Answer Me This! Podcast

** Click here for Episode 173 **

Strap yourself in for a question from Finn:

I recently watched your Great British Questions series (awesome). i couldn’t help noticing the mouse in dungarees standing outside the cheesery.

Answer me this: why does it become socially unacceptable for males to wear dungarees past the age of three? It’s annoying as I think dungarees are the coolest clothing item ever, but if I wore them at the age of thirteen I would probably be put in a circus, put in a mental home, or possibly both.

Come come, circuses would go bust if the entertainment they were offering consisted of 13-year-old boys wearing dungarees.

By all means, readers, go to the comments and explain to Finn why this twist of sartorial fate is thus; however I think the more pressing mystery is why anybody over the age of three would WANT to wear dungarees. Pregnant women, I give you a free pass; everyone else, why would you wear a garment that makes you LOOK pregnant (regardless of your gender and relative waifishness), plus forces you to undress every time you go to the lavatory? Why? WHY????

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** Click here for Episode 173 **

Help us promote inland tourism today by contemplating the following pair of questions, then going to the comments and offering your best suggestions for fun in the towns mentioned therein. Lorraine from Ireland is the first person needing your guidance:

My two kids – a 5-year-old girl and 2-and-a-half-year-old boy – have become crazy for Thomas the Tank Engine after getting some of the books as a gift.

We were considering taking our small people there during the easter break but am wondering what else Birmingham has to offer. So answer me this: what else could we do during a weekend in Birmingham?

GO TO CADBURY WORLD.

Sadly, Cadbury World is not an option where Dom from Shrewsbury is going:

A year and a half after leaving university I have finally got a graduate job. It involves moving to Nottingham so I’ve been researching my new home and I’ve found sod all. Answer me this – apart from Robin Hood and that one old pub is there anything interesting about Nottingham? The only thing I’ve found is an exciting level of gun crime.

In my brief acquaintance with Nottingham, I went to a lovely tea shop where the staff were all dressed like The Past and had an impressive selection of cakes and crockery. I can understand how that might not keep you in thrall to the place long-term; in which case, the Nottingham Caves certainly look worth a gander. And I’m sure you’ll settle into the gun culture in no time.

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** Click here for Episode 172 **

Following in the wake of the celeb craze for spring 2011, Elaine from Cork has some happy news:

My significant other and I found that we are expecting a new arrival in November.
It is a surprise for both of us really… we have told our immediate family but not our friends yet!
My question is: do you have any interesting ways for us to break the news to our friends and work colleagues after I have my first scan?
I was think via facebook for friends— but that just seems boring!
Any crazy ideas like sky writing etc… greatly appreciated?

Bravo Elaine and Mr Elaine! It would be pretty easy just to direct your friends to this post, but, I’ll grant you, perhaps insufficiently festive. You could stuff a cushion up your jumper for your next social occasion, and pretend you are practising for six months hence. You could leave a bun in each of their ovens, with a little note explaining this bizarre act (people are quite lenient towards odd behaviour in pregnant people, don’t they?); you could send them one of those creepy photos amalgamating your face with your partner’s and sticking it onto a baby’s body, with the caption, “Brace yourself!”; you could show them all how you’ve turned your erstwhile drugs den into a nursery. However, none of these ruses are satisfactory given the significance of the news, so I put it to you readers who unlike me have produced offspring. Go to the comments, and with your mental fecundity give birth to a glorious scheme via which Elaine can intimate to her friends and colleagues that in a few months’ time they will have to get used to her being tired, distracted and covered in regurgitated milk.

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** Click here for Episode 172 **

Having read listener Laura‘s email, I have been led to believe there’s a leaking gas main beneath her new garden:

My boyfriend and I recently moved into a new flat in Crouch End. On our first day sitting out in our new garden we were absolutely, COMPLETELY convinced we saw a hummingbird hovering and sipping from a flower only metres away. It was very tiny, probably only two inches high and about an inch wide.

HOWEVER after much internet consultation it seems hummingbirds simply don’t exist in Britain – so Helen and Olly answer me this – what was it that we saw and are we just deluded in persisting in our romantic belief that it was a hummingbird in our new garden?

Of course dear, it was a hummingbird, and then the unicorn next door banged on the fence and told you to stop making so much bloody noise.

However, as I once saw a crayfish on our driveway in Tunbridge Wells, who am I to say it definitely was not this exotic bird? Or a big dowdy bumblebee? If any of you readers are ornithologists, or psychotherapists, go to the comments and clear up the mystery surrounding Laura’s vision.

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** Click here for Episode 171 **

It’s a question from the birthday girl, Sarah:

It’s my birthday on Tuesday March 29th (I will be 28). My friend Sarah and I have both booked the day off work and we are planning to go on a day trip somewhere. My question is this: What can we do for a fun day out for around £30 per person in London? We are both physically fit and not afraid to try new things. Your suggestions would be most welcome.

Londoners! You have two ladies, £60 and one day; add them up, then go to the comments right away and tell the Sarahs how to have the best damn day of their lives.

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** Click here for Episode 171 **

Wedding bells ring for Annie from London. Or do they? She writes:

My partner Seb and are shortly going to be getting hitched.

So if you can answer me this it would be a huge help to us: what is the coolest way to get married?

That raises another question: is marriage cool at all? Vegas is definitely NOT cool, because it is, well, vile. And the ubiquity of Vegas weddings is the enemy of cool; plus, in our experience, drive-through establishments tend not to be compatible with institutions aspiring to permanence.

Over here we’ve got wedding preparations of our own to worry about, so readers, do us a favour by going to the comments and planning Annie’s wedding for her. If you do a good job, there might be a lucrative career in it for you.

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** Click here for Episode 171 **

Here’s an email from someone who, understandably, wishes to remain anonymous. So we will know him only as Sexy Windmaster:

I have this friend, who shall remain nameless, and whilst trying out a few movements garnered from my Kama Sutra app, I happened to experience an auditory discharge* at the very moment of entry.

My own thoughts are that it’s a very messy business and, a bit like living on a farm, it’s all part of a rich tapestry, farts and all.

Readers, I don’t know your thoughts on such matters – personally, my years of service in Sevenoaks School’s Needlework Club means that farting and tapestry NEVER go together – but Sexy Windymaster needs to know them, in order to avoid being blue-balled by his own bowels again. Proceed to the comments, and apprise him upon the most debonair way to excuse a trump without spoiling the sexytime. A noise can be laughed off, but a stench is more difficult to excuse in the moment, so you’re going to have to work hard on this problem.

* I assume he means an audible discharge, rather than his ears produced a parp.

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** Click here for Episode 171 **

Today’s correspondent, David from Paisley, is a postman who listens to Answer Me This! on his rounds. That’s not relevant to his question; it is just the sort of detail which intrigues us. His question, meanwhile, is the sort which intrigues the world throughout all of time?

Little thing that I have recently been discussing with my girlfriend: what is the difference between being in love and loving someone? I don’t think there is a difference, but she says there is a massive difference! I am confused!

This is a serious matter (especially if they’re arguing about the difference because David’s girlfriend is telling him that she loves him but is not IN love with him and will he please stop calling and stop sending flowers and stop standing outside her bedroom window with a boombox). Therefore, commentariat, mobilise yourselves to instruct David of the difference; or, conversely, to instruct the girlfriend of the non-difference.

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** Click here for Episode 170 **

Jon in Sussex:

Just listened to 170 when you ask if anyone had named a military operation. Well I haven’t, but when I was 22 I did get to name four housing estates in London. I got packed off to the local library for a day or two to find anything of interest in the local history and then drew up a shortlist and made my recommendation.

So, answer me this: if you could rename the town where you were born, what would you go for and why?

I wonder whether Tunbridge Wells would continue to be such a stuffed shirt if it was renamed Zaltzman-on-Sea (yes, I know it’s miles from the sea, but it’s nice to give people hope (Hope that one day, rising sea levels will take care of the place.)).

Kids, it’s time for you to mosey to the comments to play Fantasy Council Expensive Rebranding Exercise. The best one gets to spearhead a letter campaign to the Governer of St Petersburg to see if they’d be up for another name change, seeing as it’s been 20 years since the last one.

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