Why Girls Can't Throw: ...and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Why Girls Can’t Throw . . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

MITCHELL SYMONS

Contents

Introduction

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About the Author Other Books by Mitchell Symons Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION Blame it on my father. He was a great bloke and all that, but he was also one hell of a contrary fellow. He’d contradict anything anyone said just for the hell of it. He’d even disagree on the weather, which, let’s face it, is the one thing upon which everyone always agrees. Anyway, along with the old man’s bloody gout and his double chin, I’ve clearly inherited his predilection for looking at the flip side of just about everything. So, while the rest of the world strains to hear the latest news on the perils of smoking, I’m the one saying, “Yes, but what are the benefits?” For some time now, I’ve wanted to write a book that would answer the sort of questions you don’t even find asked elsewhere—let alone answered. Obviously, in the interests of eclecticism, I’ve also included some of the more mundane, workaday questions—what you might call the curriculum for a book of this type—but even here, I have at least tried to bring a fresher, less reverent approach to bear. Still, there’s no disguising the fact that it’s the more esoteric questions that really grabbed my attention and these are, inevitably, the ones to which I have devoted the most energy.

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I NTRODUCTION

That’s because I really do need to know whether it’s morally right or wrong to copy a CD bought for a friend’s birthday, why the word “bastard” is only ever used as a term of abuse to men, whether it’s dangerous to suppress a fart, whether you can actually lose weight by eating celery, whether it’s possible to knock yourself out using just your own fist, why men don’t use electrolysis to remove their beards, what would happen to airplane passengers if someone opened the emergency exit while it was in the air, and, of course, why girls can’t throw. But I haven’t just been pondering my own queries: friends and readers of my magazine and newspaper columns have asked me such posers as, Why do I need a cigarette before I can have a crap? Is it true that Keith Richards used to get his blood entirely replaced? Are you better off running or walking through the rain? Do two wrongs make a right? What’s the kindest way to tell a friend that he or she has halitosis? Do women who live/work together menstruate at the same time? Is it cheaper to send yourself as a parcel to Australia rather than fly on an airplane? and What is the sound of one hand clapping? Where possible, I went to primary sources for the answers. More often, I’d approach an expert—or, indeed, experts, who were then, for the sake of narrative flow, amalgamated into a single person. My thanks to them all. I also, of course, used my large library of reference books as well as the Internet (although I tried to use this to corroborate facts rather than, as is so tempting, as a tool of first resort). So I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the extremely clever people who helped me—intentionally or inadvertently (and why don’t we say “advertently”?)—to answer these extraordinary questions.

Introduction

Now, for some even more important acknowledgments. Usually, to be fair, I do these things in alphabetical order, but it strikes me that this isn’t particularly fair to people who, like me, find themselves at the far end of the alphabet. So, first up, I want to thank my kind and wise editor Doug Young, whose (seemingly) limitless faith in me is appreciated more than I can ever express. Now that I have thanked the wonderful Doug, the rest of the key cast members can take their chances in alphabetic order: Luigi Bonomi, Penny Chorlton, Patrick Janson-Smith, Jeanette Perez, Mari Roberts, and David Roth-Ey. In addition, I’d also like to thank the following people for their help, contributions, and/or support (moral or otherwise): Gilly Adams, Russell Ash, Jeremy Beadle, Marcus Berkmann, Paul Donnelley, Chris Ewins, Jonathan Fingerhut, Jenny Garrison, Sam Jones, Keith Kendrick, Richard Littlejohn, Kirsty MacArthur, Tricia Martin, Emanuel Mond, William Mulcahy, Rex Newman, Chris Pilbeam, Nicholas Ridge, Charlie Symons, Jack Symons, Louise Symons, David Thomas, Martin Townsend, Katrina Whone, and Rob Woolley. If I’ve missed anyone, then please know that—as with any mistakes in the book—it’s entirely due to my own stupidity.

Mitchell Symons [email protected]

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Q

Considering you can buy a plot on the moon from the Sunday newspaper classifieds, to whom would you apply for planning permission if you wanted to build on it?

If you think this is an extraordinary question, you will be amazed by the answer. It turns out that this whole area is a potential legal minefield. Here’s why. In the 1960s, when space travel proved to be feasible, the Americans and the Russians could agree on just one thing: that no one country should own the moon (remember: there was a time when the Americans feared that the Russians might get there before them). To this end, an Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967. However, an American named Dennis M. Hope saw a loophole in this treaty: while no country could own the moon, there was nothing to stop an individual, and so, on November 22, 1980, he filed a declaration of ownership—or rather the exclusive right to administer legal rights to a piece of the moon, and, indeed, all the planets and all their moons. Call him a lunatic (think about it) if you will, but he’s a rich one. And a diligent one. He duly divided the lit surface of the moon into individual square acres. He also made a deal with the U.S. Navy for its satellite to photograph it so that he would be able to provide his customers with photographic “proof” of their landholding. He called his business the Lunar Embassy and there are “ambassadors” throughout the world. Britain’s Lunar Ambassador is Francis Williams (and his wife, Sue) who, through Moon Estates, will “sell” you a unique acre of the moon—with a deed, constitution, property map, and mineral rights—all for $20.

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As for developing your land, well, this is trickier. I checked with a lawyer and, once he could stop giggling, he told me that planning would be fraught with difficulties. “Even supposing that they have perfect title—” Dennis Hope is certain that they do. “—against any other claimant on earth, what about people from other galaxies? Would they accept our jurisdiction? If not, who would arbitrate? Meanwhile, there are no planning regulations yet in place: if and when the moon is sufficiently well established to be developed, these might turn out to militate against individuals developing their land—at least in the way they want to.” Obviously, the whole thing’s a parcel of bollocks but, hey, no one forces anyone to buy anything and it’s only twenty bucks for what is really rather quite an unusual gift.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Are there any benefits to smoking?

Yes, there are—and I say that as an evangelical nonsmoker. It had been known for some time that smokers were less susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease, but researchers at Reading University, backed by scientists at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, conducted tests that demonstrated how nicotine not only relieves the symptoms of Alzheimer’s patients (by prolonging their attention span) but might also arrest further decline. The implications of these findings are extraordinary, as it could even lead to nicotine—in the form of patches rather than cigarettes—being used to help schizophrenics and those with attention deficit disorder. But that’s not all! A 2001 study from Tel Aviv University suggests that sufferers from ulcerative colitis (a condition of the guts which you really don’t want to know any more about) who smoke recover quicker than nonsmokers do. But that’s not all! According to the New York Times, “Nicotine literally alters the availability of important brain chemicals involved in feelings of reward and well-being. There is evidence that cigarettes make task performance easier, improve long-term memory, reduce anxiety, increase tolerance of pain and reduce hunger.”

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Q

Is it true that, given an infinite amount of time, a chimpanzee with a typewriter could produce the complete works of Shakespeare?

The question this really raises is: “How long is infinity?” and, as such, is more philosophical than it is literal. Having said that, however long infinity is, it’s not long enough for a chimp to press enough random typewriter keys to churn out Shakespeare’s entire output. Let me illustrate this: pougLWENGlegfnELGFKNewfdsfDFLNegflkndfkmdvwgmsdgv

Yes, that’s what I got from approaching this task in the same way as a chimp would, and it doesn’t bear much resemblance to “to be or not to be that is the question” (even if you leave out the spacing). Given that there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet—and assuming a typewriter that doesn’t have any punctuation marks on it—the chances of producing that tiny phrase would be one in twenty-six to the power of thirty (a figure much too large for my calculator to work out) correct keystrokes in a row, that’s ignoring spaces as well as punctuation. The odds against that are so huge that it is safe to say it wouldn’t happen from, well, here to infinity—and beyond. As for the complete works . . .

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

How and when did the American accent evolve?

I had an idea that it might have had something to do with the fact that the American accent evolved from West Country accents (for example, the Plymouth Brethren who colonized America on the Mayflower) as opposed to the Standard English you hear on Radio 4 News, but that was as far as my thinking took me. So I turned to linguist and philologist Dr. Caron Landy, and her reply startled me. “It’s not so much that their accent evolved as that ours did. We were the ones who changed words, not them. All emigrant languages have a tendency to linguistic nostalgia, and they preserve archaic forms of pronunciation long after we’ve dispensed with them. Let me give you an example. The final ‘r’ you’d associate with American English is a distinctive growl produced near the back of the mouth. This sound is standard in the west of England (Shakespeare would have growled his final “r” sounds), in the north, and in Ireland. Most of the settlement in North America in the nineteenth century from the British islands came from the north and west of England and from Ireland (especially the six northern counties of Ulster).” She paused for breath, which gave me a chance to ask her about my melting-pot theory of America. What about the languages of the other immigrants? “The non-English dialects have had relatively little influence on language but quite a lot on accent—particularly the German and Irish accents. Also, the United States kept less of a British accent because it threw off British dominance at a rather early

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stage, which other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, didn’t, and those countries continued to import teachers and administrators from ‘home.’ Even so, in spite of the differences, the similarities are so striking, your question should have been: why are the English and American accents so alike?” Which put me in my place.

Q

Is it morally wrong to copy a CD you buy for a friend’s birthday before you give it to them?

This is, in fact, an extremely complex conundrum. My own view is that, provided the CD is in no way damaged by the recording and the recipient is NOT informed, it is perfectly proper. However, I was keen to discuss the issue further with experts. But whom? That was the problem. In the end, I settled for an acquaintance and two friends. The acquaintance was Father Michael. The friends were Stuart, who has a degree in philosophy, and Steve, a professional songwriter. Father Michael’s view was that it was only justifiable if you told the recipient what you had done—i.e., you were true to yourself. Stuart’s response was that, although from a utilitarian standpoint (the greatest good to the greatest number) it was actually a positive thing to do, he was opposed to it on the basis that the moment you copied the CD—irrespective of whether you told your friend afterward—it ceased to be a gift. “That is to say, by your very actions, you alter the quality of the object.” I expected Steve, who stands to lose money in royalties

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

every time a CD is copied, to be vehemently opposed to the proposition, but actually he was all for it. It didn’t help that he misunderstood me at first and thought I was offering to copy something for him. “Nah,” he said, “it’s cool. For every dude who rips off a CD, there’s a dozen who’ll buy it, and the more buyers who hear something, the better it is for all of us.”

Q

Did any Japanese kamikaze pilots actually survive the war?

I telephoned the Japanese Embassy, where the person I spoke to, on hearing the question, very kindly offered me three years of free work on a bridge in Southeast Asia. So, instead, I contacted historian Dr. Michael Morgan, who told me that the answer was yes. “As most people know, the role of the kamikaze—‘divine wind’—pilots was to fly rudimentary planes packed with explosives straight into Allied ships in what amounted to a suicide mission. However, to complete their task, they had to find an Allied ship, and if they couldn’t, they returned to base. There was one kamikaze pilot who flew no fewer than eleven missions and lived through the entire war.”

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Q

Rivers are freshwater, the sea is saltwater—yet rivers flow into the sea. How can this be?

I think about this question every time I take my boat down the River Arun into the sea: Is there a point where the water goes from fresh to salty? If the harbor entrance weren’t so choppy (because of the sea hitting the walls) and there weren’t so many people around, I’d like to take some samples and see for myself. Fortunately, thanks to geographer Joe Finlay, it wasn’t necessary. “The sea is salty,” he told me over a drink (my round), “because for over three billion years it has taken salty minerals from the earth’s crust and there is a huge quantity of salt left in the water as a result—so much, in fact, that if all the seas in the world dried up, the amount of salt left behind would be enough to build a wall of salt around the equator 150 miles high and one mile thick.” OK, I’ve got that, but what about the river water flowing into it? “The rivers are made up of rainwater, which is fresh, and river water only becomes salty once it flows into the sea. At the point where the river is closest to the sea—at the estuary—the water is indeed more brackish, or saltier. The important thing to remember is that rivers flow into seas—and not the other way around.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why is it people become more right-wing as they get older, but very rarely more left-wing?

There’s an old saying—which goes something along the lines of “If you’re not a liberal at twenty-one, then you have no heart; if you’re still a liberal at forty, then you have no head”—that really sums up this proposition. My own political progression (if something so haphazard can be dignified thus) reflects this. Apart from a brief flirtation with the Conservative Party when I was seventeen (which was more to piss off my socialist father than through any philosophical conviction), I was solidly—if moderately—left-wing through my teens and twenties. True, this could be attributed to coming from a Labor household which once welcomed Clement Attlee as a guest for tea (it was 1964, and all I can remember is a very old man), but I think it’s also a function of post-adolescence to be idealistic, and it’s much easier to be in favor of redistribution than tax cuts. Especially when you’re not the one who’s going to have his hard-earned cash redistributed. When I was twenty-four, I met Frankie “Ooh no, missus” Howerd, a famous British comedian. I was, as I recall, trying to persuade him to take part in some dreadful BBC TV documentary I was working on. During the course of a three-hour meeting, he asked me what my politics were, and when I said that I was a socialist, he said, “Ooh, that’s only because you’re young. You wait until your loins have spoken and then you’ll think differently.” I smiled indulgently and promptly forgot his words until, yes, my loins spoke and I became the father of two sons.

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By this time I was, I suppose, a conservative and I still am (although I’ve never joined the party—mostly because I don’t really like Conservatives). How much is this to do with having children? Quite a lot, I think. My idealistic worldview has very much shrunk to their needs and my wishes/fears for their future. A socialist would—or should—worry about all children’s education: I care primarily (though not exclusively) about my children’s education. Ditto health. The fact is that education and health should be good for everyone; the truth is they aren’t. So, yes, I think it is a function of getting older, wealthier, and having a family that you’re more likely to travel rightward on the political spectrum.

Q

Do women who live/work together menstruate at the same time?

Like most of my sex/gender, I know very little about that time of the month (when a woman is “paying her monthly bill,” as they say). Nevertheless, like most of my sex/gender, I have a healthy respect—no, make that caution or, better yet, fear—of PMS. I’ve often thought that if the army were really serious about deploying women soldiers, they could do a lot worse than put together a [monstrous] regiment and put them in the front line just before their periods start: they’d be a match for any army. But obviously, this would depend on them all menstruating at the same time. So, do they, and, if so, why? According to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh, “When we were cave-dwellers, women tended to men-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

struate at the same time—the full moon. This encouraged the men to go hunting on the lightest night of the month, rather than stay at home and have sex. The additional benefit was that if all the women in the group menstruated together, they were more likely to get pregnant together, thus increasing the likelihood of a lactating woman being around to suckle another woman’s child if she died in childbirth, thereby ensuring the survival of the species.” But that was then, surely? What about now, when men don’t go hunting together and, if a woman dies in childbirth, a baby can be bottle-fed? “You don’t understand the strength of these biological imperatives: they last long after they’re actually needed. That’s why women give off pheromones—unconscious secret smells that reflect our hormonal state—as a result of which, women who live together find their menstrual cycles converging. In fact, a study has shown that if one woman’s sweat—containing her pheromones—is regularly placed under the nose of another woman, their periods will soon synchronize, and that’s without the two women meeting each other. That’s how strong this vestigial bond is.”

Q

Why do men slump in front of the boob tube all night?

I was asked this question by the exasperated wife of a particularly slothful friend. Knowing that I was writing this book, she challenged me to find an answer—any answer—to her problem

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that didn’t just mean she was married to a slob. My initial research turned up a scientist named Michael Gurian, who also proved that the reason men don’t help out with the housework is that they simply don’t notice things like dust and dirt. Mr.— give that man a knighthood—Gurian also says that the reason why, after a hard day’s work, men slump in front of the TV, oblivious to their partners, is because of a shortage of the chemicals oxytocin and serotonin (which have been depleted by all the hard work and stress). I then turned to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh (no hardship, as she’s no pig to look at). Is there, I asked her, an anthropological dimension to this question? “Could well be,” she said. “When the caveman returned from an unsuccessful day’s hunting, he would sit and gaze at the horizon for hours for any sign of animals. Fast forward several thousand years, and the businessman gets home from an unsuccessful day’s work and, instead of gazing at the horizon, he gazes at the TV.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it true that the first person to stop clapping at a Stalin rally was taken away to be shot?

I’d heard this rumor, but I had no idea whether or not it was true, and so I asked my pet historian, Dr. Michael Morgan, who told me, “Like Hitler, Stalin inspired fear in equal measure to devotion. This explains why the standing ovations at his speeches and rallies routinely lasted for an hour or longer. Was the first person to stop clapping taken away to be shot? Almost certainly not. However, the fact is many people thought that that might happen—and, let’s face it, Stalin was entirely capable of having a man murdered just for the crime of stopping clapping. This was, after all, the man who had every single hero of the siege of Stalingrad executed just in case they stole his thunder.” So what did happen to the first person to stop clapping? “Nothing, but because of the rumor, the standing ovations became an ordeal—even for Stalin himself—and so, to stop them without any individual having to take responsibility for being the first, he used a bell to signal that the applause should end.”

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Q

What is the kindest way to tell a friend that he or she has halitosis?

When the Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I’d known about flossing my teeth sooner.” Well, I’m with you there, Tom. I confess to having had bad breath through my thirties, but I took myself in hand (so to speak) when I hit forty and introduced proper brushing (tongue as well as teeth) and flossing into my daily routine, and I haven’t had a problem since. In fact, I’ve become something of a proselytizer on the subject and have indeed told a friend that he ought to floss more often. “Are you telling me that I’ve got bad breath?” Better I should tell you than a stranger doesn’t. I asked Michael Louis, an experienced dentist, for his take on it. “First of all, you have to realize that there are many causes of bad breath. I mean, even as we speak, there are thousands of people on the Atkins diet, and that can lead to foul breath. So, assuming that it isn’t down to something someone’s eaten—or not eaten, as fasting can cause halitosis—then it could be down to any number of reasons and not just poor oral hygiene leading to plaque and gum disease. For example, some women have bad breath when they have their periods.” Perhaps best not to mention it then, eh, doc? “Yes. Oh, I see. Absolutely. The key thing is to distinguish between temporary and chronic bad breath. Then you can make recommendations to your friend. Try to keep it impersonal and

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

general. Certainly, enthusing about what you do—perhaps even going so far as to recommend a great dentist—is a good idea. Or you might tell this friend that you’ve stopped using mints to improve your breath because you’ve discovered that they make the situation worse by providing a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.” Is there any other way, particularly with someone who isn’t a friend but with whom you’re obliged to spend a lot of time— like a colleague or a mother-in-law? “That’s a lot tougher, because, if they take it the wrong way, you’re in an awkward position. However, there is a solution. I’m told by my nurse that there are now Internet services that will tell people for you anonymously. Sometimes they charge; sometimes they don’t. I think it depends on how ‘personal’ a service you require, but, either way, it sounds like an excellent idea.” After talking to Dr. Louis, I went online and found a Web site, www.profresh.com, which allows people to send anonymous messages to third parties with bad breath. Here’s the blurb: “We all know one of them. They’re nice people but, frankly, their breath stinks. How do we tell them? It’s such an embarrassing subject. But if they knew what the problem was and they knew how to fix it, they’d lead a better life. If only someone else would tell them for us. We will do the job for you. We will send an anonymous and nicely worded email or letter to your offending friends, relatives, and colleagues telling them that a well-meaning person thought their life would be better if they had more knowledge. We will attach the latest research on halitosis as well as scientific suggestions for curing it. To take advantage of the unique free service, simply fill in the person’s name and e-mail address or mailing address below.”

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Having said that, if I received an anonymous e-mail like that, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to track down the bastard responsible . . .

Q

Does (repeatedly) pushing the button at pedestrian crosswalks make any difference?

There’s no mystery why we keep pushing these (and elevator) buttons: even if it doesn’t work, it gives us an illusory feeling of control—just like when I used to count to a hundred while I was waiting for a bloody bus as a kid. Still, who knows? Well, the girl at our local council’s traffic department seemed to. “It depends,” she said. “If the button hasn’t already been pushed, yes, it does speed things up. But if the lights have recently changed, then pressing or pushing repeatedly will have no effect.” OK. But she wasn’t finished. “There are two ways pedestrian crossings respond to the control lights. On pelicon [PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled] crossings, pressing does have an effect, but there is a time delay if they have only just been on red—for obvious reasons. Generally, however, especially in complex junctions and traffic lights, the delay is set, and the button is merely a psychological tool that makes no difference whatsoever to the light cycle. Having said that, sometimes the lights will only change if the button is pressed, such as on busy main roads where few pedestrians would want to cross.” Thanks.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

But still she wasn’t finished. “On some of the buttoncontrollers, there’s an upside-down cylindrical shape, which should be turning. This controls the clock inside the lights. Some people think if you twist it the way it’s already going, it will turn to a green man sooner. However, it has, in fact, nothing to do with the timing mechanism. These are provided to assist the visually impaired, who can feel them rotate when the crossing is clear. They are of particular value in locations where two or more crossings are in close proximity, making it unsafe to rely on audible signals.” Is that it? “Yes.” Good.

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Q

In Monopoly, is it better to pay a $10 fine or take a Chance?

A game of Monopoly is my idea of a proper sporting contest— especially against the kids, who aren’t really aware of the nuances of the game. For example, unless you’re playing with $500 in the kitty every time you land on Free Parking (which isn’t even in the rules), then there’s no point in owning or developing the green set. Similarly, three houses are much more costeffective than a hotel, and the orange set is the best set on the board, as houses only cost $100 each and you trap people as they emerge from jail. In fact, you might be interested to know that, according to the statistics, the most-landed-upon squares on the board are (in order): Illinois Avenue, Go, Pennsylvania Railroad, Free Parking, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue, Reading Railroad, St. James Place, Water Works, and B&O Railroad. As for the question, with six “nasty” cards out of sixteen in the Chance deck, you’re always better off paying the ten-buck fine. Especially if you’ve developed properties, and the two street-repairs cards haven’t been seen in a while. On the other hand, if you haven’t got any houses or hotels, you’d be a bit of a wuss to pay up a tenner—especially as your opponent can be guaranteed to make chicken noises and/or to show you the Chance card you would have got, which is invariably Advance To Go.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it true that Keith Richards used to get his blood entirely replaced?

Let me pose a different question. Is there any doubt that the Rolling Stone guitarist is the coolest man on the planet? Like his other fans, I’ve lived vicariously through Keef all my adult life. The deal used to be that, if he got to fifty, we were entitled to our money back. Well, he survived that milestone, and now that he’s past sixty, too, the deal’s changed and we all want him to live forever. He’s such a survivor that Robin Williams reckons that, in the event of a nuclear war, “I know that we may all be dead and gone but Keith will be there with five cockroaches. He’ll be going, ‘I smoked your uncle, did ya know that?’ ” As for having his blood changed, there’s a germ of truth in it, but not much. My mate Dave has done so many interviews with the Rolling Stones that I tease him that he’s the seventh Stone (which is one up on Ronnie Wood in the pecking order). He tells me that, in September 1973, Keith had it cleaned—not changed— in a Swiss clinic, because he had to get off heroin fast to complete a European tour. It was a form of dialysis. He did it once. However, from this—and from jokes made by Keith on the subject— the legend grew that he regularly had his blood changed.

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Q

Why don’t men use electrolysis to remove their beards and obviate the need to have a shave again?

In the interests of extending the scope of my research from beyond the cloistered realms of academe and the professions to the wider world, I visited the local beauty salon and asked the attendant on duty, a shapely blonde named Kelly, how much she would charge me to have my beard (or, rather, stubble) removed. She giggled (quite deliciously) until I made it clear that I wasn’t joking—at which point she blushed and said, “Sorry, I can’t help you.” So I returned to the cloistered realms and spoke to a trichologist who also giggled (though not so deliciously as Kelly) and then told me I was mad. “You would have to have infinite patience and money,” he said through his not-so-delicious giggles. “Electrolysis kills one hair at a time. It would take months, even years to depilate a large area, such as a man’s beard.” So, how would it work, I asked. “A fine needle is inserted into the hair follicle, which then gets zapped with electricity so that it’s killed; the hair is then tweezed out. It’s extremely painful. Even then, sometimes the first zap doesn’t kill the follicle, and the hair regrows, necessitating repeat treatment. Meanwhile, you’re paying over $55 per half hour, which is, believe me, the maximum amount of time you’d be able to stand it.” Point taken.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it true that the air masks that drop down on planes are no use whatsoever in a decompression situation? Or is it just that the pure oxygen gives passengers a euphoric high in the last few seconds before they hit the ground?

Nice theory, but it happens to be untrue. I checked with the airlines and, obviously, they gave me the official line: “In the course of various aeronautical emergencies, the oxygen flow in the cabin might be interrupted. In such instances, the oxygen masks will provide sufficient oxygen for passengers’ needs.” What about in a decompression situation? “The same thing applies, but obviously the oxygen demand is greater. The oxygen mask/bag provides oxygen—in fact, more than people need, which means that during pauses in breathing and exhalation, the oxygen flows back into the bag and is stored there until required. This reduces the need for high oxygen-flow rates—which, in turn, reduces the amount of oxygen carried and the amount wasted.” Er, thank you. That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, so I turned to Mike, a friend of mine who used to be a commercial pilot before the sauce got the better of him (nowadays he’s as high as a kite without ever leaving the ground). “Nah, they’re telling you the truth—except that if you were falling as quickly as you would be during a crash, the oxygen masks would be pretty useless. But then, by the same token, any euphoria you might get from them would be more than outweighed by the adrenaline shock. Put it this way, mate, if I chucked you off the Eiffel Tower and gave you some oxygen on the way down, do

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you think you’d be feeling euphoric? Nah, I didn’t think so, either. And anyway, if oxygen were so wonderful, we’d be drinking that instead of these scotches, wouldn’t we?” I admitted he had a point. “I’m not protecting the damn airlines. If you want to tell people about a real scandal, you’ll ask them to ask themselves—or, better still, to ask the airlines—why it is that they’ll give you a lousy life jacket on an airplane but they won’t give you a smoke hood, which is ten times more likely to save your bloody life.” Another friend of mine, John, is an aeronautical engineer, and he confirmed Mike’s words, but he also added something very interesting. If I understand him right (and it’s a very big if ), it turns out that these days, all the oxygen we get on board a plane comes in two “packs,” which are sited in the cockpit and at the front of the plane and are then diverted through air vents throughout the aircraft. This ensures that the pilot and his crew will remain alert throughout the flight—which can’t be a bad idea—but it also means that the people in the front of the plane (in the expensive seats) get first dibs on the freshest air. Which, in turn, means that, by the time the air gets to the back of the bus, the poor sods sitting there will be taking in a lot more carbon dioxide with their oxygen. So, next time you get off a longhaul flight, take a look at the people getting off from the front and then compare them to the people at the back and note how much healthier the former look than the latter. It’s not all down to the extra legroom, you know.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

What’s the origin of the expression “the whole nine yards”?

This comes from the Second World War, when U.S. fighter pilots in the South Pacific would have their airplanes equipped with machine-gun ammunition belts, which, when stretched out on the ground, measured precisely twenty-seven feet. Consequently, if a pilot fired all of his ammo at a target, he was said to have gone “the whole nine yards.”

Q

Given that celery has no calories, can the act of eating it make you lose weight?

First of all, is it true that celery has no calories? I mean, even if it’s mostly water, it must have some calorific content—otherwise it wouldn’t exist. So, I went down to the local supermarket and bought a packet of celery—never let it be said that I don’t do any research—which, helpfully, had all the nutritional information printed on it (the packet, not the celery). And, no, it is not caloriefree. The supermarket’s celery has precisely seven calories per one hundred grams. Furthermore, I have no reason to believe that that supermarket’s celery is nutritionally different from any other supermarket/greengrocer’s celery. So, what is a calorie? According to the dictionary, it is “Any of several approximately equal units of heat, each measured as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C from a standard initial temperature, especially from 3.98°C, 14.5°C, or 19.5°C, at 1 atmosphere pressure.”

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This, however, is a “small,” or “gram,” calorie. The calories we use and measure when it comes to monitoring our diets are, in fact, kilocalories, and one of these is defined as “The unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C at 1 atmosphere pressure.” But all this merely delays answering the question (who knows? maybe I’ve got a potential career as a politician), which is now this: does chewing one hundred grams of celery consume more than seven calories? So, in the absence of any other volunteers, I decided to experiment upon myself. I sat down with my five hundred-gram pack of celery and worked my way through it. All right, so I cheated a little by throwing away the bits at the bottom and all the grassy stuff that grows on the top—oh yes, and I have to confess that I spat out the particularly stringy stuff—but I must have consumed about four hundred grams worth in about half an hour. Given that one hundred grams is seven calories, this means that I consumed twenty-eight calories. But how many calories did I use up eating it? Hard to tell, but here are some comparisons. In thirty minutes, you use up seventy-five calories having a bath, one hundred sixty-five calories doing housework, and one hundred calories cooking, so you’re going to use up more than twenty-eight calories eating celery. But you’ll also use up seventy-two calories just watching TV and occasionally reaching for a piece of fruit (not necessarily celery), so who needs to chew celery anyway? The point is what else might you—or, rather, I—have been doing in that half an hour? And almost anything else would have absorbed more calories. So, no, you can’t lose weight by eating

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

celery (more’s the pity)—well, not unless you eat it instead of other foods. Now there’s the rub.

Q

Would it be possible to fit the entire population of the world into Rhode Island?

Actuaries are people who work for insurance companies, calculating the odds against various eventualities occurring. The insurance companies then rip us all off, but that’s not the fault of the actuaries, who are mathematical geniuses (even if they’re such nerds that the definition of an extrovert actuary is one who looks at your shoes while you’re talking to him, rather than at his own). Anyway, my friend William Mulcahy, a top actuary, told me that “At the moment, there are 6,406,230,000 people on the planet—30 percent of whom are under the age of fifteen. That means 4,484,361,000 adults and 1,921,869,000 children. Assuming that an average adult can stand on a rectangle of 0.2 square meters and an average child can stand on a rectangle of 0.1 square meters, we can say that adults require 896,872,200 square meters and children require 192,186,900 square meters. The total area needed is, therefore, 1,089,059,100 square meters, or 1,089 square kilometers. Rhode Island is 3,139 square kilometers. Therefore, we could fit the entire world’s population into Rhode Island, but it would be a tight squeeze.

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Q

Is it true that goldfish have a memory span of only three seconds?

This is one question I should have no difficulty answering, as my teenage son keeps goldfish. Perhaps “keeps” isn’t the appropriate word, as they seem to perish at an alarming rate. Still, if anyone should know, it’s my boy. Well? “Well what?” he replies, leading me to suspect that it isn’t goldfish but teenage sons who have incredibly short memory spans. Eventually, he tells me that he doesn’t know about other goldfish, but his have excellent memories, thank you very much, the evidence being that they anticipate feeding time—which suggests that they can remember for twenty-four hours at least. So far—now, where was I?—oh yes, so good. However, when I phoned a marine biologist to confirm this essentially anecdotal opinion, he said that fish responding to knocks on the tank or even to feeding signals weren’t displaying memory but instinct. As far as he was concerned, fish didn’t have memories at all—at least not as we understand the concept. Which probably explains why they don’t send each other birthday cards. As for my son, he’s clearly got no memory at all, as I distinctly remember his mother telling him to tidy up his room, and he’s clearly—oh too horribly clearly—forgotten.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why are lesbians called dykes?

According to Dr. Caron Landy, “Women are called ‘dykes’ either because they are actually lesbians or because—indeed, you are probably guilty of doing this yourself—they are heterosexual women who have refused a man’s advances.” But why are they called “dykes” in the first place? “The word ‘dyke’ should, properly, refer to trenches, pits, dams—those sorts of things—but there seems to be no linguistic connection between these and lesbians. So, we are left with three distinct possibilities—all of which are (unsurprisingly) offensive. The first is that it’s a corruption of the last syllable of the word “hermaphrodite”—hermaphroDITE, get it? As you might know, a hermaphrodite is a human or animal—or even plant—that has ambiguous sexual characteristics. So, it is thought that men regard women who fancy women as part men, or hermaphrodites. The second possibility—and the one that I myself prefer—is that it is derived from the colloquial word ‘dike,’ meaning ‘to wear fancy clothes’—as in ‘diked out.’ This is a nineteenth-century word and, from it, we get ‘bulldike,’ which was popular with black Americans in the 1920s. “The final possibility is that it comes from Boadicea. As you’ll remember, she was the queen of the Iceni, who took on the Romans. In Latin, her name is Boudicca (pronounced ‘boudikka’). Given that she was seen to be a fierce woman, it is not hard to imagine why her penultimate syllable might be used as a term of offense toward women who, implicitly, rejected men

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by preferring other women. Personally, I don’t think it’s very likely.” Why? “Because if it does come from her name, then we should be calling lesbians ‘dicks’ instead of ‘dykes,’ and that would never do.”

Q

Why don’t we eat squirrels?

As a man whose idea of frontier spirit is barbecuing a hamburger instead of frying it, I have no idea. But my mate Rob has lived, survived, and thrived all over the world (including, for a week, Victoria Station), and he explained that basically squirrels are “rats with good PR. We don’t eat these tree rats because we don’t want to catch rabies or any of the other horrible diseases they have—and sometimes transmit merely by skin contact. But that’s being a little unfair, because it only applies to urban or suburban squirrels. Country squirrels are fine—so long as you catch them yourself and don’t pick up a dead one. Once you’ve killed it, you skin it as though you were peeling an orange, removing the head and feet. Then you take out the internal organs and make sure—and this is very important—that you wash the animal thoroughly with water and vinegar. Then, you simply cook it as though it was a chicken joint.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why can’t you tickle yourself ?

Obviously, like anyone else, I’m aware that I can’t tickle myself— or, indeed, scratch my own back with any great deal of pleasure. But why? I asked Dr. Roland Powell, an M.D. of my acquaintance, to explain. “I guess the basic reason why you can’t tickle yourself—and achieve the same response as if another person were doing it to you—is because you can’t introduce the element of surprise. And the reason that surprise is so important is because for a tickle to work, it requires your brain to be baffled. This is why the sensations you experience in a tickle include both pleasure and, because you don’t know what’s going to happen next, just a teensy bit of anxiety. If you tickle yourself, you are, of course, forewarned by your brain and your body’s own inner sensory devices—or, as they’re known, proprioceptors—which keep all parts of the body informed about what all other parts of the body are doing. So you simply can’t fool yourself.” What, you mean, like having a wank with your “other hand” to make it seem like a hand job, self-tickling can’t work because the part of your brain that matters simply doesn’t buy it? “Er, yes, just so.” But why do we laugh when we’re tickled? “Good question. Your nervous system is conditioned to be scared of attack—it’s a very primitive reflex—but when you’re tickled, it sets up a tension between this primitive reflex and your rational mind, which produces laughter.”

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Q

Is it true that Marianne Faithfull once had a foursome with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and a Mars bar?

This is one of the greatest myths of all time. Here’s what happened. In February 1967, the police raided Keith Richards’s Sussex estate, looking for drugs. Richards, Jagger, Faithfull, and other (male) guests were watching TV and listening to music. Faithfull, having just come out of the bath, was wearing nothing but a bedcover. The police found some drugs and left. Some time later, charges were brought, and, in June 1967, the case came to trial. And that was it. Mick and/or Keith were not eating a Mars bar—or, indeed, any confectionary—out of Marianne’s private parts. But that didn’t stop the rumors from spreading. All the supposed details only added authenticity. In her autobiography, Ms. Faithfull says of the story: “The Mars Bar was a very effective piece of demonizing. It was far too jaded for any of us even to have conceived of. It’s a dirty old man’s fantasy. A cop’s idea of what people do on acid.” So was it a cop who started it? Maybe. Or a journalist. Or, as he himself later claimed, Peter Cook. But it never ever happened. Unfortunately.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Given that we now have sex equality, is it still “women and children first” in the lifeboats?

Speaking strictly as a man: it shouldn’t be, but it bloody is. Last year, we went on a cruise and, as usual, they kicked off with the lifeboat drill. Having been on a fair few cruises in my time, I ignored most of what was being said and let my eyes roam around my fellow passengers, looking for cute women to flirt with and fun guys to go gambling with, when I heard the captain announce that “In the unlikely event of the ship having to be evacuated, passengers would be helped into the lifeboats, children and women first . . .” “Hang on,” I said to anyone who was prepared to listen (i.e., no one), “that’s not right. Women have fought damn hard for equality—and they thoroughly deserve it. So, why doesn’t that extend to being treated equally when it comes to ships sinking?” When I repeated this to the first officer I could find, he smiled and shrugged, but I wasn’t mollified and continued to whinge until—ooh—dinner (well, we were on holiday). However, even after ten days of pampering and pigging out, I was still bugged, and so I phoned around the cruise companies. Incredibly, “women and children first” still prevails—although I was assured (but not reassured) that “there are spaces in the lifeboats for everyone.” Yeah, great, but why shouldn’t able-bodied young women have to wait behind elderly men or take their places alongside men of the same age? Apart from anything else, it strikes me as bad policy to split up families. I know that I’m an unlikely person to be speaking out against

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sexism, but I believe that the genders should be treated equally—yes, even when it comes to the lifeboats.

Q

Given that kangaroos keep their infants in their pouches, what happens to all the infants’ piss and shit? According to zoologist Linda Vine, “Kangaroos use their front feet to open up their pouches so that they can stick their heads in and lick their pouches clean.” So, they’re licking out all the, er, droppings? “Yes, that’s right. Joeys—baby kangaroos—stay in the pouch for several months, so their mothers have to clean around them. But even after they leave, they return when they’re hungry, until either they can’t squeeze in any longer or the mother kicks them out. In those circumstances, the mothers wait until they’ve left the pouch—temporarily or permanently—and then clean them out.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why are the numbers on a dartboard so arranged?

The standard dartboard was created by Brian Gamlin, a carpenter from Bury, England, in 1896. The task he set himself was to ensure that the higher numbers—18, 19, and 20—were bracketed by the lower numbers (respectively, 1 and 4, 3 and 7, and 1 and 5) and that there was a good mix of numbers. Because gravity makes a dart fall, he made the top of the dartboard 20 and the bottom 3.

It’s interesting to note that when Darts World magazine invited readers to come up with a different numbering system, no one managed to improve on Mr. Gamlin’s version, which wasn’t officially standardized until the 1970s. There are regional variations on this numbering pattern in places like Lancashire and Yorkshire—and, of course, in fun fairs, where you have to score under 20 with three darts, and every number on the board is 25.

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Q

When a man and a woman share a toilet, should the seat be left up or down?

Up—obviously. However, I am prepared to concede that I might be just a teensy bit biased (especially at three in the morning). But where to go for an authoritative independent opinion? And then I thought of my friend Jo who used to be Peter before “she” had the snip. “Well,” she said, “given that men sometimes sit on the toilet, then I’d say the answer should be ‘down’—if only because it looks nicer. On the other hand, the question’s got nothing to do with gender and everything to do with kindness and courtesy. Look, the sort of man who will leave the seat up is also the sort of man who would quite happily pee on the seat if it were left down. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that. So I’d say that although we women would obviously prefer the seat down, we’d rather have it left up—and clean—than down and dirty.” Having said that, Bryn, my fantastic osteopath, is a man who used to be a woman. And he says that the toilet seat should be left down because, for a woman, it’s worse to sit down on a cold toilet rim than on a wet toilet seat.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Could chickens ever fly and, if so, when did they lose the ability to do so?

As I look outside my office window into our lovely garden, I can see a group (a herd? a pride? a kiev?) of chickens running—or, because they’re so fat, waddling— around, without a care in the world. Now, I know nothing about these creatures but Penny, my wife and their sole keeper, is as much an expert as anyone I could find in a radius of, gosh, ten yards. According to her, chickens can fly. “All chickens have wings and most, in theory, can fly, hence the expression, to fly the coop. But they weigh so much”—well, ours certainly do—“compared to their wingspan that they can’t fly very high or far. This explains why we can let them run loose in the garden during the day. Nevertheless, their (limited) ability to fly does help them to escape their natural enemy, the fox, because without them, they’d be sitting ducks.” Or, er, chickens. She smiled at me as though I were an idiot (not much imagination needed) and continued. “But with some chickens—like Houdini [so named because of its constant attempts to escape]— you have to clip one or both of their wings so that they can still escape from a predator but not from the garden.”

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Q

What happens to a cow if you don’t milk it?

If I’m honest, I wanted to hear that there would be a great explosion and the surrounding countryside would be covered in bits of cow. Sadly, the truth is a little less exciting. According to dairy farmer Clive Wilson, “If you don’t milk a cow, pressure builds up, which simply stops the cow producing any more milk. Any milk still in her udder would be taken up by her body. This is what happens naturally when a calf stops feeding. But when you’ve got a high-yielding dairy cow, she’s going to need milking, or she’ll be in a lot of pain and might contract an infection, like mastitis or septicaemia.” How dangerous is that? “Could be fatal.” And might the cow explode? “No, don’t be silly.”

Q

What’s the best thing to do in a plummeting elevator?

Pray. According to Dr. Adrian Newman, a physicist I went to school with, “Assuming that all the elevator cables have gone, and assuming that the elevator is therefore falling at a speed of, say, sixty feet per second—or forty mph—there’s nothing you can do to soften the impact. More to the point, at that sort of speed over that sort of distance, you’re not going to get the time to think, let alone act. You’re going to end up like a pancake.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Is that it? What about jumping? “Why?” To minimize impact. “Even bearing in mind what I said about not having the time to think, this is not a good idea. You’re traveling down at forty mph, how fast are you going to jump up—always assuming that you can time your jump just right? four mph? five mph? At best, you’re still traveling down at forty minus five—at thirty-five mph. You’re still going to get splattered. Put it another way. Let’s say you have a terminal velocity of one hundred feet per second. Even if you were an Olympic athlete, you’re only going to be able to leap up at a speed of ten feet per second. So, you’re only reducing your terminal velocity to ninety feet per second. It’s like jumping from the twentieth floor instead of the twentysecond.” Is there anything I can do? What about bracing myself or clinging to the sides? “That’s fine at slow speeds, like five or ten mph, and bending your knees will stop them being shoved up into your body, but in a plummeting elevator, that’s useless. The best thing is to make sure that you only travel in elevators with very fat people, so that if it does crash, there’s a chance that they’ll cushion your blow. On the other hand, elevators carrying very fat people are more likely to crash.”

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Q

Is it cheaper to send yourself as a package to Australia rather than fly on an airplane?

Assuming for a second that it was possible (which, of course, it isn’t), and ignoring the intense discomfort of traveling down under tied up in brown paper and string, it would actually be more expensive. Let’s say we’re talking about a man who weighs 175 pounds (which rules me out of having to make the trip). Air mail to Australia costs $14.50 per pound. Multiply that by 175 (to get to 175 pounds), and you get $2,537.50. This compares unfavorably to the best discount air fares to Australia ($2,234 round trip). Surface mail actually costs more, at $21.50 per pound. Again, multiply that by 175, and that comes to $3,762.50! And you won’t get any food or in-flight entertainment.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why do women live longer than men?

According to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh, “It’s mostly to do with lifestyle. If you look at the lives British men and women have led in the past fifty years, it’s no wonder that men, who worked hard, commuted, and suffered the consequent stress, died before their wives, who stayed at home, having (over the years) smaller families and enjoying ever more labor-saving devices. However, with the pattern of women’s lives changing and becoming increasingly similar to men’s in terms of work and recreation and use of tobacco and alcohol, there’s every reason to believe that men’s and women’s life expectancies will become the same.” Against this is the fact that females do seem to be constitutionally stronger: there is a lower incidence of infant mortality in girls than there is in boys, and women have to have a higher threshold of pain to withstand childbirth. On the other hand, they are lying on their backs during childbirth while we’re pacing up and down outside—so, you tell me who has the tougher job?

Q

Did Hitler really only have one testicle?

All together now: “Hitler has only got one ball/Goering’s got two but very small/Himmler is very sim’lar/But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.” Ah, they don’t write ’em like that

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anymore. But was it true—at least with regard to Adolf? The evidence for it being true is as follows: in the First World War, during the Battle of the Somme, Hitler was shot—either in the thigh or the groin. Later, his company commander claimed that he’d discovered that Hitler was missing a ball during a routine VD (short arm) inspection. Hitler killed himself in 1945, and the Russians carried out an autopsy. The report of this autopsy was published in 1968 and revealed that Hitler’s “left testicle could not be found either in the scrotum or on the spermatic cord inside the inguinal canal or in the small pelvis.” This autopsy was corroborated in 1972 by a team from the University of California. So far, so good, and being unitesticled might explain why Hitler was always in such a bad mood—though fellow affectees Lance Armstrong and Fred Astaire never thought it necessary to start a world war. Against all this evidence is the fact that none of his former “lovers” ever revealed that he was lacking anything in the trouser department (as if they’d dare). Also, conspiracy theorists say that the man-with-one-ball cut up by the Russians was a double and that the real Hitler escaped to South America. One more factor? We always make sexual allegations against our enemies— e.g., Osama Bin Laden was “outed” as a man with a small penis. However, on balance, we say this is all bull and that it is absolutely clear to us that Hitler did indeed have just one ball.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why are we meant to “mind our ps and qs”?

This is a classic example of what I once called a “post-factum acronym or meaning”—only to be derided by my wife and sons (who were traveling with me in the car at the time) for using (what they decided was) such a pompous expression. But I was, of course, right. Just as the word “posh” was only used to mean “port out, starboard home” after the word had become common currency, so, too, did “mind your ps and qs” come to mean mind your “Pleases” and “thankQs” after the expression was in usage. However, although we can say with some certainty that it is not derived from a shorthand for “remember your pleases and thankyous,” it’s harder to agree on a definite derivation. After (uncharacteristically) much research, I eventually settled on one of three possibilities: 1. That it comes from the printing industry—when printers

assembled type manually, all the letters were reversed as they looked at them, which meant that ps and qs would often be mistaken for each other. OR 2. That innkeepers would run tabs for regular customers with

ps representing pints and qs quarts. If customers didn’t want to be cheated when it came to settling up their tabs, they were advised to mind their ps and qs. OR

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warn their pupils to mind their pieds (feet) and perruques (wigs). I prefer the printing one—followed by the bar tabs—but I offer you all three so you can choose for yourself.

Q

Why do men have nipples?

OK, here’s the human biology textbook answer: “After conception has taken place, all fetuses are effectively female before they become male. For this reason, all babies—and therefore all people— have nipples.” Well, that answers it, but not very interestingly. So, I asked Roger Tompkinson, a leading anatomist, who invited me to consider the human body as a car. “The basic model is the same whatever extras are subsequently fitted. So, let’s say that you buy a standard car, and you decide not to order the stereo or the airconditioning. Well, you won’t get them, but the holes where they would have been are still there. The same is true of the human body: it’s the same whether it becomes a girl or a boy. The boy’s nipples—to follow my analogy—are the plugs in the dashboard where the controls for the air-conditioning would have been.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it dangerous to crack your fingers?

According to Dr. Roland Powell, it is not dangerous. “I think that most people who do it are double-jointed, and what they’re doing is snapping the ligaments in the fingers over the joint’s surface.” But I thought that there was a ball of fluid or something that was responsible for the noise? “There’s fluid in the joint, but only a minimal amount, and that isn’t what makes the noise: it’s the snapping of the ligament.” So, finger-snappers can carry on to their hearts’ content? “No.” Why not? You said it wasn’t dangerous. “Maybe not, but it is bloody annoying.”

Q

All right, are those rumors about Richard Gere and gerbils true?

Sadly—very sadly—they are not. Did you get that? Not! Notwithstanding the fact that you only have to mention the man’s name for people to giggle about gerbils (and hamsters and guinea pigs, too, no doubt), this is a classic example of the old adage that a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. I’ve managed to trace the origins of this story to a local radio station in Texas some

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twenty years ago. The DJ was conducting a phone-in when a listener rang in to say that Richard Gere (then just emerging as a major star) had a predilection for stuffing gerbils up his back passage. It was said as a joke—you know, “A JOKE”—and it was received as such by the DJ who, nevertheless, enjoyed it so much that he repeated it quite a bit for the next few days. A DJ from Los Angeles who was listening was also quite taken by it, and used it on his show back home. However, now it started to be taken seriously, and the story spread, usually embellished in the retelling. The truth of the matter was that we all so desperately wanted it to be true that the wish became father to the thought. Especially when Gere started getting all chummy with the Dalai Lama: it just seemed too priceless that this seemingly saintly person had an unnatural, unhealthy interest in small furry creatures. I have a personal coda to add to this story. In 1995, Richard Gere was rumored to be living on our Sussex seaside estate. Late one night I went past the door of the house where he was supposed to be staying, and squeaked my heart out. No one emerged from the house—least of all a Hollywood superstar— and so I thought that was the end of it. But no, the following year, we happened to buy the very house in question, which was opposite the sea, on a road named Tamarisk Way. The house itself, although beautiful in every way, had an extremely boring name and, bearing in mind its possible connection with Mr. Gere and his alleged nocturnal pastimes (remember, in 1996, before I knew better, I was still a believer in the myth), I thought about renaming the house “Gerbils.” My wife knew better (as wives do), but sportingly suggested we might look at a book about gerbils to find a more suitable name that wouldn’t have to be explained to maiden aunts. And what do you think

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

she discovered in this gerbil book? I’ll tell you: there is apparently a breed of gerbil called the tamarisk gerbil. Spooky or what? Even so, Richard Gere is not a gerbilist.

Q

Are there any sports in which women compete on equal terms with men?

Let’s face it, for all the fuss that women tennis players make about getting equal pay at Wimbledon, there isn’t one woman who could beat any man in the top one hundred. Make that top two hundred. Or even three hundred. Having said that, there are sports—especially ones that involve equipment that’s more important than, or just as important as, the person: for example, the horse in equestrian events, the car in motor sport (see Danica Patrick’s fourth-place finish in the 2005 Indy 500), the boat in sailing—where women do compete on level terms. On this basis, it can only be a matter of time before women emerge as motor-racing drivers (although a lack of testosterone—not to mention a lower threshold of boredom— might militate against this). Elsewhere, there are areas in which women are definitely catching up to men—and it’s not just a case of them having more exponential scope to play catch-up. Although women can’t acquire the upper-body strength of their male counterparts, they can do just as well—if not better—in extreme endurance sports like (very) long-distance

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running and especially (because of their greater buoyancy) in long-distance swimming, where they often beat men. But they still can’t throw . . . or can they?

Q

Has anyone ever played someone’s mother or father in a film when, in real life, they were younger than their “son” or “daughter”?

Back in 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, middle-aged male stars carried on playing young men well into their fifties, while female stars would be put out to pasture (i.e., restricted to character roles) as soon as they reached thirty-five. As a result, it isn’t so remarkable to find actresses playing (male) stars’ mothers when they weren’t much older than them. However, incredibly, I have managed to find an example of a “mother” younger than her “son” (well, why do you think I posed the question?). In 1959, the actress Jessie Royce Landis, fifty-four, played the mother of Cary Grant, fifty-five, in the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest. No less incredibly, the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang features a father (Lionel Jeffries) who was a year younger than Dick Van Dyke, who played his son.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why does a man’s bicycle have a crossbar?

According to Raleigh, one of the biggest bicycle manufacturers, “The question should be, ‘Why don’t women’s bicycles have crossbars?’ Men’s bicycles have crossbars because the triangular construction is the most efficient type of geometry for a stable frame.” The reason why women’s bicycles don’t have crossbars is historical: the long skirts and petticoats worn by women meant that crossbars got in the way, and it was more elegant for a woman to step through the frame rather than mount it. In other words, it was inappropriate for a woman to get her leg over. Having said that, these days, any serious female cyclist buying a mountain bike or road-race cycle will choose one made with a man’s frame.

Q

We drink the milk of cows, goats, and sheep, so why don’t we drink the milk of pigs?

After all, despite their bad press, aren’t pigs supposed to be clean, intelligent animals that closely resemble humans genetically? Why shouldn’t we drink their milk? Once again, I asked my friendly farmer, Clive Wilson, for the answer. “There’s nothing to stop you drinking pigs’ milk—if you can get it. That’s the problem, though, getting it. You see, a cow has one or two calves and makes her milk available whenever they want it. A pig, on the other hand, has several piglets and, so that they all get fed,

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she has to make sure that they all suckle together. The way she does this is by only giving up her milk when all her teats are being sucked. In order for us, as farmers, to get milk from a pig, we’d have to make sure that all the teats are being milked simultaneously, and even then, we’d be lucky if we got milk for more than a couple of seconds.”

Q

Before the fruit was discovered, how was the color “orange” referred to?

Gold, amber, yellow, red, tawny . . . and all points in between (e.g., yellowish-red, light amber, deep tawny, etc.). The English language has never been short of words—as any thesaurus compiler could tell you (though why there’s no synonym for “thesaurus” is one that always stumps me). Having said that, until we had the fruit, there wasn’t much around in the color orange. The important thing to know is that the fruit came before the color and not the other way around. The fruit was brought to Spain from southeast Asia by Arab traders around the ninth century and was given the Arabic name naranj—after the Sanskrit word for “orange tree,” naranga. By the time the fruit came to England, we called it “naranja,” and then “norange.” Eventually, the letter “n” was dropped from the beginning—“an orange” and “a norange” being identical in speech. Interestingly, although the fruit first arrived in England in the fourteenth century, the first English record of the color is 1620.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

What happens to the rest of the frog after its legs have been used in French restaurants?

Do you really want to know the answer to this question, and do you have a strong stomach? (Answer the second question first.) Contrary to what you might have expected, most of the frogs’ legs consumed in France originate overseas—in places like Indonesia and India (although, in fact, India has banned the trade for reasons I will explain later). The French are only interested in the frogs’ legs, or, rather, to be precise, thighs (cuisses). Consequently, the people who process the frogs simply hack off the thighs—using unsterilized instruments—and leave the frog to die in agony. The thighs are then shipped to France so that the French can feast on them. I spoke to a spokeswoman for Compassion In World Farming, who agreed with everything I said about the French, and she told me that India has suspended the export of frogs’ legs. Why, because of cruelty? “No,” she said, “because frogs feed on waterborne insects, which destroy crops. With all the frogs being removed, the Indian government discovered that they were paying more in pesticides (to kill the pests the frogs had been killing) than they were deriving from the sale of the frogs.” So, there you have it. Which reminds me, what did the frog say when he went to the library? “Read it, read it.”

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Q

Why are there no fat insects?

Can’t say I’ve ever stopped to think about this one. I mean, I’m usually too busy worrying about my own excess pounds to spare a thought for Sammy Spider or Danny Daddy Longlegs’ problems—or not—fighting the flab. But now you mention it . . . So, I phoned my pal Lucy, who used to work at the Natural History Museum, and she told me that insects actually have their skeletons on the outside, so they simply can’t get fat. What a brilliant idea, I said, thinking of the possibilities for fatties like me, but she pointed out that the way insects are constructed doesn’t give them a license to overeat: having their skeletons on the outside means that if they do scarf down too much, they explode. Not a pretty thought. Unlike my old friend Lucy . . .

Q

Why is 666 “the mark of the beast”?

It all started with the New Testament of the Bible. In the Book of Revelations (chapter 13, verse 18), we’re told: “If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast for it is the man’s number. His number is 666.” What does it all mean, I asked the theologian Jonathan Mariner. “You have to see it in the context of the times it was written in—which was when Jews and Christians were being per-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

secuted for their faith by the Romans. They needed to warn each other, but couldn’t take the risk of using names, and so used numbers as code instead. Taking the name Nero, the most evil of all the Roman emperors, and adding an ‘n’—he was known as Neron in Hebrew—it translates as 666.” How? “Take my word for it.” I don’t. “OK, ‘n’ equals 50, ‘e’ is 6, ‘r’ is 500, ‘o’ is 60. It comes to 666. You must remember that letters were used to represent numbers in Hebrew, and in Greek, in which the Book of Revelations was actually written. From here, it was a short leap for the beast to become the devil. There is also another theory that, since 7 was the Hebrew number of perfection, 666 signified someone or something extremely powerful that couldn’t achieve perfection.” The other, chilling, proof for the potency of 666 comes if you give “a” the value of 100, “b” the value of 101, “c” 102, and “d” 103, etc.: the name Hitler scores 666 . . . (fill in The Twilight Zone music yourself).

Q

What is a Community Chest—as found in a game of Monopoly?

A Community Chest is—or, rather, was—a group of local charities joined together for fund-raising and logistical purposes. Nowadays, it’s known as the United Way.

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Q

Why is it considered bad luck to say “Macbeth” in a theater?

We’ve all heard actors referring to “the Scottish play” rather than daring to utter the “M” word, but why do they do it? I phoned my old friend Barry, who’s an actor—inasmuch as that’s the profession he puts on his passport. (He’s unemployed for fifty weeks of the year, and then makes enough from a couple of cheesy TV ads to make up for it.) He told me, “There was a time—happy days—when every town had its own theater. If a play wasn’t doing well, the theater would take it off and put on an old crowd-pleaser like Macbeth. From this grew the idea that Macbeth was unlucky, because it was only used when another play had bombed.”

Q

So what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Usually like the smack on the face of the idiot who decides to ask such a silly question. Look, it’s a zen paradox—not a bloody quiz question. It’s like “Does the tree that falls in the forest make a sound if no one’s there to hear it?” It’s meant to make you think, not speak. So while, yes, it is possible to make some kind of sound using just one hand, it’s also possible to reflect on life and its infinite nuances. Or not.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why are VIPs given the “red” carpet?

After getting nowhere with VIP events’ organizers—“I dunno, it’s traditional, innit?” although one did vouchsafe the suggestion that “it means the blood doesn’t show if the VIP gets shot”—I turned to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh. She didn’t know and said she’d get back to me, but suggested that it might have something to do with replacing all the petals that used to be strewn in the path of important people. Eventually she returned to me. “Sorry about my earlier answer: completely wrong! The truth is that red dye was always used for carpets for important people because it was so expensive to produce and therefore it was a mark of respect. If we go back far enough, to mythological times, red was the color of the gods, because it symbolized blood, and only the gods—or the priests—could walk on red carpets.” What if someone broke that rule? “Agamemnon did just that when he returned victorious from the Trojan Wars.” And what happened to him? “He was murdered by his wife.” Sounds like hubris to me.

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Q

Would it kill someone if you dropped a coin off the top of a skyscraper and it hit them?

“Not that old chestnut,” said physicist Dr. Adrian Newman when I phoned him at home. “No, it wouldn’t.” Er, thanks, mate, but could you expand on that? “All right,” he said, “no it bloody wouldn’t. How’s that? Listen, I’ve just got in. I’ll phone you back when I’ve had something to eat.” An hour later, he was all apologies for his uncharacteristic grumpiness. “It’s this detox diet—I’m not getting any carbohydrates and I’m farting like a cow. Now, this coin business. OK, let’s say you threw it from, say, the Eiffel Tower, it would reach its terminal velocity after about three hundred meters—” Which is the height of the Eiffel Tower. “—if you say so. Anyway, at this point it would be traveling at around 175 mph, so, yes, it would give someone a headache— it might even fracture their skull—but it wouldn’t kill them.” Are you sure? “Sure I’m sure. A coin moving 175 mph is a lot slower than a bullet and, besides, coins aren’t shaped like bullets.” What about a higher building, like the Empire State Building? “No, in many ways that’s safer. In fact, it’s possible that a coin dropped from the top of the building wouldn’t even reach street level. Due to wind variations and updraughts, the coin would hit the side of the building and be caught in one of the building’s many nooks and crannies. Sorry to disappoint you.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Instead of swearing, some people say “Gordon Bennett.” Did he exist and, if so, who was he?

James Gordon Bennett (1841–1918) was an American newspaper proprietor who was so wealthy and enjoyed such a lavish lifestyle that his name became an exclamation. That was the nub of the answer, but I was intrigued and so did some further reading, to discover: In his lifetime, he spent a total of $40 million. His after-tax annual income was in excess of one million dollars. He once tipped a train porter $14,000. In 1877, he got drunk at a party at his fiancée’s house and mistook the fireplace for a toilet (like you do). His fiancée’s brother challenged him to a duel (neither man was hurt), but he fled to Paris. In Paris, his favorite hobby was smashing up restaurants (and he wasn’t even a rock star)—although he always paid for the damage. He once burned a wad of thousands of francs because all the notes in his pocket were causing him discomfort. He built a yacht—the Lysistrata—which boasted, among other conveniences, a padded room for holding an Alderney cow to provide fresh milk. He once went to a restaurant in Monte Carlo and found that it was full. So he bought the restaurant and instructed the headwaiter that he was always to reserve a table for him. He was the man who sent H. M. Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone (as in “Dr. Livingstone, I presume”) in Africa. All together now: “Gordon Bennett!”

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Q

Why is the question mark the shape it is?

According to linguist and philologist Dr. Caron Landy, punctuation is a relatively recent invention. “Western and Middle Eastern languages didn’t have punctuation at all and even the Assyrians and the Babylonians only put a space at the end of each sentence. Instead, all words just elided into one another.” So when did punctuation start? “In about AD 600. And, as with so many developments in this area, it came about because of the Church. St. Augustine was worried that priests pausing in the wrong place might convey the wrong message to their congregations, and so he ordered dots and squiggles to be inserted into manuscripts.” Thanks for the lesson, Dr. L., but what about the ?? “I’m coming to that,” she said coldly. “At the start of the ninth century, Charlemagne’s court standardized punctuation, and interrogatory sentences were indicated by a full stop with a tilde (~) over it. This, of course, looks like our question mark, and so it evolved. When the printing press arrived and its use spread, it would have been very expensive to create a totally new typeface, and therefore all the (by then) traditional punctuation was used, and the question mark’s future was assured. Does that explain it?” Sort of—though it’s not very sexy. “I didn’t say that it would be. Do I get a fee this time?” No, sorry. “What?! Even if I point out that some Christians believe that the use of a question mark when asking God questions is a

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

subtle way of expressing doubt and that the hooded shape of the question mark is reminiscent of the serpent?” Nice try, love, but the answer’s still negative.

Q

What is the origin of the use of the word “gay” to mean homosexual?

There is no straight answer to this one. All right, settle down. When I say there is no straight answer, I mean straightforward, but this kind of linguistic confusion is, I fear, par for the course in a case like this. The linguist I spoke to offered that the word “gay” might have been a euphemism used by homosexuals to describe a fellow homosexual in a time when homosexuality was illegal. Did I know that “earnest” was such a word and explains the title of the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest? I didn’t. I turned instead to lexicographer Philip Turnbull, who told me that the word “gay” had a long and dark history. “In the seventeenth century, the Oxford English Dictionary gave a meaning for ‘gay’ as ‘addicted to social pleasures and dissipations; of loose and immoral life’—hence the expression ‘gay blade.’ By the nineteenth century, the word had come to be associated with prostitutes, with the verb ‘to gay’ meaning ‘to copulate.’ I can’t find any homosexual usage of the word— which doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any—until the twentieth century, when there are several different possibilities, including the word ‘geycat’ to describe a homosexual boy. My own favorite explanation is that ‘gay’ in the sense of ‘cheerful and bright,’ was probably used to describe effeminate men, and it

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stuck. Certainly, nowadays, the word is only used to mean homosexual.” What about the possibility that “gay” came from the acronym “Good As You”—as seen on placards in gay rights marches of the 1970s? “Too late, and also I think you’ll find that that acronym comes from the word ‘gay’ and not the other way around.” Aha! I think I spy another post-factum acronym!

Q

Why do I need to have a cigarette before I can have a crap?

As an ex-smoker myself, I can answer this one without having to trouble people far more important than me. Although it is true that nicotine can and does act as a mild stimulant on the bowels, its laxative effects are minimal. The truth is that this question comes about as a result of a syllogism. A syllogism, as you already know, is a deductive inference that consists of two premises and a conclusion, all of which are categorical propositions. So, for example, if you take the two statements—“all humans have legs” and “all dogs have legs”—then the syllogism is “all humans are dogs.” Which is patently untrue (although I have known some mutts in my time). Similarly here. Just because the smoker always has a cigarette before emptying his bowels doesn’t mean that the two are in any way physiologically linked. He might, for instance, always put his shoes on before defecating, but the one action doesn’t affect the other.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

As an ex-smoker, I, too, always used to have a cigarette before going to the loo in the morning, and I am prepared to concede that for the first few days after giving up it felt a bit strange going straight to the pot without having a cough and a drag first. But the feeling passes, and you soon realize that the one had absolutely nothing to do with the other. If you’re looking to give up smoking (which is a good idea—although I have to say that in thirteen years I never once got cancer), then you might drink a cup of coffee or an extra cup of coffee before taking a dump, as coffee is more of a laxative than nicotine. Alternatively, make a TV appearance: I always find that going on TV—particularly live TV—has an extraordinary laxative effect.

Q

How many ways are there to skin a cat?

Cats feature in several proverbs: a cat has nine lives, there’s no room to swing a cat, a cat may look at a king, the cat’s whiskers, to let the cat out of the bag, when the cat’s away the mice will play, put the cat among the pigeons, cat and mouse— and any number of similar expressions that will help pad out a really rather disappointing answer. The expression “there are many ways to skin a cat” means the object of our enterprise can be achieved in lots of different ways. So if we can’t (say) persuade a young lady to have sex by taking her out to dinner, we might be able to do so by buying her flowers, taking her on vacation, or perhaps even by porking

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her uglier friend first and making her jealous. There are, indeed, as many ways of scamming nookie as there are of skinning a cat. In fact, according to a furrier I picked out of the Yellow Pages, this is one proverb that doesn’t have a basis in truth. “Well,” said the furrier, not quite understanding what I was after, “we don’t get much call for skinning cats and, besides, it’s illegal.” Yes, I understand that, but how many ways are there to skin a cat if you were to? “Just the one.” Yup, I gather that, but couldn’t you—I was prompting him, but he needed it—skin it from all different directions? “You’re nothing to do with animal rights’ groups are you?” No, it’s for a book. “I thought you said it was about cats.” Thank you. I did some more reading on the subject, and I discovered the possible origins of the proverb. In olden days, cats were worthless—apart from their skins, which were used by poorer people for coats, blankets, etc. So it didn’t matter how badly the cat was skinned, because the flesh underneath was only going to be discarded anyway. Consequently, there would indeed be many ways of skinning it: carefully, haphazardly, quickly, etc., etc. Sorry to burden you with unnecessary knowledge, but that’s reading for you. So, let’s cut to the bottom line: there are just two ways to skin a cat—dead or alive.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Who was the best-endowed celebrity of all time?

First off, let’s agree to exclude all celebrities who have been grassed up in kiss-and-sell stories in tabloids. Why? Because the way that these wretched things are done is that the trollop/model/tart who’s doing the telling has sold her story and therefore the paper can have her saying precisely what it likes . . . and what it likes is no hassle from the celebrity concerned. Consequently, if she is quoted as saying, “He was a wonderful lover with a huge manhood and we had fabulous sex seven times,” the paper knows that the celebrity in question is less likely to sue. Well, would you? The exception to this rule is where the paper knows that the celebrity in question is broke—in which case, the girl will be quoted as saying, “The lovemaking was awful: he was hung like a hamster.” Having got that off my chest, let me give you the results of my exhaustive research. The following celebrities are all said to have/have had large johnsons: Gary Cooper, Aristotle Onassis (“the secret of my success”), Robert Redford, Matt Dillon, Frank Sinatra (according to ex-wife Ava Gardner, “there’s only ten pounds of Frank but there’s one hundred and ten pounds of cock”), Liam Neeson, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (not just big in relation to his size but BIG anyway), Errol Flynn (his party piece was to get it out and try to play You Are My Sunshine with it on the piano), Rasputin (said to be thirteen inches long), Jimi Hendrix (said to be as big as his guitar), Charlie Chaplin (“the eighth wonder of the world”—at least according to him), James Woods, Richie Sambora, Babe Ruth, Sean Penn, Kevin Cost-

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ner, Tommy Lee (nicknamed “T-Bone”), Chico Marx, Joe DiMaggio, and Mick Hucknall (“the size of a cucumber on steroids”). However, the winner—by, er, inches—would seem to be the American comedian Milton Berle, who was reputed to be extremely well endowed. On one occasion, another extremely well-endowed gentleman challenged him to what we might call “an extremely well-endowed contest.” The gentleman took out his “manhood” to the appreciative gasps of the assembled company. Now it was Berle’s turn, but instead of doing the same, he took out just enough to win the contest—and no more. Yup, I think that’ll do. By the way, you might be interested to know which celebrities (all dead, for obvious reasons) weren’t so well endowed. The following are all possibilities: Cary Grant (according to ex-lover Maureen Donaldson) King Edward VIII (“the smallest pecker I have ever seen,” according to one friend) Napoleon (just one inch when he died) Ernest Hemingway (“the size of a .33 shell”) F. Scott Fitzgerald (he compared his to Hemingway’s and decided that they were both somewhat lacking in the winkle stakes)

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it possible to knock yourself out using just your own fist?

As anyone who has watched two evenly matched boxers slugging it out over fifteen rounds knows, it’s hard enough to knock someone else out—let alone to do it to yourself. But does that mean that it is impossible? I phoned my friend William Mulcahy, who’s not only an actuary (and therefore an expert on risk and probability) but also the cleverest man I know. More to the point, he has the kind of quirky mind that enables him to take left-field questions like this in his stride. “It’s possible—just—but almost inevitably it couldn’t happen. Let me explain. Human beings are complex, yet, ultimately, really very simple. The species would soon become extinct if we didn’t have basic reflexes that inhibited us from hurting ourselves.” Er, excuse me, haven’t you heard of suicide? “That’s different: that’s deliberate.” So’s punching out your own lights. “No, because that requires you to suspend a reflex—the reflex that you recoil from something painful. The instinct to stay alive can be superseded by the intellect, but you can’t beat reflexes. For example, you try falling forward without bringing your hands out to break your fall: it’s well-nigh impossible. Here’s an example of what I’m saying. In the Second World War, British spies caught by the Germans would often take a cyanide pill and die. Their reasoning told them that this

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was a better thing to do than being tortured to death. However, those spies who didn’t have pills—or didn’t get the chance to take them—were obliged to find other ways to kill themselves. Some tried holding their breath, but here’s what happened: they could do that long enough to fall unconscious, but then their reflexes took over and they would start breathing again. So what I’m saying is that it’s almost impossible to override those reflexes, and therefore you would find it correspondingly impossible to knock yourself out using your own fist—if you were going to be that stupid in the first place—because, even if you could override your survival instinct enough to strike the blow, you wouldn’t be able to override your reflex to avoid pain. My point being that instinct and reflex combined would thwart you. You could, of course, always use a third party—like a thug or a wall or something.” But you said it was still possible—albeit only just. In what circumstances could it happen? “Let’s say you had someone who didn’t know that they had an extremely thin skull, and they then tried to knock themselves out with a punch. They might very well succeed, because— unbeknown to them—they wouldn’t need that much force. In other words, having overcome their instinct not to harm themselves, the reflex we’ve been talking about wouldn’t figure as much in the equation. But my thesis is that it could only happen out of misjudgment.” Would booze help in such circumstances? “Almost certainly—although the chances of you being able to hit your own face would, of course, decrease commensurately with the alcohol required to make you want to do so.” Like I say, clever chap William.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

f Q

Is it true that elephants have good memories?

According to a keeper of elephants at the London Zoo, yes, because, relative to other animals, they have big brains— although their brains are smaller than humans’ brains. “They have a retentive memory,” says the keeper. “If you teach them to do something, they can do it again in a few years. There are also stories of elephants repaying acts of cruelty and kindness up to thirty years later. For example, in India, if a mahout [elephant driver] mistreated an elephant, the elephant would remember him years later and attack him if given the chance.” The line “elephants never forget” actually comes from the writer Saki. In his 1910 book Reginald on Besetting Sins, he wrote: “Women and elephants never forget an injury.”

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Q

How come birds don’t get electrocuted when they perch on electricity lines?

With some trepidation, I phone the physicist Dr. Adrian Newman, but, fortunately, he’s finished detoxing and is in a perfectly affable mood. I put the question to him. “Oh that’s easy,” he starts, and rattles off an explanation that goes straight over my head. Listen, Adrian, is there any way you could put it in layman’s terms? “You mean ignoramus’s terms?” I tell him I liked him better when he wasn’t getting any carbohydrates. “OK, Mr. Thickie, here’s how it works. When a bird stands on a wire, it gets an electric charge, but it doesn’t get electrocuted, because no current flows through it. The bird doesn’t complete a circuit. Do you understand?” No. “All right, look at it this way. Electricity is lazy. It wants to travel as quickly and as easily as possible from one side of the generator to the other. So, if you’re sitting in the bath and you touch a live wire in an electrical appliance—and, by the way, I’d advise you not to—the current will jump from the wire to your body to the bath water and then travel back to the generator and so complete a circuit. Your body has created a short circuit. A bird, on the other hand, isn’t grounded, it isn’t a good conductor, and consequently it doesn’t offer the current a shorter way home. Why would electricity want to bother going up one skinny leg, through the bird’s body and out through the other

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

skinny leg when it can just carry on its sweet path, ignoring the bird’s tiny claw. Now, a human hand would be different: it would make a fine conductor, and so the human would get electrocuted. Do you understand that now?” Er, no. “Well, don’t worry, your readers will.”

Q

Why is a yawn so infectious?

Once again, I turned to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh (not least because, as I’ve had pause to remark before, she’s no pig to look at). “As everyone knows,” she told me, “human beings tend to replicate each other’s body language. So, if two people are together and ‘in tune’ with one another, if one person does something, then the other person will do that thing, too. This synchronicity dates back to our days as cavemen, when men would hunt in groups. For the group to be effective—and therefore to survive—it was essential that all the men be alert at the same time and go to sleep at the same time. Therefore, in a nonverbal group, the yawn would be a signal that the time was right to start winding down and go to sleep. Fast-forward thousands of years and, of course, there isn’t still the need for us all to go to sleep at the same time. However, the instinct remains, so that even if someone yawns simply because they have a need for more oxygen, then other people in the room might also find themselves yawning.

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“There is a further—and complementary—explanation: yawns are caused by boredom. If, in a conversation between A and B, A yawns, it is because B is boring them. B is bored because A is boring, and so the yawning starts.”

Q

Is it true that Star Wars didn’t make a profit?

According to my pal Russell Ash’s seminal work, The Top 10 of Everything, the Star Wars films are (after the James Bond films) the second most successful movie franchise of all time—grossing north of $4 billion over the six films. So, that looks pretty profitable by anyone’s standards, and, of course, Star Wars DID indeed make a profit. However, Hollywood folk were so used to the power of creative accounting that a gag started doing the rounds that Star Wars didn’t make a profit—meaning that people/investors who were expecting to be paid out of profits could forget it. And if Star Wars could be manipulated so that, on paper at least, it didn’t go into profit, then what chance did other, less successful, films have? What this illustrates, according to my chum Jim who works in the British film industry, is just how much comes off the top when it comes to movie accounting. “For a start, films have to double their negative cost before the word ‘profit’ can even be mentioned. What other business operates like that? There isn’t one! Then there are all the expenses—for that and, or so it seems, for every other film the producer in question has ever worked on. So, yeah, Star Wars made a profit, but not many

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

other movies have—no matter how successful they were at the box office.”

Q

Is it true—as people claim—that pigeons explode if you feed them bread with baking soda in it?

Some questions are easier to answer than others. This was not one of them. Where to start? Vets? Explosives experts? Bakers? Pigeon-fanciers? By the end of my investigation, I’d tried all of these, and the only thing upon which they all agreed was that this was just about possible but extremely impractical to achieve. Obviously, if you stuffed enough of anything down a pigeon’s gullet, you could kill it, but, as one pigeon-fancier (soon to be an expigeon-fancier, as he’s suffering from Pigeon-fancier’s Lung, which is, I guess, an occupational hazard of fancying pigeons, in much the same way that Sheepshagger’s Dick is an occupational hazard of shagging sheep) told me, “Pigeons are very clever creatures: they’ll only eat what they want to.” So, what if you wrapped the baking soda inside the bread? “They’ll eat the bread and discard the baking soda.” So, I asked a pharmacist how a pigeon might explode, and he gave me some guff about an imbalance of acids and alkalis, which I couldn’t understand but which basically boiled down to “if they consume enough baking soda, they would, in theory, explode internally through not being able to fart.” In any event, the consensus of all the people I spoke to was that, as a means of controlling the pigeon population, plying them with baking

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soda is about as effective as sending them poison-pen letters in the hope that they’ll commit suicide. This question reminds me of the film 24 Hour Party People, which featured recollections of members of the rock group The Happy Mondays about killing pigeons by giving them bread laced with rat poison. Of course, a little rat poison goes a long way—a lot further than baking soda. Having said that, perhaps the toxicity of baking soda has been overestimated ever since a 1930 recipe for poisoning sparrows. Yes, it included baking soda, but it used strychnine, too. Blaming the baking soda in that recipe is a bit like blaming the Coke in your Bacardi and Coke for getting you drunk.

Q

We know that when you flush a toilet in the southern hemisphere, the water swirls the wrong way. If my toilet was right on the equator—with half in the north and half in the south—would it explode shit all over me?

What an extraordinary question! was my first response. My second was to book business-class seats—i.e., at the front of the airplane (see earlier question)—to Australia and New Zealand, just to check the premise of the question. Anyway, it turns out that although bathwater does swirl the “wrong” way in the southern hemisphere, toilet water doesn’t (and please note that four nights in a deluxe hotel room in Sydney were spent discovering just that: yup, I’m that obsessive about research). As for the equator bit, I couldn’t actually fit in a trip there—

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

it clashed with the school term—but I will, I will. However, the logical answer is that even if toilet water did flush the other way—and it didn’t, trust me—then what do you think would happen on the equator? Obviously, it would just go down straight—not clockwise or counterclockwise, but straight down. Rather like the sun sets immediately on the equator but takes longer the farther north (where we have summer in June, July, and August) and the farther south (where they have summer in December, January, and February) you go.

Q

Was there ever any cocaine in Coca-Cola?

Yes, but not for over a hundred years. Cocaine-bearing coca leaf was part of the original recipe for the drink until, on the orders of Coke headquarters, the coca leaf was “decocained” (much as coffee is decaffeinated). This was because people had started buying the drink for its, ahem, restorative qualities—it was, after all, marketed as a pick-me-up and, indeed, some people felt more than a little “picked up” once they’d imbibed a few beakers. Mind you, the Coca-Cola company still denies that their drink ever had any Charlie in it. It was a similar story with J. Collis Browne’s Kaolin & Morphine, which some people used to buy for the latter more than for the former. That would be our grandparents’ generation. You see, just like every generation thinks it invented sex, so, too, does every generation think it discovered drugs. Cocaine’s been around for

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. . . well, a very long time indeed. The big inside joke on the Keystone Kops—the silent-movie comedians—was that they were known in Hollywood as the Cocaine Cops (why else do you think they did all that crazy stuff?). There’s nothing new.

Q

Is it dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker?

“Sleepwalking is perfectly normal in children,” says Dr. Roland Powell, “but it should cease by early adulthood. An adult who still walks in their sleep is probably suffering from stress and should either see a psychiatrist or a sleep specialist. Possibly both. It might also be a sign of a brain tumor, but that is exceedingly rare.” Thanks for that, Doc, but, er, is it dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker? “I should say that it would depend on how vigorously you did it. Rousing them might confuse them, so it might be better simply to guide them back to bed in their sleep, as it were. Having said that, it is wrong to say that waking them will cause them anything worse than a bit of confusion or distress. I mean, I shouldn’t think they would have a stroke or a cardiac event or anything. “The important thing is to protect the sleepwalker from themselves. If you know someone—especially an adult—who walks in their sleep regularly, you should make sure that there are latches on windows, and maybe even put a lock on their door so that they don’t get hurt.” Is there anything that can be done to cure them?

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

“There are two avenues to explore: first, you should, if practical, keep a diary of their sleepwalking and then try waking them just before they’re most likely to go walkabout. The other thing is for them to go to their doctor and get some appropriate drug: Valium has been known to work.”

Q

If you fall from a great height, are you dead before you hit the ground?

I wasn’t looking forward to finding out the answer to this question. Not because I have a fear of heights (great or otherwise), but because I knew it would necessitate a phone call to the only physicist I know, Dr. Adrian Newman. “Hang on a sec,” said Dr. A, “didn’t I answer this one before?” No, it was about killing someone by dropping a coin off the top of a skyscraper. “Oh, I see. Well, it’s the same principle. You speed up like Newton’s apple until you reach terminal velocity after about three hundred meters, and then you go splat on the ground.” Nice, but what about dying before you hit the ground? “It’s a good idea,” says this excuse for a human being. No, don’t be obtuse. “All right, I was just pulling your leg. The chances are that you’ll die of heart failure—actually, to be precise, respiratory arrest—from the shock of your fall so, yes, the chances are you’ll be dead, but it’s not a given.” Not content with this answer, I did some research and dis-

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covered that, in fact, the evidence bears him out. Damn it. However, some people do survive horrendous falls. For example, in 1971, Juliane Koepcke fell two miles from an airplane before it crash-landed in the Peruvian jungle; she lived to walk away. Mind you, she was the sole survivor. Incidentally, the German film director Werner Herzog was meant to be on board to begin location scouting for his film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, but he didn’t get on because the flight was overbooked, and instead flew on the next one. However, he was so struck by the survivor’s experience that he took her back to the jungle in 2000 and made a documentary about her extraordinary story.

Q

What is the meaning of the serial numbers on the bottom of Zippo lighters?

I am, as I have already said, a nonsmoker, and therefore didn’t even know of the existence of such things as “Zippo lighters.” “Wasn’t Zippo some sort of circus?” I asked my chum Mike, who is something of an authority on all matters contemporary. “Don’t be a—” However, he did explain that Zippo aficionados are forever discussing the (supposedly) hidden meanings of the dots, notches, and figures on the bottom of their lighters. He then gave me the excellent advice to check it out on the Internet. So, off I went to www.zippo.com and, even for someone who has no interest in lighters—let alone Zippo lighters—I have to say, it was fascinating. The answer it gives (under FAQs) is: “The markings at the bottom of our Zippo lighter cases are identifi-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

cation codes, which enable us to determine in what month and year a particular Zippo lighter was manufactured. For details on these markings, please visit ‘bottoms up’ which will give you all the markings for all the years from 1933 to the present day.” No, “bottoms up” is not a smutty site: it merely gives details of which marks correspond to which years. So if, for example, you’ve got a Regular Lighter with \\\ marked on the right side, then it dates from 1982. However, the same marking on the left side would indicate that it was from either 1982 or 1983. It’s all so fascinating that I’m seriously considering taking up smoking in order to have a reason to collect Zippo lighters.

Q

What is the oldest trick in the book?

You pays your money and you takes your pick. People I spoke to reckoned that it was “any con that you’ve fallen for that your best friend hasn’t. He can be guaranteed to say, ‘That’s the oldest trick in the book,’ just to rub it in.” There were other votes for asking a woman what year she was born in to work out her age and also for the trick that Gordon Jackson falls for every time you watch The Great Escape (will he never learn?). My friend Mike thought it might be sex—but then he thinks that sex is the answer to everything. Mind you, he does have a point: if prostitution is the

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oldest profession, then, presumably, the first ever tart turned the first—i.e., the oldest—trick. However, I think the best explanation is that it was Satan’s deception of Adam and Eve when he told Eve in the Garden of Eden, “If you will eat of that tree over there, you will be like God. You will be as wise as He is.” So Eve ate the fruit, gave some to Adam, and they were kicked out of Eden. Consequently, this is the oldest trick in the book—or, rather, the Book—i.e., the Bible. Me? I still reckon that putting shaving cream in a mate’s hand and then tickling his nose takes some beating . . .

Q

Why, when someone is dismissed, are they “given the sack”?

Out of desperation, I phoned the increasingly charmless linguist and philologist Dr. Caron Landy. “I wish you’d find someone else,” she said. I bit my tongue—discretion being the better part of having my question answered. “You don’t seem to know anything. Whose book is this?” Yeah, right. So why are people “given the sack”? “If you were to ask other, lesser, so-called experts, they might very well tell you about sultans who would get rid of unwanted concubines by putting them in sacks and drowning them in the Bosphorus. It’s actually true that these potentates did such terrible things, but, nonetheless, it’s not how the idiom came about. In fact, the truth is more mundane. Ever since

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

medieval times, workers would carry all their tools around with them in a sack. Wherever they worked, they would leave the empty sack at their employer’s premises. If, at any time, the employer decided to dispense with their services, he would then hand them their sack so that they could pack up their tools and leave, taking their sacks with them. Thus, they were ‘given the sack’. I assume that answers your question.” Yes, thank you, it does. I wish someone would put you in a sack and throw you in the Bosphorus, you old bag . . .

Q

Is it dangerous to suppress a fart?

I turned to Dr. Roland Powell, and he was absolutely insistent that it isn’t dangerous to suppress a fart. “On the contrary,” he said with his customary smile, “it might be dangerous to fart in certain circumstances.” Such as? “Use your imagination.”

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Is that it? “Well, I can explain why it is that this myth came about. It is, after all, an unpleasant sensation to hold on to wind, but it is utterly harmless. No one ever ruptured themselves by holding back a fart.” So how do farts work? “All right. It’s all to do with the air and gases— including methane—that you take into your intestines. Belches, which come from the stomach, consist mostly of air, but farts are produced by bacteria working on undigested food in the colon. Now some foods—such as baked beans—can’t be broken down by the body’s digestive juices, and so, as they ferment in your colon, they cause wind. But it’s not just baked beans: different people are intolerant of different foods—for example, dairy products—and will react accordingly when they consume them.” And why do farts smell? “Basically because of where they originate.”

Q

What is the meaning of life?

Let me start by telling you a story. There was once a village where the villagers decided that they had to know the meaning of life, and so they went to the wise man who lived in a cave (not so wise, you might think, but that’s the way it was). He told them to bring him all their money, and he would let them know the answer. So, they returned with everything they had and waited

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

for the answer. “The meaning of life,” said the wise man, “is a lemon.” After they’d recovered from the shock, they were angry. “What are you saying, wise man? We have given you all of our money to discover the meaning of life, and you tell us that it’s a lemon?” The wise man looked at them and then shrugged. “All right then, it’s not a lemon.” What else? Well, Douglas Adams told us in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that 42 was the answer to everything, but I don’t know if that includes life. Stumped for any other possibilities, I decided to ask my wiser friends what they thought. The most profound response was: “It’s the question. What is the meaning of life is itself the meaning of life—the process of inquiring about life.” Another answer was more humdrum: “To be born, reproduce, and die,” but I think that’s too reductive. My friend Jim reckons that “life’s a sexually transmitted condition with—eventually—a hundred percent mortality.” I think my favorite answer came from my friend Tim (who isn’t, in fact, the cleverest person I know). He said, “For me, the meaning of life is like a set of car keys that has gone missing. The more you fret about them, the further away you are from finding them. The chances are you’ll only find them when you stop looking.” Interesting. To continue with Tim’s analogy, it’s also probable that they’ll be in the last place you’d consider looking. In other words, you have to think outside the box. Still not satisfied? OK, Samuel Butler said that “life is one long process of getting tired,” and John Lennon declared that “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” while the philosopher George Santayana—who described life as “not a spectacle or a feast: it’s a predicament”—concluded “there is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

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Q

What happens to the bullets that soldiers fire into the air to get rid of crowds?

Before phoning Dr. Adrian Newman, my pet physicist, I decided to do some background research, and I was amazed to discover that people do indeed get killed (which is why blanks are used for ceremonial purposes) whenever bullets are fired into the air—even when it’s just random shots fired in jest. Every year, dozens of people die or are injured throughout the United States from stray bullets fired into the air during Independence Day and New Year’s Eve celebrations. According to a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, “People that are shooting, they don’t think they are out to kill anyone, but they do.” Of course, it’s a real problem in the States, where anyone can own a gun (and anyone—or so it seems—does). Now, for the science. According to Dr. Newman, “As soon as a bullet is fired vertically into the air, it immediately begins to slow down because of the effects of gravity and air drag. This deceleration continues until at some point the bullet momentarily stops before it begins to fall back towards earth. The bullet’s speed will then increase until it reaches its terminal velocity, which is when the weight of the bullet and the air drag are balanced.” I’m not entirely sure I understand. “I’m not entirely surprised. Don’t worry, it’ll be easier when I introduce some figures into the explanation. A bullet fired into the air climbs two miles and remains in flight for more than a minute. As it falls, the bullet reaches a velocity of anything up to seven hundred feet per second. A velocity of only two hun-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

dred feet per second is sufficient to penetrate the human skull. And that’s why bullets fired into the air can—and do—cause deaths.”

Q

Why is it easier to park a car backward than forward?

When it comes to driving, I’m actually a bit of a girl, and so I asked my mate Rob—who’s always banging on about being an advanced motorist (whatever that is)—to explain. He said, “When you turn a car’s steering wheel, it moves the front wheels. Therefore, if you get the back end of the car in first, the trickier part—the actual parking, if you like—can be done with the end over which you have greater control: the front. For the same reason, it is much easier to get out of a parking space frontward.” Is that it? “Yes.” So why do I find parking so difficult? “Because you’re an idiot.”

Q

If someone’s head is chopped off, does it retain any consciousness—even briefly?

After a lot of research—most of it really rather gruesome—I have come to the conclusion that, notwithstanding any number of supposed sightings, the answer is no. True, death by beheading

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might not be absolutely instantaneous, and a severed head might have some vestigial reactions for a split second (which would account for the blinking eyes or, in an experiment carried out on a guillotined criminal in nineteenth-century France, the reddened cheeks when the severed head is slapped) but, to all intents and purposes, beheading is—as Dr. Guillotine intended it to be—the most humane form of execution. The same cannot be said for the electric chair (where victims often literally burn to death), hanging (where, if it’s not done properly, the victim is strangled rather than sustains a broken neck) or, indeed, lethal injection (especially in the many cases where the victim is an intravenous drug user and the executioner can’t find a vein). So, although you can find any number of gory stories about severed heads—backed up by bogus science that talks about the brain having enough oxygen to function for a couple of seconds after the head is cut off—the fact is that these stories are just that, stories: designed to titillate, shock, and thrill in equal measure.

Q

Has anyone ever died during sex?

Lots of people, I’d have thought—especially husbands having sex with women who weren’t their wives (particularly if those wives happened to walk in at le moment juste: no, stop, it doesn’t bear thinking about). However, I suspect that, as usual, the word “anyone” in the question refers to “anyone famous.” So here goes. Former U.S. vice president (1974–76) Nelson Rockefeller

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

died in the “arms” of his (very) personal secretary. His wife’s name was Happy. You can write your own punchline. Felix Faure, the nineteenth-century French president, died while being fellated by his mistress. Way to go. Then there were no fewer than three popes who died during sex: Paul II died of a heart attack while a boy was buggering him. John XII was beaten to death by the husband of the woman with whom he was having sex . Leo VIII died while having sex with a married woman.

Q

Why do husbands and wives grow to look like each other?

It’s always been known that people get to look like their pets, but is it true that husbands and wives do the same? According to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh, it’s all to do with “a phenomenon called emotional convergence.” “As a couple gets closer, so their looks get closer, too. There have been studies in it, and there’s no doubt that convergence does take place.” Does the uglier partner get prettier, or the prettier one uglier?

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“I couldn’t possibly comment—save to point out that emotional convergence primarily takes place in happy marriages, and it is generally accepted that, in happy marriages, both partners are roughly of a similar rank when it comes to looks.” Are you saying that I look rank? “You don’t want me to answer that, do you?”

Q

Why is someone described as being “under the weather”—especially when the weather’s fine?

There is a nautical explanation for this. In days gone by, when someone felt seasick, they were advised to go below and find a spot in the middle of the ship where the motion would be much less noticeable. In that way, they were “under the weather.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Wasps. Why?

Once again, I turned to my old pal Lucy, who used to work at the Natural History Museum and knows more about insects than any other woman on the planet.* She told me, “Unpleasant as they might be”—might be?—“to humans, wasps do actually serve a useful function as predators of flies and other insects.” I’m still not convinced. “OK, consider this then, there is a parasitic wasp, which is actually used—and sold—to control whitefly in greenhouses, the only alternative being to use pesticides.” Nope, that’s not enough. “All right, what about the Kayapo Indians of the Amazon who use wasps to protect their crops from leaf-cutting ants?” Nah, it’s still not enough to justify their existence—especially as I read (in the course of my research) that one in a hundred people is potentially fatally allergic to wasp stings. I also learned that the best thing to do when threatened by a wasp is not to flap around and scream like a complete girlie (my usual response)— which often provokes an attack—but to slowly raise your arms to protect your face and stand still or move slowly away to escape. The other bad news is that getting stung once might not be the end of the experience: wasp venom contains a chemical “alarm pheromone” which, when released into the air, acts as a signal to other wasps to come and join in the stinging. No, I really do think we could manage pretty well if wasps became extinct. *That is, “any other woman on the planet” that I’ve gone out with.

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Q

Why do women button to the right whereas men button to the left?

In “olden times,” men dressed themselves, but (wealthy) women were dressed by their maids who, naturally, would button them up to the left—which was, of course, the right for the woman wearing the clothes. Another possible explanation along the same lines is that women’s clothes are buttoned on the opposite side to men’s because they’re both designed to be unbuttoned by men. Tee hee.

Q

What is the origin of the expression “OK”?

There are several different possibilities. In no particular order, they are: 1. Obediah Kelly—a U.S. railroad freight agent who marked

his initials on important papers to show that everything was in order. 2. Okeh—the Choctaw word for “yes.” 3. “Orl Korect” or “Oll Korrect”—nineteenth-century U.S. pres-

ident Andrew Jackson’s folksy way of expressing himself, which led to his being known as O.K. Jackson (apparently, using “comical” initials was terribly popular in the 1830s). 4. Old Kinderhook—President Jackson’s successor, Martin

Van Buren, joined in the “OK” fun and used the initials to refer to his hometown of Kinderhook.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered 5. Ola Kala—the Greek expression for “all is good.” 6. O Ke—in Mandingo means “all right.” 7. Wav Kay—in Wolof means “yes indeed.” 8. Omnia Correcta—in Latin means “all is correct.” 9. Aux Cayes (pronounced OK)—a place in Haiti, famous for

its excellent rum. 10. Och Aye—in Scottish means “oh yes.” 11. Oc—is derived from the Latin affirmative “hoc.”

It’s hard to know which explanation is the true one— although I lean toward a combination of 3 and 4. What we can say for certain is that President Van Buren popularized the expression so that by the 1840s it was in wide usage.

Q

As an international language, why isn’t Esperanto used at the United Nations?

Esperanto was invented in 1887 by a Polish man named Dr. Zamenhof, and he called it Esperanto, because it means “the one who hopes.” Unfortunately, hope is all that was achieved. Hardly anyone speaks this artificial language, and, indeed, in the United States there are more people who speak Klingon—a language made up by/for fans of Star Trek—than there are Esperanto speakers. In fact, Klingon is actually taught in some American universities. However, to prove that Esperanto isn’t there just for the nice things in life (like love, hope, and understanding), I phoned the

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Esperanto Society and persuaded them to translate the following words for me: War = Milito Conflict = Konflicto Battle = Batalo Anger = Kolero Argument = Argumento Attack = Atako Tension = Tensio Dispute = Disputo Preemptive strike = Anticipita trafo

Ain’t I the naughtiest bastardo? (Note: I’ve used the word “ain’t” in its only correct English usage: as a contraction of “am not,” which people usually—and mistakenly—shorten to “aren’t.”) However, I should point out when I talk about English, I’m talking about British English (what we call the Queen’s English). In American English (can we call this the President’s English— OK, I guess not) “ain’t” can be used more extensively. I would use this as an opportunity to gloat about the superiority of British English to American English, but, in fact, in almost all instances where we diverge, you guys get it right. Damn it.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Do women have wet dreams, too?

I decided to consult my friend Mike, who’s something of an amateur sexologist—as opposed to a dirty old man (i.e., he surfs the Net with both hands). “If by ‘wet dream’ you mean a nocturnal emission, then there’s not really a female equivalent, because women don’t tend to ejaculate fluid at the point of orgasm. Nevertheless, women do have nocturnal orgasms. According to Kinsey—” Hang on, I thought he was completely discredited. “No, not completely, and this research is backed up by subsequent studies. Anyway, 40 percent of all women have had a nocturnal orgasm at least once by the time they reach their menopause—that’s almost exactly half, compared to men. The main difference between the genders is that nocturnal orgasms are often men’s—or boys’—first orgasms, whereas women usually only have nocturnal orgasms after they’ve had them while they’re awake.”

Q

Do hair and nails continue to grow on a corpse after death?

Ooh, it’s a spooky thought, isn’t it? A person’s dead and yet their body is still alive! Maybe they’re still feeling sensations even though their brains have stopped functioning? And if their hair can keep growing, then perhaps other parts can regenerate themselves. ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE LIVING DEAD?!!!!

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Calm down. It’s all a lot less worrying than that. There is— or so Dr. James Peters, a part-time pathologist assures me—a logical explanation. “Yeah, man”—I should explain that, despite (or perhaps because of) the solemnity of his work, he is by way of being a bit of a hippie—“I understand why you might think that but, hey, it’s nothing.” It might be nothing to you, but what about the relatives of the dead? “No, it really is nothing. You see, when someone dies, that’s it: finito. They’re dead. Everything stops. The blood stops flowing, and so the hair and nails stop growing.” So where does this rumor come from? “Yeah, OK, what does happen is that the body dries out after death, and so the skin on the scalp—and, for that matter, around the fingernails—recedes a little, which, like, might give the appearance that the hair and the nails have grown. But they haven’t.” Thanks, James, dig it.

Q

Why were condoms called French letters?

I’m old enough to remember a time when purchasing prophylactics required as much nerve as embarking on a university degree course would today. But that is to digress from the even greater unpleasantness that is contact with my barely tame linguist and philologist, Dr. Caron Landy. I’ll spare you the testy exchange (even though she didn’t spare me).

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

“Basically,” she said in the icy, clipped tones that would, if she was so minded, make her a pinup in torture chambers everywhere, “for the same reason that all things to do with sex are named after the French. We talk about French kisses, French— in the sense of fellatio—and French postcards for pornographic photographs. While syphilis was known as French pox or the French disease.” I didn’t know that. “Apparently, there is plenty that you don’t know.” Ouch! “To continue: the expression ‘French letter’—as in an envelope— has its origins in the nineteenth century, but its popularity spread in the First World War, when British soldiers noticed the similarity between the windsocks on French airfields and condoms. I should also point out that there is a town named Condom in southwest France.” So, is that where we get the word “condom” from? “No, it was named after the Earl of Condom, personal physician to King Charles II, who designed his eponymous invention to protect the king from syphilis.” So what do the French call a condom? “The French word for condom is preservatif, but in the First World War, French soldiers called it la capote anglaise, which means ‘English hood’ or ‘overcoat.”’

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Q

Which sport is the most dangerous for its spectators?

I rang around a few sports journalists of my acquaintance, and although no one knew for sure, they were able to make educated guesses. For a start, there was some consensus on the most dangerous sports for participants (yes, I know that’s not the question). BASE (building, antenna, span, and earth) jumping, free diving, speed skiing (the world’s fastest nonmotorized sport), bull riding, and solo yacht-racing were all cited—and there was a special mention for people who ride bicycles into work during rush hour. The most dangerous sport for spectators is so much harder to quantify. Motor racing is an obvious candidate. In 1955, for example, a Mercedes left the track at Le Mans and killed eighty spectators, but there are now so many safety features in motor racing that participants’ deaths are a rarity—let alone spectators’. It was also agreed that, if it were possible to work out the number of spectator deaths per thousand spectators, then rallying or motorcycle road racing—which attract fewer people than Grand Prix motor racing—might very well turn out to be more dangerous. Then again, if a low participants-to-spectators ratio is the criterion, then cheese rolling is a possibility. The cheese rolling competition held each year in Gloucester sees massive, four-kilogram cheeses hurled down the hill and chased. The cheeses achieve speeds of up to forty mph and often crash into the spectators— injuring them quite seriously. One of my pals suggested that cricket was the most danger-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

ous spectator sport, as “you might die of boredom.” He is, I should explain, a soccer writer.

Q

How did the Ku Klux Klan get its name?

The KKK was founded in 1865 in Tennessee, after the end of the Civil War, as a supremacist organization opposed to blacks, Jews, Catholics, and other minorities. The KKK was given spurious glamour by D. W. Griffith’s epic film Birth of a Nation, but, for all the ceremony, it was only ever a lynch mob in sheets. As for their name, according to Sherlock Holmes, it derives from the sound of the hammer of a rifle being cocked. Alternatively, it comes from the Greek word kuklos, meaning “circle,” which was then split into two words with the alliterative (especially when misspelled) “Klan” added later.

Q

Why do humans kiss?

Search me. The fact is, no one really knows. In his book The Global Fix, Ben Whitaker advanced the theory that we kiss to test someone’s semiochemicals. These chemical substances—secreted from salivary glands—communicate biological signals and, according to his theory, the buzz we get from falling in love is really a sign that we are addicted to a partner’s semiochemicals. Bet he doesn’t get a lot of Valentine cards.

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Q

What makes feet smell like cheese?

As the father of two teenage boys who wear sneakers, I have no argument with the premise of this question. So much so that I was actually under the impression that cheese smelled like feet rather than the other way around. Given this high (even by my own low standards) level of ignorance, I decided to speak to an expert. For once, though, I thought I’d get something out of it for myself—something more than just information—and so I visited Mrs. Winwood, my local chiropodist. While she cut my toenails, filed my calluses, and poured ointment on my ingrowns, I asked her to help me. “Well, you’re not making it any better by wearing socks that aren’t 100 percent cotton.” No, not me. My feet don’t smell of cheese. She looked up and smiled—damn her. “If you say so. As I understand it, the same bacteria that are found in smelly feet— not yours, of course—are also used as a culture in the making of cheese. Not precisely the same bacteria, but remarkably similar ones, and they produce a very similar smell. But what we enjoy in food, we don’t necessarily appreciate in feet.” So what can one do about it! “I thought you said—” No, not me, of course. “Apart from changing socks regularly—even more than once a day if you suffer from perspiration—you could also try sprinkling boracic acid powder, which is available at the pharmacy, on your feet and footwear. The other piece of advice I’d offer

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

you is to change your shoes regularly. If you always wear the same pair, they don’t get a chance to air properly.” Thanks for that. “Oh, and by the way, your feet aren’t the worst I’ve seen today.” Could you please put that on a piece of paper and sign it? “Why?” So that I can show it to my wife.

Q

Why, in films, do police officers taste heroin and cocaine?

I checked this with a mate of mine, who happens to be a copper (btw, did you know that the word “cop” is an acronym of constable on patrol?) in the drugs squad, and he says that it’s total bollocks. “For starters, cocaine has no taste—besides the taste of the stuff it’s been cut with and who knows how toxic that might be: I mean, I know some dealers who use rat poison to make it go further.” So, you and your mates never do it? “No, never.” So, why do they do it in movies? “I dunno. Maybe because it makes them look streetwise or something.” How do you tell then? “If you’ve gone looking for it, and you find something that looks like it, then the chances are that that’s what it is.” In other words, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. “Exactly.”

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Q

Can a fat person starve to death?

My uncle Sammy isn’t really my uncle—he’s not my father’s or mother’s brother—but he’s been Uncle Sammy as long as I can remember: a family friend, what’s known as a brevetuncle. Growing up, I adored Uncle Sammy because of his largerthan-life personality. One day, I asked him why he had a series of little numbers tattooed on his arm. “I was in a camp,” he told me. “What, like the cubs?” I asked. (I was seven at the time, for God’s sake.) He shook his head with a rueful smile. When I turned thirteen, I didn’t have the bar mitzvah that marks a Jewish boy’s coming of age, but my father made a point of sitting me down and explaining—in graphic detail—the Holocaust to me. Some years later, I plucked up the courage to ask Uncle Sammy about his experiences, and he told me everything that had happened to him (which is a book in itself). However, it was what he said about the Hungarian victims that is germane now. He said that when they arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, they were—almost to a man—big and fat. All the emaciated inmates assumed that this would help the Hungarians to survive for ages: after all, they had all this fat to live off whereas the incumbents had been starving for years. In fact, it didn’t work like that. The fat newcomers (i.e., those who hadn’t been “selected” for extermination) were used to a big diet and simply wasted away in a few weeks—while the thin, wiry prisoners who’d been there much longer had learned to exist on the incredibly

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

meager rations and thus had a better chance of survival. So, sadly, it seems that fat people can indeed starve to death.

Q

What is the meaning of the song “American Pie”?

According to legend, when Don McLean, the singer/songwriter responsible for this 1971 classic, was asked this question, he replied, “What does it mean? It means I never have to work again.” Great answer but, alas, it doesn’t help us here. So, let’s see what we can do. One thing McLean has admitted is that “the day the music died” refers to the death of Buddy Holly (with an obvious echo in the line in the chorus that goes “This’ll be the day that I die,” and in the line “February made me shiver,” as Holly died in February 1959), and he also dedicated the album American Pie to the singer. It can also be safely assumed that the line “I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride” also refers to Holly. The title of the song remains a mystery, but it is not true that the American Pie was the name of the plane on which Holly perished. Perhaps it’s just evocative of a smalltown beauty contest of the era, in which the song—a paean to 1960s culture and counterculture—was set. Going through all the characters in the song, it is now widely accepted that the Jester was Bob Dylan (“the coat he borrowed from James Dean” possibly refers to Dylan’s leather jacket on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited, and the line “with the jester on the sidelines in a cast” refers to Dylan’s 1966

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motorcycle accident) and the King was Elvis. The Queen was either Connie Francis, Aretha Franklin, or, if McLean was being puckish, Little Richard. “The quartet” who “practiced in the park” were, of course, the Beatles (and it’s possible that the “park” was Candlestick Park, where the Fabs played their last ever concert), and “the girl who sang the blues” was Janis Joplin. Jack Flash was clearly Mick Jagger, and the lines “no angel born in hell/Could break that Satan’s spell” probably refer to the young man who was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels at Altamont (Satan’s spell being a possible reference to Mick singing “Sympathy for the Devil”). As for events (as distinct from people), the reference to “Helter Skelter” brings in Charles Manson, who was apparently inspired to go on a killing spree after hearing The Beatles’ song of the same name. The lines “there we were, all in one place/a generation lost in space” probably refers to Woodstock, where everyone was stoned. “They took the last train for the coast” could be a reference to the way that the music industry moved out to the West Coast in the 1970s. The line “while the sergeants played a marching tune” refers to either Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s Vietnam song “Ballad of the Green Beret” or else Sergeant Pepper’s. Enough now. You know that line between “interested” and “obsessed”? I think I might have crossed it a hundred words ago . . .

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Will a sleeping person wet the bed if you dip his hand in warm water?

As Hawkeye “proved” in M*A*S*H when he did it to Major Frank Burns, this is one prank that can work a treat. Indeed, I remember with some fondness my days at an MPSIA (Minor Private School, I’m Afraid) when this was one of the regular induction hazings— designed to make the new boys really feel at home. That’s to say, really feel at home if their home was stuffed full of psychopaths. It didn’t always work—I’m delighted to say it didn’t work on me—but nature has a way of getting its own back, and nowadays I’m lucky if I’m not obliged to pass water more than four times a night. I asked Dr. Roland Powell how it works. “Mostly, it’s the power of suggestion—to which we’re most vulnerable when we’re asleep. Just the thought—or sound—of water will encourage us to urinate during the day, so, when your hand is plunged into water at night, it can have an extraordinary effect. It’s the combination of the water (which encourages peeing) and the shock (which is conducive to making you let go—in this case, of your bladder). Interestingly, I know of doctors who advise patients having a tough time urinating after surgery to put their hands in warm water. And, as you know, if you’re having a tough time peeing, just letting the water run in a nearby sink often works, too.” The only time I ever have difficulty peeing is at a public urinal when there are other people around. Why is that? “Nerves, I should say, compounded by embarrassment. I’ve often thought they ought to play tapes of gushing water in public restrooms—or perhaps even have a mini waterfall.”

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Q

Why do we say “many happy returns”?

It’s short for “many happy returns of the day”—that is to say, “may this day return many times,” or “may you have many more birthdays.”

Q

Are guinea pigs ever used as guinea pigs?

Once again, I turn to my wife, Penny, but she really is an expert on this subject. While I’m watching TV, playing Internet poker, and sometimes even working, she’s down at the bottom of the garden, tending to a dozen or more guinea pigs. She can’t quite answer the question “Why do you need more than, say, two of the little critters?” but that’s OK (for once), because her guinea pig habit does at least make her an expert on anything to do with them. Disappointingly, for those of us who like things to do what they say on the package, it seems that guinea pigs are very rarely used as, er, guinea pigs: nowadays, rats and mice are preferred, because they’re smaller, cheaper to feed, and reproduce more quickly. They’re also easier to manipulate genetically—and, of course, they don’t have the same PR as guinea pigs do, and so are more disposable. However, guinea pigs have an immune system similar to ours and, like us, don’t synthesize their own vitamin C. They also have incredibly sensitive skin, which shows up potential allergens immediately.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

The interesting thing about guinea pigs, according to my wife—and I have to say that I’m thrilled that there’s anything remotely interesting about them—is that they’re neither from Guinea, which, of course, is in Africa, nor are they pigs but cavies (cuddly rodents). The creatures originated in South America more than three thousand years ago. When the Spanish conquered the Incas in the sixteenth century, they brought guinea pigs over to Europe via the port of Guinea (hence their name). In Peru, people still eat guinea pigs and keep them in their gardens, rather like we—or, rather, she (my wife again)—keeps chickens.

Q

What bits of the pig and/or cow go into sausages?

I once met a guy who had worked in a factory where they made sausages. When I asked him what went into them, he simply shook his head and said, “Put it this way, I’ve never eaten one since.” In its own way, this simple statement was far more powerful than any list of grisly ingredients could ever have been. But did it put me off? Well, yes, until the first barbecue of the next summer, when the sight—and the smell—of those tasty links was just irresistible. I phoned the major sausage manufacturers, and they all referred me to the list of ingredients they print on the side of the packet. After a while, I got wise to this and said to one spokesman, “Yeah, I know about that, but what about the cows’ verrucas and the toenail clippings?” He was, it has to be said, genuinely shocked. “Why would we put such things in our products?”

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Which left me a bit stumped. “Look, if you don’t identify us, I’ll tell you this much: of course, we use the bits of meat that can’t be sold for other purposes—as steak or pork chops—but how good, how lean, that meat is is reflected in the price you pay. But you’ll never find the things you’re really worried about, because what would be in it for us?” Point taken, but I’ve done some research and I’ve read about human body parts, rodent body parts, hair, feces, metal, plastic. What do you say to that? “Sheer fantasy. Oh, I’m not saying that some lunatic might not have used such things in the past—but not a reputable sausage manufacturer.” What about all the gribbly bits of animals—like their balls and assholes? “I don’t deny that we use gristle and fat, but these days retailers are obliged to have clear labels showing customers the meat content in sausages and burgers. And only flesh with permitted levels of gristle, cartilage, and fat will count as meat in the list of ingredients. Animal fat, gristle, and skin in excess of these levels will now have to be shown as separate to the meat. More to the point, offal, which is sometimes included in econ-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

omy brands used in catering, will no longer be listed as meat.” I suppose I’m reassured, although even the supposedly reasonable added ingredients—like rusk, protein concentrate, polyphosphate, monosodium glutamate, cochineal, and sodium metabisulphite—give me pause for thought. More to the point, there’s the sausage skins themselves. Either they’re plastic (no thanks) or they’re “natural” (i.e. made from an animal’s insides— and again, no thanks). In fact, you know what, the more I think about it, the more I want to say no thanks to sausages, period.

Q

What would happen to the passengers if someone opened the emergency exit of an airplane while it was in the air?

In theory—as all Bond film fans will remember—they’d all be sucked out (certainly if they weren’t wearing seat belts). So, what protection is there? I asked my friend Terry, who flies planes for the sort of charter company that caters to drunk bastards who might very well try to leave the plane in midflight. Wasn’t he a little concerned? “Not in the least, mate. What you have to know is that an airplane door opens in, not out. Now, on the ground—where it’s meant to be opened—that doesn’t matter, because the air pressure is the same inside and out. But when you’re flying, it’s different. The higher you go, the thinner the air. Now, this means that the cabin has to be pressurized—or else everyone would die from lack of oxygen. The difference between the pressure outside and the pressure inside makes it absolutely impossible

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to open the emergency exit—or, indeed, the regular doors, because although they open out, they first have to be pulled in a bit, which is impossible at altitude. So, there’s nothing to worry about.” Apart from blood clots. “Apart from blood clots.” And air rage caused by a lack of fresh air. “And air rage.” And grumpy stewardesses.

Q

What is the best way to cure hiccups?

No one knows precisely how hiccups are caused—eating, drinking, talking, laughing, swallowing air, anxiety are all possibilities— but they’re jolly annoying, even if they do provide much merriment for anyone witnessing them. Anyway, here is a list of cures that someone somewhere swears by: Eating a tablespoon of peanut butter. Pinching your nose while you drink water. Pinching the back of your shoulder until it hurts (this works because the nerves that control your diaphragm come from the same place). Exhaling as hard as you can and then holding your breath. Coughing or sneezing. Swallowing a teaspoon of sugar.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Holding the tongue with your thumb and index finger and gently pulling it forward. Getting someone to drop an ice cube down your back. Laughing. Hyperventilating (which has the unfortunate side effect of giving you a panic attack). Mass practice—i.e., trying to hiccup as much as possible (you might even persuade a mate to pay you for each hiccup). Breathing into a paper bag. Chewing gum. Immersing your face in iced water. Gargling. Drinking a glass of water while someone presses your ears closed.

My own favorite is drinking water from the far side of a glass (so that you’re drinking upside down). Well, it works for me. My favorite remedy when a friend’s having an attack is to give them a fright. “YOUR CAR’S BEING TOWED AWAY!” usually does the trick. If it’s a stranger, you could accuse them of stealing your wallet. Although they might break your nose before you can explain your kindly intentions.

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Q

What is the origin of the expression “It’s not over till the fat lady sings”?

I have a somewhat stormy relationship with the linguist and philologist Dr. Caron Landy. I use her shamelessly, while she treats me with haughty disregard. This time was no different. “If you’re going to bother me with questions—for which, incidentally, I am not recompensed—you could at least do me the courtesy of phrasing them correctly.” Sorry. “The expression is ‘The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings,’ and it was first used by a sportwriter named Dan Cook in 1976, in the San Antonio Express-News, to indicate that the sporting contest wouldn’t end until time was called. In employing such a colorful metaphor, he was assuming that in every opera, a soprano—usually amply proportioned—sings an aria at the end. “The popularity of this expression spread when, a couple of years later, Cook started to use it when he was broadcasting as a commentator. It really took off—and gained widespread currency— when he used it when the San Antonio Spurs were trailing in the playoffs against the Washington Bullets. The Washington Bullets’ coach, Dick Motta, heard Cook and used the expression himself, to caution fans against overconfidence. It went on to become the team’s rallying cry. From there, it entered the English language— albeit erroneously, as you demonstrated.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why is rugby sometimes called “rugger”?

OK, there’s football, right? But there are different kinds of football. So rugby football is, er, rugby, and association football is also known as “soccer”—“soccer” being a diminutive of “association.” Apparently, in the late nineteenth century, private school and Oxbridge boys had a mania for putting -er on the end of words as a form of slang. So, just as “breakfast” became “brekker,” “association” became “soccer”—or, worse, “footer”—and rugby “rugger.” And, because these fellows controlled the sport for many years, it stuck.

Q

What is the meaning of the song “Scarborough Fair”?

This traditional folk song, popularized by Simon and Garfunkel, is assumed by many people to be a love song—not least because it has a chorus containing the words “then she’ll be a true love of mine.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s about a man telling a woman that she can’t be his true love unless she performs a

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series of impossible tasks (“Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seams nor needle work”; “Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand”; “Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather . . . And gather it all in a bunch of heather”). You try doing any of those—let alone all of them—and then you’ll see why she won’t become his true love. That’s if she wanted to anyway.

Note: My copyeditor, who trusts me about as far as she can throw me (and, remember, she is a girl), made her own inquiries into the meaning of this song. Being thorough, she not only listened to the Simon & Garfunkel version, she also went through the lyrics of the original folk song and she reckons that the song illustrates that the two people’s love for each other is so great that only extraordinary feats can demonstrate it. I disagree but, hey, if you agree with her, why not write to her using a fountain pen on a cream cracker (then you’ll be a true love of hers . . .)?

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

A Bactrian camel has two humps; a dromedary camel has just one. If a Bactrian and a dromedary were to breed, would their offspring have one hump or two?

Long question, short answer: one. The reason we know this is because Bactrians and dromedaries are regularly cross-bred—not for the purposes of this question but because cross-bred camels are, in fact, excellent beasts that combine all the best attributes of the two breeds. The only trouble is that these cross-breeds are invariably sterile, and so, every time more are wanted, they have to get one of each breed and (this is only a guess) put on some smoochy music. By the way, if you really want to know about camels and their breeding/nurturing, you have to see The Story of the Weeping Camel. It really is one of the best—and most moving—documentaries I’ve ever seen.

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Q

What is the origin of the expression “in like Flynn”?

Although there are possibly other, more oblique, origins of this expression, there is no question that it gained currency as a result of the escapades of the Hollywood star of the 1930s and 1940s Errol Flynn, whose womanizing was so legendary that any man who even came close to matching him was said to be “in like Flynn.” However, there is a darker side to all this. Flynn was notorious for his dalliances with young girls, and in early 1943 he faced his first trial for the statutory rape of two teenage girls. The fact that he was acquitted (by an all female jury) did nothing to lessen the spread of the expression, which became common currency. In 1966, James Coburn starred as a secret agent in Our Man Flint before making the 1967 sequel In Like Flint, which, as well as being a pun on “in like Flynn,” helped popularize the expression. Apart from the charges of statutory rape, from which he was acquitted, Flynn was also accused of raping a French girl toward the end of his life. Once again, he was acquitted. Here are some other famous men who were accused and/or convicted of rape: James Boswell (once “abused” a prostitute “in blackguard style”). Lord Byron (attempted to rape the thirteen-year-old daughter of Lady Oxford). Herman “Babe” Ruth (according to his biographer, he raped a woman).

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Gerard Depardieu (admitted to having raped a girl in his youth. He said it was something that everyone did, but it ruined his chances in the Oscars the year that he made his confession). Caligula (raped many women—including his own sister). Geoffrey Chaucer (was accused of raping a girl named Cecile. He paid her off, and so the charges were dropped—but his action certainly suggests a possibility of guilt). Lord Palmerston (once attempted to rape one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting). Fatty Arbuckle (the silent-movie star was acquitted of raping a starlet, but his career was ruined anyway).

Q

How do you explain crop circles?

I don’t. They’re all spoofs. Really? Yup, no question. If you don’t believe me, consider this: Why do crop circles only appear in fields sited near large population areas (mostly in southern England), where the hoaxers obviously live and where they hope their work will be seen by the most people?

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Q

Is the glass half empty or half full?

Search me. At the moment, it’s half empty—but then the sun’s just gone in and I’ve lost some money at Internet poker. Yesterday was a really good day, and so it was half full. But what do I know? Fortunately, my friend Stuart has a degree in philosophy and was therefore able to offer a more objective approach. “OK, let’s look at it this way. This conundrum is a metaphor for whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. It’s as simple as that. From a purely practical point of view, however, I’d say that if you have a full pint of beer and you drink half of it, then it is half empty. On the other hand, if you take an empty pint glass to the bar and ask for a half-pint, then the glass will become half full. All right? Good, then it’s your round. And mine’s a pint.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

If Edward VIII hadn’t abdicated but had died childless, who would be the monarch of Britain today?

In this hypothetical situation, let’s assume that Edward ruled from 1936 until his death in 1972. He would have been succeeded by the next oldest of his brothers or—and this is crucial— that brother’s eldest boy child or, if there were no sons, that brother’s oldest daughter. In other words, King Edward would have been succeeded by his next oldest brother, Albert, who, in the parallel dimension in which we actually live, became King George VI in 1936 and died in 1952. Consequently, in 1972, the title would have gone to George’s oldest child, Princess Elizabeth, our current queen. Some people make the mistake of thinking that King Edward’s brother would have to be alive and that, therefore, his heir would have been his next oldest brother, the Duke of Gloucester, but this is wrong. The way it goes is that the moment an elder brother produces an heir, that heir supersedes his father’s younger brothers. So, for example, the queen produced four children. Before they had any children themselves, Charles was heir to the throne, followed by Andrew, Edward, and Anne. The moment that Prince William was born, he leapfrogged Andrew, Edward, and Anne in the line of succession. Similarly, Andrew’s daughters rank higher than Edward and Anne. Don’t be confused by the laws of primogeniture: these only apply between siblings (i.e., Charles and Anne) and not between uncles and nieces (i.e., Beatrice and Edward). It’s enough to make anyone a Republican.

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Q

Which came first— the chicken or the egg?

According to Genesis, the chicken came first, but over at National Geographic magazine, they’ve unleashed their scientists on this thorny old question and they’ve come down firmly on the side of the egg. Apparently, reptiles were laying eggs thousands of years before chickens ever appeared. What happened next was that, one day (a long time ago), an egg that wasn’t quite a chicken’s egg was laid by a bird that wasn’t quite a chicken. Evolution then took over from there. Alas, this doesn’t answer the question of which came first— egg or bacon?

Q

Why do we shake hands as a greeting?

I have to say that I’m not a great hand-shaker. Not since I read somewhere that colds and other viruses are passed on not by germs in the air but by physical contact. So if ever I’m introduced to someone who doesn’t look well, or whose hand is clammy, I invariably wash my hands at the earliest opportunity. Besides, the reason we shake hands has nothing to do with warmth or kindness and everything to do with mistrust. Just as we clink glasses so that if our companion has poisoned our drink

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

he’ll get to drink some of his own poison, we shake hands to check for concealed weapons. This goes back to the Middle Ages, when two men would extend their right hands—their weapon hands—to show that they weren’t carrying daggers. Shaking hands (as opposed to hand-shaking, which is something quite different) also has another function as the ratification of a deal or a pledge: “Let’s shake hands on it.” Here, people are not checking for weapons but are entering into a symbolic union—however brief. This goes back to ancient times when shaking hands was a sort of primitive magic that signified two people yielding to one another. You won’t be surprised to know, therefore, that the shaking and clasping of hands played a very big part in ancient wedding ceremonies. It’s still something that should be avoided. Women, who rarely carried weapons, didn’t need to go through this routine, which explains why they didn’t develop the custom of shaking hands until (relatively) recently.

Q

Is it wrong to prompt a stutterer?

I have a neighbor named Stephen who has (what he calls) a “peripatetic stutter.” He doesn’t stutter all the time, but when he does— usually when he’s being rushed or when he’s nervous—he’s almost incoherent. Like most stutterers, he has trouble with his “s”es, which makes it ironic that his parents named the poor bastard Stephen. Instinctively, I’ve never finished one of his sentences, but was I wrong? “No, you’re absolutely right. Stuttering—or stammering, as we call it in Britain—”

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I interrupted him to point out how cruel it is for both words to start with an “s.” He continued: “Stuttering is a curse, and it’s embarrassing for both the stutterer and the person they’re talking to, but, unless you’ve got a stutterer’s permission, you shouldn’t finish their sentences for them. Also, you shouldn’t tell them to ‘slow down,’ ‘take a deep breath,’ or, worst of all, ‘relax.’ We know we’re stuttering—we don’t need you to remind us.” But you’re not stuttering now? “That’s because we’re talking face to face, and there’s no pressure on me. If this were a telephone conversation, I’d be tangled up like nobody’s business. Mind you, it can be funny. I was at an important business lunch the other day, and I could feel myself starting to stutter. The thing is, once you consider the possibility, it becomes self-fulfilling. Also, because you’re very much put on the spot, waiters can cause stutterers problems. Anyway, the waiter in this restaurant asked me what I wanted with my sea bass, and I said, “Sal—sal—sal—” and for once I was praying for the waiter to finish my sentence, but he wouldn’t, so I ended up asking for fries—which, secretly, was what I wanted anyway!”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Who was Dr Pepper in the drink of the same name?

Unlike the somewhat eccentric actress Sarah Miles (dead cute in Term of Trial but victim of the law of diminishing returns ever since), I do not drink my own urine. But if I did, it would undoubtedly taste precisely like Dr Pepper. Without the fizz. Or the irritating and overbearing sweetness. And it would be a different color—but, damn it, you know what I mean. Anyway, putting personal prejudices aside, Dr Pepper was created—if that’s the right word—in 1885, which makes it the oldest (manufactured) soft drink in the States. It was originally made in Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas (as in the siege). Wade Morrison, the owner of the drugstore, named it Dr Pepper after a Dr. Charles Pepper, the Virginia doctor who had given him his first job. It still tastes like weewee to me.

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Q

Do cows have clitorises?

Do cows have what? What an extraordinary question to ask (thanks, Steve) and what an even more extraordinary question to have to answer. My first thought was to phone a vet, but they have enough on their plates without being bothered by such extraordinary trivia. Besides—and I’ll wager you didn’t know this—vets have the highest suicide rate of any profession: the last thing they need is a damn fool question they can’t answer. It might be the thing to send them over the edge. So, I went on to the Internet. At this point, I would usually add that the Internet can be used for other things besides smut, but what do you think happened to me when I put “cow” and “clitoris” into my search engine? Well, if you’ve guessed then you’re a damn sight more worldly than I am—or, at least, was. Cows do have clitorises. Er, yeah, and . . . ? Well, they do. Actually, I can tell you more than that. The clitoris itself is a vestigial penis—which is why there are some women (as seen on the sort of freaky sites that you, of course, will never have seen) with worryingly large ones. Like wives, cows probably don’t get that much foreplay but, incredibly, their clitorises are important. Experiments show that during the artificial insemination of mature cows, pregnancy rates increase after a ten-second stimulation of the clitoris during the procedure. Now isn’t that extraordinary. Worth the price of admission alone. The only question left unanswered is: who does the ten-second stimulation of the clitoris? I would ask but, do you know what, I really don’t want to know.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why are fat people jolly?

This book only has a headshot of the author, so you’ll have to take it on trust that the author is not the slimmest of men. In fact, it’s been six years since he last saw his toes without the aid of mirrors. When he walks down the street, he hears women muttering, “Oh, that reminds me, I must buy some Jell-O for tonight’s supper.” So, if anyone’s qualified to comment on the jolliness—or not—of fat people, it is he. Or, rather, me. However, I’m not particularly jolly—and especially not when I’m reminded what a lard-ass I am (i.e., any time I walk into a clothes shop and the smug sales assistant stops talking to his colleague just long enough to sneer at me that they “only” go up to a 38-inch waist). Nevertheless, I was keen to discover the origins for this myth. According to social anthropologists, fat people look like they take in so much (food, drink, affection) of everything that they have the appearance of people who would be fun to be with. Personally, I’m not convinced. I think it’s much more likely due to a mixture of fat people projecting themselves in a jolly way so as to overcome thin people’s prejudices—combined with the physiological fact that, as fat people get older, the fat under their skin hides the stress lines that thin people are prey to, and so they look less haggard and, therefore, jollier. But since I can’t say for sure, I’m off to get myself a box of jelly donuts. Well, they’ve got fruit in them, so they can’t be bad for you.

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Q

Why is the name “John Thomas” used as a nickname for the penis?

There are as many euphemisms for a chap’s manhood as there are for a lady’s front-bottom. Cock, sword, member, dick, wiener, knob, meat, chopper, sausage, prick, one-eyed trouser snake, pork sword, schlong, donger, winkle—the list is, if not endless, then at least impressively long. John Thomas is different from all of these words in that it is also a man’s name—and pity the poor man who gets lumbered with a moniker like that. How did it come to be picked, I asked linguist and philologist Dr. Caron Landy. There was a silence at the other end of the phone, and then she was into her explanation. “The expression was popularized by D. H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Mellors, the gamekeeper, uses it to describe his penis.” She paused, and I could hear the rustling of paper. “Yes, that’s right. Lawrence’s alternative title for his novel was John Thomas and Lady Jane. Now, the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has Thomas as the male member.” Why? “There’s no reason given. It was just a familiar name that served as a euphemism. Adding the ‘John’ to give it a fuller name merely rendered it more euphemistic.” So how come there are still Mr. and Mrs. Thomases naming their sons “John”? “Because some people can be real dicks. Good-bye.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

If woolen clothes can shrink in the wash, how come sheep don’t shrink in a sheep dip?

Before I answer this really really (yawn) interesting question, I want to tell you about something far more important: sheep shagging. Do you know why the Welsh have such a big reputation for screwing their sheep and loving up their lambs? According to a (Welsh) mate of mine, it turns out that, in days gone past, they weren’t shagging them so much as stealing them. Now, here’s the thing: stealing was a capital crime. So, if a thief saw that he was about to be caught, he’d drop his trousers and pretend that he’d been having sex with the animal. That way, he got his leg pulled rather than his neck stretched. Now how fascinating was that? (A lot more fascinating than what follows.) According to an expert from the British Wool Marketing Board, “There is a molecular difference between ‘dead’ wool (i.e., as used in clothes) and ‘live’ wool (i.e., wool which is attached to a living thing). Apart from that, they do now put a chemical in wool which helps stop shrinkage. So, although we’re cleverer than sheep, when wool is being worn by them it can’t shrink, but when it’s worn by us, especially in a rainstorm, it can and does. Still prefer the sheep-shagging story though.

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Q

Who sent the first e-mail? When? What did it say?

The answer to the first question is Ray Tomlinson, in 1971, to another computer programmer in the same room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He got nothing for his efforts (“unless you consider the current interest in the origins of e-mail a reward”). The message was something along the lines of QWERTYUIOP—i.e., the keys across the top line of the keyboard. The first message of any substance was one announcing the availability of network e-mail. Its exact content has been forgotten, but it gave instructions about using the @ sign to separate the user’s name from his host-computer name. In other words, the first use of network e-mail was to announce its own existence. “Why” would be a more interesting question. “Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea,” according to Ray. “There was no directive to ‘go forth and invent e-mail.’ It was a solution looking for a problem. A colleague suggested—in jest—that I not tell my boss what I had done, because e-mail wasn’t in our statement of work.” Ray chose the @ sign because “it made sense, as signs didn’t appear in names, so there would be no ambiguity about where the separation between log-in name and host name occurred.” He is quoted as saying: “The early uses were not terribly different from the current uses. The exceptions are that there was only plain text in the messages and there was no spam.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it true that George W. Bush and Tony Blair are related?

Gosh, this is incredibly tenuous, but I think I can show something—so here goes: Bush is distantly related to Sir Winston Churchill (a common ancestry). Sir Winston was a fourth cousin twice removed of Princess Diana, which means that Dubya is distantly related to our very own Prince William. Meanwhile, Tony Blair and the queen are distant cousins. Prince William is the queen’s grandson, so, therefore—come on, keep up—Bush and Blair are related, too. So, guys, when you’re belting out a chorus of “We Are Family,” remember you read it here first.

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Q

Is it true that Sir Winston Churchill was bisexual?

No, he wasn’t. However, according to Somerset Maugham, Churchill was curious to discover “what it would be like with a man,” and so he contacted the songwriter Ivor Novello (the Elton John of his day) and they duly got it on. Churchill subsequently described the experience as “musical.” Does a one-off (so to speak) make a chap bisexual? I don’t think so. Just openminded—as evidenced by the following story about the great man: during his second term as prime minister, he was woken up to be advised that a Tory member of Parliament had been found half-naked with a guardsman in Hyde Park. “Wasn’t it a bit cold last night?” asked Churchill. Yes, he was told, it was the coldest night of the year. “Is that so?” responded Churchill before adding, “it makes you proud to be British.” In fact, the Churchill-Novello encounter was not the only such liaison I came across (so to speak). I also discovered the following odd couples: Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac (or so Ginsberg claimed) Gary Cooper and Cecil Beaton Lord Laurence Olivier and Danny Kaye (or so some biographers have claimed)

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix (inasmuch as Morrison once undid Hendrix’s trousers while Hendrix was performing and fellated him) Howard Hughes and Cary Grant (and Randolph Scott)

As for lesbian relationships between celebrities, I found: Dolores Del Rio and Greta Garbo Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford Jacqueline Susann and Ethel Merman Janet Gaynor and Mary Martin Josephine Baker and Colette Tallulah Bankhead and Billie Holiday Tallulah Bankhead and Dame Sybil Thorndyke Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf Judy Garland and Ethel Merman

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Q

Why is marmalade so called?

Until I researched the truth, I had always believed the old wives’ tale that it was thus named because the Scottish woman who invented it asked her son if he would like some “more my lad”— and this expression became “marmalade.” Well, it’s as good an answer as any for something that should simply be called orange jam. Anyway, it turns out that England’s favorite breakfast spread owes its name to the fact that it comes from Portugal, where quince jam was known as marmelada. At about the same time that oranges became popular in Britain, the word “marmelada” was translated into English to apply to all jams, but it only stuck to orange jam.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why is it that we can get a headache from eating ice cream too quickly?

I was going to say that there’s nothing worse than an ice-cream headache, but there is. You could try having your toenails pulled out while they play boy-band records on headphones taped to your ears. Nevertheless, it is a most disagreeable experience, which doesn’t happen to me with ice cream but does with popsicles. The fact that it only lasts for about twenty-five seconds doesn’t matter, because when it hits, it’s really terrible. Interestingly, it is also the number-one cause of headaches—affecting a third of the population—but only occurs in warm weather (attempts to reproduce the effects in cold weather always fail, although I don’t doubt that you will now try to disprove this). According to Mr. Jonathan Leigh, a consultant neurologist (which is why he’s a Mr. instead of Dr. even though, confusingly, he was a Dr. after being a Mr.), “When something cold touches the roof of your mouth, it causes a dilation of blood vessels in the head. There’s a nerve center there—located just above the roof of your mouth—which, when it gets cold, overreacts and tries unsuccessfully to heat your brain, thus causing a stabbing or aching type of pain known colloquially as ‘brain freeze.’ If you’re at all susceptible to this, the best way to avoid it is to keep your ice cream or popsicle away from the roof of your mouth.” Is it dangerous? “Extremely unpleasant for the few seconds you experience it but not at all dangerous, unless it serves to act as a migraine trigger for a person and then, I suppose, they should think twice before sucking anything very cold.”

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Q

Who was the first woman to “lie back and think of England”?

When I mentioned this question to my wife, she muttered something along the lines of “I don’t know about the first woman, but I was the last bloody woman.” And I thought it was Kevin Costner she thought about during our intimate moments. . . . We all know what the expression means: it’s supposedly the traditional advice given to women—especially new brides—before they go to bed with a man for the first time. It’s also a piece of grim advice given to a friend of either gender. According to Dr. Caron Landy (yup, that’s how desperate I was), “The first time this phrase appeared was in the journal of Lady Hillingdon in 1912, when she wrote, ‘I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps outside my door, I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.’ ” In a rare fit of conscientiousness, I tried to confirm this on the Net, but I couldn’t find anything more than just the above quote. There wasn’t anything else listed about Lady H’s journal. In fact, although Alice, Lady Hillingdon certainly existed, there’s some doubt that her journal ever did. So, it’s equally possible that the saying/practice originated with the wife of the 1920s prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who said of her wedding night, “I shut my eyes tight and thought of the Empire.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Did Hitler ever come to Britain?

We all know that Elvis once came here (and he’s still alive, I gather, working in a garage in Scunthorpe) but did the unitesticled (see earlier question) Adolf? According to historian Dr. Michael Morgan, there’s every chance that he did. “In 1973, Robert Payne wrote a book The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, which claimed he spent six months in Liverpool in 1912, when he was twenty-three. At the time, Hitler was an impoverished art student and, or so Payne says, he stayed with Alois, his halfbrother, and his wife, Bridget, at their home in 102 Upper Stanhope Street. Bridget, who was abandoned by Alois who returned to Germany when Hitler took power, wrote her own book, claiming that Adolf did indeed stay with them. It’s hard to say either way: it certainly can’t be proved, but then it can’t be disproved, either. However, I can tell you that the Liverpool ice rink keeps a pair of skating boots on display in a glass cabinet, which were allegedly rented by Hitler.”

Q

If you cut a worm in half, does it become two worms?

Yes and no, according to my old pal Lucy, who used to work at the Natural History Museum. Hmm, that’s not very helpful, old pal. “Well, it’s complicated.” Not for you, surely?

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“No, dummy, for you!” Enough banter, tell us what happens. “Well, you do get two moving parts, but they’re still the same worm. I’ll explain. The front of the garden worm can generate a new tail but the tail can’t find a new head and so it dies— even though in wriggling around for a while it looks like it’s become a new worm. However, the flatworm—found near water—can be cut into two or even three parts and each bit will grow a new head and/or tail. Is that simple enough for you?” Sort of. Could you go through it again?

Q

Has any famous woman ever aborted a famous man’s baby?

Well, this is a deeply unpleasant question (yup, it’s Steve again) and no mistake. Nevertheless, like Mr. Memory in the original (and best) version of The 39 Steps, I feel compelled to answer it. Having done some research, I have discovered the following instances: Pamela Harriman (Gianni Agnelli’s baby), Judith Exner (John F. Kennedy’s baby—and he agreed, despite the fact that both were Catholics), Jill Craigie (Michael Foot’s baby

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

before they married; later she regretted it because she was unable to conceive again), Marlene Dietrich (James Stewart’s baby), Betty Grable (Artie Shaw’s baby), Lana Turner (Mickey Rooney’s baby), and Judy Garland, who exercised her right to choose by getting rid of husband David Rose’s baby, Tyrone Power’s baby, and husband Sid Luft’s baby.

Q

Why is French bread so long?

According to historian Dr. Michael Morgan, during the Napoleonic Wars, “French soldiers had to be able to carry their bread on foot, but they didn’t have very much space in their knapsacks. So, some bright spark—and legend has it that it was Napoleon himself—suggested that they bake very long sticks of bread so that the men could shove it down their trousers and carry it thus.” Actually, in all accuracy, I should say that the good doctor put all of the above in the present tense—like bloody historians always do (when speaking, at any rate)—but I have rewritten it in the past tense because, er, it happened in the past. As for his explanation—which I have no reason to doubt—it doesn’t seem like much of a good idea in any event, as (and anyone who’s traveled in France will agree) French bread goes stale so bloody quickly.

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Q

Why do men’s jackets have buttons on their cuffs?

There’s a silly but simple answer to this: they were originally put on manservants’ cuffs by their employers to stop them wiping their noses on the sleeves of their uniforms. Tailors thought it looked smart, and so the buttons were put on men’s suits. That’s it.

Q

Can you trust the Cretan who tells you that all Cretans are liars?

OK, I’m not stupid, I can work this out for myself without having to resort to professionals. It’s only a bloody conundrum, after all—or do I mean a paradox? Doesn’t matter. All right, he’s either telling the truth or he’s telling a lie. If he’s telling the truth, he must be a liar. If he’s lying, he’s telling the truth. Oops. I need help. Still, apparently, I’m not alone in being baffled by this. In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell recalled how he spent several months trying to solve it. Evidently, he didn’t have any mates to tell him to “get a life.” So, once again, I got in touch with my friend Stuart (the one with a degree in philosophy). “Aha,” he said, “the Liar’s Paradox. I hope you’re not losing sleep over it!” Are you joking? “Well, I did, and so did Bertrand Russell, who spent several—” I know, I know, get on with it.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

“OK, it is, of course, a meaningless, circular, illogical question—for reasons that you will have already surmised. However, there is a solution to it, which goes like this. As philosophers, we apply a hierarchical attitude to all things that Cretans say. On this occasion, we agree that when he says that all Cretans are liars, his very statement can be treated as an overview, and so we can exclude it—and its obvious implications—from our general response to Cretan utterances. In other words, our Cretan friend is telling the truth. So, yes, you can believe him.”

Q

Why do we “tie the knot”?

As you know, to “tie the knot” means to get married. Research shows that there are three possible explanations: a) the Carthaginians used to tie the thumbs of the bride and bridegroom together with a leather lace; b) in Ancient Rome, brides wore girdles that were tied in knots, which the groom then had to untie; c) in the Hindu marriage ceremony, the groom has to tie a ribbon around the bride’s neck. Any one of those three—or, indeed, all three of them—will do for me.

Q

Was there really a man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo?

Having spent a huge amount of time in casinos researching this story (although my wife still refuses to accept that massive

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blackjack losses count as legitimate research), I am in a position to give the definitive answer. In 1873, Joseph Jagger, a Yorkshire mechanic and engineer, went to the Casino Beaux-Arts in Monte Carlo, where he realized that, because of the way they were constructed and balanced, the roulette wheels couldn’t produce truly random numbers. This meant that there would be a bias in favor of certain numbers. So, he hired a team of clerks to record every number that came up, and he discovered that one of the casino’s wheels produced nine numbers far more frequently than the laws of probability would suggest. Jagger then embarked on stage two of his operation. He sat at the “inaccurate” wheel, and placed bets on the nine numbers in question. Within four days, he had won over a million French francs. The casino, however, fought back and moved their roulette wheels around. Jagger went to his usual table and lost heavily before realizing (because of a minuscule scratch on “his” wheel) what had happened. There then ensued a cat-and-mouse game between him and the casino, but, by the end, he’d still managed to amass a profit in excess of two million francs (over $1 million in today’s values). The casino was obliged to close down while they rebuilt their roulette wheels to ensure that Jagger’s feat could never be repeated, so, in the sense that he stopped them trading, Jagger could be said to have “broken” them. He left Monte Carlo and never returned. After his death in 1892, Fred Gilbert immortalized him in the song “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why is prostitution described as the world’s oldest profession?

It is, of course, a euphemism, but it also reflects the essential truth that there’s nothing new in the practice of women selling themselves to men. For many years—and for many women—it was the only profession available to women. In The Fall of Righteousness, a fourteenth-century morality play, an agent of the devil says, “Whoredom is the original business of woman,” but it takes two to tango, and if it’s the business of women then it was clearly the pleasure of men and, as I say, women only worked as prostitutes because they were denied other opportunities. Anyway, since I have some space to fill up, here are some celebrities who had been working girls: Billie Holiday, Mata Hari, Jeanette MacDonald (worked as an “escort” in New York before becoming famous), Lupe Velez, Lotte Lenya (was a child prostitute), Eva Peron, Janis Joplin (who, in her teens, tried—without much success—to sell herself for $5 at a time, and later, when she was stranded away from home, she “turned two tricks” to raise the money to get home), and Marilyn Monroe (who, as a struggling actress in Hollywood, would provide “in-car sex” in exchange for restaurant meals).

Q

Why are British stamps the only stamps in the world that don’t carry the name of the country?

Let’s face it, these days there aren’t too many advantages to being British. Our empire (on which the sun never used to set)

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now consists of a couple of islands, and our great pals, the Americans, give us the third degree any time we so much as dare to enter their country. Anyway, the answer to this question is that this is one of the few bonuses that we’ve got left. Because we, the British, invented the modern postage stamp (in 1840), we’re allowed this special dispensation—but only on the understanding that the monarch’s head appears on each stamp (except on metered mail, where the words “Great Britain” appear instead). Not much of a concession, I suppose, but we’ll take any favor going.

Q

How many people need to be in the same room to make it probable that two of them will share the same birthday?

This is, in fact, a trick question—although the math required to work it out is completely on the level. One’s immediate reaction is to say 365 (i.e., one for every day of a nonleap year). Then, after seeing the word “probable,” one thinks, OK, let’s divide that by two and then add one—just to make it slightly more probable: 183. Incredibly, the answer turns out to be not 365 or 183 but 23. That’s right, you only need 23 people gathered together to make it probable that two of them will share the same birthday. Now, although I have a good grasp of probability (as befits a man who spent much of his youth in betting shops), my fifth grade math isn’t up to explaining this. So, I asked my friend William Mulcahy, an actuary with a university math degree, to give me the lowdown. “First, consider the case that 23 people do not have a birthday

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

in common. There are 365 x 365 x 365 x 365 . . . (365 multiplied by itself 23 times) ways in which 23 birthdays can be chosen; some of these may be the same. However, there are only 365 x 364 x 363 x 362 . . . x 343 ways in which 23 birthdays can be chosen without any being the same; the reason is that there are 365 ways of choosing the first birthday; after this has been chosen, there are 364 ways of choosing the second birthday, and so on. Dividing the number of ways in which 23 birthdays can be chosen without being the same by the number of ways in which 23 birthdays can be chosen with some being the same gives us the mathematical probability of 23 people not having a birthday in common as 0.493. This means that the probability of at least two of the 23 people having a birthday in common is greater: 0.507. “It’s only when you get to 23 that the probability of a shared birthday becomes greater than the probability of no birthday being shared. So, if there are 23 or more people in the same room, it is more likely that at least two of them have the same birthday than it is that they do not have a birthday in common.” Oh, of course. “But remember that although there only have to be 23 people present to make it probable that any two share the same birthday, if you specify the date of the birthday they share—say, the eleventh of February—then there have to be 253 people present to make it probable. I can give you the math if you like.” Er, no thank you.

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Q

Why “the life of Riley”?

The expression has its origins in the 1890 song “Is That Mr. Reilly?” The song was about a Mr. Reilly and what he would only do if he were wealthy (in the song, Reilly says if he ever became the president of the United States, then New York would “swim in wine when the White House and Capitol are mine”). Now fade to black and fade up again. In 1919, there was a music-hall song titled “My Name Is Kelly,” which had the line “Faith and my name is Kelly, Michael Kelly, But I’m living the life of Reilly just the same.” That’s to say, the life of Reilly (or, as it became, Riley) as set down in the earlier song. Interestingly, the original song’s chorus went, “Are you the O’Reilly who keeps this hotel? Are you the O’Reilly they speak of so well? Are you the O’Reilly they speak of so highly, Gor Blime me O’Reilly, you’re looking well.” This is thought to be the origin of the expression “Blimey O’Riley.” Two phrases derived from one song: there’s good value for you.

Q

Why are Australian women called “Sheilas”?

Before revealing the answer, consider the following. An Australian man is telephoned by his girlfriend. She is hysterical. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve just had a pregnancy test and it’s positive.” “Well,” says her boyfriend, “I don’t want anything to do with it.” “Then I’ll kill myself!” she screams. “Strewth, Sheila, not only are you a great lay, you’re also a good sport.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

I mention this not to repeat a vile, sexist “joke” but to illustrate just how Neanderthal Australian men are to their women. A view, incidentally, with which Dr. Caron Landy, my not-so-tame linguist, concurs. Which, given our recent conversations, is just as well. She says, “One theory dates back to when convicts were transported to Australia. Male prisoners were called ‘lags’ and female prisoners were called ‘she-lags.’ A more likely explanation is that a large number of Irish people emigrated to Australia of their own free will, especially during the nineteenth-century potato famine. Sheila was a very popular Irish name, and it may have just become a generic word for all women. Did you know, by the way, that Australia still has the largest population of Irish people outside of Ireland, and that a third of the population is of Irish origin?”

G’day, she-lag

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Q

What is the origin of Russian roulette?

As you probably know, Russian roulette is the most terrifying gambling game ever invented—even more dangerous than playing blackjack in an illegal gambling den in Chinatown. It appears to have originated in the nineteenth century among Russian officers. The revolver with its revolving cylinder had just been introduced. Officers who had drunk one too many straight vodkas would spin the cylinder and pull the trigger. They believed in fatalism; i.e., that it didn’t matter what you did, the outcome had already been predestined by a greater power. Interestingly, the odds were one in seven rather than one in six, because the early Russian revolvers had seven chambers instead of six. The novelist Graham Greene played Russian roulette in his (bored) youth. He did it on his own five times, and then decided to give it up. However, first, he felt obliged to do it one more time so that the whole experience would be an even-money chance. He survived to become the greatest novelist of the century (anyone who disagrees is cordially invited to step outside). The pop star Johnny Ace shot himself (dead) in what some say was a “game” of Russian roulette. This extraordinary activity has also been the stuff of countless films and books—most famously The Deer Hunter, in which Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken are forced to “play” by sadistic Vietcong guards. Russian roulette also features in the denouement of that brilliant novel All In by Mitchell Symons (relation).

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is it dangerous to swallow chewing gum?

As we all know, chewing gum is the most disgusting substance known to man, and the practice of consuming it is one that should be banned along with men drinking Bacardi Breezers from the bottle. Dr. Roland Powell, on the other hand, says that everything you’ve ever heard about the dangers of chewing gum is untrue. All of it? “All of it.” So, it doesn’t take seven years to digest or wind itself around the alimentary canal or end up in your appendix? “Absolute rubbish. Of course, chewing gum is indigestible, but then so is quite a lot of the stuff we eat—grape pips and watermelon seeds, for example. All that happens is that the chewing gum passes through the digestive system as roughage. I should say, however, that chewing gum during bouts of vigorous exercise is not a good idea, as there is a chance you could swallow the gum the wrong way and it could get into the respiratory tract, where it could be fatal.” But apart from that? “Well, it’s not desperately good for children to swallow it in great quantities, as it can clog up their digestive tracts. One infant was rewarded with chewing gum during toilet training sessions, and the chewing gum he ate caused him to be constipated for two days.” Do you hear that, chewers? Unless you’re an athlete or an infant (and if you are an infant, what on earth are you doing reading this?), swallow your gum instead of chucking it in the street where it ends up on the soles of my shoes.

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Q

If Jesus Christ hadn’t been born, what would the date be in 2006?

First off, it shouldn’t be 2006, as Jesus wasn’t born when you think he was: it was some time between 4 BC (which is a bit of a Zen thought) and AD 13. He also wasn’t born on Christmas Day, for that matter, either. And, while we’re at it, Santa Claus is your dad. But, assuming that Jesus hadn’t been born—and assuming that we’d have adopted the Roman calendar—then the year would now be 2759. The alternative is that we’d have adopted a calendar based on the Old Testament, which, working from Bishop Usher’s date (4004 BC), would make it 6010.

Q

Is it better for a man to wear boxer shorts or briefs?

The word “better” covers a multitude of possibilities, but there’s no doubt that the one thing that concerns all men is fertility. We might not want a coconut with every throw, but we want to know that the balls would work. I have always favored boxers— and have two fine strapping sons to show for it. Medical advice would seem to support this decision. As we all know, to be potent, sperm need to be kept cool and frisky—that is why they inhabit the testicles and hang separate from the body. Apparently, they are happiest at 34.5 to 36 degrees Celsius, which is a degree or two cooler than normal body temperature. Tight-fitting jeans and cycling or synthetic shorts can all overheat testicles and, in

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theory, inhibit the production of mature sperm. Loose-fitting boxer shorts allow the air to circulate. However, when I put all this to urologist Dr. Tom Marcus, he told me that I was entirely wrong. Hang on a second, I said before he could tell me why, didn’t infertility experts issue regular warnings that generations were heading for fertility problems because sperm weren’t being kept at peak condition? Yes, they did, he said, but they were wrong, too. Hmm. “Let me explain,” he said. “While it is true that subjecting testicles to prolonged heat can harm sperm production, boxer shorts don’t lower the temperature any more than briefs. Research has shown that there were no differences in the scrotal temperatures or sperm quality of men whether they were wearing boxers or briefs: it simply doesn’t affect the temperature of the scrotum.” Interestingly, although cycle shorts may have been given the all-clear, cycling itself can potentially produce impotence. One study found that a bicycle seat’s relentless pressure on the groin area can damage arteries and nerves (well, that’s my excuse for always insisting on a woman’s saddle rather than those razorsharp men’s ones). Anyway, to avoid damaging their nether regions, cyclists should lift themselves off their saddles from time to time when riding long distances.

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Q

Why is the word “bastard” only used as a term of abuse to men?

He’s a bastard; she’s a bitch: it’s never the other way around. Why is this? Once again, I turned to linguist Dr. Caron Landy, whom I would never dare to call a bastard. “As a term of abuse, the word ‘bastard’ dates back to Elizabethan times, where it wasn’t a good thing to be born on the ‘wrong side of the blanket.’ The male illegitimate offspring, or ‘bastard,’ I would have to spend his life plotting for his share of the family fortune, which was legally denied to him by the strict laws of inheritance. This plotting often marked him out as devious and unpleasant: in other words, a right bastard.” Interesting history lesson, Dr. L., but, er, could you please answer the question? She shot me a look that queried my own parentage and continued: “Historically, women weren’t entitled to any inheritance or titles through birth, and therefore her ‘legitimacy’ wasn’t particularly germane.” So, how does one insult a woman? Once again, she gave me the sort of look that suggested I should find another (unpaid) linguist to help me in the future. “You don’t.” Interesting postscript: In Britain, before the stigma was removed from illegitimacy, there was a distinct class difference between the use of “bastard” and “bugger (i.e. a practicing homosexual in Britain).” Working-class people were sensitive about illegitimacy, since a good family name was all that they stood to inherit, and also they were (usually) unfamiliar with homosexuality, and so “bastard” was a worse insult than “bugger.” The

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opposite was true for the upper classes: they knew who they were and, indeed, could trace their families back through the generations, so they weren’t too bothered about being called “bastards” (pejoratively). However, having attended boarding schools, they were far more sensitive to being called “buggers.”

Q

Why are German measles “German”?

There is a long and ignoble tradition of countries describing unpleasant things and practices in terms of foreigners. Thus, while we talk about “French letters” and “Mexican standoffs,” the French (especially) slag Brits off with expressions like “Le weekend anglais” (dirty weekend) or “La maladie anglaise” (either a labor strike or homosexuality—depending on context). It is also interesting to note that French women used to mark the onset of their periods with the words “Les Boches sont arrivés,” or “The Krauts have arrived.” Consequently, my immediate instinct was that we called rubella (the medical name for the disease) “German measles” as a way of insulting and blaming the Germans. In fact, the name has nothing to do with our old adversaries (two world wars, one World Cup) and everything to do with the corruption of words. The word “German” is a corruption of “germane”—meaning alike or akin to measles, the viral illness to which it is related. German measles is not usually a problem for men, but it can have catastrophic effects on the fetus if a woman catches it during the early months of pregnancy—which is why all of us, men and women, have compulsory vaccinations against it.

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That sounds unfair but, by the same token, women don’t generally have a problem with mumps, but because it can make men sterile if we catch it as adults, the entire population is vaccinated against it. Sounds a fair trade-off—even if your kid ends up like Rain Man as a result of the MMR (measles, mumps, and Rubella) vaccine. . . .

Q

Why do smokers often tap their cigarettes before smoking them?

From the age of sixteen until thirty-one, I smoked every day and, especially when I was in company, I used to tap my cigarette— without, it must be said, having the foggiest why I was doing it (except it made me look like the Hollywood movie star I was never going to be). If anyone asked me, I used to say it was a throwback to the days when cigarettes were hand-rolled, and tapping was essential if you wanted to keep the tobacco tightly packed. It was just a guess, but it turned out to be true. In the days when people smoked untipped, it was also essential to pack the tobacco in at the other end, or else you’d be chewing it instead of smoking it. Nowadays, with filtered, factory-processed cigarettes, tapping is far less important, but even cigarettes from packets sometimes have little wisps of tobacco hanging off, which can cause them to burn unevenly and—very occasionally—make the lit portion fall off (which is no joke, especially if you’re driving a car). This is truer of the last few cigarettes in a packet, which

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will have been shaken around for some time before being smoked. Tappers also claim they prefer the “draw” on a cigarette that they’ve tapped—although this sounds extremely bogus to me (and, don’t forget, I must have smoked in excess of sixtythousand cigs). There is one other possibility—well, more of an urban myth, really—that sailors used to tap their cigarettes in order to stun the weevils that had accumulated there during the long voyage. It’s nonsense, of course, because the sailors weren’t smoking ready-made cigs but rolling their own tobacco (usually into pipes). The American equivalent of the story is a teensy bit more plausible—inasmuch as it involves packets of cigarettes (instead of just tobacco) being sent long distances and then getting stale and attracting weevils, which had to be stunned, etc. It might have happened once or twice, but it sure as hell doesn’t justify tapping every cigarette you ever smoke.

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Q

Do lemmings really jump off cliffs?

I’d always heard that this was a myth perpetrated by a TV documentary, but, hey, what do I know? So I phoned my pal Lucy, who used to work at the Natural History Museum, and she told me that lemmings don’t jump off cliffs. “There’s an element of truth in it, but only a tiny bit. The Norwegian lemming does migrate a small distance during spring and autumn in search of food and, very occasionally, if food really can’t be found, they will travel great distances in huge numbers. This can lead to deaths along the way—especially when they’re crossing water— but that doesn’t mean that they’re dying intentionally. Think of a football crowd surging forward—well, that’s what happens on these mass migrations.” And the TV documentaries? “My understanding is that there was a nature documentary being shot—for a film, like you used to get in cinemas . . .” What, a travelogue? “Precisely. Well, apparently some unscrupulous filmmaker decided to perpetrate or, rather, build on this suicide myth by forcing a whole load of lemmings over a cliff.” So, that’s what helped give them this image as super-suiciders? “Yes.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Do dolphins sleep?

Or, for that matter, any other creatures that inhabit the sea? According to a marine biologist I know vaguely (a friend of a friend), “Dolphins and, indeed, other sea mammals have brains which have evolved to allow them to swim with or against the current twenty-four hours a day, without being swept away.” Or, indeed, drowning? “Or, indeed, drowning. What happens is that their brains have two hemispheres, and each hemisphere takes it in turn to undergo what we would call ‘sleep’, allowing them to be in a constant state of alertness.”

Q

Does vegans’ poop smell less than meat-eaters’ poop?

I phoned my mate Brian (the advertising executive), who’s always had a thing for dippy women—you know, chicks who are into alternative things like aromatherapy, reflexology, and not shaving their armpits. Surely he must have some insight into this. “Hang on, buddy,” he said, as he went through his mental filing cabinet, “yeah, Sandra, she was a vegan. Nope, her shit smelled no better than anyone else’s.” There you have it. Unfortunately, this is probably too anecdotal to qualify as empirical proof. So I phoned the Vegan Society: “Press 1 for information, 2 for membership, 3 for products, 4 for your nearest McDonald’s.” OK, so I jest, but I hate those

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telephone menu thingies, and so I e-mailed their press officer— one Tony Weston—who wrote back: “In my experience, sweaty vegans usually smell better than sweaty meat eaters (dead food, rotting flesh and cheese takes its toll on your sweat glands). But poo . . . Now this really does depend on what’s been eaten. Vegan food covers a wide spectrum of choices—these days you can get everything from vegan scampi and dairy-free chocolate ice cream to vegan caviar and champagne. Fruitarians and raw-fooders are reputed to have very sweet-smelling poo. Vegans who eat a lot of vegetable curry have very spicy-smelling poo. The poos letting the side down are I suspect those resulting from the aftermath of lots of veggieburgers, vegan pot noodles, and vegan bacon and sausages. The manufacturers now have flavorings so realistic that they not only taste great but they have the same detrimental effect on the aroma of your poo. So in summary if your toilet has no extractor fan and you are looking for the ideal sweet-smelling lodger, better look for a vegan who eats a high proportion of raw fruit and vegetables.”

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why do we never see baby pigeons?

Because, according to an ornithologist I consulted, their parents keep them tucked away. Apparently, baby pigeons are looked after and fed by their parents until they’re fully feathered, and only then do they leave the nest (which, anyway, is well hidden). By this time, their plumage and size is the same as an adult pigeon’s. Therefore, we can’t tell the difference.

Q

Why do golf courses have eighteen holes?

Let us ignore Mark Twain’s dictum (“Golf is a good walk spoiled”) and Robin Williams’s amusing—if, for the purposes of this question, irrelevant—witticism (“Golf is a game where white men can dress up as black pimps and get away with it”) and answer the question. In fact, it’s only when you stop to think about it that you realize that eighteen is an arbitrary number—unless you live on the Planet Plog, where they operate a counting system based on number nine. However, there is a good reason (and it’s not just because the nineteenth hole is said to be in the clubhouse). The Old Course at St. Andrews was where it all started, and this was originally just twelve holes. Golfers used to finish their round and then play it in reverse—omitting two of the holes— thus playing a twenty-two-hole round. Then, in 1764, the chaps from St. Andrews decided that the first four holes were too

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short, and so these were turned into two holes. Take off two holes going out (as we say in—crazy—golfing circles) and two going in, and you have eighteen holes. And where St. Andrews led, all other golf courses—including, eventually, everywhere else in the world—followed.

Q

Is it true that Catherine the Great died having sex with her horse?

No, no, and thrice no. Not only did she not die during equine intimacy—she died of a stroke—she almost certainly never “did it” with a horse. The fact is, she did have a hugely voracious sexual appetite and slept with thousands of men who were procured for her and then road-tested by her ladies-in-waiting. Now factor in her many enemies, and you can see why this sort of story would have spread. Human-animal couplings are—thank God—pretty damn rare. However, I can tell you that the porn star Linda Lovelace had sex with a dog for a porn film, that Algernon Swinburne used to do it with his pet monkey (which he later killed and ate when it bit one of his guests), and that Larry Flynt had a sexual experience (in 1948) with a chicken, which he wrote about in his book Sex, Lies & Politics: The Naked Truth. But although Catherine the Great might have ridden a horse, she was never ridden by one.

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Q

We know that cats can fall/jump from great heights and survive, but could a cat survive a fall from—say—the nineteenth floor of a building?

I am not a cat lover. Sorry, but that’s how it is. Just as the world is divided on the Beatles and the Stones, so it is split on dogs and cats, and I’m with the pooches. Anyway, that’s by the by, and doesn’t answer the question, which I took to a vet and a physicist who, between them, gave me the answer. It turns out that not only can cats survive great falls but that they actually have a better chance of survival the higher up they are (up to a certain point, of course). According to a study, if a cat falls off the sixth floor of a building, it has less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off, say, the nineteenth. Apparently, it takes about eight floors for the cat to understand what’s happening so that it can relax and prepare itself for the fall. If it’s not prepared, it will hit the ground at optimum—sorry, maximum—speed and be splattered over the pavement. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Q

Would it b* possibl* to writ* an *ntir* nov*l without onc* using th* l*tt*r “e”?

Not only can a thing of this sort occur, but a man did it in 1939 with a book Gadsby—fifty thousand words without using any “e”s at all. Amazing! And it was a good book, by all accounts, with an apt plot. On looking through this again, you will, I trust,

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know that I did this without using it myse— bugg*r, too lat*. . . and it was jolly difficult—*sp*cially as th* author’s nam* was *rn*st Vinc*nt Wright! The author tied down the “e” on his typewriter but otherwise didn’t cheat—even though it’s almost impossible to deny yourself -ed endings, or pronouns like “he,” “she,” “they,” and “we.” Have a go yourself, and you’ll see what an extraordinary achievement it was. Sadly, Wright, who took 165 days to write it—simply to prove that it could be done—died on the day of the book’s publication.

Q

Why don’t women have beards?

I have to say that there is nothing—and I do mean nothing—that I hate more than facial hair on women. There’s nothing more offputting than going to kiss a girl and then finding she’s got a ’tache or, almost as bad, stubble. If I’m going to neck with someone who needs a shave, then I might as well go with a bloke. We’d watch soccer afterward, and he would at least understand the offside rule. But, for all their upper-lip problems, most women don’t grow beards. True, elderly ladies have little wisps coming off their chins, but not big bushy growths of the sort that manly chaps like you and I could grow—if we could be bothered. I phoned my pet trichologist to ask him the reason why. “It’s all to do with women’s hormones, which stimulate the growth of hair on the head but stunt the growth of facial and body hair. It doesn’t always work, but then that’s where depila-

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tory creams come in. The key difference between what you would call ‘the sexes’ but what I would call ‘the genders’ comes at adolescence. So, while the male sex hormone kicks in to stimulate the growth of the beard and body hair, in females it works to inhibit it. A similar thing happens—in reverse—with head hair later in the life cycle: men lose theirs while women (usually) maintain theirs.” But why? “Why?” Why don’t women have beards? You’ve explained that they don’t, but you haven’t said why. “You’d better speak to an anthropologist.” So I phoned Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh, who told me that it could have something to do with our cavemen ancestors needing to be able to identify one another from great distances when hunting (which the women didn’t do), but it was much more likely to be “because of the primary function of hair: that it grows on those parts of the body that are most vulnerable and thus need protection. The differing roles of men and women would help to explain why they have growths in different areas of their bodies.”

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Q

Why do we clink glasses when we say cheers?

This dates back to the days when people might attempt to poison their enemies. Consequently, to prove that a drink was safe, a host would pour some of his guest’s wine into his own glass— or, indeed, goblet—and drink it first. Later, this evolved into crashing tankards together in such a way that a little of both drinks spilled into each other. Eventually, guests and hosts would demonstrate their friendship for each other by touching— or clinking—glasses. In other words, by clinking, they showed that they were aware of the possibility of poisoning, but by doing it so lightly, they were showing their trust.

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Q

Why does asparagus make your urine smell?

Well, you must have noticed. Or maybe you haven’t? According to the chemist I spoke to—and you’ll have to know that I only understood about one word in three—only some of us have the (un)necessary gene that makes our urine smell after eating asparagus. What happens is that there’s a sulphurous compound found in foods like asparagus and garlic, which, when broken down by our digestive systems, comes out in our wee-wee half an hour later. And it smells rank. My chemist source did tell me the name of this compound, but I can’t read my own bloody writing and I can’t be bothered to phone him back. So you’ll have to find it out for yourself. As if you give a damn.

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Q

Why are horse races often called derbies?

You know the Earl of Derby who gave his name to the Epsom Derby? Well, whenever he (or one of his ancestors or—damn it— one of his descendants) used to visit his estate, he would challenge local landowners to race their horses against his horses. These races became Derby’s—or derbies.

Q

Is it true that the Pet Shop Boys named themselves after a bizarre sexual perversion?

Once again we return to the lifestyle that is gerbils-up-thejacksey, although no one has ever stepped forward as a participant (well, certainly no gerbils have). Anyway, legend has it that the Pet Shop Boys’ name alludes to this. In fact, the truth is much more mundane: Chris Lowe had some friends who worked in an Ealing pet shop—as Neil Tennant confirmed in an interview: “Three of Chris’s friends all worked in a pet shop in Ealing, and we used to suggest to them that they start a group called the Pet Shop Boys. When we started making records with Bobby O sometime later, we needed a name and took Pet Shop Boys. . . .”

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Q

If your eye came out of its socket but remained attached, could you turn it around and look at your own face?

There’s something ghoulishly fascinating about this, so I set about with relish, trying to find the answer. However, it wasn’t as easy as you might have thought. The Internet produced nothing more useful than a woman who had the ability to pop her eyeballs and, as you might remember, did just that on the David Letterman Show. My next stop was to phone an opthalmologist from a leading chain of high-street opticians but, when I eventually got through to one, he clearly thought I was nuts and refused to answer my question (a problem I often encounter). Eventually, after talking to several “experts” (definition of an expert: one who has made every mistake possible in a single field) who refused to commit themselves, I got hold of one of the top men at the Eye Clinic of Wisconsin who—somewhat disappointingly—told me, “Typically, if your eye came out, it would be so damaged you probably wouldn’t be able to see anything out of it—let alone look at your own face.” Why’s that? In a bored I-can’t-believe-I’m-talking-to-this-moron voice, he explained, “Any trauma that could cause an eye to come out of its socket would make it so bad that it would cease to work.” So that, I’m afraid, is that. Pity, really. I’ve always wanted to see my own face without a mirror. But not, I suppose, at the cost of having my eye hanging out.

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Q

Why is New York known as the Big Apple?

The Internet is unrivaled as a resource for all queries—particularly if you shove words like “breasts,” “hot,” and “sexy” into your browser. However, for questions like this, it is surprisingly unhelpful: too much information equals disinformation. So, it’s at times like this that I’m grateful that I never threw away all those books I went out and bought (and set off against my tax returns). Even so, after ploughing through all the reference books, I’m left with three distinct possibilities. 1. It’s possible that it was first used in a 1909 book The Way-

farer in New York by Edward S. Martin, in which he quoted a disgruntled Midwesterner as saying, “New York [was] merely one of the fruits of that great tree whose roots go down in the Mississippi Valley, and whose branches spread from one ocean to the other . . . [But] the big apple [New York] gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.” 2. Another possibility is that it comes from a mistranslation.

In Spanish, the word “manzana” can mean “block” (as in New Kids on the Block) or “apple.” So, when immigrants referred to New York as “The Big Block,” people thought they were calling it “The Big Apple.” 3. The third possibility is that it derives from jazz musicians’

slang. In the 1920s, they used to refer to gigs as “apples,”

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and New York was, of course, the big apple. This was also used by African-Americans in other walks of life—for example, by stable hands—to mean “the big time.” A newspaper sports writer, John J. FitzGerald, heard it and called his racing column “Around the Big Apple,” which would have helped to popularize the expression. If I have to choose, then of the three possibilities, I would opt for the third—although that doesn’t mean that the other two aren’t true, too. In any event, the expression—which was hardly used in the 1950s and 1960s—was revived by Mayor Ed Koch (yup, the guy who appeared in a Muppets film) in the 1970s as a way of selling his city.

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Q

Do two wrongs make a right?

Whenever I hear this expression, I always remember the late president Richard Nixon whose motto was said to be “If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.” Irrelevant, I know, but irresistible. My own instinctive reaction to this question is that two wrongs don’t make a right. If someone does something wrong to you, you might enjoy doing something wrong to them—you might even see it as “righting a wrong”—but I don’t think it can be morally justified. Feeling out of my depth, I phoned Stuart, my friend with the degree in philosophy. I told him my gut feeling and asked him what he thought. “I think you’re right. In fact, I know you’re right. Let me prove it to you. Let’s take two people, Tom and Dick. They’re acquaintances but not friends. Tom’s house is burgled by an unknown person. This is a wrong, yes? So he goes out and burgles Dick’s home—another wrong. Do those two wrongs make a right? Of course not. “That’s easy though, because of the introduction of the third party—the burglar. So, all right then, let’s make it more complicated. Tom borrows Dick’s mobile phone without his permission— thereby upsetting and inconveniencing him. But, hey, Tom tells himself, Dick would do the same if he were in the same position. Do these two wrongs make a right? Again, no. “But that’s still not getting to the nub of the question, which is this: if someone wrongs you, are you ‘right’ to wrong them

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back? To which I respond with a question, where does it end? What do you think the state is there for? To dispense justice: to right wrongs. So, if someone wrongs you, you should seek the appropriate remedy in the criminal or civil courts. For the state to punish someone isn’t an example of a second wrong: it’s a proper corrective remedy.” But, hang on a minute, what about wrongs that fall outside the scope of the courts—acts of unkindness and unpleasantness? “I hear you. OK, Tom and Dick are now friends who always send each other birthday cards. One year, Dick forgets to send one. Tom thinks his friend is wrong. So, what should he do? If he neglects to send a card to Dick on his birthday, will he have righted that wrong? On the contrary, I suggest that he will merely have salved Dick’s conscience and/or made Dick feel he was ‘right’ in the first place not to send a card to Tom. If Tom really wanted to get one over Dick, he would be better off sending a card: it would be the right thing and it would make Dick feel rotten. “Look, I’m not stupid. I do know there are times when revenge—appropriate revenge—is necessary and, if it prevents further wrongs, it might even be a good idea, but that, in itself, doesn’t make it right. “This question has exercised philosophers for years, and there are some who would point out the old chestnut: ‘Would you steal someone’s gun—which is a wrong—if you knew it would stop them from going out to kill another person that evening?’ But I say that ‘stealing’—or, more properly, taking—that gun wouldn’t be a wrong but a corrective action, and corrective actions can almost always be justified.”

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Q

We used to hear a lot about Third World countries, but what are (or were) the First and Second World countries?

According to my researches (yup, it’s the Net again), the “First World” was, basically, wealthy capitalist countries (i.e., the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and parts of Southeast Asia), the “Second World” referred to the old USSR and its empire (Eastern Europe and other satellites, like Cuba), and so the “Third World” was all the nonaligned poorer countries in Africa, South America, and Asia. These days, political correctness obliges us to refer to “Third World” countries as “developing countries.” Political correctness also obliges me not to comment on this.

Q

Why do we clap our hands to show approval?

“O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with a voice of triumph” (Psalm 47: 1) Well, that’s the Bible telling you—do you need any further explanation? Yes, I thought you might, so, once again, I turned to social anthropologist Dr. Lorraine Mackintosh. Did we clap before the Bible? “Oh yes,” she says, uncrossing and crossing her really rather shapely legs. “It’s something that our ape ancestors used to do

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spontaneously to express pleasure or happiness. You can see this in babies and tiny children who do just the same—although they’re also encouraged to do so by imitating their parents in what therefore becomes a lesson in socialization.” But why clapping? “It fulfills many different functions. When we clap—say, at a concert—we’re participating by adding our own percussive accompaniment during a song, and then we mark the end of the song by clapping. We’re also expressing our (favorable) opinion. The noise we make is an important part of the act of clapping.” Is that why you hear emcees telling people to “make some noise”? “Absolutely. How else can human beings—or apes—make noise, apart from with our voices? It’s obvious when you stop to think about it.” Of course. “This, however, is where it starts to get interesting, because making noise signifies disapproval as well as approval. Nowadays, clapping is only done positively, but in Ancient Greece, people clapped to drown out poor performers as well as to applaud good ones. In fact, clapping was so important in Athens that people organized themselves into groups called claques to clap for cash. Drama competitions were won—and lost—on the basis of which actors/playwright (or, more likely, their patron) had hired the noisiest claque.” An early example of audience-response systems? “Absolutely. There’s nothing new!”

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Q

Where does belly-button fluff come from, and why is it always blue?

I consulted Stanley Allen, a textiles expert, who had no more idea than I had, but he was so fascinated by the question that he took time out of his busy day to track down the answer. Anyway, the upshot of his research is that the belly button— especially one that goes in, rather than protrudes—is a great place for sweat to accumulate. As we know, sweat is sticky, and when the belly button becomes sufficiently sweaty, it becomes adhesive, and so, if you’re wearing natural fibers—particularly, cotton—tiny bits will become stuck to it. These tiny bits eventually join together to form little balls of lint—or navel fluff. The larger—and hairier—the belly button, the more fluff you’ll produce. Which is why mine yields enough in a month to knit a bloody sweater. Now, for the second part of the question: why is it always blue? Well, apparently, it isn’t. At any rate, not always. The color of your navel fluff depends on the color of the cotton clothing you wear. An American study proved that people who always (or almost always) wear clothes of the same distinctive color— e.g., yellow—will produce navel fluff of that color. The reason why most people’s fluff is a grayish blue is not necessarily because that’s the color clothing they wear but because they wear a number of different colors, and that’s the color you get when all those colors are mixed in the paintbox of the belly button. Think of it as an average of all the colors worn.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Is there a copyright on the song “Happy Birthday”?

Yes. And no. The original song—Good Morning to You—was written in the 1890s by sisters Mildred and Patty Hill, but they didn’t take out a copyright until 1935, by which time it was called “Happy Birthday.” This copyright doesn’t expire until 2011—but, fortunately, it only applies to commercial performances, so there’s no need to feel inhibited about singing it. Incidentally, it’s reckoned that “Happy Birthday” was the most often performed musical work of the twentieth century.

Q

Why do buses travel in threes?

No, it’s not a cruel trick played by the bus companies just to annoy us, but simply a matter of logistics. According to a transport expert I consulted, “If a lot of passengers are at one stop, the bus (Bus 1) that picks them up has to wait quite a long time to get them all on board. This allows the bus behind (Bus 2) to catch up a little. Because of Bus 2’s faster arrival, there’s less time for the next queue at the same stop to form, so Bus 2 doesn’t have to stay there so long. Meanwhile, Bus 1 has allowed more time for the queue at its next stop to build up, and so it has to wait longer there, enabling Bus 2 to catch up further. Soon the two buses are traveling together and behaving like a single bus. On a long bus route, the third bus will eventually begin to catch up as well. Which is why buses travel in threes.”

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Q

On a soccer field, what’s the point of the Dshaped area outside the penalty box?

It’s only there for one specific purpose: penalty kicks. To understand why, you’ll have to cast your mind back to geometry lessons (yup, there was a point to them, after all). When a penalty is awarded, only the penalty taker and the goalkeeper are allowed to be in the penalty area. Every other player must be at least ten yards from the ball. The penalty area serves as an appropriate exclusion zone for the most part, but it doesn’t cover the area immediately behind the ball. Consequently, the “D” or, as it’s more properly known, the penalty arc, marks that area of the field closer to the penalty spot than ten yards.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Why do we tell people to “sleep tight”?

This phrase originates from the days when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. Sagging ropes would, of course, have led to a poor night’s sleep—hence the exhortation to “sleep tight.” Incidentally, to remedy the problem of sagging ropes, people would use bed keys to tighten the ropes.

Q

Is it true that a group of British POWs joined the Nazi SS during World War II?

According to my friendly historian, there was indeed such a group—the British Free Corps—put together by John Amery who went around POW camps in Germany trying to find British soldiers prepared to fight for the Germans. Fortunately (for us), he was remarkably unsuccessful and only recruited a few men, mostly prewar Blackshirts or rabid anti-Communists. This contingent of British SS soldiers (and, don’t forget, the SS boasted units drawn from many different countries) was meant to serve on the Eastern Front but, in practice, saw little (if any) action—and then only in defense of the Fatherland in the face of the Russian offensive right at the end of the war. Although it must be admitted that, for understandable reasons, there were very few records kept and much of what happened remains untold. We do know that they wore regular SS uniforms, with a Union flag on their sleeves. Eventually, as the men (who were, after all, not exactly men

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of loyalty) realized that the war was lost, they went AWOL and tried to rejoin the Allies—claiming that they were coerced/confused. Some of them even got away with their treachery, but Amery—the son of Leo (a government minister) and the brother of Julian (a member of British Parliament)—was executed at the end of 1945.

Q

Why doesn’t Easter have a fixed date, like Christmas does?

Originally, Easter was celebrated on the same day as the Jewish Passover. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar, Passover can fall on any day of the week. The Church wanted to ensure that Easter would at least fall on a Sunday and so, after discussions that went on until the eighth century, the Church officially adopted the following simple formula: Easter Day is the first Sunday subsequent to the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21). Thus, it can occur as early as March 22 and as late as April 25 (that’s if the full moon after the equinox falls on a Sunday, Easter follows a week later).

Q

What’s the difference between an assassination and a murder?

I ran this past my pet linguist, who told me, “Both involve the premeditated taking of human life, but while all assassinations are murders, not all murders are assassinations. The key differ-

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

ence is that the target of an assassin is someone in public life— usually, though not necessarily, a politician—who is almost certainly not known personally by the assassin who is, therefore, killing for money or for a cause, however misguided. So whereas, for example, Marvin Gaye was murdered (by his father), John Lennon was assassinated (by a stranger).”

Q

Did Neil Armstrong really walk on the moon or was the whole thing a huge hoax?

Conspiracy theorists are to the Internet what fleas are to a dead fox: all over it. You can find a rebuttal of almost anything you ever thought true. The belief that the moon landings were all a hoax to get one over on the Russkis would be laughable if it weren’t so prevalent. So, let me dispel it merely by demonstrating that not only has no astronaut—former or present—confirmed any of the hoax theories but neither has any NASA scientist. So, there you have it: on one side, the world of science; on the other, the sort of people who spend their nights alone in front of their computer screens. I know which side I believe . . .

Q

My local supermarket is open twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year—so why are there locks on the doors?

I phoned my local 24/7 supermarket, where (after satisfying themselves that I was a journalist and not a burglar) they told me

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that the locks were fitted in the days when the supermarket wasn’t open all hours. So, why didn’t they remove them? I asked. “Because we do sometimes close—like on Christmas Day—and even if we didn’t, we might need to at some stage in the future.”

Q

Does S.O.S. stand for “save our ship” or “save our souls”?

Neither! It was just chosen by a 1908 international conference on Morse Code, because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it: S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.

Q

A detective detects and an inspector inspects— so what does a sheriff do?

The word “sheriff” is derived from “Shire Reeve.” During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve, who was the law for that shire. Eventually, it was shortened to “sheriff” some time in the Middle Ages, in good time for Robin Hood to have a Sheriff of Nottingham with whom to joust. Then, of course, it made its way to America in its shortened form. (Note: Don’t tell me that, as a legendary figure, Robin Hood might not have existed. He did—I’ve seen the films.)

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered

Q

Tell us, Mitch, has any Hollywood star ever tried to buy your house?

Funny you should ask. In 1986, my wife and I were trying to sell our three-bedroom end-terrace house in Shepherd’s Bush when a man named Jamie Grant came to have a look. He was so handsome that I couldn’t help saying: “My wife will be sorry she missed you.” “If you think I’m good-looking,” he replied, “wait till you see my younger brother Hugh when he comes to see the house tomorrow.” For some reason, Penny was out then, too, and so I showed him around the house, which he didn’t buy because—as I recall—it was out of his price range (that’s my hollow laughter you can hear). Fast-forward through the years, and Penny’s a big fan of the floppy-haired actor, which means that I lose no opportunity to remind her of my “association” with him. “I remember the time Hugh looked in the kitchen cupboard,” I’ll say, and suddenly a cushion will fly through the air on a collision course with my head. Or I’ll reminisce about his reaction to the downstairs shower-room (“That’s nice”). Poor old Penny: it’s gotta be grounds for divorce.

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Q

Why can’t girls throw?

I assumed it was for the same reason they can’t park cars, read maps, or understand the offside rule: because they’re women. But, alas, it is more complicated than that. First of all, we have to establish that women can’t, indeed, throw. Is this true? There was a study done in the United States a few years ago, in which twenty-five humans (none with any particular skill in throwing) and seventeen capuchin monkeys were invited to throw balls into a bucket. The men were 32 percent more accurate than the women when throwing with their chosen arm but—and this is crucial—no more accurate when it came to using their nonthrowing arm. As for the monkeys, there was no difference between males and females (although one female monkey was heard to ask another female monkey whether her butt looked big). It is thought that the reason the men could throw better—or, to be precise, more accurately—than the women is because fathers teach their sons—rather than their daughters—how to throw. However, the above study tested only accuracy. What about distance? So, I decided to conduct a series of experiments to determine which of the genders could throw farther. Over a six-month period, I challenged (almost) every visitor to my house (including my sons’ friends) to come down to the beach and chuck stones or tennis balls as far as they could. This is what emerged: 1. Everyone threw farther (and, indeed, straighter) with their

better arm.

. . . and Other Questions You Always Wanted Answered 2. Where men and women were not accustomed to throw-

ing, the strongest people (irrespective of gender) threw the farthest. This was usually the men, but that could be because the men of my acquaintance are physically stronger than the women. 3. The person (of either gender) who threw the farthest was

Kirsty, my extremely fit (in both senses of the word) bank manager, who also happens to be an international lacrosse player. 4. I threw the shortest distance of anyone—including my wife

(who, like many women, throws the ball as if she were putting the shot). 5. When women (of any age) threw, they treated it as a bit of

a laugh and giggled—often deliciously; when men (of any age) threw, they took it very seriously indeed and frowned—often comically. Therefore, we can conclude: 1. The ability to throw far is a function of either upper-body

strength—natural or acquired—or technique. 2. The ability to throw accurately is a function of technique. 3. Women can be taught to throw as accurately as men and

(almost)* as far.

*In my experiments, Kirsty was the only “proper” sportsperson; it is an established fact that a professional male cricketer can throw farther than a professional female cricketer.

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W HY G IRLS C AN ’ T T HROW 4. I am a complete girl. 5. Women are superior human beings to men.

So, that’s it. Girls can throw—except when they’ve never been shown how to and/or when they decide to lob the ball in a giggly girlie fashion in order to reassure pathetic men that they (the boys) are—gosh!—so much more powerful than them (the girls). But when girls—women—are shown how to throw, and when they do it with the same intent, they can throw as accurately and, if they’re of equal upper-body strength, as far as any man. So, perhaps we’ll retitle the book WHY GIRLS CAN THROW—EXCEPT WHEN THEY HAVEN’T BEEN TAUGHT HOW TO OR THEY’RE TRYING TO MASSAGE MEN’S EGOS. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

About the Author M ITCHELL SYMONS , author of the highly successful That Book . . . of Perfectly Useless Information and This Book . . . of More Perfectly Useless Information, was born in London and educated at the London School of Economics (the alma mater of JFK and Mick Jagger), where he studied law. Since leaving BBC Television, where he was a researcher and then a director, he has worked as a writer, broadcaster, and journalist. He lives on the southern coast of England with his wife and sons and any number of their pet animals. Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

A LSO BY M ITCHELL SYMONS Nonfiction That Book . . . of Perfectly Useless Information This Book . . . of More Perfectly Useless Information Forfeit! The Equation Book of Sports Crosswords The Equation Book of Movie Crosswords The You Magazine Book of Journalists (4 books; coauthor) Movielists (coauthor) The Sunday Magazine Book of Crosswords The Hello! Magazine Book of Crosswords (3 books) How to Be Fat: The Chip and Fry Diet (coauthor) The Book of Criminal Records The Book of Lists The Book of Celebrity Lists The Book of Celebrity Sex Lists The Bill Clinton Joke Book National Lottery Big Draw 2000 (coauthor)

Fiction All In The Lot

Credits Designed by Jamie Kerner-Scott Cover design by Mary Schuck Cover illustrations by Marc Rosenthal

Copyright This book was originally published in the UK by Transworld Publishers in 2005. It is hereby reprinted by arrangement with Transworld Publishers. WHY GIRLS CAN’T THROW

. . . AND OTHER QUESTIONS YOU ALWAYS Copyright © 2006 by Mitchell Symons. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™. WANTED ANSWERED.

PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2006 ISBN 0-06-114089-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Symons, Mitchell. Why girls can’t throw . . . and other questions you always wanted answered / by Mitchell Symons.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN-10: 0-06-083518-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-06-083518-7 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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