As revealed in AMT 251, Isy Suttie will be our very special guest in AMT 252, out on Thursday.
And here’s the proof.
As you can see, when you come to AMT Towers, we literally make you sing for your supper. Since Helen had made a tasty Chinese pork and aubergine feast on the night in question, this seemed reasonable.
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.
** Click here for Episode 188 **
We realise by now you’ll have had your fill of The Wanted, but save a little room for this – listener Hannah has made a bid to rehabilitate their current ear-botherer with a charming cover:
Damn you, Hannah, DON’T MAKE ME START TO LIKE THIS BLOODY SONG!
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** Click here for Episode 181 **
If you’ve ever wondered what Martin the Sound Man does in his day job of “physicist”, take a look at this video here, and try not to get as much of a shock as Krish did:
Looking at the technology section on the BBC website, I clicked on the video link called ‘data visualisation’, being a 3D visualiser myself.
I paid half attention to the video, just seeing a chap being interviewed by a journalist, and saw the name Martin come up. I recognised the voice, it was the Sound Man. I saw the hairy scarf wrapped round his neck and that confirmed it for me. It’s well known to AMT listeners Martin is a hairy man.
How often does he appear on TV? Will he knock Brian Cox off his mantle by appearing on more TV shows?
I thought he did very well. I would be glad to see more TV appearances from Martin.
Wouldn’t we all! We’re still waiting to hear back from the casting director of BBC3’s Help! Everyone Keeps Mistaking Me For a Bear, but if any of the rest of you want to employ Martin on the TV networks that you run, do get in touch. Surely Professor Cox must be feeling a bit weary of sitting on the edge of cliffs explaining about atoms by now.
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We can’t let Great British Questions go quite yet. Here’s the last hurrah from our video-making road trip:
Here are responses to a few of the questions you asked about the series:
• “Where did you get your sunglasses from?” They were 3 for £10 from a market stall in Camden. Nothing but the best for us.
• “What’s wrong with Olly’s eyes?” Nothing! They are both entirely fine, with the full complement of pupils, irises and whites.
• “What happened to the cheese-rolling where they run down a steep hill?” Shut down because of health and safety, alas. Watching this, we simply cannot understand why…
• “Where’s Martin the Sound Man?” He has a real job, you know.
• “How funny are the YouTube closed captions?” VERY funny. Everybody, if you haven’t already, go and watch the videos again but click on the red ‘CC’ button and select ‘Transcribe Audio’.
Additional things we learnt on the road:
• In the war of the regional plum loaves, Lincolnshire plum loaf beats Lancashire plum loaf hands down.
• If there’s anything more depressing than Blackpool on a Friday night, it is Blackpool on a Thursday night when everything is shut and there’s not even a single stag-night livening the place up.
• During the trip, we sampled many Great British Breakfasts, much to the chagrin of our arteries. Standards varied wildly, and to our surprise, our favourite was to be found at the Preston Marriott. An entire roomful of self-service hot and cold breakfast buffet? We’ll take it! In fact, we will take far more than we want to eat, just on principle.
• Whereas the Bath Travelodge serves your breakfast in a bag. This feels disproportionately dehumanising.
• The hotels we liked the best were the White Hart, Moretonhampstead, Devon; Ten Hill Place, Edinburgh; and the Westmoreland Hotel, Tebay services – we defy you to tell us of a nicer motorway services hotel in the country!
• This year, all hotel toiletries smell of lemongrass. What’s your tip for the top scent for mini-shampoo in 2011?
• Top in-car entertainment: Backstreet Boys greatest hits; Fern Britton’s autobiography audiobook.
• Deep-fried Mars Bars are surprisingly nice. Deep-fried Galaxy bars are even nicer. I’m unlikely ever to submit my arteries to such an experience again, but if I did, I’d like to take a punt on deep-fried Snickers being the best of all.
So that’s it! Many thanks to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain for setting the whole up, and to you lot for watching.
Here is the fifth and final episode of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:
In order of splashdown, the temples of hygiene we visited are:
• The Round Room at the Portobello Hotel, London. The tub in question is known as a ‘Victorian bathing machine’, which is appropriately sexy-sounding for a room with a circular bed in it.
• Garderobe at Little Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire. We can see why garderobes like this fell out of favour: 1) very drafty; 2) it’s not nice surrounding your home with a moat of shit; 3) danger of buttock-splinters.
• The Ladies’ Room at the George Hotel, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Note to all of you: if you’re planning on filming yourself monologuing in a public convenience, make sure there’s nobody else in it first.
• The sewers, Brighton. If you want to go on one of the regular sewer tours, book soon because they fill up months in advance. Especially Valentine’s Day.
• Little Chef, Popham. If more than one person is using the talking lavatories at once, the combined effect is quite hectoring, so it’s not for the faint-hearted.
• Castle Drogo, Devon, a 1920s folly with a very squirty bathtub and, downstairs, a fantastic collection of copper jelly-moulds.
• Car-park loos at the Eden Project, Cornwall. Sure, other people go there for the indoor rainforest, the world’s largest greenhouse, Sir Robert McAlpine’s iconic domes; we just go for the bogs.
• Bovine sewage-works at Rodda’s dairy farm, Cornwall. Watching a giant shit-stirrer is surprisingly relaxing – like a massive, stinky office toy.
• Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh, where even the bathwater comes out stripy.
• The Roman baths and the Thermae Bath Spa, Bath. It’s a big win for the city of Bath.
We’re also flushed with thanks to:
The nice gentlemen at the Hotel Missoni and Rodda’s, for patiently agreeing to our various ridiculous requests.
Rachel Bowers at the Thermae Bath Spa, for kindly filming us in our bathers – how did her eyes survive?
And the rubber duckie of gratitude goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
Put your slippers on, sit in your comfiest chair and make a nice brew, because it’s time for Episode Four of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:
In which you will find us visiting:
• Brighton seafront, where the rain poured, and so did the tea.
• Twinings on the Strand in London, a veritable embassy of tea.
• Braunston in Rutland, England’s smallest county. A big paper plate of cakes and two cups of tea for £1.50? That, friends, is why Britain is still great.
• Emma Bridgewater, Stoke-on-Trent, where we were instructed that tea can get you laid. If only it were that simple.
• Tregothnan tea plantation, Cornwall, where they are considering building a tea theme park. Please, Tregothnan. MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
• Grasmere in the Lake District, home of Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a legendary snack with a secret recipe. I guess Sarah Nelson is the English equivalent of Colonel Sanders.
• The Balmoral hotel, Edinburgh. Apparently having tea here features in one of those ‘1000 things to do before you die’ lists, so we’re now one step closer to the End.
Let’s raise a cup of char to the people who helped us along the way:
Stephen Twining and Matthew Rice – we’d like to see them face off against other in a duel to determine who is the quintessential English gent;
Marion, who showed us around the Emma Bridgewater factory and taught us the full birthing cycle of their beautiful ceramics – almost as demanding as the human one;
Neil Bennett, head gardener at the Tregothnan estate, who had a heavy cold and should probably have been safely tucked up indoors rather than traipsing around the huge estate with us;
Joanne Wilson from Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a woman who can wrap a stack of gingerbread in paper at the speed of light. You might not think this exciting, but, like the teapot-knobbing, when you see it live you could watch it for hours;
Harry Fernandes at the Balmoral hotel, for letting us have a big fancy tea, climb up onto the roof, and pretending that we weren’t just a pair of overgrown five-year-olds;
and an extra portion of Jammy Dodgers goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for the final installment of Great British Questions, which is all about Great British Bathrooms; and below are some photos from our tea tour.
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After the showbiz glitz of last week’s episode, this week’s installment of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions has a more intimate agenda:
In order of appearance, here’s where we go during our Great British love-in (in which we play a couple FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY):
• the Cerne Abbas giant, Dorset – the earliest known NSFW field in Britain!
• Brighton, to hang out with drunkards. It’s a pretty sexy place – after all, George IV built his amazing personal shag-palace there.
• The Assembly Rooms in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Didn’t score ourselves any husbands, though; the only man there was the old chap superintending the Saturday afternoon book sale.
• The Heartwood School of Woodcarving in Port Talbot, Wales. If you want to carve your own spoon of love, or get someone else to do it for you, you can email spoon-carver extraordinaire Sharon Littley HERE, or find out more about the traditional Welsh lovespoons in her book.
• Boat trip up the River Thames, a very pleasant way to travel through central London if you’re not in a hurry.
• Picnic at Penrith Castle, Cumbria – an unlikely thing to find in the middle of an ordinary-looking housing estate!
• The Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick, Cumbria. Don’t go there if your pencil collection has an inferiority complex already.
• The Museum of Surgery in Edinburgh, after which you’ll see we didn’t walk up Arthur’s Seat.
• Punting in Oxford, thanks to the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse – who also very kindly lent us hats with which to accessorise this beautiful scene.
• Grasmere in the Lake District. William Wordsworth’s signature restaurant can be found here. Apparently they only serve daffodils.
• The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where they hold the annual Mr Darcy Wet Shirt Contest. Ok, well we maintain that they should.
• Chesil Beach, Dorset out of On Chesil Beach
• The Eden Project, Cornwall, inspiration for Nelly’s hit ‘Hot in Herre’.
• The London-Edinburgh sleeper train, which is a bit like North By Northwest only with a complimentary sponge-bag rather than Eva Marie Saint.
• Glastonbury, Somerset, where we met the marvellous Jacqui Winn of the Witchcraft Emporium, approximately a cross between a herbalist’s and a branch of Ann Summers. If you’re keen to follow Jacqui’s advice, damiana is the herb you’re after, although we have yet to try it so can’t vouch for its effectiveness. Still, it’s a lot cheaper than fake Viagra off the internet!
• And finally, we wind up in the Westmoreland Hotel, Cumbria, which is the first motorway services hotel we’ve ever been to where you could even contemplate having a romantic night.
We also need to bestow affection upon:
Chay Allen for propelling our punt, because we sure as hell couldn’t have done it ourselves without injury;
Jill Collinge, for showing us Stamford then standing politely by as Helen did stupid impressions of Beyonce;
and the loves of our lives, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain. If you love the UK as much as VisitBritain do, join the online love-in at their Facebook page at facebook.com/LoveUK.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Four: Tea; and for more scenes from our romantic mini-break, peruse the photos below.
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We’re delighted you all seemed to enjoy last week’s video of us tooling around Britain in search of cheese; and we hope you feel just as well-disposed towards Episode Two of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:
Starring, in order of appearance:
• Princes Street, Edinburgh, where in 1995 the iconic opening sequence to Trainspotting was filmed, and in 2010 our iconic looking-like-total-dicks sequence was filmed.
• Crystal Palace Park – come for the Victorian dinosaurs and the biggest maze in London; stay for the swimming pool which is 20cm too short to be used in the Olympics.
• Stonehenge, where the banshees live and they do live well.
• Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, where Sir Anthony Hopkins lived in Remains of the Day – before he got into chewing off human faces.
• Antony House, Cornwall. Too bad that, blinded by giant plastic mushrooms, we missed its ‘national collection of daylilies’.
• Burghley House, Lincolnshire – home to a herd of deer, the horse trials, and Queen Victoria’s marital bed.
• The Cars of the Stars Museum, Keswick – not the average Lake District attraction.
• Carnforth station, Lancashire. They play Brief Encounter on a loop in the waiting room, which would be a pleasant distraction when your train is running 40 minutes late because there’s a cow on the tracks.
• Oxford, including Christ Church College and the Bodleian Library. Not including kebab vans or getting run over by drunk students on bikes.
• London, playing multiple roles:
• Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross;
• Postman’s Park out of Closer. The Julia Roberts’n’Jude Law film, not the telly thing starring Kyra Sedgwick.
• The church of St Bartholomew the Great – oy, no need to brag, Bartholomew!
• Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which star on the BBC Parliament channel all day, every day.
• also, nominated for the award for best supporting location: St Paul’s Cathedral, the O2 Arena, the London Underground, Notting Hill, County Hall, and Tower Bridge (out of that Fergie video about a different bridge entirely).
But let’s not forget all the behind-the-scenes crew: the cinematographer, the craft services, the key grip…OK, it was just me and Olly with two camcorders. But we couldn’t have made this film without the invaluable assistance of:
Jill Collinge – if ever you want to spend a very entertaining and interesting afternoon looking around the beautiful historic town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, Jill is your woman.
Philip Gompertz, for showing us around Burghley House. It’s really not too shabby.
Chay Allen, for allowing Olly to nestle his head in his crotch.
Shalini Jadeja, for risking life and limb running backwards with a camera through Edinburgh – and before breakfast, too!
And the Weinsteins of this operation: Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Three: Romance.
For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page; and for more of our tomfoolery, peruse the photos below.
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Hello chaps!
Recently, VisitBritain sent me and Olly on a trip around Britain in order to answer the nation’s most pressing questions in the form of five short videos.
So prepare yourself for Episode One of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:
Here’s where we went in our pursuit of cheesiness:
• Paxton and Whitfield cheesemongers in Bath, part of a 200-year-old cheese-purveying business.
• Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, where you can take a tour of the cheese caves, ride an open-topped bus through the gorge, visit the museum of prehistoric cheese, and of course, eat a whole load of cheese.
• The Leagram Organic Dairy near Chipping, Lancashire, where you can not only buy some classic Lancastrian cheeses, but also be taught to make cheese by cheesemaker extraordinaire Bob Kitching. He can turn milk into cheese in the blink of an eye, and also has more naughty jokes about cheese than you ever imagined possible.
• The annual Stilton cheese-rolling. Get your entry forms in now to compete in the 2011 roll!
We enthusiastically recommend all those places. See below for photos of our antics; and please tune in next Tuesday for Episode Two: Film. For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page.
We also owe massive thanks to Bob Smart at the Cheddar Caves, cheese enthusiast Warwick Davis, Uncle Henry’s for the cheese and treats, Tebay Services for not minding when Olly threw a pot of lime cheese everywhere, and, most of all, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.
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