Answer Me This! - AMT350: Fox Meat, Kilroy Was Here, and Barbicide

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

Ever run over a fox and thought, "Mmm, maybe I could cook that up for dinner - but how?" No? Well, listen to AMT350 anyway. You never know when survivalist recipes might come in handy. Find out more about the episode at . Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandolly Facebook 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

Is the new Baywatch movie set in Clapton-on-Sea? How's the bidet? How's the bidet? Yes, I'll be on your show. How much is the fee? How's the bidet? How's the bidet? Heaven and glory, how's the bidet? I've just done TED, but we're recording this before I went to TED, so here are some speculative TED anecdotes. When Serena Williams and I were hanging

out, oh, Elon Musk said the funniest thing. Probably all that just happened. All that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, if you do stay trapped in Vancouver for the next few months, then you might bump into an anonymous lady who has been in touch who says, this summer, I'm going to be moving across the country, Canada, for a job. She might be moving the other direction. She might be. She might be going to Newfoundland. She doesn't specify where she lives in Canada or where she's moving to in Canada. In fact, this email is frustratingly sparing on details.

But she does say, I am moving back to the same place and job I had last summer. It just so happens to be in the mountains. Lovely. I'm wondering which job that's mountain-based just so happens to be in the mountains lovely i'm wondering which job that's mountain based just so happens to be mountain based a sort of summer resort job at lake louise or whistler or something like you wouldn't say it just happens to be in the mountains if you were a mountain ski instructor would you because it would have to be in the mountains yeah but if she was doing a summer job as a ski instructor then she'd probably not be doing much ski instructing that that is also

true yeah let's say she sells ice creams to hikers in Banff. Fine. Anonymous Lady continues. This summer, I am planning on hiking to the summit of one of these mountains. And this presents my dilemma. I am very excited and I want to tell my mum. That's a sweet thing to write, isn't it?

Very. But I know that she would be worried about me going on a long hike on my own so helen answer me this will you come with me no should i tell my mother about my mountain climbing plans and risk her trying to talk me out of it and potentially giving her undue stress or should i wait until after i've done it and then tell her how great it was retrospectively she does say it's not a very big mountain done it and then tell her how great it was retrospectively? She does say it's not a very big mountain. Okay, cool. And then she lists parenthetically a statistic that I find bewildering.

Yeah. 2,766 metres in elevation. Puny. It doesn't sound small to me. It sounds quite big. It's the biggest mountain that I would have ever climbed, but maybe in your world, not a big mountain. When did you ever climb a mountain?

When I was 10, I went on a school summer expedition to the Lake District and I had to be led along on a lead like a dog because I might fall off. Anyway, this is a significant mountain, but she says it will only take a total of 12 hours to do. She knows three other people who have done the same climb and she grew up in bear country and therefore knows quite a bit about safety around wildlife. Yeah, sure.

It's that kind of thing, though, that doesn't reassure your mother. Presumably she knows that you know bear safety because she raised you in a bear-rich region. I think it helps that this mountain is somewhere you've been to before and survived because I think the familiar is less threatening-seeming. Well, I think from that point of view, it is significant that she was brought up in bear country because just the very fact that it's in canada i'm not giving you a very big

country but nonetheless it's not as foreign as if you were to say i want to go hiking through the desert of saudi arabia like you know she will understand what a mountain in canada roughly is like and probably has some experience of people who have done things like that herself what i'm wondering anonymous lady did you do any mountain adventures last summer? And if so, do you have photos that you can show her of you safely on the mountain? Preferably ones where the terrain looks quite gentle and non-threatening.

And there's not a bear in the background. Exactly, because then your mother's mental picture will be of that and not of the worst possible scenario. Sure, that's clever, yeah. Don't show her that film with James Franco where he saws off his own arm. Absolutely not. But she's not going to Utah.

She's safely going to be in Canada. Sure. But I think, yeah, you should tell her because you want to. And I think you'll enjoy the hype more with that not on your conscience. But also, just in case you do die or get injured, she'll be very upset that you didn't tell her

well that's true although at that point she will be more upset that you're dead than that you didn't tell her you were going to go and do the thing that then killed you well then the problem is if you have an accident and you don't die she'll be angry at you yes yes then you have to have that conversation in the hospital yeah and and you will have had an accident so it's a bad scenario should be pleased that you survived yeah actually but i you know, I don't want to get into a very deep conversation about the afterlife here. But if you have any consciousness of it at all after you've died,

you would be pissed off that you didn't tell your mother you were going. Yeah. Because you didn't give your mother the opportunity to say to you whatever she might want to say, knowing that you're going on a trip that might risk your life. You know, so you could regret it yourself

in a celestial way but obviously i think downplay the elevation of the mountain you could just be a bit vague about it and say i've got some lovely hikes planned maybe you could allude to the idea that they're not solo hikes i mean take a hiking buddy is that yeah what is the business about going by yourself i wonder if that is just perhaps our correspondent likes to be alone amongst nature. Oh, splendid. But you could think about sharing it with another mountain-minded person. Or a hiking group. And you could just hang back or rush ahead so that you don't have to speak to them.

Or wear obnoxiously large headphones. Well, on to another wild animal. Hi, it's Asa from Ashford. Hello, normally, answer me this. It's fox edible because I've just hit one yes it is if you want proof Philip Schofield ate someone this morning a little while ago prepared by the chair of the RSPB wow yeah why I mean why would a bird expert come on a daytime tv show and kill Anita Fox well I don't think she killed it on air I think she probably brought it in I think I can't remember why now I think maybe it was to prove that you can eat roadkill and like all

these things it was really just so that you could see a dead fox being cooked wasn't it and just the same as the testicular exam is really about seeing someone scrote him right and so that you can see philip scofield doing something where you can go oh philip and holly can go um and he said it tasted gamey yes evidently he's still alive. Yes, you couldn't fake that. Not for three hours of live television a day. But I would say if you're going to try this, there are some things to bear in mind.

So first of all, if you've just freshly killed it, as Asa has, you could take it home and prep it because it's very lean and organic meat. If you see a dead fox by the road, it be putrid yeah and i i imagine there are easy ways to detect that but uh if for some reason those elude you what are you looking for apart from the flies swarming around it and the terrible smell i i think really that the thing is though raw fox meat smells horrific um what does it smell of just judging by what a fox's piss smells like imagine that smells like good point a fox pissed piss smells like. Yes, good point. A fox pissed in my trainers once, and not only was I unable to ever wear them again,

but after I tried to wash the smell out in my washing machine, I very nearly considered throwing my washing machine away. So in order to get rid of the smell in the flesh, people used to soak it overnight in streams, and now they might brine it overnight, which also helps because it's very lean meat and lean meat is often tough so brining might make it more tender and then you probably want to cook it with something a bit fatty like like lardons stew seems to be what most people will make with fox meat i think i think you can adapt recipes that are for venison or goat where you've got similar problems of leanness and toughness okay when it

comes to whether or not an animal is edible i mean a sort of rough rubric as far as i can work out is if it's a fish check very carefully whether it's edible because there's quite a few sort of sea yeah but if it's a land mammal i mean it's a bit disgusting but as far as i can work out there's basically only polar bears that you're not supposed to eat because their livers are toxic wow well i would find it unlikely that i would be able to hunt and kill a polar bear but even if i did my first thought wouldn't be chopped liver like i'd think about other parts of that animal first yeah but then if you miss jewish polar bear hunter in the arctic if you've gone as far as killing the polar bear i think you'd eat all of it if you were in the

arctic you might well go for the liver because that is a very nutrient-heavy organ. So that might actually be what you went for first. Well, don't. That's my advice. And then butchered the rest of it. And the other one, apparently, to avoid is the hawk-spilled turtle. Oh, why? I don't know, but it poisons you somehow. And you can identify it from the turtles that you can eat that are delicious

by the fact that it has yellow polka dots on its neck. I'll remember that next time I'm in Pret-a-Manger. The only thing I know about eating animals that are bad for you is from i learned from naked and afraid i've still never seen naked and afraid oh my god it's such a good show i just i mean i was put off by the title i don't particularly like being either of those things well you're not in it that's the thing you're watching other people you don't have to be yeah yeah and there's someone whose job it is pixelating bum cracks and testicles every frame are you watching it on box sets no it's um i watch it when i go to the usa because there's

nearly always when i'm jet lagged in a hotel room an eight hour naked and afraid marathon on discovery i have different shows that i watch on cable tv in america to the ones that i watch here i watched that one about tattoos and i watched which one tattoo fixes uh that's come to the uk since hasn't it no uh tattoo master i think or tattoo tattoo fixes uh that's come to the uk since hasn't it no uh tattoo master i think or tattoo tattoo king i don't know la ink tattoo idol yeah one of those and then i watch um i'm a tattoo get me out of here i watched that one with the guy that used to be fat but now isn't anymore because he stopped doing competitive eating going around eating burritos yes yeah my other jet lag favorite is uh say yes to the dress on tlc which is kind of hypnotically tedious

because i do not understand wedding dresses at all and the appeal and yet every time it's just a woman has arrived you get a wedding dress and either she leaves with one she likes or she leaves with no wedding dress or she comes back and she either likes or doesn't like the one she bought eight months ago right and that's it sort of Homes Under the Hammer style is it just so finely set to a formula

I love a bit of Homes Under the Hammer here's a question from Callum who says I was recently watching Roald Dahl's Most Marvellous Book on Channel 4

and obviously one of the books featured in the list was George's Marvellous Medicine which got me thinking Helen answer me this

would the Marvellous medicine have killed someone? What does it have in it? Well, let's look at the recipe, shall we? One bottle of golden gloss hair shampoo. I'd imagine most shampoo, even the herbal stuff, is not going to be great for you. One tube of toothpaste. You can eat that, but it would not make you feel good. One can of super foam shaving soap.

Imagine the same problems as shampoo. Soap is not easy to digest happily one jar of vitamin enriched face cream that's basically petroleum one jar of hair remover that's likely to be quite toxic that doesn't sound good one large tin of wax or floor polish floor polish is often carcinogenic one tin of curry powder that's okay not toxic but that's a lot of curry powder. Yeah. One bottle of extra hot chilli sauce. Ditto. Yes. Four bottles of animal pills.

What's that, ketamine? I think the point is here, though, you could have a tincture of this and you would be okay. One large tin of brown paint. I think that's... If everything else didn't carry you off, that will. Well, isn't the sort of conceit that some of these ingredients are going to react in some way to to denature their

poisonousness and create things that the human body can digest there's just about enough of the sort of fabulity wishlessly washersley type language in the way those ingredients are constructed that you know that it's a spoof that it's a joke that it's creative like it's i find it so fascinating with dahl's books the extent to which because they're all really cruel right dunny champion of the world is cruel to pheasants but not as sadistic towards humans as a lot of them are well it's adults isn't it i mean he is sometimes cruel to children but it's normally adults being cruel to children and kids getting their own back. That's quite a common theme. Okay, no, so that's the crucial thing.

So I read a biography of Roald Dahl once, which in fairness was a slightly muckrakey Roald Dahl was an anti-Semite type biography, but it was a good academic one. And it went through the original drafts of Dahl's books. and it showed how his publisher at jonathan cape would come back with criticism that nullified some of those issues which as a parent you just be like i can't have my child read this it just tipped it so like like the oompa loompas and whether they're sort of colonial creatures that's an example you know whether they're african pygmies for example that was dialed down like an example that sticks in my mind is fantastic mr fox so fantastic mr fox is a story about a fox going to steal a chicken kill and eat a chicken okay from a neighboring farm and basically the editor said you can't write a whole book about how great it is to go into

your neighbor's garden steal their stuff and kill it so there's that whole business about boris bunts and bean whatever they're called the nasty bunts and bean one short one fat one lean there we go three horrible crooks so differently looks none less equally mean wow how's my brain hung on to that i haven't read this book for like 30 years that's the space that you get listeners when you don't watch sport it's still wasted but yeah so exactly equally mean right so the publisher said you have to make the farmers evil and they have to have done something victim blaming yes they have to have done something to mr fox and his family which they have they want to drive him out of their farm

right he's a trespasser and then he has a reason to go and think oh fuck them i'm gonna eat their chickens and it's to make my kids survive and actually it's still a dubious moral like it's saying stealing's okay in some circumstances. But at least... Well, like Robin Hood. Exactly. At least a parent can say, well, you know, some people think

they can understand why you might want to steal a thing. It's not just like, let's write a book about how we steal stuff. Yeah. And yeah, George's Marvelous Medicine is exactly... Like, it's a book about how you kill your grandmother by making a toxic concoction. Yeah.

But it's just got enough fantastical fun stuff that you're like, oh, it's a joke. Is that why he does it? Is he trying to, like, poison her? Yeah, because she's done a terrible thing. And I can't remember what the terrible thing is, but it's like, you know, she's mean, she's unpleasant. She's just a miserable old girl.

You know, she's ugly. She has a beard. Women. But the book does contain a warning at the beginning saying do not try to make George's marvellous medicine yourselves at home it could be dangerous but I would have thought that even if the other ingredients are okay

the four jars of animal pills whatever they are that could carry her off it could just be women medicine I think four jars of any type of pill is going to be bad for you four jars of paracetamol You're dead aren't you

Yeah I bought one jar Of iron supplements And the pharmacist said Don't take them all at once More than one a day And you're in trouble Why what happens

I don't know But he said The whole jar Which is 90 Could kill you I think even like A tube of Barocca Has a warning on it

Saying don't have more Than your recommended Daily allowance You start to fizz That's the way I want to go me too if you've got a question then email your question. So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty.

On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's an adventure from Nora from Boston, who says, Yesterday, I went to my salon for a haircut. As neither my stylist from Nora from Boston who says, Yesterday, I went to my salon for a haircut. As neither my stylist nor myself are much of a small talk, I found myself

with a bit of time to take in my surroundings. I had this. I went for my haircut the other week. I was doing local radio in Northampton and I don't like

being recognised generally. It very rarely happens anyway. Really? You don't like it? I don't like it. Why not? Because if people recognise me physically, it's because they've seen me

on daytime television. And if they've seen me on daytime television. Oh. And if they've seen me on daytime television, they haven't necessarily, in my view, enjoyed my best work. Maybe they were led to daytime television by your best work, so they've really done all of it. No, that doesn't happen. If you happen to be watching a paper review on Lorraine,

that's not because you listen to The Modern Man. So if I'm at like a podcast event or something or music festival and people know me through Answer Me This, that's fine. I don't want to be recognised by you people. You come and say hello. That's fine. Very specific. But I very rarely want to be recognised generally.

However, when I do work on Radio Northampton, which can feel like a lonely existence, you step out of the studio and you feel like, well, I'm Big Fish Small Pond now. I've just hosted three hours on radio northampton wow northampton come and get me yeah so i went and got my haircut after doing a show recently on radio northampton and i really wanted the hairdresser to ask me what i did so that i could say oh yeah i've just done a show on radio northampton then he could say oh my god my nan listens to that god this is like an episode of fraser and he didn't once ask me what i do for a living when does that ever happen hairdressers always ask you that and i wanted to be a local star in northampton just for that afternoon could you not just drop a few hints like i've had a really busy

morning at work tell you what this is a good haircut for radio the closest he did to small talk was uh he was asking me whether i thought he should have got the iphone 7s or the samsung you said well as a tech expert i resisted jeez i wanted him to be excited that i'd just been on radio northampton playing out george michael and doing the bouquet call yeah but he'd probably been at work dressing hair and not listen to that and isn't isn't interested so what call the bouquet call it's amazing isn't bouquet that quality blurriness in photographs what it's a feature where you call an old woman and you say gene it's a special day isn't it and then she goes oh my god i'm on the

radio and you say yep you're on radio northampton because it's your 90th birthday do you know who's nominated you gene is it my daughter yes it's your daughter because that's the only person you speak to she's had a tough year hasn't she oh yeah she's got cancer it's great it's a brilliant feature um because at the end of the call the person no it's really genuinely i'm obviously you know being flippant about it but it's actually a genuinely really lovely feature today and the kind of thing that local radio does really well at the end of it the the person you've called is allowed permitted to have as a prize either a bouquet of flowers delivered by a local florist oh or they're allowed to look at a bouquet of flowers on google images or they get a meal for two in a local establishment yeah you go for the meal right but some people don't they go for the flowers well i

think if it's a problem to go out or if you don't have anyone to go with then you've got the flowers at home for a week or if the person that you've called is dead because that's the other thing that has happened a few times not to to me, but to the presenter that normally presents it that I'm covering for. They call up and, you know, there's an elderly audience and sometimes they nominate people

a month before the call so they can get the date circled in the calendar. Hey, can I see? You do it live on air, like the whole feature is that you hear the dialing of the number and then the ringtone.

Is there not someone in the production team that calls the day before to check that person is still alive? No, because it's supposed to be a surprise and there's like sometimes it's funny when they're not there or they don't know who you are then you call up and pretending to be like oh hello can i speak to sheila i'm selling double raising yeah yeah yeah just hello are you alive yes exactly hi i'm calling from radio northampton just checking you're still alive great okay no reason why anyway yeah that has happened wow apparently okay well remember nora. She's sitting in her salon in Boston looking around because they're not chatting.

She says, as I looked around, my gaze alighted on a glass canister with a silver lid, similar in shape and size to an eight cup French press or cafetiere as we call them here. Absolutely. Yeah. But still nice to have a comparison, isn't it? So we can all imagine exactly what you're looking at. I'm getting a mental picture. Thank you, Nora.

Very considerate. Not in Northampton anymore. I'm right there in Boston with you. Well all imagine exactly what you're looking at i'm getting a mental picture thank you norah very considerate not in northampton anymore i'm right there in boston with you well this is what you're looking at then yeah rather than coffee this canister was full of an unnatural blue liquid as opposed to all of the natural blue liquid water yeah but like when you when you fill an eight cup french press with water it doesn't look that blue that's right it was full of an unnatural blue liquid and a good dozen or so hair combs and its glass surface was emblazoned with the word barbicide. Ah.

I recollected that I've seen similar if not identical containers at virtually every haircutting establishment I've ever visited. From the JCPenney salon I visited as a child to Fast Phil's barbershop where I take my preschool son, to the Suburban Salon and Day Spa where I found myself yesterday.

That's a comprehensive survey of salons. No one can say, well, one woman, she doesn't have a wide enough experience of salons to say that it's everywhere. You've seen the world, Nora from Boston. Nora has provided us with a lot of pertinent detail. Ollie answered me this. What is this substance that unites high and low coiffure culture? What is in the mysterious fluid called barbicide? How often does the average salon change its canisters?

And most importantly, does it do a damn thing to disinfect those combs that get used on multiple clients throughout a hairdresser's day? If you've seen it in every hair salon you've ever been to, I think it's reasonable to assume that it's at least an okay working product, isn't it? I don't know. A lot of myths get repeated, don't they? Okay. There was actually, believe it or not, legislation

until quite recently in quite a lot of the states of America that every hairdressing salon had to use Barbicide. Which is interesting because it is a brand. It's not a generic type of product. Barbicide! It's not like you've made it a doll, doesn't it? It does, yes, exactly.

Can you get different flavours and colours of Barbicide, I wonder? There are other brands that are owned by the parent company, which is still a family business, owned by the son of the person who started it. Harold Barbicide! But no, Barbicide itself is just the one product. Okay. And the active ingredient, to answer the question directly,

what is the mysterious fluid? The active ingredient is benzalconium chloride, which essentially means that it's a disinfectant for grooming tools, yeah. But it's a really powerful one that is even a viricide effective against HIV. Gosh. So quite valuable, obviously, for a salon that might be nipping people's necks by mistake whilst they're chopping your hair and also your scalp there's a lot of blood vessels there yeah um i've never seen this though and i don't know whether this is an american thing only but i had a haircut this morning and i saw you're both your hair looks i don't mean both the hairs on your head. I mean both your hair, Helen, and your hair, Martin, they look good today.

Thank you. Your hair looks good. Mine looks good too, thanks. Tony and Guy Northampton, thank you. It does look good, yeah. Yeah, yeah, whatever. And yet, I don't know what kind of filthy combs they were using on it, because Barbicide doesn't really go with the aesthetics of the place I get my hair cut,

because it's all like white colour scheme, and I don't think the bright blue would be, it would be disharmonious. I mean, I hate to play into American stereotypes of how dirty and filthy we all are in Britain, but definitely our levels of hygiene, it seems in barbershops, is not as high because this is not a generic product you see everywhere in the UK. Yeah, although my hairdresser is Swedish and she started the salon.

So do you think of Sweden as being a cleaner place than Britain? Yes, I think I generally do. And it's all bright white, which is very clean looking. Sure. And it's called the clinic with a K. So clinics tend to be clean and having the extra letter K even more clean with a K. I recommend it, by the way. Clinic, Exmouth Market, Women Called Anna.

My hair has not been nearly as shit since I started going there. What a review. It was fucking terrible before. She's going to put that straight on the window, isn't she? My hair's not been nearly as shit since I started going there. What a review. It was fucking terrible before. She's going to put that straight on the window, isn't she? My hair's not been nearly as shit since coming here. It's got two Ks. Yeah, so I don't think it's ever really caught on here, although we do obviously have disinfectant.

I think the danger here is that people are such pissheads that they try and drink it. Well, the blueness is just for dramatic effect. It's a brand identity thing. But obviously by colouring it blue, you are kind of possibly, arguably, making it more attractive, like more compelling, aren't you?

People will, as Nora has, look across the room and say, oh, what's that? I don't think people would drink it, but I do think in a way it's a slightly strange product to have made sexy well if you consider bright blue to be sexy sexier than like dishwater colors yeah if it was like sort of dingy grayish beige which which most disinfectants are i mean this is why in 1947 when the brand was invented it managed to break through

and become the predominant one not only because it was blue which was the novelty but also because apparently i have to go on the information provided by Barbicide's own website here. So I can't independently verify this. It's probably partial, isn't it? It is probably partial. But according to their website, theirs is the only product of its type that keeps its colour because it's a concentrate. So you add water to it.

This is answering another one of Nora's questions. How often does it does it get changed in the canister uh you can keep refilling it and apparently barbicide is the brand leader because it keeps its color stays blue even as you continue to dilute it yeah but if you just keep topping it up and keep topping it up how much disgusting detritus is there at the bottom of the cylinder it's like when i go and get um a blood donation when i go and do a blood donation i was gonna say why don't you go to one of your dodgy black marketplaces. Just to perk me up.

Helen gets her blood changed every 12 months. That's how I stay so young. And they prick your finger and drop it into a small vial of blue liquid to test your iron levels. So if it sinks, then you have enough iron in your blood to go ahead with the donation. And so at the bottom of this cylinder is just a little pile of people's blood drops which are a little creepy so i'm imagining the barber side it's full of dead knits and stuff like that do you think it's so strong that the

teeth of the comb get rotted away by it no that was another brand strength again according to barbicide.com the the product is not so strong that it rust metal it's not a secret for its success so a barber can leave his scissors or hers but you know generally male barbers leave leave his scissors in the barberside for perhaps four or five nights you know long weekend come back take the scissors out fine no rust okay yeah miracle disinfectant and there's not been any competitor that thought i can take some of barberside's glory by making pink Barbicide. I think there must have been. But I guess the fact that they became, like I say, this legally sanctioned product,

that's, I mean, that's a state monopoly, isn't it? I'm sort of surprised it was allowed to happen. Do you happen to know why in 1947 suddenly Barbicide became De Rigueur? I think, again, colour. Just simply that. This guy had, it was kind of invented in quite a mom and pop way like in his basement home or something he was a scientist but right he brought this batch of disinfectant into his local barber said you should use this and it looked funky right so it

wasn't after an epidemic of transmittable scalp diseases well no mr harold barber side was like i can fix this the great cradle capper epidemic of 1946 no but if you do think i mean 1947 you have got people coming back from the war so actually you know you can imagine that people come with all kinds of weird nits and stuff in their head so kind of figures especially new york as well you know it's the first place isn't it that people land from europe so is that where mr barbicide mr king his name is was yes yes king barbicide Barbaside, yeah. Well, also, they often have a pestilence problem in New York because people are so closely packed. So there's this whole bed

bugs problem there because it's so easy to transmit bed bugs from one to the other. It's making me a little bit itchy this conversation now. Just douse New York in Barbaside. Like in Ghostbusters 2. Yeah, that is probably what's going to happen in the next Independence Day. They are running out of ideas. Let's take a break now for our intermission and hear a little bit of answer me this from the past

our archive content well the first 200 episodes of answer me this are available to buy and they are only available to buy uh we are occasionally releasing uh content on our free feed as you know for a limited period only but if you want to dip into the entire back catalogue the only way you can do that is by buying them from itunes or from amazon or from our own website answer me this store.com here is a little taster of our classic content from episode 143 from 2010. Greg says, Helen, answer me this. Why are the slices of toast used for dunking in boiled eggs called soldiers?

Greg, that's really obvious. I can't believe you can't work that out for yourself. Why is it obvious? Go on. Because they're like an army, aren't they? They're like an army of little soldiers. They'll kill you soon as they look at you. A little army of soldiers for little Ollie to dip into his eggy. Patronising me.

They don't really look like soldiers. Well, they're not detailed. They're not like Madame Tussauds, Helen. They've not got uniforms and they lie in a big pile. If soldiers lay in a big pile, it'd be disastrous. That's what they tend to do at the end of the battle. I'm sure I remember my parents discussing with me the different ranks of the soldiers. Like, hey, the really thick one which has the crust on is the sergeant major and then the one in the thin one in the middle is the corporal martin

couldn't eat for hours because he had to arrange his men on a detailed map of france here is a question from abby who says i live in the us and i'm a professional opera singer being an opera singer means i'm obliged to put up with probing questions from patrons and donors who believe that because their donations pay my salary, it's like me in Radiotopia, they can ask me absolutely anything. Questions have ranged from the intrusive, why are all mezzo-sopranos lesbians? To the downright bizarre, why are your ears so small? I'd say more from the general to the specific there rather than intrusive to the bizarre. Who can answer why their ears are however sized they are? It's just how big your ears are. Abby says, I've learned to deal with these questions through long experience, but what disturbs me now is that more and more people with powerful roles within the opera

industry have started asking these intrusive questions specifically about my personal and romantic life. I recently had the general director of a major opera company ask me, in front of a group of people, when my last romantic relationship was. Upon learning that I had not, in fact, had any romantic relationships, through personal choice, I might add, he demanded to know how I could possibly feel qualified

to sing about love without any personal experience. And with such small ears. How can all these people play hobbits when they've never had experience of Middle Earth? So, Ollie, answer me this. Should I concoct a fake girlfriend or boyfriend who lives in Canada? Or is there another way to deflect such lines of questioning?

That's the only way. Someone asks you about your personal life, you don't want to talk about it. Invent a fake boyfriend or girlfriend who lives in Canada. Yeah? That's the only way. Someone asks you about your personal life, you don't want to talk about it. Invent a fake boyfriend or girlfriend who lives in Canada. Yeah. It's the only way. Well known. What happens in Canada stays in Canada.

I'm not the best liar, says Abby, and I'd prefer not to have to stage an imaginary breakup if I ever do meet someone I want to date. However, I feel I'm at a disadvantage when people consider me too innocent or inexperienced in my personal life to perform the roles I've trained for right wow I mean look I do understand the frustration because they wouldn't say oh you've never assisted a demon barber and turned his victims into pies you know therefore you cannot play this part oh you've never thrown yourself off some battlements

sorry can't be Tosca but I think they would to take that example they would expect you to get into the mind of a murderer so they'd expect you to have a an answer to the question you know what in your personal life have you drawn on as an actor as a performer and unfortunately you know thanks to us living in this post method post stanislavski strasbourgian world that's the kind of bullshit that all actors have to put up with, whether that's their method or not. Or at least they have to act like there's that method. They have to pretend, exactly.

They could just be thinking about what they're going to have for dinner rather than actually about empathising with a murderer. I do think she should make some shit up there. It seems like an inappropriately intrusive question. And if you can cultivate an air of mystique and say, well, of course, I'm drawing upon a very sad time of my life and then just act like you don't want to talk about it that's probably and you're an actor you can do that i asked a friend who's an opera singer for her input on this and she said you could just

invent a heartbreak that is so upsetting you can't talk about it which saves you having to invent the boyfriend or girlfriend in canada so she did recognize this issue uh well she said um they are really inappropriate but they they always do happen and she also said there are a lot of opera singers who are celibate by choice or just don't have a relationship. It's quite an inconvenient job, there's a lot of travelling. That surprises me though, I mean there's lots of other jobs that are inconvenient but you don't see stand-up comedians going I've given up sex for my profession. No but you do probably get stand-ups being asked in a bar about their relationship histories and effectively that is what's happening to our questionnaire here isn't

it she's gone off to meet donors they probably are opera fans if they donate you know let's take them at their philanthropic word they probably think if they ask you a question about what's you know what's your favorite movement or whatever that that's a cliche and so they try and think of something interesting to ask you and so they probably think oh how could you relate to this character you're playing who has a heartbroken but it's just not appropriate is it to ask a stranger that they probably think well i've paid for this so uh i own i own this person i can ask what i want inappropriate in anything that's sort of a vaguely work context yeah you know and if it's your you know musical director or the head of the opera house,

that's even worse. I mean, that's a weird paradigmic as well. In that situation, you're under no compulsion at all to tell the truth. Yeah, that's right. But then if you also don't feel like you have to lie because this is your choice, then I can understand why you wouldn't want to lie just to stop them doing this thing that they shouldn't be doing.

But the trouble is, if you say that's not an appropriate question you know that you are more dispensable because there are a lot of people who are opera singers not that many opera singer jobs but you should have an answer to the question shouldn't you what experiences have you drawn on in your portrayal of this character and that the answer doesn't have to be what they're steering you towards you can say well i don't have anything in my personal life that's like this but i did read a story about this person or my aunt did this and i've thought about that i mean that's fine you just need to just channel the question something else inspiration comes from everywhere be a politician basically because i'd imagine if you had had relationships

like the relationships portrayed in opera then it'd be a pretty rough life in so many cases and you just suddenly die i mean as a woman you just suddenly die tough shit consumption or whatever or maybe you you just suddenly die. Tough shit. Of consumption or whatever. Or maybe you and another opera singer could have an arrangement with each other where if they're also getting these inappropriate questions, you are each other's defence. So you could pretend you're in a relationship with that person and then vice versa. And you could make up an elaborate backstory together.

At least two of you have to fake the falling apart. You could do that. But then as soon as you want to be in a relationship then... Dramatic breakup! You're performers! Just think of this as another performance. In the 90s I hired a 12 person web team to build and run my websites

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want to sign up for a year and get 10% off, then you can do that by using our discount code ANSWER. Here's a question from David who says, Kilroy was here. Used to be seen spray painted and graffitied all over London. Did it? I wouldn't say all over London. I think the front of Buckingham Palace did not have it on.

I mean, I've literally never seen it. I think it's slightly before our time, Ollie oh right i think it peaked in popularity a while before we would have been sentient uh he says helen answer me this who was kilroy and why did we care where he was okay was this some sort of reference to robert kilroy silk no it predates robert kilroy silk's uh public persona i was gonna say but not the man himself because he's obviously 200 years old. This was a meme before memes, really. Right. It probably originated in a shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Like all the best things. During World War II, the United States was producing a lot of warships. Wow. And tanks and planes and stuff. This really does go back a while. Yes, it does. World War II. And Quincy was a pretty busy shipyard. Uh-huh.

And in it worked a man called James J. Kilroy, who was an inspector of rivets. So he would have to check all of the rivets on the ships. And rivet inspectors got paid per rivet, which meant that there was often a bit of funny business with rivet inspectors, where they pretended to have inspected other people's rivets yes so to avoid that james kilroy would write kilroy was here on the rivet so people could see that he'd already done on each

rivet i was gonna say it was messy isn't it on all the rivets in chalk now what used to happen was all of these chalk marks made by the rivet inspectors would get painted over before the ships went out. But in World War II, they were so busy, they just had to send the ships out. And then the American military personnel were like, what is this Kilroy was here that we're seeing all over the ships? And to them, it was quite talismanic, I suppose a bit like a protective force

because it did mean the ship had been checked properly and so then they started writing kilroy was here in the places where they were posted as well and apparently this really confused a lot of the people so like japanese troops saw it painted on the side of a bomb shelter and they were like we need to find this kilroy and everywhere and apparently this sounds like bullshit but apparently hitler thought that kilroy was a super spy yeah that's bullshit how would hitler have ended up in a position where he was inspecting rivets he had other things to do i i don't think he would have known that it was from the rivets because it then became this very common thing to write on a wall and then it caught on everywhere rivets or no however the reason why they could trace it back to this james

j kilroy uh was because his marks were in places where you couldn't graffiti because he would have marked it before the ship was put together i think people will probably still write it nowadays because a lot of people have the urge to write on the wall but when the opportunity arises they don't actually have anything to say yeah so you just fall back on the stock phrases here's a question from Claire in Manchester who says, my boyfriend was with his first love for two and a half years and he's told me she is the only other girl he has

loved alongside myself it's good that you're honest with each other yeah, apart from myself would be better than alongside wouldn't it that suggests contemporaneous loving probably just a grammatical quirk. My boyfriend has offered for her,

his ex, to have access to our joint Netflix account. And she made herself a profile so she's getting it for free. This occurrence got under my skin as personally I believe there should be certain boundaries between serious exes.

And as people have been saying since time immemorial, Netflix is one of those boundaries. Not child custody, Netflix. I'm okay with them being friends, continues Claire, as I trust him but I'm not comfortable seeing her name every time I sign into

Netflix. That is fair. Or her being able to see what we watch. Could you make it so her profile has a funny name? Jazz Flaps. That's martin would call it absolutely yeah what would martin say monday i haven't checked whether you can make your netflix viewing private to people that share your profiles i have wondered about it because my friend nick vanderkolk of love and radio was staying in our flat when we weren't in it and i thought it's the kind of thing nick would do would be to go into our netflix profile and either be scathing about what we'd been watching or add a load of really horrible stuff to skew our recommendations thing is if nick just went

into our account and watched the kind of things he would naturally watch it would massively fuck our recommendations my answer to this i suspect might be different to yours she says we've both been very stubborn and not changing our opinion on the matter, leading to us sleeping in separate rooms last night. This is getting serious. Yeah, it is. I don't fancy sleeping on the sofa for the rest of the week. So Helen answered me this.

Do you think it's okay for my boyfriend to share our Netflix account with an ex? Now, usually I'm preaching that people should uh be very forgiving and inclusive with exes because why do you hate them because you have this thing in common and if they were so bad why would they have gone out with them blah blah blah but i do feel like this case it's slightly over a line or like why what's the line that it's crossed i think she's intruding into your life a bit more than you're comfortable with and that's the point point, isn't it? It's not about her just watching Netflix for free. Although get your own Netflix account, woman. It's not that expensive.

But it's the fact that she feels like a presence in your current relationship and you want your boyfriend to prioritise you over her. I don't think I'd see it as a symbol of their continuing union in the same way that I would if she turned up every time we went out for a drink. I'd just skip past that screen. But it's also sort of an overlap of their lives, isn't it? And so it would be a bit like, I don't know, like her having a pigeonhole for her mail in your house. Or a drawer of her stuff. You feel like she's coming into your household too much. Actually, when you put it

like that, yeah, I can sort of see that. I think i think though the interesting and revealing thing about this is that claire herself references the fact that it's free as part of the reason that this irks her whereas she should be giving you the slightly under three quid a month for a third of a netflix account exactly which is ridiculous so that's the thing if you rationalize what you actually want in return if it's irking you that she's getting it for free and you're paying for his ex-girlfriend i mean really that is 30 quid a year are you really saying that if she gave you 30 quid a year that would change everything right there's a sort of principle of it though isn't it i mean for those people that claire doesn't spend 30 pounds a year on who are her actual friends and yet her boyfriend is is imposing this uh ex-girlfriend tax on her and

why should she have to pay it at all i think there are approximately two scenarios in which your partner has a close relationship with an ex either they're so over it and they've moved on from that part of their relationship so much they've managed to forge a completely new friendship that is strong but no longer romantic at all or they're still holding a candle for that person and maybe claire is worried there's the latter but maybe she could go on the ex's profile and add loads of things like the 80s and 90s psychodramas about a vengeful ex or something like that perhaps you could just add loads of things where you think it'd be very hard for her to think romantic thoughts about your boyfriend whilst watching them whatever that would be what would that be for you things that you could just add loads of things where you think it'd be very hard for her to think romantic thoughts about your boyfriend whilst watching them. Whatever that would be.

What would that be for you? Things that you could not feel sexual or romantic whilst watching? Anything? This is small. I think most 80s comedies directed by Ivan Reitman. Twins would be a good one. Okay, great. Great suggestion.

I mean, I saw that, you know, in a pre-sexual phase of my life. Yeah, that documentary where someone's suing McDonald's for scalding their crotch with McDonald's coffee. That. You're worried about her looking at your Netflix viewing habits, but have you done that to her, Claire? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that why you're worried about it, because you've had a little snoop?

I think maybe that's the way to passively aggressively deal with this, actually, because obviously in person you're being all sweetness and light because apparently your ex is great friends with this person and everything's fine. Next time you see her you could just drop into the conversation oh it's really interesting to see that you got two thirds of the way

through series three episode five of that series. We made it five minutes further on. Even better you could see if she's like one episode off the end of Breaking Bad and just spoiler it for her. Yeah that would be good.

Then she'd get her own Netflix account. How many social networks are you on? Vivo, Friendster, Pathview, Porn, Myspace, Ping and Google Buzz. If you want to be our pal

go to this URL, facebook.com slash answer me this, or twitter.com slash Helen and Dolly. But please don't follow us in real life.

Here's a question from Paul, who says, today in the office we were discussing gary lineker and how he has advertised walker's crisps for over 20 years longer than both his marriages his commitment to walkers has been longer than to his wife wow okay uh not being judgmental it's just an interesting fact that's a long relationship with walkers is my point rather than shaming gary lineker for having a short marriage. Okay, good, good. Paul says, Ollie, answer me this. Who has been advertising a product for the longest? I'm guessing there will be some kind of lifetime sponsorship deals

for some athletes, but we're talking about appearing in actual adverts. Okay, well, I sort of see the distinction that you're making because, yeah, there are kind of lifetime brand ambassadors, I suppose you could call it. Yeah. People who advertise perfumes for 20 years or whatever or slap their name on it or they have um their sponsor's name on their shirts throughout their career yeah so andy murray for nike or whatever yeah but you want gary obviously i don't know don't give a shit

but you want the full-on gary lineker is the major character in getting up to walker's mischief or rowan atkinson doing the was it Barclaycard adverts? It was Barclaycard, yes. That was quite a few years. It was, yeah. He's in a different campaign now, isn't he? Rowan Atkinson. Who does he advertise now? I've forgotten. I think As Bean but I can't remember the products. Again, obviously not a very

successful campaign. Anyway. Baked Beans would make sense, wouldn't it, for Rowan Atkinson? Mr. Beans. Yes, it would. They must have. It's about something where you're a ninja and then you become Mr. Bean because you haven't had your Mars bar

or something yes that's right yes he was in the Snickers campaign you're absolutely right the one that they did with Colin more successfully

it really works getting celebs in to advertise your product you can remember exactly what the product is oh yeah Rowan Atkinson he tastes good anyway

so Gary Lineker how long has he been the face of Walker's Crisp 20 years really actually 20 years not hyperbole from Paul? No, no. I presume the reason that,

unless he works in an advertising office, that they were discussing this in his place of work was it was recently in the press that Gary Lineker and Walker's have celebrated their 20th year together. Did they make a special flavour? Whatever the 20th wedding anniversary was. They did Salt and Lineker about six or seven years ago.

Do you think when they get to 40 years, they'll make ruby flavoured crisps or something? I think when he dies, they will turn him into crisps. That's what he would have wanted. Salt and shake. But no, I think they just sort of did a press call, basically, because, and I'm sorry that the answer is not particularly exciting because you've already mentioned it,

people seem to believe, I have not seen evidence to the contrary, that in Britain at at least this is the longest ever celebrity endorsement of a product for someone actually appearing in adverts himself it is gary lineker in the walkers ads and there was lots of people sort of speculating as to why that would be and it seems to boil down to the fact that in the very early ads i'm just going back 20 years so i barely remember them but he was prepared to take the piss out of himself when he was a sportsman and an athlete i mean it's hard to remember now because he's a tv personality but even 20 years ago he kind of retired from active service hadn't he and he was doing question of

sport type gigs yes but it was rare then to have a sports personality advertising junk foods yeah well that's the other thing it's not a chocolate bar i think right the feeling the feeling is that eaten in moderation it's not an absurd tie-up to say this sports person enjoys the odd packet of crisps yeah but crisps are not good for you absolutely unfortunately but it's it because he'd retired and because he was taking the piss out of himself it wasn't saying i mean it was on a subliminal level but it wasn't saying like you know usain bolt advertising kfc or whatever it wasn't saying eat walker's crisps and you will be a successful fit athlete it was saying you know this successful fit man that hey guys you want to be in women you want to sleep with i know that

seems improbable we're talking about gary lineker but 20 years ago uh this guy he eats crisps in moderation and that's cool do you think they chose him because they thought of the wordplay salt and lineker for salt and vinegar and thought, let's see if he's willing? Do you know what? I think it's just lightning in a bottle. I just think it was lucky. I think sometimes you like sometimes the brand ambassador seems perfect. Like Kerry Katona was snapped up to advertise a payday loan company.

But then she was actually bankrupt. After Iceland. Yeah. So she used to. Yeah, she was a good match for selling prawn rings, wasn't she? It really depended on what was happening in her private life. Yes, the family image was problematic, wasn't it? But then, yeah, when she was losing her money,

advertising payday loans company just felt uncomfortable. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes you get the right person that feels wrong. Sometimes you get the wrong person. Iggy Pop on Swift cover and somehow it's right. Oh, yeah. Well, John Lydon advertising margarine, that was... A bit weird. Yeah. Although, actually, with person Iggy Pop on Swift Cover and somehow it's right. Oh yeah. Well John Lydon advertising Margarine that was a bit weird.

Yeah. Although actually with the Iggy Pop one do you remember there was that story that Swift Cover wouldn't actually ensure musicians. Yeah. They actually had to change their policy to reflect the fact that they now could ensure Iggy Pop. Well that brings us to the end of this episode

of Answer Me This. But if you want to be on next month's episode of Answer Me This then send us a question via email, phone or Skype and you can find our contact details on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com Our next new Answer Me This will be out on the first Thursday of June. But in between, there will be a retro episode of Answer Me This

with our reflections from the present upon our past worse selves. Sounds like VH1 storytelling. Sort of. It's more like a tiny director's commentary. It is, it's good. It's more self-flagellating than that because I find my past self to be an ignorant fuckhead. You can tell that Helen doesn't write pitch documents,

can't you? But it's worth listening to. Not successful ones. And if that's not enough listening matter for you, then you can get a free Audible audiobook if you go to answermethispodcast.com slash Audible. Indeed. And if you go to answer me this podcast.com slash audible indeed and if you need something else to listen to for the rest of the month even more than

that remember that we have our own individual podcasts as well my one the modern man is on a break at the moment but do check out the other show that i'm doing the week unwrapped it's a weekly discussion show about news and current affairs which i host for the week magazine and you do the media podcast don't you i do you can listen to that as well the media podcast.com i have the illusionist at the illusionist.org and also this month i'm starting to host forethought on radio four i think that kicks off on the 17th of may but also there's a podcast there's gonna be a podcast for that too oh there already is one oh it's been going for years with added zolts now without the podcast does have added zoltsman in it whereas the broadcast version has about 30 seconds of Zaltzman in it.

Okay, right. That's the correct amount, because then it goes on to have about 15 minutes of someone more clever and interesting than me. Excellent. Okay. If you want to have that balanced out by more Helen, then do check out that podcast too. And Martin, you have a podcast as well.

Yeah, it's called Song by Song. We're talking about every Tom Waits song in chronological order. You've now reached the stage where he was covering Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I believe. We had a Whitney Houston song in one of them because we do an interval track. We have like the main track and then we have an interval track as counterpoint. So we had some... Just not by Tom Waits.

Right, yes. Yeah, yeah. Which is by another artist. We had Whitney Houston, Kylie Minogue, which was not just all about Tom Waits, guys. Wow. It's mostly about Tom Waits, though. But Waits, there's more. That's what you should say.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a new little segment for you. Nice one, Ollie. Wait, don't tell me. And if you enjoy our work so much that you'd like to give us some of your money for fuck all, then please do donate.

It's easy. Just go to paypal.me slash answermethis. Thanks. It's not tax deductible or anything. No. No reason, but just some people are generous.

Some people express... And or rich. Some people express affection with money. Yeah. And if that's you that's how you can do it. Then I can be your friend too.

Right well we hope you join us again in a month. Yes see you in June. Bye!