Archive for the ‘User-generated answers’ Category

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“Room to let. Non-smoking, non-enthusiastic, non-cool preferred.”

October 9, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT231 •••

As living arrangements have taken over from weddings as the AMT question topic of the season, let’s hear from Alistair:

I’ve recently been flat hunting in London. Due to the competitive nature of London dwellings at prices I can afford, I’ve found it to be much more like an interview or X Factor audition every time I see a room, rather than a viewing of the property.

So answer me this: should I play it cool and collected when I view a room, or should I go all out and let my full personality shine through in an overly enthusiastic horrible mess?

Try operating on a setting somewhere between those two extremes, Alistair, because most people don’t really want to share with either a sociopath or a chatterbox. Aim for engaging, but not too needy. You can unleash the real babbling lunatic Alistair when you’ve successfully signed the lease and it’s too late for them to get rid of you. Aaah-hahaha!

Readers, please visit the comments to give Alistair your own tips on how to wow his potential new cohabitants, because it has been many years since I had to audition a flatmate (Martin just moved in with me without even asking, and I DON’T EVEN GET MY OWN ROOM). But I would recommend that you don’t turn up late or use a false name. Both of those used to sour the start of the vetting process, and it rarely improved from there.

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 3 Comments »

flatmates or fiance?

October 4, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT230 •••

Difficult cohabitation has been a theme at AMT lately, and like many of you, the communal living situation is stoking murderous rage in Amanda from Virginia:

I live in a big house with my fiancee and three other roommates. We’re all students in our late 20s. When my fiancee and I moved in here, we were too poor to afford anything else. I’ve got a well-paying full-time job now and go to school online.

I HATE LIVING HERE. My roommates are ridiculously messy. I’m no neat freak, but this house is fucking disgusting. I clean all the time only to find the house trashed again within hours. My roommates also go around all winter long leaving windows and doors open, saying the cold air will rev up their metabolisms and make them skinny.

The problem is our upcoming wedding. If we want a decent wedding and honeymoon in Mexico (which we REALLY want), we’re going to keep living here another year in order to afford it. We haven’t really set a date yet, so I suggested postponing the wedding so we could afford to both move out AND go to Mexico. My fiancee doesn’t want to postpone the wedding at all. I dread my own home. Answer me this: what should we do?

I don’t know how you can postpone something which has not yet been organised, but if another year of domestic dread is likely to damage your relationship so much you never make it as far as the wedding, MOVE. Meanwhile, I assume you’ve eliminated the following possibilities:

1. Evicting the roommates and drafting in super-neat new ones;
2. Finding somewhere else cheap to live;
3. Having a smaller budget for the wedding, because weddings – and particularly American ones – are NEEDLESSLY EXPENSIVE.

Anyway, Amanda, your living arrangements are now in our readers’ hands, as I invite them to vote:

Whatever you do, don’t move out into a commune. Something tells me it wouldn’t suit you.

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Posted in extracurricular questions, Rock the Vote, User-generated answers | 2 Comments »

fun divorcee WLTM rugbyist. Must love tatts.

September 27, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT229 •••

After the rather unsavoury brace of love-related questions we’ve just had, let’s cleanse the palate with this from Lindsay:

Almost two years ago, my husband left me and I’ve spent the last year or so moving on, having fun and relearning who I am as a singleton.

I’m now in the place where I’m considering dating, however it’s a thought that petrifies me as I’ve never done the whole dating thing before and I don’t know where to even look for a lovely bloke.

So please answer me this: can you help me find the hot, tattooed rugby boys who would consider dating a Christian girl divorced by the tender age of 32?

AMTfans are a wonderfully diverse bunch, so there MUST be some tattooed rugby boys amongst you lot. Any of you also currently single and looking for ladies? Go to the comments, and answer these Bliiiiiiind Daaaaaate-style questions:

1. Where would you take Lindsay on your first date?
2. If you were a foodstuff, what would you be and why?
3. How’s your tackle?

Or just tell her a bit about yourself, you know, the usual. Let love blossom!

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nark of naughtiness

September 27, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT229 •••

Poor old B from Montreal is complicit in a right pickle:

I have a bit of a situation right now. I recently moved into uni with a girl I graduated with. When we graduated we weren’t that close, we were just acquaintances; now that we live five doors away from one another we have become really close and that’ss all well and good!

The only problem is that she has a boyfriend (who graduated with us, and is also my friend) who lives quite far away and I know something about him that she doesn’t know. Before we graduated they were dating and he cheated on her several times and never told her! All her friends knew but no one ever told her because no one was ever close enough to her to tell her.

So basically they are still dating now and she is going to visit him in the US pretty soon and she doesn’t know. We keep getting closer as friends and she keeps telling me about him and how he is so good to her and how he never cheated!!! I feel as if I am keeping something from her and even though it’s not my secret to tell I feel like she should know (because he also cheated on her recently).

So answer me this: should I tell her about her cheating boyfriend and risk him not being my friend anymore and risk her getting hurt, or just shut up and forget about the looming guilt that this secret is crippling me with?

Since this sounds like one of those situations where no outcome is likely to be happy for all three of you, I’m taking the coward’s way out and deferring to you readers. Go to the comments and advise B, because B has a pained conscience even though his infidel friend does not.

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

what fresh(ers) hell is this?

September 19, 2012

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

It’s harvest time! Which means it’s the start of the new educational year. Which means it is time for this question from Lauren from Kidderminster:

I managed to get into the university of my choice, but now I am panicking about Freshers Week.
A week of non-stop partying sounds like hell. I am very shy, hate dancing and don’t see the point in spending all my money on getting drunk and making a fool of myself on the dancefloor.

I’m not an anti-social person, it’s just that partying isn’t really my idea of fun.

Please help, how did you survive Freshers week at your university?

As a non-drinking square? I kept a massive supply of crumpets in my room, so rather than submitting myself to the full clubbing experience, instead made friends with people once they returned from their night at the fleshpots and were hungry for toasted snacks. (Also I had three essays to write in the first week, so couldn’t have gone out even if I had wanted to.)

But readers, I’m sure you have crumpet-free techniques which Lauren could adapt. Go forth to the comments and share.

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 12 Comments »

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

September 17, 2012

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

We all know that listening to Answer Me This! is life-changing for the worse. We started the podcast because we wanted to Make A Difference that did not benefit the world in any way. And lo, we have! Nick writes:

In a recent podcast you discussed eating the crumbs from a packet of crisps with the choice of either tilting the packet directly into the mouth or pouring into the hand and eating from there. All my life I have gone for the pour-straight-from-the-packet option, but after your arguments now pour into the hand.

Answer Me This: have any other listeners changed something they do as a result of listening to your podcast?

Listeners, step into the comments and tell us!

We already know that, thanks to AMT4, some of you no longer feel you are allowed to wipe your bottoms standing up. As we said, truly life-changing.

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 3 Comments »

Gordon Ramsay’s next move

August 14, 2012

Hmm, this is a slightly odder odd couple than we had anticipated

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT227 •••

In AMT226 we speculated upon the next phase of Gordon Ramsay’s career, and whether it would entail one of those odd-couple road trips that are perennially popular amongst TV commissioners. Andy emailed us to say:

I was taking in my daily fix of MTV news, when I saw that Gordon Ramsay was apparently planning a Harley Davidson tour with….David Beckham.

Suspicions confirmed! Unless they’re doing that just as a mates’ holiday, and not actually televising it…no, impossible! What would be the point of that?

For a bit of fun, readers, go to the comments and pitch a non-culinary show for Gordon Ramsay’s career reboot.

I’m emailing Channel 4 now to suggest a mountaineering challenge series called Gordon’s Craggy Faces.

••• Missing the Olympics? Console yourself with AMT Sports Day •••

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, User-generated answers | 2 Comments »

performance-enhancing potassium

August 9, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT226 •••

Sports nutritionists and environmentalists, please go to the comments to offer a more useful response than I can to this question from Charlotte:

As a professional circus artist I’ve always heard that I should eat bananas to avoid muscle cramps, apparently because the potassium in the bananas does some electrolyte magic on my muscles.

I perform a handbalance act that includes balancing en pointe (on my toes) on little tiny platforms, so getting cramps in the arches of my feet is a definite problem. But I’m trying to eat in an environmentally responsible way, buying fruits and vegetables that are grown close to wherever I am, which is usually in North America or Western Europe and definitely very far away from wherever bananas come from.

So answer me this: does eating bananas actually prevent me getting cramps in my feet? Is there something else (with less of a carbon footprint) that I could eat instead?

Since you’re travelling around, I can’t gauge the potential carbon footprint of every item you might eat whilst on two continents. Bear in mind that pumpkin and sunflower seeds, cocoa, paprika, chervil, avocados, nuts, salmon, orange juice, potato skin, beans, spinach, dried apricots and whelks are potasstic, so mix them all together into a delicious paste and carry it wherever you go for a portable potassium banquet.

••• Sports nutrition for the ears: the AMT Sports Day •••

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 3 Comments »

“And no returns!”

August 7, 2012

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT226 •••

Readers, you may offer your advice in the comments to our next questioneer, A Confused Girl:

I have a close male friend who has recently started displaying signals that he wants to take our friendship to the next level, but I’m not interested because I don’t want to ruin the friendship with him.

I’ve tried to make it clear to him and he has definitely toned down the flirting lately, so that’s good, but he keeps buying me things!

I’ve been unemployed for many months now and he’s been a great friend in helping me out of financial jams, but now the things he’s paying for me are just becoming too much!

Honestly, I can’t say that I’m not enjoying his gifts but I feel really guilty!

How do I tell my friend that he’s becoming far too generous without suggesting that I think he’s trying to bribe me into bed with him?

Here’s an idea: STOP ACCEPTING HIS GIFTS. Uncomfortable feelings of obligation, over!

As an aside: when somebody says they don’t want to get together with somebody lest they ‘ruin the friendship’, they should be honest and revise that statement to ‘because really I don’t fancy him/her’. Right?

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 1 Comment »

Pick’n’Mix

August 1, 2012

••• THE AMT SPORTS DAY: PERFECT WITH A SIDE OF OLYMPICS •••

Readers, here is a question for you to chew on from David from Whitstable:

I love Pick’n’Mix. It is ace. My bag/tub always contains white mice, fizzy cola bottles, those prawn things, those white buttons with hundreds and thousands. Maybe a jelly snake.

Answer me this: What is your strategy at Pick’n’Mix? Do you go for variety, or quantity? Or do you always get the same ones?

Well obviously variety rather than a large quantity of one thing, which one could buy elsewhere for less money. But with experience, one learns not to dally with the rubbish ones – the coconut mushrooms, the rum balls, the fudge which is invariably disappointing. One hones one’s selection, and also cannily avoids the heavy ones, though personally I’ll make an exception for the chocolate Brazils.

Since Olly has already elaborated upon his tactics in the AMT book, it’s up to you to go to the comments and enlighten David upon your own Pick’n’Mixing strategy.

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 5 Comments »

50 Shades of Prawn

July 25, 2012

•••THE ANSWER ME THIS! SPORTS DAY IS OUT NOW•••

I’m completely bored of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I haven’t even read it. I’m even bored of all the humorous deconstruction of it, but our next questioneer Mike from Shropshire may have hit on a way to quell some of the public enthusiasm for the phapping phenomenon:

Many women I know are putting status updates on Facebook telling us all that they are reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Some of these people are also professional colleagues of mine.

In view of this new openness about reading of pornography, answer me this – is it now acceptable for me to tell the world on Facebook what porn videos I am watching?

Readers, what do you reckon? Tell us in the comments – if you’re not too busy being tied to your bedposts by an arrogant businessman, or whatever.

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT224 •••

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Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 2 Comments »

three score eggs

July 19, 2012

•••THE ANSWER ME THIS! SPORTS DAY IS OUT NOW•••

Readers, please go to the comments and answer this eggy question from Tilly from Newnham:

I have somehow wound up with 60 chicken eggs due to a mix-up at my local farm shop and I haven’t got the foggiest idea what I’m supposed to do with them.

So, answer me this: just what CAN you do with 60 eggs? I know I could make a substantial number of cakes and omelettes etc. But is there anything particularly interesting I could do with this number?

A one-night-only theatrical production of Cool Hand Luke. You’ll have ten spare eggs with which to rehearse.

••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT223 •••

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