Answer Me This! - AMT352: Dothraki, Points of View, and sleb-spotting Shatner

Episode Date: July 6, 2017

Had any good celeb-spots lately? However good yours are, there's no way they're as good as the celeb-spot hat trick Olly scored last week. Hear who in AMT352. Find out all 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, albums and our Best Of compilations at Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Abby Titmuss still trapped on Love Island? How silly it is, how silly it is Is your best friend really a diamond? How silly it is, how silly it is Heaven and lonely, how silly it is A few episodes ago we had a listener who had accidentally managed to get a free bottle of wine out of a supermarket because he'd said to the supermarket he left it in store whereas actually it was in his car and they gave him a

second bottle of wine what should he do why are you reminding us of this helen is he now incarcerated an anonymous lady from london has a similar problem but amped up okay so it's like the same like the same different the same but different a, but different. It's the perfect kind of feedback, isn't it? I think there's extra jeopardy due to higher price items. It's not just wine. It's not wine and pretzels. It's more cash value than that. Okay.

Anonymous lady says, I ordered a laptop online. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do these days, isn't it? I think so. I wanted to change the delivery arrangement, so called them and was advised to cancel the order and buy it again. That seems ridiculous, but she she says i did exactly this she did as she was told she did so far she's blameless the following week i took a delivery of two laptops wow that's all right i checked my bank account and i have only paid for one ollie answer me this what would you do? The guy who steals orange juice from PrEP? Tell them and return the extra laptop or keep quiet. And if I don't tell them, how long should I wait before I sell it and pocket £700? The issue here for me is that their level of incompetence was not such to justify a £700 embezzlement.

Do you think a £10 embezzlement? Yes, I think so. I think 50 quid. We're not auctioning off the value of their incompetence. If they repeatedly send you the wrong thing, then I'd think, oh, well, for fuck's sake, you know, this is not my problem. Basically, life's too short.

They're rubbish. Not going to get on the phone and sort it out. I'm just going to pocket the cash. That is, by the way, wrong and illegal. But nonetheless, I'm saying I understand the justification for that. In this instance, really, the only thing that they've done that you have to complain about is not have a very good delivery changing policy. Yes.

I think you have to call them again and say that you've got this laptop and how can you return it? And then if they accidentally send you another laptop, then I think you're justified in selling both those spare laptops. That's the spoils of war at that point. Pretty much. Yeah I mean look ethically you're absolutely right but sometimes ethics are easy and then you're suddenly presented with a real life dilemma and you think actually I can think of a reason to embezzle this and for example I once got paid for doing two radio shows that I didn't actually present. The money was invoiced

by my agent so my agent had invoiced by my agent. So my agent had invoiced it incorrectly. And so I felt like I could distance myself from the error. Because everyone knows agents aren't supposed to have morals. Exactly. I basically justified to myself thinking, well, it wasn't my error. They're a large organization and they never gave me a fee rise. They probably owe it to you.

They never paid my parking. Exactly. All there was that time I had to stay in a hotel and they never gave me my money back for that all of which was true but also wrong like ethically wrong i should have declared the money ethically wrong but emotionally right well the way i justified it to myself was when the company charity drive came round i gave a donation which was equivalent to my two shows salary that's generous but but you know i was getting quite well paid at that time so but but you know i was getting quite well paid at that time so i kind of probably would have given quite a large donation to charity

anyway otherwise it felt like a hypocrite on air telling people to give money to them so actually i in the end i still probably gave the same amount to charity that i would have done so i still embezzled it really but i felt better about it you give your employers money to charity which is great i gave my employers money to my employer's own charity that's weird i'm pretty sure their charity only exists for tax purposes anyway so is it one of those charities like my old private school is technically a charity the least deserving charity in the entire world no it definitely went to autistic children i met them unless the whole thing was a front yeah so do you think anonymous lady could sell off the second laptop and give the money to charity

in a kind of rob Hood-ish way? No, I think in this instance, and we don't know how large the company, and frankly, if it's Amazon, don't worry about it, but if it's any small-ish company... Some artisanal laptop maker? If someone's this incompetent, they don't have a delivery policy that's any good and flexible. It could be a bloke in his shed in Worcester who's selling old laptops,

and then you are kind of ripping off the small guy, really, aren't you? I was in exactly this dilemma in the 90s, but instead of with laptops, it was with subtitle generators. What? What's one of those? Yeah, good question. I think I'm the only person to have ever bought one, and that's why they were so surprised they sent me two.

And this was like your bar mitzvah present to yourself or something? Good guess. too and this is like your bar mitzvah present to yourself or something good guess uh my present in 1994 from my parents was a panasonic vhs camcorder good that's a good gift it was a great camcorder was it huge it was huge it went on your shoulder so it looked like something itn would have yeah because now camcorders are smaller than a vh tape. Yes, well, now camcorder is on your mobile phone, isn't it? But then I started making home movies on VHS and realised that although they look pretty professional and the editing was difficult because you had to pause and play and have the two machines running at once and stuff.

Oh, wow, you did proper tape editing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Real Dawson's Creek stuff. I could never get the titles right. Like, if you wanted to do an opening credit sequence, and for me it's always been about the um credit rather than the art all you could do basically is like old-fashioned write something on wallpaper and spool it past the camera essentially i mean you could do stop motion versions of that but that's what it was unless you got a credit generator which was a box

you plugged your camera into and the other lead into the video player press record and pause and it would superimpose electronically generated BBC basic style titles over your video that is actually amazing for the 90s how did you input the text? keyboard set

it looked like a big laptop like a 90s laptop so I'm going to take a guess at the moment when was it? 1994, I know, like a 90s laptop. So I'm going to take a guess at the momentary value. That would have cost... When was it? 90s? 1994. I know the 1994 price.

I can't adjust for inflation. I'm going to say that probably cost you... 160 pounds in 1994. I was going to go for 780 pounds. No, it wasn't as much as that. The camera was 1,000. No, the prices I recollect from the mail order catalogue was 295 pounds. So it was for the serious hobbyists. And they sent me two of them. The problem I hadect from the mail order catalogue was £295. So it was for the serious hobbyists.

And they sent me two of them. The problem I had was, A, I was 14. So I hadn't even bought it on my own credit card because I didn't have one. B, customer service was much more inaccessible in those days. Yeah, it was mail order. Did you have to send something to a PO box to get a response from anyone? Yeah. In fact, I think I probably paid for it with a postal check.

Is that what they were called? Postal order? Postal order, yeah. that's old school it's like traveler's checks in the end i thought well i'll i'll keep both of them but because of course there was no ebay to sell them on and it's not something you could take to the charity shop because they wouldn't know what it was but if you kept them now ebay you could sell them quite well for because people love old electrical equipment now yeah that's a good point so i did have two but um of course i only ever used one and one just you're right i should have kept it in the box put it in the attic and now it would probably be worth

about the same you didn't know i didn't i suppose you could have donated it to your school's media lab or something what i thought was i'll use this as a prop for when i'm filming an office scene but of course you know that doesn't look like actual office equipment anyone has unless they work in a home video making company. If you were filming something like a space drama, it might look like something quite high tech, except that's something you wouldn't seem like you would make. Well, a similar dilemma, Helen, believe it or not.

Wow. Besets Charlie, who says, I'm a long time listener, aren't we all mate but a first-time question asker and i'm in desperate need of some advice i've recently moved into an unfurnished apartment in new york city most of my furniture shopping was done via amazon prime sign of the times in it but not knowing the predicament in which i would find myself i foolishly ordered a futon on wayfair what i i don't understand the uh scrape into which he has entered by doing this foolish thing no this sounds quite a lot like another customer complaint email disguised as

a question to the show doesn't it have we sunk so low um two weeks went by and a package arrived however inside the box was not a futon at all. That's a lucky escape because sleeping on a futon is a wretched business. What is the point of a futon when sofa beds exist? Sofa beds tend also to be diabolically uncomfortable. I would rather... And they're bulkier and heavier, aren't they? But more elegant and specifically designed for the purpose.

I would rather get a decent sofa and just sleep on that. Wow. Yeah. I've set out my stall. I'd rather get a decent bed and use that as a sofa. That's what I do, essentially.

Why get out of bed at all? The other furniture is largely pointless. Anyway, Charlie continues. What was inside the box? Was it Gwyneth Paltrow's head? What's inside the box

is the second half of Mulholland Drive. To my shock, spoilers, there were instead two red bar stools. Oh, interesting. That's nice. For which I have little use and little space. Obviously not planning on staging Whose Line Is It Anyway. You've got all that space that's not being taken up by a futon.

I have since contacted Wayfair, and they've assured me that the futon is on its way. But Helen, answer me this. Can you provide me with some creative, space-efficient ideas with which I could utilise the bar stools? I'd hate to give them away, as the accent colour in my living room is red. It's so felicitous that they sent you an appropriate wrong thing.

Exactly. And aesthetically, they are a good fit for my apartment. Why are you complaining about not having enough space then, Charlie? Because you've clearly made space for them in your heart. And why are you complaining about Wayfair's customer service when they obviously have spoken to you and not asked for the chairs back that they sent you by mistake? I mean, they're worth something. If anything, I'd say they're being Wayfair. Wow. Sorry. Well, I looked on Wayfair's website and I thought if they're kind of stackable stools, maybe you could use them as a sort of makeshift ladder or a plant holder or something to dry your laundry. Or a set for a fringe theatre production. Very smart. However, they do seem

to be the kind which is like a tall swivel chair with a back. that means it's hard to stack them and those are basically my least favorite furniture items well but if you look at what the crowd say helen i mean if they're the ones i think they are they've had an average of four and a half stars across 131 reviews wow now that isn't four and a half stars across 1431 reviews like we have on itunes but it's not bad and i think you'll find that's a good quality bar stool. So, you know, the crowd likes them, so try them out, is my advice. Don't just write them off because they're not what you ordered. What about, if you're the sort of person

that, rather than have a TV, has a projector, that would be perfect. Pop a projector on top of one of those stools, and you get a nice image at a decent height. Where do you stand, and I don't mean literally stand, I mean, what is your position, and I don't mean what is literally decent height. Where do you stand? And I don't mean literally stand. I mean, what is your position? And I don't mean what is literally your position. Legs are kimbo, always.

How do you feel about breakfast bars? Terrible. Me too. Bullshit. Another thing on which we can bother. Why do you dislike them so much? I think they're quite good. I don't like them because they're not as good as a table.

They usually intrude unnecessarily into a room in a permanent way, unlike, say, a butcher's block or a table. Thirdly, I'm'm short so i do not like barstool type seats where my feet are dangling i feel like a child a few months ago i met you for lunch at the riding house cafe in london there were only seats at the bar you were already there and i had to pretty much like climb up it like a mountaineer it was so undignified and it was crammed as well so there were people either side yeah It was so undignified. And it was crammed as well, so there were people either side. Yeah, it was so undignified, and that's why I hate these fucking things.

Great Baked Alaska, though. I can't remember. All I remember is the taste of humiliation. So because I hate barstools, and they make me feel ungainly and undignified, the only suggestion I have for you, Charlie, for making use of them is to form a tiny boy band with a friend, sit on them to do an acoustic ballad, and then at the key change, you both stand up off the barstools. Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com It's great.

So, Retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Here is a question from Jay, just slightly north of Cardiff. Helen asked me this. When in TV shows and films people speak in a fictional foreign language, like, for instance, Dothraki in Game of Thrones. Is that how you pronounce it? I've not seen it. I've never seen it. There's too much sexual violence in it to make it an appealing entertainment prospect to me.

Or Elvish in Lord of the Rings or Klingon in Star Trek. Do the actors just say random words and sounds? Do they use a real foreign language and hope no one notices? People would notice! Or do they actually make up a whole new language from scratch?

Yes. Yeah, the script writers are writers, they're professionals. Moreover, Tolkien was a linguist with a big background in Old and Middle English. So before he even wrote the Lord of the Rings stories, he had invented a whole language tree for Middle Earth. So all these different languages, how they related to each other by root word.

Because that was interesting to him. A lot of linguists are very interested in constructed languages, because you find out a lot about linguistics from doing that. When we got this question, I was very excited because I was like, oh, constructed languages. And then I realised I'm very uninterested in watching any of this stuff that actually contains a constructed language. I'm interested in the idea of it, but not actually the entertainment product. I suppose if you're someone like Tolkien then, who was a very cunning linguist. Oh, God. It might be that in a way it's like a roadmap.

Having that structure of the language before you've written the plot gives you a sense. If you're really interested in how the language developed and what happened over time, you're writing the history of your story before you've even started. It must help. Yeah, I think so and if you're creating a world which i think all of the examples that jay has given that they are and the language adds to that so i was very interested to read about um david j peterson who developed dothraki for the game of thrones adaptation he won a competition to do that for the pilot he sent him 180 page submission 180 pages like most other people it was just like a page or something but what he did he read the books and studied the

ways that the words worked and created this whole system for how the grammar must work and how the phonemes must work and then when he had to develop a lot more Dothraki, he would then think, well, what's the etymology of this word? Obviously a fake etymology because it's all a fake language, but that's how far he was going back. He was like, would it be related to this word? And if so, what's the common root in my mind? And so he's developed this complete grammar, although there are only about 4,000 words because you have to make up each of those words individually. So you don't have as big a vocabulary as in a real language. That how thorough these things go and i wonder whether tolkien is part of the reason of this like invented language is not a new thing at all but given how popular elvish became after that

i wonder whether it then behooved them to think about it more than just saying to the actors i'll just spout some gibberish and actually that's a hard thing to do on the spot isn't it like say to someone oh well this camera's pointed at you and like this thing is costing $2,000 every second to shoot. Could you say something that you could repeat 20 times for all the retakes that sounds plausibly like real communication because we don't want that to take people out of this story and this world that we've built.

Sounds like the sort of thing Robin Williams could do, but most couldn't. So with Klingon, I think they did start with the actors kind of busking it. I was going to say because Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, I don't know which, conspired between them to invent the V sign, you know where they hold

their two fingers together and whatever that is. Livlong and Prosper. I heard a story with Leonard Nimoy saying that he got that from... Jewish mythology. Synagogue, yeah. The cloven hand. But William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, both being Jewish boys, as a sort of joke to themselves,

came up with that symbol to each other. So apparently that's where that came from. So it made me think, well, if they were doing that, then probably they were inventing some of the language as well. And that's because the budget was different. The early Star Trek episodes did not cost $200,000 a second, did they?

They were made with cardboard sets. As far as I know, the first time Klingon appeared was in the 1979 film Star Trek. But the real Klingon happened when the linguist Mark Ockrand, who specialises in Native American languages and happened to be doing some closed captioning

on the 1982 Oscars where he met the director of The Wrath of Khan. He was brought in to supply four lines of Vulcan dialogue for The Wrath of Khan. He was brought in to supply four lines of Vulcan dialogue for the Wrath of Khan and then for Star Trek 3, The Search for Spock, he had been commissioned to create a whole Klingon language. So to do that he had to kind of make a system that fit the stuff that had already been done so it wasn't completely inconsistent and also I think there was some dialogue in English that they decided to dub afterwards into Klingon. So he had to invent stuff that fit with what Klingon there was already, but also with the movements the actors' mouths were making in English.

But is Klingon actually used anywhere apart from in the Star Trek world? So what I mean is, when Star Trek superfans meet each other, can they converse in Klingon? Yeah, yeah. Can they really, though? Like, are there podcasts in Klingon like this where they're talking about things that aren't Star Trek? There was someone who tried to raise his child with his first language being Klingon. That's child abuse.

And he couldn't quite do it because Mark Ockren said, it's not a complete language. We invented what we needed for the screen. But then other people have gone and invented stuff. And these things as well, like they get a big life online, but the languages don't quite function

like a real language, whatever your efforts because they're invented to answer an aesthetic requirement in this in this entertainment rather than a true functional requirement the words are chosen presumably because sometimes they're dramatic as well like a word for danger is more likely to be like because someone's got to say it dramatically and you know a bomb's about to go off so it's so in klingon um he said he wanted it to sound like an alien language because it's being spoken by aliens but it had to be enough like a natural language that the actors could actually deal with it and memorize it so it couldn't that must be hard actually mustn't it like i want they must just do it

phonetically mustn't they i mean you've already had to spend six hours in makeup well that's when you do it isn't it do your linguaphone tapes for Klingon. Which way is the swimming pool? I will destroy your planet. Today is a good day to die. I saw William Shatner in a cafe last week. Where? Barcelona.

I was in Barcelona with my wife on holiday. Lovely. We went to get some tapas. We were in a nice, but I would say unremarkable square. I don't want to insult anyone from Barcelona who's listening. It may have great history, this square. But what I mean is it wasn't one of the really famous ones. Yeah. We're sitting there in an anonymous tapas bar.

Not that touristy. Right. Nothing special. Not on the Ramblas. Nothing special. Yep. Tapas bar. Quite nice.

Sitting outside. I'm getting a visual. Yep. My wife wants to go in to go to the toilet because the toilet's inside. Usual. Standard stuff. This is how it works not right outside in the square

wouldn't expect Shatner to be appearing anytime soon she goes for a pee inside comes back outside and says Ollie Ollie there's a boxer in there there's a famous boxer in there

I was like really she went yeah yeah he's surrounded by security they've all got earpieces and just that was weird because we were in this very anonymous place 3pm in the afternoon

and I was like okay I'll go and check it out I went for a pee did you need one or were you just going to no I just went to see the box did you have one

for Verite though yes okay of course and I saw who she meant it was George Foreman oh but sitting next to him

was William Shatner what were they together shut the front door they were together and then as I went out to say to my wife the famous boxer is George Foreman but William Shatner

is there as well she said isn't that Henry Winkler Henry Winkler was there as well oh what all three of them were sitting there having lunch together and anyway it turns out Americans will be shouting at their smart phones or whatever they listen to at the moment

because they'll know what the answer to this is. But we don't know because it's not broadcast here. There is an NBC reality show, Better Late Than Never, I think. And it's an American version of a Korean TV show, which basically the joke is they're old, but we get them to do things that humiliate them. That's the joke. So it's like Top Gear for people in their 70s. That's awful. And Shatner, Foreman and W winkler go traveling the world doing things and they were filming in the square in barcelona where we were that lunchtime dressed in massive papier-mâché heads

papier-mâché heads of like their own heads no no of um whatever side bottom traditional spanish figures okay because that's the thing they go to each country and do a supposedly traditional thing and although it was slightly um kind of artificial for telly as in they filmed the sequence twice and it only lasted 10 minutes and it was shot from multiple angles and they'll probably make it look like it was all shot on one camera and you know all that stuff was artificial in a sense like obviously been rehearsed so it's reality tv but you know it obviously been staged big production george foreman at the age of 80 or whatever he was genuinely in the blazing sunshine was under so it was reality TV but you know it had obviously been staged big production George Foreman at the age of 80 or whatever he was

genuinely in the blazing sunshine was under a Papier-Maché head with the crowd not knowing that was George Foreman dancing so they could have had

a body double yeah and actually did do it I presume so they can talk about it afterwards or whatever so did you take the opportunity to sort of

get an autograph oh Martin I'm dignified yes exactly and Polly had to have a piss you wouldn't just get an autograph or a photograph or something with William with William fucking Shatner I'm not through Martin. I'm dignified. Yes, exactly. And Polly had to have a piss. You wouldn't just get an autograph or a photograph or something with William fucking Shatner.

You're too good for that. To go and bother a celebrity while they're eating their olives. Basically, yes. Would you even say, love the grills, George? I do love the grills. I love William Shatner's music as well, but that's, you know, probably... I don't know if he'd like me saying that or whether he'd find that a bit... I think if you said I loved your cover of Common People,

he probably doesn't get that every day in the States. He probably doesn't get that every... Exactly, yeah. That's Me Trying is a banger. That's Me Trying is my favourite William Shatner song. It's really good. We've never discussed that before. You put it on a mixtape.

Oh, and that's a good... I love it. Right, okay. It's a beautiful song. I didn't think I inspired you musically in any way at all. So that was an exciting slub spot. It's exciting when three random but very famous people are in the same place as you and you weren't expecting it

and then suddenly you realise you're in the middle of a set for a primetime American reality show. So then did you linger over your meal just so you could, like, rubberneck what they were doing? We watched this weird performance in the square that they did, yeah. But it was a huge production. I mean, I was watching it thinking... I mean, a British reality show in which in which i mean what would the equivalent be frank bruno and

nigella lawson nigella lawson and john pertwee yeah go on a go on an agricultural road trip you know that would have a crew of like six people wouldn't it that would be great you know maybe nigella would have her own personal makeup person but basically there'd be six people wouldn't it that would be great you know maybe Nigella would have her own personal makeup person but basically there'd be six people there this honestly there were like 40 people they had headsets they had t-shirts

with the name of the show on they had baseball caps with the name of the show on wow it was you could really see and I guess it must you know

if it's primetime NBC I guess it has millions of viewers and that's why they have the budget but it was just wow it was weird to see it was quite exciting to see that's a good holiday spot

yeah yeah really weird thing to happen in Barcelona this brings us to today's intermission. Time to take a break from the present with a little trip to the past. This is the annual sad calls montage that Helen expertly weaves together for our best of episodes. That is my favourite thing to cut together all year. And I know it's kind of mean because we ask you to call in and you do so in good faith or in drunken irresponsibility

and then at the end of the year you hear yourself being used in this mildly mean way. But who could object to hearing themselves recontextualized in this surprisingly beautiful way? So if you want to hear the full version of these drunken call montages they're in the best ofs and most of those are available at answermethisstore.com. They are, and they're not, unlike our other archived content, they're not available on iTunes, they're not available on Amazon. Just the store? The only place you can buy our best-of episodes

is from answermethisstore.com. They're available at the bargainous price, frankly, of £1.99 each. If you buy all of them, it's £16. You get hours of entertainment of our very best bits, and you support the show. It's a good taster as well of what we were up to that year. If you're thinking, I'm somewhat curious about what Answer Me This was like in 2008, but am I curious enough to buy 40 of their classic episodes?

This is the way in. This is the way in. So let's hear a bit of the Sad Calls montage from 2012. Oh, hi, Helen and Ollie. Oh, hi. This is Dan and Jo from Brick House, West Yorkshire. We're quite drunk and on a school night as well.

Hello, Helen and Ollie. Answer me this. Oh, I messed up. Hold on, hold on. I'll start again. Hello, I can't say hello, hello, hello. Maybe I'll have it dropped. Hold on, I'll do it again. Hello, Helen and Ollie, answer me this. And you do answer me this. Oh, fuck it. Hold on, I'm going to have to do it again. No, this is Pete from Bucks. Uh, Helen and Ollie, to answer me this. Oh, fuck it. I'm not going to have to do it again. No, this is Pete from Bucks. Helen and Ollie, please answer me this.

What happens if you get injected with semen and you have semen in your bloodstream, is there it? I don't suppose there's any possibility you could become pregnant by it? Asking the question feels kind of stupid now. At the time, it seemed... Five seconds ago, it seemed very important to us. Good night, Paul. I love you. Bye.

See you next time. Where's the other one now? There we go. here's a question from matt from buckinghamshire who says recently i was on holiday in australia and whilst on a sydney beach i spotted someone i knew from back home in the uk oh it's a reversal of what happens when you go to ell's court and all the aussies are there isn't it well it's good to keep things balanced, isn't it, with the exchange. We'd previously worked together in a pub. The problem was she was sunbathing topless

and I wasn't sure if she'd appreciate me popping up out of the blue while she was half naked. You could have chosen a more delicate phrase than popping up out of the blue, Matt. Well, I know what you mean, yes. The blue is what I nickname my underpants. Ollie answered me this. What is the proper etiquette for approaching a familiar Yet not too familiar, topless lady?

Do you ignore the boobs? Make a comment about them straight away Do not approach at all Luckily on this occasion I spotted her friend in the sea Top on Which solved the dilemma Oh that's a good get out of jail isn't it How does he mean?

Well because if you see the friend first You say hey aren't you so and so who I used to work with in the pub's friend with your top on dress normally and then they say yeah so and so's here as well then that's not so oh hi rather than oh hello i was just checking out your boobs and i realized that your head was above them do you know i wish that we all lived in the you know frankly mediterranean society that uh we'd like to in this instance what so you got to see more tits? It just wasn't a big deal. However, the truth is, when you're on a beach and there are topless people there,

you can't help but notice it as an Englishman. How would you feel if it was the reversed and you were topless? I know it's not the same. It's not the same. Because you don't have tits. I do have tits, but it's not the same. It's not a secondary sexual characteristic that has been really glamorised and fetishised. But if I was in Speedos, but it's not the same. It's not a secondary sexual characteristic that has been really glamorised and fetishised.

But if I was in Speedos, which I think is the same. So like, cock out isn't the same, because that's another thing above. That's level up. Yeah, but Speedos, so like tight so you can see what religion I am, those kind of trunks. Yeah, I'd be aware of it and I'd probably cover up with a towel. Yes.

But because she wasn't covered up in a towel or sarong or kaftan or whatever, it suggests that she's comfortable with people seeing her in her swimsuit. No, she's comfortable with people she doesn't know in Australia seeing her. Well, there's no social embarrassment in seeing that person in the supermarket a week later, is there? If you meet them first topless, that's great. Sure. I mean, that's the premise of that dating show you were on about, isn't it? Which one?

The one where they go dating naked first. Right, I haven't watched that. Oh, I thought you mentioned that show. You talk about naked and afraid? Yes. No, that's different. They're not dating. They're surviving. Whatever. They're all shows where people are naked. On all mentioned that show. You're talking about Naked and Afraid? Yes. No, that's different. They're not dating. They're surviving.

Whatever. They're all shows where people are naked. On all of those shows. You're such a prude. Point being, if you first see someone's bits, that's easier, actually, in a way, than knowing someone well as an acquaintance and then seeing their bits.

Not sexually. Could you even this up and not feel so awkward about it if you approach this topless acquaintance with one of your testicles out? Is that equivalent equivalent if you would clearly do that deliberately i don't think that's equivalent no i think there are these grounds to call the police um i think had you not seen the friend of the water with her top on the way out

of this would be to go a long way away like a hundred meters away and then shout steph is that you that's a good point. And then like, she's not going to, she's going to think, well, I'm topless on the beach, but he's not seen the detail of my boobs here.

Sunglasses are the solution because then you can say hello to her and she can't see whether you're looking at her chest or her eyes, which is part of the awkwardness, isn't it? Where you're worried that like,

you'll be speaking to her face, trying to fixate on her face, but your eyes will keep flicking down to her tits. No, I think it's awkward almost any way. Right,

well, I've got the solution for you, Matt. Only go on holiday to Iceland where the sun doesn't shine and in summer it's like 13 degrees. So the chances of seeing a colleague or anybody that you know with a top-off is fairly small. Here's another question about things that happen on holiday. It's from Laura in Auckland who says, Helen, answer me this. What is up with the turndown service that you get in hotels? Right?

Like I can't get my own bedclothes unfurled a tiny bit Helen's collaboranting It seems like an enormous waste of energy with absolutely no point Surely it would make more sense to just make the bed in a way In which it can be easily jumped into in the first place I mean, how difficult is a bed to get into even if they have pulled the covers drum tight it's still a bed see i do think that there are lots of things that happen in hotels and in restaurants and anywhere where you're being

served where you think this is a lovely treat because this doesn't happen at home what you don't put a load of ornamental pillows on your bed at home in order to take them off at night peel down your covers at a diagonal and put a pair of slippers that you don't know who's worn them before next to the bed and put some low jazz on the sound system and then leave the room. Correct. You don't. But in the case of the turndown, I agree with you that it's not something that I do think I would like that to happen. Well, you know, I would like to happen at home that a maid comes in every morning and makes my bed and sterilizes my bathroom. And that's why you got married.

And cooks me a buffet breakfast. I would like that. But I wouldn't like this. This is just like, I'm getting dressed now. I don't really need you in here. I don't need an ornamental swan or a chocolate.

The only reason why I get hotel housekeeping at all is if I need the tea bags replenished so that I can carry on stealing them. Well, that would be one of my arguments for the night turndown is that i get the conditioner if they've got the little bottles of conditioner i don't use it i use it as leave-in conditioner man fans just take it off the trolley keep those curls textured i found it's the best thing i used

to get special leave-in conditioner or wax no need what you're looking at now see this kind of flexibility but it's in place hotel conditionerten brown. Indian cress from a hotel. Indian cress? Yeah. Didn't even know that's a plant. Yeah. It's probably made up. It's probably just called cress in India.

It's probably just blended cress. That's why your hair's green and it's growing on a tea towel. Anyway, Laura continues. If I was a hotel owner, this would be the first thing I would get rid of to cut costs. Second thing, the beds. I'm sure there is some historical reason for it but seriously why hasn't it been dropped already right history of turndown service is there one well history of turndown service is basically the history of having servants yes who would do all that stuff for you servants would have come laid a fire in the evening lit the gas

lamps or oil lamps or whatever which i think is why i don't like it it's that air of servility then it has that makes me feel uncomfortable in lots of contexts yes um so with hotels like if i'm there for a few days i leave the do not disturb sign on all the time unless absolutely necessary i want it to be extravagant. Yeah. But not at human cost. But I think the feeling of luxury and extravagance is why it happens. The whole thing about luxury hotels, because this doesn't happen at Travelodge, right? This happens at places that... It doesn't even happen at Four Star Hotel, does it? It's at luxury hotels. Yeah. It's not often that I have to avoid this happening. Usually it doesn't happen. So that whole thing about hotels is the idea that no one has ever slept there before.

It's pristine, including you. And so the turndown service, even if you've rumpled the bed in the day because you had a nap, it's making it seem like your first time. Come to think of it, when it's done really well, and again, I have had little occasion to see it done really well. I can think of once, Four Seasons, Las Vegas. Very good hotel. Were there towel animals? I've never stayed somewhere with towel animals.

I have had towel animals, but not there, no. This is the thing they did, which this is what I thought was nice. It wasn't like personalized to me because it must apply to like one in five rooms that they service, but it's something I've never seen before.

I have a spectacles case with my glasses in it, just like on the side of my bed. In nice hotels before, they've rearranged that so that it's perpendicular. Yep. But what they did at the Four Seasons Las Vegas is they took my glasses, polished them, and then put a little glasses cleaning cloth

with Four Seasons Las Vegas written on it in the box. Nice. And shut the box so that it was there as a treat when I opened it. Did they fold the glasses cloth into a little elephant or swan? So I thought that was classy. Now, is a lot of this turndown service to make you feel very well disposed towards that hotel so you come back, you review it nicely, you put photos up on TripAdvisor? Is it all because of that?

Partly. I mean, I think part of the reason it might still exist now is because of that. And replenishing your towels and anything you've messed up since they made your bed seven hours before now i also wonder whether it's an element of turning your room from day to night so in the day you might have all this crap on the bed like the ornamental pillows and that weird little strip of fabric like a bed loincloth what is that it's a fake blanket but that means you might have people in your room for business or visiting you and you might not want to have your bed as laura, ready to leap into at any time, because that signals the room too much as being bed rather than business or visitors.

Bed rather than business. Unless the bed is your business. My bed is all business. I'm trying to build a website to bring tourists to Radlet, but when I open it up on my smartphone or tablet, something goes wrong and it just looks a bit shit. Unlike Hertfordshire itself. Well, try building that website using Squarespace.

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Squarespace. It's a portmanteau, you didn't know. Great. Here's a question from Brian from Windsor who says, Ollie, answer me this. How do I become a returning officer for an election? A timely question. Yes.

It's funny, isn't it? We just had one. We've just had an election. And it was a great night of television. Honestly, the best night of television that I have watched in a long time. It was gripping. It was even better than the Naked and Afraid marathons that I enjoy in hotel rooms on my own. And can you just clarify who the returning officer is?

Because there are a lot of people around on the TV coverage of election night. It's the gentleman or lady who looks like a mayor, usually. What if they look like a mayor? Like, because they're wearing like the gold coins around the neck or something. And they look official. Like Mr. T.

And they're the person who announce Helen Zaltzman. Independent. Monster Raving Loony Party. Four votes. 492. Only Man. Genius Party.

5,962. Martin Austrick. You kid. Tom Waits Party. 20 million. Well, that's good news. We're an MP now. Anyway, that's the returning officer it's okay

so if they're dressed like the mayor does that mean they are the mayor or is their special returning officer mayoral style uniform good question thank you it usually means they are the mayor yes okay um and that suggests how you become the returning officer basically it's an honorary post it's usually given to someone like the mayor sometimes it's the chairman of the council sometimes it's a county high sheriff which is a thing in england i didn't even know we had that in england and wales because brian needs to know how he can become the windsor high sheriff but the uk high sheriffs are appointed by the royal family and it goes back to before the norman conquest so it's probably too late for you brian i imagine the windsor district is competitive

but brian lives in windsor so he could just turn up at windsor castle with a gift basket possibly but in london where streatham i don't think has a mayor who does it in all of the all of the districts of london that are returning an mp it'll be a senior person from the council okay so it's councils and stuff it's councils and actually although the returning officer is is the person reading out the results and they get to be on telly they don't do any of the administering it's just the honorific of being on the telly right actually they're just the figurehead which is why it's usually a mayor or someone who doesn't actually you know necessarily know anything about what's going on so they've not counted every vote themselves what they do the most important thing

they do is not fuck up the numbers. Not put a decimal point in. They appoint the ARO, which is the Acting Returning Officer. What? I know it's weird. The Acting Returning Officer is actually the person who does the donkey work, like the staffing and the counting and supplying the ballot boxes. And that is a paid position. That's a lot of responsibility because if you fuck that up,

there are repercussions. Yeah, well, there's personal repercussions. So could you can be personally be fined up to five thousand pounds if something goes wrong with the election and you've been the acting returning officer so like if there's a rat in the ballot box that eats all the ballots there's a rat in my ballot what am i gonna do it must be a month nightmare though if you're the acting returning officer for those constituencies that were called with like 20 votes yes the controversy is very stressful yeah it's a long night. You're not going to get better at counting

at five in the morning when you've been up all night. And you're not that well remunerated for it either. It's between two and five thousand pounds. Yeah, I mean, that's not bad. Is that a day's work? No, it can be eight weeks work getting everything ready. But nonetheless, that's still controversial because all of these people are already

relatively highly paid people because they're senior in the council. So they're already on a public salary. Okay, so this is overtime. Yeah, for what you would think might be the most important thing they do in their job. So in Scotland, they're now thinking about making it so that you can't get paid for running the election as an acting returning officer. Well, then you might get Theresa May calling an election after only two years.

So you might think, well, once every five years, I can do this overtime for free. But if she's going to have one all the time hello it's freya from france i have a bike um and as i live in a flat i have to leave it locked up outside um in a public place and the thing is almost every day i come and find that someone has used my bike as a rubbish bin and has left their beer bottles or cigarette packets in it and it's really annoying so helen and ollie answer me this how do i get people to stop using my bike basket as a bin put a cover on it like a waterproof cover that you might have anyway or some kind of mesh either that or passive aggressive note i think would

be very appropriate in this circumstance cling film cling film well that's like littering your own bicycle basket isn't it if you had a cover anyway for transporting say the bread you've bought without it getting rained on then you could just leave it on there but the people are throwing rubbish in it don't have any respect for you anyway like you're spending more money on the bike to protect it they might think ha ha ha i'm gonna put more stuff in yeah they're doing it out of spite aren't they because it's super practical to put it there rather than just leave it on the ground. Exactly. Whereas Martin's suggestion speaks of someone who's not quite balanced.

Okay. A basket that's got cling film on it, you'd be like, what's that? That belongs to a weird person. I don't want to get involved with that. Actually, I don't think that's a bad suggestion. All right. Kitchen foil, equally. I don't think it's just spite.

I think it's just immensely satisfying to dunk a thing into a thing and there's something quite funny about pretending a bike basket as a waste paper basket i'm surprised that in france where cycling is like the national hobby it's de rigueur um indeed it's la mode de vie i'm surprised that anyone would vandalize a bike in any way all right the other thing you could do maybe which would be trying to make a positive out of this negative situation but would be removing the function of your bicycle basket for yourself sometimes people effectively have a window box as a bicycle basket they have charming little plants in there plastic or real i don't know she could do that because when something's pretty, people are less likely to vandalise it. The other thing you could do, I suppose, is divide it up into recycling compartments

because that seems to fox a lot of people. Particularly old people. If it's an old person putting his rubbish in your bin, he's not going to know which department that is. Is glass bottle recyclable or is it just paper? It's a bottle of Oasis. It's got a bit of everything going on. Where does food waste go? Ah! Yo, yo, one love.

The best thing about tennis is the... A women's tennis. A women's tennis. Hearing those ladies all going... It makes me go... In my pants. Answer Me This Sports Day. Out now at answermethispodcast.com slash albums.

Here's a question from T.E. Hodden I love the old-fashioned first initial second initial surname thing are you a poet

T.E.? are you a literary critic or something like that? I'm thinking F.R. Leavis style naming T.S.

Elliot are the only famous T.E.'s yes T.E. Lawrence yeah T.E. Lawrence

of course Lawrence of Arabia T.E. Hodden says Ollie answer me this. Why, oh, why, oh, why did Points of View use a version of the song When I'm 64 as their theme for decades?

Until you asked it, I thought I'd never realised. And then I looked at the lyrics and I was like, oh, yeah, I realised this when I was eight and I last noticed this. That's probably the last time you watched Points of View. It's the last time anyone watched Points of View, surely. It's still on, though, is it? Bizarrely is still on. Jeremy Vine hosts it now, apparently.

And it's now 15 minutes long and, because it used to be five, didn't it? It's as much as anyone could stand. Well, I think the reason Points of View was created, well, there were three reasons. Okay, explain to people who do not watch this shit. It's people writing in to complain about things and go, why, oh, why, oh, why?

Okay. Thank you. There are two TV channels. One of them is okay, the other one is good, but fewer people watch it. BBC1 and BBC2. Correct. The BBC is run by people who went to Oxbridge and don't care what you think. That hasn't really changed very much. Well, now some of them have been

to Warwick or Edinburgh. But there's a growing movement of busybodies who are like, I want to complain that there are too many radical politicians on the telly. Or the plants are ugly

on Garden as well. The BBC thinks, ah, we'll create a show where we answer these wankers' problems. But we'll make it only five minutes long.

Why don't we call it Shut the Fuck Up? Thereby looking like we care what the public think about us without actually having to deal with their bullshit but also filling five minutes of our schedule when we have five minutes to fill because the thing about the bbc is they don't take advertising and so when they ran for example an american import that was 23 minutes long what do they do with that seven minutes up to the news they just they just slow it down it meets more of a brit British standard as well

if you slow down an American drama. They fill it with correspondence from cunts. Wow. That's what they do. That's a better name for the show. Condispondence. Correspondcunts. So when did this start?

1960s. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's been going a long time. Who hosted it originally? I think his name was like Robin Robinson or something hilarious like that. But he did it for a long time. So this is very much before Web 2.0, where everyone was feeding back on their entertainment.

Yeah, it was quite revolutionary, the sense that the audience could interact with the show and talk about other shows. It was a bit meta. And then 40 years later, We came along. Well, in fact, actually, in a sense, it was ahead of its time. Because obviously, because of the nature of the show, they were one of the first shows to take calls. Albeit they'd be voicemails because it was pre-recorded but they were also in 1994

the first BBC TV show to invite contributions by email and at one point the producer of Points of View was the only person in Television Centre to have an internet connection so what T.E. Hodden is doing in his poetic question which befits his name by saying why oh why ohwhy-oh-why,

is that became the classic cliche of how people... Why-oh-why-oh-why. Dear BBC, why-oh-why-oh-why. Does Alan Titchmarsh not host everything? Why-oh-why-oh-why does Charlie Dimmock not wear a bra? It's disgusting to see a woman's sweater puppies. Anyway, the reason that they used the theme When I'm 64 Was because That was the average age of the correspondence

Well I wonder if there was a slight dig at that Yes When I'm 64 I'll be In my cantankerous years But still able to write There's a lyric from the song doesn't it Yes

So the answer is yes It's the lyric Send me a postcard Drop me a line Stating point of view Oh so okay So it's a very literal Yes

Reason But I'm surprised they could get the rights because I thought it was really difficult to get the rights to Beatles songs. Well, it is. Like Mad Men wiped out their whole budget just using one Beatles song and getting credits to one episode.

That was like the whole series budget. I can only speculate that Paul McCartney was a fan of Anne Robinson or something. So he wrote in and they were like, Paul will answer this complaint if... It was Anne Robinson, wasn't it, that presented it? Anne Robinson, yes. Then Carol Vorderman for a year, then Des Lynham for a year,

then Terry Wogan for 10 years, then Jeremy Vine. Cozy Carol, cozy Des, cozy Terry. Yeah. Sharp-edged Vine. Yeah, I think the reason they've gone for Vine now, although he's still got the Radio 2 familiarity and he can do Cuddly when he needs to. He's warm but acerbic when he needs to be. I think the reason they chose him is because it's become a bit more like let's interview the editor of panorama to find out why there aren't more deaf people on tv it's like that

so they take a letter but then it's the starting point for a five minute bit of journalism where he interviews someone who works on telly so it's more like radio four's feedback program and less like it used to be which was anne rob Robinson in front of a desk for five minutes. And that's because I think the five minute issue isn't such an issue anymore because of iPlayer and stuff. It could go for hours. They can put an extra long version out. They can separate the interviews and say that they're doing their duty to listen to the public and whatever. And I suppose the other reason that the BBC like it is the BBC finds it quite hard to promote itself. I know you might you might be thinking no they don't because they put ads between every show for their shows yes but those are like targeted

campaigns aren't they like that there are things that they do every week that they can't really boast about because they're the bbc and it's public service broadcasting right but by saying on points of view i'd like to say that your episode of songs of praise in which you reflected the songs of the marley community was excellent they're basically saying look at this cool thing we've done okay even if it's someone complaining so they're reminding you that songs of praise exists they're reminding you that panorama exists they're reminding you that jeremy vine exists if you don't listen to radio too clever shit right there uh and if you want to contribute to more clever shit next time then we are always up for your points of view if you'd like to send in a question for the next episode of the show all our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com and on there

as well you can click through to follow us on twitter and facebook yes and you'll also find links to the answer me this store whereupon you can buy our first 200 episodes our best ofs as aforementioned in this episode our albums and our apps uh You can also donate to the show, by the way. All you need to do is go to paypal.me slash answer me this and you can just send us cash if you want.

Some people want to do that. We appreciate that. You can also listen to our other work. Yes. Such as? My podcast, The Modern Man.

Who's been on The Modern Man lately? I've interviewed a guy called Pete Lawrence who was the co-founder of the Big Chill Festival. Wow. That's quite interesting because he started it in his sitting room in finsbury park or whatever and he was like

let's just recreate my sitting room on a grand scale essentially and then it all got massively out of hand and it became corporate backed and he had to deal with alcohol companies and he's kind of concerned about how he managed to keep the ethics of a festival going so now circumstance now it's the big stress don't want to spoil spoil the ending. Oh. But interview with him. And also on the episode that we've just put up, actually, Martin, I think you'd find this

really fascinating. Oh, yeah. It's about the use of neuroscience in the dock in a courtroom. Oh, okay. So it's an interview with a lady called Dr. Lisa Claydon,

who's an academic. And she specializes in sort of brain crime, for want of a better phrase. Not thought crime. So it's basically if we could scan everyone's brains and prove that they'd go on to be a murderer, even if they haven't done it yet, should they go to prison?

This is some dangerous shit, isn't it? Yeah, it's a good interview, really interesting. Minority report for real. The Subliminal Criminal, that episode's called. That's a great title. Thank you. Very good, thanks very much. The website is modernman, M-A-N-N dot co dot UK.

On the subject of brains, I did an illusionist recently called Eclipse. And it's about a woman who, when she was 27, she in edinburgh she was doing karaoke of total eclipse of the heart woke up in hospital several days later because she'd had a stroke on stage but uh she's very cheerful it's not like sad sad she was like it was great uh martin did a really beautiful soundtrack based on total eclipse of the heart which you can you can just download the soundtrack without the words if you don't want the filthy words, you just want the instrumentals. Theillusionist.org

is where you can find all of that. And Martin, you have a podcast as well, an award-winning podcast, no less. Song by Song Podcast, where we talk about every Tom Waits song in chronological order. Where are you up to now? We're about halfway through Sawfish Trombones. We've got the wonderful Joanna Neary as our guest. Aww. Answer me this, jingle star

Joanna Neary. Is she doing it all in the character of Björk? I really hope she would, but she, Mary Poppins, she resisted, isn't it? And you can find all of that at songbysongpodcast.com. So listen to her other work and also rejoin us in the middle of the month for a retro Answer Me This with me and Ollie reflecting upon our past selves

and the shit we spouted into Mike some years ago. Otherwise, we will see you on the first Thursday of August. Bye!