We all know that listening to Answer Me This! is life-changing for the worse. We started the podcast because we wanted to Make A Difference that did not benefit the world in any way. And lo, we have! Nick writes:
In a recent podcast you discussed eating the crumbs from a packet of crisps with the choice of either tilting the packet directly into the mouth or pouring into the hand and eating from there. All my life I have gone for the pour-straight-from-the-packet option, but after your arguments now pour into the hand.
Answer Me This: have any other listeners changed something they do as a result of listening to your podcast?
Listeners, step into the comments and tell us!
We already know that, thanks to AMT4, some of you no longer feel you are allowed to wipe your bottoms standing up. As we said, truly life-changing.
To tell you the truth, friends, we’re taking a working holiday from the podcast, and tomorrow we have a big job: Helen and Olly’s Required Listening on BBC 5 Live, a three-hour radio extravaganza all about podcasts, unusual radio stations, and other varied and curious sounds to put into your ears.
UPDATE: the aforementioned ‘tomorrow’ has passed, and the live transmission with it; so click here to hear Required Listening via BBC iPlayer.
And that’s not all: the Arseblogger will be kicking off versus Phil Cornwell from The Spurs Show; the Indie Travel Podcasters will stay still long enough to talk about their six-years-and-counting world tour; we’ll take in the sounds of the sewers with Resonance FM and eat brains with We’re Alive.
The time has come, dear listeners, for us to pack up our microphones for a month and head off on holiday. But before we go, we tackle some very important questions indeed:
• Should one allow one’s allergies interrupt the loss of one’s virginity?
• What counts as a museum, once and for all?
• What IS R Kelly on about?
Discover those answers and more in Answer Me This! Episode 228:
Plus: Olly explains a ‘reverse American Pie‘, and no, you won’t find it in More! Magazine’s ‘Position of the Fortnight’ archives; Helen’s toilet is like Kanye West, and not because he has a pottymouth; and Martin the Sound Man had just about recovered from the disappointment that was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when Prometheus came along and crushed his expectations all over again.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Jennifer from Pittsburgh about whether being struck by lightning affects your ability to use technology; assuming the after-effects of that old lightning strike allow it, use your iDevices and Android to peruse the app.
Until we return on Thursday 20th September, here are some means of busying yourself:
1. Listen to us on BBC 5 Live, 1-4pm on Monday 27th August, talking about all sorts of fun and diverse listening materials in our special bank holiday show Required Listening. 2. Tune in to Olly on LBC, 20th-24th August between 1-4am. That’s right, am. Unless you live in a different time zone and it’s a perfectly civilised hour there. 3.Vote for Helen to go to SXSW next year, on a podcasting panel with Jesse Thorn and Roman Mars. 4. Listen to Martin’s music. It is much less obscene than him talking. 5. Have a go on our albums, our first 120 episodes, and some other nice podcasts. 6. Concoct QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Have a delightful month, and we look forward to reuniting on 20th September.
Helen & Olly
PS Sadly, the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick closed down last year. But it still lives forever here:
Here’s a question of gender identity from Stuart, living in Lyon but from Newcastle:
I am working in a call centre for the summer. However the problem I seem to have is no matter how gruff I try to sound, I get mistaken for a woman so much that I have assumed Judith as my female alter ego in the office.
While this is great when someone complains about ‘Judith’, it leaves me asking whether I should really be correcting the customers (going against the mantra of ‘the customer is always right’) and trying to reestablish my masculine credentials.
You sound like you are already quite comfortable with your masculine credentials, if you’ve allowed Judith to be brought to life, rather than just announcing yourself as ‘Mister Stuart’ at the start of every phone conversation. Instead of killing her off, why not use this opportunity to explore the myriad other female identities lurking within you? Come into work wearing Judith’s sensible shoes and box-pleated skirts. If you’re doing a late shift, change into something slinkier and conduct your phone calls as sexy Sarah. When you get bored of her, no doubt the varied costumes and accents of Brigitta, Haruko and Svetlana will keep you fresh.
Hold on – it has just dawned on me that you might not be working in the type of call centre that deals with customer complaints or tech support. If in fact your summer job is answering the phone at 0898-HOT-BABES, this problem you’re experiencing is far less surprising.
Two milky questions this morning, the first from Freddie in Edinburgh:
My friend Fergus is utterly convinced that if a man gently rubs his nipple almost constantly for around three months, he will begin to lactate. Like a lady-boob.
So answer me this: can this be done?
Apparently it can! Thanks to unusual hormones or excessive stimulation – and I think three months of continuous rubbing would count as excessive – men can experience galactorrhoea, as spontaneous lactaction is known. It was also very common amongst men released from prisoner of war camps at the end of World War Two, but no doubt was not their most pressing health problem at that point.
Anyway, if any of you gents manage to produce enough milk for a glassful, perhaps you could experiment to help Mark from Telford with his question:
I was eating breakfast today and came across a difficult conundrum. I got the milk out of the fridge and my box of strawberry Nesquik and was just about to pour the milk into the glass when I asked myself, should I put the powder in first or the milk?
I mean, you can pour the milk in first and then stir in the powder, or put the powder in first and then pour the milk on top, but in years of drinking strawberry milk at breakfast, I still cannot fathom which way gives the optimum strawberry milk experience. So answer me this, which way IS the best way to make strawberry milk?
You’ve conducted a TEN YEAR study and you still have not managed to draw a conclusion? We’re not going to help you because you could solve this yourself in the course of two mornings.
In AMT226 we speculated upon the next phase of Gordon Ramsay’s career, and whether it would entail one of those odd-couple road trips that are perennially popular amongst TV commissioners. Andy emailed us to say:
I was taking in my daily fix of MTV news, when I saw that Gordon Ramsay was apparently planning a Harley Davidson tour with….David Beckham.
Suspicions confirmed! Unless they’re doing that just as a mates’ holiday, and not actually televising it…no, impossible! What would be the point of that?
For a bit of fun, readers, go to the comments and pitch a non-culinary show for Gordon Ramsay’s career reboot.
I’m emailing Channel 4 now to suggest a mountaineering challenge series called Gordon’s Craggy Faces.
In the past two episodes we’ve had questions about a dead laptop and a saucy home video, and now those two tropes combine in this question from Matt from Brownhills:
I work in the exciting field of IT repair for a big public organisation, and often do freebies repairing people’s personal computers when they break.
This week I was given a laptop that simply would not turn on. The laptop was knackered, and they just wanted all the files back.
Whilst getting these files, I noticed there were lots of videos of this person and I presume their partner “together”. (Yes, shagging.)
Answer me this: do I give her these files back on disk, thus making it awkward for the rest of our lives with her knowing I know about them, or do I pretend I never found them, giving her everything else but live with knowing she might have really wanted them but was too afraid to say?
OK Matt, answer yourself this – what do you think is MORE incriminating: returning all her files, with no suggestion that you looked at any of them; or returning only those files which you have personally filtered for acceptability?
I assume you’ve also fully perused her photo folders, combed her Word documents carefully in case she’s been writing erotica in her spare time, and thoroughly checked her Excel spreadsheets on the offchance you can convert the data into a titillating scatter graph. And backed up all her files to your own external hard drive, y’know, just in case she ever has computer trouble again or something…
Of course we love hearing about your lives; also when you sendusstuff. But this may have gone too far in Answer Me This! Episode 227:
Wherein we consider:
Zooey Deschanel
holiday money
Worcestershire Sauce
wanking off vs. jacking off
Olympics vs. Eurovision
Baron Pierre de Coubertin
the sporty Vatican
flying horses
pasta sauce
and
a table covered in ice cream.
Plus: Olly doesn’t like the look of Joey Potter’s chalice nowadays, but back in the 90s he did get a bit Dawson Leary (Dawson Leery, more like); Helen was a financially responsible child – yet another way in which she peaked too early; and Martin the Sound Man recommends keeping your pasta carbonara minimalist, even if you really need a little nipper of booze to get you through.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the AppiDevices and Android is a question from Joss which reveals Olly’s Napoleon Complex. This is concerning trees, not height, seeing as Olly is 6’3″ when he stands up straight.
Next week is our last episode before we take a month-long hiatus, so hurry and send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
For months now this is a question that has been bothering me profoundly.
We all love Haribo, kids and grown ups alike. It says so in the song. And as is tradition with jelly-type sweets of the Haribo kind, they often come in the shape of something, eg a heart, a Coke bottle, cherries etc.
But there is always one in the bag that I just can’t fathom as to what it is:
Some of my friends agree with me in my bemusement, while others seem to think it’s a baby’s dummy. But what sort of freaking dummy looks like that?!
What kind of heart, Lottie, is made of red and white gunk? What kind of bear is translucent and green? One must suspend some disbelief when eating sweets. However if you crave realism coated in citric acid, then reconcile yourself to the contentious curiosity being a jelly rendering of one of the following:
1. a key
2. an ankh
3. the little plastic thing you blow bubbles through
4. a blackhead remover
5. a noose
6. a magnifying glass
7. an absinthe spoon.
Sports nutritionists and environmentalists, please go to the comments to offer a more useful response than I can to this question from Charlotte:
As a professional circus artist I’ve always heard that I should eat bananas to avoid muscle cramps, apparently because the potassium in the bananas does some electrolyte magic on my muscles.
I perform a handbalance act that includes balancing en pointe (on my toes) on little tiny platforms, so getting cramps in the arches of my feet is a definite problem. But I’m trying to eat in an environmentally responsible way, buying fruits and vegetables that are grown close to wherever I am, which is usually in North America or Western Europe and definitely very far away from wherever bananas come from.
So answer me this: does eating bananas actually prevent me getting cramps in my feet? Is there something else (with less of a carbon footprint) that I could eat instead?
Since you’re travelling around, I can’t gauge the potential carbon footprint of every item you might eat whilst on two continents. Bear in mind that pumpkin and sunflower seeds, cocoa, paprika, chervil, avocados, nuts, salmon, orange juice, potato skin, beans, spinach, dried apricots and whelks are potasstic, so mix them all together into a delicious paste and carry it wherever you go for a portable potassium banquet.
Readers, you may offer your advice in the comments to our next questioneer, A Confused Girl:
I have a close male friend who has recently started displaying signals that he wants to take our friendship to the next level, but I’m not interested because I don’t want to ruin the friendship with him.
I’ve tried to make it clear to him and he has definitely toned down the flirting lately, so that’s good, but he keeps buying me things!
I’ve been unemployed for many months now and he’s been a great friend in helping me out of financial jams, but now the things he’s paying for me are just becoming too much!
Honestly, I can’t say that I’m not enjoying his gifts but I feel really guilty!
How do I tell my friend that he’s becoming far too generous without suggesting that I think he’s trying to bribe me into bed with him?
Here’s an idea: STOP ACCEPTING HIS GIFTS. Uncomfortable feelings of obligation, over!
As an aside: when somebody says they don’t want to get together with somebody lest they ‘ruin the friendship’, they should be honest and revise that statement to ‘because really I don’t fancy him/her’. Right?
With the Great British Sports Day in full swing, we’ve had a record-breaking number of emails asking the same question, to whit:
Have you ever noticed that the London 2012 Olympics symbol looks like Maggie Simpson giving a blow job?
Actually, questioneers, in the five years since said logo was unveiled then plastered over every available surface in our home city, it has been noted.
Here’s a far more observant Olympics question from Maddy:
Why is John Inverdale so creepy?
It’s not a scientific answer, but I think it’s because something about the arrangement of his face suggests he’s a lost Gelfling from Dark Crystal.
As a 
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