It was a race against time to complete this week’s episode and make it to London Road before curtain up. “But it’s the National Theatre!” you wail. “They don’t DO curtains.” You’re right. We’re talking metaphorical curtains. But we’re not talking metaphorical curtains in Answer Me This! Episode 185:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
We are, instead, talking about:
marriage certificates
prize belts
toy guard dogs
claret jugs
meat feast pizza
Ian Huntley vs. Poirot
killer whales vs. sharks
spiders vs. bananas
The Shamen, Bob Dylan and Lulu vs. the BBC Jerry Sadowitz ‘Je T’aime’ Slinky Dog
how Noel Edmonds’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop begat Live & Kicking Orcus Rodney Alcala
tall geriatrics
and
krill.
Plus: Olly lays waste to Percy Pig and Pals; Helen tells you how to liven up a TV gameshow; and Martin the Sound Man thinks the Strokes and Primal Scream are a bunch of wusses. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) tackles Olly’s golfing future. Will he? Won’t he? Will his shoulder pop out of its socket yet again? That’s not something anyone wants to see as they tee off.
We can’t tee off next week’s episode without your QUESTIONS, so deliver them as voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Fooooore!
Readers, please go to the comments and brandish advice for Chloe from London:
I am a 22-year-old female and I was recently asked out by a guy at work. We had coffee and chatted and had a good time, but when I added him on facebook I found out he’s 33. Answer me this: how big an age difference is too big? Is 11 years too many?
He’s not exactly the Hugh Hefner to your Crystal Harris, is he? Ignore the fact that when he hit legal voting age you still couldn’t tie your own shoes and give it a whirl! The problem is not so much the age difference, as whether you are both currently wanting similar things out of life – eg if one of you wants a footloose existence while the other wishes to settle down.
That said,
this pair both wanting to get married doesn’t stop it being wrongwrongwrongwrongWRONG.
Our next correspondent Claire‘s life is just like the movies! By which I mean, Claire has a problem which is akin to one of the many problems Kristin Wiig has in Bridesmaids. No, she’s not a frustrated cupcake baker, or helplessly attracted to Chris O’Dowd; her difficulty is as follows:
My friend is getting married next year and I have just received my invitation to her hen “party”, the hen is taking place in Monaco at a 5* spa hotel and will cost us “hens” £400 for a 3-night stay (room share, no breakfast!), plus spend money so around £600ish all in.
The question is, do I spend this ridiculous amount of money on a 3-day trip, or do I use the money more wisely and put it towards my family holiday?
Brides (and grooms), pay attention. THE MADNESS STOPS HERE. Before grabbing your dearest friends to join you in your pre-marital adventures, imagine each of them has sent you a letter along these lines : (more…)
We’ll take this question from Jim on the rocks with a twist:
I host a whisky podcast and whisky is one of my main interests – it is something I know a bit about and so I am embarrassed to ask this question.
Whisky is made from distilling fermented grain and then maturing it in oak casks. So how can the French Eddu be a single MALT whisky when it is made from buckwheat – which I believe is a pseudo grain not an actual grain?
I cannot pretend to have greater whisky knowledge than Jim, but I’ve done some pretty heavy-duty detective-work (ie gone to a page on the Eddu website) and found the answer. Or, at least, Eddu’s own-brand balm for Jim’s aggravation:
Whisky is by definition a cereal brandy. Barley, wheat, maize belong to the botanical family of graminae. Buckwheat or sarrasin, for its part, belongs to the polygonacae family, like sorrel or rhubarb.
A cereal is a plant which yields flour for human consumption.
The notion of cereal thus regroups graminae and one polygonaceae: buckwheat!
That seems like a risky argument to me, along the lines of, ‘I once ate a giant Toblerone for breakfast. Ergo, Toblerone is a breakfast food!’ (Obviously I wish it was, but take it from me, Toblerone really doesn’t set you up for the day.)
But perhaps one of you readers is a buckwheat expert, a graminae expert (!), or possibly even more of a whisky expert than Jim. Take to the comments to reconcile what Jim finds so irreconcilable; or perhaps his original explanation of what constitutes a whisky is the source of the problem, for by his logic, Eddu is not even a whisky at all if it’s made not of grain but of a rhubarb cousin.
Laura and Justin from the USA need your help to get their musical comedy satisfaction:
We are big fans of the Australian musician/comedian Tim Minchin; we have purchased the only one of his albums that is available in the US, and we have even been lucky enough to see him in concert. However, most of his CDs and DVDs are available for purchase only to those who have a UK e-mail address.
Helen and Olly, please answer us this: Do you know of any buying clubs or exchanges where British folks can purchase and ship items to Americans that we can’t get here, and vice versa? And if not, do you have any ideas on how we could set up such an arrangement? We would be happy to buy and ship anything to the UK in exchange for a Tim Minchin fix!
Hold on, readers – don’t take advantage of their peachy-keen offer to ship ANYTHING to the UK, I outright forbid you to co-opt Laura and Justin into your international drug/exotic animal/firearms trading empire.
If, however, you can help them out with the name of any copyright-swerving buying clubs, or if you yourself have been hankering for something only available in the US which is of roughly equivalent value to a Tim Minchin CD, go to the comments and let’s get this mutual back-scratching started.
Not to blow our own trumpets, readers, but we really solve a SHITLOAD of mysteries this week. What’s with carriage clocks? What’s Cher Lloyd on about? Why do people bother toiling away to earn money through honest means when they could just throw themselves in front of a moving car and rake in the compensation? Find out all in Answer Me This! Episode 184:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
We also speak of:
Facebook for babies
the great lost Arctic Monkeys single
the Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention
Parky’s Parker pens ‘Swagger Jagger’ vs. This is England The Simpsons Movie – X-rated
David Cronenberg’s Crash, reimagined
bears’ pre-hibernation precautions
compensation culture
Prince Edward
bulk-buying Tampax
and
the Hairy Moment award.
Plus: Olly is already preparing for the minutiae of his life to be immortalised in a museum; heretical Helen sees the World Cup as a prosaic, nay ugly, object; and Martin the Sound Man at last clears up the common History exam question about what was the primary trigger for the Second World War.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from Naomi about bathtime luxury, which unfortunately leads Helen to recall a magazine’s truly misbegotten sex tip involving pasta. Try it, then let us know whether we’re all missing out thanks to our reluctance to add spaghetti to our sexytime.
Hold up, we’re still not done! We recently guest-hosted an episode of the RadioTalk podcast; click here to hear it and find out more. And in high contrast to that serious podcast about podcasting, we also have the following: video evidence of the anonymous caller in AMT181 who thought his testicles, a stapler and the Keith and the Girl book would be a happy combination. If your curiosity really can’t resist, click here to watch. But we absolve ourselves from any responsibility for the consequences upon your psyche if you choose do so.
Something which has few negative consequences is sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Come back next week to see what we’ve done with them in AMT185. We promise we won’t staple them to our testicles.
Pay heed now to this question from lonely Leeds-dweller Alex:
I moved to Leeds for Uni 7 years ago and, after I finished my useless degree and messed around for a bit temping in terrible offices, I decided to get a career. Therefore I have undertaken a second degree, this time in nursing. However a lot of my friends have become disillusioned by Leeds’ charms and have moved away. This has left a significant hole in my immediately accessible social circles. Answer me this: how can I make new age-appropriate friends (most of the girls on my course are 18 – I think as a 27-year-old male it would look a bit weird if I were to only hang out with such young girls)?
Befriend people who are doing post-grad courses, for a start. Other than that, follow the suggestions that our sociable readers have left for you in the comments (readers, go to the comments and submit your suggestions RIGHT NOW. It is your duty to the NHS).
This must be a very common problem these days, judging by the number of versions of it we receive every week. One of you enterprising people out there should set up a Match-style site for adults who simply want to find friends. Right?
In AMT183, my brother tried to translate the businesspeak term ‘verticals’ into a recognisable concept, yet my argot-lite brain refused to compute. Thankfully I now have pictoral aids from Chris from Cardiff, Australia:
Based on my rudimentary knowledge of business jargon (from Year 12 Business Studies), my understanding of “verticals” is thus:
A “vertical” is, much like Martin and Olly suggested, a broad term for the different “genres” of businesses in the marketplace. I think one of the easiest ways to explain vertical and horizontal businesses is using a graphical analogy for wheat.
In the diagram, the vertical lines represent some of the different commercial functions of wheat. Each dot on the line represents a different point in the process between the raw material and the finished product. The processing business (marked with the red line) is able to sell its services horizontally to the different lines of use, thus expanding its market potential. The processing needed for wheat to become suitable for bread (pre-milling) is marginally different to the processing for wheat to be suitable for use in a distillery, so the business can expand over multiple markets.
Much of the time, a big business in the main markets will buy out the businesses or facilities which perform the different tasks on the vertical axis, this is called vertical integration.
So, in short, “verticals” are the general markets which a business can sell its services to.
Thanks, Chris. I will try to work the term into a sentence today.
I am most impressed by the solution James in Nottingham came up with to his own problem:
This is in response to my question last week about what I should do about this online paramour coming to visit me. Well I actually like this guy and he is a bit fragile so I didn’t want to disown him, so I resigned myself to give man up and give him a blow job as Olly suggested (actually I think Olly suggested a handjob – but does anyone who has actually had sex like a handjob? why not just wank yourself?).
However, on the night I had instead arranged a far more attractive mate of mine to constantly hit on this guy at the pub. After a few drinks, my visiting friend succumbed and kissed my mate; I acted highly offended and stormed off in a huff. The next day I met up with my visiting friend and said I was highly offended by his actions the night before and it was obvious that he was just looking for a quick shag whereas I was looking for a relationship (I’m not). He agreed and we parted on good terms and he had the ego boost of having my attractive friend hit on him.
Now I was quite please at how things had turned out: I managed to not sleep with someone I don’t fancy and he left with his ego increased and not hurt. But some of my friends think I should be ashamed of myself for my Machiavellian manipulations. Have I broken some moral code or should I congratulate myself for a job well done?
It looks like you manufactured a win for you AND a win for your visiting friend, so that’s certainly a job well done. You did, however, force your attractive friend to prostitute himself, which does present a moral conundrum for you and him. Readers, let us know what you think – and also if you’ve ever come up with as cunning a method as this to let someone down gently.
Hey! Remember that guy in AMT181 who called in having stapled his testicles to a copy of the Keith and the Girl book and claimed he had video evidence?
He has provided us with the video evidence.
Before you watch it, let us remind you that it is a video of a man stapling his testicles to a book, so prepare yourselves for the sight of a man stapling his testicles to a book. Click through to view the rest of this post if that is something you actually wish to see, but think carefully about your decision beforehand, because once seen, it cannot be unseen. (more…)
If this isn’t all too Inception for you… perhaps you would like to hear a podcast about podcasting?
It’s a special edition of The Radio Academy‘s weekly podcast RadioTalk. The show is usually presented by benign Brummie overlord Trevor Dann, and is typically about Important Issues relating to the world of radio, such as, ‘DAB’s a bit of a mixed blessing, isn’t it?’ and ‘Where is Salford, anyway?’
But this episode is presented by us, and we took our opportunity at the reins to talk all about podcasting, and ignore radio almost entirely. On a show called RadioTalk! Hahahahahhaha! Hear for yourself: You can also download it from the Radio Academy’s website here, or subscribe to it on iTunes.
We were very lucky to be joined by some awesome guests from the world of British podcasting: The Guardian‘s Francesca Panetta (producer of the Sony Award-winning Hackney Podcast); Luke Moore from the wildly popular Football Ramble; Andrew Collins out of Collings and Herrin and BBC 6 Music; and James Stirling, producer of our beloved Adam and Joe Show. We even managed to grab a few words with The Bugle’sAndy Zaltzman. How DID we manage to blag that?
We, you, and everyone else in the world with functioning ears should be celebrating following the joyful news this week that the Black Eyed Peas are cancelling their subscription to What Sample? magazine, hanging up whatever contraption it is that makes their oeuvre so appealing to people who enjoy shit parties, and taking an indefinite leave of absence from generating that infernal racket.
Yes.
But if, for some reason, you start to miss the sound of puerile nonsense, simply fire up Answer Me This! Episode 183:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
No booms, pows or lumps, we promise; just conversation upon the following:
Christmas in July
BBC1’s Coast Shakespeare in Love
Queen Middleton’s off games excuse
sample groups
substitute swears
baseball
Caroline Quentin
Annabel Chong
Anna Paquin
Neal Street
Canadian cricket
verticals
and
Danny Baker’s Dozen.
Plus: had he not been thwarted by the onset of puberty, THIS could have been Olly; Helen gives Tesco some much-needed advice to raise their game or lose their festive glove market share; and Martin the Sound Man blackmails petrol stations with his bowel movements. Concede to his demands, or face the direst consequences on the forecourt.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from Simon from Beddington, who has one problematic nipple. But which one? You have a 50% chance of guessing it correctly!
You have a 100% chance of sending us a QUESTION if you properly employ the usual means, which are leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emailing to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Our new intern Apl.de.Ap looks forward to sifting through them all.
and claimed he had video evidence?
Answer Me This! Podcast 