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Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you are on the planet. Welcome to the second season who knew of Ill Advised by Bill Nye and as always, the clue is in the title. This is a podcast for people who don't get out much and can't handle it when they do. It's a refuge for the clumsy and the awkward. We continue on Ill Advised in our mission to provide something for you that is entirely inconsequential. Our mission is to give you a break, frankly, and hopefully put the kettle on and take a break from anything that you might struggle with or even just normal stuff you can squander time with me. That's our quest. I've always been good at loafing. It's a superpower, which is quite handy if you're an actor because you do spend long periods unemployed, particularly when you're starting out. And I was already match fit in terms of loafing. Loafing, unconcerned is another matter, but I'm pretty good at that now. But that's because I made some money so you know, that's not so tricky. And as with season one, there will be several playlists and books that I will recommend which you won't have to remember because it will be written in the show notes and also there'll be a link Spotify. Thank you for all your questions. In season one. We were inundated, overwhelmed by the response, and we are grateful for that. People from all over the planet had urgent questions to ask me, of all people, and I did attempt to answer them without actually making things worse. So let's hear a question from somebody somewhere in the world. Hi, Bill, this is Gigi from Brazil. I've got a question for you. How do you feel about belly buttons? You know that hole we have in the center of our bodies? I think they're ugly, they freak me out, and they are completely unnecessary. Okay, cheers. Bye. Thank you. Gigi, I couldn't disagree more. Actually, I find belly buttons rather moving because they're just an indication that in the end, you know, we are creatures and we are all more or less built the same. I find them quite touching and attractive, to be honest. But then, let's face it, there are belly buttons and then there are belly buttons. So depending on, you know, I'm sure your belly button is more attractive than you imagine it to be. I don't think you should view it as a flaw. I've never really recovered from Kim Novak in a movie before. You were probably born Gigi, where she had a diamond in her belly button, which when I was about 12, was deeply unsettling. My research assistants have looked into this and apparently what you are or what you have is omphalophobia. Someone who has an intense dislike of belly buttons. There is another tribe to which I belong to of people who are rather partial to a belly button, and they're called alvinophiliacs, of which I am proud to say I am one. Hello, Bill. This is Michael. I'm a Brit and I've been living in Shanghai for about 30 years and visit London about once a year now. My question is about how you actually leave a restaurant properly when the tables are very close together, and that is if you're squeezing out sideways between two tables, do you squeeze out so that your genitals are actually facing the diners on the next table, or do you actually leave the other way so that your bottom is actually scraping across their table as you actually make your way to the exit? I find this a real dilemma, as particularly in London, all these. The tables in a lot of restaurants, even quite good ones, are very close together. I would really value your advice. It's not a problem in China where I'm living, as the tables are generally circular. And this always facilitates a very easy exit. Michael, thank you very much for your question. It's an under regarded problem in my view. You're quite right. Genitalia or bottom? It would depend, I suppose, to some degree. I mean, nothing personal, Michael, although there couldn't be anything more personal than asking you about your bottom. But if you have, let's say, a considerable bottom, then you might opt for the genitalia version. It is very difficult. I remember finding out that I had a brother one time because I went to a restaurant with my brother, who's my older brother, and I failed to squeeze between two tables and a bottle of wine on a table adjacent to us wobbled as I went by. And the man stood up and said something like, you get the. Off my. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't those words exactly, but that was the tone and my. And suddenly my brother was. Stood in front of me saying to this man, yeah, and excuse me, what problem, really, with my brother, you know. And I was like, oh my God, you know, this is my big brother. And the man said, well, you know. Yeah. He said, yeah, well, sorry, no, what? And he sat down very, you know, reluctantly, still bluffing. And my brother turned around and said, get out of here, go on. And it was very, very moving because, you know, it was the first, it was the only time really that it's been necessary to defend me. So I thought I'd give you that. As for the answer to your question, Michael, how would I know the answer to that question? But I'm flattered that you think I might. And I'm glad to know that they don't have all those risky corners on tables in China. But I would suggest that the best thing to do, it's always a genitalia thing. People are going to be less offended by genitalia than they are if you point your ass at them, if you don't mind me saying, with no disrespect, as I say to your ass, which I'm sure is comely. Hi, Bill, it's Phil Daniels here, fellow thespian and rock and roller. Years ago I made an album and I really enjoyed it, but the acting took over as it does. But I'm back in the studio 40 odd years later. Now, you've played musicians, managers, singers in your career and I know you love music. Have you ever been tempted to take us a back call from acting, have a go at writing songs or putting a band together and live a rock and roll lifestyle again? And are you an advocate of it's never too late. All the best. Sorry to procrastinate. Phil. Phil Daniels, it's really good to hear from you and I'm really pleased that you must have listened to the podcast and yeah, I'm an advocate of it's never too late. You know, a man in my situation, you've got little choice, really. No, we. We are ramping up the operation rather than winding down. And it's a good question. I did. As you may. I don't know whether, you know, nobody knows because we never got out of the garage. But I did attempt be in the world of rock and roll with a band many years ago in the 70s. And the name we had, which I think was lost on the irony, was lost on most people at the time. We were called the Love Ponies, which made me laugh, but it didn't seem to make many other people laugh. And I was the singer and I wrote lyrics and stuff, but I found it really difficult. I mean, being an actor is quite difficult. Standing up in front of people and being the only person to speak. But standing up in front of people and singing and singing words that you'd written yourself, I found it very, very exposing and very tricky. And I. I didn't know that you could kind of act it. I thought that if you stood in front of a band and throw shapes, I thought you had to throw shapes that sort of suggested you were good in bed. And I wasn't entirely convinced that I was. So I found it all. The whole thing was very. I wasn't ready. I've never been ready. I would find it really difficult now. It's because you have to take yourself seriously in a way that I. I'm not really ready to. But I always associate you with music. And I remember the cross the band. And I'm really glad to hear that you're back in the studio. Would I. I do. I fantasize about the album before I die. And I'm always thinking of names for bands which is a sort of compulsion. My latest one is the Overlooked. I thought it'd be quite good for a band of blokes my age. We'd be called the Overlooked. It's got something to it and. Yeah, no, I dream of that. I think singers. Such a hard thing to sing, particularly to be able to sing really well. Must be. I can't. I can hold a tune, you know, I'm a singer in the shower, but I would love to be able to sing for real. Later on, when I left the Love Ponies, I. They continued to perform as the Love Ponies. And in fact, they wrote a song which was called hey, hey, we're the Love Ponies, and it was based on the Monkeys tune. For those of you still alive who remember hey, hey, with the Monkeys. Our song obviously went, hey, hey, with the Love Ponies. And people say we pony around. So whatever you think pony means. I like the word pony, just generally speaking, because I like the idea of ponies, but I also like it because a pony is 25 pounds. It's also, of course, part of the cockney rhyming slang. Pony and trap, in other words, you know, whatever you want to rhyme that with. Talking of band names, we'd like to introduce a new feature which is called I'm with the Band. And what we ask for is for listeners to send in the name of bands that they've been in and the lyrics from some of their signature songs. I would suggest just one song just to give us a taste. And I will read the lyrics out on the air as part of Ill Advised by Bill Nye. And I will read them with love and respect and with great gravity. And if you believe that, you'll believe anything, you can send them in via our instagram, which is lladvisedbybill Nye. We look forward to hearing from you. Hi, Mr. Nye. I have a hosiery question. Is there an absolute when it comes to sock length, or is it something that's situational or generational? Yours truly, Dan from Niagara, Canada. Hey, Dan, thank you for your question. Give my regards to Niagara Falls, where I've never been. I might have to do something about that now. It's not generational, although I did a job once long time ago, and the wardrobe department were very young women, or rather, I'd got older. And so everybody started to be younger than me. And when I put on my own personal socks at the end of the day and they went up to, I guess, the middle of my calf, all of the girls couldn't help themselves and they burst into laughter. It was that tricky age. I can't remember, but I was probably like 49 or maybe, you know, 51, where you still worry about these things now, you know, it's too late. And I really don't mind if you laugh at my socks, but in those days I was sensitive and it hurt me. And I thought, oh, and it's when you find out how old you are, you sort of. You live in a trance where you're still 28, but in fact you're 49. And it's those occasions when you find out you're reminded of the reality of your age. It's like when I was about 50, probably around the same time I was in a prison movie, and I had to run in order to escape from prison, and I had to run down a corridor very, very fast. So on the first take, I ran down the corridor very, very fast and the crew clapped. And then, you know that you no longer look like someone who can run very fast down a corridor. So that when you run very fast down a corridor, it's an event. And the younger men of the crew were surprised and shocked that I was able to run at all, which is a revelation. You know, it's another. It's one of those turning points. Anyway, sock length, you don't want to see any of your leg. All right, no disrespect, maybe your leg is great, Dan. My legs, Honestly, my legs haven't seen the light of day this century, you know, and you don't really need to see any of my flesh. So if I can use the word flesh and therefore I would wear a mid. Calf. Short socks, I don't. I understand. And also, aesthetically, they just don't work, you know, not for me, they don't work. When I make these statements about clothes and stuff, it's just. This is how I feel. I don't expect other people to feel the same way, but short socks make me sad, make me unhappy. This is always to do with men. With women, short socks, fine, shorts, fine. But for men, short socks make me uneasy. But you don't want ones that go right up to your knee because that would make you look ridiculous. And they also. They feel pretty terrible. I have tried it. They don't work, but it's not a generational thing. Lots of things are invented as generational when they're not at all, but that's usually for marketing purposes. Hi, Bill, I'm Gemma from Perth, Western Australia, and I would like your suggestions for creative ways to swear without using naughty words. I've found that I'm swearing really all too much lately. I have a young son and I'm trying not to swear in front of him. I knew someone who used to say, oh, put it in the oven as a way of swearing in front of her children, which I found quite creative. So I was really keen for your thoughts on the subject because there's nothing quite so satisfying as having a good swear when the moment calls for it. Thanks in advance. Hey, Gemma, put it in the oven. Is that what you suggest What? Yeah. As in sort of instead of some profanity. Well, yeah, I've got nothing against put it in the oven. It's slightly unsettling, but I think funky alternatives to real swearing are hard to come by without sounding actually worse than if you were swearing. If you say things like flickering or fluck or flack, it just sounds. It just sounds. There's something about it. I absolutely hate it. You're not suggesting that. I know, but just for the record, I can't bear it when people used to do that. I think my mother used to do something like that. She'd say something instead of the word, you know, get off your horse and drink your milk was suggested yesterday as a way of saying something that could be said in a profane manner. Pretty much anything could be said in a profane manner. I would just. I mean, what do I know? Gemma, let's. Lest we forget, I have no idea what the answer to your question is. That is what the whole of this podcast is based upon the fact that I don't know what to do. But given that you're asking, I would suggest that you moderate real profanity and save it for, you know, special occasions, but not fool around with alternatives, because I think they actually end up sounding kind of more squeamish making than the real thing. And there's not a lot really wrong with the real thing. There is one word that you can't use, and we all know what that word is. A friend of mine, rufus, in the 80s or around that time, when that word became a matter of some concern and debate about whether it was ever acceptable to use it, and it was generally accepted that it wasn't. If anyone used that term near my friend, he would go over and say, excuse me, do you mind not using that word? I happen to be one and I don't like it bandied about as a term of abuse, which is a perfect joke. You could say it to yourself now and you could use the word privately under your breath, you could use the word and you'll get the full impact of the joke because it's a major joke. It's kind of perfect. It's round, it's 360 degrees, and it works from every angle. And now time for some banned words. These are words sent in by listeners which they want removed from the English language. I passionately agree with this one. It is what it is, which is not a word. It's a phrase, but somebody wants it gone. And it was placed before the permissions committee and it now no longer exists. There's a word, the perfectly good word heritage, which you can no longer use, not since they attached it to tomatoes. Basically, once it became a tomato, it ceased to be a word you could take seriously. And also it was used by, you know, shady enterprises to gull you into thinking that things were of a tradition of historic. In other words, just kind of salesmanship. So it was corrupted. The word no longer can be used. Here's something that's been on my mind and I didn't get around to it. The word so at the beginning of a sentence, it's time that was retired. It started. I don't know, I'm not very good at years, but I think it started about three or four years ago. And everyone would say so at the beginning of every sentence. So that's gone. Unless you're Irish. Apparently, it's okay if you put so at the beginning of the sentence, if you come from Ireland, but I don't understand that, really. So what would you say? So, so. So. Michael. No, I don't think. I think it's the same for any language. I think once you ban it from the English language, I think we. It's banned from all language. It's no longer allowed. It's allowed in other contexts, but not at the beginning of a sentence in the way that we refer to. This week's playlist is called Shake, Don't Shiver, and it features Mink deville doing his probably biggest hit called Spanish Stroll. I went to see Mink deville years and years and years and years and years ago, and he made the mistake of asking for a drink over the microphone. And he was drinking. Think large. I think they were large Jack Daniels or large Wild Turkeys. And he ended up with like 20 shot glasses at his feet from members of the audience. And of course, he had to drink them all because he was a big, strong rock and roll star. He was not in great shape by the end of the gig. And then one of the great lyrics of all time from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a song called More News From Nowhere. I try to pick songs that I feel are in the same kind of groove. Not so much groove as I'm going to risk the word vibe. Oh, yeah. It used to be that you didn't want to stand too near to anybody who used the word vibe first time around in the 70s, I suppose. But now it's been laundered by irony over the decades, so it's now safe to use that word. In fact, it's fun. It's fun saying vibe. I find it fun anyway. And then a not so familiar song, perhaps from the artist we can't get by without Prince. And it's called the Holy River. And then one of my favorite I Cantina Turner songs, their version of an old blues standard called Crazy Bout your Baby. And then from Raheem Devon, a song I love called Marvin Used to Say. And what Marvin used to say was, what's going on? Among other things, and save the children. Anyway, that's this week's. And that might, I think they would all warrant a shake around the kitchen. You know, if you turn it up and put the kettle on and you could, you know, snake your hips. This week's book is from the inestimable Zadie Smith, and it's a collection of essays called Dead and Alive with a very beautiful photograph on the COVID And just for the record, and she writes at one point about Kilburn, and the essay is called Kilburn, my Love. And I'll read you just a little bit of it to give you the tone. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. So I wrote of my beloved Kilburn once, a long time ago. Later, I realized that some people may have considered this to be a complaint, that I wanted Kilburn to become more like, say, Queen's park, with more opportunities to drink 4 quid coffees and 10 quid smoothies or to be mown down by a red trousered gentleman who is driving, for some unknown reason, a Land Rover Defender. But nothing could be further from the truth. I live precisely on the border of Willesden, Kilburn, Bronsbury and Queen's Park. I was born and raised on Willesden Lane. In my mind, all roads lead to Kilburn. It is where I go for proof of God and proof of a bargain. I consider it the best place to witness the old Irish at rest and the young West Africans at play. I love to observe the Eastern European security guards of TK Max performing the Sisyphean task of trying to stop people seizing their reparations from global capitalism and walking straight out the door and without visiting the cash register first. I thrill at so many drivers and pedestrians treating traffic lights as obscure suggestions. When I'm walking the high road, I enjoy a truly staggering variety of physical and sartorial beauty, most of it undreamed of in the philosophies of fashion magazines. And then I like to pop into Super Drug to watch an almighty screaming Q fight. I am the luckiest novelist in the world to live so close to the most interesting street in Europe. Once again we say goodbye. That's the end of this episode of Ill Advised by Me. I hope we've successfully enabled you to waste at least a part of your day, which is I feel healthy and if we have, we're proud and pleased. I wish you well and thank you for listening. And remember, it's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice. Bye bye everybody. Bye bye. Ill Advised by Bill Nye was produced by Alice Williams and Kiera Gregory. The assistant producer was Angelique Somers, pronounced Somers and is an Ipod Studios production