Answer Me This! Podcast

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July 23, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

I’m sure you’ve all been agog to know what Dan the office poacher from Episode 62 succeeded in nabbing before he was shown the door. Here’s the inventory:

I made off with copious pens, god knows how many pads to help my girlfriend who’s at uni, enough envelopes to run a post office, post-it notes to leave me hilarious notes around home like “Get a job loser”, staplers – spare one for Olly if he wants – and my footrest stool (good for posture when nerding it at home). But my piece de resistance was my office chair – distinctively green and comfortable. All of which is now at home.

My next question is: How can I convince my former work colleagues who come to visit that I procured this through proper channels without having to sweep it all under the carpet when they come round?

The answer to that, Dan, is: don’t! They will be super-jealous that you were so audacious to nick a pile of stuff from the mothership, especially when they realised you managed to sneak out large pieces of furniture under your coat. Ah, if only you had put your wiles to good use rather than petty crime…

Hiccup-related missives are still trickling in since Episode 58, including this eerie question from Steve:

All the suggestions for curing hiccups were probably almost useful for normal people, but answer me this – do you know of any ways to cure the hiccups of our unborn child? It’s getting kinda creepy to watch!

Um…tell the foetus to drink a glassful of amniotic fluid from the wrong side? I fear this cure from Nicole in Kent won’t work on embryos:

If you get the hiccupper at the front and get everyone to stare at them and say HICCUP they should stop.

Yup. They should stop and burst into tears because of all the chanting bullies.

On the back of Episode 59, Nicole also offers a rather less intimidating homework dodge:

Say your water bottle leaked and made it completely illegible; just wiggle lines on a page then run it under a tap to do this.

It’s certainly less of a risk than this one from Doug in Jersey:

This excuse saved me the other day: how about I made my homework into a aeroplane and it got hijacked?

Those teachers in the Channel Islands must either have mischievous appetites for absurdism, or simply not give a shit about their jobs at all.

Finally, following Episode 61, Krabbers reveals who would appear in his ultimate Celebrity Superwank:

I would like to see Vera and Jack Duckworth in a swappsy party with Richard and Judy.

Yum.

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 1 Comment »

EPISODE 63 – dehydrating Sara Cox

July 17, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)

Hello fellows,

We like the Kings Cross-Honor Oak bus route 63 so much, we’ve named Answer Me This! Episode 63 after it! Although Episode 63 won’t shuttle you between Peckham and Clerkenwell in double-quick time, it will emulate the effect of the passenger next to you muttering crazy nonsense into your ear. To get that “Oh God, can I pretend to be asleep? Will he never shut up about how the cast of The Bill are all actually secret policemen? Does he seem mad because of the face tattoo, or did he get the face tattoo because he was mad?” effect, just click.

You’ll have to imagine the background of tinny R&B played through someone’s sodding phone whilst you are assailed by such subjects as:

Julie Burchill and her opinions
jiggly boobs
U vs Non-U
Lord Byron’s mucky podcast
pork
quiche
the power of My Cousin Vinny
the world’s first colour photo
the world’s first zig-zig machine
fake Arne Jacobsen chairs
and
common sense.

Plus, Olly attempts to downgrade his poshness; Helen is approximately as fascinating to watch as Channel 4’s biggest hit; and Martin the Sound Man makes a joke about Dr Alban. It’s things like that which probably caused the awful headache and stomach pains reported by Charles from Bath after chain-listening to Answer Me This!. Know your limits, people!

Now, we know school’s (almost) out for the summer, but Answer Me This! isn’t so send us YOUR QUESTIONS for future episodes by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, phoning 0208 123 5877 or Skype-ing answermethis.

See you next week!

Helen and Olly

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pods win prizes

July 12, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

** Click here for EPISODE 62 **

Well, here’s a strange thing, listeners – esteemed questioneer Andy from Essex has pointed out that Answer Me This! is up for a European Podcast Award! The website is so magnificently confusing that we have NO idea what this signifies, beyond the mysterious ‘substantial material prizes’; but if you want us to find out, then vote vote vote (you can also win your own ‘valuable non-cash prizes’ by doing so. It’s all a bit like ‘Going for Gold’ or something…).

Befuddlement notwithstanding, thanks very much to whomever nominated us! Jolly kind of you.

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EPISODE 62 – My First Atom

July 10, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

Hello listeners,

No chit-chat today; Olly’s got a sore ankle. Such grave times do not allow such frivolity. So just listen to Episode 62 and pray for his swift ankular recovery.

It’s quite a groiny episode of Answer Me This today, what with:

split-crotch bloomers vs. the She Pee
cricket boxes
the invention of the gusset
and
testicular cancer;

but luckily there are also ungroiny topics like:

Rolodexes
epilepsy
Djibouti
perry
hot old people
Cinnamon Grahams
the drawbacks to nicking a photocopier
backwards Bulgarians
and
mashed potato.

Also, Helen spells out why you shouldn’t sit in front of her at the theatre; Olly explains the real reason why men enjoy ladies’ tennis; and Martin the Sound Man tries to emulate seductive Mr Spock. Irresistible!

Now, Olly might malinger with ankle man-flu forever if you don’t send us YOUR QUESTIONS, so hurry and email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, phone 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis. It’s a bit like that bit in Peter Pan where you have to clap or Tinkerbell will die.

See you next week, hopefully with all four of our ankles hale and hearty!

Helen and Olly

PS. If you are in need of more Helen in the next week or so (although unless you’re an elderly person writing a vanity project and you need help putting commas in the right places, you probably aren’t), you can catch her on Sky.com/News today, Thursday 10th July, at 7.30pm, or as the special guest on Matthew Crosby’s Readable Podcast, or doing stuff in the Literary Arena at the Latitude Festival 17th-20th July, or previewing the press on Sky News’s Press Preview at 11.30pm on 14th July. Olly is also previewing said press at 11.30pm on 11th July, so between them you should be pretty well up on what’s about to happen in the papers, much like a current affairs clairvoyant.

PPS. If you’re curious to know what toy so enraptured Olly’s attention during the recording of Episode 62, look here:

Available from an infant near you!

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If you like our ‘Mary Poppins’ or ‘Bjork’ jingles…

July 8, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

…you might like to see the Voice of those jingles, the wonderful Joanna Neary, perform some of her acclaimed comedy. Especially if you also like theatres in Bloomsbury, giving money to children’s cancer charities, and the comedians Jo Brand, Steven Merchant, Mark Steel, Jo Enright, Tim Minchin, Ed Byrne, Milton Jones, Mat Holness, Dan Antopolski and Robin Ince (in fact if you don’t like at least some of those things, you are perhaps a bit unwell).

Because:

on Sunday 13th July, star of stage, screen and Answer Me This!‘s jingles Joanna Neary will be performing in ‘A Night of Jos’, along with that properly stellar array of acts, at the Bloomsbury Theatre near Euston, in a special benefit night for William’s Fund.

So if you fancy spending your Sunday evening laughing your scalp off with the happy side effect of raising money for a very worthy cause, then book yourself a ticket HERE. It is likely to be Very Good Indeed.

** Meanwhile click here if you want to listen to EPISODE 61 **

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Posted in friends of the show, News | 2 Comments »

EPISODE 61 – kicking the fictional tramp

July 3, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

Happy Third of July, listeners! It’s Independence minus one, the last remaining hours in which someone else made all those pesky decisions and tidied your room for you… Hmm, perhaps time for us to brush up on our American history; but we’ve neglected our education in order to bring you Episode 61.

Within which are such topics as:

A.A. Gill
offal
William Caxton
garlic monkeys
past life regression
the Gang of Four (the band, not the terrorists)
an oblique reference to Slint
rice paper
bendy dancers
the drawbacks of unusual names
the drawbacks of the Roaring Twenties
and
the drawbacks of Martin the Sound Man’s privates.

Olly turns Japanese (not in the same manner as The Vapors, although who knows what he might stealthily have been up to below the tabletop?); Helen emulates those feisty Latinas; and Martin the Sound Man looks forward to a nice peaceful existence after everyone else has fallen prey to some kind of apocalypse. What a treasure. We also reveal the fast track to getting a job as a Sunday Times restaurant critic, and the most romantic thing you can do with a blocked nose and a finger.

And if you’re not sated after all that, look at this bit of amazingness!

Send us your affections in the form of YOUR QUESTIONS by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, phoning 0208 123 5877 or Skype-ing answermethis; and we’ll tuck them close to our hearts and think about all those times we shared.

Byeeee!

Helen and Olly

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Hold onto your stomachs!

July 2, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

On the back of George from Aberdeenshire‘s question in Episode 60, regarding bugs which use the human skin much as a mole treats a village cricket pitch, Charlie has written in with the following nightmare-inducer:

I think they were thinking of the bot fly, which does indeed lay its eggs under animal skin (can be human) and then when the larvae hatch they pop out of your skin. This has happened to someone I know when in Africa, but I think they are indigenous to quite a few countries. Pretty rank! To treat them you supposedly cover the eggy skin areas with Vaseline to suffocate/kill the eggs/larvae, although this may be an old wives’ tale. Nice.

There are also lots of nasty wormy type things, generally found in Africa, that infect humans as part of their life cycle, and that you can sometimes see under the skin e.g. guinea worm, or wiggling across the front of the eye e.g. loa loa filariasis. Mmmm. Not sure about the worm that would jump out of the loo and up your urethra though…!

It’s not a worm, Charlie, it’s a fish! In fact Gene wrote in to identify it as the candiru fish; apparently its urine-ascending powers are mere rumour, but as a precaution you might as well take a tea-strainer with you the next time you need to piss in the Amazon.

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 3 Comments »

Helen and Olly looking unusually animated for a Monday morning…

June 30, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

** Click here for EPISODE 60 **

Oh listeners, we do love it when you send us things. Questions, that’s a given. Pictures, a rare but great delight. And now animator Weles Bussett has gone and turned the pretitles from Episode 45 into a piece of animation for the dialogue* section of his portfolio! Loooooook!!!

I only wish we were that charming, moving and toned in real life.

Anyway if any of the rest of you fancies sending us your creative projects, we really look forward to seeing what you come up with: a Punch & Judy-style puppet show, with Helen and Olly beating each other with tiny truncheons? A feature-length Pixar version of Answer Me This? A Jan Svankmajer-esque version in which Helen and Olly are played by sausages? Weles has set the bar pretty high, but that certainly would arrest our attention…

*if the speech looks a bit out of sync, it’s not Weles’s fault – Youtube likes to jigger about with that sort of thing, just in case you forget who’s boss.

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Tags: animation
Posted in AMT Gallery, Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, frippery, visuals | 1 Comment »

Well, have YOU ever seen a penguin with hiccups?

June 30, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

** Click here for EPISODE 60 **

Hiccup cures are still a hot topic, even though Episode 58 is but a distant memory (yeah, I know it was less than three weeks ago, but these days my mind is as retentive as a crocheted teapot). Amy has written in with the following fun-sounding hiccup cure:

when i have hiccups i stand up and pull my arms behind my back and pretend I’m a penguin, it pulls your diaphragm back.
and it works! (plus is quite entertaining if you tell someone who’s doing it that they have to make a penguin noise)

Yikes! Isn’t that also how they tell you to kill a dog that’s attacking you?

On the tandem subject of sneeze prevention, Olly himself piped up to say that talking about an oncoming sneeze often makes it dissipate. Rather like discussing that novel you say you’re going to write one day, or the names of the children you’re planning to have with the partner you’ve only known a week…

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, sneezing | 1 Comment »

EPISODE 60 – I’d love to see Diddy in a monocle

June 26, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

the lovely Julie Halard

Wimbledon’s begun, so let’s all enjoy this picture of French tennis pin-up Julie Halard. Actually, the only one of us likely to enjoy it to a particularly valuable extent is questioneer Roger Stout, who in Episode 60 confesses that she was the object of his teenage crushes. Don’t worry, Roger, we’re not going to fight you for her.

But why don’t we all accompany Roger on a trip down Memory Lane, at the end of which waits the objects of our adolescent affections, holding a posy and looking a bit rougher than we remembered? Let us know which Hottie was on the posters you kissed before going to sleep (isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?) by leaving a comment below; and then have a listen to Episode 60.

It’s bulging like the Incredible Hulk’s trouser-seams with subjects such as:

lorgnettes
egg fried rice vs. fried egg and rice
ortolans
My So-Called Life
Brian Blessed
early Atomic Kitten: hot or not?
Kate Nash’s multitasking
botanical private parts
Bombalurina
spiky urethra-fish
and
Jon La Joie‘s song about ladies you wouldn’t want to take home to mother.

Furtheremore Olly, tired of slating Wales, this week goes for Scotland, France and Chinese medics; Helen abuses her potential paramours; and Martin the Sound Man tries to destroy the podcast by inserting his catchphrase ‘he looks like perfectly smooth pubis’ at any given opportunity (thanks to the wonders of editing, listeners, you are spared this horror. Be grateful. Very grateful). We also reveal the silliest Google searches which, according to our blog stats page, have resulted in Answer Me This!, and if you like the sound of that, then you might also like the sight of this.

There’s not much else to add except PLEASE SEND US YOUR QUESTIONS by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, phoning 0208 123 5877 or Skype-ing answermethis.

Yup. That is all. Toodle-pip!

Helen and Olly

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Whoopee! More Google fun!!!

June 26, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

Can you believe that the summer larkarama of our Top 10 Funny Google Searches Which Resulted In Answer Me This! Rather Than Anything Like What They Were Hoping To Find was a whole year ago? Can you? No? Yes? Not sure?

Well, you would be stupid to do anything other than believe it, because it is actually true, to the very day. But even though the number of people actually searching for us is now almost equal to those seeking ‘sex chairs’ or ‘cock’, the past year has yielded even more Curious, Funny or Massively Inappropriate Things Which A Search Engine Took To Mean They Were Really Hoping To Be Directed To A Question-Answering Weekly Podcast. In Episode 60 we unveil the ones which ghasted our flabbers to the greatest extent; but they are merely the tip of the iceberg, the heart of the artichoke, the Dangermouse pencil case in the middle of a particularly competitive game of Pass the Parcel. So below are some of the others which tickled, baffled or shocked us. Imagine a jolly little tune as you read them!

The Sneeze-Related Category
still a ridiculously competitive round even after all this time

Most romantic: ‘smell of her sneeze’
Most likely to make Google wonder why it doesn’t ditch its boring friends for some better ones: ‘joss sneezes’
The ‘what were they expecting Google to do about it?’ cup: ‘I am going to sneeze’
The ‘what was the internet like when you were a girl, grandma?’ rosette: ‘ladylike sneezing’
The Titmuss award for most curious mix of Amnesty International, objectification of women, and hayfever: ‘free busty sneezers’
Only ten syllables away from a haiku: ‘sinus sneeze stand up morning’

The Rude Category
yes, we know that’s what the internet’s for, so we shouldn’t have been so surprised…

Strongest proof that too much wanking ruins your spelling: ‘bals’
Cockiest (tie): ‘cock’, ‘nude cock’, ‘cock and balls’, ‘cock coming’, ‘dirty cock’, ‘cock a poo’, ‘cock in a sock’, ‘Mario Italian big cock’, ‘weird cock’, ‘weirdest cock’, ‘cock nose’ (perhaps that’s the answer to the previous two searches?), ‘cock smashing’, ‘cock porn gammy’
Most likely to end in erotic disappointment when the search results in Answer Me This! rather than something titillating: ‘ITUNES SEXY BUSTY PODCASTS’ tied with ‘the podcast you can wank to’
Podcast that people should not be seeking: ‘incest podcast’
Most unexpected perversions: ‘clandestine necrophilia’, ‘piss drinking exciting’, ‘clitoris nose’, ‘Christmas cake nude’ (bleurgh!! Christmas cake is bad enough with all its clothes on!)
Most generous invitation: ‘wank with me’

Questions the internet probably can’t answer satisfactorily because it isn’t actually human:

‘why does my girlfriend smells like onions?’
‘why are you such a cock?’
‘how can i stop curry having a laxative effect?’
‘why do charity adverts make you feel guilty?’
‘how do spaceships keep from hitting comets?’
‘where did luke have to sit for breakfast?’
‘do women prefer large girth for anal sex?’
‘why did you choose to invent vegemite?’
‘why didn’t you answer me Peter?’
Peter! Stop being such a dickhead and come clean about the vegemite, for fuck’s sake.

Potential Band-Names category:

Toothbrush Fuck
Policewoman Striptease
Babypisshorse
Fibby Lovely Dancer
Heart Shaped Bruise
The future Alanis Morrissette Album Title medal: ‘salami tactic shawshank redemption’

Celebrity round:

‘Jean Sarkozy fanclub’
‘Jean-Claude Juncker funny facts’ (There aren’t any. He’s the head of the Christian Social People’s Party in Luxembourg.)
‘Rupert Grint a hit with the ladies’
‘Nigella Lawson fat ass’
‘Lisa Riley Camden’

The Enemy of the State category for revealing the lives of others:
ordered from sordid to poignant

‘Sasha Grey drinks own piss’
‘dangers of piss drinking’ (this one goes out to the memory of Sasha Grey…)
‘brown stain on your penis’ (Google, have you been stirring the tea with your penis again?)
‘am I a lesbian? i want to have sex with’ (sadly the end of this was cut off. The implications of the search are quite different if it is ‘women’ or ‘men’. Even more so if it’s something else entirely)
‘is David the one for me answer me please’ (if you don’t know, how is Google to know?)
‘secret condoms in my boyfriend’s pocket’ (uh-oh… But it’s not like Google can help you with this one, or comfort you as you cry and rip up the photo collage)

The kind of search where Answer Me This! might serendipitously turn out to be to the liking of the searcher:

‘I love After Eights at Christmas’
‘images of topiary and front doors’
‘how to eat seductively ferrero rocher’
‘words often mispronounced by ladies’
‘Helen Zaltzman popcast’ (hee hee hee! Just imagine it!)
‘free eggery lessons’ (don’t even know what they are! But don’t they sound delightful? (If ‘eggery’ is in fact the name of some depraved practice, then please keep it to yourself and let us enjoy this moment))

So, that concludes today’s Search-Engine fun; but if YOU found this podcast by accident when you were searching for something completely different, leave a comment below and tell us what the unlikely word combination was. Hilarity will doubtless ensue!

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hiccups and sneezes

June 26, 2008 by Helen Zaltzman

** Click here for EPISODE 59 **

Beth has more advice regarding sneeze/hiccup prevention tactics as raised in Episode 58:

I cure hiccups by drinking out of the wrong side of the glass like Helen’s family. It does actually work and if you are fully capable adult it is easy to do without spilling. It essentially means you are drinking upside down, whether that’s concentration or something to do with the diaphragm I have no idea.

As for sneezing, I tell everybody who has problems getting sneezes out (‘better out than in’, Helen, your tongue method may work but I believe that you should aim to sneeze, not hold it in) that they should look at something light/bright, then to something dark and repeat every few seconds. I think this is because by switching between the two your pupils contract and dilate, and as all things are connected this messes about with your sinuses (and other general sneezy bits), causing you to sneeze out that annoying tickle. I can’t remember if I read this somewhere or made it up, but it definitely works.

Ain’t sinuses crazy? Anyway, a whole NEW question has emerged from this hiccupping debate, thanks to Klaus:

What do you say to someone when they hiccup? With sneezes, it is customary to ‘bless’ the sneezee… when someone coughs, they might say ‘cough up’ or something similar. With a burp, one pardons oneself or is pardoned. But what of hiccups? Why are they are they just forced to linger awkwardly in the air until such a time as someone suggests a dubious hiccup remedy? Please advise!

Hmm, a fine point! In the event that one can refrain from saying ‘Try drinking a glass of water! Hold your breath! Throw yourself down the stairs! Have you tried holding your breath?’ then the usual thing to do is look at the hiccupper in a manner both sympathetic and condescending, if you can manage it; but any more gracious suggestions would be welcomed.

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Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, extracurricular questions, sneezing, User-generated answers | 5 Comments »