Author Archive

EPISODE 24 – we’re luvinitluvinitluvinit

July 19, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hello there, pals!

A mere 132 years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, Helen and Olly have got with the programme and, thanks to the lovely people at Skype, installed the Answer Me This! Question Line. For the VERY FIRST TIME in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD, questioneers are posing their problems to Helen and Olly using their very own voices. If you simply can’t quite believe it, check the hell out of Episode 24, in which we’re mithering on about such subjects as:

nether-lands
Olly’s cheesy dreams
porny exams
happy birthday Tom Stoppard
summer lovin’
the Medium cup con
the voice of Katie Price
live sex shows
fibby fibby actors
camembert
Ready Steady Weep
Tower Hamlets Benefits Office
and
The Ollster.

Furthermore, Olly starts a crusade, Helen remembers her close brush with suicide, and Martin the Sound Man has a big chuckle. There’s sure to be more where that came from; so if YOU fancy putting a smile on the face of the nation’s favourite Sound Man (and lord knows he needs it), send YOUR questions to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave them WITH YOUR VOICE on 0208 123 5877. Such wild crazy times!

Love,
Helen and Olly
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EPISODE 23 – I liked it, Simon!

July 11, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hello there, pals!

Before we proceed to the standard Episode 23 blather, here are some Exciting Bits of Answer Me This!-related news:

EXCITING BIT OF NEWS no.1: Helen and Olly* are guests on the July edition of JCast, the monthly podcast about Jewish news and arts and soforth produced by the Jewish Community Centre for London. If you want to listen to them get down with Their People and talk about such Jewy things as Barbra Streisand, Jewish humour and swingers, you can download it HERE.

*Sorry, Martin the Sound Man Fans – he wasn’t allowed to come because he’s a Goy.

EXCITING BIT OF NEWS no.2: As well as emailing us, you can now pose us questions via the all-new state-of-the-art Web 2.0 Answer Me This! Question Line! So if you’re crazy with unanswered questions but stranded without internet, just call 0208 123 5877 and pose questions with your Own Voice. For the tiny price of a local call, your mellow tones could be featured in a future episode! Which makes a nice change from our flapping voices.

EXCITING BIT OF NEWS no.3: watch out ladies, because Olly is rocking a particularly husky and sexy voice this week. Not because he’s trying to make Answer Me This! a tad more 0898, but because his usual booming baritone has been beset by a nasty case of man flu (Mann Flu?).

And here’s what’s coming out of our mouths this week:
costive pomegranate
no added sugar owl porn
the arbitrary judgement of Louis Walsh
Micra morals
fear of flying (not the rude book, the apprehension of plummeting from the sky whilst on a charter flight to Alicante)
and
Project Runway.

So if you fancy being part of such action in future episodes, like these smart kids did, email YOUR questions to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, or phone 0208 123 5877 and let them all out.

Also if any of you are attending the Latitude Festival in Southwold this weekend, pop down to the Literary Arena or the theatre in the woods to catch Helen and Martin the Sound Man make a spectacle of themselves.

Until next week, bye!

Love,
Helen and Olly

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EPISODE 22 – I’m alright for Wix Wickens

July 5, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Howdy Doody, funsters!

Aside from it being, as always, Chico Time – it’s time for EPISODE 22 of Answer Me This! Quite Literally.

Some things you might Literally enjoy, enclosed within:

Sky News – the Musical
How to play ‘Bollocks!’
Jew bras
the Ann Summers warhead
In bed with Helen and Martin the Sound Man
raffling off Peter Sissons
the bias of Peter Cockroft
and
a cat called Muff.

It’s pretty strong stuff.

Furthermore, Olly’s Thoughtcrime has dreadful consequences (and not just his balding pate), Helen gets angry at panache-free anecdotes, and everyone gets excited by the prospect of Answer Me This! fan fiction. Indeed, if you are moved by priapic fervour to write a sordid behind-the-scenes tale of Olly and Martin the Sound Man’s clandestine manlove, email it to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, which is also where you should be slinging all your questions for future episodes of the podcast.

Until next week, when we have some Very Exciting News for you, toodle-pip!

Love,

Helen and Olly
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EPISODE 21: would you like to make it a maxit?

June 28, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Dear pals,

Sorry about the inclement weather. Bitter at being nastily sunburnt through factor 50 sunscreen a couple of weeks ago, Helen called in some favours and got the summer rained off. In a half-arsed attempt to compensate for this display of rotten eggery, we offer you Episode 21 of Answer Me This!

This week we’re raining down entertainments in the form of:
fox sex
pencil cricket
the youngest Kenneth
100% Bedford
Little Chef ageism
Alphabetti
Jordan and Peter
hanging at the Trocadero
sexy Swiss
the Cheers Bar (reason for existence of)

Meanwhile Helen gets all Nancy Drew about the machinations of the female mind, Olly practices for his Spearmint Rhino audition, and Martin the Sound Man speaks as a scientist. But it’s alright – that’s right near the end, so you may have drifted off by then.

Hesitate not to send us YOUR questions for future episodes by emailing them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.

Bye!

Love,

Helen and Olly

PS The Bremen Debate wages ever on. Following Tim Scullion’s three-star assessment of Bremen, original Bremen questioneer Benjamin Partridge sent in this rejoinder:

I can’t help thinking that it is a bit early to draw any conclusions about Bremen – there was no mention of the upcoming International Maths Olympiad or the Robot Football World Cup.

I shall visit Bremen and send a detailed dossier.

Don’t leave us hanging, Partridge.

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Google me this!

June 26, 2007

* Click HERE to listen to Episode 20 *

One of the many pleasures of running this website is being able to see what Google searches have sent people here. We have mentioned before how our casual mention of the fact that Olly’s sneezes smell bad daily draws in numerous similar sufferers, who assail the World’s Favourite Search engine with such combinations as ‘sneezes that have an odor’, ‘her sneezes smell’, ‘why do sneezes smell OR stink’ or ‘sneezes smell musty’ in the hope of finding a cure for this mysterious ailment, and instead find a question-answering comedy podcast. In fact, smelly sneezers probably account for about 60% of our listenership.

However some people’s approach to answermethispodcast.com has been yet more oblique. And duly it tickles us to present you with our Top 10 Funny Google Searches Which Resulted In Answer Me This! Rather Than Anything Like What They Were Hoping To Find. Just imagine the surprise! the confusion! the disappointment! of the people who fetched up here when they Googled these:

10. Dogtanian streaming episodes
9. why would a goldfish enlarge
8. Jude Law
7. high street honeys mp3
6. auto fellation
5. where i can bye armani jeans in london
4. is it halal to give money to Comic Relief?
3. do pomegranates make you constipated?
2. KNOCK A BUZZARD OFF A TURD WAGON
and…
1. my husband says i smell like garlic.

Oh, how sad a picture the winning entry paints – a lonely wife, pouring out her troubles to Google night after night, in the vague hope that one day, ONE DAY, it will pat her on the back and make everything better. “Is he having an affair?” she types. “Did my parents love my sister more?” And: “I’m so alone.” “Did you mean I’m Al Capone?” barks heartless Google back.

Stick with us, lovely garlicky lady! We’ll be your shoulder to cry on when the marriage goes tits-up because you just could not stay off the aioli.

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Bremen: update

June 26, 2007

* Click HERE to listen to Episode 20 *

Finally, chaps, those who you have been holding your breath ever since Episode 16 came out can exhale. We may finally have an answer for Benjamin Partridge’s question, “Is Bremen in Germany a weird place to want to go on holiday?” And it’s all thanks to Mr Tim Scullion, who sent us the following email:

Funnily enough, I have been to Bremen on a holiday-ish. I went with Resonance FM and we did some sound workshops and stuff, and made a programme for Resonance. But we also hung out, drank, and ate, and it was… alright. It was winter, so there was a big traditional xmas village thing in the centre of the town, which was cool. Lots of traditional mulled wine and cinnamon biscuits. Most of the art students who I asked, however, didn’t particularly care for Bremen. I should explain that I asked art students because we were attending an international arts conference. I didn’t just seek them out to get their weird artist opinions. Well, I did, but it was very easy to do.

BUT it is the only place outside of Berlin to have a branch of fantastic cafe/shop “Kauf Dich Glücklich”, which is probably the loveliest place in Berlin. The Bremen branch is more of a shop than a cafe, and doesn’t do the same range of delicious ice-cream and waffles as the Berlin original, but it is still great, and has friendly staff.

Bremen, then. Not bad, a fair few art students, a nice cafe/shop, Christmas larks, cinnamon, but you probably are a bit weird if you want to go there on holiday.

Hope this helps.

It certainly does, Tim! Thanks to you we can now conclude the following:
Bremen = alright
Benjamin Partridge = weird
.
So that’s that all sewn up.

And as Tim has been so very helpful, it behoves us to present the following plug for his lovely band Hong Kong in the 60s, who have their first gig at The Good Ship, 289 Kilburn High Road NW6 7JR on 29th June at 8pm, to which you should totally go.
But if you’re busy saving the world that evening, then you’d be a fool to miss their next gig, on 16th July at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. It’s FREE, and you get to come over all Big Lebowski whilst listening to the fine music. Which is what is known as a triple winner!

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EPISODE 20: The Final Countdown! (until the next countdown)

June 21, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hello there, pals!

We’re in a giddy mood this week as Answer Me This! reaches double double figures. Also because Olly’s off to Glastonbury and he pitched his tent over a leaking gas main. Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!1!!11!!!!!

Meanwhile, any of you who aren’t gadding about in a mud-sotted field this weekend should check out Episode 20. There’s no need to get your feet wet, and ain’t no bloody capoeira in it either.

And here are some of the stars of Episode 20:
Lord of the Rings – The (Crapulous) Musical
The Mozart of Madras
misspelling Ricky Gervais
Olly’s Dream Will Do
Marry, shag or kill?
David Gest’s face
human suffering
Civil Service vs. Stepmom
Wetherspoons curry club
DJ Olltzi
and
sharon fruit.

We also help launch the career of a new pop group, receive podcasting advice from Jesus, and reminisce about how Answer Me This! could have turned out offally different. Seriously, we all had a very lucky escape from What Could Have Been. There’s a very unlucky parallel universe somewhere out there.

As ever, PLEASE email your questions for future episodes of Answer Me This! to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, and we’ll try to fix you up good.

Until next week, bye!

Love,

Helen and Olly

PS. Back in Episode 16, questioneer Benjamin Partridge posed the following: “Is Bremen in Germany a weird place to want to go on holiday?” Following our non-commital advice, and tempted by Bremen’s apparently charming sea-front, he resolved to go, and we looked forward to finding out once and for all the answer to his question.

Only he chickened out and went to Wales instead.

So the mystery continues! If any of YOU have been to Bremen on holiday, report to us and tell us whether it was fly or a flop as a holiday destination. Leaving this question unanswered is keeping us awake at night.
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EPISODE 19: nothing’s gonna stop us now

June 14, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hey y’all!

It’s the last teenage episode of Answer Me This! We can’t believe it! It seems barely minutes ago that the podcast was just a cheeky glint in our eyes, and now it’s all grown up – Download of the Day in the Independent on Wednesday 13th, no less. Which means Answer Me This! is one of the top 365 things to get off the internet in 2007! Considering all the ladies’ jugs that are on the internet, that’s quite the accolade.

Anyway, just because the podcast is about to enter its twenties, it doesn’t mean it’s outgrown all the tantrums, rows and clandestine substance abuse. Why, in this episode we cover such classy subjects as necrophilia, disabled dolphins and ITV2.

Also:
Sex and death
Strictly Mark Lawson Fever
le petit mort
particle accelerators
Kosher for Passover ice-cream
sausage bombs
Singing’ in the Rain
Basic Instinct

dancing lessons with Martin the Sound Man
mock crayfish
and
Slags in Limos.

And if you want YOUR questions to yield such rogue results, email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We can’t promise miracles, but we can try and do something a bit flashy.

Until next week, goodbye!

Love,

Helen and Olly

PS If you notice an unusually beautiful jingle in this episode, it’s probably by the marvellous Gavin Osborn. If you liked the 20-second jingle, you’ll probably explode with joy if you listen to his new album, In the Twee Small Hours, so we thoroughly recommend you treat yourself to a copy.
PPS That’s not to say the rest of the jingles aren’t beautiful as well. Well done, Answer Me This! Players! (Sadly they don’t have an album out, but it’s only a matter of time…)

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Nick fixes it (again)

June 13, 2007

* Click HERE to listen to Episode 18 *

Even after Helen gave him potentially deleterious health advice, regular questioneer Nick has been so kind as to haul us out of a hole on more than one occasion. After his fine work on the question of emoticons back in Episode 11, dauntless Nick has once again waded in where even alleged physics expert Martin the Sound Man fears to tread.

When Martin ‘I’ve got a PhD in physics – and I didn’t buy it off the internet’ Austwick utterly failed to supply a useful answer to Jonny’s question in Episode 18, “How can we prove that the world is round?”, who should save our bacon but Nick ‘I don’t have a PhD in Physics and frankly I suspect Martin the Sound Man’s is not worth the potato it was printed with’ Questioneer, who promptly emailed us the following succinct solution:

A two-word explanation for Johnny: lunar eclipses. Couldn’t happen like that if the earth were any other shape. I thank you.

Olly and Helen are now considering sacking themselves and appointing Nick their successor, but it would mean a lot of smashing jingles would go to waste.

What do you reckon, eh?

  • Yes. Frankly it’s been a long time coming.
  • No! Nick is the most dangerous charlatan since Galileo!
  • They can ALL go to hell.

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EPISODE 18: The Return of Answer Me This!

June 7, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hey there, friendaramas!

It’s delightful to see you again. It’s been ages! Haven’t you grown? Etc etc.

I’m afraid we didn’t bring you back presents from our holidays. Nor did we take up questioneer Jonny’s highly flattering suggestion: “When you get back from holiday, can you do a double length podcast to make up for the amount of podcasting pleasure we have had to do without for what feels like years?”

Jonny, you are too too sweet. However we have conducted a series of mathematical experiments that show that
if podcast = x
and listening pleasure = y,
2x does NOT equal 2y.
In fact sometimes it can even equal less than y. And that’s the kind of risk we’re just not willing to take here at Answer Me This!, which is why we’re presenting you with a taut 25 minutes and 20 seconds of EPISODE 18.

And what’s awaiting? Why, this lot:

Cinnamon Grahams
oui
do you feel the power of the Gladiators? (dobededoo)
the dark underbelly of ‘social networking’ websites
idiomatic mums
Answer Me This! vs. The Man
conspiracy theories
square roots
delusional paranoia
Ginny from the Mission
and
Leisuresuit Larry*

Plus: new jingles! New skits! And a belated birthday shout-out to listener Katherine, who has just turned 21! Well done, Katherine. Also, well done to the recently augmented Answer Me This! Players, who have made a whole lot of kick-ass new jingles and suchlike for the new season of Answer Me This!, rather like your mum getting you shiny new shoes and extra-sharp pencils for the start of termtime.

With episode 19 imminent, please send us your questions – you must be chock-full of them by now! Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, and we promise not to hand on your email address to sinister debt consolidation services.

Love,

Helen and Olly

*if any of you want to send us a copy of Leisuresuit Larry for ‘research’ purposes, don’t be shy. Also, in a similar vein, Helen’s flatmate claims as a child to have played Stroker 64 on the Commodore 64, which sounds like nothing more than internet child abuse before the internet existed. If any of you have likewise tarnished your youthful innocence playing Stroker 64, get in touch and maybe we can form a support group for you.

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Soon, my pet; the hour is nigh….

June 1, 2007

Hello, chums!

Answer Me This! is back next Thursday. Hallelujah! Wickitty-wickitty-wah! There’ll be new jingles! New songs! New costumes! And a whole lot of the same old shit, so don’t think we’re ditching our roots and not keeping it real.

If you’re restless in anticipation of the new episodes, or just not very busy this weekend, you can entertain yourself with one of these pursuits:

1) Check out this shit-hot video from tomorrow night’s Culture Show of Tony Blair’s final speech as Prime Minister, as voiced by premium impressionist Rory Bremner, animated by cartoon badboys Triffic and ghostwritten by John Oliver off The Daily Show and Helen’s big brother Andy Zaltzman. Yep, it’s a nepotistic plug!

2) Bone up on how Olly and Helen met and fell in like all those years ago in the new edition of the stupendous magazine All The Rage. And even if you couldn’t give a rat’s handbag about how we met, you should read the magazine anyway because it’s very good.

3) Send us all the questions you’ve been brewing while we’ve been away! We’ve missed you and your lovely inquisitive brains. Pop them in an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – it’s a much better way to while away your time than watching Big Brother 8, that’s for sure.

Until Thursday 7th, bye! Xoxo! Lol! etc

Helen and Olly

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EPISODE 17: brat on board

May 3, 2007


This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Episode 17 is here, and we hope you enjoy it, as it’s (cripes!) the last Answer Me This! until the beginning of June. Yes, it’s time for us to gather our bucket and spade, roll up our trouser-legs and have a nice paddle in the balmy waters of not glutting ourselves on the sound of our own voices for a few weeks… WE WILL RETURN!

This week:
the rules of The Quiet Carriage
chicken
Christian fish
Yiddy rickshaws
evil child Olly
gambling vs. piggybanks
the Hitchcockian suspense of ITV Play
the hidden side of tinsel
Cirque du Soleil
and
dragged-up crowbars.

And also, if you’re Olly’s childhood friend Sebastian Stent: sorry.

In the meantime, if you’re craving your Answer Me This! fix while we’re holidaying – why not check out our AMAZING BACK CATALOGUE ? Gasp! at our learning curve! Wince! at our early episodes! (and then some) Grimace! at bowelly episode 5!… and then, when you’re bored of all that (as if!) be sure to join our new Facebook fanclub to declare your love for us to the WORLD!

There’ll also be the occasional new bits or bob on this site to keep you amused in our absence. But, of course, the main thing is y’all keep yourself busy by sending us YOUR QUESTIONS, and those of your quizzical friends and acquaintances, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, to help us come back in June BIGGER and BETTER and, um, BACKIER.

So long!

Helen and Olly

PS Thanks again to Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com for the fantastic tune we used at the end of the episode. We’d love to give you money for it, but only Gervais can afford that kind of shit.
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