So Simon Cowell has left American Idol. Rumours he’s jumped ship to Answer Me This! are unsubstantiated. Because they’re completely fabricated! But let’s start one, just for giggles.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
This week:
Frightfest
the revolving restaurant in Berlin
venereal disease
Bovril
junior wine buffs
Agamemnon A Serious Man
culinary innovation in Streatham
Simon Armitage the wrath of Kate Winslet
and
Dr Cilla Black.
In addition: Olly demonstrates why he should never be made editor of the Oxford Etymological Dictionary; Helen spots the hidden messages to the Russians in sweetie adverts; and Martin the Sound Man does NOT want to have sex with you in a toilet. Not even if you ask really nicely. We also hear about one of our listener’s friendship dealbreakers – if you have one of your own, share it in a comment below. Because we all enjoy other people bitching about their dear friends, don’t we?
Please send us YOUR QUESTIONS for future episodes, via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877. And we hope you’re thoroughly enjoying your free Audible audiobooks; if you haven’t already got yours, skedaddle to our Audible page and sign thyself up.
After Bunty confessed to her devious means of protecting herself from shark attacks, Isla in Aberdeenshire was emboldened to share her own irrational fear:
I have a very bad phobia of balloons. I cannot go near them, I cannot touch them, if I know they are in the same room as I am I have to place myself as far away from them as I physically can. I really hate my phobia as people forget how genuinely terrified I am of them and still insist on having them at parties. Helen and Olly, answer me this, what is the phobia of balloons and is there any way I can get over this?
Apparently, Isla, you are far from alone in this: it’s called globophobia, and lots of people suffer from it. Indeed, I was once conversing with a man who was afraid of all inflatable objects, which was particularly unfortunate as he was in the Navy.
As for getting over it: some people on the internet suggest going into a room filled with balloons until you’re no longer sick with fear; but as a room full of balloons would surely freak out even the average non-globophobe, we reckon you should try a couple of sessions of hypnosis instead. But even when you’re cured, you should not watch The Prisoner – it’s one of the few dramas in which the villain is actually a balloon!
Now, readers, help make Isla feel better by sharing your own daft phobias in the comments.
We love that the podcast encourages you lot to share. Or do we? Does Ed in Halifax, Nova Scotia just feel comfortable in our relationship, or is it a case of TMI? He says:
I was just now listening to episode 121 and was inspired to write to you after hearing listener Chris’s question “Why do I get the urge to squirt dirt whenever I visit a second-hand bookshop?”
This happens to me too!
It’s been happening for years!
And often enough that I have actually given it some thought.
I think I have a reasonable explanation that does not require some twisted mental association between books and excrement, leaving the works of ________________________ (insert name of your least favourite but wildly popular author… I choose Dan Brown):
1) I like books, so I tend to spend more time per visit in bookshops than in other types of shops.
2) Most used book shops I have visited contain jumbled piles of books and over-stuffed shelves that require even more time to find books of interest.
4) When I pay a long visit to a bookshop (45 minutes to more than an hour) I’m standing still for longer and getting more and more relaxed.
4) Confirmation bias: I claim that book shops ALWAYS makes me want to drown the kittens, but really, I think it has actually happened about six times in my adult life (I am 47 years old) that I have had to urgently leave the book shop in search of a drop-off spot for the hostages. But each time it happens it’s a much more memorable event than all the times it didn’t happen. I’m sure I have made more grunt sculptures at theaters and restaurants, but that just seems more expected, and so less memorable.
5) I suppose if you are the sort of person who makes a habit of reading while sequestered in the fortress of solitude, it is possible that you have a very direct and obvious mental association with reading and putting your thoughts down on paper.
In conclusion, I think it mostly comes down to the amount of time I have spent in bookshops making it more likely that I will be in a bookshop when it becomes necessary to beam down William Shatner.
Ed, we’ll let you off the charge of over-sharing because of your outstanding euphemisms.
In Episode 121 we talked about decent films that are somewhat cocked up by unfitting endings. Neil from Bexleyheath sees Vicky from Oxted’s shock at the ending of Lolita and raises her The House of Flying Daggers. I’d like to add From Dusk Till Dawn (stupid!), Away We Go (too sentimental!) and The Lovely Bones (I’ve not seen the film, but if it’s anything like the book, the ending is big hairy ball). But what do YOU think? Commit your opinions in a comment below!
Martin the Sound Man just wishes he’d thought to use Britain’s current cold snap to reinvent snowballs. But alas for him, Mark in Grimsby and friends have beaten him to it:
College was closed so me and my friends put the day to good use and made a giant dick on a hill next to a footpath 🙂
Can a pile of snow be NSFW? If not, click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized snowcock and balls!
Welcome, listeners, to the first Answer Me This! of 2010:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
In which we speak of:
the Next sales Sherlock Holmes
sweetbreads
condominiums
the son of Sam
Golden Wonder
Stanley Kubrick
the Queen’s Speech
Scotch woodcock
Johnny Carson
snake lungs
Anne Frank
and
the best public lavatories in Balham.
Furthermore: Olly manages to draw comparison between Lolita and Match of the Day; Helen manages to draw comparison between estate agents and kidnapped children; and Martin the Sound Man manages to draw comparison between a suitable Christmas present for his girlfriend and a DVD boxset about serial killers. Let’s hope he didn’t buy it for research purposes.
We’ve a list of chores for you to do this week:
1) click here to get yourself a free Audible audiobook;
2) share your neuroses, like shark-fearing questioneer Bunty did, in a comment on this post;
3) decide for the world whether humans are red meat or white meat by voting in this poll
4) if you’re still steaming about Walkers Crisps’ packet colours (and frankly, we aren’t), sign the petition;
5) listen to Martin the Sound Man’s latest music podcast;
6) and, of course, send us YOUR QUESTIONS for future episodes, via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877.
So, after you’ve done all those, we’ll see you next week for Episode 122!
Thanks so much everyone for all your lovely comments about our first proper radio show, Web 2009 with Helen and Olly. And thanks even more to the renegade YouTuber, who took one of our favourite bits of the show and did this with it:
Vocals by Joanna Neary. Videos by show-offs everywhere.
We saw out 2009 in pleasing and civilised fashion, and we hope you did too. But, thanks to pre-recording, on New Year’s Eve we also presented a radio show, Web 2009 with Helen and Olly. It was our first ever proper radio programme, and we would be ever so happy if you would listen to it; it’ll be available until Thursday 7th January, so CLICK HERE to do so via BBC iplayer, or download it as a podcast from the BBC website.
And if you wouldn’t mind telling your radio-and-internet-loving friends about it, tweeting it, or posting it up on Facebook, then we owe you a lollipop the next time we see you. Which, if you go to the same gym as Olly, is probably quite soon.
Links to all the nominees and winners are below – and another good link is THIS ONE to Martin the Sound Man’s free EP of songs about space. Give it a whirl!
Helen and Olly’s 2009 Web Awards went to:
David Schneider after winning our 'Tweeter of the Year' award
And finally, the LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD went to 104-year-old Ivy Bean, the oldest person on Twitter and, quite possibly, the whole of the internet…
Following Episode 120, in which we discussed whether ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ refers to an over-generous poultry lover or to a whole load of God Stuff, both Judy in San Francisco and Andrew in Southampton wrote in to tell us that whatever we said was a big plate of Wrong Pie. Their counter-evidence was this:
It’s almost exactly two years since we cracked Luxembourg, and therefore high time we set our sights on another country. But which one do you think we should go for? Andorra? Djibouti? Vatican City?
This is a bit like those small-ads you see in the paper saying, “Saw you on the District Line, you were wearing a scarf, I was the girl who dropped my headphones. Drink?”, only non-romantic. James from Sheffield seeks like-minded individual for minor acquaintance or minor friendship:
I’m in my first year at the University of Sheffield, and on Registration Day (in September) I saw somebody with an Answer Me This bag. This came as a surprise, as I’m certain that there can’t be too many Answer Me This fans out there 😉 Unfortunately I was in a queue at the time so I did not have the opportunity to introduce myself as a fellow fan of the podcast.
So, taking a sort of non-romantic “Missed Connections” approach, would you please be able to give a shout-out to “the guy with the answer me this bag who was in the registration room for first year students at Sheffield university” and see if he responds to the shout-out? You would be providing a valuable public service, uniting Answer Me This fans across South Yorkshire!!
Readers! If you are that man – or you know that man – then please get in touch, and we’ll set you up on a playdate with James.
Answer Me This! Podcast 