Helen Zaltzman

Author Archive

EPISODE 131 – Bieber is a babymaker

April 15, 2010

Hello listeners,

There are some very big issues in Answer Me This! Episode 131. The link between artistry and depression. The baffling denouement of the video of ‘November Rain’ (see below for a refresher). How to emasculate stones. Hear:

This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p 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)

As side orders to that big plateful of Important Issues, we mention:

Mary Pickford
Stephanie Seymour
bicarbonate of soda
Fernand Pitoit
Scissors Paper Stone
film myths
safety myths
creativity vs. crack
Fargo vs. chipped beef
crochet vs. stones
the boringest action figurines in toy history
cannibalistic tomatoes
and
Phillip Schofield’s big tart.

Plus: Olly conflates coitus and cultural colonialism; Helen is disgusted that all of the internet can’t come up with a believable explanation for why the Bloody Mary is called a Bloody Mary; and Martin the Sound Man comes up with a new word to express the apathy of the Web 2.0 generation. Feel free to use it in a sentence today. Also vengeful Ky from Harrogate seeks your help once more, to sponsor him on his 40-mile jog: make up for his recent Paypal fraud pain by throwing him a couple of pence at http://justgiving.com/kyle-addyman. Or you could just stand by the jogging route and throw pennies AT him, but I don’t think he or the British Heart Foundation would appreciate that as much.

Get your excitement on the boil in anticipation of next week’s Special Guestisode, featuring Andy Zaltzman out of the Bugle podcast and Helen’s gene pool; then send him some QUESTIONS. Preface them with ‘Andy, answer me this’ – email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on Skype ID answermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877; or if you’re absolutely horrified at a stranger responding to your problem, the usual question-posing format will be perfectly fine.

See you next week, for family fun day!

Helen and Olly

PS if any of the rest of you are superfans of Dr Brian Cox, treat yourself to one of THESE.

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Tags:apologies, authors, Bloody Mary, bollocks, booze, Brian Cox, cars, castrato, celebrity genitals, charity, corned beef, death, depression, farting, food, games, Guns N'Roses, headbutting, history, housemates, Joan Rivers, Justin Bieber, mancrushes, mental illness, mobile phones, music, mysteries of pop culture, neologisms, phallacies, pop music, religion, romance, science, sex, singers, sociopaths, Sony Awards, spotted!, suicide, Sylvia Plath, toys, videos, violence, weddings, writers
Posted in PODCASTS | 14 Comments »

the physics of fictional weapons

April 14, 2010

** Click here for Episode 130 **

Uh oh, have we got a fight brewing? Listener Nigel is taking issue with Dr Martin Austwick’s science of lightsabers:

The sharp pointy bit of the lightsaber may be made of light but it is not transparent hence does not allow light to pass through it.
Light from another source would not pass through the saber as with any opaque object and it would therefore cast a shadow.

Did they teach you nothing during your DPhil, Martin? Did you buy your doctorate off the internet? You’ll be attracting looks of scorn at the next Institute of Physics beetle drive. How embarrassing.

Meanwhile Adam from Tasmania was inspired to write in by Henry’s tale of semen cologne:

After hearing of the interesting scent that guy used in Episode 130, I was reminded of an interesting perfume that was mentioned in a blog I read recently.
Why dont you have a look and tell me what you think?
http://www.smellmeand.com/gb/#/home/

I AM TOO FRIGHTENED TO LOOK. But you guys go right ahead. We are not responsible for the content of external websites etc etc…

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 1 Comment »

Don’t mind her, she’s got the vampires in

April 14, 2010

** Click here for Episode 130 **

Looks like someone other than Martin the Sound Man was bored watching Twilight, because Elle from Leeds was sufficiently unswept-away by the Grand Romance to ponder upon the following:

I’m not being deliberately disgusting but please answer me this… If the whole tragedy about Twilight is that Edward wants to drink Bella’s blood, couldn’t he just wait for her to get her period? This would result in an immediate happy ending and everyone wins.

Couldn’t all vampires just do this? They wouldn’t be as terrifying but perhaps a little creepy…

Apart from Edward going hungry for most of the month – which would only make him even more vapid – this does seem like a halfway sensible plan to us. So what is the catch? We’re not experts/interested in the whole vampire mythology, but if any of you are, head right for the comments and tell us whether this could solve both the problem of vampirical nutrition and landfill caused by feminine hygiene products.

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Tags:blood, hygiene, Twilight, vampires, yuk
Posted in extracurricular questions, frippery | 2 Comments »

Vajazzled!

April 14, 2010

** Click here for Episode 130 **

Some questions we receive are too visual to cover in the medium of podcast. Such as this one from Hannah in Bridgnorth:

Why when I type ‘listen’ into Google Images does it come up with wot looks like a jewelled fanny!!?!?!?!?!?

Readers. Don’t just take Hannah’s word for it; go to Google Images and see for yourself. The result is sort of NSFW, unless you work for Charles Saatchi.

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Tags:genitals, ladybits, modern art, puns, visual puns
Posted in extracurricular questions, frippery | Leave a Comment »

EPISODE 130 – pig of death

April 8, 2010

Good morning listeners!

We may have had some jolly good news yesterday, but by gum, even though we should be taking a celebratory bath in fizzy booze or something, we are not slacking off on our podcasting duties. Heavens no. It’s business as usual, so here is Answer Me This! Episode 130:

This week’s award-nominated trash talk includes:

bodysnatchers
the lamb of God
Galen
Norsical languages
Arawak
Little Shop of Horrors
The Game
The Game
giant Bearded Fig Trees
sex homeopathy
retort cooking
Justin Bieber
zombies
antifreeze
and
the 1832 Anatomy Act.

Plus: Olly can only dream of being as innovative/stupid as the inventor of the Revolution Grill’N’Chill; Helen’s late granny ensures she’ll never be able to enjoy a nice blue china pig; and as well as featuring a questioneer’s tip to make you a proper hit with the Ladies, we come up with an ingenious scheme to entertain the pedestrians of central London AND rid the streets of the litter of freesheets. Get on it, Westminster Council!

Also, if you haven’t already, go to Martin the Sound Man’s website to download his latest Sound of the Ladies podcast to hear his smashing new song ‘What We Did With Our Lives’, as well as hear what he had to say in interviews with a few other podcasts. Yes, he cheated on AMT! Eh, who can blame him.

As always, please do ask us QUESTIONS for future episodes, by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving a voicemail on Skype ID answermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. That would be luvverly.

See you next week,

Helen and Olly

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Tags:alcohol, alcoholism, armed forces, Bahrain, barbecue, blood, blunders, bodily fluids, busking, Caribbean, champagne, child stars, cookery, copyright, death, Drew Barrymore, drinking, Easter, Edgar Allen Poe, errata, etymology, fish, food, grooming, history, law, literature, maritime, mass production, medical, movies, music, music industry, myth, nasal, navy, noses, post mortem, record companies, semen, sex, ships, Spain, Star Wars, students, style, summer, supermarkets, supply, vampires, yuk, zombies
Posted in PODCASTS | 4 Comments »

Huzzah!

April 7, 2010

Marvellous news today – for we just heard that Answer Me This! is nominated for a Sony Radio Academy Award – for the second year in a row!

Since this is an interactive show, you all get a slice of the pie, so congratulations, guys! Drinks are on you, yeah?

Photo used with kind permission of LD Communications

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Posted in News | 12 Comments »

Thank God!

April 7, 2010

** Click here for Episode 129 **

YES! Here’s the news we’ve all been waiting for! Joy, formerly of Harefield, now of Ash Vale in Surrey, kindly leaps in to compensate our deficiency in Harefield knowledge which became all too obvious in last week’s episode:

Olly mentioned he didn’t know much about Harefield in last week’s podcast so I thought I’d mention Harefield Hospital, one of the leading organ transplant hospitals in the world, home for years to Prof. Sir Magdi Yacoub, pioneering transplant surgeon (first ever live lobe lung transplant) and my Dad, carpenter Brian Lindsay.

Olly was right about the antique shop in the village having closed though.

That’s sad. Still, you know what they say about Harefield: come for the transplant surgery; stay for the carpentry.

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | Leave a Comment »

responsible revenge FAIL

April 5, 2010

** Click here for Episode 129 **

Last week, we asked you to think up responsible revenges which Ky from Harrogate could exact on his Paypal hacker. Click here to read what you lot thought up. It’s not a very responsible-looking list, is it? What with all the beating, shooting, kicking and anthrax spores… And Sondra from San Francisco hasn’t raised the threshold of savouriness any further with her email:

As the middle child of five, I often found myself as the focus of unwarranted blame. At the tender age of three, my mother accused me of spilling a brand-new box of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor when I TOTALLY DIDN’T. It was my evil older brother, I swear!!! Well, that evening I wasn’t allowed ice cream, but my brother was. Thus, the plot thickens.

In the dead of night on that vengeful Tuesday, I popped a squat in my mother’s closet and dropped a hearty deuce in the left counterpart of her most comfortable shoes. She learned of this stinky bit of fun when she put these shoes on just a few hours later, making her very late for work.

Oh, yeah, and I beheaded my brother’s Teddy.

Denizens of San Francisco, do NOT cross Shondra, unless you want to be pursued around the Bay Area by the words of Paul Calf, “You’ve got shit shoes on, you shitty-shoed bastard.”

(more…)

Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 2 Comments »

Dear John

April 5, 2010

** Click here for Episode 129 **

Apply yourselves, please, to this little pickle on behalf of Rukaiya from Nigeria:

Please answer me this:
What’s the best way to tell a guy you’re not interested in a relationship without sabotaging the friendship???

One simple method is to start seeing someone else and parading him in front of poor old Muggins as if unaware of the latter’s interest, although we admit it’s not a sensitive manoeuvre. Readers, any other ideas? Head to the comments to tell Rukaiya how to break a foolish heart!

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 4 Comments »

EPISODE 129 – intelligence is multiparametric

April 1, 2010

Praise be for the forthcoming long weekend (even though it’s all thanks to Jesus having copped the death penalty, and we’re not usually fans of capital punishment)! Anyway, if you can find the time between Easter egg hunts, drawing a comedy moustache on the Turin Shroud, or mopping up your stigmata, have a listen to Answer Me This! Episode 129:

On today’s dance-card are:

Mensa
waxed toilet paper
Harefield
Wario
Sharon Stone’s clever fanny
Supergrass’s supersideburns
pubic papercuts
Alex James and Betty Boo
Love Never Dies
annatto
Andre the Giant
Glenn Miller
Mr Darcy
the defilement of Jo Guest
Hymn-Singing for Dummies.
and
‘Bugger’s grips’.

Plus: Olly proves that putting him in charge of the 2009-10 Swan and Duck Census was not a wise decision; Helen looks like she has emotions, but it’s just a bad case of pins-and-needles; while Martin the Sound Man would never got his DPhil in walking along in a straight line without incident. Crash! Thwomp! Oh, Martin… Anyway, while he’s falling over nonexistant obstacles, you can listen to him doing an interview on the Rewind Podcast in which he talks about ~~the time he banged Tiger Woods~~ his music and stuff.

This week, we would like your ideas for a responsible revenge for Ky from Harrogate to wreak upon his Paypal fraudster; please take yourself to the comments on this post and chip in on the matter. Then, as per, please do ask us QUESTIONS, by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving a voicemail on Skype ID answermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. That would be even more super-sweet than a Creme Egg with a sugar-lump shoved into the fondant.

See you next Thursday!

Helen and Olly

PS This week’s jingle challenge entries is one of Olly’s favourites, despite it featuring an enthusiastic rendition of an email address which we don’t actually possess. Nonetheless, take it away, Krista and Heather:

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Tags:90s, am I really supposed to put that in my mouth?, animal products, artificial colourings, beards, big bands, birds, brains, bullshit, cars, Channel Islands, cheese, church, cleverity, crying, customs, death, ducks, Einstein, etymology, facial hair, fat, fertility, food, funerals, god, great British grub, hymns, IQ, movies, music, myth, peasants, pudding, rice, singing, spiders, style, suet, swans, symbols, weddings, yuk
Posted in PODCASTS | 21 Comments »

run for your Rolex!

March 31, 2010

** Click here for Episode 128 **

Apparently there were more errata than usual in Episode 128, which obviously is a real blow to our status as power-Googlers. Let’s get to it. First up to the Plate of Sorrow is James from London, who warms up with an earlier gripe first:

My love for your podcast turned to anger and rage two weeks ago when you answered, or rather, attempted to answer the question: do people really buy expensive things such as a £5,000 watch from the airport.

You missed the two critical words that describe airport shopping: DUTY FREE. Therefore, when people of limited means such as myself see a lovely watch in Harrods priced at £5,875, and think, if only there was a cheaper way to get that, we book a weekend in New York and whilst waiting for the flight to depart, nip into Harrods and buy the choice watch at a bargain price.

Have you been sniffing glue, James? Firstly, the weekend in New York surely costs more than the savings on the watch; and anyway, the only things which count as a bargain when they cost over £5K are houses or racing elephants. Go on then, unleash part 2 of your wrath:

A week later, you suggested that the distance of a Marathon is distance run by Pheidippides from the Battle of Marathon to Athens. Google Maps calculates this as 22.6 miles (although there may have been a different route available at the time) but in any event, this run was only recorded by Herodotus who wasn’t born until six years after the battle ended.

The reason that the route is 26 miles and 385 yards is because this is the distance between the starting line at Windsor Castle and the finishing line at the newly built White City Stadium during the Marathon of the 1908 Olympic Games.

Approximately 30000000 of you wrote in to tell us this, citing Wikipedia and QI as witnesses for the prosecution. Now, let’s not get wound up with the accuracy of those sources [although: ahem!]. This is a tug of love, people. Whom do you love more, AMT! or QI and Wikipedia? Huh? Huh???

OK, don’t answer that. We don’t want you to see us cry. Let’s enjoy some more criticism instead. Nathan, formerly of Tunbridge Wells, now of London, says:

As an ex-Tunbridge Well-ian like Helen, I wanted to point out an error in your last podcast.

There is a bowling alley in Tunbridge Wells and there has been for at least a decade, in the North Farm Industrial Estate, besides the large Odeon. I remember watching The Matrix there when I was on my year out so it must have been built pre-2000, the Odeon that is.

Thankyou for that, Nathan; now I know that if I ever have to go back to my hometown, I’m assured of a cracking night out on the industrial estate. Why did I not think before to go there for my leisure enjoyments? Idiot Zaltzman! Although like any true Tunbridge Wells native, I know that anything built in the town after 1898 officially DOES NOT EXIST.

Let’s cheer ourselves up with this from Mike in London:

Following a listener’s recommendation I have started playing “Answer Me That” with my year 1 class. If they can ask me a question I can’t answer they get a sticker (they love stickers).

I told my school’s other year 1 teacher about this game and now she had adopted it. I soon envisage “Answer Me That” becoming part of the standard school curriculum.

That would be an election pledge we would love to see. By the end of the year, all primary school teachers in the land would be a super-race of question-answerers!

And finally, a few words from Lorraine:

In a recent episode you discussed mood rings. It might be of benefit for Martin to buy Helen a mood ring as it will help him better judge her mood. If she’s in a good mood it will turn green, and if she’s in a bad mood it will leave a red mark in the middle of his forehead.

Ber-bam! In both senses.

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, contrition | 1 Comment »

Every cloud…

March 31, 2010

** Click here for Episode 128 **

There’s not a great deal of cuteness here at Answer Me This!, so thanks very much to Heather from Manchester for supplying some:

Do you have a mascot? If not, my guinea pig Cloud would like to apply. She has had no previous mascot-training; however she is very enthusiastic and will work for free! She even has her own yellow Answer Me This! jacket. Here is a picture of Cloud posing in her uniform for you to look at.

All together now, awwwwww! And also, doesn’t Cloud look a bit pissed off to be forced into a yellow garment? Or is that just her modelling face?

We’re not sure what mascot duties would include, but certainly couldn’t discount having one just yet; so if any of the rest of you want to send us nice pictures of your pets dressed up in home-made Answer Me This! merch, then we can audition them for such mascot-necessary qualities as…er…looking good in yellow and not shitting on the job? Anyway, send in your photos to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, and we can have some sort of X Factor-style contest, only without that infernal singing.

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Tags:cute!, little fluffy pets, RSPCA
Posted in extracurricular questions, frippery, visuals | 2 Comments »