Here’s a question of table manners from Ben from Taunton:
I absolutely love eating noodles but am unable to savour this delight as every time I do the soup splashes everywhere and creates a mess. It goes over the sofa, over my body (which sometimes burns) and if I have company I am simply too afraid to eat it in case they see what a slob I am.
Please answer me this: how do I eat noodles without creating mess and pain?
1. Wear a rain poncho during meals.
2. Liquidise the soup and noodles together, then drink out of a baby’s sippy-cup.
3. Eat at a dining table, sitting on a chair. Sofa posture will not help you save yourself from the soup-noodle menace.
Another option is not to fight your noodle mess, but to embrace it (not literally, Ben, we don’t want you to scald yourself again). Here are some inspirational materials for you:
Naomi from Birmingham is one of a multitude of people asking us the following question this week:
With the birth of bonny Prince George, I was wondering if there are any contingencies in place for the eventuality that a future monarch is born with a learning disability of some kind? Also what about developmental disabilities such as autism?
I work with children with learning difficulties and am all for inclusivity and accessibility, but I have been wondering what actions and plans would be taken if this were the case?
Historically, if a monarch has been deemed incapable of ruling, they will be subbed by their regent, the next in line to the throne. So if – heaven forfend! – anything happened to our glorious majesty, Prince Charles would step in. (And just imagine the suspiciously fragrant smoke that would subsequently stream out of the bathroom window at Buckingham Palace.)
Today, in Answer Me This! Episode 264, we pretend to remember the most beloved 20th century canine entertainer. No, not Lassie! No, not Rin Tin Tin. No, not Columbo’s Basset hound… Alright, one of the Top 40 (give or take) most beloved 20th century canine entertainers: Schnorbitz.
Plus: Olly is a human salad, with the Body Shop providing the dressing (but don’t put any strawberries in it!); Helen makes things other than podcasts; and Martin the Sound Man resolves to suspend his scepticism. We’re sure that’ll last more than 0 minutes.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we consider the Bacardi Bat and its similarity to Captain Birdseye. Certainly if we were choosing one of them as the voice of a joke Twitter account, we’d go for the one that can at least communicate in words. Sonar doesn’t translate well to tweets.
If you would like us to translate your QUESTIONS into podcast, send them to us as voicemails deposited on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT264 Child-Friendly Rating: 50%. Bit of swearing, short discussion about sex, plus a section about a dead dog. Children do get upset by dead dogs.
Our next question comes from a lady known only as A, who says:
I’m in a dilemma. I know this guy who I met at an event last year and he is way older than I am. We kept in touch but kinda lost touch for a few months. Then about a few months after that we bumped into each other and he and i got back in touch and started emailing each other. Those emails got quite intimate and personal.
We soon met up and had a quiet lunch in January. Then we kept emailing each other and pretty soon we both confessed that we want each other sexually but there’s a catch: he’s married and has a daughter and wants me the way it’s written in Fifty Shades of Grey. I am into that whole thing but just on paper and haven’t even tried that whole spanking and tying up bit.
He is heading abroad for a month and when he’s back we are planning to get busy. My gut is telling me not to do so, but my mind is saying something else as I have just started an awesome new job and have got my life in order.
What should I do? Should I just give into what he and I want or push him aside? We have been friends since day 1 so that seems to be out of the question.
It seems out of the question to you only because you’re so DISTRACTED BY THE YELLING OF YOUR LOINS.
I’m assuming from your penultimate paragraph that you’ve taken leave of your senses. You’ve just started an awesome job and got your life in order – so now would be the optimal time to mess everything up? For…karmic balance? Colour me baffled.
By all means go ahead and experiment with your BDSM fantasies, but choose somebody who is unattached with whom to do so. The Fifty Shades scenario is already one in which the man controls the woman; don’t tip it further to your disadvantage by enacting it with a married man, because you will have ever little dominion as time passes. And you should be especially cautious about enabling somebody else’s extra-marital funtime because you sound like you’ve already grown emotionally attached even before you’ve deployed the bondage kit.
Readers, if you have anything to say about A’s Fifty Shades of Folly, go to the comments and do so. But she’ll probably never read this post through her blindfold made of lust and neckties.
We receive a lot of questions about the perils of cohabitation, and here’s a tricksy one from an anonymous man:
I am living in a flat with my fiancé and my best friend. The reason my friend is living with us at the moment is because he is unable to afford a place on his own.
My fiancé and I are looking to move into a house with each other, and when I told my friend he thought he is coming with us.
My fiancé is mad at me because I haven’t told him that he can’t come and I’m scared if I say this to him he will befriend me! What should I do and say?
You’ve got to just come out and say it. “So [friend], when we move into our new place, do you have an idea of where you’ll be going?” seems adequately tactful, but if you’re too wimpy even for that, then just tell him about the one-bedroom place you’re hoping to move to. If that doesn’t work, revise ‘one-bedroom’ to ‘bedsit’. And if that doesn’t work either, start banging on about the tiny house movement.
Readers, come to Anon’s assistance and offer your friend-ousting suggestions in the comments.
Before you read the following piece of listener feedback about last week’s Tour de France chat, consider this: which outfit better behoves the King of the Mountains?
This:
Or this?
I think I’ve made my point. You may continue, Sammy from Pocklington:
I was disappointed to hear Olly mockingly describe Le Tour’s polka-dot jersey as “a consolation prize.”
Whilst the yellow jersey for best general classification is the most esteemed, the King of the Mountains jersey is far from being a consolation and is an very prestigious stand-alone category. It requires huge strength and effort to amass a winning amount of points over some of the toughest and most demanding challenges in world sport.
In fact, your general tone when discussing Le Tour (and other sports in previous podcasts) leads me to ask – why the hell do you hate sport so much?
I can’t speak for Olly, but I’d guess that he started out indifferent, then this was calcified into active dislike by the expectation of Society that he, as a man(n), must give a shit about it.
In my case, you might interpret it as a rebellion against my background; for I grew up bloody well surrounded by sport. Every other member of my family is a sports enthusiast. Of rugby and cricket was the majority of discourse formed. The soundtrack of Sunday lunch was the insidious whine of the Grand Prix buzzing in from the television left on in the other room so that my dad could pop out to check the progress of the race every few minutes. All summer, the living room curtains were closed so the sun didn’t strike the TV screen while my brother was watching cricket. In autumn, there was the interminable wait for the end of the football scores being announced so people could check their pools; the prospect of watching telly that was actually entertaining telly seemed impossibly distant. The injustice stung that we were never, ever allowed to watch television in the morning, but my dad could, as long as it was athletics. My spine even now spasms involuntarily at the unmistakable tone of football commentary: the unmodulated sub-shout. And I still think it’s unfair that so many quiet pub suppers have been ruined by big screen sport – but NEVER big screen films or sitcoms or YouTube playlists or David Attenborough programmes.
Also, people take sport too seriously. Especially YOU, football fans. Don’t start fights or let your mood be dinted by a loss, because… it’s just a game! No, it is.
It really DEFINITELY is.
AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE TORTURE OF OUR FORMATIVE YEARS THAT WAS SCHOOL SPORTS.
So there are a few reasons for you to chew on, Sammy. But perhaps you’ll be placated to hear that we both managed to swallow our natural antipathy for long enough to record the Answer Me This! Sports Day album. We don’t mind sport so much if we can use it to fund the show, as it turned out.
Although we still don’t necessarily agree with all it, we admired this impassioned and informed defence of steampunk from Sean from Ashford, Oregon:
Although I am not an active practitioner I have used the style in several theatrical scenic designs and have come to respect it. True, at its worst, it is an excuse for girls to dress-up in corsets and carry nerf-guns spray painted gold. But at best it is a “maker-movement” analogous to John Ruskin and Arts and Crafts.
The true Steampunk crafts-persons are creating unique works of art from mass-produced objects: iPad cases, flash-drives, lamps, handbags, and clothing, while employing 19th-century materials: copper, brass, bronze, exotic hardwoods, leather, and velvet. It owes more to Jules Verne than Blade Runner.
The cogs in the pocketwatch are exposed, Helen, to celebrate the beauty of the working parts. Today most things we own are mass-produced by the millions in plastic boxes factory-sealed in China. Steampunk romanticizes an age of tinkerers and inventors who had a hand in creating the things they used. The welding goggles and chauffeur dusters are simply an icon representing that idea.
So yes, much of Steampunk has become an excuse for 20-somethings to dress up in waistcoats and pith-helmets, but it has a counter-cultural heart that celebrates the unique and handmade while longing for the adventure’s spirit of Victorian explorers and scientific pioneers.
We certainly enjoy the unique and handmade, too, Sean; we just still wonder why the steampunk aesthetic seems to be so homogenous. John Ruskin eschewed homogeneity. Although he also eschewed sexual maturity, so let’s not get too invested in things John Ruskin was a fan of.
Now we’re off to the library to try to find 150-year-old lithographs of Victorians carrying around nerf-guns.
However, at the time of posting, the creature hasn’t actually been born, so try to keep a lid on that ROYAL BABY EXCITEMENT for long enough to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 263:
Plus: Olly’s money-based conjuring tricks weren’t fooling anyone; if Helen’s guess is correct and the ROYAL BABY receives the same middle name as Diana, Frances (Francis for a boy), then everybody has to give her £10 in congratulation; and Martin the Sound Man knows where to go in the event of nuclear apocalypse in the middle of Europe.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we harp on about Royal Baby Krispy Kreme. No, we haven’t had a heads-up that the baby will be named Krispy Kreme Kambridge (but if it IS, you definitely have to give us all £10); we’re talking about this shit.
But…if you are absolutely desperate to piss away money on some spurious tie-in with the ROYAL BABY, then the AMT Jubilee is obviously the best direction in which to piss. And we have no qualms about recommending our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday.
Also, please do send us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT263 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%. Minimal swearing and a fair amount of educational content, but one question about a listener’s sexual dalliances and the psychologically damaging actions of his girlfriend’s parents, which some children may find troubling.
You wouldn’t throw an original Hockney into a swimming pool, but is body art more washable? Gemma asks:
How long do I have to wait after getting a tattoo to go swimming?
We’re not experts on tattoo preservation, but surely some of you readers have practical experience which can answer this question. Do so in the comments. The future blurriness of Gemma’s ink is down to you.
Presumably the reason why so many people have dolphin tatts is because they’re water-compatible. Right?
Last week we spoke of Pulse and Cocktails, that salubrious-looking Adult Shop at the side of the A1. No doubt it has stimulated many people in its time, and now it has stimulated Mark from St Neots to write in with a little bit of backstory:
It was originally built as one of the first generation McDonald’s with a larger twin site opposite. And there were plans for a bridge across the road so you could visit either site. Along with many other food sites on the A1, they were closed down as the market changed, and if you drive up and down the A1 today you will still see many empty restaurants (there are better ways to spend your time however).
McDonald’s were looking for a new occupier for the property, but whilst the property was set up as a restaurant and still had some equipment in it they wouldn’t allow any new occupier to sell chips or burgers, the staples of a motorway services, so there was little interest.
Then the property got broken into, the copper wiring stolen and the insides trashed. Walking through a pitch black former McDonald’s with a slightly stale smell of fried cooking and then your torch picks up a picture of Ronald McDonald on the wall makes you feel like you’re in a scene from Stephen King’s IT, I can tell you.
So Pulse and Cocktails actually used to be even LESS salubrious than it is now. Imagine!
Nonetheless, the site does figure in some of your misty water-coloured memories. Bryn writes:
I have to say it was a bit of a shock to hear you talk about Boothby Pagnell in your last show, as my family and I used to live there. What’s more, the A1 adult store you referenced in your show used to be a McDonald’s.
As it was just down the road, therefore easier to get to than Grantham, this was the McDonald’s our dad used to drive us to on special occasions (i.e. when mum was away and we needed tea). So you can imagine our the dismay on my and my brother’s faces when it was transformed into something rather different.
This however was nothing compared to the sheer terror and panic on my dad’s face when forced to explain to my inquisitive younger brother what had become of our local McDonald’s.
And THAT was the exact moment your brother’s childhood ended.
Two of my friends at school used to get a giant cookie from Millie’s Cookies every week and they got steadily stranger. Goes to show they’re happy to put most things on there!
Click the thumbnails to view the series of cookie abuse:
Uh oh, Hoff-based contention! Though he unites nations, he has divided our listeners. Gesine writes:
David Hasselhoff (our beloved hero) did not bring down the Berlin Wall by standing on it and belting out “I’ve been looking for freedom” – he did his New Year’s Eve gig AFTER the wall came down. He also didn’t stand on the wall – they got a crane in for him.
If he had tried to do it before November 9th 1989, he would have probably been shot. If he had come from East Berlin, he would have needed to navigate thousands of armed soldiers, barbed wire, dogs, trenches and the death strip. And even though he must have been pretty fit during his Baywatch heyday I doubt he could have climbed the 3-4m smooth concrete wall on his own.
If he had managed to come from West Berlin and climb the wall, he might have been shot as well because his blinking leather jacket must have been a pretty tempting target.
So enough ranting – Olly you can redeem yourself by answering me this – beside the ladies in red bathing suits, what made Baywatch so popular around the world?
IT WAS THE LADIES IN RED BATHING SUITS OF COURSE. What more do you need?
But Gesine, you don’t address a greater mystery, as contemplated by Neal from Crawley in West Sussex here:
Olly mentioned that Hoff’s popularity in Germany was due to his Berlin wall unification gig. However the reason he was on the wall in the first place was because he was already popular there. So. Why was he popular in Germany in the first place?
Any ideas, anybody? Go to the comments to cast light upon this mystery, although Gary rejects the assertion upon which it is based:
Normally, I am not the type to write to podcasts and express my discontent.
But I do want to clarify something about Germany and David Hasselhoff.
Yes, he had a big hit in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall, but that was the only hit. The rest is just hype and The Hoff’s PR team. Saying Germans love David Hasselhoff based on one hit is like saying Brits love Chumbawumba because of that Tub Thumping song.
Sorry to pick nits, but the truth need to be put out there.
Can it be? You’re smashing a lot of myths there, Gary…German readers, are you just going to sit there and let him defame your beloved Hoff? Or sit there and let everybody think you have mystifying taste in music?
I’d also be interested to hear from Japan-based readers about whether bands that are renowned for being ‘big in Japan’ really ever were big in Japan. Tell me: does the country have statues of Shampoo in every city, and a national holiday in honour of Corduroy?
Hello listeners,
Answer Me This! Podcast 