look like and then even though they're challenged by that when they meet me, they still haven't quite got to grips with the fact I am actually quite tall. I'll tell you who was surprisingly tall, famous person when I met them, and I was shocked myself. Phil Spencer.

Yes, Phil Spencer was surprisingly tall. Who's Phil Spencer? Oh, Kirsty and Phil. Oh, that Phil. Yeah, yeah, okay. I had a chat with him once without knowing who he was because I'd never seen Location, Location, Location. I said, what do you do? He said, I'm an estate agent.

He was very modest. Anyway, no, Michael Parkinson. Michael Parkinson is a strapping man. And I met him when he was 74 or something. He's a tall... 74 feet tall. He's like a foot taller than me. No.

He's tall. No, he's not. He is tall. Your sense of reckoning is poor, Oliver. Yeah, you do have historically bad apprehension of height. I met Clarkson and he was surprisingly tall as well. Yeah, I'd expect Clarkson to be taller. He's a good foot taller than me.

Parkey maybe is like halfway between. You can't be seven foot tall. Jeremy Clarkson is a foot taller than me. I'm googling now. I'm calling bullshit. I'll do Parkey. I reckon Jeremy Clarkson is six foot six. How much taller than you do you think Russell Brand was?

Think of tall people you've met. Well, that was hard to tell because he was wearing heels. And his hair was done up like an inch. Jeremy Clarkson is 6'5". That is two inches taller than you. Wow. Yeah. No, he was much taller than me.

Well, maybe he was wearing heels. Yeah, he probably was. He was wearing boots. According to the internet, Michael Parkinson was 5'10". No, bullshit. He's definitely taller than me. Are you sure you're thinking of Michael Parkinson? wearing boots according to uh the internet michael parkinson was five foot ten no bullshit he's definitely taller than me are you sure you're thinking michael parkinson yes i'm thinking michael parkinson you don't mistake one meter 78 i'm saying that's what i'm saying that's five foot ten what about are you thinking of ronnie corbett here's a question from callum who is 15 and from

inverness i went to a mate's house there were four of us there when I piped up that it was four years to the day since the death of one of our other friend Robbie's dogs. Meg. R.I.P. Meg. Someone then had the bright idea that we should all get a slit in our eyebrow in memory of the dog. Teenage Kicks.

A slit in our eyebrow? You know, the little shaven bits that people had like late 90s popular... Oh, like Katie Puckricks. Katie Puckricks was a scar. Yeah, she ran into a rose bush when she was a kid. Yeah, so she didn't shave it in memory of a dog or any other thing. Callum says, I thought doing slits for Meg was a stupid idea.

Because it is. However, being a 15-year-old, I bowed to peer pressure. And since the other three had gone and given each other one, I agreed that they could give me one. However, one of my friends got rather excited and ended up shaving off half my eyebrow ollie answer me this how long does it take for half an eyebrow to grow back i've got school in a couple of days and may have to resort to my sister's makeup you will have to resort to your sister's makeup um it takes i mean there's varying different opinion on the internet but uh for a young adult in general following plucking

now plucking is more rigorous than adult in general following plucking now plucking is more rigorous than shaving obviously but following plucking you're looking at about 65 days for full regrowth so you're gonna have a stubbly phase for a while yeah although but shaving is different i mean uh plucking decreases the odds of regrowth at all um so shaving i mean let's say let's be liberal about it and saying shave 20 days off that you're still looking at at least five weeks i would say you are also always rigorously advised never to shave off your eyebrows because a lot of people in the past did that and drew them back on and then the eyebrows never grow back in the same way i don't know how true that is or whether you

do actually damage your hair follicle or something by shaving that part of yourself but i wonder whether the makeup as he's not an expert at applying an artificial eyebrow would just draw attention to the fact that something is awry with his eyebrows yeah you're gonna have to basically just get used to the fact that you're gonna be known as the dude with half an eyebrow for five weeks people will forget i mean a lot happens in a school year yeah and also the kids that had pranks played upon them, I think, were actually more sympathetic than the ones who had effectively pranked themselves. Yes, that's true. If you'd done it because you thought it made you look well-ard,

that's actually, you're right, in the long run, something that will be sort of round your neck like an albatross. Whereas, yeah, if you're the victim of a prank, everyone will laugh at you. Children do cling on to jokes. Let's call it six weeks. I think a few years. This is until you leave the school, Callum, but you're 15.

So it's only a few years away. Yes, exactly. But it will eventually disappear and people won't hold that against you. Remembering the heroine of some teen novel I read back at the time where she tweezed out her eyebrows and just got big scabs and she was allowed to wear big sunglasses to school because her principal took pity on her. Oh, nice. Okay.

That would be a solution for Callum, though. Get some glasses. Just to visually distract people. Right, yeah. Callum also says, only answer me this, how wrong is it to take the mick out of a mate for their dog dying? To be fair, the dog was charged by a bull on Hogmanay. Is there a funnier way for a dog to die?

Is there a funny way for a dog to die because dead dogs generally most people don't find funny i disagree with you on that ellen and i don't find dead dogs funny but i think actually uh the majority of the british public do find dead dogs funny no brits are really touchy about their dogs yeah they claim to be but i mean simon mayo has been doing confessions for three decades now and there's a lot of dead dogs in those stories. I've heard a lot of like, ho ho, and then the dog went in the washing machine type stories on the radio and people seem to find it amusing afterwards. It's not amusing at the time when your dog dies.

That's the thing to take into account, Callum. It is wrong to take the mick out of your friend because a dog dying is an upsetting experience, especially a dog murdered by a bull. I don't know. I mean, I was really sad when my last cat died um but now i think it's kind of funny that he did die by filling up with water what yeah he had like some weird um thing on his lung oh so he drank water and couldn't piss it out that's not funny it's kind of funny because he used to swell up like a balloon we have to take him to the vet and get

him drained i mean getting a cat drained is funny until it's fatal. Yeah, yeah. But I see the humour in it now in a way that I wouldn't if I was describing my grandfather. To be honest, Callum, I think this is the kind of thing that when you're older, you'll be like, well, 15-year-olds are callous. I think find another thing to take the piss out of your mate for.

But also remember that you have half an eyebrow, so you're not really in a good position to take the piss out of people. I've got a question. Email your question. To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at hooglemill.com

To answer me this podcast at hooglemill.com So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday,

we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors.

Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. We're quite a few months away from the traditional time of the year when all the wedding questions come flooding in, and yet, already, we have an absolute corker from our mailbag. Well, people are always getting married. All through the year. You speak more truth than you know, Helen. No, I speak the exact amount of truth that I know,

which people get married all year round. Yes, but the point is, the thing about people getting married very frequently, that is very relevant to this particular question. It is from Jay, who says, A few weeks ago, myself and my long-term partner got engaged. Congrats. Yeah, mazal tov.

But there is a small complication. We are both already married. No. Fortunately, he says, We are both already married. No! Fortunately, he says, we are both married to each other. Yay! What? Yeah. We had kids quite soon after getting together,

and whilst we wanted the legal securities that marriage provides in such cheery eventualities as one or both of us dying... Lovely things to chat about in the early stages of a relationship. We couldn't face the logistical shitstorm which is organising a marriage, especially as we were already handling the logistical shitstorm presented by having three kids under the age of five.

Congratulations on still being married at this point. That's not so much a logistical shitstorm as a logistical shitquake. As a literal shitstorm. Exactly. We didn't tell anyone we were getting hitched, as the idea was always to do it properly at some point in the future. And we knew that there would be a determination from parents to ramp up

what just felt like a necessary administrative process at the time. That's why you tell them just after it's happened, but like on the day. On the day, so it's too late for them to have this administrative process, but you don't have this secret life that you've now had. No, no, that's... Take it from me. I have friends who did this and it was a mistake. They should have told them on the day. Be precise.

Did what exactly? I have friends... Got married secretly. They got married secretly. They told their families six weeks later and their families were really upset. Yeah, but why is on the day better? Because on the day you can be like, oh, we got married.

It seems spontaneous and you're not keeping a secret because it's just happened. Right. But if there's secret keeping in the intervening time, then families get upset. Okay. And families are apt to get upset anyway

about weddings that haven't happened yet. So ones that have happened, also a matter of upset. Families get upset about weddings. Everyone knows. Okay, I see that. But the way you're presenting it as if somehow they won't be upset on the day if you call them and say we got married

and you weren't here they will be less upset than if you call them on any subsequent day they'll be less upset okay i see the mathematical formula some of them will just be so surprised that they won't have time to be upset but they will definitely be more upset the longer you leave it okay well they did leave it helen so this advice is useless to jay you should have emailed years ago so jay continues now the youngest child has started school we feel like things are sufficiently together for us to organize a big bash and we'd like to do so before the children get to such an age that they are all gangly and sullen i like the way you're timing this. Yes.

It's while you've still got the spirit left for it, but before they don't. But yeah, and whilst their eyebrows are still intact. The issue is that parents on both sides will be massively offended if they discover that we are already married, especially as there has been pressure from both sides to do just that. Oh, no. In fact... A lie. A lie has been enacted for years.

There was even an explicit mention from my mum that she would be, quote, mortified if any of her children had got married without her being present after one of her friend's daughters did just that in a similar situation to ours. She was probably trying to smoke you out. They definitely aren't aware at this stage

and they are very excited about the wedding. So he's got them hook line and sinker at the moment they think that jay is getting married to his partner and mother of his three children for the first time but in fact they are already married and the whole thing is a sort of mike lee woody allen style lie upon a lie all those secrets and lies so helen it was uncanny so helen answer me this is it possible for us to get through the whole wedding which isn't really a wedding just effectively renewing our vows without us revealing that we are already married or will it inevitably come out in the nuptial wash uh it won't be a church wedding if that makes any difference i don't know because

i didn't have a church wedding i think you could probably collude with a registrar if you're in britain uh that that would be who uh would be officiating if not a religious officiant um to do the bit where you sign the certificate to either have a fake certificate or go out of the room and you just carouse around for a bit but what basis are you are you saying that on because i think the significance of mentioning the church wedding is his thinking is that a man or woman of the cloth wouldn't want to collude in such a lie. Why do you think a registrar,

who in my experience take their jobs as seriously, albeit not with the element of faith, why do you think they'd be up for dicking about? Why don't you ask them what their procedure is? Like if you're already organising the wedding, you must have a thought as to who you want to conduct the ceremony. And if it's a registrar, why don't you ask them how they do it for vow renewals

and then say, we also have reason for this to seem like it's the first time round, but obviously it isn't. What can we sign that will look legit? This is a bit like that episode of Rev where he wants to perform a gay wedding, but he can't because he's a church reverend, so he ends up doing a blessing and it's basically a gay wedding.

Right, I haven't seen that episode. I've just described it for you it's like yeah you have in the sense that the registrar might have a lot of sympathy with you but he or she is unlikely to lie at their place of work in front of everyone so you know they may well you're right come up with a solution for you but you are really playing with fire i think because well you've got to trust another person haven't you not to blab well my feeling is that it would be worse for your family to find out on the day than in advance but then helen your theory was when it came to the first wedding they should have told them on the day well maybe that stands true for this too and they should tell them at

the second wedding that it is the second wedding on the day no i'm thinking if they've got to this point they probably should just keep the lie going until their graves. Because they've been comfortable enough to propagate it for several years already. So I reckon they can get through this. But if they have a humanist ceremony, which is not the legally binding part, but I have seen a bunch of friends do, where they have the legal wedding in an office, maybe with not many people there. And then the kind of official wedding was with a humanist.

If your parents are primed to be expecting a legal wedding they will probably wonder when that part took place so i think you have to have something to put them off the scent with that unless they don't know how weddings work ah well yes maybe you say to both sets of parents we are having a humanist wedding we want you there for the ceremony we don't want people to be at the legal bit we just want just for paperwork if you're doing it in britain because other countries have different ways of doing weddings we're getting married in a really drab registry office it's not the big day we want for only get an appointment at 9am on a tuesday really far from where you both live yeah and we need you

to look after the kids yes and then actually lie and pretend that you've done it that morning whereas in fact you haven't at all. The problem with all these plans is that the signing of the certificate, the register requires witnesses. Yes, but it doesn't require them to be your parents. Yeah, but if in that situation who else would you pick? It doesn't matter because it doesn't really happen.

They just tell their parents. We just got some witnesses off the street. That's what people always say in the films. Why would you get witnesses off the street when you could ask your parents? No, no, you take your best man. Take your best man and your bridesmaids. Yeah, maybe, maybe. Well, then your parents will be like,

well, they took them away and they're not taking me. If they're taking this seriously. You make it sound like a nice thing. You say, we don't want you to come and wait. There's the boring paperwork. We're doing that in the morning with the best man and the bridesmaid. That's how you have to do it. Or I've got another solution, which is actually,

this is sort of like Jonathan Creek-like, staggeringly simple solution. Is it get divorced and then get legally remarried at this i think because if you die on the way to the wedding that's a nightmare for your wills although i think that is the best solution that we've come up with it's a good one it's hire an actor to be the registrar your parents aren't gonna know like acts of rays at the november rain video yes exactly like that but your parents don't have to know that that's an actor they can be quite aloof they can be quite a bad actor even because registrars can be quite awkward people civil servants basically sweet mawidge actually no i'm thinking really of ted danson

in three men and a little lady that's what you're going for but uh you are piling lie upon lie that's what we're suggesting just keep on lying you've lied this far those are the two options though aren't they the two options are fess up don't or don't and if you're doing don't then it does involve more lying those are the two options do you think there's a case to be made for fessing up yes why because it's better like the amount of anxiety that he's clearly feeling in every pore of this i don't think he's feeling that anxious i think that anxiety is legitimate i relate to it and it's not going to get better by doing this. This, this... That's why.

This does not read to me like an anxious email. This reads to me like someone going, oh, I'm not asked about this, but they will be. Can you give me an excuse not to tell them? And I'm doing that, Jay. The question is, if you come out and tell them the truth, will the bubbling anxiety ruin the big day? Or is it better to lie one more time and then tell them afterwards?

All right. When at least they did see what they thought was the wedding okay so basically if you're comfortable with the lie keep on lying and if you're uncomfortable with the lie um tell the truth she couldn't even say the words martin that is of course a concern tell the tell the no i can't do it i mean the thing is, you've got a shit sandwich, haven't you? Great wedding breakfast. Well, you get your friends to help with that. You can say to your parents, you know, look, this is the thing.

But we're telling you this because we want to do this properly now. And we haven't been able to because this is our chance to celebrate our marriage. Oh, yeah, that's the thing. We did it just for the paperwork. It wasn't a wedding. You didn't miss our wedding. did it just for the paperwork. It wasn't a wedding. You didn't miss our wedding. It was just for the paperwork. Just keep emphasising the paperwork. He said that his mother specifically

said she'd be more than happy. Well, then you have to carry on the lie. No, she'll be pissed off. But if you then say, and we're going to have a massive wedding and you're going to be the centre of it. We got married, but we didn't want the wedding

until the children could wear really adorable tiny suits and frocks because everyone loves seeing kids in formal wear at weddings, right? Everyone loves seeing kids in formal wear. You don't want to waste that opportunity, so you saved it. That's the argument. Thank you. Something that is always delightful in this month of love

that includes St Valentine's Day, of course, just around the corner. Because there is nothing else good about February. February is a bleak month. Absolute ball of piss. T.S. Eliot lied. Not April. April's fine. February, especially this one.

Something that always makes it better is the opportunity to re-listen to the Answer Me This Love album. Or the opportunity to listen to it if you haven't already done that. That's right. If you didn't buy it last year when we released it for the first time, then it's new to you the love album like all of our original albums is around about an hour of never released on the podcast feed answer me this questions and answers on the subject of romance and dating and vaginal liquid it's a real joy it is a real joy which you can buy right now at answer me this store.com and itunes and amazon but if you buy it from us we get more of your money thank you but if you're thinking now i like try before I buy, here is an extract for today's intermission.

Time for a question from Jay from Manchester who says, I am a happy, young, 24-year-old gay man who happens to be in a wonderful relationship with the love of his life. Sadly, we live literally hundreds of miles away from each other, but we are modern and open-minded enough to be in an open relationship until we are able to live closer to one another. Occasionally, says Jay, I will find myself in the chambers of another man. That's so elegant. Who I may not yet be carnally acquainted with, but will end up playing hide the sausage before the night is through.

Being a sensible sort, the necessary safety precautions must be in place before the sideways samba commences. Okay, he means barrier contraceptives, correct? He does, yes, not seatbelts. Or crash helmets. Indeed. But this usually interrupts the smooth transition of foreplay into intercourse and is often quite abrupt.

For people who I am more familiar with, such as my boyfriend, there is no problem with this particular step as they can utilise their sexy magic, like putting the condom on with their mouth, but for new partners, the safety step is often like interrupting an intricate waltz with a sledgehammer to the knee.

I suppose you could literally turn it into a magic trick. I'd bite your partner's ear. Like a 50 pence piece. Now do you remember Paul earlier this evening I asked you to pick a card? What's the birdie? And now what could be more romantic than to take a question from our question line? Do you need me to list things that could be more romantic because I'd say 70% of things. I mean, I'm keen that these episodes now,

which is once a month, are slightly longer, but I think you literally listing everything that isn't more romantic than that. Yeah, but it's not you that checks all our voicemails. And let me tell you, a lot of them are just people going... So excuse me if I can think of more romantic things than taking questions from our question line. Anyway, if you want to leave us a message

that it's probably not you making fart noises with your mouth or your bottom then here's the number to dial 02081235807 or you can skype answer me this or you can record a voice memo and just email it to us at the usual address whatever it takes hi helen ollie um i'm charlie currently exiled somewhere in derbyshire but previously from letchworth helen ollie i'll tell you this what actually is a garden city it being of course the world's first and then going on obviously to the wonder that is well in garden city so charlie has been inspired by his hometown of letchworth finally to wonder what is a garden city such as Letchworth oh evidently a place that lulls the curiosity because you're already in Eden

so why wonder about anything well if only Charlie I had to hand a copy of my 1996 essay Ebenezer Howard King of Letchworth wow this sounds. I wrote for my GCSE geography class scoring me a very wholesome B but I don't I don't have that essay to hand so I'll just have to use my memory here. Folks who are new to the podcast might not know I sort of grew up in Letchworth Garden City. I went to school there but it was a boarding school so between the ages of 10 to 18 I basically lived in Letchworth. And I used to go quite a lot because my grandparents lived there and we used to go to one of the but it was a boarding school so between the ages of 10 to 18 i basically lived in letchworth and i used to go quite a lot because my grandparents lived there and we used to go to one of the swimming pools in letchworth correct that's our letchworth background so we have shared letchworth

heritage i've been to hitchin doesn't count not the same not a garden city martin shut it hitchin now full of hipsters is that you did it before yeah priced out of st albans it is totally that yeah these are the hitchsters anyway part of the GCSE geography course at my school was a whole unit on the history of Letchworth as the world's first garden city. So a garden city, as imagined by Ebenezer Howard who was this utopian visionary

I think around about the end of the 19th century, is a planned, so like properly architecturally drawn, but self-contained community surrounded by green belt so it's got to be a place that is self-sufficient you can live there and not leave there if you want you don't need to go to a bigger city to get what you need but it's not urban living because on every street and every corner there is nature there are trees there are gardens and all around

the perimeter of it there's green belt because he was effectively building a brand new city in what used to be Brownfield and Greenbelt countryside. So that's the principle. But he was disappointed with how Letchworth turned out. Utopias just very rarely seem to work out well. Britain doesn't have a great track record with planned towns, does it? Although Letchworth has quite a bit of charm. The bits of it I've seen.

It does. But it's interesting. It's the same thing that's happening now. The government is actually now, by the way, promising new garden cities for the next 10 years in Ebsfleet and Bicester and places like that. And the same thing's going to happen, basically. History will tell you what will happen. They'll promise affordable housing.

That's what Ebenezer Howard was all about. Ebenezer Howard was all about let the working class move from the slummy bits of london to live in the open bucolic countryside right so he was kind of ahead of the movement for the utopian suburbs that was like the thing in the 50s yes although the idea of a suburb at all was kind of anathema to him because he thought that it was better to live centrally and have access to the city but also have the countryside um but yes like hampstead garden suburb was kind of influenced by his ideas, even though he'd have hated it. But when they actually built Letchworth,

they made the houses too big and too utopian, and so only middle-class people could afford them. So it never quite managed to match his idea of the kind of people that would be living there. And it is only something like 34 miles from London or something. So it is quite a sensible place miles from london or something so it is uh quite a sensible place to commute from to the city so it never quite was self-sufficient either most people in letchworth have connections to london somehow how did it work out with slightly later ones like

welling garden city so you can sort of see when you go to welling that it is a more successful rendering of his idea of a garden city utopia than letchworth is do you know how much later it was uh like 20 years or something okay so not low in his lifetime yeah but enough yeah and it was his it was his fuck you to the people that had screwed up letchworth in his view like he was like i'll show you a great Hertfordshire town but the problem with well in is even though it is i think uh aesthetically more pleasing i don't really have the architectural vocabulary to explain why it's about garden city but i just know that when i go there even now and you walk around the town centre it just feels like a more relaxed and friendly place to be that works better it is closer to London so on the

self-sufficiency point it fails because again like really pretty much everyone in Welland commutes to London for work but um they didn't make that many garden cities did they the new towns that were later like Cwmbran and Telford where Martin grew up I don't believe were counted as garden cities were they even though Telford is surrounded by greenery they weren't but ideas obviously begat ideas garden cities around the world I mean in the United States there are dozens of them that are influenced by Letchworth weirdly but the most uh high profile city to be inspired by Letchworth actually I would say is Christchurch New Zealand believe it or not is effectively a garden city which is odd because

my wife's sister who's also from the Letchworth region said that she felt weirdly at home in Christchurch and I was like yeah whatever but now I read that I kind of think oh that's really interesting that they have architectural principles in common May I recommend a book by a friend of the show John Grindrod, Concretopia which is about the post-war rebuilding of

Britain, very fascinating on this topic, but also because so often these places failed because architects don't necessarily think about how humans behave. And so there were a lot where they'd build these lovely big strips of green land up the middle of residential streets and instead of the kids playing out on them all the time

and it being like a lovely meadow, it just made people feel really isolated and they'd become these barren wastelands i guess also if you build it too much around a few industries i mean you couldn't know this could you at the turn of the 20th century but the big tenant in letchworth was spirella which was a corset maker corsets obviously went somewhat out of fashion across the 20th century and by the 1980s they'd closed down because that was before the boned bra that letchworth was built no it was just and when i was at school in the 90s the spirella factory was this weird creepy empty sort of like the kind of building that would feature in a stephen king novella you know just this sort of empty shell that had weird people in it or tim burton film they tried the old golden ticket thing and just no one came forward it has now become some kind of uh communal shared workspace

thing that's still called the spirella building and they've taken the guts out of it and you know that's fine but it took like 25 years for them to find a function for it but i guess if you imagine letchworth as it was intended with the majority of people in the town working there or working in a place like that the shredded wheat factory is the majority of people in the town working there or working in a place like that. The Shredded Wheat Factory is in Welland, or was. The idea was there would be these central factories where the working class people from the area would

work, and then they'd have a middle class type existence around it. And it's basically never really delivered that. Which is a bit sad. I suppose once you've built a town, society might have moved beyond what you had thought about its functions. Well, that's the issue, isn't it? But it did spawn the Ideal Home Show.

Yay! The Cheap Cottages Exhibition, as it was originally called. Really? Yeah, was created. I like the way they've changed the name to something a bit more appealing. A bit more aspirational. Yeah, I think when the Daily Mail got on board, they were like, guys... The Shitty Prefab Show.

The Shitty Prefab show will not sell. But yeah, the cheap cottages show of 1906 was all about selling designs for Letchworth. Sort of pre-empting the tiny house movement, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I suppose, yeah. And of course, without Letchworth and the Quakers that bought up lots of the property there, you wouldn't have had the school that begat me and other opinionated twats. I'm in a weird situation now where, this sounds like humble bragging,

but it's just a fact, following the very sad death of A.I. Gill a few months ago, I think, I mean, it's subjective, but I think I might be the most famous graduand of my school. Sounds like a pretty shit school. Who are the other graduands? The other contenders are... The late Michael Winner. The late michael winner and the late ai gill so uh who else is

there like any so okay the people the people who are alive this is what i'm saying the people who are alive there's uh sonja friedman the theater producer yeah sorry i think she probably still outranks you well she's uh more notorious and she's achieved more yeah but i don't know that she's more famous because she's a behind the scenes person it's true and she's achieved more. Yeah. But I don't know that she's more famous because she's a behind-the-scenes person. It's true, but she has achieved more. I know, but I wasn't saying who'd achieved more. I said most famous. Like I said, I'm not trying to be...

I'm not saying I'm famous. She doesn't have a gold Sony Award, but she has probably achieved more. I'm just saying... That's not a fair criteria to jodgly against. I reckon one in 10,000 people has heard of me and maybe one in 15,000 people has heard of her. I'm not saying either of us are famous. Anyone else? Yeah yeah george lamb oh george lamb's more famous than you well yeah he

is still yeah yeah he is okay i mean i'm prepared to accept that i'm not i mean just just based on the number of women whose sexual awakening was linked to george lamb i think i think how would you know how many women sexually awakened george lamb i did a survey you never quite understood what he was up to at that university of his did you helen now you know how many women sexually awakened George Lamb? I did a survey. You never quite understood what he was up to at that university of his, did you, Helen? Now you know what all those datagraphs related to. How tall is George Lamb to you? About nine foot five. Yes, that's accurate.

He's very tall. He's the tallest man alive. That's why he's more famous than you, because he's in Ripley's Believe It or Not. I'm happy for George Lamb to be the most famous graduate of my school. That's fine. I don't want to be. I'm just saying, like, when A.A. Gill died, I did think Is it me? The mantle is upon me now. I am Harry Potter.

Because there's a quarterly newsletter that goes out from our school to our... They call it the Old Scholars Society. Do they rank all of the Old Scholars? Well, no, but there's a... If you're just like a normal person who doesn't have a career in the public eye you once every like seven years when you have a baby or something or get another degree you write to the magazine yes and you say i'm in in 2006 i married jeff

and we're living happily in a farm in yorkshire magazine too right so it's like that but if you're famous there's a section at the back where the editor has basically been trawling facebook about you and found a few things so when i left school when i was like 18 19 all of that back section was about michael winner and a.a gill and increasingly that back section has become about me the only man page it's just a bit weird um so yeah so that's you know but i'm glad i'm you know sonia friedman we can all agree she's achieved more. No, we don't, because you don't agree she's achieved more. I do, I think she has. The Book of Mormon is a good thing. Do you think they've got a spreadsheet

where they can order the old scholars by age, attractiveness and success, and then every year they just order the column by success? I think they've probably played top trumps in the common room. Am I achieved? Oh, i've got only man that's a far more worrying thing how many people have their sexual awakening to you no offense but i imagine no no i think i think maybe a few because of this podcast and right back at you i think thanks there are men listening to this who have wanked off to the sound of your voice hey what about men wanking off to the side of my voice i'm sure that's i'm right here i'm sure that's happening right now

i hope so okay teenagers get bonus about anything this section is doing it for some 14 year old somewhere i don't know i reckon the older man is my demographic and i think their favorite thing to wank off to is you promoting Squarespace. So you're in luck, folks. Here it is. Get ready. I put my picture on Tinder, but nobody swiped right. I went on Match and OKCupid, no suitors would bite.

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Were the vampire bats named for the mythical vampire creatures or were the bats named for the vampires? And which were the boy band The Vamps named after? Who are The Vamps? You're too old, Martin. They're half your age.

One of them follows me on Twitter. Really? Why? He listens to LBC a lot, weirdly. Okay. And when I had a show on that radio network, he contributed once to a phone-in conversation that I was having. What about?

I presume Nigel Farage. I can't remember. No, I think it was something to do with eating. Someone in the news had declared something about healthy eating and I'd said, what have you done to keep yourself fitter something something something and he'd replied saying i've spent a whole year without drinking or i don't eat chocolates anymore something that was a reasonable contribution and in fact the fact it had come from a celebrity i would have read it out on on air apart from the fact that as soon as

he tweeted that there was then an avalanche of 14 year old girls going omg heart heart emoji of a puppy not only could i not find his original tweet i then couldn't read any tweets out for the whole there was then an avalanche of 14-year-old girls going, OMG, heart, heart, emoji of a puppy. Not only could I not find his original tweet, I then couldn't read any tweets out for the whole live radio show because... They were adding you into the same tweet. Yeah, the switchboard melted. Anyway, the vampire bats were named after the creatures. After the Bram Stoker creation. Did he create vampires?

He made vampires, I think. Well, I mean, the myth of the blood-sucking creature, which took quite a lot of different physical forms, including some quite bat-looking ones, that myth was very widespread in different countries for at least many hundreds of years. I was going to say, because vampire bats have been around longer in name and in identification of species,

I would presume, than Bram Stoker's book. Bram Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897. Vampire bats, I think, were named around 1770 in Britain. They are a South and Central American bat. There are actually three types of vampire bat, but they are the only mammal that lives off blood. So it was an apt naming? Oh, yeah.

Otherwise, I think they wouldn't have been named the vampire bat because i think that is what they had in common with the vampires but there is also a substance in their saliva called draculin which was named after bram stoker's dracula that's an anticoagulant um and it's being tested for stroke treatment amazing yeah i wonder if there's any character in popular literature of the last 50 years that is you know so monumental that'll end up having animal species named after it you could imagine something from harry potter you can imagine a voldemort bat couldn't you absolutely you can or a serpent or something um but i was a bit fuzzy as to whether there was the association with vampires becoming bats but because i'm

profoundly uninterested in vampires i didn't look that far are you profoundly uninterested in vampires, I didn't look that far. Are you profoundly uninterested? I don't care for the supernatural creatures that much. Where does it rank alongside your disinterest in novels and films set at sea? More or less interested in that. Except for cruise ships. I think more vampires. I did enjoy True Bloods.

Yeah. I have a non-zero interest in vampires. Zombies are lower than vampires in my interest levels. Did you stick with True Blood all the way through to the bitter end? No, but that's also because Channel 4, on which I was watching it, did not stick with True Blood. Oh, I went with it to FX for a couple of seasons. I did not have the capability.

Right, but I still really enjoyed it, but the last series was bullshit. I wish I'd got out a series earlier, before all the fairy stuff started. Fairies, yes, it was the fairies that killed me. Okay, so evidently, actually, I do like vampires more than i like fairies hi this is toby from eastbourne when i was a kid my mum used to really nag me about eating my crusts off my sandwiches which i never did um is there actually any fact that she told me eating the

crust was the healthiest bit or by not eating the crust was actually better for me i used to be told that crusts would put hairs on my chest and did they i already had a really hairy chest i think at the point that i was being told that so it didn't make much difference well you don't know yeah there's no control experiment is there your sister doesn't have any hair on her chest did she eat her crusts i didn't know never mind do you think it's just a thing your elders say to reduce food waste? Well, I think it may have stuck around as a myth, quote unquote, for that reason. I'd understand the logic of thinking that the crust of the bread would have the same composition chemically as the rest of the bread because it's the same flour, it's just the outside of it.

But actually, fairly recently, there's been some scientific research into this. And actually, yes, there is evidence to say that in the cooking process, it being on the outside and all, it does get cooked more. Therefore, it does have a chemically different constitution to the rest of the bread. Bread crust does have antioxidants. In one test in Germany, they were looking for pronilicin which is an antioxidant and it was eight times more plentiful

in the bread crust than in the other components of the bread I wonder if that's dependent on which kind of bread does crusty bread have more of it

than that soft bread this was a sourdough oh a very crusty bread that's a lovely crusty bread whereas like the square bread that comes pre-sliced

is often so soft altogether that yeah so I think basically if the crust looks like the rest of the bread it's not going to have a substantially different constitution. Because I always assumed it's because kids don't like crust. Yeah, well it's both, isn't it? It's both.

It's a way of saying, eat all your greens. Because it's always, when you're a kid, it's the bit you've left is always the bit they claim is the best bit for you. And it's only when you're older that you realise oh, she just wanted me to finish the stew so she didn't have to chuck it in the bin. bin yeah but also they didn't want me to grow up thinking i could only have nice things because life's not like that yeah absolutely oh i don't have to do my tax return mummy hi helen ollie and martin the sound man we're eating a glittery marks and spen's goo pudding and we wondered whether or not uh the center part of it the glittery

center part was the solid part or whether it was gooey the whole way through the cooking process so the melt in the middle chocolate puddings is the middle bit always melted right from the beginning that's the question isn't it well no not always because in the case of the chocolate fondant which in masterchef they're like oh chocolate fondant oh that's a real risk isn't it because you know if it's not liquid then it's a disaster right yeah chocolate fondant so that's the one where you're basically making quite a runny form of cake mix so the outside cooks into a cakey texture but the inside stays liquidy because you put less flour in it so it doesn't solidify like a sponge cake less flour and that's it that's the only thing that keeps it liquidy so it is a risk it could go hard it's basically less cooked cake mix yeah so that's the thing that's

where oh it's so difficult because if you overcook it then it's not runny um but if you undercook it then it's not cooked so it never starts out solid it's that the whole cake starts out runny it's become such a phenomenon hasn't it the chocolate m&s started it the chocolate fondant thing m&s didn't start it in the world that's my point it's a common pudding yes but m&s started this meme for like chocolate in the middle it's oozing yeah yeah and that's slightly pornographic photo because if you take a teaspoon wedge out of a gooey chocolate pudding and then let the inside seep out yeah it does look like an open pair of legs. Does it, though? As much as a pudding can.

Yeah, a little bit. That is desperate, Ollie. Well, that's what I see. You should just look at some real porn. Say what you see. I don't know how the M&S one is made specifically, but I do notice on the list of ingredients, after concentrated orange juice,

which I imagine is the orange flavouring for the orange goo that is in the middle there is gelling agent pectin which is what they use in jam to make it uh jammy um so i'd imagine they put that in there and it's probably a gel like solidity until you cook it and then it becomes runny that's what i reckon with m&s but i think there are probably ways you can work it so it could be solid like some people when they're making them at home, they will make a runny filling and then freeze it and then plop an ice cube into

the batter of the pudding before they put it in the oven. So the pudding bakes, the middle melts, so you have the runny and the cakey bit. So that's another possibility for your home making. I read the Good Housekeeping article on the best chocolate fondant rated by Supermarket. Oh yeah, how many did they test?

400. One, two, three, four, five, six. They tested six. Iceland was the best. Well, if anyone knows how to preserve a food. Yeah. This included, like, the Taste the Difference range and the M&S one. You wouldn't think Iceland would be the tastiest, would you?

Do they say why? Yeah. Our panel of taste testers were looking for a pudding with a rich chocolate flavor and a gooey center the testers looked at flavor texture appearance and smell before giving each pudding an overall mark in our blind taste tests well it's crazy that's someone's job isn't it the waitrose one had an amazing texture and taste but it smelled of beef devils in the details but i'm the kind of person i'm so easily swayed i'm actually gonna go now to iceland i mean not now it's nearly midnight but i'm gonna go to one open in south london i'm gonna go to iceland and try their chocolate fondant because i'm a fan of them out in the middle pudding because it sexually excites you

parting it like a pair of legs and seeing all the goo come out it's the change in texture really it's that roof of your mouth feel that you get from the inside mixed with the naughty chocolate outside did you used to like sherbet lemons no for that thrilling sensation no oh okay but i see the comparison a liquid center boiled sweet yeah yes okay yeah specifically liquid centers yes i like a liquid center exactly yeah okay i hate the opposite i hate a soft outside in the hard middle that can fuck off like a pip exactly if only peaches could get themselves liquid centers they'd really be doing some business as it is second rate uh that brings this episode of answer me this to an end oh but uh there will be another episode uh on the first thursday of next month march 2017 if you would like to be in it then send us a

question all of our contact details as ever are on our website answer me this podcast.com and as perceptive listeners will have noted we did not leave you completely alone in the month between our episodes because on your feed not on the website not on soundcloud only on an rss delivered feed yeah you will have seen that we put up a retro episode of answer me this yes with a little bit of commentary from us at the beginning because going back and now having to reflect upon work we did many years ago is an interesting experience so uh thank you to everyone who got in touch to say you were enjoying listening to those as well and you spotted the comedian holly walsh asking a question on the very first instance of our phone line in that episode and there'll be another retro episode coming up for you uh in the

middle of this month but only if you subscribe to answer me this on one of your rss powered apps okay that's how you'll get it also we have our own individual projects as well for you to listen to. We are all podcasters in our own right. I have a new one. Oh, wow. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Thanks. Look at me.

Really piling them up on you. New podcast, yeah. Podcast today. That's Olly Mann. It started in January. It is called The Week Unwrapped. And it's me talking each week to three very clever people about the big stories of each week. But instead of just doing like a news roundup like everyone else, we about the big stories of each week but instead

of just doing like a news roundup like everyone else we do the three stories of the week that you may have missed so that they're stories that might still have repercussions for our society in 10 years time but i mean for example the week of the presidential inauguration we talked about what the president of china had been saying so that's the idea the big stories with impact that you might have missed so you can find that uh searching for The Week Unwrapped on whatever podcast you use, iTunes or whatever, or I'll put the links on my website, olyman.com. And that is in association with The Week magazine, is it not?

It is, yes. So if you like The Week magazine, this is a podcast. And you like Olyman. Yeah. Which you probably do if you're still listening to this. Intersection of your interests. Helen, what other podcasts would you like to tell the audience about? I'm still doing The Allusionist

And jolly good it is too Thanks, yes, it is good Well I'm sold, where do I sign up? Theallusionist.org Martin? Song by song is still going We're talking about every Tom Waits song in chronological order And where have you got to?

We're about to start on Heart Attack of Vine, his 1980 R&B album. You're only at 1980? Yeah. Extraordinary. He churned out the albums in his 20s. My God, so many. So much good work. You're going to have a really good time.

It's not just for Tom Waits fans, lots of other good music on the show. You know what a good time I had? When Martin and I went to Los Angeles at Christmas, we went on a walking tour of places mentioned in Tom Waits songs. Yeah, we had a Norm's patima as a name checked in Eggs and Sausage. Well, you did. I'm sure that's something that you both equally would have chosen as

a destination. I mean, why else would you go to LA? There's not much else there. Anyway, all that remains is to thank once again Squarespace for supporting us on this episode of the show. And if you would like to support us as well, it's easy. Just go to paypal.me

slash answermethis. Oh. And remember, you can buy our old episodes and our albums and stuff at answermethisstore.com. But cool of you to give people the option to give us money in return for nothing. That's right.

Well, in return for the... Loyalty and stuff your ears. Yeah. Anyway, we'll be back next month, but there will be that retro episode in between bye