Answer Me This! - AMT378: Blue Peter Dogs, Cats in Sacks, and Getting Over A Lipstick Fetishist

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

In AMT378, we celebrate the arrival of Olly's new child, and consider listeners' problems with attraction/lack thereof, home security systems, and mathematical nursery rhymes. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice memos to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Hear AMT episodes 1-200, all five of our special 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 . This episode is sponsored by 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

I am a Brit, won't you give me an Emmy? Is it pronounced Emmy more, or is it dare me? Very exciting news since the last time we podcasted. And I'm not talking about my new podcast. It's even better than me launching a new podcast Olly Mann has launched a new human being. Yes but unlike you Helen I haven't had to find a new partner to do it he's called Toby. Lovely. We named him after my favourite Sunday Carvery

and... Artem was almost named Toby. I was almost called Toby. Were you? Yeah. I used to really dislike the name because I associated it with Toby Juggs which I find very ugly but more recently I've met a very nice man called Toby. And now I'm like, yeah, Toby's a good name. That's all it took.

Well, Harvey's choice of brother name was Baby Lion. That's what he wanted him to be called. Well, yes. Are you going to go for Baby Lion as a middle name? No, middle name is Stanley after my father. That's nice. Which derives from the greek baby lion um actually i do have a tip that i can share for any prospective parents of second children um where the first child is toddler age um which is the same tip that everyone gives you but i can

just validate that it is absolutely true get your first child a gift from the newborn baby right even though the newborn baby doesn't have a credit card yeah and hasn't been to the shops yet they just don't think like that 12 year olds probably think like that but at three and a half harvey didn't think through the process of oh how did toby minutes after being yanked from his mother's womb managed to go on amazon and order a dell's food truck from playmobil the to go on Amazon and order a Dell's food truck from Playmobil the movie, he just thought, wow, it's Dell's food truck

from Playmobil the movie. That's exactly what I wanted. How did Toby know? This kid really understands me already. And it really works. God, children are easy to game. How is it second child versus first child? It's not as dramatic a shift in lifestyle as the first

because you've already ruined your life, haven't you? So getting up at 5am for a feed is not that big a deal. It's interesting, the media that I want to consume at that time of the day is very different to what I watch the rest of the time. I've been watching some of the weird, like, gaudy channels on Sky. Whoa, why?

You know, the gospel-y ones. They're just kind of compelling. Some of them are fundraising which is interesting like it'll be like four people sitting around a kitchen table with a piece of paper they hold up to the camera saying give us money now if you support our work and some of them are based around things that i like like country music but then there's jesus in it um and then the other thing that i've been enjoying is the hairy bikers never into the hairy bikers before not my preferred culinary choice normally no but working well at 5am, it's exactly the right level of cerebral demand.

Right. What if this is really infiltrating Toby's mind already, and he is a country-rocking Christian just waiting to hatch? I wouldn't be surprised if something is, because I'm not giving him any eye contact. That's the other bad thing. I wish this wasn't true, but I have to be honest. With the second one, because you know that basically nothing happens for 18 months. Wow.

I can't be bothered to talk to him and stuff. I know you're supposed to because he's learning all the time and he's understanding how to eat and how to breathe and how to look at you. His neural pathways are being formed by your linguistic interactions now. You get fucking nothing back. Just because you get nothing back doesn't mean it's not important. I'm choosing to use my children as an experiment, Helen. We'll find out, won't we, whether there's a difference between the one we spoke to incessantly

or the one that I just stuck in front of a bottle whilst I watched Hairy Bikers. Grow up thinking the Hairy Bikers are his real daddy. Another thing about their current series is them motorbiking around route 66 and trying out junk food basically it's quite interesting because if you watch the series as a box set uh you notice that their friendship is seriously understrained by episode three oh i don't know what happened behind the scenes but like episode one they're in chicago they're so excited they're like yeah let's start an adventure yeah and they're like finishing each other's sentences and having a laugh.

And by episode three, you can just see that they've just, something's happened. They don't want to be there anymore. They're bored of Missouri, certainly. Have you checked the tabloids for Harry Biker's seismic fallout stories? I haven't. Like many thoughts that occur to you at five in the morning, it doesn't get vocalised the rest of the day. I mean, this is the first time I've said any of these things out loud.

They could just be tired. Yeah. The travelling and the filming. the filming i think that's it yeah i'm not sure they necessarily i don't think like you know one slept with the other one's partner or anything i just think that they're a bit bored of each other by that point in the filming maybe they've never liked each other maybe they don't even like bikes they're scared of bikes maybe they don't even like facial hair it's just they got out of bed looking like that one day and the tv producer was like you look amazing. This is such a great look. And now they're stuck with it. It's your look, guys.

I'm sorry. Can't give up the bikes or the beards. It's hairy bikers, not smooth-faced walkers. Exactly. Hi, Helen, Ollie and Martin. This is Pete from Hertfordshire. But I have a question about Cornwall. A few years ago, I was staying in Penzance

with a lovely old gent and we were having a conversation about the famous rhyme, when I was going to St Ives I met a man with seven wives. He told me that this St Ives stanza was only the first verse of a much longer poem and that there were several subsequent verses, each one about a different location near to Penzance called St. Something. He even started to tell me the second verse, which apparently goes, When I was going to St. Earth, I met a woman giving birth. But I don't think he ever got to the end of it. Now, I've had a look online and there are lots of places called St. Something in that area.

There's a St. Earth, a St. Just, a St. Hilary and quite a few others as well. But I can't find any mention of the additional verses. But I'd really like to know what they are. So Helen and Ollie answer me this. What are the extra verses of When I Was Going to St Ives? And also, what do you think is the correct answer to the original riddle? Well, I think either you were being straightforwardly bullshit, or maybe locally they have developed extra verses

because they're like, hey, we're in this famous maths riddle rhyme. You would, wouldn't you? If you were from St Ives, pre-Tate Gallery, you'd think, well, what are we known for? As I was going to St Ives, that's what we're known for. Yeah, but there are other St Iveses. There's no specification that they were going to the Cornish St Ives. They could be going to St Ives in Cambridgeshire.

What's in St Ives in Cambridgeshire that would merit a rhyme or a riddle even? I don't know. In this case, maybe a cat festival. Yeah. I mean, just to answer that bit, actually, before we proceed on this vagaries of whether or not there are extra verses, the bit about what's the riddle,

the answer to the riddle is just one person is going to St Ives. It's the I, isn't it? As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives. No, wait wait I take issue with all of this right so the version of the riddle we have now is as I was going to St Ives I met a man with seven wives every wife had seven sex every sack had seven cats every cat had seven kits kits cats sacks wives how many were going to St Ives so the solution to the riddle is irrelevant thing irrelevant thing irrelevant thing are you still going to St Ives? So the solution to the riddle is, irrelevant thing, irrelevant thing, irrelevant thing.

Are you still going to St Ives? Yes, you are. That's the answer. Not necessarily, because when you're going, okay, so seven wives times seven times seven, and everyone's like, ha ha, no, because it's just the narrator. They're going to St Ives,

but there's no evidence that they met the people going the other way. No, but that's the whole point. There's no evidence they are going to St Ives. There's no evidence that they're not going to st ives yes i know the point is you you don't know okay a correct answer could be we can't correctly identify how many people are going to st ives from this riddle not enough data yeah given that each of these women is carrying 49 adult cats and 343 kittens they're probably going slowly enough for the narrator

to catch up to them and i fucking hope that whoever this polygamous man is that they're married to is also carrying a heavy burden because is it even humanly possible to carry that many felines and are the kittens even going to survive being crammed in a sack with 49 adult cats how heavy do you think that would be you you work it out you're a scientist and also the man was not a feature of the early-ish versions of the rhyme they've got versions going back to about the 1700s but it always was wives presumably right which just meant women for a long time as i went to st ives i met nine wives and every wife had nine sacks and every sack had nine

cats and every cat had nine kittens that's the earliest version from 1730 and then there was a slightly later one as i was going to st ives upon the road i met seven wives i would have gone with on the road i met seven wives it's slightly scantiny difficult so maybe that's why they added the man but then you're like well what man in england has been allowed to have seven wives by the modern definition of wife well maybe they're not in england though maybe they're in arabia on the way to seven sun ives maybe if each woman was carrying 49 cats the average weight of a cat is about four kilos so that'd be 200 kilos and then how heavy is the kitten well i haven't got that for you the ways that people people calculate it, there's a bit of variation.

So in each sack carried by the wives, there is 56 felines, which means that each carrying 392 felines times seven for the seven wives, that's 2,744. And then if you add the nine humans, that's seven wives, the narrator and the man, that's 2,753 living things going to St. I ives but then a lot of people also count the sacks i don't think that counts because then you've got to count like their clothes their supplies because presumably they're going to need sustenance so that would be 2802 oh yeah no because kits cats sacks and wives how many were going to so that does include the sacks yeah but i think I think it's a bit cautious to include the sacks.

Well, it's in the phrasing of the question. Well, I don't care for it. That's not what it says. It doesn't say how many were going to St Ives. And by the way, discards on my question if you don't care for it. Well, I think questions that are more pressing are, are the cats going to survive? No, they're not. Why are they carrying so many cats? Is there a St Ives cat market or something? But also, have you ever tried to

put more than one cat into any container at all yeah good fucking luck even a room it's difficult to add a cat to if there's already an extant cat I mean certainly putting seven cats in a sack is really hard I don't mean to be gothic but are are these cats alive? Right. Or they're selling the fur at St. Ives cat fur market. Have you located any dark history of the rhyme, Helen? Because there is often. No, not really. I couldn't find out that much about this rhyme actually, except for it being a mathematical riddle,

which to me implies that there's not going to be a load of extra verses that people have just forgotten about, like most of the verses of the National Anthem. I couldn't find any evidence of extra verses that people have just forgotten about, like most of the verses of the National Anthem. I couldn't find any evidence of different verses or of even variations, except this is a mathematical riddle that has precedent in one from 1550 BC. In the rhymed mathematical papyrus. Wow. Found in Northern Egypt, which is not phrased the same way like a rhyme, but it was basically like a maths textbook, this script, an ancient Egyptian maths textbook with different kinds of mathematical problems in it to kind of train people up.

But it was more like a housing inventory. Does it mention cats? Could have done. They had cats in Egypt. It did have cats in it. It had 49 cats and then mice and grains and stuff. does it mention cats could have done they had cats in egypt it did have cats in it it had um 49 cats and then mice and grains and stuff so it's like teaching you how to multiply numbers right so there are variations like that but i couldn't find a continuation of this and also

it's just too much maths too much riddle too irritating i'd forgotten all about as i was going to st ives until uh quite recently harvey got into his nursery rhymes book weirdly like despite he's got the full library of julia donaldson you know but the thing that he chooses is this nursery rhymes book and i'm kind of torn on it because i think it's all bollocks like why am i singing ringa ringa roses you know it's it's 2019 but he likes it like he likes the stuff that's got that rhythm and also sometimes the shock punch line like he is on the floor laughing with michael finnegan but it really sticks as well yeah it really sticks in your mind forever exactly and like so reading these i'm like

oh yeah i remember that one and then suddenly you remember it again for another 20 years you might think it's pointless but this is how he's acquiring language no i i used to think it was pointless but now i can see it i can see it's all about the rhythm essentially but then the danger with that is as the reader you start doing them blind you know you don't look down to see what's this one about um because they're all the same you know five fat peas in a peapod press one grew two grew they're all like that uh and i got to one the other day we're reading do you know solomon grundy yeah and he's born on a monday go on dead on sunday right i started i was doing the They're all like that. I got to one the other day we were reading. Do you know Solomon Grundy? Yeah. Born on a Monday.

Go on. Dead on Sunday. Right. I started, I was doing the same tone as everything else. Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday. Doing that sort of jolly speech, you know. Christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, took ill on Thursday, grew worse on Friday,

died on Saturday, buried on Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy. That's the rhyme. It was like an early version of Seven Days by Craig Davidid but it was difficult to read that to a three-year-old with a real emphasis of fun because i suddenly realized is this about infant mortality is it literally a child that's born on the monday and then dies at the end of the same week he's married on wednesday that's it right yeah day old baby is getting married? Well, but this is, I was wondering. Then you think, okay, it's about an old man

who's died on the Sunday. It's just coincidence that all the significant days of his life have fallen on different consequential days. So you can say, this thing happened on a Monday. So it's different days of the week but they're different years, basically. Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously, really, it's just a way of learning the days of the week, isn't it? And also that we're all gonna

die. And I applaud both those things. But it's just a way of learning the days of the week, isn't it? Yeah. And also that we're all going to die. And I applaud both those things. But it's just, it gives you pause when you get to that innate darkness at the end. Also, we did one the other day. Do you know teddy bear, teddy bear? Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground. Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around. Do you know that one? It was like a Cardi B song.

You know, you do the actions. And what I liked about it was we were doing the actions, touch the ground, turn around. And then it goes, teddy bear, teddy bear, walk upstairs. We pretended to walk upstairs and then it goes, teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers and it got to prayers and Harvey literally had no idea

what the action for that would be and I was so proud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you change it to like, teddy bear, teddy bear, wear some flares? Yeah, exactly. Well, we did it. I got down on my knees

and I did a sort of Christian style prayer, put my hands together and he did it laughing but he had absolutely no concept yeah but you've introduced him to the concept now he's polluted

yeah but he doesn't know what it means he has no concept of God or football it's bliss that's amazing that's the Britain

I want to see if you've got a question, then email your question to wanttobethispod podcast at googlemail.com To want to be this podcast at googlemail.com To want to be this podcast at googlemail.com To want to be this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospective, 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. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, here's a question from Mark who says, I had a date with this guy yesterday and it was absolutely lovely.

Yay. Good so far. He is one of the most adorable guys i've ever met lovely personality we have a lot of interests in common everything about him is amazing you can tell this is building to an except can't you here it is except i don't find him physically attractive them's the breaks now i know this shouldn't be a problem, shouldn't it? Isn't the biology sending you a signal to think about? I can just stiffen my upper lip and think of the young Luke Perry. And everything in me wants to make it not a problem. I don't want to be a complete superficial arsehole, but my brain can't seem to keep these thoughts out.

Helen, what do I do? I don't think this is unusual, is it? There might be a lot of people that you meet where you think, on paper, this person is the one. But if you're not feeling it, I think it's pretty hard to lie to yourself, isn't it? That's right. Although there is the possibility, like when you've had one date with someone, presumably there is a lot that you're trying to assess at the same time. Whereas if you meet someone and sparks fly, it's a lot easier to think trying to assess at the same time. Whereas like if you meet someone in Sparks Fly,

it's a lot easier to think, oh yeah, there's something in this. I mean, this is actually speaking up in a way for, I don't know how Mark met this guy, obviously, but this is speaking up in a way for Tinder and Grindr and apps where you can physically see someone before you meet them. Because people often dismiss that, don't they? And say, well, you should find out what you've got in common and not judge people on how they look. But this is the flip side of that coin isn't it

they might have met on eHarmony and found out they had exactly matched interests but if he doesn't fancy him it's not a goer but they might already know what each other looked like before they went on the date but he's still not feeling the physical attraction he might be like well mentally I totally get this but physically I don't want to bone him I mean shortly the solution to this is be friends like if you've got lots of interests in common be friends you don't have to have sex with each other you don't have to be romantic but I suppose like if it were a film you would have two people who were friends and seemed only to be friends and then towards the end of the penultimate act let's cast this let's cast this who's's cast this. Who's playing Mark? Ben Whishaw? Oh yeah, lovely choice.

Okay, so he's obviously already quite physically attractive in that boyish way and then he meets a guy who he doesn't fancy. Like really likes him on paper but doesn't fancy him in person. Who plays that man? Like Dev Patel maybe? Oh, I think he's a bit too good looking. I was thinking David Mitchell. It's a romantic comedy so they just need to be like the most handsome person you've ever seen but wearing glasses. I see what what you mean and their hair's parted in the wrong side okay okay so dev patel in skins rather than dev patel in lion got it and then he he turns into dev patel in line in the final scene like like sandra d so you're like they've been friends owning each other for months and then suddenly something happens and it flips a switch

and love happens i don't know how much this relates to reality i'd imagine it's plenty people's experience but not necessarily going to be mark's experience but i do think mark could go on another date with him and maybe like something relatively informal maybe not an evening date and just see see if it feels like a definite friends thing or a definite nothing thing or whether you think i could stomach a third date but if you look at him and you're just like i'm never gonna want to touch him in the intimate places then i don't think you can really lie to yourself or him about that as much as anything the thing that mark's getting at is he can't really necessarily lie to that guy about it either like how does he explain like they're clearly hitting it off how does he explain he's not really feeling it some people end up in marriages because they can't say that

what mark could say is like oh i'd really like you to meet my friend i think you might really hit it off with each other suggesting that mark's not interested but does think highly of the person who's been on this date with perhaps in the film the film, it would be a love triangle, wouldn't it? He'd go with someone else that he did fancy who turned out to be an arsehole. And then he'd think, ah, should have been with Dev Patel all along. Right.

It's like the film Friends With Kids where Adam Scott goes off and has a fling with Megan Fox, which means Jennifer Westphal realises that he, her friend, was actually the one all along. Right. Then it's awkward. I mean, I think a lot of men have a free pass with Megan Fox, you know, according to their longstanding relationship.

So I'm not sure you can blame him for that. I also don't think that plot is specific to that film. That seems like the plot of almost every romantic comedy made since about 1990. I don't know why that was the one that sprang to mind. It's very much not a particularly memorable film. But is Mark saying, am I bad for only finding a good looking person attractive? Well, if he is, he shouldn't be. He shouldn't feel that way, that we're programmed

to feel this way. But also a lot of people are good looking to other people. So yeah, exactly. It's just your taste. It's just your taste. I mean, I'm sure you look at plenty couples where you're like, well, I wouldn't, but they found each other. And they're probably not sick at the sight of each other. Well, yeah, but but you see therein lies the rub he's probably thinking when you look at those couples where there's at least one of them who I deem to be physically unattractive did the other person in the relationship feel that way initially and then because they love them so much grow to find them physically attractive and could that happen for me right well that's what I'm saying attempt Attempt a second date. Fine. And that might clarify your thoughts. Okay, agreed.

Maybe even a third date if it can be if both dates you can kind of situate so that you're hedging as to whether they are romantic dates, which is why I think a daytime date would be the way to go. Yeah, and actually you say daytime, I mean it's important that there's good lighting, because then you will come to a firm conclusion about whether or not you

fancy him. Like if you're in a place that's very dark you could be lured into thinking you did find him attractive we've all been misled by our loins when it's very dark exactly okay here's a question from an anonymous person who says my ex-boyfriend has a lipstick fetish which i had never heard of prior to him telling me about it but it worked out pretty well because i have have, if I'm being completely candid, very nice lips, even from a non-fetishistic view, and a truly absurd lipstick collection, triple digits. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I could fulfil his every fantasy by producing whatever lipstick his heart desired,

he was an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk, and I'm still tender for all the reasons that come with a breakup. And now, wearing lipstick isn't my fabulous shiny wall paint anymore. It just makes me sad and kind of uncomfortable. I'm usually pretty good about doing the things I like out of pure stubborn cussedness, but this is proving to be a real challenge. Ollie, answer me this. How can I disconnect my favourite pretty making thing from the association with jerkface Magoo and his desires and make it my thing again. I feel like time might heal this, to be honest.

I mean, you're putting on lipstick now and it's reminding you of your lipstick-fetishising ex-boyfriend, but I imagine there'll come a point where, since lipstick is one of your favourite things anyway, you will recover your own feelings as to why you enjoy lipstick and not associate it with him. I would say to accelerate that process, know of time healing it anyway maybe just buy some new lipstick that is not one that is a color that he's expressed a preference for or you know yeah and just wear that one i'm seeing a lot of lipsticks in unusual colors on sale at the moment like gray and green and yellow and i do wonder whether those are more aimed at people who like wearing lipstick

than people who are turned on by lipstick. And so could you go around wearing grey or blue lipstick without being reminded of the times that he was getting you to wear it? I mean, there's a different kind of sadness with wearing blue lipstick, isn't there? Which is everyone assumes you're a corpse. I don't know.

Some people look terrific in it. I'm not one of those people. And also she says that she's got hundreds though of lipstick so it might be that she's already got yellow and black and blue because those although to us seem exotic flavors of lipstick probably to her this is very entry-level stuff it might be that you have to create something completely new like a new look like i don't know put glitter on it or something fake mustache something that just separates what he was into from what you're into perhaps for a while wear your makeup very differently emphasize a different

feature of your face wear a very dramatic eyeliner say in bright colors so you're not thinking oh my face looks undressed with no lipstick on it and then after a while maybe time will have healed this wound and you'll be back on the lipsticks. Or maybe you'll figure out different lipstick looks that aren't reminding you of him to go with your new mega 80s upper face look. There's a lot of kind of ugly fashions that are supposed to be man repellers that you can indulge in because they're not meant to look attractive. They're meant to look kind of tricky and strange. This is the time for those just google

image some pictures of lee bowery and copy him 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. Squarespace 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, mum. Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of answer me this i just set up a

new squarespace website for my new podcast for anika mars investigations and uh i did quite a lot of research beforehand i was like well you know don't sit on your laurels just thinking squarespace is the best one so i looked at a lot of reviews and came to the conclusion actually squarespace is the still the one still the one still the one i design with you're still the one i flogged my merch with you're still the one that works on ios you're still the one i think that's what she was singing about what what template did you go with do you know what it was called i went with wav wav that's appropriate isn't it i might try out format i might try out sky i was quite excited the other day because i noticed there's a template called om which is my initials yeah

but then i saw the photo of people meditating and realized it was on i'm not going to start a yoga business anytime soon you could if i did i'd use squarespace and if you'd like to play around with squarespace's tools and design your own website you can there's a little sandbox feature you can have a free trial you can try it all out at squarespace.com slash answer you can kind of build your Squarespace website and before you buy see whether you like it or not and then if you do like it when you sign up you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code answer. Helen and, it's Sean and Arwen in Glasgow. Say hello, Arwen.

Sean and Arwen in Glasgow. We're watching Blue Peter. And our question is, we're looking at the dog and we're thinking, where does that dog go when it's not in the TV studio? Who looks after it? There's obviously been a lot of dogs in Blue Peter. Please answer that for us. How wonderful to have another reason to get in touch with my friends,

Joe and Colette from the Blue Peter press office. Who'd have thought? They've got a special dedicated phone line for you now. So you may remember a few episodes ago, we were talking about the Blue Peter appeal and they helped me with some stats on that. So I just dialed them up. I was like, we've had this very important question. where does the current dog go iggy trainee guide dog puppy

actually no uh it's the current pet is henry um so iggy is is the penultimate pet oh they've also got shelly the tortoise at the moment the email i got back was our current pet henry came from the dogs trust and lives with a member of the blue peter production team as part of their family they train and look after him and bring him to the studios for the show so there you go not a huge surprise but quite nice because um you know when i worked in daytime tv and we'd frequently have pets on they all came from like an agency no one in the studio gets to spend any time with them or look after them you're not allowed to touch them for insurance reasons do they have real lives or are they just filed at the agency no yeah the agency i guess is a farmhouse somewhere where they do look after the pets yeah

but the you know what's interesting is in this case well i mean it says a member of the blue peter production team maybe that's a bit of a fig leaf and maybe it is effectively just someone whose job that is but the way that's written it suggests like maybe that's someone who works in sound and takes them back home to their house, which is quite nice, isn't it? But then who looks after Shelley the tortoise? Shelley was bought as company to George the tortoise, who lived from 1920 to 2004. In 1988, George caused a scare when the home where he was kept had a break-in and he went missing. Do you think went missing or was stolen?

Like people knowing it was a celebrity tortoise? Was found by a neighbour walking her dog a few days later. So he probably just fucked off for a bit of fun. Probably, yeah. I can't now relate to why, as a child, I wanted a pet tortoise. It probably was Blue Peter that did it. And now I just can't think what I would have done had we had a tortoise. I mean, you keep it in the garage, basically.

You can't really pet it. It's not soft. It doesn't know who you are. What's the point? You keep fish. It's maybe similar to fish because they just sort of move around slowly and slightly mesmerisingly. But also, they live as long or longer than humans. So it's not like fish.

I mean, fish, you're lucky if they get to 10. George the tortoise, the one you're talking about died at 81 years old for a child it's a mad commitment to make isn't it you can't possibly understand whether or not you're going to be in a position to look after it into its dotage but then it's optimistic isn't it it's like this this pet is also going to be an heirloom i'm in it for the long haul they're relatively low maintenance as well because they fuck off and hibernate all winter you only really have to look after them about half the year something that is understandably not on the cbbc website but is in biddy baxter's memoirs is the story about petra the dog being an emergency stand-in do you know that story no 1962 petra it was their first pet, made an appearance on the show and then died two days after her first

appearance. So they then thought, fuck, what are we going to do? They drove around London trying to find a puppy that looked like Petra, the dog that they'd had on the telly, and then pretended that was Petra for the next 15 years. Wow. And no one spotted the difference and no one knew that story until Biddy Baxter published her memoirs in 2008. Yeah, black and white televisions at the time as well. How clearly could people see which dog was which? The sad thing is, if that happened now, they'd have to fess up, wouldn't they? They'd have to say, children, that dog we introduced you to died two days later, but we're going to get a new puppy.

That would traumatise potentially millions of children and it really makes no difference. Like, they don't know the dog. I don't know if it would traumatise potentially millions of children and it really makes no difference. Like, they don't know the dog. I don't know if it would traumatise children if you were just frank about it. If you're like, you met Petra last time, now here's Rex. I suppose.

We'll never talk of her again. Just like, you don't even have to be that explicit. I suppose that's true, yeah. And at the time as well, you probably wouldn't have had reportage on it, whereas now you'd be a lot more likely to know if there was some behind the scenes thing yes i think most people wouldn't give a shit if you just made it sound not interesting and you didn't do a cover-up i well yeah but if you've done a big introduction to petra like you know you've made this huge feature of introducing the first blue peter pet people would remember that they would say

where's petro socks the cat who was introduced in the show in 2006 was at the center of a scandal after the program's producers falsified the result of a viewer vote to choose the cat's name viewers had selected the name cookie but producers changed the result to socks yeah i read i read in a telegraph article from 2008 that the reason that that was done was they feared the producers feared the word cookie as a name had sexual connotations what yeah what kind of sexual connotations i just what are we missing i don't know but then they did get a cat called cookie to make up for the scandal. It's a dangerous delude. And then after Blue Peter moved to Salford,

Socks and Cookie both stopped appearing regularly on the show because they lived in London and the journey was too much. Oh, that's nice though, isn't it? They've considered animal welfare in the relocation. I think that's important. So I guess they really do have their own pet lives and maybe they weren't kept by members of the production staff if the production staff moved with the programme,

but the cats didn't. Helen, have you taken the which Blue Peter dog are you quiz? No, should I have? Well, let's do it now. One of the best things about Blue Peter is its pets. We've had several over the years, says the website, including lots of dogs. Find out which Blue Peter dog best suits your personality.

Don't worry, there's only four questions. How tall are you? Really small, average or very tall i think out of those really small but you're not you're out of those you're closer to average probably yeah let's say average average okay uh describe your personality in one word you get multiple choice this feels like a trap enthusiastic no pioneering or dependable uh actually pioneering is the closest pioneering fine what's your most recognizable feature eyes nose or ears it's not really up to me to decide is it i can't see any of those what's the third one eyes nose or ears helen's ears i can't even imagine right now so it's definitely

eyes or nose i'm gonna say eyes say eyes yeah Say eyes, yeah. Yeah, I think in isolation, I'd recognise Helen's eyes. Maybe my ears would be more recognisable if I was a golden retriever. Right. I feel this quiz is quite leading. Well, yes. Do you prefer chasing balls or sticks?

What is your main life goal? Is it someone makes a statue of me? No. A famous band writes a song about me? Sure. Or to greatly improve someone else's life? Third one, I guess. Out of those three.

Which of these best describes your hair colour? Black or very dark brown, brown or blonde or red? Brown. Yes, I'd say that's probably accurate. With grey bits. And then the final question. Where do you see your career going after Blue Peter? Well, presumably you'd be fucking

dead. I never want to leave Blue Peter. I want to do more grown-up TV or I want a job outside of showbiz. Well, that's not many options. Those are the options. Two. I want to do more grown-up TV. Sure. Okay. Right. You're

Shep. The most famous Blue Peter pet. i don't remember shep was 70s right yeah john noakes's dog yeah 71 to 87 that was pretty long living dog yeah i say john noakes's dog i mean actually probably not but you know in in the uh fraudulent nature of tv presenting shep left blue peter when noakes departed in 1978 that's's you, that is. So yeah, I never saw Shep, because I was born in 1980. Yeah. Yeah, John Noakes kept Shep, even though the dog was always legally owned by the BBC. Okay, it was his dog, fair enough.

And in rules that also applied to himself, under contract to the BBC, he could not use Shep for advertising or commercial purposes. Quite right. And he got paid out of the Blue Peter budget to cover Shep's costs. This is a good deal. I think that's fair enough. But then apparently after leaving the show,

he was furious to discover that his dog money ceased to be paid. Because Biddy Baxter was like, no, you've left, dog's left, fuck you. Paraphrasing. Yeah. But then after that angry conversation, John Noakes gave up Shep, who went to live with someone else. And then John Noakes did a bunch of television adverts using a dog that looked like Shep, named Skip. Oh, Noakes, you heartless twat. Yep, rough.

Rough, rough indeed. What works are you on? Bebo, Friendster, Pathview, Porn, Myspace, Ping and Google Buzz. If you want to be our pal, go to this URL. Facebook.com slash AnswerMeThis or Twitter.com slash HelenAndOllie. But please don't follow us in real life remember folks we have been cranking out this shit for nearly 13 years uh if you want to know what we sounded like when we were still in our metaphorical nappies our early work is available

to buy for just 79 pence per episode from answer me the store.com that is our own store they're also available from apple and amazon but we do get more money when you buy them from us just fyi and also like some of the imperative to buy them from the other places has gone now like it used to be like oh i don't want to download it on my desktop because then i can't listen on my mobile so i'm going to buy it from Amazon. Fair enough. But nowadays, I mean, we can all use a cloud service, can't we? You've got the file on your desktop, upload it to your phone, give us a bit more cash. You know it makes sense. Here's a question from Siobhan who says, I'm very lucky to live in a small block of six flats where all of the neighbours get on. We are a little community. We take turns doing the bins, have a

WhatsApp group and have the occasional pub socials. Recently, one of the neighbours had their bike stolen. It was locked up and behind a gate, so it was a bit of a shitter. I probably didn't help the situation by sending a link to an article I'd read, which stated we live in the most burgled area of Bristol, a fact I found mildly concerning but didn't think too much more about. Now, all of the boys in the group have decided we should get CCTV, the cost of which would be expected to be split equally between the flats. I don't have a lot of spare cash. In fact, with three days until payday, I have £3.28 in my bank account. I don't particularly mind having

CCTV cameras, Siobhan says. I think they would look a bit naff and tacky and do very little to prevent being burgled. And I do find the idea a bit of an invasion of privacy that one of the neighbours would probably be able to watch when everyone else is coming and going. I thought Siobhan had said they all get on great. Yeah she also said she didn't particularly mind having CCTV cameras and then went on a big rant about why she wouldn't want them. Well during this paragraph she's really convinced herself that it's getting to 1984 levels of surveillance. I really don't want the neighbours to see my gentleman callers or see me go through the bins to properly do their recycling. It doesn't often get taken

because the neighbours put things in the wrong boxes. That's amazing. I know, I used to do that in the old place. I don't want my neighbours to see me helpfully patching up the poor job they've all done on this communal task of recycling. Why not? Why not let them see? This is a great hands-off, passive-aggressive way

to show them how to do the recycling and you never have to mention it cctv could be the answer for that problem so ollie answer me this is there a good way to say i don't want the cctv without seeming like i'm stingy or up to no good or like you were the one who stole the bike um i don't really want to be the only one of the group saying i don't want the cameras. So is there a good lighthearted way of saying they should reconsider? I don't want to be the only one in the group saying I don't want them. So what you're actually saying that you want is some kind of behind the scenes whip who goes around slowly persuading other members of the WhatsApp group to follow your lead.

Like 12 angry men. Okay. I mean, I would say, Siobhan, that actually I agree with you that CCTV looks naff. And I actually think, because we could have had CCTV when we had our home extension done, like the architect wanted us to have it

and talked about having it. And I feel like having it is a way of looking like you've got something worth nicking, like having a really obvious camera. Isn't that what people used to say about having a burglar alarm on the front of your house? No, because everyone's got a burglar alarm. the front of your house? No, because everyone's got a burglar alarm

and yes, it's partly a deterrent, of course it is, but it's also practical. When your house gets broken into, you want to get the alert. But I just think CCTV suggests you've got

an extra layer of stuff, which actually, by the way, any thieves listening, I don't. I mean, I don't really have any. I've got an iMac. That's it, really. There's nothing worth nicking.

You've got the Costco cupboard. There could be years worth of toilet paper in there that's true yeah i also have uh some answer me this memorabilia that's people listening to this might be of some value the t-shirt i wore in the original cover up but anyway um you know i i i just thought having cctv was a way of signaling that we thought we had something worth nicking and i just felt a bit uncomfortable about that but there is an in-between solution there always is a compromise but in our case we ended up getting a video doorbell because we needed to get a doorbell anyway and it's not really obvious from the street that you've got a video doorbell but when you get up close it does function for me

to be able to see who's coming in and out of my house and i actually really like that now so i just wonder if shivawan, you should investigate what options there are out there. Like perhaps, for example, you could get CCTV that's independently monitored. So your concern about everyone knowing what time you're coming home and stuff,

that would only be an issue if there was a break-in. It wouldn't be that people are looking at their apps constantly, seeing you going to and from your place of fuck. I stayed at a friend's house in la where um he's got a smart lock so i just needed to download an app to unlock his door

but i typed in the passcode to his burglar alarm incorrectly so it set off the alarm but he could see that from his phone on the other side of the country and then turned off the alarm and then about 10 minutes later he texted me going i'm still watching you and yeah that's weird i didn't like that no but even if you have a video doorbell that's not necessarily going to show you the approach of bike thieves if they're not going up to your doorbell and ringing it no but you can set it so it does film everything if you set it to you have to get a subscription but you can see you can use it like c CCTV if you choose to. And it's quite discreet in that way. That sounds also expensive. Is it less than £3.28 if that was each person's share out of six people?

Per month, yes. Probably not per year. Yeah, but now, I mean, the installation, Siobhan has not got the readies. Sure. I think you could just come clean with the people saying, it sounds like this be a good idea but i just can't afford it at the moment and then see what they say if they want it maybe they'll go ahead and get it anyway uh or maybe they'll be like oh sure don't worry about it or maybe they'll be like oh we live in bristol where a lot of people are anti-capitalist what are we doing valuing possessions like this and sequestering off our

property who are we we've betrayed bristol i like the idea of putting the ball back in their court because they've unfairly made this your decision now i don't think there's any shame in saying that you don't have the money for this thing sure you're right that's the easiest way out you don't need to mention all the all the other things that you claim aren't issues anyway but then went on to expend upon them okay another compromise you could do and this is cheap because you could probably get one for 20 quid is get a fake camera as a deterrent but don't plug it in so you've got all the tackiness without any of the utility yeah but i mean like for example i know an elderly lady who has a fake beware of

the dog sign and that works like you see postmen recoiling in fear as they get close to her mailbox does she have one of those electronic dog barking noises? No, just that. Just the sign. Puts the sign in the window. But that's enough. That is enough for her purposes. What about if you just make the front of the building look really, really unappealing?

It's like when Martin and I rent a car, we make it look like it's not worth stealing by filling the footwells with old kombucha bottles that Martin has drunk and we've not yet found a recycling bin for. That's going to stink. What is kombucha? I had it for the first time the other day, but I don't know what it is.

Is it fermented somehow? How did it go for you? Yeah, what was the experience of your first kombucha like, Oli? Tasted like juice that had been left out the fridge for two weeks. That's it. It's like flat cider the next day, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Post-party booze.

It's essentially fermented tea. Right, okay. I've not met a kombucha that I liked. And with that, we have reached the end of this episode of Answer Me This. But for us to make more, then we need your questions. Yes, please. Our contact details are on our website, answermethispodcast.com.

We also have plenty other podcasts for you to discover online. So many. Loads. What is uppermost in the Olly Mann agenda at the moment? Well, actually this month I'd like to highlight something that isn't a podcast at all, but it is on BBC Sounds. It's a documentary that I've made for Radio 4. It is about the history of voicemails. It's an edition of Archive on 4,

and it's called Please Leave a Message After the Tone. There's some really amazing audio in there, actually, like everything from Fatal Attraction and Glenn Close leaving those mental messages for Michael Douglas through to Scott Mills doing Flirt Divert in the noughties. But some quite profound stuff along the way as well. Like, I didn't know this existed, but in the 1940s, you could send your sweetheart a voice letter.

Wow. Which was basically a voicemail. So you'd cut your sweetheart a vinyl disc of your message and post it to them. Oh, that's sweet. Yeah. My dad used to send cassettes to his friends in South Africa. I remember him recording those. Did he?

Similar principle, yeah. That's amazing, yeah. Well, anyway, the whole point of the show was kind of like, it's this really precarious archive, voicemails, because obviously they're ephemeral. People tend to delete them, apart from us making a show out of them but generally speaking people tend to delete them but obviously there's some real gold there and they there's a level of authenticity that you get when someone leaves a voicemail which is different to

anything scripted that you normally hear on the radio so that was the idea of the show anyway like i say it is listenable to on bbc sounds but it is quite hard to find on there because bbc sounds so uh future listeners just google ollie man archive on four and you'll find it uh but actually if you're listening now in october 2019 i've pinned it to my twitter profile so you can listen to it there uh martin what have you got i am still releasing the epic 40 song collection year of the bird which i wrote whilst i was traveling around the world uh in 2018 i released pretty much the song a week you can get the first three volumes the first 30 of 40 songs uh from palebirdmusic.com i suppose i should pick up the thread that you left uh hanging on the floor helen for us all to trip over you've got a new podcast tell us about that

it's one of those uh sweet uh tv episode by episode recap podcasts ah the teen detective drama series veronica mars and my co-host is jenny owen youngs who makes a podcast called buffering the vampire stare about buffy the vampire stare and uh so far it's very fun so would i be right in saying you're taking a sardonic look at the show albeit from a fan's perspective well there's a lot to talk about in the show and some of it you can critique just because it's a 15 year old show and there are things that you would not do now probably and then other things where at the time you think sure or you don't think about at all and then when you re-watch multiple times for the purposes of podcasts you think actually there's something up with this where do you go to seek it out vmipod.com there we go it's

called veronica mars investigations but if you want to watch along does it cost loads of money or is it all on amazon or whatever if you're in the states you can get it on hulu in britain i've heard from people a the hmv still exists and b they've got cheap dvd box sets of veronica mars i bought it off apple years ago uh that's how I've got it. Right. Turns out a slightly different version to what they've got on Hulu. We've got scenes that Hulu does not have. Too dark for the American market, maybe.

But also The Illusionist is going on tour of North America. Oh yeah, I'll be on that. Martin's on that. I'm on that. It's a very entertaining hour about smashing gender out of language because who needs it?

Listings are at theillusionist.org slash events. And we're covering quite a lot of ground so hopefully we're coming to a town near you if you're listening in north america and remember in the meantime you can rediscover our cherished archive our first 200 episodes etc at our website answer me this store.com and we will be back halfway through the month with one of our archive episodes. It will land in your feeds. And then there'll be a fresh new episode of Answer Me This on the first Thursday of November. Bye!