Answer Me This! - Answer Us Back: silky finish

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Hello! Welcome to this month's edition of Answer Us Back, featuring your responses to and observations upon previous episodes of AMT. Today: Swiss Chris continues the fondue discourse, explaining its role as a festive foodstuff, and the cheese-crust nun at the bottom of the pot. Yes, NUN. As in, nun. Cheese nun! Julia in Dublin recounts a FONDUE FIRE! And Olly tells what happened the time he sought out the best ploughman’s lunch in England. Rafael tells us what he did with the advice we doled out in AMT408 about the overly pushy patron of his art gallery.  Jane responds to AMT417’s discussion of shotgun weddings with some Classic Hollywood Musicals. Gosh, a wedding held by force is SUCH FUN, isn’t it, Old Hollywood. Johnny hears AMT410’s sweet-taste-of-sexual-awakenings cherry wine in songs and raises you sweet-taste-of-sexual-awakenings strawberry wine. Is there a beverage that reminds you of the start of your sexual career? Ari has a historical suggestion for why booze-free versions of alcoholic drinks tend to have blue branding, per AMT417. If you’ve been haunted by thoughts about AMTs 1-417, exorcise them by sharing 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 AMT418 will be in your podfeed 28 May 2026.  Help keep AMT going by signing up at patreon.com/answermethis, where highest tier gets access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including the paywalled episodes, the special albums, the Bonus Bits of Crapp on the AMT App (RIP) and all the Retro AMT episodes. AMT is sponsored by: • Saily, flexible eSIM data roaming plans for when you’re abroad. Download SAILY in your app store and use our code amt15 at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase. For further details go to saily.com/amt15. • 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

It's Answer Us Back, our monthly look, through your feedback on Answer Me This is New and Old. Swiss Chris has been the first to let the fondue chat bubble on and trickle in. Great. He says, I felt compelled to write in after all the fondue chat. The power of cheese compels you. The power of fondue, who do, you do, I do what, I'm Swiss Chris. And I say, having spent the last 46 years, of my life in Switzerland.

That's good qualification. I can add my two centim. Ironically, despite being the land of the cheese fondue, meat fondue, both chinoise with broth and borgignon with oil, are Christmas and New Year's staples. Okay, they beat the cheese to it. Many families, he says, take a break from the far superior cheese fondue to consume these meaty monstrosities.

But that's Christmas food all over, isn't it? we've said many times before. It's not about what's best. It's deliberately things you only once a year, isn't it? Yes, or even no times a year, but you would miss it if you didn't have to dislike it on that day. Yeah, exactly. Oh, it's got to be part of Christmas. Oh, mint baillies. Yes, thanks. No, thank you. Disgusting. But Christmas, sure. Yeah, well, I mean, it's just, you know, what is it? It's like brushing your teeth and having a bailey's at the same time. It's the taste of multitasking, really. Anyway, back to fondue. Chris says, I remember my dad used to keep a bouillon after a fondue in the fridge

and keep eating it as a lovely soupy broth and then he puts in brackets, ugh but I mean that's just stock. Come on. That's normal. It's a stock that's had lots of ingredients making extra flavour in it. Why waste it? Your dad was onto something. Hard agree. I mean, you can use that as a base for all sorts of things,

can't you? Risotto, pasta sauce, gravy. Yeah, more meat fondue. Indeed. As for the kissing, he says, because we did talk about this idea of people forfeiting if they lose what's on their fork. Yeah. And apparently that's a kiss in some practice. in Switzerland. Yeah, I'd heard of that. Don't be so incredulous. That's a well-known fondue penalty.

He says this has been around forever, both with meat and cheese fondos. I'm unsure how widely practice this still is post-COVID. I don't know. People are acting like COVID never happened, Chris. Gobbing in each other's mouths, licking window panes. Funnily enough, he says, during COVID, the authorities made an official declaration saying eating fondue was no risk. Yeah, it was like the British Chancellor paying people to go to restaurants, even though you couldn't go to a hospital and be with a dying loved one. Sure. I mean, I suppose at least in the summer you could eat outside, whereas this is a sharing dish and they're saying, go ahead and share. I think we can all say the molten meat is not so hot,

it kills all bacteria. If anything, it's the perfect breeding ground, surely. One of our most fun lockdown activities, I think it was maybe about a year and a half into COVID, but there was still quite a lot of restrictions on how you could be with people. We were living in the same block of flats as our friends and we put our hot pot set on a table outside and we ran an electrical cable from the garden into the ground floor kitchen so that we could power the hot pot.

Then had all the vegetables and fish bits in the hot pot outside. Oh right. So you were doing this very sin of sharing the bacteria-infested hot pot. Well, it wasn't a cheese hot pot, it was a hot pot hot pot. Anyway, Swiss Chris does conclude his email with something that didn't surprise me. He says some of us in Switzerland will dunk their bread in cherry schnapps

midway through a cheese fondue I've known people to break an egg near the end of a cheese fondue for a silky finish Oh yeah, you know when you're all full of liquid cheese What you need to refresh yourself is an egg And when Finnish never forget to eat the amazing crust At the bottom of the pot he says What we call

La religios or none in English As in Nun N-N-U-N-N-U-N. Yes. I dread to think he says what the etymology of this term is. It's one of those terms that is a bit disputed. I'd heard of the food stuff, La Religiers before, but that was like a two-tier shoe pastry thing, basically because they're like, it looks like a nun's body.

It's like a little head on a round body. I see. So it also looks like a snowman. No, fine. I thought it might be something disparaging. Like I thought like, you know, nuns are famously sexless. I wondered whether this crusty bit at the bottom of the pot and the shape of the pastry might play into that archetype.

Oh, I see. well I don't think the pastry and the crust are related the cheese crust is apparently only called that in French speaking Switzerland and the Savois region of France so one of the explanations that I think is bullshit is supposedly that monks would eat all the cheese and then be like look we've left you the crust parishioners lucky you I mean that sounds like a lie because that's kind of the opposite of the other explanation that is pretty common which is that nuns would go around visiting people in the community and then ask for a scrap of food as a reward and then people would give the nuns their cheese rinds because there are like, well, this is what I can spare for you. Yes. And then the other thing is they're like, well, this crust, you lift it out and it kind of drapes like a nun's wimple. I actually do think the first explanation makes the most sense in that obviously nuns eat communally, don't they?

So fondue seems likely. And I do think a thing a nun would do when they get to the end is go and give it to someone. Like the way you made it sound was like that was kind of sardonically, oh, eat my, eat my crumbs, you peasant. But actually. But that was attributed to monks, not nuns. So I call it a nun, not a monk. Monk, nun.

the popular imagination the same, I think. Anyway, I think it's nice that Swiss Chris has so much to say about his national dish. I think at a push, I could sort of talk to an American about how to choose a good fish and chip shop, for example, but I couldn't really write five paragraphs about it, do you know what I mean? I think you could write very extensively about where to go for afternoon teas in London and surrounding areas. I think one could. I'm not sure I could.

I think you could. You've given me a lot of useful tips in the past, such as it's all you can eat to ask for more sandwiches. I mean, I did used to have to a word count in my columns, and I did somehow manage this to spend 850 words when I only had 75 to say, so I suppose you're right, I could. I'm underestimating my own talent. Maybe you just went very florid with adjectives. Maybe. Julia in Dublin has also written in about fondue. Good.

She said a year ago, I was visiting Switzerland with my family. On one of our last nights there, we went out for a fondue dinner, as you do. It was also my mum's birthday celebration. The restaurants served various, inverted commas, traditional Swiss meals, including, including. including cheese fondos and a type of cheese shawama thing where you scraped melted cheese off a kebab. Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha. New dream for Olly Man.

I love a novelty cab. I sent you that bit. I saw a jellied fruit kebab in Dubai and I was so excited that I sent Helen the photo from the Ramadan buffet. Yeah, and I was like, you know, it's obvious. Why wouldn't you cab more things? This sounds like reclette, but in kebab form. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

I mean, who's not there for that? I suppose people are allergic to cheese. Yes, yeah, yeah. Julia says, the restaurant staff brought all the. these things out on little rolling trolleys. The restaurant was quite crowded, and everyone had their ski jackets on the back of their chairs. Surprisingly, it was not antics

from my young children, but bad trolley driving by staff that caused the incident. A fondue flame. Came too close to my mum's jacket and it caught fire. It was made of some kind of synthetic fabric. It didn't burst into flames,

but sort of melted into a puddle almost instantly. Yes, I wonder if they don't really bother sort of fireproofing ski jackets, because kind of by definition, you're not going to be near a flame if you're in one, and you're going to be near snow to put it out. Hey, well, the Apres ski, though. Yeah, well, we're seeing the short-sightedness of that thinking play out before our eyes. The restaurant staff were horrified and very apologetic, and my mom now has a new Swiss

jacket and a story to remember that birthday. Oh, that's nice. I think when you buy things on holiday, because the thing you've brought wasn't sufficient, or it got stolen, or it's run out, or you didn't bring it. Or it's melted. Yeah, or in this case, it's been caught on fire by a rogue... On your birthday. On your birthday by a fondue waiter.

I think that's always something that then when you wear that thing, you remember the holiday. I have quite a few things. Items like that. Where I'm like, well, I wouldn't have chosen that. But now I think, oh yeah, that's the fleece I bought for three quid in Blackpool Market because I was completely illiqued for the fact that Blackpool is colder than London. Oh, Oliver. So it's more of a testament to your inability to think ahead. Essentially, yes.

You know, we were talking about how fondue was popularized because the, cheese marketing board of Switzerland was like, we need you to eat more cheese, so we're going to lace this with National Pride. Yeah. Have we ever talked about this before? I felt like it was new to me, but maybe nothing is new to me at this stage of answer me this. Another cheese marketing board meal was the Plowmans. Yes, I think you have talked about that.

Right. Although the concept of a plowman is much older than the plowments, in the 1950s, the Cheese Bureau of Britain Marketing Body began promoting it in pubs so that they could sell more cheese after it came out of rationing. And very successful it's been too, and actually something that I could definitely write 850 words about. There you go.

I love a plowman's. In fact, in the answer to me this hiatus, I went to a holiday resort in the south of England that listeners may know called Sandy Balls. I don't know Sandy Balls. What an epic name. It's named after locals for a while, according to mythology, have said that giants carved the cliffs

with their feet or something. Sure they did. But anyway, it's just a sort of stupid name that makes people giggle, obviously. They knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing. It's a bawdy medieval joke that's still with us now. Anyway, in Sandy Bowles, it just so happened that, like, the week before,

I'd seen a sort of BBC 2 Tea Time documentary, one of these, like, Great British Menu type, let's tour the UK and find the best, whatever. And they'd done a programme all about Plowman's lunch, and apparently an award-winning pub selling Plowman's lunch was like five miles away from where we were staying in Sandy Ball. Tantalising. So in the family WhatsApp, I was like,

can we do lunch on the Sunday and can we not have a roast? Can we go to this place and have the best plowments in the UK please? And everyone agreed. And we all went and we all ordered the plowments. And it was really good, although because it had been on telly the week before, there was a queue and that ruined it a bit. But my father-in-law, for some reason, was like, I'll have the vegetarian soup. And we were like, John, don't do that.

This is the world's best plowman's pub. Have the plowments. I just fancy the vegetarian soup. I don't know where that came from what possessed him. It was a hot day. Oh, okay. And anyway. The heart wants what the horse wants, Ollie.

Suffice to say, everyone who had the plowments had a nice time. John went home the next day with, like, things coming out of both ends. No, from a vegetable soup. Yeah, but it just, like, if you'd have seen it, Helen, you'd be like, this has been in this. It was served out of a food truck on a very hot day. Oh. You're just like, no, no. It'd have been festering.

Have the plowments. Oh, John. Yeah. So. It's the last time he won't have a plowman's. I guess so. It's the power of the marketing board, isn't it? The suit marketing board didn't invest in the same way.

Yeah, well, I've just done the soup marketing board a great disservice, obviously. It's going to take me even longer to recover. Actually, vegetable soup and plowments do go together in my mind because at my vegetarian school, we used to get vegetable soup with the plowmonds. That was called plowments on Plowman's Day. Plowman's day was a thing. Every Wednesday, yeah. Wow.

Wednesday was the highlight, Helen, because it was Plowman's lunch with ice cream, I think. which is obviously the best pudding. And then I think that evening was egg and chips, which a vegetarian school is the equivalent of fish and chips or bacon and chips. So it's a pretty good day. That is a good day. Why'd they do it on Wednesdays just to get you through the hump?

Just to get it. I think that must have been it. This is a follow-up from AMT 408 from July 2025. Yeah. We, you might recall, advised a man who asked to be called Raphael. I mean, he was anonymous, but he said, call me Raphael, who runs an art gallery with his wife in the US. and one of his regular collectors

had written to them to say that he wanted to come and help them by working there at the weekend and Raphael was basically like no, that's when I make commission also don't underestimate my skills and experience at my job how do I tell him to go fuck himself?

Yeah, and I was like, just tell him to go fuck himself. Yeah, you were like, spell it out, F-U-C-K and he was like, yeah, but he's a good client and, you know, anyway, Raphael has followed up, Helen, and you'll be pleased to know that he's taken your advice to the letter, so it's all on you.

And it's ruined his life. He says, I really respected all your advice and ideas. Thank you. I mean, I can't remember at this stage what I said, but great. I particularly felt heard, he says, when Helen said that my customer's email was coercive. Oh, yeah. I remember this guy seeming rather entitled. This helped me justify my antipathy towards him.

Well done, Helen. That's what I live to do. I did take Helen's advice to be direct, and so I emailed him stating clearly that we wouldn't be requiring his help in the gallery, which he accepted. Okay, good. Sounds good so far, doesn't it? But there's got to be a twist. There's a twist in the world. There's a twist in the world.

He was in town a few days later, and after a quick chat, he mentioned he had a lot of ideas for our business and markets we should focus on. He said he had analysis and PowerPoints to show us. Oh, PowerPoints. What the actual fuck, I thought. Fair. No one asked for this and we don't need him. My wife is a great business person and that's all we need. Okay.

This customer had essentially invited himself to be part of a team at this point. Again, I told him we were grateful for his input but we just didn't need it. He didn't listen and his parting words before he left the gallery were, Just Get Me in front of X, X being the name of an artist. Oh, do you think he's just doing this? because he wants to hobnob with artists. Just using your contacts through the art gallery, yeah, to celeb fuck. I mean, you can just, like, give artists money for art,

and then they at least probably have to have a conversation with you while they take it out of your grabbing little fist. I think that's right. Yeah, you'd be better off going to the artist with a fistful of money, yeah, and saying, I'd like to help you, because they probably don't have any business sense, and they're probably quite happy to save the money, whereas, well, you're going to the gallery and saying,

I can run your business better so I can meet an artist. Anyway, Raphael said, that told me everything I needed to know. was coercive, he would be bossing us around. The next day, channeling Helen's directness again. I sent him a very blunt email. Yeah. Helen, I'm worried that you're going to be responsible for it.

This sounds like the beginning of a Netflix documentary. I sent him a very blunt email saying that I respected him as a businessman, associate and family man, and the last thing I wanted to do was offend him or affect his love of the art. But any reservations I had were falling on deaf ears, and I really were falling on deaf ears, and I really italics needed him to hear me we had a lot going on also in italics didn't need his help and the best thing he could do for us right now was to keep spreading the good word and supporting us that way okay that sounds sensible you've done your best it sounds final raffaile finishes

his email by saying i haven't heard back now he's usually very responsive but he's not on this occasion, and that's all right with me. Any more attempts to join our team, and I'm going to tell him to get fucked, commission be damned? It sounds like his custom would have waned anyway. If you know, his eyes were on a different prize at some point, he would have stopped buying art from you in any case. Could be that he's not responded because he's just devastated by this blunt email,

but, you know, he just didn't get the first two. He's died crying. It's not your fault, but also, you know, that is a possible. Let's not pretend that's not a possibility here. He's obviously emotionally involved with you and you've killed his dream. I don't think Raphael's responsible for that because Raphael had already tried to divest in a polite way as he could. I just literally said that. I said you're not responsible, but that doesn't change the fact it's a possible outcome. Not responsible, but you've killed this man's dreams is what you said. Yeah, well, I do think that.

I mean, I think sometimes there's no right way to do it. Sometimes people who think very differently to everyone else is quite hard to let them down in a way that doesn't upset them, isn't it? That's the thing. He says, anyway, thank you for all your advice and for letting me put. this in words to help me process it. It was very therapeutic for me to type this out and process what is turning into a quite traumatic relationship. Oh, no. Well, I'm glad we could provide that service of you just at least releasing some feelings. I do feel like I'm simply not qualified for the job that we have created for ourselves by advising anyone to do anything, so I don't know anything about anything. Oh, I don't know about that, Raphael. If you really valued Helen's input, perhaps you'd like to let us into your business. That would be a way to reward us So thank you.

Having grown up with a sculptor, the one business that I will never choose to go into would be visual arts. Fair. 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 and more than. 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.m.me.combe.combe.combe forward slash answer. Here's some feedback from Jane about our most recent episode where we talked about shotgun weddings and riding shotgun. Jane chipping in on the meaning of a shotgun wedding says,

I think I saw the angry father with gun explanation before I learnt the phrase when watching seven brides for seven brothers as a child. Oh right, okay. It's good to know there's a classic Hollywood validation for that. She's got spoilers for this film that came out whenever the fuck ago. It was a while, yeah, 19, I think 40s even.

So I feel like, find a spoiler this. The statute of limitations has definitely passed. All six kidnapped women. The alternative title for the film. Claim the crying baby as their own when their fathers arrived to liberate them from the kidnapping.

And the final scene has all six fathers watching the group wedding with their shotguns in hand. I suppose because they're like one of these is an unwed mother and we must fix that and we don't know which because all of them are insisting it's theirs. And rather than talk it out will just hold guns at their wedding. To be To be fair, it is set in 1850s, Oregon.

I seem to recall, says Jane, they even cock the guns as the men are asked if they are agreeing to the marriage. Really doesn't make the phrase or the film premise any less grim. I like a classic musical, as we all know. But actually, I've never seen Seven Brides of Seven Brothers, and I've never really investigated it until you sent this email in. From the title, I think, what it was that it didn't to me suggest that the plot had the intrigue that I'd want. Yeah, it's kind of giving away what the plot's going to be. Yeah, three brothers, but only two brides between them, is more interest to me.

Do you what I mean? But I just sort of, fine, I get it, it's the 50s. Like a sort of Jules Aegem expansion pack. Although that said, I've checked out the poster from 1956, I've just seen, yeah, so 50s. And it is marketed as MGM's Lovemaking musical in blushing Technicolor. Blushing. Blushing?

Because I thought, you know, lovemaking had like a more kind of flirtatious sense, but if there's blushing involved, was it still a hayse code at that time? Yeah. This is so filthy, it makes the chemical process we use to look at the different colour filters blush. But looking into it, yeah, it's actually based on the Roman legend of the rape of the Sabine women. Oh, wow, what a fun inspiration. The idea then is basically they're looking around Rome and being like, a bit of a sausage party around here, let's kidnap some women.

Yeah, that's the way to fix sexism. The choreography is quite interesting, apparently, because it's all about Butch Mountain Men, right? but they needed them to dance. So this is like pre-West Side Story, how do you keep the men looking ragged and mask and not like they're doing ballet? It was quite an interesting challenge in the 50s. So there's that and there's also obviously all the pretty dresses

like lots of bright colours, blushing technicolor. Yay. So I could line this up for a rainy winter afternoon, I think. Maybe. I mean, I only saw My Fair Lady for the first time a couple of years ago and by God did I hate it. I could not enjoy anything about that film. I was like, this guy's a cut.

Exactly. But again, that's your sensitivity to the particularly like anti-feminist plot, right? And also like accent snobbery. I'm like, I can't enjoy that. Sure, sure, sure, sure. It's not a fun romance. Like, she shouldn't marry this prick. Sure.

I wonder how any of these marriages turned out in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Right. Yeah. Doesn't seem like a solid foundation, really, to get kidnapped and shotguns into it. That's true. But the era that we're in... Was anything better available? Yeah, but also, like, asking how any relationship...

it worked out. It's like, well, death and childbirth and palsy. That's how it ended up, you know, but that's the era. That's not anything to do with these particular characters. Choose your bleakness. Exactly. Exactly. Keep that fire well stocked. That's my advice. Well, so that you can throw yourself in it. No, in those Wild West movies, it's always like, at the moment he goes out to get logs, that's when the consumption's going to get it. Do you know what I mean? Just keep the logs there. Keep the logs there. Okay. Well, you know, at some point, Ollie, the logs that you kept there will have been burnt and that's why you've got to get out for more logs. I suppose so.

Here's an email from Johnny who says, long-time listener, first-time caller. I couldn't help hearing you wang-on at length. I mean, you could. You could just switch off the podcast, Johnny, if you don't want to hear us wang-on at length. Yeah, you could do 1.5 speed. We're unbearable at 1.5 speed.

Can you imagine? Are we like chipmunks? Yeah. No, we're just like, it's too far. Other shows you go at 1.5 speed because they're doing the whole kind of slow and sexy podcasting thing. But us, it's like... Fast and sexy.

My brain can't handle this level of... It's just like... Too much pleasure too quick. Sure. That's what I was reaching for. Johnny says, I couldn't help hearing you wang on at length about cherry wine in episode 410. Without thinking, with Ollie liking country music,

hasn't he heard the song Strawberry Wine by Deanna Carter? I hadn't heard that song. I've heard it now. It's okay. It's not an absolute banger, but it's a well-written, sincere, you know, three chords in the truth type ballad. It's, um, Deanna Carter's basically using strawberry wine as a metaphor for the summer in which

she lost her virginity age 17. It's an atmospheric idea of the kind of time in her life. It's not like, she's not saying like, and his ball smell of strawberry wine. She's saying, I think back to that moment, hot moon, June night, summer wine, you know, that's, she's painting a picture, allegorically. This is like strawberry wine for her represents that summer. It's the sweetness, the childish nature of such a drink. Is that, it's a, it's, the same as Cherry Wine, basically, right? Yeah, as I describe it now, it's summer of 69 by Brian Adams,

it's the same sort of the thing. I remember being 17. That's essentially what the song is. Yeah, well, now I'm thinking, what drink do I associate with the summer of 1995 for the same purposes, but I cannot think of a thing. I can just think of friends throwing up cider in my house

around the same time, which is not a memory I enjoy. Yeah, but I mean, so the English folk version of it probably would be, you know, Malibu and Coke or something. Other people's secondhand cider puke is what I associate with my early sexual career. Bacardi Breezer. Oh my God. No, I've never. Never. I don't think so. Wow. I must have tried one,

but it's the thing I just thought they were a pointless drink. It's the 90s. What do you have when you go to a nightclub? Surely that's just the automatic thing someone pours you. I mean, that presupposes me going to nightclubs, Ollie. You must have done it. Yeah, I mean, I think I've talked on the show before about being so bored in the then-famous nightclub fabric in London that I fell asleep waiting for my friends to be done. It's never really much of a good club person. Sure, sure. If I was in a club I enjoyed, like the Zodiac in Oxford, I usually didn't drink. Right, fine.

Never been a drinker. I had exactly the same situation. Strongbow, because I was a boy. You were drinking Strongbo during your sexual awakenings or just in the summer of when you were 17? No, I can't think of a drink that reminds me of losing my virginity. In terms of strawberry wine, I've never had it, but fruley strawberry beer. Yeah. I love that, but it doesn't remind me of losing my virginity.

It reminds me of, like, taking cable cars in Austria. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, a longer experience, certainly. Less clean up. Probably the same. The drink that Deanna Carter was referring to in this lyric, apparently Boone's Farm, Strawberry Hill, which is a wine cooler, which were drinks targeted to teenagers, which are fizzy wine and fruit.

I think wine coolers were a reaction to alka pops becoming more heavily taxed because they appealed to children. They were like, right, well, let's make wine appeal to children. What are you going to do? I think, though, that I do have a more European sensibility in taste profile. You know, when Americans tell me that something sweet, I'm like, I'm not touching that because, you know, you think your bread tastes normal and it tastes sweet to me. There's a lot of added sugar in American savoury goods. Exactly.

And if you're there for long enough, you stop noticing. Yeah, exactly. So if the American says, this is sweet white wine, but it's extra sweet. I'm like, that's going to taste like jolly ranches. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that your palate is more savourier as? time passes, I find that everything is too sweet for me now because I'm old.

Yes, I mean, I've always been like on the olive anchovy spectrum, but I'm of an age now where I'd probably rather brush my teeth with like tomato sardine paste than mint. Nine out of ten dentists that are seals recommended. Have you not had the dentist come to your school with a tube of chippams? Pass it, man. since we're talking about drinks and in the last episode

we were talking about booseless booze now I am noticing that those have blue labels even though the ones that I drink are like you know Vancouver local brewery versions rather than like big Bexblue level brands still blue fine you're having the same revelation that I had in the

episode I mean yeah once you start noticing you can't stop noticing it find me an example that isn't blue please yeah well I'll start looking now, you've opened my eyes. Also, either you or Martin quiped that drinking blue curassau makes you look like you've been drinking toilet duck. And that reminded me

of when I was a bartender at our college bar, Olly, we had to make a cocktail called toilet duck that was blue from Blue Curacao. I don't know if you ever drank one. Almost certainly I did, because I think I worked my way through the menu over the three years, but I don't remember. Yeah, the three cocktails we had that we served in a plastic

half pint. Yeah, yeah, they weren't. It wasn't our college bar where you'd go for mixology. No, you'd go to get absolutely blasted for like three quid. Well, it's quite funny actually about our college bar as well as because all of the colleges in Oxford, they all have their own bars. But obviously the ones that are in historic buildings, it's like, oh, Keats drank here. That's the vibe. Like big open fire, you know, columns. Whereas ours was just like a leisure centre because it was built in the 60s. I mean, good architecture, if you like brutalism. Which I did because of going there. But ours had

the distinction of being the longest bar in Oxford. Just not pretty, really. No, but people, People weren't there for the aesthetics, Ollie. They were there for the three-quid, half-p pint cocktail with like six shots in it. I suppose that's what I'm saying. It made it more ruthlessly efficient as a venue that's just there to get you inebriated because there was less to pretend that you were doing. What you weren't there. Admiring some old oak beans. Exactly, yeah. We have some feedback from AMT-417 and why non-alcoholic beers have blue in the labels or names. Ari says, I think, a likelier explanation, or maybe complementary to yours, is that in America, laws regulated. the sale of alcohol are called blue laws. Originating from Puritan times,

thanks for sending them over, by the way, blue laws regulated or banned all sorts of activities on the Sabbath with the sale of alcohol as a major focus. Many states still have these types of laws, thanks to the giant stick up our collective ass. So since non-alcoholic beers would still be allowed to be sold on Sundays, then they could be considered blue, and the association with that colour would make sense.

It's a nice story, I'm not sure. Yes, people at Bollic. companies, don't think. Let's have a fun historical throwback to Puritanism. That's the thing about marketing non-alcoholic drinks. You don't necessarily want the association with Puritanism, do you want the opposite? It's like, you can still have fun and you can still have a party drink. Agree. And we will make you pay party prices for hot water. Well, I have very much enjoyed hearing your thoughts about Answer Me, This is old and new. So do send them in for next month's answer us back, but also send us your fresh new questions for Antsme This 418 and Beyond, which

these will be in your pod feed on the last Thursday of each month. Yes, and do come back for the next episode of Answer Us Back as well and tell your Answer Me This fan friends that it can be almost as entertaining as a quote-unquote real episode. You know, like the non-alcoholic booze variant. Like Martin's not here, you know, it's a little bit looser, but it's still entertaining, isn't it? Yeah.

My friend Ben was listening to us in the car, Helen. He had a long drive back from Leeds. Hey, Ben. And he said, oh yeah, I just listened to that, answer us back. I'm bearing my memory of doing these five months now. I was like, all right. He was like, I didn't bother before because I just thought, I only want to listen to the proper episodes. Fuck you, Ben.

I liked you before. I only wanted to listen to the proper episodes, but it came on on autoplay, and I was on a long drive. I was desperate enough not to hit stop. He said, actually, I enjoyed it, and then it started auto playing all of them. I listened to all five in a row and enjoyed them. Wow, what an incredible accolade. Yeah. Couldn't be bothered to turn off.

Worth listening to when there is literally no way to change the channel. Inside everyone are two wolves, one of which listens to Hansman's Back, and the other wolf thinks it won't be good. Yeah. I think these are very sweet. I think they're nice. But, you know, if we're trying to recruit people that aren't already listening to them,

this is the wrong place. This is not the way to do that indeed, yeah. Might as well just shout into the wind. Anyway, there's even more like deep cuts and less edited stuff on our Patreon as well, worth remembering. So if you're not already a member listening to us on Patreon right now, remember you could be listening to this ad-free

on an RSS feed on your podcast app if you join at patreon.com slash answer me this and support the show and get some of that joyful, unedited content like our live streamed, petty problems which you can catch up with at any time. And we send you bonus bits

each month culled from the episodes. If you want more, more, more. You can have it for money. Okay, all right. Okay, see at the end of the month, everybody. Thank you. Lovely. Bye!