Answer Me This! Podcast

Helen’s advice: a retraction

February 14, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

* Click here for Episode 5 of Answer Me This! *

Despite it being merely a few days old, I already have cause to regret some of the advice I gave in Episode 5.

When trusting listener Nick wrote in asking how to avoid the common cold, I suggested he simply do whatever my dad does, as in my whole life I have never known my dad to have a cold (despite him insisting on keeping our house at a temperature low enough to freeze our breath on the inside of the windows).

However I am now mired in guilt for taking Mr Zaltzman’s iron constitution for granted, as apparently he is currently laid up in codeine-fogged agony with a torn hip ligament. I know that an injury sustained while moving a massively overladen coal scuttle isn’t the same lapse in form as him succumbing to a cold, but I still feel a dereliction of responsibility.

Sorry, Dad. Sorry, Nick.

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Martin the Sound Man: LIVE!!!

February 12, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

* Click here for Episode 5 of Answer Me This! *

To most of you, Martin the Sound Man is nothing but a distant booming voice, interjecting when things get A Bit Much on Answer Me This.

Well, he’s all that and MORE! He’s the frontman of a band called The Ladies, and as such is playing a gig on Valentine’s Day at the Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, which is here. Why not go and check out his troubadour stylings? The Sunday Times certainly thinks you should!

He’s on at 8.30, so there’ll be plenty of time afterwards to whisk your Valentine off to share a combo platter for two at the nearest Harvester. And if you’re single, you could cop off with another Ladies fan. They are a good-looking bunch. If that is not inducement enough, Martin’s also giving away one-off free CDs, and what is more, the Slaughtered Lamb does very nice fish finger sandwiches.

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Cuddle up to EPISODE 5

February 8, 2007 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)

Good day to you, friends!

You and us, we’ve been getting on so well that we wanted to send you all an early Valentine’s card and a heart-shaped box of Ferrero Rocher. Unfortunately we ran out of stamps, and Martin the Sound Man ate all the Ferrero Rocher – so instead we offer you the fifth episode of Answer Me This! as a love-token.

And if you haven’t subscribed to us on iTunes yet, why the devil not? That way, you’ll hear our new episodes as and when they’re published, perhaps one whole day in advance of your friends. That’s sure to serve you well in the playground.

Matters attracting our amorous attentions this week include:
yeast of the head
yeast infections
yeast extract
Rupert Grint (artistic progress of)
Olly’s toiletries
birthday card etiquette
Chloe off 24
whiffy dollars
and
Martin the Sound Man at C&A.

And if that doesn’t get you in the mood for some commercially-orchestrated lurrve, then you are probably ill.

Thanks ever so much to everyone who sent questions in; apologies to those whose queries have gone unanswered, and well done to Kins, Miranda, Nick, Katie, Ken Mustard and Eloise, who made the cut this week. If YOU have a question to add to the canon, please for God’s sake email it NOW to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com (and by the way, if you want to be added to our email list, just send us an email titled ‘Helen and Olly, please send me your occasional pithy missives’).

By the by, we notice not a single one of you has even attempted to win Olly’s Christmas pudding. Come on, people! It’s the perfect Valentine’s present! (if your true love is a bit of a dolt)

Until episode 6, bye!

Helen and Olly
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Look at me! I’m EPISODE 4!

January 30, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

Hello, chaps!

At long last, the breathless wait for episode 4 is OVER. Despite its long wait on the bench, Episode 4’s beauty is undimmed. This week’s musings, hotter than a McDonald’s apple pie in August, include:

aunties
lavatory seats (feng shui influence of)
stabilisers
restaurants (evil financial vagaries of)
love-teeth
Plato (Apology)
drowsy fishermen
the Answer Me This! backlash
and
lemons.

There’s also a fair amount of self-indulgent basking in the glory of Answer Me This! achieving no.63 in the iTunes Top 100 comedy downloads. So, if you have grown fond of Answer Me This!, please urge all your friends to check it out as well and maybe we can crack the iTunes top 50. And if you haven’t, why on earth are you reading this? You’re only hurting yourself.

If you would like to join the ranks of this week’s questioneers – Ben, Olly’s dad, Holly, Tommy, Bianca and Polly – email your dilemmas, fact-niggles and bamboozlements to answermethispodcast.com. Also, nobody so far has put in any bids to win Olly’s Christmas Pudding (which pretty much ties up his question in episode 3 about whether anyone actually likes Christmas Pudding), so if for some bizarre reason you think you would like it for your pudding-coffers, send us an email entitled ‘Please send me Olly’s pudding, to feed my demented pudding-lusts’.

Until next time, bye!

Helen and Olly
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another milestone for Answer Me This!

January 30, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

Back in the olden days (ie episode 2), we asked you listeners whether you’d listened to Answer Me This! in a plane, or failing that what was the weirdest place in which you’d listened to the podcast. Answers to the latter, quite fairly, ranged from ‘in the nude’ to ‘Nottingham’.

However, after the following email trotted into our inbox this morning, I am delighted to announce that Answer Me This! has achieved its first mile-high listener:

Dear Helen and Olly,

Weren’t you wondering recently whether anyone had signed answermethispodcast into the mile high club? Well I did! But not in a dirty way. Last Sunday, episode 2, London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare, somewhere near Iceland!

Congratulations!

Alex D

And congratulations back at you, Alex D. The challenge is on, listeners – beat that! I look forward to hearing from Gerald A. Spacetourist: ‘I listened to episode 6004 whilst orbiting the Moon. To be honest, having spent £1million on the trip, I should have waited until I got home.’

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Trying times at Answer Me This

January 26, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

Hello, pals. You’re probably thinking: “By this time of the week, I’ve usually received the new episode of Answer Me This!, seeing how it comes out on Thursdays and is supposed to be weekly. But where the crivens is Episode Four? Huh?”

Well, you’d be right to wonder. Episode Four is indeed all ready and champing at the bit to be released. However, as in Terminator, technology is the enemy; unfortunately it is the very enemy to which the medium of podcasting is inextricably wedded. And currently, it’s a marriage in which our web hosting company is out somewhere on a three-day booze bender, having left poor old Episode Four back at home chained to the kitchen radiator.

Hopefully our hosting company will come back from the saloon with a contrite expression and a posy from the all-night garage, promising Episode Four he didn’t know what came over him and it won’t happen again. Episode Four is sick of being blamed for all the problems in the marriage, and just wants Technology to start behaving itself again. But Episode Four can’t even think of leaving Technology and going it alone. All Episode Four wants is love…

Meanwhile, if you can’t wait for an Answer Me This! hit until our technological problems are resolved, why not have a listen to Episode Three, Episode Four’s pretty cousin who never seems to have any problems? Alternatively, you could make your own personal Answer Me This! with a couple of sock puppets and a funny voice.

Also, while we’re on the subject of Bad News: our MySpace account just got hacked and some naughty swine sent all our Imaginary Friends lots of bulletins about penis enlargement. So, if you’re one of our Imaginary Friends and got thusly spammed, we apologise. Honestly, we have no interest at all in enlarging your penises.

It’s not all doom and gloom at Answer Me This!, however: last Saturday we were shocked and delighted to discover that after only three episodes, we were already in the iTunes top 100 comedy podcasts, at number 63!

This mightn’t sound particularly glorious to you, but our expectations were LOW. And number 63 was only a few places below the Reduced Shakespeare Company and famous-off-the-telly David Walliams talking about swimming!

Even more excitingly, later that evening we went up to number 55. Calloo callay! Since then, we’ve hovered somewhere between 55 and 70, snapping at the podcasting heels of David Walliams. But this morning we found that not only was Answer Me This! back up to 55, it was also a whopping TEN PLACES ABOVE WALLIAMS! And neither of us has even swum the Channel! If we had, we’d probably be top 20 for sure.

So, thankyou ever so much to all of you who have subscribed to Answer Me This! on iTunes. If you haven’t, you can do so by clicking here, and as soon as you’ve done that, please subscribe to one of the really popular comedy podcasts (eg Gervais, Brand, Moyles, Best of YouTube, that sort of thing) because we’ve found that helps shunt us up the chart a bit. We can get into the top 50, people! Let’s all reach for the skies!

And in the meantime, let’s hope that Episode Four and the Hosting Company patch up their differences and give it another shot.

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Martin the Sound Man’s eggy web of deceit

January 24, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

* To listen to episode 3 of Answer Me This!, click here *

Last year, Martin the Sound Man released an EP called Tissue Of Lies.

I didn’t think the title was of any especial significance. UNTIL NOW.

You know that stuff about poached eggs that Martin was spouting in episode three? Something about how to twiddle with the ions so that the proteins do something or other? (OK, I admit my mind did wander a bit.) Remember that?

Well, we’ve had an email from a scientist called May. Her email address is ‘proteinsaredifficult’, which suggests she sure knows her stuff about proteins. She says:

The core of the protein consists of tightly packed hydrophobic residues, whereas the surface is mostly hydrophillic. Water molecules are unlikely to “break” into the protein and diffuse the egg because the residues are so tightly packed.

In translation: “What Martin said about the science behind coagulating egg-whites was a load of horseshit. And just because he has a PhD in quantum physics (which he probably BOUGHT OFF THE INTERNET anyway) doesn’t mean he knows shit about shinola. Or egg-whites.”

So, Martin, you are officially a Bad Egg and you have brought Answer Me This! into disrepute. Shame on you! Shame!!!!

Lest we get into this sort of hot water again, here’s a little advance warning: in episode 4, Olly accidentally says ‘pineapple’ when he meant ‘pumpkin’. I apologise in advance if this affects your enjoyment of his joke.

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Jude ‘Crystal-Pissing’ Law

January 24, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

* To listen to episode 3 of Answer Me This!, click here *

Way back in episode two, we broached the subject of the Jude Law film The Wisdom of Crocodiles, in which he plays a serial killer who, after killing someone, pisses a crystal and puts it into a special box.

To elaborate upon this issue, we’ve had an email from Nathan, who says:

Answer me this: Did you know that Jude “Crocodile Tears” Law’s crystal-pissing condition has some basis in reality? Healthy urine may contain three types of crystals Oxalate, Triple Phosphate and Cystine. However, Jude’s crystals seem (from your description) to be more unusual which suggests that he may be suffering from liver disease of “maple syrup urine” disease.

Poor old Jude. No wonder his fictional self was cross enough to kill Timothy Spall.

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Riddle-me-ree, it’s EPISODE 3

January 18, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

Howdy, friends and associates of Answer Me This!

We are very excited to present Answer Me This! Episode III for the delectation of your beautiful little ears. We do hope you like it. Those of you who thought this thing was a trilogy, prepare to be disappointed: there’s plenty more where that came from. Oh yes.

Subjects keeping us busy this week include:
charity muggers
albumen (structural integrity of)
poaching
boobs
narcolepsy
Christmas pudding (universal unpopularity of)
Gladiators
flying maverick mice
embarrassing misunderstandings
and
syphilis.

So, much the same as Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Many thanks to this week’s questioneers, David Goo, Kins, Hugo, Ali, Nadia and Holly. And if YOU want to join their illustrious ranks, send your questions – from the sublime to the ridiculous – to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.

Furthermore, if you want to win Olly’s unwanted Sainsbury’s Basics Christmas Pudding (cash value £0), answer us this: how can we get that picture of a horse wearing flippers off our iTunes page?

Until next week, when we’ll be taking more swings at the Questions ball with our Answers bat: bye!

Helen and Olly

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Answer Me This a bit late: Alicky’s salty question

January 17, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

* To listen to episode 2 of Answer Me This!, click here*

Inquisitive listener Alicky, undaunted by the tangled mess Olly made of her name in Episode 2, asks us this:

Helen and Olly, Answer Me This: what is the precise difference between saline and brine?

Alicky, I do hope this is nothing to do with your habit of disembowelling your suitors and measuring the stretchiness of their intestines. Are you pickling them in brine for posterity? I thought we’d already made it clear that Answer Me This! cannot aid and abet such ghoulish behaviour.

(But if we were to pickle a man’s stolen intestines, we would probably opt for vinegar.)

Here comes the semantics bit. Concentrate!

saline (noun) = 1. a metallic salt, containing magnesium, potassium or sodium, used in medicine as a cathartic; 2. salty water.

Whereas:

brine (noun) = 1. water containing a large amount of salt; 2. sea-water; 3. salty pickling fluid; 4. any saline solution.

So I suppose you could say that saline is brine’s mothership.

Hey, come back – there’s more! ‘Brine’ as a verb means to pickle in brine (Alicky, put that pile of guts DOWN).

But the plot thickens if you look at ‘saline’ as an adjective, because in this form it can mean each of these things:
1. of, containing, or resembling table salt;
2. of or pertaining to a chemical salt, especially of sodium, potassium and magnesium, as used as a cathartic.

Confusing these two could ruin your breakfast.

And that’s not the end of the confusion, I’m afraid. For the third adjectival sense of saline is: ‘of or pertaining to a method of abortion involving injection of hypertonic saline solution into the amniotic cavity during the second trimester.’

Now that really could ruin your breakfast.
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What’s that coming over the hill? Oh, it’s only EPISODE 2

January 11, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

Good day to you, readers; and what more glorious day could there be than this, the day episode 2 of Answer Me This! is at last released to an adoring world?

(You needn’t answer that question. It’s rhetorical. There is, of course, no more glorious day!)

Hot topics covered in this week’s episode include:
fishy juice
sliced bread
intestines (stretchiness of)
etymology
breakfast
Continental breakfast (relative rubbishness of)
Bob Holness
French horns
Irish butchers
and
Jude Law (fictional urinary habits of).

Cor! Wow! Etc!! If you like the look of that, and you haven’t yet subscribed to Answer Me This! on iTunes, why not subscribe to Answer Me This! on iTunes? And if you don’t like it, leave us some constructive criticism in the comments section, otherwise we’ll never get better.

Many thanks to this week’s questioneers, Clare, Amy, Brendy, Alistair, Alicky and Hugo; we hope we have vanquished your queries. Furthermore, we offer a big enthusiastic ‘congratulations!’ to Nadia for her winning answer to last week’s Audience Question. Unfortunately she doesn’t win a big cash prize, but she has earnt our respect. If you want to win some of that for yourself, apply your wits to this week’s question in the post below.

We’re back with another dose of Answer Me This! next week. Remember, if YOU have a question for us, please send it to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.

Love,
Helen and Olly
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ANSWER THIS, LISTENERS!

January 10, 2007 by Helen Zaltzman

We hope you are having plenty of fun listening to Answer Me This!, and for this week’s audience question we are keen to find out what is the oddest place in which you’ve listened to it.

We realise that, given the fledgling nature of Answer Me This!, this is quite a test. However we know you to be an ingenious bunch, and look forward to you revealing the true extent of your deviant podcast-listening habits.

Please leave your answers in the Comments section, and remember: you stand to win THE RESPECT OF YOUR PEERS.

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