Answer Me This! Podcast

** Click here for Episode 165 **

Ahoy, shipmates! Batten down the hatches for a question from Robin on the Skandi Carla in Stavanger, Norway:

I work offshore on a boat so I am away with about 30-40 people. We have people who do the cleaning and our washing who are generally great people; however the girls I work with end up doing their own washing because they don’t trust getting their pants back and at least one friend has had all her underwear stolen.

My question to you guys is: Why would men want to steal women’s underwear? Girls in underwear I do find interesting, but when girls are separated from the underwear, the undies become inanimate objects.

Now, Robin, I can only guess at what it must be like to live on a boat with only a handful of people and some walruses for company. Who knows, after enough time trapped on a boat, being both lonely and lacking in privacy, perhaps I too would seek solace in ill-gotten undies – maybe using them to dress up my imaginary friend, whose company is the only thing preventing me going a bit Triangle. Or maybe I’d be stealing them because I’d started to find the society of inanimate underwear more appealing than that of humans. Or maybe I’d just run out of clean pants.

Those are my theories, but amongst you bunch of pervs there must be someone who can explain this predeliction, so go to the comments and type up your observations with one finger.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 164 **

Smile! It’s a question from Ben in Letchworth:

My 14-month-old daughter has recently started to produce a big cheesy grin whenever we point a camera at her, without us even needing to ask her to say ‘cheese’. This got me thinking ‘fromage’ just won’t get that smiling look before a pic is taken; so answer me this, what do people that speak other languages ask their subjects to say?

A friend of mine always asks people to say ‘Prunes’ to get a pouty Victoria Beckham look.

If ‘prunes’ is good enough for the Olsen twins, it’s good enough for Friends in Letchworth. And the Mitfords used to say ‘brush’, which produces quite a coy smirk.

Team AMT, International Chapter: I call upon you to go to the comments and tell us how you crack a smile in a non-English-speaking country.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 164 **

Here’s a question from the pleasingly rhyming Paul in Montreal:

Glaswegians are from Glasgow.
Liverpudlians are from Liverpool.
Londoners are from London.
What the fuck do you call people from Leeds??

Readers in the greater Leeds area, go to the comments and tell him. Paul, I don’t know why you’re so infuriated by this – is it a big problem facing Canadians at present? Moreover, what do you call people from Montreal?

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 164 **

A hairy moment now from Jessy in San Francisco:

My Swiss husband went for his first American haircut last week. He was shocked to find that the only reading material on offer, as he waited for the barber (/stylist), was pornographic mags. (He clarified that it was not merely Maxim or the like, but straight out, hard-core mags like Hustler and Playboy.)

Answer me this, please, is this a larger trend then in the US? (We’re here in San Francisco and my brother is in New York.)

Hmm. I’ve never seen porn in a barber’s myself, but then I’m a woman and therefore have no business in a barbershop unless I’m scouting for quartets. I also tend to cut my own hair, but have thus far never warmed myself up to the task with some jazzmags (unless an 18-month-old copy of Word Magazine counts). So readers, go to the comments and tell Jessy all about the reading matter available to you pre-coiffure, in a user-generated international survey.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 164 **

Marc in Altrincham has left me gobsmacked:

Recently my favourite book, Dante’s Inferno, was turned into a game. Although it is a journey through hell, I don’t remember Dante wielding a weapon in anger. So answer me this, which of the books you love would make a random computer game?

By ‘random’, we assume you mean ‘inappropriate’. Therefore we can confidently say: all of them. I struggle to imagine a first-person shooter based on The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology or some mid- to late-period WB Yeats.

A more pleasing question, if you’ll allow me to venture, would be the following: “Which totemic literary work is ripe to be converted to a video game?” Readers, you know what to do. Trot to the comments, suggest away, and if anyone at Square or EA is reading this, we could be playing Wuthering Heights Tekken by Christmas.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 163 **

To some, Fight Club conjures up images of bloodied punched-in faces; others, of Meat Loaf’s boobs; others, Helena Bonham Carter in orgasmic ecstasy. But for Lorna from Yorkshire, the associations are far more pleasant:

Whilst listening to your discussion of fight clubs a week or so ago I reminisced, misty-eyed, about my now fiance Edward taking me on our first date
to see Fight Club at the Warner Village Cinema at Clifton Moor (a handsome industrial estate on the edge of York) back in ’99.

Some people think it’s very strange that he took me to see Fight Club on a date and that it is a terrible choice for first dateyness. I suppose they think it ought to have been something more romantic, but i think romance could be quite awkward on a first date.

Anyway answermethis please: what film would be your ideal first date movie and why? And what film would be the worst possible film to see on a first
date and why?

My own first date took place at a showing of Naked Gun 2 1/2, which of course contains all the elements of the ideal first date movie – nukes, OJ Simpson, Richard Griffiths’s arse… If, however, you have strong feelings that another film is the pinnacle of the first date movie genre, then commit those to the comments; alternatively, feel free to apply yourself to Lorna’s supplementary question and tell us which film totally cockblocked you.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 162 **

Enjoy, if you will, the coif conundrum faced by Sophie from Middlesborough:

My mother won’t let me dye my hair bright blue, but at 17 years of age and willing to pay for it myself I think I am well within my rights to dye my hair whatever colour I wish.

She tried telling me that it would look awful. I pointed out that she says that every time I get my hair done and then a week later she runs off to get the same style.

If what you say is true, maybe she is trying to insinuate that she doesn’t want to have to dye her hair blue next week.

Now she is telling me that the bleach will ruin my hair.

So Helen, answer me this, when I bleach my hair how long should I wait before dying it?

You’re asking the wrong person, dear; the nearest I’ve had to blue hair is when I was bored at school and used to colour strands in with my fountain pen. But I’m sure some of you readers are far more follicularly adventurous, so please go to the comments and tell Sophie the optimal timings for the bleaching and dying so that her scalp doesn’t fall off.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 161 **

It hasn’t been a happy New Year for all of TeamAMT, for instance poor old Anon:

I’ve just told the love of my life that I am happy being her friend, and that I’m OK with her dating another guy simply because I want her to be happy. It didn’t end like in the movies where she finds new feelings for me and I carry her off into the sunset for a good shagging; she’s in fact telling him that she would love to go out with him as I write this.

So answer me this: how can I make the soul-crushing pain go away and cheer myself up in the process?

Help a heartbroken chap out, readers: go to the comments and tell the man what to do when the bubble wrap runs out.

Katie also has problems in the romance department:

I may have done something truly terrible.

I know that When Harry Met Sally dealt with this before I was born and that it probably wasn’t the best post-pub home for Christmas idea but what’s done is done and now I need someone to tell me that everything will be ok.

Everything will be ok. There, are you better now?

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for Episode 161 **

Here is a question from a questioneer who does not identify him/herself, perhaps because of their shame over their following revelation:

What word or phrase did you totally misunderstand as a child (or embarrassingly far into adulthood…)?

Also, I just got to tell my flatmate that ‘for all intensive purposes’ is actually ‘for all intents and purposes’ – he’s 23…

23! My eldest brother earned the nickname ‘Fernie Splodgings’ thanks to his misapprehension of the term ‘Furnished Lodgings’, but he was only three at the time. Share your own long-held mondegreens in the comments and we can all have a jolly good laugh at you.

PS Slightly off-topic, but since we’re in the slips-of-the-tongue ballpark…

Yup, still funny.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ

** Click here for the Best of AMT2010 Part 2 **

The course of true love never runs smooth, nor scentlessly if you happen to be Mr Anonymous of Anonymoustown, Anonymousshire, who says:

I have started seeing a delightful young lady, and all is going well. Except for one thing: I can’t really stand the smell of her perfume. Every time I see her, the floral scent hits me and hangs around for ages until I can convince my nose to get used to it. So what am I to do? Is there some kind of way I can get her to stop smelling like that, or am I doomed for the rest of the relationship?

You could buy her a new bottle of perfume, but let’s be frank here: most of them smell just as awful. You could effect an allergy which only goes away when she eliminates various of her beauty products. Or you could puke loudly whenever she spritzes on the infernal potion. That should get the message through, although the relationship may not survive.

Readers, speed forth to the comments to dish out your own advice upon this disagreeable olfactory problem.

Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • Episodes • Merch
• iPhone App • Android App • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • FAQ