Frontier Psychiatrist Trivia Quiz

Answer: Michael C. Hall

The series began in 2006, with the premise being that Dexter Morgan has an inbuilt urge to kill. His adoptive father taught him to manage this by following a code which allowed him to kill only murderers who were likely to kill again and whose guilt could be proved beyond doubt. The other actors all appeared in long running series - Dominic West was in 'The Wire' and Simon Baker starred in 'The Mentalist'. Jon Hamm played Don Draper in 'Mad Men'.

The Dexter in the song was a persistent truant, who was about to be banned from school.

Answer: Switzerland

The psychiatrist's couch is a staple of cartoonists, with the patient lying down while the psychiatrist sits and takes notes. The use of psychoanalysis is usually credited to Sigmund Freud, who was born in Austria. Jung was born around twenty years later than Freud, and developed his ideas further. He is the acknowledged founder of the school of analytic psychology.

The lyrics also state 'that boy needs therapy' and 'you're a nut', which I hope no self-respecting psychiatrist would use about a patient.

Answer: Warren Frost

The kazoo is one of the simpler instruments with which music can be created. The player hums into the kazoo, where a membrane vibrates and distorts the sound into a sort of buzzing noise. Similar instruments had been used in Africa for many years, but it was Frost who gave it the name by which it is now known. Robert Frost was an American poet and (the female) Jo Frost became known as 'Supernanny' as a result of her television programmes in the early part of the twenty-first century. Jack Frost normally refers to the cold weather of winter, although the name has been borne by real people, too.

Note - some versions of the lyrics have 'ranagazoo' listed instead of 'grab a kazoo', but that would just be silly...

Answer: Deliverance

Burt Reynolds starred in all these films, with 'Hooper' coming out in 1978, 'Hustle' in 1975 and 'Gator' in 1976. 'Deliverance' is probably the best known from this era, though, and it was the one that used 'Dueling Banjos'. Unfortunately, no-one had obtained the permission of the author of the piece, Arthur 'Guitar Boogie' Smith, for its use in the film and he successfully sued the filmmakers. Smith received royalties and had his name added to the credits. The film was directed by James Boorman, and involved the clashes between city dwellers from Atlanta and the locals during a holiday in an isolated region of the state of Georgia.

In the song, the 'let's have a duel' is linked to the 'grab a kazoo' lyric, so I'll leave you to imagine 'dueling kazoos'.

Answer: Dentures

The earliest surviving dentures have been dated to 700 B.C., in the northern part of Italy, and were made from human and/or animal teeth. The Japanese made dentures from wood in the sixteenth century, although reports that George Washington's false teeth were made from wood are untrue. Various materials, such as porcelain and ivory, have also been used, with acrylic being the most common material in the twenty-first century.

'That boy needs therapy. He was white as a sheet and he also made false teeth'. No, me neither - not a clue what this means...

Answer: Wayne and Shuster

The pair included Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, and they appeared on Ed Sullivan's show on sixty-seven occasions between 1958 and 1969. They met at high school, and began their career while at the University of Toronto. Having joined the Canadian Army in 1942 the duo performed for the forces. They appeared on radio in 1946 before having their own television shows from the 1950s onwards. Wayne died in 1990 and Shuster in 2002. The Smothers Brothers and Cheech and Chong were American comedy duos, while Morecambe and Wise were one of Britain's favourite pairings.

After the frontier psychiatrist, the singer describes himself as feeling 'strangely hypnotised'. I'm beginning to know that feeling myself.

Answer: Laputa

Gulliver visited all the places listed. Lilliput was the land of the tiny people, who captured Gulliver after he was shipwrecked. In contrast, Brobdingnag was a land of giants, twelve times the size of men. The third voyage Gulliver made led to an attack by pirates, leaving him trapped on an island. The flying island of Laputa rescued him from this predicament, giving him the opportunity to visit Glubbdubdrib, which was a land occupied by magicians. As well as giving us the word 'lilliputian' to describe anything small, Swift also donated 'yahoo' to the English language, to refer to the lesser educated of the population.

The other world included milk rectangles and a man with a golden eyeball. When I said that 'ranagazoo' made no sense, I may have been a bit hasty.

Answer: Gynaecocracy

Also spelled as gynecocracy, the word is derived from the Greek words for 'women' and 'rule'. Words ending in 'cracy' refer to various types of government, such as democracy, meaning rule by the people, and autocracy for rule by one person. Geniocracy is rule by the most intelligent, or geniuses and theocracy is rule by the church - literally, by God. Timocracy is rule by property owners.

Of course, the song might have been imagining something entirely different from a government of women, but let's give the band the benefit of the doubt.

Answer: Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York, but spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, becoming a British citizen in 1985. He had previously lived in Switzerland and taken Swiss citizenship. Menuhin established the school which bears his name in the early 1960s, where talented youngsters are given the opportunity to develop their skills. Menuhin spent much of the second World War performing for the Allied troops in Europe and also gave a performance for the survivors of the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. As well as classical music, Menuhin also tried other forms, notably recording regularly with the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. The other people listed established themselves as players of the cello, a rather larger instrument.

The line in the song actually repeats the word 'violin' three times, but, apart from that, it is quoted exactly as it appears. Make of it what you will.

Answer: Common hill mynah

The mynah is native to southern Asia and is a member of the starling family. Both male and female birds are adept at learning to mimic sounds and can imitate human speech easily when kept in captivity. Because of their abilities, they are popular pets (I remember my great uncle having one when I was a child) which has led to reductions in their numbers in the wild. Other 'talking bird' include the budgerigar and some cockatoos.

These lyrics appear towards the end of the song, and go on to say 'some birds are funny when they talk', but maybe not as strange as the record is.