Answer Me This! - AMT415: BLTs, Zambonis and the Wingdings Conspiracy

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

This month, questioneers want to know what Zambonis are up to on ice hockey rinks, what Wee Willie Winkie is up to running through the town, why not many sandwiches go by their initials, how to reassure a spouse about their upcoming voluntary kidney donation, and whether Jimi Hendrix unleashed green parakeets across southeast England. For more information about this episode, head to answermethispodcast.com/episode415. Got questions for us to answer, or feedback about an episode old or new? Send them in writing or as a voice note to [e-mail], or you can call 0208 123 5877 like the old days.  AMT416 will be in your podfeed 26 March 2026, with an episode of Answer Us Back mid-month; paying patrons at patreon.com/answermethis also get a batch of Bonus Bits, plus the Petty Problems back catalogue, AND an ad-free version of AMT415. If you sign up at one of the higher Patreon tiers, you get access to an RSS feed with ALL the AMT stuff EVER, including our entire back catalogue, our six themed albums, the retro AMTs, and every Bit of Crapp from the AMT App.  This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you're ready to launch, 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

At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a law firm, your bar for everything is high. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Dejardin.com slash business coverage. Hi, I'm Sam Baker, and welcome to the show. shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds-bar truth about being a woman post-40. I started the shift because I was so tired of the absence of older women's voices.

Where had all the women over 40 gone? I mean, seriously, if you want to walk about in your pajamas for the rest of your life, we're invisible. Each episode, I speak to an inspiring woman about her shift. I feel very strong and think I genuinely don't care what anybody thinks of me. Join me every Tuesday, wherever you listen to your podcasts. a good toasty maker, aside from Breville. Hasolidivis, hazebel. Why am I disheveled, but never sheavelled?

Has to be this. Heaven and lonely. You know, we try and keep this show as a refuge from the travails of the world. So I just feel I should say right up top, content warning, clowns. I know, they're not for everybody. Matt has been in touch to say, Helen, you can't casually drop the sentence like that library of clown makeup

where it's all on an egg into a podcast and not elaborate further. So please elaborate further. Have you not heard of the clown egg registry which started in 1946? It's a library of clown makeup where a clown's unique face is painted onto originally an egg shell

and now they use ceramic eggs because they're a bit more stable. I was going to say famously prone to breakage, eggs. Yeah, but quite useful for recording the contours of a face because it is three-dimensional. And it's sort of like a copyright library almost because it was considered bad form to use another clown's look. Obviously, duplication can happen by accident. And you can still do it. You can go to clowns international.com slash egg-hyphen registry.

And for a year membership and two eggs, one for the library and one for you, it's £60 plus shipping. Clowns International. There's something inherently funny about the idea of any kind of authority for clowns. Like, they're such sort of instinctive disruptors. It seems odd they'd have a union. I don't know, maybe that's what they need to keep things anarchic in the right context. When it's business, it's all business. And there's one person at a time who does all of the clowns.

I think the current artist's been doing it for about 10 years. Is it like voodoo dolls if you smash one on the floor does the real clown die? Oh, God. I haven't tested. That's what happened to Gromaldi. Someone made an omelette. Oh. Actually, how did Grimaldi die? It might have been something.

I mean, he'd be dead by now anyway. Oh, yeah, I've done a podcast about him before. It was something Victorian and morbid, but, you know, it was the era. He had a horrible life, actually. Yeah. Like, the cliche, like tears of a clown basically comes from him. Terrible life. Child star, alcoholic.

But I bet he had a great egg. Gromelty and his wife had a suicide pact, but when they poisoned themselves, they just got stomach cramps and didn't die. There you are. Don't trust a clown to get it done. That's what I'm saying. That's exactly it. That's why they need the union.

Apropos of other deathly entertainment that we've been talking about recently, Jordan from South Wales writes, I think the butler did it thing. It's from the game Cludeau, is it not? No, because the butler isn't a potential suspect, Jordan. The original characters are scarlet mustard, white, green peacock plum. A butler has been added in certain spinoffs of Cludeau, like the film and the video game,

but he's not really canon. So no, it doesn't come from that. I think also the phrase predates the game, right? It is a really fun story, the origin of Cludeau. Yeah, tell me more, tell me more. The inventor was a piano player. Tell me more, tell me more. He used to like murder mystery evenings.

I bet you'd have to you. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Then he had a good idea. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And his wife was a visual artist. Oh, handy. And then what happened is after he'd had the idea of being like a piano player in a hotel bar, seeing murder mystery evenings and thinking, aha, game.

World War II happened. Huh. And he was too old to fight. He was at home with his wife a lot. He created the gaming concept. She created the visual concept. Basically spent their evenings during World War, like during the Blitz where they couldn't leave the house.

Brainstorming Cludeau, which is why it's such a carefully finessed game because they had loads of time every evening. The choices were, you know, sit and listen to the wireless or design a board game. And they did that for ages. And weirdly, their neighbours were Geoffrey Bull and his wife, Geoffrey Ball, this guy who invented Buccaneer. What? So he had the professional game tester on hand to come and iron out the creases,

and then Bull said to Pratt, amazing noun-based names, aren't they? Bull said to Pratt, come and meet Waddingtons. I've got a contact. I reckon they're going to greenlight it, and they did. Gosh. That's how Clido happened. Oh, well, that's a very productive use of the Blitz. Almost makes it worth it, doesn't it?

I don't know. One of the weapons that you could play with in the original, which was called murder, exclamation mark, it was Waddingtons that came up with the name, Cludeau, was a bomb. The weapons included a poison syringe and a bomb. It'd be pretty fucking obvious if it was a bomb that killed the... Yes, yeah.

The suspect has half a torso. I wonder what weapon was... Are they just trying to take out every character in one go? Yeah, I think choosing the room would be fairly straightforward as well, wouldn't it? Was it the library? been completely devastated. Yes, it was the library. Ben from Geneva has been in touch as well. He says, I live in Geneva and went to the Winter Olympics in Milan about two hours away on the train. I was going with a Canadian friend, so we chose ice hockey. Yes, obligatory. I guess you can relate to

this now. Have you become hockey fans? No, I'm fine. Do you have to have a limited amount of hockey chat just to get through conversation like you do football here, though? Is that like the status? Actually, I'd say that people are a lot less inclined to force their favourite sport on you than Brits who like football are. I haven't had to have hockey chat that I didn't want to have. And also we have been watching curling, which is a big Canadian sport. Well, okay, so park that thought because it's relevant. Ben from Jeddaher went to see the ice hockey with his Canadian friend and says, and we watched a wildly entertaining match in the almost Finnish new arena.

I'm glad you said that because I remember. the London 2012 park was never finished, clearly. Was it not? Just like, it didn't look tested. Do you know what I mean? It looked like they just kind of hand-painted the last bit, but you're like, this shouldn't end here. Where's the bin?

Stuff like that. Anyway, Ben continues. In between the periods, that would be the periods of the hockey play. Right. Instead of any sort of show, we watched on as large stout trucks, Zambonis,

that's right. Made the ice look lovely and fresh. Yeah. I just said stout trucks in a weird. way like they distribute stout the beer, but he just means large trucks. That's what the ice is made out of. Yeah, yeah. It's just a slush of Guinness heads. So, Helen answered me this. What does the Zamboni actually do?

People also came on to shovel the ice. Is the Zamboni doing something different? And also, why rear axle steering? Well, the rear axle steering, as far as I can glean and bear in mind that about 30 seconds of reading how vehicles actually work makes my brain go, no, no, no, is because ice is slippery, as you may know, Ben. and that means the vehicles sort of slide around on it less and also like the tyres at the back don't lift off. Yeah, you don't get drift behind you so you can kind of see what's happening in front of you.

That kind of makes sense. Car chat, no, no. But the visibility is appalling. Like regardless of drifting, if you're sitting at the back and you've got a big enormous hood in front of you, you can't see what's going on under the... It must be difficult to drive. Yeah, well, the driver is driving behind a big,

tank, that's why the front of a zamboni's so big. What Zambonis are doing is shaving the top layer of ice off the rink. Then they suck it into that tank. And then they squirt a layer of water onto the ice to clean it. They suck that back up. And then they squirt another layer of water, a clean layer of water to make a new top layer. It usually melts the ice that is still there. And then it refreezes smooth.

And the breaks in ice hockey games are usually just long enough for that whole process to happen. But they can't really have a show because the Zamboni needs to go over the rink. And the reason why it's doing this is because the rink gets all rutted from the skate blades. And the shovelers go out ahead of the Zamboni to pick up the ice scrapings that have occurred during the game. It's basically like a snow that is generated by the blades. And that can disrupt where the puck is going. It can get flicked into the player's faces and it can gather quite significantly at the edges. So the shovelers have like 90 seconds to get all of that out the way and then the Zamboni can do its job.

I never thought about this before, but it makes sense now that I've read it. The whiteness of the rink isn't just the colour of ice. It's a layer of white paint that is somewhere between the bottom layers and the top layers of the ice. Oh, right, yeah. So like a cellar tape roll. So it looks like the colour of the cardboard at the bottom. You mentioned curling. Yes.

I parked it. Let's return to it. Yes. I was watching the curling. Different kind of ice, Holly. Right. Curling's got a bobbly ice. So they have to wear special shoes that look almost like orthopedic shoes.

Do you know the ones? I mean they look like they've been made by Clarks. It looks a bit like the Book of Mormon on Ice, doesn't it? That's the vibe. Exactly. Exactly. They really do look kind of like they've done something deliberately sort of spare. You know, when you compare it to Premiership Footballers,

whose shoes now are like fluorescent orange and pink with green laces and stuff. I was kind of looking at thinking, why is no one, why is, and the answer is, I suppose, because it's not worth Adidas developing a curling shoe, is it because not enough people do curling? That's the reason. They don't have to be orthopedic looking. They just do tend to be. But they have like different souls.

You can adapt just your own shoes with some gaffer tape to make it smooth to glide. But I was really disappointed in the British curling team's outfits. They were the most boring corporate-looking t-shirts. They were, they were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, these people are in the Olympics. Give them something better to wear. They deserve it. No, you're right.

It was Rishi Sunak playing tennis at the weekend was the look, wasn't it? Oh. Molly, age 14 weeks and six days. Gosh. Has allegedly written in. Fact checker on aisle three. She says, I've been listening to lots of nursery rhymes recently, particularly when my mum is trying to get me to nap.

So Helen answered me this. Who is Wee Willie Winky? Is he based on a real person? And why does he tell the children to go to bed? Well, why does he tell the children to go to bed? It's because kids' poetry is usually about getting children to do things, like not be naughty or shut up or go to bed. But we, Willy Winky, is not only a child running,

through the town, supposedly exhorting children to go to bed. He is the sleepless child who refuses to go to bed. Okay, just as a reminder for people, I just, I have here a copy of nursery rhymes. Lovely. A collection of her of her 100 favourites. And I read this with my kids tonight in preparation. Did they like it? They were a bit foxed by any of the historical ones.

They're a bit like, what? But I'll just read it for people who don't remember it. Okay. We, Willy Winky, runs through the town upstairs and downstairs in his night. night gown. Rapping at the window, crying through the lock, are the children all in bed, it's past eight o'clock? Eight o'clock. It used to be ten o'clock. Oh, really? That shrinkflation. I read it and I, like, a lot of these, I'm like, I sort of get the gist. I get it's Scottish. I get that it's a kid in the street. I get that he's doing some sort of come and play with me

kids thing. But what's not clear, actually, from the, from the words, I didn't think, is, you know, are the children all in bed, it's past eight o'clock? Eight o'clock in the morning or the evening? Like you just said it was 10, so they'll make it clearer. But like, he could be waking them up in the morning, couldn't he? He's out for a play. Where's everyone? Come and play with me. So I didn't get what was going on.

Well, he's in his nightgown, Ollie. So that's a hint that it's the night. But yeah, but he could have wandered out in his nightgown early in the morning, no? The cats asleep, the hens asleep, the dogs are asleep. It's just we, Willy Winky, who's not asleep. Right. Well, you see, you've added a second verse there. My book of nurse runs.

I haven't. It's a five-verse thing. Fine. Okay. I didn't mean you invented the verse. I'm saying, I don't have the second verse. I didn't know about the cat and the dog. Yeah, well, there's plenty more evidence.

Fine, tell me. Tell me about it. You're getting a non-canonical version, Ollie. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. I mean, I don't know if you want me to read all five verses of it. Patreon.com slash answer me this. You know I would. But he's, yeah, he's running around.

He's making noise. He's wriggling. And then at the end, the last verse is about a weary mother, dealing with her child battling with sleep. Is there a thing whether maybe Wee Willy Winky was a naughty child that didn't sleep and now he's cursed to roam the earth around the earth telling the children to sleep? That would be the like 10th century version. There were a lot of people cursed to roam the earth.

But in answer to this baby's questions, the character was not based on a real person. We Willi Winky the poem was written by a cabinet maker named William Miller and first appeared in print in Scots language in a book called, Whistle Binky Stories for the Fireside in 1841 and then an English version was published three years later. However, the first verse, the bit you read, I believe, appeared in an English poetry compilation in 1820. And William Miller can't have written that or is very unlikely to

because he was only 10 at the time. So I wonder if he encountered that and then expanded it into the full Scots poem later. But the term Willie Winky was kind of in the public imagination already, particularly in Scotland, because it was a nickname for King William, the third of England, second of Scotland. And it was this like sardonic nickname for him in the late 1700s, because the Scots really didn't like him. He had ordered the massacre of Glencoe to punish people who refused to make an oath of allegiance to him and his wife Mary as monarchs. He was also Protestant and the

Jacobites wandered him out. He never went to Scotland. But he wasn't an insomniac, crucially. Did he do like winking? Maybe. I think they're just like taking the piss out of him by calling him Willy Winky. But I don't think this poem was about him dressing up in a nightgown running around town. I think it's just like, oh yeah, this term that people know already. And then of course there's a direct line to Wicked Willie, the books of the 1980s. God. Do you remember those?

Yeah. Well, I'd blissfully forgotten until just now, so thanks. I googled it because I'd remembered it wrong. Okay, so how did you remember it? So how I'd remembered it is from the merch. So in the 80, and I remembered it because it was a... inappropriate. I mean, I remember being like on holiday in tourist shops in places like Spain and Cyprus. And they'd be selling like cock and balls with smiley faces on it stuff next to the toys

for me when I was eight. Right. And I thought it was funny because it's a willy, but now I think about it. It's a bit weird because the whole thing was kind of like, Wicked Willie's got a mind of his own, he'll stiffen of his own accord. That's what Wicked Willie is. Right. And he's never far from a pair of funny boobs. It's a bit weird for kids to have that, you know, around. Well, it wasn't aimed at them, was it? Well, it was on the same shelf, though, in that Spanish way. Okay. Went on the continent.

And I'd remember it, as I said, as penis and balls, but I don't know if that wasn't, like, if that was rip-off merch because I looked at Wicked Willie and actually, interestingly, Wicked Willie is just a shaft. Really? No balls. There's no testicles at all. You know, he's up to no good all the times. Let me out.

And it actually quite an aggressive, kind of like, like an angry. Well, he is wicked, remember? Yeah. I think I didn't know either. is, have you heard of a year in Provence? Yeah. Yeah, the Peter Mail book. That was a very big hit in the 90s.

Correct. I may even have read it and can't remember anything about it. Right. Don't drink your tea whilst I'm saying this, because you might spit it out. I'll put it down. Okay. Thank you for the warning. Peter Mail went to Provence with his Wicked Willie royalty money.

He wrote Wicked Will. What? Yes. Yeah. He's Wicked Willie. He's the Wicked Willie guy. He didn't illustrate it. So often, you know, when you say who wrote Wicked Willie, you get the name of the illustrator,

but it was Peter Mail's story. I didn't realize there was much writing involved, but I suppose it is a literary adaptation. Exactly. So, anyway, that's what I learned today. Peter Mail wrote Wicked Willie. Yeah. And that's how he was able to buy a house in Provence

and then make even more money. Wow, some people just have a knack. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. Out of such little, such thin gruel. I've got a penis. I'm going to write a story about having a penis. Then I'm going to write a story about what it's like to have a house, and people are going to like that.

Yeah, you know, just look around and find it. inspiration in the Quedidian. Anywhere. Anywhere. Wow. He didn't even get round to writing one about his balls. I mean, that's what I mean. It's amazing.

That was going to be a separate spin-off. It was going to be the better-call soul of Wicked Willie. Better call ball. Better call ball. Thank you, Martin. I've got a question. Then email your question. To answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com.

Answer me this podcast at Googlemail. So, to me, this podcast, at Googlemail.com. And to me this podcast, the Google Mail. So retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of today in history? On Monday, Earhooks, lenses and bifocals, a brief history of spectacles. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day Francis of Assisi first put on his sackcloth. On Wednesday, the dapper French businessman with a garden full of dead bodies. On Thursday, it's the 189th Academy Awards, and the winner isn't La La La Land.

And on Friday, throw me something, mister, how Mardi Gras came to America. That's today in history with the retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Amy. Amy says, Oli, answer me this. What was the point of the wing ding font? I saw there was a controversy about it, but dared not Google it further. Everyone just wants us to have the awful search for history that they don't want.

Cowards! I think we're too late to turn back on that road. Just using cognitive braising, you don't have. to write to us. Let's put to one side the controversy, I'll get there. Wingdings, the font, available with Microsoft products from 1992 onwards, designed in 1990. I think the era kind of tells you what Wingdings is. It's early emoji, basically.

I mean, it's a series of symbols that you can produce with your keyboards, knowing that throughout human history since hieroglyphics, people have liked the idea of communicating in images rather than codex lettering, knowing it would be cool to get that onto a computer, but in an era, the early 90s, when the kind of thing we take for granted now was completely impossible to imagine. Something like copying and pasting from the internet,

like you do now, when you see a symbol you like. Even having the internet. Even having the internet knowing what the internet was, having the download speeds to see the picture on the internet, all of that was years away. Even a simple icon of like an envelope, if you wanted to put an email address on some headed notepaper, to get that onto a floppy disk

so that you could put it on your friend's computer would have been a trip, you know, you physically have to save it and move it around. It would have been a three-film journey like Lord of the Rings to get that thing on a floppy disk. So this was a way of getting high-quality, scalable images that didn't clog up your hard drive

onto everyone's computer. Your 256 megabyte hard drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put this language, bundle it in with the floppy disks that people are loading into their computer to put word onto it anyway. And then one of the fonts is the vehicle for this new...

I was going to say language, but it wasn't intended to be a language. And that's where the controversy is misplaced. Oh, language controversy. I'm so tired. Such a foreign subject to you, yeah. The whole controversy came from people treating it as if it were a language. I say, what happens if I type out these words? It wasn't...

They had never occurred to the people who made wing ding, so that's what you do. What they thought you'd do is open your manual to... Windows 95 and think, hmm, I've got a restaurant, how do I get a picture of a sausage? And it would even say, page 96 images. And then you'd scroll down and say, ah, press Control X and I'll get a sausage if I choose wingdings. They're not thinking you're going to spell out words. It wasn't semaphore. It was just a way of getting the images on there.

But you can't determine how people use your novelty typeface once it's out. So, you know, before I get to the controversy, let's just do some etymology because you're like this. You've teased this so much. So any idea where Wing Ding may have came from as a root? I'm assuming the rhyme was attractive. The Wynn, I'll tell you, comes from Windows. So the Wing bit is Microsoft.

And is the dings just so that it rhymes? No, it has its origins in the phrase dingbat font, which was a thing before wingdings. So a type of font that uses alphabetical or numerical characters and ornamental and typographical glyphs. Okay. is called a dingbat font, and that comes from the printing press. Like, it's been there for hundreds of years.

And it's for things like ornamental pieces to do title pages and contents and stuff like that. So it's not a letter. It's like, I want a frilly bit round the edge. That's a dingbat. That's a dingbat. That may have just been on a masterpiece. It might have been like some geyser who was like, oh, yeah, pass the dingbat, because it sounds funny, and it sounds a bit like the sound it might make when it hits the floor or something.

But it could come from Dingus, the Dutchman. word for thing. Anyway, dingbat is a thing with precedent. Wingdings is the Windows dingbat. There you go. Let's get on to the controversy. Yay, controversy time. Al-Qaeda.

It's where things take it turn for the less fun. So, like I say, weirdos used to spell things out with wingdings to see what it looked like and whether it had a secret message in it. Because long before COVID, people were certain that Bill Gates was trying to communicate some terrible message through his products. So, conspiracy theory number one emerged around about 1992, shortly after the release of Windows 3.1, when people notice that when you spell out NYC as in New York City, you get what the New York Post described salaciously as, quote, a secret anti-Semitic message, apparently urging death to Jews in New York City.

What? That would be, a skull and crossbones is the N, a star of David is the capital Y, and a thumbs up. is the C. I mean, that's weak, isn't it? That's unfortunate. I mean, it could have just been a bagel with a thumbs down. And it had the similar fury. I think if you were typing Jew and it was like bomb, bomb, skull and crossbones, that's more to that.

But, you know, NYC... It's like when I typed some cunt into Google Maps once and it just went to China. I mean, I typed in OLLI, you know, by comparison. O-L-Y, obviously some of the same letters there. So that in Wing Ding's capital letters is a flag, two sad face emoji, and a star of David. Yikes! Exactly, yeah.

My surname is a bomb, piece fingers, skull and crossbones, skull and crossbones. That's a very mixed message. Yeah. So it seems fairly obvious that this was nonsense. But in this sort of early day of internet conspiracy theory, these things would travel for years because no one could instantly disprove them. People would put them in these massive group emails.

You remember those that like your weird uncle, would send you. So that went on for years and then of course second controversy number two, 2001, shortly after the terror attacks on September the 11th. You were at peak mad uncle email time then. You've got this conspiracy already. NYC death to choose. And so people are like, look, this is what it is. And also look at this. How many random words were they typing into wingdings to see what they got? Apparently if you typed Q33 NY, into Wing Dings. So Queenie.

Yeah. So the spam weird uncle email said that Q33 was the flight number of the plane that crashed into the Twin Towers first. Was it? No. If you typed Q33 NY into Wing Dings, you got an aeroplane, two symbols that looked a bit like two towers. And then NY, which, as we've said before, is the Scarlet Crossbones and the Star of David. So people like, aha. I mean, what, who, even if that was even if.

Bill Gates had planned 9-11. What? Huge of truth. It's a sophisticated plan. I mean, you can't summarize it as that, can you? Anyway, Q33 wasn't the flight number. That was a myth. And the graphics that supposedly

were the North and South Tower of the Twin Towers were documents. There's a thing, isn't there? Like, when people who are having mental health breaks start to see patterns and everything, that's quite common with, like, kind of paranoid, psychosis and stuff

like, you know, when you start to say, oh, the letterbox I walk past had, you know, ZX371, that's, you know, the name of my first computer. And you can look for patterns. People are very good at spike patterns. Yeah, and code is some, you know, it is true, isn't it,

that people that have secret agendas communicate in code. So I suppose wingdings appearing to be a bit like a code you could crack. And computers being something that people kind of generally skeptical about, you know, this thing that's arrived in every office, office in every house. I think all of that combined to create this kind of paranoid atmosphere. But it gets so ridiculous, like, after it's then disproven that Q33 was the plane number, you then get like, no, but the age of the first Al-Qaeda terrorist, he was 33. So it's about him.

And Quthorcaida. Oh, this is some Swifties level of Easter-Egging, isn't it? Yeah. And then someone said, no, it's the age Jesus was when he died. Again, Osama bin Laden's too busy to do a cryptic crossword about this. Are there no more recent Wing Dings conspiracies, or did the fact that wingedings isn't such a feature anymore really ruin that whole trope? It's gone. Probably for the best. But the font hasn't, pleasingly.

There's now one called WebDings. Actually, when they released WebDings, Microsoft ensured then to try and nip this in the bud, but of course you can't. That if you were to type NYC into WebDings, you wouldn't get anything that could be interpreted as death to the Jee's. So you now get an eye, a heart and a city skyline. you know, like I-heart, NY. Wow, they've erased the Jews from New York. Yeah. Oh my God, that's worse on Semitism.

I mean, you can't win, can you? But it's like, at the same time, it's like acknowledging that you can reverse engineer it that way isn't going to quiet in the people that thought you'd engineered it that way in the first place. That's the problem. Right. Yeah, if you've got to pick a lane, haven't you? Like, either the symbols are not interpreted to be written as words.

Or, oh, yes, this was a terrible mistake. We should correct it. But, like, knowing that people are going to type in NYC to see what they get, that's kind of, that is problematic about what you've, your intentions were before. And as per our Millennium Bug conversation last episode, there was a bit of paranoia

about the word millennium as well as we went into this century because it had a skull and crossbones and a bomb in it. Maybe they should have put the skull and crossbones and bomb symbols on letters that were less frequently used. Yes, I think that's probably right, yeah, like a dash or something.

Yeah. A plus. Yeah, the little like squiggly thing. Do you think of a tilde? COVID-19. Oh shit. Okay, it's a thumbs up. Yeah, plundemic, am I right? A square, the windows logo,

some ancient Egyptian symbols that I vaguely recognise but aren't sure about, a folder and a tape measure. It is all there. It's as clear as day. COVID came out of a fair-res tomb. It's the curse of the tomb coming back. And they tried to tell us. Wake up, sheeple.

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Time for a question of birds now from Rachel, who says. My question is about the green parakeets that seem to inhabit every London park. I like them, but my first. father-in-law hates them because they apparently murder native birds. Have you heard this? They're apparently a menace. They're the squirrels of the sky. Yes, I have heard this. But I think that's always the case about invasive species as people are like, oh, it's murdering the native bluebells, the native bees.

Yeah, I had no idea there were this many parakeets that it was a problem. Whenever I spot them, I think, oh, how exotic. But apparently there are loads of them. So the question is, Helen answered me this. Where did they originally come from? I've seen lots of varying claims on Reddit posts from Jimmy Hendricks releasing them to them escaping from the set of Tarzan. The African Queen is the one that I've read. I'd love to get to the bottom of it, says Rachel. I just think you need to prepare, Rachel, for not getting to the bottom of it because there's so many bullshit explanations.

The explanations that I've heard the longest are that they were escaped pets from Orpington in Southeast London. That sounds like a region-specific one to you growing up seeing parakeets. No, well, I didn't see them when I was growing up until I moved to London, but the populations of the parakeets were concentrated around southeast London and North Kent, which makes it plausible, because that is where most of them were for a while. And the other explanation that is repeated so much, but has certainly not the ring of truth, is Jimmy Hendricks releasing a pair of them in 1968. What? Why? Like, why Hendricks? Why would he have parakeets? Why would he release? Because there were lovebirds? I don't know. and it's like the era of that kind of Carnaby Street, love and paste?

Sure. It mystifies me when people compare them to pigeons. I know that they make mess and eat shit, but they're just, whenever I see them, I feel lucky to have seen them. Yes. I take pictures of them. When they land in my garden, I'm excited. Yes, we used to have a lot of them on our windowsills in South London.

It is a bit sad that they're killing off the Robbins and stuff, but at the same time, I just think they're very beautiful, and it's impressive that they can survive in the English climate, because they're from India. They're from, like, North Africa and the Indian, subcontinent. And there was a population boom of them in the 90s, which I don't know whether that was because the weather got noticeably warmer or if they just managed to bully enough local birds to really claim their patch. Okay, so the most plausible explanation to me is that because

these birds were not uncommon as exotic pets in England from like mid to late 1800s. Yes. And I think that means you could have several escapees and several small populations. growing gradually, and that means after a few decades, suddenly, you know, like, oh, actually there's quite a lot of these birds, like by the 1980s. I think in the early 80s, there were a thousand, and now there are at least 30,000. So the population has really boomed since then. Yeah, I've seen estimates of 50,000. Could well be. And I've seen academics that have studied them say they have good genes, apparently, i.e., you know, they're not inbred, they're from a wide pools. That would go more along with your theory that for a hundred years, occasionally they've

escaped and then mingled with the ones that currently existed than that there was just one instant that caused them all to escape and they're all from, you know, Jimmy Hendrix's Adam and Eve. Oh yeah, well, the African Queen, a film in which this kind of parakeet does not appear, so why did they have them on set? Someone who was curating the Cheltenham Science Festival a few years ago. There were a few press stories about how she'd said that her dad apparently lived in Isleworth, and that was next to the studio where they filmed the African Queen. And she does. remember contemporaneous with the African Queen rapping that within two years her dad was feeding parakeets in the garden and she says she thinks that it was those parakeets that went on to be the

progenitors of all these others. Hannah Ayup said that. There you go. She's a science communicator and very good illustrator. Good knowledge. When you were a kid like I don't know how accurately you're going to remember those things though right. I think a narrative forms and then slightly obscures the facts but also it could be incidental to the African Queen. because that's also a time when the populations of these birds is steadily rising. That story gets exaggerated in the retelling, doesn't it? Anyway, should they be cold? People think they should be cold because there's too many of them. No, they're so cute. They're so beautiful.

They're the squawky squadrons that invaded our skies, Martin, according to the telegraph headline. Birds are going to do? They have refused culls so far. I feel like Britain has some dangerous sentiments towards immigrants generally, but they're probably going to be kinder about the bird ones than the human ones. Here's another London question from a Swedish person who says, At the end of July,

my friend and I are planning a short trip to London because I want to see the Frida Carlo exhibition at Tate Modern and I've managed to rope in my friend to join me. We've both been before and London is certainly not my favourite city as I hate crowds. But I remember the episode where you advise someone on how to spend a hungover day in London and it was very enlightening. I don't remember that but I wonder what we said. I think that was when I suggested going up monument

because no one ever goes up monument With a hangover, that's so many stairs Vomiting off the top of monument So we are excited to go to London together says a Swedish person But we're both adamant on avoiding the subway Because it's a crammed sweat lounge Well good because the subway's in New York

So you're not going to get anywhere near it Yeah They mean the tube of course Oli answer me this What should we go and see That does not require going on the tube What area is best to stay in If we want to get around easily

But refuse the tube And lastly, how does one survive London in July? Okay. I think the fact that you're Swedish and you're saying how do you survive suggests if you don't like sweaty, boxy underground trains that you're concerned about heat, which is a hard thing to get my head into at the moment because, you know, it is grey and dismal and freezing cold.

But I do understand that some people might find London in July a little bit much. It can be very sweaty, but it can also be really cold and wet. So prepare for everything. Exactly. Exactly. Your information on the tube is a bit outdated in the... the sense that the Elizabeth line, the more recent tube line, is fully air-conditioned. So there's that. Also, I tend to find going on the tube outside of rush hour is mostly fine, but I've never lived on the tube, so there's loads of ways you don't have to go on it. There's an extensive

network of overground trains. I'd stay somewhere on the Thameslink line, because that one is a gem, and then it links you to lots of other lines or walkable bits of central London. Yes, well, so I live on the Thameslink line. Yeah, it's a classic. The stop for Tate Modern is London Blackfriars, which, by the way, is a beautiful stage, like architecturally beautiful stages on the bridge. You can get off either side of the river, ingenious. It's good. And you get a view, literally, the view from the station is like the postcard view of London that you want. You can see the Tower of London, you can see Canary Wharf, you can see the shard.

You don't really need to leave from there. But anyway, if you do get off the train and walk to the Tate Monter to the exhibition, I would say where you happen to be going anyway, that stretch between, let's say, let's say, say London Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, that's a day for people that don't know London, walking along there and looking at everything, and you don't need to get on a tube at all at any point. Gorgeous day strolling along on the South Bank. If the river's low, you can walk along the Thames Beach a little bit, which is also pretty cool. Yes. Yeah, London is a great walking city, and lots of the places you'll stay, you'll be able to walk, get a bus, get an overground train,

get a tube outside of busy time. Yeah, but also when you're on the South Bank, get the boat. Oh, yeah. It's the transport for London state-funded riverboat. and you can use your credit card to tap in and out. Get on the boat. And, you know, then you get a bit of wind through your hair. It goes under Tower Bridge.

Yeah, goes to Greenwich. That's got a big hill. That's fun to look at the rest of London on, get some breeze. Yeah, I mean, any outdoor parky bit. Hampson Heath, that's a good place to walk in July. Crystal Palace. That's on the overground, right to the park. Go and visit AMT towers.

Victorian dinosaurs. It's an itinerary for everyone. My survival for London in July is thin layers of clothing because you can get so many weather on the same day, hot, cold, sweaty, sticky, rainy, sometimes hail. If it is hot, my two tools of choice are a hand fan and a water bottle that you fill like two-thirds full, put in the freezer the night before facing upwards

so that the next day you can put a little bit of water in the top so you've got some cold water to drink, and then you can roll it on your face and your neck that makes it a bit cooler and your wrist and also you've got cold water through the day as it slowly de-frost. Very good. I mean, you know my devotion to the Yeti Cup range of products. So obviously I have access to cool water whenever needed,

but I understand those who don't wish to splash out on the luxury products that I fill my life with might want to benefit from your tip. Yes, well also if you want something cold to touch, then the Yeti Cup is leaving you unlucky. Yeah, deliberately so. Andy on Patreon has a question about something you might eat when you're in London.

You might. Helen, answer me this. Why is the BLT the only sandwich with an acronym? I'd say, Andy, why is it a sandwich that has both its own month, April and its own day, 22nd of July? That's greedy. Why do you need a month and a day? I don't understand. There is BLT month.

The month of April is national BLT moment. Oh, it needs a day and a month. I'm sorry, I had no idea. You're educated. It has a day the 22nd of July. Well, it doesn't need both, obviously. I'd say a day is max it needs. A month, don't be silly.

The Holocaust only gets a week. Yeah, Black History Month gets. It's the shortest month. BLT gets two more fucking days. I mean, in BLT months, do you eat a BLT every day? Is that the idea? It's mandatory. We should point out, I mean, some listeners won't know that BLT stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato.

You were saying to me the other day, you've seen a blap or a blat. Blat. Blat, bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato. There's also the belt, bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato. The blast, bacon lettuce, avocado sprouts tomato. And that is appropriately named. In The Princess Bride, you've got the MLT, the mutton-letters tomato. Yes.

Yeah, but you're going to some fairly obscure examples now. I mean, I suppose what he's saying is popularly. P-B-B-N-J. Oh, P-B-N-J, yeah. The P-B-J, yes. Marsha on Patreon did actually point that P-B-J is also in use in response to Andy's question. That is true. Didn't we used to have a show-biz agent, P-B-B-J?

We were represented by P-B-J management for a time, yes, in the looses sense of the word. Our photos are on their website, yeah. Yeah, wow. There's the bacon, egg and cheese, the B-E-C. I think that's a particularly New Yorkie sandwich, though. I did used to go to a greasy spoon for my lunch every day when we worked in Waterloo, Helen. Oh, yeah. And I used to get myself a CCM, they called it.

Now, I think about it, it should have been CSM because it was chicken, sweet corn and mayo. Right. I suppose it was corn, chicken corn and mayo. They were trying to go for CCM as the acronym. Like it said that on the sign, you had to order it. You wouldn't know otherwise. Yeah, but the BLT, I think often contains mayo that is not remarked upon by the acronym. You don't list butter.

You don't list salt and pepper. You don't list the butter. Don't miss the bread. Exactly. I think that's all right. So I think they were pushing it with the CMM. Well, I think there's a problem as well when they have a,

like a menu of club sandwiches. You know, so I feel like the club sandwich is chicken, bacon, the third slice of bread. That's the essential ingredients, I'd say. But now you get this thing where,

you know, in sort of, I don't know, hipster joints, they're like, do you want to see our menu of Benedicts, that kind of place? You'll get a thing where it's like,

do you want to see our menu of clubs? And actually some of the clubs are dangerously close to a BLT, I think. Well, The BLT evolved out of the club. Okay. Because it is basically a club without the poultry. A reason why sandwiches with acronyms are uncommon is because they're just not that practical, right?

Because the BLT evolved out the club which got popular in like the late 1800s. That and the BLT became more popular in the USA in the early 20th century with train travel. I think there was just quite a common thing to serve on a train. And there are recipes around for it in cookbooks from that late 19th, early 20th century period. So it had been around for a bit. The abbreviation is thought to have come up in diners in the US in the 1940s, people taking the orders shouting back to the kitchen, BLT, like they had a lot of slang about different sandwiches and different drinks and stuff that you could order in a diner. But even though it had been around for that long, in print, they were still having to explain what they meant by BLT in like the 60s and 70s. So they could say BLT and then have to point out bacon, lettuce, tomato, which really removes the convenience of the acronym.

So I think that's probably why if you use an acronym or an abbreviation or an initialism because people are like, that's not an acronym, so it doesn't spell out a word. It needs to become iconic before you can rely on it being understood. And it's taken that long because these aren't intuitive enough. I note Subway, they have a BMT, which stands for biggest, meatiest, tastiest. Oh, piss off. That doesn't even have a noun in it. I suppose if it's BMT sandwich.

Yeah. Well, exactly. So the point is it has to spell out what it, like no one. has ever said I'll have a BMT, they have to go in there and look at the menu and it says in brackets afterwards what's in it. Right. Spicy pepperoni, ginoa salami and Black Forest ham. They can't call it an MRM for mechanically reclaimed meat.

That would be more honest, though. That would be good. If anyone writes in to say that club sandwich is an acronym for chicken and lettuce under bacon, fire yourself into the fucking sun. That is obvious bullshit. Right. Okay. It's a popular bullshit, but it's bullshit.

Just like the BLT is not named after. a writer for the Chicago Tribune, Bert L. Taylor, who died 20 years before the BLT. I can't believe that no one thought to make a bacon salad sandwich before the BLT. Exactly.

Exactly. As the show's resident Mayo expert, I feel compelled to say at this point as well, that the abbreviation of Mayo, that is something that I did not use in the 1980s growing up in Britain. I'd never heard anyone say Mayo until about 1999.

Again, because people had to know what it was. They were still getting used to it in the 80s. In Britain, if you said mayonnaise, they probably thought you meant salad cream in at least half the country. So, I mean, it was a battle on your hands anyway just to get the stuff. How you suffered. Helen, Oliver, though life is full of questions, there are answers you must know. One. No, it will not fall off, but moderation in all things too.

Yes, there probably is, but we won't find out. in our lifetimes three most people prefer Connery but my personal favourite is Dalton 4 if you try and slip a one it would ruin your friendship

here Here's a question from Jay in Minnesota Who says I've been doing prep for donating a kidney I'm super excited It feels like a really good and valuable thing to do I think we're going to agree it's a valuable thing to donate a kidney, but it's complex this.

The transplant hospital has run a whole gamut of tests to ensure that I'm healthy enough and all looks good. Although the hospital has invested quite a bit of time and money in this donation, they have repeatedly emphasised that I can change my mind about the donation at any stage with no ill will. My wife has a lot of trepidation. Statistically, there's about one in a thousand chance of serious negative repercussions aside from the two to six weeks of general post-op misery.

She doesn't want to be the one standing between me and this donation. She knows it's very important to me, so she's not going to explicitly ask me not to do it, but the doctor's statistics aren't reassuring her. Okay. So, Helen, answer me this. How do I balance her fears with my desire to make a donation that drastically improve someone's life?

Wow. Yeah. And the transplant team, don't have suggestions for this because this must happen a lot. Like they must need to reassure people plenty. Every donor's family would say, are you sure you're going to be all right? Will this kill you?

And is this dangerous? Yeah. Do you definitely not need this down the line? Statistics don't generally sway people about something that is very emotional. Fearing that your partner's going to die is obviously very emotional. So you've got to find something that is appealing.

to her feelings. I had no idea that altruistic kidney donation was a thing, by the way. I knew that you could do it for someone you know. Jesse Eisenberg's doing it, Ollie. For someone he doesn't know. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. So I thought doctors go looking for matches.

I didn't know that you could just say, yeah, I don't need two. Take one. And someone might need it. That's an astonishing thing to do. But looking into it, well, here in the UK, the NHS, will only take your kidney if they are satisfied that your long-term health isn't going to be negatively impacted. Yeah, of course.

But I'm sure actually in the private system in the US, in a way, the stakes are larger because you can sue a doctor who removes your kidney, having told you that you're going to have no long-term repercussions. If they're telling you, you have no long-term repercussions, it should be fine. That is the information you do present your wife with, isn't it? Yes, there's a tiny, I know what you're, she's seen some risk and is worried, but they have done all the tests. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't let me do it unless they thought it was going to be okay. Yeah, I mean, again, I think that would be reassuring if you're someone who's reassured by facts, but it seems like that is not where she's at.

So what would you say to her to get her in the feelings? Martin, how could I reassure you that my kidney is... It's a good thing to do, but if I were against it, I would say something like, you're taking a risk for someone that you don't know and haven't even met, and why take that risk? even if it's a small chance of this having adverse effects why would you take that risk? Why go in for surgery when you don't absolutely have to?

I think honestly I wouldn't want to discourage you if that was something that you felt like you wanted to do. I would probably bite my tongue and be a bit worried. But I think most people feel that way about a loved one. Because it sounds like it's very important to J to do it. So they've already had that conversation. Why do you want to do it? Because I think it's really important

that someone else gets a kidney that they need. And also Martin, you don't even really like it when I donate blood. Well, I didn't like it when you donate blood and then go for physiotherapy and pass out. That's the part I'm not a fan of it. One time. I guess you could red nose day it, couldn't you? And roll VT. Do you know, you can be like, well, look, yeah, these are the people that I'm helping.

Yeah. You heartless bitch. Look at how they're suffering. Well, and it's just a montage of slow-mo person with kidney donation, and frolicing with a golden retriever, that kind of thing. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Like, that's partly, like, I think you have a couple of things in the back of your head if you're the spouse.

You're thinking, what if I need that kidney? What if one of your close relatives needs that kidney in the future and you've given it away? What if you need that kidney in the future? Because now you've only got one left and you're going to have a risk as a result of that. Yeah. But also, you are going to be thinking,

I mean, you shouldn't. But you are going to be thinking in a way that you don't when you give blood because it's so universal. Can I thinking, what if the guy you give it to is just a wanker? I do think that one. give blood? I'm like, what if they give my blood to Nigel Farage? No, I think with blood it's different because it's such a, I don't know why. I suppose it's just

that little bit more, it's less personal. Because there's this whole thing, isn't there, like, where the recipient chooses in the US, I believe, whether or not to reach out to the donor. Okay. So the recipient can say, I would like to meet the donor. And then if the donor has said, yes, I would like to meet the recipient, then they can meet. But if the recipient doesn't want to do that, you'll never know. If they're a wanker. If the recipient does want to do that and then you go and meet them and they're a wanker,

I would feel like I'd really, I'd wasted... Do wankers deserve to die, Olly? No, but they don't deserve my kidney. I mean, maybe. Like my kidney should have gone to someone I like. But I guess that's not altruism, is it? That's not charity.

It's the risk that you take. Maybe that is Jay's spouse's concern what if the kidney ends up inside a wanker. But listeners, if you have ideas for how Jay can reassure their wife, your advice would be gratefully received. Perhaps you've done this, or perhaps your partner has, or another loved one.

How did they reassure you? So send that, but also send your questions for future episodes of Answer Me This, via the usual contact details, which are present on our website. Answer me thispodcast.com. Don't send your kidneys to us. We have no use for them.

Well, also, because we don't have a PO box anymore. But if you are the kind of person who altruistically likes to donate things, One of the reasons to visit patreon.com slash answer me this is to support us. I'm not making a direct comparison with donating a life-saving organ, but I am saying... No, it's far, far more important than doing that. I'm just saying if you're that kind of person, you're not ready to do the kidney. Well, you've already done it.

Yeah. I'm just saying it's all on the same road of generosity. So thank you if you'd like to support this show with your lifeblood at patreon.com slash answer me this. Yes, don't send us blood either, though. But also, because capitalism, you get shit in return. Members of the questionnaire tier get to watch our live streams and listen, add free to new episodes and bonus bits. Members of our four-star hotel tier unlock an ad-free version of our podcast on their podcast app, including all our albums, retro episodes and bonus bits.

And members of Soundbag, the Crem de la Crem, the VIPs, the ballers, the Wicked Willys. They get all of that. But their feed also includes every fucking thing we have ever recorded. I think it's now 700 bits of audio. Fuck me. That's so many bits. It's the fuck me tier, including our first 200 episodes, themselves worth £200 when purchased separately.

So it's a good deal as well as a good thing to do. You made a persuasive case, Molly. I'm going to go there. Sign up right now. What was that? It's patreon.com. Answer me this. Anyway, hundreds of Answer Me This as a side.

We have other work on the internet. Helen, what do you have in store for people? Well, at the illusionist.org and in the pod feeds there is a recent episode called Cosmic Hairball, which is a fun little musical tour of space language featuring Martin singing some songs that I made him sing. Great. I'm really disappointed that you didn't call the episode Space Milk,

which was the working title for a month. I didn't call it Space Milk because I told some Illusionist listeners I was going to call it Space Milk and they were like, oh, no such thing as a fish just did an episode called Space Egg. and I was like, I can't participate in a sort of space breakfast themed podcast thing. Could have had a whole space kitchen. I wonder if Space ever considered doing an album called Space Milk. I did see Space perform in 1999 at a ball at Durham University.

And they fully did not give a fucking shit. I don't think they'd been drinking milk that day, Olly. No. Ask me what's coming up on the Modern Man, Helen. Oh, what's coming up on the Modern Man, Ollie? Oh, thanks for asking. In the February edition of The Modern Man, my monthly magazine show, We try vibe coding. That is when you program an app using just AI prompts, scary.

Jesus Christ. We talk about sex when you have a UTI. And I meet a Londoner who survived an earthquake in Morocco. He spent six hours buried in the rubble. The episode is called Trapped in the Rubble. And it's an extraordinary firsthand tale about, you know, survival and recovery and why you should always have travel insurance. Yeah.

You can find that at Modern Man with 2Ns.com. What an incredible mix of topics. Thank you. Martin. I've got a new song going. Yay! It's a dance floor banger. It's good Daddy really cares. Oh yeah.

It is an actual banger. It's got a really cool music video. And if you're to martinawstrick.bancamp.com and buy it, I will be donating all of the money I make from it to charities and organisations which support trans youth in Canada and UK. So please do that. Is there a way to sample it for free? We'll put a link for the YouTube video. Okay.

Oh, the video is really, really good. So you should watch that anyway, even if you own the song through money. You'll be singing this number until, I don't know, until the end of time. It's that catchy. I look forward to investigating it myself. Well, that's plenty for you to do. Do send us questions, though. That's the main thing.

And for you back to answer us back halfway through the month. And then the next fresh episode of Ansme, this will be in your pod feed on the last Thursday of March. Bye! Thank you.