Answer Me This! - AMT420: G-strings, Cuck Chairs and Fatbergs

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

In AMT420, questioneers want to know whether airplanes have keys, what the G stands for in g-string, and why hotel rooms have one solitary chair staring at the bed. Plus: Olly wonders if all the switches in the plane cockpit really do something; Helen maintains that going on vacation with your family is not vacation; and Martin the Sound Man guides us into the manosphere. For more information about this episode, go to answermethispodcast.com/episode420. Support AMT at patreon.com/answermethis, and in return you get an ad-free version of the show, monthly bonus bits, our video livestream Petty Problems – and the highest tier gets access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including all our paywalled episodes, our special albums, the full archive of Bonus Bits of Crapp on the AMT App and all the Retro AMT episodes. Got questions for an episode, trivial troubles for Petty Problems, or feedback about an AMT old or new? Send them in writing or as voice notes to [e-mail], or you can call 0208 123 5877 to leave us a message. AMT421 will be out 27 August 2026 and the next Answer Us Back will land in your podfeed on 20 August. AMT is sponsored by: • Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online realm. Go to squarespace.com/answer, play around with 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 • Cozy Earth, luxurious bedding, sleepwear, loungewear, and towels for bath and beach. Shop at cozyearth.com and get 20% off using our code ANSWER. • Quooker, the the tap that does it all, from instant 100-degree boiling water to chilled, filtered, and sparkling water. Shop at quooker.co.uk and until the end of August, you can use our code ANSWER to get free installation and your free Quooker glassware set. • Taskrabbit, the online and mobile marketplace, available in the UK, that connects you with skilled, reliable local freelancers to help with everything from furniture assembly and home repairs to moving, gardening, and more. Get ahead of your to-do list with £10 off your first task at taskrabbit.co.uk or on the Taskrabbit app using our promo code ANSWER. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer.

Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Now the World Cup is over Is it time to watch bowls Is there something easier to vault with than 16 foot poles? Welcome to Answer me this Episode 420

Therefore we must say nice On behalf of Americans Nice I mean I really don't understand No it's a stoner thing The 20th of April is a special day because of the way they render their dates 420. Right. Okay. It's not a thing in Britain, right? I've never heard this.

But you know, when someone says 420, you have to say nice. Nice. But you're in Canada, and yet you still feel the obligation of being on the continent where you have to say nice. It travels through the soil. Meanwhile, what are all four sides of a box grater for has proven to be our most popular ever video on TikTok? Are you okay, people? Just to recap, I'd said that the penultimately small side was for zesting. the smallest with the bit sticking out for Parmesan because it lets the cheese fall to the plate rather than coming through the box

you, Helen said no, it's for nutmeg. I was like nutmeg, ginger, but you know, I was wrong. I was wrong, Olly. You were right. Well, looking at the official sources, yes, I was right. But if you look at people's experience,

it absolutely tallies with your anecdotal instinct. For example, James on Patreon, he agrees with me. He says the spiky side is 100%. Can't argue with those percentages, Helen. 100% for very hard cheeses like Parmesan. And it's supposed to work more as a grinding surface than a grater. So most of the cheese falls off on the outside of the grater. That's what I said.

However, Alison, on Instagram agrees with you, Helen. She says, the sticking out bits are for nutmeg. I use it quite a lot. Mine are way too big for nutmeg unless you want big nutmeggy chunks, which personally I don't. And there's a third option. Amber has emailed to say the seemingly useless side of the greater in my family is used to make fruit puree.

such as apple or pear. I did it quite a lot while weaning my first child. My second child got the supermarket ones because life is too short. Yes. Third child just gets to play with the greater. Here's an email from Shrina who says, I live near the lovely Tooting Lido, as it has been very hot.

I had a look to see if I could book a session in for me and my two children aged nine and six. Unsurprisingly, there weren't any available pool slots after school, but there was a space during the day. I don't work Mondays, so I thought, hey, I rarely do anything for myself. So I booked it and went, it was lovely. I didn't proactively tell the kids, but one of them asked me what I did today and I told them. Both were upset that I went swimming without them.

I did explain that it's okay for me to do nice things without them sometimes, but they were still displeased. I did book for all of us to go out the weekend. And Ollie, answer me this. Was it okay for me to go without them? How can I get the kids to understand that I have a life and sometimes we'll do things without them? Yes, it was more than okay.

I mean, it's an important lesson that you have a life. If anything, the fact that they appreciate this particular activity themselves and feel jealous of not having gone with you as a bonus because it helps hammer that message home more than if you said, oh, I went to TK. Max today, you know, or something they'd hate. This is them understanding, like, oh, she did something, she genuinely does fun things without us and they need to know that. And it's good and fine.

Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a different thing anyway. Like, I know in their child's brain it isn't. But actually, supervising young children to prevent them from drowning is a very different activity to sportally swimming lengths and chilling out without children. Those are two different things. Yeah, just floating. Yeah.

So what you're doing when they're not there isn't the same, to answer the question directly of, like, how do I get them to understand that this is something that will happen occasionally? my solution to that actually is the iPhone camera role they're so bereft of screen activity and so desperate to have it that one of the things they will sometimes do is look at my photos for stimulation oh my god how hard up they feature in like 50% of my photos so it's emphasizing the message that they are important to my life and I do lots of fun things with them but they can flick through and see that I also do other

things some of which they have missed out on and they're a bit jealous of like when I ate a supersized croissant. And I'm like, well, that's the thing I, that's, that's daddy's work. But they sort of understand now that I have a life outside because they see my whole day whizz through them by scrolling through the roll. So I would recommend that. I don't know. If it makes them more jealous. Yeah, but that's emotion they have to go through is what I'm saying. And then ultimately they won't. They'll understand. They'll understand is a thing that happens and it doesn't mean that you go with them less. It is a big life lesson to realize that your parent is a person independent of you. Yeah, exactly. My God, I better phone my mom.

to tell her I finally clocked it. I don't really want to take my children swimming much at the moment because they've established a game now whenever we go to the outdoor pool that we have like a good hour and a half together, me chucking them off the shoulders, you know, them jumping in, a bit of annoying the lifeguard.

Then the bit where I get a beer and sit down on the lounger, they then go off into a tree and I allow them to do that because beer, lounger. But what happens is, what they've done, is they've taken one of their towels and thrown it up into the tree and then taken Toby the younger one's belongings and thrown all of them into the tree.

And they then find another child that they don't know like maybe it's a friend of a friend from school or maybe it's someone they've just met and they all laugh. And then at the end, I'm just like, this again, this isn't funny and now I have to be really shitty with you. I'm not going to get that towel, get that towel. And then there's a whole argument

where they cry about it because there's thorns there and I'm making them walk on thorns. I'm like, you can't just leave a towel, strung up on the tree. What's wrong with you? They just want your attention, Ollie, and they're willing to hurt their feet to get it. No, I think it's that weird primal den building thing that some boys do. It's just that. They just love that. And they don't think through what happens after they've done it. At the time, they don't care that that's what's going to happen afterwards.

They live in the moment. They live in the moment. There's a bush. There's a towel. That's playtime. I should have asked our friend Dallas about this question, because Dallas sometimes takes his kids to Disney, but sometimes goes by himself. Wow, okay. And how do you say, Daddy's off for a few days doing nothing? That's, yeah. Business trip. For my show Roller Coaster, which is about Universal's theme park development in Bedfordshire

the other day, I did go on Britain's fastest and tallest roller coaster, which is called Hyperia, genuinely for work. Yes. But, you know, I had to share with Harvey, the older one, the photos of, oh, this is what I did at work today. I got VIP entry to Thought Park and went on the ride before everyone else. Here I am with another grown-up you don't know. I suppose at least then I knew that really Harvey would shit himself if he went on Hyperia.

Like he wouldn't really want to actually go on that. You know, he'd want the option to go on that, but then he'd choose to go on Logger's Leap. Oh, a classic. Here's another summer holiday coded question from Ben from Geneva, who says, Helen, answer me this. Do aeroplanes actually have keys? I'm sure small propeller planes need them to turn over the mechanical engines, but surely keys aren't needed to flick the switch to turn on a jet engine.

Yeah, you're correct, Ben. Small planes do have keys both to open the door and as the ignition, usually the same key like a car. However, big planes, like a big commercial plane, do not have keys either for the doors or for the engine. They have a fuck ton of security instead of a door key. It's not the easiest thing to board or even get near a commercial plane if you're not supposed to. And presumably some sort of login as well on the in-flight system, I imagine. it knows who you are, right? I don't know that that's the case. I think a lot of them are a bit less technological than you might anticipate, but it is such an involved procedure to start a plane.

There's a lot of checks, but you can't just turn a key, and it starts because there's several different engines, and it's not a single one that gets the plane going. They have to get turned on in sequence. I've looked around cockpits a few times fairly recently, because with two young children, you sometimes get invited up to come and have a look, right, as you leave the plane. Even after 9-11?

Yes, but it has to be, as you're disembarking, if you go up to the pilot and say, thank you very much, then you'd like, would you like to come and see? There's a lot of switches, unfathomable numbers of switches, and I did find myself thinking last time, how many of these are just for show, really? I bet there's like 20 that are here, just so that you, someone who doesn't know how to fly the plane wouldn't know which ones are the important ones. But if you know, I bet there's like 10 that you press and the rest are kind of unnecessary. That's my guess. That's not how engineers think, Ollie. They're not like, that's confused Al-Qaeda by putting a few extra switches on the dashboard. We know that we have listeners who work as flight attendants.

I don't know if we have any pilots who listen, but please weigh in. Are there fake knobs and keys and buttons in the cockpit? And also, is there a login? I bet I'm right that there's some kind of login. It must know who you are, because it needs to tell ground control, doesn't it, in case you do something rogue? I think you do that on the radio. We've also had this question of planes from Chuck from Haddonfield, New Jersey, who says, in recent years, I've been on a bunch of airlines, American, Delta, Turkish airlines, Aer Lingus, SAS, a few more I may have forgotten.

I think back to my first flight in the 1970s and notice one consistency. The seatbelt has not changed, nor has the seatbelt latch. So, Olli answer me this. Why has the airline seatbelt not evolved into a fast? fancy new car seatbelt? Or is this the perfect seatbelt? If so, why don't automobiles use the straightforward ideal version? They're very different vehicles. Unless you're driving very badly, you're not going to suddenly plummet hundreds of feet in your car. And unless the pilot is driving very badly, there's not going to suddenly without warning be a collision. So, I mean, essentially that's it. There are two different engineering challenges being addressed by the seatbelts that have been installed.

The airplane seatbelt is not there to stop you getting whiplash or to stop you injuring someone near you, like in a car. It is just to keep you in your seat during turbulence. That is it. It does nothing else. Like on a roller coaster, say. Like on a roller coaster. If you were being dark, you could say it also aids in identification if there is an accident

because they know what seat you're supposed to be in and you're still in your seat. So that is what it is for. It goes all the way back to 1911. Wow. Remember, there's a Wright Brothers type plane. In that, it would stop the pilot or co-pilot literally falling out of the plane upon landing. And also, stopping their bodies being flung against a button during turbulence. So involuntarily pressing the wrong button and bringing the plane down.

But since then, car seat belts have become much more of a thing. And people do ask this question. It's not a ridiculous question because in an emergency, people resort to muscle memory. That is why they have the demonstration at the beginning, even though you kind of know how to do it because it's easy. So if the plane's falling, people instinctively start trying to unbuckle like a car seat belt because that's what they're used to using.

So there would be a psychological reason to say, no, well, let's match what's in a plane so that people do the right thing when they're asked to get out of their seats rather than panic and get stuck. But the reasons they can't is shoulder belts require a strong, secure anchor spot, which would mean that the airline seat would need to be heavier. You don't want airline seats to be heavy because that would make the plane less aerodynamic.

And the alternative would be strapping the strap to the wall. But if you think about people all pulling simultaneously on a strap attached to the side of a plane, it's probably not going to crumple, but it might strain the plane walls at the very moment you don't want it to do that. Might crumple a tad. It might crumple a tad. And a tad on a plane is a big deal. It is. But there are exceptions.

They do have sometimes in business class, they have the three-point belts because the seat in front of you is further away, because of the legroom. So then you don't have the reassurance that in that event of hitting something, you've got a thing to hit into. So they give you a car style seatbelt. They give you a peasant to use as a body pillow.

It is striking to think how much earlier plain seatbelts were than cars and how reluctant the car seatbelt uptake was. Oh, it's extraordinary. We did a retrospectors about the adoption of car seatbelts and I didn't know, but it was going on until the 80s. They were still debating in the UK.

I remember. I remember it being introduced. Ollie, I'm old enough. Matthew Paris, who I rate generally as a kind of member of the commentary, he seems like a reasonable person generally. But when he was a Tory MP, he was one of the people arguing in the House of Commons that it shouldn't be mandatory for children to wear seatbelts.

And the argument basically was like a sort of personal freedom thing. Like people said, of course we should get to smoke whilst driving. Move to New Hampshire, Matthew. You don't have to wear seatbelts in New Hampshire, if you care that much. Yeah, that's mad, isn't it? There are still states that haven't enforced it. Live free or die?

That's their motto, Olly. Live free and die. Well, in both cars and planes, there was some sort of early fake news on this in the 20th century in America where there were reports of plane crashes where they said that someone's body had been sliced in half because they were wearing a seatbelt. I do think about that, you know, sometimes.

When I'm strapping in, I'm like, is this going to behave like a cheese wire onto my body? But then I think at least I'll probably die quick. Well, exactly. So maybe, but in that situation, you would have died anyway. The seatbelt can only help by stopping you hitting the ceiling during turbulence. And everyone have an amazing holiday.

Glad we covered this seasonal question. Look, we're all just going to end up pat-A at some point or other. If you've got a question, a question, question, question, answer me this. Another summary question now from a lady who has chosen to remain anonymous who says, I have a social situation that I'm hoping you can give me some advice on. Fingers crossed. My extended families, parents and siblings, like to go on holiday together. We don't live near each other, and I think that's why we can tolerate holidays with very few disagreements.

I think you undersell yourselves. I think being able to tolerate holidays with each other and with very few disagreements is a special combination of people. Yeah, but still the very idea that she's using that phrase, tolerate holidays in a positive remark about a holidays suggests her mindset. A solid five out of ten holiday. We all got through it. Thank God I could go back to work afterwards. My husband's family, she says, have also started trying to do holidays together.

Although it's a little more complicated. It's his dad, step-mom, step-mum's ex-husband and his wife and the rest of the step-family, sister, brother, respective partners and kids. I think it's nice when exes have a good friend relationship after the romantic partnership has ended. She says, whilst they're all very nice people, it's not really my husband's family. And I certainly feel like a bit of an outsider.

Annual leave days are limited. And when we've been away with them, my husband spends the whole time moaning about how we don't get any choice in anything. And also their plans revolve around either adult things like getting a midday drink in a pub and late lunch or other kids' routines, neither of which really suit us and our kids. This is really reinforcing my most firmly held belief,

which is going on holiday with family does not count. Not holiday. So you just see that as a sort of bonus holiday? No, I see it as not a holiday. Literally not a holiday at all? No. See, I'm on the path to agreeing with you, but I psychologically, I think, have this better.

I've convinced myself it's a bonus extra. like an extra track at the end of an album. It's a bit more holiday, but so long as you can afford or have the time to go on a separate holiday. Is the bonus track ever a song you choose to listen to? Yes, yeah, yeah, it is. Is it ever your fave? It's not. It's always the ban drunk in the studio doing a little treat for the super fans or a weird pari about a guy with blood on his hands. That's a tool reference, sorry. Yeah, I guess it wasn't Robbie Williams' hidden track. Yeah, the bonus track on feel is about how he did a load of murders. I was trying to remember a name of a Robbie Williams album

but I can't. Isn't that extraordinary? Is Millennium an album? Swing when you're winning? Yeah, swing when you're winning. There you are. If I've come up with that, then it would have been funnier. Oh, well. It goes to show, doesn't it? Literally the most successful recording artist of our lifetimes and yet we can't name an album by Robbie Williams. Anyway, she continues.

Answer me this. What excuse can we use to get out of future holidays? They, her husband's family and step family, make it difficult to refuse. No is a complete sentence, Anonymous. Also, how do I help my husband deal with the guilt of going away more with my family, even though he prefers it, and knows his family are an utter nightmare? I think we have asymmetric information about either side of the family, because Anonymous mentions that her side don't live near each other,

so there's this imperative for a get-together. I don't know if the husband's family and the steps see each other a lot more, so they could be like, well, you know, this is the only chance of my family. has to get together. I don't know what kind of flannel you can use in that respect, but I assume you've tried it. I think you just have to be like, sorry, I can't get the time off work. It's not that we don't love you. We'll give you Christmas. We will sacrifice Christmas for you. I don't know, some shit like that. Well, unless you just book somewhere else, take the power out of their hands, you know, just say, oh no, we're going to Indonesia then. We've booked it.

Yeah. Just get early on it. Just book holidays for the next three years. Say it was your lifetime dream together. And then you're done, aren't you're going somewhere? Okay. All right. But how do you know when the trip is meant to happen? What if they're like, oh, that's good because we've moved it this year. It's going to be August. We'll all come to Indonesia. I guess you could say, oh, but yeah, it's going to be an expensive one in Indonesia. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can't afford the whatever you're doing. Sorry, it's a blood relatives only resort. They do DNA as you're walking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She does say annual leave days are limited. So I do think if she booked an epic holiday. we're going away for 18 days that's all my leave sorry

that at least gives you a year doesn't it then the next year what you do is you say oh yeah we've been talking about this and we don't think it's fair on my family that we go away with you in the same year so what we'd like to do is go away with my family this year and then next year we'll go away with you then you've kicked it into the long grass for two years

I feel like you can just say sorry I don't have enough leave days left and don't tell them how many you do have are they going to check with HR no it's been an expensive year and so we're just going to do a small one with little Jimmy this year, sorry. The kids are having a lot of problems at school and we have to take them away to Borstall.

Yeah, yeah. They keep on burning down villas. If Jimmy is little, because she doesn't say how old her children are or the other children. Or that they're called Jimmy. Indeed. But if they are little, I mean, again, I do think there's a psychological shift here. The thing that I personally enjoy about going away with our extended family is that the children go off and play together. and I have more time to myself,

not constantly shepherding my own children. That's just a little psychological shift of you sort of appreciating that and or free babysitting. That's another thing as well. If this is about the grandparent seeing the grandchildren, great, knock yourselves out, we're going off for a meal. Yeah, but she's saying she doesn't really feel like his family,

particularly because it's extended steps. Yeah. The truth is, family or not, just traveling with other people can be stressful. We went with our best friends to Florida, and it was amazing, but you're still working around each other's weird behaviors. There were still days where they were like, well, this is the morning we really want to go to the supermarket,

wherever it was, you know, and they'd get touchy. Or we'd say, well, do you need to pack a bag now? Because, you know, we're going to have to leave in two hours, can't we pack a bag in two hours? Can't we pack a bag in two hours? All that stuff. And that happened with our best mates, but just sometimes people are irritating, aren't they?

I have different ideas of what they expect to happen on a holiday. And you certainly find that out on a holiday that people are irritating and have different ideas. Yeah, I suppose I'm often a bit more zen. I'm a bit like, I know that's what people are like. So I've factored that in. And so I'm unsurprised by this information. And so I'm not going to let it bother me.

Okay, you're the chill guy. Because that's what I expected. I still get irritated by it. I know all the things that you just described. And, you know, I've been on trips where it's like, well, I will have a nice time, but I'm not really thinking about this as a holiday for me. I'm thinking about the family I'm with

having a good time and making sure that I'm making space for them, but I still sometimes get really grumpy, like, why these people so crap at communicating with each other about what they want to do? Why they're so resistant to just having a conversation. Stop sub-tweeting my family. We don't go on holidays. That's how we don't know how to behave on them. It's difficult if they're paying more, too.

If the elders are paying in some way. So luckily, I do get on really well with my wife's family, actually, and we do have a good time, and we're planning one for next year where we'll go away together. But a nice bonus about that set of circumstances. answers is they also pay for our accommodation. It's only a campsite in France, but they pay for the lodging. So it gives us more money to go off and do things when we're there, which is really nice. It gives you more money to go away and not spend time with them. Got it. Well, no, that relationship then does mean you're slightly in hock to them, doesn't it? So if you didn't

get on, I can see that's difficult because it's like an obligation to do their itinerary because they're paying for it. And that's maybe a problem. I mean, I think back to the dream holiday that we did, I'm putting it in inverted commas, for my dad's 60th birthday, which was Hong Kong. I mean, it was really cool. Lovely. Flew me and his sister and her partner and my mum, and he paid for us all to go to a five-star hotel in Hong Kong. Did it have a nomadet station and a multitude of pools?

It did. And it was great. But I felt as a 20-something that at no point did I actually get to see Hong Kong because I was paraded into because he was paying a series of things that he wanted to do for a 60th birthday, was go to other five-star hotels and eat in nice restaurants. And so I don't want to complain about that because it was nice. Sure. But also, as a 20-something going to Hong Kong, I did not want to do that.

I wanted to walk around the streets. I wanted to try the, like, street food. I wanted to go to the beach. And instead, I was like, one of the things we did is we all went and got a suit tailored because back then that was the thing people said, I go to Hong Kong. That's what you do. I've seen travel man. Yeah.

And, I mean, that's just, it was like being in a sweaty, dark shopping centre in, you know, wood green, except with a world-class tailor in it, but it's still not a nice experience. And I was there for like seven hours of my week-long holiday, just getting a suit fitted that I didn't really want. What? Yeah. Takes ages to get a suit tailored.

That's too much. Do you ever wear it? Yeah, I did wear it for a bit. Moth's got to it at some point, so I don't anymore. But it was a nice suit, but I just thought that's not a holiday for me. That's not what I would do. You were just absolutely reinforcing my earlier theory that going on holiday with your family is not going on holiday.

Prove me wrong. But also my theory that that's fine because you then see it as a bonus holiday. I then went with my then girlfriend on holiday that summer and we did something that we'd saved money on because we hadn't spent it on that. And I did both. But if you can't afford to do that or you haven't got the holiday days, I do see the issue, yes. I guess carve more time for yourself out of the itinerary right at the beginning. From the get-go, say, here are the three things that me and partner would love to do together

and can we make some time so that we can do those things. You can be assertive at that. I'm saying don't fucking go and then you don't have to do what you just said. I know, I know, but if you have to go, she's saying it's difficult to refuse and she's going to end up on a holiday with these people at some point, just out of diplomacy. Honestly, I think you just need to practice your refusing. Just go, I'm sorry we can't. I can't take time off work.

Can't take time off work. People respect that shit. Right, okay. Why can't you get the time off work? Because I don't want to. Just avoid getting to that point in the argument. In the 90s, I hired a 12-person web team to build and run my websites and I'd realise my tech dream, then the dot-com bubble burst, and I had to drown them in a stream.

Why didn't I just sack them? But now, thanks to Squarespace, you can do it alone, and build a lovely website for tablets or smartphone, enjoy it now, because in 10 years you'll be replaced by a drone. Just like Terminator 3. Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring Answer Me This. And making it easier for you to design beautiful websites, as we've been saying for many years. Of course, what's been changing as the technology evolves is they also offer ways to make sure your website actually gets seen. So there's one thing designing it. But now, for example,

if you have a store and you're making a listing, they have suggestions behind the scenes, prompts and things like that to make sure that algorithmically you will stand out. It's not just a case of having a good destination. It's a case of making sure people actually turn up. It's nice of them to help because as people who run a small internet business, as we do, getting people to see things and respond to things is a continual struggle. Exactly. Lots of people still coming around to the idea that we're back in inverted commas. Been, what, a year and a half now? Some people just coming around to the idea that we existed in the first place, I guess.

They're living in a blissful version of the past. Hey, if you want to take up a Squarespace website just to tell people that we exist, that would be a perfectly reasonable way to use this promotion. Do you know what? If you do want to do that, you can go to Squarespace.com slash answer. to use the free trial. And when you're ready to launch, you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code answer.

Hi, Helen and I. It's Tom from Jersey. My friend recently pointed out to me that every hotel has like a cuck chair, you know, like a single chair facing the bed that you'd sit on to watch a guy rail your wife. And I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, that can't be what they're for, right? Why is there always a chair just facing the bed in an hotel room?

Well, that's my first time hearing the term Cuck chair. Have I led a sheltered life? I think this is hilarious. It's one of the few like vaguely right wing manosphere memes that is actually funny. So I didn't know this was a meme. I'd never encountered the idea of a Cuckchair.

You both lived such sheltered lives. Yeah, I don't go on your Manosphere internet like you do. For the more innocent listener, who's like me before I researched this. So Cuck as in Cuckold. A very manospheric language, yeah. As in people who enjoy. watching their partner have sex and or the humiliation of being made to do so.

Right. And it does sort of accurately describe the setup of your classic generic kind of, you know, Hilton Marriott type hotel room where you walk in and pretty much the first thing you see in the corner, there's usually a TV on the wall, there's a bed opposite and in the corner of most hotel rooms in the world, there'll be a single chair facing the bed. A lot of people have asked for years, why that? The rooms for two people, why is there one chair, Why is it facing the bed? Is it because there's not enough room for it to be somewhere else or joined by a second chair?

Of course it fucking is. Like it seems really obvious that that's what it is. No, it's got to be cuck stuff. So they often can't fit two chairs. It's up against the corner so it makes the room feel more spacious if it's facing the bed because then it's at a diagonal, isn't it? It's using the corner better than if it was up against the wall. And it emphasizes the focal point, which is the bed,

in the theatre of entering your hotel room for the first time. you want to be reminded that you're there for sleeping and fucking. So the fact that every piece of furniture points there... Why don't they put a big sign that says bed with a flashing arrow? Because they need to put the chair somewhere, and so it has that double purpose of making use of the corner and making the focal point the bed. And then you've got something to sit on and put your socks on.

Yes, so somewhere to put your socks and somewhere to make sure you don't bash into the furniture. You need to sort of instinctively know. Architects like to pretend that they do different things for each hotel, but you do need to sort of instinctively know when you get up in the middle of the night in a room, you're not familiar with and you might be hung over and you might be tired and jet lags.

How to get to the bathroom without tripping up and it's quite important that a chair isn't in the way. And that you don't piss on the chair thinking it's the toilet. Yeah, there's a flow of the room in the other sense of flow, yes. And also, like when you first arrive, walking in with luggage, you need clear paths to move around without constantly navigating obstacles. And if you've ever had the experience of staying in a hotel that's trying to show that it's individual

by bucking some of these rules and not having the kuck-chew, chair. That can be quite irritating because you need to find a chair. Like, where's the chair? Oh, it's in the bath? What's it doing in the bathroom? Am I supposed to stand while I'm being cocked or sit on the floor like I'm at school assembly? Exactly. I stayed in a hotel room in February. It was a really nice hotel, but it was like we were in a suite and it was too clever for its own good. All of the lights were controlled by a touch panel next to the bed. The touch panel had no buttons or words on it. So you had to guess what different gestures did to the light.

and it's like, yeah, that is kind of fun to play with when you first get to the oh look, if you swipe it to the right, it opens the blinds. If you swipe it down, it dims the lights. In the middle of the night when you need a piss, you wake everybody up and you open the blinds. That's not what you want. You know, I've always thought, why isn't switching on the lights more complicated? That would really complete my life.

Exactly. And then on like day nine of the holiday, after we've been there for over a week, we worked out that if you do nothing and you just get out of bed, the lights sensed your feet on the floor. No. And automatically a light under the bed came on to guide you to the toilet. That's quite useful. I was like, that's actually cool.

Write it down. Write it on a piece of paper so I know that. My least favorite hotel trend of the modern era is bathroom walls not being made of wall and the door not being made of door. No one wants that, do they? Even if you're being cucked, you don't want to then take a crap in front of someone. We want the sound and the sights and the smells to be contained. And yet more and more, it's just like, oh, a little glass panel with a big

rolling it. Yes, that is really odd. I agree. Fuck those guys. I'd never actually thought about it before looking into this, but we have a cuck chair in my bedroom at home. Congrats. Thanks. It's more of a c-sophers, actually.

It's a kind of two-seater... Oh, that's sweet so you can have company while you're getting c-ed. Yeah, have a photographer to document it. Someone to supply the snacks? The reason was, it's not a big enough... Again, it's a corner. It's not a big enough corner for a sofa. It looks a bit too silly to not have a...

statement chair there because if you just put like a dining chair there it looked dwarfed so it was perfect to have a slightly big chair like a big brother diary room chair yes that is what it's like exactly like that yeah like a love seat style thing like extravagant looking thing if we'd put it in the other corner so it didn't look directly at the bed then that's where the wall-mounted tv is and use it for sitting and reading books in so that's weird you want to sit under a telly that's a strange feeling right so it's kind of become this thing that's looking at the bed but I never once I mean because I don't sit on it and look at the bed I sit on it and read a book I guess my kids are in the bed watching telly, but I'm never at one point thinking,

oh, this is where I would sit if I enjoyed getting off on watching other people rail my wife. That does not occur to me. I think it just says more about the manned it, right? Their preoccupations are all about, like, status and like being cooked and cooking. And so they obviously, they see a fucking pencil and they're like, well, that's a cooked pencil. That's for stabbing yourself in the dick or some man's fucking your wife. The Manosphere is very obsessed with watching other men have sex, despite being wildly homophobic.

Yeah, it is. Could either of you explain to me a bit more about this Manosphere origins of this meme? I just saw it come across my Instagram and if that happens, it's probably a sign of a deeper cesspit in some corner of the internet. And it's funny because it's so ridiculous. Yeah, I'm afraid not. My Instagram is just people recreating Pirates of the Caribbean and doing all the different dolls. Yeah, mine is just tutorials about how to bind a quilt.

Right, yeah. So the Manospheres failed to get me. But well done, Martin, for being Manosphere adjacent. It's not just manosphere stuff. I also have a lot of like animals and tattoos and cool stuff. No, but it's interesting that somehow the people that you follow, it's decided that it's like, oh, he likes physics and Robin Ince. He must like the manosphere.

How did that happen? I think it's more just like, well, he's a 48-year-old white guy. He's probably angry enough for this. Yeah, he's susceptible. We can turn him to the dark side. Hannah from Ottawa says, Helen, answer me this. Can you tell me what the G in G string stands for?

Hmm. A preliminary search suggests groin or girdle, but apparently this is inconclusive. Yeah, it's odd really that lexicographers weren't there right from the start documenting where this quite scandalous for a while garment got its name. That's the trouble. That and slangs and also things that were to do with taboo parts of the body. I mean, I have a further question which is, is G spot related to the G string? Is that where the G came from?

No, G-Spot is named after a German gynaecologist called Ernst Grafenberg. And they were probably like, well, okay, G is easier to spell than G-enberg. He did a lot of research into urethral stimulation, but he didn't name it after himself. It was named after him like decades later. Fine. Side issue, but thank you. Back to the G-string. Yeah, you're welcome.

G-spot was named in like 1981. G-string, probably like late 1920s was when it started being used for the garment that is still used for now. so like tiny little knickers that are just string at the back and then the triangle at the front. But there was a word G-string, G-D-E string, that is cited from 1878 in a text called Western Wilds where they're referring to, I think, Indigenous Americans, wearing a kind of strip of cloth.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the string attaching a loin cloth or something. And the G-E is either attributed to an indigenous word, which is often some... bullshit etymology by white people. Like it's often not very believable. They're like, yeah, yeah, indigenous stuff. Or in this case, it could have just been there like, that's like a girdle, but smaller.

So they're just referring to a girdle. Or just an American who'd previously been sheltered from native culture before, seeing someone's genitals on display and saying, G. G. Wasn't that called a G whistring? You know, that's about the most plausible explanation of the ones I've read, Ollie. I'll allow it.

And then even though the garment that we know was G-string had been around, I think it's depicted in frescoes in Pompeii, so that takes it back to 2,000 years ago at least. It was like the 1920s-ish that like burlesque and striptees really put this garment into people's consciousness because artiste would be wearing just a G-string and pasties, albeit often under other clothes that they didn't take off, but if they were wearing like suggestive, like transparent undies,

they would wear these underneath or they would finish the dance in those. So that was when the term started going around. And the groin thing, I can only find one citation for it, a linguist called Robert Hendrickson speculating that G's stood for groin. And I can't buy that because I think if they're too coy to say girdle or guss it as a full word, they're really not saying groin. And I don't know if they would have referred to groins as groins in this context anyway. It's also almost too sexy a garment to be named after groin.

groin is not a sexy word, is it? It's a medicinal word, yeah. Well, gusset and girdle are also not sexy words, really, are they? Not sexy, that's right. Whereas I feel like even if it's apocryphal, the idea of it having some link to Native American heritage, that makes it sexier, doesn't it? It's kind of exotic.

I don't think it's that implausible that it'll be referring to the G string on a stringed instrument because of the narrowness of the fabric and also because audiences were looking at it, wanting it to snap. If it's coming through Belesque, there was also like a musical connection, wasn't there? Not many of them playing violin, though.

I was reading excerpts of a book called Striptees, the untold history of the girly show. And there's a few things in there that I found interesting. One of them was that in the 30s, a G meant a thousand dollar bill. So maybe it was just referring to people talking money into those. I don't know if they could get that up close during Stripty's performances of the era.

It also meant a scam, a G. So maybe it was like women were often involved in scams. So connections with money again. Yeah. And also G men. were FBI special agents so maybe they were like, well, you get a lot of those in here at these shows. I don't know.

In the strip clubs, yeah. Feels like a stretch. There's a lot of G around. Also, in slang, at the time, they would refer to G-strings as the gadget. So it's very funny. So maybe they were too coy even to say gadget

and they had to abbreviate. There was also the first commercial manufacturer of G-strings was a guy in New York called Charles G-G-G-Eat. also known as the G-string king. I think before him, most people wearing them had made their own, but he was making costumes and made them.

So, you know, it's possible that he was like, you know, the G-string, the G-string. Yes. All theories. Sorry for the lack of certainty, Hannah from Ottawa. If you don't even know what a question is, then you're probably at the wrong place. Because religion's on godcasts,

dogs are on dogcasts, Fisher on rodcasts, but we don't do fish. Because on this podcast, you answer me this. Here's a question from Daniel, who says, I was idly reading a pack of wet wipes the other day while on the loo. Relatable. Thanks. And notice some unusual wording on the packet.

It says, It is illegal to use this product for uses other than prescribed on this label. The only prescribed use is, quote, for hand hygiene. And as I'm sure many people will agree, they are much more versatile than that. Yeah, I don't think I've ever used a packet of wet wipes for hand hygiene, only for removing feces from babies. Well, that's illegal. I'm calling the cops. Daniel says, Olly, answer me this. Why is this wording included? Is this a situation where the product contains some sort of chemical that could theoretically be refined into something sinister like an ingredient for a bomb? or am I breaking the law by using these to wipe my bum?

I don't believe anyone has ever been arrested for wiping their bum on a wet wipe, so I think you'll probably say from in that regard, Daniel. But we are now being recorded wherever we go and whatever we do, so it's only a matter of time. More likely what this is, and without knowing the exact packet of wet wipes that you are using for this purpose, it's hard to be sure. Yeah, send them in by post.

Yeah, but not the used ones. The manufacturer of that packet had that product approved for the specific use of hand hygiene because that was cheaper and or easier to get approval for. That's the use they've tested it for. See, they've not tested it for anuses. Exactly. They cannot guarantee it's anal safety.

As soon as you involve bumholes, it's harder. It's a whole different regulation set up. Really? There's a department for bumhole laws. Exactly. So they can legally advertise hand cleansing and what they're basically saying is, this is up to you.

Don't go rogue. You put this on your bumhole. That's not our problem. If it really is just for hand hygiene, rather than just like a generic warning, it might be that it actually does have a little bit of disinfectant on it, and then you actually shouldn't put that on your bum hole. So you may have actually picked up a pack of what looked like wet wipes, but actually they are hand wipes, in which case heed the warning.

What if they're those wipes that are for cleaning the floor? Just the same. Flash bathroom wipes, those aren't for sticking on your anus, are they? Well, I hope they specify that. It's unusual for companies to be this responsible, but could it be to do with flushability? because if you use it on your bum and then you flush it, wet wipes are the absolute worst for the creation of fatbergs apparently.

Well, they are, Martin, they're very bad fatberg-wise. But then I think that would be a different bit of the label because they say flushable, which actually merely means that the wet wipe can physically get flushed down the toilet. It doesn't mean it is a good idea to do it or that environmentally it's not a disaster or that this wet wipe won't block septic tank or cause a fatberg. There was a big case in Australia about.

this, wasn't there? There's been lots of cases, including in Britain, and Britain had a campaign called Fine to Flush, and it meant that the wet wipes that had fine to flush labels on them supposedly did biodegrade, but they actually took that away a couple of years ago because people were so confused by, is it flushable? It is confusing. Or fine to flush. It's fucking outrageous. Why say flushable if by flushing it, you're destroying the environment? It's such a bizarre... If you find that infuriating, Oli, you know foods that advertise themselves being plant-based doesn't mean that they are suitable for vegans. It just means they have a lot of plant material in them, but not exclusively.

Oh, that's really weird. So you really have to read the label. That's really weird. Why do they do this? Why do they do that? You'd think that's only there for the vegans, wouldn't you? That's the thing. Who else is it for?

Who else cares? Anyway, the outcome of the fine to flush campaign was just they were like, flush no wipes at all. Toilet paper and pee and poo is what should go down the toilet. Everything else does not. not degrade. These are built much stronger than toilet paper, so they don't break down. It takes a lot longer. And also some of them contain alcohol, and that kills some of the bacteria and enzymes that helps waste break down in sewers. So all in all, not a great thing for the sewer. In 23,

32 billion wipes were bought in the UK. 12 billion of those contained plastics, and up to 3 billion of them ended up in the waterways. Fine. I mean, I absolutely agree, but there is a place for wet wipes that don't get chucked down the toilet and that is on my baby's arseholes. And then after that they just stay on there forever or do they end up in landfill, Ollie? They end up in landfill, but it is amazing to me to think. I've not even asked my mum about what she did actually

because I guess 1981 was pretty wet wipe. Cloths and water. Rags, shit rags. A pile of shit rags. That's just so, I can't imagine having gone through like seeing the feces that came out of my children all up their legs and all over the table. The idea of using like,

a bit of an old t-shirt or something and then taking it downstairs and cleaning it. It's so horrifying because I live in a post-wet-white world, but I actually can't imagine doing that. Maybe you never shat. Maybe you were a very decorous baby who never shat. Fact about wet wipes, though, that isn't about how they're destroying the earth. Oh, fun. Is that they are tied in with the history of Kentucky Fried Chicken, fascinating me. Oh, I love a moist towelette.

They were invented by Arthur Julius and sold as the wet nap. That was the original title. He was a cosmetics guy. So I guess his original thought was that it would be more makeup removal or those kind of uses. But he apparently saw the slogan, Finger Licking Good, and thought, oh yeah, you get that crap all over your fingers. I'm going to speak to the Colonel, went and pitch to Colonel Sanders. And KFC since then has given away over a billion wet nap wipes. And they're still the company that is now run by his son, the market leader, producing over 150 billion a year.

I suppose if they've still got that KFC contract, then yeah, they're going to be the market leader, aren't they? Yeah. But the early wrapping of the individual towelettes is actually quite cool. Yeah. Because not only has it got the iconic Colonel Sanders branding on it, it also has to describe what it is to customers that don't know. So it calls it a folded finger bowl.

Oh, wow. That's cool. That's cool. Very classy. Yeah. Whereas nowadays people be like fingerball, what? Yeah. I mean, they're serving food in a bucket, but it comes with a folded finger bowl.

Here's a question from Caroline, originally, from South End, now living in Bath. Okay, thank you for the update. I'm travelling to La Aquila. Is that how you pronounce that? Laquila. Laquilla? Laquilla is in Italy.

Laquila. It makes her happy. For a conference next Sunday. This, unfortunately, means taking a flight and past me ended up concluding that I wouldn't be able to sleep if I needed to get up early to travel. So I might as well not bother getting an overnight bus to the airport. and catching a 6am flight. I can kind of see the logic,

yeah, 6 a.m. flights, you've got to be there at maybe three. So if you are travelling at 1 in the morning, yeah, what is the point of going to sleep? I see it. Yeah, that's the kind of shit that I would do too. But then I also avoid getting any flights that leave before like 10.30. Because it ruins your day! However, I am now also in my 30s

and vastly less well able to cope with sleep deprivation than I was. Damn. Helen, answer me this. Do you have any top tips for dealing with pulling an all-nighter for travel purposes? and making it to my 5pm hotel checking. Oh no, come on.

Yeah, Italian hotels are a bit of a fuck-off vibe, aren't they? That's harsh. Without crying slash feeling horribly ill or missing any of the various buses I need to take. I'm not much good at napping. Okay, I'm guessing 5pm check-in means you're staying at the kind of place that will not allow you early check-in

that would help you in the afternoon. If you can dump your luggage there at least, that would be good and take yourself on a walk like if you can keep moving and keep yourself in daylight, that really helps. I think also adrenaline will take care of some of this. Yeah. Because there's the point after you've stayed up all night where you're like, you're not really sleepy anymore.

You're just aware that a crash could come at any time. Yeah. Which is exciting. You've not got a jet-like problem here going from Bath to Italy. So you don't really have to start shifting your time zones, but you could like slightly tweak when you eat meals so that it's a bit later. So it's easier for you to do this all nighter. I think, of course, you get to eat.

an extra meal when you've been up all night, you get like middle of the night breakfast and also day breakfast. It's interesting that she mentions her age as a factor because it is something that I've come to recognise. I used to pull all night as she puts it here all the time. I mean, when we were at Oxford, that was like how English students write essays, right? You stay up till three in the morning. Standard. And unfortunately, that method is still imprinted in my being and it happens more than never, even though I am now 46. Yeah. And now there's an Oxford arts graduate it running the country again. What could go wrong? But this idea of like you stay up till 3.30 in the morning, you get up at 5 in the morning,

you power on through was just how I function for a long time. Whenever there was a deadline, whenever I was going traveling, this sort of thing didn't bother me. I thought, yeah, I'll power on through. I can. I can power on through. And I have noticed recently that when I've tried, I actually just can't now. I can't. My body does, and I don't nap either. I don't see myself as someone who naps. But I do that thing where you're sitting watching the telly and like your head starts lolling to the side. You can't stay awake. My body is doing that now. So I just think I have to recognise that when I'm booking things and basically not to do what you've done. Yeah, Martin and I,

from I'd say our early mid-20s were like, there's no point getting an early flight because the day is bad. But I think, like, even if you're not a napper, having a quiet lie down with your eyes closed is quite important. Like your body does perceive that as rest, even if it's not sleep. But you can't check into the hotel till five. So yeah and my experience of Italy unfortunately is don't do that with a full suitcase on a bench because someone will steal it. It's just just just my experience. The thing is it's that incremental maths isn't it when you're booking these things. You look at the price of the flights or whatever and you're like well it's it's 80 quid if I get there at five in the morning

but it's 130 quid if I get there at midday and old me would have said well that's 130 quid I don't need to spend I could spend 80 but it's 130 quid. It's not. It's the increment. It's 50. It's 50 quid. So you don't feel like shit. That's worth it. Because you'll end up spending 50 quid on feeling like shit by getting caffeine and burgers and stuff to keep you paring on through. Right. It is a false economy. Yeah. There you are. Those are the two words that I was looking for in my extensive description there. Yes, false economy. It's too hard to remember. But then maybe she had no choice because maybe it was like in order to make the various connections and get to this particular airport she has to go to. There was only one flight. that day. Yeah, yeah.

But then I would do like overnight airport hotel the night before. I would just get like the cheapest one of those. Isn't it great how like the shittest chain hotel when it's an overnight airport scenario can feel like a luxurious treat? Yes, stolen time. It's just like, ah. Because it's not like a real place. This is even the travel lodge.

I can go to bed at 10pm. Look, there's a TV. I can watch the news. I'm going to get up in the morning. Get my plane. There's a breakfast. It all just feels like a treat in a way that staying in a travel lodge in any other circumstances. It's a, it's a treat.

But that's another thing about being in our 40s, Ollie, the treats change. They do. Well, if you would like to submit a question for a future edition of Answer Me This, all our contact details are published upon our website, AnswerMe Thispodcast.com. Halfway through the month, we will return with an episode of Answer Us back. So if you have any thoughts generated by a past episode of Answer Me This, from any era of Answer Me This, you've got nearly 20 years to choose from,

then send that in. And if you are a Patreoniser of Answer Me This, you also get a monthly little package of bonus bits. That's right. And you can listen to everything that's on our free feed but without ads or for a little bit more money, everything we've ever done on your podcast app of choice. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, whatever you use. How convenient though. Patreon.com slash Answer Me This. So convenient. And also supporting the show, supporting this independent show. Lovely. And what other shows have you been making Ollie this month?

Well, on The Modern Man, M-A-D-N, which is my monthly magazine show, every year for the past 11 years, I have convened and now reconvened with Friends of Answer Me This, Tom Price and Stuart Goldsmith, both comedians and stars of our jingles past. And other podcasts that they have, I suppose. That's right. To compare notes on fatherhood, because in a weird coincidence, we all became dads at exactly the same. time. This year we're talking about how YouTube can infiltrate the strangest of places. And also actually a conversation that we had, Helen, on our Patreon spin-off live stream series, Petty Problems, about how you make friends with the parents of children that your children aren't friends with in the playground. That in turn inspired me to ask them a question about making friends in the playground that we then talked about and how to be a dad, which was illuminating.

So yes, do check that out. The episode is called How to Be a Dad, Part, whatever it is, 11 or 12, I can't remember. But anyway, latest episode of The Modern Man, M-A-Double N, wherever you get your podcasts. Helen, what have you been up to you? I was a guest on a show called The Town Show, where you go on, you talk about your hometown for a bit, and then you do some improv sketches about what you've said about your hometown. Oh, wow, okay. Gish.

Improv about Tumbridge Wells Brass Rubbing Centre. Who'd have thought that would happen, especially here in Canada. Canada. And also The Illusionist. I recently had an episode which is about how fan fiction works. And that was very interesting. It is a complex and huge world, Ollie, that I just dipped a toe into. That's at theelusionist.org. And Marty Mark, what's going on with you? Go to Martin Nasserman.com. There's music. There's a podcast I've been working on. It's all there. And if none of that appeals to you, that's fine. Just make a note in your diary that we have another episode of answer me this, which is coming out on the last third. Thursday of August.

Send in your questions. Yes, do that. Or else you get nothing. Get cucked. Get cucked. Are you going to get that put on greetings cuts? Get cucked, exclamation mark. Bye!