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This is ill advised by Bill Nye. I am Bill Nye and I vow I promise that we will continue our quest to make this podcast as in consequential as it is humanly possible to be. This is a profundity free zone. If you catch me commenting on your relationship by the sexual or romantic or any kind of relationship, I'll be answering more questions and I'll try not to make things actually worse. As regular listeners will now also be suggesting some songs and books,

we also have a new feature which is why I don't think you understand but I'm like with the band. Which is interesting where people send in the embarrassing name of the early embarrassing band and the embarrassing lyrics preferably to their signature embarrassing song. And I will read those embarrassing lyrics out over the air. Let's start now.

Hi Bill, it's Gary, a living in Uji, originally from England. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your solo air guitar the other day. It was pretty good. What a smile to my face. On the subject, I was thinking of holding an air solo saxophone competition.

“You have any idea which city I should hold it in and would you like to participate?”

Thank you very much. Gary, I think it's a sensational idea and I think there's only one city in the world that should host it. And that's Reykjavik. It's so obviously as an Icelandic phenomenon.

I've never actually air saxophone personally but I'm not against it.

I'm all for it in fact. I think the more airing that goes on the better. I think it makes the world go around. I think it makes the world a better place. And it must be quite tricky air saxophone, I would imagine. But I think that Iceland would embrace you, should you go there.

Will I take part? Gary, are you out of your mind? No, I won't because I'm pretty, I've got my hands full of your partner pun with the guitar. You know, because you never get to the end of air guitar. It's an endless quest and I'm afraid I just don't have the time for no saxophone. But I wish you luck.

Take it easy. Hi Bill. This is Julie from the US, but living in London. Over the years, I've come to love drinking tea and eating biscuits, especially sweet biscuits. But I think I have a sugar addiction. You mentioned you don't eat sugar anymore.

I wonder if you could advise me how to continue enjoying my afternoon tea without the sweet biscuits. Thank you.

“Julie, I think you came to the right person.”

I could never imagine a cup of tea without a cigarette.

It was just unthinkable. The tea became meaningless until I gave up cigarettes successfully, which is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. And then never a day goes by when I don't rejoice. And then tea became like a sacrament. Tea became the most fabulous event.

And I drink a cup of strong. I make it as strong as it can possibly be. I squeeze the tea bag with an inch of its life. And I have that first thing in the morning. And I have zero nostalgia for a cigarette. And the same thing happens with sugar.

You just have to give it a while. And then the biscuit becomes not even a memory. It would just ruin your cup of tea. And the cup of tea becomes the thing.

“In terms of sugar, I'm like a child with a credit card.”

I used to go on wagons.

They would always turn out to be a wagon.

And wagons are there for one thing only, which is falling off. And I would fall off. And I'd get quite a long time. I'd get like six months. And then I'd fall off a wagon.

It would turn out to be a wagon. But the last time I went to a shop near my apartment in my district. And I bought a sack full of high street chocolate. And I bought two of everything because I get institutionalised in the numbers. So I would have two topics, two lion bars, two picnics.

Two usually things would not send. I'd get four to eight tubes of round trees, fruit comes. I also used to get in the old days. I used to get a four pack of magnets. And a four pack of saleros.

And magnets would be like main course. And saleros would be like dessert. And I would eat the eight ice creams.

Chocolate. And the six to eight round trees, fruit comes. At one sitting in front of the TV. I became like a machine. And it's hard to rationalise.

Because like the first Magnum and Salero is easy.

Because you know, I don't smoke. I don't take drugs. I don't, you know, do bad things to people.

“So why shouldn't I have a couple of ice creams a second to?”

Yeah, you can, you can get by on the same, you know, in the same rational. The third to a tough. Why are you having a third Magnum and a third Salero? That's a hard one to sell even to a maniac. But you manage it, obviously.

But the last two, the fourth Magnum and the fourth Salero. That's a walk in a park because they're, they're messing up the freezer. You know, they're in there loose in a box in the freezer. And you can't go to sleep, leaving them in that situation. So you've got to clean up.

So you have the fourth Magnum and you have the fourth Salero. So just so you know, my credentials when it comes to sugar. But the last time I actually went to a shop and bought a load. I was walking back through my district.

“And I thought that if I were to see anybody I knew, it was just possible.”

They might say, "What's in the bag?" And I would have to explain that I was going to an orphanage the next day. Because there was no other way to account for the amount of high street chocolate I had in the bag. And then when I got home I crossed a line. The line was I took the bag to bed.

And I put all of the high street chocolate all over my bed spread. And then I went to Mars and looked back down. And I saw this man of what I was then probably 60 something. And lying in a bed that was covered with high street chocolate. And I picked it all up and put it back in the bag.

And I took it downstairs and I put it in the rubbish. And I didn't go back and get it out. Judy, I left it in the rubbish. And I can't remember if that was the last time I did.

“I think that was the last time I ever had any of that sort of high street chocolate.”

And again, you know, I never gave up anything that wasn't a terrific idea to give up.

And that didn't make life quite, you know, seriously better. And I haven't had sugar for a long, long time. You know, I don't read the back of things. I'm not a yeet bread and stuff, you know. If anybody ever says to you, you know fruit, that's got a lot of sugar in it.

Then you know you're talking to somebody who has a sugar problem. Only people with a sugar issue say, there's a lot of sugar in fruit, you know. And I do eat fruit. And I don't suffer anymore. And I don't earn, I have zero nostalgia for a picnic or a topic or a lion bar.

And I don't have to think about it anymore. It's a great relief and it's just great to be free of it all. So what happens is you're afternoon cup of tea becomes dreamy without the biscuit. Trust me. Hi Bill. It's all under here from Sydney, Australia.

I just have a question about upshopping and crewvats. I'm a 21 year old university student and I often find that classic men's wear can be quite expensive. So I go upshopping and I just wondered whether you ever go upshopping. And if you have any advice for your young listeners on how to acquire classic men's wear at a more reasonable cost.

The second part of my question is crevats and wearing crevats.

I was very lucky to inherit my grandfather's from the 1940s and 50s. And I love wearing them that they can be very flamboyant. And I just wondered whether you think you can wear a crevat in this day and age. And whether they might make a comeback and if you ever wear a crevat. Thank you so much Bill.

Ciao. Orlando, I spent half my life in what they now call vintage shops. They used to be called second hand shops. And I've just been told that they are now also called pre-loved shops. And I'm instantly putting pre-loved on the band word list because it's just too bad.

Anyway, yeah, no. So I dressed almost exclusively out of vintage stores when I was a kid. Or rather when I was a young man. And it's a great idea. I live near quite a famous vintage store, but it's mostly caters to women. But yeah, and you would go to posh areas where the second hand stuff would be, you know, posh. When I say vintage stores, I don't mean what you call apparently an Australia up shopping.

Because that means charity shops. I did go to charity shops.

They were for the person who ran the shop to make some money.

“But either way, they would be second hand clothes.”

I love the kind of randomness of it and that you would get things that you wouldn't normal. If you wouldn't go in a shop and buy them for, you know, new. But they were somehow acceptable because they were second hand. As for crevats, Orlando, are you out of your mind? It's 2020, 6. You can't wear a crevat.

And you're at university. You'll never get laid.

You'll never get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever it is you're looking for. Because you will look like someone who is pretending to be 63. I just don't think they will ever be. You know, who knows? Everything goes in circles. But I don't think they'll ever be rehabilitated.

I wear a scarf under a coat and I tie the scarf around my neck.

“And somebody, the other day, a young person said to me at work,”

"Oh, that's a nice crevat." And I said, "I tell you, I had to watch my mouth. I had to restrain myself." And I said, "Tight lipped." I said, "It's a scarf."

Then she went, "Oh, I thought it was a crevat." She said the word twice.

Anyway, they may be cute. And they came down the family line and everything and they have sentimental value, but for God's sake. Where them around the house don't go out on the street. That would be my advice on that. But then again, you know, like everything, that's just me.

You may be able to pull it off. Hi, Bill. It's Christina and Chesterton here from Deepers Burgundy in France. I'd like to know your thoughts about etiquette when taking one's accent or as they're known here, "Techle with one for dinner or social occasions at friends or acquaintances."

Thank you. Christina, hello. I used to have a friend called Ken Campbell. Ken Campbell was a genius. He was routinely described in the newspaper as a lunatic genius, which he used to really get to him and he'd say, "Why can't I be a genius like all the other geniuses?" And he had a dog called Werner, who was ironically called Werner,

after Werner air heart of air heart seminar training fame, which was a sort of semi cult that happened in the 19th somethings. And he ironically called his dog who was a girl, Werner. But he used to say that if they won't take the dog, don't go. He conducted his life according to where Werner was allowed.

And therefore, if Werner wasn't allowed, he wouldn't turn up. And he wouldn't go into any establishment where they wouldn't tolerate Werner, which was one way of navigating through life by dog navigating by dog. I used to have a dog, the trouble with my dog, smoky, was that he would eat the dinner. If you turn your back for two minutes, he once lifted a whole roast chicken

off the Sunday lunchtime table and took it into the garden. And then he came back and we couldn't find the chicken. And he came back and he did that thing that dog stew, which is he would sit with a very, very straight face,

as if nothing had happened. Which always used to make me laugh.

The joke in the house was that I was like smoky. In other words, I was long. He was a sort of lurch, a rich kind of thing. He was actually a rescue dog. My friend from Chile, when she first saw him, said, oh, he's a street dog, which I was quite, I was more than quite offended by. But it's true. He was a mungrel.

And we had a Tibetan area called Nell, who was also black and white, and they were like lady and the tramp only black and white. And the only funny thing that smoky ever did was that if you played the chord of C on the piano, he would howl in the chord of C, which I know you had to be there. But it was really, really funny. The other funny thing he did, and I'm going to get into trouble for this, but I'm going to go ahead, is that if you gave him a wine gum,

he loved, guess what, he loved the wine gum. But it meant that he had to snap up his jaws in order to get because, you know, their bouncy and dogs aren't used to bouncy food. And my daughter used to howl with laughter, now we're both in trouble. But she would beg me to stop because she thought it was wrong.

I don't know whether it's wrong to give a dog a wine gum. It's almost certainly officially technically, you know, diaterally wrong.

“But is it really wrong? I don't know, where do you stand?”

The other impressive thing about smoky was that he could catch a frisbee in mid-air

And also he was a festival of bad character.

“He was terrified of his own kind and would take a two-mile detour”

to get away from any dog that resembled him in terms of size. But if there was a small dog, he would haul and bully and become unbearably aggressive. So he'd go missing if there was anything that equaled him. But he was a good dog and I'm missing him.

It's now time for our "I'm With the Band" feature, which is where we invite people to send in the name, preferably embarrassing name, of the early band as teenagers, and some embarrassing, preferably lyrics from one of their signature tunes. And we've had lots of responses.

And one here from Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and it's from Kim, and in the '90s says Kim, "I played drums in an RT punk band called "Tex Fingali." And while most probably wouldn't call this one of our signature songs,

I always love these lyrics to the song "Rino Stand."

And the lyrics are, "I don't think I like humans no more. They either make me mad or bored. Only happy when they're causing problems. "I'm embarrassed to be one of them."

“I think he did well to sell it to us, Kim.”

I think they're great lyrics, and everyone can identify. And they rhyme, kind of. No, they rhyme, they really rhyme. To rhyme problems with one of them is exemplary. Thank you for that. If you have any preferably embarrassing lyrics

from your early band before you were 27, then we'd love to hear them. And I will read them out live on air on your behalf. And that's the end of this week's "I'm with the band." This week's playlist is called "Instead of School."

And the reason it's called "Instead of School." is because I have a friend called Karl Johnson who plays blues guitar.

And he always used to say that playing blues guitar

was what he did instead of his old levels. Which always used to make me laugh. And for those of you who don't know what old levels are, they're what GCSEs used to be before they became GCSEs. Anyway, so this is called "Instead of School" in honor of Carl.

It starts with something that I know Carl would approve of. And it's called "I'm Tour Down" T-O-I-E. Which is an expression I really like. I've only ever heard it once before. And that's of our Morrison song that many people will be familiar with.

Called "Tour Down Alar Rambo." Meaning the French poet is just a little bit of an ancient jive talk that I like ancient jive talk, particularly when it's been laundered through irony and made it into the modern world as you probably are familiar with.

So that's the first track. And the second track is by another favourite artist called "Dr. John" The Knight Tripper. And it's called "Right Place Wrong Time." And I like it a lot.

And then there's "I Container Turner" with a great song called "Bush City Limits" which a lot of you, everyone over, I don't know, 30, will have heard, but it really swings. And then another band that I thought I discovered and then realised that they were internationally famous was Elastica.

I got to them this century, which is a little late. And this is a track called "Stutter." I love the lyrics. I like Elastica lyrics. They're very cool. No need to wine boy, like a wind-up toy.

You stutter at my feet.

And it's never the time boy.

You've had too much wine to stumble up my street.

“Is there something you lack when I'm flat on my back?”

Is there something that I can do for you? It's always something you hate or it's something you hate. Tell me. Is it the way that I touch you? Have you found a new mate?

Is she really great? Is it just that I'm much too much for you? These are refreshing lyrics. The next track is from Kelly Rowland. And it's a song called "Daylight," which I thought was unique to her,

but then I discovered that Bobby Womack does a version. And it features Travis McCoy. And it's about going out, late, staying out all night,

We all know about that.

And then David Bowie, with Suffragettes City,

with very mysterious lyrics. But just a great driving tune. I know that Carl will disapprove of half of that list, but what can I do? He's just going to get out more.

This episode's book is called "The Idiot" by Elif Batchumann.

“Again, you don't have to remember the title.”

It will be in the show notes. And I enjoyed it very much. Elif Batchumann has a habit of calling her books the same name as novels by Dostaeovsky, one of which is The Idiot. And the other is the possessed, which amuses me.

Which would amuse you if you read the book. I really liked the book. It's funny and romantic. In an odd way.

And I'm going to read it a little bit.

Ivan called at 10 that night. "Where are you?" I asked. "I'm outside your house," said Ivan. I looked out the window. He was standing under a streetlight at one of the emergency telephones.

Those phones were a direct line to campus police. They didn't even have number pads. I had no idea how he had used one to reach my room. I went downstairs. He seemed different from usual, more restless.

“"I think we need to get a drink," he said.”

He had said before that he thought drinking would help me. He said it would help with talking. This obsession with drinking was one of the things that had most surprised me about college.

I had always looked down on alcohol because my parents liked to drink at dinner

and it always made them more annoying. I had known that alcohol was supposed to be a big part of college life and that some people would really care about it, but I hadn't realised it would be basically everyone, except the most humillous or childish people,

and also some people who were religious. They didn't seem to be anywhere of not drinking without it being a statement. "Fine," I said, "let's get a drink." Ivan took me to an upscale beer garden,

twinkling with white Christmas lights. The bouncer asked for our IDs. Ivan didn't seem to understand it first why we weren't being allowed in.

“He seemed to think we were somehow being discriminated against.”

"I'm not 21," I told him. "That's the reason?" He asked, "That's it, pal," said the bouncer. We walked 20 minutes farther from campus to a crowded bar in a basement where we came up against a warm wall of cigarette smoke,

beery exhalations, and some kind of vaporous sawdust. Ivan found a table where people seem to be thinking about leaving a high table with stools and loomed over them until they got up. "You can wait here," he said, "what do you want?"

"I don't know," I said. Ivan looked at me for a moment and then went to the bar. All around people were shouting, wearing t-shirts. They're back seemed more numerous than their faces. I saw Ivan leaning over the bar and talking to the bartender

who had a pixie cut, laughing eyes and dimples, though her mouth wasn't smiling. Ivan came back with two-point glasses of beer, and handed me the paler one. The glass was heavy in my hand.

It felt expensive and adult. I didn't understand why we had to be there in that place. At the same time, there was nowhere in the world that I would rather have been. I thought about what a special, unusual person Ivan was, how much more present and alive than other people.

How he said and thought things that nobody else said or thought. And how ready he was to walk round with me for hours. All I had to do was write him an email, and then he walked around with me all day long, who else in the world would do that.

Health, Ivan said in Russian, and we clinked glasses. The beer was cold and not especially unpleasant, but I couldn't tell what the point of it was. Like the iced coffee, it was at once watery and bitter. Apparently that was desirable.

Is it okay? Ivan asked, "I'm not sure," I said. He picked up my glass and took a sip. I looked at him closely. It's beer he said shrugging. Try this one. He pushed his glass towards me.

I tried it. It tasted extremely similar to mine. "Do you like mine better?" he asked. I shook my head. We traded back our glasses.

I wasn't sure I would be able to finish the beer. Swallowing became increasingly difficult. I thought I could feel my body swaying ever so slightly on the high bar stool. I didn't find that talking was easier. All around us people were laughing and roaring so loudly

Lingo by the cranberries was playing in the background.

“You've got me wrapped around your finger, the singer warbled over and over.”

In a girly, excessively beautiful voice. It felt ominous to me. The asusized girliness, infatuation, and weakness.

Do you like the cranberries?

Ivan asked, "I don't really like this song," I said. "Do you? I like it."

“He was putting a part in counting a ward of fives and singles.”

"I have enough money for two more each."

I realised he meant two more beers.

My heart sank. I had thought getting a drink. I meant you only had to have one.

“You have just been listening to Bill Nayght.”

In ill advised by Bill Nayght. And we hope you've enjoyed it. Please keep your questions coming. Not the weird short of questions, I assure you. It's nice to have fresh data.

You can send them in via our Instagram, which is at ill advised by Bill Nayght. We look forward to hearing from you. And take it easy wherever you go. Oh, whatever else you forget. Don't forget to disco.

[Music] Ill advised by Bill Nayght. It's produced by the Kiara Grigori. Actually, Kiara Grigori. And Dallas Williams.

And the assistant producer is Angeliic Somers, which is pronounced Somers. And it's an iPod Studio production.