It’s delightful to discover that AMT has provoked something in a listener other than irritation. Vincent writes:
Whilst merrily working my way through your previous podcasts, I was inspired by one of your answers, about cultural identity and clothing, to create a brand new range of wall art. (Podcast number 232 at 17:58 to be precise, in response to a question about French stereotypes.)
The range is called Mappliqué (see what I did there? Map and Appliqué!), and you inspired me to create fabric maps that use relevant fabrics to represent each region, for example, pinstripe for England, Tartan for Scotland, etc. Amazingly, a quick Google search showed that no-one else had thought of the idea so thank you for inspiring it.
Answer me this:
Are there any other ventures inspired by Answer Me This! that you know of, or is this the first one?
You could be like Dragons’ Den in reverse – the Dragons have no humour, destroy ideas that come before them and suck the life out of a room, whereas Answer Me This! inspires ideas and brings joy into the world! (Deborah Meaden power-suit optional for Helen.)
Can it be possible, readers? Have we somehow brought out your entrepreneurial streaks? If so, tell us about your business ventures in the comments. Although we must state that if said ventures failed, causing your financial/emotional/physical demise, we are NOT liable.
NB this is not a paid endorsement; Vincent just appealed to our vanity, so we appeal to you to check out his wares at mapplique.com, because look! Pretty:
What would YOU like to be buried in, listeners? A solid gold sarcophagus? A Zorb ball? A burlap sack? Contemplate this issue whilst listening to Answer Me This! Episode 282:
In which we discuss:
coffins vs caskets
coriander* vs carbonara
statues vs sculptures**
Leonardo DiCaprio vs Norman Lamont
sweaty sportswear
Americano coffee
Lincoln Logs
film soundtracks
sexy parrots
jamoke Jesse Honey vs flags of the world
the price of Lego Ron Mueck
and
an update to the Mastermind chair?
Plus: Olly probably doesn’t want to be served up as a snack at his own wake; Helen will be a posthumous pedant, OF COURSE; and Martin the Sound Man, MPhys, DPhil, doesn’t have a specialist subject on Mastermind, unless you can spin a whole round out of turning One Direction into physics references. Which seems quite possible, actually.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, Olly invents a new game, even better than Lego, even better than Lincoln Logs. What, what, what incredible passtime can this be? Find out on your iDevices, Android and Windows.
We invite you to aid questioneer Brian by naming this tune:
We also invite you to give Squarespace.com a whirl, and if you enjoy that whirl you give it, use the code answer1 to snag a 10% discount for a whole year.
We also also invite you to send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We finally invite you to rejoin us in a fortnight for AMT283,
AMT282 Child-Friendly Rating: 76%. A couple of F-bombs, but other than that, fairly clear of saucy language. Elevated discussions of sculpture, coffins and Mastermind. Less elevated discussions of sweaty sports bras. Remember, parents: light and shade, light and shade.
It’s not just Cupcake Lady who has a problem colleague. Jennifer in Dublin is similarly afflicted:
In my job, it’s always up to me to arrange cards and collections when someone is leaving. It’s not actually in my job description, but being the general office skivvy it’s an unspoken rule that I do it (and I HATE it).
In a few weeks one woman who’s been here for a few months on a temporary transfer from another department is leaving. This woman is possibly the rudest, most ignorant person I have ever met. As well as being terrible at her job, she thinks she’s above everyone else, constantly loses and damages equipment and has even been rude to the boss. It’s like she’s in another world and just will not listen to anyone else. In retrospect, the other department probably encouraged this transfer to get rid of her.
So answer me this: do I arrange her leaving card and present even though I hate her and she’s been personally rude to me? Why should I do a nice thing for someone who makes my job more difficult?
Another twist in this dilemma is that her last day is also MY last day. Should I just do nothing and hope that whoever arranges my card and present does one for her too? That is presuming that someone does arrange one for me…
As I have largely worked on my own throughout my career, I need you office-dwelling readers to help out Jennifer in the comments.
But, in the spirit of altruism, I think you should sort out her card and present. It doesn’t have to be a particularly good one – eg if the usual office expenditure per present is £25, get her a cut price box of Black Magic – but try to rise above her human follies. Although you can’t stop people writing ‘FUCK OFF AND DIE! xx Michelle’ in the card. And by ‘can’t’, I mean ‘needn’t bother’.
Regarding your own departure: my poor old father-in-law was similarly the birthday/leaving celebration organiser, so of course when it was his own landmark birthday, his colleagues totally shat the bed and forgot. He was, rightly, not pleased. To avoid your own disappointment, therefore, start dropping heavy hints to some of your colleagues with whom you’re friendly. And when you’re touting around the card and collection plate for your office nemesis, you could even mention to everyone in turn that as you’re leaving, the next card and collection will have to be done by somebody else. You could even jovially remark, “And as I’m leaving on the same day as this bitch, that collection will be for me! So you’d better dig deep, hey?” OK, that has leapt clean over the boundaries of Hint and landed smack bang in Blatant Instruction, but how often do hints work? Will hints go out and buy your leaving present? Will hints console you in three years’ time when you’re still stewing about not getting a leaving card? Screw hints! Life’s too short for hints. In fact, send around a pan-office memo right now demanding a high-value present be supplied to you by 4pm on your final day. BECOME the office bitch.
For his previous birthday, I bought my friend the complete box set of Arrested Development. Several months later, our mutual friend told me that said person refuses to watch the TV show Arrested Development because he doesn’t like the band Arrested Development.
Answer me this: am I right in thinking that that is really weird? Isn’t that like refusing to listen to the musician Dennis Wilson because his name sounds a bit like the serial killer Dennis Nilsen?*
Also, have any of you experienced similarly weird prejudices based on such a tenuous connection?
First question first: yes, quite weird, given the overlap between the adventures of Mr Wendal and the Bluth family is pretty small – unless, using the money donated by the song’s narrator, Mr Wendal works his way up to a successful frozen banana business?
Second question second, I throw out to you readers: go to the comments and tell us about your tenous irrational aversions. Unless you have an irrational aversion to doing that.
*Or, for a closer Dennis Nilsen comparison, the musician Harry Nillson. Do you refuse to listen to ‘Without You‘ because of the mental image of a necrophiliac serial killer blocking his neighbours’ drains because he flushed bits of his victims down the toilet? Guess now you might.
Here’s a response to AMT281‘s question concerning the concentration of Blue Posts pubs in central London, from Leon:
Blue Posts are so named (I am led to believe) because the original actual blue posts marked the limits of the hunting ground which Soho was during olden times.
It’s an interesting theory, and quite plausible; can anyone confirm or refute? Or does it relate to some other aspect of Soho history? Are the Blue Posts marking, for instance, the locus of the 1854 cholera epidemic? Or are they simply referring to, er, what were protruding from the trousers of gentlemen roaming Soho, seeking relief?
AMT-brand advice has come in useful for once! Rosie from Kent living in Sardinia confided in AMT281 that she thought her in-laws’ wine was giving her cystitis. Relieved, she writes:
Your answer was bang on! It turns out that the culprit was not the wine but the fabric softener we were using! It ran out and the problem cleared up, where it had only improved when I stopped drinking the wine. In the interests of science I did a double blind drunk test and still no problems. Joy!
The podcast is BACK for 2014. And changes are afoot; listen to Answer Me This! Episode 281 to discover what they are:
But as normal, we talk about such things as:
ice sculptures
coach travel
cat litter
cystitis
Piccadilly Circus vs Times Square
country pubs vs London bars In Bruges vs Helen in Bruges the Blue Posts Crawl
stamps
floppy disks
empty London
attractiveness gaps
and
blank videotapes.
Plus: how schoolboy Olly Mann was both a ‘budget Elvis’ and like Jesus; how Helen’s jar of gallstones is keeping a low profile; and how Martin the Sound Man didn’t have an affair with a dog. (That he’ll admit to on air.)
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows), Olly’s beloved cat Coco gets her Flavor Flav gear on. Of course, Olly adores her whatever she wears.
We adore your QUESTIONS, so send them in: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Thanks to Squarespace.com for funding this episode of AMT, and if you want to see an example of a Squarespace site, visit our new answermethisstore.com, where you can buy our archive episodes/albums/Best Ofs with far more of your hard-earned money going to the AMT Corporation rather than a Big Corporation.
See you in a fortnight,
Helen & Olly
AMT281 Child-Friendly Rating: 44%. Second half is pretty clean, but what use is that coming in the wake of a discussion of cystitis, masturbation and cervical mucus? Swearing: there is some.
PS Here’s that Facebook pic of the collection of baby teeth:
We hope you enjoyed last week’s jaunt through the year’s audio delights, because here’s another one: The Best of Answer Me This! 2013 Part 2.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 at theAnswer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
In which we revisit:
gherkins
gurkas
Fern Britton hassling the Hoff
Barry Scott
cat sex
misunderstood sheep
Skee-Lo
pierced clitorises
Martin’s Holly Hunter fetish
Pat Sharp’s Fun House
the guy who had sex with someone who he now discovers is his future sister-in-law
and Cupcake Lady!
Plus: the blooper reel! Which words and phrases proved our undoing? Stick around to the end to find out.
And with that, we wrap up the seventh year of AMT, but to enable an eighth year, send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and post emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We will return on 16th January 2014, and we hope that in the meantime you have a very excellent time seeing out this old year and welcoming in the new one.
Helen & Olly
Best of AMT 2013 part 2 Child-Friendly Rating: 11%. Hahahahahaa yeah no way.
The best of AMT 2013 part 1 sent you, as well as us, tootling down Memory Lane. Tom in Glasgow writes:
Deep in the Answer Me This annals of your previous season, you talked about the method Billy Kennedy’s dad employed to present him with his car on his 17th birthday in Neighbours.* Olly then launched into a sob story about how disappointed he was when his father failed to hatch an elaborate unveiling ceremony for his shiny secondhand car.
This reminded me of how my family gifted me my first car on my 17th birthday. As has become the family tradition, my grandfather and uncle came from Oldham and London respectively to the little Oxfordshire village where I used to live with my dear mother and stepfather to celebrate my birthday in the local drinking establishment.
Little did I know, that around the time of my 17th birthday, my grandfather had decided to call it quits as far as his driving career was concerned, and therefore his car was on the market.
During the meal, when it came to opening cards from family and friends, there were two small boxes from my parents. I was to open the smaller one first. Inside, I found a little toy – a silver Japanese car. Puzzled, I unwrapped the second to find an old box of Hovis flour for home baking. Inside this box…was a car key! Either I had had too much to drink, or the plan was slightly convoluted, but I think what I was supposed to do was to combine the little Japanese car with the self-raising Hovis flour to bake one big, fully-functioning automobile.
Five years on the Micra and I are doing well, and have been on many exciting adventures.
Any of the rest of you got good gift-misdirection stories? Present them to us in the comments.
*Originally in AMT250, if you want to catch up on the whole delightful tale.
Hello listeners! Thanks so much for your attention and questions this year; we have very much appreciated both. And from the twentyish hours of the AMT material that came into being this year, we have culled The Best of Answer Me This! 2013 Part 1.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
In which we reacquaint ourselves with such old pals as:
Anne Hathaway’s minge
the papal pants
the Thorntons icing policy
Olly’s local swingers
Billy Kennedy’s car
bow ties
jacuzzis
Martin’s Gregg Wallace impression (kill us now)
the Queen’s corgis
special guest Isy Suttie Armageddon Grand Designs
tossed salads and scrambled eggs
lion flaps
dickbags
getting wood
and
Roland Wank.
Plus! A thrilling cavalcade of snippets which never made it into the podcast in the first place! There’ll be more outtakes and bloopers next week in the Best of AMT 2013 part 2 (code name: TBOAMT2013P2), but if you can’t wait that long, get the AMT app for your iDevices, Android and Windows, on which there’s a special bonus bit of crap every week.
With Christmas less than a fortnight away, do take a punt on our new album, Answer Me This! Christmas: it’s one hour of all-new festive fun in the AMT fashion, and is available right HERE. Thanks very much to all of you who have bought it already and thus bankrolled the show. BAH HUMBUG to the rest of you.
Oh, not really, stop giving us the sad puppy eyes. But do give us your QUESTIONS for AMT2014: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
And remember, if you enjoyed this Best Of compilation – you can buy all six of our previous Best Of compilations for just £1.99 each from the Answer Me This Store.
See you next week,
Helen & Olly
Best of AMT 2013 part 1 Child-Friendly Rating: 12%. Dream on.
If Sarah Beeny can set up a dating service, perhaps we can too? Our first specimen could be Tony from Perth, Western Australia, who writes:
I just finished listening to AMT280 and in it you mentioned Chesca who has started working at Disney World Florida. I thought I would put it out there that I am also single and I happen to be heading over to Florida in April next year. So answer me this: do you think I have a chance with Chesca?
Chesca, if you’re reading this: fancy going on a blind date with a man about whom we know nothing aside from he’s an AMT fan and lives in one of the most remote cities in the world, so it would probably be more of a quickie than a relationship? Let us know and we’ll set you kids up!
Caitlin from Breckenridge, Colorado chips in:
I heard that one of your listeners works at Disney World and has the issue of too few men. I have been living in a ski town and find I have the opposite problem. There are far more men then women. The solution to your listener’s problem is move to a ski town!
However it is not all that it appears. The saying goes: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Despite the numbers being in my favor, there are few men that are worth dating. What would your tactic be in sorting out the good boys from the odd ones? Should I create a quiz? Should they have a set of criteria that they must meet?
We couldn’t really venture an answer unless you elaborate upon the nature of the oddness, or even condone assessing potential fun-partners using something as arbitrary as a quiz; but readers, ski down to the comments and let us know your system for sorting the hits from the gits.
Here’s an early Christmas gift from Anonymous Cupcake Lady, whose bakery-based battle with her Office Nemesis thrilled you in AMT271. In AMT272, we learnt that the fancy strawberry swirl cupcakes ‘baked’ by Office Nemesis were out of stock. And today, Cupcake Lady has returned to deliver the latest installment in the saga! This week: will Office Nemesis finally be trapped in her own lies? Read on…
I start work at 7am and my best friend (let’s call her Lindsay) and Office Nemesis both start work at 8am. We are doing a Food Bank drive here at work since it is the Christmas Season and Best Friend had not contributed anything so decided to stop in at the shops on her way to work one day.
Oh yes – guess who she also saw entering the shop a couple of minutes before her? That’s RIGHT! Office Nemesis! Lindsay proceeded to hang back a bit and watch as Office Nemesis entered the bakery section and picked up several batches of red velvet and white chocolate chip Christmas Cookies. Lindsay bought some supplies for the Food Bank and headed into work, Office Nemesis had no knowledge that SHE HAD BEEN SEEN!!!!!
Anyway, of course Lindsay filled me in on her reconnaissance as soon as she got into the office and me (being the bitch that I am) couldn’t resist going down to the Third Floor and seeing what goodies might be on offer on this particular day. Low and behold, a plate of “homemade” cookies.
“WOW – has someone been baking?” I declared.
“Yes – I have! Red velvet and white chocolate chip cookies! I baked three batches last night – getting into the festive spirit and everything,” replied Office Nemesis
“Here – take some up to your boss, I know how much he enjoys my baking!”
So, I walked over to her desk and she proceeded to pull out a few zip-lock bags of cookies! That’s right, guys – she actually transferred the cookies into zip-lock bags so it looked as if she had brought them in from home!! Her cunning knows no bounds!
Anyway, I brought the cookies up to my boss and told him Office Nemesis had baked them. He looked puzzled and said “How on earth did she get them all the same size and shape?”
I gave him a knowing glance and we left it at that. I think her secret might be out!
I’ve decided I feel sorry for Office Nemesis more than anything. She’s obviously all kinds of crazy and I think she probably deserves my sympathy more than anything.
That’s very kind of you, Cupcake Lady, and I assume that’s why you’re letting herself carry on with her hairbrained schemes for individual baking glory, rather than confronting her in the supermarket aisle and giving her a good spanking with a silicon spatula. Or concealing yourself inside a cake, waiting for Nemesis to buy it and take it into the office, at which point you would burst out and reveal her trail of falsehood to all your disinterestedshocked and horrified colleagues. But if you do decide to do that, please ask Lindsay to film it for us.
Answer Me This! Podcast 