Ask Militant Ginger

It's that time again - to tackle some of the genuine questions entered into a search engine that randomly led to my blog.

I'm now allergic to almonds and never was till I went into anaphylactic shock...

Ah, nut allergies. One of the most mysterious and growing allergies across the civilised world.

There are plenty of theories behind what's causing the massive increase in the number of people effected by nut allergies. Perhaps in your case, you had a 'bad nut.' I know my reaction to mussels started off when I ate a bad one.

But my blog is really the wrong place to go to find credible information on the subject (as illustrated by this popular post.) Instead, I'd recommend popping over to visit my friend at NoPeanutsPlease - which is an excellent blog exploring the realities of having a child susceptible to food allergies.

At the end of Death Proof, what happened to the cheerleader?

Tarantino's return to the big screen didn't quite live up to the hype. In his attempt to create a perfect pastiche of the cheesy, crappy 70's horror flicks he grew up with, he created a cheesy, crappy horror flick. Death Proof wasn't so-bad-it-was-good. It was just so-bad.

But the film raised some interesting questions. At the climax of the movie, the evil Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) had been driven off the road by stuntwomen Zoë Bell and Tracie Thoms. Rosario Dawson, playing leggy model Abernathy Ross, dispatches him with a stiletto-heel through the eye-socket.

But while the three of them were off smashing two perfectly good classic cars to pieces, their friend Mary Elizabeth Winstead (playing cheerleader Lee Montgomery) had been left behind to placate the unwashed yokel car-owner - who'd been lured into letting the girls take his car off by the promise of sexual favours from our unsuspecting cheerleader.

Her fate is a deliberate mystery. I think Quentin Tarantino wisely decided to let us draw our own conclusions regarding what happened to the cute little cheerleader. Doubtless, our imagination can provide a fate far more titillating than anything he'd be allowed to show on screen.

But imagining for a second that this isn't a Tarantino flick, I think it's fair to imagine that Lee explained her situation to the oversexed car-owner, who was a perfect gentleman and didn't press the issue. How he reacted to his Dodge Challenger being returned in several mangled, tattered pieces is another matter entirely.

Where is Pat Sissons going on Original 106?

My old colleague Pat Sissons has been driving Original 106's breakfast show since radio veterans Simon James & Hill swapped the early mornings for late nights. However Messieurs Hill & James have now left Original 106 - so a schedule shuffle has plonked Pat in their 6pm to 10pm slot. Tommy Boyd will be taking over the breakfast shift.

Pat's an enormously talented radio presenter and while Simon James & Hill will be tough act to follow - they've won three Sony awards for their ribald evening shows - I think Pat is more than up for the job. The best of luck to him!

I need to pee!

This isn't really a question - although it does make me wonder why so many people are being driven to my blog by this four-word phrase. I blame this post, which I wrote while frustrated at the speed at which my life was whizzing by.

Although it might equally refer to this post, which records my brief foray into the world of pharmaceutical sales, shifting a drug developed to treat 'overactive bladder.'

Whatever the reason, if you really, really need to pee, the solution to your problem is probably not to be found on the Internet. I'd recommend the nearest bathroom. Leave the tap trickling if you need motivation.

My Beer Machine beer is cloudy. Do you have any tips?

The Beer Machine! My most aspirational hobby - aside from novel writing - is attempting to brew foamy, delicious beer in this miraculous invention.

All in all, this process is beautiful in it's simplicity. The keg-shaped brewer is filled with water, 'beer mix' and yeast and then left to ferment for about five days. Following that, the fermented beer is chilled in the fridge to clarify it - theoretically producing a crisp, clear beer.

I have tried four brews in all - two in America and two back in England. While I have produced drinkable beer on all four occasions, there are several things an amateur brewer can do to dramatically improve the quality of his product.

• Use tap-water. It sounds abhorrent - the thought of using chlorinated tap water to brew your meisterbrau. However, the most important aspect of the brewing water is to keep it bacteria free. Bacteria can dramatically effect the taste of your brew - and never for the better. That's why spring water - even the stuff you buy in bottles - has to be boiled first. Chlorinated tap water is a quicker and easier option. I've tried brewing with tap water and Poland Spring and the tap water beer was astoundingly better.
• Keep it cold! All four of my brews have experienced cloudiness. This is caused by yeast swilling in the fermented beer. Only a long, cold period of chilling will help sink the yeast to the bottom of the barrel - producing clear beer. This is tough - I've yet to successfully manage it. However, there are two tips that might help.
• Firstly, after placing the Beer Machine in your fridge, keep it protected from taps or upsets. That will cause the yeast to swill (and the cloudiness will never fade.)
• Secondly, try to assemble the beer machine with the gravity spigot (the bit the beer feeds through to reach the tap) high up, out of the murky yeast sediment. It will mean your beer will 'run out' quicker, but should keep it clearer.

While The Beer Machine eliminates a lot of human errors, brewing beer successfully is still a science of trial and error. Keep brewing. Sooner or later, you'll crack it! And you have to agree - there's nothing quite as satisfying as enjoying a flagon of your own cold, foamy, home-brewed ale. The Beer Machine rules!

You can't turn left in New Jersey?

This is true! Sort of!

A commonly heard complaint from out-of-staters is the fact that you can't 'turn left' in New Jersey. No, this isn't quite literal. Cars do have turn signals on the left hand side (although few New Jersey drivers use them) and at junctions and traffic lights, you can turn left.

The 'no left turn' occurs on US Highways - two or more lanes of traffic in which the central partition is blocked by concrete blocks.

In New York and other states, if you want to cross the two lanes of incoming traffic, you can pull to a halt in the left hand (fast) lane and keep your turn-signal blinking until you have the opportunity to cross over the opposing traffic. On a busy day, however, this can block an entire lane of fast moving traffic.

In New Jersey, you can only turn 'left' on US Highways by using a 'jug handle.' This is an exit lane on the right (just like leaving a motorway) which curves ninety degrees to cross over all four lanes of traffic following a green traffic light.

This is how you're expected to make U-turns and left turns on the highway.

In theory, it speeds up the general progress of traffic by stopping selfish people from clogging up an entire lane of traffic. In practice, it's often frustrating because you have to double back on yourself (sometimes by as much as a mile or so) if the next 'left turn' jughandle isn't for a while.

Frustrating as it is, it's a pretty foolproof method. However, you'll still see plenty of idiots trying to make illegal left turns as long as traffic conditions allow it (i.e. there isn't a cop within sight.)

Ask Militant Ginger will be back in February...

Original Sin

Original 106 spent a million pounds marketing their new radio station.

They had television adverts during Coronation Street. Huge billboards across Portsmouth and Southampton. The back of the buses proudly declared: "Original 106. For people that [sic] have got something going on upstairs."

They broadcast to a potential audience of over a million listeners. They have Sony award winners Simon James and Hill heading up their breakfast show. And they've been selling advertising with the warm, rich promise of 10% of Hampshire's radio market.

Today, on the day the Radio Audience Joint Research figures come out (telling people exactly who listens to what station) the boys at Original were brave enough to release this preemptive advert in the Southern Daily Echo and The Portsmouth News.

Yet when the figures came in, did they match Original's expectations?

Sadly not. Not by a long shot.

Compared to their rivals, Power FM, Ocean and Wave 105 - all of whom deliver almost 200 to 300 thousand listeners per week - Original sailed in with a disappointing 27,000 weekly listeners. Less even than Southampton's local football station, The Saint.

It was shocking. Made worse by the fact that their determined and able sales team had been out selling packages on the expectation of five times that market share. If the boys at Original 106 think they're disappointed by this showing, I imagine it's nothing to what their advertisers are feeling. They've been paying Wave 105 prices for Saint listening figures.

A while ago, I predicated the fate of Original 106. I even had a bit of banter with radio legend Simon James about it. You can read my predictions here.

I'd never expected anything quite like this!

I think it's down to a variety of factors. Their obscure track listing confuses and infuriates the listeners. Some of their presenters are sophomoric, whereas Simon James and Hill, the headliners of Original 106, are irreverent and unpredictable. Original 106 wanted to deliver something different - but the reason most commercial radio stations sound the same is because listeners don't want anything different.

They just want the music they love and as few commercials as possible, with none of that Smashy and Nicey crap (at least nobody could accuse Simon James & Hill of being cheesy.)

That being said, I don't think Original 106's poor showing can entirely be blamed on their slightly queer choice of output. As much as we in the radio industry love to boast about how much more accurate RAJAR figures are in comparison to press 'readership' (generated by multiplying sales by some arbitrary number) the truth is that neither method really gives a fair indication of who's tuning (or reading) in.

RAJAR diaries are complicated little buggers. Given that the average reader doesn't necessarily know who they're listening to at any given time (we had plenty of listeners at WinFM who rang in thinking they were tuned to Wave) it's pretty fair to say Original might have reached a lot more listeners than RAJAR claims they did.

Nobody knows for sure. And when it comes to calculating costs, none of the agencies are going to care. Original 106 is going to take a pretty big hit over these RAJAR figures, but at least they have one thought to sustain them as they struggle through the next few months.

The only way is up.

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In reference to their advert - from a starting point of 0 listeners, a gain of 27,000 DOES make Original 106 the fastest growing radio station in the south. It's very pedantic, but it doesn't make it a lie.