Answer Me This! - AMT390: Giant Pumpkins, Playing Dead, and Sweet Fanny Adams

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Pop in your prosthetic fangs, spritz yourself with fake blood and turn off all the lights except for that annoying one that flickers - it's the Answer Me This Halloween Special! Featuring SCARY plays, GIANT gourds, MONSTER Mash, and SEXY Martin the Sound Man costumes if such things are possible, you have this month to prove it. Find out more about this episode at . CW: suicide, child murder, death. Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Our new album Home Entertainment is available now for £paywhatyouwant for a limited period at , where you can also obtain our other special albums, AMT episodes 1-200, and our Best Of compilations. Hear our other work: Helen Zaltzman's podcasts The Allusionist at and Veronica Mars Investigations at ; Olly Mann's five podcasts including , The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought at ; and Martin Austwick's music at his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at , and his new music'n'science podcast Maddie's Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate, at . This episode is sponsored by: Manscaped, precision-engineered grooming for your danglers. Get 20% off plus free shipping with the code ANSWER at Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'ANSWER'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good ghost voice, Helen. Assuming you are doing a ghost voice and you haven't been possessed already. What? I didn't make a sound. Here's a question from Megan in Seattle who says, It is common at state fairs in the US states at northern latitudes, where summer days are long, to have giant vegetables on display. Fun. The winning pumpkins often weigh between 1,100 and 1,300 pounds. Yeah.

So Helen, answer me this. What becomes of those giant pumpkins after the fair? What becomes of the giant pumpkins? It seems like it would be fun to carve them into giant jack-o'-lanterns. I was reading up on giant pumpkin growing. It's a whole thing online and I enjoyed spending a few hours

observing the community of giant pumpkin growers around the world. Seems to be big in New Zealand as well. Yeah. But I think the current record holder is in Belgium or Germany. He is, yeah, Matthias Welgemans of Belgium. Yeah, he's had an over 2,000 pound pumpkin.

They just keep on getting bigger. But I haven't seen that many giant jack-o'-lanterns. And they say like, it's very easy for the giant pumpkins to split. And that means they're invalid for competition. Right. They're quite fragile. Or maybe it's just people are so wowed by the giantness

that they just want to keep them whole because they'll last longer. Yeah, I mean, I've seen giant pumpkins doing a lap of honour. Oh, yeah. For example, there's a garden centre near us that always has a giant pumpkin outside at this time of year. And I presume it's been to the Women's Institute of Fate or whatever and won a prize, but then it sits outside the garden centre as a sort of photo opportunity prop.

I mean, you wouldn't eat it because it's there for children to sit on and have a picture taken at. What they often do is they retrieve the seeds to grow next year's giant pumpkins and then they compost the rest or they feed it to wildlife like moose and bears and bison yeah because apparently they're quite watery and don't taste it very much well right because they've been grown for spectacle not for flavor so yeah they're not particularly good to eat and also they might have just powerful amounts of fertilizer in not something you want in your spiced pumpkin latte it does feel a bit wasteful doesn't it where it's like people have spent a long time growing food that is not fit to eat so a lot of the giant pumpkins will go on display carved or uncarved

at say malls or hospitals or restaurants they'll'll have their victory lap. In 2005, an £1,100 pumpkin was displayed in the lobby of a theatre during a Boston Ballet staging of Cinderella, which I guess made sense. You can hire or buy giant vegetables for, like, photo shoots, PR events, pubs, displays, props. It's someone's job to be a giant vegetable rental liaison yep giant veg.co.uk but then you also get stunts for the giant pumpkins like people hollow them out and row them down rivers like a boat i believe the world record so far is 25 and a half miles

and then another thing is pumpkin dropping competitions or pumpkin chucking competitions. Yeah. The world record for pumpkin chucking is 5,545.43 feet. Yeah, respectable. If you were doing it with a giant pumpkin, that could really, really mess people up, depending on where it landed. Although the same with a normal pumpkin, even a tiny pumpkin chucked could take someone out. I assume they've thought about it all.

So there is money in them there, pumpkins, because I noticed that in these big sort of American state fairs that Megan's referring to, there's usually a cash prize. And one of them I saw in New Hampshire, which is the, as it turns out, largest pumpkin ever grown in the USA, but it's smaller than the one from Belgium. The bloke won $6,000. Yeah, but it costs like $1,000 to raise a giant pumpkin,

and then I don't know how much to transport one. Yeah, but here in Britain,1,000 to raise a giant pumpkin. And then I don't know how much to transport one. Yeah, but here in Britain, Helen, people do it for the love. You don't know. Some of them could be hiring out their giant onions, Ollie, for hundreds. Village Fate, I think if you're lucky, you're getting 50 quid top prize, if there's a prize. $6,000. It's worth putting some effort in, isn't it?

Yeah, but it's months of your life. And it can go wrong at just any moment so i feel like the patient should be rewarded i wonder who's supplying the prize though like what entity is paying what's the agenda big pumpkin they're the fertilizer guys hi helen ollie and martin the sound man my name is sarah i live on a magical street with magical neighbors and we've all been potting together throughout the pandemic. Because Halloween is obviously not going to allow for trick-or-treating this year, we have decided that we're going to create a little street festival for the kids, and also for us. I have decided that I'm going to set up a little tent and dress as a witch and offer potions and spells for the kids.

The idea being that the kids would come into the tent, tell me what potion or spell they want, and then I would make the potion and spell for them by adding different candies into a bag and then sending them on their way. But I can't really think of any good potions or spells. What would kids get really excited about and sort of believe is true also? Thanks, guys. Happy Halloween. We should say that in her email in which she attached this question,

Sarah did say that the kids concerned are between four and seven years old. So we're talking young children here. You've got one child between four and seven. What would make him excited? The important thing to bear in mind is a bit like meeting Santa Claus. He would be very likely to clam up upon meeting a witch. Yes. And not really say anything at all and be really shy. They're sensible. Witches are quite dangerous. I mean, I know American children might be a little bit more outgoing than British children. But nonetheless, I know American children might be a little bit more outgoing than British children, but nonetheless, you know, they might be intimidated by a witch. So I think keep the interactivity simple.

I mean, he'd be excited to join in, for example, stirring the pot of a cauldron. Oh, yeah. I guess, you know, now you need to hand sanitise after each application, but nonetheless, I suppose that applies to witches just as it does to everybody else. But so that, and I'd also say one thing you would be able to get out of him for example is his name so maybe what you could do is do a spell that produces his halloween name for the night i've been looking at this online there's a halloween name generator which works on initials right for instance helen you would be headstone zombie yes altsman uh mart, you would be Headstone Zombie for Helen Zaltzman. Martin, you would be Monster Zombie Apocalypse for Martin Zaltzorswick.

Oh, nice. Phil's on brand. I would be Owl Midnight for Olly Mann. Oh, that's cool. That's very emo. Okay. But I mean, I can imagine a young child being quite excited by a witch telling him as the result of a spell what his Halloween name is for the night.

So that's an option. So what would you do? Have the alphabet up on the wall with the names so they can pick out their own name no i think it should come as a result of the spell otherwise nothing magic has happened has it but i think you could learn what each initial means yeah and then consult the cauldron so sarah just needs a list that they can't see so it seems spontaneous but actually having to make up spontaneous names would be a bit of a pain you get one of those things that's like a an led light that just magically up with a name. You could just like surreptitiously program it with your phone underneath the table or something. And it says headstone midnight through the fog.

With some assistance. Yeah. And when you say through the fog, yeah, I think that's important as well. It's interesting, isn't it? That although, you know, it's done internationally and it's particularly American, nonetheless, Halloween festivities still, in the same way that Christmas is basically Dickensian in London, all around the world, I feel like Halloween isn't Halloween unless it's a bit foggy and smoky and cold, which it might not be. So I think you need to generate some fog and smoke and stuff somehow. But what you're suggesting is not answering Sarah's question. It's like, what other props could you get? Whereas she wants to know what she can do with candy and words. And what I thought was you could ask the kid what their favourite animal is. And then you say, okay, well, then you start putting sweets in saying,

okay, eat these and you'll become a lion. But if you eat them in the wrong order, then you might become a mouse. Or something like that. So that, like, they can play, basically. They can imagine themselves animals when they're eating this stuff. I wonder whether there are other things which are like this will make you confident you know placebo for positive emotions i i think that's right and i think actually it doesn't really matter what the spell

is or what it's for so long as they can join in and if they feel they've met a real witch that will be exciting enough brace yourself now for a harrowing question from isabel she says ollie answer me this if i'm going to dress as sexy martin the sound man for halloween what what should i wear oh my god well if you're specifying sexy then it probably has to be pvc or rubber so like a pvc beard pvc t-shirt yeah fishnet corduroys what pvc headphones skimpy pvc headphones doesn't have to be pvc t-shirt yeah fishnet corduroys what pvc headphones skimpy pvc headphones doesn't have to be pvc it does that's the halloween rules must have a lot of hair though just dress like me just find a photo of me on the internet just try and look like that that's automatically sexy martin the same man okay with respect uh to martin's role as you know an independent podcaster in his own

right and a fine sidekick on this show i'm not sure that going as anyone where you have to explain the costume is ever a good halloween costume but that's isn't it a good way to start conversations right and if anyone got it there would be like your soulmate that would be that would be impressive i mean i don't think if martin came as sexy martin i'd immediately guess that's who he is well they'd just be like well he's not wearing a I mean, honestly, if you get a Chewbacca outfit and then a pair of headphones, that would probably cover a lot of ground, wouldn't it? And carry a Tom Waits LP around.

Oh, yeah, a Tom Waits T-shirt. What are other trademark Martin things? An egg. Eggs. I mean, I've got a haircut that makes me look a little bit like Jason Neustad from Metallica at the moment. Soco 1993. So if that's a useful reference point go with it where

do you stand helen on people doing halloween costumes that actually aren't horror though uh because i know that's a huge thing in the states but here like even if you took a really well-known personality like you know if someone turned up as jonathan ross it'd just be weird i don't know i think it's actually quite fun and when i went to the spam museum in austin minnesota last year they had a spam costume i mean that's glorious obviously wear that every day i was so sorely tempted to buy it i mean i don't go to costume parties anyway even when they're happening in non-covid times but i was like come on how often do you get the chance to dress as a can of spam but was it a sexy can of spam i mean what isn't

but the costume but sexy thing that's such a halloween thing isn't it like you probably wouldn't wear just normal nurse clothes you have to wear like a pvc naughty nurse outfit well apparently the whole sexy halloween costume fad actually goes back to 1940s hollywood and it's from the days when studios had exclusive rights to their stars. Well, starlets really is what we're talking about here because it was never really men photographed in this way. And what they do is get them to dress up for the Hollywood magazines as witches and stuff or pixies or whatever. And of course, like the default way to sell magazines

with Hollywood starlets then as now was, you know, to produce a slightly sexualized image rather than just a classic witch. And then inevitably it became suddenly in the public consciousness like you know you're not just a witch you're a sexy witch and then drag queens at gay halloween parades in the gay villages of various u.s cities in the 70s amplified that and sort of like drag queens do made it more lurid and bold and slightly silly and then what apparently sort of capped it all off which makes sense when you think about it was elvira coming along in the 80s and ever since

then like the sexy halloween thing has become the default adult costume in the united states when you're looking to go as you say as a nurse or as a witch it's it's sexy witch so drag queens plus elvira it's it's just exaggerating these familiar things well i saw it written about in one place on the web it's kind of like it's the one night of the year that if you go out dressed as a slut no one's going to shame you was the way they'd written it so it's kind of like it's a night where you don't have to feel like you know modesty is important if you want to dress like that then no one says anything even in the most conservative circles isn't that like a plot point in mean girls that's right and it's like she goes dressed as something scary and everyone else is just looking hot she's like a kind of bride of frankenstein but just looks generally

gross and scary rather than like hot bride of frankenstein maybe just because people need cheering up there will be more of a trend for like the ludicrous rather than the scary or the bloody well i think this year it's all going to be about social media, isn't it? Because obviously people aren't really going out. So actually, it will be clothes that you don't have to worry about whether you'd be embarrassed walking down the street because you won't be. You'll be doing Halloween from home. So I think they'll get ever more outlandish and impractical. And it's a chance to just do something stupid.

And also it's a chance to reinvent yourself as a can of spam. 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. A question of films from Amy in Leeds, who says, if a horror movie is rated 18, but features a child actor, quite a lot of those, aren't they, when you think about horror movies how is that actor looked after on set so they don't see anything that might potentially traumatize them helen asked me this do they get given a censored version of the script are they given scenes without any context or are film sets just not as frightening as they seem on the screen i mean probably not because the actors will be strolling around between takes in all the gore makeup eating sandwiches it's very demystifying you don't have the sound design you wouldn't have the digital

effects it's short takes as well again and again the canonical story of janet lee in the shower actually really underlines that when hitchcockcock made the water freezing cold. People often tell that story to underpin his unhealthy obsession with dominating blondes, basically. But actually, what it really underlines is even one of the greatest film directors of all time found it challenging to get even an adult actor to portray true horror on a film set because of all those things you just said. Like on a film set, there are people there you've been there all day it's a bit of a laugh you've just had lunch you know it's difficult to get in that frame of mind well i don't know i think it's just specific to him because he also kind of tormented tippy hedren on the set of the bird she had a horrible time and uh kubrick as well like the way he treated actors particularly shelly duval on the shining it's like well there are people who pretend for a living. You don't actually have to psychologically torment them in the ways that you are doing to get the performance out of them. So I would hope that directors wouldn't do that to children the way that they did to

adults in those films. Oh, me too. Kubrick was really protective of Danny Lloyd, who plays the boy. And apparently, during filming, he thought he was making a drama not a horror film like one of those comedy trailers on youtube exactly and he only realized the truth many years later when he was shown heavily edited version he didn't actually watch the film uncut until he was 17 which was 11 years later some of the scenes uh like when he's being carried away by his mother he's he's actually a dummy so he's not experiencing

that and then i read an interview with the people who played the scary twins yeah and um when they were doing the scene where it was like their murder scene and the makeup artist was like here's how i make fake blood and so they would just put at ease so i think that's a technique they use a lot as well they just show them lots of details in the set and they're like, this is the thing that looks like this. This is the thing that we're going to be doing with this. So it's all very technical rather than atmospheric. From what I gather, there are a lot of rules governing minors on film sets anyway.

So a parent or guardian has to be within sight and sound at all times. And they will be going through an agent and then the child's legal guardian. So adults know about everything that the child is going to have to do and the child won't be given the whole script and they won't attend the table reads and they won't be on set during other parts then you also have like very careful framing and editing the children didn't know the context i do wonder like if you grew up and realized that you were in this sort of film like would you be upset by it linda blair didn't know that in the exorcist

her character masturbates with a cross until she saw the finished film in a body double filmed that scene an adult body double so you know you might not necessarily agree to that if you knew about it but then also a lot of hollywood parents who do agree to it they are not necessarily agree to that if you knew about it but then also a lot of hollywood parents who do agree to it they are not necessarily looking out for the for the child are they also a lot of these kids they are professionals so it's not their first film set experience like jodie foster when um she was in taxi driver she was 12 and that film has got some pretty violent content so the los angeles welfare board initially said she can't do it and then the governor intervened and also a psychiatrist assessed her and they were like yeah she's fine with it and so they apparently they like explained all the special effects to her and and she was very interested because she's like a film professional

by that point anyway yeah and then her older sister acted as her stand-in during like sexual or suggestive scenes but she's still playing a child sex worker seem to remember as well when kirsten dunst was interviewed about interview with a vampire where there's some scene where she has to sort of exhibit sexual desire and i think they told her something like, think about your favourite cake. Although she was 12 when they shot that, I think, and she had to kiss Brad Pitt, who was 30. She said it was many years before she then kissed anyone else because it was so gross. And I'd imagine that would be quite grim for the adult actor as well, right?

Do you know what I think might be slightly more disturbing if you're the person in the film watching it is when you realise as an adult that the reason you were cast as a child is because you were kind of freaky looking but that's actually the truth of it isn't it in a lot of these horror movies i mean you just gave the example of the twins in the shining and that's a perfect thing you know if i was them watching it back it wouldn't be like oh this is where i got murdered how horrible it would be like oh they cast it because they thought we were weird but that's the shock if you realized that you were cast because you were unusual looking yeah but they're not that weird looking

in it it's more just because there are two of them and they're dressed the same but like their faces are not odd you've also been styled to look as weird as possible but you know they're projecting an aura of oddness aren't they that's the thing that's what makes it creepy that's what makes it unsettling and then you, that is your face then that you're walking around with. Well, here's another question of how do they do horrifying things on film. It's from Johanna in North London,

who says, Ollie, answer me this. In television series such as Silent Witness, how do the victims manage not to breathe during the autopsy so as to not show the chest moving? They can't all be dummies as the

faces are too accurate i have held my breath for the duration of the shots and it's not easy is this part of drama training but yeah we've got stagecraft 101 we've got one on weapons training one on horse riding one on not breathing for for five minutes actors were often like doing side jobs of like going and posing as corpses for like emergency services training when you say they can't all be dummies i mean obviously in the close-up that is true but the close-up may only last for three or four seconds and sometimes when they use the close-up they apply a bit of slow motion as well to give you a few extra frames so you then cut to a wide shot where indeed it could be a prosthetic and is likely to be a prosthetic. So are you really looking at a wide shot where someone isn't breathing for over a minute?

I would speculate that you aren't. The other thing I would say is that in a way it is kind of taught at drama school. Because if you're playing the corpse, basically what you're doing is intense relaxation, meditation, deep breathing. And actually that is part of drama training, isn't it? I mean, I doubt at RADA they say this is so you can play a corpse on Holby City. meditation deep breathing and actually that is part of drama training isn't it i mean i doubt it rather they say this is so you can play a corpse on hobby city but i mean essentially that is one of the ways that you can use that ability to get into a sort of dreamlike relaxed state and then they do now use vfx as well so you may not be able to see the body breathing but that

might be because the editor has painted it out. But sometimes they would put the actor under a fake chest. I remember in BBC Television Centre, in one of the corridors they had on display a chest from, I think, Casualty or Holby, which had been cranked open. So the actor would go under that like a tank top, basically. So their head would be visible, but it's not their real chest. But I read a blog that was written by an actor

who'd played lots of corpses in American TV shows. And his tip was, avoid caffeine and stimulants if you've got to keep your eyes open. Because, you know, it's those little things that people will notice in close up of your eyes just being slightly, well, alive. He said you basically have to get to a state where you allow your eyes to become unfocused. You know, if you stare at something and it goes blurry. Yeah. You need to be like that because your eyes will subliminally notice a peripheral flicker and that will register in a close-up i don't know if you've watched the drama i hate suzy starring billy piper ollie i have i'm on episode four so

no spoilers please uh this just a minor thing where they show the filming of a zombie drama but i assume it's how they also do it in not fiction is the actor kind of goes into a hole in the ground with their head out and then there's like a false version of their body put on the ground so that then yes the zombies can rip out their fake guts it's fun to see yeah i don't think it would be fair to rip out their real guts retakes would be rather difficult if you've already given off your guts for the first shot a rather trained actor should be able to have their guts ripped out and regenerate spontaneously don't they teach you anything at drama school

hello i'm pennywise the clown from stephen king's it we're not abusing children or turning into a giant spider i like to sit in my sewer listening to Answer Me This. Support for Answer Me This is brought to you by Manscaped. Below the waist grooming for the possessors of scrotums. It's a salon for your scrotum. If you're listening to this and you have balls and you do shave your balls, if you're in that category, this is a great product. I gather it has LED lights so that you can, it's sort of like a little spotlight on mowing your personal lawn. Manscaped have been in the US for quite a few

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Look, this isn't a plug, but I've got a business. I make undies actually and I've called it because my last name is Adams. I've called it Fanny Adams underwear and I know the story of Fanny Adams but how come she stayed in or the story of her has stayed in our consciousness for so long because everyone's heard of her name most people know her name what made that story stay that is a question from tori and tori knows the story of fanny adams i did not until tori called i honestly thought fanny adams was just like an old man way of saying fuck all yeah well it became that but it was sort of a backronym this is going to be like berkshire hunt all over again no well it's so sweet fanny adams was a real phrase but it just meant something else and i suppose we should do a content warning for child murder

right because fanny adams was a high profile murdered eight-year-old in 1867. Wow. In Alton, New Hampshire, in England. Was she known as Sweet Fanny Adams before she was murdered? No, but I think in the reporting of the case after, it was like a very big case in the British press. Yes, it's sort of the Madeleine McCann of its day, basically. Right, exactly. They're all playing up her youth and innocence. So Fanny Adams was out playing with her sister and a friend and then this 29 year old

man called frederick baker asked her to go for a walk with him in return for a half penny and he gave the sister and the friend some money for sweets to get rid of them and then he killed her and dismembered the body they never even found all of the parts oh what did they find well they found her head and then they found some other bits it's a pretty good identifying feature i suppose and um he was hanged for it everyone in the country at the time knew about this case and so then very shortly after her name became a joke thanks to the british royal navy because they were given tinned meat rations right they were like oh this meat tastes like fanny adams's remains isn't that terrible that's really oh that was like two years later so i would say too soon i

would say in the natural lifespan of fanny adams is too soon to be mocking her meat but i guess bad taste jokes they now circulate on whatsapp i guess don't they so even though you wouldn't hear it on live at the apollo i suppose that's still happening somewhere and i guess the navy is a place where you would kind of expect to hear that it's still pretty rank though and then the tins that had contained the meat became known as fannies because they would use the tins for cooking equipment okay by 1919 sweet fanny adams became a euphemism for fuck all. And I think partly because F.A., that was the acronym to get away with the swearing more. But the meat being unsatisfactory sort of just mutated into things that were worthless and things that were nothing. Yeah, you're an army ration worth of meat.

But isn't that grim? Like, I had no idea. I didn't think Fanny Adams was a real person, but she was. But also, given that the name is notorious and has persisted, even if, well, actually, especially because people of our generation and below don't know what it means, I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been, or maybe there has been a B-movie, but I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a TV dramatisation of her murder.

Like, why don't people know that that's what it is? It would sell, wouldn't it? It's all about the title these days. I suppose because you want the child to survive, don't you? Otherwise, it's just really hopeless. You say you want the child to survive. Of course, I want the real child not to have died. But I mean, if I'm watching a grim drama, no, I want the child to die. And I want to see what happens to the murderer. And I want to watch the hanging. I mean, that's why you watch those sort of, you know, Penny Dreadful type ITV dramas, isn't it? I mean, I still could imagine there being an audience for that. James Nesbitt in

Fanny Adams, you'd watch it. Well, okay, okay so the murderer was 29 who would you get to play him james nesbit's too old james nesbit's the superintendent isn't he uh 29 freddie highmore yes good shout absolutely or freddie fox i mean it doesn't have to be a man called freddie but now you've said freddie i'm thinking he could do that freddie's playing freddie here's another question of halloween entertainment from caitlin in atlanta georgia who says ollie answer me this why aren't there more he could do that. Freddie's playing Freddie. Here's another question of Halloween Entertainment from Caitlin in Atlanta, Georgia who says, Ollie, answer me this. Why aren't there more

Halloween songs? The Monster Mash is a classic and we need more. Christmas music is huge. I think Halloween needs some musical love. Two reasons, I think. One, I think that traditionally

Halloween was very focused on a single day. So you've got one day for everyone to play your song but there are the 12 days of Christmas in the religious Christmas and in the secular Christmas, of course, there's the 25 days of the advent calendar and at least two months of consumerism. So you've got a lot of time for people to play your Christmas records. But Halloween has grown in length, hasn't it?

I think that's right. I think now, you know, it does sort of in this country, it kind of merges with Harvest Festival and Bonfire Night and the general period. So I think you do have a case, Caitlin. in the movie space they've cottoned on to that. Film is on it with Halloween. Yes. Music isn't. The Monster Mash was released in August it wasn't even released near Halloween. Well let me say the second reason why I think that there isn't much Halloween music it's because with Christmas you can't really misjudge the mood and go to Christmas you know there's there's not really a divide between kids and adults and in both categories the more goodwill

to all men the better whereas with halloween you know like thrash metal is overdoing it sacrifice is going to put some audiences off some people are offended by the occult i mean with the monster mash it wasn't played on the bbc 1973, 11 years after it was released in the States. So I think for that reason, it's a hard thing to get right. But despite all that, I still think you could argue for Thriller essentially being a Halloween song, couldn't you? I mean, it's on every year. Yeah. Why isn't Nick Cave's Murder Ballad more popular at Halloween?

I mean, that's full of, you know, gory imagery. Possibly for the reasons I just said, yeah. I'd say Time War warp is in the canon really like you you all hear that on radio one on halloween and maybe sympathy for the devil as well and ghostbusters as well there are some halloween songs when you think about it do you think it is also because christmas evolved out of a number of religious festivals and singing is typical of religious festivities whereas halloween of course it's attached to all hallows eve but the celebration of halloween is so disjointed from that it's not like there are

halloween carols in the way there are christmas carols that then also like lent themselves to there being other kinds of christmas song i think that's it and the evidence suggests that even when you've got a halloween hit on your hands people don't want to hear an album of it so people don't know this but um there is a whole surf guitar album by bobby pickett uh called the original monster mash on which monster mash is just one of the tracks and and he had responded to the fact that he had this huge novelty hit on his hands by doing like a 10 or 12 track album whenever it was and it's pretty poor it's kind of fun to listen to but i i tried last night it's on spotify like there's one called blood bank blues which is about a vampire there's one called scully gully which is about like lots of different movie monsters and there's a ballad called me and my mummy m-u-m-m-y

oh wow classic i got three songs in i was like okay i get this now like i just just play monster mash it's fine so maybe there's just not enough money in it as well. I guess people created the market for Christmas pop songs. Would you like a fun fact about Monster Mash? Yes, please. The backing singers are singing Awoo, Tennis Shoe, Awoo. Really? Is that just so it sounds like words, even though it's not meant to be about tennis shoes?

No one knows why. Like, no one can record why they're doing that. But they definitely, once you know, and you listen to Monster Mash and listen out for it, it not in the first chorus but from about two minutes in you can clearly hear tennis shoe and it stands alone despite the fact that nowadays i'd say anyone who isn't a baby boomer so like anyone under the age of 65 basically wouldn't know that bobby pickett is doing a boris karloff impression in that like that doesn't really mean anything to us like you kind of know the spooky voice like you get generically what he's doing like a b-movie voice but isn't it weird to think like that whole song comes out of an actor basically saying i do a boris karloff impression

it's quite funny you could imagine in 50 years time you know 100 years after the song was released no one would have any idea who boris karloff was but it's still like the spooky voice from the monster mash weird also even now it's like what is a mash like mash is like mashed potato yeah it's the dance yeah okay but like mashed potato is not a dance that people in the 21st century recognize that's from like the 60s yeah but twist and shout is still a popular song martin even though people don't know the twist when i picture a halloween artist though i just think of meatloaf because of like the videos I guess exactly I'd say that's aesthetic and it's it's American gothic isn't it is what it is but

it's not if you actually listen to the lyrics they're generally about kind of motorcycle accidents in 1950s suburban America they're not really about Halloween you sound like an actuary when you put it like that had a motorcycle accident in the 1950s tank open bracket and it wasn't your fault close bracket I don't know if you've ever helped your mum build a website it is the kind of torment from which there is no respite if she asks what's a widget again I will kill her

with a rusty spike or a brick or a spade or a chainsaw the square space is so easy even your mum can use it. She can drag and drop and cut and paste, that's all there is to it. So Helen, put that spike down, I beg you, for Christ's sake, don't do it. Sorry, mum. Thanks for Squarespace for supporting Answer Me This.

Elvira uses Squarespace and I'm not even joking. What does she use it for? She uses it for the highlights of her career. There's a contact button. There's a gallery. Oh, classic Squarespace use. You know, everything you'd want from the Elvira website. You can look through all the various different autographed merchandise that you can buy from her, which she sells through the Squarespace e-commerce platform. I mean, basically what I'm saying is, if it's good enough for the Mistress of the Dark, it's good enough for you.

I didn't know you were into Elvira. I mean, by into, I felt a below-the-waist twitch as a child, as a Brit. You only saw Elvira on ITV clip shows hosted by Bob Mills that seemed like a joke I didn't understand. But I was intrigued. Oh, she's got Elvira face masks

in her merch store. There you are. She's on it, isn't she? Make America goth again. If you're not as much of a Squarespace pro as Elvira and you're new to Squarespace, they have loads of online support to help you build your website as well. They do free webinars to teach you lots of design tricks. They've got a great blog called Making It, which is, well, I mean, as far as I can see, it's basically aimed at young professionals in America, really, but it is very readable, tells you how to get yourself a job using a website, how to lay out your CV, how to do a video interview, all of that stuff. You can make a really beautiful looking website, or you can just do as Alvaro does and put a

boob-tacular picture of yourself right at the top, and job done. You can go to squarespace.com slash answer, play around with the free two-week trial. And then when you're ready to ready to launch get a 10 discount off your first purchase of a spooky website or domain if you use our offer code answer hi helen and ollie this is allison in maryland during quarantine my friends and i have been reading plays on zoom together and for halloween we want to do something spooky so what is the scariest play you've ever seen? And why does it seem like there are fewer scary theatrical plays than there are films? It's a good point. I often wonder, you know, horror movies, they're so popular, why theatre isn't used because the medium of being in the same building as what's happening on stage just automatically heightens the atmosphere, doesn't it? Yeah, I wonder whether it is just the demographics because horror is often aimed at

young people who may not be going to theatre exactly the theatre's 40 quid a ticket and also a lot of horror films became classics because they were on like home video yeah but still again you'd think some entrepreneur somewhere would put on a production of carrie or a musical of the ring yeah exactly when allison said what's the scariest play you've ever seen though there was just one answer immediately for me which was woman in black me too and and to be honest actually it's the only the scariest play you've ever seen though? There was just one answer immediately for me, which was Woman in Black. Me too. And to be honest, actually, it's the only ghost play that I've ever seen.

So I can't really compare. But apparently, Ghost Stories by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman was really scary. But I never saw that because I actually didn't want to be scared. I don't want to be scared, actually. The marketing turned me off. I did go and see the Woman in Black on a school trip, like most people do when they're about 15. And I just fucking loved it.

And I went about four times since then. And it is a properly scary... This is Stephen Malletrat's adaptation of Susan Hill's Woman in Black. Properly scary show, isn't it? Yeah. Actually, every version of The Woman in Black book, I've seen two film adaptations and the play have all been scary, but in quite different ways,

because the films are a lot more blatant about it. Whereas the play, it just really puts the shits up you in surprising ways they've got a new pull quote from helen zaltzman after all these years 31 years in the west end it really puts the shits up you helen zaltzman answer me this yes what they've been waiting for but in the play there are two actors yes playing the part so would you advise allison to keep it that way with the Zoom or just include more people if this is more of a getting people together exercise? It's a really hard play to read out, you know, because I did it for my GCSE drama. Like I loved it so much that when it came to doing an extract of a play for our practical exam, that's what I wanted to do. And so me and my

mate Che did it and it was all right, obviously, but we were 15 and so not really carrying the weight of being a solicitor's clerk, whatever was supposed to be but it's hard because the reason there are only two actors in it is because it was done cheaply oh because it was designed as like a christmas story to fill the steven joseph theater in scarborough when it was effectively closed for a few weeks from their usual repertoire wow and so it was commissioned to be as low budget as possible really that's so interesting that's why there's only two actors in it. And it's a play within a play. So you see them being actors first, and then you see them playing all the parts. But actually, that's what makes it brilliantly theatrical and intimate. And that's what's kept it running for 31 years,

because it's so cheap to stage. So you can do it in a small theatre and only have half the seats occupied, and you're still going to be making a profit but that is quite hard to do on zoom because you need two very accomplished actors that's the problem you need two actors who can play like 20 parts between them yeah although i suppose you could adapt it for the zoom format because the main character is isolated a lot of the time although is that boring for everyone else watching i don't know it depends how good they are at monologuing i mean you're only going to really get into it, I'd imagine, if you're participating. So it's probably better to choose a ghost story that's a light ghost story, but has parts for lots of people, like something by Edgar Allan Poe or something.

So read a novel or short stories rather than a play text. Yes. Although I would say it's amazing how much atmospherics have to do with it. Like, it's a torch, it's a shadow, it's a sound effect, it's minor illusion. It's stuff you actually could do with a few candles and stuff, which would really heighten the mood. Yeah, well, because I was thinking, well, maybe Alison could do some film scripts

instead of plays. But then I was like, well, why is it that plays aren't scary? Because I do think it's easier actually because of all these powers of suggestion like you mentioned. Yeah. Because I was thinking Christmas Carol,

there are scary productions of that. Yeah, that true i've it's easier to think of scary moments in plays that i've seen rather than plays that themselves are scary the whole way through like mcbeth right i mean the only other thing that comes close in terms of scaring the shit out of me uh is the jim rose circus do you know what that is? I don't. Please tell. Of course, yeah, I know what Jim Rose is. Enlighten me. They're sort of like pre-Jackass Jackass, aren't they, really? They do weird shit like hammer nails into their noses

and hang fridges off their ball sacks. That's right. What? Yeah, it's like a weird Sado cabaret, I guess. So I'm a delicate child. It's the 90s. I'm 15. I go to Edinburgh Fringe Festival with my parents it's past midnight I'm in a converted church and I'm watching as what's billed as a

sort of circus freak show thing and it's just they went full-on you know they had artists coming out of coffins they had motorbikes there was organ music people inserted nails in their genitals they broke windows over their heads so I, I mean, it was intensely theatrical and I kind of admired it, but I did not feel safe there. So that's the only other time I've been scared watching something. I was dreading any kind of audience participation

because I was 10 years younger than everyone else in the room. And also you didn't want to get tetanus. But actually, obviously, that's a job well done that they created that atmosphere. It's incredible, really. Like, it felt like a proper Victorian carnival freak show, but I was not happy. saw bat boy the musical i suppose that is

sort of supposed to be scary that's funny scary isn't it like sweeney todd though i've seen shock-headed peter three times and there is a scene a short scene in that that always gives me a massive jump scare even though when i know it's coming yeah that's not one you do on a zoom call read though is it i mean that's uh no it's hard elaborate puppetry very puppetry based uh piece hey alison might have the puppetry the band she didn't mention that did she in the call it was a very it was a 15 second call yeah lots we don't know here's a question from paul who says back in 1992 when i was a freaky 10 year old horrorold horror obsessive, Ghostwatch, a faux live broadcast for Haunted House starring Michael Parkinson, Sarah Green and Craig Charles,

was shown at Halloween on BBC One. And it was excellent. How bizarre, by the way, that we should feature two Michael Parkinson side projects on the show in consecutive episodes. Last month, Band on the Run. This month, Ghostwatch. Can we do Give Us a Clue next month? However, says Paul, after ghost watch aired the newspapers reported that several people believed it was real

and it even led to the suicide of a man with learning disabilities it did yeah oh really god well in tabloid parlance it did i mean he left a note that suggested that he might now become a ghost and he'd recently been watching it and he had the mental age of a 13 year old. So yeah, that's how the tabloids reported it at the time. Yeah. After this, the terrestrial TV channels seemed to stop showing horror on Halloween for many years afterwards. So Ollie, answer me this. Were the BBC and other channels forced to stop showing horror at Halloween? Was it an internal decision? Or has my horror-addled mind just imagined the whole thing? Yeah, it's interesting this, because the BBC's attitude to Ghostwatch

now is one of, I wouldn't call it pride, but they certainly celebrate the episode, and you can buy it on DVD, and it's been acknowledged as a cult classic. But at the time, because of that young man's death, very sadly, you know, there was a huge foray about it. And so I mean, I can't find a record of the BBC's Halloween schedule for 1993, as you might imagine. But I wouldn't be surprised if they did indeed steer away from the subject of Halloween for a few years, because that program, it got 30,000 phone calls, the first ever reports of kids getting PTSD from a TV program program and then that young man take his own life so i mean it was it was a tabloid like clusterfuck when it happened um but then i think

there was a period afterwards of reflection where people realized that the people that hadn't been disturbed by it they loved it do you think they remember it like that because it was never repeated on british television so it's just in people's memories partly I mean you can't really now if you were to watch a repeat of it and I haven't seen it since 1992 but if you were to watch a repeat of it you couldn't really uh replicate the resonance of having these live tv presenters who both as a kid you knew because Sarah Green and Mike Smith were big stars from Saturday Morning Kids TV but also people like Michael Parkinson who gave it real weight like he'd never done anything the most stupid thing he'd done was be attacked by emu you know he'd never done a spoof comedy show before and so his presence was the thing that made you think it must be real even

though they build it as a drama like they introduced it as a drama at the end they credited it as a drama written by you know but i don't know people are more media savvy now than they were then but this is like six or so years before blair witch and then people were like i thought it was real yeah so actually ghost watch was way ahead of the game that has real echoes of that um famous awesome wales war of the worlds doesn't it when people cast on the radio and lots of people well there's some debate now as to whether it's exaggerated but the story that the myth is that loads of people freaked there's some debate now as to whether it's exaggerated but the story that the myth is that loads of people freaked out and thought aliens were really landing in massachusetts

or whatever yeah yeah i mean it's i suppose it's any horror format where you're using not just found footage which i guess is the blair witch genre but it's live broadcast but it's live exactly using the language of live broadcast with presenters that you trust on b One. You have to remember, 1992, 9.35pm, 11 million people would be watching BBC One. It's not like now. And there was no... Nowadays, if they did a stunt like that, then immediately everyone would hop on Twitter or Facebook

and, of course, there'd be conversation about how they made it and who's in it and who wrote it. Yeah, yeah. But then, what they'd done, actually, is they constructed... They had the going live phone line, 081-811-8181 was the number that you called whilst you were watching. So they had Mike Smith in front of a bank of actors on telephones saying, we're waiting for your call, have you seen a ghost?

And the idea was that for everyone who called that number, they'd get a voice greeting saying, the programme you're watching is fictional don't have nightmares however if you'd like to share your spooky story leave it after the beep but they got so many phone calls like i say 30 000 that the line crashed and so most people got an engaged tone they didn't hear the message saying it was fictional and like i say it's not like now where there'd be a website there was nothing so like people who thought it was real thought it was real and had nothing to contradict it did parkinson in particular get into trouble for it since he was the trustworthy element

no i haven't actually seen much record of that sarah green was the one who got some flack because she was a contemporary kids tv presenter and so her presence on the show even though it was 9 35 at night sort of said to children this is for you so she had to go on blue peter or something on the monday and tell everyone it was fictional um but uh no the rest of them i think kind of well not only got away with it but actually we're going to be bafta nominated allegedly and the bbc suppressed that because it had been such a ferrari that they didn't want to be recognized for it at award season i have like a dim recollection of watching some of that broadcast and it being obviously bullshit yeah like and i and i missed but when you say it was 92 so i would have been 14 so you know not the media savvy uh bearmouth that i am now and even i figured out that it was it was obviously a fake at the end

it gets really silly and michael parkinson gets possessed by a ghost and it's it's very clearly a gag but you know you're an hour in by that point. Like what they did quite well and quite cleverly, I think, is that the scares weren't big jump scares. They were crediting the audience's intelligence to spot things in the background, which of course, you know, pre-high definition was hard to do. And the Mike Smith in the call centre thing was like, we've been having lots of calls from lots of viewers all over the country

who all see, they all say they see something in the background in this shot let's have a look at it and then they played back the same shot and it didn't have the person standing in the background stuff like that that's nice so it was it was real like mind tricks on the audience who were prepared to go along with it and what was clever about it was even though shows like most haunted hadn't been invented yet the visual language of that broadcast even though it was fictional kind of pre-echoed all of that stuff existing. So they had infrared cameras and they had interviews with passers-by. It felt like if there was a real ghost show, which there then turned out to be 10 years later, this is what it would look like.

What is it that people were so angry about? It scared them shitless. There was one woman who wrote in to the BBC and asked for compensation in the form of a pair of trousers because her husband had literally shat himself and like i say ptsd i mean actually recorded psychological disorders as a result of watching that program is there a statute of limitations to complaining to the bbc like could you call them it is too late to complain about my cardiologist says that you've destroyed me. I'm an answer me this fan. I listen with my nan.

She is not so keen. She finds it too obscene. I follow them on Twitter, though Ashton Kutcher's fitter. I want to take things further, just one step short of murder. I want to look like Ali-Man. I want to smell like Ali-Man. I want to look like Olly Mann I want to smell like Olly Mann I want to be like Olly Mann

I want to taste like Olly Mann I want to look like Olly Mann I want to taste like Olly Mann I want to be like Olly Mann Here's a question from Alice in in auckland who says helen asked me this what happens if you cut a vampire's arm off i can't remember seeing any one-armed vampires vampires are very ableist i went to my friendly vampire expert jenny owen young's of buffering the vampire slayer podcast and she could identify a one-armed vampire in the buffy film

did anyone watch the buffy film i remember people not liking it i mean it existed i assume someone bought a ticket i know it existed because in the video shop in southborough on the outskirts of tunbridge wells there was a large cardboard cutout of kirsty swanson from the film southborough cutouts don't lie there's no point lying right in the south for a video shop jenny says paul rubens famous for playing peewee herman either loses an arm in the movie or starts the movie without one arm right and it doesn't grow back i mean if he lost it you know because of an accident or he was born with that defect as a human because of course vampires are just normal people aren't they who then become vampires then that makes sense if someone injured a vampire by trying to chop off their arm that's the question that alice is asking what happens if

you cut a vampire's arm off it's a bit like asking what happens if you cut a lion's mane i mean just don't do you if you're that close stab him through the heart you wouldn't take the risk would you but here's the thing with vampires though right they're supposedly hard to kill although i dispute that in that you can do it with daylight or a stake through the heart, but you could really fuck up a vampire and then they have to live with it long term. That's right, yeah. So maybe that's why Alice is asking, you know, you can reduce a vampire

just to the essentials. So you'd die, but you'd have the satisfaction of knowing that for all eternity, they're going to be a vampire that's less able. What if you cut a vampire's arms and legs off? Yeah, how are they going to feed? I mean, I suppose I could sort it into a bat

and attack you that way, but they're less able to pose pose a threat yeah presumably vampires can also starve to death and i don't know that i've seen the materials and i haven't watched loads of vampire stuff but materials where vampires do starve so i guess that would be another way that they could die i mean in some senses you could argue that vampirism is an impairment anyway you know they need to stay in darkness they've got very specific dietary Losing an arm would just be another disability to add to the list. Actually, researching for this, I searched for how do vampires and the auto prompt on Google was get hard. Oh, right. Because of the blood flow. Yeah, but we all know that they drink blood and

they like blood. So that's how they get hard. Like, what's the issue? Like, why are people Googling that? I mean, I know there's a sex vampire thing going on, but why would that be an obstacle? Is there some like version of the vampire myth where vampires don't have blood and that's why they have to drink blood but then they've got it and then they're able to get an erection surely yeah but things you eat don't necessarily go into your circulation in their pure form like you're not getting extra blood in your system by eating black pudding well you kind of are but i know you wouldn't it wouldn't give you a stiffy well it might but yeah it's coincidental Every single vampire thing that I have seen

has done slightly different things with the vampire lore. So I'd imagine some of them, if it was convenient to their plot to cut a vampire's arm off and they die from it by bleeding out or whatever a vampire does instead of bleeding out, then I guess they would do that. Or, I mean, do vampires get, like, infected wounds? There's a lot of vampire logistics questions. how does a scratch on a vampire heal right do you know they reckon that the the vampire myth might have been inspired as a sort of supernatural solution to explain the

circumstances of porphyria oh really which is a disorder where you get blisters when your skin's exposed to sunlight and it can cause gums to recede from the teeth in extreme cases which makes them look more prominent and it can make your body go purple or at least your waist go purple like undigested blood and there were a lot of cases in romania in the 1700s apparently and that's where the idea of vampires came from as a way of explaining what was happening i did one of my first science communication talks on this because i was uh working in the field of photosensitivity and apparently apparently one of the cures that one of the folk cures was giving people blood they thought that would help to cure it well that was a medical thing for 1600 years because of the four humors if you had been diagnosed as your humors were imbalanced because you didn't have

enough blood they would try and stimulate blood production by making you eat spice things like that maybe some of them would have like made you drink blood i also read this really horrible thing that was saying that basically when there was a like a plague in the old days um kind of like what we're having now if people didn't scientifically understand what was happening then of course the first thing they'd recourse to is is a supernatural solution and they'd say you know maybe it's the undead somewhere or someone's put a curse on us and in some cases that led to people digging up corpses that they were suspicious about and to look at them and see what was going on and in some cases those corpses had fresh blood on their teeth and that's where the idea came from that people who are undead go around biting stuff and the reason that they had blood on their teeth

according to this article is that back then people were buried alive in a catatonic state with an undetectable pulse. And in extreme cases, if you woke up underground and you were in a coffin, you'd bite yourself in panic. Oh, God. And that's what the blood would be. And then they'd find them later and be like, vampire! And, you know, that would be their whole family's reputation ruined.

It's a bit victim-blaming, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Well, I've enjoyed this foray into Halloween stuff, Olly. So have I. I knew I would. I knew I would. It's been great. If you've enjoyed this themed episode of the show, you should check out our themed albums that are available at answermethisstore.com. Absolutely. And, you know, Christmas follows on from the Halloween spirit. And so maybe you could give Answer Me This Christmas a go.

Or our new for 2020 album, entertainment which like this is a special edition just about one theme in that case stuff you do at home so cooking box set binging etc and it is free right now if you want it to be it's pay what you like at answer me this door.com every penny supports the show we'll be back next month with a fresh new episode of answer me this and we need your questions so please send us emails or voice memos or contact details are on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com And we have other work for you to check out online.

Helen. Yes, I make the podcast, Veronica Mars Investigations, where we're just about to reach the finale of season two. Yeah, it's exciting, but in a slightly annoying way. And The Illusionist, I have just released no title, which was the 2019 Illusionist touring show,

which is basically an hour of stand-up about gender in language. And there's a lot of information in it, and you wouldn't have thought it'd be a great topic for entertainment, but it is. Well, I didn't make it along to a live event, because the one time you did it in Britain, I wasn't in Britain. So I will listen to that. Yeah, I did that deliberately.

Yeah. What's happening in the manscaped universe of pods this month uh well i do five podcasts you can discover them all at ollyman.com and in my magazine show the modern man m-a-double-n we test out trends answer your sex questions and meet incredible people and in this month's edition uh i meet and answer me this listener actually called lexi hi lexi oh who is a trans woman and we talk about her journey from male to female hormones pronouns surgeons all of that and actually most interestingly i think the realities of dating as a trans woman and deciding who is genuinely interested in her and who is a fetishist listen to that at modern man m-a-double-n.co.uk

martin i do a couple of podcasts that uh and some of these listeners might enjoy one of them is called maddie sound explorers hosted by children's presenter maddie moat where we take a sound and we explore science or nature um so you could listen to that just search on your podcaptor for maddie sound explorers that's a good one if you've got kids it's great one if you've got kids if you haven't got kids still fun or if you are a kid uh if you like music i do a podcast called song by song in which we talk about the music of tom waits great one if you've got kids that one yeah good to start on young that's song by song podcast.com and if you want more of our answer me this stuff then you can buy episodes 1 to 200 at answer me this store.com and we will also put

one of those archive episodes out into your pod feed in the middle of the month and then we'll be back here with you next month talk about non-scary things you can send us pictures of your home halloween stuff on our twitter i would enjoy seeing that i want to see that martin costume so bad oh my god yes send us all of your Martin costume pictures. We'll have a competition for the sexiest Martin the Sandman costume. If only Martin could win that contest. It'd be a bit galling if I didn't win that contest. Sorry.

It's like when Adele didn't win the Adele sounded like contest, Martin. Bye!