Fire in the hold! It’s a question from Keith in Goole, Yorkshire:
In 1968 I was a member of the Sea Cadet Corps in Goole when one evening we were having training regarding dealing with fire on board a ship. Our instructor, an ex-Royal Navy man, said that if we ever discovered a fire we should go smartly to the nearest fire alarm, grab the handle AND WANK IT!!!. These last words were actually emphasized by the officer with an accompanying hand gesture like that of pulling a pint.
At this point, twenty or so adolescent sea cadets hopelessly struggled to contain their laughter whilst the instructor harangued us asking what we found so funny. In all other respects this man was well respected by us, so I believed that wanking a handle in the Royal Navy must be OK.
Answer me this: is it or has it ever been acceptable to use use the term ‘wank’ in any proper adult conversation?
Well, Keith, if you were old enough to be conscious in 1968, and we met and conversed about it, it would be a highly proper adult conversation. SURELY.
Meanwhile, if any of the rest of you upstanding citizens of the web know of any use of the word ‘wank’ which is not the obvious, put it into a nice sentence then put that nice sentence into a comment on this post.
I’m sure I have intimated as much on previous podcasts (clue: begins with a ‘C’, rhymes with ‘Bolumbo’. Binspector Borse runs a close second) so, rather than repeat myself, I want to know who your favourite TV detective is. Poirot? Holmes? Creek? Get thee to the comments to tell me!
In order of splashdown, the temples of hygiene we visited are:
• The Round Room at the Portobello Hotel, London. The tub in question is known as a ‘Victorian bathing machine’, which is appropriately sexy-sounding for a room with a circular bed in it. • Garderobe at Little Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire. We can see why garderobes like this fell out of favour: 1) very drafty; 2) it’s not nice surrounding your home with a moat of shit; 3) danger of buttock-splinters. • The Ladies’ Room at the George Hotel, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Note to all of you: if you’re planning on filming yourself monologuing in a public convenience, make sure there’s nobody else in it first. • The sewers, Brighton. If you want to go on one of the regular sewer tours, book soon because they fill up months in advance. Especially Valentine’s Day. • Little Chef, Popham. If more than one person is using the talking lavatories at once, the combined effect is quite hectoring, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. • Castle Drogo, Devon, a 1920s folly with a very squirty bathtub and, downstairs, a fantastic collection of copper jelly-moulds. • Car-park loos at the Eden Project, Cornwall. Sure, other people go there for the indoor rainforest, the world’s largest greenhouse, Sir Robert McAlpine’s iconic domes; we just go for the bogs. • Bovine sewage-works at Rodda’s dairy farm, Cornwall. Watching a giant shit-stirrer is surprisingly relaxing – like a massive, stinky office toy. • Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh, where even the bathwater comes out stripy. • The Roman baths and the Thermae Bath Spa, Bath. It’s a big win for the city of Bath.
We’re also flushed with thanks to:
The nice gentlemen at the Hotel Missoni and Rodda’s, for patiently agreeing to our various ridiculous requests.
Rachel Bowers at the Thermae Bath Spa, for kindly filming us in our bathers – how did her eyes survive?
And the rubber duckie of gratitude goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
This week, there’s no finer entertainment than the live footage of Charles Taylor’s trial at the Hague. But second in the chart, and hopefully less upsetting to Mia Farrow, is Answer Me This! Episode 145:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Amongst the evidence we disclose are such exhibits as:
Bombalurina
kopi luwak
Brixton
Gwen Stefani’s stockings
sewer gas lamps vs. energy-saving lightbulbs
Nice biscuits vs. nice biscuits vs. no biscuits
Morrison’s sausages Inside Nature’s Giants
Ben de Lisi’s new gig
interspecies romance
crotch branding
steam power
and
the frozen pea goldfish detox
Plus: Olly teaches the etiquette demanded of an interaction with the police (1. curtsey; 2. hold your kid gloves in your left hand at all times; 3. turn widdershins only); Helen prioritises which side to expose to a wardfull of patients; and Martin the Sound Man takes a big bubbly bath in listener love for his new album (out now on iTunes, Amazon and in pretty physical form, Martyfans! Go on, make an old man very happy).
Now don’t just sit there, bursting with pent-up QUESTIONS; send them to us instead! We like them in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. They will come in really handy for Episode 146, which you can hear next Thursday; and on Tuesday, come back for the final episode of Great British Questions, in which we take toilet humour to new levels.
No All-Bran or Nutrigrain bars for Haggered Wood, who asks:
Bagels Or Croissants for breakfast?
Pros and cons for each, as toast has lost its shine for me.
I grieve for you, Haggered Wood; for he who is tired of toast is tired of life (as well as toast). Here be my pros and cons:
Bagel pros: will keep hunger at bay for longer. Lends itself to myriad fillings. Might have seeds on it. Bagel cons: bit too much of a challenge early-morning if you have to assemble it yourself. Can make you feel like you’ve swallowed a stone fist.
Croissant pros: cheerfully frou-frou and indulgent-seeming. Ready to go in one tidy package. Is better for dunking into coffee than a bagel. Croissant cons: most of the ones in this country are horrific. Nutritionally horrific. Will cover you in flakes of pastry.
Readers, head to the comments and tell us which is the winner. I vote for crumpets.
Since I introduced Olly to the spoon-in-champagne-bottles tip in last week’s episode, many of you have written to tell me that the trick has been debunked by Mythbusters. Do I care? No! Because Kimon in East Dulwich has been in touch to mythbust Mythbusters:
Although it is often considered to be an old wives’ tale, there is a likely scientific basis, the key concepts being thermal conductivity and gas solubility in water.
Precisely the point I was going for, Kimon! (ahem) Carry on:
There were two very significant omissions from Helen’s spoon-in-champagne-bottle suggestion which I feel need to be addressed. a) It has to be a silver spoon and b) there’s no point unless you also put it in the fridge.
Carbon dioxide’s solubility decreases as the temperature of the water (or champagne) increases – so the really important thing, spoon or no spoon, is to put the bottle in the fridge.
So what’s the point of the spoon? Well, if the bottle has been out of the fridge, it follows that the champagne and air in the bottle is warmer than the fridge. However, glass itself is a pretty good insulator (i.e. it has low thermal conductivity, around 1.1k (Watts per metre per Kelvin)) which means that as well as keeping the champagne cool when it’s out of the fridge, if over time it gets warm, it will then keep it warm when you put it back in the fridge.
Silver, on the other hand, has excellent conductivity, higher than any other metal at around 429k. The spoon pokes out of the bottle, soaks up the cold air from the fridge, and radiates it down into the warm air inside the bottle. This in turn quickly cools the top layer of the champagne, meaning that any carbon dioxide escaping from the warmer liquid below has more chance of being captured by dissolving into the cooler liquid at the top.
You know, none of us would have got into this big flap about champagne bottles at all if only everyone were so sensible as to drink this classy substance instead.
I had an argument with my partner the other day about whether or not women are more mature than men. I’ve heard this idea thrown about time and time again but is there actually any truth in it?
There’s only one way to settle this: FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
In which you will find us visiting: • Brighton seafront, where the rain poured, and so did the tea. • Twinings on the Strand in London, a veritable embassy of tea. • Braunston in Rutland, England’s smallest county. A big paper plate of cakes and two cups of tea for £1.50? That, friends, is why Britain is still great. • Emma Bridgewater, Stoke-on-Trent, where we were instructed that tea can get you laid. If only it were that simple. • Tregothnan tea plantation, Cornwall, where they are considering building a tea theme park. Please, Tregothnan. MAKE THIS HAPPEN. • Grasmere in the Lake District, home of Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a legendary snack with a secret recipe. I guess Sarah Nelson is the English equivalent of Colonel Sanders. • The Balmoral hotel, Edinburgh. Apparently having tea here features in one of those ‘1000 things to do before you die’ lists, so we’re now one step closer to the End.
Let’s raise a cup of char to the people who helped us along the way:
Stephen Twining and Matthew Rice – we’d like to see them face off against other in a duel to determine who is the quintessential English gent; Marion, who showed us around the Emma Bridgewater factory and taught us the full birthing cycle of their beautiful ceramics – almost as demanding as the human one; Neil Bennett, head gardener at the Tregothnan estate, who had a heavy cold and should probably have been safely tucked up indoors rather than traipsing around the huge estate with us; Joanne Wilson from Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a woman who can wrap a stack of gingerbread in paper at the speed of light. You might not think this exciting, but, like the teapot-knobbing, when you see it live you could watch it for hours; Harry Fernandes at the Balmoral hotel, for letting us have a big fancy tea, climb up onto the roof, and pretending that we weren’t just a pair of overgrown five-year-olds;
and an extra portion of Jammy Dodgers goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for the final installment of Great British Questions, which is all about Great British Bathrooms; and below are some photos from our tea tour.
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If, like Olly, you are delightfully innocent and pure-minded, listen with care to Answer Me This! Episode 144; for, like him, you will probably be SHOCKED TO THE VERY CORE to understand what the heck that mucky broad Britney Spears was on about in her ‘If You Seek Amy’ ditty. We don’t know which was more shocking: the blatant sauce of the double meaning, or the topsy-turvy grammar of the single meaning.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Delicious Miss Dahl’s dirty martinis
skate’s dirty parts
Sea Pebbles
citric acid
‘Scotland the Brave’ vs. ‘Greensleeves’
the MTV Cribs diet
carbonated champagne
matzo meal
Clamato
kosher fish
those child-hating bastards Cybercandy
strawberries
the spoon trick
Hatch End
fizzy cola bottle inequity
and
modern marginalia.
Plus: Olly compares his pioneeringderanged snacking habits to Heston Blumenthal; Helen ruins Olly’s favourite delicacy, tipple, and high school sing-song tv series; and Martin the Sound Man does a rap, gives insight into the dairy consumption of tramps, and otherwise disgraces himself.
We also peer beneath the frilly underskirts of Great British Questions Episode 3: Romance, exposing some mild disappointment in the world’s biggest coloured pencil, and wondering whether the Cerne Abbas giant has been slacking on his fatherly duties thus far. Meanwhile, over on the fair shores of the AMT app, we speak of marginal things we like. Nothing pervy, unless you are aroused by the shoes of elderly Jews.
Now it’s time to give us your QUESTIONS; please bestow them upon is in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. How thrilled we shall be to receive them!
See you next Thursday for Episode 145, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Four of Great British Questions, in which we glug down sufficient tea to rehydrate the Kalahari.
In order of appearance, here’s where we go during our Great British love-in (in which we play a couple FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY):
• the Cerne Abbas giant, Dorset – the earliest known NSFW field in Britain! • Brighton, to hang out with drunkards. It’s a pretty sexy place – after all, George IV built his amazing personal shag-palace there. • The Assembly Rooms in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Didn’t score ourselves any husbands, though; the only man there was the old chap superintending the Saturday afternoon book sale. • The Heartwood School of Woodcarving in Port Talbot, Wales. If you want to carve your own spoon of love, or get someone else to do it for you, you can email spoon-carver extraordinaire Sharon LittleyHERE, or find out more about the traditional Welsh lovespoons in her book. • Boat trip up the River Thames, a very pleasant way to travel through central London if you’re not in a hurry. • Picnic at Penrith Castle, Cumbria – an unlikely thing to find in the middle of an ordinary-looking housing estate! • The Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick, Cumbria. Don’t go there if your pencil collection has an inferiority complex already. • The Museum of Surgery in Edinburgh, after which you’ll see we didn’t walk up Arthur’s Seat. • Punting in Oxford, thanks to the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse – who also very kindly lent us hats with which to accessorise this beautiful scene. • Grasmere in the Lake District. William Wordsworth’s signature restaurant can be found here. Apparently they only serve daffodils. • The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where they hold the annual Mr Darcy Wet Shirt Contest. Ok, well we maintain that they should. • Chesil Beach, Dorset out of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares. • The Eden Project, Cornwall, inspiration for Nelly’s hit ‘Hot in Herre’. • The London-Edinburgh sleeper train, which is a bit like North By Northwest only with a complimentary sponge-bag rather than Eva Marie Saint. • Glastonbury, Somerset, where we met the marvellous Jacqui Winn of the Witchcraft Emporium, approximately a cross between a herbalist’s and a branch of Ann Summers. If you’re keen to follow Jacqui’s advice, damiana is the herb you’re after, although we have yet to try it so can’t vouch for its effectiveness. Still, it’s a lot cheaper than fake Viagra off the internet! • And finally, we wind up in the Westmoreland Hotel, Cumbria, which is the first motorway services hotel we’ve ever been to where you could even contemplate having a romantic night.
We also need to bestow affection upon: Chay Allen for propelling our punt, because we sure as hell couldn’t have done it ourselves without injury; Jill Collinge, for showing us Stamford then standing politely by as Helen did stupid impressions of Beyonce;
and the loves of our lives, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain. If you love the UK as much as VisitBritain do, join the online love-in at their Facebook page at facebook.com/LoveUK.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Four: Tea; and for more scenes from our romantic mini-break, peruse the photos below.
In the olden days when I was a youngster we used to go on family driving holidays through Scotland and England. We had a board game that we played all the time whilst on the move. It involved following a track round the board, either country, town or motorway roads.
To move forward you had to see the object on the square where your piece resided. Once it was seen you could then move to the next. The idea of the game was to get from the start of your journey to the end by spotting all the objects.
Now I’m a parent I want to inflict this game upon my children but can’t remember the name of it. Can you ask your loyal listeners if they know of this game and if I can get it from somewhere?
That game was real? And not just something your parents invented to quell your refrain of “Arewenearlythereyetarewenearlythereyet Ineedthetoilet mumI’mbored!”? If so, readers, put Jonny out of his misery (and his children into theirs) by trotting to the comments and telling him what this tortuous entertainment is. But in case he doesn’t end up finding it so has to resort to different vehicular distractions, you might also mention your favourite childhood car game. We Zaltzmen used to play ‘Count the milk tankers’. The rules were simple; it wasn’t that good, but was probably still more amusing than Jonny’s fondly remembered ‘Spot the objects’.
“I’ve been scouring the internets for new stuff that I don’t need,” Sheree in Peterborough tells us, which is how we get most of our custom. Today, however, her online trawlings have led her to quite a different catch:
This has to be the weirdest book title I’ve ever seen, and I would buy it except that it seems to be a New Age self help book with absolutely no awareness of its own ridiculousness (and it’s about £15 and I’m broke).
So answer me this – what’s the weirdest book title you’ve ever come across? And what exactly is an angry vagina?
Over to you, readers: hie to the comments, and either tell us what is an angry vagina, or, preferably, the weirdest book title you’ve ever seen. Best one wins a copy of Overcoming an Angry Vagina*!
* Actually, you won’t, because were I to buy a copy for you, whenever I would log in to Amazon thereafter I would retch at the sight of my ‘Recommended Products For You’ page.
by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares.
Answer Me This! Podcast 