Answer Me This! - AMT359: Center Parcs, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Pope Tropes

Episode Date: February 1, 2018

Why does your cocktail come with a tiny piratical weapon in it? Why is Dumbledore so shit at HR? What's the deal with the Center Parcs dome? Find out all this and more in AMT359. There's more about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode359. Send us questions for future episodes: email words or voice memos to [e-mail], call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis. 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 http://answermethisstore.com Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at http://theallusionist.org, Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at http://modernmann.co.uk, and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at http://songbysongpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now the Guardians are tabloid, who will be on page three? Answer me this, answer me this This quantitative easing the magic money tree Answer me this, answer me this Heaven and only answer me this Winter Olympics coming up, answer me this listener Lizzie Arnold, who won a gold last time, is competing again Good luck, Lizzie Arnold!

Well she didn't need our help last time. I'm not sure she needs it now. We don't know. We don't know how much we helped, Ollie, in absentia. Let's just take the credit, right? Because it's the closest to any kind of athletic glory we will ever get. Well, I do actually watch the Winter Olympics because it's fun sports, isn't it? Yeah, it's hurtling down a hill at speed.

And you do often see, I think it's sponsorship deals, isn't it yeah it's hurtling down a hill at speed um and um you do often see i think it's sponsorship deals isn't it but you do often see the athletes turn up with typically beats headphones on and they listen to something to concentrate and i wonder maybe there is someone out there who preps not by listening to eye of the tiger but by listening to us i reckon i mean you're not going to listen to in our time are you to get yourself mood? No, you'll want something more sardonic and yet also more upbeat. And we fit that perfectly. Actually, whilst we're saying hello to people, hello to listener Sean, who wrote to me following my frustration in the last episode that I couldn't find myself a gold pen for my Filofax.

He runs a posh pen website called Newton pens and he's offered to send me a free one which is nice of him but it doesn't resolve the issue the issue was i needed to spend the money to get a guy i didn't need a free gold pen you reiterating the problem doesn't make the problem seem any more problematic to anybody i mean now ollie's got the problem of being offered a free gold pen that's even more of an an only man problem it's just such a burden nightmare absolute nightmare well let's get on with a question from someone who calls themselves anonymous ex-boyfriend he says i have a bit of an ethical conundrum i'd like to run by you long story short i got dumped shortly after christmas but that is the kind of long story that i would be quite interested to hear the medium to long

version popular time of the year to be dumped though uh christmas oh yeah although apparently uh two weeks before christmas is the peak oh right so then you don't have to get them a present but it doesn't seem quite as obvious that you're dumping them to get out of christmas with them i think the psychology of it is that as people prepare to go home for the holidays they're thinking about family they think about who they want to spend the rest of their lives with and they suddenly realize yeah not that jerk it's slightly dubious science um someone's looked at a load of facebook statuses of people saying oh boohoo just been dumped right and apparently that peaks on december the 11th followed closely by early march so do you think that their advent come of this way you

open the door on day 11 it's like goodbye goodbye forever. So Anonymous Boyfriend says, for Christmas I bought my now ex-girlfriend a couple of tickets to go and see her favourite comedian. Bernard Manning. Is he still alive? No. Roy Chubby Brown. My now ex-girlfriend has a habit for losing things, so she gave the tickets to me to look after until the gig in June. fast forward to now and i have got two tickets that are technically her christmas present but i spent 80 pounds and i would quite like to use them myself so ollie answer me this should i give her the tickets or keep them for myself i think if our anonymous contributor hadn't given his ex the physical paper tickets and then she hadn't given them to him for safekeeping if in other words um he'd booked them as collect from box office and all they had to do on the day they

were going to the concert in june is go along to the venue six months after they split up then i think she probably wouldn't expect that she'd still be going despite having received the tickets technically for christmas you know if you'd written out a voucher or something on a card but not given the physical tickets but having made the experience physical having said here you are here's a thing look it's a ticket to go and see roy chubby brown with your name on it we're going on this date put it in your diary and then she said you look after it for me i mean if it was a diamond ring it would it would definitely be hers wouldn't it there wouldn't be any argument about like oh well i withdraw that present now that we've broken up because you gave it to her she gave it to you back for safe keeping

not for returning yes but i suppose with the diamond ring it'd be even more evident that gifts from someone you've split up with are a hard thing to keep and with something expensive like that you should give it back so they can get their money back or give it to someone else give it to their rebound person whereas an event i think it might feel a bit less like it was irrevocably attached to the giver you might be able to separate that thought and go and have a good time anyway but you can't really wear that diamond ring and think this is fine this doesn't have connotations. I think it would be logical,

since presumably she was going with you, anonymous writer, to demand that you go together. I mean, what you bought her effectively was an experience with you to go and see her favourite comedian. You'd be a bit of a dick for pointing that out, but it's true, isn't it?

When you buy someone theatre tickets and you're the other person going, like the cost, as he says, £40 per ticket ticket you don't think of that as 80 pounds you're spending on her you think of it as 40 pounds you spent on her and 40 pounds you're going along as well so it's sort of true that 40 pounds of the present is his i mean i bought my mum tickets to go and see bat out of hell i'm mentioning it again still haven't offered me a freebie when are you going uh April I believe lovely but I bought those for my mum but part of buying the present for my mum was I

also bought a ticket for me to see it again and my wife because she was jealous last time so I spent twice as much on us as I did on my mum as part of the present it would not be on for her to take two other people right do you see what I mean so I think he has a chance still of going to see the comedian the question is whether he'd find that person funny sitting next to his ex. Well, I do think whether he finds that comedian funny is kind of at the crux of this. Taking out all of the moral and emotional implications, is this a comedian you want to see? Fine, keep the tickets. If not, give them to her and be like, noble gesture, no hard feelings i mean he says he'd quite like to go himself but that's not the same as saying it's our favorite comedian and i

really like them it's her favorite comedian yeah and it might be depressing for him to go along to you never know yeah thinking about what could have been and also if that comedian is is one such who picks on the audience and gets their stories that could be terrible like if you're together and you have to explain how you came to be there together you'll become the story of the whole night do you want that you don't want to be the story of a gig no what about just trying to obviate this problem completely call the box office explain the situation get your money back yeah but then does 40 pounds of that 80 pounds belong to her or not i think you just gotta write it up i think asking for gifts back is never a good look,

even if it's a breakup. Here's a question from Nick who says, I'm a Brit living in New Zealand and I've been asked by my boss to emcee a conference, which I'm happy to do. Good. Having accepted the role, I've been told that my emceeing should include

delivering the traditional karakia, an incantation in Maori, to open the meeting. Ah. Needless to say, in the year I've been in New Zealand, I've not become fluent in the Maori language and fear that no matter how much I practice, I'll fluff it on the day and either embarrass myself or worse, insult my colleagues and Maori heritage. Big stakes here, Helen. Yes. So, Helen, answer me this. Do I risk it

or do I find someone else to cover the role? Someone else, or at least someone else to do the karakia, not you. Because I think even if that involves you stepping back and maybe feeling a little sheepish about it, that is much better than fucking this up and potentially crapping all over Maori heritage, as if the possibility of disrespecting their culture weren't bad enough and realistic enough. Traditionally, correct delivery of the karakia was essential because mispronunciation or hesitation were bad omens. What is it, just a minute? And also, I think Brits have done enough disrespecting other cultures for well over our lifetimes.

Well, you see, that goes to the heart of it, I think. I actually disagree with you, but I think it's all about your approach. Right. I think the very fact that Nick is concerned about mispronouncing it and fluffing it reveals that he's not the kind of guy that's probably going to be giving off

a colonialist, rule Britannia vibe. I agree with you if he were, if there was any danger of that, you don't want to do that particularly as a Brit. I think the danger is that you give off that vibe just by being a Brit trying to do this Maori thing at a conference. No, well, it's all about how you do it.

I think if you're a sort of charming, floppy-haired Englishman who's sort of a bit sheepish about it, they'll fucking love you. People love that shit all over the world. People were forced into loving that shit and now they're like oh that was a bit wrong that we just let that floppy haired aristocrat come and uh kill everyone and take all our stuff yes yes yes but if just just just channel like hugh grant meets louis theroux and you can get away with anything i think be absolutely fine you just have to be charming about it acknowledge that it's not your language and you're giving it a go and people like that

i am a hard no on this get someone else to do the karakia and for the reason as well that it's a prayer and i would be uncomfortable reciting prayers in any language for any belief system there and no returns here's a question from ricky from edinburgh but tonight in a Birmingham Premier Inn. He says, I travel quite a lot with work and stay in quite a lot of hotels all over the world. Usually, if you're staying in a half-decent hotel, they provide shampoo, shower gel, body lotion, a shower cap, quite often a small shoeshine pad, sometimes a small kit containing needles and thread. But never, ever, ever do they provide you with toothpaste. Ollie, answer me this.

Why? Well, Ricky, you say you travel a lot, but obviously not to China, where free dental hygiene toiletries are ubiquitous. And you've obviously never stayed at a Hyatt, because they have a deal with Aquafresh, apparently, and you do get a little tube of toothpaste in your bedroom. I've stayed in a few Hyatts, never there where do they hide it in the safe it could be it's in the minibar that deal has now come to an end but basically it is true that it is

unusual to see mini toothpaste tubes or indeed toothbrushes even though everyone knows that they're cheap these days you can get like 10 for a pound in the pound shop can't you it's very unusual to see them can you use the shoeshine pad to polish your teeth i think there are a few reasons for it there's medical regulation uh because um other toiletries like stuff you put in your hair and stuff you put on your face isn't as highly regulated as stuff you put in your mouth and for that reason the pharmaceutical companies charge less, even in bulk, to distribute that stuff. So it can look posh. It can be Gilchrist and Soames or it can be Moulton Brown or whatever. But the bottom line is shampoo and body lotion and stuff is cheaper to buy than toothpaste.

So it could be the cost. But interestingly, Helen, I think what it comes down to is the star ratings, because most of the international star ratings give stars based on the amount of soap and the amount of apothecaries that are available in the bathrooms of your en suite bedroom. But they do not award an extra star. There's no contingency. They don't care. They don't specify. They don't ask about toothbrushes and toothpaste. So all of these incredibly expensive

six-star hotels in Dubai could just get that sixth star by lobbying the AAA to make toothpaste a thing. Six-star hotel, you get your own dentist in the bathroom. Well, there is a theory actually that because toothpaste and toothbrushes is for most people an essential whereas body lotion is a luxury there's a conspiracy theory that actually it's because you're more likely to forget your toothbrush and

toothpaste that you will then call down to the concierge and then someone will bring it up and then you feel you have to tip them that they carry on doing it as a racket because then you're charging effectively five quid for the toothpaste which costs you 30p whereas you're unlikely to call down and say where's my body lotion give me a sewing kit a really small one yeah i suppose as well just on the toothpaste thing there is an argument that you are unlikely to pack a shampoo because it might leak in your bag and it's heavy you are unlikely perhaps to pack a soap like an actual bar of soap because that's going to get manky as well whereas you can pack your own toothpaste quite easily can't you it doesn't leak i don't think it can be practicality either because like you can bring your own towel like people bring their own towels

but hotels provide towels they provide pillows and beds you could bring your own well i mean that's less practical you could bring a tent and then have no need for the hotel at all you just need to go in fact sleep in the car do that ingenious just don't leave home at all just go and live in a toothpaste factory you've always got your toothpaste right there solved it if you've got a question, then email your question. Yeah, to Answer Me This Podcast to googlemail.com. Answer Me This Podcast to googlemail.com. Answer Me This Podcast to googlemail.com. Help cat.

Answer Me This Podcast to googlemail.com. Help cat. Answer me at this podcast. Googlemail.com. So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America.

We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Dom who says, lately my auntie has replaced her profile picture on Facebook with a photograph of her late mother. Ah. This was a humbling gesture for a while

until she started chatting to family members whilst still represented by the facade of my late grandmother. Did she haunt them? Yeah, I'm not sure that facade is the right word, actually. That sounds like she's hollowed out her corpse and actually put it in front of her like a mask. Do you mean visage?

Yeah, visage is better. She even keeps this photograph updated with those Facebook frames you get for Christmas and New Year, etc. So it's apparent that this photo is there to stay. Every time my auntie posts anything on Facebook I have to do a double take to assure myself that my grandmother has in fact not risen from the dead just to share a video of kittens with my family. Helen answer me this am I just thinking about this too much or is my discomfort for my auntie making a deceased relative her profile photo justified? Mm-hmm. When you put it like that.

Whilst I'm sure she meant well, surely it would make sense to post commemorative photographs of loved ones anywhere else on Facebook to avoid this morbid confusion. Yes, I think so. But when it's done in the moment of grief, when it's done immediately post bereavement, no one's going to ever say, oh, that's a bit weird.

Everyone's going to like it, aren't they? And algorithmic, when you change your cover photo, you get a lot more traction anyway, don't you, than to other posts that you do. So she probably thought, oh, that was really nice and everyone likes it. And she may now have forgotten about it. But I think what you could do is say to your aunt i miss grandma as well but it does really freak me out

when i see her on facebook uh when you post something and maybe try and nudge her to change it you know in a kind way where you're like we're all grieving maybe we could talk about our feelings yeah and i think people just aren't aware of these technical reminders of the dead until they are pointed out to them. Because they don't see it from another point of view. And when my father died, I deliberately left my parents' Netflix profile called Karen and Stanley. Because I thought if I, because I pay for it, changed the name of my mum's profile overnight to Karen, that would look really callous. Like I just deleted my dad yeah well you're like it's over get over it Karen yeah it's been a day but then recently I was at

her house and I was helping her set up a Roku box or something boring to do with smart televisions and she said can you change that because it makes me sad every time I log on to Netflix to see Stanley's name and that hadn't occurred to me that way round, that actually she'd much rather that I'd changed it so she didn't get a reminder every time she tried to watch a film that her husband's not there. So it could just be exactly as you just said, Helen, that if you actually explain it

to your auntie who herself was so bereaved that she felt it was a good thing to change the profile as an act of remembrance that it's creeping you out and making you sad that sometimes the directest explanation is is the one that will cut through the easiest also on the whole don't you think it's a little odd when people have their facebook profiles as someone else's face generally like i can understand why you'd have a celebrity that

people say looks like you because that's funny but i mean the whole point of facebook that it's sort of differentiating factor at the beginning was that it's designed so that you're honest about who you are it's designed about where you went to school who you're related to who your friends network is what your interests are and it sort of doesn't work if you're creating fake profiles parody profiles if you're just using it for business means and although they've sort of loosened a bit on all of that stuff you know know, for commercial reasons, the basic principles are there, aren't they? It doesn't really work like it should unless you're being honest.

So I just think for that reason alone, I mean, it's probably against their terms and conditions technically, although obviously her dead mother is not going to sue her. But I mean, technically she's impersonating someone else by putting her mother's photo up, even though there's a little risk of confusion. So you could file an anonymous report about your aunt impersonating. I thought you were going to say lawsuit.

Just in Facebook court. Or maybe take a really gorgeous picture of your auntie, post it on Facebook, she could see the likes and compliments come in, and maybe she'd think, oh, perhaps that's what I want my main visual to be of myself. You upsell to your aunt the idea of her changing her picture. And you make it easy. So if in a nice way, as you suggest, you actually upload a picture of your aunt where she looks glamorous and good.

And say, look at my beautiful auntie, whatever her name is. She's, whatever, 65 today. Can you believe it? Doesn't she look incredible? I think it's time she changed her profile. We all miss grandma. But it would be great to see this wonderful woman reflected on her own page thumbs up if you agree then you can coerce her into it do you think the aunt is on tinder and her own dead mother is one of the pictures that potential suitors have to swipe do you think

you'd do better on tinder if represented by your mother or you know in her prime or as yourself i don't know she kind of destroyed all the pictures of herself if any even existed i would definitely do better as represented by my father aged my age did he have cool like 70s suits and stuff yeah he's like got jufro open shirt collar hair spilling out of the top of the shirt medallallion, tight trousers. Bee Gees look, basically. Like Barry Gibb meets Elliot Gould. And you do look quite similar, but it does seem like it takes on a very different aspect

than if you'd done it while he was alive. Like, that would have been a funny kind of in-joke when he was alive. Would it be different now that he isn't? Posing on Tinder as my dead father would It would be weird whenever I did it. I mean, that sounds like a Tumblr in itself, doesn't it? Yeah. I don't think this would be the weirdest thing for me to find on Facebook, though, to be honest. I mean, the thing that I find really annoying on Facebook these days is when people post something that's just as inane and pointless as they always used to.

You know, all the plant died today. Except instead of just writing it, they now choose one of those color templates and large so it's eye-catching and gets likes oh i don't care for those great weather today played in the snow fluorescent green large font fuck off i've never used one of those no because you've you understand subtlety and nuance helen you can use the power of your language or even a visual image to portray what you mean with the correct emphasis you're right i just want the words to work for me but maybe they want a billboard i just think it's weird this is a little off topic but i've been making martin show everyone his father's business card it's because you know martin's dad um gigs as santa yeah gigs in the run

up to christmas and his business card is the Santa Dave. And I asked him once, why doesn't he call himself Dave Claus? And he just went no, it's the Santa Dave. Do you think that's to clarify the fact that he is an avatar of Santa to preserve the idea that there is

a main real Santa and he's just a representative of that Santa in the West Midlands. Has he tried to talk your mum into being Mrs Claus? Oh, sorry, Mrs Dave. I mean, I guess she is Mrs Dave Austerwick in some sense. She'd be the Santa Val. That sounds nice, doesn't it?

When you do Santa Giggs Martin, whenever your beard's turned fully white, will you be the Santa Martin? I guess I will be the santa martin santa martin sounds like a south american tradition doesn't it oh it sounds like a small beach town in southern california yeah yeah yeah this summer i'm getting wed to my sweetheart we've got the cake the dress the band's Captain Beef Heart. And we'll both drive down the aisle in a pair of matching

go-karts. The photos will be epic. We use squarespace.com to build our wedding website. So our friends can RSVP and see our plans for the night. And we'll link to our gift list, we don't want any old shite. Seriously

guys, a hundred quid minimum yes thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This and thank you for supporting Martin and Helen's travel blog which is available at, what's the website again Helen? where can people catch up on all your adventures? smugwhitec***s.squarespace.com

smugwhitec***s.squarespace.com the number of people that have asked us if we were going to keep a travel blog, and I was like, I cannot imagine anything worse. But if we did, we would do it with Squarespace. Yeah, you certainly would. You could put up all the pictures and they would look so nice. Yeah, it's really good for photo portfolios.

I've seen quite a few sites that have used that. If you're not a self-loathing Englishman, then you should use Squarespace to distribute your content. Yeah, and even if you are a self-loathing person, you could use Squarespace to try and work out those problems in public because often it's useful to have the sounding board of a bunch of strangers. And if you don't want to show any pictures of yourself at all, you'd just rather use the template ones of attractive models

going about their business and eating noodles in funky New York eateries, go ahead and leave the template designs up. You can do that if you want. H taxis in a scarf jumping yeah always jumping or you could have a text-only website you could yeah you can still make that look good whatever you want to do go to squarespace.com take out a free trial as you can play around for two weeks don't have to pay anything and then if you like... Keep that website and sign up for a year, and you get 10% off your first purchase of their website or domain if, when you sign up at squarespace.com, you use our code.

Answer! Hi, Helen, are we? This is Lyndon from Huddersfield. Well, I'm watching the second Harry Potter film, and there's a defence against the Dark Knight's teacher who's pretending that he's really good, but really he doesn't know. And it's just a scene where he's talking about how he knows his countercurs

and Dumbledore's game is looking like I know you don't know what you're on about so it made me wonder I don't know how he answered this

if Dumbledore does know why would he hire such a rubbish teacher to teach defensively of the dark arts it's probably quite an important lesson

So in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, why do they hire such a rubbish Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher? I still haven't read the books. I'm saving them for when Harvey's older. I've only seen the films. Which film is this relating to and who plays the part? Chamber of Secrets is the second book and film. To be honest, I haven't read or seen it for at least 15 years.

But it's not a good one, is it? They get better after that. It's a role portrayed by Kenneth Branagh. Oh, I that very amusingly but the defense against the dark arts that is a cursed position so you can't pick out this one and not be like well why was his predecessor quirrell hired when he has voldemort living in the back of his head why is the next but one teacher mad eye moody but actually somebody else and the realEye Moody is a captive in a magic trunk for a year. Why is the one after that? Dolores Umbridge, who's the worst? Maybe

Dumbledore is not good at HR. You know, there are a lot of questions in the Wizardverse where you're like, they've got magic, why do they do that? But I think no amount of magic can solve human fallibility, particularly when it comes to trusting other humans. But also, it's a private school and anyone from Britain knows that those are full of kooks and

weirdos. The question implies that Dumbledore runs some sort of totalitarian school which is not the case. Presumably there's a board of governors, there's a lot of teachers who have say in the decisions and they might have their own reasons for wanting to recruit a charismatic teacher with a high media profile to attract other students to Hogwarts. Also, he talks a good game, Lockhart. He's a high profile wizard. He's very braggy. So he can probably talk his way into jobs. We're all familiar with this, right?

Where someone less talented gets a job because they're better at self-marketing. I mean, also, Harry Potter exists in the world of muggles and half-bloods and all this stuff, right? It's not a meritocracy people are prejudice it's it's based on the British public school system right it's basically Mallory Towers with magic so there's no reason to suspect that the employment procedures are fair you know Dumbledore probably just played rugby with his dad or something also isn't that suggestion that that role is not desirable like given that most of the people in that role get like killed or expelled or whatever like yeah it's not a job that would have a lot of applicants

well yeah that that was the problem because what happened was after finishing school tom riddle who later became lord voldemort applied for the job and got uh passed over for it later when he had become voldemort he applied again and they said no. So he placed a jinx on that job after he'd been refused it, meaning that no one would survive in the job for more than a year. And usually it ended badly rather than them being like, oh, I got a better job at a different wizarding school. They must have had 25 years of this, if you calculate from when Voldemort cast that spell to the end of the book. So that's 25 teachers lasting a year or less. So they didn't get good applicants because people were like that job

fucks you up and they had to take terrible people like Dolores Umbridge I mean in a way it's good that they remained committed to the curriculum you know despite not finding the best applicants it's a bit like classics teachers isn't it I mean they're all going to be a bit weird because it's a small pool to choose from but you know it turns out to be quite useful that you offer latin and greek yeah well i wonder whether they thought around the time when the books start that it wasn't super important because voldemort had been crushed and therefore the evil forces didn't seem as critical to teach children about why didn't they just change the job title why didn't they just make it like advancementment of Protection Against Evil or something?

I think the implication is the Jinx would have also worked on anyone in the substitute job. But apparently this trope of the Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers dying in nasty ways or having to leave the job in various nasty ways was inspired by Spinal Tap and the drummers all being killed off in ludicrous ways in quick succession. Oh, that's a good track. Lisa from Elton. Helen and Ollie, I'm currently on a walk through Centre Park's Woburn, but can you answer me this? Is it serendipitous they happen to find suitable land with a pine forest or is there some landscaping involved? Do they bring the trees in and plant the park? Otherwise, how do they always achieve this pine forest and fern setup? So does every centre park just happen to be in a forest? It makes a lot of sense for them to be in forest doesn't it? It gives you that sense of removal so you're in this holiday state. It muffles the noise of children screaming in a pool. I think it's more the former than the latter. You can build a holiday camp

because it's not already a town? I actually imagine it's harder for them to get planning permission to build a centre parks in a natural woodland than it is if they were just building it in Brownfield. So actually, no. In fact, the one in Woburn that Lisa is calling us from, that took many years to get planning permission to do because it is a woodland. But the reason they put so much work in to try and get the permission to base it in a lovely forest is because that's their USP. That's their distinction from other holiday camps. Yeah, so they're not at the seaside like all the other holiday camps are, are they? Yeah, in fact, I know that they'd object to even the phrase holiday camps.

Oh, sorry. Back in 2005, when I was a researcher on This Morning for ITV, we were doing a piece about the rise in staycations. There was absolutely no evidence for this particular rise to be documented on the show, apart from the fact that the producer, I think, wanted to show some of the footage of the Nobby Knees competitions from Butlins in the 50s and the Minehead monorail and all that stuff that you get great black and white archive footage for.

So we constructed this completely untrue thing, probably, about how more people were going to holiday camps than ever before. Not holiday camps, leisure villages. Well, so this is it. So in the process of researching that item, I had to call up the press offices of, like, Butlins. And I called Butlins and I called Pontins. And then my producer said, actually, we should get Centre Parcs as well.

A lot of our viewers will be going to Centre Parcs, call them, get some footage from them so i called the centre parks press office this is kind of before centre parks had a bit of a reboot to be the woodland holiday of choice of urban sophisticates as well as families who want a wave machine and a segway yeah i think it's very well established you're right now that it is kind of the waitrose of holiday parks yeah and then they were sort of beginning to go into that territory they've always been a bit european and eco-friendly and stuff but this was like yes our destiny is hummus they've made that choice um so i called the press office and i said

yeah yeah we're doing this item about holiday camps and i remember the the woman in the press office actually saying on the phone uh we're not a holiday camp we're a forest villa village a forest villa village with a revolving restaurant and a wave machine uh it's not a wave machine helen it's a subtropical swimming paradise water oscillation facility um and uh it's not a chalet it's a villa in fact it's not a villa it's an executive lodge um that sounds a bit too much like work doesn't it yeah executive lodge yeah like a team bonding exercise it does sound grown up but that's deliberate so the thing i didn't really get centre parks until i had a kid and now i totally get centre park it looks like fun from the adverts of people cycling through a forest and going in a pool in a dome yeah and it is fun but i've never been well i don't think

you should without children because I think you could do... I mean, okay, you couldn't go swimming in a dome, but you could do everything else that you can do there, i.e. walk around a man-made lake, eat lunch at a chain restaurant, see a tree. That's pretty much our wedding day, wasn't it?

To see a tree. You can do all of that without paying £500 for the weekend to go to centre parks. The reason to go to centre parks, I've realised since having a child, is there is a lot of places to drink alcohol whilst watching your children in safety it's basically that like forget everything else they say about like the holistic lifestyle and being outside and family time like all of that's true but the predominant thing is it's like laid out throughout the whole park, it's like playground, bar, playground, bar. And then the trees are there for you to prop yourself against

as you spin between playground and bar in your chalet. Sorry, executive lodge. Tree, playground, bar. Do you end up getting into conversation with the tree? Where you're like, oh, my best friend! It is actually almost to the point where it's hard to decipher sometimes whether you're standing in the soft play located in the bar or the bar that's located in the soft play.

You know what I mean? They melt into each other. And I know this sounds very flippant, and obviously I don't go there to get pissed, but genuinely, it's a place that's designed for adults and kids to have fun together. And that doesn't mean drinking, but it does, you know, there's Starbucks everywhere as well,

so you can sit and have a coffee as well. But it's just the point that you don't have, because it's really boring watching your children in playgrounds for hours not when you're boozing it isn't so in a way it's like a holiday in a time where people were happy just to throw their kids out of the house for the day and be like come back at tea time oh i think when the kids are like nine or ten obviously i wouldn't do that with a two-year-old he probably couldn't locate himself back that'd be a bad thing but when the kids are nine or ten yeah absolutely they you know compared to sending them off on their bikes to go cycling

around woburn generally you know within the area that it's uh located in woburn forest yeah you're pretty safe because there's there's security everywhere there aren't cars either no cars so and yet you can load all your crap into a car and drive it on site to unpack it and then by 10 p.m on the night of arrival you have to drive it away. Really? Where do you put it? A massive car park. But it just means that kids scooting around or something can't get hit by a car, which is actually brilliant. How big is the area?

So I'm well unlike Team Centre Parcs now. It sounds pretty fun. You make a strong case. So to get around Centre Parcs, do you walk or roller skate or get a... Segway? Do you segway? Well, as you know, I smash my shoulder whenever I try and do any mode of transport more exciting than driving or walking, so I walk.

But other people cycle more Segway. Driving's a pretty dangerous mode of transport. I would have thought anything... Well, touch wood, not for me. I mean, I've never been in a car accident. No, that's true. But I do injure myself whenever I try and do anything other than walk or drive. So, I walk.

What if you tripped over a tree root? There aren't that many trees. It's actually, I've been to longleat and i've been to woburn and longleat is the more established one yeah and it is nicer is it is it the same kind of trees i think so but they're much bigger yeah they're older yeah yeah so it's not like their center parks are committed to one particular type of forest well so to answer lisa's question i think that they build around trees that are already there but i think they plant more in certain styles of trees to give it that alpine feel because they even have a restaurant there which is a pancake house which is sort of modeled on a sort of swiss alpine feel and so i i think

probably yeah 20 years down the line woburn will. Also, pines grow faster than deciduous trees. And presumably if they've been building and they need to put trees in that are going to grow up and cover the site of the car park quicker, then you'd go for pine. So I don't know if it's in the centre box. In my mind's eye, it's a little bit like sun and running. So is it literally all under a big glass dome?

No, that is the most common misconception. Right. Yeah, the adverts really missold the dome. I remember watching Going Live in about 1988 when they'd just launched the one in Sherwood Forest and Philip Schofield and Sarah Green went round the water rapids under the dome. And Philip Schofield did a link to camera where he was talking. He was like, oh, I'm losing control because it's Kid stelly and fell over yeah and i was like that looks like the most

awesome thing in the world a ride where you could drown um and of course when i went i was disappointed that it wasn't that you know well you're unlikely to drown yeah so you're right that they absolutely hyped the dome as the central point but no it's it's just one facet of the many so the dome is just a bit where the water park is or something the dom point but no it's it's just one facet of the many so the dome is just a bit where the water park is the domes yeah but it is i think without it certainly if you visit in winter there's not that much to do if you're there in the summer there's loads of outdoor based stuff you can do pony rides and tree climbing and watching birds but uh if you're there in the winter it's kind of all about swimming because it's at 26 degrees all year round wow perfect for

you i don't know why that hasn't caught on. It must be very expensive to build. Why that hasn't caught on around the rest of the country. I mean, why aren't all our swimming pools in biodomes? It's obviously better, isn't it? Radio 4 is on 24-7, but that's not enough recorded speech for me. So I'll trot off to answer me,

thispodcast.com slash Audible, and download more for me. So I'll trot off to answer me this podcast.com slash Audible and download more for free. Like Lord of the Rings starring Sir Michael Gordon and Michelin Web series one to four. Just a minute, Alan Bennett down the line Ross Noble and the best

of BBC News Hour. Sounds awesome! Yes, the Audible offer is back, listeners. I know, like the fireworks. If you've never had a free audiobook through audible.co.uk before. What were you listening to? Just the sound of air rustling against your ear holes?

Ugh. Ugh. Why have that when you could have a person reading out a book? That's right right so they've got thousands of books and yada yada yada and you've heard us talk about it before but here's the special deal listeners it's a new thing not only have we got the old offer of get a free trial on audible try it out get a free book then if you cancel and don't pay anything audible still send

us money and support this show not only have we got that offer running at the moment, wait for it. Do you know what it is, Helen? No. What is it? Tell me. Give it. Give it. I want it. Whatever it is, I want it. You get two free books. Mic drop. Two free books. That's a good amount of free books. That's twice as good as one free book, which is pretty good. You get one free book when you take out the offer and then there's a credit in your audible account and you can get it on a second one and you can take this offer out even if you've had it before even if you've been a member of audible before oh score yeah the only criteria is you can't be an existing member of audible now but if it's been 12 months or more

since you had an audible membership go ahead this offer is for you this does though i'm afraid only apply to uk audible so if you're listening in the us sorry shit out of luck and um have you listened to anything good ollie i'm looking forward to listening for free to the audiobook by my friend greg jenner who's a historian and he wrote a book called a million years in a day which is all about the history of everyday things very interesting lots of little facts that does sound brilliant actually is it him reading it it's him reading it what's his voice like i like it as you know i i tend to listen to the memoirs of broadcasters because they tend to be good at reading their own books um and i've been listening recently to uh he's not a broadcaster he's a comic i suppose but steve coogan's memoirs so not him as alan partridge there's two audiobooks

of him doing alan partridge's memoirs which is amazing but different this is his autobiography it's called easily distracted what's really good about it is obviously he's an amazing impressionist so he does the voices of everyone in his own life story so it does add an extra layer of interest than just reading the book so he's like recreating his history teacher and his drama instructors at university and stuff like that gives it a lot of color i'll be honest there's a little bit too much about filomena he's obviously very proud of having been nominated for an oscar and not as proud as he should be about creating the defining comic creation of the last 50 years but hey if you want two free audiobooks all you have to do is follow the link at answer me this podcast.com slash audible.

And remember, just by taking out the free trial, getting your two free books, and then cancelling if you so choose, we get money. Thanks. Here's a question from Sashu from Canberra who says, Helen, answer me this. What the heck is buttermilk? It tastes neither like butter nor milk, and definitely doesn't taste like butter in milk. Well, it's kind of milk with the butter taken out. It's a by-product of butter, traditionally. You churn unhomogenised milk or cream to separate the butterfat from the buttermilk. There are tiny globules of butterfat suspended in liquid.

And then the churning, which traditionally was just putting the milk or cream in a barrel and then pumping it with a stick of wood until the emulsification happened of the butter and then you drain off the buttermilk and press the butter into a pat globules fat churning barrels emulsification i don't know which word is making me feel more appetized well anyway you make the butter then the buttermilk is just sitting around and humans or animals might drink it because there's a lot of nutrients in it. There's less fat than in whole milk and it has a sour taste, which some people like. And you can also use it in cooking because the lactic acid it has is good for tenderizing meat if you marinate it in buttermilk to make, for instance, fried chicken. Yeah, so that's my only experience of it was in a fried chicken recipe and i had to go specially to buy it and i did think really can you taste the difference you

know is this one of those things where they specify buttermilk because that's the tradition in the south of america but really is it worth me going specially to buy it couldn't i just use butter or milk well you can use milk with a bit of acid added and leave it for 10 or so minutes and that is carefully it won't use lemon juice and that okay. It's not as good as the buttermilk but it is okay. They also use buttermilk as the raising agent in things like soda bread and pancakes because it's acidic so that trips the raising process creating the carbon dioxide that leads to a fluffy buttermilk pancake. So why is it that it tastes neither like butter nor milk then according to Sashi? It's not as sweet as milk. It's more sour because it starts to ferment and it doesn't taste like butter because it's not as sweet as milk it's more sour because it starts to ferment

and it doesn't taste like butter because it's not got the salt in it that i think is the defining taste of butter the fat with salt but the butter is salted after they're separated here's a question from joe in springfield massachusetts who says that's one of the springfields isn't it most town names in america yeah uh who says, I was watching an episode of Doctor Who featuring the present-day Pope as a character. But rather than being Argentinian, this Pope was Italian. This reminded me of an older episode of Family Guy

made during the John Paul II years where a Pope character was also Italian rather than Polish. While the associations of the papacy in Italy are pretty hard to miss, yes, well done, Joe, I still find this odd as there hasn't been an Italian Pope in almost 40 years. So Helen answered me this. Why do TV shows keep making the Pope Italian?

Even if it's just to avoid any kind of trouble from evoking the actual Pope, why still rely on Italy? It just seems weird for casting folks to keep falling back on this kind of trouble from evoking the actual pope why still rely on italy it just seems weird for casting folks to keep falling back on this kind of stock character do you know ellen i think of all roles on the international scene you really could call the pope a stock character it's reasonable just classic pope there's some pretty uh distinguishing features yeah and living in italy is one of those isn't it regardless of their ethnic origin well that's the thing even though the pope may not have been born and raised in italy it's certainly a

very italian position to have so i guess by representing them as italian you're not getting to the specificity of whether they are one of the popes that isn't from italy but there have been 217 popes from italy and only about three dozen not from Italy so I guess statistically you're more likely to have an Italian pope than a non-Italian pope and they're doing a pope trope so they're going with the majority pope aren't they? The pope tropes great band much missed also Francis we're on first name terms he's the first non-European pope in over a thousand years. Wow. So although they may not have all been Italian, they're going to all be Italianate.

Yeah, he's the aberrant pope, isn't he? Yeah. You're not going to make the Pope Argentinian because that would seem less believable, even though it's our current reality. Because Argentina has such a big Italian influence that it's not that far from the tree, is it? Pope Francis, although born in Argentina, is the child of Italian immigrants. Ah, okay.

Here's a Pope fact I discovered this week, which shocked me. If you want to go, and you might do this on your smug white people travelling blog, if you want to go and watch a papal audience, that's what they call it, isn't it? Where you go and see the Pope doing some live praying. Yeah, it's kind of like a stadium type of thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know how you apply for tickets? you pray to jesus ticket master you have to fax off a form fax you have to fax off a form i i saw that on tripadvisor and i was like no that can't be right i'm gonna google this to see whether this you know this is obviously a page from 10 years ago no still the case if you want to get a ticket for the papal audience in advance, you have to fax off a form. You download the form online, then you fax it to the Vatican. How is that possible? You know how Pope Francis is thought of as a very progressive pope. And yet this exposes the truth, doesn't it?

I mean, I went to see TFI Friday being recorded in 1997 and I completed that form online. How do you have to fax off? Handsome is this. Hampton Court was Henry VIII's home. The O2 Arena was the Millennium Dome. Wasn't it? I went to see you in your room but it had been turned into a weather spoon So I ordered a two-for-one curry and a macaroon But they don't sell macaroons Do they? I just ate both curries

And now I regret that Time for a question from Siobhan in silver spring maryland that's an evocative place isn't it sure is it on your list silver spring we did go to maryland didn't go to silver spring chose not to visit siobhan didn't i'm sorry i'm sorry sounds like a great place it was a really quick visit i'm sorry it sounds like a place that's got lots of natural waters and uh money either that or a slinky that's their town emblem um well they do brunch there so i'm already on board uh because siobhan says i was at brunch the other day and the bloody mary's came with olives on little swords yes good Helen answer me this where did these cocktail swords come from well you can buy hundreds of them from Amazon I don't think she literally

means those ones Helen who came up with them and how long have they been around why swords did pirates invent them um pirates aren't known for their cocktails are they they just straight up rum usually you could say did Kingthur invent the cocktail sword because you pull it out of the olive they've been around since at least the 50s because i've seen 50s cocktail swords for sale on ebay but it's really hard to find out who originated these which is frustrating but you can see the thought process can't you because you'd think i need a spiky object for spiking an object what's already a spiky object that is easy to miniaturize into a tiny spiky object sword yes can you associate it with rum and other tropical drinks because those are popular in cocktail history yes you can ding and also because there are still a lot of injuries with people swallowing toothpicks

that come in their cocktails because they put it back in the glass they don't know where else to put it and then it goes into their throat or into their eye harder to do that with a sword how does a luminescent plastic sword resolve that issue i mean i guess it shows up better in your poop it shows up more when you are swigging that drink oh i see yeah okay so if you're just drunk enough to have forgotten that you put your toothpick back in the drink, but not so drunk that you wouldn't see a luminescent plastic sword, then it's the perfect olive skewer. Well, it's certainly an adequate olive skewer.

I have some vintage olive forks that have a plastic olive on the end. I remember those. I was very fond of those. Yeah, but it does seem a bit specific. Are they in storage? They're in storage. Yeah, we didn't travel with our vintage olive forks. But why do they have to have an olive on the end just seems very prescriptive doesn't it and also like you couldn't stab it

into something other than an olive because if you ate a piece of pineapple on an olive fork there'd be this uncomfortable association with a very different flavor that you wouldn't necessarily enjoy i know what you mean and i'm just thinking about other implements that i've seen that are like that because i'm pretty sure i've seen some corn on the cob skewers that have got cobs on them yes and I think the answer is that essentially they're a novelty you know you can use other items to do both jobs like a toothpick even though you might accidentally swallow it because you're weird and drunk so I think it might just be that it was a way of of selling the item in the store like you're living the kind of life where you

need this extra implement it's fun it's novelty do you like corn have this thing with corn on it you know it's like those um tins that say tea on them yeah tea sugar coffee i mean no one's going to really get those confused they can see fairly quickly which is which don't need to say it on it and yet it's become an iconic design or those bowls that have different types of pasta written around the rim i'm like don't tell me what to do and yet am i going to eat cereal out of one of them no too scared never i've got a cherry pie one that's got the ingredients of how to make a cherry pie and the recipe in it and whenever i put cereal in it i just feel like something's gone wrong like heston blumenthal's mess with my breakfast yeah that said my mum had

this um dish that she used to serve salad in but it had a recipe for cheese souffle written in the bottom. So she broke the cycle. She reinvented the wheel. I guess these swords are in that kind of trend of kitschy implements that seems to go with cocktails of the 20th century, particularly. You know, cocktails becoming popular and us having little umbrellas and tiki styling and stuff like that. And cocktails have elaborate garnishes on them, sometimes for flavour,

but isn't it also because otherwise you're getting usually a brown or a transparent liquid and on its own, that doesn't look that glam. And it certainly doesn't look like you want to pay £12 for it. So put some toys in it. Yeah, I was going to gonna say let's not forget the price i mean i think a lot of this is justifying the price isn't it a lot of the kind of mystique around stirring and mixing and shaking cocktails and dressing them comes from the fact that you are paying five times as

much sometimes as you would for just a straight up glass of wine and the alcoholic hit is not necessarily any more severe because it's so diluted and everyone knows that ice doesn't cost anything so you kind of have to dress it up don't you otherwise why are you paying so much i found out something about how toothpicks used to be a status symbol in the late 1800s because once they became something that was manufactured rather than people whittling one as and when they needed it they were given out in posh hotels huh but no toothpaste people i know right so people used to stand outside the posh hotels chewing on a toothpick to give the impression that they were wealthy enough to eat in the posh hotel so toothpicks were a posh thing for a bit that's a

good fact yeah that's like um in the south of france where people walk small dogs around to show that they live there what yeah like in can and stuff it's a known thing i mean obviously if you've got a dog you're unlikely to be a tourist i know some people go on holiday with their dogs but it's a way of saying oh yeah i live here i'm not just visiting like you so is there a trade in renting out dogs to tourists probably so you feel more involved i feel like this uh trend for plastic swords though is probably coming to an end now i mean i know that they will have that kitsch appeal that you discussed you know there'll always be pictures of glamorous film stars in the 50s and 60s with them so there'll always be an interest in recreating that but at the same time with all

this focus on single-use plastic now yeah i just think the time's up on uh i probably shouldn't appropriate that phrase but i do think time's up on plastic swords and cocktails like i just don't see them lasting to the end of the century why don't they get rid of straws i don't know how i used to ignore it for so long but i now can't relax when i know that i'm being that wasteful with a piece of plastic do you keep them all yeah just in case i ever have a battle i'm waiting to stage a full lego recreation of game of thrones and i'm going to use the plastic swords from various cocktails accrued over the years well i think it's time we wrap up because we're in hawaii and i want to stop talking to you and go snorkeling sorry and also it's about four in the morning here

and i can hardly stay awake but it was totally worth this evening of my life oh goody goody if you would like to keep us both awake at different ends of the earth in a future edition of answer me this then um supply us with your questions please do you can email us you can email us a voice memo because our skype and phone line are not working totally well but you can still skype and phone us as well all of our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com whereupon you can also find links to follow us on social media. And remember that we have other podcast side projects for you to enjoy as well. The Illusionist is back for 2018.

You can find it all at theillusionist.org and a lot of people think, oh, a show about language, that's just going to be grammar pedantry. It isn't. It's an entertainment show with a linguistic slant. And Ollie, you seem to have your voice on myriad podcast what's coming up this month the modern man is between seasons at the moment but do check out my other podcast

the week unwrapped it is a weekly current affairs show about the stories that aren't headline news but should be and you can find it at theweekunwrapped.com and if you think well i don't want to hear ollie man giving his views on current affairs, fair enough, I'm with you, brother slash sister, but it's me talking to intelligent people who do have a valid view. Thank God. Martin, what's coming up in your podcast? We're covering Raindogs, the Tom Waits album, Raindogs,

because it's a podcast about Tom Waits. And we have Heath and Robert Sledge. Robert Sledge of Benfold 5 fame. We've got Phoebe and Lauren from Criminal and we have Russell Allen from Imaginary Advice guesting with us.

And you can find that at songbysongpodcast.com songbysongpodcast.com So much to listen to listeners but you can also find our first 200 episodes if you want to go back

into our earlier work and our albums. You can listen to Answer Me This Sports Day during the Winter Olympics. Why not? Nice. And those are all at answermethisstore.com.

And if you want to try a sample of our archive material, well, just come back to this here podcast feed. Halfway through the month, there is a free re-release of something from the Answer Me This vaults. And we will return on the first Thursday of March with a fresh new episode of Answer Me This. And what country are you going to be in for that one, Helen?

Don't know yet. Who knows? Don't know, haven't booked it. Well, if I needed another reason to tune in, I've just had one. So rejoin us then. Bye!