Luke Thompson

She's in the hot seat.

Right, to be in the hot seat, that's in a situation where you have to answer questions.

To be in the hot seat.

I used to do an exercise in my English lessons called the hot seat.

And you basically put a chair in the front of the class and the students take it in turns to sit in the chair, the hot seat, and then all the other people in the class sit.

You know, can ask them questions, maybe even difficult questions, or just ask them questions, or test them on a bit of English that I've written on the board behind the person in the hot seat, and they can't see what it is.

It could just be a phrasal verb or something, and I keep writing different bits of vocabulary that we've done in the class, and the people in the room have to ask the person questions to help them guess what the word is, you know, something like that.

So that's to be in the hot seat where you're in a...

The spotlight is on you and you've got to answer difficult questions.

Is my brain going to work properly throughout this episode?

I hope so.

So do you as well, I imagine.

The police are in hot pursuit.

That means chasing someone.

I'll come back to that as well.

The issue became too hot to handle.

meaning it was too controversial, too problematic to deal with, too hot to handle.

So this relates to ideas of pressure, risk, responsibility, stress, trouble.

The metaphor is that heat makes life uncomfortable.

I'm going to explain in a minute the difference between hot and heat.