Pack your flippers, sunblock and emergency stomach medicine, because our new album The Answer Me This! Holiday is ready to depart!
It’s 58 minutes 3 seconds of all-new material – right down to the jingles – all about holidays, vacations, minibreaks, staycations, jaunts, sojourns, escapes; whatever you like to call them. In the usual AMT style, we tackle questions about such holidayish topics as:
things to do in New York City
summer reading lists
artificial insemination for pandas
dads’ embarrassing holiday-wear
what lies behind – or, more accurately, beneath – the scenes at Disney
Legoland sculptors
why the Spanish Steps in Rome aren’t Spanish
what to expect from a Chinese breakfast
stag parties abroad
and
why the Brits are lagging behind in competitive eating contests.
• A full range of holidaywear: clip-on sunglasses, short shorts, convertible trousers, Speedos, gilets, electroejaculators; • Classic tourist attractions: the Staten Island Ferry, Downton Abbey, Disney’s utilidors, Burghley House, the Winchester Mystery House, Flambards and A Day at the Wells; • Delicious holiday grub: satirical breakfasts, ‘world famous’ foods, congee, Sex on the Beach, the Heart Attack Grill, pork and its tasty friends, Economy Candy; • Delightful holiday companions: Cara Delevingne, Eugene Levy, Nancy Mitford, Adam Richman, naked mole rats, Spagna; • Fun holiday activities: the ‘bollocks’ game at festivals, drinking games, humiliating your fellow diners, being assaulted by Mexican shots girls, trying to remember your one-night-stand’s name.
Big thanks to Amy Smith and Sam Pay for the jingles and Jenny Robertshaw for the cover – and speculatively to you for buying it, because your outlay helps fund Answer Me This! (and our actual holidays).
Your favourite West Midlandese sound man has been very busy this year, and not with the invention of new compound cuss-words involving balls. No. He’s been paper-cutting, green-screening and back-projecting to make the video to his song 10,000 Letters of Love, and the finished product is finally here:
Wow, right? Surely the best papercut video about London sewerage pioneer Joseph Bazalgette you’ll see all year.
If you’re interested in how he made the video, click here; and if you liked the song and want to buy it plus ten more, click here to purchase his beautiful album The City of Gold and Lead, under Martin’s musical alter ego The Sound of the Ladies.
… What with the ‘second screen’ being very much the in thing of this year’s Eurovision, I have just remembered the following section from the Answer Me This book. I have reproduced it here without asking the publishers, but, hey, we wrote it, and this is the bloody internet. We based it on our experience of watching previous contests, so why not refer to it tonight and let’s see how many we get right.
Acatia from Bar Hill: Helen and Olly, Answer Me This: Are there actually any rules for Eurovision?
It might look like a disoragnised, outdated cheese-fest but actually Acatia, yes, the Ten Commandments of Eurovision are:
1. Contestants must all wave and smile to the camera at one point during their performance, whether their song is a singalong spectacular or a mournful ballad about the war tearing apart their homeland.
2. All hairstyles must be inspired by the 1984 production of Starlight Express.
3. All men must resemble either Ian McShane or H from Steps, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
4. Five points will be deducted from any song not containing the lyrics ‘la la la’, ‘yeah yeah yeah’, or ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’
5. Israel is in Europe.
6. Palestine is not in Europe.
7. The hosts of the award – one male, one female – must both be entirely without merit.
8. The videos between each act promoting the host country must contain one of the following images:
– a couple walking hand-in-hand by in a fruit market
– some ropey old men playing chess
– a little girl spinning around in a white lace dress
– a crane shot of a bell tower
– some ladies with nice boobs smiling as if caught off-guard
9. All countries must give their highest score to their closest neighbours, except for France and Ireland, who must snub Great Britain.
10. Extra points will be added for dance routines involving clapping, twirling, or removal of clothes. If all three are achieved at once this will be considered the greatest cultural feat of all time.
(If you enjoyed this extract, please do consider buying the book. It will pass some time before you die.)
Surprising news arrives from the provinces from Sarah from Gateshead:
I was in my local library and in the literary criticism section I found your book next to JEREMY CLARKSON’S. So, answer me this… what the fuck?
I know – no wonder the bookshops are all on the fast train to oblivion if they can’t even alphabeticise authors properly!
You may also question why our book and Mr Clarkson’s are filed under ‘literary criticism’, a section usually filled with the works of F.R. Leavis and Harold Bloom rather than, er, toilet reading. Well, it’s quite simple. In our book, there is very lengthy analysis of Michael Bay’s video for Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, which is of such totemic significance to 20th century art that it has been officially recategorised as literature. And Jeremy Clarkson’s book is literature which people like to criticise.
When Martin the Sound Man is not enabling us to make sounds, he makes sounds of his own under his musical alter ego The Sound of the Ladies. For his brand-new album The City of Gold and Lead, he not only made the sounds, but also the pop-up CD sleeve you see in the photo above, which is almost as pretty as the music within.
You can buy the album in CD or MP3 form from HERE, and you’ll make an old sound man very happy if you do.
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.
Last month we spoke at Next Radio, an event all about radio attended by the great and good of the radio industry.
“What the heck can you two chancer hobbyists have to teach the radio industry about radio?” you ask.
Fair point. We went for a kind of This is Your Life trot through our podcasting experiences, and here is the video footage. Warning: contains some gross images.
A lot of artists suffer from Difficult Second Album syndrome, but not us. Following our Top 20 smash hit longplayer The Answer Me This! Jubilee, we are delighted to bring you…
The Answer Me This! Sports Day
59 minutes and 33 seconds of all-new material in celebration of the glorious sporting event that will be wreaking havoc with London’s transport system this summer. Buy it now through the AMT Store, iTunes or Amazon.
Join us for a jog through such Olympian questions as what would happen if Boris Johnson dropped the torch, how you can become an Olympic competitor whilst remaining a lazy bastard, how the Ancient Greek athletes prevented their glistening nude flesh from getting sunburn, whether Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony is going to be like this, and why Jewish athletes might be buying haggis shortly before the competition.
We also learn why the men’s Wimbledon trophy is so fruity, how David Attenborough can be blamed for the popularity of snooker, what the chess queen has in common with the Alien queen, what Jack Broughton has in common with Alan Ayckbourn, and what bookies have in common with Abraham Lincoln.
We check in on such record breakers as James Cameron and Lee Redmond, and face the biggest sports question of all: what IS a sport? And do you actually have to get out of your chair to do one?
We must offer big thanks to Sam Pythagoras Pay and Amy Smith for the jingles, which alone are worth the £2.49 RRP. Eg:
NB The Answer Me This! Sports Day is in no way officially affiliated with the London Olympics. They looked at our waist measurements and said there’s no way they could endorse that.
Following our discussion of LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I know it’ in AMT215, Ashlyns School felt moved to share their sixth form leavers’ video with us. Enjoy their exuberance, but don’t have inappropriate feelings about a bunch of schoolchildren proclaiming their own sexiness and knowledge thereof, OK? OK.
Just two days after release, The Answer Me This! Jubilee is TOP 20 in the iTunes album chart!* So thankyou very much indeed to everybody who has bought it already; and if you feel moved to do the same, click here to buy it off iTunes. UPDATE: it’s now available on Amazon too, and even better, at our own AMT Store.
In return for your £2.49 outlay (or equivalent in your native currency), you receive 57 minutes and 55 seconds of all-new Answer Me This!, themed around Her Maj’s upcoming Diamond Jubilee.
Amongst the many questions royally addressed are:
• Could the Queen get away with murder? • What’s the deal with all those 21-gun salutes? • Does the Queen have a mobile phone? • Are you really supposed to pronounce ‘regina’ like ‘vagina’? • Who has seen the Queen’s tits? • Where can I run into Prince Philip on an average day? • What’s the point of the monarchy, anyway? • And what the bloody hell is going on with those nearly nude guys in the Danish monarchy’s coat of arms?
We hope you enjoy it. If you don’t, blame Prince Andrew, like everybody else does.
*Information correct at time of writing. At time of reading, it might have dropped so far out of the iTunes chart that it is outside by the recycling bins.
Answer Me This! Podcast 
The Answer Me This! Sports Day
July 2, 2012A lot of artists suffer from Difficult Second Album syndrome, but not us. Following our Top 20 smash hit longplayer The Answer Me This! Jubilee, we are delighted to bring you…
The Answer Me This! Sports Day
59 minutes and 33 seconds of all-new material in celebration of the glorious sporting event that will be wreaking havoc with London’s transport system this summer. Buy it now through the AMT Store, iTunes or Amazon.
We also learn why the men’s Wimbledon trophy is so fruity, how David Attenborough can be blamed for the popularity of snooker, what the chess queen has in common with the Alien queen, what Jack Broughton has in common with Alan Ayckbourn, and what bookies have in common with Abraham Lincoln.
We check in on such record breakers as James Cameron and Lee Redmond, and face the biggest sports question of all: what IS a sport? And do you actually have to get out of your chair to do one?
We must offer big thanks to Sam Pythagoras Pay and Amy Smith for the jingles, which alone are worth the £2.49 RRP. Eg:
NB The Answer Me This! Sports Day is in no way officially affiliated with the London Olympics. They looked at our waist measurements and said there’s no way they could endorse that.
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