Answer Me This! Podcast

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Phone a friend, email a friend/podcast; Tony in New York writes:

I listened with great interest to the segment from AMT322 about the use of Google on Phone-A-Friend for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and I realized I may be able to shed a bit of light on how things are done on the show now in the States.

Hope this helps.

It helps US, Tony, but did it help YOU? Once your episode has aired, please write back with the full inside scoop.

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Apropos of last week’s question about the water in Singin’ in the Rain, John writes in to tell us something which, in its own way, explains why the hosepipe ban might not pertain:

As a painter in theatre, I meet a lot of crew with many and varied stories about theatre, T.V. and rock stars. My friend Steve was a member of the crew of the touring version of Singin’ In The Rain which led directly to the West End revival; he is usually a reliable source, and tells me that one of the stars was such a massive cock that a part of the set-up in any new venue was for the amassed crew to meet in the fly tower to piss in the water tank.

The tour consisted of 64 dates of being pissed-on in the rain.

Readers, if you’re thinking of attending a watery stage show, do NOT sit near the front.

Do not get a job in the orchestra pit either; those poor guys are effectively working in a latrine.

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••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT209 •••

It seems a large number of you have ridden in hearses, despite being still alive! Apropos of our discussion of the funereal vehicles in AMT209, we’ve heard from Stephen from Greenock:

I play the bagpipes and in my student days made a good side-business piping at funerals. The one problem is I don’t drive. At one particular funeral, I asked the funeral director if I could hitch a lift in the hearse, as I’ve been known to do.

Most hearses are two drivers’ seats plus three behind, then the area for the coffin…but not this one. This has the two front seats (taken by the funeral director and priest) and a seat behind each of these. And instead of the third middle seat, the top end of the coffin went there. I therefore spent a very uncomfortable ten minutes sitting alone in this hearse at the church with the coffin (and within, the head-end of the deceased) right at my shoulder while the priest and funeral director chatted with mourners!

That, I would say, is an occupational hazard.

As we suspected, there’s a lively market for second-hand hearses, confirmed by Kevin:

During the summers my father was in college/university, he worked for a harpsichord builder who loved used hearses. You get them incredibly cheap because no one wants to be buried in a used one, they have very good suspension, and they already have rollers in the back for moving boxy wooden things about the size of a coffin or a harpsichord.

Very sensible! Far more so than the pre-owned hearse of Celeste from Elephant and Castle‘s acquaintance:

My uncle used to drive a hearse, in the 1970s or earlier. He is a bit of an eccentric, been a professional violinist since the age of nineteen, and has an interesting history of weird cars and motoring in general – buying a car without a reverse gear; leaving a jar of pickled gherkins in an old car of his, and having not screwed the lid on properly it leaked vinegar everywhere so he had to sell the car; and buying a gold-coloured Mercedes (to the horror of my aunt), as well as losing his license pretty much every year.

Back in his hearse days, I believe he was involved in a car crash (not his fault) and he, his now ex-girlfriend and her daughter suffered relatively few injuries because he was driving a hearse at the time, which was especially well padded/armoured/hardcore. So hearses are very safe – which seems a bit pointless as normally the people in the back are already dead.

Yes, but they are also in a big heavy wooden box, which could cause very comprehensive damage if it shot straight through an inadequate crumple zone. In a way, the death industry is foolishly protecting itself against getting extra work.

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We love it when you people reveal your myriad jobs to us – maybe because how we pass our days can no longer be termed a ‘job’ – as Pete has done here:

My girlfriend was listening to AMT207 and told me that one of the topics of conversation was regarding the role of Continuity Announcers. Which is funny. As that’s what I do.

And it’s not just talking on the telly that we do. Sometimes we make cups of tea too.

But of course – proper throat lubrication is essential in a profession requiring vocal excellence. Each cup of tea should be covered by some Occupational Health mandate.

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Luckily for us all, James from Oxford has spent much of the past two decades in deep cover, just to provide the inside scoop following last week’s question concerning I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter:

I used to work with Unilever in the mid 90s on various projects, including the development of their delicious-sounding ‘yellow fats’ strategy for Asia.

This small act of childish subversion somehow gave us the morale boost necessary to soldier on with our meaningless lives.

Meaningless? You brought yellow fats to Asia! A continent that didn’t even know it needed them! Hold your head high, conquering hero.

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT193 •••

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Episode 175 feels like a lifetime ago to us, but stirring in the depths of memory is something to do with partwork magazines and who the hell buys them and at what lifetime outlay etc etc…you remember, right? Well, anonymous newsagent has been in touch to confirm the financial and emotional devastation they wreak:

I work in a newsagent’s, and the tragic fact about those partwork magazines is that some people do genuinely buy all of them. One man has bought more than 120 of The Pocket Watch Collection (£7.99 fortnightly), with no sign of the end of the collection as yet. The poor old man can’t stop buying them, as he wants the whole set, and has spent about a grand on them altogether so far! Poverty befalls all who purchase, but he does have a rather large collection of watches now, if that’s any consolation.

Now I have betrayed the secrets of my trade, I am prepared to be clapped in irons and slung out of the print media selling community.

Don’t worry, you still have chewing gum and jazzmags to fall back on. As it were.

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** Click here for Episode 170 **

Our next correspondent wishes to remain anonymous. And for good reason: because he’s only a bona fide PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR! So let’s call him Magnum, because we so rarely get the opportunity to call someone that:

Many Police Services utilise the skills of Private Investigation and research firms.

Additionally many large insurers, investors and mega national companies instruct us as investigators to gather evidence in order to pursue multi-million pound frauds etc perpetrated against them through the civil courts, as Police cannot or will not investigate such matters.

It sounds like Magnum here has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the police. We like to think that at 6pm they all lay down truncheons and plastic disguises, and head out to a car park to settle their differences with a big dance battle.

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Look, he's right there!

** Click here for Episode 167 **

You know how much we love getting feedback from the horse’s mouth, and in this case, we equally love getting feedback from the horse’s nephew’s mouth. Behold the following email from Marc:

I was explaining to my aunt your explanation about why Where’s Wally? is called Where’s Waldo? in the US, as she used to work in children’s publishing (for the company who published Where’s Wally?), and she is friends with Martin Handford. She got quite cross – but then she’s a bit mental and tends to get cross about most things – like errant apostrophes and men with obvious haircuts.

I’m afraid you got the Where’s Wally? thing wrong on both counts.

When they sold the rights to the US, the American publishers were worried about copyright infringement because there was already a children’s book called Where’s Wallace?. Waldo seemed like a good alternative. No focus groups were involved. Publishing, especially children’s book publishing, in the 1980s was not that advanced.

So hope that clears things up. We used to get hand drawn Christmas cards from Martin Handford back in the 80s – to be honest I always used to hate the Wally books though. We had all of them. Plus all the merchandise – such as it was. All shit. Much preferred TinTin and Asterix books.

OUCH. I hope Martin Handford is not reading this.

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