Answer Me This! Podcast

** Click here for EPISODE 93 **

Before tomorrow’s new episode wipes the slate clean, let us tie up some loose ends from Episode 93. Firstly, David in Carlisle:

This week I felt that the derivation of ‘the dog’s bollocks’ was self-explanatory and not explored fully or correctly; it surely refers to the fact that dogs have an intense and continual interest in their own bollocks and if they’re good enough to be licked then they must be something special to be subject to such attention, hence the dog’s bollocks in reference to something really good.

Not a bad extraction, but to be honest the Zaltzman family dog shows a greater interest in mouldy tennis-balls than anything else, and that has yet to enter the vernacular. Onward to something cosmic from Sabrina:

Once I opened a fortune cookie after my meal, and it said “That wasn’t chicken”. Now, I would have simply laughed and joked about it if I had had a meal of anything other than chicken, but lo and behold! I had just had a chicken. The one and only fortune I have ever remembered.

Dangit, those cookies know too much!

Next, some encouragement from Simon from Wimbledon:

This is a response to Olly’s question about whether he would be able to ski. If my 60-year-old geography teacher can, you can.

A good adage for life, methinks. Now finally, a retro bit of feedback from new listener Jude:

A listener from episode 51 asked whether McDonalds milkshakes were made from chicken fat. I have an answer although it’s almost just as disturbing.

Hope that gives you all something to ponder when slurping up that great McDonalds food now and hereafter.

Strangely, that doesn’t even seem surprising.

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** Click here for EPISODE 92 **

Yet more vampire-theorising on the back of Episode 88, this time courtesy of Nick:

I’m probably way late to the party on this, but I thought I might venture an opinion I read as part of my Old Norse studies.

People, observe that although late to the aforementioned party, Nick is already looking like a better intellectual bet than us. Plus, our records show that he has form.

There was a thing in Neurology about a massive outbreak of rabies in eastern Europe coinciding with the first mentions of vampire mythology – obviously, it’s transmitted by being bitten, and it makes the victim sexually and violently aggressive, often attempting to bite and fuck other people too. You also acquire an aversion to bright lights and odours (the sun, mirrors, garlic) as well as becoming hydrophobic (which might explain the holy water thing). Also, it affects the…is it the hypothalamus? The bit that control sleep, anyway; that meant that rabies victims are often up at night.

Fascinating stuff! And it’s evidently high time the EU put some regulations in place forcing vampires to be quarantined for six months before they’re allowed into the UK.

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We had a high old time in Episode 92 wondering why ghosts say ‘whooooo’; now David, mostly in Carlisle has written in with an intriguing theory:

I think the answer might be linked with dead bodies and the noises made by escaping gases and what was thought in days gone by as the spirit/soul leaving the body. I’m sure I have read this in historical accounts, especially in times of plague etc where mass graves were not unknown.

To get police officers over the initial shock of coming into contact with dead bodies they would make sure they had a stint in the morgue on their first day. He told me that many police officers (Quincey title sequence-esque) would faint at their first sight of a dead body/autopsy. On his first day he was asked to carry a body with another officer down a spiral staircase to a basement morgue at his station and, quickly getting over the initial shock of what he had been asked to do, he get on with the job. With his hands underneath the body’s arms they manoeuvred it down the staircase. Meanwhile, knowing what he was doing, my Dad’s sergeant was outside and as a practical joke threw stones at the outside roof of the staircase. The resulting noise surprised my Dad and he dropped the body, the resulting impact making a noise akin to the WOOOOO!! of a ghost. My Dad nearly fainted thinking the dead body was coming back to life, while his fellow officers creased up in laughter. Suffice it to say he never forgot his first day in the force and got over the experience to have a very successful career.

So in essence, the corpse was like a big whoopee-cushion? Good to know one can still pull some jolly pranks even after death.

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