Answer Me This! - AMT367: IKEA Meatballs, the Popemobile, and a Years-Long Lie

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

In AMT367: the Pope goes for a drive, Dustin Hoffman goes for a walk, and a listener stands in a queue at Epcot. 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

Is it champagne for breakfast now austerity's over? Answer me this, answer me this Am I too young to have a comb-over? Answer me this, answer me this Heaven and lonely, answer me this Ever since our last episode of Answer Me This, people have been talking of nothing else except for whose were the legs

walking away in the closing credit sequence of the bill. I mean, it would be true to say that if we wanted to make this episode just feedback about who played the legs in the closing sequence of the bill, we could. Why not a Pizza at McDonald's style podcast just about this sole topic? We could. We've been generalists for too long, Ollie. I'm surprised that the leg bearers haven't got in touch yet. Because you remember when we had a question about Olympic skeleton for the next episode, we heard from Lizzie Yarnold,

two-time Olympic gold-winning British skeletonist. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, here are a few highlights. Let's go on a journey. Let's walk slowly with the legs up the street. Gemma from Cheshire said, I was convinced that i was told years ago that my auntie was the female legs right i've double checked and apparently she

was filmed for it but so were other people so she's not exactly sure if it was definitely her in the final edit what uh she may have been called annette paris at the time if we're looking for a name for the legs wow i mean as established in the answer last episode, it was an iconic role, but one where no one saw your face and there was no notoriety baked into that. I mean, okay, you're going to be on ITV, 10 million people are going to see it, but you wouldn't guess 30 years later, you'd still be being discussed. So I'm surprised that there was a screen testing process and numerous contenders even auntie annette couldn't recognize her own legs or someone else's legs yeah and then chloe says when i was in school in the 90s there was a persistent rumor that the daughter of one

of the teachers was the female legs the daughter of one of the teachers okay that's tenuous the teacher was mrs quinn but i can't remember any more details because it was ages ago now. Anyway, it was probably bollocks in the same way that many rumours at school are. So it could have been Mrs Quinn's daughter because we don't have a name. Well, we don't know whether Mrs Quinn's daughter, of course, was Annette Paris. Very good point. Gemma, was your auntie the daughter of a teacher called Mrs Quinn? Because then we're corroborating.

Did you have a rumour, by the way, about any of the teachers in your school that you can broadcast? I mean, a lot of the rumours were true that they were alcoholics or sleeping with six-formers. Same. Or having affairs with each other. The rumour at my school was that John Cleese's character in Clockwise had been based on my headmaster. But he's an uptight headmaster and you went to a very free and easy school. Yeah, but that sort of makes sense because it makes sense that like someone like john cleese would send

their kids to my school i don't know if he did but if he did that he'd come into contact with that headmaster who was uh atypical of the sort of hippie vibes in that he did uh exhibit uptight tendencies oh so i can see you know it makes sense but I don't know that it's true I feel like Clockwise is a film that it would be better not to revisit now totally agree like it's one that I'm happy I saw when I was eight and I think I was probably the right age and it was the right year well Anthony whose family were devoted bill watchers says I distinctly remember an interview with either the cast or the director at the time of the first series. They were asked about the closing credit scene, and the answer given was that the legs belonged to professional dancers.

The directors or producers wanted the steps to fall on the beat of the music, and the dancers were the best way of getting the timing spot on. This also explains the exaggerated slow pace you referred to in the podcast. Yeah, speed at which no police officer has ever walked. I did some searching, but I can't find any corroborating evidence of this. Yeah, well, tell me about it. This is the problem. It is the one truly ungoogleable fact left in the world, Anthony. I did try last time. You think ungoogleable, but Google does seem to agree with listener Tom, who says, according to Graham Cole, the actor who played Tony Stamp on the show for 20 years

so he should know everyone on the cast tried to get the gig as the legs why well again if you didn't know it was going to be a big deal why would that matter so much maybe you just want to have nice pins I mean remember the time that you and Martin competed to have the shapeliest calves it's true getting attention for your legs is thrilling. But in the end, says Tom, Paul Page Hanson and Karen England were the two extras who walked the famous cobbles. And that is on both of their IMDb listings. Okay. Yes, it is. But a couple of things on that. First of all, the facts on IMDb, so-called, are user-submitted, aren't they? So it's not evidence enough, I would say, in and of itself that it's on IMD aren't they so it's not evidence enough I would say in and of

itself that it's on IMDB although obviously it's useful but people would dispute it wouldn't they well they would if it was on for example the page about the bill but who's looking at the page for Paul Page Hanson who's no one's ever heard of loads of people evidently judging by who emailed in well exactly that's the thing so only people who believe this story that paul page hansen and karen england are the extras who played the legs in the closing sequence of the bill are going to be looking at their imdb pages so that's number one the other thing that i'm just dubious about is if you look at their other credits okay so paul page hansen only has one other credit which is doctor who now i think if you're an extra and you bother listing your extra credits

on IMDb you'd have dozens. Why only two? I don't know how IMDb listings work because some people you'd expect to have a profile don't and other people do. Exactly. Exactly. So if you're an extra that has a profile why would there only be two credits on it? If you've bothered to go to the effort of creating one. But the thing I think might solve this for us though helen is karen england's other credit on imdb is an appearance on gmtv on the 31st of august 2010 walking slowly away the role it says she's playing is herself right now i don't know anything about karen england because it doesn't say anything else on there but unless she had some weird experience she was on there to talk about like she'd seen jesus appear in her serial or whatever in which case she probably wouldn't have an imdb listing for that

exactly let's assume that if she's going on as herself and the only other notable thing about her apparently is she played the female legs in the bill let's assume that's what she was talking about on the 31st of August 2010. So my plea now is if you work at ITV and you have access to the ITV archives, can you see whether Karen England's appearance on the 31st of August 2010 was about being the legs in the bill? Because if it was, then I think that's legit. Are you sure that you want to spunk your favour from someone who works at ITV on this? Yeah, not the Saturday night chat show, this.

Very fair. Also, before anyone Googles Karen England GMTV to see if it's on YouTube, already done that. There is a lady called Karen England who was in a crossover classical music duo called the opera babes they were on gmtv in that era definitely not the same karen england according to that karen england's wikipedia she was born in 1974 which would make her legs only 10 years old in 1984 therefore too young to be the legs on the bill they certainly don't look like child legs that's

not a 10 year old legs unless you know she had an incredibly mature legs for a 10 year old and that's why all those years later in august 2010 whilst promoting her crossover classical music duo she was still talking about that unless both of the legs are child legs and it's kind of bogsy malone situation maybe i mean the bill would have been a very different program had that been the case and a more entertaining one custard guns to uh stop the crims hello this is adam and emma in liverpool say hello emma hello we're in bed at the moment and emma has a question for you hi helen Helen, Ollie and Martin, the sound guy. Just a random question.

In an average day, how many meatballs do Ikea get through? Do you mean like one Ikea or the whole of Ikea? I don't know. As I said, it was a random question. I really feel like we were in bed there with them. Yeah, totally. Martin, how do you feel about being Martin the Sound Guy rather than the Sound Man?

That's quite nice. A little more informal. Yeah. What did someone call him the other day, Helen, in our email inbox? We both laughed out loud hard. Malcolm. Malcolm the Sound Guy.

Malcolm. But it wasn't someone deliberately doing a funny. That's why it was funny. It was someone who clearly just thought your name was Malcolm. I think people have got me all wrong wrong it's the fact that they knew enough that you were malcolm the sound man you know if it just said malcolm that would be less funny you could pass for a malcolm martin oh thanks the world doesn't have that many malcolm's in it these days no malcolm kennedy i suppose is the famous malcolm who's malcolm kennedy neighbors carl and susan's

son oh right right and he peaked in the early 90s oh wait he's a fictional character then yeah the famous Malcolm. Who's Malcolm Kennedy? Neighbours. Carl and Susan's son. Oh, right, right. And he peaked in the early 90s. Oh, wait, he's a fictional character then? Yeah, he's a fictional Malcolm. Okay. I mean, everything in Neighbours peaked in the early 90s. I don't think it's fair to pin it all on Malcolm. I cannot contradict. Except for the scene where Paul Robinson is thrown off a cliff.

That was this century. Fine. Continue. I'm going to take the question to be how many meatballs does ikea get through in the world every day yes and also presumably that they're serving in their cafes rather than they're selling from their freezers although that is a good tip isn't it if you if you have a freezer and you're in ikea get the frozen meatballs they're jolly nice because once you've got through

the tills there's then the opportunity to buy more shit yeah that's right they've really thought this through and i usually go for the Ravita wheel. Yes. I love a Ravita wheel. It isn't actually Ravita, is it? It's like Stockbrod or something, but it's basically Ravita, yeah. You knew what I was talking about, didn't you?

I did. So, okay. The number of meatballs that they sell on plates at the cafes, in all the Ikea's in the world. I don't even know how many Ikea's there are in the world. Well, don't worry, Helen, because I do. I'm so excited. So the annual figure that their press office tells the world is,

wait for it, 1 billion meatballs a year. Whoa. That's a lot. I assume they're using the widespread American definition of 1,000 million. Yeah. So if that's the case, 1,000 million divided by 365 is roughly 2,740,000 meatballs a day. Hmm.

Now that sounded like a lot to me. But I thought I should test the figure. So I thought, okay, how many IKEA stores are there around the world? The answer to that, Helen, would you care to guess? It's more than you think. Okay. It's more than I thought. If it's more than I think okay it's more than i thought if it's more than i think then i'm gonna go for 5 800 but if it's the amount i think 400 yes it's 403 yes wow this article was written in 2017 might be 410 now

anyway if you divide 2 740 000 meatballs by 403 ikea stores around the world that gives you 6798 meatballs per store per day right there's a fuck a lot of maths you've had to do for this now if you take a portion size at ikea to be 10 meatballs i know some people go smaller but let's say 10 then that's 679 people buying meatballs in each ikea store per day. Wow. And that to me does sound plausible because they're massively popular stores. There's a lot of footfall and quite a limited menu. So I actually do believe that statistic. I can believe 679 people in each branch of Ikea

choose meatballs each day. So yes, the answer is roughly 2,740,000. Per day. Per day. I've been to Ikea, I'd say at least 10 times in my life, but I've actually never ordered the meatballs. What? I know, because they look like

the texture would be a bit wrong. The texture's very, very smooth. I do applaud the presence of jelly on their menu, though. You do not get enough of that in grown-up restaurants. You know, I absolutely agree with you, Ollie. For a while when I was in hospital, the only thing I could eat was jelly. And a nice jelly would have been so welcome, whereas what I had was a jelly that smelt and tasted of chicken stock. I am not ready for that jelly. No, I will never be ready. Here's a question from Graham who says, I saw the

Pope-mobile driving down the M40 somewhere near Bicester. Oh, lucky you. The Pope wasn't inside. It's a pretty strange car. Apart from whatever the Popemobile was doing driving down the M40, actually driving, not on a truck, it was keeping up with traffic. So, Helen, answer me this. How fast does the Popemobile go? Does it have a souped-up engine and good handling in case there's a chase it certainly does the popemobile's usual road speed is six to ten miles per hour which would be very unpopular on the m40 people would be honking but it can go up to 160 miles per hour what off that is a speed and it's so unergonomic it looks like i mean there are lots of different Popemobiles actually, but what most of them have in common is they look a bit like that car Homer Simpson designed. I suppose he's a terrorist target, the Pope, isn't he?

You can understand that the car would be competitive, that it could go at 100 miles an hour. Why 160? I wonder whether they did that because in 1981 someone tried to assassinate the Pope. Or possibly, I wonder if it's... Because it's not just one brand that supplies the Popemobile, is it? It's not like the British London cab that's always the same company that makes it. Everyone's had a go at it, right? Yeah, yeah, everyone.

I mean, even Leyland Trucks did a Popemobile. It was a truck with the Pope on top. I'm wondering if maybe, therefore, if you get to do a Popemobile, it's almost like doing a concept car, isn't it? So if your Mercedes-Benz, I mean, okay, it doesn't look like a Mercedes, but if the press cover the Popemobile when he brings his new Popemobile out, I suppose you want the quote to be able to say, you know, Mercedes have put their cutting edge engine in it, which can go up to 160 miles per hour.

So I wonder if that's the reason. It's a press story, isn't it? If you get to design a car for the Pope. Well, I saw quite a lot of complaints that in the pope's august visit to ireland he went by too fast so maybe he was like go on floor it let's see what this baby can do if you've got a question email your question to answer me in this podcast To give a mail.com Answer me in this podcast To give a mail.com

Answer me Answer me Answer me So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car.

On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Nancy, who says, Please help save me from a problem of my own making. I have lived a lie for the majority of my adult life, and now I am paying the price. Strong opener.

The lie I told was that I'm allergic to dogs. Okay. I'm not allergic to dogs or hamsters or any of the furry things people have tried to force on me over the years. I just don't like animals. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to hurt them. I don't go around kicking dogs or dropping cats in bins.

I just don't like animals. Our mutual friend Alex is a bit like that, isn't he? Yeah, he's softened a bit. Has he? Okay. But he doesn't have a pet, right? No, he doesn't like them, but he no longer says things like, my dream job would be kicking dogs to death.

But I think he probably still thinks it, a bit. Yeah, probably. I understand his point of view. Like he said to me, and he's only told me like at parties when he's drunk and I feel like I'm getting the whole truth. There's been an acknowledgement that this is an outrageous thing to say.

But he's told me that essentially, like he sees people's pet dogs and cats and just thinks of poo and dirt and unhygienic things. Yeah. And why is everyone letting, you know, another species into their house and letting them crap there and stuff? Wasted emotions.

Yeah. But even he, I don't think, hates the whole of the animal kingdom. Like Nancy is saying that she does. I think he would just prefer not to engage with pets. I get the sense he might like looking at an attractive vista, say, oh, look, there's a peacock. Yeah, fine.

Without thinking, and I want to kill it. Yeah, exactly. He's got to that point. Well done him. Yeah. Whereas Nancy doesn't even appear to have that aesthetic pleasure. Nancy says the problem with pet owners is they don't believe this. They think their pet is special, an exception to the rule.

The rule being that Nancy doesn't like animals. I noticed this even more as my sister is terrified of dogs. She'd cross over a road to avoid passing one on a lead. Join the club. Yet when we have visited friends and family with dogs, we've been kindly asked on the doorstep, do you mind dogs? To which my sister

has never been shy and saying no i'm terrified of dogs the truth to which the dog owner replies oh but you'll love our dog and then opens the door to let the dog jump all around us and get to know us i sympathize with where she's coming from because i'm scared of dogs um and i have had this thing happen but I have acknowledged that it appears in dog psychology to calm the dog down if you pretend and you say oh hello and let it sniff you and jump on you

it's difficult but then they do leave you alone a bit more they're not barking at you the whole time so that there is method in the madness isn't there I don't know when my family used to have dogs we used to try and hold them back from people that didn't like them but that's the point how long did you have to hold them back for like if you end up holding them back for hours it's easier just to let them

slobber on them once usually just the first couple of minutes and then they're not that bothered anymore and then they just go back to sleep many a time says nancy i've had to watch the color drain from my sister's face as we spend the rest of the visit with her so on edge that she could hardly drink a cup of tea why is this acceptable if someone said what's your worst fear oh spiders come around to my house and let some crawl on you it'll be seen as the height of rudeness anyway says nancy years ago i was noticing this reply again and again so to be polite i decided to answer the question do you like dogs with oh With, oh, I love them, but I'm terribly allergic. Bam, done.

Dogs are put outside or in the next room. That's good. I'm happy. My sister's happy. The dog owners are happy that their dogs are universally loved. Okay, so what's the problem? It seems to me that this lie has been successful in separating dogs from you. Except not.

A few months ago, my family, myself, my husband and our two kids expatriated. We moved to Kualaa lumpur at around the same time as a friend got a new dog i message her frequently and stay in touch but have to endure four messages a day of her dog being a dog if she thinks he looks cute which is all the time she sends a picture she captions and with silly comments i've got videos of it watching the tv and her giggling like a mad woman. I get sent BuzzFeed lists of 27 dogs who'll brighten your day.

Every time I pick up my phone, there seems to be a dog-related message on it to which I have to reply, oh, cute. But man, I hate that dog. And she loves it so much. You know how you can tell she's telling the truth, Helen? How?

It's because she calls the dog it. Even though she said she knows the gender. Like, she said it's a him, but now twice has referred to it as It. She probably knows the dog's name and everything. Yeah, exactly. But doesn't want to pander to it. Doesn't want to anthropomorphise. I try to consider the dog like her child.

I don't know how to tell her I don't want these photos. I'd be gutted if someone said that about my kids. They don't, of course, as I don't send people photos of my be gutted if someone said that about my kids they don't of course as i don't send people photos of my kids unless something really notable happened like one of them got a nobel prize or had a hilarious fall that i managed to capture on video i send a weekly message to grandparents of pictures of the kids and then if a friend asks how the kids are i'll send a photo of them smiling as proof of life Wow. Sounds like a kidnapping. Proof of life.

I have more photos of her dog than my kids on my phone. And the trouble is, she thinks I like them as I'm stuck in this polite, smiling prison. So, Ollie, answer me this. How do I tell her to rein it in? Or am I forced to endure a daily onslaught of dog related messages photos and links by the way since i started writing you this email i've had two photos one of the dog looking at his empty bowl and a dog food tin another of him eating the dog food i got eight last night from a walk they took together whoa all right what is the deal with your friend it seems like there's

something lacking in her life right it's too much and i think for that reason you have to tread particularly delicately actually however i see the issue and it's not the same as if you were on social media and it wasn't directed at you in which case you could just mute them i mean i've done that plenty of times on facebook um especially when people post too many pictures of their kids i like kids i just you know you know when people post too many pictures of their kids. I like kids. I just, you know, you know when people just forget that you don't, for example, want to be scrolling through your newsfeed on an iPad and see a massive picture of their son's chicken pox.

Don't. You know, too much. But you can mute those people. But the difficulty here is she is sending them directly to you and it's because of the misconception that you have caused from your lie that you like dogs but you're just allergic to them so camera phone seems the perfect medium to send you dog pictures so it is tricky but i would say very firmly don't tell her you hate the dog like you just told us that is not the thing to say

it's a thing to say but what you could say that you also told us was that fact that there are more photos of her dog than your kids on your phone that's quite a shocking statistic isn't it i wonder if if you could maybe package that as like a lol you know use an an amused emoji of some description whatever the kids do these days and and send a message that's like amused emoji i just realized i have more photos of your dog than my kids omg ha ha ha and then actually say it's getting too much for my phone would you mind just sending me the best one each week i'm getting overwhelmed no what do you mean no that was a perfectly reasonable answer it's just different to yours not no i don't think it's gonna help to be honest

because you're still letting this person think you give a shit and you don't one a week one a week put up with one a week the thing is if she's sending like eight just in one evening i think she'll think that one a week is like several a day still she'll be like god it feels like a week since i sent nancy a picture and it'll be actually two hours okay i still think my solution deserved a bit of like well that could work but i've got a better idea rather than a hard no all right i've got a different lie that nancy could try fine it's kind of assuming your sister's persona of someone who's very afraid of dogs and i think going i'm so sorry friend it's kind of difficult to say to you because it's so sweet of you to send me pictures of your dog and you know from so far away i'm always glad to hear from you but i'm actually really afraid of dogs and each

picture is kind of triggering for me would you mind not sending me the pictures of the dogs fine but that is like i say this person potentially quite delicate you're telling them that you've been too polite to say it until now but on a nightly basis eight times a night you've been terrified by them sending you something they sent you with good intention yeah so they're not going to send you any more fucking dog memes are they sure but they might not take that news very well they might feel terrible about that i think what nancy could do is invite different information from this friend's life and say you know how's work how are your hobbies what else is happening and at least try to sort of cultivate yeah he came to work with me

today here's a picture yeah my hobby now is buying things for the dog. Well, you've got to just block this friend. Is this like a relatively new acquisition of a dog? Do you think she'll get it out of her system and it'll be a little calmer? Given a few weeks or a few months or a few years? She says in the email a few months ago they moved to Kuala Lumpur about the same time

as a friend got a new dog. So is that early in a dog relationship, a few months? It's quite early, especially if it's a a puppy then people are going to take loads of photos because each week the puppy will look a bit different and for the first time the puppy is doing a cute funny thing but in two years time but then that's still a lot of dog photos you've got between now and two years hence the thing i find unacceptable is the stuff that is material about just other dogs so the buzzfeed lists of dogs i get why people send you pictures of things in their life that you're not super interested in but it's like the difference between a friend sending me a picture of their baby where i'm like

oh cool it's nice to you know just keep in touch with my friend and their family and just pictures of babies because also what they're doing by sending you the picture of their baby is they're saying you're important to me as a relationship i want you to share in this thing that means something to me yeah but the motivation is still the same with the pictures of her dog right so you agree that but you just think it's when it's because she's mistakenly thought that she likes dogs it's when it's branching off into virals yeah it's like when you've got a friend who likes cats as you you do, Wally, you like your cat. But I haven't started sending you everything cat related.

So it's not like every birthday you get like oven mitts with cats on, tea towels with cats on, china with cats on. I'm pretty narrowly focused on my cat. I have one other suggestion for Nancy. One way to ease communications from somebody is just not to respond that much. Don't respond to each one don't even respond daily maybe a couple of times a week and then they will send less yes because

she might have a mail list it might not just be you that's getting the dog oh very unlikely just to be you so she's probably thinking you're in the hardcore dog appreciation society whereas if you don't reply that often like so we have um to try and avoid the issue of putting loads of pictures of our son all over facebook and instagram and stuff we have a special whatsapp group for our family for people who might be interested in him but the aunties are in there as well as the grandparents yeah and i was like definitely the auntie should be in there but i'm sure if i was the auntie i'd be happy with you know once fortnightly content whereas the grandparents are obviously happy with maybe not daily but definitely by daily content so it's trying to

find that happy medium and i've sometimes thought do we do like a hardcore grandparents group as well for the daily updates right part of my growing to realize that is the amount that the aunties respond is obviously less than the grandparents so i think that's true what you said like you get a sense of it one thing that nancy's email makes me think of is that having an allergy can be convenient uh about three years ago i developed a booze allergy a real one but it means that all the people who were trying to force feed me booze before when i was just indifferent to it and didn't want to drink it will now leave me alone rather than being like oh go on yeah go on because so many people will not accept that you don't want to drink alcohol and you just don't want to whereas allergies they respect yes so i think nancy did a decent lie you've actually just made me think for the first time ever about whether a good friend of mine chalini who has a

cat allergy is telling the truth. That has never occurred to me before. Like, I just trust people when they tell me about their illnesses. It would feel like a terrible thing not to believe someone. But Nancy, you've just proven evidence. Maybe Shalini hates my cat. And this is the way that she's managed to keep herself in a separate room for all these years. And actually, I would be personally slighted if if that were the case if she came

out to me with that lie you must not say that this is a lie nancy all of the dog and cat allergists will be unmasked well you're casting doubt aren't you on people with legitimate allergies yeah that's the thing making life tough for them yeah it does make a lot of people's lives really shit and you've just co-opted it for your own needs exactly i should update you actually because i said on the show uh three or four months ago i think that we were thinking of getting a new cat to live with coco and i was dubious about it yeah um so the latest on that is that we've taken the plunge as in we've gone to a rehoming centre to go and look at cats. And I've learned a lot about bringing a second cat in with an older female cat. It's a generalisation, but apparently true. Older female cats don't like younger female cats.

It's an all about Eve situation. Whereas I've thought we've done really well with this particular type of female moggy cat. Let's just get another one like that, you know, that's 10 years younger. That's a big no-no apparently. Right. What you want is a younger male that she then mothers rather than you know tries to see as a rival and then we've been told uh if you've got kitten if you've got a male kitten don't have a male kitten with an older female cat because he'll drive her nuts get two male kittens so we're now in the market for suddenly three cats which is a bit insane right um because as we've discussed before i believe firmly that the line at which you become a crazy

cat person is four cats so i'm happy to get two male kittens and have our older female cat but i'm just worried like what if in the future a friend of ours is like we're going to put this cat down unless you can look after it and i'm in the situation where we have the fourth cat. Or, you know, a cat walks into our garden one day as a stranger and then ends up living here. We'll have four cats and I'll be certifiably mad. Well, of course, the alternative is just not to get extra cats. Don't be ridiculous. That's no alternative at all.

What kind of life is that? Well, I think it's now time to take a little break with this month's intermission. And today, with the festive season approaching like santa on his reindeer drawn sleigh let's hear a little snippet of the answer me this christmas album yes one hour of festive fun about different christmasy things and kwanzaas in there and all of it is stuff that has not been on the podcast. That's right. It was recorded in 2013, but it is evergreen like Will Young. 2013? It was, yeah.

No. 2013. Shit, the bird. I thought it was like two years old. And the Christmas album, as well as all our other albums, and our first 200 episodes, and our best of collections are all available on our spin-off website, answermethisstore.com.

The only thing I can think of about plum pudding that I like is that it was once a model of the atom. What? That's how people understood the atom. They thought it was like a big load of... The raisins were like nuclei and then the rest of the pudding was like electrons. Which is ironic, really, for something that has such incredible mass

as a Christmas pudding. Yeah, it's very high density. And if you split it, where's the comparison there? Well, I think you'd have to split an individual raisin to think about nuclear fission, if that's what you're alluding to. I think you're overthinking puddings, and that's all there is to it. Oh! Huh? Oh, yeah.

Let us hear a question now in your voices and you could phone the following number. Or you could Skype answer me this. The most reliable way to send us a question in your voice is to record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at the usual address. Hey Helen, Ollie, Martin, it's Nate and Kate, currently in Disneyland Paris celebrating our wedding anniversary and we just spent the last 90 minutes queuing up to meet Ariel,

the little mermaid, albeit in her human form, and I was under strict instructions from Kate not to ask her my most burning mermaid related question which is when she was a mermaid did she lay eggs or did she produce some kind of spawn um I was too busy looking amazed while we were in there so um I forgot to ask her I even looked at what the French was um so can you answer is that does the little mermaid lay eggs or spawn or produce in some other way? The bottom half of the mermaid, if you look at the illustrations, appear to be related most closely to pelagic fish. Deep sea fish.

Which, if that's the case, I mean, you're only going on how they look, but that appears to be the case, would mean they do have a slit about halfway down their fin from where they release eggs. Okay. What's the definition really spawn the eggs i would say species of fish lay so many eggs that they are effectively spawn i mean i think in the case of pelagic fish um you do get groups of eggs and that can be evidenced by the fact that if you look at uh ariel's sisters in the movie they're all quite close in age to her

so that would suggest wouldn't it that her mother laid lots of eggs and they all hatched at roughly the same time and presumably they were breastfed which is unusual for a fish but why would they have tits otherwise well you know why they've got tits so that people can leer at the tits here's another disney related question from juliana from tampa Florida, who says, my brother and sister got me a surprise gift for my birthday to go to Epcot. Ollie, answer me this. What is the best way to avoid standing in lines? Should I bring my own chair to sit in the lines? What's the most comfortable way to exist while in a line? So it's basically a lot of queuing,

is it, when you go to Epcot? Yeah, well, it's a lot of queuing when you go to any theme park and i struggle to believe juliana that you don't really know an answer to this question because not only are you from florida home of theme parks but specifically you're from tampa i've just been there on holiday there is frankly no fucking way you could live in tampa and not have at least once done the thing that everyone does within 48 hours of being in Tampa which is go to Bush Gardens which is a massive theme park so that's the same deal as Disney is the theme Jeb Bush it's named after Anheuser-Busch isn't it the beer manufacturer that's right yes it's the same group that own Budweiser and SeaWorld so they're a massive brewery so is it like the Duff Beer theme park yeah Yeah, it is in effect. But, you know, the deal's the same.

There are some rides you have to queue. So I can't believe you haven't worked out your own techniques in the past, Juliana, anyway. I would say if you're bothered about sitting in line or standing in line, however you want to do it, Juliana, do some research and pick in advance the rides that have more inbuilt line-based entertainment like mission space i can't remember now because it's been a while since i've been to epcot but i reckon mission space probably has like screens telling you how to train as astronaut because that's the theme of the ride so that when you get on the ride you've been sort of briefed

whereas oh canada that's probably not that much fun in the queue unless you enjoy the simulation of being in a queue in canada that's the real ride well my general uh epcot tips uh would be the fireworks like stay for the fireworks they're the best in the world the firework display in the evening is incredible everything else is just really weird unless you're interested in shopping or seeing what white people in the 60s thought the 90s might be like i'm kind of curious about that having lived through the 90s yeah they got it wrong oh genuine tip here now if you do want not to spend too long in queues they have a thing at disney called fast pass that's free you just need to go you need to walk up to a certain place where

you can get your passes and it gives you a time slot so then you don't have to wait more than 20 minutes for big rides okay that's a really good tip so you can get that for epcot yeah for the big rides so for whatever their three big attractions are for those you can get a slot so you shouldn't theoretically ever be waiting more than an hour for anything um and only 20 minutes for the big ones but you can pay more to get to the front but for free you can get these fast passes so that's pretty good um when we were in florida actually we went to legoland they have a cool thing if you have toddlers with you which is uh the adults stand in line but the toddlers go and play with lego until you get to the front and they join you again jealous which is really good yeah now i do wonder why theme parks when they put so much

effort into theming other things haven't put more effort into the queuing experience and why not make it more like a slow ride so part of the pain is just standing for like an hour what about making an almost very slow roller coaster so everyone sits down when you arrive in the queue and it gently snakes you to the front of the queue kind of like a conveyor belt but for humans how about well i mean effectively what you're describing is what happens in a lot of the florida theme parks i mean the design of the haunted mansion in the disney parks for example which goes back some 50 years now um you do still have to queue to get to the cool bit but the cool bit starts before the ride so there's an elevator that takes you down to the ride and the elevator in itself is this cool effect where the pictures appear to stretch before your eyes and there's this sort of vincent price style voiceover and stuff and as you're walking up to the queue

you're walking past gravestones that have got punny names on and stuff like that so i think you know that there is a tradition of doing that but it is true sometimes you are basically just standing in line and there's not much you can do to entertain yourself but i think that's important i think it's important to be a bit bored talk to your family i mean disney brought out an app a while ago so you're supposed to look at the app it's got like some sort of ar thing going on but i just think that's a cop-out like talk to your friends okay so it's not a kind of headphone situation like you would if you're cooing at an airport i should say actually i so the most recent uh visitor attraction that i've been to was just today so it's fresh in my memory whoa paradise wildlife park in broxbourne i should say if you're in my situation you have a toddler it's

great because they've gamified everything all the animals is that legal yeah there's a tunnel that takes you under the meerkat enclosure for example but the most hilarious thing about it and i actually feel almost guilty flagging this up because i don't want them to get in trouble and i don't want to ruin it because it is genuinely quite good but they have a new dinosaur attraction there which is like legit good like the sculptures of the dinosaurs they're proper animatronics they're as good as the ones at universal studios it's really cool but they are sailing very close to the wind, Helen, with the Jurassic Park references. Oh, really?

They clearly do not have the permission to turn it into Jurassic Park World. And they've obviously just thought, oh, fuck it, let's do it anyway. Like, what's copyrighted? It's just dinosaurs. They didn't invent dinosaurs. They just invented second-gen dinosaurs.

The font, like it says, you know, Paradise Dinosaur World in the Jurassic Park font. I see. dinosaur world in the jurassic park font they've got the jeep they've got these like destroyed jeeps everywhere that have just been trampled on by a spielberg dinosaur they've got the entrance to the park is a rip-off of jurassic park the big wooden doors and then to add insult to injury when you're on the dinosaur train which by the way is well worth the extra two quid uh they play the theme from jurassic park as you return to the station uh and i mean i guess that's a commercially available track i suppose they have a prs license and they can play the jurassic park theme but that's pretty

the context of it being on a dinosaur theme park ride like i say a bit close to the wind i felt and yet they continue to get away with it in plain sight suppose the theory is that universal aren't gonna sue Hertfordshire Zoological Society and i suppose that's sound but it's still a big financial risk isn't it i don't know if you've ever helped your mum build a website it is the kind of torment from which there is no respite if she asks what's a widget again i will kill her with a rusty spike or a brick or a spade or a chainsaw the square space is so easy even your mum can use it she can drag and drop and cut and paste that's all there is to it so helen put that spike down i beg you for christ's sake don't do it sorry mom thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this

episode of answer me this squarespace are the company that make it easy for you to design a website and they began in a dorm room in 2006 really about six months before we did they now have more than 800 employees and we're still doing this if you're busy in your dorm room inventing something why not build a website about that something using squarespace they already designed these award-winning templates and drag and drop tools to make it very easy for you to do your something whatever that is and whether that's showcasing your skills as a professional photographer or simply hosting a blog for your fascinating collection of insights into the world they have a template that will make you look better than you actually are and isn't that what we all want

if only they had that for life there's a two-week free trial uh so uh get on down to squarespace.com answer and try that out and then to get 10 off your purchase of a website or domain remember to use our code answer here's a question from will who says whenever i hear someone doing an impression of someone from New York, they always seem to do so by bellowing the phrase, I'm walking here, in an aggrieved tone. I've never been to New York or to the US for that matter to confirm if this is accurate. So Helen, answer me this. Do New Yorkers actually say, I'm walking here? And if so, why and in what context? Yeah, I was just in New York the other day and I'm not saying I met every New Yorker but I did not hear anybody say I'm walking here it's a specific

film reference I think um it's from Midnight Cowboy with John Voight and Dustin Hoffman and uh Dustin Hoffman is walking and talking to John voight and as he's walking and talking here yeah he's aaron sorkin and he uh crosses over a side road and a car comes out and uh almost hits him and he says i'm walking here slams his hand down on the car button and carries him walking and i think the reason that's caught on as a very new york thing is there is this perception that new yorkers are like really unfriend, like really driven and focused on getting to where they're going. And that like kind of sums up like that New Yorkiness, I guess. Yeah.

And also that pedestrians might take precedence over car drivers for once in an American city. Yeah, but there is also, there is an attitude in New York of like brashness, isn't there? And it's a stereotype, but there's a sense that, especially people on their way to work, have a confidence in what they're doing. And if you get the cab when they wanted the cab,

you know, there's going to be an exchange. Again, I get that from films and television far more than I get it from actual New York. I've got it from actual New York. I've got it from actual New York. I remember being in New York and just hearing everyone swearing at each other. And that shocked me.

I mean, this is going back to like late 90s. In London, you didn't hear people swearing then. And I remember going to New York and just hearing everyone be going, fuck you, while I'm on the road and I do remember thinking that it was a brasher place I don't think I've even lived in London when I first went to New York and I didn't find it that aggressive I think they're kind of like that reputation of being brisk and brusque well I think there's been a conflation of New York and London in the last 20 years I think they do feel whenever I go between the two cities I feel like they're more similar than they used to be.

It's partly like globalisation and they've got the same shops, literally, but it's also just the personality. London has become more aggressive and more high-flying and New York's chilled out a bit. I do feel that. Do you also think that

this is a British thing doing the impression of the New Yorkers and there aren't that many phrases that people think they can do in an American accent. So they take this very exaggerated accent. And because this is a familiar phrase, they can form the appropriate shapes with their mouths. Yes.

But actually emulating a more naturalistic New York accent would be beyond most people's capabilities in Britain. I don't know why people would find it so hard. You sound like the Jerky Boys. Is the Jerky Boys a kind of parody of the Jersey Boys? Do you remember the Jerky Boys? It was like a... No, neither of us remember the Jerky Boys. It's a dried meat based musical.

Here's a question from Ian from Watford. He says, my family were just ordering an Indian takeaway and we're discussing the hotness of chillies. Ollie asked me this, why are chillies hot? Aren't they a fruit? And isn't the point of fruit to be eaten so the seeds are spread in faeces? If fruit and isn't the point of fruit to be eaten so the seeds are spread in feces if so wouldn't being hot be a bad move and discourage animals from eating them i

just point out to ian that the hotness of chilies really does help the spreading of feces like that's presumably the reason right like animals get like oh this is tasty then they get like horrible diarrhea and and shit all over their friends bathrooms i'm just extrapolating a hypothetical here it isn't uh but i see the logic okay it is in fact an evolutionary masterstroke that ian is correctly alluding to that animals apart from humans in curries are discouraged from eating chilies um and that's because specifically mammals are discouraged because mammals have the effect that we as mammals identify with a sense of simulating the areas of the skin and tongue that normally sense heat and pain which makes the thing oh god what's going on here so which animals aren't affected by that that would be

the birds ah birds love a bit of spice and they already shit liquids i mean i don't know if they love it but they certainly tolerate it and aren't bothered. So they eat the fruit and disperse the seeds far and wide in their bum poos and mammals don't. So it's a chemical called capsaicin, isn't it? The active ingredient in chilies. I'm so pleased you said it because I've never heard it pronounced before. It's one of those words I'd be frightened to say. I've only seen it written down.

Like posthumous. Until we did posthumous. Posthumous. I was never sure. Oh, and monarchy, which I pronounced monarch because I'd never heard it out loud. Yeah. Oh, wow. Monarchy. How do you say capsaicin? Capsaicin. Capsaicin.

I was right to be worried about saying that. Capsaicin. Well, now I know. Have you got to put on an automaton sort of American accent when you do it? Capsaicin. Birds do have taste buds, but their sense of taste is less well-developed than in mammals. Well, I'm not surprised. They eat seeds.

I love seeds. Do you, though? Yeah. I like putting seeds on a salad because the crunch is a surprise, but I wouldn't eat seeds for a meal. I mean, not a full meal, but then you're much bigger than a bird. So you need more things to bulk it out. No, I'd still, you know, if I was bird size,

I'd still rather have a crumb of what I'm eating for lunch than a seed. Right. You know, like I'd rather have a bit of bagel and a bit of sesame seeds than just five sesame seeds. But you would agree that seeds on a bagel are better than no seeds on a bagel. I'm not crazy, Helen. Of course I'd agree that. Okay. I remember when we first started working together on a college publication

and I used to bring breakfast to your room and often it would be, say, bread rolls with seeds on. And you're like, girl, someone likes seeds. I felt very seed shamed. Wow. That was my first piece of observational comedy about you geez and it didn't warn me off someone likes seeds well that brings us to the end of this episode of answer me this please do send your questions for next month's episode which will be out on the first thursday of december our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com And it being December, obviously,

not that we're wishing to nudge you in any particular direction, but it's nice to feel festive that time of year. If you have a Christmas question, you know, it can either be about the origins of something festive or it could be, I hate my family, what am I going to do? Now is the time to ask that question. Don't do the thing that people always do, wait till Christmas Day

and then come up with a question about Christmas that we actually don't want to answer for another 12 months because we forget about them send it now you know no one wants stuff to listen to questions about christmas in january no worst worst time isn't it worst hangover but people are always interested by the other content we make online helen why don't you remind our audience about your excellent podcast the illusionist i make the excellent podcast, The Illusionist, which is an entertainment show about language. And we're also on live tour at the moment.

There are still dates to go in the US and Canada in the first half of November of the year 2018. And those are listed at theillusionist.org slash events. And Oli, The Modern Man is back, is it not? New season. It is. The Modern Man is my weekly podcast about emerging trends, music recommendations, sex advice, and amazing life stories. Don't worry.

I talk to people with amazing life stories. I do not supply the sex advice personally. There are 80 episodes now for you to binge on. I have interviewed everyone from would-be terrorists to bank robbers to professional declutterers. And the new series kicks off with a very frank interview. It's not a barrel of laughs. It's a man who suffered from anorexia and an incurable brain tumour. But what is interesting, and I know he's announced me this listener, so he's listening right now. He says his life is better now than when he was a junior doctor.

So that says a lot about what it's like trying to be a junior doctor. You can hear that story at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk. And Martin. Oh, you can listen to my podcast, Song by Song, where we talk about every Tom White song in chronological order. And we talk about other kinds of music. So it's not just Tom Whites. And you can hear that at songwessongpodcast.com and remember you can buy our first 200 episodes

at answermethisstore.com they only cost 79 pence each which is cracking value but it is november black friday is around the corner so you know you may want to check out the site on that day nudgy nudgy winky winky and there will also be a sample of one of those episodes in your feeds halfway through the month in our retro answer me this but you need to subscribe to the show to do that so find us on apple podcast or spotify or wherever you listen yeah you know the places to get a podcast you're listening to one right now you're no fool and please rejoin us next month for the next all-new Answer Me This. Bye!