Friends! This is your annual reminder to pipe the Answer Me This! Christmas into your home, for festive advice and history and fun facts (and to drown out the sounds of Christmas rows). There’s a bit more seasonal content in AMT328 and 329 – and in this episode of The Allusionist, in which I learn that Christmas cards used to have bacon stuck to the front, and that Santa was almost called Captain Christmas.
Recently I’ve been racing through Woman of the Hour and Another Round, but because I’m currently mired in the immense annual task of compiling the AMT Best Of – out on Christmas Eve! – I haven’t had much time to listen to many other things over the past few weeks, hence the recent absence of Thursday Listening Parties. But please go to the comments to share the shows that have been delighting your eardrums lately.
We’ve received a LOT of questions about Monopoly over the years, so I think many of you will want to hear the 99% Invisible episode about it, the least enjoyable board game ever invented.
In Answer Me This! Episode 329, one questioneer wrestles with the ethics of breeding Christmas-truther children who ruin everything for the other kiddos; another introduces us to the Catalan Christmas tradition we now desperately need to appropriate. Listen to find out about those, and also these:
Plus: Olly rode the carousel we all dream of riding; at primary school, Helen reined in her Junior Richard Dawkins; and Martin the Sound Man manages to ruin Oral-B for everyone, thanks Martin.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, the talk of free coffee fraud turns to a far graver offence: Toys R Us fraud. To hear, fire up the app on your iThings, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks very much to today’s sponsor Squarespace.com, who’ll give you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you invoke the code ANSWER.
Thanks also to everyone who has supported the show by buying the Answer Me This! Christmas album. If you haven’t yet, this is really the time of year to do so. April, not so much. It’s available at answermethisstore.com, as well as some of the online retail behemoths – links and further details of the contents are available at answermethispodcast.com/christmas.
We’ll return with the Best of AMT 2015 on 24th December 2015.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT329 Child-Friendly Rating: 5%. Some swears; some bawdy references; and the greatest peril of all: THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS OF CHRISTMAS GIFTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN AND WE THINK YOU DO. So, beware! Also, Olly encourages your children to break the airport rules, which will probably get them tasered. •••
When romance and real life collide, problems happen, such as this one befalling Dave:
I recently became single after being with my ex for a bit over 3 years and I decided to try out some dating websites.
I was chatting for a few days with a girl and felt like it was going well, so I asked if she’d be prepared to meet up. And she was! So, we arranged to meet at Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth in about a week and a half. We didn’t actually set a time and she didn’t give me her number, but she said she was looking forward to it.
Then today (a couple of days later) I’ve seen that she has deleted her profile on the site where I met her so I have no way of getting in touch.
I guess I can do nothing and should just forget about it, but it occurred to me that if this was a film or a music video I’d go to Spinnaker Tower anyway and just wait there all day in case she does show up. Answer me this, do people actually do that in real life and should I?
Readers, sprint to the comments and weigh in: to live like a romcom, or to accept one has been ghosted?
Ding ding ding, someone who knows what they’re talking about has written in! On the subject of paintings of the visibly pregnant Virgin Mary, Asa says:
I’m a historian of medieval art, so I was delighted to hear the subject come up in AMT328. You were talking about the lack of medieval images of Mary pregnant. There are, though, TONS of these. The trouble is that you need to know the right term to search. “The Visitation” is the term for a scene wherein Mary and her cousin Elizabeth get together to celebrate their simultaneous pregnancies — Mary pregnant with Jesus (of course) and Elizabeth a bit further along in her pregnancy with John the Baptist.
The associated feast was made church policy in 1389, which might be why there are more images starting in the 15th century, but there are also just more of all kinds of images starting in the 15th century. The Knight’s Templar theory you found is almost certainly not right. Pretty much everything said about the Templars is tinged with Dan Brown conspiracy theories.
Weddings are an emotive topic; Harry Potter is…also an emotive topic? So it is to be expected that you are feeling some very strong emotions following AMT328‘s mention of a Harry Potter-themed wedding. Look how worked up Steven is:
The “why not” for a Harry Potter (or similar) wedding: because it’s the very worst kind of forced fun. The very idea of going to a wedding where people “play Quidditch” makes me squirm with awkwardness, even considering that I’d obviously sit inside at the bar with the older members of the wedding party. I would rather not go at all than endure being around that, which I know is totally irrational, but there we go.
Like Steven, we intimated that wedding guests would not be properly playing Quidditch, causing many of you to write to tell us that Quidditch is a real game that real people play. Yeah, we know there’s a flightless version of Quidditch – similar to field hockey, but you play with the stick wedged into your crotch – but for attendees of a Harry Potter wedding, it’s this
Harriet in Carentan, France is a real person, I think. She writes:
When I was about 11/12, my mom made up a boyfriend for me. He was called Tarquin and she would do impressions of him and the kinds of loving things that this, entirely fictional, person had said to me and these impressions were always done in a high-pitched voice with lots of flutterings of hands and overly posh accents.
She even carried this bizarre joke on into my teens while I had real boyfriends and girlfriends. According to her these were insignificant relationships and that Tarquin was my one true love who I would eventually marry.
I’m in my 20s now and fortunately she has stopped mentioning Tarquin, and I had managed to forget about it all until I listened to episode 327. I’d thought it was just something weird my mom did, but now I’m wondering if in fact it’s a common joke for parents to make about their children and that most people just never mention it. I’d be interested to know if any of your other listeners have written in to say that their parents invented relationships for them.
Ryan in Brighton wants to check the certificate for Olly’s English degree. He writes:
In AMT328, did Olly pronounce Don Juan (Don Whan) as “Don Jew-an”?
If so, was this a Freudian slip?
He did, and it wasn’t! Olly was referring to Lord Byron’s lengthy poem Don Juan, in which ‘Juan’ was indeed pronounced ‘Jew-an’, to rhyme with such phrases as ‘true one’ and ‘threw on’. This is what passed for a joke for a Romantic poet.
How do you tell your mum that she is a STUPID WOMAN who is RUINING CHRISTMAS by buying you the WRONG GIFT? Plus other polite and classy problems compose Answer Me This! Episode 328, in which we contemplate:
Plus: Olly plans never to get married, but maybe he’ll change his mind purely to have the themed wedding of his Jennifer Connelly-starring dreams; Helen turns her profound laziness into creative tips; and Martin the Sound Man puts the beats into his favourite Christmas carol.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, available for iThings, Android and Windows devices, Olly reveals the surprise hair inspiration of his mid-1980s barnet: Princess Diana.
Feeling festive yet? Click here to read about and then buy the Answer Me This! Christmas album; and click here to get the delightful Christmas podcasts from today’s sponsor Dobbies Garden Centres – and there’re plenty of Christmas tips and decorations to buy at dobbies.com and in store.
••• AMT328 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. No bawdy content, but there are a few swears, and the possible demystification of the machinations behind Christmas presents IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. •••
Would you rather feel The Weeknd’s face or see Andy McNab’s face? Actually, you don’t have to choose; you’re probably equally capable of doing both/neither. But it’s something to think about while you listen to Answer Me This! Episode 327, in which we also deal with questions about:
party poppers
piercings vs mum’s disapproval
Sixpence None The Richer vs drug references
Olly vs his own feelings about Tom Cruise
being struck by lightning
vegetarian weddings
envious actors
humiliating ham
the moment Dr Martens ceased to be the footwear of rebels
and
Greek wine.
Plus: we learn who is Olly’s 47th favourite film star; Helen’s imaginary boyfriend didn’t even spring from her own imagination; and Martin the Teenage Physics Weirdo thinks people should express themselves through their appearance and through their weddings.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, Olly reveals: 1. what he thinks of ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers; 2. which songs make him want to piss. We know you’ve been desperate to learn these two things, so rush to the app, which is available for iThings, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks very much to today’s sponsor Squarespace.com, who’ll give you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year (and with which you get a URL, loads of storage and 24/7 support) if you stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say five times use the code ANSWER.
••• AMT327 Child-Friendly Rating: 55%. Some swears, sex and drug references, and discussions that may encourage your offspring to modify their bodies with piercings or party poppers. •••
My aunt and uncle tried for years to have a baby, using all sorts of expensive treatment. When facing defeat, and after my uncle bought an Alfa Romeo as an ersatz object of affection, my aunt became pregnant. During the pregnancy the doctors discovered my aunt had a tumour which was preventing their earlier attempts at pregnancy. They removed the tumour, the baby was born, everyone was doubly ecstatic.
But now, 13 years later and probably because of the troubled pregnancy, my aunt is completely attached to her son. He literally hasn’t had a day away from her his entire life and they still sleep in the same bed together. My mum is very concerned about this but has no idea how to broach the subject. When they stay at mum’s house for Christmas she makes up the spare bed for their son and gives his parents her bed – in an attempt to make a point – but the dad just takes the spare bed and my cousin and aunt sleep in mum’s bed together.
This isn’t normal, is it? His voice has broken and I can’t help thinking about how I was when I was 13 – riddled with hormones and unpredictable boners. Surely he will suffer from arrested development?
Anyway answer me this: how on earth do you say to someone “Stop sleeping with your son”? Even drawing attention to it is incredibly awkward. How would you guys handle this?
These two thoughts are vying for supremecy in my brain:
1. “I’m not a parent, so I’m somewhat reluctant to weigh in on other people’s family situations – what do I know? And who decides what is ‘normal’ anyway?”
2. “I’m an extremely judgemental person! This is – this is – this is…problematic.”
So, readers, I delegate to you the task of going to the comments and dropping some advice.
And I’ll just throw in this secondary question: the aunt and uncle’s relationship still seems to be going. Is this good or bad?
Get yer dolls out for the lads! Following AMT326‘s conclusion that seeing Russian dolls is more satisfying than owning Russian dolls, we want to see yours.
Nick has supplied:
Whilst on honeymoon in Sydney in May 2012 I came across this fitting tribute to the ‘King Of Pop’.
Stunning.
Is it wrong that I’m a little saddened they’re not in chronological order?
And the dolls have been coming out on Twitter. We’ve got: (more…)
Duh duh diddleiddle duh duh dur durr, duh duh diddleiddle duh duh dur durr, DUH duddle ur dur DUH duddle ur dur duddluddluddle uddle uddle ududerder, here’s some feedback from Sebastian:
I just finished listening to AMT325 and wanted to chime in. I am an actual circus performer and I can say that the March of the Gladiators (which is the name that circus folk actually refer to the song as) is deeply loved among circus people. That song will make us all stand up a little taller and get ready to put on a show!
It is so tied to circus that it pulls people in from off the street to go see if there is a circus show going on. The only other song that I can think of that gets circus people feeling excited and nostalgic like that is The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.
As far as most of us are concerned, it hardly matters how the song came to be, it is just a part of circus life. You might hate it when you first join the circus, it might seem cliche for the first few years, but after years, when you’ve been from circus to circus to circus, that song stays the same and it becomes deeply comforting.
It may be deeply comforting – until IT gets involved.
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