** Click here for Episode 128 **
Apparently there were more errata than usual in Episode 128, which obviously is a real blow to our status as power-Googlers. Let’s get to it. First up to the Plate of Sorrow is James from London, who warms up with an earlier gripe first:
My love for your podcast turned to anger and rage two weeks ago when you answered, or rather, attempted to answer the question: do people really buy expensive things such as a £5,000 watch from the airport.
You missed the two critical words that describe airport shopping: DUTY FREE. Therefore, when people of limited means such as myself see a lovely watch in Harrods priced at £5,875, and think, if only there was a cheaper way to get that, we book a weekend in New York and whilst waiting for the flight to depart, nip into Harrods and buy the choice watch at a bargain price.
Have you been sniffing glue, James? Firstly, the weekend in New York surely costs more than the savings on the watch; and anyway, the only things which count as a bargain when they cost over £5K are houses or racing elephants. Go on then, unleash part 2 of your wrath:
A week later, you suggested that the distance of a Marathon is distance run by Pheidippides from the Battle of Marathon to Athens. Google Maps calculates this as 22.6 miles (although there may have been a different route available at the time) but in any event, this run was only recorded by Herodotus who wasn’t born until six years after the battle ended.
The reason that the route is 26 miles and 385 yards is because this is the distance between the starting line at Windsor Castle and the finishing line at the newly built White City Stadium during the Marathon of the 1908 Olympic Games.
Approximately 30000000 of you wrote in to tell us this, citing Wikipedia and QI as witnesses for the prosecution. Now, let’s not get wound up with the accuracy of those sources [although: ahem!]. This is a tug of love, people. Whom do you love more, AMT! or QI and Wikipedia? Huh? Huh???
OK, don’t answer that. We don’t want you to see us cry. Let’s enjoy some more criticism instead. Nathan, formerly of Tunbridge Wells, now of London, says:
As an ex-Tunbridge Well-ian like Helen, I wanted to point out an error in your last podcast.
There is a bowling alley in Tunbridge Wells and there has been for at least a decade, in the North Farm Industrial Estate, besides the large Odeon. I remember watching The Matrix there when I was on my year out so it must have been built pre-2000, the Odeon that is.
Thankyou for that, Nathan; now I know that if I ever have to go back to my hometown, I’m assured of a cracking night out on the industrial estate. Why did I not think before to go there for my leisure enjoyments? Idiot Zaltzman! Although like any true Tunbridge Wells native, I know that anything built in the town after 1898 officially DOES NOT EXIST.
Let’s cheer ourselves up with this from Mike in London:
Following a listener’s recommendation I have started playing “Answer Me That” with my year 1 class. If they can ask me a question I can’t answer they get a sticker (they love stickers).
I told my school’s other year 1 teacher about this game and now she had adopted it. I soon envisage “Answer Me That” becoming part of the standard school curriculum.
That would be an election pledge we would love to see. By the end of the year, all primary school teachers in the land would be a super-race of question-answerers!
And finally, a few words from Lorraine:
In a recent episode you discussed mood rings. It might be of benefit for Martin to buy Helen a mood ring as it will help him better judge her mood. If she’s in a good mood it will turn green, and if she’s in a bad mood it will leave a red mark in the middle of his forehead.
Ber-bam! In both senses.
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‘. Heck, listen to it even if you have no beef with Grease.
by Petronius: Who doesn’t love an excrement fight with their gang rape? And the dis-memberable poetry reading in the last chapters is inspired.
by José Saramago: More gang rape and excrement, topped off with a scene in which a man is brutally stabbed through the neck while engaged in an act that leaves an unusual mixed aftermath on his partner’s face.
. Part of the book was set in the criminal underworld in Japan and a torture method was to place people in a cavity at the end of a ten pin bowling alley so that their heads were sticking out. The gang members would then bowl ten pin bowling balls at them.
. The book tells the story of the murder of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi during “Freedom Summer” of 1964. Huie begins the book by re-telling the story of what happened in Birmingham, Alabama in 1957. Six men from a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan gathered to decide who deserved a promotion to a higher rank within the group. One of them wanted the promotion, and to prove he deserved it, he was willing to get “blood on his hands.” They kidnapped a local Negro man, castrate him, and dumped him by the side of road.
Answer Me This! Podcast 