Answer Us Back: something has to go in that hole

0:00ever since I started serving cut water canned cocktails to my guests hey hi how are you yeah going through I've gone from host to hero thanks to cut water I can make real perfectly mixed cocktails in seconds it's as simple as garnishing a glass cracking my can of cut water open and pouring it over ice cut water real cocktails perfectly mixed copyright 2025 cut water spirit San Diego California enjoy responsibly answer me this is brought to you thanks to salie salie does e-sims that you can use abroad I'm always telling people about these partly because I'm a very boring person but also because people don't know yeah that this is a possibility when you travel used to be had to go to like a local phone shop and get a sim a physical sim yeah pop your old sim out hope you didn't lose it get one of those stupid like pins that you have to get like oh I haven't got a paper yeah what's an e-sim it's like the ghost of a sim card only so you don't have to open up your phone and shove it into your phone's guts if you have a

1:02phone that's capable of e-sim there are over 200 destinations where you can use salie for your roaming and thus not rack up a huge phone bill while away this sounds like a good thing to add to your checklist whenever you're going on holiday like my travel tips are that and four wheel suitcase dot two people don't believe me on that but seriously why do you hate your shoulders download salie in the app store and use our code amt15 at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase you spell salie s-a-i-l-y and you spell 1515 you don't have to spell the whole word so that is salie dot com slash amt15 and use our code amt15 at checkout you'll find the details in our show notes welcome to another edition of answer us back when we contend with your feedback do you want me this is new and ancient that's right and indeed Amanda has responded to our fun do chat in amt416 surely remember that one Helen that

2:04was just last episode I don't know as soon as it's on the pod feed it's going for my brain but yes I suppose Amanda says my family has always done meet fondue as our Christmas meal interesting fun activity I guess what day is this boy it's the day for the tiniest cubes of goose stick them on the end of a spork going by the biggest fat of boiling all you can this has been the tradition from my mother's family for three or four generations at least she says I've never found anyone else who does this very few people are aware of meat fondue as a concept at all yeah why do you think that is just because of that Swiss cheese lobby she does say people assume I'm talking about cheese fondue I think it's just that if you're explaining what fondue is to someone molten cheese is a more fun thing to talk about than just oil oils just a pan isn't it it's basically at the end of the day it's not much different from just a big deep fat fryer that's right it's just a small deep fat fryer yeah which is

3:04less fun to talk about more scarring though yeah no hot cheese can also cause you some damage hot cheese feels like the villain origin story and at least one super hero film I don't know when or why it started Amanda says but I do know my mother didn't like turkey much figures okay so having turkey for Thanksgiving and then again for Christmas felt a bit much so she carried on the tradition to our generation cool she didn't make us follow the rules she had to when she was growing up though like if your food falls off the fork into the oil you have to kiss everyone at the table well that's just unacceptable I would say forcing people to kiss people against their will are you a sort of Christmas party games type person though no are you surprised and well it's both Christmas even you know people who don't like games will have weird traditions in their own family that surprised you I don't think I like games generally I know you realize this about myself relatively recently I'd rather just have a nice chat I've realized only recently and only through teaching my children the different

4:06basic board games that when it comes to cards and stuff I usually prefer them when they're giant giant pack of cards yeah so like you know you get like the garden version of things yeah like big jenga yes exactly and so we've got giant dominoes which I've got in place of normal dominoes because I went to the next January sale and the giant dominoes were priced the same as the ordinary dominoes and I was like well that's no sense ten times the size of domino for the same price you'd be an idiot to get normal dominoes only man never let's a good bargain go and now I've played giant dominoes I don't want to play dominoes dominoes looks ridiculous puny lippucian anyway Amanda continues nowadays my partner really likes the traditional British Christmas meal with his family and we do fondue sometime in the week between Christmas and New Year very wise because it's always difficult to find something to do there isn't it but then once you beaten the British Christmas meal and all the leftovers are you gonna refresh yourself with some oil boiled meat here are some skills that Amanda

5:10outlines for those who wish to try meat fondue okay very specific skills set that's right it's the kind of granular detail for which we created this strand of answer me this because in a ordinary episode even we would not have time for this in case so my top tips learn over the year bullet point one use peanut oil or ground nut oil as you call it in the UK broth she says whilst healthier is rubbish for this purpose was basically a different food isn't it to boil something in broth it's like if you boil potatoes in broth they don't become chips and the same with meat fondue that's right you get the opposite don't you boil a potato in broth is all soft and squeegee whereas chips you need you need burning hot oil I will say though when we go to sit one hotpot Martin night the potato is an absolute winner because it gets all that saturated with the spicy broth but it's just different to a deep fried thing is my point Amanda continues don't make the cubes too small the cubes are meat yeah I wonder if that is because they would become too dry or if they fall off the fork I would say too crispy you know yeah because when you fry

6:14something you know if it's too small it just becomes like a dip in dot doesn't it you want a savory dip in dot but you also don't want a massive chunk of meat you want to mean like it was a huge if you've been a steak in there then it's no longer fondue is it it's just a weird way of cooking something it's oily steak and if you put a large piece of chicken in there it is mostly raw have some sort of scooper or strainer tool to hand she says but we use hotpot strainer ladles to rescue the things that fall into the oil I mean that is an experience fondue practitioner speaking there very sensible now this is something that I am reassured by she says have lots of dipping sources available yeah and try different combos of items and sources and to me that's the thing that concerned me when we were discussing meat fondue in what now seems like a very preliminary fashion yeah we were so innocent we haven't done our reset well I had done meat fondue in the early 90s but not academically that's right it wasn't a deep dive like this actually I mean it was at school so it was semi academically but it was meant to be there hey this is the one

7:14fun day of the year school day yeah but the thing that concerns me is if I ever had meat fondue is that it not only does it sound a bit dry as we've been saying but also like the lack of spice and marinade on the meat means that it doesn't taste of anything of the oil I would think so I think a dipping sauce yes okay that's what gets all the man on board with this finally I mean I went to Ibiza during half term and it rekindled my love for Alioli in every form you know how I love man oh what could be better than a load of garlic except even more of that even more exactly yeah I'm thinking I might start like a sort of trail finders type company that just does mayonnaise tours of Europe you know what I think there's enough mayonnaise pervs to make this going concerned Alioli because it gets overlooked it's always just the dipping sauce you know rather than star attraction and Amanda says I do chicken and beef as standard standard but I also do lots of non-meat things so this might intrigue Helen okay Halumi interesting I mean Halumi in any form is pretty good bell

8:20pepper asparagus asparagus at Christmas where we getting that from Peru mushrooms baby corn green beans this is where it gets kooky this year I got some fresh pasta ravioli's and some ready to eat falafel intriguing dipping some falafel in hot burning oil what sickness is this I think that's how they cook falafel at the places where it doesn't taste dry as it's that true yeah I think so I think that's why whenever I make it at home it's absolutely shit because I'm scared to deep right okay now I'm prepared to apologize if that's true she says I reckon you could actually do a cracking vegetarian meal and just leave out the meat all together if you were so inclined that's not meat fondy then there is it I mean that is just oil oil fun yeah it's a B.Y.O. party I feel like the host should at least provide the oil yeah yeah I think so too otherwise it's just just a burner I really appreciate this knowledge transmission for

9:25Amanda though gathered over a lifetime and generations before perhaps I hope that there's a big hard back oil splattered book in which every year people record their observations and learnings totally I think there's something very valuable about having a favorite recipe that you return to even if it's obscuring it's just your thing year after year after year another recent thing we said on an answer me this was we were reflecting on musicals about tragic historical events and Rebecca has been in touch to say in answer me this 416 you discussed the length of time at which it is appropriate to do a musical of a tragedy and that it is too early for a 9-11 musical but they're already as a musical about the aftermath of 9-11 called come from away which tells the story of ganda newfoundland which effectively doubled in size for the week after 9-11 as planes landed there with roughly 7000 stranded airline passengers whose planes were grounded after the attacks began yes I haven't seen come from away so it did slip my mind but even though

10:29you correctly identify that it does have 9-11 as it's kind of background and very directly as well like you say it is about people that directly affected by 9-11 crucially and this is the point that I was making it's not about the people on the planes that actually hit the buildings is it it's not about the alkaida training camps or the people in the buildings or the people were just going people from building sort of that right but my point was that it's plausible that within a hundred years someone does make a musical about that and I wasn't trying to be sort of glib and flippant about it in fact I am a fan of musicals as you know I'm not a big fan of the glib joke when people append the word the musical exclamation mark to a serious thing and think that in itself makes it funny yes I've seen some really good musicals about some very serious things we went to the London road together didn't we fuck me that was good that was about the Ipswich serial murders that was really really good yeah and also it was about like not about the murders it was about the people in the neighborhood being afraid before the syraculist Steve Wright was caught and after that just wondering how to rebuild their community

11:31knowing what had happened on their street correct Martin and I I think actually went to see another one I seem to recall that I might have taken him to see committee a 2017 verbatim musical at the Dom Marwae House that was about the parliamentary select committee hearing on the collapse of kids company that is extraordinary it was flawed but the point is not because it was a musical no point you like this is too serious a subject for a musical musicals can do I mean look at opera think be about all kinds of things be pleating their babies and shit too made into loud entertainment yeah anyway I take your point Rebecca yes but I still think my point stands that's all I'm saying okay yes all right two indirect musical for Oli Mann to be declared wrong correct well done high fives Matt from Birmingham says I've only discovered you were back in the last two weeks hey welcome to all your friends like others I thought I'd share a personal update as to what's happened in my life since I started listening to you all those years ago a lot has changed

12:31oh I've been married had a child divorced moved house three times moved city changed job we don't know when Matt started listening if it was like 2021 just before we finished season one that's a lot that's a lot 2007 still quite a lot yeah but among many comforts I managed to keep with me through all of this was one dish that you introduced me to many years ago the amazing chicken key of toasty oh I have no recollection of this I'm sure that I talked about making chicken key sandwiches I don't think they were toasted I think that might be Matt's own innovation but I stand by them even though I no longer get to eat one because you try finding a vegetarian keve that is worth eating okay I'm interested in a couple of things here one is the sandwich itself the second is the pronunciation of keve yeah on the keve thing since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine I have learned like everyone else that people in Ukraine like to call keve keve and I call keve keve but I can't get used to calling the chicken

13:32keve a chicken keve and that's because the mini keve was my favorite Bernard Matthews frozen product as a child that in an Arctic rolls has lap up meal oh my god put a Bernard Matthews mini keve in a meat fondue Oli maybe that will bring you around delicious Oli from without and within the sandwich itself it does seem like the kind of thing that the at times Luce Helen would indulge in when I knew her when she was in her mid-trendies hot-ride branda and a chicken keve sandwich on a light so explain explain again well chicken keve of the ready-made supermarket meat things yeah I'd say one of the best you know under three quid pretty tasty even when it's a bit gross and wrong then you slice it up making sure that the garlic butter doesn't all drain away and then put it in a sandwich it's very simple really you can accessorize it with other things if you want salad mayonnaise but it's raw of course so you have to cook it for us no no it's cooked sorry I should have specified haven't cooked the chicken keve

14:33having cooked it but that's where I think his thing makes more sense as you're making something hot why put it in cold bread oh I like the contrast of hot and cold bread but also maybe if you've got a leftover one I think most people with a hot filling put it in a hot outer like if I'm making egg mayonnaise I wait for the egg to cool down from putting it in cold bread well I think that's correct because mayonnaise and heat often don't really collaborate well yes I would agree with that but you know it's really up to you if you want this to be a hot or cold sandwich I prefer my sandwiches not hot that's just me I appreciate its deviant behavior it's just that when he says it's a toasty I wonder if he's even got like a toasty maker and he stuck a whole chicken keve in a toasty maker I wouldn't cook a keve from scratch in a toasty maker no that wouldn't be bad I didn't die on my account regardless of the fact that his recipe is obviously not quite the same as yours he says I've no idea in which episode it was mentioned by Helen and Martin we talk about it maybe it wants me this 306 but I've eaten an ungodly amount of them since I've told many people about them and this humble dish is what made me look you up again oh hilarious

15:38back to us Matt and find with delight that you'd returned when telling my new girlfriend about them well Matt I hope that this doesn't scuttle your new relationship that she's not horrified by this snack it's interesting isn't it when you associate someone with a recipe that they might not even be aware you associate them with like I've got a very basic kezadilla recipe contributed by Paul McCartney in a magazine feature that I tore out one day I associate it with Paul McCartney now when I see him on telly I'm like oh yeah I don't your kezadilla if you ever meet him in real life you're gonna tell him yes of course that would be the first thing I'd reach for it probably make a change from people saying oh I love to I love to twist and shout yeah a lot of people don't realize that it's actually what hey Jude is about kezadillas yep hey Jude do you want some cheese take a cold tortilla make it hot again isn't that the metaphor for relationships

16:39answer 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 3000 words on Cicero to 3000 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 jolly I love a paper magazine and more and 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 of simultaneously like luxurious but also to the point yep this life can be yours as well because you can get a six-month print and

17:43digital subscription to the London review of books and a free tote bag for just 12 pounds that's right subscribe now at lrb.me slash answer that's lrb.me forward slash answer we've heard this feedback from Chris from New Zealand who says I'm listening to answer me this 376 first aired first of august 2019 and ollie has this to say to his future self no blimey now I have now reached the age Helen and this is useful for my future self listening back to this when we do a retro episode in 2029 close to know that it was now in 2019 age 38 this age now I have decided I am going to start keeping the extra spare buttons that come with shirts right I feel like in my forties will be the time I'm still about 15 years away from being

18:44interested in sports cars or classical music but I feel like in my forties I can do some sewing oh that's interesting I was yeah I can feel the classical music thing coming um I've occasionally like not turned off radio 3 when I've accidentally put it on oh my god so brave I'd still have to like win the lottery to buy a sports car and if you did would you want to buy a sports car would you just buy something else fancy castle and it would have to be my third car I'd have to upgrade both of the cars that we have you know the practical ones into nicer cars and then would I want a sports car no probably not would you want to be a three car household even yeah exactly I'd probably rather have my dream JFK style fish tank for the bedroom with uh it's up jellyfish in it did John F. Kennedy have a jellyfish tank in his bedroom I think there's a scene in Mars attacks where someone's giving a tour of the White House and they refer to it as the JFK suite and it's like this shag palace with uh lit up for fishing it it's 30 odd years since the tragedy of JFK's murder so that's another answer to the tragedy plus time question about making entertainment

19:49out of disasters yes exactly yeah Tim Burton could do a joke about it after 30 years yeah anyway Chris says I know it's not 2029 but let's face it the world might not survive till then so Oli asked me this do you still have your button jar and have you sewn a button onto your shirt yet no oh are you still throwing away shirts when a button pings off I think what's happened is I'm what which I couldn't have accounted for in my 30s would be the case in my 40s but with child drop-off I'm often at 9 a.m. in places where I wouldn't like bother to go in the afternoon but I'm right there so for convenience I can do things like this morning I went and returned a bottle like a yoga water bottle that I bought from the range that was broken I went and returned it at nine in the morning because there's no one there and it took five minutes and I just got a new one so on the way home from kids drop-off if I've got a broken shirt button I'd probably take it to like an alteration place and get them to do it okay so I haven't done it myself I've

20:49still never sewn anything but I have a button jar it is the button jar from 2019 I do still when I buy shirts take those spare buttons and put them in the button jar optimistically listen to this oh wow that's right here my button jar how much actual sewing do you do as opposed to percussion obviously percussion is my first pass but when I give myself a break from that I do mend clothes well I let a big pile mount up and then I I mend them every few months that's great yeah no just don't have the strength of will or character yet no but because I hate clothes shopping and I don't buy many new clothes so I'm kind of doing it to avoid doing something else that I don't like but I do like sewing but what I can reveal exclusively to you Chris from New Zealand is that just after that if it was 2019 when we recorded that episode obviously little did I know at the time but covid was just around the corner indeed and in that two months when we all stayed at home and did version nothing I organized that draw extraordinarily I mean it's no longer

21:54just a button jar well I got some bespoke belt organization units from John Lewis oh yeah so each belt is like rolled up there's ties rolled up in there as well and you can be asked like once you've taken a belt off to roll it up and put it away properly turns out can yeah that's enviable well done but once you've got the draw in sir Helen it's life changing because it's easier to do that than not do it something has to go in that hole so if it's not the belt it'll be like rolled up socks or something but it's still easier something's got to go in that hole I've even got a little Judaica pouch in there what's in there is it secret now it's like some some couples or yarmakers and what else maybe cuff links yeah and of course my pen knife for performing ritual circumcision and chopping off my horns yeah you really should clean that every so often our conversation on world book day has set the answer me this questionnaire in box a light

22:56hasn't it just one of the several correspondence we have had is Katie who says I listened to the world book day discussion with a smile my child is now at high school so those days are gone but we found an option I thought you might appreciate okay so this is a dress-up option for when you can't be asked to send your child in with a extravagant homemade costume yes right Katie says not specifically for world book day we had bought one of those your child stars in the story books where they use your child's name and other details you provide to personalize the book I had one of those books it was very exciting so I think it took me years to understand the ruse that you get especially printed oh my god a child called Helen who has brothers called Richard and Andrew astonishing Katie says after some back and forth one world book day we realized the child could go as themselves thanks to that book job done I see because they're a character in the book very clever yeah it does feel a little bit like cheating like we were saying about the the screen to page adaptations feel a little bit on it but Katie says happily the child

24:02was very on board with this slightly subversive approach and used it for multiple years I mean it's kind of funny isn't it but it's funny because not everyone does it if everyone did it it would be very tedious yes also wears the escape from the self that I would be craving right yeah I mean I should say at the moment it's book fair week Jesus another one yeah it's constant it was only well booked in March in Britain I told you it's constant but there's a book fair in my one of my children's primary schools anyway okay and it's less fun it's less fun than well booked you know despite everything we said about world book days of pain it's unfair and it's it's more fun when all the kids go and dressed up like all the book fair week is is pressuring parents to buy all be subsidized books that's it there's no fun you go in a room there's some books there and instead of costing nine pounds they cost seven that's it I'm just picturing a child version of the Frankfurt book fair where all European publishers go to try and buy titles for the next year's list that

25:04would be fun if they had like authors turn up and give talks as well like they do a proper book festival but at the primary school book fair this year children we're welcome by Alan de Watan to discuss these significance and sausages in the work of Julie Doddson yeah why why don't you pitch a little mini hay on why to your son school yeah exactly yeah go on my day you a fun follow-up story says Joe in Minnesota semi related to world book day uh-huh from my childhood here in the United States that's where they keep Minnesota while my elementary school never did world book day we did have a very similar costume event called the wax museum what it already sounds very eldritch no don't even know what it is I love this how serial killer are we talking Joe yeah exactly you have to fashion character out of wax bring it into school no one asks what the wax is made from um Joe says um during which the nine and ten year old students would dress as historic figures and stand around in an auditorium supposedly like wax figures

26:06was this just to keep you quiet and still for a day each student had a little paper button next to them for visiting parents and older students to press to activate the wax figure oh my god so you're like not on the circle character who then gave a brief presentation on their historic figure you know like wax figures do what I'm thinking what's that thing in Disneyland the like thing of the presidents like all the presidents yes all the dead presidents yes that's a better name for it well do they have the life ones in there and you remember the dead ones being there I don't remember like Obama being in there yeah you may have noticed that some of the recent presidents would be more controversial to feature in that attraction so I think they're taking their time suddenly it's taking a very long time to make the wax work yeah anyway says Joe as a weird little gay boy with a French fixation at the time you sound cool honestly I remember that I opened my world history book to the glossary and found the first person with French in their one sentence bio and that's how I ended up dressed as Voltaire as a 10-year-old in 2000 in Massachusetts

27:11with a white wig and breeches oh my god I think dressing up as a figure from history although obviously has many pitfalls is a better thing than dressing up as a character for fictional book one of my children has just done this at another school I go to see different schools they've had dresses a historical figure day and he came as Neil Armstrong and it was quite good because he I mean we did have inevitably a bill for about 20 quid again buying a costume of Amazon but you know at least he had to learn some facts about Neil Armstrong and they were different facts from the person who was dressed as you know Boris Yeltsin whatever it was I guess so I suppose the problem is just how many venerated historical characters were like sex criminals human traffickers yes well you say it's a problem I think that's a way of introducing some texture about the realities of life oh true true yes but maybe you don't want to like fully embody those people I thought Neil Armstrong was a safe choice just got a check he got a check everyone anyway Joe completes his delightfully mal with this I do remember a very tear-filled evening

28:12the day before the event when I informed my mother who'd already gone to great lengths to rent a costume from a shop oh hey they also need a poster she was not pleased why does it fall to her it should be you making the posters I agree but we read she got it done well I hope she got an A I'm so curious as to whether anyone else at the school adult or child understood who Joe had gone as yeah what was the giveaway if there wasn't the poster white wig and breaches isn't enough yeah doesn't narrow it down no and I wonder what you'd put on the poster I don't know that that many people in Massachusetts in 2000 would have known about Voltaire either so in a way you could kind of put anything and they'd be like oh yeah cool yeah invented peanut butter exactly got piled flying a kite into a pylon I think you could probably basically take John Paul Cotea's biographer maybe like oh yeah okay fine yeah used to host your address yeah Voltaire Neil from Stafford says Oli I'm hoping you can close an over decade long hole in my brain sure somewhere around episode 130 to 160-ish you played a jingle during the show to the tune of the

29:17Mozart Horn Concerto number four the lyrics of the first line were you never played it again says Neil which is factually incorrect I can only assume that you got a cease and desist notice from Gilbert and George the Gilbert and Sullivan society Mozart himself or all three either way can you share the lyrics I can sing it again in my head and scratch an over 10 maybe 15 Neil you could just go back and find it in in an episode yeah let me give you the episodes you can find it in 75 84 91 102 111 124 141 and 187 all available at the higher tiers of Answer me this patreon I think we've played it since then as well I think your log has run out I think it could well have it's a flawed spreadsheet I think I've heard it a couple of times since then yeah well friends Alex and Tommy are performing that jingle this is one where they basically went off and write that themselves I think did they move to our output has rather more color than three

30:20little maids in a school in Japan yes that's a reference to the mechardo by Gilbert and Sullivan that's right then how does it go we like to make our work for mountains of feces or simply by coating our bollocks with mud with so lots of paintings and sculptural pieces will make you pay millions for your own and blood now answer me this can we please have the turn applies answer me this shall I do my flies no no no leave it open I'm still taking a picture of your cock which is Gilbert and George the artist reference combined with Gilbert and Sullivan references I suppose that was you know very much what might have been on our minds in October 2008 when we first made this jingle that's the kind of thing people were worried about in 2008 Gilbert and George being conflated with Gilbert and something well if you have a question about any of our jingles from nearly 20 years ago please do get in touch yeah or indeed if you have feedback or questions about any episode of answer me this ever then do reach out via the usual contact details for

31:24a future edition of answer us back and also do send your questions are next all new episode of answer me this will appear on the last Thursday of the month bye