Answer Me This! - AMT361: Smell-O-Vision, Bidet Chat, and Trainy McTrainface

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

With a spring in your step and a scent in your nostrils and a freshly cleaned undercarriage and AMT361 in your ears, join us to consider films that smell, friends that smell, and taking a ride on Michael Palin.  There's more about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode361. 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 . Squarespace! Want to build a website? Go to http://squarespace.com/answer, and get a 10% discount with the code 'answer'.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Facebook knows so much about me, why's my feed full of sport? How's the business? How's the business? Can I expense this election I bought? How's the business? How's the business? Helen and Molly, how's the business? Helen, you may recall last episode you were advising Andrew in Melbourne on how to live in his grandfather's house. Yes, which he's not allowed to alter.

Correct. Because in my armchair psychologist view, his family weren't willing to let go of grandad and the physical manifestation of his life. Which is ongoing, I think we should point out. He's still alive. Grandpa is still alive. But he's probably not coming home.

Well, Andrew has been back in touch and he says, Helen, your suggestions on how to make the place feel homier were much appreciated. Yes! As were your thoughts on the emotional aspect of my situation. Nailed it! She says sensitively. I listened to your answer with my mum, which led to a good chat about how we're all coming to terms with it.

To imagine, Helen, when we started this podcast, you know, do you think Claire from episode one sat down with her doctor to listen to our answer on constipation? I doubt it. I hope so. I hope she hasn't been bunged up for all 11 years. We basically offer like a third-hand mediation service, don't we? A third-hand also useful when you do suffer from constipation.

Oh, no. Andrew continues. Mum does want to correct a few matters however. She wants you to know that the restrictions on room usage were to protect the antique furniture and the fine china and the crystal until we can sell it. Yeah but they haven't sold it and they haven't stacked it carefully all in one room so Andrew can at least have a different room that he is allowed in because it doesn't have any crystal in it. They're not ready. Your answer was much appreciated, Helen. Sorry.

There's no need to double down. Sorry. Andrew does admit as well that selling this stuff could prove difficult. He says, who needs a set of prawn cocktail glasses these days? May I say, me. I would love a set of prawn cocktail glasses. Is that because you live in the 1970s it's because i think prawn cocktail is just a much underrated starter can you use a crystal prawn cocktail glass for anything else like a sundae i don't see why not apart from

the lingering smell of fish meat andrew continues mum also disputes my claim that the dolls in her childhood bedroom are creepy but they are dolls ergo so ellen answer me this are these dolls creepy or at least somewhat politically incorrect and he's uh he's attached some photos for you to peruse we'll put these doll photos on facebook facebook.com answer me this but i'll just try and paint a picture with words right now what we're looking at uh several dozen dolls dressed in the national costumes of many nations it's like eurovision on someone's shelf various different asian stereotype dolls a doll in a sari a doll with like traditional dutch wear there's one that looks a lot like mrs pepperpot if mrs pepperpot were played by angela lansbury i think what i

would say is that whilst these dolls aren't creepy in a kind of dusty woman in black type way, they are creepy in a it's a small world, children in harmony, lobotomised diverse way. These dolls are less creepy than they were in my imagination, but they still need to go. So maybe mum needs to reacquaint herself with all these old doll friends of hers

and then put them on eBay, but get them out of Andrew's new home. Elizabeth from Oxfordshire, currently in Chicago. I'm an au pair living with a family in the USA during my gap year. And in June, I have a week off where I have the opportunity to go on a road trip with one of my closest friends here. We're going to be taking it in turns to drive and we plan to see niagara falls toronto boston and maybe new york city but the problem is that although we're both pretty confident and relatively outgoing we're both pretty introverted and

so as much as we like hanging out with each other neither of us can cope hanging out with people for long periods of time like full stop so i'm worried that the hours upon hours of us driving together will be too much um over three or four days but we have no way to spend time separately as we'll be sharing hostel rooms and sharing a car and eating together and stuff so helen and ollie asked me this on a road trip how do you spend time apart when you can't actually spend time apart you can spend time alone like within that so what if you're sharing a room you can go off for a walk by yourself yes I would suggest that I would suggest when you actually arrive in a town you go off and do separate activities or if you want to just relax maybe both go to the cinema because that's kind of like being on your own i wonder whether um in a way it's harder for elizabeth to imagine that because she's going with a friend like

strangely although you might think in a couple the onus would be on you to spend more time together because you're in a relationship actually in a couple you're possibly more used to saying all right shut up and fuck off whereas when you're with a mate on your big road trip yeah you're supposed to explore everything together although she does say both of them are introverts and therefore maybe it'll be a relief for the friend to know that elizabeth is thinking about this i think it's fine to wear mutual pairs of headphones and plan these separate activities when you are in a place go to different museums or go around the museum at a different pace and then meet at the end to discuss the museum now that is a great tip it took me until i was 36 helen to realize this was an option

oh if only we'd been here for you i was in um catalonia with my wife's family and we started queuing to go to the dali museum in figueres ah you'd like it martin there's big eggs there i've been i've been to the dali museum i been to the Darling Museum that was before your egg era maybe that's what put me onto it anyway there was a 40 minute queue to get in so my mother-in-law and my wife and her sisters just said no we're going to go off and get some lunch and go shopping, we don't want to see it again

because they'd been before but my father-in-law wanted to come so we spent 40 minutes queuing together, chatting and I just assumed therefore we were museum buddies we were doing it together once we got through the threshold he just turned to me sergeant major style took authority and said right i've done this before i know which bits i want to see we're going to go around at different speeds so i'll meet you back here at three o'clock great perfect and it was amazing i was like thank god because actually you know I'd be making from his point of view really pedestrian

observations about paintings he was over familiar with but that watch doesn't keep time eh yeah exactly if you're close enough friends that you can sit in silence together and just get on with your own things without the need for constant conversation you can have a little private

headspace even if you're in the same space in the same car or in the same dorm room or whatever it is. I think actually it's me that wants my own time more than Martin. Yesterday I made him go off and do an expedition on his own, but I think he wanted me to come with him, whereas I would happily go on expeditions on my own nearly every day. In my relationship, I'm the more talky one. So, you know, I could happily talk the whole time we're in a car driving my wife cannot bear that and wants a divorce so what we do is is i talk at her for about half an hour and she says a few things and then we sometimes we'll put an album on and listen to that or an audiobook and not talk like make a thing of not talking for an hour i think audiobooks and podcasts in the car is a good

idea and when you're having meals you could just agree that that's when you both do some reading rather than chatting but you might actually find that you get a rhythm where you you really enjoy having your friend around in semi-silence where are you at the moment taiwan what have you made in taiwan oh sorry if you had done any handicrafts though that would work i do miss handicrafts, but not enough to justify that joke What's Taiwan like? Oh, it's great, I'm really enjoying it The great thing about Taiwan, Ollie

Is that they do dim sum All through the day Not just in the mornings, like a lot of Chinese places A lot of lightweights looking at you, mainland China I think that's a real fuck you to mainland China And also Are you expected to eat it three meals a day like Scottish people eat sausages three times a day?

No, you just have the option to do that. Right, yeah. Here's a question from Gareth in Chorleywood who says, Ollie, answer me this, can pubs run loyalty schemes like coffee chains do? They can. Oh. And that surprises me because there have been laws and attempted regulatory curbs on special offers two for ones and one pound drinks and things like that for the obvious reason

of not wanting to encourage alcoholism and in the interest of public health so I sort of thought that might wouldn't you think you know in a parliamentary debate have expanded as far as loyalty cards like if you're encouraging someone to buy five drinks and get the sixth one that could be problematic apparently not it's fine they do exist but i i think this is the nature of gareth's question why don't they exist on a widespread basis i think what it comes down to um is actually it's very boring this but it's to do with the technology that powers all the tills oh wow well when you use like a club card or an ecta card for foreign listeners those are supermarkets related loyalty schemes you hand over a plastic card and they do have apps now but most people

still hand over a plastic card and that has a barcode on the back of it and that goes through the till and the whole purpose really of the loyalty cards of course is to give you a special offer so that you come back. But really, it's to give the supermarket lots of information about you. You know, what's in your shopping basket, where you live, what your demographic is, so that they can market things to you more efficiently. For that to work, all the pubs in a chain need to have a till, like a supermarket with all their aisles, that understands that information. Otherwise, it's kind of pointless having the scheme and basically the way a lot of free houses work is uh landlords run the pub they're all slightly different even though they might be part of chef and brewer or green king or whatever

and so actually trying to get a loyalty scheme to work across lots of diverse different local pubs would be really difficult technologically and you'd have to train everyone the same way even if they worked in completely different environments you know some of them are drinkers pubs some of them are food pubs so i think that's the reason um weatherspoons is the obvious place where you'd think well surely they'd they've got an app surely they'd have a loyalty scheme yeah but they don't the only reason i can imagine that they don't do it is that thing of not wanting to be accused of encouraging people to drink too much. And I think it's as simple as that.

I think they do target their consumers in different clever ways. You know, when you sign up to use the Wi-Fi, you'll get an email offer offering you two-for-one cocktails. But I don't think they want people walking around with a Wetherspoons piece of plastic in their wallet because of the suggestion that that means you're a bit of a piss head um i'm tempted to ask you about exciting drinks you've had on your travels but i imagine not that many because you tend not to uh consume alcohol yeah have you have you partaken of anything exciting yesterday i was in a convenience store and they sold pringles which were mineral water flavored no and i was intrigued i hadn't bought them yet but i thought for the museum of things that shouldn't exist yeah i should invest so but I hadn't bought them yet, but I thought for the museum of things that shouldn't exist, I should invest.

So you haven't bought them yet? So you can go back and buy them? Can you please go back and buy them? I'm happy to pay for the postage if you want to send them to me. Because I'm curious because like plain Pringles would still be basically salty, wouldn't it? The thing about mineral water is the absence of salt compared to seawater. Wash the salt off.

What is that the taste of? I don't even know. Fizziness. I've just got to find out. If you've got a question, email your question to answerthethispodcast at googlemail.com

Answer this podcast to 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 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. Jay in Portland, Oregon says, I am a secret skipping lover. Yes. No need to keep it secret. There's nothing wrong with it. Well, yeah, I mean, he's out on the show, isn't he? He's given us his name. We know his email address. But we can't see him skipping, so he could be anybody. As I am a 31 year old man anyone who sees me skipping looks at me like i'm out of my mind

i think i mean i'd be guilty of that you know i'm not saying he should be shamed but i think if i did see a grown man skipping i would probably think they were a bit insane that's so sad just because it's unconventional you would think what's going on in that man's head this is why skippers stay secret jay continues before i break into that not quite running not quite walking jaunt i always make sure to check no one is around to see so helen answer me this why do people stop skipping when they're adults and how can we make it okay for everyone to have a little bounce in their step as they wander down the road? This is a really good question. Bring back skipping. Bring back skipping. Because, you know, skipping uses 24% more energy than running at the same

speed. No. But how much more jubilant fun is it? Much. Lots more. Way more than 24%. 50% more, yeah. I'd say 150%. So I wouldn't be surprised if, over the next few years, skipping did return to public parks as skipping groups felt empowered, in company with each other, to skip en masse. And then maybe solo skippers thought, you know what, it's all right for people to jog. I'm going to skip. So maybe you just need to find some like-minded skippers thought, you know what? It's all right for people to jog. I'm going to skip.

So maybe you just need to find some like-minded skippers, Jay, and reclaim the skipping. Or maybe take, I would take a niece with me as my cover story, I reckon. What I disagree with in what you're saying is the optimism that by starting a skipping group, that would filter into people feeling confident to skip alone. I don't think it would. Jay is in Portland, Oregon.

If anywhere can bring skipping back and make it acceptable publicly for adults to do, it's Portland. And I still think it wouldn't happen. But I'm not saying don't do it in a group. I think it's a great idea. I think forming a skipping group of like-minded individuals, excellent idea.

And if I saw that in the park, I'd think it was quaint and amusing. It's just that i it maybe it's conditioning of me not you but you know i'm not gonna i can't imagine a world where in 20 years time i wouldn't i wouldn't think it's weird to see someone skip past me if they're an adult it's a world that i would be happy to live in and skip through sure i'm just but i'm just being honest i remember when i was a child uh, I just thought, I'll never be tired skipping compared to walking or running. And for a child, skipping is intermediate between walking and running.

So when you've mastered walking, but your leg abilities are still a bit too new, that's why skipping is popular amongst young children. But then as you get older, your centre of gravity is less skipping compatible. So I think maybe that's one reason why it phases out in adults a bit it's just harder for a taller heavier person to do right not just because people are judgmental about someone doing something as happy seeming as skipping in public you see that's interesting because it's a bit like carrying around teddy bears and comforters isn't it like on the one hand there's no or putting your thumb in your mouth and sucking on that like there's no reason why there has to be a stigma about adults doing that if it was still something that adults enjoyed doing but maybe there is a case maybe it

isn't social conditioning maybe there's a physical reason you just stop needing to do that most people stop needing to do that when they become adolescents or whatever maybe it's a bit like that with skipping like it just actually the the physical box you were ticking before as you were saying isn't being ticked anymore and so naturally people grow out of it and that's why it seems weird when other people do it you know what the way to validate any kind of movement from strolling to dancing to rolling over on your couch as you watch a seventh hour of television is do it in exercise clothes yes so just tog up for your skipping group preferably flog a dvd or these days i guess a youtube channel around the subject so it can become the latest fitness trend yeah like prancer size yeah and

then put a diet with it and a cookbook and seriously you'll be a millionaire jay also astronauts skip in space because it's a slightly easier gate to do when you're wearing a massive space suit so all you need to do is pretend that it's an astronaut fitness and everyone be like well that sounds sciencey i suppose also you know when a man says i'm a 31 year old man the image that jumps into my head i'm thinking lunch break guy in a suit it seems particularly ridiculous yes with a briefcase yeah if actually if i saw a 31 year old man in sports gear skipping past me in the park i might assume it was a warm-up or a cool down with a fitbit on and little hand weights exactly yeah get the gear no one will notice but you know i think exercise could stand to be more fun i think adult gyms that were more like

playgrounds would be a huge hit and i think skipping i'm gonna put money on it as in four years time and exercise craze that they're writing about in the guardian and stuff where do you stand on skipping with a skipping rope is that cool people love skipping with a skipping rope uh in gyms yeah army training they do that don't they and that's usually the province of little girls in playgrounds as well and yet that managed to bounce its way into mainstream exercise by making the ropes all like chrome and heavy i think boxers use that. I think that's maybe why very

sort of, what's the phrase, gender insecure men are prepared to use a skipping rope, but not freestyle skipping. So if boxers took up road skipping, it's going to be back. It's going to be back. I am your current website. I look rather shabby I've got an ugly font and my graphics are scabby

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He was on their Super Bowl commercial. It was Keanu. Why are they bothering with us when they've got bloody Keanu? I think we're probably going for different demographics within the brand. But yeah, Keanu Reeves uses Squarespace to host the website for his motorcycle company, apparently, or clothes for motorbikes or something. I always feel, as a rule for life, if it's good enough for Keanu... He doesn't seem like somebody who's bothered by the latest fads.

He seems to have a very serene vibe and that maybe the paired down templates of squarespace matches mood it's like not a lot of extra flimflam here yeah simple clean neo although i was looking at the templates on squarespace just yesterday thinking i might have a little spruce up around here and they did seem to have quite a lot that were named after people didn't spot one named after kianu but they should i think because kianu is already a meme maybe it would be weird to have a kianu template but anyway if you want to do as kianu does um then head over to squarespace.com take out their free trial for a couple of weeks access your inner kianu reeves and then if you want to go ahead and say yes make this squarespace website a reality put it online so that everyone can see it and bask in it get a domain name thrown in full package host a podcast

on it if you want put your photos on it have a store then you get 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain when you use our code answer hello linda from urus here again hello molly answer me this quick one will smell a vision ever be a thing will smell a vision ever be a thing well it has been a thing but only for one film ever it's not just smell a vision there are many ways to scent a production there have been various efforts to do it and in fact theaters were on this before cinema existed in 1868 the alhambra theater in london vaporizers dispense smells around a production called the fairy acorn tree i think in the 20s and 30s as well broadway used to squirt smells in the air

but also that's a technique that's used by theme parks, isn't it? So when you're talking about, you know, creating an environment, like if you go on the, I don't know, Harry Potter ride or whatever, whilst you're queuing to get on, you might smell what the Hogwarts dining hall smells like and they pump through a bit of boiled mints and whatever. But that's different because that is a live experience. But it seems to me what linden is asking is when you're watching the telly would you get a smell-o-vision unit to put over your face or some sort of live interactive experience and surely the answer is no i mean even if the technology existed for that no like who wants that well i suppose if you're thinking vr you could wear a headset and during Saturday kitchen,

your VR set could do something with the smell receptors in your brain to make you think that you're smelling what they're cooking. Then that seems possible, albeit a little unnecessary. But I think if it was actually squirting smells out of your television, then that would be a problem. And also very expensive yeah and potentially triggering allergies expense actually walt disney was going to do smells for fantasia but didn't okay yeah i can imagine that with sorcerer's apprentice waves of the ocean

yeah exactly a bit of salty spume delicious salty spume. But Scent-O-Vision, which featured several odours, was demonstrated in 1939. It's going back a long way at the New York World's Fair. It was a professor called Hans Lauber. And it was actually he that went on to create the smells for the one Smell-O-Vision film that happened in 1960. Okay, sorry. What was the one Smell-O-Vision film?

I should be more excited. The one Smell-O-Vvision film was called Scent of Mystery. It was a comedy mystery caper. It was recently reissued on DVD without smells as Holiday in Spain. So you might be watching it thinking, why is there such a lingering shot of bread? But that's because you don't have the smell-o-vision to make you think, oh, oh my goodness, there's bread. Well, that's the problem with 3d movies as well isn't it when you watch

them 2d you're like why is there a close-up of that branch why is there so much gratuitous flying why are they throwing apples at me but at the same time almost a month before that there was an aromarama production which was also pumping smells into a cinema through different means. The scent of mystery was accessorised by smells because they'd kitted out a cinema with tiny black pipes on every seat with spray nozzles

that sprayed out a combination of 30 smells they had at their disposal. And it cost, I think, 30,000 at the time to install that equipment. So prohibitively expensive for most theaters yeah aromarama only cost seven and a half thousand because they were pumping it through the air conditioning it was a documentary called behind the great wall about china and so they had floral scents and cooking and tiger smells whatever they are and firecrackers blowing up but they had to purify the air several times

during the film because such a fog was building up and people came out and said that film just smelled really bad it stinks well everyone's everyone smells different presumably i don't mean their odor if everyone smelled the same we get tired of sniffing at each other but you can't unify the experience of what people are smelling and what some people will find pleasant other people would find queasy well absolutely because as you know i dislike nearly all perfumes and i hate going into a room with room fragrance in because you can't escape it so that was the problem with aromarama and then in smeller vision it was kind of the opposite problem in that some people weren't getting the smells because their nozzle was blocked or they were too far away from it or they were getting the smell too late for that scene in the film apparently

the hissing of the stuff being squirted out the pipes was distracting as was all the people sniffing loudly so apparently it just wasn't a good live theatrical experience as well as expensive and then you've got a room that stinks in 1981 john waters released his film polyester with a scratch and sniff card odorama there was like a parody of smell-o-vision yeah they would flash a number up on screen and the audience knew that then they scratched off that relevant bit and apparently one of the smells was farts and one of them was socks and one of them was roses and so at least then you can control the amount of smell that you're subjected to so it's not that these things never happened again i think disney's resorts 3d films still squirt some smells in yes yes and that's where i can see it working

like if you're going to a screening of a jurassic park experience that's 10 minutes long, then I get that they would spray around the room something that felt a bit sort of foresty to make you feel like you're there. Or I could get that if you're watching a film that is about food, like if you're watching Chocolat and they pumped in a chocolate smell, you might be like, oh, but then after about two minutes, it might start getting very cloying. I think it would. Yeah. I was interested to read a theory that

smell-o-vision and aromarama were both inspired by the book brave new world how because in it a character goes to see a feely so like a talkie a film but with the sensory experiences added on so maybe it is a kind of dystopian idea to have a film that smells. Well, talking of dystopian smells, here's an email from someone who's chosen to remain anonymous, but who says, for several years now, I've had nasal polyps. And despite medication and surgery, I have been left with absolutely no sense of smell.

Oh, that's rough. I can still remember what smells are like, but I really can't smell a thing these days. Apart from the time I knock the gas on without realising it, this isn't really a problem. And I don't miss smells at all. That's weird. Well, I'm happy for you, Anonymous. However, I've become friends with someone who is generally an all-round good guy. I sometimes invite him to my favourite pub and we chat about random stuff whilst drinking beer.

Recently, though, a few of my other friends that have met him have mentioned my stinky mate oh no the landlord of the pub has told me in no uncertain terms to tell my mate to go and have a wash as he has to spray the place with air freshener when we leave okay that does sound like quite a stinky mate that's a perfect perfect for you anonymous this i don't see the problem here yeah i mean you know it's your mate's problem if people tell him he smells yeah he he's found a perfect friend in you well the problem is they can't go to the pub uh so helen asked me this how do i broach this subject i can't smell anything so i'm in no position to judge i certainly don't have any authority on the matter for now i've suggested going to weatherspoons as i don't mind if the

clientele there are put off their pointsints. It's not very nice. But I would rather go back to my local pub without feeling like we are not welcome. Yes. I wonder whether you could kind of get the landlord to come up and spray him so the landlord looks like the arsehole rather than you when you don't even care. This question reminds me of a very, very early Answer Me This episode

where someone had the predicament of needing to tell somebody that they smell and even though all these years have passed since and we're so incredibly wise now a solution for this question is very hard to find because it is a hurtful thing to say to someone and at the time one of our enterprising listeners went and set up a website you really smell.com whereby you could send a kind anonymous email to someone saying, one of your friends thinks you smell and you should do something about it. Yes. That website has now lapsed, but there's a need for it.

Now, I wouldn't say that it should be called You Really Smell, because that's quite aggressive. If there was a way to send someone a message anonymously without bullying or trolling someone but which just said enough people maybe you know 10 people have agreed you see but then it is bullying isn't it you can't there really is different it's very difficult it's very difficult it is very difficult i think it does depend on why this person smells i would say that yes um because very often if someone has very poor hygiene if they honk it might be because they're having a tough time in other ways.

Yeah, people who are without like a stable home. Yes, exactly. Or there are certain medical conditions that can intensify your smell. And if you're a good friend, then advising them in a friendly way about their personal hygiene might be a helpful thing you could do. So, you know, you don't need to think about it as, God, I'm saying this awkward thing. A, they may not realise, and it would be better if they did realise,

so that they weren't having that interaction with people without meaning to. And B, the cause of it might be something quite deep that isn't just about using deodorant, but actually could spur on a conversation about how you can help them in other ways. But it's sad to think that this guy is alienating people around him.

Yeah. And he might be thinking, oh, why don't these people want to be friends? Why is this landlord always refusing to serve me? And he might just not know. You could ask him on a spa weekend and one that involves a lot of bathing. Yeah, that's a bit harsh on the people working in the spa and everyone else who spent £200 to be there. What do you do when you want to drown out

Your incessant interior monologue Sing opera loudly, try pneumatic drilling Or bash your head against a log Or go to answermethispod you want more things to shove into your ears that aren't going to hurt you like a cotton bud or a pencil or a drill bit or a banana... A light bulb. A spoon. Then let us recommend to you an audible audiobook.

A free one. It's much less painful than a cotton bud or a spoon. And even better than one free audiobook, two free audiobooks. One for each ear. Imagine that, that'd be amazing like julie walters in my left ear and nick clegg in my right what was that flaming lips album where you were supposed to put four stereos in four corners of your room and put four cds each with a different part of the music on and then play them all at the same time i don't know but i bet even like a rolling stone magazine no one actually did that no i bet even like a rolling stone magazine no one actually

did that no i bet even wayne thingy didn't do that no back in the day that that came out no one had four things to play cds on no exactly it's like that thing have you ever done the thing where is it the wizard of oz you're supposed to watch whilst you listen to dark side of the moon and it's supposed to perfectly time and sync i think what i'm suggesting is to play your two free audiobooks consecutively not concurrently and if you want to get yourself two free audiobooks then all you need to do is head over to answer me this podcast.com slash audible and you use your amazon login so it's dead easy you sign up this only works for uk listeners i'm afraid yeah but you sign up and then you can cancel as soon as you want to once you've got your two free audiobooks

at any time and you keep them or you can continue subscribing to audible's excellent service answer me this podcast.com audible and remember for every single one of you who does that even though you get two free things out of it as well, we get money from Audible for referring you. And to be clear, we don't get paid unless you do it. So please do it. Thanks. What are you listening to at the moment, Ollie? Well, I haven't listened yet, but I've downloaded it.

Andrew Lloyd Webber Unmasked. Like the Phantom of the Opera Unmasking. Yes, I suppose that's the vibe he's going for. Yeah, although I don't think he actually did kidnap Sarah Brightman and take her down to her cellar so that she'd marry him although who knows you haven't heard the book yet have you it's possible chapter 11 the only thing that i'm a bit worried about is it does stop at phantom of the opera which i think is a shame uh what what comes after that that you would have liked to have heard about but won't oh loads i'd like to hear about i mean like

in terms of credible work that's actually good um sunset boulevard but in terms of like fuck-ups that didn't work that's what i'd like to hear about i'd like to hear about, I mean, in terms of credible work that's actually good, Sunset Boulevard, but in terms of fuck-ups that didn't work, that's what I'd like to hear about. I'd like to hear about collaborating with Ben Elton on The Beautiful Game, why that didn't work. I'd like to hear about what he thought about the fact that Stephen Ward flopped, even though it was really good. Yeah, none of that's going to be in there. Second volume, maybe. Yeah, and third, I suspect. Well, if you want to listen along with Ollie, answer me this podcast.com slash audible. Here's a question from Rufus who says,

I am currently travelling aboard the Christopher Columbus coach on the train from Wales to London, Houston. I was thinking of the great explorer of the same name and found it quite a nice small memento to imagine a carriage in his name travelling the country come rain or snow, day or night, summer or winter. Yeah, it's perhaps not the greatest tribute to christopher columbus but it's it's not an insulting one columbus has a fuck of a lot of tributes he's not doing too badly exactly don't pity him i doubt the virgin train lines to houston is even in his top 10 but he's also being commemorated by creating thoughts in rufus's

mind he says ollie answer me this who names carriages? And how does one request for a carriage to be named? And ultimately, could we get a Helen and Ollie named carriage? Firstly, technically, it's not carriages that are being named on the train that he's on. It's actually the multiple unit express train itself. Oh. Don't get me to define the difference between a multiple unit express train and just a train but there is one so like the flying scotsman is like the name of a train whereas christopher columbus is a multiple unit express train so there are multiple carriages on that train called christopher columbus but the train itself isn't necessarily known i think as

christopher columbus it's known as 1113101 or whatever it was called when Bombardier made it. Boring. Now, the trains that Virgin Trains decided to name after explorers are known as Super Voyages. When they were built for British Rail, they're Class 221 Super Voyages. Hence, you can see why Virgin thought it would be fun to name them all after famous voyagers. So that's how they came up with the names. So they've got Ernest Shackleton as well, and Marco Polo at the serious end,

and at the more populist end, you can get on board Michael Palin. And I think a lot of people would like to get on board Michael Palin. I think there's plenty of middle-aged women that have dreamt of such a thing. And also Doctor Who. There's a Doctor Who train, even though he's not a real explorer.

Oh, that's bullshit. And there are no female trains i'm assuming because explorers are historically not a female heavy industry you could say apart from frere stark actually there are two trains named after female explorers um but i'd never heard of them before because of the issue you just highlighted with the lack of famous female explorers so who are they okay so there's uh an amy johnson yes and amelia airheart oh she's the she's an aviator isn't she and uh a mary kingsley there are some that i don't know if they're men or women mayflower pilgrims i presume that's a group of people that's a mixed bunch yeah is it all white people i mean there's a lot to break down here i appreciate you might not have all the demographic information,

but if they're naming them after fictional characters, then maybe they could branch out from the white and mostly male explorers, right? But anyway, it's quite a sweet idea to try and give the train some personality. Otherwise, it is just a sort of faceless mode of transport. Yeah. Well, then if they really want to give the trains personality, why don't they paint faces on the front? Well, you hinted an important issue here, Helen, which is why is there not a Thomas the Tank Engine fleet of trains?

I appreciate that he's a steam engine and we don't have those anymore. But even so, just I mean, Harvey would be queuing around the block to have a go on Percy, even if it was just the Thameslink to West Hampstead and it was called Percy. So why don't they do that? And I think the answer must be a complex web of licensing issues. But it's a shame, isn't it? You know, I mean, there you have some characters in children's fiction that are essentially just trains with faces painted on them. That's all they are.

They don't really have great personalities. The optimum way to use that particular franchise of characters would be on a train and no one's done it. Or you could have other trains from fiction as well. So you could paint up the Hogwarts Express or now I'm trying to think of any other train from fiction. Well, the Orient Express, but I guess that's been taken. I recently discovered, Helen, that Starlight Express,

the Andrew Lloyd Webb musical, was intended to be thomas the tank engine the musical oh wow and they couldn't get the branding so they had to just repurpose yeah so andrew lloyd webber wrote to reverend whatever he was called who came up with thomas and said i've just done implausibly a musical based around a t.s elliott collection of poems about cats and it was popular i can do anything possibly want to do one based around your old children oh hubris and he was like no not interested i i don't i don't want to do a commercial talk with you because you're going to do something cheap and brash and he went i'll show

you i'll show you and when it comes to whether you can campaign to name a train after us or anybody um the rules on how you can do that are fairly unclear that there are not really sort of open interfaces online that suggest that you can get involved in that and i think the reason for that is we all know what would happen trainee mctrainface uh stockholm to gothenburg is now called trainee mctrainface it's really called trainee mctrainface it really is yeah oh i was being glib it's happened oh people you've really lived down to my expectations Here's a question from Valerie in Austin, Texas She says, I have recently purchased a bidet toilet attachment

Woo! The problem I'm having trouble figuring out is whether or not I make mention of this to people who'll be using my bathroom You can use the toilet without interacting with the bidet Sure But perhaps someone visiting me would like to use it Of course. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable with bathroom talk.

Right. But I also don't want them to be weirded out by my toilet's accessory. So, Ollie, answer me this. What is the right amount of conversation to have with guests about bidets? Okay, so obviously my instinct as a British man is don't mention this at all. Like, you don't have polite conversations about bidets. You don't talk about them generally. They're not that common in Britain.

But if you did have one, it would be, you know, as it is for washing out your arsehole and genitals, something you wouldn't discuss politely at all. However, I'm trying to commute myself, Valerie, into your brain in Austin, Texas. A liberal city in Texas. America, a bit more open about these functions. And yet a stranger to the bidet.

So like I imagine, and I could be wrong, but my imagination is telling me, Valerie, that perhaps you've got this bidet attachment and you're proud enough to write in about it to a British podcast because you feel it is in some way kind of European and cultured. Very cosmopolitan. So I think she's sort of bought the b-day attachment so that she can do the tour oh she sort of bought it so she can talk about it look what we've got look this

is what picasso would have put on his cock that's basically what she's doing and you know what the amount people love to talk about those tricked out japanese toilets yes i think this is actually a good conversation to have. I think people all love to talk about this. And so to answer your question head on, two minutes. Okay. Two minutes of conversation about bidets. It's about right.

How do you introduce it though, if you're Valerie, and you're testing out the guests, you don't know if they're somebody who likes to acknowledge the existence of their own arsehole and hygiene thereof. Yeah. But you don't know that they're not i think um what you don't do is when someone asks to use the bathroom at that point start giving them a big lecture about the b-day because that's awkward so i think it's right to say there's a fun two minutes of conversation here that i can insert i think

the time to insert it is as i say in the context of doing a tour of the house talk about what you've recently done renovating the house, but not at a time someone is about to go and use it because that's when they might feel uncomfortable because you are talking about them having a poo or the process of them having a poo. Off to wash your arsehole, are you? I think maybe you could just be as matter-of-fact about this as possible.

You could say, here's the bathroom. There's a bidet function in the toilet. Do feel free to use it if you want. Yeah. And then just carry on to the next room. why don't you just leave a little instruction manual just stuck to the wall where it's like to use the b-day attachment switch the switch to blah blah blah that's not a bad idea yeah or a qr code someone could scan no or maybe she could have a party she'd be like come around everybody try my new b-et toilet yeah bum themed party please send us an email we love to keep in

touch if you send us an email we'll like you very much it's that's so please send us an email Or we won't know you're there And if we like your email We'll read it out on air Ben in St. Louis, Missouri is a return questionnaire. He says, in episode 338, I shared my dislike of IKEA

and you answered my question about IKEAkea product names at the end of the segment ollie tossed out the fact that one in five brits was conceived in an ikea bed despite my dislike of ikea my wife's and my bed is one of the few things in our home from ikea and now in that bed we have conceived our first child congratulations ben, Ben. Your other four children you're going to have to conceive in beds from Habitat in order to keep the stats appropriate. Ben says,

we have a small house and we prefer to keep a simpler life with fewer possessions. Well, good fucking luck when you have a child, mate. We know that having a kid involves a lot of possessions that we wouldn't otherwise own,

such as really tiny shoes. Yes. Books that don't really have words in but do have crackle in the pages but we would like to keep our stuff down to a minimum so that we have the freedom to use our time money and brain space on more valuable experiences rather than on stuff ollie answer me this which baby items and furnishings did you think were necessary prior to your son's birth which you now have found to be unnecessary and which we should consider doing without is there anything that you're surprised to have found to be vital as a parent what do we definitely need on our baby

registry and what should we leave off okay uh well let me say right off the bat that and i'd heard this before having a child but i now know from my own experience that it is true. The Answer Me This mug is the perfect size for bottle warming. Oh, cool. £12 from answermethispodcast.com slash superstore. Genuinely, we don't make much money out of that. We make like a quid. There's like no markup. It is.

We've had it for 10 years and it's still going strong. It is. Oh, it's such a good, genuinely is a great mug. It's the perfect size. And don't think, by the way, oh, but we're breastfeeding, so we're not going to need to warm bottles a you might struggle with breastfeeding or b you might want to decant breast milk into a bottle in either case that's a great bottle warming mug and also the answer me this store sells bibs that's true just fyi now i've not

had children but i have observed amongst the parents that I know a couple of things that they do not want and a couple of things that have been absolute hits. So the things that they don't want is body butter. My friend Claire said she got given gallons and gallons of body butter. And I know that your skin takes a bit of a hit when you're pregnant, but it was too much body butter. Sure. The theory of that is, yeah, let's treat the mother. So people think, oh, you get bombarded with stuff for the baby but you don't need stuff for the baby because you'll have already bought the stuff you need so let's treat the mother she's been through a tough physical and emotional time but yeah i'd say bottle of gin although i that can come through

your breast milk so be careful or voucher for a local massage place exactly yeah and everyone gets zillions of blankets and you don't really need that many do you but the things that parents i know have found invaluable and i don't know whether you agree with this ollie uh a little bouncy chair with a fluffy lining because babies go to sleep really well in a little bouncy chair with a fluffy lining yeah i would go as far to say the baby bouncer is the number one essential not the bouncer that you hang in the doorway so they can bounce up and down with glee this like the sort of lounge chair but for a baby that gently oscillates yeah some sort of thing you can put them down in before they're able to crawl

that you can slowly uh bounce with your foot yeah that's great you can take a business call you can watch tv forget about eye contact they don't know who you are for the first six months so long as your foot is on a chair and they're moving that's their whole world you can even get ones that move the chair for you i'd say don't get a sleepy head but again this is my personal experience what is that it's like this sort of weird cushioned u-shaped bed within a bed which some people rave about it's kind of like swaddling right if you can't be asked to actually swaddle them yourself oh so it's like a hug but without humans involved exactly it's like a constant hug delivered by fabric which we bought it was 100 pounds and we never used once oh so you don't even know if it works because you never used it yeah but that's the point we never had cause to

use it but every baby's different which is the problem i mean obviously also what is glorious like we've never used dummies and we've literally never used a dummy and it's not because we had a policy of like oh dummies are so horrible he's just not into it there wasn't a point like i think you know when you need a dummy and that's when you've been up all night because your baby's screaming that never happened like he was he was up all night and he was you know he'd wake us up four times but there was never that incessant crying not that i recall anyway so we never got to a moment where we were like oh this is where you use the dummy he just never took one so whereas for other people that would be the most important purchase i think the tip would be don't take stuff out the packaging until you use it

right and what about boring stuff like bottle sterilizers well it sort of depends whether or not you're going to use powdered milk um we ended up half and halving it which isn't to say we used half cream half milk vanilla lattes all the way um but which is to say pretty much from week one um we were doing kind of half breast milk half powdered milk and so if you are going to use powdered milk at all this is a dull recommendation but genuinely i'm evangelical about this product i would recommend getting yourself a Tommy Tippy Perfect Prep machine. Can you use it to make cappuccinos as well? No, but it looks like that, which is what's great about it. Does it take up a lot of room? No. And so it sounds, it's really hard to explain to people who aren't parents because it sounds completely gratuitous. Because all it does,

literally all it does, is you put your clean bottle underneath it you select how much milk you're going to put in it puts in the required amount of hot water then you put your spoon of milk in to dissolve it then it puts in the required amount of cold water to fill the bottle you'd think you don't need a machine to do that but when it's four in the morning and you are knackered, that saves so much time because otherwise what you have to do is you have to boil a kettle, then wait for it to cool down

so that the water is purified and exactly the right temperature. And you always forget and you end up making a cup of tea and then you've ruined the whole thing and you have to start again. And even if you have two kettles, that's a pain in the ass.

This thing purifies the water and gives you exactly the right amount and then you take it out and it's fun like making an espresso. It's amazing. thing i'd say as well scratch mitts i didn't know that that was a real thing well the babies scratch themselves we're so stupid when we're born that we claw out our own eyes unless you put gloves on our hands i can't believe human beings haven't evolved beyond that yet but we haven't but my final essential thing i would say and it might depend on how old you and your wife are ben because i don't know if you're in your 20s you could probably get away without one of these

but if you're a parent in your 30s like i am or especially in your 40s get a changing table get a changing table because otherwise you have to change your baby on the floor which is safer because the baby can't roll off and hurt itself but honestly like the moment i have to get down on the floor to change a nappy my back starts hurting and it can be a five minute process by the time you fucked around with all the cream and wipes and whatever and it just it mean what it means is your back starts hurting and then you do a really sloppy job and you end up with a baby with a dirty asshole because your back hurts people have just put like a changing pad on their chest of drawers yeah fine but that's still effectively

a changing table that's fine make your own changing table if you need to but think about changing the baby at height i mean if you don't have a chest of drawers you might think i'll do it on the floor or i'll do it on the bed what i'm saying is floor hurts your back bed will get feces all over your bedclothes so think about that that brings us to the end of this episode of answer me this but please help us make more answer me this is by sending us your questions via email via a voice memo sent to that email address which is safer than our skype but that's still an option as is our phone line all of our contact details are on our website and you can also visit answer me this store.com to buy our classic episodes numbers 1 to 200 and

it's also where we keep our one-off albums. There are five of them to collect. Impress your friends. Oh, you know what would be a good thing to listen to in the run-up to Harry and Meghan's wedding? It's the Answer Me This Jubilee, an hour of royal schtick. Yeah, you're right. We have done an album of stuff about the royals.

So yes, if you're getting in the mood for what is apparently a a day of national celebration check out the answer me this jubilee album and also we have our other audio that we make on the illusionist i recently put out an episode about how swearing is good for your health so i'd imagine a lot of you will be comforted by that information sounds like a great listen there's also an episode about how superheroes names evolved including how black panther came to be called black panther oh so that might be relevant still to your interest what's up on the ollie man controlled feeds uh my podcast the modern man a weekly magazine show about sex trends and amazing life stories uh is currently in season seven so far uh this season i've met an ex-soldier turned wildlife photographer and an executive headhunter.

And I've discussed in detail why my grandma used to put piss on her face. What? You're not going to find out now. You can hear it in detail at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk. Your grandma is an amazing looking woman, which is the greatest advert for piss on your face

that I can think of. It was my paternal grandma, actually. But she was also an amazing looking woman which is the greatest advert for piss on your face that i can think of uh it was it was my paternal grandma actually but she was also an amazing looking woman in her day now she's preserved in piss martin what what podcast treats have you got for our listeners oh we've got a new season of song by song uh we're talking about the tom white's album frank's wild years uh and we've got a musician jeremy warmsley guesting uh probably by the time this comes out. Oh and Martin and I are also going to be

doing some live shows. Oh yeah. We're doing the Radiotopia live tour in May and some gigs in Australia in June. Some live illusionists. If you live in the

United States or Australia come and see those. And come back right here to the Answer Me This podcast feed to get a brand new episode from us on

the first Thursday of May and a retro episode halfway through the month. Yes, please. Bye!