Answer Me This! - AMT381: Slapstick, Eggy Smell and Your Naked Dad

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

In AMT381, questioneers are worrying about lost jewels, stinking out the office, dad doing the gardening in the nude, and what happens to trains in Thomas The Tank Engine when they die. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Hear AMT episodes 1-200, all five of our special albums including AMT Love, and our Best Of compilations at . Hear our other work: Helen Zaltzman's podcasts The Allusionist at and Veronica Mars Investigations at ; Olly Mann's five podcasts including and The Media Podcast at ; and Martin Austwick's music at and his Tom Waits podcast 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

Does the Masked Singer mark a comeback for Zorro? Answer me this, answer me this Can we all agree to end dry January tomorrow? Answer me this, answer me this Heaven and all the answer me this Happy New Year, Ollie, and happy 13th birthday to Answer Me This. Is it 13? I thought it was 14. Or's the 14th year isn't it that hence 13 years old? We are embarking upon the 14th year. Yes no one ever says happy north birthday when you start.

No well they should because that does seem to be the most terrifying birthday you could have. They tend to congratulate your parents so maybe. Did people congratulate us? I don't remember. For slithering down the birth canal? No no no I mean for birthing answer me this. I feel like we've been congratulated after the fact but i don't feel like anyone deserves congratulations for doing the first episode of a podcast no at the end of last year we were discussing the logistics of sending items to people who are deployed on ships and we've had some feedback from kate who says i listened to that episode where you talked about restrictions on mail being sent to a ship and Ollie seemed confused about why anyone would send dry ice

through the mail. To recreate a meatloaf video. I wasn't confused, Kate. I was delighted. Kate says, when I was deployed to Iraq, I was there during my birthday and my parents sent me a small birthday cake through a company specialising in sending cakes to deployed service members and the cake was packaged in dry ice. I bet other perishable things like cheeses are also sent with dry ice to keep them fresh. Someone else emailed to say they do send meat as well packed in dry ice because dry ice doesn't melt like wet ice. It doesn't melt, it sublimes because it's carbon dioxide so it evaporates. Everything I know about dry ice, obviously, I know from a combination of Top of the Pops and my chemistry lessons at GCSE. I just have vivid memories of Kim Wilde standing in like four feet of dry ice

singing Four Letter Word or something. She was our supply teacher. But what I do remember is that the teacher at school was very keen to point out we should all be wearing our safety goggles and not touch it under any circumstances. The FedEx website does tell you how to do it. You need to use a polystyrene foam cooler top. Okay. But you mustn't ever place it in an airtight container

because potential explosion. Oh. And I just wouldn't want to touch it. Couldn't it freeze your fingers off? I guess that's the worry that it would stick. If it sticks to your fingers, then it keeps on cooling them, you could get frostbite, I guess. But you can put your fingers in liquid nitrogen because it boils away,

so there's a layer of gas between you and the liquid, but I don't know if that happens with dry ice. You're telling Ollie as if he doesn't know, but Ollie was the one who got Professor Brian Cox onto the TV in the first place when Ollie worked on This Morning, and I remember Brian Cox pouring liquid nitrogen all over Philip Schofield. So Ollie's TV experience trumps my fucking PhD. Thank you. Yep, I think so.

Classic media wankers. Further to our conversation last episode as well about spending Christmas in London, Mark has been in touch to say, my family has just returned home to New York from a wonderful Christmas vacation in London. Oh, good. Well, Ollie can have all the credit. Yeah, he says he took my advice. I don't know if he went to the Peter Pan Cup

at the Serpentine Swimming Club, though. He doesn't mention that. I really wanted to do that. I did think about it on Christmas Day. But he does say that they did go to a Boxing Day theatre performance and they even went to see Andy Zaltzman at the Soho Theatre. Oh, good. All was going great.

I even brought with me a last-minute special Christmas present from New York for my wife. A delicate diamond and sapphire bracelet from Tiffany's. Whoa, you're really going big at this Christmas, Mark. Yeah. A delicate diamond and sapphire bracelet from Tiffany's. Mark says she loved it. As I recall, I think we both kind of liked it. I'll stop now.

And she wore it to a fancy tea we had with our two teenage daughters at Lioness. Do you know Lioness, Helen? I don't. That's a fancy tea I've not had. Well, it's a bar, really, and it's run by one of these guys who's won like a million awards and is apparently

the world's best bartender. Right. Have you been? I haven't been, but now I've done some research, I'm keen. I'd be having dirty martinis, though, with the cakes. Not going to go to a place with the world's best bartender and order an Earl Grey. Hey, making a decent cup of tea is a fucking art. I agree, but that's what Claridge's is

for. Tragic foreshadowing, says Mark. My wife did have some trouble with the clasp. After two hours of tea and cocktails, we left, walking just a few metres on the waterfront, when my wife realised in horror that the bracelet was not on her wrist. We looked everywhere. The people at the tea room and the adjacent hotel were helpful,

as were the police and the insurance companies. However, the bracelet was not found. Shit. I suppose if it's delicate, then it could just slip down into a drain or a crevice. Or fall into your teacup, and then someone would think that the world's best bartender had just created a special cocktail that has a bracelet at the bottom of it and assume it was part of the treat i then began to wonder if someone had found it or indeed stolen it how would they sell such an

item in london it was quite expensive and then he puts in brackets plus ten thousand dollars quite is doing a lot of work in that sentence it's the cost of two cars yeah i don't shop for jewelry much uh above the 30 quid mark so maybe this is the base going rate for a delicate bracelet from tiffany's i just wouldn't know no i've bought a charm bracelet from tiffany's for my wife for one christmas and admittedly the idea of a charm bracelet is obviously you buy individual extra charms each year so those go for a couple hundred quid but the bracelet was it was i thought it was expensive at the time but it was it was sub 500 pounds it was not 10 grand plus this is pricey for tiffany's

anyway we were happy to offer a reward are you offering me a reward if I find it? We answer his questions successfully, then I think we deserve one. He says, Helen, answer me this. Where does one sell stolen jewels in London? Perhaps we can track it down. I love that you think I have these connections to the jewellery fencing business. I don't know. I would assume that the police that you've been dealing with and the insurance companies...

Have more experience. And also possibly Tiffany's would have a better idea. I assume you got in touch with the Tiffany's branch in London because, I don't know, what would I do if I found this bracelet? Is there something on it that makes it obvious it's from Tiffany's? Maybe that would be my first thing where I took it back to Tiffany's in case they knew who bought things I'm assuming they do because each of the items will have a unique mark or number on it yes so from my tentative googling because I also didn't want to be like where do I sell where do I sell stolen jewelry yeah there's a number of things that could happen and apparently some people have turned up lost and stolen jewellery on local Facebook groups

or on eBay or in local pawn shops. But it's pretty rare with jewellery. Partly because pawn shops tend to want the official documentation of this item. Yeah, because they'll be responsible for a crime if they take it. Right. If they think it's stolen, they're not allowed to buy it. I think also with high value items like this they and the police are in touch with each other and the police will check the

serial numbers of the missing things against the number of what the pawn shop has got yeah but hold on that's all honest pawn brokers i mean yeah i think we all know that it's not an industry that necessarily attracts people that are entirely above board so there probably is a dishonest pawn broker somewhere who would specialize in stolen goods let's be honest it's just hard to that necessarily attracts people that are entirely above board. So there probably is a dishonest pawnbroker somewhere who would specialise in stolen goods, let's be honest. It's just hard to know who that is. I don't know who that is. You could contact the people who advertise as like,

we buy any gold, that kind of thing. Yes, because they melt it down, don't they? So then it's really hard to trace. Yeah, but London is a huge place. So you might do it in the area where you lost the bracelet, but they might go home and do it in their local gold melting emporium. But I think what happens often is that they would give it to a fence who would then have like their regular channels for distributing stolen items. And or this bracelet would be broken up and made into

different items. Yeah, that seems the most likely thing to me. Yeah, if it's pure metal, then they can melt it down and make something else. So it's unrecognizable. But this is jewels, which obviously can't be melted down. If it's delicate, I'm assuming it's not massive single stones. So they can't be cut into different stones, but they could be reset as something else. And they could be made into a number of different engagement rings, for instance. So it's possible that the bracelet has many other lives it's possible that it's down the side of a sofa in the tea room yeah that's going to be one lucky cleaning lady isn't it here's a question

from laura from london who says i have a really close friendship with a boy who i've known for the last five years he's a fantastic compassionate friend with a great sense of humour. But recently, I've started developing romantic feelings for him. So far, so classic. Not surprising, given the fantastic, compassionate nature of this person. Yeah, exactly. You haven't said anything bad. Like, you know, it's not like, but he has BO. Like, nothing so far.

She says, I find him insanely physically attractive. Insanely. I'd love to ask him if he wants something more too, but I don't want to ruin our friendship. Uh-huh. To add to it, I have no idea if he's interested in me because since the start of our friendship, we've jokily flirted with one another.

We're very tactile. And this has recently escalated to the occasional grinding at parties. What, coffee beans? Just spices. Do you know how to make occasion rub? With your pelvis. Although we're usually pretty wasted when this happens. I've become so accustomed to flirting in jest

that I can't tell whether it's progressed beyond being a laugh or not. Wow. Oh my god. It's really a terrible time for any drama to happen because A-levels are looming ever closer. So, Ollie, answer me this. Is there a way for me to resolve this without ruining the best friendship I've ever had?

I feel like the grinding signifies something more than friendship. I think that's right. I'd normally resist answering this question at all because of the mention of A-levels there. And so for listeners who don't know overseas, Laura, therefore, is about 17 years old. In a way, there's no right answer because if I say go for it and he breaks your heart,

that might be destructive for your life and it might ruin the friendship. And equally, if I say don't, then actually, usually, honesty is the best policy when you're a grown-up and why not go for it so i usually just don't offer advice on teenage love dilemmas but i agree with you helen i think the detail of the grinding you grind with your platonic friends there's no romantic feeling i don't i don't recall you and i ever grinding at a party. We have not ground.

Admittedly, the last party we were at together was probably a radio conference. Nonetheless, I think that indicates that there's something more under the surface. And actually, if he really is a great, fantastic, compassionate friend, and he doesn't like you in that way, then he'll still compassionately understand that it took a lot for you to tell him that you liked him. And so actually, I'm sure he'll still be your friend afterwards anyway. And also, Laura, you're indicating that, what if the grinding is just pure, friendly, non-romantic grinding because you were drunk at the time?

So if you go in for a kiss, say, you could always blame it on the drunkenness if he really was only grinding like friends do. Yes, that's a good point. And again, wouldn't usually say as advice to a teenager, wait until you're both wasted again and then move in. But actually that is a way, isn't it? To just escalate it yourself and just see how he responds.

And absolutely, you do then have that get out clause afterwards. So maybe in the presence of alcohol, even if you've not drunk yet, because both of you might have been too shy all of this time to make a move for fear of ruining the friendship. But it does sound like there's stuff going on there. I mean, surely the tradition here is to send out a signal via a friend, isn't it? You send your mate to go and say to him at some point, as subtly as they can, I think Laura really likes you.

And then it's on them. If he responds badly, you can say, say oh no she was way out of line she had no idea. Well he might not want to reveal to the friend because he might be shy about it. I didn't say this was a good idea I said this was the tradition Maybe sick formers don't behave in this way anymore maybe it's all done on

Instagram or something. Alright grandad It seems pretty obvious to me that they are going to get together right I think it's only that weird mix of teenage hormones which creates any question in the listener's mind that this ironic boning is in any way ironic. The missing verse from Alanis Morissette's hit. Here is another super relatable email.

It's from Lou who says, I often buy the two eggs in a pot with spinach from Pret as a quick breakfast. I'm with you, Lou. We've all done it. I haven't. Have you not? No, I don't like our boiled eggs.

I am conscious, Lou says, this is a complete waste of money at nearly two quid. Two quid? Shit. Yeah, you're paying for the convenience. Yeah, but that goes for everything. That goes for mineral water, doesn't it? And also, I am putting more single-use plastic into the world. Yes. Again, true, but not unique

to this product. So, I have started boiling my own and bringing them into work in reusable plastic. Sounds like a good idea. Yep. The only problem is, when I open it in the office, it stinks the place out. So, Helen, answer me this. Why are shop-bought boiled eggs odourless, yet homemade ones stink? Well, I wondered whether first the shop-bought ones have been peeled earlier, and maybe the stink has already been distributed. Oh yeah, I mean the ones you buy in Sainsbury's, they're sitting on the shelf for a week, so they've been peeled much earlier. Right, but you can pre-emptively de-stink an egg. So maybe that is what Pret does.

Tell us how. So the reason why it stinks is it's sulfur in the egg white. And when that reacts with iron in the egg yolk, it creates hydrogen sulfide gas, which is the stinker. And apparently the way to stop doing that is, is firstly not to cook your eggs so hard that they get that green ring around the yolk which is what the uh that's the stinky bit what you can do is add a few teaspoons of white distilled vinegar to the water in which you're boiling the egg and then bring it to the boil then while the eggs are boiling the vinegar will neutralize the odors and it won't make the eggs taste any different, apparently. Yeah, because they're still in the shell.

By having these vinegar to poach eggs, it does mean that your kitchen smells of vinegar. Yeah. That's true. It's better than smelly eggs in the office. Yeah. You're taking the hit at home to save your co-workers. And apparently also it's a good idea to put the eggs in an ice bath or run

them under cold water once they've finished in the hot water in order to stop the yolks turning that gray green color this is useful advice because i've been egg shamed in the past um for eating eggs in an office by friend of the show ian collins uh because i once i was a guest on his radio show, and I took some homemade egg mayonnaise wraps with me. Oh, that's so antisocial, Ollie. You went on someone else's radio show, and you took egg sandwiches with you. He used to eat egg and onion bagels before we went on Steve Wright in the afternoon on radio TV.

I did, actually. It's like you're trying to weaponise your body against your radio co-host, Ollie. I didn't open it in the studio. I opened it in the open plan office outside but i suppose that's just just to share the smell a bit further and this was the joke was between him and his producer at the time laura she told me years later the joke was they referred they called me like the egg man or something similar which i think is harsh like i mean I mean, it's not an obscure ingredient, is it? An egg sandwich. But there's certain things, if I was going for, like, an interview,

or I know I was going to be in close personal proximity with other people for work, usually, that I wouldn't eat. And eggs is one of them. I wouldn't eat, like, a prawn sandwich or something. Like, anything which is really smelly was going to make me fart a lot. Well, hold on. So are you saying, regardless of what Helen's just said about vinegar and everything else,

are you saying to Lou, no, don't bring eggs into the office. It's antisocial. Don't do it at all. Well, that's borderline because it depends on the job. Like if you're sat doing data entry all afternoon, it doesn't really matter

if you burp egg a little bit. But if you're in like one-on-one meetings with people where you're discussing their career your boss like breathing egg on you at that point is really not what you need could lou go just outside open it up there waft it around a bit so the egg smell is just uh distributed on the breeze and then bring it indoors it's only a matter of time before the the office is forced to have a staff egg eating room just to keep everyone separate. If you've got a question, then email your question. Yeah, to answer me of this podcast, googlemail.com.

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

On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Toby from Sussex, who says, Ollie, answer me this. How do the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine die? Do they just get old and get scrapped? What about if they have a bad accident and are irreparable yet still alive? Do they get euthanised? Did the good reverend ever write such a thing? Well, I'm going to quote directly from one of the original Thomas the Tank Engine stories, The Blue Bells of England. Oh, I know what happens. This is Percy who says,

engines on the other railway aren't safe now. Their controllers are cruel. They don't like engines anymore. This is all a coded reference to Beeching, by the way. They put them on cold, damp sidings and then, Percy nearly sobbed, they cut them up. Do what to them?

Cut them up. Oh, cut them up. Oh, wow, that's extreme. So Percy is talking about um engines getting scrapped outside of sodor to be fair not within the safe confines of the isle of sodor where thomas the tank engine is set but on the mainland so there is reference to engines being discontinued and in one of the other books mountain engines a train called culdy tells a story about another train called godred who I don't know why they had these medieval names

who got left at the back of the shed and piece by piece got reused in other trains until there was nothing left of him it's a kind of horrifying cannibalism story but then at the end it does say that Caldy made the story up but nonetheless the idea is still in the children's heads scaring them all night well there's a number of examples where trains meet a sad doom. One famous one is the sad story

of Henry, when Henry doesn't want to come out of a tunnel in case the rain spoils his lovely green paintwork with red stripes. He's punished by the Fat Controller. He's sentenced to be bricked up inside the tunnel for eternity. And they take his rails away, his fire goes out, and then he's sentenced to be bricked up inside the tunnel for eternity and they take his rails away his fire goes out and then he's stuck there they've only bricked him up up to his eyeline so then he could see all the other trains whizzing around while he rusts to death but he does escape this eternal punishment because a little while later gordon breaks down and they need his help to pull an express train they did dramatize that one in one of the original TV series and the narrator, then Ringo Starr,

it finishes with him saying something like, but I think he should have been left there forever, don't you? He says, like, he deserved his punishment, don't you think? Yeah, it's just like, no! It's a bit extreme. I suppose it's quite an interesting comment on workers' rights, isn't it? It's like, once he won't do the one thing that the controller and the rail system expects him to do, he's useless, he may as well be bricked up indefinitely.

And it's an example to others. Also, at some point, Henry is sent away for a rebuild, then has a different shape and a different engine, but he still retains his memories. So where is the trained soul? Where's the continuity of consciousness? Right. There was also a cart called S.C. Ruffy,

and he sang some rude songs about Oliver the Tank Engine. And as revenge, Oliver pulled him to pieces, and S.C. Ruffy's remains were scrapped, and his death was hushed up as bad for discipline. Then Oliver the Tank Engine got a lot more respect from the other carts after this, because they all lived in fear. Goodness.

Wow. I think the thing to bear in mind though is that all of these stories were written either during or immediately after the Second World War and about either that period or the period between the two world wars and so kids were growing up in a world where lots of people were dead and lots of bad things had been happening so I don't think trains being

scrapped would have been, like we're much more protective about what children read and see now yeah but it's not just about the trains dying it's about what it means because there's another one it's characters just called the spiteful brake van and the spiteful brake van kept trolling douglas by making his trains late so douglas crushed him and the result in all of these stories seems to be that the violence causes the other trains to be very obedient and fearful yes which feels like a very old testament kind of thing but i think there's also a class thing going on there as well isn't there as we saw with henry being bricked up when he wasn't performing a useful function for the society it's also about using

violence to intimidate people into keeping in their place and not sticking the head above the parapet tall poppies yeah you're useful because you're useful within the system and that's all but i'm sure if henry's paintwork had been compromised he would have got a load of shit for that they're like wow henry's really let himself go they would have body shamed him yeah you can't win you can't win in a system of patriarchal violence for those of you who perhaps haven't been keeping up with thomas recently though it's a very different world we're in now. Because now, obviously, you know, Audrey's been dead for decades. And the stories as they're written up now are based on the TV show storylines.

And the TV show has got ever more ridiculous in terms of its relation to what trains actually are like. Do they go to space? I know they don't really talk. But as we're saying, the original Audrey stories had some semblance to reality, like the beaching changes to the railways or the ways that steam were being replaced by coal or whatever. They don't go to space now, but they do go round the world. Thomas goes round the world in the latest series of Thomas and Friends. And the idea is to bring some diversity into Thomas, which I applaud,

because clearly they were all kind of white men disguised as trains before and now they do have lots of female characters and they do have characters with ethnic accents and features and stuff so that's good but the way that you have to achieve that is that thomas like visits china and shit like that and i mean trains don't do that do they i mean maybe once in their life they might get on a boat but thomas is a regular international traveler which is weird it seems unlikely that's probably the orient express you're a pretty regular international traveler the flying scotsman is a character and that's fair enough but these are like your standard steamies somehow end up in india and whatever so there's that and then the other thing that happens which has obviously been influenced by chuggington which is uh a popular uh tv cartoon featuring animated trains that came out about five years ago is that the the trains kind of when they go around the corners and

stuff they come slightly off the tracks like a roller coaster oh and even fly through the air which again i just i don't think audrey would have been down with that what happens if they're passengers i mean if they're off on a sort of the weekend they can do what they want well there's kind of like a matrix style special effect that kind of swivels around them um there's bullet time in thomas amazing yeah it's basically just a way to keep three-year-olds entertained three year olds are entertained by an empty box you don't really have to try that hard but actually even in this modern world they do phase out some of the trains actually part of the diversity drive was they they dialed down edward um because edward basically didn't have

a character really like he's he's actually i think the first train that reverend audrey invented um before thomas even but really he's just like a shit version of thomas he's like the letchworth to thomas's wellin that's a local reference I can't quite contextualise one's got a swimming pool just Wellin improved on everything Letchworth had done that's all I'm saying so Edward has hardly featured since 2017 but they couldn't kill him out of the cast completely so he's been moved to a different shed or something

and he's in like one episode in 20 but basically he's he's effectively been killed off but i guess the thing is with thomas that kids go to charity shops and buy the old books and watch repeats of the old shows so in a way you can't kill them off because it's like ned flanders his wife isn't it in the simpsons like she is killed off but she's in the repeats so yeah she's alive when you've got animation where you can't see the cast visibly degrading and dying, you don't need to kill things off. You could kill them off screen if you're not using them as a kind of morality punishment story.

But you don't need to show them aging and then inevitably dying, do you? And you could probably replace the voice actor if need be. Yeah, well, the voice actor of Thomas actually stepped down about five years ago in a pay dispute. Wow. Is your son Harvey into Thomas the Tank Engine? I have not spent much time with it in my life. It wasn't big for me when I was little or as an adult. Honestly, I don't like gender conformity, but I mean, I would say 90% of the boys that he knows like Thomas and most of the girls don't. So that's

not a surprise that you weren't into Thomas. I wasn't really as a kid either, but yeah, he fucking loves it and he's got his fourth birthday coming up and he has asked for this is i mean we bear in mind like he could say i want a self-driving land rover you know that goes around the garden he has asked for a book which is an encyclopedia of thomas trains oh that's amazing that's like the four-year-old equivalent of the star trek technical manual yeah it's exactly the cimmerillion so i'll let you know it's a big like dawling kindersley job i'll let you know what it says about the discontinued trains and how they die yes please is it a book that is so big he won't be able to hold it yes so are you also going to have to buy him a lectern just so that you can look at it at my village page my hot cakes sell

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Why not? Let's gamble. You will need a website for that. Yeah, or even if you just want to do something small, but you think, wow, I've been taking some really nice photos of... And I was going to say feet, but there's actually like a really big market for pictures of feet online. I have mixed feelings about the fact that the foot fetishist that used to write to me annually asking me for a picture of my feet hasn't done so for the last three. I don't know if that's

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if you use our code ANSWER. Here's a question from Emma from Switzerland who says, I work in the museum field, so I know that despite various forms of security, there are no laser fields, not even in big fancy museums. You know, the moving laser things like the ones in classic heist movies. So I assume she's talking about having those red laser beams crisscrossing a room with a precious artefact in it. Yeah, the one that you see Catherine Zeta-Jones's arse go over in the trailer for Entrapment. Right. Or at least I did many times when I owned the VHS for something else that that was the precursor to. While you were researching for your museum heist. I was researching for my masturbation habit ollie answer me this

who came up with this trope is there an original heist movie that thought of it is it from a book when i first started work i was a little disappointed in how mundane the security systems actually are yeah are they just a little sign saying don't touch the artifacts yeah but i mean it would be, wouldn't it, such a tedious sequence in Mission Impossible if all Tom Cruise had to do was work out what the four-digit pin was. The real deterrent to stop people stealing valuable works of art is a criminal record.

And getting banned from the V&A. So Emma is right that, in reality, the red laser web that you see in those heist movies is rare however not to challenge her experience but i have seen i mean not laser security systems in galleries but i've seen like infrared signals we've all seen that haven't we like tripwires basically by the door you've seen that like you might have to stop a garage door closing on an animal that kind of simple infrared technology i've seen that for two reasons i've seen it because they obviously turn it on as part of the alarm system and i've seen it

to kind of like stop people getting too close to a famous work of art so they don't have to put a visual block around it so those do exist and i suppose that was probably what inspired the film trope you know because it's based on an element of truth but as far as i know you you can't get the web of lasers where you could spray it and see it and certainly not that you could see at night so that you know where to duck around and all that stuff that's bollocks uh but the earliest uh cliche that i can find in which that trope was exhibited was 1975, which is much later than I would have assumed. Because you get lasers in Goldfinger, famously,

when he's got the laser cutter and he's trying to cut his balls off. That's like 10 years before that. But the laser museum cliche doesn't appear to emerge until the return of the Pink Panther in 1975. Oh, wow. That's the good one, isn't it? It's good one it's quite revealing i think because it's a comedy that it's not in a drama it's in a comedy so i think it was a sort of transparently ridiculous concept for a slapstick sequence and then people believed it i suppose it looks so exciting and a museum room looking just like a museum room a lot of people would associate that with a kind of hush and respect and it wouldn't necessarily have the drama and menace and threat

of something going badly wrong without the laser beams you're not the only one who thinks it looks amazing helen one of my favorite things that i stumbled across in my research for the answer to this was a pinterest board showing how you could make a christmas tree laser grid defense system made from balls of neon yarn what so you put neon colored yarn like wool around uh your christmas tree so hanging from the tree to the to the ground or like tied around a chair and then it looks like a laser grid defense system from a museum like your christmas tree is a precious artifact being defended from sean connery what does that mean you can't get to your christmas tree then you can't put presents under it and stuff without triggering the alarms

i think that's the idea is on christmas day your kids have to go around the wires to to get their game it's a bit of fun yeah but they could bring the whole tree down which could be a disaster of course because they're not actually lasers. You don't have to attach the wires to the tree. You could attach it to, like you say, chairs and other items of furniture, but then you've still got the problem of pulling over tables and chairs and things. Yeah, or strangling them en route. But anyway, it looks great.

Well, talking of tropes, Ewan from Aberdeen has this question. He says, Helen, answer me this. Why is old-fashioned-style physical comedy known as slapstick slapstick well i think this originated with commedia dell'arte where you can trace back quite a lot of physical comedy and broad comedy and theatrical tradition is that italian theater yeah in 16th to 18th century it was like very very popular around europe and that's kind of where we get punch and judy came from commedia dell dell'arte quite a lot of plots quite a lot of um stereotype characters and um there was an implement uh I think they called it a batacchio which was made of two long sticks hinged together and not a lot of the performances were quite violent so an actor would pretend to hit another actor with a stick

but the sticks would slap together and make a sound as if pretend to hit another actor with a stick, but the sticks would slap together and make a sound as if you had really hit them with a stick. It's almost like a pair of salad tongs, but with a very, very small gap between them, right? Yeah, actually, in some countries, they did use actual food tongs for dramatic noises. That's practical. So you didn't actually have to beat someone really hard with a stick to get that effect. So that's it. It's a stick that slaps, but not in the modern slang style. It sure does slap. Hello, I'm Emily. And I'm Charlotte. And I'm Anne. And together we are the Bronte Sisters. I know. Why did we both write questions to answer me this? Good idea. Let's see who gets published first.

OK, I've got one. I've got one. Helen and Ollie, it's me. It's Cathy. I've come home and I'm so c-c-c-old. Won't you let me in your window? Good, all right. My turn. Helen and Ollie, how did that madwoman get in my attic? Oh, yes, very good.

Right, why don't we go and spend two years working that into a manuscript? Good idea. What about me? Oh, I shouldn't bother. Right, why don't we go and spend two years working that into a manuscript? Good idea! What about me? Oh, I shouldn't bother, Anne. No one will read yours. A reminder that if you are enjoying our podcast feed at the moment, but thinking to yourself, oh, what a shame there are only 181 episodes to get through. I'm so deprived.

Do remember that there are 200 more episodes for sale through our sister site, AnswerMeThisStore.com It's the only sibling you have. It is, yeah. I love it like I would a sister. Sort of. And you can get our albums there.

Answer Me This Love to get yourself in the mood for Valentine's Day next month. Yes, now is the time of year, isn't it? Now is not the time of year for Answer Me This Christmas. It's not one of those sort of wintry albums that you can listen to outside of Christmas time. Like, you do not want to listen to that now for another 11 months. It wouldn't be my choice.

But love... But maybe there's a big load of January Christmas people, I don't know. But yeah, I think now is the time for love. Something to warm you up in this chilly time of year. Yes, it's an hour-long special album of us answering questions about romance that you will never ever hear on the show itself. You can only get it by going to answermethisstore.com and giving us some filthy

cash. A tiny amount of filthy cash though. Just a little dollop. Here's a question from Danny from Streatham who says, my dad decided in his 60s that he was a naturist. He regularly does the gardening and sunbathes completely naked in the back garden.

In the summer, he's not a masochist too. When my siblings and I go to their house, the only way to enter the garden is with a newspaper in front of your face shouting, Dad, put some clothes on. Aww. My friends now refer to him exclusively as Naked Dad.

As in, how are your parents? What's Naked Dad been up to? That's quite sweet. My saint-like mum has given up engaging with it and just gets on with being her patient, tolerant self. Recently, he's upped the stakes and has started doing the front garden naked too. Is it practical to do gardening naked? You would think there's a lot of danger from thorns and insect bites and nettle stings. Apparently, most people pass by without comment, continues Danny, but an American woman recently drove past, turned round and drove back, got out and asked if he realised he didn't have

any clothes on. She thought he had dementia and had just forgotten to get dressed. He explained that no, he just doesn't think clothes are necessary when it's warm and there's nothing wrong with the human body. She said he'd get arrested in America. And he told her that we're much more sensible here in Britain. Yeah, nudity is not illegal under British law. There are a handful of laws that do address it, but it kind of has to be deliberately trying to cause outrage or have a sexual motivation and usually naturists would be

found not to be in breach of those on the one hand i see and agree with dad's point the media constantly send out terrible messages about how shameful nearly all bodies are bar from a few unrepresentative models when actually there isn't anything wrong with the naked human form we should all be less uptight about it on the other hand i don't want to see my dad's, or anyone else's, naked arse bending over the flower beds. To be fair, he does put his shorts on when us kids are there, but if he can be considerate of our wish not to see him naked, why can't he extend that to all the strangers passing the front garden,

none of whom I feel confident in assuming want to see a naked 75-year-old man raking moss from the driveway. So, Helen, answer me this. Do I have a responsibility to try and persuade him to confine his naturism to the back garden, or should I follow Mum's example and just ignore it? Well, it sounds like he has fully thought through his naturism, especially if he's been a naturist for several years already. And, you know, he's able to have patient discussions with strangers who consult him over the fence. So it would be your responsibility if you felt like he'd given it no thought at all, or maybe it wasn't by his own choice, but it is. i i quite admire the confidence and the rebellion against kind of restrictions that might be prudish or uptight i think that the thing that i admire most about

naturists is the the comfort they have with themselves yeah i don't know what that would feel like i mean i don't feel uncomfortable with myself. I don't feel like I feel uncomfortable with myself. But I do realise when I'm naked that here I am having lost some of the signifiers of who I am. I haven't got my clothes on. That's part of how I express myself. Suddenly I'm more aware of people looking at me, you know, in a changing room or whatever. It's amazing to not feel those things at all,

to have suppressed all those thoughts they've gone. It must be very liberating. Although having said that, I admire the liberation of being able to do it in reality i don't really see the difference between that and just wearing some swimming trunks or or your pants i mean it's not that big a deal in on a sunny day like in this country especially or a little apron a little utility belt maybe maybe that's what um danny could do get him a utility belt for all his gardening tools, so it was like a little loincloth hanging over

his frontal area. Maybe he should be allowed to get his dick out in his own garden. But if the concern is, basically, people can see his arsehole or his cock, you can sort of cover those things while still being undressed, can't you? And that might be a good,

an elegant solution for the front garden. Yeah, but doesn't that defeat the object isn't that saying i'm not embarrassed or prudish about my body apart from the bits of the my body that everyone's embarrassed and prudish about like i think i think it's all or nothing but well he might like he might like the air up his jacksie he'd still get that do you think this would be different if we weren't talking about a 75 year old-old man? Because I think people are a lot more habituated to the nudity of young women, thanks to media and advertising. Well, if it was a 20-year-old woman gardening naked in her garden, that would still be noteworthy. And as embarrassing, but in a different way for people.

I think, yeah, exactly. It would be embarrassing in a different way because the implication would be, what if people are sexually attracted to her as they walk past, rather than, you know, what's her sexual feeling? Her sexual feelings wouldn't come into it, partly because she's a woman. Yeah.

And partly because she's young, which is ridiculous, you're right. But it's true. No one thinks that about the older man, do they? They just think, oh, it's all about him being a dirty pervert. It's not that anyone's going to pass his house and... Get stiffy.

Or, you know, it's kind of of old people can be so sweet yes you're allowed to be eccentric in that way when you're 70 plus aren't you which you're not quite when you're younger i assume also that your your mum is somewhat a guide in this since she has to tolerate it far more regularly than you well your mum tolerates weird behavior from your dad. All too much, actually. Way too much. What do you think she'd do in this situation? Well, my dad has always had a thing about wanting to live in places where the neighbours can't see.

And the house they live in now is such a place. But I think it's not because he wants to be nude. And in fact, he wears many layers of clothes, even in summer. But I think it's because he used to love peeing outside, as I've mentioned before. As exhaustively documented, yeah. So maybe it was just that.

Or maybe it was like, well, I could be nude if I wanted. It's my right. But for him, I think it wouldn't have the same appeal if it was in other people's eyeline because then it would feel maybe a bit more confrontational rather than just his own private joy. Well, you feel if martin was into this i mean i know you don't have a permanent residence at the moment but when you did you know if martin's thing was yeah but if martin's thing was walking around the hallways for example and corridors of the

communal apartment block you used to live in how would you feel there if he was walking around naked would you support that it would certainly make passing through airport security a bit more straightforward. When you put it in those terms, actually, I feel a bit different about it, because I think it's such close confines when you live in a flat in a building with other people, that it does feel a little more like you're impinging on their right not to see someone else naked when they haven't chosen that. Yes. And lots of the legal arguments come down to, it sounds ridiculous,

but like proximity of genitals to people that have complained, for example. Right. So someone can be completely innocent, but if they're standing in a queue, you know, it could be considered harassment. I think it's the confinement and also your dad's in his space

and the passers-by are in public space. And there's a barrier between them, presumably, because there's the fence or the hedge of the garden. Right. Whereas if Martin had been wandering the corridors of our old building it would have been a shared private space so i think the rules are a little bit different there but also yeah you are trapped closer to that person's nude body whereas people have they have the choice to walk on the other side of the road past your dad, if they really don't want to see it.

It seems like they would have to come quite close to be able to see over a wall or a hedge. I guess what we're doing really, actually, is outlining why people, naturists, go on group weekends and to venues where they're safe and the knowledge everyone is into this. Yeah, you don't have to go through all this thought. Although even then, I was on the naturism website a moment ago

and for example they have an event coming up later this month in suffolk it's a naked meal 24 pounds a head starter is antipasti beef it all just sounds funny when you imagine naked people eating it beef and barley bean casserole for the main uh and uh chocolate talk for the dessert i would go for less messy food yeah Yeah. Speaking as a hairy man. Beef and barley, that's sloppy. I could get a lot of beef and barley in my pubes. And not sharing platters, I think. But anyway.

Yeah. Something really self-contained, like a slice of meatloaf. Or Froobs. Froobs? What are Froobs? Froobs, those little tubes of yoghurt. Yeah. So named because you can't get them on your pubes.

Everyone knows that. Free from pubes everyone knows that free from pubes but I was looking at the restaurant to see the kind of place that would allow that event to happen in their establishment and it looks like a nice enough sort of village pub type thing but it's got like wooden chairs and tables something about splinters

and I was thinking if I went the next day for breakfast I'd want to make sure those seats had been well wiped down you do think about those things someone's naked arsehole having eaten a barley bean casserole is gonna be sitting on it just don't overthink public seating in general that's true you can drive yourself uh very upset that way the outside world is dirty there's a lot of animal feces dead insects and shit don't worry about someone's arsehole it's the least of your concerns people may have wiped their arses on your 10 pound notes ollie before you got those yeah you're making fair points they also do an annual weekend at alton towers apparently oh that seems bold like something

channel 5 should do the documentary on i agree why have i not seen that well maybe there's just only so much pixelation that anyone can handle doing it's also i was just thinking if this was your neighbor after the initial surprise maybe had worn off you just wouldn't necessarily deliberately look out the window to see your neighbor naked gardening would you you just be like oh yeah that's a thing my neighbor does maybe tell it as an anecdote to people but it's fairly gentle yeah like my neighbors have got a camper van when that first arrived it was like whoa camper van wow look at that oh where are you going oh you're going to scotland oh wow wow it's got a telly and it's got a cooker it don't care now i don't notice it

just used to it yeah same thing with a 75 year old man's penis yeah that's right well what would you do if uh it was your father-in-law. He's got a garden. Yeah. I mean, again, it's interesting to think about it from your own position because I wouldn't care, but now I've got children I'd care because it would provoke a conversation with the children about why Grandad does the gardening naked and why everyone else has to wear clothes. Well, maybe, because children have quite

flexible minds, so they might just be like, that's a thing that happens. Children are quite curious about bodies. They might be like, why can't I go to school naked or go to yeah i think it provokes a conversation and i suppose that's it's not that that's a problem it's not that the answers are concerning it's just that maybe you don't want to have that conversation at that time i suppose that's the thing about nudity isn't it if it's if you're not prepared for that discussion at that point it feels like an imposition but then lots of other things do you know people's political views can do that point, it feels like an imposition. But then lots of other things do.

You know, people's political views can do that. But it's amazing, isn't it, that this thing that we all are is still such a controversial thing. And people are afraid of talking about it with children. And yet children are probably more fascinated by their own nudity. Yes.

And more plastic in the mind to accept ideas. I suppose the other easy solution for Danny would just be only to visit in bad weather. Yes, which actually, fortunately, you know, despite climate change is still 10 months of the year. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This. But of course, to make more episodes of Answer Me This, we need your questions. It has been thus since we started the show 13 years ago it is the case now some things are constant so send them to us via email or record yourself doing a voice memo and email that our contact details are at answer me this podcast.com and halfway through the month you can hear a retro episode of answer me this in your feed you have to

subscribe to get it you can also listen to our other work anytime ollie what is on the boil for you i do five podcasts you can discover them all at ollie man.com my monthly magazine show though is the modern man and this month i meet a lady called claire and talked to her about when she quit booze she's a mum of three and she used to work in marketing, really like boozy drinking environment, and basically got to the stage where she thought it was perfectly normal to parent by drinking 10 bottles of wine a week. The episode is called The Mum Who Gave Up Drinking and you can find that at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk. Did it make you think about your own drinking habits? It made me think about them but it hasn't made me change

them i'll be honest powerful stuff but i do i do i do think that um it's useful to stick to your own rules though that's one of the things she was saying is that it's when her own rules started sliding and she was drinking wine to cure her hangovers that was kind of the warning sign for her um so i i am very much trying to stick to no booze before dinner at the moment. No booze on cereal. Helen, what is in the Zaltzman wheel of podcasts this month? Well, I have The Illusionist at theillusionist.org and Veronica Mars Investigations at vmipod.com.

Yeah, your new show. How's that going? Great. Coming up to the end of the first season of Veronica Mars. And if you've seen that, it's a very tense time. And then recently on The Illusionist, there's been a quiz that you can play along with as you listen for a bit of fun. I've always wondered why there aren't more quiz-based podcasts, actually. Right. You think how popular the quiz format is in daytime telly?

The highest score at the moment is 14. So if you can get better than 14 out of 17, then you win nothing. Except for your satisfaction of being better than everyone else. It's January. Winning nothing is still winning. Yay. And Martin? Yeah, I just released an album called Year of the Bird. And you can find that at palebirdmusic.com. 40 tracks?

40 tracks. You don't have to listen to all four. You can get a little bit. There's a playlist on Spotify with the top 14 of 40 tracks, which is a bit more like a normal album is that your super cut that's my super cut it's a banger we will be back at the beginning of february with a fresh new episode of do join us then bye