Answer Me This! - Answer Us Back: scab library

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Hello! Welcome to this month's edition of Answer Us Back, featuring your responses to and observations upon past episodes of AMT. Today: Responding to AMT417’s collection of lost teeth, Dan from Sydney makes us wonder why there is a tooth fairy but no toenail fairy. Which body part would you choose to be the fairy of? Max in New Jersey responds to AMT418’s question about Jersey Shore filming in bars, having worked at a bar while Jersey Shore filmed in it. Also, have a care in this pivot-to-video era for we audiomakers, who do not wanna be on camera. Also responding to the Jersey Shore filming in bars with music question, Matt the dialogue editor chips in with his insider knowledge about the reality of music use and shooting dancing scenes. And Olly completely forgot that he too has insider knowledge, having himself been a dancing extra in a film! Dale in Truckee, California heard the AMT416 question about what to do with the suit from one’s wedding after the marriage has ended, and has an engagement ring to deal with post-breakup. And Rob in Durham has a question arising from maybe every AMT ever: did either of us ever try a career in stand-up comedy? If AMTs 1-418 left you with lingering questions and opinions, share them with us for future episodes of Answer Us Back. And as always, send in your questions, in voicenote or written form, to [e-mail]. All new AMT419 will be in your podfeed on 25 June 2026.  Help keep AMT going by signing up at patreon.com/answermethis, where you can get an ad-free version of the show, you can join us for our video livestream Petty Problems – the next is 28 June, 10pm UK time – and the highest tier gets access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including all our paywalled episodes, our special albums, the Bonus Bits of Crapp on the AMT App (RIP) and all the Retro AMT episodes. Answer Us Back is sponsored by: • 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. • The London Review of Books, the twice-monthly literary mag full of essays, reviews and more by excellent writers. Get a 6 month print and digital subscription for just £12 at LRB.me/answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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one of the Worker Day queries that we tackled in Answer Me This 417. Yes, very thought-provoking. I've got so many ideas now for my immense collection of teeth. Next month, should I open a scab library? Dan from Sydney has been in touch. To say, your tooth fairy conversation

reminded me of a holiday incident when our daughters were four and five, respectively. One had a loose tooth, and the other had a loose toenail from when her big toe had been crushed by a heavy stool some months earlier. Oh. I presume he means stools, as in bar stools, not bowel movement stools. One morning, he says, we awoke to gleeful cries of,

my tooth fell out and my toenail fell off. What are the odds on the same morning? On the very same day. The tooth was accounted for, he says, but the toenail was not. Uh-oh. Then began a frantic hunt for the missing toenail. Which I imagine is quite small on a four or five-year-old. Yeah, yeah.

Like the thing that you're looking for is not like finding an adult toenail that's the size of a postage stamp. I think it could be a gripping story. Wes Anderson has made films of less. Well, it's like find the afocoman, but bodily. This wasn't our apartment. And the idea of the next guest or the cleaner discovering her withered toenail was unthinkable. No, it's not.

Cleaners of holiday apartments have really seen it all. That is absolutely right. A toenail clipping, that's got to be a common leaving. A full toenail, it's got to be unremarkable, hasn't it? At least it's not moist. Yes. But I still understand the anxiety of the parent who doesn't want to leave that detritus behind as representative of their stay.

Yes, I appreciate that, not wanting to make work for other people. Good for you. He concludes his email, fortunately, the toenail was located behind the couch. But I can't wait for the day when our children's baby teeth stop falling out of their faces. Now, Helen, I was certain that that email was instead going to conclude, and thus we invented the toenail fairy to keep things fair. What the fuck, Dan?

Surely that night, one of them wanted the tooth fairy, the other one must have said, what happens to my toenail? Did you just kill their dreams then? Did you say one body part is more valuable than the other? And there's no logic behind, you know, as we said in AMT417, the tooth fairy supposedly keeps it to build castle, or bullshit. So, I mean, it's no different. Like, you can fashion all sorts of materials out

of keratin. Could be a toenail fairy that's creating biomedical applications like sponges. In fact, it makes less sense that there is a tooth fairy than there being no toenail fairy. Exactly. In a sense, if there are fairies, there should be a fairy for everything. Every body part, every hair, every blob of snot. If you were a fairy for any body part, Helen, what would it be? I guess one that very rarely falls off because I have a lot of trouble getting things done in a timely fashion Right, it's like tit fairy or something

Tithferry Mestectomies are quite a common procedure Sure, sure sure And I feel like if you've had one you deserve a visit from the Tit Ferry Yes, you totally do, yeah yeah yeah The Tip Ferry should come with, I mean I think you're looking at 50 quid plus as the reward there Yeah what is an organ that is very rarely removed from the body

Yeah yeah yeah That I'll be the fairy of that Or gallbladder fairy actually, why not? Gull bladder fairy, that's nice. I know it comes out quite often, but I've got an affiliation. Yes, yes, you have. That's what they look for, isn't it, with charity campaigns? Right.

Have you been affected? Yeah, and it also only comes out once. So that's a once-in-a-lifetime fairy visit. Not like toenails. I'd be a nose and ear hair fairy. Oh, yeah? Just to represent all the other middle-aged men out there. You know, it's a very common thing, in fact.

I'd be very busy. Yeah. And I don't know what I'd make out of all of the nasal hair. Maybe a rug. Yeah, or wigs for dolls. Yeah. Little doll moustaches. Absolutely.

But I just feel like, you know, it's time to reclaim the facial detritus of middle-aged men and say, celebrate it. Right. And like you said, it is exciting to lose a scab and put it in the museum of scabs. But nasal hair just hasn't had the kudos yet. Exactly. And therefore, Oli Man could really turn this shit around. I think I really could, actually. Yeah.

I'm making a note now. So that's going to be on my plan for 2020. Well, it's like your pickles range, all of your other excellent ideas, Ollie, that you just haven't had the time for. You know, actually, the pickle game generally has been upped, I would say, in the UK. Since I, you know, long-term listeners

the show, we'll know, like 20 years ago, I was like, the kosher pickle game is excellent, the Gentiles don't know what pickles there are. I think there's a gap in the market to bring pickles to Britain more generally because people just think of Gherkins and Cornishons, but there's so much more.

But actually, these days, there's all this sort of like fermented Korean stuff. You know, M&S do ranges of like fresh pickles as well as the jarred pickles. That's confusing. There's Japanese pickle going on, you know, the whole sort of Wagamama on the high street things. I'm not really sure. I'm not sure there's a gap anymore. You left it too late.

I think I did. Well, I knowingly left that gap in the market for someone else and I went on and did podcasting. That was generous. Yeah. Since you were the pioneer of podcasts, you didn't want to take pickles as well. It's just greedy. Co-pioner. You and Richard Herring.

That is who I was thinking of. You know, even Pamela Anderson's got her own pickle line. I didn't know that, but there you go. I mean, that just underlines the issue. The market saturation. Yeah. If I ever see some, if she's selling them on the roadside near Lady Smith on Vancouver Island where she lives, I'll get a jar for you. Yes, of course.

She's not too far from your, from your, it's conceivable, isn't it, that you could go to like a trendy Canadian film screening Q&A one day and she'd be in the audience. We're on stage. Just with a barrow full of pickles. Pickles, Pickles today. Here is some feedback from Max in New Jersey about the behind the scenes of Jersey Shore filming in bars and clubs that you were talking about in answering this 418. Oh yes, yes, that was a fun conversation, wasn't it? I always love that shit.

Yes. Max says, I grew up near Seaside Heights, New Jersey, where Jersey Shore was filmed. Oh. And I regularly worked in one of the bars they frequented while in production. That is exciting, isn't it? someone who didn't have to pretend to want to sleep with the guys from Jersey Shore so that they could get on Jersey Shore because they were just there. Max says, first of all, during the summer, Seaside Heights is a major tourist spot

and we would have regularly packed crowds until 2am, sometimes even later, even on weeknights. Okay, local knowledge, I'll bow to that. I was clearly speculating, wasn't I? I was just saying I presumed it would be relatively more empty on weeknights because I imagined that it would be busier at the weekend, but if you say not, fair enough. In summer, I suppose if they'd been filming in February could be different. Anyway, yes, fine. I mean, I have not worked in a bar in Seaside Heights. I bow to you, sir. Max says the Jersey Shore cast filmed several times when I was there, and on those occasions, they were not prearranged with extras to fill in the crowd.

They were all normal nights with the usual mix of locals who came to see the band I worked with, and the obnoxious tourists from New York that we call bennies. I wonder why they call them bennies. It was obviously derisery, isn't it? Yes, Max, please enlighten us. I know that when it goes the other way, because we did a today in history about Studio 54, the New Yorkers have a derisory term for New Jersey people. Something like something and tunnels. Bridge and tunnel. Bridge and tunnel.

Yeah, exactly, because they have to come from the suburbs and the bridges and tunnels. Yes, it's that, isn't it? That's what a Benny is in reverse, I guess. Max says, I vividly remember one such night where the cast was seated in a booth with a camera pointed at them, and they stayed there for 90 minutes without ever seen. saying a single word to each other, which I thought was very odd. So I'm not sure that does disprove. So you're basically saying, oh, there weren't any extras there, and it was a normal night

with normal people. But that's exactly the point. They weren't filming dialogue then, were they on that night? I was saying the question was, when they filmed the dialogue, that's a different scenario, isn't it? As we said in the episode, there's the kind of cutaways and the setups, the general here are the lads out on the last shots. But it's when you've got a scene, isn't it?

when you've got an effectively scripted, bullet pointed, here are the beats scene, those are the ones where they'd have the fixes. I wonder what this was for. Maybe it was just downtime while they were like getting the lighting right or some shit, the camera placement. Maybe the cast were like, we have to spend our time with each other all the time,

so we just really need not to be chatting right now. Or maybe they needed shots of them looking displeased for the narrative. Yes. And so they're like, just sit there doing nothing. I think they probably were just sick of each other because it's really actually quite, it's not strenuous, but it's tiring. Yeah. Being in reality TV. So we did actually talk about this in the episode and then cut it, but I think it's in the bonus bits.

If you subscribe on Patreon, you'll have heard this last week. But in researching around Jersey Shore, I was reading that when they made Geordie Shore, the bit where they sit in front of the green screen, that's two days filming. Two days filming doing that. Just the bit where you recollect what happened when you had an argument six months ago. and like when you actually think about what that's like, getting drunk and then having to do that for two days. Yeah, that's the shocking thing I think about pretty much all television. It's not, oh, how do they shoot a club scene with the music?

It's how long everything takes and how tedious it is. That's why I chose radio over tele, Helen, having worked in tele, and now fucking radio is becoming visualised. So it's like, oh. I know. I didn't get into audio to be perceived. Exactly, yeah. I prefer the imagination version of me that you're listening.

to you right now. Yes. Incredibly hot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd fuck him. Yeah. Do you ever feel like people are crossingly disappointed when they meet our corporeal realities? I think you just always build up a version in your head, don't you, of what a particular voice is. Brought vividly home to us both when we worked with Steve Wright. That is a man whose voice everyone in the UK had grown up with, even if they didn't consciously listen to Steve Wright in the afternoon. It's just on in the background everywhere. So when you see that voice, that iconic voice, come out of that man, you know, that disheveled, middle-aged, ordinary-looking man. It was a shock because it's like, that's not Steve Wright in my head.

Also, Steve Wright's press shots were many years old at that point. 20 years older, yes. But as are mine, because I never think, oh, I should get some press shots done. And then I'm like, oh, shit, when I need one. Sure, sure, sure. We have more discussion of Jersey Shore. Jersey Moore from Matt, who is a dialogue editor for film and television. Matt includes a link to his IMDB, which I enjoyed.

Oh, I didn't see that. Can I take a moment to see? Let me see what is he credits. I was very impressed. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, he worked on, not heard of it. I've heard that's great. Song Song Blue, not heard of it. Sorry, this is not like I'm not being critical.

I'm just being honest. I'm not heard of it. Song Sun Blue was the film that Kate Hudson got an Oscar nomination for this year. Okay. The American Revolution, I mean, I've heard of as a historical event, but not the historical TV series. Worked on Pacino and Dying for Sex, both very good shows. I'm just down browsing the whole thing to see if I've seen

any of your work. The staircase? I have seen the staircase. So yes, that is the one credit on his, on his CV that I have seen. So, yeah, anyway. Midsomer! Yeah, not seen it. Sorry.

Anyway, well done, Matt. I love that you have an IMDB. Matt says, fun to hear a really rather accurate appraisal of my chosen craft and profession of film and television audio. Yes, see? Me bullshitting about it was still accurate. There you go. I must say up front, I didn't work on Jersey Shore.

I was still in university then. But I was listening to answer me this. while Snokey and the gang were airing all those years ago. Ollie, a lot of your research was, I think, spot on. A few additional tidbits. If music is playing back in scene in a film with extras dancing, we often use what's called, at least in America, a thump track, which is just a steady pulse of bass

or a very low frequency at the tempo of the song that will be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We use bass so it doesn't occupy the same register as actors' voices and can be easily rolled off and removed from the audio recorded during filming. And that's what we were saying, wasn't it? Dance the metronome, filter it out later. I actually, I had forgotten this when we were recording it,

but I was in a film as an extra and it had to do that. I just weirdly forgot to... Oh, I've led such an exciting showbiz life. It slipped my mind that I hadn't experienced exactly relevant to what we were talking about. It did, yeah. I forgot to anecdotalise it. Well, get on the case now. So, since I'm on IMDB anyway, let me see if the film that I'm in the background of has an IMDB page.

Hold on. Live research. What period of your life was this? Oh, like straight out of university, if not still in it. Oh, my God. Okay, so the film was called The Devil's Music. Mm-hmm. I'm not familiar.

No, it was a British film. I think about the Rolling Stones or the pre-rolling Stones' Rolling Stones. Yeah, the only films that are coming up with that title were made in 2008, and this would have been more like 2001. Oh, here we are. The Devil's Music 2002, rated 15 one and a half hours. That probably is it. How does it score?

How does it score? It doesn't have the film cover art listed. It doesn't have any reviews. Yeah, there's nothing about it. I know that it, you know, it did get finished, but I'm not sure it got released. It probably got shown at film festivals and stuff. I'm just seeing whether the director's made anything since.

Not really. It was highly low budget, which is why obviously people's mates were dancing in the background. So yeah, anyway, there was a pub in Herne Hill and me and my friends went along for the day. We were paid as well, but like 30 quid for like 12. hours or something.

And yeah, we did the thing. We danced. I think we were actually dancing to a track because that was also where they were filming the miming to the track of the band pretending they were playing the track. But I seem to recall that there was also some general dancing to a nothing. So, yeah. Incredible. Done it.

Yeah. Forgotten that I'd done it. Made a reference to Scooby-Doo, but I've actually done it myself. You were Scooby-Doo for one long, poorly paid day. Matt continues Your questionnaire may have also observed a music rights issue with Jersey Shore There's a good chance that when the program originally aired It had a mainstream track as you all discussed

Either covered under MTV's blanket broadcast music licensing deals Or a song negotiated for the show But now years later Typically music rights for streaming are more expensive As it's a license in perpetuity versus a one-time broadcast So there's a chance The music that was originally in that club scene will have since been replaced by a more generic library track to save MTV some cash

before putting it on Paramount Plus. Right. Because otherwise I guess it would just be too expensive to stream an old reality show, wouldn't it? Right. Because the royalties. Yes. Matt says the most notable example of this I can think of is UK Top Gear,

where the programme as broadcast has a wildly larger array of classic hit tracks covered under BBC broadcast deals versus generic library sounder-like streaming on Amazon. Nice. Okay. This is nerdy granular levels of detail. I love nerdy granules. When I used to work at ITV daytime, there was like a poster above my desk that had obviously been there for like 20 years, quite well-worn. And it just said, do not use the Beatles or Elvis Presley.

So obviously they'd been burned by that before. Those then were the artists that were like, they will fist you if you use their song. We are not covered to play that. Didn't they use the whole music budget for one season of Mad Men on one Beatles track? Yeah, well, you can't you? It's harder when you're Jeremy Kyle. But even then, they were like, well, this meant that we couldn't have a. anything for all of the other episodes because we wanted one burst of Beatles.

Yes, well, hence I was apparently in a Rolling Stones biography without any Rolling Stones music in it. Answer Me This is sponsored by The London Review of Books. Which is a phenomenal publication with an incredible range of subjects in it. So you'll go from like 3,000 words on Cicero to 3,000 words on Britney Spears. Oh, yeah. And they're both treated seriously and written by, you know, great writers. Which I think is how we like to do things as.

well, just vacillating wildly from pop culture to something ancient through something serious or moral. I agree. I think the variety is reflective of our style. And also unlike us, the LRB has tote bags. Oh, such a good tote bag. I mean, I know I shouldn't say subscribe to the LRB so you get the tote bag, but I mean, I looked like the coolest intellectual on the beach. You are. I'm sure you're the coolest intellectual on any beach, Ollie. I love a paper magazine and more and more the rarer they get. And in this sort of fast-paced world that we're in now, that kind of lean-back experience, I am all here for. And it's simultaneously like luxurious, but also to the point. Yeah. This life can be yours as well, because you can get a six-month print and digital subscription to the London

review of books and a free tote bag for just £12. That's right. Subscribe now at LRB.combe. That's lrb.m.m. forward slash answer. How can working at your local Tims take you further? Sure, you can level up your teamwork skills. You also get a chance to receive a Tim Horton's scholarship award. Ready for what's next? Apply today at careers.timhorins.ca. You may recall, Helen, back in Answer Me This 416, we talked about a wedding suit

that an anonymous questionnaire had written in to say, what am I going to do with the wedding suit? We've broken up. Yes. Broken up and it seemed to be a fair way in their past. It did. I think three years in at that point. Dale from Truckee, California, has written in, he says,

my relationship ended 18 months ago when my fiancé of nine years left. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, we were engaged for nine long years with neither of us pushing for the official wedding to take place. I suspect we both knew it wasn't going to last. Well, good for you for realising that before getting married. Yeah, yeah, better at that point, isn't it? Not on the day in a dramatic. like rom-com fashion.

Yeah. It's like me with failing to answer emails. I figure if I leave it long enough, then it ceases to become relevant anyway, so it was okay that I failed to answer it. I mean, it's interesting. He's preempting what he thinks,

I think, we might have said there. Like, you are engaged for nine years. And that must be through your experience of lots of people saying to him, oh, well, you know, if it's been that long, maybe it was never going to work. But actually, just on that, side note, in my experience, is not true.

I know quite a few people that have been engaged for ages and just haven't got round to it. And it's not because there's some sort of unconsumated part of their relationship. My colleague Olly Pitt, from the Modern Man, when I met him in 2015, was still engaged to the same person he is now, who is now the mother to his child, and they live together and have a mortgage. Yeah. So, yeah, arm shrug emoji. Some people, they just, you know, like being engaged.

I think that's very reasonable because, A, living together with a mortgage and having a child are both. commitments. In almost life commitments. Yeah. And I'm not sure that marriage is a more significant one than either of those. But also, like, when Martin and I got engaged, that felt like a kind of shift in our relationship. But I didn't feel a similar shift when we got married.

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. I agree. He says, I've been hanging on to the engagement ring, though, because I don't know what to do with it. Right. Tiny napkin ring? Tiny tiara.

In California, where I live, an engagement ring is legally considered a conditional gift, meaning I need to give it back, regardless of the circumstances. We talked about this, didn't we? Gifts with conditions. Are they really gifts at all, say I? Yeah, this is complicated. And also because it's 18 months ago, it becomes more complicated, because if you'd given it back straight away, then you'd be free of this dilemma.

Well, if your fiancé had asked for it straight away, I think that would make a difference. We're going to come on to this. He says, my fiancé is the... one who ended the relationship. So I feel like I should keep the ring despite the legal definition of this gift. My ex wouldn't expect the ring to be returned, nor would he care about the legal definition. That's not something he would concern himself with. All right. We have a fine relationship now, as we have dogs together, and could talk about this,

but I'd rather not, it would just bring up too much from our past. Why bother? And what would you suggest that I do do? Well, I would suggest that what you could do is, is sell the ring and put the money towards the dog fund, like if the dog needs medical expenses or such. Would that seem fair? I know it's not very romantic. Dogs plural, so that is actually a useful, yeah, and could be expensive in California, couldn't it?

Right, because if you are co-humans to these dogs, then both of you are facing ongoing dog expenses. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I like that. Okay. Because, as you say, the fact that he hasn't mentioned it thus far probably does mean he hasn't even thought about it and probably does,

you're correct, not care about it or feel like he has any claim on it and he's not bothered. And so if you wanted to keep it for yourself, if it actually was bringing you some joy, even if only in a nostalgic keepsake box, then I think that'll be fine for you to keep it. But when it comes to selling it, when you started your answer there and you were like, I would suggest selling it. I was like, ooh, I think if you sell it or pawn it, then I think you do have to tell him because at that point, A, as you say, he is legally entitled to it. and B, since you still see each other, who knows?

He might ask about it in the future one day and you don't want to then reveal, oh yeah, I sold it, get the money. But the dog's thing was ingenious, Helen. Oh, thanks. I hadn't thought about that. I thought, God, what do you do? Do you just sell it anyway? And then come to him having said, look, I've had an offer for X amount of dollars.

Shall we split it and see what he says. Maybe he'll say keep it. But if he says split it, fair enough. At least you get to keep some of it. But your idea is better go towards your dogs. that is your joint project together. That is in effect the fruits of your marriage, of your aborted marriage. So yeah, spend the money on the kids, definitely.

I know you said you didn't want to have this conversation because it was going to dredge up things, but do you think you could have it if you have this plan in place? Yeah, sort of build up to it. So it's not like what do you want me to do. It's like, here's an idea for what to do with this thing that is sort of hanging over me. Would you agree to that? Pass him the leaflet on the coffee table. You know, slide it over.

like a prospectus for a private school. Leaflet for what? So you've got an engagement ring for a relationship that is now finished. No, no, no, no. A leaflet for the dog hotel or the dog outfit or the dog car, wherever the fuck you can spend the dog money on. The dog car. Yeah, I've sold my engagement ring to pay for driving lessons for the dog.

Sell him the dream. That's all I'm saying. Sell him the dream. Sure, sure. The other thing would be, depending on what it's made out of, could you get a jeweller to reconfigure it into something that you would like? and that didn't have associations for you or would it still be too uncomfortable because the association was too strong?

Yeah, or could you actually halve it but then that is kind of destroying it and then give him half and say I've made it into whatever it is, nipple rings, ear studs. Sure, yeah, matching nipple rings with someone you're no longer in a relationship with. Not at all weird.

Hold on, the answer is staring us in the face. It's a combination of all the things we're saying, dog jewelry, dog jewelry, dog jewelry. That's what to do with it. That's what you do with it. You make two dog jewellery things, one for each dog. It's keeping the dream alive through your furry children, but also it's accessorizing the dogs in a fun way that isn't then worth money to steal the dogs

because it's effectively destroyed the jewelry. Done. Dog jewelry. Okay. They are in California, which as a state I think would have more dog jewelry than most, but they are in Truckee, which, you know, dial that backwards a bit. Right, okay. It's not like they're in San Francisco.

A bling pooch in any part of the world is appreciated. Well, please send us pictures if that's what you can. Please. Rob from Durham is ending this edition of Answer Us Back. Congratulations, Rob, your headlining. Yeah. With the following humdinger of a piece of feedback. He says, I have been enjoying the Answer Me This Return.

Thanks. It allows me to ask something that I intended to ask when you ended the podcast but never got round to. Oh. Question he's been sitting on since 2021. Wow. You're both comedy fans and you both work in performance of various kinds. That part is true.

Yeah, I partially challenged that statement. It feels like it could be said of me, but it isn't fundamental to me. What, comedy fandom or the other thing? Both things, really. Okay. But I see, it's not like a million miles. It's not like you said,

you're both racing drivers and you eat loads of ham. But you haven't nailed me there. But anyway, here's the question. The elusive ollie man cannot be nailed. Did either of you ever try, stand-up comedy in your career? And if so, how did it go and were you ever any good at it? I didn't really. I did a lot of stand-up adjacent things where I would perform with stand-ups,

but not do stand-up. But I did write like weird little plays and I was in sketch and stuff and I used to run a comedy club with Josie Long. And I did on-stage embroidery during a 12-night run she had at the Soho Theatre where I was embroidering a different scene from her show each night. But Josh Whitacom never did that. Not yet. However, I didn't want to do stand-up stand-up, partly because I didn't really do like stage monologues until a few years ago with illusionist live shows because I couldn't figure out a way in which I would want to do that. But also I knew what that life was like because my brother was a stand-up.

Yes. And because a lot of my friends were stand-ups and particularly the stand-ups who weren't men, that was a fucking difficult life. There were very few of them at the time. A lot of them like didn't last in comedy because it was so unpleasant. The rooms were set up for them not to succeed. There were a lot of people sexually abusing the female stand-ups, and I didn't want that.

I also didn't want to be away 300 nights a year doing shit gigs just to build up something. I was too lazy, basically. And I liked the fact that podcasting, we got to be amusing, but there's less obligation than when people have paid to come to a place and laugh, then you really have to deliver, whereas we didn't. One of the things we always said all along was that now there are so many categories on Apple Podcasts.

But in 2007, there were like five to choose from, so we called this comedy. But we always said, like, if there was just like a banter category, which I think there is no like an... There's entertainment, I think. Entom is better because it's not comedy.

Like, it's funny, but sometimes talk about serious things in a flippant way, albeit, but, you know, it's not constantly looking for... It's not the Simpsons. It's not looking for a gag every 10 seconds. It's like... It's infotainment.

It's infotainment. It's edge amusement. Whereas, yeah, I always used to feel uncomfortable for the fact that people would sometimes call us comedians they'd interview us or write about us. Yeah.

Yeah, they still do. And, you know, when we were doing punditry as well, I went through a phase in my career, listeners may recall from a while ago, where almost nightly I'd be on BBC News or I'd be on Sky News or I'd be in the mornings on Lorraine. I did a lot of paper reviews and stuff like that. And often it would come up with a caption,

comedy podcaster. It's fine in theory, but then what are you there to discuss? Just whatever's in the news. You know, so you'd be there to discuss a grooming gang or something. It's like, I'm not going to be. making jokes about this. Whereas if it says historian, you're not going to automatically assume that they're going to contextualize everything they say with, well, actually, funny story about when Goebbels went to Rotherham. It's not necessarily connected. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

So I always used to say, can you just call it podcast? You just say podcasted. But then, of course, then I'd have Aymond Holmes grilling me half an hour about what a podcast was. So that was hard as well. What's that? How can you make money? Oh, my God. To answer the question, head on, yeah, I did sort of try stand-up comedy. I wouldn't call it in my career because I was still at school. But when I was in the Rushmore stage of my life and I was like head boy at my school and putting on morning assemblies and singing, dancing, award shows and stuff

I created a couple of opportunities per year for me to stand up in front of the entire school and basically do a comedy monologue for seven minutes. Like you were Billy Crystal hosting the Oscars. Yes, exactly my influence, yes. And I'm not going to lie, I was really good for that audience. I bet. I bet you were.

I knew exactly the in-jokes. I pitched it right, so the teachers were like uncomfortable, but not standing up to rush on stage and stop me. You know, the victim of all the jokes was usually laughing along. You know, it was well judged for a 16-year-old. But, you know, that's very different, isn't it? Performing in front of effectively a private audience where you sort of understand all the joke completely. Well, that's kind of how it is now when I perform,

because people come to a Lucianist live shows, and it is more like stand-up or cabaret or something. It's not a live podcast recording. Yeah. But the difference between it and doing stand-upy stand-up is the audience is already into what I do and I don't have to win them over. And that is a sweet, sweet privilege that I enjoy. Yes, exactly. I think also a lot of people would not have qualms calling themselves comedians and doing what we do.

But I did because I hadn't put in the work to be a circuit comedian. I felt like I needed to do that in order to claim the title. Exactly. I've had this exact conversation with Matt Hill, who co-operative. produces a lot of the shows that I make, who a few times has written about me in a sales pitch for an advertiser or something as a journalist, you know, hosted by journalist Oli Mann. And I always been like, stop putting that. I'm not a journalist. I'm a radio presenter. I haven't done a course in journalism. And he's like... Yeah, not got the ethics training.

Yeah, I haven't done all the stuff with like, this is what happens if a case is live. This is what happens, you know, in court. I don't know that. I sort of instinctively, I've understood what you do, but like, I haven't been trained. And I don't see my role as being a journalist. I tend to talk to journalists about stuff. But anyway, he was like, listen back to the modern man for the last 10 years. You've been doing original. That is original journalist. You've gone and met people. You've uncovered their stories. You've discussed things. That's being a journalist. And so both things are true. Like, you know, there is a qualified thing. And then there's also like, how do people perceive you? What would they say this is? Yeah. And so reluctantly accept that we're in the

comedy field. I do think it fucked my career quite a bit not to be like, I'm a comedian or I'm a journalist. I think you have to self-branded these things and then people let you do the kinds of jobs that I am already good at. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I mean, there's a whole circuit of kind of people that are only on radio four panel shows and have never really had a job, apart from doing that. That could be me. And exactly. And I remember thinking, how do I get to just be that guy? Because that looks fun. You have to do stand-up once, like many years ago. Yeah, or have been at university with the person who's now presenting the show. I think that helps as well. We almost certainly were, Ollie. Exactly. You're relating to the person who's presenting the show. But yeah, it's easier for the producers, isn't it, to say, oh yes, you should get them.

They're a comedian. Yeah. Even if they're not, even if they do less than we do. Yes. So that's vexing. But I just didn't want to. I would have felt like it was disingenuous. So career fuckage, I took, I suppose. Yeah, but we are genuine. That's the thing. That's the authenticity we're selling, isn't it? What price? It commands no price these days, Ollie. No one gives a shit. I don't know. Well, it commands a certain price on Patreon for which we're very very

Very grateful. Oh my God. The skills of the man. There you go. Radio presenter, not journalists. If you want to support... Could a journalist do this? If you would like to support this show and it's ongoing quest to be as genuine as possible and not necessarily comedy, then please do continue to send us money at Patreon.com slash answer me this because you are keeping us afloat. We massively appreciate it. Thank you. And you could have, if you had done that, you could have been listening to this now without having to hear the ads that have been injected in it throughout. Also, please send us your questions for the next Answer Me This, which lands in your pod feed on the 25th of Gene, and keep sending your feedback on Answer Me This episode's old and new. We love seeing your responses to these things, some of which are buried deep in the feeds and our memories. Indeed. And also your petty problems as well. If you have a petty problem, something that's too insignificant even to be considered a piece of feedback. We have a show for that too. It is our live stream series Petty Problems. The next one is on Sunday the 28th.

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