Answer Me This! - AMT366: LASIK, Hand Modelling, and a Dead Body in your Living Room

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

Landlord trouble! We've all had it, right? But have you ever had it as bad as the questioneer in AMT366? Also in this episode: passion fruit! Being square! The House of the Rising Sun! Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email words or voice memos to [e-mail]. Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandolly Facebook http://facebook.com/answermethis Subscribe on iTunes http://iTunes.com/AnswerMeThis Buy old episodes, albums and our Best Of compilations at . Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at , Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at , and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at . Helen and Martin are touring the Allusionist around the US and Canada over the next few weeks: Squarespace! Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'answer'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Join the ride at ridetoconquer.ca. How can a Tory Prime Minister have two left feet? Shall I go as Theresa May dancing when I trick or treat? Answer me this, answer me this this Heaven and all the answer me this Following our lively discussion in Answer Me This episode 365 about Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond David has

written in with some further facts about Neil Diamond He says, Neil Diamond wrote Red Red Wine covered by UB40 and Neil Diamond wrote I'm a, covered by UB40, and Neil Diamond wrote I'm a Believer, made famous by the Monkees, or by Smash Mouth, depending on how old you are. That's interesting because both those songs are famous, but not by him.

I wonder why he gave his best songs away. Maybe he released versions of it that just weren't that successful. Yeah, I suppose that's what happened. Like Cilla Black doing Visions of Beatles songs songs before they released them and people don't really remember the silver black versions maybe he doesn't like red red wine gives him a rotten hangover where do you stand on the ub40 version of red red wine well my abiding memory of it is in 1994 when i was at a model united nations conference in croydon and a boy came up and ground against me during that song oh god god. Did he make you feel so

fine or just violated or confused or all three? He did it in a less offensive way than that sounds. It was a different era, wasn't it? It wasn't a violation then. It was just all harmless. We just put up with it. We understood that we were basically human

lampposts. We actually play Red Red Wine on the playlist on Magic, where I sometimes cover radio shows, and it is the UB40 version, but for some reason the version that they play on Magic doesn't have the rap in it. You know, Red Red Wine, you make me feel so fine. And so I always find myself filling that bit in.

Do you fade down the track and do the Steve Wright thing? Bring the mic up. Come on, come on the world needs to hear it here's a question of classic entertainment from john who says my friend claims that the man who played the legs in the opening sequence of the bill had visited her school to give a talk that would have been a good get in the 80s and 90s. Oh, I'd happily go and see an hour-long Edinburgh Fringe show about that now. Would you just want to see him from the knees down? No, but I quite like the idea of someone whose fame is based only, you know, solely on that.

Like something that everybody knows and yet nobody knows who you are. He's got famous calves. Yeah. He's got a peaceful life above the knee. John says I tried to IMDB the man who played the legs in the opening of the bill. But obviously he's not listed. So Ollie

answer me this. Who played the legs of the officers in the opening of the bill? Because you just saw the legs of a male and female officer walking up the road. While it was like what am i singing no you're singing overkill by pascan morgan the 1988 and onwards theme tune of the bill which is amazing interestingly not always the theme of the bill first four years they had a

less good theme wow your knowledge goes deeper than i thought well not deep enough sadly not knee deep because well actually let me say first of all you've you've been saying unchallenged that the opening sequence of the bill featured uh the legs of the man and the woman was it the closing credits in fact it was yes um it is true that there's a brief glimpse of the legs in the opening sequence from 1984 onwards. But it was only in the closing sequence where you got just solely the legs walking down the street that everyone remembers. And the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's the closing sequence, not the opening sequence. The opening sequence was like intersplice footage of police sirens and angry men shouting at

each other right well john wants to know who both of the legs were yeah well he dittoed the lady i'm afraid it's basically on googleable um and i did try like i i can tell you who the test card girl is carol hersey she's now a theatrical costume designer i can tell you who the voice of siri is john briggs also the voiceover for the weakestakest Link. But yeah, but these people I cannot find. It is not easy. So if you know, let us know. Do you think they were either members of the production team or leg models?

I suspect leg models because my mum was a hand model in her time. Well, your mum has had the most interesting professional life of anyone. Well, she was a model and she was an actress so it's not that way i mean it's not like she was just a hand model it's just one of the things on her cv was you can just hire my hands if you so wish is that who you got your beautiful hands from because your hands are very elegant my father had long thin fingers as well so it's the incredible

combination of my mother and my father that gives me these stunning fingers and yet you have resisted the lure of the hand modeling industry so far well it's resisted me i do have a benign essential tremor so that's not great for demonstrating products oh what could have been but you know i think certainly in 1984 if you needed the legs of two people to walk down the street because remember this is the day of three TV channels I don't know maybe Channel 4 had just launched but basically three TV channels everyone was paid properly for their work

it was all unionised you probably would get leg models I don't think you would get production team people because they walk in quite a choreographed way as well they walk incredibly slowly it's sort of like a bridesmaid walk if it was that music if it was

it would work just as well as the theme from the bill here's a question from dan from york who says uh the other day i saw a doppelganger of my partner in town dan's partner looks like a seventh century century cathedral. She had the same hair, the same face, very similar clothes, and was the same height as my partner. The only difference was, she was about 10 to 15 years older. It was like seeing a future

version of her. When I got home, I mentioned this to my partner. She said, alright, was she pretty? Obviously, this was a lose-lose situation, but but i said yes and the answer didn't seem to go down too badly so helen answered me this was this the right answer what should i have said what would you have said i think that's the right answer it's the wrong answer if it if the person was 15 years younger. You're absolutely right, yeah. I just saw someone who's like you 15 years ago. Oh, right, was she attractive?

Yeah, not like you. Yeah, you're right. Remember what you used to look like. Whereas this is like, oh, I don't need to fear the waning of your attraction as I get older. The ageing process is not my enemy. Time isn't holding us. Yeah, you're looking forward to my hot future self. Well, that's flattering.

I suppose the catch-all but slightly smarmy thing you could have said is almost as pretty as you, dear. But that's, I mean, that sounds like irony. Although that's maybe just because the way you say everything sounds like irony. I know, that's an affliction, isn't it? It's like being King Midas. Everything I touch turns to something sour uh I mean Dan hasn't actually said whether this woman was pretty or not so it's quite hard to argue that he should have said anything else other than yes she was pretty because we don't know the truth but perhaps the very um doppelganger-ness of the lady is in the eye of the beholder anyway you know it

might be because that's a good point you're in love with your partner dan that you see her in more places than she actually is yeah although you think someone who is as as close to you as your partner would be better at identifying a doppelganger because sometimes i get people saying oh i saw someone who looked just like you and it is just another white woman who's short and white well actually in your case though i would say um because recently well not recently i mean recently in your stylistic evolution like last five years or so you've started going to a hairdresser and also that's a deep burn it's not i speak only truth i mean it's a true burn but it's a deep

burn they don't burn my hair i'm just saying the past you now have specific and identifiable hairstyle and also um there's a certain sort of i don't i don't want to pigeonhole it in the wrong way but like i'd say like a 50s retro vibe to a lot of the clothes that you wear that means that if i see someone who's roughly your shape size height with that haircut and those clothes even if facially they look nothing like you i can see how i might think oh that's someone with is it such similar style as helen that i'd feel like they're your doppelganger yeah pretty much whenever i see someone who's roughly six feet with the brown hair middle pasty skin a beard and rectangular glasses i'm like well that might as well be martin i'll take him home tonight was he pretty sure here's a question from ian in japan

uh who says helen answer me this why do we call japan the land of the rising sun uh in every country i've visited he, it stops being dark in the morning. That's right. Japan puts this on their flag as if they're the only ones who've ever seen it. And we call it the land of the rising sun, like we're blundering about in perpetual darkness. It's not the place the sun comes up first. New Zealand, Micronesia, even Eastern Australia, which were all discovered before Japan opened its borders, are closer to the international date line. Japan was the land of the rising sun relative to China.

Okay. So that's the context that this name arose. This phrase goes back to at least 607 AD, where the Prince Regent of Japan wrote a letter to the Chinese emperor that said, from the sun of heaven in the land where the sun rises to the sun of heaven in the land where the sun sets.

Now, apparently that was quite offensive to the Chinese. Well, metaphor carries weight there, doesn't it? After that, this term started being used in official correspondence correspondence even though the Chinese didn't particularly like it and nor did the Japanese envoys but it was better than what they had before. Japan was known as Wa. It was like a transliteration of the Chinese Wo which was an offensive term for the Japanese. It was sort of implying that they were bent over and submissive. And I think it's interesting that the country had a name that just contextualised it from the view of another country. And I'm trying to work out what that means. Is it that the country didn't need a name until it

started interacting with other countries? I don't know. Or is it just that history is written by the victors? Like, you know, newfoundland or whatever, you know, you just I mean, the names come about because the person who then had the lasting legacy decided to call it something but it doesn't mean it wasn't called something else before yeah that's interesting isn't it um when we were in australia we saw a monument in melbourne that had a correction on it and the monument said something like to john englishman who was the first person to settle this unoccupied land. And then it had a plaque screwed onto the monument saying, it wasn't unoccupied, sorry.

Yeah. I'm paraphrasing. Yeah, sure. But I'd never seen that before. And I wonder whether place names are going to get more and more revised as it's recognised that the English washing that has been done in many places of the world is not necessarily appropriate to uphold. Yeah, well, I think, you know, these things evolve, don't they? And people's sensitivity to

them evolve. It's amazing, though, isn't it, what the Chinese and the Japanese can achieve with single syllable words. I know it's based on a much more complicated written script. But like when you just said woe, yes, I mean, that's not so different from woo or wa or we to us, but to them. And the tone means 10 different things. It's just so odd, I mean, that's not so different from woo or wa or wee to us, but to them. And the tone means 10 different things. It's just so odd, isn't it, when you grow up speaking English? When you look at the word in Chinese script, it is very complicated. Lots of pen strokes for a character to my Roman alphabet attuned eyes.

But the Japanese eventually changed it to different characters, which, although it kept the pronunciation changed the meaning to harmony peace and balance and that was a revision afterwards was it I mean that was a deliberate attempt to sort of pacify the hurtful nature of what it had previously been yeah uh you know the animal song uh you know there is a house in you or is they call the rising sun in that the rising sun is a whorehouse. Did you know that? I did know that. It's kind of what the song's about.

Yeah, it's a folk song about a brothel. Why is it called that? Because you party all night having sex. Or having sex, even though it's 5.30. And then the sun rises on you having sex. Yes. Also references to rising. There could be an erectile component to that.

Yeah, if you're a man, then you're someone's son. It's less evocative, isn't it, if it was like there is a house in New Orleans they call the Tumescent Cock? I don't know. It doesn't leave too much doubt, does it? Even in the 60s, though, I don't think that would have been a chart hit. I've got a question.

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Didn't see that one coming. Certainly did not see this question coming from Greta from New Zealand, who says, For the last three years, my husband and two small children and I have been living very happily in India. We rent an amazing 200-year-old house in a small village. I can smell the mango trees from here. And the drains. Last last week our landlord who lives in a next door cottage with his 95 year old mother

reminded us that our lease is up for renewal at the end of the month he said he wants to add one small clause in the new agreement the clause states that in the event his 95 year old mother dies in the next year brackets very, very likely, close brackets, that we have to allow her dead body to be put on display in our front room for three days and nights to allow friends, family and well-wishers to visit her, propped up in a bed rather than in a closed coffin.

Wow. He explained that it is their religious custom to lay in one's childhood home before being buried. His terms are non-negotiable i'm not sure how you'd want to negotiate that anyway like yeah she can be you know in the house but not propped up she has to be at a certain degree angle i mean either the corpse is there or it is can we put a funny hat on her exactly awkward negotiations he says we wouldn't have to be there at the time okay where would they Mini break, but I guess you can plan for it

because you don't know exactly when someone's going to die. Greta says, Yeah. While we respect their religion and traditions, we're not quite sure we want the non-embalmed body of a relative stranger lying in 30 degree plus heat in the room where our kids watch cartoons. Yeah.

But you've just said you don't have to be there. I mean, I see your point, but your kids aren't in the room where our kids watch cartoons. Yeah, but you've just said you don't have to be there. I mean, I see your point, but your kids aren't in the room at the time. You could take the required two weeks if necessary to detoxify the room, couldn't you? And also, presumably, if this is part of the culture, it happens a lot and the body doesn't completely putress, you know, or people have ways of dealing with it. Yes. However, says Greta, making the stay versus go decision even more complex is that it's incredibly hard to find a house here. There are no estate agents or websites.

It took us six months of relentless door knocking to find our dream house. But a dead body would no doubt kill the magic. And I'm not sure how we could get back to normal after that. So with heavy hearts, we've decided to cut our losses and move on. Oh, I was'd get to debate this i thought the question was yes should we move out or not people don't tend to write to us greta after they've made a decision especially especially one involving the displaying of a not yet dead corpse that was right up my alley what if it

doesn't kill the magic but creates more magic exactly greta says here's the even weirder part most of our friends here including other foreigners think that we're crazy to give up our house for this quote trivial reason they think the notion of dead mother staying over a couple of days is no big deal in the scheme of things just take a staycation they said or unless what you just said although you use the phrase mini break well yeah because i think staycation means you're in your house for the night. The opposite of what you want to do. You're creeped out by your house.

That's true. Although it started to mean, like in Britain, it means people who stay in Britain and don't go somewhere else on holiday. Inbound tourism. Yes. But maybe you could go and stay next door while she stays in your house. Yes, you could do a swap. You could go and stay in the bed she was in before she died.

Yeah. You're Kate Winslet. She's cameron diaz but dead in this scenario so ollie answer me this are our friends right that we are squeamishly overreacting about three days of dead body in our front room or are they the crazy ones what would you guys do okay so we get to decide but you have already decided that you're not going to live there. Is it possible to reverse this decision? Because I feel like you would get anecdotes for years out of this. I think it'd be so interesting. Are your kids going to remember the cartoons they watched? Probably not.

Will they remember this? Yes, it's a pretty big insight into the local culture that you've opted into. Yeah, that's a really interesting point, actually, because, I mean, Greta said she's from new zealand the way she's writing about india it seems like this is a temporary stay maybe maybe it's for five or ten years but probably she's not going to live in india forever if you want your children to remember what it was like you're absolutely right this is something that's vivid isn't it and i think also children aren't as squeamish about death i think children can take a lot of things in their stride

and it might just be interesting because i think in in britain where we don't tend to have things like open casket funerals like they do in the states there is a lot of squeamishness about death in the process and saying goodbye to someone but i know friends in other countries who've had like the body lying in state and people come to visit generally not as hot countries as this one but that issue that issue of like oh god the flesh is going to be putrescing and it's going to stink and it's dangerous and all that i mean as you say if it's their local custom there's probably people who professionally assist in making sure that that's relatively hygienic okay perhaps not quite

as you do it in new zealand but nonetheless probably not going to kill you and you know the hundreds if not thousands of years of history that have built into that cultural tradition will ensure that it's not an unpleasant thing I mean I haven't been to a ceremony like the one you're describing but I have been to Indian funerals here in the UK Hindu funerals where just before they cremate the body there's there is an open coffin in the house. And I think had that been in India rather than in Perivale, for example,

in the instance that I'm thinking of, there wouldn't have been a coffin at all. It would have been an open pyre that would have then been sent out in the Ganges. And so the idea is that you basically, I'm not saying disrespectful, but basically you chuck a load of herbs and spices on the corpse.

That's the idea. So that when you then burn the body, it smells fragrant in that very Indian way. It's all about actually making a positive, sort of divine smelling and sort of pleasant floral experience out of this horrible thing of the person having died. Chances are you'd come back to your house

where this person's been rested and actually it will smell wonderful in there because people have brought loads of offerings and flowers and stuff this is such a funny one because i feel like it would be really really interesting but i also feel like the landlord is sort of abusing his position a little bit here there may be this custom that someone is shown in their in their childhood home but a childhood home with complete strangers in there yeah maybe the reason why there aren't many houses on the market is that people don't move and that's why they can be propped up in the house where they were born that's a good

good question you're right that if he didn't own the home i'm curious about the logistics of asking for your mother's dead body to be propped up in a bed in a house if you don't own the house anymore like what happens there like does that happen like is this tradition strong enough that people would just be like oh yeah of course like because other people would do the same well maybe if it's indian so maybe if he's renting to other people from the area they get it because that's what they did yeah and it seems like a big ask like even if they go away they're spending money to go and stay in a hotel or something which presumably they're not going to get back off of the rent so why couldn't she just be displayed in the home that she was in like wouldn't that be

sufficiently respectful it just seems very odd to be like oh yeah yeah well this is you know we're very traditional so we want strangers hosting her so you're saying greta should have tried to barter with him like okay well you can either display her in your house and just cheat the geography of your tradition or you can pay for us to go to a hotel she hasn't mentioned that that's a possible she did she says non-negotiable but like paying to go to a hotel that does seem reasonable actually like he might be up for that the other thing is she might not die this year you could have just kept the house i mean you're gambling on it my my grandmother everyone thought she was about to die throughout her 90s she lived in 99 and a half yeah yeah but they're not talking about living in this house for 12 months either they

want to live there for a little longer than that so that i think that's that's pushing the problem down the road maybe it won't she won't die that year maybe it'll be a year after that or the year after that but they might they'll there's a decent chance they'll still be in the house when it happens and if they've agreed to it then they can't then say actually no this is this is a pretty weird idea okay so i think there are two issues here one is the squeamishness about death yeah the other is i'm just thinking about this as someone who has never owned their own home and has been a renter there are lots of things that make you feel insecure as a renter like the landlord can do whatever

they want to yeah so do you think that's part of it she it's not the death part it's just that she wants to be undisturbed yeah it's it should be her home to live in if she's renting and like you would be like that's my home i get to decide what i do with it but i just think this would be like, that's my home. I get to decide what I do with it. But I just think this would be such an interesting thing to happen in my home. Okay, so actually, are you saying, Helen, she is overreacting and she shouldn't move out? Is that where you're falling on this? Because, by the way, I haven't answered the question yet. You're saying, yes, she's overreacting. Yeah.

I think she's right. I think it's a bit like, I was about to say, like, if the landlord's asking for that, what else are they going to ask for? But it's like, there's literally nothing they could ask for that is more intense and intrusive than their dead mother being propped up in your own home. That is a huge ask, and I think it's fine to say no. Again, to be clear,

Helen, you think she's overreacting. Martin, you think she's right and they should move out. Those are the two options. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think they're right. So I get the sort of casting vote on this. I do understand your squeamishness.

However, I do think, given everything else you've told us the amazing house the tricky property market your general happiness i think i side with your friends i think i would say get a really good cleaning company to come around afterwards and allow this thing get the landlord to pay for that yeah i mean i wouldn't mind being there i'd like to see what different cultures do in the event of deaths i think it's valuable i would love to see that i would love to do that not in my own house okay but anyway you lost martin so uh so we win anyway but ultimately you won because she is moving out exactly yeah yeah yeah good on you well good luck finding a new house i guess i hope you find something who knows what conditions will be attached

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enough even if you have a website somewhere else and you're not going to port it over to squarespace you can't be bothered you've got an existing website they're really good at selling domains as well so when you buy your next domain buy it from squarespace something they do for example right is if you buy a domain and you want like a professional email address, they're like Helen at mybusinesschisel.com. That sounds professional. Helen at takemeseriously.co.uk. Yeah. But anyway, if you want a professional email address like that, that comes free with the domain but also when you actually access that email rather than it being on some

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before the associations were being uncool, it used to be kind of praised that you were stable and upstanding and honest. It's meant that since at least the 1570s. Huh. The first references to it being uncool, kind of from the late 18th century, when square toes was kind of an insult because that referred to people wearing like square-toed shoes that were no longer in fashion. So it meant you were kind of old-fashioned and a bit too formal.

That seems to be unrelated to it coming from jazz slang of the 1940s, where it referred to the shape of a conductor's hand gestures if they were marking out a regular four-beat rhythm. So like conventional music in one, two, three, four, rather than jazz going all over the place. Okay. So when people say you're square in the jazz era they mean you're into the conventions of classical music and we're breaking them all down man yeah okay yeah you're

affiliated with that and you're not a hep hep was the opposite of square um so why does it suck around do we think this uh squareness being uncool because it's still uh it's still being propagated this in um the theme tune to thomas and friends i know from watching with harvey really yeah toby well let's say he's square it says as a joke i think a lot of jazz slang caught on the timing of it i guess and i'm speculating here but the timing was also a time of mass media so the words had a chance of spreading more than square toes did when it was in small it books you know here's a question from kelly from minnesota who says last month i finally had lasik surgery on my eyes and it's been absolutely amazing being able to see without glasses or contact lenses suddenly i see this is where i want to be minnesota yeah

do you think they've heard of katie tunstall in minnesota they have yeah it was quite a big hit in the states that hillary clinton wanted to use it as her walk-on music, didn't she? Or possibly even did. Really? I remember a news story vaguely about this. Katie Tunstall was on Song Exploder as well

a couple of years ago. Maybe that penetrated to Minnesota. There's a lot of podcast listeners in Minnesota. Did she talk about the Clinton walk-on music thing in that?

No, but there was someone else on Song Exploder who did. The person who did Fight Song. Rachel Platten. Right. And she talked about the weirdness of like this song

that she had put out as a young pop star suddenly having a political dimension. I remember when David Cameron during the Coalition years used to walk on at the Conservative Party conference to all these things that I've done by the killers. And I used to think I know that your spin

doctor thinks, ah, killers are cool. You know, this is 2010 or whatever. Killers are cool. Plus you've done lots of things because you've, you know, you've shaked up the agenda. But it's a song that's clearly full of regret, isn't it? It's a song about doing bad things,

not doing good things. Yeah, well, how appropriate is that? Even if you haven't heard the song, all the things that I've done by a band called The Killers is not great optics. Yeah, that's true. It doesn't speak to building a better, fairer society, necessarily.

She says, I know the technology for LASIK surgery has been around for at least a couple of decades now, but it still seems totally incredible to me that they can fix your eyes in a matter of minutes with lasers. That is amazing, isn't it? I didn't realise it was that quick. It is that quick.

A machine does it in a couple of minutes. And the flap of your cornea automatically heals itself it has bonding properties inside so there there's no stitching needed that's why it just takes a few it's like freaky cronenbergian stuff when you read into it but it's amazing we used to show a video of laser chi surgery when i was a medical physicist and even the medical students in the audience would cringe because it's a little Cronenbergian. When I was a medical physicist, all these things that I've done. Is that what's in the song?

That and form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Kelly says, of course, thousands of these procedures are done every year, and it's considered to be very safe, but I was still mildly worried that it might mess up my eyes forever, like forming the coalition did for Nick Clegg. So Ollie answered me this. Who was the first brave soul to allow doctors to zap their delicate eyeballs with lasers

when it had never been done on a person before? I imagine they practiced on animal eyes or donated cadaver eyes before doing it on live human eyes. But how did doctors really know it would work? Okay, so hieroglyphics, let me be specific. When Kelly talks about LASIK about lasik what's happening when kelly talks about lasik um that stands for laser assisted in situ keratomileusis good lord um so lasik is a particular kind of eye surgery which is the one that everyone has now with laser but um that means combining an eczema

laser with an incision that happened in 1991 for the first time but for about four or five years before that professors had been experimenting with laser technology it was patented for ophthalmic surgery in 1988 so you know it's difficult to say you know which was the first one on a live human because do you take the first lasik or do you take the first pre-lasik do you count someone who was blind and therefore sort of you know crudely had nothing to lose or do you say it has to be someone who was alive but had sight to lose and cut a long story short the case study that seems to get most quoted is the first person who had eyesight to volunteer to have an eye lasered when they were alive and that person was a Berta Cassidy

she had it done on Friday March the 25th 1988 at Louisiana State University the scalpel wielder was Dr Marguerite McDonald and the reason that uh aberta gave herself up for that was that she had cancer and she had quite a poor prognosis anyway and she required surgery anyway and even after the surgery she still had a poor prognosis and the surgery itself would be disfiguring so she basically said fuck it yeah i'll have experimental surgery why not at the same time and they they did her eyes and i mean unfortunately she did die of the cancer but her eyes did improve day upon day right from that very first uh live surgery so it is amazing and and uh until then from 1984 they had yes you have correctly uh suggested kelly uh you know experimented on uh dead human eyes living rabbit eyes then living

monkey eyes you know there's lots of tests before they put them on a living sighted human. I always think it's very impressive when someone does that. I know that she was going to die, but that's pretty cool to be like, I'm going to spend additional time in hospital despite the enormous amount of time I'm already spending in hospital. Not because it'll help me at all, but because

it'll help people in the future. I always think that's really awesome. What I want to know is, for the people before her, how did they know that the people who already had poor vision or were blind how did they know it had been successful apart from i don't know it didn't burn her eyelids off or whatever yeah well i suspect possibly they're testing the technique rather than the success rate aren't they the success rate is a theory they're kind of getting rid of the making sure there aren't any adverse effects kind of thing well Well, basically, can they use a laser to help adjust the cornea? Yeah.

And then they'll work out whether or not it'll help someone see. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which bit of the eye do you need to do things on? How deep do you go, etc.? Yeah. You know, getting the manual experience of it. Because it was still considered experimental until 1995,

when it was approved by the US government. I mean, obviously, people were having it in the early 90s. There'd been a few hundred cases by then. But still, it wasn't approved until the US government. I mean, obviously people were having it in the early 90s, there'd been a few hundred cases by then, but still, it wasn't approved until the mid-90s. So for the first 10 years, people were like, take your chance, basically. But I still think there's quite a frisson around it now. And I don't know the success rates or otherwise of it

or the risks, whether, you know, if it doesn't work, you're no worse off than before, or if you are. But I know a few people who've done it and they all were worried going in and all of them i think it's worked really well for i think as long as you keep your eye still it there's very very little risk because part of the reason that they don't do it on the open surface is if there are any scratches like if they kind of do it too much or too little because there's that flap that comes over it will kind of correct whereas if they did that just on the open surface of the eye those scratches could could impair your vision a little bit so if there's there's a certain amount of like uh what's the word like error

error correction built into it but i agree with helen i think it and i think the reason is vanity in a word like i think if the if the cause of the surgery was medicinal then the risk rates that there are which are tiny would be completely acceptable wouldn't they and everyone would say that's safe surgery but you'd be having it for a necessary reason whereas most people getting this surgery done which is why it's not in the nhs are doing it because they just don't fancy wearing glasses or contact lenses anymore well i think some a lot of people it's life-changing to be able to see so much better

like friends i know who've done it it's not vanity the glasses were no longer strong enough maybe but you still what i suppose what i'm saying is if it went wrong you'd feel like oh god i've done this and it was just so that i could look a bit but different without my glasses on have either of you considered having it i mean i can't have it because i have long vision which means it wouldn't work but both of you have got short sight, right, which Lasik works on. I like the way that glasses make my face look. I think they make

my face look more interesting. If you think your face looks boring, Martin, why don't you hang some tinsel on it? Alright, done. I've actually genuinely never thought about it. The only time it occurs to me as a question to which the answer is still no, is when it pops up as a discount on something. Well, it's on Groupon, so maybe...

Two eyes for £10. It always was on Groupon, and I always used to think, yeah, like that and sushi, I don't want a discount. I want quality products that I'm going to pay full full price for Five Star Hotel It had an omelette station A multitude of pools But thirty quid for parking WTF Four Star Hotel There's ethernet Not wifi like it's 1998

But there was a swim up bar In the rooftop pool. Three Star Hotel. A bit more down to earth. They did still have a pool, but it was full of kids. Two Star Hotel. A lot more down to earth. They also had a pool, But it was full of dogs

One Star Hotel There's a body in the pool Answer Me This Holiday All the fun of travelling With none of the stinky toilets Or frightening food Out now at AnswerMeThisPodcast.com

Slash albums I really love that song It's catchy Whenever I see an omelette station I think about it And if you enjoyed the jingle I really love that song. It's catchy. Whenever I see an omelette station, I think about it. And if you enjoyed the jingle, imagine how much you'd enjoy the album. We have five one-off albums. That's over five hours of us talking.

That's more albums than Jeff Buckley. And they're funnier. Definitely funnier. And they were top 20 in the British charts. Which is also more than Jeff Buckley when he was alive. Anyway, yes, we've done five albums. Holiday, Love, Christmas, help me out here, Helen, Jubilee. Sports Day. And Sports Day.

Yeah, Christmas. I mean, that's... Just around the corner. The festive period is looming. I mean, it is still like nearly three months away, but they've got it in the shops already. And all our albums are available for under three quid from answermethisstore.com, where you can also buy our equally good value

first 200 episodes, apps, and donate to the show. Andrew in Sydney, Australia says, Helen, answer me this. How did Passion Fruit get its name? I'm very passionate about how much i love it but i'd love to know what moment of passion may have determined this fabulous fruit's moniker oh i'm really sorry to ruin this for you andrew it's not the sexy kind of passion it's the least sexy kind of passion oh what the jesus passion yes is it yes surely they didn't nail passion

fruit to a cross because all the seeds would drip out of it. It's because of the flower, the passion flower, which is a very symbolic flower. Catholics in Southas and peter the corona threads were the crown of thorns uh the three stigmas are the nails on the cross the pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the holy lance tendrils represent the whips used to flagellate christ see do you think this was like a fun game where they came up with this where they're like what fruit looks most like jesus and then they had fun discussing it like we would and then the end of the night they were like yeah passion fruit it's got it's got all the different disciples in it it's got the it's got the pattern or do you think people took this really seriously to mean therefore passion fruit has been decreed by god the fruit of jesus you would have to be pretty loaded if

you're like yeah sure yeah this uh this bit of the flower looks like the holy grail this bit looks like heaven yeah exactly i think though a coded language of flowers floriography was a lot more popular in the past than it is now ollie okay so that was the catholic interpretation of the passion flower in its catholic missionaries in south america where i think they first saw the plant and uh other countries also have gone for quite a christy interpretation so they'll call it crown of thorns or Christ's crown or something like that. But then some of them call it the clock flower. In Greece and Japan, I think they call it things related to clocks because it looks like a clock. You see what you want to see, basically, a timepiece or Jesus being killed in a horrible way.

It's almost as if when you look in fruit, it's got nothing to do with things that aren't fruit. How dare you? I saw Moses in an apple just the other day. Here's a question from Phil in Newcastle in Australia, who says, only answer me this, who are the youngest people to have become dames or lords? And what were they given these titles for? These titles always seem to be given to older people. Well, titles like that are generally given to older people because they've generally achieved more. if you're older you've done more it's like it's a bit odd if you get on desert island discs before you're 40 i agree i mean not that i'd say no i should say as well phil that dame hoods aren't the same as lordships i don't know why you've asked about dame hoods and lordships but is one higher up than the other one to a

sir exactly knighthood so dame is the female equivalent of sir so that's the highest honor you can get given well by the government or the royal family the establishment without it because serving political position whereas a lord actually sits in the house of lords and has a political vote so that's higher than a sir or a dame can you be made a lord in the honors list or do you have to be born to okay you can so it's all done at the same time but the lords are appointed by the prime minister basically right so you do have people that were sirs and became lords like andrew lloyd weber was that but generally speaking people don't make it into the house of lords that route it's through other things life's in politics and stuff but the point is the female equivalent of a lord is a baroness right so i'll look at dames but let's look at

baronesses and lords shall we and then is a baron on the same level or what? The baron titles in this country related to land, right? So those are the hereditary peers. But since the 90s, we don't have hereditary peers anymore, apart from the ones that were made life peers because they were popular amongst their peers, different use of the word peers than the original use of the word peers. I'm sure everyone is following this.

So barons just kind of complicate things because you have barons, but they're not necessarily lords anymore. Anyway, it was interesting to look at this because I just sort of assumed that the record on who was the youngest ever dame would be old because in olden times people died young. But then Kelly Holmes is pretty young and she's a dame. Yeah, you're on the right track. As was she. Hey, am I wrong? Zoom, zoom, zoom. See, we can have a show on TalkSport. But the youngest ever dame was appointed in 2005

and it was Ellen MacArthur. Oh, wow. Solo long distance yachtswoman. She was 28 years old when she was made a dame. Oh, and that's the youngest. She's the youngest ever. So all the dead medieval dames were older. Older, yeah. So who's the youngest lord then? Well youngest ever. So all the dead medieval dames were older. Yeah.

So who's the youngest lord then? Well, when they were hereditary, so when we had a hereditary period system, different question for a different day, but when we did... Well, then you can be nought years old if you're a hereditary lord. No. Not to be a serving lord. The statute states that no lord under the age of one and 20 years should be permitted to sit in the house. 120?

One and 20. 21. 21. 21. So basically the answer would be 21 because upon turning 21, like every year, dozens of lords, right? So the answer is 21. But if you take the question to mean

since we abolish hereditary peers, who's the youngest peer since then, then it would actually, ironically, be a hereditary peer because it was Lord Reedsdale, which is the lord name for Rupert Mitford. Yeah, it's the Mitford's seat. He was a hereditary peer, but he was one of the ones that got chosen to be a life peer.

And he was only 32 when that happened. Yeah. So he was the youngest ever life peer, because normally to be given a life period, you'd have had to have achieved more than a 32-year-old would have. But I'm going to take this question as they're asking about the ones who get bestowed a peer in like the new year's honors lists okay in that case i think you'd still struggle to find a lord that was ever younger than 21 so the answer would still be the hereditary one but it's quite the hereditary ones well

i know i can tell you who the current youngest male member is okay that'll do that's lord way he was born in 1977 the current youngest female member is baroness burton who was born in 1978 right so if we were in the house of lords now helen we'd actually be the youngest ones there oh barely though barely but we would be for a couple of years good enough for me squeaking it yeah baby issue the house i'll be the toddler of the house that's all right do you know i've got time to get in there abolish hierarchies and still be the youngest before i get out or i'm beheaded i think that's what some of the lords are doing i mean like because actually the the mitford lord we were talking about before he's a liberal democrat oh really so it's a bit weird because

he was made a life peer from a position of hereditary peerage but the party that he supports supports the abolishment of hereditary peers and you know would think that people like him shouldn't have a seat well here we are at the end of the show and please send us your questions for next month's show we are having some problems as we have recounted before with our skype and voicemail so if you want to be sure we get your questions in your voice then record a voice memo and email it or just write an email and email it to the contact details that are on our website answer me this podcast.com and you can listen to our other audio projects oh yeah such as the modern man starring oliver man well actually that was beautifully done

but actually the modern man beautiful and talented Oliver Mann! Hands like an angel! But actually, the modern man returns next month, so I would like to, in the meantime, highlight my other podcast, The Week Unwrapped. That is a weekly discussion show about the news stories that you've missed from the weeks gone by. So, for example, in the past few weeks,

we haven't been talking about the party conferences. We've been talking about sex education in video games. And we haven't been talking about the US's relationship with China. We've been talking about Sweden's relationship with China. So it's kind of like weird facts about the world as it is

really happening, but not being widely reported. You can hear that at theweekunwrapped.com and the illusionist is also uh available to put into your ears that's helen's excellent podcast it certainly is and martin and i are currently touring the illusionist around the us and canada in exciting funny on stage musical visual form so come to that between now and mid-november 2018 the dates are listed at theillusionist.org slash events uh any city highlights from that tour that you're looking forward to and or a place that isn't selling very well that you'd like to bolster i mean what the

fuck new york and la i know i have a lot of listeners there but why are you all so lazy come on austin come on austin we're so excited to go to Austin because Martin wants to catch the bat season before it ends I want bats and barbecue that's why I'm going to

Austin don't combine the two though if only you were as excited about us coming to Austin as we are about us

going to Austin and Martin you have a podcast as well yeah song by song podcast talks about every Tom Waits song in

chronological order we're currently halfway through his live album Big Time from the 80s but jump in it's not for just for tom white's fans we talk about all kinds of fun music and have some great guests on the show i'm on the current bit of big time aren't i you are on the current bit of big time some of those songs are it's a mixed bag on big time isn't it yeah yeah you can listen to the good and the bad at songbosongpodcast.com and if you have been tracking the progress throughout the year on Answer Me This of Ryan from Melbourne's hair

Oh yes When he's growing it and then he was like Should I make it into a wig? Should I buy a Dyson hairdryer? Yeah, that guy, yeah You'll be relieved to hear that he says I did spring for the hairdryer and I love it Oh, excellent

It's a major quality of life update from my last hairdryer And though I wasn't one to bother drying my hair before Now I look forward to it I can afford to leave my showers to the last minute It's a major quality of life update from my last hairdryer. And though I wasn't one to bother drying my hair before, now I look forward to it. I can afford to leave my showers to the last minute because of how quickly it dries my hair. I wonder if you don't want to spend the money on the hairdryer, whether you could just use one of the vacuums. It's probably the same turbine.

Yeah, or dip it in and out of the hand dryer. Yeah. And we will return halfway through the month with a retro episode of Answer Me This on your feed for a brief exciting moment that's right you have to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts to be able to hear that

and then on the first Thursday of November we will be back with an all new episode of Answer Me This so do join us for that bye