Just two days after release, The Answer Me This! Jubilee is TOP 20 in the iTunes album chart!* So thankyou very much indeed to everybody who has bought it already; and if you feel moved to do the same, click here to buy it off iTunes. UPDATE: it’s now available on Amazon too, and even better, at our own AMT Store.
In return for your £2.49 outlay (or equivalent in your native currency), you receive 57 minutes and 55 seconds of all-new Answer Me This!, themed around Her Maj’s upcoming Diamond Jubilee.
Amongst the many questions royally addressed are:
• Could the Queen get away with murder? • What’s the deal with all those 21-gun salutes? • Does the Queen have a mobile phone? • Are you really supposed to pronounce ‘regina’ like ‘vagina’? • Who has seen the Queen’s tits? • Where can I run into Prince Philip on an average day? • What’s the point of the monarchy, anyway? • And what the bloody hell is going on with those nearly nude guys in the Danish monarchy’s coat of arms?
We hope you enjoy it. If you don’t, blame Prince Andrew, like everybody else does.
*Information correct at time of writing. At time of reading, it might have dropped so far out of the iTunes chart that it is outside by the recycling bins.
Although we’ve come
To the end of the road current series,
Still we can’t let go – because we’ll be back on 19th April with yet more Answer Me This!. So long and adieu, here is Episode 210:
Today we ponder:
the Angel of the North Pet Sounds
sham marriage a different type of big bird Tom Jones
Mel Blanc
emotions vs. money
Matt Willis vs. televisions
Alice Cooper vs. vending machines
Jesus vs. Spongebob Squarepants
Father Christmas on film
Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth
and
Abraham Lincoln.
Plus: we learn the one place where Olly actually keeps quiet; Helen whips ’em out for SPRIIIIIINNNG BREEEEAAAK!; and Martin the Sound Man puts a price on his hand in marriage. But you might as well barter him down to something more realistic, like £20 and a Chocolate Orange.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Celeste from Elephant and Castle about whether you can sell your house without the intervention of an estate agent. Of course you can! But, before you ask, you are probably better off not performing your own laser eye surgery.
There is more to listen to during our absence, because by royal appointment (not really) we’ve released the Answer Me This! Jubilee, a 57-minute romp through the massive numbers of questions you lot send us about Her Maj and the like. Click here to get it.
Don’t forget us while we’re away: keep sending your QUESTIONS, as voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Hands up who thinks that in movies, there ought to be more time dedicated to the mundanity of living? Tim Burton ought to spend less time on the fantastical elements of storytelling, and more time satisfying the curiosity of Ryan in Melbourne, who asks:
How does Edward Scissorhands pee?
How does Edward Scissorhands do ANYTHING? Apart from cut hair and sculpt ice, he’s ill-equipped to do anything without serious damage! Anyway, we know that Vincent Price didn’t finish off Edward Scissorhands – hence his death-hands and emo style – so I bet he doesn’t have a bladder, let alone conventional urine-evacuating equipment.* Even if he did, he would have sliced it off at some point during his lonely years in the castle.
But if, for the sake of argument, he does have the usual human formation, I reckon Dianne Wiest would help him. She wouldn’t let him get piss on his hands, because they’d rust up.
*It has been a while since I’ve seen the film, so there might be a comical “Look, Edward’s doing a piss in the garden!” scene which I’ve forgotten.
We all prefer our partners to be shallow, unevolved and un-selfactualised (whatever that is). Don’t we? Well, Sean does:
My girfriend has spent the last six months volunteering as a vet for a donkey and horse charity in Luxor, Egypt. As her trip comes to an end she seems to keep reflecting on how much she has changed and learned about herself.
So answer me this: how do I go about undoing all this personal growth and turning her back into the girlfriend who left for Egypt last September?
Readers, over to you: in the comments, please tell Sean how to transform this spiritually blossomed woman back into a selfish, short-sighted bint. Sorry, donkeys, but you’ve had it good for far too long.
Here’s the latest entry in our apparently weekly new series, ‘Facebook’s fucking up my family‘. It’s from Dave from Plymouth:
Like most technology savvy 34-year-old men, I have a Facebook page, and like many others side the rise of Twitter, I don’t really bother using it anymore.
However, in the last couple of weeks I’ve had two new friend requests. The first was from my mother and the second was from my 9-year-old daughter.
I’m happy to allow my mum to view my page, as she’s unlikely to be too upset by the occasional swearword or drunken photo which may get posted; on the other hand, I’d like to prevent my daughter from having her wonderful image of me crushed, as well as learning that alcohol and rude words are to be in some way encouraged.
Would I be right in refusing my daughter’s friend request, or am I condemned to a lifetime of intricate security and viewing settings as well as constant censorship of my own Facebook page?
You know you can customise your posts so they only get sent to a selection of your friends, right? Try it, it’s easy! You could even set up a ratings system: PG for those which are suitable for the under-12s, 18 for everyone else.
I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped the peril that approaches from the other direction, however. Are you sure you want to be privy to pictures of your mum falling over drunk, her flirty wall conversations with your friends, or her colourful swearbombs being detonated all over your news feed?
It seems a large number of you have ridden in hearses, despite being still alive! Apropos of our discussion of the funereal vehicles in AMT209, we’ve heard from Stephen from Greenock:
I play the bagpipes and in my student days made a good side-business piping at funerals. The one problem is I don’t drive. At one particular funeral, I asked the funeral director if I could hitch a lift in the hearse, as I’ve been known to do.
Most hearses are two drivers’ seats plus three behind, then the area for the coffin…but not this one. This has the two front seats (taken by the funeral director and priest) and a seat behind each of these. And instead of the third middle seat, the top end of the coffin went there. I therefore spent a very uncomfortable ten minutes sitting alone in this hearse at the church with the coffin (and within, the head-end of the deceased) right at my shoulder while the priest and funeral director chatted with mourners!
That, I would say, is an occupational hazard.
As we suspected, there’s a lively market for second-hand hearses, confirmed by Kevin:
During the summers my father was in college/university, he worked for a harpsichord builder who loved used hearses. You get them incredibly cheap because no one wants to be buried in a used one, they have very good suspension, and they already have rollers in the back for moving boxy wooden things about the size of a coffin or a harpsichord.
Very sensible! Far more so than the pre-owned hearse of Celeste from Elephant and Castle‘s acquaintance:
My uncle used to drive a hearse, in the 1970s or earlier. He is a bit of an eccentric, been a professional violinist since the age of nineteen, and has an interesting history of weird cars and motoring in general – buying a car without a reverse gear; leaving a jar of pickled gherkins in an old car of his, and having not screwed the lid on properly it leaked vinegar everywhere so he had to sell the car; and buying a gold-coloured Mercedes (to the horror of my aunt), as well as losing his license pretty much every year.
Back in his hearse days, I believe he was involved in a car crash (not his fault) and he, his now ex-girlfriend and her daughter suffered relatively few injuries because he was driving a hearse at the time, which was especially well padded/armoured/hardcore. So hearses are very safe – which seems a bit pointless as normally the people in the back are already dead.
Yes, but they are also in a big heavy wooden box, which could cause very comprehensive damage if it shot straight through an inadequate crumple zone. In a way, the death industry is foolishly protecting itself against getting extra work.
It is the 75th birthday of Maltesers, so in Answer Me This! Episode 209 we’re celebrating by berating their current advertising campaign for being sexist. Although we similarly spent Grandad’s 75th birthday party berating him for his unreconstructed chauvinism. Can’t trust these septuagenarians to say the right things.
On the agenda this week:
Trojans
buskers
aerated foods
Debra Winger
Stephen Fry’s cab
organ donation
pink newspapers
Boots
Christian barbecues Arne Jacobsen‘s arse
and
hearses.
Plus: Olly lets yet another brilliant enterprise go to waste, but there’s nothing stopping any one of you future billionaires taking it onto Dragon’s Den; Helen finds the world’s best busker – catch him before he goes up in flames; and Martin the Sound Man may be a science whiz, but even he can’t get his macaro(o)ns to work.
It’s quite a literal Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) this week, as we address a question from Volker from Germany who likes to enjoy himself in the workplace lavvies after lights out. And if this, plus the final question of the episode about WCs, has ramped up your curiosity about matters lavatorial, our video masterwork upon the subject can be viewed at the bottom of this post.
We’re also moonlighting on episode 7 of Ian Collins Wants a Word , the new podcast by star of AMT149 Ian Collins. Click here to get a dose of it.
Next week will be our last episode before we go on a little holiday, so hurry to send in your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We’ve got a bit of a treat for you while we’re on our break, though, so be sure to join us for AMT210 to discover what that is. A packet of Maltesers each? NO. Not until those tasty little bastards start treating us all as EQUALS.
Lawyers! You’ve already done the booklearning, so please go to the comments and answer this question from Stuart from the Isle of Wight:
My girlfriend recently broke her little toe by stubbing it on the sofa (ouch!), and tried to convince me I should cut her toe off as it would be less painful.
I felt a bit uneasy about this and the possible legal situation it could put me in, so declined her offer.
But, answer me this: if I had gone ahead with said request, would I have been doing anything illegal? Even thought it would have been an act between two consenting adults?
And if it was legal, at what point would the law intervene? The ankle? Knee? Thigh?
By the way I think I should clarify this is only a theoretical question. Her little toe has healed nicely now, and anyway I’m not a psychopath!
Thank goodness for that. I thought you’d lost your mind – what would be the point of amputating her toe, anyway, without a good Big Lebowski-type scheme in mind for the detached digit?
As if break-ups weren’t bad enough, Web 2.0 has to add to the pain. Pete from Somerset writes:
I recently broke up with my girlfriend of two and half years. She was my first long term relationship, and we both became quite involved in one another’s families, and added one another’s family, friends etc on Facebook.
Now that we have split up, I am unsure as to what the social protocol is when dealing with her family and friends, as I have become quite good mates with some of them, but I still feel awkward. So, answer me this: should I remove them all and hope they forget about me, or should I just leave it?
It somewhat depends upon how acrimonious the split was. If it fell at the Baldwin-Basinger end of the scale, there’s no point pretending that you and these people will ever be fraternising. Cull! Cull, before these people become weapons in the battle between you.
If, however, the break-up scored more towards the Cox-Arquette end, after a suitable amount of recovery time has elapsed, you and your ex might be friends yourselves, or at least civil enough to move in the same social circles. In this scenario, it would be unnecessary to destroy your cordial relationships with your newishfound friends, although you would have to be prepared for the possibility of photos of your ex and her new paramour appearing in your news feed.
Readers, what do you reckon? Tell us in the comments about how you still happily play Lexulous with your former mother-in-law; or, conversely, how your ex’s bestie got your account shut down after reporting your photos as offensive.
Team AMT need to get themselves some eardrops, because they’ve been mishearing things all over the place lately! Firstly, Alastair from Sheffield:
Where does the saying ‘Laymam’s terms’ come from? Who is this Laymam and why does he (or she) need things to be explained so simply?
Laymam was a famous eighteenth-century dunce, who tripped over his chamber-pot and hit his head upon an ornamental bust of Pitt the Elder, after which damage his IQ was notoriously sub-Forrest Gump. However, his curiosity was undimmed, so he launched a fashion for extremely simply-worded explanations, upon which tradition Answer Me This! is built.
Sorry, Alastair; I shit you. The saying is in fact ‘layman’s terms’, the word ‘layman’ having been coined some 900 years ago to denote a person who wasn’t in Holy Orders. Way back then, laypeople tended to be uneducated and illiterate, and the monks and clergy the clever-clogs of society. If they were to disseminate information to the masses, they had to couch it in layman’s terms, rather than high Latin. There!
Our next linguistically-confused correspondent is Rachel:
My Grandma said to me ‘Stitchin’ Time save nine’ and I know that it’s a famous saying but I have no idea what it means so answer me this, what does the saying ‘Stitchin’ Time saves nine’ actually mean?
Stitchin’ Time was a country-blues crossover artist, who made the headlines for heroically rescuing nine line-dancers after a particularly vigorous hoe-down caused the barn floor to collapse. Tragically, fifty-eight other dancers perished.
Or, rather more prosaically, the expression is ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, a homily meaning that a small amount of timely effort will prevent considerably larger efforts later. IE mending a small hole in your best jumper is much easier than putting off the task then later having to contend with a much larger hole, which you’ll never be able to mend invisibly! Or, to put it in Laymam’s terms, it’s better to stage an intervention for a friend at the point where their drinking looks like it might be getting out of control, rather than waiting until they have liver failure.
Finally, Alex from Hertfordshire requires clarification:
I listen to Answer Me This! every week, commuting in my car, giggling to myself and singing along to the jingles. However, there is one jingle that I can’t sing along to properly and it’s bugging me.
It’s the one with the Joyce Grenfell sound-alike which starts “Life is full of questions, but there are some answers you should know…”
I have a good idea what item 1 – “No it will not fall off, but moderation in all things” – is referring to, and also can take a guess at what item number 2 is talking about: “Yes, there probably is, but we won’t find out in our lifetime”. And of course there’s the completely clear item 4: “If you try and slip her one, it would ruin your friendship”, but I always stumble at item 3, which sounds like “Most people prefer coralee but my personal favourite is doulton”. The only Coralee that I know is my kid’s dancing teacher, who is lovely but hardly podcast jingle material and the only Doulton I can think of is the china company (are we talking sanitary ware?).
Please can you put me out of my misery, help get me singing again, and educate me properly: Who or what are ‘coralee’ and ‘doulton’?
Sigh. It’s hardly going to enter the canon of great misheard lyrics, but the line which has eluded you thus far, as enunciated by the marvellous Joanna Neary, is: ‘Most people prefer Connery, but my personal favourite is Dalton.’
I’ll leave you to deduce the meaning of that by yourself.
Batten down the hatches, Team AMT; today Planet Earth is being lashed by the most violent solar storm in years. Unlike the usual sort of storm, it won’t knock the flowerpots off the windowsill or ruin your laundry on the line, but it MIGHT interfere with communications systems, including the internet. So hurry hurry hurry to download Answer Me This! Episode 208, then listen to it whilst you board up your windows and dust off your emergency canned foods:
This week we consider:
mermaid menstruation
ladybird literature
the Cranberries’ comeback
partying at Heathrow Airport
the Earl of Sandwich and the Earl of Sandwich
joint bank accounts The Wizard of Oz vs. Return to Oz
Muppets vs. puppets
Soo vs. Anne Robinson
Catholics vs. farmers
grease-free cribbage
Tik-Tok (the character, NOT the K€sha song)
toothpaste
kitsch
Big Bird busybody
and
ET’s hands.
Plus: Olly would like the USA to know that burgers≠sandwiches; Helen’s unlikely to be going on a dirty weekend to Blackpool, and not just because when the wife’s away, Martin the Sound Man will play. With toilet paper.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) concerns Olly’s gorgeous teeth, both real and artificial. You’d never guess which are which!
Give all of us something to chew on by sending in your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). Chomp chomp chomp.
Unofficial AMT paparazzo Mat wired us this rare sighting:
Spotted in, of all places, Wall Street, New York, US of your actual A, while I was helping fifteen Performing Arts students traipse around the city on a college trip. I’m all about the boots, myself.
Sadly the boots are off-brand, but if you want a similar bag for yourself, click here. They’re very sturdy, waterproof, and so bright and noticeable that you may well find yourself having your privacy invaded while you take a tour of the financial centres of the world.
Answer Me This! Podcast 