Here’s a carefully-worded question from Jill from Atlanta, Georgia:
My granny hates the word “guts”. When I used to say it in front of her she screwed up her face into a big frown and made a groan of displeasure. I was surprised that hearing the simple word “guts” would produce such a strong reaction in anyone.
Helen, please answer me this: what words, if any, gross you out like “guts” grosses out my granny?
Sit down, Jill; this is going to take AGES. ‘Thang’. ‘Peeps’ (as slang for ‘people’, not the third person singular form of the verb ‘to peep’). ‘Slither’ when someone means ‘slither’. ‘Trendy’. ‘On trend’, for being just as bad as ‘trendy’ but with pretensions of seriousness. ‘Narnia’. I’m going to have to stop here as all these are inciting a visceral reaction of horror; but readers, head for the comments and bravely tell us the words that make you swallow back the brain-bile.
Often it is hard to strike up a conversation with somebody you don’t know very well, but not so when you meet Kieran from Bedford:
My dad is a gynecologist and most people seem to know this!
Answer me this: what should I say to someone when they tell me my dad delivered them?
Furthermore! What should I say to women who say they’ve been to see my dad?! The most recent was a dinner lady at school (just as you imagine!), which is not an image I want to imagine!
I’ve found myself in many an awkward situation due to this!
Yes – on your back with your pants off and your feet in stirrups, Kieran! Ho ho ho.
Readers, go to the comments, please, and give Kieran an all-purpose rejoinder with which he can deflect anybody who is keen to discuss how his father has stared up their intimate passages.
Anyway, Kieran, you should be proud of your father – he must be doing a great job, considering how eager these people are to talk about these matters upon which they would usually be so coy.
You don’t win a prize if you go to the comments to help answer this question from Jane from London, but she stands to win a job AND a wig. So help her out, please. She says:
I am a law student and am trying to qualify as a barrister. In order for this to happen I have to fill in lots of horrible application forms and attend lots of interviews in the hope that at the end of it someone will give me a wig, gown and a job. Most of the application forms are pretty standard and not a problem. But one or two of them have ‘joke’ questions, which frankly I don’t know how to go about answering.
For example, one says “If you were on Mastermind, what would your specialist subject be and why?” Answer me this: what the fuck are they looking for when they ask this question? As I don’t believe I’m located anywhere on the autistic spectrum, I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the wing-spans of birds, or of the Arsenal Football team 1976-1984, or similar! I’m a normal person with normal levels of interests and I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of anything!
So what do I do? Do I make up something that I think lawyer-y types would find impressive (and risk them asking me about it at interview). Do I just tell the truth? Or do I just have a stab at something I quite like, like ‘the works of Radiohead’ and leave it at that?
You are asking the wrong person, Jane: my Mastermind subject would be “How to poison job applications so you definitely won’t make it through to the interview stage”. Which, now I think upon it, is a sad waste of all that education I received. I should have been able to opt for “Anglo-Saxon pronouns” or “mid-period Henry James novels”, but you have to go for where your real strengths lie.
Time for a laugh/”I don’t get it. Oh! Ha” thanks to Tom in Glasgow:
When I was around eight years old, I overheard my mum telling her pal a quirky little joke that made them snigger a lot. The joke was:
Q: what do you do if an elephant comes through your window?
A: Swim.
I didn’t get the joke at all, but I always remembered it, and even told it to other people several times!
I am now in my thirties and actually have children of my own. I am ashamed to say that I have just reminisced in my brain about that puzzling day when I was eight and have just ‘GOT THE JOKE’ (hehehe snigger).
Answer me this: have you ever heard a joke and taken a long, or as in my case, a very fucking long time to get the punchline?
Oh, plenty! But luckily, in the podcast we can edit out the twenty-year pause.
Readers, please give us all a chuckle today by going to the comments and telling us a joke that we might not get for a couple of decades, or unless our mums explain it to us.
I am shortly going to be best man at a wedding in which my ex-girlfriend will be attending. When we broke up she took it upon herself to ‘borrow’ £200 off me and not pay it back, as she claims she can’t pay what she hasn’t got. Should I use my best man’s speech to name and shame the thieving b@£$h in an attempt to get her to pay up?
NO. Unless the ongoing friendship of the groom is worth less to you than £200.
Instead, keep under cover. Start by slipping a threatening note into the little box of sugared almonds or whatever wedding favour they have laid at her place setting. Ramp up the menace by slipping a dead bird under her napkin. Then wait for her outside the Posh Portaloos with a crowbar.
Break-ups and revenge: two topics which frequently collide. And here are two questions upon those two topics, so help us out by offering your own advice to our lovelorn questioneers, the first of whom is Dave in Halstead, Kent:
The lady that I was dating for five years, and engaged to for two of those years, decided that we had grown apart. This was after a period of stressful months where we both had job worries and problems finding somewhere to live. The feeling was not the same and I tried everything (within reason) to win her back, and failed. I’m 23 and this is the first proper long-term relationship I have had.
So I decided to go to New York and blow all the money I saved for our wedding on a 5* hotel for a week to get over it, as a start. So answer me this: how would you recommend getting over a difficult break-up, and when is it acceptable to start dating again? And also what cool stuff in New York would you recommend?
I have only ever spent two days in New York, and I’m not sure the Museum of Jewish Heritage will lift your spirits; but as aforementioned, readers, go to the comments and pen a potted travel guide for Dave. And while you’re at it, counsel him upon ways to recover from the emotional fall-out, because while it is excellent that he is spending the wedding pot on a luxury trip for one, we don’t want him to be attacked by melancholia and loneliness while he’s there. Particularly not on top of the jetlag, which only compounds misery.
Next on the subject, Sean from Cheltenham keeps it quick and painful:
My boyfriend of six months was cheating on me with another boy. I want revenge. What should I do?
Though David above is trying the ‘Living well is the best revenge’ tack, Sean might need something a little less dignified. Readers, you bitter and shameless bunch, unleash your inner Glenn Closes in the comments.
Hands up who thinks that in movies, there ought to be more time dedicated to the mundanity of living? Tim Burton ought to spend less time on the fantastical elements of storytelling, and more time satisfying the curiosity of Ryan in Melbourne, who asks:
How does Edward Scissorhands pee?
How does Edward Scissorhands do ANYTHING? Apart from cut hair and sculpt ice, he’s ill-equipped to do anything without serious damage! Anyway, we know that Vincent Price didn’t finish off Edward Scissorhands – hence his death-hands and emo style – so I bet he doesn’t have a bladder, let alone conventional urine-evacuating equipment.* Even if he did, he would have sliced it off at some point during his lonely years in the castle.
But if, for the sake of argument, he does have the usual human formation, I reckon Dianne Wiest would help him. She wouldn’t let him get piss on his hands, because they’d rust up.
*It has been a while since I’ve seen the film, so there might be a comical “Look, Edward’s doing a piss in the garden!” scene which I’ve forgotten.
We all prefer our partners to be shallow, unevolved and un-selfactualised (whatever that is). Don’t we? Well, Sean does:
My girfriend has spent the last six months volunteering as a vet for a donkey and horse charity in Luxor, Egypt. As her trip comes to an end she seems to keep reflecting on how much she has changed and learned about herself.
So answer me this: how do I go about undoing all this personal growth and turning her back into the girlfriend who left for Egypt last September?
Readers, over to you: in the comments, please tell Sean how to transform this spiritually blossomed woman back into a selfish, short-sighted bint. Sorry, donkeys, but you’ve had it good for far too long.
Here’s the latest entry in our apparently weekly new series, ‘Facebook’s fucking up my family‘. It’s from Dave from Plymouth:
Like most technology savvy 34-year-old men, I have a Facebook page, and like many others side the rise of Twitter, I don’t really bother using it anymore.
However, in the last couple of weeks I’ve had two new friend requests. The first was from my mother and the second was from my 9-year-old daughter.
I’m happy to allow my mum to view my page, as she’s unlikely to be too upset by the occasional swearword or drunken photo which may get posted; on the other hand, I’d like to prevent my daughter from having her wonderful image of me crushed, as well as learning that alcohol and rude words are to be in some way encouraged.
Would I be right in refusing my daughter’s friend request, or am I condemned to a lifetime of intricate security and viewing settings as well as constant censorship of my own Facebook page?
You know you can customise your posts so they only get sent to a selection of your friends, right? Try it, it’s easy! You could even set up a ratings system: PG for those which are suitable for the under-12s, 18 for everyone else.
I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped the peril that approaches from the other direction, however. Are you sure you want to be privy to pictures of your mum falling over drunk, her flirty wall conversations with your friends, or her colourful swearbombs being detonated all over your news feed?
Lawyers! You’ve already done the booklearning, so please go to the comments and answer this question from Stuart from the Isle of Wight:
My girlfriend recently broke her little toe by stubbing it on the sofa (ouch!), and tried to convince me I should cut her toe off as it would be less painful.
I felt a bit uneasy about this and the possible legal situation it could put me in, so declined her offer.
But, answer me this: if I had gone ahead with said request, would I have been doing anything illegal? Even thought it would have been an act between two consenting adults?
And if it was legal, at what point would the law intervene? The ankle? Knee? Thigh?
By the way I think I should clarify this is only a theoretical question. Her little toe has healed nicely now, and anyway I’m not a psychopath!
Thank goodness for that. I thought you’d lost your mind – what would be the point of amputating her toe, anyway, without a good Big Lebowski-type scheme in mind for the detached digit?
As if break-ups weren’t bad enough, Web 2.0 has to add to the pain. Pete from Somerset writes:
I recently broke up with my girlfriend of two and half years. She was my first long term relationship, and we both became quite involved in one another’s families, and added one another’s family, friends etc on Facebook.
Now that we have split up, I am unsure as to what the social protocol is when dealing with her family and friends, as I have become quite good mates with some of them, but I still feel awkward. So, answer me this: should I remove them all and hope they forget about me, or should I just leave it?
It somewhat depends upon how acrimonious the split was. If it fell at the Baldwin-Basinger end of the scale, there’s no point pretending that you and these people will ever be fraternising. Cull! Cull, before these people become weapons in the battle between you.
If, however, the break-up scored more towards the Cox-Arquette end, after a suitable amount of recovery time has elapsed, you and your ex might be friends yourselves, or at least civil enough to move in the same social circles. In this scenario, it would be unnecessary to destroy your cordial relationships with your newishfound friends, although you would have to be prepared for the possibility of photos of your ex and her new paramour appearing in your news feed.
Readers, what do you reckon? Tell us in the comments about how you still happily play Lexulous with your former mother-in-law; or, conversely, how your ex’s bestie got your account shut down after reporting your photos as offensive.
Team AMT need to get themselves some eardrops, because they’ve been mishearing things all over the place lately! Firstly, Alastair from Sheffield:
Where does the saying ‘Laymam’s terms’ come from? Who is this Laymam and why does he (or she) need things to be explained so simply?
Laymam was a famous eighteenth-century dunce, who tripped over his chamber-pot and hit his head upon an ornamental bust of Pitt the Elder, after which damage his IQ was notoriously sub-Forrest Gump. However, his curiosity was undimmed, so he launched a fashion for extremely simply-worded explanations, upon which tradition Answer Me This! is built.
Sorry, Alastair; I shit you. The saying is in fact ‘layman’s terms’, the word ‘layman’ having been coined some 900 years ago to denote a person who wasn’t in Holy Orders. Way back then, laypeople tended to be uneducated and illiterate, and the monks and clergy the clever-clogs of society. If they were to disseminate information to the masses, they had to couch it in layman’s terms, rather than high Latin. There!
Our next linguistically-confused correspondent is Rachel:
My Grandma said to me ‘Stitchin’ Time save nine’ and I know that it’s a famous saying but I have no idea what it means so answer me this, what does the saying ‘Stitchin’ Time saves nine’ actually mean?
Stitchin’ Time was a country-blues crossover artist, who made the headlines for heroically rescuing nine line-dancers after a particularly vigorous hoe-down caused the barn floor to collapse. Tragically, fifty-eight other dancers perished.
Or, rather more prosaically, the expression is ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, a homily meaning that a small amount of timely effort will prevent considerably larger efforts later. IE mending a small hole in your best jumper is much easier than putting off the task then later having to contend with a much larger hole, which you’ll never be able to mend invisibly! Or, to put it in Laymam’s terms, it’s better to stage an intervention for a friend at the point where their drinking looks like it might be getting out of control, rather than waiting until they have liver failure.
Finally, Alex from Hertfordshire requires clarification:
I listen to Answer Me This! every week, commuting in my car, giggling to myself and singing along to the jingles. However, there is one jingle that I can’t sing along to properly and it’s bugging me.
It’s the one with the Joyce Grenfell sound-alike which starts “Life is full of questions, but there are some answers you should know…”
I have a good idea what item 1 – “No it will not fall off, but moderation in all things” – is referring to, and also can take a guess at what item number 2 is talking about: “Yes, there probably is, but we won’t find out in our lifetime”. And of course there’s the completely clear item 4: “If you try and slip her one, it would ruin your friendship”, but I always stumble at item 3, which sounds like “Most people prefer coralee but my personal favourite is doulton”. The only Coralee that I know is my kid’s dancing teacher, who is lovely but hardly podcast jingle material and the only Doulton I can think of is the china company (are we talking sanitary ware?).
Please can you put me out of my misery, help get me singing again, and educate me properly: Who or what are ‘coralee’ and ‘doulton’?
Sigh. It’s hardly going to enter the canon of great misheard lyrics, but the line which has eluded you thus far, as enunciated by the marvellous Joanna Neary, is: ‘Most people prefer Connery, but my personal favourite is Dalton.’
I’ll leave you to deduce the meaning of that by yourself.
Answer Me This! Podcast 