Dear listeners,
Here is Answer Me This! Episode 174. Cherish it. Savour it. For it is the penultimate episode before we take a holiday until May. Aw, quit blubbing, you’ll set us off as well…
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Today we consider:
Tony Blair’s fortune
fireman’s poles
Barbie cakes
pretty jellyfish
Home on Their Own
Chartwell
southpaw mathematicians vs. rhubarb
John Major vs. Rufus Hound
Paul O’Grady’s fake shed vs. John Wayne Gacy
This Morning‘s head-shrinker
Cluedo, the telly quiz adaptation
post-prime ministerial perks
Catalog Living
Britney’s derriere
and
the new face of Blue Harbour.
Plus: Olly shows the ladies a good time in Wood Green; Helen dusts off her good manners in order to tell you that your flies are undone; and Martin the Sound Man WAS NOT LOOKING AT ANYTHING IN HIS PRIVATE BROWSER, alright? This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (find it on iPhone or Android) tells how Olly beat the charity auction system, because even altruists love a bargain.
You’ll be needing noises to destroy the sweet sound of silence while we’re away, so go to answermethispodcast.com/audible to get yourself free and half-price audiobooks. And to send this series out in a blaze of glory, please delight us with your QUESTIONS for next week: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. It’ll be something to remember you by on our vacation; like a knot in a hankie, a pressed flower in the pages of a Bible, or a repent-at-leisure tattoo of your face.
See you next week!
Helen & Olly
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Tags: advertising, Alan Carr, aquarium, astronomy, Barbie, beauty products, board games, boobs, Britney Spears, Catherine Zeta Jones, celebrities, celebrity endorsements, clothes, Clue, Cluedo, cosmetics, decor, dolls, employment, endorsements, entomology, etymology, euphemisms, Fern Britton, finances, fish, fish tanks, French, fruit, games, Gordon Brown, Graham Norton, harebrained theories, home makeovers, IT, jellyfish, John Major, Labour, left-handedness, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margaret Thatcher, Marks & Spencer, marriage, masturbation, mathematics, maths, modelling, models, moisturiser, moon, MPs, Nigella Lawson, ointment, Paul O'Grady, pensions, politicians, politics, prawn, prime minister, product placement, rhubarb, Ricki Lake, sartoria, secrets, set dressing, sets, sinister, slang, technology, telly, tents, the moon, theories, This Morning, toiletries, Tony Blair, Tories, trousers, TV, Ulrika Jonsson, unemployment, Winston Churchill
Answer Me This! Podcast 
April 16, 2011 at 5:47 am |
I love tits me!
April 12, 2011 at 4:39 am |
Olly,
More about Easter Island:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/australia-and-new-zealand-history/easter-island4.htm
April 8, 2011 at 8:44 pm |
You were taking the piss out of the (admittedly stupid) question about the moon, but your replies weren’t exactly intelligent themselves:
; “only one face of the moon is ever facing the Earth and that’s the dark side” – the first bit is correct, but as you rightly pointed out earlier if only the dark side was facing us then we wouldn’t see it. You and the original questioner might want to read http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/moon/phases.html
: “the blues skies you get is because of the scattering of the atmosphere” – obvious you meant “because of the scattering of the light by the atmosphere” – see http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/sky.htm
: “there’s just one American flag up there” – each of the successful Apollo missions (Apollos 11, 12, 14-17) so there are 6 American flags there
Incidentally, the average temperature on the moon is -53C, the minimum is -173C – but the maximum temperature in the direct sunlight on the moon is 116C
April 9, 2011 at 8:56 am |
Au contraire, Steve – I said ‘and that’s NOT the dark side’. The dark side being the bit we never see, because, as I went on to say, the sun does shine on it.
April 8, 2011 at 7:45 pm |
The fellow asking about the moon always being dark, to my mind was asking why the sky is always black on the moon. As you are no doubt aware this is because the earths atmosphere reflects/refracts the suns light causing our sky to appear blue.(its probably a bit more complicated than that but I have always been satisfied with that explanation).
I love your show, and listen every week but alas! this is only the latest of a number of questions of which you have completely missed the point. This one I knew the answer to but on other occasions I have been disappointed. Please try harder to make your show BOTH informative and amusing.
April 8, 2011 at 7:51 pm |
hmmm….martin actually mentions this doesn’t he? I’ll get my coat…
April 9, 2011 at 8:59 am |
Well, James, firstly we didn’t think that was what he was asking, so don’t get cross at us for not asking a question we didn’t think was being asked. Secondly, sometimes being informative comes at the expense of being amusing, so in the interests of remaining a lighthearted comedy podcast, we often have to cut out a lot of pertinent fact. Thirdly, we’re not paid to do this, so can’t spend four days a week researching stuff! So, please forgive our deficiencies.
April 8, 2011 at 9:51 am |
Some Greggs actually do have seating areas! Well crappy picnic table type things outside anyway. At least one of the several trillion branches of Greggs in Birmingham City Centre has recently been re-fitted and has a number of picnic/cafe type tables outside the shop for people to sit down and eat at. Admittedly being next to branches of Pret a Manger and McDonald’s kind of spoils this unfortunately, but its still quite an amusing sight to see bunches of brummies huddling up to stay warm eating a sausage roll outside of a Greggs!
I think the reason a lot of Greggs don’t tend to have seating is to do with VAT and tax that has to be added if you eat it ‘in-store’ (although this may just be a cruel hoax portrayed by other food establishments)
April 8, 2011 at 9:25 am |
I’m very good at Maths, I make up for it with being not very good at English.
I’m left handed and hate rhubarb.
April 7, 2011 at 11:16 pm |
there’s a sit down gregg’s on the strand!
April 7, 2011 at 11:29 am |
Re telling somebody trouser fly/flies are open … an aged uncle of mine used the phraase: the cage is unlocked, but the lion is sleeping.
Long ago, I read the first book of etiquette written by Miss Manners. Her guidance about appearance gaffes and sartorial malfunctions was to tell the person if there was something they would be able to do about it.
PP
April 7, 2011 at 11:19 am |
Hi. Re decolletage — I live in USA, and you are much closer to sources of froggie knowledge than I. But I believe that col is collar, decol means without a collar. Continuing rubbish etymology, it’s amusing to think that the etage is “floor”/”storey”. but probably it’s just one of those endings that means “thingy” or “area” or “ish”. If a woman is wearing a buttoned up blouse, there isn’t any decolletage.
Related to this, I was once reading old US humorist S.J. Perelman, and he described a busty woman with the phrase “il y a du monde au balcon”. Literally, “the balcony is crowded”.
PP
April 7, 2011 at 10:16 pm |
well, PP, you’re on the right track, although your etymological musings are tinged with madness. ‘Collar’ and ‘decolletage’ both come from the Latin for neck, so decolletage (the -tage merely being a grammatical suffix, showing it is a noun formed from the adjective ‘decollete’) implied that the neck had been uncovered. And then some. By ‘some’ I mean ‘cleavage’.