Archive for July, 2013

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EPISODE 262 – like Humpty Dumpty with a guitar

July 11, 2013

Hello listeners! We hope you have survived our three-week absence. If not, it’ll be no use to you to know that Answer Me This! Episode 262 is ready for your attentions:

Subscribe to AMT! on iTunes listen to the MP3 through your computer soundcloud-icon our podcast feed on Libsyn Share with Facebook

Nor to learn that in it we speak of:

the A1 (the road, not the boyband)
baseball caps
food trucks
hammock hazards
Pulse and Cocktails (link NSFW)
ice cream vans and cocktails
Steven Spielberg’s headgear
‘Looking for Freedom’ vs ‘Looking for Linda’
pate
and
great big strapping Michael Parkinson.

Plus: Olly receives the wrath of the Hoff; Helen would not give away what goes on in large discreet carparks; and Martin the Sound Man describes his brief moment as the young Frank Rossitano in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App – or, given the subject matter, this week’s Bit of Cap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android.

Please do click here to preview/purchase our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday, that was briefly but thrillingly sandwiched between Robbie and Rihanna.

And 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

AMT262 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. Question about sex shops polluting an otherwise innocent episode.

PS Click here for Historic Hoff Moment no.1, and here’s Historic Hoff Moment no.2:

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Enigma

July 10, 2013

It’s rare we receive feedback about one of our jingles, even rarer that such feedback contains courtroom drama, 90s number one hits (in Norway and Greece), venomous centipedes and tragic death. But this email from Claire from Cork has it all:

In one of your bits in the middle of the podcast, Olly has recorded a piece which goes as follows:

“Hello I’m the monk out of 90s band Enigma.
Helen, answer me this.
Why-aii-aaiiii…etc
What was that all about?”

I’ll tell you exactly what that was all about.
It was an Ami (indigenous peoples of Taiwan) traditional song.

In 1988, husband and wife duo Ying-nan Hsiu-Chu Kuo sang the song in Paris as part of a cultural exchange, where they were paid $15 a day. It was recorded by Maison des Cultures du Monde and later put on CD of ‘Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs’.

Then, Michael Cretu of Enigma fame got his grubbly little hands on it and began sampling – resulting in the classic ‘Return to Innocence’. The Kuos then took their asses to court along with EMI for violation of copyright.

They won the case which was then settled out of court in 1999 for an undisclosed amount. Cretu still maintains that he was of the impression that the song was part of the public domain.

Mr Kuo died in 2002 from a venomous centipede bite. Hsiu-Chu died a few months later.

All this drama, from a piece of elevator music.

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interesting accountants

July 10, 2013

Another bit of business left over from AMT261, addressed by Storm:

Re: the accountant who gets the ‘bored’ look from people when he tells them he is an accountant..
I’ve had this for years…I tried to evade the subject by just saying ‘I work in an office’ and then I discovered that my neighbours thought I was a cleaner!

I now try to talk about a project I’ve been working on, as I tend to find that what people think accountants do isn’t. For example I’ve recently been working on a project to open up new children’s homes.

In the 1980s there was a big move to use the private sector to provide old people’s homes, it was very successful with price decreasing and quality increasing. So the project was extended to children’s homes. Children in care are substantially different from old people, there is more shoplifting, casual violence and vandalism so the private sector haven’t been made keen to move into this market.

These places are really expensive: it costs less to send a child to Eton than to put them in a private children’s home. I met a guy who owned two children’s homes and had bought a helicopter to fly between them.

It’s better for children to be nearer their old homes, school, and friends. And I found that opening a new children’s home would save over a million pounds per year.

Good work, Storm: you’re providing many potential avenues of conversation for your chat-partner. However, not every accountant can speak of an interesting, socially important project. Does anybody have a useful gambit to say instead of, “I help a wealthy corporation stay wealthy”?

Or maybe it’s best to avoid referencing any jobs, ever. Here’s a cautionary tale from Kendersrule:

Many moons ago, while I worked at a supermarket deli counter…

*wibbley camera of the past*

One day when a woman came up to the counter to ask for some ham, we got chatting about the probiotic yoghurt drinks in her trolley.

I asked her how they tasted, as the actors in the ads all looked like they were about to vomit when they downed one.

She replied, somewhat indignantly, that she was one of the people responsible for those ads.

I said “oh” and we spent the next 30 seconds of ham wrapping time in silence. Whoops!

Silence was better than her screaming, “I don’t tell you how to wrap ham!” which would have been quite a reasonable response.

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Red Bull(shit)

July 10, 2013

Before we embark upon the new series, let’s clear up some loose ends from the last series, namely your opinions of energy drinks. Yasmine, 16, from Cheltenham, you have the floor:

I was just listening to AMT260, in which you were talking about Red Bull, a drink I have never tried or ever intend to try, being a self proclaimed H2Only – only drinking water.

I was at the doctor’s talking to a nurse about my new inhaler prescription, when the nurse said, out of the blue, “Don’t drink Red Bull with your inhaler as you can get high.”

Answer me this, is it true? And if so, WHY WOULD SHE TELL THAT TO A 16-YEAR-OLD?!?

Because she thinks it’s a safer way for you to get high than meow meow.

It sounds risky, but less so than the concoction Rachel in Phnom Penh describes:

Your assumptions about SE Asian energy drinks are basically true – in Cambodia you can buy energy drinks far stronger than Red Bull quite happily from just about everywhere. The entire teaching force of the country pretty much runs purely on energy of these drinks.

At work (I’m an ESL pre-k teacher) the staff room provides a popular local mix – a heaped spoonful of strong freeze dried coffee, another spoonful of chocolate drinking powder (Milo) about 1/3 of a cup of condensed milk. And hot water in what little space there is left. It basically tastes like a heart attack.

Answer me this – am I knocking a day off my life every time I drink this?

Dunno, because it doesn’t like the sort of substance whose long-term effects have been subjected to proper scientific studies have been done. If you’re having palpitations, mood swings and insomnia, you’re probably drinking milky amphetamines.

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