Archive for the ‘Answer Us Back! Your time to opine’ Category

nun of the above

November 14, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT236

Perhaps during AMT236 we opened a floodgate for all the lewd nun jokes that are neither comprehensible nor funny. Luca writes:

Two nuns were cycling down a cobbled a road. ‘I never came this way,’ said one nun. ‘It must be the cobbles,’ said the other.

Answer me this: why are nuns so sexual in jokes?

In my opinion, it is because the composers and repeaters of those jokes can hardly believe that sentient women would actively choose a life of celibacy. It is INCONCEIVABLE that they would waste their God-given BOOBS and LADYPARTS in this way. Since they have forsaken the public-facing singles scene, they MUST be getting their kicks elsewhere, and therefore a convent must be like a 24/7/365 Carry On film set in a boarding school for wayward girls.

To my mind, however, the real question is why a nun commits herself to marriage with a man who is not only dead, but cheating on her with all the other nuns.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

That’s Asda cacophony

November 7, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

In AMT235 we spoke of jobs none of us has experienced. But, being such a diverse bunch, you listeners have. Jess from Dorset writes:

In regards to your recent question about Asda FM: I work there and they repeat the music ALL DAY LONG and play the same adverts over and over again. Absolutely terrible and definitely for the customers not the staff!!!!!

I always had my suspicions that somebody has been developing a noise equivalent of chemical weaponry. Now I know.

Anyway, as for jobs outside of the retail sector, Elizabeth from Madison, Wisconsin informs us:

I can say that people going to the South Pole are definitely encouraged (one might say forced) to make sure that their teeth are in top shape before going there.

My husband is a physicist whose experiment is at the South Pole (IceCube Neutrino Observatory if you are interested) and in order to go there for a month one winter they made him get his remaining wisdom teeth out as a precautionary measure because they thought that one might have a cavity.

He was not keen on getting them out, but his desire to go to the frozen south was such that he did it anyway and brought me back a lot of pictures of snow.

I love the show, and listened to you while dissecting over 200 squid yesterday.

Thanks Elizabeth – we hope that was a work thing, rather than a nice day out to the aquarium that you decided to sabotage.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

the dream is over

November 5, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

Much of the USA has already had a rough few days, and I’m sorry, but I’m about to make things even rougher.

Brace yourself for more bad news:

My mum is definitely not eligible to become the President of the USA.

Aside from the reasons for disqualification as listed in AMT235, she actually had to give up her US citizenship in 1970 when she married my father: they wouldn’t let her have dual nationality, so to allow my South African father to remain in the UK, she had to choose to be 100% British.

Of course now, after 41 years of darning his underpants and withstanding his puns, she might be regretting that decision.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

surviving Sandy

November 5, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

Hey! AMTpals on the other side of the Atlantic, are you alright? We hope you and yours made it through the Extreme Weather Events, and we are relieved to have heard from some of you, sounding damp but resilient, like Emma from the Soggy Apple:

As a New Yorker, last week was pretty hectic. Hurricane Sandy turned out to a be quite a bitch.

Me, my two roommates, my roommate’s annoying dog, our friend who lives in Manhattan, and my roommate’s boyfriend were trapped in my Brooklyn apartment for days with very little to do but drink the mass amounts of beer we bought from the one open bodega in our neighborhood. We don’t have a tv, so we ended up playing lots of games.

One game we played for far too long was MASH, which is one of those playground games girls play to predict who they are going to marry, where they are going to live, how many kids they will have, etc. For instance, after one game I ended up living in Tokyo, married to Danny Devito, having no kids but 20 cats, getting around by helicopter, and working in a dildo factory. Would it actually be fun being married to Danny Devito as long as you didn’t have sex with him?

I’m not sure that would be your choice if married to Danny Devito, if there’s any truth in the rumours which sprouted after he and Rhea Perlman announced their separation last month. We learn that if fidelity is important to you in a relationship, don’t marry one of the stars of Twins.

Also if you’re deliberately entering into a sexless marriage and you have TWENTY cats, your life sounds like a mess no matter who your husband is.

Nichole had different means of seeing out the storm:

Great big slug pigs from hell, we survived the New York apocalypse known as hurricane Sandy! We roughed it out for FOUR days in our one bedroom apartment with no heat, no electricity, NO INTERNET, and water turning off and on with the wind.

Would you believe it? The husband and I managed the early darkening nights huddled around the soft light of candles and a thankfully charged iPad stocked only with Answer Me This! episodes from your early days of yore, episodes 62 to 90. It was like a drunken end of days with only the soft lull of you cracking whimsical over grandpa’s proverbial wireless.

Now we’re back and there are things we have to know! What happened to the on-again, off-again couple of Anastasia and Wade? Did Graham from Canada ever get a girlfriend in his own country?

The truth is: we don’t know! All those kids are now grown up, and unless they contact us, we can’t find out what’s going on with them since the government shut down our covert surveillance operation. So here’s an appeal:

Wade. Ana. Graham from Canada. If you’re reading this, please go to the comments and tell us what’s been happening in your life since we last heard from you circa 2009.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

Miss Marple: marriage wrecker?

November 1, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT234

Apropos of AMT234‘s contemplation of the sexual preferences of Agatha Christie’s fictional detectives, Hannah from Bedford writes:

I don’t know if this is something that comes up in the books, but in the ITV shows, Poirot does have a romantic relationship with a Russian woman, so seemingly he might be heterosexual. Obviously this doesn’t rule out the idea of him having repressed homosexual feelings like you were saying.

Similarly Miss Marple has an affair with a married soldier during WWII, he dies during the war and she doesn’t seem to have any other romantic relationships.

That stinks of TELLY MEDDLING. You know why? Firstly, because Marple does not seem the type to plant begonias in another woman’s herbaceous border. Secondly, because Miss Marple first appeared in print, already an elderly spinster, in 1926, thirteen years before the Second World War broke out. Although, as the final Miss Marple novel was written in 1971, it is possible that she did have that affair when already pretty ancient, then pined after him until her death at the age of 120 or so.

“Phwoar. Have him scrubbed and brought to my tent.”

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

locks and clocks

October 24, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

The bowels of Andrew from County Down have been suffering from stage fright:

To continue with the bathroom lock talk from AMT232, I have a similar problem.

When visiting my friend who still lives with his parents, I went to use the bathroom facilities. Having closed the door, I noticed that there was no lock but, oddly, a clock above the door. Needless to say, once I sat down with my trousers round the ankles, my friend’s mum walked in.

Answer me this! Should I introduce the family to an open and closed door system, insist they get a lock put in, or insist they remove the clock so that I’m not caught in a daydream staring at the clock when various family members walk in on me taking a shit?

No, no and no!

1. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and boss them into changing their customs.

2. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and expect them to add door-furniture.

3a. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and demand they remove the clock that presumably they keep there for a reason (eg to monitor time for the annual family competition: the person who has spent the longest time in the loo over the year wins a kilo of prunes at Christmas).
3b. Getting rid of the clock won’t stop the door from opening when you don’t want it to.
3c. Your fear is that they might catch you mid-daydream, rather than mid-shit?
3d. If you find clocks so enrapturing, this is far from your most pressing problem.

Here’s a simple solution: take a door wedge with you when you visit, which will keep the door shut long enough for you to alert the loo-invader about your presence. Alternatively, buy them one of these, but don’t be surprised if they decide not to use it, because if they haven’t already got a lock it suggests they actively enjoy the risk of a lavatorial interruption.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

bad Bad Ischl

October 24, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

Not everyone would want to claim it, so it’s nice of Gareth to pipe up:

While listening to you discussing the birthplace of the industrial revolution in Episode 233, Olly asked in passing where the first world war started. Well I am pleased to tell you that it was started in my home town of Bad Ischl in Austria. Everyone round here is very proud of the imperial history of the town. The Kaisers came to Bad Ischl for generations to take the waters and relax.

You can have guided tour of the Kaiser Villa and they glow with excitement as they show you the desk at which Kaiser Franz Joseph wrote the letter declaring war on Serbia. This on its own is not odd, but they also every year have the ‘Kaiser Bummel’ where they cover every street in the town with red carpet and have food stalls, beer and live music. All while a man and woman dressed as the Kaiser and Sissy his wife ‘bummel’ (walk slowly) around town.

If you ask me, this seem a bit over the top for a man that started the First World War. I don’t recall any yearly street parades in Ranshofen with people dressing as Hitler.

Probably for the best.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

lost photos

October 23, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

Julia from London has a tip for the poor young fellow in AMT232:

I empathised with Steve and his friend’s deleted photos of Paris – I deleted everything off my camera’s memory card AS I was backing it up! But then I found out there is a free programme you can use to “undelete” them and get them back! It’s called Pandora Recovery.

Apparently it will work better if you use it quite quickly so that you haven’t saved new photos over the old ghost files – but it worked perfectly for me and I got about 50 photos back!

Hurry Steve, there is not a moment to lose! You may yet be able to recover that photo where you’ve used perspective to make it look like your friend is wearing the Eiffel Tower like a hat.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

shrink to fit

October 16, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT232

Here’s a point of information from Hilary from Hemel Hempstead:

Bearing in mind the subject of AMT232 I thought you might be interested in this oriental remedy which claims it can change the size of vaginas.

Great news! At last Anish Kapoor will be able to shrink this down so it fits nicely on the mantelpiece.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

Pirate wedding walked the plank

October 10, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT231

Alas, it was just not to be.

Of course we love being right. Even when we’re right at the expense of somebody else’s happiness. So we were delighted to have the correctness of our answer confirmed by questioneer Fiona from Busan, South Korea (formerly from Golden, Colorado):

I wrote in a few months ago asking for advice on what to wear to my friend’s Renaissance Pirate-themed wedding.

After I had picked out my awesome pirate wedding attire I have to say you were right. One of them turned out to be a massive twat and left the other a few weeks before the wedding. Unfortunately, it was the one who had originally been my friend.

She now is married (to a different man) and is pregnant now with his child.

Good grief; Fiona’s query was featured in AMT211. Her friend sure works fast. I wonder how she even managed to decide a new wedding theme and seek out an appropriate costume in such a short space of time.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

…last seen wearing school uniform

October 2, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT230

Apropos of last week‘s discussion of school photos, Annahid from California writes:

In America every child must have an annual, updated school picture in case the child is kidnapped. That way there’s a recent and well-lit photo to put on the “MISSING” poster.

Are American schoolchildren really that likely to be kidnapped? Because this seems like a very expensive and labour-intensive method of ensuring there’s something to put on the sides of the milk cartons.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

R Lauren’s herd and R Kelly’s catering

September 19, 2012

AMT RETURNS 20th SEPT; CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON EPISODES

AMT returns tomorrow, but a couple of matters are left over from the end of the last series. Firstly, Richard writes:

Apropos of the AMT228 reference to Polo Ralph Lauren.

The cheaper branded clothing has small ponies, the more expensive has the large ponies and sometimes even a polo team.

While this may be of no interest to your listeners, I feel I need to tell you so that should we pass in the street and I’m wearing my normal “uniform” of polo shirt/Levi combo you don’t think I’m a skank.

As if we would! What could be posher than somebody walking around covered in an entire polo team?

Next, Shelley from Richmond, Virginia:

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that your interpretation of R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition song is badly, horribly, hilariously wrong.

When he says, “It’s like Murder She Wrote, once I get you out them clothes,” he’s saying something much more violently sexual than “my sex game is so mysterious.”

What he’s saying is: “I am going to kill that pussy.”

Murder that vagina. Commit homicide upon that genital region until it is worn out and useless and sweaty and sore. There is no use denying this will happen, because the murder has already been written as soon as your clothes come off. Once you have become naked, say goodbye to your genitals. Vaginal death is imminent and unavoidable.

And when he says, “food everywhere, as if the party was catered,” it’s because his music is FOR the lower middle class. That’s who is supposed to hear these lyrics and think to themselves, “Hey, I can relate to R. Kelly. I know that feel, bro. I, too, can throw a party with food. Everyone will be very impressed and the panties will drop. I, myself, will destroy genitalia! This music is my life.”

Hmm. I’m not sure I fully agree with this hypothesis, but it certainly is a very spirited argument.

iTUNESALBUMSAMT BOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEEPISODESFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBE