Answer Me This! - AMT349: Citizen's Arrests, The Shipping Forecast and Cheddaring

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

If you win a year's supply of Weetabix, how much Weetabix do you actually get? And where will you keep it? (And why would you want it?) We speculate in AMT349, as well as learning about cheddar, axolotl-maintenace, and deconstructed coffee. Find out more about the episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode349. 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

Who's the sexiest bunny, Easter or Playboy? Answer me this, answer me this How do I stop slugs eating my bok choy? Answer me this, answer me this Heaven and glory, answer me this When we last spoke to you in Answer Me This, episode 349, a month ago Days I'll remember all my life God, that nice just carry on we don't we don't have to do the chat uh listener peter was lady peter lady called peter in hunter valley australia

had written in about her neighbor who was shooting kangaroos and leaving the rude corpses to rot you remember that email listeners it's a memorable moment And about a month later those kangaroos are really really ponging. But Gina who is also in Australia has written in. Peter said that she had moved to Hunter Valley as a tree change. An expression that was new to us.

Gina says, tree change means to move to the countryside to escape the fast pace of life in the city. Okay, well we sort of guessed what it meant from context. We did. but i did wonder whether it was a typo right okay gina says it is a version of the word sea change which means to move to the beach to escape the fast pace of life in the city that's not how it's used in the tempest no so i was gonna say because i always thought that sea change kind of just meant a change of view or temperament based on the tempest of the sea.

Gina says it is also the title of an extremely popular 90s Australian TV drama, Sea Change, which popularised the idea. Maybe if you grew up at the beach, if you're the child of the people who did a sea change, you need somewhere to escape to, which is where the tree change comes in. Because you don't want a sea change to a sea change, do you? So you have to escape inland to the country i don't know but

i'm enjoying these words i wonder what else there could be p change when you move to a building with better sanitary conditions or worse yeah knee change when uh you need geriatric surgery uh ski change ski change yeah that's when you move to the mountains now that that does work yeah when i used to work as a researcher on this morning the word gear change used to be used quite frequently on the autocue. I don't know if this is something they still do, but I imagine it is because nothing at This Morning has fundamentally changed since 1992. And is that when the presenter had to do an extremely sharp tonal shift?

Correct. Here's a mouse windsurfing cancer mum. Yes, exactly that. Yeah. So it's basically a richard madeley prevention device it's basically saying richard you can riff on the autocue all you like but right now you're going into somalian orphans so don't make a joke about this cucumber looking like a cock that's basically what the the gear change on the autocue meant we have also another correspondent from

australia kim from melbourne ollie answer me this has the deconstructed coffee reached london ah i sent it over a month ago i'm not familiar with this is this just can mean have coffee beans and milk reached london she's referring to a trend which i guess like most coffee trends in the last few years has come from melbourne australia uh which is uh presenting a coffee even if it's not ordered as a deconstructed coffee this is the important point I think this is why there's been the fury

outcry exactly the outrage rage devastation it's a bit like your food on slates thing people are feeling like

they're not given the choice here I bet they can deconstruct coffee and put it on a slate can't they I bet they can you dip one end of the slate in coffee

the other end in milk sprinkle a line of sugar down the middle there you go some melbourne coffee houses you go to and there's a chance that when you order a coffee it will come out on a wooden plank with three little beakers one is full of frothed milk one is a shot of espresso and one is hot water and the idea is you mix it yourself interesting bullshit i say it's on the one hand kind of empowering you to make the perfect concentration of coffee for you yes on the other it's forcing you to do a lot of work i suppose like so many food trends it comes from a desire to instagram the food doesn't it it's like how can we present coffee in a way that someone's going to take a picture of it and put it on Twitter?

But the problem is they can put it on Twitter with the hashtag twat. That's the problem. It's not just about the Instagram moment, Ollie. It happens before that. People are bewitched by a new or beautiful visual presentation of things to eat and drink, aren't they? So to be fair, it might just be the novelty that the expensive coffee market needs.

And in a couple of years' time, they'll want their coffee in a polystyrene cup just as the backlash to this. Maybe, I mean... Or they'll want it in a super soaker and you fire it into their mouths. But most of the trends that are going to kind of catch on internationally

do come by London fairly soon after Melbourne. And this one hasn't really arrived I mean it may exist in Shoreditch but essentially it hasn't arrived so I think this is a stupid idea otherwise it would be more common already is it that Londoners are too stingy is it that they don't want you in the coffee shop spending that amount of time they want you to get it and leave I think that's it in London isn't it yeah table rent is not worth it's better for you to just buy your coffee and fuck off if you're getting a takeaway coffee as well do they give you three paper cups oh god don't get me going on the reusable cups like this has

been my personal kind of bourgeois nightmare in the last couple of weeks actually nightmare because worst thing in the world i try and do the right thing and get the reusable cups and actually starbucks have quite a good one because it's cheap it's only a pound and it's one that you can use i think something like 50 times before you throw it away it's just slightly harder and firmer so that's great i'll get one of those and i did and i carried it around with me every day for a week and it just so happened that week i was working in a place that was next door a starbucks i got my 25 off or whatever it is yeah I was happy the next week I'm a freelancer I can't help this the next week I was working in a place that was near a Costa oh do you

think you can't cross-pollinate it's not that I can't it's that I just couldn't bear to have the conversation I just thought I know what's going to happen they'll have to be bants about this I'll have to get my Starbucks cup out my bag and ask for a discount of the Costa and they'll have to wrong cup mate and I just didn't want to have to have that conversation it's funny that you think they give a shit just buy a third party cup for say eight pounds now that's the obvious solution yes it is but but the problem is i now have the starbucks one so then you know if i'm doing it to not use too many cups i'm then buying a second cup which is unnecessary yeah but you then got a disposable cup at costa because of shame. So it would have been a better economy

to get the brand agnostic cup. Well, yes, that would be the best thing, yeah. And the best thing, obviously, would be getting an Answer Me This cup made so that we could be promoting our podcast at the same time as filling up coffee in a variety of different chain and independent shops. Turn the mics off. We're going to go on Cafe Press right now

when we come back. That will be an available product. You can drink out of something with your own face on how do you think you will feel going into costa with your own face cup do you think that would be more or less embarrassing than going in with the bands that i want absolutely hi helen honey it's johnny from hackney i was walking past bank station i'm wondering is bank station called bank station because it's got lots of banks there or is that a really stupid Station because it's got lots of banks there? Or is that a really stupid question? Yeah, that's a stupid question. Well, not necessarily

because although we all know as Londoners that Bank has a long history of banks, maybe if you're... Bank of England, isn't it? Sure. Maybe if you're just a visitor to our city, maybe you would... Oh, sorry, yeah. Johnny from Hackney. It's not even that far from Bank Station.

He may well have never left Hackney. Could be that you might think the name sort of was reverse engineered and then Banks chose to set up in Bank more recently. What does Johnny think happens in Cockfosters, eh? Amazing nominative determinism, wasn't it? If you set up a part of London which was like, I don't know, a sports place and then stadiums started appearing. Or he could think it was on a river bank and

then the Thames got silted up so bank is a bit further away from the river's edge than it used to be. Well there is the embankment to the south I guess. Yes exactly and actually I did used to get those sort of semi-dyslexically kind of confused in my head. And there's Bankside which is where I'm by the Tate, it's not that far away. But no it is named after the Bank of England

and you are stupid Johnny. Which is literally right there as But no, it is named after the Bank of England. And you are stupid, Julie. Which is literally right there as you come out of the exit. The Bank of England has been on that site since 1734 to the world's eighth oldest bank. It was founded in 1694. Only the eighth oldest? Yeah, what's older than that? Well, it's the second oldest central bank

after this Swedish one. And the Swedish one is only from 1600s as well so i think it was just the whole economics works differently before that it was quite a complicated story about why they started up the bank of england to do with a big national debt after a battle that i had not heard of that france won right and so we don't cry about that one very much no it really was a history's written by the victors one two world wars and a national bank. But yeah, the station is named after the Bank of England and it opened on the 25th of February, 1900. I was curious to read that Monument Station,

which is very near to Bank, Monument Station opened 1884. It was named East Cheap after the nearby street, but within a month it was renamed Monument. What is with that? Well, it was the Mon monument there when the station opened. Yes, the monument was there and that is what is with that.

I mean, sometimes you just get it wrong, don't you? It's impressive to me that they realised they'd made a mistake that quickly. I think North Greenwich

should have been called Dome. I mean, I know the Dome is now known as the O2, but that's a corporate Yeah, but it's still a Dome, isn't it? It doesn't matter the branding.

And like Millennium Dome was always a bit naff, but it should have been called Dome. I think Millennium Dome's okay. You've got Millennium you've got millennium bridge millennium well yeah yeah i think the problem is a lot of people can't remember how many l's and how many n's are in millennium and it's just a bit of a pain for tourists it's a pain as well like because then it has to say north greenwich for the o2 arena yeah do you think it was because they wanted to regenerate or even

generate the area that is north greenwich and so they had to make it sound a bit like greenwich that was already pretty spiffy. That's true, yeah. Where do you live in your spiffy apartment block? I live in Dome. Sounds like you live in a French restaurant. Or a bellend. Yeah.

If you've got a question, email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's round 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. Here's a question from Emma from Washington, D.C., who says, A few years back, as a Christmas present for my husband, I had a portrait of us and our cat done by an artist on Etsy. It's sort of kitschy, continues Emma, so acknowledging that, and cartoony, but pleasant, not like what you get at a theme park. That's quite a low bar, I think, for portraiture. Oh, like a caricature.

Yeah. Right. It's not as bad as a caricature. It's not as bad as a caricature. I like the fact, Martin, that your parents have a caricature of your dad in their kitchen. They've got two.

Why does he keep... What? Who needs more than one caricature of themselves done in their lifetime? Well, I mean, that question really means who goes on more than one summer holiday? And plenty. You know, it's something to do isn't it a lot of british holiday resorts that is all there is to do right i've been on holiday and i've not had a single

caricature done and i feel fine about it no thanks i'm fine actually i mean now you have some quite characterful spectacles you could do a good caricature review yeah but i probably wouldn't be wearing them on holiday because they're mainly for computer work well often i find often like this is a regular occurrence i'm digging back into personal experience here from when i was seven and went on holiday every year to a place in sardinia where there was a resident caricaturist so often in 1988 in sardinia exactly i found anyone ratify this but when a person was presented to a caricaturist that didn't have any particularly prominent features they'd often just use the ones that were like their trademark stock features.

Well, like making a big nose or a big chin or something like that. I was quite an ugly 14-year-old. Oh, say it isn't so. Can you believe? But at eight, I was, I would say, generic looking. And I've still got the caricature. And basically, he put freckles all over my face. And I've never had, nor do I have now, freckles. So it must have just been like, oh, it's an eight-year-old. Let's give him freckles all over my face and i've never had nor do i have now freckles so it

must have just been like oh it's an eight-year-old let's give him freckles because there's nothing to accentuate on eight-year-old or perhaps if you do the big nose it's it's like you can't do that to an eight-year-old i don't know what the rules are there well martin's dad is a caricaturist dream because he has several trademarks beard yeah hat i think glasses as well sometimes yeah he wears glasses so once you've got the beard and the hat there's not that much face left to artificially enlarge in a caricaturist way you just make his whole head big and his body small well also they've drawn father christmas before so it's just that yeah anyway emma continues since having this portrait done we've had a baby who is now one year old congrats We think we may have more children eventually,

but these things you can't really know 100% how they will turn out. I'd love to have the same artist represent all members of our eventual family. So Helen asked me this. Should we have a portrait of the one-year-old done now, or should we wait and do all our children when we think we are done having kids? Is she worried that if she leaves it, then the artist will have retired from portraiture in 10 years or whenever their not yet existent kids are out?

No, I think this is pure economics, this. I think she just doesn't want to spend money now that she might then have to spend again later. Right, so she's thinking doing all children one at the end of their popping out kids phase so that she doesn't have to get individual ones per child and then having to get five done. Yes. Although to me, this is about whether or not you want to immortalise a one-year-old anyway.

Well, I quite agree, Ollie, because when you think about it, how many paintings are there of one-year-old babies that aren't creepy as fuck? Or in pictures of, say, newborn jesus he looks like a four-year-old he does not look like a newborn baby at all i'm not saying he should have gunkle over his face and a misshapen skull just saying he looks like a toddler standing up on mary's knee with quite well-developed facial structure and golden curls and all of that now without having a sort of massive detour into art history yeah why is that is that because portraiture at that time that had a religious element was about deference to jesus and making him look sort of better than a baby maybe

or was it i wonder that the models that they had to work on you know if you were posing for days for michelangelo was a four-year-old not a baby for obvious reasons or i wonder just thinking back to when we did a question about whether there were any paintings of pregnant mary whether they thought that painting a baby was a bit obscene in some way or whether they wanted him to look a bit more like he would be capable of miraculous speech i don't know it's true you don't see many portraits of one-year-olds i remember my brothers once asked me when they had little babies if I would paint them as a present for my mum and I said no. Now, I haven't seen all of your artistic work,

but that which I have is done in quite a faux-naive style. Is that how you would do that for them? Well, I didn't want to because what I find interesting is painting faces that are a bit lived in. And also I find it a lot easier if there's bone structure which with a baby they'll have chubby adorable faces just take a shitload of photos of a baby right that's the other thing i was going to say i mean being someone who's in possession of a baby i mean he's 15 months old now but still just about baby and

adorable so i can understand that you want to look at a picture of him but my phone is full of pictures of my son yeah so I sort of don't need... I mean, don't get me wrong. I know that visual art that you hang on the mantelpiece is different to a photo, even if you put it in a frame. But if I was going to immortalise a period of his life, I'd probably rather it was one that I hadn't extensively and exhaustively documented anyway.

Yes. I think also, even if you wait a few years, so the kid is five and doesn't look like they will as an adult, obviously, but still the portrait artist will be able to capture something of their personality. Yes. Whereas a one year old baby, that is harder to discern. Obviously, they do exhibit personality, but it's more tricky for them to show a little glint in their eye, say, or a mischievous facial expression. expression although the only sort of official uh professionally taken photograph of me that hangs in all of my family you know extended families homes is my sort of official bar mitzvah photo which my dad was apoplectic about because he was paying for it he was quite insistent that for my official bar mitzvah photo i.e the one that would be given to all my close relatives

when they came um that i wasn't wearing my religious gear but at the time because i've been brainwashed for two years in into this is the ceremony whereby you become a man in the eyes of god i was taking it quite seriously and i thought it was the responsible thing to do to to pose as if i was orthodox so the the photo that hangs in all of my family's homes of me is me looking very awkward age 12 anyway but like wearing a couple reading the bible uh it's not necessarily the most accurate depiction of my character so you'd look at that picture and assume that they became a devout child i didn't right so what you're saying is ideally if you are having any sort of picture of your child for posterity make it not too specific in any way give it a kind of timeless quality

but then this artist clearly has a strong style of their own so maybe it's kind of irrelevant anyway maybe what your baby looks like i think in any case i think what we're saying is wait i think so the danger of waiting is that if your child is sitting for the portrait artist then a five-year-old won't sit still but then if you're sending off for it on etsy they probably do it from photos anyway yeah exactly also i mean you don't want to wait so long that the hormones kick in and the child hates you yeah that's not the period you want immortalized yeah when my dad sculpted my brothers they were both uh i can't remember five or eight years old yeah does it look like them now a little bit yeah i mean the hairlines are more generous

than uh reality was that was it was a good choice though to go for that age do you think Does it look like them now? Little bit. The hairlines are more generous than reality. Was it a good choice, though, to go for that age, do you think? Well, I think if he'd done it when they were adults, then they would have been able to talk back and critique the sculpture as it was happening. I think you've said this on the show before, but if you did, it was years ago, so it's worth asking again. No, he didn't want to sculpt me.

That's what I was just about to... Really? Never even asked. Maybe he looked at my NHS glasses and thought, there is not a substance that I can sculpt with that can express these would you sit for him now if he asked to sculpt you i mean i realized that he's doddery now and it would take him a while yeah that's the thing i can't afford the 18 months um no right i think i wouldn't but that's because i don't want a portrait of me to exist and also i feel like he'd be looking at me in a very critical way which that was a whole thing in my childhood that I don't want to return to. Right sure yeah yeah. Have you ever done a self-portrait? I mean

I guess your comment there isn't a portrait of me that exists suggests you haven't. Yeah at school we had to do self-portraits made out of strips of newspaper which I think was an exercise to teach us about using something pre-existing like newsprint in different ways to express light and shade on your own face. Well done for deducing any kind of lesson from art lessons at school i still don't know what any of those were about it was a quite good portrait of someone else would you as a couple like to have a portrait of yourself done fuck no perhaps perhaps but perhaps from a sort of etsy style no crafty we don't even have pictures of ourselves around there aren't even that many pictures of us together, are there?

Do either of you have as wallpaper on your phone photos of yourself? Wallpaper on my phone is a picture of Zion National Park in Utah. Wallpaper on my iPad is a manatee. Martin? My iPhone is a birthday card with swans smoking.

And my iPad is a glacier in Iceland. Okay, right, so you hate looking at each other. Okay, fine. Good. at each other okay fine good welcome all the fucking time we don't need to be reminded throughout every electronic item well you don't need to look at us thankfully but you can listen to us for the best we chose this medium wisely you can listen to us to your heart's content especially if your heart is as big as your wallet, by buying our archive material. Yes, you can get Answer Me This episodes 1 to 200, along with our albums and... Apps. Apps, and our old best of episodes.

I think if you want just a little taster. That's all at answermethisstore.com. Yes, and for today's intermission... Here is a little nugget from Answer Me This episode 153. Hi, this is Phil in Stockport. Helen and Ali answer me this. In the 1989 Roald Dahl film, The Witches,

in the scene where the Grand High Witch played by the lovely Angelica Houston is addressing this crowd of being biddies, are some of the witches in the crowd actually men? Because some of them look very, very dubious indeed. Well, before we answer that, can I just pick you up, Phil? You can't call it a Roald Dahl film.

The tradition is to name the film after the director. So in this case, it's a Nicholas Rogue film. What? I wanted to make that point. Nicholas Rogue directed The Witches? Because that's the extraordinary thing, Nicholas Rogue. Of Don't Look Now? Of Don't Look Now.

And other films? Directed, forgotten 90s children's film starring Angelica Houston and Sir Muppet, The Witches, yes. Most of them were men and one of them is a cameo by michael palin no yeah no dialogue michael palin playing a witch in the background of that film wow fact here's a question from elena she says nothing my mother can do i live in the us and occasionally i hear the term citizen's arrest and it's usually accompanied by someone grabbing my arms and forcing me down onto the pavement i hope you don't hear it too often lena uh usually i hear it in a movie or a tv show okay i am dying to know if citizen's

arrest is a real thing or just something made up for movies that acts as a comedic device or to move the plot along and if it was just that that would be a very hackneyed device wouldn't it i mean it comes up a lot to the idea of the citizen's arrest helen answer me this if it is a real thing how does it work uh well it works differently in different countries and in fact in the usa it's different from state to state for instance in north carolina you can't do it there's not a law there that allows citizens arrest okay but in places where movies are more typically set the west new Carolina, you can't do it. There's not a law there that allows citizens arrest. Okay, but in places where movies are more typically set,

the West, New York City, can you do it there? Well, I think you can do it in all the states except North Carolina, but different terms and conditions apply. And it is actually really, really complicated. So looking at lots of different countries' citizens arrest technicalities, some countries will allow you to do it to prevent a crime but in others the crime has to have happened and in some you would have had to seen the crime taking place so catch the criminal in flagrante delicto and that would be the term legally that is used and the one that of course is being used on the streets of san francisco at the moment it happens

it means in blazing offense but i didn't know it in this context i only knew it as a kind of coy sex term in other places you just need to have reasonable suspicion that this crime had taken place and then in some places the crime has to be something for which you would receive a prison sentence i think in ireland it has to be something for which you would receive a sentence of five or more years so you'd have to have quite a good working knowledge of the legal system but in other places it could just be a minor misdemeanor or a disturbance or creating public affray but what does it permit you to do if you put someone on a sister's arrest again it varies from place to place what you have to do but basically you have to use reasonable force as in not too much force and by using the term reasonable the law is fudging this

a bit but they all recommend you do not cause injury to the person i think it would be okay to make them lie down and then sit on their back so they can't get away while you call the police but punching them until they were knocked out not okay not reasonable force even without the terminology citizens arrest yeah that's permissible in most developed countries anyway isn't it like if if someone breaks into my house i'd be allowed to do that anyway okay but here's the problem so you have to say very clearly that you are making a citizen's arrest and the condition has to be that there is not an officer of the law around to do that job for you and then you have to call for one straight away otherwise the problem is that if you do not make it clear that you're doing a

citizen's arrest or if you get the wrong person for the crime or if they haven't committed a crime at all then you could be done for assault you could be done for assault you could be done for kidnapping or false imprisonment yeah or false arrest i like the idea that they have to specify if there's an officer of the law around you can't do it like you might just kind of step and go oh hang on officer i've got this i, it can't happen very often. You're advised not to do this under most circumstances. So if there's a chance of you getting hurt or if there's a chance that you do it and the arrestee then turns it against you and launches a case against you for assault or whatever, then it's a big legal problem for them. So I think now if you've got a camera phone, the police would mostly prefer that you got as much identifiable

footage of the criminal as possible so face voice height gate number plates all of that than they would that you went and rugby tackled them and stopped them from getting away uh whilst calling the police presumably as well it's only for certain kinds of crime i don't think citizens arrest someone for fraud can you or if you think about the amount of people who have protested and say, you know, maybe they don't always mean it, but say Tony Blair should be arrested for war crimes. I mean, if you went up to Tony Blair and jumped on him, I don't think the police would take a particularly kind view of that.

Yeah, but if you caught Tony Blair stealing a precious vase from John Lewis, that would be when a citizen's arrest was appropriate. But yeah, this is what the inflagrante delicto means. So if someone has done years of insurance fraud, say, arrest was appropriate. But yeah, this is what the inflagrante delicto means. So if someone has done years of insurance fraud, say, not really appropriate. The police must find this fucking hilarious though, mustn't they? If someone phones them up and says,

I've just made a citizen's arrest. It's like the person who tries to take the giant cheque to NatWest to cash in, isn't it? Here's a question from Carl who says, I'm at the end of a night shift, best place to be in a night shift in my experience, listening to the shipping forecast on Radio 4. In this day and age of instant live data on a smartphone and most ships having long-range radar,

don't say it, Carl, don't say it. It's obvious where you're going with this. How dare you. You're going to get angry archers fans throwing excrement at your car window. Helen, answer me this. Is there a real need for the shipping forecast? He said it. Oh, no, you didn't.

He went there. Are there really any sailors who tune in at 5.15 to get their weather fix? It's on four times a day, Carl. Or is it just a tradition which the BBC can't drop? I do like the shipping forecast. It's almost like a poem, but is it needed anymore? Well, I mean, the poem is part of the need

because the BBC acknowledge that far more people who don't need the shipping forecast listen to the shipping forecast. It's on just before Radio 4 switches over to the World Service at 1am. So for a lot of people, they can't get to sleep without hearing rain, moderate or good, dogger bank, millibars, You know, that kind of stuff. In 1995

the BBC shifted the late night broadcast by 12 minutes and there were debates in Parliament. There was newspaper fury. There were petitions. The BBC backed down. Can you imagine what fury would happen if they

got rid of it? And also, it's such a British thing thing i think because we're a smallish island therefore surrounded by water and with a very significant maritime history and everyone is near enough to the coast to be able to identify with it i read something saying that in britain you're never more than 75 miles away from a piece of coast yeah you're never more than 75 miles away from a dimblebee making a documentary about the coast at any given time. And it's been on the BBC since 1925.

I doubt it's the most expensive few minutes that they have. I don't think they pay very much for it because it's made by it's not the Met Office, is it? I don't want to get into the tedious detail, but it's made by the Department of, you know, waves and fish and shit. Ships and shit. And so the BBC just rebroadcast it.

It exists anyway, whether Radio 4 broadcast it or not. Well, it certainly used to. Initially, it was the post office making it from about 1911, and it was called The Weather Shipping, and eventually the BBC took it over in 1925. The reason why they still have it, as well as the cult devotion to it and the fact that it's like this incomprehensible beat poem is that even though the ships might have internet and radar and whatnot, it is what they check their data against. It's also quite plausible that you go through areas where your internet doesn't work or your radar doesn't work, you know, or you're on a small boat. And if you're using your eyes and hands to drive the boat,

or whatever verb you do to a boat, I'm sorry, probably incorrect, then you might not be able to get on your phone and check. And I've been to a lot of coastal towns where you'd be extremely fucking lucky to be able to get any internet working. Especially off-coast in the rain with a touchscreen. I don't know if you've ever helped your mum build a website. It is the kind of torment from which there is no respite. If she asks, what's a widget again?

I will kill her with a rusty spike. Or a brick, or a spade, or a chainsaw. Squarespace is so easy, even your mum can use it. She can drag and drop and cut and paste, that's all there is to it. So Helen, put that spike down, I beg you, for Christ's sake, don't do it. Thank you to Squarespace for their sponsorship, their patronage of this episode of Answer Me This. And if you're out there and you've got an idea that you've been gestating for a while

and you think one day, one day I'm going to make this idea into a website, you can turn gestating for a while and you think one day one day i'm gonna make this idea into a website you can turn your idea into a website very easily with squarespace so easily because they have all these simple tools and uh smashingly designed templates so easy and you can do it if you've just been recently hit on the head with a frying pan you'd still be able to find your way around squarespace like spider-man a spider-man being hit in the head with a frying pan and that's why he wakes up with frying pan characteristics spider- like spider-man does spider-man mean hitting a head with a frying pan and that's why he wakes up with frying pan characteristics

spider-man spider-man hitting the face with a frying pan that's how it goes he fries an egg he's spider-man does everything a frying pan can

i mean a modern day superhero if they were just setting up their alternative persona would certainly use squarespace to quickly efficiently and easily create a beautiful website

yeah or sell merch about themselves yeah exactly because you can set up a store as well on squarespace and easily create a beautiful website. Yeah, or sell merch about themselves. Yeah, exactly. Because you can set up a store as well on Squarespace. And so have a play around with their two-week free trial. And then if you like what you've done and you want to keep it and you want to get a URL thrown in with the Squarespace service, then when you sign up for a year,

you can get 10% off if you use the code ANSWER. Here's a question from Stuart in Swindon who says, Ollie, answer me this this can you please tell me why cheddar cheese is not a protected food like stilton cheese or parma ham or cornish pasties cheddar cheese is from a distinct area cheddar it is yeah somerset and has a nice place yeah we've been we have been and it has a history there in cheddar somerset also why do the blessed cheesemakers from other parts of the world use cheddar to name their own cheese because of its notoriety and taste special about cheddar anyway it's nice is it because it goes melty and isn't too crumbly partly how funny a name is

wookiee hole as well in cheddar in somerset yeah that is a funny name although stewart and swindon is also a funny name because it's alliterative it depends where you are in the world doesn't it wookiee hole so that is the specific outpost of cheddar in Somerset where the classic cheddar cheese is from, isn't it? We did go. We did, yes. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com slash Britain. You can see our trip to investigate the various different cheesy places of Britain.

Our second stop on the journey is to Cheddar Gorge. Yes. And we saw some West Country farmhouse cheddar being made. I can't remember much about it. I remember it being a very pretty gorge and we went into a cave where you can see all of the cave-aged cheddar, cave-aging. But the reason that it's West Farmhouse cheddar

that's made there in cheddar rather than cheddar is because West Farmhouse cheddar is protected. West Country Farmhouse cheddar. That's the name that's the protected name. Okay, even though that's not in a farmhouse, it's in a cave. Yeah, it's just a style of cheddar that has to be produced in a particular way. Through the process of cheddaring, which is stacking and turning slabs of curd to facilitate drainage.

I'll tell you what, the more you read about cheesemaking, the less you want to eat cheese. It's like sausages. You just don't want to know. Just eat it and do not think about it. Drainage is not a word you want to think about when you're choosing your favourite cheese. But anyway, the cheddar that has been cheddared is called west country

farmhouse cheddar and that's protected and the reason that cheddar isn't a protected name is simply because it's so old that um it caught on in popularity all around the world well before anyone had the idea to protect something by region i don't think cheddar is a cheese with many exceptional characteristics maybe because it's so ubiquitous now that to me it is the generic cheese and then more exciting cheeses deviate from cheddar but is it not an honorific that cheddar is such a successful cheese that yes cheddar made not in cheddar somerset is also called cheddar and furthermore if cheddar even if cheddar was protected could you not write on your block of cheese not made in cheddar Somerset, cheddar in big letters, tiny asterisk, style cheese?

Actually, no. If it's protected, you can't. You can't call feta style cheese feta style cheese, for example. You have to call it crumbly goat's cheese or whatever or salad cheese. So, yeah, that is the benefit of being protected. But, yeah, like I say, many centuries after cheddar caught cheddar caught on well there goes my plan of making fake feta here's another cheesy question from david in camden who's aged 51 and 11.4 months oh maybe since he sent us this question he's turned 52 yeah he probably has actually it was a while ago happy birthday to you have some cheese for you

he says helen answer me this why do we have a cheese board on a dessert menu i suppose he means why is it dessert rather than a starter as it sometimes is in other european countries or even a main course well that's quite easy to answer because cheese because cheese i have talked about cheese all day because cheese is such a strong flavor that it would kill your palate for the rest of the meal ah and, eating cheese at the very end of the meal is thought to be better for your teeth. A lot of food that you would have just eaten is acidic, but the cheese is alkaline, and so it's thought that it

slightly neutralises the destruction of your teeth. But some people eat cheese before they eat dessert, don't they? The French, yes. That's weird, although actually... Well, they would say the British habit of having dessert then cheese is weird. Although I think there used to also be the savoury course. So maybe the cheese course is somewhat hearkening back to that.

But the French got the order of their courses from Russia because for a while Russian customs were very, very fashionable in France. And in Russia, it was thought that the sweet food would kill your palate. So you had to have the cheese first so you'd appreciate it more. So I think the cheese would kill your palate. The Russians thought the dessert would kill your palate. It hasn't caught on everywhere. I mean, in Spain, you get cheese tapas, don't you?

So that's sort of like a starter, sort of like a main course. I think probably you get a whole course in places like France and Britain because we have hundreds of cheeses and it's a celebration of them. And you might have runny cheeses and blue cheeses and hard cheeses. But there are other countries which might not have a good cheese making climate. So hungry for cheese now. Yeah, me too. Let's go out now and have a whole meal of cheese.

The Frenchman Briat Savarin said, a meal without cheese is a beautiful woman with an eye missing. What like Della Hanna in Curbel? Or Gabrielle? I don't think she had an eye missing. I think she just had an eye problem. Well, she was like a beautiful woman with an eye missing.

She is a beautiful woman with one eye concealed. This analogy is suggesting that women with an eye missing can't be beautiful, which they can. Why do people who like cheese have to be so ableist? That's a very good point, Martin. Why do French people make everything about sex? Or cheese. Why do British people make everything about cheese?

Here's a question from Helen from Hertfordshire, who says, I recently entered a competition to win a year's supply of Weetabix. Who wouldn't? Me. Someone who's wheat intolerant. Sadly, she says,

I was unsuccessful. Curse you, God. But it did lead to a discussion at work about how a company would actually send you a year's supply of something. Okay. Ollie answered me this. Would they send you vouchers for their products

so you could buy them at your leisure? Or would they post you a box monthly? Or in the Weetabix example, possibly two Weetabix daily? Just through your letterbox. Yeah. Oh, the Weetabix man's come again. Well, I mean, the generic advice when it comes to this year's supply of type competition is look at the small print and it will tell you exactly how that will be delivered to you

yes because if you ate 20 weetabix a day they probably wouldn't cater to your weetabix appetite yeah that's right so there is no legal definition of a year's supply so it is actually you know part of the law of offering a prize like this that the year's supply has to be accompanied by a disclaimer at the point that you enter the competition saying what that is and how you'd get it so in the case of ben and jerry's by the way how many how many pints of ben and jerry's do you think they classify as a year's supply the fact that you're asking makes me think you just get 12 but maybe it's something outstanding like 300 is it 50 martin's right it's 52 one a week that's quite healthy actually it's quite responsible for a ben and jerry's fan

that's a sensible amount isn't it but do you get them all at once because who has a freezer a domestic freezer that can cope with 52 ice creams at the beginning of your year so in the case of ben and jerry's no you get the voucher as helen suggests because also they introduce new flavors a lot you don't want to commit at the start of the year just in case they come up with something so with the weetabix competition i found this competition that you entered helen online even though it's closed and i saw the terms and conditions they were going to send you had you won 52 boxes of weetabix so again using the ben and jerry's matrix there you know you like your weetabix that's a packet a week let's not go crazy and i think they would

send them all at once so i mean that is tricky because where are you gonna put like your weetabix that's a packet a week let's not go crazy and i think they would send them all at once so i mean that is tricky because where are you gonna put all that weetabix well you see i'd put them in my garage but that attracts rats or you could build a shed out of the weetabix because they're hard like bricks you could insulate your house like the straw bell things my brother andy used to eat a heroic amount of weetabix and i remember he once ate i think 48 in a week in order to get a free Captain Scarlet figure that was vouchers on the box. He wasn't even that into Captain Scarlet. I think he just set himself

a goal and achieved it. I didn't realise the Mysteron's chief weapon was constipation. I also didn't realise that you actually literally had to eat what was in the box to be able to tear out the voucher and take it to the supermarket. He didn't want to win that Captain Scarlet on false premises. I guess. If you've got a question, answer me this podcast

at googlemail.com But you haven't got a scoop, answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Or if you really have the phone, 0208 123 580 Double 7 If you're up with the time, answer me this podcast I'll see you next time. Here's a question from Susie in Melbourne, Australia, who says, my friend asked me to mind her axolotl for a few months while she went back home to visit family.

You know, last month it was roo shooting. This month it's axolotls. Australia has thrilling wildlife. Okay. Weird Australian animal of the month. Okay. After about six months, it became apparent my friend was not returning to Australia. In this time, I was becoming quite tired of the axolotl. In order to feed them, you need to drop the food directly onto their heads as they're blind. Well, that sounds fun.

If anything, that's less boring than feeding other animals. Being quite uncoordinated, I kept missing his head and getting frustrated. Then the water would be putrid because of all the food floating around in it and changing it was quite disgusting and time-consuming. Plus, axolotls are slimy and gross, kind of like a prehistoric penis fish. I suppose that's why I was never given one as a child.

Because you weren't allowed slimy and gross pets, only fluffy and cute pets? Uh, I guess. Susie says, I was hoping the axolotl would die soon so we could use the tank for more pretty and less demanding fish, but alas, he kept living. I got my friend's permission to give him away

to someone more enamoured of axolotls, but decided to try selling him online. Within a few hours, he was taken. Someone swiped right on the axolotl. Absolutely, yeah. Ollie, answer me this am i morally obliged to offer my friend the money or should i keep it as an axolotl babysitting fee okay um well i i think you need to ask her not us obviously well if you ask someone am i morally

obliged to give you money they'll automatically think well there's a moral issue here no well yeah but you don't put it like that you say since i've been looking after the axolotl for the last six months i presume it's okay if i keep the money having sold it online but no worries if you'd like me to transfer you some of it right i was thinking it's okay not to tell her that you sold rather than gave away the axolotl since she's evidently ascribed no financial value to it because she said you could give it away and but then why not tell her and then do the noble thing and have told her well i don't think it's that noble just to tell her because suzy has been stuck axolotl minding for months maybe paying for the axolotls are key i think it depends what kind of money we're talking about doesn't it and we don't know okay yes if it's 500 pounds it does get to a point where you're

like i should really tell her that this is happening i don't know how much an axolotl but i'm guessing if it's 20 quid fine okay If it's like 100 Australian dollars, I would just keep it. Because also if your friends are abroad, then the exchange rate is going to take out most of their share of that. But if an axolotl is worth 1,000 Australian dollars, then I think you have to go halves. And presumably you have been paying food and vet bills as well. Who knows who's paying for the food that gets dropped onto the axolotl's head.

And you've been doing tank cleaning because it's putrid and gross you've been doing all this upkeep for no emotional reward because it's an axolotl also you've done the listing of the creature online your friend has access to the internet presumably wherever she is she could have sold him before she went away yeah exactly or she could have supervised the selling of him while she was away she's chosen not to do that. I think you're on relatively safe ground, but I guess where we disagree is I would just tell her, but present it as a fait accompli almost,

and you'd say don't tell her at all. Martin's just found an axolotl for sale online. How much is it, Martin? £7.50. Right, okay, yeah, don't tell her. £7.50? I mean, it's not even worth sending a question in. Unless that's just a picture of one.

We're wasting our time, Susie. Oh, no, that's a journal. Right, what costs more? A journal with a picture of one. We're wasting our time, Susie. Oh no, that's a journal. Right, what costs more? A journal with a picture of an axolotl on the cover or an axolotl? There's one for like $20 there. Right. So it's not going to be that expensive.

Yeah, chill out, Susie. It's fine. At least you haven't got kangaroos decomposing on your lawn. Well, we don't know. That's true. Yeah, maybe she just didn't mention it. $35.

For an Australian dollar? Well, the thing I was looking at before was a model of an axolotl. An actual axolotl in the US is $35 American dollars. It's not a significant enough amount of money to worry about. So there we go. Good to know. Great. Well, it hurts for us to part from you listeners,

but we will be back with a fresh Answer Me This on the first Thursday of May. We certainly will. However, you need to supply questions for that, don't you? Yes, you do. You know the drill. Otherwise, we'll have nothing to talk about. It'll just be white noise. That's a better name for the podcast, actually.

White noise is a good name for a podcast. It's probably been taken. Three white people talking shit. And all the contact details you can use to get in touch with us with that question can be found on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com And if you want to fill your ears with a free audio book, courtesy of our friends at Audible,

all you need to do is go to AnswerMeThisPodcast.com slash Audible. And if you want to survey some of our other work, I'm doing a live show on the 14th of April in Los Angeles with... Da-da-da, da-da-da-da. Yeah, it's going to be a burlesque show yeah sure with roman mars of 99 invisible we're doing a show together called 99 allusional because we've combined our two shows and go on tell them and uh and then shortly after that i am doing it's actually exciting listeners to listen to this it's pretty weird i'm doing ted the clarify that otherwise

people will be like no i'm doing a talk at the ted at the mother ted the actual ted conference so when people say i'm doing a ted talk they're usually doing a talk in their local town hall you're actually doing the ted thing i'm doing the ted mr ted right sir ted a lot big ted captain ted teddest of ted's so i get a bit lost with ted will that get podcasted or put on youtube immediately or could be both i don't think it's immediate i think they like to spread them out. Right. So at some point, Helen will be on TED, on whatever device you use to engage with TED.

Unless I'm absolutely shit, in which case they probably won't put that video up. Anyway, that's exciting. There's also your normal, well, not normal. What's the right word? Your regular podcast, The Allusionist. The Allusionist. And I have a regular podcast as well.

It's weekly, like my sex life. Like your bowel movement. We use it. One of those is a true statement uh modern man m-a-double-n pun on my name uh it is a weekly magazine show about sex and trends and amazing life stories did you think of the show after you thought of the name yes if you subscribe right now you will hear my interview with a woman whose ex was leading a double life and britain's top am Amy Winehouse impersonator. And also, I think the most answer me this style interview that I've done, which is a chat with the man who invented Baileys, the drink.

Oh. So if you wonder, where did Baileys come from? Did he just think, I'll put some booze and some cream together, job done, off to lunch. Yes. Full story at The Modern Man, modernman.co.uk. Martin. Songbysongpodcast.com yeah you

can hear all of our work but of course do return to answer me this for the retro episode halfway through the month and then for a brand new episode on the first thursday of next month yes and if you would like to donate to the show for no reason other than ollie's baby needs shoes big heart and deep pockets uh then all you need to do is go to paypal.me slash answer me this. Thanks. Any other business? No, that really is literally all our business. If our accountants are listening, we've just documented it all there. So just work with that as your template for the 16, 17 years. Just come to an end.

Thanks, Perry. Yep. Shout out to my accountant. Okay, great. Right. Bye. Bye.